Beneath the Bones (2 page)

Debbie wanted nothing more at that moment than to get-the-hell-out-NOW!

Adrenaline coursed through her system, jolting her memory. Her purse was right here, tucked underneath the sink, where she always put it. Moving with a liquid grace born of desperation and fueled by terror, Debbie spun her head around, knelt, snatched up her purse, straightened, and started running for the back door. Her new running shoes came in handy now, their rubber soles slap-slap-slapping as she ran, nicotine-coated lungs heaving, heart pounding loud as a bass drum in her ears. With all the noise her body was making, Debbie feared she wouldn’t be able to hear anyone approaching her from behind, and she tried not to think of all the knives she kept in the kitchen, and how very, very sharp they were.

It was only a dozen steps or so to the back door, but it felt like it took hours to reach. Her shoulder slammed into the door and she gripped the knob, twisted, but the door wouldn’t budge.

Christ oh Christ, he’s locked me in!
she thought wildly, and hot tears burst from the corners of her eyes. Then she remembered. Of course the back door was locked. She always kept it that way. She fumbled with the lock — a deadbolt — clicked it back, and threw the door open. She practically fell out onto the asphalt of the narrow alley behind the café, but she surged forward, stumble-stepping into the night, lurching and wobbling until she got her balance back. A single fluorescent bulb over the back door lit the alley, and the pool of light it created was too weak to do much to push back the darkness. Anyone could be out here waiting for her at either end of the alley beyond the edge of the light. One or a hundred, she wouldn’t see them until they started coming toward her, grinning as they anticipated the fun they were going to have with her.

Stop it!
she told herself.
Just get to the car. Everything will be okay if you can just get to the car!

Debbie ran to the end of the alley without encountering a single maniac, let alone a hundred, and continued around the side of the building. Her Ford was parked in front of the café, and she’d be safe once she reached it —
if
whoever had broken in was alone, and
if
they hadn’t turned around and rushed out the front to prevent her escape. As she rounded the corner, she looked toward the café’s entrance, saw no one running toward her, and let out a sob of relief. She reached into her purse for her keys, saw her car, and then stopped so fast her feet nearly skidded out from under her. Someone had spray-painted yellow symbols all over her car — a triangle bisected by a jagged line resembling a cartoonish bolt of lightning. Large, small, the symbols covered every inch of the vehicle, including the windows.

Debbie started shaking, and a small whimper escaped her throat. She dropped her keys and her purse, turned away from the car, and ran into the street, her whimper dying in the birth throes of an ear-piercing scream.

• • •

Across the street from the Caffeine Café, sitting in the dark doorway of Holloway’s Cards and Notions — so silent and still that he might have been merely one more shadow — Tyrone Gantz watched Debbie Coulter flee in terror. He made no move to help her: didn’t call out to ask what was wrong, didn’t rise to his feet and go to her aid. Indeed, the thought of doing anything more than sitting and watching didn’t even occur to him. Tyrone’s sole purpose in life was to bear witness, not interfere. It was his
raison d’être
, and he’d die before failing in his sacred duty. If necessary, he’d let Debbie die as well. Her loss would be a shame, but at least her death would be witnessed.

She was a heavy-set woman, well padded, though not obese, but she moved now with a litheness and speed that Tyrone wouldn’t have thought her capable of. Sheer terror was a powerful motivator, he supposed. Debbie ran north down the middle of Wilkerson Street, tears streaming down her pudgy cheeks, her screams punctuated by hitching sobs. When she reached the corner of Wilkerson and Fairfax, she turned and Tyrone lost sight of her, though her screams were still clearly audible. He turned his attention to the café.

A moment passed, then two, and a shadowy figure pushed open the front door and stepped outside. As the door swung shut, a piece of glass dislodged from the broken pane, tumbled to the ground, and shattered. The sound should’ve been nothing compared to Debbie’s shrill screams, but it seemed loud as a shotgun blast to Tyrone. The person who’d emerged from the café displayed no reaction: didn’t startle, didn’t so much as turn to look in the direction of the noise. A small thing, but it showed concentration, Tyrone thought. Or perhaps single-mindedness.

Tyrone had spent the better part of his adult life watching from the darkness, and his night vision had grown quite sharp over the decades. He squinted now, trying to make out the features of the person who’d terrorized Debbie Coulter so thoroughly. Perhaps it was due to the parking lot’s poor illumination, or perhaps Tyrone’s old eyes weren’t as strong as they used to be, but he was unable to discern more than the most rudimentary details: medium height, medium build, hooded sweatshirt, pants, running shoes … But nothing of the face. It was as if there
was
no face, only a pool of darkness where a face should be.

Before Tyrone could make out anything more, the shadowy figure sprinted off, running south on Wilkerson — opposite the direction Debbie had taken. The figure made no sound as it ran, no labored breathing, no shoes slapping on asphalt. It kept to the shadows, avoiding the blue-white glow of streetlights, and soon the apparition was gone, merged once more with the darkness that had birthed it.

Interesting
, Tyrone thought.

He continued to sit in Holloway’s doorway for the next thirty minutes, waiting for the sheriff to arrive. But after seeing no lights and hearing no sirens, he began to get bored. He stood up, stretched his stiff back, put his hands in the pockets of his treanchcoat to warm them against the autumn night’s chill, and started off down the sidewalk in search of something else to witness. He knew he’d find something soon.

This
was
Cross County, after all.

Ray killed the engine and turned off the lights. Grinning, he turned to face the girl sitting next to him, ready to use one of the smooth-ass lines he’d been practicing in his head all evening. Either,
There’s only one reason why anyone ever comes out to the old Deveraux Farm. You know it, I know it, so let’s get to it
, or,
You may be a Cross and I may be just a townie, but tonight let’s forget all that and just be a man and a woman
. But before he could speak, the girl sitting next to him said, “Let’s roll down the windows.”

It wasn’t a request. Crosses never asked. They told.

The girl began lowering the passenger side window, but Ray didn’t move. He didn’t give a damn who she was. He wasn’t about to take that attitude from any girl, no matter how sexy. The ‘78 Camaro was his pride and joy. Sure, it was old, needed a new paint job, and the engine knocked and rattled too much, but it was
his
. He was the captain of this ship, and he decided what to do and when to do it.

He wasn’t going to, but then he felt a pressure inside his skull, like a headache was coming on. Without thinking, he reached out, took hold of the handle, and rolled his window down. Not because
she
wanted him to, but because it was a beautiful evening. Cool, crisp night air, crickets chirping softly, nightbirds singing in the trees …

Yeah, right. You’re full of shit and you know it
.

Maybe so, but at least his headache, or whatever it was, was gone now. Besides, she was hot as hell, and — though he hated himself for feeling this way — the fact she was a Cross made her even hotter. The Crosses were royalty here in the county that bore their name, and it was every man’s ambition to lay one of their women, to “get crossed,” as they called it. Ray was nineteen, and he attended trade school, learning to be a welder. There was nothing particularly special about him, and though he wanted to “get crossed” as much as any other horny-ass son-of-a-bitch in the county, he’d never really thought he had a shot. Until tonight.

He still couldn’t believe his luck. He’d stopped in at the Burrito Bungalow after classes for a Coke and a taco-burrito combo, and
she
was there. He knew she was a Cross girl right away. Not because of her clothes — while she looked smokin’ hot in her blouse and shorts, they weren’t anything fancy or expensive — but because of the way she carried herself, as if she owned the world and the world damn well better know it. She’d been in line ahead of him, and he’d been checking out her ass and thinking about how there was no way in hell a girl like her would even look at him, let alone talk to him, when she turned around and asked if he had a light for a cigarette. He didn’t smoke, but she hadn’t seemed to hold that against him.

Soon after that, they were sitting down at a table outside and eating together. Well, he’d eaten. She’d just had a Diet Sprite. They made small-talk about how the high school football team would do this year, about the Harvest Festival coming up in a few weeks, and Ray was working up the nerve to ask her out, when she suggested they meet again at the Burrito Bungalow later that night and “go for a drive or something.”

So if she wanted the windows down, he’d put them down, grin as he did it, and say,
Thank you, Ma’am, may I have another?
if he had to. Putting up with a little attitude was a small price to pay for a chance at some prime Cross pussy.

Of course, if he
didn’t
get it …

She reached forward to turn the radio on, and Ray watched the fabric of her blouse stretch tight against her breasts as she moved. He could see the outline of her nipples, and he knew she was wearing a sheer bra. If she was wearing a bra at all.

Just being out here alone at night with a Cross girl had already gotten him half erect, and now his penis stiffened the rest of the way, straining painfully against the constraint of his too-tight jeans. But it was a
good
pain, oh yes it was.

She fiddled with the channel selector for a few seconds and stopped when a Black-Eyed Peas song came on. She glanced at his crotch then and smiled slyly.

Damn, girl! See something you like?

He wished he was bold enough to actually say stuff like that. Instead, he said, “So, you like hip-hop music, huh?”

Lame, lame, lame!

Her smile fell away, and she turned to look out the windshield. She shrugged. “It’s okay.”

Ray feared he’d said something wrong, but he couldn’t think of anything else to talk about, so he continued in the same vein, figuring it was better to be talking about
something
— no matter how stupid — than saying nothing at all.

“I like country mostly, but I’ll listen to just about anything. Long as it’s got a good beat, you know?”

Despite the coolness of the evening, the girl had shorts on. Short-shorts. She’d been sitting with her shapely legs crossed, but now she straightened then out, spread them apart a little, and Ray caught a glimpse of inner thigh. He wasn’t sure, but it looked like she wasn’t wearing any panties. This was too good to be true! No one was ever going to believe that he’d hooked up with a hottie like this, but so what?
He
knew it was happening, and that was all that mattered.

“So why the Farm?” he asked. He’d almost said,
Come here often?
but he’d corrected himself at the last moment. Wouldn’t be cool to imply she was a slut, even if it were true.
Especially
if. But he was genuinely curious. Parking here had been her idea, and while he’d have gladly driven to the lowest circle of Hell with her if it meant getting Crossed, the Devereux Farm did seem an odd choice of make-out spot for a high-class piece like her.

The girl looked out into the night. The Deveraux property was overgrown with weeds and tall grass, and a strand of trees partially blocked the view of the abandoned house and lopsided barn. Even if it wasn’t dark out, they wouldn’t have been able to see much of anything from here. Still, the girl stared wide-eyed through the windshield, as if the darkness was no impediment to her vision.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Guess because I’ve never been here before.” The words were casual, but her tone wasn’t. She sounded half-scared, half-thrilled.

Excellent! This was the reason lovers came here, after all: to get all good and shivery, to flirt with death a little and then flip the grim reaper the bird by performing the ultimate life-affirming act. And Ray — considering that his penis was throbbing in his pants like a bomb on the verge of exploding — was more than ready to perform. Time to make his move.

Like it was the most natural thing in the world, he reached over and put his arm around the girl’s shoulders. She stiffened at his touch, but quickly relaxed and scooted closer to him. She lay her head on his shoulder, and Ray, feeling like the biggest stud of all time for getting this far with a Cross girl, debated whether he should wait a few moments or make a grab for a tit now. He had just decided to go for the boob, when the girl said, “It’s so weird.”

Ray, with more than a little disappointment, decided it would be best to keep his hand to himself for the time being. “What is?”

“This place. It’s so peaceful. You’d never imagine in a million years that something so awful could happen here.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He didn’t really think about it much. He’d grown up hearing stories about Carl the Cutter, and while he knew they’d really happened, they were no more real to him than urban legends like Bloody Mary or the madman with the hook hand. Just another spooky legend to talk about around a Harvest Festival campfire.

The girl went on, her tone becoming increasingly dreamy as she spoke, almost as if she were becoming hypnotized by her own words. “He killed four people … that we know of. Kidnapped them, then killed them … way out here, where no one could hear their screams. They say when he was finished with his victims, he’d decorate them by carving a strange design on their bodies.” She paused, blinked a couple times, and when she turned to look at him, her voice had returned to normal. “Do you think that’s true, or just some bullshit somebody made up? About the designs, I mean.”