The Mad and the MacAbre

by Jeff Strand;Michael McBride

  Finally, he removed it and showed her the tip. "Don't worry, I'll make the bleeding stop now. Then you can relax for a while."

  He giggled as he tended to her wound. This was well worth the risk he'd taken. Not that he planned to ever do it again--he had to follow the rules--but for this one time he deserved the pleasure.

  She went into withdrawal on the second day and died on the third, but Charlie felt completely satisfied.

  * * *

  His September 24th hunt went much more smoothly. He got her the first night. She'd begged him for money. It probably would've been harder to keep her out of his car than to get her in there.

  She screamed so loud when she regained consciousness that Charlie worried that even the extensive soundproofing in his basement might be insufficient, so he put on the leather gag. By the third day, she wasn't screaming very loud anymore, and he took it off.

  * * *

  His November 24th hunt was about average. Last year around Thanksgiving he'd told his victim that he was celebrating with human flesh instead of turkey, and then he read her some cannibalism jokes he'd gotten out of a book. He dug out his notes and did the same thing this year. He didn't really eat her, though.

  He drove her pieces to the Body Pond, which was a small pond about an hour out of the city. As far as Charlie knew, hardly anybody ever went out to the pond, and he thought it was deep enough that even an extended drought wouldn't uncover the rock-filled sacks.

  Of course, he hoped to fill the pond enough that someday he'd be forced to find a new hiding spot.

  * * *

  "What do you think you're doing?" Alicia asked, walking over to his desk.

  "What?"

  "What do you think you're doing?"

  Charlie squirmed and desperately wished she would leave him alone. "I'm just trying to work."

  "Everybody else is in the break room having Christmas lunch. Doing work is strictly off-limits. C'mon."

  "I didn't bring anything for it."

  "Why not?"

  Charlie shrugged.

  "You could have at least signed up to bring napkins. It doesn't take anything to stop on your way here and buy a package of napkins. But I won't tell anyone you didn't contribute if you don't. Let's go get some food."

  "I'm fine."

  "If I called it a holiday lunch instead of a Christmas lunch, would you go?"

  "I'm not hungry."

  "How hungry do you have to be for cookies?"

  "I don't know."

  "Get up, Charlie. The whole department is having a holiday lunch, and you're part of the department. It's silly for you to sit here by yourself. Don't make me drag you in there by your shirt collar. I'll do it."

  Charlie looked back at his computer screen. "I'm not hungry."

  Alicia stared at him for a moment, and then shrugged. "Whatever you want. I'm just trying to be nice to you. Hope you get a lot done."

  She left, and Charlie let out a deep sigh of relief.

  * * *

  Charlie walked down the sidewalk, hands deep in his pockets, breath misting in the cold air. He had no interest in the Christmas lights or the music that played from one of the downtown shops, but he did enjoy the crunching sound the occasional patches of ice made under his feet as he walked.

  The wind was starting to pick up and it was getting chillier than he liked. He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and decided to cut through Klant Park. It wasn't usually a good idea to walk through the park at night (Charlie was confident in his ability to deal with a helpless vagrant woman; less so in his ability to fend off a group of muggers) but the small park seemed to be empty.

  As he walked through the single path, past the swing set, he heard something.

  A faint whimper.

  He stopped and listened more closely. Definitely a whimper. Not human. Sounded like a dog.

  He glanced around, looking for the source. It was difficult to hear over the rush of the wind, and the park was poorly lit, but it seemed to be coming from the opposite side. He picked up his pace a bit, curious to see what was out there.

  He walked through the park until he found the source of the sound, which came from beneath a wooden bench. It was indeed a small dog, lying on its side. He crouched down and stared at it with mild interest.

  Charlie had never owned pets as a kid, and didn't feel he was missing anything as an adult. He knew that a lot of serial killers started with animals and worked their way up to humans, but Charlie didn't see the point. Anybody could have control over a domesticated dog, unless it went on a wild rampage and started mauling infants. There was no trick to keeping a dog on a leash, no thrill to be gained from causing it pain. Why bother?

  He wondered what was wrong with the dog. There didn't seem to be any blood. Maybe it was just starving.

  The dog kind of amused him. It had a funny black-and-white face (white down the middle, black on the sides) that almost looked like a clown. He didn't know the name of the breed, but this kind of dog appeared in television commercials a lot. He liked the way its eyes bugged out a little. Very silly.

  He gently brushed his hand across its fur. The dog whined, though Charlie didn't think he was hurting it. It wasn't wearing a collar.

  Would it bite him if he put his finger next to its mouth? He'd never been bitten by a dog before. Maybe it would enrage him enough to want to bring the dog to his basement. That would certainly be less risky than a homeless woman.

  Of course, the dog could be rabid. That was a good reason not to see if it would bite him.

  It didn't seem to be foaming at the mouth at all, and it certainly wasn't being aggressive. Admittedly, Charlie knew very little about rabies, but everything he'd seen on TV and movies involved foaming at the mouth and growling. A rabid dog wouldn't just lie here under a park bench; it would be going berserk.

  He took off his right glove, extended his index finger and carefully placed it in front of the dog's mouth.

  The dog whimpered and licked his finger.

  Charlie wiped its slobber off on his jeans. Disgusting.

  But he wasn't going to kill it simply because it got some dog spit on him. He put his glove back on and stood up. He might check back tomorrow to see if it had starved to death, just out of curiosity.

  As he walked away, the dog let out a pitiful howl. Charlie kept walking. It wasn't his dog, and if the owner didn't care enough to watch his property, Charlie wasn't going to do it for him. If he saw the owner frantically searching for his dog, he might point out where it was laying, but beyond that, the animal wasn't his problem.

  He left the park and resumed walking on the sidewalk, once again enjoying the crunch of ice under his feet. He tried to remember which commercials he'd seen that kind of dog in. At least one of them was for flea medicine--the clown-faced dog was scratching and the pug wasn't. Or maybe it was the other way around. He also thought one of those dogs was in a car insurance advertisement. It might have talked.

  It was definitely a popular type of dog. Not only would the owner probably be looking for it, but there might be a reward for its safe return.

  Charlie had no idea how much a clown-dog cost, and he had no idea what kind of reward might be offered for finding one...but what if it was a lot? What if it was five hundred dollars? Though it was unlikely to be that much, what if the owner was really attached to the dog? It wasn't as if Charlie had anything else to do tonight--he might as well take the dog home and hope there was a reward. If there wasn't, he'd throw it back outside. No harm done.

  He turned around, walked back to the park bench, and crouched down next to the dog again. Now that he was looking at it a second time, he seemed to recall that it was named after a state. Or a city. Something like that.

  "Don't bite me," he warned the dog. He was fine with the animal biting him as part of an experiment in rage control, but not when he was trying to help it.

  Charlie immediately felt like an idiot. Dogs couldn't talk. And, more importantly, dogs couldn't und
erstand human speech. He was glad that nobody else was around to hear.

  He carefully slid his hands underneath the dog's side and lifted it off the ground a few inches, then pulled it out from beneath the bench. The dog whimpered some more, but lifting it didn't seem to hurt it. He hugged the dog to his chest and stood up.

  The dog licked his face.

  Even more disgusting.

  He couldn't wipe it off without dropping the animal, so Charlie merely scowled and left the slobber on his face. The wet warmth quickly turned uncomfortably cold in the chilly night air. Stupid dog.

  The dog nuzzled its face into his jacket, as if trying to burrow inside for warmth. Charlie supposed he couldn't blame the poor creature, though he wasn't about to unzip his jacket and let it get any closer to him.

  It was a bit heavier than he'd expected, but Charlie was used to dragging corpses around, so he was pretty sure he'd have no problems carrying the dog home.

  As he stepped onto the sidewalk, the illumination from the streetlights revealed a couple of streaks of red on the dog's fur. He hadn't noticed the blood before. He wondered if the dog had gotten into a fight, maybe with a squirrel. There hadn't been a shredded squirrel carcass lying under the bench, so it was kind of sad that the dog had been beaten by something so much smaller than it.

  Well, okay, he had no evidence that it was a squirrel. It could've been a bigger dog. Or a human with a knife.

  Either way, the dog didn't seem to have lost all that much blood, certainly not enough to account for its weakened state. Possibly a lack of food and water is what made it lose the fight. Much of Charlie's success at hunting came from seeking prey that was hungry and thirsty, so he understood the dog's plight.

  The dog fell asleep in his arms as he carried it home.

  - 3 -

  Charlie smiled as he carried the dog downstairs to his basement. He'd lived in this house for five years, and the dog would be his first guest that wasn't going down into the basement to die. At least he hoped it wasn't--the dog didn't seem to be dying, but Charlie couldn't be certain. He'd never even met a veterinarian.

  Actually, as embarrassing as it was to admit to himself, Charlie was a bit uncomfortable with the idea of the dog seeing the scene of his many crimes. Not that he thought the dog was going to run barking to the police, but still, dumb animal or not, it was another pair of eyes on the table where he'd killed almost twenty women. Maybe he was being less than meticulous about his secrecy.

  However, that irrational feeling wasn't enough for him to let the dog bleed all over his upstairs furniture. He'd upholstered that couch himself.

  He placed the dog on the metal table. It looked as if it wanted to jump to the floor but lacked the strength. He pressed down on its back to keep it from moving, and counted the wounds. Five different gashes: two long ones on its back, two smaller ones on its left side, and one on its back left leg. None of them were bleeding profusely.

  Charlie had plenty of experience tending to wounds. No medical training, and nothing fancy--just bandages and antiseptic. He assumed this would work for a dog, too.

  Normally his patient was strapped down. Unfortunately, though his ankle and wrist bracelets could adjust to accommodate various heights, they were still only designed for a human. He'd just have to hold the dog down while he applied the alcohol.

  The dog yelped and thrashed and almost got free. "You'll break your leg if you jump off," he warned it as he pressed the dog more tightly against the metal surface. Instead of his usual precise touch, he settled for pouring the antiseptic over the wounds, and then held the dog against the table for several more minutes until it calmed down. The bandages didn't stick very well because of its fur, so Charlie wrapped tape around its legs and torso, which kept them affixed well enough.

  The basement had a sink that Charlie primarily used to rinse blood off his tools. He found a small plastic bowl, emptied out the screws and nails that were inside, filled it with water, and placed it in front of the dog. The dog frantically lapped up the water, drinking so vigorously that Charlie had to hold the bowl steady to keep the dog from knocking it off the table. When the dog finished, he refilled the bowl and let it drink some more.

  He lifted the dog off the table, causing it to yelp in pain, and set it down on the floor. "Stay," he told it in a firm voice, as he walked toward the staircase.

  The dog followed him. Slowly and shakily, but it followed.

  "I said, stay." Charlie pointed to the dog. "Stay."

  The dog barked.

  "Don't bark at me," he told it. "Stay." He decided to try something else: "Sit."

  The dog did not sit. It barked again.

  Charlie walked up the stairs and shut the basement door. He didn't want blood and dog hair upstairs. The only untidy part of his house was his basement, and then only when he had a victim down there. That dog was lucky it wasn't still freezing in the park; it would just have to deal with being kept downstairs until he returned it to its rightful owner.

  He opened the cupboard and looked through the shelves. He didn't have any dog food. What was the next best thing?

  Breakfast cereal? That sort of looked like dog food.

  He filled a bowl with dry cereal, then reopened the door to the basement. The dog sat on the bottom step, looking up at him expectantly. Charlie walked down the stairs and placed the bowl on the floor next to the dog. It sniffed the cereal, looked back at up at him, and whined softly.

  "Eat it," Charlie said.

  The dog continued to stare at him.

  "Eat it," Charlie repeated. "They're Cocoa Puffs."

  The dog sneezed. Charlie wasn't sure if it was a derisive sneeze or just a regular sneeze. Either way, he didn't have a lot of sympathy for a starving creature that wouldn't eat the food that was right in front of it. If it wanted to die, he'd let it die. If it expired in his basement, his only regret would be that it had sneezed all over his perfectly good Cocoa Puffs.

  Maybe he was being unfair. Charlie wouldn't eat a bowl of dog food, so perhaps it was unreasonable to expect this dog to eat a bowl of human cereal, especially without milk. It was only around eight o'clock, so the pet store was probably still open. He'd pick up some real dog food and then bill the cost to the owner.

  "Stay," he told the dog, then walked back upstairs and shut the door.

  * * *

  Before he went to the food aisle, Charlie stopped at the revolving metal book rack. He looked at the various covers, trying to figure out what kind of dog he had in his basement. It wasn't a schnauzer, dachshund, beagle (That was a beagle on the cover? They didn't look anything like Snoopy!), pit bull, shih tzu, Japanese chin...there it was. Caring For Your Boston Terrier. He knew it was named after a city or a state.

  He didn't take the book off the rack. He had no intention of learning how to care for the dog--he was just curious about what kind it was.

  He wandered over to the food aisle and frowned. There were several dozen different varieties. Were they breed specific? Was it all the same garbage with different packaging? What was wrong with just having one bag and labeling it "Dog Food?"

  Charlie decided to make this into a much easier decision. He scanned the aisle, searching for the lowest price.

  "Looking for something in particular?" asked an employee, a young cute brunette, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three.

  "Just food."

  "How old is your dog?"

  Charlie shrugged.

  "Is it a puppy?"

  "No." Charlie picked up the closest bag of food, hoping that the employee would think he'd made his final decision and go away.

  "If you're looking for anything else, toys, treats, or whatever, just let me know," said the employee with a friendly smile.

  "Okay."

  After she left, Charlie put the bag of food back on the shelf and traded it out for a cheaper one. Actually, for some reason he'd expected dog food to be a lot more expensive; still, no need to risk spending unnecessary money in case he never found the ow
ner and had to abandon the dog.

  He walked past the toy section on his way to the checkout counter. Maybe he should buy something to keep the dog occupied during the day. He picked up a bone-shaped squeak toy, decided against the expenditure, then paid for the food and went home.

  * * *

  The dog gobbled the bowl of food as if it hadn't eaten in months. It didn't even seem to be taking time to breathe, which was funny to watch because it had a flat little nose that didn't seem like it would be easy to breathe through.

  It finished off the contents of the bowl in no time, ate the pieces that had spilled over the side, then looked up at Charlie. He shrugged and filled its bowl again. This time it finished half of the food, then let out what sounded like a happy bark.

  Charlie had nothing to say to the dog, so he went back upstairs to make some signs.

  * * *

  Charlie wrote "Found Boston Terrier" and his phone number in black magic marker on twenty pieces of paper. The notice would probably be more effective if he attached a picture of the dog, but he didn't own a camera. The whole idea of photographs made Charlie uncomfortable. Not that he believed that they'd steal his soul or anything like that--he just didn't like them. He might have owned a cell phone with a camera, if he ever had anybody to call.

  After he finished making the twentieth sign, he questioned his judgment in putting "Boston Terrier" on there. If those were valuable dogs, people might try to falsely claim the one in his basement. Though he could certainly figure out a way to make potential owners prove that the dog truly belonged to them, he didn't want to be bothered with scam artists.

  He crumpled up all twenty signs and began the process again, writing simply "Found Dog" and his phone number. Then, armed with his signs and some scotch tape, he walked around the area for about half an hour, taping the signs to streetlamps, mailboxes, and newspaper boxes, as well as on the park bench where he'd found the dog. He returned home, turned up the heat, and went to sleep.

  * * *

  Charlie woke up out of a sound sleep and glanced over at the alarm clock. 1:21 AM.

  There was a strange noise in the house. He listened carefully for a moment, and then figured out what he was hearing: scratching.