Scalpers

SEVENTEEN

Weaving dangerously, Dean took the turn onto the dirt road called Hardscrabble too late, and the ambulance tore onto the soft shoulder out of control and sideswiped a tree before coming to a halt. Dean got out, shaken and reaching for his .38 only to find it gone. He'd lost it somewhere between the hospital and here, he thought, before proceeding on foot toward the house at the end of the cul-de-sac. He had already called for backup, using the ambulance radio, explaining as best he could why he'd stolen the unit.

He saw carnage ahead of him, two bodies lying inert outside Peggy Carson's squad car, and soon he knew the two uniformed men were Staubb and Williams. He lifted Staubb's gun, which was a few feet away in the sandy soil, preferring it to wrenching Williams’ from its holster. Dean then checked the clip and found it all right, a single shot having been fired. Both men had been quietly dispatched with knives, telling Dean his hunch had been right, that the killers had returned here.

Dean neared the house at a crouch, fearing he'd find Sid Corman dead, propped up with a gun in his hand, or strung up, leaving a suicide note of confession forced from him. Dean feared he would be too late, much too late.

Dean leapt to the porch to avoid the squeaking stairs, but the porch sagged with a groan beneath his feet. If Hamel and that bastard brother of his were inside, they knew he was outside now.

The door rattled against his attempt to open it. It was secured tight. There would be no quiet entry, Dean told himself, no way. Still, he must try the rear, and so he cautiously made his way toward the back. There he stared through a window at a man's form lying in the dark interior, Sid's he guessed, and something snapped inside him.

He broke the glass on the door and let himself in, rushing to Sid where he lay alongside the oven. Lifting Sid's head he saw a horrible gash where his forehead ought to be. Dean swallowed a scream, until his eyes, adjusting to the light, saw that it was Hamel! Hamel without a scalp! Benjamin I. Hamel, scalped and murdered in his home on Hardscrabble Road in Wekiva by ... by whom?

"Sid?” Dean called out, going further into the house, toward the bedroom and the false closet and wall where the dwarf lived and fed himself, where Sid must now be....

"Sid? Sid, can you answer me?"

Dean saw there was a candle burning on the table, the only light in the odorous room, save for the glow of the dying embers at the fireplace where that black witches’ cauldron still bubbled and gurgled. Stepping closer, inching nearer, Dean saw Sid's feet and legs, then his chest. He was bound and gagged, his features in a shadowed corner next to the fireplace.

"Sid!” Dean rushed in to help his friend, snatching at the rope binding his feet, which was not rope at all but gut, human gut, dried and cured and turned into rope as strong as hemp. Dean grabbed for a scalpel he kept in an inside pocket to cut away at the stuff. While doing so, he cringed at the realization of what it was he held in his hands. Slicing through the tough, dried string, he freed Sid's legs and then, seeing terror in Sid's eyes, snatched away the suffocating gag in Sid's mouth. The instant he did so, Sid shouted, “Behind you!"

But the warning came too late. At the same instant Dean felt the catapulting stool hitting him in the back of the head, stunning him. He staggered a moment, dazed, when something else slammed into his back and shoulders. It was the dwarf, straddling him, a knife slicing away at his head and shoulders. A tear to his breast bone, a swish by his eye, and then the blade came down, a curled scimitar driving into his shoulder. Dean threw himself down, rolling over with all his weight, the sound of Staubb's .38 sliding from his belt to some dark corner of the room. Another sound, an animal sound of pain, had commingled with Dean's own screams that echoed Sid's.

"Where is he? Where the hell is he?” Dean shouted.

"I'm not sure. Get me loose,” cried Sid.

But the dwarf rocketed himself at Dean's back a second time, coming out of the dark. Again the knife slammed into Dean, and this time the cut was deep and painful, slicing his left arm at the bicep, blood pumping out onto Sid as Dean fought in the small space with the madman, trying desperately to cut him with the scalpel.

But the dwarf leapt away again and once more the room was still, silent, the deadly thing somewhere nearby, accustomed to seeing through the shroud of darkness. He knew where Dean was, but Dean could not see him.

"My hands, Dean, so I can help you! My hands!"

But the wound to Dean's arm and the blow to his head had effectively stunned him. He did a stumbling dance toward Sid, seeing him through the haze, hearing his plea only half-real, when suddenly the evil weight was on his back again.

With a revulsion and hatred Dean had never felt before, he reached round with bloodied hands and got firm hold of the thing by its arm and shoulder and flung it with all his might into the hearth, where for an instant Dean's eyes focused on the hairy beast with the enormous red-embered eyes, its nostrils flaring, the huge, curved knife looking like its horn.

"Dean!” shouted Sid. The knife-wielding dwarf slashed first his right, then his left leg, skittered past him, and disappeared yet again.

"Under the corner table—no, the other corner!” Sid shouted. “The gun, get the gun!"

Dean, the pain of his arm intense, reached under the table. His hand felt metal and he wrapped it round the gun and snatched it out only an instant before the sound of the scimitar told him he could have lost the hand.

Backing off from the dark corner, Dean tried desperately to see the evil hiding there, to blow it to pieces.

"God damn it, Dean, get me loose,” Sid cried behind him.

Dean backed cautiously to where Sid remained propped near the fireplace, stumbling over Sid and reaching round to undo the hands, when Sid shouted another warning. Again the devilish dwarf was on Dean, who rose to his feet, trying to dislodge the thing from his back, holding firmly to the gun, using it as a pummel against his attacker.

With a wild, wheeling twist and push, Dean sent himself and his attacker hard against the far wall, knocking the air out of the dwarf and flipping him forward. The creature's small body skittered once more into shadow, a squeal of pain pealing from him. Dean didn't dare look away from the place where the thing had pulled itself. He leveled the gun, preparing to fire, when he realized the dwarf was on a shelf at eye-level, and not on the floor, and that he was coming through the air at him for a final blow, the knife coming right at Dean's eyes, when Dean ducked.

The dwarf's miss hurled him hard against the hearth a second time. This time Dean was ready for the bastard, for at the very moment Dean ducked, he also wheeled and brought up the .38, trained it on the dwarf, and sent the hammer back.

But Dean stopped cold to stare at the pleading eyes inside the ugly, deformed head, deep beneath folds of skin and hair. They were Hamel's eyes!

This must be Hamel's supposed dead twin brother, after all.

Dean stared for a moment, mesmerized by the man's eyes, as the dwarf lifted the knife, preparing to throw it.

Sid, his legs free, had worked his way closer to the fire and the pot. Now, suddenly and viciously, he kicked the lug pole free, sending the scalding, putrid stew over the hairy animal at the hearth, making it squeal in pain. Suddenly it snatched up its brother's scalp and raced madly for safety, disappearing. The dwarf was badly scalded, and Sid, too, had been burned by the water. But Sid ignored his own pain as Dean freed him from his bonds. Dean was angry with himself for not having killed the ugly, hairy thing when he'd had the chance. His moment's hestitation had now allowed the gnome to disappear again, this time out of the room and down the corridor, a final door slamming deep within. Dean breathed a little better and helped Sid from his remaining bonds.

"I thought the bastard had you,” gasped Sid. “You're bleeding like a pig, Dean!"

Sid worked to tie off the arm, the worst of the wounds the dagger-wielding little creep had inflicted.

"Where do you suppose that thing is now?” Sid asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine."

"You think you can walk?"

Dazed, Dean wasn't sure. “Maybe we should wait for sunrise."

"Maybe we ought to get in one of those cars outside and get the hell out of here."

"Run off by a dwarf, you and me? Two big-deal guys like us?"

"I think we've both had enough heroics for one night. Besides, there's another one lurking somewhere."

"Hamel? No, he's dead ... I found him in the kitchen."

"Oh, yeah, now I remember—I got him in the head with a kitchen knife just before I blacked out."

"And his brother took his goddamned scalp."

"He what?"

"That ugly gnome took Hamel's scalp."

Sid shook his head. “Good God, Dean!"

"Exactly. That's why we've got to see this thing through, see this ... this creature dead. It's not human."

"All right, but we stay together. I don't care how short that guy is, he's bloody strong—and dangerous."

"There should be backup units coming."

"Did you ask for bloodhounds and helicopters? He's very likely deep in the wildlife preserve by now. It's all swamp, marsh, and palmetto bush, very hard to maneuver even by daylight ... not to mention wild things like cottonmouths and alligators."

"Maybe we'd better wait, then."

"Be wise to, but that'd be out of character for you, wouldn't it, Dean?"

"How's the leg?” Dean asked. Sid tied off a second bandage for him.

"I think the bleeding's stopped. You were damned lucky."

"How is your leg?"

"Burned both ankles, as a matter of fact, but I'm trying not to think about it"

"You burned him pretty good, too,"

"Think it'll slow the little bastard?"

"It might. Come on."

Getting through the long house and to the outside was scary in itself. Dean felt like a little figure in a video game, afraid of opening the next door, or stepping through, knowing that the killer could be waiting at every turn. But they got to the porch without incident. Down the dusty road came the glare of successive headlights, reinforcements. Over the siren noise, Dean heard something like a chicken scratch, and he suddenly jumped down from the porch and stared up to the darkened roof, half-expecting the creature to leap at him again. But it didn't come; nothing was up there.

Where had the noise come from?

Sid raced to meet the others, waving at them. Dean had another thought as the cars, their headlights flooding the yard now, showed some streaks coming up through the cracks on the porch from beneath.

He was there, under the house. Dean just knew it. But to catch the animal, everyone must somehow be alerted.

They needed to fan out. Dean tried to convey this message to the noisy, gung-ho policemen jumping from their units.

"The suspect's a dwarf,” Sid told them as Dean indicated the underside of the house, pointing, unsure whether or not the gnome had caught on to their next move.

Cautiously, after having had a full look at Staubb and Williams, and with jokes to one another about midgets and little people, the cops fanned out, trying to circle the rambling, L-shaped house. Not six feet off were the woods.

Flashlights streaked into the underside of the house and suddenly a shot rang out on the far side. Dean heard the sounds of running feet and rushed to where the gunshot had been fired. A policeman named Mike had filled a stray dog with buckshot, the animal still thrashing until another officer put it out of its misery.

"There! Over there!” shouted another cop, hearing something moving off through the bush.

The chase was on, Dean armed now with a 12-gauge shotgun, Sid beside him with Staubb's .38, everyone fanning out, trying to ensnare the killer in a human net.

"He's armed and dangerous,” Dean told the men.

"Armed with what?"

"So far as we know, only a knife, but it's his weapon of choice."

"Hear that, men?"

Up and down the line, the word was passed as the manhunt moved into the dark woods.

"Going to send two of my men back to make a call for dogs,” said the officer in charge, Staubb's superior. “We ain't letting this bastard get away."

"You better tell your men to shoot at anything that moves out there, Captain,” said Sid. “This guy will look like a wild boar out here, he's that hairy and little."

"I'll pass that along."

Sid's warning went down the line. The two cops were sent back in a team for the dogs. It would be well into daylight the next time they saw Hamel's little brother.

Aching from his wounds, the one in his arm in particular, Dean found he could not recall a time in his life when the morning's first light had ever meant so much. The dogs and additional men had arrived, and finding the scent of the killer from some discarded clothing in his hovel, the search was resumed. The man most knowledgeable about the dogs was given the go-ahead to let them loose, come what may, after Dean and Sid together had recalled the events of the night, explaining how they had cornered the last member of the so-called Scalping Crew.

"It's a certainty that this little man has lived off the land before,” finished Dean, recalling the years he'd lived alone at that Montana homestead while his brother was placed in county home. Sid reminded Dean that the dwarf also had had to fend for himself the entire time his brother was in Vietnam.

"So,” continued Dean, “this killer could live out there in your swampland for any number of years, unless he's rooted out now."

"Nothin’ could survive out there,” said one man.

"Not for long,” agreed a second officer.

"Dogs'll get ‘em,” said the dog man.

Dean realized they didn't truly understand what they were dealing with. Finding this pervert in the dense marsh of Wekiva had led them to the banks of the Wekiva River, along which some homes stood, the property of people who were carrying on a running battle with Orange County to remain in the preserve. Dean knew that every man, woman, and child in the preserve was now in danger, and that it had been a good move to send deputies to every house to issue warnings. But this weakened the number in the central posse, and it also divided them into dangerously small satellite groups. Everyone present had seen what the dwarf had done to Mark Williams and Joe Staubb.

For over an hour now the dogs had been running far and wide, baying, going in a southeasterly direction and then cutting back northerly, coming closer to the camp again, as if confused and circling—or had the dwarf circled back? This was the running argument among the men as the sound of the dogs increased, nearing, closer still.

"Just like a ‘coon hunt,” said the dog man, grinning wide, a two-day-old growth of hair on his face. “Don't worry, my dogs have run men before ... no problem."

"Why've they turned back?” asked Sid, his legs propped over a log, the scalded ankles causing him great pain.

The dog man spat out a wad of tobacco. “Turned their prey is my guess. Got ‘em on the run and he's so turned ‘round he don't know which way's up. If we just wait long ‘nough, your criminal's going to come runnin’ right into your arms."

"Too easy,” Dean said. “Not this weasel."

The dog man returned in a moment with word from the captain, Staubb's superior, a man named Todd Daniels. “Captain says it's time we go to meet up with the dogs. Told ‘em we should give ‘em bit more time, but he's got ants in his pants."

"Don't we all,” said Dean.

The group was some thirteen armed men now, counting Dean and Sid. The first sign of the sun filtered in through the thick brush and palmetto, scrub oak and palms. The forest was so dense here that Dean expected to see monkeys in the palm trees, but all he saw were curious squirrels and a flaming-red cardinal. Somewhere at the other end of the human chain they formed, Dean heard somebody shout a warning about a cottonmouth. No shots were fired and the line moved onward, forming a wide net, toward the sound of the dogs, which were now closing in.

Sid had not exaggerated the wilderness aspect of the tropical flatlands. Grass was up to Dean's armpits wherever there was a break in the trees. No rocks, no stones, no bumps in the land here, only miles of exotic vegetation, some plants Dean had never known existed, strange and beehive-like in their crusty coverings, plants that did battle with a sun that by 10 a.m. set the place aflame. The entire effect was that of a foreign and wild place.

"Damn sure wish I was back at the lab,” complained Sid, sweat glistening from every pore.

"Damn sure I wish I was back in Chicago."

Sid managed a half-smile. “You've proven to be a good friend, my friend.” Sid's last word ended in a groan.

"Leg hurt?"

"Both legs hurt like hell ... real bad,” he admitted.

Dean had looked at the scald marks and one of the officers who'd come on had thought to bring a first-aid kit. The burns were wrapped now, but the pain and the throbbing, if anything like Dean's arm, must be difficult to put pressure on.

"Why not hold up here, Sid, until we can come back for you?” Dean suggested when they came to a clearing with a little shade.

"Not on your life, Dean ... been nearly killed twice by that ... that thing. I'll be damned if I'll risk it a third time."

"But if—"

"No, no!” he was adamant and, Dean realized, scared. “Keep moving."

"Downriver!” shouted the captain, taking a cue from the dogs’ baying and the dog man, who suddenly bolted and raced in that direction, shouting, “I think they done got him, boys!"

He fell.

He got up.

He ran.

It had been an endless repetition all night long.

Fall, get up, run.

Sometimes he'd lie there long enough to try to think, but they gave him no time.

The dog sounds frightened him. He imagined the dogs tearing him to pieces. He sensed this was going to be his end, and neither Ian nor the dark powers would stop it. Ian was gone ... they were gone. Now it was Van, alone again, facing certain death—or capture. Neither ending particularly appealed to him.

Death meant the end of all the many years of hard work to get as far as he and Ian had come. Death by gnarling, angry dogs meant destruction of all that he had toiled for, an end to the satanic power growing within him. For his failure, too, the death would be not only a painful one, but made everlasting and endless by the very powers he had served so long, the dark ones who'd nurtured him in his infancy and childhood.

He remembered the black woman well.

He even remembered the black man who, from time to time, came in the company of the black woman.

Then they stopped coming. All he ever saw afterward was the dish, like a dog plate shoved onto the top stair of the basement. But he never forgot the dark ones who'd come and nurtured him, kept him alive during those crucial early years.

He would fight back as he'd always fought back. He wouldn't just lie here and wait for the dogs to pounce upon him and rip him limb from limb. He must think like Ian, develop a workable plan.

He snatched off his oxblood-colored vest and attached it to a limb. Taking a piece of brush, he dusted his trail as he backed from the vest down toward the river again, which he'd crossed once before, nearly drowning in the process. He didn't want to return to the water, but an animal fear drove him toward it.

He backed down now into the water, which enveloped his hairy form. He got deep down, feeling the muck tug at his knees, there on the bank, hiding among the reeds, waterlillies, and branches where a slender green snake slept so soundlessly on a limb he at first believed it part of the branch.

He knew he, too, must become part of the land, to disappear before the eye of any unsuspecting person or animal that happened by. In the water he had a chance. It would erase his scent. It would erase him.

Then he heard the voices of men on the other side of the river, heard them noisily sloshing through the shallows. He darted into a small alcove covered thick with algae, the surface a green mush he parted as he went.

The dogs were bringing the men, and he realized for the first time that he'd gotten turned around in the unfamiliar landscape. He silently cursed a man named Dean Grant.

He did not see the slow, deliberate movement at his back, and when, out of the corner of one eye, he did spot it, he took it for an aged, water-blackened log moving with the current. But he felt no current in the little cove. Another glance, closer this time, and he saw the two enormous eyes at the snout of the log, realizing it was alive. The gator moved at Van with ease, grace, and the certainty of a meal.

A chilling scream, like that of a banshee, froze Dean and the other men in place where they stood almost shoulder-deep in the river, holding their weapons overhead. The scream sounded to the dog man like that of a Georgia bobcat. The dogs, too, had been startled by the cry, like that of a woman in terrible distress, Dean thought, but his senses told him it was the dwarf. “It came from that way, opposite the dogs,” shouted the captain, leading the column of men.

They fought with the river to get to the other side where it narrowed, the dogs rushing by them, when Dean saw that one of the dogs up ahead had a little vest in his mouth which appeared to have been dredged from the water—it was soaking wet. All the dogs stood in a semicircle about an algae-infested alcove off the river. There before them was an enormous monster of an alligator, rolling about in the water, tearing one dog to pieces as the other animals yelped and barked and snarled, still keeping a safe distance.

Putrid water, algae, and the tussling animals could not hide the welter of blood discoloring the surface of the water.

"My dog! It's ... it's Queenie! Damn it, Captain, do something! Do something!"

"Look!” shouted Sid, seeing a piece of ripped clothing floating among the algae. Dean swiped at it with a stick, dredging it toward them. Even with the algae clinging to it, the clothing was easily that of a child ... or a dwarf.

"Think the alligator got the bastard?” asked Sid.

"A fitting Florida end to the man,” said Dean, satisfied even more by the blood he found on the little cloak. “But we've got to be sure, Sid."

Dean stepped to where the captain stared over the feeding gator. The dog man was still shouting in the other man's ear about his dog. “We've got to kill the alligator, Captain."

"What the hell for? The dog's done for."

"We've got to know for sure if the dwarf went before the dog."

"Hell, you heard the scream!"

"That's not enough, not with a killer like this!"

The captain relented when the dog man said, “Shoot the ugly bastard. He killed Queenie,"

The gun was raised, a powerful hunting rifle, and the large-caliber bullet went right between the animal's eyes. Its body kicked and shivered with the impact. There was a moment's thrashing, and it lay still at last. “Snatch him outa there,” ordered the captain, and two of his men took it by the tail. It took a third to get the giant beast onto shore.

"It's going to be hell getting him back to the lab,” said Sid.

"To hell with the lab, Sid,” said Dean, “this is fieldwork. You men, turn the animal onto its stomach."

"What the hell's he doing, Captain?” asked a confused officer.

"Cutting the thing open to see if the gator got more'n a dog."

Dean's scalpel slit the outer layers of the underbelly of the animal. A second, deeper slit caused the beast to pop open like a ripe watermelon, and the odors drove even Dean to take a step back. Covering their noses and mouths with handkerchiefs, the two pathologists began another cut into the stomach lining and esophagus and all that lay in between. With ungloved hands they probed and began to pull forth large, undigested remnants of Queenie.

The dog man was going berserk behind them, calling Dean a ghoul. He was restrained by the others.

After ten minutes, Dean, his hands bloody, stood up. Sid went to the river's edge to throw water on his face. “Nothing human inside this animal, Captain ... not a single bite."

"Gators travel in packs,” said the Captain. “Another one must've gotten our man and was gone before we got here. Hell, you got the torn clothes, the blood! Take it back to your lab and see if it ain't human blood or the dog's ... just see."

"Even if it is human, Captain ... it's not good enough."

"Well, it is for me. We're satisfied, just like the damned flies are satisfied,” said the captain, pointing to the gator carcass. It was already infested with insects. “Come on, Stewart, gather up your remainin’ dogs. The County'll pay for Queenie. Come on, all of you men ... we're going home."

Dean stared out into the blank, empty, uncaring swampland ahead of him. Somewhere out there right now the evil could he staring back at him ... or it could've been swallowed whole by this guy's mate, Dean thought again with a glance at the dead gator. Maybe, if, likely, possible ... all the qualifiers ... was that how it would now end, after all he and Sid, Peggy, and the others had lived through, after the long trail of dead bodies that had brought him to this time and place?

"Come on, Dean ... come away,” said Sid. “Get the blood off you. Let's cross back."

Dean looked into his friend's clear, watery eyes and saw a tired man still fighting down pain. “Yeah, let's get back to city streets and congestion. You can keep this wildlife refuge business for stronger men than me."

"Are you satifed the little creep is really dead?"

"No ... not really."

"Me either."

"We'll test the cloak for human blood."

"It'll only prove he cut himself with that damned knife of his."

"We may never know, Sid."

"Unless one day somewhere we read about a brutal scalping murder...."

They crossed the river, lagging behind the cops, Dean supporting Sid. “Right,” agreed Dean sadly. “Could go crazy waiting for that one."

"God, Dean, those two bastards were really sick."

Behind them Dean heard the sound of sparrows flittering about and a strange cackling bird, which sounded like a cross between a jay and a crow, his cry a staccato. He heard fish, probably mullet, jumping, and he heard small, furry animals leaping from tree to tree, some on the ground. Then came a sudden snap of a twig, a sound usually made by the human animal. It made him wheel and stare once more into the dense green forests of pines, oak, and palms fighting for space at the river's edge. But he could see nothing remotely human in the landscape.

Sid tugged at his friend. “It's over, Dean ... the dogs ran him up on a gator and that's that."

"Yeah, sure ... I can believe that."

"To sleep at night, we both have to."

"A sobering thought. Let's get the hell out of these woods."

And so they did, returning to the house where the killers had feasted on death.