Robert Walker - Scalpers

Van stared in wide-eyed horror at what Corman had done to his brother, Ian, who lay on the floor, stunned, the knife protruding from his head, dead center on the top of the frontal lobe. An X ray would surely show that the two halves of the brain had been severed, yet Ian breathed and was talking calmly as if he felt no pain.

"This ... got to get it out ... fix it,” said Van, wrapping his mangled hands about the handle, readying to remove it like an arrow from a wounded soldier on the frontier, like in the comic books.

"No, no! Not yet,” said Ian from deep within himself. “Don't remove it."

"But—"

"I'll be dead in minutes."

"There's no blood..."

"Take it out, and I'm dead ... before that happens, I want you to take a graft from me ... try my scalp, Van. We're brothers ... twins, even ... and maybe..."

He looked thoughtfully down at his brother and after a long pause said, “It could work ... maybe it could ... and if so, you won't die, not at all, you'll be part of the final accomplishment."

"Then we won't need to kill Grant, or him over there, or anyone. They'll be pleased to herd themselves before us for daily sacrifices, and you ... you'll be a god, Van, a god."

"Yes ... yes, I see ... yes.” He reassured his brother as he began the scalp-taking.

Ian squealed with the pain, jiggled and went into a spasm of pain before the shock and trauma of his wound and the scalping took him. The dwarf took his bloody prize, dripping it across the aged linoleum and into his hideaway, where he plunked it into the still-hot cauldron. While it cured and stewed, he would see to Dr. Corman.

"On my own now,” Van told himself sadly, “but I always said that one day it would be so."

He knew that Ian was brilliant and that his plan still was workable if Grant should show up tonight, as Ian had anticipated. Instead of just killing Grant now, Corman would be held responsible for the death of Benjamin Hamel as well. Yes, it could work ... it could ... if Grant played out his part.

He returned to the kitchen and with much effort dragged Corman by the heels into his room. There he tied Corman's hands and feet, gagged the man, and propped him up near the fireplace, where Grant would instantly see him and rush to his aid.

Now it was a waiting game, but Van could not resist taking a quick, hot scoop of the broth being made with his brother's skin and hair. It would sustain him this night. Miracles did happen, as when he'd found the black creatures in the basement of his upbringing that nursed and suckled him....

As he fed, stirring the scalp, his face aglow from the embers of the fire, he shed a tear for Ian and for himself. Existence after this, if he could not become one with the beings that had nurtured him all these years, was hardly worth anything. He determined that if Ian's scalp, applied to his own, did not fulfill the bargain of the dark beings, then he might himself take a final life—his own.

But time was needed ... time to allow the processes to take place, to test the possibilities. That time might only be found if Grant and Corman were dead and put away. He looked for the best spot from which to spring out at Grant when he entered.

SEVENTEEN

Weaving dangerously, Dean took the turn onto the dirt road called Hardscrabble too late, and the ambulance tore onto the soft shoulder out of control and sideswiped a tree before coming to a halt. Dean got out, shaken and reaching for his .38 only to find it gone. He'd lost it somewhere between the hospital and here, he thought, before proceeding on foot toward the house at the end of the cul-de-sac. He had already called for backup, using the ambulance radio, explaining as best he could why he'd stolen the unit.

He saw carnage ahead of him, two bodies lying inert outside Peggy Carson's squad car, and soon he knew the two uniformed men were Staubb and Williams. He lifted Staubb's gun, which was a few feet away in the sandy soil, preferring it to wrenching Williams’ from its holster. Dean then checked the clip and found it all right, a single shot having been fired. Both men had been quietly dispatched with knives, telling Dean his hunch had been right, that the killers had returned here.

Dean neared the house at a crouch, fearing he'd find Sid Corman dead, propped up with a gun in his hand, or strung up, leaving a suicide note of confession forced from him. Dean feared he would be too late, much too late.

Dean leapt to the porch to avoid the squeaking stairs, but the porch sagged with a groan beneath his feet. If Hamel and that bastard brother of his were inside, they knew he was outside now.

The door rattled against his attempt to open it. It was secured tight. There would be no quiet entry, Dean told himself, no way. Still, he must try the rear, and so he cautiously made his way toward the back. There he stared through a window at a man's form lying in the dark interior, Sid's he guessed, and something snapped inside him.

He broke the glass on the door and let himself in, rushing to Sid where he lay alongside the oven. Lifting Sid's head he saw a horrible gash where his forehead ought to be. Dean swallowed a scream, until his eyes, adjusting to the light, saw that it was Hamel! Hamel without a scalp! Benjamin I. Hamel, scalped and murdered in his home on Hardscrabble Road in Wekiva by ... by whom?

"Sid?” Dean called out, going further into the house, toward the bedroom and the false closet and wall where the dwarf lived and fed himself, where Sid must now be....

"Sid? Sid, can you answer me?"

Dean saw there was a candle burning on the table, the only light in the odorous room, save for the glow of the dying embers at the fireplace where that black witches’ cauldron still bubbled and gurgled. Stepping closer, inching nearer, Dean saw Sid's feet and legs, then his chest. He was bound and gagged, his features in a shadowed corner next to the fireplace.

"Sid!” Dean rushed in to help his friend, snatching at the rope binding his feet, which was not rope at all but gut, human gut, dried and cured and turned into rope as strong as hemp. Dean grabbed for a scalpel he kept in an inside pocket to cut away at the stuff. While doing so, he cringed at the realization of what it was he held in his hands. Slicing through the tough, dried string, he freed Sid's legs and then, seeing terror in Sid's eyes, snatched away the suffocating gag in Sid's mouth. The instant he did so, Sid shouted, “Behind you!"

But the warning came too late. At the same instant Dean felt the catapulting stool hitting him in the back of the head, stunning him. He staggered a moment, dazed, when something else slammed into his back and shoulders. It was the dwarf, straddling him, a knife slicing away at his head and shoulders. A tear to his breast bone, a swish by his eye, and then the blade came down, a curled scimitar driving into his shoulder. Dean threw himself down, rolling over with all his weight, the sound of Staubb's .38 sliding from his belt to some dark corner of the room. Another sound, an animal sound of pain, had commingled with Dean's own screams that echoed Sid's.

"Where is he? Where the hell is he?” Dean shouted.

"I'm not sure. Get me loose,” cried Sid.

But the dwarf rocketed himself at Dean's back a second time, coming out of the dark. Again the knife slammed into Dean, and this time the cut was deep and painful, slicing his left arm at the bicep, blood pumping out onto Sid as Dean fought in the small space with the madman, trying desperately to cut him with the scalpel.

But the dwarf leapt away again and once more the room was still, silent, the deadly thing somewhere nearby, accustomed to seeing through the shroud of darkness. He knew where Dean was, but Dean could not see him.

"My hands, Dean, so I can help you! My hands!"