Queen Of Blood

CHAPTER EIGHT

The ground in the woods was still wet from the recent rains. The topsoil yielded easily to shovel blades. The going got rougher approximately a foot down, but between the two of them they were able to dig a grave of acceptable size in just over an hour.

Marcy tossed her shovel aside and climbed out of the hole. “That’s enough.”

Michael palmed sweat from his forehead and wiped his hand on his dirty jeans. More swollen droplets of sweat gathered at the ends of his eyebrows. “You won’t get any argument from me.” He threw his own shovel aside and followed Marcy out of the hole. He was breathing heavily, unused to such heavy physical exertion. “That’s, what? Maybe four feet deep?”

“It’s enough.” Marcy screwed the top off a water bottle and drank deeply from it. She’d changed into jeans and a Bella Morte T-shirt for the job and they were soaked from her exertions. But she felt good. It was a strange thing. A woman she intended to kill was tied to her bed back at the house. The dead body of one of her friends was in the same room. Her other friends were freaking out. She should be beside herself with panic. But she wasn’t. She was as calm as a monk in the midst of prayers.

Michael straightened and brushed more sweat from his forehead with the back of an arm. He was shirtless. Sweat glistened on his pale torso, the diffused early morning sunlight making him look like a ghost caught in its slanting rays. Marcy watched him and felt a stir of libido. He was slim and reasonably good-looking, at least compared to the rest of them. And he was smarter than the others. Too smart, maybe. Unlike the rest of them, he didn’t just accept her every pronouncement as gospel. But maybe she could bring him more firmly under her thumb if she fuc ked him.

He looked at her and frowned, seeing the glint in her eyes. He shifted his eyes away from her, studied some vague point in the middle distance. Marcy supposed he’d mistaken her expression for something other than ardor. Which was understandable. He was very afraid of her. They all were at this point.

Marcy moved closer to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Is there something you want to say to me, Michael? Something that worries you…”

Michael jerked at her touch. She could feel the tension thrumming through his body. “I just think this is a rotten idea.”

She squeezed his shoulder and moved another step closer. “You shouldn’t worry. Everything will be okay, I promise.”

He was shaking now. “No. I really don’t understand why we’re doing this. We should’ve called 911 last night. Or maybe just taken Sonia to the ER our selves.”

Marcy didn’t reply to this right away. She was too enthralled by the live-wire trembling of the boy’s body, which seemed to grow more pronounced by the moment. She moved her hand from his shoulder to the small of his back. Michael drew in a sharp, involuntary breath. Marcy leaned against him and slipped her other arm around his back. A small sound that might have been a whimper emerged from his mouth.

Marcy smiled. “Are you a virgin, Michael?”

The sound he produced this time was louder, somewhere between a moan and a whimper. “I’m…that’s…what’s that got to do with anything?”

He abruptly broke out of her embrace and stalked away to a point several feet away from her. He pointed a shaking finger at her. “We can’t do this. It’s wrong. Sonia deserves better than being buried in the fucking woods. We need to let someone know what happened to her. We don’t even have to tell the truth, Marcy. We’ll get rid of that bitch you had us grab first, dump her in this hole, and everyone will figure Sonia had some kind of hemorrhage.”

He lowered the accusing finger, but his eyes remained bright and glowering.

Marcy put a hand to her face, rubbed at her tired eyes with thumb and forefinger. A dull ache had flared behind her forehead. Her own rage was building, rising up within her like a black storm cloud. She fought to keep a grip on her emotions. Nothing good could come of a fight with Michael. Things were too precarious as they stood. On an objective level, she knew the course of action she’d chosen wasn’t a smart or rational one, but instinct had driven her down this path. This was the way she wanted things to be. The way she needed them to be. It felt like the first step down the road to her ultimate destiny (though she had no clue what that might be).

So fuck it.

Michael would not ruin this for her. No one would.

She lowered her hand and saw Michael still glaring at her. Her own expression hardened, the corners of her mouth curling slightly in a humorless smile. Michael’s brow furrowed. His eyes reflected fear.

Good.

She darted toward him, closing the distance between them before he could even consider retreat. She drove a fist into the softest part of his stomach, making him splutter and double over. She crashed the same fist against the side of his head and he pitched backward onto his ass, landing at the side of the open, empty grave. He instinctively sought to brace himself, but one of his grasping hands reached into the hole and offset his balance. He tumbled into the hole and landed with a thump at the bottom. Marcy picked up one of the shovels and moved to the edge of the hole. She turned the shovel around, holding it like a baseball bat while she waited for the boy to climb back out. She heard him sit up and groan. She tightened her grip on the handle.

Michael exhaled heavily and groaned again. “Jesus, Marcy…that was pretty fucking uncalled for. I’m only trying to make you see some goddamned sense.”

Marcy made her voice soft and placating. “I know. And I’m sorry. I got carried away. Now come up here so we can talk things out. Maybe you’re right about everything. Maybe I’m being overemotional and crazy about things.”

Michael grunted. “Ya think. Jesus, but I’m glad to hear you talking sense for a change. Okay, I’m coming up now.”

She heard him shifting position; then he got to his feet with a groan of effort. He blinked and frowned at the sight of Marcy holding the shovel. He remained perplexed as she lifted her arms and brought the shovel blade around. It was as if he simply couldn’t fathom the idea of Marcy doing this to him. Only at the last possible instant did it occur to him to lunge away from the arc of the blade. He almost made it, but the tip of the shovel blade clipped the side of his face and sent him spinning back down into the hole.

Marcy jumped in after him, planting a foot at either side of his prone form. Michael groaned and looked up at her through a mist of tears. He still couldn’t believe what was happening to him. The dumb bastard. Marcy adjusted her grip on the shovel handle, taking it by the base and holding it in front of her like a jackhammer. Michael squealed and tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go. The back of his head connected with moist earth and he stopped moving. His mouth opened to issue a last plea for mercy.

Then Marcy squatted and drove the shovel blade into his throat. A fountain of blood erupted around the dirty blade, and Marcy watched the gory cascade with a mixture of revulsion and fascination. Michael bucked beneath her and flailed at the shovel handle. He had to know he was doomed by now, but he was fighting her with everything he had. She leaned forward and used upper body leverage to drive the blade deeper into his throat. The grind of steel on bone made her stomach lurch, but she kept bearing down and finally Michael died.

She swallowed hard and let go of the shovel handle. Her heart was racing and her breathing was shallow. She stared at Michael’s very still face and tried to make herself feel something other than numbness. The strange positive buzz of before seemed to have at least temporarily deserted her. She stared into the boy’s unseeing eyes and tried to discern some hint of the human being he’d been, but whatever he’d possessed that had made him uniquely Michael was gone forever.

And she’d caused that. She was a killer. She thought about the bum in Overton Park the previous summer, recalling vividly the way he’d dropped and not moved after the second blow to his head with the heavy wine bottle. They’d taken his booze and pitiful handful of pocket change. Marcy remembered the way the dark blood had oozed from the gash at the back of his head to stain the grass beneath him. She was almost positive he hadn’t been breathing when they’d left him. There’d never been any verification of the homeless man’s death. But Marcy’s gut told her she’d become a murderer for the first time that summer evening.

This was different in so many meaningful ways. The old wino had been little more than a walking casualty anyway, a ruined shell of a man no one could possibly care about, as evidenced by the silence of the local media on the matter. It was as if he’d never existed at all. But she’d known Michael since childhood. Had watched him grow up and struggle to fit in before gravitating to her little clique of outcasts. She knew his likes and dislikes. His favorite bands and books. She knew each member of his family by name. In a way killing Michael was sort of like killing family.

She touched his face, stroked his cooling cheek. “I’m sorry this happened, Michael. If only you’d been quiet and fallen in line like the rest of them…” As she said the words, the vague sense of purpose—of destiny—she’d felt earlier reasserted itself. “I did what I had to do, damn you. Wherever you are now, I hope you know that. But I’m sorry anyway, okay?”

The dead boy said nothing.

Marcy got to her feet and hauled herself out of the hole.

Then she noticed for the first time that the front of her clothes was splattered with sticky, coagulating blood. There was more gore on her hands and arms. Shit, it was everywhere. She’d have a hell of a time explaining all that blood to everyone back at the house. Then there was the matter of Michael’s absence. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult to put two and two together.

Dammit!

Marcy flicked blood from her hands and shook her head in disgust. This was what she got for acting rashly and not thinking things through. But the burst of self-directed anger soon dissipated. She’d done this thing and there was no way she could take it back. She could only move forward and maybe devise a way out of this mess on the fly.

She spied the pile of freshly turned earth next to the grave and had an idea. She grabbed a shovel and dug into the pile, working feverishly to return the earth to the hole. She stopped when she reached the concealed layer of topsoil at the bottom, the damp earth that was nearly like mud. She knelt next to the diminished pile and scooped up handfuls of the dark soil. And she smeared the damp dirt across the front of her shirt. The mud blended nicely with the blood, effectively obscuring the gore without cleansing it, which would have to be good enough for now. She smeared more handfuls of mud over the front of her jeans. Using the remaining water from her bottle, she was able to remove most of the dried blood that clung to her forearms.

She would look more of a mess than she should, she supposed. As for Michael, she would tell the others he’d gone for a walk. The fiction should buy her some time, maybe enough to clean up and concoct a better story.

Satisfied that she’d done all she could do to cover up what had happened, she turned away from the half-filled grave and began the short trek out of the woods. She soon emerged through a line of trees and entered the large field behind her house. The field was overgrown with weeds and was dotted here and there with ancient, discarded farm equipment. Marcy trudged through the weeds toward the house, which sat on a hill a quarter mile away.

She and her sister had inherited the property a year ago, after their parents were killed when their Subaru stalled on some train tracks. They were drunk and messed up on some other stuff. As usual. With the radio blasting, maybe. And so they probably never heard the blaring horn of the locomotive that eventually plowed into them, crushing them like bugs in a can. Marcy initially had a vague notion about reviving the property as a farming enterprise. But she’d soon recognized the idea as foolhardy. She wasn’t up to all the work it would require anyway.

Most people would love to have a place of their own that was paid for, but Marcy mostly found it to be a pain in the ass. She was bad at remembering to pay things on time. And there was so much to remember. Property taxes, water bills, power bills, and miscellaneous upkeep expenses out the goddamned wazoo. She’d already squandered much of the money her parents had left behind, of which there’d not been very much, and there was no new money coming in. The prospect of having to get a job filled her with dread and made her want to bolt. She wondered if the crazy things that had happened since the summer—the murder of the bum, the abduction of the woman, and Michael’s slaying—were symptoms of some kind of self-destructive downward spiral. Then she thought about that some more and laughed. The laughter was manic, verging on hysterical.

She reached the rear door of the house and—as silently as possible—let herself into the empty kitchen.

She heard muffled but obviously agitated voices. The sound seemed to be coming from the living room. Moving as stealthily as possible, she crossed the kitchen and entered the hallway that led to her bedroom. She paused at the archway that led to the living room. The voices suddenly stilled. Not that it mattered. She’d heard enough to know they were talking about her. And not in a positive way.

She glanced in and smiled weakly at their apprehensive faces. “We’re about done. Michael’s gone for a walk, but he should be back shortly. I’m gonna get cleaned up and then we can talk everything out, okay?”

Ellen was sitting away from the others. She was on the floor in a corner of the room, her knees pulled up to her chest. Her eyes were full of tears when she looked at her sister. Then she frowned, noticing the mud on Marcy’s clothes. “Are you . . . okay?”

Marcy made her smile go brighter and nodded. “Yes. Absolutely. Cheer up, little girl. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

The smile fell off her face as she turned away from them and continued down the hallway. Her room was at the very end of the hallway. The door was still closed. No one—not even Marcy—had managed to work up the nerve to venture into the room again. And no wonder. The woman bound to her bed possessed some level of telekinetic or supernatural ability. Marcy experienced a chill as she recalled the way the woman had reached into her mind and temporarily shut down her motor control. She wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of being in the strange woman’s presence again. But there was just no way around it—she needed something in the room.

As she neared the door, she detected a stench emanating from the other side. The source, of course, was Sonia’s corpse, which remained exactly where it had fallen several hours earlier. Marcy paused at the door, her hand hovering shakily over the doorknob. She put her ear against the thin wood and listened for any indication that the woman was awake. She heard nothing at first, but then detected the low sound of very shallow breathing. Not giving herself a chance to think about it any further, Marcy gripped the doorknob and turned it, rushed into the room and closed the door behind her.

Her gaze went immediately to the woman tied to her bed. She was lying very still. Her head was turned to one side, a sheaf of jet-black hair falling across her face like a veil. Her chest rose and fell very slightly, and the softest of snores confirmed that she was asleep.

Marcy hurried to the dresser to the left of the bed. She knelt and opened the bottom drawer, brushing aside some puttering-around-the-house raggedy clothes to find the L-shaped lunk of metal concealed at the bottom. The 9mm Glock felt good in her hands, the molded plastic grip seeming to adhere to her flesh like a living thing. She stood up and looked at the sleeping woman. It would be so easy to kill her now and remove one big fucking problem once and for all.

But the others would hear the shot and freak. Maybe run.

She swallowed hard.

Just do it.

“Right.”

She went to the door and opened it smoothly, stepping back into the hallway with as much stealth as she could muster. She was midway to the living room archway when Michael’s cousin stepped into the hallway, saw her holding the gun, and opened his mouth wide.

Marcy raised the gun and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet hit his chest dead center. Redness like a rose petal stained the front of his shirt as his body was propelled backward. Marcy blanked all thought from her mind then. She hurried into the living room and saw that the other boys were on their feet. Two of them were standing near the sofa and screaming at her. The other one, an Asian kid named Kim, was edging toward the front door. Marcy swung the Glock in Kim’s direction and squeezed off two shots. One whizzed by him and punched through drywall. The second drilled a hole through the back of his head. Then she swung the gun back toward the remaining two boys, who were backing away from her now, their faces shiny with tears as they begged for their lives. Marcy squeezed the Glock’s trigger two more times and both boys fell dead to the floor.

Marcy’s ears rang from the boom of the gunshots. The air in the room was thick with the pungent stench of cordite. A long moment later she realized someone was screaming. Her eyes found Ellen, still huddled in the corner, her eyes wide and frightened. Next Marcy heard her hammering heart and a moment later the hard reality of what she’d just done crashed in on her. She’d killed all her friends. Oh, God. What little remained of her sanity was hanging by a thread. This thing she’d done made no sense on any obvious level. And yet there remained that sense of selfish righteousness, that she was doing only what destiny required, no matter how crazy it seemed.

She lowered the gun and went to her sister, knelt next to her and smoothed back her hair with a trembling hand. “I meant what I said, baby sister. Everything’s going to be okay. You’ll see. This…it had to be done. This was a…a cleansing. And maybe the beginning of something new for you and me.”

Ellen sniffled. “You…you’re not going to…kill me?”

Marcy felt something give inside her. She dropped the gun and drew Ellen into her arms as her own eyes filled with tears. “No, no, no, Ellen, don’t you ever think that. I could never hurt you. You’re my baby girl, my only family, and I love you more than anything.”

Ellen sagged against her sister and wailed like a baby for a time. Marcy held her and patted her back, allowing her as long as she needed. Her own tears dried up faster than she expected as her mind turned back to practicalities. They had no close neighbors, so she wasn’t worried about anyone reporting gunfire. Regardless, they were going to have to leave this place. At some point relatives of the dead would report their loved ones missing and sooner or later the law would come sniffing around. And there was no conceivable way to cover up this much carnage or explain away a bunch of missing friends known to spend most of their free time in her company.

Marcy gently eased out of her sister’s embrace and picked up the Glock. “We’re going to be leaving, Ellen. Going on the road.” Seeing that her sister wanted to protest, Marcy put some steel in her voice as she said, “We’re going and that’s that. It’s too late for regrets or second thoughts. We have to go on the run, get some place far away from here. Maybe Florida, way down in the Keys. Wouldn’t that be nice? If we get out of here within the next couple of hours, we might have as much as a day’s head start before the cops start looking for us.”

Ellen chewed on her lower lip and frowned. “But…I didn’t do any of this. Can’t I just stay?”

Marcy’s expression went slack. She stared coldly at her sister for a long moment. Then she put the Glock against Ellen’s temple and said, “You’re going with me. I love you, Ellen, but I can’t leave anyone behind. Do you understand that?”

Ellen was shaking again. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Look around you, Ellen,” Marcy snapped. She eased her finger off the trigger, but kept the Glock’s barrel pressed to Ellen’s head. “I really don’t want to hurt you. I do love you. But I’m not feeling very stable right now and you don’t want to upset me. Do you understand that?”

Ellen nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. I’ll go with you.”

“Just remember, sister, you put all this in motion when you came running to me with your sob story about the bitch attacking you in the bar.”

Ellen started crying again, her thin shoulders heaving beneath her black blouse.

Marcy lowered the Glock and stood up. “I’m sorry, Ellen, but that’s just the way it is. I need you to see that we’re in this together from the beginning to the very end. Do you see that?”

Ellen continued crying, but she managed a weak nod. “I do.”

“Good.” Marcy didn’t doubt Ellen’s sincerity. She was too scared to lie. “I’m going to take care of some loose ends and clean up. You’ll hear one more shot. You know what that will be.”

Ellen nodded again. “Yeah.”

“And while I’m busy, you’ll need to pack a bag for the road. Make sure to bring as many clothes changes as you can. And any hair care products you have. We’ll be wanting to cut and dye our hair wherever we stop tonight.”

“Okay.”

Marcy held out her free hand and Ellen slipped her own hand into it, allowing her older sister to haul her to her feet. “Come on.”

They walked hand-in-hand out of the living room and into the hallway. Marcy saw Ellen flinch at the sight of the first boy she’d shot. He apparently hadn’t died instantly. There was a trail of blood along the hallway carpet to the place where he’d ultimately expired, just a few feet shy of the kitchen archway. Marcy turned her sister away from the sight and led her in the opposite direction. She relinquished Ellen’s hand when they arrived at her bedroom. Ellen slipped into the room and began rummaging through her closet. Marcy watched her a moment longer. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t have shot Ellen. As sure as she could be given the way this insane day had developed. She did, however, feel a tremendous relief as she watched the younger girl make preparations for departure. An acquiescent Ellen would make the whole process so much smoother.

She turned away from Ellen’s door and continued down to her own bedroom. The door was standing open, as she’d left it. The black-haired woman was still asleep. Marcy drew in a steadying breath and entered the room. She was going to get this over with now. Put the gun to the cunt’s head and pull the trigger. But as she strode into the room she was immediately aware of something not right. The door swung shut behind her and Marcy spun about, raising the gun and applying pressure to the trigger. But her finger froze before squeezing off a shot.

Her mind reeled at the sight of the intruder, a shapely black woman in a slinky black dress. The woman was alive and smiling, but she looked like a walking corpse. Maggots wriggled from the corners of that hideous smile, falling onto the black dress and the bare tops of her bloated breasts.

Marcy took a step backward. “Holyjumpingjesusfuckingshit!”

The black woman laughed and more maggots tumbled out. “Yeah. About sums it up, I guess.”

Marcy’s hands were shaking. “Stay away from me!”

The black woman chuckled and took a step toward her. “I’m not afraid of you, Marcy.”

Marcy squeezed the Glock’s trigger. The gun boomed and the bullet punched a hole in the door behind the woman. The black woman didn’t flinch. She never stopped smiling. “I’m not afraid of you, Marcy,” she repeated. “And the reason for that, in case you haven’t already figured it out, is that I’m already dead.”

Marcy was shaking her head and moving backward again. The backs of her legs met the foot of the bed and she stopped. “No. That’s not possible.”

“Oh, it’s possible, all right, thanks to that bitch tied to your bed.”

Marcy frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

The black woman pried the gun from Marcy’s suddenly numb hands and tossed it on the bed. “I was her best friend back when I was alive. But then I died. Which should’ve been the end for me, but she conjured me back to…undeath, I guess you’d call it.”

Marcy was shaking. She turned her head away from the dead woman’s rancid breath. “This is insane. It can’t be happening.”

The black woman slapped her. “But it is. It’s real as a motherfuck. Hell, I’m getting more real by the goddamn minute. You didn’t see me last night, but I was here all the time.”

Marcy couldn’t deal with this. It felt like the very fabric of the world was unraveling. Soon she would go spiraling away into some unfathomable void. Which would kind of be okay at this point.

The black woman grinned again. “And speaking of insane, that was some wild display of batshit crazy you just put on, girl.”

Marcy felt bile rise in her throat. “I shouldn’t have done it. Any of it. Something’s really wrong with me.”

“Don’t you second-guess yourself, baby.” The black woman wrapped her arms around Marcy and pushed her rotting flesh against her. “You did what you had to do, and you know it. Hell, it’s the main reason I’ve decided not to kill you.”

Marcy shivered in the dead woman’s sickeningly intimate embrace. “What do you mean?”

The black woman laughed softly. “We’re all going on a very long trip together. Just us girls on the road. Won’t that be fun?”

“Where are we going?”

“To a bad place, Marcy. A very bad place.” She smiled in a way that might have been intended to reassure, but the effect was offset by the sight of more wriggling maggots. “But along the way we’re going to have big fun and see many wondrous things. You have my word on that.”

Marcy frowned. So much for an escape to a tropical paradise. She felt a vague instinct to fight against this, but she recognized the idea as futile and it quickly withered. And anyway, maybe this was the true unescapable destiny she’d sensed was waiting for her beyond this place. “So when are we leaving?”

The black woman’s smile widened. “Oh, soon. Now give me a kiss.”

Marcy sucked in a breath. Then the dead woman was kissing her.

Maggots fell into her mouth and slid down her throat.

Marcy closed her eyes and prayed for an end to the nightmare.