Headless (11 page)

CHAPTER XIX

     Rain beats down on the camp, as the last four jump to their feet, shielding themselves as best as they can. The rain quickly starts to wash out the fire, and Amir removes his coat, holding it over Kat's head as she squeals, and they run off towards the building.

     “Hey! Who's going to help me with the booze? Hey!” Dougie yells.

     Kat waves back at him over her shoulder, as she and Amir enter the nearest home. Dougie turns back to find that Sam has snagged the bag with the drugs in it, and taken off down the path. He grumbles to himself, and picks up the cooler, carrying it towards the house that Amir and Katerina ran to. A bolt of lightning splits a nearby tree, setting it on fire. Dougie slides to a stop, and alters his course, going to another building further away from the fire.

     Sam uses the sledge hammer to knock in a heavy door. She rushes in, hurrying to get out of the rain, as it pours down heavier and heavier. She reaches up to the hard hat she wears, and turns the light on, looking around. She seems to have found what used to be the store. Broken down shelves, dirty floors, and aged food jars line the walls. Sam spins as she walks through the old store, and bumps into one of the shelves, knocking a few of the jars off, and they shatter to the ground. She screams out in surprise.

     “Fuck this place, man!” she hisses. “I want to go home!”

     She sits the bag she took down, and unzips it, pulling a baggy of cocaine from it. She takes out a small mirror as well, and sits it on the shelf closest to her, tapping out a bit of coke from the baggy, and she uses one of her long nails to drag it in several lines. Sam pulls a dollar bill from her pocket, and snorts up the first line, rubbing her nose, and exhaling heavily.

     “Good shit, Danny. Good shit,” she moans, nodding at the feeling overcoming her.

     Sam finishes off the lines, and puts it back in the bag, zipping it up before she starts to make her way around the shelves, looking at the various jars, wraps and broken items that were lost to time. She picks up an old pick axe and looks it over, as cobwebs stretch, pulling away from the wall to the axe. Sam turns it around, looking it over.

     She swings it once, and the metal head flies off, smashing through the front window of the store. She laughs and sits the handle down, moving on. The Horseman leans down, picking up the head to the pick axe, standing outside the window. She continues to peruse the shelves of the store, looking over all these items that had basically disintegrated. Sam reaches up, tracing her finger through the caked on dust, and dirt, holding her finger up to look at it.

     “Blech,” she whispers.

     Sam wipes her hand off on her bright orange vest, sticking her tongue out in disgust. As she makes her way towards the back of the store, the Horseman quietly pushes the door open, entering the store with her, his movements deathly quiet. She doesn't even notice, as she's busy perusing through the building, the Horseman creeping up behind her.

     She sits the sledge hammer down then takes out her cell phone, and starts dialing Tina's number. Where did this girl go? The phone rings through to her voicemail. Sam groans, hangs up, and tries again. And again; and again; and again.

     “Tina, what the fuck are you doing? Answer your phone!”

     Sam hangs up and dials again. This time it doesn't even ring through.
“We're sorry, we are unable to complete your call at this time. Please hang up and try again,”
The pre-recorded voice echoes out of her phone. She tries one last time, and it gives a dead tone. She screams out in anger, before texting.

     “Pick. Up. Your. Fucking. Phone!” she hisses out as she types frantically at the phone.

    
Could not send.

     “God damn it! Tina, it's storming. Where are you at? Just tell me you're alright!” she grumbles as she types.

    
Could not send.

     “Fuck you phone!” she screams as she holds the phone up to her mouth, before smacking it against the wall.

     She has a short-fuse temper. Sam turns the phone off, and puts it back in her pocket. She picks up her hammer, as the Horseman extends a hand towards the back of her head, and she jumps feeling the presence there and turns. Nobody's there. She looks around, and shrugs, moving on through the store.

     Her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she takes it out, hitting the button on it.

     “Hello? Tina? Tina, is that you? Hello? TINA!”

     She looks at her phone, as it beeps and hangs up. She tries dialing again. Another busy signal. Sam punches the cabinet next to her, and her fist goes through the weak wood. She gasps, shaking her hand and looks down to find a couple big splinters stuck in her flesh. She uses her teeth to pull each of them out, spitting them off to the side. The Horseman rises behind her, and yet again she gets the feeling that someone else is there.

     Her line of sight rises, tempted to look back over her shoulder, but she doesn't. Instead she finishes pulling the final splinter from her hand, and holds up the sledge hammer, staring at it. After a pause, she turns, swinging the hammer. It sticks in the wall with a heavy thud, and crack as the wood splits. Nothing there, yet again. She let's go of the hammer, and storms through the store raising her hands.

     “Who's fucking with me? Tina? Caleb? Is it you guys? Jackie? You almost had your head knocked off, assholes! Seriously, give it a rest!” The Horseman pulls the hammer from the wall, holding it up as if to examine it. She turns and finds him holding her weapon and scoffs. “Fuck you Dougie. Did Harold put you up to this stupid ass joke? Not funny. Nice costume though. Very authentic.”

     The Horseman's upper body turns towards her. She reaches up, pointing the light at the neck wound where the Hessian's head once sat.

     “Who did the make-up on the neck wound? Jackie? Used one of her medical books or something? Looks fake as shit.”

     The mercenary takes a single step towards her. Sam takes a step back. The Horseman takes another step, playing with her, though she doesn't follow, yet. It twists the sledge hammer playfully, as it takes yet another step. She chuckles uneasily, as she continues to back up towards the door. The Horseman raises the hammer, and swings for one of the stands, absolutely decimating it with a single blow. She screams out, holding her hands up to her mouth.

     “What the fuck is your problem, Doug? This isn't funny! Can't you go bother anyone else? You're fucking up my buzz!”

     The Horseman holds up the hammer, examining it again. It swings the hammer back and forth, lowering it to let the hammer sway above the ground. Sam backs into the wall, gripping it. Mist from the rain bounces off her arm, and side of her face as the store door sits open, still.

     The mercenary raises the hammer and swings it at her head. She ducks out of the way. Brick and wood splinters and flies, as she falls to her back, pulling herself out of the store, as the Horseman turns back towards her. It advances on her, and she pulls herself back out into the rain, and mud as the sky fills with thunder and lightning.

     “This isn't funny! Stop!”

     It advances on her, raising the sledgehammer over its head, swinging down. She splits her legs, and the hammer smashes into the mud, and plops out, as the Horseman drags it back towards itself, swinging back over again, as she moves back just in time, and it hits between her legs, yet again.

     “Come on, give it a rest!” The Horseman raises the hammer again, and she winces putting her hands up. “Please!”

     The Horseman pauses for a moment, then raises the hammer and swipes it across it's body. The metal makes contact with her left hand, snapping it at the wrist. She screams out in pain, and immediately turns away, as bone cuts through flesh, and her wrist goes limp. Sam begins crawling through the muck, pulling herself away with one hand, as the Horseman advances on her slowly.

     “Someone help me!” she screams out.

     The Hessian steps on her back, and pushes her down face first into the mud. She fights to keep her face out of the muck, as she can't breathe, but his strength is supernatural, pushing her further and further down. She coughs, spitting out mud as the hard hat falls off, still trying to pull herself away. A truck may as well be parked on top of her.

     “Don't kill me!” she pleads.

     The Horseman raises the sledgehammer overhead and swings down. Metal meets skull, and a loud crack echoes through the splattering of rain. Eyeballs, brain, cartilage and blood ooze out from under the head of the hammer, as with one blow, the Horseman annihilates her entire head, nearly down to her shoulders. Hair, flesh, blood and bone blend with mud and rain as the Horseman pulls the hammer from the ground.

     Her body twitches under his foot, as he pushes further down into the mud. The Horseman grabs her body by the ankle, and drags her back towards the store. Arms slide out towards where Sam's head used to be, as the muck offers a bit of resistance to her still twitching form. Rain bounces off the hard hat as it lies in the mud, still.

CHAPTER XX

     Dougie drops the cooler just inside the front door of the home, causing dust to billow up. He peers into the darkness as his eyes begin to adjust. He cracks open the cooler, and takes out a beer, twisting the cap off with his bare hand. The drink only lasts moments, as he tips it back, downing it in just a few swift chugs.

     “Damn that's good. Nothing beats American made,” Dougie coughs out, looking at the bottle. He squints at it, holding it up to try and see better in the bit of light available through the window. “Made in Germany.”

     He laughs to himself, before throwing the bottle against the wall, smashing it, and grabbing another from the cooler next to him. He twists it open and takes a drink, before noticing things around him, as his eyes finally adjust. Dougie notes the broken down furniture in the room, and walks to it, picking it up and tossing stuff on the top aside.

     The body of a dead raccoon lies cut in half underneath, and Dougie gasps, catching his breath. The stench of its dead body fills his nostrils, and he gags, throwing the furniture back on top of the rodent's corpse. He coughs, moving away from the mess, and spits out on to the floor.

     “Disgusting ass shit,” he grumbles.

     He throws the half full bottle of beer at the wood pile where the raccoon was hidden. It smashes and splatters against the wall. Dougie exhales heavily, catching his breath and looks around. It's still incredibly dark in the house, so he makes his way to the cooler, kneeling down at it. He opens it up, and digs around in a plastic bag they had stuck in there earlier, he tears it open, grabbing a handful of glow sticks out of it, and cracking them.

     “Danny and his rave obsession actually serves a purpose, finally.”

     Dougie holds the glow sticks up, and they give off a decent amount of light, turning everything in the home green. He grabs a bottle of whiskey from the cooler, twisting the cap off with two fingers, before making his way through the house. He pushes his way through the dining room, making his way into the kitchen. This place is entirely emptied out. Dougie attempts to pull open one of the drawers in the kitchen, and it falls apart in his hand.

     “Poor bastards just up and took off. Wonder what scared them off?” Harold's story came back to mind, and Dougie laughs it off. Headless Horseman; cursed town; whole lot of bullshit. “Crazy ass white people will believe anything, man.”

     He laughs, again. He leans back against the wall, but finds there's not really anything there. Dougie catches himself, before falling down the stairs, but he turns to find dark stairs leading down into the basement. The same stairs that Ray and Paige had fallen down just the night before. Dougie shakes the glow sticks, and holds them out in front of his face, peering down into the basement.

     “These mother fuckers had the legit underground railroad hidden all this time?” He chuckles to himself, as he moves slowly down the stairs.

     Dougie takes each step carefully. Every step down, he watches where he's walking, then looks up to peer into the darkness. He'll be damned if he's going to knock himself out on a low hanging piece of wood out here in the middle of nowhere. He holds the glow stick up in front of his face, examining his surroundings.

     He steps into the lit basement, looking around in surprise. Throughout the room, as opposed to the previous night, the room is filled with lit candles. Wax dripping from many of them, as they've been left for hours without attention. Dougie scratches his head in confusion, before lowering the glow stick.

     “What the fuck is all of this?” Dougie makes his way around the basement, before finally turning to find the book sitting in the middle of the room, on its pedestal.

     He stares at it a moment, and makes his way to it, tracing his middle finger along the spine of the book, before slowly opening the aged pages, and thumbing through it carefully. The pages remain blank, but as he thumbs through them blood drips down on the table, and the book. He stares at the drops a moment, closing his eyes and shaking his head, not sure if it's real, or not.

     A couple more drops hit the faded pages. Dougie sets his beer down on the small table, and touches the blood, rolling it around on his fingertips, immensely confused. Several drips of blood tap on his forehead, and he reaches up surprised. He wipes the blood from his forehead and stares at it on his palm.

     “What the fuck is this?” He sniffs it, and recoils at the metallic scent. “Blood? Am I bleeding?”

    Dougie feels his forehead, and scalp, looking for a wound. When he finds nothing, he turns his attention to the ceiling. His jaw lowers in shock at the horrific sight above him. The heads of the various victims from the past twenty-two hours, or so, are stuck to the ceiling in various stages of decomposition, blood loss, and damage.

     Not much scares the massive athlete, but this sends him falling back to his ass, in shock. “What the fuck? What. The. Fuck? WHAT THE FUCK!?”

     He pushes himself back to the nearest wall, staring around at the heads. He turns to the side as he can't hold it down any longer, and spews a sour stream of vomit along the wall. Dougie wipes his mouth, and jumps to his feet, gripping against the wall, not taking his eyes off the heads. Danny. Jackie. Harold. A few other random people he doesn't recognize. Dougie doesn't pull himself from the wall, as he moves around the room towards the stairs.

     He reaches the bottom of the stairs, and stops when he notices footsteps echoing on the wood above him. His breath slows with each step, as it grows louder, and louder. Thud; breath. THUD; breath. Each step bringing the stranger closer. Dougie stares at the door, waiting for it to open. Whoever was up there had stopped at the top of the stairs. What seems like an eternity passes in silence. He finally grows frustrated with the interminable silence.

     “Come on mother fucker! Come get some!” Dougie screams out, as adrenaline begins coursing through his body.

     His chest heaves, his pupils dilate and an instant feeling of sobriety overtakes him. His massive hand clenches the beer bottle so tightly it cracks. His breathing hastens as he cracks his neck, and grits his teeth. Dougie smashes the bottle against the wall, breaking off a nice bit to use as a knife.

     “Come on!” He roars out in anger.

     The door creaks open at the top of the stairs slowly into darkness. Dougie stares hard, trying to make anything out. He stands there a couple more moments, still not being able to see anything, and finally raises the glow stick, throwing it towards the top of the stairs. It disappears into the darkness. No one is there. Dougie looks around the candlelit basement, finding himself entirely alone, except for the heads of the deceased hanging above him.

     He exhales slowly, deeply, and lowers his eyes to the stairs in front of him. He takes his first step up, then another. And another. Finally, he looks up just in time to catch Caleb's skull directly in his face. The sudden bombardment takes him by surprise and he loses his balance, falling back down the stairs. He gasps out in pain, arching his back as the wind is knocked out of him.

     Dougie looks to his side, finding his best friend's head staring back at him. Half a strap on dildo still stuck down Caleb’s throat. A look of shock on his pale blue face. Dougie scrambles away from the head, in shock. He turns as several soft wet thuds follow. Tina's head bounces down the stairs, rolling to a stop alongside Caleb's decapitated head.

     “Jesus Christ! What the hell is going on!” He keeps pushing back away from the heads, and bumps into the small table in the center of the basement.

     He reaches up, grabbing at the sheet over the table and attempts to use it to pull himself up. However, it slips and sends him falling back to the ground, as the book and sheet fall too. He looks over to find a large glass cylinder built into the small table. In the center of it, surrounded by a soft green light, is a floating skull. The Horseman's skull.

     Heavy footsteps begin thudding down the stairs. The Horseman descends into the substructure. Dougie's eyes grow wide with shock, confusion and fear as the demonic mercenary turns towards him, the axe swaying in his right hand. The Hessian stands there motionless for a moment, before tapping Tina's head with the toe of his boot, and the head rolls between Dougie's legs, who sits back staring at the severed cranium.

     “No. You can't be real.” Dougie whispers, looking up at the Horseman.

     The Horseman spins the axe once, the razor-sharp blade swiping through the air at a high pitch. Dougie's eyes lower to the axe, as he climbs to his feet, brushing himself off. The Horseman takes a half step towards him, and Dougie raises his hands.

     “Hey! Hey! Hang on!” Dougie yells out, staring at his potential attacker. “Look, you're a soldier, right? A fighter. So give me a fighting chance, eh? When's the last time you had a good fight? Put the axe down, and let's handle this like men...”

     Dougie raises his fist. The Horseman stands there a moment, before dropping the axe. Dougie grins, feeling accomplished that he's conned his attacker out of a potentially quick death. This gives him a chance, at least. All he has to do is get past him, and outside. Dougie motions for the Horseman to come at him.

     “Let's do this, mother fucker.”

     The Horseman advances on Dougie, and grabs for him, but Dougie is incredibly fast for his build, and moves to the side out of the way. Dougie throws several left hooks into the Hessian's rib cage. As the Horseman turns on Dougie. Dougie grabs the Horseman by the back of his collar, and throws several knees into his abdomen. He lifts the monstrous figure up and throws it back across the basement floor.

     The Hessian stumbles across the dirty floor, landing on his stomach. Dougie stands up, laughing. As the Hessian starts to push itself up from the ground, Dougie runs and punts the mercenary in the shoulder, sending it rolling over to his back and slides into the wall. Dougie's adrenaline undermines his survival instinct and he runs at the Horseman as he sits there, and begins kicking it in the chest and abdomen repeatedly. The Horseman flinches with each attack.

     “You killed my boy! You killed my friends! And you think you're gonna kill me? Fuck you!”

     As Dougie lets up, the Horseman leans over, seemingly hurt for the first time. Dougie takes a few steps backwards, and turns around.
Where is it? There...
and he picks up the Horseman's axe. He turns and with a massive swing, he sticks it into the Horseman's chest and abdomen. The handle bounces off the wall above where the Hessian's head once was. It grips at the axe for a moment, before slumping over. A black viscous liquid oozing from the injury.

     Dougie spits on the Horseman's lifeless body, and makes his way to the stairs, jogging up them two at a time. He falls flat on his face, his head bouncing off the top step, and looks down to find the Horseman holding his ankle. The mercenary yanks the axe from his chest, dropping it to the ground, as he pulls Dougie back down to the basement with ease.

     The young athlete bounces off the wall, and grunts as he falls to his hands and knees. The Horseman advances on him, and Dougie pushes himself up from the ground, spearing the Horseman back into the wall, knocking over several candles in the process. The old items of the building ignite rather easily, starting a fire. The Horseman pushes Dougie back, away from himself, and Dougie twists, pulling the Horseman to the ground, and into an arm bar, extending as he feels the Horseman's arm crack in his grip. The mercenary grabs at Dougie seemingly in pain.

     As Dougie pulls harder, very much trying to remove the Horseman's right arm from his body, the Horseman turns over Dougie's legs. It climbs to it's knees, grabbing at Dougie's arm, and with ease climbs to it's feet, lifting the massive young man off the ground. The Horseman scuffles to the wall, and with a turn of it's hips, slams Dougie against the brick, as the room gets hotter. Dougie groans, letting go and falling to the ground, grabbing his side.

     Dougie climbs to his hands and knees, then stands up, barely able to keep his balance. He inhales deeply, and sighs out, raising his chin up as the Horseman's chest heaves. Dougie seems to have actually gave the demon a run for his money. Dougie grins.

     “Go ahead. Get your little axe, bitch.”

     The Horseman looks down, as the cut in his chest and abdomen from the axe heals over. The young man shakes his head, frustrated. The Horseman pulls his arm back and swings, throwing a straight right. Dougie's eyes go wide, as the Horseman's fist bursts into his sternum, and through his back. Dougie looks down at the Horseman's arm stuck through his torso, and coughs as he spits up blood. The Horseman rips it's fist from his chest, and holds it's bloody hand up in front of Dougie's face, before the young man falls to the ground, dead. With little time allotted to it, the Horseman walks to the axe, picks it up and makes it's way back to Dougie.

     The Hessian raises the axe above itself and swings down, removing the young man's head with a single swipe. It drops the axe next to the body, and squats down, picking up the cranium. After holding it up a moment and staring at it, Hessian raises the head up, placing it on his own neck. After a moment, the black liquid that oozed from his chest moves along the edge of the neck, building up to create some sort of flesh. Dougie's skin goes pale, as black veins work up into the skin, and the Hessian leans down, picking up the axe.