The Outkast (16 page)

******

The Outcast didn’t lift Brian up from the floor, which was his favorite thing to do. He was burned-out. So burned-out he felt like he would pass out again. But he knew he would be all right, because his strength would come back to him. Come back even multiple-fold. He was doing a great job spilling the blood of the impure. The gods would reform and replenish him for his valor, when everything had been accomplished.

He knelt beside Brian, who was howling helplessly.

It was time to stab the foolish Sheriff to death. When The Outcast was done with him, he would go after the woman. And then the traitor.

The Outcast lifted his knife up, but he couldn’t swing it down to kill. The pain. The ferocious pain had arrested him once again. He screamed.

******

Standing at the foot of the staircase, ready to take Robert and run out into the dark, Holly watched in awe as Craig yanked the knife out of his chest. It was a heroic act, but it was also the single stroke of action that sealed his fate. Blood, which had hitherto been flowing out steadily, now gushed out like wine from a broken barrel.

The sheriff’s deputy began to convulse.

To Holly’s right, the evil creature who had called himself The Outcast was going down on his knees, no doubt enraptured by another atrocity he was about to commit. His back was turned to her.

Although Holly had intended to run away, two things made her change her mind.

First, she thought there was no guarantee the killer wouldn’t track them down, anyway, that it was just a matter of time before their deaths would come knocking, too.

But the second thing—and the stronger of the two—was the feeling she had towards the fallen fighters.

These were men who had sacrificed their lives for her and her son. They could have turned their backs on the mission to save her, capitalized on the fact that Ogre’s Pond was equipped with only six officers of the law—including the fatally wounded—and waited till they got help from outside, at which point the help would have been nothing but useless. But they had chosen to travel along a high road, and that same valiant journey would soon cost them their lives.

Trembling with a toxic mixture of fear and rage, Holly grabbed the bloody knife from beside Craig and dashed across to where The Outcast was kneeling. Without thinking, she rammed the cold steel into the base of his neck, rammed it in really hard. And while the big devil was screaming with his hands dancing wildly in the air, Holly wrung the knife out of his flesh and rammed it back in, harder. She had never killed before in her entire life—had never thought she would need to. But right now, it felt good.

Behind her, she heard Robert’s distant cry calling her.

It’ll soon be okay, baby
, she thought, preparing to go for the third round.
Soon as I finish this business, it will be.

All of a sudden, The Outcast turned around on his knees and grasped Holly’s biceps. His grip on her was unbelievably firm for a man who was supposed to be on the doorstep of death. It was like a repeat of Samson pulling down the pillars of the temple when he was thought to have become a complete
goner
. The Outcast pulled and jerked, intending to flip Holly over right in front of him.

Holly fought back hard, digging her heels in to create sufficient resistance against the monster’s tug. But as much as she tried, she finally caved in, and her back was slammed on the floor, the big frame of the man atop her.

Then, it was over. The Outcast’s body relaxed. He was dead.

Underneath the huge body now, Holly felt a bloom of pain spread from the center of her stomach to both of her flanks, then move straight to her backbone.

She struggled to roll the weight off her, but she couldn’t. The bulk of the man had knocked the wind out of her, she concluded. And in such a very short amount of time, she had grown really weak.

She heard Robert’s voice.

Her son had drawn closer, pulling The Outcast’s body out of the way, doing as much a rescue job as his tiny self could afford.

For how long had she been stuck under the man? She had no way of telling.

With her back resting against the wall now, she looked at Robert’s innocent little face. Her boy was crying, and she was trying to tell him not to cry, that the business was over now and they could have some chocolate and cookies and cheese. But for all she was worth, she couldn’t give voice to her thoughts.

She was growing weaker by the minute.

Reaching out to touch Robert’s face with one hand, she cradled the handle of the knife that had ruptured her stomach with the other. The same knife that had killed The Outcast was buried within her.

Sacrifice.

It had been written—even before she was conceived.

She felt cold.

The pain felt cruel.

“
It feels good,” she whispered strangely.

Holly Smallwood collapsed on the floor beside her son, who cried all night long.

******

She was pronounced dead in her house at 2:59 AM, on Thursday, August 20.

Chapter 23

Robert Smallwood visited Sheriff Brian Stack in the hospital nine days after his mother died, which was the day following her burial. The reason for the delay was another long story that Robert would relive over and again during his adult life.

The four sheriff’s deputies were buried on the third day, having brought their families together to bid them good-byes. So was Donnie Murphy.

After Brian and Craig had pursued The Outcast down the woods on the night of the tragedy, Allan had abandoned Dwayne, flouting Sheriff Stack’s order to stay with his comrade. He had got more hysterical and run his car into a tree at full tilt. He was brought to the hospital shortly afterwards, where he raved about seeing a monster with a chimp’s head even as he bled in his bed. He died the following evening.

******

Brian had asked to see the boy.

“
How’re you doing today, Sheriff?” Robert said as he sat on the chair close to Brian’s bed.

Brian managed to stick one thumb up to gesture he was doing all right—even though he wasn’t. He couldn’t speak.

When Robert had turned persistently inquisitive one day, Dr. Ben Lynch had told him that the inside of the Sheriff was terribly damaged, and it would take some time for the healing to be fully made. Until then, the Sheriff would have to manage his communications through signs and gestures.

And the doctor was right. Brian recuperated really slowly, and he couldn’t utter his first word until about seven weeks thereafter. Even then, his voice never sounded the same.

He died five months later.

“
Not from the damage inflicted by the bullet, but from a malignant tumor,” Dr. Lynch said, as if by sharing that snippet of news, the pang of death would be made more bearable.

Robert would have a lot of scary dreams in the years to come—especially during his time at the orphanage—and it would proceed right into his career as an FBI special agent. Most of these nightmares would involve his stepfather, Charles Smallwood, who had adopted him as his son shortly before his death.

On the day he was taken to the orphanage, early on a wet Thursday morning, Robert Smallwood lay in his bed near the window, listening to the drumming of raindrops on the roof and gazing up at the photos of his mother that sat on the shelf.

The mother he would always love.