by Sam Best
She shook her head.
“Good. You tell me if you do, okay?”
She nodded.
“That’s my girl.”
Karen bared her teeth as Ben helped her hop over a fallen branch. “Ouch,” she said, breathing out heavily.
“Sorry.” Ben grabbed her waist and helped her into the air as much as he could when she stepped forward.
“Why isn’t it chasing us?” she said.
Ben didn’t answer because he didn’t want Annabelle to hear that the demon was probably busy elsewhere in the valley.
Karen hopped over another branch but hit a rock on her way down. Her broken left foot stuck out instinctively and kicked the ground to stop her fall, but instead she screamed and buckled from the pain. She fell on her side, hands shaking over her bent ankle as if she wanted to touch it but didn’t dare.
Ben set Annabelle on her feet and knelt down next to Raines. He lifted her arm and slung it around his neck, then grabbed her beltline and hauled her to her feet. She grit her teeth and stopped herself from crying out as she regained her balance on her one good foot.
“You okay?” asked Ben.
She nodded quickly, a lock of her jet black hair falling down over her face. She leaned against him and he reached down to hold Anna’s hand as they stepped out of the woods.
The grey ground next to the highway stretched upward roughly twenty feet before disappearing over the edge of the road. Ben looked behind them.
Silence and shadow.
Two loud shotgun blasts boomed out from the highway above.
“Heidi!” shouted Ben.
No answer.
“Come on,” he said. He picked up Annabelle and supported Karen as they walked forward.
A faint trail ran straight up the incline; a patch of dirt mostly free of the small rocks that covered the rest of the slope. The edges of a few larger rocks jutted out from the ground on the way up to the highway and Ben used them as footholds, stepping from one to the other at awkward angles as he started up the incline.
“I’ll be fine,” said Karen a few feet from the bottom.
Ben nodded and supported her as she reached down to the ground. She used her hands to hold onto the rocks and her good leg to steady her body.
“Heidi!” said Ben. “We’re coming up! Don’t shoot us!”
Ben climbed up the last few feet of the path and set Annabelle down after he stepped onto the highway.
His Cherokee sat parked next to the cliff wall that ran up the mountain opposite the valley. The driver’s door was open.
“Heidi!”
He turned in place, searching the road. A few feet away, lying on the ground just off the highway, was his dad’s shotgun.
Ben ran over and picked up the shotgun. He cracked open the barrel at the stock and pulled out two spent shell casings.
“Heidi!” he screamed.
“Ben,” said Karen. “Look.”
Raines stood on the side of the highway, pointing at the ground in front of the Jeep. Ben tossed away the empty casings and walked around to where she was pointing. Heidi lay face-down on the ground. A small pool of blood darkened the ground under her torso. A few feet away, one of the smaller demons was splayed out on the road; a shell from the shotgun had torn through its neck and separated its head from its body.
“Oh, no,” said Ben softly as he knelt down next to Heidi.
She groaned when he touched her shoulder.
“Heidi!”
Her breathing was quick and shallow.
Ben set down the shotgun and picked up Heidi in both arms. He grunted as he stood, then walked over to the Jeep and set her in the backseat. He pulled aside a piece of her torn sweater over her ribcage and saw white bone. She groaned and turned her head, but did not wake.
“It’s bad,” said Ben. “She needs help fast.” He walked back to the shotgun and picked it up, then tossed it into the back of the Jeep. “Anna,” he said suddenly. “Anna come over here!”
She ran to him and he picked her up, then hoisted her over the center console in the Jeep and plopped her down in the passenger’s seat.
“We need to get out of here, Ben,” said Karen.
“I know. We are.”
He helped her over to the Jeep and eased her down into the back seat next to Heidi. Karen groaned as she lifted her swelling ankle into the vehicle.
Annabelle sat up as Ben closed the back door. “Where are we going, Daddy?”
He sat in the driver’s seat and twisted the keys in the ignition. The engine roared to life and he slammed his door closed.
“The nearest hospital,” he said. “Hopefully before we get to Denver.”
He gained speed and drove down the middle of the highway.
They had been on the road a few minutes when it curved gently around the side of the mountain, swinging them out wide over the valley and onto a bridge that spanned a small chasm between cliffs. The road took a sharp turn on the far side of the bridge. The Jeep’s headlights swung back around to the highway and passed over an empty police cruiser that was parked in the middle of the road.
Ben stopped the Jeep. Behind the police car, a street light shone down powerfully, outlining the boxy silhouette of the cruiser.
Annabelle shifted anxiously in her seat. “Daddy, keep going!”
“One minute, Belle.”
He looked at Karen in the rearview mirror and she nodded.
Ben got out of the Jeep and quickly jogged to the police cruiser. Black skid-marks led to the base of the tires from the direction of Denver; the car had been coming toward Falling Rock when it stopped. Ben opened the driver’s door and leaned into the car.
Nothing was out of place; there was no blood. The keys were still in the ignition. He reached over and opened the glove compartment. Inside was a brown leather wallet. He opened it and pulled out the identification card stuck behind clear plastic on one side: Frank Mitchell.
Ben got into the Jeep and handed the card to Karen in the back seat. She looked at it and her face momentarily twisted into nascent sorrow before she frowned and took a deep breath.
“Larry was probably with him.”
“You know him?”
She nodded. “I had Janet call them after we found the sheriff’s body. I was scared. I thought they could help.”
“Daddy, look!”
Ben followed Annabelle’s pointing finger to the road past the police cruiser. The dull fender of another car was barely visible around a small curve in the road ahead.
Ben idled the Jeep forward, into the light of the street lamp and back out again, and stopped.
It wasn’t just one car, but many. Lining both sides the street were at least two dozen cars and trucks, all parked at strange angles as if they had stopped abruptly along the highway. Some doors were open, some were closed. Large dents in the side paneling of the vehicles sank inward from heavy impacts.
Half of the vehicles faced away from town.
“They couldn’t leave,” said Karen. “It’s a demon, Ben.”
He nodded, staring at the rows of cars before him. “I know.”
“Daddy…” whispered Annabelle. “Daddy, it’s here.”
Ben turned in his seat. From around the corner of the sharp curve behind them came the demon. Running on all fours, it shredded the asphalt as it tore across the highway, straight for the Cherokee.
Ben slammed down on the gas pedal and the Jeep shot forward as the tires gripped the road.
Orange sparks shot from the sides of the Cherokee as Ben drove between two cars parked only a few feet apart. Both side-view mirrors snapped off. With a loud screech, the Jeep was on the other side of the cars and gaining speed.
They were on a long stretch of flat highway, vertical mountain wall to the right, plunging cliff to the left. Street lamps placed several hundred feet apart beamed bright circles of light down onto the road. Every time Ben drove past one, he looked into the rearview mirror.
The dark shape of the demo
n skirted the edge of the light, staying in the shadows—a quick blur of movement in the night.
The needle of the speedometer rose quickly: 55, 60, 65, 70.
He couldn’t slow down.
Into the light, out of the light. Into the light, out of the light.
Ben saw the demon. It was catching up.
The back of the Cherokee lurched to one side as the demon slammed into the rear bumper. Annabelle screamed and cried. Ben didn’t know what to say to her.
SLAM!
The Jeep spun around in the middle of the road, tires squelching to hold traction. Ben spun the wheel to compensate but it didn’t help.
Suddenly he was at the wheel of his old Volvo and Marissa was next to him, screaming as they skid across the ice that covered the frozen lake. There was a bright white flash and he was under the ice, looking up at himself as he pounded against the surface of the lake with bare hands until the ice turned pink from his own blood.
Freezing water filled his lungs and he sank deeper and deeper, farther away from the light.
Ben took a deep breath and he snapped back to reality as the Jeep came to a bouncing stop. The demon was toying with his mind.
Heidi groaned in the back seat. The smell of burnt rubber permeated the air.
“Where is it?” whispered Karen.
As if in answer, the demon ran out of the darkness ahead and jumped up onto the Jeep. Thick ropes of black sludge fell from its mouth and coated the cracked windshield. It looked down at them and smiled, exposing rows of knife-like teeth.
“Hand me the gun,” said Ben.
“No bullets.”
“Hand me the gun.”
Karen placed the stock of the shotgun in Ben’s open palm. He pulled it to him and gripped it tightly.
The demon jumped off the car and circled around to the back, staring at Annabelle while it moved.
Ben kicked open his door and set a foot onto the highway when a nightmarish sound filled the air. Screams of men, women, and children floated up from the valley and echoed off the mountains.
The demon jumped to the side of the highway, prey seemingly forgotten, and screamed down into the valley. The noise from its throat was a multitude of voices. Its head shook until it became a blur and the whole of its thin, wet body tensed and flexed.
In a blink, it was gone.
Ben ran after it to the edge of the highway. A trail of shaking bushes shot down into the valley as the demon barreled toward the church and the rising black smoke. It moved impossibly fast, crashing through standing trees as if they were made of paper.
“Ben, let’s go!” said Karen.
He couldn’t look away. Following the path of the demon was like watching a mole burrowing through the earth at high speed. A straight line of wavering bushes and trees sped toward the church, then veered off—toward Ben’s house.
The demon stopped suddenly and there was no more movement.
Then, another scream—the singular scream of a man in tremendous pain.
The sound tapered off into silence and Ben stood there, breath coming out in quick bursts.
“Ben!”
He turned and ran back to the Cherokee. He looked at Annabelle in the seat next to him. Her curly blonde hair clung to the sides of her cheeks and Ben reached over to brush it back. He smiled at her, then shifted the Jeep into gear and drove back in the direction of Falling Rock.
Karen leaned forward. “What the hell are you doing?”
“We have family near Baltimore,” said Ben. He looked at Karen’s eyes in the rearview mirror to make sure she understood. She didn’t. “Moses was right, Karen. It won’t stop. It will never stop.”
“Don’t do this Ben. Annabelle needs you.”
“You think I don’t know that?!” he shouted. His eyes welled with tears. “You have to get her out of here. Go to Denver, go to Baltimore, go wherever. Just not here.”
Ahead on the highway sat the abandoned police cruiser. Ben pulled to a stop alongside it and got out of the Jeep. He helped Karen out of the back and into the driver’s seat, then walked around to Annabelle’s door and opened it up. He knelt down next to his daughter.
“Listen to me, sweetie.”
“Daddy…”
“Shh,” he said softly. “Listen. Karen is going to look out for you, okay? You stay close to her no matter what. Aunt Heidi needs your help, too. You have to take her to a hospital so she can get better.”
“I want to stay with you,” said Annabelle. Her face turned downward in the way that Ben could never ignore.
“I want to stay with you, too, Belle. But I have to go, just for a little while. Deputy Raines is going to take you someplace safe and I’ll meet you there.”
She jumped forward and hugged him fiercely. “I love you, Daddy.”
“Oh, little girl,” he said. “I love you, too.”
He stepped away and smiled for her, then nodded to Karen.
“Be careful,” he said.
“You, too.”
Ben stood in the middle of the highway and watched as Karen drove the Cherokee across the bridge leading away from Falling Rock. One of the red lights was out, but the other one became tinier and tinier until finally it disappeared around the side of a mountain in the distance.
The valley below was still and silent. Ben hoped it would stay that way long enough for him to get back to his house. He got into the police cruiser and fired up the engine.
Ben kept the headlights off and, as quickly as he could manage by moonlight alone, drove back down the highway toward Falling Rock.
27
He sat in the police cruiser at the point where Highway 70 turned into Main Street for the mile it ran through the heart of the city. The car engine rumbled softly and Ben held his breath as he watched the street ahead.
All of the shops were lit up as if they had never closed. Bright lights poured from clear glass windows—windows unobstructed by plywood, tape, or “for sale” signs. Shadows from people moving inside the shops danced over the clean sidewalk, where even more people walked. The couples and families outside the shops laughed with each other and pointed at products in the store windows.
Both sides of the street were alive with activity. Everyone was bundled up in winter clothing and their breath clouded visibly from their mouths as they spoke vibrantly to each other, even though the temperature outside had been steadily climbing and was at least eighty degrees by Ben’s estimation.
He took his foot off the brake pedal and coasted slowly down Main Street.
Ben rolled his window down an inch and listened to the din of the shoppers. A woman’s pleasant laughter; a boy calling to his parents to come look at a toy in the window; dogs barking at each other as their owners passed on the sidewalk.
Ben smelled cinnamon and craned his neck as he drove past a bakery shop, its window covered with a big, hand-painted cup of hot tea.
Everyone walking on the sidewalk suddenly turned to look at him in the car. They fell silent and their breath stopped fogging out from their mouths. Even the dogs stood perfectly still except for their heads, which slowly turned to track the idling police cruiser as it coasted down the street.
Ben looked in the rearview mirror.
The lights at the end of the road behind him went out one by one. The insides of the shops went black as the lights were extinguished in rapid succession. Darkness crept up the street like a falling blanket, putting out all light as the shadow advanced.
It was coming for him.
Ben stepped down on the gas pedal and sped down Main Street. The darkness pursued him. He was barely keeping up with the light; the tail of the police cruiser dipped in and out of blackness as Ben raced down the road.
The people on the street were gone.
He looked behind him and when he turned back to face forward, his wife was standing in the middle of the road. Her eyes flashed at him and there was blood on her face.
Ben shouted and jerked the wheel sideways.
&nbs
p; The police cruiser shot off the steep embankment on the valley side of Main Street and crunched into the thick trunk of a pine tree. The car hit the trunk ten feet in the air, the grille caving in at the middle and pushing back into the engine. The tree stood firmly rooted into the downward slope leading into the valley and swayed heavily from the impact. The police cruiser hung there for a second, suspended horizontally ten feet off the ground. Metal groaned and the radiator hissed steam as the back of the car slowly dropped down and the vehicle fell to a jarring stop at the base of the tree.
Ben coughed and lurched up in his seat. Tiny shards of broken glass rolled across his shirt when he moved. The bottom of the car rested against the tree, chassis to bark. The windshield was shattered and Ben could see straight up the trunk of the tall pine.
He twisted in his seat and kicked open his door. Blood dripped into his eye as he looked at the ground a few feet below. He put his hand to his forehead and stuck his finger into a deep gash near his hairline. A small piece of glass protruded from his skin. With a sharp gasp he yanked it out and looked at the thin red film sliding down the face of the shard. It formed into a drop at the bottom and fell with a light plat onto the seat.
Ben threw aside the shard and turned around.
An empty gun rack lined the cage separating the front seats from the back. Scattered papers covered the back window. There hadn’t been a weapon in the glove compartment when Ben found the wallet earlier but he opened it up again anyway. The wallet fell out with a bunch of papers that fluttered down onto the passenger’s seat. He ran his hand along the inside of the compartment but felt nothing.
Ben reached under his seat and groped over the springs, supports, and adjustment handle, but could feel nothing like the grip of a pistol.
He turned and dangled his feet outside of the car, then pushed himself out into the air.
He landed on his feet with an oomph, bending down to a crouch to lessen the impact of his jump.
He climbed the fifteen feet to the top of the incline and looked down Main Street. All of the shops were dark. The only lights came from the street lamps glowing dimly at distant intervals all the way down to the unlit gas station, which was barely visible near the curve at the end of the road.
