John Weston has been living the good life. A successful relationship, a good business, and not one but several women on the side. Tonight, he found out why:
Every seven years, the town where he lives chooses a sacred king. For seven years, he has everything his heart desires; at the end of the seventh, he is sacrificed to ensure the prosperity of the town.
That’s bad enough, but something weird is going on – well, even weirder. All of the people trying to kill John Weston tonight are being as nice about it as they can, and they act like they’re doing him a favor. Like they’re saving him from something worse. What could possibly be worse?
*
“Honey? We need to talk.”
John Weston stiffened. Those were the words every man most dreads to hear. And the timing was particularly bad: he and Courtney had just finished having some of the best sex he’d ever had. She’d been absolutely out of her mind tonight…and now she needed to talk.
Ah, hell. Sympathy bone. This can’t be good.
Still. Keep cool. Fly casual.
“Mmm? What is it, love?”
“I have…news.”
“What kind of news?” He asked.
As if I don’t know. You don’t announce good news like that.
She bit her lip, and he groaned inwardly. This was just like the time she got into that $1500 fender-bender in the P&C parking lot.
“Well…I don’t know how to put this gently. I…”
As long as you don’t want to be just friends. Why don’t you go with “it’s not you, it’s me”? I’d believe that.
John hated getting dumped. It meant he was off his game. He’d gotten too comfortable, waited too long, and gotten outmaneuvered as a result.
She paused, took a deep breath and said: “I’m pregnant.”
And that was when all of the circuit breakers in John Weston’s head blew at once.
“What? How? I mean…I know how, but…how?”
She’d been about to say something else – he couldn’t imagine what, what else could possibly matter right now? – and the question caught her off guard:
“Huh? Oh…I went off the Pill a couple months ago. That’s not – “
“You what?”
“John, please. You have to listen to me. I – “
“I don’t have to listen to anything!” He shouted, throwing back the covers and leaping out of bed. “How could you do this to me?”
She stared at him, her mouth still hanging open, caught in mid-sentence..
Surprised! She actually has the brass balls to look surprised!
“I…I’m sorry. I didn’t know this would upset you so much.”
“Didn’t know?” He half-screamed, his eyes bulging at the sheer audacity. “How did you think I would feel? ‘Oh, honey, I’m so happy! Let’s get married!’”
Wait a second.
He’d been pacing and waving his hands, too agitated to know what to do with himself, but that froze him in mid-stride. “That’s it, isn’t it?” He demanded, slowly turning on her. “Oldest trick in the book: ‘If I get knocked up, he’ll have to marry me’!”
She just blinked. “Wait, what?”
“Well, let me tell you something,” he said, ignoring her innocent act. “You’ve fucked that up for yourself. If I wasn’t ready before, what makes you think I’m ready now that you’ve proven how completely untrustworthy you are?” He finished with his finger pointed at her like a bayonet, and her staring at him wide-eyed.
He just stared back, waiting for her to figure out that the question wasn’t rhetorical. He honestly wanted to know what her thought process had been on this little stunt.
It went on like that for a long moment before she broke off the staredown and shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry you feel that way, John, but that’s not what this is about.”
He goggled at her. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Believe what you want,” she snapped. You could call Courtney a lot of things, but if you called her a liar you’d better be ready for the wrath about to descend upon you. “It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. Me being knocked up is not the news.”
Now it was his turn to blink and stare blankly. “It’s not?”
“No! That was me trying to lead up to the news gently and I’m sorry it didn’t work but would you please sit down and listen while I try again!”
John was sitting in the rocking chair across the room before it even occurred to him to argue.
Courtney sighed and rubbed her temples. “Look…John…honey…how long have you lived in this town?”
He scowled. “Seven years, as you damn well know. And if you say that it’s time for me to settle down…”
“I told you, that’s not what this is about.” With another sigh, she dropped her hands into her lap and looked him in the eyes.
“Seven years,” she said. “And they’ve been a good seven years, haven’t they? Business has been better than you ever imagined it could be, and it’s never been so easy for you to get laid.”
“And now I know why, don’t I?”
“No, you don’t. Not yet. And I’m not just talking about me.”
“What are you talking about, then?”
She held up her hand and began reciting names, ticking each off on her fingers: “Jessica Skovenski, Angela Benson, Nancy Carver, Julie Smith, Alexa Walker…” She wiggled her little finger at him at that last. “You really pushed your luck with that one, by the way. Good thing for you her eighteenth birthday was two days before.”
John just stared at her. She raised an eyebrow at him.
“Shall I go on?”
“No!” He shouted, too quickly. Then he realized his tactical error, and hurried to cover it up: “Look, I don’t know who’s been telling you what, but – “
…but she was shaking her head and chuckling – chuckling! – even as he protested his innocence. “Oh, babe,” She said, her voice a warm, impossible mix of amusement and affection, “Don’t waste your time. Did you really think I’d never find out? In this town?”
He flushed. He hated getting caught almost as much as he hated getting dumped
“Well, it looks like the only thing I did wrong was not dumping you for one of them,” he snarled, trying to regain some face. “If this is your idea of revenge, you are one crazy little bitch.”
Just as he’d hoped, that wiped the smile off her face. But she didn’t look hurt or angry, like he’d expected. She just looked…sad.
“I don’t want revenge,” she said. “You didn’t do anything we didn’t expect you to do.”
“Who expected me to do? What are you talking about?”
“Please just listen,” she said.
He subsided. Barely. Glaring. If he didn’t get some real answers soon, he was going to make a Grand, Stomping Exit, and to Hell with her explanations.
“Seven years ago,” She began, speaking like he was in one of her fifth-grade history classes, “When you first arrived, the town chose you as its sacred king. Since then, you’ve had everything you’ve wanted: everyone goes to you first when they want to buy a car, and no woman ever says no to you. But now the seven years is up.”
“If you don’t start making sense real quick, I am out that door.”
“It’s really not that complicated,” she said. “You can be kind of a dick sometimes – even if you don’t count the cheating, which I don’t, because that’s the kind of thing a sacred king is supposed to do – but we’ve had some good times together, and I wanted to give you a good last night.”
“You’re still not making any sense, but I can tell you one thing: if you wanted to make this a good night, you’ve fucked it up pretty royally.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” she said, wringing her hands. “But I think we can still salvage it, if you’ll let me.”
“Yeah?” He demanded. “How?”
She reached under her bedside table and pulled out a bucket of ice with a bottle of wine chilling in it. He hadn’t noticed it in their frantic stampede toward the bed.
“I put half a bottle of valium in this,” she said, holding up the bucket. “If you drink it, you’ll be so out of it that you won’t even feel it when I cut your throat.”
*
John Weston burst out the front door of his girlfriend’s house, hopping from one foot to the next as he struggled to pull his pants on at a dead run. It wasn’t an entirely new experience for him, but it never did get easy.
“John, wait!” Courtney called as she came out the door, clutching her robe closed with one hand and waving a butcher knife with the other. “Come back! You don’t understand! It’s better this way!”
That part was new.
Frantically, he slapped at his pants, hoping to find – yes. There.
Thank God.
His hand dove into his pocket and (taking a moment’s extra care so as not to spill his house keys – he really didn’t want to be locked out right now) pulled out his cell phone.
“Sheriff’s office, how can I – “
“This is John Weston!” He shouted as he ran down the street. “I’m on Second street, between Church and Brewer, heading for Hill road! Send someone right away! My girlfriend just tried to kill me!”
“She…? Okay. Just keep going the way you’re going. I think Hank’s in that area. I’ll have him pick you up.” ‘Hank’ was Sheriff Henry Barker, but in a town that contained all of four peace officers, he patrolled the streets just like his deputies. “Are you injured? Should I send an ambulance?”
“No, she never got close enough.”
“I knew it.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just hold on. Hank’ll be there in a minute.”
*
Courtney didn’t seem to be pursuing, so John had slowed to a fast walk by the time Hank pulled up in his squad car.
“Get in son,” he said, nodding toward the passenger seat. At sixty-four, Hank was old enough to call John “son”, but really too old to be sheriff. If he’d lived in a town that was even a little bit less peaceful, he’d have had to hang up his Smokey-the-Bear hat years ago. “Let’s get you down to the station.”
“What about Courtney?” John asked as he climbed into the car. “Is someone picking her up?”
“Not just yet,” Hank said as he pulled away from the curb. “I thought you and I should have a little talk first.”
John made a noise of disgust. “Look. Courtney already told me that everybody knows how much I’ve been screwing around, which, I know, I’m an asshole. But that doesn’t mean you can let her off the hook for attempted murder.”
“Wasn’t planning to. ‘s not what I was fixin’ to talk to you about.”
John rolled his eyes. “Let me guess, then: you’re her mother’s second cousin or something, and – “
“Boy, you never are gonna learn what I’m gonna say ‘less you let me say it.”
When you’re told to shut up by a man with a gun, it’s generally wise to do it.
“And to answer your question,” Hank continued, “I probably am related to Ms. Longstreet one way or another. Most of the family trees in this town cross at one fork or the other if you go back far enough. That ain’t the point. Now. Did Ms. Longstreet tell you why she wanted to kill you?”
“Uh…yeah,” John said, mystified. “Some sort of crazy bullshit about me being a ‘sacred king’ and my seven years being up, or some noise like that. Why, do you think it means anything?”
Hank’s scowl had been deepening as John spoke, and finally he banged on the dashboard. “Weee-ell, shoot!” He shouted. “I told her not to waste time with long explanations. Just give ‘im the wine and get it done, I said. But does she listen? Ohhhh no! He’s got a right to know, she says!”
It was about then that Henry Barker noticed his passenger staring at him bug-eyed.
“Look,” Hank growled, clearly frustrated that it had come to this. “It woulda been better if she’d just put you to sleep and finished the job, but now I gotta hope you can be sensible about this.”
“Sensible about what?” John asked meekly. He wanted to shout, to demand the answers, but again…gun.
“Here’s how it works:” Hank began. “Towns and cities are living things. Like…oh, I don’t know…little gods, I guess. That’s a hard thing for good Christian folk to accept, but sooner or later, you have to deal with the world like it is instead of how you think it oughtta be. Now, thing is, Jesus was willing to be his own sacrifice, but most gods aren’t like that. They want somebody else to bleed. Big cities like New York, that’s no big deal. You get that many people crammed in together, somebody’s gonna bleed on the sidewalk sooner or later. But you get a town like this, twenty-five-hundred people in the last census, and you can go a long time between murders. Closest thing we’ve had in the last fifteen years is when that damn fool Jedediah Wright rode his bike down to the Pine Tree Inn with his shotgun in the basket and fired a load of birdshot into the parking lot tryin’ to get Jake Haversham.”
“I’ve heard of that. The Schwinn-by shooting.”
“Yeah. And all that accomplished was a few cracked car windas, and the Schuyler kid needed a couple pellets pulled out of his shoulder. That ain’t good enough. So what happens is, every so often, the town picks someone. Last one before you was Toby Cooke. Ever hear about him?”
John thought about it a minute. Had he? It seemed like he had. The memory was strong, but vague, like something he’d heard more than once, but quite a while ago…
“Oh, yeah! I remember. That was the kid who died in the…” John felt his eyes go very wide, as he realized just what he was saying. “…hunting accident. Just…just before…I…got here.”
Hank said nothing, looking sad for the first time that night. Which was somehow the scariest thing he could have done.
Then John remembered something else.
“His girlfriend…I remember people saying he had a girlfriend, and that she was pregnant…”
Hank nodded. “That’s part of it, too. I guess the town doesn’t want its population to actually decrease, even if some’un has to die.”
John nodded as if this made perfect sense, all the while looking for a way out of the car. This was crazy. Literally crazy. Hank wasn’t “funnin’ him” (as Hank himself might say), nor was he busting his balls to get one back for Courtney. He really believed this.
“Hank…I gotta ask,” he began. Lull ‘em into overconfidence, that’s the way to do it, just like some rube at the dealership. Keep your head and you might get through this okay. “Is this like that fucked-up story I had to read in high school? What was it called?”
“The Lottery?” Hank offered. “Shirley Jackson?” Apparently he’d noticed the resemblance his own self at some point.
“Yeah, that one. Because I don’t remember drawing any damn ticket out of any damn box.”
The doors weren’t locked. That was good.
Hank shook his head. “You don’t get it, Johnny. The people didn’t choose you. The town did. Shooting Toby was the hardest thing Big Fred Cooke ever had to do, he’s never been right since, but it was a mercy compared to what would’ve happened if the town’d had to take ‘im itself. Believe you me, it’s a bad way to go. So, howzabout you make it easy on yourself and Ms. Longstreet? We’ll just pull over and I’ll put a couple bullets in the back of your head, and it’ll be over. Ever heard what they say? You never hear the one that gets you? It’s true. You won’t even know what hit you.”
*
John hit the shoulder and rolled. It was soft and sandy, but he would have jumped onto pavement if he’d had to.
This is fucking NUTS!
He looked around frantically.
Woods. I must be out past North Hill Road. Hank must’ve been bringing me out here to hide the body. Oh Christ this is real.
Oh, Jesus he’s stopping. He’s coming back. Of course he’s coming back. You don’t just say “oh, well” and drive off if the person you’re trying to kill decides they’d rather you didn’t.
John turned and bounded down the slope toward the woods. He skidded on the muddy hill (shit! It hasn’t rained all week! How – ?) and crashed into a tree, but he was so charged with adrenaline that he barely felt it, bouncing off and lurching away into the looming, night-dark woods.
Run. Get some distance. Hank is sixty-four and fat – spends his evenings sucking down beer and wings at Eddie’s instead of winning at racquetball – but he played in these woods as a kid and hunted in them when he grew up. He’ll find you if you hide too soon. Get some distance, give him more woods to search, then hide out for awhile – crashing around in the dark just gives him something to shoot at. Once you lose him, you can get the hell out of Dodge – but lose him first!
And that’s just what he did. He wasn’t satisfied with hiding behind some damn tree, either. Oh, no. What if Hank approached from the wrong side? He’d be pretty screwed then, wouldn’t he? So no tree.
Instead, he buried himself in a briar patch.
Which was even worse than he’d expected. He hadn’t expected it to be pleasant, but it was like each individual thorn wanted its own drop of blood or even piece of meat.
All of which was forgotten the instant he heard heavy, stumping footsteps coming through the woods.
“John? John, are you there?”
Keepquietdon’tmovekeepquietdon’tmove
“I know you’re out there, John,” Hank said as he appeared out of the darkness only a few feet away, right at the edge of the briar patch. “You come on, now. You’re just making it harder for everybody, including yourself.”
Hank was only a shadow in the leaf-filtered moonlight, but John could tell that he was facing away – that massive ass was a good indicator.
Don’tturnarounddon’tturnarounddon’tturnaround
“It’s better if you let me do it, son. It really is.”
Meanwhile, John was starting to question the brilliance of his hiding place. The usual stuff that happened every time you had to hold still – itchy nose, leg cramps, sweat trickling down his face almost too fast to blink out of his eyes – was bad enough. But in addition to all that, he had…well, his mental mantra had gone from:
Keepquietdon’tmovekeepquietdon’tmove
To:
Keepquietdon’tmoveignoretheprickerskeepquietdon’tmoveignoretheprickers
It wasn’t working. He was going to move. He could feel it coming, like a sneeze. He was going move, and –
“Hokay,” Hank sighed as he stumped off. “If that’s the way you want it.”
– and Hank was going to leave. Hank was going to leave?
Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, John stretched his legs and scratched his nose and wiped the sweat away as soon as Hank’s footsteps faded into the distance. He tried to brush the briars away, too, but all that seemed to accomplish was to scratch up his hands. Damn things were clingy.
What he did not do was leave the bush. This had to be a trap. Hank was a hunter, and hunters don’t get very far trying to chase after deer. They sit and wait and –
And off in the distance, John heard an engine growl to life.
It couldn’t be.
Then the siren started up, and dopplered away into the night.
It was.
Hank was gone. He’d been right there, death had been two feet away, and he was gone.
John struggled free of the briars, losing more skin in the process, and pulled out his cell phone.
No bars. Shit. How can there be no bars? It works just fine out on the road! Would trees interfere that much?
Well, maybe they were. Something was, anyway.
It wouldn’t be the craziest thing to happen tonight.
“Okay, so Plan B, then,” he said to himself.
But what was Plan B?
Get the fuck out of Dodge, of course…but that’s a goal, not a plan. I can’t go wandering around in the woods at night, I’ll get lost in about five seconds. I could walk along the road…no I couldn’t. Someone might come. But I could walk through the woods beside the road. Fade back into the trees when a car comes by. Keep trying the phone.
Now that’s a Plan B. Better get to it. I do not want to be inside town limits when the Sun came up.
*
An hour later, John was scratched up even worse, limping on a twisted ankle, and his phone still wasn’t working. But none of those things were his primary concern. No, his primary concern was the fact that he still hadn’t found the road. And that just wasn’t possible. He hadn’t run that far from the road, and even if he had, he’d heard the direction Hank drove off in. All he had to do was walk in that direction to find the road. That’s it.
So how…
Wait. Up ahead. Are those lights?
They were. And the trees were starting to thin out.
Shit. Probably a trailer. Minnie Mae Whitetrash and the kids she squeezes out every year.
Oh, sure, he could get his bearings once he reached whatever backroad the trailer was squatting on – he knew the backroads a lot better than he knew the woods, he’d gone out parking often enough…
But these fucking hillbillies aren’t too friendly to trespassers. Oh, sure, the chances of there being a Jethro Whitetrash in residence are pretty slim, but one of Minnie Mae’s boyfriends might be sleeping over, and besides, Minnie Mae herself can probably handle a shotgun pretty well. Given how everything else has gone tonight, she probably will.
Then, just as he was thinking that, a dog started barking.
“Fuck.”
The humans in that trailer might be asleep by now, or at least too drunk to notice. But that dog was awake. Trailerdogs were mean, too. Anyone who came within 100 yards – even on the road – was invading their territory.
To reiterate: fuck. Well, I got neither jack nor shit for options. Just move slowly, be ready to run. Hope it’s on a chain. That way, maybe I can circle…
No.
Not. Possible.
Not possible, goddammit! Not possible! This cannot be happening!
I can NOT be coming out of the forest into my own backyard!
He’d jumped out of Hank’s car on the North side of town, and his house was on the south. He couldn’t have covered that distance in an hour, even if he’d cut straight through the center of town at a dead sprint. To wander around it, in such a way that he hadn’t seen anything? Including the roads and rivers that he would have had to cross to get here? No. Just…no.
That was the least of it, though. The woods, as such, didn’t even come close to his house. Just a greenbelt, sandwiched between the backyards of his neighborhood and the one behind it. If he’d actually made his approach through those trees, he should have spent the last half-mile looking at –
Unable to stop himself, he turned and looked.
Houses.
They were there now. And the deep forest wasn’t.
He heard a crash and jangle of chain link behind him, which woke him up enough to realize that the dog was still barking. Throwing itself at the fence between their houses, in fact. Which made no sense…no more than Courtney wanting to cut his throat made sense, or Hank wanting to put a bullet in his brain. And for pretty much the same reason.
Dazed, he turned to face the elderly, amiable St. Bernard mix who had been his shaggy, four-legged buddy for seven years. The dog who was friend to everything in town with two legs, who endured the maulings of puppies and children alike with endless patience and good cheer, was snapping and snarling at him, trying to get through the fence and tear his throat out.
That’s it. Too much. Too much to ask any one guy to deal with in any one day. Just too much.
All John wanted now was to go home (but he was home! Ha ha! Wasn’t that convenient?), get in bed, and wake up tomorrow to discover that this whole crazy, crappy night had been one long dream.
He crossed his backyard in a state of truly amazing calm, no longer paying the slightest bit of attention to the shaggy mound of fury trying to come through the fence at him.
He’d just reached his back steps when the light came on next door. He flinched, remembering just why this night had been so hellish, but then Mrs. Detwiler came out onto her back porch, clutching a bathrobe around her skinny body, and suddenly his fear seemed ridiculous.
“Fluffo!” She scolded. “Why are you making that noise! Some of us are trying to – oh. Hello, Mr. Weston.”
“Hello, Mrs. Detwiler,” he said, giving her a weary, half-hearted wave as he mounted the steps.
“Well, I suppose this explains it.”
He froze.
“Explains what?” he asked, ‘casually’ reaching for the door as he watched her out of the corner of his eye.
“Why Fluffo’s so worked up. Animals are part of the town, you know. So are people, of course, but we can at least be nice about it.”
He’d more-or-less expected it, but his heart sank anyway. He sighed, closed his eyes, and leaned his head against the door with an audible bump. “…not you, too,” he groaned.
“Of course me too, dear,” she said. “I’m sure your young lady must have explained this to you. Now why don’t you come over here, and I’ll make us a nice cup of tea. If I put enough of Herb’s blood pressure pills in yours, you’ll just pass out and never wake up again. Nothing in the world easier.”
But John wasn’t listening to her anymore. He jammed his key into the lock and began twisting at it, but it wouldn’t turn. Dammit, his life literally depended on this, and it wouldn’t –
“Oh, that won’t work, Mr. Weston. If people and animals are part of the town, then can you just imagine the buildings?”
“Shut up, you withered old bag!” He screamed, torquing on the key with all of his might.
It snapped off like candy in his hand.
For a long moment, he stared at the nub in his hand, dumbfounded.
Maybe she’s right. It’s not like I built this house or anything. Hell, I moved in seven years ago, and people still call it “Helen and Bill’s old house”. Maybe – no. No. That’s crazy. A night-full of crazy talk is starting to brainwash me, that’s all.
“That’s all,” he growled aloud, to no one in particular.
“You really should consider that tea, Mr. Weston,” Mrs. Detwiler said. “The town is starting to run out of patience. It’s getting hungry.”
“Shut up about the town!” He screamed, whirling on her. “The town is not hungry! The town is not thinking or doing or wanting anything! Do you know why? Because it’s a fucking town! It’s dirt and concrete and houses and power lines and satellite dishes and trees! The only things here that can think are people, and I don’t know why they’re all out to kill me, but don’t pretend it’s the damn town!”
Like Courtney and Hank before her, Mrs. Detwiler was completely unperturbed. “If you say so, dear,” she said. “Let me know if you change your mind about the tea.” Then she calmly turned and re-entered her house.
When she did that, something snapped inside John Weston’s mind. He had nowhere left to hide. He couldn’t get into his house, someone would see him breaking in and call the police (if Mrs. Detwiler wasn’t calling the police already!), but the house wasn’t safe anyway. It was part of the town.
So he couldn’t hide. But he could run. He was tired and achey and scratched and bleeding, but he could still run.
I can run straight out of town and keep going, get to where the phones work and keys turn and trails in the woods always lead to the same place. I’ll run straight up the center of the road, I don’t give a shit anymore. They’re all asking permission to kill me, anyway. If I can just get out of town, everything will be okay.
But he didn’t run very far.
He’d barely gotten past his own front yard when something slammed into his shin. He heard a brittle crack, and agony flared from his hip to his ankle. “Fuck!” He screamed as he went down, abrading the last of the skin off his hands as he caught himself.
“Fuck,” he moaned. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
He looked back. What had he tripped over? The sidewalk in his neighborhood was uneven as hell – the town council wouldn’t spare a dime for repairs – but he was used to that. He knew where all the uneven places were, and he stepped over them without even thinking about it.
So what – ?
Then he saw, and he knew.
The section of sidewalk behind him was rising up like an opening maw. He tried to scramble forward, but then he realized that the section of sidewalk he was laying on was rising up, sliding back, pulling him in.
Like a tongue.
The last thing he remembered before the pain began was that they’d tried to warn him: the town was getting hungry, and it would be bad if it had to take him itself.
*
The screams didn’t last long, but it was still too long for Fran Detwiler. She wasn’t going to get back to sleep tonight, that was for sure.
Ah, well. Best to call up Sheriff Barker, let him know it was a done deal. Between the two of them, they’d make sure that poor Miss Longstreet believed that Mr. Weston had taken her tea, or Sheriff Barker’s bullets.
“Poor things,” she said as she shuffled toward the kitchen and the phone. “They never do listen.”