Free Shades: Eight Tales of Terror by D Nathan Hilliard Page A

But you ain’t gonna like what I found in his trash pile out back neither.”
    “The trooper?”
    “Nope, somebody else. Maybe more than one somebodies. Hard to tell. They’re just bones…and they’ve been gnawed on.”
    “Aw hell!”
    “Yep.”
    The Sheriff closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. He could see the headlines now. This was going to be a total circus. When the rest of the county found out there had been a backwoods cannibal living nearby, there would be hell to pay. On top of that, there would be the almost impossible task of identifying the victim, or victims.
    “Just wait. ” Les looked at him like he was reading his mind “Just wait till you see inside. It gets even better.”
    “You’re not helpin’ my ulcer, Les.”
    Carl could detect the smell of decay when he stepped up next to the door, and braced himself for what was to come. He pulled another cigarette of his own from his pocket and lit it from the deputy’s.
    “Here , Pete.” He offered the pack. “You want one?”
    “Oh no, those things will kill you.”
    “Your choice.” The Sheriff shrugged. “But it will help with the smell.”
    In truth, the Sheriff had acclimated to the smell of rot in the trenches of France long ago but it didn’t mean he liked it. He used to carry cigars for this very purpose, but Les had begged him not to send him home to Kathy smelling like that anymore. Now he settled for using those new menthol cigarettes the wives preferred.
    Carl took a deep drag on the cigarette and followed Les into the dim interior of the cabin. No point in putting it off any longer. He braced himself for the worst, but still only made it a couple of steps in before stopping and staring in disbelief.
    Luther Cole had died as crazy as he lived.
    It took a second for the Sheriff to understand what he looked at. The hermit wore only a deerskin in the form of a cape he tied at the neck. The skin included the head and horns, which Luther wore like a hood over his head. With his neck bent at an odd angle, and the hood now hanging down over his head, it made it difficult to tell the body even belonged to a human being. From the neck down, the corpse had begun to bloat, giving it a doughy shape the old man never possessed in life. Even worse, the blood had settled into the lower body, turning it black  from the waist down and engorging all the extremities…
    A ll of them.
    “Ahhh God!” T he young deputy choked in the doorway while staring in horror at the enlarged phallus pointed directly back at him.
    “Easy, Pete,” Les chuckled as he lit a kerosene lantern hanging nearby with a match . “He don’t mean nothin’ by it. He’s just happy to see you.”
    The young deputy swallowed twice before turning green and fleeing the doorway. The two older men watched him go, then looked at each other.
    “Les,” Carl sighed. He rolled his eyes as he listened to the sounds of retching coming through the wall. “Sometimes I think you have a real mean streak in you.”
    “He was gon na blow sooner or later anyway.” Les grinned and walked back over to look at the corpse. “Better to get it over with. Let’s see what we got here.”
    “You do that, I’m trying to get a count of all these animal skins on the wall. Ol’ Luther was quite the hunter. We got coyote, raccoon…here’s a bobcat…a few possum…and huh? Aw no… crap…”
    “Lemme guess…a scalp.”
    “Yeah,” the Sheriff sighed. “Two of them. How did you guess?”
    “All the arrowheads.” The deputy nodded at a shelf and table littered with pointed pieces of flint. Most were arrowheads but some were obviously for larger weapons. “And he’s got a homemade tomahawk over there in the corner next to his shotgun. It looks like Luther thought he was some kind of injun shamen or something. But speaking of the shotgun… ”
    The deputy retrieved the double barreled twelve gauge from the corner and broke it open. He extracted the two