The Portal

by Russell James

Scott moved toward the platform. Villagers’ hands clamped around his arms and shoulders and locked him in place.

  Scott’s father’s pupils flared red. He pulled the release with malicious gusto. The blade sailed down and severed Anita’s head mid-scream. This time, blood poured from her severed neck in thick, gushing pulses and splashed villagers at the crowd’s edge.

  Scott closed his eyes against the horror. The villagers shook him until he opened them again.

  Now they held him right before the platform, face a foot from the open maw of the stocks at the guillotine’s base. The warm, coppery smell of blood roiled his stomach. His father towered over him. His skin had turned sunset-red. His teeth were now white sharpened spikes. The woodsmoke air suddenly reeked of sulfur.

  “The best sacrifices are those made twice,” his father said. “Ah, to have loved and lost twice….”

  Allie appeared in the stocks. She looked confused. Scott’s heart stumbled.

  “Scottie? Where am I? What are you doing to me?”

  “Allie, it’s not me!” He tried to reach for her, but the villagers gripped him like steel bindings.

  His father laughed, a deep rumbling laugh. His face elongated. Oates’ voice replaced his father’s.

  “He’s me, I’m him,” Oates said. “And soon we’ll be you.” His face swirled again and then Scott was staring at himself. His alter ego flashed a set of those wicked, pointed teeth. “One big, happy, murderous family. It’s your destiny.”

  Oates laughed so high it registered as a shriek. He pulled the release rope like starting an outboard.

  “Scottie!” Allie begged.

  The blade whistled down. With a crunch and thunk, it chopped through Allie’s neck. Searing-hot blood exploded from the stump and drenched Scott’s face.

  The world turned red, then black.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Scott popped wide awake. His heart slammed in his chest, his pulse raced full speed. Even through closed drapes, the morning sun seemed to sizzle his eyes. He sighed with relief as he recognized Allie’s living room had replaced the guillotine.

  Something stirred in his lap. He realized he’d slept sitting up, and then remembered falling asleep on the couch. Allie still slept beside him. She thrashed in the grip of her own nightmare. Scott reached down, slid an arm around her waist, and tucked her close.

  “Allie,” he whispered. “Everything’s okay. Wake up, Allie Cat. It’s just a dream.”

  Allie’s eyes shot open. She jerked upright, every muscle tight as guitar strings. She looked at him in stark terror.

  “Scottie!” she said. She squinted, blinked, and relaxed. “Oh, my God. I had such a nightmare. There was a man. So evil. And the birds. The horrible birds.”

  “Talk it out of your system,” Scott said.

  “Well, I was home….” Allie started, then looked scared, as if the full memory of the nightmare came rushing back. She shook her head. “Nothing. Nonsense images. A jumble.”

  “Well, from the way you were squirming,” Scott said, “that one was best forgotten.”

  Allie raised a hand against the sunlight streaming in around the drapes.

  “I guess we fell asleep,” she said. “What time is it?”

  Scott looked over at the DVR on top of the TV. The omnipresent clock display was dark. He looked at the stereo. It should have still been on, along with the lights in the room. He checked his watch.

  “It’s 8 a.m.,” he said. “Does the power go out a lot way out here?”

  “No one mentioned that,” Allie said. She got up and went into the kitchen. “I’ll call the power company.”

  “With what?” Scott asked.

  “Damn,” he heard whispered from the other room.

  “It’s about time your lack of a phone frustrated someone other than me,” he said. “Do you have a battery-powered radio? We could tune in WSHR and see if they report a widespread power outage.” WSHR was Stone Harbor’s local low-watt radio station.

  He walked into the kitchen as Allie was flicking on the portable radio on the kitchen counter. He could hear Boston and Hartford stations as she spun the tuning dial, but there was only silence on the Stone Harbor frequency.

  “No WSHR,” she said. “It must be a major outage.”

  Scott didn’t like the coincidental power outage. In his memory, the island had never had a blackout. Now at least a portion of the island was dark, on the same day that Satan showed up with six ex-cons to collect a portal to Hell. There was no way these things were unrelated.

  “Allie,” he said, “I don’t think—”

  “That it’s a coincidence,” she finished his sentence. “Something big is going on.”

  “We need to figure out what,” Scott said. He retrieved what little plan he had made last night. “Let’s go down to All Souls and see Reverend Snow. We need some more details about the Portal and how he plans to keep it out of Satan’s hands.”

  “You’re driving,” she said. “Something about that nightmare spooks me about driving Stewie.”

  Scott wasn’t about to admit that the whole situation had him spooked.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Cisco Ramirez was starving.

  Until the last few minutes, he really hadn’t been hungry, but all of a sudden, he was famished. He wasn’t just ready for something to eat, he was hyenas-tearing-at-a-antelope ready to eat. His first choice was chorizo, but he knew that he was at least a thousand miles from a decent batch of that. Between drinking a bottle of whatever that crap was from the old man’s basement last night, and Kyler waking him after what seemed like minutes of sleep, his brain felt one size too big for his skull.

  Hunger only stoked his simmering anger. He’d spent yesterday rooting around in the woods. Today, he got stuck driving an old, creaky, gutless Taurus while the pickup went to that prick Ricco, a bastard rapidly getting on his nerves and about one inch away from a major ass-kicking. Then Kyler sent him to this lame little outpost on West Street. This whole event was one big shit sandwich.

  He sat on the hood of the Taurus in the center of the street and cradled the assault rifle in his lap. Residential homes with sickeningly well-manicured lawns surrounded him. The trees were bare and there wasn’t a stray leaf in any yard. A number of the houses even had stupid scale model windmills or cheesy fountains in the front yards. The shit some people thought was important….

  And just his luck, he came here with shoot to kill orders, and no one showed up to be shot. Sure, a few sheeplike residents had cracked a door and peered out of their darkened homes, but they quickly ducked back in. One look at Ramirez lounging on the hood of a car with an assault rifle was all the warning they needed. He was their worst nightmare, a well-armed illegal.

  There had been a little entertainment earlier in the morning. The neighborhood dogs had staged some bizarre simultaneous rebellion. Loud barking started at one end of the block and worked down in a chain reaction. Then came the Spectacle of the Superdogs. From many houses, family pets of all sizes leapt out of their yards, clearing impossibly high fences. Many dragged sections of rope or chain with frayed or shattered ends. Then front doors swung open and more dogs exploded from houses and bolted into the street. Bewildered, sometimes-bloodied owners peered out after them. A few started to cross the threshold and follow their pets, but the sight of Ramirez and an automatic weapon seemed to deter them.

  Ramirez had a few bad dog experiences during afterhours visits to impound yards during his car theft years. This parade of psycho dogs made him nervous. But despite their violent turns on their owners, they ignored him. He watched with amazement as the dogs met in the street, and then broke down into smaller groups. In pairs or triples, the dogs went off on well-defined courses, with seemingly specific destinations, like they were setting up patrols.

  Indeed, a collie and a retriever made rounds of his n
eighborhood, passing the nose of his car every twenty minutes or so. A few times, rapid-fire barking sounded in the distance, usually followed by human screams and the sound of a slamming door. Sounded like the dogs were covering his back.

  He knew the dog thing was Oates’ doing. When the wine kicked in last night, the men had started trading Oates stories. One guy, Culpepper, told him that he’d seen Oates command animals, actually directing two hawks to land at his feet. The man in black definitely had some powers. Was the guy the Devil himself, like some of the men thought? Ramirez wasn’t sure. Devil, demon, warlock, whatever he was, Ramirez knew to stay on the dude’s good side.

  His stomach rumbled again. His position on West Street, unfortunately, wasn’t opposite a Dunkin’ Donuts or a Denny’s. Not that they would be open on the First Annual Oates Day Holiday anyway.

  He looked over to the house on his right. A bespectacled old guy peeped out the window and quickly ducked back behind the drapes. He reminded Ramirez of a kid he used to wallop the shit out of in high school, the type that offered no resistance, the kind that turned bitch in prison. Ramirez smiled. That puss would not only hand over breakfast, Ramirez would make him cook it.

  He thought about Kyler’s instructions. Don’t leave this spot until Kyler or Oates told him to.

  Yeah, screw that, he thought. What Kyler doesn’t know won’t hurt him. What if I had to take a shit? Does he expect me to drop a load in the middle of the street?

  Besides, the dogs have me covered. The mutts are everywhere, keeping these cattle in their pens. I can be gone a few minutes. Not a damn thing has happened here all morning anyhow.

  Ramirez slid off the hood of the car. He held his assault rifle casually at his side by the pistol grip, muzzle down. He made a beeline for the house with the wimp. His boots trampled a bed of fall flowers, crushing the blossoms into the earth.

  The little man in the house made another furtive glance out the front window. The man’s jaw dropped in panic at Ramirez’s approach. His face disappeared. The drapes closed and quivered, as if the house itself feared Ramirez’s arrival.

  Oh, yeah, I’m getting breakfast, Ramirez thought. His finger caressed the rifle’s trigger.

  Ramirez entered 281 West Street for breakfast. By chance or some other intercession, that left the intersection on West Street unguarded just as Scott Tackett’s pickup came into view.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “This doesn’t look good,” Scott said.

  He feathered the pickup’s brake pedal. A rusty dark green Taurus with no license plates blocked West Street. He recognized it from Wheeler’s car lot. It sat empty. He nudged his truck’s left two wheels over the curb and crept past it.

  “Where is everybody?” Allie said. “Even with the power out, or maybe especially with it out, people should be outside. It’s Saturday morning.”

  “Someone,” Scott said, “or something, must be keeping them in, scaring them from coming out. Whatever it is, we don’t need to meet up with it.”

  The truck cleared the Taurus and dropped down off the curb. Scott hit the accelerator. “I hope Reverend Snow is all right.”

  “Amen to that,” Allie exhaled.

  The next few miles to the church looked like the set of some eerie end-of-the-world movie. The power was out everywhere. Traffic signals hung lifeless at every intersection. Scott and Allie pulled into the empty church parking lot. Scott parked in front of the church’s double doors, Allie’s door facing the steps.

  Loud, deep, furious barking broke the silence. A large German shepherd burst from the tree line at the lot’s edge and sprinted for the truck at an unreal speed.

  “Oh my God,” Allie gasped.

  The dog disappeared under the truck’s nose. The truck shook, then echoed with the sound of cracking plastic.

  The shepherd leapt onto the truck’s hood. The lightweight steel crunched and the dog’s claws ripped valleys into the paint. Its powerful jaws clamped a jagged chunk of the heavy plastic air dam between them. The dog’s eyes burned a chilling red. It spit the shredded plastic aside. Saliva glistened on its bared, sharp teeth. Its head snapped left then right, alternately barraging Scott, then Allie, with an unearthly barking so deep it resonated in the cab. Strings of saliva splattered the windshield with each snap of its jaws.

  Allie slid closer to Scott and grabbed his hand.

  Scott was more frightened than he wanted Allie to know. He was more frightened than he wanted to know. “That’s the Campbells’ dog. From the other side of town.”

  “What are we going to do?” Allie said.

  The dog’s head swung and revealed the remnants of a chain at its collar. A patch of dried blood stained the fur on its neck. The dog wasn’t just dangerous. It was deadly.

  Scott gauged the distance to the doors of the church. A dozen yards away and up one flight of steps. It would be a quick dash for them, but the dog had come out of the woods like it was launched with a rocket. They’d never make it.

  The dog leapt from the hood. As if reading Scott’s mind, it ran up the front steps. It crouched back on its hind legs and snarled. Then the shepherd came hurtling at the truck.

  Allie slid away from the passenger door. Scott wrapped his arms around her. She spun and braced her feet against the door.

  The dog launched itself from the last step. It dropped its head and angled one massive shoulder toward the truck, like an offensive lineman at a tackle dummy. The dog vanished below their sightlines.

  The dog hit. The passenger door crushed inward, and Allie locked her knees to push against it. The impact rocked the truck on its springs. Scott thought the dog had to have broken its neck.

  It hadn’t.

  Two front paws slammed against the base of the passenger window. Then the German shepherd’s head rose to fill the window frame. A deep, bloody gash sliced its shoulder deep enough to show bone. Its panting fogged the glass, but its blazing red eyes burned through the mist. The dog barked and gave its head a quick jerk back, beckoning to them, daring them to come out of the truck and play rough. It growled.

  It loped back up to the top of the steps, strong despite the obvious wear from its kamikaze assault. It began another run at the vehicle. This time it ran faster, leapt later, and hit even harder.

  The truck lurched hard. Allie squished Scott against the door. The interior passenger door panel popped off against Allie’s feet. A crack formed at the base of the window. The dog retreated for another run.

  “Allie, is that church door open?” Scott asked.

  “It always has been,” she said. “We’ll never get to it.”

  “I’m going to distract the dog,” he said, “then you need to run for it.”

  Allie sat up and looked at him in horror.

  “What does that mean?” she said. “I’m not leaving you out here.”

  “I’ll be right behind you. Leave the door open. Just get ready to go.”

  Allie shook her head.

  “Trust me, Allie Cat.”

  Allie bit her lip, then slid back across the seat. She put her hand on the door handle. She looked at Scott, her eyes wide with fear.

  “Don’t do something stupid,” she said.

  Scott rolled down his window and popped the door open an inch.

  The dog crouched for its next assault on the crippled truck.

  Scott pulled himself out of the window and sat up on its edge. He banged both hands on the roof like a bongo drum. “Right here, Fido!”

  The dog’s snarl rose to a roar. It leapt from the top step, hit the ground, then sprang straight ahead and jumped to crest the truck’s roof.

  “Go, Allie! Now!” Scott commanded.

  Allie threw herself at the passenger door. Metal moaned and the door popped open just as the shepherd sailed overhead. She tumbled out of the truck.

  Scott ducked back in th
rough the window inches ahead of the dog’s bared teeth. He dropped back-first onto the bench seat, and pushed the driver’s door wide open behind him.

  The dog hadn’t counted on the open door. It crested the side of the truck, head tucked and snapping in Scott’s wake. It flew forward and its belly scraped the top of the doorframe. The pointed corner pierced it just below the breastbone and ripped a canyon into the dog’s gut as momentum kept it going. The dog howled in pain and fury.

  Allie had scrambled to the top step. Scott slid out of the passenger door feet-first and followed her.

  The dog hit the ground on its side. Intestines bulged from the rent in its belly. It sprang to its feet, unfazed, eyes bright as roaring suns. Scott glanced back. The dog crouched and leapt back over the truck cab.

  Allie pushed open the church door. Scott hit the church’s first step and then soared over the next two in one leap.

  The dog cleared the truck with a wet slap of entrails against the roof. It landed at the church’s bottom step with a throaty growl.

  Scott leapt across the top step and flew in through the open church door like he was sliding face-first for home. Allie swung the door shut behind him. The latch clicked a split second before the shepherd hit it so hard the hinges wept dust. Frustrated, furious barking bellowed from the front steps, followed by another heavy blow to the door.

  Scott rolled on his back. Allie had her back against the church door. She whirled, flipped the two deadbolts, and knelt by his side.

  “Are you all right?”

  Scott looked himself up and down. “I think so.”

  Allie punched him in the chest. “Then don’t ever do something that stupid again!”

  She sat back and looked across the church. Her eyes went wide then filled with tears. Her jaw trembled and she buried her face in her hands.

  Scott spun around and looked up at the altar. He had to force himself not to look away.

  At the base of the altar, the crucifix’s Christ figure lay in a pile, arms, legs, and torso severed and stacked like a rack of kindling. At the top of the heap, Christ’s head lay on its side.