Tom Piccirilli
The August Special Guest Story is by Tom Piccirilli
Please feel free to visit Tom at: http://www.tompiccirilli.com/
HUSKS AND FORMLESS RUINS
by Tom Piccirilli
dedicated to Jack Ketchum
Pace was having a painfully intense How the fuck did I get here moment. He checked the rearview again, shaking his head, trying not to sigh.
In the backseat were the dwarf porno actress, the guy with the wire wrapped around his nuts–wearing gray sweatpants stuffed with sponges to soak up his blood–and the cute chick Pace had just met in the bookshop, named Sara.
Beside him in the passenger seat sat the Hexenhaus woman, muttering spells of damnation and making odd gestures on occasion. Like she was throwing magic powder in the air, as if the light of a flaming cross was in her eyes. She’d flinch and snap down to the dashboard and then jerk back against the headrest, having a mini-seizure in place every so often. Pace stared ahead at the twin beams of his headlights chopping the darkness and realized he still didn’t know how the hell he’d gotten into this situation.
Boredom is the mother of some serious fuckin’ stupidity.
The night had something to do with meeting Sara at the local mega-bookstore, crossing paths with her over in the paranormal/new age section. She was quietly giggling as he walked by. He was feeling listless and weary, as usual, heading to grab himself a double mocha latte with skim milk in the café.
She glanced up and spoke to him like they’d been comfortable lovers for years. Like this was an infrequent outing while the mother-in-law was watching the kids, and they’d be back home in a couple of hours, lying in bed making each other laugh before turning out the light, and rolling quickly toward one another beneath the blankets.
It got him low in the guts and nearly made him moan. He’d been waiting his whole life for a pretty girl to talk to him like that.
“You believe what this guy says here?” she asked, moving closer to him, entering right up into his personal space and thinking nothing of it. She stood there, tilting against the shelves, about three inches from him but looking down at the book. Holding it open so he could read it too if he wanted. “He writes that the only way to serenity is through extreme bodily sacrifice.”
Pace thought, Okay now, her eyesight must be bad. She’s lost a contact or something. She’s really talking to her boyfriend, but the guy’s moved off, in some other aisle someplace, but we must be dressed alike. I’ll answer her and she’ll gawp and back away with that stunned, slightly terrorized look, and she’ll go scampering for the beau. Tell him that some guy was bugging her in the paranormal section, and then I’ll have some bastard trying to throw down on me.
“What’s the definition of ‘extreme bodily sacrifice’?” Pace asked, waiting to see what would happen.
But she didn’t run. Just leaned in even nearer until he could see the flecks of gold deep in her brown eyes. She pressed her fingernail to a line on the page, moving it so he could follow along. “Self-mutilation. Flagellation, impalement, chopping off your naughty bits, pouring boiling oil over yourself.”
“I’ve never been much for serenity anyway,” Pace said. “Christ, the price of happiness sounds a little too high.”
“I think so too.”
“They must’ve mis-shelved the book. It doesn’t seem very paranormal-ish or new age-y.”
“There’s lots of other stuff about astral projection, karma, telepathy, curses, divine healing, guardian spirits, flying ointment, ghost dances, and soul renewal in here. But in this chapter, the writer gets kind of carried away.”
Pace reached out to touch the book, and ran the back of his knuckles lightly over her hand, reveling in its softness and warmth. When you got down to it, he really didn’t need much in this world. “There an author photo? He holding a whip with only two fingers on his right hand?”
“No photo. You think he’s bashful because of all the third degree burns on his face? How he took his nose off with a potato peeler?”
“If he’s serene, he wouldn’t be embarrassed, would he? If he is, then his theories are no good anyway.”
“I agree,” she said but kept hold of the book, clutching it to her belly. She turned her full attention on Pace and gave him a steady once-over, openly checking him out. Pursing her lips now, not overly impressed but not appalled either. “This is a present for a friend of mine. She’s having a party tonight. It’s only a couple miles away, off Route 231. You want to come?”
“Sure,” he said.
Bored all right, but always a little curious about this kind of thing, a chance to witness new people in their element. A sharp chick, an unfamiliar group of folks, a different kind of action, whatever it might be. Willing to check out the scene but not expecting much. A couple of free beers, some goofyass conversation, maybe a little necking with this girl. He figured that was all he could hope for, and it was enough.
“I’m Sara,” she told him, and took his hand, firmly, first shaking it and then sort of rubbing it, holding it tightly. She was strong and maybe a bit too forceful, but he’d wait and see. “No H. You got a nice car?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
A ‘69 Mustang, cherry red Boss 429, with 375 horsepower and 450 lb-ft. A street racer, bigger and heavier than previous models, and with an increased height came a jump in horsepower. Improved handling. Muscle.
“Great,” Sara said, giving him the studious look once more. “I’ll leave my piece of shit Civic at the Jester Burger next door. It’s open twenty-four hours and I’ll park out front under the lights. Pick me up there.”
Giving him a delicate order. Authoritative but sort of sweet, almost like they were into something together now. There was a subtle implication that they were already a duo, a team. He held back that strange, irritating neediness welling in his chest as she did a semi-strut up to the cash register and paid for the paranormal/new age book about butchering your own flesh to find inner peace.
He picked her up over at the Jester Burger. He enjoyed the expression on her face when she got in and realized how much of the horsepower you could feel thrumming through your body. The potential power in the car, ready to be unleashed. It was a temptation he had to fight all the time. He’d scrapped a ‘65 GTO and a ‘71 Chevy Nova 350 V8 in the past few years, wiping out in a couple of fairly spectacular crashes. Knowing he was lucky to still be alive, but uncertain why he should care.
Sara made small talk but he could tell she was thinking of other things, maybe how her friends would react to him. She gave him precise directions to her friend’s place.
“I know it,” he told her.
He’d passed the house on Route 231 about a thousand times back in his racing days, tearing down the narrow lanes and ripping through red lights. Shaking the cops when he could, and spending a few weeks in the local lockup when he couldn’t.
The house was sitting there on the corner, down the block from the only gas station for five miles in any direction. It’s where he’d juice up and do whatever small fine-tuning to the engine that still needed to be done before a race. He’s stare at the house while he was at the pumps, doing a final check-through. A white saltbox with an old-fashioned iron weathervane up top, a small yard full of pink flamingos and wildflowers.
They drew up to the house and she ushered him in. The minute he stepped off the welcome mat she slid away and said she’d be right back. Pace stood there looking around at everybody and realized, Ohboy, no beer. Not even any pretzels, no potato chips, no mixed drinks. Just a blurring of loud voices trying to drown each other out.
They were all into some kind of new age thing of one sort or another. A couple of dudes in the corner wearing yellow robes and talking about reincarnation, how it was better to be a dog than a flea. A speed freak jittering all around the room talking about Aztec gods, eviscerated cows, and alien abductions. A pair of resounding creation myths being debated in the kitchen. A graying hippie on a window seat lecturing a group of college kids on the five levels of purgation and ascendency to paradise. The six paths of enlightenment. The fourteen centers of the perfect orgasm.
The girls giggling, the guys looking like they wanted to take notes.
Pace kept wandering around the small house, everybody ignoring him. He liked the feeling it gave him, that he could simply move in nearby, hear somebody really going off on how to achieve communication with god-like entities, and then move off. Hear some other cats explaining how the Catholic church has the bones of Jesus sealed in a glass tube under the Vatican.
He couldn’t help himself and burst out laughing a couple times, but nobody seemed to mind. He kept circling the place, moving in, then drawing away from these people. So different in complexity of their doctrines but pretty much the same in their naive, near-hysterical exuberance of belief.
But Christ––the Hexenhaus woman was different.
She wasn’t lecturing or converting or preaching. She sat in a tiny, shadowy alcove looking beautiful and fragile, murmuring eloquently under her breath. Talking to herself about how they tortured witches in Germany three hundred years ago, with the bootikens that crushed feet, and the stonings, and burnings, and the strappado, where they’d tie people with their arms behind their backs and then drop them from high bars to break their shoulders. Pace stepped closer and turned his ear to her as her voice faded to a whisper. She said the jails where they performed these atrocities were called Hexenhauses.
He very much believed her. As she spoke she made luscious winces and frowns that could either be pain or lust. A flood of emotion pinched her features, like she was being mauled from the inside out. It was frightening and provocative and set his back teeth on edge. He felt strange and kind of pervie to be aroused by the sight of it.
She wore a plain cotton dress with a knotted golden rope around her waist, and well-worn sandals. Like she’d stepped here from the Grecian shores. Baby’s Breath in her wild dark hair, and bee-stung lips that made him grimace every time her tongue flailed and licked them. She may have been the most beautiful woman Pace had ever seen, except for the fact that she was obviously insane.
A drop of sweat curved along her cheek and touched the corner of her mouth, and he thought, there it is, there, all it takes is some instant like that to seal your fate. His pulse started hammering so hard that his wrists hurt. He stared at her long and hard, wondering if he’d always be attracted to deranged girls. It seemed to be the case. What was it that drove him to this?
Sara ambled over, holding a bottle of beer. A knowing grin tugged her mouth askew. “Here, you look thirsty.”
“Well, you did say party.”
“I misspoke, I’m afraid. I should’ve said function. Or gathering.”
“That might’ve been more accurate.” Pace drained half the bottle in one pull, then gestured with his chin at the various groups of folks pontificating on man, god, and the devil. “They don’t seem to be having much fun, most of them. You do this a lot? Attend these kinds of functions?”
“I just sort of stumbled into it.” She rubbed the back of her hand against his, the way he’d done it to her earlier. She knew this action had some kind of control over him. His shoulders tightened. It was the simple things that made his breath hitch in his chest. “You dig her, don’t you?” she asked.
“What?”
Sara got in close again, nearly nose to nose with him, and pointed to the Hexenhaus woman. “Don’t be embarrassed. Every guy swoons for her. Beautiful, always crying. Weak, in need of a protector. Probably crazy. Men like to try to save her.”
“Is that why she does it?” he asked. “Acts that way, alone in the corner? So guys can fall in love with her?”
“No, it’s who she is now.”
There was a lot of history in Sara’s tone. Anger, familiarity, alliance, and maybe even a touch of jealousy. Pace perused the rest of the group, everybody doing their own thing but at essential odds with one another. All leaders and no followers. The distracting growls of fierce arguments, stemming from the best way to find clarity and love. No fisticuffs yet, but Pace could imagine it happening. A couple of these guys throwing down on which crystals made the best conduits to beings beyond the veil. The Buddhist throwing down on the penitent.
“Who’s party is this, by the way?” he asked.
She again indicated to the Hexenhaus woman, wrapping an arm around his waist, as if knowing he was being drawn away and didn’t want to let him to go yet. “Hers.”
“What’s her name?”
“She doesn’t have one anymore.”
Pace frowned at that and finished his beer. “What do you mean?”
With a sad but anxious expression, Sara got even closer until he thought she was going to kiss him. He set himself and leaned in expectantly, but she only searched his eyes. It really threw him off, having somebody watching him like this, inspecting him, digging down beneath his surface for no reason he could see. “She was in a car accident a couple of years ago. Since then, she’s gotten deeper into this. The way she is now.”
“Schizophrenic?”
“Disassociated. She smacked her head pretty good, but she was only held overnight in the hospital. It’s not like she was dead on the table for two minutes or went into a month-long coma. They put a bandage on her and she was released.”
The Hexenhaus woman disregarded them completely. She continued talking to herself, having what sounded like an interesting discourse. Two or three different people inside her all having a thoughtful discussion on witchcraft and persecution. For a few seconds she went into a mini-convulsion and Pace started for her, but Sara held him back.
“Leave her. Mostly she’s like this, but occasionally she has moments of lucidity. She’ll phone up everyone in the area who’s a spiritual seeker. The folks dabbling in the occult, throwing themselves into theology, studying mythology, ways to get closer to the supernatural.”
“How does she get along? Who takes care of her?”
“I do.” Sara gave him the once-over again, like maybe she had spotted something more to him now, in places he didn’t notice himself. She asked, “Can you give me another ride?”
“Home?”
“No, out to the meadows. The other side of town, you know?”
“Yeah. But why?”
“I’m not really sure.” Conflicted about even asking him, but deciding what the hell. She nuzzled his neck, like getting him horny would be the answer. “Earlier she was crying that she wanted to go out there.”
“To the meadows in the middle of the night?”
“Yes.”
“That is pretty disassociated.”
“It’s where her accident happened. There’s a tree out in a field that she ran into. She believes it has some kind of occult power. She wants to go see it again. Who knows? Dance around it maybe. She used to love dancing. I think it has something to do with the autumn solstice.”
“That was two weeks ago,” Pace said. “On September twenty-third.”
The fact impressed her enough to lead him into the kitchen and give him another beer. “Now how do you know that?”
“I know lots of trivial shit,” he admitted.
“There’s more than a few people here tonight who’d say it wasn’t so trivial.”
“Yeah, but would they be right?”
She grinned at him, studying him while he drank the bottle down fast. “You don’t take this seriously do you?”
“Take what?”
“All these people’s ideologies.”
“I don’t see any real convictions at all, just a bunch of folks with some fun ideas.”
“You sound cynical.”
“Do I? Anyway, that all explains why she wants to go, but why do you want to go out there?”
“Like I said, she’s a friend of mine. Or used to be. I try to look out for her.”
All of this conversation, but Sara hadn’t mentioned the Hexenhaus woman’s name even once. How close a friend could she be?
“Okay,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“A few others want to go as well.”
“To see a tree?”
“We’re sort of a coven,” Sara told him. Her lips were on his ear now, teeth nibbling, like she decided this was the way to keep him from running. She must’ve scared off a lot of guys in the past.”
Pace said, “I thought you needed thirteen members for a coven.”
“We’re a small coven.”
“I guess so.”
“And even though I bought the book for her, another friend has already started reading and using it. He’ll be along too.”
“What do you mean that he’s using the book?”
“Practicing mutilation.”
Now this was starting to turn into a pretty funky night. “How do you practice mutilation? You either mutilate something or you don’t.”
“You’re right. He’s doing something to himself with wire, I’m not sure what. I think he’s trying to castrate himself.”
“Christ!”
Sara dropped her chin and shook her head. “Yeah, he’s spiritually a little lost right now.”
“That’s one way to put it!”
“Anyway, he’s bleeding, but not too badly. You mind taking us?”
He thought about it, wondering if the guy’s blood was going to get on the ‘Stang’s seats, if he was really going to saw off his balls right there in back of the car.
If the Hexenhaus woman would snap out of her torpor and look him in the eye.
If a small coven like this was the kind of thing you wanted to get involved in or run as far away from as you could. Thinking, you know, if only I wasn’t always so listless and bored.
“No,” Pace told her, and that seemed to be how this jaunt got started.
On the back roads on the far side of town, heading through the fields and the rising hills with empty swathes and stretches of highway where he used to race back in his teens, he watched the road and imagined how the road must be watching him.
“Hey,” the guy squeezing his own nuts off with the barbed wire said, “you think maybe you got a rag in the trunk you can give me?” His voice was thick and intense with agony, but there was a crazed giggle hidden in there too. “That last bump we went over jostled me pretty good. I’m starting to bleed even more and the sponges aren’t soaking it all up. I don’t want to stain your interior.”
“You sure you don’t want to go to a hospital?”
“This is the only way to purity and serenity.”
“Okay, man.” Pace pulled over, opened the trunk, and found a rag he used to clean off the dipsticks with. The guy stuffed it down into his drawers. Pace got in behind the wheel again and stomped the gas, watching the headlights tear across the weeds heaving in the wind.
“You seen any of my films?” the dwarf porno starlet named Belle asked. She stood about two and a half feet high and wore a shiny leather outfit with chains dangling in front of her chest, a long leather coat that dragged behind her like a wedding train. She had a tattoo of two snakes eating each other wrapped around her neck and a tiny rose on her face just under her ear. Short dyed black hair and a very sexy mouth. She was kind of freaking him out a bit. Every time he looked at her, for a second he only saw a little girl playing dress up.
“No,” Pace said.
“You sure?”
“I’d remember.”
“You better believe you would.”
“You think you could lend me some tapes of your movies?”
“Tapes? Honey, don’t you have a DVD player, or blu-ray?”
“No,” he told her.
“I don’t think I have any tapes.” She smiled, turned her head so the flower under her ear caught some moonlight breaching the clouds. “Got you interested, eh?”
“I’m curious about a lot of things.”
“Good boy.”
“You work with other dwarves too? Or you specialize with the big guys?”
“All kinds, man. Get yourself a DVD player and see for yourself.”
“I’m gonna have to now.”
The Hexenhaus woman flailed awake from her stupor and glanced at him. The cotton dress had lifted to reveal the jut of her bare knees. Some of the Baby’s Breath in her hair had dropped free and sprinkled across the dash. That tongue came out again and licked the bee-stung lips. Her black, insane radiance brushed up against him like a natural force, a storm about to break.
She asked, “Do you love me already?”
“No,” Pace said, but it sounded like a lie. She reached over and touched his knee gently, and then her grip tightened until it hurt. He had to forcibly remove her hand, and when he looked in her face he saw she was mumbling to herself again, eyes rolled back in her head.
The guy with the wire in the bad place said to the porno actress, “Tell him about that scene you did with Dave Hardup that one time, Belle.” The weird giggle in his voice was on the verge of delirium.
“He had a twelve inch crank with a big bend in it that–”
Sara cut in. “Let’s leave that story for another night, okay, Belle? We’re on a sort of mission here.” She reached over the passenger seat and toyed with the Hexenhaus woman’s hair, which appeared to quiet her a bit.
“You’re right, it’s best to keep our priorities straight. Besides, I don’t want to distract him while he’s driving. It’s easy to get lost around here.”
Pace tapped the gas a little more, feeling the throb of the engine work into his belly, his rib cage, his throat.
The Hexenhaus woman had quieted down, but she was also trembling. Her eyes refocused and Pace saw a sharp intelligence there, as well as great sorrow. “We approach the commencement and endowment of values,” she said. “The genesis of creed, canon, and law. The embracing place of the possessed.”
Sara leaned forward and touched Pace on the shoulder. “She means her accident. Another guy was driving her and hit a slick part of the road one rainy night. They went into a spin and off the road.”
Pace fought down the icy sting at the base of his spine. Sara had left out that little detail before. “What happened to the guy driving?”
“He died.”
“Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself.”
“Yes, let’s.”
“Ow,” the wire guy said. “Fuck, this hurts!”
The ‘Stang hugged the curves well as Pace banked easily along the road, knowing that the Hexenhaus woman would alert him when they got to the tree in one of these shadow-laden fields.
It didn’t take long. Her hand snaked out to clutch his knee again.
Around the next bend, standing off about a hundred yards in the meadow, he saw the silhouette of a gnarled oak rising in the moonlight. He could picture just how the crash had happened.
The driver taking this turn a little too fast in the rain, jerking the wheel as he overcompensated, and the tires slipping and hydroplaning. Carrying them off the side of the road, the driver trying to hit the brake but the car bouncing too badly for him to recover and hit the pedal. Sluicing in the mud and attempting to brace himself against the wheel as the Hexenhaus woman screamed in his ear and the tree loomed wider than death.
“That’s the tree,” he said.
“Yes,” Sara told him. “How’d you know?”
He slowed and pulled off down the embankment. His headlights picked up the tree and he noticed the scarring on the bark. The other guy, he’d been driving a muscle car as well. Pace could tell by the kind of scraping the grille had left.
He’d seen a lot of trees mangled like this. A few of them he’d done himself, taking it to 110 mph on the streets, closing his eyes, and trying to ease around the curves blind. He didn’t think he had a suicide wish, but maybe he wasn’t the best judge.
He parked the ‘Stang and left the lights burning against the trunk of the oak. The wind lifted the Hexenhaus woman’s dress and twirled her hem wickedly around her legs. Belle and Sara helped the wire guy out of the back of the car and kind of carried him over to the tree. He kneeled before the scarred markings and looked up at Pace.
“I’m giving up my future generations.” He wasn’t giggling anymore, and the thick sweat glittered on his face.
Pace said, “Man, couldn’t you just have gotten a vasectomy?”
“No,” he said.
“Why not?”
“It’s not irrevocable!”
“I’m not too sure about that,” Pace said, because he wasn’t. He’d heard the procedure was reversible, but he thought about doctors going in there and clipping tubes and stopping the potential flow of your children, and then starting it back up again. It made him shudder.
“It’s not a sacrifice unless you give it up forever,” Belle said, smiling with all those teeth. The black snakes around her neck looked like they were crawling in the dim light. Slithering, chewing.
“What?”
“If you can get it back, then it’s not a sacrifice. It’s like the Catholics giving up, what, chocolate, for Lent. Like it’s a big concession. Then after their forty days are up, they eat twelve pounds of Easter rabbits. Splurging, making themselves sick on it. You think that holds much sway with God?”
“I don’t know.”
“You think that’s what He’s got in mind when He’s talking sacrifice? Abraham had to drag his kid to a rock and yank his head back and expose his throat and stick the knife right to it. He was supposed to give up his son. For eternity. None of this Lent shit. None of this, hey, Abe, it’s only for a little while, you can see your kid again in a few weeks. No. Sacrifice is forever.”
Pace stared at the little dwarfy broad and wondered exactly how she could handle a twelve inch crank with a big bend in it. He had to get a DVD player soon.
“This wire doesn’t seem to be working,” the really stupid wire guy said, groaning, beginning to whimper. His sweatpants were soaked in blood now.
Sara crouched beside him and started pulling out the dripping sponges and rags. “You need to make it tighter, leave it on longer,” she told him.
“But I need to perform the ritual tonight!” Pointing to the Hexenhaus woman. “So she has demanded!”
“Then you’ll have to yank on the ends and...ah...saw into yourself.”
“Oh God!”
Belle told him, “If you need me, I’ll help.”
Pace thought, I need a satellite dish. If I had Guatemalan soccer coming in or all the HBO stations, I might not climb the walls so much. In fact, I might be quite comfortable staying in.
The beautiful Hexenhaus woman dropped to all fours and went into a furious fit in the meadow. Pace wondered what he should do, how he could help her, how he could make everything all right for the both of them.
Sara said, “Don’t touch her!” but Pace had no intention of doing so anyway. That jamming a spoon in their mouths so they didn’t swallow their tongues was the worst thing you could do. Wrestling with them, forcing their mouths open, sticking shit in there that they might choke on. You let hem ride it out until they were finished. It was, in a fashion, a very pure act.
Although she kept writhing in the grass, the Hexenhaus woman’s right arm snapped straight out, finger pointed at Pace. “You!”
“Me?”
“Tainted!”
“Me?”
“Carnal! Profane!”
Pace thought, Ohboy, dirty talk.
The Hexenhaus woman quieted, her violent movements slowing, until she stopped, and merely lay on the ground, the side of her lovely face glowing in the headlights. She spoke in a voice that was as ancient as the desert, full of sandstorm and destroyed temples. “You are all husks and formless ruins, collapsing at the bottom of the well of time.”
Pace thought, She’s got something there. That’s exactly how I feel.
The wire guy reached into his pants and started tugging on the barbed wire wrapped around his testicles, grunting from the exertion. He made one tremendous effort and let out a shriek. “I can’t do it! Oh lord, I’m not strong enough! Forgive me!”
“Holy goddamn,” Pace said.
With a giggle, Sara stepped over. Pace didn’t see much to be laughing about, and watched her approach. She had her arm pressed to her side, but he saw something gleaming in her hand.
“What’ve you got there?”
She held it out to him like she expected him to take it, but she was still too far away. A burnished ceremonial knife, the edge bright and lustrous. “This is an athame. A witch’s blade.”
“That right? And what are you going to do with it?”
Moving in on him again, slinky, with real skill, holding the knife low the way you were supposed to do. None of this yank it back over your shoulder and stabbing down, but loose and jabbing towards the soft meat of the belly, where it wouldn’t get stuck in the ribs. She let out a laugh that was meant to be sexual and disarming, as she acted like she wanted to slip into his arms, make love to him right here in the grass, the blade weaving, twisting forward.
Pace’s hand flashed out and caught her wrist. “That’s a little too much extreme bodily sacrifice for my taste,” he said, grinning. Sara struggled, and her smile turned to a leer, but she still seemed to be having a pretty good time. “So what was the idea?” he asked. “You leave me here under the tree?”
“Yes.”
“Dead in this spot. Like her boyfriend?”
“He died in the crash and look what it did for her.”
Pace glanced over. “It’s made her looney.”
“It’s given her power! She’s a vessel for forces out in the darkness, beyond the eternal void. She can see into the future and the forgotten, archaic past.”
“Yeah? And what good does it do her?”
“That’s doesn’t matter! It’s an honor to be a crucible for the gods!” Saying it all like she wasn’t quite sure if she even really believed it, but had decided to give it a shot because she nothing else to put her faith in.
He knew the feeling. He thought about where he was and what he was doing, and how he’d gotten here. He was starting to feel a little abused. Sacrificed to a frickin’ tree by the pretty girl who’d tapped him in a bookstore because he’d wanted a double mocha latte with skim milk.
Pace yanked the blade from her and backhanded her across the cheek. A little too softly. She wrenched forward and tried to get the knife again, and Pace grabbed her by the hair, drew her head back, and socked her in the jaw. It was enough to make her drop on her ass. He didn’t feel particularly proud or ashamed for punching out a girl he’d wanted to make, but he was glad to be alive. Odd, that.
Belle reached into her jacket and started to come out with what looked like a .38 filling her hand. The front sight got hung up in her pocket as she tugged on the pistol. Pace didn’t know what to do. He could dive behind the ‘Stang or make a run to hide behind the tree. Or maybe he could charm her with some talk, ask about her movies again, invite her over for some pizza. There were times when he thought that something like that would be more than enough to keep people from coming totally unglued.
The Hexenhaus woman said, “By my hand only shall the basins be emptied,” and Belle fumbled the pistol and shot herself in the foot.
She screamed but not as loudly as Pace would’ve thought. It looked like her two biggest toes were gone, and she stood there wide-eyed in shock. The .38 dropped from her fingers and she lurched sideways, bracing herself against the wire guy’s shoulder, where he kneeled on the ground bleeding out.
“Help me!” he whined. “Get me to a hospital!”
“I gave you your chance,” Pace told him.
Belle said. “I sacrificed my foot. I didn’t even mean to. Please, drop us off at an emergency room.”
Pace angled his chin up the embankment, pointing further into the hills. “You head a mile, mile and a half in that direction and you’ll find a service station. We used to race these back roads and gas up there. Of course, that was a long time ago. It might have closed up by now.”
“You’re leaving us to die?”
“You’ll probably make, but it’s going to hurt like hell. Think how purified you’ll feel when you get there.”
“You cruel son of a bitch,” Belle snarled.
Pace thought about grabbing up the gun and just making a clean sweep of things, but he figured it was more fun this way. “You were going to let her cut my throat weren’t you?”
“Yes,” Belle admitted, trying to do something sexy with her mouth again, but the pain prevented her from pulling it off. “We’re sorry.”
“You’re getting what you deserve.”
The wire guy was really leaking now. “Oh God, I’m bleeding to death!”
“You feeling serene yet?”
“Oh God!”
Pace helped the stupid shit up and Belle took hold of the wire guy’s thigh and together they lurched a few steps in the wrong direction. Pace pointed again. “Over there, about a mile or so.”
He reached down and yanked Sara to her feet. She didn’t look angry or hurt or even upset, all kinds of expressions creeping across her features and canceling each other out. He handed the knife back to her, wondering if she’d make another go of it. “You never should have bought that book.”
“I know,” she said.
“You might consider not going to anymore of these functions.”
“I have nowhere else to go,” she said, and started to sob. She held her arms out like a scared child and he hugged her tightly, aware of where the blade was, waiting for her to try again. She didn’t. After a minute she slipped from him and started off after the other two coven members limping and leaking in the dark.
The beautiful and insane Hexenhaus woman said, “A demon inhabits this form. It will feed on your heart and your being. When you die there will be nothing at all left to bear up to God.”
“Okay,” Pace said.
The Hexenhaus woman kissed him, and her demonic tongue was alive and twitching and stabbing his mouth. He pulled her closer and she moaned and wept, like someone lost alone in everlasting shadows. She tensed in his arms and let out a heinous laugh. “You are no mere husk. You are filled with endless hell and enduring hate.”
“Sure,” he told her and viciously pulled her onto him in the black meadow. When you got down to it, he didn’t really need much in this world.
Tom Piccirilli is the author of twenty novels including Shadow Season, The Cold Spot, The Coldest Mile, and A Choir of Ill Children. He's won the International Thriller Award and four Bram Stoker Awards, as well as having been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, the Macavity, and Le Grand Prix de L'imagination.
Below are two of Tom's newest novels. See all of Tom Piccirilli's books HERE.
Both books (and more) can be found on Amazon.
And now, Tom Piccirilli has just won the 2010 International Thriller Writer's Award for BEST NOVEL for The Coldest Mile!
