“You bastard! You killed them, then you dug them up?”
The Carlisle-thing shook its head. “No,” it said. “You did that to them. All by yourself. You destroyed them, and then you brought them back.”
“But why would I destroy the two people I love most in the world?”
“Because you love something else even more.”
“I don’t care what you say. Nothing will ever make be believe I did that to them.”
“Suit yourself, Sam. It doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that you remember the details. Think back. Do you recall the Bashgal Valley of Afghanistan? How you were on your way to help your brothers in arms? They’d been flushing out caves along the ridges there looking for Taliban fighters when they were ambushed.”
“Yes, of course I remember, but what does it have to do with any of this?”
“Everything, Sam. Think about it. A rat came up out of a hole and shot your helicopter down. You were the only survivor.”
“I was lucky.”
The Carlisle thing chuckled. “No, my dear boy, you weren’t lucky you were chosen.”
“Chosen? For what?”
“For this very moment in time. You see, you only remembered part of what happened that day. You were so afraid of death you would have done anything to survive. But you wanted much more than life and I was there to oblige.”
“Is that what this is about?” I said. “Some kind of twisted version of the Devil and Daniel Webster? Because if it is I don’t believe it.”
“Of course you don’t, but you soon will. I promise.”
I searched back in my mind. The crash I had always remembered, of course, like a malignant tumor at the center of my being. I was sitting there with the other soldiers, my friends, men I depended on, my mind numb with the realization that I would soon be thrust again into the heat of combat where in the blink of an eye a bullet could end everything. And then the explosion of metal and glass and warm body parts as the floor was pulled out from under me, and what was left of the helicopter plunged toward something large and dark and without meaning, down through concentric circles, going round and round, dizzying, faster, circle after circle, a jumble of blurred faces, cries of pain, grunts of fear and anguish, and darkness, round and round . . . into the abyss.
The rest of what happened that day had always eluded me.
But now I was starting to remember.
It seemed a long time before I regained consciousness. I was nowhere near the crash site, which by now was nothing more than a smoking pile of rubble that nothing could have escaped from. There was pain in my elbow, and I was mutely aware of the burns on my hands and face.
I wandered until I came to a series of hills. But they weren’t just hills, they were different somehow, in a way that I could not explain then and can only vaguely describe now. They were like nothing I had ever seen before, demented, deformed, not of this world. A thin humanoid figure stood atop one of the craggy hills beckoning. More hills broke the distant horizon. And there were flames rising up between them, a pall of smoke and ash, the air so thick and dense I almost could not breathe.
I knew in that moment that I was in hell.
Chapter 24
“You remember now, don’t you, Sam?” the Carlisle thing said, bringing me back to the present.
“But I don’t remember why,” I said.
“Oh, you mean the bargain. You still don’t see?”
I shook my head.
“What is it you have always dreaded, Sam? What has always frightened you most in life? It is the danger of being overlooked. Of being irrelevant. Of being just another face in the crowd. Isn’t that true? I heard your call and came to your rescue. I got you out of that fiery wreck and offered you what you could not get anywhere else. I offered you what was only a dream until that moment: immortality. Now it is time for you to finish what we started.” Carlisle proffered the machete. “You need to feed the fire.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way it’s done, the way it’s been done since the beginning of time. We have always fed the fire.”
Suddenly my entire being, mind, body and soul convulsed as if I’d grabbed hold of a live electric wire. And finally I remembered everything.
*
I’m not sure how long I stood there in hell just staring at those strange burning hills, but eventually I stumbled up the rocky incline toward the beckoning figure on the ledge. There were many cave openings beneath the strange burning hills and I imagined enemy soldiers hiding out in them using their sanctuary to plot war crimes. I didn’t care. Out of exhaustion I followed the figure into the nearest opening. What I had at first thought was a small cave opened up into a vast stone chamber bathed in flickering light. Black candles were set in sconces along both sides of the chamber’s rough stone walls. In the center of the chamber there sat a long table of dark wood with more flickering black candles, these set into silver holders. Ancient looking high-backed chairs surrounded the table. The chairs were all occupied by human figures dressed in red robes and cowls. In the flickering light their faces were pallid gray shadows inside the cowls and I could not make out any detail. On the table, in front of each of the robed figures, sat a crystal goblet filled with red liquid. The room was rich with the smell of hazel incense. A quartz sphere was placed at the center of the table.
It was obvious that this was a place of ritual. A massive throne, much larger than the chairs surrounding the table, dominated the far end of the chamber. It was impossible to tell what the throne was constructed of for it looked like nothing of this earth; its surface scaly, leather-like, and it seemed to grow and shrink in an even cadence, as though it was alive and breathing.
On the whitewashed stone wall behind the throne a large symbol was emblazoned in black.
I had no idea what that symbol represented. I still don’t. Perhaps I never will. A figure clad in black robes sat motionless on the throne. Its face was impossible to discern, for the hood cast it in shadow. The only things I could see clearly were two glittering red eyes.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What do you want?”
“Step closer.”
I hesitated a moment too long.
“STEP CLOSER!”
“I had no choice but to obey. Its will was greater than mine. I stepped to the end of the long table as the men around it picked up their glasses and began to chant in a language I did not recognize. Then they all upended their goblets at once and drank down the red liquid within.
On the throne the black robe catapulted into the air, over the man’s head, and he was lifted by the force of it, by a flapping wave that carried him above the long table. The robe flew into streaming pennants that became muscular wings flapping slowly in the hot air, crackling with static electricity which whip-lashed across the great cavern like bolts of lightning, bringing into focus the lurid faces of the seated figures. And that’s when I saw that they were not men but monsters.
And then a face appeared as the hovering figure’s cowl slipped. It was not human, nor was it a bat or a bird, but something perhaps not of this earth, something that came from a place back in the dim beginnings of time. Red darting eyes fixed on me, holding me in their thrall. It gazed at me as it rowed the air with its black leathery wings.
*
“I remember now,” I said to the Carlisle thing. “I agreed to give you something that didn’t even exist then. Linda and I weren’t married and a child wasn’t even on the radar. What would be the harm?”
“Exactly,” said the Carlisle thing.
“But why the middle of Afghanistan?”
“Easy pickings. Human suffering. Death. War is where I do my best work. Lots of bargains to be made.”
Linda and Sean began to animate, their eyes opening.
The Carlisle thing gestured toward them. “Their souls will soon be mine. But first they need to burn.”
I began to see at least part of what was happening here. Most of it would always el
ude me, of course. There are things that live at the very fringes of the universe, terrible yet true things that mortal man must never delve too deeply into, lest he risk lunacy. How could I have bargained with the souls of those I loved most? What kind of monster was I? How could I have lived all these months thinking my family was alive when they were just ghosts, or worse, a figment of some terrible madness? This was madness, of course. There could be no other explanation. There never had been any devil bargaining for souls. It was all in my head. This was all in my head. I was as nutty as a freaking fruitcake.
Even so, it all looked and felt real. I could see that the corpses were trying to rise now; loose, wet sacks of putrefaction.
Carlisle proffered the machete. “You need to finish the job,” he said. “You need to feed the fire.”
I shook my head. “Never!”
“You must.”
The Hulk roared loudly in frustration, tongues of flame licking out through the door’s louvers. It was hungry for them. I could see that. And I was supposed to do the deed. I was supposed to feed them to that thing.
Linda and Sean had managed somehow to stand and they were watching me longingly with blank, wet eyes. “This can’t be,” I said. “They’re dead. Look at them.” They began lurching toward me, zombies from the grave.
“No,” said Carlisle, coming between me and them. “Not dead. Not alive. But you’ll be dead if you don’t take this. It’s what they want. Don’t you see? It’s the only way they can . . . live again.”
“Live again?” I said, a feeling of hot and terrible hope swelling inside me.
“You’d like to have them back, wouldn’t you?”
“But how?”
“Just do it and you will see.”
I reached up to pull the mask off my face and discovered that there was no mask there. Had there ever been? “You son of a bitch,” I said. “You tricked me!”
“Are you sure about that?” Carlisle replied with a terrible laugh. “Do you know what’s real and what isn’t?”
He was right, of course. I didn’t have a fucking clue. Six months and it had all been illusion; now more of the same. I was supposed to believe that my wife and son had died and been resurrected so that they could die again, and thus be resurrected for a second time, this time by my own hand so that this creature who lived on the souls of others could continue to live. I was supposed to take the machete from him, cut them up and feed them to that thing, so that it could live, so that they could live again in some corrupt and hellish existence.
“What about the thing in the well?” I said. “What about Devlin? Was any of it real?”
“What do you think, Sam?” Carlisle’s shark tooth studded mouth shaped itself into a terrible expression that might have been a grin. He made a gesture with his hand and several of the foundation’s fieldstones broke free and crashed to the earthen floor. From the crevice slid a creature I could not in a million years have fathomed. I knew immediately, however, that it was the same creature that had taken the life of a young man named Devlin, a man who had threatened the status quo by his very presence on this cursed property.
It was some sort of serpent, or reptile, or both, but neither somehow. Like Carlisle, it was something not of this earth. Its skin was scaly and mottled, its eyes glittering blood-rubies. It wound itself around Carlisle’s frail form like a boa constrictor embracing its trusting handler.
“Jesus Christ,” I mouthed, backing away. “Oh, Jesus Christ.” Again the Carlisle thing shaped its terrible grin.
Linda and Sean were moaning and writhing as they lurched toward me. They could not stay whole for much longer, this was clear, for the corruption was far too advanced. Chunks of flesh were sliding off them and splashing to the floor. I was having trouble holding onto what thin strands of sanity I had left. The serpent, or whatever the hell it was, had lifted its head from Carlisle and was inching toward me, its blood-ruby eyes curious yet hostile. I saw needle-pointed fangs protruding from its upper jaw as its mouth began to open. It was sniffing, taking my scent.
“Take it, and do it!” the Carlisle thing said, once again proffering the machete, shaking it at me with urgency and anger. “They’ll be remade in the conflagration. I promise you it is so.”
“You do it,” I said. “If you’re what you say you are then you don’t need me.”
“Oh, but I do. You need to do it for them to live!”
I was backed into a corner now, as far as I could go. I glanced down and saw the gas can I’d stored there yesterday. I could not think straight, but I needed to. “What is that thing?” I said, pointing at the creature, trying to buy more time.
“You like?” Carlisle seemed to brighten a little.
I nodded as the serpent’s head and upper torso came closer, its powerful muscles rippling as it did so. It was inspecting me like food.
“Something I found in the sea,” Carlisle said. “Or perhaps it found me. It promised to be a good companion. And it has more than lived up to my expectations.”
“Keeps the nosy away, eh?”
Carlisle nodded slightly.
“You died on that ship, didn’t you?”
“Died?” Carlisle said as if the idea was preposterous. “I needed to feed the fire, that’s all. They were many and I was one. I told you, war is where I do my best work. I was discretionary. What’s the loss of one sailor or soldier every now and then, especially in wartime? Some make bargains, most don’t. When the torpedo struck I watched them burn. And I fed the fire.”
The thing that had been my son began moving jerkily around Carlisle and his companion. The places where his eyes had once been were milk-white pools. Linda moved around his other side. She put her hand out to me in a gesture of supplication. Her decayed lips moved and I wanted to die because I knew what she was trying to say. She needed me to end their suffering. “Please?” her lips begged. “Please, do it now, Sam.” One of her legs collapsed and she went down in a heap, only to pull herself along the earthen floor toward me with dead fingers, her rotted lips still mouthing silent exclamations.
Behind them the Hulk roared mightily, shooting licks of flame from its terrible maw. The reptile thing struck suddenly, but I feinted and it missed. Poisonous fluid sprayed from its fangs, hissing like acid on contact with the floor.
“If it kills me then what’ll you do?” I said.
“That was a warning.” Carlisle said, his mad, sunken eyes flaming with hate. “Take it to heart for it was your last.” He held the machete out to me. “You must do it! It’s the only way.”
The Hulk was roaring almost constantly now.
“Fuck you,” I said. The serpent struck a second time. It was expecting me to feint again, but I didn’t. As its head shot past me I stepped forward and snatched the machete from Carlisle’s hand, swinging it powerfully over my head and bringing the blade down onto the serpent’s neck, severing its head cleanly. Caustic yellow fluid sprayed from its severed appendage like boiling acid.
An agonizing cry wrenched from the Carlisle thing’s throat as the creature fell away from him in two parts and began writhing on the floor. I brought the machete down again, this time on the gasoline can at my feet, nearly cutting it in two. I picked it up and tossed a sheet of the flammable liquid across Carlisle, my wife, and my son. The Hulk roared its approval, sending out a tongue of fire that tasted the fuel.
I don’t remember much after that, just bits and pieces that make no sense when I try to put them into context. I was blown back against the door with such force I nearly lost consciousness. I remember being on fire watching everything burn, happy that it was over, happy that I was burning too.
Epilogue
When I awoke in the hospital, John and Meg were there. I watched them watch me for a long moment.
“How are you feeling?” Meg asked.
“I don’t know.” I tried to move, but couldn’t. There were bandages on my hands and around my torso. I couldn’t feel my legs. “How bad is it?”
“You’ll live,” said John.
“You should have left me there.”
Meg gave a helpless look. “Why do you say that, Sam?”
“They’re gone,” I said and felt tears flood my eyes.
“It was that terrible house,” John said. “You never should have bought it. You never should have trusted that evil man.”
“How did I get out?”
“We arrived just after the fire started. It took both of us to drag you out. I wasn’t much help. Mostly Meg did it.”
I looked at Meg. “You saw them then.”
“Saw . . . who, Sam?”
My probing eyes went from Meg to John, then back to Meg. “They were there,” I said. “In the cellar.”
“Sam,” John began, and then his voice faltered. “Listen . . . ever since the accident we’ve been trying to reach you. You refused to believe they were gone. Something . . . maybe it was that house, I don’t know, but something would not allow us to get near you, the same thing that wouldn’t allow you to accept what had happened.”
“That they were dead?” I said, now breaking into heavy sobs.
“Yes,” said Meg. “During and after the funeral you were too numb to react. We understood so we left you alone. You went home. John called two days later and you got in a big fight. You said that Linda and Sean were there with you and that you were doing just fine. You wouldn’t talk to us after that; you wouldn’t take our calls. When we came by you locked the doors and wouldn’t let us in. We know how much you loved them, Sam. We loved them too.” Meg wept.
“But they were there,” I insisted, and I could feel my blood heating up and my eyes widening with emotion. “John . . . Jesus Christ, you have to believe me. After I talked to you on the phone and I finally realized what had happened, I went down into the basement, because I knew they would be there. And I was right. Carlisle had dug them up—only he said I did it—and he’d put them in front of the heating system, and I was supposed to cut them up and feed them to that thing.” My voice faltered when I saw the pitying looks on their faces.
The Haunting of Sam Cabot (A Supernatural Thriller) Page 13
