The Devil Next Door

Clutching her spear, Kylie led them on the hunt…

69

“Nice job, Louis,” the voice said to him. “Very nice, scaring off those little savages. Commendable. One might think you were a savage yourself.”

Earl Gould.

Louis went over to him in the grass. “What the hell are you doing here, Earl?”

“I was kidnapped by the little horrors.”

He was tied-up in the grass. Louis cut him loose, wondering if it was such a good idea or not. “I’m telling you right now, Earl. I’ve been through the shit, okay? You try and attack me and I swear to God I’ll kick your fucking ass.”

Rubbing his wrists, Earl managed a laugh. “I’m okay, Louis. How about you?”

Louis didn’t bother answering that. What could he say? He had a bloody hammer and a bloody knife in his hand.

“Thanks for getting me out of this…jam,” Earl said. “I was next on the barbi. Nice show of aggression, by the way. You scared the hell out of them.”

“I thought they’d stand and fight.”

Earl shook his head. “Most animals rarely do. When faced with life-threatening show of aggression even a grizzly bear will think twice.”

“We’re in a hell of a situation here, Earl.”

“Yes, we are, Louis. We are in the jungle,” Earl said. “This is where seventy million years of primate development has led us: right back to the beginning.”

Louis led him into the house and made him sit in a recliner in the living room. He did not turn on any lights. He went into the bathroom and washed his face, drank a few handfuls of water. When he came out, he grabbed a poker from the fireplace and sat on the couch. He could see Earl just fine in the moonlight filtering in through the picture window. He was grinning, but it was an awful sort of grin. A mad grin, but hardly dangerous. Just the grin of a man who had parted the black velour curtains of reality and peered deep into the fires of Hell, maybe saw something looking back at him. Something he recognized.

An ex college prof, Earl dressed very neatly, was always well-groomed and on the ball. But today, all that was gone. His white hair was mussed, his clothes dirty and unkempt. There were bruises on his face and a smear of blood at one cheek. He kept taking off his glasses, cleaning them on his shirt. Putting then back on and repeating the process.

“Okay, Earl,” Louis said, his voice very weary. “Tell me about it. Tell me what you did.”

Earl just kept grinning. His eyes were wet in the darkness. “I…I killed, Louis. I killed Maureen.”

There should have been some shock, but there was nothing. Had he told Louis that he bought a new Weed-Eater, the reaction would have been about the same. “Are you sure?”

“I hit her.”

“I saw that.”

“But you ran off, Louis! You ran off!”

“I had to, Earl.”

Although Louis could not see his eyes, he could just about gauge the pain in them. But he figured there was more than pain. Probably recrimination.

“But you let me hit her, Louis.”

“No, Earl, I didn’t let you do anything. I didn’t have time to stop you. Somebody was attacking Macy. I couldn’t help you.” Louis sat there, looking at him. “You hit her, Earl. You hurt her. Not me. You. You’re the one that let that fucking madness take you over.”

Earl sat right up and walked over to Louis like he was going to attack him. “I didn’t have a choice!” He grabbed Louis by the shirt, shook him. “I couldn’t fight against it! You can’t fight against it! It just takes you and you belong to it and there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it! Do you see? That’s why I hit her and that’s why I kept hitting her!”

Louis slapped him across the face. Slapped him hard enough to snap his head back and he wanted to keep slapping him. He was just sick of it all. Sick of the shit his neighbors had been doing to each other, to themselves, to the whole goddamn town. He didn’t know why the madness had not gotten to him, but he was starting to think that everyone who was infected was weak. Goddamn fucking weak. So he slapped the old man and he wanted to keep slapping until his hand was red and numb and Earl was on the floor, bleeding and sobbing and pissing himself. To Louis, the old man was the embodiment of all of them. Their weakness. Their inhumanity.

Earl was down on one knee, still grinning, though his eyes were filled with tears.

“Tell me what you did, Earl. Tell me what the fuck you did to your wife and how it felt when you were doing it,” Louis said, needing to rub the old man’s face in the stink he had created. “C’mon, tell me all about it.”

Earl was blubbering now. Just beside himself with guilt and anguish and Louis actually found satisfaction in that because he wanted to see them all like that, down on their knees feeling the pain of their actions. And particularly Michelle. The woman he loved. The woman who had betrayed him now in ways Louis himself could not even begin to catalog.

Jesus Christ, you idiot! She’s sick! They’re all sick! You can’t blame them for it any more than you can blame an alcoholic for hitting the bottle or a junkie for sticking a needle in his arm! Sick! Sick! Sick!