by Jacob Rayne
It was simultaneously sweet and sour, spicy and mild, coarse and fine.
He devoured it.
‘What was that?’ he breathed.
‘Special execution day grub,’ the King beamed, licking thick clumps of the curried sauce from his palms. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’
Davey nodded, eyes wide.
‘’Nother one, young sir?’ the man behind the counter said, eyeing Davey with a kind smile.
‘No thanks.’
‘Good evening to ya,’ the man said, with a wink and a thumbs up.
The King handed Davey a can of something that tasted very much like the shandies his dad had used to make him, back before alcohol had been outlawed in the city.
He necked it in one, the flavours perfectly complimenting the meal he’d just devoured.
‘Enjoy yourself, Davey lad. I am going to retire,’ the King said.
‘Aw don’t go,’ Davey said. ‘I feel like I’m just starting to fit in here.’
‘You are indeed. But I must go. I can’t have a day off like the rest of you. Enjoy your night. If you need anything please do not hesitate to ask. Max will accompany you back to your home.’
Davey ran up to him and threw his arms around him. ‘Thank you so much for everything. There’s no way I can ever repay you.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ the King said, a glint in his eye.
Davey found that the King had been right about the steam; he woke up the next morning feeling more refreshed than at any time in recent memory.
It seemed like the steam had made him focus on the good things in his life and forget about the bad.
He had a little bit of a thirst, but he found that was normal when he’d spent the night next to a bonfire.
He smiled, whistling one of the songs that the Grims had sung around the campfire at the end of the night.
The smile faded a little at the thought of going down to the bait cabin and waiting in the line again.
Just as he turned his mind to this, there was a knock on his door.
Max stood there, a huge sub roll in his hands.
The bread looked thick and soft, the meat inside tender, still oozing blood and juices.
‘Special delivery,’ Max beamed.
Davey took it – and the steaming cup of Joe that Max held – and wasted no time in getting into it.
‘What is that meat?’ he asked.
Max sighed. ‘Everything around here is put to good use, David. As the King says; Today’s top dog is tomorrow’s hot dog.’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘Probably for the best.’
A moment of silence passed.
‘Whatever it is, it’s delicious,’ Davey said.
‘Thank you. I cooked it myself.’
‘You should make more,’ Davey laughed.
Max laughed too. ‘The King was pleased to get to know you a little better. He has something he would like to ask you.’
‘Anything. I’ll do anything for him.’
‘I’ll not accept that as your answer. In matters like these it is best to first hear what is being asked of you.’
‘I trust him. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.’
‘Still, hear him out before you agree to anything. As soon as you’re ready, I’ll take you to speak with him.’
The walk through the camp was quicker than Davey remembered, but he was now starting to get his bearings a little better.
He was unsurprised to see that some of the Grims were still gathered round the fire, throwing on jars and huffing in the resulting smoke.
They were still as loud and lairy as they had been the previous night.
He smiled at them, waved as they shouted a greeting to him.
The King’s compound looked much less unsettling in the daylight, although the same could definitely not be said for the King’s bodyguards.
The King was asleep on his throne of bones, one big hand propping up his broad head.
He snores loud enough to wake the dead, Davey thought with a smile.
He couldn’t help but stifle a laugh as Max shook the King awake. He came to life with a comically confused expression.
‘Whaaat? Ah, young Davey,’ he said, his brow still furrowed.
‘Greeting, Your Highness.’
‘Ah, come on, Davey lad, you should know by now that I don’t stand for that bullshit.’
‘Ok, King Solomon.’
‘Never mind,’ King Solomon said, waving it all away like it was an embarrassment.
‘So, what is it you’d like to see me about?’
‘Please, give me a moment to get woken up properly. Matters like this need to be discussed while fully alert, so both parties are aware of what they are getting into.’
‘Of course. Take as long as you need.’
The King smiled at him. ‘Such manners are so rare, especially in this day and age. It is a joy to behold. Anyway, I will be but a moment.’
The King returned, his face noticeably cleaner and shinier.
He smelt like he’d showered, his clothes were clean, his boots polished.
His beard looked groomed, the edges freshly trimmed.
He held two steaming cups of Joe.
‘Here, David. I find it best to discuss matters such as these with a nice hit of Joe.’
They clinked cups and Davey let out an involuntary, ‘Cheers, big ears,’ a remnant of a life long gone extinct.
The King smiled sadly, seeming to get the reference.
The pair of them stared at their shoes for a moment of mute contemplation, then the King broke the silence.
‘You have told me of the circumstances surrounding your appearance here, David. And I understand where you are going and what you want to achieve. I believe we were fated to meet here, for many reasons.’
‘I do too.’
‘Well, as I’m sure you remember, to earn entry to our community proper, not just stay temporarily as a guest, there are various initiation ceremonies. Something must be given before something is taken, so to speak.’
‘I understand. I have to earn my place.’
The King nodded.
‘I like the way it works.’
‘Thank you. So, the majority of new arrivals go to work in the bait cabins or the factories or on clean up duty.’
‘I’d be happy to do any of those.’
‘I know you would. But the point is, David, that you are not in the majority. There is something special about you. I have known it since the first moment I met you.’
‘Thank you.’
The King didn’t acknowledge that Davey had spoken. ‘And there is something very special that I need doing. Please understand that it is not something that needs to be done today, or tomorrow or maybe even this month, but one day it will be done. And I am certain that it will be you that does it.’
‘What is it?’
Solomon took a deep breath in. ‘I need you to kill someone for me, David.’
Time seemed to stretch out for an eternity before either of them spoke again.
Though Davey had killed before, it was not something he was keen to repeat, despite his respect and awe for the King.
‘Who is it?’ Davey said, before he agreed to anything.
Now he understood why Max had been so wary of him committing himself.
‘There’s this very bad man, he lives in a village near the West side of the city,’ the King began, and before he even finished his sentence, Davey knew who it was.
Part 2: From agony to Serenity
2.1
To many people in the City, Reverend Wayne Cross was more feared than the devil himself.
A fundamentalist Christian of the highest order, he read the bible nightly and believed that God was talking directly to him.
Even decades before the world had taken its seemingly never-ending dip into its current pit of death and depravity, Cross had been out to take scalps for God.
Roughly nine years prior to the events th
at we have been watching in the Freelands, a nineteen-year-old girl had gone to see him one night to confess her sin of getting pregnant from a one night stand.
In the booth he’d been kind but firm, giving her his standard penance of twenty-five Hail Marys and sending her on her way.
That night Deborah had been woken by a rapping at her bedroom door.
Her parents were away, so, in circumstances very close to those in which her unborn child had been conceived, she had thrown a house party.
It had been a veritable orgy of sex, drugs and heavy metal.
The floors were littered with used condoms and discarded beer bottles.
She was baked and was sleeping off the after-effects of a bottle of tequila and a quarter of weed.
Pissed by the disturbance, she grunted and opened her eyes.
She’d known before going to bed that the following morning was not going to be pretty and so had done her best to avoid it.
She was aiming for noon at the very earliest, so the fact that someone was braying on her door at – gasp! – five-fifteen did not go down well.
‘Get the fuck outta here, it’s too early,’ she hissed.
Her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Lee, lay, for all intents and purposes, comatose beside her.
He was snoring into the pillow, a sticky mass of drool pouring from the side of his mouth.
Fucking gross, she thought.
‘If you’re after more booze there ain’t any. If you’re after more johnnies, try the bathroom cabinet. If you’re after anything else, fuck off.’
She smiled at her own wit.
Then winced; even the sound of her own voice was making her head pound.
This hangover was going to be a bastard.
She glanced over to the door.
Saw that there were still two dark patches underneath; feet, waiting outside her room.
Her parents had stood there often enough for her to know that.
‘You hear me?’ she shouted, again wincing as pain lanced through her forehead.
She suddenly had a terrifying thought; that her parents had returned early from their holidays to find the whirlwind of booze and hormones that had devastated their perfect home.
The knocking on the door persisted.
Lee hadn’t even stirred with all the racket.
‘Who’s there?’ she shouted, her anger already beginning to subside to fear.
She listened to see if there were any clues to who was standing there, dumbly, outside the door.
She had grown to recognise the asthmatic wheeze of her father’s breathing, so it was clear it wasn’t him.
Maybe it was her mother.
But then again the knocking had been a bit hard for her, and she would surely have voiced her thoughts by now.
The fist brayed on the door again, this time hard enough to jiggle the small ornaments above her bed along their shelves.
Even Lee murmured a little in his sleep.
Her fear suddenly subsided as her brain clicked into gear.
It was more than likely one of her pisshead friends playing a prank on her.
‘You’re knocking loud enough to wake the fucking dead here,’ she shouted.
She had no idea why she chose those words, but in time they would become terrifyingly appropriate.
‘Right, I’m outta bed now, dickhead,’ she hissed. ‘You’re fucking in for it now.’
Her head swam as she got to her feet.
Her legs were like jelly.
It felt like she had been on the wrong end of a beating.
She giggled, in spite of her annoyance at being woken.
As she neared the door, she noticed the feet had gone.
She almost got back into bed, but her sheer anger at being woken made her want to find out who’d been knocking on the door.
She unlocked the door, pulled it open.
No one there.
The house stood in darkness, shadows shrouding every hiding place.
‘This shit ain’t funny,’ she hissed. ‘Kirtley? Renwick? Is that you?’
The silence swallowed her cries.
The house was too quiet, even for this time on a Sunday morning.
Usually there was someone still up, chasing whatever buzz they chased at parties like these.
There were no voices, no bong noises, no muffled pants and grunts.
For some reason, it made her skin crawl.
Again, she debated going back to bed, and would have been on her way there, but for the fact that she wanted to know who had been knocking on her door and why.
She followed the corridor around, her own home no longer familiar and comforting, but now sinister and alien.
Her feet crunched in broken glass and she was pleased that she’d had the foresight to put on her sneakers before leaving her bedroom.
There were roughly a dozen Bud bottles ground into the carpet, but this wasn’t what she was stepping on.
The lamp on the table by her parents’ bedroom had been hurled into the wall where it had shattered into dozens of pieces.
She moved down the corridor, feeling something sticky on the sole of her right sneaker.
In the darkness, she couldn’t see what it was, but she cursed her foolishness at inviting her friends round.
The clean-up was going to take longer than she’d thought.
By the living room door, things got strange.
Kirtley was slumped face down on the carpet.
Drunken asshole, she thought, assuming he was passed out.
Then she figured he had been knocking on her bedroom door – after all he had done this type of shit before – and was now playing dead to avoid retribution.
This theory was shot to shit when she saw the stab wounds in his back and the blood that had begun to soak into the carpet.
She felt for a pulse that wasn’t there to find but did her best not to panic.
Kirtley was the ultimate practical joker and she had had a fuckton of weed and booze last night so it was possible her mind was playing tricks on her.
She edged the door to the living room open and her jaw dropped when she saw what awaited her inside.
2.2
Her friends lay in a pile of bloody, entwined limbs so twisted it was impossible to tell where one body ended and the next began.
Blood was splattered up the walls like someone had thrown a few dozen bottles of ketchup against them.
She moved down to the closest body, her sister, Hannah, and saw that she had just about been decapitated.
Dark blood was still spilling from what remained of her throat.
Her eyes were glassy and seemed to stare up at Deborah.
While she was entranced by the macabre scene in front of her, she heard an unsettling laugh.
Saw a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye.
She turned and saw a man standing in the corner of the room.
He was naked except for a priest’s white collar around his throat.
The collar was pristine except for three dark spatters of blood.
His torso was streaked with blood which ran down his legs.
His eyes were wide, rolled back slightly to reveal the whites.
One of these also had a splash of blood on it.
His brow was furrowed, blood-streaked, sweat standing out on the pale skin.
When he saw that Deborah had looked over to him, his expression changed.
He grinned, but the blood-spattered face, slightly bowed, looking up at her through pale eyes, made it appear as though the devil himself had materialised in her front room.
The high-pitched giggle seemed at odds with his sinister demeanour.
His words cut through her like the knife in his trembling hand had cut through the bodies of her friends; ‘I’m going to cut the devil out of you.’
And again that high-pitched laugh, penetrating her ears, making her brain pulsate inside her skull.
He stepped towards her with the knife pointin
g towards her belly.
And she actually heard the blood pattering to the floor.
She followed the trail of one of the drops and saw it fall to the carpet, slowly sinking in, widening then settling.
Deborah searched the room for a weapon but the best she could come up with was a beer bottle beside one of her friend’s corpses.
She grabbed it, feeling like it was inadequate to deal with the problem.
Her hands shook, but, she noticed, so did those of the naked, dog-collared psychopath across the room from her.
As a result, his knife shook, throwing drops of blood onto the carpet.
She heard each one of them fall, her senses heightened by the surge of adrenaline that had hit her.
‘I’m going to cut the devil out of you,’ he repeated, the words fading into a high-pitched laugh that chilled her blood.
She felt certain that she was going to die here, especially with her reactions significantly slowed by the previous evening’s excesses.
He moved towards her, his movements fast and agile like a cat.
His face was contorted into a grin that disturbed her even more than the sight of her dead friends.
His eyes were like two pits of pure darkness that bored into her, seeming to draw her into their shadowy depths.
‘Sinners, all of you,’ he hissed. ‘Whoring. Drinking. Taking the Lord’s name in vain. But don’t worry. I will scrape the sin from your soul.’
With that, he darted closer, thrusting the knife towards her gut.
As she stepped back, her calves bumped into something warm and sticky and wet.
She instinctively knew that it was the mutilated corpse of one of her friends.
Still, she looked.
It was Laura, her best friend since she was five.
Her eyes had been carved out of her face, revealing dark, blood-choked sockets.
Crimson ran down her cheeks as though she was crying blood.
Her mouth was carved open in a horrid grin, the skin torn all the way back to her ears.
Dark blood ran down from the edges of the wound.
Her lips were gone, as were her ears.
Though her face was heavily mutilated, it was obvious that she still wore an expression of utter agony and terror.
Despite the sickening state of her oldest friend’s face, it was still a better sight than the dog-collar wearing psychopath.
