Daemon of the Dark Wood
Page 28
A middle-aged male patient standing in his doorway said, “Hey, nice bum, baby.”
Sharyn shot him a warning look. She half expected Susan to round on the cretin to scratch his eyes out or rip his tongue from his offensive mouth, but Susan didn’t slow down.
“Yours ain’t bad either, honey,” the cretin said in a consoling tone to Sharyn.
Sharyn gave him the finger and kept walking. She felt strong. There was power in sisterhood, especially when the sisters were in service to a greater power. A daemon. An undying demigod. How amazing that the myths of Pan and Dionysus were based on an actual entity! Imagine the lecture I could give now to those quacking mush-headed students. “We have a very special guest today, students. A living legend, come to fuck you stupid in an orgy of bloody sex. One way or another you’re all going to get fucked.”
Susan turned into the nursing station, grabbed the charge nurse by the throat and said, “Give me your keys, bitch. Give me any shit and I’ll snap your neck.”
Sharyn stepped into the chart-lined cubbyhole, grabbed a ball-point pen off the desk and brandished it like a dagger. “Do it,” she said, reinforcing Susan’s demand. “We’re not playing, I promise you.”
The nurse nodded her head the best she could and then reached into a pocket and pulled out a set of keys. Susan snatched them away and shoved the nurse to the floor.
A blond female Mental Health Tech sitting at the desk grabbed the phone and her voice boomed over the intercom: “Doctor Strong! Doctor Strong to the Adult Unit!”
Sharyn knew there was no Dr. Strong on staff. “Doctor Strong” was the hospital’s code for a psychiatric emergency, usually signaling that a patient was acting out and was in need of being forcibly restrained. All available staff were supposed to rush to the designated location and help subdue the out-of-control patient or patients.
Susan grabbed the phone out of the blonde’s hand and began to pummel her with it, cracking it against the young woman’s head and smashing her nose. Sharyn menaced the floored charge nurse with the ball-point and said, “Stay down, goddammit.”
Then the world dropped out from under her. Sharyn had to lean against the desk to keep from falling. The sensation of falling overwhelmed her. She was falling out of phase, falling out of step, falling, soon to crash to the earth like a toppling tree. What’s happening to me?
Susan continued to batter the blonde with the bloodied phone. Sharyn wanted to tell her to stop before she killed the girl but her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth, stuck there by bitter bile as viscous as the fluids of extreme sexual excitation. And still she felt the falling. Falling into a dark void, their escape plans falling to ruin. Falling too was her fated calling, her response to the daemon’s irresistible summons. Now there would be only a calling to accounts. Now there would be hell to pay. The helling wasn’t supposed to be this way, was it? Her mind raced to catch up to events gone wrong, far-away events whose effects were undiminished by distance.
And now Sharyn did fall. She sank to the floor and dropped her ballpoint weapon. Susan stood over her, shouted at her: “Get up!”
Sharyn gave her a blank stare. Didn’t Susan feel it? Didn’t she know everything was going to hell, whirling down into the underworld, to Hades itself? It was then that Sharyn recognized the falling sensation for what it was.
When a god falls, it makes deep ripples in the world.
Sharyn felt those ripples acutely with her mania-sharpened senses, but Susan seemed oblivious to them, probably because she was in a bloodfrenzy—because she was normally a normal, not a nutjob.
“Get up, they’re coming!” Susan said as she kicked Sharyn’s thigh with the ball of her bare foot.
Sharyn stammered: “Yu-you killed your hu-husband …” As she said this, she knew she couldn’t absolve herself for her part in Dr. Knott’s death, but she hadn’t killed the man, she’d only imbibed his blood, tasted his sacrificial flesh.
Then Susan Knott did an astounding thing. She pointed a finger at Sharyn and said, “You’re crazy. I didn’t kill him. You did!”
It flashed through Sharyn’s mind that perhaps Susan did feel the falling and that now she perhaps realized that no god was going to save her from the consequences of her murderous deed. And she was setting Sharyn up for a fall of her own.
Sharyn’s outrage drove her to positive action. Her realization that she wasn’t the one falling had recalled and restored her equilibrium.
She got to her feet and said, “You’re not going anywhere, you crazy cunt.”
* * * *
Thorn’s relief that he hadn’t been killed by the girl with the ax was short-lived. His wounded shoulder knew no relief from the deep pain, but he could deal with that well enough, just as he now could accept the fact that he might have to shoot some of these crazed women if he wanted to survive. It was no longer an issue for moral debate. The thing that deeply troubled him now—confounded him, in fact—was the astounding thing that had come loping out of the woods and into Thorn’s unsettled reality.
Pan. The goat-man. The mythical god of the woodlands was there before Thorn’s eyes! Sharyn had been right about that too.
Thorn rolled onto his back and fumbled at the pistol in his belt. His hand was shaking so badly that he couldn’t free the gun from its denim snag. Though the heavy rain blurred his vision, he kept his eyes on the goat-man as it advanced on Deputy Rourke. He saw Rourke shoot down another woman and then turn his pistol on the terrifying man-beast of antiquity. The bullets seemed to have little or no effect on the monster. The creature was wounded and bleeding—hit twice in its massive chest—but did not slow down.
It flung out an arm and knocked Rourke down.
“Per-fess-or!” cried Mrs. Leatherwood. “The stump!”
Thorn gazed dumbly at the tree stump.
“Grind it down!” the old lady yelled. “Hurry for God’s sake!”
Thorn got to his feet and finally freed his .45 from his belt as the beast stalked closer to Mrs. Leatherwood. A skinny woman with long teats came at him with a baseball bat. He raised the gun and shot out her right kneecap and she went down screaming.
Thorn fired three shots into the beast’s back, diverting its attention from the old woman. It turned and snarled at Thorn with its hideously wide mouth. He fired another shot into its muscle-rippled belly. The thing threw its head back and howled with such volume that Thorn feared his eardrums would burst.
And then it charged him.
Rourke was up now, firing at the goat-man. With two guns shooting slugs point-blank into the beast’s belly and chest, finally the monster slowed and staggered a little.
A peregrine falcon swooped down out of the rain and would’ve sunk its talons into Thorn’s face if he hadn’t thrown up a forearm in time to block the attack. But now the bird was attached to his forearm and he tried to fling it off. On his third attempt, he did get free of the falcon but the pistol slipped from his grip and landed several feet away.
“Per-fess-or!” Mrs. Leatherwood shouted with a scolding inflection.
“Right,” Thorn said, more to himself than to her. He ran to the rumbling stump grinder, took a moment to familiarize himself with the controls, and then he put the thing in gear and guided it right up to the stump of the felled tree. The grinder’s spinning teeth began to chew up the stump, spitting out shreds of mulch.
The falcon attacked again, this time striking the back of Thorn’s neck and shoulder and digging in its talons. He shrugged his shoulders and did his best to bear up under the painful assault. He couldn’t have said when he’d begun to believe the old lady’s assertion that the beast could be driven away by the vengeful spirits trapped in the ghost tree, but the fact was, he did believe it now. He believed it with all his heart. And it was going to take more than a fucking falcon to stop him from grinding the tree stump to smithereens.
When the goat-man saw what Thorn was about, the beast came at him in a desperate, jerky lurch.
* * * *
He looked up to see the unnatural thing closing on Thorn and knew he had no time to retrieve his pistol. He went after the beast with the baseball bat, hoping to buy Thorn and himself a little time. And after that? Who knew?
* * * *
Liza pulled open the door and slid in behind the wheel of the police car. The engine was still running. Cops always left their squad cars running, didn’t they? Made sense, sure, but it must cost the taxpayers a pretty penny, gas prices being what they were nowadays.
Concentrate, old girl. Think sharp. Was that Wilbur’s voice in her head? More likely, it was the ghost of Liza’s younger self offering frisky counsel.
She put the car in gear, gripped the steering wheel as firmly as she could with her gnarled fingers, and then put her foot on the gas pedal. The car eased forward over the grassy ground at five miles per hour.
Through the rain-smeared windshield she could see the deputy going at the tall beast with a bat. Professor Thorn—God bless him!—was grinding the stump even though a bird of prey appeared to be attached to his back, angrily flapping its wings.
Liza lined up the car so that there was a straight path to the goat-footed monster and then she put the gas pedal to the floor and the car shot forward, finding little traction on the wet ground, then fishtailing, the front-end swinging to the right and taking her in the wrong direction.
“Lord, Liza,” she said, jerking her foot off the gas. “Be sharp!”
She turned the wheel until the beast was once again lined up in front of her, about nine yards away. She pressed down on the pedal with a gentler foot this time, and the car’s aim stayed true.
She evenly increased the gas feed, gaining speed as she kept the vehicle going straight ahead, the goat-man growing bigger in the glass screen of the windshield.
Then she stomped the gas pedal and braced for impact.
* * * *
Up close, the thing was repulsively grotesque. And it stank worse than a wet graveyard dog. It towered over Rourke and fixed him with molten eyes. It growled, then screamed like a panther as it reached for Rourke with big hairy hands.
Rourke swung the bat and thought he heard a knuckle crack, not that it mattered because the beast seized Rourke by the throat with one of its hands as it closed the other hand over his face, like a gigantic NBA player palming a basketball.
Blinded by the thing’s stinking hand, Rourke swung the bat onehandedly, to no effect. The monster lifted him off the ground, held him up so that their faces were inches apart and Rourke could smell its carrion breath, and then the mad beast began to crush his skull between those massive hands.
* * * *
Thorn glanced up from the diminishing stump and saw the creature pick up the deputy by the head. Sweet Jesus, the thing’s going to kill him and there’s nothing I can do. Nothing but to keep on grinding this damned stump and hope for a fucking miracle before it kills me too.
As he was about to avert his eyes from the killing of the cop, Thorn saw the police car barreling down on the beast. He couldn’t see who was behind the wheel, not that he much cared, because he was suddenly preoccupied with working out a fast physics problem in his mind, calculating force, mass and trajectory. Yes! With any luck the goat-man monster would—
And then it happened just the way he foresaw it.
The beast looked up a fraction of a second before the police car rammed into him. The front bumper clipped him just below his oddly bent knees, sweeping his hooves off the ground, and the car carried him forward and dumped him right on top of what was left of the stump—and right into the heavy spinning teeth of the stump grinder. The deputy fell beside the stump, dead or unconscious.
Thorn kept the grinder going full guns. The teeth chewed into the goat-man’s thick neck and shoulder, pinning him to the stump, grinding him into the vanishing wood.
The thing screamed and shook his head as if to deny what was happening to him. He thrashed his legs and kicked at the muddy ground with his hooves as the grinder ate into his torso and churned out a bloody mulch of flesh, wood and bone.
Thorn watched in sick horror as the goat-man’s head finally rolled free of the pulped upper body and fell to the ground, coming to rest against the unmoving deputy. The falcon relinquished its grip on Thorn’s back and fell dead at his feet.
An enormous death-throes erection sprouted from the monster’s furred loins. Thorn winced as the grinder’s spinning blade chewed up the hideous cock and spat out bloody threads of its remains.
And then the stump grinder’s motor died and an eerie silence hung over the land, blotting out the sound of falling rain.
Chapter Thirty-Six
* * *
Julie Archer halted when she saw what looked like a bunch of flaccid Halloween masks arrayed on a gory stump. She moved cautiously forward, sniffing the air and drinking in the musky scent of the dark one who had summoned her. No, these weren’t masks. They were the human faces these crushed skulls had worn.
She understood that these heads had been offered to him in some dark ceremony she could only imagine.
She stuck a fingertip into the goo oozing from one of the shattered heads and then tasted it. Saliva flooded her tongue. She smacked her lips hungrily and wished she’d been here to see the sacred ceremony.
A piercing scream echoed through the woods. In apparent response to the shrill sound, urine ran down Julie’s bare legs. All at once weak-kneed, she sat down on the wide stump. The screaming went on a few moments longer and then suddenly stopped.
The kitchen knife slipped from her fingers. An overwhelming emptiness opened a fathomless gulf inside her, and she began to sob. Then she was bawling like a small child whose mother won’t be coming ever again. Tears streamed down her dirty cheeks. She shivered, naked and cold even though the canopy of trees kept much of the rain off her.
Something whispered in the trees.
“Michael? Is that you? Oh, Michael, please help me. I’m sorry, so sorry …”
But no, it wasn’t her Heavenly guardian. He was done with her. It must have only been the wind.
Then she thought of Angela and of what she’d done to her. Was that me? Did I really do that?
The whispering came again, louder and insistent. More than one whisperer. A chorus of hissing voices. Angry voices.
She picked up the knife, stood up and fearfully looked around. She couldn’t see them but she knew they were there. Knew they wished her ill.
She jumped onto the pedestal-like stump and danced madly about, slashing the air with her blade.
“Come on then!” she shouted with hollow bravado. “You want a piece of me? Come and get it! Don’t you know who I am? I’m Julie Archer. I’m the queen of fucking horror!”
* * * *
His head throbbing with a deep ache, Rourke leaned against the cruiser and surveyed the bloody battlefield. Of the fallen women, only two remained alive, dazed and in need of immediate medical attention. What was left of the monster wasn’t easy to look at, never mind that it had nearly killed him.
Professor Thorn waved a hand at the beast’s lower legs and head and said, “We’ll want to make sure those don’t get away from us.”
“I don’t expect they’ll get up and run off,” Rourke said.
“No, I mean they’re too valuable to turn over to your forensic people and have them end up incinerated. This is an important scientific discovery and it must be treated accordingly.”
“Aren’t you gonna see to them women?” Mrs. Leatherwood asked the two men.
“Yes ma’am,” said Rourke. “I’ve already called for an ambulance. I’ve got a First Aid kit in the car but I don’
t know if they’ll let me get close enough to do anything for them.”
“I don’t think she can hear you,” Thorn reminded Rourke.
“Well I reckon she can read. I’m going to write her an official letter of commendation. You’ll get one too. If you two hadn’t done what you did, I’d be dead. Now get your shirt off and let’s have a look at your wounds. Those two crazies can wait.”
Unbuttoning his shirt, Thorn said, “I think a couple of their cohorts ran off when I started grinding up that hairy son of a bitch.”
“I doubt they’ll be doing any more hell-raising.”
While Rourke was getting the First Aid kit from the cruiser, the radio crackled with static and the dispatcher called for all available units to respond to a report of multiple homicides at the Trucking-A.
“Jesus,” he said. “Now what?” Was there another band of wild women on a murderous rampage? No, he didn’t think so. He didn’t want to think so. More likely, these same women had hit the Trucking-A before coming here. The truck-stop wasn’t that far from here. And the women had been wearing blood when they first came running out of the woods.
Rourke felt certain that it all ended with the killing of the goat-man. The monster’s evil influence was no more. All that remained was the messy cleanup. He would probably have nightmares for the rest of his life, but the flesh-and-blood horrors were over and done.
But there was one thing that worried him now. In the cave he’d had that mind-warping vision of the strange world from which the beast had come.
Were there other monsters there, waiting for the way to open again so that they might come shrieking into this world?
* * * *
Liza Leatherwood wiped her bifocals with the hem of her dress, put them on and looked down at the beast’s severed head.
“Humph. All my life I was afraid of you. ’Fraid you’d come back. Well, you did. And now look at you. Humph. Once upon a time you had your way, but you weren’t no match for this crop of mountain folk.”