Under the Overtree

by James A. Moore

  P.J. thrashed in the stuff that was growing thicker, more solid in an attempt to slow him further. It shouldn’t have bothered, as it already was, he could feel his heart’s frantic beatings trying to pound out of his sternum. His brain was trying to explain that he would be okay, but every instinct in his body was demanding more energy, more adrenaline, in order to let him fight on. He was beginning to wonder if a heart attack was going to hit him.

  Pseudo-pods of oil-slicked goo reached for him, wrapping around his waist and covering his lower arms. P.J.’s emotions finally won over logic and he tried to break away with renewed energy. No dice, the thing had him as solidly as a web holds flies. Something happened then, what had seemed almost mindless became suddenly more alive than it had been before.

  Energies of every color flowed into the mass, revitalizing the cancerous lump, filling it with a hideous strength that had not been there before. Awareness grew over the amorphous demon, its every motion suddenly pulled into focus. With a sickening drop in his stomach, P.J. Sanderson was heaved into the center of the creature and suddenly made to realize that he had been horribly, horribly wrong.

  The creature at the heart of Mark’s problem’s didn’t need him alive at all. It simply hadn’t noticed him before.

  P.J. Sanderson was pulled into the flaccid depths of the monstrosity and as he was dragged down, he felt the awesome, terrifying AWARENESS that he had not before sensed, aimed at a careful examination of what it had within its grasp. P.J. Sanderson’s mind shut down. Sometimes, it’s better not to know what is happening to you.

  5

  Mark Howell was at peace, floating in a paradise of pleasant dreams and even more pleasant sensations. Cassie was with him and Lisa was there too, and the only reason that either of them was there was to pleasure him in any way he saw fit. Utopia was his.

  There was nothing to fear, no pain, no suffering of any type, just that annoying feeling that he was missing something important. Someone was calling his name, calling with an urgency that he did not understand. What could possibly be important enough to disturb him? Was that P.J.? He looked around, could see nothing in any direction that resembled his friend, until he looked over at Cassie.

  There was something wrong with her, she was unmoving, still smiling just as she had the last time he had actually looked at her. Almost as if he was watching a film, her body flickered a few times and then she suddenly remembered how to speak. “Is everything all right, Mark?”

  He nodded, looked towards Lisa and the same thing happened again. She flickered, then moved, asking the exact same question. She was smiling, despite what he had done to her earlier. He was mildly fascinated by how quickly she had recovered from all those bruises…

  There it was again, P.J.’s voice, coming from somewhere behind Cassie. He started to move, neither of his companions did. Then they both started up again asking if everything was okay…Was there anything he needed…How could they help him?

  Mark frowned, not understanding why they couldn’t hear P.J.’s desperate cries. Annoyed by them, he pushed them aside, not bothering to apologize; here he was king and could do as he pleased. He demanded that P.J. show himself and for just a second, he thought he saw P.J. in the distance, screaming, drowning. Then P.J. was next to him, smiling the same old smile, dressed in a battered pair of jeans and a short sleeve dress shirt. And over the “Can I help you, Mark? Is everything Okay?” question, he could swear he still heard P.J. screaming.

  Mark tried walking towards the faint voice, but a wall was in his way. That hadn’t been there before, had it? He ordered a door put into that wall, he was after all, the king of this land, but nothing happened. He turned back to look at P.J., thinking to ask Cassie a question and watched with mild surprise as P.J. actually blinked away, to be replaced by Cassie.

  “How did you do that?” he demanded petulantly.

  “Is there something wrong, Mark? Can I do anything for you?” Her smile was as bright as a sunny day. He was really starting to get pissed off about her damn smile too. The voice was suddenly clearer than it had been and Mark Howell wondered if perhaps someone was playing tricks on him.

  6

  Jonathan Crowley looked at the tower of stone that stood before him. It was huge, swollen with the power he had just returned to it; power that had until a few moments ago, fueled the possession of Mark Howell. As Crowley watched, the Stone heaved itself out of the ground, swelling even larger. Crowley had seen more in his long life than he often cared to remember, the Lord knew he had done more than he wanted to think about, but he had never before run across anything quite like this.

  He would have been afraid, but he knew it was at least half show. Whatever concealed itself in the Stone was something that considered itself too vulnerable to be seen in its true form. That in and of itself was a good sign. The toughest part would be convincing the creature to show itself.

  As if determined to let him know that It felt no fear and truth be told it did not, the Stone heaved convulsively one more time, rearing up to an unprecedented height. Crowley stepped forward, ready at last to do battle.

  7

  While Jonathan Crowley was preparing to fight, Tyler Wilson was doing his best to rouse Lisa and Cassie. Tony was already conscious, though just barely and was moaning in pain over the broken jaw that Mark had delivered to him. Mark was lying perfectly still and Tyler was afraid to approach him, because from where he sat a few feet away, he did not appear to be breathing. Lisa was conscious, but she was moving sporadically at best, little jerks and shivers that made her whole body seem as if it were on the edge of a massive seizure. Next to her, Cassie was still sleeping.

  Tyler was amazed by how beautiful the two girls were and more than a touch disgusted with the part of his mind that found their vulnerability arousing. He gently shook Lisa in an attempt to rouse her from her stupor. He shook her arm, calling her name softly. There was no response. The whole thing could have almost been comical, there was nothing that he could do, nothing that he could say that would help anyone and he was the only one here except for Crowley that was unscathed by the whole thing. His only loss so far had been his glasses and that was hardly a loss at all.

  Tyler was still busy trying to do anything at all to comfort his beloved, when Mark Howell stood up and very quietly, very quickly moved to where he could best attack Jonathan Crowley.

  8

  P.J. had pretty much accepted his fate. He was a goner and more than anyone else he could think of, he deserved to die. Wasn’t it all his fault to begin with? Hadn’t he been the one that summoned the—whatever the hell this thing was—in the first place? Yes, it was best to let it all end. No more pain. No more suffering. No more tears.

  Through the suffocating darkness that was forcing itself into his lungs, he felt strong fingers gripping his arm. He felt powerful muscles pulling at his slumped body. There was light and oh, sweet Jesus, it was GOOD!

  P.J. coughed the phlegmy substance from his mouth and throat, hacking the mucous from his lungs with painful body wracking coughs, until he could at last feel cool clean air flowing into his chest again. Perhaps he was wrong, perhaps he wanted to live more than he had ever suspected, because nothing had ever felt so fine as the oxygen that stirred in his system, forcing him to live despite his own attempts to surrender.

  He fell to his knees on the ground that was suddenly clean and relatively dry. He felt comforting hands holding him in place as he lost what little he had managed to eat earlier in the day—hadn’t he already tossed his cookies? The day had been too damn long, he couldn’t remember. He almost didn’t recognize the voice that spoke to him, almost missed the voice that had meant the most to him in his life. “Hey, Philly. Don’t you have a life or two to save?” Such a musical voice, even from well beyond the grave. “I think my nephew might need your help, guy and I think maybe your kids might need your help too.”

  “How did you know about that? That’s supposed to be a secret.” The protest was feeble at bes
t. P.J. Sanderson looked at Alex Harris and kept on looking. As beautiful as he had been in life, Alex was even more incredible to look on here, wherever “here” was.

  There was a stunning look of serenity on Alex’s face, a look of contentment and yes, even happiness that had always been lacking from his best friend’s face in life. He looked so perfect, so utterly angelic, that P.J. felt the urge to cry. “No secrets here, Philly, just good feelings. We’ll see each other again.”

  Alex was leading him towards a pool of darkness that seemed impossibly black, forbidding and full of pain. P.J. didn’t want to go, he started to resist Alex’s gentle urgings. “No, I want to stay here, with you. I love you Alex, I can’t go back there. Nobody loves me over there. It all hurts.”

  Alex smiled, half sad half happy, all too beautiful. “You’d be surprised by who loves you over there, P.J.. You really would. Go on, I can’t go back, I’d join you if I could, but there are rules that have to be followed.”

  It was hardly even a push, more a gentle touch at the small of the back and P.J. felt himself falling into the darkness again, felt himself hurled towards the world that he had grown afraid of. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, instead he simply let himself go, comforted by the last words his Best Friend Ever had to say as he fell. “I love you too, Philly, we’ll see each other soon.”

  9

  Mark sat in his little throne room and watched as the static images kept trying to ask him how he felt and how they could serve him. And, much as he tried to ignore it, he felt his friend’s pain and heard his friend’s tearful cries from beyond his little paradise.

  Enough was enough. It was time to be a friend again, instead of a friendly face. P.J. had helped him so often, so many times. How could he let him drown in the blackness? There was a painfully selfish voice in his head that demanded he stay right where he was, that insisted that silence was golden and that he would really be much happier with his dreams, no matter how strange or perverse they became.

  Mark Howell decided that he had let that voice have run of the show long enough. He had been sitting back and letting that voice handle things for most of a year now and this was where it had to end. Mark Howell struck the wall of his Special Place as hard as he could and the wall shattered like fragile glass. Really, that’s all it had ever been anyway, the delicate fabric of daydreams. How could he expect the happiest of dreams to be more substantial than they could be in real life?

  P.J. was going under for the last time, he could see the way that the author’s struggles with the miasmic blackness were fading. Mark reached out with hands freshly bloodied and pulled his surrogate father from the depths of his own pain. God, P.J. had never seemed heavier, never before had he seemed to be a burden. Maybe, he thought as he shouldered the barely conscious man, maybe that’s what all of the people you love are, burdens meant to keep you anchored. That was okay, Mark had lived without the burdens for far too long. It was a weight he would happily accept.

  10

  Crowley reached for the Stone at the same time that Mark Howell hit him in the back of his head. It wasn’t a love tap, it wasn’t meant to just get his attention, it was meant to drive his face through the pulsating Stone before him. The blow was damned near successful. Crowley felt the cartilage in his nose give way against the granite surface.

  He rested there for only a second, chastising himself for turning his back on an enemy playing possum and then he turned to face his opponent. Mark’s face still had that unnaturally alert expression, that same self-satisfied smirk of glee. If Jonathan Crowley’d had any friends, those friends would have pointed out that the look on his face matched exactly and precisely with the look on Mark Howell’s face at that moment and then they would have run screaming. If Crowley had had any friends, they could have told you that the shit wasn’t just going to hit the fan, it was going to tear that fan apart. Crowley didn’t have any friends, nor had he ever really wanted any.

  He felt more alive than he had for the last twelve decades. There was no dancing, no weaving and testing of one another’s abilities, there was only combat.

  The two foes met on equal grounds, squaring off and assaulting each other with fists that fairly blurred from view with each and every shot. Teeth were knocked loose from grinning mouths and bones were broken in the both of them. Crowley delivered a killing blow to Mark Howell’s kidneys and received a ruptured spleen for his troubles. Muscles were ripped free from bones by hands that were strong enough to bend steel bars and blows that would have shattered oak trees were dealt out to vulnerable joints that refused to stay broken. For every strike that landed, there was a rapid healing of ruptured organic matter that would have made doctors around the world crazy for the secret.

  All Tyler Wilson could do was watc hand all that the Stone could do, was pull the strings on Its puppet. Tyler was mesmerized by the sheer ferocity of the attacks, stunned by the savage power that was unleashed. He could actually feel the vibrations from the battering from where he sat some fifteen feet away. And the two of them just kept smiling. It was like, well, it was like they were both just having a damn fine time killing each other again and again.

  He was too busy with the fight to notice the odd bulging of the Stone behind the combatants, too busy to notice the Stone in the process of trying to give birth to what It had earlier swallowed. Or trying NOT to give birth.

  Tony was not. Tony was wallowing in his own pain, but he was not too busy to hear the muffled screams of his uncle. It was hard, too goddamn hard to get up and try again. He had been beaten every single time he let himself stand up for anything at all in the last few days. It was much easier just to lay here and let these things take care of themselves, thank you just the same.

  But, damnit, that was his uncle. That was the man that had been more of a father to him than his own father had ever been. That was the man he had let down at every turn, the man that kept forgiving him, kept having faith in him when he no longer had faith in himself and he just couldn’t make himself lie still. Tony got to his hands and knees and started over to the lump in the side of the Stone. The lump that would not rest.

  It hurt to crawl and so he walked. It wasn’t fast enough just to walk and so he ran. It was too far to run and so he fell and he started crawling again. But he eventually reached that spot in the Stone, that wart that grew at a cancerous rate on the side of the shifting granite rock in the center of the woods. He touched the Stone and the Stone burned him for his insolence. His fingers were blistered and the tips of his right hand fingers smelled like roasting pork.

  He was too tired to cry and he was too angry to stop. As in all times in Tony Scarrabelli’s past, it was rage that fueled him on to greater things. The same rage that let him lift twice his own weight in a max-out on his bench press, let him pull back his left hand and drive his fist into the heart of the Stone.

  The Stone screamed and the surface of the Stone broke, even as Tony’s hand was shattered. He wanted to hit the Stone again, he wanted to lash out at all the pain the thing in the Stone had caused him, had caused his friends and even the pain that it had caused Mark Howell. But the pain was too much. His hands screamed in silent protest and he felt the blood seep out of a dozen open wounds onto the pulpy mass of his left hand. Tony pulled himself into a fetal position and cried quietly. The pain was only physical, it was no longer the shameful pain of cowardice. He could live with that.

  11

  P.J. hit the actual surface of the real world in a rush of fluids. He fell to his knees and again felt the intoxicating rush of oxygen to his lungs. He looked at the grass beneath him and saw blood and knew that it was not his own. Then he saw his nephew lying curled into a ball on the ground and he pulled the boy to him. He shielded the boy with his own body, knowing that it was all about to end.

  He felt more than saw all that truly made Mark Howell who he was go running towards the thing that inhabited his body. He felt more than heard the primal scream that came from the spirit of Mark Howell
as it charged towards its natural home.

  He actually saw the triumphant smile fade from Mark Howell’s physical face as he turned to look at the oncoming spirit that demanded its rightful place back.

  In a voice that was made equally of anger and sorrow, he heard the words that erupted from Mark Howell’s body. “No! It’s not fair! I was winning! I was winniinng!”

  Jonathan Crowley delivered one last telling blow to Mark Howell’s spine at the same time that whatever had inhabited Mark’s body was forced back to the Stone by the sum of Mark’s being. P.J. heard the sound of Mark’s spine cracking at the same time that the Stone exploded.

  Fire lashed at the skies under the Overtree, flames ripped at the heavens and blasted the fog into nothingness. There was no heat from the flames, there was only an amazingly powerful cold. P.J. Sanderson felt the frost that formed across his back, felt the hair on his head grow brittle and fall off, snapped by the winds that howled across the forest. He forced his eyes to close, forced his body closer to that of his nephew’s. He had to watch out for Tony, who else would?

  He did not see the lake covered in frost, he did not see the windows in Summitville blasted free from their frames to litter the interiors of damned near every home in town. He did not see the stain of whatever had been here in the woods eradicated by the force of Mark’s denial. But he certainly felt them all as he lay there sheltering his nephew—yes, nephew, that’s all I can ever let him be, all I can ever let him know—he felt all that and he heard the obnoxious voice of Jonathan Crowley even through the titanic explosion. “Ouch. Shit that’s just GOT to hurt.”