by Dan Dillard
***
At the opposite end of the tunnel, beyond the buckets of dirt Loretta had dropped, just this side of the first lift, was Big Jacques. He was fully realized. He was closer to hell than he ever hoped to be, but something had to be done.
“You go back where you come from, devils,” he shouted. His powerful voice bellowed and thundered in the tunnel. “Go on back down there and take that woman with you.”
“We are back where we came from, slave. And now you are where you belong,” they said in unison, the pitches of their voices combining in evil triads of song.
“You don’t belong here. No you don’t,” Jacques said as he walked towards them. He shifted his look from one to the next. The beasts loomed next to the drained carcass of Loretta Gates, next to the hole they had crawled out of. “You don’t belong here.”
Jacques began to chant in his thick accent. He held his arms wide and walked toward them with no fear.
“I hunt you amongst men, animals, birds and from each living being. To the forests, to the ocean, to the swamps. Where the sun shine down and where it cannot. Where no man walk, no animal wades, no bird flies. If you cross me, you will burn on the rays of the sun. I will drown you in the morning dew, I will feed you bewitched bread. I order you be gone!”
Pain laughed deep in its belly. Despair leaped in the air and dug its claws into the stone above them. Fear walked steadily and directly toward Jacques.
“Ghost man, you have no power on this earth,” Fear said. “You are just a memory.”
The three creatures attacked from three different directions, ripping at Jacques with their claws and teeth. They tore his limbs free from their sockets and twisted him into pieces as easily as if he was made of straw and paper. One by one, they dropped the bits down in the hole next to Loretta’s body.
“Enjoy your new home. It is our home. Now we are brothers. Soon we shall all be brothers,” Despair said.
With one swift kick, he knocked Loretta’s body into the hole, she fell as doll would, her body twisting and writhing as it went down and down and down. Shrieks of joy welcomed her and as she awoke to live her afterlife inside the black heart of the inferno, she began to scream.
The trio walked down the tunnel, then climbed up the first lift as nimble as monkeys. The town of Smithville waited above them, the world beyond. Their presence was already being felt, no longer an underlying odor or a feeling of unease, but mayhem brewing from the epicenter of that hole and spiraling outward like the damaging rain bands of a hurricane.
Several blocks away, Sheila Pendleton was choking on the apathetic waters of the Intracoastal. Her feet and legs had fought the current until she could walk no more and she was simply washed away. Her last rational thoughts were of her daughter and granddaughter. It would be several hours before she washed up on shore almost eleven miles from Smithville with her purse wrapped around her neck. Identifying her body was easy.
The phone call from the police was ten minutes too late to catch Robyn at home. She was out running a few errands before the reunion. Nowhere on Sheila’s person was Robyn’s cell phone number.
The police tried to reach Kelly who was also unavailable, away from her desk, gawking with other onlookers at a bloody three car pileup in front of the motel…and it was only 4:00 pm.
Pain was there, soaking in all the suffering like a sponge. Its skin glowed and its muscles felt strong and able to flex to their full potential for the first time in centuries. It licked its lips with a forked tongue before moving along to the next delicious site.