Devil's Creek

by Todd Keisling

  Riley turned, craning his neck up at the sheer cliff from which they’d emerged—except it wasn’t stone at all. It was a fleshy appendage, a hunk of gelatinous meat crawling with carrion beetles and worms. Dark slime rolled down the surface, coating every inch with a thick film shining in the moonlight. The wall of flesh stretched on forever, consumed beyond the veil of shadows above. An acrid odor of offal and earthen rot met his nostrils, and he turned away to fend off a wave of nausea.

  “The grotto,” Jack said, and Stephanie nodded in agreement. Riley, however, didn’t understand. An underground ocean in this part of the world was too much to process. They were far below Calvary Hill, deep enough to hit ground water, but here was a whole sea. For as implausible as it was, the landscape before them was more like a shoreline than a grotto, and when he trained his ears, he heard the distant lapping of waves.

  The world dimmed, and when Riley looked up, he saw the moon vanish along with some of the stars. Others blinked into existence along the horizon. As he watched the sky, he discovered all the stars were blinking, twinkling in and out of the shadows, and a cold serpent coiled around his guts when he realized they weren’t stars at all, but eyes. His throat was dry, and his balls shriveled between his legs.

  In the last 48 hours, Riley Tate thought he’d learned true fear, but losing his friends and his father paled in comparison to losing his place in the grand scheme. He’d often wondered if the god his father prayed to was real, if there could possibly be goodness in any sort of divinity, and when Riley saw the pallid eye of the moon open in the sky and look down at them, through them, with a chilling indifference, he realized he had an answer: there was a god far below and it did not care. The concept of empathy was something foreign to its nature, and he considered the plight of ants in a magnifying glass.

  The entity cast its gaze upon them, and every nerve in Riley’s body grew numb. We shouldn’t be here, he told himself. We’ve seen too much.

  He was so entrenched in the implausibility of the creature above them, Riley didn’t hear his aunt and uncle urge him forward, didn’t hear the cries and mockery emerging from the opening behind them. Stephanie pulled him into the water, and the icy liquid stole his breath, snapping him from his fearful trance.

  “Come on.” She gripped his wrist, pulling him across the shallows. “They’re behind us.”

  Riley looked over his shoulder almost dreamily, his mind lost among the stars above, and saw the visage of his father barreling down the passageway toward them. Bobby Tate crawled along the tunnel’s ceiling, his tainted eyes shimmering in the dark, his mouth a silvery black grin of dirt and worms.

  “You can join us, son. The lord can put all that suffering to use. I never wanted you, but the lord does. The lord wants us all, and it will have us in time.”

  Riley turned away, blinking tears from his eyes. He forced the last good memory of his father to the forefront of his mind as he splashed across the water.

  Riley, I love you more than anything. Please don’t forget that.

  He wouldn’t, but with the corrupted vessel of his father’s body chasing him down, Riley struggled to disconnect the two. The thing behind them wasn’t his father anymore.

  The water grew deeper, thicker. Something brushed against his legs, coiling around his ankles, rooting him to the rocky floor. He pulled, gasping at the stark sensation of cold, of something slimy.

  “Steph—” he began, pausing when he realized Stephanie was struggling as well. Jack plunged his hand into the icy darkness, grit his teeth, and pulled out a black root-like tendril from the depths below. The dark thing writhed around his wrist, tried to snake its way up his arm, and he flung it aside. It landed with a thick splash a few yards away.

  Oh God.

  Something tightened around Riley’s foot. He resisted, pulling against the unseen tentacle, and his sneaker slipped away into the murk. A moment later, something weighted down his other foot, holding him in place.

  Jack turned back to them, the look of pure white terror in his wide eyes. We’re going to die here, Riley thought, struggling against the gelatinous waves lapping around him. He looked skyward, staring with resentment at the million eyes watching their plight from afar.

  From behind, Jacob Masters called out to the void above. “My lord below, we have come to complete your sacred rites. Amen.”

  3

  Jack broke free of the tendrils spiraling around his legs. He twisted himself around with one final bout of strength, but his muscles were already on fire. I’ve killed us, he thought, his heart sinking deep into the pit of his gut. Walking into this murky shit was exactly what he wanted me to do. We’re his now. Goddammit, we’re his.

  Defeat crashed over him in a cold wave. Stephanie met his eyes, the fear etched prominently upon her face, and they shared a moment of tacit understanding. He reached out and linked his hand with hers. Her warmth was a comfort in this dark place, and he was grateful for it. Stephanie did the same, reaching out with her free hand to take Riley’s in hers. If they were going to die, then they would do it together, knowing they’d done all they could to escape the fate waiting for them here for more than thirty years.

  Jack scanned the rocky shore, looking for a trace of his grandmother. Had she been pulled down to the depths of this black bog? Had they stepped over her drowning body in their escape from his father? Jack kept searching, trying to keep the panic from overtaking him completely.

  Jacob hovered across the surface of the water, a wingless angel of the dark. He came to rest at the foot of the stone slab rising from the water and placed the glowing idol. To one side of the altar sat a slender blade with a hilt carved from bone, its surface notched and pitted from usage over the centuries.

  On the opposite shore, Jack’s siblings waded into the murky waters.

  The dead reverend’s voice carried across the water like a siren’s call, and Jack’s mind began to itch. “We began this rite so long ago, child. Do you remember?” Jacob beckoned to Stephanie, who withered in her father’s gaze. “Or you, little Stephanie? No, I thought not. That is what the sinners of Stauford have done to your minds. They’ve tainted your purpose, made you forget the Old Ways, made you cast aside your true callin’. But no longer, my lambs. No longer.”

  Susan Prewitt was the first to reach the altar. She stepped out of the murk, her naked body coated in a film of the dark fluid, the serpent tattoo weeping blood down the curve of her ass. Jacob embraced her as he would a lover, his hands slipping down her sides, smearing blood and filth across her cheeks. When she lifted her chin and pressed her lips against Jacob’s, Jack turned away in disgust.

  “One of my darling daughters kept the true faith. She will be the first to enter into the embrace of the nameless, as she was the first to be baptized in its waters.” Jacob beckoned to them. “You were all bred for this purpose, whether you would claim this burden or not. The rites of the Old Ways demand suffering, yes, and they demand blood, but they also demand flesh, my lambs. My lord is a hungry god, and you will all be devoured in its belly. There is no greater honor, no greater sacrament.”

  Susan knelt before her father, smiling as he lifted the ceremonial blade from its place on the stone altar. He slid the curved blade around Susan’s neck. The arterial spray coated the altar in a thick crimson geyser. Even from across the grotto, Jack heard the almost orgasmic sigh passing her lips as she slumped to their father’s feet. Dark tendrils rose from the water, slipped around her bleeding body, and pulled her down into the abyss.

  Zeke followed, kneeling before his father. Jacob regarded the pitiful man with a bittersweet smile.

  “I raised you as cattle, and you were cast out among the wolves. You had a terrible go of it, my son, but for your loyalty I will grant you peace. Go, then.”

  The blade sliced through Zeke’s artery, his neck a fountain of blood and blackened earth. As with Susan, so too was his body pulled down into the depths of the water by thick tendrils of shadow.

  Chuck fo
llowed, and Stephanie struggled against the dark roots holding her in place. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she tried to break free. Jack squeezed her hand, but she resisted.

  “No,” she cried, “Chuck, don’t do this. This isn’t you. This isn’t any of you. Please, just stop. Don’t.”

  The man who was once Charles Tiptree turned and stared at his sister across the expanse of dark water. A grim smile cut across his face, freeing blackened gore from his lips. “Oh, Stephanie,” he said, “this is everything I’ve ever wanted. You’ll understand soon enough. It’s why we’re here. What greater purpose is there than to serve our lord?”

  He knelt before their father, accepted the razor-thin blade of the sacrificial knife, and was dragged below the surface. Jacob wiped the blade clean against his tattered sleeve. A slow sigh of ecstasy erupted around them, the grotto filling with a rush of sour air from points unknown. Overhead, the eyes blinked and shimmered, some rolling upward to reveal white orbs wrought with blackened veins. When Jack looked up, he saw a black pupil develop in the center of the moon. The squirming orb split in two like a great cell. Those two pupils divided again into four.

  Gaze upon your work, you sadistic fucker.

  Last upon the altar was Riley’s father, Bobby. He was the only one Jack hadn’t seen during his time in town. Out of the six of them, Bobby was the only one who’d bothered to find some form of faith. The Bobby Tate he remembered was a scared child afraid of his own shadow; the one he saw now, even under the guise of their father’s corruption, was a tall man who looked like he’d found peace despite all his hardship. He looked ready for what was about to transpire.

  When Jack looked across the water at Riley, he wished he could break free and stop Jacob from claiming the boy’s father. He wished and he hoped and he pulled, but the roots tethering them to the earth would not relent. All Jack could do was watch the tears slide down Riley’s face as Bobby fell under their father’s blade.

  Riley croaked as his father slipped beneath the dark waves. “Dad,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. The sound filled Jack with a devastating rage, but no matter how hard he pulled and thrust against his restraints, he could not break free. Across the water, their father leaned against the altar and crossed his arms, clicking his tongue.

  “My son, Jackie Tremly. I admire your passion, boy.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You were the one who always put up a fight. Even when the other children accepted their fate, you resisted. I guess you got that from your grandmother.” He turned toward the sky, beckoning to the multi-pupiled eyes watching the ritual unfold. “My lord, would you grant my son passage? Would you let his wayward soul come home to be one with you?”

  The air grew still, and a voiceless hum reverberated through the expanse above. The tendrils holding their legs finally slithered away, allowing them to move.

  “Please tell me you’ve got a plan.” Stephanie’s voice was little more than a whimper, her face frozen in a rictus of fear. Jack looked at them both, his heart breaking, a sullen emptiness in his chest.

  “Be ready to run.” He didn’t wait for her to reply. Jack waded through the water toward the place of his baptism, the place of his final sacrifice.

  4

  He remembered his father being much taller, a slender giant of a man whose smile was as disarming as it was chilling. Jack stood at the foot of the stone altar, looking up at the desiccated remains of Jacob. Blue light seeped from the old man’s sunken eyes, illuminating the dark veins spreading from his dry cheeks. Little else had changed with his father since that day in 1983, save for the scar traced into his forehead.

  Jack remembered the glyph from his grandmother’s notebook, a half-circle split down the middle with a straight line. The old bullet wound puckered around the contours of the glyph itself.

  When he looked over his shoulder, Jack saw Stephanie and Riley making their way to shore, and felt content they’d at least have a chance of escape. That was all he could hope for now. His grandmother had vanished, and he wanted so desperately to believe she had a plan, that she’d not abandoned them to their fate, but as the minutes ticked on, he found his belief was faltering.

  “My darlin’ Jackie,” his father said, beaming down at him. The altar sat atop a jagged rock, its surface carved from the stone itself, and surrounded by chiseled steps with edges smoothed over time by the churning waters. Jacob set down the blade on the stone slab and traced his fingers along Jack’s cheek. “You were always my favorite. It’s the passion burning inside you. You’ve got it going like a pilot light, son.” A gray tongue slithered across his father’s teeth. “I want to snuff it out like the light of the world. Such a light can only be good for sin, and my god can’t allow that.”

  “Did you ever love me? Love any of us?”

  The question took Jacob by surprise. Jack often wondered what he might say to his father if given the chance to relive their last moments together, and the question of love was at the top of the list. Now he questioned the point of such inquiry. What he remembered of his father was limited to their time in the church—he couldn’t recall there ever being moments of joy or play outside its walls. There were only fractured memories of what happened in the shadows, the feel of fingers where they didn’t belong, the sharp pain, the blood, the sour stench of sweat.

  Jacob blinked, met his son’s gaze, and smiled. “No.”

  Decades of anger tempered Jack’s heart against the pain of his childhood, but he still felt the ache of sadness with his father’s admission. They truly were sacrificial lambs to him, nothing more. Anger flashed through Jack like a crash of lightning, and he did something he’d only dreamed about for years. Jack snatched the blade from the altar and jammed it into the old man’s gut. The light in Jacob’s eyes dimmed, and Jack twisted the hilt, slicing the serrated edge in an upward motion toward his father’s sternum.

  “You like that?” Jack growled. He drew close, put his nose to his father’s cheek, baring his teeth like a rabid dog. “Is that enough suffering for you? You sick fuck.”

  Air escaped Jacob’s deadened lungs in a single exasperated gasp, driven from him by the six-inch blade buried deep in his torso. Jack felt triumph, a wedge of hope driven deep into the block of despair weighing so heavily on his heart, but it was not meant to last. The light was in Jacob’s eyes again, and when his breath returned, it did so with the raucous fury of a victor’s laughter.

  “I would save you for last,” Jacob hissed, “but I want your sacrifice to set an example for your sister and Bobby’s little heretic bastard.”

  Jacob took hold of Jack’s wrist, and with a singular motion, twisted the young man’s arm away from the blade’s hilt. Jack fell backward, collapsing against the altar, sending the idol clattering from its resting place. The stone effigy rolled down the steps into the murk. An instant later, Jacob fell upon him, bearing the blade down on Jack’s throat.

  “The nameless will feast on your bones. You will be devoured forever in the void of its belly, and you will feel every moment even beyond death. The grave does not relent, boy, and neither does your father. And when I’m done, Jackie, I will spread the lord’s gospel across this world. My paradise will be built atop earth fertilized with your blood.”

  The tip of the blade neared Jack’s neck, and he pushed with all his strength against his father’s dead weight. He clenched his jaw, squeezing air through his teeth in a desperate gasp of fear, his heart racing frantically as it gave way to panic. The blade drew closer, poised for his gullet, and part of him wanted to let it happen. A warm resignation washed over him as he accepted his fate.

  Run, Steph. Take Riley and go. I can’t hold him back. I can’t—

  Stagnant water erupted in a geyser beside them, startling his attacker long enough for Jack to push the blade away. A dark figure emerged from the abyss, clutching the burning idol in one hand, one blue eye piercing the dark and lighting the way. Jacob cried out as the figure wrapped its free arm around h
is neck and pulled him from the altar, dragging him into the thick sludge churning at its steps. Jack rolled off the slab, gasping for breath as two figures struggled against one another in the murk.

  “Jack!”

  Stephanie’s voice echoed across the grotto. He looked up, saw his sister and nephew standing on the shore near the entrance. Go, he wanted to shout, but the words wouldn’t come.

  Jack turned back to the figures wrestling in the water. Imogene pinned Jacob below the surface, clutching his throat with one hand. With the other, she gripped the burning idol, reared back, and smashed it against the bastard’s skull. Thick tendrils reached upward from the churning waters, driven to the surface by the agitated god above them. Joining their ranks were hundreds of tiny hands, the bloated fingers of children taken in the centuries before, drawn to the surface like worms to the rain.

  Jack looked up, felt his insides shrivel into themselves. The sky was alive with eyes, watching the struggle unfold between these two figures, every star peeled wide and bulbous, illuminating the grotto like grim stage lights. Imogene smashed the idol against his father’s skull once again. She paused long enough to catch Jack’s eye.

  “Go, Jackie. Leave us.”

  He wanted to remain and help her, to emerge from this place victorious with the woman who’d raised him, but the reality of their situation was apparent: she was dead, and never had any intention of walking away from this place. Jack saw the reality in her good eye, and rather than utter a word, he merely nodded and blew her a kiss before darting across the grotto.

  5

  The world groaned around him, the blackened waves shivering with disappointment, and Jack resisted the urge to look back. Stephanie and Riley had already gone on ahead, retreating through the opening of the writhing passageway. A guttural roar filled his ears as he reached the shoreline, the sound of a mountain uprooting itself from the earth to give chase, shifting his heart into overdrive, pumping adrenaline to his muscles. He ran across the tunnel’s threshold, his heart racing to beat the devil, the very air in his lungs combusting into flames.