RADU-CHAPTER XIII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)

AUTHOR'S NOTE-This is my favorite Chapter so far (along with Seven, Eight, Ten, and Eleven)so I just decided to go ahead and post it now. I think from here on out I'm going to post one chapter a week, at the beginning of the week, and do other blog posts over the weekend. Feel free to comment-remember, this is basically a first draft. Once it's completed, I'll put the whole thing together from beginning to end as a final draft.

PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS:

PROLOGUE AND CHAPTERS I-X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

RADU-CHAPTER XIII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
(21 pages approximate)

Just when Grace needed an automobile almost more than she ever had, Grady came through for her. Sure, it was seven years old, but it ran good, was reasonably quiet, and got respectable mileage. She made certain the transmission was in good shape, as well as the brakes and tires, because where she was going, she knew she could not depend on Phelps’ old Chevy van. The 2000 Impala would not exactly have been her car of choice for a trip out into the Virginia countryside, but at least she knew it could get her there and hopefully back again, without being stuck in the mud, or forced off one of the long, narrow, winding roads in the hilly wooded area to where they were going.

Phelps offered to drive. In fact, he almost insisted, but Grace would have none of that. For one thing, her insurance only covered herself, and for another, she missed driving, more than she ever thought she would.

“This is bullshit, Grace”, he said. “I’ve had that van all over the place. I bet there ain’t a square mile of any part of West Virginia or Kentucky I haven’t taken it, with no problems. Can you think of any?”

“Well, it’s noisier than a locomotive, so it sure would be handy in case we wanted to be sure people heard us coming around the curves, I’ll give you that”, she replied. “That’s just it. I don’t want people to hear us coming-or going.”

“Why the hell not?” he demanded. “I thought you said this place we’re going is out in the middle of nowhere, at least ten miles from the nearest neighbor, and it was supposed to be deserted.”

“Not a living soul”, Grace replied.

“Then why all the worry about noise?” he persisted.

“We don’t want to disturb the cattle”, she replied. “It might curdle the milk”. She was starting to tire of his questions.

“Fine, if you don’t want to tell me, don’t then”, he said, feeling somewhat peevish now himself. “As long as I get paid, it doesn’t matter to me. I just don’t see what you think the Explorer would find so interesting about an old abandoned farm in Virginia.”

“If I tell you, will you shut up?’ she asked. When he agreed, she bit her lip, as she finally made the turn off the highway onto what was to be the first of many roads of increasingly narrowing widths. If she had her directions written down correctly, the fourth turnoff would be onto a gravel road. This would turn off onto yet one more paved road, which would be the last such one before turning off onto yet another gravel road, and finally, one that was mostly dirt, probably muddy in a good many places.

“I’m waiting”, he said.

“It’s a UFO landing strip”, she said.

“Fuck you, Grace”, he said. “If you get me out here in the middle of some kind of bullshit-“

“You bring your gun?” she asked.

“Yeah”, he said, but now his eyes expressed real worry in response to this question. It was getting dark, and by the time they made it to the first of the gravel roads, night had fallen completely. In all this time, they saw little traffic, but now, at the worse possible time, they found themselves behind an old dilapidated looking truck hauling a load of lumber. It would be next to impossible to pass him, and he was barely going thirty-five, if that.

“I’m tempted to use the motherfucker now”, Phelps said, his temper starting to manifest.

“Yeah, that would be brilliant”, Grace replied. “Cause him to skid off the road and maybe send all those fucking logs careening down around us and on top of us. Be sure you save a bullet for the next gas tanker that gets in our way, all right?”

Grace knew of course that Phelps was half joking, but it was the other half she was worried about. She remembered the time Phelps had been assigned to follow a politician who was engaged in a dalliance with a Baltimore socialite, and when the man approached Phelps’ van to confront him, the photographer actually pulled his gun on him. Had the politician typically not wanted publicity and the resultant scandal of his affair with a married woman that would have surely followed, both he and The Explorer would have gotten into an expensive legal battle. The Explorer would have survived, but Phelps might not have turned out so well.

Still, he was a hothead, and given to emotional displays of aggression, which was why it was next to impossible for him to secure employment in a more mainstream press position. All the same, he was good, and she could not have imagined making the trip with any other photographer or, for that matter, anybody else. She would have almost as soon made the trip by herself, in fact. No other reporter would even think about making a trip such as this with no idea what they were going for. That was in fact the whole problem. She could not afford to tell anybody.

Finally, the truck turned off onto a road, and out of their way.

“Whew, that’s a relief”, she said. “I was scared to death that fucker was going to end up in front of us the whole trip.”

“Fuck that, I was worried about those fucking logs”, he said. “The way they were stacked it wouldn’t have taken a lot to cause the entire load to come down around us. I’m not in that big a hurry to get there anyway.”

“Well, you might have changed your mind if he made the same turn-off we were heading for.”

“You mean we have another turn-off?’ he asked.

“Four more, to be exact”, she said.

“So how in the hell did it ever turn out with that one story you were investigating, the one about the old Priest?” Phelps asked after a number of minutes of silence.

“The old priest”, Grace repeated, as though trying to remember, though she knew full well what he was talking about.

“Yeah, you know, he was supposed to be a communist spy or something”, Phelps said.

“Turned out to be just a rumor”, she replied.

“You’re kidding”, he said. “You seemed pretty sure at the time. Didn’t some man accuse him of causing his father to be killed by Securitate agents from the Romanian embassy? Right outside their own house?”

“He was throwing a block party to celebrate the Romanian dictators’ death”, Grace replied, tiring of the questions and becoming slightly uncomfortable at Phelps’ persistence.

“Yeah, I remember that, right at Christmas a bunch of years ago”, the photographer continued.

“Not that one, this was years before that”, she replied. “You weren’t even born then. Neither was I. There was nothing to it. The Priest had nothing to do with it.”

They finally made the next turn-off, and Phelps noted with relief they were now back on a paved road.

“I still don’t see why we couldn’t have taken the van”, he said.

“Well, at the rate we’re going now, I’m guessing you will see why in about ten minutes.”

“So anyway, didn’t you say this Priest was responsible for a lot of people in Romania being arrested, that a lot of them just vanished?”

“A lot of people vanished in Romania, Phelps, they probably still do”, Grace said, starting to become ever more irritated at his persistence. “I should know, I’m one of them. Nothing is ever as cut-and-dried as it seems. Let’s just concentrate on the subject at hand, all right?”

“Hell, I would be glad to if I knew what the fucking subject at hand was”, he snapped. “Can we at least listen to some fucking music?”

“Sure”, Grace replied, “but none of that fucking fag shit you listen to”.

“Hey, I’m not gay, I don’t know what the fuck you’re implying”, Phelps said defensively.

“Well, I’ll put it this way”, Grace explained. “If you listen to an entire CD of Celine Dionne more than once and you’re a man, you’ve probably had more dick in your mouth or ass in a month than I’ll have in my whole life.”

“Ha ha, very funny”, he replied. “At least the music I listen to can’t be classified as psychotic.”

Grace now reached into the pocket of her jacket and extracted a CD, then instructed Phelps to put it in the player. He did so, warily noting the name on the cover.

“The Mocktones?” he said. “Who the hell are they? I’ve never heard of them.”

“They’re a death metal band, sort of”, she said. “There is one song in particular I want you to hear. It’s the fourth song on the disc. But I want you to listen to the first three as well, so just wait for it.”

The first song was just finishing up as they made the next turn, onto the narrowest road yet, one unpaved, though covered with gravel.

“That shit was awful”, Phelps said. “Who are those people? You are not going to review them, are you? If that’s the opening song on the CD you know the rest can’t be worth a fuck.”

“Well, unfortunately, like the roads ahead of us, the rest just get only worse, more or less”, she assured him.

“Then what’s so special about the fourth one?” he said. “I know it couldn’t be good, but is it at least just not quite so bad?”

“I want you to note the distinction between it and the rest”, Grace explained. “It’s quite interesting. By the way, reach into my pocket and find a piece of paper.”

Phelps did so as the discordant noise of the band became ever more unbearable. The song now playing was “You Slay Me, Dandelion”. It was by now about halfway through, having followed the earlier atrocity “Cromwell Heights”. He looked with a wary eye at the title of the third one, which would be the next one-“Hung Up Wet And Crucified Dry”. He would be ecstatically happy when they got to the fourth one. He noticed that it was listed as fourth on the handwritten page, and was both circled and, as if to make sure the person for whom it was intended got the point, double underlined as well.

“Are you sure this is the right one?” Phelps asked sarcastically. “He forgot to put exclamation marks after the title.”

“She forgot”, Grace replied. “Her name is Sierra Lawson. She’s the groups lead singer. She wrote some of the songs too, and co-wrote some of them.”

Phelps looked at the picture of the somewhat cute, twenty-ish something girl with the pink hairdo, easily the youngest of the group, all of whom seemed to be in their late twenties, though one bald guy with a nose ring seemed to easily be in his mid-thirties. At the same time, they were so freakish it was hard to tell with any degree of certainty. They were all pretty much a bunch of stoners or otherwise losers on a quick road to nowhere. They probably didn’t really take themselves seriously.

“Good, it finally stopped, thank God”, Phelps now observed as the second song stopped-and then started right back up again at an even more maddening tempo. By the time the third one finally started, he felt the title was quite appropriate.

“Well, at least the drummer ain’t too bad”, he said.

“That’s the older bald guy, he’s the brother of the guitarist, who’s the leader of the group”, Grace explained.

“Yeah, we’ll he’s fucking terrible, nothing but fucking power chords, the same three over and over, and out of tune and off tempo at that. Not one legitimate riff so far. God, why don’t somebody just shoot these guys and save the world from more misery? Do these guys really think they’re good?”

“I think it’s a hobby more than anything”, Grace explained.

“Then why bother to”-but before Phelps could finish his thought he was reminded of the presence of the groups bass player, who suddenly came in overly loud and, true to the groups signature sound, vaguely out of tune and tempo. “Holy shit, what the fuck was that?”

Prior to this, the bass player was so far into the background his notes barely registered, but now he blared out in all his glory.

“That does it”, he said. “That drummer is pretty fucking bad after all. I just realize he sounds good in comparison to the others. That fucking girl sounds sick, does she have a flu or laryngitis? I see now why we are coming out here in the middle of nowhere. You want to bury this shit somewhere where nobody will ever find it, right?”

“Just be patient, Phelps, the good part is coming here in just a couple of minutes”, she said. It was now also time for the next to the last turnoff, onto the last of the paved roads, yet still a road even more narrow, more curvy, and surrounded by more forested overgrowth than the previous ones.

As they continued, Phelps looked once more at the circled and double underlined title of the upcoming song in question-“Sweet Sixteen (Leaving Home)”. He noticed then that the song was listed as having been written by “Sierra Lawson and Debbie Leighton”. So, there was another chick involved with this atrocity. It was only then that he turned the paper over and saw the song lyrics copied out by hand, in a flowing style artistic script. Sierra Lawson had signed it, but even more interesting than that was an address, which was written down. In fact, it seemed to have been hurriedly scribbled.

P.O. Box 478 Route 7
Bedford Virginia

Ominously, there was a map, which Phelps noted seemed to coincide up until now with the route taken by Grace.

Then, the song started.

“Rest in pieces, mommy dearest
Burn in hell, daddy, fuck you
Let me carve my initials
On the hands with which you hit me
Let me drain your blood and
Drink
Slice my knife across your throat
Watch me laugh, your pride and joy
As she sends you to your death

“Holy shit, that’s’-oh, fucking God, that is actually. Hell, that’s actually quite fucking good”, Phelps said, more than a little surprised.

“Yes, it is, ain’t it?’ Grace agreed. “Too bad everything else on the CD is more like the shit that came before it.”

Phelps actually found himself struggling to refrain from singing the chorus.

“I’m coming home-sweet sixteen
Coming home-for the last time
Oh but it’s time to say
Goodbye forever
To sweet sixteen-she’s leaving home”

“Shit that guitar player is actually good in this song. Listen to that. What did he do, record this on two tracks?”

“Sierra is playing the lead on that”, Grace explained. “The rest of the band is actually inspired by her, it seems. You’re right, they’re quite good here. Listen to the words of the song. It’s about a teenage girl who murders her parents, evidently in a very brutal way and with the help of some friends. Then, they just leave them there alone-unburied, and unmourned.”

Suddenly, Phelps eyes widened with the dawn of realization.

“Ohhh, shit!” he said. “Grace what the fuck are you doing? If you know something, spill it.”

“Nothing to spill” Grace replied as she made the final turnoff onto what would be the final road. “I met Sierra Lawson at The Crypt and she handed me that CD, and that note. She did not ask me to review it, just listen to it. She gave me the note at the same time. If I’m right, it explains something else she told me.”

“And that would be?” Phelps asked warily.

“She asked me not to tell anyone that she talked to me”, she explained.

“So this is a true story”, Phelps observed, as the final song ended with a merging of discordant noises that some might even consider stylistically creative. There seemed to be voices talking and laughing, and as the song ended, a man’s voice mooed like a cow.

“That is exactly what I’m wondering”, Grace said. “I did a little research into the area where we’re headed. According to the last census, one of the families in this remote area is the Leightons. At the time of the census, they had a nine year old daughter by the name Debbie.”

“The song’s co-writer”, Phelps observed. “Grace this is some scary shit. Is this band involved somehow in-“

“No”, she replied. “I don’t think so, anyway. Like I said, this band is just a hobby to them, they are really quite ordinary people, though Goths, contradictory though that might sound. I think their connection with Sierra is more sexual than work or music. The band is just an excuse for a bunch of married guys to get high and fuck with a teenager. In that sense, she is more an object of pity, being used by older, more mature men. At least, that is what I thought when I first met her. Now, though, I’m not so sure.”

The song now finished, Phelps removed the CD from the player and replaced it in the cover. He carefully returned it to Grace’s jacket pocket. He was glad to put it away. He was almost wary of touching it, as though it were now a polluted object.

Soon, they passed the last house in silence as they continued on the increasingly narrow and muddy road for up to forty minutes. Suddenly, and inexplicably, Grace pulled off the road and into a field, past some bushes, until she angled the car between two large and overgrown blackberry bushes.

“What the hell are you pulling off in here for”? Phelps demanded.

“This is the Leighton’s property”, Grace explained. “The car will be alright here. No one will see it, or should. We can walk the rest of the way. It’s about twenty minutes, by my calculations. Be sure and bring the camera.”

Phelps extracted his equipment from the trunk of the car, as Grace surveyed the surrounding landscape, which seemed totally surrounded by trees and bushes.

“Holy shit, when you said we were out in the middle of nowhere you weren’t fucking kidding, were you?” Phelps asked.

“To tell you the truth, even I didn’t realize how remote this place was”, Grace replied as they started walking a path that lead at first into a small clearing completely surrounded by thickets.

“Perfect place to hide a dead body or two”, she continued as they surveyed the thorn covered bushes.

“Shit, why bother?” he asked. “You could put them on a rooftop and nobody would ever find them here. Not that I want to find out.”

“You want this trip to be worthwhile don’t you”? Grace asked. She finally settled on a tentative path out of their surroundings.

“I didn’t ask you to come out here with your camera to have pictures for your scrapbook”, she continued. “Let’s try this way.”

After about seven feet, they finally cleared the bushes, but Grace cursed when she realized her windbreaker had been slightly torn on a particularly stubborn set of bushes.

“I’m glad I didn’t drop anything in that shit”, Phelps remarked. “It would probably be lost forever.”

“I’m sure that’s the worse of it”, Grace said, but Phelps was more focused on the many unnerving sounds of the surrounding forest.

“I think there’s something following us”, he said. “What kind of varmints are out here anyway? Wolves? Coyotes? Bears?”

Grace now thought she heard the sound of footfalls, slight ones, as though whatever it might be stalked them cautiously.

“Let’s hope its coyotes”, she said. “They’re not quite as dangerous to two adults. Just make sure you keep your gun at the ready.”

“Yeah, I’m supposed to lug all this shit and still be able to draw, aim, and accurately fire a gun in the space of two or three seconds”, he observed as they hastened their pace toward a larger clearing. “Who the hell do you think I am, Billy The Kid?”

“Who is that?” Grace asked.

“Never mind, Grace, let’s just hurry, alright? On top of everything else it’s cold out here”.

As they continued on, they came across a barbed wire fence that was down and, judging by the height of the weeds grown up around where the top lay almost to the ground, it had been down for some time. Grace pointed a flashlight over toward the area on the other side of the downed fence, and noted the horrific site of a long dead cow that looked as though fed upon by wild animals. At the sound of tromping through the grass, she pointed the light to see two other cows, both of them looking to be underfed and badly malnourished. One of them mooed pitifully, while the other seemed to barely be able to stand. A recently dead calf lay at its feet.

“I think curdled milk is the least of the worries here”, Phelps observed. He found himself profoundly moved at the saddening site.

“I think this settles the question of whether the people here are alive or dead”, Grace observed. “No responsible farmer would allow their farm and livestock to degenerate to such deplorable conditions as these.”

At that moment, they both reacted to the sound of growling, which sounded as though it came from no more than twenty feet from where they stood. Almost as though in response, Grace noted the sound of an automobile up in the distance. She then saw that Phelps had taken out his gun.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “You can’t fire that gun. You will give us away for sure.”

“I can’t stand to see them suffer like that”, he said. “Those wolves, or coyotes, or whatever they are-”

“Phelps, those cattle are beyond help”, she explained. “Letting them be torn by wolves would be more merciful than letting them continue starving while being gnawed by vermin. What do you think you are going to do anyway, kill every wolf that lunges at them? Or us? The longer we stand here the longer we risk the wolves seeing us as competitors. Besides, a car just pulled up somewhere.”

She started to move on, and soon came to the edge of the forest, and the clearing that lead the way to the old dilapidated looking farmhouse. Grace noted immediately that the house looked to be in need of a new paint job, to say nothing of a new roof. More importantly, she noted the presence of the Saturn that had just pulled into the driveway of the house, beside what appeared to be a 96 New Yorker.

A man climbed out of the Saturn, and looked at the New Yorker curiously. He seemed to be carrying some object which he pointed in different directions, as he slowly turned in a circle. Grace retrieved a set of binoculars and trained them on the figure of the average height though heavyset man, and saw then that he also seemed to be carrying a gun.

She looked back, but Phelps had lagged behind. She was growing agitated at him, for she could not address him loudly, she feared, without the man hearing her. Therefore, she picked up a rock and lugged it at him. He jumped in reaction, and almost dropped his camera. When he saw it was her, she waved him over. He had been pissing, in fact, so he hurriedly zipped up his fly and proceeded to join her.

“Keep your mind on business, Phelps”, she hissed in a whisper. “See that man there? He has a gun. Get his picture.”

Phelps trained his lens on the man, about one hundred yards in the distance, as the individual in question proceeded somewhat cautiously up the front porch steps of the house, from which a lone light shined from the back. Suddenly, Phelps turned.

“Hey, I’ve seen that fucker before”, he said. “I’ve seen him twice, in fact. Once yesterday in The Explorer building, and earlier today at the fucking gas station, right before we crossed into Virginia. What the fuck is this, Grace?”

“You sure it’s him?” Grace said.

“Hell yes”, Phelps replied. “I remember the fucking Saturn from the gas station. The reason I remembered him was that I caught him eyeing us as we was leaving The Explorer building yesterday. I didn’t think that much of it, until now.”

“You don’t know who he is”, she asked? Right about that time the man was loudly addressing the occupants of the house, but Grace could not make out what he was saying. Neither, unfortunately, could Phelps. Nevertheless, he did note that, as the front door swung open, the man had his gun hidden behind his back. He feverishly resumed taking pictures as the man seemed to be ushered into the house.

“Did you see who let him in”, she asked.

“No, but shouldn’t we do something”, he replied?

She looked at him incredulously.

“Yes”, she finally replied. “We sit here, and we wait.”

After just a little more than two minutes, the silence of their vigil was shattered by the distant sound of a gunshot. In just under five minutes, a figure appeared at the door, and Phelps resumed his work. He seemed suddenly to become animated.

“Oh shit, it just doesn’t get any better than this”, he said with a gleam in his eyes.

“What do you mean”, Grace asked.

“I know that fucking crazy bitch”, he said. “Larceny Adams. Whoever that motherfucker was, he had better hope he’s dead.

“Who is she”, Grace asked as the seemingly bald woman dressed in black leather looked over the Saturn.

“She’s an S&M hooker, and a Satanist, and on top of that, just one cold hearted bitch in general. She loves to torture people. It’s how she makes her living. There’s a rumor that if she thinks a client has a whole lot of money, she kidnaps them and tortures all their banking account information out of them, then makes them sign everything over to her. She will keep them alive just long enough to verify the transactions, and then keep them going for several months just in case somebody really gets suspicious. After awhile, she disposes of them piece by piece.”

“Sounds like a lot of exaggeration to me”, Grace said.

“Could be”, Phelps agreed. “On the other hand, I’ve heard she likes to see just how long she can keep them alive after she starts chopping them up. Her goal is to eventually keep a mans head and heart alive and connected to each other, while disposing of every damned thing else.”

“Sounds to me like somebody is trying to scare business away from her,” Grace said. “After all, anybody that can afford a S&M prostitute has a lot of money to begin with. On the other hand, I have to admit-“

She suddenly stopped, and looked curiously at Phelps.

“Those people could be alive”, she said.

“What do you mean?” Phelps replied.

“The Leightons”, Grace explained as Larceny Adams finally went back inside. “They might still be in there, being tortured.”

“That kind of contradicts the song, doesn’t it?’ Phelps reminded her. “Or have you forgotten?”

“Yeah, you’re right”, Grace said. “I’m surprised I haven’t heard of this person, what with the connections I have at The Crypt. By the way, how is it you know so much about her?”

“The Explorer was doing a story about the American Neo-Nazi movement and its connections to the occult. It was mostly a shit piece, but she came up somewhere in the course of researching the story. She ended up edited out, though, because Jennings did not want to risk a lawsuit over something-

Just then, a blood-curdling scream emanated from the direction of the house, one so horrific it made Phelps’s hair feel like it was standing on end. He shivered uncontrollably.

“Over something that couldn’t be proven”, he continued.

“Look, we need to try to get closer to the house”, she said.

“How closer?” he asked suspiciously.

“Like close enough to look in the window and take pictures of whoever that is in there”, she replied. “We still haven’t found out what we came here to find out. Let’s try to go toward one of the side windows. Just be careful-and quiet”.

Grace led the way as they stayed close to the edge of the woods, but suddenly they heard a door opening, and then going shut as if left to do so on it’s own. They ducked back into the brush, and waited. Suddenly, a male figure appeared, a short, stocky, muscular looking man, wearing nothing but shorts and a dark t-shirt with some kind of writing on it. He seemed young, with his hair done in a buzz cut. They followed him quietly, as he appeared headed towards what looked to be an old barn.

By the time he made it about halfway there, they heard the front door shut, and a woman appeared from around the corner.

“Rhino, you watch things here. I’ll be back,” she said.

“You taking the Saturn?” he asked.

“No, but what difference does it make?” she asked.

“It don’t but I want to take it for a spin when you get back.”

“We aren’t going to be here that much longer,” she said.

“So? I’ll drive it home. Fuck it, he ain’t going to be needing it.”

The woman was now walking seemingly right toward where she and Phelps hid in the bushes, and Grace was suddenly wary. The woman carried a gun, and she saw for the first time that not only was she shaved completely bald, but strangely enough seemed to have a thin moustache and a goatee. It was not until she got within about twenty feet of them that Grace could see by the illumination of the floodlights from the barn, that these appeared to be tattoos.

As Larceny Adams drew closer, Grace fought off the absurd urge to shut her eyes, as though this might prevent her from seeing her. Suddenly, Larceny veered off to her left and continued toward Rhino.

“We can’t take that car, sweetie, its dangerous”, the woman said, as though talking to a young child. “What if they find him here, then find out you have his car.?”

“Well, we could bury the motherfucker”, Rhino said. “Just because he’s not dead yet ain’t no reason to not go ahead and get rid of him. He sure ain’t making it out of here, whoever he is. We ought to bury those other people too. It’s stupid to just leave them out like that.”

“You better not ever let Joseph here you talk like that”, the woman warned her partner. “He says the more they are left out the easier they will be to get rid of.”

“Yeah, he also said as long as we pay the bills and make sure the mail is collected nobody will ever find them”, the short stocky man said somewhat petulantly. “So who the fuck is that guy-and who is that fucking woman reporter he’s looking for, that he was supposed to have tracked here? Grace somebody.”

Grace and Phelps shot each other a look, yet the photographer noted that Grace did not seem very surprise. Moreover, she actually did not seem the least bit perturbed. In fact, she actually looked somewhat pleased. They cautiously drew closer to the two people, enough so that Grace and Phelps could hear their conversation, which seemed to suggest that Rhino thought that whoever Grace was, the man had unknowingly passed her up in the process of tracking her.

“She’s probably at one of the neighbors houses”, he said.

“No, the nearest one is ten miles from here”, Larceny reminded him. “Nobody with a tracking system like he has would overshoot the mark by that much. She is here somewhere, here on this property. She’s just got the damn car hidden. She could be anywhere the fuck around here.”

“You stay here and stand lookout and stop worrying about these fucking cattle, you’ve already fed them anyway. Keep an eye on the house. If she really is a reporter, she might be on to something. Spanky, or that stupid fucking crack head Milo, has probably said the wrong thing to the wrong person, or people. If so, we have to do something about it. We might have to dispose of these bodies after all. First, we have to take care of whoever this Grace bitch is.”

Then, Larceny Adams proceeded back toward the house, but then suddenly veered off to her left, onto a path where Grace and Phelps had just been no more than ten minutes previously.

“She’ll find the car, and when she does we’re in trouble”, Grace whispered.

“Then let’s get back there before she finds it and get the hell out of here”, Phelps insisted.

However, Grace was adamant as she shook her head in denial of Phelps’s seemingly reasonable suggestion.

“We can’t leave yet”, she said. “I have to find out who that guy is. He’s still alive, and-”

Suddenly, Grace heard the sound of a car starting, and wondered if the unfortunate man had somehow managed to free himself, or was not quite badly as injured as the his two captors thought.

“That woman is a professional at doling out pain”, Phelps assured her. “If that’s him he’s probably spent the last ten minutes crawling to the car, and I doubt he makes it out of the driveway.”

However, it turned out that Larceny Adams had merely doubled back and started up the New Yorker.

“Shit, she probably knows about where the car is and she’ll just drive right to it”, she said. “Come on, while that fucker is mulling around by the barn lets head to the house while we have the chance.”

Warily, Phelps followed along behind her, careful to stay to the shadows as much as possible while keeping his eyes peeled toward the man. They made it just around the corner of the house to the blind side from Rhino, and watched him cautiously as they checked the back door. Suddenly, they froze at the sound of what seemed to be at first a loud moaning sound. Rhino was mooing at the cattle.

They proceeded into the house by way of the back door into the kitchen, and were automatically greeted by the most horrific sight Phelps the tabloid photographer had ever seen in his life. There, sitting at the kitchen table, covered with dining bibs that draped down from their necks and covered their chests, and seemed to extend to their laps, were Mildred and John Leighton.

They were obviously mummified, and Phelps gasped loudly.

“Oh-my fucking God”, he declared.

The two were not merely dead, they had obviously been butchered and mutilated, the horrific expression on their mummified faces a mute testament to the horror they had undergone. Old man Leighton had an apple sticking from his wide-open mouth, as did Mildred, and both of them had what appeared to be forks dangling from their now skeletal hands. The plates set in front of them held what looked to be parts of their intestines. Phelps stifled a sickening feeling, and despite being unable to refrain from gagging, took some pictures of the sickening tableau.

Phelps fought back tears, and shook uncontrollably. He had to turn away from the ghastly sight. Grace tried to comfort and reassure him, then tried to force him to pull himself together.

“This is the worse possible time to lose your nerve”, she informed him. “Those two won’t be away from the house for long. Come with me now.”

However, Phelps, rather than following her, started taking yet more photos of the two individuals whom he calculated to have been dead for at least the last three months, maybe longer than that, as Grace proceeded to the living room. There was the man, the newcomer, so badly beaten and cut up, so bloodied, that they did not even consider it worth the time to tie him up. He was almost dead. Still, amazingly enough, he was yet conscious. Grace approached him cautiously. When she bent down over him, she could see the terror in his eyes.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” she said. “I’m here to help. What happened?”

“Girl-tied up”, he said, then struggled to breathe. “Man swore he-not do it. She tricked me-stabbed me when I went to help her. They-“

Then he started crying, and started begging Grace to help him.

“Who sent you to follow me out here”, she asked. “And why? If you want me to help you then you must tell me the truth, the whole story.”

The man then looked and seemed to have realized for the first time that it was Grace to whom he was talking.

“Morrison”, he said. “Congressman Morrison. Grady Desmond-he works for him and bugged your car. Please-help me I beg you.”

Grace soaked this bit of news in with no emotion, and regarded the man coldly.

“Morrison is dead, he was killed in a plane crash in India”, she said.

“That was-Congressman’s father. Luke is his son”, the man said, now struggling to pronounce every syllable, obviously in ever more pain with the passing of each second. He was obviously going to die shortly. He would have no reason to lie.

“Should I call somebody?” Phelps asked, now having rejoined Grace.

“No-not for the time being”, she replied.

Please-help”, the man said, but then suddenly he drew in one last, deep breath, then exhaled, as his eyes then went back in his head.

Suddenly, the two reacted to the sound of the back door opening, then closing, as they quickly yet quietly backed up toward one of the bedrooms. They heard the sound of the refrigerator opening, as someone was obviously perusing the contents. Taking advantage of the opportunity, they made their way to one of the back rooms, and found themselves in a small bedroom that had obviously at one time been that used by the Leighton’s only child, Debbie.

While Phelps listened at the door for any sign from whichever one of the pair it was that had returned to the house, Grace shined her flashlight around the room, now piled up with boxes and bags. Most of them had what looked to be nametags written on masking tape in black marker ink. She gave them only passing, cursory looks, until she noted one in particular that captured her immediate interest. One large box, near the corner by the closet door had written on it the name “Marlowe Krovell”.

As Phelps listened at the door, Grace opened the box, noting it appeared to contain jars of embalming fluid. She then saw a large backpack likewise marked with Marlowe’s name. She quickly looked inside to see nothing but some clothing, but in the side compartment, she noticed papers, along with what seemed to be discs. Most of them were metal bands, but one caught her immediate attention. It was a DVD marked by handwriting “Family Photos And Movies-Private”.

As she stuffed it into her windbreaker’s pocket, she heard a voice. A man was speaking, but seemingly not to anyone in the house. He was asking to speak to someone named Billy.

“He’s called someone on the Leighton’s telephone”, Grace said, amazed at such brazen stupidity.

Suddenly, Rhino sounded ecstatic.

“Damn, thanks Billy, I really appreciate that”, he said. “And I promise you, I won’t let you down.”

“We’ve got to get the hell out of here, Grace”, Phelps said now.

“We can’t leave until they do”, Grace insisted. “She’s probably found our car by now. If not, she will. She probably took our unfortunate followers hand-held tracking device wherever she went, so it should not take her long. I do not think she is quite as stupid as this guy.”

“Great”, he said. “So what the hell are we going to do?”

“Just hope I can remember how to hotwire a car, and hope they leave us one”, she replied. “Otherwise-well, it’s a long walk.”

When Larceny finally returned, Rhino quickly gave her the good news.

“I get to try out for The Blackbirds day after tomorrow”, he said, obviously well pleased.

“You didn’t just call somebody from here”, she said.

“Hell, just Billy”, he replied, “and he won’t say nothing.”

“Rhino, you fucking idiot, I thought I explained this shit to you, three times in fact.”

Rhino was non-responsive. Larceny was obviously very pissed off, and her partner realized that, on some level, he had just badly fucked up.

“Have you been keeping an eye on the house like I fucking told you, at least?” she demanded.

“Yeah, I come back here as soon as you left. There’s nobody around here. That guy just got it wrong. He’s dead now. You really did a number on the guy.”

“He didn’t get it wrong, either,” Larceny replied. “I found the fucking car he told us about, so she’s around this property somewhere.”

“Great”, Rhino moaned. “So now what the fuck are we going to do?”

“Only thing we can do”, she said. “Make sure there’s nothing here for her to find. So come on, let’s get busy.”

Grace and Phelps then heard the pair walking into a distant room.

“They are going to bury the bodies, probably take them off somewhere”, Phelps observed. “Shit, who knows how long we’re going to be here.”

“Maybe not long”, she said. “But we’d better try to find a place to hide, in case they come for something in here”.

They decided their best bet was to hide on the far side of the bed against the wall. There were clothes and pictures piled up under the bed, which Grace hoped would hide them sufficiently were someone to look under the box springs. It was a tight fit, and quite uncomfortable, but Grace figured that made it that much better as a hiding spot.

Sure enough, soon Rhino came into the room, and proceeded toward the closet, where Larceny told him to pick up the box marked “Marlowe Krovell”.

“Just the box with the embalming fluid though, leave the other shit”, Larceny instructed him.

“I still want to kill that motherfucker, because he fucked Raven”, Rhino complained. “The fucking bitch. Some fucking girlfriend she was. I want to kill the fucking bitch that’s snooping around here too. So much for getting this farm. That’s been fucked all to hell.”

“No, it hasn’t”, Larceny assured him. “As soon as Debbie turns eighteen we have the Leighton’s sign it over to her, and then she’ll sign it over to us, just like Joseph promised. Sierra isn’t quite as good a forger yet as Spiral was, but she’s good enough that by the time another two years go by, she should do the job well enough for people to believe the Leighton’s have retired and decided to see the country.”

“Hell, anything can happen in two years”, Rhino said, as Grace could not help but observe that this was probably the most profound thought this young man had ever entertained. “Okay, I found it here.”

“Yeah, it took your slow ass long enough,”:Larceny complained. “Come on, we’ve got to hurry the fuck out of here.”

“So when do I get my new punching bag?” Rhino asked. “If I’m going to be a Raven I have to make sure I stay in shape.”

“I told you I’d find you somebody, you just have to not be so rough on the next one”, Larceny replied. “I think you ruptured Julio’s spleen the last session.”

“Fuck him, he’s wore out anyway, I want one with some muscle the next time around.”

Soon, Grace noted the sound of a car’s engine starting, and after a couple of minutes, it could be heard pulling out.

“What the fuck kind of people are these”, Phelps asked. “Are these even human beings?”

“Did you get any pictures?” Grace asked.

“I got a few of that moron, and the dead guy in there, and Larceny, and the Leighton’s, yeah why? Did I fucking miss something?”

Suddenly, Grace was filled with a sense of dawning realization.

“They didn’t move them”, she said.

“What are you talking about?” Phelps demanded.

“They left too quickly”, she explained. “They left that guy dead in the living room, and the Leighton’s as well. And I’ll tell you something else”.

“What?”

“I smell smoke”.

Within a couple of minutes, smoke started streaming throughout the house, and into the small bedroom where they remained behind the bed.

“We have to get out of here”, Grace said. “With all this shit in here, it will go up fast. But we have to be careful.”

She pulled herself up and made it to the window just in time to see two automobiles going up the road and away from the house.

“Great, they took both the New Yorker and the Saturn”, she said. She continued watching as the two cars stopped up in the distance, probably looking back to survey their handiwork.

“Grace, this window here, this is the quickest way out of this”, Phelps shouted, obviously growing increasingly concerned.

She followed him out, thankfully noting that they were on the blind side of the house from where the two automobiles waited. They started making their way up toward the barn. Once they made it there, they headed for the blind side.

“We have to let the cattle out”, Phelps said. “The way that fire is blazing, the heat is liable to ignite the hay in there.”

“Phelps, we don’t have time for that”, she said. However, Phelps ignored her and headed for the back of the barn, where he opened the back door. The cattle, sensing the heat, began hurriedly piling out. Phelps came close to being trampled in the process, as Grace warily looked up toward the road, just in time to see both automobiles pulling away. She then realized they were headed in the opposite direction from where her car was hidden.

Phelps was obviously distraught. In fact, he seemed to be at the end of his rope, and when Grace advised him they should return to the car, he was dumbstruck.

“They’ve probably flattened the tires, or stolen the carburetor or the battery”, he said.

“I don’t think so”, she said. “Remember, she is thinking we never came to the house, which is why she set the house on fire. She is hoping it will look like the Leightons died alongside an unknown guest in the course of an accidental house fire. She would not bother with that if she thought we saw the bodies. Plus, since she thinks we never made it there, she might be hoping that after we see the house burning, we will just leave and forget about it. She couldn’t expect us to leave if she sabotaged the car, right?”

“Are you sure those two are that damned smart?” Phelps asked skeptically.

“She is, I think”, Grace assured him. “Maybe not as smart as she thinks she is, but hopefully enough to not want us to have to call for outside help to get away from here.”

Phelps mumbled something unintelligible as Grace silently assured herself that she might be right. It made a degree of sense, but as they made their way to the clearing, Phelps suddenly started coughing, and went down on his knees. He was vomiting. He had never spent such a horrific night.

“It’s back to church for me next Sunday,” he said. “I promised God I would and I intend to keep that promise.”

“Good for you”, Grace responded. “So why are you throwing up?”

“Just shut up Grace”, he replied. “Aren’t you just a bit affected by the fact that two people were savagely murdered and left to rot in their own kitchen, and another man was beaten and stabbed so badly he died in horrible agony right in front of our eyes? That kind of thing tends to make us common people just a little on the queasy side.”

“Yeah, I know”, she said simply. “So, what do you say you pull yourself together and let’s get the fuck out of here, before they come back to make sure they did the job right.”

Phelps looked back through the clearing, and saw the frame of the house was barely visible through the blinding flames that engulfed it.

“If they had caught us there, that’s where we might be right now”, he reminded her. “Who knows if I could have drawn my gun in time? But to hell with that, who needs to carry their gun when they have pictures to take, right?”

“Well, if you can’t make a living, why bother to stay alive?” she retorted. “Stop complaining, and let’s get out of here.”

They finally made their way up the same path from whence they came to the house, Grace leading the way, as she heard Phelps mumbling, breathing erratically, and at one point, she thought, crying. They eventually made it back to where they had earlier noted the emaciated cattle, along with the dead one. Grace saw yet another one, a calf, had joined the ranks of the bovine dead, as a large black vulture, having noted the development, now feasted upon the carcass. The calf’s mother stood helplessly by, almost too weak to move. What happened, she wondered, to cause these strays to get so far beyond the others, only to become so weak they could seemingly not make it back?

Perhaps, she decided, there had been a considerable period of time when the outlaw gang had not fed the herd, resulting in a scarcity of available feed and grass, which was scarce at any rate throughout the passing winter.

She had to piss at this point, and so she lowered her jeans and squatted down. Phelps was the shy sort who ordinarily would have automatically turned upon seeing this, but he was now too distraught to give it any thought. She noticed that he had put down his camera and retrieved his pistol. She warned him seriously not to shoot, assuming he meant to kill the vulture whose gaze now met her own as she squatted down there at just about it’s eye level.

It looked at her in an attitude of suspicion, and called out an ungodly sound.

“I’m not worried about the vulture”, he said. “There’s something behind you.”

She turned on her haunches and was met by the gaze of what seemed to be a wolf, some twenty feet from her. It looked at her with a questioning, wary gaze from which she did not flinch. The piss continued to flow from her system, and she felt relieved, finally, to rid herself of the burden, which previously she had not noticed due to necessity of staying focused upon the more pressing issues of the night.

Finally, she finished, and she rose carefully, pulling up her pants after wiping herself with a Kleenex. She looked once more upon the big black bird that had by now seemingly forgot her presence, as he continued his feast upon the carrion that he himself may probably have hastened unto death.

By this time, Phelps had moved some distance from her, but seemed undecided as to the direction they should go. She joined him at his side, as she could yet hear the curious footfalls that seemed to follow behind her. She pointed the way to Phelps, and then proceeded to lead the way. After another ten minutes, they found the car, seemingly unmolested. She checked the tires, the battery, the carburetor, and the plugs. Everything seemed to be in place.

“What if those fuckers are hiding around here waiting for us to come to this car”, Phelps asked.

“No, I doubt that the woman would take the chance that we might have called for help by now”, she said. “I’m sure they’re gone. Lucky thing for you, as I don’t think you would last long as a human punching bag.”

Phelps ignored the taunt and walked to the road. Looking all around, he saw no sign of anybody, as Grace started the ignition. It started without a hitch. She realized she would have to ditch the automobile. At least she had accomplished one thing this night. She had discovered proof of her suspicions as to Grady’s complicity with the Russian mafia and its Romanian branch, and in particular with its fellow American travelers. Moreover, as an extra bonus, she knew now that Luke Morrison was involved. It just kept getting better and better. She had special plans for that son-of-a-bitch.

The trip back home was a long one, but it was still early in the morning, well before dawn, when they arrived at Grace’s house.

“Oh, so now on top of everything else, I don’t even get a ride home”, Phelps said as they pulled up to her apartment.

“You don’t want a piece of pussy, fine with me”, she said. I was going to let you fuck me before we left the farm, but I knew you were too afraid to stay around there any more. I thought you’d have yourself together by now.”

“Well, I’m broke”, Phelps said.

“No charge”, she said. “You’ve been a big help. I want something from you though. I want you to hold off on this story for a few days, until I can do a little fact checking on these two people. I also want to dig a little into our late lamented follower. Just for a few days, I promise, and then you can do the story. We, actually, can do the story. My by-line, your pictures. Is it a deal?”

Phelps laughed. He was astounded at Grace, in her obvious opinion of her desirability. Of course, she was a great fuck, going by just the one time he had her before.

“Okay, agreed”, he said. “No more than a week, though-two at the most”.

Grace agreed, whereupon they went up to her apartment. She took a quick shower, whereupon Phelps decided he most definitely needed one as well. While he was cleaning himself thoroughly of the mental garbage, as much as the physical dirt that had this past night assaulted every fiber of his senses, Grace started her computer and, lighting up a cigarette, she extracted the disc of family photos and home movies that had been the possession of the Krovell family.

She had almost forgotten the strange, balding, overweight man she had met at the John Hopkins University Hospital Emergency Room, but now there he was, in a series of photos, some with other members of the family. There was a young man who was obviously Marlowe. There were two more-a man and woman she thought were his parents. Yes, that was who they were, she decided, as she remembered seeing their photos from the story of their deaths that the Sun had covered months earlier. In these photos, they were considerably younger.

Then, something strange happened. There was a series of photos of what appeared to be cadavers. All of them were either grown women, or young girls. She actually recognized the last one, a girl by the name of Mary Evans, who had died just recently, had drowned in her family’s heated pool because of a drug overdose. This had occurred a few weeks after the deaths of the Krovells, and shortly before Grace had met Brad Marlowe at the hospital emergency room.

She sat back and watched in unsurprised curiosity, and almost some whimsy, as Brad began engaging in sex with her and, as the show unfolded, with many more corpses as well. Someone was obviously photographing him doing so. This took up a great deal of the DVD, and after a while Grace found it monotonous, and so started speeding through it.

Then she saw something altogether unexpected. There was young Marlowe, at about the age of twelve it seemed, hovering over the body of a dead girl of about his age. Brad was there as well, as was Richard Krovell. For the first time, there was more than just background noise, as Richard insisted that Marlowe had to learn to put his feelings away, and do his job. Brad seemed somewhat perturbed, even sympathetic, but offered no objection, even though Marlowe looked more than just a little distraught at the prospect of engaging in work on the body of this girl.

He proceeded to his work, and actually conducted the majority of it. From time to time, his father would appear and take over briefly, after which Marlowe would then resume. At one point he was actually left alone to work on the body of the dead girl. Grace noted now how the camera had remained fixed in place and not followed any of the people around, a circumstance that often caused their removal from the range of the camera. Still, at one point she thought she could hear sobbing.

After a couple of minutes, the sobbing stopped, and young Marlowe walked back into camera range. He suddenly seemed to be addressing the corpse.

“What?” he asked. “Linda, I’m sorry”

Then, he started once again, crying loudly. In a couple of minutes, he pulled himself together. Grace found herself so engrossed in what she was seeing, she watched him continue with his work for more than twenty minutes. Incredibly, when his father once more returned and offered to take over for him, Marlowe actually refused. The entire procedure went on for some time, while Grace started to wonder what was keeping Phelps so long. She checked on him, only to find that he was on the commode.

“I’m feeling pretty sick”, he explained. “Do you have anything for nerves, an upset stomach, and for a headache?”

“All of that?’ she said. “I have Tylenol and Pepto-Bismol. That is about it. Maybe you should just lie down and rest for a while.”

As she said this she returned to the DVD, and the long ago drama still playing out on her computer screen. Marlowe was now standing once more alone beside Linda, the dead girl, and told her he loved her. Interesting, she thought. What must that be like, to perform an in-depth embalming and preparation process on the body of a young girl, and you yourself a young man who felt, as this young man obviously did, a great deal of emotional attachment toward the object of your work? Had his parents been aware of this? Obviously, if not at the time, they would quickly have learned of it. At least somebody would have.

Phelps was now throwing up, and seemed to be very sick. He would not likely be engaging in sex tonight. Therefore, Grace would have to come up with some other enticement to insure he kept the nights information between the two of them for a week or two. He was not only sick, but he was still very upset. In fact, Grace was certain he was crying, though evidently trying to contain himself. She continued watching as Brad returned to Marlowe’s side.

“Beat it, kid”, he said. “I’ll finish up here.”

Marlowe left, and Brad turned at the sound of the upstairs door shutting, looking as though to make sure Marlowe had actually left. He then, as Grace expected, began having sex with the body of the young girl, beginning as he most often did by the performance of cunnilingus, augmented by a series of groping various body parts, and finally ending in fornication. He seemed far more turned on, Grace noted, with his ordinary sexual proclivities, than by his one profoundly distasteful and quickly concluded incident with her at the motel.

She wanted to kick herself when she realized that she should have offered him a blowjob, something she doubted Mr. Brad Marlowe had ever experienced. That would be something few corpses could hope to compete with, she mused, as the DVD went blank, only to resume with yet another of Brads many “conquests”.

Quickly tiring of this, she fast-forwarded the DVD closer toward the end. There was Brad Marlowe again, even younger this time, and there was the likewise younger Krovell couple, as Grace realized that the further the DVD went toward the end, the further back in time it went. Brad almost looked handsome, though still overweight and even at this relatively young age showing signs of balding. He also looked somewhat morose, and almost even fragile. Ah, and there was Marlowe, who at this point could not have been any older than somewhere between eight and ten. She magnified the time stamp on the lower right hand corner of her screen. July 1993. Yes, Marlowe would have been eight years old.

Phelps now came back out of the bathroom.

“Finally”, she said. “I was starting to think I was going to have to piss in a pot.”

“You could have said something, you know”, he said, as she put the home movie on pause, and made her way toward the toilet.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“The Krovell family”, she said. “Remember that mortician that was killed by his wife in some kind of murder suicide incident a few months ago? Them.”

“What were those people doing with it?” he asked. “They have something to do with it?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out”, she said, as she sat there pissing with the door open, looking at him with a smile. He turned away. Yep, he’s starting to be his old self again, she thought. She finally finished, and then returned to the living room where Phelps awaited. Hopefully, he would not want to watch any of the video. He had obviously seen all he could stand to process for one night.

“I piss once tonight while a black vulture and a wolf is staring at me, only to piss a second time to see two-in-one wanting to leer at me but ashamed to do so”, she teased. “So, are you ready for me, scavenger?”

“There’ll never be another like you, Grace,” he said, with a bemused smile and a swing of the head. “I think I need to call it off for tonight. I just am not in the mood for anything. Don’t’ worry, I’ll keep your secret. For one week, that’s it. Maybe two, if you come through later. Right now, I just want to sleep, and I want to stay here tonight. I just am not in the mood to make the nine-mile drive home. Who knows, maybe tomorrow I’ll be more in the mood.”

“That’s fine, Phelps”, she said. “So, why not take your jacket off and stay awhile?”

“I need to walk around a little, get some fresh air”, he said. “Besides, I need to get a pack of smokes. I have seen what the shit you smoke, and I need something with a kick to it, now more than ever. Like a non-filtered kick. Can I get you anything?”

“Come to think of it I can use a pack of Winston”, she said. “Light, please”.

“Got’cha covered”, Phelps said. “The fresh air will do me some good anyway. It’s a seven block walk, but this is a pretty safe neighborhood, ain’t it?”

“I hope for somebody carrying a gun it is”, she answered.

“After what I’ve been through tonight, I think nothing around here could ever scare me”, he replied. “Be back in a few,”

“Wait, I’ll tell you what”, Grace said. “I’ll make out a check, and you pick us up a twelve-pack of beer too. I could use some beer right now anyway, and I’m sure you can. That’s the least I can do for you. If there is anything else you want, go ahead and get it-within reason, of course.”

Grace hurriedly made out the check, and then handed it to him.

“Don’t be gone too long now”, she said, though she actually hoped he would take his time.

Grace smiled a polite smile of acknowledgement as he blew her a kiss. What a cornball, she thought, as she resumed the playing of the DVD.

Brad and Marlowe were taking their lunch into the living room, as someone mentioned something about an Orioles game. The tape then cut off temporarily, only to resume at the same day, probably just a few minutes later. Marlowe and his mother were down in the basement. He was asking her why she wanted him to go down there with here. Grace noted they were wearing the same clothes, but Mabel Krovell was acting much differently than she had been upstairs. She was acting suspiciously, as though not wanting to be overheard.

“Do you remember what we did in the bathroom last week?” she asked.

Marlowe looked away, as though frightened. No, more than just frightened. Ashamed. In fact, he looked as though he was humiliated.

“Answer me, Marlowe”, she said. “Do you remember what we did in the bathtub last week? How I came in, took my clothes off, got in it with you, and-“

“Yes”, Marlowe moaned. “And I told you I don’t ever want to do that again, I-“

“You threatened to tell your father on me, I know”, she said. “So, I already told him. He knows.”

“You did what?” Marlowe demanded in shock.

“Only I told it my way. I told him you forced me. You got in the tub with me and forced yourself on me. He is mad at you, Marlowe. He has even been thinking of having you put in a home for bad kids. Do you know what that would be like? What if word got out why you were there? As I said, Marlowe, your father is very mad at you. Can’t you tell? As for me, I am very hurt as well as disappointed in you and your attitude.”

“It’s wrong”, Marlowe said. “And you lied, I’m going-“

“You’re going to what, Marlowe, tell him the truth? Tell him that I wanted to have sex with you, and made you do it? Whom do you think he would believe, Marlowe-his wife, whom he loves and has loved for years, or you, who disappoints him on a weekly basis? A boy who has been caught in lies several times?”

As Grace watched this recorded drama unfold, she lit a cigarette, and wished she had some popcorn, and that Phelps would get his black ass back with the beer. On the other hand, it was just as well. This was something Phelps would not be in the frame of mind to deal with tonight, of all nights.

Mabel Krovell now demanded that Marlowe, her eight-year-old son, play along with her. If he did so, she would tell his father that Marlowe had been overwhelmed by the flu medication he had been on at the time. He had just not been himself when he entered his mother’s bathtub and forced himself on her. However, he had to do everything she told him from here on out.

“Including now, Marlowe”, she said as she started unclothing. As she did so, she lay upon the large metal table ordinarily used for the embalming of dead bodies. She was now demanding that Marlowe eat her pussy, and Marlowe, though offering one weak, pleading objection, yet tearfully and ashamedly did as she demanded. After a few minutes, his mother then pulled him with her legs towards him as he unzipped his pants, the erect penis barely visible from the vantage point of the lens of the silent, hidden camera that recorded everything, including even the glaze that now seemed to come over Marlowe’s eyes as he breathed deeply, and moaned loudly.

The phone then rang, and Grace answered. It was Phelps, calling from the neighborhood Speedway Station, just seven blocks away. The manager wanted voice verification of her check, she explained. The manager then got on the phone, whereupon Grace Rodescu repeated the information printed on the check. Then she got Phelps back on the phone.

“You got the beer and the smokes, right?” she asked.

“All that and a bag of chips”, Phelps replied. “And dip. That all right?”

You say you like chips and dip more than pussy, fine with me”, she teased.

“Hardeharhar”, he said. “You say I can go ahead and hand that story and pictures into the Explorer tomorrow?”

“I got your camera”, she replied.

“You wouldn’t”, Phelps said anxiously.

“Calm down, I’m just kidding”, she said. “I could use some anyway, I’m starving and there ain’t shit here but baloney and bread with mustard, and some pop. Chips and dip sound good. Just hurry back.”

He assured her he would, whereupon he hung up. She lit up what turned out to be her last cigarette as she returned her attention to the DVD. Marlowe had finished performing his mother’s demands, and he was crying. He was crying, and she was laughing.

What a fucking bitch, Grace thought, as The DVD suddenly went blank. After just a few seconds, however, it resumed, and they were back upstairs. There was Mabel and Marlowe, along with Brad, and two other people.

They were two older people, and they joined Brad and the Krovells in singing “Happy Birthday” to the just turned eight-year-old Marlowe, who looked aloof, sullen. He briefly met his father’s gaze, and he his, and in that one moment, Grace could tell-he knew everything. It was a game, some kind of sick head fuck that went on for no telling how many years.

Grace once again magnified the imprint of the original time-stamp of the old film, and saw the date-June 1st 1993. The newer time-stamp showed more clearly the date of transference to disc as being May 10th of this year. Marlowe’s parents had been dead for about half a year. So who had done the transference? For that matter, who was the unseen person who recorded the original film, those parts of it done by hand, such as this part here?

Grace could hear the man being addressed in the party film, which featured presents from each member of the family. Yet, though Grace could hear his voice, he never stepped into the picture, not even when young Marlowe Krovell suddenly broke down and started sobbing uncontrollably. His Uncle Brad looked unnerved at this, even distraught, and seemed genuinely concerned, asking him what was wrong.

However, the older man, whom she had heard Richard Krovell address as “dad”, the man Brad called Martin, waved him off. Martin Krovell, Marlowe’s grandfather, now derided Marlowe as a weakling. A man never cries, he informed him, and young boys who cry never become men. He then looked at the parents and winked, while Richard Krovell smiled a sadistic smile. Then, the woman who was evidently Marlowe’s grandmother declared that she would be happy she and her husband would finally be moving to Florida and away from Baltimore. She then told the unseen cameraman to stop filming, as such a record would be an embarrassment to the family history.

Grace looked over all of them at the same time. She got a good look at the Krovells and at Brad Marlowe, who seemed more uncomfortable than angry. Finally, she focused on the two older people, the two people that called themselves Martin and Nancy Krovell.

Suddenly, Grace felt overwhelmed by an inexplicable feeling of sadness, followed by a mounting rage. She looked upon the family, at the ostensible occasion of a young child’s eighth birthday party, and her stomach started churning. She was becoming hot, and dizzy, and started to feel weak, and then sick. She made it to the bathroom just in time to eject the majority of the vomit into the toilet, though she halfway heaved some up by the time she got to her bathroom door. She could feel the puke burning her nostrils as she tried with all her strength to restrain it until she finally reached the commode. When she did so, she found to her dismay that she felt no better. The room was starting to spin. Weakly, she pulled herself away from the commode, and made her way back to the desk chair and the computer. She removed the disc, and turned off the computer.

After replacing the DVD in its case, she found she could not get the faces of the people out of her mind. They spun around seemingly in the opposite direction as she did. They alternated from Marlowe, to Bradley, to Richard, and Mabel, and finally to Martin and Nancy Krovell. Then, they finally seemed to merge into one face, a mask of sheer horror, a head without a face, a demonic entity shrouded in darkness. She then went into dry heaves, but for just a brief period of time, when she suddenly noticed there were insect bites marks all over her arms and legs. Chigger and mosquito bites, she realized. They had made large welts on her arms, her hands, and even on her cheeks. They itched, and for a few seconds she scratched uncontrollably.

The last words on the DVD, those spoken by Martin and Nancy Krovell, suddenly resounded in her mind. She could hear them, repeatedly, intermingled with the laughter of Mabel, amidst the anguished and silent though obvious despair of Marlowe, the perplexed uncertainty of Brad, and the incisive, leering gaze of Richard. She became ever dizzier as she continued to hear the words spoken during those final seconds of the DVD.

“Now that we’ve decided to retire, it’s time to live the good life”, Nancy said. “I hope you don’t feel like we are abandoning you, but it so happens that is just what we are doing.”

“But you will always be in our thoughts”, her husband Martin now said with a wry smile.

Grace felt sick still, but knew she had nothing left inside her to puke. She was hurting. She needed a fix. Therefore, she fished around inside the inner pocket of her jacket until she found the hidden, secret compartment that contained the heroin she had swore she would never again take. Despite this vow, she kept it with her. The overwhelming urge had crept up on her suddenly, as it had so often done in the past. It had always been a nagging pain, but she had controlled it over these last few months.

She started to cry as she entered the kitchen, and started to heat the water she would need to mix the powder from the packet, the powder that she would have to cool enough then to inject into her oft-abused veins. She could not wait until it boiled, to say nothing of the extra minutes it would then take to cool to a safe level of warmth, and so she merely allowed the water to get hot enough to ensure she achieved the adequate solution. Her body was suddenly wracked with pain, as she suctioned the formula up into the syringe. She quickly found a rag, and tied it expertly around her arm. Aware that her mental state was not conducive to insuring accuracy, she tested the contents numerous times to insure a lack of air bubbles.

She then pulled at the makeshift tourniquet with her teeth, and tied it as tightly as she could. She tapped a vein in her lower left arm. It seemed to be adequate. Just one more time, she promised herself. After what she had seen this night, she was certainly justified. All she wanted was to rest, to sleep. If Phelps returned, and fucked her while she was wasted, so much the better, she reasoned. He could have what he wanted and she did not have to know about it. All she cared about now was getting through the rest of this night.

She injected the heroin, as she noted that it was now raining, and there was even some lightning. Good, she thought. This will hold Phelps up for a while, and give her a chance to hide the evidence of her failure to control her lifelong addiction. Possibly, he would merely surmise that she was exhausted, that the events of the evening had all caught up with her.

She felt now the rush from her bloodstream, into her body and mind, of the dream-like state she so secretly longed for, yearned for, and the desire for which she could never completely free herself from. She replaced the syringe and the now empty vial of heroin in the secret compartment of her jacket. Then, she moved herself slowly over to the sofa, and collapsed down upon it. The room was still spinning around, but now in a good way, in a welcome way. She finally felt serene, at peace with herself for the first time in months. She was a fool to think she would ever be any different. Why should she be?

“I am that I am”, Grace now said, repeatedly, as she started to fade into a semi-wakeful dream state that seemed to go on forever. She could still see the people on the DVD, but now they seemed clownish and ridiculous. As they gradually started to fade, she could hear what seemed to be the barely contained cackling of an insane man, but this faded as well. She was now feeling so much better. It was all nothing but a dream, her life.

A series of loud and assertive knocks at the door, however, interrupted this welcomed trance state. For a long time Grace ignored the knocks. Despite this, they seemed to grow successively louder. Then, she remembered something.

“Phelps”, she whispered, barely able to hear herself speak. She knew then she had locked the door. She pulled herself up, and she tried to shout at him to wait, but it only came out as a whisper. Still, Phelps must have heard the whisper. He stopped knocking. She made it to the door and unlocked it. Now he would know she had shot up again. She did not care. She opened the door and smiled a dazed, dreamy smile. Phelps wanted pussy too much to bother with a lecture, she realized.

It was not Phelps, however, and the young woman with the goatee and moustache tattoo did not carry beer and a bag of groceries, but a hand-held tracking device and a pistol.

“You fucked up big time, bitch”, the woman said, as she fired a shot from the gun. As Grace collapsed to the floor, she could feel the blood pouring from a wound from which she strangely felt no pain.

That was good, Grace thought to herself. That was all right. She just wanted to rest. She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.