Catching Hell

by Greg F. Gifune

  Thunder exploded overhead, and the downpour intensified.

  The station wagon now within reach, Tory placed a hand against the side panel and peered through the open windows.

  “What do they want?” Like a zoo animal walking its cage, Stefan strode back and forth in a short space. “What do they want?”

  Tory backed away from the car, the color drained from his face. “Run.”

  Alex traced his stare to the station wagon. She began to scream.

  And then Billy and Stefan saw it too.

  The interior of the car was smeared and spattered with blood.

  Chapter Seven

  By the time Billy realized the man in overalls had reached behind him and grabbed hold of something on the seat of the tow truck, it was too late. The man’s hand was already swinging, coming down across the top of Billy’s forearm in an arcing motion, and though he’d seen it clearly, it took a few seconds to register that the object in the man’s hand was a rusty hunting knife. He felt no pain, only pressure followed by a burning sensation as he threw an elbow into the man’s face. There was a sickening cracking sound, like the snap of a dried twig, and the man cried out, hands clutching his shattered nose. Not far behind him, Billy heard Alex scream, and other voices laced with urgency. He grabbed the back of the man’s head with both hands, yanked it down so he was doubled-over, and thrust a knee up into his face. With a grunt, the man collapsed at Billy’s feet, the knife falling from his grasp and bouncing away.

  A fast-growing pool of blood leaked from beneath the man, seeping into and mixing with the dirt and rain to form a horrible maroon sludge.

  “Jesus Christ!” Stefan, still unsure of what to do, jerked his head back and forth between Billy and the townspeople. “Did you kill him?”

  Adrenaline pumping, Billy crouched down and grabbed the weapon, noticing that the wound on his forearm, a thin gash halfway up his arm, had just then begun to bleed. “Motherfucker cut me.”

  Alex moved toward him then seemed to change her mind and turned back, addressing the townspeople. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you doing this? What did we do to you? What do you want?”

  Silent and motionless, the townspeople watched them.

  “Answer me! What do you want? What the fuck do you want?”

  Billy caught Stefan’s eyes and cocked his head toward Alex, signaling him to go to her. He did, putting his arms around her, and though she struggled at first, she eventually calmed enough to understand he was trying to help her.

  “Why won’t they answer me?” she asked, spitting the words. “Why won’t they answer me?”

  “We gotta run for it.” Tory straightened his cowboy hat and kicked off his flip-flops. “We gotta get to the car.”

  “There’s too many of them.” Billy motioned toward the Fairlane. A group of people now surrounded it. “But this truck runs.”

  Straddling the man in the dirt, Tory checked the ignition. “No keys.”

  “Shit.” Billy knelt down. “Help me check his pockets.”

  Another thunderclap sounded, letting loose an even harder rain.

  “Billy.” With an arm still wrapped around Alex’s shoulder, Stefan stepped back, pulling her with him and nearly tripping in the process. “Billy, they’re coming.”

  Even before he looked up and saw the townspeople advancing through the rain, slowly at first and then faster, wave after wave surging toward them, many of them armed with various weapons, Billy knew there wouldn’t be enough time to do anything but run. It was their only chance. He looked to the trees beyond the church. “There’s an opening,” he said. “There. Stay together and don’t stop for anything. Anything, you hear me?” He rose to his feet, tucked the knife in his belt and drew a deep breath. “Go!”

  They broke away from the truck, darted across the street and sprinted for the church, Billy in the lead, Tory close behind and Stefan and Alex at the rear but running hard.

  The townspeople followed.

  Blinking away rain, Billy’s boots splashed puddles as he crossed onto the church property and ran for the tree line. “Make it!” he called to the others, glancing behind him to make sure they were all still with him. “Make it!”

  But in the split-second his head was turned, he didn’t see the group of townspeople emerge from behind the church and run into their path, effectively blocking their escape through the forest.

  “Bro, in front of you!” Tory called.

  Led by a man carrying a hand scythe, it’s curved blade raised high, six men, two women and a boy no more than eight or nine closed in on them.

  Without slowing his stride, Billy pulled the knife from his belt and screamed, “Run right through them!”

  With a scream somewhere between battle cry and terror, Tory leapt forward into the air, his bare foot colliding with the middle of one man’s chest with such force it sent him hurdling backward to the ground. As Tory landed, two other men converged on him. Something grabbed his arm, yanked it violently as unseen fingers gripped his throat, scratched his face and tugged at his body. Arms flailing, he felt his fist connect with something solid and then he was free and running again. “Go!” he called to Stefan and Alex, who had already moved past the attackers and were nearly to the forest. “Go!”

  Someone grabbed him from behind. Tory turned and awkwardly threw a punch, but now others had joined the fray and were converging on him at once, their hands clamping onto him from every angle, clawing and pulling him in various directions. Absorbed into their mass, he fell with a shriek of terror and agony, his final words pleas for mercy as he vanished in a sea of thrashing arms, stomping legs, swinging weapons and a spray of blood.

  Billy ran directly for the man with the hand scythe. With a fierce slashing motion, he swung the blade between them, catching the man’s face. The man fell to his knees in shock, dropped the scythe and fumbled at the gaping wound.

  Before Billy could think about what he’d done, a second man came from behind him. He shifted his weight to his front foot and launched the other into the midsection of the man, sending him vaulting back just as a woman appeared, lunging at him and scratching at his eyes with a maniacal screech.

  With a downward stroke, Billy buried the knife in her forehead. The blade connected with skull and snapped, breaking off near the handle as the woman fell away in a mist of rain and crimson.

  Just before he darted into the woods, Billy saw the other townspeople gathered round what remained of Tory. They continued to attack him with frenzied glee as more of their brethren ran through the streets and converged on the bloody scene.

  Billy sprinted for the woods. Trying his best to avoid smashing headlong into the trees, behind him he could still hear the savage cries of the townspeople and the gut-wrenching sound of Tory being ripped limb from limb, his cracking bones and splitting flesh coupled with nearly orgasmic moans reverberating through the forest.

  He couldn’t be certain how far he’d run, but Billy continued on through the forest until his legs gave way and he tumbled down a slope to the base of a small stream. Bouncing along the rugged and uneven terrain, he rolled through the fall and came up on all fours, rainwater and remnants of blood bathing his face.

  He looked behind him, listened.

  Silence.

  Something moved past the edge of his peripheral vision.

  Stefan stumbled toward him from the other side of the stream. His pale face shown through the rain as he splashed across the shallow water then collapsed next to him. Behind him Alex materialized, chest heaving. Soaked, exhausted and in shock, the trio sat quietly in the forest, rain cutting through the trees all around them.

  “They got Tory,” Billy said. “He’s dead.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Alex sobbed. “Why is this happening? How can this be happening?”

  Billy headed to the stream, fell to his knees and splashed water on the cut along his forearm, doing his best to cleanse it. Though the wound was long but not terribly deep, it continued
to seep blood. Flashes of their pursuers attacking with hatchets, baseball bats, pitchforks, crowbars and anything else they’d managed to arm themselves with blinked across his mind’s eye. “I killed one of them,” he mumbled, “a woman. I was looking right in her eyes.”

  The knife blade clanging against skull echoed in memory.

  “Tory’s dead?” Stefan shook his head in disbelief. “He’s really dead, you’re sure?”

  “I saw him go down. They killed him, they…”

  “Why would they do this?”

  “He saved my ass back there. If he hadn’t called out and warned me, the ones who came at us from behind the church would’ve gotten me.”

  “You killed someone?” Stefan asked, as if it had only then registered.

  Alex’s sobbing turned suddenly to anger. “Why would they attack us like that? Why are they doing this? Why!”

  “Keep your voice down, they’re probably still on our asses.” Billy struggled to his feet and did his best to force the emotion and fear away. “Let’s go, get up. We’ve got to keep moving.”

  They followed the stream awhile, running when they had the wind and walking when they grew too tired. Although they neither saw nor heard any sign of the townspeople, they continued on without stopping for close to half an hour.

  Just when it seemed the forest was endless, they reached a break in the trees and found themselves standing before an enormous field of tall, untamed grass, the waist-high blades swaying gracefully in the rain and wind. Perhaps two hundred yards away, an old and obviously abandoned barn stood rotting in the middle of the field. Beyond it and the far side of the field was more forest.

  With jagged spears of lightning stabbing the ever-darkening sky and thunder throttling the earth, they ran across the field. Into the open. Into the rain. Wading through the grass, their legs grew weaker, their chests burned and they were barely able to breathe. But still, they forced themselves forward until they’d reached the barn.

  The building, long deserted, was rotted and littered with numerous wounds in the roof and walls. Rain trickled through the openings, running in constant currents through the cracks and spattering the dirt floor to form small pockets of puddles throughout.

  Billy and the others scrambled through an opening where the main door, a large sliding panel, had once stood. It now hung to the side and had nearly broken free of the building altogether. They collapsed to the ground in unison, their labored breath audible above the sounds of the mounting storm, pounding rain and constant trickling and dripping.

  After a moment, Billy regained his feet and inspected their surroundings. Although the barn hadn’t been used in some time, it retained something of a livestock and manure smell, and remnants of hay and old bags of feed lay scattered about the dirt floor and in the corners of a few dilapidated stalls. He looked next to the high roof, squinting as raindrops splashed his face. Glimpses of the darkening sky shown through the multiple fractures, but otherwise it looked intact and would provide sufficient sanctuary, albeit temporarily. He moved to the remains of the door. Outside, the field they’d crossed was empty. If the townspeople had followed them, they were either hidden in the forest or crawling unseen through the tall grass.

  “Are they coming?” Alex asked breathlessly.

  Billy ran to the opposite wall, found a hole and checked the hundred or so yards of field in the other direction. It too was empty, the forest beyond it dark and blurred by rain. “I don’t see them anywhere, but we can’t stay here long, there’s no way to defend or secure this place. Too many breaks in the walls and roof, too many ways in, too many directions to keep an eye on. Hurry up and catch your breath.”

  Stefan pulled his loafers off and rubbed his bare feet. Hardly conducive to running, the shoes had already caused the beginnings of several blisters. “And where, exactly, do you suggest we go?”

  “There must be something beyond those woods.”

  “Right. More woods.”

  “Sooner or later they’ve got to come out somewhere.”

  “I don’t care how far we have to go,” Alex said, “just so long as we stay ahead of those crazy freaks.”

  Suddenly, from a dark corner of the barn came a deep but quiet male voice, barely discernable over the relentless rain and occasional thunder.

  “They’re not crazy,” the voice told them. “They’re damned.”

  Chapter Eight

  Like victims in a funhouse, they jumped back and scrambled in various directions. Alex let out a muffled scream and skidded to her knees several feet away, backing into a dark corner of her own, while Stefan, leaving his shoes behind, darted toward an opening in one wall of the barn, stopping just shy of squeezing himself through to the outside. Billy had initially backed up a few steps, but now moved forward, closer to the voice, until the shadows parted to reveal its source.

  Huddled in the corner, a man watched them from the darkness. About forty or so, his badly receded dark hair was cut short and close to the scalp, which along with his face and neck, was bathed in rainwater that trickled through a gash in the roof above him. His brown eyes were fatigued, his olive skin lined and in need of a shave. He looked as if he’d been sleeping for a very long time, though not particularly well. His hands rested on a sawed-off shotgun lying across his lap, and leaning in the corner over his right shoulder was a machete, its blade glistening and wet. “I won’t hurt you,” he said, “unless you force me to.”

  “Who are you?”

  The man ran a hand across his head and wiped the water away, but with the continuous flow from above, it was an exercise in futility. He didn’t seem to mind. “Name’s Eddie Franco.”

  “The station wagon we saw back in town, was that yours?”

  “No.” He winced. “It belonged to a family, a young couple with two kids. They got caught here same as you. The townspeople slaughtered them. The rage takes over early on and they don’t think clearly until some blood’s been shed.”

  “They killed our friend too,” Stefan told him.

  “Are you one of them?” Alex asked in a tiny voice.

  “Not by choice.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We need to keep moving,” Billy reminded.

  “You’re safe for now.”

  “Safe?” Alex glared at him, eyes moist. “I won’t ever feel safe again.”

  “They won’t attack,” he said. “Not right away. The rage ends in most of them once there’s a few kills. By now they’re thinking rationally again, understanding what’s at stake. From here it’s all about the ritual.”

  “Which is?” Billy asked.

  “Did you find the library in town?”

  “Yes. We saw the books on Boxer and Lithobolia.”

  He bowed his head, better concealing it in shadow.

  Stefan stepped closer. “Please tell us what’s going on. What have we stumbled into?”

  “I came here eighteen years ago, summer of ’65. My wife and I were on our way up north, got caught in a storm and wound up here. Lauren was her name.” He looked to the dirt floor. “They killed her not far from here.”

  With his silence, only the sound of rain running through fissures in the old barn remained.

  “You must’ve been right around our age back then,” Alex said.

  “I was the same age I am now. Been sleeping is all. Or whatever it is we do when everything goes dark.”

  “This guy’s a loon.” Billy returned to the far wall to check the field. “Still no sign of them out there, let’s move.”

  “There’s nowhere to go.”

  “How can this be?” Stefan asked, a frantic edge returned to his voice. “We tried every possible road and—”

  “They all led you right back to Boxer Hills.” Franco smiled a little, as if mistakenly. “To understand, you have to know the history. They always lead the trapped to the library, didn’t you read the books?”

  “We read the basics about Alton Boxer and town history, and we saw his portra
it hanging in the library,” Alex explained, doing her best to recall as much as she could from the book. “He was a defrocked minister who came here, established this town with his followers in the 1690s after witnessing strange happenings in a New Hampshire town where stones and rocks fell from the sky. It was blamed on Lithobolia. Boxer claimed he’d seen the entity firsthand, made contact with it and understood the truth of it all, and from then on worshiped him. He preached immortality through submission to sin and—”

  “While the Puritans in Salem were hanging so-called witches on the testimony of hysterical little girls,” Franco interrupted, “Boxer was controlling everything and everyone in this village through the use of real demonic forces, promising immortality and endless hedonistic pleasure. But what he didn’t tell the townspeople was that the immortality they were chasing came with a terrible price. There was a catch.” Raindrops blinked free of his eyes. “With the Devil there always is.”

  “I don’t believe in the Devil,” Stefan said sternly.

  “He doesn’t care what you believe.”

  “Satan and eternal damnation, it’s all a bedtime story told to children to frighten and intimidate them into behaving themselves. It’s religious propaganda and brainwashing, nothing more.”

  Franco stroked the shotgun. “You have to understand who he really is, what he really is. It’s only in later Christian writings that Lucifer’s described as falling from Heaven and having a war with God. The early believers described Lucifer as a prosecutor, the angel who made the case against Man when we broke God’s laws. Lucifer had no problem with God. It was Man he considered weak and useless for anything other than slaves. Angels were superior beings, why should they bow down before God’s newest creation if they weren’t worthy of that respect? Lucifer didn’t hate God. He hated us.”

  “What was the catch?” Billy asked. “You said there was a catch.”

  “Everyone has their time, their day to die. If you don’t die, someone else has to. The only way Lithobolia would spare Boxer’s soul and the souls of the townspeople, thereby giving them immortality, was if someone else’s soul was handed over to him in their place. Someone had to die for them to live. So they began ritualistic murder, incorporating it into their ceremonies and masses to Lithobolia. Outsiders, people passing through, whoever they could get a hold of were slaughtered during their rituals to save themselves.” Franco shifted his position a bit, turning toward a grumble of thunder in the distance. “It went on like that for years, until things started to change. The world was changing, modernizing. It got harder to hide who they were and what they were up to. Things were less rural, and when people disappeared, others looked for them. There were fewer victims available, people they could chance killing. And once you run out of food, you eat your own. Newborn children, they were the easiest.”