Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 (30 page)

I bolted for the door, ankles rocking on shifting gravel.

The Pink Cave was Hollywood-set bright when, really, most of the merchandise screamed for shading. The walls were lined with various DVD titles in categories not often seen at your local Best Buy. Rentals clearly and well used, so despite the guilt from the Methodists, someone in Custer was enjoying a little visual … um … assistance. On the right, a half wall separated the cashier from the customers and a swinging door led to a dark hall, the sign above it blinked, “Booths.” But no one seemed to be manning the store.

The back wall was all about toys. Row upon row of dildos, vibrators, weird rubber sea anemones, things that looked like the spades you find on playing cards, some of them with long manes of hair protruding from the base. Mr. Kim roamed that aisle.

“Enjoying the selection?” I asked as I rounded the corner. “That was quite a show out there.”

He didn’t respond, instead just pointed at the floor. A pool of blood the size of a dinner plate was smeared in a grisly streak that ended abruptly at the wall of sex toys, as though it continued past it into some secret passageway. Not Wendy’s blood obviously—that would have dropped out like chocolate pudding. No. This was either Fishhook or Honey and the odds were not on the girl’s side. She might be right on the other side of …

A door?

“Good work, Sherlock. Now we just need to figure out how to get me back there.”

I ran my fingers across the wall, feeling for a crack or an indent, something that would give away the location of a door.

“I go through and see if I can help from other side.” Mr. Kim leaned into the wall leaving his hips and legs on my side.

I cringed, fearing the worst, and eked out a quiet, “Do you see anything?”

“Very dark. But, look like lever right here.” His hand poked back out of the wall and through a particularly heinous looking sex toy called the Oatmeal Scotchie. It was penis-shaped but its surface was mottled with a gray and beige oatmeal texture that looked suspiciously like vomit. The figure of a kilted bagpiper protruded from the base, pipes rigid and ready to stimulate some other area. The box read …

Oh. My. God.
¹⁵⁷

If this was the hidden lever, whoever had designed the secret door had made the perfect choice; I felt dirty just touching the box, which depicted the act in Technicolor detail, the model in full Scots regalia, bent over and gasping. But, it indeed unlatched the door and it swung into a cold, black tunnel—somewhat appropriate considering the method of its revelation— revealing the top half of Mr. Kim and the continuation of the blood streak.

“We going to need light.”

“True.” I scanned the store and in the “novelty” items section happened upon a “Fleshlight” but that didn’t seem to have anything to do with illumination. Behind the counter I found what I was looking for, matches and a box of candles. While not ideal, they’d have to do.

It was all so Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Pink Cave, except for all the granny porn and dildos shaped like farm animals, you really wouldn’t know the difference. I wished I’d been wearing tartan plaid and knee socks, maybe a soft cardigan. The candle was the topper and while the cave wasn’t particularly windy, it flickered as we made our way down a steep set of uneven stairs carved into the cave floor.

Mr. Kim floated ahead like the gentleman he was, scouting out crevices and sharp turns where the Cleavers
might be lurking with their claws of doom. I descended sideways, one step at a time. I couldn’t very well save the day with a broken hip, and despite revolving credit with the reapers, I didn’t relish the thought of physical deformity.

The blood trail thinned and the temperature dropped the further I climbed down. When the stairs became no more than foot holds, I was forced to break the heels off my shoes to keep moving. I freed my hands to balance, by holding the candle in my mouth and stretching my arms across to the craggy cave wall, suspending myself above the tightening shaft. The cave funneled downward, tightening with each step, as though we were dropping into some kind of tank.

“How much further down?” I called.

“Yards, maybe two.”

I couldn’t move much further. My arms felt like spaghetti from supporting my upper body, my legs were quivering, as well. I let the candle drop, praying it’d stay lit.

It did, illuminating a gravelly floor that seemed level enough. Just a few more feet and I could jump without hurting myself.

I pressed on.

Gripping the tiniest cracks with fingertips singing with pain and searching for juts of rock with my toes, I managed to get a little closer before losing my holds and dropping like a side of beef onto the stony floor, putting out the candle and plunging the space into darkness.

A searing pain wrenched through my back and I wondered if I’d be able to move, let alone continue searching for my friends. But Mr. Kim hovered over me, a gentle blue glow surrounding me.

“You okay?” he asked. “Not too bad hurt?”

I tried moving my arms, which although sore didn’t
seem to be broken. My legs worked, too. I must not have been that far off the ground, after all. Standing, tentatively, an awful crunching sound echoed through the space, followed by a wet sucking sound. One of my lungs had been punctured. When I looked down I could see a thin piece of bone protruding from my shirt, surrounded by a thick yellow and gray ooze. Zombie breath glowed white against Mr. Kim’s luminescence, snaking out of the hole moving back up the cave vent and dissipating. Despite the obvious horror of this, it didn’t feel too bad. The rib ached, sure, but had I been alive that lung would have kept me down.

I reached up and slid the rib back into place, cringing at the sloppy goo that dropped out in the process, but otherwise proud. A quick unbuttoning of my blouse and tying it off just under my chest seemed to do the trick.

“Yeah,” I told Mr. Kim. “I oughta be. Let’s go.”

The cave sloped back up toward a dim light; it reflected off pockets of crystals embedded in the walls and provided enough light to traverse the path without another cosmetic tragedy. As we reached the top, I crouched and peeked around a sharp turn where cave gave way to cavern. It spread out in nearly every direction to a level floor lit by strands of light bulbs. Stalactites or mites or whatever stretched from floor to ceiling in columns resembling streaked bacon.

In the center of the room, Honey was splayed across a raised platform, arms and legs akimbo. Next to her, a machine beeped and churned, tubes feeding it the girl’s blood. Mr. Kim sped forward into the room and hovered above the girl, weeping. His moans echoed through the cavern.

I caught a whiff of something fetid, dead and soiled.

“Mr. Kim!” Wendy’s voice hissed from somewhere.
But he disregarded it, fixated as he was on his sister’s prone form.

I started toward them, tripping over something soft in the dark, coming down on top of it on my knees.

“Oof,” someone groaned. “Get the fuck off me, you little bitch.”

It was only as the cursing began, I realized who it was I’d stumbled upon. I lurched backward. “Fishhook?”

“Who the hell do you think it is? You been following me, right?”

“Well, yeah. No need to make me feel stupid.” I reached into the band of my skirt and tugged out a candle and the matches. “What the fuck is goin’ on? This cave? Those people? Honey?” I struggled to light a match but the man’s hands covered mine extinguishing the only one to catch.

“You’ll show ’em where we’re at.”

“Where’s Wendy?”

“Down there … somewhere,” he whispered. “With them.”

There didn’t seem to be anyone around the pit, at all. No movement as far as I could tell, but still, it was certain that the family was lurking.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“They’re business people, that’s all they’ll say. But it’s what they sell … that’s the sick part.” He turned and took my chin between his fingers. “People. Blood.”

Everything came together in those words. People. Blood. The family was providing vampires with taps— convenient fresh blood at reasonable prices and right to your door. The mushrooms must keep the taps in line.

“They keep you drugged so you won’t resist,” I added.

“Yeah. It’s horrible.”

I thought of the men that Gil kept, men who’d willingly give up a pint for a night with my homeboy. It couldn’t be that bad.

“Aren’t you being a little dramatic?” I asked.

His mouth dropped open, snapped shut. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’re just like them. Monsters.”

“There’s just no talking to you when you’re like this.” Dismissing his words, I swiveled to get a better look at the table. “What are they doing to her?”

“Running tests, looking for rare blood parasites. They fancy themselves vintners. Specialists. Masters of their trade. Their clients pay millions for just one tap, and they expect the perfect bite.”

“Well, yeah. For a million, sure.”

His face pickled, disgust spreading across it.

“So why would they kill Becky and Tad?”

“Simple. Wrong blood type.”

“How would they know?”

“Those awful kids of theirs approach prospective taps and lure them back to the trailer. At least, that’s how it happened with me. While there, they slip you some black ones—mushrooms—and while you’re out they check your blood type. Too common and you’re out of the running. But you also know too much, so they kill you. Do you want to know how?”

I thought of the werewolf claws, the bodies. “No. I think I got it.”

“They must have found a gold mine in that little girl down there. Just like me. This is where I come. They picked me up off the highway in Denver—cold as hell as I remember it. The rest went all blurry after the mushrooms kicked in. You get addicted, you see?”

“Is that why you stole Tad’s truck?”

“The way I see it, that truck was in need of a new
owner. Plus, I had to get me some leverage. Tad must have been their dealer. I don’t know why it is they turned on him, but they did. Anyways, I got that stash hid away real good. They’re going to have to do business with me now.”

Just then, the boy, William, I guess, passed through the room, checked something on the machine and sauntered over to a fissure in the cavern wall.

“Sh,” I warned.

The boy was saying something to someone, but the distance was too great to figure out what. He punctuated his communication by spitting in the direction of the fissure. I had no doubt a loogie was dripping down Wendy’s face. He turned and bounded off in the direction he came.

“Let’s go.” Fishhook moved forward scrambling low over the rocks until he reached the level of the pit. I followed, darting toward the crack in the wall as I made the floor.

Wendy seethed with anger. Her face was, in fact, dripping with the boy’s spit.
¹⁵⁹
Her wrists were bound to a hook in the wall by what looked to be a man’s belt, but could likely have been some sadomasochistic shit from the back room of the Pink Cave.

“Oh thank God,” she said as I worked at the buckle. “I thought we were dead for sure.”

“Well Honey might still be, but you my dear are …” I loosened the strap and she wriggled her hands free. “Stinky as hell, but free.”

She threw her arms around me then and squeezed, sending shivers of pain throughout my chest, down my spine. Fucking everywhere. I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming.

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” She jumped up and down shaking my cracked rib all the more.

I pushed her away. “Knock it off, you’re fuckin’ killing me.” I opened my blouse and showed her the wound.

“Oh, sweetie.” She cocked her head, smiling. “That’s nothing a pitcher of martinis and twenty grand won’t fix.” And then her face changed. Shock spreading.

I turned in time to see Mrs. Cleaver pounding toward me with a claw raised over her head. I reached for the gun in the waistband of my skirt and felt nothing. It must have come loose in the fall, I thought, and ducked. The claw whizzed by slicing through several locks of hair, at least six inches long each. They floated down in front of me like a slow motion nightmare.

Oh no. Bitch didn’t just cut my hair.

Instead of standing, I dropped all the way to my hands and lunged forward, ratcheting open my jaws and chomped off the woman’s right leg at the knee. She teetered for a moment, a ghostly white pallor spreading across her skin, and then fell over onto her hip, screaming. Her wails echoed through the cracks and fissures, alerting the men. Wendy sprang for her, then, chewing through the woman’s neck, sending an arc of blood high in the air, and her head scooting across the cave floor. The silence was immediate.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the boy moving in the shadows, heard the scuffling of his feet. He was following the curve of the wall toward something. A glint of steel in the darkness.

A gun?

I decided I’d best beat him there and bolted, snatching his mother’s weapon from the ground. He started to run and we came on a small table set into a niche in the wall at about the same time. I slashed at
him and his arm went flying. He pivoted blinding me in arterial spray. The prick.