AFTERTASTE

by Scott, Kyle M.

  Blackhaven...

  Slim knew the name. Every kid did. It was legend, told around campfires and whispered under dark stars on Halloween Night. A whole town wiped off the face of the map. The attackers thought to be in their hundreds, though no trace of any was ever found. It was like the murderers simply...vanished.

  All that was ever found was the bodies of the dead.

  And they numbered in the hundreds.

  Slim had told the story herself, only last Halloween, to Meg’s younger sister, delighting in Gemma’s spellbound fear.

  Blackhaven was a town that, some said, was claimed by the Devil Himself.

  Was it all true?

  Looking at Tim, seeing the haunted look in his eyes as he remembered, and seeing the things she’d seen tonight, Slim believed it may well be the truth, at that.

  A shiver than through her, that had little to do with the evening chill.

  She listened, intent, as Tim went on.

  “I hit the road after my family were...taken...from me, made my way around the country, step by step, hand to mouth. I survived, you know. Learned the rules for living on the streets. I took a few beatings, and worse, but I earned my stripes. It was no way for a kid to live, but it was all I had. You’ve heard of that town...I can see it in your eyes...”

  “I know of it,” Slim searched his eyes deeper, and saw no lies.

  “If I’d let them take me in, I’d have been a fucking lab rat the rest of my damn life. Not many people know what happened out there in the sticks, but there are a few who knew, and know now, and they would give anything to get their hands on me.

  “I chose to run. I had fuck all left, anyway. Everyone I knew was gone. And after that Halloween night, I kinda kissed my childhood goodbye. It’s along, sad story for a better night than this, but all you need to know is that I grew up fast, and I let my anger fuel me...I used it...my pain became my weapon.

  “Over time, I taught myself all I could about the occult. I studied and I trained, and I swore that I’d do all I could to stop the suffering of others at the hands of the evil shit that’s out there.”

  “And have you?”

  “I’ve tried,” he said, quietly.

  Slim looked into his sad, dark eyes, “I believe you.”

  “That restaurant is run by something that is purely evil, staffed by unclean souls in human form and feeding people their own depravity. It’s like a virus, but one that is sentient, and one hundred percent evil as fuck.”

  “It’s in the food.”

  “Yeah....I don’t know how, exactly, but it’s using some form of parasite to eat away at the person’s conscience, and it’s putting the parasites in the food that’s being served.”

  Tim smiled; the sadness receding, as he regained his composure and, Slim thought, his bravado.

  She’d seen more in him, whether he wished to show it, or not.

  Tim waved his arm around the room, in an over-theatrical gesture. “That’s the reason why you intolerable little hippy dipshits are still on the good side....you’re all damned vegetarians!” he laughed.

  Meg and John continued staring into space, either not hearing him, or being too far gone to give a shit, and Slim wished she could join them in their temporary oblivion.

  She had other things to think about, though.

  And as she pondered on the insane situation at hand, she came to realise the enormity of her loss. Slim almost felt the crack, as her heart broke in two.

  The meat.

  The parasite is in the meat.

  My dad ate the meat.

  He can’t be saved.

  There’s nothing I can do.

  Despite her best attempts to show strength in front of this man, Tim, she found her composure fading. Before long, Slim was weeping openly

  “What’s wrong?” Tim asked, showing genuine concern, as she slid down the wall and laid her head on her knees.

  “You say there’s no coming back?”

  “No.”

  “You’re...you’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. This isn’t a disease. Whatever the creature is using...it’s acting more like a key, unlocking a door inside a person where all the mean, perverted, debased shit usually stays locked up. Once that door’s opened, it can never be closed again. Why?”

  The words came hard. “My dad is one of them.”

  Tim moved away from the window, and sat down beside her. Meg, from her position on the couch, burst into fresh tears. Still, she didn’t speak. She hadn’t said more than two words since this whole nightmare began.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Thanks...me too.” Slim closed her eyes, exhaustion beating her down like a hammer.

  “Looks like you and I have a lot in common, kid.”

  “I guess it does at that,” she answered.

  Tim cleared his throat, “There’s no way to make this right, I have to be straight about that outright, and I’m sorry but that’s the way it is, but...”

  “But...?”

  “There is a way to even the score.”

  Slim was listening, “And that is...?”

  That was when the doorbell rang; sounding like a church bell at a condemned man’s hanging.

  CHAPTER 21

  Slim pressed her left eye to the small glass prism of the front door’s spyhole, bracing herself for whomever or whatever horror may be lurking outside. In her hand, her knife clutched tightly.

  By her side, Tim stood, his posture that of one ready for attack. In his arms, the double-barrel shotgun pointed at the door; its cold steel barrel promising chaos and bloodshed.

  Slim peered down the magnified lens, her hands pressed softly against the cold wooden door.

  “Be quite,” Tim whispered.

  Slim nodded as she stared through the spyhole, thinking how much that tiny, two-inch tube resembled a tunnel to hell.

  Death and despair surely coiled in wait, beyond the glass eye.

  And when she looked, what she saw outside shocked her, but not for the reasons she had expected.

  Stood on the front porch, was a handsome, well- kept man, who looked to be in his mid-twenties. His hair was perfectly styled in a combed over side-shed, and looked to be held in place with gel. He was clean shaven, and wore a suit and tie.

  He also wore a smile, one that reached to his eyes as he seemed to peer right back at her through the lens.

  She knew he couldn’t see her, but the mirth in those eyes sent chills cascading down her spine.

  Under other circumstances, the man would have been extremely attractive, but as that smile stretched wider, revealing brilliant white teeth, she felt his own gaze penetrate hers.

  “I know you’re in there. There’s no point hiding, little mice,” the man said, softly. “You really gonna leave me out here in the cold?”

  As Slim, watched, her breath caught in her throat, he pressed one cold, capering blue eye to the glass, filling the tiny window with his dark pupil.

  Slim shivered, instinctually pulling back as though the stranger’s piercing glare could penetrate the wood, the glass, and then even her very soul.

  The man huffed. “Well, that’s a shame. I was hoping for a little hospitality, but it looks like you’re not one for playing nice.”

  By her side, Tim raised the shotgun to eye level, moving slowly and stealthily as he drew closer to the door.

  It looked to Slim like he was gearing up to fire right through the thing.

  Turning back to the spyhole, Slim watched as the handsome man on the opposite side of the threshold turned his back to them, and began pacing the porch, whistling a cheerful tune as he circled the entrance.

  “What do we do?” she whispered to Tim.

  “We wait,” he said, taking her place by the peephole. “I don’t think he knows we’re here. I think he’s bluffing.”

  “Is he alone?”

  From the living room, she heard John gasp.

  Both she and Tim turned to face him, burning holes in him
with their eyes.

  For god’s sake, be quiet, she silently urged John.

  John ignored her completely.

  He was backing up from the window, where he’d been peering through a small gap in the thick curtains, and even in the gloom that hung like a black angel over the room, she saw his face drain of all colour.

  He was mumbling to himself as he finally met her eyes.

  The hollowness she saw there was reflected in her own.

  “Gotta be a lot more sneaky than that, to fool me, little mice,” the man outside shouted, drawing Slim’s attention.

  Beside her, Tim cocked the shotgun, and levelled it with the eyehole.

  “We have to get out of here, we have to get out of here, we have to...” John was losing all control.

  Whatever he’d seen beyond the window had shocked him to his core.

  Worse than what we’ve already seen?

  Slim didn’t want to know.

  “Okay, I’ll make a deal with you fucks,” the cheerful house-caller said, in a raised voice. Slim detected no hint of fear in the man, only a giddy humour that bubbled over with madness.

  “I’m gonna knock three times, and three times only,” the man continued, “and if you haven’t opened this fucking door and let me in for some of that young, tight pussy, I’m gonna make sure you regret it for the rest of your short, agonising life. Now what’s it gonna be?”

  “He must have seen us through the window,” Tim said. “Been watching us all this time.”

  THUD!

  Both Tim and Slim jumped, startled, as the door was slammed hard from the other side.

  The sound was accompanied by a wet splatter.

  In the living room, John fell to the floor on his knees, useless to them. He was still gibbering to himself.

  What the fuck is out there?

  Please let me be strong.

  “That’s one knock...” the man outside the door giggled.

  “Slim, turn the lock slowly. Get ready to open the door when I say so,” Tim urged; his eyes hard and cold.

  She nodded, battling waves of dread that strangled her will.

  THUD!

  This time, the hard bang on the door was accompanied by a harsh cracking, followed by the unmistakable sound of something splashing on the porch.

  Slim gritted her teeth, and turned the lock counter-clockwise.

  All that stood between them and whatever was out there, was the turning of the handle.

  “That’s two...” the man shouted.

  Slim gripped the door’s handle, her knuckles white against taught skin, as Tim took on step back and aimed high. Behind them, John wept openly on the floor. There was still no sound from Meg.

  “Annnnnd three...!” the man hollered.

  “Now!” Tim hissed.

  Slim turned the handle, and pulled the door inwards, bracing herself for combat.

  Instead, as the door swung open, she stumbled back; dropping her weapon; both her hands pressed to her trembling lips as vomit spilled forth over her knuckles and down her shirt. Without realising, she let out a high-pitched scream that threatened to tear her vocal cords into pieces.

  She saw the man in his entirety for the first time.

  He was clean-cut, as she had surmised, from the chest upward.

  Below, he was drenched in gore.

  And in his hand...

  It hung limp, dripping stinking fluid from the crumpled cavity of its mangled skull.

  An infant child.

  His ‘doorknocker’.

  “Hi there!” he smiled, dropping the dead baby to the wooden planks like a terrible, broken toy.

  Slim’s eyes followed the poor, dead innocent’s descent, as though time had rotted in a hellish half-life. As it landed, spilling something purple onto the deck from its cracked cranium, she too fell to the floor, rendered immobile by the evil she bore testimony to.

  No more....no more....no more.

  Even Tim, a man she now understood to be weathered to atrocity, seemed rooted to the spot. His jaw hung loose, his eyes burned with bitter tears.

  Yet his aim remained steady.

  The man on the threshold smiled, as he took in the horror on their faces; basking in its dark splendour.

  “Thanks for the warm welcome, folks...” he said. “Sorry about all the noise at this time of night. I really hoped we could...”

  Slim’s ears seemed to collapse in upon themselves as Tim pulled the trigger.

  The man’s head erupted in an explosion of skull splinters, shredded brain matter and teeth, as his headless body fell, like a puppet shorn of its tethers, and lay pooling crimson, beside the slaughtered child.

  CRASH!

  Behind them, the back door smashed wide open, carrying manic laughter into the hallway on the evening breeze.

  Slim found she couldn’t move a muscle.

  Tim spun on his heels at the sound of the rear door crashing open, bringing the shotgun level with his eyes. In the dark, he counted two women and a man. All three were drenched in gore, as though they’d been swimming in viscera.

  In their eyes, a mad, hateful madness sparkled like deathly stars.

  Without pausing, he pointed his gun at the closest of the attackers – a blonde woman who was salivating like a wild dog, and pulled the trigger.

  Where the woman’s midriff had been, a hole the size of a football appeared as though from nowhere, the buckshot shredding her intestines and stomach in the splinter of a second. A look of faint bemusement passed over her face, before her eyes rolled back in her head and she's collapsed in a pool of her own insides, her mangled intestines spilled from the huge wound, polluting the air with its foul stench.

  Tim fought to gather his thoughts, the shock of the dead child had shaken him to his core, and for the first time in many years, he felt genuinely out of his depth.

  If evil of this magnitude could exist in the heart of man, what hope could there be in the fight for good?

  He focused all his energy on the attackers, pushing the horror of the mangled child far back into the recesses of his reeling mind, where he knew it would haunt him forever, a desolate, silent echo of all that was once pure, now lost.

  Behind the fallen woman, the male of the group surged forward, his heavy boot stomping the woman on the face as she lay there dying. The crack of her jaw snapping set Tim’s teeth on edge.

  He pointed the gun at the man and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing.

  Out of bullets.

  Thinking fast as he could, Tim raised the weapon like a baseball bat, ready to pulverise the crazy’s skull, but with little room to manoeuvre and less time, the man easily closed the distance before he could strike.

  Wet, blood drenched hands closed around his throat; the strength in them almost inhuman. The shotgun fell, clattering to the floor, as he wrestled with the lunatic trying to choke the life from him.

  Tim punched the man in his gut, once, twice.

  The man’s grip never loosened.

  He reached up with rapidly weakening hands as stars danced before his eyes.

  Clutching madly, he gripped the psychopath’s fingers as hard as he could, and pulled them back, hard. The sound of the brittle bones snapping seemed far, far away, as darkness crept up to swallow Tim’s vision.

  He’d mangled at least two of the man’s fingers, but still the bastard held on.

  This fucker’s gonna kill me.

  Numbness took hold, his strength fleeing him, as his arms fell limp by his sides.

  The man was grinning.

  Tim’s vision was all but faded to perfect black, when the man coughed a great bout of warm blood into Tim’s already greying face.

  He could only watch, dumbly, as a blade thrust forth from the man’s mouth, cracking teeth and shearing his tongue as, behind him, Meg forced its blade all the way through the back of his head.

  He was dead before his smile could fade.

  Looks like someone found her feet, he mused, as his vi
sion dimmed further.

  The knife receded from the killer’s mouth like a silver tongue as Meg yanked it free. She turned to the final attacker, a heavyset woman naked from the waist down.

  In her hand, she held a small axe.

  The last thing Tim saw as the shadows took him, was the two women clashing, the petite and terrified Meg wielding her dagger and the huge woman swinging the axe.

  He wondered who would live through the encounter.

  And figured that if he never woke up, he’d know the outcome.

  Slim watched the attack as though through the veil of stop-motion, her world becoming one of surreal stop-start imagery, gunshots and fury. The struggle between Tim and the tall, blood-soaked man was over, and she thought, yes, she’d seen Meg take the guy down.

  A knife through the throat.

  To Slim, it all felt like a cut scene from a particularly vicious video game; something not quite real, perhaps hyper-real.

  She wondered if she was in shock.

  Not the usual, run of the mill shock that fed into a person’s soul during one of life’s many traumas, but actual, bona-fide shock.

  The world, fractured as it was through the prism of her terror, pulsed with a throbbing, bloodied red shadow that danced across her vision in time with her heartbeat.

  She could only remain on the floor and watch, slack-jawed, as her best friend threw herself at a half-naked woman branding a lethal looking axe.

  Slim wanted to help, but her muscles felt cast in stone.

  Beyond the carnage, she could make out John, as he pulled himself to his knees. He appeared to be screaming something, but now she could hear nothing.

  Had the shotgun blast deafened her, or had her mind simply begun the process of shutting down; some base survival instinct overriding her sense s to render the madness obsolete?

  Again, she tried to get to her feet. She almost found her last vestiges of strength when her eyes once again fell on the dead baby by the doorway. Its crushed, misshapen head seemed twisted round at an impossible angle, as though it searched fruitlessly for its murderer.

  It was a little boy.

  She shut her eyes, gritted her teeth, and begged for it all to be a dream.

  A sickening nightmare from which she’s soon wake, sweating and in panic, but safe.