The hunt was on.
That thought in itself gave Kim another burst of adrenaline. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘time to go.’
But when she looked over at her friend, she saw a troubled look on Ashley’s face.
‘What is it?’ Kim asked.
‘I recognise this place.’
‘You mean we’ve passed through here?’
Ashley nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘That’s good, it means we are on the right track.’
Kim looked around as well, trying to see if she recognised her surroundings, but not expecting to glean much. To her, one tree looked just like another, especially in the dark. Nothing seemed familiar, so she turned back to her friend, just in time to see her face drop. Ashley held up the torch and pointed it off to their side, and Kim followed the beam of light.
Now she realised exactly where they were.
She saw that flap of skin, the yawning face, still hanging from the tree branch.
They were at the site where they’d found the faceless man.
The one Tim had killed by crushing his skull.
An act that now, knowing what they knew, would probably fit Tim’s character very well.
‘Okay,’ Kim said, ‘at least we know we’re definitely on the right track. Let’s keep moving.’
Seeing the mask of skin again was still disturbing, but there was no need to stop on account of it anymore. They knew who it had belonged to and, likely, the reason for its removal. It should have been of no further concern to them.
‘Wait,’ Ashley said, moving her beam around. ‘Don’t you see?’
‘See what?’ Kim asked as Ashley’s beam settled on a spot on the ground up ahead. There was nothing of any real interest, just more of the forest floor.
But then Kim saw the stain; smears of blood.
‘The man,’ Ashley said. ‘He’s gone.’
Chapter 19
Ted kept low as he ran, sweeping over the ground in quick strides. His dull, dirty blade was already drawn, ready to cut and cleave.
Excitement consumed him.
Before, he had simply been their tracker, watching his brother lead the group back to the house. Now, his role was different, one he enjoyed so much more.
Now he was the hunter.
He and his twin sister, Claudia, would have no problem tracking down these two feeble girls. The only question would be how quickly they would do it.
To find them, he knew he had to think like them, and scared people were disappointingly predictable people. They would return to the thing they knew, the thing that would give them the best chance of getting free.
To reach the house, they’d followed the old trail his family had deliberately carved years ago, which meant they would try to find it again and follow it out.
That meant he and his sister just had to do the same thing, only quicker, to catch up to them.
Disappointingly easy.
Still, they made sure to keep off the trail and stick to the trees, weaving between them silently. If they were on the trail and the girls looked back, they would be seen. Not that it really mattered, their prey would still be caught, but sticking to the shadows allowed them to attack when they were ready, and that would make the capture quick and simple.
His sister, Claudia, had dropped the torch she had been carrying as soon as they’d set off in chase, and they were both keeping pace with each other, pushing each other on.
‘Been such a long time since we’ve done this, brother,’ she said to him quietly. He didn’t need to worry about her talking too loudly; they hadn’t made up enough ground just yet for the two little rabbits to hear them.
‘Too long,’ Ted replied.
‘Family’s been getting anxious. Fighting all the time.’
‘That happens the longer we wait.’
‘Stupid, though. Pointless.’
‘It is, sister. But we can’t help it.’
‘Can’t control it.’
‘No, we can’t. It will always rise to the surface. Unless we feed it.’
‘Ever wonder what would happen if we didn’t feed it? Just let it take over?’
‘No, sister.’
‘I have. I’d imagine we would end up trying to rip each other to little pieces. Small enough to gobble down.’
‘You might be right. It controls and consumes us. That’s just the way of things. But we won’t let it get that far. Never have before, never will.’
‘I dunno,’ his sister said. ‘Sounds like fun. Henry could feed us all for eternity.’
He laughed, louder than he intended, and he quickly admonished himself.
Stop playing around. Stick to the hunt.
‘You might be right, but Henry would take some effort putting down.’
‘We could do it,’ his sister said. ‘Together.’
‘Thought about it, have you?’
‘A few times. When things get boring around here, the mind wanders.’
‘Well, the mind has something to concentrate on now.’
‘The hunt.’
‘Yes, sister,’ he said. ‘The hunt.’
She giggled excitedly. It was a sweet sound to him, one that spurred him on. He could almost taste both of the little rabbits that hopped on ahead. He tried to imagine the flavour of the redhead.
He even considered having a little taste before getting them back home.
His stomach churned in anticipation.
Soon it would be time to feast.
Chapter 20
Still slung over Henry’s shoulder, Craig was taken back down the steps to the basement. He half expected the creaking stairs to give way, but they held, clearly made of stronger stuff than they originally seemed. Henry then walked between the hanging bodies, allowing Craig to see their withered, skeletal faces, and smell their awful stench, as he was carried onwards to the far wall.
There was a thick, strong-looking wooden door set into the wall, which Henry pushed open, revealing a corridor behind. The walls of the corridor were nothing more than dirt, tunnelled into the ground, held back by timber strutting. Small, electrical lights hung from the struts, giving a small amount of illumination to the corridor.
Cold air rolled over Craig, as well as a musty, earthy odour.
A little farther ahead, stone steps dropped sharply down. Henry continued down the steps, eventually coming to an open area.
Like the tunnel before, this room seemed to have been carved out of the earth that surrounded it. He could see the underside of the basement floor high above him, held up by stone pillars. Electrical lanterns were fixed to the walls, lighting the room in a dull glow. Maybe the house had a generator?
Situated in the centre of the room, and clearly the focal point, was a large, stone table. Its surface was stained with a dirty brown substance—Craig knew exactly what that was—and there were small holes lining its surface.
Just to the right of that, a side table stood empty, as if waiting to take something on it. An old crate sat in one corner of the room and, at the back, set into the floor, was a metal grate. Behind that, against the far wall, there was what Craig assumed to be some kind of honest-to-God occult fucking altar.
On top of the macabre shrine, with carvings of monstrous, twisted things, there was a human skull, surrounded by smaller skulls; those of animals and, dear God, children. The flat section of the altar held a thick, yellowed book, which stood upright on a perch. It was open and, on its yellowed pages, Craig could make out scribbled writings and sketches, though they were too far away to see clearly.
Was that what all this was? Were these people some kind of cultists?
Did anyone really believe things like that in the modern age?
Unfortunately for Craig, it seemed that some people still did. It may have been backwards and idiotic, but that still didn’t help Craig in his current situation.
Henry walked towards the large stone table and dropped Craig roughly onto it. Craig squealed in pain, but Henry just laughed, clea
rly amused.
Craig was then de-clothed, leaving him completely naked, and his body was forcibly straightened out. He felt another crunch in his spine, and his legs went completely numb. He continued to scream, feeling more mind-shattering pain than he could take.
The hulking man-child looked down at him.
‘Almost done,’ Henry said, smiling. ‘Just going to need to tie you up.’
‘Please,’ Craig managed to whisper out. ‘I’m begging you.’
‘Yeah,’ Henry said, ‘you are. But the begging is going to get a whole lot worse, I think.’
Henry then got to work, pulling great chains across Craig’s body, chains that looped through metal rungs around the table’s perimeter. While the monster worked, Craig took further note of the small, circular holes in the stone, holes that were roughly the size of a penny. The only purpose he could see for them was to drain fluid from the table’s surface.
Which meant things were going to get messy.
Once Henry had finished restraining Craig, he leaned in close, so that Craig could smell his rotten breath.
‘Just one little taste,’ Henry whispered, salivating. Craig then screamed as Henry’s stubby teeth sank into his shoulder. They cut through his flesh and pulled away, tearing away skin and meat as they did.
Henry sighed contentedly as he chewed. The monster then waved with a blood-stained smile, turned, and left. The sound of his booming footsteps soon grew distant, leaving Craig in terrible pain.
All alone.
Just waiting to die.
He wept.
Chapter 21
‘How can he be gone?’ Kim asked. ‘He was dead. We saw it.’
That was the question troubling Ashley. ‘Maybe there are more of them out here. Maybe they took him?’ Ashley whispered.
‘Shit,’ Kim said. ‘Remember what Tim said, that there was, what, eight of them? Does that mean there could be more running around out here?’
It certainly seemed that way to Ashley. She looked around, letting the beam from her torch penetrate the darkness, fully expecting to see something hiding in the black.
She found nothing.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, checking the signal.
Nothing.
She’d been making a habit of checking it since the shit had hit the fan, but this place was a dead zone.
‘Okay,’ Ashley said, ‘this doesn’t change anything.’
‘I agree,’ Kim said, putting away her phone. ‘We still need to move, regardless.’
Just as they were about to run, Ashley heard something. The squeak of a small animal. Ashley wasn’t an expert by any stretch, but it didn’t seem like the normal noise of everyday animal life. It sounded somehow distressed. Before she could ignore it out of hand, she heard it again.
‘What is that?’ Kim asked.
They heard a wet, sloppy, crunching sound as the squeaks were cut off. The noise had come from a tree up ahead, one with a thick trunk that Ashley recognised. The trail they were on led up past it, but not too close.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Ashley whispered, not wanting to investigate. ‘We just keep going.’
Kim nodded her agreement and they set off again, slowly this time. The wet noise, which Ashley realised was some kind of chewing, persisted.
Something was feeding.
Her hope was that it was just an animal eating another, less-fortunate creature. Things like that happened in the wild, it was the natural order of things, so as long as the predator showed no interest in them, then hopefully they could just carry on.
It had occurred to Ashley that, as little noise as they were making whilst moving, most animals had highly tuned hearing and would probably have heard their footsteps no matter how quiet they tried to be.
Which meant that whatever was currently feasting didn’t care enough about them to stop.
Ashley kept her eyes on the tree as she moved, careful not to shine her light on it directly for fear of drawing attention. They slowly circled the wide trunk, making as little noise as possible, and Ashley braced herself for what she would see.
It was dark, but she could just make something out, sitting against the base of the tree.
It was no animal.
It was distinctly human.
‘What is it?’ Kim whispered, evidently looking as well.
Ashley couldn’t help herself, she slowly brought her flashlight up, needing to see what, or who, it was.
What she saw wasn’t possible.
Couldn’t be.
Kim let out a gasp. It was her noise, rather than the light from the flashlight, that drew the thing’s attention.
The thing that should be dead.
The faceless man.
It was an impossibility, but there he was, sitting against the tree, gnawing on what appeared to be a half-eaten squirrel. Half of the animal’s chewed body hung from the man’s chomping mouth as he looked over in their direction, alerted by Kim’s gasp.
Slowly, he got to his feet, and half of the mangled squirrel fell to the floor.
Ashley wanted to scream, but suppressed the urge. There was something slightly different about the man now. When they had found him earlier, seemingly dead on the floor, they could clearly see his skull on display, covered by a smattering of flesh. Now, however, the meat had somehow grown thicker, covering the bone beneath completely.
And that made about as much sense as him still being alive after what Tim had done to him. And yet, Ashley’s eyes were not deceiving her. Kim was seeing exactly the same thing.
‘That’s impossible,’ her friend whispered. Ashley had to agree, but they were seeing the impossible. The man began walking towards them, and Ashley put a hand on Kim’s shoulder and tugged.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, wanting to be free of these woods now more than ever.
What the hell was he? How was his flesh growing back like that?
No one could survive what he’d been through, let alone be up and walking around already.
The girls turned and began to run, making more noise, but not caring. They just needed to get away from him. Their movement seemed to excite the man, and he made a high-pitched noise, something like a giggle, and ran forward himself. However, regardless of the red flesh that had grown back, it was clear to Ashley his eyes had not yet regenerated, and he tripped and stumbled to the ground.
He let out an agitated roar into the night sky, but Ashley and Kim just ran, as fast as they could, away from him. Again and again he yelled as they left him behind.
Something clicked in Ashley’s mind as she remembered how this grotesque man had attacked them earlier. What they had mistaken for fear and instinct was, in fact, aggression. It was clear to her that he wasn’t friendly, and never had been. This man, she knew, somehow belonged to the demented clan that took residence in these woods.
The same family Tim had told them about. But it wasn’t an urban legend at all, it was his life, and Tim was one of them.
Part of the Webb family.
Her mind ran back to Tim’s story. What else had he said about them? That they served something, something greater than them, something that gave them... what was the word? Power? Abilities?
Could that be the reason the faceless man was able to live, despite all that had been done to him? His screams continued to echo into the night.
‘He’s pissed,’ Kim said, panting. Ashley was about to agree when a thought struck her. Maybe he wasn’t angry at all, maybe he was calling out to someone.
Alerting them.
‘We need to speed up,’ Ashley said.
‘What is it?’ Kim asked, casting a look around as they raced along the trail.
‘I think he’s calling to them, the others.’
‘Calling to them?’
‘His family,’ Ashley said. ‘Don’t you see, Kim? He’s one of them.’
It took a moment to make sense to Kim. ‘Holy shit,’ she eventually said.
‘And he’s
letting them know where we are.’
They both gave an extra burst of speed, reaching down inside for the extra energy, to that place in all of us reserved only for the most desperate of times. Trees flew by quickly as they sprinted. Now that they were on the relatively level footing of the dirt track, they were progressing much quicker than before. The beam of the flashlight bounced manically as they ran, shaking this way and that. Ashley tried to keep it steady as best she could, but seeing what was up ahead was secondary to moving quickly.
‘Do you think they’re close?’ Kim asked between breaths.
‘Maybe,’ Ashley said. ‘If they heard our friend back there, then they won’t be far behind.’
‘Fuck.’
‘But that just means we need to be quicker than them.’
‘Agreed,’ Kim said, then added, ‘How far until you think we’re out of the woods?’
Out of the woods?
That idiom had taken on a very literal meaning to them both. ‘I don’t know,’ Ashley said. ‘Hopefully not long.’
‘Good,’ Kim said, practically wheezing, ‘because I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this up.’
‘You have to,’ Ashley said. ‘You told me we needed to fight. Well, this is part of it. You need to push.’
‘I’m trying,’ Kim said, but she now sounded desperate. Her panting was erratic and heavy, like someone having an asthma attack. It was clear she couldn’t go on much longer, not enough to get clear of the woods, but if they stopped, that would only allow the things chasing them to get even closer. Ashley had a feeling those things wouldn’t need to stop to catch their breaths, either.
Ashley was also aware that if Kim kept pushing, eventually she would hit a point where she could go no farther, and just collapse.
Then what?
Was Ashley supposed to leave another friend behind?
No, that wasn’t an option. She would be damned before she did that. Ashley slowed to a stop, and Kim followed suit, instantly dropping to her knees. The girl laid her hands flat on the dirt and began to dry heave.
Then she vomited.
‘It’s okay,’ Ashley said, rubbing her back. She watched the trees behind them whilst comforting her friend, concentrating for movement in the shadows. Her friend clearly needed time, but they also needed to get moving again, and quickly. Kim heaved a few more times before finally beginning to settle.
The Extreme Horror Collection Page 10
