Ed Gorman - Cold Blue Midnight

By now, she also had a pretty good guess of what the smell was, too. She remembered reading something in her Crim courses about how human blood has this tart, steely smell even after you've tried to scrub it away.

Blood. That was the smell. Whatever this Rick guy did with his victims, he did it in that room down there.

The basement door at the top of the stairs opened.

Rick came down but he wasn't alone.

He was carrying somebody in his arms. This well-dressed, handsome guy. Rick wasn't even panting. He must be very strong, she thought.

Rick looked over at her and said, 'Dammit, I forgot to get you a blanket. You're probably freezing, aren't you?'

It was kind of strange, him being so solicitous and all, with an unconscious guy in his arms.

'I'll take care of Adam here and then be right back.' He sounded like her next-door neighbor kibitzing over the backyard fence.

Rick hefted Adam a little and started walking to the room at the other end of the basement.

He eased the door open with his foot and then carried Adam inside.

He was in there for maybe five minutes. Adam must have awakened because he started screaming. 'Help! Help!'

'Shut up, you pussy! You wouldn't want all your little boyfriends to hear you yell like that, would you?'

Then Adam was pleading. It was kind of sickening, actually, hearing somebody beg like that. 'Listen, Rick. Listen I'm sorry for how I've been lately. Listen to me, Rick listen to me! You're not well. You need to see Dr Milligan again. He'll tell you the truth about yourself, Rick. You're really Peter Tappley. You really are. Peter it used to be he couldn't kill anybody so he became Rick. Don't you understand that? But now it doesn't seem to matter. Both Rick and Peter can kill people.'

Peter Tappley, she thought. Wasn't that the name of Jill Coffey's husband?

But hadn't Peter Tappley been executed?

Adam tried saying more but then she could hear him struggling against a gag being put over his mouth. Rick, or Peter, or whoever he was, had probably already tied his hands.

'You've had this coming for a long time, Adam. A long, long time.'

Then there were just the sounds of the basement. The relative silence was even weirder than the shouting had been.

She wondered what Rick was doing.

And then he was there, striding out of the room to say, 'I'll get you that blanket in a few minutes.'

But she didn't pay much attention to his words.

She was more interested in the long-handled axe he held casually in his right hand.

Blood had splashed and splattered and spattered all over the axe-head and halfway up the handle.

'I need to take care of Adam first.' He shook his head. 'He really has treated me like shit. I mean, if he'd been any kind of friend at all, I wouldn't be doing this. Did you ever have an unfaithful lover? It's real hard to deal with, believe me.' He shook his head again. 'I've lost fourteen pounds in the last month. I can't eat, I can't sleep. This is the only way left to deal with it.'

Insane, she thought.

Totally clinical.

Did he expect her to respond to his monologue, or hadn't he noticed that she was gagged?

'This won't take long.'

He went back into the room, leaving the door ajar again.

There was a scraping sound, as if Rick was moving stuff around, and then there were the faint useless sounds Adam made screaming into his gag.

'I gave you every chance,' Rick said, sounding sad. 'If you'd been even a little bit honest with me-'

More frantic screaming from Adam.

By now, Rick was muttering. She couldn't make out his exact words.

She tried not to think about the axe. How it would look as Rick held it over his head. Brought it downward. Sliced it into Adam's neck.

A terrible sharp sound filled the basement.

Edge of axe connecting with human neck.

She thought of her grandpa beheading chickens back on the farm.

Then Adam's head came rolling out through the open space between the door and the threshold.

It was almost like an optical illusion. Human heads didn't really roll…

But this one had.

Rolled away from the chopping block and right out the door.

Even in death, Adam was pretty good-looking. Except for the eyes, that is. The expression in the blue eyes conveyed all the terror and horror of his last moments.

Adam's head sat there staring at her as if to say: 'Don't be so smug. You're next.'

A white hand reached out and lifted Adam up by the hair. Blood and gore dripped from his cleaved neck, puddling on the floor below.

'You can't even be faithful to your own body,' Rick said from behind the door.

Silence again. Awareness of the scratchy mattress again (maybe it had bedbugs). The need to urinate again.

What was Rick doing in there, anyway?

Marcy sure wouldn't want to spend any more time with a beheaded corpse than she had to.

But then, Marcy was Marcy and Rick was Rick.

And then the scream came and she couldn't ever recall hearing a scream to match it. It came not just from the lungs and chest and throat of somebody; it came from his very essence, his soul, his entire being.

She closed her eyes, hoping he would not scream again.

The scream was worse than the sound of the axe severing the head.

Please don't scream again, Rick. Please.

He was down on his knees and he was gripping his head vise-like and he was Peter Tappley. i am peter tappley i am not rick corday i am

He opened his eyes.

Basement.

Cold concrete floor.

Stench: blood and feces and urine.

Man, handsome man, blond handsome man.

Adam.

In one corner sat Adam's head.

His torso lay sprawled on the cold concrete floor, blood running from the shoulders into the drain.

Blood feces urine.

Adam's eyes watching him. i am peter tappley

Then: mother.

Then: execution.

Then: Arthur K. Halliwell.

Then: escape to Europe. Endless plastic surgery. Freedom.

Then: darkness… and deep within him… a voice: i am rick corday

Then: Adam explaining this to him.

How sometimes he (Peter) was Rick… and how sometimes he (Rick) was Peter.

Basement cold odors

Then: mother mothermothermothermother

MOTHER.

Peter Tappley (or Rick Marcy wasn't sure now which to call him) came out carrying the axe.

The axe dripped blood, the same blood that was all over Peter's hands and face.

The blood of his friend Adam.

She sat cowering on the mattress, trembling even more from her fear than from the cold.

He was going to cut off her head, too.

She closed her eyes.

Sure, she was nothing but a big fraidy cat but she just couldn't deal with it.

If he wanted to cut her head off, she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of watching him.

Oh no.

She was going to keep her eyes closed.

His soles squeaked on the concrete floor because they were soaked in blood.

Squeak squeak squeak.

Coming closer.

With his axe.

Then the squeaking grew fainter.

Fainter.

She opened her eyes.

All she could see was from the backs of his knees down to his bloody shoes.

He was going up the basement stairs.

Opening the door.

Closing the door.

He hadn't paid any attention to her whatsoever.

Hadn't even slowed down.

Just gone straight up the stairs.

With his axe.

She started crying. It was crazy, she knew. She should be trying to whoop and yelp her good fortune but probably because she'd been scared so hard for so long she had to cry it out of her system.

But it was a good cry.

A positive cry.

The kind of cry that

The basement door at the top of the stairs opened.

Then nothing.