Scalpers dgmm-2 Page 23

Then Dean saw an idling ambulance.

  It was his only chance, and he ran for it. In a matter of minutes, he quietly pulled out of the E.R. lot and was on his way. A block off, and he found the controls for the siren and began to speed back for Wekiva and Hardscrabble Road, praying his memory of how to get there would not fail him.

  Sid feared desperately for his life as he went about the old house, locking every door and window against the pair of killers outside who had mutilated Williams and Staubb, and who now were coming for him. Sid felt like the man in the cult classic, Night of the Living Dead, as he searched for ways to board up the place against the intruders. His only other hope was the phone, but the moment he dialed 911 and began to shout out his situation, the line, along with the electricity, went dead.

  Now he searched about the kitchen for a weapon. He never carried a gun, had never had any use for one until now. He thought of all the weapons outside in Staubb's car, in Williams', thought of all the firepower they'd had, and of their training, and none of it had saved them from this fiendish duo.

  Still, Sid yanked out drawers and tore open cabinets until he found an arsenal of knives hanging inside one cabinet. Two hooks were missing carving knives. These, no doubt, were the weapons used on young Williams and Staubb, and soon to be used on him, Sid gruesomely surmised.

  "Bastards!” shouted Sid, taking down the largest knife he could find. Suddenly a door opened inside the kitchen and the two killers rushed Sid high and low. Sid saw into the basement, saw the flash of the banging door against the fridge, saw the blur of the dwarf and Hamel coming all in an instant, and he reacted with vicious intent, bringing his knife at Hamel's eyes. The blade plunging deep into the forehead and brain just before Sid was knocked unconscious by a powerful blow from Hamel with the hilt of a pistol.

  Van stared in wide-eyed horror at what Corman had done to his brother, Ian, who lay on the floor, stunned, the knife protruding from his head, dead center on the top of the frontal lobe. An X ray would surely show that the two halves of the brain had been severed, yet Ian breathed and was talking calmly as if he felt no pain.

  "This ... got to get it out ... fix it,” said Van, wrapping his mangled hands about the handle, readying to remove it like an arrow from a wounded soldier on the frontier, like in the comic books.

  "No, no! Not yet,” said Ian from deep within himself. “Don't remove it."

  "But—"

  "I'll be dead in minutes."

  "There's no blood..."

  "Take it out, and I'm dead ... before that happens, I want you to take a graft from me ... try my scalp, Van. We're brothers ... twins, even ... and maybe..."

  He looked thoughtfully down at his brother and after a long pause said, “It could work ... maybe it could ... and if so, you won't die, not at all, you'll be part of the final accomplishment."

  "Then we won't need to kill Grant, or him over there, or anyone. They'll be pleased to herd themselves before us for daily sacrifices, and you ... you'll be a god, Van, a god."

  "Yes ... yes, I see ... yes.” He reassured his brother as he began the scalp-taking.

  Ian squealed with the pain, jiggled and went into a spasm of pain before the shock and trauma of his wound and the scalping took him. The dwarf took his bloody prize, dripping it across the aged linoleum and into his hideaway, where he plunked it into the still-hot cauldron. While it cured and stewed, he would see to Dr. Corman.

  "On my own now,” Van told himself sadly, “but I always said that one day it would be so."

  He knew that Ian was brilliant and that his plan still was workable if Grant should show up tonight, as Ian had anticipated. Instead of just killing Grant now, Corman would be held responsible for the death of Benjamin Hamel as well. Yes, it could work ... it could ... if Grant played out his part.

  He returned to the kitchen and with much effort dragged Corman by the heels into his room. There he tied Corman's hands and feet, gagged the man, and propped him up near the fireplace, where Grant would instantly see him and rush to his aid.

  Now it was a waiting game, but Van could not resist taking a quick, hot scoop of the broth being made with his brother's skin and hair. It would sustain him this night. Miracles did happen, as when he'd found the black creatures in the basement of his upbringing that nursed and suckled him....

  As he fed, stirring the scalp, his face aglow from the embers of the fire, he shed a tear for Ian and for himself. Existence after this, if he could not become one with the beings that had nurtured him all these years, was hardly worth anything. He determined that if Ian's scalp, applied to his own, did not fulfill the bargain of the dark beings, then he might himself take a final life—his own.

  But time was needed ... time to allow the processes to take place, to test the possibilities. That time might only be found if Grant and Corman were dead and put away. He looked for the best spot from which to spring out at Grant when he entered.

  SEVENTEEN

  Weaving dangerously, Dean took the turn onto the dirt road called Hardscrabble too late, and the ambulance tore onto the soft shoulder out of control and sideswiped a tree before coming to a halt. Dean got out, shaken and reaching for his .38 only to find it gone. He'd lost it somewhere between the hospital and here, he thought, before proceeding on foot toward the house at the end of the cul-de-sac. He had already called for backup, using the ambulance radio, explaining as best he could why he'd stolen the unit.

  He saw carnage ahead of him, two bodies lying inert outside Peggy Carson's squad car, and soon he knew the two uniformed men were Staubb and Williams. He lifted Staubb's gun, which was a few feet away in the sandy soil, preferring it to wrenching Williams’ from its holster. Dean then checked the clip and found it all right, a single shot having been fired. Both men had been quietly dispatched with knives, telling Dean his hunch had been right, that the killers had returned here.

  Dean neared the house at a crouch, fearing he'd find Sid Corman dead, propped up with a gun in his hand, or strung up, leaving a suicide note of confession forced from him. Dean feared he would be too late, much too late.

  Dean leapt to the porch to avoid the squeaking stairs, but the porch sagged with a groan beneath his feet. If Hamel and that bastard brother of his were inside, they knew he was outside now.

  The door rattled against his attempt to open it. It was secured tight. There would be no quiet entry, Dean told himself, no way. Still, he must try the rear, and so he cautiously made his way toward the back. There he stared through a window at a man's form lying in the dark interior, Sid's he guessed, and something snapped inside him.

  He broke the glass on the door and let himself in, rushing to Sid where he lay alongside the oven. Lifting Sid's head he saw a horrible gash where his forehead ought to be. Dean swallowed a scream, until his eyes, adjusting to the light, saw that it was Hamel! Hamel without a scalp! Benjamin I. Hamel, scalped and murdered in his home on Hardscrabble Road in Wekiva by ... by whom?

  "Sid?” Dean called out, going further into the house, toward the bedroom and the false closet and wall where the dwarf lived and fed himself, where Sid must now be....

  "Sid? Sid, can you answer me?"

  Dean saw there was a candle burning on the table, the only light in the odorous room, save for the glow of the dying embers at the fireplace where that black witches’ cauldron still bubbled and gurgled. Stepping closer, inching nearer, Dean saw Sid's feet and legs, then his chest. He was bound and gagged, his features in a shadowed corner next to the fireplace.

  "Sid!” Dean rushed in to help his friend, snatching at the rope binding his feet, which was not rope at all but gut, human gut, dried and cured and turned into rope as strong as hemp. Dean grabbed for a scalpel he kept in an inside pocket to cut away at the stuff. While doing so, he cringed at the realization of what it was he held in his hands. Slicing through the tough, dried string, he freed Sid's legs and then, seeing terror in Sid's eyes, snatched away the suffocating gag in Sid's mouth. The instant he did so, Sid shouted, “Beh
ind you!"

  But the warning came too late. At the same instant Dean felt the catapulting stool hitting him in the back of the head, stunning him. He staggered a moment, dazed, when something else slammed into his back and shoulders. It was the dwarf, straddling him, a knife slicing away at his head and shoulders. A tear to his breast bone, a swish by his eye, and then the blade came down, a curled scimitar driving into his shoulder. Dean threw himself down, rolling over with all his weight, the sound of Staubb's .38 sliding from his belt to some dark corner of the room. Another sound, an animal sound of pain, had commingled with Dean's own screams that echoed Sid's.

  "Where is he? Where the hell is he?” Dean shouted.

  "I'm not sure. Get me loose,” cried Sid.

  But the dwarf rocketed himself at Dean's back a second time, coming out of the dark. Again the knife slammed into Dean, and this time the cut was deep and painful, slicing his left arm at the bicep, blood pumping out onto Sid as Dean fought in the small space with the madman, trying desperately to cut him with the scalpel.

  But the dwarf leapt away again and once more the room was still, silent, the deadly thing somewhere nearby, accustomed to seeing through the shroud of darkness. He knew where Dean was, but Dean could not see him.

  "My hands, Dean, so I can help you! My hands!"

  But the wound to Dean's arm and the blow to his head had effectively stunned him. He did a stumbling dance toward Sid, seeing him through the haze, hearing his plea only half-real, when suddenly the evil weight was on his back again.

  With a revulsion and hatred Dean had never felt before, he reached round with bloodied hands and got firm hold of the thing by its arm and shoulder and flung it with all his might into the hearth, where for an instant Dean's eyes focused on the hairy beast with the enormous red-embered eyes, its nostrils flaring, the huge, curved knife looking like its horn.

  "Dean!” shouted Sid. The knife-wielding dwarf slashed first his right, then his left leg, skittered past him, and disappeared yet again.

  "Under the corner table—no, the other corner!” Sid shouted. “The gun, get the gun!"

  Dean, the pain of his arm intense, reached under the table. His hand felt metal and he wrapped it round the gun and snatched it out only an instant before the sound of the scimitar told him he could have lost the hand.

  Backing off from the dark corner, Dean tried desperately to see the evil hiding there, to blow it to pieces.

  "God damn it, Dean, get me loose,” Sid cried behind him.

  Dean backed cautiously to where Sid remained propped near the fireplace, stumbling over Sid and reaching round to undo the hands, when Sid shouted another warning. Again the devilish dwarf was on Dean, who rose to his feet, trying to dislodge the thing from his back, holding firmly to the gun, using it as a pummel against his attacker.

  With a wild, wheeling twist and push, Dean sent himself and his attacker hard against the far wall, knocking the air out of the dwarf and flipping him forward. The creature's small body skittered once more into shadow, a squeal of pain pealing from him. Dean didn't dare look away from the place where the thing had pulled itself. He leveled the gun, preparing to fire, when he realized the dwarf was on a shelf at eye-level, and not on the floor, and that he was coming through the air at him for a final blow, the knife coming right at Dean's eyes, when Dean ducked.

  The dwarf's miss hurled him hard against the hearth a second time. This time Dean was ready for the bastard, for at the very moment Dean ducked, he also wheeled and brought up the .38, trained it on the dwarf, and sent the hammer back.

  But Dean stopped cold to stare at the pleading eyes inside the ugly, deformed head, deep beneath folds of skin and hair. They were Hamel's eyes!

  This must be Hamel's supposed dead twin brother, after all.

  Dean stared for a moment, mesmerized by the man's eyes, as the dwarf lifted the knife, preparing to throw it.

  Sid, his legs free, had worked his way closer to the fire and the pot. Now, suddenly and viciously, he kicked the lug pole free, sending the scalding, putrid stew over the hairy animal at the hearth, making it squeal in pain. Suddenly it snatched up its brother's scalp and raced madly for safety, disappearing. The dwarf was badly scalded, and Sid, too, had been burned by the water. But Sid ignored his own pain as Dean freed him from his bonds. Dean was angry with himself for not having killed the ugly, hairy thing when he'd had the chance. His moment's hestitation had now allowed the gnome to disappear again, this time out of the room and down the corridor, a final door slamming deep within. Dean breathed a little better and helped Sid from his remaining bonds.

  "I thought the bastard had you,” gasped Sid. “You're bleeding like a pig, Dean!"

  Sid worked to tie off the arm, the worst of the wounds the dagger-wielding little creep had inflicted.

  "Where do you suppose that thing is now?” Sid asked.

  "Your guess is as good as mine."

  "You think you can walk?"

  Dazed, Dean wasn't sure. “Maybe we should wait for sunrise."

  "Maybe we ought to get in one of those cars outside and get the hell out of here."

  "Run off by a dwarf, you and me? Two big-deal guys like us?"

  "I think we've both had enough heroics for one night. Besides, there's another one lurking somewhere."

  "Hamel? No, he's dead ... I found him in the kitchen."

  "Oh, yeah, now I remember—I got him in the head with a kitchen knife just before I blacked out."

  "And his brother took his goddamned scalp."

  "He what?"

  "That ugly gnome took Hamel's scalp."

  Sid shook his head. “Good God, Dean!"

  "Exactly. That's why we've got to see this thing through, see this ... this creature dead. It's not human."

  "All right, but we stay together. I don't care how short that guy is, he's bloody strong—and dangerous."

  "There should be backup units coming."

  "Did you ask for bloodhounds and helicopters? He's very likely deep in the wildlife preserve by now. It's all swamp, marsh, and palmetto bush, very hard to maneuver even by daylight ... not to mention wild things like cottonmouths and alligators."

  "Maybe we'd better wait, then."

  "Be wise to, but that'd be out of character for you, wouldn't it, Dean?"

  "How's the leg?” Dean asked. Sid tied off a second bandage for him.

  "I think the bleeding's stopped. You were damned lucky."

  "How is your leg?"

  "Burned both ankles, as a matter of fact, but I'm trying not to think about it"

  "You burned him pretty good, too,"

  "Think it'll slow the little bastard?"

  "It might. Come on."

  Getting through the long house and to the outside was scary in itself. Dean felt like a little figure in a video game, afraid of opening the next door, or stepping through, knowing that the killer could be waiting at every turn. But they got to the porch without incident. Down the dusty road came the glare of successive headlights, reinforcements. Over the siren noise, Dean heard something like a chicken scratch, and he suddenly jumped down from the porch and stared up to the darkened roof, half-expecting the creature to leap at him again. But it didn't come; nothing was up there.

  Where had the noise come from?

  Sid raced to meet the others, waving at them. Dean had another thought as the cars, their headlights flooding the yard now, showed some streaks coming up through the cracks on the porch from beneath.

  He was there, under the house. Dean just knew it. But to catch the animal, everyone must somehow be alerted.

  They needed to fan out. Dean tried to convey this message to the noisy, gung-ho policemen jumping from their units.

  "The suspect's a dwarf,” Sid told them as Dean indicated the underside of the house, pointing, unsure whether or not the gnome had caught on to their next move.

  Cautiously, after having had a full look at Staubb and Williams, and with jokes to one another about midgets and little people
, the cops fanned out, trying to circle the rambling, L-shaped house. Not six feet off were the woods.

  Flashlights streaked into the underside of the house and suddenly a shot rang out on the far side. Dean heard the sounds of running feet and rushed to where the gunshot had been fired. A policeman named Mike had filled a stray dog with buckshot, the animal still thrashing until another officer put it out of its misery.

  "There! Over there!” shouted another cop, hearing something moving off through the bush.

  The chase was on, Dean armed now with a 12-gauge shotgun, Sid beside him with Staubb's .38, everyone fanning out, trying to ensnare the killer in a human net.

  "He's armed and dangerous,” Dean told the men.

  "Armed with what?"

  "So far as we know, only a knife, but it's his weapon of choice."

  "Hear that, men?"

  Up and down the line, the word was passed as the manhunt moved into the dark woods.

  "Going to send two of my men back to make a call for dogs,” said the officer in charge, Staubb's superior. “We ain't letting this bastard get away."

  "You better tell your men to shoot at anything that moves out there, Captain,” said Sid. “This guy will look like a wild boar out here, he's that hairy and little."

  "I'll pass that along."

  Sid's warning went down the line. The two cops were sent back in a team for the dogs. It would be well into daylight the next time they saw Hamel's little brother.

  Aching from his wounds, the one in his arm in particular, Dean found he could not recall a time in his life when the morning's first light had ever meant so much. The dogs and additional men had arrived, and finding the scent of the killer from some discarded clothing in his hovel, the search was resumed. The man most knowledgeable about the dogs was given the go-ahead to let them loose, come what may, after Dean and Sid together had recalled the events of the night, explaining how they had cornered the last member of the so-called Scalping Crew.

  "It's a certainty that this little man has lived off the land before,” finished Dean, recalling the years he'd lived alone at that Montana homestead while his brother was placed in county home. Sid reminded Dean that the dwarf also had had to fend for himself the entire time his brother was in Vietnam.