Monk checked the street in all directions and then walked up to the front door of the tattoo parlor. He could still hear music from the bar where Sandy worked, but it was some old Guns N’ Roses song. “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” Nobody gets worked up into a rage when that eighties stuff was on.
Once he was sure he wasn’t being observed, Monk tried the door again, but didn’t bother knocking. Above him the birds shuffled nervously.
“Yeah, yeah,” he told them. “I can feel it, too.”
Saying it made him realize that he actually could feel something. There was an odd feel to the door, to the whole place. He hadn’t paid enough attention earlier, but now he was on high alert. He leaned close and put an ear to the glass.
No sound.
Except …
Except that wasn’t exactly true. There was something in there. It wasn’t so much a noise as a sense of something. He was spooked enough to imagine that as he listened at the glass, some alien ear was pressed against the other side listening to him. Listening to his breath, to his heartbeat.
He cursed under his breath, mocking himself for being stupid. The feeling, however, persisted. There was something in there. It was the same feeling he had when he came to Patty’s place the previous day. That feeling of being watched, but not necessarily by human eyes. By something. By who? By what.
And that fast, Patty’s voice echoed in his head. He is the Lord of the Flies.
Monk licked his lips that had suddenly gone dry.
His car was eighty feet away and he could be behind the wheel and hauling ass in under four seconds. To hell with this place and to hell with whatever was in there. This wasn’t even his case.
Patty’s voice was still in his head. Her, trying to say the name of her little girl. Trying to say …
Monk had to fight to remember the name, too.
Tuyet. All the ghosts on his skin whispered the name of their lost little sister.
Monk forced himself to say it aloud. “Tuyet.”
He wanted to cry. He wanted to kill someone. He wanted to put his hands on something that would scream for mercy that he was not willing to give.
“Tuyet,” he said again as he fished his lockpicks out of his pocket. The lock was a good one, made to resist burglars. Monk heard the tumbler click and then the door sagged inward on its hinges. Not much, a half inch.
He stuffed the lockpicks into his pocket and drew the blackjack as he pushed the door open and went inside. It swung on hinges that made no sound. Oiled and smooth. He took a breath, let it out, and moved fast, going in to the left, crouching, turning to scan the room, trying to capture flash images in his brain. Assembling the whole place.
Like Patty’s place there were barber chairs.
Like her place there was a long worktable with pots of ink, boxes of gloves, books of art samples, and several kinds of tattoo guns.
Like her place there was art on the wall.
After that … there was nothing that connected Patty’s studio of art and beauty to what filled this place.
The walls were painted with dark colors. Blacks and purples that Monk knew were tinted wrong by shadows. When lightning flashed outside he could see the real colors. The scarlet. The crimson. The red of death and pain.
He saw that each of the barber chairs was occupied. By something.
They had been human once, but virtually everything that defined them as human, as people, was gone. Stripped away. Carved down to horror. In an irrational fragment of thought he wondered why they were tied to the chairs if they had no hands or feet. Or skin.
The floor was a lake of blood.
Lightning flashed again and in the middle of that lake, naked, legs spread wide, body painted the same color as the walls, stood a man. Sixty or so. Hair wild and caked with blood. Lips hung with pendulous beads of drool. He held a tattoo gun in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. Black flies crawled over his face. His eyes were wide and staring, and there was nothing human or sane in them.
With a howl like a demon from the deepest pit of hell, Spider came rushing at Monk, teeth snapping and blade flashing as thunder tore the night apart.