The Creep Read Free Page A

headaches and nightmares, but I know you can cure me with your hypnotherapy treatment. I need a check-up from the neck-up."
    "You've certainly been through a lot. Can I call you Bob? You're going to call me Dr. Bill, right. Tell me a little more about yourself and I'll see what I can do. Why don't you start at the beginning. "
    "How long have I got?" Bishman was serious. He finished his coffee and lit up again.
    "I don't know about you, but I've got the rest of my life!" Harvey smiled. He knew he was already in the thick of it, but there was something about this guy that he liked. He could tell that his new client had been through a lot and perhaps had a highly intriguing story to tell. Harvey was a connoisseur of human nature and couldn't resist the out of the ordinary. Such is the thirst for knowledge.
    "The first time I ever took a drink was when I was fourteen years old and I drank a complete bottle of gin, chug-a-lug." He demonstrated by holding an imaginary bottle up to his mouth, tipping his head back and holding it there.
    "I passed out for three days. My sister kept an eye on me. She told me my eyes rolled around in my head and I snored loudly and just slept for three whole days. Since that day, the one drink I've never been able to touch is gin, although I drink everything else. Gin makes me violently sick the minute I touch it.
    "We used to drink and smoke dope and pop pills all day, every day. That was when I was fourteen, I'm now thirty-eight. We used to take bottles of liquor and beer up to the farmer's field at the back of my place and ride the pigs. We'd be as drunk as skunks and try to hang on to the fuckers for as long as we could. We used to get covered in shit and stuff but we just didn't care.
    "One day we got hold of this kid and held him up by his ankles to shake him down for money, for booze. He only had a couple of bucks on him so we took him over to the Laundromat and put him in the spin dryer for about ten minutes. When we let him out he was all red in the face and crying. He ran like hell." Bishman didn't smile or laugh. He just kept deadpan, his eyes bugging out of his head, those cold light-blue eyes. Death eyes.
    "One day we asked this bitch to give us money for booze, but she gave us a hard time. We gave her a hard time. We slashed her tires and kept leaving dead rats on the back seat of her car and in her glove compartment. Harder than you'd think to slash the tires of a car. They're really tough. You need a bayonet. We'd take it in turns to phone her up and say her son was dead and leave messages on her answering machine to freak her out."
    Bishman sat expressionless. Smoking, talking, talking, smoking. The ashtray filled up. The room was clear of smoke - luckily the air conditioning worked extremely well.
    "Do you know what a serial killer is? Well I know quite a bit about serial killers. In fact I know there's the body of a five-year-old boy buried in a clump of trees not two miles from here ... so I'm told.
    "I'm not talking about the Hillside Strangler or Mack the Knife or The Boston Strangler, Henry Lee Lucas, Benny the Axe Man, or Melvin the Monster. I'm not talking about the ones you've heard of, the jerks who get caught. I'm talking about the professional serial killers who operate in the States today.
    "All this stuff you read about in the newspapers is bullshit. It would frighten you, if you knew the truth. The newspapers will tell you, at any one time there are about one hundred and seventy serial killers on the loose and on an average they may kill about twenty or thirty people over a period of years. There are the jerks that get caught, like the Black Panther, Son of Sam, Peter the Pervert, John Wayne Gacy, The Goat Man - he only killed kids - Theodore Bundy, and the Driller Killer.
    "The real serial killers don't get caught and they operate on a simple basis. There's a figure-of-eight loop that goes across America. New York to Los Angeles with about thirty-eight States in