Tim Curran - The Devil Next Door

He wondered if Michelle was out there. Maybe she had taken Macy.

Oh, not her, not Michelle, not my wife.

Louis walked on very slowly for ten or fifteen feet, then paused.

Doris nearly bumped into him.

He thought he heard that childish giggling again. His flesh crawled anew. Wasn’t it amazing that one of the sweetest sounds in the world, the delightful laughter of a child, was also one of the most foul and obscene? And particularly in a ghost town. He breathed in and out, readying himself for it, whatever it was, because it was coming. It was building around him and he could feel it. Like a frightened animal, he could sense the waiting teeth out there, the claws and hunger. Tensed like a spring ready to explode, sweat running down his face, he remembered driving up Main with Macy, how dead the town was, how he’d speculated earlier that maybe everyone was dead. But it had all been a ruse, of course. Macy and he had been watched from the moment they pulled down the street. These people were organized, then. They had laid a trap and waited for him to step into it. And, boy, he’d bested their greatest expectations, hadn’t he? Leaving Macy alone in the car even when, deep inside, he’d known it was a mistake.

Sacrifice.

He’d offered her up for sacrifice.

“No,” he said under his breath.

“What?” Doris asked him.

“Nothing.”

He went across the street, stepped up onto the sidewalk. They could have had her anywhere. Or blocks away for that matter. It was hopeless, but he couldn’t give in, couldn’t crumble. He walked over to Indiana Video. He pushed his way through the glass doors. It was silent in there. There was a light on behind the counter, another near the back of the store. Enough light to see by.

“Macy?” he said.

There was a moaning sound.

His heart leaping with possibility, Louis charged over by the children’s movies. A young girl, maybe eight or ten, was squatted on the floor, entirely naked. Arms wrapped around herself, she rocked back and forth.

She was a redhead.

Not Macy at all.

“Honey?” Louis said, still fearful. “Are you all right?”

The girl looked up at him. Her face was dark with ground-in dirt, her hair greasy and stuck with leaves. There were bruises and contusions all over her. Louis held a hand out to her, afraid she might bite it, but the humanity in him demanding that he try.

Doris kept the shotgun on the kid. “Jesus Christ, Louis…are you fucking blind as well as stupid? Look at her. That’s not a girl. It’s one of them. Can’t you see that?”

But he couldn’t be convinced of that. The girl was sobbing, shaking. One of them wouldn’t do that…would they? After a moment the girl took his hand and stood up, breaking into a wail of tears. She pressed herself against him, shuddering. She smelled bad. Like blood and decay and dirt. Her flesh was hot, moist. He could feel her heart thudding.

“They dragged me through the streets,” the girl said. “They…they…they…”

But she couldn’t go on; she shook, whimpered.

“All right,” Louis said. “You’re going to be safe now. My car is outside. We’re driving away from here.”

Doris didn’t move. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Not with that thing.”

“Stop it!’ Louis told her.

“You’re an idiot. You’ll get us all killed.”

He turned towards the door, the shadows thicker and more tangled out there than nesting cobras now. Death waited out there. In every shadow, in every doorway, and behind every tree. Death. The girl shook in his arms. And then she tightened against him. He could feel the flex of her muscles, the heat of her skin. It was nearly feverish. He tried to pry her away so he could walk, but she circled her arms around him, jumped up and swung her legs around his hip.

“Honey,” he said, “listen now…”

She looked up at him from beneath strands of filthy copper-colored hair.

She was grinning.

Her eyes were filled with a stark malevolence that was beyond mere insanity. The tips of her teeth were filed into points.

Louis felt something sink inside him, he felt her repellent flesh against his own. Darting her head, she buried her teeth into his shoulder, breaking through his shirt and puncturing skin.

He screamed with pain.

He heard Doris cry out as the other savages rushed in.

A trap, it had all been a fucking trap…

Painted for battle, the hunters came out of the back of the store. Another rushed right through the front door. And the most amazing thing was, he held a spear in his hands. And from the barbed point to nearly a foot down the shaft it was stained red.

The girl dug her teeth into the man.

This was the one. The one the Huntress wanted. She must not let go of him, she must hold him tight until the hunters could take him down. But he was wild, enraged. He did not shrink with fear as she’d hoped. He tore at her back, digging welts into her skin. He beat at her. He pounded her. Then, gun in hand, he banged the butt off the back of her skull until she pulled her teeth away and cried out. He hit her with the gun again and something went in her skull with a sickly popping noise. Inside the girl’s head, things went dark, then sank into mist and she…she could…not… hold on…

The man whirled around in a circle, yanking her free with a handful of bloody hair and throwing her as he did so. His locomotion propelled her through the air. She crashed into a case of movie collectibles, her face shattering the plate glass window. A shard of glass went right into her throat and she died kicking in a pool of her own blood.

The hunters saw it as they charged.

But they were too late to stop it, nor would they have considered it worth their time: not all members of the clan survived the hunt, the few must perish so the many could survive.

A spear barely missed Louis as he turned and fired at the three coming out of the back. His first shot was wild his hand shook so badly. But his second and third were right on target. He put a round through a guy whose entire body was blackened with what looked like ash or charcoal. The bullet caught him right in the sternum and threw him backwards in a drunken semi-circle. Blood fountained from his wound and he pitched over face-first, gyrating on the floor, screeching with a high, piercing noise that scarcely sounded human. The second round caught another hunter in the throat, in the Adam’s Apple, and the effect was instantaneous: his throat was blown apart in a spray of bloody mucilage and his head slumped forward. His legs went to rubber, but forward momentum carried him right past Louis. He stumbled right into a wall of DVDs and took them down with him in a clatter of plastic clamshells.

The third hunter did not hesitate, did not slow.

He didn’t even throw his spear. When he got close enough, he brought it up over his head and leaped with it, going airborne and bringing it to bear on Louis. Louis pulled the trigger as the man jumped. The bullet was wild, but it caught him in the ribs, glancing off them, spiraling into his body cavity and chewing its way through his stomach like a drillbit.

But again, forward motion carried him, and he hit Louis. The spear gouged Louis’ right shoulder, but it was off-balance, undirected. They went down in a heap. And gutshot or not, the naked man was not ready to die. He kicked, he scratched, he clawed. He got his hands around Louis’ throat and squeezed with unbelievable strength, making black dots pop before Louis’ eyes as his air was completely shut off by those gnarled, blood-crusted hands.

He forced Louis down, never breaking his grip and pounded his head off the floor which, thankfully, was carpeted.

Louis knew he was done.