by Jacob Rayne
‘Just hold it there,’ the man barked.
Osmo froze. He could feel the man’s eyes boring into him.
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here, but you can put the pitchfork down for a start,’ the man said. ‘Real slow.’
Osmo bent down carefully and dropped the weapon on the floor. It clanged off the path and left a few smears of blood on the gravel.
‘Please, Mister, put the gun down,’ Graham pleaded.
The man eyed him cautiously. Osmo rose up to find the gun aimed in his face.
‘Hey, no,’ Osmo said.
The gunman grinned, exposing sharp yellowing teeth.
Out of his eyeline, Marie crouched and picked up a heavy rock. She sensed that the gunman was about to fire, so she wanted to be armed.
As the gunman’s grin widened, Marie hurled the stone. The blast devastated their eardrums. A split second later, the stone hit the man in the side of the head, moving his aim a few feet to the right. This meant that he hit Graham instead of Osmo.
The blast tore through Graham’s spine and sent bloody gobbets of his stomach and lungs flying out into the night air. He crumpled and fell to the floor, dark blood oozing from the wound in his stomach.
Marie and Osmo screamed in unison as he fell. His blood drew steam as it came into contact with the cold night air. The gunman collapsed, his left temple caved in with the stone. He wasn’t dead, but he was incapacitated for the time being.
It seemed obvious to them that Graham was dying, so they left him where he lay and ran. On the way, Osmo picked up the pitchfork and stabbed it through the gunman’s leg. Blood pissed out of the three wounds in his thigh. He fumbled for the gun but they were already on their way past him. The shotgun blast missed them by a good few feet.
Their hearts thudding in their ears, they followed the path that snaked back to the main road. The path was in total darkness. They could see no further than a few feet in front of them, but stumbled on regardless, Osmo keeping the pitchfork levelled in front of him as he ran.
Finally they reached the main road which was also in darkness. None of the lights seemed to be in operation. They stood by the side of the road, waiting for a passing vehicle to take them back to town. It seemed to be an eternity before one came.
They waved their arms frantically, but the car passed regardless.
‘I don’t blame ’em,’ Marie said.
Osmo regarded her with a puzzled expression.
‘Well, seriously would you stop and pick us up?’ Marie said, indicating her blood-streaked clothes and face.
Osmo cracked a smile despite the losses he felt in every fibre of his being.
‘Hey, here’s another one,’ Marie smiled, running out into the road. ‘We’re going to be ok.’ She laughed, a strangely carefree sound considering what they’d just endured.
She was still laughing when the speeding transit van hit her and hurled her ten feet down the road.
Osmo ran to her, wailing at the top of his lungs. Her mangled head lolled to one side, a thick ribbon of blood snaking out of her left ear. She looked pale, as though life had already decided to ebb away from her. Harsh sobs racked him as he felt the heat leave her convulsing body.
‘Jesus, I’m so sorry,’ the ashen-faced driver sobbed as he got out of the van. ‘She just ran out. I didn’t have time to stop.’
Osmo looked over to him, taking in the thick smear of blood on the bonnet of the van. He looked away quickly, said nothing, just stared at the road that was decorated with his daughter’s blood. He felt if he looked at the driver he would smash his head into the tarmac until there was nothing left.
Paramedics came and declared Marie dead at the scene.
Police came and took a statement from each of them. They frowned when Osmo mentioned the events that had taken place on the farm. They promised to look into it but he knew from bitter experience when he was being fobbed off.
IV
Six months later, the police investigation had been forgotten, Osmo’s story chalked up to being a side-effect of his intense grief. Osmo was well on his way to developing cirrhosis of the liver from his daily drinking binges. He was a haunted man, forever changed by the events that had taken place on the farm. His eyes stared out of his face, but friends and well-wishers knew he wasn’t seeing them, he was seeing the incidents that had robbed him of his family. They did their best to help, but Osmo pushed everyone away with his drunken hostility.
It was rare that he left the house now, so it was a surprise for Regina Taylor, one of Osmo’s neighbours, when she spotted him taking a stroll by the river. He led a crying blonde haired little boy by the hand. The boy looked frightened and extremely uncomfortable. Regina watched in disbelief as Osmo dragged the boy into the river. She heard Osmo’s cries of anguish as he hugged the boy to him and pushed his head beneath the filthy water.
She had no idea what to do, just watched the scene with her mouth agape. To Osmo’s left were two moving circles of what looked like golden river grass. When she looked more closely, she saw the shapes of two more children beneath the water, their hair billowing around them, creating the writhing circles. The mouths of the children were open, their eyes bulging out of their sockets. They were still, save for the movement of the tide stirring their submerged corpses.
The boy bucked, but Osmo held him firmly. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he sobbed as he held his convulsing body until the bubbles finally stopped. Osmo let go of his head. The three bodies bobbed up and down in the water, their blonde hair swirling around them like golden halos.
His face a twisted, tear-streaked mask of misery, Osmo waded out of the water, leaving the bodies where they floated.
Regina felt powerless to intervene, but she managed to pull out her mobile phone and call the police. When she explained what she had seen, her words left the operator speechless. She was told that there would be someone despatched immediately.
What happened next was even worse.
Moss and stagnant water sluiced from Osmo in a stinking tide as he climbed onto the riverbank. He hauled a thick wooden fence post from the soil at the riverside and gripped it in his trembling hands.
There was a tramp lounging on the bench near the river, a few hundred yards from where Osmo had drowned the children. When he saw the approaching lunatic with a heavy piece of wood held like a baseball bat, the tramp let out a cry and ran. Osmo followed him, slamming the post into the tramp’s leg. The knee joint buckled in over, sending one of his bones jutting out of the skin on the inside of his thigh.
He screamed as he hit the floor.
Osmo’s face twisted into a hideous grin. He ran in, slamming the blunt end of the wooden post down on the tramp’s head. There was a sickly crack and the tramp went limp for a second. By the time he had regained his senses, Osmo had raised the post high, the pointed tip facing down now. After pausing for a second, he slammed the makeshift weapon down, right onto the tramp’s heart.
The tramp let out an ungodly scream as the point sunk deep into his chest, sending a spectacular red eruption up a full ten feet into the air. Gore rained down upon both murderer and victim.
Osmo was still slamming the stake into the tramp’s heart when the police came. Officer Thomas Campbell was new to the force and he was momentarily frozen by what he’d seen. This small town beat should have been a breeze after a hard five year stretch working the streets of Newcastle, but he’d never seen brutality like this in the city.
‘Well, fucking cuff him then,’ said Marshall Jones, Campbell’s commanding officer.
Campbell moved in, feeling like it was his first day on the beat all over again. ‘Stop that,’ he yelled, wincing at his choice of words and the realisation that they made him sound totally out of his depth.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Jones muttered before running in and throwing himself onto Osmo and pinning him to the floor.
He administered a couple of hard punches to his face before riving his arm halfway to his shoulder and slappi
ng the cuffs on him.
‘That’s how it’s fucking done, rookie,’ he hissed at Campbell. ‘They teach you nothing in the big city?’
Campbell blushed. ‘I don’t know what happened there,’ he said.
‘Not seen anything like that before, huh?’ Jones said. ‘I guess not. This ain’t gonna be the cakewalk you thought, sunshine.’
You’re telling me, Campbell thought. First day in this supposedly quiet little town and there’s some nutcase repeatedly slamming a stake into a homeless guy’s heart. What the fuck was I thinking?
‘Come on, Osmo,’ Jones said. ‘Let’s get you to the station.’
Osmo grunted. Blood dripped from his face and fell to the floor.
‘Fucking hell,’ Jones said, noting the blood that now covered his clothes. ‘He can go in your car. I just had mine cleaned.’
Campbell said nothing. The idea of being alone in the car with the perpetrator of such a violent crime made him sick to his stomach.
At the station, Osmo was reluctant to talk.
‘Strange,’ Campbell said. ‘He was very talkative in the car on the way over.’
‘Yeah?’ Jones said.
‘Yeah. Said that the tramp had bit his kids and they were starting to turn into vampires.’
‘Oh jeez.’
‘I know. It gets worse. He said he drowned ’em to save them the agonising transformation and cravings they were going to get. Said the tramp had white, pupil-less eyes and teeth like ivory coffin nails and he’d brainwashed Osmo into letting him bite his kids.’
‘Ah, man. He’s practically sweating brown ale. He’s in an even worse state than the last time we crossed paths.’
‘What happened that time?’
Jones waved it away. ‘Not relevant.’
Osmo looked up, his face smeared with drying blood. ‘I’ll talk,’ he said, his voice cracking, ‘But only to the young cop. He’s got a kind face.’
Jones made a bad attempt at hiding his laugh.
‘Otherwise you ain’t getting your statement,’ Osmo taunted.
‘That’s fine, I don’t mind talking to him,’ Campbell said, unsure of why he was being singled out.
‘Yeah, the less I see of you the better, Osmo,’ Jones said, still fighting to stifle his laugh. He left the two alone.
‘Please, Officer Campbell, sit down,’ Osmo said.
Campbell sat on the edge of the bed.
‘I won’t bite,’ Osmo said, laughing himself now.
Campbell got himself comfortable. Despite the circumstances in which they’d found Osmo he seemed strangely harmless now.
‘You got little ones, Officer Campbell?’
‘Yes, a lad of my own and a stepson.’
‘How old is he? Your son, I mean?’
‘Ten.’
‘Do you love him?’
Campbell’s eye was caught by Jones’s hand making a sawing across his throat motion from outside the cell door.
He shrugged. What harm could it do? Osmo was behind bars now.
‘Yes. With all my being.’
Osmo nodded. ‘You take my advice then, Officer Campbell,’ he said, leaning in close now. The coppery tang of the blood that covered his skin and clothes grabbed Campbell by the throat. ‘Keep a close eye on him. The thing in the barn will do its best to get to him.’
Campbell looked puzzled. This was a new one. Humour him, he decided. ‘Is that the reason you sacrificed your boys?’
Osmo ignored the question. ‘You need to keep your lad safe, your stepson too. There are people out there who would take them and hurt them.’
‘I know. This world can be a terrible place.’
‘With respect, Officer Campbell, you have no idea what you’re dealing with here. I didn’t sacrifice those kiddies. I was saving them from future misery. They were bitten and were undergoing the change. That tramp bit them. Passed the curse on to them. They would have changed before the sun had risen. Trust me, no one wants that, especially not young kiddies.’
Campbell nodded sympathetically, unsure of what to say next.
‘So you keep a close eye on your son. Make sure you warn him not to set foot near that accursed barn.’ Osmo wagged a warning finger as he spoke.
‘I will do. Thank you for the warning.’
‘Y’seem sincere, son. Not like your colleagues. They’da laughed me outta here again. Thank you for listening to me and not judging me. I expect you want to take a statement now too.’
‘Yes, if you’re up to talking about it.’
‘Course. Why, you’re such a polite young man. They could do with more like you here. Well, I have to admit that it was my fault the kiddies were in position to be bitten. Y’see I took ’em to the barn.’
‘Why, if it’s such a dangerous place?’
Osmo’s face lit up. ‘Good question.’ He leant in close again, glanced to the door. Jones watched suspiciously from the doorway. ‘It gets in your head and tells you to do things.’
‘What does?’
‘The thing in the barn. It speaks to everyone, but most people don’t hear. It preys on the drunk, the drugged, the mentally-ill, cos their defences aren’t as good. It can get through to ’em. Amount of drinking I’ve done this year it was probably child’s play to get through to me.’ He let out a chuckle. ‘So, yes, it spoke to me and told me to take the kiddies to the barn. Halfway there, I changed my mind, but we were already at the outskirts of the farm. One of the tramps came out and bit the kiddies – son of a whore nearly got me too – but I managed to get ’em away. I finished him before he could do any more damage. Sure if you examine him you’ll find some grit big teeth and scary eyes.’
Campbell nodded, writing all of this down as fast as his hand would go.
‘So it was my fault, but I made up for it by saving them and putting the vampire down,’ Osmo said.
‘Osmo, I’m not really sure how to say this—’
‘You think I’m crazy as a shithouse rat, don’t ya?’ Osmo laughed. ‘I don’t blame ya. This time last year I’da said the same. But that’s what happened. As God is my witness.’ He met Campbell’s eye and it was clear he was convinced by his own story.
‘I’ll pass this on and we’ll see what we can do for you.’
‘You do me – and yourselves – a favour. Check out that farm and burn the bastard to the ground before any more people die.’
‘I will get my superiors to do just that.’
‘And you remember to keep an eye on that kiddie of yours, Officer Campbell.’
‘I will do, Osmo. Thanks for your time.’
‘Think nothing of it. Cheers.’
Campbell walked out, clutching the piece of paper which displayed Osmo’s elaborate story. He winced at the thought of what Jones was going to say when he read it.
Broken branches crunched beneath the feet of Chris Davis and his wife, Vivian, as they walked through the woods on the edge of town. The sun was peeking out from behind a cloud, dappling the skeletal branches with a golden sheen.
‘There were two more deaths last night,’ Chris said.
‘Well, Jesus, why didn’t you say?’
‘I think we should go check out the barn.’
‘Are you insane?’
‘Come on, it’s got to be a crock of shit. Some serial killer whack job, in my humble opinion.’
The thin trail twisted through the woods, leading to the outskirts of the farm where the infamous barn was housed. High on the hill to their left, a dishevelled figure watched them from the cover of a gnarled tree trunk.
Jones wasn’t happy with Osmo’s testimony, going so far as to call it horseshit before throwing the paper in the trash.
‘He’s a lying, murdering lunatic,’ he screamed at the top of his voice. ‘He’s going to spend the rest of his life in a unit for the criminally insane.’
‘I think you’re probably right, but he does seem particularly lucid and convinced his story is true.’
‘Of course he does, he�
�s a psychopath.’
‘Maybe so, but I think we should check out this barn he keeps mentioning.’
‘Fine. If it’ll get you off my back I’ll send a few men up when we get some spare time. We’ll expose this asshole for the whacko he is.’
‘Thanks, Sir.’
‘Get out of here. And don’t you buy into this horseshit, Campbell.’
Dwayne Telfer knew very well the voice of which Osmo spoke. He himself had heard it every day for the last nine months. After his wife had kicked him out of the marital home having caught him on the settee putting the seventeen year old babysitter to the sword, a slow slide into alcoholism and destitution had ruined his body and mind. One day he’d heard a sweet seductive voice – actually the voice of the babysitter – which called him to the farm that sat like a tumour in the woods at the edge of town.
It always asked for him to bring it food. He knew now that it preferred to feast on humans, but it would eat anything, even animals, although children were its favourite delicacy. He didn’t question the voice, he knew that to do so would mean a fate much worse than death. The owner of the voice was kind to him and his fellow tramps. It would even let them share in the flesh of the victims they brought it and promised it would make them immortal too.
Dwayne’s mouth was parched, an inevitable side-effect of the litre of vodka he slung back every morning to slake the raging thirst he had for blood. He wiped a filthy hand across the back of his lips. His belly gurgled. He saw a couple walking through the woods and smiled. Had the idiots not heard the rumours about the farm?
They were asking for it really. Moving carefully through the angular trees, he made his way down the hill towards them. His concealed companions joined him.
‘Hey, what was that?’ Vivian said, wheeling round.
‘Probably just a rat or a bird,’ Chris suggested.
She didn’t see the tramp until she was almost upon him – his dirty trench coat blended in brilliantly with the dormant trees.