Feast of Fear

by Mark Edward Hall

  “Because on the nights of the murders you were home, in my arms, screaming in panic, delirious with the visions that you were somehow being forced to witness. You saw everything, Mitch.”

  “What about the blood, Ma? Where was the blood coming from?”

  “Your scar.”

  “What?” Mitch shook his head confusedly. He wasn’t sure he understood.

  “Your scar. On the nights of the murders your scar would open up like a fountain, and I swear, you would bleed out half your body’s supply before the scar would suddenly begin to heal again. By morning it would be healed, but red and irritated and it would pulse like it had its own heart.”

  “Oh my God, that’s what happened to me last night.”

  Elizabeth leaned forward toward her son, her pale blue eyes filled with terror. “Who, Mitch?” she asked. “Who did you see in your dream?”

  Mitch shook his head.

  “Come on, Mitch, I need to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when you were a child, every time you had one of your attacks someone would die. And you always . . . knew.”

  Mitch swallowed, thinking he might go crazy. Tears had filled his eyes and his scar was aching again, only now it was worse than before, like there was something inside it scratching to get out. “There were two of them, Ma.”

  Elizabeth stared at her son.

  “The first one was Al McKinney, and the second one was . . . you.”

  Elizabeth Redlon stopped breathing. Mitch saw the desperate terror in her eyes. “Oh, God, Mitch. What have I done?”

  “But you’re not dead,” Mitch said, taking his mother’s trembling hands in his. “Somehow you escaped.”

  “No, Son,” Elizabeth said. “You’re mistaken. I am dead. I’ve been dead since I made the decision to do what I did all those years ago. What happened to me last night was . . . well . . . just child’s play.”

  “Jesus, Ma, what the hell are you talking about? I don’t understand any of this.”

  “He’s trying to force me to tell you.”

  “Who, Ma? Jesus Christ, who?”

  “All of the victims were my clients,” Elizabeth went on, a dreamy look in her eyes. “It was as though he’d read it inside my head. Or perhaps it was your thoughts he was reading. I don’t know. God, you see, it wasn’t just me that he punished. He punished you, too, Mitch, and I never could figure out why.”

  Mitch stared.

  “The Eden police force somehow put it all together and tried to pin the blame on me, despite the evidence that a child was the only other person at the crime scenes, the only one that could possibly have done the crimes. But it didn’t make any sense. Little kids don’t commit murder. But they kept coming back to me, trying to figure out how I was doing it, convinced that I was accomplishing it through some sort of psychic witchery, or that perhaps I was even manipulating you. You see, the fact that all the victims had been my clients was the only other common link. You don’t know how afraid I’ve been all these years, Mitch. And how sorry.”

  Mitch leaned forward, staring into his mother’s eyes, knowing somehow, and feeling like he might lose his mind.

  “I couldn’t tell you, Mitch. Don’t you see? It was wrong what we did. You would have hated me. But I didn’t know what else to do. It seemed the sanest thing at the time.” Elizabeth Redlon broke into heavy sobs. “How could I have known he’d come back, Mitch? How could I have known that there’d be some sort of psychic or supernatural link between you two? The police were a lot closer to the truth than they could have ever guessed.”

  Mitch’s scar began to ache, dragging on him like a tide, threatening to pull him under for the last time. He brought his left hand around and began massaging it through his shirt, feeling the hard, pulsing scar-tissue with his finger tips. Yes, deep down, he knew, of course. In that moment he thought he’d always known.

  “Soon after moving to the house in Eden I was raped,” Elizabeth Redlon continued. “The man that raped me, his wife was one of my clients. That’s how I got to know him. He came to my door in the middle of the night drunk and . . . he wanted me to have sex with him. I laughed in his face. So he forced his way in.”

  Mitch stared at his mother in disbelief. “Are you telling me that I’m the product of a rape?”

  Elizabeth Redlon nodded as huge tears coursed down her scarred cheeks.

  “And you never told me?”

  “I couldn’t, Mitch. You see, nobody knew.”

  “You mean you never reported it?”

  “No, son, I wouldn’t have been believed.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he was a cop, one of Eden’s finest. And by then I’d been branded a witch. By the time I found out I was pregnant it was too late. I hid inside my house until you were born.”

  Mitch stood up and began to pace. “Which one is it, Ma? Which one of those sons of bitches did that to you?”

  “You know him, son. His name is Willis. Dale Willis. He’s one of the cops that tried to hang me with the murders.”

  “Oh my God, I don’t believe this. You mean to say that that fat, ugly asshole is my father?”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “I’ll kill him!”

  “No, Mitch. He doesn’t know.”

  “He knows he raped you. That’s all that counts.”

  “Six months into the pregnancy I knew something was wrong,” Elizabeth continued. “The pain had become nearly unbearable, and the bleeding. God, the bleeding. I thought I’d die from that alone. But I couldn’t go to the doctor. You see, Eden’s a small town. My life would have become an even bigger hell than it already was. So I hid it the best I could. I’d become acquainted with Al and Mildred McKinney. Mildred was one of my clients. They were the only two I told about the pregnancy. But when Mildred sensed that Al had become interested in me she turned against me, just like all the others in Eden. She spread the word about my pregnancy, told everyone that I was a whore and a witch and every other name in the book. By then I was in my seventh month, and I could do nothing but hide inside my house. I was hurting and bleeding so badly that Al insisted I go to the hospital. But I refused, you see, because I sensed something was wrong. I sensed that this would not be a birth I’d want the community at large to know about. Then one night when the pain was nearly unbearable I called Al. He came, but by then it was too late. You were already in the process of being born. Al was the one who delivered you, Mitch . . . he delivered both of you.”

  “Both of us?” Mitch said, confused.

  Elizabeth looked at her son with imploring eyes. “Yes,” she said. “You and your . . . brother.”

  Mitch stared at his mother, his mouth agape. He knew he’d heard her correctly, but still he was having trouble wrapping his brain around what she’d said. “My what?” he asked dumbly.

  Tears coursed down Elizabeth’s injured cheeks. “There were two of you, Mitch. You were conjoined. You were the normal, healthy one. Your brother was shriveled and deformed, blackened like he’d been through a fire. He was bent forward at the spine and horribly misshapen. You weighed maybe five pounds; your brother couldn’t have weighed more than two.”

  “Oh, God,” Mitch said as anger began to grip him. “You’ve been keeping this from me all these years?”

  “We did it for your own good, Mitch—”

  “For my own good!”

  “What we did is unforgivable, but we didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Was my brother born alive?” Mitch asked.

  Elizabeth nodded as tears coursed from her bloodshot eyes. “He was a monster, Mitch. His head was three times as large as yours, but his body was tiny and shriveled. His eyes were yellow, like cloudy sapphires, and his teeth . . . God, those awful teeth . . .”

  “He was born with teeth?”

  Elizabeth gave a quick nod of the head. “He was a monster, I told you. He wasn’t human. Somehow the devil got inside me and gave me a good child and an evil child. I cursed that b
astard Willis after he raped me; put a spell on him, but it backfired. Maybe it was God’s way of punishing me for the way I was, I don’t know. What I do know is we had to make a choice. We thought we could save you if we got rid of your brother, but he came back, Mitch. How could we have known he’d come back? How could we have known that you two would always be joined together?”

  Mitch sat in stunned silence, trying to absorb all his mother had told him. It was nearly impossible, of course. His brain was squealing like a bad internet connection and he thought he’d go crazy any second and start murdering people.

  “I asked Al to get the sharpest butcher knife in the cupboard,” Elizabeth Redlon went on. “He did as I asked. Al always did what I asked him to do. He was such a sap. I was bleeding, and in great physical and emotional pain. I would have done it myself if I’d had the strength. You and your . . . brother were joined in opposite directions. His right side was attached to your right side. Even if he had been normal, there was no way you two could have lived like that. I could see that it wouldn’t be difficult to separate you. There were no common organs. Or at least I didn’t think there were. You were joined merely by a stretch of skin on your right sides. After Al separated you, I sewed you up and doused the wound with alcohol. Oh, God how you screamed. But you healed, Mitch. You healed and you were okay.”

  “I wasn’t okay!” Mitch screamed. “I’ve never been okay!”

  Elizabeth stared wide-eyed at her son.

  “What happened to him?” Mitch asked in a calm and reasonable voice. There was a swelling of insanity in his heart and it took a tremendous amount of effort not to put his hands around his mother’s neck and choke the life out of her.

  Elizabeth stared.

  “I said, what happened to him?” Mitch said again, standing over his mother, his eyes swirling wildly in his head.

  “I told Al to take him and the knife out back and to bury them deeply in the sand pile by the bend in the brook. I said that nobody would ever know, and I made him promise never to tell. And nobody suspected a thing, until six years later when he came back and started killing.”

  “You buried him alive?” Mitch said, as tears coursed down his cheeks. “You buried my brother alive?”

  “You don’t understand, Mitch,” Elizabeth sobbed. “He was a monster. We did it for you.”

  “No, Mother! You did it for you! You buried your own child behind the house because he would have been an embarrassment to you. You’re the monster!” Mitch turned and left his mother weeping in her bed.

  It was dark by the time he reached the house. Mitch pulled his truck into the driveway and turned the engine off. He got out, closing the door carefully. The world was still and silent. The sky was clear and the moon was bright white, bathing the old house in motionless shadows. Mitch walked numbly to the door. It was still open, as it had been earlier in the day. He entered the kitchen. His scar was aching and throbbing, threatening to drag him to his knees.

  Mitch saw that there was a large object lying in the center of the kitchen floor. He strained to identify it, even though he guessed what it was, but in the limited light he could not make it out. He reached over and flipped on the kitchen light. The room was immediately bathed in light. On the floor, a huge red puddle beneath him, lay Al McKinney, or what was left of him. He’d been slashed nearly to pieces. Blood had sprayed the ceiling and painted the walls. There was a bloody butcher knife on the floor beside him, and all around the body, smeared in blood, were the footprints of a child. On the far wall, scratched in a bloody hand, were these words:

  Out back by the brook, Mitch I’ll be waiting for you~

  Mitch bent down and picked up the knife, gazing at it with a kind of dazed reverence. He recognized it, of course. It was the same knife he’d seen dozens of times in his nightmares, its business of brutality evident by the wear on its blade and handle. He stood and walked trancelike into the living room. On the far wall he stepped up to the window and pulled the curtain aside, gazing out into the moonlit back yard. Something small and bent scurried across the overgrown lawn.

  Mitch left the window and went out the back door, through the shed to the outside.

  The small bent form scurried into the woods at the far end of the yard. Mitch followed.

  When he reached the brook his brother was waiting there for him, standing atop the sand pile in which he’d been buried. Mitch halted. He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. His brother stood, bathed in moonlight, bent forward, and horribly misshapen. The naked body was small and blackened, as if it had been ruined by fire. The head was huge, however, as if some terrible disease had ravaged it, filling it with raw tumors. The eyes were large and bulbous and as fiercely yellow as sulfurous coal fires burning with phosphorescent life. Mitch’s mother had described the eyes as cloudy yellow sapphires, but Mitch thought them more the color of something alien, not of this earth. The creature had no nose, at least none that Mitch could see; just a black opening into a demented skull; the mouth was small and lipless, filled with teeth that would have been more at home in the mouth of a shark. Even in dreams Mitch had never seen anything that approached the sight he now laid his eyes upon.

  “She never even gave me a name,” it said.

  “I’m sorry,” Mitch replied.”

  “Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Why did you do all those things?” Mitch asked.

  “What?” The murders? It wasn’t just me, Mitch. “You were there too. You were part of it.”

  Mitch shook his head. “No. It was you. You made me go along. I’ve beat myself up for years thinking it was me. Now I know the truth. I saw everything, and it nearly drove me crazy.”

  “What about me, Mitch? What if you’d been buried alive out here instead of me? What would you have done?”

  “I would have died,” Mitch hissed. “You should have died. I don’t understand. How is any of this possible?”

  “You’re the one that kept me alive, Mitch. “It is through you that I have lived. Don’t you see?”

  Mitch stepped closer to the abomination. He was shaking his head as tears of emotion coursed down his cheeks. “No, I don’t see.”

  “Have you not felt my pain and my torment?”

  Mitch gave his head a nod. He could not deny these truths. He’d felt everything as if he had been inside his brother’s body, seen through his eyes, shared his heart and his soul. But of course he still didn’t understand. He might never understand, nevertheless a twisted species of curiosity made him probe deeper into the mystery. “I want to know why?” he demanded.

  “Why?”

  “Why . . . everything?” Mitch sobbed. “Why were you born? Why didn’t you die? Why did you have to be my brother?”

  The creature stared at Mitch, its sulfurous eyes burning. “Mitch,” it said. “Why must there always be simple answers? Nothing is simple.”

  “I know, but still, there has to be some reason to things.”

  “You want reason, Mitch. Okay, I’ll give you reason. It all happened because I was pissed off. There, how’s that? You feel better?”

  “No,” Mitch said, giving his head an angry shake. “There’s more to it than that.”

  “Jesus, Mitch, what do you want me to say? That I hung around because it was fun? Because I enjoy being like this? Because I get off on butchering people?”

  Mitch stood motionless, staring. He felt he’d hit upon something. As preposterous as it was, this seemed the most obvious answer. Even if there was more to it, what difference did it make? He’d never get the truth from this godless creature. He was kidding himself if he thought he could.

  Only now did Mitch realize he still carried the murder weapon, his grip so strong his hand hurt. In a sudden flash of inspiration he knew what he had to do. He wanted a life of his own, a life free of nightmares and monsters, free of the terrible incumbencies of pain that had wracked his existence for so long. The scar on his side was dragging him down, threatening to take him to h
is knees, further evidence of his suffering, and his need to be free. It would all end here, Mitch vowed. This would be his brother’s swan song.

  Without the luxury of further thought, his right hand moved forward at lightening speed. Moonlight glinted sharply off the knife’s blade in the instant before Mitch buried it to the hilt in his brother’s bulbous head. A searing wall of pain slammed into Mitch’s own head, nearly strong enough to blind him. He screamed, pulled the knife free and staggered back, understanding only too well what fruit the consequences of his actions might bear. He and his brother were linked in some incomprehensible way, and by killing him, well . . . the ramifications were obvious. Mitch stepped forward, however, and again buried the knife into the abomination, ripped it free and plunged it in again, and again, and again. Each time the blade did its dirty business Mitch howled into the echoing night like the tortured soul that he was, both writhing in agony and exulting in triumph, as if life and death were part of the same blurred purpose. Eventually all emotion receded, only to be replaced by its antithesis: oblivion. Numb, Mitch continued silently on with his slaughter, the abomination spitting and writhing beneath his assault, but not offering a single hand in retaliation. This only fueled the ambition inside of Mitch, spurring him on to even greater heights of brutality. If he never forgot the crimes his brother had hung around his neck, then so be it. If he survived this night he would have to live with them. This was an incontestable truth. With this slaughter he’d become the killer he’d convinced himself he’d been all along, The Fear born out to its inevitable conclusion.

  Vile smelling sewage jetted from the wounds he was opening up in the now motionless carcass, soaking Mitch with its poisons. After a very long time, the feeling gone from his body and the sanity from his mind, Mitch pulled the knife free for the final time and staggered back, inspecting his handiwork. He wiped the sewage from his face with the sleeve of his shirt, staring down at the mutilated form. He leaned over and wretched, puking muck from his mouth and nose. Unable to hold onto his consciousness a moment longer, Mitch collapsed in the sand beside his mutilated brother and slept.