1979
Maude struggled to keep her eyes open early one chilly winter morning as she padded from the front door to the kitchen with the morning paper in hand.
"You see this?" she held the paper out to Silas, who was seated at the table drinking a strong mug of hot coffee doctored with whiskey, "Looks like they finally caught that damn 'Hillside Strangler'."
He took the paper, glanced over the headline, snorted and replied, "Maybe now people will be able to get some sleep around here." Even though the murders had been occurring over a thousand miles away, the whole neighborhood was on edge with the possibility that the killer might relocate to another part of the country to avoid identification and capture.
"Until the next time," Maude said, still only half awake, as she padded over to the icebox, "And you can be sure that there will be a next time." She threw open the door and dug around for the food she was going to cook, "First it was the Boston Strangler in the 60s, then that 'BTK' sicko over in Kansas a few years ago, who the police still haven't caught yet, and now this moron…there'll be another, there'll always be another. It's just a matter of when, where, how long?" She took a pound of bacon, a carton of eggs, a jug of milk, a bag of oranges, and a box of butter in her arms and poured them out on the middle of the countertop by the sink, "You tell me why they do it."
"Why does who do what?" Silas asked as he glanced over the paper.
"Stranglers," she said simply, "Why do they strangle? What is it…the notoriety? You're better remembered for strangling somebody than shooting them, is that it?"
"Eh, could be part of it," he answered, "Another part is the power…you can appreciate that sense when you can look into your victim's eyes just before killing them."
"Sure," Maude replied as she groggily padded over to the stove and lit the burner, "But I bash their skulls in, I don't wring their neck like a dishrag."
"Because you don't appreciate that fine sense of feeling the life leaving your victim," Silas told her, "Watching the light go out of their eyes as the life slowly drains out of them."
"Too time consuming," Maude shook her head, "Just whack 'em in the skull and get it over with." She went back towards the table and said to him, "Now you tell me this one…why always women? They want to feel so powerful, why don't they go strangling any men?"
"That bastard in Kansas did," Silas told her.
"One," Maude corrected, "And that was only because he killed the whole family, including 2 children." She eyed her husband knowingly and said in a telltale tone, "What is it you always say? Hmmm? 'Women and children don't count'."
"They don't."
"Exactly," Maude said as she beat her hands against the tabletop, "All these killers that make the news…they all primarily target women…and they will go down in history, famous, notorious, infamous, for being a bunch of pussy-coward weaklings who have no gall to target and strike down a grown man of his own size, they can't stand a challenge."
"I know," Silas remarked dully, "In our time they wouldn't last ten minutes, every last one of them would be struck down, their heads raised up on pikes for the people to spit on."
Maude closed her eyes for an extended second and forced them open wider than before, she looked at him and said cynically, "Don't hold back, Silas, let me know what you really think about these people."
"Cowards, every last one of them," he remarked with a disapproving shake of his head.
She stared down her husband and said in passing, "More will and determination than any common coward who pulls a trigger."
"Perhaps," Silas said doubtfully, and added, "But no more brains, no courage, no heart, no stomach than any other common coward. Determination means nothing where there's nothing behind to fortify it."
"Right," Maude replied cynically as she idly rubbed the palms of her hands together, "So explain to me again all those village raids you committed 3000 years ago? What were they all about?"
"War," Silas answered simply, his eyebrows raised enthusiastically at the mention of the word and the memory that accompanied it.
"War," she repeated without the same enthusiasm, "Against unarmed peasants half, no, one third your size."
"Look who's talking," Silas beamed, pointing out she would also have to search long and hard before she found anybody her size to beat up.
"I did what I had to do," Maude responded.
"That's a song that never gets old."
"In any case," Maude said dismissively as she cracked some eggs on the table, "What do 4 big bad Immortals have to fear from a village of pathetic little mortals?"
"We feared nothing," he stated.
"So why did you kill all those people?" Maude asked.
He met her interrogative eyes and answered with no remorse, "Because that's the way the world was 3,000 years ago, you think it should be something more complex than that, it isn't. It didn't matter where, or who, on all sides the only law was kill or be killed…and I don't know what you learned about ancient history, but beheadings have always been fairly common depending on what part of the world you reigned in." He chuckled ominously and told her, "You see people have always believed in making sure their enemies were truly dead, they don't come more certain than that."
If he was looking to get a reaction out of his wife, he had failed. Maude remained perfectly stonefaced to his explanation, and all she had to say in response was, "And yet for some reason you and your 'brothers' felt a need to cause a reign of terror over everybody who was weaker than you, would you care to explain that one?"
"Do you have any idea how many Immortals have been decapitated by mortals over the centuries?" Silas asked, "What better enemy, one you can't sense coming? Nobody could defeat the Four Horsemen, and nobody dared try either."
"Mortals aren't supposed to know about Immortals, remember?" Maude asked as she sat down across from him, "You told me that long ago."
"They're not supposed to but they do," Silas told her, "And there are getting to be more of them, but fortunately these days they're also easier to find." He pulled up his sleeve to expose his fat wrist and told her, "A lot of them all wear the same tattoo here. Once you see it once you'll remember. They know about us, but we're not supposed to know they do, but they also don't know that we know about them."
"How perfectly confusing," Maude replied deadpanned.
Silas merely nodded in agreement.
A moment of silence passed between them before Maude all but yelled at him, "Well?"
"Well what?" he asked.
"Since you know about these people and how to find them, are the oh so mighty Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse going to mount up and ride again and wipe every last one of the bastards off the face of the earth?" she asked mockingly.
"I wish," he replied, "Unfortunately in this day and age all that can be done without drawing in too much unwanted attention is a few neatly arranged 'accidents' here and there that nobody could ever tie back to an Immortal."
"Like what?" Maude asked.
"Oh any little thing," Silas answered, "Brakes fail on a car, some poor bastard gets drunk and falls out of an open window, goes out and drowns, you name it."
"Not exactly your glory days, eh, big fella?" Maude asked teasingly.
"If you wait long enough," Silas told her, "Everything comes back."
"Oh great," she remarked dryly, "I'm going to kill the first bastard that tries bringing disco back. The first time alone nearly did us all in."
That sudden comment got an unexpected chuckle out of her husband. She only eyed him unamused and told him, "Shut up, tubbo."
From outside, through the closed, frosted up windows, they heard a bloodcurdling scream that got both their attention.
"What now?" Silas wondered as they got up from the table and headed to the back door.
Taking a break from their isolated dog haven, they'd taken to renting one side of a duplex in the middle of a less than busy street in a small town in Ohio where nobody knew them and nobody could eye them as persons of interest for anything.
There was some light snow on the ground, nothing that wouldn't melt in a day or two, but most of it would simply disappear onto the bottom of people's shoes and get smushed onto floors and rugs and porches and eventually just disappear entirely. All the same it was a nice ripe 26 degrees outside without the wind chill, and as the two Immortals dashed out into the bright white open, they saw one of their neighbors standing in the middle of the yard across the street in just her nightgown and slippers, looking like she'd seen a ghost.
31 year old Sylvia Rodgers was tall and lanky and had bright red hair that came halfway down her back, giving her much resemblance to Julie Harris about 20 years ago. Right now her five alarm screams had brought half the neighborhood out into the early morning cold and everybody was gathering around to find out what was the matter, Silas and Maude bringing up the rear and forcing their way past everyone else.
"What is it!?" Maude yelled at the hysterical woman to get her attention, "What is the matter!?"
The frantic woman, still unable to quite form words to explain, pointed to the house behind her and continued to scream like a banshee. The house in question belonged to 24-year-old single mother of two, Elizabeth Conklin. A nice, quiet, shy, mousy little woman who never gave anybody any trouble, but apparently trouble had just paid her a visit.
Silas went up to the house and saw the door was standing halfway open, he stepped inside, minding not to touch anything because he already had a good idea what had happened, turned the corner and confirmed his suspicions. He left the house and went back to the group of people standing out in the snow, many of them still in their robes and pajamas, and told everybody, "She's dead."
Sylvia went into another fit of hysterics and started bawling.
"What happened?" Maude asked.
"Somebody came in and murdered her," Silas answered matter-of-factly, "And the kids."
This last little detail especially seemed to sicken everybody who was present to hear it. Somebody went to call the police, Maude grabbed Sylvia and suggested they go inside and she drink some whiskey to warm up before the police came.
"I went out to get the paper and I saw her door was open," the woman desperately tried to explain to the rotund couple, "And you know she always tried to keep the house as warm as possible so the kids wouldn't get sick."
"Yes, but what happened?" Maude asked as she walked Sylvia over to the kitchen table.
"I went to see what was the matter…and there she was," the woman went into a fresh bout of hysterics and carried on for a minute before bringing herself to ask, "What kind of…horrible…monster, could have done this to her?"
It was a fair enough question. Maude leaned over towards her husband and quietly inquired what exactly had happened. He explained that somebody had come into the house and beaten the woman to a bloody pulp starting at her skull and working their way down, likely with a hammer, and then did much of the same with the children, her son, 6, and her daughter, 4.
"Friend of yours?" Maude asked him dryly.
Silas just shook his head in response.
"Well," Maude replied, "Good for the cops in California but I've got a feeling things aren't going to be so good out here."
And they weren't. The police came out, had their photographer take pictures of the victims and the crime scene, questioned all the neighbors, had the medical examiner come out, load the victims up in rubber bags, wheel the victims out, sealed off the scene, and that was about it. Despite the crime tape and the men outside blocking people from disturbing the crime scene, Silas and Maude made their way into the house to speak to the cops on the scene directly.
"You can't come in here," one of them said as the two Immortals entered the bedroom, "This is a crime scene."
"No kidding," Maude said, "And here I thought we just won the 100 yard dash."
"You knew the victims?" a younger cop asked, figuring since they were already here, why not question them too?
"I knew her," Maude answered, "I'd been over here a few times."
"What for?" he asked her.
"Oh you know, the usual," she answered cynically, "Borrow a cup of sugar, borrow some eggs, borrow a jar of pickled crow livers."
"Excuse me?"
"Never mind," she said.
The first cop, an older and clearly full of himself type addressed her and said, "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"Make me, Fish," she told him and added, "We know this place, we can tell you what's been disturbed."
"I doubt much has been disturbed," he said snootily as he glanced around, "Burglary clearly wasn't the motive, nothing around here worth taking."
"No burglar is going to beat a woman and her two kids to death with a hammer," Maude told him, "That's too personal."
The cop clearly didn't like being told what should've been his business and he smugly asked her, "And what academy did you go to?"
"I did better than that," she told him, "I cleaned up your messes when your people went on strike and left everybody to die at the hands of every common criminal on the streets."
"That never happened," the cop remarked as he rifled through the woman's clothes in the closet.
"Maybe not in your jurisdiction," Silas murmured, then said louder for all to hear, "What're you doing, trying to find something of hers to wear?"
The cop pulled out a blouse and miniskirt pinned to a double hangar and remarked, "If it was personal, we can guess why, any woman that goes around dressing like that, she's just asking for trouble."
"And what's wrong with this?" Maude asked as she snatched the skirt from him and held it up against her own massive middle, in which case the skirt might well have been a napkin, and she told him, "I'd wear something like that, if they came in my size."
"And the world takes a collective sigh of relief that they don't," the cop remarked dismissively.
"You really think she asked to get murdered because of what she was wearing?" Maude asked him.
"Look lady, all I'm saying," the cop told her, "Is that if you don't want trouble, you don't go looking for it."
"And the children," Silas said, "Exactly what were they wearing that got them bludgeoned to death like their mother?"
Now they'd struck a nerve. The seasoned cop looked from one to the other and at both of them and told them, "Get out of here, before I have you both thrown in jail for hindering an investigation."
"I'd like to see you try," Maude said as they walked out of the bedroom, "I'm sure it'd be worth the hernia."
"Those bastards aren't going to find out who butchered that woman," Maude told her husband as they headed back across the street, "They're not even going to try. As far as they're concerned she's just a whore who got what she deserved."
"And 'round we go again," Silas told her, "That one's about as old as I am."
Maude reached over and grabbed her husband by the arm to get his attention and she asked him, "Did you get a vibe off of that guy?"
"I wasn't trying to," Silas replied.
"You know what I mean," Maude said as they went into the house, "It wouldn't surprise me if he was killer himself."
"It wouldn't be any surprise but that doesn't mean he is," Silas told her, "He could very well just be a complete and total bastard, incase you haven't noticed there's quite a few of them running around, but that doesn't make them all murderers."
"That we know of, Silas," Maude insisted, "How does anybody know? How do we know they just haven't been caught yet?"
"Now you're just starting to sound paranoid," he said.
Maude pointed a large, thick finger to the house across the street, "A single mother and her 2 kids just got their skulls smashed in by somebody using a hammer, in the middle of nowhere where everybody knows everybody else and nobody has an enemy, I am not paranoid. That was a fine mess in there but it's too calculated, very little was disturbed, and nobody knows how to get away with murder better than a cop."
"Well I don't know about that," Silas replied.
"We're the exception," Maude remarked, and added, "But I'm very curious to know where that pig goes when he clocks out for the night. Did you happen to get his name?"
Silas slowly nodded, "Chambers."
"Can't be too many cops with that name around here," she said.
It took a little doing but Maude got the address for Officer Earl Chambers' private residence, and the next day while he was still on his beat, the two Immortals took a drive out to Chambers' block and pulled up across the street just in time for a very interesting sight.
"Would you look at that?" Maude asked as they saw a clearly timid young woman rush out of the house with two small kids, out to a waiting car parked at the curb. The woman got the car started and they tore out of there, in the middle of the day, when nobody was home to witness it.
"Think that's his wife?" Maude asked as she reached to open her door.
"Well I don't think it's the Easter elephant," Silas remarked as they got out and headed across the street to Chambers' house.
The door was unlocked, so they showed themselves in. A very low key place, clearly this was one cop who actually was living within his means, odd.
"There's no one here," Maude said, "So what do you suppose made her tear out of here so fast?"
Silas looked around towards the back of the house, from the kitchen, to the pantry, to…the laundry room.
"Anybody that could beat three people to death with a hammer," he told his wife, "Wouldn't be able to leave the scene and not be a bloody mess. Even if he'd had a spare change of clothes…"
"There's still a bloody set somewhere to get rid of," Maude finished for him.
They went into the small laundry room, Maude found the washing machine, opened it up, reached in and pulled out a wrinkled set of coveralls with dry blood on them.
"He puts them in here for a quick disposal," Maude said, "Forgets to turn the machine on. Or she forgot to do the laundry yesterday. She goes to do it today instead, she sees that, and she puts two and two together what kind of pig she married. So maybe what happened here is that girl made the mistake of getting involved with a cop who's married and has a family of his own. Maybe she wants him to choose, pick one or the other, finalize it. Word ain't got around yet about the affair, so he wouldn't want anybody finding out by any means. So he goes over, kills her, kills the kids too because they're just another obstacle for him, so he's made his decision who he keeps. Only it's not happily ever after, because clearly he's terrorizing this woman too, and likely his own kids. And now, she's just found out not only is her husband a miserable son of a bitch, but also a cold blooded murderer."
"Being a cop," Silas told her, "Once he finds out she's left, he's going to track her down and kill her too."
Maude looked around the small room as if she was figuring something, and she turned to Silas and replied, "Not if he doesn't find out she's not here."
Silas looked vexed, "What do you mean?"
"I've got an idea." She pushed him to get out of the doorway so she could squeeze past.
"What're you going to do?" he asked her.
"Not what I'm going to do," Maude told him, "What we're going to do. You miss the old days of looking into your enemy's eyes before you kill him? You're gonna get your chance now."
It was 9 o' clock at night before Officer Earl Chambers ever got back home. By that time, it was pitch dark outside, and pitch dark inside his house. He went up to the porch, turned the knob but it was locked. Cursing at his stupid wife for locking him out, he fished out his key and undid the bolt in the lock, but the door still wouldn't open. It was like someone was holding the door shut on him. He put his weight against the door and tried forcing it open a couple times, but it held. He tried again and just about ripped the door off its hinges but it finally swung open and hit the wall beside it.
"Lucille, you dumb bitch!" he called out as he set foot inside, "What the hell you think you're doing? You think you're funny?"
Taking two steps in past the reach of the door, he kicked something and heard what sounded like a whole lot of something shattering. Unable to find the light switch in the dark, he took out his flashlight and shone it towards the floor; he'd walked into about a dozen wine bottles stacked together like bowling pins, some had broken into pieces on the linoleum floor.
"Well that's just rich," he said as he looked around in the dark, "Where'd you go, you stupid whore? Eh?" He pounded on the wall as he moved along in the dark, wanting to make sure she got the message long before he found her.
He searched from room to room but couldn't find any sign of his wife, nor of his kids, but they weren't his priority. He tore apart the downstairs and realized there was only one place left she might be. He went to the stairs and looked up and called up, "You think you can lock me out? Lock a man out of his own bedroom? I got news for you, bitch," he said as he climbed up the stairs, nightstick in hand, "I'm the law, I can get in anywhere."
He reached the top and found the bedroom door, and found it too had apparently been barricaded.
"You stupid slut, you're gonna deserve what you get when I get in there," he called as he gave the door one good kick and knocked it open.
The lights didn't work for some reason, so he shone his flashlight into the room. Nothing. No sign of his wife anywhere. And then…a small creak, the closet door opened just a crack. With an evil grin, Officer Earl Chambers went over to the closet, placed his hand just over the knob and called in there, "Game's up, Lucille, now you're gonna get it!" and jerked the door open…
And came face to face with a man over six feet tall, well over 200 pounds, who had a look of murder on his face as the cop's flashlight shone on it.
Chambers felt his jaw drop. "What the hell?"
And then, the sound of another door slowly creaking open. Chambers turned and saw the interlocking door that connected to the kids' bedroom, in a scene out of a cheap B horror movie, open on its own, and in stepped a woman who was roughly the same size and build of the man, with that same ghastly look on her face.
"What the hell is this?" Chambers demanded to know, and not knowing where to look, looked from one to the other, "Who are you?"
"He's Death," Maude answered as she stepped towards him, "And I'm Charon the ferryman of hell, do you have your coins ready?"
Chambers reached for his sidearm and fired, if anything hit the woman advancing towards him, he didn't even know, he was just firing blind. In the chaos, he dropped the flashlight and was now left in almost total darkness and couldn't see anything. The only sounds that ensued after the shooting stopped were a few terrified yells of "No! No! Nooo!" and then a sickening CRUNCH, the kind that could only be made when not only was a neck broken, but the head it was on was twisted completely around.
"A woman gets killed and unless she's somebody special or from a family that is, she barely gets footnote in the paper," Maude commented the next morning as they saw the front page headline, "But a cop bites it on or off the job, and he gets the whole front page dedicated to him."
"At least it'll die out in time," Silas replied, "Once enough time passes, and people put it together it's not another serial killer…everybody will gradually come to forget it."
"Especially since he doesn't seem to have any family grieving for him," Maude added as she folded the paper and put it on the table, "So how was it for you?"
"I would've preferred my axe," Silas told her, "But it did, all the same."
"Just too bad it was dark, no 'looking into your enemy's eyes before you strike', eh?" his wife asked as she got up from the table and went about cooking their breakfast for the morning.
Silas merely chuckled lowly, and answered, "Eyes that full of fear, light up all on their own."