by Lex Sinclair
Naomi led the way, because she knew where the hole in the ground was. She hadn’t said as much as a few words, and even then she grumbled them. Walking alongside her now, Joe had thought about asking her if she was all right, but it was blatantly obvious that she was far from all right. He wanted to try and reassure her that they would find Corrie alive and well, and that they’d destroy whatever evil got in their way - but he couldn’t do that, as much as he desperately wanted to. There was no way of knowing of what awaited them in the demon’s lair, on the unholy burial ground. Furthermore, Martha had informed them that at least one of them was going to die down there. There was a strong possibility that that person was going to be him.
The sound of their footfalls on the pavement and then quietening as they stepped onto the flattened grass leading into the bushes seemed much louder because no one talked.
Then, as though she’d read his thoughts, Naomi spoke: ‘Are you afraid of dying, Joe?’
‘Eh... I guess so. I’ve never really thought about it ‘till recently, to be perfectly honest. How ‘bout you?’
‘I’d rather be dead than live without Corrie,’ she said, in a voice void of emotion.
‘Corrie is your life, isn’t she?’
‘Yes. Without her I am nothing.’
Even though Joe had never known the joys of having children of his own, he somehow understood what Naomi told him.
Life without soul isn’t worth living, he thought.
Branches and twigs snapped underfoot as the group made their way through the undergrowth into the opening and were now facing the canal at the bottom of the steep, slippery rise. They had to go around it otherwise they would lose their footing and slide all the way to the bottom and most likely fall into the still, opaque water, reflecting the magnificent full moon, which hung directly over them, and was so huge that it made you believe it to be inside the earth’s atmosphere.
They all stopped at the top of the hill arching their heads back, staring in wonder at the full moon. The hunter’s moon. The watercourse was a brilliant silver line running through the town alongside the River Neath and the M4 under the bridge.
Standing motionless, looking at the picturesque sight that would have been picture perfect for a postcard, no one in their right mind would believe that somewhere underground a monstrosity and four dead devil-worshippers were the perpetrators whom had sent shock waves through, not only the peaceful town, but also throughout the entire country.
Joe could have stayed there all night gawking at the scenery lit up by nature, exuding beauty some people never saw in an entire lifetime. Yet, they had a job to do, and a life to save (providing she was still alive). Naomi led them to the nearest bridge and down the concrete steps where a Morrisons superstore had closed for the night and back the way they’d come, only this time they were walking on the gravel path alongside the canal. Tiny stones crunched underfoot as they walked in single file, following Naomi.
A hundred yards in front they saw something indistinguishable floating lifelessly on the surface beneath another footbridge where the doctor’s surgery was situated.
Naomi, who was at the front, saw it first, and snapped her cry off abruptly, using the palm of her hand, disgusted by what she saw. She knew it was the Acolytes of Doom’s doing, without anyone having to point that fact out for her. No one else could be so cruel and heartless.
Once Joe saw the dead, fully grown swan; its neck drooping to one side, broken, he turned away, revolted at the baby swans behind the mother; their little webbed feet jutting from the water, in a wicked, heartbreaking imitation of the backstroke.
‘Sick bastards,’ Jake hissed behind him, as he too caught sight of what Joe and Naomi had already seen, and turned away from.
Naomi slowed her pace to a crawl. Joe was about to ask why she’d done this, when over her shoulder he spotted the hole in the steep bank. All of a sudden, he had a great urge of pivoting and running back home. But even if he chose to do this he wouldn’t have got very far at all; on the contrary. He’d only end up on top of their lair, not inside it. He’d still be vulnerable to their attacks. This was the only way they had of surviving this dreadful situation without their necks being caught in a noose, ready for someone to kick away the stool they stood upon.
‘I’ll go first,’ Naomi said. ‘Joe you follow me, then Martha, and finally, Emma and Jake. Does that sound all right?’
They nodded simultaneously.
‘Before we go in,’ Martha said, ‘I just need to remind you, ‘cause I won’t get chance when we’re crawling through the burrow, not to listen or believe a word that creature say’s; nor those shape-shifters. And if we, or I, don’t make it out of there, I just want you to know, I love you guys.’
Emma rested a hand on the elderly lady’s shoulder. ‘We love you, too,’ she said, speaking for all of them.
‘That burrow doesn’t look big enough for us to fit through, anyway,’ Jake pointed out.’
Martha turned around and studied Jake’s shiny white face, lit by the enormous moon. ‘That’s not just some burrow a rabbit has dug, Jake. It’ll allow our different shapes and sizes enough room to wend our way into the heart of their lair, don’t you worry. Remember what Joe told us about what happened to him: they are expecting us. They will permit our entry, because they want this final confrontation as much as we do.’
Jake didn’t reply; instead he stood at the back of their line, watching as Naomi got down on her hands and knees; her chest was rising and falling a little heavier than usual, but that was to be expected. Then her head disappeared into the hole; she dragged herself through using her arms as levers, and soon her torso had gone, then her legs. Joe got down on all fours, watching Naomi’s progress.
‘Can you see anything?’ he called out.
‘Nothing,’ replied a muffled voice.
Joe slid into the ground and kept a close eye on the dim form of Naomi in front of him. There was scarcely any room to move; not only that but there was a noticeable reduction of oxygen in here. He hoped the tunnel wasn’t very long and that they’d reach their uncharted destination soon. At the moment he had a terrible premonition that the ground would shake and collapse in on them, crushing them, covering the hole to the outside; then they’d suffocate in a very slow, claustrophobic death.
Behind him he could hear Martha struggling for air. He told her she’d be all right, and there was no need to panic, because in a short while they’d be out of this close-fitting tunnel. He had no idea that what he’d said would in fact be true... all he could do was hope.
Naomi yelled!
Joe froze.
Then he heard the thud of something heavy coming into contact with the unyielding ground.
‘Naomi! Are you okay?’ he shouted.
There was a grunt somewhere in front and beneath him, which was followed by a disgruntled, ‘Yeah... I just didn’t see the opening; landed on my hip again. Be careful.’
Joe thanked her for the warning, thinking that even if the poor woman did get her daughter back and lived beyond tonight, she’d still have the contusions and cracked hip to remind her, in case she suffered with a serious case of amnesia in later life.
He slid out of the tunnel, rolled down to the ground, blinded by the vapour of dirt getting into his eyes, mouth and nose, causing him to cough violently. His elbows and knees were sore because he’d been resting on them as he’d crawled through to where he was now.
Together, he and Naomi helped Martha, Emma and Jake out. Then they gawked at their surroundings. There was a massive opening between two large concrete boulders of serpents entwining themselves around a towering figure with a goat’s head. Golden motes drifted horizontally out of the dusky yellow light slanting through the opening of the entrance.
Not one of them moved an inch. And it was a good thing they didn’t, because seconds
later, four amorphous shadows danced on the cavern walls, getting larger and larger, until four hooded figures stood, silhouetted, facing them.
‘Welcome,’ one of them boomed; its voice reverberating off the walls.
The four figures separated into a pair and stood at either side of the entrance beneath the statues of their true leader.
‘Let me lead,’ Joe whispered. ‘If this turns out to be death trap, you guys get back into that tunnel and don’t look back, no matter what. You hear me?’ He glanced at the others, who nodded solemnly, silently concurring what he said.
Joe stepped in front of the others and crept forward, cautiously, not sure what he was going to find beyond the illuminated, vast opening to his right, which, at the moment, he was unable to see. He could hear as well as feel his heart slamming in his chest, seemingly becoming increasingly louder with every tentative step closer he took. He also had to be vigilant of the four hooded sentries standing on either side of the lair entrance. For all he knew, he was walking right into an unseen deception. It was like what Martha said - the thing with the goat’s head would tempt and lie in order to get a human to do something that would ordinarily be against their will.
But the nearer Joe got to the entrance; he saw that the hooded figures hadn’t even flinched, in the slightest. They, themselves, were like the statues above them, carved out of stone, now looming over him.
When he stood in the centre of the entrance and the dusky yellow light shone down on him, he saw what stood before him: his destiny.
The thing with the goat’s head was sitting on a massive chair made out of skeletal bones, draped in velvet cloth behind a makeshift altar, where candles flickered, shimmering a golden shine on the creature with the goat’s head, giving the impression that it too was burning.
The concrete steps leading to the makeshift altar were soaked in dry blood, and two long serpentines slithered through the mess; their blazing red eyes piercing Joe’s thudding heart with a pang of fright. Still, he kept his countenance expressionless as he faced Evil, casting its look down upon him, as though he were some measly rodent trespassing on its sacred dwelling.
The staff on the right hand side of the table draped in velvet cloth revolved on the spot, so that the thing with the miniature goat’s head also stared at him; its gaping mouth a deep chasm into the heart of evil.
‘Joe Camber!’ the thing with the goat’s head boomed. ‘You came here tonight at the midnight hour, seeking what?’
‘We want to be left alone; to live our lives in peace!’ Joe answered.
‘You want... peace? the thing with the goat’s head mocked, sneering at him. ‘And yet, you live on unholy ground. You live atop of someone else’s tomb, do you not?’
‘We didn’t know anything about that, until recently,’ Joe said, speaking truthfully. ‘It wasn’t our fault. We didn’t dig the foundations, and we certainly wouldn’t have lived on someone’s burial ground had we known.’
‘Yet, when you discovered that that’s what you were doing, and regardless of me giving you innumerable warnings to depart, you still refused to move.’
Joe nodded. ‘Yeah, we did. The reason is: because, save myself, not one of my kind-hearted neighbours can afford to sell their home and buy another one. We’re sorry for the desecration of the graves and bodies of the dead - but, as I’ve already stated, that had nothing to do with us.’
‘Why didn’t you move, then, Joe?’
‘Because, one by one, my neighbours were being attacked and killed. I wanted to stop this madness. I couldn’t just get up and walk away when they were in great danger.’
‘You are a mortal, Joe. You cannot stop what is unstoppable. You are foolish to think you can defeat me.’
‘Say’s who?’ Joe countered, feeling the blood rush through his veins, adrenaline kicking into his system. He stood steadfast, facing this monster with courage in spite of his irrefutable trepidation.
‘Say’s me!’ the thing with the goat’s head croaked. ‘I will gladly prove it - but first let me demonstrate how powerful I am, shall I?’
‘I don’t like show-offs or bigotry,’ Joe said.
But the creature wasn’t paying him any attention; instead he turned and faced the giant pagan symbol smeared in a victim’s blood on the rock face. It was staring at something Joe couldn’t see from his vantage point; something lying down on the ground behind the long wooden table. The demon gradually raised its arms wide, away from its torso and lifted them up, palms upright, in a spiritual gesture.
Joe didn’t know what he was doing, exactly; however, it looked as though he were summoning a concealed entity from an unconscious state to stand. He didn’t know why he thought this, as there was no proof to his assumption, yet, surprisingly, Joe had been right. Although, when he saw who it was that rose from the ground, he drew in breath sharply at the ungodly sight.
Floating above the ground - held up by an invisible force, arms and legs outstretched, dressed in a white nightgown - was Corrie. Nevertheless, Corrie appeared to have gone through a lot of physical alterations in the past twenty-four hours. Her eyes were no longer her own; they were an inky-black, blotting out every trace of whiteness that had been there previously.
‘Ohmigod!’ Joe gasped, genuinely horrified.
Corrie’s body was suspended high above him, not like a human, more like a ghost.
When her mouth fell open as far as it could, a trickle of black blood oozed out of her down her front, staining her nightgown a new colour. Once the drool of blood stopped leaking out of her orifice, a moth flitted out of her and up through the entrance, fleeing the demon’s dwelling with great urgency.
‘The child is mine!’ the thing with the goat’s head barked.
Even though he was shaking from head-to-toe, Joe strode forward so that he stood at the foot of the concrete steps, never taking his glare off the creature. ‘The child will never be yours!’ he protested.
The demon ignored his remark, and said, ‘Would you like to see your friends again, Joe?’
‘I’ll see them in another life, where you don’t exist!’
‘You can see them right now, if you want?’ And with that said, the creature went through the same procedure as it had done rising Corrie from the ground into the air.
Before Joe knew what was happening the ground underfoot was shaking, knocking him off balance. He stumbled into a wall and managed to keep himself at a vertical base, leaning on the rock-face, hoping that it didn’t crack and eventually crumble. The tremor stopped abruptly, as though someone had ordered it to by simply snapping their fingers. When Joe looked up at the makeshift altar again, he saw three figures, dressed in robes, hoods concealing their faces, standing, unmoving behind the demon, their heads bowed.
‘They are not my friends!’ Joe proclaimed, pointing a firm index finger in their direction.
‘Aren’t they?’ the creature asked, sounding very sure of itself. Without looking at the three robed-clad figures, it said, ‘Remove the hoods; show your faces to this imbecile, now!’
Obeying their command, the three figures peeled back the hoods and raised their heads to look at Joe with sombre expressions masking their sallow features. Joe’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly; his throat made an audible clicking sound and looked as though there was a tennis ball lodged, struggling to get out. A heavy weight fell from his chest into his stomach. If it hadn’t have been for the rock-face holding him upright, there wasn’t any doubt that he would have fallen.
There, standing before him looking culpable were his neighbours - no longer dead - waiting anxiously for the next command. They were all ghastly pale; veins like lines on maps snaking around their faces; eyes narrow as slits, red-rimmed; blood vessels stretching away from the pupil in a round-shaped web.
They may have been his neighbours once, but now they were something else:
Servants of the demon, who had captured their souls from their cadavers prior to them ascending into the heavens, and now used them like the four monks, who had lost their mortality doing the demon’s ungodly work more than a hundred years ago.
Sherri’s auburn hair was now a shocking white, and because of her ghostly features, she most certainly appeared to be more ghost than she did human, in spite of her actually standing on the altar, as tangible (in the physical sense) as Joe. When she gazed at Joe he saw that there was no life behind those eyes; it reminded him of that saying, about how a human’s eyes were the window to their soul. Sherri’s windows were opaque. Her body was an empty vessel. She was merely a marionette for the thing with the goat’s head, awaiting further instructions from her master. Joe also realised then that there was no point calling out to her, to try and persuade her to step down off the makeshift altar and flee the tomb of evil before it was too late.
Joe felt, rather than heard, a presence behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that if he’d wanted to turn and run, he would have been denied by the four hooded figures, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, blocking the opening.
Michael stood in the centre of his fellow dead neighbours, tall, broad, his football-shaped shoulders slouched, almost pulling him downwards. Even through the baggy robe, Joe could see Michael’s bulging muscles, still larger than the majority of people alive. He could scarcely meet Joe’s eyes, which hurt the ex-world boxing champion, because his intuition and Michael’s body-language informed him that the big guy blamed himself; he was ashamed of giving in to temptation, which had inevitably been the cause of his demise. Had he not taken the illegal substance - which in fact was poison - he’d still be alive, and he would have been standing alongside Joe, doubling their chances of saving Corrie and killing the thing with the goat’s head, freeing them from this god-awful nightmare that had tortured their lives, killing many good people in the process.