by Jack Quaid
What Heather didn’t know was that on the other side of the door, Jimmy only looked like Jimmy from the waist up. From the waist down, Jimmy’s legs were nothing more than skeletons with flesh and meat hanging off them.
In his hand was one great big knife.
Note From The Publisher
During transcription of the cassette tapes recovered from Albert Harris, a Sony CFS-45 boom box purchased from a flea market for sixty dollars chewed chapters forty-three through forty-five of the novel. All attempts to repair the damaged tape have proved unsuccessful.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
FORTY SEVEN
Heather’s Diner was in flames. The blue-and-pink neon light that ran across the front of the building flickered on and off a couple of times before shorting out for the final time. A couple of moments later, it too was engulfed in flames.
Slashers of all sorts surrounded the burning building, and if anybody who happened to be left alive inside actually did make it out of that inferno, they would still have to battle through all those machete-wielding maniacs.
Gunfire blasted out from inside the diner.
Inside, the walls were covered in flames. The paint on the ceiling was bubbling, and the vinyl floors were starting to melt. Lee had two shotguns, one in each hand, and he was taking out slashers left, right, and center.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
The shots didn’t kill the slashers, but they knocked the killers back across the fiery room, where they climbed back up to their feet and made another charge at Lee, and again, Lee wrapped his fingers around the triggers and…
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Three more slashers were thrown back by the blasts and kept at bay. He was just buying time. Parker was on the floor with a dying Heather in her arms. There was blood all over Heather and blood all over Parker. No chance in hell she was going to make it out of that mess.
With her last ounce of energy, Heather lifted her hand, wrapped it around the back of Parker’s head, and pulled her close. “Do something for me.”
“What is it?” Parker asked.
Heather coughed blood. “Kill them all.”
The next breath she took was her last, then she died. Parker held Heather’s hand and looked into her vacant eyes. For years, she’d tried to become indifferent to all the killing and all the dying. She’d tried to push it back down somewhere deep in her heart where she didn’t have to think about it or feel about it. She had turned herself into a killing machine—a damn good killing machine—but without being there emotionally in that moment, where she felt every single death and the pain of people dying, she was no better that the slashers she hunted. So she sat there and let herself feel every single emotion that rushed through her as she held Heather’s still-warm hand.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
All those booms snapped Parker back to the awful reality that they were in.
“Come on, girly!” Lee yelled. “Time to get back in the fight.”
Abso-fucking-lutely, Parker thought. She rose to her feet and cranked up Aerosmith. The chain saw roared to life. She revved it a few times and stood shoulder to shoulder with Lee, their backs to the wall. In front of them stood the most motley crew of slashers that side of hell. The one thing that wasn’t in front of them was a goddamned exit.
One of the slashers, some Pennywise-looking motherfucker made a run for Lee.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
The slasher hit the deck and, without so much as a missed beat, climbed to his feet as if nothing had happened.
Lee took aim again.
Click! Click! Click!
“Son of a bitch! I’m out.” Lee tossed the shotgun aside and threw up his fists, ready to start pounding away. It wasn’t the best way to battle a slasher, but the old man had no other choice.
Parker scanned what was left of the burning diner and settled her gaze on the four slashers moving in on them. “This really is a bastard town.”
Then just in that moment, that very moment where all hope seemed lost and she and Lee were about to become dead meat, Parker heard Def Leppard’s pop rock hit of 1987, Pour Some Sugar on Me. Then through the smashed glass and broken boards, headlights lit up the smoke-filled interior of the diner. Half a beat later, a vehicle plowed through the entire front end of the burning diner, taking out the windows, a bunch of seats, and every single slasher about to pounce on Parker and Lee.
The vehicle in question was a big old ’50s Cadillac convertible. Behind the wheel was Corey Hayes. At fourteen years of age, he was too young to be driving a car like that and too cocky to know any different. He wore a karate bandana around his head, a pair of Ray-Bans, and a bad attitude.
“Need a lift?” Corey said.
The slashers he’d taken out during his dramatic entrance were starting to shake the crash off.
“Sooner rather than later, guys,” Corey said, banging his hand a couple of times against the door. “This place is dead meat.”
Parker jumped into the back seat of the Eldorado. Lee, on the other hand, was less sure about the kid, but considering the situation, he was shit out of options. Lee climbed into the passenger seat, then Corey shifted the Eldorado into reverse and floored it out of what was left of Heather’s burning diner. They hammered down the streets of Bastard Town, dodging and swerving around slashers. A few of them tried to swipe out and attack the car, but Corey had the accelerator firmly buried into the floorboard, and it didn’t take long for them to be free and clear of anything nasty and carrying something sharp.
Lee looked over his shoulder at the burning diner then threw a confused look to Corey.
“What is it, old man?” Corey asked when he caught Lee’s stare.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Parker leaned over the seat between them. “What?”
“Who the fuck is this kid?”
“I think it’s time for Gramps to have a nap,” Corey said.
“Do you want me to show you what it’s like to dribble teeth, kid?” Lee asked.
“Take a chill pill, dude.” And then Corey zipped it. He knew when to not poke the bear.
“It’s Corey,” Parker said. “He got to the diner just before those slashers got in. Remember we had that whole conversation about how he’d been hiding from these bastards up at his parents’ house and he set all those traps and caught like three of them?”
To say that confusion washed over Lee was an understatement. “No? I don’t remember that at all.”
“Then when all hell broke loose, he ran out to get the car.”
“And I got the car,” Corey said.
“And now here we are,” Parker said. “All up to speed?”
Lee grunted. He was still just as confused as he pushed back into the Eldorado’s front seat and stared off into the darkness. “I must have been somewhere else when all of that happened.”
FORTY EIGHT
From Hollows Point they could see the entire town.
Hollows Point was also known as Lovers’ Lane, Lovers’ Leap, and Lovers’ Lookout. It sat a couple of hundred feet above sea level, and getting there meant driving up the winding path to the first peak of the mountains. It wasn’t law, but it was custom that teenagers on a first date ended that date after parking at Hollows Point, and if they were lucky, it would end with a kiss. Sometimes those dates turned into going steady, and sometimes, when it was time to pop the big question, couples found themselves back at Hollows Point with the guy on one knee and the magnificent view of Whittier in the background.
First dates, kisses, and proposals were not the reason Parker, Lee, and Corey were up at Hollows Point that night.
Lee pointed his yellow, cigar-stained finger at the local church at the far end of town. “That’s where the Book of Evil is.”
Parker followed his finger through the darkness and over to the small church
. There wasn’t much of it. By the look of the building, Parker figured the church to be somewhere close to one hundred years old, maybe it held over a dozen pews, a small stage, and not much else. The building itself was surrounded by dozens of slashers, and they were only the ones Parker could see in the moonlight.
“This is not going to be easy,” she said.
Corey lit a cigarette. “No shit, Sherlock.”
Parker snatched the smoke from his lips, and as she was about to toss it away, she stopped and slipped it between her own lips. “How does it work? The Book of Evil.”
“It has the power to bring death,” Lee said. “But it can also take death. If we read the right passage, the hell gate should open up and suck everything evil back into hell.”
Corey squatted and peered down at the church. “We’ll never reach it. That church is surrounded by a heap of slimeballs.”
“Then we need a distraction,” Parker said.
“How about Gramps here”—Corey thumbed at Lee—"drives off away from the church, doing a whole bunch of yelling and screaming. Naturally, the slimeballs will smell fresh meat and chase after him, leaving the church free and clear. That’s where the babe and I swoop in, open up the hell gate, suck all the slimeballs back to hell, and save the world.”
“There’s only one problem with your saving the world plan,” Parker said.
“And what’s that?”
Lee checked the rounds in the barrel of his revolver. “I’m the only one who can read from the book.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s in ancient Hebrew.”
“Okay,” Corey said, turning to Parker. “You read from the book, so that means…” At that point, Corey realized he’d just gotten the dangerous end of the plan, and it was his plan. “Shit. That’s totally going to suck.”
FORTY NINE
Corey Hayes first climbed behind the wheel of a car three weeks ago, and he’d completely overestimated his driving skills. The movie theater was having a double feature of Sleepaway Camp III and C.H.U.D II, and his father wouldn’t take him. Corey’s old man hated horror movies. He thought they were trash, a waste of time, money, and life. So when Corey asked his old man if he would take him to the theater and sit through two movies that were sequels to two other movies that the old man hadn’t seen, the answer was decidedly no. In fact, Corey had thought his old man was even going to ground him just for asking.
The way Corey saw it, being told he couldn’t do something didn’t mean that he couldn’t do something. It just meant that he needed to find a way to do it. So when the old man went to sleep—he usually went to sleep early so he could get up early and work the boats—Corey snuck downstairs, slipped the keys out of the old man’s leather jacket, and tiptoed out the back door.
How hard could driving be? Corey thought as he slid in behind the wheel of the family Monte Carlo. He’d been in and out of cars all his life, not to mention he had seen every episode of The Dukes of Hazzard, and although it didn’t count for any real-world experience, he thought it should count for something. So he slid the key into the Monte Carlo, just as he had seen his old man do a million times. He slipped the gear stick into reverse, just as he had seen his old man do a million times, and he reversed out of the driveway… and straight into Mrs. Boffard’s Packard parked right across the road.
Corey had been grounded for a month, and he never did get to see Sleepaway Camp III or C.H.U.D II. Technically, Corey was still grounded, but his old man wasn’t around anymore, so he figured the punishment was probably void.
When he’d pounded on the door to Heather’s Diner, he told Parker Ames that Hatchet Bob had hacked their front door to pieces and that his old man had attacked Hatchet Bob, not to defeat him, but just to buy Corey some time to escape. He even told her that just before running out the back door, he looked back, and his father, who was wrestling with the slasher, called out, “I love you, son.” That was the story he told himself, but that wasn’t the truth of it. Not by a long shot.
Hatchet Bob had destroyed their front door and come into their house, but what happened after that was totally different. Hatchet Bob had cornered Corey in the kitchen, and when his old man ran into the room with his baseball bat, he took one look at Hatchet Bob and ran out the back door—straight out the back door, leaving Corey to deal with the slasher all by himself. Corey had managed to get the hell out of the kitchen, run up the stairs, and climb out his bedroom window. From there, he’d jumped to the neighbor’s roof, and from there he’d been home free.
Corey’s second time behind the wheel was when he drove the Eldorado through Heather’s Diner, and now there he was for a third time, with their slasher Pied Piper plan. He crossed his heart and swore to God that if he survived the night and didn’t crash the car, he would do something good. He didn’t know what, but he made that promise to God in his head. He just hoped he wouldn’t crash for a third time.
He looked over his shoulder at Parker standing on the back seat of the Eldorado with a shotgun in her hand and a couple of boxes of shells by her feet. “Are you ready to go and do something stupid?”
“What else are we going to do?” Parker asked.
Corey wrapped his fingers around the big old steering wheel, turned the key, and woke up the massive V8 engine underneath the hood of the Caddy.
Corey dropped the tape into the tape deck, and Billy Idol blasted out of the speakers.
Then they hit the road.
FIFTY
There were slashers all over Bastard Town. They roamed the halls of Whittier Community School and the woods of Whittier City Park, and they lurked in the basements of houses everywhere. They all had one thing and one thing only on their minds: killin’.
Corey kept the big red Caddy at a cool fifteen miles per hour, one eye on the road ahead and another on the rearview mirror. Parker Ames, with her shotgun wedged firmly against her shoulder, rode in the back, just waiting to blast the hell out of anything that came near them.
Billy Idol’s “White Wedding (Part 1)” filled the quiet night air of Whittier. They were out in the open, but the noise hadn’t yet attracted any slashers. Corey was starting to think that maybe the whole plan was a terrible idea.
Then he took a corner and saw a slasher in a prison jumpsuit and a bloody hood over his head. As the Eldorado passed him, the slasher fell into line and followed them, keeping the exact same pace.
Corey looked over his shoulder at the slasher. “I liked this plan a lot more when the old man was playing slimeball Pied Piper.”
“Me too,” Parker said under her breath.
Half a block later, the population of slashers trailing them had grown. Some wore masks; others held weapons. No matter what, though, all of them had their attention fixed on Parker and Corey.
One lunged at the rear of the car. Parker didn’t even skip a beat. She racked the shotgun and took aim.
Chick-chick. Boom!
The slasher hit the deck with a shotgun blast to the chest. But like with any slasher, a shell to the chest wasn’t enough to put one of those monsters down. He climbed back up again and marched right alongside his fellow slashers behind the Caddy.
“It’s working,” Parker called out. “They’re following us.”
“Great,” Corey said, less enthused. “That’s just great.”
Parker looked back in the direction of the church. “Come on, old man,” she said to herself. “End this this nightmare.”
FIFTY-ONE
There wasn’t much left of the Whittier church. Weather and decay had worn it down. The once-pristine white walls were flaking paint, the stained-glass windows with colorful images of the Crucifixion were covered in dirt and dust, and the weeds around the building rose a couple of feet out of the ground.
Father McLane had died years ago, and the church had struggled to find a replacement. Eventually, they just stopped looking, and the church sat quiet on the edge of town.
A cemetery surrounded the church, and tombstones s
tuck up out of the grass like crooked teeth. Beyond that was the tree line, which was exactly where Lee was crouched. A few slashers were out roaming, but like Lee, they could hear the blaring racket blasting out of the Eldorado, and one by one, those slashers moved away from the church, toward the promise of something new to slash and kill.
As soon as the last one disappeared down Maple and into the darkness, Lee, bent at the waist, cut across the cemetery and up to the double doors. Three weeks ago, when he’d arrived back in Bastard Town, the church doors were chained up and secured with a brass lock. All it had taken was one swing with the sledge Lee had in his pickup to take the lock clean off, and he was inside. Lee looked over his shoulder one last time just to make sure the coast was clear then pushed through the double doors just like he had a few weeks earlier.
It was dark inside, and at first glance, the church was empty. But despite how empty it looked, Lee wasn’t taking any chances. He took careful and considered steps down the aisle toward the altar, keeping his fists balled tightly just in case something jumped out at him.
The Book of Evil was exactly where he’d left it on the floor by the altar. Lee crouched. It hurt his back a little, and he winced, but that didn’t stop him from picking up the book. He ran his hands over the human flesh that made up the pages and binding and flicked through the pages written in blood. “Hello, you son of a bitch.”
Lee flicked through the book to find the specific page that had created all this mess to begin with and paused when he found the passage. Placing his finger on that first word, he drew a breath and hoped to hell that was going to make everything right again.
“Z’ai ng’ngah, yog-sothoth. H’ee—l’geb. F’ai throdog. Uaaah,” Lee chanted. “Z’ai ng’ngah, yog-sothoth. H’ee—l’geb. F’ai throdog. Uaaah.”