The Nightmare Girl

by Jonathan Janz

  But Joe did want to know. He had to know. Because there was a ghastly image crystalizing in the darkest recesses of his mind, his own black chapel. Inside it, Michelle was shrieking as Grayman’s followers worked on her. Lily was shrieking in the background, but in the foreground there was Michelle and there was Scarface and there was the one named Shannon with a hacksaw. The pasty-faced man was there too, the one with the sagging jowls. And the bald man, the muscular one Joe had seen in the passenger’s seat of the Camaro on the day of the bridge attack, he was the one cradling Lily. And laughing.

  “Who’d you kill?” Joe called out.

  “Don’t,” Copeland said.

  The humor in Grayman’s voice was too horrid to stomach. “Anyone in particular you’re worried about, Mr. Crawford?”

  Joe swallowed, his throat clicking like an empty chamber. “You better not hurt them.” He’d meant for his voice to come out gruff and commanding, but it had sounded like a plea. A desperate, ineffectual one.

  “Say their names, Mr. Crawford.”

  “Hey, fuck you!” Copeland shouted.

  “Still discourteous,” Grayman said.

  “That son of a bitch,” Copeland growled. “Gimme some light.”

  Joe obliged, shining the Maglite in the direction Copeland was facing, the rear of the chapel immediately to their left. As he did he beheld a wide-eyed figure whose mouth was all wrong. The man was gliding rapidly forward, approaching as if borne along on a moving sidewalk. Copeland fired on the man, the shots slamming the body in the chest, the throat. Red ponds of blood splurted out of the man’s twitching body. The man thumped down at their feet just as another figure revealed itself behind the man. Before Copeland could recover, the figure dove out of the way, disappearing behind a pew and scrambling for better cover.

  Joe knew even before his flashlight picked out the dead, staring eyes of Copeland’s victim what had happened. Whoever it was—probably some random person Grayman’s henchman had snatched from the street—had been unable to make much noise because his lips had been sewn shut. The stitches reminded Joe of the job done on Harold Hawkins. Joe saw without surprise that the man’s hands had been bound with rope behind his back.

  “Ah Jesus,” Copeland said. “Ah Jesus God.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Joe said. “You didn’t know.”

  Hideous laughter echoed through the chapel.

  “I thought it was one of them…I thought—”

  “Let’s go,” Joe urged. “We’re almost to the door.”

  But Copeland didn’t move. “I know this guy,” he said in a choked voice. “It’s Bruce Morrison. He’s a pharmacist.”

  Which meant, Joe thought with a sickening jolt, that the bastards had likely gotten Louise too. Which meant they’d kidnapped Little Stevie. Or done God knew what to him. Joe thought again of the arm Scarface had lobbed at them. The flashlight beam quivered in his hand.

  Joe spoke through clenched teeth. “Darrell, we’ve gotta go now. We—”

  A high-pitched, ululating shriek sounded behind them. Joe leveled the flashlight down the center aisle in time to spot a headless body jarring toward them, the thing without arms or a head but somehow moving anyway.

  “Mother of God,” Copeland murmured, and he stepped in front of Joe.

  Joe realized a second too late what was happening, spotted the figure behind the headless corpse bearing it along. The tattoos festooning the forearms, the gray-black mane of hair.

  Shannon heaved the body at them, but Copeland’s big left arm reached up and batted it aside as though it was nothing more than a misguided sparrow. Copeland brought the barrel of his .38 to rest six feet from Shannon’s chest. The tattooed man’s eyes bugged out in an expression of comic fright. Except before Copeland squeezed the trigger there was a movement to their right, a terrible whistling noise, and the stomach-churning sound of a blade cleaving flesh and bone.

  The unfired gun slapped the floor still clutched in Copeland’s right hand. The big man sank to his knees and gaped at his severed arm. An appalling amount of blood gushed out of Copeland’s shoulder.

  Before Scarface scuttled into the darkness, Joe caught a glimpse of the scarlet machete blade, saw the way the man was grinning. Joe wanted to shoot Scarface, wanted to kill him worse than he wanted anything in the world. But Scarface was gone, eaten by the dark.

  Shannon, however, was still standing there admiring Scarface’s handiwork.

  The Maglite twitched in Joe’s hand and lit up the tattooed man.

  His gorge clenching, Joe brought up the gun and fired at Shannon. The first slug hit the tattooed man in the right shoulder and spun him sideways. The second vaporized his left ear, the gruesome hole that opened there large enough to jam a fist through.

  Shannon dropped to his knees as Joe turned to Copeland, who was grasping his hemorrhaging wound with his remaining hand. Blood was spraying through the police chief’s stout fingers, the man’s eyes already taking on a distant glaze. Joe was about to undo his belt to make a tourniquet when the machete whipped down again. Gasping, Joe shrank away from it, but not before the sharp blade had split him from nipple to abdomen. The white-hot blast of pain was so intense that the gun slipped from his fingers. Falling backward against the edge of a pew, he patted the slit in his flesh, decided it was fairly shallow.

  Joe shot a frenzied glance toward the gun he’d dropped, but it was already gone. He’d thought it had fallen beside Copeland, but evidently it had tumbled away or been knocked beneath a pew.

  He looked up in time to see a new attacker bearing down on him, this one swinging a machete too.

  Joe just had time to throw up his arms when the chapel erupted in a fusillade of gunshots. The wielder of the machete—Joe realized it was the Camaro’s driver, the pale-faced man with the saggy jowls—jittered in place, his head whipping up and down as if he were fervently agreeing with something Joe had said, and then the man slumped forward onto Joe, the machete clunking to the ground. Joe let the man bang headfirst onto the floor, and though he was screaming now, Joe didn’t think the man would scream for too much longer.

  The guy’s blue-jeaned buttocks were a horrorshow of what looked like ground chuck. Copeland had shot the man in the ass at least five times.

  Copeland lowered the gun—the one Joe had dropped—to his side. He’d shot the man left-handed, but Joe supposed it was tough to miss at point blank range. Joe reached out to support Copeland, but Copeland slouched sideways against a pew. Joe noticed as he knelt next to his friend how the floor around them had become a viscous crimson lake.

  Joe fumbled for his belt, but he saw it was useless. Copeland mumbled something, but his face had gone a sick ashen color, the lips a pale mauve. Still, Joe tried to encircle the bleeding stump with his belt. But the goddamned thing kept slipping on the slick shoulder, and there wasn’t enough of Copeland’s arm left for the belt to snag hold of. With tears stinging his eyes, Joe finally got enough of the remaining limb to draw the belt tight, but of course there were no holes in that part of the belt for him to keep the thing cinched. Moaning, he wrapped the belt double around the stump, and as he did he heard several sets of footsteps approaching. Not the whole congregation, he thought. Not yet. But four or five people at least. Too many for him to defeat by himself.

  Still, he got the belt fastened and made a grab for the gun Copeland had fired. His fingers had just brushed the grip when a booted heel descended and crunched down on Joe’s fingers. Joe yelped and attempted to jerk his hand away, but the heel ground deeper, bouncing a little, and Joe did the only thing he could do, which was paw at the big boot. Someone seized his hair from behind and hauled back on it. Joe howled in pain, the roots of his hair tearing free and his hand still pinioned under the heavy, grinding boot.

  The light in the chapel shifted, reformed. Someone had retrieved his Maglite, and evidently, Joe saw through bleary eyes,
the main door had been opened. Joe reached back, slapped at the hand grasping his hair, but then a granite fist appeared from nowhere and crashed into his nose. Joe let out a garbled moan and fell, only distantly aware that the boot had been removed from his hand. He lay on his side, writhing and pressing his good hand to his face. He lay like that for a time, and when he opened his eyes again, he saw that the chapel was brighter now, or at least relatively so. He could now see the raised area at the front of the chapel, the tapestries dangling over what Joe now recognized as a bed.

  It was larger than a normal bed, which might have been why Joe hadn’t identified it earlier. Big enough for several people to fit onto at once. Joe didn’t want to dwell on the idea, but it was difficult not to when there were naked people striding toward it, men and women of various ages and sizes. Joe recognized a couple of them from the graveyard, but he didn’t linger on their nude forms for long.

  Because Sharon Waltz was slinking toward him down the center aisle.

  Sharon wore a skimpy black dress, the most revealing outfit Joe had seen her in yet. And that was saying a lot. He already felt like he knew her anatomy better than he knew his own.

  The translucent dress swished an inch or so below her crotch. The neckline began in the general area of her ribcage, her nipples peeking at him over the fabric like the pink eyes of a cornered possum.

  To Joe, she had never looked more revolting.

  Yet she vamped down the aisle, moving for all the world like men were chucking tens and twenties onto a stage and begging her to disrobe. Her eyes were fixed on Joe, her look telling him she’d won, she’d gotten her revenge.

  It was too much, so he glanced down at Copeland, then wished he hadn’t. His friend was hardly breathing, the big body moving only a little bit more than the pews next to which it lay.

  The lump in his throat choking him, Joe looked up, saw that Sharon had produced a long carving knife. She hadn’t had it a moment ago, and Joe didn’t care to speculate where she’d been hiding it. Next to her were two of the men who’d assaulted Joe: the bronze, muscular bald man whose boot had mangled Joe’s right hand, and Scarface, his frame just scrawny enough to avoid being shot by Copeland. Joe’s scalp was still screaming from the job Scarface had done on him a moment ago. Joe reached up and fingered the hair there, and when he inspected his fingers he saw they were bloody. Scarface had ripped a good-sized clump of hair from his head. Jesus, like a divot of sod chunked out by a hack golfer.

  Scarface and Baldy flanked Sharon now, the men polar opposites physically. Scarface looked even taller and uglier than he had that day on the bridge, but that might have something to do with the blood riming his mouth. Baldy, his dark skin gleaming like polished leather, was even more muscular than Joe had previously thought. The guy had squiggled veins in his biceps as thick as garden hoses, and the scowl on his face told Joe how much he’d enjoy using those biceps to squeeze Joe’s head until it popped off like a bottle cap.

  Of course, if Sharon reached him with the carving knife first, Baldy wouldn’t have that opportunity.

  Sharon brandished the knife, its wicked blade catching the orange light that now seemed to engulf them. Joe glanced about and saw that several of the cult members were bearing lanterns, the kind that ran on kerosene. To Joe, with the black décor and the swaying orange lights, it felt like some kind of Halloween celebration gone bad. All they needed were some masks and some pumpkins, and they’d be all set. Sharon sure looked ready to carve something up.

  Joe remembered his puny pocketknife, but he had no idea where it had gone. Probably lost in the scrum. Not that it would’ve done him much good anyway.

  Copeland suddenly convulsed, then set to coughing. The sound of it hurt Joe’s heart, and though he knew it meant his friend was still alive, he knew Copeland wasn’t long for the world. How much blood could a body lose and still draw breath?

  The one Joe thought of as Baldy bent down and inspected Copeland’s face. Baldy pinched one of Copeland’s eyelids, and yanked it roughly up. Joe caught a glimpse of Copeland’s eyeball, which seemed not to register anything, much less the vicious weightlifter giving him an impromptu eye exam.

  “Gimme the knife,” Baldy said. His Irish accent was even thicker than Shannon’s had been. There was a slur to his words too, though Joe didn’t believe it was from drinking. No, he was sure it was the man’s normal voice. It reminded Joe of the tapestries hung over the stage. There was darkness and sadism and carnality in the sound, the type of voice you imagined in your nightmares.

  “Let’s see what’s inside here,” Baldy said, and before Joe could react, Baldy reached down and ripped open Copeland’s shirt.

  “Don’t touch him,” Joe said and made a grab for Baldy.

  But it was apparently what the man had been hoping for. The moment Joe’s good left hand groped for the knife, Baldy flicked it toward him. The blade plunged between Joe’s pinky and ring finger and sliced him halfway down the length of his hand. Joe groaned as the blade tugged free, and before he could pull away, Baldy whickered the knife at him again, this time slashing him from one side of the chest to the other, so that as Joe collapsed and took stock of himself, he saw that the two rips in his clothing and flesh formed a jagged burgundy cross. The blood from the vertical slit, the one meted out by the saggy-jowled man and his machete, had begun to congeal, but the new wound bubbled and trickled like a jubilant forest creek.

  “Where was I?” Baldy murmured. “Oh yeah…” And he sliced into Copeland’s undershirt.

  Joe rolled over with a mind to intervene—Baldy could cut him again for all he cared, but he’d be damned if he allowed the son of a bitch to increase Copeland’s agony in these last moments—but something hammered him in the lower back. Christ, right in the kidneys. Joe landed on his side, the tears streaming from his eyes. The black chapel had looked hellish enough upon entering, but now it seemed as if it really was hell on earth. With an effort, he turned and gazed up at whoever had kicked him.

  At first he thought he was seeing double, but upon further consideration, he realized there really were two women there. They both had long, frizzy hair, gray for the most part, but with enough brown for Joe to imagine how the women had looked when they were younger. They were identical twins, from their weirdly shining faces to their grungy bohemian dresses, which reminded Joe of the quilts his grandma used to sew. He had no idea which of the women had kicked him, but it was the one on his right to which his attention was drawn.

  Maybe because she was grasping a decapitated head.

  And not just any head, Joe realized with a new lurch of sorrow. Louise Morisson’s. As sad as that was, Joe recognized that most of his feelings centered on what it meant for Little Stevie. Even with Bruce Morrison dead, Joe had clung to the hope that Louise and Stevie had gotten safely away. But now that he knew for sure it had been Louise’s headless body out of which Shannon had fashioned a human shield, there could be no doubt that the little boy was either held captive by these monstrous people or worse.

  But Joe didn’t want to think about that possibility. Not yet.

  There were wet, squelching sounds emanating from the direction of Baldy and Copeland. The chief was still making noises, but they were scarcely human, strange ragged snuffling sounds that reminded Joe of when his daughter had suffered from the croup. But Lily had recovered.

  Baldy may as well be operating on a corpse.

  Joe looked up, saw Sharon leering down at him.

  “You don’t like that, do you?” Sharon asked.

  Joe said nothing.

  Baldy straightened, his bronze arms gory up to the elbows. He slapped something onto the floor in front of Sharon.

  Her grin broadened. “Our police chief had a big heart.”

  This was met by scattered peals of laughter. Joe closed his eyes and choked back a sob.

  “Hey,” Sharon snapped. “Hey—” She smacked him
in the face. “Come on, open your goddamned eyes!”

  Someone seized Joe’s face and squeezed, someone much stronger than Sharon Waltz—unless Sharon had suddenly taken up steroids.

  Joe opened his eyes. Baldy’s face was inches from his. “Listen to the woman,” he demanded in his guttural Irish voice. “It’s the least you can do after taking her little girl.”

  Joe stared up at Baldy. “Her little girl did it to herself.”

  Sharon elbowed Baldy out of the way. She reached down and shook Copeland’s heart in Joe’s face, spattering him with blood. “I should make you eat this.”

  Joe closed his eyes. The grin on Sharon’s face was too much to take. If the devil was real, Joe decided, the bastard had nothing on Sharon Waltz.

  “Look at me,” she growled. “Open your eyes, you daughter-killing motherfucker.”

  Joe didn’t respond.

  “Look at me!” Sharon screamed.

  Joe opened his eyes. As his vision swam into focus, he saw how her nails had been filed into wicked points. As if they’d needed any sharpening.

  Sharon nodded at him. “Not so uppity now, are you, Crawford? Not so superior.”

  Joe’s voice was almost a whisper. “I never said I was.”

  “The hell you didn’t!” Sharon screeched, her voice breaking a little. “You set out to destroy my life that day at the gas station! You got into our business, you went where you didn’t belong. And my poor girl paid the price. My poor…” She faltered, her face convulsed with anguish.

  “It was for the best,” someone said quietly.

  Sharon’s eyes flared into excess lunacy. She whirled on the speaker, her fists clenched with rage, the tip of the knife trembling like a dowsing rod. “It didn’t have to be my Angie!” she yelled. “It didn’t have to be my little girl!”

  Joe saw the man facing Sharon, a surprisingly distinguished-looking man. Like Grayman, the guy’s face was only slightly marred by age, yet the white hair and liver-spotted hands gave the impression he was in his late seventies or early eighties.