Pretty Little Dead Girls (12 page)

“Eddie,” she said softly. “Tell me.”

The words were almost more than he could say, but Eddie is a strong man. A brave man and he wanted to do what was right, even if it was difficult. He swallowed and tried to give voice to his mother’s spirit.

“My mother. Back home. The neighbor . . . found her.” Bryony gasped, but Eddie continued speaking. “There was a robbery, and she must have walked in on him. He has already confessed, this kid. He’s just a kid, looking for money. My mother . . . ” Tears ran down his face, then, and Bryony climbed into his lap and her starry bracelet shimmered as she threw her arms around him. “She’s dead, Bryony. She’s dead. We were getting married, and she . . . ”

“Oh, Eddie. I’m so sorry. If only you hadn’t met me, Eddie. It’s a horrible thing to say, but it’s true, and we both know it. If only I had gone somewhere else, picked a different market to wander through that day. If only I hadn’t chased you down with those yellow jonquils and demanded to know why you didn’t like me! Oh, Eddie, you didn’t like me at all, and that was a hurtful thing to me, but it was safe for you. Perhaps I should have let it be, because then your mother—”

He tried to say consoling things but was too distraught, and she tried to say equally consoling things, but was even more distraught. Stop quietly stepped out of the door and stood on the back porch, giving them time to grieve.

The desert laughed.

Stop heard it, and it was a sickly sound, a dark and ancient sound. It sounded even older than Stop felt, and it hardly seemed possible.

“You wicked, hateful thing,” he said aloud. His bones felt like they would powder right there as he stood, and the desert would lap them up and mix them with its sand. It would create a golem Stop, and nobody would know the difference, except maybe for Bryony, and she wasn’t long for this world either. “You’re nothing but spite and malice. You are an evil, evil old horror.”

The desert laughed and laughed. The sound made Stop shiver.

Inside young Eddie and his broken bride still cried.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

He Has a Name

The murderer was thrilled to see Bryony back on the trail. It had been a few days, not so long, as he was beginning to despair of ever seeing her again, but long enough that he had killed twice more in her absence. Nobody spectacular or even very special; just some random people he deemed suitable. But now she was back and ready to play.

Only . . . only there was something different about her, and he couldn’t quite figure it out. Something about the way she held herself, something about the shape of her mouth.

Ah, yes. Grief.

How unusual. She was a woman born of grief, and yet somehow she was breaking under the weight of it. It was a lovely thing to see, actually, like the branches of a tree snapping under an ice storm, a sort of beauty in the pale horror of the event, but at the same time, he didn’t enjoy seeing her suffer. She moved him in a way he hadn’t often been moved. It was like watching a ghost fade away after you had just grown accustomed to it. It was a difficult thing.

Well. He would see what he could do.

“Excuse me, miss,” he said, jogging up to her. He made a show of stretching his muscles and kicking around in place for a bit to demonstrate he really had been jogging for a long time, and had not been lurking behind the blackberry bushes like some pervert.

She looked up in surprise, her shoelaces still in her hands. “Why, hello. Can I help you?”

He was a familiar man, one she had seen every now and then as she ran past. His hair looked like it was combed very neatly just before his run, and he seemed to have an exorbitant amount of energy, judging by the way he leapt and bounced all across the trail.

The murderer/jogger man grinned in what he calculated to be a disarming way. “I was just wondering if you could tell me the time. I have an appointment to get ready for and I forgot to bring my watch.” That works, he thought. Believable, friendly but not creepy. At least he hoped. Totally not creepy, right?

The girl shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand, and a slender ring of stars ran around her wrist. “I’m sorry, I don’t wear a watch,” she said, “but I’d guess that it’s about . . . oh, I don’t know. About seven now? Seven oh five?”

She was right, actually. He had glanced at his watch quickly before tossing it in the bushes.

“What makes you say that?” he asked curiously.

She smiled, just for him, and something inside of him puffed up in joy. He knew he could do it. He knew it! All of these years he feared his lack of talent, his ultimate
ordinariness
, and now he finds he can make this stunning stunning being feel something—peace or joy or safety or whatever she might be feeling—enough that her sorrow can fall from her body like ancient metal armor, and she can actually smile.

“It’s the light,” she said. “This is seven o’ clock light, still filtered and the air is full of mist. It’ll burn off soon, and the light will become clearer. I can just usually tell.”

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing. I just said ‘I’m grateful.’ Okay, thanks a lot!”

He bounded uncreepily away, resisting the urge to glance back and see if the girl was still watching him. He was almost certain that was the case, and he didn’t want to look like an idiot. He put his eyes on the prize, so to speak, and kept up a great, impressive pace until he turned the corner of the trail and disappeared from sight. Then he ducked into the bushes again.

Our murderer was not a runner, not really. He was built for speed, and a little bit for strength, but not really for endurance. That didn’t matter much anyway, since he tended to pop out and surprise his victims instead of chasing them down the street like a brain dead Neanderthal. Really. Did people actually still do that these days? Wasn’t it the 21
st
Century?

Still, he did hunt on the trail, and he did spend a lot of time in his carefully chosen running shorts and a shirt that wicked away perspiration. He quite enjoyed reading the labels on these clothes aloud as he shopped in the stores, because it pleased him to say the word “wicking”. In fact, he used the word “wick” and its variances as often as he could.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but would you say that this particular shirt wicks away perspiration?”

“I don’t know. Does it say anything on the label?”

“Well, let me see. Ah, yes, right here. ‘Special fabric that wicks away perspiration.’ I suppose that is exactly what I need. In fact, I would like all of my clothes to wick. Would you be so kind as to show me to the wicking section, please? Wick wick wick wick wick.”

It cannot be said that our murderer does not find enjoyment in life.

It wasn’t two minutes later that Bryony came running up the trail from behind him and whooshed right past his spot in the bushes. Her gait was relaxed and her arms swung loosely as she ran, not that super tight Barbie doll form so many of the women had these days. Women are supposed to look fabulous in a little black dress. They rear the children, are the workplace’s brainy sexpot, and cook delicious and nutritious dinners. They write bestselling novels and monitor the house’s Internet use while clipping coupons. It was wearing them out. He had noticed that his last few victims gave up on their fight much quicker than the women in the past, and this distressed him. They had a type of weary “Gee, finally-it’s-over” sheen that skidded over their eyes like clouds, and it was, to be honest, disappointing. He expected more.

In fact, his last victim gave up so quickly that he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

“Why are you giving up?” he whisper/shouted at her. “This is your life that we’re fighting for!”

“I’m tired,” she said, and fell limp.

He held the knife up to her throat, and she didn’t even flinch. “Your life is so much more precious than you think. You really should have fought for it.”

A quick pull of his knife, left to right, and her body spasmed heavily. He wanted to leave a note on her corpse saying, “She didn’t even try to live. The satisfaction I received from this kill was substandard,” but he decided against it. For one thing, they might be able to trace the note, and he really didn’t want to be caught any time soon. For another . . . it would have been stupid. And Peter Culpert was not a stupid man.

Ah, and now you know his name!

Quickly, quickly, filter it through in your mind and see if you recognize him from anywhere else in the story. Is he from Bryony’s hometown? Somebody she works with in the market?

The killer has a name, he has a name. Now that you know, what is the significance of it?

The significance is that he has a name, and it is Peter. That is it. Sometimes when you read too much into a tiny thing, you are bound to be disappointed.

So let us discuss Peter.

Are his crimes completely random? Are they ever deserved? Can they be warded off by good deeds and kindness and talismans and belief?

Peter did not think so. Although his targets were women he didn’t know personally, there was always something about them that caught his eye. Perhaps she had particularly sparkly earrings that day, or she reminded him of somebody he knew when he was young. One young woman was listening to Mika, and he, too, listened to Mika occasionally, when he was in a particularly foppish mood, and that was enough to tie them together. And as far as he knew, nothing could ward him off, except for maybe a large dog or aggressive boyfriend, or switch those adjectives, but even those things were temporary distractions. Women have something sweet and pristine inside of them, a keen desire to be alone and reflect, and sometimes the dog/boyfriend talisman is not wanted.

That is when Peter really has the opportunity to show them what he can do with those wonderful hands of his.

But he didn’t consider himself evil, not really. He recognized his hobby wasn’t exactly socially acceptable, but that didn’t mean anything. There are so many things that aren’t socially acceptable these days, but does that make them evil? Of course not! The next person who kindly but misguidedly says: “God bless you!” to a sneezing atheist might get an earful, true, but the “Blesser” would not be labeled as evil, per se. In fact, the very next person that she says: “God bless you!” to might respond with a “Thanks, I am extremely allergic to pollen.” and all would be well with the world.

Not that Peter believed that murder and sneezing were exactly the same, of course, but it certainly was an argument that downplayed the horrendous atrocity of his actions, and therefore it was an argument he would very much like to make. Peter nodded resolutely to the blackberry bushes as he thought of this.

Suddenly . . . there was a scream. Not a “woo hoo!” scream or even an “Oh my goodness, I am so very startled! Just you wait until I get home and regale my friends and neighbors with this humorous and/or thrilling tale at parties!” scream. It was a scream of the most heart wrenching kind. It is the scream of a woman who had picked up her skirts and fled from death her entire short life, and suddenly it is staring her right in the face. S realizes even though she thought she was prepared, she isn’t, not really. It is the scream of somebody who has so much to live for, so many precious plans, and, in fact, is most certainly going to die.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

In Which the Murderer Becomes a Hero

This is what Peter the Murderer thought:

“Wow, what horrible, painful screams. It reminds me of the good old days. That is certainly a woman who wants to survive. Mmm, how lovely.”

He thought, “How unusual for somebody else to be on my turf. I certainly don’t like it. I just might need to hunt this other person down and have a frank, yet gentlemanly discussion, on what one does and doesn’t do when an active serial killer has laid claim to a specific area.”

He thought, “The girl.”

And once that brief thought ghosted over his mind, he could think no more. “The girl.” The girl he hunted, the girl he had gifted, the lonely girl from the stars whose very countenance had been frosted over by death before he even met her, and now?

And now somebody was beating him to her.

That galvanized him. That got his legs moving. He burst out of the blackberry bushes, heedless of the scratches, and pelted down the trail as fast as his legs could take him. Which was plenty fast, because he was a man with a mission.

It took him several seconds to come upon Bryony, who was kicking and screaming as hard as she could, biting at the arm that wrapped itself around her and ducking away from the sharp and distressing knife trying to force her silence.

“Shut up, shut up!” yelled the man who was pulling her off of the trail. He was sweating heavily, obviously perplexed and dismayed at this wisp of a thing who gave him so much more trouble than he anticipated. Droplets of blood speckled the ground, his clothes, ran down Bryony’s arms and soaked into her socks and sneakers.

The murderer—the
second
murderer, not our Peter—was making a mess of it. Not a professional, obviously, but more likely a young student at the university who was out for an early morning kill, simply to satiate his curiosity. Or he had done it before, but maybe only once or twice, and he still hadn’t developed his skills yet.
Poor guy,
thought Peter.
He really screwed this up. Perhaps he would have had potential, but now nobody will ever know.

Bryony’s wide eyes caught sight of Peter, and she fastened her gaze on him neatly, much like the near perfect sound a snap makes when it clicks together nicely.

“I don’t know what to do,” her gaze said. “I used every move Rikki-Tikki taught me, which is probably why I’m still alive, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough and now I can’t seem to get free. Would you be so kind as to offer me your services?”

“Who’s Rikki-Tikki?” Peter the Murderer’s eyes asked back. “What an unusual sounding name.”

“Well, actually, it’s Reginald,” her eyes explained. “That’s so formal and it doesn’t fit him at all. He’s just Rikki-Tikki to us. You’ll see what I mean if you ever get the chance to meet him, but I’m afraid that might not be likely. This man sees that you’re here and he’s getting desperate. He’s already shaky with his knife. In fact, I’m afraid and in quite a bit of pain, and might pass out soon, so please help me quickly if you can.” “But that’s so formal and he doesn’t care for it at all. He’s just Rikki-Tikki to us, and you’ll see what I mean if you ever get to know him. And I’m afraid that might not be very likely, for now this man has seen that you are here, and he’s getting even more desperate than he was before, and he’s already very shaky with his knife. In fact, I’m suffering quite a lot of pain and fright, and I might very well pass out in a few moments, so please help me as quickly as you can, if you don’t mind.”