Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

The two of them scrambled up the slope to the main road. Little Heaven was five hundred yards off. They hadn’t even made it half a mile.

Charlie stumbled. Micah grabbed his hand. Charlie was in shock. Even having glimpsed those things the other night, Charlie could not wrap his head around what they had done to Terry Redhill and his dear friend Otis.

Partner, it is happening , Micah thought as he hauled Charlie on.

The road peeled away from the trees, bathed in creamy moonlight. The night bristled with sounds, but they had dimmed to a low and satisfied purr.

“Otis,” Charlie mumbled. “Oh no, oh no, Otis —”

Something streaked out of a dogwood thicket behind them—a liquid ripple of movement. It passed behind Micah almost soundlessly, an enormous bird zipping low across the earth. He tried to look at it, but a warning klaxon went off in his brain— Danger, Will Robinson! —that kept his head from making the necessary revolution.

Charlie grunted like a man who’d been punched in the gut. His hand—no, his whole arm—dropped three feet. He’d fallen again.

“Come on, Charlie,” Micah said.

Charlie wouldn’t get up this time. Micah had to haul Charlie across the ground. Charlie’s fingers tightened and cut off Micah’s circulation.

“I got you.”

Charlie wasn’t so hard to pull now. Light as a feather, in fact. Must be the adrenaline kicking in. Little Heaven was getting closer. Micah would haul Charlie back and make new plans. A daylight run when they could see the fuckers coming.

Charlie’s fingers began to relax. Micah clenched his own and pulled him another five feet before Charlie’s belt got hung up on a root or some other snag.

“Jesus, Charlie. Help me.”

Micah turned to look. Charlie wasn’t there—the bottom half, anyway. His body had been torn apart at the hips. His legs were gone; Micah couldn’t see them anywhere. Charlie’s guts spilled out of his chest cavity, long ropes with a whitish-blue sheen that trailed ten yards behind him until they blended into the gloom. His face was set in an expression of awestruck shock: eyes wide open, lips peeled back from his teeth.

“Come on,” Micah said stupidly. “It will be okay.” He pulled until Charlie’s halved body became unstuck from the snag. He kept hauling Charlie mindlessly, his brain stuck in a time warp where Charlie was still alive. Charlie’s remains made a graceless burping sound as another knot of intestines drooled out and unraveled across the cracked earth.

Micah’s strength was deserting him; he was now using the shotgun as a cane. “Okay… we are going to be okay, Charlie…”

Let him go, Micah. He is dead.

With a moan, Micah did. Charlie’s arm flopped to the ground. Micah staggered on. Fuck the things that had killed these men. Micah would murder them all and burn their carcasses until the air went black with their smoke.

A DOZEN OR SO PEOPLEwere clustered at the gates of Little Heaven. The truck’s horn continued to blare. Seeing Micah alone, Maude Redhill let loose a desolate wail. She was joined by Charlie’s wife; Charlie’s son only stared at Micah openmouthed, not yet gripping what had happened—he was too young to understand that, yes, everything really could go to shit just this quickly.

The gates closed once Micah had shuffled through. His face was wet with blood—Otis’s or Terry’s or Charlie’s, he had no clue. He crumpled to his knees as two dozen eyes stared at him, waiting on some kind of explanation.

“It is death out there” was all he could manage.

Maude Redhill flung herself on him. She grabbed double handfuls of hair and yanked viciously, snapping his head side to side. Micah let her do it, too tired to fight back and feeling that she deserved her wrath.

“Bastard!” she screamed. “What did you do to them? What did you do to my Terryyyyyyyy! ”

Somebody finally pulled her off. Maude Redhill’s sobs spiraled up into the night.

God did not hear her. Or if He did, He kept His peace.

The devil had come to Little Heaven.

THEY PASSED THROUGHseveral villages unseen and unheard, skirting settlements like coyotes on the lope. The Long Walker carted Petty Shughrue swiftly over great distances. She wondered what had become of the preacher back at the carnival. How badly did the townspeople hurt him? The Long Walker hadn’t even seemed all that delighted when those men started to beat the preacher down. It had actually looked bored.

The Long Walker carried them up a hillside and across the narrow spine of a ridge. Petty could not help but notice how the plants wilted wherever the thing passed. A trail of death.

The ridge fed down to a grassy valley. A faint prickling of light between the trees. They came upon an isolated shack. Smoke spindled from a flue in its roof. Firelight cut between the chinking of its logs. Skins were tacked to hide stretchers near the door.

The Long Walker’s posture was loosey-goosey, shoulders rounded forward and head hanging between its shoulders. Its fingers twitched at the ends of its hands as if in search of some more spirited pursuit.

“Is someone out there?” came a man’s voice from inside the shack. “I can hear you.”

From inside, there came the popping of knots in the fire. After that, the unmistakable cocking back of a shotgun’s hammers.

“I will ask once more. Then I must assume you mean to cause harm. Who the hell is out there?”

Finally, the Long Walker opened its mouth—its terrible, skull-spanning mouth. In the moonlight, Petty could see its insides: the soft, pulpy flesh of a toothless infant.

“ It is your mother, Cedric Finnegan Yancy! ” the Long Walker cried in a voice that could not be its own—this was the shrill tone of a woman. “ Will you not come out to greet me? ”

Silence. Then a trembling voice: “That ain’t you, Ma. You’re dead, God rest your soul. You been dead eight years now.”

“ And whose fault is that? ” the Long Walker said, its lips spreading in a corrosive grin. “ Who left his mother when she was just getting sick? Whose departure quickened his mother’s path to the grave? ”

When the man finally replied, it was in a tone of disbelief. “What devil lurks past my door?”

“ Devil? ” The Long Walker laughed. “ Devil! Ha! My own son, flesh of my flesh. Come outside, boy. Apologize to your mother. For your sins are plentiful, as we both know. The whoring we may set aside, for what man has not fallen afoul of the pleasures of the flesh? But to leave your own mother, who cradled you and kissed your scraped knees—to leave her alone to die? This, my son, is a sin most unforgivable. ”

“They sent me to ’Nam!” the man shrieked. “I was given no choice in the matter!”

“ I died in pain greater than you could imagine. ” The Long Walker spoke in a crooning singsong. “ My body rotted from the inside. The sawbones cut my tits off—the same tits you latched to as an infant to suckle and bite—yes, bite, for you were a cruel nurser. Where did the doctor toss my diseased old tits? To the dogs, for all I know. Nobody was there to speak for me. My husband dead, my ungrateful son gone and run off. I screeched and bled night after night. Nobody cared. Nobody came to help me. ”

“Please.” The man’s voice was choked, pleading. “Ma, please .”