Stefan broke the spell, turning toward the darkness ahead of them.
She followed his stare, and her stomach clenched.
A man was standing perhaps ten feet from them, his silhouette slightly darker than the night sky stretched out above them. Though darkness obscured his features and the height of the grass only allowed her to see him from the waist up, the outline in his hands clearly indicated he was holding a rifle. The man stood perfectly still, but with a robotic motion, his head slowly panned back and forth as he scanned the field.
When she looked again to Stefan, he had gotten to his knees, the machete in one hand, the large blade glistening in the rain, and the other flat against the ground for balance.
Do it, she thought. Do it.
Stefan stared at the man for several seconds, eyes rapidly blinking away rain as his chest rose and fell, the machete shaking horribly.
And just when she thought they might lay hidden in the grass forever, Stefan launched himself forward and to his feet, raising the blade high.
The man’s head turned and locked on him.
Stefan froze.
Alex scrambled to her feet as the man swung the rifle around, hitting Stefan in the side of the head with the butt.
As Stefan fell back and the machete flew from his grasp, the man turned toward Alex, but she was already punching the jagged piece of wood at him, driving it up and into this man who towered over her with every ounce of strength she possessed. And it felt as if she’d punched straight through him, puncturing him like a piñata.
It wasn’t until the momentum had caused her to fall forward and drop to one knee that she realized the man had fired into the air, perhaps reflexively. He staggered back, one hand holding the rifle now and the other pawing desperately at the shard of wood protruding from his bloody windpipe. He fired a second time then fell straight back, disappearing beneath the grass.
Another shadow appeared and headed straight for them.
Stefan regained his feet, retrieved the machete and screamed, “Go!”
Alex ran on, off-balance and awkwardly wading through the grass, the long blades slowing her, trying to trip her and drag her down.
She had just reached the trees when somewhere in the darkness behind her, Stefan cried for help.
The next thing Billy was aware of was agonizing pain. Flat on his back, pinned and unable to move, excruciating crushing pressure had been applied to his chest, abdomen and legs to the extent that he could barely breathe. Frenzied panic set in but only made it more difficult for him to draw air, so he struggled to concentrate on something else—anything—that might help keep him under some semblance of control. Although his vision was blurred with sweat and blood, he was able to make out his captors gathered round and looking down at him with grim faces, lips moving in unison.
“Wilt thou give thyself to him?”
He offered no response, and the crushing pressure in his chest increased. Blood and bile gurgled up into the back of his throat. Until now, terrifying as these hours had been, it all seemed wildly fantastic and not quite real. But this pain, this inability to move left no doubt. This was no dream, no hallucination, no performance laced with Method acting reality.
He was back in the stone church, and he was dying. They were killing him. Slowly.
Alex whirled back around as he called for her again, and she spotted him several yards away, staggering through the grass. Something was on his back. A child. God almighty, it was just a child. A little girl with long blond hair, small arms wrapped around his throat, legs hooked around his waist and her teeth sunk deep into his shoulder.
Stefan still held the machete in one hand, and was trying to reach back and pry her off with the other. But she was clamped on tight.
When she reached him, Alex grabbed the girl’s hair and yanked, wresting her small body free. Stefan dropped to his knees as the child was dislodged and fell to the ground several feet away. “It’s just a little girl,” Alex cried, “a child!”
“Kill it!” Stefan screamed.
The girl was on her feet quickly, feral eyes burning night.
“Stop,” Alex said, short of breath and hands out in front of her. “Don’t!”
Screaming for the others, the child rushed her, bloody teeth bared.
Stefan staggered between them, and with a single violent swing buried the machete in the side of the girl’s neck. With a nauseating thwack, it split her to the collarbone. As he let go, leaving the blade buried deep within her, the girl oddly made no sound at all. After another fitful step forward, she pitched into the dark and fell at Alex’s feet.
Lightning split the sky.
Stefan grabbed Alex’s hand, and together, they slipped into the forest.
With the next wave of pain, Billy’s eyes slid shut, and in the back of his mind he saw Jesse staring him down at the theater back on Cape Cod.
We’ve got the same life waiting for us.
No, he thought. Not even.
He thought of his family, how they’d never see him again, and how they’d never know what had happened. Unless Alex and Stefan made it, his death—all their deaths—would forever remain a mystery, relegated to some missing persons file along with countless others, they’d eventually become statistics and little else, a group of young people who got into a car one summer morning on Cape Cod, drove off headed for Maine, and vanished without a trace into thin air.
The chanting brought him back.
“Wilt thou give thyself to him?”
Four men in ceremonial black robes and hoods held a sedan chair, a small windowed cabin atop two long horizontal wooden poles, slowly carrying it up the aisle toward an ancient throne next to the altar. Markings similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics graced the sides of the enclosed structure, and the dark curtains that hung in the windows were drawn to conceal whatever sat inside.
Their god, Billy thought, carried to its temple.
From behind the curtains came a low growl.
The chanting grew louder then louder still.
“Wilt thou give thyself to him?”
Behind the curtains the demon sat in judgment, awaiting his decision.
Billy could smell it.
Chapter Ten
The townspeople have assembled in the stone church. Standing in rows and quietly chanting, clad in pilgrim garb from the 1600s—the men in linen shirts, black coats, black felt hats, breech pants to the knees, stockings and leather shoes, and the women in ankle-length petticoats and bodices, their hair up and tucked beneath white bonnets—they remind Alex of actors staging a recreation at a historical site. But she, of all people, knows better.
Nude, and on hands and knees in the aisle leading to the altar, Alex is shackled with heavy chains that cut into her flesh, weigh down her wrists and ankles and make movement difficult. She remembers, struggling as they ripped her clothes away, beat and shackled her. Bathed in blood, some hers, some not, she fights the weight of the chains and her own exhaustion, crawls forward toward the altar, sliding along the filthy floor in small increments.
Before the altar, on a slab of stone, lies Billy. A large wooden board has been placed atop him. It is covered with large rocks. Another pile of stones sits nearby, and two burly men hold a fresh block, ready to add it to the others once given the order.
The church blurs and tilts as Alex fights to retain consciousness.
“You’re killing him,” she says, or tries to. “You’re killing him.”
Near the altar stands a skeletal middle-aged man in dark robes. He stares at Billy with his black eyes, a smile pursing his thin lips.
Alton Boxer.
To his left is an ancient throne constructed of bone and human skin.
Alex cannot quite see who or what sits upon it, but something wet and scaled moves and slithers about its base. A tail, she thinks, watching as it slinks between two clawed feet planted firmly on the floor.
God help us.
As her mind fractures, she squints through the haz
e.
“Wilt thou give thyself to him?”
Billy manages to whisper something and the chanting ceases.
A woman comes forward, leans closer and turns her ear to Billy’s mouth in an attempt to better hear him. When he repeats his answer, he does so in a strained and garbled voice, blood from a gunshot wound in his throat gurgling free and dripping to the floor. But his words are unmistakable.
“Fuck you.”
His head lolls to the side, and Alex realizes he has seen her.
His expression of defiance turns to sorrow. He holds her gaze, hides there, tunnels into her soul to all the memories they share. Now…and forever.
A reptilian finger resting on the arm of the throne casually points, and the two men place the next stone on the pile.
Something breaks in Billy this time, and his head comes forward violently, as if he’s trying to sit up. Blood explodes from his mouth, nostrils and eyes, bursting forth in a spraying mist, and with a final gurgling groan, his body gives way beneath the weight.
As Alex is dragged forward by her chains and deposited before the throne, she looks up into the yellow eyes glaring at her from the unbearable face of Lithobolia, and knows she’s next.
“Billy’s dead.”
Her eyes opened and the nightmare receded, returning her to the forest.
Stefan sat nearby, beneath a large tree. Soiled with blood and soaked from the rain, he stared at the ground with a despair she had never before seen in him. “We don’t know that,” he said softly.
They had spent most of the night walking or running, constantly on the move, and when they hadn’t encountered anyone in hours and grew weary with exhaustion, they’d finally stopped beneath a cluster of trees. Alex remembered sitting and leaning against a tree, allowing her eyes to close for what she thought would just be a moment or two. But from the look of the ash-colored sky, she’d been asleep awhile longer than that.
“He’s dead,” she said again.
Stefan seemed too destroyed emotionally to argue. “Plans,” he said, absently rubbing his wounded shoulder. “All those plans we had, we…”
Alex got to her feet. The forest was quiet and still dripping with moisture, but the storm had passed and taken the rain with it. Every muscle in her body ached. “We better get going.”
“I killed a child,” he said, voice cracking. “I killed a child, I…”
“We need to keep moving until morning, just like Franco said.”
“It’s nearly dawn,” Stefan sighed. “Look.”
In the distance, through the trees, the sun was slowly peeking over the horizon, turning the far sky an ethereal blend of orange and red. She watched it awhile then looked around, trying to gain some sense of bearing, but the forest was vast and thick, and the light had not quite reached them yet.
“We’ve made it,” he said wearily.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. They’d done it, they were free.
A cracking sound echoed through the forest.
When you see the sun rise, that’s when you know you’ve made it.
Alex whirled about, and as more sounds of snapping twigs and restless movement shattered the silence, she looked skyward.
Not a moment before.
The treetops were just visible against the sparse beginnings of daylight.
“They’re above us,” she heard herself say.
They’re human, but the deeper into ritual they go…
The forest exploded into deafening cracks as tree branches split and snapped in one sudden wave, sounding as if the woods themselves were collapsing, coming down around them.
…the more powerful they get…the less human they become…
And from the trees came blurs—dark forms in period clothing—dropping from the sky, smashing tree limbs as they went, groans and growls mixed with the thudding impact as they hit the ground, falling all about them.
With a horrific scream, Alex was gone, snatched away and dragged back through the woods.
As the others crept closer, Stefan bowed his head and began to weep.
A gentle breeze drifted through the open bedroom windows, the white lace curtains fluttering, billowing deeper into the room then returning to rest as the wind chimes outside again came to life. Their delicate song should have relaxed her, but she was still too close to the nightmares. She remembered the horrible smell that filled her nostrils while yellow, fiery eyes gawked down at her, gliding roughly back and forth above her as the beast they belonged to slammed into her with boundless violence and depravity. She remembered being chained in that awful church, her breasts and stomach and thighs slick with blood as he demanded allegiance.
Wilt thou give thyself to him?
Old nightmares, she told herself, bad dreams.
The horrific memories retreated, and she felt warmth coming from the body next to her, wafting from his nude flesh to hers. Rolling from bed, she padded across the bedroom to a rocking chair in the corner. Her clothes lay across the seat. She stepped into a pair of panties then pulled on a bra.
“Is it morning?” Stefan asked, his speech still slurred from sleep.
“Yes.”
“I remember,” he told her.
She looked at him quizzically.
“You said I was crying in my sleep…weeping.” Stefan swung his feet around to the floor, sat up and rubbed his eyes. “I remember.”
“It woke me.” She put her sweatshirt on, dropping it down over her head and letting it fall loosely into place as she stepped in front of the free-standing antique mirror against the wall. She froze a moment, and then carefully fluffed her hair, spiking it with her fingers as best she could. “I was dreaming of the forest. In the dream we didn’t make it. They came out of the trees and got us.”
He remained on the edge of the bed, head in his hands. “I’m so…angry.”
Neither suspected they’d one day end up together, existing in this lonely old house with their memories and nightmares of that awful summer day. But here they were. “1983 was a long time ago, Stef, it’s 2001.”
“I’m almost forty years old,” he said.
Alex slipped her jeans on then slid the curtains open on the window facing the street. The sun had almost fully risen, ushering in a beautiful new day.
But beauty, as they had come to learn, really was only skin deep.
“We’re immortal,” she told him, the mantra swirling through her head.
“But there’s a catch.”
“With the devil there always is.”
“No passes, only trades.”
“One day. This day.”
Through the window, Alex saw the townspeople gathered outside near the street. They watched the house with impassive faces, ready to welcome the new members of their brood to the fold.
“They’re waiting for us,” she said.
Tracing the scars across his chest with his fingertip, Stefan nodded woefully and began to dress.
For a moment, Alex had allowed herself to forget. When she first came awake, she’d thought perhaps they really had made it out all those years ago, survived that hellish day and gone on to have a life together elsewhere, relegating all else to the realm of memory and shadow. But she knew the truth. They both did.
There could be no deliverance in the past, only in the certain carnage of the future. Their salvation, their very souls, depended on it.
And the clock was ticking.
Author’s Note
Catching Hell is, of course, entirely a work of fiction. It was, however, very loosely inspired by true events experienced by myself and others one summer in the early 1980s. Though the characters, several locations and many major plot points have been changed, altered or completely fictionalized, in reality, on that strange summer day so many years ago, those of us who were involved found ourselves in a bizarre New England town and unwittingly swept into a terrifying situation that in many ways remains as much of an enigma now as it was then. Though we weren’t looking for
trouble, we were young, often reckless, and in our own ways, as the saying goes, chasing a little hell. What we hadn’t banked on was actually catching it. See you on the road.
—Greg F. Gifune
Friday, April 13th, 2007
New England. Night.
About the Author
The son of teachers, Greg F. Gifune was educated in Boston and has lived in various places, including New York City and Peru. Called “One of the best writers of his generation” by both the Roswell Literary Review and author Brian Keene, and praised by masters like author Ed Gorman, Greg F. Gifune is the author of several novels and novellas, and two short story collections. His work has been published all over the world, has been translated into several languages, and has recently garnered interest from Hollywood. His work is consistently praised by critics and readers internationally, and his novel The Bleeding Season is considered by many to be a classic in the genre. For seven years he was Editor-in-Chief of the acclaimed fiction magazine The Edge: Tales of Suspense (1998-2004) and also served for a time as Associate Editor at Delirium Books. Greg lives in Massachusetts with his wife Carol, their dogs Dozer and Bella and a bevy of cats. For more information on Greg and his work visit his official website www.gregfgifune.com or stop by and see him on Facebook.
Doug and Laura thought they bought Galaxy Farm, but the old house is possessing them instead.
Dark Inspiration
© 2011 Russell James
Doug and Laura Locke are New Yorkers who need a fresh start, so they move to Galaxy Farm, an old thoroughbred stable in Tennessee. There Doug finds inspiration to write his epic novel and Laura renews her love of teaching. They also rediscover the love that first drew them together.
Catching Hell Page 8