Dark Corners - Twelve Tales of Terror by Michael Bray Read Free Book Online Page A

do another in my own city would be risky. Monde suggested we
select cities at random and drive out to look for someone to kill. I
also knew that if I wanted to continue, I would have to make
provision to hide the bodies. I didn’t want to be caught, not
when things had just begun.”
    “ How
long did it take for them to catch you?”
    “ Sixteen
years. A man can do a lot of killing in that time.”
    “ So
what happened?”
    “ If
I had the time, I could tell you in detail, but I suspect we don’t
have long left.”
    Elgin
looked at his watch and frowned. It was the first real facial
expression other than the lizard smile that Roberts had seen.
    “ We
have around fifteen minutes.”
    Roberts
nodded. “Well, the short version will have to do. I did as
Monde suggested. I had a huge map of America pinned to my bedroom
wall. What I would do is take a dart and throw it at the map, and
wherever it would land, that’s where Monde and I would go to
find our kill. Apart from a few exceptions, like our failed trip to
Delaware, there was almost always an opportunity. Most serial
murderers go for a specific type of victim. Ted Bundy chose only
middle class white women. Jeffrey Dahmer chose only men and young
boys. They each had a profile, a reason for choosing that particular
type of victim. I didn’t have limits like that. My kills
weren’t about repressed homosexuality, or the thrill of the
chase. Do you remember that business with the clown who went ape shit
at the circus one day, completely out of the blue?”
    Elgin
nodded. “Sure. It made headline news. But he was depressed, or
so they say.”
    “ Bullshit,”
Roberts said flatly. “He wasn’t depressed. He just got
tired of pretending to be normal…”
    “ You
don’t know that, not for sure.”
    Roberts
grinned.
    “ His
name was Freddy. He used to write to me. Sympathized with my plight,
or so he said.”
    Elgin
offered no reaction, so Roberts went on.
    “ The
poor guy was fucked up, tired of his life, alienated from his family.
He was a lot like me. I gave him a few pointers on how to break the
cycle.”
    “ You…
encouraged him?”
    Roberts
shrugged. “I don’t think so, not really. He would have
done it anyway, with or without help. The point I’m trying to
make is that there isn’t always a motive. Sometimes people just
lose it and want to go crazy.”
    Elgin
nodded, but didn’t pursue the point.
    “ I
don’t have a preferred type of victim. Male, female, young,
old, black, white—it really didn’t matter to me, as I
chose based on Monde’s suggestions and our favorite word—good
old opportunity. The security job got in my way, so I quit and took a
job as a long distance delivery driver. Not one of the big eighteen
wheeled rigs, mind you, but the smaller transit types. It was
perfect. Not only was I left to my own devices, the company I worked
for even paid my fuel expenses. I’ve often wondered if that
makes them an accessory to murder.... Anyway, Monde came up with
another great idea. Once we’d selected a location via the dart
and map, we would ship a package to a random address there via the
company I worked for. All I had to do was make sure that particular
delivery was on my sheet— and boom. I had a paid trip to my
next kill.
    “ Monde also suggested we keep the dual identity
game going too. That first girl had gone with me willingly because
she believed I was a police officer. It took a while, but I
eventually sourced some high quality police uniforms from a movie
costume company and bought them using Monde’s name. We didn’t
always use the police disguise, but it was an option. Sometimes I was
Monde the door-to-door salesman, or Monde the doctor. I also refined
my technique, and after my eighteenth or twentieth kill, I had it
down to a fine art. If my victim was a woman, I would strangle her. I
liked to watch that little light blink out in their eyes. If my
victim was a man, I would render him unconscious with a lump hammer.
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