The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers (the little red hen ebook TXT) 📕

Ben woke to find his hands and feet bound by electrical tape. Marla was inching him closer to the grave, pulling his feet and torso in line with the hole to make it easier for her to roll him in. The reality hit him—she was going to bury him alive in his own backyard.

Ben began to scream. Marla put her hand over his mouth and he bit her. She pulled her hand away and then slapped him hard across the face, causing his already aching head to throb in earnest. She pulled off another piece of electrical tape and placed it over his mouth.

“You think I’m a monster.” She bent down, studying her handiwork. “Well, you have no idea of monsters, Ben. I could show you monsters.” She stood up, and he could hear her knees crack. “You asked if killing them was worth it? The answer is yes. I’ve lived for a hundred years. Killing is what keeps me alive. Every thirty years like clockwork, I find a willing sacrifice.” She smiled. “Well, willing is probably not the right term. Still, I get to keep living and looking like this.”

She wiped her face and then pulled Ben’s legs toward the hole. He kicked at her and screamed through the tape, but the sound was so muffled with the buzzing sound that continued a few houses down, drowning out his stifled pleas.

“Esmé.” The name sounded odd through the tape, but it caught her attention.

“Yes, Ben.” Marla knelt beside him. She kept aligning Ben’s body with the pit to dump him alongside Todd Sutton. She motioned toward the body. “It was easy to get Todd here that day. I’d been helping him find photos of a vintage truck that he was giving Lara as a wedding gift. Touching, isn’t it?” She rolled her eyes. “As he was leaving, I hit him with the lion doorstop we bought at Vic’s garage sale last year. You remember the one?”

What was he supposed to do? Nod that he recalled the garage sale?

“I don’t have to choose one of their loves, it could be any man, but it makes it more poetic for me somehow. I keep seeing Cecile’s face when I kill them. Her naive, stupid face. Then I place their cars at Wickelow Bend because it reminds me of the White Forest. A little offering for him so he knows that I haven’t forgotten, either.

“The thing is that they—what I like to refer to as Father’s victims—have to bleed. That’s the requirement.” She was on her hands and knees, getting him positioned, and she blew her hair out of her eyes. “You won’t count, though; the spell doesn’t work that way. I’ll be on the hook for another man in another thirty years.” She thought about something. “Sorry.”

How had he missed this? Had he been so stubborn that he failed to see the signs? This woman he’d lived with for ten years was going to dump him in a shallow grave and then pretend to mourn his disappearance.

Marla swayed a little and she got up then sank onto the nearby iron bench, finally looking down into the hole. “You were right. I need to sell this house and get out of here, go back to Rome or Los Angeles and live again. I thought I’d try domesticity with you, but it just didn’t fit.” She smiled sadly, gazing at her nails as though worried she’d gotten dirt under them. She looked down at Todd’s body. “I’m glad we can’t see his head. I hit him on the side of his head above his ear. The doorstop kind of stuck in his head.” She touched her hair lightly to demonstrate her aim.

“Peter was different, though. Oh, Peter Beaumont.” She closed her eyes like she was savoring a memory. “He could have made me forget all about Émile if I’d stayed with him long enough. I was a friend of his mother’s. He got all sentimental when Audrey told him she was pregnant and said he couldn’t see me anymore. It was like Paris all over again. But I regretted killing him the most. He always took the Wickelow Bend shortcut on his way from Cabot Farms to his house, so I parked my car there by the side of the road. He never knew what hit him. And Desmond, well, he was a bit of an asshole. I fucked him right over there”—she pointed to the lattice now facing Victor Benson’s home—“before gouging his eyes out. You were so funny, going on about fingerprints being wiped. They weren’t wiped, Ben, I just enchanted them all. The whole thing was right under your nose, but you refused to see the magic.”

She stood up and took a deep breath like she was refreshed after unburdening herself of these crimes. Then she kicked him hard in the stomach with the heel of her espadrille, which caused his body to roll. Ben fell the entire three feet into the grave, landing hard on top of what was left of Todd Sutton’s uncovered body. Upon impact, the body gave, releasing putrid smells that engulfed the hole. Ben’s head landed inches from Sutton’s, and his nose took in the pungent decay. His eyes began to water. He squirmed and tried to sit up to get away from the smell. Marla returned to find Ben trying to stand upright in the grave. The uneven dirt made it impossible for him to gain his balance and he fell, this time directly on top of Sutton. Marla furiously shoveled dirt into the hole. “Do you want me to knock you out?” She stopped and watched him squirm. “It might be easier that way… for your sake. I don’t need the blood. I don’t really enjoy it, especially not with you. You’re a good guy. I owe you that, at least.”

“Fuck you,” Ben mumbled through the tape.

“Okay then.” Marla shrugged. “You can’t say I wasn’t