The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

After I don’t know how long, I look back up, and now, good God, it’s even worse. I mean, he’s doin’ her, right there on the floor. They got their clothes off and he’s on top of her, and I never saw anything like that in my life, it looked like he was trying to screw that thing in the basement in those Evil Dead movies. I near to puked, and I looked away again but I still heard them, Pete panting like he was, I don’t know, in the throes of ecstasy, and that old woman just grunting like a pig, louder and louder till it seemed like something busted inside her, and she let out this howl like some crazy monkey with its tail on fire.

It got quiet then, and I looked through the chink. They were both lying there, and it wasn’t pretty, and I started thinking about what an absolute whore Pete Waitkus was, and I’da bet dollars to donuts that Alan Lomax never would’ve done nothing like that for a lousy song.

It was almost like Pete heard me thinking, bringing him back to square one, because he said, “Now… now will you sing for me?”

And she did. She started with that shortened fourth verse, and I’m not gonna try and sound like her because there’s no way, but it was all high and airy, not as screechy as before, but just plain spooky…

    I begged him to go and save his dear life,
    But alas he would not flee.
    With the moon in the sky they hung him on high,
    And the guilt sat hard on me.

She paused for a second, and I thought, oh shit, that’s all. She screwed Pete twice tonight. But then she went on, and it was the money shot…

    For I had slain that maiden fair
    With my love’s knife cold and straight,
    In hope he would run toward the rising sun
    And escape the Lovin fate.

Damn me, yes. We were getting there, all right. Nobody’d ever heard that one before. She started on the chorus…

    Mother come quickly, Father come quickly…

Then I heard a rustling, shuffling kind of sound that seemed to be outside with me, and when I turned my head I froze. Up toward the front of the cabin there were some people walking. I counted four shapes in the moonlight, one after another. They were moving slow, but like they knew where they were headed.…

    Brother and Sister, see…

The two shorter ones had on long skirts, and the two tall ones were wearing pants, so I figured two men and two women, but when they went through the door and I saw them in the candlelight, they could’ve been anything. What was left of their hair was long and straggly, and if the old woman on the floor was a little long in the tooth, then these four had already had the worms at them. And that’s not just a figure of speech.

    The only man I ever did love
    Is hanging in front of me.

Then the old woman says, “It’s time for the last verse,” and she puts on her dress, thank God, pulls it over her head as fast as a young woman might, and quick gets on her feet while the others surround Pete, who’s still naked.

The two in pants reach down and grab him, one by his legs and the other by his arms, and pick him up like a baby. They go outside with him, moving fast now, toward that pole in the forks of two trees that I thought was the frame for a swing. The one man drops the top half of Pete’s body and the other one hauls up on the legs so he’s got Pete’s feet up in the air, one on either side of the pole. Then one of the women sticks Pete through the back of both ankles — Jesus, did he squeal — with a long wooden stake sharpened on both ends, and before I can shut my jaw, they got him hanging head-down from the pole, and I realize that it ain’t no swing. It’s a pole for slaughtering hogs.

I fumbled for the gun in my pants and started to pull it out, but it got caught, and before I could free it, the old woman started to sing again. It was the last verse. Oh Jesus, was it ever, and now her voice sounded almost sweet. And this is what she sang…

    We hanged him up by his pretty white feet
    So his hair near touched the ground,
    We bled him and skinned him and butchered the meat,
    The sweetest to be found.

    We ate of the flesh, we drank of the blood,

    And the power came over us then,
    As strong as the rush of a springtime flood,
    And the Lovins became young again.

Then one of the men cut Pete’s throat.