SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (77 page)

The son of a bitch! He might have killed Mitch. He meant to, she knew that. There was no telling what damage Mitch suffered. Internal hemorrhaging. A concussion. A broken back. Paralyzation. Dear Jesus, it was all her fault.

“Shadow?”

She flinched. She hadn't expected him to regain consciousness. His voice was whispery and unsteady. “Are you all right? Where are you hurt?”

“Leg . . . I can't move it, think I broke it.”

“I'm sorry for everything,” she said, bending over to kiss him lightly on the cheek.

“Stay . . . stay away from him. He'll kill you.”

“No, he won't. I'm not afraid.”

She stood, uncaring if Son saw her now in the maze's depths. She began walking, taking turns, keeping her eyes on the front of the house where she knew Son waited. She had to get out of here and kill him.

There was nothing that could stop her now.

~*~

“It's just you and me,” Son called.

He stood close to the entrance of the concrete passageway that had been built beneath the catwalk. He was in the shadow, but she could see the outline of his body.

She came from the maze and moved toward him, the gun leveled. She wanted to pull the trigger, but she might miss again. This time she would take no chances. She turned on the flashlight and shined it directly into his face. He squinted and put up a hand against the light. She lowered the beam so it was on the lower half of his face.

“Yes,” she said, not recognizing her own voice. It sounded rusty and unused, it sounded like someone else speaking through her. “It's you and me, Son. It's time to end it.”

“We don't have to,” he said. “I still have poison. We could make him drink it, if he's still alive—he's still alive, isn't he? We could pour it down him and take him out together in the boat. When the police arrive, they won't find us. We'll put in to land somewhere south of here.”

“You think I want him dead? Mitch? I cared about him. Everyone I've ever cared about died, did you know that?”

He turned his head to the side and put up his hands. “You have a gun. But you don't want to kill me, Shadow. I'm closer to you than the cop ever could be. He'd put you in jail. I'd never do that. He'd turn on you. I wouldn't.”

“You're not my friend or my partner. What I've done I had reasons to do.” She hated him with such bright malice that, had he been able to see her eyes, he would have run for his life. The cold cunning so useful to her when she murdered the men she had brought to this house was still alive in her heart. She saw Son as nothing more than human excrement, something stinking and vile she must immediately remove from her presence.

“You are exactly like me,” he said in a high old-womanish voice.

This change made her stop and consider him. “Who are you? What kind of lunatic are you?”

His voice changed again to the one he had used on the phone, the one with the light British accent. “I'm no one and everyone. My name is Son, progeny of Mother and a father I never knew.”

“If you think I'm going to feel sorry for you, forget it. I don't give a goddamn about your life. I don't care what your name is. You're Frank, you're Son, you can hide behind a million names, a million faces, but I know you. You tried to kill Mitch. You'd kill me if I let you.”

Now his voice changed again and it was one of a child, a lonely sad little child. “I can mimic anyone, isn't that something?” he said. “I'm very gifted. I have great talent.”

For a long moment she was afraid. She couldn't kill a child. She could not pull the trigger on a small helpless baby. Then she knew it was a trick. And she hated him even more for trying to confuse her. “You're a sick, twisted, heartless bastard. I might be sick. I might be twisted. But I'm not like you, nothing like you. I didn't kill anyone who was innocent.”

She stepped closer and his hands came down to reach out for her as if to take her gently into the circle of his arms.

She squeezed the trigger of the gun in her fist and the sound of the shot reverberated from the catwalk overhead, it echoed through the hallways and the floors and the dome of green glass that graced the center section of the mansion.

Son stood in place, the flashlight full in his face. He had a look of utter shock and disbelief in his eyes. She squeezed the trigger again. A second shot rang out loud as a sonic boom and Son slumped now to the floor, falling to his knees, his face still turned up to her.

She pulled the trigger again and again, but the hammer clicked against empty cylinders. She did not stop pulling the trigger until Son fell forward, grasping her knees before sliding to the marble floor.

She stepped back, dropped the gun beside him.

There was nothing left in this world that she had to do. She had committed all the wrongs and suffered all the wrongs she could stand for one lifetime.

There was still the motor boat, tied to the pier. It would take her away from the dead man at her feet, away from making any excuses for her actions, away from Mitch who had loved her and who ultimately had been betrayed by that love.

Forty-One

In the far distance on the shore she saw lights swarming the Shoreville mansion. As she watched, mesmerized by the twinkling, the house windows glowed, one by one, until all the floors blazed like a fiery multi-faceted diamond.

She felt nothing, but a small regret that she could not have said goodbye to Charlene. She knew Mitch would look after her and keep her safe, but she would have liked to tell her how much she'd meant to her, how much her friendship had been valued. How much she had truly loved her.

The waves in the bay were gentle swells that came from out of the open sea. The small outboard motor hummed, pushing the boat away from land, from the lights, the dark and jumbled past.

She looked to the sky for signal of morning. It seemed she had lived for days in the mansion, hiding, searching, alternately afraid and fearsome. It had been but hours. The sky to the east changed from unpolished silver to pearl gray as she watched it. By the time the sun rose, she would be deep into the Gulf of Mexico. Soon after, the motor would run out of gas. She'd drift, carried by ocean current, past the shipping lanes, and into the vast open empty sea.

There, when she had worked up her nerve, she would slip over the side of the boat and let the sea take her down. She knew by then the Coastguard would have been called to either capture or rescue her, but all they'd find was the empty vessel floating aimlessly over the waves.

She settled back against the ribs of the boat and guided the handle of the motor so that her course would not be altered.

The wake trailed behind her, picked at by flashing divers, seagulls hunting breakfast. She saw a sleek gray dolphin leaping. It came alongside for a time, pacing the boat, accompanying her to sea.

When the sun was just over the horizon, she had cleared Galveston Island and was leaving it too behind. She saw a shrimp boat ahead of her, but too far for the men on board to notice, and she trailed it. Far to the right was a freighter that looked as small as a toy boat in a bathtub. Isolated, it steamed toward a foreign destination.

When the sun had fully moved up the eastern horizon and she could no longer see the Seabrook or Galveston shorelines, when there was no land at all in sight and deep cobalt waters surrounded her. When the shrimp boat and freighter were lost in dawn mist in another part of the Gulf, she waited for the little motor to splutter and die. It obliged her minutes afterward while she spent her last moments immersed in pleasant reverie of her time with Mitch, loving him as she had loved no other man, even Scott.

When she came to herself and realized the motor was dead and that the bow of the boat was turning, drifting on its own, she looked once at the sun, once at the shadows racing across the water. Shadows fell from fat, blue-bottomed clouds hanging low overhead. She crawled to the side, and lowered herself into the cold, rippling body of blue, hoping, hoping sincerely, that God lived, and that He safely held the souls of all little children in the palm of His hand.

Even her.

THE END

INTERVIEW WITH A PSYCHO

BY

Billie Sue Mosiman

Copyright 2011 Billie Sue Mosiman, All rights reserved

Published first in PSYCHOS by Robert Bloch, re-published in DARK MATTER by Billie Sue Mosiman (available in hardcover from John Betancourt)

***

The place was Alabama, a hundred miles north of Mobile, the village named after Paul, one of the apostles. It was 1965 and the young people hadn't deserted yet to make their marks on the world. More than three hundred souls inhabited the surrounding small farms and homesteads. In Paul stood two country stores, one with two gas pumps selling overpriced fuel, an ancient one-room unpainted house that served as the U. S. Post Office, and two churches, the Pentecostal Holiness and the more sedate Baptist.

Hank Borden lived two miles down one of the many dirt roads leading from the main blacktop that wove through Paul. He was going to be eighty-one in a few days. He had never lived anywhere but in the old gray plank house on ten acres of thick second-growth pine. He had never been married and his family was all dead, parents and five siblings.

He spent most of his days sitting in a rocker on the tin-roofed porch that aproned the front of the house. He had many thoughts, some of them damnably confusing, and nothing but time to think them.

He knew the girl was coming. She had interviewed nearly all of Paul's elderly over the past six months, and she would not bypass him. They said she was putting together a book of the interviews, an oral record of the area that covered the years between the Depression and present times. She had arrangements, they said, for the publication, and was being paid a handsome sum of money for an advance against royalties. Imagine a writer coming out of this place, this backward evil place, he thought, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the bare yard.

Well, he had many things to tell her. Things no one else knew. It was time he let the truth out. He once thought he would never tell. Had he before now the local sheriff would have come with his deputy and taken him away in handcuffs. But he was dying. He wanted to tell it now. He felt compelled to share it with someone.

He had already suffered two strokes, coming back from them without the aid of doctor or hospital. He still couldn't straighten out his right hand--it was deformed into a clawed thing, gnarled fingers pulled in toward the wrist--but he had learned to manage. What couldn't he do with just one capable hand? Nothing that mattered anymore. And his speech was slow and halting now; he had to take his time formulating thoughts into words, but he rarely spoke to people so that did not significantly hamper him. He could speak well enough to communicate with the girl.

He watched the road and waited.

She would be along shortly.

***

On a sultry summer day with the air as dense as a chain mail suit, she drove into his yard and stepped out of a mint green Ford Galaxy with dented and rusted fenders. He sat in the wooden rocker on the porch waiting, not even bothering to offer a greeting or a wave. His heart was fluttering so in his chest, he hoped not to keel over before he could tell his life story. He scowled through the blinding sunshine blinking from the chrome on her car. When she stepped from the vehicle he was not surprised to see she was a pretty thing. She was the granddaughter of a woman he had always thought handsome, even as she aged. This one, this girl, looked a lot like her mama, too, having inherited a petite build and dark brown shiny hair and eyes so dark the irises appeared black. He was glad to see she was small. He had never cared much for heavy women.

His expression softened as she came toward the steps and the dappled shadows of a mimosa near the porch threw her into shade. He could not smile, not knowing what he was abut to disclose, but he did say in a civil tone, "Hello, there, young lady. They said you were coming."

"Hi, Mr. Borden. How are you doing today? I guess my mission has preceded me. You know about my book?"

He gestured with his good hand that she take the second rocker next to him. When she was comfortably seated he said, "Everyone knows. You can't go into Potts' store without someone bringing it up. You're a regular sensation around Paul. Who would have thought we'd produce a talented girl like you?"

She smiled and brushed back a wisp of bangs from her forehead. "I love this place," she said. "That's why I wanted to tape all the stories about it so it could be preserved in print. Do you mind if I turn on my tape recorder while we talk?"

"Go ahead, won't bother me any."

She pressed a button on a recording machine that was about the size of a hardback book.

"Now," she said. "You know what I'm after, right? I want you to just talk to me as if we were having an afternoon chat about your past. We can talk like friends, you don’t have to worry about how it sounds or anything. I'll be transcribing the tapes and typing them up in your own words. I have a release form here that I'd like you to sign, if you don't mind. It's just a formality the publisher asked me to have contributors put their John Hancock on." She pawed through a fat leather shoulder bag and brought out a sheet written in small print and handed it over with a ballpoint pen.

He held the paper on his knees with his damaged right hand and painstakingly signed his name with his left. It looked like hen-scratchings on dry ground, but he knew that was of no consequence.

"You don't want to read it?" she asked.

He gave her a bemused look. "Nah, that's okay. I cant read much without my glasses anyway."

"I can read it to you…"

"Not necessary. Now where should I start?" The fluttering was back in his chest. It was going to be difficult, the most troublesome event in his life to confess to his crimes. Especially to this unsuspecting and innocent young woman. How did you make horror and depravity come out sounding like anything other than it was? He was not going to offer excuse. He had long ago realized there was no excuse under heaven for his sins.