“Huh,” she said, with an eyebrow lifted and her tongue peeking out between her teeth.
Stephenie flicked the gas-pump switch on and off a number of times and squeezed the trigger a number of times and still nothing worked. She returned the nozzle to its place and walked around in a circle.
It was a hot day. Nice, but hot.
She waited ten seconds that seemed like ten hours and walked towards the restaurant feeling like a failure.
Between the entrance to the gas station and the restaurant’s main door was a patio swing made of wood. The swing could hold three people, two comfortably. Sitting on the swing was a thin girl with dark hair. Her name was Christina Split; she wore an attractive brown dress covered in white polka dots. The dress looked retro. She looked about eighteen. Stephenie noticed her earlier but ignored her because she was clearly not the person in charge.
Christina—who had been quite literally, twiddling her thumbs—lifted a hand from her lap and waved, offering a sad little smile.
Stephenie waved back. She considered saying ‘hi’ but didn’t. Instead she pulled the restaurant door open and stepped inside while nodding her head and making a face that felt comfortable to wear but might have been humorous to see. Bells rang. Not the electric kind, but the old-fashioned, ‘bells hanging above the door’ kind that made every day seem like Christmas. Carrie didn’t open the door with enough gusto to make them cry out, but Stephenie had. Then the ringing faded and the door closed behind her. Stephenie’s eyes popped open. Her heart started pounding, her breathing became labored and she thought she might be sick.
The restaurant was a slaughterhouse.
The customers and staff were splattered everywhere. They were slumped over in the booths and in pieces on the floor. Body parts were on the tables and chairs. The walls were soaked with blood. The carnage was nearly immeasurable.
Stephenie stumbled; her mouth became dry.
Spinning, the world was spinning.
She put her hands on her knees and felt her stomach heave. Somehow she held it in. She wasn’t sick on the floor but she wanted to be. Not that being sick would fix anything. It wouldn’t. And her view wasn’t better now that she was crouched over like an umpire at a ball game; it was worse.
She was looking at a corpse.
The corpse wore a yellow waitress uniform that consisted of a loose button shirt, glossy black shoes and a miniskirt. The dead woman was twenty-five years old, give or take a year. Her nametag said SUSAN; her head was twisted awkwardly towards the door. Her skull had been cracked apart like an egg.
Stephenie could see the woman’s brain just as clearly as she could count the bone fragments lying on top of it. And still, she held her nausea at bay. She held it because she didn’t want to vomit on the girl. She didn’t dare move, fearing her stomach would revolt against such action, leading her into a bought of illness that would last fifteen minutes or more.
She closed her eyes and squeezed them tight.
When she opened them nothing had changed. She was getting a real close look at this waitress named Susan, whose eyes were wide open, shockingly open, dreadfully open. Her face held an expression of terror so absolute she seemed to have died of fright before the killing blow had been able to claim her.
In time, Stephenie lifted herself to an upright position.
There was a puddle of blood around Susan’s head and tiny footprints were in it. Tiny footprints. Carrie’s footprints.
“Where’s Carrie?” she whispered.
Then she closed her eyes, telling herself she was trapped inside a dream, a terrible dream—a nightmare in fact. More than anything else, that’s what she wanted to believe. Otherwise she’d need to face the fact that she was standing in a horrific bloodbath and her five-year-old daughter was suddenly gone.
4
The scene was tranquil. Everything was calm. The customers were eating and socializing, the staff was working and everyone was happy. There was no blood on the walls, no bodies slumped over in the booths, no body parts lying amputated on the floor. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing disturbing. Nothing to suggest there was a problem big enough to have people shaking their heads in disbelief. It was a diner, just a simple diner with no strings attached. It had stools with red seat covers, which were bolted to the floor in front of the counter. It had booths with divisional walls that were a little more than waist high, giving privacy but not too much privacy. It had cheap paintings on the walls between the dark windows. Florescent lights buzzed in the ceiling and ceiling fans spun below. It was the type of place that gets labeled a greasy spoon and often times deserves the label. It smelled like coffee, toast and bacon. The smell alone was enough to get your stomach rumbling and your waistline expanding.
Stephenie felt a tug on her finger. She heard a voice. It was a child’s voice, her daughter’s voice.
The voice said, “Mom?”
Sitting inside a booth in the center of the diner was a woman named Angela Mezzo. She was a beautiful Italian lady with dark hair and an exotic appearance. Her lips were full and her cheekbones were high. She was roughly the same age as Stephenie, twenty-nine, maybe thirty. But unlike Stephenie her youthful exterior was no longer present. Not in a bad way, in a good way. She had womanly features that weren’t restricted to the curves of her body, but on her face too. In contrast, Stephenie’s appearance suggested that she might carry her inner-girl around with her until the day she died.
Angela lifted a coffee mug from the table with delicate, manicured hands. She swallowed a sip of coffee without making a sound.
The mug had a yellow happy face painted on the side. It was the same yellow happy face that had been produced and reproduced a hundred million times and can be found on cups and glasses in dollar stores around the world.
Stephenie felt another tug on her finger. She heard the voice again: “Mom?”
Angela sat the mug on the table in front of her. She started to grin, but the grin sat on her face wrong somehow, like it didn’t belong there, like it belonged somewhere else.
Stephenie’s eyes narrowed. She had seen that smile before but didn’t know where.
Angela’s grin thickened, growing hard across her features like old gravy left forgotten on the stove.
Now Stephenie knew.
The smile was lifted from her late husband Hal. It was the same smile he made in her dreams, in her nightmares. Not when he was falling, but the moment before he hit the sign that said DANGER and his body was severed at the waist. But why was Hal’s smile on Angela’s face? It had to be a coincidence.
Angela began changing. Her eyes turned blacker than oil and her mouth crept open like a squeaky door in a haunted house. Her head tilted, hair swooped in front of her face and her skin became pale. For a moment Stephenie thought she might crumble into dust.
Then came a third tug on her finger.
The tug seemed more urgent this time, but still, it was gentle. A child’s hand was wrapped around her finger and Stephenie knew it was Carrie’s hand, which was good news indeed because if Carrie was pulling her finger Stephenie knew exactly where the girl was hiding and there would be nothing more to worry about, nothing at all. Nothing except the cold hard fact that a room full of strangers was chopped into a million pieces and somebody was responsible. Strangers don’t kill themselves when they step out for a bite to eat—no way, no chance, no how.
But the room wasn’t filled with dead people. The room was just the way you’d expect it to be: the staff were bustling about and the customers were enjoying their meals.