Shut The Fuck Up And Die! (21 page)

Out in the open, the temperature seemed to
drop nearly ten degrees. Without the cover of trees to cut the
wind, a steady breeze gusted against him and rustled the tufts of
dead scrub grass that poked through the snow like skeletons clawing
their way out of the grave. The tip of his nose was now so cold
that it almost felt like it were on fire and a membrane seemed to
form somewhere just inside his nostrils. He could feel this film
flex and relax with each breath and he cursed himself for not
having the forethought to grab a ski mask before taking off after
the man.

By the time he reached the center of the
clearing, snow had begun falling again and the tingling pain had
spread to Earl’s cheeks and ears and the hairs of his beard felt
like brittle needles poking into his neck and chin . The discomfort
made him grumble to himself as thoughts of coffee and crackling
fire plagued his mind; making Matt suffer didn’t seem as important
as it had earlier. Now, he simply wanted to kill the bastard, get
his ass home, and thaw out beneath a pile of blankets. And to do
that, he had to solve the riddle of the footprints surrounding
him.

Earl spun around slowly, taking in each track
with a critical eye. He wasn’t exactly thinking about them, but
rather trusting his mind to seize upon something that was just a
little out of place. Something that would separate one particular
trail from the others.

Halfway through his second revolution, he
heard something. Almost like a snake’s hiss. Only this sound seemed
to be coming through the air.

Before his mind had a chance to decode what
this could mean, pain flared in his chest so intensely that
everything went black for a moment. He staggered backward as his
hands groped for the source of the agony and felt the warm
stickiness of his own blood gushing from his body.

Matt watched the fat man stumble around
like a dazed idiot. Obviously, the stupid fuck hadn’t realized what
had happened yet. Otherwise, he would have been running for cover;
instead he simply stayed in the clearing, blinking at his own
bloody hands as if trying to figure out exactly what they were.
Still, it would only be a matter of time before rationality broke
through the wall of shock. And then he
would
run. Which meant Matt had to act
fast.

He drew back the t-shaped piece of plastic
that was squeezed within his fist. At first, it felt like it would
take all of his strength to pull the cord it was attached to into
position; but then the pulleys shifted and all of the tension
seemed to evaporate. He held it for a moment, lining up his shot,
and then released.

There was a soft ting as the cord snapped
back, immediately followed by the whizz of the arrow cutting
through the air. Instead of waiting for the projectile to plunge
into Earl’s blubber, however, Matt was already pulling another from
the quiver on his back and fitting the notch onto the string of the
compound bow he’d taken from the house.

He released the barrage of arrows like a
machine and their razor-like tips flew with precision. Again and
again, they found their mark as fresh spurts of blood squished from
Earl’s body. Within seconds, the man looked like an oversized
voodoo doll stuck with feathered needles. His entire chest was red
and glistening now and his face had turned pale and sallow. Sinking
to his knees, he tried to raise the pistol, but Matt’s next shot
pierced Earl’s forearm and the gun tumbled into the air as the fat
man snatched his hand away.

The bolt had passed through the arm and Matt
was reminded of Steve Martin and the headband that made it look as
if he’d taken an arrow through the skull. However, in Earl’s case,
the business end of the shaft had strands of sinew and tiny chunks
of flesh still embedded on the barbed arrowhead.

“
I’m a wild and crazy guy.” Matt
mumbled to himself as he lined up his last arrow with a
smile.

He was being more careful with this one, for
Earl had started to sway back and forth as mists of blood flew from
his gasping mouth. Somehow, he looked smaller now: as if all of
that bulk had been nothing more than hemoglobin and he was
shriveling down to a normal size now that it was all spewing from
his body. On top of this, the snow had really started coming down
again. It was almost as if the clearing were actually the diorama
in a snow globe that had been vigorously shaken by god and it made
it difficult to track the man’s subtle movements.

After several seconds, Matt finally released
his shot. The arrow sped through the air and rammed into the center
of Earl’s chest. Almost immediately, the man fell face forward into
the snow, forcing the tip of the gore streaked arrow through his
back as his weight fell upon the shaft.

He lay motionless while a dusting of snow
built up on his back.. Not trying to raise his head with the last
of his strength. Not so much as even a finger or leg twitching as a
crimson shadow blossomed beneath his body. If it kept coming down
like this, within half an hour he would be nothing more than a
mound of snow that was simply larger than the drifts surrounding
it.

Tossing the bow onto the ground, Matt raised
his middle finger at this fallen giant, kissed the tip of it, and
then snapped his wrist with a flourish. He felt like he always did
following a kill: breathless, flushed with a mixture of excitement
and release, slightly tense and tranquil all at the same time. It
was like he was a virgin who’d just gotten his first piece of ass.
Only he got to experience the giddy thrill time and time again.

That feeling, however, quickly hardened
when he heard a thin and distant scream warble through the
stillness of the morning. He stood as still as an ice sculpture as
he closed his eyes and listened. Even from this far away, he could
tell it was a scream of agony and intense pain A scream of mortal
danger. A woman’s scream.
Mona’s
scream . . . .

SCENE SEVENTEEN

Daryl felt the warmth spread across his
crotch like the blossoming of a liquid flower. It trickled down his
thighs as it’s sharp vapors rose like heat to sting his nostrils.
He was only vaguely aware of the cleaver clattering to the floor as
his hands stretched into the darkness as if they could somehow push
it back.

His screams came in short, shrill bursts that
wavered with the trembling that seized his entire body and he
staggered forward, hoping to find his way to the stairs. The
darkness, however, had other plans: it wrapped around his feet like
an over-friendly cat, made him stumble and fall, tried to force its
way down his throat where it could choke the air from his lungs;
every breath was a battle to be won, every beat of his heart felt
as if might be that muscle’s last spasm. A tightness clinched his
chest, but his legs felt as if they were as wobbly and unsteady as
a newborn calf. In the time it took to blink an eye, he’d been
plunged into the gaping maw of his worst fear and he was all too
keenly aware of the gnashing teeth housed within this great, black
beast.

The concrete floor banged against Daryl’s
knees as he toppled forward, scraping away both fabric and skin as
his jaw cracked into something hard and metallic. His mouth flooded
with a taste that was as if he’d stuck his tongue to the posts of a
battery and his back hitched as sobs tried to force their way
through the screeches that raked his vocal chords.

On the floor, with the darkness squeezing in
from all sides, he was an eight year old boy again. It was as if
the scars that crisscrossed his arms and back had all ripped open
with the disappearance of light. Rather than seeping blood,
however, these wounds oozed the invisible muck of child-like fear.
It coated his body with a cold slime that made the maturity of
years wither into a man-sized husk; this atrophied shell pulled
tightly around the youth within, reminding him of all the times
cling wrap had been wrapped around his mouth while streams of water
poured down. He was choking, drowning, gasping for air as his
fingers clawed through dark waves for even the smallest hint of
stability.

And they were out there. He could feel their
eyes, like pinpricks in his soul, burning into the back of his neck
and piercing his mind with their primal hunger. Spinning on his
knees like a dervish, his watery eyes searched the darkness for
their red glow. But they were always just out of sight, always
somewhere behind him, above him, closing in, and moving so fast
that they would tear the flesh from his bones before he even felt
the twitch of wiry whiskers against his chin.

“
Good boy . . . I will . . . I’ll be
good, Mama, please, please, please, I swear . . . .”

His voice was raw and raspy from the initial
burst of screaming and cut in and out through the sobs that bubbled
snot from his nose. At the same time, there was also a careening
tone to the words, as if he might be set free if only he could
plead his case long enough.

“
Please, Mama . . .
please
. . . .”

He’d wrapped his arms around himself and
curled into a small ball in a nest of crushed carboard boxes and
trash bags stuffed with old clothes. His head was tucked so low
that his chin rested on the tops of his knees and he rocked quickly
from side to side as tears and urine pooled below him.

“
Mama . . . .”

Mama was his only hope, the only thing that
could drive away the darkness and turn back the creatures that
slithered and scuttled toward the scent of his blood. Mama could
hold him in her arms and wipe the glistening tears from his cheeks
as she explained how he would never have to be in the dark again.
How he would always be safe and protected and strong. If only, he
would listen to her. If only he would be a good boy.

His voice tapered off into a low moan and his
teeth clattered between hiccups, sniffles, and weeping so soft that
it almost seemed as if the air were leaking out of him. He pinched
his own arms, gasped for breath, and tried to silence the pounding
in his head long enough to hear that scuffling sound.

It was somewhere in the darkness. Like the
scrape of feet dragging slowly across the floor. Circling him, but
never actually moving in for the kill.

“
Daryl . . . .”

Mama’s voice whispered so sharply that his
name could have been nothing more than a quick gasp of air.

“
Daryl, you’ve been a bad
boy.”

The sting of the reprimanding tone made his
stomach feel as though he’d just swallowed battery acid. It rose
through his trachea and flooded his mouth with acrid bile as he
clenched his eyes closed.

“
A
very
bad boy.”

“
I’m sorry, Mama . . . I’ll be good, I
swear I will . . . .”

“
You let them do this to me. You let
them kill me.”

The voice drew out the word kill as if it
were a long sigh. And all the while it moved through the darkness,
floating through the void like a disembodied spirit.

“
NO!
No, no,
no, no. I wanted to stop it. I wanted to save you. Ask Earl, he’ll
tell you, I wanted to come home and make sure . . . .”

“
You let them kill me you bad, bad
boy.”

Daryl banged his head against the floor as if
the dull thuds could drive Mama’s ghost from his mind. But with
each new burst of pain, he saw those empty eyes . . . staring at
him through the darkness. Judging. Accusing.

“
It hurt soooo bad, Daryl. All I wanted
was for them to stop. For the pain to go away. For someone to
help.”

His hands were pressed tightly to the sides
of his head now and he felt a pressure growing inside him. Almost
as if he were swelling up like a leech. Only this pressure was cold
and seemed to shred his thoughts into disjointed fragments. Past
and present overlapped, memories and reality fought for dominance,
and his brain felt as if it were being pulled in a thousand
directions all at the same time.

But still Mama’s voice kept circling in the
dark. Taunting. Jabbing with its words. Feeding the confusion and
fear and pain and loathing that roiled within Daryl’s mind.

“
I reckon you know what happens to bad
boys, Daryl. I reckon you know all too well.”

His tears now bordered on laughter and he
ripped clumps of hair from his scalp to keep his hands from
scratching open his own throat. Every muscle in his body was pulled
taut and the shivering that had overtook him now seemed as if it
had sank into his very core.

“
It’s not my fault, Mama . . .
.”

“
All your fault, you naughty boy. You
should’ve protected me.”

“
It’s not my fault.”

This time the statement was louder and
sounded more like a statement than a question. As if the pressure
and trembling within were forcing the words out like bursts of
escaping gas.

“
You let them torture me.
You
allowed me to die.”

Daryl felt as if a fissure cracked through
his skull and everything that had been building up gushed out into
the open. The force made him spring to his feet and his voice
bellowed through the darkened basement as spittle flew from the
snarl that distorted his face.

“
No!
I was a
little boy, you fuckin’ bitch! A little fuckin’ boy that you were
s’posed to love and cherish and protect! I was your son but it was
never fuckin’ good enough, was it? Never good enough for
anything!”

Mama’s voice laughed and Daryl’s hand shot
into the darkness, scrambling over the mounds of junk until it felt
cold metal beneath its fingers. He snatched the object with a
rattling clink that caused the image of a pipe wrench to flare in
his mind.