“Fuck you,” said Jacker. “Go ahead and call the cops. You can’t threaten us.”
“Son, I’m ten seconds away from shutting you up for good,” said the guard. “You found your way onto private property, boy. By law, I can put a bullet in you. Hell, kid, that’s my fucking job. Now do as I say and get on your knees.”
Jacker and Aubrey obeyed and the guards swiftly patted them down. After convinced that they weren’t armed, the older guard put a pistol to the back of Aubrey’s head. The girl cringed and started to weep as she pleaded for her life.
“If you hurt her, I swear to God…”
“What?” asked the guard. “You’ll try to fight me? Who do you think’s going to win that little scuffle? Huh, Mr. Waxman?”
“So you know who I am? Big deal. Call the cops and get this over with,” said Jacker.
“Not yet. First, I want to talk about your friends. Where are they?”
“It’s just us,” said Jacker. “We came alone.”
“Now you’re just pissing me off,” said the guard. “We found you’re van, and the motorcycle. We know there’re more of you here. We’ve got everyone’s luggage. Unless you’re trying to tell me you wear a lot of lady’s underwear.”
Jacker sneered back at the guard. “What can I say? I’m a freak.”
“Aw fuck it,” said the guard as he put his pistol to the back of Jacker’s head. “Say good night, fat ass.”
“I’ll tell you where they are,” said Aubrey. “Just don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt any of us.”
“Aubrey, shut up,” said Jacker.
“No! This isn’t worth dying over. Don’t be crazy.”
“All right,” said the guard as he lowered his gun. “You should thank your little girlfriend. She just saved your life. Now get up. We’re going to go get your friends.”
Widowsfield
March 14th, 1996
“Why are they coming back?” asked The Skeleton Man.
“Who?” asked Raymond.
“The fat one and his whore. They’re coming back.”
Raymond looked down the road, in the direction that The Skeleton Man pointed, and saw nothing but fog. “I don’t see anyone.”
“We have to do something. We have to save my sister.”
Raymond looked in through the window at the crying girl in the kitchen of the cabin. He suddenly understood who it was that he’d been watching. “That girl is your sister? Then, is the boy you?”
The Skeleton Man was crying, the tears seeping through the mess of blood and sagging flesh that decorated his skull — skin pulled from past victims that the demon had put over his face.
“If they take her, I’ll never be free.”
“What are we supposed to do?”
“I have to find the one that loves her. He’s here, I can feel how much he cares for her. He’s the only one that can stop this.” The Skeleton Man took Raymond’s hand. “We’re going to have to go inside. You’re going to have to find your sister while I talk to the one that loves Alma. You have to keep your sister away from me.”
The door of the cabin creaked as the fog pressed into it. Then the wood warped and the door blew backward as the children inside screamed. The Skeleton Man went in first, and then disappeared within the surging fog. Raymond ran in after, still unsure what he was supposed to do.
“Raymond?” asked Ben when he saw the boy enter. “What are you doing here?”
“Where’s my sister?” asked Raymond.
Alma was sobbing as she pointed up the stairs. “I’m so sorry, Raymond. Our dad made Ben do it. Please don’t be mad. Don’t be mad at us.”
“What? Why?” asked Raymond.
Ben had on a pair of oven mitts and was holding a steaming pot of boiling water.
“What’s going on down there?” asked a man’s voice. Raymond recognized the hateful voice, but it had been a long time since he’d heard it.
A gaunt man, soaking wet with sweat, appeared on the stairs. His beady eyes caught sight of Raymond and he froze.
“What are you doing here?”
“Run, Raymond!” Alma screamed.
Her father was faster and Raymond collapsed onto the concrete as the man tackled him. Michael Harper had grabbed a knife off the kitchen counter and started to cut at Raymond with it. Raymond felt himself being turned, and then an intense pressure in his gut. The knife entering his stomach was a surprise, but no worse than the pain Raymond had experienced any of the other times he died. He felt his hands grow cold as Alma’s father dragged his body back into the cabin.
“Shut up, Alma!” he screamed as he dragged Raymond inside.
That’s when the altered past dissipated, and Raymond saw The Skeleton Man again. He was standing near another man, who was tall and had a shaved head. The Skeleton Man had his hands on the stranger’s shoulders and was whispering in his ear. There was a tattoo of a snake on the side of the man’s head, right beside where The Skeleton Man was whispering.
A woman’s voice screamed from upstairs and Raymond shifted his head to look. He recognized his sister’s pained cries. “Terry?” asked Raymond as he looked up the stairs. “Did he kill you too?”
“Keep her away from me,” said The Skeleton Man.
The fog thickened, and the electricity zapped the walls. Raymond was living in two times at once, and saw both visions independently. He could see Alma as a child, and as an adult, and he knew that his sister was dying upstairs, while at the same time existing as a tortured soul, just like everyone else in the town. He looked up the stairs and saw his sister’s mangled corpse begin to crawl down.
She was nude, and she was soaked with water and blood. Her innards slid down the wooden steps, slopping across each step as she descended on her belly. Her face was shredded, and her hair was falling out in clumps of gooey blood, revealing her white skull beneath. Her left eye was falling from its socket, and her face looked like it was melting. She wailed, and continued down the stairs, focused on The Skeleton Man.
“Terry!” Raymond was no longer trapped inside his body, but was a member of the mist, swirling and experiencing every emotion that existed in every mind among those gathered in the cabin. He could look down at his corpse and the children that cried as their father murdered another person, and he could see his sister’s wailing spirit sliding down the stairs. “You have to stop, Terry.”
“Murderer!” Her teeth were loose in her gums, as if someone had been trying to pry them free. “I’ll slaughter them, all of them. I found them again!”
Raymond wrapped himself around Terry to keep her from going down the stairs any further. He was able to hold her back, but her skin was sliding off her bones. He had to hook the mist through her rib cage to restrain her.
“I love you, Terry,” said Raymond. “Dad and I loved you so much. It hurt us so bad to watch you do this to yourself. We never stopped loving you.”
“Let me go!” Terry’s bones cracked as she continued to try and crawl down the stairs.
“Stay with me, Terry.”
“I hate them!”
“I love you.”
“Hate…”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ben’s Secret
March 12th, 2012
Paul saw the security truck first and warned the others to get down. The yellow lights illuminated the living room, casting their eerie shadows throughout the cabin, but didn’t pass this time. The truck had parked in front of the cabin.
“Oh shit,” said Stephen. “They must’ve found Jacker and Aubrey.”
A loud, gruff voice crackled to life outside, amplified by a loudspeaker on the security truck. “Alma, Paul, Stephen, and Rachel, please exit the house. We know you’re in there. We don’t want any trouble. If you come out, we’ll escort you off the premises. No harm no foul. Okay?”