The Hunting Beast, Part 10
by Martin H Slusser

Tommy roused himself from a drug-induced lethargy to yawn and stretch over the corpse of the woman. According to the watch she wore, it was past five in the afternoon. The sun would be setting soon. Harrison lay sprawled on the mat near Tommy, his left arm a pale shade of blue from the rubber strap still twisted around it. The needle lay where Harrison dropped it. Tommy whispered a hollow laugh.

Needles and broads and needles and Leda. Melancowski was the worse goddess the coven the Demon’s Road Valley ever had, and she didn’t give a damn. Money . . . Everything added up to dollars and cents. Leda worshiped it.

He crawled over to check Carl’s body. Ear pressed to the broad chest, he could hear no heart. His hand felt in Carl’s crotch for a pulse. The body was cold. Algormortis had set in, and the stomach was swollen with gasses caused by decay.

“Stupid punk,” he said, shaking his head. “Thought brawn equaled brains, didn’t you? Dumber than even that old scag, Leda.” Tommy glanced down at where Carl lived. A finger flicked it in idle amusement. Leda made a mint on what hung there. A regular Fort Knox, before the UN shipped the gold to Paris. And now it was worm food.

Pulling himself up, he yawned and stretched, and only then saw the mirror. His eyes widened in horror. It was a full-body mirror. Lights from the false sun were bright, revealing the thin lines of a mass of scars on pale skin. With a shriek, Tommy spun away. He snatched up a whip stiff with the woman’s blood and hurtled it at the mirror. The handle crashed into the glass, shattering it.

Dropping to his knees, Tommy choked back a sob.

Hidden behind a cloud, a tiny spirit giggled. She gave the high sign at a raven that drifted down to stand on Carl’s dead clay. The raven cocked his head at Tommy. The man was weeping and cursing. He was less than nothing. The raven stooped to stare at the glazed, dead eyes of the man he was sent to protect.

“Wolf bitch,” Tommy said, his mind rocked, easing back and forth with the force of pain and hate. “Fucking Anna. I’ll kill you. I swear I will. I’ll kill that little bastard, Benny, too, just like old man Grey wanted, and I’ll be a god, and you’ll be my slut.”

Creeping to the woman’s corpse, he fell over it biting and tearing at the face until he screamed and passed out.

Behind the house, gray mists curled through the forest. The sun slid away, and it swelled with the dark. Whispered, mocking laughter drifted in the mist.

Carl’s finger twitched. The swelling bulge in his stomach subsided in a loud shudder of noise that seemed loud amid the quiet music and gentle scent of flower. The staring eyes moved and blinked.

One hand came up. “Damn, man,” Carl whispered. He rubbed his face and rolled over. "A mal chistè, Charlie Waya, you and your rotgut moonshine.” The hand stilled, and Carl shuddered. Tendrils of black fire whispered along his nerves. Tears ran down his face.

Anna, oh, Anna.

“I’m sorry, baby. Please, Leda had to die. Please understand. I’m so sorry for hurting you, but I had to kill the bitch.”

A choked rasp of noise filled in the air, then a whimper of pain. The full reek of the room came to him. He remembered the animal, then running through the night.

Harrison. Carl looked up. A rack of hand-cut planks was to his right. Chains and whips and smiling cherubim watched from the ceiling, and the stench of death was in the air. The judge’s funhouse.

Holding to the wall, Carl pulled himself up. Harrison lay on the floor near a lean, naked man. Nothing new there. A woman was under the lean man. Blue eyes stared blindly up at circling cherubim. What he could see of her, there were pieces of flesh gnawed away and the marks of burns and whips. The eyes, so innocent, so wide with pain, were still fresh and unsullied by death. She hadn’t been dead for long. Carl looked away.

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