Until... | Book 3 | Until The End

by Hamill, Ike

  “You think he’s down there?” George asked.

  “No,” Ricky said. He turned a slow circle. “I think he wants us to go down there so he can corner us. I think he’s waiting up here.”

  George gripped his spear tighter and glanced over his shoulder.

  “All we have to do is wait,” Ricky said. “He’s going to return here eventually. We’re just going to wait.”

  Amber pushed the door until it gained speed and then slammed down over the hole.

  She stepped onto the door.

  Forming a triangle, back to back, Ricky and George joined her.

  They were only there a few minutes when Ricky saw that George was beginning to squirm.

  “Be patient, George,” Ricky whispered. “This is going to work. You just have to be patient.”

  “It’s just…” George started. “Hold on.”

  He pulled his phone from his pocket.

  “There’s no reception here,” Amber said.

  “I don’t need reception. I have… Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

  “What?” Ricky asked.

  “I have an idea of how we can speed things up.”

  Thirty-Seven: Ricky

  After George explained, Amber shook her head.

  Ricky had to agree with her. The plan required too many logical leaps. There was no way to know if it would work or not.

  “I don’t think you guys are understanding,” George said. “It doesn’t matter what the origin of SE Prescott’s infection is. It doesn’t matter if it aligns with the same energy or not. All that matters is that we will be opening up a vortex. Like I said, the moon is right, or it’s going to be in about eighty minutes. All we have to do is memorize some lines and collect…”

  “George, no,” Ricky said. “We already decided to wait here for him. We’re ninety-nine percent sure that this is where he will come.”

  “Just the fire then,” George said. “At the very least, how can you argue with a bunch of light?”

  Ricky didn’t want to concede. He knew that if he conceded, George would keep pushing until he got his way.

  Before he could object again, Amber weighed in.

  “I’m okay with fire,” she said.

  “Amber,” Ricky said, rolling his eyes.

  “What? That part is solid. Let’s build a fire. At least we won’t have to rely so much on making sure we’re pointing our lights in the right direction.”

  Ricky tried to object, but George called a vote. The measure passed, two to one. Ricky didn’t bother to point out that it would take forever to collect enough wood to make a decent fire. He held that thought to himself. They moved as a group away from the door, towards a deeper part of the woods.

  “Romeo pulled up his four wheeler over here,” George said. “I figure there must be a decent path, and where there’s a path…”

  “Trees have been cut to keep it clear,” Amber finished.

  “Exactly,” George said.

  Ricky was disappointed to see that his brother was right. They pushed under the low limbs of a pine tree and saw a pile of wood that had been cut and cleared from the path. One of the trees had been cut into four-foot lengths that would be perfect. Ricky moved as slow as he could, delaying their efforts since they decided that they should all stay together.

  They moved back and forth between the brush pile and the tunnel, laying a decent stack of wood in less than a half hour. Ricky and Amber watched over him as George collected enough small sticks and bark to use as tinder. When everything was set, Ricky had one last flash of hope.

  “We don’t have anything to use to light it,” Ricky said.

  “I do,” George said. He dug in a pocket and found a lighter.

  While George knelt down to light their fire, Amber used a branch like a rake so she could clear a circle. Ricky gave in and helped by collecting rocks to make a ring. He didn’t know what the purpose was, but it made the whole thing look official. As the flames grew and the light rolled out, Ricky had to admit that the fire chased away some of the tension and fear that was haunting him.

  # # #

  “Hey,” Amber said, moving up next to Ricky’s side.

  “Hey.”

  “You remember that smell, down in the pit?” she whispered.

  At the mere mention of it, Ricky had a physical reaction. His chest tightened. That smell had been so strong that it had made his lungs ache.

  “Are you kidding? It’s almost like I can still smell it on my clothes.”

  “Almost?”

  Ricky looked at her and then cut his eyes around at the surrounding trees. A breeze pushed the smoke from the fire off to the north, away from them. The smell on the wind was stronger than the smoke. It was the decay and death that they had smelled down in the pit. George, a couple of steps away from them, seemed oblivious to it, and Ricky had to admit that he hadn’t noticed it until Amber had said something.

  “Is it… Is it real?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered over the crackling fire. “Maybe not, but if I had to lay money on it, I would say that he’s close.”

  Ricky nodded.

  George approached them. The firelight lit up his face, but his eyes were locked onto the display of his phone.

  “Can we just try the ceremony?” George asked. “I think I have the parts memorized. All you guys have to do is stand around the fire with me and you have a couple of response lines. I can teach you in no time.”

  Ricky looked at Amber. She gave him a tiny nod and he thought he understood what she intended to do. The trick would be whether or not they could convince the thing lurking in the woods that they weren’t paying attention. He had to be cunning—he was too old to be easily fooled.

  “Yeah,” Ricky said. “Teach us the lines.”

  “Good. We only have ten minutes or so until the moon is right, so we’ll split these us. That way you each only have to learn a few lines.”

  Thirty-Eight: Amber

  Ricky had taken the spot with his back to the other headstones. That was the position that Amber wanted, but he had gotten there first and stood his ground when Amber tried to claim the spot. She knew that she could feel the presence out in the woods. She didn’t have confidence that Ricky could feel it as clearly, and he wouldn’t know when it was approaching.

  “Okay,” George said, checking his phone again. “Once I start this, I’m going to have to finish it. I will point when you have to respond. You both remember what you’re supposed to say?”

  Amber and Ricky nodded.

  They locked eyes over the fire.

  George started speaking in that weird ancient language. The syllables were meaningless to Amber, but she could understand the gravity of what he was saying. Somehow the sounds conveyed deep power and they resonated through the trees.

  Amber thought that she could feel the currents of disruptive energy around them. Ricky had told her about the people who gathered at the other point of the geographic triangle. Those people had believed that there was a force that was the opposite of entropy—an organizing force from which all life sprang. This place, this corner of the triangle, was dedicated to pulling life apart and letting the energy dissolve back into the sky.

  With each word that George said, it seemed like the currents were growing stronger. If they didn’t have the fire at the center of their circle, she was sure that they would have been swept away into the night, unable to keep their footing in the world.

  When George pointed to Ricky so he could deliver his first line, Ricky started speaking automatically. His voice was a low drone that rolled from his tongue like water. Amber was certain that she would never match that same fluent ease.

  Ricky stopped speaking and the voice transferred back to George. It was though something else was speaking through them. The gesture came and it was Amber’s turn to deliver a line. She stumbled over the first sounds and then they flowed out of her on their own. Although she recognized the lines that she was supposed
to be delivering, they issued forth from her mouth before she could remember what they were supposed to be. An invisible puppeteer was pulling her strings.

  The wind swirled, bringing the foul stench of death to her again. The monster was closer.

  “He’s the father of all of them,” Amber thought, remembering the mumbled warning from Romeo. That much was obvious now. What Romeo had left out was that Prescott wasn’t just the father. He was the father, brother, and lover of all these terrible monsters. There wasn’t a single natural creature within a half-mile of that graveyard. Everything had been perverted by his knife or his teeth. They were all unholy experiments. She had no idea where these ideas had come from, but they felt undeniably true.

  The vortex was opening between them. George thought he was in control. Amber feared that this had never been the case. Every impulse George had was being guided by an outside force. It was using them all to gain access to their world.

  George’s voice rose as he delivered the final lines.

  Amber heard laughter from the woods.

  Prescott was mocking their effort. Compared to him, the three of them were children.

  “You’re going to have to bring him back,” Amber heard a voice say. She turned towards George, thinking he must have said the words. George was still finishing his incantation. Amber turned towards Ricky. His mouth didn’t move as Amber heard again, “You’re going to have to bring him back. Like before.”

  Amber realized that she recognized the voice.

  It was her father.

  Thirty-Nine: Ricky

  Ricky opened his mouth to deliver his line. The first few syllables came easily and then his voice cracked and his memory failed him. If he could relax, he knew the words would come. That idea only increased his panic.

  Ricky remembered that it didn’t matter. The whole idea was to have George create a distraction. With the fire and the ceremony, Ricky wanted Prescott to move in closer. Then, when he was just about to strike, Ricky would turn and attack. Closing his eyes, he could feel Prescott behind him, lurking beyond the trees. The monster had so much power, and that would be his downfall. Ricky could feel that power—feel when Prescott was close enough to be impaled on the end of his spear.

  Confidence flowed through Ricky and then the words came back. He let the strange language fall from his mouth. When he didn’t try to remember, it all came easily. In fact, the sounds coming from him were so slippery that he didn’t know if he was remembering them or just making them up. It didn’t matter. He kept reminding himself of that.

  Amber’s eyes grew wide. She looked like she might be about to bolt. Then, he saw tranquility and acceptance wash through her. Ricky tried to feed off of her calmness. He took a deep breath. At his back, he felt a warmth that was analogous to the warmth of the fire, but it also felt different. The glow behind him was malicious—a burning hate, perhaps.

  Ricky knew that Prescott was getting closer.

  He kept his eyes forward, letting them drop down to the flames so he could concentrate his other senses on what was coming.

  Ricky heard a voice from the flames.

  “Feed me your gifts, Richard Virgil Dunn,” the voice said. It was his brother’s voice, but it also wasn’t. The flames were imitating George’s voice, but they couldn’t capture the spirit behind the tone. It was a trick. There was a demon in the flames and it wanted Ricky to help it get out.

  “Stop,” Ricky whispered.

  The flames flared.

  Forty: Amber

  The ceremony was coming to a finish. Amber couldn’t understand the sounds coming from George’s mouth, but she understood his tone. The whole thing was building to a climax and once it did, they would lose control.

  “You have to bring it back,” her father whispered.

  Amber realized that his voice was coming from the flames. She shook her head.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. Her own voice was only in her head. She knew that she wasn’t speaking aloud—that would be wrong. The only voice that was supposed to call through the night was George’s.

  “It was never about the earrings,” her father said.

  For a moment, Amber was thoroughly confused. What could earrings possibly…

  It came back in a flash. Her grandfather was killed because he wanted the earrings back. His wife had given the earrings to Amber’s mother, and Grandpap came to get them back. Only, he didn’t really want to get them back. He wanted to give them…

  “To you,” her father said.

  Amber shook her head. She didn’t understand and she didn’t want to understand. There was some terrible fact that was beneath that understanding and she didn’t want it in her head.

  She remembered her mother yelling, “Inappropriate!”

  Amber couldn’t recall why. The word, on its own, didn’t have any significance.

  “It does though,” her father whispered. “That’s why…”

  “No,” Amber said. Again, the word only rang in her head. Nothing came out of her mouth.

  She remembered her mother standing up to Grandpap and telling him that it was inappropriate for him to give the earrings to Amber. For one, Amber didn’t even have pierced ears and she wasn’t going to get them pierced. Second, Amber was just a little girl. Grandpap didn’t have any right to give expensive jewelry to a little girl.

  Amber remembered.

  She remembered hiding in her room, listening to that argument and understanding what it was about even though she really didn’t understand at all. Her mother was trying to protect her, but she couldn’t figure out why there was a need to protect her at all.

  Then, when it was clear that her mother was going to lose the argument, Amber had thought about something stronger than her mother. The thing she thought about was stronger than both of her parents and Grandpap combined. It was the house—that would be strong enough to get rid of Grandpap for good. The only problem was that Amber had told the house that she didn’t want its help anymore. She had decided that the house was bad and she didn’t want it interfering.

  “But you needed it then,” her father said from the flames. “You needed it then and you need it now.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Amber screamed.

  The flames flared.

  “What happened to Grandpap wasn’t my fault.”

  “Let it help you, Amber. Let it help you with Prescott. You need it.”

  Amber tore her eyes from the flames. She looked at Ricky—he was still entranced by the fire. George was speaking the last of his syllables towards the sky. The three of them were positioned at the place where the world was trying to tear itself apart and they had just opened a current to an endless stream of destruction. She didn’t know which force was more powerful or more deadly.

  Then, she saw him.

  Prescott was standing a couple of paces behind Ricky.

  Amber screamed for Ricky to turn around and see the monster. Again, the words only came out in her own head. Ricky couldn’t hear her.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” she said. “I need it. Make it help me.”

  “You have to call to it,” her father’s voice said. “You know how.”

  Amber wanted to argue with her father. It wouldn’t do any good. Her father wasn’t really in the flames. His voice had been something that she had invented so she could tell herself what she needed to hear. The whole thing was her own brain communicating to itself. All that stuff that she had locked away could only come back to her as an outside voice. She couldn’t betray her own trust like that.

  Amber closed her eyes—partly so she wouldn’t have to look at Prescott anymore and partly because she needed to think.

  “It’s the same trick as the incantation,” she said to herself. “I know how to call it. I just have to let myself do it.”

  Amber opened her mouth and a noise came out. She could feel the sound in her vocal cords. This time, her voice was real, not just in her head. When she opened her eyes again, both broth
ers were staring at her.

  Actually, she realized, that they were staring just above her. The demon—the thing she had thought was the embodiment of her house—was with her. It was hovering over her head. Amber looked beyond Ricky and saw that even Prescott could see it.

  She could feel the thing hovering over her, feeding off her energy so it could become real again. They had banished it once but that was all forgiven now. Amber realized that the demon loved her in its own way. She decided that if it took out Prescott, she might find a way to love it too.

  Forty-One: Ricky

  Ricky saw something down in the flames as his brother’s voice rose. He expected the thing to be naked, half-formed flesh rising from the embers, but it wasn’t. It was a dark shape that he didn’t recognize at first. It swirled in the smoke and there was something familiar about its movement. As soon as it began to orbit Amber, Ricky understood. He had heard about the demon that haunted Amber, but he was seeing it clearly for the first time.

  His mouth fell open as he watched it take a perch behind her head.

  Ricky glanced at George. His brother finished the incantation and they both turned to Amber. The demon above her head had long arms made of smoke that wrapped around Amber protectively. They were expanding though—swirling out into the firelight and extending towards Ricky. The arms pulsed when he fire crackled. It appeared to be independent, but Ricky thought that the demon was still intertwined with the fire. That was the shape it had chosen for itself—or the shape that they had inadvertently chosen for it.

  As fascinating as it was, Ricky remembered that Amber’s demon wasn’t the reason they were there. The ceremony was only supposed to be a distraction. His attention was supposed to be on Prescott, and Ricky realized that he couldn’t feel the presence of Prescott behind him anymore. Then, with growing horror, he figured out that he was wrong. He could feel Prescott, but the creature had moved so close to him that he almost hadn’t recognized that it was near enough to strike.