Off Season - Jack Ketchum [36]
His mouth slack in a twisted grin, the thin man with the crucifix took his cock out as he watched them and began to masturbate against the house. Within moments he came. Beside him the man in the red shirt smiled as he saw the sperm slide down the white housepaint and fall to the ground.
And then they were ready.
Inside, Carla knew only that familiar high mix of pain and pleasure. She had come the first time with his fingers inside her, his thumb working her clitoris. And now she was almost ready again, vibratory and anticipating his every move, and the window and the cool night were far removed from her tiny world of mute sensation.
The same was true of Jim. He’d held back as long as he could or cared to. Now he began to give way within the fine warm flesh. He felt himself leap inside her. This was what he’d driven all that way to get from her, this and nothing else, and it was worth it to him.
Their bodies tightened almost simultaneously. Carla began to shudder, her legs thrashing in waves of fever. He lowered his head to take her nipple between his teeth. He bit down. At once Carla came again, and this time he followed her immediately. His eyes squeezed shut.
The room exploded. Shattered.
Suddenly there was glass everywhere. Carla felt it spray across her breasts and stomach, splinters striking her face and falling in her hair. At the same instant Jim’s mouth went slack against her. She saw a pair of arms flash out in front of her and saw something glint in the firelight. Then two more arms appeared and a broad pair of hands closed over her wrists. She screamed.
She saw Jim’s head loll away from her breasts. The hands jerked her out from under him. She saw the deep red gash across the back of his neck just below the hairline and the fierce gout of blood pouring over her belly. She felt the windowpane rake across her backbone and the next instant she was out the window and gone, his blood cold in the night air, and she was screaming again and trying to stand on legs she could barely feel in the long damp grass, staring up at the two men in the dark. She saw one of them draw back his arm and ball up his fist and she knew it could break her neck if he wanted it to. She closed her eyes and felt something strike her and then felt nothing at all.
Nick was the first one out of his room. He had not slept. He’d heard them making love. He’d heard everything. Then there was the sound of glass breaking and he thought, What the hell? and leaped from his bed and flung open the door. Then he hesitated, his mind reeling at the impossibility of what he saw. He watched Jim’s body twitching on the bed and saw her legs slide out the window, bathed in blood. For a moment he could not understand it, any of it. It was as if he had stepped into the company of strangers, in a strange room he had never seen before, and the comedy they performed for him was awful and grotesque and impossible to comprehend.
But then he was shouting her name and racing toward the window, and he reached it in time to see the man hit her and her head roll away as she fell. He was half out the window after her when the thin, slimy thing that might have been a man whirled on him with a knife and slashed him.
He fell back against the shuddering corpse on the bed and felt his own hot blood slide down his face. He felt blank, dizzy, empty. Then suddenly Marjie was screaming beside him, and he heard Laura in her room awake and calling out to them. “What is it? What’s going on? What’s out there?” And he knew he had never heard raw panic until he heard it then.
Dan was at the front door, the poker in his hand.
He opened the door. A blast of cool air swirled through the house from the door to the open window,