Josie
was so excited as she pulled into the parking lot behind the ceramic shop that
she started shouting as soon as she entered the open back door.
“He did it! Kevin made a goal!”
But
when she stepped from the bright sunlight into the dim stairwell leading down
six steps to the studio, she saw something that silenced her enthusiasm.
“Barb?”
She
could make out a figure crumpled at the bottom of the stairs.
“Su, help me,” she hollered as she rushed to
Barb’s body. “Something has—”
As she
rolled her friend over, horror grabbed the voice from her throat. Barb’s head
lolled back like a rag doll that has lost some of its stuffing and blood gushed
from the grotesque red smile just below her chin. Barb’s eyes were open wide in
disbelief.
Josie
wanted to scream but no sound would come. Her mouth moved as if trying to pump
up words from deep inside. She turned and saw blood and broken pieces of
half-finished pottery everywhere. Penny lay awkwardly over the table, her head
surrounded by the puddle of blood that oozed from her throat.
A moan
pulled Josie’s attention to the right and she could see a pair of feet sticking
out of the bathroom. Josie stumbled over
Barb and the chunks of shattered Christmas tree and fairly fell on Aggie in the
bathroom. There was hardly any blood on her, no seeping streak of red across
her neck, just a perfectly round hole in the middle of her forehead.
“Aggie! Aggie, can you hear me?”
The
old woman was unconscious but moaned again.
“I’ll get help.” Josie headed for the phone at
the front counter. As she started through the shelves of greenware, she passed
Su’s body, bent in half, looking perfectly delicate except for the circle of
red that surrounded her. Josie didn’t slow to check her but stumbled on to the
phone, looking back in horror to see her footprints tracking through the blood.
Her footprints and someone else’s.
She
ran right into him, a mountain of a man standing at the register, one purse
dangling from his neck, one at his elbow, and his hands stuffing dollars from
the register into the third purse.
Josie
squealed in surprise and Malcolm chuckled with macabre satisfaction. Josie
turned and ran, past Su slumped against the greenware, around Penny teetering
on the table. She was just about to leap over Barb at the base of the stairs
when a huge arm encircled her waist and yanked her into the air.
“No! Put me down,” Josie screamed, finding her
voice at last. She flailed her arms and legs wildly as Malcolm whirled her
around, laughing as though playing with a squirming child. In her fight to
break free, one of Josie’s jerking feet found its mark in the big man’s groin,
and he threw her to the floor as he bent in pain.
Josie
crawled a few feet to the base of one of the rolling pottery shelves. Without
thinking, she grabbed one of Barb’s gigantic porcelain bowls, whipped around
and hit the still bent Malcolm Jones in the head. He stumbled backward a few
steps, enough that Josie probably could have made it up the nearby stairs, but
an odd rage possessed her. Unaccustomed power heightened her senses and a
strange feeling of invincibility vanquished any fear.
“That’s for Barb,” she thought as the bowl
shattered. Then she turned and grabbed one of Penny’s gnome cookie jars, so big
that it took two hands for Josie to pick it up.
“And that’s for Penny,” she screamed as she
threw the heavy piece. It glanced off the madman’s back.
Malcolm shot up to full height and growled
like an angry bear. No longer was he having fun. His switchblade glinted in his
right hand and he lunged at Josie, barely nicking her leg as she ran around
behind the shelf, grabbing pieces of pottery and slinging them as she went.
Even Su’s dainty butterflies, which could sting no more than a mosquito bite,
sailed toward his advancing hulk. Aggie’s delicate designs bounced off his
shoulder and exploded on the floor.
In the
rage that gripped her, it seemed that each of her dead friends was placing
weapons in her hands. The china shop was avenging itself on the bull.
Amid
the pelting of pottery, Malcolm slashed at Josie, pushing her back to the wall
by the shelves of heavy greenware until she was trapped in a corner. She had
nothing more to throw and no outlet for escape. Malcolm paused to laugh at his
triumph.
“Father,
help me,” Josie breathed, looking into the madman’s eyes. Pressed against the concrete block wall, she
reached an arm behind the shelves of
greenware. She felt something solid, a water pipe, and pulled.
Just as Malcolm stabbed toward her with all
his weight, Josie disappeared, slipping into the imperceptible space between
the shelf and the wall as miraculously as a newborn emerges from a
ten-centimeter opening.
Frustrated,
Malcolm poked at her behind the shelf but his beefy arms were too big to reach her
as she slithered up the backs of the metal shelves.
Through
the shadowy greenware, Josie could see Malcolm straining like Hercules to pull
the shelf away from the wall. Feeling the shelf start to move, Josie grabbed a
water pipe overhead and straightened her legs, pushing against the top shelf
with all her strength. The unit wavered and then toppled forward with a
thunderous crash.
Dangling
from the water pipe like a kid on monkey bars, Josie saw a streak of movement
through the torrent of ceramic shards. Malcolm Jones had escaped.
No
longer thinking of her own safety, Josie dropped to the floor and started after
him. Beyond the register she could see that the front door was open. Had it
been standing ajar before? She couldn’t remember.
She
ran to the door and looked both ways but could see no one. She was turning back
into the room to call police when Malcolm slammed her head into the doorframe,
practically knocking her out.
“Where you goin’, bitch?” he whispered with
eerie calm. He pulled her back into the room, closed the door, and bolted
it.
“It’s my turn,” he said pushing her up against
the counter. Her face was bloodied now, one side swelling where she had hit the
doorframe. His lips curled into a
hideous grin, but his dark eyes lacked the fire of madness Josie had seen
before. Instead, as he lifted the knife to her throat, she saw sadness in his
brown eyes . . . and hesitation. Two words flashed into her mind, words Duke
had said when she wasn’t listening but that somehow had stuck with her for
their incongruity.
“Good
boy,” she choked out. “Good boy.”
Startled,
Malcolm lessened his grip enough that she slipped under his arm and tried to
run back into the studio. He grabbed her
wrist. She whirled around and threw one last piece of pottery, the heavy
earthenware vase that Su had said could be a hammer.
Perhaps
it was her aim, or the way Malcolm jerked to one side, or maybe it was a
guardian angel’s doing, but the vase missed Malcolm entirely and sailed like a
vandal’s brick through the plate glass window at the front of the store. The
lights seemed to flicker as the glass shattered in slow motion, the break
creeping in all directions with a crackling noise as it painted a spider web on the pane.
The
shock seemed to stop Malcolm and Josie for a split second. Then Malcolm’s fist
exploded into Josie’s face, and everything went black.
