by J. D. Barker
Rachael felt the baby kick and rubbed her belly, realizing she was doing so with the butt of the gun.
Ms. Perez reached for the light switch on the wall, then pulled her hand away—the plate was slick with damp mud. Rachael glanced up at the light fixture. “Crap.” The bulbs had been shattered and the receptacles were filled with dirt.
“They’re everywhere,” Ashley said.
Buster whined in agreement.
“Come on,” Rachael said, walking toward the steps.
With the wall as a guide, they made their way down the steps, one at a time, pausing at the middle landing as at least five or six of the tiny creatures darted across the room below them. They looked up with dark eyes, their tiny teeth gleaming in the shadows. Rachael wanted to shoot them but they moved too fast, disappearing before she even raised the gun. They weren’t far, though; they weren’t far at all.
Rachael glanced at the front door and realized they had somehow piled furniture in front of it. The minions had managed to slide the couch from the living room to the door and stacked two recliners on top. She couldn’t imagine them lifting such heavy items, but they had. The creatures had then packed mud into all the crevices, fortifying their makeshift dam. Eyes glared at them from behind, tiny little hungry eyes. Rachael fired the gun once more—one of the cushions jumped off the couch and landed on the floor at its base and the creatures scattered around the room, letting out a shrill so loud Ashley covered her ears.
Rachael tugged at her and pulled her into the kitchen with Ms. Perez following close behind. Buster had entered the room first. The dog sniffed at the baseboards before looking up at the cabinets lining the walls above the counter. He whimpered and backed up.
“It’s all right, boy. I know they’re in there. But I don’t think—”
When one of the creatures jumped from above the upper cabinets onto the dog’s back, he tried to buck it off but the minion held tight, rammed its head down, and buried its teeth into his fur. Buster cried out in pain and backed into the cabinet, trying to jar the monster loose.
Ms. Perez swung the golf club hard, like a baseball player going after a low pitch, and hit the minion’s torso. The creature didn’t fly across the room as one would expect; instead, the club passed through the tiny monster and the minion fell to the ground in pieces, crumbling into nothing more than a pile of foul-smelling earth. Buster reached around and licked at the spot where he had been bitten and growled up at the cabinets.
Rachael looked down at the pile of dirt in amazement. What the hell are these things?
Ashley had watched enough movies to be unfazed by such things. In her world, monsters had always been real, and for them to turn into dirt upon death was as natural as talking animals and large green ogres that marry princesses.
Rachael thought about the piles of dirt that had covered their yard yesterday morning—hundreds of them—was that the birth of these creatures?
At her feet, a small pile of dirt begin to move, morph, take the shape of one of the creatures. It stirred and red eyes snapped open—the newly-formed minion darted away, leaving nothing but a trail of muddy footprints behind.
“Esa loca,” Ms. Perez blurted. “I killed it and it came back.” Digging through the drawer beside her, she located a flashlight. Perez flicked the switch, sending a thin beam of light across the room and nodded in satisfaction.
Ashley wrapped her arms around her mother’s legs.
“Let’s keep moving,” Rachael told them, already starting toward the garage door. The others fell in line behind her, with Ms. Perez and Buster taking the rear. Ashley stayed close, unwilling to release her grip on her mother.
Although she had the gun, Rachael feared the weapon wouldn’t do much good. If these creatures, these minions, could be destroyed by a golf club and reassemble with little effort, a bullet would more than likely pass right through with little or no damage. Yet she held the gun high, finding some comfort in holding the weapon.
The door leading to the garage was unlocked, but mud had been packed tightly around all its edges. Working together, she and Ms. Perez were able to force it open on the third try. The door swung into the dark garage with a creak.
Sweeping the room with the flashlight revealed dark patches of mud on every surface. The garage stunk of feces and urine.
“Phew,” Ashley said, pinching her nose.
This familiar scent brought Buster to the forefront. He stood at the door’s threshold, sniffing at the air. He sneezed and shook his head before stepping into the garage. Rachael followed closely behind, careful not to step in the mud any more than necessary.
“Look, Ms. Rachael,” Ms. Perez said, pointing at the hood of the car. “It’s open.”
She was right, although only a few inches, probably the result of pulling the hood release. Just enough room for those things to get inside, Rachael thought. Her heart sank.
“Mommy, they’re up there,” Ashley said. Rachael followed her daughter’s pointed finger toward the storage cabinets mounted along the walls. She caught a glimpse of one of the creatures as it darted behind a paint can, its eyes shining bright.
“Just stay close, honey,” she told her.
Rachael eased her fingers beneath the hood of the car, pressed the release latch, and raised the hood, ready to fire the weapon at the first sign of movement. Nothing did move, though; the minions had finished their work on the engine some time ago.
What remained of the belts was nothing more than frayed rubber, chewed apart in numerous places. The wiring had fared no better—each had been plucked from the harness or chewed clean through, leaving nothing but exposed, frayed copper. The remainder of the engine had been covered in the same mud they had found everywhere else, packed into every opening, every crevice. Rachael swore under her breath; the smell was making her nauseated again. Hold it together for Ashley, she told herself.
“Ms. Rachael, you must see this.”
Ms. Perez was standing at the side door, looking out the window at their front yard. Holding Ashley close, she made her way over and peered out through the muddied glass panes.
The bougainvilleas had grown thick, their thorny branches lacing together into a thick, impenetrable fabric. They rose at least six feet, maybe more. Rachael doubted the door would open even if they tried. It didn’t matter; they would never get through that tangled mess. “This isn’t possible.”
Ms. Perez glanced at her and turned back to the window. “Do you see them? Down near the ground?”
Rachael leaned in closer, pressing her forehead against the glass. She hadn’t noticed them at first; there were so many they blended with the ground. Not until one turned and glanced up at her, until the minion flashed shiny little teeth, did she realize there were hundreds—if not thousands—of creatures maneuvering through the bushes. “Oh, my God,” she said.
“What is it, Mommy?” Ashley asked, her wide eyes looking up at Rachael.
“We can’t go this way,” was all she could think to say. “We need to find another way out.”
“The driveway is concrete,” Ms. Perez pointed out. “The bushes can’t grow on concrete, can they?”
Rachael turned toward the large garage door. “They probably cut the power; we’ll have to pull the manual release. Can you reach it? That red handle up there?”
Ms. Perez frowned. “If I stand on the car, maybe I can reach.”
Rachael couldn’t ask her to do it, for an old woman to climb up on a car…
…but she was already kneeling on the trunk with one leg, pulling herself up. The metal creaked under her weight. When she stood, she reached for the red release handle.
Rachael saw the small spear flying through the air seconds before it buried itself in the woman’s hand. Perez screamed and pulled away. Another spear came from nowhere and embedded itself in her leg. She lost her balance and almost fell, but Rachael reached up and righted her. Ms. Perez climbed down off the car’s hood as two more spears flew past her head with a soft
buzz.
“Back in the house!” Rachael screamed as paint cans and assorted other objects began flying toward them from the shelves above.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
1692 – The Journal of Clayton Stone
SCREAMS ERUPTED FROM THE afflicted as the windows slammed shut. They rushed the door. It would not budge.
“Where is it?” the man shouted at her. “Where is your book?!”
Wind howled with the voice of death, and I clutched my remaining papers against my breast. I held my pen so tight my fingers ached and my knuckles turned white. The magistrate ducked behind his desk while Tauber stood his ground, staring at the strange figure while shielding his eyes from airborne debris.
“Where is your book!”
The girl twisted in her bonds but was unable to break free. “I have no book!” she screamed over the wind.
“You cannot lie to me, child! I am not like them; I am not fooled by your guise!”
He took another step toward her, and the wind fought back angrily; I gripped the edge of the table as my chair fell back behind me.
His coat fluttered at his back and he held his hat with his free hand, still reaching toward her with the other, just inches from her now.
She opened her mouth and a sound escaped unlike any I’ve ever heard—the screams of a thousand souls at a pitch that burned at my ears. I dropped everything to cover them; however, it did little good. The sound ripped through my mind, turning all to red, then black. Then, finally, silence.
—Thad McAlister,
Rise of the Witch
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Day 3 – 05:40 a.m.
IT HAD BEEN NEARLY two hours since Thad left the motel in his rearview mirror and started down Highway 80 toward the small town of Shadow Cove. The rain was stubborn, refusing to let up, flooding the early morning sky in cascading sheets.
Around him, few motorists dared to drive. Most had pulled to the side of the road and turned on their hazard lights, content to wait out the storm in the safety of their vehicle.
Not Thad, though. He took advantage of the open road by forcing his rental car to speed up until he was moving at almost twenty miles per hour over the posted limit. He wasn’t worried about wrecking the car; he wasn’t even worried about getting a speeding ticket. She would ensure he arrived in Shadow Cove without incident. About an hour earlier, he saw her for a brief second sitting in the passenger seat—still naked and damp with rain as he remembered her from the parking lot of the motel. She smiled and ran her hand down his leg, her long nails scarring the fabric of his pants. Then she was gone, her scent lingering. Her scent and the sound of her fingernails, the clickity, click, click he had learned to dread.
Thad knew this wouldn’t be over until he placed the box in Christina’s hands.
He shivered at the thought, the idea of her in possession of such an object.
Bring the box to me, Thad, Christina breathed.
Bring Her to me. Over and over. Bring Her to me, my Thad.
He wanted her voice out of his head. Anything to get her out of his head.
Thad wanted to scream.
Would she release Her? If she had the box? Did she know how to bring Her back?
A sign marking one mile to Exit 17 flew by, and Thad began to slow the car.
This is it, he told himself.
Aside from a faded green highway marker, there was little to identify Exit 17. So little, Thad almost missed the turnoff. His tires cried out, fighting the slick pavement as he turned a hard right onto the exit ramp.
The road narrowed to two lanes and he was forced to slow further; the pavement deteriorated from the well-maintained blacktop of the highway to a road long forgotten by city planners and maintenance workers alike. Cracked and muddled with potholes, Thad imagined days, if not months, passing between cars on this lonesome stretch of road. A road somehow familiar to him.
It didn’t exist in his book but he knew every curve, every turn—he even recognized the thick branches of the ancient oaks towering overhead, swaying under the storm’s heavy breath.
When he reached a battered stop sign, he slid to a quick halt and turned left, followed by a quick right into the first sign of civilization since leaving the highway: a small single-pump gas station and garage under a faded sign which read Grady’s. Thad didn’t need gas, but something inside him longed for the comfort of seeing another human being before he continued on his mission.
He pulled in front of the lone pump and shut down the engine, glancing at the empty passenger seat before climbing out of the car under the safety of the small tin roof above the pump.
Inside the station, a light burned bright. Thad thought he caught movement behind the curtains. The entire place looked run down and deserted, left to rot away as the rest of the world went about its business.
“We don’t get many visitors out here no more,” came a gravelly voice. “Forgive me for not noticing you pull up, but this storm damn near drowns out everything if you ain’t listening close.”
Thad turned to find an old man standing beside the pump, watching him from behind thick glasses and a bushy gray beard. He hadn’t heard him approach and wasn’t quite sure where he had come from. Aside from the station and garage, there were no other buildings, and Thad had been looking directly at them. Any other approach would have taken him through the rain, yet he was dry as a bone.
“You startled me,” was all Thad mustered as a sudden chill raced through his bones. He shivered.
The old man smiled. “Sorry ’bout that. Didn’t intend to sneak up on ya.” He nodded to the pump. “What’s it gonna be, regular or premium?”
Thad shrugged off the cold. “Regular is fine. Just top it off.”
He watched as the old man turned a crank on the antique pump and slipped the nozzle into the rental car. A bell rang somewhere and the numbers began to tick away as the gasoline started flowing. “Name’s Grady,” he said. “I’d offer to shake your hand, but I’m a mess; been working in the garage most of the night. Got a crankshaft on an old Buick that’s turned into quite a pisser. Seems sometimes cars just grow old and want to die. No matter how many times we fix ’em, once they reach that point you might as well send them off to the auto graveyard and wish ’em well ’cause they ain’t coming back without a fight.”
Unsure of what to say, Thad only nodded, his eyes catching movement just inside the garage again.
“That’s my boy, Lenny,” Grady told him. “He ain’t much when it comes to tooling a car, but it’s nice to have the company. It can get a little lonely out here—ever since they built that highway you just came from, folks don’t have much use for old State Road 27,” Grady said, nodding toward the road in front of his station. “Been hell on business, that’s for damn sure.”
“I’m heading to a place called Shadow Cove. Have you heard of it?” Thad asked, peering down the dark road through the thick rain.
The old man gave him a peculiar frown and replaced the pump’s nozzle. “You were only down about two gallons, nearly full.” He read the total from the pump and waited in silence as Thad fished cash from his wallet.
“Am I close?” Thad asked.
Grady thumbed the bills, folded them, and pushed them into his pocket.
“To Shadow Cove. Am I close?” Thad asked again.
“It’s down the road a piece,” Grady finally said. “I don’t know if I’d drive out in this kind of weather, though. It tends to wash out with much less than we’ve had these past few days. This car ain’t exactly equipped for offroadin’.”
Thad shrugged. “I don’t have much of a choice; my schedule is a little tight.”
“Is that the case,” Grady said with suspicion. “Not a whole lot of business to be had in a place like Shadow Cove. Hardly none at all. Mind if I ask why you’re headin’ out to that place?”
Thad felt the man sizing him up. He had tensed, grown defensive. “I’m picking something up, then I need to get home, back to my family
.”
Grady fell silent, mulling over his words in his mind before saying something he might regret soon after. Then he seemed to resign himself from the conversation and turned back toward the garage. “I suggest you hurry, before you lose the road altogether in this rain. I’d hate for you to get stuck out there; could be days before help got to you. Your family shouldn’t be kept waiting, not on account of weather.”
He disappeared into the garage and Thad found himself standing alone beside his rental car, his eyes drawn toward the road he was about to take—a road which seemed to disappear into the thick forest of oaks surrounding it, swallowed by the rain and dismal morning sky.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Day 3 – 05:50 a.m.
RACHAEL LED THE GROUP through the kitchen and into the living room and was about to tell Ms. Perez to find something to block the door from the hallway when a sharp pain coursed through her belly, causing her to double over and drop the gun at her feet.
“Mommy!” Ashley screamed, wrapping her arms around her mother.
The pain seemed to come in quick waves, and Rachael allowed Ms. Perez to lead her to a chair and help her sit.
A full minute passed before Rachael drew in a deep breath and spoke. “I think that was a contraction,” she said.
“What’s a traction?” Ashley asked.
Ms. Perez looked at her with worried eyes. “We can’t get out,” she explained. “We can’t get to a hospital.”
Rachael nodded. “Maybe if I rest for a minute, maybe they’ll stop.”
The stench of rotten dirt filled the room. Rachael realized the floor was covered in it. In most places, the hardwood was lost beneath the dark mud. Not just the floor—they had smeared dirt on the walls and furniture—layered so thick on the windows not a ray of light shone through, although it was surely morning by now. She saw the creatures, the minions, darting among the shadows. She even thought she heard them, mumbling in some language unknown to her, plotting out the remainder of their plan.