by Frank Bill
Ten young boys surrounded him, none looked under fourteen or beyond the age of eighteen. Like his, their locks were flaxseed-oily and separated. Pigment was chalky. Thin. Starved of sound unless it was hymns or fighting with eyes wrenched into their skulls. They were dressed in flannel buttoned to their necks with dirtied white cottas over top. Each bore a hatchet in his grip.
Behind the Methodist, upon the wall was a large brass crucifix accompanied by a tarnished framed portrait of Jesus Christ.
Alcorn made his way around the wooden pews. Walked toward this outline of man, the heathen boys beside him. Angus followed with Hershal and Withers in the rear. Stopping before the Methodist, who questioned, “And who is this ’loper you’ve amassed for battle?”
“Calls himself Angus,” Aryan Alcorn exhaled.
Eyes gazed. Unblinking. The mind chewing on thought. “Just Angus?”
“Chainsaw … Angus.”
There was a moment of pause. Of eyes widening, then narrowing. “The man who showered Bellmont McGill with his last rites?”
Angus looked at the sickness before him. His gut churned. His mind wondered about the adolescent boys. Their ages and their use of sexual favors for a higher purpose to such an old wannabe sage drew a molestation of disgust to Angus. Was he a divine man of the cloth, one of those types who had a congregation of mad believers who’d hand their children over to this professed divination of the holy, a man who preached divination, milked his minions, and lived in sin and sloth behind closed doors? Angus felt the answer in his gut. Felt the storm manifesting. Fu had taught him to control his misanthropic desires and behavior. His anger. His savageness. But at this venture, he was rage barred only behind skin.
“One and the same,” Angus told the Methodist.
“And to think some folk spoke of you to be dead.”
“Some used to say Santa Claus was a pagan. Can’t believe all the words you hear.”
“You’d a hearty bounty about your head.”
“I’ve had many, no one has yet to collect … or lived to tell about them.”
To the Aryan, “Does he follow our rules?”
“He does.”
Soon after, Angus faced the pit from one side. Another man faced the opposite with his wrists bound behind him. Each man waited as the old church filled with the shuffle of feet, smells of earthy-retched body and breath bouncing from the once-chalky walls that were now stained and marred by fumes, smoke, and blood.
The ceiling was the same, an off-tinted hue with webs and mud dauber and wasp nests. Folks once congregated here to worship and pray for the goodness and well-being of man, woman, and child. Now it was a sanctum of slaughter.
Hershal removed the rusted chain from the collar around Angus’s neck. Left his hands bound, same as the man opposite Angus on the other side of the pit. Two long slabs of board were dropped into the pit, one on each side, creating an entrance, Angus on one side, his opponent on the other. Two men came. One held a pistol to Angus’s skull. “Move,” he threatened, “and your memories will shower this soil.” The other man cut the tines of rope from Angus’s wrists. “Walk,” said the man. And Angus did, wondering how long Fu would or could last without medicine. If he knew of some way to meditate and take himself away from the pain and lengthen his life-span and ward off infection. The man had culled Angus from addiction and killing. Showed him another way to use his energies in life. But it seemed Angus’s biggest test would now rear its head, and if he were to fail, Fu wouldn’t keep his existence.
Standing, Angus inhaled the stench of sours. Of coagulated blood. The reek of skin that lay rotted and smeared in the dirt floor. There were laces from shoe and boot that had once bound feet, there were prints from those feet digging down, bracing their stances for pugilism. There were remains of teeth, fingers, toes, and nails. Even something that maybe resembled tongues or ears, either bitten or pried, shags of tresses or mane scattered like large blotches of ink, as though a person had carved the rind from skull. But Angus knew their means of removal. It was by confrontation.
Angus stared unblinking over the remains, sized the other man up, a seven-foot beast. Tattoos lined each veiny limb with lines that looked like stitches, curving and wiring over forearms, biceps, and shoulders as though the ink gun had gone dry in places. Began working again with spots of fade, plot marks and names all about, jagging and slanting. Creating a hand-drawn map of the county over his limbs. He’d a Mohawk the shade of neon yellow and the width of a knife’s sheath. Thick patches of sideburns brushed down from his ears and over his jaws to where his face had been coaled to black with white around his mouth like teeth. Eye sockets the same. His torso shirtless, appearing as if he’d swum in a hole of outhouse waste; his pecs and ribs were a parch of wet cotton that’d been stretched and burnt. Scars created from battles won with a string of dried and hardened scalps running horizontal over his body.
Angus did not blink. Knowing he’d take the hominid out quick. Figure on a way to release himself from this maddening fit he’d found himself enslaved within. A world and all its folk swimming in the downfall of existence.
Because of his size, Angus knew he’d need to go for the Neanderthal’s legs. Cut his height. Take his air. Then his strength and maybe his existence. The way the man twitched, his feet antsy, like his hands, which gripped and opened, Angus knew the man would come at him full force. Just a brutal surge of retard strength devoid of means or reaction.
Angus looked to the man’s knees, the lumps and knots that poked out as if chunks of gravel, busted cartilage, with veins worming down the sides of his shins, varicose working into work boots.
When the Methodist stood, all eyes were on him. “Tonight, we’ve two unbeaten conscripts, Sadist Samhain and Chainsaw Angus.”
Heads of men, women, and children turned, looked to others. A tide of disquiet and whispers stood on the air as eyes went back to the Methodist.
“You hear me correct. Chainsaw Angus. Never beaten. A man many believed dead. I’m as bewildered as you, but here he is. Representing the Alcorn clan. And if he keeps his skull skin intact, well, he has my respect and earns a partition of territory for the Alcorns.”
All sight bore down on Angus and Sadist Samhain, who stood nearly fifteen feet away from each other. Sadist was growling and running his tongue over his chinked lips, waiting for a word. A signal. Something to alert the two men that it was time to battle.
And it came from the man who stood over the pit. The same man who’d held a pistol to Angus’s head. Raising the gun to the ceiling, he fired. Pieces of discolored plaster crumbled and dropped from the roof and he yelled, “FIGHT!”
Angus stood with an ease of relaxation, followed the rhythm of his breath. Felt the earth thud beneath him with the Sadist’s footsteps. Angus raised his hands, palms facing himself, left foot and hand forward, upper body slumped back. His hands appeared as if he were holding small cups of tea, his arms hugging a barrel as he waited.
* * *
The first time Van Dorn had entered the cavern, smells of parched brain, cold, thick as animal fat and moldy, spewed from the opening of a cranium and laced deep within the the space’s air. The shape tilted upright with hieroglyphic tagging from a gun barrel that doubled as a brush, supported by the makeshift canvas that was a limestone wall, but nothing could be seen, as the outline of this suicide artist was hidden by dark.
The shape’s name was Clyde. He’d been missing since the loss of wages. Since the layoff from the car frame plant down over the hill below the old Burger King. A place that once carried a good bit of the county’s people with the promise of decent wages, providing a mortgage, a car, and groceries. A good middle-class job. But also the transference of drugs from one employee to another as the meth and oxy craze blistered the minds from one county to the next.
Those mouths that yearned for nourishment could not be filled as they once were. Even Clyde’s side gig with his guitar on the weekends, playing old bluegrass tunes and folk songs he’d writt
en at coffee shops and bars, turned south. People’d no jobs. No money to be entertained. Disappointment turned to failure. A letdown of a father who no longer felt as if he was a man nor husband. He was a man defined by struggle.
Disappearing as he had, words traveled, eyes looked, phones were picked up, and fingers dialed numbers. Mouths asking if he’d been seen. Had stopped by. He’d went from running late to missing. County browns, the cops, were called. Lines were traced. Searches began. Where he’d last been seen. Whom he’d last visited or spoken with. What they’d discussed.
His vehicle was spotted some miles away, parked in an old pull-off of black dirt and beneath an acorn tree on the back side of ole man Bently’s property. Across the seat lay a box of opened .40-caliber shells. His uncased acoustic guitar. The trudge of path he’d taken, followed up the hollow, deep into the woods where he entered the opening hidden by trees. Found some weeks later within the cavern’s center by Van Dorn and Horace. Looking as others had for this man. By lantern light, they’d followed the sunken prints into the dark and found the man’s shape. Temperatures of cold had kept his freckled body intact. Pistol in hardened hand. Crust of explosion about forehead. Skin colored ruby, white, and waxy like a crayon. A flashlight lay beside him.
His body was tarped, Dorn and Horace carried the dead same as they’d done Alcorn’s brother. Carried him through the cavern and out the other side, as the terrain was easier to navigate behind the church. There were no ridges or hollows. It came out of a hillside onto flat forest.
And now Dorn and Sheldon ran and maneuvered toward the cavern, toward its opening not much farther. The spray of bullets stopped with the command of Cotto, screaming at the boy soldiers. Calling them dumb sons of bitches. Dorn not glancing over his shoulder. Only creating distance from this madman. Dorn’s heart raced. Taking the uprooted trees, climbing over the gray moss-coated rocks. The pang of hurt from his fall. Adrenaline spurring through his veins. The ache from the stick that parted and jabbed muscle.
With the mangy dog following, it was an obstacle course for the rural. Leaping upon and over tree and grabbing of limb and stone, the give of vegetation beneath foot until Dorn’s lungs were speared with burn, exhaling; his shoulder throbbed and he said, pointing, “There. Behind those windbreaks and vines.”
Sliding past the blinds of outgrowth, Dorn pointed to the beaded moist cavern wall where a mercury and rusted lantern hung. Below it a small can of fuel and a bread sack. “Hard to believe, ain’t it?” Dorn huffed, sweat immersing his apple-red face as he tried catching his breath, staying within the opening.
The Sheldon girl reached for the lantern. Shook it. The fuel splashed inside. She asked Dorn, “What’s hard to believe?”
Turning to her, he said, “That some uncivil son of a bitch ain’t found this hole and stole the matches and fuel.”
“Maybe they’s still a few like us left.”
“Maybe.”
Dorn leaned outside the cavern wall opposite the Sheldon girl, the hound sat looking. Watching. And Dorn told Sheldon, “Get a pack of them matches. Be sure that lantern is full. It’ll take a good thirty minutes to command light to the other side, ’less someone has holed up or sealed the opening and corked us in.”
“Why you standing out in sight of gunshot, wasting time?”
“So Cotto and his soldiers will view our direction.”
Dorn had made clear where the cavern was. Where Sheldon and he had disappeared to, by breaking limbs and stomping his feet into the soil. Moving loose stones about.
“Why for?” asked the Sheldon girl.
“To end him and save a kid or two. Keep telling myself they’s once like us in some form or another. If we’s to keep believing they’s no good no more, then what hopes do we possess?”
The Sheldon girl nodded in acknowledgment, kneeled, took a worn pack of matches out. Checking them for dampness. She wrapped the bag back up. Placed it to the ground where a flat rock sat. Visible. Shook the lantern once more. Then pulled the glass back, removed a match from the small box. Fingered out a small wooden match and struck it. Placed it at the wick and the flame took. Standing, she looked at Dorn. “That’s the chance we been offered.”
Dorn nodded. The Sheldon girl held the lantern up, and into the darkness they walked.
* * *
Within seconds of Sadist Samhain swinging a wide-rounding George Foreman right hook, Angus focused on his breath. Took his anger. Hardened it into energy. Felt the wind of movement coming at him, and his own building on his insides. Knees bent. Body arched backward as if doing a reverse somersault. The bones of Angus’s back popped. He whipped and spun his body. Swiveled his hips and rolled like a disjointed wooden art figurine. Attacked the side of the Sadist’s right knee with the index knuckle of each fist supported by the thumb, a phoenix-eye fist. Shotgunning a stair step of punches. Piercing his way up the thigh, kidney, and ribs. Sadist bared his yellow teeth. Dropped to his knee. Hurt peeled his complexion.
Above the pit people reeled shouts. Cheers and roars. Spitting and tossing hooch from used bottles and cups. Below, Angus came with the backs of his hands at Sadist’s temple. Patting and slapping his face away. Masking his movements, like a boxer readying his jab he was setting up his range of attacks. Reversed one hand’s motion, turned it to a claw, dug into Sadist’s throat. Felt the softness of skin. Ripped away from Sadist, who tried to stand. Came mad at Angus, swinging wild and coughing froth.
Angus rolled his arms out. Spun backward. Dropped and fed a hard-angled kick into the side of Sadist’s knee. His endorphins raked his entire body with sensations of rage. Angus was working on Sadist’s weakness, his give and bend. Keeping him to the ground, while deflecting the onslaught of haymaker attacks.
Catching Sadist’s arm as he fell in pain, Angus clenched Sadist’s wrist. His dopamine was chugging on high gear. He felt pumped with an uncontrolled strength and power. Stripping this man-child’s respect from his peers. He rolled his arm. Locked Sadist’s elbow. Made eye contact with the ridged bloodshot orbs and told him, “You’re fucking weak.” And snapped Sadist Samhain’s arm. Bone pierced flesh, followed the man’s descent forward to the ground, pinned Sadist’s arm behind him. Beneath Angus’s ass and calf. He sat with Sadist beneath him, branding the crowd with his screams. Angus’s body flamed with shivers of rushing endorphins as he studied the lost faces of rural men, not many women. Their scrubbed-out features and lost souls. He wanted out of here but needed to find the soft spot. The breach of weakness.
Then from the lookers above came the shouts and screams, and the man who bore a blade. Who’d released Angus’s wrists. He tossed the same blade down to Angus. He looked up, wanted to return the blade to the man by separation of skin, through the cavity of his chest, and stop the pulse of his heart. Instead the man told Angus, “Remove his scalp.”
* * *
The belt of sound funneled from the holler and to the cave’s mouth, hemming ears with whoops of battle, caused Dorn’s heart to peel and juice like fresh citrus. Lantern light cut through the dark where walls of rough-textured rock tunneled. Rushing feet and paws sunk into mud. Cold air dampened their hides, while the scents of mollusk encased Dorn and Sheldon’s inhale, the hound pawed alongside, whining every so often.
“What if the lantern fades?”
Rubbing the red-kraut wound about his shoulder, Dorn told Sheldon, “My worry surrounds Cotto with his juvenile militia bringing us our end. Here I thought I could save those who was enslaved, I’s crazed in my beliefs.” Dorn paused, patted his pack, and finished with “I’ve positioned us a backup light.”
“Lantern?”
“A Maglite. Ain’t fired it but it’s got batteries. Snagged from the supplies of Scar. Regardless, this cavern is a straight shot. No bumps, just a cut that opens out the other side of the hill.”
Ache and throb fell upon Dorn’s arm. Baring teeth, he tried to flex his shoulder. A tear traced down his cheek. He’d need a means to solder the wound. Heated metal or ir
on, he thought, remembering his father, Horace, mending to a hog’s wound once from a puncture. He’d heated a flat square of alloy till it rang orange with the hog fastened down about the fores and the rears and melded the flesh. The hog’s squeals still tattooed his memory. And Sheldon said, “That kid spared your life.”
Snapping back, Dorn said, “August.” The wilt of the hog’s image lying in that barn morphed into the boy’s outline, weighing his thoughts, August’s weight about the ground. Eyes open. The loss of blink. Blood fertilizing leaf. Innocent, Dorn thought, never hurt a fly. “What of him?”
“Where did you cross him?”
As he kept tread with the Sheldon girl, there was the brief rupture of sound. A change in air. Dorn couldn’t put a figure of recognition upon what it was. Maybe his ears needing to pop. But there wasn’t a drastic change in altitude, Dorn thought. He stayed attentive. “Pentecost Bill. Captured by him for the crazed Cotto. Been trapping and holding folks for him.”
“Why would a local do such a trade?”
“Why would neighbors bound and burn another with motor oil and smoke out a family for slaughtering? Why not ban together and re-create all that has been squandered?”
Sheldon’s tone changed. “What are you speaking about?”
Everything that Dorn had witnessed over the days and months had gotten heavy on his soul. He wiped the images from his thoughts. “It’s no mind now. What August told me, Cotto’d wrung out Bill by enslaving his wife. Having Bill do his trapping in hopes to see his wife again. Reason for this, Bill knew the terrain and many in the area. Was trusted. And he’s crazy as two starved copperheads in a ten-gallon bucket fighting over a rat.”
“And August was alone, with no mother or sibs?”
Lantern light hovered in front of Dorn from Sheldon’s grip, showing hints of the cavern like a yawning mouth. The slouch of pain was cramping while an unrecognized sound grew. “No, they’d yet to take him but had removed his mother and siblings along with another female and her children.”