by Adam Millard
It was at the top of the mountain they found Ryan Fielding, his black-and-white stripy tee-shirt stained with muck and blood. When Tom saw him, nailed to an upside-down cross like some sort of inverted Jesus, he dropped to his knees as sobs wracked his entire body. Luke had turned away, perhaps afraid that this was one more thing that would return to haunt him in his dreams.
Though Ryan was dead, had been dead for many years judging by the state of decomposition, in this place his soul remained, trapped, lost.
Marcus placed a hand on Tom’s shoulder and Tom climbed to his feet. Gravity was different here; it took a lot of effort for Tom to stand, and even then he felt too heavy, as if he was being pulled down, held to this infernal terrain too firmly. It was as if the land feared they would escape and was doing everything it could to keep them here.
“Foolsss!” came the sibilant cry which had taunted them for most of their lives. Tom turned, saw the black shape rising over the edge of the red mountain. Thick dark shoots danced around the hovering creature like so many snakes. And up and up it went, its blood-red eyes regarding each of them individually as if it were trying to decide which order to finish them off in. “My world,” Ghuul said. “You ssshouldn’t be here!”
Ah, rules, rules, rules, Tom thought. Even ancient Babylonian demons liked things ship-shape and above board, it seemed.
For a moment, Tom forgot that he was voiceless. Where the fuck is Jayden Lebbon? It was only when he spoke and nothing came out that he remembered.
“The boy,” hissed Ghuul, “isss prepared to die for me. Are you?”
So the fucker could hear Tom’s voice, even if they could not. “You can’t have him!” Tom yelled as loudly as he could. “You can’t have anyone!”
Ghuul drifted down to the rocks, trailing its smoky tendrils over them. Its eyes never left Tom. “You ssshould know by now,” it said, “that I am forever. I am forever becaussse they sssummon me. Before the Ice Cream Man there were othersss. Hundredsss of othersss, and there will be more.” Its sudden lunge for Tom caught him off guard. The creature had him by the throat, was lifting him up from the rocks. If it wanted to, Tom thought, it could squeeze and kill me right now.
Then why didn’t it?
Below, Marcus and Luke were silently shouting. Tom looked down and saw them, and he couldn’t help feeling that this was the last time he would ever see them. Wood was not protesting like his friends were; the ex-copper was fumbling about beneath his wheelchair.
“I will exissst for asssss long assss your world does. Perhapsss longer.”
Tom could barely breathe, and yet he could taste Ghuul’s putrid stink. Go to Hell! He thought, and Ghuul must have heard him, for it answered.
“Hell? Hell isss for the cursssed. I am not curssssed, Tom Craven. I merely am.” Then, it glanced down at the three men still with their feet firmly on the ground. One of them—Wood—was calling up to it, was holding something in his hand. Tom couldn’t hear what Wood was saying, but Ghuul certainly could. It began to descend, interested, it seemed, in the object Wood now held aloft.
What the hell are you doing, Wood? Tom thought. It’s going to kill you! It’s going to kill us all!
Then Tom was falling, and from a great height, too. As he impacted the earth, his legs buckled beneath him like strands of uncooked spaghetti. A sharp pain rushed all the way up from the base of his spine to the top of his neck, and he thought, just for a moment, that he would be paralysed, that it was better to die here now, because the thought of spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair, just like Wood, was too much to take.
But he wasn’t paralysed. He was hurt, but he could move, and when he rolled onto his knees, he saw Ghuul standing in front of Wood holding the object Wood had just been waving around.
“Isss thisss sssupposssed to make me sssad?” said Ghuul. “A picture of a child?”
Tom stood. You wily old dog, he thought. Wood had taken the picture from Burke Street, the one featuring an unsmiling Isobel White. How long had he had that on his person? Had that been his plan all along? To present the framed photograph to Ghuul and hope that, deep within it, Frederick White reacted?
“You sssentimental humaaansss,” Ghuul said, staring down at the picture, a little girl frozen in time. “Sssooo predictable with…”
With?
The smoky figure’s tendrils began to writhe, licking at the air like jet-black flames. Something was happening. Tom moved around to where Luke and Marcus stood watching, terror etched across both of their faces.
“Ssssssggghhhh…” Ghuul tried to look away from the picture, but something was pulling it back.
Frederick White?
Wood screamed something toward the frantic creature, and the creature responded with a savage roar, but Wood did not look frightened. Wood looked angry. Wood looked as if he might suddenly get up from the wheelchair which he had lived in for the past few years and punch the demon right in the kisser. Wood screamed again, and now the creature rose up into the air, its talons reaching down to the rocks but not quite making it. There was a rumble off in the distance; this realm’s equivalent of thunder, Tom thought. And then Ghuul howled as a white slice appeared down its front.
A bright light shot out of the creature’s torn abdomen; the slice widened as more and more light spilled out into the realm, and still it held onto the photograph, the object which seemed to be causing it all this pain, suffering, damage.
Tom shielded his eyes, and his friends did the same. At the centre of the light, the shadow-demon, Ghuul, screamed and writhed. Parts of it fell away, dissipated—or eaten by the light?
Then there was an almighty blast, followed by a shockwave strong enough to knock them off their feet. When Tom opened his eyes, he saw, sitting there on the boiling-hot rocks, a man. Just a man. A man sobbing and staring down at the face of his daughter.
Frederick White.
The Ice Cream Man.
“I never wanted this,” he said, running a hand over the now-cracked glass of the picture frame. “It took over. I never wanted any of this.”
He was already aging, visibly changing before them. His eyes bagged, his jowls sagged, and his mouth puckered until it was barely visible. Tom felt something like pity for the man, but it didn’t last.
And neither did Frederick White.
The Ice Cream Man’s bones began to appear through his parchment skin, which yellowed with jaundice as his eyes clouded over with cataracts. No longer able to support his rapidly decreasing form, Frederick White fell back like a marionette whose strings had been cut. His skull cracked, though nothing but dust spilled out. His hair curled, fell out, blew away with the hot wind.
In the distance, another rumble of netherworld thunder.
Frederick White became dust, and then he too was gone, carried off to forever circulate this world. Only the photograph remained.
Tom couldn’t be sure, but Isobel White seemed to be smiling now. Just a little. Perhaps not.
More thunder. Everything was dark again, and that was when the ground beneath their feet began to shake.
The end of this world, Tom thought. And we’re going to be stuck here when it goes.
Tom rushed across to Wood and grabbed onto the wheelchair handles. Marcus and Luke began to clamber down the small mountain, being careful not to slip on the dusty red rocks. Another tremor sent rubble cascading down. Tom traversed the mountain as best he could without getting himself or Wood killed. Ten minutes later, breathless and aching, they reached the base.
Thunder.
A scream.
Tom snapped his head across and saw Jayden Lebbon tied to a tree. No, not tied. The tree was holding him in place with its many arms. Ghuul had brought the child here to the mountain, then left him at its base while it did battle.
Go! Tom shoved the wheelchair over to Marcus, and after a slight pause, Marcus understood what Tom wanted from him. Head for the portal. Don’t look back.
Already running toward his bound nephew, Tom s
truggled to remain on his feet. The ground beneath was crumbling away; the sky above tearing in half. They were running out of time. The realm was going to collapse, whether they were in it or not.
When Jayden Lebbon saw Tom approaching, he frowned, mouthed Uncle Tom? Of course it was strange; not too long ago, the poor kid had been miles away, enjoying Halloween with his mother and Aunty Danielle. And now he was here, in some fucked up place, with his uncle.
Without pause, Tom began to peel the fingers
(talons)
away from Jayden’s shoulders, arms, legs. Every time he managed to unhook one, another latched onto the boy somewhere else. Tom cursed, grabbed onto Jayden’s hands and placed a foot against the base of the flesh-tree. He pushed as hard as he could with his foot and pulled as hard as he could with his hands. Jayden’s mouth fell wide open in a silent scream of pain, but Tom didn’t stop.
He had to get the boy free, or they would die here in the netherworld.
The hand fronds began to snap off. Claws tore for purchase on the boy, but Jayden was moving away from the tree, momentum carrying him forward into Tom’s arms.
No sooner had the final hand broken off than Tom was pulling Jayden away from the tree, leaping over crumbling red rocks and rushing for the starry portal. Overhead, all Hell was breaking loose. The sky was falling in on itself; Tom didn’t know which would come first, the destruction of the earth or the scorching of the sky. He just knew he didn’t want to be there when either happened.
Huge rocks began to roll down the red mountain as it came apart. Tom dragged Jayden away and out of the basin, lest they get trapped there, or worse, crushed to death by boulders which might not exist in a few minutes’ time.
Tom could see the gateway and its myriad dancing stars, and relief washed over him. They were going to make it. They were going to make it.
We’re going to make it.
Six feet from the vortex, with the whole world decomposing behind them, Tom leapt forwards and took Jayden with him.
Pop goes the weasel, Tom thought as a huge hot blast hit him in the back and shot him forwards into the gateway.
TWENTY-SEVEN
October 31st, 2016
Havering, London
"Tom? Tom, are you okay?”
Tom opened his eyes and bolted upright. It took a few moments for him to realise where he was—sitting in the middle of a frosty street and surrounded by people, some he knew, others he didn’t—and it took another moment still before he realised that he was naked from the waist up. “Wha… where’s my coat? My tee-shirt?”
“It was on fire,” Luke said as he helped Tom to his feet. “We had to get it off you. You were going to go up in flames.”
Tom turned around. Over beside the overturned 4x4, Jayden Lebbon was being comforted by Karen Davis. He looked in good shape, considering what he’d just been through. His own jacket had been removed, but at least someone had had the decency to throw a sheet over the boy, who was shivering from the cold, or shock, or both.
There was a deafening squeal which seemed to come from everywhere all at once. Tom spun just in time to see the ice cream truck begin to fold in on itself. Metal twisted, rubber melted, wires fizzed and cut out as the truck slowly self-destructed.
“What’s happening to it?” Marcus said, wheeling Wood forwards so that they were all in a line. Luke, Tom, Marcus, and Wood.
“It’s going,” Tom said. “It doesn’t belong here.”
White orbs drifted up from the concertinaing vehicle, slowly at first and then much quicker. Tom knew what they were, but he waited for Wood to confirm it.
“Souls,” Wood said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling a plume of smoke into the night.
“I’ll be fucking damned,” Marcus said, watching the orbs as they flew into the sky.
Ryan, Rochelle, Cheryl, Harvey, all freed from that Purgatory. Tom had already forgotten what Ryan had looked like in that place. Something about an upside-down cross?
The truck was almost gone by now, no bigger than a football, and still it whittled away to nothing, rattling around on the ground like a child’s tin robot. The whole thing had taken less than a minute. Tom was suddenly aware of the approaching sirens.
“Karen,” Luke said to his wife. “Take the boy inside. Get him something to eat, a glass of water. Introduce him to Lydia.”
Karen looked as if she might protest, but then Tom said, “Please, Karen,” and she sighed, pulled Jayden toward the house. The onlookers, many of them neighbours of Luke’s mother, began to head back to their respective houses. No one was going to believe them, that they had just witnessed the death of an ice cream truck, that four men—one in a wheelchair— and a young boy had come through its doors a moment before it imploded, spat out onto the street like flavourless chewing gum.
“What are we going to tell the police?” Luke said. He sounded tired.
Wood began to wheel himself toward the overturned 4x4. “We tell them we had a bit of an accident,” he said. “It’s frosty as shit out here, and Tom here lost control of the wheel, hit the kerb, and over we went. Coulda happened to anyone.”
It was believable, Tom thought. Far more believable than the truth. “I’ll take one for the team,” he said. “Leave it to me; I’ll talk to the cops.”
No one argued with that.
A young group of Trick or Treaters came dancing along the street, trying to scare one another and laughing maniacally, a result of too much sugar. A witch, a Batman, two vampires and a clown, and when they saw the capsized Range Rover they gasped in horror.
“Are you all okay?” the clown asked. “Had an accident?”
It was a stupid question, but kids will be kids. Tom smiled. Flashing blue lights appeared at the end of the street, drove slowly toward the wreck and the men standing around it.
“We’re fine, kid,” Tom said to the clown. “Happy Halloween.”
“Happy Halloween,” the kids said in unison before skipping away, their treat buckets swinging from their hands.
As the police approached, Marcus said, “This is going to be a long ass night.”
Yeah, Tom thought. Yeah it is.
THE END
1ST July 2016 – 2nd September 2016
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Millard is the author of twenty-two novels, thirteen novellas, and more than two hundred short stories, which can be found in various collections and anthologies. Probably best known for his post-apocalyptic fiction, Adam also writes fantasy/horror for children and Bizarro fiction for several publishers, who enjoy his tales of flesh-eating clown-beetles and rabies-infected derrieres so much that they keep printing them. His "Dead" series has recently been the filling in a Stephen King/Bram Stoker sandwich on Amazon's bestsellers chart. Adam is a regular columnist for UK horror website, This Is Horror.
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