Owen looked up and saw the boathook dangling from a crisscrossed jerry-rigged set-up that was hooked to the large wooden ledge. He actually didn’t remember where it had been before, and what did it matter? It was the buzzing drone that concerned him. It had almost doubled in volume and he was sure that wasn’t good.
“Come on, Randy,” he said, pulling his injured friend forward. “Come--”
A swarm of flies, thick as oil smoke, swept into the boathouse, blotting out the feeble light of the single bulb above them. The roar they brought with them was both deafening and terrifying as they surged forward, straight for the men.
They let go of each other, backed away from the cloud of flies separately. Randy put up his arms as if to fight them. Owen barely had time to say “What--”
–and the swarm hit.
Randy and Owen were driven back, each of them thrashing wildly, clawing away handfuls of flies from their eyes, nose, mouth. But the swarm never ended. For every patch they cleared, an even greater phalanx surged forward to fill it. And more came. And more, until they couldn’t see or hear or even breathe under the assault
Frantic, Owen tried to see Randy, to grab him, to get to the door, but he couldn’t make him out through the barrage. The flies were hitting so hard now they were literally dying on impact; the bodies began to pile up at his feet. Owen thought he felt a wound open up above his right eye; he thought he actually felt the flies moving inside him, under his skin, but he couldn’t reach up to be sure. For an instant – just an instant, the cloud cleared a bit and he thought he could make out a motionless figure covered in insect corpses slumped on the floor against the wall. He thought it was Randy, but he couldn’t even check that.
And then, with the same kind of clarity he had felt when he dived into the freezing river, Owen realized something. This could kill them. He and Randy could literally drown in this impossible swarm unless he did something – now.
He forced a hand free, filled it with flies as thick as porridge, and squeezed. Even as the air turned sour in his lungs, even as he felt his strength draining away, he fought them, fought them. And in the midst of the deafening roar, his heart pounding in his ears, he thought he heard … a sound.
Words. He realized he was most certainly hallucinating, but the words came again … louder … more insistent.
At first they were little more than mumbled fragments. But the fragments became words, and the words formed into sentences.
“The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.”
The strength and volume of the words began to almost equal the roar of the insects.
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters.”
Owen was an atheist. He had lost what little faith he’d had in any God at all when he was only nine – when his mother died without saying goodbye. It had turned him into a skeptic at an early age, and in the fifteen years since then, nothing had happened to convince him otherwise. There was no “God.” There was no “supernatural.” There was just the here and now, what was flat and full and real and right in front of you, and nothing more.
Until today. Until that chilling twist of fear found him standing in Charlie Danvers’ office. And now …
Now, in spite of everything, the words of the psalm brought an unexpected comfort to him, even as the buzzing roar of the insects pulled him down and down and down ...
Am I hallucinating? he wondered as his knees began to buckle under the endless assault. Is this some heavenly choir sent to carry me across from this world to the next? Could I have been wrong all along? Could I …
But the voice rose to a shout. The words filled the air. And he realized it wasn’t any angel; it wasn’t the voice of God.
It was Randy. Randy was shouting the prayer with a conviction so strong it tore at Owen’s unbelieving heart. It made him want to cry in joy.
“He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
Driven to his knees, gasping for breath, Owen realized that somehow, impossibly, the words were having an effect on the insects. They were still there, still gushing at him from every angle, but … there were fewer of them. He was sure of it. The swarm seemed to suddenly lack the power it had displayed just seconds ago.
Now Randy’s shouted words filled the boatshed, actually becoming louder than the roar of the flies. Or was the attack lessening in intensity? Or was it both?
“Yea, Though I Walk Through The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death, I Will Fear No Evil: For Thou Art With Me; Thy Rod And Thy Staff They Comfort Me.”
Yes. He was sure of it. The attack was losing steam, faltering. The endless stream was beginning to recede. The roar was retreating to a loud and barely painful buzzzz ...
Randy shouted the last words of the Twenty-Third Psalm so loud it almost shook the boathouse.
“SURELY GOODNESS AND MERCY SHALL FOLLOW ME ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE: AND I WILL DWELL IN THE HOUSE OF THE LORD FOREVER. AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
And just like that … it was over.
The horrible noise trailed away. The last of the flies disappeared into the shadows. Owen and Randy found themselves knee-deep in mounds of dead and dying flies, but there was no sign of any in the air. Not even one.
Randy stared at his friend and partner as Owen slowly, painfully, pulled himself to his feet. Randy slowly looked down at his own hand; he was distantly surprised to find he was tightly clutching the crucifix at his neck.
Owen gaped at him. His old friend’s face beamed with a conviction Owen had never seen before – had never felt in his life. He could only hope to feel anything like it, ever.
Before either of them could speak, the masses of dead flies piled around them began to disintegrate, to fall to dust. Within seconds a light wind, terrifyingly cold, whipped around their ankles and lifted the dust away, carrying it from the boathouse, leaving no sign there had ever been even one fly there.
Owen stared at Randy, at a total loss for words. He wanted to laugh with joy. He felt like crying for the same reason. He wanted to ask Randy what had just happened – how had it happened. Without really thinking about it, he stepped forward, intent on doing something he rarely ever did to anyone: give his friend a huge hug.
At that moment Randy shouted a warning:
“Owen! Look out!”
Untouched, unbidden, the boathook above their heads broke away from its netting and leaped at them, its vicious barbed tongue pointed straight down. As it neared the floor it turned, as if moving under an unseen hand, and the barbed, solid-steel arrow-shaped head ripped into Owen’s side just below his seventh rib. The force of the blow drove him to the floor with a loud crash.
“Owen!” Randy shouted, and fell to his knees next to his friend. “Owen ...”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Owen was … content. He was floating, suspended in a colorless, comforting cloud, in that timeless moment beyond sleep and waking. It would end soon, he knew. Soon, he thought sleepily, he would have to get up and get ready for work. He’d have breakfast at that place he liked on the corner; he had to get the Chevy serviced before the end of the week, and maybe he’d call …
Maybe …
The searing pain pierced his side, a burning hot lance as thick as a human arm, shoving into him, splitting skin and muscle, scraping against bone. He gasped like a drowning man and tried to curl around it, make it stop, but he couldn’t move. The comforting fog was shredding like a windblown cloud, and now the real word roared over him: the aching cold, the freezing water, the choking darkness.
And the pain. Oh, god, the pain ...
His eyes opened. He gulped in a frigid breath and remembered it all, so quickly it was like colliding with the wall. He was lying on the filthy deck of a boathouse in Amityville, New York, in the middle of a nightmare he couldn’t even begin to explain or understand. And he felt as if a red-hot poker had been jammed deep into his left side … and it was still there.
He tried to s
it up. He couldn’t help himself. It only made the pain worse, surging through him like molten metal; it made his entire body jerk convulsively.
“Owen! You’re awake. Thank God.”
He turned to the side and Randy’s face filled his entire field of vision. For a second the angle seemed all wrong; then Owen realized he was stretched out on the floor and Randy was hovering over him. He could feel Randy’s arm around his body, holding him, propping him up.
“It all happened, didn’t it?” he said, his voice rough and weak at the same time. “It’s all … still happening.” He tried to sit up again, and the pain soared. Oh, God. He leaned back, panting like a sick animal. “Bad … luck ...”
Randy grimaced and shook his head. “No,” he said. “More than that. That fucking thing came for you, Owen. Aimed right at you.”
“Im … possible.”
Randy almost snarled. “It’s all impossible, man. The rotting girl, the flies, that shit that came out of the river. That kid with the eyes you saw in the house, all of it.”
Owen couldn’t argue with him. It hurt too much. But he remembered it all, and he knew it wasn’t over.
The looming image of Randy’s face pulled away as his partner fell back and leaned against the rough wooden wall of the shed. “The boathook,” he said, licking his dry lips, almost blue from the cold. “It fell from up … up there when I first came in, missed me by an inch. And when we came back it was up there again. I didn’t put it there. You didn’t put it there.” He ran a trembling hand through his hair, and Owen heard ice crystals crackle under his nerveless fingers. “And you didn’t see it come down, man. It aimed for you. It pulled itself out of the netting and pointed at you, straight at you. Even turned itself in mid-air so it wouldn’t miss. God ...”
“That’s … crazy,” Owen said. He tried to sit up again, but the pain was almost too much to bear. He shuddered and moved a gloved hand towards his side. How bad was it …?
Randy grabbed his wrist and squeezed. “I don’t think you should touch it. It looks infected and it’s getting worse.”
“Infected?” That didn’t make any sense. “How long have I been out?”
“Only a few minutes.”
“Then it couldn’t be infected yet. Could it?”
Randy shrugged, looking strained and helpless at the same time. “You’re asking me what can and can’t be? After all that’s happened? Give me a break.”
Owen nodded dully. How could he argue with a man who’d save them from drowning in flies with some kind of … religious intervention?
That had really happened, too … hadn’t it?
“All I can tell you is that you have a fever and the wound has begun to look pretty damned nasty.” He wiped a heavy sheen of sweat from Owen’s forehead and frowned. “And you’re sweating like a pig, man.”
This simple action made Owen stop and take stock of his body. Randy was right. His entire right side was tingling with a sickening chill, a combination of biting cold and wet, but his face felt hot, damp and clammy. And the area below his rib cage, on his left, was flaming hot.
“Man, that hurts,” he said between clenched teeth. “Feels like it’s still in there.”
“A piece of it is.” Randy winced, as if it was somehow his fault. “I tried to pull the damned thing out, but the tip broke off. The entire front end of the hook is solid steel, but still … it somehow broke off.”
Randy swallowed hard. Owen noticed for the first time that his partner was sweating heavily himself. “It was only a couple of minutes before your whole side started looking … well, bad. Infected. Look, I know it can’t spread that quickly, but … it is. And I have no idea what to do.”
Owen shook his head, suddenly weary beyond words. “How could you? How could anybody?” Then, for the first time, he remembered that Randy had an injury of his own. No wonder he looked like hell. “Hey, what about your leg?”
Randy jumped as if he was surprised. Owen realized his buddy had drifted off for a moment. “What? Oh. Um … I … don’t ... I don’t know.”
Half-aware, Randy reached down and pulled up the leg of his jeans. Owen almost gagged.
“Damn, Randy!” For a moment, Owen forgot his own pain. The burn on Randy’s leg had actually spread. And worse: its edges were the vicious, wet red of infection, and fissures along the length of it were filled with a sickly green pus, so thick it was actually dripping from the wound in more than one place.
No wonder he’s having trouble concentrating, Owen realized. He must be in as much pain as I am.
It pushed him to a realization, as painful in its own way as anything else that had happened: We both have to get out of here and to a hospital quick as we can. And nobody’s going to help us. We’re on our own.
He made himself sit up. It didn’t matter how much it hurt. “Randy,” he gasped, if only to distract himself from the fire in his side, “can you still walk at all?’
Randy took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. If I use the oar like a crutch. Maybe the wall.” He looked around the room. “Do you think you can help me try and stand? I might pass out, but I’ll do my damnedest not ... to not ...”
He’s driftin away again, Owen thought. “Randy! I need you here, man. We have to work together or neither of us is going to get out of this.” Then he remembered what had happened just a few minutes earlier – a lifetime ago. He reached out and shook his partner hard by the shoulder. “Randy! Grab hold of your crucifix. Hold it has tight as you can.”
Randy reacted this time. He turned to him, sweating brow creased in confusion.
“Your crucifix, Randy. Around your neck.”
The older man looked down at his chest. His eyes widened in surprise, as if he’d never seen the thing before. But his hand came up – agonizingly slow – and wrapped around the artifact.
The reaction was instantaneous. The confusion immediately cleared from Randy’s eyes. He took a couple of deep breaths, straightened up, and began to ease himself to his feet, wedging his shoulder against the wall.
Good, Owen thought. Excellent. He pulled his own hands back, braced them against the wall and tried to stand as well.
Pain like nothing Owen had ever felt before ripped through his body. He teetered on the edge of blacking out again, only halfway to his feet. But he refused to let his mind close down. I have to, he told himself, pausing and gasping for air. There’s no choice.
He was up. They both were. They grinned at each other, almost laughing. “Nothin’ to it,” Randy said and coughed. “God ...”
A high, rough whirring sound cut through the silence beyond the shed. They both stopped moving – stopped breathing.
Someone’s out there,” Randy whispered.
Grinding, Owen realized. It sounds like a huge knife-sharpener. Like the stone-wheel grinder they used to sharpen tools back at the yard in Hicksville.
Randy was right: there was someone out there.
Without thinking, Owen turned his face to the ceiling and shouted, as loud as he could. “Help!”
Randy’s eyes widened in fear. “Owen, no! Don’t!”
There was no answer. Owen tried again. “Please, whoever’s out there? We’re in the boathouse! We’re hurt. Help us!”
The grinding continued without a pause, and a new sound was added: the metallic squeal of a blade held tight against the spinning stone. Squeeee ....
“Stop it, man,” Randy hissed at him. “We don’t know who that is. We don’t know if they have anything to do with … all this.” He gestured weakly at the shed, the boat, the water, the hook – all the horrors that had occurred just in the last few hours.
“How could it be worse, Randy? We’re dying here, man.”
Randy had to nod. It was true. “Let’s just look first,” he said. “Let’s get to the door, take a peek.”
The grinding went on. There was no change. Owen nodded wearily in agreement and took a deep breath.
The door looked a thousand miles away. The slow, excrucia
tingly painful journey along the rattling wooden wall seemed to take forever. But finally, truly amazingly, they both reached the door.
Almost in unison, the sank to their knees, then sat completely, just inside the entrance. They were exhausted.
The whining, grinding continued.
Randy was the first to stir. He shook Owen roughly by the shoulder until he opened his eyes.
“Okay,” he said, his voice thick with fatigue, “I’ll push open the door and you take a--”
The door surged open a full foot with a deafening bang! They both shouted and ducked as a huge black animal-snout, bristling with viciously sharp fangs, thrust itself through the gap and snapped at them, snarling madly.
The men scrambled back, their pain forgotten for a moment, as a huge black dog tried to shoulder its way through the half-open door, teeth bared and gnashing, spittle flying from its jaws. Its shoulder rammed against the doorpost and stopped its forward lunge, half-in, half-out of the shed and bare inches from Randy’s face. Then the animal pulled back a fraction and came at them again, even harder. The door rattled ominously in its frame, on the verge of collapsing.
Owen could feel the animal’s hot breath on his clammy cheeks, see its tongue lolling and straining for him as froth and drool splattered off its muzzle. It lunged again, and again, crazed and yowling, desperate to get at them.
Randy rolled to one side and pushed away the agony that pulsed from his leg. He crawled to the wall, five feet to the side of the huge black dog’s maw, and pushed himself into a standing position. “Kick him!” he shouted over the snarling and barking.
“What?” Owen was still on his butt, not three feet from the beast’s snapping jaws. “What--”
“Kick him in the fucking face, Owen! I’ll slam the door!”
Owen blinked at the animal as it snapped at him again. He got it. Okay …
Randy threw out a hand and spanned the two-foot gap between the post and door itself.
“One!” he shouted. He had a sudden vision of the animal leaping up and seizing his arm in its jaws. Oh, shit, don’t think about that, he ordered himself. “Two!”’
Amityville Horror Christmas Page 6
