by Ronald Malfi
Across the street the power line sparked and popped, lighting up the front of the Barristers’ house.
“We need to find a warm place to hide,” Shawna began. “I think we can make it over to—”
“Look.” Nan pointed farther down the street. “A little boy.”
But it wasn’t a little boy. Shawna knew better. The child—maybe six or seven years of age, judging by his size—stood in the center of Fairmont Street in nothing but his pajamas and bare feet. If it weren’t for the considerable distance between them and the wedge of pines that were shielding them from the roadway, Shawna would have sworn the damn thing was staring straight at them.
“What if he’s normal?” Nan said. “What if he needs help?”
“He’s not human,” Shawna assured her. “Not anymore.”
Nan was looking hard through the darkness at the boy’s frail and seemingly trustworthy frame. After a moment, she said, “Is there…there something wrong with his face?”
Shawna was busy patting down her pockets for extra rifle rounds. “Just stay back, Nan. Don’t leave the trees.”
“I think—”
Nan’s voice cut out. Shawna whipped around to see a blurry-faced figure emerge through the pines, one hand covering Nan’s mouth. The poor woman’s eyes blazed above the soot-covered knuckles. Nan’s legs kicked out as the figure dragged her backward through the trees.
Shawna lunged forward and grabbed Nan’s ankle. With her free hand, she swung the rifle around and jammed the butt against her shoulder. Aimed high. Pulled the trigger.
The pine trees shuddered. A low howl emanated from within the copse of trees. Nan’s legs were still kicking furiously, her body buried in the pines from her waist up. Shawna yanked Nan toward her but only succeeded in tearing Nan’s pants. Shawna fell back on her buttocks, the rifle thumping to the snow.
A strangled cry broke through the trees as Nan’s legs were swallowed up into the pines.
Grabbing the rifle, Shawna charged forward, pine branches whipping at her face. She cried out for Nan but the woman did not answer. She got the sense that the figure was dragging Nan through the trees just mere feet in front of her, but she could not catch up. Risking it, she raised the rifle up high and fired another shot. This one vanished into distant space. Shawna’s ears rang.
Finally she burst through the trees and spilled back out into the alleyway. Directly ahead of her, the figure was running at breakneck speed, dragging Nan behind him by her hair. Again, Shawna leveled the gun and fired two shots in a row. Both struck the figure in the back but did not slow him down.
“Shawwwwnaaaa!” Nan screamed as the figure dragged her out into the town square.
Shawna pursued, her lungs burning, her feet numb. Just as she reached the street, she saw the upper portion of the man’s body blur and lose consistency. It became a wavering shimmer of bright light and twirling snow. The figure launched up off the ground as it simultaneously became a cloud of rattling snow, carrying Nan Wilkinson with it.
Shawna raised the rifle…but there was no longer anything to shoot at…
Nan let out one final scream as she was carried off into the night sky.
“Jesus…” Shawna’s throat rasped.
The barefoot child in the pajamas appeared at the opposite end of the square. At this closer distance, Shawna could make out the smooth, unmarred convexity of flesh that made up the child’s face. There were no eyes, no mouth, no nose—just a fleshy bubble that appeared to drip down from the boy’s hairline.
Two more white moon-faces rose up from behind a parked car. Farther down the avenue, a mound of snow rose up off the ground like a missile rising up out of an underground silo.
Shawna turned and ran.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“This was Father Finnick’s stuff,” Meg said, lifting open the priest’s trunk. They were in a small room deep in the rectory, which was attached to the rear of the church. A tiny bed clung to one wall; above it hung an iron crucifix. In the closet, dark slacks and buttoned shirts hung neatly from wire hangers. On a small circular table sat a potted plant in desperate need of water.
“Thank you,” Kate said, kneeling down before the open trunk. It was filled with hand-stitched garments, embroidered stoles with gold trimming, and lavish robes made of a material that looked like silk but felt much heavier. “These are priest’s clothes.”
“I told you that already.”
“What happened to Father Finnick?”
“He changed.”
Kate sifted through the trunk. “Is there anything else? A coat or something?”
“Chris said to take you to the trunk. This is the trunk.”
Kate looked up. Her gaze lingered on Meg. In the glow of the candle she held, the girl looked almost savage. What had Shawna said about checking the shoulders? Could this girl actually be one of those things?
“Could you turn around for me?” Kate asked, trying to sound as innocuous as possible.
Meg’s expression—one of stupid incomprehension—did not falter. She did not turn around, either.
“Remember how Chris tore my shirt off?” Kate pursued. “Remember how he looked at those scratches down my back?”
“You want to see if I have scratches, too,” Meg said. It was not a question. The candle’s flame danced just inches below her chin.
Kate struggled to come up with something soothing and placating with which to respond, but in the end her mind came up blank. She said simply, “Yes.”
“Dad had them.”
“Your father?”
“Straight down his back,” said Meg. “Two long cuts. Like someone…like someone chopped him with an axe…”
“That’s horrible.” One of Kate’s hands advanced the slightest bit, moving to touch the girl and offer some semblance of comfort…but she stopped herself at the last minute.
“He came back to the church,” Meg went on. Her voice was monotone. “He banged on the door for hours. I wanted to let him in, but Chris said it wasn’t our dad anymore.”
“What happened?”
“He went around to the side of the church to try to break the windows,” Meg said. “That’s when Chris went up into the bell tower and dropped a fountain on him.”
“A fountain?”
“One of those marble water fountains at the front of the church,” Meg said. “I forget what they’re called. Chris knows.”
“Chris killed your dad?”
“It wasn’t our dad. Chris said so.”
“But he killed him?”
“He dropped the fountain on him and one of those things came out. The things that turn into snow.”
Despite the chill, a tacky film of perspiration now coated Kate’s face and neck. Resigned, she turned back to the trunk and stared noncommittally at the garments inside. “Isn’t there anything else? Anything at all?”
“This is the trunk,” was all Meg said. She’d taken a single step back; the repositioning of the candlelight caused the shadows to shift.
Kate looked up. A corduroy blazer hung in the closet. She got up and took the blazer down from the hanger. It would be a bit long on her, but she much preferred it over some religious robes.
“No,” Meg said. There was a strictness in her voice that caused an icy finger to prod the base of Kate’s spine. “Chris said to take you to the trunk.”
“And you did. But I don’t want to wear any of that stuff.” She pulled on the blazer.
“No!” Meg threw the candle down and the light blew out, dousing the room in blackness. The girl stomped out of the room. Standing in absolute darkness, Kate listened to her footfalls recede down the hallway.
I need to get Todd and we both need to get the hell out of here, she thought. Suddenly, she found she’d much rather be back at the Pack-N-Go with the others than here in this church with these two strange kids.
Kate hurried back out into the narrow hallway. Ahead of her in the darkness, Meg’s footfalls struck hollowly as she took off.
There was another sound, too—a consistent thumping coming from somewhere above her head, like someone rhythmically dropping a fist over and over against the rafters.
“Meg,” she called after the girl, her voice swallowed up by the darkness.
Dragging one hand along the wall, Kate headed back in the direction of the main body of the church, moving strictly by intuition. Without lights, it was like passing through an enclosed maze. Once, she even thumped against one wall.
Eventually she felt the space around her expand and she could make out the dimly lighted stained glass radiating with the moon’s glow, and she knew she was in the heart of the church. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, the bracketed shape of the altar, like white bone, was visible on the chancel. To her immediate right, rows of pews stretched out like the exposed ribs of some giant fallen carcass.
Someone else was in the church with her; Kate could make out the indefinite shuffling of nervous feet across the dusty floor.
“Is that you, Meg?”
“You’re going to make Chris angry,” Meg called back. The vastness of the church made it sound like she was speaking from every direction at once. “He’ll hit me again.”
“No,” Kate assured her. “No, he won’t.”
“You don’t know!”
“Where is Chris now?”
Almost as if on cue, the thumping sound increased. It was coming from directly behind Kate, as if straight through the wall at her back.
Kate spun around, her hands pawing at the heavy shadows. The movement stirred up cobwebs; they wafted down from the nearby rafters and got tangled in her hair.
A door opened somewhere close. Kate could hear heavy, labored breathing. That same instant, a candle flickered to life, frighteningly close to her. It was Meg, having snuck up beside her in the dark, the candle causing the shadows to swim across her narrow little features. Kate peered at the open doorway to see Chris’s broad shoulders come backward through the opening. He was bent over, dragging something…and Kate felt a sickness knot up in her belly.
It was Todd, unconscious or dead. The thumping sound she’d heard had been Todd’s boots thumping down the belltower stairs.
“What’d you do to him, you son of a bitch?” Kate shouted. Beside her, Meg recoiled.
“He was going to open the windows,” Chris rasped, out of breath. He let go of Todd’s arms and Todd’s body slumped motionless to the floor. “He was trying to let those things inside.”
“That’s bullshit. He wouldn’t do that.”
Chris whirled around on her. In the light of the candle, his piggy eyes gleamed like seabed stones. “Were you there? Do you know?”
Through clenched teeth, Kate said, “Is he dead? Did you kill him?”
“I’m in charge,” said the boy. He still had Todd’s pistol tucked into his belt. The dead priest’s flowing clothes were tight around the boy’s shoulders but too long, so that the hems bunched at his feet and dragged on the floor. “You both have to do what I say.”
“I told you he’d be mad,” Meg muttered at Kate’s elbow.
On the floor, Todd groaned but did not wake up. Relief washed over Kate. She hadn’t realized just how badly her hands were shaking until that moment.
Chris climbed the chancel steps and approached the altar. In the flickering yellow light, Kate could make out a number of implements lined up there—what appeared to be a golden chalice among them. Also recognizable was the plastic bag full of ammunition for the handgun, as well as the flashlight Kate had brought with them. Chris sorted through the implements until he located what he was looking for, then trudged back down the steps and bent down over Todd’s body.
Kate stepped toward him. “You leave him al—”
With surprising speed, Chris turned and had the pistol pointed at her. Kate’s heart froze, as did her advance on the boy. “Don’t come closer. I’ll shoot you. Won’t I, Meg?”
Meg nodded furiously. “He will. He’ll kill you.”
“If it’s meant to be,” Chris said, “then it’s meant to be. It’s all part of God’s plan. Are you religious?”
“I don’t know.”
Chris seemed puzzled by the answer. His chubby baby face creased. “What does that mean?”
“Please don’t hurt him.” Kate was trying to see what Chris had in his other hand, the item he’d taken off the altar.
“What would God think about your insolence?” Chris said.
“Do you even know what that word means?” Kate countered, though she knew it was a mistake the moment the words came from her mouth.
Chris bolted to his feet, enraged. “Don’t make fun of me!” he shouted, his voice echoing through the chamber. The gun wavered in his hand. “If it wasn’t for me, you and your friend would have died out there! I saw what was happening! I could have left you to die!”
“I didn’t mean to make fun of you.”
“You did! You…you fucking did!”
Again, Meg recoiled. Kate could almost hear the girl’s heart thudding against the wall of her chest.
“Kneel down,” Chris demanded of Kate. He thrust the gun at her. “Do it!”
Shaking, Kate dropped to her knees. The floor was hard and unforgiving and her whole body suddenly ached.
“Don’t shoot her, Chris,” Meg said, although there was very little compassion in her tone.
The barrel of the gun looked enormous. The longer she stared at it, the more Kate believed she could just reach out and shove her whole fist into the chamber. The thing was suddenly the size of a cannon.
“They persecuted Jesus Christ for all the good He did for people,” Chris said, the gun vibrating in his meaty hand. His face was speckled with sweat. “He tried to save them and they nailed Him to the cross!”
In her horror, Kate caught a whiff of freshly spilled urine, and wondered if the almighty Chris had just wet himself in his excitement.
“He gave his life for the wretched and worthless animals who took His!” Then he pointed the gun at Meg. “Blow out that candle!”
Meg puffed and doused them all in darkness.
Kate pressed her eyes shut and braced herself for the shot. Chris’s heavy respiration seemed to be coming from every angle, every direction, all around her. His Clydesdale footfalls paced all about.
Think of something happy, think of something beautiful, a favorite memory, a happier time, something wonderful that I want to have as my last and final thought before this little son of a bitch drives a bullet through my brain…
Several seconds went by before Kate realized she was still alive. She could hear Chris moving about in front of her where Todd’s body lay supine on the floor. There came a muted ruffling noise, like someone rifling through laundry, followed by a solid thump. Kate’s heart was strumming in her throat.
Then she heard Chris stand. A second later, she could smell his breath—a poisonous concoction of Fritos, beef jerky, and onions—directly in her face. She thought she could smell the oil of the gun, too.
“Please…” Her voice was almost nonexistent.
His lips brushing the side of her face, Chris whispered, “Judge not and ye shall not be judged; condemn not and ye shall not be condemned.”
A dull strike echoed down the nave. Kate felt Chris tense and stand up. Kate opened her eyes and squinted down the dark throat of the church. On either side of the narthex, the bluish stained-glass windows seemed to float like apparitions. At first, Kate could not tell what had made the noise. But then as her eyes acclimated themselves to the gloom, she thought she saw a single palm, all five fingers splayed, pressed against one of the windows.
“They’re out there,” Kate whispered.
Chris must have spotted the hand, too; his respiration increased its tempo again. Under his breath, he muttered, “I told you not to light those candles.”
Meg said nothing. For all Kate knew, the girl had vanished into smoke.
“They know we’re in here,” Kate said.
“Of course
they do.” There was unmasked disgust in Chris’s voice. “I should have never opened those doors for you.”
She heard Chris hurry across the narthex. A moment later, the silhouette of his overlarge head appeared before one of the windows as he peered out. “Oh,” he said, his voice almost comically small. “Oh.”
“What is it?” Kate said.
“Outside. There’s a lot of them.”
Somewhere behind Kate, Meg began to whimper.
Quickly, Kate stood. Her whole body groaned in protest. Blindly, she reached out in the dark until her hand fell on one of Meg’s shoulders. The girl did not move beneath her grasp. Kate’s fingers slid down into the collar of the girl’s shirt and worked their way over the twin hubs of Meg’s shoulder blades. There were no lacerations that Kate could feel. Bending down very close to Meg’s ear so that Chris wouldn’t hear, she whispered, “What about your brother?”
“He’s not one of them, either.”
So he’s just your typical sociopath, Kate thought…and was astounded to find that the thought nearly sent her into hysterical laughter. It was all she could do to keep from braying like a donkey.
“There’s…maybe twelve…thirteen…thirteen people just standing out there in the snow,” Chris said, still looking out the window. He sounded completely dazed by the situation. “Maybe they’ve been sent here to help.”
“No,” Kate said. “Everyone in this town is fucked.”
Meg trembled at the word. Kate quickly withdrew her hand from the girl’s shoulder. Careful of her footing, she negotiated around Meg and climbed toward the altar, working mostly by feel and from memory. When she reached it, she ran her hands gingerly over the top of the altar, her fingers trailing over the various implements until she located the flashlight. She slipped the flashlight into the rear waistband of her pants. Then her fingers closed around the plastic bag full of ammo. She winced at the sound the plastic made crinkling between her fingers, certain Chris would spin around and start firing shots at her. But he was too occupied with their new visitors out in the snow to pay her any further mind. Kate slid the bag off the altar and set it down beneath it—someplace she knew she could get to in a hurry, if need be.
