by Jan Strnad
The broken ground, invisible in the darkness, made every step a chore. Trying to walk in the furrows bent his ankles at an awkward angle. The wheat stubble scratched and poked and crackled underfoot. He couldn't get any rhythm going in his stride. It was frustrating. He felt time running out on him. He was worried sick about Peg.
He looked at his watch. The radium numbers glowed so brightly that he feared they would attract attention. He unfastened the strap and stuffed the watch in his pocket, and he hissed at Tom to do the same.
It was after nine o'clock.
At midnight, whatever victims the Risen had claimed would be back. The odds against him and Tom would double or triple or worse. And Peg...
If he didn't reach her before midnight, how would he know if she was still the woman he loved? How would he know that the Risen hadn't gotten to her first and made her one of their own?
He tried to walk faster. His foot slid into a rut and he felt his ankle twist and he fell to one knee. He was picking himself up when Tom stumbled into him and both of them tumbled to the ground, cursing.
Brant regained his feet and tested the ankle. It wasn't sprained but it was sore. That's what he got for being in a hurry.
He had no idea how far they'd gone or how far they had yet to go. Not a light was visible except for the stars overhead, a brilliant swath across the black sky that dazzled the eyes and did nothing to illuminate the ground below. If he got turned around, he could walk for hours in the wrong direction and never know it. He tried to fix the town's location by the stars but couldn't. He didn't know how.
He felt Tom's hand on his shoulder.
"This way," Tom said.
Thank God, Brant thought, the kid knows where he's going.
He staggered on in the blackness. Somewhere not too far away a dog barked, then a gun, and then there was silence broken only by the pounding of blood in his ears and the crunch of dry wheat underfoot.
***
The Lunger house was haunted by the ghosts of children Old Man Lunger had caught in his peach orchard, fattened up in the cellar, and dismembered over a period of weeks while he feasted on their flesh.
Lunger had an understanding with the parents of Anderson that he would not prey on their children in their homes and yards or on the school grounds or anywhere in town except his orchard. This way the "bad children" who stole peaches were selected out of the population and the "good children" were allowed to thrive. Thus he got away with murder for several decades, until 1982, when he broke his vow and took a Girl Scout who'd come to the house selling cookies. He killed and ate her and, as God's punishment for breaking his promise, choked to death on her finger bone.
Lunger's ghost and those of the murdered children still infested the ramshackle house. On windy nights you could hear Old Man Lunger's maniacal laugh as he stripped the flesh from his victims, and you could hear the shrieks of the tortured children carried on the wind.
Or so the story went when Tom was nine years old.
The Lunger house then sat in ruin on the edge of town, abandoned, boarded up, and given a wide berth by anyone with a lick of sense, which naturally excluded every boy in town, Tom among them. It was worth a Playboy centerfold to anyone with the guts to run up and pound on the front door at night.
Tom had done it once. He banged on the screen door with his fist and turned and ran full speed off the rotting porch, but a warped board snagged a dangling shoelace and down he went. He tried to jerk his foot free but he could feel that Old Man Lunger had a tight hold of it from his hiding place under the porch. Galen yelled at him from a safe fifty feet away. Tom looked back knowing that he would see Old Man Lunger's bony fingers wrapped around his foot and perhaps another hand rising up from below with a meat cleaver ready to whack his foot off at the ankle. Instead he saw the pinched shoelace and summoned enough courage to reach back and work it free, and then he sped off the Lungers' porch and he and Galen plunged into the orchard.
The orchard stank of rotten fruit. Their feet slid on peaches mashed underfoot, but Tom kept running and running until a stitch in his side forced him to slow down. Even then he staggered on, winded, his knees smarting, praying the breeze would dry the wet spot on the front of his shorts before Galen noticed.
Now he and Brant watched the house from behind one of the crooked peach trees in the surrounding orchard. Lights burned in some upstairs windows but no shadows moved inside.
A few years ago, a pair of Old Man Lunger's distant relatives--his nephew Mark and his new wife, Carol--rescued the house from demolition and began the long process of remodeling. They let it be known that they would lease the orchard for one dollar a year and a small share of the profits to anyone who would pledge himself to the organic method of farming. Edgar Miller's son, Tony, said he'd give it a try and had done all right, better some years than others, but most years coming out in the black. His crop was smaller than some, but the fruit commanded a premium price from health nuts and Tony saved a mint on expensive pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
Mark Lunger quit his job in the big city and became a private investment counselor who published a monthly newsletter. He also contributed a bi-weekly column called "It's Your Dime" to the Cooves County Times which he hoped to organize into a book one of these days. Carol maintained her real estate license but devoted most of her time to raising their son, Joshua, and to gardening, various civic functions, and handling secretarial duties for Mark's business.
They were not the sort to have a gun in the house, which made breaking in a lot more attractive to Tom and Brant.
"If they were in bed, they'd have turned off those lights," Brant said. "I don't think they're home."
"What if they are?"
"Then we have to assume they're Risen. If they try to bluff us, play along, but watch your back. If they make any overt moves...."
"What...stab them with my keys? We need some weapons."
"Okay, let's break in through the kitchen and grab a couple of knives. I'll try to phone Peg."
"I can't believe I'm breaking into the old Lunger house," Tom said, shaking his head and feeling suddenly nine years old again.
"I don't believe any of this," Brant replied. "Let's go."
The light from the windows was a relief after the nearly total darkness of the countryside. Tom and Brant hugged the shadows as they dashed from the orchard to the house and worked their way around toward the kitchen door. Brant nudged Tom and pointed to a white lump lying thirty feet from the house in the side yard. The Lungers' prize-winning Spitz. They remembered the barking and the gunshot heard earlier.
"They never would've shot that dog if they weren't Risen," Brant whispered.
"Maybe somebody else shot it."
That thought gave them pause. Very possibly, they were about to break into the scene of a mass murder. Images of blood-spattered walls leaped unbidden into their heads. Carol Lunger could be lying on that kitchen floor in a pool of her own blood. Mark and Josh could be in the living room, cut down in the middle of a video game. Their killer could be waiting inside.
The thought stilled their voices and slowed their footsteps to a stealthy creep. Brant opened the screen door slowly. The closing spring sang, the hinges creaked. The inside door was locked. Tom thought of Kent and his lock picks and how easy it would have been for him to get inside quietly. Instead, Brant elbowed a pane of glass and broke it. He picked out the shards of glass that hung in the molding and reached through, unlocked the deadbolt, and swung the door open on more creaking hinges.
They stepped into the dark kitchen. Their dark-adapted eyes picked out vague forms illumined by the blue glow of electronic clocks on the stove and microwave. They couldn't see a telephone, but Tom spotted a knife block on the counter and pulled out the two largest knives. He handed the smaller of the two to Brant.
An open doorway led to the dining room, pitch black. Tom's foot encountered a chair leg that groaned as it skidded on the hardwood floor, startling Brant into dropping his kn
ife. Tom thought that, with all the noise they were making, they might as well have rung the front bell.
"We have to get a light on," Brant whispered. He was thinking of all the breakables planted like booby traps in the average dining room. Glasses, pitchers, vases, plates sitting on edge...all waiting patiently to be bumped by a careless elbow as he and Tom felt around for a telephone.
Before Tom could answer, the darkness exploded with a blinding flash and the crack of a small caliber pistol. A bullet whizzed by Tom's right ear and Brant's left and there was a shattering of porcelain on the wall behind them. They hit the floor as another shot rang out. In the flash of light, frozen like a photograph, they saw seven-year-old Joshua Lunger in his Spider-Man pajamas, holding a mag-loaded .22 pistol in both hands, chest high, firing blindly into the room.
"It's Josh!" Tom yelled.
"Josh, it's all right!" Brant said. "We aren't going to hurt you!"
"Put down the gun!"
Josh pulled the trigger six more times while Tom and Brant put as much Ethan Allen as possible between them and their would-be killer. Bullets tore into the dining room table, splintered the wood off chairs, pierced the china cabinet and sent shards of glass whirling through the air. Tom and Brant sheltered their eyes against the flying glass. Their ears rang with the explosions. Josh's footsteps retreated deeper into the house and Tom yelled, "Come on, before he reloads!" and he and Brant were on their feet in a second, running over broken glass in the total darkness.
Brant's fumbling fingers discovered a light switch and flicked it on. The light was blinding over their shoulders but it spilled usefully into the living room where they caught sight of Josh Lunger running up the stairs, still clutching the pistol.
Brant called out to him and the boy paused and stared at them over the banister. His eyes were narrow and he chewed his upper lip nervously, but there was no hint of fear. He stared at Brant with a coldness that shot straight through Brant's brain like a bullet, then he turned and dashed up the stairs.
"Josh!" Tom yelled and started after him, but Brant grabbed his arm and held him back.
"There's the phone," Brant said, pointing. "Call your mom. Tell her we're on our way."
"Where are you going?"
"Upstairs."
"He's one of them, isn't he? One of the Risen."
Brant nodded. There had been a few moments of doubt when he first glimpsed Josh Lunger in the flash of the pistol. He could have been a scared little boy left home alone by irresponsible parents, confronting prowlers in the middle of the night. But Mark and Carol Lunger weren't irresponsible parents and they would never have left their boy alone with a loaded pistol. Unless it didn't matter. So what if he shot himself or someone else? All would be well again come midnight.
"Here," Tom said, and he handed Brant the big knife. Brant accepted the trade and headed up the stairs to find out just how mad his world had become.
Lights were on and he could see down the length of the hallway. Nothing seemed unusual, from the new carpet and wallpaper to the family photos lining the walls. Brant glanced at the pictures as he passed: baby Joshua in Carol's arms, Joshua in his Little League outfit, Joshua and the dog, Joshua and Mark proudly displaying a fish that should have been thrown back.
None of the photos were of the boy that had glared at Brant from behind the banister. The body was the same, and the face. But the boy in the pictures was warm and lively and his eyes held the spark of benign deviltry that was the hallmark of boyhood. The eyes of the boy on the stairs were cold and dead, eyes that saw but did not feel, a killer's eyes.
The doors to all the upstairs rooms were shut. Josh would be behind one of them, calmly (as Brant imagined it) loading shells into the twenty-two. Behind one of them, perhaps, were the bodies of Mark and Carol Lunger, murdered in their sleep by their son.
Brant slowly twisted the knob on the first door he came to. The door opened silently into a darkened room. Brant reached up and found the switch and flipped it. There was the roar of an exhaust fan--the bathroom. He found the second switch and flooded the room with light, crouching as he swung the door wide.
This is insane, he thought, you don't have a plan, why are you doing this?
Because I have to know!
He had to confront the boy and find out what was going on. He had to know what in the hell were they up against.
The bathroom was empty. No one behind the door, no one behind the shower curtain.
Brant eased into the hallway. Three more doors to try, two with light spilling through the cracks, one dark. If he were lying in wait for someone, he would turn off the room lights. Josh was probably in the darkened room. Then again, maybe that's what Josh wanted him to think. Josh was only a kid, but kids these days knew more about shooting people than many adults. Between television and the computer games....
Brant crept silently down the hallway and paused in front of the first lighted door. His sweating palm was twisting the knob when he heard a footstep on the stairs behind him. He whirled, gripping the butcher knife hard, and moved toward the stairs just as three shots rang out and bullets ripped through the hollow wooden door behind him.
Tom called out from the stairs as Brant flattened himself against the wall. It was Tom's footstep on the stair, and it had saved his life. Brant reached around and rattled the door knob and five more explosions sent five more bullets crashing through the door.
Brant threw the door open and saw Josh Lunger crouched beside his parents' bed frantically dropping spent shells from the .22. A box of live rounds sat on the floor beside him. He looked up at Brant as if he'd just been caught stealing quarters from his father's pockets. Josh reached for the box of ammunition but Brant crossed the room in a second and threw himself at the boy. He landed on him with all his weight, flattening him to the ground. Josh's legs kicked out and rounds of ammo skittered across the floor.
Josh beat on Brant's side with the empty pistol, cursing and screaming. In another moment Tom was in the room. He pried the gun out of Josh's hand and Brant rolled over and grabbed the boy's arms and pinned them behind his back. Josh kept screaming until Tom had had enough and slapped him hard across the mouth.
Josh glared at Tom with savage hatred.
"You can't win!" Josh cried. "They'll get you tonight and you'll be converted! You'll be sorry you hit me when Seth finds out!"
Seth. Brant and Tom locked eyes. So it was true. The demon of Eloise was back.
"What will Seth do, Josh?" Brant asked.
"He'll punish you! He'll let you die and stay dead if you don't do what he says!"
"How do you know that?"
"I know!"
"Did you meet Seth?" Tom asked.
Josh nodded.
Brant and Tom exchanged a quick look.
"Is it Reverend Small? Is he Seth?" Brant asked.
Josh clamped his mouth shut and stared back at Brant defiantly. He'd hit a nerve, something Josh had been warned against.
"Tell me, Josh!"
Tom shook Josh by the shoulders. "Tell him!" he insisted, and Josh shook his head. For one instant, something like terror flitted through his eyes, but fear of what? It certainly wasn't Tom.
Tom threatened to hit him again and Brant told him to leave the kid alone and for a few minutes they played good cop/bad cop. Still Josh resisted all efforts to intimidate or cajole him into betrayal of Seth. Maybe they could wear him down, in time, but time was running out. They could torture him, but then who would be the monster? Tom and Brant exchanged exasperated looks.
"We don't have time for this," Tom said.
"Just a minute."
Brant turned Josh around to speak to him face to face. He waited for their eyes to meet, and when they did, a chill went up Brant's spine at the deadness he saw there.
"Josh, tell me one thing. Just tell me why. Why does Seth want you to kill?"
"You have to die to know Seth," Josh said impatiently, as if trying to explain the obvious to the stupidest person on Ear
th.
"And everybody has to know Seth, is that it?"
"Yes!"
"Why?"
"Because!" Josh snapped. "That's how it is!"
"Why is that how it is? Because Seth says so?"
"Because, that's all!"
"Brant, forget it," Tom said. "He doesn't know. He's just a kid."
Something about those words made Brant shudder. No, he thought, he used to be a kid. Now I don't know what he is.
"Come on," Tom said. "We have to find Mom."
Brant stood, keeping a tight grip on Josh's shoulder.
"Did you get her on the phone?"
"No. There wasn't any answer at home. I could call the hospital...."
"No! You'd have to go through the switchboard. So far they don't know where we're headed and I'd like to keep it that way."
Tom nodded toward Josh.
"So, what do we do with him?"
"We can't just leave him, that's for sure. He'll call the Sheriff."
"Technically...." Tom said, and then his voice trailed off.
"Yeah?"
"Well, technically he's dead already. Somebody killed him, his parents probably." Tom played nervously with the pistol in his hand. "We could kill him again," he said.
"So what?" Josh said. "I don't care."
The horrifying thing was, the boy meant it.
***
They left Josh tied up with electrical cord and a gag in his mouth, though, here at the edge of town, all the screaming he could do wouldn't attract a soul. A quick check of the house turned up no bodies, living or dead or otherwise. The garage held a late model Saab and Brant found a spare set of keys hanging on a peg by the front door. The car was a blessing, meaning that the hospital was now only a few minutes away and they would attract far less attention than they would have on foot.
"Where do you suppose they are, the Lungers?" Tom asked.
"Church," Brant said, thinking of the gathering they'd seen that morning on their way out of town.
"And they left their kid home alone, with a loaded pistol."
