The Tome of Bill Series: Books 5-8 (Goddamned Freaky Monsters, Half A Prayer, The Wicked Dead, The Last Coven)

by Rick Gualtieri

  Although I’m sure it all happened in the space of a second, it felt like hours before the world coalesced around us again. When it did, I was surprised at the view, or lack thereof.

  “Holy Dimension Door, Batman!” Adam exclaimed. “That was fucking wild.”

  “Wild is one word for it,” Ed remarked, no doubt due to the fact that we had seemingly reappeared in the middle of a forest. It was a small miracle none of us had rematerialized inside a tree trunk.

  I was about to ask Christy if maybe she hadn’t gotten her directions mixed up when I spied something through the trees. It was overgrown and in heavy shadow, but enough remained of the billboard to clearly make out “Visit the Salem Witch Museum, 2 miles on the right.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “This is not natural,” Christy warned, no worse for the wear from our teleportation.

  Ed and I shared a glance. We’d seen this before. Sally had too, but we had the benefit of remembering it. “It’s worse than that. It means we are potentially double-fucked.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Dave asked, finally looking up from his precious notes. “So we’re in someone’s backyard.”

  “Except we’re not.” I pointed down at the broken asphalt peeking up through the dirt at our feet. “We’re standing in the middle of a fucking road.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Ed and I filled them in on things. An unnatural growth of trees, no sign of life otherwise. It all pointed to Sasquatch magic. Hadn’t Alex mentioned something about there being a potentially large Bigfoot invasion force nipping at our heels from the North? Guess he hadn’t been shitting me.

  Great! In addition to everything else, now we needed to worry about how many of the ugly fuckers were standing between us and Boston.

  I took a deep breath through my nose to try to gauge that. Ugh! Son of a bitch! I really needed to remember not to do that where the Feet were concerned.

  “We need to get off the street,” I choked out, a pinprick of sweat trickling down the back of my neck.

  “Maybe not,” Christy said. “The Forest Folk have no quarrel with the Magi. If we run into any, I can...”

  “You can explain to them why you’re hanging out with a group of their archenemies,” I pointed out. “I have a feeling they’d love to hear the story, maybe even before they tore all of our arms off.”

  “Bill’s right,” Ed said. “Let’s find somewhere defensible and hash out a way to get through this.”

  “So you’re saying we’re trying to avoid Bigfoot?” Mike asked. “I can’t imagine it’ll be hard to avoid a pack of giant screaming apes.”

  I turned toward him, keeping my voice low. “Imagine those giant screaming apes with a stealth modifier of fifty. Trust me, they make for much better thieves than you ever did.”

  We definitely didn’t need the delay, especially considering that seemed to be all we were doing lately – perhaps subconsciously avoiding the inevitable – but the Feet had a nasty habit of stepping out from behind trees and pummeling the shit out of their enemies before they even knew what was happening. Sure, we were armed, but that wouldn’t help us much if we ran into an entire army of them.

  Thankfully, it didn’t take much effort to find something. Despite the thick foliage, it soon became obvious we were in a residential area. Bigfoot magic seemed to affect organic life, but it left buildings intact. Kind of like a neutron bomb, except filled with triffid chlorophyll. Once you knew what to look for, it was pretty easy to spot buildings through the brush, even ones that had been overgrown at an alarming rate.

  Even better, the neighborhood we chanced upon was a nice one. Before long, we found ourselves standing on the torn-up driveway leading to a big-ass McMansion.

  Fuck it, if we were going to plan some strategy, it might as well be in style.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We didn’t waste any time breaking in. Locked doors aren’t much of a deterrent to vamps. Most of them aren’t designed with beings of supernatural strength in mind. It was child’s play to turn the knob until the tumbler snapped. Even better, it seemed the power was out. No power meant no loud security system blaring out to every Squatch within half a mile.

  I pushed open the door and took a quick sniff of the air. No stench of rotten forest ass assaulted me. I did catch the smell of humans, but it was stale. Nobody had been through here in perhaps a day or more.

  Even so, just to be safe, I called out, “Anyone home?”

  “Yeah, we are.” Sally pushed her way past me. “Enough with the welcome wagon bullshit. If anyone is here, they really don’t have much choice in their new roomies.”

  Thankfully, no angry residents met us with shotguns blazing. The place, as my nose attested, seemed to be abandoned.

  Well, maybe not entirely. A few trees appeared to have grown straight up through the floorboards. I had a feeling it wasn’t a random act. If what I knew about Sasquatch magic was correct, they were what remained of the original residents.

  Oh well, any port in a storm. While the rest of our group fanned out to see if maybe there was anything in this place we could use, Christy pulled Decker out of his bag, and together they set to work in the spacious living room.

  “Any ideas?” I asked.

  Be gone, fool, Decker’s skull hissed. There is nothing here which a buffoon such as yourself could possibly pretend to understand.

  Christy, thankfully, was far more generous than her former mentor. “A glamour might work. A powerful enough one can mask scent as well as form. The only problem is the number of us involved. That’s going to take a decent amount of effort to keep up. And even then...”

  “Then what?”

  “As I said, the Forest Folk have always respected Magi neutrality. But that doesn’t mean they’re allies. They’re secretive, and they have a bond with nature that’s strong.”

  “So basically what you’re saying is you have no idea if it’ll work against them.”

  “More or less. I mean, I can fool their physical senses. I’m pretty certain about that. Eyesight, sense of smell, touch; all of that – those are known quantities. They all play by the same rules, just at different levels. The problem is, we’re surrounded by growth that’s an outcropping of their own magic. They’re going to be extra attuned to that. I might be able to fool it, I might not. For all I know, it’s warded in ways I’ve never seen. Magic can be tricky like that – especially without time to study it.”

  “Well, that’s just dandy like candy.”

  I’m certain our passage will not be helped by your utter uselessness. Perhaps we should split up. You and your strumpet would make for excellent bait to cover our retreat.

  Goddamn, what a dick.

  I was about to say as much, but then a cry caught my ear. It was from somewhere off in the massive household, far too low in volume for Christy to hear. As for Decker, who knows? The fucker didn’t even have ears.

  Regardless, I knew immediately who had made it.

  I’d lived with Tom long enough to recognize his voice anywhere. My friend was in trouble, and he needed me.

  Score of a Lifetime

  “Fuck me!” the cry came again, as I navigated down into the basement. Holy shit, this place was huge. One could have crammed my entire apartment into just a small corner.

  Downstairs was no different. It was like these people had their own fucking bat cave.

  “Yes!” Tom’s voice was much louder now, and ... sounding less distressed. What the hell?

  “This is so fucking awesome!”

  Yeah, definitely a wee bit less distressed. What? Had he come across the owner’s porn collection and a battery powered DVD player?

  I passed a big screen TV set in front of a massive and disturbingly comfortable-looking leather couch. Impressive setup, but as dead as the rest of the house. So much for that theory.

  Such a pity. Following my little incident with Sheila, a part of me wanted nothing more than to drown m
y sorrows in a sea of booze, weed, and surgically enhanced breasts.

  I spied an open doorway ahead – the paneling around it all scuffed up and the beam of a flashlight visible from within.

  Tom was somewhere inside. His excited mutterings of “Fuck yeah!” and “Hit the mother lode!” would have been painfully obvious even to someone without vampiric hearing. What interested me more at the moment were the nicks and scratches on the door frame, almost as if...

  “Did you kick this door in?” I stepped through the threshold, my eyes immediately opening wide with understanding as I beheld what lay within.

  “Yeah,” he replied, his arms full. “It was locked and I was like fuck that noise, I want to see what’s in there. Glad I did. Do you see this fucking place?”

  Hell yeah, I saw it. We were in what could best be described as my roommate’s idea of heaven. The entire room was dedicated to collectible toys – some far older than us. I saw Furbies, stacks of Magic The Gathering cards, A GI Joe USS Flagg, and more – much more. Tom, proving that he was neither blind nor overly burdened by morals, had already grabbed a bunch of the nicer pieces.

  His arms were full of mint-condition, unopened figures – Han Solo’s plastic eyes stared back at me from within his clear plastic carbonite. I saw a few Masters of the Universe toys, a Stretch Armstrong, and, of course, at least one Transformer – Soundwave, from the looks of it. He was also holding a toy I didn’t immediately recognize – a Barbie-sized action figure wearing camo fatigues and sporting a porno-stache.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at my friend. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Investing in the future.”

  “You’re robbing this place blind.”

  “It’s only stealing if it belongs to someone else,” he said idly, his eyes drifting back to the shelves. I was half-surprised he wasn’t drooling.

  “This is someone’s house.”

  “Was someone’s house.”

  “They might still be alive.”

  “Doubt it.”

  “What if they come back?”

  Tom turned back to me and, for a moment, a solemn look appeared on his face. It was pure bullshit since the mad gleam never quite left his eyes. “I thought of that, Bill. Really, I did. But look around us. The Sasquatches either killed everyone or drove them off. The way I see it is, I could either leave this stuff here to rot, or I could honor their memory by cherishing that which they’ve left behind.”

  “Honor their memory?”

  He shrugged. “Or something like that.”

  “What are you going to do with this shit anyway? The world is about to end. I doubt...”

  “Fuck that nonsense right in its big fat ass. Unlike everyone else, I have faith that you’re gonna find a way to end this bullshit. Then, when it’s all over, the world will get back to normal – which means eBay will be there, waiting for a smart investor such as myself to offer his treasures up to those who are nostalgic for the old days ... and have the cash to pony up.”

  I was tempted to slug him and drag him out. “Put that stuff back.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “And I’m serious when I say you have a better chance of me sucking your dick than you do of me dropping this haul.” He looked me in the eye. “Oh, and just for the record, the chances of me sucking your dick are less than zero.”

  “Glad to hear it.” I took a step forward, and Tom – paranoia on full display – took one back. I reached out for him, but then stopped as I remembered the day he’d come home with his precious Optimus. He’d had the same look in his eye then as he did now. Hmm, was it possible? “How do you feel?”

  “What the fuck? I feel fine.”

  “Not quite what I meant. Do you feel like ... your old self?”

  “Are we still talking about my dick?”

  “Oh, fuck this shit!” Bracing myself, I walked up and made to grab the toys in his arms. Thankfully, I was aware of the potential consequences. Had I not, I’d have certainly regretted it.

  My fingers had barely grazed Darth Vader’s plastic packaging when the cool material suddenly turned red hot. I jerked my hand back in time to avoid the worst, but still came away with smoking fingertips.

  Tom look at my singed hand and a grin lit up his face, so wide I thought it might split his head in two. “FUCKING A! I am back, motherfucker!”

  I shook my fingers, waiting for my healing to kick in. “So it would seem.”

  The law-abiding part of me still felt that what he was doing was scummy to the nth degree, but I had to admit it was good to see his insane faith once more flare to life. It didn’t mean he was safe, but he would be a whole lot less vulnerable than when he started this journey.

  “There’s only one problem,” he said, looking thoughtful for a moment.

  “What?”

  “Last time something like this happened, I ended up with nothing more than a pile of broken plastic. No fucking way. Not again.”

  “Sorry. I can’t guarantee safe passage for Greedo, Prince Adam, or...” I pointed toward the oddball of the bunch. “What the fuck is that one anyway? Did someone sell a Child Molesters of the Seventies line at some point and I didn’t hear about it?”

  “Oh, this guy?” Tom held up the creepy doll in the camouflage outfit. “It’s Max Adventure.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “Um...”

  “My dad had one when he was a kid. Gave it to me when I was eight. Remember that Fourth of July?”

  I thought back. “Hold on. Was that the doll we blew up with those firecrackers?”

  “Yep. Sadly, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles refused to pay the ransom, so the bad guys had no choice.”

  “Wait, that stupid toy was your dad’s?”

  “Yeah, and believe me, he was fucking pissed.” He held it up and smiled. “Oh man, good times. It isn’t worth shit, don’t get me wrong, but damn, does it bring back the memories.”

  “Okay, whatever. Bottom line is, I’m glad you got your faith back, but there’s no way I’m giving you a warranty.”

  “I know. So I’m gonna split my stash. Bring a few, enough to cover my ass, but hide the rest for after.”

  “I don’t think we have time to...”

  “GET YOUR ASS IN HERE, BILL!!”

  Sally’s compulsion rang throughout the house, easily reaching the far confines of the basement. It was better than a PA system, although far less pleasant. Judging by the way Tom was rubbing his ears, he concurred.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. We should...” Oh fuck it. “Stay here. I’ll see what’s going on.”

  “No problem-o. I need to find a box for all this shit anyway.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I left Tom where he was and raced back upstairs. Heck, it’s not like I could have dragged him with me had I tried. His find was truly awesome – and I didn’t mean from a monetary perspective either. It meant that he would be protected from vampires like me. That in itself gave me some small comfort as I finally stepped onto the main floor, having made at least one wrong turn in the cavernous basement.

  I found the rest of the group in the living room, standing in front of a picture window and looking out toward what would have normally been a well-manicured front yard, but was now a forest primeval.

  “Jesus Christ, Sally. Lay low with the compulsions. Otherwise, every Bigfoot within a mile is going to find us.”

  She stopped me with a glare. “It’s too late. They already have.”

  Shit Storm

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “That’s kind of the point with them,” Christy said. “You won’t see them until they want you to.”

  “Well, that’s useful,” Dave groused.

  “They’re near,” she continued.

  “Yeah,” Sally added. “It’
s little things – a crunch of leaves, a tree branch swaying the wrong way.”

  “How many?”

  “Who the fuck knows?”

  “This is bullshit,” Mike said. “Everyone knows vampires beat out dire apes. We should just go out there and kick their asses.”

  I turned toward him, somehow repressing the urge to smack the piss out of his stupid self. “This is one case where the Monster Manual got its stats dead wrong. They’re not just apes, they’re spirits.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “Not quite ... unless you want to go with ghosts strong enough to rip off your head and shit down your throat. Oh, and believe me, if that latter happens, you’re gonna wish for the former.”

  “So what do we do?” Adam asked. His tone, however, suggested he didn’t feel all that worried. I really needed to remind these guys that there were different tiers of super powers. The Green Goblin might seem tough to Spider-man, but against a guy like Thor, there wasn’t going to be much of a fight.

  “Lock and load,” Ed replied. He already had his shotgun in hand. “We know that bullets can kill these things.”

  “A lot of bullets,” I corrected.

  “Dead is still dead.”

  “Yeah, if there’s one or two of them. If there’s a hundred...”

  “Too risky,” Sally said. “Christy, can you get us out of here?”

  “Already on it.” She’d placed Decker back in his bag – thank God – and was busy drawing a circle on the floor in chalk. “Guess we should have aimed for Medford after all.”

  “How long do you need?” Ed asked.

  “If it were just a couple of us, we’d be gone already. But I need a few minutes to set up a sending circle for a group this size.”

  Sally grabbed her Desert Eagle from the big duffel bag o’doom. “We’ll give you what we can, With any luck, they don’t even know we’re in here yet.”

  Sadly for us, luck was on our side – bad luck, that is. Sally had barely closed her mouth when there came a crash from the back of the house – loud enough so that I had little doubt a wall had just been caved in.