Tim Curran - The Devil Next Door

He fought at the ropes that held him.

If somehow he could convince the children to attack.

But they were submissive now, terrified. Several had even urinated. Who or what did they think the woman was? Granted, smeared with white ash, red bands enclosing her eyes and mouth, her teeth yellow and sharp, and her eyes like two windows looking into a madhouse…she was a real horror.

“ You kids!” he called out. “She’s not a ghost! She’s not a spook! Kill her! Do you fucking hear me? Kill the bitch!”

Kylie hissed at him and Maddie broke off her song, snarling in his direction and there was absolutely no doubt in Louis’ mind that he was no longer the favored, coveted plaything, but a shank of meat to be slit and deboned, salted and cured. She would slit his throat, disembowel him and bathe in his blood, wear his skin and gather his bones in a red-stained heap.

He was definitely a dead man.

But then…he hadn’t been brought down to this awful place to be treated as a favored guest now, had he? And murder, violent and brutal as it would be, was far preferable to being used for the amusement of the witch and her daughters.

“ Kill her!” Louis cried.

It was a terrible chance to take, but if he could goad the children into fighting back then maybe, just maybe, he had a chance. Regardless, his shouts disrupted the spell that Maddie was putting on them.

“ Kill her! Goddammit, kill her!”

Maybe it was an authoritative adult voice, but one of them jabbed his spear at Kylie. She deflected it with her axe. But the others took the cue. A spear sank into Maddie’s leg and her axe nearly cleaved a girl in half. Now it became a nightmare of blood. Spears thrusting, hatchets slicing, axes chopping. Louis watched it momentarily with insane glee, wanting the blood like somebody watching a football game secretly wanted blood. But unlike sports, he truly got it as the children clashed with Maddie and her mother who fought with insane, raging hysteria.

That’s it, kids, Kill the witch. Slice her right fucking up.

Louis rolled closer to the fire, ever aware of that grotesque sack of human entrails smoking on the tripod. There was a carving knife on the other side of the pit and he planned on having it. Maybe he was going to die, but he was going to die with a knife in his hand, he was going to go down fighting.

A window shattered and something exploded on the floor, spraying flames over the wall and up a stack of cardboard boxes that started to burn right away.

Louis inched around the pit like a caterpillar until he saw the knife and brought his hands around until he grasped it. He immediately started sawing at the ropes on his wrist. It was expertly sharpened and right away the fibers began loosening one by one.

In the flames and the smoke, the blood sport near the stairs went on unheeded. It was like some twisted, blood-drenched nightmare. The children fighting in a pack, glistening red, Maddie and Kylie both slashed and bleeding but refusing to go down. Knives bisected skins and hatchets laid flesh open, spears sinking into bellies and axes shearing heads from necks.

It ended on the floor with the three remaining children chopping on Maddie while Kylie, split wide open and clutching her intestines in one hand, lurched in Louis’ direction. She had a knife in the other hand. Her hair was plastered to her face with blood. She limped forward, dragging a bad leg behind her that was nearly severed at the knee.

She made a low growling noise that was wet and gurgling as she choked on her own blood.

Louis’ hands were free, but not his ankles.

He had a knife but he didn’t know if he was any match for Kylie who was by that point beyond anything as simple as a savage. She was a gruesome, hobbling zombie, a monster who understood nothing but killing.

“ Don’t do it,” Louis told her.

She spit out a glob of blood and came closer. She would have had him, too, and her last act in this world would have been to make him suffer unbelievably. But a spear plunged through her belly and then another through her chest. More children were rushing around. They sliced limbs and meats from the rafters overhead, kicked over the tripod which spilled to the floor, the gut bag bursting with a sickening hot smell as organs and entrails steamed over the dirt.

They were destroying everything.

Throwing bottles of gasoline at the walls and roaring with delight as the flames spread, consumed, and the air became as hazy as fog.

Louis slit his ankles free.

His legs were numb but he made them obey. He knocked a couple kids out of the way, dodging and darting towards the doorway. A spear just missed him. A girl swung something at him that he realized was a severed arm. And then he was jogging up the steps, coughing on the smoke.

More savage children.

They were pissing on the walls and pulling the stuffing out of sofa cushions, tipping over furniture and tossing their scat at one another. Several of them saw Louis, hesitated, maybe unsure if he was one of their own or not. They decided and bared their teeth.

Then a huge, bristling man stepped forward.

His face was tiger-striped with black slashes of paint, old and seamed, the eyes glittering with dementia. He wore a vest made of fur, his bare chest and arms filthy with blood and dirt. There was a necklace of what must have been human ears around his throat.

Louis hesitated.

Good God…was this Chalmers? Frank Chalmers from a few streets over?

He knew it was and then Chalmers dove on him. They rolled to the floor, knives forgotten, fighting tooth and nail. Chalmers was old, but in incredible shape from so many years in the Army humping it through jungles and leaping out of airplanes. Louis hit him three times and Chalmers barely flinched. His hand like a claw, he took hold of Louis’ windpipe and squeezed it close. Louis fought and tried to throw him off, but it was useless. The world went dark and he went limp.

When he opened his eyes again, he was lying in the grass.

The house was burning.

Two girls squatted by him and both had knives. They were no more than eight or ten years old and seeing them there-painted for war, splattered with flesh and blood, their eyes just gone wild-it was ludicrous. For a few days before they might have been selling Girl Scout cookies door-to-door. Now they were hunting people, slaughtering anyone or anything they could catch.

Louis licked the blood off his lips.

The girls moved in closer, crawling on hands and knees towards him like Preying Mantises stalking their prey. They had been waiting for him to come to. It would have been no fun for them to gut a sleeping man. One of the girls raised her knife for the kill…there was a human scalp on a thong around her wrist, the hair red and lustrous.

Then Louis heard a whooshing sound and a hatchet came flying end-over-end with a perfect throw, imbedding itself in the skull of the girl with the scalp.

Other savages charged in and it was war to the knife…

Macy was outside the lair, the church, and sucking in the not-so clean air of Greenlawn. She had status now. She was one of the Huntress’ clan. By blood-rite she had secured the right to stand with them, to hunt with them and butcher, and to die with them.

She heard a noise behind her.

She turned quick with sharp animal reflexes.

A man was standing there.

He was tall and filthy, hair hanging to his shoulders in greasy curls. His face was painted like a skull as all those of the inner circle. His body was likewise painted with white and blacks streaks, though smeared with ground-in blood, dirt, and animal fat.

He held a scalp in his hands, still bleeding from its owner.

The hair was lustrous gold, beautiful, like something spun on a spinning wheel. The moonlight caught it, held it, made the golden mane glow.