King of the Horseflies (5 page)

“Ain’t nothing gonna happen. He doesn’t even know where I live. So go on now.”

Ricky stops and looks around.

“I’ll be back as soon as they set my shoulder,” says the deputy.

“Take
yer time. We'll be fine,” the sheriff responds in a nonchalant voice.

They begin to walk towards the cop car together. Ricky gets in, and the sheriff shuts the door for him.

“Just take yer time,” says the sheriff.

Ricky starts the car and begins to back out of the driveway. The front door of the house opens, and his wife walks out. Ricky then flips on the headlights and drives away.

“Is everything all right?” his wife yells from the porch. He turns around and walks towards her.

“Yeah, everything is all right. Ricky just fell down and messed his shoulder up. He’s headed over to County to get it looked at.”

“Oh my, is it bad?”

“Yeah, he’s okay. He wouldn’t be
drivin’ if it was too bad.”

He looks down the road and sees his tail lights in the distance. He looks the opposite direction to see if anything else was coming down the road.

“Honey, I’ve known you for most of my adult life. I know when something is wrong,” she says.

“
Naw, it’s nothing to be too concerned about.”

“Concerned and not too concerned still equals concerned. What’s going on?”

“Ricky thinks that fugitive we were chasin’ is headed back to town.”

“So? Wait, you think he’s coming here
don’t you!?”

“No, he doesn’t even know where we live!”

“Well, you make sure it stays that way,” she says with both arms folded in front of her.

Linda turns around and walks in the house. The sheriff looks back at the road then follows her inside. He walks through the living room past his dining room to a room that he has dedicated to himself. It has pictures and mounted animals that he has successfully hunted. On one of the walls he has a collection of weapons that he has acquired over the years. It consists of everything from crossbows to shotguns and handguns. He grabs his favorite gun from the stash, a black Mossberg Thunder Ranch 12 gauge shotgun, and a box of shells. He walks to the back door that exits from the kitchen and heads to his work bench to grab the stone. William returns to the house, enters the living room, and sits in his chair facing the front window. For now, all he can do is
wait and protect the fort.

Thoughts fly through his mind while he
sits, making sure that the criminal on the loose doesn’t somehow find where he and his family reside. “
How is it possible that one man was able to kill some of the best hunters I have ever known? He renders Bama a complete and utter mess. It’s not like it was Ricky he met out there and sent him home crying like a baby. No, this was Bama. The same guy I saw punch a moose in the face on our way up to Alaska ’cause it stood in the middle of the street and wouldn’t get out of the way. Carver was big but not cripple, a defensive lineman big. Maybe appearances are a little more deceiving than I think. Who would’ve thought we would go out there with six guys and only two would leave alive? Maybe three if ‘Dubya 2’ got a couple of shots off and was able to get out of there. How can…?
” The sheriff dozes off in mid thought but continues to think as if he were awake. “
How can he pick each one of them apart just yards away from each other? He must have been really quie
…” The Sheriff jumps awake. “Damn!” he says to himself. He gets out of his recliner to walk around to try and get his blood flowing so he can wake up. Just as he does, he sees through his blinds the silhouette of somebody in the front yard. The body is wide like W2. “
Shoot, maybe that old turd made it out of there like Ricky thought
,” the sheriff thinks to himself. As he begins to walk out of the front door, he notices other figures behind what seems to be W2. They look like the crew all lined up behind each other in a “V” formation like birds do when they fly south for the winter. “
Maybe Ricky was wrong. Maybe he was dehydrated and hallucinated everything that happened out there. It makes perfect sense. That’s how he hurt himself, because he couldn't balance himself and was confused,”
he tries to rationalize with himself.

He walks out of the front door and onto the porch. He slows his pace when he realizes that they aren’t moving, but more importantly, they aren’t making a sound.

“Wallace, what the hell y’all doin’?”

Wallace’s stomach sucks in and his mouth opens up as if he is about to throw up. Instead of vomit, words come out.

“Give,” he says in a low, raspy voice.

The Sheriff gives him a “
what the hell is wrong with you”
look
.

“Give you what?”

The sheriff’s wife comes down the stairs in her nightgown, rubbing her eyes.

“Hon, what’s going on?”

He turns his head towards her but points his barrel towards the yard.

“Nothing, baby, just head back up and don’t come out until I come get you.”

“But…”

He turns back towards the yard and sees Wallace floating directly in front of him without a micron of life in his eyes.

“The Stone!” W2 harshly whispers.

Startled, the sheriff shoots W2 in the chest and falls backwards into the house. W2’s body flies off the porch and back into the yard. His wife runs back upstairs screaming at the top of her lungs.

“Ahh!”

The sheriff sits on his rear end trying to figure out in his head how W2 got right in front of him so fast. He looks around the front yard to see if the rest of the other guys are still there.
Nothing. It is like they were never there.

Willy gets up and stumbles back into his house.

“
Stay calm
,” he says to himself as he attempts to close the door. Before he can close it, Jerry’s head gets wedged in between the door and the door frame. His face is distorted to the point that he doesn’t look like Jerry anymore as it tries to squeeze inside. The harder the sheriff pushes the door, the more Jerry’s head gets pressed to the point that his eyes begin bulging out of his head.

“Oh God!” the sheriff screams as he sees the eyes now
laying on Jerry’s cheeks. He lets go of the knob and runs to the back room. He expects the front door to bust wide open after the tug of war match that just ensued; instead, the door slowly swings open as Jerry’s mutilated, lifeless body slides down the door, leaving a trail of blood against the white trim of the door jam.

Willy stands idling with his shotgun directed at whatever may come through the door.

He begins to walk back towards the front until he hears footsteps on the porch near the right side of the house. He aims his gun as if he is going to blast through the wall. He then hears more movement on the left side of the house. Willy takes aim again.

“Listen, Carver, was it? I think we may have a little misunderstanding. I’m just trying to do my job, man. You are an escaped convict. It’s my job to come get you,” Willy projects throughout the house.

Jerry’s crushed head begins to move to the side and begins to speak through its disfigured mouth. “SHA SHOOONE!” is what slurringly comes out instead of “THE STONE.”

Willy shoots Jerry’s carcass in the head. The head explodes and knocks the rest of the body outside.

“SHUT UP!” he says, annoyed. “You want it, then quit being an ass and come and get it like a man!”

Trent’s body gets tossed, this time through the back window. Pieces of glass fly over the sheriff’s back and head, startling him in the process to fire off a shot at nothing. The body and its entrails slide across the white tiled kitchen floor, smearing blood and mud in its wake. Willy turns at the window to see if anything else is coming through. Only the still sound of the night can be heard. Behind him, the sound of creaking wood gets his attention.

He swivels around towards the sound. He sees “miss the shot” Clarence standing just beyond the door way. Clarence’s eyes are there but seem to have been penetrated by something and bled onto his face. His chest was ripped open like French doors, exposing his spine. Willy stands frozen, not knowing what the mangled mess of Clarence will do next. Trent’s body on the floor begins to animate, lifting off the floor and making a wet, squishy sound. The sheriff looks at him, still pointing his barrel at Clarence. W2 bursts through the back door, knocking both the door and screen on the kitchen floor. What’s left of Jerry’s body slides through the front door behind Clarence. They all slowly inch closer in Willy’s direction. He begins to shoot at the group. Blam!

“Get away from me!” he screams.

He fires off two more shots. He shoots off a portion of Trent’s shoulder and puts a hole inside Clarence’s chest and back so that you can now see through him. None of the shots are effective as they continue to collapse on top of him. Willy falls down on his back, now out of rounds in his gun room. The bodies completely engulf him as he screams with his eyes closed.

“
Ahhhhh!”

They stop. Willy opens his eyes in the pitch black body cave and sees through Clarence’s chest/back that Carver is standing there with his eyes glowing ivory white. Carver makes a motion with his hand that makes the bodies plop to each side of the Sheriff.

“The stone…now!” he says in an almost hollowed, echoing voice effect. The sheriff, wide-eyed in disbelief, pats his chest, searching for the oil-soaked rag that contains the stone. He pulls it out of his top breast pocket of his uniform shirt and tosses it to Carver.

The Sheriff’s wife comes out of nowhere, screaming.

“LET HIM GO!”

Out of Carver’s pack flies more of the bone arrows that he makes stick into her clothes, launching her across the room then pinning her against the living room wall next to a mounted moose head.

“Put me down!” she screams.

Carver opens up the rag and stares at the stone.

“Ya happy now? Get the hell out of my house!” shouts Willy.

Carver closes the rag and reaches behind and puts the stone in his bag. He takes a few steps towards him then raises all the bodies. He makes the intestines of each body rip out of them and shoves them up the sheriff’s nostrils. They fill him until they erupt from his ears, eyes, and mouth. Carver then opens his arms wide as if he is waiting for a longing embrace. The body explodes throughout the room, plastering the walls with blood, bones, and guts. The room resembles a microwave that hasn't been cleaned in months.

“Nooooo!” his wife screams over and over.

Carver walks by without looking at her and heads out the front door. The sun begins to rise as he walks out of the house, and his eyes go back to normal from the glowing white. He takes a deep breath as if he has been holding it the whole time.

“Noooo!” she continues.

A rooster crows, and its sound illuminates the morning air. He looks at himself and all around as if he has no idea where he is.

“Noooo!”

He glances behind himself as he sees a puddle of blood on the porch that he is stepping in. He jumps out of it and starts down the stairs.

"Noooo!"

“My goodness, what did I do?” he says to himself.

He begins to walk down the dirt road leading away from the house while reaching into his backpack. He opens up the oily rag and looks at the stone. He smiles menacingly as his eyes glow a furious white.

“
Noooo!”

-*_*_*-

Continue to follow Carver in the King of the Horseflies series.
Journey with the dark stranger as he uncovers the limits of his powers and true identity.