Kill For Satan Read online

She laughed softly. “Sort of. Not really.”

  “What’s that?”

  He nodded at the Mason jar clasped securely in her elegant right hand. It contained some kind of clear liquid.

  “A gift for you. Hail Satan, loser.”

  She came a step further into the room and splashed the contents of the jar against his face. He screamed as the powerful acid began to sizzle and melt his skin almost instantly, falling out of the chair and tumbling to his back on the dirty floor. Soon his eyes were burning, too, but before his vision went away entirely, he got a last blurry look at the gal who’d disfigured and blinded him. Tube top gal was standing next to her by then. They laughed at the sounds of his misery and started kicking him as he squirmed around on the floor.

  Recognition came to him then. The second one was right. They didn’t know each other. Not really. But he knew who they were, all right. These gals were two of the trio who’d administered that savage beating back in high school. They had returned to finish the job. When the knife pierced his heart, it felt almost like an act of mercy.

  SIX

  The all-day horror marathon on Channel 39 started at noon with an airing of Night of the Living Dead. Libby Nicholson, a sixteen-year-old junior year student at Littleburg High, skipped out of school early that day with the intention of watching the entire marathon from the beginning. She made it home just in time to pop a bag of microwave popcorn and get settled in on the couch in the den as the movie was starting.

  Channel 39 was a local independent station, which meant the movies in the marathon would be edited for content. Profane language would be bleeped out and some of the nastier gore bits would be excised. This didn’t bother Libby, who’d seen all the movies scheduled for the marathon in uncensored form countless times. Her father had a large DVD horror collection and many of the old gory classics were readily available on Shudder and numerous other streaming services. Broadcast television wasn’t the only game in town anymore and hadn’t been for a long time. These days you didn’t have to watch a movie or show at a certain appointed time. VOD and streaming had changed everything. You could watch pretty much whatever you wanted whenever you wanted to watch it.

  What VOD and the streaming services couldn’t duplicate, for the most part, was the charm of seeing these movies hosted by Count Victor von Gravemore on Shock Theater. The hammy old performer had been hosting the weekly horror show on Channel 39 for decades and the annual all-day marathon was something Libby had looked forward to with great anticipation every year since elementary school.

  She grabbed a handful of popcorn from the bowl in her lap and gobbled it down as she watched Gravemore mince his way around his set, which was designed to look like a vampire’s lair in an old Hammer film. The wall behind him was covered with Styrofoam molded and painted to resemble the wall of a medieval dungeon. A casket with a plush red interior sat open on a long table. Dusty cobwebs were everywhere. An obviously fake severed head with wildly unkempt hair rested inside a wrought-iron birdcage dangling from the ceiling. Spooky sound effects played in the background. It was all so gloriously cheesy.

  Gravemore delivered one of his trademark macabre puns, making Libby giggle as his segment ended and the movie resumed. She munched down another handful of popcorn and licked her fingers. The popcorn she favored was Butter Explosion. It was the most buttery popcorn available from the local grocery store and, in her opinion, the closest thing to real movie theater popcorn on the market. She sometimes consumed multiple bags of it over the course of a single night of watching movies. It was a wonder she hadn’t gotten fat yet. Her first bowl of the marathon was almost empty already. She was debating whether to start popping a second bag when the doorbell rang.

  Libby sighed.

  Finally.

  She set the bowl on the coffee table and got up to answer the door. The person out there on the porch was probably Anne Calloway. Anne’s family had moved to Littleburg over the summer. Libby and Anne met at the start of the school year and quickly bonded over their mutual love of horror movies. She probably counted as Libby’s closest friend at this point, which was pathetic in a way. She’d lived her whole life in this crappy town without ever forming any close friendships. Not that she spent too much time feeling all angsty over it. Most kids who grew up around here were basic in the blandest, dullest way. They were incapable of understanding someone like her. Anne, on the other hand, came from a bigger city and was more sophisticated. They could have philosophical conversations about life and the universe, something that had never been possible with the simple kids born and raised here. It’d been such an intellectually liberating thing for Libby. Such a total revelation.

  What the other girl didn’t know yet, however, was that Libby had developed a terrible crush on her. The crush had started out in a relatively light and innocent way in the earliest days of their friendship, but over time it’d become an obsession. She would lie awake in bed most nights and fantasize about making out with her friend, maybe even doing other things. Things Libby had never done before, not with anyone. When they were together, she burned with the need to tell Anne how she felt, but thus far she hadn’t been able to work up the courage.

  Maybe today would be the day. She had the house to herself. Her parents were at their jobs and wouldn’t return home until early evening. There might never be a better time to make the kind of bold move she’d been yearning to make for weeks. No one would be around to cast judgment on her or interrupt. And if things worked out the way she hoped, the assurance of privacy might help Anne feel comfortable about doing some experimenting.

  The last time they talked, Anne had promised to skip out as soon as she could and come over to watch the marathon with her. She had also promised to text Libby when she was on her way, but that hadn’t happened yet. Maybe she’d just forgotten. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  Libby climbed the steps to the kitchen and passed through an archway into the foyer. The front door was about ten feet in front of her. She had a spring in her step and a smile on her face as she went quickly to the door, feeling more anxious than ever to see her new favorite person in the world. Her hand was already on the doorknob when a cautionary thought floated up from the depths of her mind. She still thought this was probably her friend on the other side of the door, but what if she was wrong?

  Anne still hadn’t texted her, after all. It was possible she was still in school and hadn’t been able to slip away. Her morbid imagination made it too easy to believe some neighborhood creep had noticed her coming home early and had decided to come over and harass her. Or some random creep passing through had noticed the same thing and had also taken note of the absence of any other cars in the driveway. The latter seemed unlikely. The neighborhood was pretty quiet when she got home. She was sure she would have noticed any cars passing by in the street on her way into the house. Still, it couldn’t hurt to be careful. She was a young girl alone at home at a time when most adults in the neighborhood were at work.

  She took her hand away from the doorknob and raised up on her toes to peek through the peephole. When she saw who was on the porch, she experienced simultaneous feelings of relief and disappointment. The giddiness she’d been feeling at the prospect of seeing Anne evaporated. She wasn’t out there. Instead, it was their neighbor from across the street, old Mr. Carson. He wasn’t who she wanted to see, but he was nobody to fear. The elderly widower was kindly and harmless. She’d known him most of her life. He was standing too close to the door to see much other than his face. Up close like this, his eyes looked weird and googly behind his thick glasses.

  While she wasn’t afraid of the man, Libby didn’t feel like dealing with him. Ever since his wife died a few years back, he’d become a touch clingy with his neighbors. Conversations that should have been finished inside of a few minutes at most often dragged on for thirty or forty minutes. Sometimes longer. Libby felt sorry for him. He was clearly lonely and desperate for interaction with other people. That was undeniably sad.
It also wasn’t her problem. She didn’t want him to be here when Anne finally showed up, which should be soon.

  Ignoring him seemed like the best way to go. He obviously knew she was home. The car in the driveway was an unavoidable dead giveaway. That being the case, not opening the door to see what he wanted could be construed as a tad rude. Then again, she was under no obligation to speak to this man. She didn’t want to risk missing an hour of the Channel 39 marathon just to listen to him ramble on about inconsequential bullshit. If he asked about it later, she would tell him she hadn’t heard the doorbell because she’d been upstairs taking a nap. He would probably mention her early return home to her parents, but she wasn’t worried about that. She would just tell them she’d come home early because she wasn’t feeling well. They never pressed her much about things like that. They knew she skipped on occasion, but she kept her grades at a high level, so it wasn’t viewed as a real source of concern.

  “I know you’re in there, little Libby,” Carson called out in his croaky old man’s voice. “Can hear you breathing. Open up just a second, please. Got something pretty darn important to ask you. I won’t keep you long, I promise.”

  Libby sighed heavily.

  Her shoulders sagged in despondent surrender as she thought, Might as well get this over with. I just hope I’m able to get back to the marathon before it’s fucking over.

  She unlocked the door and pulled it open. “I’m kind of busy with something, Mr. Carson. What is it you—”

  She stopped talking when she realized he was grinning at her in a weird way. The expression was unlike any she’d ever seen on his face. It was more of a leer than a normal grin. Something else was weird, too. He was holding something behind his back. Libby’s hand tightened around the edge of the door. Her heart was racing as she began to realize her assessment of the old man as harmless might not have been entirely accurate. The urge to slam the door in his face and lock it again was strong.

  He chuckled and the darkly malicious, unfriendly grin grew wider. “Hey there, girly. Got a little surprise for you.”

  He showed her what he’d been hiding behind his back.

  Libby screamed.

  Anne had worn her pretty blonde hair in pigtails today. Mr. Carson was holding her severed head by one of the pigtails. It was swaying back and forth in his grip. He must have killed her mere minutes ago, because blood was still dripping from her ragged neck stump.

  Libby screamed again.

  Mr. Carson laughed. “Catch, bitch.”

  He tossed Anne’s head at her. Libby reached out and caught it instinctively, holding it no longer than a second before screaming yet again and letting go of it. Her dead friend’s head landed on the tiled floor with a heavy thump. She knew she should act fast and get the door shut before the old maniac could come into the house, but her shock rooted her to the spot.

  Carson leaned to his left and grabbed something he’d propped up in a corner of the small porch. When he came into the house, he was holding an axe with a long handle. The heavy axe head’s blade looked wickedly sharp and was coated in blood.

  The old man chuckled again in that oily, insidious way. “Satan wants your soul and I’m here to collect it. Get ready to die, virgin bitch.”

  Libby kept her eye on the axe as she started moving backward. He wasn’t yet close enough to take a good swing at her, but that wouldn’t last long if she didn’t take serious evasive or defensive action soon. Her fear level was significant, but she had the advantage of being younger and faster than this elderly murderer. If she could just keep her wits about her and act swiftly, she could take herself out of harm’s way and get to safety with relative ease.

  Her keys were on the counter in the kitchen. All she had to do was run in there and grab them, then go out the side door to her car. Her phone was down in the den, but she would have to leave that behind. She could be gone from here in less than thirty seconds. No point in complicating things and increasing the risk to her life by going for something she didn’t need.

  Carson came a step closer and began to raise the axe.

  Libby took another step backward.

  Carson sneered. “You stay right where you are, missy. Time to take your medicine.”

  Libby was on the verge of turning around and running into the kitchen when she felt strong hands grab her by the shoulders from behind and hold her in place. She twisted her head around and was stunned to see the grinning face of her father. The shock of seeing him now, under these circumstances, was nearly as extreme as what she’d felt upon realizing her beautiful Anne had been murdered. Why was he grinning at her like that? Why was he keeping her from getting out of the way of that bloody axe? And why wasn’t he still at work? She hadn’t even heard him come into the house.

  Her father, the man who’d never treated her with anything other than total affection and understanding, laughed at her confusion. “You’re probably wondering why I’m home. I got a call from your school about you skipping out. Usually I ignore those calls, but not today. Today is special, you see.”

  Carson chuckled. “Damn right it is. Now hold the bitch still while I put the steel in her.”

  “Not so fast, Carson.”

  This was another voice. A female voice. Libby gasped in shock again as her mother brushed past her husband and came into the foyer. Her mother was an attractive middle-aged lady who looked several years younger than her actual age. She was wearing tight designer jeans and a white top with a low-scooped neckline. A pair of dark sunglasses dangled from the collar.

  “By rights, this is our kill, Carson. She’s our fucking daughter. Hand me the axe.”

  She extended a hand with her palm held upward.

  Carson looked like he wanted to argue about it for a moment. Then his features sagged and he shook his head in disgust.

  He handed her the axe.

  Candice Nicholson turned toward her daughter and came a few steps closer. She then stopped and spread her feet apart in a stance similar to that of a baseball player standing inside a batter’s box, smiling as she began to raise the axe.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie. I do love you. But I love Satan more.”

  Libby trembled in terror in her father’s unbreakable grip. Tears were streaming down her face. “Why are you doing this? I don’t understand.”

  Her father put his mouth against her ear. “It’s your fault, you know. This wouldn’t be happening if you’d ever let some lucky boy fuck you.”

  Candice nodded, her expression mildly regretful. “He’s right, you know. But it’s too late for that now.”

  She raised the axe even higher, turned her hips, and began to swing it forward.

  Libby wailed in despair one last time. “Please don’t kill me!”

  The heavy axe blade punched deep into her belly. The agony as the steel ripped through her organs was far beyond any level of pain she’d ever imagined. That pain doubled when her mother ripped the blade out again. Blood and pieces of shredded organs spilled out of the huge rent in her flesh. Her mother adjusted her grip on the axe and raised it again, this time high over her head. When she brought it down for the second and last time, the blade cleaved through the top of Libby Nicholson’s skull, killing her instantly.

  SEVEN

  Micah felt like he was living inside a nightmare. Hours had passed since he’d stood by helplessly while watching his beautiful but apparently deranged girlfriend savagely murder their downstairs neighbor, but it still felt like it’d happened only minutes ago. His mind kept replaying the image of Sindie sucking the blood from the dead woman’s throat wound. She had looked truly demented then, like some kind of feral beast instead of a human being. Watching her do that had been horrifying enough, but then she insisted he drink blood, too.

  He didn’t want to do it, of course, but he had no choice. Not with the way she was acting. He feared her unleashing some of that murderous frenzy on him if he resisted. He didn’t want to believe she would hurt him. She loved him. She said it doz
ens of times every day and he’d never once doubted the sincerity of the declarations, but she was unhinged right now. There was no telling what a person in that mental state might do, even to a loved one.

  So he drank some of Tanya’s blood. Way more of it than he would have liked. This was because Sindie kept urging him to have more and more. Which was bad enough, but she kept sinking to lower and lower depths of depravity. She used the butcher knife to cut off pieces of the dead woman’s flesh, eating them raw and forcing Micah to do the same. He got violently sick after, but he did it.

  After that, she dragged him into the shower in Tanya’s apartment. The hot water sluiced away the blood and Sindie went down on him. Despite the stressful circumstances, her expert tongue had him painfully stiff within seconds. When he thought he was about to come, she got to her feet and had him fuck her from behind. The orgasm that came less than a minute later relieved some of his tension for a short time. That lasted until they went back out to the living room and she ordered him to piss on Tanya’s corpse.

  “Why?” he asked her with a horrified look on his face.

  She sneered. “To revel in her total desecration. Why the fuck else? Do it, Micah.”

  He did what she wanted, of course, like always, and he didn’t stop urinating all over the dead woman’s face until he’d squeezed every last drop from his bladder. When he was finished, Sindie pulled him into a rough embrace and kissed him with a violent hunger.

  “I love you, Micah,” she told him, stealing a moment to catch a breath. “I love you so fucking much.”

  Her tongue was in his mouth again before he could respond in kind.

  The time since then had passed in a haze. He was barely aware of what was happening as Sindie dragged him to various locations all over town. What he did know was she had killed at least one more person already that afternoon. There’d been a guy walking along the side of a road at some point during their travels. Micah never even glanced at him, only perceiving his presence as a vague shape at the edge of his vision. Then Sindie abruptly swerved her car toward the man and ran him down, jostling Micah in his seat as the tires bounced over the body. He never even saw whether the man’s skin had that virgin shimmer and he didn’t bother asking Sindie. She might have killed the man for the pure hell of it, for no reason other than she’d discovered she liked doing it.