by Alan Spencer
“I’m sorry I had to tell you those things about Glenda.”
“It’s not your fault. We’re so desperate to solve this murder. I made you to tell me. It doesn’t matter anymore. She’s gone. You have no idea what it’s done to me to see her, and Cheyenne, in the condition they’re in. I loved them so much.”
Bruce struggled to speak. He needed his fluids replenished. “What I wanted to say, the things I told you about Glenda, don’t let it change the way you look at her. She’s a wonderful, kind, decent person. Everything she did was in the name of the drugs. You were the best thing for Glenda. You saved her.”
“No, she was the best thing for me. And if I would’ve known all of those things, I would’ve forgiven her. I wouldn’t stop loving her. She gave me a beautiful child.” Morty couldn’t help but choke up. “It’s been a tough life, but imagining it without either of them in my life, I probably would found myself in a very dark place. Worse than here even.”
“I love you, Dad. This is the last time I can tell you that.”
Cheyenne stirred from the floor. She stood up with a hunched gait. Blood trickled down from between her legs. With every ounce of red exiting her body, the flesh continued to grow pale. Her eyes were demented; her lips were bent into a lascivious smile.
What was his daughter thinking about, Morty wondered.
“Cheyenne, you—”
“Shhhhhhhh. Listen upstairs.”
They listened.
A crowd of persons were taunting and challenging somebody who was outside to come on in. Feet stomped on the floor. Morty imagined twenty some-odd people. He knew they weren’t people. They were corpses. Victims of Ted’s.
“You guys have one more shot to come out of this alive.”
From out of the shadows, Glenda appeared. She wasn’t deformed by murder. She no longer had nails for teeth. Glenda came to Morty and hugged him close.
She whispered to Morty, “I heard every word you said. I love you so much. I’m sorry things turned out the way they did. There’s no more time to say anything else.”
They held onto each other for another moment, then Glenda broke away from Morty. When she did, her condition returned to its former state. Morty gasped at the nails that shined between the ripped-open lines in her cheeks. Half her head was smashed in. Morty did his best to withhold a reaction. It seemed like his family wanted to help them survive.
Glenda and Cheyenne stood together, the post-mortem pair. They faced the stairway, looking up.
Morty was afraid to ask, but he did. “What are you doing?”
Cheyenne spoke. “Being dead, you learn a few things. Ted’s not the only one who can play the red to his favor.”
“Forgive me, Morty,” Glenda said, “for what’s about to happen.”
“I was born from my mother’s womb,” Cheyenne said. “A womb that’d been filled with the seeds of evil men. Together, we shall give birth to an ultimate evil! Stand back, Father!”
“What are you two doing?” Bruce asked. He went from befuddled to terror-filled in seconds. “What is happening? I’m so confused.”
“The way I see it,” Cheyenne said, “your detective and your reporter have one more shot at finding the right clues to Deborah’s murder. We’re going to use the red to busy the corpses upstairs.”
Blood and birth fluids leaked out between both women’s legs. They spattered against the concrete, infernal mixtures of water, blood and grease fat. Fluid sacks were breaking within their wombs. Their pelvises broke to facilitate the birth of inhuman creatures. Blood mushroomed from their mouths as their insides become a war zone; monsters from within battled to be unleashed. Acid oozed out of their nipples, burning through the tatters of their clothing and rendering flesh into smoke. Cheyenne and Glenda unleashed squeals of agony. Morty remembered when Glenda gave birth to Cheyenne, and this, THIS, was a thousand times worse to hear.
What slithered from their wombs, the things slashing and plowing forward up the stairway to attack, charging with speed and the integrity to pummel and destroy what crossed their path, Morty could only see details. These abominations defied logical classification.
A boy five years old with eyeballs the size of baseballs didn’t have flesh. Instead, he had arms, legs and a head, but every inch of him was heart tissue. The boy had hundreds of aortas, ventricles and chambers furiously pumping piping hot blood. Livers, spleens and intestines were given fully functional arms and legs, crafted from warped bones, heaps of ripped up muscle tissue and hideous maws that could chew through steel. Misfires, should’ve-been abortions, slithered forth from the putrid stinking wombs. Siamese twins covered in glistening afterbirth smacked against the floor when they dropped free. One was inside out, so the other twin ripped off its own skin to match its sister. Together, they tromped up the stairway. Up the stairs, the anatomical army marched.
The doorway upstairs blazed that burning red.
“Do we follow after them?” Bruce asked over the roaring, growling and stomping of the beasts. “Tell us what to do.”
Cheyenne and Glenda’s bodies had shriveled, shrinking from being so depleted. Papier-mâché flesh hugged their brittle bones. The two bodies were dry kindling about to snap and break into so many pieces.
Cheyenne said it right before daughter and mother crumbled.
“Keep Ted busy. He’s right behind you.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Larson searched the inside of the shed for weapons. What he found were bags of potting soil, vermiculite, weed killer, grass seed, insect spray, a rolled up garden hose, a stack of concrete cinder blocks and most shocking of all, a Raptor Heavy Duty 5000 riding lawn mower.
Janet pushed through him, spotting a rusty hatchet and a shovel and holding onto each one in opposite hands.
“I got what I need. How about you, Detective?’
Larson studied the riding lawn mower. “Maybe we can set this thing to blow up.”
“And burn down the house?”
“What do you mean? That’s impossible. Don’t you remember Heather swallowing a lit match and almost blowing us to kingdom come? The house is still there. Something will put the fire out, but the fire will still happen for a short period of time. I say we rig the gas tank to blow and drive it right into the house. It’ll give everybody blocking the way inside a distraction. I can shoot whatever ammo we got left at them, run up the stairs, and then we lock ourselves in that second bedroom. Something’s in there we missed. I just know it. I’ve searched Deborah’s room enough. The clue is in the other room. I pray.”
Barbie entered the shed.
“Depending on prayers will get you killed.”
Barbie was different than earlier. Her disposition was eager. Barbie was ready to fight on their behalf again. Whatever shred of hope was lost moments ago was regained by breaking into the shed.
Larson pointed at the dented-up gas can under a shelf. “I’m going to fill the mower up with gas.”
“You don’t need gas to run the motor. You need blood. My blood. It’ll give the engine that certain kick it needs to get the job done.”
Barbie stole the hatchet from Janet’s grasp and dragged the sharp end down her arm. A wide trench was created. Blood trickled down to her hand, which she kept over the gas tank hole. Red trickled into the engine.
“What’s blood going to do?” Larson honestly asked the question.
“You just worry about how you two are getting upstairs. I’ll go in first. You two have to work together to do the rest.”
Barbie handed back the hatchet to Janet. “I suggest you ditch the shovel. Use the hatchet. Go for the face. Don’t chop down over the head. You’ll get it stuck in someone’s skull, and you won’t be able to rip the hatchet back out. So go for the face.”
“Oh.” Janet furrowed her brow. “Okay.”
“Detective, I want you to go in there gu
ns blazing. Don’t pull the trigger unless you intend to hit somebody. Shoot out their eyes if you can. If they don’t have eyes, or a head for that matter, they can’t see to attack you. Otherwise, aim for the kneecaps. They’ll have to crawl after you. It’ll slow them down.”
Larson wasn’t sure how to take the advice. Just moments ago, the woman was considering murdering them. But this was good, he thought. Barbie believed they still had a purpose. They could still solve Deborah’s murder and free the dead to enter whatever afterlife they belonged in.
He recapped what Barbie had said. “Eyes first, then the kneecaps. Got it. Anything else we should keep in mind?”
“Don’t waste time once I’m in the house. Go right for the stairs. You have so very little time. If they’re right behind you, barricade yourselves in the best room you see fit to search. This is your last shot. If you fail, even I can’t keep you alive. Everybody in that house will want to kill you, including me. We can’t help it. You take away our hope, we have no reason to keep you alive.”
“Then we won’t fail,” Larson said. “So what are you going to do, Barbie?”
Barbie hopped onto the Raptor 5000 Heavy Duty riding lawn mower.
“I got ideas.”
In every window facing the backyard, the ugly, nasty corpses watched them with eager eyes. Their roar increased. They were welcomed to enter the death house.
Janet clutched the hatchet tighter in her hands.
Detective Larson squeezed the handles of both his .28 revolver and the 9mm.
Barbie revved up the mower’s engine. Pink mist shot out the exhaust. Blood turned vapor surrounded them like a red cloud of gangrene death fumes.
Barbie shifted from park to fifth gear. “GET READY! MY BLOOD GIVES THIS BITCH AN EXTRA KICK OF POWER!!!”
Barbie popped a wheelie and bounded forward across the yard at fifty miles an hour.
Chapter Fifty-Three
“Bruce—WATCH OUT!”
Too late.
Bruce quarter-turned right when the claw end of the hammer caught him in the left eye. Ted’s swift strike dragged across Bruce’s face, tearing out both his eyes. Morty watched both squashed orbs fly across the room and detonate against the wall. Bruce stood in place for five seconds as blood cascaded down his face and painted his lower half in crimson. Then Bruce tumbled forward, dead in every fashion.
Morty almost tripped over Cheyenne and Glenda’s bodies in his haste to avoid the killer. The corpses of his wife and daughter were shriveled up like dried-out roots. Used up and degrading to dust.
Ted studied the chunk of pink orbital meat stuck on the hammer and grinned big.
“Your friend had nothing new to tell me. He would’ve been a waste of nails.”
“Fuck you, psycho.”
“You went a bit crazy too when you couldn’t find Glenda, didn’t you, Morty?”
“That was you making me that way. That burning doorway. It wasn’t me. You were toying with me. You wanted me to draw in as many people as possible. It’s been you the entire time, you fucking monster.”
“I had to have you to bring in the right people. You were what brought them here. I needed you to go a little…mad.”
“And what did it get you? A bunch of people, good people, dead. And your wife is still gone. She’s gone forever. None of this has fixed anything.”
“I only want her to rest in peace. Deborah deserves the sweetness of Heaven.”
“She’d go to Heaven, and you’d go to Hell. Even if you both went to Heaven, she wouldn’t want anything to do with you.”
“What about you and Glenda? You don’t love her anymore. You’ve seen a different side of her. Her truth.”
Morty spat in his direction.
“I still love her. You’re wrong. People are a collection of their experiences. Look, life is too short to judge people so harshly. If you love someone, you love them forever. No matter what happens.”
“What a wonderful husband you are. A man who loves his wife, even if she’s a whore.”
“It was the drugs. She couldn’t help it.”
“Oh, you’re wrong. Glenda fucking loved it. She would’ve let any bum stick it in her if it meant getting high and wasted.”
“I don’t care what you say, or what you think. You’re nothing to me but a murderer. The worst kind. You’re no better than the person who ended Deborah’s life. And while you talk to me, whatever those things were that went up the stairs are going to kill what’s in Janet and the detective’s way. You might’ve lost hope in them, but I haven’t.”
Ted flicked a piece of meat off of his hammer.
“That’s where you’re wrong. There is no hope for you. Those two won’t find a damn thing upstairs. I gave them a chance. They failed. And your wife and daughter have conspired against you. They lied, Morty. Those monsters are just as eager to kill your two friends as the rest of the corpses trapped in this house.”
Morty turned his eyes down to the two bodies of his daughter and wife. Their faces were ruined by their mischievous grins. Ted was telling the truth.
He was confused, because the bodies of his wife and daughter were gaining back their flesh, although it was decaying and dead tissue replacing dust. The two women were soon up the stairs, launching themselves through the red burning door to join the battle.
“We’ll be back for you, Morty,” Glenda said.
“It’s time to kill again, Daddy,” Cheyenne said.
Once his wife and daughter were through the doorway, the burning doorway stopped burning. The basement door was a normal door again. But the light bulb in the basement burned an evil red. Morty had no time to process what happened. He was grabbed from behind, forced into a seated position at the table covered in various people’s blood. A nail was hammered into his right hand, pinning him into place.
Morty unleashed a yawp of pain.
Ted lingered over him, his hammer ready to drive another nail into his bleeding hand.
“Sit with me, Morty. Get comfortable. I have some questions I want to ask you.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
This is insane!
Larson watched with gaping eyes as Barbie drove the speeding riding lawn mower through the back door. She crashed into the house, ripping the sides of the doorway into chunks of flying, detonating wood. He couldn’t see what was happening inside, but he could sure as shit hear it. The mower’s engine raged. Gasoline, blood and oil compelled the killing machine to destroy. The machine was plowing through bodies. Barbie popped another wheelie in the kitchen, raising the mower up from the floor and smashing it back down. The sets of blades crushed those under the machine, shearing bodies and hacking victims into wet pieces.
Janet hadn’t moved since the riding mower’s entry.
Larson grabbed her arm and pushed her forward.
“Last chance, lady! You want to die being scared, or do you want to be brave and save your own skin?”
Janet answered the detective by raising the hatchet and charging towards the house like it was towards a fleet of opposing soldiers.
The closer they drew to the house, the brighter the sky burned red. Things were coming to a head, the detective thought, and they were coming to a head fast. In the house, every light on the first floor was blood red. Larson imagined they were on the very boundary of Hell.
Shooting through the broken-up doorway, Larson shot twice left, then once right. What he hit was something indescribable. A woman made of blood vessels and raw meat reached out to throttle him. He shot out both of her eyes. The other shot missed the corpse, the dead man with a sizzling scalp named Chris Neilson. Janet stabbed three other corpses dead center in the face, driving the weapon down like a crushing sledgehammer.
“I’ll back you up! Up the stairs. NOW, JANET! MOVE!”
Larson ducked, dodging a flying hunk of a thing’s head th
at reminded him of a man wrapped in a bubble-wrap version of meat. Janet was slashing away with the hatchet as she reached the detective’s position. The horrible creatures rampaging about the room were anatomical nightmares. Up the stairs Janet ran, and Larson emptied both guns fending off the collection of enemies coming after them. Larson was mid-stairway when Barbie plowed through the wave of corpses and monsters. She popped another wheelie, and the blades landed hard on five enemies at once, squashing, slicing and reducing them.
“GO-GO-GO!!!”
Janet was far ahead of Larson. The riding lawn mower’s engine shook the house, rumbling on to destroy whatever cavorted in the living room and kitchen areas. Most of the second floor hallway was blackened from the fire earlier. Piles of dirt covered the floor: what had put out the fire from earlier. They passed Deborah’s bedroom.
“In there now! They’ll be right behind us.”
Janet did as she was told and entered the second bedroom. Larson was fast behind her. They barricaded the entrance with a large drawer and a desk.
“What do we do now?”
Larson studied the stacks of unopened boxes meant for storage.
“Rip open these boxes. You see anything interesting, say something.”
Together, detective and reporter turned the boxes inside out.
It wasn’t long before they heard things stomp after them up the stairs.
Chapter Fifty-Five
The red light bulb glowed an ultraviolet red.
Two nails Ted had driven into Morty’s hands.
The questions kept coming in unrelenting fashion.
“Who do you know could’ve killed Deborah?”
“Name more of your wife’s friends.”
“Neighbors, relatives, anybody!”
“Spit it out, Morty!”
Morty threw out names of Glenda’s friends. Nobody who could’ve murdered a woman ten years ago. Not Deborah.
Ted took practice swings with the hammer into his palm to coax Morty into spilling more names and information. A small box of nails sat at Ted’s end of the table. How many would Ted use on him? All of them?
