watching for one of them to peel back so that a hidden face could peek through the small gap. But there wasn’t so much as a rustle.
“Ain’t no smoke somin’ outta the chimney, Earl. Mama gets cold so easy. Not like her to just let the fire go out. Something’s happened… somethin’ bad.”
Earl snatched the cop’s pistol from the seat and his large hands almost made it seem like a child’s toy. Clicking the safety off, he glanced at his brother with eyes that betrayed the nauseous turmoil within his gut.
“We go in slow. Don’t know what’s waitin’ in there for us, so we’re gonna be careful, you hear?”
Daryl nodded his head, but his foot was thudding against the floorboard so quickly that his entire leg bounced. He moved in quick jerks, his head snapping around as he surveyed the yard while his fists clenched and unclenched repeatedly.
“Damn it, Daryl, I mean it… you gotta calm your ass down. Far as we know, Mama just dozed off on the couch. Wouldn’t be the first time. But just in case… we take it nice and easy, right?”
Daryl nodded again, more vigorously this time, while he simultaneously threw open the door of the cruiser. He rushed around the car like a frightened deer but by the time he’d reached the other side, his older brother had already scooted out as well. He snatched Daryl’s collar, causing the smaller man’s feet to slip and scramble in the snow as he was brought to a halt.
“Daryl, I ain’t fuckin’ around. We go in together and we go in slow. You just follow behind me and make sure nobody sneaks up and….”
“Why do I gotta follow you?” Daryl hissed.
Earl rolled his eyes and pulled Daryl’s face so close to his own that the tips of their noses brushed against one another lightly.
“Because I got the gun, asshole… that’s why.”
Pushing his brother out of the way, Earl trudged up the front steps. He tried to walk as softly across the porch as he could, but the sheer weight of his body pressing down upon the old boards made them creak and pop with every step. By the time the two of them crossed through the entrance, he felt he couldn’t have been more obvious than if he’d rode into the house on the back of a steer.
Inside, all was quiet. Normally, there would have been the crackling of logs within the fireplace. Water coming to a boil in the kitchen, the scuffling of feet overhead. Perhaps even Mama whistling that little tune she liked so well. Instead, there was now only the sound of the brothers’ breathing as they crept through the hallway. Almost as if all the sounds of their home had fled through the open door, preferring the freezing temperatures and arctic desolation of the woods to whatever awaited within those walls.
As the two passed the closed, cellar door their pace slowed. Daryl seemed to press more closely to his brother and he chewed on his bottom lip so hard that blood had begun to well up on his bottom lip.
They were nearing the living room now. And something about that made both of them feel as if they were on the verge of passing through the gates of Hell.
The hairs on their arms bristled and every muscle in their bodies was as tense as if it’d been coated in quick drying cement. But, as they rounded the corner, Earl let out a sigh that seemed to expel all the energy pent up in his arms and back with its gusto.
“See? What’d I tell ya? Sleepin.’”
Though the body was hidden by the back of the couch, the pair of bare feet propped on the arm were more than visible. Small and pale, they almost seemed dwarfed by the living room and Earl shook his head as he chuckled at himself for getting all worked up over nothing. He’d let that dumb ass brother of his spook him, that was all. Next time something like this happened, he would….
Daryl’s hand tugged on Earl’s shirt as if he were trying to pull it off. Though the younger man didn’t say a word, his arm appeared over Daryl’s shoulder as he pointed to something in the room beyond with a trembling finger.
Following the trajectory of his brother’s arm, Earl’s eyes took in the far wall and he felt as if the weight of his stomach had just plummeted to the floor. For scrawled across the cheap paneling in what looked like red finger paint were two words.
Welcome Home.
Only it wasn’t paint. Paint wouldn’t have those little clots stuck into the letters or that particular, metallic odor they had come to know so well.
“Mama!”
Earl ran to the couch with his brother fast behind him. But when they looked down upon the body sprawled across the cheap fabric, the world seemed to spin like a weathervane in a windstorm as Earl gasped for breath. He staggered backward until he was pressed against the wall and tried to blink through the vertigo that crashed over him. At the same time, Daryl sank to his knees and was shaking his head silently, as if he could somehow make the entire scene disappear if only he disagreed with it strongly enough.
The body on the couch was entirely naked and its chest cavity had been slit open from the base of the throat to halfway down the stomach. The folds of flesh were peeled back like a frog on a dissection tray, revealing the pink and red organs within. They could see the wrinkled intestines peeking up from the bottom of the gash like a kid on Christmas morning. The stomach, which somehow looked shriveled and much smaller than a stomach actually should. The ivory rib cage that protected the lungs and heart, strands of muscle and gristle, blood that had congealed to the point that it almost looked like jelly. Laid out for all to see as hands with two nail holes in the very center of the palms held back these grisly curtains of flesh, probably glued into place judging from the shiny coating around the fingers.
But it wasn’t the sight of their former captive splayed open that had made the boys feel as if their blood had turned to ice water. No… it was the pair of spectacles that lay on its solar plexus. The crimson smear across the cracked lenses.
Earl bellowed so loudly that Daryl nearly jumped to his feet. Twirling around, he drove his beefy fist into the wall and splinters of particle board flew from the jagged hole that had suddenly appeared around his wrist.
“Mona!”
Even the walls couldn’t muffle the panic in the voice that drifted in from outside.
“Get out of the house, baby! They’re home! Get out of the house!”
Jerking his hand out of the wall, Earl’s eye caught movement through the thin curtains and he yanked them back just in time to see Matt disappear into the woods that bordered the house.
“Son of a bitch! I’ll fuckin’ kill your ass and have it for dinner!”
He shot a cold stare at Daryl who, at some point, had stood.
“It was him. Which means that bitch of his is still around somewheres. You find her, Daryl. You find her and you make her pay, hear? “
Earl hoisted the gun so that it was nearly pressed against his cheek and the look in his eyes almost made it seem as if he were about the give the weapon a passionate kiss.
“You find her and you make her curse God for the day she was born… and I’ll take care of that sorry-ass pretty boy.”
Daryl and Earl grinned at each other but the light of happiness never touched their eyes. For these were grins of savage glee….
SCENE FOURTEEN
Following Matt into the woods was as easier than tracking a wounded buck. His footprints were pressed down into the snow like molds; and, in places where the drifts were deeper, long gouges cut through the white powder. The man may have as well been leaving signposts every step of the way that had little arrows pointing in the right direction. As long as the trail was there, Earl would lumber after it with his heart pounding out the rhythm to a war dance.
“You can’t hide, boy!”
His voice echoed through the tightly packed trees as if it were scouring the landscape for its prey.
“May as well just give up now and save us both a ton of trouble. Might be five minutes. Might be half an hour.
