was better and Megan was an alien entity, a disease germ in the midst of a healthy body. So he had taken his axe and split her head open.
That had been several hours ago and now he had her strung up in the kitchen by the feet, had dressed her out as he dressed out his deer in November. He’d taken her head off and gutted her, placing her organs and entrails in neat piles in the sink on the drain board.
There was blood all over the floor.
There was blood all over him.
He sat in a sticky, drying pool of it, the blood-stench up his nose and down his throat, permeating every pore and every cell and the joyous, pleasing smell of it made him swoon, made him hard, connected him to the simple rhythms of life in a way he had never known before. He sat there, studying the blade of his axe. It was stained with blood. There with clots of hair and bits of tissue stuck to it.
Cocking his head, he listened.
For intruders.
They had already tried to take his kill once. A woman and two ratty-looking girls with kitchen knives. Some near-submerged, misty portion of his brain told him that they were once Maddie Sinclair and her two daughters, Kylie and Elissa. But that meant nothing to him. They were scavengers, predators. He had chased them off. He had wanted the woman. He wanted to fuck her on the bloody floor, maybe the girls, too. But they had run off.
He wondered where his own daughters were.
He studied the walls of the kitchen. They were splattered with blood and decorated with bloody handprints. When Dick had been dressing Megan out, he had been amazed at his bloody hands so he pressed them against the walls and made prints. He liked the way it looked so he kept dipping his hands into his wife’s torso and painting the walls with red handprints. Those who came here would know this was his lair. That he would defend it.
He heard voices in the distance.
Crawling across the floor with his axe, he pulled himself up by the sink. The smell of organ-meats and intestines made his mouth water, his belly growl. He peered out the window. He saw a man out there, across the street. A man and a girl. It took him a moment, but then he remembered that the man was Louis Shears and the girl was Macy Merchant.
Dick wondered if Louis would give him the girl.
Maybe he would trade her for meat.
Dick slid down to the floor and studied his handprints on the wall and contemplated his wonderful new world. He would need to go out soon. Go out and hunt. But first there were other considerations.
He needed to eat.
Breaking apart several kitchen chairs, he built a fire on the kitchen floor.
Soon, the smell of roasting meat filled the room…
20
Louis stood there with Macy by his side, listening to the empty house.
They called out a few times and listened to their voices echo and die out. Louis had been in a lot of houses and it was funny how something as subtle and abstract as an echo could tell you things. Maybe it had something to do with sound waves and maybe it had something to do with some buried sixth sense we all carry within us. Regardless, he could tell that the Merchant house was empty…though that wasn’t exactly the word that was bouncing around in his head at that moment: unoccupied. As in, Louis, this house isn’t so much empty as unoccupied, if you can dig the subtle nuances of that.
He stood there, swallowing down a sour taste in his mouth. “Maybe she stepped out or something,” he suggested and wondered why he did not believe that anymore than Macy seemed to.
“ No,” she said. “She’s always home now. She has a job, Mr. Shears, but she doesn’t go on until eight tonight.”
Louis was almost afraid to ask what that job was. The way Macy said it, not going on until eight, made it sound like Jillian had found a job stripping on stage. Thing was, his mind drew a blank when he tried to make small talk, so he just asked. “Oh yeah? Where’s your mom working these days?”
“ She’s a cocktail waitress over at the Hair of the Dog,” Macy told him. “Do you know the Hair of the Dog, Mr. Shears?”
The way she said it, Louis just bet that she knew all about the Hair, as it was called locally. The Hair of the Dog was a sleezy bump-and-grind joint out on the highway that catered mostly to truckers and bikers and tough working class types from the mills and factories. Nice place. Louis had only been in there once with a couple guys for a bachelor party and they’d left pretty quick. They were worried the women there might kick their asses, let alone the men. As he recalled, the waitresses were all topless.
“ Sure, nice place,” he lied.
Macy grunted. “You’re either a bad liar or you don’t get out much, Mr. Shears,” she told him. “No offense, but there’s nothing nice about a place like that.”
“ I’m sorry, Macy.”
She shrugged. “Why? I gave up trying to babysit my mom years ago.”
There were things Louis could have said, but it was absolutely none of his business so he kept his mouth shut. Poor Macy. Such a good, sweet kid. She deserved better than Jillian. That was for sure.
They made a quick search of the main floor and Jillian was nowhere to be found. There were a couple overflowing ashtrays and empty beer cans on the kitchen counter, a sink filled with dirty dishes, the remains of a frozen pizza on the table with a couple flies mating on it, but that was about it. In the living room there was a basket of washing that had spilled over onto the floor, scattered magazines and newspapers with rings on them like they’d been used for coasters.
But no Jillian.
“ This place is a dump, isn’t it?” Macy said, obviously embarrassed.
“ No…I wouldn’t say that.”
“ It is, too, Mr. Shears. Quit being nice about things. It’s not necessary. I know what everyone thinks about us. It’s no big deal. My mom is a lazy, drunken slob and a…a…well, I know what people say.”
“ Who cares what they say?” Louis told her. “It’s nobody’s goddamn business but your own.”
“ Thanks, Mr. Shears,” Macy said. “That was nice.”
“ Quit calling me Mr. Shears. You make me feel like I should be walking with a cane. Call me Louis or I’ll start calling you Miss Merchant.”
Macy reddened. “Oh God, not that! Mr. Hamm at school calls me Little Miss Merchant all the time. It’s embarrassing, you know?”
Louis just smiled. “Hamm is still there?”
“ Yes, and just as weird as ever.”
Mr. Hamm…dear God. Mr. Hamm had been there when Louis was in high school and he’d graduated twenty years before. Mr. Hamm was this large, very obese man who stood around in the hallways drumming his fingers on his impressive belly. Back then, Mr. Hamm had been partial to medieval forms of punishment if you acted up in his class. He’d make you stretch out your arms and balance a stack of textbooks in each hand until you thought you were going to drop or stand on one foot with your nose touching the blackboard. It was never anything violent like a ruler across your knuckles?that was Mr. Hengish?but it was just as painful after you were doing it for fifteen or twenty minutes.
Macy went and checked out the downstairs bedroom and bathroom while Louis took a turn through the dining room. Nothing, nothing.
“ You know,” Macy said when she came back, “I feel really stupid. You don’t have to stay here, you can go home. I can handle this. I’ll just lock myself in.”
But Louis shook his head. “No, let’s stay together.”
“ I was hoping you’d say that…Louis.” Macy looked around. “I have to clean this place up. What a dump. Well, I suppose we should look in the basement in case she fell down or something.”
