Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

NOCTURNE John L. Byrne

Monday brought the first miracle, as Edelman boarded the elevator, bound for the lobby. The doors opened and there she was, leaning against the rear wall. He almost fainted, seeing her in person for the first time. He thought for a moment she might be one of the terribly real flights of fantasy, his curse for so many years before therapy subdued them.

She wore cutoffs and a modest halter top, feet in ragged sneakers, chestnut hair spilling in wild disarray from a bright orange headband. No makeup, but Edelman recognized her immediately. He'd first seen that face on Cosmopolitan and Vogue covers nearly three years ago. One wall of his three-room apartment was a shrine to those dark eyes, pouting lips. His fantasies — especially his darker fantasies — were filled with her.

" 'Morning," she said as Edelman stepped into the car. Her mouth was not so pouty without lipstick. Her teeth were bright, her smile genuine.

"Good morning," Edelman said, managing to keep his breakfast down. His heart thundered so hard he expected her to hear it in the confined space of the elevator.

They rode down to the lobby without further words. Edelman stepped back to let her out. She smiled again, said "See y'round," strode away with a purposeful, almost manly gait.

Edelman wandered after her, his knees weak, his heart still pounding. Rachel McNichol! In his building! At this hour, in those clothes, it seemed unlikely she was only visiting. It was barely eight o'clock, shadows still long on 75th Street, when Edelman stepped out into the August heat.

Rachel McNichol! He remembered the first time he'd learned her name. He'd seen her in catalogs piled up by the mailboxes in the lobby anteroom; fashion catalogs displaying beautiful, anonymous women. Long, firm bodies; proud, haughty faces. The kinds of faces Edelman always had that terrible love/hate thing about. Faces, bodies he craved, that were always beyond his reach, lofty and aloof. Mocking him, he sometimes thought, with their perfect beauty, their unattainability.

In their midst one dark-eyed, dark-haired goddess who stood out from the rest, seizing his heart and mind in a way he'd not experienced since the days of sneaking Playboy magazines into his mother's house, dreaming after airbrushed gatefold fantasies. Imagining the things he might do to them, given the opportunity. They had names, though; the catalogs' models were never identified.

Then, one day, passing the news vendor's kiosk in the 28th Street station — long gone with the renovations — he saw her face on the cover of Vogue. Heavily made up, after the fashion of the magazine that year, but he recognized the chin, the pout. He bought the magazine, found inside two dozen pages with her face. On the contents page he also found her name: Rachel McNichol.

Three issues later she was featured on the cover again, again four months after that. The next month, though she was not on the cover, Edelman bought the issue anyway, in the hope there might be interior pages — particularly lingerie ads — featuring her perfect face and lithe, athletic form. He was rewarded with a short article about her — a single-page feature on a fast rising star in the modeling firmament.

He learned she was from Texas — the accent in the few words he'd heard from her therefore came as no surprise — twenty years old, single. She lived alone, he read, even eschewing the usual bevy of cats with which the young women of Edelman's acquaintance seemed so obsessed. Edelman was allergic to cats and dogs. He was delighted to discover there was, in this, no barrier to his fantasies.

He spent the rest of the day in a daze, longing for five o'clock, aching to get back home. Thinking about her made his head ache, the way it did before the therapy.

That evening he invented excuses to ride the elevator in his building — three trips to the grocery store on Columbus Avenue, each time for a single item; garbage that must be taken out; over to Columbus again for a newspaper — in the hopes of seeing her. He checked the names on the mailboxes three times; the small cards over the door buzzers twice. She was not listed, might be subletting. He knew of at least three residents on the floors above him who took August off, abandoning the inhospitable city for the Islands or the Cape.

He did not see her that evening, and although he took the elevator at precisely the same hour for the next four mornings — even lingering in the lobby to the point of arriving late at the office on Thursday — she did not appear.

Friday afternoon found him coming home from work, tired, out of sorts, generally pissed off with the world. He worked for DeVere Pharmaceuticals, on Park Avenue South, near 28th. He was good at his work — better than almost anyone else there — knew the mixing of chemicals, had the touch, the art. But there were idiots above him who stood in his way, and his fellow employees were never much interested in the things he wanted to talk about. They'd even scoffed, some of them, when he'd let it slip he belonged to a fantasy and role-playing club.

"That makes sense, for somebody with your problems," Bill Whittaker said, making Edelman regret ever confiding in him.

Adding to Edelman's misery this particular day, he'd made the mistake of asking Carolyn Murray to have dinner with him that evening, an invitation she loudly and mockingly rejected in the middle of the lunchroom.

Life sucks, Edelman thought, riding the subway, imagining all the nasty things he could do to Carolyn Murray, hurtful things that had a lot to do with rage and frustration, little to do with the sexual forms they took.

On top of that, he had not seen Rachel since Monday morning. He was ready to believe he'd imagined the whole thing — not so unlikely as he would have wished, given his history, his problems. There was that time last Christmas… He shuddered at the clouded memory of his delusion. If the elevator encounter was…

There she is!

Coming down 75th from Central Park West. Casual business garb, skirt, blouse, sensible shoes. Hair shaped into a perfect frame for her exquisitely made-up face. Carrying a large stack of library books; seven or eight volumes, Edelman guessed. Piled against her right arm, pushing the breast on that side up into the deep V of her open-necked blouse.

She was distracted, Edelman could see. Her eyes were not on the street before her, on the hose snaking across the sidewalk. Young Sanchez, the summer doorman, was watering the potted plants along the front of the building, talking to a plain-faced girl in khaki cutoffs and a black halter top. The dark green garden hose looped and piled across the sidewalk. Two steps and Rachel would trip, Edelman was sure.

He bolted forward, crying "Look out!" — just as her right toe hooked under the first loop of hose. She snapped back to the present, the place. Her eyes went wide. The library books arced out of her arms. She pitched forward.

Edelman was there. He caught her, smoothly, easily. He was bigger than her by half, a strong man. He caught her as he would a child, she weighed so little. He felt surprise, discovering this; the lingerie ads revealed no shortage of soft, supple flesh.

"Oh!" she said. Edelman felt her legs stiffen to regain weight and control. She lifted herself out of his arms, but he held on to the memory of her.

"Thanks." She smiled the covergirl smile. "That could have been… costly."

Edelman bent to gather her books — economics and real estate — his mind racing. "Costly?" he asked, as if he did not know how damaging to her daily job would be a skinned knee, a scraped cheek or nose.

"I'm a model," she said. She moderated the Texas drawl carefully. He might not even have noticed it, were he not listening for it. "I could have cost myself a few weeks' work. Oh, thanks." She took the pile of books back on her left arm, extended her free hand. "Rachel McNichol."

"Bob Edelman. We… met in the elevator the other morning, didn't we?" Now that he was into the flow of it, fabrication came easily. He could pretend not to know who she was, that it had been her Monday morning. Better than admitting to the wall shrine in his apartment.

"Oh, yeah." Her smile broadened. "You live here, Mr. Edelman?"

"Yes. Third floor." He pointed up, generally. His apartment faced out onto the park, not 75th.

"Then I guess we'll be seeing more of each other, won't we? I'm subletting the Richardson place." She dropped her voice at the last words. Subletting was not allowed in the building. Tenants developed distant cousins, come to house-sit in the summer months.

"Oh, yes," Edelman said. "I know Burt. We played handball a couple of times. I had dinner with him and Carrie last Thanksgiving. In their apartment." They'd seemed close friends, before he sensed a deliberate distancing, and Burt finally told him, flat out, that Carrie was weary of Edelman's moods and preoccupations. He'd seen nothing more of them after that, though he thought he might still have a key to their place, from an earlier time when they were called away unexpectedly and asked him to water their copious plants.

"Yeah. Well… thanks again." She was plainly interested in terminating the conversation. Edelman wondered if he'd somehow put a foot wrong, but he could find nothing wrong in the words he'd spoken. He made a show of stepping past her, as if it had always been his intent to continue toward Central Park.

"You're welcome. See you again." He watched her go up the steps into the shadow of the lobby, waited five minutes before going in himself.

Sanchez watched with raised eyebrows from his place at the end of the long green hose. He shrugged, dropped his voice to be sure no one but his companion heard. "That Mr. Edelman," he said. "An odd one."

The girl just nodded. Everyone knew that.

Saturday Edelman was up before the summer sun poked above the eastern skyline. He put on the jogging outfit he'd not worn in over a year. It struck him as the least conspicuous outfit for what he had in mind.

He went down to the lobby — no sign of Sanchez this early — and out onto 75th. He walked over to Columbus, bought a newspaper from the vendor just opening as he got there. He returned half the length of the block, remaining on the opposite side, leaned against one of the wrought-iron railings below a tall, old brownstone, opened the paper. He waited.

He had to move three times to avoid arousing suspicion. He was running out of places, on that short, residential street, where he could lounge inconspicuously and still be in line of sight to his doorway. After two and a half hours his mounting impatience was rewarded. She came out, dressed much as he was, turned right, began to jog along 75th toward Columbus.

He followed.

It was a glorious, glorious day. She went through an unstructured routine, jogging, stopping, looking in little shops along Columbus and the side streets, jogging some more. Edelman had no trouble keeping up with her. He even went in a couple of the shops, boldness overwhelming him. He tested how close he could get to her, how reckless without her seeing him.

He was getting one of those headaches, danger-sign headaches, playing this game of cat-and-mouse. He ignored it, concentrating on her, on ways he might get to know her, become… intimate with her.

In one of those little shops Edelman found the second miracle.

The moon was full, framed in the open window of Edelman's small living room. He sat in a chair positioned carefully in the long rectangle of pale white light spilling across his battered brown rug. Naked. Not even a wrist-watch. Breezes from the park cool on bare skin. The city shedding the heat of the day.

He breathed slowly, evenly, despite the headache squatting just behind his eyes, the foolishness he felt. He could have picked up something for the headache at DeVere, during his visit that afternoon. But he'd had more consuming matters on his mind. Now, he hardly even remembered the stop, or its purpose.

He reread the old book open across his thighs. He'd recognized the title in the bookstore she'd gone into, on 68th just off Columbus. He was amazed to see it. David Sinclair — Edelman's favorite fantasy writer until he'd actually met him at the Dallas Fantasy Fair — never wrote a story without mentioning it in some context. Edelman never knew it was a real book.

Nocture, it was called, The Book of Night Journeying. He'd thought that a silly phrase. "Is it about going to the bathroom?" he'd asked once, trying to sound worldly at a club meeting.

It wasn't. It was about miracles. It was about power. Odd that the clerk in the store had not known what she had, what she was letting Edelman purchase.

Edelman read the fine, narrow print — surprisingly easy to read in the moonlight — listening to the clock on the mantelpiece, waiting for the last chime of midnight.

The clock chimed. One — Two — Three —

Edelman stood up. Four — Five — Six —

A long stride toward the window. Seven — Eight — Nine —

Step up onto the ledge. No one on the street looking up at the naked man. No one pointing. No police whistle blowing. Ten — Eleven — Twelve —

A long, deep breath. Whisper the words from the book. Heart pounding, he stepped off the ledge.

It was like stepping onto a firm mattress; some give, but he did not plummet to the pavement three stories below.

The book had not lied. Standing naked in midair over Central Park West, Edelman wondered how he could ever have believed the words in those fine, tiny lines, but…

The book had not lied! He was a phantom — yet something more than a phantom. Real in one sense, unreal in another.

He looked up, turning to face the side of the building, to see the windows of the topmost floor. Her windows. The motion caused him to rise. He drifted up. A little faster than the elevator, past windows dark and light, four, five, six floors. He stopped outside her bedroom window. He knew the layout of the apartment on the top floor, knew in which room she'd be sleeping.

The window was open. He stepped onto the ledge, into the room, into a rectangle of moonlight very much like the one in his own room. It fell on a pale, uncarpeted floor. The room was large, spare. The decor was not as Edelman remembered, not at all the Richardsons' style. It was just the sort of room he'd imagined for Rachel. Low dressing table of modern design against the wall to the left. Rest of the room dominated by the huge double bed. Mosquito netting draped about the head of the bed, box spring resting on the floor, without legs. Sound of an air conditioner whirring — Odd, he thought, with the window open.

She was nude on the bed. Uncovered. Indirect moonlight bounced from the white walls, played elusive luminescence over the hills and hollows of her form. Dark hair spread over white pillow, perspiration a subtle sheen over her naked body. Edelman felt his phantom form responding as surely as flesh and blood. His manhood rose.

He crossed around the foot of the bed, knelt down to look at her sleeping face. Beautiful. More beautiful than he'd ever dreamed. Skin tanned, without the pale swatches a bathing suit would leave. Breasts full, lolling on her chest as she lay on her back, undulating slightly with each deep breath. Nipples small, dark coral.

Edelman looked down the length of her: smooth, hard muscle of her solar plexus; carefully trimmed and shaped V of pubic hair. She lay with one leg drawn slightly up and over the other. Moonlight threw deep shadow down the long muscle of her thigh.

He reached out a hand, touched her face. Smooth under his palm. Again the book had not lied, the sensation as perfect as if it were his true physical self occupying this space by her bedside.

He stroked her face, ran his hand along the curve of her jaw, the muscles of her neck. Drew a fingertip down the line of her sternum, tracing the valley between her pectoral muscles. Cupped her left breast, reaching across her chest to lift it in his hand. Ran his thumb over the nipple, saw it stiffen.

Just like the book says! She can feel me, respond to me, but she won't wake up. Because I'm nothing more than a dream to her. He bent to kiss her, certain he felt her lips respond to his, so slightly in sleep.

He dropped his face to the closer breast, caught the nipple between his ghostly teeth. It hardened. He bit down on the firm flesh. She moaned, stirred.

Edelman climbed onto the bed, draped himself down the length of her. He shifted his legs, forcing hers apart. He sank into the valley of her thighs, reached down between them to guide his member up into the parting of her pubic triangle.

Over the next few weeks she began to look tired, Edelman thought. As the book promised, he was able to use her in any way he wished, and in her deep sleep it seemed to him she sometimes reacted, moving with him, responding to his touch, his thrust. Sighing when he gave her pleasure, whimpering when he gave her pain.

He used her in every way his imagination could conceive, rolling her about on the big bed, taking her now from this angle, now that. One night he brought some lengths of cord and tied her, binding wrists to ankles. She moaned in discomfort when he mounted her thus restrained but did not awaken.

He used all parts of her, all openings. He rejoiced in it, growing bolder, cruder as he came to understand his mastery of her body. He could use the perfect, pouting mouth in any way that pleased him. He could squeeze and twist her breasts until tears flowed from her closed eyes. She did not awaken.

He turned her on her front one evening, took the same lengths of rope he bound her with to beat her buttocks. She twitched and yelped with each stroke of the cord, but she did not wake.

But she was looking tired. When he saw her in the lobby — strange now to see her dressed, awake, conscious of him — she looked drawn. Dark circles under her eyes. He smirked to himself, and asked, "Are you all right, Miss McNichol?"

"Oh, er, sure…" She looked at him, as if trying to focus or — Edelman felt a passing chill in the pit of his stomach — to remember something. Something about him. But she only said, "I guess I've been sleeping badly. And every morning there's a… smell in my room. Like a hospital smell. I was thinking about having somebody come and look for a gas leak, but all the appliances are electric." She shrugged. The explanation of her condition clearly made no more sense to her than to Edelman.

Still, he was puzzled by her reference to hospital smells. He lived with such odors all day long at work, but according to the book there should be no such effect. He would have to double-check.

That night cold fury exploded under his heart as he stepped into her bedroom.

The slut was not alone!

There was a man in bed with her. Young. Dark. Long hair — longer than hers — falling in wavy ringlets over the pillow. Body — a sculpted thing, muscles in perfect array, shaped and hardened by careful exercise.

Edelman hated him on sight, would have hated him even had he not been in bed with Edelman's property. They lay close, her back spooned against his front. Edelman did not doubt they drifted off to sleep with the man inside her.

Edelman was furious, his first instinct to grab her, pull her from the bed, slap her bloody. He conceived the notion of binding her as he had before and lashing those perfect breasts until they bled.

But another idea came. A better idea.

Smiling, Edelman crossed the bedroom, turned left outside the door, walked down the hall to the kitchen. On the white walls Burt and Carrie Richardson looked down at him from fifty plastic-framed photographs.

The kitchen was as he remembered it: large, modern, with a central carving block of rich yellow wood on stainless steel legs. Suspended between two of the legs, a rack; in the rack, a large assortment of knives for all occasions.

Even the one Edelman had in mind.

He heard her scream through the six floors that separated their bedrooms. He lay on his back, on his own bed, looking up at the cracked and peeling ceiling, imagining the scene in the Richardsons' bedroom as the little whore awoke to find his handiwork.

She screamed six times, long, ululating wails that rose to piercing peaks before dropping down to begin again. A pause. Five more shrieks, each louder than the last.

Edelman could see her in his mind, writhing on the bed as she tried to free herself of the bonds that held her, wrists and ankles bound as one. Twisting and turning under the weight of the thing sprawled on top of her, dark blood staining white sheets, flesh peeled away in great, broad strips that looped around her arms and legs. If she turned her head enough…

Another scream, startled, horrified even beyond the horror of what lay on top of her. Edelman smiled. She'd seen her partner's penis and testicles, nicely arranged in a tidy — if bloody — little pile on the pillow next to her.

Half an hour later Edelman heard the thumping of feet, the crash of the Richardsons' door being broken down. The screaming stopped.

Pity about the door, he thought. I'm almost sure I could have found the key for you.

From his bedroom window he watched the ambulance pull out of 75th Street, turning right onto Central Park West. He smiled at the success of his evening's work. The little tramp — how could he ever have idolized her? — had been justly punished, as had the creature who usurped Edelman's place in her bed.

Edelman looked out across the lush greenery of the park — how resilient those venerable old trees, to grow so full and green in the foul air of New York — contemplating the marvels lying ahead.

Rachel was of no further interest, but this amazing power opened untold possibilities. He would begin to test them as soon as it was dark tonight. See how far he could float. How fast. A world of women and girls out there, all his, now. His to use as he liked.

Invigorated by the concept, Edelman left his apartment. He was going to wander through the park, study the lithe young bodies jogging, walking, tossing Frisbees. A smorgasbord laid out for the consumption of Robert J. Edelman. Almost as an afterthought he tucked the leather-bound Nocturne volume under his arm. He could read it in the park, sitting under a tree, watching all the pleasures that would be his in the nights to come.

There were other things he could do, too. No bank was sealed to him. Donald Trump's wallet might as well have been Edelman's.

He rode the elevator down to the lobby. Police were everywhere, as he'd expected. Edelman lingered awhile, listening to their words, their astonishment as they tried to understand what had happened.

A big man in plain clothes stood in the middle of the marble floor, everything flowing around him. Edelman heard one of the dozen or so uniformed officers call the man "Lieutenant," another plainclothesman called him "Shaw."

Lieutenant Shaw spent much of his time talking to a thin-faced man in drab civilian clothes who referred frequently to a small notebook. He carried a black bag, like a doctor's bag, Edelman thought. Edelman sidled close enough to hear the men's soft words.

"Not a professional job, for sure," the smaller man said. "Never seen such a mess. Clumsy."

"Not the girl, though, you think? She couldn't have tied those knots herself. And she sure wasn't faking the hysteria."

"No. And, anyway, the bloody hand prints everywhere…"

Edelman frowned. Hand prints? She couldn't have got up. He'd left her tied. They said she was tied.

"Yeah. Not her hands, for sure," Lieutenant Shaw said. "Or his. Too big. And, anyway, he wouldn't have been moving much."

"Plus there's the ether. You smelled it, didn't you?"

"Yeah. Like a goddamned hospital in that room."

Edelman remembered her mentioning a hospital smell. He'd not thought about it then. Now… A flicker across his mind's eye. The storeroom at DeVere. The little brown bottle. He tried to catch the image, but it was too fleeting.

"So you think somebody got in there," Shaw said, "probably brought along some knockout stuff to dope her…" He shook his head. "No sign of forcible entry, though. And the windows were closed and secured from the inside."

Edelman's frown deepened. He'd gone out by the window, as he always did. He left it open. Didn't he? Another flicker. The elevator. The Richardsons' door. The key…

"Inside job of some kind," the little man said. "She's subletting the place. Maybe there's a spare key floating around."

Shaw nodded. "Anyway, with all those prints, a room full of clues, it shouldn't be too hard to nail our man."

Edelman was trembling. His head pounded. Something was very wrong. The only hand prints they could possibly mean were his. But according to the book… The book…

The headache was very bad. The walls of the lobby wavered, dreamlike. The book…

He looked down at the copy of The Fisherman's Bible in his hand.