Seven months later, Ramiro’s housekeeper found his body lying on his chaise lounge with two bullets in his head and four in his groin. The case remains unsolved, although Ramiro knew his killer.
In the six decades that Ramiro spent grooming and then molesting children, he only made one mistake: the boy that Marty Sabatino had seen at Ramiro’s ranch was Mike Young, Sheriff Ian Young’s son.
Lizzy was a friend of the Young family and Mike eventually told her about the abuse he had suffered. She in turn alerted the sheriff and it was Ian Young who murdered Ramiro.
The old man’s spirit remained earthbound, intent on revenge. Now able to move around freely and readily communicate with the forces that he had evoked and worshipped, Ramiro rapidly changed from being a human spirit into a demonic one.
In August 1950, a plate glass window ‘fell’ from a derelict building and cut Ian Young in half. The next month, when Mike was chopping wood in his backyard, he somehow managed to bury an axe in the back of his head.
Lizzy had taken her own life before Ramiro could get to her.
Unable to locate her in the spirit world, Ramiro’s desire for revenge came to a crunching halt until Gary moved onto the ranch and Ramiro noticed his growing obsession with Lizzy. He then took on Lizzy’s form and tricked Gary into performing the ritual. Ramiro knew that returning to a world that she had grown to hate would be torture for Lizzy, especially with Ramiro as her constant companion. He also knew that one always pays a price when asking the gods for something. Better Gary than him.
~
As the images, words, sounds, emotions and smells began to drift away and I followed them into a black void, Harkinen said, ‘So now you know who I am and why I’m here. Bet you now wish you’d never met the bitch, huh.’
~
Harkinen wrenched me from unconsciousness by throwing a bucket of freezing cold water in my face. I spluttered and gasped, blinking rapidly as I tried to clear the water from my eyes. I felt dizzy, sluggish, as if drugged. Drained of all energy. Senses dulled and weirdly distant. Couldn’t move. I glanced down. My arms were behind me, tied to something hard and immovable. A vertical piece of timber, I thought, like a post. When I looked up, I realized that I was in the hay barn, bound to one of the support posts that ran down the center of the building, the overhead lights casting a gentle, yellowish glow over the barn’s interior. Harkinen stood a few feet away, grinning, my Glock tucked inside the waistband of his jeans.
‘Rise and shine, shithead,’ he said.
Opposite me and about twelve feet away was Lizzy, also tied to a post. It felt like an impossibly vast distance. She looked petrified.
‘Bruce! Oh God, are you okay?!’
‘Groggy, like he drugged me, but it’s beginning to clear. Has he touched you?’
Lizzy shook her head. ‘No. He got inside. I don’t know how, but he found me and threatened to hurt you if I didn’t do as he said. I had the gun, but I couldn’t use it. I just froze.’ Her eyes widened in alarm. ‘Oh God the pups. Are the pups okay?’
Cold fear pressed a bony finger against my heart. Harkinen had got to me before I could take them to safety. I looked at him.
‘They’re in back of Beau’s truck,’ he said. ‘Give me something to snack on later.’
‘If you-’
‘Yeah yeah yeah.’ He picked up a grass sickle. The sonofabitch had been rooting around in my toolshed. ‘This reunion between you and your tart is very touching but I’m getting bored.’ He walked over to Lizzy, the grin back in place: maniacal, evil, triumphant. ‘Thought you should be awake for this.’
‘If that blade so much as touches her skin, Harkinen-’
‘You’ll what? Break free of your bonds like Superman and rescue the damsel in distress? Try it. I could do with a laugh.’
‘Don’t ... Just please, don’t.’
‘Don’t? Is that all? I had expected some kind of clichéd heroic line like “Get your filthy hands off her.” Or “Touch her and I’ll kill you”. That one would be really funny.’
‘Just untie her, okay? She’s done nothing wrong. Never hurt you.’
He glared at me, enraged and astonished. ‘Has done nothing wrong?! Never hurt me?! Didn’t you understand what I showed you?!’ Harkinen took a few steps towards me, his voice rising to a scream. ‘She told Young and got me killed! Murdered by my own friend!’
‘You were molesting his son, you piece of shit. You got what you deserved, so grow up and let it go for fuck’s sake.’
‘I won’t let it go!’
Harkinen whirled around and lunged at Lizzy, the arm holding the sickle coming up and around, the blade hurtling towards her throat.
I leaned forward and bellowed his name, putting all of my energy into it, the word rising from my gut like a cannon ball and punching through the air.
The sickle stopped an inch from Lizzy’s skin. Harkinen turned to look at me, eyebrows raised in surprise.
I felt a swift burst of relief, so sweet and pure it was close to ecstasy. Perhaps a tiny flame of humanity still flickered within the darkness he had become.
‘Nah,’ he said, looking at Lizzy, then back at me. ‘That would be too easy. Too quick.’ With his eyes holding mine, Harkinen grinned again, swapped the sickle for a hacksaw and placed the cutting edge against her neck. ‘The thing about hacksaw blades is that the teeth are so small, it takes fucking ages to cut anything. There were times when I found it frustrating. Now I couldn’t be happier.’
He turned back to Lizzy and pushed the saw across her throat, creating a thin wide red slash in her flesh, blood dribbling from the wound. Lizzy opened her mouth wide and let loose the most horrific, deafening, high-pitched squealing-scream I have ever heard. The nearest I have ever come to a sound like it was when I was in Austria on a skiing holiday organized by my high school. Some brainiac had booked us into a hotel that overlooked a slaughterhouse, the anguished squeals of dying pigs echoing up the hill.
I had never wanted to hear that sound from any living thing again.
‘Oh God no, NOO! LIZZY! LIIIZZZYYY!’
I leaned forward, straining against the ropes, but there was no way I could loosen them. Harkinen had tied the knots too well. I felt utterly helpless, unable to do anything except watch. I dropped my head, sobbing. Couldn’t look anymore. However, there was nothing I could do to block out the sound of Harkinen sawing through Lizzy’s neck, the blade making a thick, ripping sound as it cut through her muscles and tendons. Time expanded in a way I have never known before. The sawing seemed to go on for hours, Lizzy’s screams ripping me apart as thoroughly as the hacksaw ripped through her flesh. The screaming morphed into a gurgling sound as if she was drowning. I looked up. Blood was gushing from her neck, drenching her pajamas, pooling around her feet and covering Harkinen’s hands, arms, shirt and jeans. Then she abruptly went silent, her mouth hanging open, head bobbing grotesquely as Harkinen slowly separated it from her neck. It began to tip back and to her left, hanging by a rapidly diminishing strip of flesh and skin as Harkinen worked with the efficient, expert focus of a veteran butcher, Lizzy’s head finally falling from her neck and hitting the dirt floor with a dull thud, rolling a few feet until it came to a stop, her dead eyes gazing at us, mouth open in a silent scream. I could only stare in silence, struck dumb with shock, my throat feeling raw and dry. Tears cast a shimmering veil across the scene and I tried to blink them away.
Harkinen turned to me, the saw hanging at his side, blood dripping from the blade. He inclined his head towards Lizzy’s body. ‘Here comes the interesting part. Never fails to amaze me. Watch.’
I wondered what he expected me to see. For a moment, the barn was utterly still, silent, then one of her fingers twitched. For a moment, I didn’t breathe, my attention riveted to Lizzy’s right hand. A few seconds crawled by. It twitched again, then her fingers began to open and close, flexing and relaxing, as if trying to rid themselves of cramp. A beat later, the fingers on he
r left hand did the same.
‘It gets better,’ Harkinen said.
I looked at him and he nodded towards Lizzy’s head. I shifted my gaze and felt my eyes grow round with disbelief.
Something was moving inside her mouth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I watched, aghast, as Lizzy’s tongue slithered over her teeth and lips like a snake and then down her chin until it reached the ground. It slid across the floor, swelling in size and length and dividing into four long tentacle-like strips of dark red flesh. Upon reaching Lizzy’s body, they wrapped themselves around her legs and pulled Lizzy’s head six inches across the floor. It made a gritty, scraping noise as it moved, her long dust and dirt-covered hair following like a golden train. Another pull, another six inches. Then another and another, her head sluggishly making its way towards the limp figure bound to the support post.
‘Fascinating, isn’t it?’ Harkinen said. ‘Bet you had no idea that you’d been fucking a monster straight out of an H. P. Lovecraft story, eh?’
I barely heard him, my attention gripped by the Halloween show a few feet away. When Harkinen began to decapitate Lizzy, my horror, shock and grief consumed me so completely that I forgot that Lizzy could regenerate. Now, as the memory of the night she returned flitted across my inner screen like a scene from a zombie movie, I felt a mixture of revulsion, terror, hope and exultation.
When Lizzy’s head reached her feet, the tentacles crawled up her body and wrapped themselves around her shoulders, dragging her head up her legs and torso, her face making a whispery noise as it rubbed against her pajamas, and then lowered it onto her neck. Flesh met flesh with a nauseating squelch and it immediately began to fuse. The tentacle-like strips of flesh withdrew into her mouth. The jagged red line around her throat and neck turned a dark, brownish red, briefly scabbed over then faded away as flesh, tendons and skin knitted themselves together. Within a minute, there was no evidence of Harkinen’s butchery, not even a scar. I watched Lizzy intently, waiting for life to return to her face. A few seconds passed and then a light seemed to go on deep within her. A glow returned to Lizzy’s eyes. Her skin appeared to shine. She blinked, turned her head and looked at me, a tear trickling down her cheek.
‘Bruce-’
‘Well, I don’t know about you two, but I enjoyed that,’ Harkinen said, grinning like a child who has just witnessed the greatest magic trick in the world. ‘Fucking amazing, huh, Kain? Shall we do it again, Dashwood? Go on, let’s give your boyfriend a double feature.’
Lizzy’s facial muscles tightened, her lips thinning. She stared at him with a look of such potent malice that Harkinen flinched and took a step back.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Lizzy said.
‘Don’t talk to me like that, bitch. You need to learn some respect for your elders and betters.’
‘Oh shut up. Cow turds have more class than you.’
Harkinen pointed at her. ‘Listen you fu-’
‘I’m not afraid of you, Ramiro. Every time you try and hurt me, every time I die and come back, I get stronger. My god is stronger than yours and every time I pray to him, he gives me the extra strength I need to fight you. One day I’ll be so strong you won’t be able to touch me.’
She smiled and for one brief moment I saw a vehemence in her eyes that scared me. Judging from the expression on Harkinen’s face, it scared him as well.
‘I wouldn’t bother praying to your god, Dashwood. You know, it doesn’t work when I’m in a body and I don’t believe in him. He’s nothing to me, just a myth.’
‘Then why are you scared?’
‘Scared?’ Harkinen laughed, but it sounded hollow.
‘I’m going to fill you with so much pain, you’ll scream.’
For a moment, Harkinen’s fear turned into astonishment, then anger darkened his face and he thrust it into hers.
‘I’m gonna cut off your boyfriend’s nuts with a blunt knife and feed them to him. And that’s just for-’
‘Sheriff’s Office! Put down your weapons and get on the ground now!’
We all turned towards the voice.
A young male deputy was stepping cautiously into the barn, his service pistol aimed at Harkinen.
~
Thank God, I thought. She managed to trigger the alarm before he got to her.
Relief enveloped me like a warm velvet blanket as I watched the deputy’s large frame quickly cover the ground between us, his eyes never leaving Harkinen, but the feeling of relief was short-lived, its existence fleeting and insubstantial like a phantom. As I had found out, a pistol was useless against Harkinen. The deputy needed a shotgun and now I feared for him, a thick, black dread, a belief that he wouldn’t leave the barn alive settling heavily inside my chest.
Harkinen made a show of dropping the saw and then pulled my Glock from his waistband. It was a smooth, quick movement, but a stupid one against a man who’s weapon was already drawn. The deputy shot Harkinen four times in the chest, then four more as Harkinen aimed the Glock. The next two shots should have ended it and saved the deputy’s life. He put one round through Harkinen’s right eye, a fine spray of blood spurting from the exit wound, and the second through his cheek, blood now gushing from the back of his head. Harkinen continued to move as if he was unhurt, copying the deputy and shooting him first in the chest and then in the head.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
Harkinen returned the Glock to his waistband and walked over to Lizzy who was now staring at the deputy and crying. She cringed at the sight of his ruined face and I thought, Even with his power, how is he still managing to keep Beau’s body alive, to walk around as if nothing had happened? His brains are falling out of the back of his fucking head, for Christ’s sake!
‘Well kids,’ Harkinen said, ‘looks like we’ll have to cut short our little chit-chat. Time to be moving on. Don’t want to be here when more deputies turn up. They’ll just slow me down.’
His right fist shot out as if attached to a compressed spring and landed on Lizzy’s chin, the back of her head bouncing off the support post with a sickening hollow thud, knocking her out instantly. As I roared at him, Harkinen cut her free, slung Lizzy over his left shoulder, her head and arms swaying loosely like a rag doll, and ran towards the door, something that Beau could never have done.
‘Harkinen!’ I screamed. ‘Bring her back, bring her the fuck back!’
He stopped in front of the door and attempted what I think was supposed to be a wry, malicious smile – hard to tell with two bullet holes in his face - the movement opening the wounds further, blood trickling down his skin.
‘And spoil my fun? I don’t think so.’
Harkinen turned and then froze. My eyes widened in disbelief.
Blocking the doorway were dozens of children. Judging from their height and what remained of their clothes, they looked to be anywhere from five to sixteen years old. When they were alive. I recognized one of them, Mike Young, who had died in 1950 when he had somehow buried an axe in the back of his head. They were in varying stages of decomposition. Eye sockets black gaping holes. Flesh resembling old leather that barely hung to their skulls, the tissue shrinkage pulling their lips back from their teeth, giving them hideous permanent grins. The stench of their rotting flesh and moldy clothes hit me with an almost physical force as if it was a sentient being, which then wriggled and squirmed its way up my nostrils, filling my head, and I retched. Mike was the freshest of the lot, which wasn’t much in the way of consolation as he’d been in the ground for sixty-six years. The only way I could tell it was Mike was by his clothes. His great nephew, Billy, had told me that the family had buried him in the San Francisco Seals’ uniform, Mike’s favorite baseball team. It was now faded, rotting and covered in dirt, leaves and insects.
‘Hello you old cunt,’ Mike said to Harkinen, the young, vibrant voice a surreal and unnerving contrast to the repulsive thing it emanated from. ‘Remember me? Mike Young. One of t
he poor bastards you molested and then killed.’
Harkinen took a few steps back. ‘How did you get here? Who gave you the power to come back and get here?’
‘One of many whose lives you ruined,’ Mike said, ignoring Harkinen’s question, ‘and then cut short. Fucker.’
‘I said you who gave you the power to come here!’
He retreated a few more steps.
‘Stay where you are.’
‘Go fuck yourself. All of you.’
Bluish-white light formed inside the children’s decayed bodies, streaming through the holes in their thin papery flesh, mouths and eye sockets, glowing in the dimly lit barn like hellish beacons.
Harkinen jerked to a halt as if his legs had suddenly frozen solid. He looked down at them.
‘What the fuck?’ Then he looked at Mike. ‘How-?’
‘Put her down.’
‘Fuck y-’
After throwing Lizzy over his shoulder, he had wrapped his right arm over her legs to hold her down as he ran. Now I watched it rise into the air, seemingly against Harkinen’s will. It was shaking, as if he was fighting an invisible force that was stronger than he was. Slowly, his arm lowered to his side and Lizzy gently slid off his shoulder and onto the floor.
‘Come here.’
Harkinen lurched forward involuntarily. ‘Stop it you little shit! Let go of me! Fuckin’ let go!’ He stopped a few feet in front of them.
The atmosphere in the barn abruptly changed and the temperature plummeted, my breath fogging. I could smell sulfur. The children moved aside, creating a large space in the middle of their group, revealing a ball of bluish-purple light that shone brighter than the light emanating from within them. It hovered a few feet above the ground, a smaller red light glimmering at its center.
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