by P. J. Burgy
“Your teeth?”
“My teeth? What’s wrong with my teeth?” Martin feigned insult, brows knit as he grimaced. His fangs gleamed in the pale moonlight. He had blood smeared across his chin and cheeks.
Father Alvin gurgled. “You…what are… you…”
“You’re supposed to say, ‘My, what big teeth you have!’, and I’m supposed to reply, ‘The better to eat you with!’, but now you’ve gone and ruined it.” He scowled, shaking his head contemptuously. “It would have been grand, but no…”
“You? You’re… you’re not human.”
“I’ll give you a sporting chance, old man, how about that?” Martin asked, licking his lips. “It’s a hundred yards to the church grounds. Do you fancy your odds of reaching it before I reach you?”
“What?” Father Alvin backed up. He strained to look back at the church, his face a mask of terror at the distance he’d unknowingly traveled.
“I’ll count to five. Run.”
Lizzie cried out into the night. “Run! He’s letting you run! Father Alvin, run!”
Helena screamed too and Teddy shambled to the door to see, his mouth hanging open.
Whatever had kept Father Alvin stuck to the ground released him and he whirled, making a run for the church. His toes had gone numb in the snow, and he struggled to gain traction. He fell several times, scrambling to get back up.
Behind him, Martin evaporated into that black mist only for it to come back together again in a different shape. Something jet black and large, standing on all fours. Paws danced on the ground, the wolf padding back and forth in drooling anticipation, bright eyes locked on the running priest.
Lizzie’s breath caught.
That thick black fur was a void, the teeth white and sharp as the beast took off in pursuit. It ran unnaturally fast, catching up to Father Alvin in mere seconds before lunging for him, taking him down, and ripping him apart. Blood splattered into the air and across the snow as screams filled the night.
The last Lizzie saw, the wolf was prying Father Alvin’s arm off, holding his body down with his paws and rocking his head to pop the socket from the shoulder blade. A loud, visceral ‘POP’ and wet squelch reached them at the door.
Helena turned away, pulling Lizzie with her, and shut the church door. The girl ran to the first pew and threw herself into it, weeping for the first time. Her brother came to her side and comforted her, stroking her hair.
“We should’a gone out there!” she cried.
Her brother grunted. “Or not let him leave.”
“You couldn’t have stopped him,” Lizzie said. “Not without resorting to violence. Or tying him up. There was nothing we could have done.”
“We could’a gone with him!”
“No, we couldn’t have…”
“Lizzie’s right, Hel. I’m sorry.”
A long silence followed as Lizzie listened at the door. Not a peep. She tried to imagine what he was up to and came up empty.
She pressed her back against the wooden doors, looking at the pews first and then the front of the church with the altar and unlit candles. She began to walk down the center aisle, eyes heavy lidded as she stared transfixed at the huge cross on the wall above the altar. The cushions along the floor below were old and worn from being knelt on for decades.
The familiar smells of the church, the old wood and the spent candles, drifted around her and old memories resurfaced. Lizzie as a small girl sitting in the pew between her mother and father, drawing horrors on a little sketchpad. Her mother snatching the black crayon from her and scolding her lightly, pointing forward at a much younger Father Alvin as he droned on and on.
“When I was a child, I believed in monsters,” she said, voice low as she closed her eyes to block out the image beside her. “I saw them in my bed, so I slept under it. They stopped appearing in the darkness in front of me and started appearing in the darkness inside of me.”
Helena sniffed. “Lizzie?”
Her head turned, chin low. “I drew them to get them out of there. Teachers said I was sick and needed counseling. My parents took me to a therapist, and I told them about the things in my head. About the monsters. ‘A vivid imagination’, they said.”
Silence.
“I think I might be one,” Lizzie whispered, eyes opening. “Or maybe there’s one inside of me. It got in one night and that’s the real reason I started sleeping under the bed. I felt most comfortable there. In the dark.”
“Are you okay, Lizzie?” Teddy asked.
She rubbed her face, groaning softly. “I don’t know.”
“I think he got to you,” he said. “Got in your head during your time together. Maybe he started the ritual and didn’t tell you or something? Or some kind of magic…”
“What does it mean that I could see him?” she asked, rolling her shoulders weakly.
“See him?” Helena asked, sitting up and wiping at her face. “What do you mean by that?”
“In my dreams, I saw him. I saw one of his victims too.” Lizzie turned around to look back at her. She swallowed. “And just back there, he was feeding on Bill. It wasn’t my imagination. I saw him and he confirmed it.”
“You’re connected somehow,” Helena whispered. “Are you wearing anything of his? Did he give you a gift?”
“No, no gifts,” Lizzie replied, glancing at the red carpet floor. “He hasn’t given me anything. Except maybe a soda, hah…” Her eyes widened. “A soda and two meals? Is this because I ate food in his house? Oh my God…”
“No, it’d be a literal gift.” Helena stood, squeezing past Teddy where he sat clutching his knee again due to her accidentally bumping it. She patted his shoulder and stepped into the main aisle to approach Lizzie. “A ring. A necklace. Clothing.”
“He left one of his victim’s belongings in my car, but I gave that to the police,” Lizzie muttered. “If anything, I’ve been gifting him! I brought my paintings to his house, but, ah, these images, this connection, it all came before then.”
“An exchange isn’t a gift.” The girl stared intently at her, shoulders low. “This is something different. Lizzie, have you ever had premonitions before? Seen the future or anything?”
“What? No.”
“You said you saw monsters as a kid. Tell me more about that. What kind of monsters and where?”
“There was this thing in my closet,” she said, shivering. “Dark and scary. Came out every night at the same time and my parents didn’t believe me. I knew it was going to eat me up one night if I didn’t…”
“Didn’t what?” Helena asked.
Lizzie closed her eyes. “I remember this spider web in the tree out front, before they cut it down. Gigantic. Huge green and black spider in the center. One day, I saw a smaller spider crawl across the web, but it got all caught up and trapped. The big spider came down and wrapped it up in silk. A spider eating another spider – the bigger one eating the smaller. And it occurred to me that maybe monsters were like that too.”
“And…?”
“That night, I begged for a bigger monster to protect me. I’d give it anything it wanted. Just don’t let the one in my closet get me. I begged. My closet opened at 3 AM, like it always did, and I knew I had to get under the bed. The bigger monster was going to wait there and trick it,” Lizzie said, licking her lips. “So that’s what I did, and I heard an awful noise… the bed sagged.”
“Shit,” Teddy breathed.
“I woke up the next morning and closed the closet door. I looked at my bed. My sheets were all torn up. They didn’t believe me when I told them what happened. But that door never opened again, not ever, and I kept sleeping under the bed.”
“You aren’t possessed by a monster, Lizzie,” Helena stated, brows lowered. “It sounds like you connected to one, and that left you receptive to all of their kind.”
“Maybe it took my soul…”
“No, it didn’t. Trust me, not having a soul would’a turned you into something else entirely. It to
uched you and left a mark though, that’s for sure.”
“I had a feeling you’d believe me…” Lizzie smiled weakly.
“We believe in all these things.” Her eyes flashed brightly. “There are monsters out there. A lot of ‘em. Different kinds from different places. One of them gave you a gift.”
“Or placed a curse on me.”
“Sensing monsters is a gift in my book,” the girl said. “Can you focus? Can you see what he’s doing right now?”
Lizzie shut her eyes. She tried to imagine Martin St. Andre out there in the night. Only darkness came to her. Her eyes opened. “No, I can’t.”
“Probably blocked by the church,” Teddy suggested.
Helena frowned. “Well, it sounds like this isn’t over yet. Those ghouls will be here soon, I think. And holy ground won’t stop ‘em – he’s right about that. They’ll come in through the windows in his house or smash down the doors.”
“What do we do?” Lizzie asked.
“We look for anything we can use as a weapon.” The girl set her jaw, nodding tersely, and pointed at the door leading away from the main worshipping area, toward the clergy house in the back. “And we board up those windows.”
Chapter 17
They used a desk to board up one of the windows in the little house. The kitchen table covered another window; the chairs braced the door. A tool chest sat open in the middle of the floor.
“Any gasoline lying around?” Teddy asked.
“Probably in the shack out back, but I don’t want to go out there unless absolutely necessary,” Helena replied.
“Damn. Flamethrower needs more fuel…”
Lizzie frowned, looking over the pistol she’d found in his dresser, right next to his bed. A 9 MM. Semi-automatic. That was all she knew about the thing in her hands. “I’ve never fired a gun.”
“Maybe let me have it then.” Helena reached for it.
They stood in the chapel again, looking over the supplies they’d gathered laid out across an empty pew. Helena had filled three bottles of water from the font. They’d collected a handful of things from the house as well: a crowbar, the hammer, an old metal baseball bat, an assortment of aerosol cans, a few lighters, three bottles of booze, some rags, the bullets for the pistol, and five long steel pipes from the closet.
“Ah…” Lizzie handed it to her and watched as she loaded it. “You know what you’re doing?”
“Learned how to do this when I was a toddler,” she said.
“Mom was the one who taught us about monsters. Dad prepared us for the fall of civilization.” Teddy nodded.
Lizzie took a seat in the pew in front of them. “How… how did your mother die?”
Helena stuck the gun in her pocket. “Cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She’s always with us. Watching. Guarding,” the girl said. “So, we didn’t really lose her.”
“Your parents died in a car crash, didn’t they?” Teddy asked.
“Yeah,” Lizzie replied. “My Dad was driving and had a stroke. Lost control of the car.”
Helena eyed her. “They’re buried here, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, in this graveyard.” Lizzie bristled. “He can’t, ah, raise the dead, can he?”
“No, he can’t. He can’t even set foot in that cemetery.” She shook her head. “He’d burst into flames for sure.”
“How long before sunrise?”
Teddy checked his watch. “A few hours.”
“Is it really that late? Or that early…” Lizzie lowered her head, turning away. “It was just midnight.”
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” he muttered.
A loud thud came from the church doors, the wood rattling and the sound echoing through the building. The first low, guttural groans emanated from outside. A dozen or so voices moaned and wailed. More joined in. Another thud. Then another.
“It begins,” Helena whispered.
“When the sun rises, will they die?” Lizzie asked.
“No, unlike the vampire, the ghouls persist until you burn them to ash or slay their creator,” she replied, staring at the door as it shuddered from the assault on the other side.
“Damn, this leg,” Teddy moaned, pulling himself to his feet and hobbling around the pew to the other side. “I wish we could get to high ground. They can’t climb.”
“That’d be the roof and I don’t think we want to be there either,” his sister said. “The vampire might not be able to land on holy ground, but he can chuck shit at us from above it.”
Lizzie grabbed for the crowbar and clutched it to her chest. “He won’t risk hurting me. Maybe it’s a good idea.”
“At this point, do you think he cares?” Her brown eyes narrowed, and she stuffed a rag into an open bottle of booze.
“I believe he does. Whatever warped versions of emotions he has, he still loves me. Needs me. He won’t put me in direct danger.”
Helena raised her eyebrows. “Oh, like when he threw your car into the living room?”
“He did warn me to move…”
“He’ll maim you with no hesitation. You don’t need all of your limbs to do his bidding; just your hands, to paint.” She snorted. “Besides, it’s cold out there.”
Glass shattered somewhere in the house attached to the church and Teddy spun, wincing. “Hope those boards keep ‘em back.”
“Just be glad they can’t reach the stained-glass windows lining this church,” Helena said. She eyed up the three Molotov cocktails she’d whipped up and set them on the pew carefully. “I wish we had more long-range weapons. Burning down a church wasn’t on my bucket list.”
“Wish that asshole hadn’t broken my crossbow…”
Another window smashed in the house, the cacophony of moaning anguish growing louder and louder outside. Violent pounding sounded from both sets of doors – the front church double doors and the door to Father Alvin’s home.
Something hit the roof, loudly rolling down. It happened again and Lizzie squinted her eyes, trying to figure out what made the sloshing sound so familiar to her.
“He is throwing stuff at the church,” she stated.
“We need to look outside.” Teddy pointed to the little door leading to the clergy house.
The ghouls hadn’t been able to fully break through yet, but a few of them had their gangly arms shoved in through the gaps between the boards at one of the broken windows. They howled and cried, fumbling over one another to attempt reaching in.
One of the better fortified windows still stood and Helena used a chair to stand on, peering over the wooden board to the outside. “Oh, there’s a lot of ‘em!”
“What do you see?” Lizzie asked.
“A horde. Horde of ghouls.”
“What’s Martin doing?”
“I don’t see him. Must be out front.”
Teddy lingered nearby. “Does the church have an attic?”
“No, but there’s a ladder in the closet. Maybe we can get a look out from the big window,” Helena said.
Lizzie scowled. “The one above the main doors? It’s solid…”
“We got a hammer…” The girl shrugged back at her.
As they set up the big ladder by the front doors, another loud thud came from the roof and the sloshing tumble repeated. When it happened a fourth time, Helena grunted, hammer in her left pocket, gun in the other, and ascended to the big, stained glass window.
Without hesitation, she bashed at it a few times before breaking away a section, head turned to avoid the little bits of glass as they chipped off and fell away.
She peered outside, face scrunched.
“What’s going on out there?” Lizzie asked.
“Ah…” She stared out into the night. “I don’t see anything. Just a couple more ghouls. Holy shit, that’s Penelope Wiesman. Yuck. She was a jerk, but she didn’t deserve this…”
Teddy gasped. “He got Penny?”
“Sorry, your crush is a drooling cadaver now,
Teddy. You’ll have to move on.” Helena shrugged, still peering out into the darkness.
“What’s that smell?” Lizzie asked. “Teddy, is the flamethrower leaking or something?”
Helena whirled, staring down at Lizzie. “What did you say?”
“I smell gasoline.”
Teddy stiffened. “Uh…”
The girl swung about, staring out into the night again, and she let out a soft gasp. “I see him!”
“What’s he doing?” Lizzie asked.
“Setting… a ghoul on fire.”
Both Lizzie and Teddy spoke at the same time. “What?”
“He’s setting a ghoul on fire. Now it’s coming toward us.”
Teddy grimaced. “Oh shit…”
Her eyes widened and Lizzie looked up at the ceiling again, aghast. “He was throwing gas cans at us!”
Teddy sighed. “What an asshole.”
“Guess he got tired of waiting.” Helena slid down the ladder as she fast as she could. She landed hard on the floor and pointed at the little house. “The back door opens up into the cemetery. It’s walled off except for the entrance. If this place goes up, we’ll have to go outside and hold our ground there.”
Lizzie threw out her hand toward the little house, shaking her head violently. “Outside? I thought outside was bad!”
“Inside is worse.” The girl charged over to the pews and began to gather their supplies. “He’ll anticipate us heading out there when we realize the place is up in flames. If we leave now, we can close the gate.”
Her face fell. “And if they’re already out there?”
“Then we take ‘em out.” Helena waved at her, gesturing toward the door to the right.
Outside, flickering flames rose near the windows, the gasoline igniting and surrounding the church along the front left side. Wood crackled and popped, the ghouls moaning louder.
They’d boarded up the back door with parts of a broken chair and Helena struggled to pull the nails out. After they’d tossed the last of the wood to the side, the girl opened the door and looked around, eyes narrowed. Cold air swept in around her, the moaning and groaning from the ghouls out front audible but muffled. Close by, flames crackled and raged.
