The Outkast

by Craig Thomas

  But right now, The Outcast had no desire to expend his mental resources on the Sheriff, especially when there was a more pressing issue to which he must attend tonight.

  He was lying in his recliner in the dark, tearing at a fat roasted chicken thigh and washing it down with apple juice. There was a ghostly quiet hanging everywhere around him, which he cherished, and the intermittent soughing of the wind against the eaves of the roof outside pleased him—the sound was reminiscent of his victims’ last keening cries as they hugged death powerlessly against their bosoms.

  Out here in the coolness of the cave, where the fauna and the flora were his only neighbors, and where the terrible stinks of the impure blood had no power to reach, he was a king. Being cast out of the community had been a blessing in disguise for him, but a big mistake on the part of the inhabitants of Ogre’s Pond who had hated him with their all. Without the myopic action of those fools, he couldn’t have become the rod of justice. The same ones who cast him out of their sights would be cast into the site rich in fire and brimstone.

  He smirked in the dark.

  And stretched.

  His mind wandered off to his only True Blood.

  He felt a momentary twinge of concern about the little boy, who, though destined to be great—even greater than he—had been demonstrating a troubling token of weakness and disinterest lately.

  At first, when the process of emancipation had begun, The Outcast’s enthusiasm about their glorious future of reign together had been met and watered down by the boy’s shameful nerves and whimpering. But he’d waved it aside as insignificant, assuming it to be a minor foible that would fix itself on the lap of time. After all, the boy had just turned eleven at the time, and there was ampleness of space for growth. But the more time rolled by, the worse the situation became.

  He had to do something about it.

  Maybe he would expedite the process, call the ultimate ritual into existence faster than he had planned. But to achieve that, he would need to seek understanding and directions from the gods.

  He rose.

  Tonight, he needed to finish a project he had recently embarked on. It would turn out to be the best of his operations so far. He was sure of that. When it was done, he would rest for a while before planning the next execution—unless his enemies showed any potential to outpace him, in which case he would put rest aside and rise to strike instead.

  He wondered why Donnie hated his True Blood so much, but he couldn’t arrive at any reason. Not that it mattered. He loved the way the pot-bellied man reasoned and acted. The Outcast loved Donnie’s hostile disposition towards the boy. Hatred towards the little True Blood was hatred towards The Outcast, and that adequately helped fuel The Outcast’s own animosity towards Donnie. It was a perfect cycle—the way it had been predestined to pan out.

  Tonight, he would strike like a python ready for the kill.

  ******

  10:26 P.M.

  Wednesday, August 19

  Donnie Murphy was rushing out through the front door of his apartment when the vicious blow smashed into the left side of his head.

  Earlier in the night, Jennifer Foster had called to remind him of their date. The rendezvous was her place, at 11:45 P.M.

  By 8:58 P.M., Donnie had done everything he needed to do. He sat in the living room, glancing at the wall clock while he sipped his red wine, and wishing the clock hands would get some oomph and just hurry the hell up.

  Now that Trevor had been murdered by the troll boy (a little uncertainty he had been teaching his mind to just accept as true—but then, who gave a damn who killed whom?), the world was his oyster. He didn’t realize how much of an impediment Trevor had been until his death. Amazing how luck had worked in his favor and made his two enemies collide, how it had used one to take care of the other. And the one that remained would soon follow, too. In spite of Brian’s indifference to the case, Donnie would see his wish come true. He would do everything to send the little disgusting devil to where Trevor had gone.

  Right now, he thought about Jennifer Foster. When Trevor had been alive, he’d stood between them.

  Not anymore.

  He sipped.

  And waited.

  Until he could endure the wait no longer.

  By 10:04 P.M., he decided enough was enough. He would set out. Better to be at Jennifer’s place too early than to run behind schedule. He just couldn’t wait to see her.

  But he was extremely excited, so much that he returned inside the apartment from his driveway three times to pick up what he had forgotten to take along with him each previous time. Excitement was no doubt getting in the way of his full sensory functionality. His memory had been drugged by the prospect of the date.

  He came back the third time because he had left behind a piece of gold-plated wristwatch—a gift for Jennifer. He got it quickly, raced across the foyer, flipping the lights off as he went along, opened the front door, dashed through the doorway, neck jutting out. He felt the pain before he could comprehend the presence of the fist that struck out at his face. Even though he was more than sixty percent through the doorway, the effect of the blow knocked him backwards all the way into the lightless foyer. Airborne, he crashed against the crook of the walls, the crown of his head hitting the concrete first, and then crashed his nose into one of the walls as his head rebounded.

  “Oh, fuck,” Donnie cried out. He tried to sit up as soon as he landed, but failed. On a second attempt, he managed to get it right. Having propped himself up on his elbows, considerably disoriented, he struggled to focus on the figure that stood just beyond the doorway, under the flood of the security lights outside the apartment. At first, he thought his vision had been warped as a result of the monstrous stinger he had received. But then, he realized the image before him was as real as the pain coursing back and forth his head. A man, extremely tall and muscular, holding a scythe and flashing a chimpanzee’s face in lieu of a man’s. Well, he couldn’t be a man, then. Not a snowball’s chance in hell. He must be some sort of monster from the deepest part of Hades.

  Donnie screamed, screamed and scrambled to his feet faster than he’d thought he could. All of a sudden, the pains in his head and back were forgotten, his disorientation vanished, his survival instinct heightened.

  He slammed the door connecting the foyer to the living room shut, still screaming as he proceeded.

  When he got a sufficient grip on himself at the landing, he dug his hand in his pants pocket, searching for his cell phone even as he raced up the stairs.

  But ...

  Alas! The cell phone wasn’t there.

  Oh, yeah, he thought, un-cool shit has just started to hit the fan pretty quickly.

  He had left his cell phone in the car when he had been doing his aimless back-and-forth journey from his driveway to his apartment. How could he have allowed his stupid emotions to ruin him tonight?

  The monster of a man hadn’t broken through the door yet, which surprised Donnie, even though he loved it. He loved the way that part of the show was playing out more than he’d lusted after Jennifer Foster for years.

  Donnie was racing upstairs, running to his haven. The phone. The fucking phone upstairs. Damn, he wasn’t moving fast enough. He took two steps at once, almost fell, reclaimed his balance, and hopped onto the landing. He ran into his bedroom and locked the door behind him, huffing and puffing.

  His mouth was moving frantically now, praying for survival.

  Well, it was more of hoping than praying. He had never understood how or why one should pray. Had never believed in it. As he grabbed the receiver up and set to dial 9-1-1, he hoped that the night-duty dispatcher would act really fast and bypass all the nonsensical rituals of asking countless questions, save them for another day.

  When he put the phone to his ear, his mouth gaped open. The phone had gone dead—thanks to his destructively mysterious night visitor, who must have tampered with the phone line.

  But why was this happening to him? Or bette
r put, how was it happening?

  He trembled as a thousand and one questions flitted around his head, each of them unanswered, each of them bringing him chronic migraine.

  Did he leave the front door open when he had made the repeated returns to his apartment earlier? Did he forget to lock the goddamned door? He couldn’t remember. Nor could he recall if he’d opened the main front door to gain entrance the last time he had come back inside, or if he’d just gone in straight without a let or hindrance. If the latter was the case, then the intruder must have had a free access, too.

  Donnie shivered again. And burst into tears. He would soon die tonight, and he didn’t even know it until now.

  When he was done crying like an overgrown toddler, he wiped his eyes, set the phone back down on its cradle, and moved closer to the door. Putting his ear to the crack, he listened.

  The absolute silence of the apartment frightened him.

  Cold beads of sweat speedily formed on his forehead.

  He stayed by the door and continued to listen, until the veil of serenity got torn apart by the squeal of tires against the pavement.

  ******

  The Outcast watched Donnie scurry up and away into the living room, swinging the door shut behind him. He didn’t chase. Not yet. Doing so would make him lose the taste of the bite. He wanted the taste to last, because he enjoyed the taste better when it lasted longer. Of course, he wanted the game to be furious but not necessarily fast. Right now, he wouldn’t chase. He would only wait.

  He pried the door separating the foyer from the living room open, peeped in briefly, realizing that Donnie had run upstairs—just as he had imagined Donnie would do.

  Fantastic.

  Swiftly, The Outcast walked out of the building into his SUV. He drove about forty yards into the moonless woods (he didn’t use the headlights, never used any lights at all while driving, didn’t even have one), killed the engine, and walked back to Donnie’s place, doing all of this as fast as he could.

  Back in the living room, he hid and waited.

  In the shadows.

  For about five minutes after the car had sped away, Donnie didn’t move. He listened further.

  The beads of sweat on his forehead had grown bigger, and the bulbous accumulation plopped onto the floor, watering down the tiny pool of blood at his feet. Blood from his broken nose. It was bleeding and throbbing like nobody’s business, but he had chosen not to take notice of it. And he definitely wasn’t ready to renege on that choice now. A bleeding nose was the very least of his troubles.

  Why didn’t he have a gun? The thought rushed to him all of a sudden, and he felt really stupid to have not considered it all this while. A smarter man, a visionary, would have planned ahead to forestall any danger on a night like this.

  He looked around for something he could adopt as a weapon. The best thing at his disposal was a metal coat hanger. Not a stellar offer by a long chalk, but he grabbed it, anyway.

  Switching off the light to make himself less of a target, he unlocked the door and opened it, wincing as the hinges squeaked.

  A step across the threshold. A creak of the floorboard. More wincing, quick trembling.

  He groped along the gloomy landing, looking this way and that, not seeing a lot and expecting to be jumped at any moment, but still hoping like crazy he would go through all of this shit in one piece.

  You still don’t mind the gush of blood through your nose, Donnie Baby? Ah, I’m proud of you.

  No, he didn’t mind. Screw the blood. And screw the pride. He had to do something quickly, do something to live beyond tonight.

  On the staircase now, stealing along the steps—the kind that have emptiness in-between them—and trying to avoid any tell-tale sound at all costs. He held the coat hanger straight ahead of him, shivering, and at that moment, he wondered if he would be able to use his weapon efficiently if the occasion ever arose.

  Close to the downstairs landing now. Would he make it through tonight? Make it through to have another chance to smile and enjoy the good stuff life had up for grabs?

  He could only hope.

  The downstairs was not as murky as the upstairs. He instantly realized the doors—both the one connecting the foyer to the living room as well as the one between the foyer and the main entrance doorway—were open. Lights from the street lamps spilled in through the openings.

  Perhaps his stalker was still inside the house? If so, where exactly was it located? Donnie couldn’t turn and run back upstairs. He might be running just into the arms of his assailant by so doing. Right now, his initial ailing courage to progress downstairs became dead altogether. He felt like crying again.

  But he had to proceed—or else, the cops and the Coroner’s men would be here pretty soon, turning his body around inquiringly like they did Trevor Carter’s.

  He shuddered.

  And something leathery lashed out through one of the openings between the steps. It flogged his calves, helping him to make that urgent decision to proceed and stop being a coward.

  He screamed when he was struck.

  He screamed as he tripped.

  He screamed while in flight.

  His scream died away when he crashed face-first into the wooden flooring at the foot of the stairs.

  From behind him, his attacker hissed—a very freaky, feline sound.

  Even before he looked back, Donnie already knew the intruder was barely a couple of feet away.

  Donnie was gravely wounded, but he couldn’t afford to let the opportunity of an escape—hell, was there one yet?— elude him. He scrambled to his feet, and at the same time, the creature with the chimpanzee’s features swung its scythe in a wild horizontal arc towards Donnie’s neck.

  Ducking and jerking his head away from the scythe’s lethal path—the only remarkable thing he had done so far tonight—Donnie ran out through the open doors.

  And The Outcast followed.

  ******

  The chase would be sweet.

  He had known all along that this would be the best kill in a long time. He had planned it.

  Having gone through the recent mundane experience with Trevor, The Outcast couldn’t afford to be put through such agony again. It was unbearable, and just reliving it each time made him shudder.

  Chapter 10

  Thursday, August 13

  It was a few minutes past ten in the morning, but the sun, completely wrapped in blankets of clouds, appeared resolute to linger in its slumber.

  Across from the school, behind a thick overgrown bush set back from the road, The Outcast watched.

  A while ago, from his vantage point, he had seen the boy, sad and afraid, heading towards Trevor Carter’s office. Fury soaked him up at the thought of the injustice his True Blood was going through—the same things he himself had gone through before his maltreatment had eventually culminated in him being forced out of the community. He didn’t have to engage in any thorough imaginative exercise to draw a conclusion as to what was going on behind Trevor Carter’s closed doors. But it wouldn’t be long. Soon, the boy’s sadness and fear would be replaced with supremacy.

  The rest of the kids were bustling with joy, capering around like a flock of hyper lambs.

  At some point, an elderly woman in blue denim jacket came out from one of the classrooms to the playground where the kids were having a swell time. She said something to them, and they all ran back inside their various classes.

  A couple of other teachers—a man and a woman, both young—walked through the door that led into one of the school’s corridors.

  Earlier, The Outcast had watched the pot-bellied Donnie Murphy as he shambled into his office. The fat bastard’s days were numbered. But The Outcast wouldn’t think about him yet—not until he was ripe enough for harvest. Today, he would channel his mental capability towards the snake in the grass, the so-called gentleman who was tormenting his True Blood at the moment—just as he had done over and over again.

  He waited for a little wh
ile.

  Quiet enveloped the school premises as soon as the students had settled down in their classes. Only faint, distant voices debouched from the various rooms as teachings commenced.

  Just as he decided it was time to move, with the intention to sneak in through the back of the building, the security guard left his post.

  The Outcast had made a good plan in the first place. But now, it seemed things were even panning out a little better.

  He moved.

  ******

  At the entrance, he slid his mask home and pushed the door open.

  ******

  Trevor Carter was still reveling in the pleasure of seeing Robert cooped up and miserable. The boy was explaining something from inside his makeshift cell, but Trevor had absolutely no interest in what the lad had to say.

  He cursed Robert and his mother, laughed a little, evincing traces of delirium, and then cursed some more. He was no doubt having an ecstatic moment.

  He had swung both legs atop his desk, grabbed his bag of turkey sandwich—chair tilted, its back leaning against the wall—and had just taken the first bite when the door began to ease open.

  What a shitload of impudence, he thought. Whoever that was—student or teacher—walking in on him without even knocking. He might be cool with everyone, but he wasn’t in any way a fool.

  “What kind of nonsense—” he began to say amidst a mouthful of sandwich. But that was how far he could go—which was very far. His lips froze in an instant. His heart pumped blood two beats too fast. The masticated sandwich in his mouth felt like ground granite and tasted like nothing he had ever known.

  He couldn’t believe his eyes. Right there at the door was a creature in black coveralls with a human body but chimp’s head, exceptionally muscular and tall to the heavens.