by Harvey Click
“Something’s on fire up here,” he said.
“Billy! Come down!”
“I’m not allowed to go downstairs without permission,” he said. “They’ll punish me.”
She ran up and grabbed his arm, but he was still reluctant to move.
“You have permission,” she said. “Come down.”
With her help he came shuffling down the stairs very slowly, coughing and clutching the bannister to keep his balance.
“I don’t think I started it,” he said. “I don’t think I have any matches. Are they going to punish me?”
“No, they won’t. Are you okay, Billy?”
“Yes, I think so,” he said. “Do you live here now, Amy?”
“No, and neither do you. We’re going to go home now.”
“All right,” he said.
The long hallway was alive with demons, but they were too busy feasting to pay Amy and Billy much mind. A shorter corridor beside the stairwell led to the back door, and in the middle of it two harpies were hunched like vultures over a man in gray.
She told Billy to stay put, and after she killed the harpies she saw that the man they had been eating was Mack Riley. The only way she was able to recognize him was the PBR tattoo on his hand.
She unlocked the steel back door and opened it just far enough to yell, “Hey, it’s Mary. I’m coming out with my brother.”
Bloody Joe stepped out from a grove of trees about forty feet away. “Duck down and come out running like hell,” he yelled. “There are men with rifles in that concrete blockhouse.”
“Billy, do you remember when we used to play cops and robbers in the woods?” she asked.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said.
“Remember how we used to duck down and run like crazy because the cops were shooting at us? Can you still do that?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Okay, take my hand and let’s duck down and run like hell.”
She slammed the door behind them so the demons couldn’t escape, then grabbed his hand and tried to run, but Billy was shuffling along beside her like an old man.
“Better move your asses,” Bloody Joe yelled.
But Billy shuffled along, and she had no intention of letting go of his hand. She was wondering what the bullets were going to feel like hitting her body, and she kept wondering that all the way to the grove of trees, where Bloody Joe and three others grabbed her and Billy and pulled them deeper into the grove.
They were wearing camouflage with their faces painted, and it took a moment for her to recognize the three others as Shane, Lucky, and Nyx. Shane embraced her while she looked back at the house. On the east side flames were spewing out of the roof with an angry pillar of black smoke rising above them.
“I don’t know why the hell those guys in the blockhouse didn’t shoot you,” Nyx said, as if she was disappointed.
Lucky pointed and said, “That’s why.”
Though they were hard to make out in the darkness, Amy saw shadowy shapes of harpies and listeners and other horrors hunched over four bodies near the door of the blockhouse. Apparently the demons in the tunnel had come up through the trapdoor in a feeding frenzy. Karl and his friends had tried to escape but hadn’t made it very far.
“The demons are going crazy because their master’s dead,” Amy said. “When they get done killing everyone here, I’m afraid they’ll head into Blackwood.”
“I don’t think so,” Bloody Joe said. “Manda always said that even though they’re vicious they’re also cowardly. Right now they’re going berserk, but when their bellies are full they’ll run off and find someplace to hide. They’ll run off to caves and hollers where no one can find them. They’ll sneak out at night to kill wild animals and livestock, and a few people will see them and they’ll tell stories. Pretty soon this whole area will be called cursed and haunted. Everybody will move away, and it will become a wasteland.”
“It’s already a fucking wasteland,” Nyx said.
“Are Leo and Siliang dead?” Amy asked.
“I think so,” Bloody Joe said. “Things got pretty confusing last night.”
“What’s going on inside the house?” Shane asked.
“Lots of demons eating lots of dead men,” Amy said.
“Then let’s get the hell out of here,” Nyx said. “I could use about a dozen cold brews right now.”
“We can’t,” Amy said. “Neoma is in the factory.”
“I’ll be damned,” Bloody Joe said. “Is there anyone in there to shoot at us?”
“I don’t know,” Amy said.
When they got to the blockhouse they stopped long enough to kill the feeding demons. Amy was wiping her bloody sword on the grass when Shane quietly said, “What the hell is that?”
A parade was emerging from the east door of the factory. The crying man was leading it, and following him were the demonic children, some of them walking, some shambling, some crawling on hands and knees, and a few of them hopping like toads. There were maybe twenty of them, and they were heading toward the road.
“The one in front is a demon,” Amy said, “but the others are half-human so maybe bullets will kill them.”
Lucky shouldered his Remington, and the monstrous children started falling. Shane and Nyx had rifles too, and soon all the Nephilim were dead. The crying man stood looking down at them, and when Amy and her comrades drew closer she saw heavy tears streaming from his eyes.
“All my pretty ones,” he said. “All my pretty chickens at one fell swoop. What kind of monsters are you who would murder the children of Xuthal?”
He stared at Amy, his red eyes like fiery cinders and the wrinkled white skin of his face soaked with tears. Nyx was reaching for a knife and Bloody Joe was notching an arrow in his bow when the crying man said, “Be still,” and for some reason all of them stopped what they were doing.
“I hate your vile world and therefore I shall take myself home,” he said. “This world is a pestilent place of foul treachery and perfidy, and even hell itself holds more comforts. Behold.”
He placed his hands together as if praying and then slowly pulled them apart. A ball of thick black fog appeared between his palms and grew larger as he pulled them farther apart. Suddenly he threw his arms wide open, and the black fog engulfed him. When it thinned and drifted away in the dark night air, the crying man was gone.
They entered the factory cautiously with guns and swords ready. This was the children’s ward, and they walked past empty barred cages stinking of feces and urine. One child still cowered in its cage, the boy with two heads, perhaps with one head wanting to leave and the other wanting to stay. Nyx shot it through both foreheads.
“This is the worst goddamn shithole I’ve ever seen in my life,” Bloody Joe said.
They all murmured in agreement except Billy, who shuffled along with a blank expression as if he were strolling through a park. A listener was huddled in one of the cages gnawing on a bloody bone, and Shane ran it through with his sword.
When they reached the hospital section they opened the door to each room, searching for Neoma. In one room the body of a naked woman lay on a bed with her belly ripped open, and her newborn was lying beside her sucking on a string of her intestines. Shane shot it and a moment later Nyx threw a knife at a babbleboon romping through the hallway.
The door was open to the last room on their right. Inside they found Dr. Leiber’s carcass half eaten on the floor. Neoma was strapped to a gurney, a hammer lying on the sheet beside her.
The icepick was still in her eye.
Chapter 23
Amy gently removed the icepick and dropped it on a table. For some reason the demons hadn’t disturbed Neoma’s body. Maybe even they were able to see that she was special.
Bloody Joe brought in a mattress from another room and slid it under the gurney.
“What are you doing?” Shane asked.
“I’m making a pyre for Milady,” Bloody Joe said. “It’s a way to honor a grea
t warrior and chief. Say any words now that you want to say.”
“Goodbye, Neoma,” Amy said. She wanted to say more but couldn’t find the words. She remembered her dream about the marble statue lying on the flat stone at Secret Place, but even now Neoma was more beautiful than any statue.
“Farewell, Milady,” Shane said.
“You lived in troubled times,” Lucky said. “May your soul now rest in peace.”
“You were a fierce warrior and a noble chief,” Bloody Joe said. “I will remember you always with respect.”
Nyx was the only one crying. “I loved you too,” she said. “I hope you know that.”
Bloody Joe wadded up a sheet, placed it on the mattress, drenched it with a bottle of alcohol, and lit it. They moved to the hallway and watched for a minute as the flames engulfed the gurney, and then they walked out of the factory without speaking.
“Our cars are down the road at Colby and Kate’s place,” Bloody Joe said to Amy.
“Are they dead too?” she asked.
Bloody Joe shrugged and said, “Who knows? Just gone.”
“They’re probably the ones that ratted us out,” Nyx said. “Unless there really was a listener in the barn.”
She was still crying, and Amy was surprised to see Bloody Joe put his arm around her shoulder.
“Did you manage to steal one of their SUVs last night?” Amy asked as they were walking down the road, slowly because of Billy.
“No, we got chased up into the high hills by rifle fire,” Bloody Joe said. “Me and Nyx hid there all night until they left, then we drove away in my own car. Shane had made it into the hills across the road, and he flagged us down when he saw us pulling out of the driveway.”
Shane’s Jeep and Bloody Joe’s Santa Fe were parked in an old barn beside Colby and Kate’s house trailer. After they said their brief goodbyes, Nyx and Lucky drove away with Bloody Joe, and Amy and Billy left with Shane.
Amy told the police in New Mexico a story about being carjacked and kidnapped. They probably didn’t believe it, but there was no way they could disprove it, and they didn’t seem very interested in trying.
Four months later she and Shane were married, with Billy as best man. Amy wasn’t sure she loved Shane, but she did her best to make him feel loved. He was kind to her, and he didn’t mind having Billy live with them.
Soon she was pregnant, and when that happened her powers began to fade. She forgot the telekinesis chant and was no longer able to move objects with her mind. The spirit-travel lullaby was easier to remember, but usually when she sang it nothing happened, and on those rare times when she found herself in her astral body, the owl’s eyes were nearly blind and its wings too weak to fly.
But one night when she was lying in bed alone because Shane was still downstairs, she sang the ancient lullaby and found herself perched in a tall tree under a sky bright with stars, and the owl’s eyes seemed sharp again and its wings strong. She took to the air, and while she was flying she heard someone else singing the lullaby along with her.
“Neoma?” she asked.
“Yes, Mary.”
“Where are you?” Amy asked.
“In a better place.”
She opened her eyes and found herself lying in bed. After that she was no longer able to spirit-travel, but she kept the words “a better place” close to her heart and hoped they were true.
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Also by Harvey Click
Demon Mania
The exciting sequel to Demon Frenzy
Amy Malone thinks she and Shane are safe living in a desolate area of New Mexico, but after she encounters a mysterious sorcerer she’s plunged into a demon-ridden nightmare even worse than what she faced in Blackwood. Pursued through moonlit wilderness by grotesque grimsnuffers and hunted by hideous jabber-suckers that suck out their victims’ flesh through pulsating tentacles, Amy must survive a deadly maze to confront the most fearsome monster of hell: a demon so deadly it can kill with just a look.
Mixing horror with dark fantasy, Demon Mania is a wild whirlwind of sword and sorcery, witches, warlocks, black magic, telekinesis, spirit-travel, deadly assassins, eerie prophecies, breathless action, and demons—lots of demons.
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The House of Worms
Dexter Radcliff’s elderly great-aunt owns an ancient Native American artifact called the Talking Horn that allows one to speak with the dead, and when Dexter’s carelessness causes the Horn to be stolen he is plunged into a nightmarish struggle with the Lost Society, a vast narco-terrorist network of occult assassins led by a dead sorcerer. But Dexter’s problems have just begun—soon he will have to contend with parasitic brain-eating worms, sinister Longevitals who can live a very long time thanks to a hermetic treatment, a “Twisted Zoo” containing among its horrific exhibits Dexter’s murderous atavistic twin, “spectreholes” that open spectral doorways to other worlds, and a hellish monstrosity older than mankind that is preparing to return to earth and return earth to primordial chaos.
This grisly novel is not for the timid. The first chapter entices the readers like a bloody fishing lure, and each following chapter drags them deeper and deeper into a swirling maelstrom of horror.
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The Bad Box
Sarah Temple hopes to find a bit of peace and quiet when she leaves her abusive boyfriend, but instead she finds a world of horror. It’s bad enough that a sadistic serial killer and another maniac are both trying to murder her, but what’s worse is the mysterious Solitary One who controls both of them, a malevolent entity that the serial killer describes as a living darkness, a man and yet not a man, something that’s alive and yet not alive, something that wants to appall the world.
Trying to flee from the two killers, Sarah finds herself running deeper and deeper into a deadly supernatural trap, a place where people are buried alive, where ghastly apparitions mutter in the dark, where demented killers prowl, where a crumbling haunted house can drive its victims mad with terror, and where something buried for a very long time may walk again.
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Magic Times
Everybody wants a little magic—but just a little can do a lot of damage!
A young man not overly burdened with brains hitchhikes to Ohio in search of his runaway girlfriend, but he finds a lot more than he’s looking for. Soon Jason is chin-deep in a bizarre and perilous predicament involving a witch, a crippled magician, a sinister businessman, a mysterious stalker, and a book of magic that could bring about the end of the world.
Harvey Click, best known for his lurid horror tales, explores a different genre with this darkly comic coming-of-age novel. He mixes a tablespoon of black magic with a teaspoon of zesty sex, a sprinkle of savory satire, a dash of dire danger, a splash of spicy suspense, a pinch of pungent irony, a cup of coarsely ground comedy, and a full measure of sheer madness.
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