Slaughterhouse High

Bray had halted her onward hurtle, drawn her into his arms, felt her body melt against his, her mouth open to his lips.

Now the pitch of another victim's pain shot lightning bolts through her and split them apart.

"Come on," she said, pulling him along.

"Wait. Where?"

"I'm pretty sure it came from over there." She pressed forward again.

Winnie must have the night vision of a cat, thought Bray. Or my kisses have energized her.

She gripped his hand as the close warm air breezed past them. The walls swept by like batter made of rotting wood, curving out of the pitch black on either side, dim disconcerting rollers crashing without sound about them. An occasional nail snagged his suit.

The bulbs were burnt out in this section of the backways, but that didn't stop Winnie. It felt to Bray like an endless roil of dreamtime. He had to remind himself that a knife-wielding maniac might leap out at them from anywhere at any time.

"Are you sure you're-"

"Quiet," she shot back.

In their first moments behind the scenes, Winnie had spoken of trusting to instinct. Now she had clearly slipped into that mode.

Shifts in temperature and air currents and an impression of black-on-black crossings signaled intersections. Winnie barreled through them, taking her and Bray left or right without a moment's hesitation.

Abruptly she slowed, stopped. "That's the place. I'm sure of it." She raised her arm and pointed.

Two boxes of light floated ahead, canted at a peculiar angle. Bray felt imbalanced in their presence. They hovered there like pointillist paintings stippled in gradations of gray, a sense of menace emanating from them.

"Careful now," said Bray, tensing to grapple with their killer friend.

To the right of each box was a recess, the place from which the light was coming. Bray imagined a figure crouched to spring. Winnie wouldn't have a chance.

"Let me by," he said.

He gripped her, turned her, maneuvering past her. Do it, he thought, don't let fear creep in. He raised his hands defensively as he walked into the light and turned toward the recess.

Nothing.

No… but… tricked!

The slasher was there below, ready to spring. Bray's skin flushed with quick sweeps of heat. His eyes were still adjusting. The slasher charging at him had the advantage.

A knife lunged from the darkness.

Nothing.

No movement at all. No slasher. No knife.

Winnie came up to him. She peered down, then averted her eyes. "Christ," she said.

Crouching closer, he saw what Winnie had seen. Another victim, some old guy, a teacher type, someone he'd never seen. The angle the man's head lay at made no sense.

Then Bray saw that his neck had been brutally sliced open. There was blood everywhere. A crude parabola of gore coated one segment of the glass, a window onto an empty restroom.

I'm not seeing this, he told himself.

"Bray?" Winnie's throat was flayed raw.

He rose, the shock flooding him.

He wanted someone, anyone, to comfort him. Winnie. She would do. Her arms came about him, and he realized him.

Frantically, they embraced, grappling for elusive assurance, finding it and craving more.

Dumb, he thought.

He and Winnie had laid themselves wide open for attack.

They would die here. At any moment the mad slasher would leap out and cut them to ribbons. But even as he let his mind career about in panic, Bray held Winnie in a numb, shocked embrace, his body as calm as a grave.

Deadened. Dead. One way or another, they were as good as dead already. They would become victims. Or they would be accused and convicted of tonight's killings.

The cards were stacked against them.

Winnie tensed. A soft cry issued from her. Her head lifted as she seemed to sniff something new and terrible, a sharp miasma of misery on the cloying air.

"What?" Bray thought he said.

But Winnie's head was angled back, frozen in attentiveness like the snapshot of a mustang, its mane tossed about, its nostrils flaring wide from the scent of a predator on the wind.

21. Aerated and Tumbled Dry

Two things awakened Peach.

A warm slap of fluid across her cheeks.

And Bowser's screams.

Aches sang all over her body. Her knees and elbows, her thighs and back, her now-unshod feet, and every part of her head. All of it felt as if she had been drubbed unmercifully. Her hands lay like two comatose crabs, trapped and numb beneath the weight of her torso.

Peach opened her eyes, one puffy eyelid like a nagging fear in her peripheral vision. Shiny snips of tin, like crimped moons, lay scattered about a blunt iron base. Washes of blood coated the dull gray metal.

A low ominous hum came from above.

The machine shop. Elwood Dunsmore's preserve, where humiliation of the inept held sway. Peach hated it.

Fluid spattered her face like gobs of hawked spit. Some of it landed on her lips and splashed into her mouth, salty and rude.

Bowser's screams redoubled.

Peach looked up.