Steel Valentine
Date: 1986-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: cookie429; Extratorrents; Kat; General; Horror; Murder; True Crime; Adultery
Description: This gem of a short story by Lansdale was published as #7 in the Pulphouse Short Story Hardback series.
Publisher: Pulphouse Publishing

The Steel Valentine

A Short Story
by Joe R. Lansdale

For Jeff Banks

THE STEEL VALENTINE was a workmanlike story, or so I thought. I felt somewhat the same way about INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD, but when I finished them I was surprised at how much power they had. That may sound immodest coming from the writer, but I’m referring to the response both got. This one I believe was in a Best of the Year volume, and I know it was done as a special chapbook and was reprinted a lot. It was in my first collection of stories, BY BIZARRE HANDS. It was a favorite, and then, it sort of got lost. I’m glad to have it reprinted here. I think it was inspired by a collection of old MANHUNT digest magazines I was reading at the time. MANHUNT was a unique crime publication, and the stories in it were different from most crime magazines, and my guess is we will never see their like again. That said, this is certainly one of its descendants.

Joe R. Lansdale

EVEN BEFORE MORLEY TOLD HIM, Dennis knew things were about to get ugly.

A man did not club you unconscious, bring you to his estate and tie you to a chair in an empty storage shed out back of the place if he merely intended to give you a valentine.

Morley had found out about him and Julie.

Dennis blinked his eyes several times as he came to, and each time he did, more of the dimly lit room came into view. It was the room where he and Julie had first made love. It was the only building on the estate that looked out of place; it was old, worn, and not even used for storage; it was a collector of dust, cobwebs, spiders and desiccated flies.

There was a table in front of Dennis, a kerosene lantern on it, and beyond, partially hidden in shadow, a man sitting in a chair smoking a cigarette. Dennis could see the red tip glowing in the dark and the smoke from it drifted against the lantern light and hung in the air like thin, suspended wads of cotton.

The man leaned out of shadow, and as Dennis expected, it was Morley. His shaved, bullet-shaped head was sweaty and reflected the light. He was smiling with his fine, white teeth, and the high cheekbones were round, flushed circles that looked like clown rouge. The tightness of his skin, the few wrinkles, made him look younger than his fifty-one years.

And in most ways he was younger than his age. He was a man who took care of himself. Jogged eight miles every morning before breakfast, lifted weights three times a week and had only one bad habit—cigarettes. He smoked three packs a day. Dennis knew all that and he had only met the man twice. He had learned it from Julie, Morley’s wife. She told him about Morley while they lay in bed. She liked to talk and she often talked about Morley; about how much she hated him.

“Good to see you,” Morley said, and blew smoke across the table into Dennis’s face. “Happy Valentine’s Day, my good man. I was beginning to think I hit you too hard, put you in a coma.”

“What is this, Morley?” Dennis found that the mere act of speaking sent nails of pain through his skull. Morley really had lowered the boom on him.

“Spare me the innocent act, lover boy. You’ve been laying the pipe to Julie, and I don’t like it.”

“This is silly, Morley. Let me loose.”

“God, they do say stupid things like that in real life. It isn’t just the movies…You think I brought you here just to let you go, lover boy?”

Dennis didn’t answer. He tried to silently work the ropes loose that held his hands to the back of the chair. If he could get free, maybe he could grab the lantern, toss it in Morley’s face. There would still be the strand holding his ankles to the chair, but maybe it wouldn’t take too long to undo that. And even if it did, it was at least some kind of plan.

If he got the chance to go one on one with Morley, he might take him. He was twenty-five years younger and in good shape himself. Not as good as when he was playing pro basketball, but good shape nonetheless. He had height, reach, and he still had wind. He kept the latter with plenty of jogging and tossing the special-made, sixty-five pound medicine ball around with Raul at the gym.

Still, Morley was strong. Plenty strong. Dennis could testify to that. The pulsating knot on the side of his head was there to remind him.

He remembered the voice in the parking lot, turning toward it and seeing a fist. Nothing more, just a fist hurling toward him like a comet. Next thing he knew, he was here, the outbuilding.

Last time he was here, circumstances were different, and better. He was with Julie. He met her for the first time at the club where he worked out, and they had spoken, and ended up playing racquetball together. Eventually she brought him here and they made love on an old mattress in the corner; lay there afterward in the June heat of a Mexican summer, holding each other in a warm, sweaty embrace.

After that, there had been many other times. In the great house; in cars; hotels. Always careful to arrange a tryst when Morley was out of town. Or so they thought. But somehow he had found out.

“This is where you first had her,” Morley said suddenly. “And don’t look so wide-eyed. I’m not a mind reader. She told me all the other times and places too. She spat at me when I told her I knew, but I made her tell me every little detail, even when I knew them. I wanted it to come from her lips. She got so she couldn’t wait to tell me. She was begging to tell me. She asked me to forgive her and take her back. She no longer wanted to leave Mexico and go back to the States with you. She just wanted to live.”

“You bastard. If you’ve hurt her—”

“You’ll what? Shit your pants? That’s the best you can do, Dennis. You see, it’s me that has you tied to the chair. Not the other way around.”

Morley leaned back into the shadows again, and his hands came to rest on the table, the perfectly manicured fingertips steepling together, twitching ever so gently.

“I think it would have been inconsiderate of her to have gone back to the States with you, Dennis. Very inconsiderate. She knows I’m a wanted man there, that I can’t go back. She thought she’d be rid of me. Start a new life with her ex-basketball player. That hurt my feelings, Dennis. Right to the bone.” Morley smiled. “But she wouldn’t have been rid of me, lover boy. Not by a long shot. I’ve got connections in my business. I could have followed her anywhere… In fact, the idea that she thought I couldn’t offended my sense of pride.”

“Where is she? What have you done with her, you bald-headed bastard?”

After a moment of silence, during which Morley examined Dennis’s face, he said, “Let me put it this way. Do you remember her dogs?”

Of course he remembered the dogs. Seven Dobermans. Attack dogs. They always frightened him. They were big mothers, too. Except for her favorite, a reddish, undersized Doberman named Chum. He was about sixty pounds, and vicious. “Light, but quick,” Julie used to say. “Light, but quick.”

Oh yeah, he remembered those goddamn dogs. Sometimes when they made love in an estate bedroom, the dogs would wander in, sit down around the bed and watch. Dennis felt they were considering the soft, rolling meat of his testicles, savoring the possibility. It made him feel like a mean kid teasing them with a treat he never intended to give. The idea of them taking that treat by force made his erection soften, and he finally convinced Julie, who found his nervousness hysterically funny, that the dogs should be banned from the bedroom, the door closed.

Except for Julie, those dogs hated everyone. Morley included. They obeyed him, but they did not like him. Julie felt that under the right circumstances, they might go nuts and tear him apart. Something she hoped for, but never happened.

“Sure,” Morley continued. “You remember her little pets. Especially Chum, her favorite. He’d growl at me when I tried to touch her. Can you imagine that? All I had to do was touch her, and that damn beast would growl. He was crazy about his mistress, just crazy about her.”

Dennis couldn’t figure what Morley was leading up to, but he knew in some way he was being baited. And it was working. He was starting to sweat.

“Been what,” Morley asked, “a week since you’ve seen your precious sweetheart? Am I right?”

Dennis did not answer, but Morley was right. A week. He had gone back to the States for a while to settle some matters, get part of his inheritance out of legal bondage so he could come back, get Julie, and take her to the States for good. He was tired of the Mexican heat and tired of Morley owning the woman he loved.

It was Julie who had arranged for him to meet Morley in the first place, and probably even then the old bastard had suspected. She told Morley a partial truth. That she had met Dennis at the club, that they had played racquetball together, and that since he was an American, and supposedly a mean hand at chess, she thought Morley might enjoy the company. This way Julie had a chance to be with her lover, and let Dennis see exactly what kind of man Morley was.

And from the first moment Dennis met him, he knew he had to get Julie away from him. Even if he hadn’t loved her and wanted her, he would have helped her leave Morley.

It wasn’t that Morley was openly abusive—in fact, he was the perfect host all the while Dennis was there—but there was an obvious undercurrent of connubial dominance and menace that revealed itself like a shark fin every time he looked at Julie.

Still, in a strange way, Dennis found Morley interesting, if not likable. He was a bright and intriguing talker, and a wizard at chess. But when they played and Morley took a piece, he smirked over it in such a way as to make you feel he had actually vanquished an opponent.

The second and last time Dennis visited the house was the night before he left for the States. Morley had wiped him out in chess, and when finally Julie walked him to the door and called the dogs in from the yard so he could leave without being eaten, she whispered, “I can’t take him much longer.”

“I know,” he whispered back. “See you in about a week. And it’ll be all over.”

Dennis looked over his shoulder, back into the house, and there was Morley leaning against the fireplace mantle drinking a martini. He lifted the glass to Dennis as if in salute and smiled. Dennis smiled back, called goodbye to Morley and went out to his car feeling uneasy. The smile Morley had given him was exactly the same one he used when he took a chess piece from the board.

· · ·

“Tonight. Valentine’s Day,” Morley said, “that’s when you two planned to meet again, wasn’t it? In the parking lot of your hotel. That’s sweet. Really. Lovers planning to elope on Valentine’s Day. It has a sort of poetry, don’t you think?”

Morley held up a huge fist. “But what you met instead of your sweetheart was this… I beat a man to death with this once, lover boy. Enjoyed every second of it.”

Morley moved swiftly around the table, came to stand behind Dennis. He put his hands on the sides of Dennis’s face. “I could twist your head until your neck broke, lover boy. You believe that, don’t you? Don’t you?… Goddamnit, answer me.”

“Yes,” Dennis said, and the word was soft because his mouth was so dry.

“Good. That’s good. Let me show you something, Dennis.”

Morley picked up the chair from behind, carried Dennis effortlessly to the center of the room, then went back for the lantern and the other chair. He sat down across from Dennis and turned the wick of the lantern up. And even before Dennis saw the dog, he heard the growl.

The dog was straining at a large leather strap attached to the wall. He was muzzled and ragged looking. At his feet lay something red and white. “Chum,” Morley said. “The light bothers him. You remember ole Chum, don’t you? Julie’s favorite pet… Ah, but I see you’re wondering what that is at his feet. That sort of surprises me, Dennis. Really. As intimate as you and Julie were, I’d think you’d know her. Even without her makeup.”

Now that Dennis knew what he was looking at, he could make out the white bone of her skull, a dark patch of matted hair still clinging to it. He also recognized what was left of the dress she had been wearing. It was a red and white tennis dress, the one she wore when they played racquetball. It was mostly red now. Her entire body had been gnawed savagely.

“Murderer!” Dennis rocked savagely in the chair, tried to pull free of his bonds. After a moment of useless struggle and useless epithets, he leaned forward and let the lava hot gorge in his stomach pour out.

“Oh, Dennis,” Morley said. “That’s going to be stinky. Just awful. Will you look at your shoes? And calling me a murderer. Now, I ask you, Dennis, is that nice? I didn’t murder anyone. Chum did the dirty work. After four days without food and water he was ravenous and thirsty. Wouldn’t you be? And he was a little crazy too. I burned his feet some. Not as bad as I burned Julie’s, but enough to really piss him off. And I sprayed him with this.”

Morley reached into his coat pocket, produced an aerosol canister and waved it at Dennis.

“This was invented by some business associate of mine. It came out of some chemical warfare research I’m conducting. I’m in, shall we say… espionage? I work for the highest bidder. I have plants here for arms and chemical warfare… If it’s profitable and ugly, I’m involved. I’m a real stinker sometimes. I certainly am.”

Morley was still waving the canister, as if trying to hypnotize Dennis with it. “We came up with this to train attack dogs. We found we could spray a padded up man with this and the dogs would go bonkers. Rip the pads right off of him. Sometimes the only way to stop the beggars was to shoot them. It was a failure actually. It activated the dogs, but it drove them out of their minds and they couldn’t be controlled at all. And after a short time the odor faded, and the spray became quite the reverse. It made it so the dogs couldn’t smell the spray at all. It made whoever was wearing it odorless. Still, I found a use for it. A very personal use.”

“I let Chum go a few days without food and water while I worked on Julie… And she wasn’t tough at all, Dennis. Not even a little bit. Spilled her guts. Now that isn’t entirely correct. She didn’t spill her guts until later, when Chum got hold of her… Anyway, she told me what I wanted to know about you two, then I sprayed that delicate thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six figure of hers with this. And with Chum so hungry, and me having burned his feet and done some mean things to him, he was not in the best of humor when I gave him Julie.

“It was disgusting, Dennis. Really. I had to come back when it was over and shoot Chum with a tranquilizer dart, get him tied and muzzled for your arrival.”

Morley leaned forward, sprayed Dennis from head to foot with the canister. Dennis turned his head and closed his eyes, tried not to breathe the foul-smelling mist.

“He’s probably not all that hungry now,” Morley said, “but this will still drive him wild.”

Already Chum had gotten a whiff and was leaping at his leash. Foam burst from between his lips and frothed on the leather bands of the muzzle.

“I suppose it isn’t polite to lecture a captive audience, Dennis, but I thought you might like to know a few things about dogs. No need to take notes. You won’t be around for a quiz later.

“But here’s some things to tuck in the back of your mind while you and Chum are alone. Dogs are very strong, Dennis. Very. They look small compared to a man, even a big dog like a Doberman, but they can exert a lot of pressure with their bite. I’ve seen dogs like Chum here, especially when they’re exposed to my little spray, bite through the thicker end of a baseball bat. And they’re quick. You’d have a better chance against a black belt in karate than an attack dog.”

“Morley,” Dennis said softly, “you can’t do this.”

“I can’t?” Morley seemed to consider. “No, Dennis, I believe I can. I give myself permission. But hey, Dennis, I’m going to give you a chance. This is the good part now, so listen up. You’re a sporting man. Basketball. Racquetball. Chess. Another man’s woman. So you’ll like this. This will appeal to your sense of competition.

“Julie didn’t give Chum a fight at all. She just couldn’t believe her Chummy-whummy wanted to eat her. Just wouldn’t. She held out her hand, trying to soothe the old boy, and he just bit it right off. Right off. Got half the palm and the fingers in one bite. That’s when I left them alone. I had a feeling her Chummy-whummy might start on me next, and I wouldn’t have wanted that. Oooohhh, those sharp teeth. Like nails being driven into you.”

“Morley listen—”

“Shut up! You, Mr. Cock Dog and Basketball Star, just might have a chance. Not much of one, but I know you’ll fight. You’re not a quitter. I can tell by the way you play chess. You still lose, but you’re not a quitter. You hang in there to the bitter end.”

Morley took a deep breath, stood in the chair and hung the lantern on a low rafter. There was something else up there too. A coiled chain. Morley pulled it down and it clattered to the floor. At the sound of it Chum leaped against his leash and flecks of saliva flew from his mouth and Dennis felt them fall lightly on his hands and face.

Morley lifted one end of the chain toward Dennis. There was a thin, open collar attached to it.

“Once this closes it locks and can only be opened with this.” Morley reached into his coat pocket and produced a key, held it up briefly and returned it. “There’s a collar for Chum on the other end. Both are made out of good leather over strong, steel chain. See what I’m getting at here, Dennis?”

Morley leaned forward and snapped the collar around Dennis’s neck.

“Oh, Dennis,” Morley said, standing back to observe his handiwork. “It’s you. Really. Great fit. And considering the day, just call this my valentine to you.”

“You bastard.”

“The biggest.”

Morley walked over to Chum. Chum lunged at him, but with the muzzle on he was relatively harmless. Still, his weight hit Morley’s legs, almost knocked him down.

Turning to smile at Dennis, Morley said, “See how strong he is? Add teeth to this little engine, some maneuverability… It’s going to be awesome, lover boy. Awesome.”

Morley slipped the collar under Chum’s leash and snapped it into place even as the dog rushed against him, nearly knocking him down. But it wasn’t Morley he wanted. He was trying to get at the smell. At Dennis.

Dennis felt as if the fluids in his body were running out of drains at the bottoms of his feet.

“Was a little poontang worth this, Dennis? I certainly hope you think so. I hope it was the best goddamn piece you ever got. Sincerely, I do. Because death by dog is slow and ugly, lover boy. They like the throat and balls. So, you watch those spots, hear?”

“Morley, for God’s sake, don’t do this!”

Morley pulled a revolver from his coat pocket and walked over to Dennis. “I’m going to untie you now, stud. I want you to be real good, or I’ll shoot you. If I shoot you, I’ll gut shoot you, then let the dog loose. You got no chance that way. At least my way you’ve got a sporting chance—slim to none.”

He untied Dennis. “Now stand.”

Dennis stood in front of the chair, his knees quivering. He was looking at Chum and Chum was looking at him, tugging wildly at the leash, which looked ready to snap. Saliva was thick as shaving cream over the front of Chum’s muzzle.

Morley held the revolver on Dennis with one hand, and with the other he reproduced the aerosol can, sprayed Dennis once more. The stench made Dennis’s head float.

“Last word of advice,” Morley said. “He’ll go straight for you.”

“Morley...” Dennis started, but one look at the man and he knew he was better off saving the breath. He was going to need it.

Still holding the gun on Dennis, Morley eased behind the frantic dog, took hold of the muzzle with his free hand, and with a quick ripping motion, pulled it and the leash loose.

Chum sprang.

· · ·

Dennis stepped back, caught the chair between his legs, lost his balance. Chum’s leap carried him into Dennis’s chest, and they both went flipping over the chair.

Chum kept rolling and the chain pulled across Dennis’s face as the dog tumbled to its full length; the jerk of the sixty-pound weight against Dennis’s neck was like a blow.

The chain went slack, and Dennis knew Chum was coming. In that same instant he heard the door open, glimpsed a wedge of moonlight that came and went, heard the door lock and Morley laugh. Then he was rolling, coming to his knees, grabbing the chair, pointing it with the legs out.

And Chum hit him.

The chair took most of the impact, but it was like trying to block a cannonball. The chair’s bottom cracked and a leg broke off, went skidding across the floor.

The truncated triangle of the Doberman’s head appeared over the top of the chair, straining for Dennis’s face. Dennis rammed the chair forward.

Chum dipped under it, grabbed Dennis’s side. It was like stepping into a bear trap. The agony wasn’t just in the ankle, it was a sizzling web of electricity that surged through his entire body.

The dog’s teeth grated bone and Dennis let forth with a noise that was too wicked to be called a scream.

Blackness waved in and out, but the thought of Julie lying there in ragged display gave him new determination.

He brought the chair down on the dog’s head with all his might.

Chum let out a yelp, and the dark head darted away.

Dennis stayed low, pulled his wounded leg back, attempted to keep the chair in front of him. But Chum was a black bullet. He shot under again, hit Dennis in the same leg, higher up this time. The impact slid Dennis back a foot. Still, he felt a certain relief. The dog’s teeth had missed his balls by an inch.

Oddly there was little pain this time. It was as if he were being encased in dark amber; floating in limbo. Must be like this when a shark hits, he thought. So hard and fast and clean you don’t really feel it at first. Just go numb. Look down for your leg and it’s gone.

The dark amber was penetrated by a bright stab of pain. But Dennis was grateful for it. It meant that his brain was working again. He swiped at Chum with the chair, broke him loose.

Swiveling on one knee, Dennis again used the chair as a shield. Chum launched forward, trying to go under it, but Dennis was ready this time and brought it down hard again the floor.

Chum hit the bottom of the chair with such an impact, his head broke through the thin slats. Teeth snapped in Dennis’s face, but the dog couldn’t squirm its shoulders completely through the hole and reach him.

Dennis let go of the chair with one hand, slugged the dog in the side of the head with the other. Chum twisted and the chair came loose from Dennis. The dog bounded away, leaping and whipping its body left and right, finally tossing off the wooden collar.

Grabbing the slack of the chain, Dennis used both hands to whip it into the dog’s head, then swung it back and caught Chum’s feet, knocking him on his side with a loud splat.

Even as Chum was scrambling to his feet, out of the corner of his eye Dennis spotted the leg that had broken off the chair. It was lying less than three feet away.

Chum rushed and Dennis dove for the leg, grabbed it, twisted and swatted at the Doberman. On the floor as he was, he couldn’t get full power into the blow, but still it was a good one.

The dog skidded sideways on its belly and forelegs. When it came to a halt, it tried to raise its head, but didn’t completely make it.

Dennis scrambled forward on his hands and knees, chopped the chair leg down on the Doberman’s head with every ounce of muscle he could muster. The strike was solid, caught the dog right between the pointed ears and drove his head to the floor.

The dog whimpered. Dennis hit him again. And again.

Chum lay still.

Dennis took a deep breath, watched the dog and held his club cocked.

Chum did not move. He lay on the floor with his legs spread wide, his tongue sticking out of his foam-wet mouth.

Dennis was breathing heavily, and his wounded leg felt as if it were melting. He tried to stretch it out, alleviate some of the pain, but nothing helped.

He checked the dog again.

Still not moving.

He took hold of the chain and jerked it. Chum’s head came up and smacked back down against the floor.

The dog was dead. He could see that.

He relaxed, closed his eyes and tried to make the spinning stop. He knew he had to bandage his leg somehow, stop the flow of blood. But at the moment he could hardly think.

And Chum, who was not dead, but stunned, lifted his head, and at the same moment, Dennis opened his eyes.

The Doberman’s recovery was remarkable. It came off the floor with only the slightest wobble and jumped.

Dennis couldn’t get the chair leg around in time and it deflected off of the animal’s smooth back and slipped from his grasp.

He got Chum around the throat and tried to strangle him, but the collar was in the way and the dog’s neck was too damn big.

Trying to get better traction, Dennis got his bad leg under him and made an effort to stand, lifting the dog with him. He used his good leg to knee Chum sharply in the chest, but the injured leg wasn’t good for holding him up for another move like that. He kept trying to ease his thumbs beneath the collar and lock them behind the dog’s windpipe.

Chum’s hind legs were off the floor and scrambling, the toenails tearing at Dennis’s lower abdomen and crotch.

Dennis couldn’t believe how strong the dog was. Sixty pounds of pure muscle and energy, made more deadly by Morley’s spray and tortures.

Sixty pounds of muscle.

The thought went through Dennis’s head again.

Sixty pounds.

The medicine ball he tossed at the gym weighed more. It didn’t have teeth, muscle and determination, but it did weigh more.

And as the realization soaked in, as his grip weakened and Chum’s rancid breath coated his face, Dennis lifted his eyes to a rafter just two feet above his head; considered there was another two feet of space between the rafter and the ceiling.

He quit trying to choke Chum, eased his left hand into the dog’s collar, and grabbed a hind leg with his other. Slowly, he lifted Chum over his head. Teeth snapped at Dennis’s hair, pulled loose a few tufts.

Dennis spread his legs slightly. The wounded leg wobbled like an old pipe cleaner, but held. The dog seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. Even the sweat on his face and the dense, hot air in the room seemed heavy.

Sixty pounds.

A basketball weighed little to nothing, and the dog weighed less than the huge medicine ball in the gym. Somewhere between the two was a happy medium; he had the strength to lift the dog, the skill to make the shot—the most important of his life.

Grunting, cocking the wiggling dog into position, he prepared to shoot. Chum nearly twisted free, but Dennis gritted his teeth, and with a wild scream, launched the dog into space.

Chum didn’t go up straight, but he did go up. He hit the top of the rafter with his back, tried to twist in the direction he had come, couldn’t, and went over the other side.

Dennis grabbed the chain as high up as possible, bracing as Chum’s weight came down on the other side so violently it pulled him onto his toes.

The dog made a gurgling sound, spun on the end of the chain, legs thrashing.

It took a long fifteen minutes for Chum to strangle.

When Chum was dead, Dennis tried to pull him over the rafter. The dog’s weight, Dennis’s bad leg, and his now aching arms and back, made it a greater chore than he had anticipated. Chum’s head kept slamming against the rafter. Dennis got hold of the unbroken chair, and used it as a stepladder. He managed the Doberman over, and Chum fell to the floor, his neck flopping loosely.

Dennis sat down on the floor beside the dog and patted it on the head. “Sorry,” he said.

He took off his shirt, tore it into rags and bound his bad leg with it. It was still bleeding steadily, but not gushing; no major artery had been torn. His ankle wasn’t bleeding as much, but in the dim lantern light he could see that Chum had bitten him to the bone. He used most of the shirt to wrap and strengthen the ankle.

When he finished, he managed to stand. The shirt binding had stopped the bleeding and the short rest had slightly rejuvenated him.

He found his eyes drawn to the mess in the corner that was Julie, and his first thought was to cover her, but there wasn’t anything in the room sufficient for the job.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember how it had been before. When she was whole and the room had a mattress and they had made love all the long, sweet, Mexican afternoon. But the right images would not come. Even with his eyes closed, he could see her mauled body on the floor.

Ducking his head made some of the dizziness go away, and he was able to get Julie out of his mind by thinking of Morley. He wondered when he could come back. If he was waiting outside.

But no, that wouldn’t be Morley’s way. He wouldn’t be anxious. He was cocksure of himself, he would go back to the estate for a drink and maybe play a game of chess against himself, gloat a long, sweet while before coming back to check on his handiwork. It would never occur to Morley to think he had survived. That would not cross his mind. Morley saw himself as Life’s best chess master, and he did not make wrong moves; things went according to plan. Most likely, he wouldn’t even check until morning.

The more Dennis thought about it, the madder he got and the stronger he felt. He moved the chair beneath the rafter where the lantern was hung, climbed up and got it down. He inspected the windows and doors. The door had a sound lock, but the windows were merely boarded. Barrier enough when he was busy with the dog, but not now.

He put the lantern on the floor, turned it up, found the chair leg he had used against Chum, and substituted it for a pry bar. It was hard work and by the time he had worked the boards off the window his hands were bleeding and full of splinters. His face looked demonic.

Pulling Chum to him, he tossed him out the window, climbed after him clutching the chair leg. He took up the chain’s slack and hitched it around his forearm. He wondered about the other Dobermans. Wondered if Morley had killed them too, or if he was keeping them around. As he recalled, the Dobermans were usually loose on the yard at night. The rest of the time they had free run of the house, except Morley’s study, his sanctuary. And hadn’t Morley said that later on the spray killed a man’s scent? That was worth something; it could be the edge he needed.

But it didn’t really matter. Nothing mattered anymore. Six dogs. Six war elephants. He was going after Morley.

He began dragging the floppy-necked Chum toward the estate.

· · ·

Morley was sitting at his desk playing a game of chess with himself, and both sides were doing quite well, he thought. He had a glass of brandy at his elbow, and from time to time he would drink from it, cock his head and consider his next move.

Outside the study door, in the hall, he could hear Julie’s dogs padding nervously. They wanted out, and in the past they would have been on the yard long before now. But tonight he hadn’t bothered. He hated those bastards, and just maybe he’d get rid of them. Shoot them and install a burglar alarm. Alarms didn’t have to eat or be let out to shit, and they wouldn’t turn on you. And he wouldn’t have to listen to the sound of dog toenails clicking on the tile outside of his study door.

He considered letting the Dobermans out, but hesitated. Instead, he opened a box of special Cuban cigars, took one, rolled it between his fingers near his ear so he could hear the fresh crackle of good tobacco. He clipped the end off the cigar with a silver clipper, put it in his mouth and lit it with a desk lighter without actually putting the flame to it. He drew in a deep lungful of smoke and relished it, let it out with a soft, contented sigh.

At the same moment he heard a sound, like something being dragged across the gravel drive. He sat motionless a moment, not batting an eye. It couldn’t be lover boy, he thought. No way.

He walked across the room, pulled the curtain back from the huge glass door, unlocked it and slid it open.

A cool wind had come along and it was shaking the trees in the yard, but nothing else was moving. Morley searched the tree shadows for some tell-tale sign, but saw nothing.

Still, he was not one for imagination. He had heard something. He went back to the desk chair where his coat hung, reached the revolver from his pocket, turned.

And there was Dennis. Shirtless, one pants leg mostly ripped away. There were blood-stained bandages on his thigh and ankle. He had the chain partially coiled around one arm, and Chum, quite dead, was lying on the floor beside him. In his right hand Dennis held a chair leg, and at the same moment Morley noted this and raised the revolver, Dennis threw it.

The leg hit Morley squarely between the eyes, knocked him against his desk, and as he tried to right himself, Dennis took hold of the chain and used it to swing the dead dog. Chum struck Morley on the ankles and took him down like a scythe cutting fresh wheat. Morley’s head slammed into the edge of the desk and blood dribbled into his eyes; everything seemed to be in a mixmaster, whirling so fast nothing was identifiable.

When the world came to rest, he saw Dennis standing over him with the revolver. Morley could not believe the man’s appearance. His lips were split in a thin grin that barely showed his teeth. His face was drawn and his eyes were strange and savage. It was apparent he had found the key in the coat, because the collar was gone.

Out in the hall, bouncing against the door, Morley could hear Julie’s dogs. They sensed the intruder and wanted at him. He wished now he had left the study door open, or put them out on the yard.

“I’ve got money,” Morley said.

“Fuck your money,” Dennis screamed. “I’m not selling anything here. Get up and get over here.”

Morley followed the wave of the revolver to the front of his desk. Dennis swept the chess set aside with a swipe of his arm and bent Morley backwards over the desk. He put one of the collars around Morley’s neck, pulled the chain around the desk a few times, pushed it under and fastened the other collar over Morley’s ankles.

Tucking the revolver into the waistband of his pants, Dennis picked up Chum and tenderly placed him on the desk chair, half-curled. He tried to poke the dog’s tongue back into his mouth, but that didn’t work. He patted Chum on the head, said, “There, now.”

Dennis went around and stood in front of Morley and looked at him, as if memorizing the moment.

At his back the Dobermans rattled the door.

“We can make a deal,” Morley said. “I can give you a lot of money, and you can go away. We’ll call it even.”

Dennis unfastened Morley’s pants, pulled them down to his knees. He pulled the underwear down. He went around and got the spray can out of Morley’s coat and came back.

“This isn’t sporting, Dennis. At least I gave you a fighting chance.”

“I’m not a sport,” Dennis said.

He sprayed Morley’s testicles with the chemical. When he finished he tossed the canister aside, walked over to the door and listened to the Dobermans scuttling on the other side.

“Dennis!”

Dennis took hold of the doorknob.

“Screw you then,” Morley said. “I’m not afraid. I won’t scream. I won’t give you the pleasure.”

“You didn’t even love her,” Dennis said, and opened the door.

The Dobermans went straight for the stench of the spray, straight for Morley’s testicles.

Dennis waked calmly out the back way, closed the glass door. And as he limped down the drive, making for the gate, he began to laugh.

Morley had lied. He did too scream. In fact, he was still screaming.

—

If you enjoyed “The Steel Valentine,” we think you’ll like Joe R. Lansdale's Waltz of Shadows, now available as an e-book from Gere Donovan Press. Here’s an excerpt:

ALL THE BLOOD AND disaster began on a Saturday morning when I thought everything was going just right. It was late October in East Texas, and from my recliner I could see out the tall glass that makes up two of our living room walls, and it was beautiful outside. A little cool looking, leaves gone gold and red and brown and starting to fall. Clouds white as angel’s panties could be glimpsed through the tops of the tall pines and oaks that made up most of our two acres. A cat squirrel jumped from one oak limb to another, then leaped out of sight. I felt like I was in a Disney movie.

Then I got the call.

I heard the phone ring, and was about to answer, assuming it would be some minor problems at one of the videos stores I own, when Beverly started downstairs.

I could see her through the stair railing. She was wearing her shorty white bathrobe and flip-flops and had a white towel wrapped around her head from having just washed her hair. Her legs were fairly pale since she didn’t go in much for the sun, and they were lightly freckled, the way redheads sometimes are, but they were long and smooth and muscled and I never tired of looking at them.

She was carrying the upstairs cordless phone, talking and looking at me over the railing and motioning me over, which meant she wanted me to rescue her and talk to whoever it was.

I put the paper down and got out of the chair and met her at the bottom of the stairs.

Our black German shepherd, Wylie, got up like it was part of his job, came over and sniffed my crotch, then went after Beverly, who popped him on the head with her hand. He went back to his spot and laid down with a groan. Crotch sniffing was hard work for a dog, but it was his duty, even if no one liked it.

“Well,” she said into the phone, “let me let you talk to him.”

She handed me the phone and shook her head.

Upstairs I heard the kids yell again about something on a cartoon show they were watching, and I put the phone to my ear and stood at the foot of the stairs and watched Beverly climb back up, enjoying the way her bottom moved beneath her bathrobe. Twenty years of marriage hadn’t changed that for me.

“Hello,” I said.

“This is Bill,” said the voice. I knew then why Beverly had wanted off the phone and why she had the sour face when she gave it to me.

“Hey, how you been?” I tried to sound as happy as possible.

“Not so good.”

He always said that. He’d go six months and I wouldn’t hear from him, then something went rancid, first person he called was Uncle Hank.

But he’s my brother’s boy, so what you gonna do? It’s not like he’s got anyone else. My brother, Rick, got killed in an auto accident when Bill was seven, and when Bill was a teenager his mother remarried and Bill didn’t get along at all with her new husband, then his mother got some kind of weird disease you read about in the back of medical books, and died.

Bill was in many ways like his father. Always certain he was merely a day short of the big success, though you couldn’t seem to put your finger on what it was he was doing to acquire it. And, like my brother, he had a passion for women that sent his judgment and sense of decency packing.

On top of all that, he was a bullshitter and had no more true ambition than a frog.

I hated to get it started, but I said: “Tell me about it.”

Silence hung in the air for a time.

I sat down on the bottom step of the stairs and waited. Wylie got up again and ambled over, nodded his head in the direction of my crotch, but it was just a feint, to keep me honest. He laid down at my feet.

Bill said, “I got to talk to you in private. I don’t want to do it over the phone. I need to see you. Can I come over? I’ll have to take a taxi, but I think I can swing it. We can have a couple of drinks in the study.”

I thought about that one. I wasn’t in the mood to get Beverly stirred up. Telling her Bill was coming over was like telling her I was going to stack and store a wheelbarrow load of fresh pig manure in the house.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Beverly doesn’t like me, right?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Don’t have to. She talks to me like I’m a bill collector.”

“You two just don’t click.”

“We don’t click all right.”

“Look, what she’s got against you is ten thousand dollars you haven’t paid back. Ten thousand you don’t plan to pay back. Some of us work, Bill. Come over with the ten thousand in your hand, Beverly’ll meet you at the door in her panties playing a bass drum.”

“Uncle Hank, you know I’m going to pay that money back.”

“No, I don’t. You got a job? You’re twenty-four years old. It’s time you started footing your own bills.”

“Really, Uncle Hank. I’m not trying to borrow money. I need your help.”

I was going to tell him to find someone else, but the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. All I could think of was Bill at seven years old, right after my brother was killed.

“Listen,” I said. “Here’s the score. I got plans this morning, and I don’t want to get in dutch with Beverly.”

“I hear that.”

“I’m gonna take a shower and take the family to lunch, then I’ll meet you at your place.”

“I’m not at my place, and I’m not going back there. And if I did go back, you wouldn’t know where to go, because I don’t live where I used to.”

“What?”

“The place I moved to is the place I’m not going back to… Forget all that, okay. I have to see you now.”

“After lunch, Bill, or get someone else. Call Arnold, see what he says.”

Silence again. Arnold was my older half-brother from my Dad’s earlier marriage. Arnold’s mom had died in childbirth. My father was young then and hadn’t done so well with Arnold. Arnold didn’t so much grow up as he got jerked up.

“All right,” Bill said. “Let’s do this. I’m at a motel. Calls itself a tourist court, actually. I got it on a match book here… Christ, how could I have forgotten a name like this. Sleepy Time Tourist Courts. I’m in room forty. This place is a hole.”

“I know where it is. Another year or two without paint and repairs, they’ll be holding that place up with a stick. Couldn’t you have found something better?”

“Money.”

“Yeah, well, you did okay then. Listen up. We finish lunch, I’ll drive over. Might be as late as two or two-thirty. We go by one of my stores and pick up a movie for the night on Saturdays. Sometimes we goof around a little. Run a few errands. I’ll move things quickly as possible.”

“What I’m talking here is more important than fucking lunch and a movie. I’m talking some desperate shit.”

“It’ll hold,” I said. “See you after lunch.”

I didn’t give him time to complain. I hung up. I didn’t really think what he had to say would amount to much, figured no matter what he said, in the end it would all come down to borrowing more money.

I was mistaken.

About the Author

With more than thirty books to his credit, Joe R. Lansdale is the Champion Mojo Storyteller. He’s been called “an immense talent” by Booklist; “a born storyteller” by Robert Bloch; and The New York Times Book Review declares he has “a folklorist’s eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur’s sense of pace.”

He’s won umpty-ump awards, including sixteen Bram Stoker Awards, the Grand Master Award from the World Horror Convention, a British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, the “Shot in the Dark” International Crime Writer’s Award, the Golden Lion Award, the Booklist Editor’s Award, the Critic’s Choice Award, and a New York Times Notable Book Award. He’s got the most decorated mantle in all of Nacogdoches!

Lansdale lives in Nacogdoches, Texas, with his wife, Karen, writer and editor.

Find him online at www.JoeRLansdale.com.

Also by Joe R. Lansdale

“Hap Collins and Leonard Pine” mysteries

Savage Season (1990)

Mucho Mojo (1994)

Two-Bear Mambo (1995)

Bad Chili (1997)

Rumble Tumble (1998)

Veil’s Visit(1999)

Captains Outrageous (2001)

Vanilla Ride (2009)

Hyenas (a novella) (2011)

Devil Red (2011)

Blue to the Bone (???)

The “Drive-In” series

The Drive-In: A “B” Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas (1988)

The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels (1989)

The Drive-In: A Double-Feature (1997, omnibus)

The Drive-In: The Bus Tour (2005) (limited edition)

The “Ned the Seal” trilogy

Zeppelins West (2001)

Flaming London (2006)

Flaming Zeppelins: The Adventures of Ned the Seal (2010)

The Sky Done Ripped (release date unknown)

Other novels

Act of Love (1980)

Texas Night Riders (1983) (published under the pseudonym Ray Slater)

Dead in the West (1986) (written in 1980)

Magic Wagon (1986)

The Nightrunners (1987)

Cold in July (1989)

Tarzan: the Lost Adventure (1995) (with Edgar Rice Burroughs)

The Boar (1998)

Freezer Burn (1999)

Waltz of Shadows (1999)

Something Lumber This Way Comes (1999) (Children's book)

The Big Blow (2000)

Blood Dance (2000)

The Bottoms (2000)

A Fine Dark Line (2002)

Sunset and Sawdust (2004)

Lost Echoes (2007)

Leather Maiden (2008)

Under the Warrior Sun (2010)

All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky (2011)

…And that's not counting the pseudonymous novels, the short stories, the chapbooks, anthologies, graphic novels, comic books and all the rest. Get the full story at www.JoeRLansdale.com.

Copyright

This digital edition (v1-0) of “The Steel Valentine” was published by Gere Donovan Press in 2011.

© 1989 Joe R. Lansdale. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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