Richard Davis (ed) - [Year's Best Horror Stories 02]

by The Year's Best Horror Stories II (epub)

  For five minutes, McDonald just sat and stared at the report. That didn't seem to make much sense. What kind of case is it where your victim becomes your killer? There had been plenty of times when McDonald had been glad to jump at the first opportunity to arrest someone, just to get a case closed. This wasn't such a case-even if he knew where to find Coleman to arrest him. The fact that Coleman was a killer didn't explain who tore his throat. The implication that there were two madmen at large was one that McDonald didn't care to contemplate. But he had to face it.

  He had to face it and he had to find and apprehend both of them before there could be another attack.

  He called Brice Sherman and told him to alert the rest of the deputies. "I'm going out to Isaac Smith's," he said. "Maybe we can get up a posse."

  "While you're out there," Sherman said, "there was something going on out his way last night."

  "I didn't hear about it."

  "Well, nothing official. I just heard talk. Seems all over the county yesterday, the coloureds quit work early. Last night there was a bonfire back near the mountain. Near the old dirt road that used to circle Overfull."

  "Sounds funny," McDonald said. "Could be trouble, I guess. I'll ask old Isaac."

  Isaac Smith's place was a mile from the road, along a path that was little more than a rabbit path. The house was surprisingly well cared for; a two-storey clapboard building, painted grey with brown trimming. The dirt yard was hard-packed and recently swept. Beyond the yard was a hen coop, not nearly so well cared for, and a small corn patch, the stalks tall and brown and dried. Isaac Smith sat on the front porch in a straight-backed kitchen chair. He wore a faded brown shirt, the sleeves rolled up on his huge, corded arms; and faded, blue denim overalls of the sort that always seem two sizes too large for the man wearing them. There was a sad-faced hound curled up by the chair and as McDonald climbed onto the porch, the dog looked up at him. A small girl of about two years of age stared at him from behind the screen door, her eyes large and brown and sadder than the dog's. From inside the house came the sounds of other children playing and the odours of supper cooking.

  Smith rose and indicated a chair next to his own. "Sit a spell. Sheriff," he said. "Ain't often you gets up this way."

  "Ain't staying long," McDonald said. "I have to get up a search party."

  "Search party, this late? It's getting on to be dark."

  "There's a killer around here, Isaac. We've got to find him, even if it is getting late. You know the region better than anyone else. I need your help to find him."

  "You won't have much of a search party," Smith said. "Not to look for no killer at night. Not around Overhill mountain."

  "There's no choice. This killer has to be stopped."

  "What makes you think he'll kill again tonight."

  "I can't take the chance he won't," McDonald said.

  Smith was silent for a moment. Then, slowly, he said, "I don't think he'll kill tonight, Sheriff."

  "I want him in jail whether he kills tonight or not. I want him before he kills again."

  "No one's going out after him at night," Smith said.

  "Now what's so different about tonight and last night?" the Sheriff asked. Smith did a double take.

  "What do you mean?" Smith asked.

  "You people were out near Overhill last night. Lit a big bonfire."

  "You heard about that?"

  "I did," McDonald answered. "You weren't up to anything I should know about, were you?"

  Smith rubbed his palms against the faded overalls. "Maybe," he said, "maybe you don't have to worry about no killer. Maybe-somebody else might have got him."

  McDonald was silent for a moment. When he spoke, he had to force the words. "You mean last night there was a lynching?"

  Smith said nothing.

  "Who did it?" McDonald asked.

  "Don't ask me to say."

  "I've got to, Isaac. You know I got to tell the grand jury about this. It's against the law. I can't let mobs do their own killing, white or coloured."

  "I can't name no names," Smith said. "I don't know nothing."

  "Who'd they lynch?"

  "All I heard was talk."

  "Was it a white man?" McDonald said. "Sam Coleman?"

  "Who?" Smith asked. He seemed astonished.

  "The man you dug out of that cave at the foot of Overhill. His throat was torn open and he apparently went mad. He killed a man about three o'clock this morning."

  "Three o'clock-are you sure?"

  "I'm reasonably sure. What's wrong Isaac?"

  Smith seemed shaken for the first time the Sheriff could recall. "There ain't many people around tonight, Sheriff. After last night most of them want to get drunk. I couldn't get no searching party up tonight, not any more than I could if it was Friday or Saturday night."

  "I see. Okay, Isaac. I'll be back out tomorrow morning and I'll be asking you questions. Maybe we can work something out. If I can work it out, there won't be any big hearing. Nothing official. But I'm not promising anything. If I think it's necessary, I'll have the biggest hearing ever held in these parts."

  "You're welcome anytime, Sheriff. Official or not."

  McDonald nodded grimly and left.

  Isaac Smith watched the figure of the sheriff vanish among the trees and shadows of the forest and inside he felt as if he were trembling. A victim had been buried without a stake through the heart. Sam Coleman-he'd been buried in that cave.

  And there was neither time nor men available. Smith couldn't get enough men together to make it safe to go after Coleman-not enough to track him down and force him to the crossroads. Coleman had to be kept in one place until Smith could get whatever number of men he could together.

  There was a way to do that.

  The shadows were beginning to fill the forest and soon the sun would be down. There was barely enough time.

  6

  Coleman awoke with an awareness of agony.

  Pain gripped him, causing him to twist and writhe beneath his covering of dirt. It was as if he had awakened before the setting of the sun and the rays of the sun were falling full upon him. He moaned and thrust up one hand, out of the dirt that covered him.

  The hand encountered nothing but air. Coleman sat up, letting the dirt fall in small cascades from his head and body. It was night but the agony of sunlight was still present. But there was no sunlight; the sun was gone. It was night. Now Coleman was afraid. He climbed to his feet and as he was trying to stand, he saw the cross.

  His eyes burned with stabbing agony and he cried out, falling back against the wall of the cave. It was only a crude wooden cross, set in the mouth of the cave, but it was within four feet of him and it burned like the sun itself. Coleman turned so that his back was to it. His fists hammered against the clay but the clay was unyielding. The fire seemed to be eating into him, robbing him of strength and mind.

  He sank to his knees and rocked weakly. He tried to think, but couldn't. Shielding his eyes, he turned and slumped forward limply, breathing heavily, weakness and the thirst wracking his body and mind.

  He saw a rock that lay not a foot from his face. It was about the size of both his fists, closed and pressed together. His left hand moved to it, closed upon it. He felt the rough, reassuring hardness of it as he struggled to his knees and gathered his stength. He would need all his strength… he would have only one good throw.

  He managed to throw the rock with tremendous force and it hit the cross dead centre. As the cross fell backwards, Cole-man laughed with delight and scooped dirt into both hands. He threw the dirt at the cross and continued throwing the dirt until the cross was covered and no longer blinded and weakened him. He felt his strength return like a wave that soaked the sand of the beach with its wetness. He laughed again and got to his feet, almost falling as he did, and ran past the place where the cross was buried and into the trees.

  Suddenly he realized what the cross meant. He stopped and turned to stare at the cave. The entrance was stil
l sheltered by the bushes that hid it from the highway, which was not very close anyway. But the cave was not sheltered from the woods. Nor was it safe any longer. The site of his grave had been discovered and someone had placed the cross there to hold him prisoner until-until what? He dared not consider what it might mean. Merely that it meant danger, perhaps disaster. The cross failed but the threat was still there. Someone knew about him and the cave.

  Someone knew.

  Coleman remembered last night and the stake driven into.the heart, the severed head, the eager flames… He turned slowly and walked into the forest, much more slowly than before. He was thinking of the huge dark skinned man who had wielded the knife and how the torches had hurt his eyes-the way the cross did. Coleman remembered the man called Isaac Smith who led the group and who drove the stake. Smith was an enemy and not an ordinary one. Smith knew much. He knew about crosses. He would know about crosses just as he knew how to kill Coleman.

  Coleman wanted to cry out his frustrations but he feared someone might hear the sound. He didn't want to be hurt; or killed. He wanted to be left alone. It wasn't him, anyway. It was the thirst. There had to be a way out, but what? He couldn't move his grave: the need to be buried where he had originally been covered with dirt was as vital as the need to quench the thirst or avoid the sun. But to stay meant to be discovered, to be dug up. To be taken to the crossroads at midnight and there to-

  He couldn't bring himself to think the rest of it. Besides, the thirst was growing and becoming the driving obsession it always became.

  Coleman stopped at the edge of an empty clearing. It was merely a place where an old tree had died and rotted so that only weeds were there. The thirst demanded, but he saw no way to answer its demand right now.

  He paused only for a moment before plunging on, almost oblivious of direction and time. He was now searching and finding nothing that he wanted. Game had fled seemingly. Once he came to a dead stop and stared in utter horror at a length of barbed wire not ten feet ahead of him. It was part of an old fence, the fenceposts rotted and bushes grown up around had entangled in the wire. But the wire was metal beneath the rust and Coleman chose to avoid it.

  He had learned caution. It was implanted in him by something that seemed more than himself. He moved cautiously letting his senses guide him. He knew from them where to seek prey and where to step to avoid touching such pieces of iron as might be lying on the ground. These new senses were more reliable than those he had before the attack.

  Yet now they seemed to fail him.

  They were active and actually increased in sensitivity. Yet he found no game and the panic caused by his recent experience with the cross was still in him. Perhaps, he thought, he should abandon the woods and go among the houses and streets where men lived.

  But the thought that he would find metal and fire and light-and even crosses-near those houses, stopped him. He continued searching the woods until he abruptly found himself at the edge of a swamp.

  He had not remembered that a swamp was close to these woods. Here the water lay still and stagnant. He waded into it, vaguely occupied with thoughts of finding a nesting bird, or snake or turtle. He found none. He returned to shore and walked along the edge of the swamp, sometimes sinking to his ankles in the bogs and marshes. He found nothing and his senses told him of no source of blood until he came to a shallow, running stream.

  It was not a strong impression but he could feel his strange new sense telling him that game was plentiful across the stream. The thirst burned in his throat. He approached the stream anxiously, intent on crossing it. But something stopped him.

  It was strange. He was walking carefully, one hand out to catch himself in case he slipped on the smooth grass as he made his way down the sloping bank. Then his feet just stopped moving. He tried to move them by an effort of will but they would not be moved. He did not understand. He looked down at his immobile feet, then up at the water just scant yards away. The water was rushing, running silently over the gravelly creek bed.

  And the sight of it filled him with fear.

  He breathed with difficulty as he looked at the water. He backed from it slowly. He had gone into the water of the swamp until it was to his waist but that water was stagnant and unclean. Stagnant and still. This was running water and he could not cross.

  He turned and ran from the creek back into the woods.

  When he reached the woods he moved more slowly, becoming alert. He sensed the presence of a rabbit and his cunning came forth. He caught it with ease and satisfied his thirst as best he could with so little. But the thirst was at least calmed-for a while. Realizing that he was lucky to find even this rabbit, he decided to go back to the highway. It was not yet late-it wasn't even midnight. He finished the rabbit and started toward the highway remembering the man he had killed last night and how his thirst had been satisfied then.

  Since he was convinced the woods were empty of prey, he did not waste time looking as he headed for the highway. The thought of another man and the blood one would hold was almost overpowering and as he pushed his way through the undergrowth he could not suppress a small, nearly hysterical laugh.

  He came to a stop the instant he spied the house.

  He moved more silently, realizing this was the place he wanted. Man lived in houses. This house…

  This house was familiar-disturbingly familiar. He had an almost subliminal awareness that he knew the house well and that he was known there. It scared him.

  But thirst conquered unrest. Coleman slipped from the line of trees and crossed the yard towards the weak yellowish light that came through one window. He stared in at the window but the room beyond was empty. With shuffling uncertain steps, he approached the door and touched the frame, assiduously avoiding contact with the screen itself. The latched door moved slightly, making a small noise.

  He realized that he could not get in through the latched door. He remembered that once he had gotten in. He forced himself to remember. There was a time when he could get people to come open a door for him. Perhaps they still would. He decided to try. He slapped the door with the flat of his hand and made a muted thumping sound. It wasn't right. He balled his hand and tried again, this time rapping his knuckles against the wood.

  No one came. He knocked again, louder. From somewhere in back he could hear noises and a woman's voice called out, "I'll be there in a minute."

  But she was there, opening the door for him, before the minute was up. She stared at him and he stared dumbly back at her. He knew that she was someone he had known for some time. She had a name. It came to him that her name was Grace. Once she had been the most important thing in the world to him but that seemed long ago.

  "Sam?" she said in a stunned voice. "Sam? Is that-! Oh God, Sam. Come in!"

  She threw the door open wider and Coleman entered the house. Grace was crying.

  "Grace," he said without looking at her. "Grace."

  She looked up at him, wiping tears from her face with the back of her left hand. Sam stood watching her, his own feelings oddly mixed. Her expression changed and the look of relief hardened into one of anger. "Why did you do that?" she asked. "Where have you been?"

  Her anger puzzled Coleman. He pointed towards the woods and said, "Out there."

  She turned away from him, crying again. "You don't know how worried I've been. So have the children. You don't have the right to leave us like that, Sam and then come back looking like you've been… I don't know where!"

  Without knowing why he did so, Coleman touched her shoulder. She turned and looked into his face as if seeing it for the first time.

  "Oh Sam," she said, pressing him, squeezing him tightly, oblivious of the filth that clung to him. "I'm sorry if I was a nagging wife. It's been bad, that's all." She stood back and frowned as she looked at him. There was dirt on her face where she'd pressed her cheek against his chest. "Sam, you're filthy. Those clothes are torn and your wound has dirt on it. There's dirt all over you and you haven't had a b
ath in a month. You've got to clean up and see a doctor."

  "No doctor," Coleman said.

  "Don't argue with me. The pain must be more than you can bear." She lightly brushed something away from his mouth with her fingertips. "You got some kind of dirt on your face around your mouth. You look like one of the boys trying to eat chocolate candy. It doesn't look like ordinary dirt at all."

  She held her hand up and looked closely at it. "It isn't dirt," she said. "It isn't dirt at all."

  She held her head up and Coleman saw the soft curvature of her throat. Of her plump, bare upper arms. His hand moved as if by itself and touched her neck. It seemed to him that his sensitive fingers could feel the blood coursing through the jugular. So much blood. So very accessible.

  "This isn't dirt," Grace said, with a weak voice. "Sam, it's blood!"

  Coleman grabbed her shoulders tightly and shoved her to the floor. She screamed and struggled but he held her down, his hands going to her throat, pressing against it. She screamed his name and from another part of the house Coleman could hear a child crying-no, more than one. Two. Three…

  Coleman was shaking uncontrollably. He looked down at Grace's face, contorted in fear and astonishment. He made a small animal noise as he realized he could not bring himself to tear open her throat. He got clumsily to his feet and stood, unable to move. Grace was crying in fear as she stood up and backed away from him.

  The thirst was great. Part of Coleman's mind demanded, begged him to tear her throat to satisfy the thirst. But another part rebelled against the idea. Coleman cried out and turned to flee from the house and into the woods, hearing her calling after him as he ran.

  He found a place near the highway a good distance from the house and stopped running. He sat down shaking with reaction he did not understand. For a moment he forgot the thirst. He had tried to hurt Grace. What could have come over him?