Animosity (27 page)

Abruptly, the crowd cleared a path for me to reach Sam. Even as I bent over her, a voice in the back of my mind warned me that this didn’t make any sense. Why were they letting me through
now?

A second later I realized why my neighbors had
all
taken three or four steps back. It wasn’t a sudden change of heart.

A gun went in my face.

I froze, stared down its barrel.

On the other side of that larger-than-life, government-issue weapon stood Officer Keith Whitmire. Hate burned in his big brown eyes. He wore his khaki uniform shirt, but the right sleeve had been ripped away completely up to his shoulder. Gauze bandages were wrapped around his burned forearm from his wrist all the way up past to his elbow. A portion of his face had initially been bandaged as well, but at some point those dressings had been ripped away. An ugly pink rash of busted blisters glistened along his lower jaw and down the left side of his neck.

“Lay your gun on the ground,” he said. “Do it slowly.”

To my damaged eardrums, the cop’s voice sounded as if it came to me from behind a closed door.

“I never wanted to hurt anyone,” I told him. “It was self-defense. You made me do this… you all made me do this.”

“Andrew Holland, you are under arrest for the murders of Ben Souther, Sal Friedman, and Donna Dunaway. Now, I’m gonna count to three, you piece of shit, and if you don’t drop the gun I will fucking drop
you!
”

“P-please,” I said.

He cocked the hammer. Took a step toward me.

A drop of sweat trickled down his unburned temple, caught in his sideburns.

I could see his big finger already starting to squeeze back on the trigger…

The next second stretched out into infinity. Inexplicably, I found myself thinking of a fact I had learned while researching firearms for one of my novels: it only takes about five-and-a-half pounds of pressure to fire the types of handguns carried by most law enforcement personnel.

My neighbors had won. Their bloodlust would at last be appeased.

I hoped they were fucking happy.

I swallowed once. Braced myself. Knew without a doubt that
I was going to die.

I whispered a prayer for Samantha.

. . . and suddenly she was upon him.

A yellow-and-pink blur in my peripheral vision, and before I knew what was happening my daughter leapt onto Officer Keith. She bit down on his burned wrist, on the hand that held his gun, so hard I saw blood dripping from her chin, staining the front of her blouse.

He howled at the heavens as Sam bit deeper and deeper. He dropped his pistol.

“You… little…
bitch!
” he bellowed, once she had lost the element of surprise.

He shoved my daughter away. She crashed into the side of Jason’s Liberty.

“Leave my Daddy alone!” Although it still sounded as if it came from miles away, Sam’s wail was even higher-pitched than the shrill ringing that filled my eardrums.

His face pale, his arm spurting blood, Officer Keith faltered. He nearly fell, but caught himself. With his uninjured hand, he reached for his gun in the grass at his feet.

I stepped forward, slammed the butt of my pistol into the bridge of his nose.

His hands covered his face. He stumbled backward, taking out several more of my attackers behind him. In a crazy jumble of limbs, they collapsed onto the lawn.

Whitmire tried to stand, wobbled, but fell on his ass again.

I didn’t waste a second. I snatched his gun off the ground, reared back, and threw it as far as I could. Toward Donna Dunaway’s yard on the other side of the street.

Then I did the same with my weapon.

Perhaps it was a stupid move. But I didn’t have time to think about it. I just knew that I didn’t want anyone else to die by my hands. At the same time, I could not afford for either gun to end up in my neighbors’ possession before Sam and I could make our escape.

With my hands free now, I scooped my daughter into my arms. With a desperate roar, I heaved her into the passenger seat.

“Go! Go! Go!”

I leapt into the vehicle after her, slammed the door, crushing several of my neighbors’ fingers in the process.

The mob banged on the Liberty’s roof and hood, rocking the SUV so violently I feared they might tip it over. Their snarling faces pressed against the windows, smearing blood and sweat and saliva across the glass.

“Go, Jason,
go!
”

The WE STILL PRAY air freshener dangling from the vehicle’s rear-view mirror danced to and fro beneath the horde’s fury.

“I can’t see anything,” Jason stammered. “They’re all… I can’t—”

The back window exploded. The roof crumpled inward.

Finally, Jason stomped on the gas. We shot out of the driveway in reverse.

My neighbors’ bodies thudded and scraped against the sides of the vehicle and its undercarriage. The Liberty jerked to a stop in the street, and we tilted to the right, hard. I winced, braced myself against the door. We had rolled over something big and bulky behind us, I realized. It was not the curb. I felt it give a little beneath the driver’s-side rear tire as Jason slammed the SUV into Drive.

A second or two of hesitation, as that back wheel slid in something wet, trying to find purchase… and then we were off.

Bile rose in the back of my throat. I swallowed it back down.

Samantha sobbed between us as we careened down Poinsettia Lane. Her chin dug into my wound as she wept, and with every frantic beat of my heart fresh blood spurted from the hole in my chest, staining her golden hair bright red. But at this point I barely felt my injuries at all.

“It’s okay, baby,” I wheezed, holding Sam tightly in the crook of one arm. “Shh. It’s gonna be okay, honey. I p-promise…”

I did not know if I said it to reassure my daughter, or myself. Either way, I wasn’t convinced.

At some point during the chaos, Jason had bumped the controls for the Liberty’s windshield wipers. They
swish-kathump-swish-kathump-swish-kathumped
madly, back and forth in front of our faces. Not that I could hear them.

I shuddered, clutched Sam to my chest tighter than ever.

I noticed Jason’s lips were moving as he maneuvered the Liberty through the street. His voice was an incomprehensible buzz within my damaged eardrums.

“I can’t hear you,” I said.

He took his eyes off the road for just a second, glanced down at Sam.

“This was about those little girls, wasn’t it?” he yelled. “The one you found, and the one near the bookstore in town?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It was.”

He shook his head. “But… no… Andy, that doesn’t make any sense!”

I watched my neighbors grow smaller and smaller in my passenger-side mirror. They sprinted after us, shambling down Poinsettia Lane in our wake, trying their damnedest to keep up. A few of them even threw their weapons at us, though the missiles fell far short of their target.

“You can say that again,” I mumbled. “It hasn’t made sense for a while now…”

“That’s not what I meant,” Jason said. “You… you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

In a voice that sounded as if it came to me from underwater, or from a television set with the volume turned as low as it would go, Jason explained, “They got him, Andy. They caught the guy who did it.”

My eyes grew impossibly wide. “
What?
”

“The police arrested him earlier today. Over on the Lewiston Turnpike. He was a drifter, some sicko from out of town.”

I could only stare at him, my heart pounding frantically in my chest.

“They got him. It’s been all over the news.”

My mouth hung open.

“My God, Andy… your neighbors knew. They
knew
it wasn’t you
.
They knew, but did they even
care?
”

Just before my neighborhood receded in the distance entirely, I glanced into the mirror one last time.

I was quite sure I saw
smoke.

Thick, black smoke, billowing from my ravaged home like exorcised demons taking flight into the evening air.

Ten minutes ago I killed three of my neighbors.

Perhaps I should feel something—disgust, remorse for what I have done. But for now I am only numb.

Hot blood drips into my eyes. Some of it is mine, but not all of it.

“
Drive faster,” I tell the man behind the wheel. I can barely hear my own voice above the shrill ringing in my ears.

I cough, tasting cold steel and bitter bile, and something ricochets off the dashboard, into my lap.
Several
somethings: small, off-white, speckled with dark crimson and trailing meaty pink tails…

Two of my front teeth. And the jagged splinter of a third.

“
Faster,” I start to weep. “P-please…”

I peer down at the hole in my chest. It seems to pucker up and grin at me, like a cruel alien mouth dribbling gore.

My tears burn like acid through the grit upon my face.

“
For Christ’s sake, don’t stop for
anything
…”

***

Ten minutes ago I killed three of my neighbors.

Four, if you count the baby.

Looking back on everything that happened, I can’t help but think about all I have lost.

And I wonder what happens
next.

***

Where do I go from here?

Could I ever return to the house at 217 Poinsettia Lane? Do I dare venture within a hundred miles of that godforsaken neighborhood again, for as long as I live?

I know the answers to
those
questions.

It is another, more daunting quandary which shall torment me for days to come…

***

Will I ever write again?

***

If so—if I do somehow find the strength to continue on with the very livelihood that almost killed me—shall I be forced to abandon the genre I have adored since I was old enough to read?

After all, I have learned during these last few weeks that there are so many dark things in this world, things infinitely more terrifying than the vampires, werewolves, and restless spirits from beyond the grave I used to write about.

I have experienced
real
horror.

I have known true evil.

Its name is
human nature.

***

Perhaps I will never write another horror novel. At this point, I do not know.

Then again…

One last tale of terror might be the catharsis I need to get me through this.

To prevent what happened on Poinsettia Lane from driving me insane.

***

Should I change the names to protect the innocent, I wonder? To protect the guilty?

Maybe. Maybe not. At this point, does it even matter?

I do know this, however…

Despite all of their efforts, they
have not
silenced me.

***

So…

I
will
tell the world what came to pass, in my once-quiet neighborhood. I will prove to those who believe such a thing could never happen here that a seemingly normal street in a picture-perfect town populated by people who
appear
harmless and benevolent… can sometimes be the most frightening place of all.

This is where darkness lives. Where monsters are bred.

Monsters no less human than you and I.

***

I know now that I must tell my tale.

It shall be a true story. Every word of it.

This one I will dedicate to Norman. To Karen. To little Rebecca Lanning. To that second murdered child, whose body was used then discarded in a filthy back alley behind the Haunted Planet Book Shoppe.

And I will dedicate it to
myself
… because a part of me died on Poinsettia Lane as well.

I will write it all down. Soon.

I will document my ordeal.

And its title shall be:
ANIMOSITY.