by Harvey Click
“Jesus,” Mary said.
Krickbaum’s face was gone, and bloody brain trickled out through a crater where his ear used to be.
“I keep hearing something too,” Mary said. “I’m not sure his lavender-leaf bomb did the trick.”
“Maybe we’re just tired,” Dexter said.
“Let’s just get real far away real fast,” she said. “Want me to drive?”
“I’m okay,” he said. He started exploring Krickbaum’s pockets.
“What’re you doing?”
“We’ll need money for gas,” Dexter said. He found the wallet and pulled out a wad of bills. “First big town we come to, we better ditch the van. We’ll buy some clean clothes and take a bus.”
“Got any idea where that might be?” Mary asked.
“No. We’re lost.”
He shoved Krickbaum’s body off the road, and they got back in the van. Mary watched him drive for a few minutes, but her eyelids fell shut and she heard a sweet old song behind them. She wondered if Ulysses had heard the same music when the sirens sang.
She felt the van stop and back up and turn around, and she forced her eyes open. Daylight was harsh and ugly.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
“Just trying to stay awake,” Dexter said.
“You turned around.”
“No, I don’t think so.” He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know, my brain’s doing some funny things.”
“I’m sure you turned around,” she said. “Look, the sun should be on our right. You’re going back to the lake.”
“These roads twist every few feet, who knows where the sun should be?” he said. He pulled over and looked at the overcast sky. “I think you better drive.”
They got out and stretched and yawned, and Mary took the wheel. She turned the van around and headed the other direction. It felt funny to drive, as if she hadn’t done it for years. The road was narrow and slick with dew. She switched on the radio and tried to find a station, but there was only static.
“Talk to me and keep me awake,” she said.
“What do you want to talk about?” Dexter asked. He sounded tired and cross.
“I don’t know, any Goddamn thing.”
“Was it satisfying to push that button?” he asked.
That wasn’t what she wanted to talk about. She remembered Ryver’s bloody eyeless face trying to smile at her as he floated away to die.
“No,” she said. “I mean, you wait your whole life just to kill someone. So now I guess he’s in hell or something. Maybe that’s supposed to make me feel good.”
Maybe it would have felt better if Ryver hadn’t given his life to her like a treasure hidden in a box, she thought. Killing him didn’t bring Mother and Father back. It didn’t make the world wonderful.
“Revenge isn’t much to live for,” she said.
“We’ll find something better,” Dexter mumbled. “Maybe we’ll find a motel with a nice garden made of water and stone.”
He sounded as if he was talking in his sleep. Mary turned on the radio again and found a song she thought she recognized.
“Come live with me and live forever . . .”
She fiddled with the tuning knob, but the same song was on every station. It was a pleasant lullaby promising sleep and something better.
“Your life is death and now is never.”
What was the point of trying to find a town with a bus station? she wondered. Buy a ticket for where? There was no place to go but dirt in the ground. Daylight was ugly and life was bullshit.
She turned off the radio, but the song kept playing.
“Come live with me and live forever, your life is death and now is never.”
“Say something so I don’t have to listen to this Goddamn song,” she said.
Dexter didn’t answer. She looked over and saw he was asleep. His face was flinty and rough-hewn like his aunt’s, but it was a good face. Maybe there could be some kind of life worth living with him.
She noticed a house she thought she’d seen before and wondered if she had turned around. Just keep the sun on the right, she thought, but the sky was gray and the hills were high and steamy, and it was hard to tell where the sun was hidden.
“Come live with me and live forever.”
“Screw you,” she said.
She tried to push the song out of her head. There were things to live for if you had the strength to keep your hands on the wheel. She kept driving and hoped she was going the right direction.
***
Emily stopped at a motel about halfway to Omaha. The long drive had made her dizzy. Too tired for a shower, she fell into bed and was soon asleep. She dreamed of a new Adam and Eve in a new Eden burned to cinders.
She awoke with the taste of blood in her throat. She staggered to the bathroom and saw that her nose was bleeding.
She remembered her dream as she pulled a squirming white string of mucus from her nose. It was a beautiful dream but frightening too. Beautiful because a new human race was beginning. Frightening because the old human race had to die.
She wondered which race she belonged to.
***
As the sun came up, he knelt naked at the edge of the lake and studied his reflection. He recognized his face and remembered every event of its many years, and he remembered events of a great many more years that had nothing to do with this face. He remembered burrowing through darkness and remembered a time before the darkness when he ruled the waters of chaos. He knew the loci of the seven cosmic flaws caused by seven ruptures in the fabric of space-time in the first moment when the universe burst from a puncture in nethertime. He knew the names of all seven closed worlds, Gehenna and six other hells colder and darker still where primordial monstrosities waited for the sound of the keys that would release them. He knew where the keys were hidden and how to use them. He knew the deep past, when earth was without form and the spirit of God moved over the face of the waters. He knew the end of time when the great worm would devour the chosen, and he knew the name of the pit where death waited.
He was old, but his body was young. His glasses were gone, but he could see more clearly than any human had ever seen. He looked at his hands and saw that they were strong and perfectly formed and ready to work.
He lay down on the grass beside the lake and let the steamy light of morning sun dry his soft new skin. Time passed like a warm dream of slippery flesh. He was rested and ready to work, but he was waiting for someone. His perfectly-formed penis stirred at the thought of her.
He heard splashing and watched her emerge from the lake naked and glistening. Her long hair hid her perfect breasts. He stood and took her hand and helped her up to the shore.
“Come and let us walk the earth together,” he said. “It’s our garden, and we shall harvest every juicy morsel.”
They walked through the narrow valley toward the little town of Pallas. In a wet field they found many apostles waiting. There was much work to be done, and it was good to have so many slaves.
Michael Grimes and Letha raised their arms in benediction, and their servants knelt and groveled in the mud to worship the radiant first couple, the first of the worm people.
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Also by Harvey Click
Demon Mania
The exciting sequel to Demon Frenzy!
Amy Malone thinks she and Shane are safe living in a desolate area of New Mexico, but after she encounters a mysterious sorcerer she’s plunged into a demon-ridden nightmare even worse than what she faced in Blackwood. Pursued through moonlit wilderness by grotesque grimsnuffers and hunted by hideous jabber-suckers that suck out their victims’ flesh through pulsating tentacles, Amy must survive a deadly maze to confront the most fearsome monster of hell: a demon so deadly it can kill with just
a look.
Mixing horror with dark fantasy, Demon Mania is a wild whirlwind of sword and sorcery, witches, warlocks, black magic, telekinesis, spirit-travel, deadly assassins, eerie prophecies, breathless action, and demons—lots of demons.
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Demon Frenzy
Sometimes going home again is a lot like going to hell.
Searching for her lost brother, Amy Jackson returns to her isolated hometown in the Appalachian Mountains. But Blackwood has changed. Now it’s run by a mysterious drug lord who has something more lethal than guns to protect him. He has demons—more vicious, venomous demons than even Hieronymus Bosch ever dreamed of—and after Amy witnesses an unspeakable atrocity he unleashes all the frenzied furies of hell against her. Soon she is stalked by snakewalkers, herky-jerkies, toadfaces, listeners, harpies, centicreepers, and the sinister crying man, who weeps while he torments his victims.
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The Bad Box
Sarah Temple hopes to find a bit of peace and quiet when she leaves her abusive boyfriend, but instead she finds a world of horror. It’s bad enough that a sadistic serial killer and another maniac are both trying to murder her, but what’s worse is the mysterious Solitary One who controls both of them, a malevolent entity that the serial killer describes as a living darkness, a man and yet not a man, something that’s alive and yet not alive, something that wants to appall the world.
Trying to flee from the two killers, Sarah finds herself running deeper and deeper into a deadly supernatural trap, a place where people are buried alive, where ghastly apparitions mutter in the dark, where demented killers prowl, where a crumbling haunted house can drive its victims mad with terror, and where something buried for a very long time may walk again.
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Magic Times
Everybody wants a little magic—but just a little can do a lot of damage!
A young man not overly burdened with brains hitchhikes to Ohio in search of his runaway girlfriend, but he finds a lot more than he’s looking for. Soon Jason is chin-deep in a bizarre and perilous predicament involving a witch, a crippled magician, a sinister businessman, a mysterious stalker, and a book of magic that could bring about the end of the world.
Harvey Click, best known for his lurid horror tales, explores a different genre with this darkly comic coming-of-age novel. He mixes a tablespoon of black magic with a teaspoon of zesty sex, a sprinkle of savory satire, a dash of dire danger, a splash of spicy suspense, a pinch of pungent irony, a cup of coarsely ground comedy, and a full measure of sheer madness.
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