Flesh (11 page)

She aimed the light at his crotch.

“Peed your fucking pants,” she said. “Did you really think I was a ghost?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled.

Dana chuckled. Then she crawled to the pack, searched it, and found an envelope. Inside the envelope were the photographs. She flicked through them, counting. All ten were there. She set the envelope on the floor and took her camera from the pack.

“What’re you doing?” Roland asked.

“Just recording the moment for posterity.” Standing up, Dana faced him and clamped the flashlight between her thighs aiming it so the beam lit his wet jeans. She raised the camera to her eye. “Say ‘cheese.’” She took three shots, the flash bar blinking bright. “Now take off your pants.”

He shook his head.

“Want me to leave you here?”

With his one free hand, Roland opened his jeans and tugged them down to his knees.

“You don’t believe in underpants?”

Dana snapped three more shots, then gathered up the photos that had dropped to the floor. She tucked them inside the envelope and put the envelope and the camera into his pack. She put her stocking cap in with them, swung the pack up and slipped her arms through the straps.

She shined the beam on Roland, who had pulled up his pants and was zipping the fly. “Adios.”

“Unlock me,” he said, squinting into the light.

“Do you think I’m nuts?”

“I went along with it. You promised. Now come on.” He wasn’t pleading. He sounded calm.

Dana thought about it. She really wanted to leave him here. But that would mean coming back tomorrow or sending Jason over to set him free. Also, he would end up winning the bet. A hundred bucks down the toilet.

“I don’t care about the pictures,” he said. “You can keep them.”

“Mighty big of you. I’d like to see you just
try
to take ’em off me.”

“Then what’s the big deal? Get the key.”

“Maybe. Stay put while I get dressed.”

“Very funny.”

She left him there. With the aid of the flashlight, her return to the kitchen was easy. Her foot had left smudges of blood on the linoleum. She wrinkled her nose at the sight of the mess she had stepped in.

Using the wool cap, she began to brush the flour off her body.

The gag had certainly worked.

Scared the hell out of Roland.

Wet his pants.

Funny how he hadn’t tried to hide that, just flashed the light down there to show her the damage as if it were nothing.

In fact, he’d been awfully calm about letting her take the pictures. Even pulled his pants down without much protest.

After having the headless ghost come at him, everything else must’ve seemed easy.

Maybe he’s in shock, or something.

Probably is.

On top of which, he’s scared shitless I’ll drive off and leave him. He knows he damn well
better
cooperate. Without the key, he’s stuck and he knows it.

Dana shined the light down at her body. Most of the flour was off, but her skin was still dusted white. She would need to take a shower when she got back.

After dressing, she slipped the envelope containing the photos into a rear pocket of her jeans. She pulled the poncho over her head and picked up Roland’s pack.

Her dorm room was without a kitchen, so she had no further use for the flour. She left the open bag on the floor and returned to the cocktail area.

Roland still sat with his back against the bar and his legs stretched out. He looked as if he hadn’t moved at all while she was gone.

“So,” Dana said. “I guess you’re ready to leave.”

He nodded.

“I don’t want pee on my car seat.”

“I’ll sit on my sleeping bag.”

“I’ve got a better idea. How about if you walk back to campus?”

“It’s raining.”

“Yeah, well, you can use a shower.”

“Just give me the key.”

Dana stepped to the table. “I knew you wouldn’t last out the night,” she said. The small key to the handcuffs glinted among the bottles and glasses. She picked it up. “The cuffs were a pretty neat idea, though. You would’ve won for sure if
I hadn’t come along. But you lost, all right. I always knew you were a chicken. I guess you knew it, too, or you wouldn’t have cuffed yourself in. Huh? You
knew
you didn’t have the guts to stick it out.”

She twisted the cap off a bottle of vodka. They key was small enough to fit through the bottle’s neck. She dropped it. The key made a quiet splash. A moment later, it clinked against the bottom. She screwed the cap back on and tightened it with all her strength.

“Do yourself a favor,” she suggested. “Drink your way down to the key. It’ll help take the sting out of your hike.”

Dana tossed the bottle onto his lap.

At the door, she smiled back at him and said, “Cheers.”

The door bumped shut. Roland, in the darkness, clamped the bottle between his legs and twisted the cap off. He tugged his T-shirt up. Dumped vodka onto his belly until the key fell onto his bare skin. Flung the bottle away. Peeled the key off his belly and unlocked the cuff at his wrist.

Dana, walking quickly through the rain, was only a few yards from her car when she figured that Roland had probably succeeded, by now, in removing the handcuffs. It would still take him a while to gather up his sleeping bag. She glanced back, anyway.

Roland!

He looked crazy sprinting toward her, his head thrown back and his mouth wide, his arms windmilling as if he were trying to swim, not run.

In his right hand was a knife.

Dana raced for the car.

She thought, that was damn quick of him.

She thought, what’s he doing with that knife?

Where are my keys?

In the ignition.

Lucky. No fumbling.

She grabbed the door handle and pulled. The force of her pull ripped her fingers from the handle and she remembered she had left the car by its passenger door.

She whirled around.

Roland was almost upon her.

“Okay, look, you can ride back with me!”

He stopped. His lip curled up.

“Hey, Roland, come on.”

He clutched the front of her poncho, jerked her forward, and rammed the knife into her belly.

Roland pulled the knife out. He shoved Dana backward, keeping his grip on the poncho, and lowered her to the pavement. She sat there, moaning and holding her belly.

Roland sat on her legs.

He punched her nose and she flopped back. Her head thumped the pavement. She didn’t lose consciousness, but she didn’t struggle. Rain fell on her face. She blinked and gasped for air.

Straddling her, Roland plucked the front of the poncho away from her body, poked his knife through it, and sliced the plastic sheet open to her throat.

“Plea—” she gasped.

He cut open the front of her sweatshirt and spread it apart.

Rain sluiced away the blood on her belly, but more blood poured from the gash. Her chest rose and fell as she panted. Roland stared at her breasts. Then he put his knife away.

Bending low, he stretched out his arms. He held her breasts. They were wet and slick, warm beneath the wetness.

He kissed the gash on her belly.

He sucked blood from it.

Dana shrieked and jerked rigid beneath him when he bit.

She stayed alive for a long time. It was better that way.

Her heart still throbbed when Roland tore it from her chest cavity.

He was almost full, so he didn’t eat much of it. He stuffed what was left into her chest, then crawled to her head.

He scalped her, cracked open her skull with the pry bar, and scooped out her warm, dripping brain.

The best part.

Just after sunrise, Roland returned to campus. He left Dana’s car in the lot behind his dorm, and hurried into the lobby. He rushed upstairs, along the quiet corridor, and got inside his room without being seen—lucky, since he was naked except for his windbreaker.

He dropped his backpack to the floor, then took off his windbreaker and inspected it for blood. He’d been very careful with it, knowing that he would need to wear it back to the dorm after getting rid of his other clothes.

They were with Dana, stuffed inside his mummy bag and hidden in bushes about ten miles south of the restaurant.

The windbreaker, inside and out, looked spotless. He dropped it over the pack, then checked himself. The rain had done a good job of cleaning him. Though all his fingernails had blood caked under them, he looked fine otherwise.

Roland put on his robe, gathered what he needed for a shower, put his room key in his pocket, and hurried down the corridor.

The rest room was silent. He made sure the toilet stalls were vacant, then unloaded his stuff onto a bench in the dressing area of the shower room and approached the sinks. Taking off his robe, he inspected himself in the mirrors above the sinks. At the back of his leg was a crust of dried blood in
the shape of a circle where the thing had chewed its way into him. From there, a bluish bruise extended upward, angling across his right buttock to his spine, then straight up his back to the nape of his neck. His hanging black hair, he thought, was long enough to cover the neck area when he was dressed.

He stepped closer, shivering as the cold edge of the sink met the back of his legs. Turning sideways, he twisted his head around. He could see a slight hump at the back of his neck. It continued to about halfway down his spine.

Roland fingered the distended skin behind his neck. The lump felt much larger than it looked. He stroked it. The thing writhed a bit, and gave him a mild tingle of pleasure—only a hint of the ecstasy it had bestowed when he had fed it.

Worried that someone might come through the door, Roland draped the robe over his shoulders and returned to the dressing area. He dropped his robe onto the bench, gathered up his washcloth, soap, shampoo and toothbrush, and entered the shower room.

The hot spray felt wonderful on his chilled skin. He lathered himself and scrubbed. He washed his hair. After rinsing, he found that much of the blood was gone from under his fingernails. But not all of it. He used his toothbrush to get rid of the rest.

Back in his room, Roland stood in front of the built-in bureau and combed his hair straight forward as he always did before parting it down the center. This time, he parted it on the left. It made him appear more normal. Good. He no longer cared to draw attention to himself by looking weird. He wanted to blend in with the student body. At least until it was time to find a new van and hit the road.

No. Too soon.

You’d attract more attention if you suddenly changed.

For now, do everything the same as always.

Roland nodded and moved his part to the center where it belonged.

He put on a clean pair of jeans and socks, then a yellow
T-shirt with bloody bullet holes printed across its front as if he’d been stitched by a machine gun. The T-shirt, however, let too much show. He put on another shirt over it—a black sports shirt with a collar high enough to conceal the back of his neck.

Roland yawned. He ached to sleep. Plenty of time later for that. Just a couple more things to do.

He removed the handcuffs and key from his pack, and hid them under some socks in his bureau.

Then he took out the envelope with the photos. The envelope was smeared all over with bloody fingerprints.

“Not too cool, Roland, old man,” he whispered.

He opened it. The photos weren’t stained. He separated them, slipping the shots of Dana into a fresh envelope, and returned them to Jason’s drawer.

He flipped through the remaining photos and grinned. Dana would’ve been pleased by the way they turned out. Roland in his pissed jeans. Roland naked from waist to knees. She would’ve had fun with these, using them to humiliate Roland.

Roland?

Me.

He frowned, puzzled that he had been thinking of himself by name.

After tearing the photos and envelopes into tiny pieces, he returned to the rest room and flushed them down a toilet.

Back in his own room, he stretched out on his bed and slept.

The door bumped shut, waking him. Sitting up, he rubbed his face while Jason tossed an overnight bag onto the other bed and hung up his suit.

“How was the wedding?” Roland asked.

“Not bad. The groom’s a real dork, but that’s her problem. Man, did I tie one on.” He sat on his bed and made a sour face. “What gives, anyway?”

“Huh?”

“I saw Dana’s car in the lot.”

“Yeah.”

“Where is she?” Jason lowered his head slightly. “Hiding under the bed? You been slipping it to her?”

“Oh, sure.”

“So what’s her car doing out there?”

“It’s a long story.”

“So? Spill it.” Jason opened his bag, removed a pint flask, and took a swig. “Hair of the dog,” he muttered.

“She’s probably all right,” Roland said.

“Yeah? What do you mean, probably?”

Roland got up. He found the newspaper story about the killings at the Oakwood Inn, and handed it to Jason. “Read this.”

Waiting, Roland glanced at the clock. Almost noon. He’d been asleep for nearly six hours. He felt good.

Jason looked up. “Yeah? What’s this got to do with Dana?”

“We went over there last night. To the restaurant.”

“For dinner?” He looked at the paper. “Who opened it?”

“No, it wasn’t open. It was deserted, locked up.”

“Then what were you doing there?”

“Dana got this thing into her head about me not having any guts. She dared me to spend the night in the restaurant. She bet me a hundred bucks I wouldn’t.”

A grin spread over Jason’s face. “Yeah, that’s Dana, all right. I was gone, so she figured she’d use the opportunity to stick it to you.”

“She doesn’t like me much.”

“Sure she does. She just gets a kick out of tormenting you, that’s all.”

“Well, whatever. Anyway, I said I’d spend the night there, and that I had more guts than she did.”

“Wrong move, buddy.”

“So the way it turned out, we both went into the place.
The deal was, whoever chickened out first and split, would lose.”

Jason shook his head slowly. “Christ, and to think I missed out on all this. So what happened, you turned tail, she stayed, and you drove her car back here?”

“There was more to it than that.”

Jason took another drink from his flask.

“Around midnight, we heard a noise. Kind of a bumping sound. Scared me shitless.”

“Yeah, I bet it did.”

“I was ready to get the hell out, and Dana told me to go ahead and kiss the hundred bucks good-bye. So I stayed. She went exploring to find out what made the noise.”

Jason began to look concerned: “You let her go off alone?”

“I
told
her not to.”

“You could’ve gone with her.”

“Anyway, the thing is, she didn’t come back. I stayed by the front door, near the bar. I heard her wandering around. After a while, she called out and said she’d found the wine cellar. I guess she went down there. I waited a long time, Jase, but she didn’t come back.”

“So you ran off and left her?”

“No. Not then, anyway. I went to the kitchen. It was…that’s where those two people got killed. There was blood. Lots of it.”

“You must’ve felt right at home,” Jason muttered. There was no humor in his tone. He sounded annoyed and worried.

“It was pretty disgusting. Anyway, I found an open door with stairs leading down to the cellar. I shined my flashlight down, but I couldn’t see her. Then I called her name a few times. She didn’t answer. Finally, I started to go down. I was pretty damn scared, but I’d made up my mind I
had
to find her. I’d just gone down a couple of stairs when I heard someone laugh. It was a real quiet, nasty laugh.
That’s
when I got the fuck out of there.”

Jason’s mouth hung open. He gazed at Roland with wide, bloodshot eyes.

“I ran out and got in the car. She’d left the keys in it. I thought I’d go for the police, and then I realized it must’ve been Dana who’d laughed that way.”

“Did it sound like her?”

“God, who knows? When I heard it, I thought it sounded like a man. Then I got to thinking, and I was sure it must’ve been Dana. She did it to scare me off. You know? To win the bet. So I was sitting in her car and she’d won the hundred bucks by pulling that stunt and scaring me off, so I got kind of pissed at her and I figured it’d serve her right if I just took off with the car and left her there. So that’s what I did.”

“Jesus.”

Roland shrugged. “It’s just a few miles out. I figured, let her walk. She’s probably back at her dorm by now.”

Jason got up without another word and left the room. Roland went to the door and watched him stride down the corridor—heading for one of the pay phones near the exit door.

Roland sat on his bed and waited. His story had sounded quite convincing, he thought. He forced his smile away in time to greet Jason with a somber face.

“I talked to Kerry. Dana isn’t back yet. She sounded pretty worried.”

“Maybe Dana got a late start. Like I said, it’s a few miles. If you want, we could drive out that way and give her a lift.”

“Let’s go.”

Jason’s car was low on gas, so he said they should take Dana’s Volkswagen. He told Roland to drive. Then he settled in the passenger seat and shut his eyes. “Tell me when we get there,” he said.

He wished he’d taken it easy on the booze, yesterday. All that champagne at the reception, then dinner with his folks—cocktails, more champagne, brandy afterward. Great
fun at the time, but now he had a headache and his stomach felt as if he’d been eating rotten eggs. And his body seemed to buzz.

Should’ve skipped the whole deal, he thought. Could’ve been here last night, instead, making it with Dana. Then none of this would’ve happened.

What did those two think they were doing, going out to some damn empty restaurant like that?

Easy to figure. Dana wanted to mess with Roland’s head. Never could stand the guy. As for Roland, he probably had some fancy hopes of putting it to her. Lotsa luck on that one, pal. You were the last guy on earth, you wouldn’t stand a chance. Hates your guts, pal.

What if he tried and she told him to fuck off and he went ape and nailed her?

The thoughts made Jason’s heart pound harder, sending jolts of pain into his head.

Roland might be a little peculiar, he told himself, but the guy wouldn’t pull something like that. He might want to, but he didn’t have the guts. Especially not with Dana.

But it could’ve started with a small disagreement. Dana turned mean, lashed out at him with that tongue of hers. Next thing you know, Roland strikes back.

If he hurt her, I’ll kill him.

Jason rubbed his temples. He remembered a talk with Roland, late one night in the darkness of their room when they both were lying awake.

Jason: If you could fuck any girl on campus, who’d it be? Aside from Dana.

Roland: I don’t want to fuck Dana.

Jason: Oh, sure.

Roland: Geez, I don’t know.

Jason: Just one. Who’d it be?

Roland: Mademoiselle LaRue. (His French teacher.)

Jason: You’re joking. She’s a bitch.

Roland: She’s a real piece.

Jason: She’s a bitch. What are you, a glutton for punishment? Roland: First, I’d tie her up. I’d throw the rope over a rafter or something, so she’s hanging there. Then I’d take out my knife and cut off all her clothes. When she’s all naked, I’d start cutting on her.

Jason: Pervert. I said “fuck,” not “torture.”

Roland: Oh, I’d get around to that. Eventually. But I’d want to have some fun with her, first.

Jason: Fun? You are warped, man. Definitely warped.

Just a fantasy of his, Jason told himself. The guy’s a chicken. He’d never actually try to
do
anything like that, not with Mademoiselle LaRue or Dana or anyone else. All just talk.

Better be.

He opened his eyes and looked at Roland.

“Almost there,” Roland said. “I’ve been watching the road. Surprised we haven’t run across her walking. But you know, she could’ve been getting back about the time we started out. Maybe we just missed her.”

Or maybe she’s at the restaurant, tied up and hanging from a rafter, stripped and cut up…

“She better be all right,” Jason muttered.

“God, I hope so,” Roland said. “I keep thinking about that laugh I heard in the cellar. I mean, suppose it
wasn’t
Dana?” His lips pulled into a tight line. He looked in pain. “If anything happened to her, it’s all my fault. I should’ve gone down there. I should’ve.”

Ahead, on the right, was a sign for the Oakwood Inn. Roland slowed the car and swung onto a narrow road in front of the sign.

“What if someone was down there?” he said. “Like a pervert or something, and he got her? Maybe he hangs around the place, just waiting for people to come along.”

“You’ve seen too many of those splatter movies,” Jason told him.

“That kind of thing happens, though. In real life. Look at
Psycho
and
Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
They were both based on real life, on that Ed Gein guy in Wisconsin. Know what he used to do, he used to
dress up
in the skins of his victims—wear ’em like clothes.”

“Hey, come on. I don’t want to hear this.”

“All his neighbors thought he was a real neat guy because he’d bring them gifts of meat. What they didn’t know, the meat was human.”

“For Christsake, cut it out.”

“I’m just saying it’s not just in movies. Weird shit happens.”

Roland stopped the car in front of the restaurant. He turned off the engine. He frowned at Jason. “Wish I’d brought my knife,” he whispered. “I mean, there’s probably nobody in there, but…”