A Haunting of Horrors, Volume 2: A Twenty-Book eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

by Brian Hodge

  “Which way?”

  “South, always. If not Ludlum, then maybe some other place.”

  “We can’t go that way,” Brian said, “it’s a cliff! I’ve climbed it, I know what it’s like.”

  Now the grinding of the Humvees’ gears came clear, and the rising growl of their engines.

  Loi got on their Suzuki. “Come on, Brian.”

  “I’m telling you, it can’t be done!”

  Loi flared at him. “Then why did you even stop here?”

  “How was I to know they’d get around behind us like that? How could they, in those things?”

  “So where can we go?” She wasn’t whispering now. Her voice was shrill.

  “We could go down the way we came,” Bob said.

  “Back to town?”

  “We skirt the town, cross the Cuyamora where it’s shallow up near the Pratt place. Then we go south through the fields. We’ll sure as hell make better time than we will in these damn mountains.”

  It sounded to Brian like a reasonable enough plan. The Humvees were now only minutes away. They had no time to consider whether or not it was a mistake.

  The instant the first Suzuki started, huge lights flooded the whole ridge with beams brighter than the brightest sun. The ungainly vehicles leaped ahead, rumbling down on the little band of survivors like a herd of maddened rhino.

  The ATVs bounced off into the dense woods. They had been expertly turned back in the direction they had come.

  Chapter 16

  1

  Brian’s ATV bounced and lurched, its engine screaming. Every jerk went right through him. He worried that Loi was going to start bleeding again, and they were so helpless now.

  To the north and west the sky glowed purple, and he thought of the forbidden zone, the region of no escape. Was it already too late?

  He had conceived of an idea, a long chance. If he was right and his facility had been moved to this area, he might be able to get inside and do some sort of damage that would stop this.

  Loi pressed her cheek against his back. “We must turn, Brian. Turn north here.”

  “Toward Towayda? Is that wise?”

  “We’ve got to go where we aren’t expected. We can get around town that way, cross Towayda Road, then go out into that apple orchard the other side of Mound.”

  “That’ll take us right into the center of this, Loi!”

  “Where we’re least expected.”

  “I’ve got to stop. The others’ll have to agree.” He turned in his seat, trying to see them. In the near distance he glimpsed movement. Farther back, the forest was radiant with light from the Humvees.

  Loi clutched him tightly. “They’ll stay with us.”

  It was her they trusted. He was no leader. “They’ll stay with you.”

  “Yeah, so let’s go.”

  He made the turn, and the purple glow now lit the glimpses of sky ahead of him. The woods grew thicker, and he had to slow down.

  “Go, Brian!”

  “Jesus Christ, in this morass?”

  “Go, break through it! There is no time!”

  The ATV slid and protested, the branches and leaves slapped his face, the bumps came again and again. “Loi, stand up in the seat, you can’t risk the shock!”

  “Just go!”

  Suddenly a yard appeared ahead of them. Then they were crossing grass. Brian recognized the Huygenses’ place, now dark and silent. So often he’d sat with Pat under these very trees, discussing town affairs deep into the night.

  There were the four green Adirondack chairs Pat had built ten years ago.

  “Faster, Brian! This is the most dangerous part.”

  He crossed the patio, tore through the vine-covered wire fence that gave them privacy from the road—and saw a group of people just ahead. He jammed on the brakes and the vehicle slid to a halt.

  A flashlight blazed into his eyes. “State police!”

  Loi’s pistol came out.

  Ellen roared up beside them, the dark lump of Father Palmer huddled on the seat behind her. She gunned her engine, stood over the handlebars, ready to try to blast through the crowd.

  The Wests stopped a short distance back.

  Behind the light Brian could see state police uniforms, and then familiar faces, friends he had known since he was a child. Among the troopers he noticed Nate Harris.

  Bob also saw Nate, his oldest friend in the troopers, his mentor. With them, though, were more of the heavily equipped soldiers with the hidden faces.

  The street was blocked. “Loi,” Brian said, “we’ve got to deal with this.” He took his hand off the gas.

  “All right. Dismount, everybody.” They complied immediately, moving now with the speed of a well-trained unit.

  The group facing them stirred. “State police,” the voice squawked again, “come forward with your hands on your heads!”

  Father Palmer wheezed, seemed about to keel over.

  Ellen went to Loi. “We’re losing him.”

  “Does he seem dangerous?”

  “He was quiet. He groaned a little.”

  Loi surveyed their predicament. The only alternatives open now were to go down into Oscola or double back the way they’d come. But the Humvees were back there, somehow negotiating the woods despite their ungainly shape.

  If she could leave a rear guard, they might be able to make the run down through Oscola. She crept over to the priest. “Father Palmer, can you keep watch here for us? Do you trust yourself?”

  A rumbling groan.

  “Do your best. You’re what we have.”

  He hissed, then his voice guttered low. “I love you all,” he said. He may have gasped the word “Jesus,” uttered a part of a prayer.

  “I’ll stay,” Chris said. He looked toward the humped shape that had been the old priest. “He ain’t gonna make it.” Chris carried a 30-30 almost as large as he was.

  Loi gave him a fond glance. She remembered so well what it was like to be a child at war. “We need you with us.”

  “Come forward with your hands up!” Nate Harris called.

  “We’re on your side,” another trooper said.

  “Come on, Bob. You’ll all be treated well.”

  Bob took a halting step.

  “Tell Mrs. Kelly to put her pistol down on the ground, Lieutenant. And is that an AK-47 tied to your vehicle?”

  Bob took another step. “They’ve got a lot of firepower, Loi.” Then, more softly, “I’m playing for time. Get ready to move.”

  One of the troopers began walking toward them. “I wanta see everybody’s hands,” he said as he approached.

  There was a slapping sound, the clink of metal. “Stop,” Chris shouted. He was aiming his rifle directly at the trooper.

  The trooper dropped. The others took positions behind cars. There was a general clicking as guns were cocked. “Unless you throw in your weapons by the count of three, we’ll take all of you down,” Nate shouted. “One… two—”

  “I’m bringing a gun in,” Father Palmer burred. There was a sloshing sound in his throat. “Somebody give me a shotgun.”

  Nobody moved. They looked to Loi for a decision. “Yes,” she said. Nancy handed him one.

  He dragged himself into the middle of the road.

  Nate spoke. “Put it down now, Father.”

  Closer Father Palmer went, moving to within range. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Father, don’t take another step.”

  The priest stopped, his breath gurgling and wheezing.

  Nate yelled at him. “Put it down!”

  Instead Father Palmer raised it to his shoulder and fired a round of twelve-gauge buckshot directly into Nate’s body. There was a blast and a dry smack of sound and Nate flew into pieces—which at once began to jerk spasmodically, the hands clutching, the face working. Black liquid sprayed out of the torso and the neck, and dribbled from the severed arms and head.

  Bob was astonished to find that he himself had been following Father P
almer, even starting to raise his hands. Now he reared back in horror, the thrall broken.

  Father Palmer’s gun roared again and more of them fell. As he fired, appendages grew from his torso and wrapped around the barrel of the gun, attempting to wrest it from him. “By the love of my Lord Jesus,” the priest bellowed, his voice suddenly clear and hard and strong, “begone!” Again he fired, and again, and the shotgun’s roar rocked the night.

  Crowds of black serpentine arms unfolded from him, ripping out through his skin, tugging the gun, snaking around his neck. They squeezed. “Lord,” he croaked.

  Shots were returned, and the stink of cordite filled the air. For Loi and Bob it was an odor from long ago. Her blood began to run high, his eyes to well.

  Yet again, the priest’s gun thundered and more of the crowd of false people was rent into pieces. Father Palmer gargled and grunted and struggled against himself, but he kept firing, again and again.

  Loi and Brian and Chris fired. Joey hid behind his mother, his little voice cutting the air with its terrified cries.

  Quite suddenly there was silence. As the ringing faded, they all heard the same awful noise in the dark. Pieces of soldiers and troopers and townsfolk lay about scuffling and flopping, their motion chaotic. Hands vibrated, legs kicked like landed fish, lips burbled, torsos wheezed and spilled blood.

  Father Palmer ceased firing and began to dance a kind of horrible jig, his hands batting at the great coils that now swarmed from his belly.

  “Shoot him,” Ellen shouted. “Don’t leave him like that!” She fired her own gun, but he didn’t react. She was no marksman, and the dark only made it worse.

  Bob raised his pistol, but it wouldn’t be effective in this light against that gyrating hulk, not from a hundred-foot range. He gunned his ATV, went closer, began to take down the AK-47.

  “Bobby, come back,” Nancy moaned.

  “Daddy!” Joey bellowed.

  Chris trotted up beside the ATV. “I’ve got a few rounds left,” he said.

  They got to within thirty feet of the priest. This close, the man was a struggling, heaving mountain of fleshy complications.

  Now Bob fired, and as usual he didn’t miss. The priest staggered, lurched, then toppled. His fluid-filled skin creaked, it was so taut. Liquid spurted from around his knees like water from a burst pipe. Then the head came to muttering life, the eyes opening wide, bulging until they imparted an appearance of extreme surprise.

  Chris fired three shots right into the center of the face.

  With a series of wet plopping sounds the priest became entirely transformed, his head, his body, changing into a furiously active tangle of worm-like feelers that probed and pulsated, all seeking the same thing: control of the shotgun that lay before him.

  Almost without his realizing it, Bob dropped his gun to the ground.

  “No, Dad,” came Chris’s shout. “Pick it up!”

  He looked at it, looked at his boy, who calmly fired two more shots into the bubbling, spitting remains of the priest.

  “Goodbye, Father,” Bob said, and quietly added a prayer for him. He took the AK-47 to his hip and fired again. The priest’s chest burst open, his monstrously deformed head lolled.

  Chris tugged his shirt. “Let’s move, Dad!”

  From long range, Loi fired at the remains of the priest three more times, hoping that this would be enough, fearing the worst. Angry, disgusted, she shook away the tears that had started forming in her eyes. She got up behind Brian and they darted through the dismembered, disorganized rabble that was all that remained after Father Palmer’s effort.

  From behind them there rose a hideous sound, a high-pitched, raging bellow so filled with hate that it made her cling to her husband’s back to drown it out.

  They went on.

  Just as they were about to hop the curb and get back into the woods, the Viper came speeding up from the direction of Oscola. Its lights were off and it was moving at blinding speed, coming straight at them. But Loi was a good shot. She rose behind Brian and fired over his head.

  A blue spark flew off the hood of the onrushing car.

  She had perhaps three seconds.

  Her next shot dissolved the windshield.

  The sound of the engine went high, the car swerved.

  Another shot missed. “Goddamnit.”

  Again she fired, this time into the right tire.

  The car careened to the right, narrowly missing Bob and Joey West on their ATV, then rolling off into the dark by the side of the road.

  A moment later a series of purple flashes exploded up from the ditch where it had crashed. Out of the flickering explosions there raged a mass of flailing, segmented legs, clashing red mandibles, plates of gleaming red chitin.

  It hadn’t been a vehicle at all, but a—what? A colony of something?

  Before anybody could so much as take a breath, crystalline purple eyes had appeared at the ends of the mandibles.

  One of them shot forward.

  Loi found herself staring straight into its glittering darkness. She saw the mesmerizing image of a beautiful little baby. He was floating, still attached to the umbilical. He kicked, his whole body jerking with the suddenness of a man waking from an unexpected sleep.

  Brian grabbed both of her cheeks and turned her face forcibly away.

  Then she was back in this world and they were pulling out, tires wailing protest.

  Holding on with one hand, she touched her face with the other. “Did it get me?” she bellowed. Her baby kicked. “Did it get me?”

  “No!”

  “Thank God.” As they raced off into the night, she had the bloodcurdling realization that the demon was especially interested in her, and she knew why: it wanted her baby.

  Ellen was behind them when she saw, coming up from behind the tree line, something entirely new and completely unexpected. A gigantic, tapering mandible, visible in the dark only as a shadow, probed along behind Loi and Brian’s speeding ATV. It was as if the most tremendous, the most terrible of all the dragons of myth had risen from the depths.

  For a moment it wavered, as if seeking direction. Then it stopped, focused, and went questing after Loi. On its first pass it came so close that she rubbed the back of her head where it had touched.

  “Loi,” Ellen shouted, “look out! Look out behind you!”

  When Loi turned in her seat she saw a grasping, outstretched hand with fingers ten feet long.

  She grabbed Brian’s waist and hung on for dear life as they chugged toward the sheltering forest. On her cheek she felt a chill cooler than the wind rushing past, felt it slip around her neck, felt the gentlest of tugs, persistent, getting stronger—then broken.

  She was free.

  But then the serpent arm flashed back into view, tremendous fingers waving gracefully in her face. She shrieked, threw herself against Brian’s back. Her baby leaped within her. She felt a dull, deep pain. “No, please,” she whispered. She tried to force the muscles to relax, but they did not relax. Again her baby jumped. There was a dull, familiar pain. “Oh, no. Please no.”

  The serpent arm rose high over the ATV, curling in a huge arch. Then its end disappeared into the roiling clouds. She could not see where it was anchored to the ground, or the gigantic creation of which it must be a part. It was large enough to slap all four vehicles to oblivion. “Brian, it’s going to hit us!”

  The tree line was fifty feet away.

  She could feel the thing’s presence above like the looming cave-in of a tunnel or a fat client at the Blue Moon Bar sinking down on her. Then the ground shook, the ATV’s engine wailed, and the whole enormous thing crashed into the road behind them. The hand closed on air.

  Instantly the gigantic apparition rose, stretching its serpentine form to the absolute maximum, and this time swinging out to the side. As it shimmered away into the woods seventy- and eighty-foot pines shattered into matchsticks, their trunks riven, the roar of their fall like the voice of a maddened river.

 
It came back, sailing toward them at full speed, right beside them, then just beside the rear tires, then just missing, the fingers extended.

  They were within twenty feet of the woods.

  But the road before them erupted in a geyser of dirt, stones and soil and concrete flying upward as something came bursting out of the earth.

  Desperately Brian swerved away. Loi, who had been hanging on by one hand, was thrown hard to the side. She fell, her shoulder glancing off the ground. As she felt the shock blast through her, she screamed in pain and terror. Her womb shuddered like jelly, and long, hot knives of pain penetrated deep.

  “Loi!”

  She grabbed his back, the far edge of the seat, forced herself up. “I’m OK!”

  The other ATVs were coming fast, engines bellowing.

  Brian gunned his engine, their ATV leaped ahead—and Loi found herself lying in the road flat on her back. Her mind snatched details, the smell of the exhaust, the faint warmth of the pavement, the gnarled shadowy clouds above.

  From underground came a booming, pulsating sound. Her skin felt suddenly shivery, tight. She saw Brian still on the ATV, a look of absolute horror on his face. Then she felt the ground churning beneath her body.

  She was falling.

  She saw Brian disappear, the sky above him disappear, saw it all become a haze, a blur, then saw it folded away into blackness. She was dropping fast, so astonished that she couldn’t even cry out.

  From far above she heard Brian shouting, heard her name echoing.

  Then she hit something thick and warm, sank into it, kept going down and down, felt it hot around her, breathed, choked, tasted a foul taste, went deeper and deeper and deeper.

  2

  Brian threw himself to the ground, began clawing at the pavement, which was still loose where Loi had been absorbed. But the stones soon acquired a sort of crazy, spinning weight, rushing out from under his fingers and back into their places.

  Inside of twenty seconds there wasn’t a trace of the hole that had consumed her. The only sign that it had ever existed was the presence of pale, friable clay, just like the summit of the mound, or the spot out on the Northway where Bob had been taken.

  Deeper silence descended. It was broken when frogs out in forest ponds resumed a tentative chorus. Brian crouched beside their ATV, weeping.