His face, too, was overlarge, the cheeks ballooning out, his jowls inflated to the point of hiding his better features, the distinct, dark crystal-blue eyes. He'd never had so large a head before. Why now? What was he to do about it? The only parts of his anatomy that seemed untouched by his sudden weight gain were his sinewy, taut limbs. The weights he lifted helped out here. And the blood diet was helping curb his appetite, he believed.
The years had taken their toll on his complexion as well. He was ashen, the graying hair making him even more ashen in appearance. It made doing business harder, both in the daylight hours and at night. He was a colorless man, had always been a colorless man, with a low opinion of himself on account of how lowly he was regarded by just about everyone he came into contact with. Most people treated him as if he were a filing cabinet, and an empty one at that. All his life. But he was a great deal more interesting than anyone suspected.
Still, he must face the fact that he was at a crucial point in his life. He had read a lot about patterns and phases of growth, stages that a man went through. This was one of them, contracting the fat tummy and the fat jowls. He vowed not to let it get the best of him, and so, as tired as he was, he did his push-ups and sit-ups before showering and lying back on the bed. In the shower, his mind had wandered back to the scene of the murder. The hot shower water was like her blood in its warmth.
In bed, his mind wandered back again to the details of the killing. He returned to survey the crumbling, filthy, odor-ridden old place in the woods miles from the main roads. He then methodically found the precise instruments that he required in the briefcase he had on hand, in order to open a vein and drain Candy of what he wanted from her. He dwelled on this, allowing the moment to cradle him to sleep. His rest was deep and peaceful, stirred only by the unpleasant flashes regarding the need for the imprecise, heavy-duty equipment he'd used on Candy.
He had had to return to the van, placing the murder weapons in a secret compartment, putting the camera filled with the negatives of the killing on the seat. From the rear now he pulled forth his battery-operated hacksaw, a nice toy. He then returned to stand before the body, deciding what touches would be best.
The hum of the hacksaw was welcome in the deafening silence of the place; he carefully sliced away the breasts before mutilating the vagina. There was next to no wasted blood. He counted on the horror of the mutilation to confound local police, send them scouring the countryside for a lunatic escaped from an asylum perhaps, or the town weirdo, or a recluse of the woods. Certainly, no one would be looking for a man like him.
When he'd done with his final cuts, he stepped back to look at the result, casting a roving, critical eye over the corpse. He started away, but at the door he stopped and returned.
“ What the hell,” he said aloud, touching the hacksaw almost gently to where her shoulder and arm met, severing the ligaments on all sides. With a gentle tug of his gloved hand, the bone separated neatly from its socket, and with a final flourish, he threw the arm across the room.
He was about to leave when he remembered one of his scalpels in the kitchen. He had left it in the basin. As he passed the corpse again, he also recalled the hospital tourniquet tied tightly about her neck, and the pink ribbon in her hair which he had placed there. He snatched this away, too. He didn't want to leave any clues save those that would befuddle and misguide the authorities, like her severed arm and the mutilated genitals.
Earlier, he had fished out the vial of semen from the cooler in his van. The semen belonged to another man, someone he didn't even know. He had warmed it to room temperature, then poured some into the dead woman's vagina and the remainder in her mouth. He was then careful to put the vial and its top back into the cooler to be taken away with him.
He'd sent the authorities on the trail of a sex pervert. They'd find just what he wanted them to and nothing more, like the little surprise in her mouth and vagina.
Satisfied, the killer left. Home was far away and waiting, and yet he was home and in bed, his needs fulfilled, dreaming that he was coming and becoming… Could life be any richer? He rather doubted it.
And his dreams proved him right now… as before… and always.
He kneels on all fours like a panting animal, below her neck where she is dangling. In a frenzied, altered state of consciousness and being, he doesn't remember tying her long, loose hair back in order to have a clear path to the spigot of her throat from which her blood is about to flow, now that he has tapped into it. He has everything in place. He loosens the tourniquet with his hand held over her eyes. The blood is coming through to him in a controlled, measured flow, just as he had imagined it a thousand times. His inventiveness and imagination have not failed him.
He is in orgy at this point, and while not a religious man by anyone's standard, he knows now what fervent emotions strike like paralyzing electricity through the brain and heart of a zealot. Down on all fours, he catches the blood of her life in his mouth, swallows it warm and experiences the ethereal soul of her pass into his bowels, relinquishing to him her complete essence. Blood sacrifices… as old as time and man.
She does not bleed profusely or carelessly. He has taken careful steps not to squander the precious red fluid. He has covered the wound he has inflicted on her white throat with the spigot and surgical tape, turning the tourniquet, applying just enough pressure to slow the bleeding so as to catch it calmly in the mason jars he has brought with him. As each is filled, he sets it aside on the table, working by the light of an old oil lamp and a lantern flashlight he has set up on end. He doesn't want the light to draw any attention, although it is miles to the main road.
He knows his lust is insatiable and that the supply he's taken from Candy will not long last him. He knows even before he arrives home this night that he will crave the drink he craves for the rest of his life, not only because he likes the taste of blood-has liked it from childhood-but also because he likes the good feeling of the slaughter itself. He finds comfort in it; he finds reason and balance and beauty in his relationship with the body he feeds on, the woman that feeds him.
He is, after all, a vampire.
He has tried to tell people of his affliction, to get help, but that has gotten him nowhere. Most refuse to hear his cry. They don't believe that daylight hurts him, or that he sleeps by day, prowls at night, and feeds on the blood of others. He has no one. No one cares. No one but Candy, who dangles before him as his sustenance and his warm friend, forever in his mind, fulfilling him.
He thinks momentarily of home, and of taking a bath in Candy's blood. He thinks it an exciting idea and it grows. He is much closer to Candy than to Melanie or the others. Maybe a bathtub filled with her isn't such a crazy notion.?
FIVE
The wake-up call from Otto Boutine blared in her ears, but for a moment Jessica could not recall where she was; she certainly didn't recall any sleep. It seemed that only minutes had elapsed. She woke in her clothes, sprawled on the bed. With the phone on its third, perhaps fourth ring, she made a mad dive for the thing, knocking it to the floor and catching the receiver before it dropped. Good reflexes were a blessing, something she had always possessed.