Hallowed Horror

by Mark Tufo

  “Just took a quick dip,” Luke said, shaking the sand from his shirt.

  Sabrina saw Cherry peering at Luke’s muscular chest, a “Yeah, right” expression mixed in with the barely disguised hunger in her eyes.

  If you want him, you can have him. He’s only good for one thing, and I’ve used that up for the moment.

  “What’s Roy doing?” Sabrina asked, rolling up the blanket and slipping into her Crocs.

  “Exploring the village.” She lowered her voice a little, thinking that Luke couldn’t hear. She didn’t know about his unnaturally keen ears. “He’s kind of creeping me out. I was afraid to be alone with him.”

  “I thought you guys were dating.”

  “Yeah. Movies, dinner, public stuff. But this is the first time I’ve really been alone with him, if you know what I mean.”

  Maybe Sabrina had been wrong about Roy. He certainly didn’t sound like a human. At least not the male part of the species, anyway. Cherry was a little flaky, but she was a hottie.

  “What exactly is he doing besides belching?” Luke said.

  “He waded back out to the boat and got something from the footlocker. A canvas bag.”

  Luke looked back out at the sea, which seemed to have grown more turbulent and frothy. The moon was still bright but the clouds had thickened.

  “Where did you say you met him?” Sabrina asked.

  “The Bean Scene. Came in asking if there were any uninhabited islands on the Outer Banks.”

  “That’s odd,” Luke said. “He’s an experienced sailor with a big boat. He should know these waters. And you can’t sell real estate if it is part of the national parks system.”

  “That’s not the weirdest part.” Cherry glanced down at her sandals. “When we walked through the village, he didn’t have the slightest interest in—umm….Some of those houses still have furniture in them. Beds and stuff.”

  “So, the island isn’t a place to shop for antiques,” Sabrina said. “The villagers just packed up and moved out, a few at a time. It’s stood empty for more than 50 years.”

  “Roy didn’t care about any of the history. Or about trying out one of the beds. He said, ‘Well, that’s just fewer folks to bury.’”

  “You really know how to pick them, Cherry.”

  She pouted. “Not everybody gets so lucky. Of course, not all of us are sweet and stacked, either. Plus that whatever-it-is you have. The ‘it’ factor.”

  “I’ve got problems you could never imagine,” Sabrina said, losing patience with her friend.

  “We may all have problems,” Luke said, then to Cherry, “What exactly was he interested in?”

  “Besides beer, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He keep looking up, scanning the tops of the buildings. Wondered which of the buildings was highest.”

  “Maybe he wants to commit suicide,” Sabrina said.

  “Good luck with that,” Cherry said. “The highest place is the old Methodist Church steeple, and you’d be lucky to break a nail dropping from it.”

  “Damn,” Luke said, heading up the path.

  “What?” Cherry said, stepping aside.

  “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  As a vampire, Luke didn’t exactly have the power of flight, but he took great, bounding leaps that covered twenty feet at a stretch. Sabrina wasn’t ready to run out her wings and take off, not in front of Cherry. Plus she had no idea if this was an actual emergency or just a test.

  Still, she hurried after him, keeping her speed below superhuman.

  “Roy!” Luke shouted.

  No answer except the rising wind.

  They entered the first sandy street in the village, the bare houses like mausoleums harboring lost secrets. Sabrina could almost imagine the former inhabitants sitting in rockers by the black windows, looking out on the ghost town as the sand, wind, and rain eroded their memories and scrubbed all trace of them from the face of the Earth. Perhaps she had encountered one or two of them in heaven.

  Strangers then, strangers now.

  The church steeple was near the center of the village, its peaked roof rising thirty feet in the air and the spire of its steeple gleaming in the moonlight. It was built near a marsh that reeked of mud and rot. Mosquitoes swarmed around Sabrina, and she swatted at them. She wondered if they were biting Luke, and if they would then turn into little vampire mosquitoes.

  The church was dark, of course, but it was in better repair than most of the abandoned buildings. The park service must have maintained it as a scenic attraction, or maybe some mainland volunteer group had taken on its care as a mission project. Sabrina wondered whether Luke’s heightened sense picked up something she couldn’t. Her angelic powers were largely limited to the ability to sprout wings. Well, and not die, either.

  Something flashed in the church steeple, in the opening of the belfry. The belfry had open windows on each side, its old shutters battened down against storms. Ahead of her, Luke had bounded to the church doors and was attempting to break in.

  He slammed his shoulder against the door, causing wood to crack.

  “Luke,” she shouted. “That’s sacrilege.”

  “If Roy is what I think he is, then there’s a bigger evil going on than a little breaking and entering. He’s playing with fire.”

  Sabrina didn’t like the way Luke had said “what” instead of “who.” She was the agent of God and therefore should be highly tuned to the presence of evil. Roy was a dim spirit, to be sure, but she’d detected nothing that should alarm anyone.

  “If he turns into a werewolf, this is going to get weird,” she said.

  “Werewolves don’t exist, silly.”

  “What’s the deal, then?”

  “That’s a signal flare from the boat.”

  “You think he’s going to burn down the church?”

  Luke futilely pounded on the thick church doors. “He’s a beacon for bad things.”

  The strange reddish light flashed again in the belfry. Sabrina leaned back to see what was going on up there that had Luke so worried.

  Roy cackled with laughter above them. “One if by land, two if by sea!” he drunkenly bellowed.

  He thrust the sparking tubes out the belfry window, one in each hand. They were distress flares, shooting red-orange light into the night and casting an eerie glow across the village.

  “He’s summoning them,” Luke said. “We have to stop him.”

  Luke scrambled up the belfry wall, with the quick and graceful scuttle of a spider.

  “Luke!” Sabrina shouted after him.

  He glanced back at her, still scrambling, but his hand jammed hard against a weather-beaten board, which shattered beneath his grip.

  His screech pierced the night and he plummeted to the ground, landing in the sand with a dull thud.

  Sabrina rushed to Luke’s side, but Roy’s shouting stole her attention. Roy frantically waved the flares, his grinning face made lurid by the light. He glared out to sea as if calling up some monster from the deep.

  “Stop him,” Luke whispered, his eyes rolling up in his head. Sabrina had never seen him the least bit weak, hurt, or vulnerable, and his pale complexion shocked her.

  “What’s wrong?” she said, running her hands over his body to check for wounds. He gave a weak grimace and turned up his hand. A fat splinter had gouged his palm, the gray nubby end of it protruding from his flesh. Black ichor oozed from around the wound, a sluggish substance that was far more horrifying than blood would have been.

  She’d never stopped to consider what coursed through his veins, and though he was capable of….fluids…she had assumed he was basically like a human, only better.

  “Is that all?” she asked, hiding the revulsion caused by the gooey, gross substance. “You get a sliver and you’re down for the count?”

  “Church wood,” he muttered.

  “Christ,” she said.

  “Not quite. But Roy must have known…must have known about me…
.”

  Cherry yelled Roy’s name from the far end of town. She would arrive on the scene in a couple of minutes.

  “What’s he up to?” Sabrina asked Luke as she grabbed the jagged end of the splinter.

  “Ow-weeee,” he groaned, face twisted in pain at the contact.

  “Hush and take it like a man.”

  He grabbed her wrist with his good hand, and the lack of strength was shocking. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Church wood. If you pull it out, I die.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I die slower.”

  She released his wounded hand. “I always figured a man would abandon me at the church steps. I just thought it would be on my wedding day.”

  His grimace revealed his fangs. That meant he was hurt, hungry, or horny. Given the circumstances, she went with “hurt.” The red glint of his eyes had darkened, like clouds crossing the flaming moon.

  “I need to get you to a doctor,” she said, knowing it was stupid even as she uttered the words.

  “9-1-1, I got a vampire here bleeding to death. Can you send an ambulance and a priest?”

  “You need to stop him,” he said, summoning his strength to give her a fierce glare.

  Roy’s laughter echoed across the ghost town, somehow riding above the distant wash of waves and the breeze that rattled the loose tin of rusted rooftops. The flares had burned down to tiny nubs, but still he waved them, even though they surely had scorched his flesh by now.

  “What’s the big deal?” Sabrina said. “Are you afraid he’ll burn down the church?”

  “No, I’m afraid he might burn down the world.”

  She probed the splinter again. “Jeez, Luke, I never figured you for a drama queen.”

  “I’m serious,” he hissed. “Stop him, now. There were plenty of flares in the boat.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t you feel the change?”

  She lifted her head. The breeze had shifted direction, blowing in from the sound now, and the air had grown palpably warmer. The salty aroma had given way to an acrid stench like the smoke of a match.

  “Smells bad, like the devil farted.”

  “Worse than that. Gog dookie is about to hit the fan.”

  “No…” Sabrina stood and peered out to the ridge of dunes on the edge of town. Cherry called for Roy, still several streets away.

  “Stop him before he calls them in!” Luke said.

  “One if by land, two if by sea,” Roy yelled.

  “Look out!” Luke yelled.

  Sabrina heard a fizzing and sputtering above her and danced to the side just in time to avoid the sparking intensity of the dying flares. They bounced away and quickly extinguished themselves in the sand.

  “Hey, you drunken asshole!” Sabrina yelled up at the belfry.

  “Angels shouldn’t cuss,” Luke said, trying unsuccessfully to roll onto his side and rise.

  By now the stench was oppressive, and the wind was warm enough to raise a sweat on Sabrina’s hairline. Roy ignited two more flares and continued his mad arm-waving, only now he seemed to be ranting in Latin.

  “God, please tell me he’s not Catholic,” Sabrina said. A muted rumble came in answer, which meant nothing.

  “He’s summoning the Gog, Sabrina. I’ve seen it before. You’ve got to trust me.”

  Trust? A man?

  A VAMPIRE man?

  “Hey, I’ve only been dead three months, and even I’m not that dumb,” she said.

  “Why do you think I’m here?”

  “To be my man meat and let me save your soul?”

  “This is no time to be cute.”

  Actually, for an angel, “cute” was part of the deal. None of the Renaissance artists ever painted ugly angels, although some of the angels were a bit on the chubby side. “What’s so strange about Roy? He acts like most of the rich sailboat brats in Beaufort. Maybe a little more pyro than some, but hey, we all have our downsides.”

  “Not all of us have a Gog side, though.”

  Until now, Luke had never spoken of any encounters with the Gog. Sabrina had always assumed he was working on faith, a watchman drafted by some other vampire long ago, appointed a reluctant defender of the world order. And, in exchange, he got to keep feeding.

  But what if Luke’s duty in the Life Saving Service was just one of many tours he’d made? What if he’d been monitoring this coastline for centuries? What if God had a role for vampires in the Divine Plan?

  Maybe there’s more to this guy than drop-dead sexy.

  “Fly,” he said.

  She looked up past the belfry to the high heavens. “God, this wasn’t in the job description.”

  The sky rumbled again, most likely an offshore squall gathering force, but she thought she heard a few words in the noise. She couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like “Smell the glove.”

  Thanks, Big Guy. Preesh the guidance.

  She took a deep breath—air seemed like a strange substance now that she was an angel, as if her lungs could smell and taste and even see the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen. And the stuff was damp and salty, yet it made her feel light, strong, and alive.

  “Fly away home,” she said.

  She was only dimly aware of the wings sprouting from her shoulder blades. They flapped almost of their own accord, and she was lifting away before she realized she was flying. She gripped Luke’s wrist for a second, hanging on to the ground in futile resistance, and then she was torn away by the wind.

  Sabrina cast one brief glance down at Luke, who snarled in what must have been encouragement. She flapped her wings and covered fifteen feet of altitude, and unfurled them once again to propel herself toward the belfry.

  Below her, Cherry screamed in shock and surprise. “Sabrina! What…what the hell are you doing?”

  “Ruining your date,” she said, and then she oriented herself against the angles of the church. She hadn’t had much practice at flying. Luke had taken her up to Kitty Hawk and they’d engaged in some pre-dawn test runs before lapsing into sandy frolicking, and she had tested her wings inside Luke’s house.

  But she’d never flown with purpose, not since she’d awoken in the memorial gardens of the old Beaufort cemetery and found she was no longer dead.

  Flying with purpose proved much more difficult than merely gliding on the sea breeze at Kitty Hawk, and the wings didn’t seem to work in unison. She gave another flap and tilted wildly to the right, twenty feet off the ground.

  Roy didn’t seem to notice her, because he was still intent on whatever lay on the far horizon. His flares were burning down, but still he waved them, and she wondered how many flares Luke had stored on the boat. Knowing Luke, there could have been enough to run a lighthouse.

  “Two if by sea!” Roy shouted into the teeth of the keening wind.

  Sabrina flapped her wings again and veered even further to the right, now leveling off and losing altitude.

  Your right wing is stronger, which makes sense, because you’re right-handed.

  She gave a softer push with the right wing, feeling the way the mechanics torqued into her muscular system, and gave two quick, hard beats of her left wing. She found herself balancing out and she thrust out her chest and threw her head back, nosing up so that she was again pointed at the belfry.

  Learning on the fly. Heh. Lame angel humor.

  She thought she had the flying gig down, but her confidence caused her right wing to regain its natural dominance. This time when she veered, the tip of her left wing banged against the side of the church, causing her to drop.

  She somehow managed a midair somersault and spread her wings to break her fall. Still, she landed hard on her feet and nearly rolled into a crash landing.

  Cherry ran over to her. “Oh my God, Sabrina. You got wings.”

  “Yeah, it’s a flight harness—”

  “What are you, like some sort of government experiment?” Cherry tugged on one of the wings. “Is this a robot backpack or something you’re
testing for the Coast Guard?”

  “Yeah,” Sabrina said. “Top secret. Which means I’ll have to kill you, if we’re lucky enough to survive this.”

  Cherry gave a nervous laugh. “I knew there was something fishy about Luke. He’s with the CIA, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah. But don’t tell anyone, okay?”

  “National security, right?”

  “Right,” Sabrina said.

  “What’s up with Roy?”

  “He’s three beers short of a six-pack, if you know what I mean.” Sabrina used her feathers to brush the sand from her skin; gazing up to make sure Roy hadn’t caught the church on fire.

  “Those wings are so realistic,” Cherry said. “It’s amazing what they can do with plastics these days.”

  “Sabrina!” Luke yelled. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Go take care of him,” Sabrina said to Cherry. “He’s got an ouchie.”

  Rolling to her feet, Sabrina got a running start and spread her wings again. This time she caught the breeze and soared like a kite past the belfry. She just had time to glance inside and see Roy’s twisted, leering face lit by the flares.

  Then she was fighting the wind, which had gained force, and she had to beat her wings furiously just to stop her ascent. If she had kept gliding, she would have been blown past the opposite edge of the island to the sound.

  The sky was darker now, the moon nearly obscured by the gathering clouds. A storm was definitely gathering offshore, a black morass boiling on the horizon, lightning throwing violet streaks against the sea.

  Come on, wings. Flap, damn you.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Angel wings were supposedly a gift of God, but now Sabrina wondered if they were yet another example of His universal humor. An eternal being probably grew quite bored eventually, so tricking an angel might be a great way to pass the time. She might be just a kite or a yoyo to Him, an idle toy.

  But the wings were hers now, and she was going to use them.

  She beat them until she discovered the proper balance, stroking harder with the left to compensate for its relative weakness. By the time she’d completed three circles in the dark sky, she felt aerodynamically sound enough to aim for the church below.