Holly Luhning - Quiver

For my grandmothers,

Helen Seifert Luhning (1921-2009)

Hilda Lowe Jacobson (1922-2009)

Beauty is terror.

Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

DONNA TARTT, The Secret History

She was easy to spot.

Her skin was almost blue-white. As usual, at the corner she said goodbye to the other girls; he saw her part from the heads of pink hair, tight black curls, a blonde pixie cut. Watched her follow a narrow asphalt footpath that led around the corner to a pedestrian tunnel under the busy motorway.

Hed been in the tunnel, walked its sixty feet back and forth. He had done this most mornings this week, on his way to the office. No one noticed him. He was just a man wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase, going to work. When a lorry passed on the road above, the caged fluorescent lights that hung from the ceiling buzzed louder. Sometimes cyclists whizzed towards him through the tunnel, but they always stayed on their side of the yellow line painted down the centre of the path. Each day before he left the tunnel, he stopped and looked at the yellow paint, imagined it blotted by a puddle of blood, a small broken body stretched across the line.

Today, while he waited for her to pass by, he sat at a table next to the caf window and flipped through the pictures theyd sent him. Four snapshots of the girl with long, dark hair. The girl, with a rucksack, on her way to class. On a sports field, wearing muddy football cleats. Sitting on a lawn, sipping a juice box. Walking home from school with a group of friends, passing in front of the caf.

He had an allong and ate a cannoli, slowly. He glanced at his reflection in the glass: a translucent, freckled hand, copper hair he had cut every three weeks at the salon. Ironed dress shirt, slate sports jacket.

As the girl left her friends, she flipped her dark hair from her collar. Locks splayed over her heavy rucksack.

He walked into his flat. It faced west and had beautiful evening light. Unfortunately, he had been distracted and let the kitchen get messy. White dishes streaked with jelly and tomato sauce filled the sink. Bloated bread and pizza crusts clogged the drain. He was almost out of clean cutlery; a collection of dirty utensils was sunk beneath two inches of water. Small islands of white and green mould floated on the surface.

He cringed at the sight and smell of the mess as he walked through to the living room. He hated letting things go like that, but this project had kept him too busy for housework.

He put on John Cages Cheap Imitation. The speakers wired in each corner of the room pulsed with eerie piano. He sat on his black leather sofa, pulled the photos from his briefcase and set them on the heavy marble coffee table. A trio of flies migrated out of the kitchen. He stood and shooed them, then poured himself a glass of Scotch. As he swallowed the smoky liquor he looked at the pictures again.

The one of her sitting on the lawn with her hair up was the best, he decided. He liked the pictures, but he almost didnt need them anymore. He would destroy them tomorrow, according to plan.

The books and DVDs they had sent him were in a long box under the coffee table. The kit they had sent was there too. He sat down again, popped the lid off the box and pulled out the blue satin pouch. He untied the string, felt the metal blade and the ceramic talisman inside. Then he closed the pouch and started to think about which film to watch that evening.

Before hed met them, he didnt have these books or movies about the Blood Countess. It was a bit lonely. He went to work at the software company, input data and printed reports. Hed earned a promotion last year, but still his boss wanted him to go faster, produce more reports and numbers. Sometimes on Fridays he went to the pub with some co-workers. He went to the gym twice a week. But these were all things that everyone else he knew did too.

Then he met them, and learned about how the Countess killed hundreds of girls. How people helped her with the girls and the blood. It kept her beautiful. More beautiful and exciting than filling a computer with numbers or running like a rat on a treadmill.

Hed never hurt anyone before. But hed always thought about it. About what it would feel like to attack someone, to hold his hand on their chest while their heart stopped beating. Once, he had poisoned a stray dog, stood over the mutt while it convulsed and died, but that didnt stop his thoughts. It only fed him, teased him. When he met them it was like they could sense it immediately, but instead of looking away or making an excuse not to talk to him in the coffee line, like some people did at his office, they liked him more because of his fantasies. And now he had instruction, inspiration. He had a goal.

Between melancholy piano notes, he heard a squeaking in the corner by the fridge. This building was old, so if he didnt remember to keep the holes plugged the mice got in. He would do the dishes, get groceries and plug the holes after he finished with the project. But for now, hed only had time to pick up some sticky traps at the corner store last week.

He chose a DVD from the box and put it on the table. Downed the rest of his Scotch, then stood up from the smooth leather sofa. He saw the mouse in the sticky trap. Its body shook, strained against the glue that shackled its feet. He picked up the trap, held it upside down, then sideways. He was amused every time the rodent squealed louder.

He put the trap on the counter. Thumb on the mouses right back leg. Snap. The next one. Snap. Both front legs. Crack, crack. He batted the trap between his hands, laughed at the loose shimmy of the animals body above its broken limbs.

He found a clean paring knife in a kitchen drawer. The mouses squeals were quieter; its eyes fluttered. In a moment, mouse, he said as he stroked the top of its head. He ripped the dull knife through the fur and sinew of the mouses neck.

They bled best when cut at the throat.

I moved across the Atlantic to speak to the man in the next room.

I am five minutes early, but the orderlies have him ready. Beige hospital pants and top, standard-issue sneakers: Martin Foster looks much like any other patient I might interview in a day. Hes seated in one of Stowmoors observation rooms and I watch him through the one-way window. He scrunches up his nose and cheeks to push up his tortoiseshell-framed glasses, then sticks out his lower lip slightly and blows his shaggy ginger hair off his forehead.

I know his file off by heart. He is thirty-one. He is five foot nine. No history of substance abuse. No prior criminal charges.

Two years ago, he abducted a fifteen-year-old girl who was walking home from school in Leeds. He beat her, restrained her and branded her palms with a small ceramic block that he heated with a blowtorch. The engraved block seared an imprint of the letter B, bordered by a circle of vines, into the girls skin. He slashed her neck with a Renaissance-era dagger, bled her to death and bit pieces of flesh from her thighs. He said he believed her blood had the ability to wash away the freckles that still pepper his face and arms. Upon arrest, he told police he was paying homage to sixteenth-century serial killer Elizabeth Bthory.