He had done all that his god had asked of him; he had caught his mother’s spirit again and again, had made her suffer in ways even he had not dreamed possible. He had made her beg and plead for her life countless times; he had repeatedly and pleasingly humiliated her. He had raped her again and again, and still she resisted coming to him and remaining as his permanent trophy. As he struggled to get the body above deck, he cursed, “If you had any character, any character at all, you’d have come to me long ago to end the suffering I must continue to bring down upon the innocent. Mother, you putrid bitch!” He had released the three bodies at once, sacrifices to his demon god, so he had truly expected better; he’d expected Her to come to him. But this was only followed by another day and night of being unable to fill the need that drove him. And now another day had passed in which he’d had no opportunity to kill, not anyone. His god counseled patience, that the right time and opportunity would present itself, and soon, but the frustration of doing nothing-of accomplishing nothing-was overwhelming, boxing him up, making him feel small and useless and helpless and irritable and memory-ridden, so much so that he’d begun to wonder if he had been foolish to cut loose three of the dead at once-one of which he hadn’t had the use of for very long at all. A deepening depression continued to enshroud Warren.
Still, there was meaning and reason to his rash act, since he was assured by the voice of the deity driving him-a twofold purpose, in fact. He would taunt authorities for proof of the sheer fact that he could, yes, but in addition, by releasing the rotting corpses of those he’d kept in limbo, he’d be forced to go after more, to harvest others, replace those lost… to seek a higher plane, a better union with the one power capable of returning Mother to him so that he might hurt Her for all eternity.
Substitutes were no longer enough.
It hadn’t been a completely conscious path he had followed to come to this plateau of understanding, no more so than had been the decision to release three victims of his insatiable need at once. In fact, he hardly recalled cutting the ropes, and he certainly didn’t recall deciding to leave the ropes dangling from the bodies, although he did recall leaving the rope attached to their hands and throats. Was it purposeful? Was it to give authorities a taste of the fox, so to speak? He knew the authorities wanted him so badly that they might do anything to stop him, but he did not believe them capable of learning about him, locating him or stopping him. In fact, releasing three bodies at once was a slap in their collective faces, the bloody bastards. Give them not one body to ponder but three at once. It was a stroke of irrepressible genius, if he could take credit for it; but no doubt the idea had been deposited by Tauto.
Now that the collective they had the FBI working the case, Warren-or some part of him, perhaps his Tauto, his god-had decided to be more playful, to exact a higher price from those who virtually allowed his ravagings to go on, to give them more to chew on and nightmare over. Three killings were better than one. The newspapers couldn’t ignore it. The TV cameras couldn’t ignore it. The world couldn’t ignore it.
But it seemed they had pretty much ignored it. They gave it a minute and twenty-nine seconds of airtime on Channel 3; the Herald positioned it on page two while turning page one over to the President’s arms embargo of a third-world country, a big trade agreement with Japan and the death of a local politician by suicide.
“ Well, screw the whole lot of them,” he told the empty expanse of ocean where he stood, Madeleine’s body fighting him, the gravity pull on it so powerful it felt like lead. For a moment, he wondered if the pull wasn’t from the hand of Mother, ever-teasing bitch that she was. He looked out over the side, saw the rushing wake and realized his ship was moving at quite a clip and that he must return his attention to the helm. Earlier he had set sail for the south to see where the winds of fortune and fate might take him. And now what had begun as a mild tropical wind had become a strong southeast tack that had tagged his T-cross, filling out her sails, the breath of his god speaking to him, telling him it was time to return to more southerly regions, cast his fate in another direction, see what might come of it. He was, after all, a free soul now.
“ Free of the past?” he asked himself as he struggled with the body, working it up and over the lip of the ship’s starboard side. “Not hardly… not until Mother comes for Hers,” he reminded himself, talking to the stiff body he continued to struggle to bring to the rail.
He’d readied to send the body over when it spoke to him. “You’ll never be free of me, Warren dear…” The weight and gravity pulled the body from his grasp, but Warren held on to it by a thread, by the single hook in its back. It dangled over the side precariously, trying to pull him into the depths with it.
“ Mother, you dirty, filthy, whoring bitch!” he shouted at the corpse, feeling the sting of a psychological imprisonment he’d endured all his life.
She just purred up at him from the well of the dead carcass, speaking in her cockney English brogue, “Not bloody likely you’ll ever be free of me, dearie… not yet, anyway…” The dead lips mouthed the words as Warren blinked back saltwater spray and tears and the ship bounced wildly against the increasing waves.
Perhaps, he thought, / won 7 ever be free… can 7 be free…
“ Not until you’re dead, dear,” the corpse said in his head.
“ Mother, it isssss you! It is you! Finally come…” He held insanely to the body with all his strength as it fought to find the water. He struggled as the ship lurched now against the sea, threatening to claim his mother, his hard- won prize. He held on to the corpse, cursing it. “Damn you, I’ve finally got you, and I’m holding on!”
He almost fell into the ocean with the corpse, but suddenly the hook around the spinal column held, despite the yielding, no-longer-devoted flesh, and Warren Tauman and Madeleine careened against the deck, flailing like two fish there beneath the rain that had begun to fall.
He screamed up at the heavens, cursing Mother over and over again, saying, “Ugly hag bitch! I’ve got you now! I’ve finally got you now!”
He lay on the deck, his forehead split open from the impact of the hard shell that had crashed into him. When he realized that he had won the battle, he began an uncontrollable laughing. The sea had turned against him, churning the ship now like a corkscrew in a whirlwind. He’d entered a storm, and rain continued to pelt him where he lay on the deck with Mother.
He went instantly to the controls below and corrected his course, set the ship on auto again and returned to the corpse on deck, where it was washing from side to side. He had to secure Mother. “You won’t get away from me so easily this time, Mother,” he told the body. He then lifted it and carried it back down into the cabin.
TEN
Thou has betrayed thy secret as a bird betrays her nest, by striving to conceal it.
“ Clever of you to get Dr. LeMonte here in so timely a fashion, Jess,” said Santiva. “How’d you manage it?”
Jessica Coran and Eriq Santiva sat opposite one another in a small and unhealthy little room which the MPD called their task force ready room. Surrounding Jessica, on every wall, were blowup photos of the Night Crawler’s victims and a gallery of other, up till now, only missing young women. Some, Jessica had mentally ruled out as simply missing persons, since they were obviously not of the type that he preferred. Blondes, raven-haired women and ordinary brunettes were not targeted, and this was likely why Judy Templar-more brunette than auburn or redheaded-was spared while her more auburn- haired friend Tammy was taken. In fact, the young victims seemed to bear a haunting similarity to Jessica as a younger woman; it was a disturbing similarity, one she’d kept to herself, one which no one else, apparently, had noticed.