by Ronald Kelly
The law officer regarded him suspiciously. “Sir… exactly what is going on here?”
Anger flared in Paul’s eyes. “I told you… some… some thing… it jumped in there and attacked my wife…”
“And it slammed the door behind it and locked it?”
Paul realized how very lame that sounded. “Yes.”
McMahon studied Paul for a long second, then turned to his partner – a tall, lanky young man – who stood in front of the patrol car. “Grab the Slim-Jim, Jasper… and the shotgun.”
Soon, both county deputies were standing next to the Escalade, looking at one another. They then looked at Paul, who lingered at the front of the vehicle, pacing back and forth nervously.
“If there’s an animal in there, sir,” said McMahon, “why can’t I hear anything?”
Paul shrugged. “How should I know? You could sure as hell hear it fifteen minutes ago!” He shuddered at the memory of those wet, ripping, slurping sounds.
“I’ll take your word for it… right now. But you stay put, do you understand?”
Paul swallowed dryly and simply nodded.
The elder officer turned to his subordinate. “Okay, this is how we’re gonna work it, Jasper. You jimmy the lock and open the door. I’ll shoot the thing when it comes out.” He jacked a shell into his twelve-gauge Mossberg with a metallic click-clack.
“Gotcha,” agreed Jasper. His hands trembled as he stepped to the driver’s door and began to slowly insert the narrow length of the Slim-Jim past the blood-soaked window and down into the body of the Cadillac’s door.
Frank McMahon stepped into the center of the highway and lifted his shotgun, bringing the butt securely against his shoulder. “Okay. I’m ready.”
Jasper fished around with the jimmy until something within the door went click. “Get ready. Here goes!” Then he grasped the handle and pulled open the door.
At first, nothing happened. Deputy McMahon peered into the vehicle’s dark interior. Then his eyes widened. “What the shit?”
Paul watched as the thing burst from the gore-encrusted cave of the Escalade, leaping straight toward the lawman. It was bigger… twice as big as it had been before… and, it seemed, twice as fast. It barreled out of the vehicle; sharp jaws gnashing, a deep, thunderous roar rumbling up from out of its gullet.
Deputy McMahon managed to put a load of double-aught buckshot smack-dab in the center of the thing’s chest, but wasn’t able to jack another round into the breech. The creature landed atop him, seemingly unharmed. The officer cried out as he hit the pavement hard, his eyes bulging as the monster’s teeth burrowed deeply into the tender flesh of his throat.
“Do something!” screamed Paul. “Shoot it!”
Deputy Jasper dropped the Slim-Jim and nervously fumbled his service revolver from its holster. He held it in both hands, pointing it at the thing on top of his partner. During his hesitance, the thing brought its powerful jaws together in a bone-shattering crack! His victim’s head separated from the neckbone, rolling lopsidedly across the highway, stump over balding scalp.
Jasper looked over at Paul in indecision. “I… I might hit Frank.”
“Frank’s head is in the freaking ditch!” Paul yelled at him. “Shoot the damn thing!”
The deputy turned back and pumped the contents of his .38 into the back of the creature’s head and spine. Instead of suffering from the gunfire, the thing seemed to regard it as an annoyance. It looked over its shoulder, shook its leering head as if saying “Stupid bastard!”, then lashed out with its bristly black tail. The blow took Jasper’s right hand off at the wrist. Both severed fist and the gun clutched tightly within it crashed through the windshield of the patrol car, leaving a jagged black hole.
“Mama!” croaked poor Jasper, just before the black thing whirled and turned its fury and hunger on him.
“To hell with this!” muttered Paul. He turned and began to run down the dark stretch of Highway 987.
He was crossing the road, intending to head toward the farmhouse, when he heard a great, bellowing roar split the air behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and immediately pissed himself. The thing was bounding down the two-lane blacktop toward him, its paws shattering the asphalt with each heavy footfall. Its awful hunger had fired its metabolism and started a growth process that could only occur in things not fully of this world. The black-bristled creature was nearly as big as the Escalade now. Its open mouth, full of long ivory and ragged meat, looked large enough to swallow a man whole without gagging.
Paul bounded over the drainage ditch at the far side of the road, then scrambled over a barbed wire fence. He was nearly over, when his left foot became entangled in the strands. As he struggled to kick free, the thing’s head appeared. The jaws found its target, dipped downward, and chomped. As burning agony shot through Paul’s ankle and up the calf of his leg, he looked back to see the thing rolling something around in its mouth. It was a pocket of Eddie Bauer leather with a meaty morsel of Paul Stinson tucked neatly inside. The thing gobbled it down and winked – dear Lord, did it actually wink? – before it began to skitter across the fence toward him.
On half a foot, Paul began to limp toward the farmhouse, gibbering, crying, even laughing for some awful reason he couldn’t figure out. “God, God, God, oh, God,” he sobbed out loud. Funny that he would call upon that name so freely now… since the only way he had used it in the last few years was with the word damn tacked to end.
But, then, Paul Stinson had suddenly gotten religion, as the old folks called it. That awful kind of HarlanCounty religion preached by things that posed as harmless roadkill at the side of deserted country roads.
As he ran, shrieking, toward the old farmhouse, Paul sensed that the thing was toying with him. It would dart out in front of him, then circle him, allowing him to get a head start and then begin the torturous cat-and-mouse game all over again. He was almost to the front porch of the house, when the thing’s long tail lashed out, striking him across the lower back. Paul wailed as his kidneys ruptured and the lower vertebrae of his spine were pulverized into jagged splinters.
He hit the ground hard, facing the house. In the yellow glow of a front porch light, an old woman opened the screen door, looked out, then retreated with an expression of panic and horror. That door isn’t going to help you, lady, he thought. That whole damned house isn’t going to protect you. He doubted that the vault of the Harlan County Bank & Trust would hold up to this demon’s ceaseless hunger.
As the thing pounced and landed atop him, Paul thought of his mother and some of the quirky sayings she used to pass on to him. One came to mind as he felt the thing’s claws meticulously, almost tenderly, separate the back of his leather jacket and the cloth of the shirt just beyond. Curiosity killed the cat?
No, that wasn’t it.
Yeah. Oh, hell, yeah… that was it.
Paul Stinson felt the thing’s long, gray tongue – peppered with taste buds the texture sandpaper and broken glass – run the length of his back, from the nape of his neck, clear down to the cleft of his buttocks. It somehow tickled and hurt all at the same time.
Paul began to laugh.
He laughed wildly, madly, straying far beyond the limits that humor tastefully allowed … until, finally, he could laugh no more.
WHOREHOUSE HOLLOW
Just as they had promised Coach Winters, the Bedloe County Bears delivered the final victory of that football season, as well as the coveted mid-state championship.
Not that such an accomplishment was anything new for the elderly coach or the annually-changing team that he had commanded for nearly twenty years. Under the stern training and no-nonsense guidance of Bud Winters, the Bears had won every single game, both at home and abroad, as well as the midstate championship since the autumn of 1973. Exactly how such a feat was accomplished consistently, year after year, was debated by sports fans and neighboring high schools throughout the state of Tennessee.
Even some of the major colleges in the a
rea, such as Vanderbilt and UT in Knoxville, had attempted to analyze the mixture of skill and pure luck that seemed to bless Winters’ team of beefy farm boys on a puzzlingly regular basis. In fact, entire theses had been written by a number of graduate students, attempting to theorize exactly what the Bears possessed that no other high school team in the state seemed to. But, in actuality, no one really had a clue.
No one, that was, but the members of the team itself. Those strapping, young men who made up the ranks of the victorious Bears certainly knew what the motivation of their unequalled stamina on the gridiron and their infallible will to win was due to. And that magical motivation could, quite simply, be summed up in two words.
Whorehouse Hollow.
Unbeknownst to those who spent their free time debating the phenomenon of the Bedloe County Bears – from blue collar workers in sleazy honky-tonks to state senators at their posh and manicured country clubs – there was one factor and one factor only that made the team an unbeatable winner each and every season. And that factor was plain and simple horniness.
When fall training began on the football field of Bedloe County High every September, the inevitable pep talk was given. Coach Winters drummed the importance of team spirit, organization, and brute force into those young minds. The talk was taken patiently as always, the new members of that season’s team squirming on the risers of the wooden bleachers until that anticipated promise was made by the crabby, cigar-puffing coach. Then the old man would smile and give them what they had been waiting for. “Do it for me, boys,” Coach Winters would say, “Win that mid-state championship for me this year just like all the years before, and at the end of the season, you all will be rewarded. And I reckon you all know what that reward will be, don’t you?”
Snickers of dirty laughter and sly looks were always exchanged by the members of that year’s incarnations of the Bears. Yes, they all knew what the coach’s payment for a successful season of winning was. It had been the same for the past twenty years. A couple of cases of Budweiser … as well as a trip to Whorehouse Hollow.
For a team of teenaged boys with a field of wild oats to sow, such an offer of free beer and unlimited sex was enough to drive them toward an ultimate victory. And that current year, like every one before, proved to be no exception.
~ * ~
Boisterous laughter and shrill rebel yells echoed through the boys’ locker room following that final game, as well as words of congratulation and customary pats on the butt. The Bears had done it once again. They had annihilated the Crimshaw County Cougars, 28 to 0, and taken the mid-state championship, no contest.
A season’s worth of hard work had finally paid off. Now it was time to relax and enjoy the spoils that victory had netted them. Namely the night of debauchery that Coach Winters had promised them that first day at practice.
Among the eighteen seniors who gathered in the locker room, peeling off their sweaty, grass-stained uniforms and taking their turn in the showers, only one seemed to lack the air of excitement that the others shared. Tony Frazier, star quarterback of the Bears, sat on the bench in front of his locker. He grinned triumphantly and exchanged high-fives with his fellow teammates, but, inwardly, he was having second thoughts about the anticipated fulfillment of the coach’s promise.
Tony wasn’t like most of the Neanderthals who made up the ranks of the football team. Unlike them, he had a head on his shoulder, as well as high ambitions beyond the realm of the rural Tennessee high school. Tony was a straight-A student. He was bound to graduate with honors and, hopefully, with a football scholarship to one of the big Southern universities as well. Strangely enough, despite the longstanding winning streak that Bedloe County boasted, not one player in a span of twenty years had gone on to play college football. Tony couldn’t understand exactly why. It seemed like, when scholarships were being awarded at all the other high schools, the star players of the Bears always turned down the opportunity. The reason? Plain and simple apathy. After the big win, the members of the Bedloe County Bears always seemed to lose their drive. Just like the alumni before them, they graduated from high school and led dismal and lackluster lives. They either married too young, ended up with a passel of unwanted kids and spent their days working their fingers to the bone at some dead-end job, or ended up drinking themselves to death or landing in prison. Exactly why those gallant warriors of the gridiron succumbed to such paths was as much a mystery as their constant wins of decades past.
Tony Frazier vowed that he wouldn’t end up like that. He was going to march across the football field on graduation night, proudly accept that football scholarship from Principal Allen, and then go on to a future as a pro player. He wasn’t going to let the apathy that cursed most of the good old boys in BedloeCounty infect him. He was a lover of life and expected only the best for himself in the years to come.
As he finished undressing, he noticed his teammates as they entered and exited the stalls of the boy’s shower room. Most of them already sported raging hard-on’s in anticipation of the night to come. All they had on their minds were a couple of cans of Bud and a trip to the most infamous whorehouse in BedloeCounty.
Tony had heard the stories, passed down in whispers from upperclassmen the year before. The stories of Whorehouse Hollow and the old two-story mansion located deep in the depths of the woods south of town, and how the madam, Fanny Eldritch, and her twelve beautiful daughters awaited the wants and needs of the county’s horny men, willing to do the wants and needs of the county’s horny men, willing to do anything for only a few measly dollars. The pleasures that Whorehouse Hollow boasted were legendary. They said that Fanny and her girls knew everything imaginable about getting a man’s rocks off, and put that well-honed knowledge to good use. What they could do with their hands and mouths – as well as other bodily orifices – well, it just had to be experienced to be believed.
No wonder the Bedloe County Bears had enjoyed such a solid winning streak. Each and every new team that Coach Winters put together was enticed by the carnal pleasures that Whorehouse Hollow promised at the end of the season. The winning machine that made up the high school football team ran off of one chemical and one chemical alone. Pure, 100 percent testosterone.
Tony jumped when he felt a strong hand on his broad shoulder. He looked up to see Coach Winters standing over him. The elderly man grinned paternally down at the quarterback, grinding the butt of his Tampa Nugget cigar between the stubs of his tobacco-stained teeth. “Whatcha doing sitting here, Frazier?” asked the coach. “You’d best get in there and shower. You wanna be fresh and ready for all that hot tail you’re gonna find down there in the Hollow.”
“Yes, sir,” was all that Tony said. He forced a grin and left the bench. As he headed for the scalding spray of the showers, he looked back over his shoulder. Coach Winters continued to grin at him, hands in his pockets, his eyes like tiny black marbles beneath those bushy gray eyebrows. Something about the coach’s expression disturbed Tony. It was almost predatory in nature. He had seen it before, both during practice and in the heat of the actual game. The coach was a man who enjoyed winning at any cost, that was plain to see. And when the winning was over, Winters like to gloat.
The coach savored making the opposition feel as insignificant as a maggot in horseshit, while he himself felt ten feet tall and invincible.
As Tony found a vacant stall and began to soap himself up beneath the hot spray of the shower, he began to wonder if he could actually go through with that night’s secret trip to Whorehouse Hollow. He thought of his steady girlfriend, Pamela Sue Cripps, and began to feel a pang of guilt nag at him. Tony had gone with the pretty blonde since the start of the school year and he really cared for the girl a lot, maybe even loved her. One thing was for sure and that was that Tony saw more in Pamela Sue than any of the other girls he had dated in high school. In fact they had never made love. Their intimacy had never gone further than kissing or petting. She simply didn’t feel comfortable going all the way and Tony, resp
ectful of her feelings, had never forced the issue.
Now here he was on the verge of cheating on her with some whore he would encounter in some sleazy one-night stand. It just didn’t seem right. It seemed somehow dirty and shameful. But he certainly couldn’t make his feelings known to the other guys. They would rag him about his reluctance for the rest of the school year and he simply didn’t need that kind of hassle. As he began to lather his lower abdomen and legs, Tony felt himself become suddenly aroused. He closed his eyes and imagined how tonight would turn out. Although guilt cast its shadow his way, Tony was still a red-blooded teenage boy. His hormones kicked in and he fantasized about Fanny Eldritch and her voluptuous daughters. He imagined the paleness of creamy skin in the moonlight, the solidity of firm flesh and muscle against his body, and the warm wetness of lips and tongues teasing him, from head to toe.
Tony looked down at his crotch and saw that he had hardened, just like all the others. He fought hard to drive all thoughts of Pamela Sue from his mind. Just one night, he told himself as he stepped from the showered and vigorously toweled off. Hell, what could it hurt? She’ll never know.
“Let’s hurry it up, boys!” called Coach Winters from the locker room. “Fanny and her gals don’t like to be kept waiting!”
A cheer of primal lust went up from the ranks of the Bedloe County Bears. And, like it or not, Tony Frazier’s was among them.
~ * ~
A half hour later, they were on their way.
Coach Winters had borrowed one of the BedloeCounty school system’s big yellow buses to take them to their intended destination. After stopping off at a tavern called the Bloody Bucket and purchasing two cases of Budweiser tallboys, as promised, the coach headed the diesel due south along U.S. Highway 70.
After a few miles, fertile farmland gave way to dense forest. Without warning, Winters jerked the wheel to the left, pulling the bus onto a long stretch of uneven dirt road. “Next stop … Whorehouse Hollow!” he called out.