Johnny Gruesome
Page 21
“I was in the water for a long time, and then I was in the ground, and I caught a cold.”
She cocked her head to one side as if considering the meaning behind his words. “You’d better zip up your coat. Want to help me make a snowman?”
“No.” He scanned the frozen terrain for a small stream he knew cut through the property into the woods. Would this little flower float? But all he saw was clean white snow. He moved closer to the girl, who showed no sign of fear as his shadow fell over her. “Who were those guys?”
“My brother and his friend.”
He towered above her. “Where do you live?”
Looking up at him, she pointed past the running boys at a large white farmhouse half a mile away. He had glimpsed the house many times in his lifetime, on an almost daily basis. Tammy’s parents owned the vineyard. “Why are you out here?”
“We were playing. Why don’t you want to make a snowman?”
“Your mother let you come out and play today?”
Tammy nodded. “Uh-huh.”
He found this impossible to fathom. “Didn’t she warn you about the bad man who’s running around hurting people?”
Her quizzical expression answered his question. “Mommy told us to stay in the backyard, but Mark and Danny wanted to come here.”
Reaching into his pocket, Johnny took out his switchblade, which he held close to his hip. He knew a way to really shock the good citizens of Red Hill; a way to suck the life right out of the town. “Aren’t you afraid of me?”
“No. Why should I be?”
“Maybe I’m a monster.”
She rolled her eyes in an exaggerated fashion. “There’s no such thing as monsters, silly.”
“There are all kinds of monsters. Some are real and some aren’t. Didn’t Mommy ever tell you not to talk to strangers?”
“You’re not a stranger. I’ve seen you lots of times. You live right there.” She pointed past Johnny at his house.
Johnny swallowed air, a reflexive reaction. She knew him. If he had doubted whether or not to kill her, the uncertainty had passed. She knew him. He rubbed the knife handle between his fingers. “I don’t live there. You’re thinking of somebody else.”
“What’s that?” She pointed at his knife hand. “Do you have gum?”
Beneath the mask, his facial muscles tightened. “No. No gum. Just this.” He raised the knife and thumbed its trigger. The blade sprang out with a sound that cut through the air.
Tammy continued to stare at him, her breathing shallow. Did she finally sense danger? Johnny fisted his free hand. It would be so easy to stain the snow with her innocent blood. Matt Crane would suffer nightmares until his dying day; maybe longer. He lowered the knife, blade pointed out and ready to strike. Then, with his left hand, he tore off his ski mask, revealing his violated and decomposing features.
Tammy’s eyes widened with fear, but she stood frozen to the spot. Leaning forward, Johnny roared at her. She screamed and fled into the vineyard, her red scarf flapping behind her. Johnny watched her go, then closed the switchblade and lumbered toward his house.
Chapter 38
Pulling out of the high school driveway, Gary watched the brick complex recede in his rearview mirror. “Good riddance.” Sitting beside him, Karen rolled a joint, moistening the paper with her tongue. “I heard you and Eric got in a fight today.”
“Yeah, who’d you hear that from?”
“Shannon Bentley saw the whole thing.”
“Fuck her. And fuck him. We don’t need that pussy anymore.”
“Whatever you say.” Karen unrolled her window a crack and fired up the joint. She puffed on it and held in the smoke, searing her lungs.
“You should have seen him acting all tough. What a joke.”
Karen held the joint out to him. Before he could take it, a siren bleep-bleeped behind them and his eyes darted to the mirror. His heart fluttered at the sight of the police vehicle on their tail. “Oh, shit. Get rid of that!” Glancing at the speedometer, he saw he’d been going forty miles an hour in a thirty zone. Without realizing it, he had pressed down on the accelerator after Karen had brought up his fight with Eric.
Karen rolled her window the rest of the way down and pinched the end of the joint as Gary pulled over to the curb.
“God,” she said. “Do you have to stop here?”
Glancing out his window, Gary saw the Grissom house overlooking them. “I don’t really have a choice.” He unrolled his window and cold air passed through the truck’s cab. Turning to Karen, he caught her tucking the joint into the breast pocket of her denim vest. Their eyes locked and he resisted cursing at her. Fuck it. It’s her ass if she gets caught, not mine.
Behind them, Matt Crane climbed out of his SUV and approached with a purposeful stride.
Fucking Crane. Gary missed the old police chief, who spent most of his time at Dunkin’ Donuts. He hoped the fresh air had cleared the cab of Karen’s marijuana smoke. He heard Matt’s footsteps on the slushy pavement, and then the policeman stood before him, their faces less than two feet apart.
“What’s the problem, Chief Crane?”
Matt glanced at the Grissom house. “Seems like you’re in a hurry to get home today.”
“Can you blame me? That school is dangerous.” He clenched his fist. Damn it. Why had he said that? This was no time to be a wise ass. “I mean, I was only going as fast as everyone else. Why pick on me?”
“No one else was going forty, Gary. This may be Main Street, but it’s still only got two lanes, with little kids crossing at every corner.”
“Hey, you’re right. I’m really sorry. I’m just all keyed up from everything that’s going on and I wanted to get my lady home.” Shit!
Cocking his head to one side, Matt looked at Karen for the first time. “You two are going out now?”
Karen stiffened beside Gary, who said, “It’s up in the air, okay? This is a rough time for both of us.”
“Karen, is Gary here your new beau?”
Karen shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
Matt turned back to Gary. “There, you see? A simple answer to a simple question.”
Gary felt himself turning red. This was going badly. “Are you going to give me a ticket?”
Matt stood still for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then he stepped back from the cab. “No ticket, just some friendly advice: get home, stay there, and be careful. I don’t need any more dead teenagers on my hands.”
Gary turned the ignition. “Thanks for your concern.”
“We’re enforcing a curfew starting tonight. Don’t let me catch you on the road after eight o’clock.”
Gary smiled. “Thanks, but I’m eighteen. Your curfew doesn’t apply to me.” Rolling up his window, he stepped on the gas.
Matt watched the truck rejoin traffic.
Stupid kid, he thought. He’s got a bigger mouth than Johnny did.
It hadn’t taken Karen long to hitch her wagon to a new horse. He’d witnessed similar desperate behavior in some adults, but Karen was too young for such cynicism. Gary’s attitude lingered in his mind—a lot of anger in that one.
Enough to make him a murderer?
He doubted it. Still, he made a mental note to pay Gary another visit at his mother’s trailer to check his alibi on the nights when Todd, Derek, and Cliff were murdered. He looked once more at the Grissom house and an inexplicable shudder traveled along his spine.
All hell had just broken loose in Twilight of the Dead when Johnny heard a familiar sound, that of a Red Hill police siren. Pressing his leathery fingertips against the window sill, he peeked around the blind just as Gary’s piece of shit truck pulled over to the curb below.
That asshole! he thought, unable to see Gary.
Sitting in the front seat, Karen looked straight at his window and moved her mouth.
That bitch! Bad enough she had gone along with Gary’s plan to cover up his murder, but now she was driving around town with him. He knew what that
meant. The embalming fluid in his veins boiled like human blood in a witch’s cauldron, and his fingers closed into fists that shook with rage. Behind him, on the portable DVD player, future zombie food screamed.
Matt Crane walked around the truck with his back to traffic. Karen stared out the windshield, her expression dazed.
Admitting to himself that she looked hotter than ever, Johnny watched Matt lecture Gary. For a moment, he feared Matt intended to arrest them. Don’t you dare. They belong to me now.
Then an ugly little Dodge Neon the color of a diuretic passed the truck, and Johnny glimpsed Eric staring out the window with a worried look on his pale face. The poor guy looked like shit.
This is getting good, Johnny thought. A regular class reunion.
Rhonda Young’s car passed from his view, and Matt stepped back from the truck. A moment later, Gary drove off. Johnny studied Karen as the truck passed the house. Matt glanced in his direction, hesitated a moment, then headed back to his vehicle.
Johnny became aware that the screaming behind him had stopped. Turning, he saw that the screen on his portable DVD player had gone dark; so had the green LED light on its front. The face of his digital alarm clock blinked at him.
“What the hell?”
His joints snapped and cracked as he rose. He twisted his trunk and threw a few punches at the air, stretching his atrophied muscles, before crossing the bedroom. He pressed the power button on the DVD player but nothing happened. Then he thumbed the power button on his CD player and jerked the cord hanging from the ceiling light.
Nothing.
“Shit!”
The bastards had turned off his electricity.
“Fuck!”
He couldn’t even watch horror movies anymore.
“Goddamn it!”
The lack of heat did not upset him; he had already turned off the furnace, figuring he would keep better in the cold. He hurled the DVD player across the room, smashing it against the wall.
“You fucking bitch!”
He threw a handful of DVDs at the closet door and kicked in the front of his Marshall amplifier and pounded his fists on the closest wall.
“Slut!”
He knocked over a chair, threw his mattress off the box springs, and used his electric guitar to rupture the wooden chest at the foot of the bed.
“Whore!”
He raged and wailed, and when he had finished, he regretted he could no longer shed tears.
Chapter 39
Eric narrowed his eyes as Rhonda pulled into the Carter driveway, a sense of déjà vu creeping over him. “Is something wrong?” Rhonda said.
Yeah, last night I dreamed my dead best friend slashed your throat in this very spot. “I’m just distracted.” He’d been unable to shake the image of Matt Crane standing at Gary’s truck across the street from Johnny’s house ten minutes earlier. He supposed that if Matt had arrested Gary for murdering Johnny, he’d have deployed backup, and police officers would be surrounding Eric at that moment. Besides, Red Hill residents had no idea Johnny had been murdered, and they had more pressing concerns.
“That’s understandable.”
Come on, do it. “Do you want to come inside?”
She gave him an amused look that made him feel self-conscious. “Are your parents home?”
“My dad’s at work and my mom’s at the school. The PTA’s having a preliminary get-together before the big town-hall meeting.”
She switched off the engine and smiled. “All right. But I can’t stay long. I’m covering the meeting for the paper.”
They walked through six inches of snow to the front door. Inside, Eric kicked off his shoes and hung their coats in the closet.
“This is really nice,” Rhonda said, looking around the living room.
“Taking care of it keeps my mom out of trouble. Do you want something to drink?”
“No, thanks.”
He hesitated. “Do you want to see my room?”
She held his gaze, her expression unreadable. “Sure.”
Feeling his temperature rise, he tried to sound casual. “Great, it’s this way.”
They went upstairs. Eric flicked on the overhead light in his room and cringed; dirty clothes and comic books littered the furniture and floor.
“Sorry,” he said, scooping up his underwear and kicking an issue of Batman beneath his bed. “I’d have cleaned up if I’d expected company.”
“That’s okay, you should see my room.” She stepped over to his bookcase and scanned the titles of his science fiction library. “Batman, huh?”
“Yeah, well …”
“I like X-Men.” She moved to the framed photo of Eric and Johnny. “You two really were like brothers.”
He felt a dull ache. “We were blood brothers.”
She turned back to him. “Really?”
He nodded. “Johnny swiped a switchblade from his uncle’s house and we used it to cut ourselves.” He held out the palm of his right hand. “See the scar?”
“That isn’t very sanitary.”
Eric shrugged. “We were kids.”
“I’ve never been that close to anyone who wasn’t in my family.”
Excited by the scent of her perfume, he focused on her eyes and her lips. Leaning forward, he kissed her. She responded and he eased his tongue into her mouth. To his astonishment, she reciprocated. With his confidence building, he drew her closer to him. He allowed himself to block out everything that had occurred during the last week and concentrated solely on that moment. When they parted, she led him to his bed. Reclining on their sides, they resumed kissing. He cupped his right hand over her left breast and his pulse quickened when she arched her back.
The room grew dark as they kissed, groped, and fondled each other. As he pressed against her, and felt her pressing back, an image coalesced in his mind: Johnny, resurrected and rotting, standing behind the bonfire at the memorial party for Todd. He felt his erection wilt.
No! It didn’t happen! It was just my imagination!
Opening his eyes, he knew better.
I saw him.
Rhonda opened her eyes, as well. “Is something wrong?”
Flaccid now, with his face turning red, he stammered. “Nothing, it’s just—I—” She sat up, and in the dim light he read the rejection on her features. How could he save this situation? “I don’t have any, um, you know … protection.”
She raised her eyebrows. “What makes you think you need protection?”
I’m drowning here. “I don’t. I mean, I don’t want to take any chances. I like you too much.”
The look on her face told him she didn’t believe him. “Eric, I like you, too. A lot. But this thing between us is just beginning. I’ll let you know if we ever reach the point where you need to worry about that, okay?”
Nodding, he feigned disappointment. “Whatever you say.”
She leaned against him and he slid an arm around her shoulders.
Carol pulled into her driveway. After switching off the engine, she sat in the Prius for ten minutes, staring at the front door of the house. No matter how hard she tried, she failed to convince herself she was just being paranoid. Finally, when she realized she had dug her fingernails into her palms so hard they almost bled, she forced herself to exit the car. The wind numbed her face.
She unlocked the door and the streetlight behind her projected her shadow across the living room floor. She turned on the light and her shadow vanished, like a phantom. Her heartbeat quickened.
No one here. No one here. No one here.
She closed the door and locked it, then marched through the house, turning on one light after another. Satisfied that no one had broken in, she retrieved a shiny metal case from the bedroom closet and sat on the bed. Pushing the tabs, she opened the case. Matt’s .45 gleamed in its foam compartment, next to a magazine cartridge. Closing her fingers around the weapon’s grip, she took it out and raised it before her face. It felt heavy. She abhorred guns and violence.
Outside, the wind howled, and a tree limb creaked in protest.
Chapter 40
Eric helped Rhonda slip into her coat. “Maybe we can see a movie on Friday if the curfew is lifted.”
“I cashier at the supermarket Fridays.”
“How about Saturday?”
“It’s a potential date,” she said. “I like foreign films and indie flicks.”
“Oh, uh, yeah, so do I …”
Laughing, she kissed him. “See you tomorrow.”
“Right.” He opened the door for her, and a rolled-up newspaper leaning against it fell over. He picked it up and watched the wind whip Rhonda’s hair as she ran to her car. She got in and started the engine.
No undead teenager sat up behind her.
She backed out of the driveway. Closing the door, he opened the newspaper to its front page. Class photos of Derek and Cliff stared at him from beneath a screaming headline: MURDER TIMES TWO!
He swallowed. Who could want Derek and Cliff dead? And Todd? Gary had nothing to gain from such crimes, and he was too paranoid over what he’d done to Johnny to commit such brazen acts.
Johnny.
He had really seen him.
Impossible.
His mind had to be playing tricks on him. It all seemed like a distant nightmare now.
I know what I saw.
He went upstairs, pulled back his bedroom curtains, and stared at the handprint on the window. Through the frozen residue, he watched snow fall.
Then he sat at his desk and booted his computer.
A ghost is a paranormal phenomenon, often believed to be the spirit of a human being remaining on earth after physical death.
Eric copied and pasted the sentence into a Word document. The first Web sites he’d checked had been useless. He had no idea that 32 percent of citizens living in the United States believed in ghosts, or that so many pursued “ghost sighting” or “ghost hunting” as a hobby. He skimmed information about orbs, electronic voice phenomenon, ectoplasm, and stigmatized property, and studied grainy photographs of what appeared to be lens flares in the cameras that had taken them. Concrete proof? He didn’t think so. One site recommended that people who believed their house haunted should “discreetly obtain” holy water from a Catholic church, stand in a doorway of their home with it, and make the sign of the cross! Or use sea salts blessed by a Catholic priest …