“ Fastidious about himself and his things,” she agreed, “and I don't think he wanted to get any blood on his clothes. If he tried catching her blood in a bucket, it would still be all over that cabin, and all over him. He'd gag and wretch if he tried taking it all in at once through a hose of some sort. No, he'd have to do it in a very clean, neat way.”
She was busy in her head with the image of the monster, silhouetted in the dark against his victim, working meticulously over her before tearing into her dead body with the mutilating tools in an attempt to hide his finer work.
This time neither of them said good night. Both of them knew that sleep, if it did come, would not be without disturbing images.?
FOUR
When she got into her room, she turned on all the lights, and seeing the big double bed, she stretched out across it in her clothes thinking she'd just lie here for a moment. Then she was in back of Stowell's car with her hands in Otto's. She felt safe with him and she nestled in against him there in the crooning car, finding warmth in the crook of his arm, a curved, protecting cove. All around them the dismal, black Wisconsin landscape transformed into an oceanside lit bright with sunshine where they drove along a winding road above the escarpments. It was as if they were transported to Scotland, she thought, a place she had long dreamed of seeing, since her roots were there.
The ride was lovely and Otto's voice was as caring and gentle as the soft breezes coming in at the windows. He asked after her comfort. She next heard him say something about love, but it was as if he were suddenly far away and she looked up to find herself alone in the car, a roiling black cloud having turned day into night, and the car was now a hearse, and the driver was no longer Stowell, for in the rearview mirror she made out the eyes of Candy Copeland as she said, “Just sit back, missy, and enjoy the ride.”
Jessica started from her sleep with a jerking motion that almost sent her off the bed. Sitting upright, panting, she surveyed her surroundings. The dream had been so real… so real… When the bleeding had stopped, it was almost three in the morning and he was alone with the corpse and his own mind again. He hated this moment. It brought on panic and guilt and sick feelings in his head and in his stomach, and so to push it away, he relived the moments leading up to his quenching the burning thirst inside him.
He hadn't made love to her in the usual sense, yet he loved her far beyond any physical bonding, for with her life's blood literally his, literally inside of him, they had become one.
Candy, she had called herself, and she'd had the dull look of a simple schoolgirl bored with life, when he had first approached her at the bus stop. She wasn't too bright, but it wasn't brains he was after. Her speech patterns told of a meager upbringing. It was obvious she was unread, that she did very little thinking beyond what was between her legs and who was the current teen idol. She was perhaps eighteen, maybe more, and she had the hard look of a girl who liked to drink and party whenever she could find it.
She smoked fiendishly.
He must have looked strange to her, grand in a way, certainly not what she was used to. He was much older, dressed in a suit and tie, driving a nice van. He was old enough to be her father. In a sense he had made her his, hadn't he?
She was foul-mouthed, and she dressed like the teen idol Madonna, which made her look like a tramp. She did dope whenever she could get it.
He had certainly broken her of all her bad habits in one fell swoop…
When he had fooled her into taking that trip with him, she had said, “I'll help you, if you'll help me.”
She'd wanted a ride and a smoke, preferably grass. She got the ride and something a great deal stronger than weed. Then she got something she never bargained for, something that would make her live forever, so long as he chose to go on living forever. She is dead now, but still some blood trickles down the long, tapering neck, catching at the upside-down chin where it drips from the arched Adam's apple… and he catches the blood in his hands… uses it like holy water, rubs it into his face. Feels it against his skin, the smell of it-her essence-eases his tense nerves. He wants to remember the moment… but it's fast fading, the images weakening with every hour that passes.
He wanted to go back to that moment.
Preserve Candy and that moment in his mind.
He reached over for the Nikon shots that he had snapped of Candy-before and after shots from every angle, catching her in the pose that fed him.
Beside him, on the floor, stood the icebox and the mason jars. He went about the business now of packing the overflow away. His home freezer needed stocking, and thanks to Candy, it was looking much better.
A neighbor's dog was barking, causing an eruption of other dogs to pierce the evening sky with their howls. There was a bright moon out and the dogs saw shadows moving everywhere. His was a quiet area, peaceful really, the backyard barbecues rusty from their long winter's wait, fences crumbling with age and neglect. It was an older neighborhood, to be sure, the houses in the district erected in the late sixties. Still there weren't a lot of pestering little ones about the front yard and the street, and while the houses looked their age, only an occasional salesman showed up at the door.
Inside, he had all the comforts he required, mostly medical books and magazines. He even had a copy of Gray's Anatomy published before the days when such a masterpiece could have been mass-produced on flimsy paper at a reduction in print size. The book had been a prized possession of his grandfather's, a man he had never known.
He must be certain that absolutely no trace of Candy's blood be found on the tools of his trade. The blood itself, if packs in the icebox, would not long be in his possession. Melanie's was already depleted to a final pack, and Janel was soon to follow.
He was careful with his jars of blood. In the morning, he would transfer the blood into plasma packs, boxes of which he kept on hand. The stored blood would keep better that way and take up less room in his freezer.
For want of a better name, he labeled his jars Candy, so as not to be confused with Melanie, Janel or Toni, three earlier contributors to his supply. He kept one jar of Candy in the door of his refrigerator, some to fill his A.M. appetite, some for slides. In the morning, he'd have a microscopic look at Candy's blood, in order to determine its finer qualities, or if it possessed any unwholesome aspect. During the heat of conquest, such concerns could not be contended with.
His work was near done. He securely placed each jar atop the other with a little glass clink, unloading the cooler labeled Specimens. He had brought it in from the van. He'd waved at Jonstone down the street as he carried in the stuff. Jonstone was an insomniac, and it wasn't unusual to find him walking his dog even at three in the morning.
From the bottom of the cooler, he now lifted a small vial with a cork top. This he placed in the sink to be sterilized and reused later. Staring at the vial, it reflected the light over the sink, and he mused on its having been heated earlier by him, using his Bic lighter. He had stared through the flame at the dangling carcass. Alongside the slender tube resting in suds in his sink, he now placed an array of sullied items: a thermometer, a surgeon's scalpel, a pair of probes, a clamp, and a device he had only recently given a name to: the spigot.
Now he went to the case of fine steel knives and instruments gleaming in the weak light. He hadn't remembered wiping them clean, but he had. He now closed the cooler and the case, and he began to feel a little fatigued. He had driven a long way to get home. He went into the bathroom, peeling away his shirt, revealing a broad, hairy chest and a stomach that spilled over his pants top, the navel buried within flesh, unseen. He'd been dieting, watching the fried and fatty foods whenever he was on the road, but it seemed to be doing nothing for the midsection where all his extra weight appeared one day when he woke up and examined himself closely and critically. He wasn't terribly obese, just enough to cause a bulge all around him and to strain the buttons of his shirts. He'd taken to wearing oversized ties to business meetings to cover the area at his navel, but there was only so much that could be covered.