All Hallow's Dead, page 23
His face twisting in a snarl, Elliot rammed the thick blade of the hunting knife into Bennet’s right temple up to the hilt. Bennet’s body spasmed for a few moments, then went still, stretching the chain taut as he sagged toward the floor.
Elliot moved away from him, leaving the knife embedded in his temple. “And now, if you two will excuse me, I believe I’ll head upstairs for the night. I’ve left my bride-to-be waiting alone up there all day. I’m sure she’s lonely. I’ll see you crazy kids in the morning. Try not to have too much fun while I’m away.”
His booted feet echoed on the concrete as he headed for the staircase.
Chuck frowned beneath the pumpkin.
Bride-to-be?
But then it came to him. The lunatic could only be referring to Susan Rochon. The reference to her as his bride was bizarre, but then so was everything else about this fucked-up situation.
Chuck looked at Karen.
The eyes are the window to the soul.
Chuck shivered as Elliot’s words came back to him. If that was true, then Karen’s soul had been usurped by that of a hate-filled demon consumed with a burning desire to skin him alive and revel in the beautiful music of his endless screams.
32.
Three days until Halloween
Willow Springs, TN
In those first hours after being brought to her abductor’s lair, Susan Rochon nearly returned to full consciousness a few times. Each time, though, the man who’d snatched her from the truck stop parking lot was there to administer another dose of sedative. During these brief periods of semi-wakefulness, she’d been just cognizant enough to take in a few details of her surroundings. She was being kept in a space roughly the size of a standard studio apartment, with a kitchen nook and a smallish main room. Closed doors obscured the probable locations of a bathroom and closet. The main room was sparsely furnished. The bed was a queen-sized mattress atop a box-spring. Its rumpled, dirty-looking sheets suggested a distinct lack of interest in proper housekeeping. There was no frame. A boxy old TV sat atop a stack of plastic crates opposite the bed. A ratty-looking recliner that looked like it’d been rescued from someone’s curb was situated near the TV. Someone, almost certainly her kidnapper, had defaced the white walls with red spray-paint, inscribing it with slogans that were a testament to his insanity.
RIGHT THE WRONGS.
KILL THE WHORES.
KILL KILL KILL.
And similar cheery things.
Susan saw none of these things during her first prolonged period of full consciousness. She awoke in a much smaller space that looked as if it had once functioned as a supply closet for a now defunct business. Against the back wall was a rack of metal shelves. All but two were bare. Various types of car repair manuals were stacked in haphazard piles along the bottom shelf. Piles of pre-printed forms and stationary pads bearing the name ZEKE’S AUTO BODY were on the shelf above it.
The only other item of interest in the closet was a copy of a Willow Springs middle school yearbook from 1990. It’d been left on the floor near the closed door. After trying the door and finding it locked and unyielding to her attempts to break it open, Susan gave up and sat cross-legged in the middle of the dusty floor with the old yearbook open in front of her. It’d obviously been left in the closet for her to find and peruse. Her initial instinct had been to ignore the thing and not play along with whatever demented game her abductor was playing, but she dismissed the defiant impulse after a mere moment’s consideration. She was helpless here. A prisoner. She wasn’t tied up or confined to a little cage like the people she’d groggily glimpsed downstairs earlier, but she was a prisoner nonetheless. There was no such thing as blissful ignorance in this situation. If the yearbook held any potential clues about the man who’d taken her and his motives, she needed to give it a thorough examination.
Her first impression after opening the book and leafing slowly through the first few pages was that it was an original copy from 1990 rather than a reproduction. She had a friend who’d bought reproductions of all her old yearbooks. You could easily get them online from various sites. But this one had a lot of edge wear and its binding was loose. The person who owned this copy had looked through it often over the years. It was, however, the strangest old yearbook she’d ever examined. There was no name inscribed along the top of the pasted-down end paper in front, as was commonly done to indicate ownership. More curious, however, was the absolute lack of classmate inscriptions and signatures. Either this was an extra copy from the original printer or its owner hadn’t found even one person willing to sign his yearbook.
She was still puzzling over this when she came upon an image that nearly made her heart stop cold. It was on a page filled with rows of black-and-white student photos. In the middle of the second row from the bottom was a picture of a boy named Elliot Parker. She recognized that face. Long-forgotten memories of a meek boy who kept to himself and moved cautiously through the hallways of their school came back to her. She remembered occasionally feeling vaguely sorry for him back then, though not enough to extend an offer of friendship. Despite being perceived as rebellious as a kid, she’d wanted to fit in as much as anyone else. And fitting in didn’t involve befriending obvious pariahs like this boy.
His face was leaner and harder now. But she saw the bitter, broken man the child would one day become in that younger version. That hollow-eyed look was exactly the same. His was the only unsmiling face on the page. Despite her fears about what Elliot Parker possibly had in store for her, seeing this triggered a faint pang of empathy. For the first time in a lot of years, she regretted not reaching out to him when they were young. Something like that, a basic gesture of kindness, might have made all the difference in the world at a crucial time in Elliot’s life. The feeling passed quickly, though. Whatever the guy had gone through in the past was no excuse for the horrible things he was doing now. He was sick in the head. And extremely dangerous. She needed to remember that above all else.
She resumed leafing through the yearbook, but stopped again when she arrived at the page with her picture. A heart had been drawn around it in faded ink. Susan started trembling when she saw this. His outcast status aside, Elliot had been like a lot of his male peers back in middle school in one crucial way. He’d harbored a crush on her. Unlike the rest of them, however, he’d never let go of it. He’d stalked her and kept track of her ever since those days. It was a haunting, horrifying revelation. Shaking her head, Susan groaned in memory of the callous way she’d attempted to deal with him at the bar last Halloween. She saw now it’d been the biggest mistake of her life.
Kill the whores.
On reflection, that slogan really didn’t bode well for her.
After completing her thorough examination of the book, she again tried the door, alternately kicking at it and ramming her shoulder into it. She risked this because the total silence from the outer room suggested it was empty, an assumption seemingly confirmed by a lack of reprisal from Elliot. Again, however, the door did not budge. It felt like it’d been reinforced in some way.
Hours passed. A lot of them.
Eventually, she gave up the intermittent efforts at escape as obviously useless and stretched out on the floor. After a while, her eyes fluttered shut and she slept for a long time.
On the verge of collapse when he reached his second floor rooms, Elliot went into the kitchen nook and took a tall can of Red Bull from the refrigerator, popped the tab, and chugged it down fast. He crushed the empty can in his hand and tossed it at an overflowing wastebasket in a corner. The can missed the basket. Elliot didn’t bother retrieving it from the floor. He had a building full of ripe-smelling corpses downstairs. Cleanliness wasn’t exactly one of his priorities these days.
He walked out of the nook and stared for a moment at the closet door. The girl he’d spent most of his life yearning after was on the other side of that door. His heart sped up a little at the thought. This amazed him. Even now, after the awful way she’d treated him a year ago, the mere idea of her proximity was enough to stir strong echoes of the anxious, fluttery feelings she’d first provoked in him during their school days. He supposed the allure of her would remain with him until he’d drawn his last breath, persisting despite her obvious loathing of him.
The door was reinforced with an iron bar across its center. He’d installed it after stashing her in the closet. It was secured with the sturdiest, most expensive padlock the local hardware store sold. Though he had taken care to ensure she was securely locked away, he was committed to treating Susan more humanely than his other captives. This was largely because, in spite of her hatred of him, the feelings she’d inspired in him through the years were the closest he’d ever come to feeling normal. Despite everything, he loved her. She had to pay for her sins, just like the rest of them, but she wouldn’t suffer like them.
Elliot took a key from his hip pocket and inserted it in the padlock, giving it a twist. He removed the padlock from the clasp when it clicked open and tossed it over his shoulder. It landed with a heavy thump on the floor behind him. He wouldn’t be needing it again. Pulling the bar away from the clasp, he opened the door a crack and peeked inside the closet.
Susan was asleep on the floor.
Watching her, he thought back to the day before and his initial rough treatment of her. That had been a product of adrenaline and residual anger over what she’d done. He felt no anger now, not where she was concerned. It was over and done with, her transgression against him, just like everything else in the past. Soon it would all be less than meaningless.
But for now…
He pulled the door open wider and she stirred at the sound of the creaking hinges.
Her eyes opened and she stared up at him in silence for a moment before she said, “You’re back.”
The strange thing was how calm she seemed. She spoke in the placid tone of a housewife greeting her husband upon his return home from a long day at work. He pulled the door fully open and retreated from the doorway. “Come on out of there.”
She yawned and got to her feet. After rubbing her eyes, she squinted at him and said, “Are you going to kill me now?”
“I have plans for you,” he said, his tone noncommittal.
Her expression turned wary. “What sort of plans?”
“Come on out and I’ll explain.”
Shaking her head, she sighed in resignation. “I don’t trust you. Obviously. But I guess it makes no difference whether you kill me in here or out there.”
Elliot didn’t reply to that.
Susan came out of the closet, pausing just outside the doorway to take a longer look around at the room. Elliot felt a pang of self-consciousness as she did this. Her gaze flicked briefly to the huge pile of dirty clothes by the bed. He glanced that way and knew she likely had spied the multiple pairs of hole-riddled underwear, the seats of which were stained brown.
He looked at her. “I apologize for the mess. Take off your clothes.”
She frowned. “What?”
“You heard me.”
She stared at him evenly for a long moment before shrugging. Then she pulled off her top and tossed it aside. “So you’re gonna rape me now, is that it?” she said, unclasping her bra. “How does that make sense? You’ve spent your whole life pining away for me. You shouldn’t want to hurt me.”
She let go of the bra, crossing her arms over her breasts as the scrap of black fabric fell to the floor.
Elliot drew in a deep, shuddery breath and slowly expelled it. The sight of Susan’s partially nude body was as breathtaking as he’d ever imagined. Now that he’d taken things this far, he needed to see the rest of it. There was no other choice. “I never wanted to hurt you, Susan. Not before you hurt me last year, anyway.”
“I’m sorry about that, Elliot. I should have been more sensitive. It was a mistake.”
He nodded. “Yes, it was. Take off the rest of your clothes.”
She sighed and took her arms away from her breasts. She undid the snap of her jeans and began to wriggle out of them, but she paused when she finally took note of the dark-gray garment bag on the bed. He’d taken it from the closet and put it there prior to stowing Susan away. “What’s that?”
Elliot smiled. “My mother’s wedding dress. I had it cleaned for the occasion.”
She frowned again as she finished wriggling out of the jeans. “What occasion?”
His smile broadened. “Our wedding.” He held out his arms, beckoning her forward. The gesture caused multiple metal objects inside his trench coat to clank against each other. “Come to me, my bride. I’d like you to try on the dress, but I desperately want to hold you in my arms first. I’ve wanted that for so long, Susan. Come to me. Come now.”
Susan’s expression was warier than ever, but it was clear she knew she had no choice. She kicked the jeans aside and went to him, shuddering as he wrapped her up in his arms and crushed her against him. Her trembling intensified and he made soothing noises in her ear as he stroked her hair. They stood together like that for several minutes, Elliot sighing as he felt her tears on his neck. Despite her obvious deep fear of him, his gentle treatment of her began to work. Her trembling had nearly ceased completely by the time he took her neck in his hands and snapped it.
Elliot sobbed as her body sagged in his embrace.
He held her limp form for a time.
Then he carried her over to the bed and laid her down next to the garment bag. After spending a few moments brushing her hair away from her face and adjusting the angle of her head, he took off his trench coat and draped it over the back of the recliner. It would only get in the way of the delicate work he needed to do now.
He allowed himself several minutes to admire Susan’s beautiful body.
Then he went to the bed and unzipped the garment bag.
33.
Two days until Halloween
Willow Springs, TN
Bob Lee’s last morning as sheriff of Willow Springs began on a sour note when he walked into his office and found the mayor already there waiting for him. Vic Bailey, formerly one of Lee’s most trusted and dependable men, was at the mayor’s side. Vic’s flat expression betrayed no emotion, but the way he refused to look him in the eye was telling.
But Lee found it hard to hold a grudge against the man. Vic was only doing what anyone with an ounce of real ambition would do. He was smart enough to know his boss was on the way out regardless of any stance he might take on the matter, rendering any gestures of defiance or solidarity pointless. If nothing else, Lee figured he could rest easy in the knowledge that, at least until the next election, the department would be in steady, competent hands.
Lee’s feelings regarding the mayor and his underhanded tactics weren’t nearly so magnanimous. He wanted to knock the smirking, hair gel-abusing bastard on his ass. Instead, he maintained his composure long enough to power on his office computer one last time and type out a brief note announcing his resignation. After printing it out on official department letterhead, he handed it over to the mayor, turned his department-issued handgun and badge over to Vic Bailey, and walked out of the building carrying a box of the few personal effects he cared to take with him. He left by the back exit to avoid the awkwardness of exchanging goodbyes with his former underlings.
He returned home long enough to stow the box of personal effects in a closet, change into civvies, and retrieve his personal handgun—a .357 snub-nosed revolver—from his office safe. Less than a half hour later, he drove away from his house in his Toyota Celica and began a long day of tracking down and interviewing known associates of Ricky Bennet and the other missing men. Coordinating with Pete Acker by phone, they methodically worked their way through a list of likely possible confidantes.
Lee began the process with a high level of enthusiasm. He was certain one of the missing men must have spilled something about their shared secret—whatever that was—to someone at some point over the past twenty-some years. But that enthusiasm waned as the day wore on, morning yielding to afternoon with no new information garnered. Lee knew the passage of time was the single biggest complicating factor. Most of the people he talked to that day had only vague recollections regarding their former acquaintances. Those who admitted to remembering the splintering of that group of friends insisted they had no idea why it happened, saying that none of the boys had ever been willing to talk about it. After so many years in law enforcement, Lee had a good sense for when someone was telling him a pack of lies. As best he could tell, no one he talked to that day was lying to him or attempting to conceal information.
By the time he emerged from the double-wide trailer home of a man named Leon Jenkins at half past two that afternoon, Lee was on the verge of admitting defeat. Jenkins had been an associate of Ricky Bennet’s during their early post-high school years. The two had been arrested together multiple times for various kinds of troublemaking. Lee had once caught the men in what could be described as a compromising position in the back of Bennet’s car late one night in an otherwise empty K-Mart parking lot. Though he could have busted them for public indecency that night, he’d given them a break, much to the tearful Bennet’s relief. As per usual in such cases, Lee had figured an arrest would be a pointless exercise in embarrassment for everyone involved. Instead he admonished them against indulging in amorous activities in public places and sent them on their way. It was this memory that made Lee believe Jenkins might represent his best shot at uncovering a possible former confidante.
But Jenkins, a devout born again Christian, was a dead end. He spoke of his former friend with obvious disdain, calling him a sinner and saying he was doomed to burn in hell. The man was full of opinions on the subject of eternal damnation and was eager to share them with Lee, but he knew nothing about the bad thing that had driven apart Ricky and his old friends.
