by C. T. Phipps
“Stay calm, stay safe,” I mouthed to myself as I waited for the right moment to move. Once the first-floor dealers were out of visual range and I heard the ones upstairs start to enter the rooms there, I moved up the side of the staircase. I clung to the wall in order to make sure the steps creaked less as there was more support along the edges.
I could hear a half-dozen hearts beating throughout the house as the need to kill took me over. I heard every little awful thing the group had done, and it was hard to concentrate as they all distracted me. Instead, I focused on the ones directly above me. Their hearts drowned out the others and I eventually focused on Earl, who trailed behind Jimbo.
Earl Jones was Jimbo’s cousin and the weakest of the pack. He had done terrible things both to men as well as women, but always with someone there to hold his hand. His weakness was not physical but mental. In his desire to fit in, he’d do anything and had done so in hopes of winning their respect. I could see the metaphorical splotches of blood from all his crimes glow on his hands, shoulders, and face. The worst deed he’d ever done was drug a girl he’d known from school and sold her to the mysterious Irishman they’d mentioned. He didn’t know what happened to her, but it didn’t matter, did it? I was surprised Carrie hadn’t called dibs on him as well.
“So, this is where you killed that kid, huh?” Earl asked, moving into the children’s bedroom of the house.
“Shut the hell up, Earl, I don’t want to hear it,” Jimbo said. “I did what Wilbur ordered me to do. We needed a place to stay and the family was in the way.”
“Hey man, I’m not judging,” Earl said, trying to save face. “It was hardcore. You did what you had to do.”
“Screw you,” Jimbo said, clearly not comfortable having his worst act brought up. “Go check the bathroom.”
“But it’s dark, man!” Earl said.
“I said check the bathroom!” Jimbo said.
I didn’t need to be told twice that the upstairs bathroom was the best location for stalking my prey. It was a ratty looking location with a white tile floor, an utterly unsanitary toilet with mold growing in its bowl, and a cracked mirror. There were no curtains over its tiny window, so the moonlight streamed in brightly despite Earl’s claims. The door opened inward and I slipped behind it, holding my breath so it wasn’t too ajar.
“Jackass,” Earl muttered, heading into the bathroom. “I don’t know what he thinks I’m going to find in here. It’s not like people are going to be hiding in here. Did it occur to Wilbur that maybe they had two cars and are in town? They probably came to this hellhole to survey it or took one look then hopped over to Silverton in order to stay at the Best Western.”
Silverton was the proverbial next town over where we’d have to do our shopping tomorrow. It was also the place where we’d bought Nancy her Burger King. I presumed that was where most of the meth dealers originally came from since it had a population of at least six thousand and was an actual community.
I could hear Earl’s heart beating in front of the door and knew he was staring at the mirror. He turned around to leave as I slipped out and wrapped the piano wire around his throat before pulling it tight. I overdid it and sliced through his throat, causing blood to drip down his shirt before moving my arm to break his neck in one easy motion. I was stronger than an average human being and what would have taken extensive training was almost all too easy.
It was all too easy.
Unsatisfying even.
I accidentally broke the piano wire in my hands by pulling it too hard, an unconscious expression of frustration. While I’d wanted to kill Charles Devinshire quickly and stealthily, this felt wrong. Earl Jones had died without knowing who was coming after him, why, or for what reason. Even if it was against all the laws of sense, it was important that he not just die but die in a way that made the act meaningful. God, suddenly so much about slashers made sense. We were puppets to rituals that I didn’t understand and wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Now you’re getting it, the Spirit of the Hunt whispered. It usually takes other slashers eight or nine kills to understand. Still, you popped your cherry and that calls for a reward.
I don’t want your reward— I thought back, only to feel an agonizing pain on my left hand as the feeling of my father’s cigarettes was felt only a thousand times worse. I went into shock for a second or I would have screamed out. There, branded into my hand, was an I. No, wait, not an eye, but the Roman numeral for one.
The Mark of Cain, the Spirit of the Hunt said. Not all slashers have it, but those that do are marked for something truly special. It means I’m watching them. The mark can be anywhere, but the left hand is a favorite of mine. Do you know the word sinister originally meant left-handed? People believed that lefties had something wrong with them and it came to mean something harmful or evil seeming. 90% of slashers are left-handed. You’re one of the remaining 10% who are ambidextrous.
The Spirit of the Hunt sure was chatty for a diabolical spirit encouraging me to kill. I wondered if she was as personable with other slashers. I thought God gave Cain his mark in order to keep him from being murdered by his relatives for killing Abel.
Don’t believe everything you read, the Spirit of the Hunt said. And no, I’m usually a lot less chatty. You and your sister amuse me. Now get back to murdering.
I tried to shake away the feeling that I’d failed in killing Earl. Not because I’d given into the killing urge, but I’d done so quickly and without flourish. My sister probably would have said that made me like a teenage boy, but I disliked that comparison. Sex and murder were not similar despite how many killers got off on the latter. The only thing they had in common was that they were both primal urges—at least for slashers.
Reaching down, I pressed my forefinger and index finger into the late Earl’s throat wound and gathered up blood like finger-paint. I proceeded to write the words SINS PAID IN FULL on the mirror. It was weird but something about the act relaxed me and allowed me to focus on my other prey. I could already imagine the meth dealers coming upstairs, finding the body, and freaking out. It amused me more than I wanted it to.
I wiped my fingers on a dirty hand towel before removing my glasses. The piano wire was useless now and I needed a weapon. Breaking the edges off the glasses’ frames, I turned it into a makeshift shiv before proceeding to the room Jimbo was in. I took up position beside the door and peered inside.
Jimbo was standing in the middle of the room, looking down at the child’s bed covered in blood. The Lego set was missing from the room, but it was still full of stuffed animals and posters of clowns on the wall. Apparently, the child had been unironically fond of the creatures. There was a large octagonal window on the side of the wall, almost the size of a man, with a beautiful view of the moonlit farm beyond. Light was provided by the lantern at his side but also the window, making it an eeriely well-lit chamber.
“I’m sorry, kid,” Jimbo said, continuing to stare at the blood. “I’d say it was just business but that’d be a lie. I was high as a kite, though. Haven’t touched the stuff since.”
His apology briefly moved me before I shook my head. Apologies would not bring his victim back to life and there was no redemption in hell. Besides, it hadn’t stopped him from dealing the substance that drove him to kill, had it? I shook those thoughts away and stalked him from behind.
“Time to pay,” I said, my voice seemingly lowering an octave.
“What the,” Jimbo said, turning around with his gun in hand, only for me to grab it and aim it at the ceiling before it went off. The noise would attract his fellows, but I didn’t care. I drove my glasses into one of his eyes as he screamed a horrific death rattle. From there, I grabbed him by the shirt and threw him like a baseball through the octagonal window. He weighed something like two hundred and fifty pounds but throwing him had been easy. Interesting. I ran to the window and stared down at the ground, seeing the corpse of Jimbo spread out on the ground like a broken doll. It made me feel powerful and I al
so felt a strange sense of satisfaction from the house itself. Humans left behind ghosts as well, just not as overtly so as the slashers. Either that or I was just trying to justify what I’d done.
Against my years of resistance, I was the Accountant now. There was no turning back.
As if there ever was an option to, the Spirit of the Hunt taunted.
The mark on my hand doubled in size, becoming a Roman two.
Chapter Eleven
Hearing footsteps coming up the stairs and the heartbeats that accompanied them, I knew I didn’t have much time. I’d managed to come back from Charles Devinshire shooting very quickly, but I wasn’t sure just how durable I was to “normal” damage.
Maybe I’d stretched myself to my limits by doing so and was no more immortal now than any other humans. You never knew as a slasher when your death was going to be for the last time or not. For some, it made them act like they were immortal until they suddenly weren’t, while others relied on becoming as stealthy as possible so they were like a nightmare that you could never be sure was real or not.
I knew which one I preferred to be and climbed out the window, sliding on the ledge before scaling on the building’s roof. I could hear the hearts of the new intruders start beating faster, possibly having discovered the nightmare I’d left behind in the bathroom. They were James Parker and Karl Johnson, my powers told me. I knew things about them by the weight of their sins calling out to me. Walking across the roof to just above their location, I could hear them through the roof despite the layers of wood and insulation.
“They effin slaughtered him, Karl!” James said, looking in at the corpse spread out before the mirror. “Sins paid in full? What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s just someone trying to mess with us, James!” Karl said. “Some sicko who thinks he can scare us.”
“It’s working!” James snapped.
Of the two, Karl Johnson was the most professional and clinical about how he went about his business. He was the group’s chemist and had no real feelings about the violence his fellows indulged in so they could make money. While he’d participated in some of their most heinous crimes, he’d mostly stood as a silent witness while the others carried out their grizzly deeds against competitors. Methamphetamines was just a business to him and no different from alcohol, tobacco, or weed. The fact that his cohorts killed, raped, and tortured in order to make sure they could keep selling it was a bit of cognitive dissonance that didn’t reach his heart.
James Parker, by contrast, was what I would call a “twitchy” killer. In a way, he was the most normal of the group if you judged a person by their lack of desire to kill people. However, his mind was an addled and unpleasant place that was governed by constantly shifting emotions. I couldn’t read mental illness from the sins in his heart, but if I had to guess, he was bipolar and took a variety of drugs to self-medicate. James couldn’t afford actual therapy and having killed his first man during a botched robbery when he was sixteen, was on the lam anyway. When James could be, he was high, and when he was high, he made bad decisions. Staying high, at least as long as he could, kept James from having to deal with the guilt of his actions too.
Fascinating.
I followed them as they moved to the child’s bedroom where I’d killed Jimbo. They both got significantly more agitated as they looked out the window to see the corpse of their friend on the ground.
“Damn, damn, damn!” James said. “Oh hell, we need to get the hell out of here now!”
“And leave behind the vamper? Are you high? Wait, don’t answer that,” Karl said. “I know you are. We can’t leave this place behind. Our equipment is here in the barn.”
“There’s a serial killer here!” James said, sounding on the verge of tears.
“We are outlaws!” Karl shouted. “Also, I’m more afraid of the Irishman than I am some bargain basement Ed Gein.”
I resented that comparison, even if he might have been someone my Texas cousins had known. Despite not being a slasher proper, at least as far as I’d known, plenty of writers had used his horrific crimes as a basis for combining urban legends and folklore from real slashers to create their media depictions of us.
James took a deep breath. “Okay, then, just let me take a fix and I’ll calm down.”
“Are you serious?” Karl said. “You want to crank up now?”
“Yeah, I got a drop of the Dracula with my special blend,” James said.
“You’re nuts man,” Karl said. “You remember what you did to that family last time? Over a frigging dog too.”
“I want my dog back!” James said. “He better not be dead! I only forgot him because I was distracted!”
Carrie would be unhappy that I was going to kill James before she could. James was splattered with blood differently from Jimbo, covered in it from head-to-toe but in wild exotic patterns. He killed, beat, and maimed when the mood struck him only to flee from responsibility. He was also holding a spiked baseball bat that had a dozen sharpened nails sticking out of it. I could feel him reaching down and picking up Jimbo’s dropped gun off the floor too.
“Fine!” Karl said. “I’ll go check the other bedrooms. I’ll scream if I see something.”
“Good,” James said.
Karl turned away and walked away as I heard his heart start pounding harder the further, he was away from James. While he was good at putting up a brave front, he wasn’t a fighter and the realization that he was moving away from someone who was into the unknown was getting to him. That made him a particularly interesting kind of prey.
A part of me wanted to shake myself out of this state but the hunt was in control of me now. With his back turned to the window, I swung behind James while he stuffed a piece of bloody toilet paper soaked with chemicals and full of homemade pills into his mouth. Reaching into my pocket protector, I pulled out two fountain pens. They were expensive and sharp, looking like the ones the chief administrator of H.P. Lovecraft Memorial Hospital used to use. It made think Carrie had finished him off on the way out, or at least robbed his office.
“Jaaammmessss,” I whispered, ducking immediately after. “Your life is a write-off.”
Exactly as expected, James spun around with his bat only to hit empty air. I proceeded to stab him twice in the throat with the fountain pens in my hand, both hitting arteries in his neck. His eyes widened as a gory shower began to pour out, only for me to take out another two pens and stab him in the eyes. He stood there for a few seconds, the vampire blood taking effect despite his injuries and I pushed him over. He landed on the ground with an audible thump as a big red pool appeared around him.
Well, now we’re officially rated R, the Spirit of the Hunt said. Three kills now! You’re now a serial killer!
Spree killer, I said, feeling a bit of my old hesitation returning. Was I really making the world a better place by doing this?
No, don’t do that, the Spirit of the Hunt. Don’t try and rationalize it. Don’t try and find a reason. This is for its own sake.
What is? I asked, barely noticing as my wrist changed for the third time. The pain was almost irrelevant now.
Murder, the Spirit of the Hunt said. Like all art, you need to do it for its own sake.
What do you get out of this? I asked. That’s what I don’t get.
Fun, the Spirit of the Hunt said. In the old days, every tribe knew that the gods fed on blood and prayer. Now we must get a bit more creative in our sacrifices. Think of yourself as a priest in a traditionalist old timey religious sect.
I’d rather not, I said. That was my grandfather’s thing.
Your grandfather kept many awful things asleep for a very long time, the Spirit of the Hunt said. Too bad they’re stirring now.
I didn’t have time to contemplate that because I was too busy focusing on the form of Karl running back into the room with a gun drawn.
“Stay the hell away!” Karl shouted, holding the gun like a complete amateur, which he was.
I stared at him. “I am inevitable, Karl. You cannot escape paying for what you have done. It all comes to account.”
You should let him go, the Spirit of the Hunt spoke.
What? I asked, confused as hell. You’re asking me to show mercy?
The Spirit of the Hunt laughed. Mercy has nothing to do with it. Gods and demons feed upon both blood as well as prayer. Let this one escape and you will become a legend. The Accountant’s story will spread, and you will gain a portion of that power. It’s why so many slashers are obsessed with their legends and the demons of Hollywood do their best to spread their stories.
Demons of Hollywood? No wait, I don’t want to know, I said. Besides, he knows where we live.
If you were planning on staying here after killing the Fraternity, then you might consider changing your name to the Dumbass. Billionaires do not take kindly to having their fun interrupted.
I was prevented from responding by having a bullet go into my arm. It stung like hell before my body started to regenerate. Karl fired a second shot and it went over my head.
“Okay, now I’m ticked,” I said, avoiding harsher language already because of Nancy’s influence.
Karl stared at me in horror as his heart beat so fast I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack. Rather than continue to fire at me, possibly killing me, he threw his gun down on the ground and ran for the stairs. I proceeded to walk after him, taking in a deep breath with every step. One of the things I’d been taught early was the history of human dominance over the animal kingdom via the power walk. As bizarre as this may sound, the greatest benefit for hunters in the early years of our race was endurance. Whereas cheetahs and other predators could move at incredible speeds for a short time, the simple fact was that a human could follow a herd until the animals exhausted themselves and pick off any stragglers they wanted. Human victims were no different as they ran as fast as they could, exhausting themselves, and allowed slashers to catch up to them.