Shut The Fuck Up And Die! (19 page)

Earl’s head snapped up as if it were
spring-loaded. In the distance, he could just make out something
slipping through the maze of trees. Partially obscured by darkness,
it was nothing more than a moving shadow. But it was large. And
there was only one thing it could be.

“
Gotcha now, mother fucker.”

He raised the pistol at arm’s length,
squeezed one eye shut, and sighted down the barrel. With a fluid
grace that seemed out of place, he tracked the bastard’s movements
slowly, always making sure that the little nub of metal on the end
of the gun was slightly in front of his target.

And then, as he exhaled, his finger flexed.
The pistol kicked in his hand as strongly as if something had
slammed against the underside of his wrist. Fire licked from the
muzzle and a puff of almost sulfuric smelling smoke billowed into
the air as the roar of the gun boomed through the clearing.

The moving shadow toppled like it had tripped
over some hidden obstacle and stumbled to the ground. For a second,
Earl kept the weapon trained on the little mound of darkness that
was just visible between the stand of trees; but it didn’t try to
get back up. It didn’t kick or thrash or bellow in pain.

“
Damn, Dead Eye,” he mumbled into his
frost-coated beard, “one shot.”

Still, he had to be sure that son of a bitch
wasn’t playing possum. He had to make certain the murdering asshole
was really down for good.

He pulled the trigger two more times in rapid
succession and watched as the body jolted with each impact. Nodding
his head with satisfaction, Earl stomped through the snow while the
high pitched ringing leftover from the gunfire filled his head like
an announcement from the Emergency Broadcast System.

There was no way someone could just lay there
and take two slugs like that. No one that was still alive.

“
And that, retard,” he said to his
absent brother, “is what it takes to be a man.”

SCENE FIFTEEN

Searching the bottom floor of the house had
proven pointless. Daryl had opened every closet, looked behind any
piece of furniture that was caddy-corner with the walls, and had
even went as far as checking the cupboards in the kitchen. Cobwebs
clung to his mustache and the knees of his pants were dusty from
where he’d crouched on the floor and peered underneath Mama’s bed.
He’d noticed the record player and speakers laying on the floor,
surrounded by drops of dried blood as if they had jumped to their
death; and there were also cinders and ash scattered . . . almost
as if something had disturbed the remains of the fire. So he’d
stooped as low as he could and peered up into the darkness of the
chimney as the lingering warmth from the hearth radiated over a
face now smeared with soot.

It had been like staring into mouth of a
nightmare: so pitch black that he could almost imagine hundreds of
red, glowing eyes peering down at him. His stomach had gurgled as
his hands began to shake and it almost looked like the shadows were
creeping toward him, devouring more and more of the creosote coated
bricks as they reached toward him with tentacles of darkness. He’d
fallen backward and scooted across the floor like a dog with ass
worms in reverse, his eyes never straying far from the open hearth
while his pulse and breath quickened.

“
Nothin’ up there.” He breathlessly
muttered. “Nothin’ up there at all. Not her, not nothin’ else
either.”

Picking himself up, he’d backed away as if
he’d half expected a flock of bats to surge out from the chimney
and cover him with their leathery wings and razor-like teeth. The
cleaver he’d snatched from a kitchen drawer caught a stray shaft of
sun and threw reflections of light that jerked and darted across
the walls.

“
Grow up. Ain’t no reason to be shakin’
like a palsy victim. You got the cleaver, right? And she ain’t
nothin’ but one woman. You hack her ass a few times and it’ll take
the fight plum out of her.”

The tremor in his voice, however,
contradicted the bravado of his running monologue. Snapshots
from
Mona’s Secret Delights
still burst through his mind like a slide presentation from a
vacation in Hell. Maybe it was because, outwardly, she looked so
sweet and innocent. Even a little shy, perhaps. She was the type of
girl he would have imagined writing love poems; maybe dabbing her
eyes with tissue as she silently moved her lips to a chick flick
that had been watched so often that even the DVD player knew how
everything would turn out. The type who should have been fair
game.

And yet here he was, stalking through his own
house like a sneak thief. Mama was dead, but it was this
dark-haired bitch who haunted him.

He saw her with a cigarette dangling from the
corner of her mouth; one hand proudly displaying a thumbs up, the
other pointing at the mound of bodies piled by her side in a grisly
imitation of Lindy England and the infamous Abu Ghraib photo.

Daryl shook his head as if he could fling the
image from his mind and looked up the stairs. She had to be up
there somewhere. Crouching in silence.

Was she hiding?

Or waiting?

“
Bitch killed Mama . . . you gonna let
her get away with that shit?”

The voice he heard in his head was Earl’s and
it was so clear and distinct that Daryl could almost believe that
his brother were actually standing just behind him.

“
You gonna let that little whore sit up
there and laugh at you? Because you ain’t got the balls to go up
there and show her who’s boss?”

His fingers tightened around the wooden
handle of the cleaver and he flexed his arm as if testing its heft.
He tried to imagine the rectangular piece of metal cracking into
her skull and splitting that rounded forehead like it was a
Christmas roast. But all that came to mind was a picture of her in
faded, tight fitting jeans: she was turned slightly to the side and
her pretty little mouth formed an oval and her eyes looked wide and
surprised; her bare chest was pale white and contrasted starkly
against the cocoa-colored flesh of the severed arms she held in
either hand. With their palms covering her nipples, she looked like
a modest psychopath caught in the act of undressing.

“
There were two of ‘em.” Earl’s voice
said. “She had help. This time it’s just you and her. You tellin’
me that you’re afraid this piece of pussy is gonna kick your ass?
That what you tellin’ me?”

Daryl took a deep breath and started up the
stairs. He walked as softly as possible, ensuring that each
footfall resulted in nothing more than a slight tap. He listened to
the silence that seemed to enshroud the house and his flesh crawled
at the tiniest of noises.

That faint creak . . . was it the sound of
her sneaking through the hallway?
Or just old wood expanding with the heat of dawn?

Was that her shallow breathing? Or nothing
more than the sound of his own respiration bouncing back at him
from the walls?

By the time he reached the top of the stairs,
Daryl gripped the cleaver so tightly that the rivets attaching the
handle to the tong had pushed dimples into the pads of his hand..
He felt sweat trickle down the back of his neck and his stomach was
gurgling so loudly now that cramps pulled at the muscles in his
abdomen.

Yet he somehow forced himself to go on. To
take another step.

He passed the braided rug where Earl had
beaten that Chinese guy to death with a pipe wrench. Then the
bullet hole in the wall that Mama had always called “your Daddy’s
last home improvement project”. When he slinked past the cabinet
outside of Mama’s bedroom, he almost shattered the glass of the
empty display case when his own reflection made his heart feel as
if it had attempted to burst right through his chest. But even
then, he forced himself to keep going. For he could feel Mama and
Earl’s eyes upon him, judging every move and decision as if they
were dark gods who held his fate in their hands.

The door to the bed room was partially open
and he pushed it as forcefully as he’d always dreamed of shoving
his brother. It banged against the wall so hard that it bounced
back at him as if seeking retaliation for the assault. But its
brief stand was put down easily with the touch of a hand and Daryl
strode into the room, certain now that no one had been hiding
behind it.

The chairs and rope lay on the floor and
there were more traces of blood, but nothing else seemed to be
disturbed here. Mama’s scrapbooking desk looked as if she might
scuttle into the room at any moment with a fresh crop of old photos
to cut and paste onto the thick pieces of colored paper. Daylight
streamed through the window and everything seemed to glow in a
color that reminded Daryl of fresh, golden honey.

Across the way, the door to the adjoining
room was open at a forty-five degree angle. He could vaguely see
half of the table that so many people had been nailed to but little
else. With no windows of its own and the door only halfway open,
the room was as gloomy as the interior of a crypt. Mama had taken
out the light bulb years ago, preferring their victims to only have
light when she deemed it so. If he were to go in there and that
door somehow managed to swing closed . . . .

“
Nuh-uh.” Daryl said aloud. “No way, no
how. I ain’t goin’ in there. Not without light.”

“
Don’t be a pussy.” His inner Earl
snapped. “Get your ass in there and find that bitch.”

“
Fuck that! You know I don’t like the
dark, Earl. You
know
it. No
way I’m gettin’ trapped in there without no light and no way out
and God knows what all else.”

Daryl’s voiced had risen in pitch so sharply
that it bordered on hysteria. Even the thought of being trapped in
that lightless room was made his eyes shimmy behind a veil of tears
and he paced about the room with short quick steps.

“
I know Mama is dead and all but I
ain’t fuckin’ goin’ in there, you here me? What if she comes
runnin’ out from the hall and locks me in? What if it’s dark and I
can’t get out and there ain’t nobody here to help me? What then?
What the fuck then?”

Daryl stopped as if he’d come to some sort of
invisible barrier as his voice trailed off. He laughed at himself
with a nervous little chuckle and shook his head.

“
Flashlight.” He said. “I’ll go get the
flashlight. Then it won’t make a lick of difference if that bitch
tries to lock me in the dark.”

He bounded out of the room like a rabbit and
Mona watched through the crack in the door as she lowered the rusty
machete that had been raised above her head. The corners of her
lips were arched in a crooked smile that, in any other situation,
would have been misconstrued as flirtatious.

So, the little prick was afraid of the
dark was he?
That
was
definitely something she could have a little fun with. And, as she
recalled the black painted windows she’d noticed when she found the
machete, she realized that she even knew the perfect place to play
this particular game.

With the stealth of a cat, she slipped out of
the two rooms and into the hallway, already giddy with what she had
planned.

When Daryl saw the police cruiser parked
outside, he slapped his forehead so hard that a red hand print was
left in its wake. With everything that had happened, he’d
completely forgot that they’d ditched the truck alongside the road.
And, since the sun had already risen by that time, the MagLite had
been safely tucked away inside the glovebox.

Still, a cop had to have a flashlight, right?
He imagined they had to go into abandoned buildings all the time to
chase out kids and squatters. And that time last summer when Earl
had his license taken away for DUI, the cop had shone a light into
their faces that was so bright any coon hunter would’ve been proud.
So it stood to reason that there had to be a flashlight somewhere
in the car.

After nearly five minutes of searching,
however, Daryl was still empty handed. His mind flashed back to the
officer sprawled in the middle of the road, but this time it wasn’t
the pulp his face had become that came to mind. This time, he
envisioned that shiny, black belt that encircled the cop’s waist.
It was almost like a super hero’s utility belt with it’s pouches
and holster. Pepper spray, handcuffs, the little cradle for the
handheld radio . . . and also a slender, black flashlight attached
by some sort of hook or clamp. To be honest, he’d been so busy
looking for the handcuff keys that he couldn’t remember which. All
he knew for certain was that there had been a flashlight. And that
it was still attached to that now frozen corpse.

“
Son of a bitch!”

Daryl wanted to hit something, to drive his
fist through a piece of wood just like Earl had done when they
discovered Mama’s spectacles laying inside the corpse of their
former victim. Instead, he stamped his foot into the snow and
slammed the car door shut with as much force as he could muster.
From somewhere back in the woods, a gunshot rang out and he stared
at the edge of the forest for a moment while the meaning of this
dawned upon him. The initial shot was followed by two more, one
right after the other, and he knew he had to get moving.

Earl was a damn good hunter and the chances
that he’d missed his mark were about the same as finding an honest
politician. Which meant that the man was now dead and Earl would
soon be coming back to the house. If he found Daryl simply standing
in the yard because he was too afraid to check the darkened room
for the woman . . . well, that was something he really didn’t want
to think about.