Was it different somehow?
Was it a new kind of scream?
Wiśniewski didn’t particularly like screams, but he was philosophical about them. They were a part of his world. They were expected in a place like this. And, since this world was his world, he tried to understand them, categorize them, assign them ratings. Last week there had been a whopper of a scream when a male client was introduced to a strap-on for the first time. His scream had gone ultrasonic, and he’d kept it up for a full five minutes. That had been a new one, and Wiśniewski rated it a seven in a new category. He figured the man could have put a little more into it, and maybe would with a bigger attachment to the strap-on. The man had left smiling — and walking funny — and Wiśniewski figured he’d be back.
This scream, though… it wasn’t like that. It was a female scream. A girl, he thought, not a woman. Probably one of the girls up on three. There were two whores working day shift up there. Kya something and Brandy something. The guys who liked to fuck the young ones did it in the middle of the day, usually on their lunch breaks, so no one would take notice of them being out. So their wives wouldn’t miss them and think they were up to something. There were two guys up there now with the girls. The scream had come from one of the rooms directly above him, 304 or 306. Wiśniewski could tell. Even on four or five, he could usually pick the floor, the room.
There was another scream, and Wiśniewski frowned. It was shrill and somehow wet. Raw wet, like someone who wasn’t used to screaming that loud and did it the wrong way. Did it hard enough to tear something. That surprised him, because he hadn’t pegged either of the johns as hitters. They were both semi-regulars, and there hadn’t been problems before. No bruises on the girls. Not even on Kya, who sometimes sassed the johns. She chased some clients off, but not because any of them had made her scream.
Not like this.
Wiśniewski waited, listening, head cocked. He chewed on the end of his pen for a moment, waiting for the next one. When they were that loud and nasty, there was almost always more, softer or louder. Seven times out of ten.
He waited.
There was another sound. Another scream, but different.
This time it was a man who screamed. And then there was a thud. Another. Hard, reverberating through the ceiling, spitting dust from between the cracks. More screams. Male and female now, overlapping, colliding, and the crash of something heavy. A table? A chair?
A body?
“Jesus Christ,” growled Wiśniewski as he launched himself from his chair. “What the fuck is happening up there?”
He raced into the living room, where his nephew, Stanley, was playing video games with some kind of stupid set of goggles. Stanley stood in the middle of the floor kicking and punching as if he were fighting a host of ninjas. Stupid kid. Wiśniewski slapped the goggles roughly off the young man’s head.
“Ow!” cried Stanley, and was about to say more when he froze, raised his face, and stared at the ceiling. The screams were constant now. “Oh, jeez… what’s going on?”
Wiśniewski didn’t answer. Instead, he snatched a sawed-off baseball bat from an umbrella stand by the door and hurried out.
He rushed to the stairwell, slammed through the door, and took the stairs two at a time. Wiśniewski wasn’t a young man, or a thin one, but he was strong. Peasant stock, his grandmother used to say. Wide and barrel-chested and thick. Stanley, thin and short, followed but not as quickly. Wiśniewski reached the third-floor landing, yanked the door open, and saw that the hallway was filled with people. Girls dressed in underwear or towels or nothing. A few men hanging back, peering uncertainly out of rooms, not meeting the eyes of the other customers. One door was closed, and the screams were coming from inside that room.
“Everybody get back,” bellowed Wiśniewski. “There’s nothing to see here. Go back to your rooms. It’s all okay.”
The spectators retreated half a step. Wiśniewski bulled his way through them, bawling for Stanley to clear everyone out of the hall. The super reached for the handle and froze. The screams inside were rising in pitch now. They were terrible to hear, and there was another sound buried inside them. A more animalistic noise, which made no sense.
Was it a growl?
Christ, had someone brought a dog into the place? Why? Even here at the Imperial there were limits. Getting busted for prostitution was one thing, but bestiality was a whole different set of laws that Wiśniewski didn’t want to break. Oh, hell, no.
He cut a momentary look over his shoulder. The girls, the johns, and his nephew all seemed to be frozen, barely breathing, staring. Then Wiśniewski tightened his grip on the baseball bat, turned the handle, and opened the door.
He stepped into a nightmare.
He stepped into a scene from some horror movie.
There was blood everywhere.
So much blood.
On the bed. On the walls. On the lampshade.
On the john, who lay sprawled like a starfish, half on and half off the bed. He was naked, hairy, pale-skinned, and all the blood, Wiśniewski was certain, was his. One of his eyes had been torn out and lay as a collapsed, dripping ruin on his cheek. His face and chest and arms were covered in long slashes and vicious purple bites. He screamed and screamed and screamed.
The girl, Kya, sat astride him. She, too, was naked. A tiny thing with vestigial breasts, a shaved crotch, a tattoo of a butterfly above her heart, and wild red hair. She screamed again, throwing her head back to hurl the shriek at the ceiling — or, perhaps, at God above — and then she suddenly bent forward and bit the throat out of the screaming man.
His screams collapsed into a wet gurgle. The girl worried at his throat, growling like a dog, ripping at the tough skin as she beat at him with bloodied fists.
Wiśniewski almost ran.
He stood there for a moment, stock-still, the weapon forgotten in his hand, mouth agape, staring at the red horror in front of him.
Behind him someone else screamed. He turned to see Stanley and the other girl, Brandy. Wiśniewski wasn’t sure which of them had uttered the scream.
Then Kya snarled, and Wiśniewski realized that she was looking at him now. Her mouth was smeared with blood, and there was a shred of something glistening between her teeth, but her wild eyes were focused on him.
“Watch!” yelled his nephew, and it was almost too late, because Kya launched herself at Wiśniewski with shocking speed. The big super stumbled backward and swung the bat as much by accident as by intention. It whistled through the air and hit the girl on the upper arm. It was not a well-aimed shot and nowhere near as hard as he could have managed if he hadn’t been panicked, but it was still hard. The girl weighed eighty-nine pounds, and the force of the blow sent her crashing into the dresser. That should have knocked her senseless, but it didn’t. She hissed in fury rather than pain and came off the floor in a tearing rush. The super backpedaled and his shoulder caught the outside edge of the door at just the wrong angle, and his bulk slammed the door shut.
Outside in the hall, Stanley Wiśniewski stood staring at the closed door. Hearing the dreadful sounds that were coming from inside. Hearing the screams.
Hearing his uncle’s screams.
Hearing those awful, awful screams.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I need your help on something,” I told Violin, “and I’m resource-poor at the moment. Are you free?”
“Depends on what you have in mind, Joseph,” she said.
“A job.”