He opened the door quickly and slid inside, even as the girl scrambled across to the passenger side and tried to open the lock.
Angel grabbed her arm tightly and yanked her back.
The girl screamed. It was a garbled, broken sound that grated on his ears like shattering glass. She pressed back into the passenger side door and smacked her head painfully on the glass of the window. Angel released her arm, drew his hand back, and smacked her hard in the mouth. Her head jerked, and her eyes widened in shock. She started to scream again, and Angel spoke.
"Shut up," he said. His voice was soft, but it carried. "Shut up or I will hit you so hard you don't remember how to scream."
She stopped screaming, but was still crying and breathing heavily, having trouble sucking in air through the gag. Angel grunted in satisfaction. He had instructions, but it was difficult to think of them with his ears ringing.
"Turn," he grunted. She did as he asked and he unknotted the gag. "Take this," he said, thrusting a small flask toward her. "Take this and drink. Don't stop until it's empty or I will hold you by the hair and pour it down your throat. Spill it, and it will be worse."
She stared at the flask, but made no move to take it. He shook it at her and turned, reaching for her hair. With a soft cry she took the flask. She fumbled with it and he reached across the seat. She flinched, but Angel was quick. He wrapped one large hand around hers and with the other he gripped the lid of the flask. He unscrewed it quickly and drew his hand back.
The scent of the liquor filled the small car and his eyes watered. He thought of the trail behind the store. He thought of Silas. The thought of what had been promised to him pulsed in his brain and steadied his nerves. The girl's hand shook, and he reached out again to steady her. This time she didn't flinch. Her eyes were glazed, and she stared out through the window to some point far away and above the store.
Angel directed the mouth of the flask to her lips and tilted it. She resisted, just for an instant, and then she was drinking. The liquor flowed down her throat smoothly. Angel watched her lips wrap tightly around the flask and the way her skin flushed. He placed his free hand behind her head to hold her steady, and when the flask was empty, he re-capped it and laid it on the floor of the car.
All the fight was gone from the girl. She slumped back in her seat, and Angel leaned across her and unlocked her door. He stepped out the driver's side, walked around and lifted her carefully out onto the dirt. He pressed the seat forward, pulled her cooler out and tossed it aside. With a soft grunt he lifted her slight form in his arms and slid her into the back seat. She didn't struggle, and she didn't speak. He let the seat fall back, closed the door, and returned to the driver's side.
A moment later they pulled out of Silas' lot and turned off up the mountain. About a mile later, Angel took the turn up toward his father's home. The sky was bright and filled with stars, but he turned on the windshield wipers. As they bumped along the uneven, rutted road, he sang Bobby McGee softly under his breath.
Abe heard an engine in the distance, and frowned. It was late for anyone on the mountain to be driving, though he expected they might be coming down to see what had burned, or to help fight the fire. He saw no lights, and when he turned onto the old road, still running smoothly, he was alone. Ahead he saw the silhouette of Greene's store. He picked up his pace; Katrina's smile filling his mind. He could almost hear her voice, calling to him through the memory of smoke.
He slowed as he approached the store. There were no lights inside, and there were no vehicles parked beside the place. He approached quietly and stood just off the porch, trying to make out the interior of the place through the dusty windows.
Nothing moved. There was no way to know if Greene was inside, or if he'd been back to the place in a week. Abe climbed up onto the porch and tried the door. The knob turned easily. His heart quickened. For all his bravado, he wasn't sure he was ready to face Greene, alone and on the man's own property.
He knocked lightly on the door. No one answered. He waited a few moments, then knocked harder. The rapping sound rang out through the night and echoed down the hill, but no one came to the door. Abe hesitated for a second, and then he turned the knob again, opened the door and stepped inside. He closed it gently behind himself. He remembered that the phone was in the back office.
Nothing had changed since he'd last been in the store. The jumbled shelves and unkempt piles of goods in the corners might not have changed since the first time his father had brought him to the store so many years in the past that they seemed like lifetimes.
The light was on in the back office. Abe stepped through the doorway. The phone sat on the edge of the old desk, and he hurried to it. He lifted the receiver and dialed the operator. After a long hesitation and several clicks, he heard a soft female voice asking him for his card number. He waited. There was no way to punch in the tones, so he'd have to talk to a real operator. This took a few moments longer, and every second raised the hairs on his neck further. He had the sensation of being watched, or stalked, but he ignored it. Finally the operator answered.
Abe spoke quickly, giving his card number and answering a few short questions to prove his identity. There were more clicks, a buzz that made him think the line had disconnected, and then the phone was ringing. He didn't start to worry until the fifth ring. At the tenth he placed the receiver gently back into its cradle and turned away. No answer. It was late, and there was nowhere Kat would be at such an hour—unless she was just gone.
Abe stumbled back through the door of the office and out through the store. The moon had risen, and there was enough light to see, but it still took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the new light. He turned away from the mountain and stared off down the road leading up from below. Something white caught his eye, something in the small parking lot that didn't belong, and he stepped closer.
As he approached, he saw that it was a cooler. A white Styrofoam cooler with the emblem of the San Valencez Dragons on the side. He stood very still. Surrounding the cooler on the ground was water, ice, and a number of bottles of water. It was Cold Springs water. Katrina drank cold springs water.
Abe leaned down and picked the cooler up. He turned it slowly and stared hard at the bottom. His skin was clammy, and his heart had slowed. The world took on a warped, surreal edge. Across the bottom of the cooler in dark, bold letters was a single word: Kat.
The cooler dropped from Abraham's numb fingers. He turned slowly and stared both ways down the road. There were tracks in the dirt, but the light wasn't bright enough to tell what kind they were, or which direction they'd taken last. He threw back his head, stared into the face of the moon, and whispered no. The whisper rose in volume, expanding from deep inside. He raised his hands over his head, tears streaming down his cheeks, and he screamed.
The echo followed him back down the road toward the base of the trail. Far up the mountain he thought he saw the wink of headlights, and then they were gone. The trail up the mountain was very difficult with tears clouding his vision. The climb took an eternity.
NINETEEN
They filed into the church slowly. Silas stood just to the right of the door and gazed into each set of eyes, occasionally reaching out to lay a hand on someone's shoulder. Not all of them bore the mark. Their families had drawn some of them into the slowly marching throng. Others had heard that services would be held and had wandered in because they remembered older times and other services. Silas met and held the gaze of any that lifted their eyes from the dirt of the path, or the stone of the steps. Most looked away, others he marked in his mind. There were old men, young women, couples and children. Silas saw one boy hunkered down behind his mother, keeping as far from Silas' gaze as possible, and he smiled. He knew what was going through that boy's mind. It wasn't exactly the same, because none of them knew what to expect from him yet. Some of the older ones suspected. Others had heard stories that had been built up and shifted through too many minds and rolled over too many tongues to
be reliable.
The last man climbed slowly up the steps and disappeared into the church. Silas stared out toward the path and the trees for a moment, then turned and followed them inside, closing the large doors behind him with a hollow thud. The interior of the church was silent. No one shuffled their feet, and if any of them, even the children, fidgeted in their seat, Silas didn't see it. He strode down the center aisle slowly. He turned now and then and fixed his gaze on one or another of them, but he didn't single anyone out. Not yet. He had plans already in place, and though their fear was palpable and intoxicating, he ignored the call of it for now. Silas stepped up behind the pulpit and turned to them. He avoided the fixed gaze glaring out from above the rear door and swept his own across the gathered assemblage.
"It has been too long," he said at last. His voice carried easily, though there was no magnification. When the church was designed, there had been no such aids, and the acoustics were perfected to take advantage of natural resonance. They raised their eyes, but most were averted. So many trembled that the room hummed with the vibration of it.
"It has been too long since we have gathered," Silas continued. "The sins of the mountain have piled so high they threaten to drown us in darkness. Our fathers knew how to combat that darkness…how to sate its hunger. They knew where their allegiance belonged, and they knew the price of redemption. We have not paid that price in a very long time, and the mountain screams for redemption."
There was a soft murmur. No one spoke, but they breathed sounds that blended and shifted about their feet, as if groping for coherence and falling short. Silas felt the energy in the room slip up a notch, but he held his elation in check. They sat in cold, lifeless pews, but Silas felt the hum of their energy escaping through the soles of their feet and sparking across the wood planks to rise through him. He felt the darkness shimmer overhead as impossibly large shadow antlers flickered just beyond sight. He sensed their presence, and he knew that those gathered sensed it as well. Some might even see it, though what they saw would be colored by their own beliefs and memories.
Some saw a large, serpentine form writhing behind Silas and rising to the raftered ceiling. Others saw a larger version of Silas, arms spread wide and shadows dripping off him like a long cloak. The rest saw the hint of the antlers, the horned symbol of rebirth. They felt the energy of it flowing in their veins, like the sap in a young tree. It brought hunger that could not be sated, and heat that refused to cool.
Silas raised his hands over his head and turned slowly. He took them all in, the corners of the room, those squirming in the front row and others cowering in the rear. He hadn't prepared anything to say, but the words came to him easily.
Those who would assist him knew the parts they would play, as well. He hadn't sat them down and explained it; there were more certain methods of communication. They moved about him, some outside the church, one in the rear near the pool, and still others walking the perimeter of the churchyard. He did not want to be disturbed. Things were moving very quickly. There would be no gradual buildup of power this time. Reverend Kotz had continued what others had begun. There had been other churches built on this spot. She was all that remained. When the white church was erected, the first thing in place when the walls were framed was the alcove. She had watched, even then, every board and every nail connected to her through an intricate skeleton of wood, paint, glass and shadow.
As he spoke, Silas felt the past leak up through the floorboards and the soles of his shoes. He felt the dirt beneath the foundation, and the stone beneath the dirt. He stared out over the congregation and saw the ghosts of walls long fallen, stone walls that lay much closer to the center. He saw clapboard walls shimmering just beyond the long-fallen stone, and beyond that the walls he knew, the door he had entered through since he was a boy, and her eyes. It all hung in the air before him, connected by lines of green light like a web, sticky and clinging. He expected her to step out onto this web, her carved root hair snaking out like the legs of a huge spider as she approached to devour him.
The words didn't matter. It wasn't Silas Greene speaking, and the words were not words that he knew, though he knew their power. He knew their source, as well. As powerful as the other was, tucked away in her small cave above the door, there was more. Much more. The darkness that hovered just out of his reach most of the time, teasing him with glimpses of strength and melting him in the heat of its lust. He was a conduit; power flowed in a steady stream from the earth, poured through his slight frame, and sprouted in the huge horned shadows. As he spoke, they solidified. The weight became real even as the strength to bear it rose to the challenge.
Sometime after he started to speak, three of those in the front row staggered to their feet. They cried out, but the sound was lost.
They staggered past Silas to the curtained alcove and disappeared from sight as others rose behind them. The third row had come to their feet by the time the first three returned. Their arms were wound about with serpents and their eyes were wild. They didn't walk from the baptismal, they danced; sultry, sinuous steps that rolled their hips and shoulders and drove the heels and toes of their feet into the planks of the floor.
They slipped past one another, in and out of the room. They didn't return to their seats, but they entered the rows, one after another. Those who were marked bore the serpents and those who were not screamed and tore at their hair. They joined the dance, too terrified to run, but they leaned away from the chosen and slipped into aisles where there were no serpents.
One man, white-haired and thin as a rail, threw his hands over his head and screeched. His eyes were wide and his mouth was open so wide Silas believed he could see down the man's throat to his soul. He careened out of his aisle, collided with one of the dancers, and turned toward the door. Before he took a step one of the serpents struck. It dangled from the arm of the woman the man had bumped.
The old man shook his arm where he'd been bit, but before he could free himself, a second snake clamped onto his flailing wrist, and a third curled up around his left leg. It sank its fangs deep into the flesh of his thigh and clung like a limp phallus between his legs.
The man continued toward the door. He walked in a daze, stumbling and barely able to stay erect. The doorway beckoned, and the sunlight beyond, but with each step he was bitten, and each time he was bitten his steps slowed. Just short of the doorway, beneath the alcove where she watched in dark delight, the man collapsed. He was dragged quickly aside and left beneath one of the pews. The rhythm of the dance did not falter. If anything, the striking snakes and the slow, ponderous steps of their victim lent themselves as counterpoint to the rhythm.
They formed a corridor. Men and women, children and their parents, and a wall of twining, sliding bodies lined either side of the main aisle. The red carpet that ran down the center of the building looked like a river of blood, and light streaming in through the windows played the shadows of those gathered across that blood in a winding snarl of darkness.
The door opened slowly, and Tommy Murphy stood there, transfixed by the scene before him. He held a small, struggling form by her hair. When she saw what awaited her inside the church, she screamed; a loud, high-pitched keening that broke through the dark silk of Silas' voice, just for a second. The sound shivered through the room and ricocheted off the walls. It wound in and over Silas's sonorous chant.
Silas held out a hand to Tommy. It stretched impossibly, a shadow among shadows. He felt ten feet tall, and he sensed each touch as the antlers looming over his head brushed through the rafters of the ceiling. The arm that reached out was his, but there was more, just as there was more to every aspect of him since the ritual and the fire. Some barrier between Silas and another world had been weakened in that fire. Something reached through and manipulated him. It gave him strength and confidence and stole his doubt.
Tommy hesitated in the door, holding the girl easily, and Silas smiled. "Bring her forth, Brother Murphy," he whispered. "Let the cleansing begin.
"
Tommy stood very still and stared into the church. He thought he knew what to expect. He thought Silas had filled his mind with the entirety of the truth. Nothing could have prepared him. He would not have believed the truth, even if Silas had pounded the images one by one into his mind like mental stakes.
He watched the swaying forms to either side of the main aisle weave back and forth. Snakes hung from every limb, twined about their necks and rose from their hair. Face down on the carpet before him, an old man lay very still. Serpents writhed and squirmed over that inert form as if it were part of the floor, and no one paid the old man the slightest attention.
Tommy remembered a story he'd been forced to read in school that had given him nightmares. There had been a woman with snakes for hair that turned a man to stone if he stared too long. Tommy had been eleven when he read the story. He'd dreamed that night of Irma Creed, one of his neighbors. Irma bothered Tommy in ways he couldn't explain. She made him nervous, and he'd been caught more than once staring at the front of her shirt. In his dreams, Irma followed Tommy into the woods. She wore nothing but her jeans. Her breasts swung slowly from side to side, and she licked her lips. The further into the woods and shadows she followed him, the less she looked like herself. Her hair grew taller and began to move, slowly at first, and then as a writhing mass of scaled bodies.
Even in the dream Tommy remembered the story. He fought to keep from looking into her eyes, but she came closer and closer. Tommy woke with a shout, sitting upright in his bed and bathed in sweat. His erection was so solid it was painful, and for a panicked moment he thought he'd turned to stone—just that one part of him, the part that made him think about Irma and snakes.
A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult Page 416
