But he didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything.
He jumped into the hole and closed the coffin.
Slammed it closed.
* * *
Todd Gould yawned.
It was a nice night, that was for sure. A little colder than last night, but nice. It was quiet. Nice and quiet.
Sometimes it was real quiet at the furniture store. That was nice.
But this place wasn’t like the furniture store. There wasn’t any furniture here at all.
11:38 P.M.
The coffin lid slammed closed, and Amy was trapped in borderless darkness.
April’s coffin, however, was not without borders. Amy’s heels pressed against the bottom wall. She couldn’t move them because her legs were bound at the ankles and the coffin lid pressed against her knees. Her wrists were bound as well, and another rope secured her forearms to her waist so she couldn’t get enough distance to lift the coffin lid. The tight bonds cut off her circulation, and she couldn’t fight the numbness that bloomed in her feet and hands. She could only lie there, the icy water soaking April’s clothes, cold fear snaking through her veins.
A whimper rose inside Amy, but it couldn’t go anywhere. The strip of duct tape that masked her mouth locked the sound inside her. She dipped her face to the side, into the cold water, but the tape didn’t loosen.
And she felt that she would explode. Her breaths came too fast through pinched nostrils, but she refused to surrender to the fear. That was what they wanted. They wanted her weak, beaten.
It’s a little late in the game to start fighting, don’t you think?
The coffin lining sagged above Amy’s face. Dank silk rubbed her nose. Cold drops of water struck her eyes, and she blinked them away. She moved her head, but the droplets only increased.
She closed her eyes and kept them closed.
People did this for fun. Amy had read about it. Sensory deprivation tanks. Floating around in saltwater, getting in touch with one’s innermost concerns. It was said to be very relaxing, but then again Amy was pretty sure that there weren’t too many sensory deprivation tanks that had once been coffins, and no one climbed into one of the things bound up like Harry Houdini.
And no one left four lunatics in charge of the keys.
But all this could change. She had overheard Bautista’s master plan. He wanted Steve Austin, the ex-Six Million Dollar Man who had become an unstoppable mummy in Amy’s own private mythology. Austin had something Bautista wanted. From what she had heard, Amy guessed that something had to be Marvis Hanks’s movie.
Austin cared about April. That much was certain. And, in his mind, at this moment. Amy was April.
The Six Million Dollar Psychotic would get her out of this.
And where would he take her? Back to his basement?
God. What would happen when he realized that she had tricked him? He didn’t want her. He wanted April Destino. He wanted her so desperately that he was willing to chase after her in death. Wanted her bad enough to push himself to the limits, until he found a way to believe that she could still be with him.
Amy struggled against her bonds. Stale water sloshed against the sides of the cramped coffin. Her wig slipped off. It lay beneath her head like the pelt of a dead animal, scratching her neck. She drew a sharp, frightened breath through her nostrils. Air. The word came to her in an instant. There was only so much air in a coffin. She couldn’t afford to waste it.
She lay very still, as still as the dead. Her fingers were completely numb. They were strangers, and her hands would soon be as well. She could no longer feel the gooseflesh dotting her legs. Only the damp cold penetrated her bones. She was dying a millimeter at a time.
This had been April’s fate. Lying in a trailer, a dozen drugs pumping through her veins as she waited for the end. Alone. Then cold in the ground, lying in a tight box in the borderless darkness. Alone.
Amy tried not to breathe.
She wasn’t alone. April was here in the darkness, but the darkness didn’t frighten her. She was dead. She didn’t need to breathe anymore.
For April, the coffin was a suit of armor. She welcomed it.
And suddenly Amy understood April Destino. April didn’t mind being alone in the darkness, because no rapists waited there. April couldn’t see fingers pointing when she masked her pain with drugs, and she couldn’t hear her name spit through laughing lips when she was alone.
Amy’s thoughts were foggy with cold, but her inner vision was clearing. She opened her eyes and stared into the void, blinking as cold droplets rained down from the silk liner.
The void was complete, perfect. It was the only thing there.
Help me, April, Amy thought. I’m scared.
How scared April must have been. Four jocks raping her. Half the people in school thinking she was some dumb bimbo anyway. Maybe someone would have believed her story, if she had mustered the strength to tell it. But she would have had to keep telling it, and then she would have had to face Griz and Derwin and Todd and Bat, and go on facing them until it was over.
Win or lose, she could never be the same.
Win or lose…. There were four of them, and only one April. It was that simple, and it was still happening today. Some things never changed, because people never changed.
Bat and Griz and Todd and Derwin hadn’t changed.
But Amy had changed. She had grown up. People like Amy….
…tormented people like April. And they went on to torment husbands and lovers and friends, bending them to their own personal agendas. They leeched on misery, ripped up bright futures and stole the best of the scraps. They laughed and whispered and trashed lockers and trashed lives, driving the April Destinos of the world into trailer parks. People like Amy hated people like April, hated them for the things they had gained so easily, and the things they surrendered without a fight.
Suddenly, it seemed so simple.
April in a hot metal trailer.
Amy in a cold metal coffin.
That was the truth of it.
When you hit us, we bruise, every one of us…. When you cut us, we all bleed.
April, I’m so scared.
Welcome to the club. Try living like this for eighteen years.
A chill wracked Amy’s chest. April’s sweater was heavy with water. Amy knew there was no way to get warm. I never took any hits, Amy thought. Not really. I never knew what it was like, April. I swear to God, I never saw what it was like to be so alone. I never knew it could be so cold.
The darkness was waiting. The still water opened a welcoming hand.
April had been her teacher, leaving the sweater and the eight ball, leaving her Doug Douglas and Steve Austin. But the lesson had gone on from there, into what seemed another world, a place where the dead and the living existed on the same plane, a place where the same battles were fought again and again.
I can’t do it alone, April.
The cheerleader’s sweater was heavy with darkness. The wet Kleenex stuffed inside April’s bra cupped Amy’s small breasts, molding to her skin like the marble hands of the dead.
I don’t want to be alone, April.
April’s hands were on her, like stones.
Strong hands which had never become fists.
April, I….
The cold rushed in, and something froze deep inside Amy. The darkness blinded her. Icy hands increased pressure on her chest until her ribs threatened to snap, and violent tremors tore through her, and she rode the spasm until the frozen thing shattered within.
11:44 P.M.
The Colonial Chapel Mortuary was a study in glowing green-white. The energy-efficient halogen lights appealed to the bottom-line instincts of the proprietors, while the Barnum in them appreciated the mystical, otherworldly aura that the lights lent to the colonial-courthouse-style structure in the late hours.
Steve extinguished his headlights as he approached the mortuary. He pulled into the rear area where the hearses—one black and one white
—were parked. Steve’s Dodge drifted to a stop between them.
Bat Bautista wanted to lure him to the cemetery. Wanted him to drive up, lights blazing, and park on the winding road near April’s grave. Wanted to blow his ass away from behind a tombstone.
No way that was going to happen. No way Steve was going to play their game, because he knew that they didn’t have anything that he wanted. Bat Bautista was a liar.
Steve glanced in the rearview and saw the guy who had tried to corral Bat Bautista with words sneering back at him. How had he ever imagined that he could tell Bat that April was back, and then expect him to leave her alone? Stupid, to have thought that he could scare Bat and the others, when they were the bastards who had trapped April in the nightmare in the first place. They were too stupid to fear anything.
They took April, all right. The A-Squad and that little bastard Shutterbug. They didn’t even bother with her dead husk, except to make it into a billboard.
Steve’s hands shook on the steering wheel as he remembered the note safety-pinned to the corpse’s cheek. That minor atrocity didn’t slow the A-Squad’s progress one second. They left April with Shutterbug, hoping to play out their hand, hoping to get the film, wanting everything, because that’s what guys like Bat and Derwin and Griz and Todd always wanted, and too many years had passed since any of them had gotten even a little piece of everything.
Steve slipped his gun belt around his waist and fastened the buckle. Leather creaked, and the familiar sound put him at ease. Hopefully he would manage to surprise them. Hit the A-Squad before they knew he was even there. Come out of the darkness like a boogieman.
Steve snatched up his shotgun.
He opened the car door quietly, stepped out soundlessly.
And the morons thought that he was stupid enough to drive up to the grave, lights blazing.
The 16mm loop was in Steve’s pocket. He knew what he was going to do with it. He was going to shoot Bat Bautista, but not kill him through. And then he was going to put the film in Bat’s pocket and light it on fire.
Steve closed the car door and turned, shaking his head, grinning…
…and he stepped into a nightmare.
11:47 P.M.
“You hear that?” Derwin asked.
“Yeah,” Griz said.
“Sounded like gunshots.”
“Yeah,” Griz agreed.
“Or a car backfiring,” Todd put in.
“Shut up,” Bat said. “Whatever it is, it’s got nothing to do with us.”
“But if someone calls the cops,” Todd offered.
“No one’s gonna call the cops.” Bat sighed. “Think about it. There’s a closed drive-in on the other side of the road. This cemetery is as big as the fucking Oakland Coliseum. If anyone heard anything, they’ll just ignore it. And even if they don’t, you think the cops come running every time someone fires a gun? In this town?”
“But Bat— “
“Shut the fuck up! If Austin hears us, this whole thing will go bad. Now stake out this place like I told you. Together we’re sitting ducks.” Bat whirled, moped off, and hid behind a tombstone. He was sweating now, and his heart pounded like a little bongo drum locked in his chest. And his stomach…man oh man, his stomach.
Bat lay Ozzy Austin’s .45 on the grass and fished a roll of Tums from his pocket. Crunched three of the things. Vague fruit flavors masked the sour taste in his mouth.
Jesus, sitting here in the dark with three morons. Hiding behind tombstones, waiting for Austin’s car to show.
Maybe Austin would be smarter than that. Bat was counting on pissing him off, forcing him to rush after them like a wildman on a mission. If Austin stopped long enough to think things through— No way. Ozzy Austin wouldn’t do that. The guy was a lunatic. He would want his bitch back. He would want Amelia Peyton right now, so he could get on with whatever crazy game they were—
A whisper next to his ear: “Hey…Bat.”
Bat spit flecks of Tums. Todd was standing there, his silhouette barely discernible. Had to be Todd because the silhouette was too short for Derwin and too skinny for Griz. “Don’t go sneaking around like that,” Bat whispered. “Everyone’s jumpy. You’ll get your ass shot. Now get back to that tombstone and keep your eyes peeled.”
Two metal circles pressed against Bat’s left cheek.
Tight circles, a cold figure-eight.
Bat smelled gun oil. Jesus! A double-barreled shotgun!
He made a grab for Austin’s pistol. His hand closed over the scored grip. His finger found the trigger.
But by the time he pulled it he was already dead, and the shot he fired was little more than a reflex.
The bullet dug its own grave in the green grass.
* * *
The bucking shotgun had punched a hot knife of pain through his shoulder, but he hardly noticed it; he had seen what the shotgun did to Bat Bautista and that image was much more powerful than the pain.
The white marble tombstone was now slick and black. A gory river flowed where Bat Bautista’s head had been. Damned impressive. Bat Bautista down so easy. The hot metal smell of the weapon drifted to his nostrils, along with the aroma of blood and singed meat.
The night surrounded him. The sky was masked with concrete clouds. The clouds wiped at the moon, and in an instant all was black.
It was as if he were nowhere.
But he wasn’t alone. The others were coming. He could hear them.
He moved, rolling low, staying quiet.
A sharp click. The sound of a revolver cocking.
“Oh shit!” someone said.
“Austin’s here,” came another voice, a voice he recognized as Derwin MacAskill’s. “Be careful, Griz.”
“Damn right…where’s Todd?”
“Who the fuck knows?”
He smiled from his hiding place. They couldn’t see him. They had walked right past him, one on each side. He was with them in the dark, and they couldn’t find him.
The coffin lid was slick, but he held tight to the shotgun and kept his balance, his arms rising slowly over the lip of the grave. He propped his right elbow on the grass while his left index finger lay steady on the trigger. Griz and Derwin stared at him, but they didn’t see him. He pressed the smooth wooden butt of the gun to his shoulder, smelled furniture polish, and almost laughed.
“You check over there,” Derwin said.
“Uh-uh,” Griz said. “I don’t think that we should split up.”
Down in the grave, he thought about making the obvious joke. He didn’t.
But he did fire the shotgun, and twin loads of number 0 buckshot split them in half.
* * *
The green halogen light was the light of heaven. No it wasn’t.
Steve came to in the mortuary parking lot.
The son of a bitch. Waiting for him like that. Waiting until he got out of the car.
The memory sizzled through Steve’s brain: Turning from the Dodge, seeing the gun in the unreal green-white light, and the man holding it…. Too late…. The first bullet clips his left shoulder as he makes a grab for his own revolver, and his arm goes dead before he can get it out of the holster…. Reaching across his body with his right hand, anything to get his gun, but the revolver is thundering in the mystical light of heaven, bullets slamming him…. And he’s lying on the trunk of the Dodge just that fast, and Frankie Valli in his incarnation as a disco superstar is in his head singing about feelin’ the rush like the rollin’ of the thunder, spinnin’ his head around and takin’ his body under…. Oh what a night, didn’t even have time to blink and there’s no air in his lungs and the gunman is leaning over him now, digging through his pockets, grabbing the 16mm loop and the shotgun shells while he can only wheeze…. He tries to make his left arm move, tries to push the man away, but the man is already gone and….
And The Six Million Dollar Man is now fully conscious. But he is not quite right beneath his Kevlar vest, and hot transmission fluid leaks from the hole in hi
s mechanical shoulder. I’ll have to pay a visit to Dr. Rudy Wells down at The Six Million Dollar Man Repair Shop when this is over, he tells himself.
He grabs his revolver with his right hand and it feels like an alien thing, because he is left-handed.
He tells himself that tonight he will be right-handed. He is a Six Million Dollar Man, a cyborg, and his brain can control every muscle in his body.
He moves forward.
And barely avoids falling flat on his face.
* * *
Shutterbug climbed out of April’s grave—clothes muddy, the shotgun warm in his hands—and saw Todd Gould running like the track star he once was.
Clouds slid away from the moon. The night sky powdered from charcoal to bleached ash, and then Todd noticed Shutterbug and realized in one horrible instant that he was running in the wrong direction.
An awful little shriek escaped Todd Gould’s lips. His hands were empty. He had lost his gun, so he turned and reversed course, slipping on the grass.
Todd was still fast. His arms pumped in the smooth rhythm of a natural athlete. His feet were flying.
And he was bearing down on the fuchsia-colored police tape.
Shutterbug laughed. He laughed so hard that he couldn’t shoulder the shotgun. Todd broke the tape. Shutterbug cheered.
A pistol crack sounded in the distance. Todd Gould collapsed, his corpse skidding across the damp grass like a kid riding a water slide.
* * *
Shutterbug’s laughter caught in his throat. The shotgun was suddenly very heavy in his hands.
The A-Squad had four members. They were all dead. It was supposed to be over.
“I warned you. I told you not to cross me. I’m coming.”
It was Steve Austin’s voice, but it couldn’t be. Shutterbug had gunned him down in back of the mortuary.
The sound of thunder erupted behind him. Shutterbug whirled, gasping. Not thunder. The sound came from the grave. From April Destino’s coffin. Something was in there, pounding to get out.
Slippin' Into Darkness Page 22
