Speak the Dead

 

The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used in an entirely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Grant McKenzie

Cover, jacket and interior design by Damonza

ISBN 978-1-940610-54-233-7

eISBN 978-1-940610-62-745-0

First hardcover publication: September 2015

1201 Hudson Street

Hoboken, NJ 07030

www.PolisBooks.com

Other books by Grant McKenzie

Writing as
Grant
McKenzie

No Cry For Help

Port of Sorrow

K.A.R.M.A. (Polis Books)

The Fear In Her Eyes (Polis Books)

Speak The Dead (Polis Books)

Writing as
M.C. Grant

 

Angel With A Bullet

Devil With A Gun

 

For

Karen and
Kailey

who I
love

even
more

than wine
gums

 

“Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.”

— Apple founder Steve Jobs' final words
on his deathbed

 

Twenty-five years ago

The blast shattered the night's silence, ripping the six-year-old girl from restful slumber into blind, terrified panic. Sally bolted upright, her heart hammering so fast that it pained her ribs.

She strained to listen… heavy footsteps in the hall shuffling along the floor as though fighting gravity. Something hard and meaty slammed into her bedroom door, cracking the wood and rattling the flimsy brass handle. She covered her mouth and froze in place, but whoever was outside didn't seem intent on entering.

A mumbled curse escaped unpliant lips before the unknown intruder shoved away from the door and shambled on.

In its wake, Sally grimaced at the uncomfortable wet warmth that seeped around her, soaking through her cotton nightdress and pooling on the protective rubber sheet her mother had fitted over her mattress. This time it wasn't one of her night terrors, however. This was really happening.

Sally climbed out of bed, both embarrassed and afraid.

Before looking for a new nightdress, she crept to the door and carefully turned the knob. The handle wasn't locked—it didn't have the capability—and it opened both silently and easily. Whoever had fallen against it could have entered her room with no effort at all.

Despite her growing fear, Sally peeked into the hallway and gasped—a bloody handprint oozed down the shiny white surface of her painted door. Its finger trail elongated as the handprint slid, becoming something other than human.

Sally fought her panic as she glanced up and down the dark hallway. The washroom light was on, and she could hear the sound of heavy grunting, like an animal.

She didn't want to see what was making the noise.

Instead, Sally darted in the opposite direction and pushed open the door to her parents' bedroom at the rear of the house. The room was in darkness except for a shaded bedside lamp, and what it illuminated filled Sally with overwhelming despair. Her eyes filled with tears as she rushed forward to climb on the four-poster bed beside her mother.

With her ravaged nightdress drenched in blood from a double-barreled wound that had ripped open her chest with unimaginable, close-range fury, Sally's mother was no longer contained within her shattered, fleshy shell.

Sally wept as she cradled her mother's limp head against her tiny chest, mindless of the blood and the cloying stench of death. She closed her own eyes, wanting it to be nothing more than a nightmare, a horrible dream that she could wake from and everything would be okay again—when her mother's trapped voice finally released in a pent-up groan: “Run, Sally! Run!”

Her skin prickling with painful, electrified goose bumps, Sally stared open-mouthed into her mother's lifeless green eyes. Another face seemed to stir underneath the dead flesh, and without moving a muscle it repeated the warning.

Sally released her mother's head back onto its pillow and scrambled off the bed. At the bedroom door, she turned around again, unsure. Her mother hadn't moved. The other face was no longer visible, but its urgent warning still echoed inside her head.

“Be brave,” she told herself. “You're a big girl now. Do as your mother tells you.”

Sally opened the door and started down the hallway toward the stairs. When she neared the washroom, she slowed, fear making every footfall sound like the clatter of a dropped soup pot as her bare feet struck the floor.

“Just run,” she told herself. “Don't look inside.”

Sally glanced inside and saw her father standing in the bathtub. He was wearing drawstring pajama bottoms, but no shirt. His bare torso was covered in blood, and the twin barrels of a well-oiled shotgun were jammed in his mouth. The glistening oil mixed with dribbling blood to turn his saliva into a frothing purple beard.

Her father's eyes were rolled back in his head, the orbs white and stormy. A dark shadow filled the room and the incessant chanting of a repetitive voice echoed from every direction.

Sally hesitated, wanting to stop and help, to wake her father from this seizure, to save one of her parents—but the urgency of her dead mother's warning propelled her onward. As Sally bolted down the stairs, racing toward the front door, a final bone-jarring
BOOM
erupted behind her.

With tears streaming down her face, Sally did the only thing she could.

She kept running.

Six months ago

The woman ran until her lungs threatened to burst. She had lost both her shoes in the undergrowth when she diverted off the footpath, and now the soles of her feet were cut, bruised, and bleeding with every step.

Leaping over a mossy log, her feet sank ankle-deep into marshy soil—and stuck.

She screamed as her right foot twisted and the sickening
snap-crunch
of cartilage ripping from bone fired a white-hot jolt of pain directly into her brain.

The woman collapsed face first in the dirt, unable to breathe, the crippling hurt blurring her sight, her reason, and her will to survive.

Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!

The river was close. She could hear it. She scrunched up her face and gritted her teeth.

An escape. People. There were often fishermen wading in the shallows in their ridiculous rubber pants. She had made fun of them so often, but now—

Come on! Get up! You're tougher than
this!

Whimpering, she ran her hands down her leg to gently pull her injured foot from the soft ground. She did the same with her other foot and then rolled over onto her back. She wanted to lie in the cold mud forever, allow the pain to subside and her breath to catch, but she couldn't. With a prayer on her lips and her face awash in cold sweat, she found the strength to sit up and cradle her twisted ankle in her hands.

The pain, the dirt, the cold, the fear… it was too much.

And
why?

Walking home from work, she took the same path through the woods that she traveled every day, her ever-present iPod drowning out the birdsong and the labored gurgling of the Spokane River.

She didn't hear the stranger approach.

Suddenly, a gloved hand wrapped around her mouth and the terrifying lick of cold steel pressed against her throat.

She froze, her mind unable to fathom what was happening. And then the stranger spoke: “If you run, I'll slit your fucking throat.”

It was the kind of warning that screams:
You're
dead
.

The woman drove her elbow hard into the stranger's gut and took off down the path at full speed. The knife had slid across her skin and blood had flowed, but she felt the wound wasn't deep, no worse than her legs had suffered when she first learned to shave.

If she had been wearing runners, the stranger wouldn't have stood a chance, but the damn heels she wore to the office to make her butt look pert beneath her tight skirt were useless.

She lost the shoes when she diverted off the path and into the thick, bug-infested foliage. The stranger's panting breath was so close behind her that she hadn't dared turn around.

She had simply run.

Pushing up from the dirt, the woman attempted to stand. She placed most of her weight on her left foot, but the moment she tried to balance herself with her right, pain brought her back to her knees with an agonized squeal.

The crunch of breaking branches nearby made her swallow the pain and crawl toward the river. If she couldn't make the water, maybe she could at least find a large bush or a fallen tree to crawl under. Hide until the stranger gave up.

She pulled herself along the ground, nails digging into the soft earth, fingers clawing for purchase. Desperate.

The river was close. The noise of it. The smell of it. The cool–

A heavy weight landed on her back, hard knees on either side of her spine, the surprise load crushing her chest into the dirt, snapping ribs.

She opened her mouth to scream, but a second weight pushed down on her skull, forcing her face deep into the moist earth. Dirt and worms and dead leaves flowed into her mouth and up her nose.

She couldn't breathe.

She couldn't ask why.

The stranger yanked her head out of the dirt before she lost consciousness. The woman spat and struggled, but her efforts were so pitiful that she felt ashamed.

“I told you not to run.”

The woman's eyes went wide as the knife stabbed deep into her neck and was pulled hard across her throat.

When released, her head flopped onto the ground, her breathing strangled, her blood pouring out to stain the earth. She wanted to speak, but her mouth, her body, no longer worked. Only her brain was alive, and that wouldn't be for long.

She was flipped over onto her back.

“You're not her are you?” asked the stranger, disappointed.

The tip of the knife flicked toward her eyes.

With her larynx severed, the woman couldn't scream.

One week ago

Sister Fleur wept tears of blood.

The monster stood above her, his breathing labored, his face spattered in sweat and gore.

Beside her, Sister Emily had stopped moving, her throat grotesquely swollen and her battered face locked in agony rather than the serenity she deserved.

Mercifully, she was beyond pain now.

Sister Fleur stared up at a visage ripped from nightmare and prayed for him to stop. His fists were a storm of agony, each blow measured to inflict maximum humiliation and pain.

The left side of her attacker's face was smooth and handsome, but the right side sunk fear into her heart. Twisted and torn, folds of rubbery, dead-belly skin drooped over a lifeless eye and sunken cheek. Muscle and fat had been eaten away as if by rats, and his ear was nothing more than a ragged hole.

It was the face of evil or hell or the devil himself.

“Where's Salvation?” the deformed man screeched.

It was a question he had asked a dozen times, and with every shake of her head he had landed another blow. Sister Emily had endured the worst, but Sister Fleur couldn't make herself answer.

Gasping for breath, the man grabbed Sister Emily's leg and dragged her close. Her unseeing eyes stared at Sister Fleur as the man's large hands tore at her clothing. Hot spittle flew from malformed lips.

“I'll rape her corpse while you watch,” he threatened. “And that is not yet the worst I can do.”

Sister Fleur shook her head in panic. No more, please Lord, no more.

“Where's Salvation?”

And, God forgive her, she told him.