Hunters

Raze and Az go looking for trouble, and bite off more than they can chew. Surprise, surprise.

 

Hunters

            The Dead Man winds on down the road, his shadow taller than his soul. The Devil shakes his head and wishes for that sublime faculty which the mortals name pity.

It caresses the dark bitter core which throbs with the hundred aches which life and death and the spaces in between have wrought, offering a respite for its beleaguered host.

            The Dead Man pushes it away, fever-mad and burning under the heat of his hate. He doesn’t want comfort. He wants answers. He wants to end it.

            To be a rock and not to roll.

 

***

            “Are we sure about this?” Az’s voice is nearly swallowed up by the thumping in his chest. The gasoline had been easy to find. So had the butterfly knife. However, the courage necessary to carry out the plan, something which Raze found only after the revenant had thoroughly ripped through his mind, that was something a little harder to come by.

            Raze turned, the gasoline sloshing in its red plastic container. He wasn’t wearing any makeup today, though he was no less pale than he had been a week ago beneath an inch of foundation. “Yeah, Az. We can’t let him keep killing people.”

            “Why not, Raze? The book said that he’s only supposed to kill the people that killed him. It’s justice, dude.”

            “Revenge isn’t justice. It’s just murder for different reasons.”

            They stood at the back of the ghost-house, before the boarded window which had given them access that first night. Knowing what they knew now, it wasn’t so easy to simply duck beneath the loose spars of wood and into the deepening gloom. It was just after three and already it was starting to look like the light was fading.

            “But what about--?”

            “We’re not going to argue about f*****g morality right now, Az. Like it or not he’s a f*****g monster. He’s a zombie, like in the Romero flicks. We can’t let things like that just wander around.”

            Raze swung a leg over the window-frame and ducked into the shadowy interior of the house, his boots crunching over broken glass. It sounded like teeth beneath the tread of a tank.

            Weird metaphor. Weird place.

            “S**t.” Az ducked in after Raze, unwilling to be alone outside the den of a predator, even if all of the research told him that he should be safe.

            Raze had pulled out a flashlight by the time that Az had finished climbing in through the window into what was probably once the dining room. The amber beam cut through the clinging darkness like a bolt of angelic fire. He swept it toward in the direction of the living room and the stairs which lay just beyond.

            “C’mon.”

            Az dutifully fell into step with his friend, pulling the butterfly knife out of the waistband of his jeans. With an awkward flick (he’d never gotten the hang of the damned thing), he flipped out the four-inch blade from between the two furrowed handles, closing them around the tang of the blade. Perhaps not the first choice of heart-removal experts everywhere, but one’s got to work with what one has.

            He just hoped that the whole decapitation thing wouldn’t have to happen. There was no way that the little piece of sharpened scrap-steel would cut through a spine.

            Raze turned to see Az fiddling with the knife and scowled, gesturing with the light for Az to stay closer and be quiet. As if the revenant would hear the echoes of Az’s train of thought.

            They made for the stairs together, Az a step or so behind Raze. They mounted the steps and began the slow and agonizing ascent in utter silence. Az’s train of thought began to meander back toward the very real possibility the Raze was simply nuts. Occam’s Razor almost demanded that to be the case. It certainly made more sense than a walking dead guy who had a hankering to kill the people who had murdered him.

            If Raze really was crazy, Az at least was the one holding the knife.

            A full minute passed before they gained the top of the stairs. Raze made a quick show of scanning the horizon in all directions (many of which were obvious walls) before motioning Az up with him. He extended on finger toward the door which, in Az’s own house, led to the master bedroom.

            Az nodded once and they slunk toward the door. Raze’s hand settled on the knob and a breathless handful of heartbeats passed.

            Then Raze threw open the door.

            The open window let in a few blinding rays of sunlight into the musty interior of the bedroom. They stabbed like crystal spears into the gloom, driving it back into the corners of the room. Even these shadows were quickly banished as Raze shone the flashlight into each in turn.

            Nothing.

            Az let out a breath that he hadn’t realized that he’d been holding. His heart hammered, and he idly wondered when that had started. Raze turned and offered a shrug.

            “Nobody home?” Az mouthed.

            Another shrug. Az’s guess was as good as his, it seemed. He swept the light toward the closed door to the master bathroom, just off to their right. Az crept forward to cover his possibly-insane friend as best he could with his four-inches of sharpened scrap-steel.

             Again, Raze deftly let his hand settle on the door and carefully turn the knob. It rattled slightly as it turned, metal scraping metal. Or maybe it was only the blood rushing through Az’s ears.

            The door behind them exploded inward as the dark shadow of Raker swept into the room, an inarticulate cry of rage and frustration breaking from his throat. Raze and Az whipped around in time to catch the black flash of his trench coat and the darker burning of fathomless black eyes of the revenant crossing the room.

            And then he drew up short, only a scant few feet away from the two goth-lings. For a moment no one in the half-shadowed bedroom breathed.

            Raker’s eyes swept from Raze to Az and back again, taking note of the pungent tang which emanated from the full bladder of gasoline and the glinting shine of the butterfly knife in the same fell twisting of his head.

            “Forgive me, boys.” His voice was that which might have escaped the throat of a wounded animal. It grated, hissed. It was the tortured growl of a fox caught in a bear-trap. “I’m really in no mood.”

            Raze turned to Az, his eyes for the first time since cooking up the plan, showed something akin to naked fear. Az might’ve been surprised had he been capable of anything more than a frantic working of his jaw and a little squeak which might’ve been a strangled infant of a scream.

            Raker turned away, pacing toward the bed, carefully avoiding the errant shafts of sunlight. He whipped off the heavy canvas mantle and tossed it onto the bed.

            “Leave, Raze. Take your friend and go.”

            Raze made no move.

            “It has been a most unpleasant day. Raker needs his rest. Now please leave.”

            Az began to scoot for the door but Raze fastened a hand on his friend’s shoulder. Az turned with a goggle-eyed expression of surprise and terror. His jaw pumped more vigorously as he mouthed something like “Runfuckrun!”

            “Rage?” Raze’s voice sounded hollow and reedy in his own mind, and he had enough sense to hope that it came out stronger.

            Rage, through Raker’s eyes, cocked his head over his left shoulder as he reached into the folds of the discarded jacket. “Naturally.”

            “We want to talk to you.”

            “Oh I wouldn’t advise that, Raze.” Something in Rage’s voice, that twisted mockery of the dead artist’s own voice, sounded afraid.

            “Why not?”

            “Raker saw something tonight, and he’s a bit out of sorts.”

            Az struggled feverishly twisting away from under his friend’s hand, finally gaining his voice. “Raze, dude, I thought you were f*****g nuts. I get it now. It’s real. But lets go…let’s just f*****g go.”

            “Not yet.” He turned back to the demon in the dead man’s skin. “What happened?”

            “Our boy bore witness to atrocity on parade; the holy of holies in the hands of another man.”

            Raze squinted in incomprehension.

            “What’s the gasoline for, boys?” The demon’s eyes grew dangerously narrow, and his lips twisted into a smile which spoke of old evil. The kind that generally can only be brought on par with slow torture with a potato-peeler.

            Az took that moment to quietly piss himself. His knees had turned to rubber and all hope of escape began to trickle down his leg.

Raze swallowed hard. “We know what you are, Rage.”

“Is that right?”

Raze nodded and gestured with the gasoline. “You’re a revenant. A walking ghost in a shell. And you’re back to kill your murderers.”

“Something very like that. Yes.” The Demon produced the revolver from the deepest pocket of the black canvas coat. He spun the cylinder with a flick of long-fingers.

“Will it solve anything?”

The Dead Man’s hand popped the cylinder open and began to methodically remove the spent shells. He let them roll in his hand a moment. “Raker will have peace. He will be able to rest easy in the knowledge that his murderers are dead.” His features contorted for a moment, his lip curling upward in a rictus of struggle. “And peace would most assuredly be a new thing for him.”

            “One man’s peace isn’t worth all of this blood.”

            The captive lips of the dead artist twist into a wry smile. “But it’s certainly worth burning him.”

            Az backed up against the wall and clung to it as though it alone had the power to preserve his life. The cool plaster against his skin played counterpoint to the chilled sweat which was already teasing adrenaline shudders from his bones. He whispered an endless litany of profanity like a charm against evil.

            “You can’t do this.”

            “You can’t stop him.”

            “You mean you.”

            “No. I mean him.” The devil behind the dead man’s eyes brooks no misunderstanding. “Even now, it’s fantastically difficult to hold him back.”

            Raze squinted his incomprehension. “But I thought—“

            Errant patches of blue pierced the liquid black of the dead man’s eyes. Raker was battling through the dominion of the foreign presence which held him momentarily in thrall. And the roar which shook the very foundation of the house let Raze know that the Devil was most assuredly not mistaken. Raker was certainly the more frightening voice from the whipcord-lean frame. He howled like a blood-hungry animal. A name.

            Monica.

            Raze joined his friend against the far wall, huddled against it and cursing his own stupidity. He was a kid. And this was evil. And he had let it get between himself and the only door.

            The features of the dead man seemed to collapse into themselves as the Devil regained control, the fury draining from his face. He sank down to one knee. “You’ve been told already, Raze. You aren’t on the list. You don’t have to die. But I’m losing my grip on dear Raker, and I’m afraid that I don’t know what he might do if I leave you alone with him. So go.”

            Az turned and shot a pleading glance toward Raze. It was time to go. Raze nodded.

            But apparently they didn’t move quick enough for the Devil’s liking.

            The heavy four-poster bed slammed into the wall three feet to Raze’s right, thrown across the room with a bass grunt of exertion from the Demon, or perhaps the dead man. Wooden splinters and the overpowering aroma of crumbling drywall peppered the two boys. “Get out!” Raker roared .

            And they got out. They got out like the very hounds from Lucifer’s own kennel were nipping at their heels.

***

            The Dead Man crouches in the darkest corner of his broken home. A man of flesh and blood might have wept at the sights which he had seen, at the things that he now knew. His Monica, his darling Monica, had a hand in his murder. The knowledge burned in his gut like a patch of smoldering crude-oil.

            The Devil has retreated for the moment, giving the Dead Man time. It knew from the beginning that the last kill would be the hardest. But his heart must harden, for only in the spilt blood and cordite and sulfur haze could he ever finally rest.

            The Dead Man still holds the two empty brass shells in the palm of his left hand. He grips them until they leave furrows in his skin. Until his fingernails leave bloody crescents in the palm of his hand.

            It wasn’t fair.

            He takes the time the Devil gives him. With careful movements, he ties first one shell into his hair, and then the next. The shells tangle in the long black tresses, knotted tight until they ride against one another, against the pallid flesh of his right cheek. When he moves they clink together like thirty pieces of silver in a rough leather sack.

            His smile is as cold and deadly as a falling icicle as it twists his lips into a hideous parody of mirth. They would hear him coming.

            But it wouldn’t save them.