by Ronald Malfi
Down on the floor, Todd moaned. Much louder this time.
“They’re going to hear him,” Meg cautioned.
Chris hustled back across the narthex, his multiple robes rustling. “I should shut him up for good.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kate said, sliding back into place beside Meg. “They already know we’re here. What we need to do is wake him up so we can all figure out what to do next.”
“What do you mean?” Chris demanded. “What do you mean, ‘what to do next’? I don’t need him to tell me what to do.”
“That isn’t what I meant. I just think that with the four of us trying to figure this out, we might stand a better—”
“I don’t need him for anything.”
“All right.” She knew better than to keep up the argument.
“They won’t get in here. This is sacred ground.”
“I don’t think that matters to them.”
“You don’t think God matters?” Chris boomed. Behind him, more hands appeared on the stained-glass windows. “You don’t think the Almighty is powerful enough to keep evil at bay? Because that’s what they are—they’re pure evil! Sent to punish us all for our sins! Sent straight from hell to do the devil’s bidding!”
If I rush him in the dark, surprise him and get him off balance, I could probably wrestle that gun away from him, she thought. He’s a chunky son of a bitch but as long as I kept his weight off me, I think I’d actually be able to do it.
She started sweating all over again.
“Kate?” It was Todd’s groggy voice filtering through the shadows. “You there, Kate?”
“I’m right here,” she called to him.
“Stop it,” Chris said. But there was little strength left in his voice now.
“What’s…what’s going on?” Todd continued.
“We’re at Judgment Day,” Chris said. “This is the End of Times.”
“I can’t move,” Todd said. His voice sounded more lucid now. “I’m tied up to something. Kate?”
Like starfish clinging to the underside of a boat, countless hands now papered the windows.
“They’re going to get in, Chris,” Kate said, her voice level. She desperately wanted to sound logical and calm at that moment. She also deliberately spoke Chris’s name in hopes that whatever memory had been temporarily knocked from Todd would return to him the moment he heard the boy’s name. “We need to untie Todd so he can help us keep them away.”
“I told you,” Chris retorted. “They won’t be able to get in here.”
“I’m scared,” Meg said, startling Kate, who had forgotten that the girl had been standing right next to her.
“Don’t listen to these people,” Chris told Meg. “They’re on the side of evil. That’s clear to me now. They want to coax us into battle when there is no need. God will protect us, Meg. Just like Mom and Dad have always taught us—God will see us through this.”
Sensing her opportunity, Kate sprang down off the pulpit and landed on Chris’s chest in a clumsy but effective tackle. They both dropped to the floor, Kate on top of the boy, and she heard the distinct sound of the gun clattering to the tiles. Shit! Nonetheless, she straddled him and sought out his neck with her hands. He sent his big fists swinging, connecting over and over again with the sides of her head. Sparks flew beneath her eyelids. One punch rushed up to meet her nose and tears exploded from her eyes. Beneath her, Chris bucked like a hog being tied. He shouted to his sister in throaty lamentations.
“Stop it!” Meg screamed from the pulpit. “Stop it! You’re hurting him!”
Kate’s fingers closed around the boy’s throat. Chris’s spittle flecked her face as his thick-fingered hands attempted to loosen her grasp on him.
Distantly, Kate was aware of a looming presence…and she was reminded in that instant of being a young girl out on the softball field, and how cool it had been when airliners would pass overhead, their shadows like the shadows of a giant bird bulleting across the outfield…
Kate let go of Chris’s throat and rolled off him just in time to glimpse a dark, wavering shape floating just beyond the panels of stained glass in the ceiling high above the altar. Then, a second later, something came crashing through the windows, sending a shower of jagged spearheads raining down on them all. Kate blocked her eyes with one arm but still managed to see a figure, undeniably human, fall through the shattered windows and plummet like a sack of potatoes to the altar. The figure struck the altar with a bone-crunching din and nearly buckled in half at the force of the landing. A cone of moonlight poured in through the ceiling, spotlighting the altar and the twisted, mangled corpse that lay folded over the top of it.
Meg screamed.
Kate quickly scrambled to her hands and knees and pitched forward, pawing for the handgun. Its blue steel practically glowed in the moonlight. Gripping the gun by the hilt, Kate then swung around and hurried over to Todd, who sat half-cocked against a pew, staring up with stark disbelief at the wound in the ceiling.
“Where are you tied?” she said, nearly knocking her forehead against his ear as she slid into him.
“My hands.” But he wasn’t looking at her; he was staring numbly at the ceiling. His face was a network of small cuts and bleeding lacerations from the shower of glass.
Kate reached behind him and found that Chris had tied Todd’s hands around the front leg of the pew. Quickly she felt out the knot and managed to dig her fingernails between the sections of rope, prying them apart.
“Oh, fuck,” Todd said, his voice sounding like it was sticking to his throat. “That’s Nan.”
Kate paused in her work just long enough to look back up at the altar. Had Todd not said anything she would have never recognized poor Nan Wilkinson, owing to the stage of her mutilation, but once she locked eyes on Nan’s face—the frozen grimace of fear and pain, the bulging, milked-over eyes, the skin pulled taut like the flesh of a balloon—she couldn’t not see her.
“Oh, Christ,” Kate whispered breathlessly into Todd’s ear. “Oh…Christ, Todd…”
“Untie me.”
She quickly went back to work with the rope. Peripherally, she saw Chris scoot away from her in the darkness, possibly looking for sanctuary behind one of the pews. Up on the pulpit, a pinpoint of light sparked through the darkness: Meg’s lighter. The flame shook and wavered until the girl was able once again to light the candle. This time, her brother did not yell at her to blow it out.
Meg approached the altar and the mangled corpse that lay across it. One bloodied arm jutted out at an unnatural angle. Meg moved with the lethargy of a somnambulist while the candle’s flame jittered in her hand. Above the girl’s head, it began to snow through the opening in the roof.
Kate finally got the rope untied. Todd pulled his hands into his lap and rubbed his wrists before climbing to his feet. He was staring up at the snow coming through the roof. “We need to get out of here. Fast.”
Kate rushed up to the altar and snatched the bag of ammo from beneath it. As she stood, she locked eyes again with Nan Wilkinson’s corpse. Ice clung to the woman’s silvery hair and her skin looked cold and brittle, like porcelain.
“Come with me,” Kate said, grabbing Meg by the wrist. The motion caused Meg to drop the candle.
“My brother,” Meg said.
“We all need to get out of here.”
The hands against the windows began banging on the glass—all of them in unison, like some orchestrated percussive beat. Kate pulled Meg down off the altar just as the snow above their heads began to solidify and come together. At the center of the blustery mass was a tendril of silver light, like light spilling out of a keyhole.
“Here!” Kate shouted, tossing Todd the handgun. Dragging Meg by the wrist, she ran toward the farthest wall. Meg was as lifeless as a rag doll in her grasp.
Chris began whimpering from behind one of the pews.
Todd press-checked the nine-millimeter, then took several steps backward. The mass of snow rotating abov
e the altar seemed to darken and take on form, like a shadow. Watching it, Kate found herself hoping that Chris had been right—that perhaps this was sanctified land and no evil would dare cross its threshold. But as the swirling mass of snow and light above the altar became thicker and more prominent, she knew that was not the case.
They were going to die.
The carpet beneath the altar suddenly went up in a blaze of white flame: Meg’s dropped candle. A second later and Nan’s outstretched arm went up, too, filling the nave with a dark black smoke and the acrid, gunpowdery reek of burning flesh. As the black smoke rose up out of the hole in the roof, it commingled with the twirling mass of living snow hovering just above the altar. Briefly, like a sheet draped over a mannequin, the smoke brought the creature into frightening relief—the human-shaped head with the distended jowls and the hollow pits for eyes; the thin stalk of its neck; the heart-shaped scurf of its upper chest…
Todd fired two, three shots at it. The rounds passed right through the cloud of smoke, carving funnels in their wake. Meg clamped hands to her ears while her brother shouted something unintelligible, the fear in his voice undeniable now.
The creature swooped down and glided just above the pulpit, its near-formless arms trailing behind it like the tentacles of a giant squid. Its belly licked the flames, causing the massive thing to shriek in agony and pull up toward the ceiling. Kate felt the wind of its movement against her face.
“Burn it!” Meg screamed beside her, clutching onto Kate’s forearm with both her hands. “Burn it!”
Indeed, the creature’s scaly flank glowed as red as embers in a bonfire as it pulled rotations above their heads. Charred bits of scurf fluttered to the altar like confetti.
Just as one of the windows shattered behind her, Kate lunged forward and pulled one of the wall sconces from its seating. Charging up to the altar, she plunged the sconce into the flames, the heat from the growing inferno stinging her eyes and causing sweat to pop out of her pores.
“Kate!” Todd yelled at her. “Get down, Kate!”
Meg wailed and curled up in one corner. Directly above Meg’s head, one of the townspeople was attempting to climb in through the shattered window.
Proffering the flaming torch above her head, Kate stepped down off the altar and joined Todd, who was holding the pistol in both hands now, a look of utter perplexity on his face. Blood streaked his white skin—cheeks, forehead, neck, and chin.
Kate waved the torch and the creature pixilated into dust. Snow rained down from the rafters while more poured in through the opening in the roof.
Farther down the narthex, more windows imploded as fists were driven through the glass. Ghoulish shapes shimmied up over the sill and dropped down into the church.
“There’s a side door!” Todd shouted, pointing clear across the pulpit.
“Okay!” Kate shouted. It felt like the building was getting ready to shake apart. She turned to Meg and called for the girl but Meg wouldn’t move; she’d drawn her legs up into a fetal position and simply sat, rocking back and forth in the corner.
“Come on,” Todd said, grabbing Kate’s arm.
Kate pulled her arm loose. “Wait!” She ran to Meg and pulled her to her feet. Meg stumbled but followed. Kate shouted for Chris, too…and the boy popped up behind one of the pews, his flesh prickled with sweat and his priestly garb hanging off him like quilts. He hurried toward them just as something—something big—moved behind him in the shadows. The darkness seemed to separate from itself just as a white curl of powder engulfed Chris, bringing him screaming to the floor.
“Chris!” Meg shouted, and it took all of Kate’s strength to hang on to the girl.
Chris attempted to stand…but just as he got his feet under himself, something partially transparent and shaped like the blade of a hunting knife (only much, much bigger) speared out of the mist and plunged straight into Chris’s right shoulder.
Chris’s eyes bulged. His mouth dropped open and, a moment later, a black string of blood oozed out. He staggered and would have fallen, had he not been speared to the thing behind him.
A second curled talon appeared, this one the size of a school bus fender and about as solid as a strip of film projected onto a cloud of smoke. It sprung forward, reminding Kate of nature specials she’d seen as a kid, where scorpions jabbed their poison-tipped tails into the backs of spiders. The talon pierced Chris’s left shoulder, making the boy’s head roll loosely on his neck. Blood continued to spill from his agape mouth, staining the holy vestments he wore.
Meg buried her face in Kate’s chest.
Later on, Kate would recall Shawna Dupree’s words when thinking back on this event—about these things wearing people like puppets—because that was exactly what appeared to be happening. The darkened shape behind Chris seemed to loom up over him as it slid its bladed arms farther into Chris’s back. As it did so, Chris’s body jerked and squirmed, like a sock being fitted with an oversized foot. The cloud shape then seemed to fade into Chris’s back, as if sucked through a black hole, and as the last vestige of the creature withdrew into him, Chris’s eyes flipped open and his neck cocked at an angle in a mockery of life.
Everything went deathly silent. In the shadows behind Chris, Kate could make out the crenellated silhouettes of the townspeople inside the church while others paused halfway through the broken windows. They were surrounded.
“Hey,” said the Chris-thing. “Hey, Meg. Come on. Come here.”
Meg would not look at it. Kate hugged her tighter.
“Come on, Meg. Sis. Come on, little sister.” The Christhing shuffled forward, its steps as awkward as a toddler’s. He had the same empty look in his eyes as Eddie Clement had had when they picked him up on the side of the road. “Hey, now…”
“Fuck this,” Todd said, and kicked through the doors at the other end of the church. Freezing air filled the church. For a second, it seemed the torch in Kate’s hand would be extinguished, but the flame was strong and held on. Todd marshaled through the door and Kate followed, Meg still clinging to her.
Behind them, the Chris-thing screamed—a sound like a passing locomotive.
Todd staggered in the snow. His shoulders appeared to slouch. From over his shoulder, Kate saw what had deterred him: scattered around the grounds of the church were twenty or so townspeople, each one staring them down with dark, soulless eyes. Todd raised the gun, pointed it at one of them.
Directly above them, the sky looked like a volcanic eruption. Lightning flashed horizontally from cloud to cloud. There was no moon.
Todd grabbed Kate’s arm. “Use the fire if they get too close.” He pulled her through the snow while Kate, in turn, pulled Meg. The townspeople began closing in on them. Todd let a few rounds rip from the handgun but that didn’t seem to deter any of them, except for the one or two that went down from the force of the bullet. When clutching hands got too close, Kate singed them with the torch. One of the townspeople howled…and suddenly dropped to the snow like someone shucking off an old housedress. Something semitransparent and hulking flitted off into the night.
The church grounds sloped downward to Pascal Street. There were a number of dead vehicles staggered at intervals down the street and two tipped over on their sides in a nearby ravine. Todd led the charge, panting and out of breath by the time they reached the street. Kate nearly slammed into his back and managed to hold on to the torch before it tipped out of her hands and clattered down into the frozen culvert.
Kate chanced a look behind her.
The church was a black smear at the top of the hill. Thick smoke billowed up through the rent in the roof and melded with the low-clinging clouds. The lower windows were alive with firelight as the interior of the church burned. The townspeople still stood on the snowy slope, staring down at them. Strangely, none had pursued.
Something’s wrong here, Kate had time to think. Something is very, very wrong…
Though he was still breathing hard, Todd straightened up and began m
oving farther down the road. “Come on. We can’t stop now.”
Kate lifted the torch above her head and gripped Meg’s hand. It felt limp and lifeless; the girl was no doubt shocked into immobility by what she’d just witnessed happen to her brother. Kate tugged her through the icy streets, close on Todd’s heels.
“Where are we going?” Kate called to him. Before Todd could answer, she looked over at Meg. “Where do you think we should go? Where would be safe?”
The girl only stared at her without expression. She was still in shock.
“When I was up in the bell tower,” Todd said, “I saw a fire hall and a police station up this road. I don’t know the condition they’re in but we need to—”
A mound of snow burst up from the ground along the shoulder, showering the night in white crystals. A lion’s roar shook Kate to the marrow of her bones and she nearly dropped the torch. The snow rose up and towered over them, three stories high, undulating like the segmented body of a worm. A blade of ice protruded from it and reared up—
Kate charged forward and drove the torch into the wall of snow. She had expected the flame to immediately extinguish upon impact, but instead the snow solidified and turned the color of a catfish. Kate could make out the vague suggestion of a rib cage and, beneath the translucent scurf, the throb of a white light at the center of the being. The flame ignited its flesh and the creature emitted a bone-numbing shriek that shook the tops of the nearby pines. Then it folded in on itself and scattered in a cloud of sparkling mist across the snowy ground.
Todd could only stare at the space where the creature had been just a moment ago. It looked like he was holding his breath.
Kate put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said, though she thought her voice sounded too nervous and uncertain. “We’re okay.”
“Right,” he said, nodding without really hearing her. “Right…”
She pushed him forward. “I’m right behind you,” she told him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
