“My God.” Chuck slammed the passenger door and climbed over the railing onto the porch. The mob watched their brother’s transformation and rejoiced when he rose to his feet, flames be damned. Chuck stood beside his brother. “What the hell’s happening to him?”
Jack ignored the question. “Where the hell did you get a gun?”
Chuck grinned. “Any self-respectin’ southern boy carries a piece. Me, I keep mine in my glovebox. Those lessons at the range didn’t hurt, either.”
Jack shook his head. “Get inside with the others. We need to figure this out, and right fucking now.”
2
Stephanie was on her phone when the gunshots erupted outside, and she nearly dropped the device as she sank to the floor. Riley stood at the window next to Professor Booth, gaping at the mob, and Stephanie was torn between scolding and applauding him for his sense of self-preservation. Definitely not like your old man, she thought, readjusting the phone against her ear. Chuck shouted something to Jack, but she couldn’t make it out. In her ear, a recording told her all circuits were busy.
She tried 911 again, received the same recording. She looked up at the old man and shook her head. “Can’t get through to the cops.”
“You won’t,” Professor Booth said. “Tried that earlier.”
“The whole town’s borked.” Riley sank to his knees beside her. “It started at church this morning. It’s an infection.”
She squinted, shook her head. “I don’t understand. An infection? You mean what’s wrong with them is like a cold?”
“No, it’s like—whatever that black shit is, it gets in their heads. It’s controlling them somehow. Just like in my comics.” Jack burst into the house, followed by Chuck. They engaged the lock and braced their backs against the door, panting. Riley cocked his head in their direction. “It’s like the cover he painted for the Gothical comic.” The boy’s expression fell, dragged down with a sullen realization. “It got Dad.”
Stephanie forced herself to smile, but inside, her heart was breaking. You poor kid. First your mom, now your old man. She wanted to reach out, pull him to her, and hold him tight, but now wasn’t the time for comfort.
She dialed 911 again and put the phone on speaker. A friendly woman told them all circuits were busy, please try again later.
“This is insane. Did you see what was coming out of that guy’s mouth?” Chuck brandished the handgun, pointing it toward the torn plastic covering the broken picture window. “And this is going to do us a whole lot of good, Jack. Great fucking job. Did you even call that guy about fixing this?”
Stephanie climbed to her feet and pulled back a curtain. The mob remained in the driveway, staring at the house. An infection. It gets in their heads.
And then she remembered. They’d all spent their time in the grotto, a place that hadn’t made sense to her even then, because a place that far underground couldn’t possibly have an open sky above. But there were stars. She remembered them—and she remembered the dark things erupting from the mouths of the congregation.
All of them, including her own mother, stood at the edge of waters in the twilit grotto with their chins lifted to the stars above. There was something extracting itself from their mouths. Long, worm-like, squirming with eager ferocity as it licked the air, the essence of a living shadow somehow given flesh with the power of their blasphemous faith. Dark hands reaching for the god in their sky, the stars its eyes, unblinking from their home in the tangent cosmos as its children baptized sacrifices in its name.
“They’re getting closer.” Professor Booth watched the mob advance across the driveway toward the porch. Stephanie put her hand on Riley’s shoulder and pulled him from the window.
“You stay with me.”
The boy shrugged. “They can get in here if they want to. There’s nothing any of us can do to stop them.”
“A little optimism might go a long way right now, kid.” She checked her phone again, saw there were three bars of service. On a whim, she dialed the radio station to see if any lines were open. Silence followed by a hiss of static and the trill of a ring on the other end. She held up her hand and shushed everyone. “It’s ringing.”
Stephanie put the phone on speaker once more and set it on the table. They huddled around it like a tribe, waiting for their deity to answer their call. On the third ring, someone picked up.
“Yes, hello?” Stephanie cleared her throat. “Cindy? Ryan? Can you guys hear me?”
A low rumbling laugh tested the boundaries of the phone’s tinny speaker. Ryan Corliss spoke: “Howdy, Stevie G. You callin’ to make a request?”
“Ryan, listen, this is kind of an emergency—”
“I know, darlin’. My lord told me all about it. He told me you’d be calling.” The air left her lungs in a slow breath of defeat. She closed her eyes, pounded her fist on the table. I need you to radio the state police barracks in Landon, she’d wanted to say. The words still hung there on her tongue, eager to be voiced, eager to ignore the stark reality breathing through the other side of the phone line.
“You still with me, Steph?”
Tears coated the rim of her eyelids. “I’m still here.”
“Glad to hear it. My god’s got a message for y’all.”
The feeling in her legs left her, their consistency like rubber. She listened to the hum of static on the line, the ratcheting beat swelling in her chest. “What’s your message?”
“Stauford belongs to us now. Give us the idol and let Laura go.” Ryan’s voice changed, cracked, distorting with the sound of layered voices speaking over one another. “Your lord commands it. Our will and the Old Ways are one.”
The signal strength dropped to nothing, and the line fell silent.
Outside, the mob began their chanting, led by the burning Klansman. The old man’s face split horizontally, his charred skin cracked and blistering from the flames, while a thick tendril protruded from the wound of his mouth. Fingers sprouted from the tip of the dark shape, bent at their knuckles like the old man’s spine, a dark puppeteer positioned above its marionette. The impossible thing was impervious to the flames engulfing its host, towering nearly two feet above the man’s cracked face. He walked with an almost comical gait, his neck craned backward to accommodate the shapely appendage, arms limp at his sides, legs full of jelly and marbles. Like a human marionette, controlled by the malignant god infecting his mind.
The Klansman walked toward the porch, reached out, and placed his hand on the support beam. Flames spread up the column, along the banister and railing.
Somewhere below, a woman laughed.
3
“I knew you’d come for me, my lord. My love. My light.”
Laura Tremly craned her neck toward the basement window and watched her lord’s followers march closer to the house. Her head hummed from Jacob’s voice inside her mind, a slow vibration filling every inch of her body with a kind of ecstasy she’d not felt since he ravaged her in the grotto all those years ago. Down in the dark, amid the eyes of God, they conceived a vessel of flesh which would serve as a sacrifice to signal their utter devotion. A tremor rippled upward from between her thighs and took her breath away. If she concentrated, she could almost feel him there, his fingertips inside her, his breath against her neck, in her hair, in her ears.
You are mine, one body and mind, one soul. And we will be together again soon. We will start again.
“Yes,” she gasped, straining against her bonds. “I will give you this body, this womb. I will be your kingdom on Earth, my lord. Hallelujah.”
Hallelujah, my lamb. Will you take back what is ours? Will you bring it to me?
“Anything for you.” She pulled at her restraints, twisting her wrists, sucking in her breath as the coarse twine dug into her skin. “My suffering for you.”
I will wait for you in the city. Our flock will bring you to me, and then we will consummate our union where our kingdom began. We will rebuild on the ashes of Babylon, at the shores of t
his lake of sin.
And like a whisper, he was gone from her, the aches in her bones returning, her muscles crying out once more. Black tears rolled down her face and she clenched her jaw, biting back the pain digging deeper into her wrists. Such suffering was miniscule, a tribute to their buried god, but the sting was still there. A reminder of her earthly nature, the ache of mortality writ in skin and bone and blood, etched forever in the temple of her body.
Laura pulled against the beam, pulled until her fingertips tingled from a loss of circulation, until the sharp sting of twine cutting into her flesh dulled to numbness. Until her bindings finally broke free, loosing her upon the world once more. For years she’d lain dormant and drugged in the town’s psych ward, waiting for the return of her god and lover, waiting for the time when she would do her part to fulfill Jacob’s prophesy.
Tonight, she would join him, and the world would quake at their union. But first, there was a matter of the idol, of the heretics upstairs, and her rebellious son.
Laura walked to the bottom of the stairs and peered up. Rivulets of blackened corruption dripped down her wrists and pooled on the floor. The basement door stood open, light from the kitchen falling down the stairwell in a rectangle of dust motes and frantic shadow play. She heard them speaking frantically up there, panicked by the mob outside, bickering about which way to scatter.
Because rats always scatter, she thought. Cowards.
“You all need to calm down. This isn’t solving anything.”
The old man’s voice brought a smile to her face. The back of her head still ached, an exquisite throb to the tune of her corrupted heart, and she decided she wouldn’t let his transgressions go unchecked.
Thief. Interloper. My lord’s will would be done by now if not for you.
Laura waited and listened. Their voices rose and fell, dancing between muffled syllables and profane clarity. She heard her son say the house is on fire, and she nearly cried out with joy.
She cursed her mother in her mind, but Imogene Tremly didn’t respond. There was only the chorus of chanting rising from outside the house, the shuffle of footsteps and panicked chatter above, and the slowed beating of her black heart.
Laura Tremly gripped the banister and climbed the stairs.
4
“—the fucking house is on fire, Chuck. What would you have us do?” Jack held out his hands, waiting for his brother to respond. Chuck gestured to the phone.
“Try 911 again? Shit, I don’t know, Jack.”
“You all need to calm down. This isn’t solving anything.” Professor Booth stepped between them. Sweat dotted his forehead and his hands were shaking, but a career of wrangling students never truly left him. “Get whatever you need from here and go out the back door. They’re standing out there, waiting for us to go out the front.”
“Out there,” Chuck said. He shook his head, incredulous. “Are you out of your goddamn mind, old man? Did you see what’s wrong with them?”
Stephanie didn’t wait. She took Riley’s hand and pulled him away from the window, crossing the dining room toward the den. Jack scrambled to gather his things, stuffing his grandmother’s notebook into his messenger bag. He reached for the idol but hesitated. The stone carving pulsed with light, its hollow eyes staring forever, its grim smile mocking them all.
“That’s coming with us,” the professor said. He put his hand over it, moved it into the open compartment in Jack’s bag. “Genie made me get it for a reason, son. It can’t go back to Devil’s Creek, no matter what.”
Stephanie called from the living room, “We need to go, gentlemen. Right now.”
“What about your mom?” Chuck looked at Jack, surprised by his own words. He knew better, or thought he did. Jack’s stare said everything it needed to. Chuck frowned and left the room to meet Stephanie and Riley on the back porch.
A haze of smoke filled the room, tickling Jack’s nose and burning his throat. He slung the bag’s strap over his shoulder. As he crossed the threshold from the dining room, Jack heard the professor utter a startled cry. Jack turned, and his heart sank into his gut, his veins flushed with ice water.
Laura Tremly clutched the back of Tyler’s neck, her fingers digging into his sagging flesh.
“Give me what he stole, baby boy.”
“Don’t,” Tyler rasped. The professor’s face screwed up in agony as she dug her fingers into his neck. Jack slid his hand under the flap of his messenger bag, traced the contours of the idol’s grinning face.
“Laura,” he said. He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Mom.” The word left his tongue coated in a bitter taste. “Let him go. I’ll give you what you want. Just let him go.”
His throat burned from the smoke, his eyes watering as he suppressed an urge to cough. The smoke grew thicker, the heat palpable, and he heard the crackle of flames as they spread to the second floor. The windows of the dining room were aglow, the front door engulfed, and through it all he heard the cheers from the mob outside.
“Don’t, Jack—”
Something collapsed upstairs, followed by a rush of flames, the sizzle and pop of cinder.
“Shut up, Tyler.” Jack removed the idol. The malignant light brightened the room, illuminating the swirls of smoke dancing between them. Sweat dripped down his forehead into his stinging eyes. He strained to meet his mother’s gaze through the smoke. “You let him go and I’ll give you the idol.”
“Jack…” the professor growled. His eyes widened, glaring across the room through the curtain of smoke. “…it opens the rift—ulk!”
Professor Booth’s neck snapped with the effortless twist of Laura’s wrist. She flung his body to the side. He crumpled into himself like a wet paper bag, his face frozen in the pained expression of determination. Jack fought the urge to puke, fought against his limbs going limp. In that moment, watching the old man’s lifeless body collapse, he wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball and cry. None of them deserved this nightmare.
And there, in the center of his despair, Jack found an anger he’d not felt since he was a teenager. An anger he’d submerged in a well of uncertainty and confusion, a well he’d covered over and hidden away as an adult.
Laura grinned and leaped at him with her teeth bared. Time slowed, Jack’s heart stopped, and in a frozen moment, he reopened the well.
Jack raised the idol and roared at his mother, channeling all his frustration and resentment and hate. The light dimmed, focused itself around the stone figure’s hollow eyes, and erupted in a pulse of force.
Both mother and son were propelled away from each other in a violent shockwave. Laura’s limp body shot through one of the dining room windows, through a wall of flame and shattered glass. Jack flew backward, sprawling through the air into the living room where he collapsed with a pained grunt. The world swam and his whole body ached from the impact, his heart racing as he struggled to regain his breath.
The idol.
Jack sat up, searching the floor around him, but the idol wasn’t there. He looked toward the dining room for its dull glow but only saw flames spreading into the room.
“Jack, come on, we’ve gotta go. Riley, give me a hand.” Stephanie and Riley clutched him under his armpits and dragged him to the back door. He tried to stop them, tried to tell them the idol was missing, but his throat was scorched from the smoke. All he could do was clutch the strap of his messenger bag, saving what mattered most.
A cool breeze swept across his face as they pulled him free of the burning house. He watched the inferno eat away at his childhood home. So ends the Tremly legacy, he thought, before a painful cough erupted from his lungs. He gasped for air, tried to spit out the taste of smoke. Stephanie knelt beside him on the grass, her hand on his back.
“Breathe. It’ll be okay.” She looked up at Riley. “Is he coming?”
The boy stood near the edge of the house, peeking around the corner. He glanced back and nodded. A moment later, Chuck’s black BMW appeared, chewing up the lawn as he ste
ered toward them. The car slid to a halt in front of the back porch.
“Get in.”
They piled into the car, and within minutes were headed toward the parkway. Behind them, the silhouette of the Victorian house slowly collapsed into itself. The eyes of Jacob Masters’s followers lit up the hillside like blue fireflies, their hymns of victory lifting the ceiling of Heaven for all the angels to hear.
5
Laura Tremly’s fingers twitched, curled into fists as a roar ripped through her chest and out her charred maw.
The mob cheered as they watched her step through the broken window into the inferno. She returned a minute later, a smoldering figure born from nightmares.
Laura held up the grinning idol. Its glow pierced through the haze of smoke. The Klansman knelt before her, followed by Riley’s assistant principal and the other men and women from the neighborhood. They bowed in reverence, praying to the visage of their new god, the faith of their apostle, the love of the sacred mother.
She gripped the idol, lifted it to her blistered, blackened lips, and kissed the face of her god.
“Take me to the lord,” she said. “He requires his prize.”
6
Stephanie kicked the underside of the glovebox. “No fucking signal. No cops. Nothing.” She tossed the phone onto the dashboard. “We might as well be on the goddamn moon.”
Riley snorted, screwing up his face to contain his laughter. “Well, it is Stauford.”
She looked back from the passenger seat, shook her head, and laughed. Jack joined her but was stopped by another round of coughs tearing through his lungs.
“This isn’t funny,” Chuck muttered, shaking his head. They were headed west along the Cumberland Gap Parkway, through North Stauford and toward the I-75 ramp. Dozens of smoke trails snaked their way into the sky from the south, tumbling upward from the fires downtown. “This is wrong. People are dead. The old man’s dead.” Chuck took a breath, stepped on the gas. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”
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