They Came With the Rain

by Christopher Coleman

  Allie gave a thumbs up and Deedee and Josh waved in unison, sad smiles on each of their faces, realizing there was a better-than-not chance they would never see Allie again. “Good luck, deputy,” Deedee called out.

  “You too.”

  Deedee looked to the ground for a moment, and when she looked back up, there was a grimace on her face, distress. “Will you do me a favor?” she said, choking out the words.

  Allie nodded, “Of course.”

  “If...somehow you find my husband—Ray—will you let him know...that I’m sorry. And that I love him.”

  Allie frowned and nodded. “I will.”

  Josh tilted his head up. “Tell him that from me, too. Especially the part about being sorry.”

  Deedee looked down at her son but said nothing, and Allie simply nodded again, knowing there was little chance she would find Ray Bronigan alive.

  She gave a final, half-mast wave and then turned and walked back to the cruiser, entering it like a car thief and shifting it into reverse with veracity, squealing the tires on the pavement as she and Maria headed back toward town.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Ramon knew something was wrong before he started up the ramped walkway of Winston Bell’s deer stand, but Tony wasn’t answering his shouts, and since there was no one to call for back up, he was committed to entering the stand alone. He held his Glock in prayer in front of his face, his eyes fixed on the thin, rectangular windows that surrounded the hexagonal structure. But the slats were too narrow, and from his position, he couldn’t see a thing.

  He followed the second segment of the L-shaped ramp until he reached the top where a six-foot high fence had been constructed, the barrier clearly used to cordon off the structure from any critters who might amble up the slope seeking food or shelter. But the gate to the fence was open wide, allowing passage to the main structure, and Ramon stepped through and turned right toward the narrow opening of the stand doorway.

  He saw Tony immediately, back-straight in an armless school chair, his hands laced and resting atop his head as if he were gazing at the ocean from a chaise on the lido deck of a cruise ship.

  “Tony!” Ramon whispered and then instantly regretted it.

  Tony bowed his head slightly and then looked straight again, slumping his shoulders in a deep sigh. He then leaned to his left, a sideways nod of sorts, and Ramon knew it was a signal.

  Ramon shifted his eyes left and then took a quick step inside the deer stand, turning toward the wall to his left as he did, his pistol outstretched, prepared to unload the bloated clip on the ambush coming from the corner.

  But the space was empty, and when the ambush came, it was from the opposite side of the room. The muzzle of the rifle poked the back of Ramon’s skull a second later, and he slowly dropped his pistol and raised his hands high and wide. From his periphery, he saw Tony begin to stand.

  “Sit down, Mr. Radowski,” Winston Bell instructed, his voice stern though shaky.

  Tony followed the order and kept his position in the chair, but he lowered his hands to his lap and sighed, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. You were right. We should have stayed together. Guess that’s why you’re the sheriff.” He paused and then said solemnly. “He said he’d shoot me if I didn’t give you the wrong signal. Didn’t feel like I had much choice.”

  “Not your fault, Tony.”

  “It’s the fault of both of you, in fact,” Winston said. And then, “Why did you come here, Sheriff? All that’s happened today, and here you are at my house. My stand on the lake. Why?”

  “Just wanted to ask you a few questions, but it looks like I already got my answer.”

  “And what answer is that?”

  Ramon lifted his chin high and turned slowly, his hands still high and unthreatening. He was almost daring the old man to shoot him, which he was seventy-five percent sure he wouldn’t—not odds Ramon would have taken on a normal day—and when he was facing Winston and still breathing, he said, “You did have something to do with this. You helped murder a town full of people.”

  Winston Bell swallowed and shifted his eyes from Ramon, and then he steeled his nerves again and locked the sheriff’s stare. “And how would I have done that, Sheriff? I’ve been here all night. The rain brought me down here. I thought the sound of the downpour on the lake would help me sleep.”

  “I don’t know how, exactly, that was second part of my question. My friend Tony thinks your interference with the telescope had something to do with their coming. Somehow drew them here.” Ramon squinted and quivered his head. “What are they, Winston? Do you even know?”

  Winston’s eyes bloomed, his lips parting slightly. “You’ve seen them?”

  Ramon scoffed and nodded. “You could say that.”

  Winston swallowed nervously as he suppressed a smile. He then pointed the gun toward Tony and jerked it toward the door. “Let’s go,” he ordered, “we don’t have a lot of time.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Allie drove with purpose toward the opposite edge of town where the Brandt house was located, watching the desert landscape quickly populate with houses as she reached Oak Street and the small section where downtown Garmella began.

  “Where are we going,” Maria asked, rubbing her brother’s forehead with the tip of her thumb. Her voice was low and sullen as she stared absently at the world outside.

  “To find Sheriff Thomas and his friend. But I have to follow up on something first.”

  “Those people from the truck?”

  “That’s right. They said they were staying at a house by Kelly’s Market. Just gonna swing by and make sure they’re okay.” Allie’s intentions were a bit more targeted than just a follow up as her suspicions of the three had continued to grow since their encounter. But Maria was focused on her brother, and she didn’t need the details.

  As Allie reached St. Patrick’s, her gaze was caught by the spire of the cathedral looming above the square. The structure first invoked images of Sunday school as a kid and Christmas Eve mass, but they were quickly consumed by thoughts of the creatures, of the demons that had ascended from the depths of Hell to bring ruination to the world above.

  “Demons,” Allie whispered. “Demons from Hell.” As the words fell from her lips, she felt a burn of belief—of truth—in her heart, truth that Heaven and Hell were real, that God was somewhere in the universe watching. But as quickly as the satisfaction of reality set in, it was replaced by an overwhelming sense of fear, a terror of the magnitude she had never felt previously. It was indescribable.

  “What?”

  Allie turned to see Maria staring at her. “Nothing, honey,” she answered, and then, “Look.” Allie pointed to the jagged bill of a synthetic swordfish that rose above Kelly’s Seafood Market, which was a half block from the Brandt house, on the opposite side of Oak. She slowed the cruiser and turned into Kelly’s lot, and then guided the car around to the back of the market, hidden from the view of the street. She parked and opened the door.

  “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  Allie exited the car and quickly walked toward the front of the restaurant, and then, suddenly, she stopped and turned, flashing a forced smile and a reassuring nod to Maria through the windshield. But Maria’s eyes were a beacon of sadness, and the girl held Allie’s stare for only a beat before focusing back on her brother as she slumped low into the passenger seat until Allie could no longer see her above the dashboard. Allie considered returning to the car, but in that moment, she heard a voice echo from across the street, the new silence of the world carrying it like a virus through the air. Allie couldn’t make out the words, so she stooped low and quickly dashed across the street until she only twenty yards or so from the front of the house, hidden by a row of hedges.

  “We can’t wait anymore,” a voice said. Allie knew instantly it was Zander, the younger of the men from the traffic stop. “We’ve run out of time. We can’t be late for them.”

  “Why did we come bac
k to begin with?” the woman of the group asked. The question was followed by a long pause, and Allie could almost feel the danger in Zander’s eyes at the questioning of his subordinate. “I’m sorry, Zander. It was not for me to question.”

  Another pregnant silence and then, “We needed the detonators, and...” he paused. “She was one more to feed to them. One more for their collection.”

  AS SHE ENTERED THE wide-open straightaway of the interstate, Allie floored the accelerator and headed for the town entrance.

  She didn’t know for certain the van was headed for the sinkhole—and she couldn’t very well follow them from any significant distance—but as she weighed the other possibilities, she couldn’t think of another destination. She had always suspected the unusual crater was instrumental in the day’s happenings, and now she was just about sure of it. And when she crested the hill by the cliffside at the edge of town, just at the point where the crater became visible from the roadway, all doubt was erased.

  The first thing she saw were the creatures, the black forms rising tall in front of the sinkhole, hovering there like shadows over a grave. In front of them, facing the creatures, were Zander and his associates. Beside them was Winston Bell, who looked to be standing slightly in front of the other three, closest to the creatures, facing them as if he were on trial, being judged by the beasts.

  Allie was rapt for several seconds, but she recovered quickly and pulled the car to the shoulder, parking it out of sight behind one of the large desert evergreens that lined the side of the road. She craned her neck desperately, trying to get a view of the small crowd of people at the chasm, and though the car was now hidden, Allie had no visibility from the spot; she could only see the top of the van from her current position. She needed to get eyes on the scene.

  Allie lifted a scolding finger to Maria, a warning to stay put; but Maria didn’t see it, focused as she was on Antonio, her face still warped with distress. Finally, she looked at Allie, her eyes tear-filled, a bulge in her throat. “He’s dying.”

  Allie frowned and put her hand to Maria’s face, nodding. “Okay, honey. Just hold him. Keep him close to your body. Let him feel your heart beating. Love him.” She removed her hand from the girl’s face and used it to unclip her pistol. “I’ll be back. I need to get a better look at what’s going down out there.”

  Maria nodded, and Allie quietly opened the door and then stepped down to the dirt shoulder, barely closing the door to its first hitch before hunching her back and jogging forward to a cluster of shrubs twenty feet or so ahead. Once at the new hidden location, Allie stopped and stooped again, now peering through a new set of bushes that gave her a near-perfect view of the sinkhole and the bodies surrounding it. And with the breeze coming at her, she could hear the words coming from Winston Bell as if he were speaking them from only a foot away.

  Ramon and Tony were nowhere to be seen, but Allie assumed they were in the cruiser, hopefully alive. She prayed it was true.

  Winston Bell, on the other hand, stood tall in front of the creatures, facing the shimmering beasts like an orator speaking to a crowd of hundreds, his shoulders and chin high as he recited some tragic event of his past.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Her name was Diana Modesto, and my intention was to rape her.”

  Winston spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable just as he’d rehearsed a hundred times, his eyes locked on the three creatures that he had dreamed of every night since that first morning Zander and his team arrived.

  They were more than beautiful, beyond terrible; they were the culmination of every mythical being he could imagine, godlike in their majesty and size, their lack of visual clarity somehow enhancing their splendor.

  The beings had latched his mind almost instantly, without warning or introduction, but Winston was prepared, and he knew when it began to let the memories flow through his mind without resistance, and to allow them to reach the end of the reel before drawing out and focusing on the one in particular.

  And when the film finally ended, Winston conjured the memory of Diane Modesto once more. He summoned the shape and smell of her body, the sounds of the serene setting, bringing to life the event at the Christmas party for what he hoped would be the final time in his soon-to-be-long life.

  But he didn’t waste time on the backstory or the build-up to the evening; instead he got right to the crux of the confession, unleashing the desire and harm of his polluted heart to these demons—these Arali—of Perdition.

  “I grabbed her. I forced her to me. I rubbed my groin and body against her and brought her to the ground with the intent to penetrate her. She got away from me—I didn’t have the strength that night to restrain her—but if she hadn’t, I would have done my worst to her.”

  The moment he uttered this statement of guilt, the words he believed communicated the worst his soul had to offer, he glanced toward Zander, who immediately looked away as if Winston had disappointed him.

  Winston’s face flooded with the burn of adrenaline at Zander’s reaction, and the doubt and fear that he’d tried so hard to suppress over the last few months suddenly gripped him again.

  “It...it isn’t that what I did was as bad as...I...” He looked at Zander again, desperate now for the words that would put him back on the right path. “What is it?” he cried. “What do they want me to say?”

  Zander looked to the ground and then back to Winston, sadness in his eyes now, a frown on his face. He shook his head. “I’m afraid you’ve failed, Mr. Bell. Just as I feared you would.”

  “Failed? How could I fail? This is my crime! This is the evil in my heart! You told me to find it and I did! Who else can say what is my sin?”

  Zander let his eyes linger on Winston for several beats, allowing the elderly sinner the opportunity to discover the answer for himself. But Winston could only stare back in desperation, his eyes sodden and feeble. “You’ve sacrificed an entire town of people, Mr. Bell. Instead of warning them, you’ve killed them. And you’ve done it all for yourself.”

  “What? No, I—”

  “Hundreds of people died today because of you, Mr. Bell, and you facilitated those deaths based on nothing more than a promise from me. Do you not think that is the sin they desired?”

  The obviousness of the statement hit Winston like an armored tank, and as he opened his mouth to accept this new felony as gospel, to speak this new truth to the demons who now controlled his future, the blood inside him instantly thickened, and within seconds, his veins and arteries shattered like glass.

  Winston Bell’s organs and bones, his tendons and muscles and skin, all turned to black in a broiling wave, and then his corpse collapsed to the ground like a used fireplace log, bouncing slightly before turning face down onto the pavement.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Zander stepped in front of the Arali with the confidence of his immunity, knowing that he had paid his sin to the creatures years ago and was, if not safe from their wrath, at least shielded from it.

  But he had always desired more from them—and to offer more—and his research, warped and biased though it may have been, had led him to believe that if he could provide the sins of others to the Arali, sins that they knew had been offered to them by Zander, they would extend his life even further, perhaps all the way to immortality. Or at least close to it.

  “I have others to offer,” Zander said with a smile, a glimmer in his eyes that resembled that of a young man seeing the love of his life for the first time.

  Zander turned to Ouray and nodded; his was face stern like a drill sergeant’s, and the elder man quickly complied to the tacit order, striding like a soldier back to the cruiser. He opened the door and grabbed Tony Radowski by the arm and pulled him outside, and then nudged him from behind with an elbow as they marched to the spot where Winston Bell had stood with confidence only minutes earlier.

  Tony faced the Arali with his chin high, and then he cleared the terror from his throat and swallowed. “Which one of you ug
ly fucks did I shoot earlier?” he asked, lifting a finger and pointing to the creature on the right. “I think it was you.” He shifted the finger to the middle Arali. “Or maybe it wa—”

  Tony Radowski suddenly threw his hands to his forehead and squeezed his eyes closed, pressing his hands at his temples. His mind began to strobe in a surge of memories: His days in the army—the best of his life; the eighteen months he did in Coconino for assault; his cellmate who Tony had killed one night with a bedsheet following a lightly veiled threat and a wag of the bastard’s tongue.

  Zander stared at Tony patiently, waiting for the images of the man’s life—which Zander could only assume was a long and sordid one—to finish playing in his head.

  Finally, Tony exhaled in a gasp and raised his head, opening his eyes now and staring at the Arali with a bit more fear and deference than earlier.

  “Give them what they want,” Zander whispered aloud, knowing the Arali were making the same request in the man’s mind at that very moment. “Give them your evil.”

  Tony turned away from the monsters and looked down at the fried corpse of Winston Bell below him. Finally, he turned to Zander and said, “Fuck you and fuck them too.”

  Zander’s shoulders slumped at Tony’s words, and he sighed in disgust and weariness.

  He took no pleasure in Tony Radowski’s screams of pain, or his death that followed a half-second later.

  CHAPTER TWENY-SEVEN

  Allie squeezed her eyes shut at the sight of Tony Radowski’s destroyed body collapsing to the pavement, and she instinctively kept her hand hovering just below her mouth, ready to stifle a scream if one emerged. But she kept herself together and forced herself to take several slow breaths, trying to keep her mind focused on what she could do to help.