It still applied. It had to.
She lay flat among the crosses, and pressed her eyes tightly shut.
She was finished.
Dead.
Oh Christ.
At least, if she didn’t move, the Krulls might not notice her. She could die here, and save herself from them.
Time passed.
A long, long time.
Longer than Cordie thought a night could last. Then the sky turned pale blue, and finally the sun came up.
Hearing a sound, she raised her head. And saw Heth swinging his legless torso through the crosses. His eyes met hers.
“No,” she whimpered.
A strange noise filled her ears, a fluttering whup-whup-whup. She raised her eyes. At the far edge of the clearing, a helicopter sped over the treetops.
“Jesus,” she muttered.
She glanced at Heth. His hideous, bloated face seemed to grin.
She scrambled to her feet. She raced toward the cabin, waving her arms high, not giving a damn about the crosses she bumped, the heads that tumbled before her.
The helicopter set down in front of the cabin.
The passenger, a tall woman, stepped out. She wore a red jumpsuit. She carried a rifle.
“Sherri!”
Cordie rushed toward her.
Sherri shouldered the rifle.
“No! Please! I’m sorry!”
The shot smashed through the roar of the rotors. Cordie spun around. Heth, a yard behind her, teetered on his outthrust arms.
A hole in his forehead.
He fell facedown.
“Get your ass over here!” Sherri yelled.
Cordie ran to her.
Channel 3 News July 2
“On the local front, a Mariposa County Sheriff’s posse has failed to return from their search of a wilderness area west of Barlow. The eighteen men entered the rugged forest terrain on Tuesday to investigate reports of multiple slayings….”
EPILOGUE
“What ho! What ho!” Lander sang quietly as he limped through the dark woods. His gunshot leg had nearly healed.
“What ho! What ho! Sing merry-a-day!”
He carried the girl through the clearing, and dropped her at his feet. She groaned.
Not dead?
“Passing strange,” he muttered. “Soon fixed.”
He slid the hatches from his belt.
Her eyes opened. She reached up, and clutched a handful of hair, nearly pulling down his nice new skirt. “Please,” she said.
“Please? The King’s tongue?” He knelt beside her. He gazed at her moonlit body, a body he’d taken such pleasure from, earlier, after bashing her head. A young, lithe body. “What do they call you?” he asked.
“Lilly.”
“Lilly. Oh, Lily sweet and fair, how like a flower you are.” He touched her small breasts. “Buds and petals. Sweet nectar. Shall I spare you? Shall I take you to my palace?”
Her hand slipped through the hanging hair, and touched him.
“Perchance I shall.”
He put the hatchet away, and lifted her. He kissed her breast. “Come, let’s away. We shall be God’s spies.”
He carried her into the forest of impaled heads.
“Grar,” said the girl, looking at one.
“You knew him? A fellow of infinite jest. Quite chapfallen.”
“A prick,” said Lilly.
Lander laughed. “What ho! What ho! So merry-a-day,” he sang, and carried her toward the cabin.
Channel 3 News July 11
“On the local front, a twelve-man search-and-rescue team has failed to return from the wilderness area west of Barlow where, last week, a sheriff’s posse vanished without a trace….”
Also By Richard Laymon
Other Leisure books by Richard Laymon:
CUTS
TRIAGE (Anthology)
THE MIDNIGHT TOUR
THE BEAST HOUSE
THE CELLAR
INTO THE FIRE
AFTER MIDNIGHT
THE LAKE
COME OUT TONIGHT
RESURRECTION DREAMS
ENDLESS NIGHT
BODY RIDES
BLOOD GAMES
TO WAKE THE DEAD
NO SANCTUARY
DARKNESS,
TELL US
NIGHT IN THE LONESOME OCTOBER
ISLAND
THE MUSEUM OF HORRORS (Anthology)
IN THE DARK
THE TRAVELING VAMPIRE SHOW
AMONG THE MISSING
ONE RAINY NIGHT
BITE
RAVE REVIEWS FOR RICHARD LAYMON!
“I’ve always been a Laymon fan. He manages to raise
serious gooseflesh.”
—Bentley Little
“Laymon is incapable of writing a disappointing book.”
—New York Review of Science Fiction
“Laymon always takes it to the max.
No one writes like him and you’re going to have
a good time with anything he writes.”
—Dean Koontz
“If you’ve missed Laymon, you’ve missed a treat.”
—Stephen King
“A brilliant writer.”
—Sunday Express
“I’ve read every book of Laymon’s I could get my hands
on. I’m absolutely a longtime fan.”
—Jack Ketchum, Author of Old Flames
“One of horror’s rarest talents.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Laymon is, was, and always will be king of the hill.”
—Horror World
“Laymon is an American writer of the highest caliber.”
—Time Out
“Laymon is unique. A phenomenon. A genius of the grisly
and the grotesque.”
—Joe Citro, The Blood Review
“Laymon doesn’t pull any punches. Everything he writes
keeps you on the edge of your seat.”
—Painted Rock Reviews
Copyright
A LEISURE BOOK®
July 2008
Published by
Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
Original edition copyright © 1981 by Richard Laymon
Restored edition copyright © 2008 by Ann Laymon
Introduction copyright © 2008 by Kelly Laymon
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
E-ISBN: 978-1-4285-0517-9
The name “Leisure Books” and the stylized “L” with design are trademarks of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
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Visit us on the web at www.dorchesterpub.com.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Neala flinched as the door crashed open. She pressed her face tightly against the deerskin beneath her, and wished she could burrow in.
Heavy footfalls shook the ground.
No!
She gritted her teeth, trying not to scream.
“KRULL!”
Her body quaked, shaken by the blast of his roar.
He is the Dev il! Cordelia was right!
Oh Christ, we should’ve run!
Any moment, he would fling aside the skins that covered her.
Hail, Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women….
From his hiding place behind a draping deerskin, Robbins watched the huge dark shape stride toward the far corner.
His sword clacked a
gainst the wall.
The creature swung around. It stood motionless. Robbins held his breath. He gazed at the thing, and shuddered.
Its wide, leathery face looked red in the candlelight. One eye was gone, its socket a dark slit as if the lid had been torn away. The remaining eye seemed to glare at Robbins with contempt.
Then it lowered to the stack of skins near Robbins’s feet. Robbins looked. He saw Neala’s hair. Inches of it curled from beneath one of the skins, glossy in the golden light.
The creature lunged. Its massive hand grabbed Neala’s hair and jerked.
The head came free.
It swung slowly as the single eye studied it.
Robbins staggered from behind the deerskin. With both hands, he swung the saber. Its blade struck, lopping off the outstretched arm. The arm dropped to the floor, Neala’s hair still gripped in its hand.
Robbins swung at the creature’s neck. Its remaining arm battered the sword from his grip. It flung Robbins against the wall. He slammed it hard, and fell.
Neala, hidden in the far corner, heard the struggle. Thrusting aside the deerskins, she saw the thing standing over Johnny, its back to her. It reached down for him with its one arm. It grabbed him by the throat.
Silently, Neala raced across the room. She leaped onto the massive back, grabbed a handful of wild hair, and tore its throat open with her knife.
Blood sprayed onto Johnny.
The creature whirled, bellowing, and threw itself backward against a wall. Neala cried out. She lost her knife. She slid off its back.
It reached down for her. It gripped the stubble of her hair and pulled, but lost its hold. So it clutched her shirt front. It lifted her off the floor.
Blood spilled onto her face from its ripped throat. Its mouth opened wide. She shut her eyes, and felt its teeth on the sides of her face. They clamped tightly.
Suddenly, the beast staggered. Its teeth kept their grip, but the hand let go of her shirt, and she dropped to the floor. As she hit, the teeth cut into her cheeks.
“It’s all right.”
Johnny’s voice.
The jaws opened, and the pressure of the head went away. Johnny, crouching over her, held the monstrous head in both hands. He tossed it aside.
Then he picked her up, and held her tightly.
Later, Robbins unknotted Neala’s long, soft hair. He pulled it from the jawbone of the old head, and tossed the head outside.
Among the crosses in front of the cabin, he found one more sturdy than the others. On it, he impaled the head of Manfred Krull. He propped it near the cabin door.
“Sir!”
Turning, he saw a man moving through the barrier. The thin, pale man casually pushed aside the pikes as he came forward.
Neala took hold of Robbins’s arm. He saw that she held the saber.
“Be not afraid,” said the man.
He stepped out of the crosses. A skirt of hair floated about his legs as he moved. He stopped in front of Robbins.
“You have slain the Dev il,” he said. “With his life, you have purchased your salvation. We shall escort you to safety.”
“We can go?” Robbins asked.
“Tell no one what you have seen in these woods, or your lives shall be forfeit.”
“What about the others?” Neala asked.
“There are no others.”
Richard Laymon, The Woods Are Dark
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