The Devil Next Door (27 page)

Una moved down the hallway to the stairs, standing there, feeling a silence within her that would never be disturbed by noise again. It was all she had, that coveting and enclosing silence, windy and longing and hollow. The sound of graveyards and empty places, listening churchyards.

Down the steps, then, one, two, three, four…

She could smell supper.

She’d always had a good appetite, but now that was gone. Skeletons were never hungry and scarecrows needed no bread. She could feel the aches and pains and stiffness of a life that had long since ceased to be productive.

She made it downstairs and suddenly, the children were quiet and Phyllis stopped humming. They were holding their breath, waiting, playing games on an old woman who had no more sunshine in her heart for games.

Una moved through the living room towards the kitchen. The smells from the kitchen were meaty and thick and spicy.

Still, no sounds.

No sounds at all.

She came into the kitchen, saw them sitting in the dining room beyond.

Phyllis. Stevie. Melody.

They were all naked of all things.

And bald.

They had shaven their heads. All of them were grinning, their chins shiny with grease. A strand of meat hung from Melody’s mouth and she sucked it in. On the table was what they were eating, what Phyliss had been cooking. What she had chopped and sliced, stewed and boiled and baked and the smell of it was sickening. And the sight of it…
no, no, no, you old woman, you’ve lost your mind, you can’t be seeing this! You can’t be looking at this!

“Sit down, Auntie,” Phyllis said.

“And eat,” said Melody.

“It’s yummy,” said little Stevie, jabbing something pale on his plate with a fork.

Una shook her head from side to side as a scream loosed itself from her throat. What was left of Benny Shore was spread over the table. The provider of this household who was even now
providing.
His limbs had been roasted and his viscera stewed, his blood was a soup and his entrails stuffed with jelly. And there on the platter, surrounded by browned potatoes and carrots, garnished with dill, was his head, glazed like a ham, his screaming mouth stuffed with an apple.

“Sit…down,” Phyllis said, drool running from her mouth, her eyes glistening stones, staring with a fixed madness.

Una, screaming and mad, sat down.

Then the children were there, pressing themselves in, stuffing fat and pale meat into her mouth, pushing it down her throat with their greasy hands, filling her with the flesh and blood of their father while Phyllis held her. They emptied tureens and platters and serving dishes, dumping them all over Una, ladling soup over her head and shoving undercooked meat into her mouth until she could not breathe, not swallow, not do anything but fall from her seat, retching and retching, as they stood above her, grinning.

Then they fell on her with knives and teeth…

39

The boy’s meat was sweet and rich.

The thing that had once been known as Maddie Sinclair slept off her repast of boy, bloated, gassy, and satisfied. She snored. Her limbs trembled. Naked and crusted with dried blood, fat, and marrow, she lay in a corner of the cellar where she had scooped an earthen nest out of the dirt floor, filling it with dry leaves. A section of the boy’s entrails, half-gnawed, encircled her like garland. She lay there with her arms around her eldest daughter, Kylie, who nestled to her mother’s pendulant breasts as she had done as an infant. They slept on, bathed in their rising stench, happily as any animals fattened from the kill.

The air was smoky, ripe with an odor of meat, blood, and urine.

Maddie’s limbs shuddered as a dream ran through her simple mind. A primordial dream of the chase, the hunt, bringing down shaggy beasts with spears and arrows, bathing in the blood of immense carcasses.

She chattered her teeth, winced as gas rumbled from her backside, and went back to sleep.

The cellar was dim, moist, and smelled of black earth. Rather like a cave. It was this more than anything that had drawn Maddie here. Guided by untold ages of racial memory and primate instinct, she selected her lair as her ancestors had. The gutted remains of her husband were scattered across the floor along with some of his picked bones and drying flesh, garbage from several plastic bags. A wiry, muscular man, he had not been good eating. That’s why the trap was laid that snared in Matt Hack.

He had been most delicious.

A pit had been dug in the center of the floor and a low fire burned, smoke rising and filling the cellar with a dirty haze. The limbs of the boy, carefully dressed-out and salted, were hanging from the cobwebby beams above on ropes fashioned from his tendons and gut. Over the fire, suspended by a tripod was the boy’s stomach. It had been stuffed with organ meats and fat, sewn-up and now slowly smoked. His torso was dumped in the corner along with his head which had been broken open, brains scooped out.

Maddie’s youngest daughter, Elissa, was still awake.

She squatted by the boy’s head, running fingers along the inside of his skull, getting the last bits of buttery-soft gray matter that had been missed. Staring at what smoked over the fire with vacant eyes, she sucked her fingers clean. Like her sister, she was naked, streaked with grime and filth from head to toe, her flesh intricately cicatrized in patterns of welts and rising scars. Maddie was now similarly decorated. Elissa belched, ran dirty fingers through her fat-greased hair, dug a hole with her fingers and, squatting, shit into it. When she was done, she wiped her ass with a handful of leaves, then crouched down to sniff what she had produced. Satisfied, she buried it, flinging dirt over it like a cat.

Hopping on all fours, she crossed the room, intrigued by the smell of garbage on the floor. A heap of rotting vegetable matter stopped her. She sniffed it, chewed some, decided it was good. She rubbed herself with decomposing lettuce, pulpy tomatoes, bits of onion.

Then she went over to the nest.

Circling it three times, she wedged herself in next to her sister who reflexively encircled her with her arms. Then together the brood slept, dam and offspring, a knot of foul things, trembling with atavistic dreams, waiting for the night and the good hunting it would bring beneath the eye of the sacred moon…

40

Louis knew that the smart thing to do was to turn the car around and head right out of town. He was guessing there were only about a thousand voices in his head screaming for him to do this very thing…voices of instinct, survival, and self-continuation. But these voices knew nothing of love and devotion and duty. These were vague concepts to the voices, bigger and civilized things and they could not have cared less. All they cared about was living, was continuance, about saving the bacon of one Louis Shears who was preparing to jump right into the frying pan, fat side down.

So Louis ignored them.

He pulled over a little hill and entered Main Street from its far eastern edge, seeing all the familiar sights and familiar places that should have been calming, but now filled him with a mounting anxiety. He took it all in, trying to swallow and finding that he simply could not.

“We’ll…we’ll go over to Michelle’s work, see if she’s around. Then we’ll go over to the police station,” he told Macy and he thought it sounded pretty good, pretty reasonable considering the situation.

Macy was tense next to him. “Okay,” she said.

Unlike many towns where the main drag was perfectly linear or seemed that way, Main Street in Greenlawn was a winding, serpentine affair and you could never reach a point where you could see more than a block ahead or behind you. They passed blank storefronts and little cafes, gas stations and bowling alleys, hardware stores and banks. It all looked perfectly fine. All except for one thing.

“Where is everyone?” Macy said. “There should be people around on a Friday night.”

“Just take it easy, honey.”

“C’mon, Mr. She—Louis. Look around, there’s nothing. There’s not even somebody walking a frigging dog,” she said, alarm bells chiming just beneath her words. “It looks like a ghost town and it feels like one, too. Where are they?”

Louis tried to swallow.

She had a very good point, of course. They had seen life in other parts of town—along with a great deal of wreckage—but here it was simply dead. His window was unrolled and he no longer heard sirens or anything else, just the sound of the Dodge’s engine, its wheels rolling on the pavement, a slight breeze in the trees overhead. But not a damn thing else. It was like in the last five or ten minutes, somebody had thrown a switch, shut everything off.

“They must be inside,” he said.

“Why? Why would they be doing that?”

“I don’t know.”

“This is freaking me out.”

It was an almost comical statement considering things, but he did not laugh. Main Street was a graveyard by all intents and purposes. Not a thing moved or stirred. There wasn’t even a bird singing or a cat sunning itself on the sidewalk. Just a great, empty nothing. Yet, deep inside, Louis was certain that those houses and buildings were
not
empty, that there were people in them or things like people, things with eyes that watched the Dodge slowly roll past, waiting until it stopped, waiting until the man and girl got out and then, and then they would—

“There’s the Farm Bureau building,” Macy said.

Louis saw it, his heart thudding in his chest now.

It was on the corner, set back a bit with a parking lot out front. The building was red brick, kind of looked like one of those old school houses you’d see in the country sometimes. Even had a little belfry on top, but no bell. Louis remembered that it had been the post office when he was a kid, before they moved it to the end of Main. There were a couple cars parked in the lot, but none of them were Michelle’s. Still, he had to look.

He pulled the Dodge to a stop and just sat there, getting a feel for Main as it, he thought, got a feel for him, too. He could smell flowers and grass, the heat boiling from the blacktop. He was feeling those eyes again, watching. There were people nearby and he knew it. They were hiding behind locked doors, in closets and cellars, peering from behind curtains and Venetian blinds. Just watching. Like a group of people waiting to yell, “SURPRISE!” when birthday boy walked in.

Louis figured that’s not what they would say to him, though. It would be something unpleasant and dire…right before they slit his throat ear to ear.

“Well?” Macy said.

He stepped out and breathed in Main Street, felt it in his face. It was hot and still with a dark, sweet smell that he could not recognize, but knew did not belong. He listened for someone, anyone, even the sound of a car, but there was nothing but a flag flapping on the pole above Farm Bureau and wind chimes coming from an antique store down the way.

Oh, they’re here, all right, Louis. All of them. They’re playing the oldest game in the book. Maybe you remember it: hide-and-seek. They know where you are and if you get close enough, they’ll jump out and tag you. Maybe with their hands, but probably with their teeth.

He came around the side of the car, noticing with some unease that the shadows were starting to grow long. It would be dark soon. The wind was hissing through the treetops and along the roofs with the sound of someone exhaling. He walked across the parking lot, the fear building in him, unsettling him. It was growing, getting big and unmanageable. He had no reason to be afraid, yet he pulled the lockblade knife out of his pocket and knew that he would use it if he had to.

He found himself looking around Main Street like he was seeing it for the first time. The tight rows of buildings, the alleyways cut between, all the little cul-de-sacs and stairways and shadowy recesses, the overhanging roofs…all the places someone might conceivably be hiding. He was looking at these things the way a soldier might as he edged into enemy territory.

“Louis,” Macy said and her voice was heavy, breathless. “Look.”

She was at his side, but as he had been scoping out the threat factor, she was only looking at the Farm Bureau building ahead of them. She was pointing at the whitewashed doorway with its gleaming brass knob. There was something on the door. A smear of something dark which he knew instinctively was blood. There was more of it on the doorknob. A few flies were investigating it. Swallowing, Louis unsnapped his lockblade and reached out for the door.