Devil's Creek

by Todd Keisling

  He was so caught up in the racing fear that for a moment he forgot about calling for help. Instead, Riley faced the prospect that he was going to lose another parent. His only parent. The prospect of being without a father scared him, but the imminent possibility of being truly alone in this world downright terrified him.

  Beyond the bathroom door, Bobby vomited into the toilet, muttering a prayer to God for release from this awful poison coursing through his body. Only Riley heard him, and the sound of his father’s agony was enough to spur him to movement. He ran down the hall to his room, locked the door behind him, and fumbled for his phone through a cloudy haze of tears.

  “Oh God,” he cried, wiping his eyes. “No, no, no, not now. Not now!”

  His heart sank. The battery indicator flashed on the screen, and he glanced toward the far wall where the charging cable hung limp from the outlet. Riley’s phone was dead.

  3

  The world spun for Jack Tremly, the rooms of his grandmother’s home tinged in shadow while an expanse of colorful stars burst before his eyes. His gut lurched, and he was halfway out of consciousness when he realized he was flying. No, not flying. Floating, held aloft by an unseen force while his mother cackled madly from somewhere beyond the creeping dark.

  I’m still dreaming, he thought. Still back in the temple beneath the church, still a child, still terrified.

  And he was terrified, but the effect of adrenaline slowed time, slowed his responses to everything. The world didn’t move to catch up until he heard the creak of the basement door, and from that moment, everything happened in the impeccable high definition of stone-cold reality.

  Jack hovered at the precipice of a darkened maw leading down into the basement. Laura hovered with him, her dirty toes scraping the wooden floor of the kitchen. She held him by his throat with an impossible strength, the cords of her neck standing out, the muscles in her blood-soaked arm bulging with blackened veins. Thick rivulets of black oil seeped from her glowing eyes and streamed from her nostrils. A black puddle riddled with thick clumps formed at her feet.

  “I never got to say goodbye to you, Jackie. My, how you’ve grown. You look just like your daddy.”

  Words failed him. After years of imagining what he’d say to his mother if he ever saw her again, all the anger and sorrow drained from him. Now, more than ever, Jack wanted to breathe again. He wanted to feel the comfort of gravity. And he didn’t want to go down into the darkness of the basement.

  Laura Tremly had other plans.

  “The old bitch can’t protect ya now, Jackie dear. And you and me, baby boy, we got some catchin’ up to do.”

  His mother puckered her lips and blew a kiss. Her rancid breath sent the world spinning, and Jack realized he was falling backward, the light of the doorway rolling upward as he tumbled. Jolts of pain shot through his back as he met the sturdy wooden stairs. The burning agony traveled down his waist and gut as he rolled the rest of the way, collapsing hard on the concrete slab below. A familiar warmth spurted from his nose as a white heat surged between his eyes, and stars sparkled before him while he sought to make out shapes in the dark.

  A groan escaped him when he tried picking himself up from the floor. More than the pain in his head and throat, more than the terror of waking to face his mother, there was the unsettling realization and agony of finding himself in the dark of his grandmother’s basement. Even when Mamaw Genie was still alive, he avoided this terrible place. His therapist told him it was a trick of his mind, a way of projecting early trauma on present surroundings, a flight response triggered by what happened to him when he was a child. Here in the deep dark of the earth, all the old demons were waiting for him, folded up in the shadows like old decorations, covered in dust and cobwebs. Jackie, they said, you’ve finally come to play.

  Jack groaned again as he forced himself to his knees, his mind racing to get to his feet, to gather his wits and defend himself against his attacker. Blood gushed from his wounded nose, pooling on the concrete between his shaking hands. He knocked over a pair of cobweb-laden brooms and his old wooden baseball bat from a million years before. They clattered to the concrete, the harsh noise chiming in his head like cathedral bells.

  “Yes, my lord,” Laura Tremly croaked, descending the staircase like a fallen angel. “I’ll find your prize, and I’ll make sure my boy gets what he deserves. Your will and the Old Ways are one.” She fell upon him before he could find his footing. “I thought I raised you better, baby boy. But look at you. You’ve gone and fallen in with the heretics.”

  Laura hooked her hand around Jack’s neck and heaved him across the room like a twig. He collided with a stack of packed boxes, and Christmas decorations clattered on the floor, strings of lights and decorative balls shattering from the force of impact.

  The world swam before Jack’s eyes once more, and he fought to maintain consciousness while his whole body shrieked with pain. His mother’s words flirted with the dull ringing in his ears, swirling with the dark colors accumulating in his palette of vision.

  “More useless trinkets for a false god,” Laura mumbled, picking through the strewn Christmas paraphernalia on her way toward him. “Did the old bitch ever tell you she used to shun such things? She ever tell ya she used to be one of us?” Laura found him bleeding amid the crushed boxes. He opened his eyes, glared up at her, but lacked the strength to speak. “Even her false god punished traitors. Only she didn’t need thirty pieces of silver. No, all it took for her was a little baby boy. Just you. You, and the rest of your kin.”

  “What do you want?” he grunted, wincing as he eased himself up on his side. “Why the fuck are you here?”

  Laura clicked her tongue. “Always so disrespectful to your mama.”

  “You might be my mother, but you’re not my mama.” He spat blood at her feet. “Genie raised me while you were rotting in the hospital. I always hoped you’d die there.”

  “My lord saw to it I got out, baby boy.” She kneeled before him and took his chin in her bloodstained hand. “He gave me a job to do, and I aim to do it. The old bitch took something from my lord many years ago and you’re going to give it back to me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She squeezed his cheeks. “I can pull that lyin’ tongue from yer head, Jackie baby. My lord ain’t kind to liars, and I follow His ways to the letter.”

  “But I know who might,” Jack said, bracing for impact. “Someone like him, maybe.”

  The baseball bat struck the back of Laura’s skull before she could react. Jack turned away as a thick clump of black sludge splattered the wall above him. His mother’s unconscious body slumped to the side, revealing a sweating old man in dirt-covered khakis and a tweed jacket.

  Professor Booth let the baseball bat clatter to the floor. Panting, he pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his forehead. “You okay, son?”

  “Never better,” Jack said, gritting his teeth as he rose to his feet. The swirling shadows before his eyes finally got the better of him, and before he knew what was happening, the world was swimming once again. The last thing he saw before the darkness overtook him was a surprised look on the old man’s face.

  4

  Tyler Booth still had a hell of a swing from his boyhood days of playing on the field, but he was long past the age of carrying a full-grown man up a flight of stairs. Instead, he dragged Jack’s unconscious body away from the bloody wretch to the opposite side of the room. He knelt and put a finger on the young man’s neck. Come on, Tyler thought, don’t die on me, boy. I need you.

  The pulse was there, and strong, too. Nothing some bandages and aspirin wouldn’t fix. Tyler wiped sweat from his brow and thanked a higher power he’d come along when he did. After his discovery at Genie’s grave, he’d debated on packing up his things and leaving town but knew he couldn’t live with himself if he abandoned his love’s kin.

  Instead, Tyler drove the quick couple of miles to Genie’s house, hoping he�
��d find Jack there. He’d knocked twice when the front door creaked open, and that’s when he’d heard the struggle within. Less than a minute later, he’d found himself standing at the foot of the basement steps, staring at the back of a haggard creature defying all logic and gravity. Finding the stray baseball bat at his feet seemed like more than luck to him—it seemed like divine intervention, or at the very least, a small gift from Genie.

  Satisfied Genie’s grandson wouldn’t die on his watch, Tyler turned his attention to the bleeding bitch on the other side of the basement. A dark mixture of blood and something like oil seeped from the wound in the back of her head, pooling in a misshapen halo around the top of her skull. Tyler wondered if he’d killed her.

  He knelt again, grimacing as his aching knee popped under pressure, and spotted the plastic ID bracelet on her wrist.

  “And who might you be?” he muttered, lifting her limp wrist and turning it over in his hand. He read the tag: LAURA JEAN TREMLY. The color drained from his face as realization sank in. He stared at the woman’s features, trying to see through the blood and black murk staining her skin, wondering how Genie could’ve ever given birth to this horrible woman.

  A conversation from years ago replayed in his mind, the night he and Genie sat in her backyard, watching for shooting stars. They’d each had their share to drink that evening after dinner, imbibing a full bottle of wine he’d brought for the occasion.

  “I used to sit out here with my daughter, you know. Me ‘n Laura would do what we’re doin’ now, watchin’ the stars.”

  “That so?”

  “Yes, sir. She wasn’t always bad. Wasn’t always locked up in a hospital. No, she used to be a good little girl, before she fell in with Jacob. I tried to do right by her, but…well, some things can’t be saved, I guess. Maybe some of us are born rotten. I failed her, and then she failed Jackie. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

  It was the only time she’d ever brought up her daughter around him. Even toward the end, when she went all-in with her plan to combat Jacob’s binding ritual, she never brought up Laura Jean Tremly. For the longest time, he suspected Genie was trying to protect her grandson, but now he realized she was trying to spare herself the heartache. Maybe you were right, he thought. Maybe some of us are born rotten, Genie.

  Laura stirred in her sleep, her eyes moving behind their lids. A thick bead of black goo slowly rolled down her cheek, carrying with it a musty stench of rotting leaves and grass. The smell took him back to a place he swore he’d never go again, and from within the dark shadows of his mind rose a chorus of voices he wished he could forget: We see you, child.

  “You were right,” he whispered. “All along, Genie, you were right.”

  Tyler walked toward a dusty workbench in the corner, its strewn contents of misplaced hammers, nails, and other hardware covered in a thin sheet of cobwebs. He found a bundle of twine in one of the drawers.

  “This’ll have to do.” Tyler looked up and pulled the dangling chain from the bare bulb above. Pale light flooded the room, illuminating a design of circular glyphs on the floor and wall in all their esoteric glory.

  How many years had Genie devoted to deciphering the nature of the ritual? He couldn’t say but knew she was researching the glyphs for as long as they’d known each other, and probably even longer than that. Tyler reached out, tracing his index finger along the dusty chalk lines drawn on the wall and recoiled with a jolt. He rubbed the tip of his finger against his thumb, watching his flesh turn red and blister.

  I wish I’d stopped you.

  Instead, he’d obeyed her like the lovesick fool he was. Now she was gone, and he was alone to deal with the fallout. He looked down at Laura and then back at Jack. No, he thought, not alone. But first things first.

  A few minutes later, after he’d bound Laura to one of the beams in the middle of the room, Tyler tried to rouse Genie’s grandson. Blood caked Jack’s nose and lips, his throat was bruised and swollen, and whenever Tyler said his name, Jack groaned errantly but did not wake.

  Nervous, Tyler pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed 911. A recording announced all circuits were busy. He tried the number again and met the same result.

  “Shit.”

  He paged through his phone’s contact list, searching for the name of the only other person he could call. The one person he’d sworn never to speak to again, for helping Genie carry through her final wishes.

  Tyler stared at the name CHUCK TIPTREE, frowning. “The hell with it.”

  He dialed the attorney’s number and closed his eyes.

  5

  Bobby knew what was happening to him. He hadn’t recognized it at first, not when he sank to his knees to greet the two missing boys, and not when their corrupted filth spread among his congregation. No, he didn’t realize what was happening until he felt the awful darkness spreading inside himself, when the dark sludge worked its way into his guts, his blood, his soul.

  He’d seen this once before, seen the effects on an otherwise normal human being, and for the longest time he thought they were nightmares culled from less sinister memories of his time beneath his father’s church. He’d prayed to God to quiet the darkness of his childhood, to keep those vile things from bubbling up within, and for a while his prayers were answered.

  Now, as he crawled his way out of the bathroom and across the hall toward his bedroom, Bobby Tate understood his prayers would no longer be answered. He was being punished for his instinct to cry out to God, each muttered prayer ending in a crescendo of agony as his guts ripped themselves apart, the viscous sludge seeping further into his core. Soon it would reach his heart, and what then?

  Then you’re gone. Then you’re His. Like you used to be. Like He always wanted.

  Bobby winced, crawling along the floor of his bedroom toward the bed. Thick ropes of the dark sludge streamed from his nose and the corners of his mouth. Fight this. He pulled himself up onto the bed and collapsed into his pillow, wincing at the deep ache inside his skull, the awful taste of bile and dirt in the back of his throat. Fight this for Riley.

  A voice spoke up from across the room. Oh, son, why fight this? Why fight your true lord? Why fight your father? When we both know this is the way things are supposed to be?

  Bobby lifted his chin and stared straight ahead, expecting to see his dead father, but there was only the stillness of the room. The chest-of-drawers stood silent, cluttered with some of his late wife’s things he couldn’t bring himself to remove, the dark screen of a small television, and a cross hanging on the wall.

  Your father knew the true meaning of sacrifice, my child. He, too, was once a man of a false faith, a follower of a heretical god. But he saw the true light, not from above, but from within. He read the scripture of the Old Ways, etched those ancient words in his heart, and followed a narrow path of the one true faith. He spilled his seed for me. He suffered for me. He gave his life for me. And I have raised him up from the clutches of death, free from the bounds of the earth, for the earth is my domain. No cage of the earth will hold you if you would suffer for me, Bobby. Your father is my apostle. Will you not be one too?

  A tiny metallic ting filled the room, and the cross fell to the floor. Bobby sucked in his breath and looked away, blinking dark tears from his eyes. Something plastic scraped along the wooden flooring. The voice grew louder.

  Your wife is one of my children now. I can free her from the prison of the earth, child, and give her back the life stolen from her. Would your false god do such a thing for her? I alone heard your prayers all those nights, while your darling Janet rotted in the earth. I alone heard your anguish, your quiet cries for her return. And by the mandate of the Old Ways, my son, I will give her life once more if you would open your heart and suffer for me. Would you shred your soul to be one with me? Would you suffer to let your wife be with you once more?

  Bobby turned his head and clamped his eyes shut, struggling to contain the rank sewage spilling up his throat, slowly drowning hi
m from within.

  “Honey,” Janet Tate whispered, her warm breath tickling his ear. “Don’t you want me back? We can start over. We can be one again and make another baby for our lord. We can give Riley to the Nameless and begin anew.”

  The scraping intensified, growing heavier, transforming into footfalls across the room toward the bed. Bobby wanted to cover himself like a child, to hide from the monster in his bedroom, praying that if he couldn’t see it, then it couldn’t see him. The thing speaking to him was not his wife, dead or otherwise. This thing speaking with his wife’s voice was a liar, a puppet of the dark god his father conjured from the earth. The real Janet would never trade Riley for anything.

  “So foolish,” Janet cooed in his ear. He felt something like a hand trace its way across his cheek, down the back of his neck like she used to do, and then down along the side of his thigh. “Honey, my darling reverend, you can’t hide from the one true god. He is eternal. His roots run deep beneath this home, beneath all of Stauford, and if you would suffer to come unto Him, He would reap the fields of the earth.” The hand moved up, cupping his groin, massaging him through his slacks. “If you would suffer for Him, then you could fuck me again. I would do things to you in death I never would in life. Because you were too timid to ask. Our new lord doesn’t judge our desires, honey. Your lust is not a sin.” Her voice deepened, tainted with the rot of a thousand years. She was no longer at his ear, but inside it, inside the chamber of his mind. “I want you to do terrible things to me, Bobby. On an altar of blood, beneath the unblinking gaze of our lord, I want you to ravish me. I want you to spread me open, taste the honey of wasted years, and consummate our union.”

  “No,” Bobby groaned, rolling away, hiding his face in the pillow. His cheeks burned with a heat he’d only known in the quiet moments of the night, after his wife’s untimely death. The rigid discomfort in his pants betrayed his refusal, and the thing infecting his body and mind knew as much. A deep laughter filled the chambers of his head, shaking the world around him.