by Hixon, Wayne
While he took this shape, he looked at Rain, studying her, not just making sure she didn’t run but relishing the look of shocked horror wiping itself across her face. She probably thought she would never have to look at him again either. He was about to show her exactly how wrong she was. Exactly how wrong she had ever been to leave him.
Thirty-four
Unconsciousness threatened to grab Rain and take her under until the wolf pressed its wet nose vigorously against her arm, startling her. She looked at the wolf, watched it slowly back away from her, and consciousness suddenly flooded back to her.
The wolf was changing.
It stood up on its hind legs and Rain thought crazily that it was like watching a werewolf in reverse. For some reason, she knew the end result would be more terrible than the wolf itself.
The change was quite rapid, the wolf’s fur not falling off but just disappearing completely. It was becoming a man. She watched the wolf’s skin stretch and then bulge with muscles. She watched as clothes were painted onto the naked body, gaining substance, and then she looked at the man’s face and her breath caught up in the back of her throat.
“Bones?” she said. She had to ask because even though he looked a lot like Bones, he looked a lot different than the Bones she remembered. It was almost like this person could have been Bones’ more attractive older brother.
“That’s right,” he said.
“How did you do that?”
“Because I’ve seen the other side. They finally let me in. I told you it would happen only you decided to run out before it could.”
“You’re sick, Bones. You were sick. The things you were doing were wrong.”
“They’ve already poisoned you.”
She struggled to stand up. She did not want this confrontation with someone who had always been stronger than her, who had always been able to overpower her. She just wanted to get away.
Nausea threatened to double her over once she was able to stand upright in front of Bones, two feet away.
“Nobody poisoned me, Bones. I saw you that one night, you know? That night you did those things to that dead girl.”
“I had to see what it was like.”
“No you didn’t. There are some things people can live without knowing.”
“No there aren’t. We have to experience everything we can.”
“I’m getting the fuck out of here.”
“Like hell you are.”
“Stop me.”
She took off walking through the woods because a walk was the only thing she could muster. She felt too broken to run.
“Come back here, Rain.”
“I’m finished listening to you, Bones.”
“No you’re not.”
Suddenly he was behind her, grabbing her arm, as though unaware it had been mauled. He grabbed her head and tried to kiss her. She pulled away from him, the thought of those lips touching her made the nausea grow even worse.
“You’re not going to get out of this alive,” he said. “You are mine and you will always be mine. You and any other bitch I want now.”
“Just let me go, Bones. I promise if you let me go I won’t tell the police anything about what you did.”
“I don’t need to worry about police anymore. Can’t you see that, Rain? Can’t you see how I’ve changed? I’m dead but I’ve never felt this alive.”
“Fuck off.”
Bones reached out and smacked her, lightning quick. His knuckles felt like stones cracking into the side of her face. She went back down onto the ground.
“The only question I have to ask myself now is if I should fuck you when you’re alive or when you’re dead.”
He fell on top of her.
“Bones. Stop.”
His hands were beneath her shirt, pawing at her small breasts, his hips grinding against her.
“I don’t have to stop. There isn’t a thing you can do about it.”
She wanted to scream but was afraid that if she did then the sound of her own shrill voice would send her back into unconsciousness and then Bones would be free to do anything he wanted to without her even being able to put up a fight.
She wondered what was more important to her—keeping Bones from raping her or her life. In one sense, she thought if he raped her she could almost just think of it as him fucking her like he had countless times in the past and God knew that sometimes when Bones fucked her, even when she had let him, it was something similar to rape. But if he killed her then he killed her and that was it. Of course, there was a good chance if she let him fuck her, he would end up killing her anyway.
“Can this wait?” she asked.
“I don’t think it can,” he said. He worked at getting her shorts down her legs. She didn’t wear any underwear. She hadn’t minded putting on Rachel’s clothes but she drew the line at someone else’s underwear.
He put his hands around her neck, squeezing.
“I can take you to them,” she spat, seeing it as being maybe her one chance at survival.
“Who?”
“Jacob and Rachel.”
She could tell that Bones thought about this. About how good he would look to those mysterious strangers if he could redeem himself by getting not just the girl they had come for but the boy as well.
“You’re lying,” he said, unfastening his own pants.
“They’re at the house. I can take you to them.”
“You just told me where they were. Why do I need you to take me to them?”
“But they’re hiding.”
“I can sniff them out myself. I can see things now I couldn’t see before. I saw you laying down here from all the way up in the sky. Did you know I can fly now?”
Rain didn’t like the sound of his voice. Panic filled her. He hadn’t bought anything she said and there was a part of her that wondered if she would really lead him to Jacob and Rachel if he let her go. She thought maybe she might, if it meant keeping herself alive. And she really hated knowing that about herself.
“Jesus, Bones, just let me go.”
“Can’t do that.”
He rolled her over on the ground and she could feel his cock in between her buttocks. She was crying now. Uncontrollably. She saw all of her life up until this point and wondered when things had grown so dangerous and sad. She felt pain as he pushed himself into her, wrapping a large hand around her chin before yanking her head back toward him and snapping her neck.
Rain saw a bright light, heard the pop of her neck, and then everything was silent.
So this is death, she thought.
She felt her spirit rise up out of her body. She could not bear to look down. She could not bear to witness the things that Bones did to her dead body.
Finally, she felt free. She thought about Jacob and Rachel, wondered if there was any way she could help them and then she realized she wanted to be done with all of it. Rising higher and higher above the woods, rising until she could see the house burning and the whole of Lynchville below her, Rain looked to the West, toward home, and started off in that direction.
Thirty-five
Fuck.
The hands clutching Jacob’s arms were unmercifully strong.
As soon as he was in the house, thrown back into the main room, he heard the van hit. The plan had worked amazingly well, he thought as he heard the van explode, except for the one tiny little hitch of him being in the house. He was definitely not supposed to be in the house. And, worst of all, now he was separated from Rachel. She was somewhere out there and he was in here.
He wondered which was worse.
The person holding him threw him to the ground and Jacob looked up to see him.
If it was a him. Whatever it was, it was an abomination. It was naked save a dirty loincloth that had ridden to one side, exposing the thing’s hideously malformed genitals.
So it was most assuredly a him, Jacob thought. The genitalia weren’t the only things wrong. This guy looked like a human being who had been p
ut together all wrong and he briefly wondered how he could have been overpowered by someone who looked so feeble.
Jacob struggled to his knees, trying to stand up.
“Just get the fuck away,” he said.
The man scampered across the room toward him and Jacob looked into his lopsided eyes. What he saw staggered him, nearly dropping him to the floor.
Looking into the man’s eyes, he saw every atrocity that had been performed on him. He saw a different man, one who was very good-looking in a dark sort of way, observing this. He felt the bones breaking. Heard the skin ripping. Heard the screams and the constant pleas to stop.
Part of Jacob took pity on this man.
The man grabbed him by the neck and pulled him up. Jacob remembered he still had the tire iron in his hand although he must have dropped the gas can somewhere while being jerked in. He didn’t know if any of it mattered or not. He didn’t know if he would be able to get out of the house even if he bashed this guy’s head in.
Already, the heat was intense.
The walls of the house flamed around him, chunks of it dropping away.
The manthing pulled Jacob up and pushed him onto the couch in the corner of the room. He hit the couch and then bounded back, swinging the tire iron at the manthing. It connected solidly with his head and, while it tore out a chunk of skin, it didn’t seem to faze him. Jacob figured he must have been quite accustomed to pain at this point.
The man continued to approach him, grabbing the wrist containing the tire iron. He began lurching toward the back of the house.
Jacob thought maybe he could try reasoning with him.
The house was filling up with smoke. He couldn’t even see to the back of it. Sweat streamed down his skin and his lungs burned.
“No, look, we have to get out of here.”
The man grunted, continuing to drag Jacob. Jacob took a barehanded swing at the back of the man’s head. The skull felt soft beneath the thin greasy hair and, again, this did not stop the man.
They reached the back of the house and the man took Jacob to a door. With a grotesquely long arm, the man reached out and opened the door. Stairs led down into darkness. Jacob became dead weight, trying to push back against the man.
“This whole place is burning!” he shouted.
The man grunted and thrust Jacob toward the steps with strength Jacob found nearly impossible. He lost his footing and tumbled most of the way down, sacrificing the tire iron in order to wrap his arms around his head. The last thing he needed was to let this night pass him by while he lay at the foot of the stairs with a concussion.
He half-expected the man to be behind him, pushing him to some greater depths but realized the man had stayed on the surface.
He had stayed on the main floor so he would be burned alive when the interior of the house finally caught fire. That man would rather be burned alive than to go another day being the way he was. The way he was made, Jacob reminded himself. He could almost understand. Hell, he wanted to cry for the guy. But there wasn’t any time for that. Not now. Right now the only thing he could really think about was either making sure he was safe from the flames and the smoke or trying to find some way to get out so he could get back to Rachel. Anything could be happening to her out there. She was the one these people had come for in the first place. He hadn’t been there to protect her at her house and he wasn’t there to protect her now. Some boyfriend he was turning out to be.
Of course, he knew, if there were any protection to be had, then she could most probably do a perfectly adequate job of protecting herself. He may be physically stronger but, in many ways, she was a lot tougher than he was.
He stood at the bottom of the steps and wondered if he should charge back up the stairs and try to find his way out of the burning house or if he should go through the door in front of him and see if he could penetrate any further into the mystery that had plagued him the past two years.
He climbed up a few steps and grabbed the tire iron. He sat down and tried to collect his thoughts.
Upstairs, he heard the manthing screaming as the flames scoured his skin from the bone.
Jacob decided to open the door.
Not an insanely strong person, he struggled with the heavy wood. Once opened, a strange blue light met him and he was suddenly struck with the question of how far this place went down. Jacob had the feeling it wasn’t just this simple little room but many rooms, possibly going farther and farther into the earth. Only he knew it wasn’t really going farther and farther into the earth. Like the house, this place appeared and disappeared at will. He knew he could have stood in that spot where the house was and started digging and not found anything except dirt and rocks beneath his shovel.
Sitting at the table were two people. A man and a woman. A couple.
Jacob’s heart leapt when he saw them. Like he and Rachel had suspected, they were dealing with completely different people.
The couple stared at him, their eyes boring through him and Jacob stared back at them, going back and forth between each set of eyes.
“Jacob Riley,” the man said.
Jacob looked at him, trying to pick something from his eyes, and got nothing. This staggered Jacob. Most of the time, he had to look away from people’s eyes because even a casual glimpse would tell him more than he needed to know. This was not the case with this man. Jacob saw nothing. Regardless of how much he willed himself to travel into that secret place that carried all of those memories, he came away with nothing.
“Yes,” Jacob said. “I’m afraid I don’t know you.”
“You are correct. You’ve never seen me before.”
“Then why are you doing this to me?”
“Doing what to you? As I recall, you are the one who came here. So maybe I should ask you the same question. Why are you doing this to us?”
“You know why I’m doing this to you. You tried to hurt Rachel. You’re responsible for death after death. The disappearance of kids.”
The man continued to stare at him, as if weighing what Jacob told him.
“Yes,” he said finally. “I guess we are. And you’re here to... what? Stop us?”
Jacob realized how stupid he must look, standing there, in what was most probably their home, holding a tire iron and threatening them even though the man could probably have conjured a hundred ways to kill him on the spot at this very second. Part of him wanted to simply excuse himself and back out of the room but he had come this far and he wasn’t about to turn back. Instead, he decided to say nothing.
The man continued. “Because if you have come to stop us, I think you will be sadly disappointed. There isn’t anything to stop. You have the wrong idea about us. I’ve heard about you. I’ve heard about how you saved our precious Rachel. It was a setback. That’s all. We need her. We will have her. She is part of the plan.”
“And exactly what do you have planned?”
Ernst stood up from the table, smoothed down the front of his jacket, slowly scooting the straightbacked chair across the floor until it was flush with the table. Ilya remained seated in her chair to his left, her simpering eyes continuing to burn into Jacob.
“Preparation,” he said.
“Preparation for what?”
“I don’t really need to tell you that, do I? Why should I stand here and justify myself to you?”
Jacob didn’t have an answer for that.
“Let’s just say that it is time for Ilya and I to move on.”
“What do you mean by ‘move on’? Going to another town. Tormenting some other people?”
“Oh, we’ve already done all of that already. I don’t see any point in continuing with that. Let me ask you a question, Mr. Riley... Do you believe a person can be chosen for something?”
Jacob thought about this. He realized he had been holding the tire iron at the ready, brandishing it in front of him. Thinking about this man’s question (and it bothered him that he still didn’t know his name), he lowered the tire iron
somewhat.
Did he think a person could be chosen? Philosophically, he wasn’t so sure about that. He didn’t think he did. Whenever he heard about someone being chosen it automatically made him think of Hitler and cult leaders, wackos who fulfilled the sick instructions their minds received, claiming it came from some higher power. There were times when he thought he and Rachel had been chosen although he could never really figure out what it was they had been chosen for. All of this Devils business seemed rather pointless and without any kind of definite end.
“No,” he said finally. “I don’t believe in anyone being chosen to do anything. I think we do things to the best of our ability and the rest is up to fate.”
“Fate?”
“Yes.”
“So you believe in fate but you don’t believe in someone being chosen?”
“Maybe I said that wrong. Maybe I said ‘fate’ when I should have said ‘chance.’”
“Ah, ‘chance,’ that’s better. That’s a little more realistic, isn’t it?” The man opened his eyes as he spoke, moving closer to Jacob. He leaned into his ear and whispered, “If you do not believe in fate then what the hell are you doing here?”
Jacob felt the man’s demeanor change but, before he could prime the tire iron for striking, the man’s huge hand was around his forearm, completely overpowering him. Ilya guffawed from the table.
The man was behind Jacob now, holding him around the biceps, pulling his arms back. He spoke into Jacob’s ear again.
“My how you should curse chance, Mr. Riley. Of all the places it could have taken you tonight, it has brought you here. And let me assure you this is the worst place you could ever want to come to. You’ve heard of the Low Church, haven’t you? The Dark Fire? Where we Devils get all of our sick energy?” The man didn’t give him time to answer. “No matter. I’m going to show it to you now. If you’re lucky, I will kill you when it is all over. But you aren’t afraid of a little death are you?”
The man began pushing Jacob toward the back of this room where there was another door on the right.