by Dan Padavona
Overexertion gave way to the beginnings of nausea, yet they carried on even as their legs screamed at them to stop. Please let there be help inside, Mary silently prayed as the Storberry Police Department came into view.
As they pushed through the door, the overhead bell announcing their arrival, a wide-eyed officer with the badge name Kendrick turned on them with gun drawn. His eyes lacked conviction. His hand trembled, his face pallid and drawn.
Evan clutched the stake but quickly realized he was not facing evil. The graying officer was terrified.
“Who are you?” Kendrick asked.
“Friends of Greg Madsen,” Evan said.
“Thank God. Nobody has seen the chief since yesterday. Do you know where he is?”
“Dead,” Mary said.
The officer went limp, all hope lost in his eyes.
“Are there any more officers here?” Evan asked.
“No...no...well, yes...there's Stultsy. But he's s-sick. Awfully sick.”
“Is he well enough to defend this place?”
Kendrick's heart rose into his throat. He told them it had been nearly 36 hours since he had last seen normal activity on the streets. He was a religious man, and while he was not superstitious, he had suspicions of why everyone had disappeared—house windows boarded against the daylight, shapes that only emerged after sunset. Though the suspicions had seemed mad initially, he had seen the things that had once been his neighbors, crawling through the shadows of the night.
Now something far worse came for them all.
“He just sits there, staring at the wall. I found him when I came on shift this morning. I couldn't leave, you know? I wanted to get him to the hospital, but nobody else showed up for work.”
“Where is he now?”
“Next to the cells. He don't want the lights on. I think it hurts his eyes.”
The tremble in Kendrick's voice suggested he suspected something worse than sickness.
“Lock the door and take us to him,” Mary said.
As he spared a wary glance out the glass door, Kendrick fumbled for his keys and turned the deadbolt. The concrete sidewalk leading to the department was lit by lampposts which ran four to a side along the parking lot, the shadows of the posts reaching across the chalky surface like fingers. The sidewalk ended in the deep shadow that extended into the frontage of Court Street.
Evan felt shiver run down his spine. Death stalked the night in Storberry.
As they hurried around the front counter through the rows of desks, Evan noticed Greg's bike parked along the right wall, and a lump formed in his throat.
Kendrick stopped at the closed door which led to the twin cells beyond. He put a key into the lock, and Evan shot a glance at Mary. Why did he lock Stults inside?
Kendrick stopped before he turned the key.
“You sure you want to see Stultsy? Like I said, h-he's pretty s-sick. Maybe it would be best if we just left him alone—”
“Open it,” Evan ordered.
“Okay, okay.”
Kendrick's hand shook. The bolt unlatched with a pop that echoed across the barren walls.
The door swung open, creaking on its hinges like the laughter of witches. Kendrick nervously flipped the wall switch, and two rows of fluorescent lighting flickered and buzzed to life. Two empty cells lined the wall in front of them.
A portly officer sat unmoving in the far corner, back slumped against a wooden chair.
Evan hoped the man had died within, legitimately ill. As Evan approached the figure with Mary at his side, Kendrick waited by the door, wound tighter than a spring. If Stults so much as moved, Kendrick might come apart at the seams.
“St-Stultsy...got some f-folks here to see ya...”
No movement.
“Me and Stultsy...we go way back ya know...came into the force together and...”
Evan and Mary came closer, and each brandished their stakes with obvious intention.
“There's no need for that,” Kendrick called from over their shoulders. “He's just sick, that's all.”
But the officer could probably guess what the primitive weapons were for. He unconsciously performed the sign of the cross.
The stench of decay hit Evan like a wall. Now he was close, yet Stults still hadn't moved. He began to think that Stults really was dead, but when Mary pulled out the cross, Stults opened his eyes.
Stults swung his body in the chair to face them, much faster than would have been possible for the overweight man when he was alive. His eyes were bloodshot and ghastly, his skin white paste.
Stults sprang forward before Evan could react. Evan crashed against the wall, rockets exploding under his eyelids. Stults skittered past them toward Kendrick. Before Mary could turn, she heard the tortured scream of the officer. She bounded after Stults, cross aglow in her hand.
As Evan shook off the throbbing pain in his head, he heard a splattering sound and turned to see a clump of Kendrick's flesh on the floor. A gaping hole had taken the place of the side of his neck, and Stults eagerly lapped at the torrent of gore which poured out.
Stults never saw Mary coming from behind. She plunged the stake into the back of his shoulder blade. Stults howled in anguish, something between wolf and man. He swung at her, and the back of his arm sent Mary crashing to the floor.
As Stults spun around, Evan jammed the stake into his heart, the wooden implement digging inward as though yearning. Stults collapsed to his back with Evan astride him, Mary's stake still protruding at an angle out of his shoulder. His face had changed, no longer timeless. Decrepit flesh hung from his bones like bloody strips of wallpaper.
Mary climbed to her feet and yanked her stake free as Stults trembled in death throes. She wasn't taking any chances. She bit her lip in sorrow before sinking the weapon into Kendrick's prone form. The officer stared back at her with haunted eyes.
Evan hadn't known the officer. He was regarded as a good man who had been born and raised in Storberry before making the choice to defend it. Kendrick had deserved better than this.
As Mary slumped to her knees, the weight of the world around her shoulders like heavy chains, Evan stood above her, extending his hand. After a moment, she took it.
Ten
For twenty minutes they ran along the barely visible shoulder of route 16. The fog had expanded, rising off the ground until it sat steadfast and silent, like a cloud across the saturated terrain. The white stripe which marked the shoulder appeared briefly, then disappeared within the murk. Their sneakers scuffled along pavement and stone as their tired bodies continued on.
Still their pursuer came.
Twice they thought they had lost whatever followed, yet whenever they slowed to catch their breath, the sound of footfalls were never far behind. The thing’s pace was relentless, never tiring.
Without warning, the shoulder stripe disappeared, and they stood on a wide strip of pavement. A double-yellow line ran perpendicular to them, the fog so thick that they had run into the intersection of Winchester Road without noticing.
“Which way?” Jen asked.
“This way,” Tom said, taking her east through the fog.
The gray murk seemed alive, a breathing thing that clouded their vision and clung to their skin. The fog was a ghostly presence, with tendrils that whipped about them like misty vines.
Water gurgled off the shoulder. As the morass drained into the roadside ditch, night birds raised their voices to the murk, joined now by peepers who found the waterlogged terrain reminiscent of their swampland home. And another sound...work boots scuffling along the shoulder of Winchester Road. Even in the heart of the fog, they had been found.
They both ached from the crash, and their energy stores were drained. Jen's breathing became labored. She wouldn't quit, but Tom knew they would have to stop soon and make a stand if necessary. Make a stand with what? The stakes are back in the truck.
They needed shelter or transportation. If the thing in the fog never tired, it would soon have the
m.
“A little farther,” he said, his voice strained from exhaustion and thirst. “There are houses on this road.”
He had ridden with his family down Winchester enough times to remember the sparse population of farmhouses. The question was, would they be able to see the residences in the fog? They could hardly see past arm's length in the murk, and the moon and stars had vanished overhead. Only the enduring gray mass and the occasional glimpse of pocked blacktop existed.
He recognized that he had slowed his pace to stay by her side. Her weakening happened gradually, like eyes which grew heavy before sleep arrived. Her adrenaline was all that carried her forward now, and she would soon give out.
He could still hear the footfalls coming. Are they closer?
He stumbled over gravel and loose stone. He nearly fell, but she steadied him. Halting their slow jog had been a mistake, for lactic acid surged through their legs, urging them to cease. Yet it was the brief respite which allowed them to recognize the loose stone along the shoulder as part of a longer stretch of stone and gravel—a driveway.
Muscles screamed in protest. They ignored the pain, pushed onward by new found hope.
As he surveyed the stone driveway curving upward, Tom instantly knew where they were. He had seen the farmhouse and barn, situated up a small incline beyond the stone driveway, many times on trips to and from Storberry. He recalled that the barn had been no more than fifty yards off to the left.
He couldn't hear their pursuer coming, but Tom knew that they would never lose it.
He grabbed her by the elbow, pulling her off the driveway into the dewy grass toward the barn, which stood somewhere within the concealing fog.
Their footfalls became silent in the grass. Their pursuer would no longer be able to track them by sound, but they wouldn't hear it coming, either.
As the dew-laden grass soaked through his sneakers, Tom noticed some things about the lawn’s nature. It wasn't field grass. It was St. Augustine grass, the same type that proliferated his backyard on Maple Street. His hope soared, noticing that the grass was cut short as though recently mowed. He would have given anything to see another human.
The barn rose out of the fog, a wooden stalwart against the mists. Sturdy-looking double doors fronted the edifice, its fresh red paint black in the night.
They were relieved to find the barn unlocked, and the doors swung open silently on well-oiled hinges. Tom closed the doors behind them, as Jen located a metal spike off to the side which was used to bolt the doors together from the inside. She threw the latch over and pushed the spike down.
The inside of the barn seemed like another world. Their vision seemed more acute, the texture of the barn's inside like an overexposed still-life. The interior was well organized. Potential weapons in the form of spades, axes, and pitchforks were hung along the walls. A loft, accessed by a wooden ladder which seemed to stretch upward forever, as though it had sprouted from Jack's magic beanstalk seeds, ascended deeper into the barn,
As the muted night songs continued beyond the doors, they could feel the fog press against the barn walls, trying to slither inward. The mist watched them with gunmetal eyes through the window. They both knew there was something in the night more nefarious than the impenetrable mists. It walked upright and wore the work boots of a man, and it would not stop until it had them.
Somehow moonlight found its way through the mists. The diffuse radiance washed against the barn window and spread a thin, hazy glow across the dirt floor. Shadows rolled off support beams and stretched toward them, like black swords.
The wind brushed against the barn and sheared the fog into disparate apparitions that rose against the window. Jen crouched in the shadow of the loft, arms wrapped around her knees.
As Tom grabbed the pitchfork from the wall, a faint movement caught his eye. The latch to the double doors had quivered for just a second, the left door opening a crack. How long had their pursuer been outside the door, stealthily searching for a means of entry?
He hoisted the weapon at the door, expecting it to fly off its hinges at any moment. She began to sob, the horrors of the last three nights shredding her emotional stability.
Fury flashed across her eyes. She jumped to her feet next to him, armed with a burning hatred for the thing outside—for their families, for friends they would never see again, for their childhood, forever lost.
The double doors shook as though they might soon disintegrate. The wind whipped the fog into a frenzy. The rattling became deafening, and when it ascended into delirium, he heard her scream. Her cry sent shivers down his spine, for it was not a scream of terror but one of boundless rage.
The doors ripped off their hinges with a squeal of metal against wood, the frame splintering. Fog rolled inward like an unearthly fiend. The silhouette of something baleful moved within its expanding mass.
The thing had no sooner materialized than Tom lunged forward with the pitchfork. As the points plunged into the figure’s chest, the thing howled in pain, hands reaching out for him, grasping incessantly despite the weapon protruding from its chest.
The man, who had once been a farmer living at the edge of Storberry, had blocked the road, causing the accident which had resulted in Renee's death. Tom drove his legs forward, propelling the vile excrescence toward the barn wall. The farmer grasped for him with gnarled claws, his bloody eyes burning with fury.
The farmer shrieked as the impaling force pinned him to the wall. Gore oozed from the wound, black and silver in the dappled moonlight. Jagged fangs snapped in the air, blood and spittle running off his lower lip.
Jen ran to Tom’s side, grasping the spike which had fallen off the broken latch. She swung the spike into the farmer’s skull, knocking his neck into a grotesque angle. She swung again, the impact cracking his head open.
He straightened his neck and smiled at them.
Tom backed away. The farmer had both hands on the pitchfork, trying to pull it free. As they ran toward the ladder to the loft, followed by wicked laughter, the farmer slid the implement out of his chest.
Tom propelled her up the ladder ahead of him. The rungs seemed to stretch on endlessly, fading into shadow halfway up before moonlight from an upper window caught the loft. Boots scuffled along dirt and hay behind them, and he wondered if the farmer remembered how to climb.
At the midpoint of the ladder, he looked down. Already, they were frighteningly high, the barn floor a dizzying mix of gloom and moonlight far beneath. The thing approached, its shadow monstrously stretched by the moonlight.
As he concentrated on moving up the ladder, his hands gripping the wooden rungs, he nearly collided with her. She had made the mistake of looking down, frozen, three stories off the unforgiving earth. A fall from this height would shatter her.
“One step at a time,” he urged. “Don't look down.”
She moved with trepidation, her legs shaking and her feet sliding along the rungs in tremors. He didn't think he could catch her if she slipped. It was all he could do to keep hold of the rungs himself. He imagined her foot slipping off the rung, her body tumbling into his, and then the earth hurtling upward to meet them with devastating force.
And then she did slip. Her left sneaker lost traction on the next rung. She grasped the rung above her with both hands, her legs flailing wildly over his head. She screamed as her body swung into the ladder, the wooden edges digging into her ribcage.
But she held on, and he was able to ascend to her height and press his body against her, their shoulders heaving with each breath. As blood surged into his head, his vision grew dark and his heart pounded as though it might burst. Praying the dizziness would soon pass, he concentrated on holding the rungs,
The ladder spun across his vision, as though he had just stepped from a merry-go-round. Nausea boiled out of his chest and into his throat, and it was all he could do not to wretch. After several seconds the spinning subsided, leaving his skin clammy and his arms shaking. The taste of bile burned at the back o
f his throat.
She moved again, starting up the ladder.
He waited until she had cleared him before he resumed his ascent, but he couldn't help thinking that they were jumping from the frying pan into the fire. How will we defend ourselves once we reached the loft? There would be no escape if the farmer followed them up.
When her head poked into moonlight at the loft, she saw that the rungs stopped several inches below the landing with no continuation beyond. This required her to release her grip on the ladder and fall forward onto the planks. For one awful moment, vertigo overcame her, and Tom was certain she would plummet backward.
But then the rough surface was beneath her body. She crawled forward, and he pushed himself onto the landing next to her.
He heard the farmer wheezing up at him, as though he was confused by the ladder.
Tom contemplated the time. He had no idea how long he had lain unconscious after the crash. As the flight from the scene had taken close to an hour, he guessed it was sometime between 2 am and 5 am. The salvation of sunrise might be hours off.
As moonlight shone brightly against the wall behind them, casting the landing in silver, he spotted a small mound of hay clumped against the wall, with a second pitchfork sticking outward like a flagpole. The glint of steel caught his eye. He reached down to find a handsaw, beside which wood was stacked in the corner near a hammer and a small bucket of nails.
“It's coming.”
Jen bent over the landing to see the farmer two rungs off the barn floor, a wicked grin stretched across his face. At his deliberate pace, he would reach the landing in a few minutes.
She pushed against the ladder, but it was well constructed and firmly secured to the landing. As she grasped the pitchfork, Tom sorted through two-by-fours, putting one aside as a bludgeoning weapon. If worst comes to worst, maybe I can knock the thing off the ladder.
He splayed the stack across the flooring and laid the top piece across, sawing the corner off the two-by-four. While the sweet smell of sawdust wafted upward, he sawed as quickly as he dared, not wanting the blade to slip and tear through his fingers.
