Pretty Little Dead Girls (8 page)

“Dear girl who is already dead,” he said out loud to her in the darkness of his room, “how will the world be without you? How will this city alter if you are no longer here? Will you leave stains of yourself around, or will I be the only one who remembers you? Perhaps I alone shall bear witness of your existence, and I’ll remember the joy that I gave you” (for she very much seemed to be the type of girl who would be delighted at unexpected presents), “ and I will know you smiled for me alone.”

What a pleasing thought. What a fantastic, warming idea that is. He hugged her smile close to him, happy that he was going to please her before he owned her. She would be his favorite butterfly in a jar.

He knew she would simply adore his gift. He would make sure it would be the best, most superb gift that she ever received.

How to do that, he wondered? What is it about a gift that makes it so incredibly memorable?

Ah, that’s right. It is all in the packaging.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

A Brief Essay on Gifts

There are few people who are not genuinely delighted when it comes to gifts.

Whether you are giving them or receiving them, there is something undeniably magic that skitters up one’s spine and makes one shiver in anticipation. A gift! A surprise! Something unexpected and shiny and sparkly where before there was . . . nothing! Suddenly there is something new to squirrel away and whisper to in the dark, quiet parts of the evening.

And when one gives a gift, one is transformed from Billy Next Door to A Generous Benefactor, and when the receiver opens their box, they are full of gratitude and awe for the kindness and insight of the giver, who knew exactly what they wanted.

Unless, of course, it is a particularly terrible gift that is delivered in an undeniably ill-chosen fashion. And it is a sorrowful thing to say, but that is exactly what happened with the murderer and his carefully chosen gift for Bryony.

The gift itself was a charming thing, a delicate star on a chain that inspires whimsy and sparkly rainbows of happiness, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was where the murderer found it. It was a trophy he had taken home from an earlier kill—a rather mannish brunette with a penchant for fine things. And after she had been stashed away in several places across the valley, he placed this necklace along with the others in his stash.

Oh, he had beads and rings and a tongue bar, and even the gruesome second joint of a woman’s pinky finger he had a special fondness for, though even he couldn’t explain it.

But the young girl on the trail, the one who radiated her own soft light, needed stars, and a star he had, and he was quite certain the earlier owner wouldn’t put up a fuss if her necklace was passed along to somebody else, somebody a little more deserving, and—dare he say it?— a little livelier than her. Really, wouldn’t it be quite selfish of the muscular brunette to begrudge a thing of such beauty to the glowing girl on the trail? After all, she wasn’t using it, and would never use it again, this much was certain.

Now the murderer was left to ponder the exact way he should get the wondrous gift to the girl. After all, if he were to simply hand her a creatively wrapped package and say: “Hello, dear girl, I am the man who shall be the death of you, but first I would like to present you with this trinket in order to commemorate the event. I do hope that you like it. See? It’s shiny!” Well, then. She would look at him askance and bound off to the nearest police station, and his life would certainly change, and most likely not for the better.

So that was right out.

But he wanted something that would really make an impression; something that she could reflect on for years to come, or at least, for the rest of her life, which he was fairly certain wouldn’t stretch as long.

He considered himself a patient man for the most part, but didn’t think he could wait that long. He wanted his hands around her throat, his teeth on the back of her neck, the knife zipping along in its usual friendly, productively busy manner.

Bzzzzzzz,
it would hum as he slid it between bones and joints and across the fluid surface of her skin. Did she have tattoos, he wondered? He so hoped she had a discreet tattoo hidden away from the eye of Every-Day Every-Man, a tattoo that he would be able to study and feel and eventually cut away, and frame as art. Yes.

But he digresses. He will save that luscious thought for later, and instead focus on the subject at hand. The gift and its packaging, and the ever-so-sticky problem of delivery.

He clicked his tongue and thought of the things he knew about her; her tendency to be gregarious and the way her soul washed out on the waves as she stared at the water after a tough run.

Ah, yes. How perfect, truly.

He would be able to combine pleasing the Star Girl with his first love, which of course is the stalking, the waiting, and the almost unbearable pleasure of hearing his victim gasp and fight, and eventually the consuming silence that occurs afterward. That silence, untouched by breath, unstained by the constant beat, beat, beating of a heart hidden under clothes and skin and ribs and tissue.

Oh. There is nothing quite like it on this earth.

It is time. It is time.

The murderer scooped the star necklace into his pocket, ran a comb through his dark hair, and set out into the fine, fine evening.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Eddie on Edge

Eddie didn’t sleep that night.

This was for many reasons.

One, he was extremely nervous about playing at the station in the morning. Had he chosen the right songs? Would Bryony be moved by the one he had written especially for her, the one teased from Jasmine the Guitar on that fine, moon-magic evening? He had never played it for her before, and he could imagine her eyes growing starry and luminous with her joy, and hoped she would be bouncing eagerly from foot to foot, impatient to hug him, impatient to cover the bottom half of his face with kisses, ready to slip her anxious hand into his as she stood stalwart beside him. There would be interviews and maybe even autographs, and they would network and make small talk and schmooze, and do all of those necessary, yet sometimes delightful, things of making and selling music.

This was, quite honestly, enough to make him nervous on its own, but something else had Eddie on edge.

It was the feeling of dying, the feeling of: “Oh no, how can I possibly do this again?” that coursed through his veins like love or venom, from time to time. Bryony’s siren call for death meant monsters would come, and that’s how it would end for her, and he knew it. He felt that perhaps he could withstand a tragic Accident, whether it was a car or fire or a confused-yet-angry bear from the woods. He would stand resolutely by her casket, managing not to shed a tear, as though he had turned to stone inside.

“I’m so sorry that Bryony fell off of the hiking trail and landed in a den of rattlesnakes,” somebody would whisper, an old woman, maybe, and she would hug Eddie fiercely, leaving grandma perfume and outdated lipstick on his fine white lapel.

“It is all right,” he would answer tersely, although ever polite. “These things happen, you know, and it isn’t anybody’s fault. It was a terrible, terrible Accident.”

And that is how he would comfort himself. If she was eaten by sharks or hit by a meteor, of course he would go through the “If only I hadn’t said: ‘Yes, Bryony, I do believe you are correct, and today is the day you learn how to hang-glide!’ Then surely she would be alive.” phase. It would be almost inhuman not to. But at the end, as he curled up with his memories of her, he would be forced to admit he is not a god, and doesn’t have power over the universe. If something so unusual were to happen to her, then who is he to stop it? He can’t see the future. He can’t alter the cosmos. Will that lessen the pain? No, not really, but at least it would be a fluke of the universe, and not something more sinister.

Of course our Eddie is tormented by thoughts of Rita, and the pictures of her body the police shoved in front of him. The things that were done, the liberties that were taken, made him furious, they turned him into the kind of man he never planned to be. A man who hated, a man who hunted something and somebody to better hate.

It’s the intent of the thing that really got him.

That a monster sought out a person to hurt. He lay in wait for somebody full of vibrancy and life, and then perversely enjoyed bleeding it out . . . Well, that wasn’t right. It was downright
wrong
. And although Eddie was the kind of guy to let people choose their own idea of right and wrong, according to what suited them, he was unafraid to stand up and publicly declare that, hey, killing people was
wrong
, and torture was
wrong
, and pulling the living light out of somebody’s eyes for your own enjoyment is
wrong wrong wrong.
He does not try to be judgmental by this; he is simply declaring his own beliefs. And what he believes is this:

If you so much as lay a finger on my Bryony, I will come after you. I will come after you and I will make you pay and you will be sorry until the end of your days because you do not want to experience what will happen to you. You can’t do that to her. I won’t let you. I won’t let you.

So Eddie thought, strumming and fretting.

He practiced his song for Bryony until it was, oh, so perfect, and he feared what he had always feared since he had met her. He feared her death. He feared being lost without her. He feared waking up one morning and realizing that there might not be anything left.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

A Terrible Smile

“Daddy?”

“Sweetheart. How are you?”

“I miss you, Daddy.”

“I miss you, too, sweetie. Is everything all right?”

“I . . . yes, yes, it is. I just want you here more than usual, I suppose. But everything is fine.”

“You would tell me if it wasn’t, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course, Daddy. I just . . . wanted to tell you I’m okay. I love you, and I . . . what’s that sound?”

“It’s nothing to worry about, honey.”

“It’s the desert, isn’t it? I can hear it even here, over the sound of the water. It sounds so angry.”

“It wants you, child, but it can’t have you. It’s frustrated, but isn’t that a beautiful thing? Sometimes I listen to it at night, growling its plans, and it makes me smile. I can feel it on my face, and it’s a terrible smile. A smile that I never thought would belong to me, but there it is. It is aching for you, and the frustration that it is exhibiting . . . Well, it’s beautiful. It might be one of the best things I have ever heard. The sound of its exasperated yearning? Ah. It makes my heart glad, dear one. It is the sound of you living your life. It is the sound of your survival. It means it hasn’t caught you yet, and sometimes I almost believe it never will. I think that it is the most exquisite sound I have ever heard.”

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

If Something Were To Happen

Bryony and Rikki-Tikki hardly missed a practice. The sound of her fists rhythmically hitting against his open palms was both soothing and empowering. Sometimes Syrina would come in and watch, and scream: “Go for his eyes, Bryony! This murderer wants to take you down! Go straight for his eyes!”, but usually it was just Bryony and her very precious Rikki-Tikki.

“Rikki-Tikki, you have become a brother to me,” she told him.

He grinned. “Nothin’ like fighting to make you feel like family.”

It was the evening before Eddie had to play at the station, and they were having an especially lovely practice with fists and feet, and Bryony’s ponytail flying through the air.

In the midst of the delightful mayhem Rikki-Tikki said: “Everybody seems to have been touched by fate so far, except maybe for Eddie. I wonder when his turn will come.”

He watched carefully as Bryony’s eyes lost their starlight glimmer and the bones of her face seemed to press against her skin.

“Ah, you almost forgot us,” the bones whispered to Rikki-Tikki, “but indeed, here we are. We are death and fragility and decay and we lurk ever so close to the surface. How cunning we are! We ride around inside of Bryony’s skin and we are as intertwined with her as murder. There is no escape.”

But Bryony didn’t stop or flee. She thought of the many people she had lost—of her young friend Samantha Collins’ horribly proper funeral, and the way Teddy Baker had broken her heart, and how her darling Jeremy had broken her life, and then she thought of her sweet, sweet, brave and strong Eddie. If something were to happen . . .

“You shall not touch him,” she silently warned fate, and the stars on her wrist glittered as she continued to punch and kick with a newly ferocious determination.

Rikki-Tikki nodded his head in satisfaction.

Later at his apartment, he massaged his bruised hands while fate hissed and scrabbled at the window outside.

“She might not beat you,” he said aloud, “but she’s going down fighting.”

Before crawling into bed, he pulled his sparring pads out of the closet. He was going to need them from now on. The girl was blinking the stardust out of her eyes. She was getting good.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

All in the Packaging

A fairly decent arrangement, if he had to say so himself. And he did. The pendant was perfectly placed. It was ready.

The murderer took a second longer to admire his work, and then ran. He ran, as the Star Girl ran, running so that he was not caught, running away from what he had done, because somewhere inside he knew he was doing A Bad Thing, and people who do Bad Things are the kind of people who are supposed to run away. Perhaps subconsciously he ran away from Eddie, who was now at this very second threatening anybody who would ever harm or even disturb his Bryony, and the murderer had left the gift in a memorable way, yes, but not a nice way, or even a fairly decent way. In fact, he would upset the Star Girl very much.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

The Gift

“I found a body in the water this morning,” Bryony said to Police Detective Ian Bridger.

He was young, and he tried to seem hard, but somehow he wasn’t able to pull it off. He was a sweet man underneath, the kind that called his mama and worked on the neighbors’ cars without expecting payment. This was maybe why the girls was able to talk to him so freely when her tongue had frozen up with his partner. His partner hadright through her, looked at the body as though it was nothing except an annoyance. It wasn’t an annoyance; it was a woman. At least it had been. Once.