The Killings (2 page)

He had his way with the woman. The blade of his straight razor tore through her abdomen, making deep cuts within the viscera. As he cut, he seemed to go in a kind of trance, intoxicated by his bloodlust, seemingly possessed by some madness. He pulled her intestines out of her abdominal cavity and he orgasmed, coming all over the inside of his trousers. He panted harshly, cutting through the viscera of her bowels, the smell of blood and other bodily fluids heavy and musky.

When he was finished - it never took that long, a minute perhaps - he shifted his penis around, the sticky wetness of his spunk coating the crotch of his trousers. He always came when he was cutting them up. This time he got off quicker than he would have liked to. There were still things he wanted to do with her. He bent over her, his bloodlust rising. His knife flashed and dipped in, cutting deep.

It didn’t take long for him to get aroused again. His erection strained against his trousers. The heady aroma of her digestive system didn’t get him excited; this time, it was the look and feel of her viscera as he pulled it out of her abdominal cavity.

The heat of her insides wafted at him like a furnace. He took in another deep lungful of air, suppressed a shudder, and quickly got hold of himself. Not now. Not tonight. Once is enough.

Stopping was always the hard part. If he only had a place he could take them where he could have a bit more privacy. Inside his head, a malevolent presence urged him to sate his every perverse passion on the woman’s corpse. He called it
the Fury
- or that’s what it called itself. He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that its will was nearly irresistible. It knew all the buttons to push, which strings to pull. It knew all his secret, dirty, violent, evil lusts, and it encouraged them, stoked the fire with kerosene. It was his own little band leader, waving its hands and urging the percussion section behind his ribcage toward a frenzied Ragtime crescendo. The rhythm was wild, seductive. It would be so easy to give in to it now, to lie down and roll in the woman’s blood and entrails like a kitten with yarn.

He took several heaving breaths, trying to slow his pulse, quiet the Fury’s tempestuous rage. With great effort he managed to collect his wits and catch his breath. His clothes were filthy from the romp in the bushes. Blood drenched his black suit.

He looked over toward Duke Street, peering over the bushes. Deserted.

Turning back to the woman, who now lay lifeless before him, he scrambled to his feet and began weaving his way through the trees, toward the outskirts of town, which was probably where this woman had been going. He paused once to pull a clean handkerchief from his pocket and wipe the blood off his hands and face. He checked his clothes for blood. A great amount had soaked into his black slacks and his dark suit coat; this late at night, nobody would notice. Spots of blood had stained his shirt. He stuffed the bloodied handkerchief in his front pocket and pulled his suit coat together to cover the stains and continued on, forging his way through the trees. He’d been watching this area for months now, and there were quite a few chambermaids who lived in the neighborhood that bordered the other side of these woods. He could emerge out of the woods on that end of town, skirt the edges until he reached the center of town, and then be on his way.

Twenty minutes later he walked down Main Street with a calm and purposeful step, a look of contentment on his face. From a distance he looked just like any other young, proud Negro man who might be strolling home after a night on the town.

ONE

July 11, 1911, Atlanta, Georgia
 

It was a bad summer. Every Saturday there were more killings, and every Sunday the papers were filled with lurid reports of mutilation and murder. Journalists were delighted to have something interesting to write about. Their articles scared the Negro community into stunned silence, wondering if they were next. Parents didn’t let their kids play outside anymore, and women made sure to get home before dark. The churches were full of colored folks praying for the murderer’s capture and their own salvation.

Robert Jackson would have been there himself if he didn’t have to work this morning. He was planning on catching the afternoon service.

Robert wiped the sweat from his brow as he walked down Carson Street. He was twenty-three years old, tall, lean, and broad-shouldered. He favored dark slacks and white shirts on most days, especially during the summer. The hat he wore today was tan with a broad rim. He considered ducking into one of the saloons to get out of the sun for a little while, maybe have himself a beer, but drinking made him sleepy, and as the proprietor and sole employee of Jackson’s Barber Shop, he couldn’t afford to spend all morning drinking in a bar and show up late for work. He envied those who could. But mornings were always the busiest time of the day for him; that’s when all the business owners and professional Negroes came in to get their haircuts and shaves so they looked sharp for work. Friday afternoons and Sunday mornings were the busiest times. Friday was when all the gangsters, hustlers, musicians, and nightclub performers came in to get sharp before the speakeasies kicked into full-swing; and Sundays were when all the drunks, harlots, gamblers, and adulterers got themselves cleaned up for church to beg the sweet Lord for forgiveness from all the sinning they had done the night before.

The sun had not yet reached its full height in the sky but already the heat and sweltering humidity was so oppressive that Robert had trouble thinking about anything else. His mind was filled with thoughts of lemonade, iced tea, and the occasional indulgence of imagining himself walking down the street to Ms. Millie’s and buying some of the homemade ice cream she sold off her front porch.

The city always got mean in the summer. The heat brought out the worst in folks. Murders in August were not uncommon in Atlanta - people getting stabbed in bar fights, shot over back-alley card games, husbands killing their wives, wives killing their husbands. That was all normal. What had been going on recently was something different. It was bad and it was only getting worse.

Robert swallowed hard and cursed out loud as he flipped through the
Atlanta Constitution
. An elderly woman walking in the opposite direction, dressed for church in white pinstriped dress and black pillbox hat, winced at his outburst.

“God bless you, ma’am,” Robert said, tipping his hat. The old woman scowled back at him.

He managed a wan smile before returning to the article. Once again, the newspaper contained a report of another young colored woman murdered. Like the others, the victim had been raped, her throat cut. There was mention of some type of mutilation that was similar to the other victims; eleven victims so far by his count. Robert could only imagine what had been done to her, and his imagination was pretty good. It frightened him. He could see the faces of the victims, imagine the look and smell of the blood, the feel of the blade carving through living flesh so deep that it scored their vertebrae. He could see the look of terror and pain on the woman’s comely features as death sucked the living soul right out of her.

Robert closed his eyes and felt a shudder. The only thing he couldn’t imagine was what these women had felt as they succumbed to their attacker - the terrific agony of being slowly, viciously undone. What their last thoughts on this earth had been like … the regrets for things left not-yet-experienced and unachieved, the sense of profound loss, knowing they would never see their loved ones again, and then after, when they left this world. The after is what interested Robert and confounded him the most.
What did they experience once their heart stopped beating and their lungs ceased inhaling and exhaling? Did they feel anything? Was there a heaven or hell waiting for them, or just some great nothingness?

Robert went to church most Sundays, but he still wasn’t sure if he believed there was anything after this life. Jesus? Naked White angels playing harps, plus all the stuff you saw on stained-glass windows? He didn’t
dis
believe. He just wasn’t completely convinced. He wasn’t so sure that Jim Crow laws, the KKK, or colored women being slaughtered like hogs were all in the plan of a loving God, though he was certain the preacher would say just that during services this morning. (“The Lord works in mysterious ways!”)

Robert looked down at the photo of a woman’s silhouette, her body splayed with arms and legs akimbo beneath a white sheet. Sometimes he had his doubts.

In another article, a local judge insisted there was no such thing as a “Negro Jack the Ripper” in Atlanta and claimed that all the murders were the work of different men. He’d even made a comment about there being a thousand colored men in Atlanta right now who would slit their women’s throats given half a chance. Robert thought it was too bad the judge was an old White man and the Ripper only attacked Negro women. It was nice to imagine him finding out the truth the hard way.

This wasn’t a bunch of hysterical, ignorant, superstitious niggers running scared from their own shadow and seeing the boogeyman on every dark street corner. There was no doubt in Robert’s mind that there really was a killer or killers out there preying on young colored women. He didn’t know if it was a lone lunatic or the KKK or some other racist group, but he knew the streets weren’t safe any more and the cops were not going to help them. And Robert knew the latest Ripper victim, Sadie Hollis.

He had gone to grade school with her older brother, Freddy. She was a light-skinned girl with long wavy hair like a White woman and a loud boisterous nature that often got her into trouble. She was slender, with long skinny legs like a young colt. She drank a little too much and was rumored to have a few too many gentlemen friends, but Robert had always liked her. Now some lunatic had reduced Sadie to a black-and-white newspaper photo of meat, bone, and blood. Her throat had been cut from one ear to the other. She’d been nearly decapitated, according to the newspaper.

Girls Robert had known most of his life were being butchered and left for the maggots and cockroaches. He knew that if it was revealed that the Klan was behind these murders there would be trouble. Racial tensions in Atlanta were bad enough, but if the KKK was killing Negroes, it would get much, much worse. Not even the most docile, napkin-headed Uncle Toms would sit by and let White folks kidnap and murder their women without fighting back. Colored folks would riot in protest, and the White folks would respond with guns. There would be beatings, arrests, and lynchings. Robert’s stomach twisted. In the end, all their outrage would lead to was more dead Negroes.

On the next page was another article about “the Atlanta Ripper.” This one was trying to insinuate a connection between the killings here and the killings that happened in England more than twenty years ago, but Robert couldn’t imagine someone coming all the way from England just to cut up a bunch of poor Negroes. He couldn’t imagine anyone coming from across town for that unless some White girl had been raped and there was a lynching underway. The way Robert saw it, if someone was killing folks in this neighborhood, it was someone
from
this neighborhood. It was the only thing that made sense.

TWO

July 19, 2011, Atlanta, Georgia
 

Power.

The feeling was overwhelming. It was as consuming as the burning hatred, the rage, the lust to crush the bitch’s delicate neck bones to splinters, pulverize her esophagus, see her eyes fill with the realization of her death, hear her last strangled breath. Every muscle was filled with this - power.

A surge of murderous might emanated from the alien presence occupying space in Michael Carter’s brain - and it felt good. He called it
the fury
. He didn’t know how or why it had chosen him, but he was grateful for it. It had changed his life. It had turned him from the lonely geek who sat in his room all night reading comic books and horror novels, playing video games, and watching porn into a motherfucking monster, a killing machine, death on a goddamn spree! This demon, beast, poltergeist thing whispering terrible nothings in his amygdala had several lifetimes of horrible memories that it willingly, gleefully shared. And Michael had a few ideas of his own. He had been fantasizing about killing conceited cunts like this for as long as he could remember, but he never thought he’d do it, never thought he’d ever work up the nerve, but now ... now it was more than possible. It had become his newest hobby.

Adrenalin and endorphins flooded Michael’s brain. Power. It filled every molecule, burned inside him like gasoline firing in a combustion engine, a fucking muscle car engine like a Charger or a Mustang, a fucking Porsche. A Ferrari! That’s what he felt like. Like a Ferrari with a tank full of gas and the speedometer revving up to 200 mph. So much fucking power! Enough to break bones, pulverize muscle, snap ligaments, and tear tendons. It was enough to kill the half-breed bitch, snap her like a damn toothpick.

His legs trembled as he followed her. His hands shook. All the spit in his mouth dried up. His underwear felt uncomfortably tight as his erection swelled. He began to hum some silly tune he’d heard on some fast-food commercial. It was an old heavy metal song about a man who had to kill the woman he used to love. Michael didn’t know what the hell that had to do with hamburgers, but it seemed to fit the situation. He used to love women like this, but they only liked White boys and gangstas. Niggas like him weren’t good enough for them. He wasn’t some over-privileged White boy born with a silver spoon in his mouth who got his jollies slumming in the ghetto. He wasn’t some thug getting rich off the misery and degradation of his own people. He didn’t sell drugs, didn’t carry a gun, didn’t wear his pants hanging off his ass, didn’t have washboard abs covered in prison tattoos, and he didn’t have an Escalade with twenty-two inch rims, a platinum necklace, or a diamond-encrusted watch from Jacob the Jeweler. He couldn’t even rap. But he could kill. That he could do very well.