by Ed Kurtz
“Kuh-kuh-KILL YOU!”
“I very much doubt it.”
Sarah seized Gwyn by the neck and dragged her closer. Gwyn burbled and grumbled, her breath strained. Sarah then made a tight fist and punched her directly in the trachea. She could feel the airway crumple like paper against her knuckles. Gwyn spit blood and wheezed. Sarah punched her again.
“What was that?” Sarah shouted. “You were going to kill me? Is that fucking right?”
Sarah got back to her feet and recommenced kicking the struggling creature at her feet, again and again. Her foot crashed against bone and cartilage, collapsing ribs and obliterating Gwyn’s nose. After a while, Gwyn stopped moving at all. As far as Sarah could tell, she wasn’t even breathing.
Feet pounded against the steps leading up to the attic, but Sarah ignored it. As Walt surfaced from the opening, she drove her heel into Gwyn’s temple. She heard a dull, damp thud and then did it again. This time she felt the skull give a little. The third attempt made a shallow crater in the side of Gwyn’s head.
Sarah laughed triumphantly.
“No!” Walt cried as he scrambled toward them. “Sarah, no! What have you done?”
“Not much. I just killed your fucking monster, that’s all.”
“Killed? Oh God! Gwyn!”
His face twisting with sorrow, his dropped to Gwyn’s side and pulled her limp, bloody body into his arms. Tears spilled down his cheeks and he peppered her pink, fuzzy head with gentle kisses. There was no doubt about it; Sarah really had killed her.
“How could you, Sarah? How could you?”
Sarah blew a laugh through her nose and groaned.
“You really have lost it, haven’t you? You’ve always been kind of a sociopath, Walter, but now you’ve really gone over the edge.”
“You didn’t have to kill her!”
“Yeah, Walt, I did. That thing came up here to kill me. Tear me apart like all the others. What am I supposed to do, lay down and just fucking take it?”
Walt wrapped his arms around Gwyn, pulling her tight to his chest, and shuddered as he wept over her.
“Disgusting,” Sarah scoffed under her breath.
She crouched and then sat down on the paneling. The adrenaline was receding and she was beginning to realize how sore she was. Her palms burned from the steel cable scraping against them. And though the monster was dead, she remained tethered to the support beam—with Walt so far gone he was unlikely to ever let her go.
“Damn it,” she whispered and she dropped her chin to her knees.
Walt just wept, clutching at the nude corpse in his arms. For a moment, Sarah considered giving him some of the same, but that wouldn’t set her free. It would only result in two corpses rotting beside her until her own death eventually came to pass. At least by letting him live he would probably take the revolting dead thing away.
The sick son of a bitch will probably eat it.
How long until he decides to kill and eat me, too?
Her imagination turning dark and beginning to run wild, Sarah felt a shiver work its way up her spine. She swallowed hard and her ears popped as though she were at a high altitude. Then she heard the pop again and realized it wasn’t in her ears. It was outside, just below the vents.
It was the sound of car doors slamming shut.
***
“I’m staying in the car.”
Alice folded her arms and pouted. Nora pursed her lips at her.
“Fine,” she said. “Do what you like. But I’m not leaving the engine running just to keep you warm.”
Nora got out of the car, shut the door and headed for the house. She was at the front porch when she heard Alice’s door slam shut and her small feet scrape the walkway toward the porch.
“I’m not going to freeze my butt off,” said Alice. Nora gave the girl a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Then she knocked on the door.
After several minutes dragged by and no one answered, she knocked again.
Alice said, “He’s not here.”
“Maybe not,” Nora said. But she waited anyway.
There was still no answer.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Alice said after a protracted and uncomfortable silence. “Why don’t you take me home now?”
Nora furrowed her brow. The kid really wanted to get home, but that put a kink in her plans. She was not particularly interested in getting slapped with a kidnapping charge, but if Walt was home then he was going to be prepared when she came back, and she didn’t want him to be prepared. She wanted him off-guard and red-handed. Balling up her fist she pounded hard.
The latch clicked and the door swung open several inches.
“I guess it wasn’t quite closed all the way,” Alice theorized.
She took in a sharp breath as Nora waltzed boldly inside.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting to the bottom of this,” Nora responded at a normal conversational volume. She vanished into the house.
Alice bounced on the balls of her feet, afraid to follow but just as nervous about waiting on the porch. Mr. Blackmore could come back home at any time, find her standing there. What would he think? Probably nothing quite as bad as he’d think if he found her breaking and entering. Either way seemed bad. But it was cold outside, so she made up her mind and went into the house.
It was dark inside, but there was enough light filtering in through the windows to see where they were going. Alice gently and quietly shut the door as Nora advanced through the foyer and into the living room. Everywhere there was clutter, like the occupant of the house had only just moved in and hadn’t finished unpacking. It smelled musky and dank. Nora wrinkled her nose and crossed over to the dining room. It was even darker in there, due to all the boxes that were stacked up against the room’s only window. It was also stuffier than the other rooms. There was a sickly sweet odor in the air, almost metallic. It was like rust and mildew. Nora made a face and continued through the room and into the hallway beyond.
Alice went the other way, into the kitchen. She jumped a little when Nora appeared in the adjacent hallway.
“Just me,” Nora said.
“Shhh!”
Nora narrowed her eyes and cupped a hand to the side of her mouth.
“Walt? Walt Blackmore? Are you home?”
Alice’s eyes bulged.
“Jesus, Nora!” she hissed. “Be quiet!”
“I’m not here to rob the place, kid. I have to talk to this guy.” She resumed her booming shout. “Walt Blackmore! My name is Nora, I’m a friend of Amanda’s! I need to talk with you!”
“Great,” Alice groaned. “He’s obviously not here. Can we go before he comes home and finds us, please?”
Nora wagged a finger at Alice without looking at her. “Just a minute,” she said.
Alice rolled her eyes.
Nora checked the bedroom next. She found a light switch and flipped it. The room was strewn with dirty clothes. The sheets on the unmade bed were filthy and mottled with brown stains. She sneered at the repulsive mess and went back to the hall.
“There’s no one here,” she said quietly, mostly to herself.
“I told you that already,” Alice grumbled.
“You were guessing.”
“I was right.”
Nora gritted her teeth. The kid had a hell of an attitude problem, and it was getting to her, but she knew practically all kids that age were pretty much the same way. Besides, she’d all but forced Alice to join her on this adventure, so she couldn’t really blame the girl for getting so grouchy. She unclenched her jaw and went over to the kid in the kitchen.
“Okay, maybe next time. How about we go get some burgers and shakes? My treat. You know, for ruining your snow day.”A faint smile played at the corners of the chubby girl’s lips.
“Yeah,” she said. “All right.”
Nora placed a hand on the middle of Alice’s back and gently guided her back to the front door. It had been a wash, but she was far from done wi
th the elusive Walt Blackmore. He had to come back home sometime, and when he did, she would be waiting. And even if she never got him on his own turf, she now knew what he did for a living. He was Alice’s English teacher, which meant he would be back at school as soon as the weather cleared up. One way or another, a confrontation was coming. She was going to get some answers about what happened to her best friend.
Alice finally let herself smile, and she looked a little guilty doing it. She reached for the doorknob and gave it a twist. The hinges squealed slightly as she stepped to the side, opening the door for Nora, who let out a stilted gasp.
The man on the front porch hefted an axe over his head and quickly sent the blade crashing down into the middle of her skull. Nora’s head split open as the heavy blade sank down to the handle. Her arms jutted out, her hands and fingers dancing spasmodically for a minute before she drooped and collapsed onto the floor. The man jammed a booted foot against Nora’s sternum for leverage to extract the axe from her face. Blood and chunky gray globs of brain bubbled out of the wound when the axe came free.
Alice stumbled backward, her thick lips working rapidly but unable to make a sound. Mr. Blackmore stepped into the foyer and gave the axe a hard shake. Blood and flecks of bone flew from the blade, splattering the facing wall. He turned his cold gaze on Alice and brought his eyebrows together in a sharp V.
“Alice?”
A wet sob exploded from deep in the girl’s chest. Spittle and snot sprayed out of her face and she began to tremble all over.
“You shouldn’t be here, Alice,” Mr. Blackmore said as he nudged Nora’s body out of the way of the door with the axe. “You shouldn’t be here at all.”
He kicked the front door and it slammed shut.
53
His back and ankles aching from the drop out the attic vent, Walt stumbled awkwardly toward the terrified teenage girl. The bloody axe hung limply from his three-fingered hand, the nubs of the former two shone red from all the exertion. Up in the attic, he’d only heard the one woman’s voice. Walt was not prepared for Alice’s unexpected presence in the house. He did not know what to do with her.
She trembled as she backed up to the wall. Once she was flat against it, she began moving sideways toward the kitchen. Walt watched her slow movements, careful to keep her in view while his addled mind searched for an answer to the predicament he faced.
Tiny whimpers spilled out of the girl’s wobbling lips. Her knees faltered as if any moment they would buckle and send her crashing to the floor. His crippled hand growing tired, Walt switched the axe to his other. Alice cried out and bolted through the kitchen.
“Alice!” he screamed.
He gave chase, and by the time he made it into the kitchen, the back door was already slamming shut.
“Shit!”
Walt’s feet pounded the linoleum as he strained to maintain enough energy and momentum to pursue her. His ankles throbbed and his lungs were already burning before he even made it to the backyard. But he could see her now, pumping her arms and legs like a cartoon runner in her mad dash for the field between Walt’s yard and the tree line in the distance. He tightened his grip on the axe handle and ran after her.
The snow crunched under his feet and slowed his progress. Somehow Alice kept right on running, unimpeded by the four-inch deep hindrance. He got it in his boots, soaking his socks and freezing his feet. This was the stuff he and Sarah would scoop up in plastic cups when they were children, pour vanilla or maple syrup on it and eat it quickly before it melted. Now it was preventing him from killing that interfering little cunt as quickly as he’d like.
A fox skittered over the surface of the snow at the edge of the woods as Alice disappeared into its thick growth. To Walt she seemed miles away. His chest ached and his breath came in shallower and shallower bursts. Still, he forced himself to keep moving. To let her get away would be nothing short of suicide.
He had no choice in the matter. Alice had to die, even if he had a heart attack in the process. He was not particularly delighted by the prospect of killing an adolescent girl—much less another one of his own students—but as far as he was concerned she’d brought it upon herself by walking into his house.
He made it across the snowy field and ducked into the dense copse of trees at its edge. Between the icy snow and the dead leaves and the broken branches that littered the ground, he could hear nothing over the seemingly deafening crunches of his own steps. Nevertheless, he had a fairly good notion of where she would end up heading. There really wasn’t anyplace else for her to go.
***
The faded red farmhouse exploded into view the moment Alice cleared the woods. Her face was chilled with cold sweat and every muscle in her body screamed at her to stop running, but she pounded on toward the house. Mr. Blackmore might have looked fitter than her, but he was still floundering somewhere back in the trees. She raced down the hill and across the unkempt grass in the front yard.
She was already screaming before she got to the door.
“Help! Help me! Somebody!”
The heavyset girl barreled toward the front door only to find it standing wide open upon her arrival. She skidded to a halt and paused to catch her breath. Off to her left, a ragged pigpen was hidden in the knee-high grass, its railings rotting and broken. One pig rooted around in the mud, snorting and snuffling. Alice dismissed the animal and turned back to the house. The last time she’d just walked into somebody’s house hadn’t turned out well for her. She didn’t even know who lived in this one. Still, the chances that the only two houses in the area were both owned by psycho murderers seemed too remote to seriously consider. Alice screwed up her face and looked over her shoulder.
Mr. Blackmore had emerged from the woods and was huffing down the hill, his arms pinwheeling and his face crimson with rage. She yelped and rushed into the old place.
All at once the repulsive miasma of rot and decay slammed her in the face. The house smelled like a slaughterhouse, or at least what she imagined one would be like. Blood and shit and decomposition lingered in the air like a nauseating fog, but she didn’t see anything that might have caused it. The carpets were caked with mud, picture frames knocked over and china broken on the floor, but apart from that the house seemed relatively normal. She clamped a hand over her face. It was almost too much to bear.
“Alice!” Walt screamed from the front yard.
She shrieked, rushing for the adjacent staircase. The stench only worsened as she ascended to the upper floor, but there was no turning back now. Blackmore was already in the house.
“Goddamnit, stop!” he roared from the bottom of the stairs. “Come down here right now!”
She almost wanted to laugh at him using his teacher voice at a time like this. It might have been funny if the man wasn’t carrying an axe he’d just used to split a woman’s face in two. She turned into the dusky hallway, away from the stairs. Blackmore growled like an animal and started stomping up after her.
“I’m coming, Alice!”
He was snarling his words now, grating them out his throat harshly and powerfully. Alice sniveled as she hurried down the hall and into an ink-dark room. She quickly found the edge of the door and pushed it shut. She locked it. Then she began searching the wall for a light switch. She found one and flipped it, but nothing came on. The house must have been abandoned, she reasoned. But what in hell is that awful smell? It was so strong now her eyes stung and watered. As she gradually adjusted to the lack of light, she noticed dim yellow hazes on either side of the room. Windows.
Alice tumbled across to the nearest one, tripping over something that squished against her foot and rolled away. Ignoring it, she reached out and grabbed handfuls of the window curtains and yanked them open. The dying afternoon sunlight leaked in through the dusty glass panes, illuminating what she could now see was a bedroom.
A loud crack echoed. Blackmore laughed on the other side of the door. He sounded insane. Another crack and the wood of the door began to s
plinter.
Tears silently ran in steady rivulets down Alice’s face as she scanned the room for something—anything—to use for defense.
The first thing her eyes settled upon was a rotting human head on the floor. It was what Alice tripped over, what squished warm and soft against her shoes. She drew in a sharp breath as she hurried away from the hideous thing. When the axe finally broke through the door, she lost her footing and fell backward on the bed.
Alice planted her hands on either side of her to heft herself up, but she slid on the slippery ooze that coated the comforter. She had been so focused on Blackmore and his axe that she failed to realize what she was lying in. The entire bed was covered with malodorous, rotting gore. Alice clamped her mouth shut and frantically looked all around her. At the head of the bed lay a human body, its flesh greenish brown and dripping off splintered bones. The torso had been ripped open as though it exploded from within. The jaw yawned open with no tendons to support it, and the sunken, ghostly face stared without eyes.
She screamed and rolled off on the other side, under the other window. When she crashed against the floor she found herself face to face with a filth covered pig. Its entire head was awash in mud and shit and rot. The animal bucked and squealed at her. It was gnawing on the few tattered chunks of flesh that still clung to the brown, broken skeleton on the floor. Alice leapt over the pig and hurried back to the first window. She unlocked the latch. It heaved open as Blackmore’s axe burst through the door again.
“I hardly ever wanted this, Alice,” Walt shouted as he hacked the door apart. “It’s anathema to me, I swear it. Damn bloody work, but I’ve got to. I’ve got to do it for Gwyn, don’t you fucking see that?”
The door finally came apart when he delivered a sound kick to it, dividing the hollow wood right down the middle. Alice wasted no time. She climbed up onto the window ledge and leapt out.
She felt no pain or discomfort when she landed on the slushy ground, two stories beneath the bedroom window. Only when she started into a sprint did her ankles throb and complain, sending white hot messages of radiating pain to her spinning head. She disregarded it. The dilapidated barn a hundred yards ahead commanded her attention for the moment.
