The girl shrieked and tumbled out of her chair. An unintelligible utterance that might have been some kind of threat came from the jock as he rose from his chair, took a wobbling step in Elliot’s direction, and then fell against the porch railing.

  Elliot ripped the machete blade from the little one’s face, gave the body a kick that sent it tumbling off the porch, and grabbed the girl by an arm, jerking her to her feet. The jock made another vaguely threatening noise as he tried and failed to propel himself away from the railing. The girl squealed and made a weak attempt to pull away from Elliot. He pushed the tip of the machete blade into her stomach, allowed her a moment to feel the pain as it cut through her buzz, and then pushed it in another few inches. When he withdrew the blade, he let go of her arm and she dropped to her knees. Elliot swung the machete and the blade hacked into the side of her neck. Blood sprayed from the gash when he yanked it away.

  The jock made another attempt to throw himself at Elliot. This time he succeeded at propelling himself away from the railing, but he wasn’t able to maintain his footing and fell onto his side on the porch. Elliot positioned himself above the doomed young man, pausing a moment to observe how strongly he resembled guys who’d tormented him when he was in school. An echo of an old bitterness stirred inside him. After allowing the bitterness a moment to fully reawaken and consume him, he snarled in rage and started hacking away at the last of the stoned trio. The blows came in a rapid, bloody frenzy, spatters of gore flying from the blade each time he tore it away from the body and brought it down again.

  When he finally stopped hacking away at the boy, who was now very dead, Elliot knelt on the porch and took a few moments to catch his breath. Once he felt a little more in control of himself, he got up and went around to the back of the cabin. The sun was a bright orange ball hanging right at the edge of the horizon, making the lake light up in hues of scarlet. Darkness was encroaching, but he saw Ramona. She was still sitting down there at the edge of the boat dock.

  Elliot watched her for a moment.

  Then he turned away from her and went to retrieve his Civic from its hiding spot.

  Ramona sat at the edge of the dock until several minutes after the sun had finally disappeared beneath the horizon. With the arrival of full dark, the loud screech of cicadas in the trees had become almost deafening. The mosquitos were out in full force, too. When she felt them sucking blood from her legs and arms, she decided it was finally time to stop sulking and go back inside.

  As she got to her feet and headed back down the boat ramp, she mentally rebuked herself for all the hours she’d wasted moping alone out here. Her alcohol buzz had dissipated long ago, which meant she would likely find her friends extra annoying when she arrived back at the cabin. She was sure they were all good and fucked up now. It was a problem with only one solution. Well, technically, more than one. She could go to her room and go to sleep, she supposed, but fuck that. She’d come out here to party and have fun and, damn it, she meant to do just that if it killed her. A concentrated burst of power-drinking was the one acceptable solution. She would catch up to the rest of them and party until the break of fucking dawn. Tomorrow she would tell Kevin to go to hell and never talk to her again, but tonight was for fun.

  Shortly after entering the cabin through the back door, her feet slid on something on the floor. She grabbed an edge of countertop to keep from falling over. Frowning, she took a look around the kitchen. Someone had dumped flour out in various places in a half-assed attempt to cover up some kind of horrible mess. Rather than freaking out about it, Ramona couldn’t help laughing. It was exactly the way a severely stoned person would think to deal with a problem overwhelming their dulled senses. Treading more carefully, she headed for the archway that led to the living room.

  That was when she heard the thump from the pantry.

  Halfway across the kitchen, Ramona froze in her tracks and turned toward the pantry. Its folding door bulged outward. She had glanced that way after coming into the kitchen and was sure the door had been properly closed. Now, as she stared at it, it bulged outward a little more.

  Frowning, she approached the door, gripped the little knob at its center, and pulled it open.

  Then she screamed when the hacked and bloodied body of her best friend fell out onto the floor. Her heart hammering, she stared at Candice’s dead face, trying to convince herself that what she was seeing wasn’t real. She couldn’t do it and screamed again. Not knowing what else to do, she ran out to the living room, her mind barely noting the carved jack-o’-lanterns arranged on the coffee table in front of the sofa as she headed for the front door.

  After yanking the door open, she froze at the threshold, paralyzed by the spectacularly gruesome tableau of blood and carnage. When the temporary paralysis passed, she threw the door shut and backed into the center of the living room. That was when the presence of the jack-o’-lanterns finally registered. One of the pumpkins was open at the top. Trembling and crying, she edged closer to it and peered inside, saw Tom Glover’s face peering up at her.

  She screamed again and backed away from the coffee table.

  The front door opened and a tall man in a black ski mask and trench coat entered. His right hand gripped the handle of a machete dripping with the blood of Ramona’s dead friends. Ramona unleashed yet another scream and took a few shaky backward steps away from him. She knew she should be running from the killer, but something about him—something subtle she couldn’t quite understand—held her there, compelled her attention.

  “Wh-who are you?”

  The killer peeled off his ski mask, revealing the sharply angular, hawkish face of a guy she didn’t recognize. He looked ancient, maybe as old as forty.

  “Hello, Ramona.”

  Her heart almost stopped at the sound of that voice.

  She shook her head. “Oh, no. No, no, no. It can’t be.”

  The killer smiled. “But it is. It’s me, Kevin, your beloved. Only that’s not my real name, as I’m sure you’re finally realizing.”

  Ramona sniffled. “You bastard. You fucking bastard. What have you done to my friends?”

  “Well, Ramona, I’ve pretty much fucking slaughtered them. I thought that was kind of self-evident. And guess what? You’re next.”

  His face changed then, becoming ugly as it twisted in a snarl of hatred.

  The killer raised the machete and charged at her.

  Ramona screamed, whirled about, and took off running. She got to the kitchen ahead of him and kept moving, taking care to avoid the splashes of flour and whatever they were covering. The killer neglected to do this and slid in a puddle of flour-caked blood. His feet slipped out from under him and he crashed to the floor. By the time he regained his feet, Ramona was out the back door and was running for the woods. The killer followed her, but he wasn’t able to catch up to her. She knew the terrain far better than he did, having grown up here. Before long, he gave up the chase as lost and opted to flee while he still could.

  Later that night, many hours after she’d finally made it over to the local sheriff’s office to report the massacre at the cabin, she was taken to a hospital and treated for shock. She wasn’t able to talk to the authorities in anything like a coherent, calm fashion until much later the following day, at which point she provided a sketch artist a detailed description of the murderer.

  But by then it was too late to matter for just about anyone.

  31.

  Three days until Halloween

  Willow Springs, TN

  Eating the therapist’s brain gave Chuck one of the worst cases of the shits he’d ever experienced, exceeded in his memory only by the unfortunate aftermath of a visit to a cheap Mexican restaurant on the occasion of his sixteenth birthday. In that case, at least, he’d been able to sit on a toilet and evacuate his bowels in a sanitary, albeit painful, way. This time, of course, he had no choice but to stew miserably in an odiferous, squishy puddle of his own waste. His underwear and the seat of his pants were filled with runny excrement. Some of it had been forced outward, away from his groin and pelvic region. A thick layer of filth coated his thighs. Still more had trickled down his legs and pooled inside his shoes.

  The severe episode of gastrointestinal disturbance didn’t begin until hours after he’d ingested the last morsel of the dead woman’s gray matter, enough time to lull him into a false sense of security. Onset of the disturbance was signaled by a sudden awareness of a queasy pressure in his stomach. The pressure increased dramatically within seconds, discomfort yielding quickly to agony. Tears rushed from his eyes as he screamed behind the gag in his mouth and squirmed uselessly against his tight bonds. The pressure continued to build and build, until it felt as if his stomach lining was on the verge of ripping apart. His puckered asshole strained and strained as he sought desperately to void himself. When the evacuation of his bowels began at last, the initial burst of relief he felt triggered another rush of tears. The smell that arose from the center of his bound body was immediate and intense, eliciting a sound of disgust from Karen.

  Hearing her sickened reaction made Chuck feel ashamed, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. It wasn’t the first time he’d relieved himself in his pants since being taken prisoner by Elliot Parker, but somehow this particular episode felt worse than all the others combined. Part of it was the simple knowledge that there were partially digested bits of a dead woman’s brain floating around in all that mess. Also, it seemed to him the stink really was significantly worse than all those other times, worse even than the sharp stench of urine emanating from the immediate vicinity of each remaining prisoner in Elliot’s lair. Even if by some miracle he survived this nightmare and escaped this hellish place, he suspected it’d be a very long time before he ever felt truly clean again.

  Their captor had been gone for a much longer time today than he had at any point the previous day. Or what felt like a previous day, anyway. After multiple days of captivity, time had taken on a strange malleability. He’d begun to lose any real sense of how long he’d been tied to the chair. It might have been only a few days, but it could have been a week or longer. He just didn’t know. All he did know was Elliot had been gone a really long time. Most of a day, at least, long enough to renew Chuck’s hope the crazy son of a bitch had finally run up against someone he couldn’t handle.

  That hope intensified briefly when, at long last, the loud ratcheting sound signaling the raising of the rollup door commenced again. Chuck turned his head in that direction and peered through the slanted eyes of the starting-to-rot jack-o’-lantern as the door lifted, revealing a pair of bright headlights piercing a vista of black. He prayed the vehicle was a police cruiser and that soon this den of horrors would be swarming with cops.

  But then the car rolled slowly into the building and the ratcheting sound started again as the door began to close. As the front of the vehicle neared the faint circle of light at the center of the large room, Chuck saw that it was the same Honda Civic Elliot had left in earlier. Soon the car’s engine cut off and then the door opened as the driver emerged. A fresh wave of crushing despair assailed Chuck as Elliot stepped into the circle of light. The madman was back and soon a new round of torture and horrors would commence.

  Karen yelled something incoherent at Elliot from behind her gag. There was a ferocious level of defiance in the sound. Hearing it added yet another layer to Chuck’s ever-deepening shame. His wife still had some fight left in her. But Chuck did not. Elliot’s belated return confirmed all his worst fears about their situation. They were caught in the depraved clutches of a man who could not be stopped, a diabolical genius who’d planned his campaign of terror with meticulous care. A plan that accounted for virtually everything that might conceivably prevent him from accomplishing his demented goals.

  Salvation wasn’t a real possibility, not even remotely. Hope was pointless.

  We’re doomed, Chuck thought. I wish he’d just kill us all now and be done with it.

  Elliot paused between the bound husband and wife and peered at each of them in turn for a few moments. Chuck immediately perceived that something in his demeanor was different now. There was still no hint of anything like mercy or empathy in the man’s expression, but he was more haggard-looking than Chuck had ever seen him. The smudges under his eyes were darker than before, the rest of his face even paler than it had been. These things and the way the overhead light played off the angular planes of his face combined to make him resemble a walking cadaver. He looked beleaguered, like a man pushed nearly to the point of total collapse. Chuck puzzled over this a moment before noting what looked like many new splashes of blood on Elliot’s dirty trench coat. He’d evidently been very busy while he was away.

  At last, Elliot sighed and moved away from them, approaching the wire cages where Ricky Bennet and Jimmy Martin sat quivering in puddles of their own waste. Digging a key out of his hip pocket, he opened the padlock securing Ricky’s cage and pulled the door open, motioning for Ricky to come out of the cage. Instead of doing as commanded, Ricky squealed in fright and cowered against the back of the cage.

  “Come out, Ricky. You’ve got no choice.”

  Bennet stayed where he was and squealed again.

  “There’s something you don’t know,” Elliot told him, his weariness evident in every syllable he uttered. “The bottom of that cage is electrified. Here, I’ll demonstrate.”

  A box approximately the size of a pack of cigarettes dangled from a cord between the cages. Embedded in the center of the box was a metal switch. Elliot flipped the switch. A silent second elapsed and then Chuck heard the low buzz of a building current. Ricky yelped as the buzz quickly intensified into a loud crackling. He squealed continuously as he wriggled his way across the metal bottom of the cage. His bound wrists made rapid progress impossible and Elliot laughed at the way he slithered and twitched his way to the front of the cage. When he finally made it to the opening, Elliot flipped the switch again, cutting the current.

  Elliot reached through the opening, grabbed hold of the studded dog collar encircling Bennet’s neck, and dragged him out of the cage. After hauling the trembling, sobbing man to his feet, Elliot clipped the length of heavy chain dangling from the ceiling above the cage to Bennet’s collar. He then gave Bennet a hard shove and sent him staggering in the direction of Chuck and Karen. The overhead whirring sound came as the other end of the chain moved along the ceiling track.

  “Stop right there!” Elliot commanded.

  Apparently having learned his lesson about disobedience, Bennet came to an immediate halt.

  Heaving a tired breath, Elliot again moved into the space between Chuck and Karen. “You two are probably wondering why I’ve dragged this miscreant out of his cage. The thing is, I’ve had a long and exhausting day. I accomplished a lot and now I’m much closer to my desired kill total. Unfortunately, I fell short of total success and as a result there’s a strong chance I won’t have as much time as I’d hoped to finish the job here. I’d planned to deal with Ricky the day before Halloween, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be dead by then, so my schedule needs adjusting. Chuck, you’ll be happy to know I’m saving you and your lovely wife for last. You guys get to live just a little bit longer than everyone else. Don’t you feel special?”

  Karen yelled at him again.

  Fuck you, it sounded like.

  Elliot nodded. “Yes, fuck me. Except that I’m already fucked. In fact, Mrs. Everly, I was fucked for life by your husband and his friends a long, long time ago. They did something terrible to me when I was a boy and now you’re paying the price for it. How do you feel about that?”

  Karen’s head swiveled slowly back toward Chuck.

  She was silent, but her eyes told him exactly how she felt about it.

  Once again, Chuck wished Elliot would just hurry up and put him out of his misery. And, yet again, his wish was not granted.

  Elliot smiled. “It’s true what they say, isn’t it? Eyes are the window to the soul. A time of judgment is at hand, Mrs. Everly. A time of retribution. Your husband has a short while remaining before he answers for his sins, but for Ricky Bennet that time is now.”

  Ricky Bennet squealed and tried to retreat when Elliot approached him, but he moved in the wrong direction, backward rather than left or right, which would have caused the ball attached to the other end of the chain to move along the track. Elliot clapped a hand on his shoulder and kicked his feet out from under him, causing him to drop to his knees. He kept the hand firmly in place on Bennet’s trembling shoulder, preventing him from getting back up.

  Elliot looked at Chuck. “Hey, Chuck. Did you know your old friend is a homosexual?” Bennet’s head drooped as he began to sob. “It’s true. It’s one of the most fascinating of the many revelations I uncovered while tracking you assholes over the last several months. Ricky spent a lot of time in the gay bars of a neighboring town, I guess to avoid being spotted by people he knew. Now, I’m not homophobic and wouldn’t care at all if not for the rich, rich irony. I’m sure you remember how Ricky used to love calling other people faggots. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, it used to seem like every other word out of this cretin’s mouth was a homophobic slur. In retrospect, a classic case of overcompensation. Like I said, I wouldn’t care, but I figured his old friends should know the truth before he dies.” His brow furrowed as he glanced briefly at the cages. “Well, Jimmy’s pretty out of it, from the look of things, the pitiful fat slob. But it’s enough that you know, Chuck. You’re the one who really matters here. You and Ricky, that is.”

  He reached into his trench coat and took out a hunting knife.

  “Originally I’d hoped to deal with Ricky in a more creative way, something symbolic of his particular hypocrisy. You know, like what I did to my therapist.” When he sighed, there was a tinge of wistfulness in the sound. “Again, though, there’s no time for that. Goodbye, Ricky. You goddamned piece of shit.”