by Ian Woodhead
I gazed down at this wretched girl, now on her knees, her hands cradling her private parts. I know that I had damaged her with the bone so my two kicks obviously must have ruptured her. Not that I particularly cared about her well-being. She didn’t care for mine. I wiped my bloodied hand in her hair then picked up my knife. Susan was in too much agony to even notice the addition of the razor-sharp blade now in my possession.
I gripped the hair then pulled her head back. It only took one rapid stroke to open a long slit in her forehead. I’m very skilled with a knife as this girl was about to discover. I fully intended to peel off her face and pulled the scalp back over the girl’s gleaming skull. A thin film of blood had already run into her eyes.
“Wait!”
I jerked my head up, to find the other two had already returned. Mrs Price held the escaped boy by his hair while Mrs Harper held the boy’s severed ears. Mrs Price dropped the groaning boy on the floor and rushed over to me, her face a picture of worry and concern. She pushed Susan to the side and gently examined my neck.
“Oh, you poor child,” she said. “Did this little harpy do that to you?” She took a deep breath. “Are you badly hurt?”
I shook my head, still not able to speak.
“What a calamity. Mrs Harper, you bring that child over here right now.” She stood and straightened her back. “Okay, my friend. One of these children is going to die right here and now. Mrs Whitehouse, I want you to pick one.”
Like there was even any doubt. I pointed to the girl. The two woman each grabbed an arm while I continued cutting. First, I lengthened the cut I’d already made, extending it all the way up to her ears. The girl’s blood seeping from the slit made it difficult for my fingers to get a purchase on the flap of skin under the cut. In the end, I had to wipe away as much mess as I could before making two more cuts in front of her ears. I was then able to pinch the skin together just above her eyes.
Her howling had given me such a headache but I persevered, knowing she’d soon cease making that unearthly racket. I nodded to the two woman who then pulled hard on the girl’s wrists. I heard her plead, to ask for forgiveness just before I jerked my clenched fingers down, pulling the thin skin past her eyes and halfway down her nose before the bloodied skin between my fingers tore. Still, it wasn’t a bad effort.
I wiped my hands before pushing past the lot of them and sitting down in my favourite armchair. A cold glass full of water appeared beside my hand.
“Here you go,” said Mrs Price. “Sip this, it will help to take the swelling down.” The woman sat beside me while Mrs Harper took up position in front of us. “I think that Mrs Harper has something to say to you.”
My friend took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“You do know that the Happy Day Scythe will be yours to hold at next week’s gala.”
I think my confusion showed as Mrs Price then told me that Mrs Harper had confessed to the little prank in the shed. That’s exactly the words she used too. Like finding one of my livestock trying to murder me wasn’t of much consequence.
“You have both provided a vital service to our lovely town.” She stared at me then at Diana. “And I should have stepped in years ago. But, in my pride, I thought you’d eventually settle your minor differences.” She stood up. Well, this is what happens, ladies. Mrs Harper, as recompense, because you are totally responsible for the loss of Mrs Whitehouse’s livestock, you are to sell all of your stock and give the proceeds straight to Mrs Whitehouse.”
“Wait a minute!” screeched Mrs Harper. “That’s not fair, besides, she still has one left. He’s not too damaged.”
I held up my hand.
Mrs Gloria Price switched her attention to me. “Does that deal not sit well?”
I shook my head, listening to the quiet moans coming from the earless boy. After all the noise that erupted from his now dead companion and Mrs Harper’s sudden squawk, even his snivelling played hell with my headache. I was so close to stuffing those ears right down his throat. I pointed to Mrs Harper then at the boy and shook my head again.
That was not going to happen. My suppliers demanded quality from me. There was no way that I wanted them to have to deal with her inferior rubbish. I’d just have to make sure that I sweet talk the nice Mr Cartwright as soon as my voice returns.
Mrs Price shrugged. “It’s not a problem. We can sort this out once you’re able to speak again. Now, I do have a surprise for you, my dear.” She wound her fingers through the boy’s hair and pulled him up onto his feet. “I did promise you the Happy Day Scythe, well, this year, you’re going to use it too. Just for this year, I’m going to authorise the use of the gutting stool.”
Oh my! I think I was going to faint at the excitement of it all. In front of every Brutality-born inhabitant, they would chain this little boy’s arms and legs to the stone wheel which sat in the middle of the town square and while he stared into the sky, I would draw the Happy Day Scythe along his distended stomach. I grinned at Mrs Sour Puss Harper while imagining that it would be her chained to the wheel.
“I do have a little favour to ask of you, Mrs Whitehouse. Once you have removed that bone, do you think I might have it?”
I do believe that Mrs Price was blushing. I smiled back and nodded. I had no problem with that. After all, Stuart did have another arm.
The End
POISONED
By
Ian Woodhead
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright Ian Woodhead, May 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.
This is an extreme horror tale – you have been warned
Acknowledgements
A big thank you to the following people who took time to beta read this story. You all rock, seriously!
Deb Yarbrough
Mandi Pickett
Max Smith
Lisa Redden
Anna Garcia-Center
Kyle M Scott
Kelly Mead
During the first few hours of my arrival to this town, I bathed in the power of the Lord’s light. I know he works in his own mysterious way and it is not down to lowly mortals to question his suggestions. Still, I would have preferred a few more days to prepare.
Rumours of this forgotten little town reached my ears months ago. At first, I dismissed them as fairy tales, a tabloid scare story, written by some lazy hack, seeking to cash in on people’s fears. The tales persisted, whispered in confidence, through confession, slipping out from the lips of people that I trusted not to lie and finally through video footage, discovered on some obscure website.
I’ll admit, the flimsy evidence should not have sucked me in but, alas, my inflamed curiosity needed satisfying. So after little preparation and some harsh but resigned words from my bishop, I set out to track down this supposed town of the damned.
It wasn’t until the next day when I found my myself walking down the deserted streets of Brutality that I had to wonder if my search had been a little too easy? Of course, as a man of God, I obviously put the ease of discovery down to providence, that perhaps I had found my calling.
After reading everything I could about Brutality, I knew these damned souls could not be allowed to live out the afterlife in hell. I had to find some way to save them, even if I could save but one soul, that alone would be a result.
Now though, the Lord has supplied me with a slightly different agenda, one which does not deviate much from my original plan, but it has opened me up to considerably more danger and yet this still fills my heart with utter joy.
Once the inhabitants realise my hidden intention, it could result in this p
it of vipers hunting me down.
I have seen what they do to their victims and there is no doubt that Brutality’s homeborn will show me the same courtesy. I will stay strong though, as I know that even if I fall, the Lord will send other men of the cloth to pick up the work that I have started here.
I know this because he told me.
---
The blazing sun bakes the roads and pavement. Birds, perched in the bare trees, serenade me as I stride along Brutality’s main high street. Delicious aromas of fresh baked bread caress my nose. I hear children’s laughter coming from the park across the road and idle chatter from passing shoppers. Two of them even pause to offer me a polite nod. I smile in return.
First impressions portray a perfectly ordinary mid-sized English town and I believe that this portrait has been very carefully cultivated throughout the years, perhaps even longer for there is the taint of ancient evil here infecting the very brickwork.
It does not take much to dislodge the mask. The laughter? That will be kids poking a frog with sharp sticks. The chatter from the two women? They’ll be discussing the most efficient method to dispose of a body.
Please don’t take my commentary as ravings from a delusional young man. I have witnessed these atrocities , and with God’s blessing, I have acted upon it. In the four weeks since becoming Brutality’s newest parish priest, I have murdered two men, an old woman and a teenage boy.
So how can I condemn a full town of sinners? Obviously, it isn’t possible. The thieves, child abusers, the adulterers and the abductors will find judgement from the Lord once they stand before him to recite their crimes.
I am only here for the truly evil, the individuals who take another human life, for I am the Lord’s instrument and I shall give no quarter. I will carry out my holy order until I am no longer able.
---
“That was such a loving service, Father!”
I gave Mrs Brady a patronising smile. I had spotted the elderly lady leave the betting office but I assumed she would take a left and vanish into the Shop and Save, like she did every day. “Thank you for that wonderful chocolate cake,” I replied. It hurt me to lie to her but I dare not allow anything this woman created to enter my mouth. Mrs Brady sprinkled dried dog faeces and powdered glass into a cake that she baked for a party held for her next door neighbour’s seven year old daughter. Three children were taken to hospital two days later.
Thankfully, none of them died, meaning that this woman would be able to wake and witness another dawn. Mrs Brady’s sister though, well that was another matter. Edna Brady lay on a stone slab under my church. Her naked body currently twisting and writhing as the slow acting poison I injected into the woman’s neck did its duty.
The woman would undergo her agonising contortions for a few more hours before her soul left to stand trial before our Lord.
“Yes, I found it very moving. In fact, I do believe that I might have even shed a couple of tears.”
“Your kind words lighten my heart, Mrs Brady. I can only hope that you take heed in my parable and perhaps learn from the mistakes made by the main protagonist?”
The woman nodded solemnly but I knew in my heart that she had no clue to the real meaning behind the words from my service. How could she? Like the rest of the town, they were trapped within the machinery that operates this foul pestilence.
However, this did not stop me from trying to help some of these poor unfortunate people, even if my actions did prove somewhat wasted. I saw it as the flip-side to the good work I did perform in Brutality, namely the eventual extermination of every single killer who resided in this town.
“I just wish my sister had been able to hear your words, Father. I’m not afraid to tell you that I am becoming a little worried for her now. It has been almost a day.”
“If Edna does not return in the morning when we have mass, the whole congregation shall pray for her.”
The chances are that her sister did hear the rather emotional speech he improvised in front of his congregation of eighty-four people. The acoustics in that ancient chamber, below the church floor was excellent.
The old woman said her farewells and resumed her usual routine. I watched her vanish into the grocery store while I wondered how the Lord would react to me extending my good work to include the sinners who hadn’t killed.
The Lord himself had brought me to the church and gave me my already assembled group of parishioners. It was just one of the many gifts that he bestowed upon me in order to carry out my sacred duty.
On the second morning of my arrival in Brutality, my wandering brought me out of the town centre, past a large, grey factory complex, surrounded by a high wire-mesh fence and into a graveyard. I had no idea where my feet would be taking me. My mind was still reeling from my vision during the night, also this morning, Brutality hid her body behind thick rolling fog. I passed no other person in my brief travelling and I think this was intentional. It meant that I could proceed to my new domicile without hindrance and distraction.
The fog parted like the Red Sea to reveal what appeared to be a large, three storey abandoned church. First impressions led me to consider that nobody had been anywhere near this place for decades. First impressions were a fickle lady, for even before I pushed myself through the overgrown vegetation to reach those high double doors, I noticed two older women standing beside an iron gate, hiding inside bramble. They both waved to me.
By the time I reached the front doors, the path behind me no longer looked like a green carpet of weeds and moss and I now saw a large wall surrounding the church boundary and even the bramble around the gate had gone. The two women acted as though vanishing vegetation happened everyday.
The Lord said he would deliver unto me the implements required to purge this town of evil and so it came into being. The first of my congregation, The Brady sisters, welcomed me into Brutality and said they would look forward to my first mass.
It wasn’t until they had gone; leaving me to explore my new home when it sunk in that the pair of them already knew my name. I saw no reason to question their knowledge, as the transfer worked both ways. I saw the younger woman’s dirty trick with the cake as well as her older sister bludgeoning a visiting postman with a golf club then setting fire to his unconscious body.
She’d committed this atrocity simply because the man had parked his van directly outside their house and she believed the gases from his exhaust would kill the flowers in her garden.
My belief is that I was the first good man to set foot inside this abandoned stone corpse. The first Christian, that much, I am sure of. The miracles commenced by the Lord on the outside of the church continued their divine transformation on the inside, banishing whatever Pagan blasphemy these infidels committed in this building.
I explored, I fasted and I meditated, staying inside these walls for three nights and two days, until on the seventh day, I opened the doors to find my flock waiting to hear my first sermon, a task that I eagerly anticipated.
---
Mrs Brady left the grocery store, a couple of minutes later. She had bought a tin of peas and a newspaper while the inside pocket in her long purple coat held a small joint of beef. I wished her a good day before I turned and strolled towards the park. The Lord was now my constant companion, softly whispering their crimes to me.
These souls had been feeding on this town’s blood for far too long. I saw myself as Brutality’s conscience and their abnormal behaviour was going to alter or they would face the consequences. The Lord dealt with their everlasting spirit while I dealt with their earthly body. It was a very good arrangement.
The glorious sunshine had not brought a crowd to the park, as you would expect. As I reached the low stone wall, I saw no pram pushers, no ice cream van, no workers feeding bread to the ducks and no small children enjoying themselves on the playground equipment. This is Brutality though, so normality does not apply. Nobody played here, except for the older teenage boys, and there were no ducks because
the boys had killed them.
I saw the three of them busy carving their names in one of the remaining trees. I waved. They waved back, and the Lord informed me that the weed infested pond now contained the body of another dog.
He then chronicled in implicit detail exactly how those waving boys used their sharp knives on that poor black and white terrier. When the Lord reached the point where the youngest boy pushed his blade up the dog’s already bleeding anus, I had to take a deep breath. It almost made me place young Jack Brown on my ever-growing list of individuals already awaiting execution.
I do despise animal cruelty.
Until last week, the trio was a quartet. All that changed when the four boys attended my second mass. The Lord only hinted at the tragedy and malice that my assembled congregation inflicted upon each other and the passing innocents in my first mass.
The Lord failed to indicate which sinner I should separate from their souls. I was aware of the older Brady sister’s killing but I wished to leave her until I was sure of her crime.
I did not; of course doubt the Lord, to do so would mean that everything that we have created here meant nothing, that it was all some cruel illusion. Or even worse, it wasn’t my Lord controlling me but the great beast, that I was his tool, that I would be committing the ultimate sin in the name of Satan.
The doubts did fade away during the next few days until my second service where they resurfaced. I found myself looking down on these total strangers questioning everything that the Lord had shown me in the past week. I think, this is the reason as to why our relationship deepened.
I gazed down at those four smirking boys. Unlike the rest of the congregation, none of them were paying any attention to my words, although I will give them a little bit of credit, they were keeping quiet, to a point.