by Ivan Blake
“Damn! Damn! Damn!” shrieked Meath. “She was moving around too much, I couldn’t set the tension right! Oh Christ, I think I’ve damaged my Activator. Damn bitch!” He paused, drew a long breath, shut off his tape machine, and turned to Chris. “Well, small setback,” he said. “Thank goodness I still have you.” Meath chuckled, and in spite of Mallory’s movement, he managed to unfasten his activator from her head. “Miss Dahlman, I’m done with you, so…into the fire you go.”
“No! You have to bury her! You can’t destroy her, otherwise...”
“Otherwise what?”
“Otherwise her spirit may not rest.”
“What spirit? And why should I give a damn about her spirit anyway?”
Because she’ll torture the hell out of me forever if she gets free of her corpse again, Chris wanted to scream.
“I know what you’re thinking, Chandler. You want me to bury her so you can lead police to the grave and prove you’re not as crazy as they think. That’s your scheme, isn’t it?”
“No, I only want Mallory to have a proper burial. We were close.”
“Oh, spare me, Chandler.”
Because Mallory’s bindings had sliced deeply into her flesh, Meath had to cut them away before shifting her. And before he severed the final ties, he got an axe from the pegboard and hacked off her feet. “Can’t have you wandering away,” he said.
Still flailing about, Mallory slithered out of the chair and down into the dirt where her mindless attempts to stand without feet were almost comical. For a moment, Meath watched bemused, then picked up the shovel his wife had used to crown Chris, put a foot on Mallory’s chest, grumbled, “This is how I treat cadavers that damage my equipment,” and drove its rusted blade through Mallory’s neck.
The first slice didn’t do the trick. He had to use the jagged blade of the shovel to hack through tendons and bone before Mallory’s head rolled away from the writhing corpse. “Lively bitch,” he mumbled, “handful in the sack, eh, boy?”
Meath then got a long knife from the workbench, kicked Mallory onto her back, and knelt on her. “Spectacular breasts,” he said under his breath as he carved a great hole in her chest. He reached inside the cavity and pulled out her heart, wet and gray like a dead jellyfish. It continued to beat somehow, oozing a thin trickle of yellow liquid into the dirt. The body still flailed about, its movement somewhat diminished. Now less difficult to handle, Meath heaved Mallory’s corpse onto the butcher’s table, tied her there with a length of rope from the barber chair, and found his cleaver. She was soon reduced to a heap of writhing limbs and chunks of throbbing torso.
Meath got the wheelbarrow from the porch, stacked Mallory’s pieces in it, and wheeled them outside.
“What’s he doing?” Chris cried.
“Getting rid of her,” his wife said, still kneeling in the dirt where she’d remained since knocking Chris unconscious. “His burn barrel’s in the yard.”
Chris first caught the familiar tang of kerosene, and then the most appalling stench as Mallory’s remains caught fire.
* * * *
“Burning nicely now,” Meath said as he came back into the barn.
“Oh, the smell,” the old woman said. “You moved the barrel!”
“I pulled it onto the porch. The freezing rain has turned to snow, and it’s really coming down. If I’d left the barrel in the yard, the fire would have gone out.”
“The porch is too close! The barn’ll catch fire!”
“You think I’m stupid? I partly covered the barrel to keep the heat down and the flame low. Means she’ll take all night to burn.” He wiped grease and soot from his hands as he spoke. “Strange, parts of her are still flopping around in the flames; not for much longer though. So, Chandler, now you.”
Meath walked to Chris’s side and said, “This chair has to be on a level surface for my activator to work.” He walked around Chris deep in thought, then around the barber chair, and finally examined his pulley system. “I don’t suppose you’d let me put you in the barber chair without a fight, would you?” he asked. “The chair would be best for you. It’d improve your chances of surviving my procedure, and even if the device fails, your ordeal might be less painful in the chair.”
If Chris agreed to the move, Meath would have to undo the restraints and thereby afford him a chance at escape. “All right,” he said.
“Excellent. This is how we’ll proceed. My wife will cut your ropes while I keep my hand on the activator. As soon as you’re free, you’ll get up, go to the barber chair, and sit down. Try anything and I’ll turn this screw. You’ll be immediately paralyzed. Clear? Good.” He yelled at his wife, “Get over here.”
Sobbing with pain, she got up from the dirt and limped to her husband’s side. He handed her the knife he’d used to remove Mallory’s heart.
An opportunity to break free during the move never materialized, and Chris soon found himself trussed to the barber chair like a scarecrow to a post.
He was running out of time. His neck was literally on the line. He had to do something, so the moment Meath let go of the activator screw, Chris began rocking back and forth as violently as he could. The top-heavy chair wobbled from side to side and swivelled at the same time, first clockwise and then counter clockwise.
“Stop that!” Meath shouted, barely jumping clear of the wrought iron foot rest as it spun past. The last few bolts holding the chair’s heavy base plate to the platform pulled free of the plywood, and the chair toppled sideways.
Meath dove to catch the huge chair, knocking his wife aside as he did. With all its teak, iron and steel, the chair weighed a ton. He knew instinctively he couldn’t simply catch the enormous chair. He crouched and scrambled beneath it, catching the full weight of the chair across his right shoulder. He tried to heave the chair upright, but Chris was still thrashing about, and, since the chair swivelled, Meath wasn’t able to get a good enough grip to stabilize it. At any moment, the huge chair threatened to twist away from him and crash to the floor.
“Help me,” Meath shouted as he struggled against the chair’s great weight and wild twisting motion. “I can’t get it upright! He mustn’t fall the way you did.”
Still sprawled in the dirt, his wife shouted back, “What? What did you say?” She tried to stand.
“If Chandler falls, his neck may be damaged,” Meath said through clenched teeth.
“What did you mean, the way I did?”
“You remember. When you fell, you tore muscles in your neck.” Meath could barely draw a breath as he struggled to hold onto the chair.
“When I fell? You told me I had a small stroke in my sleep.”
“Yeah that’s it. For Christ sake, woman, help me!”
“When did I fall?”
“Fell, stroke, what does it matter?” He was almost sobbing with the exertion.
“It matters to me! When did I fall? How did I fall?”
“You stupid bitch, you fell when I tried to put you into the chair...”
“When?” She dropped to her knees once again.
“After I drugged you, now help me, I’m losing my grip!”
“You drugged me?”
“It was after Arthur Bent. I was so disappointed and sick of using cadavers, I had to have a live specimen! You have to understand—”
“So you used me!” she cried out.
“If I’d known I’d get two perfect young specimens this soon…”
“But you used me.”
* * * *
Thirty years they’d been together, ten in splendor back in Britain and twenty in squalor on the coast of Maine. They’d both been in their late thirties when they’d married, the spinster and the mad scientist, she with money and a bad back, he with a name and a wild shock of hair. Meath was crazy, of that she was quite certain, but, then, so was she most likely, to have put up with him all these years.
And what she’d put up with: his insufferable arrogance during the good years; his drinking and violence durin
g his fall; the poverty and humiliation, the insults and the blows, out here in this stinking hovel, with goats and corpses, and the stench of burning flesh night after night. And the things he’d made her do! He’d insisted she help with the crazy experiments, and she did! Oh yes, she had to be as mad as her husband.
What was this hold he had over her? Once there might have been a hint of admiration, even though she’d never believed any of the nonsense he spouted about vital forces and subluxations, not really. He wasn’t especially good looking; then again, neither was she. The best that could be said for either of them was that they had each other. And for all the disappointment and misery, there had been times when he’d been different. For all the times he’d struck her and roared like a wild animal, for all the times he’d threatened and belittled her, there’d also been moments of tenderness—he might wash her hair in the sink, or massage her sore feet, or bring her tea in bed—amazing what a little tenderness could make up for.
But this! He’d thrown her into the dirt like a severed limb from one of his corpses. She had blood and goat dirt all over her and the excruciating pain in her spine was melting away the last vestiges of her sanity. No amount of foot rubs and promises would ever make up for all this.
And to learn he’d tried to use her in one of his mad experiments! He’d drugged her and tried to strap her into that damned chair! He’d actually tried to use his ridiculous spine-shattering device on her!
She crawled across the floor toward her husband and the teetering barber’s chair, the pain in her back screaming like some Greek chorus, urging her on. She picked up the rusted and bloody shovel from the dirt—the one her husband had used to sever the girl’s head—and raised the blade as high as she could.
* * * *
Chris didn’t stop thrashing about; he didn’t dare. He did see the old lady pick up the shovel.
“Yes, you stupid bitch...yes, I used you! I had no one to help me, so I dropped you. And if you don’t help me now, I’m going to drop this boy as well!”
From the dirt where she knelt, the old lady swung the spade at her husband’s legs. Its rusted, jagged edge sliced through his Achilles tendon. Meath screamed, turned to stare at his wife in horror, and then toppled to his knees.
She took another swing. This time, the spade caught her husband across the mouth. It knocked out several teeth and ripped his cheeks open from ear to ear like a hideous, bloody smile. As he howled in agony, he collapsed under the weight of the chair and pitched forward onto his face. Chris and the huge chair landed across Meath’s back. Chris heard the crunch as several of Meath’s ribs splintered beneath the enormous weight. Mrs. Meath lifted the shovel to take her third swing at her husband but couldn’t raise the spade high enough from her kneeling position to do much damage. Even so, the blow to his head silenced his screams, for the moment anyway.
The chair rolled off Meath’s back and planted Chris face first in the earth. “Help me, please,” he tried to say.
The old lady paid Chris no mind. She retrieved the crutches, hauled herself up, and started for the door. No sooner was she outside than she slammed into Gillian Willard.
Gillian had been running full tilt toward the barn and lost her footing on the ice and snow. As they collided, Gillian screamed and tried to catch the old lady. Too late. Mrs. Meath fell sideways and out of Chris’s sight. He did hear a crash and huge whoosh as the burn barrel was upended. Everything immediately burst into flames.
“Oh God! I’m so sorry!” Gillian screamed.
Still tied to the chair, his face pressed into the earth, Chris saw little of the nightmare unfolding outside. He did see smoke and tiny flames creep beneath the old boards of the barn wall however. Struggling to lift his head out of the dirt, he watched helplessly as Gillian tried to drag Mrs. Meath clear of the burning porch. The woman must have cracked her head on the burn barrel when she fell because she wasn’t moving in spite of the flames licking at her from every direction.
Gillian tried to smother the old lady’s smouldering hair with her sweater, all the while crying, “Forgive me, forgive me.”
“Gillian, you have to leave her,” Chris called as best he could with his jaw still clamped shut.
“That poor woman,” Gillian sobbed as she stepped over Mrs. Meath and ran to Chris.
“That poor woman?” Chris said through clenched teeth. “She brained me with a shovel and then opened her husband’s face with it!”
Gillian stared down into the doctor’s shattered face. “Is...is he dead?”
“Gillian!” Chris shouted to snap her out of the trance.
“Oh, okay.” She pulled the metal cup away from his jaw.
“Did you call the police?”
“Yes. Then I heard gunfire.”
“Meath shot some goats.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t wait at home.”
“Help me out of this.” He pulled against the restraints.
Gillian looked about frantically for something with which to cut the straps, spotted a scalpel on a small metal table, and ran to it. Next to the scalpel lay a binder full of Meath’s notes, proof, in Meath’s own words of his crimes. Burning debris had already melted its plastic cover to the metal table. Gillian ripped out several pages and shoved them in her pocket. She then grabbed the red-hot scalpel. It burned her hand and she screamed, but held it all the tighter and ran back to Chris. Kneeling beside the enormous barber chair amid the cinders and ash, she began cutting Chris’s bindings.
“Where’s Mallory?” she yelled over the roar of the fire as she sliced through the last few cords.
“She was in the barrel.”
“Meath burned her?”
“After he hacked her up. We’ve got to save some part of her! “
“What? Why?”
“Because I have to give her—or part of her anyway—a burial if I’m going to be free of her.”
“Okay.” Gillian got up, and ran outside.
Chris tried to stand. He doubled over with pain and almost vomited, then tried a second time, and again the pain staggered him. Finally, he steeled himself and started for the door.
Something grabbed his ankle, and he fell headfirst into the dirt. He almost lost consciousness from the lancing pain in his chest and pounding in his head. Blood from his mouth trickled into the dirt.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Meath rumbled.
Although the words in his shattered mouth made little sense, Meath’s anger was palpable and his grip on Chris’s ankle like a steel trap. Evidently, he was determined to never let go, even if it meant they both died in the fire. Still holding Chris’s leg, Meath struggled to get up, but his useless foot gave way beneath him and he fell forward again.
Chris kicked against the doctor’s grip. His own injuries and the thickening smoke were getting the best of him. He coughed, tasted blood, and closed his eyes. Why fight this? What for? He had nothing to look forward to even if he did escape this particular nightmare. Only another nightmare and then another after that. No, he couldn’t keep fighting, not any longer.
In that moment, someone whispered in his ear. “Don’t you dare roll your eyes at me, young man,” and for an instant, amid the ash and cinders, Chris smelled wildflowers. He squinted up through the smoke and found Felicity Holcomb looking down at him. He felt her fingers on his cheek and heard her say, “Heroic, that’s how I described you. So, don’t make a liar out of me.” She kissed his forehead, smiled, and then faded from view.
That’s when he heard Gillian cry from the doorway, “Chris, Chris, you’ve got to get away!” Face smeared with soot, and hands blackened, she ran to his side and started kicking at Meath’s arm. She needn’t have bothered.
Fire had freed Mallory Dahlman’s spirit from her burning remains.
Chris heard the distinctive crackle. Through the smoke and the flames, he peered toward the door and saw the air outside begin to bend and twist, then Mallory’s face, hovering, hate-filled, and murderous. Chris inst
antly knew what to do. He wouldn’t let Meath win…or Mallory!
Twisting back toward Meath, Chris threw himself across the doctor’s crumpled body, then lifted the old man’s head from the dirt, and kissed his ravaged cheek.
“Wha…!” was the only sound to escape the bloody hole in Meath’s face.
Gillian backed away, horrified. “God, what are you doing?”
“Run!” Chris said and then pressed his lips to the doctor’s shredded face, kissing Meath again and again on the shattered mouth. Meath screamed with the agony of each kiss and released his grip on Chris’s ankle. Between kisses, Chris whispered, “Retribution,” then rolled clear of the dazed old man just as Mallory took over.
Meath’s body rose into the air. Mallory’s malicious face appeared in the swirling smoke. It stared into Meath’s eyes. Meath stared back, uncomprehending, and was flung to the floor again. He lay there stunned. Then his head rose from the dirt and started to turn. Mallory twisted Meath’s skull to the left, farther and farther. The doctor howled in agony. Bone shattered, flesh tore, and blood gurgled from Meath’s ragged mouth. Then his head twisted to the right, this time farther still. Meath’s eyes bulged from his face, blood trickled from their sockets. The mangled mouth opened in a terrible, strangled scream as the head twisted all the way round…then came away from the shoulders entirely, like a drumstick torn from a Thanksgiving turkey. Blood gushed from the ragged neck; sinew flapped about in the torrent, like a rag snagged at the end of a storm drain in a downpour. Finally, Mallory ripped into Meath like a root grinder into a tree stump, bits of flesh flying in all directions.
While Mallory was busy with Meath, Chris got to his feet and cried out to Gillian, who stood frozen in horror near the doors, “Get out! Get out of here!” and stumbled after her. He’d just stepped over the old lady when Mallory lost interest in the doctor. Her eyes, two black holes in all the smoke and fire, looked around the burning barn.
