Authors: John Curtis
But Frank didn’t die; he just pulled the knife from his side. Small blood-colored worms slithered and squirmed around the edges of the wound as it sealed itself. His mouth knotted into a grin as he rose to his feet, holding the knife out to his side. Tommy kneeled there before him, on all fours, his sides heaving with every labored breath.
"Huh-uh, buddy," Frank said. "Don’t you know you can’t keep a good man down?"
Frank bent over and began plunging the knife into Tommy. There was the thwick-thwick-thwick of the knife slipping through Tommy's flesh. It sounded like someone punching a canvas bag full of pinto beans. The wounds cross-hatched his chest and gut; the fresh blood dyed his t-shirt crimson.
The tiles that ran halfway up the kitchen wall were splattered with blood and gore that slid slowly down to the baseboards. Behind them, the bits left slimy, opaque red trails, as if someone had flung around the contents of a pot of strawberry jam. Tommy’s desperate screams were soon reduced to irregular heavy gulps of air as he lay face down with his cheek pressed tight against the floor. His blood pooled slick and gooey round his body.
Frank had made a right mess of it. Fifty times he had struck at the corpulent torso, stopping just short of a death blow, for he needed a beating heart. It was only with an extreme act of will that he had stopped himself in mid-swing on the fifty-first stroke. His hatred of Tommy had been years deep and as cold as the waters in which he had drowned.
He took a close look at the results of his fit of anger. The blood still surged from the wounds. The pupils still responded when he rolled Tommy over onto his back, exposing them to the light. Life. His animal instinct had grown stronger ever since Gene had brought him back from the other side.
The heart was the seat of life, the anchor for the soul energy upon which he fed, through which he grew stronger, able to reach out to Jay. Jay was the whole point of this. But Frank wasn’t strong enough yet to get through to him when he was awake, when his mind was able to push him away with nary a second thought. He didn’t understand why.
He had been able to overpower the minds of lower animals in their waking state, but they were simple and motivated by base drives; food, shelter, continuation of the species. He had seen it. Human beings were too complex, with thoughts that flickered up for a moment and then disappeared in a twinkling of an eye. These random thoughts were like razorwire, protecting them from his probes. But as he grew stronger with each kill, he was able to dig deeper, cutting away more and more of the defensive layers. It wouldn’t be long now before he could reach out to anyone, anywhere. Undeniable.
But there was this unfinished business. Betrayal. Supposed friends who were no friends at all. They had left him here and moved on. It wasn’t fair. There were wrongs to right and it was this fire that drove him to kill. It was like an ache deep within that wouldn’t be cured by an aspirin.
He enjoyed the killing, the taste of the warm blood on his own cold, bloodless lips. He savored the salty taste when he took his prey and the rush he got as he absorbed their essence. His adolescent mind couldn't grasp the idea of an orgasm, but he knew that what he was about to do made him feel good.
Frank ripped open Tommy’s shirt under the gaze of his staring, glassy eyes. His fingers formed into a claw and he let the tips rest on Tommy’s chest for a moment in anticipation of the pleasure he would soon feel. Frank began pressing and kneading the flesh until it broke. Blood which had pooled in Tommy's chest cavity overflowed onto the floor as he dug in and his fingers wormed their way through muscle and under bone.
Then, he felt his target. It pulsed unevenly against his fingertips as it kept up its efforts to supply nourishment to the extremities through mains broken in a half-dozen places by Frank's attack. His hand closed around it. It felt slick, warm, and silky. It felt like it was trying to wriggle away like a fish as he tightened his grip.
Frank pulled the heart free of its enclosure, into the open air, still attached to the network of plumbing that nourished the cells. He ran his tongue slowly along his lips in anticipation and then leaned in to touch the meat with the tip of it. Immediately he felt that tingle that started where his tongue touched it and then slowly traveled in a wave to the ends of his toes.
His body shivered as he gave the heart a tug, like he was picking an apple. Connections torn asunder, arteries and veins ripped, he held it to his mouth and sank his teeth into it. Frank felt a high voltage surge run through his body. His muscles tensed and released, normally inactive synapses fired, and all the hairs on his body stood at attention.
With every bite, there was a new rush. When he had finished he threw his head back, filled with ecstasy and intense well-being. He didn't think that there was anyone living who could feel what he felt at that moment.
The coveralls, torn and dirty, were now covered with crimson splotches; the pale skin of his face was sprinkled with bright red freckles. Smears of blood created the illusion of rosy cheeks. Frank loosened his grip on the knife and shrugged. He tossed it into the sink as he walked to the stove.
He turned each of the burners up full, so that the room was filled with a loud, snake-like hiss. Then he walked over to Tommy's body and pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the one of the pants pockets.
"You know," he said, as he took a cigarette from the pack and put it to his lips, "I did you a favor. These would have killed you, anyway."
He cupped the lighter in his hands. It took several flicks of the touch wheel before it lit.
CHAPTER 27
Swanson was just putting the key into the lock on Gene’s cell door when a massive explosion shook the building, almost knocking him off his feet. The ceiling fixtures flickered and danced on the ends of their wires. Dust sifted from all the nooks and crannies, rained down like a fine mist. When the shock had passed, he released the grip he had taken on the bars to steady himself.
"Holy shit!"
He jammed his key clip back onto his belt and brushed the fine powder from his shoulders as he ran back to the front of the station. The office area was in total disarray. The deputy on duty at the night desk was dazed and files were scattered across the floor.
Gary bolted from his office, pulling on his coat as he walked through the chaos. As he headed for the front door, he could see that the switchboard was lit up like a Christmas tree. A deputy, still clutching a donut, was bobbing about in front of the window.
Gary grabbed him by the shoulder and ordered, "Get the fuck away from the window! And answer the damn phones!"
"What do I say to them?" came back the nervous reply.
"Just nothing about atom bombs and alien invasions."
Gary could see through the cracked window that just a few blocks away, a fire with flames at least forty feet high was pouring black, sooty smoke into the air. Swanson stumbled out of the cell block. The powdering of dust and look of confusion on his face made him look like a mime.
"What the hell was that?"
"I don’t know," answered Gary, "You stay here and watch the prisoner while we go to check it out."
Jay and Meg had been eating pizza down the block from the station and were standing outside the restaurant, looking in the direction of the bright, rosy glow that shone over the tops of the buildings in the next block. The column of smoke rose about one hundred feet into the air and then broke to the right as a high, light breeze drove it across Main Street.
Gary drove by in his cruiser, red lights flashing. Jay stepped out into the street to hail him down. The sirens of other emergency vehicles could be heard in the distance, headed for the scene.
Gary rolled down the window and Jay leaned in. "Hey, can I catch a ride?"
Gary didn’t speak. He just shoved open the passenger door and waved him in. Jay barely had time to shut the door and settle into the seat before Gary peeled out with his siren on.
They were almost sideswiped by a fire truck as they swerved through a turn at an intersection. Jay gave the door handle a tight squeeze, leaving deep impressions in the foam-backed vinyl upholstery.
When they reached Tommy’s house, there were already some firemen on the scene running out hose lines. Bits and pieces of the house and its contents were spread across a four block area in yards, hanging from trees; windows of houses were broken for more than twice that distance. A couple of cars parked on the street directly in front of the house were engulfed in flames. A deputy who had been nearby when the explosion occurred was trying to put them out with an extinguisher.
Gary pulled to a stop in front of what was left of the Lazaro house. The illumination from the fire made faces peering from behind curtains in nearby houses appear ghostly. For a moment, in the flickering shadows, Jay thought that he saw a familiar face. It happened so quickly that he couldn't even be certain of what he had seen. It certainly wouldn't have been a good idea to mention it to Gary, who had made his own views on the idea that Frank was somehow alive eminently clear.
Bits and pieces of the house were still fluttering down out of the sky, like fiery snowflakes that turned into black blemishes as they landed, extinguishing themselves on the crusted surface of the snow. What seemed to be of most interest, though, to the gathered host was what looked like a Tiki torch that someone had planted in the middle of the front lawn.
Jay and Gary stumbled up to it past the hose lines and over the frozen slush. Impaled on a broken broom handle were the burning remains of a human head. Next to it lay what they later discovered was the charred, headless body of Tommy Lazaro. The gawkers gathered around seemed mesmerized by the sight of it as it burned with a blue-yellow flame.
They were snapped out of their collective trance when the jaw, hinges burnt away, dropped open as if to speak. It fell onto the snow with a hiss. Then, the skull itself cracked and popped, splitting open like a ripe melon.
"Put it out," snarled Gary. Jay just turned away as one of the firemen kicked the grisly display into the snow.
If there had ever been any remaining doubt in his mind about who had been behind the killings in Haddonfield, it had been eliminated by this last act. What he saw went far beyond just the need to kill for survival. Hauser… Lazaro… They were both there that day on the pond. There was rhyme and reason to events.
Gene had been there that day, too. If Jay were right and everything was leading up to his being the main event, now, with Gene alone in his cell, would be the perfect opportunity for the brothers to settle accounts.
CHAPTER 28
In the jail’s cell block, reality ripped like the hem of a cheap dress. Pale, bony hands appeared at the break. They spread it wide, like a stage curtain, allowing a blinding golden light to fill the dingy cells.
Gene, who had been sleeping in the darkness at the back of his cell was awakened by the light and walked to the bars. All he could make out was a vaguely human form, black and with arms outstretched before an artificial sun. Then the figure dropped its arms, the dazzling corona vanished, and Gene was blind.
As his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the cellblock once again, he could make out the form of someone standing in the shadows, caught in the anemic glow of the fluorescent ceiling fixture. He recognized the greasy, pinstriped fabric of the leg of a pair of coveralls.
With a bit of trepidation Gene spoke, "Frank?" The name sounded more like a raspy croak. He cleared his throat and said it again, louder. "Frank."
Frank stepped forward into the light. For the briefest moment, he flickered and broke up like a bad television signal. When his image firmed up, it shimmered as if he were being projected onto a cloud of smoke.
"Frank," asked Gene, wide-eyed, "How did you do that?"
"Do what, brother?"
"Just come outta nowheres like that."
"Oh, there are a lot of things I can do. More than you can imagine, Gene," Frank said softly. "Watch this."
His eyes turned black as obsidian. White wisps like the clouds of cream in a cup of coffee flowed and swirled across them. They were shark's eyes.
Gene saw jet black veins rise under Frank's pearlescent skin and writhe like snakes. When Frank spread his arms wide, dark lesions appeared in the palms of his hands. Frank lifted a few feet from the floor. As he did a slow pirouette, a double helix of rosebuds fell in a chain from his hands. Their sweet scent filled the air.
Then, he was hidden in a cloud of petals as the chains of blossoms running from his hands exploded. They transmogrified into lustrous golden bubbles that popped as they bounced off the floor and walls. Gene’s eyes widened and he went slack-jawed as he pressed up to the bars of his cell.
This was the Frank that he knew, the one he had hoped to bring back. The Frank who loved him and told him stories to help him forget the bad things that their father did late at night when he came into their room and woke him from a deep sleep. Gene laughed and clapped his hands.
Frank whirled to a stop, grinned, and put a finger to his lips. "Shhhh."
Gene had always been quick to do what his older brother had said and immediately went silent. He watched in wonderment as Frank slowly descended to a soft landing on the pads of his unshod feet.
Frank learned early that he could stop Gene’s crying with the simplest of tricks. This was the opportunity for him to show off the new ones he had acquired since his brother had welcomed him back that chill night in the cellar.
He lacked understanding then of what was expected of him. Gene’s thoughts were so vague. He was always that way, vapid and opaque, like an empty frosted glass. But as much as he enjoyed playing the fool for his little brother, he still had work to do.
He didn't understand why he felt nothing about what he was to do. There should have been some twinge from somewhere deep inside that told him that what he had done and was about to do was wrong. Conscience and empathy were like dim memories. They were like the faded images he had of a birthday when he was four when he had gotten his first tricycle. He knew it was a pleasant experience, but it was so far in the past that instead of feeling that happiness he knew he must have felt, he just felt numb.
"Did you like that, brother?" he asked.
"Wow! Yeah, but, hey, can you get me out? They think that I killed all those people."
Frank’s voice changed to a conspiratorial whisper. He swam through the air to stand in front of Gene, just out of his reach.
"Did they find my room?"
"No, Frank. I don’t think so. They were just looking through all the cabinets and drawers." Then, with hand out-stretched in the tone of a man desperate to get to the nearest urinal, he said, "Come on. Get me out of here."
Frank sniffed the air and put a finger to his lips. "Hush," he said. "Now tell me. Did they find the book?" He could smell Gene's fear. Could he do that before? Before he went to the dark, dark place?
Gene shifted from foot to foot and squeezed the bars. "No. Don’t worry about that. It’s in a safe place. Now can we please go?"
Frank drifted right up to the bars, almost nose to nose with his brother. "You know I love you, don’t you Gene?" His tone was flat and lifeless.
"I love you, too," replied Gene. A puzzled look came across his face as the corners of Frank's mouth tilted up in a slight, Mona Lisa smile.
Gene grabbed his shoulders through the bars and shook him. "What the fuck are you on about? Just get me out of here, will ya?"
Black bile began to flow from the stigmata in Frank's palms. Putrefaction filled the air and Gene wrinkled his nose. With one hand, he pulled his t-shirt up over his mouth and nose, attempting to stanch the flow of the sickly-sweet stink to his olfactory lobe. Gene felt himself being pushed back, as if the odor were a physical manifestation, and loosened his hold on Frank.
"Oh, gosh! Shit, man, it smells like something died."
The irony of the remark caused Frank to roar with laughter as he reached through the bars and took Gene’s head in his hands. His grip was vise-like as he pulled his brother face to face with him at the bars.
Frank's visage changed. He was Gene's big brother again. It was a bit of the old Frank that still dwelled somewhere deep inside of him. Inside the cold thing that he had become. Even as he began to squeeze harder and felt Gene squirm and wriggle like an eel caught in a trap, there was no change in his countenance. His face was locked in a warm smile, his eyes looked deep into Gene.
Gene’s face flushed and he grimaced as the pressure on the sutures joining the bones in his skull increased. "Frank," he exclaimed, "what are you doing Frank? Help me! Somebody!"
Frank’s face remained a mask, unchanged, as Gene kicked at him through the bars, tried to pull his hands away. The screams changed to a gurgling hiss and Gene’s grip on the bars slackened. Frank could feel the blood pulsing at Gene's temples. Then, a loud crack and it was over. The skull crushed, there was nothing to stop the jagged bits of bone from scraping and intruding into the gray matter they had been designed to protect.
Frank cradled Gene's head in his hands for a moment. Then, as the body slumped and he could feel it’s full weight stretching the vertebrae in the neck, he released it with the benediction, "Sometimes you can love someone too much, brother."
The pleasant fantasy complexion that he had displayed was cadaverous once again; his eyes again cold as ice and deadly dark. The perfect predator, except for that one guttering flame deep inside which represented his humanity and sweet grass summers of his youth.
Deputy Swanson had been left on duty at the front desk, busily fielding anxious phone calls. It made him sweat. He had barely mastered the keyboard when they installed the new dispatch system. The switchboard left him positively goggle-eyed with its blinking lights and the continual buzzing from the flood of calls.
He had completely forgotten about Gene. Swanson had missed the first cry for help. It wasn't until Gene had let out one last, baleful scream for aid that he had noticed something was amiss. He leapt from his chair and headed for the gun cabinet, from which he took a shotgun and a box of shells. He fumbled with the shells, dropping as many on the floor on the way to the cell block door as he managed to get into the weapon's magazine.
The first thing that Swanson noticed as he stepped through the door was that half the lights seemed to have burnt out. He could barely see to the end of the row of cells. Swanson toggled the light switch on the wall next to the door a few times, with no result. The next thing he noticed was a total lack of sound.
He was in a kind of twilight, caused by a fog that emanated from a point near the end of the corridor, in front of Gene’s cell. No, when he thought about it, it was more like all the light was being drawn to one place, so that it wasn’t bright enough to see anything without squinting. Crazy shadows were cast along the walls and floor; geometric patterns that rotated and bent like the ones in a kaleidoscope.
He shook his head to try to dispel the disorienting effect and stepped into the corridor, shutting the steel door behind him to insure that no one could come up from behind or escape if they got past him.
The hairs on the back of his neck bristled. There was a shclick-shclick sound as he pumped a shell into the chamber of the gun. That sound a pump shotgun makes puts the fear of God in burglars and can make the most avid bar brawler into a timid milquetoast. He announced that he was a motherfucker who meant business.
Swanson squinted and listened. Nothing. "Gene! What are you doing down there? Gene!"
The deputy’s voice sounded unnatural. There were no echoes, no ringing as it bounced off the concrete walls and floor. The syllables flowed out of his mouth smothered with a heavy wool blanket, every word clipped short at the end.
"Gene!" he yelled once more as he took a step. There was no sound of boots on concrete. The word seemed to run away from him down the hall in the direction of the cell.
When he looked up at the ceiling lights, their illumination appeared to bend and flow in the direction of the cell, too. Swanson went forward a couple of steps more. The floor had dropped from beneath him completely and been replaced by an air mattress.
Someone had attached weights to his ankles and seemed to be piling more on with each step he came closer to Gene's cell. His breathing became heavy and labored. Perspiration stained his clothes. What seemed to have taken hours, when he checked his watch, turned out to have taken just a little over a minute. Swanson looked to his right and saw Gene’s body there, leaning against the base of the cell door. Little crimson streams flowed from his nose and ears, trickling down along his jaw line like gory rouge.
Swanson wiped his forehead with the back of one hand. His perspiration made the shotgun feel cold and slippery. It took all his concentration to keep a firm grip. He turned away from the bloody mess, retched violently.
When he looked up, there was Frank. He was a shimmering study in soft, glowing pastels. The room temperature began to fall as Frank's outline became more distinct.
With each breath he took, moist vapors flowed from Swanson's mouth and tumbled to his feet, where they curled around his ankles and crawled across the floor. Swanson blinked and suddenly the apparition before him was a cherubic, rosy-cheeked, and smiling 12-year-old.
The deputy stammered as he spoke and took his shotgun in both hands, pointing it in Frank’s general direction. It was just enough to be threatening, but insured that he wouldn’t accidentally shoot someone who didn't deserve to be shot. Who could be more innocent than a kid?
"What… What are you doing here?" he asked, with a slight quaver in his voice.
Frank gave a disingenuous smile and replied, "I came to see my brother." He pointed toward the crumpled figure in the cell. "But he looks like he’s hurt. He’s hurt bad." He followed this with a whimper.
Swanson took a sliding step to the side, keeping his eyes on this kid, who had no right to be here, and took another look at the body. Gene had a stupid grin on his face. Why did he have that grin?
Swanson shook his head and leveled the barrel of the gun at Frank’s chest. This was all wrong. All the weird shit. What happened to the floor and walls? A tingle suddenly ran from the base of his spine up to his scalp, causing the hairs on his neck to prick up and gooseflesh to run down his arms.
Frank stepped toward him, which caused Swanson’s muscles to twist into knots. His fingers gripped the weapon in his hands even tighter. His trigger finger rubbed lightly against the hooked piece of metal. A bead of sweat traced a pachinko machine route down the furrows in his brow as he said, "I don’t think that you should move any closer, kid."
Frank stopped short and looked up at him, all dewy-eyed and seemingly devoid of bad intentions. He was no longer the innocent child he appeared to be, but Swanson had no way of knowing. No suspicion. And that was his undoing.
"But what’s wrong with him, deputy?" He waved his hand toward the cell. "Mebbe you could take a look at him," he continued. "I sure hope it ain’t serious."
The deputy felt himself being drawn to a spot at the front of Gene’s cell. The conveyor belt was moving him inexorably forward toward… what? Swanson had no desire to fight it. The magnetic force encompassed his body and propelled him onward. He felt warm again and something in the boy’s voice was soothing.
His arms dropped to his waist and the shotgun pointed impotently off to the side. His eyes fell on Gene’s body; the blood from his nose, mouth, and ears now turning a dark crimson, almost black, as it coagulated in a halo around his head.