Allhallow's Eve: (Richard Laymon Horror Classic) (26 page)

Nate leaped over Bill. His knees drove into the man’s belly. The man screeched. Nate pressed the knife to his throat.

‘Who is this fuck-head?’ he said.

‘Kill him,’ said a girl.

‘Beth?’ Bill asked.

‘Kill him.’

‘Not me,’ Nate said. ‘I may be a shit, but I’m not a killer.’

‘He died in surgery.’

‘What a shame.’

‘Yeah. My heart bleeds. He should’ve been executed for the California murders, but they didn’t have capital punishment back then. So he got life. Which came down to fourteen years and a massacre in Ashburg.’

‘He won’t kill anyone else.’

Sam nodded

‘He murdered Clara Hayes and all the Horners so they wouldn’t interrupt his party?’

‘And because he enjoyed it, I suppose.’

‘You didn’t say, though. What about the third gorilla?’

‘Cynthia.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘She was dead. He must’ve got her … I don’t know, sometime that afternoon.’

‘I’m sorry, Sam.’

‘Well …’

Melodie lay her head against Sam’s chest, and they sat in silence for a long time in her room behind the office of the Sleepy Hollow Inn.