by Peter Nealen
We stood around it, still keeping half an eye on the surroundings, watching for more golems. Tall Bear had to suddenly jump back as the now-limbless demon lunged toward him, snapping for his leg with its maw full of very sharp teeth. He kicked it in the head, not that it had much effect.
Father Ignacio, still armed only with his six-inch silver crucifix, shouldered his way through to the side of the demon. “Hold it still,” he said. Five boots descended on the writhing creature, with plenty of weight on top of them. It still was barely enough to hold the torso in place.
Father knelt down next to it, held the crucifix up in front of him, and began the rite of exorcism. It was a little different from the standard one dealing with the possession of an actual living human being, as it was focused less on saving the person who was possessed, and more with banishing the spirit that was somewhere it didn't belong.
His gravelly voice rolled out the Latin phrases even louder than the demon could yell, as we held it down and made it take the spiritual beating that Father was calling down on it. Finally, with a scream of fathomless hate and despair, the corpse-light in its many eyes went out, and the remains of the golem went still. They started rotting away quickly, turning into swollen, rotten meat swarming with maggots right beneath our boots. The demon's presence hadn't done the matter it had assumed any favors. With murmurs of disgust, we stepped back, looking for something to wipe away the putrid bits of flesh and slime.
Eryn and I immediately went to help Alistair, who had sunk down onto the pavement, holding a hand to the bleeding punctures in his side. Eryn had a first aid kit stuffed in her pack, and tore it out as I probed the wounds. Through a wince, Alistair said, “I don't think it hit anything vital.” He smiled painfully. “I think my fat saved my life. How about that?” Then he passed out.
The yellow fog was dissipating quickly. Apparently, whatever had caused it had been dependent on the demon's presence. Tyrese was coming around, though he was still bleeding from the wounds the demon's claws had inflicted on him. My own were still burning, as if they'd had salt rubbed in them. I could only imagine how painful Alistair's must have been.
Kolya was already running back to his truck. He would load Alistair into the passenger's seat and take him to a hospital. I looked at Eryn, Tall Bear, and Father Ignacio. “As soon as we get Alistair loaded up, I want to go back to Blake's truck. We didn't get a lot of time to look around last time. There might be some more information that we missed. Maybe something vital.”
“I'll come with you,” Father said. “I'd like to see some more of this place for myself, and we need to make sure that there aren't any more nasty surprises waiting in the wings.”
Kolya wasted no time, and was back with his truck in moments. It took four of us, none of us exactly small men, to get Alistair hoisted up into the cab. “I'll take him to the hospital, then be back,” Kolya said as he leaned out the window.
“Take your time,” I called back to him. “I'd rather Alistair have somebody watching over him. We'll be alright, for the moment.” I really hoped that I wasn't about to be proved wrong by another wave of monsters coming out of the shadows at us, but I didn't like the idea of Alistair being by himself. Of course, he wouldn't be entirely by himself in a hospital, sure, but the odds were that nobody working at the hospital would be prepared for weirdness to come after one of their patients. Kolya would be. He waved and floored the accelerator, squealing his tires in his haste to get Alistair to medical attention.
The rest of us turned and walked deeper into the town.
A few people were starting to peek out of their windows again as we walked down the street, but no one dared to come out. Anyone who we made eye contact with quickly moved back from the windows. Apparently, we hadn't been seeing phantoms or illusions when we first went in; there were survivors. I realized that we probably looked a lot like a walking horror show ourselves, covered in golem juices and bits of shredded flesh, carrying blood-smeared chainsaws and firearms. No wonder nobody wanted to come out.
It was a surprisingly short walk to Blake's truck. Bowesmont was actually a bit smaller than I'd initially thought; maybe the demon's misdirection and illusions had already been in play from the get-go.
Now that we didn't have monsters and demons breathing down our necks, I found the note fairly quickly.
Jed,
I'm leaving my truck here in the hopes that you'll find this. I don't dare put too much down on paper, but this is big, at least as big as your little run-in in Silverton last year. It's a lot bigger than I thought when I first started after him. I'm heading for Ophir. You've got to meet me there, and don't waste a moment! If we don't stop this, there's going to be hell to pay.
Blake
PS, If you meet a friendly little old lady, steer clear. I don't know what she is, but she ain't human, and she's very dangerous.
I felt a chill as I read the last part. It appeared that the demon had told the truth, though certainly not out of any sort of pure intentions. “We've got to get back to the campsite,” I said. “Now.” I showed the rest the note. It took only a moment for it to sink in. We headed back at a run.
I'd parked my truck right at the edge of town, alongside Ian's. The four of us piled in quickly. Charlie and Ian were watching over Tyrese and Miguel Ramirez, who was tending to Tyrese's wounds. “We're going back to the campsite!” I yelled as we passed. “Catch up as soon as you can.” Tyrese immediately waved Miguel away and headed for Ian's pickup, the rest in tow.
Our two trucks roared into the campsite, which seemed strangely still. There were still the same RVs and tents that had been set up when we left, but there wasn't anyone moving around any of them, and a couple of the RVs had open doors just swinging on their hinges. Jackets were laid over camp chairs next to empty tents. It was as if everyone had suddenly gotten up and left. The bad feeling in the pit of my stomach just got worse.
Not everyone was gone. Edgar Ramirez was lying on the ground next to the twins' F-150. He wasn't sprawled out like he'd been knocked down. He was lying on the grass, perfectly composed, his hands folded on his chest. I got out and ran to him. I didn't know either of the twins very well, but I really didn't want to have to bury another Hunter.
He was breathing, deeply and evenly, like he was sleeping. I hesitated, not sure what the effect of trying to wake him would be, but then Father Ignacio reached down past my shoulder and shook him.
Edgar came awake slowly, blinking up at us without a lot of comprehension in his eyes. Then it all came flooding back, and he sat up, a look of horror spreading across his face. He grabbed my arm. “The girl!” he exclaimed. “Is she gone?”
Father Ignacio and I traded a look, then scanned the empty campground. “It sure looks like it,” Father said.
Edgar groaned. “The old lady...she did this. I don't know what she is, but she's...”
“Not human,” I finished for him. “Blake left a note. He warned us about her. Unfortunately, we got to it too late.”
“It was like all of a sudden, her eyes just got really big, and I couldn't look at anything else. I couldn't move. She told me something, but...” he clutched his head. “I can't remember it. Just those eyes...she walked away, and everyone followed her. Then I passed out.” He looked up at us, anguish in his eyes. “There was nothing I could do!”
Father put a hand on his shoulder. “I know, son,” he said. “Blake warned us she was very dangerous. We don't know what she is, but if she's from the Otherworld, there might well have been nothing you could do, even if you were prepared for it.” He looked up at me. “We'll find them.” The look in his eyes told me he was hoping just as much as I was that he wasn't just voicing wishful thinking.
One thing was for sure. Blake wasn't lying when he said this was big. Two towns already torn apart by whatever was going on, powerful demons taking physical form in the waking world, and unknown Otherworld creatures kidnapping people, and that was apparently only the periphery of the real events.
I was starting to really dread what we'd find in Ophir.
Chapter 10
“This really isn't getting any better,” I muttered, as we came over the ridge to look down the valley toward Ophir.
“Were you really expecting it to?” Eryn asked.
“No, I can't say that I was.”
The valley where Ophir lay was almost solid farmland from edge to edge. As soon as the timber fell away, it was replaced by crops. There were a couple of feedlots closer to the town. Or at least, they were closer to where the town was supposed to be. We couldn't actually see Ophir itself.
That was because the town was enveloped by something that looked almost like a supercell thunderstorm had reached the ground. A black, swirling cloud was tearing up the crops around the edge of town, utterly obscuring any of the town itself except for about half a gas station, that was looking a little the worse for wear. Any hope that it was just a natural disaster was pretty well dashed by the weird green and purple lightning that was flashing in and around the cloud. Not that anybody looking at it would have thought it was naturally occurring in the first place. It looked like something from the cover of a fantasy novel, or maybe a heavy metal album cover.
The cloud rose above the town and spread out like a giant umbrella, brushing the tops of the nearby mountains. We'd seen it from the far side of the ridge, but the full picture hadn't revealed itself until just now.
There was a small rest area a few miles outside of town, and I pulled over into it, with the little convoy of mostly older vehicles following me in. I parked my truck right outside of the little brick restroom and got out. The rest joined me around the tailgate.
Now, while there are certainly exceptions, the vast majority of Witch Hunters, at least these days, are combat vets. There isn't any hard and fast requirement for it, but it just tends to be the way it is. That also seems to be the reason why the Order is so overwhelmingly male. Well, that and the fact that most of the battleaxes tend to go join the Sisters of St. Peter the Exorcist, but I try not to spend too much time thinking about that particular bunch of uptight fanatics.
So, since most of us, with the exception of Tyrese, who had actually been a semi-pro basketball player before being recruited after a run-in with another Redcap, were either former Marines, soldiers, or, in one case, an Airman, we were all comfortable with planning these little operations just like we were still in the military, however our personal styles may have changed afterward.
Which was not to say that everything went as smoothly as a mission brief in the mil.
“How are we supposed to go into that with just a handful of us?” Charlie demanded as he walked over from his Scout. He waved at the storm. “That's not something we're going to be able to take care of by shooting a few monsters and sprinkling some holy water.”
“You need to have a little more faith, Charlie,” Father Ignacio growled. “And need I remind you that Jed here dealt with a potentially world-ending incursion in Silverton last year, essentially by himself.”
“I had some pretty top-tier support on that one, Father,” I put in. I'd done my bit, but I would have been a thin paste in a basement if it hadn't been for the intervention of an Archangel. He'd done all the heavy lifting.
“My point being that this kind of combat is never entirely determined by numbers,” Father said. “Remember, 'The Lord is my strength.' Now, has anybody seen anything like this before?” Heads shook in the negative all around. I'd seen it rain blood in Silverton, but that wasn't what this was. This looked weirder, somehow. “Has anyone heard about anything like this before?” he asked, looking around at all of us. Again, nobody answered that they had.
“Well, then,” he said, rubbing his chin, “I guess we'll have to go in prepared for just about anything, though I rather expect that we can probably expect something similar to Bowesmont.” He peered at Eryn, Tall Bear, and me. “Or am I just indulging in some wishful thinking?”
The three of us looked at each other and shrugged. “Bowesmont was a pretty considerable escalation after Coldwell,” I said. “Leaving aside the body count, there was a lot more freaky stuff going on in Bowesmont, and it wasn't nearly as weird going in as this. I think we'd better expect some seriously demented stuff going on in there. I doubt it'll be as 'tame' as Bowesmont was.”
That elicited a chorus of groans. Bowesmont hadn't exactly been “tame” by anyone's definition of the word, but given everything we'd seen so far, there was definitely something worse than homunculi and flesh golems driving this chaos. No slouch summoned a demon that could possess a construct, and whatever “Lucy” had been, it hadn't been a minor nuisance, either. The closer we got to it, the worse I was expecting it to get.
Of course, as much as we needed to be ready for the situation inside to be very different, we still approached the town very similarly, parking the cars and trucks just outside the edge of the strange cloud and approaching on foot, armed to the teeth. The subject of going in with the vehicles had come up, but the majority of us who had been infantry in the before time loudly kiboshed that idea, again.
With everyone doing their best to face the unknown with steely-eyed resolve, masking the nervousness and trepidation that roiled behind impassive faces, we advanced on the swirling vortex of cloud. Armed with rifles, shotguns, chainsaws, and Charlie's improvised bandolier of Molotov cocktails—which had most of us keeping a decent distance from him—we walked up the road in a loose line, facing the weirdness ahead.
We stopped just short of the whirling wall of cloud. As we got closer, we found that there wasn't any appreciable wind to match its apparent movement. It looked like we were standing just outside the funnel of a tornado, but the wind was barely stirring Eryn's hair. Some of the nearby crops were torn up, but only right at the edge of the cloud, and they looked more like they'd been grabbed and ripped out by hand, rather than blown around by the wind. It just made the whole scene that much more disconcerting.
We just kind of stood there for a few moments. I think everyone was mentally steeling themselves for what was to come. There was no telling what was on the other side of that misty barrier, or even what touching it would do to us.
It was actually Tall Bear who broke the stalemate. The most inexperienced guy in the group stepped forward and passed into the smoke or cloud or whatever it was.
That kind of jarred the rest of us out of our hesitation, though we all sort of looked at each other for a moment as if to say, “Did he really just go in there by himself?” Then the lot of us charged in, hoping that Tall Bear hadn't somehow met his doom before we could go in.
As soon as I stepped through the threshold of the cloud, I was alone, or at least it seemed like it. I was in a dark, swirling fog. The ground was still solid underneath my boots, but I couldn't see anyone else. I could hear, though.
“What the hell?” Charlie wasn't exactly being quiet, but that wasn't exactly surprising, either. “Where did you guys go?”
Before anyone could actually answer, something came screaming out of the fog at me.
I couldn't get a good look at it; it was moving too fast. It also wasn't exactly solid, though it was making enough noise that it sure sounded like it had a good set of lungs in it. It wailed and howled as it swooped at me, looking like a semi-transparent cross between a Halloween ghost and a squid, faintly glowing against the gloom of the fog, or smoke, or cloud, or whatever it was. I brought up my Winchester instinctively to shoot it, but given the fact that I could see through it, I held my fire. I heard another boom off to my left, suggesting that somebody hadn't been quite that circumspect. The howling, moaning thing swept around me without even stirring my jacket and disappeared.
Unfortunately, since I wasn't driven off by the display, the next thing to come out of the fog wasn't nearly so theatrical or powerless. Where the howler had been faintly glowing, the next figure, looking just as tattered and windblown, was pure darkness. It just loomed up in front of me and stared at me, or at least I assumed that was wha
t it was doing, considering I couldn't see anything resembling eyes in its blank, shadowy face. But whatever it was or whatever it was doing, the air temperature suddenly dropped about twenty degrees. The thing seemed to loom larger in front of me, forming a wall of darkness, and I felt the strength start to drain out of me. By the time it really sank in that this wasn't just a noisy phantasm, that I really had to fight it, I could barely lift my rifle. Not that the gun would necessarily have done that much good.
My knees started to buckle. My throat was so dry I could barely draw breath. It felt cold enough to die of hypothermia right then and there.
Somehow, past the desert in my mouth and throat, I started to whisper Psalm 23. It's a good one for those kinds of situations, especially when it feels like your brain is frozen with fear and whatever malignant influence is pushing its way into your brain. Everything felt sluggish, but I was able to pull that one out.
Few creatures of darkness can stand prayer, and their attacks falter in the face of it. This one was no exception. The shadow shrank, the cold began to recede, and I began to feel stronger. I got a little bit of spittle back in my mouth, swallowed, and was able to continue the prayer in an audible voice, growing louder with each verse. By the time I finished the Psalm, the shadow had bolted away into the mist, and I was standing tall again, though I still felt a faint chill that only accentuated the dread I was feeling going into this. After Coldwell and Bowesmont, when this was the opening salvo at Ophir, I knew this was going to be a nightmare.
Three more steps and I was out of the mist. Charlie, Ian, Eryn, and Father Ignacio were already there. The Ramirez Twins stepped out a moment later, followed by Tyrese. But Tall Bear was nowhere to be seen. “Ah, crap,” I muttered, and plunged back in. The big deputy probably wasn't adequately armed for this; we should have left him at the hospital with Alistair and brought Kolya along, instead, but we'd been in a bit of a rush.
