by Sam Witt
The half-made girl’s good hand was looped around Stevie’s wrist, grinding the bones together and holding the witch close. “If I can’t teach you about love,” she whispered in Stevie’s thoughts, “then I’ll teach you about pain.”
The girl squeezed her finger and thumb together, and Stevie’s wrist bones popped and cracked to pieces. Zigzag lightning bolts of exquisite pain raced through Stevie’s nerves, lighting her brain up like a fireworks display in hell.
CHAPTER 66
ELSA NO LONGER cried out. Her clouded eyes stayed locked on Joe as her lips trembled and fat tears rolled down the sides of her face and into her tangled hair. Joe watched as his baby lay there suffering and knew that he’d done this to her. There were monsters in the mix, but in the end it was his own hand that had delivered Elsa to the darkness. He’d had a plan, he knew that, but it seemed so long ago and far away that he couldn’t put its pieces together. Worst of all, was the fact that he could feel his girl’s pain, but it no longer bothered him. Whatever part of him was meant to care was burnt out by the onrushing presence of the new boss. As it pushed its way through the darkness and into this world, it was doing something to Joe’s soul.
Swearing to the Long Man hadn’t been like this. Joe had gone after his father died, walked the long road up to the Black Lodge with the old man’s shredded body cradled in his arms. He’d come into the shadowed house as an empty shell, a new-made man with baby fat still clinging to his cheeks and blood soaking into his boots. Swearing the words, taking the oath to protect the people of Pitchfork from the same evil that had taken his father had felt right and just. He’d been filled with a zealous strength and righteous sense of purpose that left him ready to take on any asshole who got in his way. The Long Man had scooped out a little space in Joe’s soul and filled it with a shard of himself, a portion of his being and power.
But swearing to the new boss left Joe wrung out and used up. Strong as hell, pretty sure he could take on the whole county in a fair fight, but weary all the way down to his bones. There was no greater purpose here, no sense of relief in finding the spot where you belonged. Joe watched what was happening now with the same resigned attention of a bait dog being thrown into the ring. What was going to happen would happen, no matter what he did, so there wasn’t much sense getting all riled up about it.
Joe knew there’d been some other plan, some scheme to raise a ruckus so his people could do their part, then he’d spring his own little ambush on the new boss. With his daughter on the slab and his brain being squashed by the intrusive, burning mind, Joe just couldn’t see the point in all that business. He was too wiped out for any of it.
The air above the ancient altar shimmered with a hazy purple light. There was a sucking, a sudden drop in pressure as the new boss scratched a tiny little pinprick through the wall of reality. There was a blackness there, a complete lack of light, that tugged at Joe’s guts. This was the real deal, oblivion staring at him through a crack in the world. “In the end,” it whispered, “you all come to me.”
The bats answered the call of darkness. They swarmed into the cave like a living tornado, whirling between the serpent-filled quartz columns, their countless wings pounding the air into submission. Stinking shit stained the floor as they came, a liquid shadow that formed a river of filth flowing up to the very edge of the dais. The bats circled the altar, sweeping through gyres around one another, filling the air with their screeches.
Elsa’s hand groped blindly for Joe. He took her tiny fingers in his own and her eyes snapped back to blue. “Daddy,” she whispered, “I can’t hold it back, not for much longer. It’s so big.”
Joe wanted to squeeze her little hand, but he couldn’t muster the energy to comfort her. He didn’t know how he could have believed this frail little girl could stand against the darkness. What kind of a shitty father was he to put her in harm’s way? “You let it come on, then, baby. This ain’t a fight for you.”
Elsa looked at her father, her blue eyes probing him, trying to make sense of his words. “Daddy, we fight the bad things. That’s what we do.”
“Let it go, baby girl. The world has rolled on. No sense trying to haul it back.” He tried to shake his hand loose from his daughter’s grip, but she wasn’t letting go. Elsa’s thin fingers clung around his hand, and he had to peel them off, one by one. “You listen to your old man now, girl. You let it come on.”
It killed some part of him to take away her hope, but Joe couldn’t see his way to any other choice. Better to let her go quietly, to slip off for the final sleep, than to have her keep fighting and getting tore up in a battle she could never win. Elsa turned her head away from him and folded her hands over her stomach.
Joe’s hand strayed to his backpack, his fingers feeling for what he’d taken from Stevie’s house. It was still there, but he didn’t see much point in messing with it now.
Fervent, mad singing joined with the bats’ screams, a worshipful cacophony that echoed through the cavern. The cultists came into the chamber, making the pilgrimage to see the birth of their god. They belly-crawled across the cold stone floor to pay homage to the nightmare they’d begged to be their king.
They made Joe’s stomach hurt with a mixture of disgust and grief. He watched them creeping forward on their bellies, and he saw the sad and pathetic reality of their lives. Worse, he saw the truth of his own.
Pitchfork was full of the broken and weak, the weary and hopeless. But they hadn’t always been that way. Not so many generations back, the people of Pitchfork were pioneers and explorers, the kind of brave men and women who spawned legends. They’d mined these hills and tamed the wilderness to make lives for themselves. They’d held the darkness to the caves and valleys through sheer grit and hardheadedness. Then time had moved on, and the world outside Pitchfork left those brave men and women behind.
In the years since the railroads and highways had detoured around Pitchfork, the best and the brightest the county had to offer left to chase their fortunes in the wider world. Those who stayed behind lost hope. Depression ate away at their sense of self and stripped them of their drive to find something better. The world had fed these people shit for so long they’d started to like the taste.
Joe watched them abase themselves and knew he’d been wrong to hate these people. He’d hounded them for the only hope they had, that something greater than themselves would come and lift them up out of the ruins. They’d been wrong to worship at the black altars and wrong to make compacts with the darkness, but the gods of light hadn’t exactly been fair to them.
He felt useless and stupid, sick with himself that he could only see the truth now, at the end, when it was too late to take it all back and do it right.
Overhead, the tear in the world widened into a quivering, fire-dripping slit. A voice poured through the hole, adding its wordless cries to the operatic wailing of its worshipers. The sound had weight, a power that drove Joe to his knees. Tears ran from his eyes, and he felt as if the whole world had fallen on his shoulders.
It was so much more than he’d imagined. How could he have ever thought to stand against this nightmare? Even this tiny piece of it, this ephemeral wisp of its true magnitude, was an overpowering totem to darkness. It was not a monster, but an absolute. A fact that the universe was, and always would be, ruled by those who took without pity or remorse. The world belonged to those who consumed it.
Elsa’s voice cut through the din and buried itself in Joe’s ear. “I can’t hardly hang on no more, Daddy. Will you hold my hand?”
Her words stirred that part of him Joe had thought cold and dead. He tried to reach out to her, but his muscles wouldn’t listen. His hand jiggled on the end of his wrist, but his arm hung useless and weak at his side like someone had cut the nerves at the shoulder.
“Leave her her her,” the voice thundered. Joe felt something pop in his left eye and tears squirted down his cheek. He tasted blood on his lips and a spark of rage flared deep in the center of his chest.
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Joe didn’t want to be like those poor fuckers crawling across the ground, with their lips pressed to the limestone and their throats raw from screaming their strange prayers. It was easier to be the one who followed orders, simpler to obey.
But it wasn’t who Joe wanted to be. It wasn’t what any man deserved to be.
Years of kowtowing to the Long Man had given way to this new boss, one who wanted to not just tell him what to do, but force him to do it. And that was just a mite too far for Joe to bow.
The clean, pure fire of anger helped Joe remember his plan. It was time to do what he’d come to do.
Joe felt the blackest, most hateful thoughts he could muster erupt in his skull. He saw the most depraved visions of a Pitchfork under the new boss’s thumb run wild, clouding his mind with fantasies that repelled and fascinated him. He could see, with the power of the new boss within him, how to make it all real, how to keep people where they needed to be and out of mischief.
He could see what it would be like to be king.
A king without a family, a king who served at the pleasure of something foul and dark. A king who’d forsworn everything to gain nothing.
And Joe didn’t think he could live like that.
He growled and shoved his hand into his backpack. He felt the new boss closing around his muscles, trying to stop him, but he was ready for it this time and pushed back, bending the power he’d been given to his own ends. The new boss screamed in Joe’s head, but it was learning that this new relationship worked both ways and what was once given didn’t get taken back quite so easily.
Joe pulled out the mask he’d taken from Stevie’s house and lowered it onto Elsa’s face. It was the cruel black mask, the one that had started Elsa down the path that ended here. It settled on his little girl’s face with a quiet sucking, as if pulled into place by her need.
There was a thrum in the air, like a chord being struck on a guitar string made from God’s hair, and Joe’s ears popped. The power flowing through the tear was no longer coming under its own steam, it was yanked screeching into the world before it was ready.
Elsa’s body stiffened. Her eyes snapped open, staring sightless up through the mask’s eyeholes. Behind the mask, she was the one to be feared, the mistress of spirits. “Come to me,” she whispered, “come on, and let’s see what you got, you nasty old monster.”
There was a roar in Joe’s head, a sound like a tidal wave crashing over a tornado, the sound of a great beast let loose in a room far too small to hold it.
The new boss screamed and thrashed and fought. This was what it wanted, to come to Pitchfork. The beast had wanted to use Elsa, to possess her as its host while it acclimated to the new reality.
But Elsa wasn’t going to give it that chance. Without the mask, she was an open conduit, a great big hose for spirits to pour through.
With the mask, she was the master. She called the shots, and the spirits came when and how she wanted them.
A massive wing burst through the burning hole and slashed across the cavern. It smashed through stalactites and sent them plummeting into the huddled knots of cultists. The stone spears punctured bodies and pulped guts and heads and legs, pinning the faithful to the floor. Their blood ran red across the limestone, collected in pools into which the greedy bats hurled themselves.
A second wing tore its way into the world, crashing into the ceiling and sending even more stalactites plunging through its followers. Its head followed the wing, a nightmare of a gnarled bat’s face dripping with pink slime that burned sizzling holes in the limestone floor where it fell. Quivering tentacles drooped from below its convoluted spade of a nose, hanging like a curtain of flesh before the fanged gash of its mouth.
Its single, bulging eye emerged from its forehead like a ripening boil. The lids opened, and tears poured out, steaming in the cool cave air. The three pupils in its center pulsed and dilated as they fixed Joe with a hateful stare.
It was like standing before an avalanche. Joe’s mouth went dry at the crushing enormity of his enemy. Each pupil was bigger than his head. Its wings were too wide to fit into the cavern without bending. Its body creaked through the opening. Looking at it made Joe’s head swim; he couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. Its body undulated in a hundred different directions, like a nest of copperheads. Black holes opened in its body, and pink tongues licked the air from within them. It was scaled and hairy, straight and crooked, an amalgam of nightmares and dreams.
Joe wasn’t sure if any of the others had finished their work, but he didn’t have time to fuck around waiting for a sign. The bat god was coming, and whether that was its plan or not, it would be ready to start kicking some ass very soon.
Elsa had surprised it, weakened it by hauling it into this world before it was quite ready, and he had to take advantage of the moment before it passed.
The shotgun slipped off Joe’s shoulder and into his hand. He whipped it up, not giving the new boss time to figure out what he was up to. Joe could feel the monster’s confusion, the swirling mass of hate and rage that it called a mind. He swung the shotgun up and aimed it at the bulging eye.
It screamed at him, a sound that pierced his head like an iron rod fired from a cannon.
Joe pulled both of the shotgun’s triggers.
Twin lances of silver fire and smoking lead soared through the air. They punctured two of the pupils, sending a scalding cascade of vitreous fluid splashing down around Joe.
The new boss threw its head back, spraying saliva into the air. Its screeching took on a new, hideous pitch that made Joe want to drive nails into his own ears to make it stop. It was the sound of death, the mindless howl of a mortally wounded beast.
The new boss thrashed its wings against the sides of the cavern, breaking open jagged cracks that raced across the walls and ceiling. But the monster didn’t fall.
Its head swiveled back to Joe and the big, blazing eye was whole, untouched.
Joe realized his error, too late. It wasn’t screaming.
It was laughing.
CHAPTER 67
THE BIG WHITE Hummer roared over the back roads of Pitchfork County, blasting over bumps and kicking up gravel rooster tails from its rear tires. The driver watched the road with unblinking eyes, his hands relaxed at ten and two, like he was taking a leisurely Sunday morning drive and not driving hell-for-leather down a rutted road that was little more than a trail. He swerved to the left to avoid a squirrel, then snapped the big car back to the right as smooth as could be.
Walker didn’t worry about his driver’s ability to keep the vehicle on the road. The driver drove as he always had, flawlessly. The old preacher prayed his old prayers, whispering the words to himself. He didn’t want to die today. He wanted to go back to what he’d been doing before all this madness had dropped on him. He wanted to worship his God in peace, lead his flock through the rituals of the faithful. It had been a good life.
He couldn’t bring himself to believe it was over.
Walker sighed and leaned back in the comfortable custom seat he’d had made for the Hummer. It fit him perfectly, though he’d need to change it in another year when his ass grew too fat. He latched onto that thought, on surviving long enough to need to replace that seat, on all the rich rewards he’d earned for his good works. His God would surely be pleased by his actions today.
“But will he forgive me for missing this in the first place?” Walker tapped his plump lips with his index finger and pondered the question. What would the Red Oak feel about the desecration it had suffered? While the Night Marshal had instigated this disaster, Walker was the shepherd, and it was his job to keep the holy root safe. He wasn’t sure that success today would be enough to cleanse him of his failure.
The Hummer lurched to a halt in front of Walker’s church, wheels kicking up fallen leaves and chunks of gravel. The driver stayed behind the wheel, eyes fixed to the road. That driver had held the reins of wagons, the wooden wheel of a Model T, and to many other vehi
cles to count before he’d sat in the captain’s seat of the Hummer. As long as there’d been a pastor for Red Oak, the driver had been there to carry him about his appointed rounds. Walker wondered where the man had come from, wondered if he’d ever find out.
“That’s a worry for another day,” the old preacher grunted as he pushed the Hummer’s door open and eased himself down onto the gravel. He was fat, but he was still strong and nimbler than anyone gave him credit for. The opulence of his figure hid a strong, resilient man, a fact that Walker was more than happy to let others discover to their chagrin.
His boys spilled out of the church, white robes gliding over the damp earth, darkening where their hems soaked up the morning dew. They did not speak, but flowed around him, lending him their support and innocent courage. Their presence eased his worries and calmed his troubled mind. Walker loved his boys.
The preacher rested his heavy hand on a boy’s shoulder. “Thank you, my children.”
At the door to the church, Walker’s gut lurched. The wound ached, a bad tooth throb that froze him in his tracks. He clutched his hand to the wound, and a wet warmth oozed through his fingers. Then something wriggled inside his gut.
“She’s here,” Walker whispered.
The boys raised their voices, a choir of innocence that eased Walker’s pain and chased the chill from his bones. The boys were filled with God’s spirit, and they always knew the perfect way to help him along his often troubled path. Walker hurried them up to the altar. “Come along, children, our time is short.”
Walker hoisted his bulk up the steps to the altar, pausing at the top to gaze up at the red-stained cross that hung from the ceiling. The gnawing ache in his gut was back, despite the soothing song of his choir and the warm strength of the cross. Walker limped to the altar and put his hands on its polished surface, framing the stain left by the half-made girl between his outstretched fingers.
