Psycho Save Us (51 page)

Dmitry didn’t
answer, he just jerked at Spencer’s hoodie and flung him into another wall.  He
was stronger than Spencer, and heavier, too.  He flung Spencer about not quite
like a ragdoll, but close.

When they hit
the other wall, the flames spread out, arched around them and formed a
hemisphere.  Tiny hands reached out from the walls, and they looked so loving,
so accepting, so
wanting
.

There was a
flash of light, like a bolt of lightning, and the floor beneath them became as
lava.  The walls behind them peeled back and there was a low tearing sound,
like something trying to break through.  As the walls crumbled, Spencer saw the
throbbing tonsils, and felt them burst and felt the pus run out of them as
Dmitry pushed him farther into the wall.  The arms still stretched out
impossibly, pulling him in, accepting him into their fold.

And he heard
them.  He heard the familiar voices.  Whether real or imagined, they were all
there.  Dr. McCulloch shouted, “There you are!  You sonuvabitch! 
There
you are!”  And then there was
Kevin Baxter, the forty-two-year-old man dying of
stage III-A lung cancer, and who tried to kill Spencer rather than pay back the
money he owed him.  “You motherfucker!  You took me away from my family!”  Then
there were the screams of Miriam Downey, the nurse he’d killed and dumped in
the Tennessee River because she’d tried to blackmail him after selling him the
necessary supplies from the hospital to create their startup meth lab.  “I
got’choo, Pelletier!  I got’cho ass now, son!”

It fazed him,
though not in the way one might think.  He wasn’t afraid of these people, if in
fact they were even present in the room, but he was
angry
at them.  He
felt diminished by their taunting, and was outraged at their grabbing hands. 
After all they’d done to him, after everything
he’d
done to make sure
they were wiped from the world, they were still around to belittle him, to
disrespect him.

Dmitry slammed a
knee into his gut, and shoved Spencer deeper into the wall.  “Maybe I let them
take you now, eh?” he shouted, smiling that smile that had drawn Spencer from
first sight.

And then came a
tiny voice.  The most taunting voice.

“You snuck on
me, Spence ol’ boy!”  Spencer knew that voice.  It could be no one else.  Only one
kid had ever called him that.

“Hey, Miles!”
Spencer laughed, his face pressed deeper and deeper into the pulsing tissue. 
“How’s life?”

“You coming down
here with me, Spence ol’ boy?  Huh?  You coming to join me?”

“Probably!” he
cackled, watching Dmitry’s face go from humored to confused.  “Just not today! 
Lemme introduce ya to a new friend o’ mine!  Dmitry, Miles!  Miles, Dmitry!” 
The hands groped for both of them now, and Dmitry saw this.  He recoiled, and
Spencer rejoiced at the sight of fear on the Russian’s face.  As Dmitry pulled
away from the hands, he let go of Spencer and backed up to the center of the
room.

Spencer ripped
the hands of the damned off of him and pulled himself away from the wall, which
had welcomed him like quicksand.  Fire still lived on the floor, and was
breathed in and out by parts of the walls that had developed flaps of skin like
fish mouths and gills.

The flames
licked up Dmitry’s right leg, and he leapt away, momentarily burned.

“You’re startin’
to believe it, Dmitry,” Spencer said, standing up.  “Don’t let it get to you. 
Not before I’m finished with ya.  C’mon now, let’s imbue this moment.”

Dmitry stood
there, looking at his right leg in a detached state, like a man standing alone
in a dream, wondering if he was going to wake up.

Then, the
ceiling swelled like pimple, and burst just as explosively.  Ceiling fans and
planks of wood fell on top of them, as well as objects that had been held in
the attic—a multicolored tricycle, a few boxes of Christmas decorations, some
boxes of old paintings and picture frames—and descending from the sky were meat
hooks, at the end of which swung flayed men and women screaming.  The barbed
hooks clung to their sinew as they tried to wiggle free.  The chains holding
these people in the air went up for an impossible distance, into a great,
enveloping darkness.

The shadows
began to tear apart like fabric, great swaths of it separating and cascading
into the room as they took shape.  A murder of impossibly black crows swarmed
about the dangling bodies, some alighting here and others alighting there,
pecking and tasting the buffet of dangling flesh.  The people on the hooks and
chains writhed, but it did no good, the crows did their work unfettered.  One
batted its wings at Spencer, and dashed to the buffet of hanging corpses all
around them.

“
PELLETIERRRRRRR!
”
someone roared.

He turned, and
spied one particular man dangling from the end of one of the longer hooks.  It
was Aaron Schmidt, the man of the Aryan Brotherhood who he’d killed and…mutilated
postmortem.  He swung from side to side, trying to get closer to Spencer, who
backed up calmly, though not slowly.  This was the first time Spencer
considered that this might actually
be
hell, that the girl’s ability to
tap into others empathetically might’ve somehow enabled her to reach down to the
pain and suffering being experienced in other dimensions, other levels of
reality.

“
YOU FUCKING
DID THIS TO ME!  I’LL PUT YOU HERE, AND SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT!
”

Spencer sighed
and nodded.  “You ready?” he said to his opponent.  Dmitry was standing
perfectly still at the center of the room like a man who was afraid of tipping
over the boat if he moved.  One of the swinging corpses moved near him, an
outstretched hand begging for help.

Spencer stared
at his opponent.  “You ready?” he repeated.

Dmitry looked
Spencer up and down, as if seeing him for the first time.  “You,” he breathed. 
“You did this.  The girl, too?”  He was a clever creature, if a punkass, him
and his kind would have to be to keep this operation going for any amount of
time.  Dmitry was piecing it together, a man taking his first steps out of an
acid trip.  “I’ll kill her,” he decided.  His thoughtful voice made him sound
like a man deciding on what he’d have for dinner.  Then, his face twisted into
rage.  “I’ll kill her!  I’ll kill her!”  He ran towards the flaming dresser and
pushed it over.  “I’ll kill her!”  He kicked over a small table, picked up a
flaming chair and tossed it at a glass window, shattering it.  “I’ll kill her!”
he screamed, continuing his fit as he lifted a lamp and stabbed it into the
throbbing wall.  A murder of crows fluttered away from one of the holes and
disappeared into the darkness above.  “
I’LL KILL HER!
”

Spencer smiled. 
“You can kick an’ scream an’ holler, but I betcha five dollars ya don’t touch
her again.”

“Out of my way. 
I have to kill her.  She’s doing this to me.  To us. 
We
have to kill
her.”

“I don’t think
you understand.  I’m a Portia, bitch.  I came here to eat you.”

Dmitry screamed
and ran at him.  Just then, the floor buckled beneath their feet and an abyss
as endless as the one above them revealed itself.  Spencer leapt for one of the
dangling bodies, and dug his fingers into the muscle and sinew.  Dmitry did the
same, only his momentum swung him towards the door, which was now an isolated
floating hole of light in this dark corridor of nothingness and chains and
screaming people.

Spencer hung
there, clinging to the flayed, screaming body of Aaron Schmidt.  His flesh that
had once donned the mantle of the AB and various swastikas was now completely
gone.  His fleshless arms batted at Spencer as he climbed higher and higher,
pulling bits of muscle and tendons free as he climbed up to the barbed chain
and started swing them both back and forth.  “FUCK YOU, PELLETIER!  I’LL
FUCKING FUCK YER GUTS OUT—”

“Oh, shut up,
Aaron!” he shouted.  “You did this to yourself!”  Spencer swung to the next
dangling body, which was the one that Dmitry had swung to freedom with.  It was
the body of Ramsay Friedkin, recognizable only by his missing right leg and
half of a missing right arm, both lost to landmines in Vietnam. 

The old fucker
had entered into an agreement with Spencer just before he went into prison, and
while he was away at Leavenworth Friedkin had taken all his money and ran.  Only
not far enough, as Spencer tracked him down outside of Baton Rouge once he got
out.  Spencer was a hunter by nature, though a hunter of a different sort, and
this vast black arena was a monument to that work, an assortment of trophies
that still talked.

“Spencer?” said
Friedkin, taking on a different tone than the others.  “Spencer…help me.  I’m
so sorry for what I done.  Please, help me!  This can’t be real!  This can’t
be!  I wanna wake up!  Find my mother!  Please,
MOTHERRRRRRR
!”

“Shut up,
Friedkin.  Take it like a man.”

Flames shot down
the barbed chains from somewhere far, far above, and then bathed every single
one of the bodies in its baptizing heat.  All his victims screamed louder, if
that could be believed, and as he swung to the doorway and hopped off and back
to the relative safety of the hallway, Spencer was fascinated to hear the
screams almost harmonize.  It seemed that when the ultimate summit of torture
was reached, all human beings hit the same note.  Funny.

The hallway
squished beneath his feet.  When he stood up, his hands and knees were covered
in a translucent green mucus.  It smelled of someone’s unwashed mouth.  The
three men from before were now being absorbed into the meaty walls while fire
licked around them.

Spencer became
convinced that they were, in fact, inside the throat of a beast, at least
that’s what Kaley’s mind and his were constructing, or summoning, or both.

You have to kill
him
,
said the Voice.  It was calm, still, supremely certain.

“I’m workin’ on
it!”

He’s coming to
kill us
.

“No shit!”

He knows we’re
doing this
. 
Instinctively he knows
. 
He’s coming to stop me
—

“No
fucking
shit!”

Dmitry had
already run down the stairs, on his way to kill the girl, no doubt.  Spencer
bolted for the stairs and looked down, and for a moment he got vertigo.  These
were not the same steps he’d ascended moments ago.  Now, there was scarcely a
step every few feet, and the walls and the ceiling had become lined with ribs
pressing out from the meaty walls.  The fire still licked up and down these
walls, traveling like wind through a grassy field while the creature continued
to breathe.

Dmitry was at
the bottom of the stairs, slipping and sliding down the mucus-covered floor
before ultimately flopping on the floor at the bottom.  Spencer took two steps
down the creature’s gullet, but once he slipped the first time he just went
with it and flopped belly first on the floor and slid down to catch up to his
prey.  Dmitry was just getting to his feet as Spencer slammed against his legs,
taking them out from under him.  And there they grappled, the flames blooming
out from wherever their arms met.

The two gunmen
who’d come up behind them had been taken out, one by a SWAT sniper and the
other by Agent Porter with a well-aimed and well-timed shot.  Leon spotted
Agent Porter trying to move cover-to-cover to get to his two downed agents.

Avery Street had
become a war zone.  The firefight had expanded, and it appeared that they were
gaining more enemies, not less.  The shots were pouring out from windows and
back yards.  Leon now realized something that he would revisit sometime later,
if he survived.  They were in the dominion of the
vory
, of the Rainbow
Roomers.  They had found the cave where these creatures had kept their secret,
had held council, and had carved out a place for themselves while the city
slept.

Another officer
was hit, a bullet to the shoulder put him down.  Leon turned and spotted a
second SWAT vehicle on its way towards them.  It was followed by three other
squad cars with sirens blaring, but barely audible for the din of gunfire. 
Another chopper had joined the fight, sharpshooters raining down bullets on the
house at the right, which was dishing out the most punishment.  The two houses
on the left had desperate men and even women running out of the house, firing
wildly as they crossed the lawn and tried to get to their cars.  One woman was
gunned down by someone, and a half naked man was clipped in his leg as he dived
for cover behind his Chevy.

All of the
houses supported one another, all except for the last house on the right at the
far end of the cul-de-sac.  That one was strangely dark and silent.  At least
so far.

When the second
SWAT van arrived the driver bravely drove it directly in front of the other
police vehicles, creating a new barrier with its solid steel body.  The driver
hopped out and joined the rest of the team assembling at the back.  Two snipers
took up position at the front and the rear, firing around the sides.  A third
sniper crawled
underneath
the SWAT van and fired out the other side from
cover.