by C. T. Phipps
Maybe that’s why you’re attracted to her, Carrie said. Ooo, telepathy! I didn’t know we could do this! Twin-lepathy!
We’re not twins, I said, annoyed by this new development in my powers. I was too close to my family already. Also, don’t read my mind.
I suppose she could also be someone you’re hunting. She is a murderer now, Carrie said. Technically, it wasn’t self-defense when she clobbered Chuck to death.
Out! I snapped, driving out all the voices in my head. She’s an innocent.
“I can’t wait to kill those mothersuckers,” Nancy said, continuing to avoid using any swearwords. “All one hundred of them.”
Okay, somewhat innocent. Still, I could feel something change within her and her strength grow. I didn’t know if she was a slasher, an Artemis, or something else, but it had power. Power related to killing and I was destined, no, wanted to help her with her revenge. We just had to dispose of the body beside us first and head out to the house to get prepared. If it wasn’t knee deep in cops following up on my last name.
Oh, you don’t have to worry about that, Carrie thought to me as she played with her stolen cellphone. I checked the internet. The police are searching the countryside for William and Carrie Englund with a U. Apparently, they think we take our nicknames from horror movies. Ha, what a bunch of losers.
I have no idea when you’re being ironic, I muttered.
Is it weird I can hear you guys thinking? Nancy asked.
Yes, Carrie said. This is a family only party line. One newly opened by his first resurrection.
“Okay,” Nancy said.
“So, if you want to talk to him, you have to marry one or both of us,” Carrie said.
“Wait, what?” I asked.
“That’s what I was going to say!” Nancy said, smiling. Apparently, she had a creepy side since she was now to the point of finding this all amusing. A good thing since, again, a sane person would have run screaming for the nearest car by now. A very expensive car that was still running with an open trunk now that I thought about it. While some slashers might be able to just dump cars in the swamp because they had their own business, most of us had to figure out how to make our money other ways. Selling this vehicle, even at a reduced cost, might mean a few more years of freedom. I began calculating the benefits in my head just in case.
“A hundred of them?” Carrie said, changing the subject. “Shiny! That’s gonna be a new record. Well, not for Fred and the Camp Killer, but those guys have wiped out a whole town.”
“Is it weird that you guys remind me of my sorority sisters?” Nancy asked, looking between us.
Both of us looked at her strangely.
“A little, yes,” I said, blinking.
“That’s it!” Billy snapped, having been watching us the entire time with an increasing look of fury. “Hunting fellow killers, allying with an Artemis, and now she’s part of the Greek system? This cannot go unavenged!”
Billy proceeded to leap into the corpse of the late Charles Devinshire like he was jumping into a swimming pool. His spirit vanished and we were suddenly without my father’s irritating presence for the first time in a decade.
“Did you know he could do that?” Carrie asked.
“No,” I said. “Mind you, I only know what he tells me about the supernatural. Which is next to nothing.”
Oooo, this is going to get good, the Spirit of the Hunt said.
“I have no idea,” Nancy adopted a defensive position with my knife. “Get away from the corpse!”
That was when Charles Devinshire’s eyes opened and he rose up, resurrected as a slasher-possessed zombie. My father’s powers apparently included raising the dead now.
Great.
Chapter Four
Charles Devinshire’s body was a stinking mass of dead flesh that was rotting at an advanced pace, flesh flicking off his skin. His eyes were an empty black pair of pools, reflecting the monstrous spirit now animating him. The revenant wasn’t the first zombie I’d ever seen (that was more Grandpa’s thing), but was certainly the first time I’d ever seen my father animate one.
Even more than the abomination against life the zombie represented, it was a disturbing realization my father could now return to the world of the living. Not only was he a threat to normal people yet he could theoretically menace my sister and I. He was an irritation as a ghost but as a shambling corpse, he could do more than curse at us. I had to put a stop to this before he decided he wanted to create a zombie family to back up his latest killing spree.
“Artemissssss!” Billy hissed through corroded lungs.
I stepped in front of Nancy, protectively, only to immediately be pushed to the side as she charged forward and began stabbing my father’s new body in the chest. Carrie, reaching down to the ground, grabbed the bloody golf club Nancy had discarded then moved to attack him herself. I was proud of Carrie in that moment even if I felt embarrassed that everyone else was showing me up tonight.
Are you a slasher or not? The Spirit of the Hunt taunted.
I don’t know, I said.
Choose quickly or you’ll end up prey instead of predator, the Spirit of the Hunt hissed.
That was when Nancy was thrown twenty feet and landed on top of the Cadillac’s rooftop. The entire top of the vehicle crashed in and caused its windows to explode. She didn’t look that injured since she just reached to feel her back while stretching out her legs. Still, that meant I wasn’t going to be able to trade that car in.
“Crud!” Nancy said, holding her back.
“Do you ever swear?” Carrie called back. “Seriously, it’s okay to say damn, hell, or shit!”
“I’ll work on it!” Nancy shouted back.
My sister was fighting my father, the five-iron buried inside his left eye-socket. Nancy’s butcher knife, formerly mine, was also, inside his chest. It was a rather impressive display of gore but didn’t seem to have done much to a man who was already dead. My father proceeded to grab her by the throat and lift her up, strangling her.
“You’ve been a naughty-naughty girl! Ho-ho-ho!” Billy said, adopting his evil Christmas voice as best he could.
“You can’t do the voice without the suit,” Carrie yelled at him, kneeing his face. “Help!”
“Okay!” I shouted, trying to figure out how to help. “Can you hold on for a second?”
“Sure!” Carrie said, sarcastically. She then hit the five iron deeper into his eye and caused our father to drop her. “No biggie!”
“Sorry!” I said, looking for something to help me deal with my father in a way that wouldn’t get us all killed. Zombies weren’t like they were in the movies, one headshot and done. They were already dead so that meant they couldn’t be killed.
Deciding to work smarter, not harder, I jogged past the Cadillac toward the open garage. I took a second to look at Nancy to make sure she was still breathing, a second resurrection within a few minutes of the last was impossible even for strong slashers. The interior of the garage was pretty much the nightmare fusion of tool shed, garage, abattoir, and slaughterhouse that I’d imagined it to be, but it didn’t distract me from my desperate search for a weapon.
There were two wooden benches covered in slabs of meat, racks of various carving tools, and a bathtub that had a shower curtain around it with a shadow of a human figure inside. There was also a viscera-covered chainsaw on the ground next to a white hockey mask.
Rolling my eyes at the two items, I sighed, “No accounting for taste in the boonies.”
Putting on the hockey mask and picking up the chainsaw, I revved the latter up and proceeded to march back toward my father. I had to wonder what Marge was thinking about all this noise and whether she was going to charge more for the mess we were making of her kill zone. On the other hand, I was now extremely glad I hadn’t tried the ribs. I didn’t care how hungry I was, that meat processing center was just unhygienic.
“Traitorrsssss! My own flesh and blood!” my father hissed, lifting up Carr
ie and throwing her toward me.
Unable to catch her, I instead just ducked as she landed behind me.
“Sorry!” I said.
“Sokay!” Carrie said. “It’s only a broken leg! Should be easy to fix.”
There was a horrible snapping sound a second later as Carrie set the bone back into place. Yeah, I was pretty sure my dad was wrong about there being no women slashers now. I looked over to the Cadillac’s roof and was surprised to see Nancy was gone. That was a trick I’d never quite managed, to be able to disappear when people weren’t looking. They usually just saw me running away and that spoiled the effect entirely.
“You’re not harming our new friend, Dad,” I said, advancing on Billy. “I’m not letting you kill any more of them.”
The roar of the chainsaw grew louder as I took a step forward, seemingly enhanced by the drama of the moment.
“You didn’t need friends growing up. You had me!” Billy said, pulling the five-iron of his eye and lifting it up. His body now looked like it had been rotting for days, a side-effect of possession, and the smell was absolutely disgusting. It looked like Marge wasn’t getting her supply of fresh meat today.
Billy charged at me with the weapon only for me to saw off his left arm. The limb fell to the ground, clutching the five iron. Billy proceeded to reach over to grab the knife in his chest and pull it out, only for me to saw off his right arm. It was surprisingly easy as either my slasher strength was coming in or his body was barely hanging together.
Armless, my father spit in my face, only for the green toxic loogie to be blocked by my mask. “You’re a complete disappointment, son.”
“I’ll survive, somehow,” I muttered then drove the chainsaw between his legs and caused Billy to scream before it was cut off by the chainsaw going through his throat. I ended up bisecting the zombie in half as the two sides humorously fell apart in opposite directions. It was like a scene from a particularly violent cartoon.
“Ooo, wicked!” Carrie said, hopping up on her now fully healed legs. “That was sick, bro!”
“Are those words good or bad?” I asked, continuing to chop my father’s remaining pieces up. They twitched a bit before ceasing to move. About the only upside to all of this was that his heart wasn’t pumping post-mortem, so it was less of a mess than it otherwise might have been. When the chunks were still, I let the chainsaw die.
“Good,” Carrie said, “I think. I’m going to be honest, I’m not exactly up to date on my slang. Not a lot of teenagers in the Women’s Ward of HPL’s.”
“You’re twenty-seven,” I said. “Not a teenager anymore.”
Carrie stuck her tongue out.
“Is he dead?” Nancy’s voice spoke. “I mean, like dead-dead.”
“No,” I answered, removing my mask. Half of its lower jaw area had burned away from my father’s spit. “Destroying a ghost’s vessel won’t destroy them permanently. He probably will need some time to reincorporate himself, though. I can’t say how long that will take. I didn’t even know he could reanimate the dead.”
“You’re all acting like this is entirely normal,” Nancy said.
“Isn’t it?” I asked.
I turned around and saw our mysterious friend holding Charles Devinshire’s pistol that she’d retrieved.
“You planned to use a gun on a zombie?” Carrie asked, incredulously. “What is wrong with you?”
“Maybe it’s for us,” I said, dryly.
“Oh,” Carrie said, blinking. “That makes sense.”
“I’m not going to shoot you two,” Nancy said, putting the gun away in the pocket of a pair of shorts’ underneath her skirt—what I believed to be called a skort. Honestly, I didn’t think there was room enough there for it. She really needed to steal herself a purse.
“Why?” I asked. “Honestly, I would.”
“You’d also screw it up,” Carrie muttered. “I mean, seriously, you just got a butcher knife and announced yourself? Strictly amateur hour. You needed to make some scary noises, use a mask, and lure him into a proper killing position.”
“I was forced to announce myself!” I snapped.
Nancy smiled at us both. “Yeah, you guys do remind me of the parts of my family I don’t hate.”
Both of us turned our head.
“Really?” I asked, skeptically.
“Are you an Artemis?” Carrie said.
“I’ve never heard of them,” Nancy said. “However, both my grandmother and mother raised me to hunt down serial murderers.”
I blinked. “Huh.”
“Well, that’s a big coincidence,” Carrie said. “Almost suspiciously so.”
“Not really if this actually is Murder Central,” I replied, trying to make all the information fit together. “The Fraternity of Orion probably built their compound here because it’s a place with a history of violence as well as locations known for disposing bodies. That’s why we’re here.”
“Yes, but why would she be here?” Carrie asked. “A bridal party isn’t going to go camping in the woods nearby murder town. Is it?”
“Maybe they were transported here,” I said.
“You could just ask me,” Nancy said.
“Oh,” I said, blinking. “Sorry, it’s just my sister and I are kind of used to talking to each other.”
“Like twins but two years apart!” Carrie said, throwing up the peace sign. Which was also the victory sign if you didn’t realize that.
“That’s a new thing,” I said.
Nancy got an angry look on her face, which suited her. “I think my bridal party was targeted by Cassie’s fiancé. We were all sorority sisters at Theta Alpha Alpha.”
“Your sorority is named T&A?” Carrie asked, blinking.
Nancy’s angry look focused on Carrie.
“I’m not the one who named it that!” Carrie said, raising her hands in surrender.
“It’s for survivors of violent crimes,” Nancy said. “It’s practically unique. We teach self-defense class, Krav Maga, guns, survival, and offer sponsorships to the military or law enforcement.”
“Then it’s even more unfortunately named,” Carrie said.
“And your mother and grandmother sponsored you to this?” I asked, wondering if perhaps my father wasn’t completely wrong about Artemises existing.
Are you skeptical about it because they’re a sexist concept or because you’re worried you can’t sleep with her? Carrie asked in my mind. Because she already said she’s not a virgin! Then again, maybe that’s why she lost against Dad.
There’s nothing wrong with the loss of virginity, I responded. It’s an overrated rite of passage.
I certainly think so, Carrie said. Seriously, it’s awesome. You should try it. I mean, not now, obviously.
“You know I can hear you two, right?” Nancy asked.
Carrie shut up, grimacing. “Whoops. Sorry, bro. Didn’t mean to expose you.”
I sighed. “Please go on.”
“My mother was Vivienne Weiss and my grandmother Janet Leighton,” Nancy said, waiting for a reaction.
“I see,” I said, thinking about that.
Carrie leaned to my side. “Who?”
“Vivienne Weiss was the maiden name of the sole survivor of the Babysitter Massacre,” I replied, having had plenty of time to look up true crime details at the asylum library. It was part of my effort to understand what I was and cure myself after I realized the doctors had no real interest in treating me. “Her mother was the sister of the Motel Shower Murderer’s first victim.”
Carrie blinked. “Really? That makes the movie adaptations’ casting pretty ironic.”
Nancy shook her head. “Both of them were terrified of the world after their experiences and imparted it to their children. I got the worst of it. I don’t know what awful, evil supernatural force resulted in two generations of my family being targeted—”
Ahem, the Spirit of the Hunt said.
“But they made my life a living hell growing up. It was li
ke being raised by Spartans. Constant training, living off the grid, and indoctrination in a ‘danger around every corner’ philosophy that I hated. Really, TAA was a breeze by comparison,” Nancy said, crossing her arms. She then furrowed her brow. “Goshdarnit, now all I hear is T&A when I say that.”
“See!” Carrie said.
“So you were raised to kill slashers, were legacied into a house for victimized women—” I said.
“I prefer the term survivors,” Nancy interrupted.
“Sorry,” I said, sincere. “And yet you were taken by complete coincidence?”
“Yes,” Nancy said. “I never even believed them when they tried to convince me the world was full of monsters. Hell, I didn’t believe me when those psychopaths were chasing me with guns and dogs.”
“Guns just ruin the whole thing. I hate them,” Carrie said, wrinkling her nose.
“But it all makes sense,” Nancy said, shaking her head. “My mother and grandmother were right. We’re in a United States of Monsters.”
“I prefer Homicidal American,” Carrie replied, starting to count the money in Devinshire’s wallet.
“Well, that improves your sorority sisters’ chances of survival,” I said, trying to be comforting and not sure how to do it. Emotional validation wasn’t something I had much experience with and wouldn’t know how to give even if I did.
“I doubt it,” Nancy said, looking disgusted. “The Fraternity doesn’t have much care about cheating. I was the strongest, toughest, and best-trained one, but they eventually wore me down. I managed to get a few of them, but that was their guards, not the actual hunters.”
“That’s a few less we’ll have to deal with,” I said, dryly. “My offer stands.”
“And I’m taking you up on it,” Nancy said. “Mind you, I’m going to have to ask you to keep your father from being involved.”
“I’ll see if there’s a spell to deal with him in Grandpa’s copy of the Necronomicon,” Carrie said, lifting her cellphone. “Assuming I can get a Latin to English ap off the internet.”