“He wouldn’t want you to give up,” Emily said.
Hurley had managed to push the stone up and out of the hole, and now climbed out himself to return to his work.
“It’s just too much,” he said, retrieving his shovel, getting ready to continue with his grave.
“You didn’t think it would be easy, did you?” she asked in such a cute little voice. She was holding her doll and swaying from side to side.
“No, I guess not,” he said, leaning on his shovel, gazing down into the hole in thought.
It seemed much deeper now, darker.
“He wouldn’t have picked you if he didn’t think you could do it, right?”
Emily’s dolly was gone now, replaced by the squirming lobster. She was hugging the crustacean lovingly, as if it was the best toy in the world.
He was about to ask her whom she was talking about, but he already knew. The darkness within the hole was rising, and now he was looking down into a pool of solid black.
There were sounds coming from the pool, mournful screams and pathetic cries. He imagined that they were crying for him.
Calling to him.
“They need you,” Emily said, setting the lobster on the ground. “He needs you.”
The darkness climbed higher, rising up over the rim of the hole he’d dug. The lobster crawled into the ebony waters and disappeared without a ripple.
“I’m a failure,” he finally admitted. “I tried to save them already, but . . .”
“You can’t give up,” his daughter said with a shake of her head that made her pigtails wiggle like animal ears.
“I know, but . . .”
The cries were louder now, their urgency prodding him toward action.
“And besides,” the gorgeous little girl said with a twinkle in her lovely brown eyes, “how are you going to find Mommy and me again if you give up?”
She turned away, but he did not want her to go.
“Emily,” he called out, reaching for the child across the ebony blackness that had seeped up from the ground where he’d been digging.
The cries and howls were frantic. He stepped into the darkness, wading across the pool toward the retreating Emily.
Hurley had made it halfway across when he felt the tremendous pull from underneath. Within seconds, the darkness was beneath his chin. As he struggled to remain aloft, he saw Emily turn back to him, her small hand raised in a goodbye wave.
And then he was sucked down into the void, darkness made fluid rushing to fill his lungs as the cries of the helpless deafened his ears.
—
Hurley awoke with a groan and a cough, still believing himself held in the grip of the pool, choking on the darkness. But as the fog of unconsciousness began to clear from his mind, he saw that it was not darkness that held him, but leather restraints. Bound—his wrists and ankles were bound to some sort of hard wooden surface . . . a table.
The screams and cries were still around him and he lifted his head to see where he was. Hurley’s heart skipped a beat as he saw that he wasn’t alone, but part of multiple rows of men and women all restrained atop crude wooden tables.
His head dropped back to the table as his eyes took in his environment. It seemed that they were in some sort of factory, an abandoned brewery perhaps.
Hurley strained his neck again to see the guards posted around the room and in front of the exits. These sentries looked as though they were in the process of being transformed into those monstrous things, but hadn’t yet been turned all the way.
A sound that made his blood nearly freeze in his veins erupted from somewhere behind him, and he tried to crane his neck to see what could have made it.
There were multiple sounds from somewhere in the cavernous room, and an odor very much like that from the lion cages that he’d once smelled at a circus when he was a kid. Whatever was back there, there was no doubt in his mind that it was dangerous.
The screaming in the chamber had become even louder, the yells of terror and protest moving down the various tables.
The muscles in his neck trembled as Hurley lifted his head once more to see what the ruckus was about.
The devil was in the room with them. The evil beast was wearing a suit that really didn’t seem to fit his large, twisted body, and he was pushing a cart. As he made his way closer to the men and women strapped upon the tables, they all began to scream, their childhood terrors suddenly coming to life.
He could remember the pastor at his church telling him that the devil was going to come for him when he was bad, taking the Lord’s name in vain, or not doing his homework. Hurley figured the room he was in must have been filled with sinners—all those who hadn’t done what they were supposed to—and the devil had come for them all.
The devil had stopped his squeaking cart at the first table at the far end of the room.
Hurley’s neck muscles screamed for him to lower his head back down to the table, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the awful sight unfolding before him.
The creature plucked an empty hypodermic and a glass tube of something blood-red from the cart and proceeded to fill the needle with the precision of a doctor. Who knew that the master of hell had such skills?
The devil lurched closer to the squirming man, his horrific countenance looming. And the devil smiled, showing off rows of yellowed razor teeth as he let the man see the needle, giving him a good long look, before he brought it down to the taut flesh of the man’s neck and plunged it in.
Hurley suspected what the injected substance would do, having seen the results back at the Lobster’s lair as well as in the park. He wanted to cry out, to add his own screams of protest to all the others, but, ashamedly, he was too afraid of drawing attention to himself.
He did not want the devil to notice him.
The man on the table began to convulse, his head bouncing off the heavy wood. Thick sprays of foam erupted from his screaming mouth as Hurley watched the transformation take hold. It sounded as though the man’s bones were breaking. As he thrashed, his skin bubbled, sloughing off to reveal something dark and reptilian beneath.
The devil barely gave the man a second glance, already filling the needle with another shot of the dark fluid as he moved to the next victim in the row.
“Stop your nonsense,” the devil yelled at the next man, who had begun to struggle against his bonds, praying aloud for the Lord God to deliver him from this horror.
That just seemed to amuse the monstrous figure as he readied the injection.
“The Lord God has abandoned you, leaving only me to hear your pleas.” He jabbed the needle into the man’s neck and pressed down upon the plunger. “And like the kind and loving god that I am, I have answered your prayers instead.”
The devil started to laugh, then, a horrible sound that echoed about the cavernous chamber, mingling with the cries of the fearful.
“You are all my children,” he announced, spreading his arms in a beatific gesture of welcome. “And we will be as one.”
The two men who had been injected were completely transformed now, very little of their humanity remaining.
Going back to work, the devil continued to fill the hypodermic and administer his hellish sacrament, moving with speed and efficiency, turning one frightened victim after another into slavering beasts.
And he was getting closer. It would be only moments before Hurley would feel the prick of the needle, and he would let go of everything that he had worked so desperately to hold on to.
There was a woman strapped to the table on his left who had been unconscious up until now. She came around slowly, the terror of their situation sinking in.
She looked over at Hurley, panic in her hollowed eyes.
“Please,” she begged. “Please . . . you have to do something.”
The devil was shuffling closer now, and all he could do was look away as she started to beg for mercy, which she did not receive.
As the needle entered her neck, a mournful wail e
scaped her lips, as if her very soul was being torn from her body. She looked to Hurley again as she started to transform.
He wanted to tell her something . . . anything to make it better, but all he could do was stare as she gradually ceased to exist, replaced by a slavering monster that wanted nothing more than to be free of its restraints, free for murder and mayhem.
And then it was Hurley’s turn.
The devil loomed over him, and he was transfixed by the horrific sight. He could see how this person, whoever he was, had been human at one time, but that humanity had been stripped away, replaced by the horned horror that now filled a hypodermic above him.
“I’ll fight it,” he said through clenched teeth, as the demon prepared to administer the shot. “I’ll fight it with all that I have.”
The devil snickered.
“And you’ll lose,” he said.
But the devil was suddenly distracted by sounds that echoed within the chamber. The hypodermic, so dangerously close, was quickly withdrawn.
For a brief moment, Hurley imagined that he had been saved. Inside his mind he saw the Lobster and his men, guns blazing, flooding into the monster factory, dispatching evil with cold, ruthless efficiency. The devil and his disciples did not stand a chance against them.
But those hopes were dashed to the ground as he craned his neck to see the figures emerging into the chamber.
Rocco Fazzina had been transformed, his countenance more bestial, but there was no mistaking his face, or the identity of the limp and unconscious figure that he dragged along behind him and then dropped to the floor.
“A present . . . for you, Master Chapel,” the monstrous Fazzina announced.
A gift to the devil, in the form of a bloodied and beaten Lobster Johnson.
CHAPTER TWELVE
—
As Chapel had stabbed him with the needle, filling him with the stuff that would transform him into . . . into what he had become, Fazzina had been terrified like never before.
But now, after the change, he couldn’t imagine why he had been so afraid.
He could feel the others in the room, others like him. He could sense their thoughts . . . see all the horrible things they wanted to do once their master unleashed them on the city.
All the horrible, horrible things. And it made him want to laugh.
Once, Fazzina had wanted to be king. Now, he was happy simply to be part of a much greater power.
He watched as his master approached, blessed needle in hand.
“He came . . . just as expected,” Fazzina growled.
“And you did not damage him too severely?” Chapel asked.
It had taken all of what little self-control Fazzina had left not to feast upon the flesh of Lobster Johnson, but he knew his master’s wishes, and had not wanted to incur his wrath.
“No.” Fazzina shook his head. “No . . . still alive.”
“Excellent,” the master hissed. He gestured toward the Lobster with one clawed hand. “Pick him up.”
Fazzina grunted once, and one of the others promptly stepped forward. Together, they hauled the captive to his feet, holding him tightly between them.
“This is the one who has caused such trouble?” the master asked, reaching out to grab the Lobster’s chin, lifting his face. “It doesn’t seem possible when you see him like this. So frail . . . so alone.”
Chapel raised the needle toward the Lobster, and Fazzina could not take his eyes from it. He remembered his fear, and then the euphoria as the blood of transformation had flowed into his veins, making him better than he’d ever been before.
“Change . . . him,” he growled excitedly, watching the needle as it started to descend toward the Lobster’s exposed throat, just above his collar.
“No longer will he be alone,” the master spoke. “No longer will he be our enemy. He will be one with us, and he will revel in our approaching glory.”
Just as the tip of the needle was about to prick the unprotected flesh of the crime fighter’s throat, the Lobster snorted. Fazzina could feel the prisoner’s body tense in their grip.
“Awake,” Fazzina growled, tightening his hold on the Lobster’s arm.
The Lobster raised his head, looking up into the face of their lord and master.
“Chapel,” the vigilante hissed.
“Once,” Chapel said with a smile, as the fine needle tip touched flesh, about to break the skin. “But not anymore.”
Then, just as the plunger was to be depressed, sending the substance of change down the thin, hollow tube and into the crime fighter’s blood—gunfire erupted within the room.
And all hell broke loose.
—
Red O’Neill really had no idea what he was going to find once he entered the old stone armory. But he certainly hadn’t expected this.
There had been rumors that Fazzina had bought the building for a song not too long ago, and was planning to transform it into a brewery. However, this was the farthest thing from a brewery that O’Neill could imagine.
Spread out before him were tables—row upon row of wooden tables with people strapped to them. And the monsters—the room was filled with the filthy beasts.
There was one in particular, the boss—of that Red was certain—the way he carried himself, the yellowed horns protruding from the front of his skull. It was like Satan himself had set up shop, a factory to make his monsters.
Red stood unnoticed with his men in the doorway, seeing with unbelieving eyes. He could feel the terror creeping up on him again, that same nearly overpowering fear that had sent him screaming into the night and practically over the edge of sanity. He squeezed the handle of his ax, finding courage in the smooth, polished wood. A big part of him wanted to run again, to get as far away from this madness as he could, but he knew that wasn’t the answer.
He knew that no matter where he went, the terror would always find him.
No, he had to face this fear, to kill it with bullets, and hack it to pieces with his ax.
O’Neill glanced over his shoulder at his men. They were slowly backing away, the fear generated by what they were witnessing turning brave men into cowards.
He knew exactly how they felt, and what he had to do.
Red O’Neill would lead by example.
He charged into the chamber, swung his axe, and buried its blade in the skull of the nearest monster. Blood like tar spattered the front of his clothes and his face as he pulled the ax out and turned toward his men.
“Plug ’em,” he ordered. “Kill ’em all!”
And, almost as one, his men moved forward, firing their weapons at anything that moved.
—
The unexpected eruption of violence provided the Lobster with the opportunity he’d hoped for.
He lifted a leg and kicked at the horned abomination that loomed before him, hypodermic in hand. Then he yanked his arm away from the thing that had once been Rocco Fazzina, driving a solid elbow into that twisted face.
It was chaos, utter confusion, and the Lobster reveled in it, maneuvering the landscape of madness with the utmost efficiency. The other beast that had held him aloft roared its disapproval, ready to strike at him, only to be cut down by a burst of machine-gun fire from the invaders in the doorway.
The Lobster wasted no time. He darted toward the wailing prisoners, beneath the hail of gunfire.
Another of the monsters emerged from the chaos, smaller in stature, but no less fierce. It shrieked at him, baring jagged teeth as it attacked, its claws tearing at his jacket. The Lobster fell back, crashing into a table of scientific instruments, hearing the clatter of glassware above the sounds of screams, gunfire, and the snarls of his attacker.
The Lobster blindly reached out, grabbing hold of the first object his hand fell upon. It was a beaker. He smashed it on the corner of the table, bringing the sharp end up and slashing at the child thing’s face, driving it back.
He sensed the presence behind him and whirled. The horned beast—the mast
er—stood there in all his horrid glory.
“You did this,” he snarled through yellowed teeth. And with amazing speed and strength, he reached out, snatching up the Lobster and hurling him down on top of the lab table.
Glass shattered. There was a flash of fire as one chemical mixed with another, and then billowing smoke. The Lobster rolled from the table onto the floor, using the growing gray clouds as cover. Clawed hands reached through the smoke, grabbing him by the front of his jacket and dragging him toward the monster.
“I’ve waited too long for this. You won’t spoil my plans again,” the monster growled, slapping the Lobster across the face with the back of a bony hand.
It was like being hit with a shovel. The Lobster’s head snapped loosely to one side and the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth.
“Killing you would be far too quick, and where’s the fun in that?” the master mused with a demented chuckle. Then he brought one wrist up to his mouth and took a large bite from his leathery flesh, allowing his blood to flow.
“And seeing as I’ve lost my hypodermic, we’ll be doing this the old-fashioned way,” the horned beast said, wearing a smile smeared with his own blood.
He pulled the Lobster close. “Drink,” he snarled, shoving the seeping wound toward the Lobster’s mouth.
The Lobster seemed stunned, his arms dangling limply at his sides.
Allowing the knife to drop into his hand from within his sleeve.
“No, thanks,” the Lobster spat.
He moved like lightning, jamming the short knife blade into the monster’s eye.
“I don’t drink.”
With a howl, the horned devil thrust him away, falling backward to the floor.
The Lobster rose and stood over the still body of the devil man.
“Welcome back to hell,” he said with a snarl.
—
The screams and gunfire had died down, but the air was now filled with thick, choking fumes.
Hurley strained against his bonds, struggling with the notion of calling for help or remaining silent so as not to attract the wrong kind of attention.
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