by Lukens, Mark
Stella couldn’t help following his gaze.
There was someone outside those doors—a young man running up to the lobby doors from the parking lot. He was wearing a brightly-colored jacket, jeans, and rubber boots. He had a knit cap on but no gloves.
And he was carrying a gun.
Travis entered the lobby through one of the glass doors. Melted snow dripped off of his pants and boots, leaving smears of water on the tiled floor.
“Get out of here!” Stella told the young man.
Travis raised his gun, but he didn’t point it at the thing that used to be the clerk. Instead, he aimed it right at her and David.
“What the hell are you doing?” Stella yelled at him.
The kid couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen years old, she thought. He looked like a clean-cut kid. And now she saw that he was crying, his arm shaking as he aimed his gun at them.
“Back away from the kid, lady,” the teenager said.
Stella didn’t move. She pointed her gun at the new intruder. She knew now that he had come for David. The Ancient Enemy had done something to this young man. “You can’t do this,” she told him.
“I don’t have a choice,” he said as he cried harder.
CHAPTER 31
Cody’s Pass, Colorado—The Mountainside Inn
Cole opened his eyes as he lay on his side in the motel room bed. His dead brother Trevor stood right next to the bed, the pieces of his dismembered body stacked back up together again, the ragged cuts in his skin somehow fused together. Tattered and bloodstained strips of clothing hung off of his purplish and boated skin, which was blackened with rot at the edges of each piece. His brother smiled at him as he stared down at him, leaning over him, the puckered scar of his severed head circling his neck. “Brother,” he whispered. “You need to wake up now …”
Cole snapped awake and jumped up, ready to backpedal across the bed away from the monstrosity that used to be his brother.
But there was no one beside the bed.
He realized that he’d been dreaming. He looked around at the motel room and saw that he was alone—Stella and David were gone. For a split second he thought they might have gone back down to the vending machines to get some more sodas and snacks, but their coats were gone. Stella’s gun was gone too; their hats and gloves, the cash she’d stuffed down into her socks and coat … all of it was gone.
They’d left him.
Cole jumped up and grabbed his boots; he shoved his feet into them and laced them up quickly. He stuffed the packs of cash down into his socks and pushed his pants legs down over them. Then he grabbed his gun and stuffed it down into the waistband of his pants. The other gun was in his coat pocket with more packs of money. He pulled his knit cap down over his head and slipped his hands into his thin leather gloves. He shrugged his coat on and headed for the door.
The hallway was stone-quiet and it felt peculiar out here. There was a feeling of evil around him. He didn’t know how else to explain it. It was like a terrible storm was coming, the rumbling of thunder signaling the danger that was approaching, an electric static in the air, the taste of ozone on his tongue, like the air itself was alive with energy. A creepy-crawly fear danced along his flesh, and his hairs stood up on end, prickling his skin.
Stella and David were in trouble. He wasn’t sure why he was so certain about that, but he was. They had snuck out and now they were in danger.
The Ancient Enemy was here in this motel somewhere.
Cole crept down the wide hallway, silent as he moved past closed door after closed door. But then he saw something on the ugly carpeting in the distance … dark stains on the floor.
He hurried down the hall, and as he got closer he realized that the stains were blood and streams of gore.
Oh God, no …
His heart felt like it had stopped in his chest as he stared down at the smears of blood and meat on the carpeting. The line of gore led to an open door of a room.
Cole clenched his gun harder, an anger burning inside of him.
It got them … it had gotten one of them … maybe Stella …
He darted inside the room, his gun aimed out in front of him, his finger on the trigger ready to shoot in a millisecond. He was all the way inside of the room, looking everywhere at once. This was someone’s room. There was a suitcase at the end of the bed, clothes piled up inside of it. More clothes were draped across one of the two chairs by the table next to the wall. The TV on top of the dresser was on, but the sound was turned all the way down. It looked like a normal messy motel room … except for the splashes of blood all over the floor, walls, and across the bedspread.
But no bodies anywhere.
Cole heard a noise from behind him in the hallway … the rustling of fabric, a light footstep, and then a whisper.
“Cole …” a male voice whispered from the hallway.
For a moment Cole thought the voice was from his dead brother, the nightmare still so fresh in his mind. But he knew it wasn’t Trevor’s voice … this was the voice of that thing … the Ancient Enemy.
“Cole … come here … I need to show you something.”
Cole aimed his gun at the doorway.
The person was still out in the hallway, hidden from the view of the doorway—Cole saw the man’s strange-looking shadow falling across the threshold.
“It’s a secret, Cole,” the male voice whispered from behind the edge of the wall. “But it’s a secret that you need to hear.”
Cole backed up a step, moving deeper into the room. He glanced around him. He was trapped in here. He looked over at the sliding glass doorway that led out to the small balcony, the ground twelve feet below that. But it was his only way out. Then he saw a cell phone, wallet, and a set of car keys—all of them grouped together on the table next to the bed.
A slapping noise brought Cole’s attention back to the doorway. A hand shot out from the hallway, grabbing the doorframe. The fingers trembled as they held on to the door jamb. The ends of the fingers seemed to have been ruined, like they’d been smashed flat with a hammer, the fingernails long gone. Drops of blood dripped down from the ruined hands, running down the door jamb to the ugly carpeting. Patches of skin were missing from the man’s wrist like the pieces had been carefully peeled away.
“It hurts, Cole,” the unseen man said from out in the hallway. “It hurts so much, and it won’t ever let you go.”
A thin tentacle about the thickness of a garden hose shot out from the hallway, flapping around in the air until it slapped the other side of the doorway, the end of it flattening out and sticking there, attaching itself to the doorjamb. The black flesh of the tentacle was slick with mucus.
Cole wasn’t going to stick around to see what this thing really looked like. He darted for the keys on the table and then he jumped up on the bed, running across it in two big steps, avoiding the splashes of blood, and then he landed on the floor on the other side.
“You don’t have the kid to protect you now, Cole!” the man’s guttural voice cried out from behind him.
Cole could hear the thing coming in through the doorway, rushing inside the room. But he didn’t turn around to see what it was doing. He could imagine the thing rushing towards him, feelers and tentacles and spindly legs propelling the mutilated body forward, like some kind of giant insect or spider, getting closer and closer to him.
Two seconds later Cole was out on the balcony, the keys and his gun already shoved down into his coat pockets. He could’ve shot at the thing, but he knew from experience that it wasn’t going to do any good. He was up and over the railing in one smooth movement, gripping the spindles in the railing, letting his hands slide down them until he hung from the bottom of the balcony, his legs dangling in the cold air. His gloved hands were slipping on the cold metal of the balcony spindles, and he knew that at any second one of those feelers or tentacles was going to wrap around his hands and grab him … and then they would never let him go.
He
dropped to the ground, not even looking to see where he was going to land. He felt the cushion of snow break his fall and then he hit the hard ground underneath, tumbling away down onto the parking lot. He hit something hard under the snow … it felt like it might have been the edge of the sidewalk. But he didn’t let it slow him down. He was on his feet in a second, adrenaline coursing through his veins, heating up his muscles.
Cole drew his gun and aimed it up at the balcony he had just dropped down from.
Nothing there.
It hadn’t come after him.
Why?
Well, he wasn’t going to wait for it to find him again. He yanked the set of car keys out of his coat pocket and pressed the unlock button on the key fob. He looked around the parking lot, pressing the lock and unlock buttons until he saw a white Chevy Tahoe’s headlights and taillights flashing on and off in rhythm with the push of the button.
That was their ride.
CHAPTER 32
Cody’s Pass, Colorado—The Mountainside Inn
Travis fired his gun at the ceiling as the tears streamed down his ashy pale face. “I’m not playing around, lady!”
Stella stole a glance at the clerk. He was still waiting near the counter, his face slack and his body frozen, like he was a robot that was turned off for now. Except for his eyes—they were still watching her and David.
“What’s your name?” Stella asked Travis, her eyes back on him again.
“We don’t have time for that,” he cried. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just need to kill the boy, that’s all.”
“You can’t do this,” Stella said.
“That thing … whatever it is, it’s got my sister and my mom. It’s going to tear them apart if I don’t do what it wants me to.” His words were running together as he cried harder.
Stella stared at the boy … he was really still a boy. “Listen to me. It’s already too late for them. It’s killed them already.”
The fear crossed Travis’s face, and he shook his head. “No. No, he promised that he wouldn’t hurt them anymore. He said he wouldn’t kill them if I did what he wanted.”
“That thing is a liar,” Stella said.
Travis aimed his gun at Stella now, his hand shaking. He wiped at his eyes with his other hand, trying to clear his sight to shoot.
Stella heard a noise at the top of the stairs. She saw Bruce the salesman … or what was left of his mangled body … crawling towards the steps, tentacles whipping out of him, propelling his ruined body along as it slid down the stairs. Bruce was screaming with every movement.
He couldn’t still be alive, could he?
Every exit was blocked again.
Stella looked back at the clerk; he had taken a step forward with his backwards legs, that creepy smile on his face again.
It was over, Stella thought. She and David had nowhere to run to now. This kid was going to shoot both of them, or those monsters that used to be the clerk and the salesman were going to close in on them. She looked down at David. He was their only hope now, but he looked too frightened to fight back.
“David,” she whispered as tears streamed out of her eyes. “You have to do something. You can’t let that thing win; you can’t let it get you.”
“Last chance, lady,” Travis said, bawling now, his hand shaking worse than ever.
“Do it, Travis …” the clerk uttered as it took another awkward step towards Stella and David with its backwards legs. “Do it, or I’ll take your mother and sister apart.”
Bruce was still screaming over and over again as the remnants of his torn and shredded body were propelled down the carpeted steps by the feelers, tentacles, and segmented legs.
Stella looked back at Travis. Maybe she could get through to him by using his name. “No, Travis,” she said. “You can’t shoot David. He’s just a boy. That thing lied to you. It’s already killed your mother and your sister.”
Travis looked at the clerk with tears on his face, lowering his gun a little. “Is that true?” he asked the clerk. “Did you kill them already?”
“Do it, Travis,” the clerk growled. “Do it, or you will experience things you never thought were possible.”
David looked at Travis, at the gun pointed right at him. But then Stella realized that David was looking beyond Travis … at something outside the glass doors, out in the parking area.
Something else was coming for them.
And then Stella heard the noise from outside. It was a low grumbling sound, hard to hear at first underneath Bruce’s constant screams.
Travis heard the noise from behind him outside the glass doors, but by the time he turned around, it was too late. The back end of a big white SUV crashed in through the lobby doors, knocking Travis down flat on the tiled floor, and then the vehicle drove right over top of him and skidded to a stop inside the lobby.
The driver’s door flew open as the glass and pieces of metal framing crashed down to the floor and the parking lot outside. Cole was out of the vehicle in an instant, pulling the back door open like a chauffeur. “Get in!” he yelled at Stella and David.
Stella grabbed David’s hand and they bolted across the lobby to the waiting vehicle.
Cole was still behind the open back door, using it as a shield and waiting for them. He had his gun in his hand, aimed beyond Stella and David as they ran towards him. He shot at the thing that used to be Bruce the salesman, and then he shot at the thing that used to be the clerk.
When she and David reached the back door of the SUV, Stella looked back to see if Cole had stopped either one of them with the bullets. And then she froze as she watched the monstrosities. The air seemed to warp around the clerk and Bruce as the bullets hit them, like the air was shimmering for a moment, folding in on itself, distorting anything near the two of them. And then the whipcord tentacles propelling Bruce’s mangled body forward were gone, only his mangled body was left behind. The clerk’s dead body collapsed down onto the floor like nothing was holding him up anymore. The Ancient Enemy was gone from their bodies now. It seemed like the Ancient Enemy had bent time and space around their bodies and then teleported away.
But to where?
Where would the Ancient Enemy pop up next?
David crawled inside across the back seat of the waiting vehicle.
Cole still had his gun aimed at the two dead men, ready to fire again if he needed to. “Get in!” he yelled at Stella.
Stella was sure Cole had just seen what she’d seen. That thing … those things that were inside those bodies were gone now. They had just disappeared.
She got in the back of the Chevy Tahoe and pulled the door closed.
Cole was back inside the SUV, stomping down on the gas pedal as he closed the door. Tiny diamonds of shattered glass poured off the hood and roof of the white SUV as he gunned the gas and drove out of the lobby of the motel, one of the back tires spinning on Travis’s arm for a second, smashing it flat, the skin splitting and blood jetting out.
“You okay?” Cole yelled at Stella as he jerked the steering wheel to the left, taking the curve too quickly, speeding down the parking lot exit towards the road. He hit the brakes and the truck slid the rest of the way down into the street. He turned the steering wheel the other way and the back end of the SUV fishtailed out into the middle of the road. Cole took his foot off the gas, the motor roaring with power. He didn’t touch the brakes, letting the truck slide all the way. Then he gently pressed the gas, turning the wheel the other way now to overcorrect their spin. The whole world of white snow raced by outside the windshield in a blur, but Cole finally got the truck straightened out.
Stella looked out the rear window at the Mountainside Inn, at the destruction they were leaving behind. But she didn’t see the Ancient Enemy anywhere.
Cole sped down the street, but he was slowing down a little as they came to a curve, the road climbing up into the mountains, the woods beginning to get thicker now.
David was sobbing with terror. Stella held him clo
se as he cried. “Shh,” she told him. “It’s okay. We got away. It’s not following us.”
“Why won’t it leave me alone?” he cried.
She didn’t have an answer for him. “I won’t let it get you,” she promised him.
Cole didn’t say anything as he drove.
David’s cries stopped and he wiped at his eyes. He was still tired, she could tell.
“Lay down here,” she told David. He curled up on his side on the big back seat, drawing his legs up to him.
Stella looked down at the sea of garbage on the floorboards of the back seats. There were soda cans and bottles, crumpled up fast food bags, potato chip bags, candy wrappers. She looked behind her at the back and saw stacks of boxes of samples of whatever Bruce had been selling. She didn’t open any of the boxes.
“This is a salesman’s truck,” Stella told Cole from the back seat. “His name was Bruce. We met him at the vending machines.”
Cole just nodded. “Yeah, I met him, too. Only he wasn’t Bruce anymore.”
Stella saw a quick flash in her mind of the salesman beaming at them while they bought their cans of soda and bottles of water. He’d just wanted to talk to them and she had brushed him off. Then she saw what that monster had done to him, twisting his body up, parts of him crushed, pieces of jagged bone sticking out, yet the Ancient Enemy had kept him alive somehow so he could scream with every painful movement down those set of stairs.
“We need a map,” Cole said. “This guy’s a salesman, maybe he has a map.”
Stella brushed David’s hair back from his forehead. His eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping yet. “I’m going up front to look for a map,” she told him.
David didn’t nod or even open his eyes.
Stella crawled up to the front from the back and sat down in the passenger seat. There was as much garbage on the floorboard up here as there was in the back. There were a few issues of some kind of trade magazines among the trash. In the cup holders there were two Mountain Dew bottles and a soggy McDonald’s paper cup with a lid and a straw. Obviously Bruce had lived off of sugar, fat, and caffeine.
