“How so?” the cop said and you could see he thought it was all a waste of time. Christ, pink elephants next.
She hugged herself against the night breeze. “Well, sir, it didn’t seem to have a head nor legs, just those long arms and a big, fat body.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, I believe it had a tattoo on its chest.”
*
On the way out to the shack in Specks’ Buick, Weams spilled it, said those words, hated the taste of them on his tongue: “We didn’t do it, Lyon and me. We didn’t cut Zaber’s arms off, we just threw him in the pit. That’s what we did. That’s exactly what we did.”
“Should’ve known better than to trust you idiots.”
“Yes,” Weams agreed, “you should’ve.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Weams chose his words carefully…carefully as he could. “Me and Lyon were amateurs, Specks. You knew that. You damn well knew that. Not like you.”
“Oh, you think I do that shit all the time?”
“No, but we saw you. You were experienced. You knew exactly what to do.”
Specks sighed, lit a cigarette. “Maybe I did. Maybe I spent too much of my youth with the wrong people. What of it? I’m not a fucking psychopath. What I did, I did for us all. You boys agreed. You’re as deep in this shit as I am, Weams. Don’t you dare forget that.”
Weams didn’t think he ever would.
Specks pulled the Buick off the highway, onto a gravel road that turned into a rutted dirt track a few miles down the line. Weams didn’t say a thing, he just remembered it all, watched the headlights limning those big twisted trees that hung out over the road. He didn’t say a word, but he thought plenty.
“All right,” Specks said when they reached the field. “This is it.”
Weams stuck tight to him as they followed that meandering trail through the dark, brooding forest. There was terror in him, hot and white and knotted, but not for what they might find, but for what mind find them.
The shack was still there, still waiting.
Then the lantern was lit and Specks and he began yanking up the boards. They didn’t bother being careful this time, they went at it all-out, splitting the boards and tossing them aside until there was a circular, rough-hewn hole through the plank floor. Weams held the lantern down there, his blood gone to a cool, gray sludge. The dirt of the grave was undisturbed. Or so it seemed.
“Keep that lantern steady,” Specks said, taking a shovel and giving his 9mm to Weams.
He began pawing through that moist, rank soil, flinging shovelfuls aside wildly, not caring if he sank the blade into Zaber’s corpse, not caring much about anything but proving to Weams how very wrong he was.
Four feet down there was nothing.
“We didn’t go any deeper than that,” Weams told him.
“You must have,” Specks said, sweat streaking down his dirty face. Weams felt something happening, something that made him instinctively cringe away from that hole as if a snake was going to show itself or a tiger was going to come vaulting out with gnashing teeth. “Specks, dear Christ, get out of there, get-”
Too late.
Specks looked down into the pit where his feet were, saw they were slowly sinking into the bottom of the grave. He couldn’t seem to work them loose. He let out a shriek, thrashing and fighting and finally falling over. And by then he had sunk to his knees in that rippling, bubbling soil. And he was still going down, like a man drawn into quicksand.
“Help me!” he cried. “Help me, Weams!”
Weams took hold of one of his hands, then let go.
“What’re you doing, Weams?” Specks whined, tears running down his face, drool flying from his contorted mouth. “Help me, for godsake! Help me! Help me! Get me outta here! Something’s got me, something’s pulling me down-”
Weams’ eyes were huge and wet. “Tell me, Specks. Tell me about you and Lila. Tell me about what you have with my wife.”
But Specks was beyond simple conversation. He had sunk to the waist now, screaming and moaning and gibbering and all that did was sink him farther. Sink him until two bloated white arms rose from the muddy earth, pudgy fingers taking hold of him and dragging him down and down. But before his mouth was filled with soil, Weams heard what he said.
Heard it very well.
Zaber, he’d said. It was Zaber, not me.
*
Lila came slinking home an hour before dawn.
Sneaking, stealing lightly, her high-heels in hand, she slipped through the front door and Weams was waiting for her. He had Specks’ 9mm and he pointed it straight at her.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.
She just stood there, looking a little worn around the edges from a rough night of play, a cat creeping home, its belly full and satisfied. She started to smile, saw the gun, thought better of it. Then she didn’t do anything but watch Weams slam the door shut behind her. And Weams could hear the loom of her brain whirring and clicking, trying to spin believable webs of lies, but unable to find any fresh silk.
“How long,” Weams put to her, “how long were you and Zaber sneaking around behind my back?”
“Zaber? I-”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Lila was figuring that probably wouldn’t be a real good idea either. Because she was seeing Weams, her husband of six years, seeing that twitch in the corner of his mouth, that mottled face, those eyes like windows staring into a madhouse.
“Not long,” she said, then started to cry.
And, hey, she was good. You had to give her that. Right to the last drop. Those tears looked real and they made something soften in Weams. But not for long. “You wanna tell me why?” he said to her.
Oh, she was whimpering and chewing her lip, making with those big brown doe eyes. The sweet, precocious little girl who had done something bad, but would never do it again.
Weams laughed. Maybe it wasn’t a laugh exactly…too hollow, too sharp, too agonized. “No, let me tell you why. Money. Plain and simple. It’s always that way with people like you, Lila. Cash means so much to you, you’d lay with a pig and…ha, ha…I guess you did at that.”
“Please…please,” she pouted.
“Get moving,” Weams said.
He marched her right to the cellar door, the gun on her the whole while. “Open it,” he said.
She did. Her hands were trembling. All you could see down there were the steps leading into a mouth of blackness. Like the depths of a cave, there could have been just about anything down there.
“Go ahead,” he said, far too calmly.
“Oh please, baby, you don’t-”
“Go down…or I’ll fucking shoot you,” Weams told her, drooling now, a funny sobbing sound coming up from his throat.
Weeping, Lila moved down two steps, then three. Stopped. She turned and looked back up at Weams like he might change his mind. And as she did so, there was a sound down there…a fleshy, heavy sound. Something moving, something big.
“Enjoy yourself,” Weams said, slamming the door shut behind her, locking it carefully.
He heard her scream.
Heard the sound of motion, somebody scrambling up the stairs. Lila’s voice crying out, begging hysterically for help. A thrashing, a slapping of flesh, a rending. A manic scream dampened by something wet and slobbering and attentive.
Then, his mind just gone, Weams put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
