Brides Of The Impaler (8 page)

The shadow seemed starkly tapered. A woman wearing a floor-length dress? And the jet-black shadow of the head was just as peculiar: angled upward with triangles of some sort hanging down.

“All right,” he said with a stout voice. “I don’t know how you got in here, but you better leave the way you came, and I mean right now. I’ve already called the police on my cell phone…”

The shadow didn’t move.

What now? Retreat for a weapon, go back downstairs and call the police for real? It seemed the most sensible tactic, but…
That’s got to be a woman
, he reasoned. His muscles tensed when he tightened his fists.
Someone’s in my
house so I better take action
. Unfaltered by his nakedness, then, he stepped boldly into the room.

The shadow had jagged during his final steps, and disappeared. Immediately, Paul’s eyes darted out the window, and he exhaled long and hard.
Idiot
, he told himself. He could see the buildings across the alley, and higher up on one of the balconies a woman was watering plants. It had obviously been
her
shadow that had briefly played into the room.

All right. So much for that
.

He chuckled at the afterthought. For a split second, the shadow had reminded him of that of a nun.

He looked about the room, which was cluttered with boxes that the men had brought earlier. Cristina had opted to use this room for her studio instead of the den downstairs. Better light, she’d said.
What ever she wants
…Her work desks and computers were half set up now. A large drawing table and brace-frame sat in one corner, and on some walnut shelving she’d already arranged the figurines she’d created in the first two releases.

Cadaverettes
, he thought with a tight smile and,
Plastic
Surgery
Botchies
. Paul had fronted the production cost for the latter, the first line of figurines. It was about thirty grand, no big deal, and once they’d gotten a distributor, the line, however limited, had sold out.
That’s some bizarre
stuff, all right
, he thought, peering at the row of figures. The line’s motif was plastic-surgery disasters, the grim theme clashing with the “cuteness” of the figurines themselves, each about four inches high. They were little troll-like toys that each displayed some outrageous mistake of cosmetic augmentation, and had equally cute/macabre names, like Liposucked Lisa, for instance, a cute little
cherubic woman with a smile on her plastic face, naked with her arms out to highlight fleshy grooves up and down her legs, belly, and buttocks—grooves from a botched liposuction job. Botox Bonnie grinned below huge bright eyes, her lips and face lopsided from inept injections. There were others: Rhinoplasty Robin, Grafted Greta, Facelifted Felicia, etc., which all displayed the most outrageous malpractices of each procedure. Implanted Isobel was the most notable entry in the line: another curvaceous nude kewpie with one breast huge and the other empty. Amused, Paul shook his head.
How could Cristina even
THINK of things like this?

But it had been the Botchies that had gotten Cristina’s foot into the door of the market. After the line had sold out completely, a doll manufacturer by the name of Von Blanc Toys had offered Cristina a contract for her next line, Cadaverettes. Paul perused the second shelf where they all stood, a dozen of them, with names like Incinerated Ilsa, Over-Embalmed Oscar, Eviscerated Evan, Torso’d Trisha, Electrocuted Ellen, and the like.
Damn
, he thought, squinting.
They even look freakier in the moonlight
. Paul wasn’t into this cult-market at all, but he was all for supporting Cristina’s creative endeavors.
To each his
own…or hers
. Ultimately he realized that her creation of these macabre toys was an important outlet of release, or, as Cristina’s therapist had put it, “An all-too-crucial creative purgation of the emotional traumas of Cristina’s past.”

Paul knew all about that, and to this day, it made him furious.
Those goddamn Goldfarbs
…He swigged the rest of his drink.
All they got was twenty years. You fuck up kids
like they did you sure as shit should get life with no parole. I
wish to hell I’d been the prosecutor on that one
…

He let it go out of his head. It was all over anyway, and things were good.
So why dwell on it?
He found himself looking once more at the row of Cadaverettes and eventually
was chuckling at the grotesque whimsey.
Runover Rhonda,
Floater Frank, Crushed Cassandra, Headless Helen…And
lots of people BUY these things
, Paul realized.
But what the hell
do I expect her to do? Knit sweaters? She’s found a niche market
for these dolls—more power to her. And let’s not forget—she
made a SHITLOAD of money on these things last year
.

At least that’s how he tried to deal with it. Sometimes he’d get a snicker or two from some opposition attorney—“Hey, Paul, isn’t your girlfriend the one who makes those ridiculous dolls?” or “Man, that’s one morbid fiancée you got there, pal.”

To hell with them
, Paul always reasoned.

He was about to leave but caught himself snagged by something.

The shelves…

He didn’t seem to see several of the figures that were most memorable to him. Gutshot Glen, Hypothermia Harriet, and Leprosy Linda.

Hmm
, he thought.
I guess Cristina hasn’t put those up
yet
…

Jesus Christ. And yesterday I was complaining that nothing
ever happened in this precinct
…

Vernon was stupefied by what he stared up at in the Dumpster cove behind the brewing company on 76
^th
and Amsterdam. Alleys in New York tended to reek of urine but this one stank of hops and barley, the combination of which stung his eyes like CS gas. Beat cops were cordoning the perimeter while TSD techs snapped pictures that caused Vernon to wince.

“This is some shit, huh, Inspector?” a tech asked.

Vernon opened his mouth to respond but nothing came out. Instead, someone else said, “This is fuckin’ ghastly…”

And someone else: “Hell of a thing to have to look at at five in the morning.”

You got that right, buddy
.

Slouch shuffled up, his hair a mess from the sleep he’d just been jolted from. “You know, How, when you rang my phone a half hour ago, I was really pissed ’cos I thought sure it’d be another namby-pamby call.”

“This look namby-pamby to you?” Vernon asked, still stifled by the visual shock. “Looks like a hardcore psycho job to me.”

Slouch huffed the grimmest laugh. “I hope the M.E. gets here quick and gets the stiff out of here. Can you imagine what the papers are gonna do with this?”

“You don’t have to tell me. Maybe we can hold them off for a few days but eventually…”

Slouch nodded. “We’re gonna look like the Keystone Cops. I can see the headlines already. ‘Woman
Impaled
in Twentieth Precinct.’”

Vernon got dizzy from the words.

Impaled
, he thought.

The victim was a white female of indeterminate age. She’d been stripped naked, and then her body had been mounted upon a two-inch-thick wooden rod—six feet long and sharpened at one end. The rod ran completely through her body, from crotch to mouth, its point terminating at the roof of her mouth. Her clothes formed a small pile where the rod had been planted, and by now they were sodden with the blood that had poured down from the entrance wound. The woman looked starved, the insides of her elbows pocked with scabs. Yellowed eyes remained open in a death stare, the mouth open, too, an eternal gape that displayed the impaling rod’s sharpened point. When a Technical Services photographer snapped a picture from behind, the bright silvery flash stretched the crime’s shadow all the way down the alley.

“One dead junkie,” Slouch commented. “Must’ve been a snitch. Lately the dope gangs have been hanging them upside-down and gutting them, but this…”

“Definitely a new twist,” Vernon said. “Might be that new skag gang—Z-Mob, I think they’re called. Narcotics said their stoolies are scared shitless of them, a hardcore crew. We’ll have to check out those lines on the body. Probably a gang label.”

Slouch hadn’t noticed it initially but now he saw that the dead woman’s body had been crudely adorned with waving lines running down her entire body. The lines alternated in color. “Black, green, and red,” Slouch said. “Looks like magic marker, for Christ’s sake.”

“Not looks like—it
is
,” one of the techs informed. He
held up a sealed plastic baggie that contained one El Marko red magic marker.

Slouch sighed through a smile. “Let’s start praying to every god on the deity list that there’s a decent fingerprint on it.”

“Amen.”

Yeah
, Vernon thought, encouraged.
It’s got to be a gang
label
. Every so often they’d mark their turf with the bodies of sniffed-out in formants, just…not this elaborately.

Vernon finally yanked his gaze from the corpse. Amid the photographic flashes, at times he couldn’t see the pole, which made it look as though the woman were hanging in midair.

“Inspector?” one of the evidence men bid. “Back here. Something written on the body.”

Vernon walked around, part queasy, part curious. Across bony shoulder blades, someone had magic-marked:
SINGELE
LUI TRAIESTE.

“A foreign name?” someone guessed. Someone else: “Probably some new gang-speak. They make up their own words to throw off wiretaps.”

Vernon scribbled the odd words in his notebook. “Well. Looks like we get to do something we haven’t done in a while. Detective work.”

Slouch offered a lazy smile. “Right on.”

Vernon’s eyes played downward, where the rod had been planted in the ground.
Asphalt back here. There must
be a hole in the asphalt
, Vernon considered. “Hey, Sarge,” he asked one of the techs doing the initial workups. “Is it all right if I pull those bloody clothes off the bottom of the rod?”

The tech, ever blank-faced, passed Vernon a plastic evidence glove. He got down on one knee, and very carefully peeled the sodden clothes away.

Vernon stared.

“What the hell is that?” Slouch asked.

The evidence technician paused, then popped a brow. “Looks like a friggin’ Christmas tree stand.”

You’re in a hot grotto of some sort, or perhaps a medieval dungeon.
You smell niter and soil and you can see water bleeding
through walls of uneven bricks lit by wan firelight. The fire gently
crackles
…

And the woman raises the cup
…

She’s robust, beautiful, and nearly nude. The only clothing
she wears is hardly clothing at all but the black-
and-
white wimple
of a nun. She seems parched, her lambent skin glazed with
sweat, and the firelight lays moving squiggles on it, like faint
tongues of light. And the cup
—

Not a cup, really. It’s cereal-
bowl-
sized but of dull brown
clay. You can’t see what’s in it. The woman’s breasts jut as she
raises it high, as if in offering. Three gemstones mounted on the
bowl sparkle, one black, one green, one red
.

Behind her, the firelight on the wall…changes. Soon the
bricks are squirming with wavering lines of black, green, and
red, slowly writhing snakelike. When the nun lowers the bowl
just below her bare breasts, you see its contents: blood
.

At first you think the nun will drink the blood but she never
does. She simply holds the bowl low, so that you can look at it,
and then she speaks:

“Singele lui traieste…”

The accent-
tinged words echo about the chamber while her
flawless flesh shines with sweat. She holds the bowl like a prize.
Eventually her intonation is replied to, the gruff but fading
voice of a man, who says:

“Kanesae…”

The woman nearly swoons. Where did the male voice come
from? The woman—this obscene nun—seems to grin aside, to
a dark corner where the light barely reaches
.

The luminous black, green, and red lines behind her begin to
churn in a fury and then her eyes go wide and she turns her
head to gaze right through the mirage—

Right at you—

—and grins, showing two long, narrow, and very sharp
fangs
…

And that’s when you scream and—

—woke up in a lurch, a hand slapped to her chest.

“
Damn
it!” Cristina wheezed.

Darkness mottled the bedroom, but she could see the light of day leaking in from around the drapes.
That painin-
the-
butt dream again
…She gave herself a few moments to catch her breath. In spite of the room’s coolness, she felt slopped with sweat, her pillow and sheets beneath her soaked.
Everything’s going so well all of a sudden but then that
damn dream keeps coming back
…

She was used to it now, at least. The startlement always wore off quickly, leaving her more curious about it than anything.

The nun
, she thought.
With fangs
…

Just another weird dream—everyone had them—but why did this one plague her with such morbid features? Bowls of blood, cryptic lines of light on a dungeon wall, bizarre intonations.
Where does it comes from?
she wondered and sat up.

Same place THAT came from
, she realized next when she noticed her doodle-sketch of the Noxious Nun sitting on the nightstand.

The whimsily grinning fanged nun holding the bowl of blood…

But the glimpse enlivened her now. She couldn’t have been more excited about her next line of figurines.
I…
can’t…wait
…

Just a few days ago she felt terrified by the prospect of living in New York City, yet now, in an eyeblink, she felt
the reverse. Everything came together at once—it was almost uncanny. Her relationship, the house, the neighborhood, and her creative endeavors. The only sore spot was the weird dream.
Salvador Dali CRAVED weird dreams, he
even INVITED them,
she reminded herself,
because they fueled
his artistic visions. I’ll just have to do the same thing
.

The resolution made her feel ten times better. She was up in a moment, to drop the sheets and pillowcases in the washer, turn on the coffeepot, and then she hit the shower.
Much better
, she thought, toweling off. Her smile shined in the wall-length mirror, along with her nakedness. Then she blushed momentarily when she recalled her sexual acrobatics with Paul yesterday.

The best sex of my life
…

She dressed quickly in jeans and a T-shirt that replicated an abstract painting by de Kooning. The Tiffany clock on the living room mantel showed her it was past nine—Paul was long gone; he generally was in the office by eight.
Now it’s time for me to go to work, too
. She skipped upstairs and went directly to her studio. Her main computer she typically left on, and the first thing she did was look at the digital models for the first four characters of the
Evil Church Creepies
line. They glowed on the screen, revolving in three dimensions: first the Noxious Nun, then the Sickening Sunday School Teacher, the Corrupt Choir Boy, and the Demented Deaconess.
They’re beautiful
, she praised the images.
Now if Bruno’s company can only make
the actual dolls look just as good
…

Her muse assailed her; next thing she knew two hours had passed as she’d made some initial sketches for upcoming figurines and scanned them into the 3-D program. When her eyes began to hurt, she got up and stretched, recalling her and Paul’s ravening sex-play. It made her wonder about herself.
Every aspect of me is changing for the
good. Why?

It didn’t matter why. That’s what Britt would say. Her body and spirit were in a compatible place.

I’ve never really had that before, have I?

More satisfaction swept her as she gazed at the shelves on which her first two lines were displayed. But…

Wait a minute
…

She was certain she put them all out yesterday after the movers had left, yet three figurines from the Cadaverettes seemed to be missing.

Gutshot Glen, Hypothermia Harriet, Leprosy Linda.

I’m SURE I put them on the shelves yesterday
…

Or was she? There were still more boxes to unpack—perhaps the three dolls were in one.
Yeah, I guess so
, she thought and started searching. The task grew frustrating very quickly, however. She searched for a half hour but couldn’t find them.

From behind a hand touched her shoulder—

Cristina nearly screamed. “Holy—”

“Scared ya, didn’t I?” Britt said.

Cristina gawped. “Yes!”

“Sorry.” Britt gave a light laugh. “I dropped off some papers for Jess at the office, and Paul gave me a key. He asked me to pick up some letters he forgot to mail. Said they’re in the kitchen somewhere.”

Cristina’s pulse was just simmering down. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, Britt. I thought you were a burglar.”

Britt exaggerated her pose in a one-shoulder silk dress and white high heels. “Burglars don’t wear Yves Saint Laurent.”

“Yeah, I guess they don’t!”

Britt chuckled it off, then took to examining the studio. “So this is your workroom, huh?” She frowned out the back window. “Great view—of the alley.”

“The afternoon light’s perfect,” Cristina said, then rummaged through one more box, exasperated.

“Need help unpacking the rest?”

“No, thanks. It’s mostly just supplies left. But I can’t find three of my Cadaverettes.”

“Well tell what’s his name—Bruno—you need more. What’s the big deal?”

I guess she’s right
. “I probably just lost them,” she said, before giving up the search.
They’re just plastic dolls, and it’s
not like anyone could’ve stolen them
. “I’ve got coffee on downstairs—Costa Rican.”

“Yum. Let’s go.”

On their way down, Cristina asked, “Why didn’t Paul just call and tell
me
to mail the letters?”

“He thought you might be working, didn’t want to disturb you. I wish Jess was that considerate.”

Cristina smiled over her shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“Most of the time he’s like a caveman, especially when he wants sex. One time he came into my office at social services and had the gall to ask for a quickie.”

“What did you say?”

“Yes, but that’s beside the point.”

Cristina laughed. She poured coffee, then walked to the other end of the island table. “Here are the letters Paul was talking about. Don’t bother with it—I’ll mail them myself.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m going to go walk around town a little while, then do some more work in the studio.”

Britt’s high heels clipped across the floor as she browsed the kitchen and adjoining rooms. “Paul really did a terrific job with the place.”

“I know,” Cristina said, feeling a pang of negligence.
He
did everything
. “He spent a fortune, but I’m going to pay for the refurbishments upstairs.”

“That’s right. You’re Ms. Money Bags now.”

“Not for long if the new line flops,” Cristina guardedly remarked.