Calamity (34 page)

The waitress paused. “Everyone has a breaking point, I guess. Sounds to me like he just snapped. Or he was crazy.”

“No doubt,” Victor said. The aroma of fried sausage swarmed around him like poison gas. “But why here? Was he a regular?”

“I never heard of him until that day when Arlon, my boss, called and said some wackjob shot up the place. Killed five people, one of them was a waitress.”

“You know her?”

“Sabrina? She was a new girl. Just out of high school, looking to save up for community college. She was a pretty thing. Such a shame.”

Victor glanced around, merely for show. The diner was fairly busy this Saturday morning. People were engaged in conversations in the booths while scraping their forks across plates that must have been used a billion times. The only other patron at the counter, however, was an old man in a big, heavy coat. He was at the far end, a cup of coffee before him and a newspaper.

“Place seems to have bounced right back,” Victor said. “Like it did after the last time.”

The waitress nodded. “I didn’t know what to expect. Thought I’d be out of a job. But Arlon reopened after three days, when the cops were done, of course, and people came back. Helps to be the only diner in a twenty-mile radius.”

“I’m sure.” Victor had lived in Stone Creek his whole life. The little town was squished on the corner of Orange County, New York, at the foot of Blood Mountain. The mountain was the second highest peak in the region next to Schunemunk Mountain, which, at almost seventeen-hundred-feet high, always got all the attention. Blood Mountain, however, had that killer name and the beauty that went with it.

“What did you mean, the last time?” the waitress asked.

“Some places are marked,” he said.

“Marked?”

“Cursed, I guess you’d say, but it’s more than that.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “What can I get you?”

“The coffee is fine for now, thanks.”

“You just let me know.” She winked.

Victor smiled back. What would she look like beneath his hunting knife? Would she still wink at him when he pushed it slowly into that soft spot at the base of her throat where her skin had started to sag?

She walked down to the old guy at the end of the counter and then made her way to the front of the diner where the rest of her customers waited in booths. Victor spun slowly on the stool as if he were maneuvering to get up, maybe head to the bathroom.

The girl and her father had only coffee and water so far. But they would soon be eating quite a large breakfast. They wanted to have enough energy to make it to a late lunch if not dinner. They would have eggs and bacon and pancakes and toast and hash browns. They would eat up because they thought it would help them.

He would watch them eat for a little while. Watch the way the gip te way trl, not a girl but a young woman, chewed her food. The way her jaw moved. The way her lips pursed open just slightly like offering some secret kiss.

He would watch and then he would go back to his car and eat the tuna fish sandwich waiting there.

He would leave five dollars on the counter and a full cup of coffee.

T
WO

Mercy Higgins did not want to climb some ugly mountain with her father when she could be at home reading a book or working on one of her short stories. Could be at the bookstore helping Pete clean out the fiction section for the new coffee bar he was installing.

Dad needed this, however, and that would have to suffice.

The book someone had given him at work--
Daddy/Daughter Bonding: Activities to strengthen a Father’s Connection with his Daughter
--waited before him like it was his meal. Several skinny Post-Its stuck out from the pages.

“I know you don’t want to do this,” Dad said. She started to protest but he continued. “I know this may not be what you want to do on a Saturday, but I think it’ll be good for us. Get some fresh air. Some distance from the world. You might actually have fun.”

They had never been camping. Dad never showed any interest and she certainly had no desire to sleep in a tent on the ground. Not to mention the hiking. They weren’t prissy people; they just liked their quiet time at home. It was warm there, especially in the reading room where Dad kept the fireplace going through the winter and the walls of books sheltered her like giant arms.

Mom had loved that room, too.

“It’s fine, Dad,” she said. “I’m looking forward to it.” She held his gaze long enough for him to believe it, or at least add it to the tomb of self-denial he was perpetually building.

“It’s supposed to be beautiful tonight. Maybe a little chilly but we’ve got the thermal sleeping bags and the arctic tent. The portable grill, too. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a fire going.” He laughed in that way that always made him sound vulnerable. It was something she liked about her dad, something she’d liked about Joel at school, too. So many men came across as cocky know-it-alls; it was refreshing to find a few who could be self-deprecating.

“I know, Dad.”

“I bought the best stuff. It’s not like we’re heading out unprepared.”

“I know.”

“It’s going to be fun. Trust me.”

About a month before she died, Mom told Mercy all the things she loved about her husband. She said them slowly, breathing shallowly between words. When Mom started on the physical traits, Mercy had steeled herself against the expectation of graphic sexual references because sometimes in those last days Mom had forgotten what she was saying, gotten really vulgar. Instead, Mom said it was Dad’s smile that always moved her heart. So sweet and inviting. And those dimples.

Dad’s smile now was no less sweet but carried a weight of desperation. The beard he’d grown had covered his dimples and his face had thinned.

“You’re really sweet, Dad.”

“No pity on your old man. This is for us.”

When the waitress took their order, they both asked for more foo usfor mord than they had intended, like they knew they would need it.

Beyond the parking lot outside the window was Route 51, which led straight across the county to New Jersey in the west and onward to New York City in the east, and on the other side of the road, almost close enough to touch, waited the foot of Blood Mountain. Clouds obscured the peak like it was something secretive. Or dangerous.

T
HREE

Victor did use the bathroom before he left the diner. It was a cramped, two-person room with one stall and a urinal. When he relieved himself, Victor admired his penis. He stretched it out. From what he found on the Internet, it was above-average in length. When he had paid a woman to suck him off, she made no comment about his size. He almost asked but he didn’t want her to look at him with that skeletal face and gap-tooth smirk.

“Soon enough,” he murmured to it.

He put himself carefully away in his pants before he could get excited and washed his hands at the sink. Too many images crowded his mind. So many ways he could manipulate the female body. So many positions. He had to keep those images in check. If he let his excitement get control, he would lose the upper hand. He had planned this for far too long to let it get away because he was desperate for a woman’s touch.

After the cleansing, there would be plenty of women for men like him. Plenty of touching.

Mercy Higgins could be saved. It would be her choice.

Victor almost missed the writing on the mirror. He started to turn away, shaking his hands dry, and wondering if using their water had been such a good idea; it might permeate his skin, infect him.

In the lower right corner, scratched into the mirror’s surface, it said:
Cleanse the World
.

Victor traced the three words with his finger. The indentations they made in the mirror were like slices in skin, knife tracks about to spout blood.

It didn’t matter who put it there, Hugo or someone before him. It was another sign.

Victor left the bathroom. His smile must have looked so peculiar.

F
OUR

While Mercy and her father gobbled eggs and pancakes and toast, the teens in the booth across from them discussed the recent shooting in which a crazy guy named Hugo killed five people in this very diner.

“Fucking guy came in with a shotgun or some shit and
bam! bam! bam!
” The teenage boy in the skinny jeans and body-tight hoodie made a child-like gun gesture with his thumb and forefinger.

His equally tight-dressed friend laughed like the kid was talking about some movie.

The first kid glanced around, like scoping out the place. “Can you imagine? Must of been sick to see it go down. Blood hitting the walls and shit.”

“You’re sick, man,” his friend said.

The first boy glanced at Mercy and her father. His gaze lingered briefly. What was he seeing in his head? Was he imagining fucking her in some degrading way? “Can’t be prude about it,” he said to his friend. “Most people live in a bubble.”

That’s what Joel had said:
Mercy, you live in a bubble
. And he’d told her to use fabric softener. Such a weird thing to say.
You’re clothes always smell stale
. So, she’d used dryer sheets and went around in a cloud of lemon. Then he’d told her she had clammy hands and that he’d found someone else. She tried to elicit a smile from him but he stared at her like she was some beggar on the street.

In a way she had been. She’d begged to have sex with him, told him she was a virgin and that she really wanted him, even though she wasn’t sure that was the case but she was almost out of college and nobody graduated college still a virgin. Only losers. Then he said her hands were clammy and he’d met someone else.

“Can you imagine how fucked up it must have been?” the first boy asked.

“I’m glad I wasn’t here,” his friend said.

“Fuck that. I would have taken that guy down. Would have shot him between his eyes. Watch the blood splatter. Been a hero.”

Mercy’s eyes started to water. A minute ago she had been fine. Her only feeling was one of slight dread about hiking up a mountain on a chilly spring day and then having to sleep on the ground at some campsite. Then those two boys started talking about the killing and she was remembering Joel for some reason and how he said she smelled stale and had clammy hands and wouldn’t have sex with her and then she
had
graduated a virgin. Now, she was crying. Sometimes she hated being a woman.

Her father put down his fork and touched her arm. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

She took several napkins out of the dispenser on the table and dried her eyes. When she looked at her father, he had that sweet face he always got when things didn’t turn out right for her. When she’d fallen off her bike as a little kid. When her violin audition for Juilliard fell through and she studied literature at the State University in Pleasantville instead. When Mom died.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You have nothing to be sorry about. This is my fault. I shouldn’t have pushed this whole camping thing on you. I just thought it would be fun. Thought we could have some time to bond.”

Tears began to reemerge. “It’s not that. I want to go camping. It’s just . . . Just . . .” She paused, breathed deeply. “I have to use the bathroom.”

When she slid out of the booth, the first boy said, “You think the guy wanted to have sex with any of the bodies? Shoot his load and then shoot his head off.”

If Mercy were a different sort of woman, she would tell them to stop being such stupid pricks and grow up and then she’d throw a cup of coffee on each of them.

She started to get her tears under control. A skinny guy with several-day’s worth of stubble on his face was staring at her. He was walking past the counter while she was on the opposite side of a dividing row of booths. He wore jeans and a black jacket. He was cute, too, aside from an undernourished face.

She knew him from somewhere.

Their eyes met and the man looked away. A moment later he was at the front door and Mercy was in the bathroom.

She knew him. She had spoken with him.

F
IVE

Victor he"><0">Victld the girl’s gaze for no more than a second or two. He would have loved to stare at her for hours. Loved to hold her close and stare into her eyes, caress the fragility of her soul.

There would be time for that later. If she caught on too soon, there was a risk the whole thing might collapse. He had pressed his luck, no doubt about that, and if he pressed it any further he would be, as his father used to say,
S.O.L
.

No dinner tonight, son. Sorry.

But I’m hungry.

S.O.L.

Shit out of luck.

Victor’s father hadn’t been a bad man or even a bad father. He was the kind of father who never understood what fatherhood was really about. He saw Victor as a roommate, maybe even an acquaintance. He didn’t belief in tender consolation. Life dealt you a bad hand? Well, looks like you’re S.O.L.

Victor didn’t want to be S.O.L. Luck had been with him for a while now. It would continue to be with him. He only had to trust the greater powers manipulating his future.

He turned from the girl’s soft white skin and innocent blue eyes. They would be his in time. Then he could chew on that flesh and suck those eyes right from her skull if he wanted. Maybe she’d even like that, get off on it. Her body would convulse in a spasmodic orgasm as her eye slid past his lips and onto his tongue.

He walked quickly outside to his car. The friction of his jeans only encouraged his arousal. His underwear, always a size too small on purpose, was doing little to stymie the growing bulge.

He had parked at the far end of the parking lot. His car was a beater from the late eighties he had bought for one-hundred dollars. It had two-hundred-eighty thousand miles. The steering wheel shook violently at speeds over forty and the exhaust stank of rotting eggs. But it was all he needed.