"Cut off her ears, Ray," Ben said, excitement bubbling in his voice.
"Hush up a minute." He lowered the blade so that it rested on her cheek. "Like I told you, Miz Edmiston, your choice of friends leaves something to be desired. You must know that the Blackburns cheated my family for years. Not just us. Lots of families."
"Yes. I know."
"The fact my dad got killed while he was trying to do something about it, well, that was no coincidence, was it?"
"No. But I had nothing to do with any of this. You know that."
"Don't tell me what I know," he said, his temper close boiling over. "If something really happened to my brother, I'm betting you know a lot more than you've let on."
"It's bullshit," Ben said. "Dad ain't dead. I'm telling you, she's just saying that to try to get us to go back in there."
Ray turned to glare at his nephew. "You shut up already. Just shut the hell up. I've a good mind to send you out to the cabin to look for him."
"Like hell! Not with that thing still running around! Come on, Ray, you know she's lying."
"Suppose she's not?"
Ben leaned down so Courtney could see his face, which appeared to register for the first time that she might be telling the truth. After a moment, he said, "If Dad's really dead, she's going to wish she was."
"Well, Miz Edmiston?"
She could feel warm blood running down her side. "I've told you everything I know. I've told you."
"Where is David Blackburn?"
"Home."
"No, he's not. Where do you think we went all that time?"
"I haven't seen him since last night."
"How much does he know about the Monarch?"
"He doesn't even believe in it."
"No?"
"I tried to tell him…I'd seen it in the woods around the house. He wouldn't believe me."
"Then you have seen it before."
"Just a glimpse."
"Come on, Ray. Just cut her up."
He ignored his nephew. "What about old Martha? You say she called the thing up. What's that mean, exactly?"
"She sang into the woods at night. It answered her." Her voice softened to a weak whisper as her energy ebbed.
"This is the biggest load of shit I ever heard," Ben said. "That was a bear or something that hit us. A fucking bear."
"It wasn't a bear," Ray said, impatience blazing in his eyes and voice. "Was it, sweetheart?"
She shook her head, barely able to move any longer. A brutal hand grabbed her hair and pulled her head forward.
"No passing out allowed." He patted her cheek a few times to bring her around. She groaned but felt her pain growing more distant. Then, with a look of resignation, Ray took hold of her underpants, sliced through the cotton fabric, and with a quick jerk, tore them away. She felt a sudden coldness on her inner thigh, which drew her back to full awareness. He had slipped the knife between her legs and was slowly moving it upward.
Ben began to laugh. "Yeah, Ray. Do it."
Again, the older man leaned close to her. "Okay. Unless I get some real answers from you, this thing is going to get know you intimately."
"I've told you the truth," she whispered.
"I think you can do better."
"It's everything I know. I swear it."
"We'll see. Now. I want you to tell me again. What happened to your friend? After she stopped shooting."
Courtney swallowed hard. She felt the blade beginning to press hard against her tender flesh. "Didn't see. The thing must have taken her. I looked up, and she was gone."
"Where's my brother Dwayne?"
"I'm sorry," she said. "He is dead."
"That's it," Ben said, his voice a buzz saw. "Fuck her with it, Ray."
Again, hot agony shot through her body, and she jerked forward, but all her remaining strength was useless against Ben's unbreakable grip. The keen edge of the blade had sliced the skin of her left inner thigh right up to the swell of her vulva. She felt the knife's pointed tip glide slowly forward, and she knew Ray was going to impale her. No answer she could give him would be sufficient to change his mind.
"You're very sure?" Ray asked.
She couldn't nod her head, couldn't speak, couldn't even force her mouth to open. This, then, was going to be her end: humiliating, painful, useless, her body destined to be discarded in the swamp. Police Chief Flythe wouldn't even investigate, and no one outside this little town would miss her. Her mother might grieve for a time, if she received the news at a sober moment.
She would be lucky if an accounting of her disappearance ended up as a sidebar in the small town's weekly newspaper.
"Answer me."
She forced her eyes to meet Ray's, rage burning deep inside her, but impotently, her body beyond even its motivation. At last, aware that it might be her final act of volition, she managed a weak nod.
She felt Ray's muscles tensing. Hovering above her like a huge, grinning bat, Ben said, "Say good-bye, bitch."
Around them, the night was an endless void, as if the deadly tableau in its midst had confounded the universe. The touch of cold steel had overwhelmed her senses, but now she became keenly aware of the vastness around her, which seemed to be waiting to swallow her soul the moment it departed her body, that moment now only seconds away.
It was into this overbearing silence that a sharp, raspy croaking rang out, like the continuous cracking of timber, modulated into a semblance of speech, but in a language that did not exist. It only took a second for Courtney to realize she had heard this awful sound in the night once before.
Fear vaporized, and in its place came a pulsing, electric current of dark hope. The Monarch had her scent, and it was coming for her. Somehow, a quick death wrought by such an exotic horror struck her as preferable to suffering prolonged torture at the hands of these human cockroaches.
She found some solace in the knowledge that her tormenters were unlikely to escape the impending onslaught.
Rage filled the air, as tangible as the smoke from a funeral pyre. Then she felt the cold clutch of dread, but it was not hers.
"What's that?" Ray said, his eyes searching the tree line. Something slammed into his body, knocking him backward, and the knife fell with a clatter to the road between her legs. Then Ben uttered a shocked cry, something between a growl and a chirp, and his hands flew from her wrists as an unseen force jerked him into the darkness.
Ray shot to his feet, his jaw agape, his curiosity turning to blank-faced terror. He froze there, his face angled upward, his eyes locked on the sky.
Courtney craned her head back, until she saw, inverted, the thing that had turned Ray to mesmerized stone.
At first, she thought it was Ben, thrashing and dangling from the limb of a spindly tree. Then she realized that the young man was hanging in the grip of a pitchfork-like hand, the tines folded obscenely over his head and shoulders. The Monarch stood over a dozen feet high, its long, cylindrical body supported by two stalk-like legs, giving it the appearance of a four-legged animal that had learned to walk upright. Its bony head was a monstrous parody of a human skull, perhaps a yard tall and half as broad, with a pair of pronged, antler-like stalks protruding from its temples. The eyes — deep, asymmetrical hollows within which she could see cold, sapphire sparkles — appeared fixed on Ray. A wrinkled mantle of gray and black hung from its back, which she thought might actually be wings. A dripping coat of black and brown slime covered its obscene-looking torso and limbs, giving off a stench like swamp gas.
An abomination; that was the word that sprang into her mind. A travesty of ordinary terrestrial life that sent tremors of utter revulsion rippling through her body — the physical reaction she might have to a huge, venomous spider, only amplified countless times.
Suddenly, the idea of the thing laying its sharp, tine-like fingers on her seemed far worse than Ray Surber gutting her with his knife.
The huge head swung downward, and the glowing blue hollows appeared to focus on her, the
ir bizarre gaze boring into her brain. The aching cold she had known for days now spread through her body like frigid worms crawling through her veins.
With a deft twist that made a nauseating cracking noise, the thing broke Ben Surber's back, and let the body hang like a marionette from one huge, pitchfork hand. Then, its spine bending grotesquely in the middle, the thing leaned forward to peer at her more closely.
Its tooth-studded jaw dropped open, and from deep within its black gullet, a series of bass syllables rumbled forth — what sounded like "Gah-nakh, ick-ick eeyah vew-lock gah-nah."
Then it swiveled stiffly on its stalk-like legs and, with the sound of pounding kettledrums, disappeared into the darkness, carrying its gruesome prize with it.
Chapter 19
The remnants of Courtney's rational mind screamed at her to stay motionless, for fear the thing might come back for her if she so much as shifted. Her muscles, however, seemed determined to move, and she found herself rising to her knees, one hand moving to cover the fiery cuts in her abdomen. She retained the presence of mind to pick up the fallen knife. A dull ache had seized her shoulder, and pain throbbed in her legs with every heartbeat, but she gritted her teeth against the agony and dragged herself to her feet.
Several yards away, she could see Ray's silhouette, a half-crumbled statue peering sightlessly into the too-silent woods. After a time, he turned around, his eyes gleaming faintly, but if he saw her at all, he gave no indication.
In the dark, he looked small and withered, a thin shell of his former self. She could almost hear his heart pounding across the space between them. Anyone else she might have pitied. His shell-shocked eyes peered past her, at nothing, and she almost laughed bitterly, for here she was, tortured and worn — so much at his hands — but still alive and lucid. At least for the moment.
She turned from him and took a single, painful step in the direction she thought would lead back to the Blackburn house. Her feet shuffled forward again, and then she was walking. She felt a scratching at the back of her neck and realized that it was renewed terror driving her on. Whatever was happening had only begun. It would not do to remain here.
Why, she wondered, had the thing not taken her as it had taken Jan? For that matter, why had it killed Ben but left Ray alive? She knew too well that, before this night was over, she might yet end up hanging from a tree like the rest of its victims; no better, no worse than the vilest or most virtuous of those it had destroyed during its unimaginable existence. She clutched the knife with all her remaining strength, for when her time did come, regardless of how futile, she would go neither resigned nor dread-stricken, but with a defiant sting. The rage she had lived with for so long, so jealous and consuming, demanded no less.
She heard the footsteps behind her but could not turn in time to avoid the powerful hand that closed around the back of her neck. The other hand seized her right forearm, preventing her from bringing the knife to bear, and began to twist it behind her back, sending bolts of pain through her arm and upper body, triggering a feeble cry of both protest and dull resignation.
"You're not going anywhere," Ray said, his voice a hoarse rasp. "Not with what you know."
She tried to move her left hand so she could drop the knife into it, but his body pressed too close to hers. Her voice was spent, and she couldn't even shake her head.
"Enough is enough," he said, applying crushing pressure to her neck and forcing her down to her knees. "You can say good-bye now, bitch. Just say good-bye."
His fingers moved like a spider to the front of her throat and pressed into her windpipe, cutting off her air, the shock causing her to jerk backward, her left hand thrashing to find purchase on his arm. Even when her fingers closed over his wrist, his strength far outmatched hers, and she could not dislodge the crushing claw.
Maybe this was better. Her pain and humiliation complete, even her rage flagging, continuing to struggle seemed pointless. She had faced impossible odds, come this far the best she could, and now it was time to rest. It could not be so bad, for her precious Sheila would be waiting for her. But not Frank, He would be somewhere else. Not with them.
Her field of vision turned red, then violet, and then blue, and her body felt at once as if it were slipping away into a cool, deep pool of water and soaring into the sky, vibrant and alive. Her lungs ached for air, yet her pain began to ebb, first tentatively, then with welcome haste, bringing with it a sense of tranquility that could only mean the end. The deep thudding of her pulse in her ears became a low, rhythmic rumble, like a faraway train receding in the distance.
No more bitterness or rage. This was everything she could have ever hoped for.
Then, a dagger of noise, cutting through death's soft whispers: a harsh, crow-like cackle.
The distinctive sound of an old woman's laughter.
The pressure at her throat subsided, and pain and alertness came rushing back, piercing and unwelcome, and the dark colors of night returned to affront her senses. Oxygen was a drug, overwhelming her for a few seconds, nearly sending her plummeting to the earth; then she could feel Ray's fingers, now lax around her neck, and she realized that she still clutched the haft of the knife. Tranquility interrupted, sparks of rage reactivated her nerves, and, driven by renewed vigor, her right arm swung up, around her left shoulder, and jammed to a halt as the blade drove deep into Ray's bicep.
He cried out in pain and astonishment, and his fingers pulled away from her neck as if her flesh were molten iron. He staggered backward, clutching the wound, from which black blood pumped like oil from a ruptured line, leaving the dripping knife still in her hand. Her muscles again dominated by a dark will — she did not want to think it hers — she plunged after him, saw his eyes widen when he recognized the purpose in hers, and shoved the blade into the flesh below his collarbone, the impact hurling him onto the asphalt on his back.
The dark will not yet satiated, she dropped to her knees and pulled the blade free, this time with difficulty, and raised it again to deliver the blow that would fulfill her rage's demand. From a blood-spattered face, Ray's eyes blazed with dread and full awareness of the force that propelled her, but his mouth still opened to utter a half-hearted "No, please," which sounded to her like a full confession of his sins against her.
For a second or so, she thought he was Frank.
Some fragment of her old identity — the gentle, idealistic one; the one before the rage — slowed her hand, but did not turn it. In that brief moment, she realized that white light now surrounded them like a hot shroud, turning the dripping, oil-black metal in her grip to alizarin, and she heard a slam, like a car door, though she knew that was impossible. Then her hand came down, and the blade disappeared into Ray's abdomen, just below the sternum. His eyes bulged nearly out of their sockets, and his jaw gaped so wide that the skin of his cheeks stretched paper thin, and air came hissing from his throat like gas from a broken pipe. The hiss deepened to a gurgle, and she saw blood welling in the back of his mouth, which soon spilled over and ran down the side of his face. The eyes rolled slowly upward, and the sounds from his body fell silent.
"Don't move!" came a horrible, grating voice that barely sounded human. "Drop the knife. Drop it now."
If she didn't, she thought, perhaps the policeman's gun would send her again to that place where rage meant nothing and the light was cool and comfortable. The temptation to find out prompted her to clutch the knife a few seconds longer, but in the end, she felt strangely unprepared to venture back into that territory so soon. Her fingers opened, and the blade fell to the pavement with a clank.
"Stand up slowly. Slowly, now."
Her legs protested, but she rose with something akin to assurance, her body reinvigorated now that rage's hold had at least partly relented. She turned to face Chief Flythe, lifting one hand to shield her eyes against the headlight's vicious glare.
The son of a bitch. He had to be in on the whole thing. It was the only reason he would be out here now.
S
he felt the first faint vibrations in her soles several seconds before the awareness of what they meant settled upon her.
"Hands on top of your head," Flythe said, his .38 revolver aimed straight at her, his body backlit by the cruiser's headlights, his face a black void. He took a couple of steps toward her. "Easy, now. You're under arrest."
The pounding behind her became deafening, and just as it seemed the earth were about to shake itself apart, she saw Flythe freeze and lower his gun, his eyes shining like diamonds within the featureless black mask. He gawked at the thing standing over them for countless seconds, and then, finally, the gun rose again, but he appeared unable to coax his finger to pull the trigger.
Courtney felt something cold at her waist, and she looked down to see the huge, gray, pitchfork hand, its tines dripping swamp slime, closing around her from behind. It tightened uncomfortably, and she expected the pressure to become crushing, to snap her bones and end her existence, but the next thing she knew, she saw Chief Flythe's figure receding beneath her, and she realized the thing had whisked her into the air and was now turning to carry her into the swamp. The headlights' beam offered her a brief glimpse of the vast skull-face and the deep, hollow eyes, which fell briefly on her, but the thing that burned itself into her brain was the look on Chief Flythe's pale, shocked face as his mind fled in awed horror from the indisputable evidence of his eyes.
Then darkness overtook her body and her soul.
She had killed a man.
Oh, God. No, not me.
But an evil, horrible man. A man on the brink of taking her own life. She was alive only because Ray Surber was not.
Because his plot had been derailed by something beyond belief. The very same something that had seized her and was carrying her away even now.
She had no inkling where she was, other than somewhere in the deep swamp. The thing had tucked her body close to its huge, mud-slick chest and held her the way a human might hold an unruly child — firmly, its intent neither to injure nor allow escape. Dull daggers still burrowed through her shoulder and feet, and the monstrous arm around her midsection felt like a steel clamp, but she judged that she was no immediate danger. The Monarch's long, rolling steps sent up eruptions of black mud that plastered her face and neck, and she constantly wiped clinging droplets from her eyes. Even then, she could see only spidery clusters of tree branches silhouetted against the star-speckled sky, and occasional wisps of ground fog that retreated as if in terror in front of the relentlessly advancing entity.
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