(Part 3) I'm a cable guy in the world's creepiest little town, Hollow's End..

Part 1

Part 2

When I got back to town the sun was just beginning to set. The Butcher was closing up his shop and seemed to be anticipating me as I pulled up to the curb in front of his shop. He opened my passenger door and dropped his giant, hulking body into the seat, uninvited. Scratches leapt out of the way, waking up from his nap in an instant, his cat reflexes saving him from being crushed to death. The Butcher weighed easily 350lbs. The van drooped to the right with the weight of his body, shaking the whole van as it see-sawed back and forth with his bulk.

“Good job. You found him quick. Let's go kill the son of a bitch.”

“I’m a bit worried. It looks like there's only one way in or out. He might be expecting us. We might need backup.”

He looked me in the eyes, measuring my words. His skin was puckered and red around the scars which crisscrossed his face and arms. His entire body looked like it had been stitched together in pieces. No one knew where the scars were from, but there were plenty of rumours.

“Good idea,” he said. “You can never be too careful. This is clearly a dangerous character we’re dealing with. We'd better call in the cavalry. Why don't you do a lap around the town square?”

He told me what he wanted to do and I began to honk my horn and drive slowly around the town square. The Butcher rolled down his window and yelled out in his loud baritone voice.

“CITIZENS OF HOLLOW’S END, WE ARE UNDER ATTACK! GATHER AT TOWN HALL FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS!”

He shouted this again and again. I began to see people emerging from their houses in the gathering darkness. A lone man, impossibly tall, dressed in a dapper suit with a tall hat, strode with purpose towards the town square, his eyes glowed like embers. He nodded at us and continued forward. I recognized him as Varduin, the town mortician.

A woman who appeared slightly see-through walked alongside Steve, the town barber. I saw a couple of tourists pop their heads out of the café, but unseen shadowy figures pulled them back inside quickly, their faces covered with chloroform-doused rags.

By the time we stopped in the town square there was about a hundred shadowy figures milling about the place. More were filtering in by the moment. A pair of twins, young girls, dressed in Victorian era clothing walked together holding hands and joined the crowd, their teeth were long, sharp, and pointed as they chatted excitedly to each other. Their eyes were black and their faces fish-like.

I looked out at the crowd we had assembled. It was quite a rag tag team. But we would get the job done, we all loved this town too much to see it get destroyed by some rich, entitled asshole outsider. I told them all as much, explaining about the wall of evil lava flowing toward town from the sisters' place. I heard gasps and had to stop briefly until the place quieted down, everyone was chattering excitedly with nervous voices.

“If we kill this outsider, it will stop the evil from spreading.” The Butcher’s voice silenced everyone and they all looked at him. He was the pseudo leader of the town; we didn’t have a mayor, we had The Butcher.

“Then we’ll go to his place, and kill him!” Someone shouted from the back of the crowd.

“I wouldn’t count on that, my friends..”

We all looked around for the source of the voice. It sounded like an old man, wise with age and experience. A man used to getting his way.

A drone descended from the sky into the midst of us. A loud voice echoed from it.

“Those who attempt to follow these.. pathetic fools into battle.. will be killed alongside them. Your deaths will be slow, they will be painful. I ask you all, leave this town now, it belongs to me, as of today. Chose to stay and fight, you'll die. Surrender your town to me, and run away, children.”

The voice was arrogant and condescending. Someone picked up a rock and threw it at the drone. It fell from the sky into the crowd. When it landed, it exploded with a fiery blast that killed a dozen or more townspeople in an instant. Even more were wounded and taken from the fight before it could begin. Clearly we had underestimated our opposition.

A harsh, mocking laugh came from the sky and I looked up and saw an even larger drone flying up there. It flew away silently, back towards the north east and was gone.

I surveyed the carnage in the town square. Bibbins, the local fruit stand operator, was laying on the ground near my feet, the top half of him, anyways. Blood sputtered and sprayed from his lips as he reached down to feel for legs that were no longer there. His intestines hung from the charred and mangled remains of his belly. Blood spurted into the air from an artery, trying to desperately pump blood to legs that no longer existed. His slack horse-face lost its life as his head hung to the side and he died looking into my eyes.

I saw the twins, or just their hands I should say, still intertwined, hanging from a high tree branch, like a sick Christmas ornament. The Barber (our version of a town doctor) had his hands full. The old man was already comforting a guy with small horns who I recognized as Jonathan, the clerk from the general store. He had a large piece of something long and sharp impaled through him. His eyes looked frantic, blood poured from his mouth in rivulets.

The worst thing of all though, was that I looked down and saw Scratches breathing shallowly at my feet. He was breathing intermittently and looking up at me. Blood ran from his ears and was dried in his fur.

I was too angry to cry for my friend, as I saw he was dying. The cat and I had always shared a special bond. I was the only one who could hear him, and had never told anyone about it. The sisters hadn't even known. Maybe I was just hallucinating all these years, the thought had occurred to me. After all, it had been years since I’d taken my antipsychotics.

I lied… The sisters.. they're still alive.. I'm a coward. I ran away. They're still there for all I know, fighting for their lives.

I wasn’t angry with him for some reason. It was pointless, this wasn't his fault.

“We're gonna kill that son of a bitch,” I said. He didn't hear it though, he was already gone.

Dark clouds began to roll in from the northeast, as if on cue. Fat rain drops came down, slowly at first, then in torrents. Thunder boomed in the dark sky as I heard the wails of dying townspeople all around me. Faces that I had known all my life were unrecognizable around me, mutilated by the explosion of C-4 or whatever the bastard had rigged to blow on his drone when it crashed.

I found The Butcher. He was pulling a chunk of shrapnel out of his shoulder. Blood was all over his hands, being washed away by the heavy rain.

We spoke for a minute and decided what we would have to do. He stood up on the pedestal which had been the base of a statue of his great grandfather, now mangled by the explosion.

“LET'S GO KILL THAT MOTHERFUCKER!”

He raised his heavy clever high in the air and the remaining town folk raised their own weapons high above their heads. Knives, swords, barber’s straight razors, scythes, and axes were held high in the rain, and my heart felt full of pride and dull anger as their voices rose up into the air in a war-cry, drowning out the thunder.

Part 4

JG