Free A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre: Halloween Is Going to Be Jealous by ed. Shane McKenzie Page A

pulse, throb, breathe with the threat of constricting them into pulp. A nonsymmetrical box was described into the dirt of the far wall like a crudely carved door. The ground consisted of the same muddy substance as the walls, and chunks of it clung to his hands and feet…
    Oh God.
    His feet were bound by chains as thick as a giant’s thumb; the other end of the chains vanished into the hard-packed earth. He looked at Brooke and found her chained to the ground, as well. Terror licked his spine.
    “Are you okay, baby?”
    “I think so. I don’t…do you remember what happened?”
    Amazed at the steadiness in her voice, Lawrence said, “No…I think…I was smoking by the car. We had just packed up the tent, right? That’s the last thing I remember.”
    Brooke twisted her bound legs beneath her so that she could sit upright. “I remember double-checking the campsite, making sure the fire wasn’t still smoldering in the pit. I…I heard a creak behind me, thought it was you. There was a smell…”
    “Like something burning, right? Like a fire? I smelled it too. Then…” He rubbed the back of his head and flinched at the pain. “Then we woke up here.”
    “What the fuck, Lawrence, what the fuck? Where are we? Who would do this?”
    Stay calm, sweetie, please stay calm. If you panic I’m gonna lose it. Sweat dripped down his forehead, hung off the tip of his nose, and fell to the mud unheeded.
    “I remember something else,” she said. “The trees, right before we were hit by whatever hit us.” She leaned forward, fixed his wide gaze with conviction. “They moved— ”
    The door camouflaged into the far wall slammed open with a wet thud. The couple shrieked like a single organism and scuttled backwards, stopping with pained grunts when their leg shackles pulled taut.
    The stench of a thousand swampland logs swept into the earthen room. Lawrence gagged and buried his nose into his filthy sleeves. The air was fat with the smell of wood, the stink of wet things. He shut his eyes, afraid to let the poison in, and let toxic tears flow. The stench wasn’t nauseating in itself—it smelled green, lush, alive— but the concentrated thickness and intensity of the smell overpowered what little resolve Lawrence still possessed and drove a string of whimpers from his throat.
    It’s a dream, he thought. This is a dream smell. But when the sound of shuffling footsteps followed the stench into their prison, he opened his eyes and prayed to be awakened.
    The figure striding into the room was easily seven feet tall. He limped towards Lawrence with an unsteady gait, his legs teetering and seeming to threaten collapse with each step, like a toddler learning to walk but too inexperienced to trust his limbs. A gown of thick brown fabric covered his thin frame to where his knees should’ve been, and a hooded cowl capped his head, rendering shadows over his face.
    Brooke lunged against her chains. “Who the fuck you think you are the fuck did you do to—” She stopped as the towering figure turned in the middle of a rickety step and strode towards her.
    “No!” Lawrence screamed. “Me! Come to me!”
    The figure drew his right hand from his robes. A mound of black dirt lay in its palm. Brooke had backed away as far as her binds would allow, and Lawrence saw blood ringing her thin ankles where the chains bit. The man— that’s no man you know that’s no man— stopped in front of her, dark crumbs falling from his upturned hands. With a crack that stained Lawrence’s jeans with a spurt of urine, each of the figure’s legs bent at the middle and snapped, creating a pair of splintered, jagged knees. Brooke screamed, covered her ears as if preparing for the next explosion of breaking joints.
    The thing knelt before her, its face cloaked in the darkness of its hood. Its left arm emerged from its sleeves, as straight and unwavering as its legs had been before the deafening crack. Lawrence envisioned a snake slithering from its