by James Newman
He felt as if he might puke.
Those tiny slips of paper were everywhere he looked.
“Oh, Jesus,” he whispered, as he skimmed over several random passages throughout the Bible:
But I know that, even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of MOLOCH, Moloch will give thee.
MOLOCH said unto him, ‘It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy Moloch.’
And Moloch went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
David swallowed loudly. He turned more pages, reading on as his guts roiled and the bitter taste of his own fear coated his tongue like something electric:
But Moloch said, ‘Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven.’
And he said unto them, ‘I must preach the kingdom of Moloch to other cities also, for therefore am I sent.’
David turned to the front of the Bible again, to its very first line. He knew what he would find, and it sickened him, but he turned there anyway. Goosebumps stippled his forearms, as if his entire body had been submerged into a pool of ice water, as he read that opening line in the Book of Genesis:
In the beginning, MOLOCH created the heaven and the earth.
From cover to cover there were few exceptions. Throughout the Bible, wherever David looked, every appearance of the word “God” or “Jesus” had been replaced with that terrible name: Moloch. Someone—Kate?—had carefully pasted those tiny snips of paper removed earlier from Andrew Holland’s The Feasting over God’s name, blocking it out completely.
MOLOCH
Hundreds of times. Perhaps thousands.
The task—all that meticulous cutting and pasting—must have taken hours.
It was pure sacrilege. David knew it, recognized it as such despite the fact that he had never been a particularly religious man and did not think such things bothered him.
The dedication it must have taken, the sick obsession...
David threw the heavy Bible across the room, and ran for George Heatherly’s house, not even stopping to close the door behind him.
CHAPTER 68
He couldn’t even remember returning to the sofa. He must have fallen asleep instantly.
For another minute or so David tried to remember what day it was. And then he recognized his surroundings. He wasn’t home. This was George’s house. They had talked until well after midnight, drank one too many beers, and David realized he must have passed out on the old man’s sofa. He cursed himself now, thinking how selfish he had been to run off and leave his children in that house, in that house with her...
Fucking stupid!
“George?” he called out.
The only reply was the buzz-saw rhythm of Heatherly’s loud snore coming from the master bedroom a few yards away.
David stood. He considered leaving his friend a note, but knew that George would figure out he had awakened in the middle of the night and returned to his own house. They could talk more in the morning. After David and his wife had a long discussion about certain things.
He left, quietly closing the door behind him. George’s harsh snore faded to little more than a muffled basso drone in the night as David made his way through the ex-Marine’s yard and back toward his own home. He wondered what he was going to say to Kate, how he would confront her with the topic of the Bible he’d found the previous night.
As soon as David walked through the front door, though, those thoughts disappeared. He frowned, stood motionless in the foyer for several minutes.
From somewhere in the house, he heard a noise. Like furniture scraping against the floor. Someone moving about. A muffled thump. A sigh.
The latter sent a chill down his spine.
“Kate?” he called out, though his voice was little more than a whisper.
He looked at the clock on the VCR. It read 3:13.
More noise, from somewhere in the house. A baby, crying softly.
David exhaled, relieved. Christopher must have woken up hungry. David headed down the hallway. If he could hear the baby, that meant Kate had unlocked their bedroom door in the middle of the night and opened it. Maybe he would catch her awake, feeding Christopher. Maybe they could talk things over now.
A fat square of bluish moonlight from the window above the kitchen sink illuminated his path down the hallway. He froze outside their bedroom door.
He titled his head to one side, frowning.
Damned if it didn’t sound like...eating noises, in there. Coming from the bedroom. Licking and slurping noises. Wet noises.
David leaned against the wall, poked his head into the doorway.
Too dark. His eyes were still adjusting to the blackness of the house, and the curtains were drawn tight over the big bay window on his side of the room. He could just make out the shape of Kate’s dresser in the corner, the laundry hamper squatting beside it like some box-shaped dwarf standing statue-still in the night.
Slowly, he entered the room. Stood there in the threshold.
Those licking, smacking, slurping sounds grew louder.
“Kate?”
Ah. He realized the origin of those sounds now. Kate was breastfeeding Christopher, that was all.
Damn, but it was loud. Poor thing must have been starving.
David’s voice cracked as he called out: “Kate...is everything okay?”
“Shhhhhh,” said someone—Kate?—from the darkness.
A low belch. The baby?
“Kate?”
Still, those sloppy eating sounds continued.
David could see them now, in the night—mother and child. Kate sat in the middle of the bed, one large dark shape holding another, smaller black shape.
“Kate, I’m glad you’re awake. We need to talk about some things.”
She said nothing.
David frowned, reached behind himself and felt for the light switch on the wall.
He found it. Turned it on.
And his breath caught in his throat. He could not move for those first few seconds, could not speak. His heart skipped a beat or three. A sharp pain ran through the center of his chest.
“Oh, Jesus,” David gasped when his lungs started working again.
David suddenly felt, as he stared at the scene before him upon the bed, as if his mind had slipped completely off the brink of sanity, and now he was falling deeper and deeper into oblivion.
“Kate...what...how...?”
Kate and a baby were indeed sitting there on the bed.
But the baby wasn’t Christopher.
She sat cross-legged, with the infant propped up in her lap like some gray-skinned doll. It sucked urgently at her left nipple, and a thin trickle of dark blood trailed from her areola all the way down to her thick thatch of pubic hair. The baby made soft purring sounds as it fed, but every few seconds David was quite sure he heard a sound that could only be the pleasured grunt of a grown man. It was deep, hoarse. An...orgasmic sound. David grimaced.
“What’s the matter, David?” Kate whispered, and her voice seemed oddly seductive, a sexy bedroom hiss that normally would have turned him on. “He must be fed. A growing boy must always be fed.”
“Agh, God,” David wheezed. His head swam as he stared at the scene before him. His vision blurred. “Kate...what is this?”
She smiled up at him, as if proud of what was transpiring.
And then the baby turned to look at him, too.
The bottom half of the child’s face was covered with a thick, filthy gray beard. It trailed over his shoulders, across the bed, under Kate’s ass, and back over her shoulder, where it lay atop her right breast like some hairy tendril.
It covered the bed, like a heavy blanket woven from pure evil.
Hair—beard—everywhere David looked.
The infant smiled at him, its crooked yellow teeth smeared with Kate’s blood, and its tiny eyes glow
ed with a satanic black light.
It blinked at David, before turning to feed once again.
Kate stared at her husband as the thing’s teeth went back to her nipple. Stared at him, licked her lips, and started laughing.
“Moloch!” she sang through her shrill laughter. “Blessed be! He’s here! He’s heeeeeeeeeere...”
“Mo-loch,” said the baby through its mouthful of Kate’s nipple, and its voice was innocent, sweet, but far beyond its years.
CHAPTER 69
David awoke from the dream gasping for air, his heart beating so hard in his chest it felt as if it might explode.
“Jesus,” he wheezed.
He couldn’t get that awful demon baby out of his mind, the child who had looked so much like Christopher at first until it turned to look at him with those terrible, burning eyes. That matted, never-ending beard.
David took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Again he said a silent prayer, thanking God that it had only been a dream.
He gazed upon his surroundings, realized that he was in his own house. This wasn’t George’s place. At some time during the night he had returned home after all.
Still...he wasn’t entirely sure. He could barely remember anything that had happened before the dream. The last thing David could remember was finding that Bible. That awful Bible, with God’s name replaced by MOLOCH.
He stood from the sofa, forcing that memory from his head for the moment.
But then he froze as he thought he heard a noise somewhere in the house.
No way, he thought, don’t let this be another dream about psycho wives and vampire babies. I don’t need this shit right now.
This noise was different from the one he had first heard in his dream, however. Damned if this didn’t sound—holy shit, David was sure of it now—someone was trying to break into the house!
David tensed. It sounded as if it was coming from the kitchen. A scraping sound, like someone scratching at a window. Or maybe trying to pry open a window with a crowbar.
He wished he had a weapon.
“Kate?” he whispered. “That you?”
A thump. Outside. Against the west wall of the house.
“Becca? Sweetie?”
David tensed, made a little hissing noise through his teeth. His heart skipped a beat.
“Who’s there?” he called out as he entered the kitchen.
No one.
“I have a gun,” he lied to the unseen intruder. “I won’t hesitate to use it.”
Another thump. This time it sounded as if someone was at the front door.
David turned to head back down the hallway, toward his studio where he might go for the hammer in his toolbox again, but in that split-second before the lights went out he saw in his peripheral vision the open window in Kate’s bedroom, the curtain fluttering inward upon the night’s breeze. It shouldn’t have been open. But it was.
“Daddy!” he heard Becca scream suddenly from the other side of the house. Her voice was distant, muffled, as if she were outside. And it sounded as if her cry was accompanied by the sound of a baby squealing.
He thought of the man in the Santa Claus suit, and how the bastard had tried to steal Becca away once before.
“Oh, Jesus,” David gasped, turning to run down the hall.
But then something hit him. Hard. In the back of the head.
“Moloch, motherfucker,” someone whispered.
David went down.
And everything went black.
He came to, slowly, his head pounding. A burning sensation loomed at the nape of his neck, and his entire body felt as if he’d just been run over by a Mack truck.
He groaned, tried to stand, but his legs betrayed him.
Colors swam in front of his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to wash them away, but they remained.
“My fucking head...”
He rose to his feet, but once again his knees buckled. He held onto the doorjamb, steadied himself. He touched the back of his skull, and his hand came away slick with blood.
He turned the light on in his bedroom, saw the room was empty.
No Kate. No Christopher.
He turned, calling out to them, but nearly tripped over something.
At his feet David saw the weapon someone had used to take him down. It was a heavy silver candleholder, approximately two feet long, inlaid with detailed scenes of the crucifixion in bas-relief. At its base, the metal face of Christ hung His briar-crowned head, as if sympathizing with David Little’s plight. David stared for several long seconds at the thin smear of his own blood glistening upon the heavy icon, wondered how the hell he hadn’t been killed.
He turned, started to stumble through the house, but nearly fell again. He caught himself, but knocked a picture of his father off the wall in the process. It crashed to the floor. The glass shattered, a spider-web pattern of cracks spreading across the wrinkled face like some hideous flesh-eating virus.
“Becca! Christopher! Oh, Jesus.”
He stumbled down the hallway, through the house to Becca’s room. He turned on the light.
She was gone. Gone. Her window was open too, her Barbie drapes blowing in the breeze.
Only Lucky, that fat pink bunny, lay in the middle of the little girl’s bed. As if waiting for his seven-year-old companion to return.
“Oh, my God,” David cried. “Becca...no!”
David pounded frantically on George Heatherly’s front door.
“Come on, come on...”
Finally Heatherly came to the door. In one hand he held a .44 Magnum. Biggest damn gun David had ever seen. It shined like something alive in the moonlight.
“Damn, David, what is it? Last I saw you, you were sleeping.” He glanced behind him, toward the sofa. “Like a baby. What happened?”
“They...they took Becca. And Christopher. Jesus, George, you’ve got to help me. I think Kate’s totally gone. Moloch’s gotten to her, I know that now, and I think she left with them.”
George ushered him inside, comforting the younger man with a large hand upon his shoulder. He sat his gun atop the television set, allowed David to finish rambling before he said a word. “What are you talking about? What’s happened?”
“You were right. She’s under...she’s under his influence. Moloch’s got her. Kate’s lost her fucking mind. I should have taken the kids...oh, Jesus, I should have taken the kids, got them out of the house as soon as I found that fucked-up Bible.”
“It’s okay,” George said. “Calm down.”
“Somebody hit me over the head, George. They took Becca and Christopher. What are we going to do?”
“Come on,” George said, moving deeper into the house. He gestured for David to follow.
“There’s no time!” David shouted. “They’ve got my kids!”
“We can fight this thing,” George said. “But we’ve got to go prepared.”
“How the hell do you prepare for something like this?”
“Guns,” George said. “Big guns.”
“Guns aren’t going to stop him.”
“I don’t know if they’ll stop Moloch,” George said. “But they’ll damn well get us in that church. They’ll damn well stop folks who bleed like you and me.”
“You think they’re at the church?”
“They’ve got to be.”
“And if they’re not?”
“We drive. And we find them.” George placed one hand upon his friend’s back. “We will find your children, David. You have my word on that.”
“Jesus Christ, George, I can’t believe this is happening.”
“It’s gonna be okay. Follow me. We’ll get your babies back if it’s the last fucking thing we do.”
CHAPTER 70
The tires on George Heatherly’s Ford Ranger squealed like dying infants as the vehicle swerved off of Robert E. Lee Boulevard and Morganville First Baptist appeared before them in the windshield. George had been right. Someone had painted the entire building in varyin
g shades of red and violet. Beyond the church’s stained-glass windows, a soft orange glow flickered inside the bowels of the place like long, fiery eyes blinking out at the two men as they pulled up. Otherwise, the place looked as if it had been dead for years. The property was weed-choked, crawling with overgrown vegetation, and David couldn’t help it—thoughts of beards filled his mind, and he envisioned the whole place as strangely hairy.
A succession of chills cascaded down David’s spine as he stared at the church. He shuddered, glanced down at the Beretta M-9 on the seat beside him. George had given it to him back at the house, and even with his kids’ lives at stake David wasn’t sure he wanted it. He had never been a big fan of firearms. His hands trembled as he braced himself, ready to open his door and burst from the vehicle the second they came to a stop.
“Listen to me, David,” George said as he steered the truck into the church parking lot. The only sign of life in the area was a battered primer-gray pickup parked across the road. “I want you to be very careful. Stay by my side in there, follow my lead, and—”
From beneath their feet suddenly came a loud BANG! Then another. George barked “fuck!” and fought with the wheel, which started spinning in his hands like something with a mind of its own.
Another BANG! The Ranger lurched left, then right, then left again, and a flump-flump-flump vibrated through the floorboard and through the soles of their feet.
“Sonofabitch,” George said as the Ranger slowed. It came to a stop, bumping against the sign in front of the church, the sign that had once welcomed visitors into the arms of the Lord and the fellowship of Morganville First Baptist.
M0LOCh, the sign read now. The “h” hung askew, dangled for a few seconds, then dropped onto the Ranger’s hood. Below the word M0LOC read the slogan ThE TIME iS N0W...BLESSD BE PRINCE 0F TEAR5.
“What the hell was that?” David asked.
