“You okay buddy?” Pat asked, bringing himself closer.
The man moved forward, faster than any snake. He rushed Pat and grabbed his arms, holding him back. The light tumbled from his hand and rolled across the floor, giving the room a strobe effect.
“What the fuck?” Pat asked and struggled to free himself, but he could not. The old man’s grip was like iron, gripping and crushing his body. Desperate, Pat kicked him between the legs as hard as he could. He was too drunk to fight fairly. Besides, this was just some darkie. Chivalry was not required.
The man went down. The man rolled.
“Hold it!” Pat said, raising his gun. He got the barrel on him and was ready to fire.
“Kill me, white man!” the darkie screeched. “Do it! Shoot me, mother fucker!”
“Just calm down,” Pat said and tried to take a deep breath. “Let’s talk this through.” If he did kill this man, he would need to bury the body. Dragging a dead man through the swamp did not sound like an agreeable end to this evening. “What the fuck did you do to those kids?”
The man crouched, gripping his knees and rolling back and forth in his own private rocking chair on the floor. “She danced,” he said. “I saw her. She danced with the Loa’s, the dark Gods. She is a true goddess, a mistress of evil and rage. She walks in both worlds, white man, like a lost spirit.”
“Who?” Pat asked, moving forward.
The man splayed out as if unseen hands had grabbed him. He screamed again, and Pat moved backwards, keeping his gun trained on him. “She walks! The mistress walks! And I gave her the drink of the black adder! Nothing will stop her juju! Nothing can stop her black magic!”
“Black adder?” Pat asked. “What the fuck you talking about, boy?”
“The sacrifice was made,” the man smiled, and Pat saw his teeth. Only a few of them remained. Mostly it was just gums. Bloody gums in a black mouth. The sure sign of a meth addict, Pat knew. There were plenty of them at Sam’s trailer park. All of them were missing teeth. “She gave birth, white man. I saw a snake crawl out of her belly!”
With a final shudder the old man went still. After a time, Pat knelt beside the body and felt for a pulse. There was none. The man was dead, as if the life had simply got up and left his body.
“God damn it,” he cursed whatever God was listening. He didn’t have time for this shit.
Pat left the body behind and went back to his car. He decided not to make another stop until he got to Sam’s.
***
“He’s dead! Oh, God! Dead!!” Mabel was inconsolable as Pat’s car pulled up to the trailer. The lights were on and blazing in the night, illuminating a scene of total despair.
Pat got out and looked at the old beat up Dodge station wagon parked in front of the trailer. Inside were Sam’s three kids. They had their heads down like pallbearers at a funeral.
He slammed the door shut, hoping the noise would shock Mabel out of whatever state she was in. The woman literally collapsed in his arms when she saw him. He comfortably slid his around her body. Pat never liked Mabel. She was loud. She was obnoxious. She was a liar.
He sometimes wondered if she had lied about Hal Robson. And now this.
“He’s dead, Pat. Oh, Sam is dead!”
“It’s okay, Mabel. I’ll go inside and look, all right?”
“It don’t matter none,” she groaned and her tears ran down his cheap suit. He prayed that she could not smell the alcohol on his breath. “It’s all over, Pat.
Over!”
Carefully he pushed her away then walked up the porch. He tried to open the door only to find it stuck. “Do you have the keys?” he asked.
“It ain’t locked,” she whimpered.
“Yeah, it is.”
She sniffled and handed over the keys. Pat turned the lock and pushed open the hollow door to the trailer.
Sam was hanging from the middle of the roof as if he had been lynched.
“Damn,” he cursed under his breath, looking at poor old Sam in the dim light.
He reached out and gently touched the man’s leg. Another step and he was inside, feeling Sam’s cold arm and trying to find a pulse. He left his finger over the lifeless vein just long enough to confirm it. Sam was dead, and judging from the chill of his flesh, had been for hours.
“When did you find the body, Mabel?” he asked, leaving the trailer and being careful to pull the door shut behind him.
“About a half hour ago. Right before I called you.”
“And how long had Sam been alone?”
“We left for the market at nine. He stayed home to watch the game. We were gone for about two hours. You know, I had to feed the kids.”
Pat glanced at his watch. It was just after midnight. Mabel’s story lined up. But something did stick out. Sam was a big man. He weighed 240 at least. The roof should not have been able to hold all that weight. Something strange was going on.
Sam decided to go in again. He tried to open the door. It would not budge.
“Did you lock this?” he asked Mabel.
“I didn’t touch it!” she whined.
“Shit,” he moaned. He must have locked it himself. He still had the keys, so he opened it. Then he turned on his flashlight.
He shined it in the darkness, running it up the rope until he was looking at the end. Right there, where it should have been tied to the ceiling, it was not. In fact, it was tied to nothing.
Pat felt it. It felt like a normal piece of rope, but it was only hovering in mid-air. He gave it a tug, but it did not move.
Taking out his knife he carefully cut Sam down. But Sam was a big man. His body hit the floor with a bone jarring THUD! Outside, Mabel wailed when she saw the trailer rock. She knew what had happened. With horror-stricken eyes he watched the rope fade away. Then it was gone, as if it had never been there at all. Pat dropped next to Sam and looked at his throat. It was bright red with rope burn and tiny scratches and cuts that were still bloody. But there was no rope.
Pat called the police and told them that he had a heart attack victim on the floor of his trailer. A heart attack victim with rope burns.
***
With a clawed hand the shadow pushed away the vines and stepped out of the swamp. Hank began to scream.
He panicked, like a man in a bad dream, and struggled to get up. But it was no use. His ankle was broken, shattered in his mad dash to get away from the creature.
Besides, the swamp was not about to allow any escape for one of its prisoners. It was hungry tonight.
The bog was heavy around him. It filled both his nostrils and eyes with decay. Thick waters covered with moss and lichens and decomposing plants surrounded him on all sides. Soon his body would join that rotting mess. No one would ever find his bones.
He screamed again but the thing was not listening. It was a monster spawned in the darkest parts of his imagination. On giant paws it stepped forward then raised itself up on its hind legs, standing like a man before the moon. The werewolf turned its snout to the sky and howled.
Hank whimpered as the thing looked down upon him. Saliva and snot dripped from its snout as Hank’s heart began to pound. He could smell the dog breath over the stench of the mire. Then he saw the long fangs, sharp as daggers, inside the creature’s black maw. They were ready to rip his flesh open and devour him.
Beady red eyes stared through him and into his soul. There was only one escape. Hank woke up.
The sheets were ruffled about him. They stuck to the sweat on his body like plastic wrap. With a silent cry he sat up in bed. Hank looked about, surprised to be alive. In his mind he should be dead. That wolf had mauled him. He could remember it. He could still feel his veins opening and bleeding. He could still feel his heart stopping in his chest. But he was in his tiny home on the bayou.
Once again, the dream had shredded reality. Everything he knew had been gone for a time and the return left him drained and weary. It had slipped away so suddenly, like a tornado tearing through the night.<
br />
The window to his room was wide open and the smell of the swamp blew inside on gentle midnight winds. The drapes reached for him like groping fingers. It felt right. It felt okay. The gentle winds like mother nature soothing her frightened child.
This was the third time the nightmare had come this week. It stole his safety and trust then slipped out the back door like a prowler in the night. Hank’s heart was still pounding like a jackhammer, thumping in his chest to a savage drum beat. He ran a hand over his forehead and wiped away the sweet. Then he got up and walked to the bathroom.
Hank turned the water on full force. He left it cold and washed his face. Rising, he looked at himself in the mirror. His face was haggard. His eyes were raw. These dreams were destroying him slowly, from the soul out. He ran some cold water into the same glass he used when he brushed his teeth and took a long gulp, trying to assuage the hot devils inside of him. The whistle came first. It was faint to begin with before turning into a dull roar. Hank dropped the glass and let it shatter on the floor.
He thought the noise was coming from outside but then it grew even louder, and he knew the truth. It was inside him, as if his entire mind was screaming so sharply it made no sound at all.
Not real, he told himself. It could not be real. Lord, he needed a beer!
The house shook as he walked the length of it to the refrigerator, the whistle still burning even as he opened the door and let the cold air massage his naked body. Hank grabbed an ice cold can and popped it open. He drank it all in a single gulp.
But the noise was still there. The memories were still there.
It had been on a night like this, so long ago, when they had strung that guy up, that Hal Robson. And he could remember the girl, screaming as she ran away into the surrounding wetland. There was still an uneasy feeling inside him and there had been ever since that night. What if she was still alive? What if she told the sheriff?
It wouldn’t matter. She was just some blue gum bitch. No one would believe her, especially not a cop. There was no one on her side and no one to protect her. He was safe.
And it had been funny. Watching that darkie dangle from the tree. He got a boner as he died. That made them all laugh but Hank laughed loudest of all. Especially when he shit himself. It stank. It reeked bad. But it was so funny it still made him laugh. Sometimes, in quieter moments, Hank asked himself why they had done it. In those times he thought of the children.
Not his. He had never married. But Sam’s kids. Sam’s kids deserved to live in a town without darkies. They deserved to grow up safe. That was why they did it. For the children.
The can lurched in his hand as if it was possessed of a life all its own. It struck him under the jaw, knocking his teeth together. It hurt. Bad.
“What the Hell?”
“You have been named,” a voice whispered. “They call you Sadist.”
“Who said that?” He turned around.
The home was empty.
Hank reached up and found that he was bleeding. He looked at the floor and watched the droplets form crimson pools in the moonlight. His fingertips were red.
The refrigerator door opened from the inside. He turned only to have another can fly out, smashing him in the forehead. Hank stumbled backwards but the wall caught him. He stood up just in time to see another beer can aimed right at his stomach. It was like being hit with a dull bullet.
Hank collapsed to his knees as more cans shot forth, pummeling him. Blood started to flow. Bones were broken. Somewhere, someone was laughing. Drums were playing. The whistle was growing in pitch like a snake’s hiss.
Hank looked up. He couldn’t figure out what was happening. Beers cans struck like angry barracuda, darting in to take their bite of flesh before leaving. They were everywhere.
Over him the toaster started to rock, trying to escape from its own mundane existence. Hank rolled on the floor, covered in beer and blood, as the toaster leaped.
It smashed into him and Hank screamed as electricity coursed through his smeared and battered body. The last thing he heard was the whistle as it reached a shrill crescendo, like a shrieking in his mind. He was the thief, he thought. He stole souls. He stole a man’s well-being. He was the thief.
***
Hank must have made his famous spare ribs for dinner again, Pat thought as he slowed coming up to the house. The smell was heavy in the air, a noxious and distracting odor. They always went to Hank’s house for the Fourth of July. It was far from the beaten path and they were able to light off fireworks here with no one the wiser. Now the front yard reeked of burnt hair and clotting blood, all charred to an edible crisp.
Out of this small circle of friends Hank was the strangest. When he was a small boy his father made him slaughter a hog. After that he cut the heads off chickens. Pat had done the same thing, but Hank seemed to take an odd glee about the work. He seemed to enjoy the taste of blood. He claimed that it tasted like misery.
And that night, when they had strung up Hal Robson, he had laughed like a maniac. So, he had come to tell Hank about Sam. Hank had to know. He and Sam were close.
“Hank!” Pat called out. He knew his friend and knew how crazy he was. Maybe he was drunk. And when Hank got drunk, he got mean. Pat was liable to meet him on the doorstep with a rifle in his hands instead of a smile. It went either way with Hank. “It’s me, Pat!”
There was no answer. Pat climbed out of the car and walked up the wooden steps that they had built themselves. Hank had come into this land shortly after his mom’s death, which had happened under mysterious circumstances. No one ever accused Hank of killing his mother, they were too close for that. But they all knew he was capable of it. And they all wondered.
After she had died he had inherited this land and he decided to build his dream home here. They all helped, Sam most of all. Sam needed any excuse to get away from his family. That was the four of them, working away during the summer to get something created where nothing was before. They had taken pride in crafting this little hideaway.
Now it was silent as a tomb.
“Are you fucking drunk again?” Pat asked, hammering at the door. “Come on, I need to talk to you! Something happened to Sam. It’s bad, man. Bad!”
No answer.
With a curse he whirled about and looked at Hank’s beat up truck, glistening in the moonlight. It was run down and rusty, but it was where it was supposed to be. Which meant that Hank was inside. He never went anywhere without his truck. It was miles to civilization from out here.
Somewhere a cricket chirped. The moon was red. In the distance a kid was playing his drums too late and too loud.
“Hank, god damn it! Wake up!”
Now Pat was starting to get scared. Sam was dead. The night was creeping up on him. He felt alone and vulnerable. If anything, he needed a familiar face. He needed someone to talk to.
Once again, he thought about poor old Sam. He thought about the vanishing rope. And he needed someone to talk to!
He knocked on the door again then started kicking at it. “Hank! Open up!”
No answer.
He took the credit card from his wallet and slid it into the door. This was a move he had seen Hank do a thousand times before, usually when he was so drunk he locked his keys inside. The lock clicked, and the door opened. Pat turned on the lights.
The home had been painted bright red. When had Hank done that? he wondered. They had spent an entire weekend painting this place. A beautiful sky blue that would, hopefully, ease Hank’s psychosis. Barry had read about that in a psychology book. Then he took a closer look.
The red was blood.
The smell was thick and coppery and made him want to gag. With a savage choke he managed to keep his bile in his stomach, albeit barely.
“Hank?” Had he done it? Had he finally given in to his insane urges and killed someone? It looked like it. The blood was everywhere. It dripped off the ceiling and stained the couch. It ran down the windows in slimy scarlet trails. Pat had
never seen so much blood. Every pint had been pulled from a human and thrown against the walls haphazardly, like some obscene art project. “Hank?”
He lay on the floor in the kitchen. Pat went and turned the body over. Portions of his skin had been burned, which explained the smell. And he had been beaten, severely. Pat barely recognized him.
“Oh, Hank.”
Once again, his stomach heaved and this time it was successful in its evacuation, spilling his acids all over the floor. It mixed with the blood to create an even more overpowering stench, one that he would never forget. Somewhere, something laughed.
Gore Suspenstories Page 8
