by Stephen Hand
The hammer cocked—
NO!
Morgan pulled the trigger.
ELEVEN
The boy stared appalled, unable to believe what he’d just done. Erin and Pepper had cried out, begging him to stop, but they were too late to keep his finger from squeezing the trigger. And now they, too, looked on in mute horror at the murder scene that had just played out before them.
Sheriff Hoyt, on the other hand, was as happy as a fag in the boys’ locker room. When Morgan had finally cracked and fired the gun, there’d been no gunshot, no bullet wound and no blood, only a faint click.
The gun wasn’t loaded.
A tear ran down Morgan’s cheek as the sheriff took the useless revolver out of the boy’s hand.
“Yep,” smirked Hoyt. “This one’s the killer all right. Only this time,” he looked at Morgan, “you shot yourself a sheriff.”
Then he reached over the front seat of the van and took the car keys from the ignition where Erin had left them. None of these kids were going anywhere until he’d completed his investigations.
A voice called to him, told him to wake up and to get out of there.
He shook his head and groaned, but the voice persisted: it was now or never, he had to do something, he had to break free.
The words were barely audible through the waves of pain that washed over him, and the meaning was dulled by the unique tiredness of blood loss, but Andy knew that the words were his own. They were a soundless rallying cry for survival, stirring from deep within his soul—only there was no use in listening.
What would be the point? He was hanging from a meat hook in the underground basement of a psychopath. He was his prisoner. He was going nowhere.
Unless Erin had got away, unless she came to rescue him, death was inevitable. He was dying. And even if he could get down from the meat hook, how could he get out of the house? How could he escape on one pathetic leg? And there was no way he could beat that second-skinned bastard in a fight. Face it, he was finished.
Yet still, the voice urged him to try.
It wasn’t about hope anymore—Andy was beyond hope—it was about the fish wriggling on the hook, the wounded deer limping away to avoid the headshot, the armadillo dragging its crushed legs off the highway rather than surrender and become road kill. It was about gaining one more second of life.
Andy moaned. The pain was so bad . . . so bad.
There was a large pipe running horizontally behind his shoulders. As best he could, he rested his upper back on it. His remaining foot dangled about a yard up off the ground. There was something beneath him, furniture of some kind, but Andy was too tired to see what it was. All he cared about was that he could see his own blood dripping down onto the wood and then rolling down to form a puddle on the wet floor.
Again, that damned voice was telling him to do something, quick, while that damn face-freak with the chainsaw was out of the room.
His attacker had left the basement some time ago—it could have been minutes, it could have been hours. Andy had expected to receive a killing blow at any moment but he’d simply been left to hang, to die slowly and painfully on the meat hook. For one darkly humorous moment, Andy recalled how he’d gone with Erin up to the house. He’d thought he was safe because he was young, strong and carrying a tire-iron.
But that bastard had taken him out with pathetic ease. He’d come after him, sliced his fucking leg off and then assumed complete control of him. And now Andy had been left hanging from a meat hook—beneath contempt, not even worth execution, left helplessly to die.
No!
He couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t go down like this, not like this—maybe fighting, running, anything. But he couldn’t just hang there and bleed to death like a total loser. He had to do something. He had to make that bastard pay.
Andy looked up—and groaned.
As he lifted his head, his neck muscles contracted and expanded, pulling on his chest muscles, abdomen, his whole dismembered and impaled body, causing agony to explode through the damage of his terrible wounds.
But now he could see.
The hook was at the end of a stout chain that came down from a sturdy crossbeam, a few feet above his head. Maybe there was something he could do after all.
He took a few moments to marshal all the strength in his broad, powerful arms—at the same time preparing himself for the overwhelming rush of broken pain that would soon be tearing into his very soul.
One deep breath—
His face was pale, ashen gray.
A second deep breath—
He clenched his jaws and snarled, wincing as he raised both hands to take hold of the iron chain above and behind his head.
The basement echoed with his piteous moans, but he’d done it. He’d grabbed the chain and was now locked in position, ready.
Fist by agonizing fist, he began to pull himself up the chain.
The links rattled, each one being no more than an inch in length, yet each seeming an impossible distance as the boy took the pain and used his muscular arms to haul himself up. All he needed was to get enough slack in the chain. Then, if he could find somewhere to brace his foot . . .
He was slipping!
Exertion had taken its toll—not in fatigue, but in sweat. His palms had become slick with saltwater, and suddenly his hands were finding it tough to grip anything.
He had dropped only about an inch, but the sudden motion of the chain pulled on the hook embedded in the soft flesh of his back. He moaned but was able to check his fall—keeping some slack in the chain.
Sweat was now stinging his eyes and his breathing was coarse and labored, but at least he hadn’t dropped all the way back down again. He paused, readying himself for a second attempt. It wasn’t looking too good; he needed all his strength just to hang on.
Again, a cry escaped his lips, and again the chain rattled as he reached up over his head and began to—
He lost his grip!
Fearing the worst, Andy tried everything he could to slow the fall. His hands clawed and grabbed at the straightening chain, but it was no use.
His body dropped, the chain pulled tight, and the meat hook tore his insides apart, breaking the bones of his spine.
And the total loser screamed his empty heart out.
The police car was moving at a leisurely pace back down the access road towards town. It was fully dark now and the silver light of the moon seemed to strobe through the silhouetted woodland of dead contorted trees.
Morgan had been arrested.
The sheriff had charged the boy with the murder of the teenage girl while under the influence of illegal substances. Then he’d handcuffed and bundled him into the back of the patrol car. Sure, the girls had complained a whole lot but as far as the sheriff was concerned, they were suspects too.
He’d told them straight out that he thought they were all a bunch of drug-taking hippie-shits. He believed the girls when they said they had two more friends skulking about the place, but he didn’t believe any of their bull crap about the Hewitt house. If there was any trouble up at the farm, it was probably being caused by those two missing boys being high on acid.
And that’s why he’d confiscated their car keys. He didn’t want them to go anywhere until he’d time to put Morgan behind bars. Then he’d come back, ask them some more questions, and then go look for the other two boys—if they actually existed.
Erin had argued with him. She couldn’t understand why she and Pepper couldn’t drive down to the station with him. Or why the sheriff couldn’t finish his questions and then take Morgan. Why keep going back and forth like that? None of it made sense. But every time she’d started to get a bit lippy, he’d threatened to run her in with the boy. As far as Hoyt was concerned, his little charade with the revolver had one hundred per cent proved the greasy haired punk’s guilt.
Morgan stared at the handcuffs holding his wrists together. There was a sense of unreality about the whole situation, something he’
d felt many times during the day. If only they’d just dumped the body at the mill and left. If only they’d never picked the teenager up in the first place. If only they’d stayed on the Interstate to Dallas. If only, if only, if only . . .
Sooner or later, they’d have to bring him a lawyer and, when they did, Morgan would make sure that Sheriff Christ Almighty Hoyt would end up in deep shit. What that pig had done back up at the van was tantamount to torture. That bastard had terrified Morgan half to death. Morgan was still scared now, but was nowhere close to the pitch of fear he’d felt when the sheriff had forced him to put the gun inside his own mouth.
“Man,” he called from the backseat, “this is BULLSHIT! I got rights!”
Hoyt looked back through the rearview. The boy was just letting off steam. The cop grinned. Scrawny little heel-shit.
They drove in silence for a moment, the car rocking side to side.
Then finally, “Where were you guys headed?” asked the sheriff.
Morgan sighed, looked at his cuffs, “Dallas. Skynyrd concert.”
“I like Skynyrd,” purred the sheriff.
“Me too!” Morgan wondered whether this was just the sheriff’s idea of polite conversation, or whether he was angling for something.
The sheriff glanced at the rear-view mirror another time, studying the boy. “Guess we got something in common, huh?” he drawled sarcastically. Then after another moment’s silence, “What are you gonna do with your tickets, boy?”
Morgan looked up. His eyes met the sheriff’s in the rear-view. Was the sheriff saying what he thought he was saying?
“You want them?” he asked hopefully. “You can have ’em, man!”
No reply, and they covered another short stretch of road in uneasy silence.
A bottle of bourbon lay in the passenger seat next to the sheriff’s ass. Most of the liquor was already gone, and now Hoyt lifted the booze to his mouth and finished it off—one hand on the steering wheel, the other round the neck of the bottle. He smacked his lips and sighed. Good stuff. Then he held the empty up and took a quick look at it—all gone.
“That a bribe?” he asked slyly.
The tickets? A bribe? Morgan was unsure how to ans—
THE SHERIFF SWUNG HIS ARM ROUND AND SMASHED THE THICK HEAVY BOTTLE INTO MORGAN’S MOUTH
Blood exploded across the bottom of the young man’s face. He howled in pain, his teeth cracking and breaking loose, one of them slipping back down his throat and being swallowed in an instant. The bottle had shattered, showering glass all over the back seat and the floor.
Almost immediately, shock numbed the pain. Morgan reached a hand to his mouth and found that his lips were bound with viscous strands of thick blood. He opened up and gently prodded, tearfully finding that the middle four teeth of this top jaw had all been smashed to bits.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Hoyt mockingly. “That was rude. Did you want some?”
Morgan sobbed with pain, trying his best to hold it together. When he talked to his lawyer—
The sheriff sneered and threw the broken bottle clown on to the floor where it came to rest beside the heavy torque wrench wrapped in duct tape.
He looked back at the boy and snickered. The kid was in a real state, yes sir, a real state.
“Now we’ve got even more in common,” he chuckled.
Morgan shook his head, trying to think straight. Got WHAT in common? Skynyrd? More? What? WHAT?
He looked up and saw the sheriff’s face. Hoyt had removed a clip of false teeth from the front of his mouth and was smiling with gap-toothed malice into the rear-view.
The officer roared with laughter then hit the gas hard, pushing Morgan back into his seat, where he lay handcuffed amidst the shards of broken bottle, blood-spit and cracked teeth.
Oh God, I don’t wanna die.
The abandoned Crawford Mill looked even worse at night. The shadows, which before had been held at bay by the sun, now crept out through the open doors and windows.
Erin had now explained everything to Pepper, about Andy, about Old Monty and the house. And about that thing with the—Erin didn’t want to think about it. She’d told Pepper they hadn’t found Kemper but that she was pretty sure he was up there somewhere.
It was clear the two girls couldn’t do anything about it. If they went back up to the Hewitt place, they’d both be killed. And it was just as clear that Sheriff Hoyt was a twisted, sadistic fuck. Which meant only one thing: they were on their own.
Now they’d had breathing space to think things through, a whole lot more pieces of the jigsaw fell into place. That teenage girl, the one they’d picked up, she was half mad with fear because she’d escaped these bastards. She’d come from California with her family and had somehow taken a wrong turn that ended up at the Hewitt house.
The girl had said, “They’re all dead.” That’s exactly what she’d said. She must have meant that her family had all been murdered. Which meant that Kemper and Andy would also be murdered if they hadn’t been already.
Hell, the signs had been all over the place, but they just didn’t know how to read them: the hidden clearing with the wrecked cars, the auto spares, the luggage and clothes for sale down at Luda May’s—all taken from people passing through. Christ, some of the clothes and automobiles they saw were almost twenty years-old!
And no one knew anything about it? How could a series of murders like this go unnoticed for so long?
And what about Luda May’s yard sale?
She was the one who’d sent them up here to the mill in the first place. So either Luda May was in on it or she didn’t care too much where her merchandise came from. But something still didn’t quite add up.
Luda May had sent them here to meet the sheriff and Hoyt did eventually come out and meet them at the mill. Things went wrong only when Erin and Kemper went to the Hewitt house, thinking it was the sheriff’s place. And they’d gone there on the advice of . . . Jedidiah. It was the small boy who’d sent them into real danger. So was he part of it?
The crazy kid sure as hell seemed happy to spend most of his time up here at the mill, and he had a thing about the dead girl. Which meant the mill was probably involved as well. But then it had to be. It was near the auto graveyard and the Hewitt place—and just look at all the revolting skulls and stuff.
Suddenly they realized that they’d been sent up here, like so many others before them, to become sitting ducks. Which was all Erin and Pepper needed to figure to decide to get the hell out of there. There was no argument, no discussion, no vote.
They just needed to get the van started and make a break for it. And then they’d go straight to the State Police or the FBI and not some redneck creep with his sadistic, evil mind games. Only problem was Hoyt had taken the keys to the van.
Not that this would stop Erin.
Pepper held the flashlight steady while Erin found a Swiss army knife she kept tucked in her napsack at the rear of the van. Then Erin went and sat up front, and Pepper took a position close behind the driver’s seat, so that she could point the beam down over Erin’s shoulder. There, she watched as Erin set to work on the ignition switch with her knife.
“What do you think he’s gonna do to Morgan?” asked Pepper innocently. Gay-rape, beat-up and torture sprang to mind but Erin was busy working on the lock, trying to prize the damned thing open. But it was tough.
“I don’t want to—” The blade snapped. “Shit!”
Erin quickly slid a second blade out of its compartment in the knife and bent forward for another try. She pushed the edge of the knife into the exact same position, hoping that the cover may have at least been loosened a little by her previous attempt. The sooner they got out of here, the sooner they could get the cops to turn a spotlight on this whole rat-bastard dump. And if there a God, he’d make sure the Hewitts were sent to the chair and he’d fry the fuckers.
No! The second blade snapped.
Pepper couldn’t bear the idea that Erin might screw up and she bega
n to cry. She was wearing her down jacket now, not because she was cold, but because it made her feel more comfortable, more protected. And now the nylon sleeve made a gentle but insistent swishing sound as her arm shook beside her body.
“Pepper,” said Erin firmly. “I need you to hold the light steady. Can you do that?”
Pepper was close to meltdown, but somehow she drew strength from Erin and began to relax a little. The beam from the flashlight fell steady on the ignition once more.
The drive had passed for Morgan.
It hadn’t passed quickly. It hadn’t passed slowly. It had just passed.
All he could think about was the pain he was in. He’d never seen so much blood in his life, especially his own, and his mouth . . .
He didn’t know where they were or where they were going, but he knew he’d be spending the evening behind bars. Maybe things would get better in the morning. The sheriff couldn’t just keep him locked up in a tiny, small town cell.
Morgan never found out what Erin saw up at the Hewitt house. She’d just come back in a panic and tried to start the van; that’s when Sheriff Hoyt had shown up again. And from that moment on, their night had eroded into mentally unstable, violent horror. But whatever it was Erin had seen, there was no way it could compete with what that bastard had just done to him.
Up front, the sheriff was talking on his car radio.
“I don’t care if you’re tired,” he said. “Get your butt in gear and get over to the Crawford Mill. Those two fillies are good to go.”
W . . . What did he just say?
Morgan shook his head, tried to clear his thoughts. Who the hell was the sheriff talking to? What did he say? Two fillies? And what did Hoyt mean by, “good to go”?
What the hell was going on?
Feeling the tension rise within him, Morgan pressed his face against one of the windows and peered out into the darkness.
Where were they?
They didn’t seem to be on any major road. There was no street lighting of any kind and they couldn’t be anywhere near town.
The headlights of the car swept forwards, scything through the black, until at last the vehicle came over the brow of a low hill and turned left onto a dirt track. At the end of the track stood a solitary building, an imposing two-storied farmhouse constructed in the plantation style, but the design of the place was almost . . .