Our Lady Chaos, page 22
part #5 of Bloodletter Series
“Well, then.” The chief settled his bulk into one of the dusty kitchen chairs. “Did you see that beautiful Tiffany lamp down there in the basement? Didn’t your Auntie Margo want that out to the farm where she could appreciate it? How do you suppose they got the glass that bright-red color? It’s almost as if the lamp is on, even though the thing’s not plugged into any socket I can see.”
Red? Eddie turned the thermostat to seventy-three degrees and tapped it with his finger the way his mother always had.
“Can’t say I appreciate the picture much. A Garden of Eden thing? That ugly willow tree with orange leaves, that orangish-brown snake with the red spots… And that weird bird! Not my style at all. Did your mother like that shade?”
My mother never saw that shade, Eddie thought. When daddy brought it home, it was as I saw it last night, but when the scary lady started to come, it changed to the dark background and bright-blue fish. It’s never been red. He wanted to say the words aloud, but even at eleven, Eddie knew better than to say things such as that to a cop.
He turned, glancing at the kitchen visible from where he stood. A part of him wanted to go down into the basement and look at the new lampshade, but he didn’t believe he’d ever go down those steps again. Not without someone dragging him.
“Why don’t you come back in here, Eddie, and we’ll have ourselves a little chat?”
“Coming.” With a gentle sigh, he turned away from the thermostat and walked back to the table in the kitchen. Eddie chose the chair across from Chief Morton’s and sat, resting his elbows on the table. After flicking up to the chief’s face, his gaze rested on Morton’s bronze name tag.
“Eddie, I know it’s hard.” The big man cleared his throat, but in a much more polite way than Eddie had a few minutes before. “It must be, it must be hard to deal with…well, what you have had to deal with. I don’t imagine your Uncle Gil makes it easy, either.”
Eddie pursed his lips and turned his head away.
“But there has to be something good in all this.”
Eddie darted a quick peek at the chief’s broad face.
“Your Auntie Margo is a nice one. Don’t you enjoy being with her every day? I mean, it’s better than a stranger, right?”
Eddie fidgeted with the zipper on his coat and leaned back in the chair.
“It can be hard, a boy your age and a man such as your Uncle Gil. I imagine he’s a hard taskmaster. Hard to please. High expectations.”
Eddie ducked his head.
“But is that all of it, Eddie?” asked the chief, leaning forward and resting his elbow on the table.
Eddie glanced up into the chief’s face, met his concerned gaze, but said nothing.
The chief looked uncomfortable for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck. “Your aunt…” Morton shrugged again. “Well, there’s been rumors. A small town such as Cottonwood Vale… People talk, and when the little old ladies at church glimpse bruises under your aunt’s shawl… Well, you know.” The chief reached for his neck again but stopped and dropped his hand to his lap.
Eddie raised his eyebrows.
“I can help, Eddie. If there is something going on, something not right, all I need is for you to tell me what it is.”
Eddie cut his gaze away.
“Eddie, look at me,” said Chief Morton, but it wasn’t a threat the way Uncle Gil always said it.
He brought his gaze back to the chief but stared at the end of the chief’s nose instead of looking him in the eye.
“I can help, Eddie. There are laws. It’s not how it used to be. If your Uncle Gil is getting up to no good, all you have to do is tell me.”
Eddie tried to swallow the sudden pain in his throat, unable to speak even if he wanted to. For a moment, he imagined that cold pressure on his tongue kept him from making a sound, but there was no pressure, no tightness around his throat or deep in his chest. He pictured that big black hole in his middle and shoved all that pain and fear into it.
Morton sighed and flopped his big hand on the table. “Okay, then. Tell me why you are here in this cold house. Why did you leave the farm last night?”
Eddie closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “I… I collect things. Gil…he…he doesn’t want me to collect things. He…” Eddie shook his head.
“Go on, son,” said the chief in a voice just above a whisper.
“I was collecting…” Eddie’s gaze darted up to meet the chief’s. “I had these…these figures, and Uncle Gil…Uncle Gil… He hated them.”
“What, action figures?”
Eddie licked his lips and cut his eyes to the side. “I had two G.I. Joes—one with the Kung-Fu Grip.”
“I can’t imagine anything wrong with that, son. A boy your age.”
Eddie squinted at the chief. “I also had… Do you know what a Ken doll is?”
John Morton nodded. “Yes, goes with a Barbie, right?”
“Yeah, I had a Ken doll and a few Barbies, too.”
“Barbies, you say?”
Eddie swallowed hard. “As collectibles. They’re going to be worth real money in twenty years. Everyone says so.”
Morton grinned and lifted his shoulders. “If you say so, son.” His face grew serious. “I’m still not seeing it, Eddie. I still don’t get why your Uncle Gil should get upset about this collection.”
“He…he called me a bad name.”
“Because of the Barbies?”
Eddie nodded, and John Morton pursed his lips and sighed. “Son, some men…” He shook his head. “Some men are a little uncomfortable with the idea that someone in their family might be different.”
“He called me a faggot,” Eddie blurted.
“I’d guessed that, Eddie. Do you understand what the word means? It’s an ugly word, for as much as it gets used these days.”
Eddie tilted his head to the side and looked off into the corner. “I think so. Men that…” Eddie blushed to the roots of his hair.
The chief leaned toward him. “Yes, men that love other men.”
“I’m not—”
“No, no. Playing with dolls doesn’t make you gay, son. If it were that simple, I don’t reckon there would be any gay men.”
“Then why did Uncle Gil—”
“To get at you a little.” The big man put his hands on the table between them and stared at his palms. “To make you feel small. Weak.”
“I don’t understand.” Uncle Gil always called him weak and made it sound like a bad thing. Why make me feel weak, then?
The chief glanced at him, meeting his gaze. “If your Uncle Gil is the type of man that he seems to be, Eddie, there’s a lot about him that’s hard to understand. It’s a weakness that some men have, a broken part deep inside that leads them to do bad things to the people they love.”
Eddie thought about the way Uncle Gil treated Auntie Margo, about the bruises she wore from time to time, about how he cowed her into doing whatever he wanted. He thought about how mean Uncle Gil had been to him over the years, how he had made Eddie burn his doll collection, and he bobbed his head.
The chief nodded back. “I see you understand. As far as I’m concerned, that’s another nail in your uncle’s coffin. All you have to do, Eddie—all you ever have to do—is ask me for help, and I’ll be there. I know how to stop a man who’s bent up inside like your Uncle Gil, to stop him cold. You just tell me.”
Eddie squirmed in his chair. I told you about Uncle Gil, he thought. I told you he didn’t like me. I told you he called me names. How many times do I have to tell you? But he said none of those things, and so, nothing changed.
2
December 1979
As they walked toward the park, Sean summoned the courage to take Kristy’s hand. She winked at him and licked her glossy lips, sending his pulse racing.
“Come on,” she purred at him. “Let’s go for a hike through the woods.”
“A hike?”
She tipped him a wink. “Yeah, silly. You and me, all alone in the trees where no one can see what we do.”
Something stirred in Sean’s belly as he nodded. Kristy was seventeen, and he was only twelve, but he didn’t care. He wanted her.
She led him off from Main Street, following a serpentine path. She peeked at him often, smiling her sexy smile and giving his palm a squeeze. “You will love this, Sean. I promise.”
Sean gulped and tore his gaze away. He’d never even kissed a girl, let alone—
“Ah, there it is,” Kristy said. She lifted her free hand and pointed at a ramshackle collection of cast-off boards hammered together with all the skill of school children.
Sean’s stomach dropped. He recognized the shack—it was where Denny Cratchkin said Ari had murdered Jasper with a hammer. He stopped walking in the middle of the trail.
“Come on, Sean,” crooned Kristy. “I’m going to make you see the face of God.” She winked and pulled on his hand.
“Don’t you know what that place is?”
“Sure, I do. What could be more fun? We can find the exact spot where Jasper bled out, and you can lie down where he died. I’ll climb on top of you and—”
“No!”
“Oh, come on, you little narc. Get your freak on.”
While Sean had seen Kristy’s lips move, the voice was Denny Cratchkin’s, and he…
…bolted upright in the bed, his heart thundering in his chest.
Something’s wrong, he thought, though he couldn’t say why he believed it. Kristy’s in trouble!
3
December 1979
Denny strode down the sidewalk next to Union Street with the studied casualness Red Bortha had drilled into him. He had no doubts Red had changed the course of his life for the better, so even if the favor Red had asked for hadn’t seemed fun, he would have done it.
But it did seem fun.
A rapacious grin stretched his lips, and given the cover of night, he didn’t feel compelled to hide it under a mask of normalcy. What Red had called a “little favor” had Denny’s heart pounding and his blood up.
Without glancing around, Denny turned up the driveway of the house neighboring Kristy’s. He acted as though he had every right to walk up the drive, he pretended he owned the place, and if he performed up to Red’s expectations, he would own the house—and soon.
He mounted the steps that led to the kitchen and slid the key to the door into the lock. The deadbolt opened with a solid thunk, and he stepped inside the silent home. Red had a specific scene he wanted set, and Denny aimed to please him.
4
December 1979
Karl Munnur sat hunched behind the wheel of his “new” automobile, though the seventeen years of service the machine had seen in Western New York had robbed it of its new-car luster. He missed his Impala, and he missed his old life, but he’d gotten sloppy, and his present situation was his just dessert.
Miriam Benchly had made a single phone call that evening back in September, but with the kidnappings, the mass shooter, and all the rest, Leif had garnered little attention from the Oneka Falls Police Department, and given the murders within its ranks, Munnur didn’t expect much of an investigation into a drug-pushing teenaged boyfriend—the charges of pimping notwithstanding. Even so, he’d had to leave the house next door to Kristy Benchly, and worse yet, he’d had to abandon all the work he’d put into the girl. And that rankled. He’d intended her to become a mobile buffet, someone whose shame and guilt kept her by his side for further debasement.
His mind turned down a well-worn path through his psyche, one littered with signposts that read “why,” and “how.” Karl had no answers to those questions. Sean Walker had somehow done the impossible. How in the blue fuck did he recognize me? Have I become so slothful, so sloppy, that an eleven-year-old can breach my visage?
He sat watching the Walker residence, waiting for Sean to appear. All Munnur had to do to ensure Red’s plan would succeed was to keep Sean away from Kristy’s house for the next few hours.
The blinds covering Sean Walker’s bedroom window twitched, and a small peephole emerged. Why, hello there, Sean, Munnur thought. He considered giving the window a jaunty wave, but until he could figure out how in the hell Sean had seen through his disguises, he’d decided to treat the boy like an archenemy.
But, if Red’s project went off the way he’d claimed it would, his archenemy wouldn’t survive the evening, and he’d share what remained of Kristy Benchly with Red. The alpha’s strategy relied on simplicity, where the complexity of Munnur’s exotic plan had led only to mistakes and missteps.
Simple, he thought.
Karl pursed his lips and clenched his fists at the memory of all the effort he’d wasted cultivating Kristy, of the time he’d squandered courting Vickie Walker just to be close enough to Sean to dine on the boy’s crushing sadness when he was peckish. In hindsight, his ideas seemed…juvenile and naive.
At least he wasn’t the only demon who’d suffered setbacks. Herlequin himself had pulled up stakes and moved to the forest close to Lake Genosgwa. The rumor mill said three of his prey had seen through the game Herlequin played with them and escaped.
Munnur shook his head. Something in Oneka Falls had gone cockeyed, and it had cost him a well-established identity and a job he’d enjoyed.
And his Impala.
5
December 1979
Not for the first time since the ugliness with Leif in September, Kristy lay awake well past when she should have been sleeping. Frigid cold ruled the darkness in her mother’s house, and though she needed to pee, Kristy didn’t want to leave the comfort of her warm bed.
The preceding three and a half months had been hard on her. As the haze of the steady diet of drugs—drugs Leif had fed her—withdrew from her brain, memories of their evenings together had returned, and shame ruled Kristy’s mind and heart.
The things I’ve done…
Kristy grunted and rolled to her side, pulling the covers over her face. She’d lost count of the number of sleepless nights she’d spent trying to make sense out of everything, struggling to understand what Leif had done and why.
She and Sean Walker had become friends, despite the five-and-a-half-year difference in their ages. The boy seemed smart and thought with almost adult maturity. He said Leif wasn’t a teenager, not really, that he was the same person as a middle-aged guy Vickie Walker had been dating, but that made little sense when you knew Leif’s anatomy as Kristy did.
She hadn’t seen Leif Lawson or his father since the night Sean had burst into Leif’s bedroom and stopped Leif and that pig, Dennis Cratchkin, Senior. Without his intervention, the evening would have ended with a gang-rape at the very least. She’d read that in Cratchkin’s eyes, but as time wore on, she’d come to believe the expression had also shone in Leif’s eyes.
No question about it, she thought. I owe the kid.
6
December 1979
Denny climbed the stairs in silence, practicing what Red called his “ninja walk.” The house rang with emptiness, but he practiced as much as he could because Red said it was important.
As he walked down the upstairs hall, he picked a door at random and opened it. A stale odor pervaded the air inside, the scent of dust bunnies and old air. The room was vacant except for a bent wire hanger on the floor of the closet. Denny shrugged and opened the door on the other side of the hallway. It, too, was empty.
A slow smile drifted across his cheeks. Kristy the dink, he thought. The image of Kristy in her black bikini accompanied the idea, and lust stirred his blood. Soon, he said to himself. Soon you can play with Kristy as much as you want, and there won’t be any goddamn swimsuit getting in your way.
He walked to the door at the end of the hall—the only upstairs room Red’s friend had used—and slipped inside. The blind was down, but Denny could still make out the details—a cheap stereo, a twin bed, albums stacked against the wall, clothing strewn on the floor. If nothing else, he had to admit that the bedroom gave off a convincing appearance.
He’d had his eye on Kristy for some time—the gorgeous blonde who put out for drugs. She’d always sounded like Denny’s very idea of fun, but Red had forbidden him from touching her. He’d said to leave Kristy alone, that someone else had taken an interest in her.
But, no longer.
With a feral gleam in his eye, Denny stripped the sheets from the mattress and twisted and tied them into bonds that would soon hold Kristy in place while he had his fun.
7
December 1979
Sean hooked his index finger through a space between the slats of his blinds and twitched a peephole into existence. He peered out, staring at the white Ford Galaxy parked a block up the road. He’d seen the car before but never the driver.
His instinct said Karl Munnur sat behind the wheel, despite the figure there being half the size of the deputy and having the wrong color skin. Leif had looked nothing like Karl either, but Sean knew they were one and the same. If he can do it once, he can do it again, the boy thought.
Thinking back, Sean had seen the Galaxy many times over the past few months. Outside the school, parked on the side of Mill Lane a few blocks from the store, and cruising down his own street in the evenings. He peered between the slats, trying through sheer force of will to penetrate the gloom inside the car, trying to pierce whatever magic Karl used to camouflage himself.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered, pressing harder with his mind and opening his eyes wide. He pushed until his pulse pounded in his temples and his eyes burned as if he’d stared at the sun, but though the darkness seemed to recede a bit, he could see the driver no better.
With a sigh, Sean let the peephole close and turned away from the window. He snatched his jeans off his desk chair and shoved his legs into them. There has to be a way to see who Karl really is. Has to be. He grabbed the T-shirt he’d worn the previous day and pulled it over his head. If he can…what? Project? If he can project whatever he wants me to perceive, how would I ever know if I saw the truth?
Instead of pulling on his shoes and socks, Sean returned to the window and pierced the blinds with his index finger once more. The car still waited down the street, swathed in shadow. I know Karl. I’ve spent a lot of time with him. I should be able to pierce his illusion.
