An awareness came over him. His mouth fell open, gritty bits of earth hitting his tongue.
“It wants in your house,” Max said.
“I know.” Vera gripped him tighter. “It can’t get in.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
The priest kept praying, going through all these motions, Aunt Tilda following along. “The blessings on the basement, the artifacts, I think they’re keeping it out,” her aunt shouted, overhearing their conversation. “I think it wants to release what’s inside—all the demons, all the darkness. We can’t let it, Vera. Come! Help us. We have to stop it.”
Vera looked at her aunt, then at Max’s mother, then back at Aunt Tilda, then at Max. He could see the rattled confusion in her eyes as if he were looking in a mirror. She didn’t know what to do. No one did.
Then Chloe yelped, strangled pain in her voice, a child struggling to breathe. “Max!” she squeaked out.
He shook off Vera’s hold. He couldn’t wait any longer. These prayers weren’t working. A splash of water wasn’t working. He wasn’t going to stand here and let this thing kill his sister while he watched. He wasn’t going to let his mother do that to her own child.
The beast turned toward Vera.
“Ready yet?” it asked.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Vera
It wants in the house. Max and her aunt were right.
Vera stood on the lawn, the chaos of Hell consuming them, and felt in the deepest part of her soul how much the monster wanted inside her house. Why? Aunt Tilda guessed it was to shatter all the objects the house contained and release those demons on Earth. It was possible—the result would be catastrophic, apocalyptic. But it didn’t feel right.
For some reason Vera couldn’t quite explain, the rationale was wrong.
Beside her, Max bounced on his toes, ready to attack, while her aunt and the priest chanted exorcism prayers that felt…off. It was the binding prayers on the objects that were working; they were keeping the demon outside the home. That was clearly why it hadn’t come after Vera’s family before. In these seven years, it stayed away because it had to stay away. It couldn’t break in. Now the cult had made it stronger.
It wants you. It wants you.
They’d been saying it all along, all of the afflicted—Mr. Gonzalez, Anatole and his mother, Max’s mom. They’d been telling Vera directly, plainly, what the demon wanted.
“Oh, Vera, I wish I could be there when it happens. You’re going to be so beautiful!”
It. Wanted. Her.
“The line that separates good and bad, it doesn’t exist out there somewhere in need of an invitation. It’s inside you…It’s a choice.”
It wanted Vera to choose—Chloe’s life, or her own. The lives of every brainwashed cult member, or her own. The lives of innocent children, an entire town, the entire planet, or her own. Would Vera let the monster take her?
As though hearing her thoughts, the demon turned her way. The depths of Hell she saw in its pitted eyes could have sucked a person’s sanity.
“Ready yet?” it hissed, then tightened the stranglehold on Chloe’s neck.
The girl yelped. Vera bit her cheek, warring with herself, the coppery tang of blood filling her mouth. Why did it want her? Because she was her parents’ daughter, because they had fought this exact demon before and won. The cult leader knew her parents were out of town. The demon wanted her to submit while they were gone, ensuring their devastation when they returned. It was striking first before her parents could strike at it. Before her parents could bind it. Again.
There was a click, an audible flip to the machine working her brain.
It didn’t want to release the other demons in the basement. Demons don’t hang out with the other cool demons and get each other’s backs. It wanted inside her basement to destroy all remnants of the chalice, to destroy the shards of the object that bound it. Her parents had the power to do it, and it thought Vera could do the same.
Demons don’t want to possess things, they want to possess people. That’s why we’re able to contain it in an object, if the object belonged to the person doing the demon’s bidding.
It didn’t want to be vanquished.
The sleepwalking. The strolls to the basement. Her body was trying to open that door in her most unconscious state. Her mother was wrong; her dreams weren’t demonic. Something was awakening in Vera that she’d repressed for years, maybe her whole life.
Instinct was leading her to that door.
Because that was where the solution was.
Her aunt’s words returned: Sometimes people choose evil, but they can also choose to be heroes.
Vera sprinted to the truck, letting the whispers of intuition guide her. Her scientific mind couldn’t process what was in front of her, couldn’t rationalize a plan, but something else inside her could. She tore open the passenger-side door, grabbed the hard hat, and sprinted across the lawn with lungs gulping misty air, blood thundering in her ears.
Her aunt yelled. Father Chuck bellowed for Vera to stop. And the beast followed her every move with its obsidian eyes.
Vera bounded up her porch steps in two giant leaps and dove through her front door. The hat was clutched in her clammy hand as she shook the old wooden house with her thwacking sprint to the basement door. Her sandals skidded to a halt in the kitchen as the brass knob came into view.
Never open it. Never touch it.
Her entire life she’d been afraid to brush that surface with so much as a pinkie finger, her covers pulled high to block the nightmares swirling behind it.
Not anymore.
Her breath shuddered in time with her hands as she wiped her sweaty hair from her forehead.
A voice rose up inside her. Don’t think. Just do.
She took two large strides and placed her hand on the chilled metal knob.
With one final gasp of air, she turned it.
The creak of the door’s hinges ripped open the forbidden portal.
Then Vera broke the plane of the doorjamb and placed her foot inside.
The room smelled musty, the old water stench reminding her of the flood damage years ago. She flicked the switch that illuminated a bare bulb and descended the steps into a chill much like the one she felt at the Durands’. She knew where she had to go. Somehow, despite never so much as glancing into the room, she knew.
She walked across the floor, her sandals slapping the painted spinach-green concrete, her eyes on the third shelf of a bookcase. A black velvet satchel rested, its drawstring pulled tight.
Vera’s hand trembled as she lifted the sack, a clattering of broken glass rumbling inside.
All of this over broken glass.
She loosened the strings and peered into the black mouth. Fangs of shattered crystal loomed, untouched for seven years.
Vera poured the razor remnants into the scorched gas worker’s hat. This was why she’d taken it. Some piece of her knew this moment was coming.
Filtered light from a tiny basement window reflected on the fragments—so small, so delicate, so destructive.
Vera shifted back toward the basement door, feeling that familiar pull, understanding the ramifications of the rule she’d broken.
Something was waiting for her at the top of the stairs.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Max
When Max watched Vera tear off into the house (was she carrying the hard hat?), he spun toward his mother, refusing to let his girlfriend, or friend, or whoever she was, risk her life for his family while he stood outside flat-footed.
“Put my sister down!”
Only, his mom wasn’t looking at him, or his sister. Her eyes were locked on the house, as if tracking Vera’s movements inside. It was distracted. This was his moment. He had to act.
<
br /> He shifted his weight to his toes, and as he did, his eyes caught on a sudden flickering shadow. The fog parted and a tiny white apparition emerged, its barks high and yappy. Max squinted, struggling to discern the shape of the beady black eyes sprinting closer, yipping like a record skipping. In his mother’s bedroom, she’d mimicked the sound. It was the neighbor’s dog.
His brow furrowed as the fluffy animal raced toward his sister.
Then Chloe started choking, hacking, flailing.
His mother’s knuckles protruded as they tightened around her daughter’s neck, lifting her higher from the ground. Guttural bursts erupted from Chloe, her feet desperately kicking for purchase. Max had to charge. Yaps reached a crescendo and Max watched as a tiny barking puff flew through the air and latched itself onto his mother’s calf.
For an instant—he barely saw it—his mother snarled, charcoal eyes flashing with fury in the animal’s direction. And Max reacted like a starter pistol fired in his brain.
Three things happened in quick succession: his mother flicked her leg, sending the little dog soaring; Max barreled into her hips, shoulders low, head down; Mom’s fingers lost their grip on Chloe’s neck. His sister collapsed onto the wet earth with the lifeless limbs of a doll. Her legs bore no weight as she tumbled onto her side, her head smacking the grass and bouncing once.
Momentum carried Max a few paces beyond the collision, and he stumbled to keep his balance. He spun around, ready to assault again, and caught his mother gliding to the house, leaving the scene behind her, wind swishing her hair.
Max scrambled to Chloe, his bloody ankle brushing a tuft of fur. He peered down and spied the white pooch, not more than a couple pounds soaking wet. There were streaks of crimson on its white mustache, his mother’s blood. A door slammed in the distance.
“Snowball! Snowball!” yelled the voice of the elderly neighbor charging out of his house on rickety, arthritic legs.
Hope you’re okay, little guy.
Max dove toward his sister. She wasn’t moving. Her hands weren’t on her throat. There was no coughing. Her eyes were closed.
No.
No!
“Chloe!” he yelped, tears forming a solid mass in his throat. He gently lifted his sister’s head, placing it on his lap and smoothing her black spirals from her face. “Can you hear me? Breathe. Breathe, okay?”
She was so still.
Please, God. Please!…I’ll do anything. Please…
“Move aside.” A hand clamped his shoulder.
Max looked up into the face of Father Chuck.
The priest dropped on all fours in his faded blue jeans. “Priests are teachers, and teachers know first aid.”
The man carefully lifted Chloe’s head from Max’s lap, bracing it between his palms to keep it as straight and still as possible. He set her skull on the ground and placed his ear to her chest. Then he began pressing on her heart with his hands laced together. CPR.
“Is she okay? Should I breathe into her mouth? What should I do?” Max didn’t know any lifesaving procedures, but he’d seen enough movies to think it counted.
The priest slammed on her frail chest, mumbling words (prayers?), his hands thumping, counting, pulsing.
Finally, Chloe coughed.
Holy shit, she coughed.
She rolled onto her side, hacking, eyes fluttering.
“Chloe, can you hear me? I’m here!” Max hugged her face, her curls sticking to his leaking eyes.
“Where’s Mom? She tried…Why…” Then Chloe sobbed, thick bursts erupting from her chest, and Max hugged her tight, cradled her close, buried himself in his sister’s hair as a wave of anguish pulled her under.
That was when he heard the voices.
Max looked up, slowly realizing they were no longer alone.
A crowd had gathered.
And they were chanting.
Vera
When Vera emerged out of the basement, the beast was waiting for her. Inside her house. She had what it wanted. She’d pried open the door and broken the prayers of protection.
Finally, it was in.
Vera worked to hide her unsteady hands as she clasped the hard hat filled with shards of a crystal chalice that once poisoned its followers in Chicago, all in service to a demon. The biting chemical scent of a gas leak rose from the hat, melding the sins of Roaring Creek with the sins of the past.
An endless inferno of black gleamed in the beast’s eyes as it snarled at the objects, lips peeled back from its pointed teeth.
“It’s time,” it rasped, tongue unfurling against the rotted skin of its chin, eyes wild with hate.
Then she heard the crowd of voices soaring outside the windows, encasing the house. Gauzy lace curtains blew in the dining room, exposing a mob of wide-eyed strangers bedecked in yellow hats droning as one. The rally had moved. The cult was here.
Aunt Tilda rushed inside, Bible clutched like a shield, but its protection useless. The beast’s entry gave it power. Vera could feel it consuming their energy, drawing from the demonic evil trapped inside the basement, trying to absorb it, obliterate it. Obliterate them.
Father Chuck rushed beside them, a cross in his hand. The beast laughed.
“Let us be done with this endless agony. Life will never bring you peace,” the monster growled, arms wide as its mangled toes lifted from the floorboards.
It was floating! Dear God, it was levitating. Max’s mother’s body rose from the ground, her feet, its feet, hovering inches from the gritty hardwood. Its arms lifted with the grace of a swan, white nightgown fluttering in a breeze that now blew inside the house. Its pocked face oozed and pointed toward the heavens. No, the skies. Heaven wasn’t here right now.
“You’re all dying. You have been since you were spat onto this Earth. Why continue to suffer? Rush to me. Now! Now! Now! My children, the time is now!” it bellowed.
Crimson blots blistered before Vera’s eyes as its rhythmic words rang in her head.
The cries from the crowd outside gathered in force.
“The human constructs of this inhumane world brought about your pain. It is time to shed the limitations of the flesh.”
A baby screeched, an ear-piercing shriek, and the beast broke into a feral grin.
Acid burned up Vera’s throat.
“Step over with me, my children. Find our new beginning! Now! We must go now!”
Its words sank in as she floated up.
A wind blasted through the kitchen, a warm wind, a summer wind.
Wings. Were those wings? Vera swore she could feel the tickles of feathers on her skin as white light filled the room. She stared at this figure, this beast, in a ruffled ivory nightgown, transfixed, wondering if Max’s mother wore it often. Was it her favorite? The gown clung so perfectly to her hips, her chest. Vera never slept in anything so dainty, so feminine.
And now she had wings!
“Rip your souls free! Do not delay. Go, go, go!” it called.
It called to her. She could end this. It wanted her. Wasn’t that what everyone said? It wanted to inhabit her. It wanted to be her. How simple would it be to give it what it wanted? It would all be over. It wouldn’t hurt. Numbness. No one else would suffer. How simple, how simple…
“Vera!” A voice shouted. “Vera! No! Step back!”
Was she moving? She wasn’t moving. She was standing still. She was watching. But its face was getting closer. Those eyes, those fathomless eyes, what secrets lay inside that abyss? She could know. If she let herself, she could know everything. Just a simple invitation.
“Vera! Listen to me! Stop! Wake up!” a voice continued to shout. Where was she? Why did everything feel so far away? Was she floating?
A hand clutched her shoulder. The grip was firm, pulling, yanking. “Vera, hear my voice. Come back. Stop. Please. Co
me back to us.”
Us.
What us?
Was there an us?
“Vera, please, for me. Do this for me. Don’t leave me. I can’t lose you too. We need you. All of us.”
She blinked.
Max. It was Maxwell Oliver.
He was beside her. He was holding her. He was holding her back.
Her gaze flicked about.
She was still in her house. She was still in her kitchen. Her eyes were awake.
She was no longer sleeping.
She peered down at the cursed hat in her hand, full of glittering glass. Her breath gusted in heavy bursts. Wind smacked her face, shoving her back. She was tired. So tired. It was draining her life, her will, her…everything.
Vera scrunched her eyes, gripping the brim of the hat with all her might, and with a clarity of mind she didn’t know she possessed, she began reciting all four stages of the binding service she’d heard echo from the basement over the course of her seventeen years. She breezed through the first two stages quickly, as far as her aunt had gotten after the hurricane. This was why the words only protected them, their family, and their house, when the demon was unleashed. The town—the world—remained at the mercy of the monster, because by the time they said the final two phases, it was already gone.
Fingers brushed against hers, gripping the hat, but Vera kept her eyes closed. She couldn’t look. She couldn’t risk that hypnotic stare pulling her in again.
Somewhere in the distance, a gurgle rose up, bloody and liquified, booming and powerful.
Vera kept chanting. She moved on to stage three. “I exercise my power to expel all evil spirits. I command them to leave. I renounce all forces and bind them to these objects….”
Her aunt’s voice surged in time with hers. Then Father Chuck’s. They recited the words with the force of their beings, drowning out the humming chants outside, their fingers cramping, their breath unified.
Small Town Monsters Page 21
