Candy Cain Kills, page 8
They all watch as the car door opens, and Sheriff Brock gets out from behind the wheel.
“Why is the sheriff driving our car?” Fiona asks, gut sinking. “And where’s Dad?”
The sheriff opens the back door to lift a limp body out, and Fiona recognizes the puffy coat immediately. Brock drapes Dad’s arm around his shoulder, carrying him toward the house.
“A little help!” Brock calls from under the weight.
“Oh my God, Greg!” Mom rushes out the door and down the porch steps. She puts Dad’s other arm around her shoulder and helps Brock carry him across the threshold into the house.
“What happened?” Fiona asks.
“We got into a little accident on the way here.” Brock’s leg is bleeding from a deep cut, his face inflamed pink.
It was hard to see through the snow, but the car didn’t look banged up to Fiona. So, what kind of accident was he talking about, and more importantly: “Why didn’t you go to the hospital?”
Brock responds by roughly releasing Dad’s body, which collapses against Mom like a sack of bricks, knocking her to the floor under the weight.
“Mom!” Fiona lurches toward her mother.
“Not the best cover, I know,” Brock says. “But that’s all the time I needed.”
He tosses the camcorder at Austin, who catches it instinctively, confused as the sheriff casually strolls back out and closes the front door behind him.
It’s all happening too fast to process as Mateo finally says out loud: “All the time he needed for what?”
“Greg?” Mom is checking Dad’s pulse, prying his eyelids open.
“Mom. . .” Fiona points to the bottom of Dad’s puffy coat, leaking with blood.
Mom unzips the coat, and Fiona is instantly reminded that she’s not in some bloodless fantasy video game with orcs and axes. The darkest red has blossomed around two gunshot wounds in her father’s chest.
Everyone realizes it all at once, but it’s Fiona who actually says it: “Dad’s dead.”
Austin rushes to the door and tries to open it, but it barely pulls an inch before snapping shut again.
Fiona looks out the window to see that Brock has just finished tying a bungee cord around the knob, securing the other end around the porch post for tension. He’s trapped them in the house.
The sheriff gives Fiona a wink before heading to his car.
Cortisol spikes in her system, just like the shot the doctor gives her to ease the arthritis. Only this is all natural, pure fear.
Her mother is weeping on the ground with her father’s corpse, and Fiona’s trying to do what she does best.
Compartmentalize the pain.
But a little voice in her head is saying that it doesn’t matter anyway.
They’ll be joining Dad soon.
Brock grits his teeth as he limps toward the car, leg still bleeding from that sneaky bastard’s cheap shot.
“Your old man put up a fight,” he calls over his shoulder toward the house. “I’ll give him that.”
He pops the station wagon trunk, finding the red can of gasoline he’d moved there from his own cruiser. He always keeps it full in case of an emergency, and this was indeed an emergency.
An emergency cleanup.
As he trudges back to the house, Brock thinks of all the citizens of Nodland sleeping soundly in their beds on Christmas Eve. They have no idea the lengths he goes to serve and protect them; but he does it anyway. A thankless servant, just like Christ himself.
Arriving on the wooden porch, he walks backwards along the boards, gas can tilted to douse the whole thing. But too much weight on his injured leg sends his boot slipping on the wet wood, and he falls flat on his back.
Brock curses to himself, can’t wait to be done with this mess. Thankfully, nobody inside saw the embarrassing display. They’re too busy screaming and crying as he climbs back to his feet and calls through the window screen.
“You folks should’ve just stayed in the city.”
There are more bodies inside than he met at the diner, but it doesn’t matter. They all came from the same heathen hellhole called Los Angeles.
City of Angels, my ass, he thinks.
He would die before letting Nodland go rampant with crime and decay, lawlessness and sin. All it takes is one bad news story, one infamous crime to open the floodgates. It almost consumed them ten years ago, but Brock handled it, like he always does. He overdosed that loose-lipped M.E. on fentanyl and, wouldn’t you know it, the paper printed a retraction on account of the unreliable source.
There was no Candy Cain, no violent murders in Nodland.
A tragic fire, that was all.
“He’s gonna burn us alive,” a young girl says inside now. “The fucking sheriff is gonna burn us all alive.”
“That’s right,” he says. “A cleansing by fire, just like the good book says.”
He needs to keep Nodland clean and pure. God’s chosen people mustn’t be tainted by outsiders.
Brock pats his pants pocket but finds it empty. He doesn’t see the Zippo on the porch where he fell, so it must’ve slipped out in the car. He draws his gun instead, sending a clear message to the little girl on crutches still glaring at him through the grey mesh screen.
“Now, I know you ain’t running nowhere, little lady. But you best tell your family to stay put too. Because anyone who tries to escape is gonna find themselves shot like fish swimming out of a barrel.”
Brock aims at her head, does a dramatic kickback motion like he’s just pulled the trigger.
She doesn’t flinch, looks past him now, into the tree line. Poor thing’s gone catatonic.
He limps back to station wagon, checks the driver’s seat and finds his trusty Zippo, emblazoned with that good old American flag. He’s feeling damn tired by the time he gets back to the bottom of those porch steps.
The Zippo’s metal top clicks open, and Brock’s ready to light it up and finish the job.
“Wait,” the cripple girl says. “If you’re gonna kill us all, at least tell us why.”
Brock sighs. He doesn’t owe her an explanation, but he doesn’t get to boast often. The cost of being a silent guardian.
“I already got into it with your daddy, so you’re getting the CliffsNotes. When Candy Cain killed her family, she nearly killed this town too.” He flicks his thumb over the wheel, sparking the flame bright. “It’s time to put the legend to bed.”
It could just be the window screen distorting his vision, but Brock swears he sees that little girl smiling as she says: “Why don’t you tell the legend to her face?”
“What are you on about?”
She’s definitely smiling now. “That’s all the time I needed.”
Brock senses it, a presence behind him as a little voice speaks over his shoulder: “So many toys.”
There’s a tug on his belt and he spins around to face the tugger. Brock swears he’s looking upon a miracle.
Candy Cain herself standing before him, risen from the ashes like Jesus from the tomb.
He can’t find his own words, so it’s verse that falls from his lips: “And the dead will be raised imperishable.”
This miracle of resurrection is the last thing he sees before Candy raises the pepper spray and presses down on the nozzle.
A blast of spicy liquid flushes Brock’s eyelids open, and he collapses to his knees, dropping the Zippo in the snow. She grabs him by his thinning hair, holding him in place as the spraying continues. Brock screams, swears his eyeballs are melting right into his skull as he pulls the gun from his belt and swings it forward.
Candy’s grip releases and there’s a bustling of movement in the snow as Brock fires wildly. He hears bullets ping and pang off the station wagon until the gun click-clicks empty.
Did he hit her?
If he did, it doesn’t stop her from singing.
“God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.”
Brock can’t see a damn thing now as he starts to crawl away on his stomach. He feels the tug at his belt once more.
That’d be the taser.
“Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day.”
But Christ won’t save Brock from what comes next. A mechanical pop, then two sharp pinches in his back. Those little metal hooks cling to his flesh, followed swiftly by 240 volts of electricity, surging into his muscles.
The lightning scrambles his brain, thoughts bouncing around like popcorn in his head, but one of those thoughts rings clear and bright:
Oh God, the gasoline.
It’s soaking the back of his uniform from that stupid fall, making the polyester combustible; and combust it does, because the next thing Brock experiences is hell on Earth.
He doesn’t full-on engulf in flames, but his back turns into a flaming grill on the Fourth of July as he thrashes face down in the snow. Even over the sound of his own screaming, he can hear the engine starting.
Brock roars back at the machine, helpless. He can’t see it, but he knows what comes next. He just keeps crawling through the cold snow, his back a raging hellfire.
The front wheel skims the inside of his legs before slowly crunching up over his pelvis.
God, he wishes she’d just floor it and get it over with, but the car rolls slowly up his spine, crack-crack-cracking every vertebra like a two-ton chiropractor.
All the while his insides are pushing, sliding up, up, up toward his head. He’s a tube of toothpaste being squeezed until chunky red innards come oozing outward from his mouth, his nose; and there go his long-suffering eyes, popping loose from his skull.
The car door opens and Candy Cain hops out.
The flames on Brock’s back are licking up the tire, into the engine.
She bends down, wraps her hands around his head. It’s nice and loose from all the bone cracking and tendon tearing. Comes off in one firm tug, easy as a bow taped to wrapping paper.
She carries her dripping present toward the house, admiring the new trellis full of dead flowers.
Everything dies. Even pretty things.
Candy doesn’t flinch when the boom comes next.
A hot gust blasts through the window screen when the family station wagon explodes.
Austin’s eyes water, staring at the hunk of fiery debris when he realizes Candy Cain has already disappeared into the night again. He turns back to the group with visions of carving knives dancing in his head.
“Fiona was right. We need to arm ourselves.”
Everyone seems to agree as they shake out of freeze mode and into fight, rushing back into the kitchen. They pull out drawers and scramble to find any weapons they can. Unfortunately, Lynette did a terrible job of stocking the rental with the bare IKEA essentials. Austin just witnessed that girl rip a grown man’s head off with her bare hands. No way is he going up against her with a green plastic spatula.
He slides a big kitchen knife from the block and turns to his sister. “Stay close to me, okay?”
“Grab me two steak knives,” Fiona says. She clutches the smaller knife handles against the grips of her forearm crutches, blades pointed out like the horns of a bull.
His sister can clearly handle herself, but his mom is still staring vacantly back into the living room at her dead husband.
“Mom?” Austin steps into her line of sight, blocking the view. “Remember what you said, about trying harder?” Austin places the kitchen knife in his mother’s hand, wrapping her fingers around it and squeezing tight. “It’s time to try harder. We need you. Now.”
Mom visibly swallows a lump in her throat, and Austin knows she’s sending that fear somewhere deep into her gut, away from her nodding head as she says, “I’m here.”
“Good.” He turns back to see Mateo wielding a giant butcher’s knife and Valerie dragging a heavy cast iron skillet off the stove.
“Are you sure you don’t want something sharper?” Mateo asks.
“Absolutely not.” Valerie shakes her head. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with. She could be a zombie, and stabbing doesn’t kill zombies.” She lifts the black pan by its grippy rubber handle. “But one swing to the skull with this will stop anything in its tracks.”
Austin shakes his head. “She’s not a zombie, Valerie.”
“How do you know, Austin?”
“Because zombies aren’t real.” He doesn’t actually know that, doesn’t feel like he knows anything anymore. “And even if they are real, I’m pretty sure zombies don’t grow up. I think Candy survived that fire somehow. Did you see what she was wearing? The same pajamas from the video.”
A blur of red and white whistles past the kitchen window, and Valerie shrieks.
“Okay.” Mom finally takes charge, snapping the curtain closed. “We’re too exposed down here. Everyone upstairs. Let’s go.”
They scurry up the stairs, crowding into the master bedroom. It does feel safer, but Fiona asks the question on everybody’s mind: “What do we do now?”
Austin darts to the window. He looks down to see the storm doors to the basement and the truck sitting beside them. “Rick’s body has to be in this house somewhere, and I’m betting his keys are still on him.”
“So, your plan is to go looking for dead fucking bodies?” Valerie asks.
“It’s the closest car and our best chance of getting out of here,” Austin says. “Unless you’re ready to make a run for the road.”
Valerie groans. “Please tell me somebody has a better idea.”
All heads turn toward the only adult in the room. But Mom is standing by the dresser, reading some kind of note she just plucked from the floor.
“Mom?” Fiona asks.
Mom wipes her tears and tucks the note into her pocket, turning to the kids with welcome authority. “There are two ways into this room. Austin, Mateo. Help me move this dresser.”
The three work together to push the heavy wooden dresser in front of the hallway door. Mom drags the wooden chair from the corner and jams it under the bathroom door handle to seal the other entrance.
“Someone must have heard that explosion, they’ll see the smoke,” she says. “We just have to wait it out. If she tries to get in, there’s only one of her and four of us.”
“Four of us left.” The heavy pan trembles in Valerie’s hand. “We shouldn’t even be here. I should be home in my warm bed watching Love Actually. God damn you, Mateo.”
“God damn me?” Mateo says.
“You just had to drag us out here to meet up with your secret crush, didn’t you?”
Austin’s heart sinks.
Mateo fumbles for words, finding a single unconvincing one. “What?”
“Oh, come on,” Valerie says. “I’m not an idiot, even if you treat me like one. I know you two have a thing for each other. Everybody knows.”
“A thing?” Austin feels the blood rush into his cheeks. “We aren’t even. . . There’s nothing to know.”
“I know.” Fiona shrugs.
“Yeah, honey,” Mom chimes in, “It’s pretty obvious, and very sweet.”
Austin doesn’t know what to say to them, so he turns to Mateo instead. “I mean. . . do you? Have a crush on me?”
Mateo looks down at the floor. “I did drag everyone out here with a half-assed plan just to see you. So, maybe, yeah. I kinda have a crush on you.”
“Oh.” Austin can’t help smiling. “Cool. Me too.”
Mateo grins back. “Cool.”
Valerie interrupts the moment. “What’s not cool is totally using me to come out here.”
“You’re right,” Mateo admits. “I’m sorry, Val. That was fucked up. You don’t deserve to be treated that way.”
Austin speaks up. “I guess it just took us a little longer than everybody else to realize.” This is not how he imagined this conversation would unfold, but relief swells in his chest as he looks around at his family and friends, all so accepting.
“It’s fine.” Valerie shrugs. “You two will make a very cute couple.”
“Guys?” Fiona interjects.
“I mean, if we actually get out of here alive.”
“Guys!” Fiona shouts.
“What?” Austin asks.
“Did you hear that?”
Austin can barely make out the sound.
A faint whistling.
“I think she’s in the house,” Fiona whispers.
Valerie’s grip tightens on the pan handle. She is so not ready for this. “Where’s it coming from?”
Mrs. Werner leans her ear against the bathroom door first, then the bedroom door. She shakes her head. “Not there.”
“Wait,” Valerie says as the whistling gets louder. “I know this song.”
She’s been spending every afternoon at the mall a mile from school because her mom’s too busy (or day drunk) to pick her up. Valerie doesn’t mind the shopping sprees, but lately the Christmas music on repeat has been driving her nuts. The lyrics are ingrained in her at this point as she sings along to the tune in her head: Ho, ho, ho, who wouldn’t go? Ho, ho, ho, who wouldn’t go?
Mrs. Werner is looking at that note again. “My North Star. . . Oh God. The skylight.”
Valerie’s face falls as she hears the whistling directly above now. Her eyes move up to the ceiling.
To the skylight above the bed.
The lyrics spill from her mouth: “Up on the housetop, click, click, click. . .”
Crash.
Glass rains down from above as a basketball bounces off the bed and thumps to the floor at Valerie’s feet.
No, not a basketball. It’s Sheriff Brock’s severed head. Stringy red things hang from his torn neck and ooze out his mouth.
“Run!” Mrs. Werner pulls the chair from under the bathroom door handle and guides everyone through.
But Valerie’s too slow. Candy Cain drops down after the severed head, landing softly on the mattress with a giggle. The pajama-clad killer hops off the bed with her back to Valerie, lurching toward the bathroom door, where everyone is huddled inside.
Valerie rears back that heavy pan, rushing forward to throw an uneasy swing—
Thunk.
It barely grazes the back of Candy’s head, but it’s enough to send the little freak flopping face-first to the floor.
