3 Supernatural Thrillers

by Jason Brant

  As he watched, thinking that they might be growing brighter while he stared at them, the back of the church caved in on itself in an explosion of wood and stone.

  Chapter 20

  A massive tentacle, nearly as wide as the church, sat atop the rubble, the muscles underneath its skin undulating.

  Stone and wood continued to fall on top of Kyle and Bryan, showering them with dust and debris. Pieces of the ceiling collapsed, sliding down the side of the tentacle, which lay only ten feet from them. The back of the church had been completely destroyed.

  Bryan grabbed at his friend’s ankle trying to pull him free of the stones that had fallen on him. Kyle’s weight proved too much for Bryan as he couldn’t use leverage to get them clear. He dropped Kyle’s ankle and watched as the tentacle slid to the right, pulling a large section of the wall with it.

  The end of the appendage came into sight, splitting open as it drew near, revealing the maw that adorned its tip. Teeth lined its edges, yellowed and sharp. It rose in the air, aiming directly at Bryan, ready to strike out at him.

  Bryan wanted to close his eyes and wait for the end, but willed himself to keep them open, knowing that he had moments left to live. Katie crawled beside him and looped her arm around his, squeezing him close to her. Together they watched the mouth draw closer, goo dripping from its flayed skin.

  Then it fell to the floor, writhing like a wounded snake, knocking Kyle’s unconscious body to the side. The mouth opened and closed, blood pouring from it like a river. The flaps of skin that covered it straightened in one quick motion, remaining rigid for several more seconds before falling limp, obstructing their view of the jaws.

  The rest of the tentacle followed, slowly relaxing until it rested across the pulverized debris that had been the end of the church. A large pool of blood formed at the end of it, rapidly spreading across the floor. The beast bellowed in rage, but it felt softer, farther away, as if it came from a great distance.

  Bryan and Katie sat on the floor, arms interlocked, watching and waiting. They remained silent, waving the dust from their faces with their free arms and trying not to cough. Katie picked up a chunk of what used to be the wall and threw it at the mouth. The rock cracked against one of the teeth, chipping it, and landed on a flap of skin. Nothing else moved.

  “What happened?” Bryan asked. His voice wavered he spoke. He fought to keep himself from breaking down and bawling.

  “I think the gate closed and severed it,” she said, pointing at the tentacle. “That was the only piece of it that sat in the ‘thin’ area.”

  “Wait, you think we’re back?” Bryan tried to jump to his feet, forgetting about his shredded calf, and fell back to the floor in excruciating pain.

  Katie smelled the air, coughed at the dust she inhaled, and turned to him, her eyes alight. “Do you smell it? The stench has abated! It smells like it did when we first arrived!”

  Bryan wanted to believe her, but his body wouldn’t allow him to relax. He took a quick whiff and realized she was right – though the air could hardly be called fresh, it smelled significantly better than it had for the last few hours. He tried to look through the dust at the forest, but the darkness proved too thick.

  “Help me up.” He pulled himself to his feet with Katie’s assistance and leaned against her, trying to keep his weight off his bad leg. The pain made him lightheaded, but he pushed on, determined to get out of the Danver church.

  They hobbled toward the front door, struggling with the debris scattered around the room from the destruction of the chapel. Reaching the front door, Bryan shined the flashlight into the area directly ahead of the building and felt his heart race inside his chest at what he saw.

  The crevice had returned, along with the bridge that crossed it. The generator sat off to the right, looking just as it had earlier in the night, with the exception of the severed power cables running into the church. A small sliver of light broke through the trees, hinting at the coming sunrise.

  Bryan turned to Katie, his excitement boiling over. She looked back at him, staring into his eyes with a relief that only someone who had been through the same experience could understand. Without thinking, he placed his free hand on the back of her neck and pulled her face to his. He kissed her hard, overwhelmed with emotions he couldn’t begin to express.

  After several long, heart pounding seconds he released her. She had kissed him back, but with little vigor or excitement. Her face showed more shock than joy. Bryan cocked his head to the side, more than a little confused at her reaction. At that moment he would have kissed a female gorilla if it had gone through this with him.

  “I thought people that suffered traumatic experiences fell in love with each other after it was over?” he asked. “Or at least they had wild, raucous, animal-like sex.”

  “Typically they do, I think, except when one of them is gay.” She gave him a wry smile. “That and your face looks like you went a few rounds with Freddy Krueger.”

  “You’re a lesbian?” Bryan thought Kyle had been pissed earlier when she shot him down, and had called her gay in an attempt to keep his ego from being shattered.

  “No fooling you.”

  “I told you she was a lesbo earlier, dude,” Kyle said from the other side of the church. He’d moved to a seated position, but hunched at the back, grimacing as he tried to stand.

  “I thought you were joking.” Bryan and Katie moved back into the building, working their way over to where Kyle sat.

  Kyle started to laugh, but stopped to cough up some blood. “Her Wikipedia page said she was gay.”

  “You looked at that almost as soon as we got here!” Bryan stood on one foot, balancing himself against one of the benches as Katie helped Kyle to his feet.

  “Yeah, but I saw the way you were looking at her,” Kyle said. “I figured having a little crush on a famous author might help you get over some of this Christine bullshit.”

  Bryan felt his face turn scarlet and found it difficult to look Katie in the eyes as Kyle spoke. He saw her smiling, but she didn’t tease him about it. Kyle was right though, it had helped him keep his mind from Christine. The monsters performed that chore later on though.

  “I hate to break up this little game of flattery, but what the fuck are you talking about!” Travis screamed at the top of his lungs. “We just crossed over to another fucking plane of existence, were chased through the woods by a fucking biblical god, and Joey and Ben are fucking dead! Now you want talk about who has a fucking crush on who?”

  Bryan had completely forgotten about Travis during the fight with the giant centipede, and the tentacle crashing through the roof. He stood by the far wall, covered in dust and dirt, bleeding from a cut on his scalp. Bryan did have to concede his point – their conversation seemed ludicrous in light of their situation. He assumed it was just their way of maintaining their tenuous grasp on sanity.

  “Whom,” Katie said.

  “Suck my ass lady.” Travis sifted through a pile of debris and pulled out one of his dim flashlights. He walked over to the equipment table and began tearing cabling out of the computers.

  “What are you doing?” Bryan asked.

  “Do you have any idea how much the footage recorded on these hard drives is worth?” Travis pulled a memory card free from a camera that sat on the table and held it up. “Once I sell this, I’m going to retire.”

  Kyle lifted a hand to his head, grimacing as he did so. “You’re worried about money at a time like this?”

  Bryan wasn’t surprised by this. Travis and Joey had seemed like sleaze bags from the moment they stepped out of their van. Finding out that one of them was more concerned with cashing in on the night’s events than on the death of their friend and business partner wasn’t shocking. That and Travis seemed to have completely lost his mind about an hour ago.

  “Fuck yeah I am.”

  “But you were just giving us shit for talking about Katie being homo,” Kyle said.

  Katie punched his arm,
making him whimper as he flinched in anticipation of the blow. “Sorry,” she said.

  “No shit. I yelled at you because you should have been busy pulling out these hard drives instead of trying to bag her bitch ass.” Travis continued pulling wires clear of the computer towers without looking up. His movements were rigid, hectic.

  Without responding further, Bryan hopped over to Katie and Kyle, placing his hand on her shoulder and doing his best to walk with them. He wanted to get as far away from the church as he could by driving as fast as he dared. Kyle needed to get to a hospital as soon as possible. Bryan was worried about the amount of blood he’d lost.

  He also needed some drugs for the agony in his calf. While it hurt when it happened, the pain seemed to be intensifying as the shock wore off. Bryan wasn’t sure that he would ever fully recover from what he’d seen, but the adrenaline coursing through his system when he thought his death was imminent had dissipated.

  They made their way across the floor slowly, with Katie struggling to keep Kyle’s massive body from toppling. Sweat beaded on Kyle’s forehead and his face scrunched as he struggled to put one foot in front of the next. Seeing his friend in such agony kept Bryan from complaining about his own wound.

  “What happened to you at the beach?” Bryan asked Katie. He’d been dying to ask her about her recovery from the near catatonic state she’d been in.

  “Whatever bit me just outside the forest must have poisoned me with some kind of low level anesthetic. It hit me like a hammer when we were trying to run away. It felt like I was stuck in quicksand. I could hear and understand you, but my body refused to function. My leg still hurts from the bite.”

  That drew a look from Kyle.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Anyway, I had started to feel a little better when we got back to the church. Fortunately I recovered enough to give a hand back there.”

  “About that,” Bryan said. “Where did the knife come from?”

  “I had it in my bag. I always bring a hunting knife with me.”

  “You couldn’t have used that earlier in the night? I fought a monster with a rock...”

  “There wasn’t a whole lot of time to grab supplies while running from a giant caterpillar.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks for helping us out. You fought like a goddamn rampaging beast,” Kyle said. A little blood spilled over his bottom lip as he spoke.

  “P90X is fantastic, isn’t it?” Though she smiled at Kyle, her eyes betrayed her concern.

  Travis didn’t offer to help, though he could clearly see how they struggled. It took them ten minutes to get across the chasm and into Bryan’s car. They weren’t sure that the bridge could hold all of their weight at once, so Bryan sat in the dirt and waited for Katie to return.

  They got Kyle situated in the back of Bryan’s car, lying on his stomach across the bench seat. Bryan carefully worked his way in behind the wheel, having to work his injured limb under the dash. He was thankful that his right leg, though exhausted, still worked, allowing him to drive.

  “I’m going to grab my bag and then we’ll get out of here,” Katie said. She walked briskly across the bridge before disappearing into the church. She had them blocked in, so they couldn’t get turned around until she moved her car first.

  Bryan laid his head against the seat and took a deep breath. They were minutes away from leaving this nightmare behind them. How they would ever go on to lead a semblance of a normal life after this, he couldn’t imagine. He didn’t even understand exactly what had happened. Where did they go? If that wasn’t the afterlife, then what was it?

  Leviathan was mentioned in the Bible, and there were symbols in the church naming the monster that had come from the ocean – were they one and the same? Did someone else go through the gate, see the Leviathan, and come back to write about it? Was that other world the inspiration for the biblical Hell?

  “Dude,” Kyle said from behind Bryan, startling him. “Tonight really sucked.”

  They both broke into uncontrollable laughter at the most absurd understatement either of them had ever heard. Bryan’s ribs started to ache as he bent over, slapping the steering wheel with his palms. Kyle alternated between coughing, swearing, and laughing in the backseat.

  “Just to let you know, I’m bleeding all over your shit box of a car,” Kyle said, giggling again.

  Salt-laden tears ran down Bryan’s face, stinging the cuts and gouges that lined his cheeks. He wiped at them, but couldn’t keep more from coming as he kept cracking up. Hiccups set in, shaking his body and making them laugh even harder. Had anyone see them at that moment they would have assumed that Bryan and Kyle had lost their minds. Bryan knew that probably wasn’t far from the truth.

  Katie’s flashlight appeared in the door of the church ahead. Bryan had handed it to her before she went back inside, and now she pointed it at the ground in front of her as she walked toward the bridge. Travis appeared behind her, barely visible in the darkness, his arms full of electronics.

  Bryan turned the key in the ignition of his Taurus and waited as it lazily turned over before firing to life. The front of the car pointed toward the bridge and he flipped his lights on, hoping to give Katie a little more to see by. The headlights showered the area in front of them, causing Katie to throw her hand up to shield her eyes.

  The creature with the large lobster claws, bloody and mangled, appeared from around the corner of the church and scurried at Travis and Katie as they approached the chasm.

  Chapter 21

  “Shit!” Bryan bolted upright in his seat and honked the horn furiously. He watched as it closed in on them, his mind struggling to understand what he saw. It had two large claws resembling those of a lobster, each at least three feet in length, but one appeared crushed and hung limply by its side.

  It stood more than twelve feet tall, towering over them as it scuttled along on four insect-like legs. Along with everything else they’d encountered, the beast had no color to it, and its pale trunk of a body was covered in some kind of exoskeleton.

  Bryan watched in terror as it moved across fifteen yards of space in the blink of an eye, descending upon Travis before he could even react to the honking car. Katie swiveled on her heels just as it scooped Travis up in its remaining claw. He dropped the equipment cradled in his arms and let loose a gut wrenching scream.

  Blood already poured from Travis midriff as it lifted him from the ground. He punched at the pale claw twice before he was severed at the waist. Blood splattered across Katie as Travis’ upper body fell at her feet, spasms racking his arms and hands. Katie threw the flashlight at the creature’s head and sprinted across the bridge before it could give chase.

  “Get out of the car!” Bryan yanked the Taurus into gear and held his foot on the brake. “Now!”

  Kyle had been trying to sit up in the backseat, unable to see what happened. “What’s going on?”

  “Just get out!”

  Without another word, Kyle opened the backdoor on the driver’s side and slid from the vehicle, moaning from the pain as he went. Bryan didn’t wait for the door to close before mashing the gas pedal to the floor. Katie reached the other side of the bridge before it could catch up to her.

  She dived out of the way as Bryan’s decrepit car accelerated through the small clearing toward the bridge. Katie rolled into a crouch, tossing her bag to the side, and watched as the Ford zipped past her, heading straight for the gore soaked beast.

  Bryan’s car smashed into it at thirty-five miles an hour. It had just cleared the bridge as well, rushing toward Katie, when the front bumper mangled its legs. It rolled onto the hood, crushing the front of the car with its incredible weight. Bryan shielded his face with his right arm as the windshield shattered in front of him.

  The working claw burst through the broken glass, shredding the passenger seat as it tore furiously at the fabric. Bryan kept his foot pressed on the gas as he tried to maintain control of the car, and open his door at the same time. His visibility was gone as the cr
eature obstructed his view. Though he couldn’t see the crevice in front of him, he knew it couldn’t be more than a few feet ahead of the car.

  He tried to lunge from his seat before the Taurus went over the side, but his mangled leg gave him no leverage at all. He only made it halfway out the door when he felt the claw crush his right arm, propelling him from the vehicle as it went over the side of the chasm. The left wheels spun in the air as the car rolled sideways off the bridge and fell into the precipice.

  Bryan’s arm exploded in agony, feeling like it was bent in too many places, as he rolled on the ground, sliding at the very edge of the fissure. He watched as the car smashed into the far side of the crack, crushing the lower half of the monster and shattering the headlights. The beast wailed in pain and anger as it fell with the car into the depths below.

  With his feet dangling over the edge, Bryan rested his head against the cold ground and gritted his teeth at the searing agony in his arm. It hurt worse than his leg, blocking his ability to think coherently.

  He could hear Katie yelling something at him in the darkness, but couldn’t understand her. With no flashlights left, he couldn’t see anything save her rough outline from the cresting daylight behind her. He felt her groping at his body, trying to pull him away from the abyss. A cry escaped him as she managed to slide him across the ground, his arm and leg dragging behind.

  “That was an incredibly brave and stupid thing to do,” Katie said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I think I might have to write that into my next book.”

  Bryan tried to laugh, but his body felt loose, the pain subsiding in his arm and leg. His eyelids felt weighted. “I think I’m going into shock.”

  “We’ve all been in shock for hours now. Just hang tight, I need to get Kyle loaded into my car, and then we’ll pull forward and pick you up.”