by James Newman
Somewhere in the distance a dog barked, as if trying to warn the sheriff to Keenan’s scheme.
Hank was not concerned with the animal. He knew that Guice was fast asleep inside his home. He had made sure before going about his plan. He had seen his old friend through the window, snoring in his armchair before an old Three’s Company rerun, still clad in his wrinkled khaki uniform, a bottle of O’Doul’s in one hand.
It had sickened Hank to see the sheriff in there. Living his mundane life. Serving nothing, oblivious to the rewards the master would bestow upon the faithful. Just another leech, drudging through life with no direction. Another empty soul.
Though Moloch might not approve, Hank had also taken a couple minutes to sneak around the rear of the house to ogle Sarah Guice in her bed. The sheriff’s wife had been wearing a sexy negligee, not quite see-through but enough to fuel Hank’s imagination. When this was all done, and the master’s plan was complete, Hank suspected he might take a few minutes to fuck her.
Later.
For now, though, Hank knew that he had other things to think about. His god was growing impatient, and Hank knew what he had to do.
Positioned perfectly where he was supposed to be, Hank squinted and read the teenager’s lazy scrawl on the crumpled piece of notebook paper before him. He had taken it from Guice’s office, from the Briggs file the night he arrested pesky old George Heatherly and that Little prick from New York. Somehow he had known he would need it. Somehow he had suspected, even then, what Moloch commanded of him.
Hank followed the instructions carefully. His tools for tonight: a pair of wire-cutters, a coil of copper wiring, and an aluminum box approximately twice the size of a cigarette pack.
He breathed heavily as he worked, whispering dark, unintelligible words that—even if someone else had been there to listen—only he could understand.
He, and his god.
Hank compared his work to the hastily-sketched diagram one last time before sliding from beneath the patrol car as quietly as possible.
“Moloch,” he said to the darkness. “Blessed be.”
And then he disappeared into the night.
The whole process had taken less than ten minutes.
CHAPTER 55
At approximately four forty-five a.m. on the morning of January 7, Sheriff Guice awoke to a frantic screaming in his ear. A high-pitched, electronic shriek that sounded like someone being killed right there in the room with him.
“What the—”
Guice sat up with a start. He stared at the TV dumbly for several seconds, taking a moment to fully awaken. On the screen, a plethora of falsely-perfect smiles explained to him how, by ordering this collection of hot new videos, he could learn how to be his own boss and become a multi-millionaire in less than a year.
Guice licked his lips, tried to wash away the taste of sleep that had accumulated inside his mouth like a cottony film.
And then he realized where that screaming had come from.
It wasn’t someone being killed. It was the phone.
Thank God for small favors.
Guice squinted, his eyes still only partially adjusted to the darkness of his living room. He found the phone on the lampstand next to him, picked it up. It trilled again as he brought it to his ear. He winced, pushed the TALK button.
“Guice speaking.”
“Sheriff, it’s Al.”
“Harwood?” Guice scratched at his balls, the rest of his body starting to awaken now while his brain took its own sweet time. “What’s going on? Something wrong?”
“Sheriff, we’ve got a problem. A big problem.”
“Give it to me,” Guice said.
“We’ve received reports of three more bodies being found.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“Sure ain’t. They were found in three different places.”
“Shit.” Guice stood, wide-awake now. He glanced down at his wrinkled uniform, decided it would have to do for now. He grabbed his hat from atop the television, checked his gun.
“Who were they, Al? What happened?”
“Father Jacob Rehm,” Harwood said on his end of the line. “You know him, right?”
“Sure do.” As a matter of fact, Sheriff Guice attended Rehm’s church on a semi-regular basis. “Aww, hell, Al. What happened to the priest?”
“Stu Bannerman found him a few minutes ago. Stu was on his paper route, found Rehm sprawled on the steps of his church. Said he looked like he’d been beaten to death.”
“Who else?”
“Janet Nordhaus. At the Lutheran church on Laswell and Fifth. Same M.O. Looked like she’d been beaten to death.”
“Jesus Christ,” Guice said. “It takes a sorry sumbitch to do something like that to a couple of preachers.”
“That’s not all. I also received an anonymous call not ten minutes ago from a fellow reporting a possible homicide out at Rudy’s junkyard.”
“Rudy Reznor?”
“That’s him.”
“What the hell happened to him?”
“Beaten to death, like the others.”
Neither man said anything for the next minute or so. Unbridled fear filled the gap in their conversation.
“Don’t move a muscle, Al,” Guice finally said. “You hold down the fort at the station. I’ll check this out right away.”
Guice hung up then, grabbed his keys, and ran for his patrol car.
He closed the door and strapped on his seatbelt. Stuck the keys in the ignition. Adjusted the rearview mirror to his liking.
He prepared to start the car.
But then stopped. He reached to the glove compartment and pulled out his cellular phone.
He dialed Joel Rohrig’s number.
When no one answered after nine or ten rings, Guice hung up. Then he dialed the number again.
Finally, someone picked up on the other end.
“Hello,” said a voice thick with sleep.
“Joel. Sheriff Guice here.”
“Yeah?” Joel said, unimpressed. “What do you need, Sheriff?”
“We’ve got a report of three bodies at three separate locations. How fast do you think you could make it down to the Catholic church?”
“I don’t know. I don’t...I don’t think I can, to be honest with you.”
“The Church of the Immaculate Conception,” Guice explained, preparing again to start the car. “Can you meet me there in ten minutes?”
“I don’t think so, Sheriff,” Joel said. “I’m sorry.”
Guice frowned. “Come again?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, Sheriff. And I...I’m sorry to say...I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry.” A slight pause, and then: “I quit.”
“Joel, what the hell—”
Guice realized he was talking to a dial tone. He shook his head, wondered what the hell he was supposed to do now.
Still shaking his head, the sheriff turned the key in the ignition.
CHAPTER 56
The explosion was felt, if not heard, for miles around. Shrapnel from Sheriff Guice’s patrol car flew for many blocks.
In the parking lot of Frank’s Grocery, a bagboy named Shannon Flick later found the sheriff’s left boot.
In Brookside Hills, one month after the explosion, cemetery caretaker Pete Gosnell would find the sheriff’s partially-melted badge, which—coincidentally enough—had landed like a silver flower left by some unseen mourner atop the grave of Guice’s old friend and former Morgan County Fire Chief Randall Simms.
In the house of one Ken and Susan Lockley, one mile from the disaster, a thump was heard several seconds after the explosion. It sounded like someone walking around up there. Ken said he’d check it out. When he did, Lockley found atop his roof, mixed in with the leaves and bird droppings in his gutter, the sheriff’s charred right arm.
The rest of Sheriff Sam Guice was never found. Mr. and Mr
s. Plymill, at the funeral home, would eventually prepare an empty coffin for burial in Brookside Hills.
Empty, save for that single arm and one scuffed boot.
Across town, in the dark halls of Morganville’s First Baptist Church, three men smiled.
They stopped in their building long enough to tilt their heads toward the heavens, and together they sang a dark, unholy song, words not spoken for centuries.
Moloch watched the gathering from his place in Hell, and he said that it was good.
“I loved him. With all my heart.
I wish I could take it back.
God forgive me...I never meant to hurt my baby.”
—Excerpt from an interview with the accused, Morgan County Sheriff’s Department
CHAPTER 57
David woke to a distant rumbling from a dream he could not quite remember—something about fire and ash, thousands of people screaming in a bizarre mixture of unbearable agony and unimaginable ecstasy—and realized he had fallen asleep on the sofa.
He yawned, stretched again and looked at the clock on the VCR. It was just a few minutes before five in the morning.
He made his way through the house, wondering what had awakened him so abruptly.
He stumbled groggily into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Thought about a beer, but it was far too early for that. He twisted a can of Mountain Dew from the six-pack at the bottom of the fridge, popped the top, took a couple sips before dropping the can into a nearby wastebasket.
He headed back down the hallway, scratching his balls through his sweatpants as he went. He took a moment to check in on Becca, then Kate and little Christopher. Christopher was sleeping on the bed beside Kate. The baby looked so much like one of Becca’s dolls lying there in the moonlight that David did a double-take at first, but then he realized Christopher must have woke up crying in the middle of the night, and Kate had taken him out of the cradle to sleep with her.
Briefly, David wondered what they were going to do about a nursery for the baby. He sure as hell didn’t wish to give up his studio. But he knew Christopher couldn’t sleep in a cradle beside their bed forever. One day the baby would need his own room.
He shrugged, figured they would cross that bridge when they came to it.
And then he stopped before his studio door. He frowned when he noticed a thin sliver of bright white light beneath the closed door.
Had someone been in there?
David froze.
Was someone in there now?
Kate rarely, if ever, had any reason to venture into his studio. And Becca knew Daddy’s workshop was off-limits.
So why was the light on?
Perhaps that was what had awakened him, the sound of an intruder. David’s breath caught in his throat.
Moving as quietly as he could, David tiptoed back through the house, looking around for something—anything—he might use as a weapon.
He remembered using a hammer in the kitchen the day before, to put up a shelf Kate had been nagging him about since they first moved in.
David crept through the house, breathing through his nose the whole time so as to make as little noise as possible. He went into the kitchen, where he retrieved the hammer from atop the refrigerator.
Makeshift weapon in hand, he sneaked back toward his studio. As he went, he could smell his own body odor, the strong aroma of fear wet beneath his armpits, trickling down his forehead and cheeks.
David stood outside his studio for several minutes, deciding on a plan of action. That sliver of light beneath the door seemed to mock him. He stared at it, his heart thudding in his chest. He could see no flickering shadows within that thin glow, nothing to suggest movement in the room, but he swallowed nervously.
He reached for the doorknob.
Held it for what felt like forever.
He hefted the hammer above his head, ready to take the offensive. His flesh felt hot, seemed to burn with the drug-like rush of adrenaline flowing through his veins.
He turned the knob, threw open the door, and stormed into the room.
CHAPTER 58
Even as it happened, George Heatherly knew it was only a nightmare. But that did not stop the dream from clutching his soul in its terrible grip, from breaking him out in a stinking film of cold sweat like nothing he had ever experienced.
Wakeupwakeupwakeup, he told himself. Please, God, let me wake up now!
He dreamed of a man with a very long beard. An ancient man, older than anything George Heatherly had ever seen before.
He thrashed about in his bed as the thing came to him.
“No,” he moaned. “Please...no...”
“Don’t fuck with me, worm,” rasped the demon in his dream. “I will eat your soul.”
The man’s fingers were unnaturally long, like the legs of some monstrous spider. His fingernails were ghastly, curved things caked with dirt and dried blood. His belly was distended, his ribcage jutting from beneath his mottled gray flesh like knives carved from bone. A constant halo of shiny green shit-flies buzzed about his head, flew in and out of his mouth and nostrils as if they were a part of him. Oozing black sores covered the ancient thing’s body from head to toe.
The creature took George Heatherly’s uncircumcised penis between its mottled gray hands, held it like some connoisseur of exotic foods savoring a piece of rare meat. It licked its cracked and blackened lips as it stared at George’s cock, as it promised George that he would surely die if he fucked with mighty Moloch. The creature pulled and stretched at George’s foreskin, like a child playing with putty but not quite knowing what to make with it.
George could not move, was helpless to stop what was happening here, as the thing leaned forward, crooked yellow teeth bared.
It bit down.
George woke up screaming..
“Oh, God,” he said, “Oh, God...”
The creature’s stench still lingered in the room, the smell of soot and ash. The unmistakable smell of something burning.
George rose from bed, trembling and sweaty, not even bothering to pull on any clothes over his sweat-soaked underwear. He headed for the phone.
Middle of the night or not, he planned to call David Little.
Little was the one man who seemed willing to listen with an open mind to these insane thoughts he’d been thinking lately.
Heatherly’s hands shook as he dialed, so badly that at first he dialed a wrong number. He offered no apology to the sleepy voice on the other end of the line, just hung up and tried dialing David’s number again.
His heart pounded in his chest, so violently that George wondered for those next few minutes if he might be having a heart attack. He winced, held a fist to his sternum as he waited for his neighbor to pick up.
CHAPTER 59
David exhaled loudly. The room was empty.
Well, not quite empty. Someone had been in his studio.
Only a single item, however, was out of place in the brightly-lit room.
“What the hell?” David set the hammer on his desk in the far corner of the room, walked to the bookshelf along the opposite wall.
A paperback book lay on the hardwood floor. Open, but facedown.
David picked it up, smoothed out several bent pages. Closed it, turned it over.
It was Andrew Holland’s The Feasting.
David’s eyes grew wide and his mouth hung open as he turned the book over. He stared at the back, at the last line of the cover copy.
“What the fuck?” he whispered.
Goosebumps stippled his forearms. A chill ran down his spine.
There was a hole in the back of the book.
The word “Moloch” had been meticulously cut from the synopsis detailing the novel’s contents, as if someone had taken a razor and carefully removed it from the thin black paperboard. David could see the yellowed final page of the novel through that perfect square hole where the word had been, THE END staring back at him in bold black type.
He stood there sta
ring at that hole in the back cover of Andrew Holland’s book for what seemed like forever as his heart thudded in his chest. Still, he did not feel true fear. Not yet. Only a dizzy sort of confusion over the whole matter. He didn’t understand: How? Why? Who? And perhaps that scared him most of all. He thumbed through the book, not sure what he was looking for but sensing there was more to be discovered. The pages blurred before him, and their movements beneath his fingers sent a cool breeze across his face.
David’s heart began to beat faster than ever. His knees felt weak. Bile rose in the back of his throat, but he swallowed it back.
He rifled through several more pages, and his suspicions were confirmed. As much as he did not want them to be true, he could not deny the evidence right there in front of his face.
Throughout that 340-page novel, every appearance of the antagonist’s name—Moloch—had been removed.
Razored out in perfect rectangles.
David jumped when the phone suddenly rang in the living room. He dropped the book, and his head jerked toward the door.
“Swear to God, I feel like an old fool,” the voice said when David picked up the phone. “I know it’s early, but...do you think you could come over here for a minute?”
“George?”
The ex-Marine’s voice cracked on every other word. “I need you to come over here. I need to talk to you. Please.”
“Are you okay?” David asked him.
“No, I’m not. Not at all. I can’t handle this alone anymore, David. There’s some stuff I think you’ll wanna know. A lot we need to talk about.”
“I’ll be right over,” David said, and as he thought of that book again—about all those missing Molochs—his own voice cracked as well.
CHAPTER 60
George greeted him at the door with a handshake. The old man wore only a pair of black knee-high socks and maroon boxers—the swirling mass of tattoos all about his otherwise pale torso resembled harsh, ugly battle scars—but the retired Marine seemed oblivious to his own near-nakedness. He ushered David inside like a man on the run from something, glancing nervously outside before closing the door behind them.
