The stench of Jiggy’s innards punched her in the nose. But she held her breath and dragged his lower half to the door; grateful that the darkness at least spared her from the sight of still-attached guts unraveling and stretching, fluids sloshing out onto her boots.
She scuttled toward of the barn’s far corner, hoping to find a place to hide or a decent weapon amid the dark clutter.
The bulky silhouette of an antique wardrobe stood against the wall just a few feet away. She felt her way along the shelving to get to it.
Everett opened the barn doors with a triumphant cackle, only briefly distracted by Jiggy’s legs in his path.
Jill lunged to get to the wardrobe, stunned when she stepped deep into a slippery, goopy mess. Nico’s legs and arms. She was standing in the middle of him.
Her gorge sped to rise yet again. Only the prospect of Everett catching her or Candace gave her the willpower to keep it down.
Shutting her eyes tight as a bank vault, she made herself pat down the gang leader’s blood-soaked corpse for a weapon; maybe a gun in his boot.
She heard Everett’s uneven shuffle, surely no less than—
The Trick or Treat Terror snatched her by the hair and forced her nose-to-nose with his—or rather, Pipsqueak’s—face.
The smarmy biker’s countenance bore a slack sadness that belied the screeching laughter emerging from behind it. Scents of blood and pumpkin washed over her.
“Pretty!” He raised the athame and poked her face with it. “For Canniss!”
Beyond her fear of dying at this twisted devil’s hands, Jill thought of poor Candace being forced to wear the flesh and bone from one of her only true friends. She reached out to the shelf at her side and found a jar, even as the reborn killer hurried toward the door, dragging her head forward with too much momentum for her to gain any footing.
Chapter 28
Attack of the Mushroom People
McGlazer might as well have been shaken from his stupor and slapped.
On the foggy screen of his office wall consciousness played the image of Stella Riesling—his assistant, confidant, friend.
She, along with the Lott and Barcroft boys and her husband Bernard, were down here in the subterranean sub-level of the church that his possessor had re-opened using McGlazer’s body.
But he already knew that.
“Leave them alone!” his mind bellowed.
Then he was underneath Ragdoll Ruth again. With righteous rage, she pummeled him with the shiny pistol. He saw only stars, heard only shrill, jagged shards of madness and hatred between.
Stuart dropped his light just past the narrow threshold of the shrunken archway and thrust his head in. The opening shrunk fast and clamped on his head.
Terror filled him; a need to be free so intense it robbed him of breath.
Mockingly, the tunnel ahead yawned wide and high, like a castle keep.
His cries of suffocation and despair had triggered the same in Bernard, and in the still-recovering Stella. He could hear them.
He was certain his head would be slowly crushed. He just hoped he would black out before the pain.
Then, muffled by either stone or mere perception, Bernard shouted, “Stuart, you know it’s not real!” He felt the engineer shoving at his butt. “Just keep going!”
With a roar, Stuart crawled, exerting all his strength. He was propelled forward like a torpedo.
He grabbed the flashlight and spun around to see its beam dance across the terrified faces of the two grown-ups, framed within the comfortably wide archway. “Come on, losers!”
Bernard pulled Stella behind him.
Once they were all past the mercurial archway, Stuart got moving again, his beam and gaze fixed on the doorway at the other end. “Don’t pull anything crazy!” he commanded it.
He stopped to help Bernard and Stella get through, then checked behind him to the coffin chamber entrance. It was sealed; solid obsidian.
Stuart wondered if he had left DeShaun behind in that dank deadly room, stuffed in one of those coffins.
Bernard grabbed his shoulder and pulled him through, into the first room. “Real or not, we need to get out of here!”
Stuart, scared and exhausted, said “I can’t.”
“What?”
“I can’t leave DeShaun.” He willed tears back into their ducts. “You guys go.”
“I don’t think we can,” Stella whispered.
Limned by weak moonlight, a man’s silhouette filled the open doorway of the outside stairway.
Their flashlight beams revealed McGlazer.
“The veil is thinning,” said a strange man through McGlazer’s mouth. He held the oil lamp from the door-side sconce. “We are coming through.”
The room seemed far different in the glow, but no less oppressive. He went to place the lamp back on the sconce, revealing a figure behind him.
“DeShaun!” cried Stuart, stopped from going to him by Bernard.
The other boy seemed like death warmed over, his unfocused eyes glazed nearly solid white, his posture slack.
“Another guardian.” McGlazer guided DeShaun to his side. “For our children,” he told Stella.
“No…” She was back to her senses.
“What are you—?” Bernard quieted when Stella put her hand on his arm. “Abe is not in control. He’s possessed. Isn’t that right, Mr. Bennington?”
* * * *
Feeling a cold rush of menace behind him, Stuart spun with the flashlight.
Figures wriggled in the arched corridor. Things from the coffins, shambling toward him.
He cried out, causing Stella to do the same. Bernard followed Stuart’s light with his own.
The approaching figures were monstrous mushroom men.
White-speckled brown caps grown together and walking on two legs.
McGlazer extended a commanding hand that froze the fungus demons. “Mykespatmosia.” The voice was booming, ethereal. “From the caves of the Greek island Patmos.”
“Saint John…” whispered Stella.
“His doorway to revelation.”
DeShaun’s mouth fell slack, and several fungus caps fell out. Stuart’s heart ached for his friend.
McGlazer knelt to scoop up the caps, grandly gesturing. “It has the power to awaken souls”—now he motioned to DeShaun—“to join them together”—he closed his hand over them—“and much more.”
Stuart had a revelation. “You’re not Wilcott Bennington.”
“What?” Stella asked.
“He’s possessed all right. By a real assclown named Conal O’Herlihy. Not Wilcott Bennington.” Thinking of what O’Herlihy had said about DeShaun being a guardian, Stuart wondered whether the things had a crude sentience or were just glorified scarecrows.
“I brought the excrescence here, for my people,” O’Herlihy said. “To create a new world, a new Man. To conquer first fear, and then death.”
“Why do you need Abe?” Stella asked. “Or me?”
“Vessels. That my faithful followers may be reborn.” He cocked his head toward the tunnel and the chamber beyond. “The two of us will spawn them.” He gave her a wink. “The three of us, if you prefer to view it so.”
Bernard found a reserve of indignation. “Now just a minute!”
O’Herlihy cast a domineering finger at him. “Hold your tongue, cuckold.”
Stuart, watching the mushroom men, saw that they almost emulated McGlazer’s gestures, as if vaguely connected to the man.
“You’ll all serve a noble purpose.”
“There’s no noble purpose in controlling a man when he’s weak,” Stella said. “Or imprisoning children.”
O’Herlihy stalked toward them, pointing to the floor. “Man and boy. You will kneel.”
Stuart glanced at Bernard and thought the
engineer’s face must have been tired from holding the same expression of extreme terror for so long. He looked at the silhouetted DeShaun, slumped like a rejected mannequin, then back at the man before him, who was both friend and enemy. “Go to hell, you dillhole.”
“Die!” McGlazer’s hand and O’Herlihy’s will waved the fungus demons forward. They marched into the room with unexpected quickness.
DeShaun shuffled toward them as well, his blank eyes seeming to glow. The frightened trio clambered to the far corner,
“Okay, okay!” Bernard knelt, pulling Stuart down with him.
Stella stood in front of them. “If you want them, you’ll have to kill me!” she cried. “And you need me!”
With a gesture, the town founder halted his slaves just a few feet from the trio. Stuart saw that the nearest of them was not yet entirely covered in the ugly growth. His dark brown pants were those of the county sheriff’s department. It was Deputy Shavers. And they would soon share his fate.
“On the contrary,” O’Herlihy said. “You’re quite replaceable, woman.”
He cast mushroom caps at Bernard and Stuart. “Take. Eat this, the Flesh of The Saviour.”
* * * *
Jill could not get her feet beneath her. With freakish and fearsome strength, Everett dragged her along like a ragdoll toward the house. Then his laughter stopped. He let her fall.
Jill raised her dizzy head to see Aura in full wolf form.
The transformed biker stood poised on all fours in front of the little girl, glowing amber eyes laser-focused on Everett. Wolf and child were less than twelve feet away.
Aura growled a warning. Everett only giggled more enthusiastically, overjoyed at all the fun Halloween games. He threw his head back and issued his attempt at a werewolf’s howl.
“Come on, Jill!” Candace called, reminding Everett of his new mask source. He grabbed Jill’s jacket as she rose to run, yanking her back toward him with a nauseating snap. She felt her breath flee with the impact, saw with dazed eyes and mind the monster Everett looming over her a hundred feet high.
Laughing like mad, he raised the athame.
Then Aura crashed into him. The jumble of fur and pale flesh fell into the high weeds and out of sight.
Jill opened her mouth wide to welcome any kind patch of air, as Aura roared and snarled and ripped—and Everett laughed and laughed, ecstatic in both destroying and being destroyed.
The Aura wolf yelped horrifically as she rose to her hind feet then fell again, rolling side to side, rhythmic gouts of blood spouting from her throat.
Witches’ blades are silver, Jill realized.
Jill stood, but couldn’t maintain it; she was too dazed. She dropped to one knee, stars and fireflies clouding her vision and mind.
Candace was coming toward her, but the little girl stopped to scream. A screen of blackness fell over all of this, cancelling all but the least shred of awareness.
Chapter 29
Versus
“Pretend you are doing what he says,” Bernard whispered. “I just need a sec.”
Stuart, seeing Bernard discreetly fumble with a lighter, reached for the mushrooms, dragging out the act like he was fighting to resist O’Herlihy’s command.
The lighter sparked. “Move aside!” Bernard shouted.
Stuart did, dragging Stella with him. In an instant, the room lit up like a football stadium, reducing suffocating darkness to stark shadows that bent and swayed in all directions. The nearest mushroom men instantly began to smoke. Their brethren behind instinctively retreated toward the darkness of the tunnel.
Bernard held up two burning strips of magnesium—miniature suns.
With a cry of shock, O’Herlihy covered his eyes.
“Here!” He thrust one out to Stuart, who shielded his eyes as he accepted it.
Bernard drew another strip from his pocket and lit it from the first, then tossed it toward the mushroom men. Eerily silent in their death throes, they collapsed, shriveled and smoked. Oily ichor puddled out from them onto the dusty floor.
“Let’s get out of here!” Bernard shouted as he went to McGlazer. He tossed the strip down and grabbed the possessed minister by the arm to haul him out. Stunned but not defeated, O’Herlihy slugged Bernard, sending him crashing toward the writhing mushroom men.
Stuart shoved Stella and the torpid form of DeShaun toward the exit door, but Stella resisted. “Get DeShaun up top!”
Stuart eyed her doubtfully. “What about you?”
“DeShaun needs you. My husband and my friend need me.”
Stuart grabbed DeShaun’s arm and yanked him through the old door, telling him, “You’re gonna owe me a million ZingGo bars, butthole!”
O’Herlihy dropped his knee into Bernard’s stomach, forcing out an agonized retching.
“You shall become a vessel then, cuckold!” O’Herlihy forced Bernard’s mouth open, as he dug into one of the dying, melting mushroom men, ripping away its “flesh.”
Bernard tried moving his head away, but O’Herlihy was far too strong. He clamped down on Bernard’s throat, forcing him still.
“Abe,” Stella said; almost a whisper.
O’Herlihy grimaced at the woman kneeling there beside him, humble and fearless.
“Still your tongue!”
She shushed him like he was a toddler. “I’m not talking to you.” She raised her hand in a simple summoning gesture. “Come on out of there, Abe. You know what’s real.”
* * * *
Stella’s voice carried something to the minister’s shrunken psyche, an importance and a Truth. It was far greater than the promise of alcoholic oblivion, or the threat of endless bludgeoning.
“Blasphemer!” rasped O’Herlihy—louder, stronger and much nearer than the weakened Stella. “Deny her, or you will witness her damnation alongside your own!” O’Herlihy’s voice was everywhere.
Stella’s voice was only in his mind, just beyond his ears. “Come out, Abe.”
He took a step toward the door.
O’Herlihy’s furious bellow, just outside now, froze him, blasted into his skull, shook his bones. “I will rip you apart and sew you back together with burning needles—a thousand times a thousand!”
His desk lamp sparked and popped, casting quick shadow puppets of mutant ragdoll ghosts upon the door, a terrible promise of what waited beyond.
A knock vibrated the office door; three resounding thunder crashes. The office quaked, throwing McGlazer’s plaques and photos to the floor, where they shattered and vanished.
“Just step on out, old friend.” Stella calmly encouraged.
Cracks opened in the wall around the door frame, releasing blistering sprays of steam that drove McGlazer backwards.
“Yesss!” O’Herlihy taunted. “Come open this door, dearest Reverend! Why not begin your unending suffering now!?” From the cracks, a high-pressure burst of steam hit McGlazer square in the face. He realized it was moonshine. “You send her away, you little drunk failure!” commanded Ruth.
There was a nauseating gravity shift—the whole room tilted roughly forty-five degrees, the rear wall behind his desk dipping backwards. McGlazer pinwheeled his arms as he fell into the edge of his desk, slamming his lower back.
As he rolled off to all fours, his hands splashed into liquid pooling in the triangular tilt of floor and wall.
He wiped stinging moisture out of his eyes and saw that he was in bubbling moonshine—elbow-high and rising fast.
“Forty days and forty nights!” cackled O’Herlihy.
“You’re needed out here,” murmured Stella.
“DRINK your FILL!” screamed O’Herlihy.
McGlazer gazed toward the door at the end of the ramp that his shine-soaked floor had become. He pushed himself off the desk and lunged for the knob. The liquid stunted his progress.
&nb
sp; “Here,” Stella said. “Take my hand.”
…How, dammit!?
“It’s here. It always will be, Abe.”
McGlazer stood on his feet, defying the pull of gravity. He spat out the bitter burning liquid in his mouth, and walked to the door, just like he was going to step out for some fresh air.
O’Herlihy had gone silent. He would not be behind the door because he couldn’t be. He was dead and powerless.
Stella, the source of the voice, and so often the source of his day’s ration of strength, was alive, and so much more.
She was an anti-hate—and a hyper-love. A force that would not deny healing; would, in fact, insist on it. Stella Riesling was a reality that reduced doubt and hate to mere quick-dying sparks buffeted by monsoon winds.
McGlazer opened his office door and found himself in some strange cave, pinning poor terrified Bernard with a knee on his chest. Stella was kneeling there before them. Near her side was a flame, something burning so intensely it hurt his eyes.
* * * *
Once they got up the stairs, Stuart eased DeShaun onto his back on the grass. In the quiet night he listened to DeShaun’s breathing. It was shallow and ragged.
With the flashlight, he checked DeShaun’s airway. Just within sight was a slimy blackness.
Pieces of mushroom. He rolled DeShaun over and got his arms around the bigger boy’s upper abdomen to administer the Heimlich maneuver, as the boys had learned together in gym class. Good thing we decided not to goof off and actually learned something that day he thought.
He could hear the hitching sound of DeShaun’s breath pushing at an obstruction. The problem was, the fungus wasn’t a full blockage; air could pass around it just fine.
“Jeez, you weigh a ton, dude!” Stuart complained, as he rolled DeShaun over again to his back. He stood and wracked his brain, trying not to think about what might be happening to the Rieslings.
Right now, he had to make DeShaun puke.
The boys had a game they played: they would take turns assailing each other with descriptions of gross and gory things. A couple of times he had succeeded in making DeShaun almost lose his lunch. But alas, that required consciousness.
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