It Drinks Blood Read online

  FIRST EDITION

  It Drinks Blood © 2011 by J. F. Gonzalez

  Cover Artwork © 2011 by Zach McCain

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DELIRIUM BOOKS

  P.O. Box 338

  North Webster, IN 46555

  www.deliriumbooks.com

  To the memories of Hugh B. Cave

  and Karl Edward Wagner

  Who I am extremely proud to have known before they shuffled off this mortal coil.

  Acknowledgements:

  My thanks to Shane Ryan Staley for lighting the fire, to James Beach and John Pelan for “splatterpulp” research, to the late Mark Williams for fueling the obsession early on, the late Hugh B. Cave for the day he shared his account of what it was like to write for the pulps back in the day, and to James Jessen Badal and his excellent non-fiction account In The Wake Of The Butcher: Cleveland’s Torso Murders.

  This is the last thing I will ever write.

  I haven’t written anything worth reading for more than ten years. They say writers will continue to produce work throughout their life and the only time they stop is when they shuffle off this mortal coil. I suppose, on reflection, there is some truth in that. After all, despite my decade-long hiatus, I’m writing now.

  I suppose that after my passing, my daughters will find this, read it, and assume it is my final work. They might even attempt to have it published. If they do, the editor who reads it will assume it is a piece of what is now called “meta-fiction;” a fictional piece heavily based on, and starring, the author. It’s certainly structured that way, but I did this to draw the reader in. To make them feel like they are in the story. I tried an earlier draft in standard journalist-reporting fashion and it was just too damn boring.

  Despite the manner in which I wrote this, rest assured it isn’t fiction—it’s all true. If people want to think its fiction, they are perfectly welcome to. After all, what they read within these pages will be pretty extraordinary.

  The story I’m about to reveal involves me, a fourteen-year old girl, family dysfunction and abuse, alcoholism, neglect, violence, torture, sadism, vampirism, and a serial killer who can only be described as America’s very own Jack the Ripper.

  I’ve kept this a secret for over seventy years.

  And what brought those long buried memories to the surface? The arrival of a new resident to the Lincoln Nursing home, where I’m spending my final days.

  The woman in Room 412, directly across the hall from me.

  I recognized her the moment she was wheeled in. I was sitting in the front lounge, reading the paper. I like sitting there in the morning; I like to people-watch, even if the majority of the folks in here are old dinosaurs that can barely shuffle along. I’ve always been observant this way. It’s a trait that helped me when I was a writer. It also helped me with other things, especially my earlier career as a petty criminal.

  Anyway, about the woman—I was sitting in the lobby reading the paper, people-watching, when I noticed the orderlies wheel her in. A middle-aged man accompanied her, probably the elderly woman’s son. The woman being wheeled in bore the vacant, worn-out look of the elderly, those who have lived long lives and continue to live even after their bodies wither and fade, their minds still sharp but trapped in a body that is failing them.

  A look of depression. Of loneliness.

  I recognized her all right. Allison Kenyon. She was fourteen and fifteen years old during the years of the tale I am about to tell you.

  When I originally met Allison in the summer of 1938, she was thrilled to meet me. She had read my novelette “The Corpse Eaters” in the June-July issue of the pulp magazine Horror Stories and recognized my name. You see, from 1934 until approximately 1942 I wrote dozens of stories for such pulp magazines as Dime Mystery, Thrilling Mystery, Horror Stories, Terror Tales and the like. These were the weird menace pulps. The stories contained gruesome, often over-the-top violence and scenes of torture and sex. Of course, what’s being published today far exceeds what we did back then, but we did push the limit for those times. I wrote more traditional detective, science fiction, and weird fiction as well, for the other leading pulps like Argosy and Weird Tales.

  When I think about what happened back then, I realize it sounds very much like the plot out of one of those blood-drenched shudder pulp stories I used to write. If only what happened had come from the depths of my imagination and had not actually happened.

  It seems only fitting to relate this story in a manner that would have fit right in the pages of Terror Tales or Dime Mystery Magazine…

  Chapter One:

  Scream at Midnight!

  I knew things were bad at the house next door…but I didn’t know they were that horrific, that tumultuous, until that cold snowy February of 1939 when Allison’s grandmother, Linda, ran from her house to ours and pounded on our front door.

  It was early evening and Ellen and I were up, listening to a serial on the radio. The pounding on the front door alerted Grace, our pit bull terrier, who began to bark furiously.

  “Who is it?” I grunted.

  “It’s Linda! I need to use your phone! Please! It’s Susan…she’s gone crazy! She’s…” At the mention of Susan going crazy, I leapt to my feet and immediately opened the door. Linda tumbled in, out of breath and in a state of panic.

  Linda was one of the first neighbors we met upon moving to Fir Lane, a nice, quiet rural section of New Castle, Pennsylvania. She was approaching seventy, but looked older, and appeared frail and stooped. She lived in the dilapidated house alone. We later learned that she had a forty-six year old daughter named Susan, who was a carnie. Susan had a fourteen-year old daughter named Allison, whom she dragged along on the carnie circuit.

  Susan and Allison had no steady home. Their home during the carnival season was wherever the circuit took them. Off-season, they stayed with any number of men, YWCAs, and whatever run-down motels and flophouses Susan managed to find lodgings in. It was like that for a lot of people back then. On a regular basis, Susan and Allison would find their way to New Castle and stay with Linda. Occasionally, Susan’s boyfriend, a tall, well-built blonde man accompanied them. He was introduced to me as James; his last name, I learned later, was Nicholson. He appeared much younger than Susan by about a decade. He seemed pleasant enough, but I detected the vagabond in him. He had that look about him; it was in his smile, which seemed to leer at you.

  When Susan and Allison stayed with Linda, they always fought loud and viciously. They would stay for a few days, maybe a few weeks, then leave and return at some point. During that time, Ellen and I would listen to the horrible sounds from next door: blood-curdling screams, tortured shrieks, mad yelling, loud crashing of furniture, breaking dishes. It was hard to tell who was the aggressor. All three women’s voices were equally loud, spitting vitriol embroiled in equal parts hatred and malice.

  Ellen and I never called the police, preferring to stay out of it. Besides, we learned from one of the couples we became friends with—Jack and Cathy Henderson, who lived in the large, rambling farmhouse at the end of the road—that this was common occurrence for the Kenyon women. “They fight like wildcats every winter,” Jack told me shortly after we moved in. “It’s a very vicious cycle. There’s not much that can be done about it, I’m afraid.”

  I later learned, after the few times I did alert the authorities, that Susan or James would retaliate against whoever phoned the police. It happened to me a number of times, usually in the form of vandalism to our automobile. One time,
there was an attempted poisoning of Grace by throwing tainted meat into our yard—luckily I saw Susan do this and was able to grab the meat before Grace could gobble it down. I almost went after her then, but I didn’t. Back then, men didn’t hit women. Susan was the first woman I ever met who I wanted to punch in the face. It didn’t take long for me to stop calling the police. Besides, they never did anything about it. James would sweet talk them, use that charm. Sorry, officers, I was just trying to apply some discipline. Surely you understand. That was the line that was parried back then when it came to domestic violence. Domestic abuse was never a big issue back then with law enforcement. It took a long time for law enforcement to take it seriously.

  In the mad jumble to get everything situated upon Linda entering my living room, I noticed several things. One, Linda’s face was badly bruised, her upper lip cut and bleeding, the flesh around her left eye swollen. Two, I could hear a tremendous screaming and crashing from the house next door; it sounded like a fight. “Linda, what’s going on?” I asked.

  “Call the police!” Linda said, her tone begging. Ellen was in the kitchen, trying to restrain Grace behind the gate we sometimes erected between the kitchen and the mudroom. “Susan is beating Allison!”

  I dived for the phone, got an open connection, and dialed the police. The desk officer who took my call confirmed the address, and then told me a squad car would be there shortly. I hung up, and then I began to bundle up to prepare for the trip next door. Ellen had helped Linda into our home and seated her on the living room sofa. As I prepared to go outside, Ellen said, “Robert, be careful!”

  I looked at Linda. “Is James at the house?”

  “No, it’s just Susan and Allison,” Linda said.

  I nodded, relieved I wouldn’t have to be tangling with James.

  I was halfway to their home before I realized I should probably have a weapon. It didn’t occur to me that I would have a physical confrontation with Susan. I didn’t want one; I was brought up to never strike a woman, no matter what. But if I came across Susan pummeling her daughter with her fists, I would have to do something. And if she attacked me in the process, I would have to defend myself. Susan was a short, stocky woman who looked far older than her forty-six years. I had the feeling if I tangled with her, she’d be a formidable opponent.

  I reached their home and paused, standing at the front porch. The front door was open. A single light burned in the living room, casting the porch in a soft, eerie glow. I could hear voices from the rear of the house.

  I opened the storm door and let myself into the house. “Allison! Susan! Everything all right?”

  From Allison, obviously talking to her mother. “It’s okay, Mom, it’s just Mr. Brennan, from next door. He’s okay…he’s not like the others…”

  “How d’you know what I’m thinking?” Susan roared. Her voice was loud, and she was slurring her words. She was extremely drunk.

  “Because you told me earlier, remember?” I could tell from the tone of Allison’s voice that she’d been crying. “You told me that he wasn’t like those others…the ones that killed—”

  “Shut up!” Susan shouted. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore, so just shut up!”

  I stepped in the kitchen and saw them standing near the corner. Allison’s hair was hanging in her face in knotted clumps. Susan had a bloody nose. They looked in my direction. Susan’s eyes were piercing glares. “Where’s my mother?”

  “She’s at my house,” I said. I could feel myself grow tense, the way I always did when I knew I might get into a fight—I was no stranger to physical confrontations and the occasional brawl. “Ellen is taking care of her. What happened here?”

  “It’s none of your business!”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. Whatever your problems may be, I hardly see where beating on your daughter is—”

  Susan screamed. “You can’t see it! Nobody can see it, not even my daughter! She’s going to wind up just like her!” She pushed Allison away from her and slumped against the wall, muttering.

  Allison retreated toward me and I put a comforting arm around her. She wasn’t trembling; most girls would have, but something told me Allison had been through this type of abuse before.

  “It doesn’t matter what happens, my mother will never own up to it,” Susan continued. “My mother…will always be this way. She’ll always be the cause of everything that is wrong!”

  I gently guided Allison toward the living room. “Go on,” I said. “Go to my house and wait for the police.”

  I waited until Allison was gone and then I turned back to Susan. She had slumped all the way to the floor and was half-moaning, half sobbing. “Nobody sees it but me. My mother is insane! She’s crazy and nobody sees it except me!” She punctuated this by striking her fists against the floor. I didn’t know what to say. I felt I was either witnessing a complete mental breakdown or that maybe…just maybe…there was some truth to what Susan was saying.

  “What are you talking about, Susan?”

  “She still thinks she can push him around,” Susan said. “I know she does! She only moved back here because she couldn’t order me around. She could never control me the way she wanted to. I never let her. But they did!”

  “Who let her control them, Susan?”

  Susan sighed and looked up at the ceiling. She looked lost, her gaze vacant. “Nobody will believe me. Nobody ever believes me.”

  Off in the distance, I heard the sound of a police siren approaching our end of town. I didn’t know what else to say. I stayed there until the police vehicle pulled up outside our home. Then I went out onto the front porch and waved one of the officers over.

  * * *

  I sold my first short story in 1934 during the height of the Great Depression. I had no choice. I was twenty years old, unemployed, with no job prospects and a minor criminal record. That sale, to Weird Tales, earned me about thirty-five dollars. Thirty-five dollars in 1934 was one week’s pay. I wrote that story in two days. I went on and published about a hundred or so stories in the decade that followed, often for a penny or two a word. I made more money during the Great Depression as a pulp-fiction writer than most college graduates at the time, those lucky enough to find a job, that is.

  In June of 1938 I married Ellen Smith and we moved to a small house on the outskirts of New Castle, PA. New Castle is now considered a small suburb of Pittsburgh; back then it was a simple small town north of Steel Town, but still considered within close commuting distance. Our home rested on a small, rural street where there were only six other homes spaced about an acre apart from each other. Surrounding these white, two story clapboard homes and farmhouses was miles of woods. Railroad tracks ran through these woods—in some cases, they ran about fifty yards behind somebody’s house. The Mahoning River ran through these woods as well. The railroad tracks cut an east-west swath through much of the state, meandering through Pittsburgh, then into Ohio, going through Youngstown, Akron, Cleveland, and beyond.

  About five hundred yards beyond the railroad tracks was a heavily wooded area the locals called “murder swamp.” It earned its nickname as the dumping ground for mobsters from Youngstown, Ohio, who would cross the state border to dump their rivals bodies. It was also said to be the dumping ground for an elusive killer. A fiend that dismembered and beheaded his victims, leaving them drained of blood like discarded rags.

  The crimes stretched all the way back to 1921 when an elderly woman named Wilma Struthers was found in her West Pittsburg home, nearly decapitated. The house was not ransacked, nor was anything stolen. What linked her murder to those in murder swamp were three things: her house lay at the edge of the woods, the railroad tracks ran directly behind her home, and she was nearly beheaded. When she was found, her head hung to her neck by straps of flesh.

  Two years later, the dismembered body of a young girl was found in the Mahoning River. She’d disappeared one late spring day in 1923, then turned up in pieces a few days later. Her parents had been shatte
red by her murder. Two years after that, the decapitated body of a man was found along a path in the woods. He was never identified. I have vague memories about that discovery; I would have been eleven years old. As the years went on, more bodies were found, probably a dozen in all. All of them were decapitated, their heads found yards away, sometimes buried. In some cases, the victims had been in the woods for a while and were reduced to skeletons.

  In March of 1934, two victims were found in murder swamp. Shortly after that gruesome discovery, a thousand New Castle residents trampled through the woods for clues. They stormed city hall and the New Castle police station, demanding a stop to the horrible crimes. Despite all their efforts, the police never apprehended the killer, but the residents did. They focused their rage on Allen Tinker, who was, by all accounts, an odd man. His wife had left him years back after allegedly finding him in a romantic tryst with another man. She ran off to Cleveland, to be with their daughter. After she left, Allen was known to wander the streets late at night and occasionally peer through people’s windows. He continued his trysts with men, and he was very open about it. Back then, homosexuality was very much frowned upon. It didn’t help that Allen was seen cavorting with drifters and male hustlers that blew through town on the rail system—the very kind of people who were victims of the killer the press called “The New Castle Butcher.” Despite his sexual predilections, the killer also dispatched women; at least five of his victims were female.

  That didn’t matter to the residents of New Castle. Allen was the most obvious culprit. He was a homosexual, he associated with men who came from the same social strata as the victims. He was also a heavy drinker, and lived with his adult son, Doug. By coincidence, the house Ellen and I moved to was about a block away from the home they lived in. Doug continued living there even after those horrible events of March 1934. I often saw him walking the streets of downtown New Castle, or around the neighborhood. He was moody, his skin pale, and he favored black clothing, especially dark suits. I never saw him in the daylight.