Under The Blade

by Serafini, Matt

  The intruder buckled beneath Dad’s fist and she dropped to the floor. The ex-chief didn’t waste a second, the shotgun was back in his hands and he pointed it at the assailant and pulled the trigger.

  The burst was deafening. Trish convulsed beneath it like an electrical current surged through her. The floor was wet and sticky now, but she couldn’t look.

  “Back off,” Dad screamed to no one in particular. Intrusive hands continued flapping around at each window.

  “This is on you, chief. All of it.” The voice from beyond the glass had no inflection. “You are as lost as your daughter.”

  Dad’s eyes connected with hers and he looked like a man who had aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours. More than just his disheveled hair and wrinkly skin, his eyes were tired and tormented.

  Fear.

  One hand managed to unlatch the window, forcing it up. Dad pointed the gun at the glass. “Don’t make me do this,” he cried. The hand fell off the pane and disappeared back through the glass.

  “What do they want?”

  “To kill us.”

  The phone rang and she raced to it, certain that it was Nate, and not a moment too soon.

  “Repent and submit,” said the same dry and monotonous voice.

  Dad heard it and pulled the receiver from her hands, ripping the wired base from the wall. It smashed across the redwoods.

  The back door rattled and a large shape filled the window frame. The doorknob jiggled. “Repent,” a woman’s voice cried out.

  Dad came forward and didn’t give the voice the chance to speak again. He fired off a blast at point-blank range.

  The puff of blood shook Trish. She bolted upstairs in panic, clasping her hands over ringing ears. The old hallway hadn’t been touched since she’d left for college, and her room felt familiar as she slammed the bedroom door, sidling her weight against it to prevent intrusion.

  Repent and submit.

  Why was the phrase so familiar? It sounded like something that might’ve passed her mother’s lips at one time. Trish had been a girl of only five when she left, but memories of that night came flooding back.

  All of sudden she remembered it like it was yesterday.

  How could I forget?

  She had been sleeping, forcibly awakened by a pungent odor that gave way to someone standing inside her room. He stumbled out of the shadows and she screamed when she saw his deformed face. One good eye studied her with confusion.

  The bloodied eye socket was all she could stare at as he lurched forward, scraping his rough hand against her cheek. She must’ve screamed because Dad charged up with Mom in tow, and he didn’t waste time unloading his gun on the scary man.

  She shook in the wake of every thunderous eruption, his blood dabbing her face as he stumbled back and slumped into the corner.

  A knock at the door pulled Trish out of her recollection. “Stay here, girly.” Dad said as sirens approached. “Back-up’s coming. You find your husband and you leave town. Tonight. Understand?”

  “Let them handle this, Dad.”

  “I thought they’d leave us be,” he said. “But I’m the only one who can stop it.”

  Trish listened to his footsteps and wished she could go with him. Dad shouldn’t do this—whatever this was—alone, but she couldn’t throw her life away, and he wouldn’t let her.

  I’m too terrified to even move.

  She looked at her old bed and touched the stale sheets, remembering Mom’s hysterics as she charged the dead body, shouting “Repent and submit” in his ear like she was delivering last rites.

  He came home that night because he was scared. There was no place left to go. Somehow, she understood that.

  She remembered everything now, amazed that she could’ve ever forgotten.

  It was the only time she’d met her brother…

  A NEW BEGINNING

  1988

  Ron Sleighton heard his daughter’s screams and knew at once what was wrong.

  How did he find us?

  The revolver was heavy in his hand as he took the stairs two at a time. The hallway had never felt more confined. The door to Trish’s room was ajar, and the space between was alive with the yellow-ish glow from her nightlight. He pushed it wide with his boot and leveled the gun.

  Zohra was at his back, her hands gnarled around his chief’s jacket like eagle’s talons.

  Cyrus Hoyt was here. He hovered over Trish’s bed with red hands. Somehow, he’d gotten inside.

  Sleighton’s heart was exploding but he acted on pure instinct and with tunnel vision. Needed to get Hoyt away from Trish, no matter what. After everything this maniac had put their town through, it ended now.

  Six shots thundered in quick succession. The room lit repeatedly with bursts of white-hot light. Every bullet staggered the behemoth back, his chest exploding in squibs of blood that littered his daughter’s neon pink décor. Hoyt slid to the floor as the gun clicked empty.

  The Holden kid had sworn up and down that Hoyt wasn’t dead. When they scooped his corpse out of that muddy lakeside, nose bitten off and eye gouged, the old dog looked like he’d seen his last day.

  Hoyt had been on ice for three days and was finally ready for the ground. Larry Fraser was pulling morgue duty and planned on calling the second Hoyt’s transport to Eternal Walk was complete. But that call never came because this madman had somehow climbed off the slab and put a hacksaw to Fraser’s neck, cutting through the bone and taking his head off before escaping.

  Knowing he was on the loose, Sleighton came back here to ensure his family was safe. He assumed Hoyt would be en route to Camp Forest Grove—what else did this mongoloid know? But there was always an outside chance that he’d come to find his mother.

  Turns out that’s what he did.

  He looked dead now. Smoke billowed up from freshly blown holes as his wheezing chest fell into stillness.

  His mother threw her arms up like an overblown caricature and rushed to his side. Her knees dropped into pooling blood. Their daughter, white as a sheet, might’ve warranted more attention than the disfigured freak, but Zohra didn’t seem to feel that way.

  Sleighton went over and pulled her close, her tiny head nuzzled against his chest. He squeezed her, whispered that the monster was gone, and wouldn’t hurt her. Her muffled cries were almost loud enough to drown out Zohra’s ramblings.

  But not quite.

  Sleighton eyed her with a glare. She cradled the retard’s bloodied head and stroked his limp wrist—like he could suddenly snap out of six bullets to the heart. Bloodied tails of spit swayed form the corner of his mouth.

  “Repent!” She cried. “You’ve got to atone for the horrible things you’ve done, my son. Submit and accept His love before it’s too late. Repent and submit! Repent and submit! Please, for the sake of your soul!”

  Sleighton tried speaking over her, but his pitch couldn’t match her hysterics. He lifted Trish out of bed and hurried across the room, keeping her cradled against his chest. They left Zohra babbling like some drug-addled whore and headed for a quieter part of the house.

  He situated her on the downstairs couch, and sparkling eyes followed him wherever he went. He brought her a glass of water and knelt down, strengthening his grip on her arms.

  There wasn’t much left to say but he floated a few more quiet assurances that promised the worst was over. He didn’t know if he believed that, but he needed her to.

  Trish’s sobs became infrequent sniffles after some time. She was doing better than her mother, whose jabber reached a fever pitch that culminated in a scream of anguish overhead.

  A part of him hoped she had taken her life, but he caught the nasty thought and chased it away. Zohra Sleighton was the woman he loved. And she remained the mother of his child.

  The upstairs floorboards creaked and shifted. Zohra came down and stared at the back of her daughter’s head in silence. Sleighton snapped her arm into his hand and dragged her into the next room. She came without figh
t.

  He couldn’t contain himself. Once she opened her mouth to speak, he cracked her across it, slapping whatever words she had back down her throat. She winced but didn’t take her watery eyes from his.

  “Did you know about this,” he said. “You did, didn’t you?”

  She only smiled.

  “All this time we thought he was a campfire story...”

  “You thought that.”

  “And you said nothing.”

  “It was my words that grew his legend…He comes by firelight but you won’t see him…He waits in the dark and you’ll never hear him…Don’t know you’re dead until he has you…Cyrus Hoyt hacks through bone to kill you…” Her expression alternated between anguish and delight as she spoke his ‘legend.’

  “I should’ve let you die out on that lake.”

  “I had to redeem Abblon’s vision in the years following that night. You never understood that, or cared. But what I did for the church does not change the past…I abandoned my child …and I think about that every day…” Tears fell once more.

  Ron shushed her for Trish’s sake. “Your ‘child’ killed seven people…maybe more. Ruined a teenage girl’s life. And you knew he was out there this whole time…”

  She looked wounded. “I had a mother’s hope, Ron. Nothing else. I started that campfire tale because I wanted it to be true.”

  “He’s a part of what happened, dammit…a reminder of the sick things your people did to innocent people.”

  “I am the Obviate now, and we’re not murderers. You know this.”

  “What I know is that you chose your monstrous son over your terrified daughter back there. You showed me that your loyalty is to your religion.”

  “I saw my son again for the first time in twenty years. Just long enough to see you put six bullets into him. What I did up there was so that his soul might find the peace that his life never had. My last chance to be his mother. If that makes me a monster…”

  His emotions were as hot as everyone else’s, but never once had he considered what this was like for Zohra. Her son had been born when she was just sixteen—six or seven years before she got roped into Abblon’s nonsense. She had never been a good mother—this by her own admission—and while she didn’t speak of Cyrus often, her occasional tortured stares and vacant looks said that his uncertain fate had haunted her more than she’d ever let on.

  Sleighton took a moment to collect himself and allowed Zohra to do the same. In the living room, Trish’s sniffles continued.

  “Look,” he whispered, “you need to put on a brave face. Take her and run down the street to the Hautanen’s house. Stay there until I come for you. I’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do.”

  Zohra looked reluctant, but did as she was told. After a few minutes, the girls headed for the door.

  Sleighton followed them into the mudroom and watched them shuffle into the brown Volare station wagon. The headlights broke the darkness and he demonstrated a half-hearted wave.

  Once they were gone, he took the revolver from his holster. The spent casings fell on the tiled floor like loose change as he pushed six more bullets into the swing out cylinder.

  Let’s get rid of you once and for all, you bastard.

  Sleighton climbed the stairs only to find an empty room.

  He studied the blood-soaked carpet. The rug was wet with his impression, but nothing else. Bloodied footprints led back into the hall, but they were too small to be his. He remembered his wife kneeling in her son’s blood and followed the trail anyway. One solitary splotch looked fresher than the rest. It pooled on the stairwell.

  Had Hoyt managed to slip down there?

  Sleighton checked the rest of the upstairs before heading down. The house was empty all over. He followed stains like they were breadcrumbs, but the blood circled back on itself as he swept the rooms—no way of knowing where the killer went after hopping off the steps.

  If the legend was to be believed, Hoyt was a skilled woodsman who had gotten by on his own for years. He hunted his prey out of necessity and that need grew into something worse. It was entirely possible that he had intentionally confused the trail.

  Sleighton toyed with the idea of calling for backup, but if Hoyt had escaped—again—then he was going to need his guys out there and on the lookout.

  The mudroom screen door slammed and he leapt from his skin, bracing as he headed for the noise. If he had to gun down Hoyt on his front lawn, so be it. He’d already killed his stepson once tonight.

  But the entryway was empty. Spent casings littered the floor where he left them, and not even the wood axe was disturbed. It remained tucked into the corner where he had left it.

  Another door slammed—this one somewhere in the house.

  He turned, looking down the barrel of his gun.

  Which one was it?

  He decided it was the basement. Hoyt might’ve been planning to make an escape through there—a less conspicuous strategy than sneaking across the front yard after gunshots had awakened half the neighborhood.

  Sleighton opened the door and started down. He was on the second step when he realized he made a mistake.

  Hoyt hadn’t gone down.

  The knife slashed down at his back, and Sleighton tried whirling around to face it. He lost his balance on the limited space of the tread, and the only place to fall was down.

  He slipped from Hoyt’s range and tumbled, smashing against the wooded steps as he went. His mouth tasted of blood while his brain begged for unconsciousness. Mushy thoughts of desperation lingered in his head like cobwebs, but the need to sleep was greater.

  Hoyt crashed down the stairs in a thunderous declaration of impending death and Sleighton’s revolver was lost in the dark. There was no time to search it out. He was barely on his feet when Hoyt’s cloudy outline filled his vision. He raked his hand across the shelf of yard tools behind him, the palm of his hand closing around something. Whatever it was would have to do.

  Hoyt was close, his angry eye burning with madness. His physique was so imposing that Sleighton wanted to run, feeling as scared and helpless as his little girl must’ve been.

  The knife came for him again and he did the only thing he could. He threw himself at it, grabbing Hoyt’s forearm with his free hand and knocking it as far off course as it would go.

  The killer’s rotted mouth opened in protest, and a gust of fetid air slipped out.

  Sleighton pushed through the stench and swiveled his arm out, slamming a three-pronged cultivator into Hoyt’s face. He screamed as the blades sliced his cheek, ripping the flesh clear and leaving his swollen gumline exposed from the side. Sleighton readied another blow, but Hoyt’s free hand clasped around his neck and squeezed—stealing his breath away.

  Hoyt prepared the killing stab, but Sleighton refused to wait for it. He drove the garden tool into the creature’s forehead with every last drop of energy. It cracked his skull and terminated his grasp. Then he scooped his revolver off the floor and cocked the hammer as the colossus dropped, pressing the barrel against his malformed head.

  This piece of shit died twice so far this week—this was his end of line.

  Sleighton pulled the trigger.

  It took another hour to clean up the struggle signs. Then he wrapped Hoyt in their plastic shower curtain, binding his arms and legs in rigging chains for extra safety.

  Lugging the monster up to the top of the stairs left him sweaty and tired while his head begged for sleep. A concussion, he knew, but that didn’t matter. Sleep was a pipedream now.

  He dragged the plastic-wrapped corpse to the mudroom, leaving it there while he splashed his face with cold water and cracked the one remaining can of Budweiser in the fridge. His line of sight never abandoned the plastic wrap. He needed to be convinced it was over. Even after splattering Hoyt’s brains all over his cellar stairs, he wasn’t sure he could believe that it was.

  Sleighton was halfway through the can of Anheuser–Busch when he wondered if he shouldn�
�t take a hit of something stronger. Just to keep the impending effects of head trauma at bay. It might not have been the right thing to do, but it was how he dealt with bodily harm. Drink the pain away.

  He fumbled through the cabinet for a bottle of whiskey when cracking plastic caused his hairs to stand. He threw his beer on the floor, leaving it sloshing and spilling as he strode into the mudroom and lifted the axe from the corner. It was without hesitation that he hacked at the wrap, chopping into the maniac’s head with a war cry. He brought the blade down again and again, until the plastic ran red.

  He hoisted the sheet over his shoulder and brought it dripping out to his car, nearly passing out after sprawling it across the back seat of his cruiser. He slapped his face as he slid behind the wheel. There would be plenty of time to sleep once this creature was put to rest.

  Why can’t he die?

  He considered this as he drove, mulling his own responsibility from behind heavy eyelids. It was his reconnaissance that alerted the world to Abblon’s madness, his report that condemned the Obviate to death. There was no saving those psychos and he never lost a night’s sleep over it.

  Cracking the window filled the car with enough fresh air to keep him from shutting down as he recalled life after the Obviate. It was comfortable. Dumb luck led him to rescue the woman that he loved from a grim fate, and there was precious little to regret about the last nineteen years.

  Until Zohra’s long-forgotten son decided that he didn’t like being overlooked.

  The turnoff for Camp Forest Grove came fast. He toggled his eyes between the road and the rearview—watching the plastic sheet with careful attention.

  So far, so good.

  The dirt road was long and Sleighton didn’t exactly know why he was bringing him out here. Was it because Hoyt’s spiritual family had gone to their graves in the same spot? A poetic burial? If he was romantic for such concepts, this was his first time realizing it. Wasn’t it because this was the only place in town where bad memories stayed dead and buried?

  Do they?

  The campground was silent. He rolled onto the grass and climbed out, remembering how the Holden girl had reported that Hoyt had managed to infiltrate her barricade through a trap door. That felt like the best place to go. Bury this monster so deep in the earth that he would never get out again.