Habeas Corpus: Black Womb (Black Womb Collection Book 1)

by Matthew LeDrew

  “That’s just a rumor. The real reason was because he cheated on her,” she smirked to herself coyly.

  “With who?” he moaned, feeling a ‘relationship’ headache coming on.

  “Me,” she said proudly, and he realized that this would become a migraine before it was over.

  Jamie turned the corner and bumped immediately into a large, dark figure. The person was covered in a trench coat and looked like it was made out of shadows. The thing’s eyes burned bright with hatred as it made a move towards him menacingly. Jamie screamed loudly and took off in the other direction, but his stitch got the better of him again, this time right away. The shadow-figure grabbed him, pulling him into the darkness. He took a dagger from his coat and jabbed it into Jamie’s right side. Blood gushed immediately from the treads etched into the sides of the blade, splattering onto the street with a sickening splashing sound.

  As Jamie’s vision because hazy and he realized it was over, he stopped struggling against the man’s iron grip. He fell to the ground, and the last thought to run through his head was that maybe if he had given up smoking just a little earlier, he might have been able to run just that little bit further.

  Blood oozed into Sara’s dress as the killer twisted, then pulled the knife from the mouth it had just opened. Sara let out a little sound like a dove cooing, a small tear rolling down her cheek. The killer wiped her cheek clean, then sliced her slowly across the throat. Her hand went up to her wound, and was instantly covered in blood. The killer put a finger up to his hooded mouth. “Shh.”

  She opened her mouth to scream a warning to the others, but couldn’t. All she felt was her blood pour out onto the wooden balcony. She lay down on the floor and her eyes rolled back into her head. A small puddle of blood began to form all around her. As the killer walked through it, he gazed into the room filled with teens. A wry smile spread across his lips.

  The last thought to go through her mind was of Xander.

  Tommy Irons stepped into the auditorium, bringing a hand up to his squinted eyes to block some of the harsh orange light that bombarded him when he did so. The room was filled with candles, each one shimmering and dancing and casting its own set of shadows onto the walls and the people that had gathered there, packed tightly into the tiny gymnasium. He turned as Sud came in behind him, throwing his friend a smirk. “Think they’re ready?”

  Sud patted the breast pocket of the dingy jacket he wore, nodding once as a grin spread over his face as well.

  Snickering, Tommy’s eyes floated over the gathered crowd until he found the person he was looing for.

  Mike reached out and touched the pewter frame before him, the physical contact sending goose pimples up and down his arm and into his spine. Somehow, touching it made it different. Made an otherwise surreal experience a little more grounded and real.

  It was a picture of Sara, laughing at the camera as her body jutted in one direction and her hair in the other, dancing at The Factory. Her smile seemed to transcend the boundaries of the frame, spreading far beyond the paltry limitations offered by the eight-by-ten cage. It came out and took a light all of its own, so good and full of life.

  The candle beneath next to her picture flared up, almost touching his palm and making him flex back. The sensation was gone instantly, the image instantly becoming just another picture among the dozens lined up in the gym. Each had their own candle and their own space on the table for friends and loved ones to leave poems, cards, flowers and whatever else they wanted.

  “Hard to believe,” came a voice from his side, sweet and soft.

  He turned toward Cathy, having almost forgotten she was there while in the trance of the picture. “What is?”

  She laid a folded white letter next to Sara’s photo, her name scribbled into it in purple ink. She stared at the image for a long moment just as he had, then turned back to him, brushing her hair back behind her shoulders. “Everything.”

  He paused, nodding as he took her hand in his own, gently guiding her away from the photo as more people started to come close.

  “Xander should be here,” she said suddenly, letting out a small sigh.

  “No. He shouldn’t,” Mike replied, casting his gaze over the more than forty framed photos mounted around the room. His eyes landed finally on Tommy, walking from the other side of the room with Sud close in tow. He stopped dead in his tracks, followed by Cathy a moment later.

  “What?” she said, almost tripping. She followed his glare to Tommy, coming down upon them with that gangly, determined strut of his. “Oh, no.”

  “Hey, you guys all right?” came a high-pitched voice from behind them.

  Cathy jumped a little, her heart racing before she turned and took a sigh of relief. “We’re fine, Derek.”

  “Yeah,” Mike swallowed, keeping one eye trained on Tommy as he greeted his friend. “Just trying to avoid some trouble. Know what I mean?”

  Derek laughed, leaning forward and clapping Mike on the back heartily. “I can honestly say I don’t, friend.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  AN ENDING

  “Hey,” Tommy grunted, spinning Mike around by the shoulder until their noses were only inches apart. “We need to talk.”

  Mike scoffed, gritting his teeth as he looked Tommy up and down, paying close attention to how the boy’s fingers twitched over his right jeans pocket. “I’m not in the mood, Tommy,” he said, starting to turn away again.

  “Don’t you turn away from me!” Tommy snarled, grabbing Mike by the wrist and twisting.

  “Get off him, Tom!” Cathy cried as she pushed the taller man against the shoulder, making him step to one side.

  Derek stepped forward, hitting Tommy’s hand away.

  Tommy backed up a pace, checking over his shoulder to make sure Sud was still behind him. “What the fuck’s your problem, Smith? Why you gotta get involved in this?”

  “My Pop used to say things about men like you out on the farm,” Derek smirked, chuckling a little to himself. “‘Bad stock of corn’s not even worth trouble’a harvesting.’”

  Tommy frowned, his shoulders falling slightly.

  Derek nodded, turning back toward Mike and Cathy.

  They stared at him with ghostly white faces, Mike stepping out in front of Cathy but otherwise staying perfectly still.

  Derek looked at them for a long moment, clicking his tongue against the back of his teeth. “Gramp’s not really a farmer,” he admitted after a moment, smiling.

  Mike tried to bring his hand up. He imagined plowing it into Derek, the boy’s skull collapsing under the force of his fist... but for the life of him, he couldn’t even summon the strength to make his fingers twitch. Cathy quivered and shook, her legs turning into rubber rods that were barely able to hold her weight. A quiet, hushing sound came from her lips every few moments and someone would have had to have their ear right next to her ruby lips to have recognized it as the world’s quietest scream.

  “Would it help if I said I was sorry?” Derek laughed, slowly moving his hand into his pocket.

  “How could you?” Mike said after a moment, finally finding his voice. “Why would you?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Tommy huffed, stepping forward to come between them again.

  “Probably this,” Derek piped, swiping his blade clean across the back of Tommy’s head.

  Tommy fell forward as Mike and Cathy backed up quickly to get out of the way, the back of his head streaming blood as his nose hit the concrete floor of the gym and produced still more of it. The crowd let out one scream after another as a circle parted itself around the five of them, all eyes glued on the knife that now spun lightly between Derek’s fingers, reflecting the glimmering light of the candles and sending it off in different directions.

  The color returned to Mike’s face slowly as Tommy groaned, trying half-heartedly to get up.

  “How can I?” Derek smirked, bringing the knife around and pointing it at Mike. “How can I? How can I not?
This town’s been begging for it for years. Every time anything bad happens, you all gobble it up like pigs. Newspapers and terrorists and horror novels and video games... how ‘bout a little good news? How ‘bout, someone finally gives these people,” he paused, waving the knife at the crowd. “What they really deserve?”

  “You killed them? All of them?” Cathy gasped, her eyes fluttering briefly from Derek to all the pictures that stood around them. To Sara.

  “Not all,” he laughed, spinning the blade again as he took a step to one side, the crowd shifting to accommodate. “‘We can see further than ever, because we stand on the shoulders of giants’... I just expanded on what another man started. Turned it from function... to art. No, I didn’t kill all those people.” he grinned, letting his gaze shift to the crowd. “I’m going to kill all those people.”

  Mike lunged forward, bringing his fist up from where it hung to connect with Derek’s jaw, sending him sprawling to the floor. Derek spread his fingers wide, grabbing his shirt as he fell and bringing him down as well, both of them tumbling down and sliding on the slick court.

  Mike felt his knee twist, gritting his teeth as he tried to ignore it and get back to his feet. He rose only an inch before he felt cold steel against the nape of his neck.

  “I’ve been wondering about the ending,” Derek said cheerfully, his voice wet with anticipation as he ran the fingers of his free hand through Mike’s hair, straddling him from behind. “There’s this thing that burns out in a person right before they go to that big slaughterhouse in the sky, and try as I might, I can’t see it in me...” He pulled back on Mike’s hair until he could look him in the eye. “Do you think you have it too?”

  “You could have killed me, and you didn’t,” Mike reminded him, trying not to swallow as he felt the sharp blade against his adam’s apple.

  “You weren’t ready,” he laughed, bouncing up and down a little. “Now, though... I think you’re nice and plu--”

  Sud shoved forward with his fist, brass knuckles clenched tightly over them as they connected with Derek’s cheekbone and sent him over Mike’s back and onto the floor. “Plump,” Sud finished, spitting onto the concrete as he brought his hands back up into striking position.

  Derek clutched onto the table, scrambling to his feet. He laughed a little under his breath, feeling his mouth fill up with blood from the large crack now forming in the roof of it. He lunged at Tommy, still clutching his head on the floor, then stopped midway and stepped back to where he had been against the table.

  “Give it up, man,” Mike pled, slowly rising to his feet.

  “Oh, no,” he smirked, looking from Mike to Tommy and then back again. “You haven’t even seen the best part.”

  Mike clenched, waiting for Derek to move.

  Derek looked from Mike to Tommy and then back again, smiling wide as Mike watched his every move. “Shall we dance?” he coaxed, before lunging at Tommy once more.

  Mike dove forward, fists clenched hard as he came to his knees just over Tommy, ready to lash out at Derek and finish it.

  He wasn’t there.

  For one stunned, silent moment; Mike stared at the empty floor in front of him with his blood boiling before turning to see Derek’s hand wrapped around Cathy’s throat, his knife pressed so hard against her side that even the slightest movement would send it coursing through.

  “You see?” Derek laughed, spitting blood from his mouth onto Cathy’s shoulder. “That’s what happens when you forget who leads.”

  Mike stared at them, Cathy biting her lip and trying her best not to whine as she felt the sharp point of the steel blade press into her.

  “You ever get to be inside her, Mike?” Derek taunted, taking a long whiff of Cathy’s hair and then nodding toward the blade. “Because I’m about to be.”

  “Please,” Mike began to plead, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Please, not her. Not - -”

  “Oh, but I have to,” Derek smiled, nodding feverishly. “Nothing sells papers like dead hot, young ass after all.”

  “Please,” Mike repeated, as he watched Cathy cry more and more.

  “Please?” Derek spat, taking a step closer and pulling Cathy along with him. “Please? That’s all you can say is please? You’re about to watch the woman you love get gutted like a fish and the most you can say is please?” he screamed, taking the blade away long enough to slam Mike across the face with the handle, breaking his nose with one loud, wet snap. “Tell her you love her! Tell her how sad it’ll be when she’s gone! Don’t just sit there like a bump on a log and cry!” He lashed out with the dull end of the blade again, the sharp corner digging a gouge into Mike’s forehead near the temple and bringing more blood to the surface.

  “I love you,” Mike said, his voice barely recognizable through the tears and the pain.

  “I love you, too,” Cathy screamed, her voice shaking and blubbery as water streamed down her face from every orifice.

  “Tell her how you want her to stay. How you’ll be better. Because in a minute...” he smiled, the blade piercing the tender flesh of her stomach and drawing blood. “You won’t be able--”

  Xander grabbed Derek by the shoulders and pulled him backward, the knife coming back from Cathy’s side. He grabbed the killer by the throat and pressed hard, digging his thumb as far into his windpipe as he could.

  Derek tried to say something, a large grin spread across his lips, but couldn’t get enough wind to speak. His lips were already turning blue as he met Xander’s dutiful glare, not even bringing his hand up to try and pry his away, instead keeping his fingers gripped around Cathy’s slender neck.

  “I’m going to rip you in two,” Xander said finally, his upper lip curling as he watched Derek smile, his teeth stained with red.

  He tried to speak again, but couldn’t.

  “What?” Xander asked finally, not loosening his grip.

  Derek spat a long tendril of blood from between his two front teeth, hitting Xander right in the eye. Xander’s grip loosened on Derek’s throat and he slipped through it, the blood that covered him providing just the right amount of lubricant to wrestle free. “Can’t a guy finish a sentence around here?” he said, bringing the knife back to Cathy’s gut. “We’re outta here, girl. Fun’s fun, but I don’t like these odds anymore, so you’re my ticket out and then you’re my ticket in, got me?” he said, backing her towards the door.

  She did not respond.

  He jabbed her again with the knife, his teeth gritting together in the first sign of real anger since the ordeal had begun.

  “Yes!” she wailed, feeling the cold of the metal mix with the warmth of that small sliver of blood.

  Xander glared up at them, Derek’s blood still running down his face as Mike struggled to stay conscious at his side, trying to climb to his feet.

  Derek locked eyes with him, smiled, then smelled Cathy’s hair again. “Tell them you want to come with me.”

  Cathy sobbed. “I want to come with you.”

  “Good. Then we’re all gonna play nice,” he said, giving her a small peck on the nape of her neck as he kicked the gymnasium door open behind him. As the door closed behind them, Derek looked at Xander one last time. “Tootles.”

  Xander bolted for the door as soon as it closed, reaching it in seconds and flinging it open again. He paused once, looking from left to right, and was running again before the door closed.

  Mike watched his friend go, trying to get up but feeling his brain cry out in agony every time he tried, the altitude making his skull want to implode.

  Beside him, Tommy finally made his way to his feet. “What the Christ was that about?”

  Mike turned to say something to him, then stopped and forced himself to his feet.

  Don Smith sat at his keyboard, his fingers hovering uselessly over it as he stared blankly at the blinking curser. He’d been watching the black line mock him for the last thirty-two minutes, to the point that he could almost hear a robotic laugh every time it disappeared an
d reappeared.

  The house was deathly quiet; there wasn’t even noise coming in from the breeze of the open window a few feet away. Even so, as blocked as he was, even the slightest sound was grating. Even the beating of his heart felt like a drum bellowing out, its vibrations echoing into the base of his skull.

  -thunk-

  He stopped, turning around in his chair. The rest of the living room was bare, the faded chairs and table casting long shadows on the wooden floors. The patterns in the couch seemed to laugh at him for a moment, the swirls in the dusty-rose colored fabric churning until they were eyes that glared out at him and teeth that dripped with rabid anticipation, waiting for the sweet taste of flesh.

  A shiver ran down his back as he turned away from the vacant room and back toward his screen. The notes he had pinned up next to it had been crossed out line by line, each one sounding stupid and insipid upon a second read. None of it had any spark or flare, and that seemed to make to curser’s laugh even louder. The grandfather clock on the wall beside him started to grind at him now, the steady switch of its pendulum tocking back and forth until he ground his fingernails into his palms.

  -thunk-

  “Fuck off!” he screamed finally, turning around fast to yell at the room. Immediately the frustration poured out of him, leaving him a frail-looking slump swiveling slowly in his chair. He sighed, running his fingers through his hair and scratching his scalp as he tried in vain to make his mind be quiet long enough for him to think.

  -thunk!-

  “Christ,” he grumbled, getting up from his chair and walking around the corner into the kitchen. He paused, looking around for a moment until he saw the drawstring from the window teetering against the heater. He grabbed at it, holding it in his hand and waited. After a moment of silence, he smiled.

  -thunk-

  “Dammit,” he cursed, letting the string fall as he walked back into the living room, following the source of the sound. It had been softer that time, which meant he’d been closer to it before he’d moved. It didn’t sound like it was coming from above, but could have come from...