by TJ Park
The Winchester would not stop it, but it would knock the fucker around a bit. Gain a few seconds for someone else. Doug was thinking he’d try for its eyes, when an inarticulate cry came from behind him, then a closer shout of, “Where are you?”
The idiots!
The familiar’s head lifted to gaze beyond Doug, who continued circling so he could bring the drama behind him into view. But the familiar would not oblige. It ceased pacing, curious about what was happening further away. Doug trod his circle alone. The familiar was now the one turning on the spot to keep him in sight.
Someone whistled. It was high and unmistakably clear. What sigils passed for the familiar’s ears peeled back.
Doug heard Janet shout “Scott!” from near the house, close enough to beat the familiar inside if it came to it. A small part of him felt relief. That was until the boy came running into the arena he and the familiar had scratched out for themselves.
Scott halted in sight of both, then glanced behind, from where he’d come.
The boy placed thumb and forefinger to his mouth and blew another piercing whistle. If he was trying to attract the familiar’s attention, he already had it. But that wasn’t his only intention.
He stripped off his shirt and waved it up and down. The flapping shirt was a washed-out red thing, almost pink. Practically a white flag in the dark. The boy swung it around his head and then threw it toward Doug and the familiar. It landed on the grass between them.
Then Scott stood absolutely still, as if playing a game of statues.
The familiar snubbed Doug, now intrigued by Scott’s actions. It turned to give its attention to the defiant, but unarmed boy. Shouting, Doug raised the rifle and fired.
The familiar was knocked sideways, but righted itself carelessly with an outstretched paw and started approaching Scott.
Doug ran forward with a yell, firing again. The bullet caught the familiar low. But it straightened again, still not paying him mind. Deliberately irritating him.
Doug fired another shot, but not at the familiar. He sent it at Scott, snapping the grass up at his feet, praying it would make the boy run.
Scott didn’t take the hint. He flinched from the gunshot, but stood his ground.
Doug snapped back the bolt on the rifle again. Empty. A howl burst free of him. With the rifle raised over his head like a club, he charged the familiar. The monster took heed at last, turning to meet this startling madman.
Doug swung the stock back to thrust it in the familiar’s eye, but was knocked aside first, sent spinning to the ground. Next he knew, he was on his back, the fight and the breath knocked from him, his arms wrapped around his head instinctively. He felt like he’d been swiped by a passing whale. Or clipped by a train. Christ, what a hit.
Staggering to his feet, he found he wasn’t alone. The familiar was down too.
The monster was on the ground a short distance away, its trunk twisted about awkwardly, recovering, claws hooked into the earth to keep it in place. The sigils on its face had blown out wide, emoting something like baffled consternation.
The monster gathered up Doug in its bewildered sights, figuring him somehow the cause. It leapt up and charged him, but made it two paces before its hindquarters lifted and the creature was dumped on its head, flipped from behind. Doug had to dive away not to be caught underneath.
Down on his hands and knees, Doug snorted dust from his nose, as did the seething locomotive that rushed past him.
It struck the familiar hard and threw it over onto its back. The monster righted itself with a splintered snarl that hurt the ears, but before it could get a fix on its attacker, it was hit again. It was shunted along several metres, rolling over and over across the yard as if caught inelegantly on a cowcatcher. It yowled as it went, claws flashing out to hook hold of something, but they were churned under with the rest of it.
It was driven hard against a lemon tree. A brief shower of green fruit bombed it, the leaves above chattering like a flock of birds sent into shocked flight.
It was only then that Doug got his first proper look at what had broadsided the familiar. The King had found his fight.
UNBIDDEN PART V: SLEEP NO MORE
Chapter Fifteen
Tossing its head, the familiar raised its disarranged face, sigils trying to reassert themselves in the proper places for eyes and mouth, ears, flaring nostrils. Solomon promptly head-butted the familiar, knocking the sigils into disarray again. The familiar fell into a lolling heap.
Doug backed away clumsily. He had left the rifle behind, but managed to pick up Scott’s shirt, marvelling at how he had employed it like a matador’s cloak. Then he caught up to Scott, whose pale, heaving chest stood out like a beacon in the pearly pre-dawn light.
Together they watched the final, shocking rout of the familiar.
The monster was crawling on its belly, behaving in a cringing, servile way toward the bull, but that was only to give it time to slip past so it could escape up into the tree. Claws racketed out and sank deep into the trunk as the familiar began to clamber up into the thin foliage. It went slowly. Doug wouldn’t have believed such a thing possible, but in its clash with King Solomon the monster had been injured.
The King watched this from less than a metre away. Then he lost patience and smacked into the familiar again, pitching the monster away from the tree with a toss of its horns. The familiar’s claws tore great chunks from the bole as it went, enough to fell the tree as if axed.
The familiar groggily tried to get up and Solomon mowed into it again, grinding the monster into the earth. Horns busied its skin like tent poles scouring tarpaulin.
The familiar tried to slip away, leaping to gain more room, but then fell over without the King’s help, its hindquarters tipping over stiffly. Solomon butted the familiar again casually, then stood there and watched.
The monster tried a different direction. It fell down again. It dragged itself forward by its forepaws, and made some small headway, though hindered by the deadweight of its hind legs. After a short distance it stood up on its forelegs, trying to hold itself upright. Instead, it leaned and then collapsed to land flat on its side, snarling.
“Jesus Christ,” Doug barely whispered. “I think its back is broken.”
King Solomon didn’t understand what he was looking at, and not liking it, he charged. Doug and Scott could only watch, the boy shaking as if rocked by a gale.
The familiar rose into the air again, caught up on Solomon’s horn like a kitten held up by the scruff of the neck in its mother’s mouth. But apparently that was not Solomon’s intention. The exasperated bull laboured to discard the familiar, whipping its limp weight from side to side.
In that moment, Doug felt the beginnings of hope.
***
Immune to fire, bullet and blade, the familiar was never given protection against the beast of the field. Its architect could hardly have imagined it needed such a thing.
Now it was coming undone.
***
Solomon swung the familiar about on its horn, the monster’s limbs dragging through the grass. The familiar’s expression had gone slack, the sigils drifting. The sigil-eyes were gone, replaced by flat likenesses. They only moved when the head moved.
Bowing low, Solomon vigorously shook and stomped up and down with his forelegs to rid himself of his burden. The familiar finally slid off the lowered horn and fell to the earth in an untidy heap.
Solomon nudged the still form, then roughly shovelled it into a new position. It did not stir again. The floating sigils had trailed to a dead stop, the red in them faded, gone the colour of wet newspaper. The depthless coat went dull.
The King snorted and made some small hops in a gait peculiar to bulls. That was the extent of his victory dance.
Next to Doug, the boy was leaping high on the spot, cheering. A mottled red patch bloomed on his chest from beating his fists there.
The familiar’s head was lying on the cushion of its mashed cheek. Its switc
hblade mouth hung open, a gravestone-tongue protruding. Its sigil eyes, an ashen eight-ball and a broken heart, had lost interest. They were stopped clocks. Dead.
The boy howled with frenzied delight. Doug was worried he could suffer a stroke, or gain the King’s attention. The boy could not have cared less about either. He whooped and hollered and cheered.
Doug put a hand out to settle him and the boy took that as permission to move, springing forward toward the familiar. To do what? Spit on it? Drop a rock on its head? To have his turn?
Doug caught him just in time. The boy squirmed with a strength more elastic than a grown-up’s. Doug struggled not to let him wriggle from his grasp.
The boy cursed him, but did it happily.
Scott’s ruckus finally did get Solomon’s attention. Apparently the King did not like what he saw – forgetting the familiar, he made a menacing, stunted charge toward them. Just what an adversary used to playing dead might be waiting on … for the opponent to turn his back.
***
That the familiar was not charmed against the might of other living creatures could be considered a terrible oversight. Yet it was safeguarded against fire, bullet and blade.
It meant Solomon should have concentrated more on trampling its opponent under crushing hooves, not by piercing and goring. Because interpreted loosely, a bull’s horns could be considered a blade.
***
The familiar sprang from the ground, sigils flaring, to clamber up Solomon’s back with the wriggling speed of a lizard. Once there, it began to rake and rip. Long, dark strings looped through the air about beast and monster, separating out into impossibly large gobbets of blood.
Scott’s cheers died to stunned silence.
Solomon went wild, trying to buck the familiar off. The familiar’s lower half slid away, evidence that its useless hind legs were not part of the act. It didn’t matter. The forepaws dug in, climbing higher to hoist all of the familiar’s weight on top of Solomon, always one paw or the other hoeing in to hack and slash.
Blood ran down the King’s flanks in shocking black tides, flying off like sprinkler sprays as he whirled about, bucking with high backward kicks as flashing claws continued to swipe ragged divots from his shoulders, exposing muscle and sinew. Too soon, Solomon’s prickly snorts became baffled and wider-spaced, his actions more sluggish. An offbeat stroke shockingly laid open the white tines of his ribcage.
In a desperate move, Solomon slammed down on his side, either to throw off his attacker or to flatten it. The familiar hung on grimly, refusing to let go.
Solomon sat up with a heavy grunt, thick gluey ropes hanging from its snout. The familiar rose as well, still pinned to him like a leech. The bull regained his feet slowly, twitching in shock. The familiar clambered up again to resume cutting its mount into sheaves.
Solomon tried to buck again, and staggered in a half-circle, shifting like a heavily-laden canoe pulled the wrong way in a strong current. Then some of his old defiance returned, enlivening his dull features. He charged at nothing, folded in his head and slammed into the earth, flipping over to try and dislodge the familiar once and for all. The monster was squeezed into the impact as if between rollers. A paw projected out from under the bull’s mass, closing and opening on air.
Then Solomon kicked himself upright again and ran a short distance from where he had up-ended the familiar, turning about and snorting to confront his opponent … except the familiar had remained on his back all the while. It began carving fresh channels across the old.
King Solomon spent his last moments lunging at phantoms, each charge shorter and slower than the last, until he stopped and stood in place on trembling legs as the familiar swatted his neck into tatters. Finally, the majestic bull leaned forward, the weight of the rider telling. Forelegs buckling, Solomon crashed down, a bellow cruelly cut off as the ground snapped his jaw shut.
But his hind legs refused to give and they steadied in place, stalwart, waiting for the rest of him to regain his feet.
The familiar slid down the incline of the bull’s back, riding side-saddle. It gripped a horn in each paw. And pulled.
Solomon’s snout was lifted into the air, jaws open for a mournful bellow never properly begun, a sole moaning note carried away on the wind. Then his mouth stayed hung open, trailing thick strings of blood and saliva.
The King was dead before his horns were snapped off.
Released, the unadorned head thumped to the dirt. The standing hindquarters failed in the same instant.
The familiar slithered off the lifeless mound, a long horn grasped in each paw.
Its sigil gaze hunted around for Doug and Scott … found them.
Still holding on to its trophies, the familiar attempted to stand. Its top half succeeded, but its hindquarters lolled off to one side in a rubbery heap, throwing the monster off-balance and bringing it down short.
Doug was thinking furiously. All he needed was something of a good length, like a heavy branch or a long-handled tool from the machinery shed, anything that would keep him out of reach of the monster’s claws while he took his sweet time bashing its head in. He almost licked his lips in anticipation.
The familiar looked directly at Doug, and perhaps saw optimism there. Its sigil eyes drew back from its face to make way for a mouth of bloody spikes, growing large and spreading across the black pit that approximated its face, grinning insanely.
The familiar raised the broken horns in each paw and stuck them point first into the earth. They trembled greatly as the beast rose up, its weight braced upon them. Doug swiftly understood the intent: walking sticks.
He tugged on Scott and the boy fell as if he had no substance left in him, triumphant no longer. Doug tried to pull him to his feet, but it was like administering to someone deep inside a waking coma. The boy had simply given up. Doug had no words left to coax him, either. He hauled Scott up under his arm and started carrying him to the house, the toes of the boy’s boots dragging in the dirt.
One look behind and he wished he hadn’t.
The familiar was after them, pulling itself along with the bull’s horns for crutches. It came on like some monstrous, shuffling insect, useless hind legs slithering from side to side behind. But as ghastly as the sight was, the familiar’s progress was slow, its method clumsy and difficult. Doug had to wonder why it did not throw aside the horns, which were probably slowing it down. Surely it could crawl faster without them. But the likely answer brought a chill. The familiar wanted to keep its trophies because it proposed to make further use of them.
Doug found Janet and Lauren at the front stairs.
Janet was slow to move inside. She was anxious over the state of her son, refusing to accept Doug’s assurances that he wasn’t hurt. Lauren’s scream at the spider-like approach of the familiar put a swift end to any further argument.
Once inside, Doug slammed the hallstand back into place. It barely fit due to the collapsing ceiling and bowed walls. Half of the living room was the only place left somewhat intact, where Doug could stand without stooping. He and the others hunkered down there, Janet huddling with her kids amongst the lounge chairs closest to the fire. Doug sat apart in an open place on the floor so he had room – for what he didn’t know.
All of them braced for a renewed assault on the house. The wait stretched out. The longer it took, the more unnerved Doug became, until it seemed likely that he would go off at the slightest tap.
Then it occurred to him. Perhaps the familiar was no longer physically able to knock the house down. He crept to the nearest window, peering over the sill.
Was the night really on the turn, losing its deep-black lustre?
Though Warlock’s theory had yet to be tested, Doug’s spirits dared to rise a little. The lingering night did more to sap his will than the monster’s perseverance. Even if the theory was wrong about it going away when the sun rose, Doug thought he could cope better in the bright light of a no-nonsense day.
Hurry up. Bring on morn
ing.
A shard of glass popped out of the window frame in front of him with a sharp crick. He raised his eyes to the bowed ceiling with new worry. The house had not finished shifting.
From outside came a sharp knock, then no more. The familiar, being sly and playful? Doug knew if he tried too hard to work out which noises were suspect and which were innocent, he would go mad. Furtive creaks and breathy shiftings came from everywhere. Then a distinctly long, sandpapery scrape troubled his ears. This one could not be mistaken for the house settling.
There was no clear indication of where it had come from, but he backed away from the front just the same. His eyes met Janet’s. “Where’s that –” he began.
“Underneath,” she whispered, her face filled with dread. She began trying to haul her children up onto the chairs.
The floor gave a massive groan near the barricaded entrance, the groan separating out into a loud, trumpeting stutter. More glass shards detonated out of the window frames. The joins between the floorboards broadened into fish gills gaping for breath, then the floor slumped and the joins met together again with a hard bang. Doug stared at the roughly restored flooring near the doorway, the hallstand above trembling.
“What’s it doing?” Lauren asked of anyone.
Then the floor beneath Doug bulged, really bulged, upending him. The planks that made up the front wall gnashed against it, splintering. The hallstand fell over with a crash. Doug had to balance on his toes and spread fingertips as the swollen floor shoved upward. Then the floor dropped flat again with a slam, jolting him in place. The heads of several nails protruded from the timbers.
Doug wheeled around in a crouch. “Janet! Get in the corner, against the wall!”
“Is it going to get in? Can it get in?”
He still believed it couldn’t, but then again, it wouldn’t have to. In his mind’s eye, he saw the load-bearing stumps under the front of the house canting over to bring the floor low enough for the crippled familiar to reach with ease. He saw the monster pushing up on its two good limbs, pressing its back against the floor supports, heaving up with all its might.