The Laughing Corpse - Laurell K. Hamilton [58]
I started to say thank you, but that didn’t cut it. I picked my way over the floor searching for the rock fragment. I found it in a coffee cup. There was something green and growing in the bottom of it. I picked up the stone and wiped it on a pair of jeans on the floor. I put it back in the bag and shoved all of it inside the purse.
I stared around at the filth and didn’t want to leave him here. Maybe I was just feeling guilty for having abused him. Maybe. “Evans, thanks.”
He didn’t look up.
“If I had a cleaning person drop by, would you let her in to clean?”
“I don’t want anybody in here.”
“Animators, Inc., could pick up the tab. We owe you for this one.”
He looked up then. Anger, pure anger was all that was in his face. “Evans, get some help. You’re tearing yourself apart.”
“Get-the-fuck-out-of-my-house.” Each word was hot enough to scald. I had never seen Evans angry. Scared, yes, but not like this. What could I say? It was his house.
I got out. I stood on the shaky porch until I heard the door lock behind me. I had what I wanted, information. So why did I feel so bad? Because I had bullied a seriously disturbed man. Okay, that was it. Guilt, guilt, guilt.
An image flashed into my head, the blood-soaked sheet on the brown patterned couch. Mrs. Reynolds’s spine dangling wet and glistening in the sunlight.
I walked to my car and got in. If abusing Evans could save one family, then it was worth it. If it would keep me from having to see another three-year-old boy with his intestines ripped out, I’d beat Evans with a padded club. Or let him beat me.
Come to think of it, wasn’t that what we’d just done?
16
I WAS SMALL in the dream. A child. The car was crushed in front where it had been broadsided by another car. It looked like it was made of shiny paper that had been crushed by hand. The door was open. I crawled inside on the familiar upholstery, so pale it was almost white. There was a dark liquid stain on the seat. It wasn’t all that large. I touched it, tentatively.
My fingers came away smeared with crimson. It was the first blood I’d ever seen. I stared up at the windshield. It was broken in a spiderweb of cracks, bowed outward where my mother’s face had smashed into it. She had been thrown out the door to die in a field beside the road. That’s why there wasn’t a lot of blood on the seat.
I stared at the fresh blood on my fingers. In real life the blood had been dry, just a stain. When I dreamed about it, it was always fresh.
There was a smell this time. The smell of rotten flesh. That wasn’t right. I stared up in the dream and realized it was a dream. And the smell wasn’t part of it. It was real.
I woke instantly, staring into the dark. My heart thudding in my throat. My hand went for the Browning in its second home, a sheath attached to the headboard of my bed. It was firm and solid, and comforting. I stayed on the bed, back pressed against the headboard, gun held in a teacup grip.
Through a tiny crack in the drapes moonlight spilled. The meager light outlined a man’s shape. The shape didn’t react to the gun or my movement. It shuffled forward, dragging its feet through the carpet. It had stumbled into my collection of toy penguins that spilled like a fuzzy tide under my bedroom window. It had knocked some of them over, and it didn’t seem able to pick its feet up and walk over them. The figure was wading through the fluffy penguins, dragging its feet as if wading in water.
I kept the gun pointed one-handed at the thing and reached without looking to turn on my bedside lamp. The light seemed harsh after the darkness. I blinked rapidly willing my pupils to contract, to adjust. When they did, and I could see, it was a zombie.
He had been a big man in life. Shoulders broad as a barn door filled with muscle. His huge hands were very strong-looking. One eye had dehydrated and was shriveled like a prune. The remaining eye stared at