Halloween Candy by Douglas Clegg Read Free Book Online Page B

small and green skitter across the shiny tiles and dive behind the shower curtain. A lizard?

    Paul went to pull the shower curtain aside, and that’s when he found the woman’s torso.
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    Paul washed his face six times that night, back at the sheriff’s office. He wished he hadn’t found it, he wished it had been Beth, or some other cop, someone who could take that kind of thing. It was the sort of image he had only seen in forensics textbooks, never in living color, never that muddy rainbow effect, never all the snake-like turns and twists...he had to put it out of his mind. He did not want to think about what was left of the woman in the tub.

    He had not seen her face, and he was glad. She wasn’t entirely human to him without a face.

    Her name was Shirley. Fazzo the Fabulous told him. “Shirley Chastain. She was from the Clearwater District. She ran a dry cleaners with her mother. I thought she was a nice sort of girl right up until I cut her. I dug deep in her. She had a gut like a wet velvet curtain, thick, but smooth, smooth, smooth. She had a funny laugh. A tinkly bell kind of laugh.” He had sobered up and was sitting in county jail. Paul stood outside his cell with the county coroner, who took notes as Fazzo spoke.
    “She had excellent taste in shoes, but no real sense of style. Her skin was like sponge cake.”
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    “You eat her skin?” The coroner asked.

    Fazzo laughed. “Hell, no. I’m not some damn Jeffrey Dahmer wannabe. I mean it felt like sponge cake. The way sponge cake used to be, like foam, like perfect foam when you pull it apart.” He kneaded the air with his fingers. “I’m not a freakin’ cannibal.”

    Paul asked, “You were a clown or something? Back in your circus days, I mean?”

    “No, sir. I wasn’t anything like that. I was the world’s greatest magician. Even Harry Blackstone told me, when I was a kid, he said,
    ‘Fazzo, you’re gonna be the biggest, you got what it takes.’ Didn’t mean shit, but my oh my it sure did feel good to hear it from him.”

    “I guess you must’ve been something,” Paul said.

    Fazzo glanced from the coroner to Paul. “Why you here, kid?
    You busted me. What are you gawking for?”

    “I don’t know,” Paul said. “You kind of remind me of my dad I guess.” It was a joke; Paul glanced at the coroner, and then back at Fazzo. Last time Paul saw his dad, his dad’s face was split open from the impact of the crash.
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    “Shit,” the old guy dismissed this with a wave. “I know all about your old man, kid. It’s like tattoos on your body. Everybody’s story is on their body. Dad and Mom in car wreck, but you were driving. Little sister, too, thrown out of the car. I see it all, kid. You got a secret don’t you? That’s right, I can see it plain as day. You shouldnta never gone in 265, cause you’re the type it wants. You’re here because you got caught.”

    “ I got caught?”

    “You went in 265 and you got caught. I pass it to you, kid. You get the door-prize.”

    “You’re some sick puppy,” Paul said, turning away.

    Fazzo shouted after him, “Don’t ever go back there, kid. You can always get caught and get away. Just like a fish on the hook. Just don’t fight it. That always reels’em in!” Paul glanced back at Fazzo. The old man’s eyes became slivers. “It’s magic, kid. Real magic. Not the kind on stage or the kind in storybooks, but the real kind. It costs life sometimes to make magic. You’re already caught, though. Don’t go 77

    back there. Next time, it’s you.” Then Fazzo closed his eyes, and began humming to himself as if to block out some other noise.

    It sickened Paul further, thinking what a waste of a life. What a waste of a damned life, not just the dead woman, but this old clown. Paul said, “Why’d you do it?”

    Fazzo stopped his humming. He pointed his finger at Paul and said, “I was like you, kid. I didn’t believe in anything. That’s why it gets you. You believe