Cannibal Corpse, M/C

The old man laughed uncontrollably and it was a hideous sight with no skin and no lips…just that peeled anatomy, the yellow teeth jutting from the gums. When he stopped laughing he started singing again:

“Your stomach turns a slimy green,

“And pus pours out like whipping cream.

“You go all mushy like dampened bread,

“And that’s how the worms eat you when you are dead…”

“Stop it,” Slaughter told him. He’d had enough and he wasn’t in the mood for any grade school graveyard poetry. He was barely holding himself together by that point and he intended on having answers one way or another. The old man had been badly used and was out of his head from it, but that didn’t mean he would go easy on him if it came to that.

Because right about then all that fear and weird terror had built up in him and broke open like a boil and he was feeling dirt mean. He was feeling capable of just about anything if he didn’t get what he wanted.

“I’m going to ask you again: What happened here and who in the fuck did this?” he said.

The muscles of the old man’s face hitched up into something like a grin. “He came in the dead of night,” the old man said. “There was a hot wind blowing, the hot plague wind of the Hellmouth blowing strong. And I knew. I knew he would be coming. I think we all knew he would be coming. He was dressed in black. All in black, you see? Death must be dressed in black. He looked like a preacher with them duds and that wide-brimmed black hat. He carried no bible, stranger, only the Book of Hell in one hand and a branding iron in the other. He wore black boots that clumped along as he walked. You should have seen his face…white as marble, scarred and pitted and flaking, them eyes like pink frog spawn, staring, never blinking, just staring and showing you things and making you think things that you wanted to forget. He said we were named in his book, every last one of us and that’s when everyone went on the stakes. I hid. I didn’t see it. But I heard ‘em screaming, oh yes, I heard the screaming of the dying and those that wished they were dead. But I was a coward and I hid and then he sought me out and did this to me, told me I would not know death…not until a stranger came and you are that stranger and, praise glory, I go to the good earth now and the mercy of my God…”

“Who?” Slaughter heard himself ask. “Who was this man?”

But the old man just shook his head as if he dared not say. “He was Death. He was Death. He showed me the death-in-life. He had holes in his face and he pulled worms out of them holes. Crawling worms. He pulled one out and dropped it on a corpse and the worm crawled in and the corpse was alive. That was my choice. I was to be like them, the dead that walk…or I could wait for you. I made my choice.”

“Who was he?”

“Him.”

“Tell me.”

The old man began humming and Slaughter realized it was some sort of Sunday school hymn he’d probably learned as a child. He was crazy. His mind had been laid bare…yet, Slaughter knew that what he was saying was essentially true. It was Black Hat. It could be no other.

“His name,” Slaughter said. “Tell me.”

“I asked him…I sure did…I asked him…”

“And?”

The old man began to shake. “He smiled at me and black blood came from his mouth in gouts. And he said…he said… ‘Nemesis…I am Nemesis.’ That’s what he said and I knew him by other names as you shall know him…”

Then the old man fell over, going face-first into the grass. He shuddered and died. Slaughter stared down at him, hearing the carrion birds feeding and cawing and hissing. The old man said Nemesis carried a branding iron and there could be no doubt of that because he had used it on him. For burned into the old man’s back was:

It made no sense.

It covered nearly his entire back and was seared black to a depth of half an inch into the flesh there. Some kind of stylized word and accompanying symbol that looked cabalistic and mystical and made Slaughter tremble. He told himself it made no sense and yet it made all the sense in the world if he could only figure out what it all meant. The altar. The sacrifice of the people of Victoria. Black Hat who carried a branding iron and the Book of Hell (as the old man called it). Black Hat who called himself Nemesis who, Slaughter knew, had been a Greek goddess of revenge and divine retribution but was sometimes referred to as the Christian devil himself.

Was that what this was about?

The Devil?

The fucking Devil?

Slaughter could not be sure. It seemed both a possibility and a complete absurdity. Too simple. Too pat. Maybe Black Hat was not the devil, but if he wasn’t then he was surely something like that.

“All right,” Slaughter heard his own voice say. “Enough. Now get on out.”