He had sensed Chloris’s terror. She dared not speak, sure her voice would…
Rufus stepped out of the guest room, more bored than ever. “You should keep your windows closed, sir, as winter approaches.”
Bennington winked at Chloris. “What have I told you, Chloris?”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“You keep an undeniably tidy house,” said the elder Cooke, perhaps accusingly, as he walked to the door, no longer scanning about.
“Please visit anytime,” said Bennington.
The sense of relief was short-lived. Urgent hoofbeats stopped just outside.
Adonijah swung open the door to find his other sons swinging down from their mounts. “We found Hezekiah, Father!”
“Yes?”
“In the barn.” Jonas drew his matchlock and raised it toward Bennington. “Torn utterly asunder.”
* * * *
Less than an hour after the Cooke boys locked her in the pillory, Chloris was aching from head to toe.
At least the rain, pouring earlier in the day, was only a fragrant memory—for now. Come the dawn and the rise of most Ember Hollowites, she would undoubtedly be pelted with everything from vegetables to mud to stones. She could only hope for a cool day or a quick resolution to the mystery of Hezekiah Hardison’s slaying.
The pillory, meant as both punishment and interrogatory torture, stood only four feet high, forcing suspects into a miserable stooped position with head and hands locked in circles cut out of the two planks that fitted together. The stress on her legs and waist could only be relieved by letting her throat and wrists bear the weight. It made her think of a guillotine, which seemed nearly humane compared to however long she would suffer in this position.
She had wept when the Cooke men arrested Bennington and her, mostly from fear. She felt the need to weep now from the pain, yet recognized the need to conserve fluids. Bennington was locked in jail. No one would be obliged to bring her water.
From off to her side, Chloris detected a muted shuffling sound.
Just a few yards beyond the rear of the street’s businesses and homes was the forest, carpeted with recently fallen foliage, and darkness. If she strained, Chloris could see the edge and the closest trees, but that was a waste of energy. She feared the thick, dark woods of the new world more than she ever had the sparse forest of her hovel back in England.
Though wolves, bears and other predators never ventured this close to the settlement, something had.
Her throat tightened with the recollection of Everett’s crushing grasp. He was loose now.
She thought of calling out to Jonas, currently standing watch over her master in the jail two buildings away. Of the Cooke clan, he had been roughest with her, to the point that even the hard-hearted Adonijah had to admonish him. If he were to come without his father here to restrain him…
The soft shuffling on the leaves became softer steps on the street, still muddy from the afternoon’s shower. The time had come to scream.
A hand smacked over her mouth; polished shoes fell just within her sight line. Then an insidiously sharp edge pressed against her neck. “Stay quiet, woman.”
Despite its whispered tone, Chloris recognized the voice of Conal O’Herlihy.
He removed his hand. “This is a sad state for such a loyal servant. And your master sheltered and safe over there in the jailhouse.”
She was helpless to stop the tears now.
“You need my help. No one can else can save you.” Conal allowed a scoff. “Not even the great Wilcott Bennington.”
She tried to raise her head to glower at him, wanting to show him some measure of defiance, even as her tears told a different tale. But she simply could not.
Conal showed her the bone knife he had taken from Schroeder, waving it near her eye line. “You declare that he killed Hezekiah, and I’ll see to it you are freed and held blameless.”
Chloris inhaled mightily to utter one word. “No.”
Conal pressed the blade, harder. “No hurry, dear. You can just stay right here like this until you’ve come to the right decision.”
The blade eased, the shoes disappeared, and Chloris was alone, more distressed and terrified than ever before.
* * * *
Modern day
Reaching the top of the ladder, Kyle Trainor leaned down to reach for a board from the dismantled pallet to brace the Community Center’s upper windows. It was a precarious task at best. He would never complete it.
The window shattered inward, pierced by a dripping wet vine-leg. Smaller tendrils writhing at its end wrapped around Kyle and yanked him through the window in a blur.
Inhuman screeches of varying pitches echoed around the brick walls and wood floors, as driving rain blew in.
Another tentacle whipped in and found the ladder, scooting it noisily around the floor and banging it against the wall, before the demon realized it did not have hold of anything useful.
“Get them into the weight room!” McGlazer told Stuart and DeShaun, motioning to the children.
A hissing roar came through the window and echoed about the high walls and rafters like a swarm of bats. Then another, as several of the twisted appendages cast for prey.
“In here, you guys!” DeShaun and Stuart spread their arms wide as they rushed the kids into the weight room, relieved that none of them saw Kyle’s demise.
Timbo backed against the rear wall and pointed the rifle toward the window. Kerwin opened the box of shells and stood by to hand them off.
“Get in the office!” McGlazer ordered Mayor Stuyvesant.
“I’m the mayor, not the messiah,” Doris told him. “We all fight together.”
* * * *
No sooner had Pedro pushed Ophelia’s bedroom door closed than a crack appeared in it, the pumpkin demon’s angry warbling cry signaling its intention to get in.
“Dammit, do it if you’re going to!” Yoshida said, presenting his back to Pedro and pointing at his neck. “Are you sure you even know how?”
“I’ve seen all of Ed ‘Strangler’ Lewis’s matches on Golden Classics of Wrestling. Paid close attention.” Pedro wrapped his big arms around Yoshida’s head and neck. “You ready?”
Yoshida nodded. Pedro began to apply pressure, wary of breaking his friend’s neck if the thing battered at the door again and startled him.
Yoshida reflexively grabbed at Pedro’s forearm, issuing a distressing gurgle.
“Just relax, bro,” Pedro said. “Only takes about four sec—”
Yoshida’s back and neck grew in mass and density so fast Pedro thought he was exploding. The gurgle became a growl just as quickly.
Pedro released and shoved Yoshida away. “Get in that closet!” he called to Ophelia and her mother.
Pedro charged to open the bedroom door, ducking as soon as it swung open.
He had guessed that the beast Yoshida became would pounce right for his back—and he was right. But his quick move caused the werewolf to smash fangs-first into the pumpkin demon.
Two otherworldly, yet wildly different bellowing reverberations blew out from the entangled monsters, like a sonic mushroom cloud.
Pedro rolled away from the action and toward the closet, glancing at the blur of fur and fangs and vine and rind, relieved the jumble was moving away from the door.
He grabbed the hands of mother and daughter and pulled them out. “Stay behind me!”
When they ran out into the dark demolition of the living room, Ophelia stopped stock-still and screamed at the sight of Yoshida clawing into the pumpkin thing’s face. It sprayed very red blood several yards in all directions.
Pedro picked her up in his arms and ran to the door.
As the first demon collapsed, the second smashed its face through the battered window frame and bit into Yoshida’s shoulder. The werewolf
emitted a high-pitched howl of pain that felt like needles in Pedro’s ears.
He ran with the women to the breezeway and pushed them toward the stairway. “Stay at the top!”
As they did, Pedro ran back to the edge of the walkway and once again hauled himself onto the roof.
Peering over the far edge, he saw the bulbous end of the crab-like goblin, Yoshida’s opponent, sticking out of the window of Ophelia’s apartment. Yoshida’s continued shriek of pain told Pedro all he needed to know about what it was doing. “Dammit!”
He glanced around and found the length of pipe Yoshida had used as a weapon, those eternal seconds ago when the lawman was human.
Barely slowing to spot where the damned thing was, Pedro leaped off the edge with the pipe pointing straight down. He buried the pipe into that big, evil orange ass with the force of muscle and momentum, and tore it open from top to bottom. Blood cascaded over his head and shoulders as he hit the ground, flip-rolled forward and came to his feet—which stung like hell.
The creature made a cry of raging pain as it fell apart, spilling intestines, seeds and buckets of blood.
Pedro looked back up just in time to dive away from a twelve-foot-long, segmented leg falling toward him.
“Crap!” he called, checking to see if there was anything else coming at him.
There was—a roaring, toothy, blood-covered nightmare dog-man.
Yoshida smashed into Pedro and drove him onto his back on the muddy ground, knocking him breathless. The musician opened his eyes to see a vortex of teeth and bloody blackness beyond.
“Leave him alone!” called Ophelia.
Pedro felt the briefest instant of relief when Yoshida stopped mid-bite—and then the most despairing of horrors, as he realized the man-beast was now focused on Ophelia.
Yoshida leaped off Pedro, focused on his new easy prey. Pedro lunged to grab his foot. He was dragged face-forward a yard or so, and then left behind in his terrifying failure.
Except Yoshida slipped in the mud as he crouched on his hinds to leap. He fell to his back but immediately scrambled to all fours. As he coiled for another leap, Pedro crashed onto his back and once again sank the sleeper hold.
Yoshida squirmed and twisted and kicked like no rodeo bull ever had. Pedro clinched his legs around the monster’s bony hips and held on, yelling, “Get going, Ophelia!”
Yoshida-wolf rolled stomach-up, putting Pedro on his back against the ground. Its instincts did not tell it this only helped to deepen the hold.
Just as he was sure Yoshida was about to peel his arms away from his neck—and his body—the werewolf went limp.
Pedro shook the rain off his face and saw the eyes of the wolfman roll to white, its bloody tongue hanging from slack jaws.
He released his friend, relieved to see him shrinking—becoming human.
“You okay?” he called up to Ophelia, but the little girl and her mother were already on the way down.
Chapter 28
Unfinished Business
The impromptu healing session for Ysabella had begun optimistically enough. Little Emera’s innocent belief that closeness and love would heal her new friend was infectious among the women.
But Stella, keeping constant check on the elder woman’s pulse and breathing, soon grew gloomy. Her frequent glances toward the phone, the door and the rain-smudged windows gave her away, first to Jill, then to Leticia and Elaine, who each raised their grim faces from the rocking and whispering circle to look at each other.
“She needs a hospital,” Stella mouthed.
Jill stopped drumming the pot for a second, shocked still by the dread of sadness. This broke the concentration of the others.
When she picked the rhythm back up, it was too late. Whatever trance the younger girls had been in disintegrated. “Why’d we stop?” asked Candace.
“We need to do something else,” Stella explained. “Soon.”
“No!” Emera hugged close to the old woman, squeezing a breath from her that was too close to a death rattle. “Miss Iss hassa stay here till she gets better!”
Stella rubbed the child’s quivering back. “Honey…”
With an excited bark, Bravo dashed to the door.
“Open up!” Bernard shouted, as he pounded the door like a raiding SWAT captain. “Hurry!”
Jill went to the door and was nearly knocked to the floor by the giant woman who rushed through.
“Where is she?” asked Brinke.
Bravo did not bristle, and no one asked who she was. Her urgency and self-assurance told them all they needed to know.
“Keep doing what you’re doing, everyone.” Brinke pulled Ysabella’s blankets away and lay atop her like a lover, hugging Ysabella’s lolling head in her arms. “Stay close, sugar,” she told the confused Emera. The little girl reacted quickly, reclaiming her spot against Ysabella, like a cat seeking warmth.
“Okkala Boro-Tah Cam-Ura Tahn!” Brinke said in a tone that commanded attention.
She repeated the incantation, rocking restlessly.
“Hit it, everybody,” said Jill, and the other women joined in the chant as best they could until they had the hang of it. As their voices rose, so did their assurance, and soon Elaine, Leticia, Candace, Stella and Bernard had formed a pentagon around the bed with their hands linked, their heads held high, and their wills rocketing into the universe.
* * * *
Staring expectantly at Timbo, Kerwin raised his voice-box amplifier in a shaking hand. “What are you waiting for?”
“No use shooting their legs,” Timbo answered. “I’m waiting for one of ’em to show its face.”
“At least the barricades are holding,” Mayor Stuyvesant said.
The heavy double doors at both ends shook, as if the monsters had heard and sought to prove her wrong.
“For how much longer?” asked McGlazer.
In the weight room, each unearthly roar, every echoing crash drew ever more strident and frightened cries from the children huddled in the farthest corner.
“What’s happening!?” asked a six-year-old boy whom Stuart and DeShaun only knew as Pockets.
The older boys grimaced at one another to pass the buck. Finally, DeShaun tried, “The storm’s knocking down trees or something.”
Stuart peered through the rectangular pane set high to the side of the door.
The tentacles had withdrawn, leaving a tense stillness, and leaving McGlazer, the mayor, Bernard, Timbo and Kerwin out in the open.
“Are the trees gonna fall on us?” asked Pockets.
“We won’t let them.”
“Why can’t we have the lights on? I’m scared!”
“Hey, let’s play a game, you guys,” DeShaun suggested, peering around the room for some kind of prop.
A chorus of sibilant roars rendered the ruse ineffective. The kids broke into a chorus of their own, sobbing pleas for their parents, for the lights to be on, to be taken home.
The pounding at the Community Center’s doors devolved to eerie scratching sounds, then to nothing, which was worse.
The monsters had stopped blindly thrashing with their tentacles and their scratchy-voiced screaming.
“Could they have left?” whispered Doris.
Their incredulity was apparent even in the darkness.
“No science-based defense this time?” McGlazer asked Bernard.
Bernard shook his head.
One of the high windows went black, filled by something from a bad Halloween acid trip.
“Good God. It’s…a pumpkin…something…”
Timbo was quick to aim and fire, hitting a sickly eye. There was a burst of pulpy blood, then a cry of almost human agony. The thing quickly disappeared, leaving only the sounds of rain and lightning.
“Good shooting!” praised McGlazer.
“Th
ey must be too large to get in through those windows, maybe even the doors,” noted Bernard.
“Maybe we can wait them out,” wondered Timbo.
“But there’s still the rest of the town,” the mayor grimly added.
“How many can there—”
Timbo’s question was cut short by the crashing of the flimsy pallet boards covering the windows above them as a six-inch-thick spider leg punched through. The boards fell across Kerwin’s back, drawing a weird grunt.
“Are you o—?”
Six viney appendages flew in after the boards, moving as fast as the lightning that cracked at the same time. McGlazer and crew dashed to the opposite side to dodge the flailing killer cables. Timbo fell to his back as he aimed the rifle up at the newly broken window.
He got off a shot as another of the evil orange faces peered in, shrieking loudly enough to shatter nerves. The bullet missed, sparking the cinder-block edge of the window.
The quintet rolled and crawled back toward the middle, just beyond the reach of the vines on either side. “Dammit!” shouted McGlazer.
They huddled closer and closer, as the grappling root-ropes stretched to ensnare them. Awful orange faces filled the windows now, grimacing and grinning down at their prey, reducing the meager sodium lights of the parking lot to a dim suggestion.
“If they get any bigger, they’ll be able to reach us,” said Bernard.
“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that.” Pointing up at one of the demons with a trembling finger, the mayor spoke with more pessimism than anyone had ever heard from her.
It opened its mouth wide, squinting, as if in the pain of giving birth.
* * * *
“I should probably tell you now, dear boy,” Violina began, patting Dennis’s arm. “I know what you’re trying to do with the sneaky, silly water scheme.”
Dennis didn’t react in even the minimal fashion he was allowed. He just stared ahead into the rainy road and drove, seething.
“That’s why I’ll let you have a little drink of your old favorite soon.” She raised her flask in thumb and forefinger, shaking it a little to make it slosh. “Diamante’s with a dash of magic motor-control potion!” She tucked it back into her cleavage. “A little something for both of us.”
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