The Last Rite

by Chad Morgan

  “Oh, my god,” Daniel gasped.

  “Daniel?” Lisa asked. He could hear the terror trembling in her voice.

  “Run,” he said, but shock and awe robbed his words of any conviction, so Lisa stood there looking scared and confused. Daniel shoved her down the alleyway. “Run!”

  The three of them ran down the alley, the wolf in the lead. His backpack bounced uncomfortably against the small of his back, but he ignored it. Daniel didn’t want to look back, it would only slow him down, but Lisa did and shouted, “Hurry! It’s coming!”

  Turning had slowed her down, a subconscious reaction to not looking where she was going. Daniel grabbed her by the upper arm and pulled her on, guiding her. He looked for the back door to the camping store, but they all looked alike. “Which way to the camping store?”

  Lisa pointed to one of the back doors and sprinted for it. “Over here! Hurry!” But when she reached the back door and turned the handle, the door didn’t move enough to clear its frame. She looked back to Daniel in horror. “It’s locked.”

  Daniel joined her at the door and tried it for himself. “No, I think it’s just blocked on the other side. Help me. Ready?”

  He looked back the way they came, and the king of the abominations was stepping out of the diner, knocking bricks over as if they were toys. Daniel turned back to the door and shouted, “Now!”

  The door opened a bit, and Daniel could hear heavy boxes sliding against the floor inside. They rammed it again, Daniel ignoring the heavy footfalls of the gigantic abomination entering the alley. The second shove opened it about half way. It would have to do. Lisa didn’t need an invitation and slipped through the gap, though the wolf needed some encouragement. The footsteps were growing louder, and Daniel jumped through the gap in the door himself. He tripped over the boxes and fell to the ground, and Lisa was already on the other side of the door shoving it back closed. It was reminiscent of when he fell into Lisa’s apartment, when Lisa saved him.

  “Hurry,” she shouted at him. He got to his feet and helped shove the door closed, then Daniel shoved the boxes back against the door. Then he leaned against the door and listened. He heard the massive footsteps come closer to the back of the store.

  “It’s right outside!” Lisa screamed, backing from the door. “It’s going to get us!”

  Daniel grabbed Lisa and clamped his hand over her mouth, shushing her. She fought him, wiggled against his grasp, but as the footsteps grew closer they both froze, waiting. Even the wolf froze. The footsteps stopped right outside the door, and he expected a large clawed hand bursting through the door or down from the ceiling at any moment. Daniel’s heart beat so hard he was afraid the abomination outside would hear it. It could have been seconds or decades, Daniel couldn’t tell, but after all the anticipation, he heard the footsteps again, this time receding. He let his hand slip from Lisa’s mouth, and they both let out a breath.

  “Oh my god, what was that thing?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve seen it before. He’s like the alpha male or something.”

  “It almost killed us!” she gasped.

  Daniel shook his head. If anything, the large abomination saved them. They were at risk of falling to the roach monsters, but the large abomination’s arrival destroyed them all. “I’m not sure it was even after us. What the hell happened back there?”

  Lisa pulled herself out of Daniel’s arms. He hadn’t realized he was still holding her. She turned and looked at him, her hands on her hips and a stern look on her face. “You blew up a building. Again.”

  “That wasn’t me,” he said. “I think when that thing appeared . . .”

  And then he screamed. The infection on his arm and stomach erupted into a searing pain with no warning. He doubled over and fell to his knees. Lisa took a few steps back, though he thought he saw compassion and concern on her face.

  “Daniel?” she asked. “What? What is it?”

  He held up his wounded arm. The black tendrils crawled underneath his greying skin. He could hear his flesh being shoved aside as the tendrils branched out through his body. The wolf started barking.

  “Oh my god! No!” Lisa called, holding her hands to her mouth. “Daniel, no!”

  He forced his head up, looking at the fear in Lisa’s eyes. Fear of him. “Lisa, run! Get a gun! Protect yourself!”

  “I can’t lose you too, I’ve lost everyone else . . .” she said, but Daniel cut her off.

  “Damn it, run!” he screamed.

  Lisa turned and disappeared into the store, screaming as she went. He fell over on the floor, coiling into a fetal position. The wolf stood over him, watching. He tried to wave it away.

  “Get out of here!” he screamed. “You stupid mutt, get out of . . . uhhh!”

  His vision was blurring. The wolf stood there, staring down at Daniel. Only when he was blacking out did the wolf start to move, but she was heading towards him, not away. While thinking he had given the animal’s intelligence too much credit, he felt comforted that the large wolf stayed with him. Then he passed out.

  26

  The business suit man sat against the wall, the knife plunged through his hand, enjoying the look of horror on Lightfoot’s face as the large abomination rose from the hole the thing had punched into creation. The abomination would have been too large to summon in the normal world, but Shellington Heights had sunk into an area in between the dimensions of the Ancient Ones and his own. The membranes or fields or whatever it was that kept the different planes of existence apart were thinner here, thanks to all the rites they performed so far, and once they performed the last rite, the barriers would be down for good.

  The bank was ripped open like a wound now, the dull fog-diffused sunlight spilling into the vault. He wondered if his partner survived. The roof was now on the floor in pieces, all of the abominations slain or squashed or incinerated. They would have to fall back to the saw mill after this.

  Lightfoot got to his feet. The business suit man wasn’t sure which shocked Lightfoot more, the large abomination emerging from the diner next door, or that he was willing to do what it took to summon it. His hand didn’t hurt, it was numb from shock, but pulling the knife out would be very painful. He had practice from before he wore a business suit in pinning hands with knives, aiming between the metacarpal bones and avoiding the major arteries and tendons and such, but it wasn’t an exact science and it was the first time the business suit man had performed the action on himself.

  Then the stupid abomination wandered off. It knocked over walls as it went, raining bricks on top of the vault. He could hear them slamming against the thick metal of the vault. Lightfoot looked both relieved and confused, but a moment later they heard something else slamming against the vault. The king of all abominations came back. Lightfoot grabbed his funny looking bow and the scroll case and stumbled out of the vault. The business suit man strolled out, watching him try to run. The dog monsters were all gone now, and the few nature things Lightfoot had brought charged the gigantic abomination. Lightfoot let loose several arrows in the thing, but it brushed it off like thorns and slashed open the nature monsters with no apparent effort. Lightfoot used his allies for cover and retreated.

  “Where are you going to run, Mr. Lightfoot?” he asked aloud.

  The king monster reached down and pulled one of Lightfoot’s tree-things off the ground. The thing shriveled in the abomination’s hand, then exploded in a puff of ash. He saw his partner crawling out of the rubble, sliding out from under a desk. The business suit man walked up to meet his partner as the last of the nature monsters were quelled, then watched with pride as the large abomination walked back to him.

  “Do something,” his partner said. He could hear her swallowing back her fear. He grinned but did nothing as the giant abomination walked through the fallen wall and back into the bank. Its head wouldn’t have cleared the ceiling if it was still standing.

  “Do something!” she said again, this time her fear raw
and unmasked.

  The business suit man grabbed the knife handle with his free hand and, with a wince, ripped it from his hand. The ground under the king abomination cracked and opened like a giant mouth, sucking the thing down into . . . well, he wasn’t sure where. He just knew it wasn’t here. A cyclone of crackling power pulled the abomination down, and when it was gone, the ground closed. If it wasn’t for the crack in the floor where it had split, there would be no evidence that the monster or the opening that sucked it down had ever existed.

  “You are out of your mind,” his partner said. He didn’t have to look to know she was glaring at him, her tone told him all he needed to know. “I mean it, you are certifiably insane. We can’t control that thing like the others, it’s too powerful. What were you thinking?”

  It was the last part that burned at him. He had been called crazy before, sometimes in jest, sometimes, in awe, and occasionally with detached analysis, but to suggest he hadn’t considered every angle, every option, every calculation? He may be crazy, but he wasn’t sloppy. He turned to face her.

  “I was thinking we need to get that scroll back. In spite our best efforts, it seems Mr. Lightfoot has escaped us.” He held up his wounded hand. “I’m going to get cleaned up. I suggest you do the same. Then we need to get that scroll back.”

  He marched off through the rubble. He could feel her eyes on him, but he didn’t care. He had seen countless war zones, seen man’s inhumanity to man it all its forms, and had committed many atrocities himself. Soon they would perform the last rite, kill the girl, and the Ancient Ones would return. They detested all of creation, which they considered the abomination, and at this point in his life, he couldn’t disagree. When the Ancient Ones came and wiped out humanity, he would stand on the tallest hill and watch. His partner would either stand by his side, or she would be wiped away with the rest of them.

  Bethany sat in the corner of the old caretaker’s cabin, in what was the only clean spot she could find. The place looked disgusting. The dirt wasn’t on the surface, it was deep in the wood where you couldn’t get rid of it. In one area, mushrooms were sprouting out of the floor boards. Not from under the boards or between them but growing out of them like the wood was soil. The professor gave her a blanket and she covered the floor with it and sat, but the stuff was still there, under the blanket. It was gross.

  The professor was going over books and charts. She was curious as to what it all meant, but now there was a lot on her shoulders, and it dampened her curiosity. She wanted to know the truth, and she got it. Now, she wished she could give it back, to unlearn it all. She wondered how much her mother knew before she died. Maybe that was why she killed herself.

  “Can I go outside?” she asked.

  The professor looked up from his work. He seemed surprised she was there, like he forgot. Bethany watched him come back from his work to the present and remember where he was and who she was. “Yes, you can if you’d like. Just don’t leave the graveyard. And please don’t go too far from the shack.”

  Bethany went to the shack door, then froze as she saw the twisted trees growing in and around the gravestones. None of them moved, but it wasn’t the trees she was afraid of. She turned back to the professor. “Is it safe?”

  The professor nodded. “Yes, as long as you stay in the graveyard.”

  “But is it safe with the other things?” she asked.

  The professor nodded, knowing what she meant. “Oh, yes, they won’t hurt you. They’ll protect you from the abominations.” He looked back to his work, but as Bethany turned to leave he popped his head back up. “Just don’t antagonize them, just to be safe.”

  Bethany took a step back from the door, rethinking how much she could tolerate the moldy caretaker shack. The professor already had his nose back in his work, so Bethany took a few steps through the door. She stood on the porch for a moment. She hadn’t been struck down by any monsters, so she ventured further into the graveyard.

  Bethany wondered through the graveyard, looking at the old tombstones. The way the trees grew amongst them and over them, enveloping the tombstones in some cases, was almost beautiful. The dates on the tombstones reached back over a hundred years, and Bethany marveled at evidence the world existed before she did. These were people that were born, lived, and died before she existed. She wondered if people would continue to live and die after she was gone. She thought about her own gravestone, sitting forgotten in some graveyard for a hundred years, everyone who would miss her already gone. Would she see her mother in heaven? Was there a heaven?

  Bethany pulled back a tightly woven bunch of branches to get a clearer look at another tombstone when the leafy bundle pulled back on its own. She jumped back with a scream as the thing got to its feet, stretching like a large cat awoken from a nap. Bethany’s foot caught a root, or maybe another one of those creatures tripped her. Either way, she fell back and hit the ground as the creature looked at her. It leaped down from its perch and stalked forward to her. Bethany screamed again.

  “It won’t hurt you,” came a voice from behind her and to her side. Even the creature looked up, and it seemed to relax like a dog welcoming home its master.

  Bethany craned her neck to see an old woman standing there. She wore a hooded robe, which wasn’t more than layers and layers of dirty rags. Her face was a maze of wrinkles, darkened and emphasized in the shadows of her hood, and Bethany thought she might be the oldest person in the world. She thought about the tombstones with dates going back a hundred years, and she imagined the old woman standing by it when the grave was freshly dug. The old woman walked over to the creature and reached out to it, stroking its head like it was a huge pet. The crazy part was the creature lifted its head against her hand, like a cat wanting to be petted harder, and Bethany thought she could hear it purring.

  “Who are you?” she asked. She wasn’t scared, but part of her thought she should be. She didn’t know this old woman, there was a creature standing over her made of earth and plants, but in spite of that, she felt calm.

  The old woman pulled her hood back. In the light, her wrinkles didn’t look as bad. Her hair was unkempt and a light gray, but it reminded her of how her mother looked first thing in the morning before brushing her hair and showering. When she looked down at Bethany, she saw her mother’s eyes, not just the color but the same softness in how she looked at Bethany.

  “You can call me Grandmother,” the old woman said.

  Bethany got to her feet, looking at her. She remembered seeing the grave of her grandmother when her grandfather died. Her mother showed her after her grandfather’s funeral when he was buried next to her. But she also knew the world had changed, and there were new truths to learn. “You’re my grandmother?”

  “More like a great grandmother,” she said, “but there are too many ‘greats’ to add, so ‘grandmother’ is fine.”

  “Did Mommy know you?” she asked the old woman, her grandmother.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, with a tone of an old woman fondly recalling her youth. “Your mother and I met on occasion, but I’ve watched over her since before she was born, just as I’ve watched over you.” She looked from the creature and back to Bethany. “You’re safe here. You know that, right?”

  Bethany looked at the creature, which she now couldn’t see as anything but a giant house cat, albeit one made of vines and branches. What had Charlie and the professor called them? Avatars? The professor explained it, said the world was taking form to fight back against the bad monsters, what they called abominations. She didn’t understand it all, but what she could understand from what the professor tried to tell her, was that the world was alive, but there were other worlds where things weren’t alive and hated the real world because it was.

  “That’s what the professor said,” Bethany said in reply.

  The old woman cocked her head and looked at her. The old woman . . . Grandmother . . . looked so much like her mother with that expression, Bethany’s heart tightened with longing
for her mother. She felt tears swelling in her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them come out. She was a big girl now, not a little cry-baby. She had to be. She was alone, and she had to be brave.

  “You don’t believe him?” her grandmother asked her.

  She looked at the avatar. “He said why, but I don’t understand.”

  “This graveyard holds the spirits of so many souls,” her grandmother said. “It’s here they returned to the world they sprang from. It’s a concentrated area of spiritual presence.”

  “’Kay,” Bethany said, not sure she understood.

  The old woman stepped closer to her. The avatar looked up at the old woman with its eyeless head and walked up to stay beside her. “Did Professor Lightfoot tell you what these wonderful creatures are?”

  “Yes,” Bethany said.

  The old woman raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t look at Bethany unkindly when she asked, “Did you understand?”

  Bethany shrugged. “No, not really. They’re spirits, but somehow they’re real.”

  The old woman turned and started caressing the avatar again. “They’re spirits made real. They’re spirits of our world, creating a body for themselves from nature herself.”

  “’Kay,” Bethany said. That made even less sense than what the professor told her, but adults loved explaining stuff. If you didn’t understand what they were talking about, unless you wanted a three-hour lecture, you faked it.

  The old woman looked down at her. “Are you afraid them?”

  “Yes,” Bethany said. While that was true, she had been in a constant state of fear for weeks, since her mother started seeing shadows moving behind them when no one was there. She was scared, but she was getting used to being scared.

  “Are you afraid of me?”