by Harvey Click
And I know I’ll never see
My mama’s face again
Amy clapped when John finished singing, and when he turned and saw who it was his confident ease was replaced by the bashful awkwardness she was used to seeing.
“That’s a pretty song,” she said. “Did you write it?”
“No, my grandpa taught it to me. He used to roam the hills singing songs and fighting warlocks and demons and such. I was named after him.”
“Sit down and drink some wine,” Manda said. “I got a clean glass.”
“Thanks,” Amy said, but as she was unfolding a chair Red stuck his head into the barn and said, “Brook, Jake, Scotty, and Mary, your shift starts in five minutes.”
Now that she had completed her cleansings, Amy was required to patrol for three hours and twenty minutes every night, like everyone else. Her shift began at 8:00 p.m., so at least there was some light for the first forty minutes or so. She was given a flashlight, a sanctified sword with a scabbard, a pre-paid cellphone that she was allowed to use only to call Unseen members in case of an emergency, and a police whistle to blow since cellphone reception was highly unreliable at the compound. Her Mossberg had been returned to her along with a sling so she could carry it on her back.
Four people were on patrol during each shift, and each one had to walk up and down one-fourth of the perimeter. Hers started at the driveway and wound its way north past the barn and then west to one of the no-trespassing signs that marked the property line deep in the woods, then back again and forth again until somebody relieved her at 11:20.
Tonight was her first guard duty, and as soon as she walked past the barn into the deeper woods to the west, her nerves began to tingle and her legs felt wobbly. Shadows lengthened and thickened in the setting sun, and the woods began to fill with rustling and scurrying sounds that she never seemed to hear during the daytime. By the time she reached the no-trespassing sign, twilight was painting everything a ghastly gray that faded to black as she trekked back toward the barn.
Mosquitoes were thick, humming around her ears and searching everywhere for weak spots in her repellent. Long before she reached the sign the second time, her shotgun was rubbing heavily against her spine. She pulled it off her back and shifted it from hand to hand, using her other hand to shine her flashlight into the trees and hollows at every sound. A pair of owls had emerged from their nests to hoot back and forth to each other from their distant trees, and their cries were the only comfort she could find in the darkness.
At least she had some time to think, when there wasn’t a sound to make her jump. She had been at the compound less than a week, and already it had changed her more than grade school, high school, or college. Things that she hadn’t believed possible a week ago were becoming almost commonplace.
Her attitude toward Neoma had changed too, ever since Neoma had made the short speech about knocking the snot out of her. For the first few days she had hated Neoma; now she feared her but didn’t hate her. It was true that Neoma was her commanding officer, and it didn’t do to call your commanding officer a bitch, at least not to her face. Whoever the supreme commanders of the Unseen might be, they had chosen Neoma to lead this small gang of warriors, and they must have had their reasons for trusting her.
And Amy was beginning to trust her as well. Fear, trust, grudging respect—and there was something else she felt as well, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it or even think about it.
As she was approaching the no-trespassing sign, she saw a flashlight bobbing toward her. “Who goes there?” she called.
“Scotty. Is that you, Mary?”
“Yep.”
She waited for him at the sign, and when he was close enough that she didn’t need to yell she said, “Nine o’clock and all is well.”
“All’s well back here too,” he said, “’cept these damn skeeters are eating me right down to the bone.”
“Didn’t you put on some dope?”
“Forgot to.”
“I got some in my pocket,” she said.
He grinned when she handed it to him, and she was happy to see that his loose tooth was still in his head where it belonged. She noticed that instead of lugging a heavy shotgun, Scotty had a revolver tucked into a holster on his belt.
“You don’t want to trade guns, do you?” she asked.
“Well, lemme see what you got.”
She handed him the Mossberg and he examined it carefully. “Well, why not?” he said. “I got me another revolver plus a 1911 and a thirty-aught-six, but my brother stole my shotgun. You got any extra shells for this thing?”
“One box.”
“It’s a deal,” he said, unclipping the holster from his belt. “This here’s just a cheap Rossi .38 Special but it’s in real good shape. I can give you some more ammo tomorrow.”
Since she was wearing a scabbard on her right side, Amy clipped the plastic-mesh holster onto the left side of her belt. It would have been a relief to stand there at the no-trespassing sign and chat for a while longer, but the orders were to keep moving, and as soon as they finished their trade they both turned and headed in opposite directions.
She walked back to the driveway, and when she got there she saw a flashlight approaching her in the distance. That would be Brook, who was patrolling the next sector in that direction, but she didn’t wait for him. She turned and headed back again, past the barn and back into the deep darkness of the woods, feeling more comfortable now that the shotgun wasn’t weighing her down.
She was nearing the no-trespassing sign when she suddenly heard a police whistle blow some distance in front of her and then heard Scotty yelling for help. She ran toward the sound, but with her flashlight aimed ahead instead of on the ground she soon tripped over a log and fell, banging her knees and hands hard against the ground.
She had fallen on the flashlight and it was dead. She pushed herself up painfully and listened. The whistle had blown only once, which wasn’t a good sign because it probably meant Scotty was in too much trouble to blow it again, but then she heard some scuffling up ahead and another cry.
The moonlight was faint through the thick trees, and she had to move no faster than a deliberate trot to keep from falling again, sword in her right hand and gun in her left. Then she saw the glow of a flashlight ahead, and as she hurried toward it she saw that it was lying on the ground.
“Scotty?” she called.
No answer.
She holstered her gun so she could pick up the flashlight, and she aimed it around in a complete circle with her sword extended in the other hand, but she saw nothing. She blew her police whistle and kept blowing, pausing only to draw her breath. That was the protocol: blow your whistle only at the scene of the emergency so there wouldn’t be the confusion of whistles blowing all over the woods.
She stopped blowing for a few seconds to listen and saw a flashlight hurrying toward her.
“Who goes there?” she yelled.
“Jake. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. Scotty’s missing.”
A moment later Jake was beside her, and they started moving cautiously in different directions, aiming their flashlights at every bush and tree trunk.
“Oh shit! Oh shit!” Jake suddenly yelled, and she ran to where he was. He had his flashlight aimed down into a shallow basin, and she saw Scotty lying at the bottom with a creature standing over him.
The thing had two arms and two legs and was as tall as a man, but it looked more like a monstrous lizard than a human. It had scaly green-gray lizard-like skin and a large head with a grotesque face halfway between human and lizard. It turned to glare at them, its green eyes bulging and lidded like a lizard’s and its wide lizard-mouth gaping open with glistening drool dripping off its piranha teeth.
But the strangest thing about it was the way it moved. Its arms and legs and whole body moved in sudden jerks as if she were seeing it in a strobe-light. It didn’t seem to move so much as suddenly relocate itself in space a
few inches from where it had been a moment before.
Scotty let out a terrible moan, and she shined her flashlight into the basin to see him groaning and writhing in agony.
A moment later her left ear felt like it had exploded. Standing a short distance away from her, Jake was firing his revolver at the creature, which wasn’t even bothering to jerk as the bullets hit it.
“Don’t shoot, damn it, use your sword!” she wanted to yell, but there was no time for yelling. The creature was coming toward Jake now, jerking its way quickly up out of the basin, and he didn’t even have his sword drawn—it was hanging uselessly in his scabbard.
Not wanting to get shot, Amy waited until she heard his hammer fall on a spent cartridge, and then she lunged at the thing with her sword held in both hands above her head. She had a heart-stopping close-up view of that huge hideous face with its long dripping teeth jerking swiftly toward her, and then her sword cleaved its head open from the crown to the gaping mouth.
She slashed again, and the split head came off its shoulders and rolled down the declivity. The body was still twitching, so she stabbed it several times and then backed away because the stench of rotten Limburger was so overpowering that she could scarcely breathe.
The body stopped twitching, and Jake said, “Damn, you saved my life.”
“Blow your whistle,” she said, and while he did she scrambled down into the basin to check on Scotty. He was still alive, but barely recognizable because his face was swollen half again its normal size. In fact his whole body was swollen, and his puffy limbs were writhing in pain while thick white foam bubbled copiously out of his mouth.
“Scotty, can you hear me?” she asked.
He moaned, and more foam bubbled out of his mouth.
Brook was the first to arrive, and then suddenly it seemed almost everyone got there at once, including Neoma. She took one look at Scotty, drew her pistol, and shot him through the head. No one seemed surprised by this, not even Amy, though she was surprised a moment later when she saw Neoma cross herself.
The two separate parts of the demon were already beginning to putrefy. The smell was overwhelming, so they all backed away and those who had bandannas or handkerchiefs held them to their noses.
“I’ll go get some quicklime,” Jake mumbled.
“No, no lime,” Neoma said. “It won’t be able to reconstitute this body if you pour quicklime on it, but its spirit will still be earthbound so it will soon make a new body for itself. And then the first thing it’ll do is tell Sandoval what it’s seen here. We’re going to crate this one so I can properly dismiss it back to hell. Red, you and Ivan get the tub from the barn—and bring a couple scoop shovels.”
“Mary saved my life, Milady,” Jake said. “I was stupid—I forgot my training and started shooting.”
“Next time you’ll remember,” Neoma said.
“How’d it get through our defenses?” someone asked, but nobody answered him.
“Bloody Joe, you and Leo set up the crate in the clearing where we fence. Siliang, bring a bag of lime—I think I want some after all. Brook and Jake, you bring that old door that’s stored in the barn. We’ll use it to carry Scotty’s body.”
Red and Ivan soon returned with a large oblong metal tub that probably in years past had been used as a portable bathtub. Both men had scoop shovels, and they wrapped bandannas around their noses before they began scooping the now-gelatinous remains of the herky-jerky into the tub.
“Dig around and make sure you get all of it,” Neoma said. “Then we’ll pour some lime on the ground just in case there’s anything left.”
“So you mean just some little puddle could turn into a new demon?” Amy asked.
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out the hard way,” Neoma said.
“I guess that’s all of it,” Red said.
He and Ivan lifted the tub by the handles at each end and started lugging it through the woods while Siliang dusted the ground with several scoops of quicklime. When he was done, Brook and Jake climbed down with their heavy wooden door and carefully lifted Scotty’s body onto it. John and Lucky grabbed two corners of the door to help them carry it, and they all headed through the woods toward the front of the property.
A large cage with metal bars was set up in the clearing near the picnic tables, and Ivan and Red placed the tub with the liquid remains inside it and locked the barred door.
“What should we do with Scotty?” Brook asked.
“I have the only air conditioner at the compound,” Neoma said, “so Scotty will rest in my bedroom tonight. Follow me.”
She led the four men with the body in through the back door of the house, and when she came out a few minutes later she was wearing her white ceremonial robe and carried the sword she had used to initiate Amy.
“We may as well sit down,” she said. “We need to wait till it has reconstituted its body, and that’ll take a little while. Ivan, bring out something to drink—everyone must be thirsty. And remember, when it’s back in action don’t look at its eyes. It can fix you with its eyes and you won’t be able to look away. Herky-jerkies have been known to turn people to stone with their gaze.”
Ivan came out with a pitcher of lemonade and a stack of plastic glasses, and everyone drank. People drifted up to the cage one by one to see what was going on inside the tub, but they quickly turned away and came back to the picnic tables. Amy came up for a look and began to gag from the sight as much as the stench. There was a glistening body lying in the tub now with an already-beating heart and veins pulsing with blood, but it still had no skin.
She came back to the tables and sat down with her head reeling. “Won’t you need a chalk circle to protect you?” she asked Neoma.
“No. It can’t escape the cage. The bars are made of steel rods inside of lead pipes, and the lead makes it weak. But I think it will soon be time, so let’s get ready. I need twelve people to stand around me in a circle.”
“That’s all we got left now,” said Nyx, the tattooed knife thrower. “There’s just twelve of us now plus you.”
“You forget Shane, Colby, and Kate,” Neoma said.
“Yeah, but they don’t live here.”
“They’re close at hand.”
“Yeah, but they don’t live here. There’s just twelve of us left now to guard the camp.”
“Yes, and there were just twelve of us before Mary arrived, so what’s your point?”
“Mary’s a newbie,” Nyx said. “She don’t know the ropes.”
Neoma turned on her with anger flaring in her eyes. “She just killed a demon, didn’t she? Now shut up, and let’s form our circle. That thing’s going to wake up any minute.”
Neoma stood about twenty feet in front of the cage and told the others to stand around her facing outwards and holding hands to keep the circle tight. Somehow it turned out that Amy was the closest one to the cage, exactly where she didn’t want to be. The thing was sitting up in the tub now with its back to them, breathing in short gasps and occasionally letting out strange mewling sounds like a huge infant.
And then suddenly with a jerking leap it was out of the tub, glaring at them with venom dripping from its teeth and shaking the bars so violently that the cage rocked back and forth and seemed as if it might tip over. Though Amy was holding hands with Brook and Leo, and though Neoma was chanting just a few feet behind her, she felt alone with the demon, which seemed to be staring at her as it roared and shook the bars of its cage, as if it remembered that she was the one who had killed it, and it intended to return the favor.
The lead didn’t seem to be making it particularly weak, as it was already beginning to bend the bars, and she hoped that Neoma’s spell would soon do its work. She remembered that she shouldn’t look at its eyes, but whenever she caught an accidental glimpse it was difficult to look away. As loathsome as they were, they were also strangely enticing, like forbidden fruits of the Garden, and whenever she glimpsed them they seemed to promise her respite from all
of her worries and pains. She knew she should shut her eyes but was unwilling to do so, just as she had been unwilling to shut them the day she’d witnessed the sacrifice, as if by looking she gained some control over the awful event.
Neoma continued to chant, and eventually the air began to crackle with electricity and a black mist started forming around the demon, which began to howl as if in terrible pain and bark out what sounded like curses in some unknown language. The mist thickened and grew taller and wider until it completely hid the cage in a glowering ball of blackness, and then quite suddenly the demon’s cries sounded very distant and then faded to nothing, and there was only the sound of Neoma chanting.
The mist thinned and drifted upward like black smoke, and the demon was gone. Brook and Leo let go of Amy’s hands, but nobody spoke until Neoma said, “Second shift, your patrol duty starts now.”
Amy was in the kitchen unbuckling her scabbard when Neoma came in and said, “You may want to sleep on the sofa tonight, since there’s a body in my bedroom.”
“Where will you sleep?” Amy asked.
“I won’t.”
Chapter 12
Sunday morning Amy awoke on the living room sofa to the sounds of hammering and sawing. She stepped outside and saw that Ivan and Red had set up a pair of sawhorses between the house and the barn and were building a crude coffin on top of them. Neoma was standing there watching them, dressed in her usual blue jeans and blue sleeveless work shirt, and when she noticed Amy she came over and led her back into the house.
“You need to cover yourself with incense ointment,” she said. “I’ll help you do your back.”
“Why? Am I leaving the compound?”
“No, but from now on you need to wear it twenty-four seven.”
“Why?”
“Because Sandoval has your hair. I thought our defenses were adequate, but obviously they’re not. We’ve never had a demon in our compound before.”
“You think I attracted it? I mean, it wasn’t even anywhere near me. It found Scotty, not me.”
“No, Mary, I don’t really think you attracted it. I think they’re just beginning to figure out that there’s something interesting going on here. But I don’t know that for certain, and I have to protect my people. We’ve lost one, and we can’t afford to lose any more.”