Jack turned to Riley, offered a thin smile. “What about you? I can’t imagine your old man ever brought you out here to go hiking.”
“No way. Dad told me if he ever found out I was out here, he’d ground me for the rest of my life.” Riley paused, thinking about their conversation. “I asked him what was out here. He told me it’s nothing, just a void.”
Silence fell over them, the air inside the car too hot, suffocating. Stephanie opened her door, prompting her brothers to do the same. For a moment, Riley wondered what it was he’d said, but he understood as soon as he opened his door. The air was different here, possessed with an unnatural stillness as though time itself were standing in place. There was no breeze, no sound of animals or insects. Now he understood his father’s ominous statement.
He stared at the gravel turnabout where the truck was parked. It’s a fucking dead end, he thought, smirking. He was struck with an urge to text Ben, but his heart sank when he realized his error.
“Riley?”
Stephanie watched him from the other side of the car. He forced a smile. “What’s up?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m…taking it all in. You know?”
She nodded. “Got it.”
He watched her tie back her curly hair, noticed the way her hands were shaking, and felt a little better knowing she was as terrified as he was. Jack and Chuck walked around to the back of the car and opened the trunk.
An Army surplus duffel bag filled out the BMW’s trunk space.
“I invested in one of these bug-out bags a few years ago,” Chuck said. He unzipped the duffel, revealing a first-aid kit, a carrying case for a second handgun, four heavy-duty flashlights, a jumbo pack of batteries, road flares, and several loaded magazines. At a glance, Riley thought there was enough ammunition to start a small war, but even with all their hardware, he didn’t think they were any better off. They were as ill-prepared now as they were back at Jack’s house—except now they were exhausted, hungry, and capable of shooting each other by mistake.
“So…this is it.” Chuck reached in, opened the carrying case, and retrieved his second handgun. He offered it to the group. “Any takers?”
None of them volunteered, exchanging uneasy glances among one another. Riley hesitated, considered holding out his hand, but Stephanie’s gaze stopped him. She stared at him intently, forcing the smile of a terrified mother.
Chuck sighed. “Someone needs to take this.”
Stephanie reached out and took the weapon from her brother.
“You know how to use this?”
She pulled the slide, chambered a round. “No, I was too busy cooking and birthing babies to learn how to shoot, Mr. Patriarchy.”
They shared a nervous laugh together, but his aunt’s levity did little to quell the dread growing in Riley’s gut. Minutes later, Jack slung the duffel strap over his shoulder and walked to the edge of the road, tramping down the weeds at the foot of the trailhead.
Riley watched him move, watched the careful hesitation in his mannerisms, the uncertainty in his steps. He’s terrified, the boy realized, looking from Jack to Chuck to Stephanie. God, they all are.
When Jack looked back at them all, he did so with pale resignation, his eyes pleading silently for this to be over. His uncle didn’t say anything, only looked at each of them for a moment before clicking on his flashlight and forging ahead into the forest. Chuck did the same, crunching across a carpet of dead leaves and weeds without a word.
Stephanie followed but hesitated at the tree line and turned back to her nephew. She held out her hand. “I don’t have any breadcrumbs to show you the way.”
Smiling, Riley took her hand and followed her into the dark.
2
Stauford’s children returned to Main Street to watch the adults slowly roast in the flames. They were drawn to the spectacle with the same fascination as children at a carnival, wide-eyed and agape with awe. Their lord set them free, and they danced barefoot in the streets to celebrate the dawn of a new age. An age of their lord to mark the decline of the heretic god and the beginning of a paradise on earth. Their paradise. And it would all take root here in Stauford before spreading across the world like the most tenacious of vines.
They frolicked from one end of Main Street to the other, dancing between the walls of flame and the skeletal remains of the town’s structures, the desecrated temples of Stauford’s false gods. From South Stauford, where the remains of the high school collapsed in upon itself, to the central part of town where First Baptist was now long gone, and to the north where the bank, the radio station, the newspapers, and other businesses were still burning, the seeds of Babylon rejoiced and sang the praises of the lord in the earth. The nameless void. The smiling god of their dreams, calling them home to an ocean underground, beneath a darkened sky of eyes and teeth.
Their lord’s apostle beckoned them to his pulpit of fire. They answered his call, young and older children alike, skipping along in sing-song fashion while the flesh of their elders blistered, cracked, and slipped from bone in charred sheets.
Ben Taswell and Toby Gilpin were among the crowd. Their faces were split open, chunks of bloody flesh held suspended in the air by the dark worms protruding through the viscera. Thick fingers of blackened corruption jutted from their open maws at odd angles, swirling in the air, feeling their way.
Amber Rogers’s younger sister, Candy, walked with her eyes suspended inches from her face, held aloft by thick stalks of writhing filth, while her tongue was a nest of crawling worms. Amber herself crawled along the asphalt of Main Street, held upright by a swirling mass of dark tendrils sprouting from between her legs. One of those tendrils wrapped around her waist, snaking up her torso, into her gaping mouth, and down her throat.
Jimmy Cord walked toward the apostle’s pulpit with a grin on his face and the blood of his father on his clothes. He’d watched his old man stroll into the burning storefront of Rick’s Hardware a mile back. Ronny Cord screamed in glee as the flames ate the flesh from his bones. Jimmy walked on, humming his new father’s sacred hymn, and pushed his way to the front of the crowd encircling the bonfire at the end of Main Street.
There, he watched Jacob Masters lead a prayer consecrating the dawning of their new age. When he finished, the children shouted “Amen!” as loud as they could, and Jimmy joined them. The Old Ways stirred something in Jimmy’s soul, something he always felt but could never voice. A need to free the primal creature living below his skin. To be free of society’s restrictions. To rend and tear, to bleed, to taste, to fuck and devour. Jimmy raised his hands in the air, “feeling the spirit” as his daddy used to say, and pledged his devotion to their lord’s apostle.
A great surge of heat filled his face, following the blackened veins around his eyes and cheeks, spreading along the ridge of his jaw and into the chasm of his throat. A cluster of black worms erupted from his Adam’s apple, splitting his gullet in half. Clumps of soil and writhing insects spewed from the wound, crawling over his body, cocooning his face in a helmet of skittering limbs. He fell to his knees and praised his god, hallelujah.
“And now, my little lambs,” Jacob went on, “I must return to our lord’s temple and complete the rites as dictated in the Old Ways. Rejoice, for tomorrow we begin anew.”
Their lord’s apostle turned to the trio at his side. Susan, Zeke, and Bobby led their father back to one of the cars and piled inside. Minutes later, they were on their way home to Devil’s Creek.
3
They reached the footbridge as the sunlight finally failed them, draping the forest in thick shadows. Jack led the way, his flashlight beam bobbing along the ground in tandem with his steps, but Chuck discovered he still remembered the way. The trail took a hard turn up ahead at a pair of elm trees, ran down a small slope, and into a gully where the creek babbled away in the dark.
Shouldn’t have lied, Chuck thought as they neared the bridge, but supposed it didn’t matter. Like Stephanie, he’d c
ome home one weekend from school, had a few drinks, decided he was bold and brave enough to confront his demons, and drove stupidly all the way out here to do so.
The legend of the place was in full swing back then, the turnabout lined with cars and trucks belonging to stupid kids who all wanted to experience something creepy. Music filled the forest, some forgettable hip hop song, and the trail was teeming with flashlights and laughing teenagers, discarded plastic cups reeking of beer, the crisp forest air suffocated with an acrid haze of pot smoke.
He’d gone as far as the footbridge when something called to him from beyond the trees. The music was still going on, punctuated with the laughter of a party that wouldn’t end for hours, and yet he still heard his name amidst all the noise. Charles, the voice said, which was enough to give him pause. Curious, Chuck stepped off the trail and followed the creek toward the sound of his name.
The passage of time erased any sense of distance from his memory. Chuck couldn’t remember how far or for how long he’d walked into the dark, but what he did remember were two beady blue eyes in the distance, peeking from behind a gnarled tree on the edge of the water. Its roots were exposed, and half the trunk hollowed out, frozen forever in an expression of anger.
Charles, welcome home.
He couldn’t remember what drew his attention to the limbs above. Maybe it was the appearance of blue light, or maybe it was the movement of shadows, the dark separating from itself and taking on formations in the void. When he looked up, dozens of sapphire eyes peered down at him. He stumbled backward and fell into the creek bed. The shadows laughed, mocking his terror while he splashed his way out of the water.
Never again, he’d vowed, and yet here he was, standing on the footbridge once more. He pointed the flashlight toward the water and spotted the hollowed-out tree. The trunk now lay collapsed to the side of the creek bed, its dead roots jutting out over the water.
“Chuck?”
He looked up, straining to see Stephanie’s face in the failing light.
“Yeah?”
“You all right?”
He nodded. “Just thinking. Come on, let’s get going.”
Stephanie frowned, made to say something but decided against it, and turned to join Jack and Riley beyond the bridge.
Chuck turned back toward the creek, pointing his flashlight into the shadows, expecting to see eyes. There were none, but in the back of his mind, he heard the hushed voice repeating itself. Charles, welcome home.
4
A quarter mile from the footbridge, they encountered their former compound. Two wooden posts marked the entrance, one on either side of the overgrown trail, and both were almost consumed by crawling ivy. The metal hooks which once held lanterns were long gone, the wood too rotten to hold them. Stephanie smiled when she saw them. She and Zeke used to race each other through the village every night, eager to be the first to light the way for any lost souls stumbling in the dark.
Father Jacob told them they served a higher purpose, their births signaled the spark of a new light for all, and to young Stephanie Green, she took that meaning literally. Carrying the lantern to the edge of the village every evening was the best part of her day.
She’d told this story to her roommate, Lizzy, the day they’d hiked beyond the footbridge. Standing now at the edge of her former home, while her brothers and her nephew forged on ahead, Stephanie remembered the look on Lizzy’s face when she’d drunkenly admitted to being part of a cult. Of course, there was alcohol involved, so much Stephanie couldn’t recall parts of the conversation as their night went on, but she did remember two things: telling Lizzy about her childhood and fumbling her way into a kiss. The retelling of her childhood was the awkward part.
Riley pointed his flashlight at her feet. “Steph? You coming?”
“Yeah. I’ll catch up in a sec.”
The forest had grown over the trail even more, leaves and weeds blanketing the earth before them, but the other lamp markers were where they’d left them all those years ago. Lizzy’s voice spoke in her head, in a shrill bubblegum pitch of innocence Stephanie once found so endearing. “So you lived out here with, like, no electricity? No running water?”
No, Stephanie told her, the adults had forsaken those things. She didn’t experience modern amenities like warm showers or microwaved food until she was older, after the church burned to the ground. She didn’t dare tell her roommate about the circumstances, though.
Up ahead, Stephanie saw the first of the metal shacks, its flimsy surface marred with rust and graffiti. Someone had painted a crude Confederate flag on one side. A stark white swastika glowed beneath the beam of her flashlight, and she turned away when she realized what it was. Riley, Chuck, and Jack were farther along, chatting amongst themselves, peeking into a few of the sagging structures.
Poor Lizzy, she thought. This was where their hike stopped, where their budding relationship ended before it even began.
The details were fuzzy—what they’d talked about on the drive down to Stauford, what they’d eaten for lunch—and the event nearly twenty years gone by that point, but other things jumped out of her memory with pure clarity. When the living shadow emerged from one of the shacks, Stephanie hadn’t seemed all that surprised, as if its appearance was expected.
Lizzy wasn’t prepared for it, though. She laughed off Stephanie’s warnings, and because Stephanie had a thing for her, because they might’ve fooled around that night for the first and only time, she’d acquiesced when Lizzy suggested they visit the old compound.
Stephanie pointed her light at the next shack on the trail, its roof caved in, the rusty metal walls covered in vines. The shadow had emerged from there, extracting itself from the dark the way oil separates from water, slipping into their reality without a sound. The impossible thing towered over the two women, standing nearly eight feet tall when it was done forming itself into being, and looked down at them with bright blue eyes.
We knew you’d return, little Stephanie. Your father sleeps with Us in the earth. Will you join him?
She remembered Lizzy’s shriek, the way the poor girl backed away from the dark creature like a terrified child, toddling backward until she lost her balance and fell. The living shadow turned away from Stephanie, looking down at the hapless creature crawling through a mound of dead leaves. Lizzy screamed, crying out for Stephanie to help her to her feet, only Stephanie was running by that point.
“Hey, Steph?”
She took her eyes off the collapsed shack and looked down the path at her brothers. Jack shook his flashlight to get her attention.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m coming.”
“You’d better look at this,” he said.
Stephanie nodded, trudging through years of dead leaves past the old shack. She couldn’t remember who’d lived there—one of the deacons, maybe—but supposed it didn’t matter now because they were long dead. As she walked toward them, Stephanie’s mind wandered back to her roommate. Lizzy wandered out of the woods half an hour after their encounter, shivering, her running mascara painting her face like a harlequin. Stephanie sat in the front seat of the car, crying. Her roommate never said what happened after Stephanie left her there, and Stephanie never asked. A week later, Lizzy broke their lease and moved out. They hadn’t spoken since, and Stephanie thought it was for the best.
Walking toward the boys, she felt the familiar urge to turn and run. The impulse to tear off into the forest, take their car, and speed away from Stauford as fast as possible was paramount—but she was older now, maybe even stronger. And while Jack and Chuck could handle themselves, there was still Riley to think about. She wouldn’t leave him for the world. Whatever was waiting for them down in the bowels of Calvary Hill, she would find the courage to face it—if not for herself, then for her nephew.
“What did you find?”
Chuck turned to her, was almost smiling. “You won’t believe this.”
She peered into the open shack. Jack’s flashlight lit up the small r
oom. At least a dozen propane tanks sat on the floor, along with several containers of chemicals, tubing, matches, and a camping stove.
“A meth lab,” she said. “Or what was going to be one.”
Jack stepped inside and lifted one of the tanks. “It’s full,” he grunted, returning the tank to the floor. “Shit, I bet they all are.”
When Jack looked up at them, Stephanie found she couldn’t help but smile. She stepped inside. “You’re still a troublemaker, Jackie. Thank the gods for that.”
5
Unlike his siblings, Jack never felt the need to return to his birthplace. Growing up here was enough. Stauford always felt haunted to him, but Devil’s Creek was a living nightmare always one step behind him no matter how far he ran. They were marked by this place, a fact which uncovered a deeply rooted anger in his youth. Thousands in therapy bills helped him tame the anger. He’d learned to channel it into his art, building a career and a small fortune on the back of his pain, but the anger was still there, the fire still burning. Revisiting this place stoked the fire inside. Everything that happened to him here—to them all—poisoned his life, his soul.
Walking down this backwoods rendition of Main Street USA, Jack came to understand everything he was began here. The last several decades of trial and ridicule, anxiety and depression, his whole life a road atlas of misery that inevitably led back to this godforsaken place. His obsession with the macabre. His distrust of authority. His disdain for religion. All of it began here in this ground zero of sadness and agony, a mecca of madness and a monument to one man’s hubris. The compound of Devil’s Creek, the Lord’s Church of Holy Voices, and Calvary Hill were all part of a greater cancerous mass on the earth that had to be excised.
Finding the meth lab might have been merely fortuitous but Jack chose to believe otherwise. If he and his siblings were here for any purpose at all, if there was any sense of justice in this chaotic universe, this had to be it. The circumstances were too perfect for him to believe otherwise. He’d never felt such conviction for anything else in his whole life.
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