by Remy Wilkins
“Morning,” he said cheerily.
Walden looked up startled and flicked his shades down a notch to eyeball him. “How do, son? Y’name’s Rodney? That right?” He said ‘right’ like ‘rat.’
“That’s right, Sheriff Walden.”
“Good lad, knowing your honorifics. Y’uncle in?” He latched his thumbs into his belt, weaving his belly side to side.
“No, he’s out.”
Otis came around from behind Walden and squatted down, putting his hands on his knees. “What? Not here? Didn’t you give him my message?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Otis.” He was pouring the politeness on thick. “He, um, went into town to sort it all out. I think.”
“Sort it out?” Otis gestured over to the car. “Then why’s his car here?”
“Oh, it, uh, caught on fire last night. That’s probably the smoke you saw yesterday. I think it’s toast.”
Walden walked down the steps to examine the car.
Otis trained his eyes on Rodney. “That’s not the smoke I saw.”
“So what? He ride a bike in?” Walden said as he tentatively put a hand to the hood, to check its heat. He touched it quickly, then again longer. “Yup, still hot.” He watched Rodney and Otis join him next to the Honeypot, more black and brown than yellow. “Say it’s toast, too.” He grinned widely.
“Yeah, Ray biked in. I guess he thought he could catch you before you left.”
“We didn’t see him,” said Otis. He was eyeing the house, like he expected Ray to jump out at any moment and surprise them.
Rodney tried to look surprised and confused.
“So he’s downtown?” Otis was suspicious.
“Any idea what happened to the rig?” Walden knocked on the scarred roof of the car.
“Um, no. I think uncle Ray said something about wires.” That sounded believable.
“Uh-uh,” Walden said while shaking his head. “Not wires. Guarantee.”
“Come on, let’s get Ray,” Otis said stomping back to the car. He opened the door, sat, and shut the door before Walden even moved.
Finally, raising his hat and letting his large palm run over the thin hair underneath, Walden said, “Welp. We’ll go track him down.” He went to the car and opened the door. “You aight here yourself, Rodney?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I’ve got plenty of food here.”
“Maybe you should just ride with us.”
An arrow of panic went through his chest. No telling what would happen to Ray if he wasn’t saved soon. “No, I can’t. I’m waiting for a call. From, uh, from my mother.”
Al nodded approvingly. “Hm. S’pose that’s fine.” He reached into his shirt pocket and shook loose a white card. He walked around the car and handed it to Rodney.
Otis crossed his arms and shouted out the window, “Let’s just go, Al.”
Walden looked back at him and shook his head. Then to Rodney he said, “’Smy card. Got my number on it. Need anything or ya see Ray, gimme a call. Aight?”
“Alright.”
Walden put a finger to the brim and joined Otis in the car. Rodney backed up onto the porch and watched them until the cruiser disappeared in the trees. He sighed in relief.
He returned inside, shut the door, and saw his bat sitting on the floor. He could read the crisp lettering on the bat from where he stood. Libra. “I hate you,” he said, and gave it a solid kick. It spun into the stair room and hit the thick pillar in the middle.
Rodney picked it up and gripped it tightly. “I hate you,” he repeated and swung at the pillar. He struck the pillar mightily. The bat bent a tiny divot into the side of the wood, hardly a mark. He adjusted the bat to strike again. “I hate you!” He swung again. The bat ricocheted off the pillar. The reverberations stung his hands, but the pillar stood strong, barely marred by his swings.
He turned to the clock on the wall and regripped his bat. He raised it above his head and smashed the face of the clock with a downward thrust. The gold symbols scattered and bent. The hands pointed accusingly at Rodney and did not move. The symbols for Taurus and Aries were missing, and the symbol for Gemini barely clung to the face of the clock. He swung down again and Virgo, Aquarius and Sagittarius flew off the face and skittered across the floor. Three more blows had cracked the left side of the clock, and only the symbol for Scorpio remained.
He measured out his final blow. He drew back with his mouth in a furious snarl and cried, “I hate you!” and brought the bat down on the Scorpion. There was another satisfying crack, but Rodney jumped back in surprise when the whole wall moved. It was a door under the stairs.
He examined the clock and he saw that Scorpio had not been dislodged, but was sunk into the face of the clock. He looked closer, putting his finger to it. He pressed it. He heard a click and Scorpio popped above the surface again. It was a button. It must have opened the wall.
He carefully pulled it back and saw a stairway. There were two steps curling down before it dead ended in a red, wax-looking wall. It appeared to be moist and sticky. He prodded it with his bat and with some effort was able to press his bat inside. He looked closer and saw tiny hexagons, some imperfect and some interlocked, but most were haphazardly pressed together. It was a barrier of bloody honeycombs.
“The Scorpio room,” he said aloud.
He remembered what Ray had said that night in the upper room looking at stars: scorpions always get crushed. It made sense that the Scorpio room would be the basement, crushed by the rest of the house.
He tried to bend back the barrier. He dug his fingers in feeling the wax give way as he pressed deeper. He hooked his fingers and pulled, bending the layers of honeycomb out. It was malleable and not much of a barrier, but it would be slow and difficult to get past it. The demons weren’t concerned with keeping anyone out; they just wanted to stop up the stairs, to seal off the Scorpio room from the rest of the house.
He could get through, but he needed a plan. He didn’t know what to expect down there. If he was going to destroy the Alvarium, assuming it was still down there, he would need to make sure he could get down and back up, preferably fast.
He pushed the wall shut and opened up his backpack that was on the floor in the foyer. He pulled out his jacket and another shirt to tie around his face. He ran outside to grab the rope he’d seen in Ray’s workshop. He stopped in the gravel to pick out a few larger rocks for his slingshot. He stuffed them into his jacket pocket. Once he grabbed the rope he returned to the house.
He was a flurry of activity. He knew Al and Otis would be back once they realized Ray was not in town. He had maybe an hour or two. If he could just destroy the Alvarium, that might give him enough time to convince others about the demons. More likely he’d just convince them that he was as crazy as Ray.
His stomach rumbled. No breakfast, and lunchtime was coming. He went into the kitchen and rolled up some slices of turkey around a pickle and ate standing up. He drank down a glass of milk to complete his hasty meal.
He spied a knife on the counter and grabbed it, sliding it into his belt. He remembered the flashlight in the drawer next to the back door and dug it out. He returned to the stair room. The ruined clock was silent. Ray wouldn’t be happy about that.
He tied the rope around the center beam, double knotted and triple knotted. Then he faced the clock again. His heart ached and his breathing became thin. He felt the urge to cry out, to call his mom, to run upstairs into the observatory and hide until something happened. Anything.
He realized he should leave a note just in case. He went into the library and picked up The Jawbone of Heaven, opened it up, and wrote on the first page: “I tried to stop them. I love you mom. Rodney Abner Niemand.” It was all he could think of. He read it aloud, then added the symbol for Libra underneath.
He took the book outside and set it on the porch where it would be easy to find. Then he sto
od in the sun to calm the shivering that had begun to take over his body. The day was as hot as always, but Rodney shivered and hugged his arms about himself.
He closed his eyes and looked up, dropping his hands to his side as he did so. “I love sunshine. I love sunshine. I love sunshine,” he said quietly. He bowed his head and forced himself to stop shivering.
The whole world went silent. The chitter of birds and bugs, the rippling of the wind through trees, the clicking of grass, all silent. Rodney opened his eyes and looked around. He was startled by a loud thump off the bill of his cap. He ducked and jumped back as a fat, black lump landed in front of him.
He looked closer and saw that it was fuzzy. It was about the size of a quarter. He crouched down. “A bee,” he said when he recognized it. It didn’t move.
Suddenly another spack! spack! spack! in the gravel drew his eyes up. Three more had hit the ground. He stood and two more hit him, one off the wrist, another in the small of his back. He heard more thuds behind him, bees bouncing off the roof of the Honeycomb House. Soon bees were striking him from all sides. He raised his hands and ran back to the porch. It was a deafening storm.
He jumped up the stairs and fell to the rough wood of the porch as the rain of bees fell. It was a thick rainfall, louder and louder. He pressed himself against the front door, but just as quickly as it had started it was over. He scanned the clearing before him. The ground was peppered with dead bees. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands.
Rodney turned and threw open the door. Whatever a host of dead bees meant, it couldn’t be good. He ran to the beam and checked his knot. It felt solid. He tied the other end of the rope around his waist, patted the knife in his belt and the slingshot in his back pocket, and felt the small, smooth rocks in his other pocket. Last, he checked the flashlight. Its pure beam struck the clock’s face.
He pushed the Scorpion with his thumb and the wall clicked open. He pulled it back and set his bat against the frame so that he could tie the extra shirt around his face. He turned his hat backwards, stuffed the flashlight under his arm, picked up his bat, holding it in the middle with two hands, and pressed forward into the bloody wax.
The wax bent back and a crease was made that was big enough for him to shoulder into. His foot pressed through the soft bloodcombs until he felt the next step. He dug his bat forward again and pushed farther.
The staircase spiraled like the stairs above him, and the light of the door was a distant sliver behind him. He estimated that the stairs were the same as the stairs above him, which meant there were twenty-four steps leading to the basement. After fifteen minutes, he’d descended six, but he’d figured out the best system for proceeding.
First, he’d bury his bat midway and then wiggle it up and down to make a hole. Next he’d dig a crease for him to get his leg into and stomp it down. The wax would fold and compress as he burrowed. Once he reached the next lower step he’d try to scrape it as clean as he could with the knife so that he’d have solid footing. The wax was slick and he fell more than once, banging his back and elbows against the hard wood.
About halfway down by his estimations, the stairs had curved enough that he could no longer see the light from above. The air was dense and hot, and his sweat mingled with the sticky, gory wax. The light from his flashlight was pink, and he had to unzip his jacket and slip it inside to clean it.
He was burrowing his bat in, leaning against the wax wall when he felt his bat break through. He tumbled forward and slid down the remaining stairs. He landed in a hot pool of mud. There were cries and snarls in the darkness before him. He stood in the ankle-high mud and trained his light on the noise.
In front of him stood a demon about his own height. The light was stinging the demon’s eyes, and he held his hands in front of his face to block it out. Rodney went stiff with fright, but managed to pick up his bat. He dropped the flashlight so that he could get a firm grip, and he swung.
His bat struck the arms of the demon. There was a crack and an explosion of dust and curses from the demon. Rodney stepped back as he noticed a yellow glow emanating from Libra. The demon stirred, and he raised the bat before him again. It grew brighter, and the demon flinched and retreated a step.
“You filthy adam,” the demon spat.
Rodney noticed that the demon no longer had arms. All that was left were nubs that ended at the elbows. They twitched like antennae.
There was a stirring on the ground to Rodney’s right. A prone figure, wrapped in black goo, wiggled and tried to sit up. Rodney turned his bat toward the other creature.
It croaked, “Rodney, that you?”
“Uncle Ray?”
The figure fell back to the muck unable to remain upright. The demon stepped closer, snarling.
“Strike him again, Rod,” Ray barked.
Rodney turned and the bat glowed brightly as he wound up to swing, bringing the bat up above his head. He stepped and turned his hips. Just as Ray had shown him he pulled his hands through, rotating them, and brought the bat down and around. His blow struck the demon at the shoulders. The bat skipped off and collided with the demon’s head.
The force of the swing sent Rodney sprawling. He saw the demon fall and not move.
“Home run, Rod my boy! Great wackadoo!” crowed Ray from the ground. He’d rolled sideways to watch. “Glad I treated that wood. Good call on my part.”
The bat continued to glow. Rodney raised it over his head. The room was hexagonal, and on the other side of the room was a tunnel. In the center was a huge throbbing mass. The Alvarium Maleficorum was black and supported by thick wooden beams. It was shaped vaguely like a heart, bulbous and bigger at the top than at the bottom. Eight or so feet tall, as Pinwheel had guessed, and twice that in width at the top.
“Quick, Rodney. We can’t hang around here. You gotta help me out of this.” Ray struggled against the bonds that held him.
Rodney ran over and pulled out his knife. The material wrapped tightly around Ray from top to toe was harder than it looked. He sliced with the knife, but it didn’t make a mark.
“I can’t cut you loose.” Rodney felt panic closing his throat. He saw his bat begin to pulse, growing brighter, then dimming. It was flashing like the warning lights of a car.
“Uh-oh, Rod. Might need to bash some more brains in.”
Rodney snatched up the bat, stood, and turned. He heard a voice calling and the squeak of a pulley, the rumble of rope on wood. He looked under the looming Alvarium and saw a couple of steps that led down into the floor. A little lower was a platform and then a hole, which was too dark to see down, but he could see the rope leading into it was moving. Something was being hauled up. He could hear a voice calling.
“Blisterteeth, you pig, come grab the buckets. If Plugseed has to climb up there a foot will be crammed down your maw.”
Rodney turned and whispered, “Ray, another one’s coming. What do I do?”
“I suggest you hit him.”
The complaining voice was drawing nearer, and Rodney climbed down and readied his next blow. The moment the fuzzy-headed demon stuck his head through the hole, he received the solid wood of Ray of Hope Bat Company’s debut bat.
The demon’s head exploded like a bag of flour and he fell back on the platform below. Rodney stuck the bat down the hole and saw a towerlike structure rising from the pit. The darkness was too great for the bat to fully illuminate.
The platform with the now headless demon swung side to side. He could hear the sounds of wings and the grumblings and cursings of the army of Hell laboring in the darkness. He heard a shriek from below. “The cursed adam! Get him! Get him!”
He climbed out of the pit frantically. He turned to Ray. “I think more are coming. What do I do?”
Ray jerked himself upright as best he could and said, “Hit the leg that holds the beehive.”
Rodney looked at the wood structure tha
t held up the Alvarium. It was a tree as thick as a soccer ball, lashed to the frame with rope. There was no way he could break through it, but the rope looked frayed and weak. Perhaps a good jolt to the structure would snap the rope. He opened his stance and crouched, bringing up the fiery Libra.
Just as the head of another demon popped through the hole, Rodney swung and connected with the log. The whole structure wobbled. The demon saw Rodney and yelled out.
Rodney swung again, and the rope popped. Frayed cords like fingers fanned out around the single line that held it together. A moment later the line snapped loudly. The structure went sideways and collapsed down on the sunken platform. Rodney heard the groan of cracking timber beneath him. There were screams and the sounds of heavy things falling. The tall structure under the room collapsed. He wondered how deep the base was.
The Alvarium leaned heavily to one side toward the tunnel. The legs on the other side had snapped off. Only the ropes from the single remaining leg kept the Alvarium from rolling off.
He could hear the clacking of talons on wood as a group of demons climbed up the ramp toward the Scorpio room. He ran back to Ray to drag him to the stairs. He barely budged an inch in the mud.
“You’re too heavy.”
“Keep cutting, then.” Ray bucked against the restraints.
Rodney tried again to free Ray with the knife. He pried and chiseled until the knife snapped in half at the handle. The noises grew louder.
There was a roar above him, and he turned to see a demon climb over the wreckage of the Alvarium. Rodney grabbed his bat and smacked him before he could jump down. Another dust cloud scuttled the air. The glow of Libra leaped again and he knew that more demons were near.
He looked up at the tunnel and saw a mass of the black creatures. Their eyes squinted at the yellow glow of the bat. They entered the room and spread out against the wall. They were hissing and spitting and flaring their wings out.
“Uncle Ray . . . ” Rodney was backing away.
The demon to Rodney’s left shot forward, driving a foot into his stomach. Rodney fell back. He sat up spitting mud and trying to suck in the air he’d lost. Another demon hooked his wing’s talon into Rodney’s jacket and slung him to the far wall where Ray slouched.
