The Devil Next Door (45 page)

“I don’t think we’re alone out here,” Earl said.

Something moved in the hedges and Louis did not even hesitate: he brought up the rifle, worked the bolt, and fired. There was nothing but the echo of his shot. No movement.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

Holding the rifle high, he led Earl away out to the sidewalk. He knew it wasn’t safe to stay in the house and it was no more safe out here.
They
were near and he could smell them: the stink of oily hides and wet dogs. Something moved across the street. Louis hesitated. Something moved behind a parked car. He fired, taking out the windshield. Earl turned to him, mouth opened to say something…but then he grunted and stumbled forward. There was a sharpened spear shaft jutting from his lower back. Blood filled his mouth and he made a gurgling sound and went to his knees.

Louis fired a shot.

He heard a whooshing sound.

He turned, made ready to fire again and his head exploded with stars. The rifle fell from his hands. When he opened his eyes he was flat on his back on the sidewalk. He could hear Earl gasping. But he paid no attention to that. Because somebody was standing over him. They smelled of urine, meat, and shit.

At first he thought it was a monster. Some horrible, walking cadaver that had forced its way out of a muddy grave. But it wasn’t that. It was a woman…or something like one with huge breasts and an axe in her hands. Her flesh was clotted, lumpy, white as bone, glistening. That’s when he knew that she had covered herself in slimy white clay or maybe ash. She had coated herself with it and slicked back her hair, giving her the appearance of a bloodless wraith. Bright red diagonal bands at the mouth and eyes contrasted this. He could see the yellow of her teeth which had been filed sharp, the shining orbs of her eyes. She wore a necklace of fur which he soon realized were maybe a dozen human scalps sewn into a garment.

The stench of her.

The absolute obscenity.

He tried to move, but his head was spinning. Two other women—younger, thinner, breasts like small cones—stepped out of the gloom. They were smeared with ghostly white ash, too. One carried a sling which had propelled the rock into Louis’ head. The other stepped over to Earl, planted her foot in the center of his back and yanked out the spear. Earl screamed and she stabbed him three times in the throat.

I’m next…they’re gonna kill me next.

This is what Louis thought as he hovered at the edge of unconsciousness. They gathered around him for the killing. The older woman crouched down by him, running her hands over him. When one of the younger girls groped at his crotch, she slapped her hand away and hissed at her like a snake.

“Mine,” she said.
“Mine…”

73

The Baron was scalping his prey.

The body of a man was facedown in the grass. The Baron—or Mr. Chalmers as he had once been known—was kneeling on his shoulders. He pressed the lethal, razored edge of his K-Bar knife just behind the man’s left ear and slit along the back of his skull, above the right ear and along the forehead/scalp line and back to his original incision. Then he peeled the scalp free from the skull with no little exertion, holding it up for all to see.

The pack howled like animals.

They screeched.

They bayed at the moon high above.

The Baron wiped his bloody fingers on his sleeveless fox coat, then he tossed the scalp to the pack. They fought wildly over it. And as they did so, the Baron cut off the man’s ears and then, punching holes in the cartilage with the tip of his knife, threaded them onto his necklace.

He had six sets on there thus far.

He told them he would fill the necklace by morning and the greatest hunter among them would be awarded the necklace of ears as a symbol of their stealth and ferocity. For amongst the pack, these were the things admired the most.

A pair of young boys came running back into the yard. The Baron had sent them scouting for new prey. They were breathless, filthy things who wore only pants and both carried long-bladed hunting knifes on makeshift slings around their necks. The Baron heard them out, his black-striped face grim, impassive. It would be his decision.

“Lead us,” he told them.

The pack howled in honor of the blood sport to come. Then, maintaining the pack discipline that the Baron had told them was so very important, they quieted down and there was only the sound of a summer night. Crickets. A light breeze in the high boughs of the oaks. And in the distance, the screams and war cries of other packs as they raided from neighborhood to neighborhood.

The Baron’s pack moved out in single file with flank guards to either side and the two boys taking point far ahead. Soon there would be scalps for all…

74

The girl was broken.

The ritual began.

The Huntress watched the clan seize the girl, take hold of her and drag her from the shadows where she cowered. She did not fight at first. She was becoming of the clan, but she still acted stupid and helpless like prey. Her brain was not yet the brain of a hunter.

But soon.

Soon she would hunt with them.

The Huntress was certain of it. Because just as she could smell fear or the telltale scent trail of other hunters, she could smell what was going on inside the girl. The more like them the girl became, the more her blood ran hot and bright.

At my side. When you have proven yourself, you will hunt at my side.

Then she could wear the paint of the skull, but not before. Only the ones the Huntress selected were given this privilege. Her inner circle.

The men wanted to have the girl, of course. Many of them. They could smell her ripeness and hers was a fruit they wished to pluck so very sweet and juicy was it. But she had been broken by the one the Huntress chose. That was enough. For now. The others would not have her nor the women who wished her for sport. This one was special and she belonged to the Huntress and none dared violate that taboo. The Huntress had other reasons for wanting the girl. She was somehow connected to the man and the Huntress desired to have the man.

But he was sly.

He was cunning.

She would use the girl as bait.

Even now, the Huntress could hear his strange, mystical words:

Come over here, Michelle. I’m your husband. I love you. I won’t let them hurt you.

The Huntress did not understand what he said exactly, but she knew there was a special meaning to those words. The pain and depth of emotion in the man had been all too apparent. And his voice, what he said and
how
he said it…it had touched something in her, made her feel warm, weak, and soft. And so she had set the clan upon him before they smelled her uncertainty.

The girl cried out in pain.

The clanswomen had thrown a rope over the naked beams above and, tying the girl’s wrists, were hoisting her up by them. The girl was crying out. Her wrists were raw from the other ropes she had been tied with, the skin scraped red. A trickle of blood ran down her left forearm.

“
Let it begin,” the Huntress told them.

This was the ritual. The Huntress remembered it from another time and that time seemed to be long ago. When she tried to recall it, everything was dim and misty and what faces she could see were not faces she recognized,
yet
she was certain that she knew them. And well. No matter. The ritual was ancient and correct. It was a test for a true warrior maiden. If the girl did not cry and whimper like an infant, if she withstood the ordeal, then she would hunt with them.

If not, there were the men.

Then the women and their skinning knives.

It started with sticks from the fire. Once the ends were blazing hot, the women withdrew them and, chanting archaic words under their tongues, they spun the girl so that she twisted on the rope and as she rotated, they jabbed her with the hot sticks. The blazing ends hissed as they sank into her pale white skin. She would forever be marked and forever remembered for this. None that looked upon her would doubt her courage or importance.

The Huntress knew that some died during the ritual.

It was unfortunate, but necessary. If this one died, her ghost would be released from the shell of her body and would be angry. It would seek vengeance as ghosts often did. Young ghosts were always angry.

The girl did not beg for mercy or even whimper during the burning. She just twisted on her rope from bloody wrists, her eyes glazed over and staring. The women were angered by their inability to break her. They took up branches and whipped her mercilessly, drawing blood, tearing open the burned pink flesh until red creeks ran down the girl’s belly and legs.

The Huntress raised her hand and she was cut free.

The women now knotted her hair and tied it tight with the rope. Again, the girl was hoisted above. The man had sticks in their hands. As they passed, they swatted her with them. And when they were finished, they urinated on her.

She was left to hang like that.

Maybe for hours…

75

The tribe moved through the shadows, the dappled moonlight from intertwined tree branches overhead enhancing the red and green serpentine stripes covering their naked bodies.

Angie, with Kathleen at her side, two hunters cast ahead, led them.

Dawn was hours away yet, but until then they would hunt. For the tribe lived, breathed, and was of the hunt. Without it they were nothing. It was their blood and soul and purpose. Without it they would be no better than any other pack of animals rooting in the dirt for grubs and worms. The hunt gave them focus, it gave them reason, it was the blood in their veins. Angie knew instinctively that her kind rose above the beast of the field
because
of the hunt.

When dawn came, they would slink back to their lair and sleep away the daylight hours like the rest, waiting for darkness.

But for now, they hunted. Being that they were more than predators, but creatures of opportunity, scavengers even, they were following another hunting clique. The one led by the old man in the animal skins. He had an army of children following him. They were raiding from neighborhood to neighborhood, killing and slaughtering and laying waste. The tribe followed along because the pickings were so good
and
out of sheer curiosity.

There was another reason, of course.

And that reason was Angie’s and hers alone.

The old man. He was an excellent hunter, a great leader, savage, bloodthirsty, and exceptionally cunning. Angie learned many things just watching how the old man led his raids. His hunters were very well disciplined.

She respected and feared him.

She emulated him.

She wanted to kill him.

Yes, that’s what she really wanted because that’s how it was done. When you killed another, drank their blood and feasted on their meat, you
absorbed
what they were. Their strength, their wisdom, their spirit became part of you. Angie knew as her ancestors had known that the center of it all, the nucleus of the being, was the heart itself.

She would kill the old man with one well placed arrow. Then she would bathe in his blood. And lastly, while the others fought over the tidbits, bones, and sweet meats, she would carve out the old man’s heart and eat it raw, filling herself with his spirit and vitality. For the heart was the center of the all, the hub of deeper mystery, the pulsing artery to the beyond. And when she had eaten it and filled her veins with his cruel potency and thrumming life force, then she would skin him and wear his flesh as a garment…