by B. V. Larson
The oddest thing, after the air cleared, was the feeling of suddenly being outside. A moment before we had been in the deepest inner recesses of the building we had made our home in for weeks and then, we were out under the open skies. Everyone was screaming. My own throat was raw, but that could have been the dust. The storm had settled down to a steady rain of fat cold drops. It cleared the dust quickly and turned the floor into a dark gray mud of crumbled cement and plaster. Cold air blew down from the dark sky and occasional red flashes of unnatural lightning still flickered high above us. I looked up and drank in a heavy breath of night air. For all the terror in my heart, the air still tasted fresh and good.
The optometrist’s third of the building had now become a pit, an abyss of dust and rubble. One of the trees was down on its side, not moving. The other, which had the look of a huge black oak, was leaning and struggling to rise. This tree had two arms. One huge branch was straining downward as it leaned on it, trying to raise its fantastic weight with it. The other arm reached up and grabbed the lip of the shelf that had been our corridor, it clamped onto the crumbling remains of carpet and floorboards. I saw the missing finger on that hand, and recognized this was the one that had swooped down and dragged Jimmy Vanton out of the lobby.
I fell upon that hand, chopping with my unnaturally sharp saber. I used both hands, and I shouted while I did it, furiously. Spit ran from my lips and I chopped a finger away, then another, and then split the wood of the hand itself. It shuddered, and groped for me, and then the Preacher was at my side, his axe chopping at it with great heavy thunking sounds. It jerked back the arm, clearly in pain, shuddering, and toppled over backwards as it overbalanced. The small part of my mind that was not in an animal state realized that trees, once free of the earth, had a hard time standing up straight. Like walking telephone poles, balance was not easy for them. Most of my mind was in a barbaric state just then and that part of me loosed a victory howl when I saw the great oak sag down and thrash there in the ruins of the basement, looking like a devil in the very black pits of hell itself.
“Everyone sound off, who have we lost?” demanded the Preacher.
I called out my name, as did others. Carlene Mitts was gone, as were Jimmy Vanton and Mrs. Nelson and the rest of the Nelson kids, only Holly and her father were left. Monika had Carlene’s baby now. She held her with both hands, shushing her. But the baby cried steadily, inconsolable. They weren’t loud cries but rather formed a hoarse, hopeless, keening sound mixed with coughs.
I looked around at them. There were less than a dozen of us left. Normally, any commander would surrender now, but there was no one to accept our surrender, no one to give us quarter. Surely, not the Hag. There was no mercy there, I knew, for I had looked into her shining eyes.
“John, we have to kill the Hag,” I said.
The Preacher looked at me and nodded.
Around the corner, back where the lobby would be now, the lights were wrinkling the air around us again. Looking up, I could see threads of liquid amber and rosy pink and glaring orange. They reflected in the dying smoke and steady raindrops.
At my side, Monika leaned up on her tiptoes, I bent my lips to her and we kissed. Holly came to stand behind me, as always.
The Preacher had his axe out, and he stepped down the corridor toward the lobby. The corridor was shorn in half and full of debris. It made treacherous footing in the wet and dark night. I opened my mouth to protest, to tell him I would go first, but he was already moving forward. The words died in my throat. It was very likely I would get my turn at the front, I knew. We worked our way along the ruined corridor, a cliff into a deadly pit at our feet, ready to swallow us up. His axe’s black blades shone where there was no light to reflect. My saber glimmered faintly as I took my position behind him.
Things were coming down the half corridor now, around the bend up ahead. Now that our inner doors and barricades were gone, there was nothing stopping them, these abominations the Hag was making. They were worse now, now that she had her lantern and she was in the open air of a hellish storm on All Hallows Eve. Her power, I reasoned, was at its peak.
The first thing to come around the bend was the X-ray machine. It took me a moment to recognize it. That strange, elongated arm like an ostrich’s neck with a wide unblinking eye at the tip. The handles on the side of the projector had grown into curved blades. It didn’t walk, so much as dragged itself with appendages grown from the sides of the base. Its power cord now served as a whipping black tail.
It was the first time I’d seen a machine shifted. Always before the changelings had been animal or plant, something alive, but now the rules had changed. Heat emanated from the projector, and I felt the hot kiss of the beam as it touch my cheek. Somewhere in the back of my mind I worried, briefly, about radiation and the retinas of my eyes if the beam were to shine into my head, even for a second. The Preacher cried out something, I think it was something about Joshua, and then he went in hacking with his flashing axe. I hung back, not out of fear of the machine but of his axe. One does not get too close behind a furiously wielded double-bladed axe.
The tail was the first thing to go, it whipped out and wrapped around his ankle, but only for a moment before it was severed and flopping. Then the projector itself darted forward, like the beak of a dinosaur. It smashed into his shoulder and spun him around. I smelled burning cloth. But he was ready for it, he was good. He grabbed the metal neck and hacked wildly at the joint. A normal weapon could never have cut through the aluminum skin of it, but his axe was anything but normal. He had worked his way down to the vital wires in three strokes. The head whipped violently and then the hot lashing beams stopped and the head came off. Still the heavy base of it thrashed horribly.
“Help me,” he grunted and I rushed forward and we heaved it over the edge to smash down into the basement. The oak tree reached over and groped blindly for the thrashing machine, and crushed it. Soon there was silence again down there.
The next things to come around the bend were a pack of bulbous creatures like black jellyfish. There were a lot of them, and they rolled at us like beach balls. But these beach balls had fangs and hard white eyes.
The Preacher took the brunt of it, but some got past his kicks and his swinging axe. Those that got past were left to me and Holly and Vance, we fell on them and stabbed and chopped them up. Once they were punctured, which was hard to do, as they were tough, a mix of air and vile liquid sprayed out. This process reduced them to flopping, fish-like things. It was only when I caught the smell of them, that powerful rubbery stink. I knew then what it was we were fighting.
“Tires,” said Vance in a wondering tone. “Those were tires from the cars out in the lot.”
Panting, I nodded. I dared to let my hopes grow, for we were winning, we were beating everything she could throw at us. It had to take some length of time for her to make these abominations. The Preacher was good, better than I had any right to hope. But I could tell he was getting tired, that he could not keep this pace up forever. Soon, it would be my turn at the front, after something got him. I thought of telling him to take a breather, to let me take the point for a while, but I knew without asking that he would refuse. I knew the bloodlust he had in his eye. I had felt it myself. When you wielded one of these shadowy weapons made from the very stuff of the shifting, it was hard to quit fighting while there was a fight to be had.
We followed the Preacher, but had only advanced a few more steps, perhaps we were half-way to the bend now, when the next horror came into view. This one made us all gasp and I heard a wail of despair from behind me, but wasn’t sure who made the sound. It could have been any of us.
What stood before us was Jimmy Vanton. He wasn’t quite the same anymore, however. He was dead, of course, and he had been melted together with that shotgun of his. His arm ended just past the elbow and turned into the barrel and firing mechanism of a twelve-gauge shotgun. He raised it slowly, but not slowly enough. The Preacher’s downward stroke lopped
off that monstrous fused arm of his, but not before he got off a booming shot.
The sizzling lead spray reached out like a hand, past the Preacher, past me, over Holly Nelson’s ducking head, and caught Nick Hackler full in the face and chest. He fell back with the shock of it, dead before his eyes could close, dead before he hit the cheap dirty carpet of the hallway. I glanced down into his dead eyes for second and thought of those awful squirrel sausages he’d been so proud of.
Then the Preacher’s axe took off the fused arm with the shotgun and the metal barrel crashed to the floor. The bleeding stub flailed, but the Preacher kept Nick back with his left hand. I saw then he had his Bible in that hand, pressed against Nick’s chest. He lifted the axe high again.
“I pass judgment upon thee and thine and cast this thing back into the pit from whence it came!” he cried out. His voice rolled out over us all. The axe removed Nick’s lolling head with a single clean stroke.
We pushed the whole mess over the side and took five more steps forward.
The thing that got the Preacher came next. It was a steel beast, a massive thing with whipping cords and no arms, but it had two legs of round smooth metal. It rattled and clattered and farted blue smoke as it approached. Despite the strange configuration, I knew what it was right away, I had spent too many summers looking at just such creatures, repairing them, to not know one now. It was the contents of a car’s engine compartment, all assembled together into a nightmarish configuration.
It stumped forward and appeared to have no weapons, but very soon its plan of attack became very clear. It would simply push us off into the pit that was now filled with the tree and the flopping remains of a dozen other horrors. It must have weighed near a thousand pounds and the floor sagged under its weight.
The Preacher and I tackled it, grunting, but it was like children tackling a giant. Spark plug wires lashed about and sought to wrap around our necks. The battery opened up chambers and gouted acid.
“Vance, get over here! Heave all at once now!” I shouted and Vance put his shoulder against it. It took another step, ignoring us, and crushed down on Vance’s toes. Vance howled. He struggled but his foot was pinned under those round metal legs—they were exhaust pipes, I realized in a blurry moment.
We heaved together and it shifted off-balance a fraction, and then rocked back.
“That’s it,” gasped the Preacher, straining purple. “Rock it.”
We did as he said and the spark wires whipped harder. Holly cut at the wires with her knife when they wrapped around our necks or wrists.
Thump, thump, we rocked it and the stiff legs were up and off the ground. Inside the thing’s barrel chest, I heard pistons chatter angrily. It farted another stinking blue cloud of exhaust, and then it went over.
Vance and I managed to jump back, but the Preacher went with it. The thing had managed to wrap too many wires around him, and they went over in a lover’s embrace.
“John!” I cried out. And then he crashed down into the basement. I only had time to hope he had gotten on top of it. It weighed so much more, perhaps he had ridden it down, instead of the other way around. It was his only hope for living.
Then it was my turn. More things came. Lots of them.
There a flat metallic thing of chrome or stainless steel. A bumper? A the hood of a car? Or maybe a medical table? I couldn’t tell but my sword rang on it and cast only sparks, made no cuts, and we tossed it off over the side into the pit, screeching and hammering on it. It vanished and we took on a procession of things in its wake. They were smaller things now, but they came faster. Lobby chairs with wooden feet that bent impossibly, a bookcase with attached books that snapped like a thousand hungry mouths, an office computer with a glowing face on the screen, the ficus tree from the lobby, and much more. Some things I could identify, others I could not. I rounded the bend and headed down the homestretch to the lobby. I could almost see the Hag at the table now, and the lantern was shining brightly, more brightly than it ever had. It was as bright as a thousand rainbows in there, almost a bright as the summer sun.
Carlene’s body came at me from behind after I turned the bend. Somehow the Hag had awakened her flesh and gotten her up out of the basement. There wasn’t any hesitation left in me, that had been beaten out of my mind over the last hour. I throttled her with both hands. She thrashed at me with newly grown tentacles, even though she should not have been able to breathe. Vance finished her with his Mauser.
After that, all I could think of was Carlene’s face and that of her baby, who Monika held somewhere back behind me. It made me deeply angry, and that anger replaced the horror and the dread and the fear and kept me going.
It went on for minutes or perhaps hours, I’ll never know how long. It was wild and sad and terrifying beyond any nightmare of my childhood. I couldn’t remember much of the things I fought after Carlene until suddenly there were no more of them coming.
I stood before the Hag and she faced me.
“My champion,” she said. She reached out a delicate hand, as if to caress me. Instinctively, my saber lashed out to take her hand.
I slashed that wrist with all my strength, without hesitation, but it was as if her flesh were made of iron. The blade rang off and vibrated painfully in my hand.
She laughed at me, and I stepped forward, furious, and cut at her neck. The blow did nothing but shock my hand so greatly that I almost dropped the sword.
She shook her head, mocking me. “Child, don’t play the fool. Why would I give you a blade so sharp that you could not be stopped?”
I stared at her and my sides heaved with exertion. My eyes were full of dull hate. I made no attempt to answer her. I thought of the pistol I had carried, but it was long since emptied. I glanced back at the others. Vance was there, so was Holly. But they were stock-still. The lantern had them in its gaze. I saw all of them, except for Wilton. None of them were moving.
“Because, child,” she continued gently, “it is enchanted for sharpness, but it is also enchanted so that it can’t harm me. There is only one thing your sword cannot cut, champion of mine, and that one thing is me.”
I understood then, my sword, the gift she had given me, was a trap. I dropped my saber and stepped forward. She pulled her lips back in curling peels. She reached for my throat as I did for hers.
Her grasp was strong, stronger than any woman’s I’d ever known. I gripped her, but could not squeeze her throat. It was like squeezing a block of wood.
She grinned at me as her fingers sunk into my neck.
“Yield,” she said, “yield and serve me and I will spare the rest of them. I have need of a strong champion, and I have chosen you.”
With a flickering movement, I tossed off my glove. It was no longer my hand. It was still hand-shaped, but there were only three fingers and a thumb now, and those fingers were claws, really, not fingers at all. Thick boned scaly claws flexed in a permanent curl. I applied my warped hand to her neck, and squeezed with all its new unnatural strength.
Her breath became labored. Mine all but ceased. I whistled and choked and swallowed through my closing air passage. I was losing, I knew it, but I figured I might as well make her feel my rage before I died.
“All you have to do is look at it,” she hissed out. “Save yourself, fool. Gaze into the Eye.”
The light in the lantern beckoned me, but I stared at her hideous face instead. The black claw tips dug in, making a row of dimples on her dead-white throat. She should have bled, but I doubted there was any blood left in her body. I felt her neck giving way, folding inward slowly like thick cardboard. There were no more sounds that I could make, I could barely get down a gasp of air now and then.
“Your will is too strong,” she gasped, “you must be put down.”
And then she squeezed harder. I was shocked to realize that she had been holding back. My lungs burned and my heart pounded. I wished I had another of Wilton’s potions, but even then, the blood would be cut to my brain soon and I would
pass out. My stomach threatened to vomit, but I knew it would be fatal so I fought to relax it.
Then, even as the world had focused down to her face and mine, I felt her stiffen and gurgle. She stiffened again, and again. Her body shuddered. Then the killing grip around my throat eased. I held onto consciousness as the first choking gasps of air entered my lungs.
She sank down, but my left hand kept its grip. Kept squeezing.
Behind her, with a bloody knife in his hand, stood the Captain.
Thirty-Seven
“I owe you again,” I said to the Captain.
He shrugged. “You did most of it.”
I just stood there for a while in the rain, which now fell with a quiet, sweet hissing sound. The lobby had no roof and not much left for walls either, so the rain simply fell into my matted hair and ran down loosely over my face. I blinked at the thing in my hands. For a moment, I saw a woman’s eyes, they were a pretty shade of yellowish-brown. They were the eyes she’d been born with, long, long ago before she had become a powerful changeling. In death, she was no longer a Hag. I released her throat and she sank down gently, like a deflating balloon. Soon, all that was left was a vicious dark stain on the carpet and an antique dress. Her flesh had melted away even as she had melted so many things into living horrors.
The lantern sat on the table. Still and waiting. The prism inside it continued to shine, but with a less brilliant vigor. What had she called it? The Eye. Now, it sent out slow ripples of color to splash over the walls, rather than fierce beams that dazzled one’s eyes and seared the mind.
