Is that really what you want?
“Remember what Mr. Ghastly said. There are only two ways out of this place, the way you came in and the exit. The only way to the exit is by passing our tests. After this there is only one more test, then the riding of the dead.”
“I don’t want to ride the dead.”
Spindle tilted his head and squinted his eyes as if by doing so allowed him to better size Calvin up.
“Don’t worry, boy, it’s nothing like this. Now what do you want, my hand or a kiss?”
Spindle held out his gore-coated hand. Calvin knew, as he looked up at the man’s hand, that he was going to kiss Jenny, if for nothing else than a means of escape from this particular corner of hell. Besides, he knew giving up wasn’t an option. Better to endure a night of pure madness than live an eternity on the Wall of Suicide.
Calvin breathed evenly through his mouth, still trying not to taste the sweet mingling of vomit and death that perfumed the air. His eyes had grown tired and he felt weary, estranged.
“I’ll kiss her,” said Calvin, his voice flat, dead.
Spindle, whose face had become slack, grinned wide. He nodded and said, “Very well,” just before placing his index and pointer finger into his own mouth and sucking them free of gore.
Scare tactics! Kiss the corpse and get the fuck out of dodge!
Calvin tried desperately not to look Jenny in her cataract eyes, well, what was left of them. He knelt down before the chase lounge and the body of a woman that may have once been beautiful, perfectly kissable—now a thing of horror and revulsion.
Lingering would work against him by fueling his mind with further paranoia. He had to get the kiss over with as quick as possible. He would have to hold his breath to avoid another regurgitation, but he could do it. This was all for the sake of survival.
They’re getting to you. Don’t let them get to you.
The face wasn’t as sticky as the legs, but more like a clammy, cold ghoulish head formed in wax by the hands of a madman. Calvin placed his lips over what remained of hers and kissed. He could feel her teeth on his lips but ignored the awful sensations sent through his body, the horror, the gag reflex. His skin went cold and immediately tightened into a wash of gooseflesh.
There was no way for Calvin to understand what constituted a kiss to the skinny freak licking his chops like a kid on a cookie dough spoon. Calvin drew away from the stinking body, stood, and looked into the eyes of the devil, deep, dark, and listless. They had gotten to him. They had pulled him to the precipice and forced him to look within the folds of madness, no, to lick the grue from between the folds. And still they wanted him to take it and smile.
“I suppose that’ll do,” said Mr. Spindle. “It’s not for everyone, that I know and understand. Back in the hallway. Follow the candles.”
Calvin nodded, closed his eyes, and turned his back on the most revolting individual he’d ever had the displeasure of dealing with. He exited the room into the thrashed hallway where a new series of candles led him in the opposite direction he had come from. He could swear he heard the skinny bastard whisper to his beloved cadaver, “Don’t worry, my dear, he just doesn’t understand,” but Calvin couldn’t be sure of anything. At that point he wanted nothing more than to make distance between him, Mr. Spindle, and the corpse.
Calvin spit, but the flavor of death seemed to be embedded in his mouth like liquor after a night of binge drinking. His mind swooned as he followed the candles, fearful of what atrocity he would be subjected to next. One more test and then he would have to “ride the dead”, and quite frankly he wanted nothing to do with riding the dead. He wanted nothing to do with the Gorehounds, and he was beginning to wonder about his obsession with death in general. Perhaps his obsession wasn’t so healthy. Perhaps he was perfectly happy with his and Ronnie’s vanilla life.
Maybe I’m the center of an elaborate joke!
Maybe they want to kill me.
That thought had occurred to him, and yet as sadistic and bent as this misadventure had been, he was quite sure these freaks were pleased to have found someone as twisted and all alone as them. In an absurd way they were opening their arms to him, but they had to be certain that the man they were letting into their select group was indeed one of them. Just as goddamned depraved and rancid in the head.
Calvin stopped in the hallway for a moment to collect his thoughts. He couldn’t accept the possibility that the Gorehounds were involved in something as vile as grave robbing, but that taste… he couldn’t get it out of his mouth. He shuddered and then dry heaved. Images raged through his mind at random like someone took the most gruesome scenes from his favorite horror movies and spliced them together for one hell of a gore reel. The final images were of Celia’s body on his living room floor and what was left of Danny after Calvin and Hazel had finished with him.
You’re no better than this, he told himself. You deserve every bit of this. Killing is killing. The dead are dead whether freshly killed by your own hands or dug out of the ground. You’re no better than them. You’re no better than Mr. Spindle.
Head somewhat collected, Calvin followed the candles to a stairwell on what he thought was the back of the building. He followed the candles down the stairs, through a hallway and into another room, only this one was familiar, and it stunk of something far different from the last room he had been subjected to. This one smelled of blood, piss and shit, and the reason for said odors was sitting in an old wheelchair, butchered beyond recognition. This person’s mother wouldn’t recognize him, but Calvin recognized the mass as the man he had seen butchered on the television screen at the beginning of this macabre journey.
Heart palpitating, sweat beading on his brow, gooseflesh breaking out on his shoulders, arms and back, increased breathing—mind on the verge of cracking up. Calvin stepped toward the body, his footfalls the only sound in the desperate room. His mind played a grave slideshow of images from the video he had seen.
A machete protruded from the red mass the way one leaves axe embedded into a cutting block. Calvin wasn’t startled when a female voice spoke up from behind, commanding him to grab the machete. He didn’t turn around for he knew who it was, had seen her in the video. There was no use fighting it. Calvin grabbed the blood speckled handle of the machete and yanked it out of the husk. The body quivered just slightly, the blood having begun to coagulate as rigor mortis set in.
“Now, I want you to practice,” said the female voice. “Go ahead, get a feel for it. It’s not like you imagine it to be. You’ve killed someone before or you wouldn’t be here, so don’t be shy.”
The machete felt strangely natural in Calvin’s clenched fist. He stared at the bloody body like it was a side of beef in the back of a butcher shop. It could be anyone. It could be Mr. Spindle, or the girl behind him, or even Ghastly himself. Any one of them would be worth hacking up. They deserved it. Calvin deserved it.
Self-loathing set in. Calvin stared blankly into the contours of hacked flesh and dried blood like some kind of candy coating on a human sundae. He could do anything now and it wouldn’t matter. Anything. Life was fragile and death a blessing.
Sharks roll their eyes back when they attack. Perhaps this is because they need to tap into some kind of preternatural madness for the kill, but whatever it is, Calvin found that very place within himself, and he too closed his eyes as he laid the machete into the formless torso, ripping it into something less recognizable than it had been. His anger, fear, and the madness of the whole night came out in waves that were translated into ripped flesh and chunks of thick, jellied blood.