and he was pretty sure they were coming from upstairs. Even so, he didn’t want to miss something important, so despite his adrenaline and the urge to move quickly, he forced himself to remain quiet and not rush into anything.
The kitchen had two entrances other than the mudroom he’d come from. One of them opened onto what must have been a dining room, though there was no dining table present. The room was almost entirely bare. The only piece of furniture was an old china cabinet. It was made of hardwood, with glass doors on the front. A delicate design of swirls and spirals adorned the doors. Inside, stacks of dishes sat on the shelves. These were obviously not the dishes Cliff and Rodney actually used—those were dirty, in the kitchen sink. Jason could see the dust that coated everything inside the china cabinet, even from across the room.
Jason moved back through the kitchen to the other entrance. This opened into a large sitting room. An antiquated sofa and three very old armchairs were positioned in a semicircle in the center of the room. A dusty throw rug covered the floor in the center of that circle. A fireplace was set into the far wall, though no fire burned inside it. Behind the sofa, a staircase led up.
There was a half-closed door in the adjacent wall, and Jason pushed it open with his foot, holding the axe in both hands. What he saw was the bathroom he’d known was there, based on his exploration of the outside of the house. No one occupied it, though the light had been left on. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the bathroom. A sink, with a mirror above it, stood next to the toilet, which in turn stood next to the bathtub. All three were porcelain, chipped in places and showing rust in others.
Jason crept to the base of the stairs.
He listened intently, holding his breath, for a full minute. He thought he heard voices, but they were dim and unclear. Every few seconds he could hear the shuffling sound, as if someone was walking around in slippers without lifting their feet. The realization that Cliff might not be the only person in the house hit Jason with astounding force. It hadn’t even crossed his mind before. But what if he was up against two people instead of just one? Or three? Hell, what if there were ten guys up there, having a slumber party, playing Truth or Dare, and all of them ready to murder without a second thought? Jason’s blood seemed to coagulate in his veins and his heart skipped a beat. How could he be so stupid? He should’ve fled when he’d had the chance. Avenge his brother’s murder? What the hell had he been thinking?
He looked behind him, thought about leaving the way he’d come in, then decided against it. Yes, it was stupid. Yes, he realized he was probably going to die if there were other people up there with Cliff. But for some reason he felt an absurd sense of duty to the creatures who had freed him from that yoke. If he fled now, if he went back and got Valerie and they made a run for it, Cliff would take it out on those two little beasts. He would probably beat them within an inch of their lives, perhaps kill them. And Jason would be responsible. He couldn’t explain the feeling, he knew it was irrational, but he couldn’t turn his back on them after they’d risked their lives by setting him free.
Jason climbed the first stair. It was solid and did not creak or groan. He climbed to the second, then the third. The fourth stair did creak, but it was relatively quiet compared to the fifth, which screeched louder than a jet engine when Jason put his weight on it. Instinctively, Jason sprinted up the rest of the staircase. If whoever was up there had heard that squeak, it would be better if he was at the top than stuck somewhere in the middle when they discovered him.
At the top of the stairs Jason faced a long hallway. He expected burly men in flannel to converge on him from all directions, but no one appeared. But he could hear the noises better now, and he was sure they were voices. He still couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but he could hear two distinctly separate people. Neither one sounded like Cliff, but there was no way to be sure of that.
Jason moved stealthily down the hall. He came to a closed door and ignored it, choosing instead to continue to the door where he thought the voices were coming from. When he reached that one, also closed, he paused and listened, trying to determine the location of the people inside the room.
“And now it’s time for more medicine,” one voice said gaily. It was almost definitely a woman’s, and it sounded to Jason like an old woman. His hopes of survival increased a fraction. He was sure he could defeat an old woman if he needed to. “It’s been nearly an hour,” the voice continued, “and we wouldn’t want you to lose your power, would we? That’s what makes you great!” There was laughter in the voice, and merriment, but it still sounded cruel to Jason’s ears. What was going on in there?
“No,” the second voice replied. Jason couldn’t tell if it was male or female. “No, nonononono.”
“Yes yes yes,” the woman said, then cackled like an old crone.
“The pieces,” the second voice said, “no more pieces, no more… crawling…” Then Jason heard a gurgling sound as if the person was drowning in shallow water.
“Yes, crawling,” the old woman replied. Her voice was placating, as a mother with a young child. “Crawling, always with the crawling. Now open up.”
Jason could hear more shuffling, then a weak scream. The emotion behind the scream was clearly terror, but it wasn’t loud; if Jason had still been downstairs he wouldn’t have heard it at all.
“Stop struggling!” the woman’s voice said, losing its placating edge and suddenly sounding annoyed. “Keep your eyes open, you fucking lunatic!”
Jason figured it was as good a time as any to open the door. Hopefully both of the room’s occupants would be so absorbed in each other that they wouldn’t notice him right away. He grasped the doorknob, turned it, and pushed the door open a few inches, just enough to see through. When the sounds of the struggle continued unabated, he pushed the door open farther.
He saw a single twin-size bed against the far wall. There were no sheets or blankets on the bed, just a dirty, stained mattress. Lying on it was a naked, emaciated man; Jason could see his ribs poking through his skin, his cheeks were hollow, his arms and legs were nothing but bones with a thin layer of skin. His hands were shackled to the bedposts above his head, and his ankles were similarly bound at the foot of the bed.
Hunched over the man, with her back to Jason, was an elderly woman in a filthy housecoat. She was trying to hold the man’s head steady, but he shook it back and forth with such vehemence that she was having considerable difficulty. In her right hand she held an eyedropper full of clear liquid.
If these two people had been the only sights in the room, Jason would have rushed them immediately. Even as he stepped through the doorway his intention was to blindside these people and subdue them, even if that meant killing them. But he was stunned into inaction by the other things his eyes were trying to register. He didn’t understand what was being done, but it instinctively caused him to pause.
The naked man on the bed had an erection. Encasing his penis was a clear, plastic pump of some kind. What looked like a plunger inside the pump slowly rose and fell, creating a low sucking sound. There was rubber tubing protruding from the end, running across the floor and ending at a long workbench-type table set against the adjacent wall. On the table were numerous beakers and test tubes; it was a primitive laboratory of some sort. Many of them were filled with liquids, some clear and watery, others opaque or milky. Next to the conglomeration of containers was a large, shallow pan—about two inches tall and four feet square—with about an inch of viscous fluid covering the bottom. Jason could tell it was not water. The end of the tubing that ran from the man’s penis was clamped to the side of this pan, with the end of the tube obviously depositing its contents into it. The first thing that came to Jason’s mind was that the fluid in the pan was urine, but he dismissed that almost immediately; it was too thick, and almost transparent. Instantly following that thought was the idea that the pan was somehow full of the man’s semen; but that, too, seemed impossible, simply from the sheer amount.
Resting in the fluid were three large eggs. They were the size of footballs, and milky white.
Jason returned his gaze to the bed just as the old woman said, “There we are now, doesn’t that feel nice?” She had managed to hold the man’s head steady with her forearm, and she was squirting the contents of the eyedropper into his left eye, which she held open with two scabby fingers. “Yes, yes, power juice for dear old dad,” she continued.
Over her shoulder, the man noticed Jason; Jason could see the recognition in his eyes. It only took another second for the woman to notice the change in her captive. She whirled around, still wielding the eyedropper as if it were a weapon. It was empty now, but one fat drop of liquid formed at its end, almost in slow motion, and finally fell to the bare wood floor.
The woman’s face was a cornucopia of wrinkles, with two beady, black eyes peering out from within. But despite her age, Jason immediately saw the resemblance. This woman was Cliff and Rodney’s mother. There was no doubt in his mind. She looked so similar to the two men that Jason wondered for a split-second if there had been any genes besides her own in the pool. Then he glanced again at the man shackled to the bed and reconsidered.
They stared at each other for what seemed like ages. Jason still held the axe in both hands, the double blade up above his shoulder, the handle still coated with the gore from the previous carnage it had inflicted. The woman held the eyedropper, not flinching, not screaming, as if her weapon was just as deadly as his. There was utter silence in the room.
Finally, weakly, the man on the bed said, “Help me…please.” Those words broke the old woman’s paralysis.
She shrieked like a banshee, pulled one leg up like she was in a marching band, then promptly stomped it down on the floor and raised the other foot. She might have been preparing to dance a jig. “Home-wrecker!” she shouted. “Adulterer!” Her voice was very loud, unlike the captive man, and it carried. Jason wondered where Cliff was.
But still, he hesitated. Everything about this situation was baffling. She hadn’t shouted, “Axe-murderer,” or “Psycho,” or even “Intruder.” She’d called him a home-wrecker. What the hell did that mean?
And then the answer came to him, a sudden realization that allowed him to finally move. This woman had called him those things for one simple reason: she was utterly, unequivocally, batshit insane.
Jason moved swiftly, faster than he’d ever imagined he could. He didn’t think, he didn’t falter, he didn’t contemplate the moral justifications. He simply took three long strides, raising the axe above his head at the same time, his right hand sliding up the handle almost to the blade. And then he swung with all his might.
The old woman screeched, a witch-like howl, loud and piercing. And then the axe blade buried itself in her neck, slicing diagonally between her shoulder and her throat, and her screech turned into a hollow rasping sound. Jason wrenched it free and swung again. He was surprised at how easily he’d done it; he was even more surprised that it felt good. Since they’d stopped in the road for that bathroom break, oh so long ago, Jason had witnessed atrocities performed and revenge taken, but he had yet to dish out any himself. Now that it was happening, he reveled in it. He had no time to think about what that might mean; he only had time to swing the axe again.
Blood spewed and sinew dangled from the gaping wounds he was inflicting on the old woman. She was surely dead. Still, he had to force himself to stop swinging the axe. It was almost a thing outside of himself, his muscles responding to some sort of inherent wild rage, and it took all his willpower to slowly lower the axe to his side.
As soon as he did, his situation came crashing back down around him. This was an old woman he had just killed. Sure, she was probably evil; she was obviously the mother of two evil men, so she had some responsibility in that, not to mention the fact that she was keeping this man captive. But she wasn’t Jason’s real target. His real target was still roaming around somewhere, either in this house or back at the barn, and he was considerably more dangerous than some old lady, no matter how evil she might be.
Jason stepped across the room and quickly closed the door. That would at least give him a second or two of warning if Cliff barged in. He turned his attention back to the naked man on the bed. The man’s eyes were rolling about in their sockets, crazed and paranoid. He strained against the binds that held him to the bed.
Jason assessed the shackles quickly; they were nothing more than simple leather buckles, cinched tight. He moved to the edge of the bed, stepping over the still-bleeding carcass of the old woman. He rested the axe against the bed, leaned over, and unfastened the buckle holding the man’s left ankle, then his left wrist. The man lashed out, pushing Jason’s shoulder, scratching the side of his face. He kicked with his free leg, pounding the wall with his foot.
“Shhh,” Jason said, “be quiet!”
“You!” the man replied. His eyes were still rolling back and forth, up and down. “You!”
“Can’t you see I’m setting you free?” Jason whispered as he undid the buckle on the man’s right leg. “I’m helping you.”
The man continued to thrash about, but his movements were sluggish and weak. He smacked his lips. “They’re coming,” he said, almost inaudibly. Then louder, “They’re here to teach us all. Crawling!”
Jason had no idea what this guy was talking about. He was clearly just as insane as the woman had been. Still, this man was not his enemy. He unfastened the last shackle binding the man’s right hand.
When both of his hands were free, the man immediately reached down and grabbed the plastic pump attached to his penis. He yanked on it, but it barely moved. Jason could see the skin around the man’s groin stretching as he pulled on the pump. He gave it a few more tugs, grunting, and finally it pulled from his penis with a horrid popping noise. It sounded like one of those rolls of pre-made biscuit dough Jason’s mother used to buy. She’d take one from the fridge and twist it, squinting her eyes shut as she did, until it finally popped open, white blobby dough smooshing out the sides of the cardboard roll.
This sounded just like that. Except it wasn’t biscuit dough. It was this man’s dick.
Jason found himself wondering just how long that plastic pump had been attached, then realized that he really didn’t want to know and he pushed it from his mind.
He grabbed the axe again, then moved away from the man, tripping and almost falling over the lifeless head of the old woman. Her eyes stared up at him, already glossed over, but still accusing. He managed to keep his balance despite the steadily spreading pool of slippery blood he was now treading in.
The man sat up on the bed, slowly turning his body. He planted his bare feet on the floor, splashing in the blood. He looked down at them as if he’d never seen them before. Then his gaze shifted to the woman and he suddenly screamed.
He stood and began to kick the woman’s body, hooting and howling as he did. Just as suddenly as he started, he stopped. He squatted down beside her, his ass almost touching the floor, and poked the side of her rubbery face with his index finger.
“You’ll see all the pretty colors,” he said, his voice a fake falsetto of mockery. “You’ll hear the music of the world.” He paused. “And you’ll make beautiful babies.” He looked up at Jason. His eyes still shifted quickly back and forth and he continued to poke the old woman’s face. Jason couldn’t help but notice that his penis was still erect. “A few drops every hour and you’ll uncover all the secrets,” he continued, “you’ll peel back the veil of the Earth and lay bare the beauty within.” He stood again, his legs wobbly. Jason could see a darkness creep across his face. “They’re still crawling,” he whispered.
Jason didn’t know if he was supposed to respond. “What?”
The man didn’t reply. He returned his attention to the dead woman. He stood over her, straddling one foot on either side of her mangled body. Then he spit in her face.
“Fucking shitsucker fuck cunt!” he shouted. And then, to Jason’s surprise, he b
egan to cry. His body sagged and he fell. “They’re crawling!” he shouted through his tears. “Oh, God, a few drops and they’re crawling! Crawling!”
Jason didn’t know what to think. As he scanned the scene, he saw the eyedropper the woman had been holding. It had nearly rolled under the bed. What had it contained? This man was raving about drops. Surely he was referring to whatever had been in the eyedropper. An hallucinogen of some sort? Perhaps some homemade concoction of powerful LSD? Jason didn’t know, and he supposed it didn’t really matter. He needed to stop gawking at this man, pull his head together, and find Cliff. Before Cliff found him.
He thought of Valerie again. For a few moments, somehow, she’d managed to escape his mind. But now he thought of her out there in the barn, all alone, defenseless, and his adrenaline kicked back in. He turned toward the door, intending to leave the man and the dead woman to whatever fate found them, when he was stopped by the man’s voice again.
“Don’t let them live,” he said. “They crawl. My babies. Don’t let them live.”
Jason glanced back at him and saw that he was pointing. Jason’s eyes followed the man’s outstretched finger to the far corner of the room. Amidst all the commotion that had occurred since he’d stepped inside, Jason hadn’t noticed the cage in the corner. It looked like a rabbit hutch, and the things crawling around inside were about that size.
But these were no rabbits.
Jason gasped.
There were three of them moving around in there, three little bunny-sized monstrosities. They weren’t exactly like Colonel Cuddles and the other one, but Jason could see the similarities. One had that same circular maw of razor-sharp teeth, but it appeared to have no eyes at all. As Jason watched, it crawled aimlessly in the cage, bumping into anything in its path; it was blind. Another had the eyes that the first was missing, but it did not have the mouth and spinning teeth. This one only had two arms instead of four, making it look more human than the rest. The third looked very similar to Cuddles, except it was covered with coarse feathers of a dingy, yellowish shade. All three of the creatures moved about the cage constantly, as if searching for a way out.
“They mustn’t live,” the man said from his position on the floor.
Jason stared. Somehow, through whatever twisted science she’d been performing in here, the old woman had been creating these creatures. Obviously it was a process of trial and error. But did these little ones in the cage have the same intelligence
The Snow and The Darkness Page 16