by Jack Quaid
“Turn that down, would you?” Parker called.
Begrudgingly, Sam slid off the chair, made her way over to the television, and turned the volume down. Then returned to the kitchen table and reglued her eyes back on the screen.
Parker went back to making dinner and used the blade in her hand to chop up a couple of carrots. She wasn’t much of a cook—there was no secret about that—but Parker tried. She really tried. She bought cookbooks and took lessons, but no matter how diligently she followed the recipes or how attentive she was in those classes, almost every single meal she cooked was served up on the kitchen table as if it were cursed. Needless to say, they ordered in a lot.
“Mom?” Sam said with her eyes still glued to the TV. “Are monsters real, or did someone just make all this up?”
Parker paused and gave that a little bit of a thought. “No, sweetheart. Someone just made it all up. There’s no such thing as monsters.”
Just at that moment, they both heard the same sound at the same time. It came from the front of the house. The sound of the front door opening and closing filtered through the house, followed shortly by a couple of heavy footsteps. Sam sat up, and her body stiffened.
“Well, sweetie,” Parker said without so much as an ounce of fear in her voice. “Maybe Mom was wrong. Maybe monsters do exist?”
As the footsteps grew closer, they were joined by a groan that grew louder and more painful the closer it got. Sam leaned forward, fear on her face. She looked at Parker then back at the empty hall again.
Then a figure emerged in the doorframe, and it wasn’t the Creature from the Black Lagoon or anything else even remotely as scary. It was just Joe in the world’s worst Wolfman mask. He pulled the thing off and let out one last grrrrr.
Sam rolled her eyes. “So lame.” And she went back to watching television.
“Come on,” Joe said. “Wasn’t anyone scared?”
“Sorry, Wolfman, “Parker said. “Not even a little.”
Joe’s eyes dipped a little disappointedly down to the mask in his hand. “I thought this would kill.”
“Sorry, babe,” Parker said as she gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Us girls just aren’t that easily scared.”
The telephone rang, and before Parker or Joe could even think about answering it, Sam pounced on the receiver and pushed it to her ear. She listened for a couple of seconds excitedly and looked to her mother. “Can I stay at Marcy’s for a slumber party?”
Parker grumbled a little and shook her head. “I don’t think so, Sweetie.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s Halloween, and I don’t like you going out at Halloween.”
“Why?”
“I just don’t; that’s all.”
“We won’t go trick-or-treating. I promise.”
“Yeah, come on, Mom,” Joe jumped in, not being very helpful at all. “They won’t go trick-or-treating.”
It was a bad idea at the best of times, Parker thought. Groups of young teenage girls watching horror movies at a slumber party on Halloween did nothing but attract slashers, maniacs, and future urban legends. Parker had seen the aftermath of many of those nights, and it wasn’t the prettiest of sights. But when Sam looked at her with that hope and excitement in her eyes, she wasn’t thinking as Parker Ames, slasher hunter, but as Christine Harrison. And Christine just wanted her daughter to be happy.
“Sure, kid. Go stay at Marcy’s.” She gave Joe a dirty look for encouraging the whole thing.
“What?” he asked with a shrug. “The only time bad things happen at slumber parties is in horror movies. She’ll be fine.”
But Parker wasn’t so sure.
Twenty-Two
Dinner was a success… kind of. It was eaten without too many complaints, so in Parker’s book, that was success. After the table was cleared and the dishwasher loaded, she left Joe and Sam on the couch with candy and the seventh movie in Butcher Ben’s Twenty-four-hour Monster Film Festival of Terror, Fright Night, and made her way upstairs to get changed and freshen her makeup. She really couldn’t be bothered, but not only was Marcy’s mom, Jacinta, somewhat of a bitch, she was also a gossip. If Parker turned up at any time of day looking less than perfect. Jacinta would make sure half the town knew about it before sunup. So Parker went upstairs to their bathroom, brushed her hair, and washed the day’s makeup off so she could apply a fresh layer.
She wore too much makeup. It wasn’t due to vanity; she wore the makeup for one very simple reason. It covered all the tiny little scars that littered her face and neck. because behind each and every one of them was a story of a close shave where some violent son of a bitch tried to take a piece of her and almost did.
The makeup was a mask.
With it, she was Christine Turner. Without it, she was Parker Ames.
A skull-and-crossbones tattoo poked out from the sleeve of her shirt. She unbuttoned her shirt and let it slide off the back of her shoulders. For the first time in years, Parker stood there in front of the mirror in nothing but her underwear, and she saw herself as she really was, without the makeup covering her scars or the Christine Harrison costume that covered the tattoos. Her entire left arm from her wrist to her shoulder was covered in skull-and-crossbones tattoos. There was one for every slasher she had sent back to hell. Her other arm told another tattoo story altogether. The elaborate vine tattoo ran up her arm and down the side of her back until it looped around her stomach again. She had a leaf for every single life she’d saved. It was difficult to tell how many that number was for sure, but after half a glance, a conservative estimate would have placed that number in the hundreds—living, breathing people who were all alive at that very moment because when evil came knocking, Parker Ames was there, with a weapon in her hand and a look in her eye that told each and every one of them that she was about to send them back to hell.
She looked at her wristwatch. Corey Hayes was waiting.
Twenty-Three
Corey Hayes was on his fourth cigarette and second Big Gulp as he sat cross-legged on the hood of the Eldorado. He checked his watch; it was almost eight thirty. If he were placing bets on whether Parker Ames or Christine Harrison or whoever she was calling herself was going to turn up, he wasn’t sure if that was a bet he would take. The Parker Ames he knew would have already been there, sitting alongside him, sharing a smoke and a Coke. That had been a long time ago, though, and as he sat there on the hood of the car, he wasn’t absolutely, positively one hundred percent certain he would ever see her again.
Then a couple of headlights punched through the fog and darkness, followed shortly by a minivan. It pulled off the road and into the gas station. The engine shut down, the door opened, and there she was.
“You know, for a moment, I was starting to think you really had quit,” Corey said as he flicked his cigarette off into the darkness. “I didn’t think you’d be back.”
“I’m not back. I’m only here to make sure Hurricane doesn’t cause any more damage. Do you have any leads?”
“I’ve got one,” he said, sliding off the hood of the Eldorado. “Walk this way.”
He made a beeline for the filling station. Although the neon light above the store hummed, there were no lights on inside, and the sign Corey had flipped over earlier in the day was still flipped to Closed.
Corey pushed through the door, found the light switch, and flicked it on. A cloud of flies hovered over the headless corpse and weren’t terribly disturbed by Corey and Parker’s presence or the light.
Parker took one look at the body, the flies, and the head a couple of feet north of where it had originally been and vomited like a rookie. Luckily for her, there was a trash can by the door, and Parker got most of her dinner into that when she barreled over to heave.
Corey looked at her with half confusion and half shock. “You’re kidding, right? I know this is not the first headless body you’ve seen.”
“I’ll be all right,” Parker said in between heaves.
“I�
�m really hoping so. Because if you’re not, there’s a very high chance we’re all going to end up hacked to pieces by the time this whole thing is over and done with.”
Parker wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Who’s that poor son of a bitch?”
He took a couple of steps, waved away the swarm of flies, leaned down, and pulled a wallet from the guy’s pants. “He’s Lloyd Fairweather,” Corey said, flicking through the cards in his wallet. “Or should I say it was Lloyd Fairweather?”
Parker took in a couple more deep breaths of dead air and tried to keep it together. “This was his joint,” she said, motioning around at the gas station. “Probably just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bad luck for Lloyd.”
“Lloyd probably agrees. I figure Hurricane Williams passed through here; Lloyd got in his way and lost his head,” Corey said. “What do you think?”
Parker took another look at the body and again folded over and vomited.
“Jesus,” Corey said. “Are you going to be like this the entire time?”
She held her hand up to put him on pause, and when she was finished, she stood up and dragged in a lungful of air. It took her a couple of moments, but she pulled herself together. “If he’s coming for me, he’s going to want a weapon. He came here looking for one and didn’t find it.”
Corey pointed to what was left of the proprietor of the First & Last Gas Roadhouse. “Then how did he separate Lloyd’s head from Lloyd’s body?”
“With his bare hands.”
Corey cocked his head and got an angle on the body. “Damn, that’s cold.”
“He still needs a weapon,” Parker said, “and I think I know where he’ll go to find one.”
Parker couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there and take a couple breaths of fresh air. “Do you see that out there?” Parker pointed through the fog and into the night to a small flickering light off in the distance.
“Yeah, so what?” Corey said.
“That’s the Aronson farm. It’s a cattle ranch and the only thing for miles around. If I needed a weapon and I needed one quick, and I walked out of here and saw that farm, that’s where I’d go.”
Corey thought about it for a moment, and once all his thinking was done, a grin crawled to the side of his face. He slapped his hands together excitedly. “That’s what I’m talking about! Parker Ames is back!”
“I’ll drive,” Parker said as she took a step toward her minivan.
Corey started to follow but stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes fixed on the minivan. “In that?”
“What? Why?”
“It doesn’t exactly strike fear into the hearts of monsters, does it?” Corey said.
“It’s reliable,” Parker said with a hint of hurt in her voice.
“Yeah,” Corey said. “That’s really not enough.”
Twenty-Four
They took the Eldorado. The headlights cut through the fog as Corey put pedal to the metal and hammered up the cold dusty road that lead to the Aronson farm.
“Don’t you miss all this?” Corey said. “It’s like the good old days. You and me, chasing down some monster in some scary place, not knowing what the hell we’re going up against.”
“Do I miss running around and stabbing dead things that should already be dead?”
“Hell yeah, running around stabbing dead things that should already be dead.”
“No,” Parker said. “No, I don’t.”
“Not even a little bit?”
“No! Not even a tiny little bit.”
“Then…” Corey struggled to find the words. “What do you do with your days?”
“I live like a normal person,” she said. “I cook dinners. I go to work. I look after Sam.”
“How many Sams do you have?”
“One.”
“And you cook dinners?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m a really good cook.”
“You’re a terrible cook.”
“I’m getting better.”
“The most dangerous monsters ever to bust out of hell feared the name Parker Ames, and now you’re cooking dinners?”
“It’s talk like this that won’t get you invited to dinner.”
“From what I hear, that’s probably a relief.”
Parker smiled to herself. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I just can’t travel around, chasing all the things that go bump in the night anymore.”
“Why the hell not?”
Parker wound the window down and let the breeze flow though the car. “It won’t be long until Sam’s a teenager. In a few years, she’ll be sixteen, the same age I was when my parents were killed. I don’t want her to grow up like me. I don’t want her to grow up alone.”
Corey lit a cigarette. “She could do a lot worse than growing up like you.”
It was about as close to a compliment as anybody was going to get out of Corey, and although she couldn’t help but think that he was still the smartass she’d met all those years ago in Bastard Town, it was clear that he had come along way too. Parker had her eyes on him and was thinking about that when out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the Aronson’s front gate emerge out of the fog.
“Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!”
Corey slammed on the brakes, and the Eldorado slid along the dirt until it came to a stop just inches from the gate. Corey peeled his fingers one by one from the wheel. “I guess we’re here.”
“I guess we are.”
The pair of them climbed out then made their way past the gate and through the fog until the big Aronson house emerged. The ranch-style house must have been close to one hundred years old and had most likely been there as long as the town had.
Parker vaguely knew Linda and Darren Aronson and their two sons, Blair and Andy. They were one of the few families around Delaware who still farmed beef. They didn’t run a lot of cattle, but they had enough head to sell to the local restaurants, and that was just the way they liked it.
The youngest son, Andy, was the same age as Sam. Occasionally, they’d been to the same parties or sporting events, and Parker had exchanged a couple of pleasantries with Linda. As far as Parker could tell, she was all right. Parker had a pretty good bullshit detector for those kinds of things. So when she walked up to the farmhouse, a part of her hoped they were on the right trail with Hurricane, but an even bigger part of her hoped they weren’t.
Corey and Parker walked up the steps to the veranda, and at front door, Parker raised her hand to knock before realizing it was already open a couple of inches. When Parker pushed it farther, the door swung open to reveal a long hall that ran the length of the house. From the front door to the back was a long trail of blood.
“Do you think this is the place?” Corey asked.
She gave him a look. “It would be one hell of a coincidence if it wasn’t.”
The pair of them made their way through the house starting with that long bloody hall, and they were both very careful not to step in any of the blood. It wasn’t that easy. The blood was everywhere. Whoever had done the bleeding was still alive while being dragged through the house, and they had clearly put up fight. Bloody handprints pulled along the walls above shoe scuff marks and other signs of a struggle.
As Parker and Corey passed each room, they did a search for survivors. No luck. Each room came up empty, so they continued following the bloody path through the house until it exited out of the back door and into the yard.
It was dark in every direction until Corey pulled out a flashlight from his leather jacket’s pocket. The flashlight lit up a long line of crimson that shone in the light. The trail of blood led straight to the barn a good twenty or thirty feet away.
Parker followed Corey across the yard, and it wasn’t long until the pair of them were at the closed barn door, where the trail continued on underneath.
“On the count of three,” Parker said to Corey, “we go in.”
“Did you bring a weapon?” Corey asked.
“No,” Parker said. It was amateur hour, and she knew it. “Did you?”
He shook his head and pulled back his leather jacket. He had a whole assortment of things strapped to his belt: a .45, a Bowie knife, and a couple of more blades—everything a prepared hunter of slashers could possible need.
He pulled the knife from the sheath, spun it around in his fingers like some sort of rock ’n’ roll drummer, and presented the handle to Parker. She took the blade and held it in her hand as if welcoming an old friend before shifting her eyes back to the barn doors and getting back to business.
“On the count of three,” she whispered. “One.”
She drew a breath. “Two.”
A bead of sweat rolled down her neck. “Three.”
Parker took a step back and lifted her foot. With one hard and fast kick, she sent that barn door flying open. The pair of them were ready to fight, punch, kick, and scream, but when Corey lit up the barn with the flashlight, they didn’t see anything to fight, punch, kick, or scream about. Hurricane wasn’t there, but he had been; that was for damn sure.
Hanging from one of the three major beams that held up the barn were all four Aronsons, their torsos ripped open and their insides scattered across the floor.
A devastated sigh left Parker’s lungs. “This really is a crappy job.”
Twenty-Five
Every Tuesday night, old Telly Edmondson would climb behind the wheel of his faded blue Packard, listen to the oldies on WPX, like Gene Pitney, the Ronettes, and Dusty Springfield. Those dusty old tunes leaked out of his speakers as Telly drove along Delaware Route 1 to US 13 until he reached Philadelphia two hours later. Then he would simply turn around and drive all the way back home, just exactly the same way he’d come.