Black House

“Is the big boss here tonight?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Good.”

He turns away and continues on toward the lobby, and she calls after him. “Wait!”

He looks back. She is standing up, a sure sign of great concern.

“You aren’t going to bother Mr. Maxton, are you?”

“Say any more, and I’ll bother you.”

She places a hand on her throat and finally notices the floor. Her chin drops, and her eyebrows shoot up. “Mr. Burnside, what do you have on your slippers? And your pants cuffs? You’re tracking it everwhere!”

“Can’t keep your mouth shut, can you?”

Grimly, he plods back to the nurses’ station. Georgette Porter backs against the wall, and by the time she realizes that she could have tried to escape, Burny is already in front of her. She removes her hand from her throat and holds it out like a stop sign.

“Dumb bitch.”

Burnside yanks the clippers out of his belt, grips the handles, and clips off her fingers as easily as if they were twigs. “Stupid.”

Georgette has entered a stage of shocked disbelief that holds her in paralysis. She stares at the blood spilling from the four stumps on her hand.

“Goddamn moron.”

He opens the clippers and rams one of the blades into her throat. Georgette makes a choked, gargling sound. She tries to get her hands on the clippers, but he pulls them from her neck and raises them to her head. Her hands flutter, scattering blood. The expression on Burny’s face is that of a man who finally admits that he has to clean his cat’s litter box. He levels the wet blade in front of her right eye and shoves it in, and Georgette is dead before her body slides down the wall and folds up on the floor.

Thirty feet up the hallway, Butch Yerxa mumbles in his sleep.

“They never listen,” Burny mutters to himself. “You try and try, but they always ask for it in the end. Proves they want it—like those dumb little shits in Chicago.” He tugs the clippers’ blade out of Georgette’s head and wipes it clean on the shoulder of her blouse. The memory of one or two of those little shits in Chicago sends a tingle down the length of his member, which begins to stiffen in his baggy old pants. Hel-lo! Ah . . . the magic of tender memories. Though, as we have seen, Charles Burnside now and again enjoys erections in his sleep, in his waking hours they are so rare as to be nearly nonexistent, and he is tempted to pull down his pants and see what he could make it do. But what if Yerxa wakes up? He would assume that Georgette Porter, or at least her corpse, aroused Burny’s long-smoldering lusts. That wouldn’t do—not at all. Even a monster has his pride. Best to carry on to Chipper Maxton’s office, and hope that his hammer doesn’t go limp before it is time to pound the nail.

Burny tucks the clippers into the back of his waistband and yanks at his wet shirt, pulling it away from his body. Down the corridor of Daisy wing he shuffles, across the empty lobby, and up to the burnished door further distinguished by the brass nameplate reading WILLIAM MAXTON, DIRECTOR. This he reverentially opens, summoning to mind the image of a long-dead ten-year-old boy named Herman Flagler, otherwise known as “Poochie,” one of his first conquests. Poochie! Tender Poochie! Those tears, those sobs of mingled pain and joy, that yielding to utter helplessness: the faint crust of dirt over Poochie’s scabby knees and slender forearms. Hot tears; a jet of urine from his terrified little rosebud.

There will be no such bliss from Chipper, but we may be sure there will be something. Anyhow, Tyler Marshall lies bound and waiting in Black House, helpless as helpless could be.

Charles Burnside plods through Rebecca Vilas’s windowless cubicle, Poochie Flagler’s pallid, deeply dimpled backside blazing in his mind. He places a hand on the next doorknob, takes a moment to calm himself, and noiselessly revolves the knob. The door opens just wide enough to reveal Chipper Maxton, only monarch of this realm, leaning over his desk, his head propped on one fist, and using a yellow pencil to make notations on two sets of papers. The trace of a smile softens the tight purse of his mouth; his damp eyes betray the suggestion of a gleam; the busy pencil glides back and forth between the two stacks of papers, making tiny marks. So happily absorbed in his task is Chipper that he fails to notice he is no longer alone until his visitor steps inside and gives the door a backward kick with his foot.

When the door slams shut, Chipper glances up in irritated surprise and peers at the figure before him. His attitude almost immediately changes to a sly, unpleasant heartiness he takes to be disarming. “Don’t they knock on doors where you come from, Mr. Burnside? Just barge right on in, do they?”

“Barge right on in,” says his visitor.

“Never mind. The truth is, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

“Talk to me?”

“Yes. Come on in, will you? Take a seat. I’m afraid we might have a little problem, and I want to explore some possibilities.”

“Oh,” Burny says. “A problem.” He plucks his shirt away from his chest and trudges forward, leaving behind him progressively fainter footprints Maxton fails to see.

“Take a pew,” Chipper says, waving at the chair in front of his desk. “Pull up a bollard and rest your bones.” This expression comes from Franky Shellbarger, the First Farmer’s loan officer, who uses it all the time at the local Rotary meetings, and although Chipper Maxton has no idea what a bollard may be, he thinks it sounds cute as hell. “Old-timer, you and me have to have a heart-to-heart discussion.”

“Ah,” Burny says, and sits down, his back rigidly straight, due to the clippers. “Hardz zu hardz.”

“Yeah, that’s the idea. Hey, is that shirt wet? It is! We can’t have that, old buddy—you might catch cold and die, and neither one of us would like that, would we? You need a dry shirt. Let me see what I can do for you.”