Killing Swine: Unbidden Part Two

By TJ Park

Part 2 of the terrifying supernatural crime thriller

Fleeing bizarre and brutal events at a strange outback house, the remnants of Doug Mulcahy's gang are set upon by unnatural forces that destroy their latest getaway vehicle. Posing as victims of an accident, the men take refuge at a remote homestead owned by the warm and welcoming Clarkson family. But the powers aligning against the gang have followed them to the property, turning placid dogs into savage beasts, infecting livestock with disease, and giving rise to wicked portents and apparitions across the farm. Far worse is in store for the Clarksons when their guests reveal themselves and take control. But even the worst thieves and killers, no matter how desperate and cornered, could not reckon on the evil pursuing them.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Mar 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781460706312

TJ Park

TJ Park is an Australian novelist and screenwriter. He was raised on a steady diet of Stephen King novels, British science-fiction television, and the cinema of John Carpenter and Sergio Leone. Not much else is known about him. That's just the way he likes it.

Book preview

UNBIDDEN PART II: KILLING SWINE

Chapter Six

You’d think we were in outer space.

Another harsh burst of static scolded Mick. He was fiddling with the jeep’s dodgy CB radio, roving the band for any news about the shoot-out at Mirribindi. He had rooted out a faint, crackling conversation between two truckies, one warning the other to watch his speed because of the increased police presence on the road, but too quickly their chatter faded into the ether, and nothing more was found outside of a steady hiss.

It won’t last, Mick said. The cops think we did a runner by plane. They won’t be looking for us on the roads. We could be anywhere.

Doug didn’t argue with the last part. The night stars were all they had to go by. The directions drawn out of Selena didn’t seem as certain when travelling through unmarked territory in the dark.

Mick took the dial for another run. Some static blew up into a brief storm, passing over what sounded like a voice mixed in with the white noise. He reversed the dial, hunting it down.

A scream burst from the speakers. It rose too swiftly for reaction, intensifying into an ear-splitting shriek. In the rear-view mirror, Doug saw Warlock clap his hands over his ears. Forced to keep his hands on the wheel, he had no such luxury.

Cursing, Mick twisted the dial savagely but the shriek followed it across the band, not letting up for an instant.

It chased me down, was Doug’s sole coherent thought during the audio assault. It won’t leave me ever. But he knew it wasn’t the same scream he’d tried to outrun back at the house. This came from a different throat.

Rather than Mick getting rid of the sound, the scream fell away on its own into crackling static; it also subsided, as it failed at the end, into a steady ruin of crying and inhuman gobbling. Sounds that set teeth on edge and made their skin crawl.

What the fuck was that? Warlock cried out in the sudden silence.

The hairs were standing on the back of Doug’s neck. They stood on the back of the hands seized on the steering wheel as well.

Feedback, he replied thickly.

You’ve got to be fucking with me . . . that sounded human.

No, it didn’t, Mick said. It sounded like Cutter.

No. No. Warlock wasn’t having any of it. How would you know? How would anyone know what Cutter’d sound like if he screamed?

The bit at the end, Mick said with numb conviction. The bit where it was like he was sobbing or laughing. That’s when I recognised the fucker.

Except for the jeep’s rattling, there was now only occasional static cutting through the softer white noise of the radio. Every spike of static became a threat . . . it could turn into something bigger. Mick turned the radio off, trying not to look like he was in much of a hurry about it.

Would Cutter scream? Warlock asked weakly. He wouldn’t scream, right?

Doug hated the presence of Warlock leaning over his shoulder, crouched there like some pissant voice of conscience. It was feedback, he replied forbiddingly.

Warlock was oblivious. "But he was dead, wasn’t he, Doug? Didn’t you say he was? And even if he wasn’t, what would make him scream like that? Who’d be trying to contact us with a radio message like that? Why would he –?

Doug twisted around in his seat briefly.

I’ve told you for the last time. Shut your cakehole!

Doug’s ears were still sore from the crap that had roared from the radio; he wasn’t in the mood to have them filled with any more.

***

At two in the morning they stopped a while. Doug turned the jeep off the road, weaving through tall scrub until they were far from passing sight. Warlock was content to doze fitfully while he was being chauffeur-driven, but Mick and Doug weren’t. They were of the same mind, each preferring to be wide awake for what could come round the bend.

However, with the jeep concealed behind a leafy screen they hoped to get a couple hours of uninterrupted sleep. Doug had no qualms about closing his eyes on Mick. He was as good as family, even if he had bitterly disappointed of late. If there was anyone to be suspicious of it was Warlock. Then Doug realised he must be bloody tired indeed, and it was affecting his judgement . . . Warlock was incapable of doing anything that meant he would be alone.

They gave the jeep a proper once-over before sleep beckoned. The biggest prize was a frayed, but serviceable, road map tucked away in the glovebox, providing them with a better idea of where they were. It was one of several happy finds. There was a full drum of petrol huddled between the shopping supplies in back. Also, they discovered a five-litre jug of water stored away. The abundance improved their mood.

Despite their good fortune, they were still a long way from safety, and when Doug finally leaned back in his lowered seat, arms folded, he slept like a tightly-strung wire. A nightmare should never have penetrated so shallow a sleep. If it was a nightmare. It didn’t seem sensible enough to even be called one.

***

He is back inside the death room of the house, again. He catches himself in the middle of a run, boots striking the floor in wet slaps. His throat is raw agony; every breath is a ripsaw drawn through it. It feels as if he has worn out his vocal cords in some terrible way. He is running to the lifeless woman on the bed, to shake her into life again. Or to hold her.

But his hands do neither. They inexplicably catch at the empty air above her head. They behave as if they are trying to snatch the fine gossamer of spiderwebs trailing downward. At least, that’s what it seems like he is trying to do. The prisms that double his vision, then treble it, make it hard to tell.

He wipes his eyes roughly, only to break the prisms into a worsening blur. He rubs at his eyes furiously again. Then he jumps on the spot, and steps up on the bed to launch himself to the ceiling, filled with the despair of a child failing to snag the trailing string of a balloon that is swiftly rocketing into the stratosphere.

He watches his hands perform the mime of raking back what they can, retrieving only tattered wisps, gathering the pitiful amount together, holding it safe.

Bare traces of what has departed, but he is greedy for them.

Then Doug sees his broad fist clearly for the first time. He examines the ingrained dirt in the livid nails pressed tightly into his white and purple palm. Beneath the deeply-scratched knuckles healing over with scabs, is an ancient scar from an injury he doesn’t remember.

It is not his scar. This is another’s hand grafted onto his wrist.

Then he hears a noise, hears it with ears he does not trust to be his, either. The noise comes from behind him. It comes from the dead man lying against the wall, not quite dead yet.

Doug rushes to him, filled with a stranger’s sudden, lunatic fury.

The dying man groans – no, growls – a second time. He is railing against his fate, one he refuses to accept. Defiance to the end expelled on a final breath.

Doug’s other hand – matching the first in appearance and size and just as alien – shoots out with precision