by Edward Lee
“You ain’t doing shit except dying, shithead,” Alexander guaranteed. He’d taken all the blaspheming he cared to, thank you. His finger gently retracted; the hammer fell again.
BAM!
The big bullet took the top off Tritt Balls Conners’ head clean off, and spectacularly redeposited the contents of his cranium onto the abbey’s slate foyer.
“Fuck it,” Alexander said.
(X)
“The men, Annie explained, “the townsmen. They shot the thing dead right back there on the shoreline, and then they’se throwed it into a room in the abbey’s basement, and bricked the room up!”
“Them stones, them stones in the lake! They’re some kinda temple—some kinda doorway—been there thousands’a years they say! And ever now’n then…somethin’ come out!”
COME, Charity heard.
“Your father! It was your father! And the Bighead’s too!”
COME.
Annie sobbed on as they made their way back up the wooded trail. But her sobs cessated only when the great hook hand snapped out of the wavering trees.
The voice in Charity’s head now struck like a bell—
COME. COME. COME.
Annie’s screams alternated with more explanation, as the hulk of shadow ripped off her clothes and hauled her down into pockets of darkness. “Why you think no man ever wanted ya? Why you think all them men left ya in yer bed? It’s ’cos you ain’t like normal folk, Charity!”
Charity stood and did nothing as the great shadow continued to maul her beloved aunt. And all those memories, then, replayed in her mind. All the men putting their penises into her, then getting up to leave without even finishing. Leaving her so unfulfilled she thought she would die.
Because I’m not like them, she realized now. I’m not even fully human…
Annie gagged in the weedy darkness. “There ain’t but one man on this earth who’ll love ya, Charity, an’ it ain’t no man!”
Then she gagged some more, screamed amid a wet tearing sound.
“Yer brother!”
Charity stared.
“Kill yerself, darlin’! It’s the only way! Kill yerself ’fore he kin git ya!”
But Charity just watched, what little she could see. The moonlight revealed only snatches: the old scarred breasts, the white abdomen, scarred thighs being pushed apart as the demonic buttocks pumped on.
“Kill yerself ’fore he kin git ya, ’cos—’cos—”
A crackling of bones finished the exclamation. The shadow grunted and came. A further crunching sound showed Aunt Annie’s head being palmed open, large pieces of skull falling like broken nutshells, brains being calmly stuffed into the black-gash mouth.
Then The Bighead stood up.
It grinned, the same primeval face she’d seen in the peephole. It’s foot-long-and-then-some cock remained hard, throbbing upward, a line of semen like white string depending from a puckered piss-slit. The gargantuan penis pointed at Charity as if in accusation.
The Bighead’s great hook hands reached out.
Charity collapsed.
(XI)
He knew it was coming. Jesus had told him. Why bust my ass looking for it? Alexander reasoned. I’ll just wait. I’ll let it come to me. And what was there to be afraid of? It was only a birth-defected demon hybrid. God was on Alexander’s side, or: At least He better be, otherwise I’m in a hopper of shit.
So the priest sat and waited, and he knew exactly where to wait. Why hadn’t it occurred to him before? The basement—the wanly lit warren in which he now stood—was the focal point of everything, wasn’t it? Tonight, and twenty years ago when the nuns had been raped and slaughtered, when dying priests had been eviscerated and sodomized where they lay, and when the ten-year-old version of what now stalked the shadows had fitfully tried to break down the cryptic brickwork. Two decades ago it had tried and failed. Tonight, though, it would return—older now, and stronger—to finish the job.
Yeah, let Bighead do the work. ’cos I gotta see what’s behind that goddamn wall…
Alexander hid at the far end of the corridor; it reminded him of waiting in the bush behind an Stoner machine gun and a defensive perimeter of integrated Claymores. Waiting and waiting, scratching your crotch-rot, digging at bug-bites the size of bullet holes, and waiting some more. You knew Charlie was coming, you just didn’t know when.
The alcohol lamps guttered, painting the walls with an appropriate eeriness. He hefted the clunky gun in his hand, flipped open the antiquated receiver. Four bullets left. If you can’t do the job with four, you got no business trying. He flicked his butt, felt a pang of regret realizing he had no more.
An odd, even impossible wind blew through the corridor; the lamp flames nearly blew out. At once, Alexander felt prickly in a static caress, and cool in spite of the heat.
Then, as he knew, the footsteps approached, thudding down the stairs to the basement.
(XII)
It weren’t a dream at all, no sir! No, The Bighead remembert! The dream’a the castle’n the angels’n the crusty, dyin’ ol’ men. An’ Bighead ruckin’ ’em all up…
It weren’t no dream. It were real.
Back a long times ago when he were just a tike…
He remembert it all now.
Ands he remembert somethin’ else:
He remembert walkin’ down these self-same stairs…
Follerin’ the Voice…
(XIII)
Get ready, Alexander thought. Old themes from the Army haunted him. Cover, concealment, suppression, teamwork… But all that wouldn’t do dick for him now—he was alone…
The thing—The Bighead—stepped into the hall. It was grosser than he’d remembered from his glimpse upstairs. It was naked now, veneered in sweat. Its cock was more than obvious.
Easily over a foot long, half-hard, slicked with blood that was going crusty as dried tempera paint.
And the stench…
Alexander almost heaved-ho. The smell of the thing overpowered him: a meld of offense—something akin to ass sweat, week-old underarm b.o., old shit and stale piss and halitosis and dick-stink and God knew what else, all distilled down by the heat of the earth to launch into the priest’s face like a chain-mailed fist.
Wait, wait, he thought. Don’t do shit…
Its warped shadow crossed the hall, stopped, looked at the wall. Then it picked up the pick ax it had no doubt picked up twenty years ago, raised it, and—
Dropped it.
Instead, it stuck its hand into the hole that Jerrica had generated, pulled, gusted a single breath, and—
The wall toppled like Leggo blocks.
Then the thing entered the new-formed entry.
Alexander already had the Webley revolver cocked, ready to go. He thought a moment about what Jesus said, about his need to “grow” a “pair of balls.” Alexander grew them, then walked into the rough-hewn aperture…
The Bighead stood before a clump of…something, its arms outstretched, its hideous face gazing high. Then Alexander took a look at the clump…
Shit…
It was a raddled, desiccated corpse, or so he thought. A whey-faced thing. Dry as wicker—a body composed of something semblant of corn husks—all coagulated against the wall in a crisp meld. A shroud of cobwebs veiled its form like a caul.
Most obvious, though, were the horns.
Horns, like a ram’s, jutting from its forehead.
A heirarchal demon, Alexander surmised. One of Lucifer’s incarnates. Dead…but…somewhow, still vaguely alive…
Maybe its body was dead, but it’s mind had remained alive all these years, to call its progeny back.
But— Why? the priest wondered. For what purpose?
Fahter and son. The son come back to see to its father’s proper burial. Or, in this case, its father’s proper…return…
It was talking to him—talking to The Bighead.
It was feeding thoughts into its son’s malformed head.
But what thou
ghts?
“Hey! Bighead!” Alexander shouted.
The thing twirled at the insult. Alexander got another good, hard look at its face, and that was all it took. He fired—
BAM!
—right into the face.
The big bullet plowed into the wedgelike forehead. The head jerked back—
Then the thing smiled, raised its thumb and index finger and plucked the puny bullet out of its forehead. The big raw-clam eye winked.
“My ass is grass,” Alexander figured.
The priest, expecting to die, watched speechless, looking at the face of the thing that had occupied this room for two decades. The face seemed frozen in a yawn of anhydrous rot, its bundled devil’s horns protruding. It looked back at him with hole-punch eyes,
And blinked.
(XIV)
TAKE ME BACK, OH MY BEAUTIFUL SON. I’VE WAITED HERE SO LONG. TAKE ME BACK TO MY MASTER’S CHASM, THE ONLY DOMAIN WHERE I CAN LIVE AGAIN.
BUT YOU—YOU, MY SON, YOU ARE PART OF THIS WORLD YET PART OF OURS. YOU CAN LIVE HERE AND BRING MORE OF THE MASTER’S BROOD INTO THE LIGHT…
GO FORTH, GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY….
(XV)
The priest sensed the strangest thing: it wasn’t the monster talking into his head, it was the dry-rot corpse, the dead body but the live brain…
The Bighead threw the corpse over its shoulder and left.
(XVI)
Alexander followed, grabbing one of the alcohol lamps. One bullet had mushroomed on the thing’s forehead; he only had three left—he had to make them count. The thing didn’t seem to care, though. It must know that Alexander was following it with a weapon, but it didn’t care.
Not good, the priest thought.
But he had to give it his best.
Think, priest. Remember, he heard.
All the men he’d killed in the field—dozens. All the whores he’d fucked.
No! I am forgiven!
Are you?
Yes!
The thing walked on with its vermiculated father slung over its back like a sack of horse-feed. It was walking down the ridge-trail.
It was walking toward the lake…
On the shoreline, the priest saw, Charity lay still.
She looked fine, untouched, unmolested. When The Bighead walked to the edge of the water, Alexander knelt at Charity, swaying the lamp forward. No, no, she’s all right. Christ, he’d seen the size of The Bighead’s cock—like the business-end of a softball bat. If The Bighead had raped her, she’d be ground to pulp now, bleeding like a tap. But—
There was nothing.
Charity, in other words, was all right. There was only The Bighead to contend with.
In shimmering moonlight, the thing walked on. But only then did the priest see that the lake had…drained.
The field of upended stones lay settled there, pentangled, ancient yet perfect. Alexander thought of the circles of Stonehenge, the basal plinths of Babylon, and the dolmens of Osiris. All portals to another place, all doorways, allegedly, to the netherworlds….
The Bighead was walking towards it, through the reduced muck of the lakefloor.
It was taking its father…back…to the egress of hell from whence it had come.
Alexander ran after it.
“Hey, melon-head! Ya fuckin’ ugly motherfuckin’ nibblenuts freak. Take me on! You can’t leave before you kick my ass, can you!”
The figure came to a momentary halt, then continued.
“Deformed cracker demon bastard! You chicken? You got no balls? What, you’re only man enough to fuck with nuns?
Well, grow ourself a pair and fuck with me!”
Another falter, another pause. Then it continued.
“You inbred creeker hunka shit! You’re great when it comes to raping women and butt-fucking old men! But—look at you!—I’m giving you a fight and you’re walking away! You got no guts. I’ve seen kindergarten kids with more balls than you, you pissant walking shit-heap! Coward! Chicken!” Then Alexander took a wild shot with the Webley—BAM!—and hit Bighead’s husk-dry progenitor in the back. Dust sprayed out.
The Bighead stopped. He dropped his father in the lake slime and turned—
The bulb-face glared. Needle teeth shimmering like tinsel. The great hook hands upraised, and the penis dangled like a flap of raw porterhouse.
“You are one panty-waist, creamcake, homo, dick-lickin’ wuss! I’ve seen scarier baby toys!”
The Bighead sloshed closer.
“Hope ya don’t like it and want to do something about it, you ball-less little nun-raper! Come on over here and kick my ass…if you can, twinkie! Yeah, big bad demon crossbreed tough guy. Don’t make me laugh! I know little girls who could kick your Fire Island, pink-champagne-drinkin’ coward ass!”
Alexander knew he only had two bullets left now. He drew a bead down the Webley’s barrel. He remembered how that first shot had mushroomed on the thing’s thick head… Gotta get to the brain, he realized, and there was only one way to do that.
Through he eye.
“You beat up old ladies, you man-butt-lickin’, tip-toein’- through-the-tulips fairy motherfucker! Hey, Tinker Bell! Come and take your whuppin’ like a man!”
Steady, steady. The priest’s eye opened wide behind the sights.
“Come on! Peter-suckin’, tutu-wearin’ little twerp! Come on!”
Alexander drew in a breath, then let half of it out, just like the D.I.s in Army had taught him. Then—
He dropped hammer.
BAM!
And again.
BAM!
The Webley’s twin slugs socked right into The Bighead’s big eye, punched through the back of his head. Clumps of greenish-white brains flew like little parakeets, then slapped hard into the drained muck of the lake.
The Bighead stared at him with a fury in its other tiny eye. He roared a quick objection, quaked, then—
Thank you, God.
—then fell backward and collapsed.
SLAP!
Dead.
It was only then that Alexander realized he’d shit and pissed his black cleric slacks simultaneously.
— | — | —
EPILOGUE
“You sure you’re all right?” Alexander asked.
“I’m fine,” Charity replied. “Tired, shocked—”
“Understandable.”
“—but I’m not hurt. Not a scratch.”
Dawn was just breaking, Luntville twenty miles behind them now. Charity’s dark-brunet hair sifted intricately in the breeze from the Mercedes’ open windows.
“It killed everything that moved,” Alexander reflected, one hand on the wheel, the other lighting a Lucky Strike, “and it raped every woman that crossed its path. But it didn’t so much as even touch you. I wonder why.”
Because it knew that I was its sister, Charity answered in thought. It couldn’t hurt its sister, its own blood.
But, of course, she couldn’t tell the priest that. She could never tell anyone. All she said in reply, instead, was, “Who knows? I guess God was with me.”
“I hear that. He was with both of us.”
“But what do we say? What do we tell people, about what happened back there?”
“We don’t tell anybody anything,” Alexander sternly suggested.
“Yes, I suppose that’s the best thing to do,” Charity agreed, resting back in the leather seat. The Appalachian Mountains passed serenely to their left, dawn-tinged, wide-open fields and pastures to their right. She closed her eyes, let the wind run like fast water over her face.
Then the car…began to weave.
Charity looked up, confused. “Father?” But the priest, cigarette dangling, seemed to be clenching the steering wheel, his face beet-red and crimped in pain.
“Father Alexander! What’s wr—”
The Mercedes swerved back and forth, rubber screeching. The priest’s right hand pawed haplessly at his left shoulder, and the left side of his chest.
A
nd all Charity had time to do after that was scream.
««—»»
What the—, Alexander thought. What…happened?
“You wrecked the fucking car, that’s what happened,” came the reply. But it wasn’t Charity who’d said it.
No, it was Jesus.
Bewildered, the priest cast a questioning glance. Yes, it was Jesus again, this time dressed in beige Dockers and yet another black t-shirt, this one emblazoned with the white letters: CYBER-PSYCHOS, A.O.D. He was sipping from a bottle of Yoo Hoo. And He chuckled, “Yeah, man, Halford’s gonna be pissed. Look what you did to his Merc! Man, it’s a good thing you’re a priest, ’cos you’d never make it as a driving instructor.”
Alexander looked. The Mercedes had indeed crashed, its clean, white front end crushed, wrapped around a tree. Steam gently eddied from the bashed grill. Pale green antifreeze spurtled onto the shoulder.
“Charity!” he shouted, and rushed to the wreckage where he could see her lying still in the passenger seat.
“Forget it,” Jesus said.
Alexander turned, outraged. “No! Don’t tell me she’s dead! She can’t be dead!”
“Relax, Mario Andretti. She’s not dead. She’s not even seriously injured. Just a little conk on the head. She’ll come to in a few minutes.”
“Well, Christ—er, pardon me, Lord—I should at least get her out of the car—”