The Devil Next Door

10

An easy three blocks away from where Louis Shears was being introduced to the new postal system in Greenlawn, Tessler Avenue crossed Ash Street and right there, right at the bottom of the grassy hill where all the houses were whitewashed and the flowerbeds bloomed lushly with black-eyed susan and rose-pink spider lily, there was a store called Cal’s One-Stop. It was named after Bobby Calhoun, who had run it since just after World War II until his death six months ago. Cal’s was the sort of place to grab a six-pack or a gallon of milk or a pack of smokes, but not much else since everything was vastly overpriced.

When Angie Preen set out for Cal’s, tucking little Danny in the buggy, she did so not because she needed beer or milk or cigarettes or even paper plates or a bottle of ketchup. She had other reasons. None of which were altruistic.

She was going there to turn the screw, as she liked to call it.

And said screw just happened to be firmly lodged in Brandi Welch’s back.

And I’ll twist it in that little witch, God yes, I’ll make her squirm.

“We’re going to the store, Danny,” she announced. “We need some things.”

“We always need things, don’t we, Mommy?” said little Danny and for one uneasy moment there, Angie was almost certain that there was a deep salty rut of sarcasm behind his words. But that was silly. He was barely two-years old.

Paranoia, that’s what.

Besides, it was that time of the month and her flow was heavy. She was moody, quick to anger, ready to scratch out eyes for the least infraction. Some women, she knew, did not get crazy like she did when they were menstruating. Lucky them.

She looked down at Danny, struck, as always, at how much he looked like his father and how little he looked like her. He had his father’s smooth flawless Mediterranean skin and moody, chocolate-dark Sicilian eyes. As such, he was beautiful. Just like his father. Pleasing to behold. One could only hope that he was nothing like his father in every other way.

“I want a candy bar,” Danny said.

“Okay. We’ll get you a Mounds or a Three Musketeers or something.”

Danny seemed satisfied with that, then he furrowed his brow, said, “I want a gun.”

“Stop that!” Angie chided him, a bead of sweat popping at her temple.

“I want a gun so I can shoot people dead!”

Angie stopped the buggy right there, right on Tessler where the streets are handsomely lined with oak and yellow poplar. “Stop it, Danny. Don’t you let me hear you talk like that again. Only bad men shoot people. And bad men get thrown in cages for the rest of their lives. You don’t want that, do you?”

A tear in the corner of his eye, he shook his head.

God, she wondered if he was already becoming his father.

Jimmy Torrio. Angie had met him in Terra Haute. A week later she was sleeping with him and the transition between stranger and lover had been exceptionally smooth. But Jimmy Torrio was nothing if not smooth. He gave her Danny, who was beautiful and precious, but that’s the only thing he had given her.

Then why did you keep spreading your legs for him?

Ah, the question of the day, the year, the century. Why? She had a good job, she was from a good family, at least by Greenlawn standards. Jimmy was an asshole, he was selfish, he was corrupt. He had a criminal record that he had not revealed until she was in too deep to care. He was really good at nothing beyond drinking and gambling and mooching money. He was not even really very good in bed. Yet, Angie had stayed. At least until she’d found out that she was only one of many. Then she ran straight back to Greenlawn, a bun baking in the old oven, no money, and absolutely no self-respect.

Two years later, she was still obsessed by him. Maybe it was smoldering hate now, but they always said that hate was merely the flipside of love.

“Can I have two candy bars?” Danny asked.

“Of course you can,” Angie told him. Why not?

It was a beautiful day and Angie was thinking about Louis Shears who had just driven by, how he always smiled at her, how his eyes flashed like coins in a streambed and behind that look, just behind it, a touch of heat and a touch of interest. Louis was nice. Louis was funny. But he was also married to Michelle who was a very nice lady. So Angie would admire from afar. As always.

Across the street, she saw Dick Starling walk by. He was a very nice man. Everyone loved him. His daughter, Brittany, was on the archery team. Angie had won three state championships in archery when she was in high school and Dick Starling had been instrumental in getting her to take the job of archery coach. Angie hadn’t wanted to at first… but she finally submitted. Putting an arrow in a target was not only a great distraction from the stresses of life, it was sheer joy when you imagined that the target was in fact Jimmy Torrio. Bullseye every time, heh, heh.

She waved to Dick Starling… he did not wave back. He was gripping his head in his hands and staggering up the sidewalk like he had a good hangover going. Angie decided it was none of her business.

Cal’s was just up the block now.

Angie grinned.

Other than archery, tormenting Brandi was her only true joy in life.

Maybe I should use that bitch for target practice.

Danny’s birthday tomorrow. Maybe Jimmy was already in town. Sometimes he did that. He’s show up in Greenlawn, look up some of his old cronies and throw together a card game, indulge in a little whoring with cheap sluts like Little Miss Saucy Tits Brandi Welch. Asshole. He’d probably screwed the little witch last night. Maybe this morning. You could never tell, oh God in high Heaven, you could just never tell.

Angie pushed her buggy through the door of Cal’s.

There were maybe six or seven people in there, buying bread, examining the beer in the cooler, chit-chatting as people in Greenlawn will do.

Angie swept the store with acidic eyes.

Ha, there she was. Right behind the counter: Little Miss Saucy Tits. Look at them everyone, admire them, see how plump they are. Women, wouldn’t you just love to have a set like these and, men, wouldn’t you just love to squeeze them or bury your face in the sweet valley between, yummy-yummy.

At the sight of her, a slight headache bloomed in the back of Angie’s skull: it was sharp, insistent. It made her squeeze her eyes shut. And for the briefest of moments, it cast a dark shadow over her thoughts. A shadow that she instantly recognized with some fundamental half-submerged awareness that was ancient and misty. It crawled up from within her, breaking the sleep of reason.

Then it was gone.

Brandi looked up from her Soduku magazine, pencil pausing, saw Angie and tensed, God how she tensed.

Angie smiled at her, a lethal meat-eating smile.

Poor Little Miss Saucy Tits. Look how nervous she is. See how her breasts, so jutting and firm, have deflated somewhat. See how her liquid black eyes shift about nervously like those of a rat wary of the cat. She trembles. Her lips so full and pink and juicy are now pulled into a pale gray line of despair.

Poor little thing, Angie thought. It’s nothing truly personal, you know, but you shouldn’t have been fucking my ex. He comes to town maybe once a year and you fuck him and I know it and you know it and I’ll never let you forget it.

Angie lifted Danny from the buggy. “Go find yourself a candy bar,” she said, then turned her full hating attention on Brandi Welch who was already withering away like a flower before October’s first frost.

“I’d like a lottery ticket,” Angie said.

Brandi swallowed. “Um… which kind?”

“What kinds do you have?”

Hee, hee. Make her go through the whole list from Megamillions to the state drawings to instant scratch-offs like Pot-o’-Gold and Million-Gazillion and E-Z Street. It took her about five minutes to go through them all and tell Angie how much they cost and how much you could win, all the unnecessary details. And when she was finished, a fine dew of sweat on her brow, Angie said, “No, I’ve changed my mind.”

What Angie badly wanted to do was to read the little whoring witch right out in front of everyone. What a scene it would be with little Danny at her side! Just tell Little Miss Saucy Tits what she thought of her in plain terms. Refer to her openly as that part of the female anatomy that you generally reserved for the worst, evil little shrews, the old Cee-U-Next-Tuesday. Which was a word that Angie would not allow herself to say out loud or in mixed company because, dammit, she was from a good family and she was better than that… wasn’t she?

“I want some cigarettes.”

“Cigarettes?”

Angie flashed her the dead smile of a window dummy. “Yes, cigarettes.”

“I guess… I mean, I didn’t know you smoked.”

“Lots of things you don’t know, isn’t there?” Angie told her. “But trust me, Brandi, in time you’ll get to know all about me.”

Brandi swallowed. She recognized the implied threat and the tension was so thick on her you could have sliced it like cake. “What kind? What kind of cigarettes?”

“What kind do you have?”

Brandi sighed. “Listen, do we have to go through this every time?”

“Through what?”

“You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

“I only know that you’re being very rude to a customer.”

Danny, damn him, came running up and tossed two Almond Joys on the counter, breaking up the fun which had all the earmarks of being exceptional.

“Is there anything else?” Brandi asked her, a thin smile on her lips.

Angie, pissed-off, cheated, and trembling with barely-concealed rage, dug through her purse, clawed through it really, found her wallet… and it was at that precise moment that the little headache blooming in her skull like a corpse-orchid suddenly flowered and its petals filled her head and its fragrance consumed all that she was.

With moonstruck eyes, she looked from the purse to Brandi, recognizing neither or their place in the scheme of things. She made a guttural grunting sort of sound deep in her throat. Her fingers continued to dig in the purse, finding a wallet, a cosmetic bag, a cellphone, a box of crayons for Danny… things she no longer recognized or understood.

Then they found something else.

A box-cutter with a curving steel blade like that of a scimitar.

Angie had no memory of throwing it in there when she’d sliced open boxes for the recycling. She only knew that it felt good in her hand. It conformed to her palm and begged to be put to use.

“Um… are you all right?” Brandi asked, caught somewhere between confusion and fear.

Angie looked up at her, drool running from her mouth. Her eyes were fixed, staring, almost reptilian. She brought out the box cutter and slashed Brandi across the throat. Brandi stumbled back, shocked, stunned, overwhelmed. Blood bubbled from her torn voice box and she tried madly to stem it with her fingers. It squirted between them like a flow of rich red wine, catching Angie in the face.

The hot spray of blood was not unpleasant.

It was pleasing.

Angie came right over the counter. She slashed Brandi’s outstretched fingers to ribbons, she took the tip of her nose off, she opened one breast, and then she ripped the box-cutter across Brandi’s lovely dark liquid eyes, the hooked blade catching in the left pupil and yanking the bloody, glistening orb out by a section of optic nerve.

People fled the store.

But more disturbing, others did not.

When Angie came around the counter from the hacked, bleeding thing on the floor, two men and one woman stood there, smiling at her, staring at her with dark troglodyte eyes. Eyes that understood. One of the men, middle-aged and balding, stepped up behind her and slid his hands up her shirt, gripping her breasts roughly.

Angie liked it.

Her blue eyes were like crystal drowning pools, lips pulled away from teeth. The front of her pink tee was soaked with blood, crazy whorls of it had splashed over her face. She enjoyed the smell of it. It excited her, stirred primal memories of the hunt. She licked it off her lips.

The others following, she went back behind the counter. She dipped her finger’s into Brandi’s gored throat, swished them around in the wound, then, her fingers dripping with blood, she went over to the wall. She knocked a display of Hostess cakes out of the way, kicked aside a cardboard standee of Dale Earnhardt hawking Budweiser… and proceeded to draw on the wall in blood. Elaborate looping symbols, complex intersecting linear marks, bloody handprints and stick figures, repeating them again and again.

Using Brandi Welch’s corpse as their palette, the others joined her, covering the walls in ritualistic hieroglyphics that looked oddly like the cave paintings of Paleolithic man.

They instinctively knew what she was drawing and they followed suit until the wall was crowded with primitive art.

When Angie walked out of the store, the others followed in her rich, savage blood-wake. It was her scent now and it drew them to her.

And behind in the store, forgotten but unconcerned, Danny reached into the meat case and found a moist, well-marbled slab of sirloin. It dripped with blood. He brought it to his mouth.

Humming, he began to suck the juice from it…