Husk

By Dave Zeltserman

Classic contemporary horror from the Shamus and Derringer-winning author of Small Crimes.

Charlie is a Husker on the prowl in the New Hampshire wilderness when he falls in love with one of them: a girl named Jill. Loving Jill means leaving the Husk clan, with its gruesome cannibalistic rituals, and that will be far more difficult – and dangerous – than Charlie could have foreseen.

It’s only in New York City that the secret to ending his terrible cravings may reveal itself – if it doesn’t kill him and everything he has grown to love first.

A darkly imagined tale, all the more frightening for its apparent ordinariness and plausibility, Husk is guaranteed to leave readers shaken, stirred – and chilled to the bone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781780109831

Dave Zeltserman

Dave Zeltserman's first 'badass out of prison' novel, Small Crimes, received widespread acclaim, with NPR naming it one of the 5 best crime and mystery novels of 2008 and the Washington Post naming it one of the best books of 2008. Dave's second 'badass out of prison' novel, Pariah, was named by the Washington Post as one of the best books of 2009. Dave lives in the Boston area with his wife, Judy; is a die-hard Patriots and Red Sox fan; and when he's not writing crime fiction he spends his time studying martial arts, and holds a black belt in Kung Fu.

Book preview

ONE

Labor Day weekend is always a good time to pick up students hitchhiking, but that wasn’t why I pulled into the rest stop on the Massachusetts Turnpike. While I had fourteen empty burlap sacks in the back of the van that needed to be filled before heading back home, along with more than enough rope and gags to take care of things, I didn’t expect to be picking up any of them here. While there’s always the chance of finding a hitchhiker at a place like this, it’s a small one and I was expecting that most of the stragglers I’d be getting would be in cities off the Turnpike. Hartford, Bridgeport, and if need be, New Haven. For this trip I hoped to get mostly students. They were generally healthier and leaner than the usual types – the prostitutes, drifters, homeless, and other such stragglers that I’d often have to collect. Students also tended to carry more books, clothes, and money on them than those others, all of which was good to bring back to the homestead. If I ended up needing those others to fill up the back of the van, I would. But I was hoping for mostly students.

Another reason I didn’t expect or care about getting one of them at this rest stop was it’s safer and easier to collect them at night when it’s dark and you don’t have to worry about prying eyes. But it’s not impossible to collect them during the daylight. It’s not even that hard, and I’ve done it plenty of times in the past. You just have to be careful. So why did I stop? Only because I’d been traveling for over five hours, and I wanted to get a bite to eat and stretch my legs.

As you’d expect on the Saturday before Labor Day, the building housing the small food court and restrooms was teeming with travelers, even though it was only a little after ten thirty in the morning. I stood among them fantasizing how much simpler things would be if I could just pick fourteen of them out, take a club to them, and load their unconscious bodies into the back of the van. If I could’ve done that, I’d be heading home shortly afterwards and arriving at the homestead well before sundown. But these trips are never that easy. Not hard, exactly, but they take time. Almost always at least a full twenty-four hours, and there have been times when it’s been double that.

I purchased a newspaper and then searched the food kiosks until I found the one I’d frequented the last time I came this way. At the kiosk I bought a large black coffee and what was advertised as a vegan chocolate-covered doughnut, and took it to a small table in the back. For the next twenty minutes I stretched out my legs fully, read the newspaper all the way through, ate my doughnut, and sipped my coffee. After that I sat with my eyes closed and listened to the hubbub they made, letting my mind drift. What knocked me out of my daydreaming was realizing there was a heated argument going on nearby. Lovers were fighting. From their raised voices, the man was angry and getting angrier, and the girl tearful.

I glanced casually in their direction. They were two tables away. The girl’s back was to me, so I couldn’t tell much about her other than that she had long yellow hair and seemed to be a slight thing, at least from her slender shoulders and how narrow her back was. The man I was able to get a good look at. Red-faced, beefy, cruel mouth, eyes even angrier than his voice. He looked young, but that didn’t mean much. The healthy ones always look much younger than we do because of the soft, pampered lives they lead. Even after all the forays I’ve made into their world, I still have a difficult time judging their ages.

I glanced away, but soon after that my ears perked up when he told her in a strained and lowered voice that he was done with her. This meant there was a chance of me being able to get him safely, assuming he had been a passenger in her car and now needed to find another ride to wherever he was heading. He’d be a good one to pick up. The women back at the homestead would get a lot of meat off of him when they stripped him to the bones. But it was more than just that. Because of his cruel mouth and the way he left that girl sobbing, I wanted him to be the first one I left trussed up in the back of the van.

I kept him in my peripheral vision and watched as he left the table. Soon he was crossing diagonally in front of me as he made his way toward the exit. I found myself holding my breath, hoping he’d put out a thumb and start hitchhiking. I could see him through the glass as he stepped outside and moved doggedly in a straight line as if he knew exactly where he wanted to go. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to be hitchhiking. He could’ve quickly decided where he was going to try to flag down a ride.

I decided to give it three minutes before heading out after him, and was still counting down to zero when a small green-colored sedan pulled up in front of the entrance. That same man I’d been hoping would be my first pickup got out of the car, walked to the trunk, opened it, and flung a duffel bag toward the door. After slamming the trunk closed, he got back into the driver’s seat and sped off.

I couldn’t help feeling disappointed as I glanced over at the girl, and it wasn’t because of how much less meat we’d be able to get off of her.

TWO

Even though she had to know her duffel bag was lying unattended on the pavement outside, she didn’t bother getting it, or even looking in its direction. Instead, she sat as if in a daze for the next forty minutes before slipping a backpack on and finally leaving the table. She must’ve been hoping her boyfriend would have a change of heart and come back for her, and it took that long for her to finally accept that he wasn’t. Or maybe the ordeal had weakened her to such an extent that until then she lacked the strength to stand on her feet. Whichever it was, the rush of travelers entering and leaving the building during that time all stepped around the duffel bag, with none of them bothering to locate who it belonged to or check whether that person needed help.

I didn’t want her to notice I was watching her, so I looked away as she wandered somewhat aimlessly toward the door. I then waited five additional minutes before following her outside.

She sat cross-legged on her duffel bag, her face buried in her hands. She looked so tiny it again made me think there just wouldn’t be enough meat on her to justify the bother. But I had already invested time in her, and I knew the elders in the clan would’ve expected me to collect her if possible. They might not be able to trim more than forty pounds from her, but it would be high-quality meat, leaner, tastier and more nutritious than much of the meat I brought back. I stood in front of her making up my mind before telling her that I had been sitting nearby when she had her fight with her boyfriend. She didn’t move at all, and I wasn’t sure she heard me or realized I was there. I tried again.

‘That was rotten what he did to you,’ I said. ‘Abandoning you like that. Where I come from, we’d skin a boy alive doing something that mean to a pretty gal like you.’

I made sure I was smiling, so when she looked my way she’d think I was joking about the skinning alive part. She slowly lifted her head, and as her eyes caught mine I felt a hitch form along the side of my mouth. Even as red-rimmed as her eyes were from crying and as blotchy as her skin was around those eyes for the same reason, she looked younger than I expected, much more so than her boyfriend. She also struck me as very pretty. Usually I don’t think of them in any particular way – pretty, ugly, or otherwise. They’re just them. Something different from my kind, and certainly not something to think of as anything other than the meat we can trim off of them. But in her case I thought about how pretty she was. I also realized that for a few heartbeats I’d been somewhat mesmerized by her blue eyes and all her blondeness. That was easy to understand. I’m not used to blue eyes or golden hair, especially hair that looks like it could be finely spun silk. In my clan, and all the other clans I know of, all of us have brown eyes that are so dark they look black in most lights. Likewise, we all have coarse black hair.

Her lips turned upwards slightly so she could return me a frail smile. ‘This is embarrassing,’ she said. ‘But thank you. And yes, that was pretty awful what Ethan did.’ She shook her head slightly. ‘I still can’t believe it.’

‘You look like you could use some help. Anything I can do?’

‘That’s awfully nice of you, but no. I’ll be OK.’

‘I don’t know.’ I rubbed the back of my neck in a folksy sort of way to put her at ease, which seemed unnecessary given how relaxed her smile had become and the way her eyes held steady on mine. ‘It looks to me like he left you stranded out here, and where I come from we don’t walk away from someone in need of help.’

‘I don’t know …’

I turned my smile up a notch. ‘People tell me I have a friendly face,’ I said.

That was the truth. Many of them I’ve picked up in the past have told me that. She broke out in a soft laugh. ‘True, that,’ she said. She stood up and offered me her hand. ‘My name’s Jill Zemler.’

Seeing her standing in front of me, she was every bit the slight thing I’d thought earlier, the top of her head barely reaching my chest. Maybe ninety pounds soaking wet. Her hand quickly disappeared in mine as I took it. Her flesh felt warmer than I expected it to be.

‘Charlie Husk,’ I said.

I felt a sudden dryness in my throat that I couldn’t quite explain, and it caused my voice to crack a touch. I also realized that our handshake had gone on longer than it should’ve. She didn’t seem to mind, but I released her hand anyway.

‘Nice to meet you, Charlie,’ she said. Her smile had turned into something impish that also showed in her eyes. ‘Where are you heading?’

I must’ve been too distracted by the way she was smiling at me, because I should’ve gotten her to tell me first where she was going. From where we were on the Massachusetts Turnpike, it was likely she’d be heading in one of two directions, at least if she was a college student as I suspected. Either somewhere along the way to New York or Amherst, Massachusetts. I took a gamble and told her New York.

‘Well, it must be fate,’ she said. ‘I’m heading there also. I’m a student at Queens College.’ A flash of hurt momentarily dulled her smile. ‘It wasn’t much fun being dumped here, and you really are rescuing me, Charlie Husk. I didn’t know what I was going to do, other than try to get an Uber ride to a bus station.’ The little that remained of her smile turned into something brittle as she said, ‘I hope you understand, but my mom would kill me if I didn’t ask to see your driver’s license.’

‘Sure, of course.’ As good-naturedly as I could manage it, I pulled a leather wallet out of my pocket, dug a driver’s license from it, and handed it to her. Like the dungarees, flannel shirt, and work boots I was wearing, the wallet came from one of them I had picked up on an earlier run, and it was in good shape, not too worn. The driver’s license was a fake, but to my eye looked every bit as genuine as any others I’ve seen from the state of New Hampshire. The name on the license, Charlie Husk, is my real name and I do live in New Hampshire, but while the address on it was a real street address in the state’s largest city, Manchester, my clan lives eighty miles from there, deep in the wilderness – an area nobody, other than us and other clans, knows about. Occasionally we get lost hikers stumbling upon us, but ever since the advent of handheld GPS devices we get far fewer of them, which is one of the reasons my clan needs me to make these runs more often than I remember anyone ever doing when I was a child, even though there are fewer of us now.

Her eyes and smile brightened as she handed me back my license. ‘I must be a mess,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if I go back in there and wash up before you leave?’

‘Not at all.’

She disappeared into the building leaving me to stand guard by her duffel bag. I knew she wasn’t going to just be washing her face, she’d also be calling someone, probably her ma, so she could give that person my name and address. Others I’d picked up in the past had tried that same safety precaution – at least they claimed they had before I choked them into unconsciousness. Of course, with those others I had shown different driver’s licenses – I was always collecting licenses from pickups who physically resemble me, at least enough so their license photos could pass for me. I had several of those with me now, and I wondered why I gave her my real name and showed her the license I did. I’d never done that with any of them before. It didn’t matter, though. When the person she’s calling now later calls the authorities about her disappearing, it will be a dead end, as always.

It didn’t take her long to finish up whatever she was doing and rejoin me. Before she could reach for her duffel bag, I hoisted it up and pointed in the direction where I left my van. She squinted toward it, but couldn’t see the van because of the larger vehicles surrounding it. It was no accident that I parked where I did.

‘I’ll be paying for gas,’ she said.

‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘I insist.’

I didn’t argue any further. It didn’t matter. She followed me as we squeezed between cars until we reached the back of the van. I didn’t drag her inside of it like I had planned to. Instead, I threw her duffel bag into the back and closed the door before she had a chance to see the burlap sacks and rope. As I made my way to the driver’s side door I tried to understand why I didn’t take care of her then. I’d made sure nobody was watching. It could’ve been handled quickly and without any fuss. Now I was going to have to take care of her while she was sitting in the passenger seat. This meant grabbing her by the throat while she was unaware and choking her into unconsciousness, then pushing her body to the floor of the van, and driving someplace where we’d have privacy so I’d be able to move her to the back and take care of her properly. It wouldn’t necessarily be difficult to do that – I’d done it plenty of times in the past. And with her being such a little thing, it wasn’t as if she’d be able to put up much of a fight. I have a surprising amount of strength in my hands and arms, even for someone of my own kind, and I’ve easily subdued men bigger than myself. Still, it didn’t make any sense for me not to take advantage of the opportunity I was given, and it left me confused. But that was only because I was still lying to myself.

THREE

‘Is anything wrong? You look so … preoccupied.’

‘What? No, nothing like that,’ I lied, because I was very much preoccupied, enough so that I’d been scowling without realizing it. The reason for my consternation was that I had gotten off the Massachusetts Turnpike over forty-five minutes ago, was now on Interstate 84, and I’d had plenty of opportunities where I could’ve taken care of her. I was also beginning to accept the reason why I hadn’t. I had stopped thinking of her as one of them, and was instead thinking of her as a very pretty girl with a sweet smile. Maybe I’d been thinking of her that way ever since she’d looked up at me and our eyes met outside that rest stop. That could’ve been why I’d been feeling this uneasy anxious fluttering in my chest almost from the moment I led her into the passenger seat of the van. I’d also pretty much decided she wasn’t going to be one of them I brought back to the clan. Instead, I would drive her to New York like I’d promised, and from there work my way home filling up the burlap sacks along the way. If the elders ever found out about this, the consequences would be severe. But I just didn’t see how I’d be able to do anything other than that. I said to her (and while it wasn’t the whole truth, there was still some truth to it), ‘It bothers me thinking of how that boy treated you.’

‘Please, don’t waste another second thinking about him. I’m not going to.’

The tone of her voice caused me to glance in her direction. Because of what I’d said, she was now brooding as she stared straight ahead out the windshield, her body stiff, her jaw clenched. I wanted to ask her what their argument had been about, but instead I asked how long she had known that boy.

‘Long enough to have known better.’ There was a heavy breath from her. Then, ‘Let’s not talk about him anymore, OK?’

‘Sure.’

A silence fell between us, which was fine with me. I had a lot on my mind trying to come to terms regarding how I was thinking of her, because I’d never thought of any of them in that way before. We’re not supposed to ever think of them in that way. From a very early age we’re taught to think of them only as them, and that they have only a single purpose. The elders reinforce these teachings by bringing us to the slaughtering rituals once we turn nine years of age.

Maybe part of why this had left me so shaken was that I’d always believed we’d feel the same about them even without the elders’ teachings. That our attitude toward them was simply something instinctive. The natural order of things. After all, we’re different than they are. Our eyes are darker than any of their eyes I’ve ever seen. There are other differences, too. It might be too subtle for them to notice, but the shape of their eyes and mouth marks them as a different breed. Also the scent they give off and the texture of their skin. But none of that matters. Even if we were blindfolded and had our nostrils plugged up with mud, we’d still know. There’s something unspoken that we pick up on right away. Maybe it’s akin to how bats instinctively use radar so they can know about objects they can’t see. It could be that way with us – that we pick up a frequency of some sort that tells us when we’re with our own kind. And when it’s one of them – when we’re not picking up that frequency, or we’re detecting that unusual scent they give off, or noticing the subtle physical differences – we find ourselves unable to think of them in any way other than that one way, which is how it needs to be because of our cravings. Except now. Because I wasn’t thinking of this girl next to me in that way. That was why I welcomed the silence. I needed to understand what had happened to me – at least that was what I told myself.

I’m not stupid or thick. I knew what the truth was even though it was something too big for me to acknowledge, at least at that moment. So I instead went through the fruitless activity of trying to figure out something I already knew, and I told myself the half-truths and half-lies that I needed to so I could avoid the real answer. That maybe it was only because of how pretty she was, even though I must’ve picked up dozens of other girls in the past whom I also would’ve thought of as pretty if I’d let myself think of them in that way. Or, that her needing rescuing had triggered something inside me, which I knew made no sense since most of them that I pick up are in trouble and need help. I was in the midst of trying to fool myself with another of these half-lies (or half-truths, depending on how you look at it) when she interrupted me by asking whether I was married.

That question drew my attention back to her. She must’ve worked past my asking about that boy who had abandoned her, because she was no longer brooding and instead was smiling in this impish way, sort of like the Cheshire Cat illustration from the badly battered copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that I used as a child to learn to read.

‘Don’t look so surprised,’ she said, her smile inching up. ‘You know my relationship status. Recently broken up. It’s only fair that I ask about yours.’

‘I’m not married.’

‘Girlfriend?’

I shook my head.

‘That doesn’t make sense. You’re too good-looking in that tough masculine sort of way.’ There were several beats as she waited, hoping I’d answer the unasked question about whether I liked girls, but before the silence between us could grow into something uncomfortable she asked whether I’d ever been married.

‘No,’ I lied, because I was married once. The elders had arranged for me to marry this small, furtive girl from the Webley clan, who make their home deep in the Appalachian mountains between Pennsylvania and West Virginia. All marriages between our kind are arranged with other clans, to bring in new blood. Or at least stir up the blood, since I suspect we all originated from a single people. Whether or not it kept us from inbreeding, that’s what we did, with custom having the bride always traveling to the groom’s clan. In my case, my wife was named Patience. I never much liked or trusted her, and was relieved when she died of complications from a tooth abscess eight months into our marriage.

All at once I felt fidgety, my palms sweaty as I gripped the steering wheel. My voice echoed thinly in my head as the words leaked out of me, ‘Maybe things would be different if there were girls as pretty as you where I’m from.’

Since I was still not ready to admit the truth about her, I was left confused about why I’d said that. But before I could puzzle over that too much, she laughed. It was a soft, gentle laugh, and I found myself liking the sound of it.

‘Come on! There must be plenty of girls in Manchester prettier than me.’

‘Not that I’ve ever seen.’

I could sense her body relaxing. That’s something we’re able to do. Just by being in close proximity to them we can pick up on their tension and fear. At that moment she was completely empty of any fear or wariness. Without looking at her, I knew she was smiling a little brighter than before.

‘Charlie Husk,’ she said playfully. ‘That’s an odd name. Husk. Of course, I shouldn’t talk. Not with a name like Zemler. Is Husk a common name in New Hampshire?’

‘The only Husks I know are blood relations,’ I said. ‘But it’s an old name. We’ve been there for a long time.’

She didn’t ask me how long we’d been there, which was just as well. From the stories the elders