The demonic scarecrow took a few slow steps towards the Lincoln; it's vacant stained cloth eyes never wavering from those of the terrified old woman locked inside. In response, Dale’s mother screamed again and crawled across the front seat desperate to find any escape. Mr. Friendly pushed his stuffed head and vine hands flat up against the glass.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry Mr. Friendly!” she screamed.
Mr. Friendly’s mildewed head nodded against the glass as if in reply making a window wiper like sound. His vine hands seemed to grow in size for a moment as he pressed them against the glass. The window groaned for just a moment and then exploded inward. The old woman fought frantically to unlock the passenger side door and escape, but Mr. Friendly’s spindly hand wrapped around her ankle. She screamed again, as he began to pull her from the car. She gripped desperately for anything she could as the scarecrow pulled at her with unbelievable strength. Her fingernails cutting deep lines in the Lincoln’s leather seats, but the outcome was inevitable.
Dale rolled over with a groan and watched as Mr. Friendly pulled his mother kicking and screaming out through the broken driver’s side window. The fragments of glass cut and scrapped at her legs as he pulled her through by her ankle, her yellow housecoat was quickly shredded and stained with streaks of dark blood. Mr. Friendly easily lifted up the old woman and held her gently in his arms as if she were a screaming babe.
“Mother, momma,” Dale called out weakly.
Mr. Friendly turned his head for just a moment as if just to show Dale his torn smile again. Then turning, the scarecrow broke into a run and carried Dale’s mother away. Mr. Friendly ran back in the direction from which he and the other monsters had come, those long loping strides carrying them both away, towards that point on the horizon. Dale sat and stared helplessly watching after the thing as it carried away his screaming mother and to his shame he did nothing.
Sometime later a voice asked, “Hey mister, are you Okay?”
Dale turned dumbly and found an apron-wearing clerk standing nearby.
“I, I think so,” Dale replied.
The clerk paused and then asked, “Hey, where are we? This sure doesn’t look like Colorado anymore.”
“Colorado? No, this is Kansas.”
The clerk turned and looked around at the red ground topped by a red sky, both stretching for as far as the eye could see.
He asked skeptically, “This is Kansas?”
Dale looked around doubting it himself and then his eyes settled back on that point on the horizon.
“They took my mother,” he said.
The clerk just nodded and said. “I saw, I’m sorry.”
“What were those things?” Dale asked.
“Demons my boy!” the Priest shouted in reply.
“Demons? Fucking demons?” Jerry demanded.
“You’re in Hell, did you expect puppies?"
The group of hard-eyed killers ran in unbridled fear, pushing their ghostly steeds as fast as they could. Jerry squeezed his eyes shut still unable to believe what was pursuing them. Between the horse’s pounding hooves and his labored breathing, he could hear the priest whispering the Lord’s Prayer to himself again and again.
Jerry glanced to his left and found Oliver riding close by. The Dragoon’s horse was shoulder to shoulder with Jamie’s, and even Jerry could see the gunslinger was having trouble staying in the saddle. Black blood coated Jamie’s right side all the way from his hip to his boot which dripped a steady trail of blood. Jamie’s face was pale, and his eyes were squeezed tightly shut. Far to the left Shinji was riding hard as well, though the warrior kept turning in his saddle watching the ever-approaching dust cloud on their back trail. The Mongolian pointed behind them again and shouted.
“Olgoi-khorkhoi!”
“No fucking shit!” Cort shouted in reply.
The cavalryman rode just ahead of the group, leading them into retreat just as he did into battle.
“They’re gaining on us!” Oliver pointed out.
Jerry ignored the priest’s advice and looked back over his shoulder. A single dark figure broke free of the dust cloud. For a moment Jerry thought it was another horseman and then realized the horse carried no rider. The horse was easily the largest Jerry had ever seen and he guessed it’s back was higher than he was tall. The beast was pitch black, its body sleek and rippling with muscle as it raced behind them. Jerry blinked several times and looked closer. The horse’s mane and each of its hooves shimmered with heat and trailed red and orange flames. Instead of a tail, the demon stallion trailed a plume of black smoke behind it.
As Jerry watched in horrified disbelief, he quickly realized Oliver’s warning was true; the thing was steadily closing the gap between them. The stallion slightly shifted its pursuit to the left, and immediately Jerry knew the thing now focused on the wounded Jamie. What would the killers do? Would they turn and fight, defending their own? Or would they leave Jamie to his fate? Cort answered Jerry’s question a heartbeat later.
“Whatever happens, we stay together!” the Lieutenant shouted.
Then the cavalryman pulled his heavy revolver and wheeled his horse around hard to the left, racing back towards their pursuer.
“Cort no! You know you can’t kill it!” Oliver shouted.
“Dear god watch over him,” Jerry heard the priest plead quietly, but the Man of God still refused to look back.
Jerry, on the other hand, couldn’t tear his eyes away. The cavalryman and the demon raced towards each other closing the distance over a handful of heartbeats. The flaming terror raised its head when it saw Cort and released a terrifying noise, a scream that sounded like the twisting of steel. It shifted back to the right eager to meet the man head-on as the thing’s hooves bit into the hard earth with renewed vigor.
Cort raised his revolver in reply with a well-practiced motion, sighting down the barrel trying to compensate for his horse’s stride. He took a breath and fleetingly wondered how many times had he done this now? Willingly riding into the face of death, was this his hell, forced to do this for all eternity? He knew the demons couldn’t be killed, that they would heal faster than they could be hurt, but he didn’t need to kill them, just slow them down. With that, he let the breath out and squeezed the trigger.
The fiery stallion lowered its head as the cavalryman’s rounds began to hit home. The first lead ball struck it in the neck, the next two squarely in its chest. The beast released another terrible scream as if in pain but it didn’t slow. Fresh flames sprung from the wounds, and almost immediately they sealed as if burned shut from the inside. As the pair closed the distance between them Cort whispered a single word, a name actually, he didn’t recognize it, but for some reason, it carried the weight of a prayer. The moment it left his lips, it was gone as if carried away on the wind. Whatever it was seemed to have steadied him, he lowered the revolver just a bit and focused down the swaying sites. He emptied the cylinder in a quick series of shots and then broke hard to the right.
The shots were low, the first two striking the hard-red earth in front of the charging stallion, but the last round found its mark. It struck the beast’s front knee with a small spray of black blood and a gout of flame. For a split second nothing happened, then as the stallion took its next step the leg buckled and folded. The beast went down screaming, its massive weight and speed sending it into an uncontrollable tumble. A series of loud cracks followed as the demon’s bone snapped and splintered as it came to a stop in a cloud of fine red dust.
The lifelong horseman couldn’t help but cringe as he watched the stallion fall. Those thoughts were blasted away a moment later as the downed demon launched a breath of searing flame at the fleeing cavalryman. Cort threw himself to the left trying to use the horse as a shield, holding onto the saddle pommel for dear life as the blast bathed his mount in flames. The ghostly steed didn’t make a sound, seemingly oblivious to the heat, but Cort screamed in agonizing pain. His horse had absorbed the worst of the blast, but his
right hand that had gripped the pommel was charred black to the elbow.
Though the horses raced at breakneck speeds to Jerry, the scene seemed to unfold in slow motion. The wounded cavalryman was slipping, his injured hand not strong enough to hold his weight in the precarious position. In desperation, he dropped his pistol and grasped for the pommel with his now free hand, but he move only slowed his inevitable fall and Cort screamed in frustration.
Just then, as his wounded hand slipped free and the cavalryman began to fall Shinji appeared at his side. The Mongolian leaned over what seemed impossibly far in his ancient saddle, the warrior didn’t even bother to grip his pommel, holding himself into position with just his legs. With both hands, he grabbed Cort by the shoulders and hauled him upward. Cort gritted his teeth and screamed again, this time in determination. With Shinji’s help, he just managed to pull himself upright into the saddle.
The pair turned their mounts side by side and began to chase after the rest of the fleeing party leaving the wounded demon in their dusty backtrail. Cort rode holding his blackened arm to his chest and turning he gave Shinji a single nod in thanks. The warrior replied with a large toothy grin, but just as Jerry began to think that their luck had changed Oliver screamed out a warning.
“Lookout!”
Cort and Shinji reacted immediately, though whether it was years of practice or just instinct Jerry couldn’t say. The pair split, Cort breaking right and Shinji left. A heartbeat later a huge green shape the size of Volkswagen crashed to the earth right where the two men had been riding. At first, they lost sight of the thing in the dust, stirred up it’s landing. But a moment later the dust cleared, and a new monster came into view.
“It’s a, a, giant fucking toad!?” Jerry shouted in stunned horror.
“What?” the priest demanded.
“A toad, a fucking toad!” Jerry repeated.
“Well that’s a new one,” Father Callahan replied.
The toad sat completely motionless as if intentionally giving the riders a chance to escape. The thing’s eerie pause gave Jerry a moment to get a good look at the latest beast chasing them. It was vibrant green, which stood out painfully against the red rock plain. The thing had large yellow eyes the size of bowling balls that likewise didn’t twitch or move. It crouched on a pair of powerful legs each nearly as thick jerry’s waist. The thing moved then, twisting its body awkwardly to the left with its small nearly useless front arms. A moment later the beast exploded into motion, launching itself into the air at an unbelievable speed.
Jerry’s head rocked back as he tried to follow the path of the deadly green streak. The thing had leaped high into the air and passed easily over the fleeing Shinji and Cort. It was now banking steeply back towards the earth accelerating as it descended. Somewhere in the back of Jerry’s brain three years of college-level math courses finally became relevant as had always been promised.
“Move!” Jerry screamed.
The priest jerked the reins sharply, and his ghostly mount responded and veered to the left. The move was just enough, and the green beast crashed to the ground a second later sending up a cloud of red dust and splintered stone. The pair found themselves showered with bits of rock and Jerry instinctively held up the briefcase to shield himself. A moment later a long orange tongue launched from the demon toad’s mouth, the appendage was as thick as man’s arm and slammed into Jerry’s briefcase with a wet thud. The sticky tongue reversed course a split second later and wrenched the case from Jerry’s grasp. The briefcase was quickly hauled back into the beast’s waiting mouth. The jaws clamped down on the briefcase and a moment later swallowed it whole.
“Go, go, go!” Jerry pleaded.
In response, the priest kicked their horse into a run again, but as the pair galloped away from the beast, Jerry watched as the demonic toad adjusted itself with its small front legs and prepared to leap again. He saw it then, the futility of their running, these things would never tire and couldn’t die. They would dog them without mercy and either kill them all or wait for the urge to run towards the horizon became too much to bear, this was a game the riders were meant to lose.
Two quick thuds announced the arrival of a pair of arrows in the toad’s muscled thigh. A few heartbeats later the warrior and the wounded Cort thundered past it. The thing didn’t even flinch and seemed to pay Shinji’s attack any notice at all. Its large unblinking eyes were locked squarely on Jerry and the fleeing priest’s horse. It lowered its body ever so slightly and then leaped again, as the muscles of its powerful legs flexed the arrows stuck deep in its thigh exploded into splinters.
At first, the demon toad seemed to sail through the air as it had before, but this time as the thing reached the zenith of its arc it was clear the arrows had affected its leap. The thing was hurtling back towards earth and Jerry could see that it was out of control. It tumbled through the air as it fell and was angled slightly to the right of the fleeing riders. In the split seconds before it struck Jerry could see the thing swinging it's nearly useless arms trying frantically to right itself. It was no use, and the demon struck the ground upside down, hitting the hard-red earth with the same sound a piece of rotten fruit makes when it falls from a tall tree.
The group of killers thundered past the bloody remains of the still twitching monster and in the pit of Jerry’s stomach he knew it was only a matter of moments before the thing would be up and pursuing them again.
“Jamie!” Cort shouted
The cavalryman now rode shoulder to shoulder with the wounded gunslinger’s horse.
“We need the canyons! Can you conjure up the canyons?”
Jamie turned his head giving him a vacant and confused look. He nodded once numbly at Cort’s words and then turning he nearly tumbled forward out of his saddle. Only Oliver’s quick reach kept the man on horseback. Cort reached out as well forgetting his blackened arm for a moment, and immediately he cursed at the pain.
“He’s no good Leftenant!” Oliver shouted.
“We need a way out!” Cort shouted through gritted teeth.
“What about the moors?” Oliver offered.
“No good! We need to lose them,” Cort replied, “the moors will just slow us all down, they’ll never lose sight of us.”
Jerry glanced back over his shoulder again, the smashed toad that was now struggling to rise on its broken legs. Far behind that, the dust cloud had reformed, it was thick, but a dark shadow began to form at its center. A moment later the demon stallion broke out of the cloud and charged into view. The demon already healed it seemed and was quickly racing to catch up to the fleeing men, it spouted a fresh gout of flame out each nostril and let out a terrible cry.
The image struck something inside of Jerry, not the demon itself but the way the thing had appeared from the cloud. It was a memory he realized; it was another time and a very distant place. He turned back around, and Cort’s words struck him again. They had to lose sight of them!
“I have an idea!” Jerry shouted to the priest.
“Then Keep it to yourself. If I have to die in the place I want to die in peace!” he replied.
“How do I create a place?” Jerry demanded.
“What? Why?”
“Just tell me how to do it!” Jerry demanded.
“It has to be a place that means something to you, something terrible,” the priest said.
Jerry nodded, “it is.”
“You have to picture it, what it looked like, what it smelled like, but most importantly you have to remember how that place made you feel,” Father Callahan explained.
“That’s it?”
“Then it’s just a matter of willpower, you have to have the strength of will to bring the place into being,” said the priest.
“Okay, I..I think I can do that,” Jerry said nodding.
“But it also takes something from you as well. It will drain away a bit of your energy, your life,” Callahan warned.
Jerry closed his eyes and nodded in reply, but in
his head, he was already somewhere else.
A Wonderland
It was Jerry’s first year of college, and he was two longs days into a miserable Christmas break. Over the weekend the campus had all but been abandoned by the student body and most of the faculty. Now only those too poor or too desperate remained, Jerry fell into both categories. He had gotten into the school on a handful of grants and on what little money his parents had left him. Now he was sweating his way through a half a dozen classes and juggling a pair of part-time jobs on the side. He wasn’t failing out of school yet, but he was teetering on the cusp. The break would give him the chance to catch up, perhaps even get a jump on the reading.
The first knock on his door was so quiet that Jerry thought he imagined it. On the second knock, he opened the door and found Rachel standing in the hallway surrounded by her Coach luggage. They had been out on exactly two dates and had gone for a coffee. He still had trouble believing that this tall, beautiful woman actually knew who he was. She always dressed to look her best, a freshman in college but already dressing the part of the powerful woman she would become. She was easily the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and standing there in front of her in the same sweatpants he had been wearing for two days she scared the hell out of him.
Rachel looked up just then; her cheeks were red as if she had been standing in the cold for a time, but then he noticed that so were her eyes. She tried to smile at him, but it was a sad and forced thing, and she quickly abandoned it. Years later, Jerry would only be able to remember a handful of times throughout his life when he had abandoned his fears and just acted, following his instincts, this was one of those times.
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