by Keene, Brian
“Arrianne, what are you talking about? Becoming who?”
“Lucy.”
“The dog?”
Before she could answer, there was a knock at the door. No, not a knock. Something dragging, slamming against the other side. Dickie had given up growling and was now whining along with Lucy.
Chuck appeared at her side and faced the door with her. “Jesus—now what?”
***
Nicci’s vision was growing blurrier by the second. She could hardly stand, had to lean against a tree. Her pussy felt shredded on the inside, every slight movement pure torture. Blood ran down both legs in a constant trickle, now pooling around her feet and turning the dirt muddy.
Through the fog in her eyes, she glared at the place. Standing tall in front of her like some brick and wood behemoth from the bowels of hell.
The house. Nicci had been so worried about being taken back to the asylum she didn’t even realize where she was. Didn’t realize those little fuckers had brought her back here.
She felt it staring back at her, welcoming her home, urging her to step inside.
“No,” she said, and winced. Her throat burned like she had been gargling battery acid. She tried to swallow, but there was no moisture in her mouth to wet her throat, and it felt like sharp rocks slid down her gullet.
Movement to her left. She flinched and cried out from the shock of pain that erupted at her core and quickly slapped a hand over her mouth. Positioning herself behind the tree, she peeked, watched as a car pulled into the garage.
Someone’s living here, she thought. That’s what that fucker had said before. A guy who looked like Mitt Romney was inside. And now this woman.
It’s starting again.
Nicci clenched her teeth and did her best to ignore the pain as she hurried across the yard toward the garage door. It buzzed as it descended, nearly halfway shut now. Nicci dropped to her stomach, chewed down the scream that wanted so desperately to escape her mouth, and rolled into the garage.
She didn’t know what she would say to this woman, didn’t have a plan. She just knew the evil in that house had to be stopped.
Nicci stayed on the floor, on her belly, holding her breath. A dog barked at her from inside of the car, its breath fogging the glass.
When the woman stepped out of her car, Nicci was going to announce herself, explain that they were in danger, that they had to get the hell out of that house and never look back.
“One in the garage, the other in the living room,” the woman said. She set a duffel bag on the ground and pulled something out that looked like a crockpot.
What is she doing?
The woman set the device on the floor up against the wall and then reached into the bag again. But something stopped her. She flinched and jerked her hand out of the bag as if it were filled with boiling water.
Nicci thought she heard a voice, someone yelling, calling out a name. The woman heard it too, tilted her head and listened, and then she opened the car door. A puppy yipped from the crook of her arm and she held the larger, older dog by the collar, dragging him backward toward the door leading into the house. The dog barked, growled, did everything it could to get to Nicci, but the woman dragged it away and all three disappeared into the house.
Nicci slowly stood, biting her tongue to keep from screaming out. A smeared puddle of blood coated the concrete where she had been lying. When she got to her feet, she stumbled, nearly fell back to the floor, but balanced herself on the woman’s car. She was filled with the urge to sleep, just lie right back down on the floor and sleep forever.
But she forced herself across the garage, toward the duffel bag.
A bomb. Two of them. That’s what they were. Her brother, Sam, had told her about them, used to talk about how easy it would be for him to blow up the prison he worked for, that he would do it too if they didn’t treat him better, show him more respect.
And he died. Right here in this fucking house. Torn apart.
“I’m not crazy,” she whispered. “I’m no loony. I can’t let this happen again.”
Chapter Twenty - Shane McKenzie and Bryan Smith
The second bomb was still in the bag, along with what could only be the detonator. Nicci carefully lifted it, hardly having the strength as she continued to bleed out from her mauled vagina. The blood made her toes stick to the insides of her shoes.
The door the woman had pulled the dogs through was locked, so Nicci hit the button on the wall to open the garage door again. She hoped the man and woman would hear it, would come and investigate so Nicci could explain, make them see that they were in danger.
Was that a gunshot? Am I too late?
Leaving the first bomb in the garage where the woman had left it, Nicci stumbled toward the front door. She had to get the second bomb into the house, right in the center of it. Blow the evil back to hell where it came from.
Her hand wrapped around the knob. Locked.
“Fuck.” The word felt like a sea urchin rolling from her throat. She lifted her hand to knock, but something hit her from behind. Lifted her into the air and slammed her against the door.
Her legs were spread so wide her femur bones popped out of their sockets. She started to scream, but something jammed down her throat, shoved the shriek back into her belly.
Everything went black for an indeterminate time.
When the world came back into focus, she was still standing on the porch with her arms wrapped around the pressure-cooker bomb. But some other things had changed. The mind-shredding pain she’d experienced in those last pre-blackout moments was utterly gone, as if it had never happened. But it had happened. She vividly remembered that awful sensation of bones popping out of their sockets. Just thinking about it again made her cringe. It’d felt like her body was tearing apart, as if something had been on the verge of ripping her to pieces. But not only was the pain gone, so was any sense of a sinister demonic presence. Whatever had been shoved into her throat had also vanished. That part of it had been so much like what she had experienced years ago, that prelude to rape by some unfathomable entity. She couldn’t begin to guess why the presence had retreated so abruptly, but she was grateful.
But Nicci knew her reprieve might well be short-lived. Maybe the forces at work here were just toying with her. Supernatural motherfuckers liked to toy with people. If she’d learned nothing else from her previous experiences with otherworldly whatsits, it was that. But she couldn’t worry about that. Right now she needed to focus on getting inside the house and setting the damn bomb while she was still able.
She reached for the doorknob again.
Her hand froze when she heard a familiar sound behind her. It took her a moment to identify it as the noise a can of beer or soda makes when someone pops it open. She let go of the knob and turned slowly around.
Some gray-haired dork in a garish Hawaiian shirt was standing there in the yard and watching her with an annoying smirk on his face. A tall can of Pabst Blue Ribbon was clutched in his right hand. “Hey, Nicci. What’s up?”
Nicci scowled. “Who the fuck are you? And how do you know my name?”
“I have the gift. The sight, some call it.”
Her scowl got deeper. “What?”
“I’m a motherfucking psychic, is what I’m saying. And I can prove it. Check this out. I’m gonna count to five. When I get to five, you’re gonna put down that ridiculous bomb and come down off that porch.”
“Bullshit! I must stop the evil.”
The gray-haired dork shook his head, the smirk giving way to an almost sad expression. “Nope, afraid not. Stopping the evil ain’t your role in this scintillating drama. And look, evil is never truly vanquished in this genre, even when it looks as if it’s been utterly, completely obliterated. There’s always a chance for some kind of hokey resurrection, especially if sales are good.”
Nicci had heard enough of this insanity. She had no clue who this asshole was, but he sounded crazier than anyone she’d met in the loon
y bin. Time was of the essence. She could almost hear a clock ticking down to zero, like a madman’s bomb timer in an action movie. Which was only appropriate, given what she was holding.
She started to turn toward the door again.
“One, two, three, four, five.”
Nicci put the bomb down and descended from the porch.
The gray-haired dork cackled and chugged from the can of PBR.
Nicci gaped at him and shook her head in disbelief. “How did you do that? Did you fucking hypnotize me?”
The guy chugged more PBR. “You know, they say life’s too short to drink cheap beer, and in general I agree with that sentiment. I’d rather have a nicely bitter IPA, but PBR seems more apt here for some reason. Anyway, I did not hypnotize you.”
“Then how did you make me do that?”
Another cackle. Yet another big gulp of beer. This guy was a fucking alcoholic or something. “That’s simple. I’m God.”
Nicci sneered. “No you’re not.”
“As far as you’re concerned, I am.”
“Who are you? I mean, really?”
The gray-haired dork finished off the tall can of PBR, crushed it, and tossed it over his shoulder. Like magic, another can of PBR appeared in his hand. He popped open the fresh can and drank deeply from it. “Wow, I am really starting to get a hell of a buzz. Anyway, my name’s Bryan Smith. I’m writing this part of the chapter.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Walk with me.”
“Where are we going?”
Smith tilted his chin in the direction of the Ford Tempo parked near the foot of the driveway. “See that car parked down there?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re going for a ride.”
Nicci gave her head an adamant shake. “No fucking way. A ghost-thing raped me in that car. No way in hell can you make me get in that goddamn car.”
Two minutes later they were in the Ford Tempo and driving away from the house on Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road. Smith was driving. He had one hand on the wheel and the other around the beer can. Nicci twisted in her seat for a last look at the receding house. They went around a bend and it was gone.
“Why am I in this car?”
Smith drank his beer. “Because it needed to happen. Gonzalez declared you dead in one chapter and then there you are dragging around fucking bombs. That’s a plot inconsistency on a level with the best works of Ed Wood Jr.”
Nicci shook her head again. She couldn’t even begin to wrap her brain around this strangeness. “So what happens to me now?”
Smith guzzled more of his beer. “Anyone who reads my shit knows I have a thing for crazy chicks. So here’s the deal. You are now in love with me.”
Nicci had tears of joy in her eyes. “I never thought I’d find love. Ohmigosh, I’m so happy!”
Smith laughed.
They rode off into the sunset or the night or whatever damn time it was by that point. Later they went on a wild cross-country killing spree. Movies were made about their bloody exploits. Books were written.
Books that were not Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road.
***
Chuck and Arrianne clasped hands and leaned against each other as they watched the front door vibrate in its frame. There was a sense of something massive and ferocious assaulting the entrance of their tainted home. Chuck considered dragging Arrianne off to some other part of the house in search of refuge. There was just one problem with that. He wasn’t sure there was such a thing as a safe place anywhere in this house.
The assault on the door abruptly ceased.
Chuck hardly dared believe that whatever had been out there had left. Some time passed. He decided to open the door a crack and peek outside. Which, okay, maybe defied logic, but he felt helplessly compelled to do it anyway, even with Arrianne crying and begging him not to.
Chuck cracked the door open.
He frowned. “Huh. That’s strange.”
Arrianne sniffled. “Wh-what’s out there.”
Chuck shook his head. “Nothing’s out there. I mean … nothing. That’s really—”
A scream rang out from somewhere behind him.
Chapter Twenty-One - Edward Lee, Wrath James White, and Ryan Harding
Chuck and Arrianne clasped hands and leaned against each other as they watched the front door vibrate in its frame. There was a sense of something massive and ferocious assaulting the entrance of their tainted home. Chuck considered dragging Arrianne off to some other part of the house in search of refuge. There was just one problem with that. He wasn’t sure there was such a thing as a safe place anywhere in this house.
The assault on the door abruptly ceased.
Chuck hardly dared believe whatever had been out there had left. Some time passed. He decided to open the door a crack and peek outside. Which, okay, maybe defied logic, but he felt helplessly compelled to do it anyway, even with Arrianne crying and begging him not to.
Chuck cracked the door open.
He frowned. “Huh. That’s strange.”
Arrianne sniffled. “Wh-what’s out there.”
Chuck shook his head. “Nothing’s out there. I mean … nothing. That’s really—”
A scream rang out from somewhere behind him.
***
A scream rang out from somewhere behind them.
Of course it did. They were in a casino after all, and some lady had just come up big on the roulette table.
Wearing a Black Flag T-shirt; a loose, unbuttoned, white flannel shirt; and blue jeans, Edward Lee sat at the bar drinking beer and Diet Coke, and beside him sat a flabbergastingly large, bald black man who was nearly a foot taller and seventy or eighty pounds heavier. The bald man wore a tight-fitting plain black T-shirt that accentuated every muscle, while a thick, stainless-steel dog chain hung round his neck. With one hand the size of a catcher’s mitt, he held a bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Strawberry Margarita flavored, from which he took an occasional sip.
On the other side of Lee, a tall, lanky guy in a Your Kid’s on Fire T-shirt (featuring George Eastman devouring his own guts in Anthropophagous) teetered on a bar stool, knocking back shots of some unidentified amber liquid. Beside him, grinning sardonically—and chuckling over some inside joke that only he was privy to—sat a man wearing an Anthrax hoodie and eyeglasses. He was engaged in the process of downing his third or fourth shot of top-shelf bourbon.
“So what the hell happened?” the preposterously large black man enquired.
“They all died, dude,” answered the peculiar fellow in the Anthrax hoodie. In spite of the solemnity of the topic, the grin never left his face. Sometimes it occurred to others that this grin was genetically imbued into his features.
“Gonzalez, Nate, Ketchum, Bryan Smith, all of them?”
“Yup. Tortured, dismembered, and sodomized. In that order, the way I understand it.”
“Not just that,” Edward Lee added. “They drowned in vomit, too.”
“I just can’t fucking believe it,” Wrath James White, the gargantuan black man, whispered. He dropped his head.
Lee appeared suddenly stoic. “Me neither, Wrath, but it’s true. I did a Freedom of Information Act request and got copies of the police reports.”
“It’s fucked up, man,” offered the guy in the Your Kid’s on Fire shirt. This, by the way, was a young “gentleman” named Ryan Harding who appeared as some manner of social hybrid: one part studious college student, the other part unmitigated pervert and brazen punk. “I mean, what are the chances of something like that happening to four horror writers? All murdered on the same day?”
“And not just the same day but in the same house,” observed Anthrax hoodie. Was he now on his fifth shot of bourbon? Jesus! His devilish grin never faltered.
“Yeah, and Nate, for God’s sake—he drowned in vomit, and it wasn’t even his vomit,” Lee replied.
“I wonder whose vomit it was. Fuck!”
Lee appended yet again the bizarre confabulation: �
��And evidently there was poop smeared on his face too. Ironic, isn’t it? Didn’t he have a thing about poop?”
“He had a thing about a lot of things,” Wrath pointed out. “Oh, what about Gonzalez?”
“Drowned too, like Nate. But not in vomit.” Lee paused, as if for effect. “In sperm.”
“Sperm poisoning.” Ryan shook his head. “What a tragic death.” He toasted the memory of J. F. Gonzalez and Nate Southard. Then he added, “But noble.”
Wrath made an expression of disgust but then shot a quick frown to Anthrax hoodie, who was also known as Brian Keene. “Why the fuck are you grinning like that, Keene?”
Keene shrugged. “Well, since you asked, I think it’s kind of funny … but, I mean, in a sad, mournful kind of way.”
Harding spilled some of whatever dreck he was drinking right down the middle of his YKoF T-shirt. “Aw, shit, that’s not half as bad as Smith. Dick cut off, found sticking out of his mouth, balls somehow pushed up his ass? And then his nut sack was stretched over his head like a fuckin’ stocking mask.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Wrath asked.
“I read it in the newspaper. They found him in his car about two miles away from a place called Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road.”
Wrath frowned. “What did you just say, Ryan?”
“Look, it says right here, they found him in his car about two miles away from a place called Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road,” Ryan verified, holding up a newspaper.
“But … but that’s fucking impossible! Let me see that paper!”
Ryan passed Wrath a neatly folded newspaper with the headline House of Horrors at Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road!
“That’s fucking impossible,” Wrath said again.
“Calm down,” Keene soothed. “Why are you getting so upset?”
“Because that house doesn’t fucking exist! We made it up! Don’t you remember? We were all writing a novel together. A collaboration. It was me, you, Lee, Ryan, Jack Ketchum, J. F. Gonzalez, Nate Southard, Bryan Smith, and Shane McKenzie. Oh God! Shane McKenzie! Did they say anything about Shane?”
