Kelly didn’t even have time to respond. She stepped out and the Charger leaped forward, the door slamming shut, and for the briefest of moments she was bathed in its tail lights. And then it was gone.
“Right,” Kelly muttered, slipping the handgun into her waistband. Shielding her eyes from the swirling snow, she jogged on to the sidewalk, started moving towards Briar Road. It took about thirty seconds for her to realise that sticking to the shadows was a problem when the streets were so well lit. Granted, it was a hellish light, of an almost greasy quality that made her stomach swim uneasily, but it was still light, and it threw the shadows far away from each other. But, whenever she could, she stuck to the shadows, because all the monsters were dancing in the light.
She passed carnage, and brutality, and depravity. At regular intervals the town became alive with screams. How Virgil could ever have stayed indoors and fooled himself into thinking these were shouts of celebration, she did not know.
Denial, she supposed. An awful lot of it could be laid at the feet of wilful denial.
She passed a girl who had spikes growing from her body, feasting on a small pile of junk food. The girl snarled at her, and Kelly speeded up.
She approached the turn on to Briar Road and slowed down, took a peek round the corner. It was clear. She hurried up the slight hill, nearly tripping over loose slabs of sidewalk that Hell Night had thrown up.
“I do declare,” said a voice behind her, “if it isn’t our favourite redhead, come back to pay us a visit.”
Kelly’s heart went cold, and she turned. Ricky and Dave from Sally’s bar grinned at her through grotesquely misshapen faces. They were each a different kind of demon, sharing only the same look in their eyes.
Kelly ran.
Ricky and Dave laughed and gave chase. Kelly ran until the street evened out. They were right behind her. When it became clear she wasn’t about to outrun them, she went for the gun, prepared to whip it out as she spun round. And then something slammed into her and she hit the ground, went sprawling.
“Oooh,” said the Party-Monster, looking like a real monster this time, “look what I caught.”
Kelly got up and backed away as the three demons advanced, clearly relishing the moment.
“You run pretty fast,” said Ricky. “For a girl.”
“Ignore him and his blatant sexism,” Dave said, moving closer. “He doesn’t know how to woo a lady.”
“You’re making fools of yourselves, the both of you,” said the Party-Monster. “The redhead’s a dyke, remember? She’s not interested in the noodles you’re packing.”
Kelly’s mouth was dry. “I don’t want any trouble, fellas.”
They laughed at that.
“You really must be new here,” Ricky said, “because Hell Night is all about trouble. You don’t have to ask for it. You don’t even have to want it. We deliver it to you.”
“On the house,” said the Party-Monster.
“Besides,” said Ricky, “we owe you. You whupped our asses first time we met, didn’t you? We had no idea you and your friends could fight like that. Guess you showed us, huh?”
“I’m sorry,” Kelly said. “I’m sorry, all right?”
“Little late for apologies. When it got out that I’d had the shit kicked out of me by a dyke, you know what happened? Ridicule. Public ridicule.”
“So what is this?” Kelly asked. “This is all because I’m gay, is that it?”
“Gay or straight’s got nothing to do with it,” said Ricky. “Hell, I was screwing the Party-Monster not half an hour ago in the middle of Main Street.”
“That’s right, he was,” said the Party-Monster.
“Walking around in the daytime, we got all these little fears and insecurities and prejudices and they all mean so very much there, in the sunlight … but y’know what? When Hell Night rolls around, no one gives a good goddamn about any of that stuff. When we’re like this, we do what we wanna do. We do who we wanna do.”
“It’s a very liberating experience,” said the Party-Monster.
“So ask,” said Ricky.
Kelly could feel the cold metal of the gun against her hip. “I don’t understand. Ask what?”
“You know.”
“I don’t. I swear.”
Ricky chuckled. “Ask us what we’re gonna do with you. Go on. Ask. You know you want to.”
Kelly blinked. “What … what are you going to do with me?”
The Party-Monster howled with laughter.
“We’re gonna kill you,” said Dave, delighted.
“Every year,” said Ricky, “we try to kill someone in a new way. You know what we’ve never tried? Guess.”
“I … I don’t …”
“Go on, guess. Guess how we’re gonna kill you. Hey, we’re not totally unreasonable. We’re actually pretty nice guys once you get to know us. So we’ll give you a chance to get out of this in one piece, how’s that? If you guess correctly how we’re gonna kill you, we’ll let you go.”
Dave slapped Ricky on the back. “Nice one! Genius! How about it, Red?”
“No,” said Kelly. “No, I can’t play that. But, if you let me go, you’ll—”
“We’re not letting you go,” said Ricky. “You’re playing the game or you forfeit. If you forfeit, we kill you. So … now do you wanna play? You can have three guesses.”
“Play!” the Party-Monster chanted. “Play! Play! Play!”
No way out. Kelly swallowed. “If I get it right, you’ll let me go?”
“Yes,” said Ricky. “Guys, you good with that?”
“Gambling’s no fun unless you risk losing something,” the Party-Monster said, grinning.
“How many people have you killed?” Kelly asked.
“Lots,” said Dave.
“And you killed them in new ways each time?”
“Each and every time,” said Ricky. “That’s enough. This isn’t Twenty Questions. Three guesses as to how you’re gonna die. First guess?”
Her thoughts jumbled together even as she tried to separate the possibilities into categories. Beating, stabbing, shooting, all probably used up. “Drowning?” she asked.
“Ooh, drowning,” said Dave. “We should keep that for next year.”
“Not drowning, Red,” said Ricky. “Second guess.”
“I don’t know, I … it could be anything.”
“Yeah, it could.”
“Burning then.”
Ricky’s grin widened. “I like the way your mind works. But no. We’ve already burned someone to death. Did that on our second Hell Night. Third and final guess, Red.”
“Give me a clue.”
“No clues.”
“Please, anything. Give me anything. A hint. Anything.”
“I think we should give her a clue,” said Dave.
“You’re just sweet on her,” Ricky told him.
“I’ll do it,” the Party-Monster said. “Okay then, you red-headed rug-muncher, you want a clue? Get ready for some history. We’re gonna kill you in the same way that Henry the Eighth killed two of his wives.”
“Beheading!” Kelly shouted triumphantly. “Beheading! He had their goddamn heads chopped off!”
She went to run between them, but Dave blocked her way.
She backed off. “You said! You said if I guessed it right you’d let me go!”
“You didn’t guess it right,” said Ricky.
“Bullshit! Henry the Eighth had Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard beheaded! I know my goddamn history!”
“You do,” said Ricky, “but the Party-Monster doesn’t.”
The Party-Monster looked confused. “I thought he had his wives hanged.”
Kelly paled. “That’s not fair. He’s the one who got it wrong, not me.”
“But what you failed to take into account is how dumb the Party-Monster is. And for that alone you deserve to hang. Come on. We’ve already got it all set up.”
She went for the gun, but the Party-Monster grabbed her
arm, started dragging her after Ricky and Dave.
“You shouldn’t have called me Kevin,” he said. “Maybe I’d have let you go if you hadn’t called me Kevin.”
“I didn’t call you Kevin,” Kelly managed. “That was Linda.”
“Still, though.”
She got a hand to the gun as they turned on to Main Street, but when she saw the huge crowd of demons congregating around the square she left it in her waistband. Firing a gun now would only get her killed faster. Ricky and Dave shoved other demons out of their way, and the Party-Monster dragged her right into the throng. Curiously, though, none of the other demons were looking at her.
“They got one,” the Party-Monster said. He turned back to Kelly, grinning at her excitedly. Like they were friends. “They got one!”
He let go of her, and vanished into the crowd.
Kelly tried to follow. She didn’t want to imagine what this mob would do to Amber if they grabbed her. She didn’t know what the hell she’d do if it was Amber they’d grabbed – she only knew she’d do something. She’d have to.
The crowd was a living, breathing thing, and it moved and jostled and every now and then Kelly would catch an elbow that would send her crashing into someone else’s hardened skin. In this snarling sea of fangs and claws and horns and wings, she couldn’t even see Ricky or Dave anymore.
She tried moving sideways, but the crowd surged and she cried out as she was squeezed to the front like toothpaste from a tube. Suddenly she could see what they were all gathered here for: they’d captured a Hound.
Laughing and jeering, the demons pinned the Hound to the square itself, right where the ballot box used to be. This Hound had a tighter beard and tattoos on his bare, muscled arms. If the Hound had tried to struggle before this, he had ceased by this point and lay on the ground, calmly awaiting his fate.
His fate arrived in the form of the Party-Monster, yanking the cord of a brand-new, just-looted chainsaw from Oscar Moreno’s rival hardware store. It roared to life and the demons laughed louder. There was some shoving as they reorganised themselves so that the Party-Monster could stand over the Hound’s left arm. Grinning, he lowered the chainsaw, and the chain bit into the Hound’s bicep.
Blood sprayed. The demons howled. The Hound made no sound as his arm was severed. Kelly could barely watch.
The Party-Monster held the chainsaw over his head, his face splattered with blood, and welcomed the cheering. He spun in circles, whooping and hollering like Leatherface at the end of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, nicking whichever demons were dumb enough to be standing too close. Then he stepped over to the Hound’s other arm, and the crowd leaned in, and Kelly got to her hands and knees and started crawling through the forest of legs. She got kicked a few times, kneed a few times – once hard enough to cause her vision to cloud – but then the forest broke all of a sudden and she was out.
She got up on shaky legs, felt for her gun, and realised she had lost it somewhere in the melee. She could go back for it – but seriously, screw that. She hurried away from the crowd, back the way she had come, only turning again at the sound of Ricky’s voice.
“Ladies and gentlemen!”
She peered up. Ricky had climbed to the very top of the snow-covered scaffolding outside the Municipal Building, and he was now holding his arms out while he waited for the chatter to die down, like a dictator about to address the masses.
Once it was quiet enough, he began his speech.
“You wanna see something cool?” he shouted. The demons shrieked their approval. “I said, you wanna see something cool?”
So far, Kelly was unimpressed by Ricky’s speech-making skills.
“Check this shit out!” Ricky hollered, and there was a pause as the Party-Monster appeared behind him, dragging the Hound. Blood still flowed from the stumps that were once his arms, but the Hound didn’t seem to be bothered by it. Another few seconds passed while Ricky placed a noose over the Hound’s head and tightened it, and the demons began to chant impatiently. Finally, it was ready, and Ricky stepped to one side, making a grand gesture for the Hound to throw himself over the edge. Instead, the Hound merely stepped into Ricky, nudging him off balance, and Ricky toppled backwards and screamed all the way down to the street. His sticky end was hidden from Kelly by the crowd, who took a moment before erupting into laughter.
Once they were finished laughing, they started chanting again, and the Party-Monster grinned down at them, grabbed the Hound, and shoved.
The Hound plummeted. Halfway down, the rope went taut and his body snapped straight and his head popped clean off. It all happened so quickly, with so little fuss, it was almost ridiculous. The Hound’s body slipped from the noose and crumpled to the ground and the head followed it down, bouncing twice and then rolling. One of the demons ran up, kicked the head like he was trying for a field goal.
The crowd went wild, and Kelly left Main Street in her wake.
She headed back towards Briar Road, and froze when she heard a dog barking. Two? Keeping low and doing her best to move quietly, she ran from shadow to shadow, closing in on the sound.
She lost it and stopped, trying to ignore the laughter and the screams from the streets around her, doing her best to focus. The dog didn’t bark again. Whether it was Two or not, she took off once more, heading in that general direction, and she rounded a corner and ran straight into a psychopath with a gun.
HE KNEW IT WAS USELESS, trying to outrun them. Even in human form, Marco Mabb and Jamie Hillock were bigger and stronger and faster than Austin was.
In demon form, it wasn’t even a competition.
They played with him, toyed with him, offered him glimmers of hope and then, finally, they overtook him, shoving him and laughing as Austin fell in the snow.
“Out past curfew!” Mabb howled.
“Naughty, naughty!” crowed Hillock. His hair was even longer as a demon, and threatened to cover the startlingly ugly face that had resulted from his transformation. “I swear, Blancard’s gonna wish he was here for this one. He really doesn’t like you, kid.”
“Really,” said Mabb. Unlike Hillock, Mabb had gotten better- looking as a demon. His skin was a dark gold.
“We should take him to Cole,” Hillock said. “Kill him in front of him.”
“Cole’s in his panic room,” Mabb reminded him. “We could video it. What do you think?”
“No, asshole,” Hillock said. “Remember the rules. No videos. No pictures. We can’t tell anyone about tonight.”
“Shit, yeah. Okay then, we’ll just kill the little turd here and go back for Cunningham and his friends. Give them what’s coming to them.”
They closed in and Austin stood, breathing hard, and raised the gun.
Hillock laughed. “Holy crap! Check it out!”
“Is that a silencer?” said Mabb. “He’s got a silencer on it! That’s so cool!”
“Now we’re definitely going back to Cunningham. Take that with us, walk right up to him, shoot him between the horns. Nobody, and I mean nobody, does to us what they did. Nobody.”
Mabb nodded. “We’ll give them something to laugh about. We’ll see who the big man is when we’re done with them. Vengeance is sweet. Give us the gun, shit-for-brains.”
“Stop,” said Austin. “Stop or I’ll … just stop …”
“Bet you can’t even fire that thing,” Hillock said. “Bet you can’t even pull the trigger.”
“I will,” Austin said, gritting his teeth. “I’ll shoot you.”
“Then go ahead,” said Hillock. “Shoot us. I dare you.”
The gun was heavy, and trembled in Austin’s hands. Still, he didn’t let it drop.
Mabb and Hillock laughed again, and stepped forward, and Austin yanked hard on the trigger. He expected a pffft, like in the video games, but the silenced pistol snapped loudly and bucked in his hands.
“Jesus!” Mabb yelled, his eyes wide while his hands clutched at his belly. “He shot me!”
Mabb staggere
d back and Hillock followed, pulling Mabb’s hands away so he could see the wound for himself. Austin didn’t know what to say. He fought hard against an overwhelming urge to apologise.
“Well, holy crap,” said Hillock. “You did it. You actually did it.”
“I’m gonna kill you!” Mabb howled, but was too busy being in pain to attempt it.
“I didn’t think you’d do it,” said Hillock. “Didn’t think you had the balls. Cole always says you’re a chickenshit little runt, but wait till he hears about this.”
“He won’t,” Austin said. “He’s dead.”
Mabb stopped howling, and Hillock raised his eyebrows. “What’s that?”
“Cole’s dead,” said Austin, speaking louder this time. “And, if you’re not careful, you’ll be dead, too. You better leave me alone.”
“You killed Cole?” Mabb asked in a small voice.
Austin swallowed, and nodded.
“You?” Hillock said, stepping forward. “You killed Cole Blancard?”
“Stop walking,” said Austin. “Stop walking or I’ll shoot you.”
Hillock didn’t seem to even move, and yet suddenly he was close enough to smack the gun from Austin’s hands.
“You killed Cole Blancard?” Hillock said again, lifting Austin off his feet by his shirt. “You murdered our friend?”
“Jamie,” Mabb whimpered, “I think I’m dying.”
“Shut up,” Hillock snapped.
“He shot me in the belly, man.”
“Shut the hell up, dickhead! The little man here just confessed to the murder of our friend, didn’t you hear him?”
“I think he killed me, too, Jamie.”
Hillock threw Austin down and stalked back to Mabb, who was bent over and moaning. “What?” he demanded. “What the hell is wrong with you, Marco?”
Mabb pointed at Austin. “He shot me. You saw him.”
“So?”
“So I think I’m gonna die, man.”
“What do you expect me to do about it?”
Mabb dropped to his knees. “I don’t know, Jamie, I’m scared.”
“Don’t be a pussy.”
“It’s not being a pussy to be scared of dying.”
“Yeah, it is, and you’re being one right now. Man up, for Christ’s sake.”