by TJ Park
Up on the ceiling, the woman’s eyes slid back into place with barely a flutter and fixed on him.
This new shock knocked Doug down in his panic to get away. He scurried backward on all fours, piling a drift of birds against his back. The touch of them made him scramble up to his feet again and he stood braced for what the woman on the ceiling – the witch was clearly a female, you fool, Doug – would do next.
When she didn’t move, he remembered the pistol and wrestled it from his pants. Never mind that it was empty, he felt better with its sure weight in his hand. He kept backing away, hating the feel of those eyes on him, wondering if you could dodge a hex like a stone. Maybe she could strike him down dead with her gaze.
But it seemed she was unable to shift her head. As he backed away, her eyes rolled to keep him in sight. That was what gradually convinced him she wasn’t so much of a threat. He stepped forward so she could see him better, while staying well clear.
“Your name,” he said. “It’s … Mitch?”
Her face twisted in painful recognition. A nickname then, or something shortened. She continued to watch him, waiting.
“Stop it,” he said. “Call it off.”
Any lingering dull look from her was gone. The witch’s face blossomed. It became suddenly radiant with defiance. Her body shuddered with the force of it.
“No.”
Christ. Even the voice was masculine, croaky and deep.
“I’ll kill you if you don’t stop it.” Though that would be a tall order without bullets. He’d need a chair or a witch’s broomstick to reach her.
A grin cut through her face.
“Tell me you like what I sent you.”
“Stop it. Now!” He moved forward, aiming the useless gun at her.
She bared her teeth wider. Tears formed, but didn’t drop. Her eyes swiftly filled up like thick, magnifying lenses. “Stop it?” She tasted the words, mulled them over.
Then her grin fell apart, but the sick gladness was still there. It was as if she was biting down on something that tasted bad, but still somehow satisfying. Seeing it made Doug believe what she said next. Such conflicting emotions were too hard to fake.
“I can’t stop it. I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to.”
***
Janet knew she had to get away, but she couldn’t command her legs. They failed and she fell into a heap against the upturned table.
The familiar was caught in the doorway. The cottage was so diminutive the doorframe doubled as load bearers, with the familiar jammed firmly in between.
Janet tried to rise holding onto a table leg. She couldn’t do much more than sit up. Seeing her there set out like dinner on a plate, the familiar was excited into new ferocity. The cottage shook with its efforts. Extended claws scraped the floor, digging out long, curling strips of linoleum. Jagged splinters of wood sprouted in the gaps. Every stroke was like fingernails on a chalkboard, screeching.
Not getting anywhere, the familiar stopped trying to bull its way in, and began to squeeze its bulk through the door instead. It was lurid, the monster’s measured slide into the kitchen. Like black icing being squeezed from a tube.
Janet did not see Danny get up from his chair, his ruined face twisting briefly as a sharp pain struck him between the eyes. Nor did she see him go past, to stoop and start digging at his ear. Her unsteady attention was on the familiar. It was nearly inside, only its hips wedged in the doorway.
Then an arm went around her waist, hauling her to her feet and making sure she stayed on them. She turned to see Danny. She could almost bear it. None of his amiable daze or sorrow remained. He was grimacing with determination, compassion.
But the powerful aura of emotion did not seem to be coming from Danny himself, but from a place above his head. Though Danny’s lips moved, the sound came from over his shoulder, in a voice that was not his.
“Go!” it said. “Go!”
He shoved her hard toward the hallway.
Glancing back, she saw Danny turn and face the familiar. The monster was fully inside, filling up almost the entire space. There was no point waiting to see how it turned out. She ran for the bedroom, only wanting to find her children, make them safe.
***
Holding him under his arms and back-pedalling – the same way Doug had done with Mick the night before – Lauren dragged her brother all the way to the main house.
She knew if she could drag him that distance, she could manage him up the canted wall and inside. But one look at the dark structure … and she could only wonder how she could be expected to go inside, into the place where she had nearly died.
Lauren suffered a brief spasm of vomiting, turning away to avoid soiling her brother. There was not much to it, bile mostly, nerves. The thought of going back into the house made her stomach buck. Yet she couldn’t leave Scott by himself.
She took a deep, almost sobbing, breath and started hauling him again, away from the ruin. She figured it was not vital they go back inside. Since it was not the same monster that was after them, perhaps the same rules didn’t apply.
The house barely protected them when all in one piece. She hardly expected the smashed pile to protect them now. The thing pretending to be Danny had entered the workers’ cottage easily enough.
***
The familiar recognised Danny – not the mount, but its rider – with a disbelief that turned into a promise of severe chastisement later. Yet it still managed to look bemused when Danny charged. The dead-alive man intended to wrestle it with his bare hands …
The familiar reared, its massive head butting the ceiling. From on high, it fell on Danny with the might of a birthing iceberg. Danny forcibly sat down in Janet’s chair, cut in half. A swipe of the familiar’s claws had cleft him from shoulder to lower spine.
Incredibly, despite being split almost in two, Danny tried to rise again; his determination to stop the beast never faltered.
The familiar struck him again, claws hooking into Danny’s ribcage and dashing the lot of him to the floor. Pinning him down with one paw, the familiar hacked with the other, and kept hacking at him, until it was digging trenches into the floor beneath.
Danny did not move again after that.
The familiar found this satisfactory.
***
I can’t stop it, the witch had told him. Doug was nodding even as she spoke. He had expected a bad result, but pushed all misgivings aside in his quest to get here. It was the only thing that had enabled him to get this far.
“The animal we hit in the jeep. The roo. That was something you did?”
He smiled, to cover up his embarrassment. What he said sounded ludicrous to his own ears, no matter what other lunacies were made real.
“Yes.”
He remembered the reflected eyes, ones that didn’t belong to the animal, looking over its shoulder.
“You controlled it somehow.”
“I was riding it.”
Doug couldn’t help, but shudder. He thought awhile.
“You did it to slow us down. Maybe kill us if you could.” Looking steadily at her. “You did that with the dogs, too?”
She nodded, or tried to. She couldn’t since the back of her head was bonded to the ceiling. That glittering, ecstatic rage crept back into her face.
“I wanted to show them what you are.”
Doug nodded, his own bitter smile rising to his lips.
“The Clarksons. Yeah, you succeeded there, alright.” He paused, considering her flatly. “Their hired hand. You kill him, too?”
The witch’s triumph fell. “I didn’t mean for him to die. Only to wreck the truck. Stop you from getting away.”
“How did you …?” He said it derisively, not expecting an answer.
“Eagle.”
Doug opened his mouth, left it open. He tried to picture how such a thing could be orchestrated, then decided he didn’t really want to know. The witch went on.
“I used him to finish destroying the tru
ck. So you couldn’t have it.”
“You rode him, you mean.” No matter how shameful his own behaviour had been the last few days, Doug found himself somehow sickened by such a dark ability.
“You nearly killed the boy with those dogs.”
“I can’t control the living as well as I can the dead.”
Doug closed his eyes for a moment, trying to process it all. When he opened them again he gave her a conspiratorial nod. “You know what? I don’t think you gave a damn who was in the way. I think you would have carved a path through a hundred innocent people if that’s what it took to get to us.”
The witch didn’t answer.
“Excuse me,” she said. She said it casually, as if about to answer a phone. Her eyes rolled back in her head, leaving only the whites again, eyelids fluttering.
“Mitch?” He waved a hand before her face. No response.
She was mumbling to herself, nonsense words tumbling over each other – another spell? He wasn’t too worried about it. Somehow he didn’t think it had anything to do with him. Abruptly she shouted, “Go! Go!”
Then she began shuddering terribly, as close to convulsions as her invisible restraints would allow. Doug thought she was having a seizure, perhaps dying, but then she returned. Her eyelids stopped fluttering, and in her eyes the whites were dispelled again and dark pupils were fixed on him. She appeared calm and forbidding. Sphinxlike. Then her chest jumped. It heaved for ragged breath.
“Don’t think you can get away that easy,” Doug told her.
Her words were blown out between exhausted gasps.
“I’ve … tried … to … make … amends.”
“Did you? I haven’t seen it? Or was it you who stopped that … thing coming into the Clarkson house?”
“No.”
Doug laughed without uttering a sound.
“I didn’t think so. You couldn’t stop it pasting you to the ceiling, either.”
“It was … too strong. I needed his anima to find you. I’ve never done that before. I put too much of myself in it.” Her lips curled in disgust. “I put too much of him in it. What I made was supposed to be my weapon, but it … it got away from me.”
Doug nodded. It satisfied him when pieces started coming together.
“Let me get the timing figured out straight. When did that thing stick you up there? Before or after you set the dogs on us?”
She tried to shirk, couldn’t. “Before.”
“It turned on you and still you kept helping it.”
Doug was angry, but the witch was angrier. She shook in her moorings.
“I chose!”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want you to get away with what you’d done!”
Spittle began to rain down on Doug. “And you’re the last! Once you’re gone, its purpose is over. It won’t exist any more!”
“Yes,” Doug replied, “I see. And you’ll be set free. Get yourself ready when it happens. It’s a bit of a drop.”
She slumped in her moorings, her fury turned to ashes.
“I’ll never be free of what you’ve done.”
“What we’ve done,” Doug corrected her.
“Don’t compare me with you!” she screeched.
Doug wasn’t deterred. A crim could always suss out another crim.
“Are you sure your monster will just fade away when it’s done with me? You didn’t expect it to get the better of you, either.”
The witch looked away. No, she hadn’t expected it.
“I told you. I … I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve never come close.” She laughed harshly. “I was better than I thought.”
“Yes, you took a monster and made him worse.”
The witch sobbed. She returned her teary gaze on Doug.
“Tell me … did she suffer?”
Doug wasn’t sure he understood. Or wanted to.
The witch tried again. “Selena. My … love.”
The steel in her briefly resurfaced. “The woman you murdered. Did she suffer?”
“I wasn’t there when it happened. I didn’t see for myself, but yeah, she suffered.”
The witch stared at him like he was mad. She shook, her tears falling in drops.
“No, not the first time. I know all about that, you bastard. I found what you left behind! I mean this time. Now.”
Doug was confused.
“You didn’t leave her lying out in the yard?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Selena. Bring her inside, please. Where I can see her.”
Her eyes gleamed, became furtive. “I’ll tell you how to defeat the monster. I know a way. Bring her in and I’ll tell you how.”
He knew she was lying. But maybe she could offer some clue that could help.
“Okay, then. I’ll bring her inside. Where is she? Where did you put her?”
It was the witch’s turn to show confusion, then a bright, fearful understanding.
“How did you get past her?”
“What are you –”
The witch screamed. If she’d been able to lift her head, he might have realised sooner it was not directed at him, but at something behind him.
He was struck hard in the back and sent flying.
With all the carcasses littered about, you’d think he could avoid hitting his head on the hardwood floor and knocking himself out.
You’d think.
Chapter Nineteen
Lauren would never have got him to the loft if not for the old straw basket. It was big and round as an upturned Mexican sombrero, the bottom sagging into a pouch. Kept on a shelf in the barn, it was attached to the hoist for things that couldn’t be raised to the loft on a hook. Scott enjoyed having Lauren throw him around in it when he was younger, but then she never lifted him any higher than her head, despite his pleading. They stopped that game when he got too heavy to lift, over five years ago.
Tonight she struggled just to get him in the basket, never mind pulling on the rope. Most of him was left dangling, threatening to overbalance and tip out as he rose in the air in stops and starts.
She raised him no higher than her waist.
Frustrated, Lauren decided on a course of action quite unlike her. She climbed the ladder to the loft, wound the rope around her forearm, and jumped.
She risked hurting herself badly. Her shoulder suffered a terrible wrench, and her skin blistered where the rope pinched, but otherwise it worked. She hit the ground with her knees scarcely buckling, Scott going up swiftly and securely in the basket.
Lauren tied the rope off at the barn door handle, then climbed to the loft again to pull her brother to safety. She laid him on his side, so his head rested on his arm, then leaned into the open air and swung the loft doors shut, shutting darkness in with them. She crouched above her brother protectively, listening for any abnormal sounds.
She hadn’t thought through their hiding place, driven only by an instinct to seek higher ground. It seemed especially urgent since Scott was so helpless. But now she considered the advantages of the loft. No-one could sneak up behind them. There was only one way in now, via the ladder. And she had the advantage over anyone who dared try. The loft carried plenty of long-handled tools. The only problem was being boxed in.
Lauren decided she could live with that. Let Danny come. At least there would be no more surprises.
***
Janet shared Lauren’s instincts, taking to a high place in the hope her pursuer could not follow. She had the advantage over her daughter of having no extra weight to carry. The only burden she carried was in her head – the feeling she had failed them.
She would be easily seen on the windmill. She never truly intended to get away, or imagined she could. She only wanted to buy more time for her kids, on the chance they might survive the night. Perhaps the house could still protect them. Perhaps the monster would take a long time with her.
She never looked down while she climbed, not once, not unti
l she reached the very last rung. Once there, she caught her breath, hearing distant noises that sounded like the workers’ cottage being demolished. Though lost to darkness, she eventually looked in that direction.
For a while there was nothing to be seen, then the familiar sauntered into the yard. It came with never any doubt about where she might be. Its glimmering sigil gaze never left her in its desire to drink her all in.
She trembled on her perch. She could barely endure the monster’s serene approach. For all its earlier fervour, it seemed in no hurry now. It had all night.
The monster did not make a sound as it moved forward, its tail waving sinuously behind it like a snake through water.
It paused at the foot of the ladder. Its gaze never leaving her, the familiar casually circled the metal windmill, perhaps to be sure there was no means of escape, or savouring how perfectly realised was the trap she’d made for herself. Janet waited passively above, when what she really wanted to do was hurl abuse, or rain down boulders if she could on that self-satisfied face.
Fuck it, some abuse couldn’t hurt.
“Just fuck off!” she yelled. “Go on, get away! Bastard!”
The familiar completed its circuit, coming back to where it began, at the foot of the ladder. Its smiling gaze still locked on her, the monster placed a paw on the first rung. It was a tight fit.
Janet tensed, inadvertently leaning away from her perch as if it was possible for her to take wing and fly away. Perhaps she should try.
The familiar began climbing. The rungs of the ladder were difficult for its bulk, so it switched to the cross-struts of the tower. It leapt three in quick succession, paused, then leapt another three, relying on speed rather than grace to keep gravity at bay.
Janet expected the struts to groan under the weight. But there was no sound. Yet still a sensation of the tower leaning toward it. Neither had she expected it incapable of climbing, but its agility was shocking. She thought it would take longer to reach her.
The familiar dashed up three more struts. Janet hung on grimly, this time certain the tower was leaning. Though it did not groan under the monster’s weight, it laboured elsewhere, the joins creaking, bolts shifting. She thought about climbing onto the platform and hiding behind the fan. Perhaps she could confuse it. But the blades were barely moving. The familiar would simply pat them to a halt.