by Joe Zito
The dark figure stood there not saying anything, only staring down at the terrified people in the dirt cellar. The figure lowered itself in a squatting position and cocked its head to the side as if studying its victims.
The female cried out, “Please don’t hurt us, please!” A sprinkling of stars lay in the background behind the dark, long haired figure.
Then it spoke.
“Have you ever seen the devil?”
No one answered.
“I said, have you ever seen the devil?”
Still no one said a word. The figure began to growl and make animal sounds. The female screamed and the figure screamed along with her, mocking her terror as he put the flashlight directly under its chin, revealing a horrid, frightening face that to the victims resembled a scarecrow.
The figure rose and howled out in a thunderous voice.
“All hail Angel Larson. I will bath in the blood of the wicked and tortured!”
The victims got a much better look at their captor babbling wildly in the night. Indeed it did look like a scarecrow with its potato sac face and small slits cut out for the eyes. A rusty looking metal contraption was centered on its mouth. One of the males thought it looked homemade like a bunch of knives welded together.
The oddest prop on the figure though was the long, black wig it was wearing.
Among the roaring engine the figure put the flashlight under its chin again and said, “It’s playtime kiddies!” And with that the three people trapped in the dirt cellar screamed in horror as the figure rushed towards them; its fright mask descending rapidly down into the cellar.
They ended up inside a dark barn only with the soft glow of four candles giving them a little light. Their naked bodies were cut up terribly and bruised beyond repair as they were drug from the cellar by the tractor. Their ankles were cuffed to the chains they heard rattling earlier. The blood rushing to their heads made them feel as if they were going to explode. The freakishly costumed figure had suspended them upside down by their ankles. Below them was a giant vat of pig’s blood, boiling and bubbling under hot coals waiting for their arrival.
As the masked creature lowered its first victim into the hot blood of pigs, he chanted over and over again, “All hail Angel Larson!”
To add to the terror of the no way out situation, the costumed freak had hit play on a large boombox sitting on top of a bale of hay. Captor of sin by Slayer played throughout the candle lit barn as the first male was lowered, screaming his head off, into the giant vat of scalding hot blood.
The masked killer had taken the tape from his victim’s dark blue chevelle after he had whacked a baseball bat on the back of his head. The kid was too busy fucking his girlfriend from behind on the hood of his car to even hear footsteps lurking up behind him. She too was whacked in the head soon after her boyfriend slumped over her body; her believing that he blew his load already, only to turn around and see the face of a scruffy old man raging toward her. The other male was an easy catch. He was passed out in the back seat of the chevelle, stoned out of his mind.
Now all three of them were going to die a horrific, bloody death because their killer had gone off the deep end and saw something in the summer of ’74 that made him lose his mind, but it was really the story the girl with long black hair had told him one early morning in a small room down at the Bludenhale police station.
Beneath the killers scarecrow mask, his eyes grew wide at the sight of the body rising up out of the vat of boiling blood. It hung motionless, dripping with blood, oozing pus from its charred, burnt body.
And then Red Brown remembered.
“All right Ms. Larson,” Detective Monroe said as he pushed record on a small tape recorder. “The floor is all yours. Tell me your story. What did you see in the garage?”
“It was around 10:30 when we got to the garage. It was just another normal Friday night. The four of us hanging out, listening to music, the guys working on the chevelle.” Angel paused, wondering if she should leave in or leave out the bloody fun she had with herself while her best friend watched in psychotic awe. She decided to leave it out. Some secrets should stay in the garage. “We heard a loud bang on the roof from out of nowhere. It scared the hell out of us. It kept banging and walking across the roof. We didn’t know what it was.” She paused again, wondering if she should say how they all began screaming and yelling at each other because they were freaking out and how her boyfriend accidentally impaled Heather in the stomach with a small hatchet. Just get to the truth Angel, she thought. “Then, something busted through the garage door. Glass flew everywhere. It was……it was this thing,” she said with a sickness in her voice.
Among the din of the hung upside down female screaming and the satanic metal blaring throughout the barn, Red was knocked back into reality when a loud bang came from the closed and locked barn doors.
He jerked his head towards the barn door. His black hair wig flew with his sudden movement. Red knew that his property was far enough away from the other houses along the dirt road where he lived and that no one would be able to hear the screams of his victims. So who could be out there Red, pounding on your door? Angel Larson maybe? How about a bloodless Heather Smith crawling out of her grave, dragging herself in the night to your farm to say hi. He shuddered with terror at the thought.
Bang!
Red jumped this time but the girl was still screaming.
“Dammit, shut up! Shut your damn mouth!”
And of course she didn’t shut her damn mouth, but only screamed louder. So Red cut her loose from the chains holding her upside down above the boiling blood. She fell with a hard thud on the barn floor. The male victim hung helplessly and was silent, as if he was internally praying for death.
Bang!
“Goddamn hell!” Red yelled.
What’s wrong Red. Does all of this sound a little familiar?
A sickness formed in his stomach. His mind was trying hard to tell himself that whatever it was outside those doors wasn’t the monster in Angel Larson’s dreams.
Bang!
And then the door busted open with great force, letting out a loud crack of old wood. Red inhaled a breath of horror, even though he didn’t see anything. But then from out in the deep dark a giant shadow lurched across the dimly lit bales of hay in the barn; a shadow that Red knew was the beast from Angel’s tale a long time ago. From underneath his fake scarecrow mask, Red’s eyes bulged out in unbelievable horror at the sight of the eight foot scarecrow beast coming towards him, with that all too familiar limp in its stride, just the way Angel described in her story.
Red’s mouth hung open and as he hyperventilated, the potato sac material sucked into his mouth. He felt like he was suffocating.
In the beast’s large and scaly hand was a barbwire whip. The same one it used to wrap around Heather Smith’s smooth ankle and drag her out to the corn.
It stood towering in front of Red, who had begun urinating on himself as he shook in terror at the metal trap mouth monster in front of him. The beast growled from deep within. It vibrated through Red’s quivering body and the barn walls. Then it reached out and grabbed ahold of Red’s throat and pulled him up. Its glowing red eyes peered up at Red and then it began to squeeze his neck. Its violent grip tore through Red’s skin, rupturing blood vessels and veins. A wash of slick redness that looked black in the orange glow of the barn, rushed down the front of Red’s potato sac shirt. The beast snarled and then threw Red to the floor.
He was still alive.
The beast lurched over to the male hanging upside down. It drove its large hand into his naked chest. The man made no sound as the beast searched inside his chest cavity. Shock had silenced him permanently. Then it found what it was searching for. The beast forcefully ejected its massive hand. It was holding a still beating heart. The scarecrow roared at the ceiling and squeezed the man’s heart, raising it high, letting the heart blood rain down onto its metal mouth. Red clutched his ripped throat as h
e watched in disbelief. He couldn’t believe he was still alive, but more so, he couldn’t believe his eyes and that the words Angel Larson spoke in that small room in 1974 were true.
A shrill scream came from the female, making the scarecrow whip its giant head in her dirtection. Realizing that she should have kept her pretty little mouth shut, the horrid beast slowly started making its way to her. Red had the feeling that somehow the beast had spared him his life, only because he was saving him for last. He watched as the monster lifted up the violently shaking female and put its massive, scaly hand in between her legs. Clenching it with a firm grip, the beast lifted her off the barn floor. Her eyes were wide with shock and her mouth drew open in a look mimicking a girl experiencing her first orgasm. Her eyelids fluttered as the beast growled with delight. Warm tears streamed down her face. It squeezed her sex organ harder and she let out a short, high pitched scream. Blood poured out of her, covering the beast’s entire arm. It dripped to the floor. Lines of blood crisscrossed down her legs. The beast sat her back down on the floor. She waivered in its grip. Instinctively she put her small hands on the beast’s shoulders to keep from falling down. It caressed her vagina again going back and forth, scraping it with its scaly hand. The girl threw her head back, looking like she was in ecstasy but she was in a shocked state of horrific pain and disorientation. A puddle of her blood formed at her feet and then the beast lifted her body up again but higher this time; high enough to where her demolished vagina was right in its view. Her hands were still holding on to its shoulders. Then the beast’s metal mouth met her bloody pussy and it began to suck. And that’s when she let loose a fire witch of a scream. The bastard menace growled as it sucked every last bit of blood from her young body. Red watched in unearthly disbelief as her skin crumpled in on itself, like a vacuum sucking in a large bag of air.
The beast had finished its blood ritual. Her bones popped and banged together inside her body. The sick sight was all too familiar to Red. All skin and bone. His mind whirled in a frenzy of thoughts and memories. Your mommy’s best friend sucked all her blood gone. The beast released the dead, bag of bones female. Her lifelessness crashed to the barn floor. The beast let out a thunderous roar that shook the bloody barn.
And Red knew he was next.
Making its way to him, blood dripped off its metal trap mouth. Its hulk of a body glowed hauntingly under the glow of the candles. Slayer was still blasting forth on the boombox. Red didn’t notice. Death was right in front of him. The hellish scarecrow stood before Red, who was holding his throat with both hands. The bastard creature’s chest started moving in and out as if it was breathing heavily. It outstretched its bulky arms and raised its head back. It kicked Red’s hands away from his bleeding throat and stepped on his wrists, pinning him to the floor. The beast lowered its hideous face to Red; its eyes glowing a demon red. Red could have sworn he heard the fucker laugh but he wasn’t sure. The beast ripped off Red’s ridiculous scarecrow mask. Drops of blood fell onto the old man’s face. The massive monster’s chest began heaving again but now quicker as if it was going to throw up. All Red could do was watch in terror as the beast stood high above him. Then a violent gush of blood exploded from the metal mouth of the beast, blasting down hard on Red’s face and body. It was then that Red knew the sickening reality of what he saw in 1974. A black wave of confusion and guilt soared throughout his mind. I bathed in her blood was the last thought that went through his mind before the scarecrow reached down and put its monster hands around Red’s head, ripping it off, tossing it across the barn, where it hit a bale of hay and then rolled across the straw covered floor, landing face first into the bloody snatch of the bloodless female.
1997
Susan stood in the isle, lost in the trance like memory of that day so long ago when Red Brown took away her granddaughters innocence. Days after the life altering event, the local paper reported that former B.P.D. officer Red Brown had gone missing, but no seemed to notice or care, including Susan. Bludenhale had written him off after he quit the force and became the town drunk.
A tear fell from Susan’s eye as the memory began to fade from her mind. The sound of two bells clinking together on the entrance door of Sam’s brought her back to the present as well as Sam’s hearty laugh. A heavy feeling of sadness formed in her stomach when she expected to see Mark at the register, laughing and cutting up with Sam, but he wasn’t. He was long gone; buried six feet under in the Bludenhale Cemetary. She caressed the lump in her throat and glanced around the isle, hoping no one saw her standing there staring at nothing and of course there wasn’t.
She suddenly remembered why she was standing in the aisle; the damn leaking hose on the ac unit. She quickly found what she needed and made her way back up to the register, leaving behind the sad, dark memory. After a few minutes of small talk with Sam about his store, the weather and his condolences of Mark’s passing (something he always did every time Susan stopped in) she left. She got in her car and began the drive home.
It was late September and unseasonably warm that day. Susan didn’t bother turning on the ac. Instead she rolled both the drive and passenger side windows down all the way. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail so she wouldn’t have a mess of hair flying all over her from the wind. She drove through town, eyeing all of its oldness and memories. She smiled a little when she saw the old theater that she and Mark use to go to all the time, and then of course her daughter and granddaughter. Aside from a few new businesses, Bludenhale hadn’t changed much. The gas station she drove past still had the same old pumps.
A traffic light turning yellow caught her attention and she began to slow down and then stop when it turned red. She rested her head into the palm of her hand as she waited for the light to turn green. There was an ’86 Buick in front of her. The driver was a thirty something gal with long, sandy blonde hair. Susan was thinking of the town she grew up in and never left. She loved it and hated it at the same time. The warm September wind blew into the truck, rushing into her face. She flinched when she had the reoccurring thought of just leaving town for good; moving away from all the horror. Ain’t nothin’ else here for me, she thought. But she knew better. She would never leave. The memories were all she had now.
The light turned green but the ’86 Buick in front of her just sat there as if oblivious to the meaning of ‘go’. Susan made a fist and hit the horn hard enough just to get their attention and move. It worked. The Buick slowly took off and so did Susan. She would be home soon.
She sat on the grass in front of the rattling, leaking ac unit. A pair of pliers and an adjustable wrench lay next to her. She wasn’t handy when it came to things like this. Mark would always take care of things when they were broken or needed repaired. She knew she wasn’t going to fix the damn unit but she had to try. Money was tight even though she lived alone and received Marks retirement check every two weeks.
She sat drumming her fingers on her knee and then a squirrel appeared from behind the tree in the yard. Susan saw it and wondered if it was the same one from earlier. It was sitting up on its hind legs, gnawing on an acorn, watching Susan. She gave it a mean look and said, “I’m going to fix this piece of crap, you watch.” She stuck her tongue out at the squirrel and then said, “Just maybe not today.” She got up and dusted off her jeans and went inside. The squirrel had already scampered away.
She had another uneventful lunch. Chips and a turkey sandwich and of course a long island ice tea. She sometimes wondered what the point of eating or breathing was if she had no one to share those things with. But she knew she wasn’t the type to off herself.
She went upstairs with the mindset of taking her laundry basket downstairs to do some wash. Even in the midst of endless tragedies the laundry still needed to be done as well as other things around the house. She grabbed the white hamper and made her way back down the hall. Going past Heathers room, she slowed herself down and then stopped where she was. Don’t do it Susan. Not now. Just go d
o your small load of laundry. Slowly she backed tracked her steps and stopped in front of her daughter’s bedroom door. It had been closed for the past eight months. She turned and faced the faded white door, bringing her hands up and pressing them flat against it. She leaned forward with her head touching the door. She contemplated going inside because she hadn’t been in there for a while. She tries not to go in there too often because it is just so difficult and emotionally depleting. Today she just opted to stand close to it with her hands lying flat on the wood surface and all the memories on the other side, helping her get through another day. For a moment she thought she heard music playing on the other side and the sound of laughter from a long time ago. She knew better though. Slowly she lowered her hands to her sides, feeling slightly better, even though she didn’t go inside like she does every few months on extra hard days like these and just sit on Heather’s bed and cry and talk quietly to four pink walls and a lonely stereo in the corner.
As she moved away from the door a thought surged in her mind. She tried to fight it but it was bearing down on he like a truckload of steel. Forgetting completely about the laundry and house work, she found herself standing now in front of Amy’s door. Her aging hand trembled as it gripped the golden door knob. She turned it and the door came open; the creak of the door sounded as if it was saying ‘why’.