The Killing Floor

by David Tully

  The ship left, and the people of the village were alone, in these great black woods in this vast unknown land, so far from the world they’d left behind. The land Parson Chillingworth had fled, accused under another name of blasphemy. Of alchemy, like his nemesis John Dee.

  Of witchcraft.

  And still he sat at the feet of Wyandotte, and still he learned. Learned how the shaman’s people had received their name: that in another time, ages past, a great evil had roamed these woods, a demon that called itself Croatoan.

  And that it was Wyandotte’s people, their shaman’s magic, that had contained and controlled the beast, through the power of a sacred stone that had banished it forever.

  And these people were the guardians of the stone, the people of the Croatoa, their eternal vow to keep the beast at bay.

  And Matt knew that the preacher lusted for the shaman’s stone as any alchemist lusts for the philosopher’s stone. For he knew that within that stone lay power.

  And in the night he gained it, and brought back that which had been banished. And the preacher knew, for the shaman had told him, that the beast must have its vessel to walk among us.

  And the preacher chose the child.

  Virginia. And Matt tried to protect her, reached out to save the child, but these were phantoms he saw, and they passed by, and the preacher did what Matt knew he would do.

  And on that blackest of nights, Croatoan returned to our world.

  And Matt then saw, for the shaman showed him, that Croatoan feasts on fear, on anger, on chaos and all the forces of the dark.

  And Matt saw that it feeds by first corrupting, driving those around it to slowly simmering madness.

  And Matt saw the ninety-eight come as one, silent and together, to the beach—and fall on each other, and kill.

  And the preacher, clutching the stone, watched. And Matt tried to turn away and could not.

  And Croatoan fed.

  And when it was done, the sea claimed the bodies.

  And the preacher claimed its servant, for he who controls the stone controls Croatoan, providing its focus and anchor in this world.

  And the preacher and the girl, now older than she had been just days before, walked hand in hand into the darkness of the forest, and Roanoke was no more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Matt fell to his knees on the beach, watching them leave. The waves continued to silently crash on the beach so recently washed clean of the blood and the bodies.

  “Why didn’t you do anything?” he asked the shaman, who stood behind him, his back to the sea, staring at the spot where the two figures had vanished into the trees.

  “You speak as if I knew what he was doing. We of the Croatoa lived far from these people. We visited when we could, but we left them to themselves. Suns had risen and set, several times, before I knew the stone was gone.”

  “And?” Matt asked.

  “And I knew who had taken it.”

  The shaman started walking up the beach, away from Matt, heading north. The Big Dipper was filling the sky over his head, Matt idly noted, its bottom nearly crashing into the old guy’s head. Matt wished it was really a pan—he’d smack it over the old bastard’s head for letting this happen.

  But it wasn’t, so Matt got to his feet and stumbled after the retreating form of Wyandotte.

  “Where are you going?” he called after the figure, who seemed to be moving up the beach much faster than Matt.

  “Where the black magician and his slave went.” And he was gone into the gloom up ahead.

  And Matt followed and saw. The preacher and the child moved through the forest, leaving a trail of madness and death in their wake. And the child grew in years as it fed, and the preacher grew in power and knowledge, learning of Croatoan’s world, taking what he wanted when he wanted as they moved through this world.

  The preacher wanted to return east eventually—this Matt knew as he watched. He would return to the land that expelled him and have his revenge. But first he took his pleasure here, with the child, and the people of this new world screamed at their coming.

  And Matt shared in their screaming, felt their terror, as he had felt the joy of the people of Roanoke.

  And the shaman followed. It was his responsibility, for he had trusted the preacher, had told him the truth, had allowed the stone to be taken.

  And finally, following the path of their destruction, moving in the wake of their evil, he found a way to stop them, before they left this world and brought their madness to another.

  In the lands to the north, where he had never dared go, he braved the heart of the nation feared by all others: the Iroquois. And he faced them at the seat of their power: the killing floor. The place of sacrifice to the Great Spirit.

  Here, in a cathedral of rock, their blood sacrifices brought power. These people were feared by all others, but they feared the shaman—for they knew he was of the Croatoa, the people who guarded the stone.

  Here the shaman convinced them that the preacher and the two beasts that had already plagued their own people, warlock and familiar, could now be caught.

  And they were caught: one dark magic entrapping another, as the fierce Iroquois warriors stole the stone, slew the preacher, and cowed the beast. Without the stone, they were naught but graying priest and frightened child.

  The warriors caged the two forms in a tomb of bark surrounded by stone, burying them beneath the rock and mud, trapped deep beneath the killing floor.

  Matt watched as the tomb was lowered to the earth beneath cliffs rising on three sides, and rocks slid into place to cover the hole dug deep in the ground. He shared, too, in the grim exultation of the shaman, knowing at last that the hunt was done.

  One final massive boulder was rolled into place by six warriors, sealing the last wound in the earth. The shaman and his Iroquois counterpart chanted their chants and danced their spells. Stars fell from the skies, thunder rolled across the heavens, the very ground heaved…but the cage held.

  Croatoan was trapped forever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Matt stood alone in the darkness, in the middle of the killing floor, gazing at the high rock walls surrounding him on three sides, the sloping earth leading out in front, and knew this place.

  It was now filled with black water, the result of man’s tampering—of the Europeans who came and pushed the original inhabitants from their place of power…to the west, or to death, that ultimate western land.

  He saw the white men come with their machines, saw the dark waters flowing like oil. He tried to warn them, to tell them to leave, that it was madness to be here, to wake that thing that slept beneath, but they didn’t hear. They didn’t see.

  And beneath the rocks, in their magic-shrouded tomb, the preacher rotted, and the beast slept on.

  Until the black pipe came and pierced the earth, digging deep into the rock, breaking the killing floor. Matt saw the fracking pipe drive into the earth’s crust like a spear, driving deep into the dark. He tried to turn away, but he saw.

  And down there, deep in the earth, it found the resting place and caused the smallest fracture in the tomb. And something was nestled in bony arms. It stirred and slithered out.

  It crawled through the rock and the filth until it reached the surface, its pale thin arms grasping for freedom.

  The earth broke open and the beast crawled free, an emaciated parody of a human form that scuttled into the woods, not remembering, not knowing what it was or where it had come from. It knew fear. It fed on fear.

  It lived in those woods for weeks, feasting first on the creatures that lived in those woods, then on those who came to the quarry to work, or to stop those who worked. Matt saw it feed and was nauseated and outraged, for he knew what was coming and still could only watch.

  And as the beast fed it grew stronger, and its influence spread, though still it could not remember and could not break free.

  And one day a man came and found it in the woods. A man who, like t
he beast, had been dead and now was not.

  Matt tried to intervene, tried to scream at himself, tried to change what had been. He failed.

  He put out his hand and the demon reached out to grab it…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  With a start, Matt woke up.

  He wasn’t on any beach anymore, and he wasn’t out at the quarry. He was still in the library, right where Dark and Croatoan had left him for dead.

  Dead…

  He looked down at his midsection—there was still a scar visible, but the wound had sealed up, the blood washed away.

  Shit—he knew he was a good healer these days, but this was fucking ridiculous. How the hell long had he been asleep?

  “Not long,” said a flat, deep voice behind him, and Matt jumped, looking over his shoulder.

  The shaman stood across the room, barely illuminated by the one candle still burning in the room.

  “Did you do this?” Matt asked him, indicating his healing stomach.

  The shaman didn’t even bother looking at the wound or responding directly. “I have need of you, Matthew.”

  Matt noted that although the old guy was answering him (kind of), his lips weren’t moving. What the hell—he’d seen stranger things tonight, so he wasn’t going to get too hung up on that one. He also spoke pretty good English for an Inj—for somebody who didn’t speak English, but he guessed they were communicating in a way that was going beyond all that, too.

  “Is that why you brought me here?” Matt asked instead.

  “I?” the shaman responded. “I never brought you here. I am the guardian of the stone. That is my focus and my reason. But I use the materials that come my way.”

  And suddenly Matt understood all about Darkhunter, about who would have a reason to bring him here.

  “It wasn’t you who called me,” he said the shaman.

  The old guy shook his head. “It was the…creature…you call Mr. Dark. He needed you to lead him to Croatoan. He sensed the beast’s awakening, its growing power, and knew it was hiding itself.”

  “So he needed me to find it?” Matt didn’t quite get that.

  “To figure out what shell it wore and wake it to its true nature. Without you, he can only observe. He needed you.”

  Matt grimaced. “His pawn. And Mr. Hero thought he was coming to town and helping the helpless. Instead, I did exactly what Dark wanted.”

  Matt slammed his fist into a bookshelf, one of the few still standing in the library, and sent it toppling.

  It wasn’t much, but it made him feel better for a second.

  “Too late to feel sorry for yourself, stupid white man,” the shaman compassionately continued. “Now you’re here. Now you can stop it.”

  At that, Matt turned to him. “I can?”

  The shaman shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Only one way to find out.”

  “Yeah?” Matt replied after a beat. “How’s that?”

  “Go after Croatoan and kill the beast before Dark starts using it the same way that preacher did. Only worse. The preacher wanted power. Dark wants chaos. If he gets the stone, he can control the demon. He can infect the world, as the unconscious Croatoan infected this town.”

  Dark’s chaos on a global scale, armed with a weapon of concentrated hate. Matt pondered that for a second, feeling hopeless and helpless. Dark had already been using enough of Virginia’s latent power earlier to beat Matt like a red-headed stepchild. Now that they were working together, what the hell kind of chance did he have?

  And then he saw the handle of his ax, uncovered from its hiding place by the bookshelf Matt had just capsized.

  And then beyond that, he suddenly saw the still, lifeless form of Zoey, lying hunched in the corner, her back to him, small and incredibly fragile.

  And he turned back to Wyandotte. He had no reason to trust this…apparition, ghost, angel, demon, whatever. He’d trusted the child, and that hadn’t turned out so well.

  But the shaman—if that was what he really was—was Matt’s best bet for getting another shot at Dark and his new buddy.

  “Just point me in the right direction,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The old shaman faded into the gloom, saying nothing.

  That guy didn’t need to point him anywhere. Matt knew exactly where he had to go: back to the fracking site, to the quarry, to the killing floor.

  They’d be there now, digging at the hole Croatoan had crawled out of, looking for the shaman’s stone—Croatoan knowing this was the only limit on his power, Dark knowing the same. Not that they both wanted it for the same reason, so the race was on to get there first.

  And Matt was way behind. He knew he had to get his ass in gear, had to go back out into the eye of the storm, had to face his own personal bogeyman and that thing that nearly killed him, that easily would have killed him if he wasn’t dead already, or whatever he was.

  He had to get out there and save the world.

  Instead, he sat down and took Zoey into his arms.

  He held her lifeless, torn body and allowed himself a moment’s regret, an instant’s pain. He’d allowed himself the luxury of trusting, and this was the price he paid: the little angel turned out to be a demon from hell that ripped a hole in a beautiful, kind woman.

  Typical. Just another day in the death of Matt Cahill.

  He indulged himself in grieving for a few more seconds, listening to the rain slamming against the windows, the old beams of the house groaning under the onslaught of the hurricane, and then felt like somebody was watching him.

  He lifted his head from where it rested against Zoey’s, his eyes trying to peer beyond the flickering candlelight into the gloom beyond.

  From the darkness, a face emerged, glowing orange in the candle’s flame.

  It was the old guy, back again.

  “You’re starting to get on my nerves,” said Matt.

  The old guy grunted. “Stupid white man. You better get going.”

  Matt turned away from the face peering into his, looking down at Zoey’s hair. “Just give me one more minute.”

  The intensity of his loss shocked him, in that detached part of the mind that observed his grief. He was struck by that in the same way Zoey had been oddly curious about why she’d trusted a hitchhiking stranger enough to pull over in the middle of nowhere and give him a lift.

  “Because she was like you,” Wyandotte answered in response to Matt’s unspoken question.

  Matt raised his head from Zoey’s hair and regarded the wizened face peering back at him. “She had a destiny to help others, to fight evil. She would have been called, as you were. This is why she was immune to Croatoan’s infection. This is why Dark could not decide whether she or the child was not what she seemed to be.”

  “But she was,” Matt whispered.

  The old guy nodded. “And she must be avenged.”

  Gently, Matt laid Zoey down on the floor, then brushed her red hair back from her still, peaceful face.

  He stood up, gazed down at her a moment longer, and then walked across the room, threw aside a pile of fallen books with one powerful sweep of his arm, and grasped his ax by the handle.

  He lifted it into the candlelight, and the light cast a red glow on the metal.

  He turned to face the shaman, but the old guy was gone.

  Matt strode through the library, threw open the door, and walked out into the howling wind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Last time he’d been out here, the Sundown village green had looked eerie in its desolation but essentially unchanged.

  Now it looked like a bomb had gone off.

  Matt supposed two had, actually: a bomb named Hurricane Jonas, followed up by a nuclear device called Croatoan.

  The gazebo in the center of town was smashed by a tree that had fallen straight across it, one of the many that had been uprooted and sent flying. Most had gone into store windows—the storm was limiting vision to nearly nil, but Matt had yet to see one un
broken windowpane fronting the green as he ran across it, crouching in the face of the gale. He dodged from bush to bush, leaping the mangled remains of Gus and Patagonia Pete where the pickup had left them behind, his eyes scanning the darkness for signs of attack, or just a usable car.

  One enormous old oak had crashed into a telephone pole, and the two had joined forces to rip a massive hole in the side of the old one-screen movie theater. Somehow, the devastation had kicked the film projector into action. Ghostly blue light flooded out of the theater into the air over the empty village green, as wraithlike images of Hollywood actors silently danced over the leafy branches of the fallen tree that filled the space, tossed by the hurricane winds and rain.

  Matt glanced at the film being played out on the fallen tree’s limbs and idly, crazily wondered for an instant what movie it was, if he’d seen it yet. He didn’t catch many movies these days, and this one looked pretty lame—two people sitting in a restaurant talking. Who wants to pay to see that? Then the rain smacked his face with a stinging intensity as the wind picked up even more, incredibly gaining strength when it already seemed to be at cyclone speed, and Matt forgot about shitty movies and started thinking about how to get back to what he’d already started thinking of as the killing floor.

  The other cars that had followed them from the quarry were parked haphazardly all over the area—some on the green, some on the sidewalk, some in the middle of the road. All of them still smoked, and some still burned, from fires that had been set inside them. Matt wondered how intense the fires must have been when they were set, that they could still be smoking after hours in the open during a hurricane that was starting to make Katrina look like a sun shower.

  They were smoking, useless husks now—that was for sure. Someone didn’t want Matt coming back to the fracking site. And whoever had driven them here was lying low…but chances were good that no matter how deserted this town looked, somebody was still around, waiting for him.

  He turned and ran into the shelter of the pharmacy doorway, needing protection from the storm while he assessed his options.