AFTERTASTE

by Scott, Kyle M.

  “I know her. She works at Waldo’s. Her name’s Harriet. What is she?” John asked from the rear, sounding more like a lost child, than a teenager on the cusp on manhood.

  “She’s part of the reason your town is eating itself alive. Not a huge part, but a cog in the machine. She’s a serf. A...concubine,” the man whispered. “She’s not a girl.”

  The thing on the bed that looked craned her neck forward, her tendons so tense it looked like they may snap, and spat in his face.

  “Oh, we’re much more than that!” it growled.

  Its voice made Slim think of dying things, rot and desolation.

  She instinctually backed away from whatever was lying on the bed; it’s dark, mischievous eyes never leaving her as she receded.

  “Don’t be light that. Come closer, child, let me see you in the light. I promise I won’t bite.” The candlelight flickered to the creature’s side, its eyes flashing like a cat’s under partial shadow.

  He’s right...

  This isn’t a girl.

  What the fuck is this thing that’s talking to me?!

  I have to get out of here.

  The man’s strong hand rested on her shoulder, as though he could sense her need to flee, “There’s nowhere to go.”

  “Talk to me, child,” the thing rasped. The ancient voice emanating from such a soft, feminine face sent ice coursing through her veins.

  The girl-thing surveyed its mangled form, and laughed at the wreckage, before pinning her down with its evil stare again. “I’m still in reasonable shape. Would you like to eat my pussy? Your friend here hasn’t touched that part yet. He’s torn my pretty body up, and he liked it, too. Don’t let him fool you.”

  “What are you?”

  The creature ignored her question. “How about you get down between my fucking legs and lick my cunt clean like a good little lesbian.”

  Slim reeled.

  “I promise, I’m really wet and taste like cotton candy. All this excitement has left me somewhat gushing.” The creature thrust its head from the sodden pillow once more, gnashing its ruined teeth. “We’re going to eat your soul and shit it out in hell, lesbian cunt!” it roared.

  Everything Slim had ever known, right and wrong, reality, science and the rational world, was rapidly dissolving as her mind struggled to accept what she was witnessing.

  This was no man-made virus, killing her town.

  No terrorist attack.

  No mass hysteria.

  This was something else.

  Something...evil.

  “I don’t believe in you...” Slim said.

  The creature giggled, its cadence suddenly that of a young girl, “We don’t need you to believe in us, you dumb little ape, we believe in you!”

  From the corner of her eye, Slim saw that the man had withdrawn a dagger of his own from a sheath concealed by his leather jacket.

  “Kill it.” He handed the knife to her, open palmed, and with hands that felt like they belonged to someone else, someone completely and hopelessly insane, she accepted the sharp blade.

  Immediately, she felt an energy course through her. Indefinable.

  Its handle looked to be etched with strange symbols; the gilded hand-guard decorated with small renderings of human skulls. Into the blade itself, more symbols had been carved, runes from what she could gather. They looked almost beautiful, cast in soft light and reflecting the flames of the candles.

  The fire in the creature’s eyes burned brighter as it coughed up great spurts of blood, “We believe in each and every one of you. Your town...”

  Holding her breath, Slim raised the knife above the abominations head.

  “Your friends...” its dark eyes danced with glee.

  She gripped the hilt tight.

  “And your family...”

  With all her might, Slim thrust the blade down into the creature’s forehead. Its skull halting the blade’s progression for only a fraction of a second, before it cracked and split, and the knife sank into its brain till there was no blade to be seen.

  The fire in its eyes extinguished.

  The grin dissolved.

  And on the bed, torn and ravaged and dead as the evening air, was nothing more than a young girl.

  “You’d better step back,” the man said.

  Slim did so without question

  Whoever this man was, he was here to help.

  She knew that now.

  Sure as she knew her own father was on the other side of the light, where no-one could reach him.

  Within a moment of backing up, she understood why the man had urged her so.

  The body on the bed began to bubble, as though rupturing from the inside, roasting internally. The eyes sank into their sockets and puddled into a grey soup, the remains of the girl’s breasts softened, flattened out and ran down her sides in fleshy rivers. Soon, the flesh was all but melted away, leaving only a charred, smoking skeleton behind, as the internal organs dissolved into stinking liquid and slewed from the frame.

  Slim didn’t stop backing up until her head hit the far wall of the bedroom, where she stood, motionless and half-mad, as the flesh-swamp that had been a girl, sizzled and popped and soaked into the flowered pink bedspread.

  CHAPTER 20

  “I need to get out of here,” she said.

  “I know you do. But we have to wait, kid.”

  They had left the charnel house of the abandoned home’s bedroom, and were huddled in the darkened living room of the property. Meg was sat on the couch, still rendered all but incapacitated by the shock of the night’s events. John, silent and battling a rising trauma all his own, sat by her side. He held her limp hand in his, and together they stared at the patterns on the carpet, seeing god only knew what.

  Slim was with the stranger, by the window. He held open the blinds just enough to see out, but not so much as to alert the attention of the crown outside.

  The mass of people were walking, silently.

  Down the centre of the road, they walked as one; their faces etched with dumb, unthinking mirth. Many were bloodied, though few seemed hurt. In their hands, Slim saw a whole myriad of weapons.

  Knives. Baseball-Bats. Guns.

  And worse.

  Some carried body parts.

  She spotted a boy, no older than twelve or thirteen; in his hands he held a chunk of meat that Slim recognised as being a human heart.

  To his left, a woman wore what, at first, appeared to be a wig. It took Slim a moment to realise that the blood streaming down the woman’s face was not her own. She was wearing someone’s scalp.

  Two elderly men, both white haired and otherwise kind-looking, sported a human head, which they tossed back and forth like a football. The group was close enough that Slim could make out the dark chasms where the eyes had been.

  The group was huge.

  At least a hundred strong.

  Yet they were not attacking each other.

  They merely walked on...a procession of the truly mad, hell-bent on their destination.

  “They’re going to the restaurant, aren’t they?” she asked.

  “That would be my guess, yeah...” The man popped a cigarette in his mouth and raised the lighter, then, thinking better of it, he spat the cigarette to the floor and pushed the small gas lighter back into his breast pocket.

  Slim watched as, outside, the hundred plus lunatics turned down Isla Street and onto Lincoln Way.

  From there it would be a straight line, right to the restaurant.

  Slim turned away from the window, overwhelmed.

  “I think you’re ready to learn what’s going on...” the man said.

  “Well...I'm sure as shit not going anywhere right now,” she answered.

  “I promise, soon as they’re all gone, we’ll get moving. We have to let them pass, though. Those people out there....they’ll slaughter, rape or torture anyone in sight who takes their fancy.”

  “Why...what’s happened to them?” she pleaded.

/>   “They’ve been set free,”

  “Set free?”

  “In a sense...” he sighed. “There’s something nesting in your town...something that revels in the rotting of the human soul. It takes pleasure in the fall of man, bathes in the sins of once good people. It’s a puppet master, of sorts, yet one that lets the strings loose and allows the puppets to run rampant. What you’re seeing out there, among those...people, is free will turned up, or down, if you like. It’s pure evil.”

  “But what is it that’s doing this?”

  “You saw that girl on the bed. What do you think she was?”

  “I’ve watched my share of horror movies, and what I think it was, was a fucking demon, but I don’t believe in the supernatural in any way, shape or form. I can’t believe in what I just saw with my own fucking eyes. There has to be some sort of explanation.”

  “I'm afraid not. What you saw, and put down, was once a girl, but no more. She was possessed.”

  “Like in the movies?”

  “No...not like in the movies. In the movies, the family always bring in a priest or a rabbi or a witch doctor, and the invading spirit can be expelled. That’s all bullshit. Once they’re in...they stay in. And that little bitch invited that evil into herself like a hard dick on prom night.

  “Shit...”

  “Yep. And she’s not the only one, either. There are a whole staff of these little shitheads working for him.”

  Slim understood. “The man who runs Waldo’s.”

  “Bingo! Evil finds a way, Slim. Even in a small town like this...it finds a way. Those people out there....they’re victims of their own base natures. But that little bitch was a willing participant. A dumb, selfish kid who thought she could dabble in the darkness and get away with it.”

  “He’s recruiting them.”

  “One’s like her...yes. ‘Recruiting’ being the operative word, seeing as the little fucks are serving behind the counter at his restaurant. They’re doing his bidding. Helping a fella out, you might say.”

  “This can’t be happening,” Slim moaned.

  On the bed, the thick sludge of stinking meat that had been the girl, bubbled and popped. “There are no such things as monsters. Not real ones.”

  “Honey, if you don’t open your mind to what’s really happening here, you’re not gonna make it through tonight in one piece. These things are real, you just an entity back to where it belonged...which was wise, considering it would have liked nothing more than to cleave out your eyeballs and make you eat them. And there’s a whole lot worse than that thing out there...”

  Slim rubbed her eyes, exhaustion and trauma had all but burned her out. And now this...

  Demon possession and evil spirits and...

  She felt untethered, like she was no more than a bit part player in someone else’s nightmare.

  Maybe that’s not so far from the truth.

  Maybe your holed up in a mental hospital right now, painting the walls in your own shit. Howling at the moon.

  You saw that thing on the bed, her inner reason countered.

  You saw its eyes.

  Heard its voice.

  The things it said.

  Not to mention the fact that it melted when you stabbed it with that strange blade.

  Fuck.

  This is real.

  “Okay, say this is true. There are....demons...?”

  “Yep, for want of a better word...there are.”

  “...there are demons out there. Is there a Devil, too? Is all that bullshit in the bible actually true?”

  “Now, that’s a loaded question, kiddo. And one that will need a little time to answer. And now ain’t that time.”

  She changed her approach. “The restaurant manager....he’s....he’s a demon of some sort, isn’t he.”

  “Now you’re catching on. I believe he is, yes.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “His job.”

  “Which is?”

  “The scourging of souls, the systematic destruction of a populace’s humanity, and finally, the collecting of these poor, ruined spirits for his master’s eternal pleasure.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Never met a Jesus. Pretty sure he ain’t got shit to do with it.”

  Outside, the large group of crazies had finally disappeared from sight. An eerie silence choked the night.

  “Well give it five minutes and then we’ll move.”

  “Then you have five minutes to tell me everything you know,”

  “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “You could start by telling me how you ended up in Plainfield.”

  “I followed the signs,” he answered. “Whenever something like that bastard running the restaurant escapes the confines of its own dimension, it leaves a tear, however small, in the fabric of our reality, and when it does, bad things tend to happen in and around the area – children going missing, animals attacking people, natural disasters. There are a number of signs, and most of them are easily missed or wrote off as everyday human folly. Almost all of them are human folly, or the natural swing of thing... but then, once in a while, something claws through the veil, and it’s my job to send it back. Or try, at the very least. Did you hear about the child disappearances last year in Burkett County?”

  Slim thought back to the horrible news articles she had read on the tragedy. Seven kids gone missing in a two month period, their bodies only found months later, mutilated and dismembered, left to rot in the vast woodland that bordered both Burkett and her own town. Apparently the killings had been ritualistic in nature. No one was ever arrested, but on the grisly discovery of the bodies, the authorities also found a clearing in which it was determined the slayings took place. Details were vague in the news reports, but it seemed clear that the murders were committed by occultists of some sort.

  The story had horrified Slim back then.

  Now, realising the enormity of what it meant, it froze her blood.

  “Someone opened up a gateway and invited this thing through, didn’t they?”

  “That they did. In fact, you just stuck a knife in one of their heads.”

  “Who would do such a thing!?”

  “Plenty of people. Never underestimate the human race’s hunger for power, or its capacity for evil. In this case it was a bunch of messed up, dumb, vicious kids. They’re all now working at Waldo’s, and whether the sick fucks truly knew what they were doing or not, they let him in, and with him, they let in the malignancy that was living inside that young girl.”

  He gave Slim a moment to take it all in. “I follow the signs. I extract information. I do the math. And occasionally, much as it fucking pains me...I get it right.”

  Slim thought of the state the girl-thing on the bed had been in when she entered. Mashed nipples, severed legs, beaten to a pulp, sliced open.

  She knew exactly how this mysterious man extracted information.

  She hoped he’d made them suffer, and realised just how far down she’d fallen this terrible evening.

  He went on. “Anyway, I learned what I needed to know, then followed the tracks. This particular entity has a penchant for, and the trail led me here, to your cosy little town, just in time for the grand opening of Waldo’s Burger Emporium.”

  “And you’re telling me that this thing, this...demon...rose up from hell and opened a burger joint?”

  He laughed quietly. “I guess I am, at that. What better way to punish man’s greed and dumb, blind consumerism than by feeding him his own gluttony till he chokes on it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Those people out there, the things they’re doing...those terrible things already resided in their hearts. It’s a very thin line between the fragile civility we all take for granted, and the carnal, frenzied desires that lurk in our souls. The human race is ‘devil’ enough all on its own, without the need of any intervention. Most of us suppress and deny that base, immoral shadow of what we could be. We aspire to hig
her things, better things. It’s what makes our species so special.”

  “Our capacity to rise above our own nature.”

  “Exactly. Now, those people out there, most of them were probably fine, moral individuals, but the moral code that we have had consciously installed in our genetic make-up over thousands of years and countless generations – the compassion and love, the desire to protect and nurture – those things have all been washed away. Eroded, leaving behind only the darkest of desires. Their souls have been swallowed whole.” He looked deep into Slim’s eyes. “And there is no coming back from it.”

  “This is insane.”

  “I know it is. I’ve been doing this work too damn long, and I still gotta check myself in the mirror to see if I’m really here. We don’t always get to choose our paths, kiddo, sometimes they’re chosen for us, and all we can do is hop on board and hope the fucking wheels don’t spin out and hurtle us over a cliff into crazy-town.”

  “You’re a demon hunter.” Slim wasn’t asking.

  The man winced at the term, “I prefer to just be called a hunter, this isn’t exactly Hollywood, but yeah, you could say I’m a demon hunter.”

  “Christ almighty...and do you have a name?”

  “My name’s Timothy. You can call me Tim.”

  “Tim the Demon Hunter”, she huffed. “Hardly badass, is it?”

  “Oh, I dunno,” he smiled. “I think it’s pretty righteous.”

  “Whatever you say, ‘Tim’.”

  The two shared a moment of soft laughter and, however fleeting, it felt like discovering an island amidst a roaring sea.

  Tim went on, “It’s the name I was given by my parents. They were good people. The best...though not so good with the names.”

  “Where are they now?”

  Tim cleared his throat, “They were murdered, many years ago, when I was still a kid. Something came for them. It came for my town, and for me and my sister, too. I wouldn’t be here right now if it wasn’t for her. She saved me. She saved all of us.”

  “And where is she?”

  “I don’t know...” Tim lowered his head, lost in memory.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago. The town where I lived, where it happened...Blackhaven...was no more than a goddam ghost town after that.”