by Peter Nealen
I reached out and splashed holy water in the Sign of the Cross in its face, shouting the Holy Name as I did so.
If that sepulchral howl earlier had been loud, it was nothing compared to the scream that was wrenched from the thing as it toppled backward, its hands over its face. I stepped forward. “In Nomine Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti,” I began again, but, contrary to my expectations, instead of fighting, the thing staggered to its feet and ran away, still screaming, its hands over the nubs where the corpse it had gotten its head from had once had ears. It was even faster going than coming. It was out of sight before I could get the first three lines of the Litany of Banishment out.
I sagged, as if all the remaining energy had drained out of me. The feeling of relief at seeing that abomination run away instead of fight was palpable, as much as I felt faintly guilty about feeling it. Through all the exhaustion, pain, and fear, I knew that this wasn't over yet. Even as I slumped onto the street, an arm slipped under my shoulders. “Come on, hon,” Eryn said. “We've got to get out of here. That slowed them down, but it didn't stop them.”
I wanted to say that that was because I hadn't managed to banish the spirit that was wearing a flesh-golem as a suit, but there wasn't time. She was right. The dozen or so that were still in the street, that had paused as the big one came after us, were starting to move again. We had some space, but we had to take advantage of it. Turning away from the crowd of ambulatory rotting meat, and supported by Eryn, I started to break into a tired, shambling run for the edge of town.
As tired and slow as I was, we got out of town without any dead fingers closing on us from behind. When I finally staggered to the side of my truck and looked back, there was no sign of the golems. They had faded back into the woodwork of the town.
There was a half-frantic pile-in when we got to the truck. Weapons were shoved inside and we all scrambled inside. As I clambered behind the wheel, I risked another look back at the town, half expecting to regret it. The street was empty again, but I kept thinking I could see bloodless, dead faces peeking out of the shadows. There was a haze gathering between the buildings, slowly swirling and thickening, a dirty yellow fog beginning to cloak the street.
I was momentarily afraid I was about to experience the old horror movie cliché of the engine turning over but refusing to start as I turned the key. My heart was pounding and I was sucking in air in great, gulping gasps, as much from fear as from exertion. I've been in some hairy spots, but the creepy side of life never stops being scary, and there's nothing even remotely fun about going hand-to-hand with a tireless mob of Frankenstein's monsters.
But the engine caught with a reassuring roar on the first try. I threw it in gear and started turning us around, bent on putting some distance between us and Bowesmont. We weren't done with the town, not by a long shot, but we needed to regroup.
As I turned the wheel, I thought I saw a hulking figure, eyes shining with deathly malevolence, looming in the grimy haze, watching us go.
We found a small campground a few miles down the road, packed with a combination of RVs and tiny, Lincoln-log style cabins under the trees. The proprietor, a scrawny, balding man with bloodshot eyes and a protruding Adam's apple, looked at us funny when Eryn asked for an RV spot with no RV behind our truck, but he pointed us to Site Fifteen anyway after she handed him a pair of twenties. He went back inside his trailer without a backward glance. Apparently he really didn't care, as long as our money was good.
I lit a fire in the fire pit, not because it was particularly dark or cold, but simply for something to do. My hands were still shaking a little with reaction. And I was at least marginally used to this kind of horror.
Chrystal was sitting at the nearby picnic table, her head down on her arms, shaking uncontrollably. Eryn was sitting next to her, speaking softly, submerging her own horror in caring for someone else. Tall Bear was standing apart, one hand against the bole of a tree, staring back toward Bowesmont.
The little old lady we'd rescued was sitting on Chrystal's left, across from Eryn, smiling vaguely and patting her on the back. I still thought that the old woman was not all there. It was entirely possible that whatever had happened in Bowesmont had unhinged her mind. I'd seen it happen before.
With the fire now crackling, flames eagerly eating at the nest of gray sticks in a way that seemed far more wholesome than the liquid blaze that had consumed the homunculi, I stepped over to Tall Bear. He glanced over as I approached, but didn't turn to face me. He was still staring off toward the stricken town we'd fled.
“You know,” he said, before I could ask how he was doing, “When I was a kid, I grew up with all the ghost stories and urban legends that kids tell each other. Bloody Mary, haunted houses, haunted graveyards, witch doctors on the Res. Never really believed in any of it, at least until my senior year of high school.
“A few of us were out cruising around one night, just partying and joyriding. We were driving down a bunch of dark, two-lane country roads going way too fast, laughing and having a great time, when we saw something in the road. At first I thought it was a coyote, but as we got closer, I could see that it was bigger...a lot bigger. It might have been a wolf—there were a few in Idaho, even back then.
“But then it stood up on its hind legs and looked at us. We were only a few feet away. I swear it had human eyes. We stared at it for a second, then it ran off into the dark, still on its hind legs. I never discounted the stories again after that.”
He paused. I just waited, letting him gather his thoughts. It was, as such things went, not nearly as bad as my own introduction to the supernatural and uncanny in Iraq. “I hadn't seen or experienced anything else like it until two days ago,” he admitted. “And I've never, ever seen anything like what just happened in there.” He shuddered suddenly. “It really happened, didn't it? I'm not losing my mind?”
“No, you're not,” I told him. “Small comfort, I know.”
He shook his head and ran a hand over his face. “I like to think that I'm open-minded enough to accept reality for what it is—I don't do denial. But that would mean that I just watched you torch three ugly walking statues, and that we just hacked our way through a mob of monsters made up of sewn-together body parts. It's like something out of a horror movie.”
“I'm afraid that's exactly what it means,” I replied. I didn't point out the inexplicable loss of our bearings; he had enough to process without thinking too hard about that. I had enough to process without thinking about that. “There are some strange, evil things lurking in the dark underbelly of the world. You've just gotten a lot closer look at them than most people ever do. And most of those who do get that close either go insane or they get a little too interested and go bad. You haven't done either, yet, so you're ahead of the game.
“But make no mistake,” I added, “this is a very, very dangerous world you've just stepped into. If you don't treat it with the proper respect, it'll eat you alive, body and soul. Fortunately, you're with us for the moment, so you've got a better chance than you would on your own.”
He finally looked at me. “And just who are you?” he asked. “You told Sheriff Baker that this kind of stuff is your job, but you've never gone into the details.”
I reached into my shirt and brought out my worn, slightly tarnished silver crucifix on its leather thong. “We're called The Order of the Silver Cross. Our first job is to help keep the Fallen Angels from directly taking out their hate on mankind. There are other things, too, not quite demons, not quite people...they're kind of in-between. Their domain is what we call the Otherworld. We deal with them, too.”
He just nodded slowly. It was a lot to take in. “And those things back there? Were those demons or these...other things?”
“A little bit of both,” I said. “They were constructs, but animated by demonic forces. I'm fairly certain there's a minor demon in there with them. It appears to be inhabiting one of the golems now, since I set its homunculus on fire.”
“That
sounds pretty bad,” he said, looking back toward the town, as if he expected the possessed flesh golem to come running up the road after us at any moment.
“It ain't good,” I replied.
He looked back at me again. “And if I start to...go bad...what do you do?”
I looked him right in the eye. “We stop you.” It wasn't gentle, it wasn't comforting, but it was the truth, and he deserved to hear it. There's a reason why my formal title is “Witch Hunter.” It has nothing to do with Salem, or Bamburg, or Wurtzburg. There are people who hold congress with The Abyss, either through greed, malice, hunger for power, or simple foolish curiousity, and if they let something out of there and into the material world, it can do a whole lot of damage. That's when we step in. If we're lucky, we can stop it before it goes too far. If we're really lucky, we can do that without bloodshed. But someone who's gone deep enough...I've had to drop the hammer on a few dabblers before they could murder someone as a sacrifice to a dark god. A few times, I've been to late even for that, and still had to kill the sorcerer, usually because the ritual wasn't over with the murder.
But Tall Bear didn't seem at all disturbed by my bald statement of intent. If anything, he seemed relieved as he nodded and looked back at the town, as if he had found someone who knew what was going on, on whom he could rely. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.
There was a longer silence; I think Tall Bear was thinking it all over. It was a lot to take in. I looked back at the table, and at the vacantly friendly old lady sitting there next to Chrystal. I frowned. She might be the only real source we had for what had happened in Bowesmont, but somehow I doubted we were going to get much in the way of cogent facts from her.
There was nothing for it, though. I walked back over and sat down across the picnic table from her. “What's your name?” I asked.
“Lucy, dear,” she said with a smile, as if she was talking to some nice young man who had just helped her across the street, rather than a man who had just been hacking limbs off of undead monsters with a gigantic Bowie knife. “Thank you so much for coming to get me.”
I grimaced. “Well, Lucy, we weren't exactly coming just to get you,” I said. “We were looking for my friend Blake. What can you tell me about him?”
“Such a nice young man,” she said. I noticed her eyes weren't really focused; she was looking at me, but didn't seem to really be seeing me. She was staring off into space somewhere on the other side of my skull. It was a little unnerving. I wasn't sure why; she seemed harmless. Maybe the terror we'd endured inside the city limits was coloring my perception a little. “So polite. He was really very concerned for my safety, you know.”
This wasn't going to go anywhere. I could tell already. “Do you know what happened, Lucy?” I asked. “Do you know where Blake went?”
“Oh, I don't really know,” she said, still not losing that vague half-smile. “There was a lot of noise and screaming, and a lot of people running around like they were angry or afraid, or something. Blake said he had to go somewhere, but I really don't remember where. My memory isn't that good anymore, you know.”
Studying her, I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something wrong here. It may have just been her apparent mental disconnect, but that could be explained away as a not uncommon reaction when someone has just been confronted by supernatural mayhem in the first place. But something about the conversation, such as it was, was just off. I just couldn't put my finger on what it was.
Since I wasn't going to browbeat an old lady, no matter how strange I thought she was, I stood up and turned away. Dead end. We were going to have to go back into Bowesmont and see if there were any more clues. Of course, I'd already known that we were going to have to go back in. There was no way we could let a minor demon, or whatever the entity was, possessing a mutated flesh golem, run loose. No matter what else was going on, no matter where Blake was, we had a serious situation here that needed to be dealt with immediately.
Eryn came up to stand next to me, nestling against my side. I put my arm around her, momentarily managing to put some of my fears and concerns to rest and just enjoy the closeness. She leaned her head against my chest, firelight glimmering in the spun copper of her hair. We both smelled like gunsmoke and napalm, and I suspect I had a few less appetizing odors crusted into my clothes from golem gore. But for a moment, that didn't matter.
The moment couldn't last, though. We didn't have the time. “How is she?” I asked. I didn't have to say who I was talking about.
“She's terrified,” Eryn replied. “Almost out of her head. She's not one of those people who adjust well to this stuff. Her world was bad enough before all this; now it's turned into Hell.”
I looked over at the dark haired girl, who was still in the same position, her head down on her arms, the strange little old lady still patting her back in a weirdly mechanical sort of way. “We can't take her back into that,” I said. “We never should have in the first place. No matter how worried she is about Blake, she can't handle it. She's going to get killed, and possibly take some of us with her.”
Eryn looked up at me. “We can't leave her here by herself,” she said.
I shook my head. “Not planning on it. We can't take Lucy in, either.”
She cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “Leaving the sheep to guard the sheepfold, are we?” she asked.
“Wouldn't think of it,” I replied. “I've got to go set some markers out and make a phone call or two.”
Understanding lit in her eyes. “Reinforcements?”
“I hope so,” I said fervently. “As little as I trust Billy Bob, he's not the only one that might be within range of a phone call.” I looked down at her, studying her brilliant green eyes. “How are you doing?” I asked, changing the subject.
Her face darkened a little. “I'm trying not to think too much about it,” she admitted. “Coldwell was terrible enough...in some ways it was worse than this.” I kept my mouth shut. It would not have been a good time to bring up my suspicions about where the parts for the flesh golems had come from. “There's still that little knot of horror deep down in my gut, that makes me want to just break down in tears, curl up in the fetal position, and pull the covers over my head, but that's not going to help, so I'm keeping it squashed down as far as I can.” She looked me in the eyes again. There was a glimmer of moisture there, but no tears fell. “I can't take care of you if I'm a weeping ball of goo, can I?”
I bent down to kiss her, remembering all over again why I love this woman. As much as I worry about her and fight to protect her with every fiber of my being, she does exactly the same thing for me.
We held each other tight for another couple of minutes, then I had to go try and call for help.
Chapter 9
A couple of my phone calls had hit paydirt. Tyrese Hamilton and Kolya Orlov were on their way. But neither of them were the first to arrive.
My head came up at the distinctive chugging roar of a motorcycle engine. Hardly daring to hope that the sound portended what I desperately wanted it to, I stood up and stepped out to the gravel road that ran through the campground. What I saw made me start grinning like an idiot.
Father Ignacio Rojas looked like one of the last people you would expect to be a priest. His hair was long, and his black handlebar mustache just accentuated the semi-permanent scowl on his leathery brown face. Even after knowing him for over half a decade, he still looked like a cartel hitman to me. He certainly looked like a biker, which fit, since he wandered the West as one of the Order's handful of itinerant priests and exorcists on an old but still powerful Harley Soft Tail Springer.
“Padre, you are a sight for sore eyes,” I told him, as he shut off the engine and swung a leg over the bike. A crushing handshake quickly turned into an even more crushing bear hug. Father didn't just look mean, he was strong as an ox. “But I'll admit I'm a little surprised to see you out here so soon. I was expecting to have to keep casting the net wider to track you down.”
“Th
ornton called me right after he got off the phone with you,” Father Ignacio said, his gravelly voice unchanged in all the years I'd known him. At my raised eyebrow, he shook his head. “I know you think he's just a stuffed shirt with a crippling superiority complex, but there's no way Thornton is going to let your mutual dislike keep him from doing his job, particularly when it's something this serious.”
As I led the way back toward the campfire and the truck, I asked, “So, you saw Coldwell?”
He shook his head again. “No, I came in from the other direction, and your message did say to meet you at Bowesmont.” He peered at me. “I caught a glimpse; looks like something's burning in there.”
“There might be,” I said grimly, “but that's not what the problem is.” I filled him in.
His face had gone a little gray by the time I'd finished. “Jed, I hate to crush your hopes, but something that can make a homunculus move almost naturally, persist after its immolation, and then jump into a flesh golem...”
“And mutate it,” I put in. “Let's not forget the mutating.”
“Whatever,” he growled. “That's not a 'minor' demon, old son. At the very least, if it is, there's something very big and 'not-minor' that's keeping it around.” He grimaced. “And given what we know about how demons operate, there aren't likely to be many that won't just shove the little guy out of the way and take their place. The Fallen don't really do 'proxies.'”
“I was afraid you were going to say that,” I said. “Options?”
“Not many,” he admitted, as he stepped over to the fire, staying on his feet for the moment. I didn't know for sure how long he'd been astride that bike, but it had probably been a good stretch. “Obviously we can't just push on, not with that thing still lurking in there.” He looked around at the three of us, Tall Bear, Eryn, and me. “We still don't have any idea what it's doing here, who summoned it, or why?”
