The fifty-one dollars in his pockets was going to be helpful as well. But his phone was shot. The thing was dead, and as far as she could find in his car, there wasn’t a charger either. But there was more food. Taking the boxes of pizzas and subs into the house, she asked Dane how he had managed it.
“We can tell some of them what to do. Like whisper in their ears to do this or that. One time I had me one of those big money trucks open up his back doors and walk away. But he didn’t get far before the cops that was around when you don’t need them brought him back. Nobody got a dime of that money either.”
Stashing away the food, she looked at her dead pizza boy. They were no fun at all when they didn’t scream. She should have been more careful. Ellen moved the body off the floor and to the basement door. She was ready to kick him down there when she saw something moving.
“What is that?” Dane moved to look over her shoulder and told her he didn’t see anything. “You have more deadies down there? More like you? Go look.” Dane moved down the stairs and Ellen looked for Joel. She wanted to ask his advice on how to best keep the smell out of the house, but he was gone. Dane came up a few minutes later and told her that there wasn’t a thing down there. “I know I saw something. I’m going to keep an eye out for them. If you’re lying to me, I won’t help you.”
“I’m not lying.” But he looked down the steps again before speaking. “I felt something, but it wasn’t the dead. Not like us. I don’t want to go back down there though. Not ever.”
Ellen moved to go down the stairs herself, if for no other reason than to show off. But there was something down there, if only a feeling that should she go alone to the basement, she’d not come up the same again. Closing the door, she looked at the pizza guy.
“I’m going to take him to the barn. And we’ll have to…well, I’ll have to do something with his car. I’m not any good at driving, but I’ll have to put it in there too.”
Dane told her he could help her with that and entered her body. Ellen stood there for several seconds, just marveling at the feeling of his body within hers. But she also felt sick to her stomach, and hurried out to the car. Before she even got it started and moved, she’d thrown up twice. This wasn’t anything she was going to repeat either.
The car was shut up in the garage, the body was wrapped up in some tarps that she’d found, and by the time she’d made it back to the kitchen, she was a mess and covered in slimy dirt. Starving, she took out the now cold pizza and ate, plotting about all the shit she was going to do as soon as the living started coming in. Yes, sir, she was going to be the best skinner in the world.
Chapter 10
Addie entered the bedroom to talk to Nick. She needed to talk to him about what was going to happen. There wasn’t any way she was going to be able to stand up to Joel. He was mean when he was alive, and she had a feeling he was going to be an even meaner ghost. But the sound of the shower running had her mind going in a different direction, and she started stripping down even before she opened the bathroom door.
It was a huge bathroom. The shower stall alone was big enough for several people. And the wall of clear block let in all the light from the outside, making the room and the man standing in the stall a very beautiful setting.
Nick was leaning against the wall, the water spraying down over his back, and she could see the scars then. All of them had been put on his body so long ago, but she was sure that he knew each of them. Could tell her when his stepfather had put them there, the reason he’d given for doing it, and Nick would remember the pain like it was just yesterday.
When they’d made love before, it had been so quick that she’d seen little more than his chest. But she had a feeling that very few, if any, had seen all of him. Stepping in behind him, she put her hands on his shoulders and down around his chest.
“I was thinking about you.” He started to turn around, and she stopped him. “I can’t stand for anyone to see me like this. Let me turn.”
“No. I want to see them.” He was stiff under her fingers, his body a hard mass of muscles that seemed to ripple when she ran her fingers over them. Kissing the first scar that ran along his back, she asked him what Dane had used.
“Mostly it was his belt. But he’d taken to putting things like screws or nails in the holes so that it would hurt more. Draw more blood and cause a lot more pain to me. He said that it made the slide into me sexier.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t tell anyone what happened to me. There’s a reason for it, but I don’t want to talk about it.”