“They may never catch him,” said Fred. “Vicious criminals just disappear sometimes. Maybe Satan takes them in to serve in Hell. I recall that case up in Bethany some years back, that incestuous sister and brother who killed several people including their own mother and that young woman from TV, burned their own house down with the murdered bodies in it. It was all they wanted to talk about on the news for a while, but the police never found hide nor hair of either one.”
“You know what I think,” she said. “It’s either Jaime Tales, Hobie Lautenschlager, or some other guy. Or Shannon Boner. He gets crazy sometimes.”
“Hobie who?” said Fred.
“Lautenschlager. He don’t come here. You don’t know him. Real fat guy, thinks he’s smart.”
“Could be a woman doin’ it,” said Fred. “Women kill other women all the time, out of jealousy. Vanity and jealousy, they go together. In any case, it’s someone you don’t even know, girl. This ain’t no small town.”
“Hmm,” went Heather, mildly annoyed. She thought, but didn’t say, that it might also be Fred.
CHAPTER 31
TODD BAILS OUT
Todd was sitting in the bathroom on the toilet, reading some more of the Plan 666 book. He’d found an interesting passage about the “love bombing” practice:
“It was all about love, see,” explained a girl who went by the name Breeze, who’d been engaged in the love bombing mission as early, she claimed, as age 13, and who spoke in the rather dated “hipster” slang typical of many Kindred members of all ages, in imitation of their founder, Daddy Dickey. “They said we were missionaries. They used to tell us a story in this like school we went to about a French saint named Julian. This Julian cat used to off animals and even his parents and all this bad shit. But then Jesus made his heart and he got turned on to love. Julian, after he got with love, used to carry people across a river, and one day this leper hits him up for a ride. I mean, you dig lepers, right? After that, the leper kept hitting him up for bread and food and shit, a place to crash, and Julian gave the leper whatever he asked for. Eventually the leper wanted to make it with him, and Julian was so into the love scene he did that too, and like, Julian was making it with this leper and in the middle of that the leper turned out to be Jesus, and took Julian to heaven with him. I mean, it’s like an orgasm, it really shouldn’t just come from jerking off by yourself, right? It’s a parable about giving, about love at a high level, a spiritual level. About how giving to others becomes giving to yourself, too.”
“We didn’t say love bombing among ourselves, we called it fuck fishing,” said Cloud, an ex-Kindred member who’d gone on to work as an exotic dancer. “We weren’t the only group like that doing it, but maybe we had more young girls, so it kind of got to be a big thing naturally, you know? Plus, I think we were pretty wily about it. They’d tell us to try and draw attention to ourselves but make it seem like we weren’t, like were just naturally beguiling or whatever, innocently seductive. That is, assertive by being passive, you know? Because, you know, that is what really turns guys on. But you had to be careful because it’s true what they say, that ‘good men dream what bad men do,’ you know? And once you bring that dream into reality, it can bring the bad out in them.”
So she had to get out of there sometimes?
“Oh yeah,” she said, “but also sometimes you can get past all that. You really have to play it by ear, or rather by eye, look them in the eye and try to see what’s going on back there behind them. And like, it’s best to get those things out of the way, to get past resentment and aggression and even hatred, to where that’s exhausted. That’s when love is possible, sometimes. But yeah, with some guys it got worse and worse, you couldn’t get past it with them, and that’s when it got dangerous, and you had to split.”
Yes, he had to agree, there was some truth to that. More than a little. About some guys. Like himself. He picked up the nearly finished gallon bottle of Rhine Wine from the floor by the toilet and took a pull.
Sky called out from the next room. “Hey, Todd, are you in there?”
“Yes, why?”
“I miss you.”
“I’ll be out in a minute.” He flushed the toilet, pulled his pants up and strode out. Funny, he used to be embarrassed about crude bodily functions around girls when he was younger. Didn’t bother him at this point. In fact, nothing bothered him now.
He stepped into the bedroom. Sky lay there, glancing at him eagerly, her hands bound to the bedstead with some elastic bandages he’d found in the bathroom cabinet earlier. Her legs were free, pulled up. If he got close, he’d have to be careful to make sure she didn’t kick him.
“Hey. It gets lonely out here like this. Can’t see the TV, either.”
“I know.”
“Say, how about letting me loose here? Pretty please?”
“I’d like to but I don’t trust you anymore.”
“All I said was that I wanted to visit my grandmother.”
“I’m not sure I believe you have a grandmother. What’s your grandmother’s name?”
“Evelyn. Why don’t you believe me?’
“Because I think you just came here because of this Kindred thing.”
“Do what?”
“That’s what they call it in the book.”
“What book?”
“This cult called the Kindred. You were in it, weren’t you? In California?”
She hesitated. “I was, but I’m not now.”
“Why not?”
“I quit. That’s all. I’m on my own now.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, I guess.”
“Really, this is awfully uncomfortable. I don’t mind kink, it’s fun sometimes, even when it’s rough. But you know, enough is enough. Back to ordinary life.” He noticed the bruises around her neck, bad in spots, purple blotches, slightly swollen even. His doing.
He said, “See, that’s just it, that’s what I can’t get back to. I mean, it’s not your fault. It’s what happened before. I’ve got something really wrong with me. A screw loose.”
“No you don’t.”
“You know it’s true. I’m dangerous. You’re scared of me, in fact.”
“I’m not scared of you at all.”
“You should be, and I think you are.”
“You’re not that bad. I’ve seen worse. You just need to modify a little. Don’t get so carried away. And that’s not why I said I was leaving.”
“No, see, you’ve seen worse but I have too. I’ve seen worse from me. I wasn’t sure about what had happened, but now I am.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“There’s no way you would.” He sighed. “It’s funny, you know, I always thought I’d reach this point and it would be all dramatic and emotional. But there’s nothing. I guess that’s what it’s about. Nothing. Zero.”
“If you let me go—”
“I gotta go find something.” He got up and went to the dresser across from the bed, opened a drawer and got out one of his old switchblades.
“What are you looking for?” Sky sounded afraid.
He brought the switchblade over, and her eyes froze upon it. “You’re not the first girl I messed up,” he said. “I think I killed a girl in the woods last year. I was fucking her and I strangled her.”
“You wouldn’t ever do that,” said Sky, but her voice was wavering.
“I might have killed some more,” he said. “Here, let’s see.”
He put the blade against her throat—she shut her eyes hard, held utterly still—then ran it along a cheek of her pretty, angelic face. He pressed the tip of the knife in near her mouth, feeling his dick get hard. She whimpered as a trickle of blood slid down unto the pillow.