Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

It got quiet then, and I looked through the chink. They were both lying there, and it wasn’t pretty, and I started thinking about what an absolute whore Pete Waitkus was, and I’da bet dollars to donuts that Alan Lomax never would’ve done nothing like that for a lousy song.

It was almost like Pete heard me thinking, bringing him back to square one, because he said, “Now… now will you sing for me?”

And she did. She started with that shortened fourth verse, and I’m not gonna try and sound like her because there’s no way, but it was all high and airy, not as screechy as before, but just plain spooky…

She paused for a second, and I thought, oh shit, that’s all. She screwed Pete twice tonight. But then she went on, and it was the money shot…

Damn me, yes. We were getting there, all right. Nobody’d ever heard that one before. She started on the chorus…

Then I heard a rustling, shuffling kind of sound that seemed to be outside with me, and when I turned my head I froze. Up toward the front of the cabin there were some people walking. I counted four shapes in the moonlight, one after another. They were moving slow, but like they knew where they were headed.…

The two shorter ones had on long skirts, and the two tall ones were wearing pants, so I figured two men and two women, but when they went through the door and I saw them in the candlelight, they could’ve been anything. What was left of their hair was long and straggly, and if the old woman on the floor was a little long in the tooth, then these four had already had the worms at them. And that’s not just a figure of speech.

Then the old woman says, “It’s time for the last verse,” and she puts on her dress, thank God, pulls it over her head as fast as a young woman might, and quick gets on her feet while the others surround Pete, who’s still naked.

The two in pants reach down and grab him, one by his legs and the other by his arms, and pick him up like a baby. They go outside with him, moving fast now, toward that pole in the forks of two trees that I thought was the frame for a swing. The one man drops the top half of Pete’s body and the other one hauls up on the legs so he’s got Pete’s feet up in the air, one on either side of the pole. Then one of the women sticks Pete through the back of both ankles — Jesus, did he squeal — with a long wooden stake sharpened on both ends, and before I can shut my jaw, they got him hanging head-down from the pole, and I realize that it ain’t no swing. It’s a pole for slaughtering hogs.

I fumbled for the gun in my pants and started to pull it out, but it got caught, and before I could free it, the old woman started to sing again. It was the last verse. Oh Jesus, was it ever, and now her voice sounded almost sweet. And this is what she sang…

Then one of the men cut Pete’s throat.

I knew it was too late, my hand on the gun slumped. The blood just poured out of him, and one of the women caught it in a wooden bowl. He kept moving for a while, but he was dead. I couldn’t have saved him. I keep telling myself that, and I hope it’s the truth.

Then they did what she said they’d do in the song. And I could only crouch there in the shadows and watch, afraid to move, praying the moon wouldn’t light me up. Hell, I didn’t know what they were, I didn’t know if I even could shoot them, if it’d do any good. It wouldn’t do Pete any good, that was for sure.

After they got done with Pete — taking what they wanted from him — they went into the cabin, and they ate and drank like the song said, and I was still too scared to move, to make a sound. But after a while the sounds inside the cabin, like pigs eating from a trough, they stopped, and it got quiet, and it was darker too. I’d just started to move when I heard the old woman’s voice — at least I think it was hers. It sounded different, soft but… stronger . It was singing.

It was singing a final chorus, a chorus that maybe nobody outside this hollow had ever heard.

When it was finished, I looked into the cabin through the chinks. All the candles but one had burned out. The Lovins, all five of them, were lying on the floor, like hogs that had eaten their fill and fallen asleep.

I stood up and took a step away from the cabin, and my foot lit right on a dry branch that snapped loud as a breaking bone. I held still. I could feel sweat just oozing out of me. I waited for footsteps crossing the cabin floor to the door, but they didn’t come.

So I got a little braver and looked in through the window. None of them were moving at all. It was like they were dead drunk. And then I knew what I had to do.

I thought about it as I picked my way through the trees toward the RV. Whatever these things were, they were evil. I didn’t know if they’d magicked Pete or what, but my folks are from the hills, and my grandpas and grandmas and aunts and uncles told me things that people would say were crazy, but which they really believed in. They saw things happen with their own eyes that we’d say were impossible. And I saw something tonight that made no sense at all in the real world. At the very best, these… people were murderers. Pete was dead, and they’d killed him. And worse.

I’d seen the two-gallon can of gas in the back of the RV, so I took it and a pack of matches and went back to the cabin. It was still dark but for the moon, and I finally looked at my watch. Two thirty-five. There was plenty night left — too much of it.

It took me some nerve to go inside, but I did. The Lovins weren’t moving. Hell, they didn’t even seem to be breathing now. The last candle was burnt out, but the moon gave me just enough light to work. I slopped the gas all up the dry wood walls and over the floor. I didn’t splash any on the Lovins, though, just in case they might wake up, but they didn’t. The tallest man, who I took to be the father, was lying in a patch of moonlight, and he wasn’t what he’d been before. His hair was full and long and dark, except for gray at the temples, and his skin was whole again.

That was enough. I didn’t want to look at the others.

I poured a trail of gas out through the front door and then touched a match to it. It ran inside quick as a snake and the whole shebang went up at once. That dry wood took to fire like kindling, and in less than a minute the cabin was blazing. Nothing moved inside. I don’t think even the burning woke them up.

The hollow was pretty well hid, so I doubted anybody’d see the flames, and there was enough of a clearing around the cabin that I didn’t think it’d set the woods on fire, though I didn’t give a damn if it did or not. I wasn’t thinking real clear.