Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 4

by Cheryl Mullenax

  “It wasn’t her—I used the hood, I covered his head, I said her name, I did it right, but it wasn’t her.” He was babbling. “He—It bit me. It!” He swung an accusing finger into the candlelit room and Heath used the moment to gently move Allan’s hand away from his throat and took a stunned step back.

  A large bite had been taken out of Allan’s throat and tatters of skin still hung in ribbons where teeth had torn savagely at the flesh. There was so much blood, an artery must have been severed. He was dimly aware that Allan was turning back towards him, that his clammy hand was closing over one of his, that he was trying to say something else, but Heath was too busy watching Allan’s Adam’s apple bob without the privacy of skin covering it. Blood bubbling from his neck, Allan swooned and fell to the floor where he lay still. A pool of blood spread slowly from him. Stepping over it, Heath took a deep breath and pushed into the room.

  Hawthorne’s body was sitting up on the bed, his hooded head turned towards the door as if expecting Heath. His nightshirt was stained with Allan’s blood and by the candlelight, Heath could see something wet on the front of the hood, and felt eyes on him.

  Whatever had bitten Allan was still here, behind the hood, inside of his brother’s body and as he neared the bed he thought he could see where Allan had gone wrong.

  He had used the hood, but he had also tied a length of velvet cord around and around the base of the hood to strangle Hawthorne. Hawthorne, then, must be dead.

  The heaviness of the thought settled so hard in the pit of his stomach that when the thing gibbered at him—chattering the teeth that it had pushed through the fabric like cursed pearls to bite Allan—he swung the back of his hand against its face and brought his foot down on its ribs as it fell off the bed in a heap.

  “You want my brother? Rot in his body!”

  Grabbing the top of the hood and the luscious hair gathered under it, Heath dragged the thing inside Hawthorne’s body out of the room and through the spreading pool of Allan’s blood, bringing the stain with them down the hallway.

  The thing inside Hawthorne raged—thrashing and twisting in his grip—but though it pushed its tongue against the thick fabric of the hood and clacked its horrible teeth at Heath, it didn’t so much scream as sigh hotly.

  Kicking open the door to the cellar, Heath lifted it and threw it bodily down the stairs where it twisted and writhed its way to the bottom. It almost hurt to see Hawthorne like that: his limbs twisted and twitching on stonework.

  Meeting it at the bottom, he rolled it over with his foot, onto its back. Taking a shovel from the wall, he brought the spade end down where the coarse fabric of the hood ended and Hawthorne’s silken skin began. The body lay silent and still.

  Wiping sweat from his brow, Heath brought Hawthorne’s wheelchair down to the basement, tied the body to it and sat the head in its lap, then walked it back to the furthest reaches of the basement. Who knew this basement better than them, of course? He went through one door with his skeleton key, then another, then another, stopping only when the foundations around them were old and wet with the earthen stain eating his blackberries.

  In a room with the old stained press and bottles that were so time-gnawed the liquid inside of them looked like it had congealed into thick, black rot, he left his brother and the monster that had wanted Hawthorne more than he had.

  He locked every door behind him.

  * * *

  Of course, Allan’s death was easy to explain. Hawthorne’s health had come back and he’d attacked their houseguest, leaving him for dead before he ran madly out into the moors.

  Heath sent his house staff out to look for him, but no traces were ever found.

  The fungus faded from the fields like a bad dream and time moved on and Heath filled his life with new things: a wife, new hunting dogs, a set of twin boys. He named one after his brother, of course.

  But like all young boys, they found their way into trouble often enough—in the thickets, in the house…Looking back, Heath should have known simply beheading it and locking it down in the deepest cellar wouldn’t be enough. When his sons came up from the cellars breathless and pale, crying about something that sighed and didn’t so much crawl as pull itself along—sightless, dragging a dark rope—knotted bag along beside it, Heath wondered how the hell their father had had the stomach to kill his own brother twice.

  He went and got his shovel.

  This time, he’d burn and scatter him—far away. Separation was good for growing boys, of course. He’d do what their father had never had the heart to do: let go of his brother completely.

  <<====>>

  Author’s Story Note

  "Carnal Bodies" was originally published in Two Dead Queers Present: Guillozine. The goal of the zine was to explore the various implications of being headless.

  CROSSROADS OF OPPORTUNITY

  doungjai gam and Ed Kurtz

  From Lost Highways: Dark Fiction From The Road

  Editor: D. Alexander Ward

  Crystal Lake Publishing

  Though it took Marianne the better part of a year to die, she finally got around to it on a Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, Henry was on US I-78 heading west at a steady clip of 75 MPH. He drove a baby blue Buick with the radio stuck on one station, which sometimes wasn’t a station, depending on where he ended up. Country/Western in the morning, static in the afternoon, something a bit like reggae by sundown. That was after Henry passed the state line, though he wasn’t entirely sure which state he’d left and which he’d entered. He didn’t pay mind to much.

  He just drove.

  Sometime after midnight Henry’s eyelids grew heavy and his stomach growled in anger. A brightly lit billboard advertised all-night breakfast at a diner on the outskirts of Effinghamsome miles down the road and he figured that was as good a place as any to stop for a cup of weak coffee and runny eggs. It wasn’t until the billboard was out of sight that he realized he missed what exit he needed to take. There were a couple of signs that may have mentioned food or gas or lodging but he noticed them in the rearview mirror as accidental afterthoughts. What lulled him out of his state of semi-slumber was the exit sign for I-57 northbound to Chicago.

  Illinois, then.

  But Chicago was a definite no. Far too many people, too big a city. This Effingham? He’d never heard of it. A bump in the road to a Jersey City boy. And the logo emblazoned on the water tower, the one on the east side of town when he crossed into it, after the diner he’d missed and after he realized he was in Illinois: The Crossroads of Opportunity. Shades of old Robert Johnson, selling his soul at the crossroads to the devil so he could play the guitar. What in hell had Marianne done it for, then? Just to live a little longer in agony, Henry reckoned. And then, once she finally died, to get back up and laugh in his face.

  “Chicago would've been nice,” Marianne rasped from the back seat, her voice heavy with a two-pack-a-day habit. A couple of rounds of chemo damn near destroyed what remained of her vocal cords. “I’ve never been to the Midwest.”

  You’ve never been outside the Tri-State area.

  Henry couldn’t bear to think of the thing back there, moldering under her blue wool blanket, as Marianne. As far as he could tell, the moment she went through the door, this motherfucker snuck right in from the other side. Talk about an opportunity, her death the crossroads.

  He continued down I-70, which was now also I-57. 78 had ended two, three states back, he didn't know. Didn't care much, either. The key was to keep driving. The answer had to be out there.

  His eyes were drawn to a light on the other side of the highway—a smallish blob on the horizon that grew larger and taller the closer he got.

  "Holy shit," he muttered. It was a cross, easily a couple of hundred feet tall. He figured most people saw it as a glowing white beacon of hope in the night; to Henry it was a monstrous eyesore. He and Marianne had never been more than casual churchgoers at best—Christmas and Easter with the occasional wedding and funeral thrown in for go
od measure. She had flirted with the idea of converting after the diagnosis but instead became enraptured by the homeopathic lifestyle, with its essential oils and strange cocktails of ginger and turmeric and whatever snake oil was trending at the moment.

  He wished that had been the end of the madness, but it was merely the beginning.

  In a brief moment of desperation, Henry wondered if it was worth getting off the highway and bringing her to the cross. But what could be done—it wasn't like he could drop her off there and expect a miracle. Maybe there was a priest nearby who could perform an exorcism on whatever entity it was that had taken over her body.

  He snorted at the notion. Even if he was more than half serious about bringing them both back into a religious environment, there didn't seem to be an exit to get there. He'd passed the last one at least a mile back and the road signs indicated that 57 and 70 were going to be splitting back into two separate highways in less than a few miles.

  South to Memphis or west to St. Louis—neither appealed to him. But west was the way he had started this trip, and west he would continue. He moved into the right lane to continue on 70. The streetlamps on this stretch were unlit for some reason; he reckoned the situation would not improve once they were outside the city, same with the billboards.

  “Stop for a pack of Winstons for me, will you, love?”

  “No.”

  “Can’t hurt me anymore.”

  “Shut up.”

  “That’s not niiiiice,” she hissed.

  Henry shuddered. And then, as if mimicking him, so did the Buick.

  Not now. You piece of shit, not now.

  Marianne snickered. Henry shot a glance at the gas gauge, the needle at just above the halfway point. The car shuddered again, and his mind bounced around random diagnoses, though Henry knew next to nothing about cars. They were barely out of Effingham, back on a dark, empty stretch to anywhere, when the dash lights blinked off, and then on again, and finally died.

  The Buick trembled violently and the steering wheel wrenched itself free from Henry’s grip, spinning left and sending the car careening across two lanes. His ears filled with the loudness of the rumble strip as they hurtled onto the low ribbon of yellow grass and dirt in the median. Henry’s heart pounded against his ribs and Marianne cackled the whole way.

  "Shit!" Henry pounded the steering wheel. The Buick now faced eastbound, dead in the grass, dead as Marianne should have been.

  “Pity,” Marianne said.

  A semi rocketed past, shaking the car and its occupants. Once it was gone, all was still again. Still, and pitch black. Henry’s temples throbbed. Marianne was beginning to stink. Instinctively, he jabbed at the button on the armrest to his left to lower the window. It took him a second to piece together why it wasn’t doing anything.

  He felt like crying. His wet eyes shot up to the rearview mirror, where he saw the shape of her rising up behind him. A dark, formless shape bubbling up from the seat and the blanket, more terror than reality, for he couldn’t really see much of anything at all. It was the most she’d moved since he’d thrown her back there, and this was disconcerting. The idea was that the farther they got from the source of it all, that ugly business that started this whole mess, the more likely Henry would be able to put an end to it. The stone she’d died clutching, that goddamned talisman, a thousand miles away and two and a half feet underground, but did it matter? He wondered.

  “Too late,” came the voice behind him, the shape trembling as it spoke. “Too late.”

  Henry squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath. Didn’t want to see, to smell, to think. It hadn’t been much of a plan to begin with, all he could think to do was drive and hope the rest came together along the way, but it hadn’t. When he opened his eyes again, blinking away the sticky exhaustion and nascent tears that filmed them over, the only thing he could see clearly was the clean, white glow in the distance ahead of him.

  The cross.

  Talisman for a talisman, he thought. And this one was bigger. A lot bigger.

  He opened the door and heaved himself out of the car. The air was cool, crisp. It felt good on his face and in his lungs—each deep inhalation brought on a coughing fit but he didn't care; it was better than the smell of decay in the car that had slowly grown stronger over the course of the evening.

  Inside the car, Marianne turned her head to look up at him from the back seat. Henry wasn’t sure, but she seemed to be grinning at him. Fighting back the gorge rising in his gullet, he opened the back door and said, “Come on. We’re going for a walk, you and me.”

  The outpouring of stink from the car overwhelmed him and he dry heaved a couple of times before reaching in. He grabbed her arm and quickly let go, disgusted at the feel of his fingers sinking into her cold flesh. She had dropped dozens of pounds over the course of the last year and had taken on a frighteningly skeletal form—loose skin, hair loss, sunken eyes. In those last months she didn't want anyone to see her and he did his best to dissuade even her closest friends from coming by to say goodbye. Like anyone else, she’d have preferred to go quickly, but this way it was a kind of living death before the actual end.

  But not like this. Marianne really was dead now, had been for close to forty-eight hours. She’d been quiet, at least, for the first four or five hours, still and silent with her eyes closed while Henry wept beside her. He’d fallen asleep eventually, clutching her body to him as though afraid it would crumble to dust right then and there. Instead, she screamed until he jolted awake and screamed back at her. Her screams turned to laughter, his back to blubbering. One seemed to feed the other. Little had changed since.

  Her hand fell upon his, cool and papery, like onionskin. Henry pulled away from her, and Marianne’s hands emerged from the shadows of the Buick’s backseat, silvery-white in the moonlight, and curled their fingers around the frame of the open door. She clamped down and pulled herself forward, her tight, grinning face rising quickly from the car at him. Henry staggered backward with a gasp, and he watched as she unfurled herself, spider-like, to her full height on the side of the road before him. She had been a tallish woman in life and remained so in death, though so much thinner now, her face somehow longer and limbs spotty, rubbery. Her hair, sparse before, continued to thin and drop away, leaving broad patches of bare scalp that was beginning to peel and flake.

  “Christ Jesus,” he muttered. He noticed her arm—the one he had grabbed moments earlier—had five new blemishes that were quickly purpling. He choked back a pained gasp.

  Marianne canted her head to one side and widened her cloudy, dead eyes at him. He couldn’t fathom how she could see out of them, but none of this was supposed to be possible.

  “Henreeeee,” she said, her voice lilting into something approaching a song. It made his stomach flip. “Where are we going, lover? That fucking cross? Tell me it’s not the fucking cross, Henry.”

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “All this way and that’s all you’ve come up with?”

  Her shoulders raised, rolled, and sagged again. She rolled those foggy eyes, too, and worked her jaw while her tongue probed at her teeth. Whatever was in there was finally getting a shot at trying out the body, or at least Henry figured as much. The first step she took was like a newborn calf or deer, the spindly legs trembling and unsure. He noticed how long and jagged her toenails looked now, and he wondered if he shouldn’t have put some shoes on her before he left Jersey. Even undertakers put shoes on the bodies they dumped in the ground. He shuddered, knowing that the Marianne he spent over a decade with would be horrified at the state of her post-mortem being.

  She reached for him again and it was all he could to not recoil at her touch. She stopped just short, her fingers hovering over his forearm. They waggled ever so slightly, the fingernails grazing the hairs on his goose bump-ridden flesh. He backed away, not hiding his disgust this time.

  "You're repulsed by me." Her outstretched arm fell back to her side as her grin faded.

&nb
sp; He wasn't sure how to answer.

  “Good,” she said, reading his face in lieu of a response. “Good.”

  The grin returned.

  Henry’s lungs deflated and his shoulders sagged. He thought again of the enormous cross, and he silently admonished himself for having considered that for a solution. None of this was in his wheelhouse, though he shuddered to think whose wheelhouse it was in. All he knew was that his wife’s rapid descent into the world of herbs and crystals and other assorted hokum had made him more than a little uncomfortable, but since it wasn’t his sickness, his death, he resolved to keep his mouth shut and let her do whatever the hell she wanted to do. The stone, in retrospect, seemed among the least ridiculous items she’d acquired from the sundry humbug dealers she’d found online.

  Five bucks, plus another three-fifty for shipping. When first he saw it, he was reminded of the smooth, flat stones he used to search for on the shore of Lake Hopatcong when he was a kid; long, lazy summer days spent skipping them over the surface of the water as he got better at it and the stones went farther and farther. A comforting memory triggered by her comforting hocus-pocus talisman. How bad could that be?

  Of course, that was before he believed in things that weren’t at all possible. Black, rotted things that didn’t belong in his life or this place. Things that, apparently, one could procure for fewer than ten American dollars and a healthy dose of desperation.

  Things one could not outrun.

  The cross loomed in the distance bright and steady, beckoning. He turned his back to it—that was a foxhole he had no desire to jump into. But to walk back that way also meant finding a place to stay for the night and maybe an all-night diner. His stomach growled. It had been hours since he had polished off the beef jerky he bought when he last got gas. He couldn't remember where that had been, just that the sun was still out at that point.