House of Skin

MEMOIRS OF THE TEMPLAR SOCIETY (4)

Stadtler, Grimes, and Zero were busy men. They pretended to be certain people during the day but at night they were something else entirely. In the passage of weeks since they’d drugged the girl and began their explorations of death, they had the blood of five women on their hands. The guilt was taking its toll on Grimes and Stadtler. Both were mere shadows of the men they’d been before striking this peculiar partnership with Zero. They rarely ate now. Even pot-bellied Grimes was beginning to look thin and Stadtler was a skeleton. They jumped at any sudden noise and saw the police everywhere. The study of death was destroying them both physically and psychologically.

Only Zero seemed to be enjoying himself by that point.

He hadn’t changed. Every fresh killing left him in a sort of euphoria that frightened the other men. He seemed to draw his strength from killing, taking life from death. He had become sort of a parasite who ran down like a clock in-between murders. The other two never saw him between meetings, they couldn’t know the listless, drained creature he became until he got his fix.

They met on their usual night and plotted.

“Back to work,” Zero said, sipping brandy.

Grimes said nothing.

“How many do you plan on killing?” Stadtler asked.

“You mean, of course, how many do we plan on killing?”

“Yeah, whatever.” Stadtler didn’t argue. Zero knew as well as he did that they were just dupes, that it was Zero who called the shots. He selected the victims, he oversaw their murders, and he did the actual cutting on their corpses. They were merely followers, little more than indentured servants who were in so deep by that point that they didn’t know how to get out and were terrified of what Zero would do to them if they tried.

Zero smiled. “We’ll dispose of as many as need be. Our study is just beginning. The science is the thing. The murders are a means to an end, nothing more. When we’ve learned all we can, we’ll be done with the dirty work.”

“We can’t hope to go on like this,” Grimes said.

“And why not? What will stop us?”

“The police for chrissake, Zero. Do you think they’re just ignoring the bodies they find?” Stadtler said, his voice nearly neurotic in tone. “There’s a hundred men if there’s one out there right now hunting us down.”

“They’ll never find us. Not if we use our brains.”

“I don’t know if I can do it again,” Grimes admitted.

Zero looked amused. “You two aren’t coming apart on me, are you? We struck a bargain.”

Neither spoke a word.

“What you need is diversion,” Zero advised in a genial tone. “Our subject upstairs is softening up nicely. She’s beginning to call out for her mother. It’s delicious.”

Grimes seemed to come to life. “Why don’t we toy with her a bit?”

“Not just yet. She’s not ready yet.”

“Soon?”

“Very. But tonight…”

“The streets?”

Zero grinned. “Yes, our study continues.”