Stared at him.
Her head lolled at an unnatural angle from her body. Her neck had been broken and partially severed, the flesh peeled back like the skin of a rotten fruit, exposing her insides. Her long chestnut hair was a tangled nest of flesh and debris. Bloodstains covered her pale, naked body, like splatters of black paint. Her breasts, as with the rest of her body, had taken on a soft, bloated look: the nipples were shriveled and dark, a cold-looking, bluish-purple color that reminded Mike of a really bad bruise he'd once gotten while playing football. The fingertips on her left hand were jaggedly torn, where small protrusions that looked like splinters of pink wood found their way out of her flesh. No, not splinters. Bones. The bones of her fingers.
Life had vacated her body like a married man vacating a sleazy motel in the dead of night, leaving her to the mercy of maggots, flies, and decay. And as Mike stared down at the bloated corpse, it suddenly occurred to him that she was more than just a body. She was the remains of a person, a human being. A girl whose parents probably loved her, and missed her. Parents who didn't know their little girl had become food for the flies in the grimy room of an abandoned house. Parents who were probably wondering, at that very moment, where their daughter might be. Parents who were probably praying that their little girl would come home safely. Though Mike was certain he had never seen her before, she might have lived in Futawam, the next town over from Hevven, and possibly attended high school there. Maybe she even had a boyfriend. A boyfriend who would also miss her, who might even love her. Friends who would miss her, too.
She was more than just flesh and blood and bone. She was a human vessel that had once contained a spirit, a soul, a life, before some sick bastard had robbed her of these things.
Okay, Mike thought hysterically, I can wake up now.
But he didn't. He couldn't.
Because he wasn't sleeping, wasn't dreaming.
It was real.
While Mike and Rick stood inside the room, trying to cope with the reality of what they were seeing, Max was standing at the doorway, bombarding Lou with questions he could not answer. Lou stared into space with a blank expression, unable to utter a coherent word. He looked as though he wasn't even aware of Max's presence. It wasn't that Lou didn't hear him; Max was far too annoying to ignore. Lou wanted to answer, he truly did, but he simply couldn't find the words. All he could think of was the body, the butchered, hacked body he'd discovered in the room.
What the hell kinda nightmare is this? Lou wondered. Then a name flashed in his mind: The Hevven Hacker! Could that be possible? No. That was just an urban legend, wasn't it? But what about all those missing people? All those missing girls...the newspapers said they were runaways, but...
Maybe it was a monster, a terrified voice came forward in Lou's mind. No, he reasoned. There's no such thing as monsters. That's baby stuff! What the heck are you thinking? There's no such thing as...
Monsters? But what kind of man could commit such a murder? Shuddering, Lou spat the stinging taste of vomit from his mouth. His stomach burned from the inside out. His eyes watered.
“Shit!” Max said. “Answer me, you dick!”
Lou barely noticed him.
Mike turned away from the corpse, unable to look at it any longer, and wasn't surprised to see that Rick was standing behind him. Blinking slowly, Rick looked up from the body, and deep into Mike's eyes. After a moment, he looked down once again. But Mike would not forget what he saw in Rick's eyes. And it scared him. The rage!
“C'mon,” Mike murmured, and began for the door. After a moment, Rick followed him.
Max was holding the collar of his shirt over his nose. He took two steps toward them, eyes shifting from Mike to Rick, from Rick to Mike. “What's going on?” he asked in a muffled voice. “It smells like shit in here.”
“We're gettin' the fuck outta here,” Mike commanded in a shaky voice. “Right now!”
Lou moaned and doubled over again, hands clenching his stomach as he dry-heaved onto the floor.
“What the fuck?” Max growled, angered by the thought that there was something the others weren't telling him. He turned and waved the candle at Lou, trying to provoke a response from the mute boy. “Will someone please explain to me why this kid's actin' like a fuckin' vegetable? What's in there, a dead animal or somethin'? I ain't no pussy like the Vegetable Man over there. I can take it.”
Mike's eyes flared with sudden anger, partly because he was sick and tired of Max giving his little brother shit all the time, but mostly because he was terrified. “You don't understand. We gotta get outta here. Right now!”
“What the f—” Before Max Kendall could finish, Mike Swart grabbed two fistfuls of his leather jacket and pinned him to the wall like a decoration. Max's eyes bulged, stunningly blue in the candlelight. For the first time that evening he looked very, very sober.
“Right now!” Mike said through clenched teeth, as if talking to a disobedient dog, resisting every urge to punch Max in his square, stubbly jaw. “We'll talk later. Now put out the fuckin' candle.”
For a moment, as the shadows toyed with Max's already-stoned mind, Mike didn't look like Mike anymore.
He looked like a monster.
Even Max could see the insanity of arguing. He winced a little and raised his hands in the air, as if to say: Okay, okay, I'm cool now. Mike held him that way for a little longer, until he was certain that Max understood who was in charge. Then, slowly, Mike released his grip, and his twisted, maddened face returned to normal. The anger left his eyes. The monster was gone. He was Mike Swart once again.
Max pinched the wick, and the flame sizzled out beneath his fingers. The smell of smoke and wax mingled with the smell of (flies and maggots and decay) the dead girl, as the boys emptied into the hallway.
Lou was the first to reach the top of the staircase, with such speed that the others had to jog to keep up. They were about to head downstairs when Rick stopped suddenly, blocking Mike's path.
“What is it?” Mike asked.
Rick raised his hand to silence him, but in the darkness Mike couldn’t see it.
“What is it?” Mike repeated.
Max and Lou had paused on the stairs. “Come on!” Max insisted quietly, desperately.
“Shhh,” Rick said in a low voice. “I thought I heard something.”
“It’s nothing,” Max said. “Probably just the wind or somethin'. Come on!”
Rick lit the Zippo, and in the dancing light they could see the fear spreading across his face as his eyes scanned the shadows. To the left of them there was another corridor. The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere down there.
“Hold on,” Mike said. “He’s right. I hear it, too.”
“You heard it, too?” Rick asked somberly.
Mike nodded. “You stay there with Lou,” he said to Max. “Rick and I are gonna go check it out.”
Mike looked over at Lou, who was clinging to the railing for dear life. Lou’s face was a glistening rictus of fear in the darkness, and his bulging eyes had a watery, far-away look in them. “Stay with Max. I’ll be right back,” Mike whispered.
Mike let a few seconds pass, but the younger boy did not respond. Mike tapped Rick on the shoulder and the two boys started off down the shadowy corridor. They followed the sound for what seemed like an eternity before they came upon yet another corridor, which seemed to run adjacent to the one they had just left. Whatever it was they had heard, it was getting louder with each step.
“What is that?” Mike asked in a barely audible voice.
“Dunno.”
At the end of the corridor they arrived at a closed door. Rick gave Mike a morbid smile as he pocketed the Zippo. In the darkness, they listened.
“It sounds like...” Someone praying, Mike was going to say, but he didn’t have to. They could both hear it clearly now: A soft feather of a voice, reciting the Hail Mary in a fast-forward whisper.
Rick rested his hand on the cold brass doorknob. “I'm gonna open
it.”
“…blessedartthouamongstwomen…”
“Great,” Mike whispered flatly.
“…andblessedisthefruitofthywombjesus…”
Rick turned the knob and pushed the door open a crack.
Rick opened the door a little more, the sound becoming louder.
“...holymarymotherofgod...”
The two friends entered the room, Rick in front and Mike following closely behind him.
“...prayforoursinnersnow—”
The prayer ended abruptly.
Rick pulled out his Zippo and struck a flame.
Before his eyes could adjust to the sudden burst of light, a phantom face lunged at him from the shadows. It shrieked into his face, a single high-pitched noise that made his blood run cold...and then it was gone, back to the shadows from which it came.
Rick dropped the Zippo. His lungs stopped working. His heart stopped beating. Every nerve in his body was a live wire. He stumbled backward, collided with Mike, and the two boys tripped over one another and toppled to the floor.
“What the fuck was that thing?” Mike yelled.
As they scrambled to get back on their feet, the praying began once more.
“...andatthehourofourdeathamen. Hailmary...”
Rick felt around on the floor and found his Zippo. He struck another flame and waved the lighter through the air. Then he saw her.
She was naked and kneeling on the hardwood floor, ankles and wrists shackled to a thick chain which hung from a loop on the ceiling. Her head was bowed toward the opposite wall, the thick tendrils of her auburn hair spilling down across her bare shoulders, hands clasped before her, as if begging for forgiveness.
Suddenly, the heat of the Zippo brought Rick to his senses. He quickly handed the lighter to Mike and dashed to the girl’s side.
“Shit! God, are you okay?” was all he could muster, his voice sounding distant and not quite his own. The auburn-haired girl kept chanting the Hail Mary in a continuous run-on sentence. Rick lifted her chin. She was about his age, attractive, with drowsy blue eyes, full burgundy lips, and well-defined cheekbones. Her eyes were vacant; they stared right through him.
“It’s alright,” Rick whispered in his soft, gritty voice. “We’re gonna get you outta here.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Mike! Give me a hand with these chains!”
Mike gave the chains a rattle, trying to test their strength, and didn't like what he saw. Each link was almost as thick as his pinky finger. He clicked the Zippo shut, and tucked it away inside his back pocket. The shadows returned with a vengeance.
“On the count of three,” Mike said breathlessly. In the darkness he groped, found a hold. “We’ll both pull at the same time. Put all your weight into it.”
“Okay, ready? One, two, three!”
They both pulled, muscles working and straining together. Chunks of plaster tumbled from the ceiling, but the chains held fast.
“Again!” shouted Mike. He started nervously at a sound behind them, and fumbled for the lighter. In its flame he saw Max standing in the doorway with his mouth gaping and his eyes bugging-out. “Get over here and help us!” Mike ordered.
Max ran over and wrapped his hands around the chain. Mike put the lighter away again. In the perfect darkness, the three boys readied themselves.
“On three!” Mike grunted. “One, two, THREE!”
At last the chains crashed down in a spray of dust and sheetrock.
The girl winced at the sound, and continued with her Hail Marys.
“She's not all there, is she?” Max managed between breaths. “What's wrong with her?”
“She’s in shock,” Mike said, remembering the body at the opposite end of the hall. He could not even begin to imagine what kind of horrors this girl had endured in the old house.
Mike ignited the Zippo again, revealing the girl amid a tangle of chains. “How the hell are we gonna get these things off her?” asked Rick. They had succeeded in freeing her from the ceiling, but the shackles on her ankles and wrists remained intact.
“We don't really have a choice,” Mike said. “We'll have to take them with us.”
Rick knelt down and scooped the naked, babbling girl into his arms. Thankfully, she stopped in the middle of her prayer and wrapped her arms loosely around his neck. “Somebody grab these chains,” he ordered.
Mike doused the light, tossed the heavy chains over one shoulder, and followed Rick out of the room. With Max shouting directions from the rear they worked their way back through the labyrinth of rooms and corridors, and found Lou still standing where they had left him. Upon seeing his friends he turned and hobbled down the stairs, his glassy eyes barely registering the naked girl in Rick's arms.
Together they stormed through the choking darkness of the abandoned house, feeling their way like the blind. Several lifetimes later they burst outside and into the starlight, where they continued toward the car.
As they trampled through the tall thickets of yellow grass, Rick stopped suddenly in mid-step. Something was stirring in the forest, near the side of the house. Near them. He wasn't the only one who had heard it.
“Quiet...” Mike whispered.
Behind him, in the darkness, his friends came to a clumsy halt. They were less than twenty feet from the car.
Before anyone could question why they had stopped, Rick pointed to the dark forest and they listened. Branches cracked and snapped beneath the weight of an unseen force. Someone, or something, was out there, in the forest.
There's only one thing worse than the sounds that come from a dark forest, Rick reflected nervously as he strained to listen, and that's when the sounds stop without warning. Something's wrong. Something's very wrong.
No birds. No peepers. No frogs. Everything was still. Then the forest was alive with the ominous cracking and crunching of branches—the unmistakable sound of something big moving through the underbrush, coming closer, closer.
Frantically, Mike motioned for Rick to continue towards the car, but it was already too late.
A hulking figure emerged from the treeline, a shape somehow darker than the darkness itself, and the four boys dropped into the tall grass, Rick with the girl still in his arms, Mike pulling Lou by the collar of his shirt. Lying still, their hearts pounded.
With long strides, the figure treaded ever-closer to their hiding place, moving into the center of the moonlit yard, where his thin white hair seemed to glow with an almost ghostly incandescence. When he was a little more than halfway to the house, he stopped without warning. Wearing dark coveralls, he stood motionless, except for his hands, which opened and closed into large tight fists at his sides. He wore a strangely evil expression; they could see it plainly, even from their distance.
He was grinning like a jack o' lantern, eyes burning with insanity.
Mike was sure whoever it was hadn't seen them, but soon would if they didn't act fast. Fear, like the fear he had felt while looking at the body, clutched him once again. But this time he ignored it. He had to. This time he wasn't looking at a motionless body, he was looking at someone who was alive, someone who was moving. A dangerous looking someone, moving toward them. Mind racing, heart pounding like a fist against the inside of his chest, Mike signaled the others to break for the Thunderbird.
Rick half-carried, half-dragged the naked girl as he followed his friends to the car. Though they were all taken by immense fear and excitement (yes, in danger there is always excitement), they were all aware of one thing: Their chance was now, or maybe never.
Rick quickly and quietly opened the passenger side door. With Mike’s assistance, he pushed the girl and her chains into the car and slid in after her. On the other side of the car Max and Mike hopped into their respective seats, Max in the back and Mike in the front. Come on! thought Rick. We gotta get the fuck outta Dodge.
It did not, however, appear that the hulking man had seen them, thanks to the combination of the darkness and the immense tangle of weeds in which they had parked.
Lou brought up the rear, and as he rose to find the safety of his brother's car he felt something slide from the back pocket of his bulky jeans and into the grassy carpet below. Without a second thought he dove into the back seat. Whatever it was he had lost, it didn't matter now. Certainly it wasn't worth dying for.
Mike quickly keyed the ignition and the Thunderbird's engine roared with delight, giving them away. Startled, the white-haired stranger jerked towards them. Mike flicked on the headlights and gunned the gas pedal, skillfully maneuvering between the man and the house, swerving just in time to avoid several piles of junk that had somehow materialized in the darkness. As the headlights flooded the night, shining upon the face of the man—the craggy, emotionless face of a killer—Mike's skin crawled as if he were covered with insects.
What Mike saw was not a man. Sure, it resembled a man; it had two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and hair. It even walked like a man. But its face was not the face of a man; at least, not any man Mike Swart had ever seen. Its face was pale and almost skeletal, with scattered little teeth, and eyes that seemed as bottomless as a black hole.
It was there in the headlights, and then it was gone. Later, when he had more time to think about it, Mike would try and convince himself that what he saw was just his imagination getting the best of him; perhaps even some trick of shadow and light. But deep down inside he knew the impossible truth: He had seen a monster.
A cloud of chewed-up soil arose as they sped across the field, down the old dirt driveway, and onto Roller Coaster Road once again.
~Nine~
“You gotta be fuckin' shittin' me!” screamed Max, when they reached the beginning of Vernon Street. He punched the back of Mike's seat. “We are sooo ffffucked!”
“I'm s-sorry,” Lou said.
Panicked by the sudden outburst, the naked girl whimpered and tightened her arms around Rick's waist. He stroked her greasy auburn hair, but nothing he said or did seemed to soothe her. He turned his head to Mike. “We gotta get this girl to a hospital,” he said.
“I know,” Mike said, throwing him an uneasy look. But first things first, he thought. He glanced up at the rearview mirror and found his little brother staring back at him with petrified eyes. “Lou, listen to me. Are you absolutely sure you had your wallet on you?”
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