Hunters: A Trilogy

by Paul A. Rice

  Wiping a hand across his face, he looked up and said, ‘You are one filthy sonofabitch, you’re a goddamned animal!’

  Henry laughed loudly, saying: ‘Yes, indeed – I am the animal! An animal who will see all of your entire species in this dimension returned to the darkness!’ He coughed and, after pausing to spit out a mouthful of his own vile phlegm, looked at them with his baleful eye. ‘Yes…’ he sneered, ‘…and by the time my fire has finished burning, this entire parallel will be filled with nothing more than animals, for your pathetic species are only that, tiny specks of animal shit who sit in miniature vanity amongst the vastness of my endless playground! You dare to imagine that you are the only ones who matter, the only things of any value!’

  He chuckled again and Ken knew that it wasn’t Henry who they were listening to. Henry, whoever he may have been, was long gone. No, this was merely the husk of his former existence, a hollow shell that was now completely filled with the Darkness. However, in a sick twist, the voice it spoke with did actually sound somewhat like their mentor’s own, gently-persuasive tones. The backwoods slang was nowhere to be seen, a well-spoken voice had taken its place, George’s voice. The Demon looked at Ken, his face creasing into a wicked grimace as he saw the realisation in Ken’s eyes.

  With a small laugh, a sarcastic sound of patronising anger, he said, ‘This is my universe,’ and raised his arms in an exaggerated expression of ownership of all that lay around them. He paused, before saying: ‘And you and all of yours are nothing more than a passing amusement to me, nothing more!’

  He looked directly at Ken.

  Then, with his cracked lips curling in resentment to reveal a row of blackened stumps, the Demon shook his head and said, ‘And you, Mister Robinson, you are my greatest disappointment! A great waste indeed – you should have come to me when you had the chance, I have given you several opportunities and yet you still stubbornly refuse to acknowledge my presence within you, it is such a shame because we would have made a great team! Still, even I can’t win them all, but it will be you who lives to regret that denial, albeit not for long…’ He winked at Ken.

  As his eyelid rose, they saw that the previously bloodshot eyeball had now turned a deep yellow. The Demon stared at them and they heard his voice deepen. ‘Ah yes…Henry,’ he sneered. ‘Dear old Henry, that poor, jealous little man, so desperate to keep up with his brother’s wonderful deeds, so desperate to achieve some form of recognition, so filled with avarice!’

  Tori cursed him. ‘You bastard!’ she spat. ‘Henry was sick, he was a sick old man, he never knew what he wanted – he didn’t know anything, anything other than his work!’ She snarled at the beast and her rage once more ignited the blue fire within. ‘He was amongst the brightest minds we have ever known! He would never have willingly allowed you into his soul, never. George loved him!’

  Her fury hurled itself at the monster standing before them. Blue light flashed across and sliced into the side of Henry’s rotting face. The Demon howled in anger and rage, his whole body shook for a moment, quivering as though in the grip of an uncontrollable fit.

  And then, right before their eyes, they witnessed the departure of Henry.

  The face before them seemed to melt into an unrecognisable mess – in an insane moment of total horror, they watched as his lower jaw fell away from the rest of his face. It just tore away and tumbled down his chest to land with a wet thud on the ground below.

  They stood in mesmerised disbelief and watched as the thing reached up and tore out its own tongue, the piece of flesh made a horrible stretching noise, before snapping with a wet, twanging sound. The Demon tossed the steaming tongue over its shoulder, and then turned to speak to Tori in its own voice.

  Fixing a horrible yellow eye upon Tori’s face, it said, ‘No, he wouldn’t have, and in that assumption you are quite correct, but he didn’t have to invite me in because I already had the key to his soul, I had the key!’

  The thing shrieked with laugher.

  With a gurgle, it said, ‘I have all the keys to those who leave their bitterness and anger in a place where I can find them, hidden in the bottom of their carefully disguised lives, waiting behind the curtains of their sad, lying existences. I can see them all, and the keys always fit the lock!’ The thing turned its face away and looked into the cave behind, listening for a while. With a lecherous creasing of its ruined face, it turned back to them and spoke once more.

  ‘Henry never loved George…whoever he is…no, he hated him, and that hidden hatred gave me the combination to his soul! And I have to say that we made a great team, a fuckin’ wonderful team! But, and it’s always the same with you fuckin’ pricks, you just had to come and interfere, didn’t you!’

  Black mist, its grains so finely separated that it appeared to be sand, began to ooze from the hole where the unfortunate Henry’s jaw had been until a few moments previously. The voice took on a metallic, hissing sound. ‘Anyway, enough of this small talk, my task here is completed and you cannot stop the flowers! My sweet yellow flowers have been planted, in a few moments they shall bloom and then it shall be summer, summertime for everyone – and it’s going to be a hot one…’

  It paused, and then giggled, before saying: ‘Flowers…ah yes – the old woman? Yes, she loved her flowers, she was a very flowery woman indeed, right up until I pulled her fuckin’ head off she was! A very flowery, stubborn old woman – she screamed a lot, too!’ The Demon threw its head to the sky and let out a gibbering roar of laughter. The dust from within began to bloom from its mouth, spewing into the purple sky and hovering above them like the awful liquid that Tori had seen above Jeremiah just before she killed him.

  Ken had seen enough. ‘Sod this for a game of soldiers,’ he thought. ‘The mist’s gone, so let’s see how he likes chewing on some hot lead’ He yanked his pistol out from the holster and cocked the action. As he was bringing the weapon into the aim, Ken felt the strangest of things; his hand had become hot – red-hot!

  He looked down at the pistol.

  To his utter amazement, saw that it had started to glow with heat.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ he yelled, flinging the pistol away as quickly as he could. He was only just in time. As the pistol left his hand and sailed through the air, it exploded with a loud bang – the superheated ammunition, blowing apart the weapon and filling the air with the sound of whining metal. Ken heard the pieces falling like tinny confetti and realised that he had been seconds away from losing his hand, and most likely his life, too. The pain in his hand was immense, looking down he knew the blisters would be but a few seconds away. He knelt down and pressed his burning palm flat onto the freezing surface of the icy slope.

  Looking up, he saw the Demon laughing at him.

  ‘Fuck you, leper-head!’ Ken said. It was all he was able to come up with at the time, his hand was killing him and the fact that he was now beginning to wonder what exactly the hell they were going to do next, both ensured that he had very little time for pleasant exchanges with the dripping beast that stood grinning to his front.

  The Dark One sneered at him. ‘You should know that such things are not permitted here,’ it said. ‘Only I have control here, and as for you…’ the dripping face blew a cloud of black snot in Ken’s direction, ‘…I will deal with you in a short while, after I’ve finished with these pricks!’

  It snarled and turned back in the direction of Tori.

  Bellowing out something in a language they had never heard, and with the blackness swarming around its head, the beast stood and laughed as its last remaining foot-soldiers came rushing out of the cave.

  However, the burst of hysterical laughter soon stopped.

  As the four men ran into the daylight, turning to their master for instructions, they took one horrified look at his disintegrated face and kept on running, screaming and wailing as they burst past Ken. Throwing their weapons to the floor and yelling out some fearful cry, the men rushed past to run helter-skelter down the steep path away fro
m the lair. The sight of their disorganised cowardice was almost comedic, and if it hadn’t been for the horrible tearing sound filling the air, Ken would have definitely burst into laughter himself. As it was, the time for laughter was long gone – the only time left, was the time to die.

  With a roar, Red and the others leapt forwards, Tori and Junior blasting their blue light into the leprous remnants of Henry’s body, the trio rushing forward to kill the last fragments of the Darkness that lay trapped within the rotting remains of George’s twin brother.

  Only Michael Wildeman remained, the boy had dropped to his knees and was dragging the cloth bag from his pocket. Like a child emptying out the last of his precious marbles, Michael tipped the bag upside down and caught the two metal ships in the palm of his left hand. Ken and Jane watched as he calmly carried out his task, gently separating the ships he placed one in each hand, the pointed end of each medal facing toward the Demon.

  Seemingly satisfied with the angle of the ships, Michael raised his hands up, and then with a movement so rapid that it was hard for the eyes to see, he clapped his hands together.

  As his palms met, clashing the metal ships together, there was a terrific flash of light, so bright that it made the others appear as though they were under a strobe light, one that has just fired its powerful bulbs in the most bizarre disco ever known to man. Tori and her onrushing son and husband seemed to move forward a frame at a time, racing to engage in a dance with the Demon, embrace him in their unworldly disco, where together they would dance their final dance of death.

  Ken and his wife stared at the boy, half-blinded by the flaring candles the flash of light had left burning in their eyes. They saw Michael rise to his feet and open his hands, cupping them as if to catch some unseen trickle of water. The ships had gone and in their place there now lay a strange, lily-shaped object. It was a deep purple, almost black, shimmering flower-head. It was shaped just like a half-opened lily and was the size and shape of a pear, albeit a rather large one.

  Michael looked away from the object, and then standing there with it held in steady hands, he screamed: ‘Kill him, tear him apart, I’m ready for him – kill him!’

  In perfect synchronicity to Michael’s command, Red and the others reached the Demon, as one they leapt upon him. In a few seconds of unbridled ferocity, the three powerful Hunters destroyed the earthly remains of Henry. They literally pulled him to pieces, tore him from limb to limb. Sickening sounds of tearing flesh and snapping tendons filled the air. Blood flew in wild arcs – the sound of the Hunters’ screams and curses was only beaten by the wailing screeches of the Dark One as his final dwelling was dismantled around him.

  Red had done something indescribable, an act far too awful to dwell upon, but it is suffice to say that it was he who held the dripping head of the Demon’s host aloft, wiping the blood from his lips and roaring at the sky like the terrible, red lion that he truly was. The black dust spewed like a geyser, pumping through Henry’s gaping neck into the air above them. The unutterable metallic sound of the Demon’s voice, that rusty bag of nails, filled the air.

  ‘Ooooh, you cunts…’ it screamed. ‘You fucking gereshhk pig’s-fuk, I curse yoo, whore bitches, pathetic little fuks, garrggghhh, you pigs, you fukpigs – now you will all die, bastards!’

  The rancid gibberish rose into a crescendo and they watched as the sound matched the gathering rise of his composition, his blackness. The Demon was the blackness. His departing particles reached their zenith, flaring above them in the shape of that giant bird, the uncountable zillions of its black particles shimmering and twisting in that hideous, oily fashion.

  Just as it appeared to Ken as though they had failed in their task and that the black thing, the devilish kite, was about to flee, he heard Michael scream.

  The boy’s loud cry easily cut through the shrieking of the blackness.

  ‘Get down, down everyone, get down!’

  Whether Michael had spoken the words, or he had thought them, was irrelevant. As one, the whole team of Hunters hit the deck on their bellies, dropping to the ground in an instant and craning their necks upwards to try and see what was going on. Ken looked sideways at the young Hunter.

  Michael had remained on his feet, and now that the others had fallen flat, the eye of the Demon fell upon him. As the blackness saw him, sensed the power within the young man, it flared outwards, almost seeming to spread those impossible, dusty black, liquid wings. The screeching sound stopped, the cessation of which brought an immensely satisfying silence to their surroundings. The previous noise had been like tinnitus, and not until it was gone did the listeners realise how bad the sound had been. Now there was silence, even the moaning wind, which still gusted in a freezing embrace across the face of the cave, seemed to have held its breath. For a few seconds, the silence was total.

  Then the Demon cried out, that familiar sound of fear, the one Mary had heard as she saw it trying to leave Jack’s plummeting body, cascaded upon them. It cried out in childish anguish, wailing at Michael.

  ‘You, you’re the one! Oh, you have it, don’t you? I see it, I see it! Give it to me, give me the thing – give it to me!’

  Michael laughed and raised his hands.

  The Darkness rippled, a vicious fluttering that made its giant form seem to spread even further through the air above them, its dark shadow filling their vision. It shrieked in anger, and within that awful sound they also recognised another noise, the echo of terror, the petrified sound of recognition – the realisation of the fact it had been trapped, that this moment was to be its final one. The last remnants of this particular Dragon knew they were doomed, but it didn’t stop them from trying to gain the upper hand one last time.

  With a sickening wail, the huge cloud launched itself at Mikey. Screaming out its last words, the Darkness made a final attack. ‘You cannot ever defeat me, I win, I always win – you are too late, the flowers will bloom, the flowers will bloom!’

  Accompanied by an ear-splitting rumble, it launched itself downwards.

  Waiting until the onrushing storm of darkness was only a few feet away, the unflinching son of Jack Wildeman calmly raised his hands to point the shimmering purple lily straight into the face of his fearsome attacker. The others watched as Michael stared into the eye of the storm, he was smiling.

  A deeply serene expression lay upon his face. They saw him mouth the final words the Demon would hear in this parallel.

  ‘Come then, come to me – you belong to us!’

  Abruptly, the Demon’s rush came to a halt – it simply froze, exactly as though time had been paused. Ken saw the tiny specks of darkness, the ones scattered around the edges of its central bulk, a million tiny specks of evil, they too were just hanging in the air, and although it seemed to be impossible, Ken knew that he saw them, they were there, vibrating within the unrelenting grasp of whatever force it was that Mikey had unleashed. The sound of the Demon had also stopped, and stopped completely. There were no sounds at all.

  Michael turned, smiled coolly at them, and then turned back to face the frozen dagger of blackness as it hung just feet from his face.

  ‘Come to me!’ he commanded.

  Then, as though into a vacuum cleaner, the frozen black cloud was sucked into the mouth of the beautiful, metallic flower that Michael held aloft. The only thing they heard was a short ‘Swiiippp’ sound. The noise was similar to the sound of someone licking a drop of blood from the tip of their finger, a soft, ripping suck of a sound. In a microsecond, the dust had been incarcerated within the bowels of Michael’s iridescent device.

  He turned back and spoke to his friends, and this time they quite clearly heard his words as there was no other sound to disrupt the perfect silence.

  Michael said, ‘It’s done – we have conquered this Demon for once and for all! It’s time for him to leave us…’ Turning around, he drew back his arm.

  Like a baseball pitcher, the young Hunter hurled the Demon’s prison into the abyss beyond. The devic
e left his hand in a blur of light, racing away faster than the eye was able to see. Leaving a thin trail of sparkling blue light behind, the glowing flower head rocketed into the far horizon. The only noise to accompany this amazing event was a gentle ripping sound, which they heard rolling back down to them from the heavens above.

  Ken sat up and swivelled his hips to see if Jane was okay. His wife grabbed his forearm and used it to pull herself into a similar position as her husband’s. Sitting together with their arms around each other’s waists, the stunned couple sat and looked over to where the others stood.

  Michael had run over into the cave, where he remained for some five minutes. Then he burst from the entrance and ran across to Tori, quickly helping the dark-haired woman to her feet. After also extending a hand to Red and Junior, he stood huddled together with them for a few moments. To Ken it looked like as though they were conferring, but it didn’t seem as though this particular conference was one in which they were planning some wonderful event to celebrate the demise of their enemy. By the looks on their faces, Tori, Red and the two young men were doing anything but planning a party.

  Red looked across and Ken quite clearly saw the tears running down his face. Junior, who had glanced over at the seated couple, also seemed to be somewhat less than happy. Ken saw him walk away from his family, he shot one more glance across in Ken’s direction and then began walking in a confused circle, meandering around and shaking his head. After a short while, Junior returned to the others and squatted next to them, where he remained with his head lowered and eyes staring morosely at the ground under his thighs.

  Wondering what the hell was going on, Ken rose to his feet and made as if to walk across to join the worried-looking band of fellow Hunters. Tori saw him, lowering her head, she murmured something to the others, whereupon they all turned and jogged over to where Ken and Jane were. Junior, rising to his feet, took up the rear, walking with his head down and angrily kicking at some loose pebbles, the frozen stones clattering like glass as they bounced away from his boots.