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  There was just the sound of his hands tearing at the wooden slats, until he heard something from behind him. He began to turn but stopped himself. He did not want to see what had made that ghastly moan. He forced himself to keep searching for the door. It was just here.

  Then something in the air changed; it got warmer and heavier. Something moved. He heard it take a step behind him. It made a clop-splat noise. The room grew brighter. Red light bled in from the cracks.

  There was another clop-splat, and he turned. He was staring directly at the altar. That strange bull shaped carving glared back at him with its bulging eyes of rotting meat and crawling flies. Only it was no longer carved of wood. It wasn’t just an idol anymore. Some horrible, demented fairy had granted some bastard’s wish and turned it into a real monster.

  It was standing there, in front of him, dressed in a rotting black robe. Beneath the hem two cloven feet stood amongst the gore covering the floor. Two arms stretched out from its sides. Long and thin, skeletal and bovine at the same time. They had too many joints and bent unnaturally.

  Before he could scream, it drew one of its arms back and slapped Denton across the face. The impact lifted him off his feet and he landed with a splash into the muck. It was cold and slimy. He tried to get back up, but the more he fought, the more he sunk down into it. Desperately, he tried to drag himself out as it slowly swallowed him up.

  * * *

  The three boys surrounded the body. The man’s angular limbs were splayed out, with his overcoat billowed around him in the snow. His left cheek was red and a bruise was already beginning to form. From the corner of his mouth, a trickle of blood inched across his face, until it reached his temple, where his dark hair broke into a spider web of premature gray. More blood was splattered beside him on the white ground. At the end of the trail, a pair of dark rimmed glasses sunk into the snow.

  “Shit, it’s that cop that came by my house.” Eddie hunched down and examined the man’s face.

  Danny already had the stranger’s wallet out. He carefully selected one of the cards and held it up to read. “He’s no cop. He’s from Milton. Says here: Faculty.”

  “Alvin, did you have to hit him so hard?” Eddie asked.

  The tall boy with the lumberjack shirt just shrugged. “I guess I don’t know my own strength.”

  The gestured caused the hunting rifle to slip off of his shoulder. He struggled to recover it with just the hand that gripped the barrel, but the weight of the weapon forced him to lunge for it with his free hand, before it fell from his grasp. A frown replaced his look of pride, and his already red complexion blossomed with embarrassment.

  “Who cares how hard we hit him?” Danny scratched the sandy colored hair behind his ear. “We can’t ever let him leave.”

  Chapter 18

  The Three Killers

  PAIN PULSED THROUGH HIS JAW like a constant electrical current. A sharp ache filled the entire left side of his face. But even worse was the sensation in his teeth. They refused to line up properly. Each time his mouth closed, the bottom teeth clicked against the top, sending a disturbing signal to his brain that screamed something was horribly wrong.

  He wanted nothing more than to rub the soreness out of his face and to try and massage the muscles back into alignment, but his hands were tied tightly to the arms of the chair. The cord bit into his skin. His hands were icy and his fingertips tingled.

  Denton was alone in the main room of the lodge. The gallery of victims swam in front of him as one giant blur. Without his glasses, everything beyond three feet faded into murk. He could make out the box lantern on Aikman Field and a photo of Maggie Biscamp, but familiarity had more to do with it than eyesight. The rest of the ghoulish collage was devoid of details. It was just the sort of sick display that in the movies every serial killer kept. Articles and maps were taped up alongside all manner of photographs. Some were clearly snipped from the newspaper. Others were glossy and reflected the light where they curled at the corners or appeared to have been printed from a computer.

  From time to time, he glanced at all those hazy faces. Were all eleven victims there? There were so many. Did they have several photos each or did their numbers far exceed what was known?

  He had no idea where Eddie Radcliff and the other two had gone. Denton had gained consciousness briefly, while they were tying him to the old cane backed chair. But by the time he was fully awake, he was alone.

  He wasn’t sure if they were in another room or gone for good. The insidious thought that they’d left him there to die of hunger took hold in his brain. He tried to think rationally about it, but that only brought about the realization he would die of dehydration long before he would ever starve.

  And with that thought, the dryness of his throat became unavoidable. He found himself swallowing involuntarily, even while he consciously tried not to. It seemed as if he needed to swallow more than he ever had to in his life. And each one was accompanied by a raspy pain that reminded him of his possible fate.

  He needed water.

  The urge to scream out for help became overpowering. But the lodge was too isolated for anyone to hear him, other than those boys. It didn’t seem to be the smartest idea to yell out to a bunch of murderers. Of course, he hadn’t limited himself to smart ideas lately.

  Time dragged on, and the only noises were the occasional crackle of the fire and the wind outside. He was completely on his own.

  The restraints were too thick to break and too tight to slip. Fighting against them only rubbed the skin on his wrists raw and bloody. He decided his only hope was to break the chair.

  Lifting it off the ground by leaning forward, he strained against the ropes that lashed him to the legs of the chair, until he managed to get up onto his feet. He then slammed it back onto the floor.

  After the fifth attempt, he gave up and added sore ankles and a jarred spine to his ever lengthening list of pains.

  The chair may have been an antique, but it was solid.

  Did Hoover sit here? he wondered, with a perverse sense of the absurd.

  It was night outside the windows. How long had he been there? Fighting back tears, he tried not to think what Linda was going through wondering where he was. And what she would go through, when they found his burned corpse in some farmer’s field.

  What an idiot he was. This is what he got for playing the hero. He belonged behind a lectern, not out in the woods hunting killers.

  His self-pity was interrupted by the sound of voices approaching the cabin. The front door opened and icy air gusted against the back of his neck. It made his spine arch reflexively, but there was something soothing about it at the same time. Until then, he hadn’t noticed how warm and stuffy the wood fire had made the room.

  “Well, well, look who’s awake.”

  Denton refused to turn his head to see which one of them had spoken. Although without his glasses, he probably wouldn’t have been able to tell anyway.

  Eddie Radcliff walked over and stopped in front of him. He could tell it was Eddie because of his untidy dark hair. The boy pulled off his gloves and unzipped his coat but didn’t say anything. Was that a look of concern on his face? He couldn’t be sure.

  Another killer came over. He had lighter hair and when he leaned in Denton could see the spray of freckles across his face. It was the driver from the van.

  Freckles forcefully grabbed Denton by the jaw. The pressure sent a torturous surge through him. His limbs strained against the ropes. And he clenched his jaw shut, an act that only increased the pain. The firm hand twisted his face around, so Freckles could examine the damage.

  The boy released him and said, “Alright, then. Time to get some answers, Dr. Denton Reed.”

  “Don’t worry, we parked your car for you.” The third killer laughed. He was still somewhere behind the chair and out of sight. “Dumped it in the ravine.”

 
“Alright,” Freckles said. “Who else knows you’re here?”

  Denton weighed the situation. The more information they wanted from him, the longer they’d keep him alive. He couldn’t answer their questions. He had to hold out until help arrived.

  But the question disturbed him. Who did know? No one. He had discussed the lodge with Lorraine, and if the police questioned her, she might mention it. But when would that be? It took forty-eight hours until he was considered a missing person and the police might start trying to track down the last people to see him. So, two—two and a half days? If he was lucky. But she was in Buffalo until the New Year. If they didn’t talk to her until she returned to town…

  Why the fuck didn’t he tell someone?

  “Get over here.” Freckles gave a slight wave to his unseen accomplice.

  The other boy came over and joined them. All three stood there looking down at him. The last one was the tall red haired kid, with the lumberjack shirt. The one from Federal Road. The one who had smacked him with the rifle, when he turned around with his hands in the air.

  “Now, I’m going to ask you one more time: who knows you’re here?”

  Denton stared down at a blank space in front of him and said nothing.

  “Alright, then. Even him up,” Freckles ordered.

  Big Red did a little dance with his fists pumping, like boxer before a bout, and then launched a vicious punch against the right side of Denton’s jaw.

  Denton didn’t recognize the sound that came out of his mouth. If he hadn’t felt the air expelling from his lungs, he would have thought that someone had let a wounded animal into the cabin.

  “Anything?” Freckles asked him, sounding amused.

  Denton wasn’t watching, so he didn’t see the hand gesture that signaled Big Red to hit him again. The punch split open his lip. Blood filled his mouth with a sharp metallic taste, and warm drops tickled his chin, as they inched their way down to land on his shirt.

  When he still didn’t speak, Freckles said, “Okay. Let’s handle this a different way.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small white card. Glancing at it, he pretended to read the information he had apparently memorized. “75 Kipling. That’s your address isn’t it, Doc?” He paced a few steps back and forth in front of Denton, as he pretended to study the driver’s license. “Hmm, perhaps we should pay a little visit.”

  “No!”

  “Looks, like I got your attention.” Freckles didn’t even attempting to hide the glee in his voice. “Hmm, I wonder what we might find there—or who we might find there.”

  “You sick bastards,” Denton spat. The words came out alien to his ears—distorted by his dry throat, his stiff jaw, and his pure hatred. “If you had half a brain, you’d be on your way to Canada right now. The police will be here any minute.” He tried to sound tough and confident but his voice was little more than a croak.

  Freckles and Big Red laughed at him. Eddie was just a little too far away to read his expression. He hoped it was worry, but he feared it was only coldness.

  “I don’t think so. If you’d called the cops, they would have been here long before now.” Freckles called his bluff. “You know what I think Mister Doctor? I think no one is coming for you, and when we’re done with you, no one will ever find you. That’s what I think.”

  “You fucking animal.” It was an expression of seething anger and burgeoning sobs. “You goddamn psycho. If you wanted to kill people, you should have started with yourself.”

  Freckles slapped him hard across the face. The force knocked his head aside and the world briefly shattered apart into ragged fragments of agony.

  “Do you think you know what’s going on here, little man? You think you have it all figured out? You don’t know shit.” Freckles leaned in so close Denton could see the blood vessels in the whites of his eyes.

  What happened next sent an icy finger down Denton’s spine. It wasn’t what the three of them said. It was the way they said it. It sounded eerily practiced, as if they had been rehearsing it for a long time.

  Eddie said, “We are humanity’s last hope.”

  Big Red said, “We are the army that stands between the light and the darkness.”

  Then Freckles said, “No one can hide from us. We are the Bexhill Guerrillas.”

  Chapter 19

  Two Circles

  COLD WATER POURED SLOWLY OVER DENTON’S FACE. The slight trickle washed over his cheek and dribbled off of his mouth and chin. The chill helped to relieve the pain. Occasionally, he took a sip as it passed over his lips. His thirst was no longer as demanding as it first was when he had gulped desperately from the faucet.

  To get his head into the tiny porcelain sink, he had to bend at nearly a ninety degree angle, his hip pressed tight up against the wall of the confined space.

  He had only asked to use the bathroom to buy a little time. He never thought they would actually let him go. When they had untied the ropes holding him to the chair, he was as surprised as he was relieved.

  Without a doubt, the last hour had been the strangest and most desperate of his entire life.

  After the boys—the killers had introduced themselves in that strange comic-book fashion, Freckles said, “Okay, no more fooling around. Eddie, get out the painting. Time for the test.”

  The words seemed to make no sense, and Denton didn’t even want to know what they meant. A stubborn defiance was beginning to build inside of him. But despite himself, he couldn’t help being curious when Eddie walked to the other side of the room. He seemed to move extra slowly, his feet dragging out each step. His blurry figure stopped and lifted something from the other side of the sofa. Even with his hazy vision, Denton understood immediately that he had a canvas in his hands.

  As he brought it up to Denton, the other two stepped back. The picture was held so close to his face that even without his glasses, he could see it clearly.

  “It’s one of your mother’s,” he said automatically.

  But wait, was it? It was the same star and moon motif as the last two paintings she had worked on, but it was hyper-realistic. It could have been a photograph. He could see solar flares shooting beyond the radiant glow of the sun. The moon had an atmosphere. Clouds of gas roiled like a sea, with currents and eddies.

  Denton thought back to the studio: a painting sitting on an easel and one leaning against the leg of the other. Had this painting sat on that empty stand? Was this the last one she did before she died? Before these kids killed her?

  “Okay put it away,” Freckles said.

  “What was that about?” Denton asked.

  “Good news. You passed. We don’t have to burn you now.” The way Freckles said it left no doubt the only thing they weren’t going to do to him was set him on fire.

  They still might be planning to kill him, but to them there was a logic to it. Whatever pathological delusions these bastards were operating under, they had defined a set of rules. They were good. The people they killed were bad. There was a test. Failure resulted in fire. If he could learn their rules, perhaps he could use it against them.

  “So is that how you good guys do it. Kill innocent people.” He fought to keep his voice from quivering. If he wanted to have any chance, he couldn’t be seen as a victim. He needed to keep his voice calm and steady. His voice had to maintain a tone of authority and stay in the lower registers. Even if he couldn’t see their eyes clearly, he had to make unwavering eye contact and let them believe he had no fear. It was the same as maintaining order in the classroom. You kept control by convincing the students you were in control.

  “Don’t you watch the news,” Freckles said. “It’s called collateral damage. Happens in war all the time. It’s nothing personal. We just can’t have you screwing things up. There’s too much at stake.”

  “I don’t know,” Eddie said. “This seems wrong. The others ma
de sense, but he’s not infected. We’re supposed to be saving people like him.”

  Infected? Infected with what?

  “Yeah, and where do you think he goes if we let him go? Straight to the fuckin’ police,” Big Red said. “I say we stop wasting time and see what the Winchester does to the back of his head.”

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself. Let’s get him on his feet.”

  Big Red started untying his restraints. Think, think, Denton screamed at his brain.

  “I’m not infected.” A desperate ploy began to form in his head. “But I’ve been following someone who is. He led me here.”

  He shot a nervous glance at one of the windows, as though he was expecting to see a face there. It was only a black blur to him, but they didn’t know that.

  The fingers on the knots stopped moving.

  Freckles hand went to the grip of the revolver sticking out of his waistband, and his eyes searched the night outside the window.

  Denton had only acted once in his entire life, during a play in fourth grade. He played a shop keeper in the Christmas pageant. He had been terrified and said his one line with robotic precision. With the thought of having his brains splattered all over the snow, he had found the motivation to give an Oscar-worthy performance.

  “Eddie, watch him. We’ll check it out. If he tries anything, kill him.”

  They hastily threw back on their coats and boots and picked up hunting rifles from a rack by the door. When they were gone, Denton asked, “You’re going to kill me anyway, aren’t you?”

  Eddie stood just to the side of his chair and gazed out one of the larger windows.

  Denton waited for a reply that never came. After glancing from the boy’s blank face to the empty blackness beyond the glass, a vaguely remembered quote about staring into the abyss sprung to his mind.

  “Eddie?”

  “Shut up. It’ll be up to Danny to decide what to do with you.”