Will soldiered on into the forest, deciding after a moment to approach the house indirectly—they might be watching the path—but he soon found there was no need. His tracking skills weren’t the greatest, but it was obvious they had plodded down the main path—it looked like there might be a small army of trolls involved, given the obviousness of their passage. The grass which had stood tall last night was utterly trampled.
He had been watching for blood—Sam’s—but could see no trace.
Until he got to the yard.
5. Four Skeletal Keys
Three of the crucifixes had tumbled. The bones that had been affixed to them had been scattered, some of them crushed. There were swaths of blood on the lawn.
Will approached cautiously, knife in hand.
He was only a few feet onto the lawn when he came within earshot of the muffled noises deep inside the cabin.
Roaring. Bestial.
And screaming.
Samantha’s.
««—»»
Will sprinted to the porch.
It was slick with blood, a trail of which led inside the door.
The door was locked, of course.
Will wished he were a ghost again, that he could simply walk through the thick wood of the portal as he’d done before, but he was going to have to get in some other way.
Now, as he thought desperately about how to gain access to the interior of the cabin, he noted another sound—a mewling cry, maybe combined with a growl, just behind the door, the sound of a dog in intense pain. The monstrous roaring and Samantha’s pleading were somewhere deeper in the building—probably in whatever lay under the living area the ghost had shown him.
As awful as the inhuman noises in there sounded, Samantha’s screams were worse.
How to get in?
He could race around the house, look for an alternate entrance.
No time—and there hadn’t been any evidence of any during his time in The Ghost World.
The windows were boarded.
The door too thick to break down.
But the door was also ancient.
And so was its antiquated lock.
Will could pick locks.
If he had the right tools.
Will turned and examined the yard.
Bones.
If he found one the right size, the right length…One that wasn’t too brittle…
Will grabbed what looked like a femur. He used Big and Ugly’s knife to quickly, crudely whittle a tool the approximate size and shape he thought would work.
Samantha’s muffled cries sounded both enraged and terrified. Will could make out no words.
He could not imagine what sort of creature would make those awful whining, growling half-howls, half-moans of pain behind the door, much less what Samantha could possibly be facing.
And yet he had to force his breath to come slowly, had to force his fingers to work carefully despite the lock being a relative gaping hole, as locks went.
The bone, untreated, was brittle. He could feel the tension in the tenuous calcium structure of the bone tensing, so pliable, against the old, solid, possibly rusted metal inside the close iron quarters of the lock.
Sweat, awash with grit and his own dried blood, ran into Will’s eyes, stinging as he worked the tight mechanisms of the ancient latchwork, trying to ignore the whimpers of the beast on the other side of the door, the roaring of whatever had Samantha in the basement, the horrific cries of the woman he loved. He tried to blink the sweat away, but in the end he had to take a second to use his forearm to wipe it off.
He could feel the last pin giving way. His eyes were staring at that stupid runny-painted “KEEP OUT” on the door, but that’s not what he was seeing. He could picture the structure of the lock in his mind, now, forced himself to focus only on that, imagining the bone sliver working it, moving it, ignoring the awful, gut-rending cacophony in his ears.
The bone wasn’t going to hold.
He was putting too much pressure on it, had to.
The bone snapped.
A millisecond after he opened the lock.
Will stood, threw the door open, already wielding the knife.
««—»»
He was expecting maybe a dog, thinking perhaps Samantha had put up a fight, injured a guard animal. He had, after all, taught her some self-defense.
A sickly-sweet odor, pervasive in the room, flooded his olfactory senses, but Will had no time, initially, to discern its origin.
What Will saw crouched in the corner of the main room on the wooden slats of the cabin floor, however, was…if not a woman, a female. She was partially disemboweled, a gaping gash in her side. She was holding a coil of guts into an oddly pulsing stomach wound. One side of her hirsute face was covered with a congealing mass of blood from a horrendous slash. She was covered in coarse hair—she looked like old time pictures of hair-covered sideshow freaks—and now—though her feral, inhuman eyes seemed only half-aware, crazed, taking him in—she started…barking? It was hard to make out through the wound, but she had a maw. Will was sure of it. Her nose and mouth jutted out in a misshapen snout, albeit one not fully formed, more like her hairy nose and mouth were stretched by a ball stuck under the skin of her face. Will’s mind wanted to deem it a werewolf—it was definitely human-like; it had breasts, for god’s sake. But he also saw…bear? Its still-shifting, elongating snout was roundish, its paws thick and heavily padded, its claws larger, more fearsome than any canine’s.
Will also saw in a glance that whatever melee had started out on the lawn had continued in here. The long table had been pushed askew. The skulls which had sat on it had tumbled to the floor, some shattering. The large jars with the viscous contents—honey? Honey jars? Yes, the source of the sickly sweet odor—had smashed to the ground.
The book shelf had been knocked over and some of the photo albums had been knocked to the floor. One was indeed a photo album, though he didn’t have time in the mere millisecond he had to glance at the destruction to make out any details. In that same glance, however, he understood that at least two of the books were most definitely not photo albums. There was some sort of ornate writing and bizarre illustrations on the random open pages—and without actively reading or even actively seeing what was there, what he glimpsed nonetheless hurt his brain. Will knew it instinctually, the way an almost unperceived odor might warn a small animal away from a predator’s cave, that the language used to write those books would challenge his brain’s very conception of language, that the illustrations would challenge his mind’s perception of the solidity of time and space.
All this, and more, in a glance, in a fraction of a second:
Huge, bloody tracks—the tracks of a giant more animal than human—led to the spot where the carpet had been flung aside, revealing a trap door, a huge lock in its center, beneath which something savage, beyond human, beyond animal roared and Samantha screamed in anger and rage and protest and fear.
The knife flew from Will’s hand.
The strange books had done it. Will thought this even as the werebeast’s snout—was it already longer than it had been mere seconds earlier?—made for his throat, as his head hit the hard wooden floor, as the creature’s slablike claws hugged him, their bodies a jumble of screaming and snarling, of hair and flesh, it’s large, hairy breasts smushing into his chest, its claws ripping at Will’s back.
Will’s hands found the creature’s neck—it felt thick as a tire—all his strength focused on keeping those slathering jaws from his carotid artery.
Even though the thing had appeared somewhat slight while crouched in the corner, it was at least twice as heavy as he’d imagined it could be. Will couldn’t roll, couldn’t turn the two of them on their sides, the creature having the total upper hand above him. It roared and issued odd, excited yipping sounds from its scarred, bleeding jaw as it fought his hands.
The creature’s hind legs scrabbled for purchase on the already blood-slicked floor and Will used the op
portunity to bring his own feet up and in—his injured rib crunching, sending bright sparklers of pain throughout his torso, the partially coagulated cuts on his legs ripping open anew. He managed to bring his boots clumsily between them, kicking at the beast’s hips, stretching its already injured abdomen, finally managing to at least partially throw the thing sideways so its entire weight was no longer on him.
How to fight this thing? Standard techniques might not work.
And it apparently had relatively quick regenerative abilities. It had definitely healed some since Will had first glimpsed it. The wound in its face was not as…gashy as it had been.
Yes, but what about the rip in its stomach?
Will had only an instant—keeping one hand on the beast’s throat he reached down with his other and grabbed a slippery, rubbery loop of gut and tugged. He realized that some of its intestine had unspooled behind it when it had leapt at him, and now his tugging merely uncoiled more of it.
The thing lurched its head back and its gore-streaked neck slipped free of Will’s hand.
Will instinctively brought his hand that was holding the creature’s guts up in a defensive move and the beast’s sharp teeth, just missing Will’s flailing hand, snapped into and through its own intestine. Black blood and even darker bile spurted from the new opening in the tube-like organ, a vile odor also spraying forth into the air, mixing with the copper aroma of blood, the cloyingly sweet stench of honey.
The knife, Will saw, was within reach on the floor, near the awful books, if he could have a free instant in which to retrieve it.
The beast roared, its maw opening wide.
Not thinking, Will stuffed a fistful of the thing’s own intestine deep between those ferocious teeth.
This cut the howl short. The beast started gagging, helplessly chewing on its own innards. Will felt it growl desperately, deep in its chest, as his body lay atop its. He stretched across the floor, reaching for the knife.
This time there was no mercy, as there had been with ol’ Big and Ugly.
Partially masticated chunks of bowel fell free as Will decapitated the damned thing.
It did not regenerate.
««—»»
Will smashed in the glass in the cabinet front and retrieved the hardwood box, knocking aside skulls and shattering gnomes.
Inside the box was an old-fashioned metal “barrel” key, about two-thirds the length of his hand. The part one gripped was fashioned into three grinning skulls.
Despite the fact that it was relatively huge compared to a modern key, there was no way this key would fit the gigantic latch in the floor. He put it in his pocket.
He didn’t think he could find the patience to pick another lock, not with the noises from below.
“I’m coming, Samantha!” he yelled.
He hoped he wasn’t lying.
Will heard Samantha scream his name in response over the monstrous bellows.
In addition to all his other wounds, his back blazed in pain with every movement from the werebeast’s clawing.
The sun was finding ever more cracks in the windows now, and Will saw that the lock in the trap door appeared strangely curved.
It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t place it.
The curve looked like a comma, like a…like a claw.
Will, mud-covered, blood-streaked, bile-soaked, hardly able to stand his own stench, reached into his belt and pulled out the knife.
The bone handle.
With the strange talons.
He gripped the knife gently by the blade.
He knelt by the lock.
The handle slipped in like a hand into a glove.
Will twisted the blade, feeling the lock give.
««—»»
The wooden stairs beneath the trap door led down to flickering lights, shifting shadows and an uneven earthen floor.
There was no room for caution in this instance. Will leapt down the stairs.
A huge basement.
A thousand candles—how had there been time for them to be lit?
A bizarre altar of bones against a wall in the center. Bones set in the wall in surreal spirals and unreadable but obviously blasphemous runes.
A torture area at one end, hundreds of sharp, twisted, evil instruments. Samantha shackled to a rack. The huge werebeast, wearing a black cloak, did not appear to be torturing Sam, at least not yet. It was, instead, yammering in some animalistic language, reading from another of the damned books, this one gigantic. The book would have been difficult for the likes of Will to hold in both arms, but the beast held it in one huge, wickedly clawed paw while its free mitt traced strange sigils in the air.
The roars he’d heard all the way out on the lawn were not coming from the were-priest.
The roars were coming from the end of the basement opposite the torture chamber.
The demonic creature nailed to the cross of bones there was itself partially skeletal.
And yet bulges and bubbling ripples of white, mottled flesh were forming on it even as Will watched.
He recognized the creature.
Ol’ Big and Ugly.
Except thrice as huge.
And thrice as ugly.
His skin, what there was of it, looked dead, desiccated. Green and blue and black-red veins throbbed and pulsed on the surface and beneath. His maw was fully bearlike, his ears protruding in flopping triangles, his hands shifting between talon claws and dead-white bear mitts. He was bound to the bone cross—if by physical or some sort of spiritual bounds, Will could not discern. He had no sex organs, his legs coming together in a smooth, hairless joining of gray skin at their union point. His eyes. His eyes burned red with literal flame, literal wisps of fire more hellish than any red hot poker he could imagine torturers using on victims of the rack to which Samantha was bound. Looking at the flames in Ol’ Big and Ugly’s eyes hurt in the same way merely glancing at those infernal books upstairs had hurt.
There was a heap of something at the base of the cross to which Ol’ Big and Ugly was affixed. It appeared to be a mass of hair and … flesh? Yes, flayed, prepared flesh, free of bone, apparently treated in some manner because there was no accompanying stench. An offering. Samantha, a human, was surely to be the final sacrifice. Will inferred this much before he took action: He had stumbled upon this scene in media res. These were still initial prayers in a larger ritual. Samantha’s blood would surely be the sacrifice which would bring Big and Ugly fully back from The Beyond, more powerful and wicked than ever, to wreck who knew what havoc upon the mortal skin of this earth.
The were-priest’s red eyes—inhuman, but not truly infernal, like Ol’ Big and Ugly’s eyes—glaring from beneath its cowl, had noticed him now. There was drying blood on its claws and snout, surely from whatever altercation had happened with the now-dead creature upstairs. It shrieked in rage, a keening higher than Will would have imagined it capable of. It was apparently enraged that he had interrupted its infernal preparations.
Forget the logic, the hows and whys, this was happening.
There was only action or doom.
Will clenched the knife, expecting the creature to rush him.
Instead it threw the book at him.
With amazing force.
Later, Will would swear the book flew at him—that its covers and pages flapped like the wings of an enraged bird as it rocketed into his head, impossible to dodge. Will was knocked blind to the ground, losing the knife again, incomprehensible words from the book raging through his brain, setting it afire with their fiendish syllables.
Will had to fight the words in order to come to. As a distant part of his consciousness heard a jumble of Samantha yelling for him to get up, the were-priest’s growly verbiage and Ol’ Big and Ugly’s demonic roaring, the core of his mind heard iniquitous consonants and vowels not of any language spoken on this planet since recorded time.
But there was also information in the book. Ol’ Big & Ugly, had, during life, performed ritua
ls which turned his very bones into a key. With the proper rituals, with the proper spells and sacrifices proffered unto this key, Ol’ B&U would become a portal, allowing incomprehensible twistings of reality far more malicious and unfathomable than mere lycanthropy or demonic reign to spread like a plague.
Will retreated into innocence in order to survive, to wake back unto himself. There had been, he realized for the first time in more than two decades, a time when he’d thought words were literally magical—and, the truth, he realized is that they are. Nursery rhymes. Songs from kindergarten. Poems he’d memorized during a lit class in college. Classic rock tunes. Words that fit together magically, innocently, perfectly. These rhymes—he sang and recited dozens at once as the otherworldly words stormed and thundered around him—were things that should be, that were meant to be—while the insane vocabulary with which the book bombarded him and creatures like the were-priest and Ol’ Big and Ugly’s infernal incarnation were the antithesis of meant to be. Mother Goose, Boston’s first album, Wallace Stevens’ “The Idea of Order at Key West.” These were the words that might save the world.
It felt to Will as if he did battle with the book for longer than he had spent avoiding getting back into the Jeep back in the Ghost World, but when he finally came to it was apparently only seconds later. His head was throbbing anew. The book lay on the earthen floor—but it was now just a book, whatever powers it had now suddenly utterly spent, gone.
Samantha was still shackled, still screaming for Will to get up.
The were-priest was desperately throwing skins pell-mell from the heap at Big and Ugly—and Big and Ugly was absorbing them. The skins would stick to B&U’s veiny white viscous skin then slowly sink in, and he would grow more solid, more flesh bubbling forth on his huge skeletal frame with each atrocious sacrificial pelt.
Only action or doom.
The were-priest noticed that Will had roused himself.
Will turned, found the knife.
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