by Peter Nealen
It was dark outside by the time we finished. Magnus still hadn’t come in, which had me worried. I knew he wasn’t an ordinary dog, but if he was still out there it told me that either he was busy with the skinnies in the woods, or he’d been hurt. But Ray insisted that we shouldn’t worry yet, so we let it go.
After another chorus of prayer, which Miller watched but did not join in, we made sure all the doors and windows were securely barred, then called it a night. But all of us had our doors cracked, and weapons close by our beds.
Screaming woke me up. I shot up in bed, scrabbling for my rifle, trying to get my bearings. Eryn was right behind me. She almost knocked her shotgun to the floor fumbling for it, but caught it before it hit the slate slabs.
The screaming was high and thin, and it wasn’t stopping. A fresh chill went up my spine. No human set of lungs should have been able to make that sound. It was going on too long.
It took a second to notice that the screaming wasn’t the only sound echoing through the house. It was just the loudest. There was banging, howling, yelling, and more of the hooting and gibbering coming from outside, along with Magnus’ barking. That last was a comforting sound; it meant the big dog was still alive, and still had plenty of fight left in him.
I got to my feet and headed for the door, just as it slammed open on its own, to pin itself against the wall. The hallway beyond was dark and empty; there was nothing there to have shoved the door open. I caught a sudden whiff of a smell like sulfur and burned blood.
I immediately started praying again, taking a hand off my Winchester to reach for the holy water flask. Whatever we’d chased out the night before seemed to be back.
I suddenly thought of the shadow I’d seen move behind Trudeau. Had that thing piggybacked back in with her? It was possible. But that could wait; right then we had to get to Father Ignacio and chase this thing off again.
As I stepped into the hallway, the extent of the activity became more evident. There was a crashing sound from the direction of the kitchen, and it sounded like all the cupboards were being opened and closed, over and over again, violently.
Something was shouting in the living room. It was gibberish, completely unintelligible, but unlike the last time, it was loud. It was still barely audible over the high-pitched screaming.
Father Ignacio’s door was rattling, as if he was trying to get out and something was holding the door closed. I took two long steps and reached it, slamming my shoulder against the door. The knob was icy cold.
It swung open under my assault, and I nearly knocked Father over. He had been yanking on the door prior to me slamming into it. He caught himself, clapped me on the shoulder without a word, and headed out toward the living room. He already had his stole on and his big crucifix in his hand.
Rolling Latin verses boomed out of his mouth as he stepped out into the living room, with Eryn, Frank, and me on his heels. The room was dark, but unlike the last time, the manifestation wasn’t invisible.
There was a towering, utterly black figure in the center of the room. It was amorphous, like the shadow of the column of smoke from a burning refinery. It shifted and swayed as the angry, hate-filled, wordless shouting continued.
Even though it didn’t have a clear shape, the thing seemed to turn toward us, and a sudden, even louder shout hit us like a storm front. We actually had to lean into the blast of wind that hit us with that roar of noise. Father was holding his crucifix up, and roaring right back.
Not for the first time, the silver crucifix seemed to gleam with a light of its own.
The thing shrank back from the holy symbol, but it didn’t shut up. The rest of the racket in the kitchen was continuing, cupboard doors slamming open and closed in unison, silverware flying back and forth across the room. I grabbed Father and pulled him back just in time, as a cloud of forks whizzed past to embed themselves in the far wall. If I hadn’t pulled him out of the way, they would have pierced his neck and face.
Father was leading a litany of exorcism now, a familiar one that every Hunter had to learn within the first few weeks of his or her training. We joined in, the familiar Latin refrain a comfort in the face of the unnatural, spectral power in the middle of the room.
None of us bothered to try to shoot it. This wasn’t something that was going to work on. This was even more of a spiritual battle than that thing in the Bed and Breakfast in Spokane had been.
It screamed at us again, a roaring cascade of hate so deep-seated that it hit us like a physical force. It nearly drove Father to his knees, and he gasped at the impact, but still held the crucifix high and continued the prayer, advancing one slow, struggling step at a time.
Another voice was suddenly raised in concert with us, from the other side of the apparition. Ray had come out of his room, bearing his own, smaller crucifix, and had heard, even over the unholy cacophony, where we were in the litany. Faced with a spiritual assault from two sides, with a last, spiteful shout that rattled the shutters and every door in the house, the thing suddenly seemed to plunge into the floor and disappear.
The outside noises faded away at the same time. All of the objects flying around the kitchen fell to the floor with a clatter and a crash. The cupboard doors hung half open, halted in mid-movement. Almost as one, we slumped, exhausted by the brief, but soul-searing, battle.
And Special Agent Trudeau started screaming.
Chapter 8
As exhausted as we were, we all whirled and went running for her door. She might be an insufferable thorn in our side, and she might not like us anymore than we liked her, but she was under Ray’s roof, and she was in trouble.
Getting through the door was more easily said than done, though. Since Ray had offered, she had locked it, and Ray had to go find a spare key. She might not appreciate someone else having the key, but she sounded like she was in hysterics in there, and we had to get through that door. I hated to think of the possibility that that thing in the living room had simply gone in after her when we thought we’d banished it.
Miller was wrenching on the doorknob, though it wasn’t doing any good. Trudeau was screaming at the top of her lungs, and then, without the screaming slackening a bit, several gunshots sounded from inside the room.
I grabbed Miller and yanked him away from the door. The log walls would do a decent job of stopping pistol rounds, but I couldn’t say the same for the door. We all spread out, staying out of the line of fire from the doorway.
Ray reappeared at the end of the hallway. “I can’t find the key!” he said. “I know exactly where it was supposed to be, and it’s not there!”
“Crap,” I said, looking at the door, that was rattling in its frame now. The shooting had stopped, though that probably only meant that Trudeau had run her sidearm to slide lock, and was too hysterical to reload. She was still screaming though, and there were a lot of other noises that sounded like a physical confrontation was going on in there. “We need a sledgehammer!”
“Coming right up!” Ray vanished again.
Not content to wait for Ray to return, Miller started trying to kick the door in, but that was a losing proposition, since he was barefoot and in his skivvies and t-shirt. He only tried it once, stumbling back and wincing, holding his bruised foot.
I had a sudden thought, and tried buttstroking the door open with my Winchester. The big lever-action was heavy enough that it might work. But I only succeeded in gouging the door with the ends of the steel buttplate.
Ray came huffing back, hefting a ten-pound sledge. I took it from him, stood just to one side of the door latch, and, as smoothly as I’d ever breached a door in the Marine Corps, swung the hammer to strike the door right below the latch.
The door splintered inward, and Miller bulled his way through, slamming the door against the far wall, his Glock in his hands.
Trudeau was sitting on the bed, in her shirt and not much else, tears streaming down her cheeks, her own sidearm held straight out in front of her, the slide locked back. She wa
s shaking like a leaf.
Whatever had been happening, it had ceased just as we’d busted in the door. There was nothing in the room except for Trudeau and the furniture. There were bullet holes in the ceiling and the top of the wall, over the door.
As soon as Miller started to get near the bed, Trudeau jerked and pointed the quavering pistol at his face. He backed up, holding his hands out to his sides, even though she physically couldn’t have shot him at that point. There weren’t any bullets left in the gun.
Her eyes were glazed as she looked around at all of us, and then she started shaking even more violently. Then she reached for the spare magazine on her nightstand, and started to shakily try to reload the gun.
I started forward at that, but fortunately, Miller seemed to see the danger in letting her have a loaded weapon again. He reached for the gun. “Easy, Karen, why don’t you let me have that? Just until you calm down.”
“Get away from me!” she snarled, pointing the still-useless weapon at him. She pointed it around at all of us. “None of you come near me!” she hissed. “I don’t know what kind of games you’re trying to play, but I’m not going to fall for them, do you hear me?!” Her voice had risen to a shriek. Whatever had happened in there, it had her seriously rattled. I didn’t even think that her hatred of religious people even had anything to do with this. This was sheer, unadulterated terror.
“We’re not playing any games,” Eryn insisted. “We tried to warn you about this stuff…”
But Trudeau shrieked with mocking, semi-hysterical laughter, cutting Eryn off. “And now it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it!” she demanded. “Get out! All of you! I’m done! I’m not putting up with this mumbo-jumbo anymore! I’m locking that door until morning and then I’m leaving, and I’m coming back with a task force to deal with you people properly!”
“No, you’re not,” Miller snapped, apparently about as done with Trudeau’s tantrum as she claimed she was with the entire situation. “Even if we could get out, you’re not in charge, and we already established that.”
She glared at all of us through her tears. “I said get out. If anyone sticks their damned head in here, I’ll blow it off!”
“And I’ll have to arrest you for murder shortly thereafter,” Miller retorted. “See sense, Karen!”
“Out!” she screamed.
I stepped up to Miller, getting treated to a good view of Trudeau’s pistol muzzle as I did so. Even knowing it was still unloaded, it wasn’t a comforting sight. “She’s not listening, Miller. Let’s go. Give her some space.”
Frowning, and without taking his eyes off her, Miller complied, backing away with me. The others had already left the room while she’d been focused on the two of us. I pulled the door shut as best I could, even though it wasn’t going to latch again, short of some major repairs.
In the hallway, Miller leaned back against the wall and ran a hand over his face, letting out a half-sigh, half-sob. “What the hell is going on?”
“Be careful using that name,” I warned him. “Especially with these sorts of things happening.”
He stared at me. “You’re telling me that whatever was making those noises…”
“Is likely demonic, yes,” I replied. “It’s not even slightly corporeal, which rules out most Otherworlders. And whatever it is, it’s extremely dangerous.” I took a deep breath. He might not believe me, but he needed to hear this. “Talking too much and too specifically about these things has an odd effect. The more interest you show in them, the more likely they are to return that interest. And trust me, you do not want that to happen. They’re interested in us enough as it is. And speaking certain names tends to…attract attention.”
He blanched. His eyes searched my face, as if he was searching for any thread to grasp to believe that I was delusional, or just lying. But he’d witnessed what had just happened, and while he wasn’t quite as rattled as Trudeau, he was on shaky ground even so.
He put a shaking hand to his forehead. “I saw some odd stuff when I was a cop,” he admitted. “Just about every cop does, eventually. But it was never anything that I couldn’t explain away. This?” He shuddered. “I keep trying, but I can’t think of an explanation for this. Stuff flying around the room…the noises coming from nowhere…”
“Welcome to our world,” I told him. “It ain’t pretty. But it’s real, and it’s dangerous, and that’s why we do what we do.” I looked up and around, suddenly realizing something. We were still gathered in the hallway, but someone was missing. “Where’s Charlie?”
We rushed to his door. It was unlocked, and I pushed through it, dreading what I might see.
Charlie was alive. At least, he was breathing. He was also apparently still asleep, though he was tossing and turning, and his eyes were rolling behind his eyelids.
I crossed myself. This wasn’t normal. There had been plenty of noise and commotion in the house, not to mention Trudeau’s gunshots. He shouldn’t have slept through that. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Charlie! Charlie, wake up!”
His eyes jerked open with a yell, and he stared at me blindly for a minute. He thrashed and squirmed, trying to get loose, so I bore down and held him still. He was making little mewling noises, as if he was trying to scream and couldn’t quite get the breath.
“Charlie, it’s me!” I told him. “It’s Jed! Snap out of it!”
He stopped struggling as the words sank in, and he stared at me uncomprehendingly for another few moments, then the glaze seemed to leave his eyes. But instead of saying anything, he started to weep.
“Charlie, what is it?” Eryn asked, at my elbow. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer at first. He tried to curl into a ball on his bed, shaking and crying, though he made no sound while the tears streamed down his cheeks.
That lasted for a couple of minutes, while we stared and crossed ourselves. Father Ignacio was standing at the foot of Charlie’s bed, whispering a prayer for protection. It was pretty apparent that Charlie had been under direct attack, just like Trudeau. But with Trudeau, I kind of understood it; she was a non-believer. She didn’t have the defense mechanisms that we did. Charlie was one of us.
But it was nagging at me, and not for the first time, looking down at the sobbing wreck who had once been a boisterous, obnoxiously cheerful jokester of a Hunter, that Charlie hadn’t been the same since Storr’s Hole. And I thought I was starting to understand just how deeply wounded the other man had been.
Slowly, the shaking subsided, and Charlie sat up. He waved me away, and sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, leaning on his knees, his head bowed. Finally, taking a deep, shuddering breath, he looked up at us. His eyes were red-rimmed and haunted.
“I’m all right,” he said hoarsely. “I’m all right.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “That was rough.”
“What happened?” I asked. “You slept through quite the commotion.”
“I was in a fight,” he said frankly. “Whatever was out there, was also in here.” He tapped his temple with a finger. “I fought, but if we’re being honest, if you hadn’t busted in when you did, I don’t know if I would have woken up at all.” His stare got far away. “I was losing.”
“Can you tell us about it?” Eryn asked gently.
He shook his head with a shudder. “That would mean thinking about what I saw,” he answered. That same sense of dread that I’d seen on his face before was in his voice. “I don’t think I can do that. I’m afraid…I’m afraid it would invite that thing back, if I thought about it.”
“We can’t help if you don’t tell us how we can,” I pointed out.
He looked up at me. He was mostly composed, but the look I saw in his eyes gave me a chill. I realized just how little I really wanted to hear about what he’d just gone through, what had given him that look. “Just pray for me,” he said quietly. “The Walker…it did something to me. I don’t know what, but it’s like there’s a hole in my mind, now
. And that thing found it.” He shuddered again, looking down at the floor. The shudder turned to trembling, until he was shaking like a leaf. “You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t ever want to know what it’s like.”
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m scared to close my eyes again. I’m afraid that if I do, it’s going to come back.”
“I’ll stay with you, Charlie,” Father Ignacio said. “I think I can help you mount a more effective defense, at least for the rest of the night.” Charlie just nodded.
I squeezed Charlie’s shoulder. “We’re here, man, okay?” I told him. “And the Captain’s nearby, too. He told me he would be. You’ve just got to ask for his help, remember?” He nodded jerkily.
Frank and Kolya clapped him on the back, and Eryn gave him a hug. Ray gripped his shoulder, hard. Then we left the room, leaving him to get some equilibrium.
For a moment, as I paused in the doorway, I thought I saw something close to panic in his eyes. I recognized it for what it was; even with Father Ignacio there, Charlie didn’t want to be alone. He wanted to be surrounded by as many people as possible. The dark was truly fearful to him now, it really did hide terrors that he didn’t want to have to face, not alone. But Father Ignacio was with him, and so the rest of us retired to the living room. Kolya started a small fire in the fireplace, just for some light.
I knew a few Hunters who never slept with the lights off. I expected that Charlie had just joined their number. I crossed myself and breathed a brief prayer that God would look after him. Charlie had been hard to take sometimes, before. He had been loud and brash, and given to obnoxious jokes. He’d ridden Frank hard at first, until the big Nez Perce had thrown his hassle back in his face. It had been said that Charlie had been after the title of most outrageous Hunter in the Order, and it hadn’t been a stretch to grant him that title. But now, seeing the haunted, fear-riddled husk of the man that was left hurt.