Blackmail Earth

Blackmail Earth - By Bill Evans.



PROLOGUE





There’s no need for retreat but he steps back anyway. For a better view. A body lies spread-eagled on the floor: once a woman, now a bloodied, disfigured form. Red smears on rough planks.

The smells of salt and sweat and blood rise like the crackling madness of cicadas, millions of them beating their belly membranes in the surrounding fields and forests.

A taper burns in his hand, flickering light that dares the shadows to dance, the reckless darkness to come to life.

Carefully, with a true aim, steady hand, he dribbles wax on the five points of a pentacle that he’s carved into her chest, then stares at the smaller stars that he’s gouged into each of her perfect cheeks and her lightly lined brow.

Her empty eyes are open, but even in death—so ravenous and raw—they hold his gaze. Not for long. He will grant them special attention.

He retrieves two white votive candles from his pocket and lights them. The scents of anise, cinnamon, cloves, and rose hips fill his nostrils. Like cookies.

He doesn’t touch her. Not directly. Not anymore. He tilts the taper till it spills hot wax on her fallen eyes, patiently sealing their glum surfaces. The rest of her face, though lit with an orange glow, proves no less opaque, its features drowned in a crimson flood, as if she’s been flayed in a furious rage. Purely unidentifiable at a glance, and that’s all he allows himself, for a calm has come; and his attention to the macabre details of murder is spent. For now.

He smiles. He didn’t choose her. She chose herself. The laws of night coming alive in veils of sudden wonder.

He stares at the red length of her, then places the taper on her bloody belly, where babies might have nested. The candle falls over, sticks to her richly scored skin, and sputters in the silence. As she did. Quickly snuffed. As she was.

Straightening, he runs his index finger and thumb down the slippery sides of a beveled blade, his eyes on the drips that spatter the floor.

Like the rain that never comes.