by Edward Lee
Did she scowl at him? The word seemed to put a pike in her expression. “You were out longer than I was. Are you all right?”
“I think so. Christ, that fucker Sullivan hit me hard.”
“You were dreaming,” she said.
Dreaming. Was he? Or was I remembering? Leaning up from the couch, he told her the whole story, twenty-five years late. About that day. About Dawnie, and the House, and the things he’d seen in it. “When I got back to my aunt’s house, I had a bad fever. I was laid up for days, didn’t know anything. The doctor came over, and I told him the story, and he told my aunt that I was hallucinating.”
“You weren’t,” Vicki said.
Phil contemplated that, reserving comment. He looked at her. Her face was bruised, there was blood crusting her red hair, and her clothes were torn. He also noticed that some of her teeth were missing.
“They raped you, didn’t they? I mean, before they beat you up and brought you out to the car?”
Very hesitantly, she nodded. “There were so many of them,” she eventually murmured. “They were taking turns with me. They were all laughing while they were doing it.”
“Don’t talk about it,” he said. “It’s best not to even think about it. Look, I’m gonna check you into the hospital, then I’ve got some things to take care of.” Oh, he had things to take care of all right. First, Sullivan, then Natter. And fuck the judicial process, he told himself. Why bother? He was going to tend to this himself.
“Don’t take me to the hospital,” she pleaded. “You don’t know Cody. He’ll figure that’s what you did, then he’ll send someone. You don’t understand these people. They’ll sacrifice themselves for him. He’ll send someone to kill me. Just let me go with you.”
What could he say? She’s right. “Okay. Let’s go.”
He helped her up, and aided her down the hall and back out to the car. He had lots of questions, but he didn’t want to pour them on all at once, not after what she’d just been through. “Let me ask you something, Vicki. How did Natter know that I’d seen you?”
“Watchdogs,” she told him. “He had Creekers following me. They must’ve seen me come here… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s not your fault.” Watchdogs, huh? he thought. Well, I’ll be putting a leash on them, and fast. It was close to two in the morning. He drove the Malibu down the Route to the station. “Shit!” he exclaimed when he pulled into the lot. Mullins’ car wasn’t there, and neither was Susan’s.
Phil needed backup. And he needed guns.
“I gotta find some hardware,” he said. “Come on.”
In Mullins’ office there was nothing, just file cabinets full of papers, and an equipment locker hung with junk. He tried calling Mullins, but there was no answer. No answer at Susan’s either. And just as he hung up the receiver, the phone rang…
“Yeah?” he answered, wiping sweat. and blood off his brow.
The ancient voice creaked like an old house in the wind. “Didn’t I tell you, all those years ago, that we’d see you again someday?”
But we’ll see you again someday, his memories echoed.
He’d known the minute he regained consciousness that the giant figure from his childhood and Natter were the same…
And Natter’s voice, now, rattled on. “An incentive, perhaps? Yes.”
“What are you talking about, you fucker?” Phil yelled into the phone.
“There’s someone here,” Natter guttered on, “who’d like very much to talk to you.” The line crackled, the pause seemed to last hours. Then:
“Phil?”
Phil’s heart dropped. It was Susan.
“Phil, they have me!”
“Where are you?”
“They’re doing…horrible things to me!”
Phil needn’t imagine. “Tell me where you are!”
“Phil, don’t come here! They’ll kill you—”
Her voice was pulled away, and Natter’s returned. “Incentive enough? Or…perhaps not. Listen, lawman.”
A scream shot through the line. Phil winced.
“In case you’re curious as to the cause of that scream,” Natter told him, “I’ll have you know that your good friend Mr. Sullivan just cut off one of your paramour’s nipples with a pair of roofing shears. But perhaps you need even more incentive. Yes?”
“Stop it! I’ll do whatever you say!” Phil yelled.
“Listen.”
“No!”
Another of Susan’s screams shrilled through the line.
“That,” Natter said, “was the entirety of the breast. Your friend Mr. Sullivan really is deft with a knife.”
“Hey, bub,” Phil heard next. “Come on out. Let’s party!”
Phil’s emotions collided. He could picture what they were doing to her. And the only other thing he could picture was killing them all.
“Natter, you there?”
“Indeed.”
“Don’t hurt her anymore. I’ll come out there. Just tell me where.”
“Ah, a test. Think.” Natter chuckled. “You know.”
“No, I don’t know! Tell me where you’re at!”
“Little boy. You remember.”
click
“Goddamn!” Phil shouted and slammed down the phone.
“They have Susan, don’t they?” Vicki asked.
“Yeah. Why? Why did they take her? Why do they want me to come there when they could’ve killed me earlier at Sallee’s?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Come on!”
They raced outside to the lockup. Maybe Gut, the prisoner, would be able to tell him something. And maybe Mullins had some guns stored there.
But he wilted when he trotted into the room of holding cells.
Gut had been…
Gutted, Phil observed.
He’d been hung by the neck from the cell’s ceiling, his large abdomen drooping open like fat white lips from a spine-deep knife slash. His innards lay in a pile at his swinging feet.
He pushed Vicki out into the hall before she could see it all. “Go down to the end of the hall and check out the storage room,” he directed. “Look for guns, ammo, anything we can use for weapons. Hurry!”
Distracted, she did so, and Phil went back into the cell rows. Gut’s cell door was unlocked. Who unlocked it? And when he looked closer, he noticed a scrap of paper pinned to Gut’s chest.
Phil squinted through the bars.
WE’RE WAITING FOR YOU, someone had written on the note.
In blood.
Christ, they planned this whole thing. But why?
He didn’t waste time. Several more lockers lined the block. Phil rummaged through them all but found nothing in the way of weapons. What kind of a fucking police station is this? he outraged to himself. There wasn’t a gun to be found. Like a fucking gas station with no gas! All he had was a puny .25, but he’d need a lot more than that for the undertaking he foresaw. A shotgun at least, and a couple of 9mm’s would be nice. But in the last locker, in a box at the bottom, something caught his eye. He picked it up…
My God, he slowly thought.
It was a framed black and white picture, like something taken at a graduation, yellowed with age. Two men, in police cadet uniforms, stood smiling for the camera, their arms draped about each other’s shoulders.
Phil couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
One of the men was Mullins.
The other was Dignazio, the guy who’d set Phil up on the Metro scam.
“I just pulled up out front,” came a voice from behind him. “Didn’t want you to hear my car. Pretty nifty job they did on Gut, huh? It was me who gave ’em the keys.”
Phil turned to face Mullins, whose bulk filled the block entry. The chief’s fat hand was filled with a Colt .357.
“You set me up,” Phil said stonily. “You had Dignazio kill that kid and plant the illegal rounds in my piece.”
“You got it.”
“Why?�
�
“To get ya back. Me and Dignazio, we been friends since we got out of the academy. I asked the guy a favor, and he did it. And me and Natter—well, we ain’t exactly what I’d call friends, but we’ve always had an agreement. He runs his whores out of Sallee’s and gives me a cut for lookin’ the other way.”
“And I guess he gives you a cut for looking the other way on his PCP network, too, huh?” Phil suddenly felt certain.
Mullins’ big, bulbous face grinned at the remark. “Jeez, Phil, you must’a left your brains back at Metro along with your career.”
“What’s that mean?” Phil asked.
“Natter ain’t got no PCP network.”
Phil peered through his own confusion; he stood in an instant fog. No…network? Suddenly the revelation made sense: in all of his investigative work, he actually had found not one iota of evidence to suggest that Natter was dealing PCP. Just heresay, just lies. Just…Mullins, he realized.
“You’ve been lying to me the whole time. You’ve had me looking for a PCP lab that doesn’t exist. You made the whole thing up.”
“That’s right, partner,” Mullins admitted. “And you fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I know you’ve had a hard-on for PCP since Metro, so after I had Dignazio shit on you, I figured the quickest way to get you to take a job here was to make up some bullshit about Natter running dust. Shit, Natter ain’t never run dust. It’s all just been a bunch of cowboys like Peters and Sullivan and those guys, workin’ for a couple of labs out of town.”
“But…the murders—”
“Oh, sure, there’ve been murders for a long time, that part wasn’t BS. Natter and his Creekers have been offing people for as long as I can remember. It was part of the deal. I looked the other way on that, too. And when time started to get short, I told him to start hitting local dust runners ’cos that way you’d be more likely to believe the whole story in the first place.”
Hook line, and sinker, Phil thought. He’s right. Yeah, it all made sense now, all except one thing.
“Why? Why?” he asked in total perplexion. “Why go to all that trouble? It almost sounds like you were trying to lure me back to Crick City.”
“Something like that. It’ll give ya something to think about on our way to Natter’s.”
“Oh, so you’re going to deliver me, is that it?”
“Might as well, I’m here.” Mullins waved the gun toward the exit. “Drop your piece on the floor, and don’t try anything.”
Frowning, Phil took out his pocket .25—his only weapon—and tossed it aside.
“Good boy. Now come on. You’ve got some driving to do.”
Mullins kept his distance as Phil approached the exit. Shit, I’m had, Phil thought. He could try a disarm, but the chief wasn’t close enough; making a move would get him shot. His only chance was a distraction…
And at the same moment, Vicki walked in. “Phil, I couldn’t find anything in the storager—”
Mullins, taken by surprise, turned at Vicki’s voice. Then Vicki shrieked. It was all the distraction Phil was going to get, so he took his chance, spun back, and hit Mullins across the bridge of his nose—crack!—with his right hand. With his left, he grabbed Mullins’ gun.
A round went off; Phil flinched at the massive concussion. Next the two men were on the floor, wrestling. But Phil had the gun, and he shoved its blue-steel barrel under the chief’s jaw. “Give it up!” Phil growled, but Mullins only struggled further, his own hands pawing at Phil’s.
“Don’t!” Phil yelled.
BAM!
The magnum discharged, bucking fiercely once in Phil’s grasp. Cordite stinging his eyes, he lay still a moment. Mullins, however, lay significantly more still, his face agape. When the smoke cleared, Phil got up and saw that the chief’s bald pate had been replaced by a ragged, pulpous crater. A fantail of brains plumed from the man’s head across the shiny tile floor.
««—»»
They took Mullins’ souped squad car; it was more reliable than the Malibu, plus it had a pump shotgun in the dash-lock, and several revolvers which Vicki awkwardly loaded as Phil drove.
“Listen,” Phil said. “Earlier, when I told you about what happened to me as a kid, you said it wasn’t a hallucination.”
“It wasn’t,” Vicki grimly replied. “It’s all true. And that word you said when you came to—‘Ona’—”
“What is it? It’s a demon or something, right?”
“It’s something they worship. It’s their god.”
Their god, Phil reflected as the Route wound through another bend. A demon…
“I don’t know all the details,” Vicki went on, “but the story goes like this. The Creekers have always worshipped a devil, a male devil named Onn. For hundreds of years they made sacrifices to it—incarnation sacrifices…”
“Yeah?”
Vicki’s words darkened. “Well, supposedly, a long time ago, one of their rituals succeeded.”
Phil’s gaze saw little past the windshield. Am I supposed to believe this? She’s telling me that the Creekers incarnated a demon…
“Their goal, for all that time, was to add the demon to their bloodline. They considered this to be the ultimate blessing. According to the story, Onn mated with the least defected Creeker girl in their clan.”
“And then gave birth?” Phil guessed.
“Yes.”
“But to what?”
“To Ona, the female inbred of the demon and the Creekers.” Vicki paused. “That thing you saw when you were ten.”
Phil fell silent again, driving without direction. So many queer ideas were wafting through his head, he didn’t know what to think. “But they also call it ‘skeet-inner’—”
“That’s its nickname,” Vicki said. “Most of the Creekers can’t talk right—it’s called dyslalia—like dyslexia, only with words. When they say skeet-inner, they’re really saying—”
“Skin-eater,” Phil deduced, and with the deduction came a crushing weight of contemplation. Rhodes, those other cowboys on the death reports, and Dawnie, he remembered. They were all skinned. “So the murders weren’t really murders. They were sacrifices.”
“To Ona,” Vicki affirmed. “It’s symbolic. Consuming the appearance—the skin—of the unflawed. The Creekers consider themselves cursed by their inbreeding, so they pay homage with sacrifice victims. It’s the Creekers’ gift to Onn, by providing uncursed flesh to Onn’s inbred daughter. And the Creekers have been reproducing with it for generations.”
Phil thought about it, gripping the wheel. It was just too crazy. “I don’t believe it, Vicki.”
“How can you not believe it? You’ve seen the Creekers, you’ve seen how deformed they are. You ever seen any other hillfolk as defected as the Creekers?”
“Well, no,” Phil admitted.
“Most of them don’t even look human, and that’s because part of their bloodline isn’t human.”
Then Phil thought back to the books he’d read. She was right, at least in part. The worst-case examples in the photographs of typical inbreds weren’t nearly as genetically defected as most of the Creekers he’d seen. The consideration chopped through his head. Creekers. Inbred. With a demon…
By now he didn’t know what to believe. The only thing he was sure of was this: Natter and his Creekers have Susan, and they’re going to torture her to death unless I can find them.
“Okay, so you’re telling me that Ona is real, fine. Then the House must be real, too.”
Vicki nodded.
“Tell me how to get there,” Phil said.
— | — | —
Thirty
“So many years, so many ages,” he whispered.
Eternity, he thought.
Years were grains of sand sifting through his fingers.
Multitudes had gladly given their blood, their lives.
Onn, he thought. And blessed Ona.
“Unto you we bow forever…”
Redeemer. Sanctifier. Holy father, holy
daughter.
The visions sang to him; they always did. Entrails routed briskly from the bellies of the unfaithful. Blood squeezed from the heads of the unsaved. Screaming faces clawed at till they were screaming plops of pulp. Soon, yes, the cursed would become the blessed, the damned would rise to the dark heights of the absolved.
Soon they would go on, shed of their curse, enlightened instead of deprived, one with their master.
Forward into the new nights of a new age, perfect instead of corrupted, no longer in turmoil but in bliss…
Natter, the Reverend, opened his eyes upon the hot, starry night. His old, blotched skin felt new and young now. His ancient mind felt aglow. His savior whispered blessings to him.
The moon shined on the crags and furrows of his disfigured face. His triple-jointed hands opened to the sky.
“So many years, so many ages.”
Time was no longer short.
Instead, the time was upon them.
— | — | —
Thirty-One
“They’re also telepathic,” she said.
“What?”
Vicki shifted in the passenger seat, her red hair flowing about in the warm breeze from the window. “Ona,” she said. “And Cody too, and some of the stronger Creekers. You can hear them in your head.”
Phil scowled. “That’s a load of—” But then he stopped. Wasn’t that what Gut had told him? That Natter talked to him at night, in his head? And showed him visions? Even Phil himself had to acknowledge it. Twenty-five years ago, at the House, and just the other night when he and Eagle had been ambushed. He’d heard words, hadn’t he?
In my head.
“Just tell me how to get to the House,” he insisted.
“You don’t believe it, do you?”
I don’t know what I believe, he told himself. “Look, I don’t want to hear anymore about demons, all right? I got enough to worry about.” That much was true. Like, how was he going to get Susan out? If she’s not dead already, he added. And since Natter was expecting him, and anticipating his motives, the House would surely be a fortress of armed Creekers. And all I’ve got to fight back with is a shotgun, three pistols, and a drug-addicted prostitute…
