by Hixon, Wayne
“Nope.”
“I heard it’s not there all the time.”
“I’ve heard that too but, what I figure is, people like us come out here too pissed to really know where they’re at and just get confused, you know? All these hollows and valleys and shit all look the same.”
“Good point.”
Steve stood up and stumbled to the front of the van. Tapping Dave on the shoulder, he said, “Hey, man, go lay down in back.”
“Fuck off,” Dave said, drunkenly swatting at Steve’s hand.
“Come on,” Steve said. “You’ll feel better if you go lay down.”
He pried the bottle from Dave’s grip and chucked it out the window.
“Why’d ya do that?”
“‘Cause you don’t need any more, ya fat fuck. Now go lay down.”
“You gonna bang Rachel?” he asked.
“No. I’m not gonna bang Rachel.”
“Can I watch? Can I bang her too? I’ve always wanted to fuck Rachel.”
Steve looked at Rachel as though this were all a revelation to him. He pried Dave a little out of the seat and said, “Come on, go lay down in back before you embarrass yourself any more.”
“Okay. Okay,” Dave stood up from the seat and Steve moved out of the way.
Dave didn’t make it to the back. He sprawled down on the floor in between the two middle seats.
Steve sat down in his spot and said, “You know where it’s at?”
“Yeah, I think,” Rachel said.
Steve found a decent station on the radio. Dave had turned it to static. Rachel was a little buzzed and had to concentrate on driving.
Soon the asphalt ended and they were on a gravel road. Some misty fog had gathered here and Rachel wondered if they were the only people out here. It seemed like it would be a popular place to go on Halloween.
It was all a little eerie.
She became a little paranoid.
The road was narrow. What if another car full of drunken teenagers came barreling around a turn? It was so foggy that, by the time Rachel could do anything, it would be too late. She jokingly wondered if all the stories about the Devils were true. She didn’t believe them. If she believed them, she wouldn’t be here.
Earlier, she had tossed her coat onto the floor beside her seat. She reached down, careful to keep her eyes on the road, and fished out her cell phone.
“Hm,” she said. It was dead. She thought she had just charged it last night. “Do you have a charger in here?”
“A what?” Steve said.
“Does Dave have a charger in here? For his phone?”
“Dave doesn’t have a cell phone. Neither do I. They’re for losers.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see who’s the loser when we need to call someone to get us when we run into a ditch.”
“We’ll be okay,” Steve said. “I’ve managed to go seventeen years without one and I’m still here.”
“Good thing you have survival skills.”
“It should be up here on your left.”
Rachel slowed down.
Gradually, the wall of woods on her left faded and then fell away completely. They were on a ridge overlooking the hollow. The house was there, shrouded in misty fog and milky moonlight. Rachel stopped the van.
“Creepy place, huh?” Steve said.
“Certainly,” Rachel said.
“Oh, God,” Dave called from the back. He had risen to his knees and thrown open the side doors, throwing his head out just enough to spew his vomit outside.
“Thank God he made it out there.”
“Yeah. The fuck. So are we gonna go in or what?”
Rachel thought about this for a minute. Another wet heave came from the back.
“I don’t really want to.”
“Why’d we come out here for?”
“Just to see it, I thought. I feel like my Halloween experience is complete. We can go home now.”
“Come on. I dare you. I’ll go with you. We can just open the door and run in and then out.”
“I can think of soooo many reasons why that isn’t a good idea.”
“You’re the smart one. Let’s hear em.”
“Okay. Well, for starters, it might belong to someone. We’re drunk. We’re all drunk. If we get caught it’s going to go beyond simple trespassing. We’re going to be in huge trouble if we get caught. And that’s if we’re lucky. This is Deliverance country where crazy hill people like to solve things their own way. This should frighten you just as much as me. I don’t think you want your butt seal broken any more than I do. And Dave is sick. We should take him home so you can tuck him in and give him a little kiss good night.”
“Your reasons are shit,” Steve immediately refuted. “First of all, if someone does own it, they sure as shit don’t live in it. Which means no one would notice if we just ran up and had a look. I don’t think the cops are any worry because I’ve never seen a cop outside the town itself. And if just me and you go down, it’ll give Dave a chance to collect himself.”
Dave punctuated this with another heave.
“Come on,” Steve said. “We don’t even have to go into it. Let’s just run down and touch it. That’s all. It’s either the house or your tits.”
“What?” Rachel said.
“Yeah. Either go down to the house with me or show me your tits.”
“Fine. I’ll race you down there. I win, you show me how you compare to the Big Green Monster.”
Steve rolled his eyes.
“Okay, go,” he said, springing out from the passenger side.
But Rachel had already taken off, barreling down the slope, the dew-slick grass wetting her shoes.
Steve had a longer stride but she was quicker and more sober.
She bounded up the steps and put her hand on the front door. A bad feeling surged through her body but she tried to ignore it. Steve stood in front of the porch, hands on hips, pouting.
“Okay,” Rachel said. “Drop em.”
“No. We gotta go in... if you want to see it.”
But Rachel was already descending the stairs of the porch. “No way,” she said. “You couldn’t pay me to go in there.”
“Then no cock for you.”
“You promised.”
“You cheated.”
“You’re such a bastard. You ready to go?”
“I guess,” Steve said.
She could almost sense how much he wanted to go into the house, see what was in there, snoop around a little bit. Probably just so he could brag to Dave that he had gone in. He’d probably tell him that they went in there and he fucked her in every room of it.
She couldn’t bring herself to go in. She didn’t like the way it felt. It had an odd smell to it.
They began walking toward the van.
That’s when they heard Dave scream.
4.
After starting out at a run, Rachel and Steve almost immediately held up, simultaneously realizing they didn’t know exactly what they were running toward.
Or, perhaps, it was that they both simultaneously spotted the other car, a beat-up old thing, behind Dave’s minivan.
“Shit,” Steve asked.
“What?” Rachel said.
“I think it’s Bryan and Darryl.”
“What?”
“All we said was we got in a fight. We didn’t say we necessarily lost. I think maybe they’re trying to get back at us.”
He began walking up the side of the hill.
“Just stay behind me,” Steve said. “I don’t think they’ll try much with the both of us. Maybe they thought they had Dave alone.”
Rachel saw the boys at the top of the ridge, dark silhouettes against the light of the moon, surrounded by the swirling mist. They spotted Rachel and Steve and threw something at them. Rachel had no idea what it might be. She ducked, half-expecting an explosion.
She heard whatever-it-was thud against the ground and Steve said, “Aw, fuck!”
“What? What
?” Rachel asked.
Steve grabbed her arm harshly, pointing at the ground before them.
Dave’s head stared up at them. Tendons, veins, and bright white bits of cartilage hung from the tattered flesh. One eye was open, wide and bright blue. The other one was mostly closed. His mouth was open, blood all around the lips. Rachel was pretty sure his tongue had been removed.
She burst into tears, panic shuddering through her body.
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “Would they do that?”
“Hell, I don’t know. We gotta get the fuck outta here.”
He grabbed her arm and turned her back toward the house.
But she couldn’t go in there. She didn’t care how scared and panicked she felt. She couldn’t go into that house.
Because something in there wants to kill you.
The thought came completely out of the blue.
Why would something in there want to kill her? She’d never even seen the goddamn house before.
“Fucking come on,” Steve said, giving her arm another yank.
They ran to the house.
“Not in there,” Rachel panted.
“Shit no,” Steve said. “That’d be like a fucking trap.”
They ran past the house, hearing something behind them.
The house was positioned almost exactly in the center of the hollow. On the other side, woods began at the base of the hill and climbed to its top. Rachel thought that seemed almost as suicidal as the house but she followed Steve as he plunged in.
The people following them seemed impossibly fast.
They hit the woods. Navigation was nearly impossible without any trails. There were sticks and thorns and branches everywhere.
And the sound of the leaves.
The sound of those leaves would make it nearly impossible to hide.
She felt what she had dreaded.
A hand on the back of her neck.
Dragging her down.
Separating her from Steve.
The body above her turned her over onto her back and, looking up at it, she thought, I guess it could be Bryan.
But he looked all wrong.
Everything seemed sharper and more elongated. She thought of a hairless werewolf.
Bryan pulled her to her feet.
“She the one?” it asked Darryl. It looked like Darryl had been transformed in much the same way.
A simple thought ran through her head:
It’s true. Everything I’ve heard about the Devils is true.
The Darrylthing lifted Steve by the throat. He chokingly shouted, his legs kicking in mid-air. The creature flung him to the ground and said, “Make sure she doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Got it,” Bryan said.
With his left hand, he grabbed her right wrist and dragged her to a tree. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a small hammer. Rachel kicked. She screamed. She clawed.
It was all useless.
Holding her wrist against the tree, he transferred a large nail from his right hand into his left. Simultaneously, he braced her wrist against the tree and poked the tip of the nail against her palm.
“No,” Rachel said. “No. I know who you are. You guys can’t get away with this. We know what you did to Dave.”
“Dave was a dick,” Bryan said.
Then he drove the nail through her hand. She heard it pop through the flesh and delicate tendons.
The pain was excruciating.
She wanted to drop to the ground and curl up into a fetal position but the nail kept her standing nearly upright.
“You sure she’s the one? A pudgy skank like that?” Darryl said, his arms closed around Steve’s chest.
“That’s who he said. I’m sure,” Bryan said, the newly acquired snout altering his speech. “Let’s go to work on this guy. Ain’t he the one who fucked you up?”
“Yep.”
“Fuck you!” Steve shouted.
Rachel wanted to tell him to be quiet. Anything he said was going to make the beating that much worse. She didn’t want to see Steve without a head.
Darryl threw Steve to the ground.
Bryan turned his attention to Rachel. He unfastened his jeans, pulled out his cock, and pissed on her. The warmth splashed her jeans, sinking through so she could feel it running down her lower legs. He moved closer to her and she could see his penis was huge and erect.
Steve cried out behind him. Darryl had him on his stomach, raking claws across his back.
Bryan reached out a clawed finger to flick one of Rachel’s fear- hardened nipples.
She closed her eyes, the tears rolling out.
“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Don’t do this.”
And still she was wondering if the Devils really had gotten hold of Bryan and Darryl or if they’d just had like a professional special effects person apply their costumes.
Bryan reached out a hand, grabbed the bottom of her shirt and lifted it.
A gunshot blasted through the night.
Bryan went sideways.
Rachel looked down at him. His left leg was separated at the knee. He howled in pain. Darryl, distracted, looked up from Steve.
His face exploded.
Another shot punched away what was left of his head. Each shot made Rachel jump. She heard Steve moaning in pain.
Bryan struggled to stand up. Another shot separated that leg.
Steve pushed Darryl off of him. He landed in a heap on the ground.
A man came out of the darkness, holding a pistol and carrying a can of gas. He splashed it on the crawling twitching things that were Darryl and Brian. Then he tossed a match and they went up in a perfect blaze, screaming their shouts to a lost night.
Seventeen
The three of them sat around the table sipping their coffee. The storytelling finished, Rachel took her hands away from Rain’s. She didn’t have to open her mouth to give Rain the past. It was there, fed through her. Jacob had simply looked around the coffee shop while Rachel transported Rain back to that Halloween night.
One he remembered very well.
Sipping her coffee, Rachel said, “After the nail was removed, the hand healed immediately. And ever since then, I’ve been able to do things... move people’s minds. Transport them. Heal things.”
“I’ll say,” Rain said.
“How’s that cut on your foot?” Jacob asked.
Rachel slipped off the too large Converse (she had a shortage of shoes at his house), turning it so Rain could look down and see that the cut she had inflicted was completely gone. Gone also were all the minor cuts and scratches that had blemished Rachel’s face, legs and arms.
“But,” Rain said, “why was Jacob there?”
“Me,” Jacob said. “I was out there to kill myself.”
“Jesus,” Rain said.
“Rather fortunate now that we look back on it though. I was going to douse myself in gasoline, hang myself from a branch and, if that didn’t work immediately, I was going to blow my brains out.”
“You were serious about it?”
“Yeah. Remember when I told you there were other reasons we didn’t keep guns in the house?”
“Yeah, but...”
“Well, we’re all here now,” Jacob said.
“What happened... after?” Rain asked.
Rachel, already somber, grew more so, leaning her head down to inspect the wood on the table.
“Jacob and I both changed. I already told you about mine. I can do more than just give people visions. I can use it as a weapon.”
“Torment them,” Rain said.
“I guess, yeah. And Jacob has these wild hallucinations.”
“Most of them don’t make much sense. Maybe on some symbolic level, like what I saw on the TV last night.”
“What about... the other guys?” Rain asked.
“Steve didn’t fare so well. Physically, he was probably better off than me. Or should have been better off. But, mentally, he was gone. I’ve never seen him since that
night. He’s been in Signal Point...”
“The insane asylum,” Jacob said.
“I was trying to be polite about it. But, yeah, he’s been there since that night and I just can’t bring myself to go visit him. Don’t even know if I’d be allowed to visit him.”
“What about the police and stuff? Surely you went to the police?”
“We did,” Rachel said. “Jacob and I both went in and filled out the whole crazy report and neither one of us have ever heard anything else about it.”
“That’s crazy,” Rain said.
“About as crazy as you going on a yearlong killing spree with a half-wit and never coming close to being caught,” Jacob said.
“The Devils have a way of doing things,” Rachel said. “Like maybe you’ve wondered why we didn’t call an outside newspaper or contact some authority outside of Lynchville?”
“Kind of.”
“Well, we did. And you call them and they listen to you like you’re not a crazy person and then they hang up and you wait for the story to appear in the Bryton paper or something. You wait for a reporter to call you. You wait for something to be on the news. Hell, like maybe even one of those investigative journal pieces? And nothing happens. I’m guessing that, as soon as they hang up the phone, they have no recollection of ever speaking with anyone. And, yeah, maybe we could go there in person but something tells me that, even though I leave Lynchville nearly every day to go to work and school, if I was to ever leave with the hope of going somewhere and telling them our story, I don’t think it would let me out.”
“That’s fuckin crazy,” Rain said. “And I’m sure it’s true. Have no doubt.”
“On the bright side,” Jacob said to Rachel. “It looks like they’ve come back.”
She wanted to throw her coffee in his face.
Eighteen
Silence wrapped itself around them. It was the kind of silence made quieter with the knowledge that something should be said. They all knew that. Rain sipped her coffee and stared absent-mindedly around the cafe. Jacob drummed his fingers against the worn table. Rachel stared into the dregs of her cup.
“So,” Jacob said finally. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “Do you have any ideas?”