Jacob stumbled through the mist, unable to see or breathe. He felt his limbs grow weary and weak, the gas finally seeping through his mask and affecting him. He was sure it was the paralytic kind that the Gasser was famous for and if not for the blessings bestowed on the masks, he knew he would have succumbed long ago. As it was, he could barely move, the fog stinging his eyes and burning his throat. He kept going, though, pushing forward, until he was through the wall and into the clearing, where he fell forward onto his knees and tore the mask from his face, gagging and coughing.
Spring-Heeled Jack hopped and bounced between the strands of intestines criss-crossing the clearing and dove towards him.
Jacob clambered to his feet, holding his blades before him.
“Time to die, demon from Hell,” Jacob said. He spat a wad of gunk from between his teeth and smiled, happy to finally be doing the Lord’s work.
Aggie was last through the fog and between the bleeding and the loss of his mask, he barely made it. He held his breath and ran as fast as he could, staggering forward and hoping for the best. Some of the gas got in him, though, and it was just enough to numb his body but not enough to bring him down.
When he plunged into the clearing, he hacked up a wad of phlegm and spat it to the ground, right at the feet of the Mad Gasser. The monster had Sadie pinned to the ground like a butterfly on a collector’s pad as his tongue throbbed in her mouth like some kind of blasphemous act of oral sex.
He dropped to his knees, raised the shotgun, tucked his elbow into his ribs, and fired one barrel.
The buckshot, full of iron, garlic, and salt, tore through the Mad Gasser’s backside. He shrieked, his head jerking back and his tongue ripping free from Sadie’s throat with a wet slurp. As she sagged to the ground, gagging and gasping for air, the Mad Gasser turned to face Aggie, angry.
Aggie smiled.
“Come and get some, fuck face.”
He let go with the other barrel.
In the middle of the clearing, ignoring the battle raging behind her, the Weeping Lady thrust her arms into the air three times, each push ending with a sharp cry in an ancient language. She was summoning their dark lord, the One Who Brings Redemption, and nothing the humans could do would be able to stop her.
The marrow and blood on the ground between the humans rose slowly into the air, hovering three feet above the ground before surging up in a geyser, spinning and twisting, mixing and finally bursting, as if against an invisible wall, forty feet up in the air. The bodies of the Black-Eyed Children and Sheriff Monroe followed, rising from the ground and hovering for a second, gravity suspended. Then they, too, flew into the air like arrows fired from a bow, shattering against the same invisible wall, the body parts exploding in a shower of blood and bone, bits of hair and organs.
Martin was next. He floated up off the ground, his intestines tearing from his stomach, keeping their pattern above him as his body slipped between them. He could see where he was headed, what waited for him, and he closed his eyes, glad it was finally going to be over. And then he soared head-first into the invisible wall, like a spear. His skull crushed like it was made of glass and his body followed, smashing against the wall—now not invisible, but a surging glow of blue and green, pulsing and aching, as if about to rupture—and exploding in a deluge of blood.
Hazel went after Martin, her intestines snapping free and coiling permanently into the patterns above her. She barely had time to register what was happening when she was flung from the ground and hurled against the barrier between this world and the Other Side. Her spine snapped and her flesh scorched black as she died, splintering into thousands of tiny bits of skin. Her flesh showered the air for a moment before being sucked up into the throbbing gash in the air.
Something beyond the barrier roared and thrummed, shaking the ground of the clearing. For a second, everyone stopped, men and creatures alike, and cast an eye to the barrier, glowing a bright blue and green now, as one long, black tentacle slithered through the opening.
The One Who Brings Redemption snarled, the blast of its voice scorching the grass beneath the cracking barrier.
“No!” Jacob cried. He jumped forward only to be blocked by Spring-Heeled Jack, who slung his blades around, whirling them in front of him like a lawn mower. Jacob glared at the creature, a grim smile on his face as his own knives glinted in the moonlight above them.
“Come then, foul beast,” he said, licking his lips. “Come taste the fury of the Lord.”
Spring-Heeled Jack cackled and leapt high into the air and flew down, like a missile, blades spinning, thirsty for human blood.
The second shot punched the Mad Gasser’s chest, knocking him from his feet. He tumbled to the ground and rolled, squealing with pain. He rose slowly to his feet, his chest pouring yellow pus that ran down his stomach, his legs, and pattered the ground with thick clots of seepage. The slit in his face opened and three more stems grew next to the first one, these black also, with green stripes running down their sides. He ran at Aggie, furious.
Aggie dropped the shotgun and fished through his pockets for more shells. That was the damned problem with shotguns; you had to reload them after nearly every shot. He found two shells and jerked them free. He rolled onto his side, setting the shells on the ground as he used his stump to crack the gun open. He grabbed the shells, pushed them into the barrels, and shut the gun.
Just in time for the Mad Gasser to bend over and blast his face with a red gas from the two new stems sticking from his face.
Sadie writhed on the ground, coughing and spitting. She could hardly breathe, the contact with the stem causing an allergic reaction as her throat swelled up and nearly closed. She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to get some oxygen, trying to think through what she had to do.
An explosion above her caused her head to jerk up and stare at the rupture in the sky. Three black tentacles, as big around as an elephant’s leg, wriggled through the opening, dangling and slithering in mid-air. From them dripped a black oil full of obscenities. She could hear them as they fell, each drop striking the ground, filling her head with fetid voices, each syllable of the ancient language they spoke corrupting her body, breaking down her cells.
She climbed to her knees as The One Who Brings Redemption bellowed from the Other Side, the pure sonic might of its voice slamming her and everyone around her to the ground.
Four more tentacles came through the rupture as blood trickled from her ears.
Jenny screamed, finally finding the voice that ran to the depths of her soul, as her body floated up into the air. She spun, her intestines tangling and snapping, ripping free of their fleshy container. When they broke, she flew into the air, straight for the giant pulsing gash in the sky. She flew between the tentacles, writhing and wriggling, until she smashed into the barrier. At the last second, she closed her eyes and wished she’d lived a better life.
And then she was no more, pulverized against the barrier, her body smashed into millions of wet, ragged pieces, only to be sucked up into the gaps in the wall, food for an ancient god.
Mandy looked up, her intestines mixed and twisted into esoteric symbols with those of her companions, all dead now, all sucked up into that horrible maw of a monster. She gazed with an eye of recognition, because she understood now what was happening. That thing, The One Who Brings Redemption, was the same creature who had appeared to her in her vision, the same entity that had come to her father and killed him while compelling her to come here. She had thought it was the Wrath of God that spoke to her, but she’d been wrong. It was evil incarnate, and it had brought her here for a very specific and horrendous purpose.
She knew, in her heart, that she was the last sacrifice for a reason. That something about her would be the thing that finally shattered the barrier forever, and then The One Who Brings Redemption would come through and ravage this world, making way for the Ones to follow.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
A pawn in t
heir game, a woman led to believe she was special in the eyes of God, just like her father, and it had all been lies. Were any of her visions real? It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered. She was to die and her death would serve to destroy mankind.
Mandy looked across the clearing and watched as Jacob and the others battled for the future of the human race. A futile battle, she thought. The darkness had already won.
Her intestines started cracking, one by one, tearing off and wrapping around the others, completing the occult symbols. And with each one to break, her body shuddered and rose another foot from the ground.
It was almost time.
The cry of The One Who Brings Redemption had smacked all the creatures flat to the ground, except for the Weeping Lady, who stood still and resolute, her mouth working the incantations, her arms raised to the sky.
As a consequence, Spring-Heeled Jack, flying through the air, was knocked off course and hit the ground four feet from Jacob, breaking one arm and mangling the other. It didn’t matter much, because the body healed itself fairly quickly, so that by the time it was on its feet again, rocking on the springs of its heels, it was almost whole.
Jacob surged forward, taking advantage of the slightest of openings, and buried both of his silver knives into Jack’s chest. The creature screamed and raised its own blades to slice Jacob but he was too quick, yanking the knives out and ducking down and to his left. He swung back around, slashing through the right shoulder of Jack, almost severing the limb, as he kept going forward, his momentum carrying him around and behind the monster.
Jacob jammed his knives into the middle of Jack’s back, one blade on either side of the creature’s spine. Spring-Heeled Jack howled and bounced into the air, carrying Jacob, who held fast to his knives, up with him. Jack turned and wiggled, twisting his torso to face Jacob, who had in the meantime wrenched his blades free and held them up, ends pointing down from the bottom of his fists.
They hung in the air for a moment that seemed frozen, the wild, fanatical eyes of Jacob meeting and locking on the button eyes of Spring-Heeled Jack. They stared, two wills struggling against each other.
Then the spell broke and they plummeted to the ground. Jacob drove both his knives into Spring-Heeled Jack’s throat and when they hit, with Jack on the bottom, Jacob twisted the knives, using the momentum of the fall and the power of the impact to cleave the head from Spring-Heeled Jack.
Jacob rolled, coming back up to his feet as Jack’s head bounced across the clearing and rolled through the fog and into the forest. The creature’s body shook and spasmed on the ground, yellow blood pulsing from the stump in its neck.
Aggie screamed, his body pinned by the cry of The One Who Brings Redemption as the Mad Gasser was knocked off his feet and fell next to him. The gas burned his esophagus and billowed inside his lungs and stomach. It filled him, like he’d just eaten a good steak dinner, and Aggie bloated, his torso swelling to twice its normal size.
The Mad Gasser staggered to his feet and glared at Aggie, watching his gas work on the old man. He tilted his head to the side, enjoying the moment, the thrill of victory, and the taste of the old man’s agony.
Then his head exploded as a gunshot rang out through the night. The Mad Gasser’s body stood for several seconds, its head blown completely off, as if it couldn’t comprehend what had just happened. Yellow pus erupted from its neck and sprayed high into the air as the body twitched and danced for a moment before falling to the side.
Tom, gun in hand, stepped through the dissipating wall of gas, Dolores at his side.
“Anybody else need a hand?” he said.
Aggie’s stomach ruptured and dozens of tiny rats spewed from his open guts, squeaking and pouring over his body, their teeth gnawing every inch of his weathered flesh. He screamed, rolling on the ground, brushing the creatures with his good arm, trying to get them off him as he bled out. But they were too quick, like piranha, and within a few seconds his legs were stripped down to the bone. They glistened in the throbbing lights coming from the rupture in the air.
Tom stepped back, shocked, as a couple of the rats ran to him, circling at his feet. He stomped them, their little bones crunching under his foot.
Dolores screamed and jumped up and down, crushing two more. But it was too little, too late. They came like a flood, rats leaping from tearing at Aggie’s corpse and rushing at Tom and Dolores, swarming up their legs, biting and scratching. They tried to beat the rats with their hands, smashing some but missing the majority, as they streamed over their bodies.
Tom dropped to his knees, rats screeching and clawing his neck and face, one biting his lower lip, as he screamed and tore handfuls of the tiny creatures from his body. As he fought, Dolores did the same next to him, falling down and rolling on the ground, trying in vain to crush them under her weight. But they were too many for the loving couple, and the few they killed weren’t enough to stem the tide.
Aggie’s dead torso twitched as a dozen more rats erupted from his torn stomach, born from the Gasser’s attack, chattering and squeaking as they turned and ran towards Tom and Dolores, eager to devour them.
The blue-green gash in the air pulsed as another tentacle, this one as thick as a tree trunk, pushed its way through the barrier and wriggled into this dimension. The One Who Brings Redemption howled again, its voice shaking the earth, causing it to tilt slightly, pitching all the humans onto their sides as the monster kept bellowing, hungry to pass through. It could sense that it was close to entering this world, to shattering the barrier and at last returning to its rightful place in the universe. With each passing second, The One Who Brings Redemption became more furious with the lust to get through, to come out and become what it once was, what it always should have been.
The barrier cracked with a peal of thunder, growing larger, spreading out in bright green lines that seemingly formed in the air and resembled lightning when it streaked the sky. But these cracks did not disappear in a flash; they instead grew longer and thicker as the barrier was falling.
In the midst of this, undeterred by the violence behind her and the shaking of the ground below her, was the Weeping Lady, arms raised in supplication to her dark lord, her lips intoning the incantations that would finish the job. She would bring her master through and into this world. Just one last thing had to happen, and as the Weeping Lady turned her terrifying eyes on Mandy, floating just inches above the ground, she smiled, knowing that at last they would win the day.
“Rise! Oh, Prophet of the False God!” the Weeping Lady cried. “Rise! Rise! Let your unholy blood be the bringer of destruction upon your world!”
Mandy’s body twitched and she felt the last bit of her intestines rip free as she floated slowly up into the air. The winds around her howled with agony, whipping between the trees and tearing small bushes from the ground and tossing them around like pieces of confetti in a parade. Steadily Mandy rose; unable to stop what was happening, unable to move or to even close her eyes. She stared up into the barrier, pulsing like an infected sore, and at the giant tentacles of the creature that had come to her in her dreams, that had deceived her, and was now on the verge of not only killing her, but destroying life on Earth as well.
The tentacles parted and a giant, black eye with a blue iris stared down at her, and Mandy felt her mind at last snap as she screamed, the horrible gaze of The One Who Brings Redemption gazing at her, burning through her soul, driving her insane.
Jacob glanced over at Tom and Dolores, at first thrilled that they’d arrived just in time to help, but now dispirited, because they fell under an avalanche of rodents, tiny, thick vermin that seemed endless in number and powerful in intent. Mandy’s scream tore him from his moment of loss, his feelings of despair, and he whipped his head around to see her body floating up in the air, the Weeping Lady crying out in triumph as the beast on the other side of the barrier was about to burst through.
And he didn’t know what to do.
He glanced here and there, de
sperately praying for guidance from his God. He heard nothing except the groaning of creation being corrupted by the voice of the monster on the Other Side and its foul breath, which whispered through the barrier, filling the air with its pungent stench.
“Jacob!” Tom screamed. Jacob turned and saw Tom, in one final, last effort to help, pick up the pistol, rats swarming his arms and legs and face, so thick that he seemed to made of the writhing mass of rodents. He stumbled forward on one knee and threw the gun towards Jacob. It only flew a few feet, but it was enough.
Jacob leapt forward, tucking his knives into his coat and scooping up the pistol. He checked it. Only three shots left. Three chances to get it right.
He cracked his neck, held the gun out, sighted the Weeping Lady, and fired.
On the ground, Tom collapsed, his legs gone, the last of the muscles devoured by the rats. He fell flat on his face, turning his head to look at his bride, the love of his life. Dolores was next to him, in similar shape, and she was already gazing at him. He reached out, the few fingers he had left clutching for her. And she responded in kind, her left hand meeting his right, their fingers intertwining.
“I love you,” he said.
She smiled and nodded the same back at him.
A rat exploded from her mouth, tearing and rending the flesh. Tom’s head dropped and the rats poured over his face and hers, chewing and gnawing until there was no flesh left at all.
Men of Perdition Page 24
