* 3 *
It took half the night, but the last stitch of the church was finally sewn.
“It’s time, girl,” Momma Clavis said. “Let’s give it a whirl.”
“What do we got to do next?”
“Nothing you’ve got to do. It’s all up to me, not you. Fire is needed to seal the spell, and a sacrifice of meat as well.
“Momma, stop that rhyming. You sound like a drunken rap singer.”
“Where you think rap got its starting? Rhyming magic is as old as farting.”
“Yeah, but you’re bad at it, Momma. Real bad.”
“Bad don’t matter, it is part of the spell. Gonna send that old witch straight to hell. We need to burn the church and all that’s in it, that’s the only way to kill the infinite.”
Wendy Joe saw where this was going.
Momma was figuring on sacrificing herself.
“I can’t let you do that, Momma. I can’t let you go,” she was weeping.
Damn it, she didn’t want to go through mourning one more time. She looked lousy wearing black.
Momma wouldn’t have any of that foolishness.
“Death’s just passing and pushing up clover, don’t mean that nothing’s over. When push comes to shove, nothing’s stronger than love. Damn it, Wendy Joe, don’t sing the blues. I got to die, where the hell would I buy shoes?”
She pointed with her hand at her mismatched feet.
Wendy Joe had to laugh.
“You are speaking the word of truth, Momma, but tell you what. We get through this, I’m going to buy you a rhyming dictionary.”
“Truth’s the best word that I ever heard. Now give me those matches and leave, ain’t no time to sit and grieve.”
Wendy Joe handed her the matches and headed outside.
She stood in the darkness.
Staring.
Waiting.
The first flame curled like a snake about the dust-dry wood of the church.
The spell was begun, the old witch better run.
* 4 *
Like electrons dog-fighting over a single nucleus, Fell’s spirit and the power of Thessaly’s concentrated hatred struggled for control over her freshly resurrected body.
“Just like a man,” Thessaly shouted. “Always trying to get into a woman’s body.”
She felt herself weaken.
The wind, lightning and the breaking of her broomstick took too much from her. “I’m not letting you in,” she vowed.
She bit and hissed and stirred up her hatred. She forced control back from Fell, but the preacher was determined. He pushed his righteousness right back at her.
“Damn you, Fell.”
Thessaly fought back hard as she could, but she was losing.
She twisted free, throwing Fell from her.
Then she rose up behind the Tatterdemon.
The Tatterdemon stood there as still as death, awaiting Thessaly’s pleasure.
She slammed the jagged broomstick deep into the demon’s resurrected back, driving it down into the top of his twisted shoulders, following the track of the spine and straight on through to bottom meat.
This is where the soul is kept, deep in the belly and the back and the bowels.
The magic shot like galvanized lightning. The Tatterdemon stiffened and enlarged and stretched like an evening shadow, growing larger with every desiccated heartbeat.
Behind the Tatterdemon, the body and spirit of Thessaly and what was left of the ghost of Fell continued to struggle. There was a puff of pure green smoke. Fell glanced up and he swore he saw a crucifix, burning high above the field, heard the sound of a long-dead bell ringing and singing as clear as hell.
From out of the smoke leaped Momma Clavis, like a streak of greased black lightning.
“Come to hell with Momma!” she called out, not bothering to rhyme.
She yanked the witch’s body from between the two struggling spirits, and the two of them vanished in a cloud of burning church smoke. With nothing left to cling to but the hollowness of their mutual hatred, Fell and Thessaly blew away like wisps of yesterday’s wind.
“Ding dong, the witch is dead,” the Tatterdemon rumbled in Vic’s voice. He was ready to play. “No more boss, no more woman to listen to. I got the power now.”
“I’ll show you power,” Maddy screamed.
She ran from out of the shadow of the barn and threw the first firebomb. It crashed like a broken promise next to the Tatterdemon’s leg.
The battle had begun again.
CHAPTER 52
A Needle in a Burning Haystack
* 1 *
The flaming gasoline splashed up the Tatterdemon’s legs.
Maddy had hoped the nails would do some damage as well but there wasn’t enough concussion in the brew to do the kind of damage she’d hoped for.
The Tatterdemon ran towards her, flames eating it as she ran. Maddy had seen pictures of a big desert celebration where they burned a giant straw man just for the hell of it. This was ten times worse.
The Tatterdemon was burning and walking.
It could not be stopped.
Without pausing to blink, Maddy reached for the next firebomb.
She had lost the Zippo in the earlier blaze and was forced to resort to an ancient folding book of paper matches she’d scavenged from Vic’s tool chest.
The first match broke.
The second as well.
The Tatterdemon was nearly upon her when the third match sparked into life. She set it against the straw wick. It caught and the part of her that grew thick with straw felt a little fear.
She threw the fire bomb in the same motion.
Too damn quick.
The jar broke harmlessly upon the Tatterdemon’s chest. But the flames already burning accomplished the rest. The Tatterdemon burned even hotter. He hit the ground, rolling in the dirt like a crazy hound, trying to extinguish the flames.
Maddy threw the final bomb, not bothering to light it.
She stepped in with the hatchet.
She hauled it back over her head like a giant executioner’s fry pan and swung for the Tatterdemon’s leg. As big as the leg was, she took it off in one good swing. The last blast of the yellow go-juice had made her strong again.
The Tatterdemon stumbled towards her, propping itself up with one arm and the other leg.
Maddy swung at the arm, knocking it loose with the momentum of her swing.
The Tatterdemon hit the ground.
Maddy swung for its head but the beast was too quick. It rolled, swung out at her and took a strip of her leg. She saw the tail end of her bone poking like a tiny Moby Dick peeking up from the red and straw sea.
“Tit for tat,” the Tatterdemon said. “You take my leg, I’ll take yours.”
“You’re the one trying to balance on your dick, shithead. All you ever did was scratch my itch.”
He swung again.
She parried with her hatchet.
The Tatterdemon lost its balance and fell flat on its face. That was all the chance that Maddy needed. She launched herself in a mad assed leap of destruction, screaming like a psychotic banshee on angel dust.
She landed squarely on the Tatterdemon’s smoldering back. She dropped the hatchet but to hell with that. Ignoring the flames, she cupped her hands around his chin, braced with her legs and yanked backwards until she’d popped the Tatterdemon’s head off like a champagne cork. The rest of it was hatchet work. First the other leg, then the arms, then anything big enough to hit.
She kept at it.
“You ain’t ever coming back.”
Hacking and hacking, way past toothpicks.
“Never.”
It might have gone on longer, except for the voice that rose from out of the field.
“Maddy!”
Maddy turned and stared like a deer trapped in oncoming headlights.
“Maddy!”
The voice was coming from the field. She knew who it was.
Daddy was c
oming home.
She dropped the hatchet and ran for the shelter of the welcoming barn. She could fight a witch and a big-assed scarecrow from hell, but this was a terror that she didn’t know how to begin to fight.
* 2 *
Out in the field, the true Tatterdemon was finally being born.
Daddy had been waiting for this moment for a very long time. After waiting so long in the darkness, resisting Thessaly’s call, resisting Vic’s call, just waiting for his chance at vengeance.
Now he had all of the power and the magic and the hate.
And the blood, he had that as well.
He even had the broom and a wonderful place to wear it.
All he needed now was a woman.
His daughter, the one who had buried him out here, was waiting for him.
Tatter-Daddy came out of the field and lumbered towards the barn, to where Maddy was helplessly hiding.
* 3 *
Maddy felt safe in the stalls, even though they stank of blood and horseshit.
The shed might have been safer, deeper in the barn with a door that closed, but the shed was Vic’s place and before that, Daddy’s place.
She used to hide in the stalls back when she was a child whenever Daddy took to one of his moods. Daddy never beat her. No sir. Daddy was kind to her. He always told her how kind he was. How lucky she was having a man initiate her in the ways of the world. Daddy was funny that way. Always treating her like he was doing her a favor when he touched her the way he liked to touch.
“That feels good, don’t it, Maddy my girl? Come on. Do it for me the way I like.”
Even though she never wanted to.
“Do it, girl. Your Daddy has spoken.”
She burrowed into the hay and shit and horse blood like a pill bug, ignoring the flies that swarmed about her like tattle tales.
How dead am I, anyway, she wondered.
All the times he touched her.
He’d started so goddamn early.
Then one day Momma had caught him at it.
That’s how she remembered Daddy best. Bare-chested above her like a bear with his pants down about his knees, all those beads of sweat crawling about his forehead and lips, the pole of man-flesh stuck in her like an evil snake. Then all at once, Daddy was holding his arms out like Jesus, the tines of a large hayfork skewered through his chest, poked all the way through him, poking little tiny forget-me-not scars into Maddy’s young chest.
Momma killed him.
Then they buried him out in the field.
Momma told Maddy to remember that it was all her fault. That’s right, Maddy’s fault. It was her fault that she had caused her Daddy to act that way. It was her fault that he had wanted her in the way that he did. It was her fault she had caused her Momma to have to kill her Daddy.
It was all Maddy’s fault.
Momma told her.
Maddy cradled herself in the hay, blood, and straw and hoped to die.
CHAPTER 53
Tatter-Daddy
* 1 *
Tatter-Daddy crashed through the barn doors like a one-man siege engine.
Nothing could stop him. He pushed and slammed and crushed his way in, rooting for her, digging and grubbing until he found her cowered in the stables.
“Away in the manger, Maddy. Away in the manger.”
He stood there like a wall of fate.
From between his legs sprouted the jagged end of the broomstick, glowing like a soft rotted sunflower.
Maddy knew what that broomstick was for.
“There’s a lot of ways to make scarecrows, little Sunflower, lots and lots of ways. You and me, we’ll do it by fucking. You and me, we’re going to breed ourselves up a whole damn army.”
Tatter-Daddy advanced upon her. She could feel his heat and the stink of him. He smelled old and dead and all too familiar. She took two steps back until she felt the remorseless wall.
And there she stood and waited.
Tatter-Daddy towered over Maddy.
Just then a strange voice rang out from the mouth of the barn.
“You want to get fucked?”
Tatter-Daddy turned to look. Maddy just stared, not believing her eyes as Roland Friar charged in, pitchfork held out like a knight’s lance, slamming the prongs of the fork through the rotted meat of Tatter-Daddy’s back, caging his spine and pinning him against a pillar.
“There,” Roland said. “Now you’re fucked for sure.”
It didn’t matter that Roland was taking vengeance on the memory of his ex-wife Carmen. It didn’t matter that in his crazed state he didn’t know Maddy or Tatter-Daddy from a hole in the ground; because for once Roland was absolutely right.
Tatter-Daddy was fucked. Still, he was dangerous. He reached out and swatted Roland like a pudgy little fly.
Roland crashed against the wall, out cold.
This gave Maddy all the chance she needed. She picked up a flat grain shovel. She stepped around Tatter-Daddy and swung it, using her momentum and the shovel blade. Swinging like John Henry’s hammer, hard against the pitchfork shaft, driving the tines deeper into the wood.
The shaft of the pitchfork snapped in two from the impact.
“You’re fucked, Tatter-Daddy. You and Vic and Momma and all the rest of you, fucked for sure, and once I get something to burn you with, I’m making sure you stay fucked forever.”
She turned and strode for the work shed.
Behind her, Tatter-Daddy forced one of its stick arms between the prongs of the pitchfork and slowly began to work itself free.
* 2 *
Maddy found some kerosene in a lantern and grabbed the hammer and some nails, just to be sure.
She was too slow.
She turned, only to see Tatter-Daddy pushing its way into the workroom like a child rudely pushing its way back into its mother’s womb.
Tatter-Daddy reached out and caught Maddy by the throat. She felt the stick-like talons cutting the wind from her lungs. Tatter-Daddy had fully-formed hands and no trouble constructing a perfect choke.
He reached out his other hand and began popping her shirt buttons one by one.
There weren’t too many of them left after all she’d been through. Her shirt was nothing but tatters.
“Just like old times, isn’t it, Maddy?”
Maddy struggled uselessly. She felt her shirt give way. She felt a rude stick hand pawing at her breasts.
“You made me do this girl. It is all your fault. You made me feel this way.”
She stared up into Tatter-Daddy’s eyes and saw the glimmer of icy blue, Daddy’s cold-as-March snow stare.
“I can’t blame you though. It was in your blood. Since you first crawled out of those woods, the dark little baby that you were, you’ve had it in your blood. Girl, you were just plain born for evil.”
His voice thickened.
She saw the memory of that cruel grin, doing things to her no man should do to his own blood kin.
“Goddamn you, Daddy. This isn’t my fault. None of it was ever my fault.”
She caught at his arm and peeled it away from her.
“You’re just a memory. You’re nothing but a bad dream haunting my nightmares.”
She pushed his arm back.
“YOU AIN’T REAL!” she shouted, nearly tearing her throat out.
She pulled one hand free, dragging a spike from the barn wall. A good solid four inches, rust red as ancient memory, just long enough to reach. She held the spike against his wooden palm and swung the hammer while he tried to fight back.
It was no good.
She’d finally beaten him.
His terror was destroyed.
Patiently she hammered him, Christlike into the door frame, moving him like a rag doll whenever she saw the need. He twisted and snarled and swore and bit as she soaked him with the kerosene.
He snapped at her futilely one last time.
“Wake up and smell the kerosene, Daddy. It’s time to light the barbecue.”
&
nbsp; She crawled between Tatter-Daddy’s dripping legs, feeling the rude, black tickle of his huge wooden cock. She stood for a moment, enjoying his helplessness, but only the briefest of moments.
Then she struck him alight with one of her three remaining paper matches.
It only took two matches, but she threw a third for the hell of it.
She smiled, happy and content as the flames climbed higher, lapping at his rot-blackened flesh.
He sizzled and stank like a pan full of foul bacon.
She watched him go up like a little girl watching a snowman melt.
She wanted to dance and sing and a funny part of her wished for a big bag of marshmallows.
And then he was gone.
She left the barn before it burned to the ground, dragging Roland to safety.
He was still as nutty as a fruitcake with the fruit left out, but Maddy wasn’t going to leave him behind.
CHAPTER 54
Afterburn
* 1 *
It was early in spring.
The fire should have died quickly, but the life of that field had been sucked out a long time ago. The field burned like it was made of gasoline. The flames ran wild about the hills and valleys, working their hungry way down to the town of Crossfall.
They burned the town clean to the dirt.
Only after the flames reached the ocean did the fire finally die.
* 2 *
Roland Friar went back to long-haul trucking.
He now rolls the roads, chatting happily to his invisible Carmen.
He’s hung a splinter of the Tatterdemon from his sun visor, like a piece of the one true cross.
He was absolutely nuts, and absolutely happy, so where’s the harm in that?
* 3 *
Chief Wilfred and Earl were buried with full police honor.
Ivan Barrand’s body was found in a freezer in the basement of Wilfred’s home. Investigating police believe he’d clambered in there, seeking safety from the flames. They were at a loss to explain the one-legged corpse entwined about Ivan’s corpse so tightly that a pair of crow-barring coroner’s assistants hadn’t been able to untangle the knot.
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