by Fred Crawley
Joanie turned away from them. She couldn’t afford to lose her head now. She stepped down from the stage and walked down the central passage towards the door.
A few people turned to look at her as she passed. A few whispered to each other. She wondered what they thought of her, if they somehow blamed her for what happened. Maybe they thought she was going to try to kill them like Ben had. She ignored them all.
She stopped at the door and looked up. It was big, easily three metres taller than she was. She put a hand against the wood and pushed, it didn’t move. The hinges were solid metal and the screw heads had been worn down to nothing. She knocked on it and the sound faded to nothing so she couldn’t even call passers-by to help.
Joanie examined every centimetre of the door but it was ancient and solid. It might as well have been a brick wall. If they were getting out it wasn’t going to be this way.
Joanie walked on past the door, searching the walls as if they might contain a hidden exit. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She was trapped and she didn’t like it. She had an overwhelming urge to fall to the floor in floods of tears but she couldn’t let herself. Why was this happening? She wondered. And why was she, a nine year old girl, the only one that seemed to be doing anything constructive to try and get them out of it.
At the corner or the church she walked around the gold candlestick holders that were as tall as she was and then continued her search along the next wall. If there was only a way to get up to the stained glass windows they could get out. If only she knew where she could get a ladder or something that she could lean against the wall and climb.
She squeezed past the people that were clustered along the wall. They looked down at her as she passed but they didn’t ask her what she was doing or offer to help. They were completely useless, she realised. They had never had to deal with looking after themselves, never had to defend themselves, they didn’t know what to do. If she didn’t get them out of here then they would just wait around until Ben got them.
She hadn’t seen Ben since she’d come out of the Vicar’s office. Remembering that he was the reason they were locked in the church she looked around for him but he wasn’t there. If Ben had escaped, she wondered, would the vicar unlock the door and let them go, or would he refuse to believe it and let them all starve to death?
Joanie didn’t know the answer but she decided she might as well ask the old man. She wondered why no one else had tried speaking to him as she pushed open the door and stepped into the room. It was dull but the lamp on the vicar’s desk gave off enough light for her to see by.
She clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle a scream.
The vicar was dead. Slumped face down on his desk. Ben was holding onto his back, pulling strips of flesh away from his neck.
Oh Ben, she thought, but of course it wasn’t really Ben. It was something else, some horrible abomination using his body. His poor little body that should have just been allowed to rest.
The door fell closed behind her and she jumped. She turned around and grabbed the first thing that she could find: a metal tea pot. It was heavy but not heavy enough to really do any damage. Joanie wasn’t thinking about that though. Suddenly she was angry, furious, whatever this thing was it had no right to use Ben’s body like this and to kill all those people.
She ran three steps across the room and swung the tea pot. The Ben thing didn’t even turn around at the sound of her footsteps.
When Joanie struck her brother’s head she felt the sickening weakness of flesh as his soft skull caved in. The thing let go of the vicar and fell forward onto the desk.
Joanie stood there panting, holding the tea pot up, ready to use it again if she needed to.
Ben turned slowly to look at her. Red was smeared around his mouth as if he had been eating lipstick. His eyes were sunken and ringed with dark circles. He opened his mouth and hissed.
‘You stole Mister Fixer,’ he said. His voice came from deep within his chest.
Joanie shook her head, ‘no,’ she said dumbly. ‘No Ben, that’s not true.’
Ben grinned showing even more of his immature teeth stubs. Joanie wondered how he managed to bite through skin with those blunt things. He nodded. ‘You stole him and you killed me dead.’
It was as if he knew what she was thinking but hearing her own thoughts aloud made her realise how silly they were. She shook her head with more conviction. ‘It was an accident,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry that you’re dead Ben but no one’s to blame.’
She waited for him to attack but he remained crouched on the desk. Joanie tightened her grip on the teapot.
The thing that was not her brother watched her from across the room. No more than a metre separated them.
She hadn’t killed Ben, she realised that now. It had been a terrible, terrible accident but no one was to blame. This thing, whatever it was, was not her brother but it had already killed her mum and if she didn’t do something soon it would kill everyone in the church, starting with her.
Joanie lifted the heavy tea pot above her head and ran at Ben. Whether she caught him off guard or had disarmed him with her denial of responsibility, she didn’t know. Whatever it was he did not put up much of a fight.
The teapot caved in the front of his head and the familiar face vanished beneath a slimy mixture of blood and fragments of skull. Ben lifted his hands to try and push her away but he was weak now and she was strong. She brought the teapot down again and again until her arm started to hurt and his body was limp.
She stepped back, out of breath and sore. Ben’s body lay in a heap, his face caved in and unrecognisable. She turned away.
There might not be much time, she realised. Ben’s body had come back from the dead once, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.
She turned towards the vicar. He was dead but that might have been for the best. She hurried over to his body and began searching for the keys. She found them in the bottom drawer of his desk, next to a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches. She slipped the matches into her pocket along with the keys and backed out of the room without taking her eyes off Ben.
In the main church she closed the door and prepared to turn around and give the others the good news. She wondered if they would feel ashamed that they had been rescued by a nine year old girl.
Someone screamed and Joanie turned towards them. She dropped the teapot that she was still holding and the clang echoed around the church.
It couldn’t be.
She took a step forwards, feeling dazed, she shook her head. It just couldn’t be.
Her mum was standing up. The hole in her neck was a red gash. She turned her head jerkily from side to side and Joanie could see the muscles and ligaments working in her neck.
Her mum
(it wasn’t her mum, just like it hadn’t been Ben)
reached for the nearest person, a woman Joanie recognised from school. The woman stepped back, everyone stepped back, they were wise to the danger they were in.
Joanie turned towards the door but a voice made her stop: ‘Melanie,’ said her dad.
The mum thing turned in the direction of the voice and started walking towards her dad, but she needn’t have bothered; he was walking towards her.
Joanie watched in horror as the mum-thing and her dad moved towards each other. They had their arms stretched out like they were about to hug.
‘Dad no!’ shouted Joanie. She started to run across the church, pushing people out of her way. She was too far away though; they were going to meet at any moment. ‘Dad!’ she shouted again.
‘Joanie, shhh,’ said her dad. ‘Don’t shout in the library, you’ll get us thrown out.’ He didn’t look at her, didn’t turn away from her mum.
The mum-thing opened her mouth, her adult sized teeth visible right up to the gum. Joanie rounded the final pew and then she was sprinting through the clearing that had formed around her mum and dad. She made up almost all of the ground she had lost. But it still
wasn’t going to be enough.
The mum-thing and her dad reached each other. He took her hands and leaned in to kiss her. Joanie did the only thing she could think to do: she put one foot on the nearest pew and flung herself into the air.
Her dad closed his eyes and puckered his lips.
Joanie flew through the air. The world around her seemed to stop moving. She could see nothing except her dad and the mum-thing moving closer, closer.
The mum-thing leaned forward, a fat tongue fell out of her mouth and hung there like a dead eel.
Joanie collided with the mum-thing and her dad’s lips brushed across her cheek as they flew to the ground. The mum-thing cried out in frustration or anger or something else. They rolled across the hard stone floor, over and under each other until they hit the side of the stage.
Joanie reached for the edge of the stage and pulled herself to her feet. Her right arm hurt where she had landed and her left leg where she had rolled over the keys. She turned to look for her dad. He stood where she had left him with his mouth open in surprise. She stepped towards him intending to explain and then she felt the sharp stabbing pain in her ankle. When he looked down she saw her mum had bitten through her jeans.
She looked around hoping to find someone who might help but they had all turned the other way. She couldn’t believe that a group of family, friends and neighbours were just going to stand there while a little girl got killed.
‘Dad, please,’ she said. She didn’t think her dad was really capable of helping her but he was the only one even looking in her direction.
‘Oh no,’ he said, shaking his head. His expression hardened into one of anger. ‘I saw what you did to your mother. You’ll get no sympathy from me.’
She couldn’t believe he was just going to let the mum-thing kill her but she supposed that’s not what he saw happening. He was safe in his deluded little world and he wasn’t going to step out of it to help her. ‘Dad she’s killing me.’
‘Oh don’t be so melodramatic,’ he said.
Joanie yanked her leg away from her mother and she felt her skin being torn. She tried again, gritted her teeth through the pain, and managed to hop away.
The mum-thing swung out its arm to try and recapture her but Joanie was too quick.
‘Come on dad,’ she said, grabbing hold of his arm and pulling him away. He mumbled a protest but didn’t actually resist.
She hopped down the central aisle and people got out of her way. She looked up at them, hoping to shame them for abandoning her, but not one of them would meet her eye. Cowards, she thought, at least her dad had the excuse that he’d lost his mind.
Joanie found that she couldn’t put any pressure on her injured leg and leaned against her dad for support. They moved slowly and behind her she could hear the mum-thing dragging itself after her.
‘Tony help,’ she heard it say, its voice muted and frail like Ben’s had been.
Her dad tried to stop, to turn around and go back for her but Joanie kept moving. She forced him to move with her.
They reached the door and she was out of breath. She fumbled in her pocket for the keys and found the packet of matches.
Joanie looked back along the aisle, the mum thing was still coming. Everyone was watching her to see what she would do. She had a mind to leave them all here, let one of them deal with the mum-thing as she had dealt with Ben. But if they killed the mum thing the Mrs Mitchell-thing would be next and if they dealt with her the uncle-thing would rise up. She didn’t understand what was happening but she realised she had to put a stop to it. Under no circumstances could they be allowed to get out.
She unlocked the door and pulled it open. People began surging towards her but she hobbled outside with her dad before they arrived.
Joanie waited until the last of them was out and then she looked back inside. The mum-thing was on the ground, its arms stretched out towards the last person it had tried to grab. She slammed the door closed and locked it.
CHAPTER 7
IT WAS SURPRISINGLY EASY TO START A FIRE. Joanie knew boys from the year above her at school sometimes went to the woods with boxes of matches. They would light one and put it back in the box. A moment later the rest of the matches would catch with a whoosh. A brief bright flame would explode followed by a cloud of smoke. They called it a genie.
‘Wait here,’ she said to her dad. He nodded and remained by the door.
Joanie leaned against the wall of the church for support and made her way around to the back.
Outside of the church there were grave stones everywhere. They stuck up from the grass like tiny islands. Most of the names were too faded to read.
At the back of the church she found a shed. It was locked but she tried the vicar’s keys and found one that opened it.
She hoped to find a lawn mower and she did. On a shelf beside it there were two red plastic containers that were used to store petrol. She lifted them up and was relieved to find them full.
She stood on the road opposite the church and held her dad’s hand. Everyone else from the funeral was gone.
The heat from the fire warmed her face. She had to look away when the stained glass windows exploded out. In the distance she could hear the siren of a fire engine but it would not arrive in time to save the building nor the people-things inside it.
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About the Author
Fred Crawley is an open pen name used by James Loscombe for publishing horror fiction.
Fred / James lives in the UK, which might go some way to explaining why he finds horror stories so fascinating.
