“We'll just lay it on the cross up here.” Mark set the smoking cigarette at the juncture of the T shaped cross. “If you stand over there, you won't be able to see anything but the smoke.”
Jillian danced out of the way and Donovan raised the camera just as thunder rolled ominously overhead. Another blast of lightning illuminated the spikes of Mark's punk styled hair.
Through the viewfinder, Donovan saw a swirl of smoke rising above the cross. Unsure whether or not it was going to work with the flash, he took two pictures in a row once Mark moved out of the way.
Behind them, he could hear the boys trying to get the carousel to turn. Hinges and gears protested with creaks and whines.
“I can't wait to see the girls' faces when we develop these.” Jillian's laughter got cut off by another boom through the night.
“We should probably get out of here.” Donovan pocketed the camera and caught Jillian by the hand.
“What? Why? It's just a little rain,” she said in protest.
“It's not the rain.” Halfway between the tomb and the carousel, the sky opened up and the deluge came down. It didn't start off with a few drops, it came in a torrent and all at once.
Donovan counted heads and costumes as they approached. “Where's Cory?”
“He's over looking at one of the gargoyles. Why?” Wesley said, hanging off the Jester's arm.
“Let's round everyone up and go.” Donovan helped Jillian up onto the carousel and followed her out of the rain. Mark hopped up beside them.
“It's just a little rain. It'll be over before we can even get to the car. Why are you so skittish, man?” Jarrett, sitting on one of the horses, leaned over to flick Jillian's collarbone.
She swatted his hand and pinched his arm, earning a fake yelp for her effort.
“I'm not.” Donovan pushed down the defensiveness that automatically leaped to the surface. But he was defensive, and he was also becoming more unnerved with every second that passed. Leaving Jillian with the guys, he wove through the carousel in search of Cory.
“Cory!”
The rain fell in such a torrent that he couldn't see the outline of the house from the carousel. If Cory had sought shelter there, he wouldn't be able to tell from here. Donovan scowled. The silvery sheen obliterated everything but the tossing heads of the wild looking horses and the insidious stare of a circus master. His jolly roundness was offset by the somewhat cynical look in his lacquered eyes.
“Cory!” Donovan called out again, and got no answer. Where the the hell was he?
“He probably went off into the woods to take a leak,” Poundcake called from the other side of the carousel.
Warped mirrors lined up vertically along the center column marked Donovan's progress around the circle. He couldn't see the others from here, but he could hear them.
“Yeah, but he should still be able to hear me.” Donovan muttered under his breath.
“He's probably trying to scare us,” Deeter yelled.
With a sudden spin, Donovan turned around. It wasn't something he'd heard or seen that had grabbed his attention, but something else. He couldn't quite place what had drawn his notice. His gaze touched on the side of a gargoyle, the outline of the devil, and the coattails of the circus master.
Thunder rattled the air and shook the fiberglass beneath his feet.
He became aware that whatever was wrong, or whatever he was supposed to notice, wouldn't end up being pleasant. Instinct told him so. The same kind of instinct that served him well on the football field when he rolled out of the pocket looking for an open man down the field.
Jillian laughed at something Wesley said and Donovan heard Poundcake 'Yehaw!', apparently astride one of the inanimate animals. His friends didn't seem to have the same sense of unease.
And then it struck him; the Mime was missing. A blatant hole in the line of characters drew Donovan forward, his mind frantically trying to figure out if he was just in the wrong spot on the carousel or if the Mime really was gone.
Couldn't be.
He was imagining things.
But something had been in the vacant spot between a gargoyle and one of the horses.
“The hell?” The words didn't travel far.
A flicker out in the rain snapped Donovan's gaze there. A glimpse of black and white against the dark outline of the trees. He couldn't make any detail out other than whatever it was, it moved fast.
Donovan burst into motion, the hair up on the back of his neck. Vaulting the back of a gargoyle, he landed with a thump of boots on the sodden ground and took off at a dead run.
“Cory!” He shouted the name into the night, streaking after the glimpse of whatever he'd seen that was already gone.
Behind him, he heard the other boys call out. Donovan couldn't hear the exact words over the thunder and didn't care. Right now, he wanted to find that thing. Or Cory.
The trees were spaced far enough apart to give him plenty of room when he sank into the canopy. He glanced left. Right. A strange glow permeated the evening, as if the rain gave off needles of illumination while it was falling.
He saw no flash of black and white. No Cory taking a piss.
Just trees and clumps of bushes clustered at the base.
“Donovan! Man, what the hell happened?” Poundcake came up behind him, bristling and breathing hard. The run hadn't winded him; uncertainty had.
“I don't know. I saw something out here. It ran in here.”
“What's going on?” Deeter said, standing behind Poundcake.
“You guys go that way. See if you see anything.” Donovan pointed to his left. He went right, jogging through the tree trunks. In the clearing, he could see some of the other boys fanning out, drenched by rain. Jillian, her white gown making her visible even in the downpour, stood uncertainly at the edge of the carousel.
“Stay there, Jillian!” Donovan called out.
A faint cry stopped him. He spun the way he'd come, looking for the source of the noise. “Poundcake? Deeter?”
No answer.
“Donovan, what's going on?” Wesley, as dark as the night around him but easily seen in his red, gold and white football uniform, jogged parallel to the trees.
“I don't know. Tell Dane and Jarrett to stay with Jillian.” Smearing rain off his face, Donovan stared into the night. Lightning blitzed the black sky, casting a strobe of light off the trunks.
In that three second flash, Donovan saw Cory tied to a tree. Even from there he could tell something was wrong. The way Cory's chin tucked against his chest, the limp fall of his hands. He was running before he thought twice, shouting Cory's name.
When he got there he found his childhood friend attached to the tree with barbed wire. It cut into his throat, his arms, his thighs. Blood oozed from too many wounds to count. Donovan tipped Cory's head up—and paused. Hollow sockets sat in the place Cory's eyes used to be.
Donovan staggered back in shock. An involuntary scream ripped free.
Another scream, timed to a wicked streak of lightning, yanked Donovan's attention toward the clearing. Toward the carousel.
Bouncing off a trunk, he broke free of the cover of trees just as Jillian leaped to the ground. Rain smeared the black paint on her white face, making gothic spikes down her cheeks. The devil, pitchfork clutched in hand, spaded tail lashing behind it, jumped down in pursuit.
Surreal, bizarre as something from his worst nightmare, the scene made Donovan's steps stutter. “Jillian, run!”
Wesley, the fastest man on their team and closer to Jillian than he, hurtled toward the devil. The thing looked bigger than it had on the carousel, more fierce. Deadly. Its skin wasn't glossy but scaled. Gritty. It had three fingers instead of five and curved, sharp canines.
Wesley jumped through the air to tackle it, a war cry on his lips. The devil turned at the last second and braced its weapon, lips curled back from its teeth. Wesley landed with a thud and a sick, wet gurgle.
“Wesley!” Donovan shouted so hard he mo
mentarily lost his voice. Both hands speared his hair, tugging the strands away from his hairline. Chaotic and wild, his heart hammered in his chest.
Impossible. None of it could be real.
Understanding on a subconscious level that he could do nothing for Wesley, he veered toward Jillian. She ran for her life, the hem of the tattered gown fluttering like wayward ghosts around her feet. She resembled an image from a black and white movie, distorted and fuzzy through the downpour.
In periphery, Donovan saw flashes and flickers of the other boys, everyone running a different direction. He heard a crash of thunder and realized too late it wasn't overhead but behind him. Knocked down, he landed hard, hands planting in the mud. A glancing hoof tore the skin open on his shoulder. Donovan felt the pain like an afterthought, more concerned with survival than a gash in his skin. He rolled to the left just as a pair of gold trimmed hooves would have caved in his head.
A scream ripped through the night. Donovan couldn't tell whose it was.
He rolled straight through and popped up to his feet, ready to defend himself. The carousel horse, missing the pole from its back, loped a wide circle. It too looked bigger than it had before; broad through the chest, heavy through the flank. Its eyes gleamed with evil intent. In snatches, Donovan caught a glimpse of the devil prying its pitchfork out of Wesley's stomach. He caught another glimpse of the Pirate, sword gleaming, chasing Dane with a malicious grin. Three steps later, the Pirate impaled Dane through the back.
“Run, for shit sake, run!” Mark barreled into him from the side, surprising him. Donovan swung wildly with a fist, aiming for the face.
Mark dodged and shoved, looking as panicked as he felt. “Go, go!”
Needing no further prompting, he started running. Jillian, in the melee, was nowhere in sight. Donovan hoped to god she'd made it to the Nova and was even then coming around to run these bastards over.
Another of the horses swerved in front of them, cutting them off from the house and the vehicles. Mark lost his footing on the slick ground and Donovan reached over to both center his balance and push him out of the way of the horse.
A strange jingle, like Christmas bells, preceded a colorful burst out of the corner of Donovan's eye. The Jester took Mark to the ground with a solid thud. He was close enough and at the right angle to see the Jester laugh like a crazed hyena right in Mark's face before slashing at him with claws that looked better suited to a jungle cat. A gout of red arched into the air when Mark's throat gaped open from the inflicted wound.
Spinning away, Donovan regained his footing and bolted forward, dodging another horse while he ran for the trees. He wanted to stay and fight, to go back there and pound the Jester into the ground until it was nothing more than a puddle of blue, red and gold. Sanity demanded he find as many survivors as he could and get the hell out of there.
“Jillian! Brian! Deeter!” Donovan cut through the sparse forest, slapping limbs and leaves out of his way. At least the horses would have a harder time getting at them in here. Donovan bounced between shock and survival instinct, frantic to make sense of the madness. Part of him couldn't believe the things he'd witnessed and another part of him, a darker part, whispered that he wouldn't get out of this alive.
Still another understood exactly what had killed Pitchford that night.
Jillian careened into view twenty feet ahead.
“Jillian!” Donovan knew something was chasing him, could feel its menacing presence somewhere behind him. He didn't know if it was the devil or the pirate or the jester. Running harder, cutting sharply around the trunks, he closed in on his girlfriend. She didn't stop or even look back. He could hear terrified little noises the closer he got.
“Jillian!” Ten steps before he reached her, a gargoyle, hopping one tree trunk to the next, swooped down and snatched her off the ground. It attacked where it had room to maneuver with its wings extended and flew out of the trees with Jillian clutched in its talons.
Donovan lunged after them, hands landing on empty air. Her screams reached fever pitch as the gargoyle dove down into the woods on the far side of the clearing. Battling impotent fury and fear, he stopped at the edge of the trees, breathing hard, rain slicing like tiny daggers against his skin. Just then, he saw Brian dangling from one of the hooks on the carousel. Metal pierced his back and jutted out from his chest. His body hung limp, head slumped low. Donovan released a pained sound.
Jillian, Brian, Wesley, Mark. All dead.
He jumped when a hand landed hard on his shoulder. Whirling, he swung blindly, shouting at the top of his lungs. Poundcake and Jarrett stood behind him, panting and sweating. His fist grazed Poundcake's shoulder with little affect on the linebacker.
“Damnit, don't sneak up on me like that,” Donovan said.
“Let's make a run for the cars. Found these back there.” Poundcake held up two pieces of pipe about arm's length.
Donovan took one of the pipes without even thinking. The horses were nowhere in sight and neither were several of the carousel's occupants. That meant they were stalking them through the trees or lying in wait somewhere.
“I have to find Jillian--”
“Dude, Jillian's gone. I saw it. You go after her, they'll just get you, too.” Jarrett didn't have a pipe but he had a thick piece of wood in his hand.
All three of them glanced over when they heard a twig crack. Donovan saw nothing. Yet.
“Where's Deeter?” he whispered.
“Last I saw him he was running into the woods,” Poundcake said. He looked around with darting eyes, mouth a tight line.
“We can't just leave without knowing if they're all--”
“Dead? They are.” Jarrett interrupted, scanning the woods in every direction.
Donovan didn't want to accept that everyone else was already gone. And he didn't want to stand here feeling bad about it if it meant his own death.
“We don't know about Deeter for sure. I think we should go right out in the open though and not through the woods. Too easy to pick us off,” Donovan said.
The storm raged overhead, letting loose the hounds of hell from the heavens.
“Are you sure, man? Seems like we're better prey out there,” Jarrett said, ticking his chin toward the clearing.
“At last we can see them coming.” Donovan met each of their eyes. They communicated their desire to stay together—strength in numbers—and moved out of the woods at the same time.
Running.
They were an imposing trio, all standing at least six feet. Poundcake stood six-three. Faces locked into masks of determination, they hustled for the opening in the clearing that led back to the house. To the cars.
To safety.
A blur on Donovan's right, coming from the trees, made him veer and swing the pipe in reaction. He caught only a glimpse of the pirate, sword slashing through the rain, before he tripped over an exposed root and went down. Knocking his chin on the pipe, he felt blood explode from the wound. Rolling over—got to get up, go, go go—he got a glimpse of the pirate slashing-hacking-slicing into Jarrett's stomach.
Intestines spilled out like a can of giant red worms. Jarrett looked minutely surprised before he dropped the wood and tried to cup them and push them back in.
Poundcake swung his pipe for all he was worth, howling a mad-man's cry. He landed a blow on the Pirate's shoulder and swung again, aiming for the head.
Donovan rushed in to help, realizing the shouting he heard above the rain came from himself. It had a strange keening quality to it. A wounded animal type of fury and determination. Wielding the pipe like a bat, he swung for the back of the Pirate's head. The figure had a bizarre sheen to its skin and clothing, like the lacquer was a part of its natural make up.
Their strikes landed and bounced off.
The Pirate laughed, cutting the sword around with a vicious slice toward their bodies.
“Movemove!” Poundcake shouted.
Donovan arched backward—straight into a body. He swung the pipe a
round in a deadly arc. It cracked across Deeter's face, breaking his jaw and busting out several teeth. The shattered remnants flew sideways into the rain.
Donovan couldn't retract the blow but he saw that it wouldn't have mattered; the Mime stood behind the already dead Deeter, holding him up with one hand like it was effortless, peering around the battered boy's head.
The silent, venomous stare and painted-on smile froze Donovan's blood in his veins. He heard Poundcake make an ugly sound, one that could only mean his death, and Donovan burst into motion. Breaking away to the side, pipe in his hand, chin flayed open, he ran for the opening.
A peal of thin laughter, mad laughter, came from directly behind him. He heard the grinding flap of wings, the shuffle of running footsteps. Over the pounding rain, the crash of hooves was unmistakeable. Panting, he didn't stop.
Refused to look back.
Ahead, looming like a white frothy puddle, was Jillian. Her arms and legs were at odd angles. Blood tinted the Bride's gown red over the skirt but he couldn't tell exactly where her wounds were.
“Jillian!” He screamed her name though he knew it was in vain.
Past the opening to the clearing, he caught a glimpse of Pitchford's house. Lightning lit it up. Along the roof, perched on the seam, were two gargoyles.
Watching him.
He was going to make it to the Nova. He was. Turning on the speed, he prepared to hurdle Jillian's body.
Pierced from the back, he saw three prongs, spaded at the tips, jut out from his sternum. The pain came a second later, blooming hot and raw.
He screamed and the pipe fell out of his hand. Landing face down, cheek in a puddle of mud, he stared sideways. It felt like someone had lit a fire in his spine that spread through his chest and down his arms.
Just out of his field of vision, he could see part of Jillian's tattered dress.
Kneeling down, the Mime put his cheek to the ground. Mimicking him. Donovan watched the expressive, slightly glassy eyes go round, then narrow when it cracked a curving smile. It faded in favor of horror, fear, the knowledge that it knew it was dying. He understood the Mime was portraying his own death, a surreal mirror image.
Cemetery Psalms (5 Ghost/Horror Short Stories) Page 2
