Terror Town (41 page)

Cathy didn’t answer. She kept screaming and crying and holding William’s corpse close to her body.

Her high-pitched voice was annoying, and before long Nicolas decided enough was enough. He turned away from her, walked up six steps and looked into his cupboard. He put his hand on the hedge clippers, then he touched the blowtorch, and finally he decided on the sledgehammer. The sledgehammer was good. It was sturdy and heavy. Too bad there wasn’t much room in the cellar to use it.

He lifted the tool and made his way down the stairs, approaching his plaything with evil on his mind. He grabbed her bony ankle and dragged her from the corner. His beady eyes were slightly askew behind his glasses, making him look crazier than ever.

Cathy screamed louder, holding William’s corpse like her life depended on it. It didn’t; the corpse couldn’t help her. What she needed to do was beg for Nicolas’ forgiveness, and even that wouldn’t be enough.

Nicolas pulled her into the center of the room. The corpse slipped from her remaining fingers and a moment later Nicolas released her. As she flopped to the ground, writhing in mental agony, he positioned himself above her, holding the sledgehammer––not in a traditional way, but the way an executioner would hold his battle-ax while waiting for the condemned man to arrive––with the mallet at his feet, not over his head. And when he raised it up, he raised it to his waist, balancing it above Cathy’s teeth.

Cathy was on the floor, squirming and laughing, screaming with her eyes opened very wide. Something changed inside her mind and she looked right at him, right into his face with knowing awareness. She howled like an animal, saying, “SHE GOT AWAY! OLIVE GOT AWAY! YOUR PUMPKIN IS
GONE
, NICOLAS! SHE’S GONE, GONE,
GONE!”

Nicolas continued holding the business end of the sledgehammer a foot and a half over her face. It swayed left and right like a pendulum. He said, “What did you say? What!? How dare you speak to me like that! She’s not gone! She’s not gone! She’s mine, you hear me? Mine!”
 “SHE’S GONE, SHE’S GONE, SHE’S G-O-N-E! OH, YOU STUPID MISERABLE PSYCHOTIC FUCKER, SHE’S GONE AND SHE’S NEVER COMING BACK! NOT NOW! NOT EVER! SHE ESCAPED YOU! YOUR
BABY
ESCAPED YOU!”

“Don’t say that! Don’t you
ever
say that––!”

“I’M SAYING IT YOU STUPID PRICK! OH LORD, I’M SAYING IT!”

“I’ll kill you!”

“DO YOU THINK I CARE? I
WANT
YOU TO KILL ME! DON’T YOU KNOW THAT? I WISH YOU HAD DONE IT YEARS AGO! KILL ME! KILL ME, YOU PATHETIC PIECE OF SHIT! DO IT! DO IT NOW BEFORE I GET UP AND WALK OUT OF HERE THE WAY PUMPKIN DID!”

“You’re not going anywhere!”

“KILL ME YOU BASTARD! I DARE YOU TO!”


Nicolas heard enough. His hands were shaking. His nostrils were flared. His knuckles were turning white from holding the wooden handle so tight.

Raising the sledgehammer another two inches, he screamed, “YOU WANT ME TO DO IT? YOU WANT ME TO KILL YOU? OKAY
BITCH
! I’LL DO IT! IF THAT’S WHAT YOU WANT I’ll GIVE IT TO YOU! I’LL KILL YOU RIGHT HERE AND NOW! HERE IT IS BITCH! HERE IT IS, RIGHT IN YOUR FUCKING FACE!”

∞∞Θ∞∞

5:37 am. Nicolas mashed the mallet into her eyes, crushing her skull like a beer can. He raised the weapon up and slammed it down again. Cathy’s head cracked open. Blood, brains and bone rolled free. Legs trembled. Hands flinched. Her nightmare ended, and the next time Nicolas hit her she was already dead. But that wasn’t enough to stop him from smashing his fury into her empty shell until her head looked like mush. Nothing would stop him. And when he finally grew tired of beating her with the hammer he kicked her four times and threw the weapon across the room.

6

5:40 am. Nicolas stormed his way upstairs. He was furious! He wanted to kill everyone, everywhere––right now! This was shit! Complete fucking donkey shit! How did Pumpkin escape? How did she get out of the house? It made him so MAD! He felt like sticking his hand into a blender and turning the knob to mince. Maybe
that
would ease his thinking. Maybe
that
would make things better.

After stomping through the house, he kicked his way into his laboratory and considered slamming together a mix of sulfuric acid and nitric acid right then and there, real fast like. But building nitroglycerin wasn’t something you ‘slammed’ together when you were pissed off at your babies. He was mad and crazy, but not mad enough and crazy enough to try something like that.

“FUCK!” He screamed. “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!” He tore a handful of hair from his head and cracked his knuckles against his ears. “HOW DO YOU BUILD NITROGLYCERIN? ONE PART SULFURIC ACID AND ONE PART NITRIC ACID! HOW DO YOU MAKE DYNAMITE? THREE PARTS NITROGLYCERIN, ONE PART DIATOMACEOUS EARTH AND A SMALL FUCKING ADMIXTURE OF SODIUM CARBONATE! AND HOW DO YOU BLOW UP THE TOWN? YOU PUT DYNAMITE IN EVERY HOUSE AND SET THE WORLD ON FIRE!” Nicolas clomped out of the bedroom, balled his hand into a fist and punched a hole in the wall. “FUCK!”

He went into his bedroom, tore off his robe and kicked off his slippers. He threw on pants without underwear, shoes without socks, and a white golf shirt that had a snappy green alligator above the left breast. He combed his hair real nice and checked his teeth in the mirror. They were clean, but not clean enough. He entered the bathroom, brushed his teeth and clipped his fingernails, making sure they were rounded and spotless. After that he shaved and applied a generous amount of aftershave. Perfect. He looked like a lunatic.

Reaching into his pocket he found his keys sitting next to a stick of gum. He pulled the gum from his pocket and tossed it on the floor.

A new idea came: he hustled his ass to the basement, pulled the chainsaw from the cupboard and grabbed the sledgehammer from the corner of the room. He took both items upstairs and blasted his way outside.

∞∞Θ∞∞

5:45 am. The morning was beautiful in Cloven Rock. The sunshine was bright, the air moved with a gentle wind and no matter which way you looked, the day seemed absolutely gorgeous. But Nicolas wasn’t looking at the beauty of the landscape; he was looking at his car and thinking about the bitch inside the trunk. With an ugly smirk he squeezed the sledgehammer in his left hand. Then his smirk became a sneer and with his right hand, he lifted the chainsaw high.

Chainsaw
.

He dropped the sledgehammer, flicked the saw’s safety switch and yanked on the cord. The machine came to life, easily and without delay.

“Big Beth!” His voice was barely heard over the roar of the spinning blade. “You in there? Are you? I got something for you! Here comes a big fat surprise!”

Nicolas didn’t have time to fuck around. He didn’t have time to make the most of the situation and enjoy the subtleties of the terror he was about to inflict. It was time to kill people, simple as that. He was about to rip the town a new asshole, starting with that rotten whore he had stashed away.

Holding the saw tight, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his keychain. He shuffled the keys through his fingers until he found the appropriate one. The key entered the lock. His wrist turned. He heard a CLICK and the trunk was unlocked.

Then came a big fat surprise all right: Beth kicked the trunk with her knees and the trunk flew open. Almost comically, it nearly bounced shut.

Beth squealed.

The
last
thing she needed was a surprise attack that started and finished with her getting locked in the trunk again. It was almost funny but holy hell, it wasn’t. She stuck her knees up just in time and the trunk lid bounced into them.

“Look at you!” Nicolas screamed as Beth worked her body into a sitting position. “Look! Coming out swinging, are you? Do you know what you look like?”

Beth felt like she had spent six weeks living inside a used coffin. Her hair was wet, her face was dirty and her eyes were glossy and red. She had bugs crawling on her skin and maggots in her hair. Her lips were dry, turning white and starting to crack. She was dehydrated. Her arm was bloody and mangled, with a wound that was getting more infected by the minute. And she stank. Oh boy, did she ever. She smelled like Pauline Anderson’s corpse, fresh urine and old sweat mixed together in a tub of compost. On top of everything else, she was scared; it was easy to see. Her eyes were wide, her teeth were clamped together and her muscles were as tight as a hangman’s rope.

Do you know what you look like?
he had asked. Truth was: yeah, she supposed she did. She looked like a woman that had tasted hell, a woman with nothing left to lose, a woman that had spent the night in the trunk of a madman’s car, lying next to a dead body, wondering if she’d ever see her family again. She wasn’t happy about it, not one little bit. And she wasn’t going down easy; she wasn’t going to give up living without a fight.

Beth lifted the crowbar as high as she was able. She said, “Back!”

Nicolas started shouting: “Oh, you want to play do you? Okay bitch! We can play! We can play all morning long! I haven’t had breakfast yet… how about you? Did you get something to eat while you were in there? Did you break off a little piece of Pauline Stupid-Head for a late-night snack? Yum! Pauline tastes good, yes? She tastes good to me, you fat fucking cow. Her fingers taste like steakhouse ribs!”

Beth didn’t hear much of what Nicolas was saying; the chainsaw was too loud and piercing. She understood the gist of it though: Nicolas was explaining that he was crazier than a hen-house fox and he was going to chop her into pieces. Simple.

She swung the crowbar wildly. “Stay back I say! Back!”

Nicolas moved a little closer and revved on the engine. “What’s that? You want me to saw your face off? I can. Won’t be a problem. I can saw off your arms and legs off too.”

“Get the hell away from me!”

Nicolas’ glasses sat low on his nose, threatening to fall from his face. He didn’t seem to notice, or care. His focus was firmly directed on Big Beth, the ugly man-dyke with a neck like a tree trunk and a head like a bowling ball.

He smiled with good reason: he was happy. A moment ago he was furious but bingo-bango––things had changed. Just looking at that stupid tub of mule piss was a knee-slapper. She looked like an over-the-hill babysitter trying to extinguish a house fire with a glass of pudding. Where did her smart talk go? Where was her existentialism philosophy when she needed it? Apparently her Mother Teresa attributes evolved into a big brown loaf of underwear-munchies once she became bed-buddies with a corpse.

“Hey Einstein,” Nicolas said, revving the motor louder. “Why don’t you sweet talk the chainsaw?”

Beth felt a cold chill creep down her spine. She needed out of the trunk, otherwise she was a goner.

She put a hand on the trunk’s casing and shuffled her legs around so she was kneeling. Now her head was touching the trunk door and her feet were pressed against Pauline’s corpse. She didn’t care about the corpse. Not now. The bugs, maggots, flies and rotting flesh meant nothing at this point. The girl was dead. It was bad but she was over it. And she was alive. Bugs and maggots could be washed away, memories could be suppressed, and without a doubt, she had bigger things to worry about than the creepy-crawlies nesting on her skin.

Beth’s eyes shifted; she caught a glimpse of the white van. Then her eyebrows lifted and she looked up.

“Oh my––”

There was something on the roof––big, black and loaded with legs. It had a dozen mouths and was roughly half the size of riding lawnmower.

7

5:48 am. The crab-critter crawled down the wall and onto the porch. Its mouths opened and closed in unison.

Nicolas saw Beth’s eyes shift towards the monster and he decided to make the most of the moment. He lifted the chainsaw high and came at her quickly.

For one terrible flash Beth thought her life was over. It wasn’t. She lifted the crowbar up and the spinning blade crashed into it. Sparks shot into the air as he pressed the saw towards her, putting muscle into it. If she couldn’t hold her ground he’d chop her into hamburger patties for sure.

And it was going to happen. Oh God, it was going to––

Nicolas stepped back and pulled the saw away. The sparks stopped flying.

He was laughing now. Laughing, but his face was pinched into an expression of pure hate. The two facades made him look like he might turn the saw against himself and like it.

Beth snuck another glimpse.

The creature from Daniel’s basement was smaller than the one that tried to break through the trap door, but it was just as ugly. Its mouths opened slowly and snapping shut fast. Bulbous eyes were unmoving. Long pink tongues, not unlike the tongues of lizards, flicked the air. Long, limber stalks tickled the area around it.

The trap door must be broken
, she thought.
That big mamma escaped and brought a few friends outside with it.

Nicolas realized that Beth was
honestly
looking at something behind him. He was surprised; at first he thought she was bluffing, which seemed like a straightforward line of defense. What else could the bitch do aside from bluff her way free? He had a chainsaw and she was geared up to change a flat tire. Bluffing was her only move, wasn’t it? He thought so. But when he saw the look in her face––in her eyes––he knew she wasn’t pretending. There
was
someone behind him. He’d bet the farm on it. And who, he wondered, would that
someone
be?