The Devil Next Door

by Curran, Tim

  The hunters ravaged the camp, looking for weapons, for food. They kicked over the spit that the dog had been roasted on. They scattered the coals of the fire into a heap of dry kindling that immediately began to blaze.

  Leslie thought they might not notice her there in the grass, away from the fire. But the rekindled blaze made the yard glow orange and yellow, flickering. Then a form jumped down by her, a girl with long hair knotted with wildflowers and sticks. Her painted face was like that of a wild boar…fat, puffy, greasy, her eyes glistening black. She stank like shit and blood.

  She dragged Leslie by the ankles over towards the fire.

  The other girls snarled and snapped at her, kicked her and spit on her. The boys rushed in, gripping her breasts and the globes of her ass. One of them bit into her shoulder. They fought over her, yanking her in all directions, their dirty nails scratching into her back. They were all hard and she could smell the brine of their balls.

  She screamed.

  She hissed.

  Fingers groped her face and she bit one of them to the bone.

  Then the huge shaggy figure waded in, tossing the boys aside, screeching at all of them until they drew back and away. Leslie looked up at him. He was a huge man, shining with sweat. His hair was white and bristly, his face set with deep-hewn wrinkles and ruts. He wore a shaggy fur coat with the arms torn off, his chest on display. He had many tattoos. There was a hatchet and a knife in his belt. A necklace of blackening ears was strung around his throat.

  Leslie recognized him for what he was: the baron of the pack.

  He pulled her to her feet, sniffed her face, then licked it. His breath was foul like he’d been chewing on rotten meat. “Did they take you, child?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Did they force you here?”

  She nodded.

  “Would you hunt with us? Kill for us? Be with us?”

  “Yes,” she said in a dry, cracking voice.

  The man spun her around, pulled his knife and cut her the binds from her wrists and ankles. He shoved her away towards the other girls. They touched her hair and face. They sniffed her breasts, between her legs, and especially her ass. This was how they would know if she could be one of them. They were sniffing for the telltale trace of adrenalin, which would indicate fear. They smelled none.

  A spear was thrust into her hands.

  She liked the feel of it. She would use it. She would bring down prey and her simple little animal mind wanted nothing more.

  Mike Hack, forgotten in the grass, leaped to his feet and tried to escape. Three of the girls jumped on him, took him down. He fought madly, but they bit and scratched and hit him, beating him into submission. They tore at his eyes and worried his testicles until there was no fight left. He was pulled to his feet. The pack did not like runners. It respected those who stood and fought; it despised cowards. While five or six of the pack held him, another cut the tendons behind his knees, the others behind his ankles. He flopped uselessly in the grass, blood rushing out of his wounds.

  Mr. Kenning was lifted up, hoisted by the half dozen or so spears sunk into him. He could barely stand. He was wet with his own blood, gagging and grunting, a spray of vomit at his chin. He was pushed over to the tree where he had earlier hung the carcass of his Irish Setter, Libby. The noose was still there. It was looped around his throat, drawn taut. The spears were pulled from him, blood gushing out of the holes. Six of them took the rope and pulled on it, yanking him up off the ground by the noose around his throat.

  The pack baron pulled out his knife and began to slash Mr. Kenning, hacking and slicing with wild abandon until he was flayed open, slabs of flesh dangling by threads of red gristle, his intestines hanging in slimy loops. Laid raw, Mr. Kenning was still alive.

  Leslie, excited by what he had done, rubbed herself against the girl next to her whose flesh was hot and slippery.

  All were watching, all were breathless, all excited sexually.

  With a few deft movements of the big knife, the Baron slit off Mr. Kenning’s balls, then his penis. He threw them into the grass and the girls went after them, fighting over the scraps, biting and clawing each other. The boys went after the viscera, yanking it out in coils that they chewed on.

  The Baron turned towards Mike Hack. He put away his knife and took out his hatchet. Bleeding, broken, Mike squirmed in the grass as the Baron towered over him, his eyes filled with a primordial malignance.

  “Mr. Chalmers,” Mike moaned. “Please, Mr. Chalmers…”

  The Baron let out a piercing cry and brought the hatchet down. Again and again and again. Such was the punishment for disobeying the rules of the pack…

  58

  He ran because there were too many of them. He shot and killed two, wounded a third, and as the others set on them to feast and three more went after Doris, Louis ran into the back of the store and out the rear entrance. He cut down the alley, moving through the shadows. He waited for shapes shaggy, meat-smelling and vaguely human to jump out at him…but none did.

  He made it onto the street.

  There were bodies everywhere.

  Had there been that many before? Two or three were lying by the car. He couldn’t remember if they’d been there before. Carefully, he stepped forward and then he knew. Maybe one or two them had been there, but not these others. If they had, he would have run right over them. These bodies were dirty and ragged, but they were alive. Crazies playing dead and setting up an ambush.

  Very clever.

  Louis scanned the darkened buildings, the rooftops, the shadowy storefronts. Even with the streetlights on, the main force could have been just about anywhere. So many places to hide. He moved forward, pretending not to notice the ones on the pavement…a man, a woman, a teenage boy. But he gave them a wide berth. He heard one of them stir behind him and swung back with the gun.

  “You can get up now,” he said, “nap time is over.”

  The boy made it to his feet first, bringing out a carving knife. Louis pulled the trigger and the kid took a round in the chest that knocked him flat. He twisted and thumped on the pavement, hissing and gagging and that was it. The man ran off, but the woman came right at him. Louis fired point-blank at her. The slug caught her in the belly and she went down, a river of blood running from her hands which were clenched over her stomach. She had no weapon. Just fingers and teeth. Her face was smudged with dirt, her eyes huge and glistening, staring black holes. She was gutshot and she wouldn’t make it. She squirmed around on the ground leaving a blood trail, coughing and wheezing.

  Louis was sickened by the killing he had done, yet exhilarated. There was power in holding a gun, using it. He could feel the darkness welling inside him then, something huge and organic and clutching, the beast within clawing up, scrambling for hold, wanting to own him. It liked the killing. It fed on it like an engorged leech at an artery.

  He fought it back down.

  He would kill to survive. Not for pleasure. That was the difference, that was the difference between civilization and the primal call of the jungle.

  Louis stared at the bodies. They had thought him easy prey and now he had shown them different. There was a satisfaction in that.

  “All right!” he called out, his voice echoing off the buildings. “You wanted me and here I am! Come and get me! You hear me? Come and get me!”

  He heard sounds from between the stores, from alleys and shadowy tangles of shrubs. Rustling sounds. They were there, but they did not want to show themselves.

  Sure, not much more than animals, but certainly not stupid animals.

  “DID YOU FUCKING HEAR ME?” he shouted now. “SHOW YOURSELVES! WHERE’S THE GIRL? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER? YOU LET HER GO AND WE’LL DRIVE OUT! YOU CAN HAVE THIS PISSING TOWN!”

  More rustling, some subdued voices, nothing more.

  The woman on the ground was still squirming. Louis was suddenly filled with a hatred he had never known before. The blood, the carnage, none of it could touch him.
Macy, dear God, poor sweet Macy. He walked right over to the woman and kicked her. She grunted and rolled to the side. When she tried to get up to crawl, he kicked her in the ass. When she turned to bare her bloody teeth at him, he kicked her in the face. Her eyes rolled back white and she flopped to the ground.

  That got them.

  He was abusing one of the pack and they simply could not allow such a thing. Whatever had rotted their minds and swept 7,000 years of recorded civilization into the dustbin, it had not taken away such very human traits as devotion and loyalty. Maybe they were animals and madmen, but they were a clan and they lived and died for the clan.

  They came running out. First five or six, then twice that number and twice it again. They emerged in twos and threes, joining together in a mob. They carried axes and pipes, knives and shards of broken glass. But most simply came empty-handed. Men, women, children. Even a woman nursing a child. They were a filthy and ragged lot, looking little like modern humans and very much like a Neolithic tribe. Hunters and gatherers. And wasn’t that the most amazing thing of all? That they had degenerated so quickly in just a matter of hours? Maybe that said something about the human race and maybe it said something else about the contagion that had afflicted them. The only thing that betrayed their primitiveness, were the Nike shoes and cargo shorts and Wet Seal t-shirts some of the women wore. Though many were shirtless and barefoot, many others were stark naked and painted for battle.

  Like New Guinea headhunters.

  They assembled on the other side of the Dodge and stopped. Louis could hear them breathing, smelling the body odor and blood on them, a stench of urine and feces and something like vomit.

  Behind him, he heard the pattering of feet and some red-haired kid, maybe seventeen or eighteen, came bounding out with a broomstick in his hands. He was naked, his genitals swinging from side to side. He had painted up his body with blue and gray streaks of makeup like a Celtic warrior, bands set under his eyes, his lips painted white.

  Louis fired and missed.

  Fired again and caught him in the arm. He could plainly hear the kid’s humerus snap like a green stick. The kid skidded to his knees, screaming and spitting, a pink slime of foam on his lips.

  Louis put the gun back on the others. “I want the girl,” he said. “I want the girl now and if I don’t get her, I start killing you sonsofbitches.”

  They just stood there, holding their weapons, clenching and unclenching their fists. Drool ran from their mouths. Contorted faces were twisted into sneers. Eyes were wide and staring and glassy. There didn’t seem to be any intelligence in them. Hunger and need and hatred, surely, but nothing more. Louis could not believe that any of them were smart enough to orchestrate this little trap.

  “Hello,” a voice said.

  Michelle stepped from behind the clan. She was still wearing her skirted business suit, though her nylons were torn and her usually carefully coifed long dark hair was matted and there were leaves stuck in it, what looked like flowers and sticks braided into it. There was blood all over her shirt from the killing she’d done. Even with the suit, she was unbearably tribal, vicious. This was her clan, her pack, Louis knew then with a yawning emptiness opening inside him. She was their warrior queen. They were all ritualistically painted with snaking bands, symbols, and tiger-stripes. But their faces…yes…they all bore the individual insignia of the tribe, the ceremonial sacraments of the wild hunt: the likenesses of skulls. Every face was painted the same. A flat marble-white base that covered face, ears, and throat, black upturned crescents around the eyes, a black oval around the mouth, and an elongated black triangle down the bridge of the nose.

  The effect was chilling.

  Michelle was painted the same, the dark glittering jewels of her eyes staring out from that grim death mask. She was no longer human; she was an animal now.

  “Michelle…baby, come over here with me,” Louis said to her, everything breaking loose inside him, tears welling in his eyes. Her glare was fierce, hungry, lethal…yet, he wasn’t afraid, not really. Just the sight of her, painted up and bloody or not, crushed him, made him want to weep at her feet. He pitied her, he pitied himself. That their love should be shattered like this, torn asunder by some primordial horror from the dawn of the race. It was an obscenity. “Please, Michelle, please…”

  She just looked at him. There was no recognition in her eyes…and yet, there was…something. She seemed almost hypnotized as she stared at him, unblinking. Inside, deep inside, she knew him and the knowledge made her blood run and her heart beat and her chemistry long to be joined with his.

  “They’re…they’re all crazy, Michelle. Come with me. I don’t know what the hell got a hold of you and the rest of them, but we can figure it out. Come on, baby. I love you and you know I love you. Don’t do this.” He felt the tears well up in his eyes and overflow onto his cheeks, felt his throat constrict until his voice sounded like that of a whiny little boy. But the emotions he was feeling were almost too much. They paraded through his head with the memories and each one laid him open. He held out a shaking hand. “Come over here, Michelle. I’m your husband. I love you. I won’t let them hurt you.”

  She just stared. Maybe her mind was a little more intact than the others, but something essential in her was burned away. There was no love in those eyes. There was manipulation, madness, a means to an end, but certainly not warmth. They were the eyes of a spider as it hunts down its prey, prepares to suck the blood from a fly in its web…a favored fly the spider is drawn to, but a fly nonetheless.

  She grinned then and for the first time he saw her teeth…Michelle always had very long teeth, perfectly straight and perfectly white…and now he saw that they had been filed to deadly points, those beautiful teeth. So when she grinned at him, it was the lewd grin of a snarling wolf, a grin of fangs…fangs that were stained pink from what she had been feeding on.

  He almost went out cold at that.

  She was gone. Not only had she killed, but she had torn and rent her prey with her teeth, filling herself with bloody meat.

  Oh, Michelle, oh baby…oh dear God…

  The primal fall.

  He could hear the guy on the radio and he fully understood it as he hadn’t before. You had to see someone you love regress into a beast to appreciate those words:

  Bonfires and stone knives by this time next week, animals hunting in the streets…most of them of the two-legged variety. Now comes the time of the primal fall…

  He made a gagging, whimpering sound in his throat that was partly repulsion and partly deep-hewn pain.

  It stopped Michelle for a moment. She seemed to understand inarticulate noises better than words. Inside she felt them and understood. She cocked her head to the side, softened, but it didn’t last. She closed her mouth, pursed her lips, then shook her head frantically like a dog trying to throw off bothersome flies. “Come with…us,” she managed. “Walk with…us…the night, the night…the night…” she said to him, her words breaking off into a coarse barking sound.

  Oh, it would have been easy, but he did not want to be one of them. “No,” he said very loudly.

  Bands of shadow fell over her face, making her already skullish appearance unpleasantly cadaverous. Her eyes were seething with a fathomless darkness. She brought up her hand and pointed one long, bloodstained finger at him. And then she said it. Said it without remorse: “Kill him!”

  She was their queen and they just mindless drones and soldiers. The stupor that had consumed the mob broke like the snapping of fingers and they vaulted forward. Some coming around the car, but most scrambling right over the top of it.

  Louis fired three shots into the mass and then ran, pausing and shooting, pausing and shooting, dropping half a dozen of them. Then his gun clicked on empty and the others poured forth like hungry insects looking for something to tear and feed upon. Behind them, near the car, Michelle just stood there, supreme and malefic and insane, grinning and grinning at the idea of her husband’s grisly de
ath.

  Louis ran…

  59

  They had failed…all of them, failed! And the task was so simple!

  The man bolted away and with surprising speed. So quickly, in fact, that it was several moments before anyone thought of pursuing him. The Huntress fumed. She bared her teeth. She screeched into the night.

  “AFTER HIM!” she cried with every ounce of volume she had, so loudly that her voice seem to bounce off the face of the moon itself. “BRING HIM DOWN!”

  They already knew what she was capable of. They already knew what she would do to them. She did not like failure. She did not understand it. For those who failed there was the knife, there was the cutting, the rite of the blooding. Already in those precious few hours they had been together she’d already flayed two hunters.

  She watched them scatter into the streets, threading into shadow like worms into meat, all anxious to be the one who brought back the pelt of the man. There would be benefits bestowed: the first choice of mates, the best food, the best weapons.

  The Huntress raised her knife to the moon and howled like a wolf.

  It was simple, was it not? The girl used as bait to trap the man, then the others hunters taking him, bringing him bound and broken to dump at the feet of the Huntress. Yet…the man had proven himself clever, deadly, treacherous.

  As she faded into the darkness herself, she knew they would bring him down.

  There were only so many places to hide in the hunting grounds and already the clan had his scent. They would cast for it, locate it, force him out of hiding and then run him, the way wild dogs would run deer to their deaths.

  You can run but you can’t hide.

  That gave her pause…the words seemed familiar for some reason. She liked them. She would use them again. When the man was found, she would make a spectacle of him…