No time to gag and puke and retch. Carl stood back up and was stunned by the damage that had been caused. Though he wasn’t close to the sacrificial altar a lot of what had been between him and his destination was now prone and either bleeding or dead. Some of the things might get back up, but it would take a few minutes.
That would have to be enough.
Carl moved forward and stumbled, his left leg refusing to carry him properly. That was okay. He’d hop if he had to. He maneuvered around the things on the ground, which were motionless or twitching and steaming around him.
He couldn’t hear a damned thing except the ringing in his ears.
As he moved, he reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out his special package, a hand made shotgun shell. Any decent hunter can pack a shell, and though he’d given up hunting years ago, his daddy used to take him when he was a boy. Long as he remembered the basics he didn’t figure he was going to blow himself to Hell╤Already there, thanks kids!╤when he pulled the trigger.
The shotgun was still in place, but pulling it free felt like he was uprooting it from his side. He didn’t look down, he didn’t dare. His luck he’d have done something significant to his internal organs.
Ahead of him Siobhan Blackbourne and the people and things around her were looking his way. He couldn’t be surprised by that; he had, after all, just blown a quarter acre of their kin into shreds. And on the altar in front of her was another body that was dead or dying. And next to her, ready to go on the altar and still struggling mightily was Wade.
Not good, but at least he hadn’t killed the man. Carl charged forward as best he could and slipped his special shell into the shotgun. He’d maybe have had doubts about this earlier, even when he was putting the damned thing together, but watching the woman with blood all over her hands and front and the wild-eyed expression on her perfect face tended to put things into perspective. He hopped across the body of one of the things on the ground╤he didn’t even want to know what it had looked like before the explosion╤and stumbled forward.
And as he looked back up, fully expecting the Moon-Eyes and the Blackbournes alike to be charging toward him, he saw a very large number of both recoiling, looking around for some way to escape.
On his worst day he knew they weren’t looking at him. And seeing as they were monsters, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was that had caught their attention, but now and then, you just have to know.
And once he looked, he wished desperately that he could have taken it back.
***
Siobhan felt the sky opening above her. The explosion the sheriff had caused was trivial, really. It hurt a few, killed some more, but in the end they were not significant. She had so many children and she could always have more, would have more with the One.
The burning circle expanded, and her hair whipped into a frenzy in the sudden change of pressure. Around her the Muhneyht fairly vibrated in ecstasy, their god finally returned to them.
Siobhan looked up, her eyes taking in the dark magnificence of Shub Niggurath returned at last. The One was coming home to her, as she and it would be united, joined in their need to breed, to procreate, to multiply. The Black Goat with a Thousand Young, the Black Ram with a Thousand Young╤the titles meant nothing, could not begin to express the power of the god that was coming for her. She could feel the god’s desire and in response, her body shifted, became more real, finally began to reveal itself for all to see.
While she was busy viewing the sire of her future children, the man she’d planned to offer up next took advantage of the moment and broke free of his guards. His face was a bloodied mask of rage. To most it might have meant something, but to Siobhan, it was little more than a flea trying to bite at her flesh.
The Muhneyht holding him were struck down, broken by the blows he used to free himself. One of his elbows shot backwards, crushing the nose and skull of the closest of her children. The man bent forward at the waist and another pale figure went flying over his shoulder to fall into the crowd below. This one was a warrior. She could almost have admired him when she was something close to human.
And then as he prepared to attack her, the transformations she was going through became visible to him for the first time.
***
Frank felt a sense of urgency, and moved forward, drawn to the sacrifices, to the power that they offered, and while some small part of him wondered if there was danger up ahead, the Other voice inside of him was growing louder, more excited by the second. The walls were too narrow, and so he smashed them down, breaking through the hallway with all the finesse of a bowling ball hammering its way down the fluted cup of a champagne glass. Some of the Moon-Eyes╤His Other called them “Muhneyht” and was now speaking in the language that Meemaw used to sing to him in. He understood enough to know that the Other was repulsed by the white shapes╤tried to stop him, but his arms lashed out, and grabbed them, tore at them, broke them into bloodied pulps. And all the while his Other screamed, drooled, demanded satisfaction.
The double doors before him would have accommodated him only an hour earlier, but now he was too big, too swollen with power and desire. Auntie lay ahead of him. Part of him wanted to kill her. Most of him had other desires.
And Shub was somewhere ahead of him, too. He could hear the voice of Shub Niggurath, a deep tone that vibrated his bones through the swollen meat of his form. He only understood a few of the desires of his Other, but knew that the thing that was taking him over wanted Auntie Siobhan and also lusted after the thing coming down to join with her. Perhaps his Other understood the odd anatomies of the thing, but the very notion hurt Frank’s head.
Frank charged forward, roaring and destroying everything that stood between him and his targets. He was dimly aware of the sheriff limping along in front of him, but not even that man meant anything to him now. He had his Auntie in his sites and he needed to hurt her. The Other disagreed. It had other plans. Two legs didn’t seem capable of moving him fast enough, and so he grew another, and then two more, the better to cross the distances to his prize.
***
Carl’s hearing must have been starting to come back, because he heard a thunderous roar of obscene noises coming from behind him even as he turned to look. Worse, he could feel the ground shuddering at the same time.
Deep in the pit of his stomach he knew what he would see: he could have told anyone who was there to ask him at that moment, because the last thing he wanted to see was exactly what came up to ride his ass.
The area behind him was no longer a ballroom, nor did it look remotely like any place he’d ever seen in person before. The sky was the wrong color, and the ground was a vast field of jagged rocks and mossy spots that wriggled and squirmed and tried to get out the way of the thing coming toward him, stomping on rocks, moss-stuff and bodies alike with complete abandon.
Frank Blackbourne charged, bulldozing his way past the abominations that tried to get out of his way. Carl did not recognize him easily, because he had grown like a cancer being fed steroids. The freakish thing was easily eight hundred pounds, and each time one of the massive feet slammed into the ground the world seemed to shake. There were a lot of feet. Way too many. Carl didn’t even try to count them, he just stared, too shocked to do anything else for a moment. The part of the thing that was recognizable as Frank was smaller than he’d expected. He could make out the face, part of the torso, but they were insignificant. The gaping, babbling mouth of the thing below the chest was larger, and drooled as it bellowed vile, offensive gibberish.
Had you asked Carl what his plans were, he would have probably considered prayer, or just possibly even shooting the goddamned thing. What he would not have said, what he would have expressed as a sure fire guarantee of a painful death and maybe a good way to lose his remaining shreds of sanity, would have been to hitch a ride on the freakish thing.
And yet, he did it. Without any conscious thought his left hand lashed out and grabbed at the remaining
shreds of cloth that had twisted into the cauldron of flesh that poured past him at high speed.
He was pretty sure he was screaming as he was hauled off the ground. It was hard to tell past the massive thing’s shrieking tirade.
There was a certain rhythm to the way the thing moved. That helped.
Carl held on tight and looked at the approaching altar, the growing image of Wade fighting for his life, the nightmarish thing that Siobhan was becoming╤and his mind did not want to even consider that╤and worst of all, the shape that was pushing at the blazing rift in the sky.
He had no idea what was trying to be born, but he was terrified to find out.
One shot.
One shell.
One target.
Carl held his breath for a moment and then sighted on Siobhan Blackbourne’s hellish shape as she expanded, grew larger and more malformed even than Frank, and prepared to pull the trigger.
***
The world had gone stark raving, bugfuck mad. Griffin had managed to free himself but before he could get his hands on the Blackbourne bitch she had begun to grow. No, that was wrong. She wasn’t so much changing as becoming fully visible. Phantom limbs, human, insect, and animal shimmered in the air about her and behind her was a gigantic pulsing mass like the venom sack of some great bloated spider. How could he hope to stop anything like that?
And then another mad image. A huge, misshapen thing that also seemed to be growing in more than one dimension, and riding it like a cowboy gone berserk was Carl goddamn Price. Griffin saw two things at once. He saw Carl level a shotgun and fire, and he saw something silver and glittering out of the corner of one eye. Decamp’s sword, fallen to the ground, perhaps too full of the wrong kind of magic for any of the pale abominations to hang onto.
Griffin dived from the platform as the female horror recoiled from the shot. The shotgun couldn’t hurt her, but perhaps it had surprised her. Griffin hit the ground, rolled and came to his feet, lashing out with the sword to cut through a Moon-Eye who was trying to grab him with hands like lobster claws with eyes. Griffin glanced back. Carl had fallen from his lunatic mount and was limping slowly toward the altar. To Griffin’s surprise, the Blackbourne woman was clutching her midsection and she suddenly looked far more human than she had a moment before. Her fingers were clasped tightly over her abdomen but a great quantity of brackish blood was streaming from the wound. The semblance of other limbs and greater mass was a ghost image around her more human shape.
Above them great arcs of purple flame and coruscating white light spun across the gate. The dark shape trying to coalesce in the center of the gate flickered and a voice unlike any heard on the planet in countless ages shrieked in frustration and rage. Then the giant form that had carried Carl to the stage slammed into the Blackbourne woman and both figures crashed to the strange grassy plain that had appeared out of nowhere.
Griffin made his way to Carl, who was leaning against the altar. He said, “I think the gate is collapsing. What the hell did you shoot that freaking bitch with and do you have any more?”
Carl shook his head and immediately looked as if he regretted it. “One per customer. I’ll tell you about it later. Right now we’d better get the hell out of here.”
Griffin heard a sound like thunder and felt a concussive force shake the ground. He looked past the blazing gate to the rock strewn plain beyond and as he watched, slowly, impossibly, the horizon began to tilt.
“What the hell?” Carl said.
“I think the dimensions are shifting again. We have got to get out of here. I can’t see the door to the ballroom but maybe it’s still there.”
“Go,” Carl said. “My leg’s twisted and I think something’s broken inside.”
Griffin said, “No way. No freaking way.” He slipped one of Carl’s arms over a shoulder and half lifted the sheriff. “Now run!”
Carl didn’t run fast, but he ran. With Griffin supporting his friend, the two ran in some grotesque parody of a three-legged race. Fortunately they met little resistance. Most of the pale ones were cowering on the ground or wailing in terror. That made Griffin remember the remaining humans who had been brought for the sacrifice. Some were still alive. Carl stumbled and almost fell, and Griffin gritted his teeth and moved on. Those other folks were on their own. There was nothing he could do.
Griffin heard another screech and he risked a glance backwards. The gate seemed to be collapsing in on itself and as it did so, anything near it was being pulled inside. Griffin saw pale folk go spiraling into the air, drawn by the force of the shrinking gate. Some were torn apart as they approached the vortex, affected by two different gravities.
The ground bucked and writhed under Griffin’s feet. Was the door really gone? No! There it was, standing in mid-air amidst the leaning, swaying boulders. Griffin half dragged Carl toward the door, cursing with each step. Carl was not a small man. Just as they reached the panel it swung inward and there stood Isaiah Blackbourne. His dark clothes were covered with dirt, his dark glasses were gone, and his gleaming eyes reflected the crimson fire from the gate.
“No,” said Isaiah. “You’re not going to get out of this one. I came home at just the wrong moment. Can’t find my way out of this damn house of mirrors, so looks like I’m going down with the family ship.” He smiled his razor smile. “But at least I can take you boys with me.”
Griffin let Carl slide to the ground and leaped forward, the point of the silver edged sword striking straight for Isaiah’s heart. The albino slipped aside, not with the extra-dimensional speed he had shown before, but with old fashioned, snakelike quickness. Griffin figured Isaiah’s dimension shifting powers were canceled out in this environment of unstable dimensions.
“You’re a quick one,” Isaiah said. “Maybe the fastest human being I’ve seen. Not fast enough though.”
Griffin saw Isaiah’s clawed hand shoot forward and he almost got out of the way, but then he felt lines of fire sear across his shoulder as the claws dug deep. Griffin grunted, but spun away, lessening the damage. He continued his spin, whipping the long, slender sword out in a killing arc. The tip of the sword slashed through Isaiah’s black shirt, leaving a gash in the pale flesh of the albino’s chest.
“You actually cut me,” Isaiah said. “I won’t give you another shot.”
“Sure you will,” Carl Price said.
Griffin and Isaiah glanced down at the same moment. Carl had hold of one of Isaiah’s ankles. The albino snarled and tried to jerk his leg free, but while he was busy, Griffin ran the sword through his chest.
Isaiah sank to his knees, breathing black blood. “Take more than that...to kill me.”
“I believe you,” Griffin said. He jerked the blade free and made a quick cut downward, slicing Isaiah’s head from his shoulders. “I just hope that was enough.”
The ground shuddered again and the entire moor seemed to shift. Griffin bent down and helped Carl to his feet. The two managed to stumble through the door. Griffin felt that familiar nausea that he’d come to recognize as the shifting of dimensions and then they were in the dirty white corridor. But this time the nausea didn’t go away. The walls and floor and ceiling all seemed to be heading in several directions at once and there were too many walls and parts of walls going off at odd angles. Griffin couldn’t help but think of what Charon had said about non-Euclidean geometry. Just looking at the corridor made his head ache and his eyes blur. Reality was collapsing and they had to get out of the house before it finished.
Grunting with effort, both men staggered down the hall, leaning on the walls and on one another. Griffin just hoped they were going in the right direction.
***
What the hell had that damned fool done to her?
Siobhan screamed, pain lashing through her body, tearing into her in ways she hadn’t thought possible anymore. And before she could properly recover from that sudden explosion of shredded nerve endings, Frank plowed into her. She recognized him, of course, the damned whelp, the
nuisance that had haunted her again and again.
She’d created him, she knew that. She’d spoken words of power into his body as she cut him open in her childhood, a toy for her to play with, a favorite toy that she broke and then tried to fix and she’d fixed him all right, but far too well.
“Why don’t you just fucking stay dead?” She screamed the words at him and he looked at her with those pathetic, puppy dog eyes of his, the same ones he’d always cast her way when she discarded him.
And then she saw the other face, the other half of him the part that she had brought out in him with her words, her rituals. The part of him that was like her, connected to the god above them. The god that suddenly screamed in frustration as everything started falling apart.
Frank opened his human mouth and tried to say something, prattling on about his Meemaw again, as if her mother had ever been worthy of anything but contempt. She was a weak-willed woman who was broken when she gave birth to Siobhan.
And Frank’s other face, the true face that had hidden inside of him, spoke again, condemning her, calling for her, demanding that she give herself to him as if that could ever happen.
And above them both, the One roared in pain. Siobhan looked up toward the gateway as it disintegrated, torn apart by the blasphemous metals inside her body.
How many times had her mother called into the charm bracelet? How many rituals had she performed in an effort to stop the curses Siobhan had put on Frank when she was younger and didn’t fully understand that she was meant to be the gateway for Shub Niggurath to come back to the universe? How could it be that the damned woman had created something so powerful, strong enough to bleed the power from her body?
The rift in the multiverse collapsed and pulled with incredible force and Siobhan felt herself drawn up into the sky, pulled along with Frank as if they were little more than leaves in the cosmic wind.
Blind Shadows: A Griffin & Price Novel Page 31