by Jack Kilborn
Mal nodded, which made him slightly dizzy. He knew he was rambling, but it helped him feel grounded. “It caused massive birth defects. Real freaky stuff. Pregnant women taking it gave birth to children with some pretty terrible deformities.” Mal pointed to the well. “And it’s apparently gotten into the Inn’s water supply. The drugs have seeped into the ground. Anyone pregnant drinking from that well will… oh, shit.”
Mal’s addled brain remembered the woman who very obviously was with child.
“Are you saying,” the woman was gently rubbing her belly, “that my baby…”
“We don’t know that,” Letti went over to her. “We don’t know for sure, Sue. We’ll get you to a doctor when we get out of here.”
“But… this is Larry’s baby. It’s supposed to be normal.”
Letti patted Sue’s hair. “There’s nothing we can do about it now, Sue. Let’s focus on getting out of here.”
“I can’t have one of those freaks growing inside me. I can’t.”
Mal had been feeling pretty terrible before, but now he felt like curling up into a ball and dying.
“There’s the door,” Cam said. “Maybe that’s the way out.”
Cam led Kelly, by the hand, to the exit. Letti and JD followed.
“I’m so sorry,” Mal said to Sue.
“They did things to me,” Sue said. “Horrible things. I can’t have my baby be like that.”
“I’m sure it will be okay,” Mal lied.
Sue nodded. She and Mal walked toward the door, and then Sue broke off, heading for the well.
“Wait! Don’t!”
The pregnant woman gave him a sad, backward glance, then jumped into the hole. Two seconds later, there was a splash.
“Help!” Mal shouted. “Help us!”
Letti and Maria hurried over.
“She jumped in. She just jumped in.”
The three of them formed a ring around the well, staring down into the blackness.
“Sue!” Letti called.
Sue didn’t reply. There were no splashing noises. No sounds of struggling.
Just bubbles.
The bubbles of someone letting all the air out of her lungs and sinking.
Aw, Jesus, what have I done?
“It’s not your fault,” Letti said. “She would have found out eventually.”
Mal continued to stare into the well. Jumping in didn’t seem like a bad idea, actually.
“We need you,” Letti said, taking his good arm. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but we need to stick together to get out of here.”
“We can’t,” Mal said. “We can’t get away.”
“Yes we can.”
Mal pulled away. “They’ve been killing people for over forty years. More than five hundred people. No one has ever escaped to tell the world about it.”
“Then we’ll be the first.”
Mal stared into Letti’s eyes. They were strong, determined. Like Deb’s eyes.
Deb.
I have to find Deb.
“I guess I could lend a hand,” Mal said. “One, at least.”
He allowed Letti and Maria to lead him to the door. The next room was another storage area, thalidomide boxes stacked everywhere. There were three other doors, not including the one they came through.
“Kelly?” Letti said, looking around. “Kelly!”
But Kelly, the dog, and the boy were gone.
Felix opened his eyes to blurry, swirling lights. He took a breath and winced—add several broken ribs to his grocery list of things that hurt. Blinking, he realized he was on his back, lying in the woods. The two lights he saw were headlights, coming from a vehicle a dozen yards away.
The memories came to him in snippets.
…accidentally shooting John in the head…
…being taken here in a police car…
…the cougar attack…
…getting hit by the tow truck…
The tow truck.
Felix knew the tow truck was part of this whole nightmare. He needed to get away from it. Far away.
Biting his lower lip so the whimpering wasn’t too loud, Felix managed to turn onto his side. There wasn’t a single part of his body that didn’t throb.
A stick broke, nearby. Someone walking through the underbrush.
Ronald? Or the tow truck driver, Ulysses?
Felix looked around, saw he was near a depression in the ground filled with dead leaves and pine needles. He rolled to it, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain, coming to a rest on his back because he couldn’t breathe while on his stomach with his ribs hurting so badly. Then he put a stick in his mouth to bite down on, and used his mangled hands to scoop dirt and dead foliage onto himself, trying to cover his body completely.
The sound got closer. It was steady, rhythmic.
Footsteps.
If Felix had any doubt it was Ulysses coming for him, those doubts were laid to rest when he heard, “Don’ make me come find you, little man. You make me hunt around, it’ll be worse on ya.”
If Felix had any sense of humor left, he might have laughed at the irony.
Like things could get worse.
The footsteps got closer. Felix peeked up through the pine needles on his face, waiting for Ulysses to approach.
That’s when he noticed his cell phone.
He’d had it in his jeans pocket. It must have come out when he was hit by the truck, or when he was rolling. The tiny green light, indicating the phone was on, blinked like a homing beacon.
If Ulysses sees that phone…
Just then, Ulysses walked into the clearing.
He was big, every bit as big as John. Thick in the shoulders and the chest. A head as massive as a tree stump. Felix could only make out his silhouette in the moonlight, but he could see Ulysses was carrying something long and curved.
A crowbar.
Felix quickly reached out his hand, slapping his palm over his cell phone, covering the green light.
Then there was a burst of red. Ulysses had lit a flare.
The red glow illuminated the large man’s facial deformity. The right side of his face bulged out like he had a baseball under his skin. This stretched out his mouth, making it almost twice as wide as normal. Ulysses looked like he could swallow an orange, whole.
Felix stared, impotent, as the man stalked closer. Soon he was three steps away…
Two steps…
One step.
Please no oh please don’t step on…
MY HAND!
Ulysses’s work boot crunched down on Felix’s broken hand, prompting a pain so intense Felix had to gnash his teeth so he didn’t scream.
“Y’all put a dent in my truck,” Ulysses said, staring into the woods.
Get off my hand! Get off!
“When I find you, I’m gonna beat out that dent with your skull.”
GETOFFGETOFFGETOFF!!!
Ulysses hacked and spat, hitting Felix on the cheek. Felix squeezed his eyes shut, feeling it slide down into his ear, knowing he couldn’t hold the scream in any longer.
Then Ulysses abruptly walked on, into the forest, the red flare growing dimmer and eventually disappearing.
With tremendous effort, Felix got up onto his knees, and shoved the cell phone back into his pocket using his thumb and pinky.
The Inn. I need to go back to the Inn and find Maria.
But with his mangled hands, he knew he was practically useless. He couldn’t hold a weapon. He couldn’t even open a door.
Are my fingers broken? Or just dislocated?
Squinting in the moonlight, he studied his bent digits. The bends and twists were primarily around the knuckles. But, incredibly, the two of the fingers Ulysses had steeped on looked better than before.
Maybe I can bend them all back.
He brought his right hand up to his mouth, ready to stick his finger inside.
Just bite down, and let gravity do the rest.
But Felix didn’t bite down. On th
e list of things he didn’t want to do, trying to fix his fingers ranked slightly above pouring gasoline on his head and setting his hair on fire.
Just do it.
Felix didn’t move.
Do it! For Maria!
He clamped his teeth down, hard, and then quickly dropped his wrist.
SNAP!
A sob escaped him, and his whole body shook. But his index finger did seem to be better. Even semi-functional.
Three more to go.
He switched hands, raising the left one to his face, when he noticed a firefly in the bushes, glinting yellow. The firefly also had a mate, a few inches away.
Then the fireflies blinked, and Felix realized he wasn’t staring at fireflies.
He was looking into the eyes of the mountain lion.
Deb didn’t hesitate. With her folding knife in a death grip, she hacked away at the throat of the nearest Siamese twin, cutting and slashing until she hit bone and they crawled off of her, spraying geysers of blood.
When they got to the bed, the twins sat up. The duo shared the same two legs, but at the chest they forked into two halves. A single, underdeveloped arm jutted out of their sternum just below the split. The head on the left-hand side was limp, nodding forward, eyes rolled up. The left arm was similarly slack.
“Andrew?” the other head said, staring at his dead twin. “What’s wrong, Andrew?”
He slapped the slack head, repeatedly. Deb gawked, the horrible image too much for her to handle. She scooted away from them, snagging the bag with her prosthetic legs from the closet.
“You killed Andrew!” the other twin cried. He attempted to lunge at Deb, but only half of his body worked. As he pathetically tried to drag himself forward, Deb crawled to the nearest wall and pulled herself up.
The blood soaking her sweater was warm, and the stench was making her sick. She stripped it off, down to her tee shirt and shorts, and headed into the hallway. More than anything else, she wanted to run outside, get as far away from this awful house as possible. But she wasn’t going to leave Mal behind. Somehow, she knew he’d give her the same consideration if the roles were reversed.
The next room over had Abraham Lincoln stencilled on the door. Brandishing the knife, Deb went in quick, feeling along the wall for the light switch. When she flipped it on, all she saw was lots of creepy Lincoln decor. But it was empty of people.
Next came Calvin Coolidge. Like every door so far, it was unlocked, making Deb wonder if any of the locks actually worked. Testing her theory, she turned the lock on the knob and then twisted it.
It doesn’t lock at all.
Again she stepped into a dark room, reaching for the light switch next to the doorway—
—touching the man who was standing there.
Deb recoiled, pulling away, backpedalling into the hall. Her ass hit the banister, and for a crazy moment she thought she was going to flip over it and tumble down to the first floor. She lowered her center of gravity by doing the splits, her Cheetah prosthetics splaying out as she sat on her ass.
Whomever she accidentally touched walked out of the dark room, into the light of the hallway. He had a large brow ridge, bisected with a single bushy eyebrow, on a head that was big and flatish on top. His arms were longer than they should have been, and his fingers were fused together in a triangle shape, like the flippers of a walrus. His other hand had a bloody bandage wrapped around it.
But the most repulsive thing of all was his torso. He had no shirt, and his pale, hairless chest was pocked with dozens of—
Nipples. He’s covered with nipples.
The freak opened his mouth and made a noise that was a lot like the honking of a Canadian goose. Then he lunged.
Deb thrust her blade at him, but he batted it aside with his bandaged hand, sending it skittering across the floor. She tried to scurry after the knife, but the curved fiberglass of her Cheetahs slipped across the wood floor. The only traction on her prosthetics were the rubber treads, but in a sitting position the bottoms were bent upward like the ends of a W.
Calvin honked again, getting his arms around her, nipples poking at her face and eyes. Deb tried to turn, to get onto her hands and knees, but his grip was too strong.
Behind her, the banister creaked, then shifted.
Calvin backed up, apparently afraid of breaking it and falling over. Deb took the opportunity to lunge for the knife, tapping it with her fingertips, sending it spinning toward the railing.
Don’t fall! Don’t fall!
The knife handle teeter-tottered over the ledge then righted itself. Deb stretched farther, trying to snag it, and then her head was yanked back by her hair. But it felt more than just pulling. It also felt wet.
She turned her head, trying to see what was happening peripherally.
He’s biting my hair.
Deb tried to push against the floor, but her prosthetics couldn’t get a purchase. Then her eyes flitted to her bag, the strap still around her shoulder. She reached for it.
Calvin’s hands moved down, encircling her neck, and Deb thought he was going to strangle her. But the pervert lowered his hands, reaching for her breasts instead.
Bad move.
Deb tugged down the zipper on her suitcase and freed one of her prosthetic mountain climbing legs—the one with the spikes on the toe.
Calvin got the spiked end in the eye.
He honked again, rolling off of her, slapping both hands to his face.
Deb grabbed the knife and pulled herself upright, ready to fight back. But the strange, heaving sounds Calvin made had a familiar, rhythmic pattern that made her pause.
He’s crying. Like a little kid.
While Deb was deciding what to do next, Calvin let out a mighty roar and tackled her, both of them flying over the railing, crashing to the floor twelve feet below.
Florence spent a lifetime studying the martial arts to become more in touch with her body, her surroundings, and her spirituality. But along the path to enlightenment, she also learned how to fight.
The two shots to the head didn’t even slow down the monstrous Warren, with his massive skull and elephantine legs. But Florence also had a knife. She moved easily and fluidly toward the stampeding giant, dropped her left shoulder, and rolled up to him, thrusting the Sheriff’s blade deep into his inner thigh. Florence twisted the knife, intending to sever the body’s largest artery, the femoral. Battlefield triage in Vietnam had shown her how quickly an injury like that proved fatal.
Incredibly, Warren swatted her aside, like she was a pesky fly. Florence moved with the blow, deflecting most of its force, and faced him on all fours, still clutching the knife. She waited for him to drop.
He didn’t. His leg was bleeding, but not gushing like she’d expected.
His thigh is so thick I missed the artery.
“You stabbed Warren,” Warren said.
“And I’ll do it again unless Warren leaves me alone.”
Florence eyed the door. She probably had a chance to get away. But Warren would no doubt follow, and alert others to what was going on.
It’s self-defense, Florence told herself. I’m not actively trying to kill a man.
But Florence knew Warren had to die if she was going to find Letti and Kelly.
Strangely, she was okay with that.
“How many brothers do you have, Warren?”
Warren plodded over to the dresser, picking up a packet. He tore it open and slapped white powder onto his thigh and forehead. The bleeding stopped almost immediately.
The styptic the Sheriff mentioned.
“Warren has lots of brothers.”
“How many is lots?”
He turned to face her. “Lots.”
“Your brothers have my daughter and granddaughter. I want to know where they are.”
Warren took a step toward her, spreading out his arms. “In the slave cellar. Where y’all ‘r gonna be.”
“Warren, if you go back to bed, and promise not to tell anyone, I won
’t kill you.”
Warren made a low, throaty sound, that Florence figured out was laughter.
“Warren is big ‘n strong. You ain’t gonna kill Warren.”
