He grabbed the cheap Styrofoam picnic cooler from the backseat and opened it, then breathlessly removed a perfectly chilled, sensually perspiring bottle of 100 Proof Vodka. He searched the melting ice and located a small glass. Ray carefully poured one shot of the precious liquor, sprinkled a bit of pepper in it. He handed it to Wanda, who seemed genuinely surprised.
“You’re underage, but this is a special occasion,” he said. And he kissed her on the cheek. Wanda trembled visibly and downed the shot. She shook and gasped, but seemed to enjoy it. Impressed, Ray poured another and peppered it. She took the glass, but sipped it this time.
“Where are we going?” she asked. Her voice was timid, vulnerable and more childlike than he had heard it sound in years. Ray liked that.
“This way,” he said. “Follow me.”
He led her into the trees and along the path, the Vodka bottle and cold cans of beer all bumping and thumping in the ice cubes and rattling around in the cooler. The sandwiches were safely sealed in plastic bags within plastic, to keep the meat from spoiling. Meat should always be fresh, Ray thought, and then he giggled.
“What’s so funny, Pops?”
“Nothing,” Ray said, cheerfully. “Nothing at all.”
They found the spot. “Hey,” Wanda said, trying to put the best spin on things. “This is kind of cool.”
“Cool? It’s beautiful!”
But the heat was actually oppressive and the insects were merciless. Ray dropped the cooler on the blanket and grabbed the bug spray from the tote bag. He sprayed the air, whistling tunelessly. He lit four smoke-producing incense burners purported to keep bugs away, set them at the edges of the blanket. Then he removed his pants. Now he wore only a sleeveless t-shirt and bikini underwear bulging like an exclamation point. He sprayed his own arms and legs. Wanda was sitting cross-legged on the blanket, nearly through with her second shot of vodka. Her eyes were vacant and she was feeling the powerful effects. He touched her arm and she jumped.
“Don’t want you getting bit,” Ray said. “Turn around.” His pulse was pounding and his voice felt thick with lust. Wanda turned her back and crossed her arms. Ray pushed her halter down and sprayed her back with bug repellent. She jumped.
“That’s cold.”
Her skin rippled with goose bumps and Ray felt his breath catch in his throat. He held her down by her shoulders. Suddenly his mind flashed on his Grandfather again, that dirty old man with his teeth out and his breath so foul crooning, “let me touch it, please let me touch it,” and for just a moment a part of his brain screamed: Don’t do this to her, Ray! Don’t do it!
But then his wandering fingers found a nipple.
Wanda shrieked and jumped to her feet. The halter fell down around her waist and her teenage breasts were free. She tugged her clothing up and the look of betrayal she gave him nearly broke his heart. She kicked him in the face and Ray fell backwards onto the checkered blanket, clutching his lower lip. It was bleeding, and began to swell immediately.
“You son of a bitch!” Wanda screamed. “I knew you would do that! I told Mommy you would do that! You piece of shit!”
“Wanda, listen… I’m sorry… I can’t help it, baby…”
Wanda moved, and Ray jerked back reflexively, protecting his shrinking erection with both hands. But she surprised him. She grabbed his pants, fished out the car keys and ran like a deer through the woods. Ray struggled to get back into his pants, but accidentally got both feet into one leg and promptly fell down. He kicked the pants away.
Ray followed Wanda through the trees, wearing only tennis shoes with no socks, butt-floss underwear and the wife-beater T-shirt. He tried a shortcut, but his head cracked into something that felt like plaster. It fragmented into powder. A nest! Furious wasps swarmed around his upper body, hostile little peckers out. He felt several sharp stings prick his chest, neck and face.
Ray rolled through the brush, bobbing and weaving. He suddenly realized he still had the can of bug spray in his right hand. He created a dank cloud of mist around his head. The wasps flew away. He stopped, oriented himself and went after Wanda.
When he heard the car start, he sobbed with frustration. He’d forgotten she knew how to drive; her mother had taught her earlier in the year, in preparation for her learner’s permit.
Walt burst onto the trail, choked by a cloud of steadily rising dust. The car bounced through some holes, nearly ended up in a ditch, and for a brief moment he thought he’d be able to catch her and that they’d have their little picnic after all. But Wanda yanked the wheel, fishtailed around a bit and sped towards the distant highway.
I am well and truly fucked
, Ray thought. His mind raced, imagining her returning with the local law; having him arrested. He pictured jail time, and what felons generally do to men who molest children. She’s not a child. You saw those tits! But the law wouldn’t care. They wouldn’t understand how seductive Wanda had been, even when she was just a little girl.
And neither would the convicts.
Ray sobbed again at the injustice of his situation. Stranded out here in the fucking middle of nowhere without anything to live on but a blanket, a couple of sandwiches, some beer and the clothes on his back. How the hell was he supposed to survive? This isn’t fair, God Damn it!
But then he wiped the tears from his eyes and a light bulb went off in his head.
The fisherman.
The old man had to have gotten out here somehow. He had transportation and might even have a gun with him. Maybe there was still time to catch up to Wanda. She’d be afraid to drive seventy, eighty miles an hour. She’d stay on the main highway doing thirty or so, playing it safe; for Chrissakes she was only a kid, right? He could still catch her, enjoy her and then kill her. That would be unfortunate, but perhaps it had become necessary. And that way nobody would have to know about their little picnic. Nobody. Not even the fisherman would be left behind to talk.
Ray circled around the wasp nest, edged through the trees and approached the stream. The old man with the fishing rod was still in the same place, the scene precisely as it had been before. Ray edged along the bank of the stream, searching with his eyes. He dropped the can of bug spray and knelt down, his determined eyes fixated on the old man with the fishing pole. He searched the freezing water with numb fingers until he found what he wanted: A rock, thick at one end and sharp on the other. It would make a decent weapon.
It was cold close to the water, and he was still half-naked. Ray shivered, although he wasn’t sure if it was from the temperature, fear or shame. He only knew that he had to keep the sacredness of this place, his picnic area. Just Ray and his Grandfather’s little secret. He’d only shared it with the four other young girls who were quite carefully buried here…and now with that little bitch Wanda. He could do this. Ray knew he was strong enough.
The old man’s back was turned, after all. It wouldn’t be sexually good, not like it had been with those young girls, but it would be easy and quick and then he would be on his way…
The old man moved.
Ray froze, heart in his throat. But it was just the pale left arm holding the pole. It had twitched a little bit, probably something involuntary because the old fart was fast asleep. Almost like a spasm of some kind.
Ray tiptoed down the bank and got behind the aged fisherman. He started to edge closer. His shadow fell across the water and part of the bank, and he knew if the old man was awake he’d see it and react and turn around so Ray lunged forward; he raised his arm, the pointed end of the rock aimed squarely at the old man’s neck. He gritted his teeth, brought his arm down as hard as he could…CRAAAAK.
His arm went into the old man right up to the elbow.
The skin just gave way like thin dry wall; white powder sprayed up and into the air and the old man started to fall apart, one chunk at a time. His jaw fell off into the water and then the head collapsed at the neck and the trunk split wide open. Something crawled out of a lump on that gray forearm and it pro
mptly dropped the fishing pole into the icy stream.
Ray felt something bite him again and then again. He shrieked and pulled his hand back out of the cavernous hole in the fisherman’s back. Spiders? Hornets? They were all over him, little brown and gray and yellow things with hairy legs and wings; but they were like nothing he had ever seen before. In some calm, non-psychotic part of his mind Ray wished he’d held onto the bug spray, although he knew that it probably would have been useless. Because suddenly he realized the nests he’d seen back in Dry Wells had been gray, just like this old man’s skin. And then it came to him that those ancient, motionless old people in the rocking chairs, they had been…inhabited.
One squirming lump ran into his mouth and bit down on his tongue. His mouth tasted copper from the fresh blood. Ray bit down hard in return and crunched it into furry guts. The open wound burned like something drenched in acid. He gasped and howled, and swatted at himself again and again. When he tried to breathe, to shriek out his agony, a tiny one ran down his open throat, scraping the tender flesh with its feet. He tried to vomit but it held on tight.
Ray went completely, musically mad. He began to giggle and dance around. He fell flat on his back, rising screams of pain alternating with bouts of hysterical laughter. A strangely calm part of him understood that there was a kind of poetic justice taking place. He would soon be a hollowed-out nest.
And food for the young ones just hatching.
Suffer the Children
They smelled the little boy before they found him.
The night was bitter cold, the ground crackled with frost. A Full Worm Moon burned white in the evening sky and their breathing spewed tiny, twisting dragons of fog. Sheriff Sam Kenzie left the police cruiser’s lights on bright and walked over to the icy stream, one hand clenching the handle of his .9mm Glock. He paused at the edge of the woods to locate and turn on his heavy flashlight. He sprayed the beam from left to right, his nostrils twitching.
Kenzie heard heavy footsteps crunching along behind him and someone grunting from exertion. He kept his eyes focused forward, following the narrow beam of light, and searched the woods.
“Just when the hell were you people planning on telling me about this, Doc? At my retirement party?”
Doc Meadows was droll by temperament and obese. He coughed and spat out phlegm. “Give me a break, Sheriff. We thought the bastard who done it was dead and gone two years ago.”
“Obviously not,” Kenzie said. “Because he called and told me where to find this one.”
“Too bad he didn’t tell you who he was while he was at it.”
“Hang on a bit,” Kenzie said. “Could be he did.”
They worked their way along the path, concentrating carefully. The flashlight caressed some brittle sage, paused for a second and moved on. Kenzie blinked. His breath caught in his throat. He moved the light back to find what he’d nearly missed.
“There, Doc. Look.”
A child’s tennis shoe was jammed into a clump of brush like a ridged exclamation point.
“Wait here,” Kenzie said.
Doc, a veterinarian by trade, hugged himself against the cold. He seemed to briefly consider standing alone in the darkness. Then he said: “Fuck that. I’m coming with you.”
Kenzie lost his footing on the bank, slipped onto his ass and slid down until his boots sank into the freezing water. He barely noticed. He was far more concerned about the amount of noise made by his handcuffs, mace and keys as they went jangling through the mud and sharp stones. The crazy bastard might still be nearby, watching them with amusement. He heard Doc stepping carefully, and the sucking sounds his large boots made in the muck. They approached the body.
The stench was like a force field, and it drove them back. Doc shook his head and gagged. “Sweet Jesus, is that from a human?”
Kenzie had been to his share of crime scenes as a homicide detective in LA. He thought he’d left such things far behind when he’d moved to Two Trees, Nevada, ostensibly to a softer job. He reached into his coat pocket and grabbed some menthol chest rub. He dabbed a bit under his nostrils, offered some to Doc. The veterinarian took it gratefully and followed Kenzie’s example. The menthol almost overpowered the stench of entrails and rot. Almost.
Kenzie examined the ground around the body carefully. He took some plastic bags out of his pocket and picked up a few things with tweezers: a nail, some threads and a dried-out wad of chewing gum.
Doc was obviously terrified. “Shouldn’t you wait and let the State Police do that, Sheriff?”
Kenzie shook his head absently. “The number of predators we got around here, this place will be covered in coyote and badger prints come morning, and the boy would be half-eaten. Can’t risk that. I’ll pick up what I can. See, you never know. If this chewing gum belongs to our perp, he just left us some DNA to work with.” But in his heart of hearts, Kenzie knew it belonged to the boy. Whoever had brought him here had struck him hard across the face, and the gum had gone flying. Kenzie took some photographs. The flash made the scene appear washed out, even more ghoulish.
Kenzie ran the beam up the body and flinched. A long plume of frigid air blew past his shoulder as Doc, leaning in close, gasped in horror. Kenzie sighed and took more pictures.
“Who could do such a thing? Gut him like that?”
Kenzie put the camera down and swallowed. The carnage to the boy’s belly was hideous to behold, but he’d seen worse during his years with LAPD. He kept reminding himself of that fact, almost as a litany: I’ve seen worse, I’ve seen worse, I’ve seen worse. Another flash photo: Little Timmy’s eyes were rolled back in his head and several blood vessels had burst, spider-webbing the whites. As for the evisceration, it was ghastly, but hadn’t killed him right away. No, Timmy had been strangled while he lay suffering.
“I think the boy fought back,” Kenzie said. He wanted a cigarette. Badly. Even though it had been years since he had smoked. He covered the boy’s hands with plastic bags. “Look at his fingernails, Doc. He scratched and kicked, maybe thumbed the perp in the eye. Something that really hurt. I’d say the bastard lost his temper and sliced the kid open, then had no more use for him.” He walked around a bit more, stepping carefully. “Looks like he used some brush to fuck up any trace of footprints.”
“Look,” Doc said. “Look over there.”
Kenzie ran the beam along the ground. “Where?”
“Up there, Sheriff. To your right.”
One lone print. A large one; the boot heel and a partial. It lay half under a flat piece of rock part way up the bank. They’d gotten lucky. Kenzie stepped wide around the crime scene and eased close to the print. He took a photograph, measured the print carefully and noted the size and depth of the indentation. He piled some rocks up around it, hoping to preserve it for the forensics team that would come up from Elko in the morning. He paused.
“Doc. Come here.” There was something near the heel of that print, something grayish and dried up. Kenzie used the end of his knife to scrape some of the matter out into a plastic bag. He sniffed carefully. It smelled foul, even with the stench of the body and the open intestines lying nearby. He felt Doc behind him and held up the bag.
“What the hell is that?”
Doc whistled. “From pigs. That’s pig shit.”
After a few seconds of silence, Kenzie turned his head. “What, Doc? What are you thinking?”
Doc took a step back, his bulky body large in the moonlight. “I’m thinking that there is only one farm around these parts that has a lot of pigs.”
Kenzie felt his heart kick like a mule. “Let’s not get too excited yet,” he said. “Maybe the perp just crossed that man’s land to get here. Where is it?”
Doc shook his head and pointed south. “We’re gonna drive, we got to go all the way down to Star Valley and go over the bridge. But a man could walk it in fifteen minutes going right across that field.”
Kenzie jumped to his feet, excited. “Damn. You mean that old German guy,
Klaus? He keeps pigs at his place?”
Doc nodded. “He surely does.”
Kenzie grabbed his cell phone and tapped out a number. After a few rings, a woman answered sleepily. “Laura? It’s me. Honey, look. I want you to call the State Police right away. Now get a pen and take this down.” He told her about the anonymous call, where the body was, and what he had already done at the crime scene. “Now sweetie, don’t worry about me. But tell them I have gone to interview a suspect by the name of Klaus Wachner. Yeah. You know, that weird old guy who hardly ever comes to town. Doc and I are going to his place right now. If he did this, I don’t want him to have time to cover up anything.” The woman spoke urgently, and Kenzie laughed reassuringly. “Like I said, don’t worry. He’s just a crazy old man, and there are two of us. Yes, Doc is with me. Now make that call, honey. I’ll call you back in an hour or so. Promise.”
Kenzie broke the connection. Doc spat again. “Nice of you to volunteer my ass without even asking me first.”
“I don’t have time to run you back to town,” Kenzie said. “Sorry. You can wait in the car if you want to.”
Doc hugged himself against the cold. “You carry a shotgun, right?”
“Right. On the dash.”
“Well then you can keep that there popgun. I’ll carry the shotgun and back you up. How’s that sound?”
“Just fine,” Kenzie said dryly. “That’s what every cop wants to hear from his partner. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be right behind you every step of the way.’” They shared a bitter laugh. Kenzie packed up his camera and the evidence he had collected. A few moments passed. Doc cleared his throat.
“Sheriff? I’m scared shitless.”
“That’s a reasonable posture,” Kenzie said. “I am, too.”
Kenzie paused to look down at the boy. I’m sorry I have to leave you here, he thought. You were a brave little boy. And I will get this bastard, I promise.
A Host of Shadows Page 29
