The Devil Next Door

65

Louis entered the Soderberg house. He stepped in there, sensing immediately that he had just made a very bad mistake. The house smelled like shit and blood and God only knew what else. A steaming odor of waste and offal. He moved through the house, fighting against his own fears. He had to find that gun cabinet. He had to have a weapon that could drop those animals from a distance.

Perfectly good plan.

It took a moment or two for Louis to get his bearings. He’d only been in the Soderberg’s house once or twice. He entered the living room, trying to remember where Mike Soderberg’s den was. Because that’s where his gun cabinet was. He seemed to think it was on the other side of the house, somewhere near the kitchen.

Louis, his heart galloping wildly in his chest, moved through the dining room, barking his shin on a chair and cussing under his breath. So much for stealth. As he came into the kitchen, he thought he heard something out in the backyard. A thumping sound. He cocked his head, listening, sweating and trembling.

Nothing.

Nerves, probably just nerves, he told himself.

He moved on, the moonlight coming through the windows thick as curdled milk.

He became aware then of a particularly vile smell that was sharp and revolting that he could only acquaint with something like rotting onions… or hides. Because when he’d been a boy his class had gone on a school trip to a mink farm. The heaped mink hides had smelled something like this, pungent and unbearably musky. They were told that the stink came from the mink’s scent glands. He was smelling that now. Or something like it.

It was far too strong to mean nothing.

And that’s when a man stepped around the side of the refrigerator. He had something in his hand that might have been an axe. The stench was coming from him. He let out a little shrilling cry and swung what he had at Louis, missing him cleanly. Louis did not hesitate. He swung his hammer with everything he had and felt it connect with the guy’s skull with a sickening hollow thud.

The guy folded up.

The backyard suddenly exploded with light, flooding the kitchen. Louis crouched down. He thought at first it was an explosion of some sort, but from the quality of the light he could see it was a fire. A big fire. He raised himself up and peered out the windows above the sink. Yes, there was a bonfire burning in the backyard. He saw five or six naked forms dancing around it. They looked like kids. Somebody was tied to a tree and kindling had been banked up around them.

They were burning.

The kids were hopping around happily, burning someone. And from the way the bound figure was squirming there was no doubt that they were alive. Tied and gagged, but alive. Something snapped in Louis. He couldn’t watch this. He charged out the back door with a fierce cry, a rebel yell that came from deep within him. He charged with the hammer in one hand and his knife in the other. One of the kids, a teenage girl, launched herself at him and he staved her skull in with the hammer and stabbed a boy in the belly. The girl fell limp at his feet and the boy hobbled away.

The others ran off, taking the girl with them.

Panting, slicked with sweat, his hand holding the knife bloody up to the wrist and the hammer clotted with gore, he looked very much like a savage himself. He whirled around, expecting attack from every quarter. But none came. The tree was engulfed in flames as was the person tied to it. They were beyond help. The flames were so high he could barely see them. But the stink of roasting flesh was thick and nauseating.

Louis fell to his knees, needing to cry, to vent himself somehow.

And from the shadows a voice said, “Over here, Louis. I’m over here…”