Brimstone

by Daniel Foster

  “No Garret.” she said. “Because you’re not looking in the right place inside of your head. It’s there.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know where Antonia is. You know because the creature told you.”

  Garret stared at her.

  Mrs. Malvern pointed at the door. “It told you. I know it did. Now go save my daughter.”

  The back wall of the study exploded, hurling stone and wood. Garret tried to shield himself with his arms. Stone pounded the wall around him, a few chips cutting his arms, a larger piece hitting him in the stomach. Mrs. Malvern was not so lucky. Maybe she screamed and it was lost in the dim of tumbling rock and thudding wooden beams. Maybe she didn’t have the chance.

  Garret sprang on the chair, fur spreading across his body while pieces still tumbled. Mrs. Malvern lay on the floor, blood on her head, and a beam across her left arm. The creature stood over her, and it was looking at Garret.

  “You didn’t do what I asked,” it said in a playfully human way. Then it caught sight of Mrs. Malvern, half buried in rubble at its feet. A look of anger came over its gnarled features, then one of pure frustration. It bent down, flipped the beam away from Mrs. Malvern’s arm as if it was a twig, and picked her up out of the rubble. It held her old, limp body in its fingers and its countenance darkened.

  “Wake up!” it snapped as a mother might bark at a child who spent too much time in bed. “Wake up, you selfish old hag!” The creature shook her as if she was a clogged-up salt shaker. Her arms and legs flopped and whiplashed, making Garret cringe. He positioned himself by the door, paws spread and hackles bristled, ready to flee.

  “You wake up this instant and face me!” the creature roared.

  Mrs. Malvern’s limp form did not oblige. The creature flew into a rage, and when it roared again, the orange flames were burning brightly behind its obsidian eyes. “You will answer to me!” The humanity was gone. It was the monster once more.

  It drew its muscular arm back as if the older woman was a baseball it intended to fling from there to the South Pole, and Garret braced himself for the bone crunching thud that was to signal the end of Mrs. Malvern’s life, but the creature stopped. It held the position for a long moment, its ivory teeth bared and grinding together, its heart pounding hard enough for Garret to see its pulse throbbing down the arteries in its arm.

  Then it put her down. It glared hotly at the wall in front of it and balled its hands into fists. Its lungs pumped like iron bellows. Its tail whipped and curled about behind it, seeking, grasping. Suddenly Garret wondered why on God’s-Green-Earth he was standing there staring at Death instead of running from it. He gingerly backed away, taking silent steps towards the door. The creature seemed to have forgotten him.

  His paw tipped a loose stone, and it clacked loudly down a broken timber. Garret froze. The creature’s long, triangular ears twitched towards him, and it sent a glance after them. Garret’s adrenaline surged, but the creature paid him no more mind. It knew he was there, but it didn’t care. For weeks it had acted as if he was the center of its hatred. Now it dismissed him like a cockroach. That had to be important. It meant something, but for the life of him, Garret couldn’t figure out what.

  The creature screamed. Hands opening, long fingers spread, claws extended, it bellowed at the wall in front of it. The cry ripped the air with sounds a living throat should not make. Garret raked his ears with his paws, trying to shut out the painful sound, but it clawed at him, tried to split his skull with its pitch, tried to crush his heart with its hatred.

  Then the creature burst into flame. Deep orange, the color of the flickering behind its eyes, flames wreathed the creature from its long ears to the tip of its tail. They came from it, roaring out of its soul, bursting from its pores. It was the fire that powered the creature, or perhaps the fire was the creature—its truest nature. Garret stumbled away from the heat bloom, so intense that he instinctively closed his eyes to keep them from being scorched.

  Even greater than the heat that singed his fur and eyes was the smell. As the creature screamed and its flames roared into being, it seemed the whole world would be overcome by the sickening reek of Brimstone.

  Garret snorted the smell out of his nose and scrambled from the heat. There was a thunderous crash and an ear splitting shriek. Garret scampered into the hall. The creature stood further down the hall, having simply torn through the wall, setting it ablaze at the same time. Mr. Malvern’s gun cabinet had gotten underfoot on the way through, but the creature didn’t seem to notice the mangled cabinet door, hung around its ankle. It didn’t notice because it was using the other foot to stomp one of the maids into the marble tiles.

  It was smashing the woman like a ripe banana. She didn’t cry out. She’d died with the first blow. Garret felt the shocks through the floor as it stomped her body into a mushy smear on the marble. It wasn’t like watching an elephant step on a badger. That would imply there was some small contest involved. The creature stomped and stomped, throwing its whole body into the motion, and the woman simply splattered, as if she was made of nothing but liquid. As if her body was unable to offer the slightest resistance to the monster’s foot. The marble crackled and fragments flew.

  The monster shifted its weight and brought its foot down on the maid’s head. Her skull snapped like a large walnut and spurted, sprinkling the wall.

  A crack shot down the floor from her skull all the way to Garret’s paws. With another scream, the creature’s flame surged, then collapsed on itself, and the creature disappeared into it. Its scream didn’t end, but it changed locations. One second it was standing in front of Garret, disappearing in a rush of flame. The next second, the scream was over his shoulder in another room. He spun. At the end of the hall, a wave of fire billowed out of the doorway to the den.

  A man cried out, then flew through the doorway. Another one followed him. The first man hit the opposite wall, crackling the plaster. The second man hit the first man, softening the blow.

  They fell to the marble as the creature slammed its way through the door, ripping the facing loose around its head and shoulders. The lefthand wall caught fire, but as the creature reached down to pluck the men off the floor, its flames went out with a whuff.

  It grabbed the top man and held him up. “Look at me.”

  The man whimpered, tried to shield his face, and pissed himself.

  “LOOK AT ME!”

  The man cringed, wrapping his hands around his head in pure, animalistic survival instinct. The creature slammed him to the marble. The sound was both a thud and a wet slap as blood flew from his eyes, nose, and mouth. The creature gripped him by the legs and slammed his torso into the floor again and again, slinging blood and all sorts of bodily fluids down the hall towards Garret. Then the creature flung him so fast Garret that didn’t see the man coming until he flashed past Garret’s head and became a pulpy paste with bones sticking out of it, partially buried in the wall at the end of the hall. When Garret looked back, the creature had just put something small in its mouth and was chewing with vengeful relish. Garret couldn’t see what it was.

  As it swallowed, the creature picked up the second man, an older gentleman whom Garret had met on a couple of occasions in town. He had a British accent, smiled only with the corners of his mouth and finished most of his sentences with “if you please.” He was still alive, but the left half of his body hung limp from his impact with the wall.

  The creature lifted him level with its own head, gripped half his torso with each hand and drove its claws into him on either side of his spine. The old man gurgled, his eyes bulging. The creature screamed at him, as if it blamed him for everything it had become. Then it burst into flame again.

  The weakest cry, a mewling for mercy, dribbled from his mouth as the flesh roasted off his face and hands, and his suit went up in flames. As he burned, the creature pulled opposite directions and ripped him in half. It discarded his right half like a torn piece of cloth, reached beh
ind his glistening sternum, which had stayed with his left half, and ripped out his heart. It popped the old man’s heart into its mouth and bit down, grinding its cracked teeth together as they pierced the small organ. It tilted its head back in ecstasy, but Garret didn’t see it swallow because it disappeared in another roar of flames.

  The moment after it vanished, its cry rang from the floor above him, and the ceiling crackled under a sudden weight. Since the ceiling was falling apart anyway, blazing and disintegrating, Garret scurried out from under it.

  Running would have been the smart choice, and he really wanted to do it. He wanted to flee and save his own life, but if he did, everyone in the house would die. He almost left anyway, but then heard a scream he recognized. It came from the kitchen. It was Ella. She’d kept her job, somehow, and now it was going to cost her life.

  Garret cringed, skittered away as part of the ceiling fell in, bringing a heavy bureau from an upstairs bedroom with it. Somewhere else, a ceiling came down with a whoom. Garret ran for the kitchen. Smoke was thickening in the air. He stayed low. The screams of the creature were shifting all over the mansion amid collapsing walls and roaring flames. Once or twice he passed a frightened person in the chaos. Everything reeked of brimstone.

  As Garret rounded the last corner into the galley, the dizzying stink jostled his memory. He’d smelled this brimstone-reek before, but not from the occasional smell of sulfur-laced coal in his shop. This was a very specific smell, rancid and deathlike. It was personal to the creature, an olfactory signature. He knew the link was important, but he couldn’t remember where he’d smelled it. It had something to do with what Mrs. Malvern was trying to tell him.

  Hackles bristled, teeth bared, Garret slinked around the last corner and into the galley. The creature’s roar sounded elsewhere, followed by two human wails that were certainly death cries. Garret sighted down the long island, overhung with all manner of iron and copper implements. In the corner by one of the two pot-bellied stoves stood Ella, brandishing a skillet. The rest of the kitchen staff surrounded her, led by the tall, matronly Mrs. Lemley. She had an accusing finger extended at Ella.

  “You’ve brought this on us, negro, with your devil worship.”

  “I don’t worship the devil, you stupid cow!” Ella spat with the frustration of someone who had explained herself many times. “If we don’t get out of here now, we’re all going to die!” She shot a desperate glance at the far end of the room. “The back door’s right there!”

  “We’re not going to die, just you, little witch.” Mrs. Lemley barked. “The Devil comes for his own.”

  Garret sprinted for her, coming to two feet as he went, hands balling into fists. His fur retreated quickly from him, but he held it at the last second, a ruff down his back, keeping some of the wolf’s strength in his limbs.

  One of the men in the circle made a grab for Ella’s arm. She brought the skillet down in a wide arc, and he flinched back. Mrs. Lemley had been waiting for the opportunity and made a grab, but Ella had apparently done this dance before. She twisted, changing the skillet’s downwards travel into a long arc like a croquet mallet upswing. It connected solidly with Mrs. Lemley’s jaw, rang like a Chinese gong, and split in two. The blow was so hard that it brought the big woman off her feet. The first thing to hit the ground was the back of her head.

  Huh, Garret thought as he leaped onto the man closest to her. If she’d have told me that was how she broke it last time, I’d have probably fixed it for free.

  Garret landed on the man, driving him to the ground and delivering three punches to his jaw on the way. One would have been enough. Another man swung at Garret with a fire poker, but Garret rolled away as a human, leaped and became wolf in midair. He bit down on the wrist brandishing the fire poker. Bone crackled. Garret let go and reverted to mostly human as he collided with the man, putting his blacksmith’s shoulder into the man’s throat. The man went down hard. Garret spun to a stop and dropped to all fours, growling with bared teeth, but it wasn’t necessary. The rest of the band was hobbling, running, or crawling away through the smoky kitchen. From a nearby room came the roar of flames, followed by the creature’s voice, repeating a question and demanding an answer.

  Ella gripped the half-skillet and eyed Garret uncertainly. He twitched his ears towards the back door. “Go,” he rasped wolfishly.

  She nodded, hitched up her dress, and went like a cheetah. Since his eyes were only about waist high, he couldn’t help but notice what nice legs she had. The creature came through the wall, flinging plaster, studs, and intestines. Garret reeled out of its way. It had Bramley, the butler. It was gripping him by his head, its long claws driven into his skull. Not far in, though, judging by the fact that he was still conscious and begging senselessly as the creature dug into his abdomen with its other hand.

  “You don’t remember?” the creature demanded in its human voice. It ripped a long coil of his intestines out, though they were already dragging the floor. “How about now?”

  Bramley’s lips moved, but the sound was fading. He was losing the ability to speak as his organs were removed. The creature ripped out another handful, and another. “Now do you remember?” It was unreeling his guts like a fishing line. “How about now?!”

  Garret’s stomach heaved. He needed to run. Now. So he did. But towards the creature instead of away from it. A small, logical voice inside his head said with remarkable calm, You’re going to die you idiot. Perhaps he was, but no one should die like Bramley was. Garret couldn’t be human or wolf and allow that to happen. When Garret leaped, the creature bared it teeth at him and pulled its fingers out of Bramley’s abdomen. The fur on the back of its hand was matted with blood and the reeking, slimy contents of Bramley’s digestive system. Its claws were out, ready to skewer Garret as he went for the creature’s throat.

  Garret knew that. He wasn’t going for the creature’s throat. Just before the creature realized that Garret’s trajectory wasn’t quite right for its own throat, Garret closed his jaws around the back of Bramley’s neck and twisted hard and fast.

  A lead blanket of guilt settled on Garret as Bramley’s vertebrae snapped in his mouth. It was a quiet sound. Soft and final. It was the quietest thing Garret had heard all day. He wouldn’t have been close enough to hear it unless he’d been the one to do it—unless he had been Bramley’s executioner.

  Garret let go and tried to brace for the blow that was surely coming, Dr. Grey’s words flashed through his head. In the end, it was all I could do for my friend. So Garret wondered, Is this how Dr. Grey ended up like he is? Is this what destroyed him? The idea was so frighteningly simple that it was probably true. But Garret had more immediate things to think about, such as the enormous grey fist coming through at high speed. The creature could have run him through with its claws, but instead it had closed its fist. It didn’t want to kill him, it wanted to hurt him.

  The fist might as well have been a locomotive, though the iron front end of a train would probably have been softer. The blow sent him crashing into a wall. He hadn’t fallen all the way to the ground before the creature was on him. It pinned him to the wall and leaned on him, sending wires of pain branching through his wolf body.

  “How dare you touch him! How dare you touch Bramley!” it roared. It flung Garret again. He tumbled through the air and the back door rotated into his view right before he hit it.

  It broke, or maybe he broke. Something broke, and he tumbled onto the portico.

  Whimpering and head spinning, Garret tried to get his paws under him. The creature was on him again. With disorienting force, it flung him straight up, sending him through the roof above the portico. Mercifully, he missed the rafters, but he flew into the sky, turning gently to see the creature explode through the roof like a cannon shot, coming up to meet him. It grabbed him in the air, and flung him downward. Garret screamed as he fell towards the slate roof, which would be a sudden, violent stop which neither man nor wolf could survive. He closed his eyes, though
t of Molly, and hit the slabs of slate. Just before he did, they gave way of their own accord, the roof’s structure eaten away by the fires beneath. So instead of crushing him, the slate only hurt like hell, and slowed him slightly.

  Garret fell into an inferno, tumbling, bouncing off of burning planks and rafters, breaking through some, searing his skin and scorching his fur, filling his lungs with smoke. He crashed through disintegrating plaster and landed on Molly’s bed. The mattress broke his fall, though it sacrificed itself to do so. His fur retreated, leaving only burned, torn human skin.

  Eyes full of ash and coughing his lungs out, Garret struggled weakly to get off the bed. It took him four seconds. If it had taken five, he would have died. In a gout of smoke and flames, the creature crashed through, widening the hole he’d made in the ceiling. Its triangular ears were pulled back, and its claws were out, spearing the mattress, but when it hit the bed, the floor gave way. The creature, the bed, and Garret were all pulled down through a funnel of collapsing floor and raining furniture.

  The marble of the first floor met him with savage glee, slapping his already broken body. Flaming timbers rained around him, but Garret couldn’t move. It hurt too badly. Pain had become a living thing inside him, thrashing around and hating Garret with as much vehemence as the creature itself. It ran through his muscles, it stretched his nerves, it raked his skin, it pooled in the blood from his back, which was sizzling on the superheated marble.

  Molly’s armoire slammed into the floor beside Garret, flinging splinters. He couldn’t see anything beyond the grey and orange blur of smoke and flame. His lungs kept trying to draw air, then hacking out the searing smoke that filled them instead.

  A blurred form loomed over him. The creature. It crouched close, spread his legs and one of his arms and knelt on all three of them. Garret couldn’t inhale, so he couldn’t exhale to cry out at the pain of the unbearable weight.

  The creature placed its free hand on his chest, or rather, the points of its six claws. In a circle, they surrounded his heart. With glacial slowness, the creature began to push them into Garret’s chest. Compared to the agonies he’d experienced in the past few days, sharp tips entering his skin and muscle should have been merely uncomfortable. Instead, Garret shuddered, lurched violently and involuntarily, but it had little to do with the physical nature of what was happening. The creature was driving itself into his soul, pushing itself into him, invading the core of his being. It was like being raped. It was like being eaten alive. It was like being ripped apart by giving birth to something larger than yourself.