by Ninie Hammon
She rolled over onto her side. The seat-back and chair arms she was strapped to rolled with her, no longer attached to anything else. Her legs were still taped securely to the front chair legs, but the chair legs were no longer affixed to the seat.
She lay panting, gasping in air that was, indeed, much better down here. Then she rolled onto her back again, bent her knees and began to scoot along the floor on the chair back, inching herself toward the elevator cage.
“What I must look like!” she said aloud. Maybe to Bishop. Maybe to God. Maybe to both of them. “A big fat ole black caterpillar that ain’t never gone be a butterfly.”
If she could get to that elevator, maybe she could send it down to the basement with her in it. Air’d be a whole lot cleaner down there.
* * * * * *
Suddenly, Andi heard a voice calling her. Not in her ears, though, in her head. It was Princess Buttercup.
She was squeezed into the big basket that sat by the doorway of a house in the woman-at-the-well scene. Andi used to play in the basket during pageant rehearsals—but she’d been a lot smaller then. Now the basket was only barely big enough for her, but that was good because from the outside it didn’t look like anybody could possibly fit into it.
The huge storage room was dark. There were light switches on the far wall by the doors leading out to the third floor, but Andi didn’t need any more than the dim glow shining up through the open trap door to find her way. She’d burrowed by feel to the back of the room where she knew she’d find the basket, had crawled into it and put the lid back on it. Even if that monster did figure out where she was—how could he?—he’d have to unload the whole room to get to her.
But maybe the demon could sense her somehow, or had special hearing that could pick out the rattling beat of her heart. She tried to calm her ragged breathing, but every time she thought about the demon crouched on the man’s shoulders, her heart started hammering away again.
This one was even uglier than the one made of wasps that sat on the head of the man who’d shot Miss Lund and Mr. Bishop. She hadn’t gotten a real good look at that one through the crack in the storage room door, but she knew it didn’t have a face that looked like a lizard—with slanted eyes and no nose at all, a mouth with jagged teeth and a tongue that flitted in and out of it, forked like the tongue of a snake she saw once on the Earth Channel. It didn’t stink, either, like the one on the fat man did, a horrible stench that made her heave like she was going to throw up. There was a brown stream of something oozing out beneath the demon that smelled like—worse than a baby’s diaper. It ran down the fat man’s back and dripped on the floor in a sticky puddle.
The demon on the fat man had those tentacle things, like the arms of an octopus, but more of them and they were stuck into the man, into his back and his cheek, one big one into his neck. They looked like the sprouts that grew out of an onion if it got knocked down behind the bin and nobody found it for a long time. This demon had red eyes, too, without any black spot in the middle of them at all. And no eyelids to hide them. He’d turned those red eyes on her when she came into the Fellowship Hall, and she’d screamed.
Maybe those red eyes could see her no matter where she hid. She held her breath and listened to the silence. It felt like the silence was listening to her, too. Maybe the demon would make the man come for her and—
She didn’t let her mind finish. That man had said he would shoot her mommy. She’d heard a bang, like the sound of a gunshot in the movies. It wasn’t a gunshot, though. It was something else. She didn’t know what, but something else.
Andi, she heard again. Come here, Sweetheart, quick.
Andi didn’t move.
Come now, Andi. I need you to come right now.
All of a sudden, light shone through the wicker all around her, light so bright it splattered the inside of the basket with shining jewels. Andi slowly lifted the lid, just enough to peek out. The brilliance was coming from a form floating above the open trap door, a brilliance that cast no shadows. It was Princess Buttercup, and yet it wasn’t. It was more than Princess Buttercup, a stunningly beautiful being in the white dress Andi recognized, only it was shimmering like each thread was made out of light. Wings with sparkling feathers rose up high in the air above her and in her hand she held the most amazing thing Andi had ever seen. It was a sword with a handle of gold and a blade made out of…they had to be diamonds. Each stone reflected—no, refracted—light like the glass prism Miss Donaldson kept on her desk in science class. Alive with thousands of flickering rainbows, the blade was both beautiful and terrible, more powerful and dangerous than anything Andi’d ever seen. Yet the sword seemed somehow delicate in Princess Buttercup’s hand, fragile and perfect and…holy.
“Hurry,” Princess Buttercup said.
So Andi pushed the lid off the basket, crawled out and through all the other props. When she got to the trap door, the light still shone bright, but Princess Buttercup was no longer in it.
* * * * * * *
Daniel was about out of gas, had barely been able to keep out of Vic’s grasp.
Vic had been skinny as a kid. Now he was an overweight, out-of-shape slob, but hyped up on adrenaline, he was as fast as a striking cobra. Daniel only managed to elude him because he knew the layout of the church—with its interconnected classrooms, prayer rooms, craft and activity rooms. He dashed from one to another, planning his route in his head, hearing Vic behind him, charging like a bull.
Victor almost caught Daniel in the Children’s Ministry wing, roared into the activity area only a couple of seconds behind Daniel. Vic’s big hand fastened on the back of Daniel’s collar, but he wrenched free and dived into the opening of the Play Cave in the side wall of the room. A model cave with the lumpy walls of a real cavern, the tunnel twisted and turned, went back twenty feet under the raised floor of the room next door.
Daniel felt Vic’s hand tighten around his ankle and kicked it viciously with the other foot, knocked it loose and scrambled farther in so he was too far for Victor to reach. He smelled Victor then—the reek of his unwashed body was sickening.
“Come out of there,” Victor yelled. The cave was a tight fit for Daniel. It would be impossible for Victor to squeeze his fat bulk into it. He couldn’t reach Daniel, couldn’t shoot him. What was he going to do? If Daniel stayed in the cave, he’d be safe from the monster until help came.
But Andi wouldn’t.
As if Vic had read his mind—had he?—the fat man leaned over the mouth of the cave and shouted into it.
“It’s you or the kid, Dano. I’m gonna go back to that closet and call her. When she comes, I’m gonna twist her head off her shoulders like the top off a pickle jar.”
Daniel crawled as fast as he could until he had completed the circuitous route the whole length of the cave tunnel and came out the opening in the room next door. He took a couple of deep gulps of air and ran out of the room and down the hallway, knowing Vic would hear his footsteps on the tile floor. As he rounded the corner in the hall, Vic burst out of the Play Cave room and raced after him.
Then Daniel did the only thing he could think to do. He was running out of options, so he turned into the hallway that led to the stairs to the belfry. It was a warm night. The neighbors might be out on their patios or back decks. He could yell for help.
It was a chance. He couldn’t outrun the adrenaline-juiced Vic for much longer, couldn’t get enough of a lead to find a phone and call 911. The belfry was a dead end, a last hope, but it was outside.
He took the stairs two at a time, the stitch in his side so painful it brought tears to his eyes. He was halfway up the circular staircase before Victor burst through the door below and leapt onto the bottom step. Adrenaline or not, Victor’s body was so fat, he had trouble negotiating the narrow, twisting staircase. But he was coming all the same. He was coming.
Daniel blew through the doorway in the back wall of the bell tower, raced to the railing and started shouting, “Help! Call the police
! Help!”
He ran around to the other side, called out with all the power of his preaching voice. “Call the police! Somebody help. He’s going to kill—!”
Vic’s long fingers closed around the back of Daniel’s neck, pulled him away from the railing and flung him to the floor.
“No, he ain’t gonna kill you,” Vic said. He was breathing hard, panting in great gulps that sounded like a horse. Sweat was beaded on his face. A rancid stench pulsed off the heat of his body. “He’s only gonna hurt you.”
Vic kicked Daniel savagely in the side and Daniel doubled up in pain. Vic kicked him again and Daniel cried out in agony, certain that the blow had broken a rib. But Vic cut the cry short by slamming his work boot deep into Daniel’s belly.
“Hurt you bad.”
All the wind whooshed out of Daniel and he couldn’t seem to draw any more back in.
Daniel can’t breathe. He can’t draw in a breath. The air is too thick to breathe now, and as putrid as a well in the depths of which things had drowned and laid there rotting.
But that’s not why he can’t breathe it. He can’t pull air into his lungs because what he sees has driven all breath out of him. Forever. The horror of it has driven everything out of his mind and filled it with a boiling black ugliness that burns away thought and desire, past, present and future. Burns everything out of his mind so the image is all that fills him.
A creature has risen out of the flames of a burning red sea. A creature made of fire. The fire lights the cavern and Daniel sees Jack on the blackened rocks beside the sea. He is on his knees, looking up at the monster.
There are other people here, too, he thinks. From the corner of his eye he can see figures off to the side. But he cannot move his eyes to look at them because his vision is nailed to the creature.
Then he feels fingers entwine with his, small fingers, warm, and soft. Becca has taken his hand. He tries to turn and look at her, but then the creature before him roars.
Daniel hears the sound with every molecule in his body. His ears go deaf, but he hears the sound with his bones and his tissue and his blood. The roar is more than sound, it is a single pure thing, flawless for what it is, a wine glass touched with a fork that emits a note in perfect pitch. Clear and horrible beyond description. It is the sound of absolute, consummate evil and to hear it is to die.
Vic sneered at Daniel, curled in a fetal position on the floor of the belfry.
“Won’t kill you, but I’ll make you wish you’s dead.” He lifted his foot as if to slam it down on Daniel’s face and Daniel instinctively lifted a hand to ward off the blow. Vic grabbed his forearm and forced his hand backward on it. Daniel heard the pop when his wrist broke, but had no breath to scream out the agony he felt.
“I’m gonna drag you down these stairs and you’re gonna call that little girl of yours. Then you’re gonna watch me cut off little pieces off of her until you tell me where to find Becca.”
Daniel’s mind could form only one clear thought.
Andi, Baby, stay hidden somewhere so deep you can’t hear his voice or mine. Don’t come out for anything.
In the sanctuary below the belfry, Andi walked slowly out of the choir robe closet and started across the dais.
CHAPTER 34
Theresa lay on the floor of the elevator coughing hard now, coughing with every breath.
Still, it had sure enough been worth a try.
She’d scooted herself like a worm across the floor to the elevator and managed to get inside, then struggled to get up on her creaky old knees so she could get to the button on the control panel, maybe push it with her nose.
That was the first time she’d been close enough to get a good look at the padlock Cole had hung on the elevator door. He hadn’t just hung it there, he’d locked it in place, hooked it around a bar of the cage, and fastened it to a bar on the elevator door.
The door couldn’t shut. And the elevator wouldn’t run with the door open.
Game over.
Thick, black, deadly smoke was relentlessly sinking toward her, and she had nowhere to run.
But the effort to get to the elevator hadn’t been totally wasted. Because the elevator was a cage, it didn’t make a complete seal with the shaft that stretched out below it into the basement and she could smell cool, damp air in the crack between the floor and the elevator. She was grateful for it, fresh and clean, soothing her, though she understood now that she’d been given that smoke as a gift. She was gonna pass out soon from breathing it. It might even kill her, but if it didn’t, she wouldn’t know it when the fire did.
She couldn’t pray out loud anymore because she didn’t have any breath. But you didn’t have to be able to speak to talk to God.
I’m coming home, Lord. Won’t it be fine to see yore face, to know what you look like after I been imagining it for all these years. I’ll cry when I see you, I know I will. Or sing, or dance or fall down on the floor laughing—somethin’ grand.
A coughing jag interrupted her, the room was spinning, twirling around and around her, making her dizzy.
And soon’s you and me’ve had us a nice long talk, I wanna see Bishop.
Then the image of a face, worn fuzzy around the edges with time, came to her mind and she actually smiled.
Bishop and Isaac!
* * * * * * *
Jack stared at the two silver circles for only a heartbeat, then shot a glance at the red triangle. Putting it together in his head. Working it out. Yes! He had only seconds to respond.
“No!” Jack cried. “Please, not my eyes!” He rolled himself into a protective fetal position facing away from Cole, shaking his head violently and wailing. “I don’t want to be blind.”
When he rolled onto his side, Jack picked up one of the two silver circles now beneath him. He used his thumb to flip the catch, hooked the handcuff to the barrel trailer rail and snapped it shut.
“Don’t hurt me anymore,” he begged, his voice hysterical, as he gathered up some dust and a handful of wood chunks from the broken ladder. “Cole, please! I can’t…my head…my head hurts…”
Jack suddenly went rigid for two seconds—as stiff as a plank. Then he began to jerk spastically, making a low moaning sound deep in his throat, his legs flailing.
“Hey!” Cole said. “Don’t you have a stroke on me!” Cole reached out his only good hand and rolled Jack over on his back.
Jack threw the dust and splinters into Cole’s face, right into his lone eye. When Cole instinctively reached up to wipe his eye. Jack grabbed his injured right hand, dangling beneath the broken arm, and snapped the other handcuff shut around the wrist.
In one motion, Jack rolled to the side and leapt into the small empty space between the barrel rails and the wall. He reached out then and took hold of the red triangle—the chock holding the barrels in place on the sloped bed of the barrel wagon.
Cole could see well enough to understand what was happening. He sneered at Jack and yanked on the handcuff to break it away from the rail.
Nothing happened. He grabbed his injured hand with his good hand and yanked again. It didn’t come free.
He’d used it up. All the strength he had was finally gone. Cole’s engine had blown.
A look of horror and fear, rage and hatred washed over his shattered face. Then there was something else. In his eye, a flash, like Jack had seen that day years ago. The man whose body and life had been hijacked by a demon looked out at Jack through the one clear blue eye. For an instant, their eyes held and locked, and in that moment Jack understood. The real Cole Stuart who was about to die was grateful.
Jack yanked out the chock.
The first barrel crashed to the ground in front of Cole, knocked him backward, and rolled over his leg. Cole shrieked and reached up to keep the barrel from rolling any farther. Then the second barrel hit the ground behind the first and crashed into it. There was a moment’s hesitation, then a grunt and the first barrel rolled down the length of Cole’s body. Followed by the sec
ond. And the third.
Jack stood and watched all eight of them, one after another, smash Cole’s body. When the last barrel had dropped off the wagon and rolled over Cole and into the elevator, Jack stood for a moment longer. Until that instant, that flash of humanity, Jack had not stopped to consider what it must be like to be possessed by a demon. He shuddered, then turned his back on the form lying crushed on the ground between the rails. It looked like road kill.
Jack started slowly up the incline—and smelled smoke. He looked up and saw it boiling down out of the roof on the far end of the warehouse. It’d be on fire in…
If this warehouse was catching fire, that meant the fire had spread from the fireworks factory through the other warehouses to ignite it.
Theresa!
* * * * * * *
Andi walked in something like a trance across the dais from the choir robe closet to the spot on the floor where her mother lay in a pool of blood.
He did it. He did shoot her.
“Mommy?” she said, maybe out loud or maybe not. She knew her mommy couldn’t hear her no matter how she said it. Mommy was dead.
She knelt in the puddle of blood beside her mother and a big hole opened up in Andi where her belly should have been. The emptiness grew and grew until it was so big nothing in the world would ever be able to fill it up again.
She felt fat, hot tears slide down her face but she didn’t think she was crying. Crying came from that place in her belly. That’s where she felt sad and hurt and afraid, and that place was gone now. She couldn’t cry, though her throat hurt and tears dripped off her chin into the pool of her mother’s still warm blood.