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

den as the arm grew longer, longer, knotty yet smooth. Lawrence lunged, fingers curled and eager for the thing’s neck, but his chains locked tight and he pitched forward, his face slamming into the earthen floor. He raised his head into blindness, tried to scrape the grime out of his eyes. His ears, however, were ruthlessly keen, and pain riddled his chest as he heard his wife’s shrieks collapse into retching, choking sobs.
    The thing was on him before he could regain his sight. A hand as hard as granite grabbed the back of his skull and wrenched his head back. Lawrence screamed. A ball of dirt smashed into his mouth. He shook his head, tried to dislodge the filth, to see his attacker. Blinking away enough for a hint of blurred sight, he saw only the hooded figure’s arm, directly in front of his face and shoving the soil down his throat. He gagged, spit, shrieked behind the wall of dirt filling his mouth, and finally, he swallowed. The dirt, now muddy with his saliva, slid down his esophagus like a ribbon of slime. He coughed, exaggerated the action in an effort to expel the dirt from his mouth, his stomach, his lungs, but the thing pressed harder. Lawrence could taste its fist in his mouth, and it tasted like timber.
    He raised his teary gaze to the thing’s face. Shadows still embraced its details, but a creak sounded from within the darkness like a door opening upon a haunted room. It’s smiling, he thought, and closed his eyes again, praying he’d never have to see that grin. He thrashed against the thing’s pressing arm, its shoving and choking and suffocating arm…
    Bark, he thought. Its arm looks like bark.
    It spoke then, its voice a log dragged across bones. “The trees did more than move. They screamed.” It lowered its face to within inches of Lawrence’s own. It reeked of oak and summer. “Remember your greatest sin, murderer.”
    It rose and backed away. Lawrence heard its irregular footsteps retreating, heard the moaning and spitting of his wife across the room. He shoved his fingers into his mouth, digging for loose dirt, spitting and spitting and screaming when nothing but flecks came out.
    HE DIDN’T REMEMBER PASSING out, but when he awoke, the stench of vomit dominated any lingering odor of wood or mud. A crusty film of dried puke coated his face, and he wiped the gunk with his shirt, managing only to smear sweat-saturated dirt into the mess.
    Brooke moaned from behind him. He sat up, reached for his wife, his fingers just able to brush her outstretched arm, her face fuzzy in the thin moonlight. She gave him a mockery of a smile.
    The bravado was gone, all the spunk and grit and attitude he had fallen in love with, gone. Her eyes shook off her smile with disdain and broadcast the truth: she was terrified and lost. Lawrence had never seen this expression in her eyes before, didn’t think defeat had ever been wired into her genes. But even the effort of smiling, her attempt to placate the fear that must be plastered across his own face, spoke of the fight in her bones, the strength of her soul.
    He didn’t blame his wife for her fear. He was mortified, beyond the capacity to control his terror. Every cell in his being shrieked for release, begged to awaken from the nightmare. Raw courage in the midst of insane violence, brashness in the face of murderous psychosis, spitting into the grin of your kidnapper while chained to the ground and blinded by his blade, none of those responses to the world’s basest evil held true outside of the clichéd heroes of Hollywood. In the real world, terror bit with monstrous jaws and didn’t let go after a hail of curses and a few clever one-liners. It scoffed at your defiance and giggled at your anger.
    “I love you,” he said.
    “I love you too, Lawrence.”
    “We’re gonna get out of this.” Her smile returned, even less convincing than the first.
    “You were throwing up in your sleep,” she said. “I was afraid you’d choke.”
    “I wouldn’t