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The thing with the chainsaw wore
a black ski mask, ski goggles, and a tattered black and green ski
jacket with a black hood drawn over its head. It moved around the
outside of the house over the snow, its breath steaming out from the
ski mask in little bursts on the cold Colorado air. It smelled of
gasoline, sweat, and sawdust, and it knew something was inside the
house. It could taste Levine and McKenzie’s scent on the breeze, but
their sweet feminine scent hit his mind in maddening whorls of light
and sound, and he swung out at the air with the chainsaw.
Brrrzzzzz!!!
Chainsaw had come from the barn. His tracks in the snow came
straight from the darkness inside the barn out into the snow. And
there they paced back and forth frantically trying to figure out
where the scent was coming from. He let the chainsaw idle a moment
and sniffed the air like a deranged dog.
Something metallic. He smelled something metallic, something
filled with gasoline and oil and -- hard rubber. He lumbered out
toward the front of the house. There was a distortion in the normal
sound Chainsaw was accustomed to, a metallic echo of the Farmboss’s
36-inch roar hitting something human out there in the front
yard.
He saw the Suburban standing there in the yard, half-buried in
snow with more snow lighting on it, and he became enraged as though
someone had vandalized his yard.
“Rnnnn!” he moaned.
He lumbered toward the Suburban swinging that Farmboss in front
of him. Sparks exploded when the saw teeth hit the roof above the
driver-side window, and Chainsaw stood there sawing through metal
and glass, sparks and glass exploding outward around him.
He got the saw inside the truck, and its teeth tore through the
hard rubber steering wheel, and he held the Farmboss there mangling
the steering wheel, the gear shift, and the front seat. After twenty
seconds he staggered backward away from the truck. He swung the
chainsaw around furiously in front of him and laid into the hood.
The chainsaw ate through the left front fender, and it hit the
tire with a huge explosion of pressurized air.
Chainsaw moved around the front of the Suburban and laid the
Farmboss’s 36-inches of hell-driven fury into the center of the
hood. Metal screamed, sparks exploded, and the chainsaw ripped
through the engine, tearing the V-12 Chevy engine apart.
Gasoline, oil, and red transmission fluid oozed out of the
truck onto the snowy ground underneath the truck. More fluid
splattered out around the Suburban spraying the white snow with
horrible black and red automobile fluids.
Chainsaw staggered maniacally around to the passenger side of
the Suburban, swinging the Farmboss over his head and then slamming
its steel teeth down into the front window on the passenger side. It
ate through the front window and continued raging downward into the
passenger-side window, tearing a horrible scar straight from front
window to and through the passenger-side door.
The Chevy looked like a junkyard pit-bull that had just been in
a horrible fight.
Chainsaw killed the engine and stepped a few feet back from the
passenger-side door. He seemed satisfied, and his shoulders and arms
hung down relaxed and fulfilled. He looked at the Chevy in front of
him. He looked up at the house. And the idea slowly realized itself
in his deranged mind that whatever had driven that Suburban up into
his domain was inside the house.
He cranked the chainsaw again, and swung it down toward the
gasoline tank on the back left side of the truck. Sparks exploded
and ignited. There was a huge, bright-orange explosion of fire and
gasoline. Flames engulfed Chainsaw, but he just stood there sawing
through truck, fire, and gasoline.
The flames quickly spread over the whole truck, and Chainsaw
lumbered out front of the truck. He swung the Farmboss in front of
him with blind fury. He was on fire. The truck was on fire, and the
flames licked wildly up into the snow that continued to fall on the
white landscape all around the Chevy, the house, and the maniac with
the chainsaw -- the maniac who now staggered toward the front door
of the darkened house, bright-orange flames from his shoulders and
head licking up into the air above him as he swung the chainsaw
wildly through the air.
• •
Levine stood inside the hallway inside the house holding Sara
McKenzie’s hand.
“What is that?” she whispered frantically.
“It sounds like a -- chainsaw,” McKenzie said.
They followed the sound of the chainsaw outside the house. It
sounded like it moved out away from the barn near the back of the
house up towards where they’d parked the Suburban. But the sounds
inside the snow-buried house were deeply muffled and difficult to
follow. They were certain they heard the screaming shred of metal,
but they moved back toward the front door, the parlor, to where
something had just slammed the front door.
“Hello,” Sara called.
There was no reply. They heard an explosion outside and then
fiery shadows filled the reading room adjacent to the parlor. The
only light that came through into the room came through at the top
one foot of windows, which were buried in snow, but they could
clearly tell that something had exploded outside and was now on
fire.
And they heard the roar of that chainsaw coming toward the
front door, now, coming toward the house.
Levine tried the front door, but the door lock was frozen and
would not budge clockwise nor counterclockwise.
“Something’s jammed the doorknob,” she said. “It won’t budge.”
“Upstairs,” McKenzie said.
They started up the stairs. It was very dark inside the house,
but whatever had caught fire outside had given that side of the
house the glow of firelight, and they could see well enough to move
up the stairwell.
At the top of the stairs, two intersecting hallways gave them
four options in which to run.
“Which way?” McKenzie said.
“To the left,” Levine said. “See if we can find a window.”
They started up the hallway to the left. There was a curtained
window at the end of the hallway. They could clearly see through the
curtains that something was ablaze out in the yard.
“The truck,” Sara gasped, and they pulled the curtain back on
the window.
“Oh, my God,” Levine said.
They could see from the second-story window that the Suburban
was on fire. Huge flames roared up into the air above the truck, and
then their eyes went to the thing standing twenty feet in
front of the truck. He wore a ski jacket, ski mask, and ski goggles,
and he waved a chainsaw wildly in front of him. He was on fire.
“What in God’s name,” Levine said.
They watched in horror as the maniac with the chainsaw lumbered
toward the house and toward the front door.
“Try one of those rooms,” Levine said.
They started back up the hallway, and opened one of the doors
that gave onto the front of the house. The room was bare, and there
was a single window that gave onto the front yard. They went to the
window and watched the maniac with the chainsaw. He lumbered over
the snow out front, every few steps sinking down into the snow.
He looked up at the house, and raised his chainsaw up into the
air and opened up the throttle.
Brrrzzzz!!!
“How are we gonna get out of here?” Sara said. “The truck is on
fire!”
“Well, the snow drift is only about ten feet down,” Levine
said. “We could break through the window and jump down onto it.”
“But then what?” Sara cried. “We’re twenty miles in the
middle of nowhere!”
Smack!
Levine slapped her as much in panic herself as from trying to
get Sara to calm down.
“Get hold of yourself,” Levine said.
They turned and watched the maniac reach the front door, and
then they heard that chainsaw roar and hit the wood on the front
door of the house. The sound inside the still house was
terrible, the sound of the chainsaw eating through the oak-wood
door.
He was pushing and beating at the splintered wood, and they
could hear it. They could hear the maniac tearing through the front
door.
“To the back of the house,” Levine said.
And they both started out of the room. They hit the hallway and
then turned up toward the main central stairwell. They reached the
stairwell and saw to their horror the blade of that chainsaw tearing
through the front door. The maniac pushed his way through the front
door, the door tearing away from him, and then he stepped into the
parlor. His shoulders and head were on fire, and the flames caught
fire there inside the parlor.
He looked right, then left, then looked up the stairwell and
saw McKenzie and Levine standing there at the top of the stairs. The
chainsaw swung up in front of him with a roar of its throttle, and
he lumbered forward toward the stairwell. McKenzie shrieked.
And Levine took off toward the back of the house.
McKenzie stood there frozen, her feet unable to move. The
maniac lurched up the stairwell and swung that chainsaw through the
banister along the right side of the stairwell. Wood splintered and
exploded. Flames licked up toward the ceiling. Fire ignited
wallpaper on the left side of the stairwell, and flames spread up
the wall.
McKenzie staggered backward and fell down. The maniac reached
the top of the stairwell. She was there on the floor ten feet away
from him. He swung that chainsaw around in front of him and lunged
forward at Sara McKenzie.
She screamed, rolled over, and took off up the hallway.
Levine was up there at the end of the hallway. She was trying
to open the window at the end of the hallway, but the window was
stuck.
“He’s coming!” McKenzie shrieked.
Levine glanced over her shoulder and saw McKenzie coming up the
hallway. And standing there behind her in the center of the hallway
was this raving maniac, his head and shoulders on fire, a chainsaw
held firmly in front of him, an index finger revving the throttle.
He studied the two women trapped in the hallway twenty-five feet in
front of him. Fire roared behind him on the stairwell and on the
wall beside the stairwell. Smoke billowed along the hallway ceiling.
And all three just stood there for a moment, frozen in time.
• •
Parker Walcott stood inside a room no more than twenty feet
from the raving maniac. He held his left palm flat against the door
and with his right hand he slowly turned the doorknob. The door
opened one inch, and Parker peered through the crack out into the
hallway.
He saw the maniac’s right shoulder and back. Fire licked from
the maniac’s shoulders and head. There was a brighter blaze of fire
behind the maniac, burning on the stairwell, and the maniac stood
there in the middle of the hallway.
It raised the chainsaw up in front of itself, opened up the
throttle, and Parker heard Levine and McKenzie scream from up the
hallway.
Parker glanced to his right and saw a lead pipe about three
feet long standing in the corner of the room. He grabbed the pipe
and hefted it up in his hands. It was heavy (ten pound’s worth) and
blunt. He swung it through the air, then he threw his door open.
“Hey you!” Parker called.
The maniac looked around him like he thought the sound was
coming from the ceiling or the walls. And Parker took four powerful
strides, winding that lead pipe up behind him like a battleaxe, and
then struck the maniac powerfully across its head a few inches above
its right ear.
There was a dull crunching sound like a watermelon hitting
pavement from a two-story fall, and the maniac staggered leftward
into the wall. The chainsaw fell to the ground, the maniac crumpled
to the floor, and Parker fell on him with the lead pipe. He wailed
mercilessly on his head, shoulders, and upper torso.
McKenzie and Levine stood there staring at him from twenty-five
feet away, trapped at the end of the hallway. Firelight lit up their
horrified expressions, but McKenzie found herself cheering for him.
“Beat the hell out of him, Parker!” she roared.
And Parker swung that lead pipe down through the air with a
horrible whickering sound until it met the maniac’s right knee cap
with a crunching squash!
Flames quickly spread up the walls and onto the ceiling above
Parker and Chainsaw. There was a cracking sound, and a ceiling beam
gave way. It crashed down onto the floor at the top of the
stairwell, hitting Parker powerfully across his left shoulder.
Parker fell forward onto the floor on top of and over the maniac.
The lead pipe hit the hardwood floor with a loud clank!
And it rolled up the hallway just a few feet from McKenzie and
Levine.
“Get Parker!” Levine shouted.
She reached down and grabbed the lead pipe. She leapt up,
spinning around furiously, and crashed that lead pipe through the
window. Glass rained down onto the floor reflecting bright
firelight. Clouds of smoke raced out the window. Levine turned and
saw McKenzie dragging Parker up the hallway.
Parker was partially conscious like a fighter five strokes into
a career-ending ten count, but he was trying to get to his feet.
Levine took his other hand and helped him to stand up.
“Through the window!” Levine said.
McKenzie and Levine helped him up over the windowsill. It was a
ten-foot drop down into deep white snow from the window. Levine saw
that it was still snowing outside, and she looked across the back
yard through the snow to the barn across the yard.
They pushed Parker through, and he fell through the air. He hit
the snow with a quick ffwhhump! And powder exploded up around
him. It looked like he was buried down there. No time to think.
Levine helped Sara up into the window. Sara crouched in the
windowsill and then leapt. Her arms windmilled around, and she hit
snow.
Levine started to climb up into the windowsill. The fire was
raging in the hallway, now. She glanced back over her right
shoulder, and her muscles flooded with bright terror.
Chainsaw stood there five feet away from her. His head was
oddly shaped, and he still wore that horrible black ski mask, ski
goggles, and the black hood over his head. And he held the chainsaw
up in front of him with both hands.
Levine screamed.
Chainsaw lunged at her.
The Farmboss roared, and its steel teeth barked at Levine’s
right shoulder. She fell forward out into the air and hit cold snow.
McKenzie rolled over and staggered to her feet. She sunk down
in the snow up to her knees and tried to carry on, away from the
house. Levine was clawing her way up out of the snow. Parker was
there in the snow, not moving. Levine straddled him and slapped his
cheeks.
“Come on!” she said. “Come on, Parker!”
McKenzie looked up at the window. Fire blazed from inside.
Smoke billowed up into the snow falling sky. Flames licked out of
windows. And Chainsaw stood there in the middle of the bright orange
blaze. He looked down at them from the window, smoke and flames
billowing out of the house around him. He raised the chainsaw up in
front of him, opened up the throttle, and plowed through the window.
He looked like a fireball falling through the air. The house
groaned and part of the roof fell in on itself. McKenzie grabbed at
Levine. They had Parker up and were trudging across the deep snow
toward the barn.
Chainsaw emerged from the snow like some hideous gopher coming
up from the ground. His right arm swung over onto the surface of
snow, and he pulled himself up out of his buried position. He
searched the snow around him for his chainsaw and saw its hole in
the snow. He crouched down, reached into the snow, and removed his
chainsaw from the earth. He pulled the crank with his left hand, and
it roared to life.
Levine, McKenzie, and Parker Walcott hit the door to the barn
and fell forward into darkness. The snow drift at the door to the
barn was six feet higher than the dry floor inside the barn, and
they rolled down the little white hill like falling forward from a
sand dune. They hit the ground and smelled barn odors: sawdust, aged
leather, hay and the lingering odor of manure mingled in the
wheat-dry smell of hay. And there was something like gasoline there
too, and the not-unpleasant fragrance of horse hair.
“Snowmobiles!” Parker shouted.
At the very back of the barn, there were two objects that wore
green canvas tarps. They looked like snowmobiles. They ran to them
and yanked the tarps up off of them. Two sleek black Yamaha Mountain
Max’s shined in the dim firelight that reached through the barn’s
deepest shadows. They were painted black with dark blue detailing
work, and a clear glass front window aerodynamically fanned back
from the front. They looked powerful and fast, Levine leapt over one
and checked the oil and gasoline levels.
“The tank is half full,” she said. “How about that one?”
“We got three-quarters a tank,” Sara said. “How do you start
this thing?”
“Electric start,” Parker said. “Hit that red switch. Now press
the start button.”
Sara’s snowmobile rumbled to life, a powerful, deft engine
humming under the hood. She opened the throttle, and the engine
roared.
“Gears are automatic,” Parker said.
“Get on!” she said.
Parker climbed on the snowmobile behind Sara. He hooked his
hands around her waist. She popped it out of neutral, and she
steered the snowmobile toward the front door, working the gas and
brake.
Chainsaw stood there at the top of the sloped snow mound.
Behind him across the yard, the house was fully engulfed in bright
orange flames, and everything was very bright in the firelight. He
held the chainsaw down at his side.
Shrapnel exploded from the house sending fireballs out over the
snow. Its roof caved in, and sparks exploded up into the air like
fireworks. The snowfall swept hard behind Chainsaw on a sudden gust
of wind, and Chainsaw whipped that Farmboss up in front of him and
laid into its throttle.
Brrrzzzz!!!
Levine pulled her snowmobile up beside McKenzie’s. Parker and
McKenzie looked at her. They were there inside the barn forty feet
from the wide open front door. Chainsaw just stood up there on top
of the snow mound, waiting for them.
“This one’s mine,” Levine said.
She reached her hand between snowmobiles and slapped high-fives
with Sara. She crouched down behind her snowmobile’s handlebars,
looked hard through the glass window at Chainsaw up there, the fire
from the house raging behind him. And she laid into the accelerator.
The snowmobile took off, racing headlong through the barn
toward Chainsaw. Chainsaw swung the Farmboss back and forth in front
of him. Levine quickly approached, racing faster and faster. She
stared through the glass window up through Chainsaw’s ski goggles,
into his windowless eyes. And then the snowmobile was up. It ramped
up the mound.
There was a horrible tearing chainsaw-on-metal scream, and
Levine’s Yamaha plowed through Chainsaw. He was up in the air,
hurtling end-over-end above the snowmobile. The snowmobile was in
the air. Levine saw fire from the house, and white snow flashed
underneath her. The snowmobile landed swiftly and raced out into the
yard.
Levine got the snowmobile midway between the barn and the
burning house, and she swung around.
She saw Chainsaw lying face down in the snow a few feet back
from the top of the mound. She saw the darkness inside the barn. The
headlights on Sara’s snowmobile lit up, and Chainsaw staggered up on
his hands and knees. The Farmboss was somewhere in the snow to his
right, but Chainsaw looked dazed. He shook his head. He was on his
knees facing the dark open door of the barn, and Levine realized
that Sara was racing toward him. Her snowmobile roared, hit the snow
mound, and was up in the air.
Chainsaw was kneeling there, and what happened next made Levine
wince and look away. Sara’s snowmobile clipped Chainsaw’s head clean
off of his shoulders. The head was in the air whirling round and
round for a terrible moment of time, and it plopped down onto the
snow.
It stood there on the snow, looking as though there were a body
buried underneath it. The snowmobile landed in a quick cloud of
powdery white, and raced up to Levine.
McKenzie swung the snowmobile around. She turned back to see
the headless chainsaw maniac kneeling there in the ice and snow, the
darkness of the open barn door beyond. Without his head, kneeling,
he seemed strangely at peace.
McKenzie and Parker looked at Levine.
“Come on,” McKenzie said. “We’ve got enough fuel to make it to
Ouray.”
And the two snowmobiles took off, racing across the endless
white landscape.
END
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