Tim Curran - Cannibal Corpse, M/C

She set the needle aside, pulled off the tourniquet.

“Please,” Maria said, pulling on Slaughter’s arm. “Let’s get out of here before she starts talking.”

The woman began to grin, huge and moony, her glazed eyes bright and sparkling.

Then, wetting her lips, she turned and faced her visitors and began to speak.

“I know what you seek,” said the woman. “I can see it.”

Slaughter just stared at her. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“What I’m doing I’m doing for my brother.”

The woman tittered with laughter that was acerbic, caustic even. “The one you seek was here. He laid with me. He spoke the tongue in my ear.”

Slaughter looked at Maria but she did not meet his gaze.

“He said…he said you would come and I would know you. That your name is Death and that you ride a pale horse,” the woman said, her eyes almost blazing now as if something in her brain were slowly smoldering. “He said I would see the hate in your soul, the murder in your eyes, and smell the blood upon your hands. I would know you as Death.”

“You don’t know shit, lady.”

She smiled at him. “But I do, John Slaughter. You are Death. On the surface you can tell yourself that you seek freedom for your brother but underneath, in the darkest tracts of your soul, you only want to kill and kill again. You are Death but you pretend to be freedom and life. And that is the great irony, is it not? That Death does not even recognize himself as Death.”

Slaughter was stunned.

The crazy bitch knew his name, about his brother, and was that just because Black Hat had told her or was it the drugs? Did that worm juice tweak some latent telepathy or powers of prophecy? He didn’t know. Couldn’t know. But it disturbed him greatly.

He swallowed, looked at Maria.

She still would not meet his gaze. As the crazy woman fell into some weird little fugue, her eyes rolling back white in her head, he grabbed hold of Maria’s chin none too gently and forced her to look at him. “Do they always do this? Does shooting up that worm juice make them read minds?”

“Sometimes.”

“Just sometimes?”

Maria shrugged, then sighed. “Some of them just go into a stupor and mumble. Others lose their minds. Some, like this one, have certain abilities. They can see things and know things.”

The woman’s eyes rolled in their sockets, then focused with a glassy clarity. “He said you would come because this is the land of the dead and you will ascend the throne of death because it is your calling.”

“Bullshit.”

Again that simply awful laughter which raised goosebumps on the backs of Slaughter’s bare arms.

“He caused all this, didn’t he?”

The woman just stared at him.

“All of this was from his hand?”

“Men caused this.”

But Slaughter didn’t believe that. Not entirely. Maybe it was close proximity to this worm-witch (as he was beginning to think of her) but in his mind so many things that had long been vague and unformed were taking on a curious sort of shape. “No, not men. Men are puppets to a thing like him. He feeds off death and pain and insanity. He revels in it. He mainlines it. He’s nothing but a fucking leech.”

“No!”

“Yes. He’s responsible for bringing this death into the world. The worm rains and the wars that followed it…it’s all a fucking page written in his hand, in his book.”

“You lie!” the woman nearly screamed at him. “He said Death would lie! That Death despaired of the truth! You are the king of liars! You are the king of spades! You are Death riding a pale horse with Hell following you just as he said!”

“He’s a liar.”

“No! No! No!”

“Yes. He’s the liar. Tell me his name.”

The woman was shaking now, contorting. Tears ran from her eyes and a revolting stench issued from her that smelled almost like burning flesh and singed hair. It was hot and febrile. “He has no name!”

“Yes, he does. Tell me.”

“I will not!”

“Yes, you will.”

“I cannot!”

“But you must.”

Her head whipped from side to side. “ No, never!”

“I’ll find him. I’ll hunt him down. I’ll make him pay for all this.”

“No!”

Slaughter stood up and picked up his rifle. “Tell me his name.”

But she wouldn’t so he put the barrel of the M-16 up to her eye and put his finger on the trigger. She thrashed and cried out, flailing and weeping, calling out mixed-up prayers and psalms, her legs kicking and her hands flailing. Her face ran with sweat. Her tongue lolled from her mouth. Her eyes rolled back white again. And her voice, shrill and screeching and nearly inhuman in tone, said, “You! You! You! You came as he said you would! You stand here in the flesh! Death! Oh, abominable, hungry Death! Pestilence! Plague! War! Famine! It is wrought by your hand and written in the Book of Hell! I will not be witness to it! DO YOU HEAR ME, DEATH? I SHALL NOT BE WITNESS TO YOUR BLASPHEMY AND YOUR MURDER AND YOUR SEETHING HATE! I-I-I-I WILL NOT!”

She was moving with wild greased gyrations by that point. The burning smell was stronger about her and blood ran from her mouth. It filled her eyes and dripped from her ears. Then she slumped over and hit the floor. As she laid there, obviously dead, limbs askew, mouth still wide, eyes still staring, steam began to rise from her like she was melting. It carried an acrid stink of burning flesh.

Something was happening.

Something revelatory.

Maria was openly crying out in her fear, but Slaughter was close to something, he thought, or maybe miles distant. Yet, he knew what was happening was not by accident. He had the most uncanny feeling that it was meant for him and him alone. As the steam continued to rise, filling the hut with a sickening odor, he used the barrel of his rifle and pulled the woman’s shirt up and there it was as he knew it must be. Her belly was rising like bread dough, pushing up to form letters that were going from pink to red like scalded flesh. Then there was a searing, burning stench and he saw it, he saw it once again:

Just like all the others, it was branded right into her. Upraised and branded right into the flesh and just the sight of it made him take a stumbling step towards the door. He stepped out into the air which, although dank and cool, was comparatively fresh compared to what he’d been breathing in the hut. He was dizzy. Woozy. His knees were weak and his legs were shaking. He found an overturned crate and dropped his ass on it, breathing in and out, clearing his mind.

“Are you all right?” Maria said, wiping tears from her face.

He was still trembling. “Yeah…I’m okay.”

“I told you we should leave,” Maria said to him. “I told you that they say things. Things you don’t want to hear.”

He nodded. “Question is: how much of what she said can we believe?”

“I don’t know.”

“She knew things she shouldn’t have known. I can’t explain that with ordinary logic, now can I? And, even if I could, I sure as hell couldn’t explain those words burned into her.” Before he could stop himself he told Maria about that word and where he had seen it before. “I don’t know what it means but Black Hat is behind it.”

“Black Hat?”

Since he had started telling the tale, he went through the whole spiel, telling her about that video at the compound in Wisconsin, his dreams, and specifically about Frank Feathers and the Skeleton Man.

Maria was silent for a moment when he was finished. “I’ve seen it before,” she finally said.