All-Night Terror

by Adam Cesare

  “I thought you didn’t have a car?” Her tone was lighter now.

  “Don’t.” He pointed toward the impatient idling of the now-ownerless SUV. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t. Hell, I’ll bring you right to your doorstep. Where do you live, anyway? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around town.”

  “I—have no home.”

  A peculiar answer, but maybe she was just new to the area. “Where are you from, then?”

  “Not far from here. My home was lost. In that fire.”

  “I’m sorry, Leah. Is there anyone else you can call?”

  She pointed to the pale corpse across the way. “He got my friends. Stalked and killed them all. Now I’m alone.” It sounded like the thought was only now sinking in.

  Chad got up, gently taking her by the arms. It wasn’t doing any good for either of them to have to keep seeing the remains of this lunatic.

  Only, Leah didn’t want to be touched. She pulled away and sunk her nails into one of his legs. It gave out, and Chad screamed and buckled under his own weight.

  Her hands weren’t hands anymore, but malformed claws coated in dark blonde fur.

  Leah’s green eyes widened, and kept widening, her irises morphing into green orbs shimmying beneath the moon.

  “I suppose I should thank you.” Her speech slurred, and her timbre deepened with each passing word. She struggled to spit them out over a pulsing, expanding Adam’s apple. “The hunter was well prepared. Stalked us for days. He would’ve taken me too if I hadn’t happened upon you...” Her words trailed off as that tapering vowel became an animal’s growl.

  Chad pushed away, but Leah grabbed his shredded limb and took it in her shifting, reshaping hands. A playful giggle might’ve slipped out of what was once a mouth but was now a newly formed snout.

  With a growl she bent his leg upward, and it broke with an extremely loud and sickening crack.

  Chad felt the tart stain of stomach acid growing at the back of his throat as he realized he’d blown his chance to escape scot-free.

  The wolf seemed to realize it too, positioning herself over him, her belly expanding and scraping against his own. Her tongue was massive and hot, leaving trails of saliva in its wake.

  For a second he thought the beast might let him go.

  But then Leah slammed her jaws shut on his face, the wolf’s bite tearing through his skull.

  He didn’t even have time to scream.

  Through one good eye he saw her nose wiggle, snapping flaps of flesh and hunks of bone free. She chewed his face between oversized killing teeth.

  The last thing he heard before he died was her howl.

  Intermission #3

  “Where are we going?”

  Bob hated questions. Especially when they came from miserable fucking co-workers.

  “Open your mouth again and I’ll crack your face. Lord knows I’ve wanted to do that for years.”

  Lisa stepped into the hallway, and Bob jammed the nine millimeter’s muzzle against her back—a reminder that he meant business. Being in control had given him a measure of energy he never thought possible.

  He knew the headlines tomorrow would say he had snapped; they’d call him a loner, a loser, and some may even throw around the word terrorist. But right now, his only regret was not doing this sooner.

  The doors to the second and third floors were chained off by bike locks, but he suspected that the cops were already inside. Which was why he needed to bring a hostage with him. Those sons of bitches loved getting cute. But they weren’t going to outsmart him.

  And neither were Fred and Mike. He knew they couldn’t be trusted while he took Lisa on a little field trip, so he wrapped them tight in gaffer tape and extension cords and locked them in the utility closet.

  “Turn right here. Up the steps.”

  They climbed to the roof in silence. Only Lisa’s sniffles echoed over their footsteps in the barren stairwell. This had to be quick because there was only about ten minutes left in the current movie.

  When they reached the top landing, he had her make sure there were no cops. Lisa fumbled with the door and pulled it open. They did an awkward shuffle on the tiny landing as Bob made certain she was the only one in the line of fire if they had snipers covering the tower.

  Everything looked clear, and they moved forward slowly, Bob taking cover behind a brick exhaust chimney.

  “If you try and do anything other than what I tell you, I’m going to kill you.”

  Truth was, he wanted to kill her anyway. This bitch, every day with her meetings. And then memos about those meetings. If there was a less productive member of the American workforce, he hadn’t heard about them.

  Red and blue police lights pulsed against the neighboring buildings, another reminder that this was destined to be Count Mort’s swan song.

  Which was why they were up here. He had to make sure the police didn’t do anything stupid, like trying to cut off the antenna.

  The signal tower was fenced off and topped with loops of barbed wire. The door was chained and reinforced with two locks. From Bob’s vantage point, it looked like no one had tried disturbing it. He had Lisa walk the perimeter to make sure, keeping her in the pistol’s front sight.

  “Okay, let’s go back.”

  Lisa was crying louder now. Probably because the rooftop teased freedom. Help was so close. And to prevent that help from getting any more brazen, they needed to see this.

  Bob shot her once in the throat and tossed her away from him, toward the edge of the building. She danced along the gravel, and he pulled the roof access door shut behind him, not staying to hear her smack against the concrete.

  He headed downstairs with a spring in his step, trying to trick his body not to vomit.

  Killing Time in the Off-Season

  July 31

  Butcher crouched behind a fallen tree and watched as the last of the parents arrived to pick up their children from Camp Chicopee.

  The younger ones were crying as their mothers and fathers led them to their cars, giving wide berth to the areas webbed off with yellow police tape. One woman had her daughter in a stranglehold, but Butcher doubted its effectiveness. She didn’t have her hands close enough together.

  The last of the ambulances had left, but not before scooping up and carting away what was left of the counselors. The police were on break after combing the area around the cabins for the two teenagers that they still didn’t have all the pieces of.

  If he had the ability to speak, Butcher would have been able to help point them in the right direction.

  One of the missing teens was a muscular fellow who had tried to skewer Butcher with a fireplace poker. He was folded twice around a thick tree branch, twenty feet off the ground. Butcher wouldn’t have normally gone through as much trouble, but the feisty ones could still get a rise out of him. The boy’s corpse was only a quarter mile south of bunkhouse C, and the search party would find him easily, provided they looked up.

  The boy’s brunette girlfriend was at the bottom of Lake Oneeonset, her lips wrapped around the base of a boat anchor, the fluke poking through the back of her head like a third pigtail. They’d only find her if they dragged the lake. Probably never.

  As he looked at the empty campsite, a memory flashed in Butcher’s simple mind. He closed his eyes, and the procession of parents and children became the carnival leaving town somewhere in the fog of his childhood.

  In his memory, he was a little swelled-head boy again, gripping his mother’s hand. He wore an orange-and-white-striped shirt under his overalls, having not yet traded up to his all-purpose jumpsuit and mask.

  Thinking of the soft OshKosh shirt against his skin made him smile. And when he smiled, he drooled. Keeping saliva on the inside was easier when your jaw hadn’t been bifurcated by an outboard motor. The sound of spittle hitting the forest floor brought him back to the present.

  Before disappearing into the woods, he allowed himself one more thought of this year’s crop of co
unselors, letting his mind linger on the one special girl whom he’d always let get away.

  It was true that he’d killed them. But it was a task that had to be done, not something he enjoyed doing. Occasionally the hunt brought its own rush, but before the blood had darkened and the sweat under his mask had dried, the only thing he was left with was the rest of the season’s work to be done.

  October 15

  It was a staring contest, one that Butcher was intent on winning.

  They had startled each other upon meeting. Butcher stalked through the woods with his focus on the forest floor, looking for roots and mushrooms, anything he could add to a simple stew, unaware of the deer’s presence until they’d nearly collided.

  The animal’s large glassy eyes were fixed on Butcher. It blinked.

  Butcher knew animals could smell fear but wondered if they could smell mass murder.

  They regarded each other for another moment, until he reached out a hand to stroke the deer’s fur.

  Under his palm there was warmth and a twitch of movement as the deer shivered. Touching a living being, one that would still be alive when he was finished touching it, was something that Butcher rarely experienced.

  If he were in a killing mood, the stag’s antlers would have made an impressive hat rack. There were points on top of points, and that meant that it had survived many hunts.

  Something about the experience—possibly because Butcher possessed a seasoned hunter’s appreciation for survival—made him take a seat.

  Perched on a stone at the edge of the clearing, Butcher watched the stag grow calm. Eventually the animal dropped its stare, confident that Butcher wasn’t a threat, and began to graze.

  It was cloudy, but the odd sunbeam would peek through and make the scene even more pleasant.

  The stag heard the hunter’s approach before Butcher did. The animal pricked up its ears the second before the bullet slammed into its shoulder. Its hooves clumsily clawed at the ground to flee, but it couldn’t get any traction.

  The stag continued running in place until the second shot rang out and its body hit the ground.

  Butcher didn’t move from his seat but listened as the hunter approached.

  The man whistled, muttering something about his unbelievable luck as he approached the fast-cooling corpse of the stag. He was so occupied with counting the stag’s points that he didn’t hear Butcher creep up from behind. They almost never did.

  Butcher gave his belt a pat and realized he’d left his hunting knife at home. That was good: improvisation bred masterworks.

  The hunter felt Butcher’s presence and twirled to meet him.

  “What the fuck—”

  Butcher stifled his words by sticking a thumb into his mouth. The man was too scared to bite or suckle or fight back; he just watched wide-eyed as Butcher curled three callused fingers under his jaw and gave a quick jerk.

  The skin of the man’s neck stretched like taffy before letting go with an elastic snap. Butcher tossed his mandible onto a pile of dead leaves.

  The stag had died instantly, but the man was still gurgling as Butcher walked out of the clearing the way he’d come.

  Butcher headed back to his cave with tears dripping down the slats of his hockey mask.

  January 16

  The snow was a yoga mat, muffling every noise, including Butcher’s lumbering tread.

  The man—Butcher’s prey—kept both eyes straight ahead and didn’t make a single sound as Butcher cleaved him in two with his machete. His pieces fell into the snow with minimal mess.

  In a rare acrobatic flourish, Butcher whirled the heel of his boot into the air and knocked the head off the man’s female companion before she had a chance to register what had happened.

  Her headless body remained standing as Butcher doubled over, huffing beneath his mask, winded from the kick. Exercise was a big part of his day, but the mask restricted his airflow terribly.

  Butcher had spent the most time on the woman, packing extra snow around her midsection to build up her hips and breasts. By the time he began sculpting the snowman, his hands were red and numb from the ice and snow. In his haste, the man’s face had only been two buttons for eyes, a twig for a nose, and a handful of broken trophy-teeth for a mouth.

  After setting them up and knocking them down a few times, Butcher’s hands were too cold to build the snow couple again, so he headed back inside his cave and lit a small fire.

  He flexed his hands as they burned from the cold. Staring at their hands was something he’d seen the counselors do many times, but he’d never indulged it in himself.

  His hands held many scars but so few distinct memories. The mangled tissue was an endless memory loop of tree branches that lacerated during pursuit, knives wielded by protective boyfriends, and torches that rare kids would use to shoo him away like Frankenstein. None of those things posed a threat, especially the last one.

  When he was done with his hands, he walked further into his home.

  In the deepest chamber, under the soft light of an old kerosene lantern, Butcher studied his treasures. There were stacks of yellowed books. They had titles like Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, The Martian Chronicles, and Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Butcher couldn’t remember if they were his or whether he’d scavenged them from a campsite, but he still enjoyed having them around.

  Among his things were also shoeboxes of photographs. There were pictures of families with smiling faces on vacations. In some of the pictures were faces that Butcher recognized, but if they were his family, he couldn’t recall.

  Once his hands stopped throbbing, he returned to the fire to lie down. Before he drifted off to sleep, he had a wonderful idea that kept him busy for a few hours before sleep.

  In the morning, all that was left of his snow family was a puddle by the fire.

  April 12

  The rains were the worst that Butcher could remember, but he could remember very little.

  Huddled in his cave, he watched as the wind felled branches and tore roots from the soggy ground.

  His jumpsuit clung to him and was beginning to smell terrible, even by Butcher’s standards, so he peeled it off and tossed it out into the rain for a wash and placed his boots next to the fire. Butch could carve the nose off a screaming teenager in order to sow fear in their friends, but he would not suffer the smell of his own wet filth.

  The dry silt of the cave floor powdered his toes, and the occasional thunderclap made him jump. It wasn’t that he feared the weather, but that he was surprised by it. Nothing scared Butch but failure.

  Before he realized what had happened, the fire was drowned out and the cave went dark. As he took a step backward, his bare feet hit not ground but wet paper.

  He was wading in a puddle of his most prized possessions. Deep in the hill, a tributary must’ve opened up and sent the water gushing in. Rage and confusion were his first reactions, but they quickly gave way to cold resignation. Accidents happened, but at least he still had a couple of months to reorganize before hunting season.

  Butcher cleared off space on his workbench to stack up his books and photos to dry. After he moved his hooks and lures and nets, he set to moving his weapons. A few soggy books were bad; a rusty claw hammer was worse.

  After that was done, there was nothing left to do but stand in the driest spot he could find and wait for the storm to pass.

  Cold, wet, and alone, Butcher wished summer would hurry up and arrive.

  June 25

  The children were all asleep—or at least in their bunks—and the counselors were gathered around a roaring campfire. Girlfriends rested on the knees of boyfriends, cuddled up close to listen to the head counselor share the story of the Chicopee Butcher.

  The grisliest narrative beats were punctuated by laughing shrieks from the girls and THC-heavy coughs as the joint made its way around the circle.

  Many had come before this head counselor, and many of those had told it better. His descriptions lacked th
e lyricism to truly frighten. His details were far from accurate. Worse was his propensity toward profanity. Butcher liked hearing the story better twenty years ago, when motherfucking wasn’t used as much.

  Gripes aside, the power of the story was in the telling.

  Standing just out of the campfire light, Butcher listened. He couldn’t understand every word. But even without that understanding, there was a charm to the rhythm of the storyteller’s intonations.

  The tale took only a few minutes, but when it was finished, there was a hush.

  Tomorrow the season would officially begin, and it would be all blood, sweat, and elbow grease as Butcher tried to shoehorn a modicum of ingenuity into his work.

  There were times that he got close, but every year, after they were dead, he was always just tired. But right now, by the fire, the counselors and the Chicopee Butcher could sit and enjoy all the possibilities held by a brand-new summer.

  Intermission #4

  Danny watched the end credits and felt his palms sweating. Any minute now he’d be back inside that terrible studio, where someone else was probably going to die.

  As much as he loved blood and guts in his horror movies, this real-world stuff made him nauseated, not scared.

  There was a fade-in, and Danny saw the now-familiar visage of Count Mort, the camera zoomed so close that you couldn’t see the edges of his face. His makeup was fading in splotches, and an erratic spatter of red trailed across his cheek.

  “My friends.” Count Mort held eyes with the camera for a silent second, and Danny thought they looked sad. “I regret that our time is drawing to a close. You will be pleased to know that we saved the best ones for last. Oh, how I wish I could’ve shown you more. So much more.” Black eye makeup dribbled down his cheeks. “I wanted to do the best show I could. And they wouldn’t let me. She wouldn’t let me. Not because she didn’t like the idea. No. Because it was mine.”