Psycho Save Us (49 page)

Then, gunfire
erupted all around him.  Left, right, from the windows of the neighboring
house, and even from up above.  Yes, the helicopter had gone on the offensive.

Spencer went to
the back door and stood to one side of it.  “All right, boys!” he howled.  “I’m
a fucking Portia!  Know what that is?  It’s a fucking spider that eats other
spiders!  I’m comin’ into yer parlor, bitch!”  He tittered, barely able to
contain his excitement as he kicked open the door and moved inside.  What he
saw next, he would never forget.

David was the
first car on the scene, but only by about fifteen seconds.  The chopper was
already hovering above the big brick house at the far end of Avery Street, on
the right side of the cul-de-sac.  Its searchlight was out but no longer
sweeping, which suggested it had locked on to something, or someone.  That was
the first thing that struck him.  The second thing was the Penske truck, parked
at the side of the street without any attempt to hide it behind something of
equal size or larger.

Then, the first
bullet came through the rear window on the passenger side, ripping through the
leather seat in the back.  David slammed on his brakes and put the vehicle in
park, then ducked out of the door and used it as a shield as he hunkered down
and gauged his surroundings.  He was about twenty yards into Avery, with the
first two houses on either side of him.  Lights were on in various windows. 
Behind him, another squad car was on its way, its coming foretold by the red
and blue flashing lights that flickered against the threes around the bend.

Fucking
jackalope!

He shouted into
his radio, “This is one-Adam-four, Officer David Emerson!  I’m at Avery Street
and taking fire!  Repeat, officer taking fire!  I’ve spotted the yellow Penske
ditched at the side of—”  He stopped when two more bullets panged off of the
hood of his car, and a third cut the air over his head and smacked into a
mailbox thirty feet away.  “More shots fired!  I need more backup!”

The squad car
he’d seen coming had now rounded the bend, and was speeding up towards, no
doubt having heard his call for help.  It screeched to a halt just behind his
car, and out came Officers Walt Keitrich and McDevitt.  “Grab some cover!” he
advised them, just as the first shots bounced off their windshield.  David
peeked over the open door, saw a few open windows on the house on his right. 
There were two quick flares from a window on the top floor, and gunshots rang
out, both round bouncing off the other squad care.  “Top floor, second opening
from the left!”  David fired the first shot in retaliation.

Keitrich and
McDevitt peeked over their own open doors and saw where he was shooting, and
fired warning shots of their own.  Two more answered them, then David fired
another and waited.  There was no more return gunfire from that window.  He was
down on one knee, waiting…

Suddenly, the
world came alive with booming guns, panging bullets, and shattering glass.  The
bullets came from everywhere at once, perhaps even behind him.  David dived
back into the driver’s seat and ducked his head towards the floorboard.  He
heard hissing and felt the front of the car tilt to one side.  That’s how he
knew the run-flat tires had taken serious damage, since it took a great deal to
empty them of air so quickly.

Outside, he
heard Keitrich and McDevitt returning fire.  He heard screaming from one of
them.  “
Officer down!  Officer down!  Officer down on Avery Street!
”

A curtain of
flames greeted him at the threshold, though he didn’t think the flames were
real because he felt no heat.  “You open this door with the key of
imagination,” he said.  The flames defied the standard laws of fire, licking down
from the ceiling, as well as out from the walls, rather than climbing upwards. 
An ocean of roiling liquid fire churned on the floor, spreading around his
feet, parting for him as he past, revealing unburned carpet and furniture.  On
the floor was a bottle of Michelob light, a Styrofoam container holding
leftovers from Buffalo’s Café, and a Mary Kay catalog unburned, despite flames
dancing around it.

Someone
screamed.

Inside, he moved
with greater care.  Somehow, he knew this wasn’t meant for him.  It was someone
else’s hell, and he was just getting a glimpse.  Yet still, something moved on
the floor, something with hooks in its face and desperate eyes.  A hand reached
up to him, a beseeching hand.  It belonged to a younger man.  A boy of maybe seventeen
years, eighteen tops.  He writhed on the ground, the hooks in his skin
connected to chains that came out from openings in the walls, which pulled at
him, peeling his lips and nose back over his face.  His pants were down around
his ankles, and there was a hairless, oily four-legged creature pumping on him
endlessly, tirelessly.  The creature paused to look up at Spencer, regarded him
for a moment, and then went back to his business.

“Sunny days,”
Spencer sang, for what else could he do?  “Everything’s
A-okayyyy
! 
Friendly neighbors there.  That’s—where—we—
meeeeeet
!  Can ya tell me how
to get…how to get to Avery Street?”

Spencer stepped
over the pleading boy, holding his Glock in one hand and the silenced Uzi in
the other.  The flames parted at his feet, revealing more of the boy’s
torment—the flesh on his back had been peeled back to reveal the sinew, the
intertransversarii and trapezius muscles, as well as the latissimus dorsi, a
triangle of rippling, bloody tissue from the shoulder to the hip.  The detail
to the illusion—if an illusion it was—was incredible.  He looked on with the
curiosity of an ornithologist, pausing at a possible new parakeet on his hands,
but with many other new discoveries waiting all around, commanding his
attention.  He moved on.

Flames danced up
at him, climbed his legs a bit, children clambering for attention, and he
thought he felt the heat now.  Someone screamed from someplace deeper in the
house.  Spencer moved carefully.  Though he knew this torment was not meant for
him, he knew that he might easily get caught up in it if he allowed himself to
be, just the way a bear trap might be meant for a dumber creature didn’t mean
that a smarter one might not act carelessly enough to get stuck.

More screaming.

The flames
shifted.  Like grass in the wind, it all blew apart as though a great gust had
come through.  They moved up the wall, breathing.  Yes, the walls were
definitely breathing in and out, in and out, in and out.  He smelled smoke, and
coughed, even though he knew this mustn’t be real.  It was both real and
imagined.  Somewhere between shadow and substance, it was as real as it needed
to be.

Blood.  Blood
dripped from a ceiling fan overhead, its flaming blades creating a nightmarish
pinwheel.  The blood dripped from the center of the fan.  This felt real, but
he imagined the longer he stayed here, the more all of this would seem logical. 
Fundamentally, he understood this wasn’t all just in his head.  It was the
girl’s doing. 
And mine too, somehow
.  He understood this, also.

More screaming
from somewhere inside the house.

Spencer took a
moment to look about the house, get his bearings.  The seas of fire parted at
times, giving him a glimpse of the furniture, windows, and television—the TV
was on the Food Network, and the house was cooking up something that looked
mm,
mm good
, glistening sliced ham with pillowy mashed potatoes and gravy with
okra glazed with butter.  But there was something else in there, too.  Just
behind the plump, mustached chef with the green apron, there was a woman being
flayed alive and pieces of her were being placed out onto the grill, where they
sizzled.  “Oh, now that smells good already,” said the chef.  Spencer spotted a
piece of the peeled flesh, saw that it had a crimson bear tattoo on it.

It’s Olga
, said the
Voice.  It permeated the walls just as the flames did.  In fact, the flames
breathed when those words were spoken.

Spencer didn’t
comment on that.  “Leave Dmitry to me,” he said.  “That one’s mine.  I deserve
him.”

Why?  You
could’ve called the police any time
. 
You could’ve called them once you
had the license plate of the Expedition
.

“And you and
your sister’s throats would’ve been slit once their cop-on-the-take gave them
the heads up—”

You still don’t
know that
—

“Yes, I do, but
you
don’t wanna believe,” he said, glancing out the windows.  What parts of the
windows he could see through the flaming curtains were scant images of a
charred, tortured landscape.  A post-apocalyptic scene that was the antithesis
of everything Normal Rockwell ever painted.  Someone screamed upstairs.  A
man.  No, several men.  “An’ ya can’t afford to kill me now.  Ya still need
me.”

For what?

“For
this
,”
Spencer laughed.  He approached the steps with the Uzi aimed up the stairs and
the Glock aimed down the hall from whence he came.  “I hope ya don’t think
you’re doin’ this all on your own.  No little girl ever thought up shit this
fucked up.”

The police are
here
. 
They’ll protect us!

He smiled.  “You
gonna rely on others to protect ya, little girl?  How’s that been workin’ out
for ya so far, eh?”

No reply from
her.

“Doesn’t matter
anyway, sister.  They’re out there, fighting at least a dozen angry Russians
with machine guns.  It’ll be a while before they clear this entire
neighborhood.”  He started up the steps, aware of the heat climbing up his
back.  The fire had started catching to him.  It had started to become real. 
“Ya can’t keep this goin’ forever.  You’re gonna need me.  Now, where the fuck
is Oni?  He’s inside here someplace, isn’t he?”

I can feel him
, she said
finally, desperately. 
You have to kill him
. 
But he’s
…
he’s
…

“He’s what?”

He’s like you!
 
He’s not as
affected by what I’m doing
.

“You mean he’s
immune to hell, or the
idea
of it, anyways,” Spencer said, nodding. 
“Yeah, I smelled that on him.  He’s ready for hell, always knew he was goin’
there, an’ had no fuckin’ problem with it.  My kinda guy.  But there’s only
room for one fuckin’ maniac on this planet.  Where is he?”

I don’t know
. 
He’s here
. 
He’s everywhere
. 
All around you
.

At the top of
the stairs, Spencer paused.  On the floor were three older men, all of them
bare-chested, all of them with tattoos on their arms of red bears, and all of
them writhing in exquisite agony.  Briars stemmed from their guts, and from
their assholes, tearing through the cloth and crawling across the floor, up the
flaming walls, and finding purchase in the ceiling.  These outstretched vines
pulled the three men up from the floor, suspending them in a web of briars and
flames and their own blood.  These would be the men that Kaley had seen playing
cards in the kitchen downstairs when she first came in.  Spencer knew this,
because she saw his reaction and recalled them for him.

One of the men’s
pants had torn free thanks to the briars pouring out of him, and his scrotum
dangled like a potato bulging from a small leather pouch.  And something
crawled around inside it, something bubbling, bobbing up and down beneath the
skin, poking at the testicles curiously.

Except for the
occasional muscle spasm, the only thing moving on the three men were their
eyes, which looked out at Spencer pleadingly.  He stepped forward and analyzed
them, relishing his position and theirs.  This felt good.  This felt right.  It
was as it should be, he standing and smiling, and they twisted and helpless.

Then, all at
once, one of them managed to scream.  From mouths pushed permanently open by
briars that worked their way up through the jaw and up through the roof of
their mouths and through their nostrils, this one man screamed.  He went into
convulsions as more briars suddenly moved, spilling out from his own anus and
slowly crawling into his throat.

The flames all
around him breathed.  Spencer turned and saw something moving.  A long, undulating
tentacle moved out from a doorway down the hall, its serpentine crawl random,
and it piled high on the floor.  Its skin was translucent, and its insides
appeared to be a gelatinous thing that pulsed with life, even as something
inside struggled to get out.

“You see it,
too?”  Whoever said it had a thick Russian accent.

Spencer looked
up.  Dmitry stood on the other side of the slithering thing, which had no head
and no tail that he could find.  The Russian was at the end of the hall,
standing inside a small bedroom and bare-chested like all the rest of his
comrades, flames licking all over his body and tiny creature crawling about his
shoulder, the same creature humping the poor lad downstairs.  The little imp
paused just above the crimson bear tattoo, licked it, and winked at Spencer. 
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Spencer told him.