by Paul A. Rice
Red sobbed almost uncontrollably, garbling words out as he did so. ‘Aww… Maggie, grandma…she ain’t done nothin, those mutha…Why, Ken, why? George, where are you, how can you let them do this? Kill them, kill them all, lemme go, Kenny, lemme GO!’
Ken held him tight, pinning Red down until the anguish had gone. Finally, when he felt the tension leave Red’s massive shoulders, he rolled to one side and lay gasping in the icy air. Red was extremely powerful and it had taken all of Ken’s strength to restrain him, the effort left him trembling with adrenaline.
As he finally rolled off Red, Ken became aware that Mikey was talking to Tori.
Maggie’s body had come to a rest by the side of the two Hunters, the trolley had tipped over and she laid in full view of them.
No dignity, no decency, no head.
Mikey was whispering: ‘Why did he do that to her, what’s the point of doing that? He could’ve just killed her!’
Tori whispered something to her young protégé and Ken watched as the young man stared at her for a few seconds, before nodding and turning away.
He looked up and saw Ken watching him.
With a terrible expression upon his face, Michael said, ‘Will you help me get her out of that thing, please?’ He started to untie the thin strips of wire that had been used to tie Maggie’s wrists to the steel frame.
As he reached across to help, Ken realised why Maggie had seemed to be so misshapen. She had been tied upside down on the crucifix, and she… He stopped and stared at her corpse in horror, waiting whilst the shocking reality dawned upon him. It was one of the cruellest things Ken had ever seen, and he’d see plenty in his time.
Maggie’s head had been impaled upon a steel spike, a steel spike that had been thrust into her womanhood. The demon had beheaded her and then, after turning Maggie upside down, impaled her between the legs with the piece of steel, then rammed her decapitated head onto it. In his final act of humour, the Dark One had made it appear as though she was still in one-piece, spiking her head between her legs so that from a distance the old woman had appeared almost normal. Ken really hoped that the bastard had impaled her after she was dead, judging by the amount of skin stripped from her abdomen and thighs, he knew that Maggie had obviously endured some terrible torture before she had finally succumbed.
Mikey groaned as he saw the horrendous sight; turning away from Ken, he expelled a long stream of bile onto the frozen earth. After a few seconds, he returned to the task of freeing the old woman’s body from its cruel bonds. Dragging her away from the metal trestle, he laid Maggie onto her back and folded her arms across her blood-soaked chest, the gingham dress was blackened with the stuff and its crusty surface was very unpleasant to touch. Mikey did the terrible task without another flinch.
To save him from any further anguish, Ken crawled away and retrieved Maggie’s decapitated head. Returning to her body, he placed the head where it should have been, then gently removed the offending spike from her groin, slinging the iron bar angrily over his shoulder, pausing to listen to the jangling toll as it bounced over the edge of the path.
Mikey reached across and dragged one of the packs nearer, reaching inside he removed one of the crumpled space blankets and began to cover Maggie’s body with the silvery material. Ken, looking back to where the others lay with their eyes intently focused upon the lair – doing anything other than looking across to where Maggie’s mutilated body lay – asked if any of them wanted to say anything.
Tori looked across and shook her head, saying: ‘No, there is no need; I have known for a long time that she was dead, she has already said her farewells to me. We will see her in some other place…’ She cast those awesome blue eyes upwards into his face.
Ken was struck by the overwhelming sense of calmness exuding from those fiery orbs. He saw that Tori’s mind was in that place where only those who truly have no fear can go. She was at peace with herself, and knowing her fearsome abilities in battle, he realised that someone was about to be thrown into a world of pain. No-one else spoke, and so without any further ado, Ken helped Mikey to pull the silvery shroud over their departed friend, mentor, and fellow Huntress. As soon as they were done, the two men re-joined their friends, crawling across to await the next move that the Demon was sure to make.
Their assumptions were not long in proving to be correct.
They felt him before they saw him. As they lay there waiting for that next move, eyes straining to try and peer through the gloom of the mist wisping in front of the cave’s door, the Hunters realised that he was already amongst them – unseen and unheard, the Darkness had already made the first move.
A horrible, thickening sensation filled their heads, a dreadful feeling not unlike those last few moments after having been anesthetised, the slowing of time and the almost frozen numbness that one feels just before tumbling into the dreamless world of induced unconsciousness. The horrible realisation that you can still hear and feel everything, and yet, you cannot move, you cannot speak, but you can still think. Everything is clear and yet it isn’t, it’s fuzzy.
But you know it’s fuzzy, you know that you’ve been drugged, and that’s the awful point – you know! Laying there in frozen stasis, praying to your God, praying that you may soon be taken into the blackness, taken and cocooned in the arms of some nameless anaesthetic. That last awful moment where you hear the surgical team clattering something metallic, something sharp, laughing softly as they share some private, in-house joke. Powerless, you sit upon the precipice and hope that whatever it is they’ve given you actually works.
Otherwise, you’re going to be awake when they…when they cut you!
That feeling was exactly what the Demon’s presence gave to them. Paralysed but fully aware of everything that was happening, laying there waiting to be cut, and cut the Demon did. He cut deep and he cut viciously.
Ken felt the blackness enter his head, slinking in and rummaging amongst the deepest corners of his mind, like a nosy neighbour looking for some dust, searching for secrets in your immaculate house, something they were able to use against you later, looking for anything. He heard the whispering chuckle, an undecipherable echoing chatter, the dark voices of a million depraved souls, aeons of sinful years and wickedness all wrapped within a fluttering cacophony of barely-audible words, they whispered and yet were almost deafening in their overwhelming invasion of Ken’s thoughts.
He felt his brain contract, the automatic self-defences of his mind pulling down the shutters in the Demon’s face, running scared before it and slamming doors behind – sprinting through the dark corridors of his sub-consciousness with the Dragon snapping at his heels, snarling and laughing.
It spoke to him.
‘Oh, come along now, Kenneth Robinson. There’s nothing you can’t share with me, I know everything that you’ve ever done, all of those dead people you’ve left behind? I know them too, I am them – I am you! Let me tell you one thing, boy, there are more pieces of me within you than there are in the rest of these pricks who you call friends, more pieces in you than in all of them put together – you are me!’ The laughter increased in volume, filling his head with its madness.
An overwhelming desire to place the pistol’s muzzle into his mouth, stick it in there and blow his own brains out, blow the Demon out, get rid of him for once and for all, filled Ken’s mind.
The rusty voice taunted him, snarling: ‘Yes, go on then, do it! It’s the only way that you’ll ever be rid of me – I can see you, but you don’t have the balls, do you?’ It sniggered, goading him. ‘Just think of it, no more noise, no more dreams, no more me. Don’t it sound good, Kenneth? Go on, you pussy – do it!’
In his terrible anaesthetised stupor, Ken felt the cold steel of the Glock filling his mouth, the muzzle tasted of oil. He pushed his tongue into the barrel and more oil spread into his mouth.
The Demon egged him on. ‘Tastes good, don’t it…boy – tastes like pussy, don’t it? Sweet, sweet pussy! Now, go on and do it Kenneth
, go on and make your choice, just do it or I’ll never go away!’
Ken felt the gun in his mouth, forefinger tightening against the trigger.
The Demon shrieked at him: ‘Do it!’
Then he heard Jane’s voice, she was shouting at him, but the Demon’s cajoling tones were blocking out her words and he really wanted to hear what his wife was saying. Ken slammed the door in the Dark One’s face. Anger filled its tone and he heard it shouting at him, the sound more distant now, an insane scream reaching out to him from the other side of a thick, glass wall.
‘Just pull the fuckin’ trigger, you yellow-backed cocksucker – pull it, pull IT!’
Ken felt the gun slip from his mouth, the oily caress of its cold steel barrel was replaced by the much warmer, sweet-tasting caress of his wife’s lips. He opened his eyes and looked up into the petrified gaze of Jane’s shining brown eyes. In that one instant the Demon’s fate was sealed, the battle to injure their minds was lost; it had played its last card in the war of psychological domination, tried and failed to win the soul of Ken, the man with the darkest past – the Hunters’ weakest link.
The unbreakable bond they shared had overcome the Demon’s best and almost successful attempt to diminish their numbers with its mind-games. Now the game must change, enough of these silly creeping-around-the-inside-of-people’s-heads games. Enough of those petulant, childish activities, now was the time for the big boys to come out and play, now would be the time for some good old-fashioned, unrestrained violence.
Now the sparks were really going to fly.
‘Fuck this!’
Those two words, uttered by Junior, were the signal that launched the others up and over the lip of the mound. He rose to his feet and dashed forwards – the first people to follow him were Tori and Michael, the three of them sprinting towards the veil of black mist. As Ken and the others scrabbled to catch up, still struggling to rid themselves from the last echoes of the Demon’s impromptu visit to the inside of their heads, they saw the three people ahead, those who came from the Hunters’ true bloodline, dashing towards the mist.
All of them had begun to glow. A dull, blue light began to emanate from their bodies, and as they drew nearer to the cave the light began to get much brighter. Ken, Jane and Red raced to catch up, slipping and sliding their way up the slope, but they were too late to stop the others from carrying out their apparently suicidal mission. Junior slid to a halt at the very edge of the mist’s sulky, black perimeter; he was quickly joined by Tori and Michael, whereupon the three of them joined hands and stared into the mouth of the cave.
Unbelievably, Mikey began to taunt the Master of Darkness.
He shouted: ‘Come out, come out wherever you are, come out and fight like a man, you pussy!’
Ken stared at the entrance and then back to the glowing trio, eyes flitting to and fro in a vain effort to try and keep up with the rapidly-unfolding events. By now he and the others had caught up and were standing just behind Tori and her laughing team. Yes, they had actually started laughing.
Ken was incredulous; he stared at them in awe until his transfixed gaze was dragged away by the glimpse of movement he’d caught out of the corner of his eye. Turning back to the mouth of the cave, he watched as the darkened figure sidled up to the entranceway, the shadowy figure stopping short of the light, pausing a moment to speak. Its words filled the air around them; Ken wasn’t sure if the sound was real or if it was once more booming through the speakers in his mind. Either way, the noise was deafening.
The awful voice said, ‘Oh, I’m coming out to play, all right, I’ll be right out. But first you should meet my friend…’ The darkened figure raised its arms and pointed towards the group of glowing Hunters.
In immediate obedience to its master’s command, the black mist rose into the air and began to meld in the shape of the hideous bird-like thing, which they had all seen before. It rose up before them, the sound of tearing metal, a wretched, squealing rip of a sound, started to fill the air. Just as it seemed about to launch itself down at them, hurling its bile downwards onto Tori and the others, smothering them with blackness, she and her two shining siblings, for Michael and Junior were nothing if not that, exploded with light.
Their energy burst forth with all the power of a thousand dying stars, a blinding flash of the purest blue light raced outwards and sliced into the black eagle that hung screaming above them. Ken and the others, watching through slitted eyes, saw the blueness burst amongst the mist – the power of their energy, much like Jack’s had done, blew the darkness away, scattering it into the air around the cave. But, unlike the effects of Jack’s energy, which only dissipated the blackness for a few moments, the combined power of the trio’s energy destroyed the Demon’s ethereal servant as easily as a child blowing chalk dust from the top of a school desk.
With a rippling inferno, the blue fire spread amongst the darkness like ignited gunpowder. Standing in amazed horror, they watched as the black mist caught fire. It crackled and spat, tiny specks of blue fire leaping from one particle to the next. The two men, Maggie’s escorts, who stood below, cowered in fear as the rippling sheet of fire roared around them. Upon seeing the intensity of the blaze, they turned to run back into the cave. The fire was merciless – a flashing arm of blueness reached down and seared them like a flamethrower. In an instant they had become nothing more than a pair of stumbling fireballs. They ran around in flaming circles for a few moments and then, with a loud ‘whoomph’, the two men disintegrated in a burst of fire, their demise sending a plume of glowing ashes into the air.
In seconds the dreadful fire had disappeared completely. Where once the black mist’s presence had been master of all it desired, there now only remained a thin veil of smoke, a quickly dispersing cloud that filled the air with a strong smell of burning manure.
Junior whooped loudly, reaching across to high-five Mikey.
Tori turned to the cave, staring into the darkness, she said, ‘Well…come out into the light, you coward. Come out so that we may cast our eyes upon your face, whoever you are. Come out – now!’
With a bloodcurdling chuckle, the Dark One obliged her bidding.
As he stepped into the light of day, the Hunters, who, under normal circumstances, should have all immediately focused their attention upon his presence, did not, because rather than looking at the one thing they had been dreaming of for a lifetime, the beast they had been running from and battling against for so long, they all had turned to stare at Tori instead, they couldn’t help themselves.
With a gasp, she had fallen to her knees, sinking to the ground with all of her unbounded energy seeming to have disappeared in that one expulsion of sighing breath. Tori knelt upon the frozen earth with her whole being deflated; she seemed to have shrunk. Looking up at the man who stood in front of the cave, and with tears streaming down her face, the beautiful woman sobbed once and then tried to rise to her feet. ‘You!’ she said, and then flopped back to the ground as her legs once again gave way.
In one bound, Red was by her side. He plucked her from the ground, and with his right arm wrapped around her slender waist, stood next to his wife like an oak tree, effortlessly holding her upright.
She leaned against him until her strength returned, breathing deeply for a while and standing there with her eyes closed, thin jets of breath drilling out from her nostrils and pluming angrily into the freezing air. In that one moment she looked like a dragon, and a livid and vengeful dragon at that. Her blue eyes flashed open, Tori was back and whatever it was that had taken the legs from under her, was now obviously about to be nothing more than history. She stared at the man, the thing, as it stood smiling flamboyantly in front of them.
He was short, very short – perhaps only five-and-half feet in height, and he didn’t appear to be in good health. In fact, upon closer inspection, they saw the filthy state of him. The clothes he wore were nothing more than rags that hung from his bony frame in tatters, making him seem like a badly-dressed s
carecrow.
The other thing they saw was that he had parts of his body missing.
Ken saw that his left eye was nothing more than a blackened socket with a strand of something unmentionable hanging from the weeping hole; it dangled and flapped against his scabrous cheek. As he stared at the wreck of a man, wondering how he was even still alive, never mind standing there and wielding such power, Ken began to realise that he recognised him – the man’s face, as ruined as it was, reminded him of someone, someone he knew.
Just as the realisation dawned, Ken heard Tori speak, and her words provided the answer to the question, the one that all the Hunters were asking themselves. They too had seen the horrible similarity of the abhorrent thing standing before them. The man’s uncanny likeness to George leapt out at them, he may as well have been the old man’s double.
Tori said, ‘I thought you were dead, Henry – why are you here, why is it you have allowed this thing to take flower within your soul?’ She stared at the dripping monster before her, and with the anger filling her with energy, Tori brushed Red’s thick forearm away from her waist and stepped forward.
The thing chuckled at her, the thick sound of hatred oozing from its parted lips like hot treacle. The man, within whom the Darkness had found such solace, raised a hand to his face and plucked off one of the many scabs laying there. The removal of the scab left a suppurating wound on his face, the uncovered lesion dripped a yellow tear of pus.
The onlookers stared in horrified fascination as it trickled down the side of his neck. He lifted the scab up and studied it carefully through his one remaining eye. Even though they knew what he was going to do next, the way in which Henry licked his lips and then popped the crusty morsel into his fetid mouth, was still a grotesque sight. The action was in fact so monstrous that Michael, who couldn’t help himself, retched loudly and once more hurled a stream of bile onto the ground next to him.