The Devil Next Door

by Tim Curran

  He did not want flowers.

  He wanted mud.

  With the sun beating on it, the dark earth of the flowerbeds was warm and mucky. He scooped up handfuls, sniffing each one, and smearing it all over his chest and legs and arms and genitalia. Especially his genitalia. It was warm, thick, and comforting like primordial ooze. He greased his wet hair back with it and painted black bands across his face.

  He felt safer then; camouflaged, stealthy.

  He grabbed up his bloody axe where he’d left it by the back door. It felt good in his hands. A hunter needed a weapon and this one had already been blooded. On his hands and knees, he crept around the side of the house. He was full now, his belly stuffed with meat. His needs were quite simple: food, shelter, weapons. But there was another desire as well: sex. Since his daughters had not returned, he knew he had to go hunt a woman.

  Peering from the hedges that flanked the front of his house, he watched the home of Louis Shears across the way…

  26

  Kathleen Soames was not surprised when she saw the crowd.

  She had felt them coming for some time as she dismembered her husband on the kitchen floor and decorated the walls with his blood. She had willed them to her. She wanted them to come and marvel over what was hers. She wanted them to try and take it so she could fight them, roll in the dirt with them.

  But when she saw them, she knew they had not come to raid.

  They had come for other reasons.

  So she looked at them and they looked at her, each recognizing one another for what they now were, grateful that they had found each other at long last.

  The crowd.

  Dear God, yes, the crowd.

  Men, women, and children tagging behind three cops in filthy untucked uniforms. The big one in front was bare-chested and painted for battle. He was pushing a wheelbarrow and in it was what Kathleen expected to see. Something broken and bloody and tangled. Something that made her heart split open momentarily, made her remember things, remember a swollen belly and a kicking, a chubby pink thing pressed to her breast, a growing and hungry thing, blue-eyed and wheat-haired. A smiling face and a boy’s laughter and a world drowning in love and joy. But it vanished so quickly maybe it never existed at all. The heat of the memory became a frost that settled deep into her, a killing frost that withered roots and closed blossoms and then there was just a winter deadness inside her that no spring thaw would ever melt again.

  The crowd.

  They came up to the porch and stayed there, watching her, smelling her scent and recognizing it as their own. She had marked the porch with her urine and now they smelled it. They would not cross her scent unless she allowed it. Not unless they wanted to fight.

  They pushed in, compressed into a single mass, a single breathing machine, something with eyes that did not see and hearts that barely beat and minds that were flat and metallic and cutting. They waited at the edge of the porch.

  The white-haired cop who had no hat on looked up at her and said, “Ma’am, I’m Sergeant Warren. This is Officers Shaw and Kojozian. We brought this back to you because we knew you’d want it.”

  Kathleen just stared.

  She could feel her breasts rising and falling, the blood drying on her arms, taste the sweat on her lips. Smell the darkness oozing from her, content that they, the crowd, smelled as she did now. A stink of things dead and things horribly alive, things pulsing with a morbid vitality. She stared at Warren and at the thing in the wheelbarrow. Her mind was a hollow oblong that filled with blackness drop by drop.

  Wary as any animal with others intruding so close to its warren, she hopped down the steps to inspect the offering they had brought. She examined the tangled corpse in the wheelbarrow. She sniffed it carefully. Bending her head down, she licked the skin of a stiffened arm.

  “ Yes,” she heard herself say. “Yes. It’s mine.”

  “ We bring this to you,” Warren said, indicating the corpse of her son. “Have you something for us?”

  “ Yes. Inside. Upstairs.” She was breathing hard. “Would you like to see my husband?”

  “ Yes.”

  Then they filed past her and she heard them in there, heard them laughing, heard them snarling and fighting over things. She would share. Of course she would share. She’d always been a good neighbor. The crowd filled the house with motion and voices, claws and teeth and intent. Kathleen watched them file from the living room. She touched the dirt and blood ground into her skin, fingered the filth in her hair. The crowd was in awe of her. They stood in silence, faces like yellow wax and dead moons, mouths painted red and fingers still redder.

  “ Well,” Warren said, wiping blood from his cheek “What do you offer?”

  Kathleen grinned and her teeth locked tightly together. They felt long and sharp and ready. “Upstairs,” she told them. “Upstairs is the one you want.”

  The crowd moved up the stairs, leaving a blood-smell and a meat-smell in their wake. They smelled as she did, only more so. Just dirty and rank and repulsive. A bouquet of death lilies and graveyard roses and mortuary orchids pressed into cold, waxen fingers. A good smell, a fine smell, a real and true smell.

  As they filed up the stairs, Kathleen grinned.

  The sun outside was so hot, so very hot, burning and blinding. She wanted sunset and shadows and steaming darkness, the feel of cooling pavement under her hands and feet, night-smells and night-tastes. The pure and atavistic joy of running wild and free and hungry with the pack.

  Upstairs there was the pathetic, broken scream of an old woman.

  Kathleen grinned.

  Hurry sundown.

  Hurry…

  27

  Well, that’s how it ends. That’s how it all crashes down around you.

  This is what Benny Shore, Principal of Greenlawn High School, was thinking as he left school that day, just amazed at all of it. Yes, beside himself with the horror of it, surely, but more than that, just amazed. Like they said, what a difference a day could make. He’d come to work that morning, chipper and happy, whistling some silly tune…and now he was leaving, depressed and hopeless, wanting to slit his wrists.

  Yes, one day could make all the difference in the world.

  There was little to do now but wait and see what came next.

  The school board were beside themselves, the city and state and county cops just scratching their heads. Shore’s phone had been pretty much ringing off the hook ever since it all happened and then, for the last hour or so…it had been oddly quiet. He was expecting to be besieged by parents once their workday had ground to a halt, but it had been quiet.

  The calm before the storm?

  Or a sign of something worse?

  The sign of a world going into the shitter, that’s what. It’s breaking out everywhere now…random violence, bloodshed, savagery. And, for once, old boy, you don’t need to turn on CNN to see it: because it’s HERE. It’s in the STREETS…

  Shore hopped into his Jeep and buried his head in his hands.

  He sat there like that for maybe ten minutes and then just stared out into the deserted parking lot. There were a few police vehicles there, but that was about it. He was thinking about what Ray Hansel had been telling him as the State Police CSI unit combed through the wreckage, about the violence not only at the school but in the town as well. So much of it in one day that it made even the most skeptical onlooker more than a bit nervous. Was there an underlying cause to it all as Hansel had suggested? Was there a pattern very much evident, but one they could not see because it did not fit the usual parameters? And probably the worst and most unthinkable thing of all, was it possible, as Hansel had hinted at, that this was only the beginning of something much larger?

  Would this infection of violence gut the world?

  Shore shook his head.

  Too much, too much. His head was beginning to hurt from it all. There had been a nasty headache threatening all day and now it was coming, landing hard in his head with reinforcements
.

  He dug a bottle of Ibuprofen from the glove compartment and chewed a few tablets up, washed it all down with a swig of coffee from this morning that had been sitting in the Jeep all day. It was awful tasting, but he did not notice. He fumbled a cigarette into his mouth, lit it, and blew smoke out through his nostrils.

  He felt so…helpless.

  So utterly helpless.

  He’d been principal at Greenlawn High for nearly eleven years, before that assistant principal and guidance counselor. This school was his school and he did not like the idea that he could do absolutely nothing. That this was all in the hands of others, most of them with no true personal interest in the school, the kids, their combined impact on the community at large. He felt like he was giving up without a fight.

  He unrolled his window the rest of the way and stared up at the school.

  Two stories of red brick that had been standing since 1903, right on the spot where the old schoolhouse-tall and narrow, whitewashed clapboard with a rising belfry-had been until it burned to the ground in the winter of ’01. He thought of all the classes that had passed through those high, arched doors, the class pictures that had been taken out in the grassy courtyard. All the football games and track meets that had been held in the athletic field behind. He could almost hear the cheering and laughter, the boom of drums and thunder of the high school band. Yes, he could smell autumn in the air, leaves and bonfires and apples.

  That’s what it was all about, he suddenly knew.

  Tradition.

  It was all about tradition.

  And those goddamn kids in Biolab had taken that all away.

  Not just from Shore himself, but from the whole goddamn town and the generations that had yet to set foot in the school. Those kids had tarnished that and it would never be the same again. For the next hundred years, maybe, if the school stood that long and the world was still turning, kids would be telling stories of that terrible day. Horror stories. That was the ultimate legacy of this day, this Friday the 13 ^ th, grist for horror stories.

  Shore felt the headache building in his skull. Fucking kids, he thought. What the hell were they thinking? What the hell came over them? How dare they do something like this, turn my school into a goddamn sideshow!

  The headache amplified and Shore actually cried out, pressing his hands to his temples. The cigarette fell from his lips and landed on the seat between his legs, burning a hole there, but he neither noticed nor cared. The pain passed and he swore under his breath. He was actually hoping that none of those little shitting monsters from 5 ^ th hour Biolab was ever found. He hoped they did the right thing and threw themselves into the deepest, darkest hole they could find and pulled the dirt in after them. Hell, yes. Let the evil of this day die with them and then nobody would point their fingers at Greenlawn High, they’d just speculate and speculate and finally accept the fact that those kids were all fucked-up on drugs.

  Shore smiled at the idea.

  He started the Jeep and threw it in reverse, then drive, coasting it slowly through the parking lot. He lit another cigarette and brushed the burning one on the seat to the floor. He pulled around behind the building, taking the circle drive, so he could take a good long look at his school.

  He liked to see it.

  It made him feel good inside, important maybe.

  Necessary.

  This was his territory.

  His.

  As he came around the corner, passing through the faculty lot, he decided he had better not see any of those damn dirtbags smoking cigarettes or necking in the trees behind the lot. If he did…well, if he did, he was going to come down on them like never before. He’d bust their heads open. He’d bust their goddamn heads right open.

  But he saw no one.

  At least until he came around the back of the school and then he saw a kid standing there, right in the middle of the road. Some dumb kid staring at the oncoming Jeep like he had no idea what a moving vehicle was. Shore grimaced and hit the horn a couple times. The sound made his head throb.

  Dumb kid…what the hell was he doing?

  Then Shore got a good look at him.

  No, just not any kid. That was Billy Swanson. Goddamn Billy Swanson from 5 ^ th hour Biolab.

  “Billy,” Shore said under his breath. “Well, well, well.”

  He knew Billy fairly well.

  A little nothing shit, an outsider dwelling in a world of fantasy. He didn’t try out for sports, volunteer for any of the clubs. He did absolutely nothing and like any kid that did not fit in, he took the standard ration of shit. Shore had disciplined kids like Tommy Sidel-another 5 ^ th hour Biolab monster-for picking on Billy, for shoving him in the halls or punching him in gym class or tripping him up outside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It had fallen on Shore as it always fucking fell on Shore. But right then? Had he been able to go back, he would have picked on that little shitting mama’s boy himself. Knocked his ass to the floor and kicked his fucking Star Trek paperbacks away, wiped his ass with them.

  Kind of shit was that for a growing boy to be reading anyhow?

  Feeling it rising in him, the anger, the rage, the frustration, Shore slammed on the brakes about ten feet from Billy. He hopped out. “Billy! Get your ass over here, I want to talk with you! You hear me?”

  Billy just looked at him, his eyes dead and flat and somehow defiant.

  Shore did not like how the kid looked at him, because not only was there defiance there, but an absolute lack of fear. Shore did not like that in the least. Billy should have been cowering, hanging his head, but he was not. He was glaring. Shore glared right back at him, his lips peeling back from his teeth. It occurred to him that they were facing off like two dogs disputing territory, which had the right to piss on a given tree. But he dismissed that, for suddenly things like metaphors made no sense to him.

  “Billy…” he said.

  The kid just smiled.

  Smiled and spit at his feet, made sure Shore watched him do it, too. Why, the defiant little shit. He had no idea what he was stepping in this time. Benny Shore did not take crap from losers like Billy Swanson. He stepped on them. He crushed them. And Billy was about to find out all about that.

  But Billy had no interest.

  He turned and walked off at a very leisurely pace, again indicating no fear.

  Shore reddened, fumed. “Billeeeee…”

  He thought he heard the kid laugh, was almost sure of it.

  Billy was now moving off at a casual jog, the sort of jog that said, you couldn’t catch me anyway, you stupid fuck.

  So that was the game he wanted to play? All right, all right.

  Shore jumped behind the wheel of the Jeep and threw it in drive.

  He squealed out and rocketed right at Billy Swanson. Although he was not aware of it, something had finally and ultimately burst in his head like a sore, filling his mind with pus and diseased drainage. All he knew is that Billy Swanson had really stepped in it this time. Really and truly. He accelerated, gripping the wheel and the very act felt so good, so liberating, so very right. The Jeep came speeding up behind Billy at almost forty miles an hour and the stupid kid just didn’t have the sense to get out of the way. He tried to dart to the left at the last possible moment, but no dice. Shore struck him and the impact tossed him up onto the hood. He rolled off and tumbled into the parking lot.

  Shore squealed to a stop and spun the Jeep around.

  Billy got up.

  He was young and the impact had hurt him, but he was hardly down for the count. He glared at Shore with wild eyes and then limped off like a wounded animal. But Shore wasn’t having that. He gunned the Jeep and swung the wheel when Billy hobbled up over the curb. He almost got away, but then the Jeep hit him again and Shore cackled. Billy was thrown face down and the Jeep rolled right over him.

  In the rearview, Shore saw him back there, broken and bleeding. But still no fear. Billy was scowling and snapping his teeth. Shore threw the Jeep in reverse and rolled over him again. Th
is time he clearly heard the sound of bones snapping. It was a good sound, one that Shore had wanted desperately to hear.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  So he drove over Billy again.

  And again.

  And again…

  28

  Ray Hansel was just leaving Bob Moreland’s office at the Greenlawn Police Station when he saw the woman coming up the stairs. Under ordinary circumstances, he probably wouldn’t have paid much attention. It was a police station, after all, and people tended to come and go at such places. Particularly today where there was a constant stream of visitors…some were out of their heads and went straight to lock up; most were just normal, or nearly, normal and scared and worried. They came in to report assaults and arson and even a few murders, but mostly it was just to report missing family and friends or neighbors that were just acting a bit off.

  But the woman Hansel saw was not one of them.

  He shut the door to Moreland’s office-where they had just decided that it might be a good idea to call together an emergency meeting of the city council because what they were looking at was civil unrest-and he saw her step into the corridor. What drew his attention to her was the fact that she was wearing only a bathrobe, a ratty old terricloth thing that was dirty and dusty with strings of cobwebs stuck to the collar and sleeves like maybe she’d been hiding out in an attic. Her face was pale, terribly pale, her hair teased into a great rat’s nest. And her eyes were like black holes burned into her face.

  “Ma’am?” Hansel said, his hand instinctively going for the butt of the bluesteel Beretta 9mm in his holster. It did this automatically without any help from him. “Can I help you?”

  She took two steps forward, moving with an odd mechanical cadence, not seeming to see or hear Hansel. Her attention was focused on Moreland’s door with such intensity that it was almost scary.