“Gotcha now, motherfucker.”
He raised the pistol at arm’s length, squeezed one eye shut, and sighted down the barrel. With a fluid grace that seemed out of place, he tracked the bastard’s movements slowly, always making sure that the little nub of metal on the end of the gun was slightly in front of his target.
And then, as he exhaled, his finger flexed. The pistol kicked in his hand as strongly as if something had slammed against the underside of his wrist. Fire licked from the muzzle and a puff of almost sulfuric smelling smoke billowed into the air as the roar of the gun boomed through the clearing.
The moving shadow toppled like it had tripped over some hidden obstacle and stumbled to the ground. For a second, Earl kept the weapon trained on the little mound of darkness that was just visible between the stand of trees; but it didn’t try to get back up. It didn’t kick or thrash or bellow in pain.
“Damn, Dead Eye,” he mumbled into his frost-coated beard, “one shot.”
Still, he had to be sure that son of a bitch wasn’t playing possum. He had to make certain the murdering asshole was really down for good.
He pulled the trigger two more times in rapid succession and watched as the body jolted with each impact. Nodding his head with satisfaction, Earl stomped through the snow while the high pitched ringing leftover from the gunfire filled his head like an announcement from the Emergency Broadcast System.
There was no way someone could just lay there and take two slugs like that. No one that was still alive.
“And that, retard,” he said to his absent brother, “is what it takes to be a man.”
SCENE FIFTEEN
Searching the bottom floor of the house had proven pointless. Daryl had opened every closet, looked behind any piece of furniture that was caddy-corner with the walls, and had even went as far as checking the cupboards in the kitchen. Cobwebs clung to his mustache and the knees of his pants were dusty from where he’d crouched on the floor and peered underneath Mama’s bed. He’d noticed the record player and speakers laying on the floor, surrounded by drops of dried blood as if they had jumped to their death; and there were also cinders and ash scattered… almost as if something had disturbed the remains of the fire. So he’d stooped as low as he could and peered up into the darkness of the chimney as the lingering warmth from the hearth radiated over a face now smeared with soot.
It had been like staring into mouth of a nightmare: so pitch black that he could almost imagine hundreds of red, glowing eyes peering down at him. His stomach had gurgled as his hands began to shake and it almost looked like the shadows were creeping toward him, devouring more and more of the creosote coated bricks as they reached toward him with tentacles of darkness. He’d fallen backward and scooted across the floor like a dog with ass worms in reverse, his eyes never straying far from the open hearth while his pulse and breath quickened.
“Nothin’ up there.” He breathlessly muttered. “Nothin’ up there at all. Not her, not nothin’ else either.”
Picking himself up, he’d backed away as if he’d half expected a flock of bats to surge out from the chimney and cover him with their leathery wings and razor-like teeth. The cleaver he’d snatched from a kitchen drawer caught a stray shaft of sun and threw reflections of light that jerked and darted across the walls.
“Grow up. Ain’t no reason to be shakin’ like a palsy victim. You got the cleaver, right? And she ain’t nothin’ but one woman. You hack her ass a few times and it’ll take the fight plum out of her.”
The tremor in his voice, however, contradicted the bravado of his running monologue. Snapshots from Mona’s Secret Delights still burst through his mind like a slide presentation from a vacation in Hell. Maybe it was because, outwardly, she looked so sweet and innocent. Even a little shy, perhaps. She was the type of girl he would have imagined writing love poems; maybe dabbing her eyes with tissue as she silently moved her lips to a chick flick that had been watched so often that even the DVD player knew how everything would turn out. The type who should have been fair game.
And yet here he was, stalking through his own house like a sneak thief. Mama was dead, but it was this dark-haired bitch who haunted him.
He saw her with a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth; one hand proudly displaying a thumbs up, the other pointing at the mound of bodies piled by her side in a grisly imitation of Lindy England and the infamous Abu Ghraib photo.
Daryl shook his head as if he could fling the image from his mind and looked up the stairs. She had to be up there somewhere. Crouching in silence.
Was she hiding?
Or waiting?
“Bitch killed Mama… you gonna let her get away with that shit?”
The voice he heard in his head was Earl’s and it was so clear and distinct that Daryl could almost believe that his brother were actually standing just behind him.
“You gonna let that little whore sit up there and laugh at you? Because you ain’t got the balls to go up there and show her who’s boss?”
His fingers tightened around the wooden handle of the cleaver and he flexed his arm as if testing its heft. He tried to imagine the rectangular piece of metal cracking into her skull and splitting that rounded forehead like it was a Christmas roast. But all that came to mind was a picture of her in faded, tight fitting jeans: she was turned slightly to the side and her pretty little mouth formed an oval and her eyes looked wide and surprised; her bare chest was pale white and contrasted starkly against the cocoa-colored flesh of the severed arms she held in either hand. With their palms covering her nipples, she looked like a modest psychopath caught in the act of undressing.
“There were two of ’em.” Earl’s voice said. “She had help. This time it’s just you and her. You tellin’ me that you’re afraid this piece of pussy is gonna kick your ass? That what you tellin’ me?”
Daryl took a deep breath and started up the stairs. He walked as softly as possible, ensuring that each footfall resulted in nothing more than a slight tap. He listened to the silence that seemed to enshroud the house and his flesh crawled at the tiniest of noises.
That faint creak… was it the sound of her sneaking through the hallway?
Or just old wood expanding with the heat of dawn?
Was that her shallow breathing? Or nothing more than the sound of his own respiration bouncing back at him from the walls?
By the time he reached the top of the stairs, Daryl gripped the cleaver so tightly that the rivets attaching the handle to the tong had pushed dimples into the pads of his hand. . He felt sweat trickle down the back of his neck and his stomach was gurgling so loudly now that cramps pulled at the muscles in his abdomen.
Yet he somehow forced himself to go on. To take another step.
He passed the braided rug where Earl had beaten that Chinese guy to death with a pipe wrench. Then the bullet hole in the wall that Mama had always called “your Daddy’s last home improvement project.” When he slinked past the cabinet outside of Mama’s bedroom, he almost shattered the glass of the empty display case when his own reflection made his heart feel as if it had attempted to burst right through his chest. But even then, he forced himself to keep going. For he could feel Mama and Earl’s eyes upon him, judging every move and decision as if they were dark gods who held his fate in their hands.
The door to the bed room was partially open and he pushed it as forcefully as he’d always dreamed of shoving his brother. It banged against the wall so hard that it bounced back at him as if seeking retaliation for the assault. But its brief stand was put down easily with the touch of a hand and Daryl strode into the room, certain now that no one had been hiding behind it.