A Blood of Killers Read online

  The wrap prevented him from turning away from her. His erection throbbed and he arched his back to bring his hips closer to her.

  “Getting restless, are we?” Eve shifted down and teased him with her moist sex. “Anxious for life? You know you have to die a little, first.” She got out of the coffin and placed blinders with earplugs over his eyes. Her hair brushed across his nose, then he felt the thump of the lid when it closed over him.

  Blood pounded past his eardrums. Suffocating darkness closed him in.

  They never come back, he thought, fighting his panic. Not the dogs, not anything else. But sometimes, if you looked deep enough you could see that the things you missed had never really left. Like corpses and treasures, they lay buried underground. The corpses came out in the dark right before sleep, or in nightmares. Whenever he saw old Shamus, his mother, his father, or all those others in the dark, his heart raced and he wept so hard Kim woke up and had to comfort him. In the nightmares, the dead acted differently. His father—he didn’t want to remember the nightmares.

  He had to go deeper. Beyond the day the old Shamus left, along with his father. He had to stand on death’s border to find the treasures.

  Her painted face, like a blasting cap, uncovered the bright, shiny coins of his childhood.

  Sometimes, they never left …

  On the first day of school Gene is crying. He blubbers, then screams at his mother and father for throwing him out of the house, forcing him to stay with strangers. He misses his mother. His father comes to the classroom and watches over him through a window in the door. The smell of chalk and crayon makes Gene want to vomit. The other children running and screaming and pushing scare him. But he stays because his father is close by, watching over him. And later, when his mother comes to pick him up, father sends her away with the car and walks Gene home. Their first man to man talk is exchanged during that long walk. Gene’s tears dry up and his fear evaporates when he looks up at the big man next to him, feels the big man’s hand holding his, feels the strength seeping through the fingers into his small body. He wants to be just like his father.

  The air in the coffin was hot and stuffy. Gene suddenly wanted someone to rescue him. He wanted to move his arms, kick his legs. He wanted to see. But Mistress Eve did not come. He had not yet given her the right signal.

  His raspy breathing cut through his thoughts like a saw. He thought about the way he sometimes saw his father in the dark. In his nightmares.

  (Little boy Gene watches Dad come home from his part-time banquet waiter job. The big bag carrying his uniform and other things gets tossed into the basement. Dad goes upstairs to wash his hands. Gene is in the bathroom as Dad dries his hands. He keeps rubbing them with the towel. Want to hear a story, Dad asks. Sitting on Gene’s bed, Dad talks. His words become a little girl stealing a rose from a beast’s garden; a boy running after someone along a road that turns into a cave that winds down into the earth; a man changing into something wild to hunt for food. Then little boy Gene’s back in bed. Dad tucks in the sheets. Watches over him as he says his prayers. But then, Gene knows. He knows what’s in the bag. He knows what Dad likes to do. His father’s dark eyes watch him. Big, strong, gentle hands sink slowly towards the bed like pale, weighted corpses through water. His father paints a face on him. And before anything else happens, Gene wakes up screaming.)

  Gene screamed. The sound squeaked past the plastic in his mouth and filled the coffin. He wept; tears pooled along creases in the plastic wrapping and spilled back into his eyes when he tried to shake his head back and forth in denial of the dream. His eyes burned.

  What would his father have done if there had been an accident, if he had found Gene broken, bleeding, bone and guts showing through shredded flesh. What if, instead of a boy, his mother had had a girl? What if a sister had come before or after Gene? What did he dream of doing to Gene’s mother. To the aunts and grandmothers and cousins in the family. To the old lady living by herself in the corner house. To the teenage girl who looked after Gene when his parents went out.

  Would he have asked Gene to help.

  And would Gene have done it.

  Bad memories. Terrible thoughts. Dead bodies mixed in with gold coins. He took deep, steady breaths and shut his eyes against the insanity. His heart slowed. He relaxed in the plastic’s grip, in the power of Mistress Eve’s coffin. He did not want to be gone like Shamus, his father, the bodies. No, and he did not want the nightmare father, with his bag and his hands and his long, dark gaze, to paint his face and do things to him. Or worse, ask him to do things to others. He wanted the other father, the one always home for dinner with some time to spare for his son.

  He suits up for his first little league game while his father instructs him on how to hold the bat, keep his eyes on the ball, move his hips and shoulders. They play catch in the backyard, touch their toes a few times, jog between the fence and back door a few times. After the warm-up, Dad drives him to the league field. They don’t talk. Gene thinks about some of the other kids, even girls, who can hit and catch much better than him. He worries about disappointing his father. Maybe his father will be ashamed. Maybe he’ll want to trade him for another kid. At the field Gene looks at all the parents looming over him, talking and laughing about the game being played. Gene strikes out and hits himself with the bat at his first time up, then falls on his face when he trips trying to field a ball. The ball bounces off of his head and trickles away. While other parents and kids laugh, his father watches with a quiet smile and nods his head as if to say everything is all right. He claps and yells the loudest when Gene’s bat finally makes contact with the ball and when he assists in a put out.

  Memories flowed, golden bright. The nightmare father receded, the bodies sank back into shadow. The father he had known in his childhood was back. Until the bodies crept out of the darkness; until his constant fear, the terrible thoughts, fed the nightmare father long enough for him to command his dreams. And then he’d have to take another day off and visit Mistress Eve again.

  But now was time for Mistress Eve to scoop him out of the darkness and return him to the waking world on a magic carpet of sex.

  He kicked the coffin lid with his knees. He mumbled through the gag. He rolled back and forth, knocking into the walls, bumping his butt against the floor. Twice he drove his head into the lid. She had to hear him beg with whatever means he had to catch her attention. She had to hear the signal they had agreed upon.

  After a few intense moments of effort he collapsed, exhausted, desperately sucking air through his nose. His skin burned from the stifling heat of his own body. His stomach turned and he considered the possibility of choking on his own vomit.

  Still, she did not come. For a dizzying moment, Gene thought he was going to cross the border. He was going to die. The golden memories would be gone, but the nightmares would also end.

  (Women and girls, their torsos ripped, their faces veiled by swirling painted designs, dance around little boy Gene after Dad’s tucked him in. They come closer, touch him, caress him, beg for him to be the man his father is. He looks at the door to his room. The girls are in bed with him. Footsteps boom in the hallway. The women stroke his privates with sticky hands. Lights come on. He starts to wake, he wants to wake, before his father comes. A big shadow stands in the lighted doorway. The girls shriek, the women fall over him. He screams.)

  Gene screamed again. He started reaching into the golden flow of memory for a fragment of the distant past.

  Then a breeze blew across his face. Strands of hair tickled his nose. Something pressed against his cheek, his forehead. He felt wet lips kiss the tip of his nose.

  He groaned with relief, and with disappointment.

  The plastic wrap came apart around his legs. The cold metal of a knife slid over his arms, freeing them. Fresh moisture beaded on his skin where the knife had passed.

  A casual brush knocked the blinders askew. A distant voice giggled. The sound of running steps faded away.
/>   Slowly, Gene freed himself and sat up in the open coffin. In the darkness, he rubbed life back into his sweat-slick, trembling limbs and breathed in the basement’s cool air. The entrance to the dimly lit stairwell at the other end of the room was empty. He called for Mistress Eve, but she did not answer.

  He shivered. He listened for her in the room but heard only his breathing. The ritual had broken down.

  With elaborate care, Gene crawled out of the coffin, wincing at the flashes of pain calling attention to his body’s fresh bruises. He put his foot down on the floor, discovered a slick spot and slid before he could pull back his weight.

  He fell and cried out as much from fear as pain. The dampness from the floor, warm, thick, sticky, covered his hands. The taste was coppery, the smell sickening.

  Gene loped towards the stairwell, shoulders hunched against an unexpected blow. His head bumped against the hanging cage. A knee brushed against the gear wheel at the end of the rack. Gene reached the bottom of the stairs and looked back. The basement’s darkness rushed towards him, propelled by the blackness at the furthest corner where the coffin lay.

  Gene backed up the stairs towards the closed door at the top.

  Daylight streamed in from the living room and kitchen windows when he opened the door. The hinge squeaked. A clock ticked steadily in another room. Otherwise, the house was quiet. Gene tiptoed to the entrance where he found his clothes. He reached for his underwear, then hesitated. His hands were covered with blood, and drops of blood crept down his forearms and thighs.

  Animal blood, he thought quickly. But Evelyn never involved animals in her fantasy enactments. Human blood. An even more ridiculous possibility.

  Stage blood. She was luring him on, digging deeply into his mind to find the triggers to his secret pleasures.

  His penis jumped, stiffened into an erection.

  He called for her again, held his hands against his chest so the blood would not drip over the carpet and tiles as he searched for her on the first floor, then went upstairs. A thick trail of blood on the carpet led to the bedroom.

  He found Evelyn naked, tied spread-eagled to her brass bed, gutted. A pink, flowery design lanced with jagged lines in yellows and black covered her face. Her mouth was open, as were her eyes. She stared at the doorway, at Gene, with a frozen expression of terror.

  Gene felt only numbness as he stared at the scene. Horror came when he realized he had not lost his erection.

  He stares at the pieces of the airplane model spread out before him and wonders with a growing sense of helplessness how he will ever put it together. He glances at the picture on the box cover. The old World War II bomber flies effortlessly through Nazi flak, turret guns blazing and distant Luftwaffe fighters falling away in trails of fire and smoke. On the table, the pale plastic pieces mock him from their grids. The instructions on the sheet read like the Egyptian hieroglyphics from the Mummy’s tomb. He feels like throwing up from the smell of the open tube of rubber cement. Then his father’s hand settles on his shoulder. The solid weight anchors him. His father’s towering presence at his back fills him with confidence. Together they sit at the little desk in his room and begin to build the airplane. The picture on the box cover starts to look like something he can make.

  He backed out of the room, but her stare still burned in his thoughts as he leaned against the hallway wall. He looked at his bloody hands and suddenly saw his name in headlines. He remembered a newspaper his mother had snatched out of his hands long ago. (“He’s gone. Your father’s gone,” she cries. “Stop looking for him.”) Then he remembered the kiss on his nose, the brush of hair across his skin, the faint giggling. Gene lost his erection. The killer had set him free. The killer might still be in the house.

  Breathing deeply, he went to the bathroom. Listening for the faint whisper of footsteps on carpeting, he washed the blood from his hands. After he put his clothes on, he looked at the front door while listening to the silence. The murderer could be watching him now from a closet, from behind a sofa, he thought. But when the police arrived they would find the wrappings downstairs with his hair. They would find his fingerprints, the book he knew Evelyn kept with information about her johns. There might be videotapes, tape recordings, photographs.

  There might be video and audio recordings. Photographs.

  It took three hours to search the ground and upstairs floors. He tapped for false bottoms, hollow walls; he searched through every box, every bag and pocket. He found her phone book, the notes she had taken when discussing the fantasy he had wanted to enact, a book of secretly taken pictures featuring all her johns in various restraints and humiliating postures. He unplugged the answering machine that had captured his last call and stowed them all in a knapsack.

  The anticipation of hearing the police sirens or the doorbell ringing, of being attacked by a knife-wielding madman never left him.

  He left by a side door, sneaked through a neighbor’s lawn and walked briskly to his car parked several blocks away. He drove slowly to a Burger King where he tried to settle his stomach with a soda. When the cup was empty he dropped the answering machine chip into it, then stuffed the cup into a paper bag and the bag into the trash bin. The phone book, notes and pictures of himself in bondage he tore methodically into small pieces which he mixed together and then dumped in various trash bins at two different nearby malls. He tossed the bag with the photo album into a dumpster at a road extension construction site.

  Kim’s car was in the driveway by the time Gene came home. He put his car in the garage while rehearsing the litany of excuses he had decided to use to explain his absence and the lack of dinner: restlessness, an attack of claustrophobia, traffic, shopping. Kim would be irritated and might even ignore him. He’d retreat to his study, help the kids with their homework, stay home tomorrow again and try to figure out what had happened.

  And what, with a killer imitating his nightmare father stalking him, might yet happen.

  “Kim?” Gene called out as he walked in through the front door. “Kids? Sorry I’m late.” He went through the living room into the empty kitchen. There was nothing on the stove, in the microwave, or in the sink. The morning dishes remained where he had left them in the plastic drip stand. The silence in the house collapsed over him like a suffocating blanket.

  “Kim?”

  Somebody from the family came by and took them all out to dinner, Gene thought as he left the kitchen and headed upstairs. Kim should have left a note, but she must have been mad at him.

  Halfway up the stairs, his fingertips brushed against something cold and sticky on the banister. He jerked his hand back and hastily wiped it against his shirt. When he looked down at himself, a reddish-brown stain streak marked his chest.

  At the top of the stairs, partially covering a fresh stain on the carpet, Gene found several sheets of yellowed, crinkled paper on the floor. Across the top of one sheet capital letters had been clipped from magazines and newspapers to form a title:

  THE BLANK GENERATION

  Below the title, in the uneven and faded lettering of an old manual typewriter, Gene read phrases he had not seen since his childhood:

  America, its genius, assimilation of everything that can be assimilated, sucking everything in, but nothing underneath, just hunger, hunger, deep and ugly, the blank generation with their painted faces, watching TV, listening to music, slaves to fashion, to whatever the glowing screen tells them they should do, what is normal, going to the colleges like breeding coops, breeding the next generation of dead thinkers and consumers, full of hunger and devoid of wisdom, tell them what is and they laugh, speak to them in the night language and they don’t know, they’ve never heard, ignorant, don’t see the corners with history, accumulated blood, frustrations, hate all around them, festering disease, pain, too busy with careers and paychecks and all masks of normality, it’s the women, don’t they see, mothers to us all, they bring it all upon us, breeding the blank generation, raising the blank generation, have to teach t
hem what is underneath it all, what is real, what is the nature of their hunger and the craving of their children, show them all what they have assimilated, what it means, how they can use

  He remembered reading the same kind of chaotic rambling in a newspaper as a child. The story had been about his father, accompanied by a picture of him in front of the house. After what happened to Shamus. His mother had torn the paper from his hands. (“He’s gone. Daddy’s gone.”) His father was gone. His mother was gone, withered away, haunted and eventually consumed by the fear of what she had lived with for all those years. All those bodies, gone. Gene shut his eyes.

  A voice whispered in his head, like it sometimes did late at night when he was tired and angry at all the advertising and vacuous programs clogging the television, and restless because things weren’t going well at the office, and afraid to fall asleep because the whispering voice would only get louder, and angrier, as the hands came down on him and painted his face; and the whispering voice rambled and talked nonsense, like in the newspaper article, and after a while the voice became his own and he was speaking and he was painting his father’s face and he was carrying the heavy bag home and he was going after Shamus as the cars pulled up.

  He opened his eyes and steadied himself with a hand on the banister. His hoarse, rapid breathing filled the air. He looked up, away from the pile of papers on the floor.

  He thought of Art and Diane, and Kim. He became cold, bloodless.

  He checked his son’s bedroom. The smell assaulted him first: rancid, like meat left in the sun to rot for days, and pungent like the stench of Evelyn’s insides spilled across the bed. His hand instinctively found the light switch, and he was startled when the overhead lamp came on. What lay on the bed was unrecognizable.