The fire was spreading more quickly than he had imagined. The first few portraits he had doused in the spirit and lit with his lighter had illuminated up the scene with a monstrous colour that danced across the rippling surface of the creature. It was by turns trying to scramble up to the second floor and also hurling fragments towards him of the statues that it was crushing under its legs as it sought a way out. Aleister had been smart (or foolish from one perspective) and thrown the first couple of burning canvasses towards the entrance to block the creature's exit. He was now trapped with it, but still had a chance to escape if the fire distracted it long enough...
He kicked over boxes and searched through the tools around him until he finally found what he needed, a sculptor's mallet, thick steel, heavy and blunt.
He looked back down, spotting the spider's legs disappearing under the gallery in the haze of rising smoke. He would still need to find a way down there...
The planks groaned under his feet. Aleister's eyes went wide as he spotted the far end of the second floor start to give way, the timbers twisting and snapping as the spider broke the supports, with the remaining bottles of white spirit tumbling down towards the floor below. He gripped the hammer hard as the thick rope-like legs started to clamber up the ramp of planking that had been created, grasping at the pillar that was flush to the balustrade to haul itself up. No time, there was no more time. Smoke started to burn his lungs. What had he done? He should have run. Too late now. The die had been cast.
Aleister ran forward, hammer held high, hoping to...
The legs grabbed him with lightning reflexes, one wrapping around his body as the other raked a line across his face. The cuts... the cuts on Jacqueline's body... the legs... but that had not been how she died. That was coming next.
As the leg pressed against his face he felt the spider liquefy a little as it pushed into his mouth, his nose, bleeding into him before joining with his own blood. It would drain him, bleed him dry, a husk like all the others, before his skeleton burned away in this dead chapel...
The leg was suddenly wrenched from his face as he saw the man grasping the spider's limb as hard as he could with his black bruised arms, pulling it away from Aleister whilst dragging his vomiting body closer to him, with his face a mask of anger and terror. There was no time for words, as blood poured from Aleister's face... either his or the remains of the beast’s, there was no way of knowing. Smoke obscured his vision, blinding him with tears, though he could see enough, he could see...
Aleister swung the mallet, catching the man full in the temple. His skull caved inwards in a crunch of blood and matter, sending his body into its death throes. The spider fell away, its limbs weakening immediately as it slipped down the planks, already starting to lose its composition, liquefying in front of him, rolling to jelly as it fell.
That was why the creature had left Thomas Webb and escaped and bled into the river. Thomas Webb had been the host for too long, and was close to death. If it was still connected to a host when it died, the effect spread, it became a nothing more than liquid...
Aleister had no more time to watch the scene though, as he saw the bottles of white spirit scattered on the floor were dangerously close to the spreading flames that were already licking the wood of the supports below him. He turned towards the stained glass window and picked up a large toolbox from nearby, smashing it repeatedly and desperately against the lead work that ran between the glass until it finally buckled outwards, falling onto the wet ground outside with a crash. The air rushed past him as the seal on the building was broken and he felt a wave of heat as the fire found new oxygen to fuel it. He didn't have time to scan the ground for a safe spot to land, so simply hurled himself outwards into the night.
The ground rushed to meet him, jarring his body as he collapsed. Luckily he landed on the rain softened earth to one side of the path, rolling in the thick blades of grass, feeling the water cool his sweat covered skin. He lay there for a few moments, feeling the weight in his right hand and realising he had picked up the sculptor's hammer again before he had jumped. He had to force himself to drop it, flexing his hand painfully, as if his body didn't want to give it up, as if the act would become more real once it was truly over and the weapon was released. He had killed a man. It had been self-defence but such reasoning was a salve for the higher brain and did nothing for his soul, which now felt hollow and rotten...
Get up, keep moving. He still needed more distance. He pushed himself to his feet and started to stagger to the road, following the tarmac back towards what must be the direction of Wyldston. He surely only had a few more seconds before...
It was as if the sun had risen, only for a second, the white hot light banishing all shadows ahead of it. The blast flung him forwards and he collapsed into the embankment at the side of the road, as a snowfall of broken glass fell around him. He rolled painfully onto his back, looking back at the chapel that was now fully ablaze, with the roof burning and the spire a beacon, shining out through the countryside, as the blood and the bodies burned.
December 7th
Shred - Cuts of Flesh #1 Page 12