The bolt had passed through the arm and Matt was reminded of Steve Martin and the headband that made it look as if he’d taken an arrow through the skull. However, in Earl’s case, the business end of the shaft had strands of sinew and tiny chunks of flesh still embedded on the barbed arrowhead.
“I’m a wild and crazy guy.” Matt mumbled to himself as he lined up his last arrow with a smile.
He was being more careful with this one, for Earl had started to sway back and forth as mists of blood flew from his gasping mouth. Somehow, he looked smaller now: as if all of that bulk had been nothing more than hemoglobin and he was shriveling down to a normal size now that it was all spewing from his body. On top of this, the snow had really started coming down again. It was almost as if the clearing were actually the diorama in a snow globe that had been vigorously shaken by god and it made it difficult to track the man’s subtle movements.
After several seconds, Matt finally released his shot. The arrow sped through the air and rammed into the center of Earl’s chest. Almost immediately, the man fell face forward into the snow, forcing the tip of the gore streaked arrow through his back as his weight fell upon the shaft.
He lay motionless while a dusting of snow built up on his back. . Not trying to raise his head with the last of his strength. Not so much as even a finger or leg twitching as a crimson shadow blossomed beneath his body. If it kept coming down like this, within half an hour he would be nothing more than a mound of snow that was simply larger than the drifts surrounding it.
Tossing the bow onto the ground, Matt raised his middle finger at this fallen giant, kissed the tip of it, and then snapped his wrist with a flourish. He felt like he always did following a kill: breathless, flushed with a mixture of excitement and release, slightly tense and tranquil all at the same time. It was like he was a virgin who’d just gotten his first piece of ass. Only he got to experience the giddy thrill time and time again.
That feeling, however, quickly hardened when he heard a thin and distant scream warble through the stillness of the morning. He stood as still as an ice sculpture as he closed his eyes and listened. Even from this far away, he could tell it was a scream of agony and intense pain A scream of mortal danger. A woman’s scream. Mona’s scream….
SCENE SEVENTEEN
Daryl felt the warmth spread across his crotch like the blossoming of a liquid flower. It trickled down his thighs as its sharp vapors rose like heat to sting his nostrils. He was only vaguely aware of the cleaver clattering to the floor as his hands stretched into the darkness as if they could somehow push it back.
His screams came in short, shrill bursts that wavered with the trembling that seized his entire body and he staggered forward, hoping to find his way to the stairs. The darkness, however, had other plans: it wrapped around his feet like an over-friendly cat, made him stumble and fall, tried to force its way down his throat where it could choke the air from his lungs; every breath was a battle to be won, every beat of his heart felt as if might be that muscle’s last spasm. A tightness clinched his chest, but his legs felt as if they were as wobbly and unsteady as a newborn calf. In the time it took to blink an eye, he’d been plunged into the gaping maw of his worst fear and he was all too keenly aware of the gnashing teeth housed within this great, black beast.
The concrete floor banged against Daryl’s knees as he toppled forward, scraping away both fabric and skin as his jaw cracked into something hard and metallic. His mouth flooded with a taste that was as if he’d stuck his tongue to the posts of a battery and his back hitched as sobs tried to force their way through the screeches that raked his vocal chords.
On the floor, with the darkness squeezing in from all sides, he was an eight year old boy again. It was as if the scars that crisscrossed his arms and back had all ripped open with the disappearance of light. Rather than seeping blood, however, these wounds oozed the invisible muck of child-like fear. It coated his body with a cold slime that made the maturity of years wither into a man-sized husk; this atrophied shell pulled tightly around the youth within, reminding him of all the times cling wrap had been wrapped around his mouth while streams of water poured down. He was choking, drowning, gasping for air as his fingers clawed through dark waves for even the smallest hint of stability.
And they were out there. He could feel their eyes, like pinpricks in his soul, burning into the back of his neck and piercing his mind with their primal hunger. Spinning on his knees like a dervish, his watery eyes searched the darkness for their red glow. But they were always just out of sight, always somewhere behind him, above him, closing in, and moving so fast that they would tear the flesh from his bones before he even felt the twitch of wiry whiskers against his chin.
“Good boy… I will… I’ll be good, Mama, please, please, please, I swear….”
His voice was raw and raspy from the initial burst of screaming and cut in and out through the sobs that bubbled snot from his nose. At the same time, there was also a careening tone to the words, as if he might be set free if only he could plead his case long enough.
“Please, Mama… please….”
He’d wrapped his arms around himself and curled into a small ball in a nest of crushed carboard boxes and trash bags stuffed with old clothes. His head was tucked so low that his chin rested on the tops of his knees and he rocked quickly from side to side as tears and urine pooled below him.
“Mama….”
Mama was his only hope, the only thing that could drive away the darkness and turn back the creatures that slithered and scuttled toward the scent of his blood. Mama could hold him in her arms and wipe the glistening tears from his cheeks as she explained how he would never have to be in the dark again. How he would always be safe and protected and strong. If only, he would listen to her. If only he would be a good boy.
His voice tapered off into a low moan and his teeth clattered between hiccups, sniffles, and weeping so soft that it almost seemed as if the air were leaking out of him. He pinched his own arms, gasped for breath, and tried to silence the pounding in his head long enough to hear that scuffling sound.
It was somewhere in the darkness. Like the scrape of feet dragging slowly across the floor. Circling him, but never actually moving in for the kill.
“Daryl….”
Mama’s voice whispered so sharply that his name could have been nothing more than a quick gasp of air.
“Daryl, you’ve been a bad boy.”
The sting of the reprimanding tone made his stomach feel as though he’d just swallowed battery acid. It rose through his trachea and flooded his mouth with acrid bile as he clenched his eyes closed.
“A very bad boy.”
“I’m sorry, Mama… I’ll be good, I swear I will….”
“You let them do this to me. You let them kill me.”
The voice drew out the word kill as if it were a long sigh. And all the while it moved through the darkness, floating through the void like a disembodied spirit.
“NO! No, no, no, no. I wanted to stop it. I wanted to save you. Ask Earl, he’ll tell you, I wanted to come home and make sure….”
“You let them kill me you bad, bad boy.”
Daryl banged his head against the floor as if the dull thuds could drive Mama’s ghost from his mind. But with each new burst of pain, he saw those empty eyes… staring at him through the darkness. Judging. Accusing.
“It hurt soooo bad, Daryl. All I wanted was for them to stop. For the pain to go away. For someone to help.”
His hands were pressed tightly to the sides of his head now and he felt a pressure growing inside him. Almost as if he were swelling up like a leech. Only this pressure was cold and seemed to shred his thoughts into disjointed fragments. Past and present overlapped, memories and reality fought for dominance, and his brain felt as if it were being pulled in a thousand directions all at the same time.
But still Mama’s voice kept circling in the dark. Taunting. Jabbing with its words. Feeding the confusion and fear and pain and loathing that roiled within Daryl’s mind.
“I reckon you know what happens to bad boys, Daryl. I reckon you know all too well.”
