Kill for satan, p.10
Kill For Satan, page 10
Cynthia was positively beaming as she turned away from her dead sister and faced Seth. She looked like she’d just won the lottery. “You have no idea how satisfying that was. I’m sure that bitch fed you a line of shit about me while you two were locked up in there, but I’m here to tell you there’s two sides to every story. My family hated me because they couldn’t tolerate anything that didn’t conform to their repressed way of thinking. I was in hell for years before I found Satan.”
Seth nodded warily as he absorbed this speech. He wasn’t sure why she was bothering to mount any kind of justification for what she’d done. With his wounded heel, he was no kind of threat to her. Any attempt at escape would be laughable.
“So what now? You kill me?”
She shrugged. “I could do that, sure. I might even enjoy it, even though you’re no longer a virgin. Or I could bring you to tonight’s midnight mass and see if the priestess thinks you’re worthy of becoming one of us. What do you say, boy? I get this vibe from you, sort of a kindred feeling. You know what it’s like to be scorned and treated like shit, don’t you?”
Seth frowned, thinking about his parents.
He thought about his father’s fists connecting with his face. He had to admit Caitlin’s sister had a point.
“So what are you saying? That I become a Satanist like you?”
She smiled. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, kid. And, hey, it looks like I need a new escort to tonight’s big bash, as my boyfriend seems to have run away. I loved the guy, but I can’t say I’m surprised. He was always so wishy-washy about the devil worship thing. Another thing to consider. We’re actively working to convert the whole town to the dark faith. Things won’t go well for those who can’t get on board with that.”
Seth sighed. “What the hell. Why not? I’ll go to this midnight mass thing with you.”
In part he said this because it was the pragmatic thing to do. He feared a negative answer might cause him to fall victim to that machete, leaving him dead on the floor like all the others who’d come to the midweek YALL meeting. On another level, he was genuinely intrigued by Cynthia’s invitation.
“You’ve made a wise decision, kid. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Seth.”
“Well, Seth, judging from the way you’re holding your foot up like that, you could probably use some help getting out of here.”
She extended her free hand and he took it after a brief hesitation. As they started moving toward the basement door, she squeezed his hand hard and said, “Careful about all the blood. It’s slippery as hell.”
The bonfire at that night’s midnight mass was the biggest ever, with the bodies of those killed throughout the day feeding the flames. Micah’s body was among those that burned that night. Sindie glimpsed his face in the huge pile of bodies moments before the pile was set ablaze. She felt sad when she saw his slack features and realized he was gone forever. Her love for him had been real, their emotional connection deeper and more profound than nearly anything else she’d ever known, with the obvious exception of her love for Satan.
The dark lord made another appearance at the mass, again inhabiting the body of the masked priestess to deliver his message. He was pleased with the unprecedented bounty of pure souls delivered to him by his faithful that night. The souls taken in his name would feed his power and help to bring about a new dark age. The reward for those who served him would be just as unprecedented. Soon Littleburg’s followers of the dark faith would hold absolute sway over the town, turning it into one of hell’s most dedicated outposts on earth.
Sindie’s sadness over Micah was swept away as the mass proceeded to the stage of revelry and orgy. She indulged in the delights of the flesh with her usual wild abandon, losing herself in the sheer sensory overload of it all as the midnight air thickened with black, swirling smoke and the stench of burning human flesh.
EPILOGUE
Three months later
Scarlet Collins was back in Littleburg after a semester away at the community college in Monroe County. She had mixed feelings about being back in her hometown. The place was as quiet as ever, but something felt different. A lot of people she’d known growing up here were no longer around, including a few who’d been close friends. She was given conflicting reasons for the mini-exodus every time she inquired about it. For her that was clue enough to stop inquiring about it. She knew the town had a dark underbelly. There’d been whispered rumors about sinister happenings in the woods on the outskirts of town for as long as she could remember. She didn’t know how much stock she put in the rumors, but it’d long been understood it was best not to get too nosy about it.
In the end, she decided to accept the multiple disappearances as just part of life in Littleburg. There wasn’t a lot going on around here in terms of fun things to do. It was a boring place, really. That some of the town’s denizens would opt to suddenly leave and start over somewhere else was no big surprise.
Scarlet was just glad she’d been able to rent her old apartment from the Dozier family again. The room above their garage was more or less as she’d left it at the end of the previous summer. The walls were still adorned with her collection of horror movie posters. Right now, as she sat atop chubby Franklin Beauchamp on her bed and rode his big dick in a slow, rhythmic way, she had a direct view of the posters for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Evil Dead. Both movies were perennially in her top five horror films of all-time. Top five films period, actually. These posters occupied wall space above her wall-mounted 55-inch television, which was currently tuned to Channel 39.
She began to ride Franklin faster when she heard the familiar Shock Theater theme music emanate from the soundbar. The show had been one of her favorites since childhood. It had been on hiatus for a while, however, because the old Count Gravemore guy was one of the many who’d disappeared in her absence. The show had been gone entirely during that time. Not a single rerun had aired, from what she’d been told.
Now, apparently, it was back.
But, as she soon learned, this was no rerun.
The distinctive organ-driven theme music ended and the cheesy old-school title graphics gave way to a shot of a completely redesigned set for the show. The old set’s vibe had been very Hammer Films, but this new one looked like it was inspired by the likes of Hostel and Saw. It had a grimy industrial look and featured graphically realistic depictions of bodies locked into various torture devices. A woman in a tiny black dress stood between two of these devices. Her back was turned to the camera. Then she turned around and smiled as she appeared to lick blood from the blade of a butcher knife. The blood was probably the usual stage mixture of red food coloring and Karo syrup, but it looked good on screen.
Bouncing up and down on Franklin with even greater vigor now, Scarlet gasped and pointed at the screen. “Holy shit! I know that chick! She works at that record store on Main Street. Or she used to anyway.”
Franklin said something, but it was muffled by the studded black bondage mask encircling his head.
On the screen, the camera zoomed in for a closer shot of the new host of Shock Theater. “Good evening,” she purred in the silkiest, sexiest voice Scarlet had ever heard. “And welcome to Shock Theater. I’m Sindie Midnight, your new host. Tonight we bring you a blood-curdling double feature of glorious Satanic majesty, beginning with Blood On Satan’s Claw.”
“Yes!”
Scarlet’s exclamation was partially a product of sexual excitement, but it was also fueled by the pure joy she felt over the return of Shock Theater. She rode Franklin harder and harder, eliciting more muffled complaints from beneath the bondage mask. Franklin sounded like he was in a lot of pain, which was to be expected with so many strands of barbed wire holding his limbs in place. It was amazing how impressively hard a tortured man could stay after being force-fed so many boner pills. She’d been riding him for almost an hour and his dick was still just as engorged as it had been at the beginning.
She figured she’d keep at it at least until the resuscitated Shock Theater went to its first commercial break. Then she might start working on him with the knife. It was a funny thing. During her time away from Littleburg, her murderous compulsions had gone away, but the old craving for blood came back within days of her return. There was just something about this place.
Something that made her feel … evil.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank C.V. Hunt and Andersen Prunty for their hard work in getting this book out in a greatly accelerated time frame. They kick a frankly astonishing amount of ass. Brian Keene, Ryan Harding, Matt Hayward, Mike Lombardo, Tod Clark, and my brother Jeff are some other cool people I know. Of course, I have to thank my wife, Jenn, because she’s fucking awesome. Last but definitely not least, huge thanks go out to my Patreon “super supporters”: Brian Keene, Brian W. Picard Sr., Ben Ohmart, Jordan Lindsey, Joe Brannon, Robert Witherington, Scott Berke, and Tim Feely.
Look at that. Brian Keene got named twice in the space of one acknowledgments page. That may be some kind of historical first.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bryan Smith is the author of numerous novels and novellas, including 68 Kill, Slowly We Rot, Depraved, The Killing Kind, The Freakshow, and Last Day. Bestselling horror author Brian Keene described Slowly We Rot as, “The best zombie novel I’ve ever read.” A film version of 68 KILL, directed by Trent Haaga and starring Matthew Gray Gubler from CRIMINAL MINDS, was released in 2017. Bryan lives in Tennessee with his wife, Jennifer, and their many pets.
Follow him on Twitter at @Bryan_D_Smith and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bryansmith/
Get access to exclusive Bryan Smith fiction at Patreon. Includes serialized novellas and novels, excerpts, short stories, and behind-the-scenes essays: http://www.patreon.com/horrorauthorbryansmit
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Bryan Smith, Kill For Satan
