Slaughter Series

by A. I. Nasser

  John pulled the drapes aside and realized that the sun had already begun to set, the sky a deep crimson that teased him with the passing of the day, pointing and laughing that he had missed his chance at a few good moments of yellow sun.

  He didn’t care.

  John opened the window to his room, the latches straining, the pane swinging easily. He stared out across the field where just weeks before he had watched Eva Green skip home after a night together. The field was barren, and the Victorian that had been her home was a burnt out pile of rubble.

  John lit his cigarette, took in a deep breath and exhaled as the sound of running feet started to echo above his head.

  Chapter 20

  Nobody had expected to see David Green so soon.

  The tall man strolled through Gale Street, his head high, his eyes darting left and right as the people passing by averted theirs. His hair seemed to float in thin strands around his head, the strains of white having had increased over the past few days, giving him the tousled look of a man who had definitely seen better days.

  And everyone in Cafeville knew that David Green was not a man used to seeing bad ones.

  The Green fortune was known to all, marked on every corner and in every building that lined the new roads coursing through Cafeville. Even on Gale Street, the family had left its mark with one of the most notorious venues in town, the arcade, a place that had once been filled with laughter and fun, but was now a Halloween attraction for those brave enough to venture inside.

  David Green was a force to be reckoned with, even now, after losing his home and his daughter all in one night. His tall frame was as intimidating as it had ever been, and even in the cold, his coat hung open and blew in the wind like the cape of a super villain out of a comic book. The sneer on his face pushed anyone away as his stride went unabated until he reached Hank Pollard’s store and stormed inside.

  “You!” he bellowed, his voice echoing across the store as he pointed his finger angrily at Hank.

  Hank immediately dropped the work he was doing, his hand instinctively going to the double barrel shotgun he had hiding under the countertop in cases of emergency. He felt like this might just be one of them, and he prayed to the Heavens that David wouldn’t force him to pull it out of its resting spot.

  “It wasn’t a gas leak, was it?” David yelled.

  Hank frowned and shook his head in confusion, his mind taking only a few seconds to register what the man was referring to.

  “My daughter did not die in a gas leak!”

  Hank stepped back far enough to make sure David couldn’t reach over the counter and grab him. Hank’s hand clutched onto the weapon firmly, his knuckles a gleaming white.

  “You ain’t makin’ a lotta sense, Mr. Green,” Hank said, his eyes locked onto the man’s manic gaze. “What d’ya want me t’say?”

  “You’ve been checking my house for years,” David hissed. “You never said one thing about a possible gas leak.”

  “Cuz there ain’t never been one,” Hank said. “Everythin’ was fine with that ol’ place.”

  “So how are they saying it was a gas leak, Pollard?” David balked. “How are they blaming my daughter’s death on faulty piping?”

  Hank shook his head, trying his best to keep cool as his shaking hands threatened to give him away. “I don’t know.”

  Hank had his suspicions about what had happened, but he wasn’t about to share that with David. Not when they were the only two in the store. Whatever consequences might arise from him voicing his opinion, Hank didn’t want to have only his word to fall back on. Everyone knew to take whatever he said with a grain of salt, even when he was telling the truth. Doing something stupid, doing anything at all actually, without witnesses would only mean he was digging his own grave.

  David Green saw that. At one moment he was furious, his clenched fists slamming against the countertop with every stressed word, and in the next he was suddenly very calm and pensive, one eyebrow cocked as he read everything in Hank’s eyes.

  “You know who did this, don’t you?”

  Hank quickly shook his head, a little too quickly for his own good, and instantly regretted it. There was a glimmer of a smile on David’s face, and that small arch that was his lips was a chilling thing to see on a man mourning the death of his only daughter.

  “You know, Hank,” David seemed to be confirming his suspicions to himself. “I can see it all over that round, porky face of yours. You know.”

  “I saw nothin’ more than what anyone else’s seen,” Hank said firmly.

  “It was Krik, wasn’t it?” David nodded slowly, rapping his fingers around the edge of the counter, his calmness a lot more alarming than his anger. “John Krik killed my daughter, didn’t he?”

  “John was with me all night,” Hank said. “That house was burnin’ long before we arrived.”

  David cocked his head to a side, frowning at the sudden shattering of his perfect explanation, before his eyes widened with a novel notion. “The wife!”

  Hank didn’t reply, suddenly feeling a shudder race through his body from hearing someone else voice his same suspicions.

  “The wife, she did it,” David said. “That’s the only explanation.”

  “They’ve already said what caused that fire, Mr. Green,” Hank said. “I suggest you lis’n to them.”

  David shook his head, a slow gesture that made him look more dazed than anything. “It was the wife,” he said, and with a final glance at Hank, he turned on his heels and left the store.

  Hank Pollard exhaled in relief, reluctantly letting go of his gun as he rested the palm of his hands on the countertop and tried to calm the beating of his heart. He looked at the door to his store, a part of him worried that David Green might just storm back in and attack him anyway. He counted down from ten, and when no one came back, he ran a hand through his hair and tried to think of what to do. He had a sinking feeling that David Green would do something that would only make matters worse.

  Hank Pollard pulled out his cellphone and swiped through his contacts until Sheriff Walter Garland’s name appeared.

  ***

  This is ridiculous.

  John ignored the voice, squinting as he tried to concentrate on the screen in front of him. The scurrying above his head continued, and he had turned off the lights in his room to keep their flickering from bothering him. Everything that seemed to be happening around him in the house was part of the routine. It was the new normal.

  He heard the slamming of window panes against walls downstairs, knowing that the latches had come undone despite his many attempts at fixing and replacing them. Over the past few days, he had come to terms that if they didn’t want to remain shut, nothing he or anyone else would do could keep them closed.

  The stench had also become worse, and John quickly found himself using a towel against the bedroom door to hinder the scent’s insidious attempts at suffocating his sinuses. He locked the door as well.

  This is a waste of time, Johnny-boy. You need to stop.

  John continued with the editing, at first reading through the last few pages he had written before deciding to delete the final three chapters and rewrite them. He had almost felt like he could hear the voice in his head scream with every deleted word, as if he had ripped its soul apart. There were pleas of mercy, then threats of retaliation, and John ignored them all, working through the changes like a sledgehammer against the drywall.

  You can’t change the story! Whatever you have planned, it’s not the way it ends!

  “I don’t care,” John said to the empty room. “I’m giving Derrick his ending, and then I’m done.”

  You’re a storyteller. You’re supposed to tell the truth.

  John was telling the truth, at least the one he believed readers wanted to read. Or, to be more specific, the one his editor wanted to read.

  He had felt good about how he had first ended his work, the final pages rounding everything up nicely into a gruesome resolutio
n worthy of the story being told. However, Derrick had been right; it was too dark, and it was not going to sit well with a lot of people. It had to go.

  You’re a liar!

  “Shut up,” John whispered as he began typing.

  His fingers raced across the keyboard, working on their own, already comfortable with the pace of relaying his thoughts. It wasn’t hard anymore, hadn’t been for a while now, and even when he was not being pushed by the voices, when he was not being motivated by some sinister stirring within, he knew that he could finish this off by dawn. It wasn’t the ending he wanted, the ending worthy of a horrific work like this, but it was still an ending.

  At the end of the day, the books had to sell.

  You’re kidding, right? Do you actually believe the bull you’re spewing?

  He didn’t.

  John knew that with every word that materialized on the blank screen in front of him, he was writing a story that was far from the one he had originally intended to write. At this point, however, he didn’t care. No one would know the difference. Fiction was fiction, after all, and people wanted to be entertained. They didn’t care what changes had led to the final manuscript they were holding in their hands.

  He just wanted to get this over with.

  And then what, Johnny-boy? What are you going to do next?

  “Go home,” John replied immediately, his mind already set on the sequence of events that would follow the final approval by Derrick.

  John had imagined that final day during each waking minute of the past few days. Derrick would clap his hands and praise him for an outstanding piece of literature, if that was what anyone could call it, and he would light one final cigarette in his room. He would go to sleep, ignoring the voices and the sounds and the lights and the house.

  In the morning, he would pack his bags. He wouldn’t clear out his stuff completely, because he really didn’t want to spend any longer than he needed to here. Just his laptop and the clothes strewn in the closet. He would pack hurriedly. He would throw everything in without even bothering to fold or organize. Then he would throw the bags in the trunk of his car and get the hell out of Cafeville.

  The only problem with that plan was Karen, or the woman who was pretending to be his wife.

  John had no idea what he would do about her. He had already given up on any hopes of talking to her. She was too far gone for reasoning or listening to logic, and even if she weren’t, she wouldn’t listen to him. Still, she was his wife, and leaving her behind was a worse sin than having had cheated on her. He just had no idea how to reach her.

  A part of him thought of June Summers, and of asking her to coax Karen into going back home. He had toyed with the idea, had even considered it a worthy solution before seeing how Karen had reacted around Hank. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

  Karen’s not going to go so easily.

  John knew that, but he owed it to her to try. He owed it to their son. Whatever evil had found its home inside her, he really felt like it was tied to the house. If he could get her away from here, out of Cafeville and back in familiar territory, there was a chance he could save whatever remained of the woman he loved. He didn’t care if his cheating tore their marriage apart; at least, he didn’t care right now.

  You can’t leave. What are you going to do, Johnny-boy? Are you really going to go back to your mundane city life where you couldn’t write a book to save your life?

  “Yes,” John said to the empty room.

  You can’t do that!

  “Watch me!”

  And what about me?

  John stopped typing, the sounds in the house suddenly gone, his thoughts deafening in the emptiness. For a second, he heard the voice in his head as loud as someone whispering in his ear.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  John waited, but there was no reply.

  Chapter 21

  “I’m not going back.”

  John stood patiently in the kitchen door, watching as Karen ran the water over the dishes in the sink and proceeded to scrub one after the other. His mind should have been focused on the fact that she had been wearing the same outfit for three days straight, her clothes wrinkled from having had been slept in. He should have been taking a closer look at her blistered feet scarred with splinters from the attic floor where she had been spending most of the last few nights, alone.

  Or at least he wanted to believe so.

  Instead he was trying to remember when the last time they had had a meal was; one that warranted her current dishwashing chore.

  “Karen, please,” John begged, his voice weak. He hadn’t called June yet, and he was hoping he wouldn’t really have to. Karen was his wife, after all, and there had to be a part of her still inside that shell of a body. He had to believe there was a way to reach her.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Karen’s voice came back, raspy, unlike her. “Can’t find a reason to stay now that your mistress is gone?”

  John sighed. “Karen, the book’s done. There’s no reason for us to stay.”

  “On the contrary,” she said, dropping the dish in her hand. John watched it shatter as it hit the ceramic floor. “I told you before, I want to move out of the city. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that you weren’t listening.”

  John’s eyes were fixated on the broken plate, shards littering the floor around her bare feet as she dropped a second one. She didn’t flinch as the sound of breaking china echoed in the kitchen.

  “We can find somewhere else,” John said. “Just not here. This place isn’t good for us, Karen. Cafeville isn’t good for us.”

  She dropped a third plate, and John knew she wasn’t going to stop until all the dishes in the sink were lying in pieces around her.

  “But I’ve made friends here, John,” she said. “So many friends. People who care about me.”

  “We can always visit June and Hank during the holidays.”

  Karen chuckled, a sound that was foreign to him, and for a moment he wanted to turn her around just to make sure it was actually Karen he was talking to. “June and Hank are not my friends, they’re yours.”

  “That’s unfair.”

  “Is it?” Karen suddenly stopped what she was doing and turned around to look at him. The gaze he received sent chills down his spine. “Is it really? Tell me, husband dearest, did they know about you and Eva?”

  John knew where this was going and tried to think of a way to change subjects. “This house is poisonous,” he said.

  “Answer the question!”

  Her voice was shriek, loud and piercing. It seemed to rattle the walls around him. He could sense her anger everywhere in the kitchen, the force of it suffocating him as he stood still and met her gaze. Her scowl made him cower, and he suddenly pondered actually leaving her behind. This was not his wife.

  “They knew nothing,” John said.

  Karen’s scowl softened and a smile found its way to her lips. Somehow, it made her look even more intimidating. John watched in horror as his wife slowly made her way towards him, his eyes drawn to her bare feet as they scrunched on the shards of broken china, cutting deep and drawing blood. She didn’t seem to notice, her smile unfaltering, as if she had no sense whatsoever of what she was doing.

  He pried his eyes away from the bloody footsteps she left behind, looking up into eyes that mirrored madness and fury, a stark contrast to her smile and the calmness of her face. She stopped only when she was a few inches away, her eyes locked on his, and she reached a hand out to his face.

  John flinched at the cold touch, the warmth of the gesture lost in the horror he felt as she stood so close to him.

  “I’d like to believe you,” Karen whispered. “I really do. But, it just seems so unlikely.”

  John felt a shiver run down his spine. For a few seconds, he could see Karen’s face shift and be replaced by an unfamiliar image of someone else before returning back to the more familiar features of his wife.

  “Trust me, Karen, they know no
thing.”

  “Trust you?” Karen frowned, her expression suddenly changing as she frowned at him. “That’s asking for a little too much, baby. All things considered.”

  John didn’t know how to answer her; the only thing he could do was step back and put some space between them. “You’re bleeding,” he whispered.

  Karen looked down at her feet, then back at her footprints. She smiled again and shrugged, as if she had no idea how that had happened.

  “How about a break?” John ventured. “We can just go home for a few days, see what we’ll do about moving out here, and then come back.”

  Karen looked over his shoulder at the suitcases he had left next to the front door, and then back at him. She shook a finger at him, slowly, and clicked her tongue in disapproval. “You don’t look like you’re packed for a few days, Johnny-boy,” she said, and the way she said his name made his heart stop. “You’re not trying to trick me, are you?”

  John shook his head quickly. “We’ll leave the bags here,” he suggested. “Just you, me, and the clothes on our back.”

  He could see she didn’t believe him, her eyes searching his for a catch. He just needed to get her away, even as much as outside the front door. He believed that a few miles between her and Cafeville might just be enough to snap her back to her senses.

  What if that doesn’t work, buddy? What if whatever’s in this house has somehow found a permanent residence inside her?

  It was a risk he was willing to take. Despite everything, this was his wife, the woman he loved, the mother of his child. He had to try.

  He was about to speak again when someone began slamming on the front door. Karen’s eyes went wide as she gasped in mock surprise. “Someone’s at the door, sweetie,” she whispered. “Did you invite someone without making sure I was decent first?”

  John peered over his shoulder at the door, then back at his wife. He wasn’t expecting anyone, but was willing to believe that fate had dealt him a card in his favor.