Husk

by Dave Zeltserman

‘You either one of us or one of them,’ my pa said to me, his voice filled with disgust. I didn’t look up, but when I heard my ma start to cry I knew he had left the shack.

  FORTY-ONE

  None of my kin wanted to stand near me in the sacred hall. That was for the best. The more they kept their distance from me, the better. If the elders didn’t call on me to deliver the silencing blow, I would have to fight my way through them to wrestle the truncheon away from whichever elder was holding it. So the further they kept away from me, the better chance I’d have of doing that.

  I made sure not to look at the elders. I didn’t want them knowing what I was thinking. I wanted them to believe I was standing there chastened and ashamed.

  There was movement off to the side of the hall, and I knew the first of the victims was being brought out. More of my kin moved to the front to watch this person being tied up. I felt my heart ready to explode. I’d caught glimpses of this person’s muddy hair and slight stature, and knew it had to be Jill. The elders had chosen her to be first. This didn’t surprise me. I braced myself for what was going to be happening.

  They had finished tying Jill up. All I could see were glimpses of her, thanks to my kin mostly obscuring my view. I looked at the elders beseechingly, pleading silently for them to spare her. This was genuine on my part but also intentional, as I hoped this would spur them on to order me to deliver the silencing blow. And it worked. The elders really are bastards, every single goddamned one of them! The elder holding the truncheon stepped forward, and ordered me to deliver the silencing blow.

  Those of my kin standing in front of me parted and I could now clearly see that her yellow hair had been turned muddy brown, just as it had in my dream. As with all the others who had been slaughtered, she’d been tied so her toes barely touched the ground. As she saw me she started to cry, her eyes pleading, begging me. One of my kin hissed as I rushed forward and took the truncheon from the elder. Before she could stop crying long enough to utter a word, I struck her on the side of the head with the truncheon. Then I took the slicing knife from the elder and, after pulling open her slack jaw, I cut out her tongue.

  I stepped away from her and moved to the back of the hall. I had hit her too hard – the silencing blow had knocked her unconscious instead of simply stunning her – and several of the women kinfolk were slapping her to wake her. The victims had to be awake for the slaughtering ritual.

  This rush of activity kept the rest of my kin from noticing how I was shaking. By the time the womenfolk had wakened her, I had gotten myself under control. It wasn’t hard to imagine how it had happened. Daniel and Clement would have seen Brittany and Jill as the same – as one of them who was small and yellow-haired. Even if they’d had a photograph of Jill, they wouldn’t have been able to tell the two of them apart. All I could imagine was that Brittany must’ve gone to Jill’s apartment to try to make amends, and Daniel and Clement had grabbed her before she could knock on Jill’s door.

  I felt truly sorry for Brittany as I watched her suffer the horrors of the slaughtering ritual. Even though she had been nothing but a thorn in my side, I would’ve saved her if I could. But I never had a chance, just like I wouldn’t have had a chance of saving her if it had been Jill. I had been deluding myself. Even if I had succeeded in cutting her down, which was unlikely, my kin would’ve caught up with her before she had a chance to leave the homestead.

  The moment I saw it was Brittany, I knew I had to silence her before she saw me and said anything to let my clan know she wasn’t the one they wanted. I was sorry my women kinfolk were able to wake her, though.

  As I watched her being slaughtered, I realized that the elders were soon going to discover she wasn’t Jill. They’d know, once Daniel and Clement looked through the belongings they’d collected and found Brittany’s pocketbook. Even if they didn’t discover it was Brittany, I had little doubt the Brooklyn clan would. And if the Brooklyn clan didn’t grab Jill for themselves, they would send word to the elders.

  The slaughtering rituals soon became little more than background noise as a glimmer of an idea came to me. And before long, I had a plan.

  FORTY-TWO

  The slaughtering rituals ended at sunset. Even though it disgusted me, I sat in the sacred hall and ate the stew I was offered without complaining. I couldn’t afford to make my kin any more suspicious of me than they already were. Since my own home had been destroyed, along with the other houses I built, when the slaughtering ritual ended I went to my parents’ shack, where my ma made me a bed by the hearth. Before retiring for the night, my pa grudgingly nodded at me, as if I’d made amends of sorts by striking a decisive silencing blow.

  I waited until midnight before sneaking out. My kin had destroyed all the power tools I brought to the clan, but I was able to find a small cache of hand tools they’d missed and took a screwdriver from it. Stealthily I headed toward the path that would take me to the van. I moved quickly, sometimes running, sometimes walking briskly, and covered the four miles in less than half an hour. I was out of breath by the time I reached the clearing where the van was kept. I collapsed forward with my hands on my knees as I tried to slow down my breathing and my heart. It was only then, in the moonlight, I noticed Daniel and Clement sitting by the van. They both stood up. Daniel was holding a hatchet, Clement a crowbar.

  ‘You might’ve fooled those others, but you ain’t fooled us,’ Daniel said. ‘But that’s because we learnt that yellow-haired girl was the wrong one. We learnt that when we went through what she was carrying. But you didn’t say nothin’ about that. That’s how we knew you’d be coming here.’

  They both stepped toward me, murderous intent shining in their eyes. They’d easily have been able to explain to the elders why they needed to kill me. But what they didn’t understand was that while they had hate driving them, I had the desperation of trying to save the woman I loved. That was something they would never understand.

  I flew at Daniel. He swung the hatchet, aiming to bury it in my head, but I ducked low and swung my fist into his testicles. My kind don’t fight like that. It’s considered an unmanly low blow and disgraceful, but then my kind don’t usually fight to save the ones they love.

  My blow sent Daniel reeling, clutching his groin. Clement hit me hard across my shoulders with the crowbar. The pain knocked me down on all fours, but before Clement could cave my skull in with another blow, I rolled away and grabbed the hatchet that Daniel had dropped. From my knees, I whipped the hatched at Clement. He tried to block it with the crowbar, but the blade dug into his forearm. That didn’t stop him, but it slowed him down, and when I tackled him the pain and added weight of the hatchet kept him from swinging the crowbar hard enough to hurt me.

  I crawled on top of him and pinned him down with my knees. Clement was always a feisty one, but he was thinner and smaller than me, and he couldn’t buck me off of him. I brought my fist back and punched him in the nose, and kept doing that until I knocked him out.

  Daniel had gotten back on his feet. His face chalky white in the moonlight, outrage over my low blow glinting in his eyes. He charged me, ignoring the fact that I now had Clement’s crowbar. I swung for the fences the same way I’d watched baseball players swing a baseball bat weeks ago in the World Series, and connected solidly enough with his jaw to make a satisfying ‘Thunk!’ noise. There was no doubt that I had shattered it. He was out well before he hit the ground.

  I found the van’s keys in his pocket, and also my wallet that he had taken from me earlier. It was still stuffed with money. He and Clement must’ve been planning to head back to New York to snatch Jill right after they killed me. I tossed away the screwdriver I’d taken, since I no longer needed to get at the ignition wires.

  I dumped all the burlap sacks and rope from the back of the van. Then after a moment’s thought trussed up Daniel and Clement and put them both in sacks. Maybe the clan would discover them in a few days, or maybe it would take a week. They could both die before that happened. I didn�
��t much care.

  I drove off in the van, and kept driving until I reached Massachusetts. As much as I longed to, I couldn’t go back to Jill right away. There was something I had to do first, something I wouldn’t be able to start until the morning. I found a motel situated off the main road.

  That was two days ago. I’ve been writing this nonstop since buying the necessary notebooks and pens at a convenience store. The motel I checked into has a coffeemaker in the room that’s been useful – the coffee I’ve been drinking has been instrumental in allowing me to write this as quickly as I have. I’ve tried to be as honest as I can with what I’ve written, and I’ve tried my hardest to remember everything that has happened since I first saw Jill back on Labor Day. It’s important that people realize this is an accurate accounting of the events that occurred.

  I’m planning to figure out a way for this document to be sent to the police and the newspapers, maybe even to a book publisher, if anything ever happens to Jill or myself. Also, I’ll be including maps and directions to every hidden clan I know about, and will be giving a copy of all this to the Brooklyn clan to read and to deliver to my clan in New Hampshire. They can take the van back to them if they want to. I don’t care.

  Last night I called Jill and I told her as much of the truth as I could. That two of my relatives came to New York to kidnap me. That they knocked me out, tied me up, gagged me, and drove me to the family compound without my being able to do anything about it. It broke my heart a little when I heard her whisper ‘Oh my God!’, and from her voice I was able to imagine how stricken she must’ve been right then.

  I tried joking, telling Jill that the worst part of it was that I lost the present I’d bought her for our two-month ‘Officially Dating’ anniversary.

  ‘The necklace was freshwater pearls with a gold pendant shaped like a lily. It just seemed so perfect for you, and now you’re not even going to believe I bought you anything.’

  ‘Charlie, what they did to you is just so awful! Are you hurt?’

  ‘My head hurts,’ I admitted. ‘My shoulders and back also. But I’ll be OK.’

  ‘When am I going to see you again?’

  ‘I’ll be back in New York in two days, maybe three. I wish I could see you tonight, but there’s something important I need to do first.’ I tried joking again, although it really wasn’t a joke, but rather something I’d been dreading asking her. ‘Assuming that you still want to see me, and I’d understand if you don’t given how backward and demented my family is—’

  ‘Charlie, of course I want to see you. I’m not going to blame you for your family. But you need to call the police. You have to!’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I hope you can trust me regarding this, but it’s best if I don’t tell anyone but you about this. My family will never bother me again. They understand that now.’

  That last part was a white lie. But they will understand once the Brooklyn clan brings them a copy of this document. If they hurt either of us, they’ll be dooming not only themselves but all the other clans too.

  As long as they leave us alone, nobody will ever read this.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This novel wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Dana Kabel. A few years back Dana invited me to contribute a story to an anthology titled ‘Kannibal Cookbook’, and while that story ended up being almost the polar opposite of what HUSK became, writing it got the creative juices flowing for this novel. I’d like to thank Paul Tremblay for reading an early draft when it had the working title ‘American Cannibal: A Love Story’, and for providing his blurb. In memoriam, I’d like to acknowledge the late Ed Gorman. Ed was a friend and a mentor for almost fifteen years, and during this time provided me constant encouragement, and HUSK was one of my last novels that Ed was able to read. I’d also like to thank my college buddy and unofficial copyeditor Alan Luedeking for all of his help in improving this book, and also my childhood friend (and best man at my wedding) Jeff Michaels for his feedback. I’d like to further thank Kate Grant for acquiring this book for Severn House and, for better or worse, giving it the light of day, and to Holly Domney for all of her careful editing which required a careful balancing act to both improve the writing but also maintain Charlie Husk’s unique voice. Finally, I’d like to thank my wife and best friend, Judy, for all of her support and help with this book.