*****
Get him, E, John thought, an ascertain confidence rising triumphantly in both himself and Eric.
“The element of surprise,” he heard Eric say clearly.
John knew that Raymond had most certainly lost that, and they were about to take it back over. He could see the blood standing out on Raymond’s upper lip and knew it could not be a good sign.
Now.
But not yet.
Watching Raymond lick the blood like a ravenous dog made John feel even worse.
Go.
But not yet.
Licking twice...and a third time.
Now.
But not yet.
Raymond’s hand tightening around the black, butcher knife handle.
Go.
But not yet.
Raymond’s first words came out muffled.
Now.
But not yet.
“How’s this for surprise?”
Go.
And John did.
CHAPTER 23
Had Eric not been paying close attention, and relying heavily upon his own instincts, there was no doubt in his mind of what would have happened next and how differently the situation might have played out. When Raymond moved, so did Eric (as soon as Raymond lunged forward, Eric sidestepped like a defensive boxer dodging a fatal knockout blow).
John moved as well. He timed it perfectly to where the instance that Raymond lunged, he was up on his feet once more and running, running aimlessly and to no specific destination. He zigzagged back and forth across as Raymond realized he was gone.
So what now? Eric thought. What do we do now? Nothing came to mind, and so he began to run as well, joining his goofy-looking friend in zigzagging pointlessly across the yard.
This was their master plan. No. That was not the entire truth. Their master plan would have them out front running towards the gates, towards their bikes, towards Cahill Drive that would carry them to freedom. This was the backyard, and there were no gates, no bicycles or roads. There was no escape, but what other choice did they have? Raymond blocked their only way out of the backyard.
At this point, Raymond felt something that he hadn’t felt in a long time (more than eight years to be precise), if ever. Panic.
While he had been truthful in telling Eric “they weren’t the first”, it had never been this complicated either. He never let any previous trespassers alone for this long, and why he had now was mostly a mystery. Part of him knew somewhat, but he did not want to believe it. In a way, he felt sympathetic towards the boys.
Sympathy.
It was the ugliest of all emotions in Raymond’s eyes. From what he could remember (and unfortunately his memory of before that night had been going downhill over the last eight years), he never sympathized over another human being. Even when doing in his own entire family and framing his father for all of it, his heart had been full of contempt, and maybe even a tad bit of guilt afterwards...but sympathy? Never.
So why now?
Isabella, he thought. That little bitch is always pulling shit like this.
She always conspired against him. Every damn time someone wandered into this place, just about the time he readied himself to move in and make his move, Isabella would find a means of interference. She was like Casper, The Friendly Ghost always thwarting his brother’s ghoulish and outlandish attempts at humor. But he was not a ghost. Not technically. Which led him to his next question: was she capable of this? Capable of making him...feel? He assumed so. Possession was one of her many nifty tricks, and although she could not directly interfere with his affairs (which technically she was not doing) and he despised giving her reasonable credit for anything, he must admit that she had gotten good at it. But he had always been immune to this particular trick of hers.
What was the difference now?
This was definitely their master plan, although with a few spur of the moment improvisations added. Run like banshees, Eric had suggested. And it had seemed so valiant at the time, but of course, they had had a destination in the beginning.
They made it midway through the yard, away from the house and towards the back end of the property line, before realizing that Raymond had not moved. They stopped abruptly, coming to two conclusions: (1) Raymond had been truthful and that there really was no other way out except the front door, and (2) Raymond appeared to be in deep concentration and perhaps had a proposition for the two of them.
While they each knew deep down that his words would bode no good news for either of them, they listened; they had no other choice and supposed it to be for the best. Listening gave them something they seemed to be rapidly running out of…time. They needed time for their minds to coagulate another plan; a better one.
While the first one appeared to have failed miserably, the second may work to perfection.
“Isn’t this sweet?” Raymond announced hollowly in a victorious tone. And why not? Victory was quite possibly his to lose now…again. “Y’all really thought you were free, huh?” He laughed gently, a certain arrogance and confidence boasting through his veins.
What Raymond said next did nothing to put their minds any closer to being at ease. “Are we still having fun, boys? Is this the adventure you boys planned for, or what?”
“Or what,” Eric said shrewdly.
Raymond’s laughter sounded shrill on the soundless night air. No longer did he seem like a child on the verge of receiving whatever his heart desired but a nervous man trying to disguise his real emotions. This boy, Eric, had a way of getting under his skin.
Raymond didn’t much like this feeling of...he would not necessarily deem it panic anymore. Despair, perhaps. He had yet to panic exactly because he simply saw no reason for it. But this boy was smart and cunning. So not panic at all, maybe not even despair, but anger. Raymond saw red. He didn’t like this feeling at all because his anger always managed to get the best of him; it controlled him. Seeing red was never a good thing. It always caused him to frantically lose control, ensue with sloppiness rather than the sublime tactical elements that he grew accustomed to displaying. Not even with his own family, nor with any of his victims since, had he saw red. He supposed that explained his continued freedom and lack of suspicion brought against him. No accidents, no witnesses, no mistakes, and above all else, no physical evidence left behind. That was how he always planned it, and until now, it had always worked with little to no resistance.
All at once, he decided subconsciously that it would work to perfection this time as well. This boy, this fucking punk teenager or preteen—or whatever the fuck he was—wasn’t about to stand in his way any longer.
“Or what?” Raymond mimicked. “Well, I’m truly sorry that you boys’ night didn’t go as planned.” He paused, drawing in a breath of the pleasantly crisp night air. “Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. So nighty-night, boys.” Raymond twirled the knife once more as he moved forward, swapping the blade from one boy to the other as if playing a sinister game of innie Minnie minie moe.
“Wait,” Eric demanded, stopping Raymond cold in his tracks.
Raymond transformed from smiling to snarling. “What now?”
“I just have to know why,” Eric said. “Why did you do it? How could you do it?”
“An eye for an eye, Eric,” he replied casually. “A tooth for a tooth.”
Eric swallowed hard. His throat felt as if it was quickly swelling shut from some type of allergic reaction. “I may not be the smartest boy as you said before,” he advised, “but I’m familiar with that saying. There’s nothing your family could have possibly done to you to equal taking their lives. You’re just...just—”
“You’re fuckin crazy,” John finished, somehow mustering up the courage for an insult of his own.
This particular barb made Raymond cackle yet again. “I don’t deny that,” he agreed, eyeballing John momentarily before reverting his attention back to Eric. “As far as my family goes, we’re even. They watched me die; I watc
hed them die; simple as that.”
The two boys glanced warily and shockingly at each other, and as if they shared the same set of vocal cords, said together, “You’re a ghost?”
“No,” Raymond replied instantly and without hesitation. “Well...not quite.”
The boys exchanged worried glances again; glances of both paranoia and confusion.
“Not quite?” Eric repeated. “I don’t understand.”
*****
Raymond glanced to his watch. It was nearly three a.m. There’s plenty of time to elaborate, he thought.
You sure you want to be doing that? a voice from within queried.
The voices came less frequently now. Most were unrecognizable which was why he usually chose to ignore them, but this one in particular sounded vaguely familiar. He could not quite put his finger on it. Perhaps it was family, but he doubted it. His family no longer cared enough to help him deliberate between right and wrong. Perhaps it was an old staff member, but he doubted this much, too. He never had what you might consider a relationship with any of the staff that entered into the manor. Perhaps it was only his conscience. Perhaps it was Isabella still screwing with him, buying the boys time.
It didn’t matter. He would oblige.
Why not? Raymond thought. They won’t make it out of here alive, and I clear my conscience a bit in the process. It’s a win-win.
I don’t like—
But Raymond cuts the voice off immediately as he spoke aloud. “You see that house back there?” He pointed to the back of the yard.
The boys glanced back. Between the darkness and the abscess growth of shrubbery lining the top of the fence, there was not much to see. However, both of them could see a distant silhouette and assumed it was a house.
“That is Dr. Green’s house—well, ex-doctor. He retired some time ago, moved away, and is now I believe deceased. Despite a pension, retirement plan, 401K, and social security, the man was still as greedy as they come.
“My family paid that man heftily to help us. They offered to build him that house up there after he retired if he would agree to join their payroll as the family’s own private medical staff, and he did. Anytime any of us needed any sort of medical attention, rather than a trip to the emergency room or an appointment at a doctor’s office, we phoned the neighbor. No matter how serious it was or what time of the night it may have been, good ole reliable Dr. Green came running.”
“So what’s the point?” Eric intruded.
“The point is,” Raymond said shrewdly, a twinge of red beginning to blot his vision, but he blocked it, “one day, we were out here in the backyard—you know—having a normal Saturday Family Day, barbecuing, swimming, playing ball. Dad was running the grill; mom was putting the final touches on her famous potato salad or something; all the staff were gone for some reason—I still don’t know why. No one was watching us kids.”
Eric saw Raymond’s eyes beginning to well up. He is trying not to cry, Eric thought. I’ll be damned. He is still human, after all. We have a chance.
“I had been trying to learn how to swim but couldn’t get it down,” Raymond continued. “Gregory thought it would be hilarious to throw me in and watch me struggle. A childhood prank that I suppose all big brothers pull on their younger siblings at some time. He threw me into the deep end, and I...I...I panicked. The more I struggled and fought and screamed, the more water I took in.” The first tear rolled down his pallid cheek. “I passed out about the time Gregory decided to pull me out. My lungs filled with water; my heart stilled. You boys ever had an out of body experience?”
The boys looked at him puzzled. They shook their heads solemnly. They had each heard the term before but neither understood the true concept of it.
“I never believed it was possible to have one until that day. Thought they were just some bullshit ideas some Podunk farmer made up—like alien abductions.
“Anyway, I was out-cold but somehow still watched everything unfold. I saw everything but not from the deck where my body was lying. It’s like I was standing next to Gregory who was kneeling next to my unconscious body.
“You know, people tend to think in near death experiences when the heart has stopped beating that the soul actually leaves the body?” He cleared his parched throat with subtlety. “Maybe it only happens for a split second, but it definitely does happen. It happened to me.”
“Sounds like a dream to me,” Eric crudely interrupted.
Raymond flashed a wan smile and continued without missing a beat as if Eric had said nothing at all. “If the soul doesn’t return, the vitals fade out. The heart quits beating, and you die. And no matter how many charges they hit you with using those paddles, you stay dead. Can’t live without a soul, boys, if you’re human.
“So either you choose the light or the darkness, and of course, there are a few that never get to glimpse that light at all. Can you boys guess what was waiting for me?” he asked with a sinister grin.
The boys thought it over carefully, and it took seconds for them to derive the same conclusion. They each wanted to express what they thought but decided against it, and even if they had decided otherwise, Raymond did not leave them much of a window to get their words out.
“I stayed out-of-body long enough for Gregory to scream frantically for ‘somebody’ or ‘anybody’ to help; for Dad to try many failed attempts at CPR; for Mom to call good ole Dr. Green.
“I had made my decision by that time, though. Between an abusive and neglectful father, a mother who was completely oblivious to things going on right beneath her nose—or just simply pretended not to know—and several siblings who loathed and despised me, I decided that my life (at least in my own eyes) wasn’t worth living anymore. I would rather have died in that manner than to go on living with things the way they were.
“Before good ole Dr. Green could arrive, I left...no, I—” He glanced over at the boys with sorrow-filled eyes. No longer the careless eyes of an abstract and ruthless murderer, but the eyes of a child. A child who had been caught doing some terrible act and was now begging whomever caught him not to tell his parents. He gazed thoroughly, and then, as if seeming to conclude that they would not tell, continued rambling. “I was called away—for lack of a better term.
“My life had been decent, meaning I had been relatively good to that point, but the badness never ceased to exist either. Basically, despite everything, I had an inconceivable choice: the light at the end of the tunnel or the darkness in the depths of the pit; Heaven or Hell.
“I can tell by the way you boys are looking at me that you are shocked, maybe unbelieving. Don’t be. It’s the truth. If I’m lying, I’m dying.” And at this, he laughed hysterically.
“Anyway, while the first was bountiful and beautiful, I just couldn’t do it. I figured after all the shit I had already been through, that maybe God and Jesus and Heaven may not be for me. No. The darkness is where I felt I belonged; so I chose Hell.
“And then He gave me an ultimatum I couldn’t resist.”
“He?” Eric questioned in a shocked and dry tone he barely recognized as his own.
“The devil?” John chimed in.
Raymond laughed hesitantly and nodded. “The devil; Satan; Lucifer; whatever it is you wish to call Him.
“Take it how you want it, boys. I know you think I’m probably just fuckin with ya, but I really don’t care. I have no reason to lie to you. And the truth is, I was faced with another difficult decision: serve the rest of eternity as a lapdog in Hell or serve it here on Earth as a soul collector. I, of course, chose the latter...obviously.”
The boys both grimace at the subtlety of these words and the calmness in his voice. Nothing about his tone or actions suggested he was lying to or deceiving them in any way. His honesty was truly frightening and disturbing.
“And staying on my path of honesty, your time is up, boys.”
Raymond lunged forward again, towards John, of course, and only this time, it was really more of a bounce tha
n a lunge.
During his own rambling, Eric and John had not been the only ones contemplating. He, too, had thought. Eric, the slightly larger of the two and clearly the smart ass of the bunch, was his main priority. He viewed no possible threat in John, assuming he would probably hang himself somehow (so to speak) possibly by just tripping and falling or maybe even fainting.
The devil had blessed him—or cursed him, either way would suffice, but he liked to think of them as blessings—with many things, but he possessed no distinct powers or other-worldly capabilities such as his parents and siblings now do. He needed to rely solely upon his own keen, heightened senses to get by.
His plan was simple: deception. Deception was key. Make ’em think left, and go right. His bounce was merely deception, like a pump fake in basketball, or counter play in football.
He faked left towards John, all along really planning and anticipating going right at Eric.
The boys were baffled now more than ever before by the sheer audacity of it all. While part of them believed it because, frankly, he was just so goddamn convincing, the majority of both their hearts and minds believed it all to be false temperaments. They were waiting patiently to make their move, adhering to every word of the story when Raymond bounced.
Eric and John took off once more at the first hint of Raymond’s movement. John saw which direction he moved in, and surprisingly, he didn’t freeze up, but moves swiftly instead.
The boys focused on nothing but running, their main objective at this point being to get through the sliding glass door and back inside the house. Eric thought of how bad of an idea it could be because in horror movies, running back in to the house always led to eventually running up the stairs. And that was always a horrible idea, but they had no other choice.
They had moved outward in the beginning and in separate directions to avoid Raymond’s reach and possibly—hopefully—confuse and disorient him, if only for a second or two. If they both get by unscathed, great, but only one was acceptable if that one was Eric.
What they had not counted on was Raymond’s perception of the situation. Raymond played them like a fiddle. When they saw Raymond bounce, Eric’s mind filled with ease at the thought of escaping, just as Raymond had planned.
Huff Bend Hell House Page 20
