Chance Damnation

by DeAnna Knippling

  Aloysius started the truck and drove away. Jerome expected him to stop in a few seconds, but the truck tipped back, going uphill. After a slow minute, the truck stopped, and Aloysius left.

  His chances of being able to protect Celeste Marie weren’t going to get any better, so he waited until Aloysius should have been out of sight down the hill, then pulled the latch on the truck seat.

  His lungs filled, and he knew that no matter what else happened that day, he wasn’t going to be able to ride behind that seat again. He lay in the crevice between the seat and the cab and waited until the spinning stopped, trying not to take too many deep breaths. Then he pushed down with his left arm, curled his knees up under him, and pushed himself over the back of the seat, nearly hitting his head on the steering wheel horn.

  He couldn’t feel the fingers on his left hand, not even a tingle. He flexed them a few times, but it didn’t matter, as long as they did what he told them to do.

  He looked around. Mr. Blackthorn’s car was coming up the hill, so he ducked down again. Either he could sneak around or he could come out into the open. Mr. Blackthorn couldn’t be counted on not to send Jerome back down to the church, danger or no. He’d probably march Jerome down there himself for the satisfaction of seeing the look on Aloysius’s face.

  So Jerome waited as Mr. Blackthorn parked his car in the barn, covered it with a tarp to keep the birds off, and locked the barn door with a padlock. He kept stealing peeks at Mr. Blackthorn’s progress but didn’t feel overly concerned about getting caught.

  After Mr. Blackthorn had unlocked his front door and gone inside, Jerome counted a few more minutes, counting out the seconds extra slow just to be generous. Mr. Blackthorn, no doubt, had gone to the south side windows so he could look at the church. Jerome opened the door and slid out.

  Moving around made him realize how sore he was. He limped to the back of the truck. The bb gun was sitting in the middle of the truck bed. The backpack was under a fold of the tarp; they probably hadn’t seen it.

  He collected both, shook the last pricks of sleep out of his hand, and walked around the house to Celeste Marie’s room. As he walked, he shouldered the backpack.

  Celeste Marie’s room was on the west side of the house, facing the short-cut yard and, invisibly beyond the trees and bushes, the long, wild grass full of flowers that she’d called to grow. Jerome had tried to explain to her the reasoning of a proper yard with a row of windbreaker trees, but she’d only made him laugh with her puzzled looks and questions.

  Jerome ducked at each of the windows and kept away from the rocks bordering the flower beds more out of respect for what he was doing that from any estimation that Mr. Blackthorn would notice, either then or later. Then he was under Celeste Marie’s west window. He stopped to listen.

  It took him a few seconds to hear anything, because he had to set aside the sound of the bees flying and the wind tussling the leaves of the bushes and elm trees around the yard.

  When he finally did hear it, he smiled, stood up, and faced Celeste Marie, who was standing at the screen, scratching the tips of her fingers against the screen, waiting for him.

  “We got to get you out of here,” he said.

  Celeste Marie’s face was covered with tear streaks; as he watched, two more tears rolled down on each side. “We have to bring my daddy.”

  Jerome shook his head. “He won’t come, and you know it. He’ll march me back down the hill and keep you locked up in here.”

  She didn’t answer, and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to pry her out of the house with a crowbar and a rope.

  “We could run off into the pasture and then yell at him, so he’d have to come follow us,” he suggested.

  Another pair of tears rolled down Celeste Marie’s cheeks, and then she nodded.

  “Pull out the screen and come on,” Jerome said.

  Celeste Marie struggled with the latches holding the screen in place, then almost dropped the screen on her foot when it came loose suddenly. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, pushed the screen aside, and let it fall. Then she took a deep breath, looked around her room, and disappeared into the shade of the house.

  “Celeste Marie,” Jerome hissed.

  “Just a minute,” she said.

  He heard a clink and a rustle.

  “Come on.”

  She reappeared with a patchwork denim bag slung across her grasshopper-thin chest. “Ready.” She kicked one leg over the windowsill. She was wearing a pink dress, and it slid up her leg until her panties were showing.

  Jerome leaned his bb gun against the wall, grabbed her around her waist, and helped her slide her other leg out of the window. They left footprints in the flowerbed under her window but were otherwise unharmed.

  “This way,” Celeste Marie said. She led them through a gap between the lilacs and spirea, through the barbed-wire fence on the other side, and out into the pasture.

  “We’ll have to angle toward the church,” Jerome said. “Otherwise he won’t see us.”

  “No, this way.” Celeste Marie pointed at the crest of the hill.

  “He won’t see us to follow us.”

  She led him up the rest of the hill. “Stop here.”

  Jerome looked around. They were standing in the middle of a patch of alfalfa with snowy white flowers; the trees and the barn between them and the northwest side of the house. Celeste Marie waved. Jerome looked closer and saw one of the windows precisely through a gap in the branches.

  There was a thunk as the window was slammed open. “Celeste Marie Blackthorn!” Mr. Blackthorn yelled.

  Celeste Marie waved again.

  Jerome raised his bb gun to the sky and shook it. “You’ll have to come and get us!”

  Celeste Marie tittered and kept waving. “Hi, daddy! I have something to show you!”

  Jerome heard something from across the prairie and turned to look, lowering his bb gun.

  “Daddy!”

  He followed the crest of the hill until he saw the line of pickup trucks just out of sight of the church, waiting. Startled, he looked down at his shadow, which was almost directly underneath him. He’d thought he had more time.

  The sound was louder, and he twisted to look over his own shoulder.

  Behind him was a stampede of demons, what looked like hundreds of them, a black line on the golden grass. Bright metal flashed: weapons.

  “Celeste Marie!” he shouted, but she wasn’t beside him. She was halfway down the hill toward the house, her braids flying. She wasn’t wearing any shoes.

  The demons were running toward him; he was running toward Celeste Marie. Celeste Marie was faster than he was, but the demons were even faster.

  To his surprise, the demons split into two groups and ran around the little farmhouse and barn, then merged together beyond the farm and rushed down the hill toward the church.

  Hadn’t they recognized her? Maybe he was wrong, and they hadn’t wanted her.

  There was a crack from the house, louder than a gunshot, and then a twisting, groaning noise, and the sound of breaking glass.

  Celeste Marie, on the other side of the bushes, ran straight into the side of the house with the palms of her hands flat out. The wall slowed her down, but half a second later, she’d pushed through the wall and into the house like a stone into the river. The wall shook behind her, and a black line appeared between the ground and the top of the basement.

  The middle of the house sank inward, and then Jerome was at the barbed wire fence. He ducked through the strands without a nick, then charged through a lilac bush.

  He could hear her clearly. “Daddy!”

  He ran toward the wall, hoping that she’d left him a way through, but bounced off it with his shoulder. He ran around the house, flung open the screen door, and jerked on the handle. It was locked, the fool had locked it!

  He ran around the house to Celeste Marie’s window, which was still open. He tossed the gun inside, then boosted himself up into the windowsi
ll. A grinding noise filled his ears, the squeal of metal.

  A shot.

  “Daddy!” Celeste Marie screamed.

  He finally dragged his legs through the window and landed on the floor. He grabbed his bb gun—for what little good it would do—and rushed through the door.

  The hallway was shattered, leading downward from the south end of the house into darkness.

  “Jerome!” Her voice echoed.

  Jerome slid down the hallway, digging in his heels to control his descent as much as he could. He fell through a hole in the floor to the basement and landed with his bb gun ready. He spun around and saw a group of demons stuffing Celeste Marie into a cloth bag. One demon slung the bag over his shoulder. The others saw Jerome and turned away.

  Jerome charged them, shooting. The first demon he hit brushed at his fur and followed the demon with the sack; the second demon turned around and swung his fist so suddenly that Jerome was dreaming by the time it occurred to him to duck.

  Chapter 18

  The next thing Aloysius noticed was the house. It would have been the first thing he’d noticed if he hadn’t had Jerome to worry about. The front of the house had tipped inward, and the roof had collapsed. The house had pulled away from the foundation at the ends, and the smaller windows were all broken. One of the big front picture windows was still whole, the drapes pulled but dangling at right angles to the ground, away from the wall, and he could peek inside.

  Inside was chaos.

  He tried to open the front door, but it was locked. He punched the door with the heel of his boot, right at the handle, and put his left foot through the door, knocking the handle inside. The door didn’t come open; the fool had bolted the door, too.

  Aloysius giggled at the sight of his pants flapping loose under him and pulled his foot out, his boot neatly sliding off his heel and landing in the house, taking his blood-soaked sock with it. Hopping on his injured right, he reached through the hole in the door until he found the deadbolt and unlocked it.

  “Jim!” he yelled. “Jerome! Celeste Marie! Anybody in here? You all right?”

  Something fell.

  He shoved open the door and recovered his boot, leaving his sock behind.

  The front room, with its wood paneling and brown carpet, tilted toward the center of the house, both back and sideways. The linens, vestments, and bric-a-brac from the church was in a pile in the southeast corner of the house in what looked like had been neatly sorted stacks that had toppled and mingled. Aloysius went around it into the kitchen.

  The refrigerator and hallway were gone, the whole back wall collapsed. Part of the west wall had gone, too, and Aloysius could see into the girl’s room, a plain pink quilt spread over a bed with a window screen on the floor next to it. The thin curtains billowed in the breeze.

  “Jim! Jerome! Anybody!”

  The blood was running down his leg again; it tickled him. He wiped it off with a kitchen towel off the oven handle and thanked God that it had been the fridge that had torn away, not the gas stove.

  Aloysius went back into the main room and opened the door to the basement. The steps were partially blocked with collapsed boards, pipes, and whatnot, but Aloysius slid through without losing too much skin.

  The basement had been finished with tile and drywall but left open in one great room. Careful cupboards lined the walls, tilted askew but their doors still firmly shut.

  The main part of the damage had come from what Aloysius now recognized as the work of one of the silver spheres. It must have hit the ceiling above the hole, pulling the house inward and down as it fell.

  The tunnel below was mostly covered with the debris of the upper floor, but he knew where it should be, and thus could see the dark hole around the gaps in the boards and ceiling tile.

  “Jim Blackthorn! Jerome! Little girl, can you hear me?”

  He circled the hole in the floor, looking for a better view, and saw everything all at once. Jim Blackthorn was on the tile, all torn up. It looked like he’d been shot directly in the chest, and then fallen into the orb feet first. His arms and legs were tangled together with a splintered, wrung-out board.

  Beside him was Jerome’s bb gun. It had been broken in half.

  Aloysius squatted by the hole. “Jerome!”

  He slid down into the rucked-up dirt, which was oddly soft underneath him. The hole came in at an angle, so he had to duck at first. The machine they’d used to dig this tunnel must be smaller than the other one, he thought.

  He followed the tunnel, crouching until the ceiling was high enough to walk almost upright. Dirt shed into his hair, but not as much as he would have thought. Except for the end of the tunnel, the dirt was packed down hard.

  He couldn’t see anything ahead of him, and the mouth of the tunnel was dim behind him. He walked forward for about dozen more feet, then slid as the floor of the tunnel went out from under him. He turned and dropped to his belly, spreading his hands wide.

  How far he slid, he wasn’t sure, but it took him a long time to scuttle back up the slope, keeping his belly down, pushing into the machine’s track ruts with the toes of his boots, and dropping his belly again. His face was in the dirt, one cheek down, to help keep him from sliding.

  Voices called down the tunnel at him, but he couldn’t tell whose they were, the echo was so bad.

  “Shut up!” he yelled, but they didn’t. He slid back a few feet, grunted, and shut up himself.

  He couldn’t shake the feeling that he should slide the rest of the way down the tunnel, that he was missing something. He knew it was wrong. He had no light, no weapons, no rope, and his leg was bleeding pretty bad, down his ankle and into his damned boot. But something was going to happen when he stepped out of that tunnel, and he wasn’t going to be able to take it back.

  A rope landed beside him. A light shone in his face. There was a smack and the light bounced away.

  “Don’t shine it into his face,” Theodore said. “Grab on.”

  “Go down,” Aloysius said. “Jerome’s down there.”

  “You left a trail of blood all through the house. Get you patched up, then I’ll go,” Theodore said.

  “I’ll be fine,” Aloysius said. “Just go.”

  “I’m stubborner than you,” Theodore said. “You come on and grab that rope, now.”

  Aloysius wound the rope around his right arm. “Be gentle,” he said.

  Theodore hauled him out.

  Chapter 19

  When Jerome woke, things were wrong, but not so much more wrong that he didn’t know what to do. More of the house had fallen down, but the tunnel hadn’t been blocked. Mr. Blackthorn was dead in an ugly way, but Jerome was pretty sure he’d been dead before he got knocked out, and that was something, anyway.

  He checked his head. There was no blood, wet or dry, under his fingers, and the skin hadn’t been torn. It was sure sore, though, and he had a headache on the opposite side of his head, from it hitting the floor.

  He checked his backpack: he had it, it hadn’t flown open and scattered everything. Then he crab-walked into the tunnel, sideways and hunched over, with his left hand in front of him to keep himself from hitting his head.

  It was dark in the basement, darker in the tunnel. After a short while, the roof of the tunnel rose up far enough that he could stand. The walls felt packed enough not to crumble. By touch, he knew if he had wanted to light up the tunnel, the walls would have shone a little, like dirt that had been polished smooth. The dirt didn’t smell like dirt after the first few steps; it smelled cold, even colder than it felt. There wasn’t any dust in the air, nothing to make him sneeze.

  He wasn’t surprised by the slope in the tunnel; where else would it go, up? As soon as his left foot started to slide down the slope, he leaned backward and sat on the tunnel floor with his right foot under him.

  He tested the slope with his right until he found the tracks from the machine. He was surprised with how shallow the tracks were, until he thought there must be tr
acks on the top or the sides of the machine to help pull it along and to right it if it turned over.

  He wasn’t going to be able to walk down the slope in the ruts left behind by the tracks, which was a disappointment. He was going to have to slide.

  He didn’t mind getting dirty, but he (after an experience of painting roof shingles with his father last year) knew that sliding down a steep, rough slope for any length would rip a hole in his pants, and then his underpants, and then right through his skin. The dirt down here would probably give him fewer slivers, though.

  On second thought, he went back to the house and found a jelly roll pan upstairs in the kitchen.

  Jerome had to smile as he walked past Mr. Blackthorn. Only an hour ago, he’d have been beaten for what he was going to do now. Not that he’d wanted Mr. Blackthorn dead or anything.

  He scuttled back to the slope, counting steps, then set the pan where the dirt barely started to curl downward. He might have waxed the bottom of the pan, but then again, he wasn’t sure how far he was going to slide. It would be embarrassing to work up a certain amount of speed and have all the wax wear off at once, tossing him out of the pan and skidding down the hill face-first.

  He used his feet and his weight to scoot himself onto the slope. At first, the pan wouldn’t move at all, and he was considering sit-scooting down the slope; then the pan found a drier patch of earth and started to slide.

  The sound was too loud, and he didn’t like it. Every bit of rock that hit the bottom of the pan seemed to let out an accusing ding or screech, chattering along like old people after church. It was so loud he couldn’t tell if there were echoes or not.

  Jerome trailed the heels of his boots just barely into the dirt and fresh-chewed gravel. From time to time, the pan would screech over a larger rock, and he was grateful to have the thin skin of metal between him and the world, but otherwise he was annoyed by it.