Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions

by John Everson

“ ‘I don’t love you anymore,’ she said. Her eyes were blinking fast and her voice cracked.

  “ ‘I’ve been trying to find it for a long time, but I’m sorry, I just don’t. It’s gone,’ she said. I looked at her then, and maybe saw her for the first time in years. It’s funny, after awhile, you start to see your wife as part of the furniture. She’s there, you know? But in that instant I saw her, Cheryl, the girl I met at a beach party 20 years ago. And in her eyes I saw an unknown woman – still with all the mystery of a first date. I thought I knew her inside and out, but quite suddenly I realized that all I really knew about Cheryl was her skin. That I knew by heart. And her routines. But her? The woman staring at me with tears and pity in her eyes, I didn’t know. And the man who cried, and begged, and finally fled here to the Ale’s Head Tavern… I’m ashamed to know.”

  A hand patted him on the shoulder and Bill looked up into the startling eyes of the stranger. They were milky white, shot through with veins. They had no pupils. They rested in a face that seemed to move and shift in a manner no muscles could control. The rest of the man was cloaked in a long gray coat which didn’t hide his gauntness. His bony fingers were also covered-in half-gloves, hobo-style.

  “And what are you going to do about it?” the stranger asked, his breath crossing Bill’s nose in a putrid wave which made him realize the alley stench was not of the alley, but of the bum.

  “Nothing,” Bill whispered. “I just want to die.”

  “That wish, I will grant,” the stranger answered, and with a leap, pinned Bill to the ground. He didn’t struggle.

  “Go ahead,” Bill said, all resistance leaving him. “I don’t really care.”

  At close range, the stranger’s oddly twitching face appeared mottled with sores, violent explosions of purple standing in grotesque relief against bone-white skin. The hands which pinned him to the gravelly asphalt were cold, sticky.

  “I can give you the tool for revenge,” the lips offered, mucousy spit dripping from them to moisten Bill’s face. “Or I can simply kill you. I give you the choice because it wasn’t offered to me. I would have chosen death. The cost of revenge is higher.”

  Deep in the burnt-out shell of Bill’s heart, a tiny flame guttered higher. An insane thought crossed his mind. This was not your ordinary alley bum. Looking into the bloody whites which passed for the stranger’s eyes, seeing the pus oozing from the cracks in his neck, smelling the decay which was not garbage, not bad breath, but this trench-coated bum’s rotting flesh, Bill concluded that this was the devil himself. And suddenly that long unslaked thirst for revenge poured gasoline into his heart.

  “I’ll pay the price, whatever it is,” he gasped through gritted teeth. “If it’s my soul you want, take it, I don’t care.” Anger flooded his mind like the bile still lodged in his throat. “I just want to make them pay. All of them.”

  The being hesitated a moment, and a word of warning gurgled in his throat. His eyes lowered to stare into Bill’s own. The stench was overpowering. Bill’s stomach threatened to lose whatever acid remained trapped within when the eyes suddenly pulled away and then with a watery cry, the man buried his mouth in Bill’s neck. He only got out one yelp of surprise and pain, and then the night sky blurred. His body went rigid and a stream of cool ice froze in his head. He could hear the stranger slurping, hear the beat of his own heart, thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud…thud .. thud……. thud…. thud…………. thud.

  The stench. God, it was bad! Bill lifted his head from the cushion of a plastic sack and stirred a hive of flies from somewhere below. They swarmed across his face and landed on his lips. He shook them away and realized in doing so that, amazingly, he had no hangover. But where was he?

  Rolling off the bag, he felt the surface shift beneath him with a metallic heave as bags slid away and his feet scrambled to find purchase on solid ground. Reaching above him, his fingers met cool metal that lifted with a push. He rose to full height, his back and legs creaking at the unaccustomed stretch. A garbage dumpster. He was standing in a garbage dumpster! In a dark, stinking alley.

  And then the events of the night returned to him. The drinking, the stranger, his story, and then – an attack? He reached up to feel his neck. Sure enough, two big sores where the bum had bit him. Bracing his hands on the side of the dumpster, he vaulted himself to the ground and brushed off his clothes. Something moved in the dark and he froze.

  It was the expectation of hearing his heart pound wildly in his chest from fright that tipped him off.

  His heart wasn’t beating fast.

  Odd.

  He put his hand to his chest, felt around. It wasn’t beating at all.

  Odder still. But the worst part was, while intellectually he expected to break down into hysterics at any moment, the fact that his heart was not pumping blood to feed his fear didn’t bother him. In fact, he felt very little. Rubbing an index finger along his neck and jaw, he realized he could feel the texture, but it was dulled. The equivalent of a black and white movie versus color.

  The shadows stirred again. The stranger from last night emerged from a lean-to shelter behind the dumpster.

  “Well, you asked for revenge,” the bum said in a grating voice. “Now is your chance. Don’t waste it. You don’t have much time.”

  The blotches covered the stranger’s face now; a tattooed blur of motion, its lips twitched out of sync with its speech, which was now slurred and indistinct – as if his mouth was slow to respond to the twitch of his muscles.

  “Who are you?” Bill asked, his eyes drawn with abnormally detached interest to the shivers coursing across the man’s exposed flesh.

  “My name is Lawrence,” the man said, milky orbs meeting Bill’s own. “And, as you’ve probably guessed, I’m a vampire. You wanted revenge, so I gave you some of my blood last night.” He pointed at the bruises covering his cheeks. “And this is the result of my thirst. This is your blood.”

  Bill thought that he should have known anger, should have smashed his fist into the prune face before him. But his head remained cool, empty of rancor. He’d been attacked and bitten by a man with a revolting skin disease, and here he was shooting the breeze with the same guy.

  “I think you’re just a sick bum with an S&M side,” Bill laughed bravely, already trying to figure out if he should attempt to gain entrance to the couch at his house or head to a hotel for the rest of the night.

  “You’re dead,” the voice before him gurgled. “And you don’t have long to act if you want your revenge.”

  “Uh-huh,” Bill said, starting to step away from the stinking, disease-ridden bum. But Lawrence shambled quickly to block the exit of the alley.

  “Pull my finger,” the bum begged, holding out his left palm. Bill laughed at the incongruous offer.

  “Humor me,” Lawrence demanded, ice in his tone.

  Bill stared at the outstretched hand, its wrinkled whiteness a thoroughly unhealthy looking offering. Deciding that the faster he did what the transient wanted, the faster he could get to a bed, Bill grasped the extended finger and jerked.

  And found himself holding the finger.

  This appendage wasn’t one of those trick pieces from the magic shop. This was real skin, real bone. And the red-black ooze at its disconnected end was, Bill suspected, his own blood.

  “You’re dead,” Lawrence croaked. “Live with it.”

  Bill threw the digit away from him with a frown. He was now becoming somewhat disturbed at the situation. Things were looking, well, unreal.

  “OK, let’s say I’m dead. What happens now?” he asked.

  “The same thing that happens to all dead people,” Lawrence returned, stepping away from the alley mouth. “Decay. So get your revenge. Fast. And stay out of the sun. It won’t stop you, but it will make you unpleasant to be around a lot faster.”

  Lawrence turned and disappeared behind the dumpster once more, leaving Bill alone. He felt again for his heartbeat. Dead. Stepping out onto the street, he decided to find o
ut just what a man with no heartbeat could get away with. Remembering his impotent rage at the two boys who had stolen his daughter from him, he began walking towards the southeast end of town. There was a growing burning in him that sought release, a fire that consumed not only his heart, but his limbs, his head, his lips.

  At last, he thought, I will have some justice.

  It wasn’t hard to find them. There were only a couple of likely teen hangouts in this part of town, and the Angel’s Park basketball court was one of them. Taking the bum’s advice, he’d slept the day away in a cheap hotel, waking with the dusk to smooth his trash dumpster-scented clothes and step out onto the street once again. He briefly considered stopping at a McDonald’s, and then realized that not only wasn’t he hungry, but the idea of grilled beef made him somewhat nauseous. A drink wouldn’t hurt though, he thought, and ducked into a Walgreen’s to buy a pint of whiskey.

  “Is something the matter?” he asked the aged woman behind the register inside the store. She wagged her head ‘no’ while staring at the stubble on his cheek. Her nose crinkled obstinately in complaint. Bill smiled as he accepted the paper bag. Her hand shied from touching his in the exchange. “How quickly we devolve,” he thought. “Two days ago she wouldn’t have looked at me twice.”

  Outside the store he opened the bottle, tilted it back. The amber liquid slid easily down his throat – but lacked any kick. It might as well have been grape juice. He felt it travel his throat, detected a thin hint of flavor, and that was all.

  By the time he’d reached the basketball court the bottle was empty, and he’d realized that, as liquor lacked any ability to warm his palate, so did it lack the power to make him drunk. “Maybe it will preserve my insides longer,” he thought. And then he noticed the dark stain spreading down the insides of his pant legs. Droplets fell to the sidewalk from his cuffs with each step. No control, he realized. If he drank, it simply ran through him. If he ate, it would probably putrefy inside him.

  His attention was suddenly wrenched from his deteriorating condition to the fenced-in asphalt lot before him. The two punks he’d come looking for were here! They dashed from side to side wrestling for the basketball with a group of other teens. Bill settled unobtrusively on a bench just outside of the lot.

  He could wait.

  It wasn’t a long one; it was already dark. The boys played under the blinding white glare of the park’s lights for 15 or 20 minutes after Bill’s arrival, and then began to fragment. Soon, only his quarry and two other boys were playing two on two. And then, they too split, two of the players passing him on the way out of the lot, while the two Bill was after hopped the back fence and headed through the alley towards their homes. As soon as the others had passed him, Bill jumped from the bench and sprinted to the back of the brightly lit court. He vaulted the fence easily, and saw the boys just a block down the alleyway. The tall one – Marcus, he remembered – was punching the shorter blonde kid’s shoulder. Terry, that was his name. As if I could forget, Bill shuddered. In the courtroom they had appeared like negatives of each other – Marcus tall, black, beanpole-skinny; Terry short, squat and blonde. But both had maintained those smirking “you’ll never nail me” expressions that were so maddening as it became more and more apparent that they were completely correct. Well, maybe not completely, Bill thought as he began running down the alley after them.

  As he ran, that hot feeling in his heart and gut began to build once more – the thrill of the chase could at least still reach his deadened nerves. And then he was on them, slamming open palms into each of their backs just as they began to turn to see who was pounding the pavement behind them.

  Terry was caught off balance by the blow, and fell to the ground with a startled exclamation. Marcus stumbled, but with the grace of a true athlete, absorbed the imbalance, and turned to meet his attacker. His eyes looked like searchlights in the dark street as he saw Bill’s maddened face.

  “It’s Lissa’s dad,” he yelled to Terry, who clutched a knee on the ground. “Lay off asshole, or we’ll have you in jail,” the taller boy boasted, dodging a punch.

  But Bill wasn’t listening now. His body was on fire, his blood boiling, his head…hungry. He realized that even if he wanted to stop this, it had already gone too far. He had to have these kids.

  Now.

  He leapt at Marcus, ignoring the knife the boy pulled. He absently noted that the weapon lodged in his back as he and the boy fell to the ground. His voice seemed to slur as he pummeled the surprised teen’s face with his fists and at last vented his anger: “You killed my daughter, you bastards!”

  Reaching into his pocket with one hand, he brought out a shiny barrette. “Thought it was real cute to leave these on my doorstep, didn’t you?” Bill raged.

  Marcus let out one “holy shit” as Bill’s mouth opened to expose a set of elongated fangs. In the same instant, Bill brought the barrette down, lodging it in Marcus’ left eye. The boy shrieked an ungodly noise, and Bill felt rage electrify his body. He hated the snivelling creature beneath him. The boy had stolen his life.

  Something crashed into his back, knocking him off balance. Then hands were around his neck, trying to wrest him away from the boy on the ground. He looked up to see the frantic face of Terry, trying to use his weight to drag Bill down. He only laughed and clubbed the fat slacker in the side of the head, and Terry went down like a rifled deer.

  Then he turned back to Marcus, still writhing beneath him, hands covering his punctured eye. Bill felt a meanness he’d never known in life course through him like liquid fire and with his fist he beat at the boy’s hands, pounding the barrette deeper into the boy’s skull, until only a glint of metal remained visible amid the punctured white and red Campbell’s soup of the boy’s eye socket. Marcus’ screams turned to metronomic near-silent hissing squeals. His arms dropped to the ground and his hands clenched and unclenched, his entire body spasming. Bill pulled the knife from his back without even a wince and began to stab his daughter’s killer in the heart, over and over and over again. With each thrust he hissed “you… killed… my… Lissa.”

  Marcus didn’t answer.

  Finally Bill stopped slicing and stared at the wreckage he’d made. Blood was smeared like an explosion of thick barbeque sauce across the boy’s face and his t-shirt lay in dark stained tatters across a torso wet with crimson ruin. The scent of sweet iron filled the air and Bill realized he was salivating. Drooling over the carcass of a murdering rapist. His face inched lower to the boy’s chest and he tried to pull back. But the pull of the scent was like a leash. The world faded out and all he could see was the slick red skin beneath him. He lapped at the chest wounds like a dog, and seconds later, Bill’s newly grown incisors were buried in the soft, unmarked flesh of the boy’s neck. He sucked like a newborn babe on his mother’s teat, drawing the essence of Marcus within himself, mouthful by mouthful, suckling breath by breath.

  It was good, so good! As the liquor should have felt, that was how this blood was. He was floating in a garish maroon cloud of lust and drunkenness. Every touch, taste and emotion he’d lost upon his death combined in this hot elixir. Bill felt as if he was cumming, drinking an exquisite wine and laughing all at once.

  This was heaven.

  He was blinded to everything for a moment as the dying teen shuddered once more beneath him. With a fist he pounded the boy’s chest to still him and found that with each punch, the rush of heaven increased. So, long after the boy’s life had finally slipped away, Bill continued beating Marcus’ middle, cracking his ribs, and eventually, forcing some of those splintered bones through the skin.

  As the blood began to taste different, cooler, Bill pulled away from his drunken orgy and looked around. The night was still around them; amazingly, no one seemed to have been alerted from the boy’s screams earlier.

  Then, all at once, he saw that Terry had disappeared. He was loath to lift his mouth fully from his feast, but some last vestige of sanity forced him. He couldn’t let the oth
er boy live. Rising from the carcass, he saw for a moment the slashed neck, the white tips of ribs hung with shreds of skin and blood, the white, rolled back eyes – one with a shiny barrette skewer. He pulled the knife from its soggy chest holster and then he was running down the alley.

  Terry would go home, he thought dimly, and home for the boy was only a few more blocks, he knew. There were many times after the court trial that he had driven past Terry’s house, wishing fervently that he could stop and go inside and beat the living shit out of the little rapist who lived there. But he never could.

  He forced his feet faster; the neighborhood garages backing onto the alleyway became light blurs as he ran. And then he saw the blond head of the hobbling, injured boy, and the look of utter terror as Terry saw the bloody face charging towards him. Bill threw his body at the boy. Something cracked loudly as they hit the ground. But that wasn’t enough. He wanted the boy to feel the way that his daughter had.

  “How do you like your own medicine?” Bill whispered. Picking up a loose hunk of asphalt, he brought it down on the boy’s forehead, ruining that golden blond hair purity with spatters of blood. Terry moaned and Bill stood up, dragging the boy’s limp body with him.

  “Thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you?”

  He threw the boy against the steel pole of a fence and didn’t wait until the body had slumped back to the ground to yank it up again. Bill had never felt this strong in life. With one motion he slammed the body on the ground like a rag doll and when one feeble hand reached out to stop him, he stood on the boy’s chest, grabbed the hand and yanked until with a loud pop it separated from the shoulder joint.

  “You were never good enough for my daughter,” he mumbled, and then retrieved the knife from the ground. Slicing through the boy’s shirt, belt and jeans, he stripped Terry and stared at the white folds of unconscious flesh beneath him.

  “And I’ll make sure you’ll never do it to anyone else.”