Strangers (38 page)

He did not answer.

“Are you going to kill me now?” she asked.

“Soon,” he said. “There’s something I want you to see first. Will you come with me, please?”

She stepped down the hall with him. She knew she was not dreaming; she no longer dreamed.

They went into the children’s bedroom. She stood with her back to the dresser at the foot of Kim’s bed. He was at her right.

The room was lit by the lamp on the
night-table
between the beds. In the aquarium-cage on the stand by the window, Chopper, the brown and white guinea pig, ran furiously in circles, pinewood chips flying. From the poster above the headboard, ET gazed down at Kim.

All the blood,
she thought.
Such a smal
child and so much blood “You killed her.”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill Marcy.
”

“No, not yet. First you and then the other child.”

The thoughts streamed through her mind with such speed that they were a single sheet of thought:
Kim was dead could not be saved and Marcy lived and would live had to live
had
to live live live…

Almost inaudibly, she whispered, “I want to tell you something.”

He leaned down, a stranger’s face close to hers, striving to hear.

The scream shot out, a scream of all the hurt and rage that she had buried within her, and as she was screaming she transformed her hand into a weapon
—Curved sharp prongs of the garden weeder! Kill the weeds
!—
and clawed at his left eye. She felt the thin resistance of the membrane of his eyeball, the pressure of the liquid beneath, but he was turning, pulling away, saving his eye as she ripped deep into the flesh of his face, the bloody skin slimy under her nails.

He turned away from her like a figure on a revolving
music-box
, bending, shoulders hunched, hand to his face, grunting, “You hurt me.” She whirled, picking up the portable television on the dresser, palms pressed on either side of the plastic cabinet. It was no heavier than a beach ball. The plug popped out of the socket as she lifted it, then smashed it, screen down, against the curve of his spine directly beneath his shoulderblades.

His yell and the glassy-banging
whump
of the imploding picture were simultaneous. The set tumbled off his back.

He was on his knees, feet touching the base of the dresser, head and arms draped over the foot of Kim’s bed. A ragged circle was blasted in his shirt and the flesh of his back looked like ground red meat, dotted with bits of gristle, and stringy yellow cords.

But then he raised his head, glared at her, the corner of his mouth twisting up into the bloody streamers she had carved into his face—and he still held the knife.

She jumped over his legs and the wrecked television. She screamed, “Marcy!” and ran.

The stairway was dark. She sped down it but she was careful. She could not afford a misstep.

Marcy would live!

As soon as she reached the foyer, she heard him. He was on the steps, coming after her. She needed a new weapon.

She dashed into the dark living room. She felt her way along the couch to the end table, traced the crystal lamp’s cord to the outlet and unplugged it. Holding the lamp by its base, she pressed back against the wall.

“Beth?”

He was in the foyer.

“Beth?”

He was in the living room.

She squinted. She saw nothing.

And then he was there, his smile nightmarish white, an arm’s length in front of her. She swung the lamp, felt it hit his upper arm or shoulder, saw the prisms hang in the air between them like too perfect hailstones and then she felt a fiercely cold instrument right below her breastbone.

She dropped the lamp. She rose up on tiptoe as the blade of the knife worked higher within her. They were united now, she thought, for the first time, she and the one who had masqueraded as husband-lover-friend.
They were joined by the knife that tore through every pretense and every barrier between
them.

I tried, Marcy,
she thought.
Live, Marcy!
She looked at her murderer, saw a stranger, said, “You old codfish,” and died.

The Stranger rested on the living room sofa.
Now
was his time, The Time of The Stranger, yet things had not
gone
as they should have. The child died much too easily and quickly. Her eyes not even open and, like that!
she
was dead. After the suffocating years in the bodily prison of Michael Louden, the first glorious rush of freedom had overwhelmed him; he had not been able to restrain himself.

And the woman! She, an insignificant, meaningless nothing had
hurt
him.

Oh, he was in pain, but he was almost glad for it. Severe pain was a unique sensation, one he had never expected to experience. He knew now what his victims felt, what his victims-to-be would feel, and that gave him new appreciation for his birthright, his killing gift.

The Stranger rose. A victim awaited him, awaited his pleasure! He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with blood-death scent. He felt his strength surge omnipotent within him.

Would she yet be asleep downstairs, now, after all the noise?
It was possible. Children slept through hurricanes, earthquakes,
volcanic
eruptions. And if she were not asleep—perhaps huddled terrified but in an agony of imaginations, oh, better still!
A game of hide
and seek. Come
out,
come out, wherever you are!

He went into the dark kitchen and opened the door leading downstairs.

“Enroll now at DeLand School of electronics for the sake of your future.” He heard the television commercial. Quietly, clenching the butcher knife handle, he walked down the steps.

The television was the
room’s
only lighting. He went to the sofa.

She was not there!

“MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

The soprano shout behind him sent him jumping six inches into the air, whirling. Another commercial filled the TV screen, an animated advertisement for orange juice, splashing the room with garish, pulsing light, turning her into a psychedelic blur as she ran at him.

She was stiff-armed. It seemed as though she were being pulled like a water-skier gripping a
tow-rope
, but she held the wooden handles of the hedge-clippers.

With all her weight and speed driving them, the closed blades punched into him an inch above the belt-line, piercing cloth and flesh.

He shrieked and, no strength in his arm, no strength in him at all, dropped the butcher knife. She drove him back and he plopped down onto the sofa. She was on him, straddling his thigh, working the handles of the clippers, twisting and tearing.

He threw back his head and tried to scream again. He could not. The scream was not in his throat. It was white-hot and echoing in the huge, gut-torn crater from his navel to his ribs.

“Guess I’m a naughty girl, huh, Daddy?” she said, with a giggle. She pulled the handles of the clippers fully apart.

Everything inside him was torn loose, uprooted, and spilling out onto his lap. All that remained was the excruciating pain.

“I know you’ll have to give me a good spanking for this!” she said. Then she jumped off him, leaving the hedge-clippers rooted in his body. She stepped backward a pace, then another.

“Oh, Daddy, sweet daddy, nice daddy, smart, smart daddy. Is this one of those times when Daddy could just
kill
his little girl?”

Kill her!
He had no strength but the power of the thought itself brought him to his feet. The hedge-clippers tore loose of his massive wound and fell on his foot.

It hurt. He was amazed that he could feel such a tiny hurt while being consumed by a total, great hurt.

Kill her! Kill her!

He managed a half step and his intestines and blood spewed onto his legs and shoes.

“Come on, fall down and die, you dumb bastard.”

Kill her!

A foot slid forward into the stinking, slippery mound. He fell down and he died.

— | — | —

EPILOGUE

IN CHICAGO, Eddie Markell was tired and he wanted a drink. He was always tired and he always wanted a drink. He went into a sleaze-hustle bar on Rush Street. First came his drink and then came the B-girl with the hustle. After all, a guy shouldn’t be lonely on Christmas Eve.

Eddie Markell said, “You know, I don’t give a shit.” That summed it up for him. It was The Time of The Strangers and he had waited too long. He shattered the rim of the glass on the table, rammed the jagged edges into her face, and twisted.

She screamed, spraying blood all over and by then Eddie was on his feet, the .357 out. He fired at the bar and the heavy slug literally atomized a three square foot section of it.

By no coincidence at all, Joe Rimaldi was at the tavern. He was a vice-cop come to collect his Christmas bonus from the management for not doing his job. But when push came to shove, the fat was in the fire, Joe Rimaldi was, by God, a cop and that nut with the monster pistol was…a nut with a monster pistol.

Joe Rimaldi pulled his Police Positive. His first shot went wild and the second smacked Eddie Markell in the chest.

“I don’t give a shit,” Eddie Markell said.

 
When the .357
slug
hit him, Joe Rimaldi died instantly and, dead, did a double back flip over a table.

Eddie Markell emptied his pistol, killing three people. He left the bar and got halfway down the block before he collapsed and died.

It was “hot Dr. Pepper” time for the Rasmussens. At Christmas time, their drink of choice was heated Dr. Pepper with floating slices of orange and lemon. A Dr. Pepper punch bowl was on the table in the center of all the cookies and brownies and fudge bars and peanut butter balls Grandma and Mom had made.

Karl Rasmussen, Jr. was sipping his third cup of hot Dr. Pepper, an orange slice tapping his front teeth. Ask
anyone,
the finest young man in Monroe, Wisconsin was Karl Rasmussen, Jr. The blond high school senior maintained a B plus average in the college prep program, played football and basketball, was president of the First Lutheran Church’s youth group, participated in Future Farmers of America and 4-H, and was, along with his father, a full dues-paying, voting member of the county dairy cooperative.

Karl Rasmussen, Jr. said, “I’ve got a surprise for all of you”—all being his father, Karl, Sr., and mother, Anne Marie, his nine-year-old sister, Lynn, Grandma and Grandpa Rasmussen, and Judy Stelter, his steady girl friend. Karl went to his bedroom.

Like virtually every country boy, Karl liked hunting and for his fourteenth birthday, his parents had given him a Hi-Standard Supermatic Deluxe, a twelve gauge, five shot,
auto
-loading shotgun. It was the surprise he returned with.

“Let’s all get together, real close together, right there in front of the fireplace.”

“Karl, Jr.,” his mother said, “this is not funny.