by Hixon, Wayne
“Running from what?”
“Well, not really running from anything. It’s more like we’re running towards something only I haven’t really been able to figure out what it is, exactly. I think only Bones knows. It gets kind of complicated. It might be the Devils you keep talking about. He says we’re gonna be fucking vampires. Anyway, like I said, it’s complicated.”
“I think we have all the time in the world. We’re a good half hour away from any signs of civilization.”
“Do you know where we are?”
“I have a good idea. I think if we just stay on this trail, then we’ll end up behind the cemetery.”
“Great. That’s just what I need. A fucking cemetery.”
“You think Bones knows this area?”
“Hell no. He’s fucking clueless. Spends all his time following other people and never looking out the window.”
“Then I think we’re okay for now. We can go to Jacob’s and get cleaned up when we find our way out of this. Let him know what’s going on.”
“All right then, since we have the time, I guess I’ll start at the beginning.”
Rain took a deep breath and, for the next few moments, Rachel saw and heard the terrified girl that Rain truly was.
Eight
“Me and Bones went to high school together in California. He was always a pretty bad kid and I was always a pretty good kid until I turned fifteen and then I guess I got a rebellious streak or something. That’s when I started hanging out with Bones. His real name’s Lonnie by the way. I think part of the reason I did it was because I knew my parents hated him. We started hanging out last summer, not this past summer but the one before that. And we would just, you know, pop some of his mom’s pills, smoke some pot, fuck whenever the parents were out of the house. As stupid as Bones is, I would have to say he was a pretty good fuck. Or maybe I was just too stoned to really know what a good fuck was. He was my first anyway. Never mind. That’s a whole other area.
“So, earlier this year, he comes to my house really late at night and tells me he saw this woman standing out in his front yard like asking him to come outside or something. So Bones goes outside and the stupid fucker doesn’t even really remember what this woman says but he walks away from this conversation with what he called his life’s mission. He thought the woman was like a vampire or something. And she wanted Bones to bring people to her. That was it, basically. She wanted Bones to bring her meat or blood or whatever so she could feed on like real human people. I thought he was crazy but he just kept jabbering on and on about it.
“I didn’t just think he was crazy for taking this stupid bitch seriously, either. I thought he was crazy for all but telling me he had a big crush on this older woman. For like the next week it was all he talked about. I was sick of it after about the first five minutes but, at the time, there was a part of me that really needed him. All my old friends stayed away from me cause they thought I was a pill popping whore, which I guess I kind of was. I knew that if he left, I’d be all alone. And my friends weren’t the type of people you could just get back by dumping your stupid fuck of a boyfriend. They were all rich kids, people who place a lot of value on reputation, you know? Besides, by that time, I’d done some stuff with their boyfriends and... I’m getting off track again.
“Anyway, I thought that if we just did more drugs then maybe Bones would forget about this stupid dream or whatever he had but that didn’t work. Before too long I started believing what he was saying.
“Then one night he came back and said the woman had come again and she wanted him to follow them and he decided he didn’t want to follow them without me. And, in my present state, which was pretty fucking blitzed, I thought this was just about the sweetest thing Bones had ever said to me. At the time, it just didn’t hit me how crazy and wrong it all sounded. Here my boyfriend was telling me how he was going to follow this other chick wherever she wanted him to go and I went along with it. I guess I had no self-esteem, you know? He did good at making me think I was garbage. He’d bring up the times I’d cheated on him and tell me this was different because he was asking me to come along with him. I guess he was expecting some big wild threesome or something. Anyway, it was all insane. I must have been insane.”
“Sometimes we do crazy things,” Rachel said. She had calmed down somewhat, now realizing just how cold it was outside, feeling the damp rot of the forest floor beneath her painful feet, the chilly mist clinging to her bare arms and legs.
“To say the least,” Rain said. “Well, this is when things started to get strange. Like they weren’t strange enough to begin with. One day we just hopped into Bones’ van and headed east. He was pretty vague about what he was doing. Probably thought that it would freak me out. But I was empty inside. Incapable of being freaked out. The only way he could have done that was to take the pills and the vodka away. At first we had money for cheap motels and that kind of thing so he was able to lock me in these while he went out scavenging in his van. He was taking people out of their homes and from the streets and taking them to these people he had met. I didn’t have any idea. It was Bones. He would go out and I’d stay in the motel room, crocked out of my head, watching soap operas and heading deeper into oblivion. He would come back and fuck me senseless and that was the day. I thought maybe he was out selling drugs to make a few extra bucks or something like that. Until I saw her, I wasn’t going to believe this woman existed. Besides, as dumb as Bones is, I didn’t think he was capable of murder. I thought he was essentially a good person. Just like I knew I was, somewhere deep deep down.
“He took his victims to the people in that house. He said they were too weak to go out hunting themselves. That’s how I justified it when he finally told me what he was doing and by that time it was too late to get out. I knew that, even if he wasn’t like slashing anybody or anything, what he was doing was still murder. It’s like the Nazis who lined people up for the gas chamber. Even if they weren’t the ones turning on the showerhead, they were still killing these people. And I wondered what they did to the victims. Thought maybe it would have been more merciful to kill them beforehand. I saw what some of the corpses looked like when they came back out.
“Like I said, it was too late at that point. There was something about him I was hooked on. He had changed in some way or the other. Those people that he had met up with had changed him, I was sure of that. They had some kind of power over him and he was able to exert this power over people. That’s how he could kidnap them so easily. That’s how we never got caught. All that shit he told you back there about the van being some kind of a decoy is totally wrong. He had their protection. How else can you explain getting pulled over ten times and, each time, you know the trooper who pulled you over was looking for a specific vehicle and a specific person that fit the description of Bones and each time they came to the window, they never even bothered looking at his driver’s license? They just took one look into his eyes and told him they had made a mistake and he was free to continue on to wherever he was going. More than once I wanted to cry out to them. I wanted to come clean and tell them what he was doing. Still, though, I went along with it. I figured the only reason I was even able to have these thoughts was because I never came face to face with those people, so their power wasn’t as strong over me as it was over Bones. But I wanted to see them. And that was part of Bones’ power over me.
“I begged him to take me to them. I let him do things to me that he had asked for since meeting me. I let him hurt me more than he already had until I was reduced to a sad lump of nothing. I had to meet them. Part of me wanted to be changed in the same way he was but I think there was another part of me that just wanted to be able to go along with this as casually as Bones did. But he wouldn’t take me to them. It was like they were his big secret. Of course, now I realize what I wanted was change. My brain was telling my body I couldn’t go on like this. If I wasn’t sixteen and resilient I probably would have been dead.
“So, even
tually, we ran out of money and had to start living out of the van which meant that I had to go on these kidnappings with Bones. It also meant that the drugs were gone. Forced detox. Not fun. I was able to deal with it, with what Bones was doing. Detoxing like that, I was totally out of my head. I felt psychotic. I liked seeing other people in as much pain as I imagined I was in. I even helped out from time to time. He would take them somewhere, always making me stay in the van, and come back empty handed... most of the time. But these strange people were selective about who they would take and sometimes they would turn him away with one of them. I don’t know why. They murdered them, maybe drank a little of their blood, but they didn’t want to keep them. So Bones would drag these corpses back into the van and then we would have to get rid of them. But even that’s not what made me finally decide to leave Bones.
“Even though things just kept getting worse and worse. We hardly fucked anymore. We never bathed so even the idea of fucking was sort of gross. The van smelled... Well, you know about the van. Everything that had seemed so shiny and new just a year ago had deteriorated. Gone way past deterioration, actually. I’d find myself at a truck stop while Bones was off and I’d try and hook up with some of the sickest looking truckers there. Just to satisfy something. One of the many desires I had. Most of them wouldn’t even look twice at me. How bad is that? I was that crazed and smelly and disgusting. Still, I was there with Bones rather than on the phone to Mommy and Daddy... It was like some part of my brain was still stuck in an unusual place. So I guess you’re wondering what did make me leave, huh?”
“A little,” Rachel said, but she didn’t know if she really wanted to or not. Already, she had found herself grimacing with nearly every sentence from Rain’s mouth.
“About a month ago, he kidnapped this girl. She was about our age, maybe younger. Beautiful. Even me, jealous as I am, could admit she was beautiful. So Bones took her into these people and came out a little bit later with the fresh corpse of this girl. We had to go somewhere to drop the body and I must have fell asleep or something. Anyway, when I woke up, I could hear Bones grunting. I was in the passenger seat and when I looked back at him he was on top of the girl, fucking her corpse. Her dead eyes were all filmed over and staring right at me and I... I just felt something whoosh out of me. I wanted to throw up or scream at him to stop or something but I just turned around and pretended to be asleep because I thought he would get really mad if he knew I saw him doing that.
“After that, I couldn’t look at him the same way again. There were just so many things wrong with that. I didn’t know him anymore. Didn’t want to know him. So I had my revelation. Maybe it was because the drugs were out of my system or something. I knew I was part of the reason that girl was there. She had died, in part, because of me. Worst of all, I realized that she was me. A beautiful girl of fourteen or fifteen. I thought of the way I had looked before Bones and the drugs and all the other guys... I wanted that. I wanted to be that way again.
“Mostly I just avoided him, waiting to meet up with someone who could help me. I started stealing clothes from thrift stores and at least bathing in the truck stop restrooms. I was tired of being a pig. I was tired of... everything.”
“Jesus,” Rachel whispered.
“That’s pretty much it.”
“I would hope so.”
Rachel reached out and grabbed Rain’s cold hand, trying to comfort her in the only way she really knew how.
“Rain, Bones is behind you now. All of that’s behind you. Maybe you can help me and Jacob. I think the people who got their claws in Bones might be the Devils. Or, at least what we call the Devils. But Lynchville is not like other towns. Never has been. We need people to help us in the fight. We need to get rid of these people.”
“I’d like to. I’d really like to do that. I think that if we hadn’t found you, then I would have killed myself eventually. Maybe I just felt some kind of connection with you.”
Rachel didn’t want to elaborate too much on that. She didn’t want to explain to Rain how, ever since her encounter with the Devils, she was able to exert a little bit of this power over people as well. How she could kind of feel their consciousness in her fist... and bend it, pull it into her. Sometimes. It didn’t work all the time. It wouldn’t have worked with Bones. She wasn’t the only one the Devils had changed. Jacob had had vivid visions ever since that day. He said his psychiatrist called them waking hallucinations. Most of them featured the Devils.
And fire.
And murder. Something like sacrifice.
The girls reached the edge of the woods and the cemetery loomed in front of them, stretching up its broad slope, ground fog wrapping its ethereal fingers around the aged tombstones.
“We’re pretty close to Jacob’s now,” Rachel said, continuing to hold Rain’s hand as they walked through the milky night, in between the rows of tombstones where, earlier, two others had coupled on ground meant to cover the dead.
Nine
Jacob stood in the middle of the living room, staring down at the broken twisted remains of the television, blood dripping from his right hand. The beating he had administered to the TV made him a little more tired but it didn’t make him feel any less scared. Bad stuff was still coming, he knew. He couldn’t put the thought out of his head.
He was restless, wanting to do something but not sure what.
He went into the kitchen to put some coffee on.
While the coffee brewed, he bandaged his wounds.
Once properly, if unprofessionally, bandaged he cleaned up the vomit on the living room and uprighted the corn plant in front of the windows, throwing down some towels where the rain had blown in.
That done, he went back into the kitchen, grabbed a white ceramic mug from the cupboard and poured a cup of very strong black coffee. He filched a cigarette from the breast pocket of his shirt and headed back out onto the balcony.
He sat down on the damp weather-beaten wooden chair he kept out there, surveying the chilly night surrounding him.
How could something so beautiful be so dangerous? He was thinking about both the town and the night.
Smoking his cigarette, he relished the impenetrable silence around him. He tried not to think about anything in particular, tried to go blank, but he couldn’t help it. His mind went in circles, continually thinking about the image he had seen on the TV, substituting Rachel for Mr. Leavingworth, flashing back to two years ago... the people in the woods. The whole twisted night. The violence of it all. The Devils.
People could tell him they didn’t exist.
They could tell him there were no such things as Devils.
He wouldn’t believe them.
He saw more that night, felt more that night and every night since to think that it was anything other than something supernatural. The unexplained. Wasn’t “supernatural” the word we used to explain the unexplained.
Teenage boys hunting and trying to kill a teenage girl was natural. It was nature. It was nature at its most cruelly debased level but it did exist within the realm of human nature.
People who became monsters... who became something else, was not natural. That was what Jacob couldn’t explain. That was supernatural—outside the realm of human nature.
And there was more.
So much more.
His thoughts were feverish and circular, relentless.
He quickly finished his cigarette and tossed it out onto the street, wishing it wasn’t the only thing he could cast away.
He went into the bathroom to take a hot shower and change clothes, wash away the dirtiness of this evening and put on a fresh skin. Might as well start his day early. He didn’t think he would be getting any sleep tonight.
Ten
Bones stood in the cold night listening to the sluggish chirping of the bugs in the distant woods.
Fucking bitches, he thought.
After giving chase to the girls and losing them once they got over the road he had come back to this strange l
ittle hollow where he had brought the van. The house was in front of him and that meant those people were in there. If they weren’t there, Bones knew, he would not be able to see the house.
It never ceased to amaze him, this world of magic these people had brought him into. And this house. This house that followed them like they were turtles and it was their shell or something.
Bones didn’t want to go inside but knew he would have to. If he simply tried to escape them, they would hunt him down. They would find him. And then it would be like the last time. The time in Illinois when he could not find a single person to bring to them. The time when he had almost gutted Rain in her sleep just so he wouldn’t have to feel their wrath. Just so he could please them. He wanted so much to please them. He loved being in the house as long as he had some bleating, pleading prey in tow.
He didn’t want this to turn out like last time.
That wound had not yet healed. It ran, a jagged zigzag down his spine.
They had opened him up, told him they needed blood, and they had suckled from him. The cut was really nothing more than a flesh wound but it stung his pride and it hurt him to sit upright.
Ilya and Ernst. Ernst and Ilya. Anything to please them.
He had never told Rain he knew their names. He didn’t want to share with her. And he guessed, deep down, he just hadn’t trusted her. He knew she would try some shit like the stunt she pulled tonight. He was certain he would be the one laughing in the end. Ernst and Ilya did not like people to get away. They didn’t like people existing who knew their secrets. Or maybe they didn’t mind if they existed, they just wanted to drag them down to where they were, somewhere deep within the house, wherever the house happened to be.
That was another reason Bones dreaded confronting them with tonight’s escapee. Bones knew all about Rachel Stokes. He had received sort of a briefing before going to invade her house. She had burned them in the past. They didn’t go into great detail and Bones had enough sense to know this was because she had somehow put one over on them, making them feel stupid, making them feel less powerful. She had, somehow, hurt them.
