Chapter 1
Spring had come early to Camden, New Jersey, along the broad Delaware River. Where only weeks before March ice had lined the banks, small boys now skipped fiat scalers across the scum-streaked torrent. The chattering of pneumatic hammers sounded on the breeze blowing from the direction of the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
Winter was past. Along South Park Drive, caged forsythia burgeoned into spears of floral yellow flame behind barriers of link wire fencing.
Ugly colliers, their rusted hulls freshly daubed with uneven patches of red lead, steamed slowly in apparently endless procession past the airport on Petty's Island.
At the corner of Haddon and Kaighn avenues a young cop stood idly studying a racing sheet he had picked out of the gutter. It was early evening. The town was quiet, sleepy. A big Ford turned into Park Boulevard off Euclid Street, braked at the entry to the Harleigh Cemetery. A fat woman squirmed out, revealing a generous expanse of fleshy thigh and grunting with the effort of heaving her bulk off the protesting upholstery. A skinny character handed her a bunch of flowers, their pink coloring matching the flush in her flabby cheeks. Her enormous buttocks quivered as she waddled slowly towards the boneyard.
Along Brasher Street in Auburn Township, the door of 1205 opened quickly to admit a young girl, pretty, tall, very dark and with a good figure, full haunches and trim legs. She stepped inside, smiling. Just a kid, not more than eighteen. But the proud thrust of her breasts filled out the front of her dress. Her physical development was exceptional. She was vitally alive with the eager exuberance of restless youth. It showed in the impulsive way she gripped the freckled arms of the girl who opened the door.
The other girl was shorter, plumpish, with natural ash blonde hair worn long. Her bust was smaller but well formed, her buttocks prominent. The expression on her round face as she almost dragged the dark girl inside indicated a secretive, cunning disposition.
"Mavis!" she blurted, "I thought you'd never come. Darling! I've been waiting for hours . .
"Oh, Sandra-I'm less than half an hour late. Aunt Drucilla was particularly difficult...."
The blonde girl kissed her quickly on the lips, closed the door. Barely nineteen, Sandra Mathis looked much older. She was shy, a moody, temperamental girl, passionately Lesbian since her fourteenth birthday, easily exited and prone to hysterics. Mavis Preed was, in many ways, her direct opposite, oversexed, nymphomania apparent in her every movement, in her conversation, in the smoldering boldness of her dark, insolent eyes. Since the early awakening of adolescent sex consciousness she had indulged freely in intimate relations. Her parents were dead and she lived with a prim maiden aunt who thought butter wouldn't melt in Mavis's sweet mouth.
Mavis was impetuous, very strong-willed, but not a bad girl in the sense that she was deliberately out to cause trouble. She was one of those girls whose sex appeal and personality invariably make them the center of attraction wherever they go and whatever they do. And Mavis was driven by a vital, possessive urge stronger than mere ambition, the desire, a need, to get ahead, to be somebody....
She and Sandra Mathis had been friends all through childhood, had completed high school together. Now, Mavis looked after her hard-faced bitch of an aunt-Sandra held down a part-time job in the Smithfield Avenue Library.
She had just bathed. Beneath a pale blue robe her body was bare, and the soft material clung to her damp flesh, was moulded to the fullness of her exaggerated buttocks as she started up the stairs ahead of Mavis, her slipper-shod feet slapping noisily on each thinly carpetted tread.
"The whole house is empty," she told Mavis, "The Ellisdons are away. Mother had another stinking row with my step-father and he threw her out, then went downtown...."
"Boozing again?"
"What else? How I loathe that man, Mavis-he's a coarse, degenerate brute, a filthy beast! I'll never know why mother stays with him."
"I could tell you."
"You could? Well, why then? Oh! That!"
Her voice crackled with contempt. Mavis smirked. In some ways Sandra was so dumb....
"I don't expect either of them back till late," Sandra said, pushing wide the partly open door of apartment 3c.
"How's Hilda?"
"Fine, I guess."
Mavis removed her coat, then her hat, shook out her dark curls. Sandra went through into her bedroom, seated herself at the dresser and picked up a comb. She began to run it through her damp tangle using slow, awkward strokes. Mavis came in, closed the door, turned the key in the lock, took the comb from Sandra and began to draw it gently but firmly through her friend's long, silky blnde hair. Sandra relaxed. She watched Mavis's reflection in the mirror, especially her facial expression, and for a while neither of them spoke, as if the ritual of the combing was expression enough and needed no words. Presently, when Mavis reached over Sandra's shoulder to put down the comb, the blonde girl grabbed her by the wrist, turned her hand palm up, and pressed moist lips almost reverently to Mavis's fingers.
Sandra's eyes were shining, unnaturally bright. There was a fierce longing in their lucid depths, a hunger, an urgent need, as she conveyed Mavis's hand inside the robe and placed it between her warm breasts. Mavis sighed. She responded, stroked the smooth flesh, fingered the girl's hardening nipples. Impulsively Sandra twisted round, clasped Mavis in her arms and buried her face against her friend's yielding bosom.
"Oh, darling!" she whispered, "I thought you'd never come. My God-but I want you! I need you, dearest, so bad."
She reached up, pulled Mavis's head down, sought her lips, clamped her mouth to them avidly. And Mavis returned the wild, demanding kiss, let her tongue probe into Sandra's yearning mouth, darting swiftly, tantalising, provoking ... Sandra moaned, went wild. Abruptly Sandra jumped up, tore open her robe, let it fall, stood naked in front of her flushed friend. She cupped her hands under her breasts, lifted them, squeezed their budding ripeness.
With a low cry she clutched at Mavis, pushed her, and they fell together onto the bed. Mavis' dress hiked up. She lay there, allowing Sandra to remove her brief under garments, only mildly exited but content to make love for Sandra's sake. Since she learned what it was like to make love with a man, physical contact with Sandra had lost its appeal for Mavis. What she did, what Sandra did, seemed almost meaningless, no longer stimulating, yet causing her no actual revulsion. At first it had all been a novelty, something new, forbidden ... Now Sandra's kind of sex was something to be tolerated, for Sandra's sake, an outlet the strange girl had to have, a safety valve for her unhealthy emotions.
Yet all the while Sandra was fumbling, Mavis' thoughts were elsewhere, her mind recalling her movements the previous night, the thrilling hours spent with Jimmy Leach, who was a nice boy and a man in fact in every way that mattered to her.
A door slammed. Feet blundered up the stairs. A drunken voice blared snatches of a ribald tune. Mavis gasped, tried to sit up.
"Somebody's coming!" she exclaimed hoarsely, "Sandra! For God's sake let me up!"
But Sandra, deaf and oblivious to all save her own immediate need, clung like a burr, and of the two girls she was by far the stronger. The shuffling footsteps came closer, paused outside the apartment door. Mavis heard the door open, slam shut, sounds of someone lurching into the parlor, feet scuffling. A chair scraped loudly. Then she heard two distinct thuds as of shoes being kicked off, followed by a heavy sigh and a loud belch. A raucous voice called out thickly:-
"Sandra! Where the hell is that girl? Sandra...."
And now Sandra also was aware of the intruders presence. She tensed. A tremor passed through her body. Her mouth gaped slackly and terror gleamed in her eyes, flickered like the glimmer of a shark's belly in the murky green deep and was gone, was replaced by cunning. But still she didn't remove her weight from Mavis.
"It's him!" she muttered, "Mavis-it's Eddie. He's home-and he's drunk...."
The bedroom door handle turned, was rattled violently. A hard, powerful fist pounded on the panels.
"Open up, Sandra," the man demanded angrily, "I know you're in there."
"Go away!" she called, "I'm ... lying down. I don't want to see you or talk to you in-in that condition...."
He swore, pounded on the door again.
"What condition you talkin' about?" he shouted, "Listen to me, girl-I'm your father and I'm tellin' you...."
"You're not my father. Leave me alone-you drunken pig!"
The door panels shuddered under a deluge of heavy blows.
"Open up or I'll break it in!" Sandra's step-father threatened.
"Who you got in there-some fella? I'll throw the bastard out oft his ass if I find you got some young punk in there. You gonna open this door?"
Mavis made another, more determined effort to get up but still couldn't dislodge the meatier girl. She desisted, lay back breathing heavily with effort, her heart pounding. She listened, suddenly terribly afraid.
"It's only Mavis," Sandra cried out frantically, "Please go away-you frighten me when you've been drinking ... Please, father...."
Outside the locked door Eddie Mathis stood scowling darkly, teetering unsteadily and glowering at the panels. He was a big man, running to fat and bulky round the belly, but still muscular and extremely powerful. His hair was close-cropped and he had a hard face made even more unpleasant by an old bottle scar that puckered the whole left cheek from jawbone to temple. His eyes were red-rimmed, their expression mean. He needed a shave badly.
Since the flare-up with Millie Mathis earlier that evening be had been in a foul temper. Instead of riding downtown to Francetti's like he usually did when on a blind he stopped in at Mac's Bar just three blocks from the apartment and slaved there, drinking steadily, becoming sourer and meaner with every drink. At forty-two, Eddie Mathis was a failure, a punk insurance salesman without prospects or ambition-a moron, drunk or sober, and not overburdened with brains at the best of times. He was the sort of useless, loud-mouthed slob who can't keep any job for long-or a woman, except perhaps some weak creature, like Millie, as worthless as himself, without the courage to leave him even though she hated his guts. It was less than six months since Sandra's widowed mother was fool enough to marry him. When Carl Branch, her first husband, was killed in a railroad pile-up, Millie Branch went all to pieces. In a few short months she aged years. Now, at forty, she was an old woman, haggard, without interest or any appreciation of responsibility even where her daughter was concerned. She had always liked a drink-that's how she happened to meet Ed Mathis in the first place. After her husband's death she really took to the bottle. But she kept her figure, and Ed Mathis, hot for her, tried his damndest but eventually had to accept the fact that the only way to make Millie Branch was to marry her. At the time it seemed a good idea.
Eddie could be quite pleasant when he had a mind to be, and when he was sober. Even so, it hit Sandra like a club between the eyes when her mother announced her intention of marrying him. Sandra detested her step-father from the start, and it quickly became obvious that he had no interest in her as a daughter. His only interest concerning her mother was sex, and when Millie's appeal ceased to arouse the same response he had experienced earlier on, Eddie Mathis began to cast lustful glances in Sandra's direction.
She was a strange girl. Even as a child she kept to herself and had few friends. She cried at the slightest thing, and when she grew older sought the company of her own sex, never boys. If her mother considered this inclination strange she never commented on it, neither did she do anything to combat the unhealthy trend that to any mother more interested in her daughter's welfare should have been increasingly obvious. Even when, much later, she was forced to accept the truth-that there was a stronger than usual association between Sandra and Mavis Preed she dismissed the idea of anything 'wrong' as absurd. The girls were just-'friends,' she maintained, and if Sandra seemed a little-strange ... she would undoubtedly grow out of it. Sandra's true father was no saint. Although she entertained a certain affection for him she never really loved her real father, neither could she respect him or her mother.
Sandra received no sex education other than what her own inquisitive eyes and ears taught her. Consequently her early impressions of sexual relations between her father and mother aroused curiosity, at first
-after that only disgust developing into actual revulsion. She grew up firmly convinced that sex, from a masculine viewpoint, was an ugly, sordid business. Subconsciously she harboured a deep-rooted resentment towards her father and his 'abuse' of her mother's body, and, regarding her mother's eager submission as 'betrayal'-the female acknowledging inferiority, being possessed by the brutal, dominant male, subjected constantly to his will.
What Sandra saw and was openly allowed to see of her mother's sex life following marriage to Eddie Mathis was even less calculated to correct misconceived tendencies and induce normal reasoning and behaviour in the mind of a young, highly emotional, and impressionable girl. Their mutual animal lust and drunken mauling merely confirmed and intensified the shuddering fears and disgust simmering in her confused mind and alienating her virgin body.
Eddie Mathis was quick to define Sandra's phobia. He promptly labeled her a 'queer,' and thereafter made her life a hell with his taunts and leering suggestiveness every time he had a few drinks. And on several occasions he went further, and tried sneaking into bed with her. The second time Millie caught him interfering with Sandra there was one hell of a row. Millie was as drunk, perhaps worse, than Eddie. The ruckus ended with her losing a couple of teeth, shedding maudlin tears, and finally performing a strip-tease in the middle of the bedroom floor and offering herself, naked, to her man who, with his clothing already open, grabbed her and fell across her on the bed chuckling and cursing alternately while Sandra looked on, shocked yet fascinated, with her wide eyes following every gesture, every movement, absorbing every stark detail.
Some of this was running through her distressed mind as her step-father continued to bang on the door. Eddie Matliis recalled the incident often, and sudden desire welled up into his loins, flushing his face more and tightening his belly muscles, as he thought of the two girls and what they were up to behind that locked door....
Raising a foot he smashed it against the door near the latch. Wood splintered. The door ripped free of the frame and slammed back against the bedroom wall. Eddie Mathis lurched into the room, tripped, and fell to his knees. He remained like that with his weight on his knuckles. His eyes widened and he sucked in his breath sharply.
The girls were still on the bed, clasped in each other's arms. Mavis was lying on her back with her knees drawn up and her dress pulled high. Her panties had been removed, and she had no secrets from Eddie's searching eyes. Her dress was unbuttoned from throat to waist so that the flushed globes of her bared breasts protruded, their nipples still wet from Sandra's kisses. Sandra, sprawled on top of the dark-haired girl, was completely naked. Her rounded buttocks were towards Eddie, and her thighs were apart-
Eddie Mathis pursed his lips in a silent whistle. He clambered to his feet and lurched towards the bed, fumbling at his clothing and mouthing exitable oaths. But in the moment when she felt his rough hands on her flesh Sandra screamed and twisted from under Mavis like an eel, rolled over, and fell to the floor. Eddie Mathis, overbalancing, sprawled across Mavis as she jerked erect, free of Sandra's weight at last, and flattened her against the sheets. Instantly he grabbed her ... Slobbering, he buried his face between her breasts, and the smell of her flesh almost drove him crazy. He thrust her back with one hand and cupped one proud breast with the other, fondling, squeezing, bruising her. She felt his touch between her thighs, and a thrill of responsive passion displaced some of her mounting fear and tension.
Suddenly she was no longer afraid. Desires awakened by Mavis' caresses flamed under Eddie's masculine touch. His liquor-reeking breath wafted in her nostrils as he raised his head and sought her mouth and she felt a spasm of nausea. But when his lips crushed hers nothing else seemed to matter, and she responded, unable to help herself, to fight against the flood of passion surging through her quivering body. This was the kind of love she could understand....
When Eddie Mathis felt the quick fluttering of her tongue between his lips the very unexpectedness of it momentarily unnerved him and he hesitated, confused and suspicious. In that instant Sandra, cowering in the grip of blind, abject terror coupled with hysteria, experienced a wave of berserk fury prompted by absolute panic and came cat-like to her feet with face convulsed and her eyes glaring like those of a mad woman. She grabbed the handiest object, in this instance a heavy bronze book-end, and with a hoarse cry brought it down with all her strength against the back of her step-father's tousled head....
Bone cracked. Blood poured. Eddie Mathis uttered a choked cry, went limp. His gross bulk slumped sideways off the girl, flopped heavily to the floor. Blood rapidly formed a pol, spreading from the roots of his greying hair, soaking into the carpet, filling his nostrils and his mouth pressed against the pile....
Sandra stood gripping the bloody book-end, her free hand pressed against her mouth so tightly that her teeth dug deeply into hr knuckles. Mavis, ashen-faced, got up slowly from the crumpled bed. Eddie Mathis didn't move. His eyes were open, the pupils fixed in a horrible, glassy stare.
"Oh, my God!" Sandra whispered hoarsely, "What have I done?"
The book-end dropped with a thud at her feet. Mavis backed away until the wall stopped her.
"You've-you've ... killed ... him, I think---", she said vacantly.
"I don't care," Sandra shouted defiantly, fighting against her terror and a desire to scream incessantly, "The filthy, drunken swine...!"
"You fool!" Mavis said, "You bloody fool!"
She felt suddenly cold. Her limbs trembled with shock.
"But-I had to do ... what ... I did," Sandra said falteringly.
"When I saw what he-he was trying to do I-"
"Did you hear me complaining?"
Sandra stared, uncomprehending. Mavis sighed. Some of her composure was returning. Her mind was busy. She stepped away from the wall, gestured impatiently.
"Forget it," she said, "Sure, I know you hit him-because of me, but you needn't have ... It's done now. Sandra-what are we going to do?"
"Do?"
"Yes, DO. Sandra, for crying out loud! Don't you understand? Don't you realise what you've done? You've killed a-a man ... Your own father!"
"I-I didn't mean to. I couldn't help it. I had to do something-don't you see? Oh, Mavis...."
She sank down onto the bed edge and buried her face in her hands. Her fingers were bloodless, like marble. She jerked her head erect suddenly.
"He wasn't my father," she protested vehemently, "He was vile-a drunken beast. They can't do anything to me."
"The Police? Perhaps not. But suppose it all comes out? About us, I mean."
"Let it. We weren't doing anything wrong. We can say we were in my room, talking, when he broke in and tried to-to seduce me, and you. It's the truth, isn't it?"
"Yes-but who's going to believe it? That your own father...?"
"Don't keep saying that. He isn't-wasn't my father."
Youth is resilient. Already Sandra's hysteria was giving way to cunning. Eddie Mathis had tried to rape Mavis, therefore whatever she, Sandra, had done to him was justified.
"Step-father then," Mavis said, "What does it matter? Do you imagine for one moment your mother won't speak up? That she'll keep quiet-to protect you? All right-don't look so indignant. Maybe they did fight all the time. For all that they were closer than you think, and she's going to hate you for this, Sandra...."
"She hates me already---"
"I wouldn't argue about that. I know her, better than you do, perhaps. She's never been much of a mother to you, not since your father died. She's no good, like Eddie there. They're deserving of each other. She'll blame you, not him. What happened last time? Don't say you can't remember. The last time he tried to get into bed with you and your mother caught him with nothing on except his socks, in your room. What did she do? I know. You've told me often enough. It was funny to her, to both of them. A big joke. Well, now the joke's on her, but it'll be on us, too. if we stay around here. Likely well get into trouble, real bad trouble."
Sandra, still bewildered, shook her head.
"You mean we ought to run away?" she asked.
Mavis nodded. Her lips were dry and she passed her tongue over them a few times. She looked towards the huddled shape, and shuddered.
"What else? My aunt will turn me out anyway once she finds out about-us. And she will find out. You know what your mother's like when she gets a few drinks. Worse than him. She'll shoot off her mouth, tell everybody. I couldn't stand that, Sandra."
"I'm not ashamed. Darling, we...."
"Other people don't see it the way we do. I'd just die if people started pointing and whispering."
"They do already, at you," Sandra declared resentfully, "Because you go with boys. Once it used to be just you and me, nobody else. Then that awful Jimmy Leach...."
"Oh, God, Sandra-don't start that again. I've tried to be a good friend to you. This is serious."
"Well-Look, Mavis-suppose we said we came in and found him lying there. They'd think he fell and hit his head when he was drunk-"
"Would they? What on? Darling, be sensible. His skull is-is fractured, smashed in. They'll know he couldn't have done that in a fall, not in here. They'll know somebody must have hit him with something. Even if we hide the book-end and they. Oh, it's no use. We've got to get away from here, now, while we've got the chance."
"But if we run away they'll think we murdered him. I feel faint. I think I'm going to be sick. Mavis-I didn't mean to kill him. I'm sure if we explain the police, and mother, will understand."
She clutched at Mavis, laid her face against the dark-haired girl's stomach and held on tightly. Suddenly her defiance and forced courage drained away and she began to sob. Mavis stroked her soft hair.
"It's all right, Sandra," she comforted, "It's all right. Of course they'll believe you. I'm being silly, and selfish, wanting to get away. Of course nobody but us knows what we were doing when he came in. We're acting like children."
She started to extricate herself from Sandra's clutch, but the plump blonde clung all the tighter.
"Where are you going?" she demanded tearfully. Mavis indicated the telephone.
"We'll have to call the police and report this," she said. Sandra nodded miserably, got up from her knees beside the bed and bent to pick up her bathrobe.
Mavis, with the telephone receiver in her hand, suddenly screamed and pointed frantically. The 'corpse' was moving, heaving up like a great, shaggy ape with slack mouth agape, drooling saliva, eyes staring, bulging horribly, tongue protruding ... The supposedly dead man was trying to speak but his straining throat only managed to utter muter, incoherent sounds. His arms lifted, reached up, got a grip on the dresser. He began to pull himself up from the floor. Blood was congealing in dark gobs down his unshaven cheek and in his hair roots. There was more blood, sticky and glistening dully, extending from his hairline to the sweat stained collar of his striped shirt. The triangular gash at the back of his head was deep, a ghastly wound from which sprinters of white bone protruded.
Sandra gaped in silent, frozen horror. Mavis, after her initial shriek, stood as if petrified. Eddie Mathis's thick fingers clamped on the wood quivered with effort. He moaned. Abruptly the last vestiges of strength left his limbs and he flopped face down and lay wheezing, breathing heavily into the stained carpet.
"Dear God!" Sandra croaked, "He's alive-"
Mavis whirled, snatched up the phone, put through an emergency call to the Cooper Hospital. She babbled incoherently for a few moments before she could control her speech. She replaced the receiver and leaned against the wall.
"They're sending an ambulance," she said tonelessly, "It won't be long."
"What about the police?"
Mavis shrugged. "I suppose we'd best call them too."
"Do we have to now?"
"We must. There's no way out. We'll have to tell our story, just the way it happened."
"I shall die of shame. If the newspapers get hold of it they'll-My own step-father, Mavis! The disgrace of it. I'll never be able to look my friends in the face."
"What friends?" Mavis said bluntly. "Why should you feel ashamed-he's the one who'll have to face the music. It's him they'll look down on."
"Mud clings. You know how people talk. They can be-beastly. You were right, Mavis-we'll have to leave here, go away somewhere, slip away together. Nobody wants us here anyway. I hate this town...."
"We can't leave, not right away."
"But you said-"
"I was confused. Of course we'll have to go now. If he recovers there's no telling what he'll do, and in any case we'll neither of us be safe, you especially. But we must wait and see what happens, not lose our heads. Later we'll make plans."
Sandra gripped her arm so tightly that Mavis winced.
"Tell me you'll always stick by me, darling," the blonde girl asked desperately, almost pleading. "Always, whatever happens."
"Of course I will." Mavis looked surprised.
"Promise me ... Dear Mavis-I couldn't go on without you, if I thought you didn't love me. Promise me you'll never leave me-never...."
"But."
"Promise!"
"All right, I promise. Now you'd better get some clothes on before the ambulance arrives."