Muscles screaming, Jack ran as fast and as hard as he could, through the tunnel of flesh and stone, and into the temple chamber. Stephanie and Riley were already climbing up the ladder. When he looked back, he saw a darkened mass assembling at the far end of the tunnel. The shape was amorphous, a blob of blackened corruption folding and tumbling in on itself, spotted with blue eyes and shining white teeth.
We will be fed.
Terror clutched at his resolve, but the adrenaline kept him one step ahead. Jack cupped his hands and cried out to his sister. “Push the tanks into the hole!”
The shapeless thing advanced, squeezing its way through the tunnel toward them. A stream of black water surged from the grotto into the chamber, mixing with the ashen earth, washing over the bones of past meals. Jack slowly backed away, past the small stone altar in the center of the room, and toward the coarse steps of the earthen pillar.
“Bombs away!”
Riley’s voice echoed down into the chamber, and a moment later, several propane tanks fell to the floor with a dull thud. There were ten in total, falling one after the other like crabapples from a tree—thump, thump, thump—and when they were done, Jack went to work opening the valves on the tanks, watching with growing panic as more and more of the viscous sludge streamed into the room, flooding the pit below. With the valves open and the stink of propane filling the room, Jack kicked the tanks into the black ooze slowly filling the room.
Heart racing, his mind struggling to fend off panic, Jack took to the ladder. His muscles screamed for him to slow and rest, but his mind said otherwise, and when he reached the surface, the shapeless mass of flesh and eyes and teeth reached the end of the passage. Blue orbs rolled up and stared at him as he climbed out of the temple. Myriad voices echoed in his mind, shrieking for retribution and sustenance.
Stephanie waited at the edge with the flares. When Jack was free of the ladder, she struck the cap and winced as a jet of flames spewed from the flare.
“Run,” Stephanie screamed, tossing the flare into the pit. Jack yanked Riley to his feet, and together they raced down the hill.
Behind them in the bowels of Calvary Hill, the seething gas caught fire, engulfing the mass of Jacob Masters’s nameless god in an explosion of cleansing flames.
All around them, the earth shivered and groaned as the fabric of reality shriveled, contracted. The ground beneath them shook violently, throwing them off their feet and sending them rolling down the hillside. An agonizing voice echoed into the night, crying out with the rage of defeat, the fear of final oblivion, but then it, too, was snuffed out in the fires below. A bright orange-blue fireball shot out of the opening at the summit, tumbling over itself in a coil of smoke rising toward the heavens.
A series of smaller explosions popped and cracked from within, the shockwave rippling through the earth, and all through the forest, the living shadows shrieked as they lost substance. Half the hillside imploded upon itself as the temple collapsed in a gust of smoke and dust.
The rumblings from below continued for the better part of fifteen minutes, and the trio of survivors took refuge beneath a tree at the edge of the clearing. Jack leaned against the trunk, waiting for his racing heart to calm itself while the fires burned within the earth. Riley sat with his head against Stephanie’s shoulder, half-crying, half-laughing at what had happened, and when another burst of flames shot out of the hill, Jack pointed toward it.
He looked to them, a smile of relief painted upon his face. “See? I told you I’d blow up that motherfucker.”
They shared a nervous laugh between them, afraid to question, afraid to voice the obvious. Was it dead? Was the nightmare finally over? They had no answer. Together, they waited beneath the tree, while the moon completed its slow arc overhead. It held no answers, either.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
1
Dawn drove away the forest’s shadows, revealing the extent of their work the night before. Calvary Hill had collapsed into itself on the far side. Smoke billowed upward into a hazy golden sky. A network of veins was burned into the clearing, erratic patterns reminiscent of a lightning strike, reaching as far as the surrounding forest before vanishing in the overgrowth. Bits of stone protruded from the disturbed earth like fragments of bone, and when Jack surveyed the damage, he thought the hillside now looked like a collapsed skull. Looking at it reminded him of his grandmother’s final moments, using the idol as a weapon against their father, and he turned his back to the smoking husk of earth for the last time. He would look at it no more.
Stephanie and the boy were asleep under the tree, and he considered letting them sleep a little longer, but the thought of remaining here filled his belly with a sour warmth. This place had always felt haunted to him; now it felt like a cemetery, inert, silent, cloaked in a palpable sadness that would never abate.
“Hey guys.” He tapped Stephanie’s knee. She sat up with a jolt, ready to run. Jack put his hand on her shoulder, smiling. “Easy now. It’s okay. We just need to go, that’s all.”
Relief washed over her, and she roused Riley from sleep. The boy sat up and yawned. He looked at them both in a daze, and after another sudden yawn, he asked, “Can we get breakfast?”
Jack smirked. “Yeah. I’m buying. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
2
They drove as far south as Williamstown, sticking to the backroads, wondering how far Jacob’s corruption spread. Some fires were still burning, some roads teeming with the fallen bodies of men and women and children covered in dark mounds of sludge and corruption, but they drove on, hoping they weren’t the only people left alive. EMS and fire engines barreling down the two-lane highway quelled their fears, and although none of them acknowledged it, they all breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
On the other side of town, Jack pulled the car into a Waffle House parking lot and asked for Riley to hand him the messenger bag on the backseat. After the boy did so, Jack fished out his wallet, and as an afterthought, his cell phone. The screen lit up to show more than a dozen missed calls and texts. The battery had less than ten percent left. More importantly, there was service.
“You guys go on inside and get a table. I’ll be there in a minute.”
After they were gone, Jack finally called his agent. Carly Dawes answered on the third ring, her voice dry and groggy, and when she realized it was him on the line, he heard the relief in her voice through the angry cursing.
“You don’t answer my fucking calls for days, Jack! I was so worried! What happened? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, just a little beat up.”
“Beat up? You got into a fight? Christ, do I need to get your publicist on the phone? Do I—”
Need to fly down there, she was going to say, but he cut her off. “No, no fight. It’s kind of a long story, Carly. Listen, I wanted to let you know I’m all right, and I might miss that gallery show. There’s…well, something came up. I have a little family issue I need to take care of. Can we postpone the show?”
A low electric hum buzzed on the line as she fell silent. A moment later, Carly said, “This is important, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Okay,” she sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. Take care of whatever you need to. I’ll handle everything from here.” Before they hung up, Carly said, “Jack?”
“Yeah, Ms. Dawes?”
“You okay? I mean, really?”
He looked outside. His sister and nephew sat in a booth near the entrance, watching him from the window. Riley raised a hand and waved.
“Yeah.” Jack waved back. “I’m okay. I promise. My battery is about to die, so I’ll call you later. I promise.”
“That’s twice you’ve promised me something, Jack Tremly.”
“I know, I know.” His phone beeped a low battery signal. “I’ve gotta run, lady. I’ll call you. Promise.”
“That’s three.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, and hung up.
3
Th
eir bellies full of carbs and grease, the trio of survivors took the entrance ramp to I-75 North and drove alongside unassuming travelers for the next fifteen miles. A state police barricade waited for them at Exit 25, diverting potential visitors off to the next exit. Several cars stopped along the highway to question the state police officers redirecting traffic, but Jack stepped on the gas and kept driving.
Pillars of smoke rose from the eastern horizon, towering above the tops of trees along the ridge. A few miles away, the remains of downtown Stauford were a smoldering ruin. Stephanie leaned her head against the glass, watching as the dark trails vanished into a yellowing haze hanging above the town like smog. Jack looked over at her, wanted to ask what she was thinking, but thought better of it. He already knew.
When they were kids, they used to sit on the banks of Layne Camp Creek, talking about how they hated Stauford, how everyone treated them like freaks. In some sick sort of way, Stauford molded them all, shaping them from the salt of the earth into the band of successful misfits they were today.
Now the town was gone, burned to the ground by the very sinners who’d built it, collapsing beneath the weight of its own hypocrisy, and the misfit outcasts lived to see another day. Some of them, at least. And in the great purging fires, they’d lost everything for the second time in their lives, their livelihoods stripped away in a different cleansing ritual.
He thought of Imogene, wondering if this is what she’d intended. She’d hated Stauford as much as the next person, maybe even more. Had she enjoyed watching it burn? Even Jack had to admit seeing the smoke on the ridge filled him with a sense of retribution, glee. The place that robbed them of so much finally suffered its own trauma, and in the process—perhaps by Mamaw Genie’s doing, no less—set them free once and for all.
Maybe, he thought. Just maybe.
Exit 29 loomed ahead, but unlike the South Stauford ramp, this exit wasn’t closed. Jack flipped the turn signal and eased off the highway.
4
The devastation was greater than they’d first realized, with the full extent of Jacob Masters’s curse reaching beyond the city limits and across the outlying suburbs. They witnessed emergency fire crews fighting flames while EMS workers struggled to make sense of the casualties strewn about the parkway.
“Something happened when we…killed it, I guess?” Riley’s voice startled them both. The boy had been silent since they’d left Williamstown, and Jack thought him asleep this whole time. “If it can be killed, I mean.”
Stephanie turned in her seat. “Not sure I follow you, Riley.”
He pointed to the bodies loaded on stretchers alongside the road. They’d reached a stoplight at the shopping center a mile from downtown, and the road leading into Stauford proper was closed by a police barricade. Beyond the state police cruisers was a pile of bodies, their heads torn open and bleeding, stewing in a black puddle.
“They were connected somehow. When it…died, I guess, it took them with it. It looks like they all went pop.”
Riley made a popping sound with his mouth. Stephanie and Jack groaned. A moment later, the light turned green, and they sped on.
5
Jack cursed under his breath when they rounded the curve of Standard Avenue and the Tremly estate fell into view. The once proud Victorian was nothing more than a charred, hollow shell. Plumes of smoke snaked lazily toward the sky.
“Oh, Jack.” Stephanie put her hand on his. “God, I’m so sorry.”
He remained silent as they parked in his grandmother’s driveway. Jack climbed out of the BMW and surveyed the landscape. Most of the homes in his grandmother’s neighborhood survived the burning, adding insult to his injury. Jacob targeted this place, knew what the estate meant to Imogene’s family, and now it was a smoking corpse of the Tremly legacy. Now there was only Jack, and the burden of possibly building something even half as grand weighed heavily upon him.
While Riley and Stephanie walked aimlessly around the perimeter, Jack leaned back against the car and closed his eyes. He stuffed his hands into his pockets—and felt something there.
“What the hell?”
He pulled a folded slip of paper from his pocket. A loose bit of twine hung limp and knotted from one corner. Confused, he replayed the previous day’s events in his mind, retracing every step until—
Mamaw. Her final embrace.
Jack opened the door to the BMW’s backseat, unzipped his messenger bag, and retrieved his grandmother’s journal. He flipped it open to the back, where the jagged remnants of a torn page stood out from the binding, and unfolded the sheet of paper. Tears welled up in his eyes as he scanned his grandmother’s final scribbled words.
6
FROM THE JOURNAL OF IMOGENE TREMLY (5)
Entry not dated
Jackie—
Well, my darling boy, if you’re reading this, then everything I’ve planned has come to pass. I’ve died and returned from the grave, and so has your father, and if there is any justice in this chaotic universe, then you are reading this in a moment of peace. I’d like to think you are. It’s how I imagine you’ll be. I have to.
What’s happened between my death and now, I cannot say. Contrary to what most of those awful people in town think, I can’t tell the future. I can hardly keep track of time. Tyler is supposed to be here within the hour, and then…well, I’ll be doing what I’ve spent the last thirty years preparing for. You probably already know by now.
If there’s any cause for these words, it’s for me to tell you I love you. I love you more than anything. You might not have been my son, but I raised you like one, and the only thing to match my love is my pride in you, boy. You’ve given me a second chance in the latter half of my life. I feel like I did a whole lot of wrong when I was younger, but you made me believe I could fix it all. You gave me a chance to do it all over the right way.
A second chance is what this journey of mine has been all about, Jackie. I hope when you read this, you’re able to put this all behind you. I hope the nightmares no longer haunt you. I hope you can leave this town behind you once and for all. I hope all your brothers and sisters can do it, too. Hope is about there always being a second chance, son. A chance to amend, to right wrongs, to move forward, and start over.
That’s my hope for you.
I love you, little Jackie, and I’ll be watching from the stars. Make me proud. I know you will. You already have, more times than I can count.
—Mamaw Genie
7
He closed the notebook and wiped his eyes. A warmth washed over him, the soft embrace of love from a lady long dead but still alive in his heart. Jack closed the car door and joined his sister at the remains of the front porch. A pile of charred rubble stood there now, smoking lazily in the morning light.
Stephanie looked at him, saw the tears drying on his cheeks. She nudged him. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. What about you?”
“I think so. I mean…” she trailed off, watching Riley wander around the side of the hollow house. “I think I have to be now. For him.”
“If you need any help, I can—I mean, I’m offering. Just say the word.”
She smiled. “I appreciate that, bro.”
Jack rolled his eyes, grinning. “Ugh, God, don’t say that ever again. ‘Bro’ sounds wrong coming from the great Stevie G.”
“There’s a first time for everything. For a second time, maybe.” Her words trailed off on the breeze. A haze of smoke turned with the wind, forcing them to walk around the side of the house. In the distance, fire sirens cried out in emergency, as their responders traveled from one ruin to the next.
“Do you think they’ll rebuild it?”
He knew she was talking about the city of Stauford, but when Jack turned back toward the skeletal remains of his family home, a thin smile crept along his face. “Maybe,” he said, “but not here.”
The breeze picked up again, changing the direction of the smoke. Jack Tremly put his arm around his siste
r’s shoulders, and together they walked through the billowing white curtain toward their nephew.
Their shadows drew long in the morning sun, and the day was just beginning.
September 27th, 2007—March 7th, 2019
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It’s been a long journey down Devil’s Creek Road, and there are many praises I must chant before I’m to make the hike to Calvary Hill.
Many thanks to my agent, Italia Gandolfo, for championing this book to others and trusting my vision. The same goes to my editors, Amelia Bennett, Kenneth & Heather Cain, and Renee Fountain, for imparting their wisdom, keen eyes, and blessings upon this manuscript.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Ken McKinley at Silver Shamrock for taking a chance on this monster and allowing me to be involved in the particulars of its creation. You wouldn’t be holding this book in your hands if not for him.
Words can’t properly express the appreciation I have for the friends and family who cheered me on throughout the writing of this book. First drafts may be written alone, but a book isn’t born without the support of others. You all know who you are, and I love you dearly.
My wife, Erica, has been patient with me over the years while I fumbled through the dark with this story’s many stops and starts. She was my light at the end of tunnel. I don’t know how many nights we sat up late talking about the plot and characters, but I cherished them all. Thanks, love.
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