Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 (27 page)

Yeah, that’s about right, I thought. Why make it easy?

“You ready?” Scott brandished the room key, fluttering it between his fingers.

“Yeah. Just let me grab a few of these … or all of them.” I slipped a dozen of the brochures into my bag and followed Scott back out to the cars.

He stopped briefly at the Winnebago to tell Wendy to follow, and again at the Volvo to get the message to Honey.

Four wings spread from the water park, housing the guest rooms. Scott earned brownie points by choosing one of the furthest. Number 184 was in the far corner of the property, nestled snug against and comfortable … oh who am I fooling? The place was a wasteland, a flat rectangle of a building with outward-facing doors rising from a cement patch in a barren prairie.

It was all just so … beige.

So we drove the obstacle course of happy families dragging their luggage like disobedient pets, marauding hoards of children, SpongeBob SquarePants towel capes flapping in their wake and packs of sullen teens comparing self-mutilation trophies. Our convoy spilled into the last three spaces, the RV jutting into the parking lot like a hernia.

Two beds, a desk, a dresser with a TV on it. Standard motel room but with the edgy addition of a glass-based lamp, pseudo-Warhols and a carpet straight off a Vegas casino floor. While I filled in the girls on the possibility of Markham’s guys swooping in for a massacre, Scott made quick work of the mattresses, doubling them up in front of the window.

“Where’s your gun?” I asked Honey.

She reached into her backpack and pulled out the shiny black thing, slid out the cartridge, fondled the top bullet and slapped it back in.

“Okay. So that’s one.” Scott stood with his hands on his hips à la Superman. “I’ll get mine from the car. The bullets won’t stop them if they come, but they’ll surely slow them down.”

“Dude. What if it really was Fishhook, though?” Honey asked.

“Then he’s probably long gone.” I patted her shoulder on my way to the door. “Gil and I won’t be long and then we’ll get out of here and head home. There’s got to be something we can do to patch things up with Markham.”

Scott shrugged. “Doubtful, but it’s worth a shot.”

So, as dusk took hold and Scott battened down the hatches with Wendy and Honey, Gil and I drove off in search of Passages Hospice Center and … ahem … closure.

Rapid City, South Dakota is not a big place.

So why, I ask, did it take Gil and me three hours to find the place? We drove through downtown three times, passed by what seemed to be the hospital row at least five, even stopping once to fill up with gas and a shabbily dressed pedestrian with a shopping cart nowhere near a grocer.
¹⁴¹
Gil insisted it was one way, I the other.

Bicker, brake, accelerate.

We ended up having to ask the gas station attendant for directions. Bob, I believe his name was, stared at us like he’d never seen anything but twelve-dollar haircuts. Sure enough, Passages was right there near the hospital, only slightly further up the road. Neither of us had been correct, which is a shame, because the banter would have been much more lively.
¹⁴²

“Is that it?” Gil pointed across the bridge of my nose at a darkened lawn between two rows of poplar trees; it meandered down a gently sloping hill toward a single story building, overly columned like every other memorial.

“It’s gotta be. I feel the rest of the life draining out of me the closer we get.” I glanced at his normally handsome face; it took on the worn boredom of a day-care worker. Maybe I was laying it on a little thick. “Looks like a mausoleum, though. Huh?”

He grinned, nodded. “No doubt, only darker. The sign is even off. Maybe they close up to visitors after a certain hour, you think?”

It was difficult to make out the swirling ethereal lettering of the word “Passages,” but “Hospice” was clear enough even by street lamp. The big black lettering was ominous and blocky as though Death himself—or herself—had done the job.

I grimaced. There weren’t any cars lining the drive down into the place, so I shut off the headlights, just in case we’d need to get in there unnoticed—and by unnoticed I do mean breaking and entering.
¹⁴³
“The workers probably all park in the back.”

“Yep. Probably smoke back there, too.”

“You think? Even with all the cancer patients and shit.”

“Oh yeah. Addicts don’t have those kind of boundaries.”

I passed the facility and spun the SUV around to the opposite side of the street, coming to rest in the deep shadow of an overgrown lilac bush. Too deep, apparently. Gil struggled to open his door and grumbled as the branches slapped at him as he made his way around to the back.

“Jesus Christ!” He stumbled through the last bit, a stray branch dragging across his cheek like a claw.

“Shut up,” I whispered. “We need to be quiet. I’ve got no intention of waiting until morning for visiting hours. Let’s just keep to the tree line and get a look around first, see if there’s an easy entrance.”

As we neared the center, stumbling nearly the entire way over roots like rude feet, the windows only appeared darker, even less occupied than was suggested from the road. The main entrance was a black pit and the glass transoms were barely visible in the moonlight.

There were quite a few cars in the back, mostly older model domestics, but a few Japanese cars dotted the rear parking lot, right up next to a low fence. Beyond this was a vast panorama that had it been daylight might have stretched out across the fabled Badlands and the Etch A Sketch doodles of residential streets and block houses between. A Mercedes as black as ink gathered moonlight and my attention—would there even be an import dealer in this shitty town?

Must be a doctor, I thought.

The back door was nearly as dark as the front, but propped open with a wooden wedge. But, that wasn’t nearly as interesting as the one brightly lit room shining
on the far right like a beacon. The curtains were closed and the light snuck around the edges like a copy machine.

“Well, someone’s home,” I said, then pointed and darted across the gray lot, careful not to crunch against stray gravel or break an ankle in a pothole. Gil followed, close enough that when I paused, his hand rested on the center of my back, urging me forward, up the short set of stairs, and he crouched with me to listen at the crack in the door.

The soft strains of some easy listening, horns like Lawrence Welk dancers would spin to, sweeping the floor with gauzy chiffon gowns and patent leather nightmares floated toward us. But the sound was not my concern.

It was the smell.

A dense iron-filled stench crept from the building. Gil caught the scent too and his nose crinkled with interest.

Blood.

Not the luscious flowing vibrant crimson that we crave, either. This was spilt blood, coagulated and congealed on floors thick with wax buildup, reeking of bleachy cleansers and artificial pine.
¹⁴⁴

Gil’s cheek pressed against mine, nose jutting toward the crack. “That’s different types. Way more than just one vein is open in there. I don’t like this.”

Before I’d really thought about it, my hand was reaching for the door pushing it open into a scene from a horror movie. Bodies were strewn everywhere. Bloated corpses in white uniforms shared floor space
with cancer-riddled shells in thin cotton robes, overlapping legs and arms woven together as they fell or were linked purposefully into one disturbing game of Barrel of Monkeys. A sweep of bloody gore like a red carpet stretched out to an open door at the end. Light flooded from the room and shadows danced in the glow.

So much for closure.

I won’t lie, the thought of my mother’s body being strewn amongst the rest of the victims, indistinguishable from the crowd, made me smile. Just a little one, though.
¹⁴⁵
How ironic that Ethel expended so much effort to be a unique individualist, and here she was just some stray flotsam, a bit of goo on the floor.

Still. It would have been nice to see her off.

I scanned the floor as I stood, Gil rising with me. I knew who’d done this. Somewhere in my scattered mind pieces of phone calls were surfacing, moving forward. Someone had wanted to know an awful lot about me, capitalizing on my—how shall we say—penchant for celebrity. That someone could have been Jack the Ripper and I’d have fed him information as long as he said he worked for Rupert Murdoch. That someone had probably arrived in that Mercedes. If that someone turned out to be Markham, I wouldn’t forget that Marithé had been the middleman in the whole fuck up, or middlewoman. Middlezombie?

Either way, she’d be dealt with. Oh yes.
¹⁴⁶

I slipped my feet out of my heels and gestured for Gil to do the same. Probably not a good idea to knock
at this point—once you’ve decorated a hall with dead bodies, you pretty much don’t want visitors.

The linoleum was cool under the pads of my feet, so it must have been freezing in there. I’m not such a good indicator of climate, being roughly room temperature, myself. I was careful with my footing, though. Cold or not, blood was slippery and it webbed across the floor like Italianate marbling.

The closest body was a chubby nurse splayed like a broken doll with her skirt bunched up around her waist and granny panties dotted with old menses. And something else, or lack there of. I held out my arm to get Gil’s attention and pointed to where the woman’s head should have been. The vampire’s nose curled in disgust. Gil never even left a drop of blood, and some of the time his victims gave it up willingly.

A palsied hand clutched the dead nurse’s wrist like a talon, a patient obviously, and probably near death, but again, no head. I examined each of the dead by turn, breezing over the particulars of the remains. Looking for that singular indicator, that calling card.

No fucking head.

None of them.

We crept with our backs to the wall, stopping at each open door to listen, peek around the corner. And in each instance, the same thing, white sheets, stripped and cascading from hospital beds like winter waterfalls. Dragged from their beds in the middle of the night. For what purpose?

“It’s a fucking massacre,” Gil whispered.

“No shit. It’s pretty bad.”

We didn’t say any more. We’re used to death, but this was different. There was a glee in this, a blatant wastefulness. It was almost too much to take.

At the midpoint of the hall we found the heads.
Lined up two deep on the floor, spanning the entire distance of the entry hall and facing the door, ready to greet those first horrified pioneers.

“Look at that,” I said.

“It’s shocking. I think we should get out of here.” His eyes were wide and fear played across his face in spasms. “Like now.”

“Hold on.” I stepped over the rows and squinted at the heads in the dim light. Face after unfamiliar face. Men, women, young, old, mostly thinned out to gristle and leather by a lingering death. But no Ethel. “She’s not here.” I grabbed Gil’s shoulder. “It’s Markham.”

“I know it is.”

“How?”

“We don’t have near enough time for that story. I’ll tell you later, once we’re out and safe.” He slid his hand into mine and pulled me toward the exit.

“No, Gil. I can’t.” I jerked my hand from his. “Not until I see.”

Now I know what you’re thinking, this is the stupidest, horror movie victim bullshit I’ve ever read. Why would she keep walking toward that door, when he’s obviously down there, waiting? No. Unh uh. Don’t go down there, bitch!

But here’s the deal: I had a plan.

“Wait for me in the parking lot. This won’t take too long.”

Gil lingered.

“Just do it, Gil. I know what I’m doing.” He turned and tiptoed over the carnage, slipping out the door without a squeak.

The same lilting strains whispered down the hall. A radio station might have broken in with a call sign, so I suspected someone was listening to a CD. The music was familiar, too, like a memory.

Like Saturday night at the Frazier’s.

Mother loved Lawrence Welk, but that was a secret, punishable by death and/or public humiliation, of the verbal sort, since Ethel couldn’t legally employ a front yard gallows. She used to dance with me, spinning me until my robe would twirl.

Mother.

Markham was listening to my mother’s CDs. Probably dancing with her dead body, her head lolling and arms and legs flopping around like a rag doll. That sick fucker.