Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

His arm jerked. He had no control of it. He tried to scream, but all that came out was a wheeze. He reached toward Eli’s face; Eli’s grin stretched even wider, so big that Nate was sure Eli would eat his fingers through the plastic, grind up his skin and chomp his knuckles and keep on moving down his arm… and Nate was even more terrified he would want to keep feeding Eli, helplessly shoving his hand and then his wrist into Eli’s mouth.

He flung his gaze away from the window. His father was sitting up on the floor, watching Nate. His face was bathed in sweat. His eyes huge wet discs.

Daddy , Nate mouthed. Oh, Daddy, please…

His father nodded curtly, as if he had just received some bad news. Then he pulled the blankets up, his eyes still bugged out and his hands trembling, lay down, and rolled over into a little ball.

Nate’s fingers made contact with the plastic window. His head whipped back to see he was touching Eli’s face through the plastic; Eli’s skin was cold and hard, as if Nate had touched stone. He moaned and shut his eyes.

Oh please, please just don’t make it hurt too much and don’t make me into one of them—

Then the pressure went away. When Nate looked, Eli was gone. Nobody was at the window.

He sagged to the floor, shivering uncontrollably. The tips of his fingers were still cold—would they ever feel warm again? He glanced at his father, still rolled on his side, pretending to sleep. A wave of hatred rolled through Nate, so black it made him woozy.

Coward , he thought. Chicken-guts FAKER.

Rattling from the mess. Back in the kitchen.

No , Nate thought. No-no-no-no—the cellar.

He raced through the swinging galley door. A security lamp shone through the lone window. The kitchen countertops gleamed; the stink of rancid grease hung heavy. A trapdoor was set into the floor at the far end of the kitchen, next to the fridge. The door led down to the cold cellar, which could also be accessed through a set of doors outside. Nate had watched the cook swing those doors open and hump sacks of flour, rice, and potatoes into the storage area; he would bring them up through the trapdoor as needed. The outer doors weren’t locked—only three places in Little Heaven always had locks: the chapel, the Reverend’s quarters, and the windowless bunkhouse.

The trapdoor rattled again. Nate jumped; his skin felt too tight all of a sudden, as if it were about to split down a hidden seam. The trapdoor was held down under two chains lashed to the ringbolt. When it rattled, the chains rattled, too. Nobody heard it except Nate.

The trapdoor opened—just a hair. In that heart-stopping slit of darkness, Nate saw their faces. All four of them clustered under the door, peering out at him.

“You’re cute,” said the Elsa-thing, and giggled.

It was no longer the voice of a child. It was a choked and sewage-y gurgle, the sound that bubbles up from a clogged drainpipe.

“Come with us,” said Eli. “Come and be meat.”

“It will be neat,” said one of the Redhill boys, laughing at the silly rhyme.

Nate could smell them: ripe and fruity, the stink that wafts through the car vents when you drove past days-old road kill. He said, “No.”

Eli grinned. His mouth stretched so wide, almost ear to ear—the smile of a shark. Flies buzzed through the trapdoor, fat sluggish ones that landed on the kitchen window and blotted out the moon.

“It wants you,” Eli said. “It wants you all.”

Eli began to laugh. The others joined him. Cold nausea swept over Nate. He hated them. Not Eli and Elsa and the Redhills—though they had never been very friendly to him—but whatever they had become. They were disgusting and lewd, and it made his soul sick to look at them.

Before he knew what he was doing, Nate rushed at them. Stop! STOP! his mind chattered. But he was as mad as he’d ever been. They were bullies before and they still were. You had to stand up to bullies or you would spend your whole life in fear. You would grow up to be a man like his father.

Nate leapt and came down on top of the trapdoor. It banged down hard. He stood there a moment, seesawing his arms, fear rising in him like a fever. What was he doing? Was he crazy?

“Go away!” he shouted. “Leave me alone!”

He felt like raising his arms in victory, washed in a giddy sense of triumph—until the door popped up with a sharp bang, rattling the chains and spilling Nate onto his ass. He yelped and dug in his heels, trying to crab-walk away from the—

A withered arm shot through the trapdoor gap and snatched his ankle.

EAT KILL SWALLOW EAT EAT HURT KILL EAT CHEW KILL EAT

—schniiik!—

Nate reared back, screaming and clawing at his skull. Something had leapt into his head the moment those fingers closed around his ankle. His mind had been covered in choking oil that blotted everything out—everything except a powerful, uncontrollable urge to break and hurt other living things.

He was in the kitchen again. The trapdoor was shut. The skinny outsider woman was next to him. She held a huge butcher’s cleaver. Her lips moved, but Nate couldn’t hear her. His head was fuzzy. It had felt as if… as if a giant worm or leech had fixed its mouth around his brain, inhaling it into its black guts and transmitting its alien thoughts into him. They were the crudest, the most awful feelings imaginable: of eating and chewing and ripping and just hurting , hurting scared helpless creatures before eating them.

The skinny woman stabbed down with the knife, impaling something on the tip. A child’s hand. Black blood oozed from its severed wrist. She flung the knife and hand away. It skittered across the floor and jammed up under the fridge.

“You okay?” she asked. He could hear her now.

There were five icy blots on Nate’s bare ankle where those fingers had touched him. Nate managed to nod. Whatever had invaded his head was gone now, but coldness continued to seep over his scalp ten times worse than an ice cream headache.

The one-eyed man came into the kitchen, followed by Ellen and the Englishman.

“What happened?”

“One of them was grabbing his leg,” the skinny woman answered the one-eyed man. She stabbed a finger at the Englishman. “What the hell happened to you?”

The Englishman wiped sleep drool off his chin. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how I—”

“You fucking moron,” the woman said.

“One of who?” said Ellen. “ Who , Minny?”

“The children,” the skinny woman said in disbelief. “The boy Eli. Jesus, I’ve never seen anything so awful.”

The one-eyed man approached the trapdoor. Nate said, “No, please don’t open it.”

The man pushed him out of the way and lifted the door a few inches. The skinny woman pulled Nate to her chest. The man took another knife off a magnetized rack above the sink, unhooked the chains, and went into the cellar. Nate waited for him to start screaming. Thirty seconds later, he came back.

“Empty. But the outer doors are open.”

“What happened, Nate?” Ellen asked.

The experience seemed too huge and horrible to talk about. The children’s dead eyes, the force taking over his mind…

The one-eyed man crouched beside the severed hand. He touched one finger with the tip of the knife. The other fingers jerked. Nate began to cry when he saw that. Sobs ripped out of his chest, these loon-like whoops.

We’re all dead , Nate thought. Or worse. Death might be better.

He glanced over the skinny woman’s shoulder and saw his father hovering at the kitchen door. He waved at Nate. Apologetically, or just confusedly, Nate would never know.