Daddy squealed and gurgled and thrashed as the knife forced its way into his torso.
‘My name is Bill Reed. My name is Bill Reed—’
He yanked the knife free and a geyser of gore followed. The ceiling tore open and the beast roared above.
‘My name is Bill Reed! Bill Reed!’
The Yellow Man stepped from the corner, clapping and laughing as Bill turned back to Daddy’s body and thrust the knife into him again and again and—
—fell on top of Apoc Hill. In the front room of the house. In a pit of fire and death and terrible despair. At once, at once, as one—
Bill felt as though his head would burst at any moment as he was torn between one place and the next. His brother (Her brother! Not his, not his. Mary May, Mary May—) fell to the floor/red grass/dirt, clutching the gushing wound in his neck, eyes wide with shock.
‘You didn’t have to help him with Mum,’ said Bill. ‘You didn’t have to do that at all.’
My name is Bill Reed. I am Bill May Mary Reed!
‘What will they see in me, when they look?’ the fallen brother whispered. ‘Is my darkness well hidden, Bill? Will they see and know and judge?’
He wondered who Bill was, his name wasn’t Bill at all. Wasn’t anything like Bill. He was…she was…she wasssssssssss—
‘They deserved it! They all deserved it, if anyone did! You can’t deny that, you can’t!’
‘Bill?’
The beast roared, or was it laughing? The Yellow Man would know, but now all he saw was the beast and the blood and the flesh that tore, tore tore—
‘I had a choice, you see? I was warned; the Knot Man told me, but they knew I wouldn’t resist! The whole Hill knew! They’ve whispered and whispered to everyone in that house for so long, long, long—
Blood and flesh and hands where they shouldn’t be, oh no, no, no—
‘Bill, I’m scared.’
Bill turned. My name is Bill Reed. How could I?
‘Help me, Bill! They got me! Help me—’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Alice gasped for air as she jerked upright. Her arms flew up to protect her from the yellow surging toward her from the house, then she realised the world had jumped and she was in the back of Bill’s car.
‘Bill, I—’ her voice cut out as she turned to the side and vomited, a stream of brown sickness and yellow pollen ejecting itself from her.
When she was done, she flopped back, her breath ragged. She tried to think back to what had happened and saw herself tearing her mum apart. Tearing apart her lies. She knew now, deep and certain, that it hadn’t really been her mum, nor her dad. Not really. It was just monsters. Just mean, lying monsters. Sure, she’d believed the lie for a minute, but she wasn’t dumb. She was smart; her mum had always said that. No mean monsters were going to make her feel bad towards her mum or dad. She wouldn’t let them.
Okay, so what had happened to her? The yellow. She remembered the yellow rushing towards her, invading her, and then a feeling like she’d been pulled out of herself. Pulled out and plunged into freezing water and then…
…and then here.
‘Bill?’
She looked out the window for the first time and took in where she was: she was outside the house by Apoc Hill. Really here.
Had she been dead?
The thought suddenly struck Alice and she hugged her knees tight to herself, ready to cry, then bit her own tongue in anger. No tears! None. No more. They wouldn’t have them!
She heard a man scream.
‘Bill!’
Without fear for herself, she opened the car door and shuffled out, her legs wobbly like a newborn foal. She steadied herself and took a few breaths. As she raised her head, she saw them. The creatures. They covered Apoc Hill and they swayed, swayed, swayed like tall grass in the breeze, all looking as one toward the house with smiles on their faces. What had they done to Bill?
She turned her back on them and walked toward the house. She might only be small, and maybe they’d got the better of her more than once, but she wasn’t gonna let them scare her, or let them do anything bad to her friend. She entered the house and closed the monsters on the Hill outside.
‘Bill, where are you!’
She heard a cry again from upstairs. She forgot how weak her legs felt and ran up, two steps at a time. She found one of the doors in the corridor ajar, yellow pollen weaving out from inside.
‘Bill, I’m here—’
She ran into the yellow room. There was a woman on her knees on the floor, eyes black and fixed on Bill’s, who knelt in front of her, trembling, one hand upon her shoulder.
She saw the two tears in the room, the two people tears, and the beast that writhed beyond them.
‘Bill. I’m here, Bill.’
Alice kept the fear squashed and tight and ignored the strange, impossible people-tears. Ignored the creature. Instead she darted over to Bill and took his hand. His eyes were black and his mouth was twitching with unheard words.
‘Bill, it’s me, it’s Alice.’
Bill’s head jerked to the side and his eyes screwed closed; when he opened them again, they were normal. He looked to Alice as she crouched by his side, holding his hand, stroking the damp hair from his forehead. Alice could see he was trembling uncontrollably, she wondered what he’d seen. Wondered if it was worse than what she’d seen.
‘It’s okay if you want to be scared, Bill. I’ll be brave for us both.’
Bill’s jaw moved, he was able to speak on the third attempt, ‘You’re… You’re alive…’ Bill smiled. ‘You’re alive.’
He held her tight and she felt his tears on her neck.
‘We have to try and stop the monsters, Bill. Then we can win and everything will be okay and normal again.’ And I can make them pay for what they did to my mum and dad.
Bill reached up a hand to her face, touched her cheek.
‘Is that… it’s really you, isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘I think so. Bill… was I dead?’
‘Yeah. But it looks like you managed to shake it off.’ He smiled at her and she felt warmed.
Bill, shaky, stood, one hand on the wall to steady himself; Alice could see his legs were wobbly and liable to send him crashing back down to the floor. She turned to look at the two strange tears that hung in the centre of the two people with their eyes closed. She could see darkness through them. Not darkness like space, it was darker than that. Thicker. Space was empty black; this felt like it was made of stuff. She saw the creature that lived in the different dark, saw its giant shape and limbs. All the beaks and mouths. It made her feel scared in the pit of her stomach in the way she’d not been since she was about five and had to sleep curled under a thick blanket, every bit of her covered and tucked in tight no matter how hot it was, in case something in the night time dark reached out and touched a bit of her that stuck out into danger.
‘Is that the Devil?’ asked Alice, pointing at the enormous beast that writhed beyond the torn people.
‘I don’t know, Alice.’
‘Help… help me…’
Alice turned to see Mary looking up at them, her eyes were no longer black, they were the eyes of a terrified young woman. ‘Please help… before… before they come again… before…’
The beast in the void roared with a thousand different voices and Alice clung to Bill.
‘We should get her out of here,’ said Bill.
‘We should kill the monster.’
‘What can we do, Alice? What can we hope to do against awful things like that? We’re just people! Just too old or too young and that… that thing is…’
Alice placed a hand on his arm and smiled sadly, ‘It’s just a thing. We’re completely better and more than it. It’s nothing compared to us.’ Alice believed it completely. Bill looked surprised for a moment, then smiled.
Grunting, Bill cradled Mary in his arms and struggled up onto his feet. ‘It’s okay, Mary. It’s okay.’ He turned to the door to l
eave, Alice already there, when Mary constricted in his arms, gripping his shirt tight with one hand, eyes impossibly large and terrified. Alice turned to see what she was looking at, and saw the two tears in reality, the two people from which all of Hell seemed to be bursting through, were smiling and shuffling, step by step, towards them. Alice swallowed hard and reached out a hand to touch Bill.
‘Where are you going, Mary? Did your daddy say you could leave us?’
Mary didn’t reply or scream, she just trembled in Bill’s arms, her eyes unblinking.
‘Mary, they saw the dark in me. They saw it,’ said the other torn person.
Bill dropped Mary down so she leaned against him, and pointed his gun at the two approaching creatures. ‘Stay back, now! You’ve done all you’re going to do.’
Alice felt a surge of certainty, like she knew Bill was strong and brave and he wasn’t going to let no stupid demons do anything to them.
‘Who’re you to come into my house and take my daughter from us, hm?’ said one of the torn people.
‘You know, Bill, it was my sister who really started this whole game in the first place. This is all really her fault. Me and Dad didn’t get any warning, we just got whispered at. Whispered at and whispered at for years and years. She got told the truth and acted anyway.’
‘Tell it to someone who gives a damn.’ Bill fired at the brother’s head, it snapped back and he screamed high and long, like foxes at night outside your window but a hundred times worse. So bad and high and horrid was the cry that the bedroom window exploded outward.
‘You’re playing the game real well, Bill. Real well.’
‘Shoot the monsters, Bill! Shoot them!’ said Alice, heart beating and beating and racing on.
Bill fired at Mary’s father, once, twice, and the beast within the two roared in anger, charging towards the tear as the edges began to fold back in on themselves. Began to seal and make the two whole again.
The house started to shake and the beast shot an octopus-like limb through the closing gap that smashed against the wall, the wood splintering.
‘Bill!’ said Alice, ‘Let’s get away! Run!’
As Bill lifted Mary once more into his arms, Alice gave one last look into the room as the beast roared and thrashed and the torn people began to seal up. ‘Beat you, monster!’
The beast roared and Alice ran.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Bill felt older than he ever had, his whole body crying out for him just to stop and rest a damn second. Bill ignored it. As the house shook itself apart, he concentrated on holding on to Mary and following Alice outside. Had he done it? Was that really enough? Really all that was needed?
You’re playing the game real well, Bill. Real well.
Bill saw the smile on Mary’s dad’s face again as he said the words and it made him wonder what he meant. Why’d he seemed so happy?
‘Hurry up, Bill! It’s all crashing down!’ said Alice, bursting through the front door and out of the house.
‘I’m coming, I’m coming—’ Bill bashed the door aside with his hip and staggered out of the wounded house. Alice waved him on, and Bill didn’t stop until he was on the other side of the car; then he lurched down, placing Mary on the ground as gently as he could.
Bill brushed the hair from Mary’s face. ‘Are you okay?’
Mary looked up at him with shining-wide eyes, a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth briefly and she nodded, fingers teasing and teasing at nothing.
Bill knew the truth of that smile, of that nod; this woman was a hell of a long way from okay. Maybe she never had been. He’d seen her life, what she’d been though, what she’d done in retaliation. The pain, the fury, the… just the terrible everything. It had swamped him and he didn’t think he’d ever be able to shake it free entirely. He’d only experienced it for a few minutes, imagine a whole lifetime of that. A lifetime of evil before a righteous, violent explosion. No. No, no, no. Mary was never ever going to be anything as easy and pat as ‘okay’.
Bill turned to look at the house as it shook itself to pieces. The pollen had ceased bursting into the world as the torn people had closed and the yellow sky seemed to ripple in complaint.
‘I think the house is going to go away now, Bill,’ said Alice.
‘Yeah. It looks that way,’ Bill said and rested his hands on his aching knees to watch the show, Alice beside him. He looked at her and felt like holding her so tight that her head might pop. She was alive! She was actually alive! He realised, with sudden certainty, that he’d not really expected her to come back. He’d gone into that house knowing he had to try, but he’d not thought for one second, not really, that what he did would make one bit of difference. That the monsters, the Yellow Man, would actually give Alice back if he did as they wanted. But there she was, and it wasn’t a trick, he felt that in the pit of his stomach. Alice was alive. He’d walked into Hell and they’d given her back.
A roar, a crash, a cry. The house wasn’t just falling, it was like it was an animal that was self-harming, purposefully trying to tear itself limb from limb and stamp what was left into the dirt.
Before the top story went, Bill thought he saw a familiar yellow face in one of the windows. Black eyes, two horns, an easy, comfortable smile.
You’re playing the game real well, Bill. Real well.
‘What’s the matter, Bill? We did good, didn’t we? We won?’
Bill watched as the last of the house turned in on itself and finally there was nothing left but rubble and ash.
‘Bill? Didn’t we win?’
Bill turned to Alice and smiled a small smile, ‘It certainly looks that way.’
Bill lay back and looked at the sky as the yellow pollen began to pull apart and blue streaks started to shine through.
He wondered if his daughter was still up there somewhere.
He wondered if she was safe.
He wondered what would happen next.
EPILOGUE
The creatures in their thousands covered the Hill, the crimson grass curled around shoes, feet, hooves, and other things. Some of them had played this game before, none had ever won. But this time, things were different. They had learned infinite patience. The game was in motion and the deck was loaded.
‘They do not know.’
‘So stupid.’
‘Stupid.’
‘Ha!’
They watched as the house fell and the yellow sky began to pull apart and dissipate, like smoke blown by a fan.
The Yellow Man joined them and clapped his hands together in delight. ‘Oh, they have played the game so well, haven’t they?’ He sat and ran his yellow fingers through the cold, red grass.
‘The daughter has returned to Earth. She is almost here.’
‘Almost here.’
‘Almost here.’
The Yellow Man nodded and lay back, looking up at the sky with joy filling his many hearts. ‘Everything is as it should be. The Hill will crack.’
The creatures stamped and rattled and crowed.
‘The Hill will crack!’
‘We shall feast.’
‘The Beast will devour!’
‘We will rise!’
‘Rise!’
‘Yes,’ said the Yellow Man, ‘And all flesh shall bow before us, in the new world of screams and pain.’
End of Part One
***
~Become a Stranger~
Get Part 2: Apocalypse Hill Cracks FREE by signing up to the mailing list!
JUST CLICK HERE
By The Same Author
A Monstrous Place
The Identical Boy
The Increasingly Transparent Girl
Sixty-Six: A Strange Story
Tales From Between Box Set
Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book or telling your friends about it to help spread the word.
Thank you.
mrmatthewstott.com | Follow On Twitter | Official Facebook
Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book or telling your friends about it to help spread the word.
Thank you.
mrmatthewstott.com | Follow On Twitter | Official Facebook
Apocalypse Hill (Apoc Hill Miniseries Book 1) Page 14