by Chris Miller
Marlena tore off another piece of cloth, wadded it up, and pressed it into the exit wound. Then she began wrapping the first strip of cloth around his shoulder and cinched it tight, which James met with a wince. But the man wasn’t conscious, either. His eyelids fluttered, showing only whites, then went still.
“That’ll help staunch the bleeding,” Marlena said. “But he needs a doctor.”
Denarius nodded, looking about. He could hear rabbling voices in the street outside, getting louder. Could hear the snarls and bubbling clicks of the abominations as they charged. They didn’t have time. No time at all. No time to deal with the marker, no time to stop Dreary, no time for anything.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Denarius said. “You!”
The quiet white man, still standing back from them, snapped his head in Denarius’s direction.
“Check the street from the window and tell me what you see. I’ll check out the front. Then we need to get this man and my family into the woods.”
The man was nodding, his eyes wandering about the room.
“M-my wife and child,” he mumbled. “Th-they’re in town, as well.”
Denarius stared hard at the man, not without compassion. But he was more worried about his family than this stranger’s.
“Maybe we can regroup, get to them later,” he said. “From the sound of things out there, we don’t have any time. Now look out that window and tell me what you see.”
The man nodded again, blinking rapidly and seeming to come out of a haze. Then he was moving toward the window.
“Stay close to your mother,” Denarius said to Martin as he rose to his feet and headed for the door.
He stopped shy of the threshold and looked to the other man. He was stepping to the window, hands grabbing either side of the sill, eyes evidently wide, even in profile.
“How many?” Denarius hissed to the man after a painful moment of waiting with no response.
The man turned only his head to him, his face ashen and defeated.
“All of them, I think.”
Glass exploded around the man, shards of razor-like debris burying into his skin causing a blossoming forest of wounds on his face and arms. A plum of crimson flowered from the back of his head then and a meaty pile of gruel spattered the floor behind him with a wet smack before he tumbled to the floor and moved no more.
“Jesus!” Denarius muttered and turned for the door to peak out.
No sooner had he turned, he noticed two things. First, the man he’d shot who’d been charging the church as he and James entered was no longer lying face down in the mud outside. And second, his belly was on fire.
He looked down, confused by the sight of spreading scarlet in his shirt and the handle of a knife protruding from his stomach, a mud-slimed hand gripping the hilt.
As he went down, he saw the horrific sight of a man, covered in mud and blood, one eye dangling from its socket. A second before his head hit the planks and he blacked out, he heard the man speak.
“Gotcha!”
31
Something began to stir at the back of the room, something that no one still living inside the temple seemed to notice. The sounds of the abominations and the coming mob and the screams of Marlena and her boy drowned out the hum which began to swell from the black cube. Jeremiah’s and Mike’s blood on the floor began to slither like crimson snakes from the pools about their corpses toward the center of the sanctuary. Like living tendrils, then turned towards the marker.
The cube emitted a soft glow, revealing the designs of constellations and solar systems on its side, some of them things none of the others might have recognized, save perhaps the traveler, James Dee. At the center of the obsidian mass, one design glowed brighter than the others. A coiling spiral symbol, identical to the one atop the spire of the church, began to blaze brighter.
The blood from the men crawled up the stairs as gracefully as serpents, and upon reaching the marker, began to crawl up its side. The constellations began to glow brighter, the coiling spiral near the center brighter still. The hum grew louder, though still no one seemed to notice. There was an ear-shattering boom, a cataclysmic sound from out in the street, and the walls of the church shook as the windows on three sides all burst into tiny fragments, the pelting rain following in after them.
The explosive boom from outside seemed to have silenced those still living in the church, though the man with the dangling eye was still fast about his business on the floor with Denarius, his lips pulled back over his muddy teeth in a mad grimace of rage and desperation. Denarius was struggling on the floor with him as Marlena tried to stuff Martin between the pews, begging the terrified boy to stay hidden and still.
Then she was moving for the man atop her husband as the still unnoticed hum grew louder still, the glow of the cube’s constellations—familiar and alien alike—began to intensify as the blood began to slurp into its surface as though being drunk.
She was almost to the man on top of her husband when yet another man—one she’d not seen before—rounded the door. He wore a bowler’s hat and a bowtie above his vest and jacket, and his sopping beard dripped with rain. Marlena stopped short when she saw the man, and her scream was short-lived as the man raised a small revolver and fired at her. Her head whipped to one side then the other, slinging strings of blood lashing out like angry whips.
Then she collapsed to the floor, unconscious before James. He saw this, and wanted to raise up and blow his nemesis into the next century, but he didn’t have the strength. He could hear the grunts and cries as Denarius wrestled with the other man.
Though no one had seemed to notice the sound of the marker, or the glowing solar systems on its surface, James had seen the whole thing from his stationary place on the floor, the pain and shock of his wound rendering him unmoving and thought dead by the others.
His eyes glanced up as Dreary stepped past him and into the aisle between the pews, facing the awakening marker. Though James could not see the man’s face, he sensed its mask of wonder and lust.
“Mine eyes hath seen the glory,” Dreary said as he took slow, steady steps toward the marker, the central glow intensifying still. “Behold the glory of The Elders! Behold the power of N’yea’thuul!”
Before James could muster the strength and resolve to get up, Dreary’s form began to rise into the air before the obsidian marker, his body aglow with the light of the cube.
PART VI:
The Divination of Gear Dreary
32
Bonham grunted and spat blood as he sat up. The abomination he’d dispatched was as unmoving as its host, whose terrible laments—which might have been sensual music to Bonham’s ears had he not been locked in a life or death battle with the thing—had now ceased.
The clambering noise of a mob caught his attention and he turned to see three more abominations, followed by too many townspeople to count, all rushing down the street. There were guns and pitchforks and clubs in their hands, and the abominations snarled through ribcage and groin and spine, respectively, their bone teeth jagged and dripping ichor.
He knew there were too many to draw down on at once, even if he had more time and some high ground. As it was, he’d be properly fucked in less than a minute. He hated being properly fucked. He was a man who insisted on giving the proper fucks.
A glance back toward the church and he saw Dreary rushing away from him. This didn’t anger him as it might have. Dreary was a man obsessed. A man with singular focus. Bonham knew from the day they’d begun to ride together that Dreary saw Bonham as nothing more than a means to an end. Bonham had never begrudged him that. In fact, he appreciated the upfront honesty of it. It let him know precisely where he stood, and what to expect of the man. And in return, he’d had ample opportunity to satiate his needs along the way.
A second before he looked away, there was the crack of a gunshot and he saw a man spin and fall to the mud in front of the church. Bonham smiled, recognizing Quentin’s bulk, and h
e spat a wad of bloody spittle in his direction before turning away to face the oncoming horde.
Goddamn coward, he thought. I’ll join you in Hell directly.
Dreary was mounting the rise to the church when Bonham turned back to the mob of monstrosities and madmen. He guessed there were a couple dozen men and women just behind the three abominations, and began to figure his odds as he reached inside the leather-lined pocket of his coat and curled his hands over the pair of cylinders he liked to refer to as ‘his endgame’.
He’d had them for some time, tied together with twine and kept dry and safe on his person at all times. He supposed most men wouldn’t want to have such a thing with them in a gunfight, but Bonham had never much thought about it. If he were ever to die, his aim was to take as many with him as he could manage.
And friends and neighbors, it was time for a grand farewell.
He pulled the two objects free from his pocket and swept them under his coat to keep them dry as he fumbled a box of matches from his shirt pocket. The box was moist, but not soaked. A small mercy.
He coughed a pint of blood as he knelt down in the center of the street, the horde less than thirty yards from him now and coming on fast. He got a match free, struck it, and it died nearly immediately in the rain. He curled over to block the downpour, seeing for the first time the horrific gash across his chest the dying abomination had managed to get in on him. He grunted dismissively at the sight. It didn’t matter. Not now.
Another gunshot rang out behind him, much quieter than the previous ones. Dreary’s Bull Dog. So, the man was at the church, charging on to his goal.
Best of luck to ya, Dreary, he thought as he pulled another match free and readied to strike it as the horde closed in to less than twenty yards. I’ll save ya a seat.
This time, the match stayed lit as he moved it toward the pair of objects in his other hand. The fuse ignited and began to spark. Bonham smiled, blood-slimed teeth peeking out beneath his mustache.
He stood, coughing more blood, and tucked the lit dynamite under his coat to shield it from the rain. He looked to the oncoming horde, the wild faces, the abominable creatures.
He rushed them then, sprinting toward the crowd with a speed and agility most men in top form wouldn’t be able to accomplish, never mind one mortally wounded. His lips peeled back in a vicious snarl, and a roar issued from deep within him so animal, so primal in its rage, the crowd before him seemed to slow. Even the creatures seemed to miss a step, their crimson eyes blinking in surprise.
But they were much too close to make any difference now. Bonham charged on, and surprise turned to outrage and madness upon all the faces in the mob as he began smashing into them, knocking down two of the town’s people as he slipped between the legs of the abominations.
The snarling shrieks of the monstrosities rose in volume and pitch as the crowd of townspeople began raising guns and pitchforks and clubs at Bonham, but none of their voices topped the ferocious roar of the man.
The explosion was monumental. In all directions flew pieces of bodies—arms, legs, feet, hands, heads, torsos, and smaller bits. Quivering legs of the abominations whipped through the air, one impaling what might have been the sole survivor of the crowd near the back, and leaving the man in a permanent posture of supplication upon his knees. All screams and shrieks and roars were ended in the thundering boom, never to return again. Even the building where the earlier abomination had come crashing through was blown apart, and its columns and walls collapsed in on themselves, clattering quietly beneath the echoing of the mighty explosion.
Bonham neither heard nor saw any of this, though his still-snarling face—which looked chillingly like that of an insane smile—was etched onto his severed head as it came to rest in the street, overlooking the destruction.
A grand farewell it had been.
33
Martin watched the bad man who’d shot his mama walk past him in the aisle. The little boy trembled and shook, trying to hold his breath so the man wouldn’t hear him. But he couldn’t do it. His small body shook with fear and cold, a chill setting in from the rain, and he hugged himself tightly in an effort to control it.
But the man didn’t seem to hear him nor notice him in any way as he passed, heading toward the weird black box at the front of the sanctuary. And Martin was only now noticing the glow in the room, one he was certain hadn’t been there before. The gloom was dissipating with a soft blue light, one which seemed to be getting brighter.
He dropped to his hands and knees, still trembling, and crawled to the edge of the pew. He peeked around with one eye and saw the bad man—there were so many bad men these past days he was having a hard time keeping up with them all—slowly approaching the black box. There were strange shapes and symbols all over its surface, aglow with strange light, and a beam of that light seemed to be reaching out from the center, from a shape he recognized as identical to the one on top of the very building he was now in. The beam reached across the room, meeting the bad man, and seemed to envelop him.
The man began to rise from the floor.
Martin blinked several times, believing his eyes to be betraying him. But after a couple dozen flaps of his eyelids, he resigned himself to accept what he was seeing. The man was floating. Right in front of him, as if the beam of light were lifting him from the ground like the arm of some ghostly being. He’d heard plenty of ghost stories, mostly from his grandma who’d passed away last year. Neither of his parents much cared for the stories or his daddy’s mama telling them to little Martin, but the boy had relished them. Only, in the stories his grandma used to tell him, the ghosts didn’t grab you and lift you in the air. They walked in halls or graveyards, waiting to finish whatever was holding them back from moving on to glory or damnation, whatever awaited them beyond this world. And none of them ever reached out of a big black box in an old church that didn’t seem to be a thing like the one he and his parents attended on Sunday mornings.
The man’s body seemed to be tensing, his arms and legs arching behind him as his head lurched back. He could only see a portion of the side of the man’s face, but he could make out the grimace there, whether of pain or shock, Martin didn’t know. What he did know was that something bad was happening and his mother had been shot and his daddy was fighting another bad man with his eye hanging out of his face and the white man his daddy had come with was lying on the floor, either hurt badly or dead.
He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be at his house, eating biscuits and horsemeat with his parents and working the field. Anywhere but here. But the only way to get out of here was with his parents. He was scared. Scared for himself, for his mother, his father. He glanced to his mother and saw her chest rising, and a grateful shiver shook him.
She still living, he thought.
Then he saw his father and the other bad man, locked in mortal combat on the floor. Daddy was hurt bad, The bad man had stuck him with something, maybe a knife. He needed help, and the white man wasn’t moving—
But his eyes is open!
Martin’s gaze fell on the man, and they exchanged the briefest of looks before the man glanced past Martin once more to the floating man. Martin scrambled from the pew and rushed to the back of the church near his mother and father and the white man. His daddy howled in pain, grunting with effort. The man with the dangling eye was over him, pushing at the thing he’d stuck him with. His daddy was pushing the man’s face away with one hand, trying to fight him off with the other.
Martin glanced around, his breathing coming much too fast, and looked for something. Anything. He needed a weapon. He had to help his daddy, and soon. There was no time to run and hide and though he very much wanted to, his daddy’s words came to him, something he remembered his daddy oft repeating since he could remember.
You don’t run from trouble, boy, his daddy’s voice told him. You face it head on, and deal with it like a man.
He had to be a man now. His daddy’s life depended on it. His mama�
�s, too. If he didn’t act—and soon—they were all dead.
Another glance about the room and his eyes fell on a candle holder, just like the one his mama had used on the man who tried to wrestle with her. There were several around the room and he rushed to one and snatched it up, knocking the wax candle it held to the floor with a quiet thunk.
Martin turned, gripping his new club, and rushed the man with the dangling eye.
34
The darkness bordered on absolute. The only visible light seemed to be tiny pinpricks, sparkling at what must have been a great distance, though they seemed near enough to pluck right out of the blackness all around. Dazzling, sparkling jewels floating in a vast nothingness.
And it was cold. So cold.
Pain was evident as well, as of something burrowing into the skin, then worming throughout the entire network of veins. Pulsing and dredging all the way to every extremity.
There was screaming.
The screaming at once seemed to be from a great distance away, but also felt as though it were erupting from inside, somewhere beneath the worms digging through the flesh, the tendrils of horrors unknown wriggling and writhing around the bones.
From the abyss in front, lost within a blackness impenetrable by any light from the twinkling gems which danced around, it came. Its shapes were all wrong, not in line with anything with which it could be associated. Angles that made the head ache for understanding, slithering monstrosities that must have been some sort of arms, yet there seemed to be dozens of them, and their movements were both staccato and fluid at once.
Further tearing at the edges of sanity were the words. For they were not words as man knew them to be. They weren’t even foreign, like the tongues of men from the other side of the world. These were wholly alien to the ears, nightmarish sounds which assaulted the senses, yet seemed to come from within the mind rather than from without.