The Beast House

Tyler sipped the coffee, and wrinkled her nose.

“What can I say? It’s instant.”

“At least it’s hot.” She took her cup to the dressing table, sat down, and drank as she brushed her hair. Abe stood behind her, watching. “Was Jack there?” she asked, and saw him nod in the mirror.

“Lucky Jack,” he said.

“Lucky Nora.”

Abe put down his cup. He rubbed her shoulders, and she moaned.

Then came a quiet knocking. He let go of her, crossed the room, and opened the connecting door.

“All set and rarin’ to go?” Nora asked. She entered, followed by Jack. “We thought it’d be fun to go in town for breakfast. That sound good to everyone?”

“Sure,” Tyler said, getting up.

Nora was wearing a tube-top that left her bare to the tops of her breasts. A faint red line marked her shoulder where the man, yesterday, had struck her with the radio antenna. Her skin had a rosy glow, and her hair looked damp. She must’ve recently taken a shower, Tyler thought. Jack, too, was slightly flushed. Had they showered together? Made love under the hot spray?

Abe and I could’ve…

“Got your room key?” Abe asked her.

Nodding, she picked up her purse.

They went outside into the cool morning shadows, and Tyler slipped a hand around Abe’s back.

“I think,” Nora said, “I could go for pigs in a blanket.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Gorman dreamed they were after him. He was running down a sunlit slope, laughing at first and waving the paper—the contract—overhead to taunt them. “You can’t catch me,” he sang. He knew they couldn’t. He was fleet of foot while Marty and Claire were staggering after him like sleepwalkers. No, like zombies. It suddenly struck Gorman that they were, indeed, zombies. That notion took away some of the fun: what if they should catch him? Zombies would likely treat him to a horror or two.

Though he knew they were after him, they were somewhat preoccupied. Marty was busy ripping to shreds a pair of pink panties while Claire was digging out one of her eyes with a blunt stick.

I never did that, he thought. You’re doing that to yourself, sweetheart.

Looking forward, he saw Brian wave at him from on top of the fence. Janice was up there, too, straddling the spikes—one of them in her—writhing passionately on it while she sucked Brian’s cock. She saw Gorman and sat up. “Hey,” she shouted, “that’s my contract!”

“Finders keepers, losers weepers!” he yelled back, flapping it at her.

“Forget it,” Brian told her. “You’ve got me.”

With a shrug, she leaned down again and took him into her mouth.

Gorman turned away and raced alongside the fence. Looking back, he saw Marty and Claire. They were close behind him, which didn’t make much sense because he was running and they were shambling along slowly. Marty was stuffing bits of the shredded panties into his mouth. Claire, beside him, had one eyeball dangling over her cheek and was working on the other, trying to pry it out with her stick. Let her get that one, Gorman thought, and she won’t be able to see worth shit.

Then he tripped over the end of a bathtub. He fell toward the water. The water was red. A naked woman, reclining in the tub, stretched out her arms to catch him. Her wrists were crossed-hatched with slashes. Martha! He fell toward her, and fell, and fell. “Leave me alone!” he shrieked, and lurched awake.

The room was bright with daylight. Gasping for breath, he stared at the ceiling. He used the pillow to mop the sweat off his face.

Good Christ, he thought. What a nightmare.

He glanced at his travel clock. Nine twenty. He’d been in bed no more than three hours. But he’d had some sleep before Marty and Claire came knocking.

God, if only that had been nothing but a dream.

He crawled to the edge of the bed and sat up. The bruise on his stomach where Marty had punched him (he started it) looked like a smudge of dirt. There were a few minor scratches on the backs of his hands, but his knuckles weren’t even skinned from rapping Claire’s face. He walked to the mirror above the dressing table, and peered at his own face. Except for the bloodshot eyes, it looked fine.

He went into the bathroom. Kneeling beside the tub, he looked closely for traces of blood on the enamel, especially around the drain. The tub looked fine. It should—he’d bathed in the ocean before returning to the room and showering.

He turned on the shower, adjusted the temperature, and stepped beneath its hot spray. As he washed himself, his mind went over every detail. Had he overlooked anything?

The contracts. He had burned them both and flushed the ashes down the toilet.

The tape. He’d pried open the plastic cassette, stripped out the tape, and held it dangling over the toilet while it burned, making greasy black smoke.

The recorder. Since he’d touched its casing with his bloody hand, it had to go. It went into the ocean.

The camera. Same problem. Same solution.

His clothes. After tearing off the tags, he’d weighted each garment with a rock and hurled each into the surf. The shoes hadn’t required rocks.

The cars. In Gorman’s estimation, his solution to that problem had been brilliant and daring. At the time he’d taken Marty’s keys, he hadn’t known why he wanted them. But the scheme must, even then, have been brewing in his subconscious. Not until he reached the cars did the plan come fullblown to his mind.

Since he couldn’t risk leaving even a minute trace of Claire’s blood in the Mercedes, he left it untouched and drove Marty’s car to the beach. He’d been very lucky finding the beach; the very first road leading west had taken him within a couple of hundred yards. He’d simply followed a moonlit path along a hillside and voila—the ocean.

Farewell to the cassette player, the camera, and his clothes. The worst part was washing his body in the ocean. No, perhaps the worst part was the trek back to Marty’s car, naked and wet and freezing, and frightened half to death that someone might see him. The area was desolate, though, and the only building with a view of the parking area appeared to have no windows.

He’d found a rag under the car’s front seat. He’d used it to wipe the seat and steering wheel before climbing in, just in case some blood remained on them. Later, after parking behind the Mercedes, he’d used the same rag to wipe the car for fingerprints. When he’d finished, he wiped its outside handles and flung the keys far up the wooded slope. Then he had simply climbed into the Mercedes and driven it back to the motel. Stark naked. Right through the center of town. But he hadn’t seen a living soul, thank God, and all the bungalows of the Welcome Inn were dark when he arrived.

Looking back on it now, he was amazed that he’d succeeded in carrying it off—amazed, indeed, that he hadn’t allowed the panic of the situation to overwhelm and destroy him. For he would have been destroyed if he’d simply fled without taking elaborate precautions.

As matters now stood, even if suspicion should fall on Gorman, he was confident that he’d left no evidence connecting him to the crimes. And he had a marvelous bonus in his favor: investigators would naturally assume that the same perpetrator had dispatched Brian, Marty and Claire. It would be obvious to anyone that Gorman was physically incapable of impaling Brian on a seven-foot fence.

Only one possibility worried him—that he may have been seen. Janice was unaccounted for. If she’d been alive on the hillside and witnessed the murders…Possible, but highly unlikely since she neither appeared nor called out during the search. More than likely, she was dead. But Gorman had committed the murders within view of Beast House. Someone watching from a window could have watched it all. If that had been the case, however, and his crimes reported, certainly the police would have intercepted him at the cars. Since the police didn’t show up, he could assume that either he wasn’t seen or the witness had crimes of his own to hide—such as the murders of Brian and Janice.