Body Counting Page 12

  He decided that he would wait until night, as it would make it easier for him to get to Lukas without being seen. His body ached with anticipation; his rage and frustration had been nearing the boiling point for two years.

  Tonight he was going to explode.

  He left his quiet house just as dusk arrived. The cold air of late October bit into his skin as he walked to his car, the gun tucked into his jeans. He had also taken the largest and sharpest knife he could find.

  He started his car and drove down the road. For the first time since Billy’s death, he finally felt a sense of purpose. His life for the last few years had been aimless. Lukas, in some sick way, had put him back on the path; he had given him a genuine reason for living.

  The Willis residence was fenced in. He could see a large Victorian-style house off in the distance. He was surprised to see the lettering on the mailbox:

  Lukas Willis, Veterinarian

  A pet-loving serial killer, he said to himself, laughing bitterly.

  He parked the car at the edge of the woods that bordered the eastern side of the Willis property. Putting on his gloves, he exited the car and walked into the trees.

  As he crept across the leaf-covered ground, his breath fogged off into the moonlit night. He tried not to think about the shallow graves. The thought of the dead children made the woods seem menacing. He even felt an unnatural breeze rush into his face, brushing by like a ghost. He stayed close to the fence, not wanting to stray too far off into the dense foliage.

  Lukas apparently did not like the dark. Every window of his house was brightly lit, even the attic. Maybe Lukas is afraid of ghosts too, he thought. When he was even with the house, he climbed the chain link fence, being careful not to fall and hurt himself.

  He pulled the gun from the waistband of his pants and crept toward the house. He could hear the rumbling bass of a rock song blasting from the residence, the windows shaking slightly.

  He was about twenty feet from the house when something hit him from behind, knocking him roughly to the ground. A sharp explosion of pain detonated on his left shoulder.

  Still holding the gun, he spun around and fired. The Doberman yelped and fell immediately to the ground. He got up from the dirt, shaking with fear. He should have thought about the fact that Lukas would probably have a dog. It had almost ended for him before it started.

  The music suddenly stopped, freezing him in his tracks.

  If Lukas looked out the window, he would see him standing in the center of the moonlit lawn. As he ran toward the house, he prayed that the gunshot had not been heard.

  He stepped quietly onto the porch, ignoring the painful throb that pulsed in his bleeding shoulder. A rocking chair was creaking back and forth with the night wind. The closest window had a lit Tiffany lamp in front of it. Walking carefully, he crept up to the glass and peered in.

  Lukas was walking right toward him.

  He ducked to the side, praying that he had not been seen.

  The light went out. Lukas must have turned it off so that he could look outside. Daniel held himself as close to the house as possible as Lukas tapped his fingers against the glass repetitiously.

  Apparently satisfied that he hadn’t seen anything, Lukas turned the light on again. Daniel waited a minute and then leaned over and looked through the window.

  Lukas was sitting on the couch watching the television. From this vantage point, he could not see what he was watching, but he got a good look at the man who had killed his son. He realized that he didn’t have to worry about being seen, as the whole right side of Lukas’s face appeared to be prosthetic. If Daniel hadn’t seen him bring a drink up to his lips then he would have thought he was looking at a mannequin. The plastic eye stared ahead vacantly, giving the appearance that he was a walking dead man.

  Daniel walked around to the next window on the porch so that he would be able to see the screen. The picture on the television was his son. “I love you, Daddy,” Billy said. It was the tape that he had given to the media in those nightmare days just before they had found Billy’s body. As he watched, he saw the image of his own face appear on the screen. “Please give us our son back. Don’t hurt him.” He watched his weeping face on the television. Lukas’s shoulders were shaking with laughter.

  Daniel walked over to the front door and checked the knob, finding it locked. He looked down and saw deep scratch marks embedded into the door. He pulled out his knife and scratched it on the wood roughly, hoping that it was an adequate copy of the dog’s scratching.

  “Damn you, Daniel!” Lukas’s voice boomed out from the house. Daniel felt the shock travel throughout his body like an attack. “I thought I trained you to bark instead of doing that, you stupid fucking mutt!”

  He could hear Lukas stomping toward the door.

  When Lukas pulled open the door, Daniel fired three times in succession at his legs.

  Lukas danced backward, his one eye widening in astonishment. When he fell against the wall, his nose tumbled off like an image in a surreal and insidious nightmare. It landed on the floor with a click and bounced off under a table. The gaping hole in the center of his face made it look like a skull. He was bleeding profusely from the groin and kneecap.

  “Hello, Lukas,” Daniel hissed, stepping into the house, his face beaming triumphantly. “I thought I would keep in touch. Looks like you lost your nose.”

  Lukas tried to get up and failed. “How in the fuck did you find me?”

  Daniel fired a bullet into his shoulder. “You’re overstepping your bounds, Lukas. I’m the one in control now. I have the edge. Where’s Billy?”

  Lukas’s mouth was opening and closing in shock. Daniel kicked him in the face, jumping back in disgust when the prosthetic piece that held the upper left half of his face fell away. There was now another large hole where his eye had been. The piece of plastic sat on the floor, giving the grotesque appearance that a piece of flesh was embedded into the wood.

  “Don’t fall apart on me now, Lukas! I need you!”

  “He’s in the basement,” Lukas rasped wetly, blowing air through the hole in the center of his face. “Please, Daniel.”

  “Please? Please!” Daniel shouted, looking down at him icily. “You have the fucking audacity to plead for mercy, Lukas? Did Billy get mercy, Lukas? Did Billy get any leniency?” Daniel kicked him in the cancer-ridden face. “Who …” He lashed out again. “… has …” He smashed his gun into the head, sending blood splashing into his face. “… the power now, Lukas?” He inserted the gun into the hole in the center of his face and fired, not even flinching once. He left the gun embedded in Lukas’s face and fell to his knees, weeping, his rage spent with the last bullet of his gun.

  When he found Billy’s body, he embraced it lovingly.

  “I love you, Daddy,” Billy said, looking into his father’s eyes affectionately from where he rested on the couch. It seemed that he never left the couch, Daniel thought.

  Daniel looked up from the kitchen table and smiled. “I love you too, Billy. You know I do. That’s why Daddy saved you from the mean man. That’s why Daddy came to your rescue.”

  “Will he try to come back and get me, Daddy? Will you keep me safe?”

  Daniel got up from the table and walked toward his son. He picked him up and set him on his lap. The boy should eat more, he thought. He’s so damn light. “He’ll never come back, Billy. Daddy sent him to hell. You’ll always be safe with me now.”

  “Forever, Daddy?”

  “Forever and ever, Billy,” Daniel said, holding his son close to his chest. “Forever and ever.”

  Broken Souls: A Fairy Tale

  Sarah could see the confusion in the kitten’s eyes and she found it almost too amusing. Of course, he wasn’t just a kitten anymore. Not many kittens could claim to have the soul and brain of a fifteen-year-old dead boy named Simon. The kitten gaped around—it’s tiny eyes blinking in bafflement and fear.

  “Hello, Simon,” she said, running her fingers gent
ly over his furry head. The kitten stared at her and then promptly started mewling. To an outsider, the crying would sound eerie, almost a mixture between cat and human. She picked him up, scratching his tiny belly delicately. “Don’t be afraid, Simon. You’re back amongst the living, my dear.”

  The kitten continued to wail, a sound that was almost heartbreaking in its anguish. For a brief moment she grew angry, but then she realized the reason he was upset. Simon’s human body lay on the living-room floor right in front of the couch, a knife jutting out of its chest. She turned the kitten’s head into her breast and cocked her head to the side to study the corpse. A small trail of blood ran down the corpse’s lip and onto the side of its cheek. Its eyes stared out into eternity as if to seek the reason for his sudden and violent death. Its hand still clenched the part of his chest where she had driven the knife deep into his flesh.

  Gideon, her favorite cat, was curled up between the corpse’s neck and shoulder sleeping peacefully. The Siamese was the only pet who had stayed with her after transference. It was a rare thing for one of her poor pets not to lose their sanity after finding themselves resurrected into the body of an animal. As Sarah walked by the corpse and into the kitchen, she noticed Gideon’s eyes open up just a sliver to watch them as they passed.

  Sarah set Simon on the kitchen counter and opened the cabinet. She picked up a can of tuna, opened it, and set it down before the cat. Simon stared at the tuna can dumbly before once again wailing in anguish.

  “Fine, then starve to death,” Sarah said, shrugging. “I care not.”

  The sound of tapping on her window broke her concentration from the cat. Sarah did not want to look up, as she knew it had to be George. The tapping continued rhythmically and she struggled not react.

  George was a young man who had rudely laughed at her when she had fallen on an icy sidewalk last winter. She had waited one bitterly cold night outside of his college library as he studied within. When he came outside into the snow-covered parking lot, she approached him as he unlocked his car.

  “Excuse me, will you help me?” she had asked, as he turned to face her.

  Sarah knew he sensed danger, so she acted quickly. A swift flash of her knife and a gaping wound had opened up under his chin. The blood fired out of his neck in a fountain-like spray, turning the snow into a crimson slush. George fell heavily into the snow, clutching his throat as he struggled to scream. She sliced his face three more times furiously, stepped back, and pushed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. As the snow blew around Sarah, her jacket fluttering on her sides like wings, she gazed down at him and grinned. She sensed the animal in the tree above his parked car and closed her eyes in concentration.

  The first moment of transference could only be described as possession. The only way to move the soul from one vessel to the next was to use her own body as a container. This moment was always dangerous, as she ran a risk of losing control of her own mind. Fortunately, victims were always too confused to seek the moment and were quickly brought under control. Once she had the soul within her own body, she hastily channeled it into an available animal. Only once had she almost lost herself to a soul.

  She stared up at the animal and laughed wickedly as it perched in the tree shivering in fear. “Have a good life,” she hissed and retreated into the incoming storm. The next morning she had read about the puzzling murder in the school parking lot. His name was George O’Leary. Had she known that the bastard was going to make the next year of her life so hellish, she would have simply left his corpse on the ground where it lay, never bothering to transfer his soul.

  The tapping on the glass was maddening. Casually, almost animal-like, she turned her head to face the window. George sat on the windowsill tauntingly, daring her to come out and get him. Sarah gritted her teeth and wished she had the ability to reach through the glass and strangle the squirrel. She jumped back when Virgil, an owl holding the soul of a five-year old boy, flew to the window and perched next to George. It was the first time she had seen them together, although she had always suspected the connection.

  The owl studied her like a predator, its feral eyes drilling into her rabidly. She had killed Virgil in the park three years ago when he had wandered off into the woods. She hadn’t even planned on transferring his soul, but the owl had come out of nowhere and she did it on a whim.

  She approached the window and brought her face up closely, a grand smile on her face. George placed his little paw up against the glass and clicked it a few times. Although she was a little nervous, she turned to the squirrel and made her grin even wider, staring into his dark eyes defiantly. “You little bastard, you don’t scare me. I killed you once, I can do it again.”

  The owl smashed its beak into the window, exploding shards of glass into her face and sending her eyeglasses hurling to the floor. Sarah felt a flash of burning pain just below her eye and she moved back speedily. The squirrel eyed her for a moment and then leapt from the sill and into the darkness. The owl had already vanished, leaving only a single feather amongst the shattered glass. Sarah touched her finger to her face and it came back bloody.

  She retreated into the bathroom, her legs shaking. The fact that her victims were beginning to team up was absolutely terrifying. Although the cut was only superficial, it was bleeding profusely. One more inch upward and she would have probably lost her eye. Her vision was blurred slightly, making the line of blood that ran down the side of her face seem thick and fuzzy.

  Fortunately, her glasses were not broken. Needing a surge of confidence, she walked to the basement door and pulled it open. A rush of foul air blasted into her face and she waited a few moments to get it under control. Her nose had long ago become accustomed to the stench of urine and feces to a degree, but she knew a stranger would probably gag instantly. She flipped on the light switch and crept down the dimly lit stairs.

  This was where she kept her victims. Animals of every type stared out of their cages miserably. They had long ago ceased to whine and cry at her approach. Every once in a while she added a new family member, but it would learn rather quickly that crying would get it nowhere.

  Sarah pulled the string on the dim bulb in the center of the room and let it swing back and forth like a pendulum. They stared out of their feces-covered cages hatefully. She sighed and closed her eyes, feeding off of their malevolence, letting it strengthen her as she beamed proudly.

  Moving with grace, she walked over to Oliver’s cage and tapped on the wires with her long fingernails, being careful not to let the flesh of her fingers move too close to his drooling mouth. Oliver was a nineteen-year-old man whom she had transferred over to the body of an obscenely large rat.

  “Hello, Oliver, good to see that you are in such good health,” Sarah said, offering her finger teasingly.

  Oliver exploded at her finger, hissing spastically as he threw himself into the mesh wires. She pulled back just in time, grinning wickedly at his boldness. “Now, now, Oliver. Don’t make me withhold food from you again.”

  Oliver continued to fling himself against the cage spasmodically, his drooling, yellow teeth gnashing into the mesh wire until they dripped with blood. He had been insane since the moment he had found himself inside the rat. Of course it didn’t help that she had tortured his human body for days until he finally succumbed to death.

  She had hung him from the cellar wall naked, cackling as the animals watched in silent rage. Casually, she carved into his flesh with her knife and then began licking his dripping wounds with her tongue. It amused her that he had become aroused by her actions. It made her feel powerful and brought her joy.

  “How far can we take this?” she had asked as she brought him to orgasm during a particularly brutal day. Swallowing his semen, Sarah laughed at his repulsion, kissing him on his duct-taped mouth. He had died later that afternoon, sighing quietly as he went. His head had dropped weakly toward a puddle of blood that lay congealing at his feet. Sarah had transferred his soul seconds later into the ca
ged rat. He had stared around in confusion, the sides of his body rising up and down as he breathed himself into a panic. She left him to stare at his mutilated body for days before she had finally severed his head right in front of him. Later, Sarah had put the head into his cage, snickering wickedly as he slammed himself repeatedly into the hard door. “That is what happens to those who cross my path, my dear,” she had said, giggling as she walked up the stairs of the basement.

  Leaning forward, Sarah stared into the cage, enjoying the memories of the past as they crawled around in her brain like festering bugs. She had not fed Oliver for weeks, forcing him to partake of the meat from his own severed head. The flesh had long ago rotted away from the skull. The rat had scrawled something odd on the left side of the skull and she narrowed her eyes to get a better look. Oliver had gnawed the word “Agony” on the side of the bone. She nodded languidly and winked at him. He continued thrashing brutally as she moved away.

  It always made her feel so alive when she stood amongst the animals. Their stoic silence pleased her; it told her that they had long ago given up on their lives. When she was younger, the animals were the only things that seemed to be capable of loving her. Sarah had tried so hard to become a part of society, but always seemed to fail. She was treated like an exile from the community. No matter what she did she was continually pushed away.

  The day Sarah had struck back at the world that had so cruelly shut her out was a day of rebirth for her. She had discovered her talent on her second victim. She had tried to strike up a conversation with a jogger named Lyle one night while in the City Park. He had rudely turned away from her, not even acknowledging that she had spoken to him. The next night she had returned, hiding in the brush beside the jogging trail, a knife clenched tightly in her fist. She had leapt out as he passed, stabbing him so rapidly he had probably died before he hit the ground. She noticed a crow watching her in the moonlight and had briefly entertained the thought of transferring Lyle’s soul like a protagonist in a dark fantasy story.