Bedbugs (24 page)

With water streaming down his face like the sweat of passion, he straightened up and finally dared to look once again into the mirror. From deep inside his chest, there sounded a low, strangled cry as he studied his face. In the flickering glow of the single candle, his reflected features seemed oddly distorted, and for a dizzying instant, he had the sensation of standing outside of himself. In the dull oval mirror, he saw—not his own boyish face, but the face of a man not much older than his father. The man stared blankly back at him from the mirror, his unblinking eyes two black, swelling pools. Long, curved canine teeth pressed down against his lower lip, and when his reflection smiled, an ink-dark wash of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and down his chin, staining his bare chest.

For uncountable heartbeats, the boy stood there staring, fixated by his own hypnotic stare. He wanted to cry out, but the instant his lips parted, another, stronger gush of blood flowed in twin dark streams from his mouth. A hot, tingling rush of elation warred with the cold surges of repulsion that swept through him. He was ashamed and thrilled by what he had done and by what his cousins had made him do! Against his conscious will, his member began to stiffen again, and he closed his eyes in pleasure as he began to caress himself lightly.

Uttering a low cry, he suddenly shook his head and tore his gaze away from the face reflected in the mirror and looked down at his bleeding crotch. Still trembling, he scooped up a handful of water and carefully dribbled it over his wound. Then he took a clean cloth and daubed gently at the tooth marks on the flesh at the base of his member. Tiny, ruby beads of blood rose from the wound. The pain burned strongly, pulsing through him in knife-sharp rushes. He couldn’t deny or pretend not to know what Mara had been about to do to him. The thought nauseated him, but what sickened and thrilled him even more on a deep level was the certainty that, were she here right now, in his bedroom with him, he would lie back and willingly allow her do whatever she wanted to do to him, if only for the blinding instant of pure pleasure that pain would give him.

Once the bleeding stopped, he pulled on a clean nightgown, blew out the candle, and threw himself onto his own bed, curling up into a tight ball beneath the covers. As the glow of moonlight slid silently across his floor, he lay there, clutching his bed covers close to his chin, and shaking and sweating as though wracked by fever.

He sought escape from his pain and panic and confusion in sleep, but sleep didn’t come for many hours, not until the first faint traces of morning light edged the eastern sky with gray.

And even after he had finally drifted off into a fitful sleep, he was haunted by distorted dreams of the exquisite pleasure and torment that his cousins might have given him and his own uncontrollable urge to taste once again the intoxicating coppery sting of blood as it coursed over his lips and down his throat.

—for Alice Alfonsi

I
can’t go swimmin’ any more, ‘n all because Phil had to go and kill our son-of-a-bitch of a boss, Lester Croix. I suppose it was bound to happen, but . . . I dunno. I think Phil coulda done a better job of it. Lucky thing for Phil, though, I work with him and was the first one to notice Lester’s body—his hand, anyway. That way, just as a favor to Phil, I could clean things up to make sure no one else ever found out ‘bout what he done.

You prob’bly remember—it was bitchly hot for quite a stretch back there last August. What with tar bubblin’ up out of the road, ‘n gardens ‘n yards dryin’ up like tinder ‘n all, I guess we shoulda expected somethin’ bad to happen to that “son-of-a-bitchin’-whore.” That’s what me ‘n Phil—’n just about everyone else in the trailer park—called Lester. Hell, he even had that nickname back before he got the job as head of maintenance in our park. Pine Haven Trailer Park. Quaint soundin’ name, though, ain’t it?

Anyway, I was sayin’ ‘bout Lester. You see, he truly was one mean son-of-a-bitch. From what I heard, he was married once, but you can imagine that didn’t last too long. He lived alone out there in a beat-to-shit trailer up back, in what we call the “old part” of the park. It was the first part, built back in the fifties, long b’fore Pine Haven was as big as it is now. You know, though—now that I think ‘bout it, it’s kinda funny . . . ironical, I guess you’d have to say, that Lester’s trailer bordered on the back of the Hilton town cemetery.

None of us could believe it when Harrimon—he’s the owner of Pine Haven. He don’t live here, though. I guess he thinks he’s just a bit too fancy to live in a place like this. Anyway, I was sayin’ how none of us could believe it when Harrimon gave Lester the job instead of Phil. Just about everyone in the park—everyone who cared, at least—was surprised as shit. Phil’d been workin’ park maintenance since . . . Oh, Christ! I’d say since ‘77, maybe ‘78. Lester hadn’t even moved here when Phil started workin’ the roads, cuttin’ lawns ‘n such, so we considered it downright wrong that he got the job instead of Phil.

I knew there’d be trouble sooner or later, but I told Phil more times than I care to count that he should watch what he said or he’d end up losin’ his job. I’d tell him maybe Lester would up ‘n move back to Florida where, so I’d heard, he had a kid. I can’t imagine Lester havin’ a kid, but anyway—now that I think about it—maybe, plain ‘n simple, Lester was askin’ for it. He was always bossy as hell with both me ‘n Phil, ‘n only a damned suicidal fool is gonna schedule anyone to repave roads in the middle of an August heat wave.

But that’s what Lester did, the son-of-a-bitch! He had me ‘n Phil out there from dawn ‘till dusk, pourin’ ‘n rollin’ asphalt. Hot as fuckin’ all Hell, lemme tell you! But that weren’t so bad. What made me just ‘bout shit my britches was when he told us to make all of them speedbumps throughout the trailer park. Key-rist!

I don’t wanna bore you with ancient history here, but speedbumps have been one of them tonics that generated a lot of heat with the residents of Pine Haven over the years. Not many folks was in favor of havin’ ‘em, but I guess enough parents with little kids pushed for ‘em ‘cause they figured it’d make people slow down enough so’s if one of their brats was run over, he’d just be hurt, not killed. They put enough pressure on Harrimon, so he told Lester to get the job done. But it was Lester who got me ‘n Phil out there, bustin’ our humps in the peak of that heat wave.

I s’poze, in general, speedbumps is a good enough idea, but both me ‘n Phil complained some loud when Lester showed us that he wanted one of them damned things just about every thirty feet throughout the park

“Folks ain’t gonna like that,” I remember sayin’ to Lester more than once. Sometimes I’d say it just ‘cause I didn’t want Phil to start in. Once he got goin’ on speedbumps, it was just a matter of time b’fore he started upbraidin’ Lester for workin’ us so hard ‘n for takin’ his job away from him ‘n such.

“Folks don’t have to like ‘em,” Lester had replied, just about as often as I said what I said. “They just have to slow down for ‘em.”

“Yeah, well . . . we’ll see about that!” was Phil’s one ‘n only comment. I have to chuckle, now that I think about what happened later.

Like I was sayin’ before, though, it was a good thing for Phil that I was the first to find out he’d killed Lester. I found Lester . . . his hand, anyways—oh, must’ve been six, maybe seven months after we finished the roadwork. As much as everyone in the park bitched about them speedbumps bein’ every Christly thirty feet, we made ‘em just like we was told to. Nice ‘n round so as, if you didn’t come to a complete stop before goin’ over ‘em, you’d bottom out for sure and scrape the shit outta your muffler. Ruin your shocks, too. ‘Course, there was always them folks who didn’t give a rat’s ass ‘bout their mufflers or shocks, ‘n they’d roar on over ‘em, makin’ sure to squeal their tires on our fresh-done asphalt. That must’ve been what wore the tar away eventually so’s one mornin’, must’ve been in late April, maybe early May the next year, I noticed Lester’s hand, lookin’ like a flattened leaf or somethin’, stickin’ up out of the speedbump we’d made right there at the park entrance. I just about shit myself, lemme tell you!

At first, I couldn’t hardly believe what I was seein’. I mean, I thought it must’ve been a handprint or somethin’ one of the kids left in the hot tar—you know, like we used to do, puttin’ our names and footprints in fresh cement. ‘Course, that mornin’ when I first noticed that hand there in the road, I had no way of knowin’ or suspectin’ it was Lester’s. Not until I got out ‘n inspected it closely—then I knew it was him. The first thing I did was go right to Phil ‘n ask him if he’d killed Lester and planted his body under one of them speedbumps.

You gotta understand, now, that Lester’d been missing for—well, hell—now that I think about it, it was just ‘bout since me ‘n Phil finished up that roadwork back last August. There’d been police ‘n detectives ‘n all sorts of reporters and such looking for him, but everyone came up dry. I guess after a while they just sorta gave up. It wasn’t like Lester was the president or somethin’. So after a few months, once winter had come down hard on us, pretty much everyone forgot all about Lester. Most folks figured he must’ve lit out for Florida or some damn thing. ‘Course, there was that talk about him shacking up with Sally Hampstead in Bangor, but I paid no never mind to it. None of my damned business in the first place.

So anyway, back to that mornin’ when I found Lester’s hand stuck there in the surface of the road. I got out of my car ‘n checked it out good. That’s when I noticed the ring on the third finger. It sure as shit was the same cheap, green stone that Lester always wore on his left hand. I remember it ‘cause it put a fair to middlin’ sized gash along my left cheek the night me ‘n Lester had a bit of a fracas down to Randy’s bar, in Old Town. Still got that scar, too. See? But that’s got nothin’ to do with what I’m talkin’ ‘bout here.

I went right over to Phil’s trailer ‘n rousted him outta bed. His wife didn’t take too kindly to that, but—Christ on a cross!—I’d just found Lester’s hand, ‘n I was pretty sure the rest of him was under that mound of tar, too. ‘Fore long, I was damned well positive Phil had planted him there.

But you know—I was kinda surprised . . . hurt, too, that Phil wouldn’t talk to me ‘bout what he’d done. Wouldn’t even admit to it. Even to me! Hell, we’d been best friends for as long as I could remember. In truth, I moved out to Pine Haven ‘cause me ‘n Phil were such good friends. That was ‘bout a year after my wife left me. She ran off or some damned thing. Fuck, all I know is, I never saw her again. So it bothered me that Phil wouldn’t let me in on what he’d done. I mean, Christ! I’d been the one who complained to Harrimon ‘bout him not givin’ the maintenance boss job to Phil. ‘N it was me who told Harrimon all about what a son-of-a-bitch Lester truly was. I even started a partition or whatever the Christ you call them things to get Lester out ‘n put Phil in.

But you know, after I told Phil that I’d found out what he’d done, he started actin’ real funny toward me ‘bout the whole thing. Got real quiet, you know? Skittish, like he was thinkin’ he couldn’t trust me or somethin’. Finally, figurin’ just to calm him down, I told him I wasn’t ‘bout to breathe a word of this to anyone, ‘n I expected that he wouldn’t, neither. When I left his trailer, I went straight out to the maintenance shed, got the truck, ‘n drove into town for a fresh load of asphalt from Bishop’s Pavin’. Then I high-tailed it straight back to the park ‘n neatened up that speedbump, makin damned sure I laid on that new coat of tar nice ‘n thick. Then I rolled it down good ‘n hard so’s Lester wouldn’t be pokin’ out no more.

It was the least I could do for my buddy.

But then that night, ‘n for the next coupla days, I started thinkin’, ‘n I didn’t like what I was thinkin’ ‘cause I started wonderin’ if maybe there was somethin’ more I could do for Phil. Maybe there was more I should do for him. I dunno. I prob’bly should’ve gone over ‘n talked to him some more, gotten him to admit—at least to me—what he done. Or maybe I should’ve—you know—arranged for him to see someone like . . . maybe a shrink or priest or someone else he could talk to ‘n not worry about bein’ turned in to the cops.

What bothered me the most, though, was that the longer I thought about the whole thing, the more I became really worried for Phil. Christ on a cross! He was my best friend, ‘n rightly or wrongly, he’d killed a guy! If he ever got found out . . . Shee-it! I don’t know as I could handle that.

What I decided to do wasn’t easy, but after a coupla weeks, once summer was in full swing ‘n we’d broken ground for the swimmin’ pool for the trailer park, I finally made up my mind. I had to do ab-so-fuckin’-lutely
everything
I could to protect my buddy Phil, ‘n make sure he didn’t get found out. So late one day, when it was just him ‘n me workin’ on the concrete floor of the swimmin’ pool down in the deep end where it slopes down the most, I smashed Phil’s head in with my shovel. He died real quick. Just dropped without a sound. I like to think he never felt a thing—just
BANGO
, ‘n the lights was out for him. It took me almost until dark to finish smoothin’ that last layer of cement over where I buried him in the bottom of the swimmin’ pool. Once the cement was dry, ‘n it got a good coupla coats of paint, ‘n the pool was filled with water, nobody’d ever know Phil was down there . . .’cept me, of course.

So now do you see why I can’t go swimmin’?

I know you’ve told me a bunch of times that there’s no swimmin’ pool here in the hospital. ‘N even if there was, it wouldn’t be the same pool as the one back to the trailer park where I buried Phil. But my mind’s been workin’ kinda overtime on this one, ‘n I just can’t stop thinkin’ that the very first time I took a dive into that pool—or any pool—I’d see Phil’s pale face, lookin’ up at me through the green-painted bottom. His skin’d be all wrinkly ‘n such, and his left eye’d be bulgin’ out of the socket like it was after I hit him. Much worse than Lester’s face was after Phil nailed him with that sledge hammer. ‘Least ways, that’s how I think Phil did it. Have’ta ask him, I guess.