Munns’s childhood had been a living hell. Ray had heard the stories from the people in town. Munns’s parents were no-good drunks who’d taken turns torturing him. One day his father was beating the snot out of him while his mother looked on; the very next, Mom was giving him the belt while Dad smoked a butt and watched. Beating their son had been a sick sport that had lasted for many years. It had stunted Munns’s growth and left psychological scars that no amount of time would ever heal.
That was Munns’s story, at least part of it. There was another sordid chapter, although Ray had never gotten the details. Something had happened when Munns was a teenager that had been the icing on the cake. It was so ugly, that at times Munns lost control, and did crazy things, like try to run over townspeople’s dogs.
Ray had known all these things about Munns, yet still had recruited him into the Order. In hindsight, it now seemed a mistake. Munns was too imperfect for the job, too flawed. The Order did not tolerate mistakes, and Ray would pay for his lack of judgment.
As Ray started to leave the unit, the sliding metal door clanged shut in his face, throwing the interior into darkness. The door wouldn’t budge. Was Munns playing a trick on him?
“Let me out!” he said, banging on the door with his palm.
A scraping sound made him jump. Something was crawling across the floor. He dug out his lighter and flicked it on.
He gasped. Jucko’s severed head was rolling across the floor by itself. Coming to its own body, it stopped. Before Ray’s disbelieving eyes, the tendons and sinew rejoined in perfect union, and the dismembered corpse became whole again.
Jucko stood up. His face was lifeless, his eyes unblinking. Ray had thought he knew evil. But now, he realized he didn’t know evil at all. The evil he knew was clever and sly and played wicked tricks on the world. The evil standing before him was different. It was pure, and came straight from the depths of hell.
“Give me your lighter,” came a ghostly voice out of Jucko’s mouth.
Ray hesitated. He did not want the room to return to darkness. Then his imagination would take over, and he’d lose his sanity.
“No,” he squeaked.
“Do as I say. It’s for your own good,” the voice said.
The voice of reason, coming out of a dead man’s mouth. Ray reluctantly handed over the lighter. In the dead man’s hand, it turned into a torch, which illuminated the entire room.
The lid to one of the footlockers popped open, and a female corpse climbed out. It was no longer shrouded in plastic, but wore stylish city clothes and had a skeletal face. The lid to a second footlocker popped open, and a second victim emerged, this one dressed like a much older woman. The dead women stared at Ray with hollow eyes.
Their number gave them away. It was the elders, come to pay him a visit. Ray had never felt more afraid in his life. “Guess I screwed up, huh?” he said.
The unholy trio did not reply.
“I can do better,” Ray promised them. “I swear I can.”
“To who do you swear?” came a voice out of Jucko’s mouth.
“To Satan and everything he stands for.”
“Forever and ever?”
“Yes, forever and ever.”
“Good. There has been a change in plans. We need you to speed up the process. Munns needs to bring the woman named Rachael out on the train sooner. Munns must call this woman, and convince her to come out right away.”
“But everything’s in place for Friday night,” Ray protested. “She’ll become suspicious and start questioning him.”
“Help Munns deal with her suspicions. Work with him.”
“Munns is a basket case. He’ll screw up,” Ray said, speaking his mind.
“We’re giving you another chance,” said the voice. “Make the most of it.”
“You’re crazy,” Ray said under his breath.
“Deal with him,” said the voice.
The two dead women charged across the shed, and pinned Ray against the door. Their bony fingers gripped his arms and held his struggling body in place. The one to his left bit into his cheek and held the flesh between her teeth; the one on his right clamped her teeth down on his earlobe, and tugged on the skin. At any moment, he expected to be eaten alive.
“Care to reconsider?” asked the voice.
Ray took a deep breath, expecting it to be his last. Not once had the elders asked him his opinion. They didn’t care what he thought. He was just a slave.
“All right,” he said.
“You’ll work with Munns and make the girl come out?” the voice asked.
“I’ll try.”
“That’s not good enough!”
The dead women began to tear away at Ray’s flesh.
“I’ll do it!” Ray screamed.
They stopped eating him. Ray shut his eyes, and tried to wish this nightmare away. Opening them a moment later, he found that nothing had changed.
“Is that a promise?” the voice asked.
“On my mother’s grave,” Ray said.
“We’re going to hold you to that.”
“I said I’d do it,” Ray said. “Why is this woman so important to you? Is there a reason?”
Jucko brought his face within inches of Ray’s. His breath reeked of the rotted architecture of an evil man’s soul. “The woman is meaningless. It’s Peter Warlock we’re after. Warlock is trying to save Rachael, and will travel from New York to come to her aid. That is predestinated, and there’s no changing it. When Warlock arrives in your little town, he will have an FBI agent with him. That is predestined as well. The agent will arrest Munns, and you as well if you’re not careful. Your job at that point will be to stay out of the way. Understood?”
“Why? What will happen?”
“What do you think will happen, you stupid little man?”
Ray shook his head, his thoughts clouded by fear. The teeth of one of the dead women began to gobble his ear and he shrieked in agony. “Please! Spare me!”
His ear was being torn from his head. The other dead woman tried to rip a hunk of flesh out of his cheek. He screamed and struggled but could not free himself from their bony grasp. The dead man standing in front of him lowered the torch onto the top of Ray’s head. Ray felt his hair catch fire, and knew that this was the end.
As if by magic, the torch extinguished itself, throwing the shed into darkness. The dead women stopped eating his face. They seemed to just melt away, and Ray brought his hand up to touch his unscathed head. Behind him, the sliding door slid open on its own accord and filled the shed with sunlight. Jucko’s headless body lay on the floor, his head a few feet away, while the footlockers were propped against the wall, the corpses of Munns’s victims still inside.
None of it had been real.
It didn’t matter. Ray was still terrified. The elders had tapped his innermost fears. They knew what scared him, and had used those fears to turn his soul inside out. Locking the sliding door behind him, he hurried across the parking lot to his van. Munns sat in the passenger seat, listening to a Marilyn Manson CD on the sound system.
“Where you been?” Munns asked.
“Shut the hell up.”
Ray stared through the windshield at the road, thinking hard. He would have to concoct some reason to draw Rachael from New York. He’d always been good at making up stories, and supposed it wouldn’t be too hard to come up with a convincing lie. The hard part would be to get Munns to call Rachael, and make her believe him.
Ray glanced at his passenger. Munns was humming along to the music. He did not appear the least bit upset by what he’d done. Munns rolled up his sleeve and began to scratch the skin around the tattoo of Surtr holding the severed head of Peter Warlock. It was one of Ray’s best creations, the colors so vivid it almost looked alive.
“The skin is burning,” Munns explained.