Эд Горман - Blood Moon

She lost it again, put her head down, started sobbing so hard I was afraid she was going to vomit.

I went over and got down on one knee and stroked her dark hair and rubbed her back gently and told her over and over that these things usually turned out fine and that if we just had a little patience and a little time... But that wasn’t true, of course. At the very least we were dealing with a person who could chop off another person’s finger. I had no doubt that we were also dealing with the same man Nora Conners had hired me to find, the same man that Mike Peary had profiled in his letter to Nora. The same man who had murdered all those girls.

She sat up, dried her eyes with the backs of her small white hands, and sniffled. “I really appreciate you being here.”

I stood up. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll check back with you tonight.”

She nodded.

I went over to the back door, opened it and said, “If the man should call you, write down everything he says. Every single word — all right?”

“Yes.”

“And if you should hear any noises in the background, anything at all, write down what those were, too.”

“I will.” She sniffled. “I really appreciate this.”

I nodded and left.

The nights make him crazy sometimes. Nobody can really describe nighttime in a lumbering old whore of a prison like this one. Puke & shit & sweat & piss & saliva & jism & every conceivable bodily fluid on the floor & in the crapper & in the mouth & up the bunghole.

It all makes him sick

It all makes him feel like a puritan.

He does not want to be one of them.

He is not one of them.

Even when he kills it is with a kind of purity.

He sometimes has dreams of his own particular dark god.

A very goaty old bastard to be sure.

Bring him bone and bring him flesh and bring him life hacked unto death with a knife or blown unto death with a gun or choked unto death with good strong quick hands.

The goaty old bastard likes it.

He has such crazy dreams.

Is sixteen years old again/sitting in a 1963 movie house watching Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin/but it is a movie unlike any he has ever seen

Sandra Dee is delivering a baby

And Bobby Darin is peering down between her legs

And what is emerging

What makes even the suddenly-appearing doctor stand back and cover his eyes in disgust and horror

is this

thing

No other word for it — thing

a crocodile head on the body of a small hunch-backed human child with fingers that are long slashing razors

slashing Sandra Dee’s face into bloody shreds

severing Bobby Darin’s neck from his shoulders

& then leaping for the doctor

knife-fingers ripping the man’s blue blue eyes from their sockets

the doctor screaming

and covering his eyes again

blood streaming from beneath his fingers

And then running, running

sirens just behind him & shouts just behind him & gunfire just behind him

& into a deep woods now

lost & wandering in circles and circles and circles

& a storm all crashing thunder and silver lightning that burns when its silver touches

& he knows who he is now

& he is both the 1963 boy watching the movie

& also the sad hideous terrible thing that is lost in the dark woods

“Hey, man, knock it off.”

The coon upstairs.

That’s how he thinks of him.

Guy in the upper bunk.

Says he’s white.

But everybody knows better.

Except the warden, who always puts him in with the white guys.

And he has to endure the coon for another six weeks or so until the new section is put on the prison.

“You hear me?” the coon says.

“Yeah.”

“That musta been some nightmare,” the coon says.

“Yeah.”

“Woke me up,” the coon says.

Politeness now calls for him to say Sorry. But not in prison where politeness is considered an effeminate sign of weakness.

“Screw yourself. You don’t have nightmares?”

“Not like yours.” the coon says.

“Just go back to sleep.”

“Just go screw yourself.”

It is at times like these that the claustrophobia comes. There is no place for privacy. You eat/sleep/piss/shit/shower/exercise/work/read/pick your nose/scratch your balls with people watching you. Twenty-four hours a day. Three hundred sixty-five days a year. Watching you. There are even cons in this place who like watching gang rapes. Somebody is always always watching somebody. True, in some respects, it is a jungle but unlike a real jungle it offers no trees no ravines no caves for privacy. None.

It is also at moments like these when he understands the suicides. There was a guy in cellblock D, for instance, who beat his head against the wall until he killed himself. There was a guy in the infirmary who got his hands on some rodent poison and killed himself. There was even the guy who was so desperate to get it over with that he went down to the garage one day, poured gasoline on himself and set himself afire, like those Buddhist monks back during the Vietnam War.

“Next time you tell me to go screw myself, man,” the coon says, “you’re gonna be sorry you said it.”

“Yeah?” he says. “Go screw yourself.”

But the coon is a coward and everybody knows it.

The coon eventually goes back to sleep. He eventually goes back to his nightmare.

Back to the movie theater again. And back to the beast on screen who is really — himself.

Razor talons click as he searches for new victims.

“ ’lo.”

“Chief Avery, please.”

“This is she.”

“I just wanted to tell you that you’ve won a free Mike’s pizza.”

“This could only be the mysterious Mr. Hokanson.”

“I believe we were talking about pizza. Don’t change the subject.”

“How do I get this pizza?”

“You give your address to our delivery man, and after he’s run a few other errands, he’ll bring it over to your place. Maybe an hour and a half.”

“And the delivery man is—”

“A guy I know named Hokanson.”

“Why not? I have a gun and plenty of ammunition and a whole drawerful of arrest warrants. I guess I can take care of myself.”

“All I need is the address.”

Which she gave me.

Jane Avery’s apartment house sat in a little grove of cedars on the edge of a narrow creek that ran silver in the moonlight. No lights were on. No car was parked out front, Maybe she’d gotten tired of waiting.

It was a night of crickets and barn owls and a quarter moon, a night of lonely distant dogs and far roaring trains and creek water tumbling across rocks just right for frogs to sit on. No doubt about it, I liked the country life.

I left my car running and walked up to the apartment house. I knocked on the screen door. Then I watched something white flutter to the concrete block steps. This was my night for notes.

Jim,

There’s been an emergency. I’m at the old Brindle farm. Guess we’ll have to try again. Sorry, but this is very serious stuff.

I stuffed the note in my pocket, got in my car and drove back to my motel. Maybe I’d just have myself a good night’s sleep and start this investigation all over again tomorrow.