by Landon Wark
"Something's going on," Jonah said, leaning over his shoulder to watch the scene in the street where Bill Wilson was frantically dialing his phone.
"Why wouldn't the credit card work?"
"What?"
"The credit cards," he replied. "Why wouldn't either of them work?"
"I-I don't know," she said, breathing heavily. "That's what you're worried about?"
"That's Jenny's husband back there that tried to stone us?"
"Yeah. Uncle Ezra said he showed up at the house last week. He looked pretty far gone."
Jonah bit on his tongue. "We need to get back to the house."
"You dirty fucking rat!" the man screamed as he shook Bill by the sweat stained lapels of his suit jacket.
In between shakes Bill absently tried to bring the phone to his ear. He thought that he might know the man shaking him, but for whatever reason the circuits of his sleep-deprived brain refused to connect. Listlessly he glanced at the talk button that glared out at him. If the man holding him would just stop for an instant... It was an important call, how could he not know that.
"Who the fuck was that?" his assailant demanded. "You better hope—"
The man's demands were cut off by Bill driving a knee into his testes. With a gurgle his eyes rolled up into his head and he crumpled to his knees. A small discharge of vomit from his mouth hit the ground and the toe of Bill's shoe.
"Fucking witches!" Bill hissed into the man's face as he pressed the talk button on the phone. "Fucking Christ-damned witches!"
The phone buzzed in his ear as the people on the sidewalk, taking pictures or frantically trying to dial, murmured and gasped.
I'm already doing it, he thought. Don't worry. The authorities are going to know.
"Hello?" he spoke into the phone amidst the commotion. "I need to talk to the Sheriff..."
The voice on the other end of the phone prattle on for a moment, though he was already tuned out. How could they go after the witches and not know that some of them had taken that car into town? But he just shrugged against the plastic of the phone. Fucking witches could be anywhere they wanted he supposed.
With that thought Bill's red eyes squeaked against their dry lids as he surveyed the people along the sidewalks, whispering and taking pictures. A sneer split along his quivering lips.
"Get the fuck outta here!" he screamed. "You fucking witches!"
The voice on the other end of the phone paused.
"Look!" he shouted at it. "Just... You just tell the Sheriff that he doesn't have all of them! There's at least two of them in town! Are you all with them?! How many of you sold your goddamn souls!"
A couple accompanying a small girl on the sidewalk started to back away.
"You tell him!" Bill screamed into the phone as the sun began to dip into a particularly red sunset in the West. He threw the phone at the moaning man holding his loins a few steps from where he paced. It glanced off the man's temple, knocking him to the ground as the crowd gasped.
"You tell him," Bill whispered.
The New World Ablaze
Fire.
Red tongues of it licked at the gaudy teal siding and combusted the new tar under the shingles. Flames poured up into the sky from the windows and the front door. The concrete of the front step blistered and cracked under the heat and windows split into little more than melted shards. It ate at everything, first searing it black and then consuming, turning everything that had once been there into vapour. It roared and coughed, challenging them, taunting them with a bright, blazing laugh.
Jonah leaned out of the car in shock, his mouth agape. Sandy merely sat in the car, her hands white on the steering wheel.
“Where is everyone,” she managed over the roar of the fire. “Did everyone get out?”
He shook his head, taking another step away from the car toward the inferno. The foundation was cracking and the east side was sinking into the earth. He had to put up a hand to keep from being blinded by the glaring burn.
The idea that the others had been trapped inside was too much for him. The guilt of it would overwhelm him and so the thought was largely ignored as he approached, step after step. The front door yawned open, a sign of relief. It had not yet burned off its hinges. Someone must have gotten out.
They must have.
Something else caught his eye, a sight that knocked the wind clean out of him. A more manageable thought than that of the others trapped inside that blaze, but also one that he would have to deal with.
The cabin, his sanctuary, his research, was burning.
He swallowed harshly, running towards it without thought.
“Jonah!” Sandy yelled.
“Check the house,” he called back, turning at a run to look at her. “But don’t go inside.”
Ahead of him where a pair of police cruisers . Partially hidden in the shade of some of the denser trees ringing the house, they had missed them upon first approach. Jonah slowed, seeing a pair of figures lying in wait inside.
Long trails of blood dripping down the word "Sheriff" emblazoned on along the side in a grisly river made him stop. The figures sitting in the driver and passenger seats made no move and as the fire flared behind him he could see the head of one leaning against the partially rolled down window. Dark streaks flowed down the window and onto the side of the door below his head.
"Holy shit..." Jonah exhaled before his attention snapped back towards his goal.
The cabin loomed up before him. It was not as far gone as the main house, but another minute or so and the whole thing would be a lost cause. His body slammed into the door, barely pausing to turn the knob. The inside was alight with small fires, creeping in from the outside. He looked up to see fiery holes eating their way through the roof and knew it would not be long before the whole thing came down.
He scrambled for the spot where a stack of blue notebooks ought to have been, but found nothing. The same was true for a second stack, but a pair of them in the corner told him that whoever had rummaged through his possessions had not completed their task.
The thought of it caused his fingers to curl and his brain to race for a moment before it refocused on the urgent task.
Pulling the books from their place he flung them out of the door.
A beam crashed through the roof about five feet away, sending a shower of sparks through the cabin and igniting some of the carpet and the drapes on the far window. The heat caused sweat to pour down the sides of his face and his heart to beat rapidly as he grasped the dial on the safe in the corner of the room.
The black notebook. It was too important to leave it to chance. If the book was destroyed he would have lost a large chunk of his research. If it survived and was found by someone who didn’t know what it was…
He had just pulled the door open when a force grasped him and hurled him face first into the wall. A loud whistle erupted through his head, accompanied by a sharp splinter of pain. The world spun for an instant and the heat grew dull. The same force grasped him by his neck and spun him where he stood. Eyes glared into his, surrounded by thick red scars and full of rage that would have bowled him over if he had not been backed against the wall and knocked the air out of his lungs had he been able to breathe.
His mind reeled for an instant. The giant hand tightened around his neck and for a moment he was certain it had crushed his trachea.
“McAllister,” the giant hissed, leaning his burned face in so close he could smell the lymph leaking from the flesh around the scars.
Jonah’s eyes bulged, though whether it was from surprise or asphyxiation he would not know even if he had been able to think.
His hand grappled around the wrist that held him, desperate for a breath that would allow him to speak, to release a word that would save him. After a moment he was desperate for a word that would allow him to breathe.
The corner of the room collapsed, allowing a thin glimmer of the outside through the ruined wall.
“Payback,” the huge man
croaked over the destruction around them.
A thin stream of fire snaked it way up the carpet on the floor and the giant’s eyes turned away from a brief second. Jonah struck out with his foot, striking what felt like a slab of granite in the huge figure's abdomen. His fist came down with all the strength he possessed, but it was like pounding on an iron bar, there was no give.
Fire crept up the wall beside him, a wave that inched and swelled its way along to where the arm held him against the wall. His vision began to dim and the blood squirted through the veins in his ears until the sound of it mingled with the crackling of the fire. He could smell the cinders and the drywall. There was one last surge against the powerful muscles that held him in place and then he collapsed, near exhaustion.
“Jonah?” he heard the voice through the roar of the fire and with it the shape of Sandy filled the doorframe. Her hand went to her mouth as the surprise of the scene overcame her.
She took a single step forward and he could see the anger in her eyes, the knowledge that she would march into the fire without worry if she thought he was in danger.
The giant growled at her and there was uncertainty. She would do (almost) anything for him, but there was no idea what that anything was. He had taught her well, but taught her only how to duplicate money or to make lights with her voice. In his fear that something dangerous might come of his research he had kept it to himself. There was little she could hope to do to help him.
Unless…
“Out,” the massive hulk holding him against the wall barked and Sandy stopped short. She was not afraid. Nothing made her afraid anymore, but Jonah McAllister was holding up a limp hand, trying to get her to stop; with his other he was groping for the door of the safe beside him.
His hands grew cold as his nerves numbed and he fumbled, letting the notebook slip to the bottom of the safe twice before his hand fixed around its smooth cover and he threw it towards where his acolyte stood, deep worry and fear outlined on her face. It managed about four feet before falling to the floor, narrowly missing the encroaching flame and sliding to Sandy’s foot. Her surprised face disappeared into the haze surrounding the ever-approaching fire as his eyes drooped and the world seemed to fall away from him.
She looked up at the monster holding Jonah and then, as if struck on the head, scooped up the notebook.
The giant looked over his shoulder at her with a sneer. Satisfied with the state of his victim he let Jonah fall to the floor, coughing and gasping for breath, he was barely able to feel the fire coming towards him even as it burned the tips of his fingers. He jerked away with a gasp, smoke filling his lungs as he coughed for breath.
Aegera retreated a step as she broke open the smooth cover of the black notebook, cowering away from the giant that was bearing down on her, teeth exposed in a smile of glee, illuminated by the light of the fire.
Within the book there were words, like the ones he gave her to tell the others, written down in the same way, they didn’t look any different. She knew the power these words had, her very body was a testament to that. They had brought her many things. Wealth, family, hope. She looked at the monster before her. Implicit in all of that was that they could be used to take as well, but she had never dared venture past the implication. God was in the words. Was the devil as well?
One massive arm reached towards her and all thought and worried were gone. She managed a glance toward where Jonah lay, gasping on the ground. If he trusted her with it…
“Keep focused,” she told herself. “Look at your subject.”
How could she look away?
The fire was everywhere now. Not an inch of the walls were visible beyond the flames. The heat was all around her and suddenly she was aware of her sweating and shortness of breath.
The colossus loomed up over her.
The words poured out of her mouth, tinged with harshness and urgency.
Nothing happened.
The red-scarred face blinked, flesh stretching over it like a bad Halloween mask. Its eyes filled with malice and rage.
And recognition, she realized.
A swirl of air told of a massive arm swinging towards her.
She threw up her arms and shouted once again, now with desperation.
The giant was lifted clean off his feet and thrown against the back wall where moments before he had held Jonah in his massive hands. Those hands proved little use to the man as the wall, weakened by fire and force, buckled outward. The giant was thrown into the flame brightened night. His legs trembled once in an attempt to recover from the shock of it, already he was getting to his knees and then back to his feet.
Sandy rushed briefly towards the flame, pulling back when the heat got unbearable. She stopped just before where Jonah fumbled around the ground like a blind beggar. Her heart pounded like a kettledrum as she pulled him to his feet.
She screamed at him to help, but he would not, or could not. The cabin was coming down around them; embers filled the air like the flakes in some demented snow globe. The door was burning from its hinges, the frame disintegrating into little more than a pile of burning wood.
Sandy struggled with the bulk of Jonah’s body, lugging it step by treacherous step. Her shoes smouldered against the heat of the floor and there were several moments she was sure her clothing was on fire. At every step she told herself to let him drop and save herself but that part of her she tossed into the heat.
She screamed as the fire at the door burned her feet and collapsed on the other side, barely able to roll herself and her charge out of the way of the collapsing roof.
Both coughed into the crisp cool air of the night, limbs slowly grasping for the ground to push themselves up. Sandy rose slowly to her feet, painfully aware that the giant was still on the other side of the cabin.
“Car,” she coughed violently.
Jonah struggled up, elbows braced against his knees, roaring with a fit that would have risen the dead.
“Wait,” he barked, scraping around the ground and pulling to his chest what looked like a collection of blue tiles.
The grizzly face of the monster emerged from around the side of the cabin. His clothes were dusted with splinters and embers, smouldering through the fabric and burning into the uncaring nerves beneath. A fresh trickle of blood smeared the corners of his contorted mouth.
“Come on,” she begged, but he would not be moved from the piles of books on the ground.
The giant broke into a powerful stride that shuddered the earth beneath their feet, towering before them. Sandy pressed her fingertips against the black notebook cover and took a single step towards the monster. The words she had used only a minute or so earlier tore through the air and slammed into the juggernaut, there was the scraping of gravel as the words washed over him, dragging the feet across the ground. The white teeth clenched as he slid backward, retaining his feet through sheer force of defiance.
“Jonah?”
“Come on!”
The flaming ruins of the house they had all once lived in lit their way back to the car; the pounding footfalls of the giant after them every step of the way. Jonah clutched what remained of his notebooks to his chest as they ran, his pace maintained by the fury with which she pulled him on. The passenger side door flew open and with all the grace that panic and horror could provide they were inside with the door slammed and locked, for all the good it did.
The ham-sized fist burst through the window with a spray of glass. The engine roared to life and the horn sounded as gravel squirted out from under the front tires. The arm flew out of the window, leaving a slick of blood on the remaining glass. Sandy steered the car in reverse down the thin lane toward the highway.
They did not get far.
Whatever the cause was, there was no time to discover. The rear end of the car threw a cloud of raw dirt into the air as it plowed into the ditch running alongside the back lane. The driver’s side swung into a black poplar, jamming it closed.
Sandy threw her foot agai
nst the gas pedal and the engine whined. More dirt sprayed out of the rear, but the car refused to move.
From out of the inferno up the hill, face rimmed in the pall cast by the burning house, marched the intent form of the monster that had come for them.
Jonah pulled against the door, forgetting that it was locked. There was a fleeting moment when he knew they would not be able to get away on foot. The monster was bearing down on them. He was faster, stronger and they had no weapons powerful enough to stop it.
There was only one chance.
“Give me the notebook,” he shouted.
She fumbled with it before shoving it into his hands. He nearly tore the black cover off opening it.
“I need you to say this with me,” he said, underlining a large block of text with his finger. “Do you remember how?”
She glared at him.
“Quick!”
She was barely able to keep her voice even as they read, out loud, trying desperately to stay in sync. It was long. The giant who had started at the top of the hill was nearly at the car door by the time they were halfway through. Sandy rushed, cramming more sound in. He grasped her wrist to slow her. There was one line left as the door swung open. The hand grasped Jonah once more and nearly yanked him from the car. He managed to keep his composure and the last word came.
Sandy screamed. Her nerves frayed and twitched. She felt as if someone had attached strings to each of her fingers and toes and begun to pull in exactly opposite directions. Her eyes went blind in a light so white that she became lost in it. There was the feeling of motion, which stopped just as soon as it started and then there was the feel of nothingness. Complete and utter nothingness.
Aftermath
The screen shook a little and for what seemed like the first time in days the world around it came into sharp focus. The empty car. The man's fist crashing through the driver's side window. The dissipating flash of light that had momentarily illuminated the hillside around them against the light from the burning house reaching its zenith.