Cannibal Corpse, M/C

This was a badness, an atrocity, far beyond the living dead. And the most awful part of it was that he could still feel it in the air, the pain and horror and absolute terror of what had happened. The atmosphere was rank with suffering, soured by depravity.

But what did it mean?

Because, honestly, it had to mean something. Maybe he was worn out (he was) and maybe his mind wasn’t exactly riding smoothly along its rails these days (it wasn’t), but he was seeing a pattern. Old Black Hat was behind it or involved in it right to the core, as was the Hag. It was all part of something that made the wormboys themselves seem almost pedestrian in comparison.

But what?

Oh, don’t be so stupid, Johnny. You know. You thought it the moment you saw it. Now just unlock your jaw and say it aloud.

So he did. Standing there with a burning cigarette in his trembling fingers, he gave it voice and spoke it unto the wind: “Sacrifice.”

Because, yes, that’s what this was and the only thing it could really, truly, possibly be. These people weren’t killed out of anything as mundane as human sadism or even for food. They were murdered to appease something. Expiation. Burnt fucking offerings laid at the thorny feet of some nameless, pagan, malefic god of graveyards, gallows, and body pits.

That’s what this was.

Blowing smoke out through his nostrils and nearly swooning with the smell of carrion, he kept staring at those violated bodies, perhaps seeking truths or secrets in their insect-ravaged faces. Buzzards were walking around, spreading their darkened wings, tearing at bits of flesh that had sloughed off the corpses, their scaly heads glistening with corpse-slime and grave-waste. Crows were cawing, perched on shoulders, picking away at holes in faces, digging untouched eyeballs from hollow-vaulted sockets.

It was too much.

Slaughter turned away…or tried to. But the best he could manage was a slow-shuffling backward gait.

He found he could not think clearly any longer.

Forcing himself to stand still so he did not fall down, making himself drag cool and easy off the cigarette in his fingers, he felt the sun above, felt it burning on the back of his neck and tossing his own shadow at his feet as the innumerable dead things about him continued to swell and green and cry tears of subterranean slime. He felt at that moment, as he listened to the buzz of flies and the popping mucid sounds the corpses made, that he had never been quite so exhausted in his life.

That’s when he heard someone humming.

Humming.

It was insane, but he heard it. It filled him with a strange, dreamlike sense of terror. He dropped his cigarette, which tasted like death anyway, and pulled the Combat Mag.

Humming? No, they were singing.

And Slaughter could hear the song very clearly. A childhood ditty he had long forgotten about:

“The hearse goes by, the hearse goes by.

“No one laughs when the hearse goes by…”

He looked across the host of impaled corpses but it wasn’t them, of course. It was coming from the other side. He moved around the edge of the green, beneath the shadows of the impaled and saw a naked man crouching there. An old man who looked much like a living corpse himself. He was on his knees, facing Slaughter, swaying his head from side to side as he sang his dirge:

“They wrap you up in a bloody sheet, and bury you under six feet deep.

“They put you in a big black box, and cover you up with dirt and rocks.

“And all goes well for about a week, and then the coffin begins to leak…”

Slaughter went over to him cautiously.

The old man looked at him. He had no eyes. The skin had been peeled from his face and there was only a red-crusted deathmask there now. Though he had no eyes with which to see, he looked right at Slaughter and sang,

“The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout.

“They eat your eyes, they eat your nose, they eat the jelly between your toes…”

A madman. Some crazy old coot who had been tortured yet had escaped the fate of the others. Slaughter stood over him wondering if he was too far gone.

The old man stopped singing and said, “You, oh it’s you. I knew you’d be coming and I waited for it because my last hour was growing long and he said there would be no death for me. Not until you came.”

Slaughter had a lot of questions, but all he said was, “What in the hell happened here? Who did this to you?”