by Mark Allen
Jack found himself taking an instant liking to the man. Sometimes you just know good people when you meet them. “We sure are,” he said. “I’m Jack and that’s my son Kevin. Hope we’re not intruding.”
Paul gave him a friendly slap on the back. Clearly the man did not know his own strength; Jack felt like his spine had just been slapped out his sternum. “Not at all, my friend, not at all,” said Paul. “Come on in, get your gear stowed, and then maybe we can get a big ol’ bonfire going, burn some hotdogs, drink some whiskey, and get acquainted.”
At the mention of alcohol, Jack felt the craving kick in and swallowed hard. As Paul and Tom led the way up the steps and into the cabin, Jack glanced at Kevin. His son was staring at him and Jack knew that he was thinking, What are you gonna do, dad?
Jack didn’t have an answer. When the whiskey broke out, he knew what he would want to do, but whether he did it or not remained to be seen. One thing he knew for sure—Kevin already considered him a failure and breaking his promise to stop drinking would just further nail that belief in place.
As they filed into the cabin, nobody glanced toward the outhouse, but even if they had, it was unlikely they would have seen the one-eyed freak concealed in the brush behind the shitter. Cyclops remained silent and still, conditioned for the hunt, the grace of a predator merged with the power of a brute. He didn’t even blink when a blowfly crawled across his bulging eye.
He watched in utter stillness for several more minutes, slime and slobber drooling from the corners of his mouth, then slunk away to tell the others.
Father would be pleased.
Chapter 5
Putting the “Red” Back in MurdeRED
Sitting in her kennel, the woman looked at the charred, blackened stump where her arm used to be and fought back the despondency trying so desperately to claim her. It would be easy, so easy, to just give up and surrender to the depths of insanity that clutched at her. She knew there would be peace in letting her mind break. Just stop fighting, let her soul tumble until it shattered like an eggshell against the harsh, hopeless reality that was her existence.
But she couldn’t do it. That wasn’t who she was. She was a fighter and not even the loss of a limb could change that.
She still wasn’t used to the smell of her cooked flesh. It overpowered even the ripe scent of her own body—she was overdue for a trip to the stream—and constantly assaulted her nostrils in an olfactory reminder of the violation she had suffered. If there was a scintilla of grace in what happened to her that night, it was that she remained unconscious while they devoured her flesh. When she awakened in the dog cage, they had been discarding her meat-stripped bones. She had closed her eyes, but not before seeing that every bone had been snapped in half and the marrow sucked out.
She looked out the window and saw a bloated harvest moon hanging in the heavens. She found solace in the lunar light streaming into her prison, but the night sky was thick with clouds and she knew they would soon snuff out the moonbeams. But that was her life now; slivered moments of peace and respite in the middle of a living hell. She had learned to savor those moments when they came, however brief they might be.
Mr. Brown was crouched on the floor of her cage, keeping her company, but seemed distracted by a moth caught in the web over in the corner, powdery wings beating themselves to pieces against the silken strands as the insect struggled to break free. Still, when she spoke, the spider shuffled its eight feet to turn toward her, letting her know it was listening. “I don’t know how much more I can take, Mr. Brown,” she said to her companion. “It feels like God has left me here to die.”
The spider swung around to glance at the trapped moth, then returned its full attention to the woman.
She gave the arachnid a weak smile. “You don’t talk much, do you? But you’re a great listener.”
She didn’t know if the spider actually smiled back or she just imagined it, but either way, she was grateful for the grin.
Both their smiles faded when, from outside the cabin, they heard a woman’s shrill, piercing, horrified scream cut through the night.
The door banged open and Mongus stomped in. The warped floorboards rattled beneath his heavy feet. The woman shooed Mr. Brown to safety and the spider darted from the kennel, heading for its web as fast as its eight legs could carry it. Mongus was dragging a middle-aged woman behind him. The woman’s head bounced painfully over the threshold. Her “I Love NJ” shirt was torn, tattered, and smeared with blood. Through the rips in the fabric, the woman in the cage glimpsed blood-weeping scratches on the other woman’s breasts and realized she had been molested and mauled by the mutants’ ragged, dirty, claw-like fingernails.
Boss entered next, one end of a logging chain over his shoulder, the other end wrapped around the ankles of a man. The man’s face was caked in blood and his head scraped over the rough wooden floor as Boss dragged him inside the cabin. The man looked at the woman through a mask of red and weakly whispered, “Vicky…”
Vicky screamed, “Wayne!” but then Mongus’ fist plowed into her gut so hard that her spleen probably flattened against her spine. The blow literally lifted her off the floor … the floor on which she fell a moment later and curled up in a vomiting ball.
Boss punched Wayne in the face and teeth exploded from his pulped mouth in a shrapnel-spray of shattered enamel. A second blow splattered Wayne’s nose from cheek to cheek. Boss then flung the man into the corner like unwanted trash before helping Mongus lift Vicky off the floor. They slammed her down on the table and the woman in the cage winced, knowing whatever came next would be ugly and brutal.
The brutality began when Boss and Mongus each pulled out a blade and started carving on Vicky’s head. The sound of the knives slicing through skin was soft and moist. Vicky’s shrieks filled the cabin with hopelessness as blood spattered out onto the table and across the arms of the cannibals as they went about their grisly work. The woman in the cage knew there was no real reason for the scalping; it was just something the mutants did sometimes, torture for torture’s sake. They had done it plenty of times before and no doubt would do it plenty of times again.
After several agony-filled moments, Mongus peeled off Vicky’s scalp like someone tearing the skin off a grape, the sound wet and ripping. Vicky screamed as blood from her mutilated skull streamed down her face. Mongus held the skin-cap in the air like a trophy, ragged strips of tissue and mangled hair gleaming in the moonlight.
Boss walked over to the kennel. The woman hurriedly retreated to the rear as he unlocked the padlock. Mongus unceremoniously dumped Vicky into the cage—they weren’t done with her, not by a long shot—and Boss locked it back up.
The two women stared at each other. One with eyes sad and haunted from years in hell. One with eyes bewildered and terrified because her hell had just begun.
Up in the corner, Mr. Brown kept one of its three pairs of eyes on the scene below while it slowly stalked over to the moth entangled in the web. The insect’s frantic struggles had considerably weakened and the spider hovered over its prey, patiently waiting for just the right moment to strike.
Boss yanked Wayne to his feet. The New Jersey native was a relatively fit man and tried to fight back, but his strength was nothing compared to Boss’ brute power. The leader of the cannibal pack smashed two brain-blasting blows to Wayne’s jaw that knocked him three-quarters of the way toward unconsciousness. The woman in the cage knew Boss had pulled his punches; if he had struck Wayne full force, he would have caved in the man’s skull like an eggshell. She had seen him do it more times than she cared to count.
Boss stretched Wayne out on the torture table, still slick with his wife’s blood, and all four of the flesh-eating mutants surrounded him, each bearing a sharp-edged instrument of some sort. They raised the blades over their head. Wayne had one second to cry out in a slurred, semi-conscious voice, “No!” And then all four weapons exploded down into his body. The thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk of steel punching into flesh echoed o
ff the walls of the cabin, savage music with a grisly rhythm.
Mr. Brown had seen it all before and didn’t need to see it again. The spider turned away and sank its oversized fangs into the moth, driving deadly needles into the soft body to feed.
******
The bonfire burned high and bright, flames leaping off the logs and casting flickering shadows into the intertwined canopy of pine boughs overhead. Jack and Paul sat side by side in camp chairs on one side of the fire while their sons sat on the other. Tom was showing Kevin the intricacies of a Nintendo 2DS. They didn’t allow many electronics in lockup, so Kevin was unfamiliar with the gaming system. But apparently he was catching on quick, because Tom yelped, “Holy crap, dude, you’re a natural! You came within five thousand points of beating my high score!”
Jack squashed a melting marshmallow between two graham crackers and took a bite. He suddenly realized he had forgotten the chocolate, but decided he didn’t really care. “Oh, man, that’s good,” he said appreciatively. “If I get to Heaven and find out they don’t serve S’mores, I’m asking to go somewhere else.” He reached over, tapped Paul on the shoulder, and pointed to their sons. “Can you believe we bring them all the way out here to God’s country and all they want to do is play videogames?”
Paul broke off a piece of Hershey’s bar. After Jack had pulled him aside and explained the alcohol situation, he had readily agreed to skip the whiskey, but he had compensated by stuffing himself with half a dozen S’mores. Now he was forgoing the graham crackers and marshmallow and just nibbling on the chocolate. His face was solemn and thoughtful in the firelight as he replied, “I’m just happy Tom’s here at all. I almost lost him. If you think he’s skinny now … well, skinny doesn’t even begin to describe what he looked like before rehab.”
Jack nodded as if he understood, but looking across the fire at Tom, it was hard to imagine him much skinnier. He must have been nearly cadaverous before hitting rehab. “He doesn’t seem too bent out of shape about it,” Jack remarked.
“He was at first,” Paul replied. “Our relationship went through a pretty rough patch.”
“I can relate,” Jack said. “Kevin and I are still going through a rough patch.” The S’more seemed to abruptly lose its flavor and Jack tossed it in the fire. The marshmallow melted and ran in sticky white rivulets that sizzled in the flames.
“Yeah, I heard,” Paul said. “Small town like Vesper Falls, it’s hard not to hear the rattling of skeletons in people’s closets.”
Jack winced. For some reason, the word “skeleton” made him think of Tricia, lying six feet underground, no doubt nothing but bones by now. He stared into the fire, shadows dancing over his face, as a single tear slid down his cheek. He turned his head to hide his shame.
Paul continued, “I know you’ve heard this a million times, Jack, but you didn’t kill your wife. He killed her. The man in the ski mask. That wasn’t you.” His voice was warm and compassionate.
“I was scared so I let her die,” Jack said quietly, brushing away the tear. “I was a coward. There’s no other way to put it. I know it. Kevin knows it. And he’ll never forgive me. Not without a miracle.”
Paul reached over and put a comforting hand on Jack’s shoulder before standing up and saying, “Well, a miracle is what it’s gonna take for us to get out of bed at the crack of dawn if we don’t get some shut eye.” Turning to Tom and Kevin, he said, “C’mon, guys, let’s put the games away and hit the sack. The deer get up early and so do we.”
******
Jack awoke a few minutes before the alarm was set to blare at 4:45 a.m. He allowed his eyes to adjust to the lack of light as he listened to Kevin, Tom, and Paul snoring away in their sleeping bags, dreams of big bucks no doubt frolicking through their heads. He swung his legs over the side of his bunk and peered at the clock. As he did so, he thought he glimpsed something move quick and furtive outside the small octagonal window above the dresser. He padded over in his bare feet to peer outside. The glass was fogged over and he reached up to wipe it off. But the moisture wasn’t on the inside of the pane, it was on the outside.
Like someone or something had been breathing on it.
Jack looked outside, but it was too dark to see much. He could barely make out the nearest trees and they were less than five yards away. From the outside, the window was seven feet off the ground. Jack stared at the slowly dissipating patch of fog on the glass again.
A bear? Or maybe a Sasquatch?
He grinned at the thought. He had heard reports of Sasquatch sightings to the south, down in the Ticonderoga and Dresden areas, but never this far north. He wasn’t sure he believed in the existence of such creatures, but he did wonder from time to time what he would do if he encountered one. Crap his pants, was the most likely answer.
The buzz of the alarm interrupted his thoughts. He stopped thinking about the fogged up window and started thinking about putting a big buck in his crosshairs. He slapped his hand down on the alarm clock to silence it. He heard the rest of the guys squirming in their bunks, assorted moans and groans filling the room as they went through the waking up process.
“Rise an’ shine, boys,” Jack said in an exaggerated drawl. “Daylight’s a-wastin’.”
“There’s no daylight yet,” Kevin countered sleepily.
“Early bird gets the worm,” Jack replied. “Early hunter gets the buck.”
As Paul climbed out of his bunk, he muttered, “Yeah, but don’t forget, the early worm gets eaten.”
Jack chuckled and began pulling on his hunting gear.
******
Paul whipped up a big batch of scrambled eggs, venison sausage, and home fries, cooked in enough butter to send cholesterol levels skyrocketing and washed down with black coffee strong enough to grow hair on a concrete block. The combination of greasy food and bitter brew ensured they all made a pre-hunt trip to the outhouse despite Kevin’s dire warnings of butt-chomping spiders.
Bellies full and guts purged, they all checked their walkie-talkies to ensure their frequencies were synchronized, then walked up the trail with Paul lecturing about various safety aspects of deer-hunting. His primary point seemed to be that you needed to be positive you were shooting at a whitetail buck and not another hunter hunkered in the brush. “If you’re not sure, then don’t pull the trigger,” he said.
About a hundred and fifty yards past the cabin, the path split in three directions. Jack and Paul continued on the main path that would take them up to the beaver dams. Kevin broke right to follow a brook that snaked its way through the bottom of a gully. Tom took the left-hand branch, threading through some beech saplings at the base of a knob (or small mountain; he couldn’t tell which it was) until he found himself standing at the edge of a small, stagnant pond populated with dead trees and coated with green gunk. He circled the pond and eventually settled in a copse of oak trees overlooking an overgrown clear-cut that had been logged off years ago and allowed to brush over.
It was ideal habitat for deer, especially a wary trophy buck with a nice crown of bone on its head. Tom wasn’t a die-hard hunter—he mostly did it to make his father happy in an attempt to restore their once-broken relationship—but he certainly would not pass up a big rack if one happened to stroll this way.
Dawn was just streaking the sky with grey when he found a stump. Best of all, a thick layer of moss carpeted the top, forming a natural cushion. The frost-coated moss crackled a bit when he sat down, but he couldn’t feel the coldness through his thermal underwear and insulated hunting pants.
His breath plumed in the crisp autumn air as he leaned his shotgun against a nearby tree. In a violation of basic firearms protocol, he clicked off the safety so that if a buck appeared and he had to quickly reach for the gun, he wouldn’t waste time fumbling around with the safety. He would just be able to grab the gun and shoot. Besides, he justified to himself, there’s nobody else around, so even if the gun accidentally goes off, nobody will get hurt.
Comfortable and
satisfied with his setup, Tom pulled out his Nintendo 2DS. He muted the volume to avoid alerting any deer in the area to his presence, then began playing the latest Grand Theft Auto. He chuckled to himself as his thumbs flew over the controls. Times sure had changed. Hard to believe in the old days hunters had to bring a paperback with them to kill time while on watch.
Immersed in the game, he never sensed the danger that suddenly loomed before him. Never felt the large shadow that suddenly enveloped him. Never realized he was in the final moments of his about-to-be-cut-short life. Just before he died, he heard a twig snap in front of him. He pulled himself out of virtual reality and back into the real world just in time to see a huge axe arcing down at his head.
It happened so fast that there was no time for fear to register. His reaction was instant and instinctive.
He raised his hand.
The blade of the axe struck him between the middle and ring finger, carved through his palm, and split his arm open all the way to the elbow. Blood spurted onto the frosty ground and brutalized bone shards jutted from ruptured flesh.
Shocked, Tom didn’t even feel any pain. He didn’t scream. He just stared at his wounded arm, cut in two like a piece of firewood.
Mongus brought the axe back around and with an animalist grunt planted the blade in the top of Tom’s head. It was a perfectly delivered killing stroke.
The axe made a loud, wet crunching sound as the blade bit through skull-bone until it was buried in the boy’s neck. Crimson gore geysered as Tom’s face cracked apart, both eyes crossed as if trying to find each other. Brain matter curdled out of his smashed head like spoiled cottage cheese as the corpse twitched in a spastic death dance.