Cold Dead Past Read online

  "And who do I have to thank for that," Frank asked. "Huh? A tub of lard who couldn’t find his own dick unless he used a mirror. If you weren’t so fat, we wouldn’t be having this little chat." He smashed the sandwich into Tommy’s face. Bits of tomato sticky with mayonnaise clung to his cheeks and lunch meat fell to the floor at his feet. Tommy began to blubber and jerked away just as Frank’s pale, cold fingers reached to poke his stomach. He ran for the kitchen and Frank followed him, laughing.

  Tommy was breathing hard when he reached the kitchen. He flipped the switch for the ceiling light and grabbed the handset of the princess phone mounted on the wall next to the refrigerator.

  As he dialed the number for the sheriff’s office, Frank entered and ripped the phone from the wall. Tommy backed away, still clutching the handset and dragging the rest of the phone across the floor in his wake.

  Frank grinned, his lips curling to show off more of his bloodstained teeth, and asked, "Now how could you call the police on an old friend? That’s not very nice."

  When Tommy bumped up against the counter, the phone dropped from his hand and hit the tile floor with a clickety-clatter of plastic. Suddenly, he remembered the carving knife he’d left on the counter behind him. Tommy began slowly moving down the counter, feeling for it with his hand behind his back, always keeping Frank in view. Frank came on, slowly, inexorably.

  "Especially when all I want to do is to talk about old times," continued Frank.

  Tommy noticed an odor beginning to permeate the room. It was like the smell of one of those old raccoons that had been run over by a truck and left in the road under the hot summer sun. Sickly sweet and foul. It radiated from Frank and seemed to fill every crack and crevice of the room. He was almost overcome by the stench by the time he found the knife and clenched it in his fist.

  Frank was standing directly in front of Tommy now and ran his hand through Tommy's hair. The short hairs on the back of his neck bristled and his scalp tingled as if he had grabbed hold of a live wire.

  "You did me a favor and I just want to repay you, that’s all," Frank went on.

  When Frank’s hand had reached the back of Tommy’s head, he grabbed a handful of hair and pulled his head back, exposing his neck, all flabby and with a sickly pallor in the fluorescent light.

  Tommy thought to himself that it was now or never. As Frank opened his mouth wide, exposing his blackened gums, he swung the hand holding the knife around and plunged the blade deep into Frank’s side. There was a hiss, as if gas were being released, and Frank’s mouth snapped shut. He gave Tommy a look of surprise and fell to the floor. His eyes were closed and he lay motionless. Tommy collapsed to his knees and kneeled over Frank's body.

  "I got you. I got you good." He settled back on his heels and wiped the back of his hand across his brow.

  Then, Frank's eyes snapped open and his sarcastic laughter filled the air. "Oh, gosh, that hurts. You got me good. I guess this is the end." He laughed louder as he clutched his hands over his heart.

  Tommy laughed hysterically through the tears rolling down his rosy cheeks. "Die, you bastard!"

  But Frank didn’t die; he just pulled the knife from his side. Small blood-colored worms slithered and squirmed around the edges of the wound as it sealed itself. His mouth knotted into a grin as he rose to his feet, holding the knife out to his side. Tommy kneeled there before him, on all fours, his sides heaving with every labored breath.

  "Huh-uh, buddy," Frank said. "Don’t you know you can’t keep a good man down?"

  Frank bent over and began plunging the knife into Tommy. There was the thwick-thwick-thwick of the knife slipping through Tommy's flesh. It sounded like someone punching a canvas bag full of pinto beans. The wounds cross-hatched his chest and gut; the fresh blood dyed his t-shirt crimson.

  The tiles that ran halfway up the kitchen wall were splattered with blood and gore that slid slowly down to the baseboards. Behind them, the bits left slimy, opaque red trails, as if someone had flung around the contents of a pot of strawberry jam. Tommy’s desperate screams were soon reduced to irregular heavy gulps of air as he lay face down with his cheek pressed tight against the floor. His blood pooled slick and gooey round his body.

  Frank had made a right mess of it. Fifty times he had struck at the corpulent torso, stopping just short of a death blow, for he needed a beating heart. It was only with an extreme act of will that he had stopped himself in mid-swing on the fifty-first stroke. His hatred of Tommy had been years deep and as cold as the waters in which he had drowned.

  He took a close look at the results of his fit of anger. The blood still surged from the wounds. The pupils still responded when he rolled Tommy over onto his back, exposing them to the light. Life. His animal instinct had grown stronger ever since Gene had brought him back from the other side.

  The heart was the seat of life, the anchor for the soul energy upon which he fed, through which he grew stronger, able to reach out to Jay. Jay was the whole point of this. But Frank wasn’t strong enough yet to get through to him when he was awake, when his mind was able to push him away with nary a second thought. He didn’t understand why.

  He had been able to overpower the minds of lower animals in their waking state, but they were simple and motivated by base drives; food, shelter, continuation of the species. He had seen it. Human beings were too complex, with thoughts that flickered up for a moment and then disappeared in a twinkling of an eye. These random thoughts were like razorwire, protecting them from his probes. But as he grew stronger with each kill, he was able to dig deeper, cutting away more and more of the defensive layers. It wouldn’t be long now before he could reach out to anyone, anywhere. Undeniable.

  But there was this unfinished business. Betrayal. Supposed friends who were no friends at all. They had left him here and moved on. It wasn’t fair. There were wrongs to right and it was this fire that drove him to kill. It was like an ache deep within that wouldn’t be cured by an aspirin.

  He enjoyed the killing, the taste of the warm blood on his own cold, bloodless lips. He savored the salty taste when he took his prey and the rush he got as he absorbed their essence. His adolescent mind couldn't grasp the idea of an orgasm, but he knew that what he was about to do made him feel good.

  Frank ripped open Tommy’s shirt under the gaze of his staring, glassy eyes. His fingers formed into a claw and he let the tips rest on Tommy’s chest for a moment in anticipation of the pleasure he would soon feel. Frank began pressing and kneading the flesh until it broke. Blood which had pooled in Tommy's chest cavity overflowed onto the floor as he dug in and his fingers wormed their way through muscle and under bone.

  Then, he felt his target. It pulsed unevenly against his fingertips as it kept up its efforts to supply nourishment to the extremities through mains broken in a half-dozen places by Frank's attack. His hand closed around it. It felt slick, warm, and silky. It felt like it was trying to wriggle away like a fish as he tightened his grip.

  Frank pulled the heart free of its enclosure, into the open air, still attached to the network of plumbing that nourished the cells. He ran his tongue slowly along his lips in anticipation and then leaned in to touch the meat with the tip of it. Immediately he felt that tingle that started where his tongue touched it and then slowly traveled in a wave to the ends of his toes.

  His body shivered as he gave the heart a tug, like he was picking an apple. Connections torn asunder, arteries and veins ripped, he held it to his mouth and sank his teeth into it. Frank felt a high voltage surge run through his body. His muscles tensed and released, normally inactive synapses fired, and all the hairs on his body stood at attention.

  With every bite, there was a new rush. When he had finished he threw his head back, filled with ecstasy and intense well-being. He didn't think that there was anyone living who could feel what he felt at that moment.

  The coveralls, torn and dirty, were now covered with crimson splotches; the pale skin of his face was sprinkled with bright red frec
kles. Smears of blood created the illusion of rosy cheeks. Frank loosened his grip on the knife and shrugged. He tossed it into the sink as he walked to the stove.

  He turned each of the burners up full, so that the room was filled with a loud, snake-like hiss. Then he walked over to Tommy's body and pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the one of the pants pockets.

  "You know," he said, as he took a cigarette from the pack and put it to his lips, "I did you a favor. These would have killed you, anyway."

  He cupped the lighter in his hands. It took several flicks of the touch wheel before it lit.

  CHAPTER 27

  Swanson was just putting the key into the lock on Gene’s cell door when a massive explosion shook the building, almost knocking him off his feet. The ceiling fixtures flickered and danced on the ends of their wires. Dust sifted from all the nooks and crannies, rained down like a fine mist. When the shock had passed, he released the grip he had taken on the bars to steady himself.

  "Holy shit!"

  He jammed his key clip back onto his belt and brushed the fine powder from his shoulders as he ran back to the front of the station. The office area was in total disarray. The deputy on duty at the night desk was dazed and files were scattered across the floor.

  Gary bolted from his office, pulling on his coat as he walked through the chaos. As he headed for the front door, he could see that the switchboard was lit up like a Christmas tree. A deputy, still clutching a donut, was bobbing about in front of the window.

  Gary grabbed him by the shoulder and ordered, "Get the fuck away from the window! And answer the damn phones!"

  "What do I say to them?" came back the nervous reply.

  "Just nothing about atom bombs and alien invasions."

  Gary could see through the cracked window that just a few blocks away, a fire with flames at least forty feet high was pouring black, sooty smoke into the air. Swanson stumbled out of the cell block. The powdering of dust and look of confusion on his face made him look like a mime.

  "What the hell was that?"

  "I don’t know," answered Gary, "You stay here and watch the prisoner while we go to check it out."

  Jay and Meg had been eating pizza down the block from the station and were standing outside the restaurant, looking in the direction of the bright, rosy glow that shone over the tops of the buildings in the next block. The column of smoke rose about one hundred feet into the air and then broke to the right as a high, light breeze drove it across Main Street.

  Gary drove by in his cruiser, red lights flashing. Jay stepped out into the street to hail him down. The sirens of other emergency vehicles could be heard in the distance, headed for the scene.

  Gary rolled down the window and Jay leaned in. "Hey, can I catch a ride?"

  Gary didn’t speak. He just shoved open the passenger door and waved him in. Jay barely had time to shut the door and settle into the seat before Gary peeled out with his siren on.

  They were almost sideswiped by a fire truck as they swerved through a turn at an intersection. Jay gave the door handle a tight squeeze, leaving deep impressions in the foam-backed vinyl upholstery.

  When they reached Tommy’s house, there were already some firemen on the scene running out hose lines. Bits and pieces of the house and its contents were spread across a four block area in yards, hanging from trees; windows of houses were broken for more than twice that distance. A couple of cars parked on the street directly in front of the house were engulfed in flames. A deputy who had been nearby when the explosion occurred was trying to put them out with an extinguisher.

  Gary pulled to a stop in front of what was left of the Lazaro house. The illumination from the fire made faces peering from behind curtains in nearby houses appear ghostly. For a moment, in the flickering shadows, Jay thought that he saw a familiar face. It happened so quickly that he couldn't even be certain of what he had seen. It certainly wouldn't have been a good idea to mention it to Gary, who had made his own views on the idea that Frank was somehow alive eminently clear.

  Bits and pieces of the house were still fluttering down out of the sky, like fiery snowflakes that turned into black blemishes as they landed, extinguishing themselves on the crusted surface of the snow. What seemed to be of most interest, though, to the gathered host was what looked like a Tiki torch that someone had planted in the middle of the front lawn.

  Jay and Gary stumbled up to it past the hose lines and over the frozen slush. Impaled on a broken broom handle were the burning remains of a human head. Next to it lay what they later discovered was the charred, headless body of Tommy Lazaro. The gawkers gathered around seemed mesmerized by the sight of it as it burned with a blue-yellow flame.

  They were snapped out of their collective trance when the jaw, hinges burnt away, dropped open as if to speak. It fell onto the snow with a hiss. Then, the skull itself cracked and popped, splitting open like a ripe melon.

  "Put it out," snarled Gary. Jay just turned away as one of the firemen kicked the grisly display into the snow.

  If there had ever been any remaining doubt in his mind about who had been behind the killings in Haddonfield, it had been eliminated by this last act. What he saw went far beyond just the need to kill for survival. Hauser… Lazaro… They were both there that day on the pond. There was rhyme and reason to events.

  Gene had been there that day, too. If Jay were right and everything was leading up to his being the main event, now, with Gene alone in his cell, would be the perfect opportunity for the brothers to settle accounts.

  CHAPTER 28

  In the jail’s cell block, reality ripped like the hem of a cheap dress. Pale, bony hands appeared at the break. They spread it wide, like a stage curtain, allowing a blinding golden light to fill the dingy cells.

  Gene, who had been sleeping in the darkness at the back of his cell was awakened by the light and walked to the bars. All he could make out was a vaguely human form, black and with arms outstretched before an artificial sun. Then the figure dropped its arms, the dazzling corona vanished, and Gene was blind.

  As his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the cellblock once again, he could make out the form of someone standing in the shadows, caught in the anemic glow of the fluorescent ceiling fixture. He recognized the greasy, pinstriped fabric of the leg of a pair of coveralls.

  With a bit of trepidation Gene spoke, "Frank?" The name sounded more like a raspy croak. He cleared his throat and said it again, louder. "Frank."

  Frank stepped forward into the light. For the briefest moment, he flickered and broke up like a bad television signal. When his image firmed up, it shimmered as if he were being projected onto a cloud of smoke.

  "Frank," asked Gene, wide-eyed, "How did you do that?"

  "Do what, brother?"

  "Just come outta nowheres like that."

  "Oh, there are a lot of things I can do. More than you can imagine, Gene," Frank said softly. "Watch this."

  His eyes turned black as obsidian. White wisps like the clouds of cream in a cup of coffee flowed and swirled across them. They were shark's eyes.

  Gene saw jet black veins rise under Frank's pearlescent skin and writhe like snakes. When Frank spread his arms wide, dark lesions appeared in the palms of his hands. Frank lifted a few feet from the floor. As he did a slow pirouette, a double helix of rosebuds fell in a chain from his hands. Their sweet scent filled the air.

  Then, he was hidden in a cloud of petals as the chains of blossoms running from his hands exploded. They transmogrified into lustrous golden bubbles that popped as they bounced off the floor and walls. Gene’s eyes widened and he went slack-jawed as he pressed up to the bars of his cell.

  This was the Frank that he knew, the one he had hoped to bring back. The Frank who loved him and told him stories to help him forget the bad things that their father did late at night when he came into their room and woke him from a deep sleep. Gene laughed and clapped his hands.

  Frank whirled to a stop, grinned, and p
ut a finger to his lips. "Shhhh."

  Gene had always been quick to do what his older brother had said and immediately went silent. He watched in wonderment as Frank slowly descended to a soft landing on the pads of his unshod feet.

  Frank learned early that he could stop Gene’s crying with the simplest of tricks. This was the opportunity for him to show off the new ones he had acquired since his brother had welcomed him back that chill night in the cellar.

  He lacked understanding then of what was expected of him. Gene’s thoughts were so vague. He was always that way, vapid and opaque, like an empty frosted glass. But as much as he enjoyed playing the fool for his little brother, he still had work to do.

  He didn't understand why he felt nothing about what he was to do. There should have been some twinge from somewhere deep inside that told him that what he had done and was about to do was wrong. Conscience and empathy were like dim memories. They were like the faded images he had of a birthday when he was four when he had gotten his first tricycle. He knew it was a pleasant experience, but it was so far in the past that instead of feeling that happiness he knew he must have felt, he just felt numb.

  "Did you like that, brother?" he asked.

  "Wow! Yeah, but, hey, can you get me out? They think that I killed all those people."

  Frank’s voice changed to a conspiratorial whisper. He swam through the air to stand in front of Gene, just out of his reach.

  "Did they find my room?"

  "No, Frank. I don’t think so. They were just looking through all the cabinets and drawers." Then, with hand out-stretched in the tone of a man desperate to get to the nearest urinal, he said, "Come on. Get me out of here."

  Frank sniffed the air and put a finger to his lips. "Hush," he said. "Now tell me. Did they find the book?" He could smell Gene's fear. Could he do that before? Before he went to the dark, dark place?