Long black coffin, p.19
Long Black Coffin, page 19
There’s things with those two. Scary things, man.
Kurt generally opened up to me about all things given time…but I wondered how long it might have taken him to tell me about this. He must have been so ashamed, so utterly ashamed and offended to his roots. According to the dating on the video, the torture sessions had happened fifteen years before. That meant Kurt and I were eight-years-old at the time. I had to wonder if while we sat in his basement playing Xbox if that woman was in the coal bin, shackled and gagged. The idea made my stomach feel weak. What made it feel worse was when I remembered how we used to try and pick that lock. Jesus, the things we might have seen in there.
And that made me wonder what they had done with the woman’s body when they were done with her and if she had been the only one.
I was pacing back and forth, wondering what I was going to do. Go to the police? No, that would do me no good. I didn’t even have the red braid that Vic must have cut off the woman. It had disintegrated, for lack of a better word. I didn’t even know who the woman was. I had to investigate this. I had to somehow get Stella to spill the beans. It’s funny, in retrospect, how naïve I was. I thought I had it all figured out. The woman had been tortured and murdered by Vic and Stella. Her ghost had now returned wanting me to solve the crime so her spirit could rest in peace. It was like the plot of a cheap TV movie or a bad paperback book. So clichéd and stereotypical it was absurd. But I did believe it, or, should I say, I had talked myself into believing it because it was a system of logic that made sense to me in the traditional ghost story type of vein.
I walked out onto the back porch and had a cigarette.
I almost expected the ghost/entity to be standing out there on the railroad tracks in the distance, but she/it wasn’t. I wanted her to be. I had made the connection and I think I wanted her to know that. I understand now. I will help you. I’m so sorry about everything. I’ll put it to right. Somehow. I think, had she been there, that’s exactly what I would have said.
But she wasn’t there.
I was alone.
Stella was the key. I had to get her to spill the beans, as I said. I couldn’t just storm over there and start accusing her. That wouldn’t do. I needed Stella to admit it to me. I felt that was important. But to do that would require finesse and serious schmoozing on my part. I would have to ingratiate myself to Stella, pour the booze into her, and maybe even sleep with her again. The idea was repellent, but if I wanted something I had to give something.
I went back and lay on my bed, thinking, plotting, scheming.
The male animal is funny. I think, by that point, part of me was in love with the nameless red-haired woman from the video. I didn’t know who she was or where she’d come from, but I was infatuated. I suppose part of it was the old damsel-in-distress kind of thing, but much of it was that, like any other guy, an attractive woman snaps her fingers and I’m smitten. There was no getting around the fact that the woman was hot. I hate to even admit I was thinking that, but she was. Tall, leggy, firm-breasted, athletic. Her face was pretty, that red hair set off by those green eyes that made my heart beat hard in my chest. But that’s the male animal: we see a beautiful exterior and we assume the inside is just as flawless. How many men have learned to regret thinking with their glands and not their brains?
Well, smitten I was and with a woman I could never really have.
Not in any normal, natural sort of way that was.
I whiled away the rest of the day making my little plans, figuring out how I was going to handle it all. When Rachel came home, I put on a strong face so she wouldn’t guess at the turmoil brewing in me. I laid it on thick. I even told her I was going back to work in a couple days and that satisfied her. We had dinner together and watched some TV afterwards. When she went to bed, I stayed up. That cemented it all into place that I was just fine and everything was hunky-dory.
About an hour later, I turned in, too.
I had told Stella I would stop by, but I just didn’t trust myself to face her. Not yet. I figured I’d get a good night’s sleep and then put my plan into action the next day. It still wasn’t set in my mind, but I’d wing it and see what happened. If all else failed, there was always the video and she couldn’t deny that. If I showed that to the police along with Kurt’s letter, they’d have to do something.
I was emotionally and mentally exhausted. I think I went out soon as my head hit the pillow. Sometime afterwards, I dreamt of the woman. I saw her wearing a green string bikini that showed off her excellent body and made her emerald eyes shine and sparkle. She smiled and undid her top, exposing her breasts to me. Her nipples were large and hard, the areolas around them dark and enticing. I went over to her and she grasped my head and pushed my face between them. Her skin tasted sweet. I pulled first one nipple into my mouth, sucking on it, then the other. After a time, I pushed her onto her back and slid off her bikini bottom and took her shaven vulva in my mouth, eating her until she came. I had never known lust like I did in that dream. It felt like my cock would explode. When I entered her, I felt it with my whole body. I fucked her until she came and when she came a second time, so did I. It felt like my skin would melt. I emptied myself into her and then, as happens in dreams, I was still hard and I fucked her until she screamed with orgasm and then I came again.
The next thing I knew I was laying on my back and she was riding me and then that faded. She was sitting next to me, her back to me.
“There’s something I need,” she said. “I want you to help me.”
“I will,” I said.
“I want something, you need to get it for me.”
“Just tell me.”
She laughed then and the laughter was cold, metallic. “Good. I knew I could trust you…Vic.”
I came awake, sweating and shaking. Right away I smelled that awful dank stench in the room and I knew she was near. It smelled like rotting leaves and the green, mossy undersides of logs. I tried to control my breathing.
“Are…are you here?” I said.
There was no reply, but the sense that she was near grew stronger. The smell thickened in the air. It was palpable and suffocating, I could almost feel it settling over my skin like bog slime. I could hear her breathing in the shadows, a long, hollow, drawn-out respiration like she was breathing into a bag. I could hear her running her fingers through her hair and it sounded like it was next to me. My whole my body was drawn taut. My throat was dry. My skin was crawling. I reached out a shaking hand and I touched cool, smooth flesh. I slid my fingers down and I felt an engorged vulva, the juicing wet slit beneath. It was more than the feel of a sexually aroused woman, but something else…it was too wet, almost spongy beneath my fingers and I felt something soft and worming wriggle inside of it.
I cried out and pulled myself away.
Her breathing grew deeper and faster like she was on the verge of climax. Holding back a scream, I fumbled for my bedside lamp and clicked it on. It threw about as much light as you needed to read by, but not much more. The room was lit up with a subdued yellow glow that threw shadows against the walls.
There was nothing in bed with me.
But I could see, right next to me, the shape of a body pressed down into the mattress. It left a dirty gray stain behind. The smell was still in the room. I had kicked the sheets to the bottom of the bed and they were beginning to move. At the sight of this, I half-jumped and half-fell out of bed. There was something under the sheets, a rumpled form in motion. And not just it but the sheets themselves…they were sliding slowly up the bed, rustling. Then they began to rise up like something beneath was filling them. And as they did, I could see what I thought was a head and right where the face would have been, a watery stain began to spread out until the sheet clung to a hideous, grinning face and I could see it sucking in and out as the mouth inhaled and exhaled.
I was kneeling on the floor.
I hadn’t screamed, but I was shaking my head back and forth, just beyond myself with primal fear as the sheeted, grotesque form began to move in my direction, pulling itself forward with a spasmodic, sluglike locomotion. That’s when I screamed. When the sheeted form drew close and something under it reached for me.
Rachel was there right away.
She was half-asleep, her eyes still crusty. I told her I had a nightmare and I don’t think she believed that at all. It took me some time to convince her of it. When she left, I got dressed. I had to go see Stella.
42
When I got to Stella’s, the house was dark.
I shouldn’t have been surprised because it was like after three in the morning, yet I was suspicious. I went up to the front door and it was unlocked, which, as I’ve said before, was not something Stella would do. Not consciously. She was far too paranoid. Sucking in a deep breath, I said, “Stella? Are you here?”
There was no answer, just the sound of my voice being drawn deeper into the dreaming, dark immensity of the house itself. I went from room to room, turning on lights, calling for her, my voice getting weaker all the time until it was nonexistent. She wasn’t there and somehow, I knew she wouldn’t be. I went out the back door and stood on the patio, just looking off into the night. The door to the garage was open and I knew it was where I had to go, but I couldn’t seem to get myself to move.
Swallowing, I finally did.
I paused about three feet from the door, standing there in the shadows, looking at the rectangle of darker shadow that was the open door. I called out Stella’s name in a low, weak voice but there was no answer and I did not expect one.
I listened.
At first, I thought I was hearing things, but then I knew I wasn’t. In the garage, I could hear a subtle rustling sort of sound. The sound a sheet makes when it’s pulled from a bed. I was certain that the thing from my room was standing in there, waiting for me, the sheet covering it like a shroud.
I began to shake.
My eyes were wide and I couldn’t seem to blink. I could feel my guts unwinding like cold fingers were pulling on them, my muscles going slack and loose. I thought I would fold right up. That rustling sound grew louder. I could hear the sheet dragging as something moved closer to the doorway. I thought I could see it shifting in the grainy darkness. Gooseflesh broke out on my arms and along my spine.
“Are you here?” I heard my voice say.
Far in the distance, a dog barked. I could hear the night breeze whispering through the tree branches above me. I smelled that damp, moldy stink. I heard water dripping in the garage. There was no sink in there, no pipes…yet it continued to drip and drip like a leaky tap. The smell grew stronger and I was reminded of leaky foundations and mildew growing up the walls of cellars. It was pungent and nauseating. I heard that rustling noise again. Whatever was in there wasn’t going to come to me; it wanted me to come to it. That was part of it. Me offering myself to it was part of the game, part of the pattern, and I knew it.
I could feel chill air blowing out at me through the doorway.
“I’m coming in there,” I said.
Drip, drip, drip, went the water.
“I’m coming in now.”
Drip, drip.
“I’m coming in there and I don’t want to see you. Do you understand me?” I said in a cracking voice. “I don’t want you to be there.”
I waited. The dripping had stopped. And in the back of my mind I heard the voice from my dream say, Who am I you hold in your arms? It was so real it sounded like it was spoken into my ear. I think I let out a little cry.
“I’m coming in,” I said and moved through the doorway.
I heard the door of the GTO slam shut, the car rocking on its springs. No dome light came on. I reached for the light switch and clicked it on. I saw the car, a wet stain in front of the driver’s side door as if some waterlogged thing had been standing there. Stella was lying a few feet away. She was unconscious. She was naked. I could see her back. It was bruised with lash marks, some of which had bled.
“Oh, Stella,” I said.
I scooped her up in my arms and carried her outside, setting her on the grass. “Stella,” I said. “Stella…wake up. Can you hear me?”
She mumbled something, but she was completely out of it and I was scared for her. Scared for the abuse she was taking, the pound of flesh that thing was exacting from her. I wanted to despise her, to hate her, for what I had seen on that video, but in the end all I could feel was pity.
I left her there and went back into the garage.
There was music playing. It was coming from inside The Coffin. The radio was blasting in there and I could hear the song that played out all too clearly:
“Wait until I’ve won you,
And my love drops down upon you,
You can’t tell the difference after dark…”
It was that Alberta Hunter song and it sent chills up my spine. The light overhead began to flicker like the filament was going. I looked at the Goat. The windows were fogging up the way they might if somebody had been sitting in there a long time breathing or two lovers had been putting out a lot of heat. Within seconds, the windows were all fogged white. I knew whoever or whatever was in there was sitting in the driver’s seat, looking out at me because I could see the condensation of their breath whitening the window further.
Then a vertical slash was drawn down the inside of the window. Whoever was in there was writing on the fogged glass. It was slow but I saw what it said:
YEDIRB
That’s what it said. Incomprehensible gibberish. Then my brain started working again, and I knew. Whoever was in there was writing on the inside of the window so it was backwards to me. Not YEDIRB, but:
BRIDEY
It had now named itself and its name was Bridey.
As this realization sank in, the light continued to flicker overhead and I knew it was going to go out, as the lights had gone out in the cellar the night before when I grabbed the lockbox. I was scared, but I was curious, and maybe a little angry with my fear. I went over there and grabbed the door handle. It was cold as an ice cube tray. I yanked the door open and there was no one inside. No one at all. But it was freezing in there and I could see my breath. The radio was not playing. In fact, there was no key in the ignition. I looked, and the keys were still hanging from the nail.
The light shattered, and I got to the door just as it tried to close.
I got out, and it slammed shut behind me.
I scooped Stella up from the grass. She was limp and cool to the touch. I hoped Mrs. Canning from next door wasn’t watching out the window. It would have been a real scene: me carrying a naked Stella through the yard by moonlight. Anyway, I got her inside and into the downstairs bathroom. I set her on the pot and gently shook her awake. She came out of it a bit, but her eyes were still glazed and unfocused.
“Stella,” I said. “What were you doing out in the garage?”
“I wasn’t in the garage.”
“Stella, I found you lying out in the garage.”
“No.”
“Yes.” Her body was terribly scratched and bruised. I got out some Peroxide, soaked some cotton balls, and dabbed her wounds. “Who did this to you, Stella? Who cut you? Who beat you?”
“Vic,” she said.
“No, Stella. Vic is dead.”
She was out of it. I kept asking the same question and getting the same answer. Vic. Vic had done it. I explained to her over and over again that Vic was dead, but she wouldn’t accept it.
Finally, she said, “Part of him is still alive and you know it.”
“Stella…”
She fixed me with dark, smoldering eyes. “Part of him is still alive. In that car. Part of him still lives in there.”
After that, she got practically delirious. Nothing I said seemed to make any sense to her and everything she said was mumbling gibberish to me. She was half-asleep, worn thin, her eyes opening and closing. “The deep, dark woods,” she said again and again, making no sense whatsoever. “It’s so dark…so dark…all the little ones, under those dark trees.”
She started sobbing and I couldn’t get another word out of her. I helped her upstairs and into bed. I covered her and told her to get some sleep, that we had to have a talk in the morning. As I made to leave, she sat up.
“You’re not leaving, are you?”
“Yes.”
She started to sob again. “Please, Johnny. Don’t leave me alone. I’m scared.”
“What are you scared of, Stella?”
She shook her head. “Don’t leave me alone.”
“I’ll stay if you tell me what you’re scared of.”
“If you go…she’ll come again. She’ll come again and hurt me. She likes to hurt me.”
That’s all I could get out of her as she went on a crying jag. Though it was wrong and I knew it, I lay down in bed beside her and held onto her. I held her until she finally calmed and went to sleep. Sometime afterwards, around five, I drifted off, too. I don’t know how long I slept, but when I opened my eyes, Stella was at it again. She unzipped my pants and yanked them down. I could have stopped her, but I didn’t. She took me in her mouth and sucked on me until I came, her head bobbing up and down in the darkness. I sank back on my pillow and slept again.
I woke later and sunlight was coming in through the window. It was after eight. I pulled my pants up and went downstairs. Stella was sitting in her rocking chair. She had a drink in her hand and she was pretty buzzed up.
“Stella,” I said, sitting on the sofa across from her and lighting a cigarette.
She pulled off her drink, but she wouldn’t look at me. “I want you to leave, Johnny. I want you to leave and not come back. What’s between us isn’t right.”
