The New Neighbor

He spat the last word. ' – pastor!' Then he pulled his foot back and kicked Pastor Quillerman in the face.

Blood spurted from the pastor's nose and mouth as his head snapped back and cracked against the side of the pickup. He slid sideways until he hit the ground, unconscious.

Weyland turned as George stumbled in front of him and gripped his shoulder. 'I'm telling you,' he said, 'Don't do this! My wife is in that house! And your daughter's -'

'My daughter's chosen to be in there,' Weyland growled, pushing George away from him. 'And as far as I'm concerned, that means my daughter's just as much a godless whore as that bitch she's with, who just might be a murderer if she had anything to do with what happened to the Garrys, and I don't know about you but I think she did!'

'Then call the police.'

Weyland laughed, then turned to the crowd and shouted, 'Shall we call the police or take care of this bitch ourselves?'

Their voices rose in an incoherent but unmistakably positive cry. The cry became a long, wild cheer, flashlights were clenched in fists and punched straight up into the air. The crowd began to move as a single entity away from the pickup toward Lorelle's house, all except for Weyland, who turned and jogged toward his own house.

George watched him go, then looked at Pastor Quillerman who was still unconscious on the ground. He turned to the moving crowd, felt suddenly alone and isolated and weary enough to lie down and close his eyes. Shut everything out, forget all of it, including his wife and children. But he couldn't, wouldn't, and hurried after the crowd instead. His pain had faded little and he still limped, but the knowledge that Karen was in that house and was in danger – along with everyone else who had joined Lorelle there – strengthened him and helped deaden the pain.

He followed, a small distance behind the crowd, but didn't worry about his lack of speed because he knew he'd catch up soon enough. But the prospect of catching up with them was not a comforting one because -

– George's neighbors, young and old, had become a tribe of screaming, snarling savages, more animal than human, with veins that flowed with cold, black hatred. Their eyes seemed to show more white than pupil and their lips were torn back over their teeth in hellish, skull-like grins as they ran toward Lorelle's house like a group of mad schoolchildren running for a playground at recess.

George ran after them.

* * * *

Robby stood at the window and watched it all. Jen stood beside him, clinging to his arm as if for life. He could feel her heart pounding against his elbow. They still wore their jackets.

'What're they doing?' she asked, her voice weak with fright.

Robby didn't answer. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

'Look,' Jen said, pointing at a single figure running across the street, well behind their father.

'Mr. Weyland.'

'He's… carrying something.'

Chips of ice rolled through Robby's veins when he recognized the object Mr. Weyland was carrying. He pulled away from Jen and hurried toward the door. When she followed him, he spun around and said, 'Stay here.'

'I'm not staying here by myself.'

'But what if Mom comes back and nobody's here?'

Her shoulders sagged and she looked at him sadly as she shook her head and said, 'Robby, you know Mom's not coming back on her own. Lorelle won't let her. Lorelle's got her, or Mom wouldn't be over there in the first place.'

He couldn't argue with her because he knew she was right, so he didn't protest when she followed him out the front door.

* * * *

George watched the crowd attack Lorelle's house. Broken glass crunched under stomping feet. The gardenia bushes in front of the house were trampled and the rectangular black mailbox on the wall by the front door was ripped off and thrown down the porch steps. The front door was pounded and kicked and angry voices clashed together as they shouted for their children, spouses and, loudest of all, for Lorelle.

Flashlight beams crossed like swords as they cut through the darkness. Occasionally, light flashed into one of the broken windows and fell on pale bare flesh and long grinning faces. Mocking laughter came from inside the house.

George spun around to see Weyland moving toward the house with a blue ten-gallon polyurethane kerosene can, its cap dangling by a thin chain from the two-inch spout.

'No, stop!' George shouted, throwing himself toward the man.

Weyland lifted the can before him and George slammed into it. The fluid splashed sloshed inside and splashed up out of the spout, slapping onto George's left cheek and shoulder, dribbling down his neck and stinging his skin. George staggered backward, coughing and sputtering.

Weyland grinned. 'You want some more, Pritchard?'

'Please… please don't.'

'Then stop me!' He stepped around George, shouting into the crowd, 'Okay, who's gotta light?'

George winced at the biting odor and sting of the kerosene that had spilled on him, but -

– it did not smell like kerosene.

George ran after Weyland, shouting his name. He grabbed the man's arm and spun him around. 'That's gasoline, you idiot!' he snapped. 'You're gonna kill yoursel -'

Weyland's fist struck George's jaw, clacked his teeth together and knocked him to the glass-strewn lawn. Turning his back on George, Weyland was swallowed by the crowd.

George sat up slowly, rubbing his jaw. How could Weyland not know that the can carried gasoline and not kerosene? Perhaps he knew, but wasn’t aware of the difference between the two – that, unlike kerosene, gasoline fumes were flammable and could detonate the very air around a fire. But George doubted that. He didn't have time to figure out why Weyland would endanger his own life and the lives of everyone outside Lorelle's house. He had to get Karen. He stood and rushed back to the window, crying, 'Karen, where are you? Karen come out here noowww!'

She popped up from beneath the window, naked and grinning, and said 'Boo!' Her eyes were half-closed and she laughed drunkenly at her little joke as she swayed back and forth.

'Karen, get out of there now!'

'But I don't have a thing to wear,' she giggled. She waved a hand back and forth in front of her face and wrinkled her nose. 'You stink.'

'Karen, you've got to get out of there! They're gonna torch this place and everyone in it and -'

'It won't matter,' said a voice from behind her.

George moved the flashlight until its beam fell on Lorelle. She was naked… and beautiful. Her former pale, sickly appearance was gone. She had a healthy, lustful glow.

'Nothing really matters anymore, does it, George?' she asked.

Or had she spoken at all? Suddenly, George was uncertain if the words had come from her or had floated silently through his head.

'Your family is no more, George,' Lorelle went on – definitely out loud now – in a low, throaty voice. 'It's finished. You've lost your wife – or should I say you’ve lost another wife – and your children will inevitably follow when they see what a failure you were in saving their mother.'

The furious voices around him, the sounds of the front door cracking under the battering it was getting from the savage crowd, and the thick crunch of chunks of the house being broken away all faded as George listened to Lorelle. His pain was forgotten and he felt a growing tightness in his pants which, after a few hazy moments, he realized was due to his arousal at the very sound of Lorelle's voice.