The Nightmare Girl

by Jonathan Janz

  Grayman detached from the crowd and hurried over to the fireplace. There was a bundle of twigs on the mantel Joe hadn’t noticed before. They looked like they’d been wrapped with twine. Grayman plucked the twig bundle off the mantel and poked it into the fire. When he stood erect he was holding a blazing torch. Without pause he moved up next to Bridget, who extended an arm. Without taking her eyes off Joe, she accepted the torch and held it two-handed before her, like some nudist pyromaniac about to say her wedding vows.

  “We honor Angela Waltz tonight,” Bridget said. “She undertook the darker of the two rites, the sacrifice of innocent blood.”

  Several cult members nodded at this or bowed their heads, but very few actually spoke. The only sound Joe could hear was the pop and crackle of the twigs as they were consumed. Several orange embers singed the flesh of Bridget’s fingers, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  “Now, all that is left is the consumption of the heathens.”

  “Yes,” Grayman said, and several cult members looked up at this, the contagion of the moment showing in their bared teeth, their heaving chests.

  Joe heard footsteps from the back hallway and wondered how many more people could fit in here. The room was vast, but there were already two dozen or more people packed shoulder to shoulder. But the crowd parted for the new arrival, and when he spied Baldy and what the man held, Joe began to shake his head.

  It was Little Stevie. The boy was naked, though Baldy’s beefy forearm covered most of the child’s bare rear end. In his other hand Baldy clutched a machete. The burly man strode over to the fireplace.

  “Wait!” Joe shouted.

  Grayman nodded reassuringly. “The child is too young to know any better.”

  “You can’t do this,” Joe said, though his voice came out a harsh sob. “You can’t hurt that boy.”

  “It is all for the renewal,” Bridget explained. “Neither of you will have died in vain.”

  “It’s all a waste of life,” Joe cried. “Can’t you see that? Me, Little Stevie, Copeland? Even Angie…she didn’t have to do it to herself.”

  Sharon Waltz burst loose from the crowd. She wore a sleeveless white dress tied around the waist with hemp rope. The dress, of course, was cut very short, and there were flowers in her hair. She was no doubt going for the flower child look, but to Joe she still resembled a porn star with too much mileage.

  “Don’t you talk about Angie!” she shrieked. “Don’t you talk about—” She broke off, seized Bridget’s wrist, and thrust the torch under the swing.

  All at once Joe realized what was happening.

  The heat on the metal base was instantaneous, the flames so high beneath the swing they actually licked up over the edge. Joe moaned and began to thrash. He realized why the Martins had wanted double-paned windows and as much sound damping as Joe could provide.

  It was to muffle his screams.

  But he still screamed, screamed almost as much as Little Stevie was screaming. Baldy had turned with the boy and was extending him toward the fire. Beneath Joe the metal base began to burn his naked flesh. Joe smelled sizzling bacon and shrieked until his throat went raw.

  No! he thought. This was beyond his worst nightmares. Please help Lily to be safe, he thought, the tears streaming down his cheeks. Please help Michelle—

  There was a collective gasp and outraged cries as something happened behind Joe, some commotion he couldn’t see from his angle. He supported himself on his elbows and heels because they didn’t hurt as badly as his shoulder blades and his ass did on the molten surface. He couldn’t help but let the back of his head touch the searing base, however. Soon his hair would ignite.

  His body contorted that way, he could just swivel his head enough to spot, upside down, two women, both of them with guns extended. One of them wore a police uniform…Alyssa, he thought. That’s what Copeland had called his fellow officer. Alyssa Jakes.

  The other woman was Michelle.

  “Let them go!” Joe’s wife shouted.

  “Now, ladies,” Grayman said, raising a hand and stepping toward them. “You don’t want to—”

  His forehead disintegrated.

  The crowd, which had been moving forward, stopped as one and watched Grayman drop to his knees, his eyes hinged wide in shock, and then slump forward face first onto the floor.

  Joe glanced back and saw it had been Michelle who had shot him.

  A man entered behind Michelle and Alyssa, and for a moment Joe thought one of the cult members had ambushed his saviors, would add them to the list of sacrifices. But the man wore a dark blue cop’s outfit like Alyssa’s, and he immediately rushed forward and pushed against the swing. Joe hung sideways, nearly perpendicular to the floor, but he saw the way the flames surrounded the officer’s ankles, the way they were already licking up his pant legs.

  “Shoot the chain,” the officer grunted.

  Alyssa Jakes strode forward, but a cult member darted out of the crowd, and she was forced to swing the gun sideways and fire at the man from point blank range. A gout of pulpy matter exploded out the back of the cult member’s head, the man falling very much like Grayman had moments earlier. The rest of the cult members froze. Joe was coughing, retching, his mind beyond rational thought. He knew it was too late, but somewhere, buried deep beneath the strata of horror and panic, he marveled at Michelle, at his wife who’d returned to save him. She was aiming at the eyehook from which the swing distended.

  A shot sounded and the swing gave way. The drop wasn’t far, but the impact was bone-rattling. The heat was unbearable, the whole room a maelstrom of smoke and scorched flesh. Joe was dimly aware of his own shrieking, but he couldn’t do a thing about it, couldn’t do anything but thrash and kick and bellow in agony. The metal disk was still roasting him.

  The whole world tilted, and Joe was suddenly face down on the floor. But at least it was cool wood, not the bonfire on which he’d been barbecued a moment ago. The cops and Michelle were trying to loosen Joe’s bonds. Joe’s left cheek was pressed flat with the weight of the swing bearing down on top of him, and from his vantage point he was able to see what had been beneath him moments before.

  It was a copper fire pit, a large, circular one. The kind you’d buy at a hardware store or even Wal-Mart. It had been kicked over, the burning logs starting several smaller fires in the living room. Joe wondered if maybe his imagination hadn’t made things worse than they’d really been. Hell, he’d been envisioning the climactic scene from an old Christopher Lee movie he’d once watched, but though he knew his back was burned, it might not be as bad he’d thought.

  Joe’s right hand popped free of its manacle, then his left. The circular disk of metal was lifted away from him, allowing blessedly cool air to swarm over his bare ass, his blistered back. His ankles popped free a moment later, and then the swing was removed, leaving Joe with his agony and gratitude. He pushed up on his elbows and felt Michelle’s arms around him. She helped Joe to his knees, and though he was aware of his own nudity, his dick out in the open for the whole congregation of freaks to behold, he didn’t much mind the exposure.

  Anything was preferable to being burned alive.

  Of course, if they all didn’t get out of this house soon, they might still perish. One of the curtains on the right side of the room was glowing with flames, and several pieces of furniture had begun to flicker. The room was growing hazy with smoke.

  Joe tried to say something but found his voice wouldn’t work. All he could manage was another coughing fit.

  Michelle was in his face, her eyes concerned moons. “What, honey?” she asked.

  “Stevie,” he managed to say.

  Alyssa, her gun leveled at the crowd, glanced down at him. “That’s the little boy, right?” She looked at Bridget and Sharon, who stood before the group. “Where is he?” Alyssa asked.

  “The boy,” Bridget said, “is
none of your concern. Now get out of my house.”

  The male cop—he had a bushy mustache and was slightly overweight—chuckled, but he didn’t lower his gun. “You’re kidding, right? You guys try to burn these people alive in some sick ritual, and you think you’re not going to jail?”

  “I’m never going to jail,” a voice from their left said, and Joe saw the distinguished old man from the chapel step through the crowd.

  With a gun.

  The cop with the bushy mustache just had time to shift his gun, but the old man opened up on him too quickly for the cop to even fire a shot. The slugs slammed the cop in the belly and chest, the man jagging like he was being electrocuted, and then the room devolved into pandemonium.

  No sooner had the old man opened fire on the officer than the entire throng of cult members darted in different directions. Several of them started for the back hallway, but the flames had spread to the doorway, the ivory paint seeming to breathe with shimmering heat. Seeing one escape route blocked, most of them scampered up the steps. One of the many who took refuge upstairs, Joe saw, was Baldy, who still carried the sobbing little boy in his arms.

  Bridget, Joe saw, was ushering her congregation up the steps, shouting, “Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid!” And despite the lunacy of the sentiment, almost all of them followed her command. But two cult members ignored her and instead headed straight for Alyssa.

  She fired on one, then the other. They both dropped and clutched the middle of their chests.

  At the same moment, the old man turned his gun on Joe.

  Then the old man was flailing backward, his shot going wild, both Michelle and Alyssa pumping rounds into him. One of the cult members, a giant shaggy-haired man, sprang at Michelle, but Joe’s wife was too quick. Her pistol fired just as the man’s ursine body crashed into hers. The man came down on Michelle, the gun sent skittering across the floor and Michelle’s head cracking the wood with appalling force, but then her attacker was scrabbling at his throat, the huge hole there spraying blood everywhere.

  As he finally got to his feet, Joe saw another cult member had produced a knife, and though Alyssa Jakes had already impressed Joe as a serious asskicker, she wasn’t fast enough to stop the man from slamming the blade straight into her belly. She fired her gun as the man stabbed her, but the shot hit the ceiling and the man pumped the knife into her gut four more times before Joe could grasp a log of firewood by the end that wasn’t burning, pivot, and bash him in the head. Sparks burst from the man’s skull as he stumbled back. Joe made to follow, but three more cult members—one of them a curly-haired twin—had regained their courage and doubled back to renew their attack.

  Joe reached down, pried the gun from Alyssa’s dying fingers, and brought it up just in time to shoot a boy no older than twenty who came at him with a fireplace poker. The slug punched the kid in the belly, and the boy went down screaming. Another cult member, this one a young woman—perhaps she was the gut-shot kid’s girlfriend—swooped toward Joe and began clawing at his face. Joe kneed her in the gut and hoped that would do it, but the girl, stooped over that way, spotted her boyfriend’s weapon, retrieved it, and came at Joe again with the fireplace poker, so Joe shot her in the face. She collapsed sideways and lay without moving.

  “You…coward,” the twin woman said to him.

  Joe glared at her and saw murder in her eyes. He raised the gun, squeezed the trigger.

  And heard a click.

  The twin sprang at him, moving with the agility of a jungle cat. Joe swung a foot up and caught her in the chest. Her breath whooshed out, and she dropped like a sack of meal. He brought his foot up and stomped on her chest. The woman squealed and clutched herself. Joe glanced down at Michelle, who was pushing up to her hands and knees. In the melee her gun had apparently been lost. The cop with the bushy mustache, his gun was gone too, probably pinned under one of the corpses. Joe threw a pained glance at the mantel, and above that, the crisscrossing Celtic swords displayed there. If he couldn’t locate a gun, he might have to use one of those.

  But the smoke was thickening, the flames climbing a wall now. The old-fashioned settee the Martins had arranged under one of the eastern windows was ablaze, as were the tapestries dangling over it. Joe got his hands under his wife’s armpits and hoisted her up. She moaned, muttered something unintelligible, but allowed him to lift her and carry her toward the doorway and the foyer beyond.

  They moved onto the newly laid tile, and Joe was just reaching for the knob when a strident battle cry erupted behind them. He turned in time to see the twin he’d stomped on moments ago hurtle toward them, something grasped above her head.

  The woman had noticed the swords too.

  The silver blade whished down at them and damn near chopped Joe’s head in half. He was just able to wrench Michelle sideways a millisecond before the heavy blade chunked into the front door. Fueled by a nauseated rage, Joe seized the twin by her curly hair and bashed her face into the door. He knew he’d likely immobilized her, but his arm moved without volition. He cocked her head back and then, as if swinging an axe, smashed her head into the door again. When it caroomed away, he saw a red spot on the ivory paint, but just to be thorough he smacked her head on the door three more times with as much force as he could muster. On the last strike he heard a sickening crunch and figured he’d just about obliterated the woman’s skull. So he pivoted and heaved her limp body back through the foyer.

  His whole body numb and trembling, Joe bent and shouldered his wife.

  Michelle hardly moved as he carried her out of the Baxter house. He knew he should get her to a hospital—she’d sustained a concussion at the very least—but at the moment all he cared about was getting her somewhere safe. Joe was about to carry her to their house when he spotted the neighbors on the lawn across the street. They were the Murphys, he remembered. John and Jenny. Two kids, both teenagers, were gawking on the lawn with their parents.

  With his wife slung over his shoulder, Joe strode toward them.

  “We heard a commotion,” Jenny said.

  Her husband didn’t speak, nor did the two teenagers, perhaps because they were struck dumb by the sight of a naked man, his body blistered and bleeding, approaching them with his unconscious wife draped over his shoulder.

  “Take her inside and lock your doors,” Joe said, pushing Michelle into John Murphy’s arms. Murphy accepted the load, but looked to Joe like a largemouth bass that had inadvertently leapt inside a fishing boat.

  “You have a gun?” Joe asked.

  When Murphy only continued to gape, Murphy’s teenage son said, “Dad has a twenty-two. He bought it to keep the raccoons out of our trash.”

  “Get it,” Joe said. “Take Michelle down to the basement, turn off all the lights, and stand guard.” He nodded across the street. “The people over there are the nastiest kind.” He started toward the Baxter house. “Call the fire department too.”

  Jenny gaped at the house. Wisps of smoke were beginning to curl from the first story windows. “There are people in there?”

  “That’s the thing about zealots,” Joe said, moving away. “They don’t have enough sense to save themselves.”

  Joe was crossing the street when the teenage girl finally found her voice. “Where are you going?”

  Without turning, Joe said, “To get my son.”

  Chapter Twenty

  He was fervently hoping the sword would still be wedged in the front door when he reentered the Baxter house, and it was. He was also hoping the fire hadn’t spread too much, and while it seemed this wish had been granted as well, the smoke still made breathing difficult. Joe’s eyes began to water as he reached up for the sword handle, braced a foot on the door to give himself some leverage.

  Something cracked the base of his skull. Joe sucked in startled breath and whirled to face his attacker.

  Scarface.

  The s
on of a bitch.

  The wraithlike man still gripped the stout wooden block with which he’d brained Joe. Upon further review, Joe realized it was the small clock from the mantel. The clock looked undamaged from its collision with Joe’s skull, but Joe’s head ached like a son of a bitch.

  He balled a fist and swung at Scarface, but the man danced away, smiling.

  “We’ll find your daughter,” Scarface said. “We’ll dine on her flesh.”

  Joe knew the bastard’s words were good news, that Lily was alive and at least for now was beyond their reach. But the rage inside him swelled so fast he could hardly think. He swung again at Scarface, but missed wildly this time, and Scarface brought the sharp-edged clock down on the top of Joe’s head.

  He sank to his knees, half-dazed, and saw that he’d backed Scarface into the wall. Before the man could strike again, Joe grasped him by the legs and lifted. Though Scarface was tall and surprisingly strong, he was as light as a mannequin. Joe squatted him easily into the air. He expected the man to bludgeon him with the clock again, but Scarface astonished him by letting loose with a witchlike cackle, the man delighted by Joe’s attempt at retaliation.

  Keep laughing, Joe thought.

  “I ate your friend,” Scarface said through his laughter. “The cop. I ate his heart this afternoon.”

  Joe pivoted toward the door.

  “I’ll eat your daughter’s heart t—” Scarface said but broke off when Joe let him straddle the sword. There was a neat slicing sound as the sword edge sank into the man’s perineum. From the sound of Scarface’s bellow of pain, the blade had cleaved his scrotum too. The man’s weight unseated the sword from the door, but not before it had done enough damage to send Scarface to the tile in the fetal position, the man gibbering in agony and pawing at his bleeding undercarriage. Joe reached down, grabbed the sword hilt, and though he yearned to make Scarface suffer more for his treatment of Darrell Copeland, he knew the time he had before the Baxter house became uninhabitable was short. So he inverted the sword, grasping the hilt with both hands, and drove the point straight down into the side of Scarface’s head. The keen blade entered through the man’s ear, shot through skull and brain, and cracked the tile floor beneath. Joe wrenched the sword out and was about to move to the living room when a heartbroken wail filled the foyer.