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Kin
Kealan Patrick Burke
A new novel by the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of THE TURTLE BOY.
On a scorching hot summer day in Elkwood, Alabama, Claire Lambert staggers naked, wounded, and half-blind away from the scene of an atrocity. She is the sole survivor of a nightmare that claimed her friends, and even as she prays for rescue, the killers—a family of cannibalistic lunatics—are closing in.
A soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder returns from Iraq to the news that his brother is among the murdered in Elkwood.
In snowbound Detroit, a waitress trapped in an abusive relationship gets an unexpected visit that will lead to bloodshed and send her back on the road to a past she has spent years trying to outrun.
And Claire, the only survivor of the Elkwood Massacre, haunted by her dead friends, dreams of vengeance… a dream which will be realized as grief and rage turn good people into cold-blooded murderers and force alliances among strangers.
It’s time to return to Elkwood.
In the spirit of such iconic horror classics as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance, Kin begins at the end and studies the possible aftermath for the survivors of such traumas upon their return to the real world—the guilt, the grief, the thirst for revenge—and sets them on an unthinkable journey… back into the heart of darkness.
Review
“From the first chapter I found myself comparing KIN to the absolute best work of Jack Ketchum, James White Wrath, and Richard Laymon. You might be thinking that I’ve listed an awful lot of great authors here and mentioned more than a few classics in this review and that there’s no way this book could live up to that hype. You’d be wrong. KIN is not only the best novel I’ve read all year, it is one of the most horrifying ones I’ve ever read. I hope you give it a shot.”
—HORROR WORLD
“It’s odd that an Irish transplant to the Northern US has written one of the best Southern Gothic novels in recent memory. I’ll look forward to Burke’s next work just as much as I hated to see this one end. I would highly recommend KIN to lovers of old fashioned horror fiction with a twist. If you’re going to read just one noir cannibal revenge novel this year, KIN should fit the bill.”
—DARK DISCOVERIES
Kealan Patrick Burke
KIN
For Doogie, and the staff at The Delaware County 911 Center
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Writing is a solitary pursuit, and yet one that so frequently depends on the generosity of others to make it work. With this in mind, my heartfelt thanks must go to Jennifer & Tyler Burke, Elaine Lamkin, Kathy Jewell, Tod Clark, my friends and family, and of course, you the reader.
PART ONE
-1-
Elkwood, Alabama
July 15th, 2004
Everything is dead.
Naked, bloodied and stunned, the sun high in the cloudless sky and scalding her sweat-slicked skin, Claire Lambert nevertheless managed to note that the stunted, bone-white tree in the field to her right was the same one she’d commented on a few days, months, or years earlier, though what she might have said about it was a mystery now. She stopped walking—if indeed she’d been walking at all, for the sensation thus far was one of being still, spine bent, the road moving like a granite-studded conveyor belt beneath her torn and filthy feet—and squinted at the gnarled trunk, which looked like an emaciated mother with an elaborate wind-wracked headdress, twisted limbs curled protectively around its womb, knees bent, feet splayed and poking out from beneath the hem of a skirt that had been washed and worn a few times too often.
It fascinated Claire, and though she swayed as if she might fall on legs that had many miles ago ceased registering as anything but independent creatures burdened with her weight, she couldn’t look away. Fire licked with cold tongues at her groin; the blood in her hair hardened, and whatever vile substance now lay in a gelid, solidifying lump in the hole which had once contained her right eye, ticked as if someone had replaced it with a watch to measure the time she had left. But still she looked, still she stared, as the merciless sun turned her scalp pink and cooked the flesh on her back. Sweat, cooler in the scant shade beneath her breasts, fell like tears. At length, she twitched, and her legs shuffled her toward the barbed wire fence that separated the field from the road. Cotton whispered in the breeze as her stomach met the wire, the barbs pressing deep into the skin; she felt nothing but an involuntary shiver. A startled bird exploded from the cotton with a cry that dragged her attention to its whickering form as it soared high, then lost itself in the blinding blanket of the sun. Claire lowered her head, licked dry, cracked lips with a sandpaper tongue and pushed again against the fence, unable to understand why her progress was being halted. Surely no one would begrudge her a conference with that tree, a taste of the maternal comfort she felt it might offer. Again she pushed, and again she was withheld. This time the barbs pierced her skin. Troubled, she took a half-step back, the black wire thrumming like a guitar string strummed by the breeze. A single drop of her blood welled from the iron tip of a barb and hung, suspended in time, refusing the sun, before it plummeted and colored crimson a finger of grass. Frowning, she looked slowly from the wire to the tree, as if the blame might lay with that withered woman, and tried to speak, to beg. A thin whistle was all that emerged from her parched throat—Help me—and she swallowed what felt like a handful of hot stones.
A sound.
She turned, reluctant to look away from the tree, but drawn by the only other noise she had heard thus far not immediately attributable to nature, or that soft voice inside her chanting incessantly and with tireless determination that everything was dead. A strand of her hair snagged on her lower lip, and stayed there, held in a fissure where the skin had split.
Raging white light thundered toward her. Of this she was only dimly aware, for between that light and where she stood swaying, was a man with no face or hands. No, that wasn’t quite right. Daniel still had his hands, but they no longer had skin and looked impossibly dark and raw. This didn’t concern her, for rarely had he held her anyway—a lapse in affection of which she had once upon a time hoped to disabuse him.
Why won’t you hold my hand?
Because we’re not kids anymore, babe.
But at the sight of that flayed skull, a tear, like the blood on the wire, defied the sun and spilled from her one good eye.
“We can hitch a ride,” he told her, though his lips never moved. The raw ragged open wound of his face, topped by a nest of unruly brown hair, turned to nod at the glaring light behind him, which had grown closer still. The mirrored sun floated above shimmering metal, the wheels grinding up thick mustard-colored clouds.
She opened her mouth to respond, to tell her boyfriend that they really should wait for the others, but even had she possessed the voice to convey the words, a sudden bolt of dazzling pain tried to scissor her in half, forcing her to double over as she vomited into the dirt at her feet.
Everything is dead.
Her head swelled as she watched a dark red river flow from her mouth, turning dust to rust and spattering her ankles. The veins in her neck stuck out in thick cords, her ruined eye began to burn and throb, making it feel as if her brain was trying to force its way out of her, to distance itself farther from this confusing reality than she had thus far managed on her own.
Weakened, she dropped to her knees, felt the ground abrade the skin there. But there was no pain. Her flesh had become a thick heavy coat, and the many tears in the lining affected her not at all. Her palms slid into the dirt.
The sound of squealing might have been of old hinges in the doors of the earth opening to accept her; it might have been her own struggle to breathe against a torrent of vile regurgitated panic and grief, or it might h
ave been the brakes on the car she’d seen coming because now a new voice, a strange voice, drifted down to her sunburned ears as a figure eclipsed the sun and a cool shadow was thrown like a blanket over her bare back.
“Jesus, Mary’n Joseph’n all the holy saints,” it said. “What happened, Miss?”
It’s them, she thought feebly. One of them come to take me back. To hurt me again. It was the same knowledge that had kept her going this far, the unmistakable feeling of being watched, stalked, hunted, meant to die but breathing still.
She shook her head to deny him. Opened her mouth to speak but only blood emerged, the river of sickness forcing her throat to swell. Still she tried to struggle, but when she raised her hands to protect herself, it happened only in her mind. Her limbs would not respond. The pair of dusty boots that had pressed into her field of vision moved away.
Good. Go. Leave me alone. You’ve done enough. Everything is dead. You killed them all.
“Christ, Pete, get me that ’ol dog blanket an’ the flask. Move!”
At last the dizzying current ceased and she found strength enough to raise her head. The man was a wiry knot of shadow under a crooked hat, a scarecrow with a golden halo, trying to deceive her into thinking him salvation. Dread pounded at her chest, igniting further knots of pain that seemed to radiate from the core of her.
Another shadow sprouted from the man’s shoulder, this one just as thin, but without a hat, just a fuzz of hair.
They’re here to kill me.
“Oh God, lookit her eye.”
“Shut your fool mouth, boy.”
“What happ’ned to her? She ain’t got no clothes on.” The voice was filled with nervous excitement.
The hatless shadow was elbowed aside. The thin one flapped its arms until its chest became wings descending around Claire, swaddling her.
“Help me carry her.”
She opened her mouth to moan at the sudden, terrible heat enveloping her and felt new warmth seep from between her legs. The dirt turned dark quickly.
“Pa she done wet hers—”
“Now.”
Before the arms could press their wings even tighter around her, Claire took a series of quick, dry, painful swallows, then drew in a breath that sounded like nails on a blackboard, and screamed for Daniel. But even as that tortured, awful noise poured out of her, and though she was surrounded by shadows that were lifting her up and carrying her back to Hell, she knew for the first time in her life that she was well and truly alone, and that no help was coming now, or ever.
-2-
The smell of burned flesh, though only a figment of his imagination, made Luke’s mouth water. He was hungry, his dinner having been interrupted not a full hour before by the sound of Matthew’s keening from the woodshed. It had reminded him of that day when they were kids, when Luke had observed his younger brother trying to skin a deer they had taken down with a bow and arrow. Luke had known the excitement and desire to prove himself would lead Matt to make a mistake, and he’d been right. With a wide smile on his face, and sweat on his brow, Matt had held up the fistful of pelt he’d managed to free from the deer, his other hand still digging that Bowie knife into the carcass as he sought approval from Luke. Told’ya I could. Before Luke could satisfy him, the pelt slipped free of Matt’s grip and the momentum made his other hand snap back. The blade cut a thin half-inch-deep groove through Matt’s bare side, just below the ribs. Luke doubted it hurt very much, but it was enough to send his brother to his knees, hands grabbing fistfuls of hair as he vented his shame and disappointment in that irritating singsong keening sound—the same sound he’d used earlier today after the blonde woman drove a wooden spur through his chest.
Anger made Luke forget himself and he rose from where he’d been crouching atop a grassy hillock. Up ahead, an old black man and his boy were helping his brother’s attacker into the back of a flatbed truck. Helpless to do anything but watch, he’d been tracking the woman on this road, which few folk ever traveled, biding his time before he closed the distance and dragged the woman back to make her pay for what she’d done. Rage had made him abandon the traditional rules of running down the quarry and he’d stayed on the road, in full view of the woman. She hadn’t seen him, and was moving slower than a crippled coon. Even if she had looked over her shoulder and spied through the heat haze his lean sinewy form striding toward her, there was no chance she’d get away. She was bleeding a lot, and he didn’t figure she’d get very far.
It should not have been a difficult task.
But damned if she hadn’t kept on staggering away, her pace even despite her obvious disorientation. It was as if, instead of just floundering blindly through the woods, she’d been drawn to the road like an iron filing to a magnet. Still, he hadn’t hurried. There was no need. He’d been confident despite the ache that throbbed steadily within him whenever it came back to him that Matt was hurt, and hurt bad.
But then Luke heard the truck, and noted the sound of the engine was not a safe, familiar one, and he’d quickly hopped the fence and ducked down in the grass, watching with queer, unfamiliar dread the red vehicle bearing down on the woman.
Claire, he remembered. One of the others had called her “Claire”.
No one ever got away. Not for long. To let someone escape was an unthinkable, unimaginable mistake they had managed to avoid for as long as Luke had been alive. Papa-in-Gray had showed them how and what to hunt, and why it needed to be done, and they had executed his instructions flawlessly.
But today…
Today an implausible number of distractions had left Matt alone with the woman. Even so, she’d been tied to a stake, her hands and feet bound behind her, her mouth gagged. His brothers had already raped her and blinded her in one eye, cut off most of the toes on her right foot, and stabbed her repeatedly in the arms and legs. There should have been little life and even less fight in her, but yet somehow she’d managed to free herself and skewer Matt with the spur. She’d been gone damn near half an hour before Luke, oldest of his five brothers, heard Matt’s pitiful mewling, and by then he’d all but bled out on the floor.
He knew it was not too late. He could still try to close the distance between himself and the truck before they got the woman settled and the engine running again, before they carried Claire out of their lives forever. If the two men he’d seen hefting her into the truck put up a fight, he’d deal with them. He had Matt’s Bowie knife, plucked from his brother’s hand with a vow to finish what the other had been denied the chance to do. Luke was quick. He could make it, and all their troubles would be over. All he needed to do was start running.
But then he heard the sound of the engine coughing, saw the dirty black plume of smoke puffing from the truck’s exhaust, and knew it was too late. Slowly, he started moving toward the fence, and the road beyond. He wanted to scream at the top of his lungs, tear at his hair, rip at his skin, but instead he hopped the fence, and raced in the opposite direction, away from the truck, and back the way he’d come.
When he’d left home, Matt had been conscious. Breathing. Alive. That Joshua, Isaac and Aaron hadn’t piled into the truck and come roaring down the road in pursuit of the woman told Luke that might no longer be the case.
Most telling of all, Luke realized, was that he hadn’t thought to take the truck. He couldn’t drive for shit, not with the way his fingers were arranged, but that was no excuse. Not now. He had always been an efficient hunter, and he knew the real reason his brothers weren’t coming was because they assumed Luke would handle what needed to be handled. But for the first time ever, they were wrong. He had lost them their prey. And he knew what that would mean when he returned home. He would have to answer to Momma-In-Bed, and she would not be at all pleased. And the last time she’d been mad at him, she’d gotten Papa-In-Grey to bust the fingers on his left hand and set all but the thumb and the middle one wrong.
Dispirited and fearful, he slowed, and whispered a small prayer to God that she would go easy on him. Bu
t as the sun rose higher, became a blazing eye in the center of the cornflower blue sky, he knew two things at once.
God wasn’t listening. Not to him. No more than Papa ever did.
And that today, there was every possibility that Momma-In-Bed would kill him.
* * *
“Stop starin’.”
“Sorry, Pa.”
“Watch the road.”
Pete nodded and righted himself in the passenger seat. They had covered the girl with a tarp, which was all they had, but just now, through the small begrimed window at the back of the cab, Pete had seen that a corner of the tarp had come loose, flapping madly at the billowing dust the Chevy was kicking up and exposing the girl’s right side, down to her hip. One small breast was visible and despite it being crisscrossed by cuts and scratches, the boy’s breath had quickened, his heart beating faster and faster the longer he looked. He didn’t even know if she’d been a pretty girl before whatever had happened to her. It was hard to tell because of her wounds, and the swelling, which made her face look like a beaten squash. He hoped she was, and that once she recovered—assuming she didn’t die right there among the tools and empty chicken cages—that she might take the kind of interest in him he’d thus far been unable to excite in members of the fairer sex; maybe as a thank you for rescuing her.
Of course, it had really been his father who had plucked the wounded woman from the road, but Pete would be in no hurry to dissuade any misguided gratitude she might choose to throw his way in the first few days of her convalescence. And it wasn’t like the old man hadn’t needed his help.
“What do you think happ’ned to her?” he asked his father again.
“Animals.”
Resisting the urge to glance back over his shoulder again, Pete focused on the road being sucked beneath the old Chevrolet’s grille. “Never seen an animal do that to someone,” he muttered. “D’you see her eye?”