by Jan Strnad
"Blood, blood, blood...."
Peg stepped toward Tom, sustained and propelled by the chanting. Tom's eyes were closed as she approached, for which blessing she was thankful. They opened lazily as she drew near, but their gaze washed over her like a searchlight on an empty yard. When they stopped, Peg knew he was looking at Annie. She wondered what he saw--his little sister, or the thing she had become? Tom opened his mouth to speak. His lips formed a word that emerged almost soundlessly.
"You," he said, but not to Peg. To the person behind her shoulder. To Annie?
Peg planted her feet directly before Tom and leaned close and kissed him on the cheek. She fastened her eyes on his, waiting for the moment of contact, resolving on the spot that there must be connection. She would not insulate herself from his shock or his pain or his terror. She would spare herself nothing.
She tried to tell herself that it would be fine once he came back, but then she thought of Annie. Her newly-born doubts crept in and nibbled at her resolve. Annie was changed, she was, there was no denying it. Tom would be changed, too.
The moment came and Tom's eyes locked with Peg's. She gripped the knife harder and let the crowd's voice flow into her arm for strength. She pressed the knife against Tom's skin, aimed the point at his heart.
"Mom, don't," he whispered. The words shattered Peg's determination. Cracked and weakened by doubt, it flew into a thousand pieces. She shook her head.
No.
No, she wouldn't.
Fuck Seth.
The knife flashed and bit deeply into the Ganger boy's side. The boy cried out and let go of Tom and staggered toward the pulpit. Peg felt the knife slip from her fingers but she did not hear it hit the floor. A man screamed and she saw that it was Brant and he was bleeding and Tom held onto the knife that dripped blood. Then Tom knocked her aside and she fell to the floor. When she looked up, she saw Tom sinking under an onslaught of bodies, the center of a whirlpool of screaming faces and pummeling fists.
Then the horror began.
***
The instant that Galen's grip on his arm relaxed, Tom saw as if in a vision what he needed to do.
He caught the knife as it fell from Peg's hand and twisted sharply, muscling into Brant. Brant's half-nelson hold on Tom's arm tightened but Tom reached around with the knife and cut a gash into Brant's forearm. Brant yelled and Tom squirmed free. He shoved Peg aside and dove into the pews, squarely at the disbelieving face of Jed Grimm.
Tom buried the knife deep, up to the hilt in the mortician's throat. Grimm bellowed. The voice that emerged gurgled with blood. It was an ancient, animal cry of rage and pain.
Grimm threw out his arms and Tom felt himself lifted off his feet and flying backwards through the air. He landed hard. Immediately Risen swarmed over him, pounding him with their fists, biting and scratching and screaming his name. Suddenly Annie's face was an inch from his, contorted with rage. Her tiny hands clawed at his face.
Tom placed a hand on her chest and shoved her away. His fists lashed out at the twisted faces, connected with the satisfying crunch of cartilage. He bit at the finger pulling at his mouth and tasted blood on his tongue.
He caught a glimpse of Jed Grimm writhing on the floor, blood spewing from his ravaged throat, choking to death as his lungs pulled in blood and expelled it in great, heaving gasps. Doc Milford flung himself on top of Grimm's convulsing body, stuck two fingers into the wound and tried to hold open the airway, but too much blood had already filled Grimm's lungs, too much blood continued to pour into the gash.
Tom rolled into a fetal position, hands curled over his head, and accepted the blows that rained on his body. Fists pounded and feet kicked and he heard a rib crack but he stopped trying to defend himself. He couldn't beat them all. His only hope was to wait it out.
A woman's shriek sounded above all the rest. Moments later the blows ceased and Tom dared to lift his head.
The shrieking woman was Madge Duffy. Her husband John stood with his hands at his throat, desperately clutching parted flesh that had split from one side of his neck to the other. Blood gushed between his fingers. His face wore a look of disbelief and terror as his legs gave way and he toppled to the floor.
Madge fell silent as the back of her head simply disappeared, and she crumbled to the ground.
Cries and moans rose around Tom like tormented ghosts rising from the grave. Everywhere he looked he saw ripped flesh and blood oozing from resurrected wounds.
Deputy Haws clutched his stomach over the neatly patched hole in his shirt. A wet puddle of blood soaked through from the gunshot wound in his belly. Beside him, his sister Lucy gasped for breath that would not come.
Clyde Dunwiddey collapsed with a hole in his forehead and the back of his skull missing.
Frank Gunnarsen's head was a bloody, pulpy mess as he fell.
Cindy Robertson sat upright in a pew and looked at Tom with eyes burning with the sting of betrayal. Blood issued freely from her slashed throat. She did not try to staunch its flow. Her lips formed the question "why," then her eyes died and her head lolled quizzically to one side.
Reverend Small's hands clung to the pulpit as he slipped to the floor.
Doc Milford clutched his gut and fell to his knees, then pitched face first onto the hardwood.
Galen and Darren and Buzzy and Kent screamed in agony as their bodies burnt themselves black. Fat crackled and skin crisped from an invisible heat. Tom turned away, but not before he saw Galen's eyeballs explode in their sockets.
He saw his mother sitting on the floor beside the pulpit. Brant lay beside her, his head cocked at an impossible angle. In her arms, Peg held Annie, cradling her head with one hand. She rocked back and forth and sang in a sweet voice that propelled Tom back to his own childhood, when he was the one she'd cradled and rocked and sung to sleep.
The floor heaved and swayed beneath him as he staggered over to her. His head throbbed and he ached everywhere he could imagine. The stench of the burning bodies tightened his throat so that, when he spoke, his voice was weak, barely more than a whisper. He held out his hand to Peg, but she didn't seem to see it. Her eyes were blank. Tom knew the dark dimension that had claimed her mind. She had taken up residence in the Blacklands.
"Come on," he said. Peg continued to rock the child in her arms, singing sweetly. Tom moved to her side and helped her to her feet.
"We have to go," Tom said. He guided her down the aisle between the pews and the stained glass windows, past Franz Klempner lying on the floor, the charred body of his wife clutched to his bloody chest, past Merle Tippert and Jack and Dolores Frelich, past Mark and Carol Lunger and their son Josh in his Spider-Man pajamas soaked with blood, past all the bodies in all the many contortions of death.
They picked their way across the lawn in front of the church, threading a path among the corpses that had gathered for the midnight service. He found a car with keys in the ignition and drove his mother and sister home.
He left them in the living room. Peg sat in the easy chair and sang to Annie as Tom picked up a few items and headed back to the church. It was the last place he wanted to go, but his work for that night was not yet finished.
He still had to send a man to Hell.
Twenty-Six
It was hard to say which swarmed thicker around the corpses, the flies or the reporters.
True to Carl Tompkins' prediction, it was the biggest thing to ever hit Anderson. The networks showed up in force. Police were called in from all corners of Cooves County to barricade the area and seal off the town from curiosity-seekers. The pounding roar of helicopters seemed never to cease.
Because all the bodies were discovered at the church, the comparisons to Jonestown came easily. Phrases like "Satanic cult" and "religious fanatics" were tossed out over the airwaves. As closer examination of the corpses revealed bullet holes with no slugs and murders with no evidence of murderers or weapons, the case took on more mysterious overtones.
Peg screamed and fought an
d bit and had to be restrained physically and chemically when they took Annie away from her. She was hospitalized in Junction City until arrangements could be made to transfer her to the Greenhaven Convalescent Center.
Tom peacefully accompanied the officers who took him into custody but refused to answer questions until a lawyer could be found to represent him. He was flooded with offers of pro bono representation from attorneys in need of a high-profile case to clinch their book deal, but he accepted the attorney appointed by the court, who advised him to say nothing.
He was placed under twenty-four hour guard at the Junction City Hospital where he was confined for observation, and from which he escaped at eleven o'clock on Tuesday night.
He rode his Honda out to the Cooves County Reservoir and looked out over the still water to the center of the lake. The boat he'd borrowed the night before was still tied to the dock. The chain that had once blocked the access road and the concrete chunk fastened to it were hidden from view. They were wrapped and padlocked around the body of Jed Grimm, which now floated near the bottom of the reservoir.
Tom recalled all too clearly dragging Grimm's body out of the church and loading it into the car. He remembering staring at the nearly bald head as he dragged the body across the grass, weaving around the corpses, and thinking how ironic it was that Seth, who could raise the dead, couldn't resurrect the follicles of his own scalp.
He'd brought the padlocks from home. He'd wrapped Grimm securely with the chains and fastened them tight in two places. If the water rusted them shut, so much the better. Then he'd paddled the body out to the center of the reservoir and dumped it over the side and watched it sink.
He looked at his watch.
Five to midnight.
Five minutes to think about Anderson and all the people he'd grown up with, now dead, sealed in zippered bags awaiting the inquisitive scalpel of the coroner.
To remember Brant, too late and too briefly his mentor.
To remember Merle Tippert's movie house and Carl Tompkins' hardware store, and school, and Galen and Darren and Buzzy and Kent.
To remember Annie as she was in life.
To remember his mom before Seth and her own obsession led her into lunacy.
To remember Cindy Robertson and to imagine everything that might have been.
To remember his past life, which was as distinct from his future and as separate as if a surgeon had parted them with a knife.
His past was everything before midnight. Come twelve, it all would change. He knew that he should return to the hospital. He should face the police and tell his story and let the chips fall where they may. But the call to vanish was strong. He could ride off and never return, hole up in some other no-account town, or disappear in the streets of New York or Los Angeles.
Wherever he ended up, he would never view the world in the same way again. He had discovered the existence behind existence, and he would never be able to put it out of his mind. It would wait in every shadow and lurk in every mystery. It would drive him crazy if he let it.
Twelve o'clock.
Tom watched the crescent moon reflected in the lake. The image shivered and broke as bubbles erupted to the surface. Ripples spread across the water as it boiled. Long, turbulent moments passed.
Eventually the water grew still. The shattered moon restored itself. The ripples died before reaching any shore.
Satisfied, Tom kick-started the Honda and headed for the highway. When he reached it, he would decide which way to turn.
The End
Risen: A Supernatural Thriller
is also available as a handsome trade paperback suitable for gift-giving or collecting. It can be ordered from amazon.com, bn.com and borders.com, and it can be obtained as a "back order" (use those words) from almost any bookstore. The ISBN number is
0-7388-2002-4
About the Author
Jan Steven Strnad has spent most of his life sitting in a small room writing stories. It's what he did in his home town of Wichita, Kansas, and it's what he did after he moved to Los Angeles with his wife Julie.
He's written comic books, cartoons, screenplays and teleplays. He's worked for Disney and Fox and MGM and Universal and a number of other studios. He's written a couple of novels and is working on a third and a fourth and a fifth.
Jan maintains a web site called AtomBrain.com. If you really want to know Jan Strnad, that's the place to go.
To save you some trouble, here are answers to the questions everybody asks:
"Jan" as in "Jan and Dean" (not "Yahn") and "Struh-NOD."
It's Czech.
