Welcome to FROST HARROW, my new modern (1990s) gothic horror series! If you’d like to support this and my other work, go to www.CushingHorrors.com and become my patron! You may also enjoy the Scribe Award-Winning MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE – In print, for kindle, and for all e-book formats. And check out my retro-horror-comedy classic CANOE COPS VS. THE MUMMY as well as my other books. Now… On with the show!
TWENTY-TWO – BIG DICK
Katherine Small loved a good juicy affair.
She specialized in them at the Big Detective Agency, also affectionately known as “Big Dick” to her friends and clients. Katie had chosen the name for her firm in a moment of ironic whimsy. The play on her surname was obvious. Less well known was the pun about her former profession.
Before she bottomed out and turned over a new leaf, Katie had been a prostitute. Her thirty-eight triple D chest remained a testament to her days as a call girl. One day she meant to have her breasts reduced to their natural size. She just hadn’t had time to get the operation reversed since she went straight.
Katherine’s rags to riches story never failed to inspire those who knew her personally. She commanded an equal amount of respect from those who only knew her professionally, since her transformation. Katie Small was a damn good detective and she ran the best agency on the Lake Superior shoreline—either side of the border.
But she still took particular delight in rooting out philanderers—especially ones who had been clients in the bad old days.
Tonight was one of those nights. Her agency had been hired by Mrs. Kaber from Winchell—the high-rent town northeast of Frosthaven. Mr. Kaber was a small-time local politician with delusions of grandeur—both on a business and a personal, physical level.
He’d held late night “meetings” with Kate for almost a year before she decided she didn’t like the smell of his money. Hell, even back then, doped or drunk to the gills, Katherine still had some small amount of taste and dignity.
When she stopped returning his calls, she thought she’d never see him again. Now she relished the opportunity.
It had taken her the better part of the night to track Jimmy—Mr. Kaber—to his love nest on the unfashionable northeast side of Frosthaven. Now, low-light camera in one hand and lock picks in the other, she snuck up the stairs past the “We have water beds!” sign that hung on the front of the Jungle Motel.
Dawn would be breaking soon, but Katie knew it would probably take more than just a shot of her husband coming out of the hotel to convince Tamara Kaber that her boy hadn’t merely been on a business trip. Kaber lied masterfully, Kate would give him that. And Tamara was just so damn gullible.
Katie intended to get irrefutable proof, even if it did involve a little B&E and voyeurism. She didn’t even care who Jimmy was screwing. She’d been on the receiving end of that treatment and was self-assured enough to believe any woman would be better off without him. Except, maybe, for Tamara.
No, she didn’t care who the woman correspondent was. Nor did Kate mind that she’d been up all night. She’d had trouble sleeping lately, anyway.
She peered in the window of the room Jimmy had parked his car under. Despite the time of year, the Jungle Motel remained mostly deserted. Its usual clientele only needed the rooms for an hour or so, and all good working girls had gone home by now, lest the dawn should turn them to stone.
Unfortunately, someone had drawn the room’s curtains. Not Jimmy, probably—he didn’t have the brains. His liaison must have had more sense.
Kate tried the doorknob and was gratified to find it unlocked. She’d gotten lucky after all. She slowly pushed the door open, keeping low in case someone might be awake. People usually shot high when a door opened unexpectedly.
What she found inside made her stagger back out the door and retch over the railing.
Somehow, impossibly, it looked as though Jimmy and his date had flayed each other alive while they coupled. Patches of skin lay scattered around the darkened room like clippings on a hairdresser’s floor.
The corpses lay on the worn motel carpeting, twisted and tangled together like pretzels—their faces pulled back in hideous death-grins.
It looked to Katherine like it had been one hell of a night.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Read my FREE Frost Harrow Halloween stories:
“The Weeping Ghost” (2012), “A Trace of Violet” (2013), “Lunchroom Zombies” (2014), “Omens & Visitations” (2015), “Fata Morgana” (2016), “At the Appointed Hour” (2017), and “Devil’s Lake” (2018).
