The rangers slapped their horses gently on their hindquarters and the horses trotted to the cabin. Bob dismounted, then kneeled down on his haunches in front of the girl.
“Hi there, young lady,” he said quietly. “Shouldn’t you be inside? Kind of cold out here, don’t you think?”
The girl had the iciest blue eyes Bob had ever seen. She hugged her knees up to her face, stared straight ahead and rocked. And sang. And rocked. And sang.
“The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out…”
The wind was picking up. It felt like somebody had stabbed Bob in the back with an icicle. He shivered. Or maybe it was a shudder. He wasn’t sure. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked.
Still staring nowhere. Still sing-songing. “…out came the sun and dried up all the rain…”
“Do you live here?”
Still droning, still rocking. “…and the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again.”
“Are your mommy and daddy inside?”
“The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout…” Still singing. Still rocking.
Bob shook his head and called up to John, “You gonna see what you can see, or what?”
“Yeah, I guess.” John hopped off his horse and landed ungracefully on his knees, kicking up a puff of snow that blew into Bob’s face.
Bob wiped his eyes with the back of his glove. “Nice work, slick.”
John took a tentative step towards the front door, cracked it open about a foot and called out, “Anybody home?” A cat darted out, bounced off John’s ankle, then stumbled her way through the snow, hop-skipping off to wherever it is cats hop-skip off to in the middle of the winter. John jumped back and let out a surprised yelp. He stared at the blood-red paw marks that the cat left in the snow.
“What’s the problem, Simon?”
“Nothing. Just a cat with red painted paws.” He squinted through the open door, trying to see what he could see before he ventured in; if it wasn’t for the beat-up, cast iron cauldron bubbling over an open orange flame in the middle of the floor, sending dark shadows dancing on the walls, he wouldn’t have been able to see a damn thing. The windows and the walls had all been painted black. He took three nervous steps past the threshold and stepped directly into a thick, sticky, gooey mess.
“Damn it,” he mumbled, “cat shit.” He called to Bob, “Hey, Brubeck, I just stepped into a pile of cat shit.”
Bob picked up the little girl and was holding her tightly in his arms, trying as best he could to both comfort and warm her. She was still chanting away. He stepped forward, calling to John, “Simon, you’re in a horse barn every day. You’ve stepped in worse. Keep going. I’d like to get out of here and get Miss Itsy Bitsy someplace warm, figure out who left her here and who the hell she belongs to.”
John took three steps into the cabin, slipped and fell on his ass. He found himself staring into the face of a woman, her bloodshot, distended eyeballs bulging out at him. It was a moment before he realized it was a disembodied head, so neatly chopped off that it could’ve been mounted on a pedestal. He sat up suddenly, realizing that he’d slipped not in cat shit, but a pool of blood. His nose picked up a stench that tied a knot in his stomach.
John’s eyes started to adjust to the dark; he wished they hadn’t. Directly in front of him sat another head, but whoever chopped this one did more of a slapdash job, leaving four inches of spine protruding from the neck. Six inches to the left of that head was a messily carved arm. On top of the arm, there was a leg bent at a ninety-degree angle—the wrong way. Another six inches to the left lay an armless, legless torso with an “X,” or a plus sign, or maybe it was an upside down cross carved into a chest. John didn’t take the time to count the dismembered heads of men and women littered on the cabin floor; he’d seen enough. He pulled himself up and stuck his hand in an oozing pile of…something. He didn’t want to know what. He had some ideas—small intestines, toes, maybe even fingers—but he had no urge to find out for sure. He didn’t want to look. He just wanted to get out of this hellhole.
But he looked. He couldn’t help it.
John Simons could be forgiven for thinking the pile of cold, fleshy nubs came from the bottom of somebody’s feet, because in the semi-dark, three toes and three castrated penises feel just about the same.
He screamed “Jesus Christ,” as he crossed himself and flew out the front door. He stumbled on the threshold, almost knocking over Bob and the little girl. “Hey,” Bob growled, “Watch where you’re going! I almost dropped my new friend here.”
“No…don’t!”
“Settle down,” Bob barked.
Sputtering, John Simon couldn’t get out a single coherent sentence. He was hyperventilating, turning pink, easing into purple. “What the hell is goin’ on?” Bob snapped.
John could only pant and point to the door. Finally, he spit out, “Death.” His stomach gave in as his lunch made its way back out. He rushed off the porch into the fresh snow and puked his guts out.
“What? What the hell’s in there?” Bob tried to put down the little girl but she had grabbed his neck and had no intention of letting go. So with the child around his neck, singing that damn song over and over again, Bob decided he had to investigate what was beyond that door. “I’m going in.”
John found his voice, turned. “No! Don’t go in,” he pleaded. Even in the bitter cold, perspiration dotted John’s forehead. “It’s evil. Flat out evil!”