by Glover, Dan
"Why are you telling me this, Roger?"
"Yelena told me something evil is heading this way. It has something to do with Allison. Has she said anything to you?"
"Do you mean Allison's brother?"
"I don't know. She said the strangest thing. She told me she dreams of an evil clown. She said this clown is the one behind everything. What do you make of that?"
"Allison came home the other night with Yelena in tow. They'd gotten drunk together so Allison asked Yelena to spend the night rather than going home alone. Something had them both spooked. Allison said she thought someone followed them home. When I went outside to look I didn’t really see anything."
"Did they say anything else?"
No, they were both hammered so I put it off to that. But I tell you, Roger, the hairs all stood up on my back while I was standing out there. I kept seeing shadows moving out of the corners of my eyes. I swear there was something out there in the dark, waiting and watching. When I looked right at it there was nothing there. Or maybe there was."
"Yelena told me to be ready if you need help. I promised her I would. I'm not sure how much an old man like me can do, but if need be, I'll die for you, Billy. I don't think I could stand losing you again."
Chapter 41—Allison Too
Allison had started on her second bottle of wine.
She was tired of being alone all the time. The only people she seemed to talk with were other employees at Twenty Nine Katz and they all had their own lives... she sometimes got the impression everyone felt sorry for her, otherwise they wouldn’t pay her any attention at all.
The walls in the old Victorian were thin enough that she could sometimes hear Lisa's moans of pleasure. Allison envisioned one day having a man of her own but no one wanted a lush. Her mother had warned her about that but she never listened.
She couldn’t help it if she liked to drink. She told herself that she wasn’t hurting anyone. It didn’t matter to Allison if she was with someone or alone. In fact she preferred drinking alone... that way no one could give her that look when she started to slur her words ever so slightly and her eyes crossed just a bit, just enough that she could no longer focus on the face in front of her.
She had grown used to that look. Her late fiancé Tony seemed to have it in his eyes all the time.
"Do you really have to drink so much, Allison? I can smell the alcohol on your breath from way over here. We're supposed to be going to my house for dinner tonight."
Allison wanted to tell Tony that the precise reason she was drinking was that they were going to his house where his parents would inevitably give her the once over. A little liquid courage helped to stoke her self esteem. But she knew the boy wouldn’t understand why a beautiful rich girl needed to fuel her ambitions with forgetfulness and oblivion.
She couldn’t ever remember a time that she didn’t want to just disappear off the face of the earth... to run away to that somewhere that no one knew her and she could start over again. She had plotted it every day of her life as she was growing up in Malibu Hills amid the wealth and splendor that Hollywood brought to her family.
When she had finally worked up her courage to leave, she had ended up here. She had loved the old Victorian the first time she saw it but now its decrepit nature was weighing on her a little more every day.
The wallpaper was peeling. When she attempted to remove it she discovered another six or seven layers lurking underneath like hidden ghosts forever shut of the daylight. The hardwood floors buckled in places and though she never seemed to trip it served to irritate her meticulousness honed by the perfection of Malibu and the mansion she grew up in.
She had given up on making the house better. It was impossible. She wondered what had drawn her to it in the first place. If not for Lisa she never would have looked twice at the ramshackle wreck.
She was wondering if she should switch to something a little stronger when she heard a floorboard creak in the closet that led to the other side of the house… the secret passageway they called it.
“Is someone here?”
She called out to the empty room while looking over the back of the sofa. Sometimes Jem came to visit her through the secret passageways but she knew the little girl was staying the night at a friend’s house. She decided her imagination might be playing tricks on her, or perhaps the old house was making noises as it sometimes did.
Ghosts.
She sometimes thought of all the people that must have lived in the house over the years wondering if they left impressions of their lives behind when they moved on. Often times, Allison would catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eyes but when she looked there would be no one there.
Thinking of ghosts reminded her of that first night with Billy and how she had blindfolded him in the kitchen. She couldn’t remember a more erotic moment in her life. She expected him to do like her late fiancé used to do after he tried and failed to have sex and how he would then fall fast asleep.
But instead Billy seemed energized… they made screwdrivers and drank until dawn talking about all manner of things. She fell in love with Billy Austin that night. He told her about meeting a little boy on the bus ride to Little River… how the boy told him about how he dreamed of a ghost chasing him as he rode on a horse in his father’s arms. She thought how the little boy could have been Billy.
Going home that morning after drinking all night with Billy she fell into a deep sleep, dreaming how she thought she saw her brother Alex walking out of a wall in her bedroom. She lay nude on the bed. She felt ashamed but she felt excited too. He stood there watching her. Butterflies hovered around him, little white ones with black spots on their wings, and when they alighted upon his shoulders they fell to the floor dead until they looked like dirty snow piled around his ankles.
She had never seen snow but she imagined that’s what it might look like… deadly white. Alex walked closer to her reaching out to touch her lips with his grotesquely-shaped blackened tool as she screamed herself awake. She remembered being happy to see the daylight pouring through the window and not awakening to such a dream in the darkness of night. And she smiled remembering what Billy had said about her being sunshine.
She sat on the sofa thinking of Billy Austin and Lisa and ghosts and watching a foreign movie with French subtitles and lots of sex scenes. A very beautiful actress playing the lead role reminded her of Lisa. Allison wondered what her name was and why she never seemed to appear in American films.
Watching the movie Allison understood why French women were seen as such great lovers. She decided Lisa must be part French.—when she felt something soft go over her eyes and someone’s hands tying it behind her head. She gasped and then sat still waiting to see what happened next.
The hours were a blur. Before that night Allison never even dared to dream of the rapture that enfolded her body and her spirit. Her template for love had been her father and mother yet they were at war most of her childhood. It was only after Alex was interred in the asylum—no, Allison, it's an institution—that her parents had finally healed the rift that was pulling them apart for so long.
She wondered if it was Jamie who helped to calm the rages in her mother's soul. She suspected they were seeing each other even before her father's death. Allison hadn’t the temerity to ask outright but every once in a while Jamie and her mother would make some small allusion to how they met.
What if father had lived? Would Jamie still have become a member of the family? Probably not... somehow Allison couldn’t see her parents opening up their bed to another woman. Allison thought what a great love they missed out on by being as prudish as they were and how her mother had gently tried to dissuade her from staying together with both Billy and Lisa when they moved back into the Victorian.
"Come home, Allison. Find a man of your own. Your being there isn’t serving anyone any good. I know you love your friend Lisa but all you're going to do is ruin her marriage to Billy. I see the way he looks at you. It's
only a matter of time before you two fall into bed."
Now, with the three of them lay tangled together in each other, drinking red wine and talking, mother's words came rushing back at her, haunting her and taunting her. It was her first time. What right did anyone else have to judge?
“What did you mean when you say it’s a night for firsts for you, Allison?”
She hadn’t realized that she spoke out loud. The thoughts rampaging through her mind like marauding monkeys had been stilled at hearing Lisa's voice to the point where she could once again focus upon reality to the exclusion of illusion.
“It’s the first time I made love to a woman, for one thing, my darling Lisa.”
Allison loved snuggling close to both Billy and Lisa and feeling the warmth pour off their bodies as if they were on fire. She thought she might be dreaming of heaven. Perhaps she had died of pleasure—more than just la petite mort—and now she was floating ethereally through forbidden realms populated only by silk scarves and whispers of love and longing.
“And it’s the first time I made love with a man… I mean, technically. I’ve fooled around a little… you know that Billy. But my fiancé could never get it up long enough to actually have sex with me… so this is a real night of firsts for me.”
“I’ve never been anyone’s first before.”
Billy's voice broke over her like the raging surf as he traced I love you with his finger tips up and down Allison’s legs while Lisa caressed the delicate blonde hairs growing on her arms.
“I like touching you, Allison... you're so soft.”
“I like you touching me, Lisa… you’re my first woman… and my last.”
Allison loved to watch how Lisa couldn’t keep her hands to herself, how she had gasped in amazement when they undressed her. She remembered the hurt erupting in her heart when she first showed her body off to her fiancé, Tony, and how he told her he thought her breasts were too small.
“I don’t know about Billy, but I’m in love with you, Allison Johns. I’ve never felt this way about a woman before.”
“I’m in love with two of the most beautiful women in the world… That's how I feel, Lisa. I’ve never been happier. You two complete me.”
“We each complete the other, Billy.”
“Well… all I know is that I’m in love with both of you, Billy and Lisa. I think I’ve been in love with you since we first met… that day I first pulled into the parking lot at Twenty Nine Katz and saw Lisa out back… I knew right then that I wanted you… and that day Yelena introduced us, Billy… I tried to fight it. I told myself that you weren’t my kind. But Yelena knew… remember how she told us we’d be great friends?”
“How could I forget?”
"I've been thinking of leaving here."
"I knew it, Allison. I told Billy that you were feeling left out and if we didn’t do something soon you would be gone one day. You aren’t still thinking about it, are you?"
"I doubt wild horses could pull me away now, Lisa."
Chapter 42—The Ancient One
"I swear you look ten years younger, Kirk."
"I feel it too, my boy. It's the effects of those last little treats we ate. How about you? Is your problem growing better?"
"It's amazing, but yes. I'm like a new man."
The cognac tasted particularly good tonight and though they had drank two bottles between them and were well into the third Oscuro experienced a kind of clarity of mind he rarely experienced before.
The urge to see Allison again had been growing exponentially. At first, he only thought of her once in a while... when he by chance saw another woman who reminded him of her. All his conquests had been centered on her... he saw her in his victims. Lately, he had begun dreaming of Allison nearly every night.
She was a teenager again, thin as a stick and all bony beautiful and blonde. She smiled the same way she used to when they were together, before he had taken liberties with her that he shouldn’t have.
He blamed it on the alcohol. He never thought of touching Allison like that... at least until that night when he found himself standing in her bedroom not really remembering how he got there nor what he was doing.
She liked to show off. It was a game they played... Allison was wise beyond her years, wily in ways that sometimes befuddled him. She grew up too fast, maybe, or perhaps it was him hoisting his own demons upon her, making her into some weird sort of icon that he might worship from afar.
She had enticed him. That much he remembered. Allison liked to tease the boys whose blood thickened at the sight of the pretty blonde girl with legs up to there. He watched her do it. He often times found he was scolding her for her antics but his words only seemed to send her over the edge as she dipped her essence in depravity.
He'd had dozens of women since then... hundreds, perhaps. None of them satisfied him like Allison. Not that he had actually gone all the way with her like the other women... he was saving that for a time when he could savor each moment.
When Kirk brought up a plan to kidnap and rape women—hypothetically, of course—Oscuro automatically thought of Allison. He envisioned her welcoming him into her waiting arms, opening her legs to him willingly, and ultimately bearing a child for him. She would do it out of love, and if not, then she would do it out of hate.
She belonged to him and no one else. Whenever any boy had showed the slightest interest in Allison, Oscuro made sure to put them in their place. It still rankled him to think how Tony had weaseled into Allison's heart. He had threatened the boy when he noticed him making eyes at her... not in so many words but by showing Tony boy what kind of experiments he liked to perform on living creatures.
"Have you given any more thought to my plan, Oscuro?"
"I wanted to surprise you, old man, but I'm learning that's not easy to do. I have our first prospect picked out. There's something about it. I think you'll see what I mean when I bring it in. How far away is that cellar of yours from here?"
"We can be there in an hour."
"I'll be picking it up tomorrow night. I've been watching. It always goes to bed at the same time. The husband works at night. He'll come home in the morning and it'll be gone. I'll take some clothes with, to make it seem as if it ran away. I'd say it's already six months along. We can start immediately."
"Perfect, my boy, you make me proud. I knew you were special from that first moment I saw you. Believe me, I've been around long enough to know it."
"You're older than what you told me, aren't you, Kirk."
"I'm far older, Oscuro. I've been around so long I cannot begin to count the years. I lived on every continent and worked in many different trades. Europe was always my favorite place to live. There are many things to be said about the continental pleasures there."
"Did you really have a son?"
"I've had lots of sons, daughters too."
"Did you use them in your recipe?"
"Of course I did, many times. Otherwise we would not be sitting here drinking cognac and talking of such things. I'd have turned back into dust ages ago."
"If you're so old, why haven’t you accumulated more wealth?"
"Oh, but I have, my boy. Look at this RV we're sitting in. It cost more than a million dollars. You'd be shocked to know how much I'm worth."
"But you're a clown traveling in a second-rate carnival show, old man."
"What better place for me to hide? I'm always moving from place to place. If I settled down somewhere, how long do you suppose it'd be before people started talking? I've tried that. My neighbors nearly lynched me back in Transylvania after a number of young family members mysteriously disappeared. They garnered the mistaken opinion that I was a vampire. I fled to England. I began traveling with a minstrel troupe. It afforded me a degree of freedom that I hadn’t realized existed before. I've been traveling ever since."
"So you can die."
"I am sure that I can be killed, yes. I've always been a careful soul, however."
"If you're s
o careful, why did you hook up with me? You must have known you were taking a chance, especially if you knew who I was."
"I had grown old and tired, Oscuro. I no longer had the strength to obtain what I needed to survive. When I saw you lying in that ditch I knew you were the person I'd been waiting for. You would help me one way or another; either you'd save me or you'd slaughter me. I was ready for both eventualities."
"How do you feel now?"
"Thanks to you, I feel like living for another ten thousand years, my boy."
Chapter 43—Saving Billy Austin
Billy sat in the kitchen holding his head.
Pain was gradually draining away his sanity. He could hear the wolf promising him peace if he would only do it and do it now… howling for him to do it now… there were plenty of sharp knives in the drawer—sharp enough to do what the voices urged him to do… the same voices of the past.
He had only to pick out the smallest and the sharpest and taking it with him to the sea side he’d open his throat this time. No one could stop that kind of bleeding. With Lisa at work and Jem in school… no one would find him for hours. He saw himself walking to the drawer as if in a tunnel looking out. Just before his hand closed around the knife the door opened as Allison walked in.
“God, it’s way too early to be up, Billy.”
Her long blonde hair tousled her gorgeous face and her cheek was still wrinkled from sleep as she padded barefoot to the coffee maker pouring a cup. Her thin nightie showed the full outline of her small breasts, the shape of her luscious body jutting softly against the fabric with a patch of blonde hair between her legs poking out beneath.
“I’m out of coffee on my side and when I smelled yours I had to come get a cup.”
“Hey, Allison... I'm so happy to see you!”
He walked over to hug her from behind while nuzzling her neck. “You look fantastic.”
“If I look anything like I feel, you’re a liar, Billy Austin.”
