Shane ed. - A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre - Halloween Is Going to Be Jealous

The little fella was in no hurry; its whiskers twitched as it glanced around, absorbing its new surroundings.

And then time seemed to slow down.

As Christine watched, her eyes wide, she saw a clawed hand creep from the hedge. With a swift swipe it captured the rabbit. Its snowy legs thrashed against the hold, but the gnarled fingers tightened around it, the filthy, pointed nails puncturing the little body.

From inside the house Christine could hear the creature’s agonized squeal as its captor squeezed ever tighter.

A bloody, coiled thing fell from the rabbits anus, still attached somewhere inside. Its eyes bulged like cooking egg-whites and were seconds from popping with the pressure as its head lolled around on its neck in a desperate struggle for air. With one final jerk its spine snapped and the writhing ceased. It hung like a used dishrag over the grotesque fingers.

And then she stepped into the garden.

Christine clamped her hands over her mouth. Air hissed from between her fingers as she screamed her throat raw, the sound muffled against her palm. She dropped to her knees when the thing on the lawn turned towards the window.

Fear and shock invaded her body, turning it ice cold. Her stomach convulsed and she braced herself against the wall as she vomited pools of bile and terror.

AH, EASTER. A TIME of yellow and green; of fluffy bunnies and downy chicks. Kids with chocolate-ringed lips grip colorful baskets in smeared hands, their teeth watering and fingers itching for the egg hunt. For a few hours there is an excitement in the air that is almost akin to Christmas.

But not in the town of Murrins. There the doors were locked and bolted, blinds firmly closed. And they remained so until the sun was high in the sky and the latter half of the day had begun. Nothing happened before then; there were no morning egg hunts, no early sermons in the church to celebrate the Ascension.

Families huddled inside in darkness and fear until the clock in the village struck twelve. Then cautious cracks appeared in curtains. Doors eased open and father figures emerged to inspect the lawns. The lucky ones got to walk back inside with such obvious relief that the difference in his posture from the man who had walked out moments before was as stark as if it were two separate people.

Small bonfires were lit around the backs of the houses of the less fortunate. Fathers, husbands, eldest sons could be seen toting shovels, grimacing and staying as far back as possible from the pulsating, oozing thing carried on the other end; big green globs that dripped mucus and trailed after-birth. They were tossed into the flames with a hiss and crackle. And then, as the heat set in, an unearthly wail like a cat being skinned alive would fill the air.

When the sound faded and died, and the town fell quiet, only then could the Easter festivities begin.

Murrins was not a pretty town. There was nothing in particular wrong with it. It had all the right ingredients; pretty flowers sprang from their perfectly groomed beds, litter was kept off the streets. The buildings all had uniform, old-world façades of wood and stone; no tumbledown shacks or ugly, unpainted edifices to break the charm. Livestock grazed contentedly in the lush meadows that surrounded the town and wild critters could often be seen darting from the woods.

It was like a dream, a postcard, but one had only to set foot in the town to sense the tainted air of the place. Especially on that day: Easter Sunday. No amount of town planning or aesthetics could mask it.

The town had a history, and not one that it was proud to tell. This was not something one would find in local tourist information pamphlets; it was known only to the inhabitants, passed around by word of mouth in whispered conversations designed to shock and frighten. Inevitably leaks occurred, rumors got out, and that history became a stigma that lay like a cloud over the town and stained gray the countenances of the inhabitants.

The story varied depending on the age of the teller and the shock-factor intended, but the basic plot was always the same.

It happened many years before, so many that those who could remember were long gone and only their great, great grandchildren remained. There lived a girl in the town. She was bubbly and pretty and outgoing, sometimes to an eyebrow-raising degree. Some called her feisty, headstrong; others called her a harlot. Perhaps it was due to the fact that her mother had died giving birth to her and she had never had that maternal figure to teach her the ways of ladies and coach her on decorum.

Whatever the reason, when a passing battalion stopped in the town, she became besotted with one of the soldiers and no laws of chastity could keep her from him. The whole town looked on with clucking tongues; nobody took the time to tell her.

And so the soldier passed on and the girl’s belly grew so that it could no longer be ignored. It was a disgrace; the talk of the town. Something had to be done before word spread to the neighboring villages.

She was hidden away, and for nine months that was how she stayed.

On Easter morning her child was born. All pink and wriggling it was taken away from her. She heard its first cries as the door closed on her lonely prison, her arms clasped over her empty chest. She never knew if she was mother to a son or daughter.

Nobody knows for sure what became of the child. The most PG rated stories told of it being sent off to an orphanage in a far away city. Other versions were not so kind to her progeny. There was a well in the center of town. For many years it had been closed up, cemented in, and water was drawn from a spring in a less convenient location on the outskirts. There is no documented reason why. The stench and toxicity of decomposing flesh after a time made for undesirable cooking water perchance? Maybe that was the ill-fated infant’s first cot, its newborn cries replaced by watery gurgles as it was held down with a stick like the unwanted litter from a stray cat, the dark and the cold closing in around it as its short life ended. I leave each to make their own conclusions on the matter, but the general rule of thumb is: the deeper buried the truth, the more heinous the crime behind it.

All that remained was the question of the girl. What to do about her? She was tainted, used, an embarrassment. No man would have her for a wife. And worst of all—she was the weak link in the town’s secret.

So she stayed locked up, and it soon became evident that she had her uses after all. There were men in the town who had needs that their wives could or would not satisfy. And of course there were those who had no wives—widowers, bachelors. You know, the upstanding citizens who could afford a penny or two for a ride of the corrupted daughter.

No one ever questioned why every nine months or so a fresh, moist squealing bundle of joy was brought from the house; there was the reputation of the town to think about. The whole town participated in her lifelong rape, whether they laid a hand on her or not, whether or not they were the ones who wielded the throbbing, twitching rods that plugged at her womb daily and nightly, sometimes mere days after she had given birth.

And then something happened.

Monday night was Bridge night in the local hall for the ladies, and hence, it was the busy night at the house. It didn’t run on an appointment system; the men just dropped by when they felt the stirrings. The women were away, the men were left unattended…and we all know whose hands the devil makes work for.

It became poker night at the house, mainly because the queues were getting longer by the week and the patrons needed a way to amuse themselves while they awaited their turn. On that particular night the parish pastor was downstairs with the girl. It was not in his habit to call to the house on Monday nights, usually coming instead at quieter, more clandestine times. But, when nature calls…