Dark Corners - Twelve Tales of Terror

by Bray, Michael

“I didn’t do it, if that’s what you’re thinking. Although I would have, if I had found a way to. I grew to hate him as much as he hated me.”

  “What happened?”

  “Cancer. They gave him a year, but he only lasted five months. That stuff don’t fuck around, Mr. Elgin. Even when he was a flesh-covered skull on his deathbed, he still couldn’t look me in the eye. I think on some level he suspected what I had done to Alessio, and felt partly responsible. I wasn’t sorry when he died. It was like a weight lifting off my shoulders.

  “I thought that by satisfying the urge to kill with my brother, the desire would fade away, and I would become the same as everyone else. But it didn’t. Instead, it grew, festered, and swelled— my own cancer, if you will. I fought against it for a while, but things at the vineyard took a turn for the worse. Without my father to run things, the place began to fall apart. The family unit, of which I was barely a part of anyway, started to crumble, and when I was thirteen, my mother sold the vineyard to the Picenzis. My oldest brother, Marco, moved away to northern Italy with his girlfriend. My two sisters stayed in Italy with my uncle, and as far as I know are still there, married with families of their own. My mother took me with her to America, where we settled in New York, in a shitty apartment above a filthy dry cleaners. It was very different from the open fields and clean air of the vineyard, but I didn’t care. I had half hoped that with my mother to myself, she would finally give me the attention I felt I deserved. But with a son and husband buried, and the vineyard lost, she found her own comfort—the southern kind—and she was knocking back at least a bottle a day. The place may have changed, but the situation hadn’t. I was left to my own devices. I felt like that dog, Mr. Elgin—the one with its teeth around the neck of its prey. I didn’t want to kill because of some bizarre need or means of atoning for my shitty childhood. I wanted to kill because I knew I would enjoy it.”

  Roberts felt good saying it aloud. His back had begun to ache from sitting on the edge of the bed, and he stood and stretched. He watched Elgin carefully and saw that he was smiling. Not quite the wide mouthed lizard grin from before, but more of an I know something you don’t know kind of smile. His stomach felt bloated, and without excusing himself, he crossed to the toilet and began to urinate loudly. He couldn’t see Elgin from where he was, but he would bet on him having that same blank but interested look on his face. He finished his business and returned to his bunk, and sure enough, Elgin was waiting and as hard to read as ever.

  “Just over half an hour left. We should continue.”

  Roberts nodded grimly. He suddenly wasn’t so indifferent about dying as he was earlier that morning.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “That’s up to you. Whatever feels right to talk about.”

  He thought for a moment, then lowered his head and spoke to the bare white floor.

  “Those first years in New York were lonely ones. I thought I’d known isolation back at the vineyard, but that was a picnic compared to this. Even though I felt isolated from my family, there was always activity in the house. My brothers or sisters arguing over the television, or how they didn’t like whatever was for dinner that night, or my father complaining how the grapes weren’t as good as they’d been the season before and how it would affect his profits. Whatever it was, there was always activity. But now things had changed, and I would come and go from that stinking apartment with my mother either drunk and on her way to sleep, or just waking up and starting to drink. I didn’t bitch about it. There was no point. Let the old fuck drink herself to her grave, if that’s what she wants... I was already planning my next kill.”

  “What happened to waiting for opportunity?”

  Roberts smiled. It was without humor.

  “That’s a pretty naive question, Mr. Elgin. Opportunity is fine, but if you don’t know what to do when it knocks, then what is it but a wasted opportunity. And I was keen to make sure that when the time came, I would know exactly what to do.”

  “I see your point. Please continue.”

  “I… I invented an imaginary friend. It seems stupid and childish, and I suppose it was. But to me he seemed real. It was like…he was the real me. The one who didn’t have to pretend to be normal like everyone else. It sounds strange, but I think he became a real thing. He and I would discuss methods to kill and not be caught. That was the key thing. We were planning for the long term.”

  “What was he like?”

  Roberts chuckled and shook his head. “It would sound stupid to you.”

  “You don’t know that. I’m a hard man to surprise.”

  “I don’t doubt it. You might be too young to remember who I’m talking about anyways.”

  “I’m older than I look,” Elgin responded, flashing the lizard smile. Roberts felt gooseflesh prickle on his skin.

  “I imagined he was this Italian gangster type guy, with slicked black hair and a smooth little moustache. Did you ever see the original Rocky movie?”

  “Of course. I think everyone saw that movie.”

  “There was an actor called Joe Spinell. He played a loan shark called Gazzo who gives Rocky a job collecting unpaid debts.”

  “I know the actor. He also played Willi Cici in the Godfather, if it’s the same one I’m thinking of.”

  Roberts slapped his thigh and offered a broad grin.

  “That’s him, that’s the one! That’s what my guy looked like. All smooth and dark skinned, slick and confident. He was everything I ever wanted to be. I even gave him a name.”

  “What was he called?”

  “I called him Monde.”

  “No first name?”

  “Didn’t see the need. I liked the snappiness of it. Just one word that you could say quick and easy.”

  “Did you know he wasn’t real?”

  Richards looked offended. “Of course I did. Just because I like to kill doesn’t mean I’m off my damn rocker.”

  “I never said it did. I was just asking.”

  “… Anyway, Monde and me, we planned and schemed, and sometimes he did seem real. He suggested things I never would have thought of.”

  “Like what?” Elgin asked, as he shifted position.

  “Like where to find our first victims. There was no shortage of people in New York, but that didn’t mean we could just charge out into the streets and start waving a knife around. Monde said we needed to be sensible. We needed to hone our craft. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but he spelled it out for me. The homeless. There were around a quarter-million of them in New York alone, and they would be easy pickings. They were already anonymous and nobody would care if a couple went missing or turned up dead. It was perfect. We had already spent weeks wandering the streets and looking for the best places, seeing where they spent their nights. Eventually we were ready.”

  Roberts trailed off, and his brow furrowed.

  “Is everything ok?”

  “Yeah. It’s just that bringing everything back is not always good, you know?”

  “Guilt?”

  “Guilt?” Roberts repeated, with a short bark of a laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. You must have read about me—you know what I said at my trial.”

  “I do. You said you felt no pity or remorse for any of your victims or their families. It was a powerful statement.”

  “Yeah, and it wasn’t just for the TV cameras either. That’s how I felt then, and it’s how I feel now.”

  “So why did you look so…Conflicted just now?”

  “You know what, Mr. Elgin,” Roberts raged, suddenly feeling defensive.

  “This has been all give and no take, and I don’t feel like talking to you anymore. I think you can take your job and shove it up your prissy little ass!”

  Roberts was hot and sticky, and yes, a little afraid. Afraid that his life was scheduled to end in a matter of hours. The dim realization crept up on him that he would never sleep in the bed he was now sitting on. He wondered why the cells here even had beds at all.

&nb
sp; He had hoped to see Elgin beg and plead for him to continue, but as always, he was sitting impassively and watching Roberts with mild amusement. Suddenly feeling stupid for his outburst, Roberts sat and continued his story without prompting.

  “That first one was no fun. I was nervous, and the old fuck wouldn’t die, even though I choked him so hard I couldn’t flex my hands for two days. He just looked at me with a glazed indifference, and when he finally snuffed out, I was neither satisfied or elated. Monde had decided to keep quiet. He often did when things went to shit. It didn’t deter me though. I chalked it up to nerves and poor technique. I tried another couple of strangulations, but they had the same empty feeling. Then I figured out what was bothering me…”

  “The anonymity. You didn’t like the secrecy.”

  “Exactly. I wanted people to know that I was out there, and what I was doing. I wanted to smell the fear on the streets. I wanted to read about myself in the paper and watch myself on the news. I wanted to become the most famous killer in history. That was when I started to use the knife, and I christened myself with the name I would become known by the world over.”

  Elgin nodded his head and smiled. Unlike his previous reptilian versions, this one was of genuine pleasure.

  “Of course. The Demon Dismemberer. Demon is Monde. Monde is you. Genius, Mr. Roberts. Absolute Genius.”

  Roberts swelled with pride, and although he tried to hide it, a smile cracked the stern face he’d been trying to hold.

  “It made sense to use Monde. When I was out there stalking the streets, I used to pretend to be him—that swaggering Italian gangster who lived to give the middle finger to the world. As with anything, the more I worked at it, the better I got. By the time I had offed my seventh hobo, I was pretty damn slick. They were no sport though, not really. Nobody bats an eye when a hobo turns up dead. Monde suggested we take things up a notch.

  “I first saw the girl completely by chance. I was twenty one, and had finally moved out of the shitty apartment where my alcoholic mess of a mother still lived. She had stopped living in the true sense of the word years before, and instead wandered around with yellowed eyes and skin to match. I thought she would croak before Christmas came, but the stubborn bitch is still ticking over as far as I know. Anyway, I got a place of my own. It wasn’t spectacular, but at least it was clean and didn’t smell of booze and vomit. I had taken a job working security for an all-night supermarket. Because I worked nights, it meant I didn’t have to mix with anyone and could keep to myself. I didn’t have any friends, and didn’t really spend much on food. I pretty much lived on takeout and TV dinners, so I had plenty of money left over each week. I saved up and bought myself a car—a white Toyota. It got stuck sometimes between second and third and didn’t always turn over the first time, but it got me from A to B.

  “I was on my one-hour break. They still called it a lunch hour, but at one o’clock in the morning, it was hardly lunchtime. It was one of those hot and sticky nights where you could still feel the residual heat of the day rising up off the pavement. I had walked half a block down to grab a sandwich when I saw her, and I knew she was the one. She was tall and slim and had long blonde hair, which seemed to shimmer with a life of its own. She looked to be around the same age as I was, but I didn’t think of her sexually. I never really had those feeling; didn’t do anything for me. Anyway, she was just leaning there against a wall, crying. She wasn’t making any sound, but I could tell she was upset. I didn’t care of course, but Monde whispered that special word in my ear, and my heart began to beat a little bit faster.

  Opportunity.

  My mind began to race about how I could get her somewhere quiet. I approached casually, and almost backed out when she pretty much handed herself over to me.

  ‘Officer, please help me,’ she sobbed as she looked at me pleadingly.

  She’d seen my security guard uniform and assumed I was a police officer. How I managed to suppress the smile I felt welling up within me, I’ll never know. I offered her the most reassuring voice that I could muster, flashed my pearly whites and said, ‘Officer Monde. How can I help?’

  It was easy.

  She was new to the city, had become separated from her friends, and was now lost. I nodded in all the right places and wore an expression of concern that was no more than a mask. I was thinking, you see; thinking about how delicious it would be to kill her— to cut her up. I had a bizarre and completely random flashback to a day back at the vineyard when I was a boy. My mother was removing the legs from a chicken she was preparing for our evening meal. I remembered the gristle like crunch as the knife went through the bone and separated the joint. My stomach quivered. I wondered how it would feel to do it to this girl.

  I listened politely and confidently with Monde guiding me, helping me when I struggled for something to say. I loved that about Monde. He always knew what to say and how to make it sound convincing. I let him operate my mouth. He told her we would give her a ride back to her apartment and that it was no trouble. She thanked us profusely, and Monde told her that a young girl could never be too careful, that there were a lot of bad people out there. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. She came willingly enough. It was easy to reassure her, despite her questions.

  ‘How far is your patrol car?’

  ‘It’s just down here.’

  ‘I really appreciate your help, Officer.’

  ‘No problem, ma’am. It’s our duty to protect.’

  ‘It’s dark down here.’

  ‘Don’t worry, miss. Nobody will harm you whilst you are with a police officer.’

  ‘Wait, what are you doing? No!’ ”

  Roberts smiled wistfully.

  “Her neck felt tiny in my hands… Even though the alleyway was dark and smelled wet and rotten—kind of like Alessio’s Well—I enjoyed every second of it. I tried to cut off her head, but my small pocketknife was dull, and try as I might, I couldn’t hack through the gristle and tendons, so I had to stop. It was much more satisfying than offing the hobos though. I looked into her eyes as she died, and I swear I saw the life leave her. It was exhilarating. That’s when I knew that all I wanted to do with the rest of my life was kill.”

  Elgin looked up and Roberts was surprised at the look in his eye. He had expected revulsion, or disgust. But what he saw was admiration.

  “This is fascinating. What happened next?”

  Roberts shrugged. “I started to kill. As often as I could. I was smart about it though. They found the girl’s body the following day. It turned out she was only sixteen, but she looked a lot older to me. I still didn’t feel guilty... I was desperate to kill again, but to do another in my own city would be risky. Monde suggested we select cities at random and drive out to look for someone to kill. I also knew that if I wanted to continue, I would have to make provision to hide the bodies. I didn’t want to be caught, not when things had just begun.”

  “How long did it take for them to catch you?”

  “Sixteen years. A man can do a lot of killing in that time.”

  “So what happened?”

  “If I had the time, I could tell you in detail, but I suspect we don’t have long left.”

  Elgin looked at his watch and frowned. It was the first real facial expression other than the lizard smile that Roberts had seen.

  “We have around fifteen minutes.”

  Roberts nodded. “Well, the short version will have to do. I did as Monde suggested. I had a huge map of America pinned to my bedroom wall. What I would do is take a dart and throw it at the map, and wherever it would land, that’s where Monde and I would go to find our kill. Apart from a few exceptions, like our failed trip to Delaware, there was almost always an opportunity. Most serial murderers go for a specific type of victim. Ted Bundy chose only middle class white women. Jeffrey Dahmer chose only men and young boys. They each had a profile, a reason for choosing that particular type of victim. I didn’t have limits like that. My kills weren’t about repres
sed homosexuality, or the thrill of the chase. Do you remember that business with the clown who went ape shit at the circus one day, completely out of the blue?”

  Elgin nodded. “Sure. It made headline news. But he was depressed, or so they say.”

  “Bullshit,” Roberts said flatly. “He wasn’t depressed. He just got tired of pretending to be normal…”

  “You don’t know that, not for sure.”

  Roberts grinned.

  “His name was Freddy. He used to write to me. Sympathized with my plight, or so he said.”

  Elgin offered no reaction, so Roberts went on.

  “The poor guy was fucked up, tired of his life, alienated from his family. He was a lot like me. I gave him a few pointers on how to break the cycle.”

  “You… encouraged him?”

  Roberts shrugged. “I don’t think so, not really. He would have done it anyway, with or without help. The point I’m trying to make is that there isn’t always a motive. Sometimes people just lose it and want to go crazy.”

  Elgin nodded, but didn’t pursue the point.

  “I don’t have a preferred type of victim. Male, female, young, old, black, white—it really didn’t matter to me, as I chose based on Monde’s suggestions and our favorite word—good old opportunity. The security job got in my way, so I quit and took a job as a long distance delivery driver. Not one of the big eighteen wheeled rigs, mind you, but the smaller transit types. It was perfect. Not only was I left to my own devices, the company I worked for even paid my fuel expenses. I’ve often wondered if that makes them an accessory to murder.... Anyway, Monde came up with another great idea. Once we’d selected a location via the dart and map, we would ship a package to a random address there via the company I worked for. All I had to do was make sure that particular delivery was on my sheet— and boom. I had a paid trip to my next kill.

  “Monde also suggested we keep the dual identity game going too. That first girl had gone with me willingly because she believed I was a police officer. It took a while, but I eventually sourced some high quality police uniforms from a movie costume company and bought them using Monde’s name. We didn’t always use the police disguise, but it was an option. Sometimes I was Monde the door-to-door salesman, or Monde the doctor. I also refined my technique, and after my eighteenth or twentieth kill, I had it down to a fine art. If my victim was a woman, I would strangle her. I liked to watch that little light blink out in their eyes. If my victim was a man, I would render him unconscious with a lump hammer. In all cases, I would dismember the victim after death. I would always remove the head, but if I could, I would also take the arms. I tried the legs too, but they were difficult to take off, so I gave that up early on.