Primal Fear

by Boucher, Brad

  Above them, he saw the great beast turn, its towering form pivoting in their direction. It swept towards the earth, a huge plume of snow and dirt rising into the air in front of the house.

  Harry felt the ground shiver beneath them, the wave of billowing snow hitting them broadside like a runaway truck. The Jeep’s front end came up, the steering wheel ripped out of his grasp. They were going over and there was nothing he could do about it.

  For a moment there was no sense to the world, no difference between up and down or left and right. He felt his body flipping end over end, mercifully thrown clear of the tumbling Jeep, but then he came down hard into the fallen snow. The frozen earth knocked the wind out of him, left him gasping for breath as his body finally came to rest some thirty feet from the house. He raised his head carefully, trying to hold onto his senses, his eyes scanning the yard.

  There was no sign of the demon. He half expected it to swoop down and finish him off, aware that he was defenseless now, that he couldn’t possibly withstand another attack. But apparently it had something else in mind, some other task that couldn’t wait.

  Another crashing sound from the house drew his attention and he saw that the beast had gone back there. It had only wanted to slow them down; now, its attention was centered once again on getting the P’oh Tarhei from within the house.

  Harry climbed to his feet, his body aching in every muscle, stiff in every joint. He turned to peer at the wreckage of Charlie’s Jeep. It lay smoking on its side, one wheel missing, another twisted almost completely off of its axle, the passenger compartment torn open to expose the empty interior. He couldn’t see John or Charlie, couldn’t see their gear. He felt alone, helpless, as if everything had been snatched away from him by the demon’s final relentless attack.

  Something moved in the corner of his eye, over to his right. He turned toward it, staring into the harsh wind. It came again, at the foot of the house, a movement beneath the cover of the snow, weak at first but noticeable nonetheless.

  The bulkhead door.

  It shuddered for a moment on the brink of opening but then fell quickly closed again, the weight of the snow above it too much to bear from inside.

  “Laurie,” Harry whispered, his heart thundering in his chest. He raced toward the door, the pain in his limbs forgotten, the fog lifting from his thoughts. He turned his eyes upward as he ran, searching for the beast. It was still there, looming over the house, its limbs formed by the spiraling snow, hammering ferociously at the roof’s crumbling framework.

  He reached the bulkhead, digging furiously in the snow until he found the handle. From behind it he heard Laurie’s voice, her cries for help, and he knew at that moment that he would rather die himself than fail her now. He couldn’t bear to hear the sound of terror in her voice, not for another moment, not while he still had an ounce of strength left in his body.

  He heaved on the handle, kicking the snow off of the door. It opened with a rusty creak of metal, his shoulders burning with the effort.

  And then Laurie was scrambling up the cellar steps, falling into his arms and sobbing his name, over and over again. In her hand she clutched the P’oh Tarhei. She’d risked her life to ensure its safety. Now, if they could, they had to find some way to use it against their attacker.

  Harry turned away from the house, pulling Laurie with him through the snow.

  John had come to his feet somewhere beyond the wreckage of the Jeep. He limped towards them, his fingers curled around the duffel bag. Harry couldn’t imagine what tricks he had left within its zippered pockets, but whatever they were, he hoped the young man was prepared to use them now.

  “Where’s Charlie?” Harry called. “Have you seen him?”

  John pointed past the Jeep, where Charlie was rising slowly to his feet.

  “Thank God.” Harry motioned towards Laurie. “She got it,” he shouted. “Laurie has the P’oh Tarhei.”

  John nodded, one hand clasped to his side, his body hunched over painfully.

  “You okay?” Harry asked, reaching John’s side.

  “I don’t think so. I think I might have broken a rib, maybe worse.” His voice was forced, his breathing ragged.

  “Can you keep moving? We have to get the hell out of here.”

  “No,” John muttered. “First we have to destroy the P’oh Tarhei. It’s our only chance. If the demon gets hold of it . . .”

  Harry shook his head and snatched the artifact from Laurie’s grasp while she held it out for John to claim. “We can’t. We can’t destroy it, not yet.”

  “Harry, it’s the last piece of the tupilaq. Wyh-heah Qui Waq can still regain its form if it possesses the P’oh Tarhei. We can’t let that happen.”

  “Listen to me. If we destroy this, the demon will still go free. You told me so yourself.”

  “But we might be able to stop it.”

  “Might?”

  “That’s right. There’s something we can try. It might not be too late. But I can’t be sure.”

  “Then let’s give it what it wants.”

  John stepped forward, making a grab for the artifact. Harry moved away, aware that they couldn’t stand here and argue forever. He could see Charlie trudging towards them through the snow, staring wide-eyed at the spectacle of the writhing demon. He could imagine Charlie’s worst fear as he crossed the yard, could confirm it with his own suspicions.

  At any moment, the demon would sense that the P’oh Tarhei was no longer in the house. When that happened, they wouldn’t have a prayer. On the other hand, if they acted quickly, and if his suspicions were correct, they just might get out of this alive.

  “John, you have to trust me. I know what I’m doing. If everything you’ve told me so far is true, then this should work.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “If it doesn’t, it won’t matter. None of us will be around to regret it.”

  Harry moved as quickly as he could, hoping to put his plan into motion before the demon broke off its attack on the house, before the storm and the cold could weaken their resolve. He was already on the brink of exhaustion, just as he knew John must be. If some headway wasn’t made soon, he didn’t think either of them would have the strength to carry on.

  Together, he and Charlie helped John through the yard, putting a bit of distance between themselves and the house. They sat him down beneath one of the maple trees that formed the border between his lawn and Marty Slater’s and Harry laid his plan out as quickly as he could. By the time he’d finished, John was already shaking his head. “You’re insane,” he said. “It’ll never work.”

  “It has to.” Harry crouched beside him, placing the zippered bag in John’s lap. “Whatever you’re going to need, you’d better get it ready now. We won’t have much time.” He turned to Charlie. “You in?”

  Charlie shrugged, his features pinched with doubt. “Whatever you say, Chief.”

  Harry looked at Laurie, trying to smile, to give her some sense of encouragement. “Ready?”

  “If you are.”

  He winked at her, slapping John on the shoulder as he started off towards Slater’s back door. “Be ready to move when I get back.”

  “You got it,” John said doubtfully, already rummaging through the bag.

  Harry didn’t waste any time at the door to Slater’s house. Shielding his face, he drove one gloved fist through the glass and reached in to flip back the lock. With Laurie and Charlie close behind him, he stepped into the house and headed immediately toward the cellar.

  The stairs creaked beneath their combined weight, but Harry pressed on into the dimly lit cellar. He followed the foundation wall to the tiny opening that led to the underground shelter. Laurie peered uneasily at the thousands of pictures that covered the walls, taken aback by Slater’s apparent obsessions, her face ashen.

  Crossing the cramped room in two long strides, Harry squatted beside the work bench against the far wall. The cardboard boxes containing the clothes of the missing children h
ad been taken away as evidence, but the others were still there, just where Charlie had found them. He peered inside, his own doubts rising within him now. The explosives were clearly very old, their edges dried and crumbling, their casings faded and covered with dust.

  For the first time, the very real possibility of failure occurred to him. If the explosives didn’t work, if the blasting caps no longer fired, then all would be lost. It would be too late to try anything else.

  Gripping one of the boxes, he tugged it out from under the bench and into the middle of the floor. “They’re all pretty heavy,” he told Laurie. “If you can’t lift it, pull out as much as you think you can handle. Every bit is going to help.” He turned to Charlie. “Grab that last box. We’re going to need all the wire we can get.”

  Harry hefted the final box and stood, pleased to see that Laurie had managed to lift the box he’d given her. Nodding back the way they’d come, he led them back toward the stairs. Something stopped him halfway there, something that he couldn’t put his finger on.

  Laurie seemed to sense it, too, but her fear had come with realization.

  “Oh God.”

  “What is it?” Harry asked her.

  “The noise stopped,” she said, her voice heavy with dread. “I don’t think it’s attacking the house anymore.”

  John staggered closer to Harry’s house, each step sending a sharp pain deep into his side. He gasped for breath, fighting the wind, fighting exhaustion, understanding that the next couple of minutes might be the most crucial in his life.

  The demon had ended its attack on the house, its huge form hanging over the burning wreckage like a cloud of living smoke, coiling into itself in confusion. It had seemed to sense, all at once, that the P’oh Tarhei had been stolen right out from beneath it, that its last chance to regain the shape Jha-Laman had given it so long ago was no longer within its reach.

  John straightened, standing painfully upright. He would have to hold the demon at bay, keep it in place as long as he could, hopefully until Harry made it back with the dynamite. He didn’t know if he had the strength to work the magic, didn’t know if his incantations would have any effect at all against the demon’s growing power.

  But he had to try.

  He raised his arms over his head, grimacing with pain, and began to speak in his native tongue. The words came easily, a litany learned through years of careful study, sharpened now by the raw necessity of survival.

  He only hoped the magic behind the words would be stronger than he was. But already another idea was beginning to form in his mind, one he knew could only be used as a last resort. If everything else went wrong, if Harry’s plan didn’t work out, then there was always one final alternative.

  * * * * *

  Laurie saw him first.

  Emerging from Slater’s house, they’d seen immediately that John was no longer sitting where they’d left him. His bag was gone, too, and Harry had a moment of near-panic as he realized that John might have given up and run out on him.

  “There he is!” Laurie shouted, pointing into the yard behind their home. “Jesus, what does he think he’s doing?”

  Harry started out toward the side of the house, making his way to the bulkhead. The box full of explosives was becoming unbearably heavy, but he pushed on, wading through the snow, his teeth gritted in determination. He kept a watchful eye on the writhing shape of the demon, certain it was about to come after them.

  It did move then, uncoiling in a long ribbon of motion, swooping down from its place above the house and sweeping gracefully earthward.

  “Harry,” Charlie hissed from beside him. “It’s coming.”

  They froze, staring up into the deepening twilight. The beast swept past them, coming to bear only a few feet above John’s upraised arms. It contorted in the air above him, thrashing back and forth through the storm, filled with rage but for some reason sparing the young Eskimo when it could have easily crushed him flat.

  Harry stared into the falling snow, trying to make out what was happening. It was only when John’s hands began to move that he understood what his friend was trying to do. He recognized the patterns John was forming in the air and knew their purpose all too well.

  John was summoning Wyh-heah Qui Waq, conjuring the demon of the wind to his own command, just as Jha-Laman had done two-hundred years before. But when the ritual was complete, when the great beast was no longer bound by the rites of incantation, it would kill him where he stood.

  “He’s buying us some time,” Harry said, and stepped into the darkness of his cellar. “Let’s not waste it.”

  The damage to the house seemed worse here, the debris lying in piles to every side, the floors above hanging down wherever the cellar’s ceiling had given way to their weight. Water from a dozen broken pipes coursed down the foundation walls to freeze on the floor below, and every few moments, the sound of creaking wood stopped them dead in their tracks.

  “If you want to leave the box here and get back outside, I’ll understand,” Harry told Laurie, setting his own load down on a relatively dry patch of cement.

  “Tell me what to do,” Laurie told him.

  He pointed along the foundation wall, tracing a line along the entire front of the house. “Start laying the bundles of dynamite about every ten feet or so, right up against the wall if you can. If there’s any water there, try to avoid it. Charlie, you take the back wall, same deal. I’m going to be following along with these.” He held up a roll of heavy wire and a handful of blasting caps. “We have to move fast.”

  Laurie nodded and moved on, dragging the box behind her into the darkness and stopping every few seconds to lay out a small pile of explosives. Charlie followed suit, stopping only to wipe a thick sheen of sweat from his forehead before making his way toward the back of the house. Harry started to prepare as many lengths of wire as he could, stripping the sheathing off at either end and then dropping them into his own box of explosives.

  The work seemed to take forever, the howling of the wind through the fallen house above them serving as a grim reminder of what John was facing outside at that very moment. Working together, they managed to lay out most of the explosives along three walls of the house. Laurie was about to head for the fourth, the foundation wall barely perceptible beneath the fallen ceiling, when Harry pulled her back.

  “Not enough time,” he said. “This will have to do.” He handed out several lengths of wire, pointing towards a small box of blasting caps he’d left in the middle of the floor. “We have to wire them now, one cap for each bundle and then a lead to every cap. Charlie will help you out.” He demonstrated the procedure for her, his hands moving confidently over the wires and contacts. “I’ll wire them all into a main line as you go.”

  They worked quickly together, barely exchanging a word as they tied off each bundle of explosives to a single master wire, feeding the wire slowly back toward the bulkhead door.

  The groan of timber came again, this time from the far end of the cellar, where Laurie was tying off the last few caps. She looked up, startled, and Harry could see a fine sprinkle of dust raining down on her from above.

  “Get out of there!” he shouted.

  She left the final bundle undone, moving towards him as quickly as she could.

  He grabbed her by the arm and led her towards the door, letting the main wire unroll from its spindle as they crossed the cellar. A thunder of falling wood roared behind them, the first floor finally giving in completely to the tremendous weight that had crashed down upon it.

  The three of them stumbled out into the storm, struggling through the fallen snow for the cover of Slater’s driveway. Harry turned to look for John and saw that the demon’s movements above his head had become even more violent. It was certainly on the edge of attack, John’s hold over it slowly coming to an end as the ritual neared its climax.

  Harry reached into his pocket, tugging out a detonating lever. He twisted the handle back, trying to make his numbed fingers work
long enough to secure the bare ends of the main wires to their respective contacts.

  “Hurry,” Laurie urged. “Something’s happening over there.”

  Harry hand-tightened the last screw, his eyes already rising to check on John. He looked up just in time to see the demon rearing back, its massive form unfurling above John like a giant snake, the snow caught within its form going completely black in this new configuration. John’s arms had fallen to his sides, his strength gone, depleted by this final attempt to control the demon of the wind.

  “John!” Harry shouted. “Get out of there!”

  It was no use. Even if John had heard him, it wouldn’t have made a difference. He didn’t have the strength to run, didn’t have the energy to fight.

  The demon struck before Harry could call out again, slamming one spiraling tendril into the ground beside John’s passive body, flinging him flat onto his back into the snow. His duffel bag was thrown another ten feet further into the yard, its precious contents scattered in every direction.

  John’s body came down like a broken doll, his limbs falling limply out beside him.

  Above him, the demon moved in, ready to strike again.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Harry pushed the detonator into Laurie’s hands. “Wait for my signal, then hit it. All you have to do is twist it counter-clockwise and be ready to run.”