by C. J. Sears
If there was a piece missing from this puzzle, Finch strived to think of what data he might have overlooked. He didn’t understand what the symbol was about, but that had long fled from his mind as a major component to this case. He was unsure of the exact growth rate of the parasite or its purpose in the ritual, but that seemed secondary to the intent behind the murder. All that lingered was the culprit himself. Maybe a confession.
The sheriff coughed to get their attention. She was on the opposite side of the room, peering at the wall. Finch and Mason crossed over to her, careful to avoid the fetid animal corpses. Her hand traced the rocks set into the wall.
“Looking for a hidden switch?” asked Mason, bemused.
Donahue shook her head, moved aside to let them through. Finch saw what she was looking at: words scrawled in chalk on the stone. The print was almost microscopic as if the author was afraid someone was watching. Finch read them to himself. They were the words of a confused individual. Can’t go back. Why won’t it work? Please stop. I’m sorry.
“Sounds like a raving lunatic to me,” said Mason with a shrug. Why would a cult leader write this?
Their radios hissed. It was Officer Plinkett. “Sheriff? Agent Finch? I hope you can hear me.”
“Loud and clear,” answered Finch, “what’s the update?”
He could hear the excitement in the officer’s voice. “I have been rooting around the car like you asked. I found the vehicle registration, but I think it was under a false name. Same with the license plate. I thought it was a lost cause, but then you sent Wilkins back here and we looked through the notes. They mentioned a woman, his daughter I think. Anyway, I matched the name in the notes to our database. You won’t believe this, our man’s a detective. His name is−”
“James Black,” a gruff-sounding man finished for him. Finch and the others raised their guns, aimed it in the direction of the voice. It was coming from the stairwell.
Black sat on the bottom step, hands clasped together like he was praying. Leaning forward, his thin gray hair drooped like spaghetti noodles around his head, masking his face. He wore a black overcoat with torn pockets. Underneath, his pants had shrunk up to his shins, exposing legs so skinny that he resembled a skeleton masquerading as a living being. He was unarmed, but Finch had no doubt that this was their un-sub.
“Stay right where you are,” said the sheriff, closing in. He didn’t budge. She continued on, Finch and Mason poised to act if something happened.
He saw Black’s gimped leg twitch.
The sheriff was practically on top of him. Finch’s heart raced.
Black sprang up, grabbed hold of her weapon arm. Mason fired and missed. Finch knocked the gun from his hand. “You could have hit her,” he shouted.
Donahue wrestled with Black. She shoved her gun into his throat. He buckled backward, landing with a crack on the steps. He righted himself with renewed vigor, kicked the sheriff in the gut. She stumbled back into her brother’s arms.
Finch kept the Browning trained on Black. He had the sheriff’s gun, fixated it on her and Mason. He looked over at Finch. The federal agent saw Black’s face for the first time. Eyes stripped of their color stared into his brown pupils. His lips were cracked as if the man had been stranded in the desert, unable to quench his thirst. Scars and wrinkles carved his forehead into a hodgepodge of contorted flesh. He could see that this man must have been in immeasurable pain.
He spoke for the second time. Rhinehold was right. He did sound like a noir detective. “You’re not leaving this room until you kill me,” he said. He glanced at Donahue and Mason. “And if you try to reach your gun, you die too.”
This wasn’t Black negotiating. This was a demand. Finch nodded to show that he understood, urged Donahue and Mason to do the same. “Okay, you want to die, we get that. Before that happens, I need to know what the point of all this was.”
Black maintained his focus on the sheriff and the deputy. “I’ll give you answers. You won’t like them, but in the end you’re going to kill me. You must.”
Finch cleared his throat. “All right,” he said, “let’s get this way out of the first. Are you a member of the Church of Divine Promise? Or its leader?”
The haggard man laughed. “No. I am not.”
That wasn’t the answer Finch expected. “You’re being truthful when you tell me this? What about the symbol at the house where Harley’s body was found?”
Black assured him he wasn’t lying. “The cult is dead. Or dying. Their hands have not been soiled by this mess. You took the trials, I made sure of that. You should’ve learned all you needed to know about this godforsaken place.” He squirmed, some pain in his body forcing him to hunch forward.
“You’re the one who killed Susan? You left the puzzles behind, the riddles, the insane contraptions.” Somehow, that made sense, but it was no perfect fit, not a square peg in a square hole but a shaved peg, perhaps.
“I didn’t make those trials. I led you down the path of sight. I came here, just like you, on a case. I’ve regretted it ever since.”
“Why lead me on, why not just tell me where to find you from the start if you wanted me to catch you?”
The man’s face grew grim. “It won’t let me.”
The proverbial light bulb switched on in Finch’s brain. “It? The parasite? Are you telling me that you’re infected with it and that it talks to you?” It seemed asinine, like something out of a video game.
“You don’t get it. This thing, it feeds on you, preys on your weaknesses, enhances your strengths. It develops a symbiotic relationship with its host, pumping them full of chemicals to keep them going. It brainwashes you without even touching your mind, convinces you that you need it as much as it needs you to survive by doping you. The only way to suppress it is with other drugs.” He pointed to the case Finch had dropped to the ground in the commotion. “I wouldn’t be able to talk to you now if I hadn’t taken it.”
Strands of thought connected in Finch’s mind like a network of information. “That’s why you want me to kill you: it won’t let you kill yourself.” The thought that a man couldn’t take his own life as an option to rid himself of a monstrous creature like that frightened him beyond reason.
“This thing,” Black said, “is all about self-preservation. It consumes and consumes, pumping its waste into your body like a perpetual motion machine. But sometimes, it takes too much, and has to look elsewhere for nutrients.” He gestured to the animal carcasses. “It gets its fill and comes back stronger. It grows in your body, draining you until you have nothing left. You become a husk.”
Another realization clicked within Finch. “Those parasites in the mine, they had left their host’s bodies? That’s what’s going to happen if we don’t kill you, isn’t it? It’s going to escape and propagate more of its kind.” He paused and then asked, “But what about the spores? If the parasite incubates first as a spore, how long does it take to mature? The one inside Harley wasn’t as large as the creatures inside the mine, but the coroner said that she would’ve been dead in days.”
Black snapped his fingers when he saw Mason eyeing his gun again. “Keep your eyes on me if you don’t want to die. The parasite is still inside me, no matter how sober I may sound. It’s a dull itch that spreads as the seconds die. It’s the reason I have this gun on you; it fights to live, even now, knowing what I want you to do.” Sweat drenched his brow. Finch wondered how that affected the battle raging between Black’s will and the parasite’s demand.
“As for how long it takes for these things to shift from spore form to their more colorful appearance; it depends on the person, but anywhere between four days to three months. It has to be inhaled for it to progress as fast as it did for her. Ingesting them in the form of a liquid makes the process take much longer. But your doctor was wrong; Harley would’ve lived if I hadn’t ended her suffering.”
Finch thanked God that he had the foresight to cover his mouth in the mine. “So you shot her up with drugs to su
bdue her parasite. Then you burned her, hoping the thing inside would die. A purge, if ever there was one. You hoped that her soul might rise from the ashes. But why copy the MO of the cult? Why get all the details perfect except for their call sign?”
“I needed you here,” he said, “to question the truth. You took the trials. You know the answer.” He was repeating himself now. “If anyone had any chance of solving this and ridding me of this awful creature, it was you. The parasite magnifies my desires and twists it to its own ends, sings to me in ways that you should never hear. But you persisted and here we stand.”
Finch breathed deep. Not even the stench of the animal carcasses could overwhelm his thoughts in that moment. If what Black had told him was true, then the implications behind everything that had happened since he left Washington were far worse than he’d feared.
The door at the top of the stairs crashed open. Officers Plinkett and Wilkins bounded down, guns at the ready. Black swung around to face them. Mason lunged for his gun. Donahue leapt to grab him.
Finch fired four times in quick succession. The rounds pelted into Black’s spine, propelling him head-first into the stairwell. His shriveled body twitched, then relaxed. A disgusting odor, like burnt rubber merged with skunk, wafted from the body and mingled with the dying air. It must have been the parasite, its machinations finished at last.
The sheriff radioed for an ambulance as the last bonds of life left the body of Detective James Black.
* * *
A wistful breeze accompanied the dirge performed at Jane Harley’s funeral the following day. Her parents had chosen a closed casket rather than an urn, believing the fire would be an insult to her memory in the wake of how she died. Patrick Rhinehold and his choir launched into a volley of chords that brought tears to the eyes of the community. Finch buried himself deep inside.
The burden of her murder had been lifted from his shoulders yet he felt as if discovering her killer hadn’t been the closure he needed. Black’s death raised more questions and presented more problems than he’d been prepared to solve. After his death, the coroner took the body. The parasite, blown to bits by Finch’s gun, was dead. To make matters worse, Susan Edwick’s autopsy showed that she’d ingested laced moonshine. Countless others in Lone Oak were infected with no means of tracking how widespread the scourge might be.
The quarry would be collapsed in a matter of days to prevent further exploitation of the mine. The fossils were to be shipped off in multi-layered containers to labs around the United States. With time, they might understand the precise life cycle of the organism.
His supervisor contacted him earlier that morning. He said that they needed him back to catch a pervert raping and mutilating women along the eastern seaboard. Arguments were exchanged. Finch told them he was taking furlough and there was nothing they could say to change his mind. He had enough of death these past three days.
The pastor said his prayer, reminded guests that there would be a reception after the funeral to honor Harley’s memory should anyone need comfort. For the first time in two days, he’d changed into clean clothes: a wool-laced, black denim jacket over a blue collared shirt and a pair of slate-gray dress pants. In spite of the proceedings, he kept the Desert Eagle holstered at his side.
Beside Finch, wearing a black mourning dress, Sheriff Donahue watched the casket sink into the ground. Her eyes were solemn. The toll this case had taken on her was clear.
The service ended. Finch and Donahue whispered their condolences to Harley’s family. They wept, but thanked them for everything they had done. The sheriff told them if they ever needed anything, or just wanted to talk, they could give her a call. Afterward, the two of them started toward the parking lot where Mason met up with them.
“Going to be some time before this town gets over what happened,” said Finch as he and Donahue joined her brother at the car.
“If they even can,” countered Mason. He gazed out at the dozens of townsfolk that gathered around the burial site, uttering hushed whispers. “For many of us, it’s like losing family.”
The sheriff broke her unusual silence. “For them,” she said, pointing at Jane’s mother and father, “that’s exactly what it was.”
They watched as the mother of the deceased stumbled and fell to the ground clutching used tissues in her hand. The husband stood motionless, petrified by shock. Finch took a few steps forward to help her. The sheriff held him back, shook her head. Finch looked back at the couple, saw friends of the family rush to pull her to her feet. The admiration he felt for the communal ties of this small town grew in that moment and he couldn’t hide the smallest twinge of a smile.
It was the sort of thing he missed by spending all his waking and working hours in big cities. Tracking down subhuman scum for an agency that never seemed to appreciate his need to keep a healthy state of mind had worn out its welcome.
What he wouldn’t give to be able to settle down in a place like this, free from the drudgery of day-to-day traffic and the numbness of death and decay within and without the concrete jungle. Come to think of it, he could extend his furlough indefinitely, turn in his badge, maybe buy a cabin somewhere on the outskirts of Lone Oak. He could spend his days fishing, had always wanted to fish, meant to make it up to his father for never taking the time to appreciate it. He wouldn’t fly fish; that seemed a little out there and not as fun as reeling in a catch, but given−
“What the hell is going on?”
Mason’s outburst caught Finch’s attention. He was pointing at something in the distance. Donahue reflexively drew her sidearm, aimed in that direction. Finch’s eyes traced their arms, panned over to the cause of their worry. A ring of shadows hovered over an indistinct figure. Was he seeing things? Was this an illusion brought on by the stress of the past few days?
He blinked. No, the shapes were still there, amassed around the one on the ground. Long arms, impossible arms stretched toward the sun, then came down upon the figure lying helpless. No, not impossible, not only arms, but hands clutching knives, tire irons, blunt instruments of all kinds. Beating the figure, no, the person, on the ground until their movement ceased. There was this unfathomable sound, like the grating of nails on a chalkboard mixed with the wail of a cougar having its flesh stripped from its bone. But it was something more than that, lower-pitched yet loud and somehow felt as if it were burrowing into his skin.
Then he watched as sharp black tendrils erupted from the backs of the murderers, the men and women who moments ago had helped right a mother fallen in grief. Finch understood a cosmic terror worse than he’d ever known.
As the horde turned to face them, he drew his gun and fired.
THE DAMNED
Round after round struck the cluster of crazed individuals in front of him, taking some in the abdomen, others in the chest, but none of them went down. They continued toward them, weapons poised to strike, overcome with a rage that glazed over their eyes. Finch felt the anger and hate radiating from their bodies, like a nuclear heat that threatened to overwhelm and disintegrate him.
He took cover behind the police car as one of the murderous townsfolk threw a pocket knife, missing his head by inches. The knife embedded itself in the tire of a nearby pickup truck. This was bad. For one of them to throw a small knife that far at that speed with enough force to puncture a tire that thick, it had to be more than human.
He’d seen, or at least thought he had, the gross, monstrous thing squirming out of the backs of his attackers, but he hadn’t had time to process what that meant. Still didn’t, but he knew that these people were like Black: infected, superhuman, wrong, and out for blood. And he wouldn’t have enough ammo for all of them, not nearly enough.
“This can’t be happening!” Mason shouted, back against the other side of the car. “We killed the man behind all this. There’s just no way.” He leaned over the hood, fired off a few rounds from his Beretta which took a heavyset man in the knee, knocking him to the ground.
“It is
happening,” said the sheriff, crouched beside Finch, watching in amazement as the crippled man continued to crawl forward. Weapons in hand, his comrades stomped past him as if in a trance. “And we need to get out of here.”
Finch rattled the handle of the passenger side door. Locked. “They seem slow enough that if we got in the car, we might find some place to hole up and figure out what to do,” he said. He looked at the crowd. They were closing in on their position, but their pace, a determined march, remained the same.
Donahue glanced back at him, saw he couldn’t get in. “Rick, get the door open. Llewyn and I’ll distract them.” Mason threw his Beretta her way. She caught it and shot three rounds into the group, blasting apart one woman’s shoulder. At this distance, Finch saw better than ever the parasite protruding from their backs like a sickening babe strapped to its mother.
Mason nodded, fumbled in his pockets for the key as Finch and his sister retreated from the car. They headed in the opposite direction, toward the cemetery and away from his Jeep at the farthest end of the parking lot. Eyes engulfed in frenzy followed as did the sound of their footsteps. Mason found the key, drove it home, and jumped into the car.
“Pull around to the front gate, we’ll meet you there,” yelled Finch, blind-firing at the burgeoning mass that threatened to consume them if they stopped for too long. Another of their number stumbled as rounds tore through his left leg, but the man kept coming, his rigid movements in tune with the tempest swelling around him. Finch knew that this was a storm that couldn’t be weathered.
He heard the roar of the engine as Mason drove off and headed down the twisted path of pavement toward the front gate, past the bulk of the cemetery. The crowd remained single-minded, all of their malice directed at the sheriff and himself. She stopped for a moment, kicked off her heels. Running barefoot wasn’t ideal, but both she and Finch knew the other option would get her killed.