“Hey! Fuckface!” Crowley’s voice was loud in the growing silence. The thing turned to look at him again. Then it moved, pushing away from the ruined wall, bleeding profusely as it charged, the brutal slab of meat caught Crowley in its oversized hands and rammed him into the wall.
Crowley wasn’t moving.
The big thing was.
***
None of the memories it had taken from anything, living or dead, had ever prepared it for the pain it felt. The Dead God was dying; it’s body failing after so much time and energy devoted to building it.
And the Dead God was not amused.
Its hand caught the once old man and squeezed, feeling bones creak and break under its grip. But that was not enough. It needed to kill the old man once and for all, to get rid of him so that it could try again. It had made a body before, there was no reason it couldn’t make another now that it needed to.
Still the man struggled, thrashed as it slammed him into the wall. He fought with every breath, his fingers trying to peel back the Dead God’s flesh and break its grip.
It would not let him escape.
Once more it reached into the once old man’s mind and sought a way to stop him. It found just the right memory, the perfect way to make him stop struggling, and forced the man to relive it again.
***
John felt the bones grating inside his body. He heard the break and couldn’t even manage a groan. He’d underestimated the thing a second time and it looked like it might be the last time. He was almost grateful. Maybe this time death would come for him properly.
He’d accepted it. He welcomed it.
Then it got stupid and made him angry.
Whatever it meant to do, instead of simply crushing him it shoved his mind back into the memory of his family dying. Elizabeth’s screams echoed through him and tore at his heart. Jeremy’s pain-reddened eyes looked at him and ripped through his mind. His little boy was helpless and there was nothing he could do to stop the pain. Theresa’s last rattled breath cut into him and the sound of Wendy’s legs breaking, mixed with her wail of pain to freeze his blood anew.
John Crowley felt it all again with all of his senses, felt the anger, the sorrow, and the shame. His body was too broken to move, but his mind screamed for him, raging at the futility, the feeling of helplessness.
Jonathan Crowley let out a growl and looked at the face of the thing that mocked his memories and forced him to relive them. It was bloodied, yes, dying even. But it looked at him with hatred and reveled in his pain.
“You asked for it, you bitch.”
The Dead God looked at him with a shocked expression. It must have thought he was dead.
No such luck.
As has been stated before, Crowley preferred physical confrontation to mystical. Now and then something happened that changed his mind on the subject.
He touched the hands that were still wrapped around his chest and spoke softly, uttering words he had not spoken but twice before in his life.
The Dead God didn’t even have a chance to scream. Flesh boiled away from the oversized hands as streamers of smoke rose into the air. The monster dropped Crowley to the ground as its skin seared away.
It looked at the damaged meat and shivered. The blackened skin spread across the forearms and then upward as the monster looked on.
From his new perspective on the ground, John smiled as best he could through the pain of regeneration. He felt bones shifting back to their proper positions and the wreckage of his muscles and organs knitting themselves back together. Was it painful? Oh, yes. He didn’t care. He just pushed the pain aside and watched as the Dead God burned.
Panic rose in the demon’s eyes and Crowley stood up, his smile spreading wider and wider. The thing looked away from its ruined, smoking arms and then toward him with an expression of pure confusion. It didn’t understand how this could happen, didn’t realize that any physical body can be destroyed.
“You like that? Does it feel good?” John’s voice was shrill and he didn’t care. All thoughts of public appearance were gone from him. All concerns about the people in the asylum had been dismissed, replaced by the sheer pleasure of watching the sick fuck that had brought his worst pains back as it was incinerated.
The scorching heat spread, charring muscle and bone and blackening the pale flesh in a growing stain. Soon the whole form was blazing. Crowley stood near it, watching as the flesh bubbled and then finally burst into flames.
On the other side of the fire he could see Branaugh and a few other police officers staring in wide-eyed horror.
Finally he shook himself out of his rage and looked at the mess he’d made.
“Shit.”
The body was gone. The spirit was still out there and that meant it could still cause troubles. It would make another form if given the chance and it would make one even more powerful than the last.
The rift between life and death was still there, still growing, and as a result Crowley and all of the men present saw the hungry ghost as it rose from the remains.
Crowley called out past the shape that lifted and ordered Branaugh to get his ass inside and handle the situation there. Partially it was because he knew the chaos in Cherry Hill was probably reaching the point of no return. Dead and living alike were having it out. Mostly, he wanted the detective and everyone else away from him when he finished his duty.
The form that rose up was not quite shapeless. It towered up into the air, much larger than the body it had occupied, and stretched roughly shaped arms into the air above it as it howled its rage out into the ether.
In most cases Crowley had an advantage. He knew that he could survive almost anything. This was different. He’d never actually entered the place where the dead dwelled. That particular location was off limits to him as it was for every living thing. The Dead God had changed those rules and Crowley didn’t know exactly what would happen now, or how he would handle dealing with a giant that could potentially rip his essence out of his body.
He was about to find out.
***
Though it had sampled life and was intimate with death, it had never been killed before. The pain of being destroyed still echoed through its mind and while it was as strong as ever, the Dead God was having trouble recovering from the destruction of its body.
Senses that had become adjusted to the physical realm were suddenly altered and it saw not colors and shapes but energies. The once old man still glowed with a ferocious vitality, while it had been diminished. The man still had form and could move his body, while it stared down at the remains of the majestic form it had created.
It accessed its memories of the living and dead alike and chose a trick of the dead this time. Rather than creating a permanent body, it chose to use the ectoplasm all around it to achieve a temporary form.
Dead, yes, but not defeated. It pulled in the spirits around it as easily as it had inhaled oxygen while alive and it drew in the ectoplasm it wanted to gather mass.
The man looked up at it with that same strange smile in place and it felt weight again, however temporarily. This body would be less vulnerable. This form would be designed solely for destruction. The once old man would know pain and then death and it would swallow his soul, devour his wretched little life.
***
Branaugh and his men ran through the front doors of Cherry Hill’s main entrance and stared at the carnage. There was little left around the area that wasn’t battered in some way or another. No people, just furniture. That was as close to good news as he’d had in the last day.
“We’re not spreading out. We’re doing this together, guys. One room at a time.”
“You hear me complaining?” Liebowitz was looking almost as pasty as the thing they’d shot.
“Let’s just do this, okay?”
They hadn’t even reached the end of the hallway when the lights started flickering. Carl decided to worry about the people inside instead of the power outage. They kept movi
ng, and he wished he’d thought to bring a few hundred extra rounds.
They had no keys, which meant they either shot the locks off the doors to gain access to most of the building, or they found actual people who had keys. The first option wasn’t going to work very well because, if they were lucky, they might have ten bullets. And thinking about that fact, he checked with the rest of the officers. Sure enough, they had seven bullets. He took two of them.
That only left finding someone with keys. When in doubt, find food and you’ll find people. That was his philosophy in college and it had never failed him. He went for the break room.
He found people. Sort of. They were in the same shape as the first victims he’d seen, but the attacks on them hadn’t been quite as extreme.
Liebowitz looked at the survivors and groaned, his face going chalk white. “What the fuck happened to them?” He touched one of the fleshy masses with his foot and then backpedaled and screamed when it let out a moan of pain.
“Calm down!” Carl realized he was screaming and forced himself to take a few deep breaths. “This is what I’ve been dealing with in this place for the last week. We don’t know what causes it. The only good news is it’s not contagious.”
That said, he walked over to the first of the victims and tried to figure out where, exactly, the pockets on the slacks might be. There was an ID tag on the shirt that identified the whimpering lump as Phillip Harrington. Carl didn’t even try to suppress the shiver that ran through him as he reached into the pants pocket and fished around for the keys he needed. Harrington tried to say something, but all that came out was a faint whistling noise. His mouth was open and gaping, but Carl couldn’t see any hint of either teeth or a tongue.
“Shit, Harrington, I’m so sorry…”
He found the keys and stood back up on knees that threatened a rebellion. “Liebowitz, you need to call the station, now. Call them and tell them we need back up and ambulances.” He should have done that before, but he wasn’t thinking as clearly as he would have liked. Something about monsters and ghosts took away his normal calm.
Liebowitz didn’t respond. The lack of words coming from the younger cop was enough to make his neck hairs raise into hackles.
“Liebowitz?”
None of the others were responding. He didn’t want to turn around, didn’t want to see whatever was keeping them quiet. Carl had the purely childish desire to ignore whatever was over there and hope it would go away.
There were sounds, but they were faint, almost inaudible. They were wet noises, bloody snippets caught by his ears. When he couldn’t stand the near silence for even a moment longer, he turned and looked.
The three men with him were all crumpled to the ground, surrounded by the blurred, nightmarish shapes of the dead. A veritable army of ghosts held onto them and pulled at them. Parts of the living men twitched and shuddered as the ghosts sank hands into their flesh as if it were merely water and pulled away, taking something more with them. Each time a hand withdrew away from one of the uniformed officers, the cop flinched and trembled as if in pain.
“What the fuck?” Branaugh didn’t waste time thinking. He reached out to grab at one of the imperfect figures and felt his fingers pass through it.
The shape—he thought it was male but couldn’t be sure—ignored his presence completely. Its hand just kept reaching into Wendt and pulling, ripping something loose from inside of him. That something—his soul? His life force? His spirit? —left no marks on Wendt’s flesh or clothing as it was torn free.
Carl tried again to touch the ghosts and failed. He grew frantic. He screamed, he tried to lash out, but nothing worked. Liebowitz had stopped moving and all Wendt did was shiver uncontrollably.
Desperate, Branaugh grabbed Wendt by the ankle and pulled him away from the ghosts that attacked the downed officer.
That got him all the attention he could have ever wanted. The things hovering over Wendt turned to look at him, their misshapen faces contorted with rage.
“Oh, shit.” One of them lunged toward him and Branaugh raised his hands to block the attack. The thing moved through his arms and reached into his chest. Spectral fingers caught at him from the inside: hot knives of agony ripped into him and sent him to his knees. He felt it when a vital part of his spirit was torn loose from the rest and watched in horror as the hand pulled back and the ghost shoved some fragment of his soul into its greedy mouth.
That was the moment when Carl Branaugh knew he was a dead man.
One moment later, before his prediction could come true, the ghosts throughout the room were torn away, caught like wisps of smoke in a tornado and pulled through the wall.
If he’d had the strength, Carl would have gone after them. He would have seen that his suspicions were accurate: the ghosts were drawn to the Dead God as it tried to summon the strength to fight against its enemy. Throughout Cherry Hill the dead fought to keep their places and failed.
The Dead God was hungry and demanded sacrifices. The dead were chosen to fulfill its needs.
Carl Branaugh crawled on his hands and knees, aching and weak. He made it most of the way to the door before he collapsed into unconsciousness.
***
Crowley stood still and watched as the thing that called itself Dead God began rebuilding itself. Even without the unusual abilities he possessed he would have seen the ghosts being drawn to the monster. They came from inside the asylum and from farther away, like iron filings drawn to a powerful magnet, their energies drawn into the coalescing blackness. With each spirit the Dead God absorbed John could sense the power increase inside of that endlessly hungry pit.
He also saw it start to solidify as it generated the ectoplasm it needed to make a body.
As Crowley watched and recovered from the damage the thing had inflicted his smile grew bigger and brighter.
“That’s right, bright boy. You just keep making this easier for me.”
At first he thought he might have to deal with a giant again, but this time it seemed the Dead God preferred to play on a more level field. Instead of forming a body meant for intimidating mountains, it concentrated on adding mass to itself. It was still a little taller than him, but not gargantuan in its proportions. Thick ropes of ectoplasm wove themselves together around the spirit, forming a body that was close to human, but not quite there.
Crowley felt the itching heat fade from his muscles and knew that he was healed. His muscles hummed with energy and he paced around the thing as it finished recreating itself.
Dark, sleek skin covered a muscular frame. The face, malformed before, was nearly perfect now; a strong jaw and broad features surrounded eyes that were the same color as the flesh, and he saw the slack expression on the Dead God grow animated as it looked in his direction.
It spoke without opening its mouth: You must be destroyed.
“Yeah? Well, if you feel that way, I guess we should get this done, Peaches.”
The new and improved body was much faster and far more graceful. The Dead God stepped toward Crowley and drove its fist toward him. Crowley sidestepped, blocked the blow with his left arm and then caught the wrist as it passed by his face. His right arm lifted and dropped as he twisted the captured limb. A moment later, the Dead God screamed in pain as newly formed bones were shattered under the impact. Before it could properly recover, Crowley wrenched the broken limb in a half circle and yanked the hungry ghost in closer. His next blow broke the creature’s neck. He brought his knee up quickly and drove it into the shocked face of the thing and felt more bones fracture. Three well-placed kicks shattered the spinal column, the left fibula and the right side of the creature’s pelvis.
The Dead God fell to the ground again, face down, and Crowley spat at it. “First rule you should have learned, moron, is how to actually fight.” Most of the blows he’d delivered would have either crippled or killed a living being. The Dead God was not alive, not any more, and it started to rebuild the new flesh again.
Crowley didn�
�t give it the opportunity. He reached out with both of his hands and drove his fingers into the mockery of flesh, reaching past the ectoplasmic shell and into the very essence of the hungry ghost, before it could finish the task of healing itself.
“The second rule should have been how to stay hidden from me.”
He caught the spirit in his hands and pulled it from the body it had created. It burned, Lord, how it burned, but Crowley kept his smile going as he captured the thing.
He wove his spell quickly and efficiently, capturing the Dead God in his grip and stripping it of its power. He had fought demons on countless occasions and while the Dead God was powerful, it was nothing compared to a true Infernal.
“You cheated, sport. You didn’t play by the rules. Now I get to spank you and send you home.”
Oh, how it struggled. It tried to break away from his hands and when that failed it tried to force its way into Crowley’s body, but he was no longer a weak old man and he was ready for it.
What are you doing?
“I’m killing you once and for all, you little shit.”
NO! Please, I want to live!
“Not an option. You killed a lot of people and you broke the rules.”
I didn’t know! I didn’t understand!
“Yeah. You still don’t. You never will.”
It stopped trying to speak and sent waves of emotion into him, desperate wordless pleas for mercy. Crowley endured them and scowled through the process.
“Oh, stop it. You’re being a baby.” In truth—and John had to acknowledge that it was the truth—the entity was a baby. If he’d figured out the details as well as he thought he had, it was less than six months old and had spent that entire time getting a very skewed view of the world.
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