by Guy N Smith
She was leaning back against the table in a lewd stance with legs wide apart, her blistered fingers pulling at soft flesh. Grinning horribly, she was willing him to watch and be seduced.
‘I … I’d better go and get Mike.’ He made as if to rise, but she pushed him back into his seat, and laughed. The ruse had not fooled her.
‘No, doctor. I think it is too late, anyway, from what you tell me. Let us go out there and fill the grave in.’
‘Paton isn’t dead. I heard him groaning at the bottom of the shaft.’
‘You heard something, doctor. But not Nick! The thing that lives down there is hungering to feed again. We must give it flesh, human flesh, or else it will rise and go in search of living bodies!’
He swallowed. She’s crazy, he thought. The plague has taken her mind. Listening above the roaring in his ears, he was hoping to hear the sound of approaching vehicles. But there was nothing. How much longer were the police going to be?
‘Come on.’ She was grasping his wrist, struggling to get him up on to his feet. ‘We have work to do and there isn’t much time left.’
‘How are we going to fill in the well?’
‘With shovels. There are a couple lying out there.’
‘Impossible. It would take days, even weeks.’
‘We shall manage it.’ She coughed, and something landed stickily on the floor. She was dragging him now, with an urgency about her that bordered on panic.
Her strength was waning. Like her husband, she was running out of time. So far she had had an advantage over him, with her pathetic state and her mania. But Williamson knew that he had to act fast, for part of what she said was true – there was a living disease at the bottom of that borehole that had to be destroyed.
Even as they stepped outside he turned on her, twisted the arm which she held him behind her back, grabbed the other and jerked it upwards. Holly screamed, a yell of pain and frustration, and anger because he had dared to turn on her. Her head came round and her teeth snapped, then ground together. She hissed, dribbling revolting pus on to her ravaged bosom. She struggled, but she was too weak even for an ageing man, cursing as he pushed her before him. Making inarticulate protests, she slumped back against him as soon as they were indoors again, but he was not deceived. The sudden strength of the demented was not to be underestimated.
He looked around and saw a cupboard beneath the stairs, its door hanging open. That would do – it would have to, he decided. He shoved her towards it, thrust her into its opening and she sprawled across an array of buckets and cleaning materials. He slammed the flimsy door and pushed the wooden catch into place. As he leaned back against it, he allowed himself just one sigh of relief – and then he was moving towards the outer door.
An idea which had only just come to him renewed his ebbing strength. Shuffling, shambling, he hurried towards the Range Rover, those twin eyes blinding him as if it, too, was on their side. Scrabbling in the back, he found what he was looking for – a red canister with a closed spout. Its contents sloshed about inside as he hurried on down to the hollow below.
He knelt and fumbled with the spring catch that held the collapsible spout closed, snagging a fingernail even as he managed to prise it free. Lying full length, he held the nozzle over the brink, tipping the jerry can and hearing liquid gurgle out of it. The stench drowned the sharp odour of the petrol – that putrefying smell was beginning again. The Festering was stirring from its temporary slumber, coming up the shaft towards him as if it knew!
The can was empty. He let it fall and listened as it went clanking downwards. He could hear that groaning again, a wheezing that sounded as if the wind was rising, or an ancient entity was crying its anguish aloud, screeching its hatred. Hungering for living flesh.
The doctor’s fingers trembled and the matchbox rattled as he drew it from his trouser pocket. He sent a briar pipe rolling across the hard ground, and matches spilled from the open box, but somehow he held one, rasped it on the emery paper, and a miniature flare fell burning into the mouth of the well. Another. And another. He was striking them as fast as he could find them, until at last the box in his hand was empty. He waited, face pressed against the ground. Just one match, he thought. That was all that was needed, a tiny flame to ignite the fumes down below. But perhaps they had been extinguished on their fall, and it was all in vain.
The stench was growing stronger. He felt it in his throat, in his nostrils, a living force that tried to suffocate him, making him cough and retch. And all the time that cry from down below was getting louder.
Then suddenly the ground and sky seemed to explode. Williamson saw the gush of flame even through closed eyes, a tongue of fire that shot out of the gaping hole like a burning geyser, a subterranean dragon venting its anger on the world above. The dark sky turned orange in a premature fiery dawn.
Then the doctor was clutching his ears again as he heard the screams from below, deafening cries of agony, the shrieking of a burning soul in hell, reaching shrieking pitch, then dying away as the inferno down below took hold. Hell itself was being consumed in its own flames, he thought, as the intense heat surged upwards, and stones cracked and splintered in the walls of the shaft. Black smoke came billowing up, obscuring the myriad of stars, amid the underground roaring and hissing as the cauterization began.
Williamson rolled away and crawled, coughing, towards the cottage. Even as he fought to escape the heat and smoke, he permitted himself a smile and recalled Professor Shaw’s words taken from the script of an ancient apothecary: Only fire can destroy the disease completely.
Through the eddying smoke he saw the lighted dwelling, the back door still open as he had left it. He headed towards it because there was a telephone in there. He would call the emergency services: fire, police, and an ambulance to take Holly Mannion to …
He was unable to hold back his cry of despair as through the stifling gloom he saw, for the second time that night, the silhouette of a naked woman framed in the doorway. Her shrieks of fury reached him even as she saw his crawling figure. The demented girl had found her last maniacal strength and was heading towards him, brandishing a wood chopper in her festering hands.
20
For Doctor Williamson it was almost too much of an effort to rise to his feet again. Almost, but not quite. His mind was stronger than his body and forced it to respond one last time, just as Holly Mannion must have done in order to escape from that broom cupboard.
He swayed unsteadily and regained his balance with difficulty. His head felt as if it might burst from the pressure inside it, and there was a tightness akin to a restricting steel band clamping his chest. He knew the signs only too well, and just hoped that he could hang on for a little while longer. He wondered whether it really mattered if he couldn’t. The plague which had lived in that well for centuries was surely destroyed by fire forever now; nothing could possibly have survived in that raging inferno below ground.
But the plague had survived, right here in front of him, in the grotesque form of a diseased woman brandishing a chopper. It had spawned, and it would live on! All his efforts would have been futile unless …
‘You fool!’ Holly – he found it almost unbelievable that it was her – stopped a few paces from him. ‘See what you have done!’
‘I thought you wanted it destroyed.’ Keep her talking, he told himself. Play for time. The constriction in his chest had eased a little; he felt he might be alright in a few moments.
‘Not now!’ She threw back her head and gave a laugh that rattled the phlegm in her throat. ‘Once I did, but that was before I understood. It came up and took me but it did not destroy me as it did the others. I recovered, and I am its Chosen One. It has given me immortality in return for keeping the plague alive! I shall live while others die. I can feel its power within me, it has given me a new role, to rule over mankind as a queen.’
You poor fool, he thought. In a matter of hours, perhaps less, you will be dead. He caught his breath as he detected her f
etid body odours. The light from the flames were bathing her in an eerie orange glow. Holly Mannion was, in effect, already dead; this creature standing in front of him was surely a she-devil sent by Satan, barely human any longer. Her sores wept, and rivulets of stinking poison ravaged her flesh, leaving a trail of racing cancers in their wake.
‘The whores carry it,’ she cackled. They spread it. That was where Mike got it from. I gave it to Nick … just as I am going to give it to you, doctor!’
The axe fell from her fingers and thudded to the ground. She did not need it any longer, she decided. It had served its purpose in smashing down the door of her prison. Now her body was her weapon of death!
Williamson almost screamed ‘keep away’, but he knew that she was beyond reasoning now. She dropped into a seductive crouch, a she-hunter stalking her prey, leering. She had to drag her body every inch of the way, her arms reaching out for him.
He eluded her grasp, wondering if he could outrun her, and almost fell. No, he realized his tired old body was as spent as hers, only she was fired with a devilish lust that transcended normal human strength. Now it was a deadly game of chasing and dodging, feinting – and the loser’s forfeit was death.
He tried not to envisage her grappling with him, throwing him to the ground and clambering upon him, tearing at his clothing, baring his flesh with those ulcerated fingers. Macabre, terrifying – but in an inexplicable, bizarre way it was also erotic, a primeval urge for mating in its most basic form that went back to the beginning of the world.
He was tiring; his chest was tightening in that invisible vice again. His footwork was clumsy, he was kicking stones and slipping on them. She was toying with him now, displaying her body provocatively. So sure of him.
Suddenly they heard a wailing, a sound that seemed to come from nowhere but was everywhere, rising to an incredible ear-bursting pitch, as if a thousand devils were coming out of that fiery well. The noise numbed him, hit him with an almost physical force. And that dancing, flickering orange firelight had become a kaleidoscope of dazzling colours, flashing blue that turned green and then back to orange. Like crazy disco lights that hurt, and he could still see them even when he closed his eyes.
Williamson saw Holly Mannion falter and stagger, her body awash with multi-coloured pus, an optical illusion that transformed her into a shapeless glutinous mass which heaved and pulsed, and streamed opaque putrefaction. Anguished, she was screaming – but it was impossible to hear her cries above this escalation of noise – a cavorting, writhing, demented being who would surely sink down and die at any second.
Realization that it was no army of banshees materializing out of the flames brought relief and euphoria. Instead, a small force of uniformed police officers fought their way through the thick eddying smoke. The authoritative silhouettes came towards the doctor and Holly. And in the far background there was another blare of sirens – ambulance and fire engine, Williamson hazarded a guess.
‘Are you all right, doctor?’
Williamson nodded, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Holly miraculously revived. Just as she had seemed about to wilt like a hothouse flower without moisture, she came back to life, one last surge of madness propelling her body beyond the limits of normal human endurance. She straightened up, leaped and ran, a wounded gazelle determined to outdistance an attacking lion. Except that she was heading directly towards that well which now gushed fire like a burning oil geyser instead of water. The lithe figure sprinted, seemingly having thrown off her terrible affliction.
‘Stop her!’ one of the policeman shouted, and gave pursuit.
‘No, let her go,’ Doctor Williamson grunted, but nobody heard him. It wouldn’t have made any difference to the outcome, anyway. They would not overtake her. Not now.
He was afforded one final glimpse of Holly as the heat drove back her pursuer, and he saw her throw herself forward at the mouth of the borehole in a dive that took her into the very core of those shooting flames. She was outlined for one moment, a plucked fowl roasting on a spit, suspended over the fire and then being sucked down into it. Then gone, forever. It was the only way.
Williamson stood there and watched as the searing heat drove the three policemen still further back. Holly had gone to join Nick Paton down there. The doctor recalled with some relief that Tommy Eaton, Jim Fitzpatrick and Frank Bennion had all been cremated. Now he must ensure that Mike Mannion’s corpse was also consumed by fire. Perhaps, as a precaution, he might manage to persuade Susan’s parents to have her body disposed of in the same way, too.
Police were moving the obstructing vehicles in order to allow the fire engine access. It did not matter now, the doctor thought, as he allowed a young constable to lead him back to the Range Rover, if they doused the blaze, for the flames had done their work. They had destroyed the Festering Death. And cleansed.
It was the only way, as an unknown apothecary had written centuries ago.
The End
Thank you for purchasing this ebook.
I hope you enjoyed the read!.
Guy.
This ebook is the fifieth book to be published as part of a project to convert Guy's entire back catalogue to ebook format. Beginning July 2010 it is expected to have all books available by the end of 2012.
The list of books so far published is :
1. Werewolf by Moonlight.
2. The Sucking Pit.
3. The Slime Beast.
4. Night of the Crabs.
5. The Truckers 1 - The Black Knights.
6. The Truckers 2 - Hi-Jack!.
7. Return of the Werewolf.
8. Bamboo Guerillas.
9. Killer Crabs.
10. Bats Out of Hell.
11. The Son of the Werewolf.
12. Locusts.
13. The Origin of the Crabs.
14. Caracal.
15. Thirst.
16. Deathbell.
17. Satan's Snowdrop.
18. Doomflight.
19. Warhead.
20. Manitou Doll.
21. Wolfcurse.
22. Crabs On The Rampage.
23. The Pluto Pact.
24. Entombed.
25. The Lurkers.
26. Sabat 1: The Graveyard Vultures.
27. Sabat 2: The Blood Merchants.
28. Sabat 3: Cannibal Cult.
29. Blood Circuit.
30. Accursed.
31. Sabat 4: The Druid Connection.
32. The Undead.
33. Crabs' Moon.
34. The Walking Dead.
35. Throwback.
36. The Wood.
37. The Neophyte.
38. Abomination.
39. Snakes.
40. Cannibals.
41. Alligators.
42. Bloodshow.
43. Thirst II: The Plague.
44. Demons.
45. Crabs: The Human Sacrifice.
46. Fiend.
47. The Island.
48. Mania.
49. The Master.
50. The Camp.
51. The Festering.
The next book will be :
52. Phobia.
"Number thirteen Schooner Street was a typical terraced house in an up-and-coming area of south London - or so John and Leah Strike thought when they first moved in with their children. But then he nightmares started - vivid, harrowing images of gruesome violence that tore into their consciousness leaving behind rabid, phobic reactions to the simplest of everyday things. Caught in a web of their deepest fears - too scared to leave home, too terrified to remain - reason told them that the only thing to fear was fear itself. But then the terrors that festered in the shadows of the evil house took on a life of their own - and the grisly killings began …"
To view all ebooks currently available, including the one above, please follow the link below.
View Ebook Catalogue
Best regards,
Guy and all at Black Hill Books.
Table of Co
ntents
Title
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
The End
