She opened them, the sting of blood prompting tears. Wimpy old nurse lady, mateless, over the hill. When they had spoken of her at all, it had been with sneers or innuendo. Now she’d gone over the edge.
A skilled hand reversed the cross of knobs, dropped to tug Bowser a few inches farther on, then found again a red knob. She was punching buttonholes deep into Bowser’s body, working her way toward his head as if she were making a human cribbage board.
And Peach was next.
She wanted to cry out, to scream for help.
But all sound had drained from her. Her body, an empty gourd, shook and shivered. Like a sudden blush below, her bladder released. The warmth became clammy and chill. The odor of undiluted urine invaded her nostrils.
Above, a new gush of blood fountained. A spurt of Bowser’s heartpump rained again across Peach’s face.
Bray felt like a mule tugged along by some crazed prospector, as twists and turns of backway were carved out of nothingness by the womanshape that impelled him on.
Winnie’s instincts were up.
Since they’d left the restroom victim, Bray had lost his sense of direction. For all he knew, they had reached China.
Winnie’s step did not falter.
“Are we getting closer?” he called out.
Her hand raised to wave him silent. Then he abruptly ran into her halted body. He clutched her as if he had meant to.
“Oaf,” she said. “Listen.”
Bray couldn’t hear anything but his own heart and the settling of ancient dust. Then he made it out: The faint whine of a buzzsaw, a gnat at his left ear.
Winnie said, “This way,” and again they were off, like Alice and the Red Queen trying furiously to stay in place.
He concentrated on staying near the receding rustle of Winnie’s dress. His eyes struggled to keep it in view.
Oddly, there in the oppressive confines of the backways they swept through, Bray’s thoughts turned less to the danger they were in and the corpses they had seen, than to Jonquil Brindisi.
It was almost as if the obscure grayness in front of them were a moving projection screen.
Upon it he saw the thick-lipped looker, the flaming redheaded instructress of the greater vices, sizing him up, sizing them both up, from their first meeting.
There she stood at the mike, keeping the kids from panicking. Her strength thrilled him, turned him on, setting off flares of worry at the thought of her accusatory finger suddenly pointed in their direction.
Generous breasts, earlobes to die for, a hot steely look in her eyes: He craved it all, the promise, speaking perhaps only in his mind, that this woman would be the perfect complement to his and Winnie’s love.
They stopped again.
The whine was louder.
Winnie’s mouth touched his ear. “We’ve got him!” The triumph, the high flush of arousal in her voice thrilled him. Then she took off again, hurtling faster, a great bird of prey swooping down the obscure passageway, drawing him along in her wake.
He loved Winnie. He loved her determination, her naivete, her shape and smell, the totality of her. If they survived this night, their life together would be glorious.
Another halt. This time, he nearly knocked her off her feet.
The high whine came louder still, edged this time with a scream, a piercing girl-sound. Then that was choked off and the whine ceased.
Dead silence descended upon the backways.
Winnie swore.
“We’ve lost him,” said Bray.
“Not yet,” she shot back, nearly sniffing the air to find their killer. “We’re almost on him.”
“He’s gone.”
She thrust her face into his. “Look, there’s no time for your bullshit, okay?”
No recrimination in her words. Just love and a forgiving, a statement of fact, a simple urging to follow her as she turned and flew off once more on sheer hunch.
Seconds later, an eternity later, Bray saw a flash over Winnie’s right shoulder.
It fluttered. A distant figure came through a panel. A moving smudge. He was headed straight for them! Then clearly no.
The closing panel sheered away the light and Bray saw the figure recede, something swinging from its right hand.
“Wait! Hey you! Stop!” Winnie shouted.
After the briefest of pauses-would he kill them?-the flat sound of running echoed along the backways. Their savior had no interest in chatting. Nor it seemed in confrontation. Not now, at any rate, while he and Winnie had the upper hand.
Bray saw a sickly white 654 above the panel as they passed it. “Shouldn’t we—” he began, but Winnie flew on, then jerked to a halt.
A muffled thud. No running sounds.
Another panel had shut.
They were alone in the backways.
He felt Winnie deflate. “He’s escaped.”
“No, he hasn’t,” protested Bray. “We can still catch him.” His body was suddenly in overdrive, straining to go on. “How many panels can there be up ahead?”
“I had the bastard.” She made a gesture, an expression of despair, her certainty gone. “Now he’s vanished.”
“Yeah but couldn’t we—”
“It’d be a waste of time. I’ll bet he wants us to do that. Then, while we’re mucking about looking for him, he’ll kill again. A few more victims.”
“Speaking of victims…”
“Yes,” said Winnie. “Let’s. He may have left a clue to his identity.”
They doubled back and found 654 again.
Bray found the catch and released it.
And the abattoir that had been a machine shop opened its vile red stench to them, an outrageous glimpse into hell.
In the school’s basement where they had gone to ground, Kyla looked upon the antics of Patrice and Fido with sheer disgust.
She could understand giddy. Hysterical was even in her purview. But throwing caution to the wind, acting like puppystruck schoolkids, shouting juvenile defiance at the walls? It drained the love right out of her, new as well as old.
For years, Patrice had felt like part of her, a hairy wen one accepted and even grew perversely fond of. It stunned Kyla how fleeting eternal love could be, how in one instant over something that seemed trivial, it could crumble, leaving you alone again in the ashes of solitude.
She was sitting crosslegged against a cheaply paneled wall. But the wall felt solid. You could sense- she could anyway-whether or not a wall was hollow. This one had no boobytrap, nothing to give the slasher an advantage.
Out on the concrete floor, Fido brandished his cleavers, Patrice her knives. They circled one another at a safe distance: Jack Spratt sparring with his wife.
“Quiet, you two,” said Kyla.
Again they ignored her.
Giggles.
High-pitched come-out-come-out-wherever-you-are’s.
Safe feints at mutual mayhem.
By God, Kyla wanted to slaughter them both. Impulse twitched in her hands, there where she clutched her own cutting tools.
All part of this evening’s madness, she thought. It would be easy to best them, to put her past behind her, to blame two more deaths on the janitor-who was futtermeat, surely, as soon as he showed his face.
“Me ’n’ Patrice are ready for you!” crowed Fido.
His skin, whose touch for the longest time she and Patrice had craved, seemed loathsome to her now. She despised as well the visual blat of his friendship lobe, an odd bit of flesh that last night she had dreamt of kissing.
Patrice’s knives danced like daggers of rain in the harsh light, a safe distance from Fido’s.
Few kids knew the school had a basement, let alone how to reach it. Fido had hit upon the idea of hiding here. He had convinced them it would be a swell idea, the slasher concentrating on the upper floors for his victims. Now Kyla had her doubts.
Their new beau was too damned cocksure.
Patrice had soaked up his confidence, going giddy in the head, her chubby figure twirling like a hippo in heat.