Through the In Between, Hell Awaits

by Robert Essig

  “We . . . I don’t have a phone. Not here.”

  “No cell phone,” said Zack.

  The man raised his eyebrows. “How about you? Doesn’t everyone have a cell phone?”

  “It really is a funny story,” said Jenny. “If you’ll let us come in out of this cold, I’d love to tell you. Thing is, we locked our keys in the car, and, well, that’s where are cells are. Stupid, huh?”

  “Convenient is more like it,” said the sweaty man. “I don’t feel comfortable letting the two of you in here. If you,” he pointed to Jenny, “want to come in and use my cell, that’d be all right.”

  Jenny mimicked the look a loved one would give her husband with such a strange offer. Zack understood the mime and played the part of husband.

  “Okay,” said Zack. “But make it quick. Don’t leave me out here freezing.”

  “She’ll be out in a minute,” said the sweaty man, a look of contempt on his face that would have frightened the average person into turning and risking the freezing walk to the next house.

  Zack didn’t like the look in his face. He was deviant and something was wrong. Had this been a mortal situation back when Zack was Rich and he were still married to his wife, he never would have allowed her to go into this cabin alone. On second thought, that would have been a good idea, letting his ex into the embrace of a maniac.

  Zack waited, listening carefully for the goings on inside the cabin. Mr. Sweaty had another thing coming.

  ***

  Mr. Sweaty’s real name was Ned Juarez, though he hardly resembled a Hispanic. His mother was Norwegian and his father Mexican and he was blessed with her fair skin and his dark hair, which gave him a look all his own that baffled people as far as pinpointing his heritage, not to mention such an average white bread first name attached to his father’s Mexican surname.

  He was surprised when the doorbell rang, interrupting his fun. He tried to lay low, but he was making far too much noise and thought it would be easier to just shoo the people away.

  He wasn’t expecting such a vision of beauty, though, and so he decided to take things in a whole new direction. After he bound this woman, it would be easy enough to sneak around the house and subdue her husband. He’d be half frozen from standing still on the front porch, which would make him an easy target.

  The living room of the cabin was in slight disarray, but it was obvious that there had been a prior struggle. And even if there were signs of struggle, this woman who was stupid enough to blindly enter Ned’s cabin wouldn’t have time to make a run for it before Ned smacked her across the face.

  “So, what’s your name?” asked Jenny.

  “Ned. Yours?”

  “Jenny.”

  Jenny walked into the living room very casually, which infuriated Ned. There was no real reason for her to be fearful of him, but her air was beginning to irritate him. She was looking the place over too closely, almost as if she were casing the joint.

  “How about that phone?” asked Jenny.

  “Oh yeah. It’s right in here.”

  Ned crossed the room and opened a door. Jenny didn’t have a clear view of the room, but she could make out something that looked like red paint splattered on the wall.

  She followed Ned into the room. When he turned and saw that she was standing there staring at him as he retrieved rope and the gun he planned on pistol-whipping her with, he lost his shit.

  “Get out of here! GO! GO! GO! Get out!”

  It was his private space, this room, and the woman strapped to the bed naked and bleeding was his private passion. Though he had similar desires of Jenny, he didn’t like her to view him as the maniac he was.

  Jenny smiled, much to Ned’s horror. That wasn’t how she was supposed to react. The woman on the bed stirred. Her body was cut here and there, her blood strewn across the walls like a child’s finger-painting. The woman looked up at Jenny and then at Ned, and then her head went limp again.

  Jenny began giggling.

  “What are you laughing at?” asked Ned, infuriated. “What’s so damn funny?”

  “I couldn’t have asked for much more, that’s what.”

  Then Ned calmed, lowered his gun that had been pointed at Jenny’s head, and looked as if he were on the verge of weeping.

  He looked at Megan, the girl he met while hiking, lying there on the bed in a soupy mix of life and death and blood and piss, and he began to fear the fact that Jenny wasn’t scared. Why not? She should be whimpering and running for her life, but no, she just stood there in the doorway with that shit-eating grin on her face, giggling. Frankly, it disgusted Ned.

  “You should be repulsed and scared of me,” he said. His voice wasn’t nearly as stern as he wished, not the way it was when he talked to Megan before tying her up and raping her. He’d lost his edge and it was causing his whole world to cave in. “Why are you acting like that? Why aren’t you crying?”

  “Because I can use you.”

  What?

  “Use me?”

  Jenny nodded. She then proceeded to walk into the room and up to the bed. Megan’s chest rose very slightly as she breathed shallow breathes. Much of the blood that adorned her was beginning to crust. The cuts were playful, almost tender in a psychotic sort of way. Child’s play.

  Ned stepped back. He wasn’t in control any longer and that filled him with horror. Here he’d been in his special place doing special things, and this tramp walked in like she owned the place, and here she was in front of his precious plaything without the slightest bit of fear or trepidation. It was crazy.

  Jenny reached over the soiled bed and gently grazed the woman’s flesh with her fingernails.

  “What are you doing?” asked Ned. His eyes were wide and his mouth agape.

  “I want to show you something. Do you ever long for eternal life?”

  No. Ned hadn’t even considered such a thing. He was a weak fool when he wasn’t inflicting pain. He was a momma’s boy, a geek who never discovered himself and his place on Earth. He couldn’t meet women unless he kidnapped them, and when he was finished with them he was ashamed with himself, and in those moments he wanted to die. In fact, he’d come close to killing himself after the first victim he raped and killed. Very close. And right now he was feeling the weight of shame again.

  Jenny’s fingers plunged into Megan’s abdomen. She was partial to the entrails, always had been. Megan erupted into a bout of screaming as Jenny fished her way through intestines and organs until she found something tangible, gripped it and pulled it steaming into the cold air of the cabin.

  Ned raised the gun and pulled the trigger launching a bullet at Jenny, however he was so shaken up that he missed her and put a hole in the wall. He pulled off another shot and it missed as well.

  Jenny took the steaming innards and placed them in her permuted mouth, her razor teeth having no trouble biting through the viscera.

  Ned freaked out. “Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy—”

  “Knock it off!” said Jenny in a convoluted voice that was part sentinel and part woman.

  Then the front door to the cabin was audibly busted in. Ned thought it was the police, there to arrest him and put in prison for the rest of his life. He was glad to see them. Not only to save him from this crazy woman, but to save him from himself as well.

  But it wasn’t the cops. It was Zack.

  “What’s going on in here?” asked Zack.

  A length of intestine stretched from Megan’s ruptured belly to Jenny’s blood spattered sentinel mouth. Zack smiled so wide that his grin cracked his human flesh, distorting into the horrific sentinel that the sight of a fresh kill elicited in him.

  “What are you?” Ned screamed. He began hyperventilating. He pointed his gun at Zack and then at Jenny before shoving the barrel in his mouth.

  Jenny spit out her tasty intestine and said, “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  Ned eyed her, but there were so many tears that she looked like a distorted blob.
Everything looked like a blob, and that was just all right with Ned. Once he pulled the trigger the blob of a world he lived in would turn to black, and that would be even better.

  Zack’s mouth began dripping saliva in thick sappy strands, but he remained calm rather than fling himself on the dead woman’s body to devour her brain. He wanted her brain. He couldn’t stop eyeing her head and imagining the prize like the flesh within the shell of a walnut.

  “Why did you kill her?” asked Jenny. “Power? The thrill of it? Domination?”

  Ned’s hand shook violently, but something was keeping him from pulling the trigger much the way he hesitated after that very first woman he killed: his mother. What stopped him from taking his own life that day was the liberation from her stifling grasp. She made him who he was, and because of her shielding and overbearing ways she had a hand in her own destruction. After he killed her, he imagined living a normal life, meeting a woman, getting married, and having a family. But things never changed. And Ned had become a bitter and violent man.

  “Power and liberation,” said Ned as he pulled the gun from his mouth.

  The fear and shame began to recede as, in some strange way only psychos would understand, the presence of these two monstrous people comforted him, though they did ruin his fun.

  There was something wrong with them, something wrong with their faces. After the shame and depression when he killed his mother, Ned found that cuddling her corpse made him feel better. It began to stink, of course, and that’s when another harsh reality seeped in. It was no wonder he couldn’t live life like normal people. With his other victims, the coddling turned into rape, and a body could last a long time before it became too putrefied for fun. He’d expected to have a lot of fun with Megan before the depression kicked in, and the tedious task of disposing the body was ahead of him. When the euphoria lifted, reality would sink in and he would become paranoid, convincing himself that he wouldn’t kill again, but murder was his heroin, and there wasn’t a treatment center he could go to for help with such an affliction.

  In all his madness and self-loathing, he had a semblance of control. For the first time in a dog’s age he was confused.

  “Very nice,” said Jenny. “I have something to offer you that I think you can appreciate.”

  Jenny nodded to Zack and, accepting her nod as an invitation to feast, he kneeled over the bed hovering above the dead woman’s head. She still had color, being freshly dead. It was an opportunity for Zack to stretch his new muscles. Ned watched as Zack craned his neck, his face distorting into something hideous that almost looked like a human that had been horribly disfigured from a bad fire. His mouth grew a set of razor teeth that clamped onto the woman’s head and bit down. Zack rapidly chomped his absurd jaws and spun his head from side to side like a human can opener before ripping her skullcap off, revealing the tender gem that was her brain.

  “Not the brain,” said Jenny.

  Zack shot her a look of confusion. Her expression told him all he needed to know. The brain was important. Instead, Zack tore into her chest, ripping through her breastplate and ribcage. He removed heart and bit into the fibrous muscle, chewing it like piece of beef jerky.

  “You see, Ned,” said Jenny, “we are powerful, and I am looking for others who would like to be a part of my tribe. We’ll gather upon the Earth and feast on the flesh of the living, and when we grow enough in numbers we will destroy my old tribe and rule over the In Between.”

  It was a lot for Ned to comprehend. His guts churned like a bowl full of wiggly maggots; his brain burned with harsh visions of murder more blasphemous and gruesome than he was capable. After all, he didn’t murder because he like to eat the flesh of the dead, or because he was a maniac that enjoyed the finer aspects of dismembering human anatomy. He killed because of sadness and for comfort and for power over the girls who would never give him a chance. They didn’t love him, but he loved them. He loved them to death.

  “I . . . ” said Ned, “I don’t like this. I don’t e-eat human flesh.”

  “You’ll learn to like it,” said Jenny. Her form was mutating into Dagana just enough to give Ned a peak at what she really was. There wasn’t enough time to coax him into his becoming.

  Ned shook his head. “No.” He raised the gun and mouthed the word “no” again.

  Jenny’s face distorted into her sentinel form. She said to Zack, “grab him, quick!”

  Zack leapt over the bed and tackled Ned, flinging the gun from his hand. It let off a random shot the pierced another hole in the wall.

  Ned scrambled and yelled. “Get off me! Get off me! What are you doing?”

  “Hold him there,” said Dagana. Jenny had completely transformed into a sentinel. “I’ll be right back.”

  Ned struggled but he was no match for Zack’s super human strength. The crazy duo that was attacking him had begun to transform into something the dark side of his worst nightmares couldn’t begin to dream up. Eventually he gave up trying to free himself, and then Dagana returned with a blender and a funnel. Ned had no idea what these items we for, but they sent fear into his bones that he’d never felt before.

  22

  Audrey slept well, nuzzled within the embrace of her lover. It felt so natural to fall into the depths of sleep that they remained that was until something caught the attention of her sleeping brain.

  Her dreaming mind was showing her a picturesque landscape of beautiful green meadows dotted with trees that were a mix of pines and maples, along with shrubbery that concealed the watchful eyes of deer and rabbits. In the meadow was a man atop a white stallion: Austin, a caricature of far too many romance novels, only his hair wasn’t Fabio-long and he wasn’t quite as bronze-toned.

  Audrey, filled with joy, comfort and security, smiled at the sight of him. He was there for her and always would be and that feeling gave her warmth. Then the animals began to show themselves from their hiding places, all attracted to Austin atop his horse—rabbits, deer, squirrels, snakes, birds, bears, mountain lions, gophers, lizards; everything from the forest. So many of them, in fact, that they began to crowd Austin. Audrey’s brow furled at the sight of Austin in distress, the look of fear on his face sending a chill up her spine for he was her knight and he was fearless. The animals enveloped him and finally they pulled him off his stallion and that’s when the blood erupted into the air like a red geyser as the animals became rabid and devoured him. Audrey screamed herself awake.

  Her screams were shrill in the silent night, however Austin didn’t so much as shift from his deep sleep, as if he hadn’t heard her at all. Audrey sat up in bed, covered in sweat, and looked at him lying there. She hoped his dreams were filled with visions of her. After her nightmare, she could only wish his dreams were filled with blissfulness.

  As she admired his sleeping face, a jolt shot through her body when his eyes suddenly opened. Did he sense her watching him?

  She said his name very softly, but he did not respond. He lay there staring straight, unflinching. There was something creepy about his dead stare. Audrey began to wonder if he was one of those people who sleep with their eyes open. Her cousin slept with his eyes open and whenever he would stay overnight at her house when she was a little girl it freaked her out to see him like that. Though she couldn’t help but peek at him sleeping every time. She often wondered why his eyes didn’t dry out, but she supposed open eye sleepers close them from time to time to moisten them.

  Austin wasn’t closing his, and there was something about it that was different from her cousin, something that reminded her of the time she had to identify her brother’s body at the morgue. It was one of the last things she did before leaving for Hollywood. Jackson’s lifestyle had led him into the gutter begging for change to buy the next bottle of Night Train. She had loved him so much growing up. He had been destined to be a star football player, but then he took a good hit on the field that sent him to the hospital with a severe concussion and a dislocated shoulder. The concussion turned out to be w
orse than was initially diagnosed, which led to a brain aneurysm that left him with chronic headaches and what became an addiction to pain medications that rapidly evolved into illegal narcotics, and then a life of cheap wine drunk from brown paper bags.

  Never had Audrey thought she would find herself identifying a body in the morgue. It took but one look and she knew it was Jackson. There was no doubt about it with the telltale scar above his right eye from the very football accident that sent his life astray.

  “Austin?” she said hoping to arouse his consciousness without startling him out of a deep sleep. “Austin, wake up.”

  It wasn’t that Audrey wanted to wake him up, but that she didn’t like the look in his eyes. There was no other way to explain that look than to call it a death stare. He wasn’t dead—his chest rose and settled gently as he breathed—but she would have felt better to see cognizance in those eyes before going back to sleep.

  This time Audrey shook him gently. “Austin, wake up.”

  His jaw dropped and his head lolled as if his spine could no longer bear the weight. From his opened mouth, a flow of maggots spewed onto the sheets. Audrey screamed in horror and leapt from the bed.

  Austin rose mechanically, head crooked. His eyes clouded over and popped out of his head to dangle over his cheeks like macabre Christmas ornaments. His flesh began to shrivel up and change to a rotten green/black color. It all happened so fast that Audrey couldn’t gather her thoughts. He began changing into something alien with gray skin and a face that resembled melted candle wax, a mouth full of sharp teeth, and a lower lip that sagged in the most disgusting way.

  Baz eyed Audrey as she quivered in horror. Trembling and weeping, she backed herself into a corner of the room. Baz stood from the bed and approached her. She didn’t make any quick movements for fear of agitating him. Baz towered over her by at least three feet, and he looked meaner than mean. The only thing she could think to do was try and reason with him, but . . .