The Devil Next Door

By

Tim Curran

“
Man is a predator with an instinct to kill and

a genetic cultural affinity for the weapon.”

—
Robert Ardrey

“
Human aggression is instinctual.”

—
Konrad Lorenz

Prologue

Somebody had painted the walls with their own feces.

The naked man sat there on the floor, his body a map of bruises and contusions, and smiled at this. His skin was crusty with blood. Some of it was his own and some of it belonged to others. He could tell by the taste. He stared at the walls, licking the salt off his fingertips, trying to make sense of the elaborate graffiti of fingerpainted shit on the wallpaper around him.

Somebody marked this place with their own filth so they could smell it, find it even in the dark.

He wondered what all the childish scrawls might mean, sensing there was important ritualistic symbolism behind them. They seemed familiar. Like maybe once, perhaps as a child, he’d painted a room like this, smeared shit on the walls to marks it as his lair.

What if whoever did this came back?

There was a knife. He looked at it, marveled at the dark stains on it. Sniffing them, he remembered each one.

He put the knife away and went to the window.

The sun was up, all the night things retreated back into their holes. There were wrecked cars in the streets. Several bodies were sprawled on the pavement. One of them didn’t have a head. Two others, a man and woman, had been arranged so it looked as if they were copulating. Whoever did that had a sense of humor.

He sat back on the floor, running fingers through his grimy hair.

There was a corpse in the corner and a collection of knives. A fine nest of leaves and sticks and boughs. The scent on them was female and familiar.

He smelled the shit on the walls. It was a fine, earthy smell. The sort of smell that made one comfortable, relaxed, grounded to nature. Not fighting against it, but
part
of it. There was serenity to be had in a lair decorated with feces. He thought about the girl and wondered where she was. If he found her again he would claim her. For it was his right and he had fought for that right.

There was grit on his teeth. A bit of something tasty wedged in his molar. Licking and sucking, he worked it free, sucking the juice from whatever it was, and swallowing it. He sat there, hugging himself, humming a low melody under his breath. The stench of his own sweat and pungent body odor made him feel strong. Later, he would piss on the walls, the chairs, so all that came here would know this place was now his.

The ripe stink of a man’s bodily excretions was all he really had in this world. His true fingerprint and it was important to spread them around, mark territory and conquests. Others would smell them and know him.

There was something under a rocking chair.

He crawled over there and seized it.

Meat.

He sniffed it and licked it, not knowing where it came from or how it had come to be there. It was salty and gamy smelling.

He put it in his mouth, chewing.

And waited for the girl…

1

Friday the Thirteenth…

Greenlawn, Indiana. The high, hot outer edge of summer. Louis Shears breathed in deep, let that pure green heady aroma fill him to bursting. He could smell freshly cut grass, azaleas in full glowing bloom, hot dogs sizzling on backyard grills…and then something else that stopped him, disturbed him, passed through his mind like an ugly dark cloud: blood. Just a momentary psychic whiff of it, but one so strong he could feel it churning down in his guts.
Blood.
The blood of the town. A blood that was rich and vibrant, almost seductive.

Then it was gone.

He just shook his head as people will do, dismissing it.

And dismissing it mainly because he did not know what was about to happen. That good old Greenlawn, Indiana—like the rest of the world that was old but not nearly so good—was poised at the brink of a pit of absolute yawning blackness.

But back to summer.

Back to clean air and green grass and cars sudsed in driveways and kids on skateboards and the long tanned legs of young ladies pumping away in short shorts. Little pink houses for you and me, smiling children and happy faces, clean fresh-scrubbed places. The American dream. Condensed.

Louis had the afternoon off and the weekend was stretched out before him fat and slothful like a plump tabby sunning itself. He’d landed two new accounts over at CSS, the steel vendor he was a sales rep at. All seemed right with the world. He was looking forward to a lazy Saturday morning of yard work followed by an afternoon nap, maybe brunch with Michelle over at Navarro’s on Sunday. And tonight? Well, they were celebrating.

In the backseat of his little Dodge were two nice seasoned porterhouse steaks, a couple baked potatoes, a bottle of Asti Spumante.

After the meal, Louis figured, maybe they’d jump in the hot tub, have a glass of wine or two, and get naked.

These were the things going through Louis’ mind in a happy rhythm as he turned the Dodge onto Tessler Avenue, saw a couple walking hand in hand down the sidewalk beneath the spreading oak branches. It was a warm, muggy day as late August always was in those parts and he had his window open, his arm hanging out. He could smell the thick green odor of clotted vegetation on the riverbank. In the powder blue sky he saw a couple gulls winging past, a kite skimming against the fluffy white clouds. It was just the sort of day to be alive and to be happy. The sort of day you wanted to wave and smile at people.

He saw Angie Preen pass on the walk pushing a baby carriage. Her sapphire eyes sparkled in the sunlight, long autumn chestnut hair swept back in a ponytail. It swished from shoulder to shoulder, keeping time with the admirable jiggle of her bosom. She waved. Louis waved. Angie. Single-mother, but proudly so. Independent, strong, reliable. Came from good stock, as they liked to say in Greenlawn at baked bean suppers and church socials when the lives of anyone and everyone were examined like rare old pottery, checked fastidiously for inconsistencies and flaws.

Ah, Angie. Louis had always thought that if he hadn’t hooked up with Michelle, then Angie and he might—

Then reality as he remembered the envelope sitting on the seat next to him.

The check for the car insurance. Michelle had given it to him two days before to mail and as was his way, he’d simply forgotten. Forgotten the way he sometimes forgot things.

He spotted a blue iron mailbox up Tessler and pulled to a stop. He got out, whistling under his breath, and dropped the letter in.

Then he glanced down the street.

A primer gray sedan pulled to a stop and two men with baseball bats hopped out. There was a teenage boy standing there, a paperboy, his sack dangling limply over his shoulder by a neon orange strap. The men spoke with him, laughed, and the boy followed suit. A perfectly ordinary exchange, it seemed, but Louis was suddenly disturbed. The sky suddenly seemed not blue but iron gray and there was a chill on the breeze. He could still smell the freshly-cut grass and river bottoms, but now they did not smell of life and growing things, but of rank sun-washed death.

Blood.

He smelled it again.

Louis stood there, something expanding in his chest.

The two men laughed again and swung their bats at the kid.

He went down with a strangled moaning sound. They’d caught him in the belly and the hip. For one split second they stood over him and then they started swinging again. Suddenly, the air was split with the meaty sounds of wood impacting flesh and the kid’s wavering screams. The bats kept coming down and Louis plainly heard the splintering of bones.

It all happened in the span of ten seconds.

And like anyone faced with random, extreme violence, Louis’ initial reaction was one of disbelief and even skepticism. This was not happening. These two guys— perfectly ordinary-looking guys—were not beating the shit out of a paperboy with Louisville Sluggers. It was a gag, a joke. Surely there was a camera rolling nearby. Some director would shout, “CUT!” and the two guys would help the kid up, all of them laughing about it.

But that did not happen and the screams coming from the kid’s mouth were surely not play-acting. The men stood there looking at the kid, the ends of their bats stained red. They were laughing.

They just beat the fuck out of that kid and now they’re laughing.

Laughing.

It was at this impossible juncture that something shattered inside Louis because he realized that this was the real thing. Then he was running, running as fast as he could towards the kid and the two men. He had no idea what it was he thought he was going to do when faced with two psychos with baseball bats, but something inside compelled him to intervene.

By the time he got near enough to see the kid and the red pool expanding around him, the two men had already hopped into their car. It passed Louis at a casual speed—a primer gray sedan with a wired-up front bumper and a shattered rear window, a UNION YES! sticker on the trunk—and the two men smiled at him and waved, kept on driving like they were just on their way to the store to grab a six-pack and had not just viciously beaten a paperboy with baseball bats.

Louis thought of chasing the car, but instead he memorized the plate number, and went to the kid.

“Oh Christ,” he said when he got a good look at him.

He was curled up like a dying snake, the femur of his right leg poking through his pant leg. His left knee was shattered, the leg twisted off at a crazy angle. His right arm was like some lumpy purple contusion and his face was swelling to the point that it was nearly impossible to make out his features. His head looked like some garish, knobby Halloween pumpkin capped by spiky tufts of blonde hair.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Louis heard his own voice say.

There was blood everywhere…soaked into the kid’s clothes, spreading onto the sidewalk, running from his mouth and ears and eyes. Louis saw a bunch of white things on the walk and realized they were the kid’s teeth.

“Don’t move,” Louis told him, caught between the need to cry and the need to throw up. “I’ll…I’ll get an ambulance.”

But as he turned to run back to the Dodge for his cell, the kid grabbed his ankle with a bloody hand, the pinkie of which was broken and nearly turned right around in its socket. He lifted his head up and vomited out a spray of blood and bile, his entire body jerking, making a sucking, sticky sound as it convulsed in its own pool of blood. Louis just looked down at him, disgusted and afraid and too many other things he was not even aware of. The top of the kid’s head was shattered, plates of bone sticking up like shards of glass. You could see his brain in there, lots of blood. A trickle of clear fluid ran down his face.