Contents
Title Page
copyright page
SALLEY GARDENS
THE THRONE
HABEAS CORPSE
NOTHING BUT THE BLOOD
HEADLESS THALIDOMIDE BABY
THAT HYPERBOREAN FELLER
STUD
A SERPENT'S TOOTH
IT CAME FROM PEACH ISLAND
LEAD LOBOTOMY
Contact:
FLYBLOWN
AND
BLOOD-SPATTERED
by Jarred Martin
(c) Copyright 2014 by Jarred Martin
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used
in any manner whatsoever without the
express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover image by bacco
SALLEY GARDENS
It wasn’t supposed to go down like this, thought Alene as she stood over the corpse of the old man. She looked down at his withered face, made even more grotesque by the sunken recess that Paulo had hammered into it with the fire place poker. It hung off his skull like an ill-fitting mask pulled on in haste. It shouldn't have gone down like this, she thought again as she watched the blood spread out beneath his head.
Goddamn Paulo. Goddamn fucking spic. Alene closed her eyes, trying to shake that image of the old man crawling on the floor; begging, pulling at the hem of her skirt, while Paulo laughed behind him. What had he said? What had he pleaded before Paulo punched his ticket? “Don't bury me in the garden. Please, don't bury me in the garden.”
Just then Paulo came back with the hedge clippers. Alene didn't know if it was the blood splattered across his face or the way he was smiling, but he looked deranged. His grin widened as he pulled the handle apart and snapped the blades together. He threw the clippers down by her feet and they splashed in the shallow water of the flooded room.“Start with the head, then do the hands. And hurry the fuck up, 'cause we're leaving real soon.”
“Don't bury me in the garden. Please, don't bury me in the garden.”
She had met the old man several months earlier. She was a waitress in the bar at the Ciel D'or, back in Des Moines. She brought him a glass of Cabernet and he nursed it alone for hours before some diseased-looking Mexican came and wheeled him away.
The glass was still nearly full when she went to pick it up and there was a five hundred dollar tip for her on the table.
And a room key.
“Don't go.” Pamela had told her that. Fat, fucking no-tits Pamela. Jealous bitch.
Alene smiled and looked at Pamela's blouse billowing slack over her paltry breasts. “Oh, I'm going. This five hundred's got my, ahem... appetite whet.”
“Don't you think he's going to have certain expectations when you go up there?”
“He can have all the expectations he wants, but I know he doesn't have the ability to follow through. You saw him, he's a decrepit stick figure. He looks like someone drew hangman in a fucking wheelchair. Here's what's going to happen: I'll sit in his little lap, wipe his drool up while he pinches my titties, and then I'll walk out of there with enough money to pay off my credit card debt before you've made five dollars in tips.”
Pamela was still unsure, “What if the money wasn't for him, what if it was for that Mexican dude. Did you see his face? How it looked rotten, that's impetigo. Like flesh-eating bacteria, you know? He looked like he should be quarantined. Do you have any idea how contagious that is?”
“Oh please, Pamela, that old fuck ain't paying five hundred plus to get the help laid.”
“Well, I still wouldn't go if I were in your position.”
“Well, Pam, thankfully, I don't think you're ever going to be in my position, so you don't have to worry about it. Now be a dear and watch the bar for me, I got tits to shake and hips to break.”
Pamela watched Alene as she untied her apron, ran her fingers through her hair and unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse. As she stepped out from behind the bar and walked through the door leading to the lobby, she turned and called, “Hey, Pam, if I never see you again, I just want you to know: I'm not thinking of you.”
But Pamela did see her again; three hours later when her shift was ending. She was wiping glasses with a towel and Alene pushed the door open and came across the barroom to leave by the front exit. Her head was down and she was walking quick and deliberate, trying not to limp. Her hair was a mess and her hands were crossed over her chest holding the front of her blouse closed. She looked like she had been crying.
Alene went back to the old man's room the next night.
And the night after that.
And the morning after the third night, she walked out of the hotel with the old man and his rotten-faced assistant and never looked back.
Fuck Des Moines. She was flying over the city now, watching it recede into a speck; a speck of dust, a crumb she could brush away and never have to think about again. Fuck Des Moines.
She sat in economy, next to the old man's assistant while the old man himself was in first class. The assistant told her his name was Paulo, and that he was from Paraguay. She asked if that was one of those spring break places, but he didn’t answer.
She turned to Paulo after a while and asked him, “Is it nice where we're going? What's it like?”
“What do you think it will be like?” He said. “When you close your eyes to imagine, what do you see?”
Alene closed her eyes, “It's like a mansion or a palace even, with marble columns, everything’s white, and what isn't white is crystal. It's big, so big it echos even when you whisper. The second floor is a mezzanine, and the third floor has a heated pool with underwater sound system. There's butlers and you can scream at them for nothing when you get bored and all they can say is, 'Yes, Madame, will that be all?'”
Paulo laughed, “That's pretty good. You keep that. Try and hold on to it. And when we get there, if the place don't meet your expectations, you can just close your eyes and go there whenever you want.”
Alene glared at him, “You're trying to make me feel like an asshole. I don't think I'm going to like you. And that’s too bad, 'cause I'm going to marry that old fuck, and I'm going to get all his money. And when I do, you're going to be shit out of luck. You're going to wish you never crossed the Rio Grande, Senior-o.”
Paulo scratched at the sores on his face, “Too bad we're getting off to a bad start. After some time, I think were gonna be best friends, though, 'cause when we get there, it's just going to be you, me, and the old man. And that old man's fucking crazy.”
Alene rolled her eyes and looked down at the fresh bruises around her wrists and arms, “Don't I know it.”
“No,” said Paulo, “you don't. Not really. You don't know shit. But you're going to find out.”
She woke as the plane touched down. She didn't even remember falling asleep. Her neck was stiff and Paulo only shrugged when she asked him how long she'd been out. They exited the plane in the long, shuffling queue. It drove her insane how people could move so slowly after crossing the country at high speed. She guessed they thought there was time to kill after traveling nearly fast enough to break the sound barrier. And then it dawned on her: she didn't know where they were, not even what airport they had arrived at. It didn't matter, she supposed. They were here and here wasn't Des Moines, and that was good enough.
She waited for the old man, impatiently, beside Paulo. He was the last one off the plane. Alene watched a flight attendant push him across the terminal. She wondered how old he was. He looked ancient. He was nearly bald, with stringy wisps of white hair combed across his liver-spotted head. He had an oxygen mask strap
ped to his face and beneath it his mouth looked collapsed, caved-in from when his teeth had rotted away over the myriad decades. His eyes were recessed deep into their sockets and his gaze was like something afraid, something from another time peering out of a dark cave at a world it hardly understood.
Alene tried to take the old man's hand, walking beside him as Paulo wheeled him through the airport, tried to play the part of the trophy wife, or whatever it was she was supposed to be. His hand drooped in her grip and the old man gave no indication that he was aware of her at all. She moved her thumb over his bulbous, arthritic knuckles for a second before placing it back into his lap. She looked at Paulo.
“He's fucked up,” he told her. “That's the only way he can fly. Eats a stomach-full of pills. He won't snap out of it 'till tomorrow, probably.”
“Oh,” said Alene. “Tell him I tried to hold his hand, okay?”
Paulo nodded.
The black Town Car rolled to a stop in front of a huge iron gate with a long, winding driveway beyond. Alene got out and peered through the bars of the gate while Paulo and the driver struggled with the wheelchair crammed in the Town Car's trunk. She couldn't see the house; actually, she hadn't seen any houses for the last half of the drive from the airport. Their car had taken them through a prosaic landscape rendered in earthen hues and shades of green that made her think of a plague of moss and vine devouring every trace of humanity for miles.
She watched the Town Car drive away in a cloud of dust and then it was only the three of them; three figures before a gated entrance in a desolate land.
Paulo unlocked the gate. “You get the bags and I'll push the old man.”
Alene gave him a stubborn look.
“They ain't heavy. Besides, you don't gotta carry them far, the house's just at the end of this drive.”
“I don't care if they're heavy or not, they're your bags, you carry them. I'll push the old man,” said Alene.
Paulo looked at the two bags sitting in the driveway. “You didn't bring anything with you?”
“Not even a toothbrush.”
“That was stupid,” said Paulo.
“Everything I have is gonna be brand new from here on out. All that old shit in Des Moines belonged to a sad barmaid who couldn't even get her broke-down Toyota out of her parents' driveway. That's her shit and she can keep it. I'm not her anymore. That old man can afford to keep his new girl looking good.”
“Yeah,” Paulo said as he picked up the bags and began to walk up the drive, “he can afford it; I'm not so sure about you, though.”
She looked to the old man sitting in his wheelchair, “That's the thing about the lap of luxury: As long as he can't get up, I'll never fall out.”
They continued through a gentle slope of sparse vegetation and ugly patches of bare earth. There was nothing except for the odd stunted shafts of gnarled trees, choked with ivy, jutting up from the ground.
The path came to an end at a massive hedgerow enclosure. The hedgerow split apart at the entrance and they walked through beneath an arched trellis.
Alene's eyes widened in awe. Within the enclosure was the most stunning garden she had ever seen. The sheer scale of it was breathtaking. All around her was an infinite array of exotic flora exploding in dazzling color. There were flowers beyond name, decorative topiary in geometric patterns, statues, and in the center of everything, a stone fountain.
“Fucking jackpot,” Alene whispered. “This is more like it.” She turned to Paulo, “Tell me that fountain lights up at night.”
“I don't know,” he said, mildly annoyed. “C'mon, the house is this way.” He walked on.
“Sure,” she said, keeping up. “If this is just the garden, I can't wait to see the house.”
She followed Paulo through the seemingly endless pulchritude of blushing landscape. The garden was punctuated by several strange and beautiful trees. They looked like willows, but the branches were covered with blooming red and pink flowers.
Alene pointed one out, “What kind of trees are those?”
Paulo turned his head slightly to look, but kept his pace. “Those are called weeping cherries.”
“Do you know what all this shit is called?”
Paulo stopped dead and turned around to face her. “Look, stop asking me about these fucking plants, 'cause honestly, I don't give a fuck. If you wanna talk about plants, wait 'till the old man snaps out of his self-induced coma. He loves talking about plants. It's all he talks about. His plants, and his little friends that live in them.”
He began walking again. Alene wanted to press her luck, to ask him what he meant by little friends that live in the plants, but she saw something that forced the thought from her mind. Just off the edge of the little footpath, was a series of statues. She stared at them in horrible fascination. There were several in a cluster, but there was one that commanded her attention: A statue of a young woman recoiling in terror, eyes wide, mouth open in mid-scream. She was being advanced upon by a gang of smaller statues, all vaguely human and at the same time insectoid, with extra limbs and grotesque, bulging eyes. There were mandibles protruding from their mouths and she could see that they held little knives and forks in their hands.
That's so fucking creepy. She looked around and noticed that Paulo had disappeared farther up the walk. She continued on, pushing the wheelchair. “That's a really interesting choice of decor,” she said to the old man. “Who does your landscaping, Jeffrey Dhamer?”
The old man's head jerked up, suddenly. “They're my friends,” he said in a sing-song croak. “They're my little friends who live in the flowers. My little flower friends. My little friends come out at night and eat the little girls. And they're huuuungryyyy.”
“Man, I want whatever you're on,” she chuckled nervously. She began to walk faster, almost pushing the old man at a full run. The old man had sunk back into his pharmaceutical haze and bounced along limply, like a mannequin in a shopping cart.
She came to the end of the path, and nearly slammed the wheelchair into Paulo, who was waiting for her with his arms folded across his chest.
Behind Paulo was the house.
It was hideous.
At one time it had been a handsome Victorian manor, but years of neglect had reduce it to a battered pile of stone and wood. There were jagged panes of broken glass left in the window frames and exposed slats of rotten wood. One of the turrets had collapsed in on itself and the entire house seemed to sag under its own weight. The house looked dark, even in the daylight it seemed to be cast in permanent shadow.
A sickness began to blossom in Alene's stomach, but she said nothing, only followed Paulo through the door and into the entrance hall. Paulo took the old man and pushed him across the room. He turned to Alene, “I'm going to lay him in his bed. Look around if you want. You can have any of the rooms upstairs that aren't nailed shut, except the third door on the left, that one's mine.”
Alene looked down at the rug beneath her, there was once a pattern on it, but now it was almost completely black with filth like everything else in the house. She walked through the downstairs, the walls were brown with water stains, they were warped and pushed outward in oblong bulges. All around the bottoms of the walls, where they met the floor, were covered in a yellowish powder. She came to a staircase and paused. More powder was scattered all over the steps. The powder had been there for a long time and there were footprints leading up and down the staircase. Well, that's good to know. At least someone has been using the stairs. They're not gonna collapse when I'm halfway up and me break my leg in the fall. She put one foot on the steps to test them. Shit, what if I did break my leg out here in the middle of nowhere? Who would come? Who would know? I'm not even sure this place has electricity. The stairs creaked and groaned beneath her weight and the railing wobbled when she touched it like it wasn't even attached, but the stairs held and she made it to the top.
She made her way down the hall, testing every door she came to, except for the one Paulo had desi
gnated as his own. She entered the first one that wasn't locked or nailed shut. Inside, it was sparse, nearly empty save for the grime, rust-colored water spots and peeling wallpaper. There was an old metal bed, the kind with springs built into the underside, and a thin, soiled mattress on top, and beside it, a little bedside table so old and dark the wood looked almost petrified. She found a small closet where she could keep the clothes she didn't bring. There was a single window that held a view of the garden below, at least that was pleasant to look at. When she sat on the bed, the worn springs sagged and her ass almost touched the floor. She looked out the window and thought about the ways she could make this situation work for her. It didn't look like the old man kept anything around of real value. But this adventure was still new, and she supposed the old man would have to have a bundle of cash tucked away someplace. She could use that to fiance her next scheme, or a bus ticket out of here at the least. She would have to see how things played out. Even though this place was creepy and falling apart, it was still a hell of a lot better than being a waitress in Iowa, but that was a pretty fucking low bar to clear.
Her eyes moved down from the window to the floor. There was more of that strange yellow powder spread out all around the baseboard. Alene rolled off the bed, got down on her hands and knees to examine the stuff. It felt grainy when she poked a finger into it, and it was filled with little black dots. She looked closer and saw the little black dots were ants. Not just ants, but all types of insects. There were thousands of them, all dead inside the powder, dried-out little husks.
“Hey, princess!” Paulo shouted, and she snapped around, embarrassed, like she'd been caught doing something she wasn't supposed to. “It's dinnertime! Something special just for you. Come down and get it.” She looked around and the room was empty. He must have been yelling from the bottom of the stairs. Christ, the sound travels in this house. I'll have to remember that. “Yeah, fine. I'm coming,” she called down to him.
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