The Ice Scream Man

by Salmon, J. F.

  Hunt sniggered through his nose at the sickness. “Oh, God, is this fucker ever going to make a mistake?”

  Something niggled at Tony, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, which made him anxious. Something, that if they had realised sooner, maybe, just maybe, they could have prevented all these years of macabre deaths. Above everything he had seen today, that made him feel sickest of all.

  45:

  “Don’t walk out on an empty stomach.”

  No, it can’t be. It was a dream, a bloody nightmare. The ribbon came from somewhere else. That’s why it was in the dream. I’d seen it before and added a bit of colour to the woman’s hair, that’s all it was.

  Sardis inspected the ribbon closely, scratching it with her nail. The fine spots smudged. Her mind was racing. Those specks are dirt; blood, as if. . . . No, it’s not possible, it’s just dirt. There’s a perfectly good explanation for this. The ribbon came from somewhere else. It’s Mum’s, that’s whose it is, and it ended up in my bed, that’s all there is to it.

  Sardis opened a drawer under her dresser and shut the ribbon inside. “It’s Mum’s,” she reminded herself, but she was still afraid to present it to Suzanne and ask.

  Sardis ambled to the fridge in bare feet with her arms folded in a short, black-satin dressing gown that covered her white nightdress. Fine knots nested in her purple hair with thin black streaks and her toenails of purple paint curled toward the floor with each step. Without a word, she took out a recycled cranberry juice carton which had a small round orange sticker on each of the four sides, an indication that it contained “Shake.”

  “What’s up with you this morning?” Suzanne asked, emptying the dishwasher.

  “Nothing.”

  “Sardis, use the beaker or at least a glass, please. Don’t be drinking from the carton. What’s the hurry?” Suzanne asked and handed her a clean glass from the dishwasher.

  With the carton in one hand and the glass in the other, Sardis continued to look in the fridge but took nothing else. She plopped herself down at the kitchen table. “No one else drinks it.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  Sardis jiggled the carton in her hand, poured, and shook the drips into the glass. The brown liquid filled a third of the glass. “Is this all that’s left, Mum? That’s all that’s in the fridge.”

  “Well, you didn’t look very hard. Did you try the back?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Let me see.” Suzanne went to the fridge with stern strides and moved food stuffs about with both hands.

  Sardis drank the shake and held the glass over her open mouth to catch the remaining drips. Instantly, she felt better but not satisfied.

  “Shit,” Suzanne said under her breath, “I’m sure I put another one in here somewhere. Well, that’s all there is until I make some more tomorrow,” she said without apology.

  “So it won’t be until after school tomorrow?”

  “Hey, missy, stop behaving like a bear with a sore head. Sorry, I thought there was more, there isn’t, what do you want me to do? Pull it out of thin air? It’s not the end of the world; it’s not going to kill you to do without for one day.”

  Suzanne continued to rummage the fridge, more in hope than anything else. The shakes only had a limited shelf life of three days before they began to smell and had to be thrown out. There were no other containers with round orange stickers.

  Sardis lowered her voice and stared into the stained glass still in her hand. “You don’t understand.” The tips of her nails scratched up and down the serrated side of the glass, making a low washboard sound.

  Suzanne closed the fridge door and turned to her daughter. “Understand what, Sardis? Are you feeling all right?”

  “No. It’s nothing. I just didn’t sleep very well. I’m fine.”

  “Listen, I’m going into town for a few hours. Why don’t you come with me today?”

  “No, I have a lot of study to do; final exams are only weeks away.”

  “It’ll only be for a few hours. How often do we get to spend the day together?”

  “Can’t Dad get some?”

  “Can’t Dad get some what? Your dad’s in the shower; he’s going out to watch a match this afternoon. Sardis, it’s Sunday, nothing can be gotten until tomorrow.”

  Sardis ran her nail with more friction along the glass and picked at the centre wooden strut below the table with her toenails; notches of wood splintered to the floor.

  “Sardis, please stop making that noise.”

  Sardis pushed back the chair with her feet and let the glass fall over on the table.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To my room.”

  “Okay, suit yourself.”

  Sardis heard the familiar overstated hum walk out the living room and into the hall. It was Dad’s calling card, a poor melody of dum-de-dums, his way of warning her of his imminent arrival into her territory. It was also a safety guard against catching his daughter in a compromising position, God forbid. On one occasion when Sardis was unwell and three of her male friends called in to see her, Alex knocked on the door and although he was surprised to see them, his response was, “Blessed art thou amongst men.” They all thought Alex was a cool dad.

  “Five, four, three, two, one,” Sardis counted down.

  The inevitable rhythmic knock on the door came two seconds late.

  “Yes. Come in.”

  Alex opened the bedroom door and sheepishly leaned in, using the support of the door handle. His eyes scanned the room, past her desk, before fixing on her bed.

  Sardis sat propped up with the covers over her and the laptop resting on bent knees.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said without zest and closed the lid.

  Alex recognised the tone. “Hey, you all right? You look a bit pale.”

  “I’m okay, doing some study, that’s all.”

  “Mum’s gone out?”

  “Ages ago, into town.”

  “Oh. What are you doing in bed at this time? That’s not like you.”

  “Don’t feel like getting up to much.”

  “You do look a little peaky. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, I’ll be fine, just feeling a bit quiffy. I’m going to stay in bed for a while, maybe watch a movie after.”

  “I’m not feeling too good myself, pain in my stomach all bloody morning. All bloody morning, and a headache to boot,” Alex said, rubbing the back of his neck with a frown.

  “That’ll be Mum, then,” Sardis said with her first smile of the day.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. Promised some of the lads I’d go down the pub and watch the match, big game, otherwise I wouldn’t bother. But c’est la vie, as they say.” He drummed his fingers on the door and gave it a final tap with one finger. “Right then, I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Okay, Dad, enjoy the game.”

  “See you later, love.”

  “Hey, Dad,” Sardis said, as if it was an afterthought, “is there any shake left?”

  His expression told her he didn’t have a clue. “It should be in the fridge where it always is?”

  “There isn’t, it’s all gone. Is there not any I can make up?”

  “That’s your mother’s department, honey. I know nothing about it.”

  “But you get it for her?”

  “Just the main ingredient; she makes up the rest. You know your mother, very secretive when it comes to those shakes. She doesn’t want anyone else getting their hands on the recipe.” Alex raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Hmm, it’s not like your mother to run out; I’ll get some of the raw stuff tomorrow. Don’t look so put out. Just think, love, it could always be worse.”

  “Yeah, okay, thanks,” Sardis said, hiding the disappoint
ment that swayed in her stomach.

  “I’m going to have to get something for my head. It feels like it’s about to burst. See you later.”

  “See ya.”

  Left alone, Sardis took a deep breath and blew the air back out her nostrils. The craving in her stomach seemed to be worsening, that’s what it was, a craving. She’d do anything for a shake right about now.

  If I’d known there was none left I would have sipped it, made it last. Bloody hell, Mum. What is going on with me? I feel like I’m going crazy trying to be normal.

  Images flashed in her mind. They should have been disturbing. She should have shut them out but instead she allowed them to fester, to manifest to the point of fantasy. She was back in her host observing another moment when he went down between a woman’s legs and began to bite, suck, and chew. A tinge of excitement tickled her thighs as she recalled the lurid act. She could taste the shake again in her mouth.

  She frustratingly flipped the lid open on her laptop. Disgusted with herself for even letting such thoughts enter her mind, she opened up the app to her private diary, re-entered her password, and typed how she felt. Sometimes it helped to let the words flow, quench the thoughts to the page and then lock them away so as not to bother her. No sooner had the first few words tapped from her fingertips, than a car horn jarred her from her concentration of irritation.

  It sounded out the front of the cottage and she guessed the horn sounded angry. It didn’t sound in two bursts to say goodbye or short little bursts to grab one’s attention. This was the sound heard when almost in an accident, a continuous, uninterrupted blare that cursed out to the person responsible.

  She lifted her head from the laptop, looked to the window, and waited for it to stop.

  It didn’t.

  “I hear you, Dad. Okay, okay, I’m coming. Hold your horses.”

  It should have stopped.

  It didn’t.

  She rushed to her feet from the bed, jumped into her black jeans, threw on her black woollen jumper; slipped her black converses over bare feet. All the while the horn blared a suffocating noise. She hesitated at the front door, half expecting to see her dad’s hand wave her over from his white Vauxhall Astra for assistance of some kind. But that didn’t happen.

  Outside, the horn sounded different, like an eerie wailing, not like a horn at all.

  The sky was dark. She felt the first drops of rain as she walked briskly toward the car that looked grey and ominous in the poor light of day, pebbles crunched and moved beneath her feet. With each step the rain fell that bit harder and the horn squalled louder, more terrifying the closer she came. She saw that someone was in the car; it could only be her dad. He appeared to be slumped against the steering wheel. Her strides got wider and her pace quickened with the fall of rain until she was up against the car door looking in.

  The horn was unbearably loud. She badly wanted it to stop its screaming at her. Large drops splattered against the window and ran down the glass like sperm in a race, their tails leaving behind slimy shimmering trails to obscure the inside. She wiped the window with the palm of her hand and peered past the condensation on the inside. His arm was wedged in the steering wheel; pressing on the horn. She could see that his head was face down and his body slumped to the door, still, not moving.

  “Dad! Dad!” She pulled the handle of the door. The central locking had been activated from inside the car.

  “Dad! Dad!” She banged on the glass.

  No response.

  The howling horn never let up. The sound pallet wrapped around her head and began to squeeze and suffocate. She ran to the far side of the ear-splitting Vauxhall, toward the border of neat rock that separated the grass from the white pebbled driveway. She picked up a triangle-sized rock in both hands and came back round to the driver side.

  The horn continued to madden.

  She eyed the back passenger window as if it were the eye of a beast and shot-put the rock at its membrane. The window shattered. She put her hand through the opening, careful of the tempered glass, to unlock the front door. The blaring stopped as soon as she opened the door.

  Alex came away from the steering wheel.

  His dead weight took her by surprise, forcing her back from the car door. She cringed at the sound of thud and crunch when his head hit the wet, pebbled driveway.

  It took Sardis precious time to remove the rest of Alex from the car and lay him out on his back. The absence of the incessant horn left behind a deathly silence that had yet to be absorbed. Her ears still rang and her head ached terribly like the sick throb of a hangover. She fixated on his face for signs of life, for signs of breathing, but couldn’t ignore the amount of blood, some of it brownish, coming from his nose and mouth . . . lots of it. The colour was similar to her shakes without the food colouring and vaguely smelt the same. Her stomach knotted akin to an ex-smoker inhaling the ribbons of passive smoke on the day they decided to quit.

  Sardis hadn’t decided to quit anything. She ran out. Or more precisely Mum did.

  The sensation in her stomach confused her mind and she had to remind herself what to do next. She shook Alex by the shoulders and scratched him across his body for a response. It was a game she remembered playing when she was just a child, called Tickle Me Awake, whereby they took turns pretending to be asleep and tickled the other until they either burst out laughing or rolled into a ball. The winner was the one who lasted longest without moving, which for Sardis was less than half a second. Had today been a game of Tickle Me to Death, she would’ve had the upper hand.

  Sardis fixated on his face. It was impossible to look anywhere else. Shaking his shoulders spread the bloody gloop from his mouth like thick paint over both cheeks. She kept her composure and pinched the loose skin on the back of his hand, then twisted and unintentionally pierced the flesh. There was no reaction, nothing, nada, not a flinch from the pinch. She looked to his aura for signs of life, nothing either. She knelt up beside him, her intention to administer first aid, a valuable skill taught in school (on a dummy). She was reluctant to get close. The smell grew close and heavy. It began to taste. It was no longer the notion of giving mouth-to-mouth that was drawing her closer. It was the smell, a scent of “shake.”

  His eyes were closed. Large droplets of rain tapped across his face, creating tiny craters in the rich mucky blood. Sardis watched the fluidity of the blood weaken and it began to trickle from his face. There was a sense that she was missing out, being wasteful.

  And then the cravings, the ones that had pestered all the morning and most of the afternoon, the ones that never really left suddenly reappeared. Desire, Yearning, and Want collided in a rush that left her unhinged, like another person entirely, like the living equivalent of the Walking Dead. She lost sight of herself and who she was. Her head spiralled into confusion as if the universe’s force of gravity was manifesting to drag her closer, the compulsion to taste too great to resist.

  Wet strands of long heavy hair fell off her shoulders as she bent her head down. The action to perform mouth-to-mouth was the same, the execution very different. She pinched the bridge of his nose and widened his mouth to open from the chin. A soup of blood stirred in the cavity. Without will or restraint, she lapped the blood off his face and lifted her head to savour the starter before the main meal. She tongued the nostrils as if gathering the last of the ice cream from the bottom of a bitten cone. And then she greedily attacked the mouth, sucking and slurping from the well.

  “Sardis?”

  Images of her host in his different guises flashed through her mind, the biting and the chewing between the legs of several victims and she felt the consistency of their flesh in her mouth. All the blood of her father would not suffice. There was not enough texture for her taste. Caught up in a torrent of emotion, she opened her mouth, poised to bite the nose, then the cheek.

&nb
sp; “Sardis? Stop! Stop! What are you doing?”

  Sardis felt a halting hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see blinding yellow light shine on her as though on a stage. Her situation tapered when she recognised the hum of an engine and her mind glued the two together. Her mum’s red Fiat Punto had rolled into the drive.

  “What have you done? Get off him, get away!” Suzanne yelled. The overt tug was enough to shift Sardis from her impulsive meal. She rolled back from Alex but failed to get to her feet. On her knees, both hands clutched the gravel, turning her knuckles to white. Her saturated head was stooped, long strands of hair framed her hands among the stones and she slowly uncoiled her fingers and viewed her pointy purple nails with newfound repugnance. She was like a boxer after a knock down, exploiting the refs count to stay on the canvas and shake the sensibilities back into her head.

  She couldn’t remember how far she had gone before her mother pulled her from her dad but she knew her intention had been sinister. She swept the inside of her mouth with her tongue for evidence that she hadn’t gone too far. The subtlety of absence did little to quell her anxiety. Left alone a moment longer and she would have bit and tugged at his nose like a rabid dog until it came away from his face. She would have used her talon nails to strip the flesh from his cheeks and stuff them in her mouth. She was sure of that. And then he would definitely be dead and how would she explain all that to her mum and plead that it wasn’t her who killed him? Sardis pushed her weight from the stones, sat up, and rested back on her ankles.

  Alex was dead. Suzanne knew there was nothing further she could do to save him (the sheer amount of blood shrouding the pebbles made it easier for her to stop CPR). She turned away from him to check on the whereabouts and wellbeing of her daughter. Sardis was a few feet behind her, sitting up in the dirt, staring back through scraggly strands of hair. Her body swayed in an unsettling circle with the cuff of her jumper scrunched in her mouth, drawing on the bloody moisture from the fibres of damp wool.