and these people promised they could do.
It would go on and on…
He screamed and tried to wrench free but someone smashed an elbow into his nose; he felt it pop like a smashed grape. Someone kicked his feet out from under him. He could hear Gretchen yelling something; felt hands pawing his wallet from his pocket. Other. hands skinning off his pants. A low pitched grinding as someone kicked him in the ribs; a squealing sound as someone kicked him in the head. The flicker of a lighter.
'What he got? He got rock? Lemme see that fuckin' wallet, bitch. He got -'
'He think he goin somewhere.' They started again. Starbursts, flashes of light that were the kicks to his head. Tasting the floor through blood and smelling hot piss splashing around him and hearing Gretchen laugh…
And it did: He'd been right. It went on and on.
10
Near Malibu
Lonny wasn't sure how long he'd been crouching in the old cactus garden between the main house and the smaller one out back. He'd crawled in on his hands and knees and nestled among the yucca spears and he had only been jabbed once or twice. He held the gun lovingly as a kitten in his hand as he peered through the bushes, wishing he'd never come, feeling sure that Mitch was dead. Not wanting to find what they'd done to Orphy.
How could people like this hang out in the world at all? Why was it allowed?
There was a light in the window of the guest house, downstairs. Once, he thought he heard Orphy's voice from over there. Some of the others came and went – just shapes in the darkness, some of them nude, some of them in sloppy clothes – and now here came four more, so he scrunched, down lower, biting off a shout when he accidently drove a cactus needle into his right arm near the elbow. Grimacing, he felt for the broken-off needle and plucked it out. He was going to lose an eye in here next. Had to get out.
But he was safe in the cacti. Maybe he should stay till daylight. These sick fuckers probably slept during the day. Or maybe they never slept. That wouldn't surprise him, either.
Two more of them went by, carrying something long and sodden that dripped onto bricks. What they were carrying didn't have to be a man's severed arm. Not necessarily.
They paused a moment, next to the pool. One of them bent and seemed to tease the surface of the water with the drippy end of the thing he carried in his hand. Lonny thought he saw something sparkle, faintly, in the pool, then, but he wasn't sure. The two laughed. Were they men? Yes, now, seeing them pass across the open area of the terrace where more starlight reached them, he could see they were white men, both clothed but one of them with his dick hanging out his fly – from here it looked like a little white worm.
They paused at the door to the back house – and both glanced over their shoulders at the cactus garden. A flash of teeth as they grinned. Then they went into the house.
Holy shit, Lonny thought. The fuckers knew he was there. They'd known it all along.
They wouldn't leave things like this.
Lonny crouched lower, got down under the curve of the yucca spears, and squirmed like a soldier moving under barbed wire, pulling himself with his elbows, till he got free of the cactus garden. Then he got to his feet and ran in a crouch across the big terrace.
He still had the gun, anyway.
And he had to know. He scurried up to the lower window of the guest house. The windows were curtained. He heard voices. One of them was Orphy. Sounding delirious. He had a drunk, disbelieving quality about his voice and Lonny couldn't work out exactly what Orphy was saying.
He made up his mind. He went toward the door, circling the treetrunk-thick stem of the huge rose bush growing up the side of the place – looking quickly away from the yellow bony thing wired into the roses. (Bones with only the grease of a human body left on them.) Gun at the ready, Lonny walked through the front door of the guest house. There was a hallway, strewn with trash and rose petals. Beyond it, a sickly gray light from the hall corner.
The trash moved. Lonny stared. There was a man among the bottles and cans and old rags. He looked like a rag himself. He was crawling through the trash toward Lonny. He wore only bloodstained diapers. Baby's disposable diapers. Scabby rips all over his gray skin. He was… Lonny shook his head with amazement. He'd never seen anyone that skinny except on TV commercials about those starving kids overseas. A skeleton with skin shrunk-wrapped on it.
'Don't…' the guy rasped. No hair on his head. His eyes looking two different directions. 'Don't…' The voice like a rustle of paper, barely audible. His body made a dry scraping on the floor when he moved a few inches closer. Saying, ' Don't let them do this to you.'
Lonny's mouth went dry. Instantly. He turned to run – then he heard Orphy yell his name. ' Lonny ya fucking… Feez motherfucker… Don't… Lonny…! ' Something skewed wrong in his voice – the words were pleadings, protests – but the tone was childishly happy.
'I've got the gun,' Lonny murmured. And maybe they had Mitch with Orphy.
He forced himself to go around the corner and look through the door into the room.
There was one dirty white bulb directly in the middle of the ceiling. Under it was a kind of platform, about bed-height from the floor. It took him several seconds of staring to be sure that the platform and the chairs around it were made of human arms and legs. The bone-ends, the bits of meat at the join, showed it was real. They'd preserved it and crudely stitched it together and tied it up with strips of skin; clunky and haphazard looking, but it held together as Orphy thrashed on it.
Orpheus was strapped spread eagled, naked on the bed with the Feasters – so Lonny thought of them – crouched around him, or sitting in bodypart chairs. They were connected to him. Something like stretched-out bits of glue ran from their mouths and exposed genitals, into Orpheus. The stretched-out bits quivered and flowed, and Lonny could see that they were alive, that they were something…
Something like worms. And they were part of the people around the bed, half a dozen people including the guy who called himself the More Man and the little guy, the Handy Man, and a woman whose eyes seemed to shine… you couldn't see her face at all, there was a kind of gas mask effect because the transparent slick white stuff had erupted from her mouth to cover most of her face. The other worm things squirmed into the wounds on Orpheus's throat… Another woman crouched over his genitals, chewing them up, as a worm thrashed whitely next to her pink tongue… A fat man crouched next to Orpheus's foot; the ankle had been broken, a bone end sheering out through the breached skin and the guy was licking marrow from it. Orpheus looked down at the guy and made a sound of pleasure.
Orpheus made that sound?
They'd done something to him. He was writhing,
Lonny saw now, not in pain but in ecstasy… as the More Man used the severed arm of the security guard to fuck a wound in Orphy's side, the arm a dildo. Orphy writing in repugnant happiness. Feeling no pain while they snapped his bones. He looked invitingly at Lonny. Mucous bubbling from his mouth as he urged: 'Git on, Lon!' he said wetly. 'Take a hit!'
The worms thrashing and squirming over this feast. Not eating flesh but taking something – taking what? The woman looking up at Lonny with eyes that were glossy with sensation but something imploring in them too.
Use the gun on me, boy. Use it on me
Was that her voice?
Use it on me, Mein Schones jung. The head. Shoot me in the head
Orpheus's belly was humping up with the movement of the things probing in him and he was way beyond yelling now, he was just staring deep into the lightbulb and going 'Ack… ack… kuh… ack
…' as they probed into him, his eyes bulging, the joy in his face worse than anything else. All of them smiling through the wormstuff at Lonny. Reaching out…
Lonny felt a buzz in his head. A flush of pleasure.
'NO FUCKING WAY!' Shouted so hard he could feel something rip in his throat. And the gun came up -
Me, herrliches boy…
