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Since he had no cell phone on him any longer, he ordered Louis to pick up his phone. When the man looked at him, like he didn’t have a first clue on how to even blink, Marlin decided that there wasn’t enough decontaminator in the world to make him use his phone ever again. Moving around the mess, difficult to do with blood still pooling under Lowel, Marlin made his way to the front of his secretary’s desk.
“Call the police. He killed a man.” Dorothy picked up the phone and asked him who had killed who. “That man. Kirk. He killed Lowel, trying to prove some kind of point. Which is…why are you staring at me like that? I said to call the police.”
Dorothy asked him the name of the dead man. After telling her, she asked where the killer had come from. The first thing that popped out of his mouth was that he’d been on the phone with him. She put the handle of the phone back in the cradle and stared at him. It wasn’t a look that he was particularly happy with, but he asked her what she was doing.
“And tell them what, sir? A man who isn’t in your office killed a man over the phone? I never let him in, so I couldn’t tell them who the man was nor if he had…how did he kill Lowel? Gun? I haven’t any idea. Was he there before I got in? I’ll need details if I’m going to make the call. I’m not getting into the middle of things without lots of details that cover my own ass. What do you mean he killed Lowel over the phone? Perhaps we should start there. I might be able to call someone if I have a lot of details. You will, too, if you know what the police are going to say when you tell them that story.”
“He just lost his head.” Giggling a little, not liking that his mind was suddenly thinking hilarity was in everything that he said, Marlin pressed his hands tightly over his mouth and didn’t speak. Starting for his office, he turned on his heel to leave the building. He’d never be able to work in that room again. Not after the massacre, that’s what he’d thought it would look like even if he had all the walls and carpet changed out.
Once he was on the streets, he heard phones going off all around him. He didn’t like the fact that they were loitering in front of his place of business, answering calls, but he was too busy to mess with them today as he needed to inspect his clothing for any more blood. As it was, one of his— One of the people, a woman that had her cell to her cheek asked him if he was Marlin Couch.
“Yes. Who wants to know?” She handed him her phone and he wasn’t sure how to hold it. It had so much crap and glittery stuff all over it that he knew that it had to weigh about three to four times more than it would have had she not decorated the damned thing. “Who is this?”
“It’s Brad again. It seems that your other phone got a little messy from my proving to you that I can get to you anytime I wish. And I will if you fuck with me any more than you have so far. By the way. Did you know that blood from a vampire will disappear with any contact with the sun? I didn’t either. Not that you have vampire blood on you, there are a couple of spots on your mouth where you should just lick away. However, like I said, vampire blood will simply go away, and then you’d be as pristine as you were before if you’re asking. You’re a very strange man. Has anyone ever told you that before?” Not to his face, he supposed, but he wasn’t going to talk to the man who was…well, he didn’t know what he was doing
He looked around, looking for the bastard that had so much detail about him. He had to be close. He knew to have so much detail about the blood that was on his face. While he couldn’t find him, not even standing next to him, Marlin pulled out his handkerchief and wiped at his mouth. There were two fat streaks of blood on it. Dropping it to the ground, backing from it, he’d had just about enough of this man’s childish games.
“Where the hell are you? I demand that you show yourself, or so help me, Christ, I will end you.” The man laughed, no longer using the phone. He could hear the man in his thoughts like he was right there with him. “I’m not fucking around. Show me your face now.”
Backing away from the woman, the woman who had handed him her phone who now had the face of Kirk, he hit the back of his head on the wall behind him. Everywhere he looked, there he was. Peoples faces. The reflection in the glass that was the doors to his office. The manhole cover was a larger version of Kirk. He was on fire hydrants, flower blooms, as well as his own face when he looked for an avenue to escape and saw himself again in the reflection.
“Did I do as you wanted? Can you see my face? I should hope you’d know the look of the man that is going to make your life a living hell.” The laughter made him feel like he was going insane. It was high pitched and—no. That couldn’t be right. It was him screaming not the man that was even now taunting him.
Terrified now that he might well be going insane, Marlin had witnessed firsthand his mother going over the edge when she’d nearly gunned him down one trick-or-treat night when he’d been about nine.
He’d been dressed as a ghost, a sheet over him with holes cut out for his eyes. It had been all he could afford with his mother driving his father away, and there no money for any food in the house. As it was, Marlin had had to be treated at the hospital when his mother had tried to strangle him using the very sheet that he’d been wearing. After that, he’d gone to live with his grannie, a mean old buzzard that wanted him out of the house so that she could be alone again.
Turning his back to the streets of people that he didn’t want to look at, Marlin closed his eyes as tightly as he could. Putting his thumbs in his ears so that he’d not hear anyone screaming—he knew on some level that it was his voice that he heard—however he wanted nothing to do with the crowd that was forming right next to him. They were out to get him, just as his mother had told him when she’d been trapped by the people who had come to take her away.
Marlin didn’t know how long he’d stood there, humming and singing the alphabet over and over, until someone touched his shoulder. Again, something that his mother had done a great deal toward the end of her short but eventful life. Cringing from everything, he begged whoever touched him to leave him alone. He was barely hanging on to his own sanity and didn’t want to drag someone else into it.
“My name is Officer James Billing, Mr. Couch. We were called to do a welfare check on you by some of the people in your office to make sure that you’re all right. If you don’t mind answering a few questions, I can get you some help. You seem to be needing it.” He told the man that he wasn’t all right. There was a headless horseman in his office. “Headless horseman? Are you telling us that you have a dead body in your offices? I’ll have to check that out, of course. Will you be able to stay with my partner? I won’t be but a few minutes.”
“Yes. That man did it. He has been taunting me for the last few hours. I want you to go arrest him for the murder of my associate.” He asked if he was the headless horseman. “Well, of course it is. Are you even paying any attention to the things I’m telling you about? There is a bloody mess in my office that this Kirk guy did it to my associate when I threatened to harm his son. I will, too, but if he’s in jail…Will you please just go and see if he’s killed anyone else? My secretary is up there, and I’d just as soon she wouldn’t be hurt too. She knows a great deal about my operations, and I’d just as soon she was dead than talking up a storm. Go check. He’s up there in my office with my other henchman.”
They followed him up the elevator without saying a word. He certainly didn’t want to see the mess that was in his office, but he’d do this, just this one time, for them. Hopefully, it would take care that Kirk was in jail so that he could get into his office and ruin the man. Marlin couldn’t remember right off the top of his head if Kirk had done anything to him, but just the fact that he’d killed someone in his—
“Mr. Couch. You gave me a fright when you ran out of the office a half hour ago. What’s the matter? I know that you didn’t have any appointments today, but—” He asked if she’d gotten someone in his office to clean up the mess? “The mess? I’m not sure what you’re meaning. Mr. Lowel and Mr. Louis are awaiting your return so that they can—what are you doing now?”
He forcibly pulled Hilda from her seat and made her open his door. While she was doing that, he turned to the police officers and told them to just wait. They were going to see what Kirk had done to him. And Lowel. It occurred to him that Hilda had said that his men were waiting to talk to him, but one of them was dead, and he didn’t know what to think of—
“Mr. Couch. What dead body are you talking about?” He slipped around the officer who had entered his office. There wasn’t a body. “You said that Mr. Kirk removed his head and that he was in here. I don’t see anything like you described. The only two men that are in there are your henchmen; you did call them that. But no body—headless horseman or whatever. Are you sure that’s what you saw?”
“Yes, I’m sure. It was right there. I had blood all over me. I had to toss my jacket off because it was covered.” He picked up his suit jacket by two fingers and handed it off to the man. “Just have a look at that. See that it’s covered in blood.” It wasn’t.
Even when the officer turned the jacket inside out, it was still as clean as it had been when he put it on this morning. Grabbing his jacket from the man, he tore it into pieces while trying to find even a spot of blood—he remembered his handkerchief. Digging it out of his pocket, he handed it to the man as well.
“Here. Have a look at this. I know that it has blood on it. I saw…well, I saw it as well.” He watched as the two officers exchanged looks. He knew just what they were thinking. “I’m not insane. My mother was, and she nearly drove us all…I’m not insane. I know what I saw.”
As was the jacket clean, so was his handkerchief. He was tossing his office when it occurred to him that they’d switched out his office. How they’d done it, he hadn’t a clue, but that was all he could think that had happened. He asked Hilda what she’d done with his office. Even to his own ears, it sounded…off.
“Tell me, damn it.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t happy with him right now. “Please. I won’t be mad. Tell me what you did with switching out my office. And then tell the police that it was all a joke on me. I won’t be mad, but I need to know where my office is now.”
“It’s right there. Where you left it. Are you feeling all right, Mr. Couch? You don’t look so well.” He started to scream, barely able to hold it back while he tried to reason with Hilda once again about his office. “I don’t know what you think I am, sir, but I won’t have you accusing me of taking anything out of your office, much less the whole lot of rooms you have. I think you need to let these men take you to the hospital. You’re not acting right in the head.”
“My head is perfectly fine.” Both the officers put their hands on their guns when he screamed. Taking in another deep breath, he did that three more times before he thought that he could speak. “I’m perfectly fine. My head is fine, too. I’m just missing my office. The headless guy, well, he wasn’t headless, but he made one of my men headless, and that was all I could think about. You’ll see. As soon as someone tells me how they switched the offices around…maybe we’re on the wrong floor. That’s it. We got off on the wrong floor, and they’re playing with my head.”
Now that he was saying it out loud, he realized how ridiculous he sounded. Trying to regain some control over…well, everything that he’d said and done today, he looked at the officers and told them without resorting to hysterics that he was all right now. He’d been….he’d been upset before, but he was better now. Trying to back them out of the office, whomever it belonged to, they weren’t having any of it. He just knew that he was going to end up in the loony bin like his mother had.
