Ahead, the corridor ended at a door. He prayed that it was not locked, that it led outside, but then he saw that he didn’t have to pray. There was a window in the metal, and through the window he saw the deep purplish orange of twilight.
He’d made it.
He reached the door, turned the handle, and it opened.
He stopped and looked behind him, pointing his revolver. He had no qualms about shooting the women. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he did not have enough bullets for all of them.
But there weren’t that many. He saw only three women running after him.
Hadn’t there been more?
Yes.
They grabbed him from behind. They’d split up, some chasing after him, the others sneaking around the outside of the building to trap him, and he’d been so fucking stupid that he hadn’t thought ahead, he’d walked right into it.
He deserved to be caught, he thought.
But as the first fingernails sliced into his flesh, as the broken wine bottle cut open his throat, he thought: no, he didn’t.
They stood next to the fence, looking into the woods.
The woods.
Even the word seemed ominous, and Dion suddenly wished that they had not come out here alone, that they had brought Kevin and Vella with them.
Or, better still, that they had waited until morning.
For it was night now. The sun had set quickly, brightening an already extant moon, and the woods were dark, the trees silhouettes and shadows, the hills black background. Behind them, on the other side of the high hills walling in the opposite edge of the valley, the world was yellow and orange, a prolonged sunset fading slowly into the Pacific. But here there was only gloom and the pale bluish light of the moon.
He was afraid of the woods, and it had nothing to do with Penelope or her mothers or anything that he had seen or heard or imagined. It was an instinctive reaction to the sight before him, a physical sensation in response to something within the trees that seemed to be calling to him on some subliminal level.
Something within the trees.
He did think there was something within the trees, although he was not sure where, why, or how he had come up with that idea. And it was calling to him. He was afraid of it, but at the same time he felt attracted to it, pulled toward it.
God, he wished he could have a drink right now.
“Dion?”
He looked toward Penelope. She was pale, and he knew it wasn’t only the light of the moon that made her appear that way. “Yeah?” he said.
He expected her to say something serious and profound, something that would articulate and explain the complex conflicting emotions he was feeling—that they were both feeling—but when she spoke, her words were disappointingly, disconcertingly mundane: “We should have brought flashlights.”
He found himself nodding. “Yeah,” he said. “We should’ve.”
They crawled under the fence without speaking—he holding up the barbed wire so she could sneak beneath it—and he grabbed her hand as they started to walk into the woods. Penelope’s hand was warm to his touch, her palm sweaty, and he liked that. Her fear excited him somehow, and he felt a stirring in his crotch.
He tried not to think about his feelings, tried not to acknowledge them, but they were as frightening to him as the woods around them. He should tell Penelope, talk to her, let her know that something was wrong not just with this place but with him, but he said nothing, held her hand, continued walking.
The world was silent. Car noises, city noises, did not reach here, did not penetrate, and the woods generated no sounds of their own: no crickets, no birds, no animals. There was only their own breathing, the snap-crackle-pop of their tennis shoes on twigs and gravel. There was something familiar about this lack of sound, Dion thought, something he couldn’t quite place.
Penelope’s hand stiffened in his. She stopped walking, and he turned to look at her. The woods were dark, the ceiling of trees effectively blocking out the over bright moon. Here and there, individual shafts of moonlight illuminated small sections of ground, but Penelope was in shadow, her pale face barely visible in the murk. “What?” he asked.
“Maybe we should go back.”
“I thought you wanted to—”
“I’m afraid.”
He pulled her close, put his arms around her. He knew that she could feel his erection, and he pressed forward, pushing it against her.
“There’s nothing out here,” he said. He didn’t believe it and didn’t know why he had said it, but he repeated it again. “There’s nothing here but us.”
“I’m afraid,” she said again.
He wished they’d brought some wine with them. A flagon of that stuff in the vat. A few swallows of that and she wouldn’t be afraid anymore.
Hell, a few swallows of that and she’d be out of her panties and on her fucking hands and knees, begging for it He pushed away from her, took a deep breath. “Maybe we should go back,”
he said.
“You feel it too.”
He nodded, then realized that she couldn’t see his face. “Yeah,” he admitted.
She reached for him, took his hand again. “Let’s—” she began, then sucked in her breath, squeezed his hand. “Look,” she said.
“What?”
“Over there.” She pulled him to the left, and he saw for the first time what looked like a clearing between the trunks of the trees. A meadow.
He didn’t want to go to that meadow, wanted instead to turn back, return the way they’d come, but he allowed himself to be pulled along, and they passed between the trees, reached the edge of the clearing, and stopped.
“Oh, my God,” Penelope said. She was breathing heavily, in hiccuping spurts. “Oh, my God.”
Dion felt suddenly cold.
The clearing was littered with shattered wine bottles, moonlight sparkling on the tiny pieces of broken glass. Here and there, busted kegs emerged from the sea of smashed bottles like dark whales. Scattered amongst the glass were pieces of bone. The pieces were small— carpels, tarsels, metatarsels—but there were enough of them distributed just at their feet to let them know that this had been the sight of some major carnage, that the skeletal remains of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people could. be found here.
But it was not the bones which had chilled Dion so.
It was the blood.
Beneath the glass, beneath the bones, the grass and the dirt below the grass were stained a dark blackish red, the residual sediment of a wave or river of blood which seemed to have once flowed through the clearing. Even the trunks of the trees were darker than they should have been, and the small shrubs and wild bushes which grew around the perimeter of the meadow had a distinctly reddish brown tint, as though blood had seeped into their systems through the roots and had usurped the space of chlorophyll in the leaves.
Dion took a hesitant step forward. The soles of his tennis shoes stuck for a second to the ground, pulling out blades of grass as they moved upward, sounding and feeling stickily like the adhesion of wet paint.
“Don’t,” Penelope breathed, pulling him back.
But he had to move forward, he had to see. He was horrified by the sight before him, he had never seen anything like it … but something about it seemed familiar. It was not the bottles, not the bones, not the blood. It was the clearing itself, and this layer of detritus that had been overlaid on top of it had successfully hidden what was really there, effectively blocking what he should have recognized.
But why should he have recognized it? He had never been here before.
He walked into the meadow, Penelope at his side, still holding his hand.
It was larger than it had first appeared, and that brought home to him the enormity of what must have occurred here. They tread gingerly over the littered ground, carefully avoiding the bones.
Some of these might be Penelope’s father’s, he thought.
He said nothing.
The sil
ence grew heavier, the already oppressive atmosphere even more oppressive. Before them, at the opposite end of the meadow, against the trees that fronted the hillside, was a low mound. Bones and skulls, many with bits of dried flesh still clinging to them, were arranged in ancient runic form on the section of cleared ground. From the center of the space rose a stone square about the size of a bed, and atop the square were arranged crude and ancient instruments of death. Grappling hooks hung from thick chains attached to the branches above. In the trees beyond there loomed a dark carved figure, a stone idol of some sort, and as they drew closer, Dion saw that it was the likeness of a god, festooned with what looked like the results of recent kills:
scalps, ears, fingers, penises.
The god had Dion’s face.
Penelope’s fingernails dug into his palm. “Oh, shit.”
Dion backed up. “No,” he whispered, shaking his head.
“We have to call the police,” Penelope said, pulling him back. ‘This isn’t something we can handle.”
Dion nodded dumbly.
From somewhere, from the woods, from the hill, there were screams and cries, laughter and singing, coming closer, low but getting louder. He looked at Penelope, she looked at him, and though both of them knew that they had to get out of the clearing, neither of them knew where to go.
The approaching noise was coming from an indeterminate direction, and they did not know if they would be moving away from the arriving people or toward them.
There was a chaotic feel to the noise, an impression of anarchic abandonment that Dion found at once frightening and reassuring. These people, these people who were laughing and crying and screaming, they might try to kill him, but he understood them, he knew where they were coming from, whoever they were.
Whoever they were?
He knew who they were.
They both knew who they were.
Penelope’s mothers.
Sure enough, a group of figures burst through the trees at the far end of the clearing, from almost exactly the same spot at which they themselves had entered the meadow. Women. Naked women. Penelope’s mothers. They carried between them two unmoving policemen.; They were drunk and moving jerkily, several of them! carrying what looked like spears, but they were obviously heading this way, and despite the apparent randomness of their movements, they were moving at a good pace, clearly making a beeline for the altar.
“We have to get out of here,” Penelope said.
Dion nodded. He wasn’t sure if they had been spotted; yet, but unless they quickly found some cover, they soon;
would be. He took Penelope’s hand, pulled her toward the trees to the right of the carved idol.
And they were seen.
A cry went up, the high-pitched wail of five women screaming in unison, and Dion turned to see, over his shoulder, Penelope’s mothers dashing madly toward them, still screaming identically at the same pitch, grinning hugely and carrying the unmoving policemen with them.
“Run!” Penelope screamed.
He tried. They both tried. But her mothers were moving fast, and the screams were disorienting, and the trees here were thicker, the underbrush heavier, and … And part of him wanted to be caught.
That was at the root of it. He was scared out of his wits, more terrified than he had ever been in his life, and he genuinely wanted to escape. But he held tightly to Penelope’s hand, started running first one way, then another, and he realized that he not so subconsciously wanted her mothers to catch up to them. He wanted to know what would happen after that. He was frightened, but at the same time he felt strong, strangely energized, and he knew that whatever happened, no matter how freaky it got, he could handle it.
He wanted to handle it.
Her mothers caught up to them a few yards into the trees. Strong hands grabbed his arms, long nails digging into his skin, and he was yanked harshly around to face a leering, drunken Mother Margeaux.
He was not as prepared as he’d thought he was, nowhere near as strong and brave as he’d led himself to believe, and he screamed as the women dragged him back out of the trees toward the square altar on top of the mound. He heard Penelope screaming off to his left, but he could not turn his eyes to see her, and whether she was screaming in pain or fear—or both—he could not tell.
A flagon was shoved between his lips and cool wine forced out. Most of it dribbled down his chin, but some of it ran down his throat, and it felt good, strangely calming.
The he was lifted into the air and slammed down onto the concrete slab.
The breath was knocked out of him, and pain flared in his back and his head, but then more wine was being forced down his throat and the pain disappeared. His strength returned in one odd, cold shiver, and he sat up, or was allowed to sit up, and he saw that Mother Margaret and Mother Sheila were the ones holding his arms. Mother Sheila or Mother Felice? He could not remember which was which.
At the foot of the mound below him, he saw the other mothers laughing hysterically as Mother Margeaux shoved a pine cone-tipped spear into the now exposed belly of the older policeman. Blood pooled outward, not spurting but overflowing from the rent skin, cascading onto the grass.
Penelope was not being held but had been thrown on the grass to the left of her mothers and was attempting to sit up. She saw her mothers whooping and cackling as the younger policeman was stripped and gutted, Mother, Margeaux ripping into the entrails with her fingers after the spears had opened the flesh.
“What are you doing?” Penelope screamed. “What’s happening?”
What was happening? Dion wondered. But though he wanted to scream too, though he wanted to cry, he didn’t.
Instead, for no reason whatsoever, as he watched the mothers laughing and gleefully playing in the blood, he started to smile.
He is here.
The knowledge burst upon Dennis Mccomber fully formed. The officer rolled down the window of his patrol car and dumped out the coffee he’d been drinking. He reached for die bottle of wine on the seat next to him, popped the half-stopped cork, and allowed himself a long, luscious drink.
He is here.
He thought of the chief’s daughter and wondered if that little minx was going to be there as well. She probably would. Hell, of course she would. She’d known about it even before he had.
He thought of the way her head had been bobbing up and down in her boyfriend’s lap. Had she taken him all the way into her mouth? Had she deep-throated him? Mccomber was pretty sure that she had. Even if she hadn’t, what the fuck difference did it make? She’d deep throat him.
She’d suck him all the way down to the root. He’d make her. He’d fuck that little slut’s face so hard she’d be coughing up sperm for a month.
He is here.
Yes, He was here, and it was time to meet Him. It was time to get shitfaced and fuck his brains out for the glory ��f his new god.
Amen.
Mccomber took another swig from the bottle and started the car.
Someone unplugged the jukebox, and Frank Douglas was all set to scream at the little pissant, whoever he was, &nd kick him out on his troublemaking ear, when he saw that everyone in the bar had stopped dancing, s moving, stopped talking, and were all staring at him.
“He is here,” someone said, whispered, and the voic was like a shout in the silent bar.
Frank felt suddenly cold.
He glanced toward the door, saw that Ted the bouncer | was standing with two of me patrons, a half-finished botf tie of Daneam red dangling from his hand.
What the hell was going on?
He is here.
He knew what was going on. Well, he didn’t know, not! exactly, but he knew that the past few weeks had been J building up to this, and he was not surprised that it was occurring now. He looked over the counter at the assembled patrons, jostling one another to the left and the right, shuffling unthinkingly into a line as they continued to stare unblinkingly at him. s He reached under the bar for his shotgun, felt comf
ort in its familiar heft as he removed it from its perch. He did not look down at the gun, did not look away from the;’ crowd, unwilling to give them any edge.
Most of these bastards were loaded, crocked, three sheets to the fucking wind. They might be all tanked up and full of courage, right now, but when it came down to it, when he started; blasting, they’d scatter and run like scared jackrabbits. [
When he started blasting?
He glanced over at Ted, saw the gleeful belligerence hi the bouncer’s face.
Yes. When.
For it was going to happen. He had been in fights before, been in more bar brawls than he cared to remember, and there was always a point past which the violence was inevitable. No matter what was said or done, no matter how much talking went on, it was going to happen.
They’d passed that point when the jukebox was unplugged.
The shotgun was loaded, in preparation for an emergency, and in one smooth motion—a motion he had practiced hffront of the mirror and in back of the bar until he could do it the way he’d seen it done in a movie—he swung the weapon up, barrel pointing straight into the center of the crowd.
“Back off!” he ordered. “Back off and get the fuck out of here! Bar’s closed!”
A red-haired woman laughed. Frank noticed with shock that her skirt was off—she was wearing only a blouse and panties. As his gaze moved from one person to another, he saw that many of the men and women had clothing that was ripped or missing.
“He is here!” someone yelled.
“Wine!” a woman cried. “We need more wine!”
“The bar’s closed!” Frank repeated, shifting the shotgun.
The red-haired woman laughed again.
And Frank blew her face off.
He didn’t mean to. Or at least he didn’t think he meant to. It happened so fast. She was laughing at him and he was pointing the gun at her and his gaze went from her black panties to the look of black hatred on her slutty face and he hated that look and he wanted her to shut up and before he could even think about it he was pulling the trigger and when he could see again she was down and her face had been blown off.
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