Dead Man's Song

“Yeah.” Dylan’s face looked milk-white in the spill of light from the house, but his eyes were in shadows as he bent toward the glass. He reached out and touched the pane, tapping it with a fingernail. Adrian made a gesture that asked if Dylan had the goods, and the pale-faced twelve-year-old held up a vinyl CD wallet and waggled it. “Oh, yeah!” said Adrian.

“Go let him in,” called Darien. “Hurry up.”

Adrian jerked his thumb to indicate the door and Dylan faded back into the shadows. “Be right back,” he said to his brother, and hustled out of the room to the entrance foyer. If Dylan truly had the promised goods, then the three of them would whisk away to the third floor, which was the sole domain of the twins. Their PS2 could play any kind of CD-ROM, and this was going to be jerkoff heaven.

Smiling in anticipation, Adrian stepped into the foyer, twisted the door handle, and jerked open the heavy oak door. “Come in, come in!” he was saying even as he swung the door wide to reveal Dylan Jamison standing in the doorway. Dylan was only five-three and thin but he had a huge smile on his wide, wet mouth. It was not a nice smile, not a pleasant smile, and the second he saw it Adrian, who had also been smiling, felt the grin drain from his face, leaking like liquid from a broken glass. He stared at Dylan, not understanding at first what he was seeing, and then he slowly, very, very slowly, began backing away from the door. Accepting the invitation to enter, Dylan stepped over the threshold, his smile stretching wider, seeming to tear his cheeks as he grinned, his pale lips pulling tightly back from his teeth. Behind him, other shapes moved, detaching themselves from the shadows, becoming figures that also moved and smiled.

Adrian tried to scream, but his throat had locked shut with the shock of what he was seeing. With a soundless cry of terror, he spun and tried to run, tried to race up the hallway to the family room, but Dylan caught him before he had taken five steps. He caught him by the hair and jerked him back so hard that Adrian’s heels kicked up into the air and something in his neck went Pop! Adrian fell so hard on his ass that a white-hot firebolt of pain shot from his tailbone all the way to the top of his head. Dylan jerked Adrian’s head back and whatever had popped before now went Crack! Lights exploded in Adrian’s eyes and he felt himself being bent savagely backward, his spine arching too far too fast as all of the vertebra in his back popped loudly like a string of firecrackers. With tiny white hands Dylan pushed Adrian’s shoulder and head apart to expose his neck, doing this with such force that the skin on Adrian’s neck stretched and suddenly split, splattering Dylan’s face with bright red dots. Growling low in his chest, Dylan bent close, his smiling lips brushing the soft skin, but then he paused and looked up quickly as a shadow fell over him. The man who stood over him smiled coldly, and in a voice that was no more than a graveyard whisper, he said, “Do it.”

Dylan’s eyes blazed as red as coals as he plunged his head downward, driving the long spikes of his teeth into Adrian’s throat. Blood geysered past Dylan’s face with tremendous hydrostatic pressure, spraying the wall and scattering ruby-red droplets on the sleeve of the man’s coat.

Karl Ruger raised his sleeve and licked the droplets off with a long, sharp tongue. The taste was exquisite. Behind him, the two other shapes were becoming agitated, incensed by the sharp, sweet smell of blood. Ruger gave a slow, grand gesture, indicating the whole of the house with his bone-white fingers.

“Do ’em all,” he whispered.

Gaither Carby and Dave Golub rushed past him, howling with red delight.

(2)

Vic Wingate sat on the tailgate of his truck smoking a cigarette and watching the stars wheel overhead, listening distractedly to the screams coming from the nearby house. He knew he shouldn’t be smoking this close to the two drums of paraffin in the bed of the truck, but he figured screw it.

The screaming only lasted a few minutes. He cut a look at the only other house within sight of this one, but it was four hundred yards away and no extra lights had come one, there were no yells, no inquiring calls. With this many trees around even screams didn’t carry well. Vic knew that from long experience. He took a last drag, then ground out the coal on the heel of his shoe, put the butt in his shirt pocket, and stood up. It was a pretty night.

Turning, he reached into the bed and took hold of the corner of the topmost of the stacked body bags, braced his feet against the weight, and pulled. Though the carcass inside was two months dead it still had some weight, so he was careful of his lower back as he pulled it off the truck. He took his time hauling the others down, too, and laid them in a row. One for each of them, stolen from cemeteries around the county. A little bit of selective grave robbing. One here, a couple there, and some caretakers’ palms greased along the way so no police reports ever got filed, no relatives notified. Some quick excavation with a backhoe, and then the empty coffin reburied with all of the sod neatly put back afterward. All told Vic had close to a hundred bags like these, piled like cordwood in a refrigerated storage unit he rented out on Route 202. The manager there has been receiving five large a week in cash since the first week of September, and was an old friend of Vic’s. It wasn’t the first time Vic had used the place to keep something fresh, and he’d swung by there tonight to get what he needed so there would be bones found in the ashes once this place was torched. The proper amount of bones. Residential fire like this, there was little chance of anyone ordering a DNA analysis of the remains. Or, what was the word? Cremains? Yeah, that was it, and Vic liked the word. Cremains.

He pulled down the last two—kid-sized bags. Just about the size of Adrian and Darien. The devil was in the details.

PART THREE

LITTLE HALLOWEEN

October 10th to October 13th

“There was about him a suggestion of lurking ferocity, as though the Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.”

—Jack London, White Fang

I went Trick-or-Treating in a suburb once. One lady gave me The Look; One old cuss gave me a hard time; One beautiful girl gave me the cold shoulder, And one son of a bitch gave me the willies.

—Indigo Heart, “Monolog on Halloween”

Chapter 19