by David Irons
A thick scaled eel-like tail swished out of sight, splashing and writhing into the darker concealed part of the pool.
Kelly's mouth fell open as the cold water on her face turned to a mask of sheet-iced terror. She snapped her head around to Jennifer, who looked back at her with a beaming smile. One filled with the success of finding another way out of here, another chance at freedom.
Her smile quickly dropped as she saw the girl's frightened eyes. From the dark recess at the back of the pool, a soft sinister hiss broke from what sounded like seething snake lips.
She moved over to Kelly, whipping the child behind her and reached to the floor to pick up the shovel. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness as she spotted movement in the shadows in front of her. A slow-moving mass unfolded. A thick unwinding thing, resembling a flexible tree trunk squirmed around into sight.
Holding the shovel back over her shoulder, her grip tight, poised and ready to swing, she backed up. Kelly picked up the rhythm of her feet and did the same.
Then, from the darkness, a familiar face peered out, bleeding into the white moonlight, revealing its features to her.
There, only a few feet away, was the grinning face of William Blitzer. His features distorted, twisted and melded with a reptilian-like texture. Thin slitted pupils stared from eyes that were glowing yellow balls; their glare only cut off with quick snake-like blinks. His upturned mouth, stuck in a frozen grin, stiff and un-animated, broken only by a thick black forked tongue that reached dryly through his lips. With each step back, his head glided through the air towards them, staying face to face with his old employee, on a stretching, never ending scaly neck.
She felt a judder from Kelly as the face became clear, confirming her instinct that this was the face of the dead man, the face of the man they had come here to bury. A face that now, presumably through his experimenting with the bite of the creatures, had somehow become this awful underworld’s serpent king.
He had become a creature that slinked and lounged by its pool, away from the other menial, lesser things further back in the tunnels. Elongated, black scaled arms reached from the creature's length, spindly things with a width of almost twenty feet. Its extended fingers fluttering slowly like the stick branches of a bare tree in the dead of winter, seductively swaying at the sight of the final two girls.
Suddenly, coldly, from between his lips a single word broke free.
'Jenifffeerrrrrrr, you brought me a treeeeeeeeat,' the mutated Blitzer hissed out, arching its head to one side to stare at the child behind her.
'Fuck off,' Jennifer spat back through gritted teeth.
The reptile creature curled its lips with an exhalation of air, flashing a mouthful of fine sharp teeth, as it moved in closer.
CHAPTER 35
Jennifer quickly stepped backwards, wondering if somehow his new mutated design was to look like the stone thing that entwined the outside of the church. Trying to replicate its imagery, to give poignancy to his new form.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, as a cold shiver tinkled down her spine, aware of another presence behind her.
Suddenly, the ink devil enflamed, as the rash on her skin burned in sharp pain, a feeling the same as when her instincts warned her of Keith Connors' motivations. Its memory brought to mind the words on her arm: 'Come on down!'
In the past, she had done just that, bending down to pick up that odd card, the crow bar whisking overhead. A flash of that moment passed through her brain, an instinct to do just that again, to bend forward, to drop to the floor, to 'Come on down!' The devil on her arm, firing cold ice daggers in her veins, warned her, was somehow telling her to do it right now.
Turning, trying to move, she went to drop to the floor, to drag the girl down with her on her tattoo's instinct, but looking over her shoulder, instead she became mesmerized.
Two wide, enraged human eyes stared back, as her nose flared at the distinct smell of burnt flesh and hair.
Distracted, she sensed something coming from above, feeling a fast breeze of air rushing towards her. She pushed Kelly to one side, spilling her onto the ground. The sharp end of an old pickaxe split the air where the girl only a second ago stood. Missing its target completely, as its sharp blade plunged straight down, penetrating the skin on Jennifer's right leg with a splitting flash of pain. It moved like a knife through her soft flesh, heading down towards her knee cap, scraping over its bone and ending only a few inches before the ankle.
With a scream, Jennifer collapsed to one side, her cold skin now experiencing the warmth of her own blood, as all feeling in the bottom half of her body escaped her control with the heavy, piercing blow. Trying to drag herself up, she clutched her leg in agony. Watching in disbelief as the charred, living body of Alison reached out and grabbed the screaming Kelly by the hair, stifling the girl's wails by squeezing her mouth shut with her gas pipe fried hands.
The woman, crazy-eyed and bald, flashed her perfectly white teeth in a death’s head grin. Her skin had become a tar-like blistered layer, pieced together like a jigsaw over tendons and sore red flesh.
Kelly tried to scream, Alison's burnt flesh rubbing off into her small face as she did.
'Why did you have to ruin everything, you red-haired bitch?' the burnt woman moaned. 'We had this planned all along, for you, for them, for this stupid little bitch!' she placed a hand around Kelly's throat tighter, squeezing with any strength she had left.
'William and I discovered this place; we had heard that the gateway was underneath it. That's when we brought the others, people who understand the black arts; who understand its importance, who were willing to excavate beneath the church, to find if the legend was true. When we planned this, you were to be the first victims of the hive. The first meal brought to the spawn from above by their new king!' She smiled up at the Blitzer creature, which in turn smiled back at her with its awful needle teeth.
'The new king of the underworld: The serpent! The beast! They say heaven is a place on Earth… no, that's not true… hell is, and we found its entrance. We had planned this for years, for so long! You and all those others, you were the first. I was supposed to be his queen down here. Now look at me… NOW LOOK AT ME!'
Jennifer tried to raise herself to her feet, tried to equal the playing field. But with her blood pumping leg, she was unable to move a muscle, her entire lower half now just shutting down with the pain that ran through it.
'It was going to be the three of us who entered: Gregory, Traxler, and me. But Traxler… When Gregory's transformation was complete... he… he got… hungry.' Alison's face dropped. 'But now it's just me and Gregory, the way it always should be.'
She beamed up at the beast, the burnt shell of a woman swooning over the serpent that used to be her boss.
'Just let her go, Alison. I'm the one you always had a problem with, not her. Just let her go.'
Kelly let out a muffled cry, trying to reach for the woman's charred hands to release her but flinching with every touch, as her skin pulled away as easy as that of an over cooked Thanksgiving turkey.
Alison's intense glare lessened but stayed fixed on Jennifer.
'You're right,' she said in softer tones. 'I have always had a problem with you, I have always hated you.'
She let one hand go from Kelly, reaching around to the back of her burnt dress and pulling out a fourteen-inch kitchen knife.
Jennifer's eyes widened at the reflective glint of its blade. She reached out towards Alison, panic overcoming pain, her legs still unable to work.
'No, no, no. no, no, no,' she coldly rattled out, her voice a repetitive mess.
The blade, now under Kelly's wide teary eyes mirrored her reflection. Pale moonlight glimmered up onto her even paler white skin. She flinched backwards, watching as the sharpened instrument waved an inch away from her face, unable to react, unable to scream, unable to escape.
Alison smiled.
'This is for you, Jennifer Blu!'
'No…'
'
THIS IS FOR YOU JENNIFER BLU!'
With a maniac flash of Alison's teeth, a quick repositioning of the blade to Kelly's throat, with a final lightning quick slice, a slow-motion silence filled the air.
Alison's face beamed like a demented skull on Halloween night, both of her hands letting go of the girl, now rose up high in triumph. The knife dropped through the air hitting the ground and flipped over endlessly. Jennifer stared at the hypnotic flashing blade, her senses in overload trying to understand, trying to move, trying to do anything.
Kelly's eyes, as wide as twin full moons, lost their glow; lost their child-like innocence. A change came over her, a non-understanding. Things in the books never ended like this, they always ended the opposite of this. She was the kid, she was the child; she was the one that who was supposed to… live.
Her bag slipped from her shoulder and her book, The Grey Fairy, fell from it into a cloudy puddle.
Suddenly, around her neck, an unseen red necklace slowly appeared. Tearing its way along her skin, opening up to let the same red warmth that paralyzed Jennifer's legs pour down her chest.
She reached up with her small fingers, grasping at the wound, unwilling to touch it like the burnt woman's foul flesh. Then slowly and sadly she let out a giant final wheeze, her mouth gasping at the air like a fish out of water.
Alison wailed in hysterics, her eyes firing like sheet lightning. The Blitzer creature writhed in pleasure, grinning its sharp teeth with a low sensual hiss at the sight of the dying girl.
'Nooooooooo!' Jennifer screamed, as her will to go on broke inside of her. All hope of this situation ending how she wanted it to dwindled from her bones.
Kelly backed away from Alison, swaying on her feet, her face becoming more and more white, already looking like a ghost of herself. Now not caring about touching the wound, her fingers clasped either side of her split neck. Trying to clamp the wound together, trying somehow to fix what the burnt woman had done.
Roars of laughter came from Alison, making Kelly wince. The young girl's eyes flicked to Jennifer, looking at her, wanting her new friend to tell her what to do, looking at her, wanting her to make it all stop.
Jennifer cried harder, reaching up, trying to make the girl concentrate her last moments towards her, not the cackling things that had done this to her.
But Kelly backed away, stepped into shadow, turned and walked towards the pool with what power she had left. Letting go of her neck, she reached in for a final double handful of water, bringing it up to her face; she froze for a second, her back to them. Then losing all balance, she fell forward into the pool, her splash a mixture of white and red in the soft moonlight.
Kelly was dead.
Alison cried out with laughter. 'Swim away little fish, swim away!'
'I'm going to fucking kill you! I'm going to fucking kill you!' Jennifer screamed.
Alison turned back to her mid-laugh. 'You will do no such thing, Jennifer Blu.'
The Blitzer serpent coiled around, positioning itself to hover over the water where Kelly's body floated in its red cloudy aura. It looked at her quizzically, and then dived in head first, bringing its thin arms around to hoist out the girl’s dying body, all teeth and claws tearing at her, feeding on her still-warm innards.
Jennifer looked away, and then turned to Alison.
'You have lost, all of you have lost. It's time for a new order, a new way of life and it's going to start down here. There was no way I was ever going to get caught by those things back there; I knew every nook and cranny of this place years before I came down here with you. I know where every secret tunnel is hidden, where every fake coffin leads to another room — we designed it that way — I know this place like the back of my hand.'
She froze for a second, looking at the back of her hand; a blackened split thing she in actuality had no knowledge of.
'This is Mr. Blitzer's life's work. This is our life's work. Up there we are nothing, he took it as far as we could. He had success; he had the best it could offer in the world above ground. But down here we can start again. When we found one of those things, a serpent, a snake, we knew what we had to do with its bite. Now he has turned, he is ready, ready to go back to the pit; back to that hellhole, down to the nether world. To rule it! To overthrow its commander, to become its new God! To become the new Satan! Look at him, LOOK AT HIM!' She pointed to the feasting thing in the pool.
Through blind hatred Jennifer felt the tattoo pulse so hard, it felt like it would rip from her arm. Everything sliced through her mind about the face on her arm, the slogan: 'Come on down!' The coincidence of finding the card, saving her from…
'Night Creepers — Night Creepers.'
Its warnings when she had it tattooed, was it all for this? Was it something through some unknown transmission into her mind that was trying to keep her alive? 'Come on down!' Old Nick's face winked on her arm; was this his premonitory mark to inform her of Blitzer and Alison's delusions of over throwing him from his place in hell? Was this her role? Was this her fate in the situation? Was she supposed to… she remembered that day twenty years ago when it began, escaping the locker, escaping the…
'Night Creepers — Night Creepers, creeping up your nose, wriggling through your body; wriggling to your toes!'
That feeling of…
In a way it had saved her, and … one day… she would have to repay the favour.
Staring at her tattoo she knew, she had been destined to come here to see this through, to make sure Blitzer didn't manage to enter the hellhole, to try and overthrow its king. Suddenly the tattoo twitched three times, as if saying,
'Yes! Yes! Yes!'
'He promised me, if I bring you here, if I survived, then with his bite I will be his queen!' Alison screamed. 'I finally get to be his queen!'
I have to stop them… for you… Jennifer thought.
'Yes! Yes! Yes!' the tattoo pulsed.
Blitzer raised his bloody head up from his meal, staring at her as Alison turned to him. He dropped the girl's corpse back in the pool for later consumption.
Quickly gaining momentum from a second wind, Jennifer swung around, unable to stand but reached for the knife on the floor. Before she could grab it, Alison's blackened shoe kicked it off into the shadows.
'I don't think so,' she spat. 'We had to put on the show, having him killed in front of witnesses. We were worried it went too far, his head was crushed… we didn't know… when turned… if it would affect his mind?'
Blitzer pulled back his lips to grin again, his eyes flashing with the yellow glow of the other night crawlers. From the darkness, the end of his swishing tail drew towards Alison. She stared down at it, watching it slither to her feet.
'But my Blitzer, he's fine. He's… better now,' she grinned.
She reached down for the pickaxe as Blitzer's tail twined itself around Alison's leg, working its way upward. Wrapping itself around her shapely burnt thigh, its pointed end aimed for her crotch.
Jennifer recoiled in disgust as Alison's face showed a moment of surprise and pleasure as his snake tail reached up to penetrate her. Pushing inside her, making her sigh and squeal while grasping the pickaxe handle tighter.
'Soon, you bitch,' she squealed, 'it will be me and Gregory together forever…' she moaned, with a mixture of euphoria and pain on her singed face. Blitzer smiled, lips growing bigger and meaner, pushing his tail deeper into the woman, pleasing himself with her pain, impressed with how much of him she could take.
'But first…' Alison moaned. 'You die.'
She brought the pickaxe up high over her head, teeth clenched once more, ready to bring it down and brain Jennifer. Led forward like a rod puppet by the length of Blitzer's tail inside her, Jennifer helplessly tried to pull away, her legs a useless tangled mass beneath her.
A flash of evil passed Alison's eyes, bringing up the weight of the pickaxe as she swayed backwards. Jennifer unable to do anything knew that this was it. This was her final moment, watching her snake-like old boss enter
his cremated secretary. She had failed, she had failed her parents, she had failed Kelly, she had failed Matt, and she had failed herself.
A quick pulse drove through her body from the tattoo, a reminder that she had failed someone else too.
She stared up at Alison, knowing she would rather just face her head on than hide behind fear and screams. Alison, beaming, brought down the pickaxe, cutting the stale air of the cavern with its velocity. Jennifer's teeth tightened, expecting its final cold blow to send everything forever into black.
Then… slow footsteps crept behind her.
CHAPTER 36
Before the pickaxe dealt its final blow, a quick, swift silver flash penetrated the space around Alison, one so fast and so timed, her entire head was severed and tumbled from her body. Hitting the floor, it rolled away like a barbecued bowling ball. A fountain of red gushed from her ragged tendons in her ventilated neck, her instantly limp body dropped the pickaxe to the floor and staggered bow legged from side to side. Her body turned to the Blitzer snake, her flailing hands gestured uselessly, pleading for her beloved man to reconnect her sliced head to its stump again. But all he was able to do was pull out of her and turn away from a spraying face full of blood.
She fell to her knees — the spurting blood from her gored neck looking like a vase of red flowers blowing in the wind — before she toppled over fully, washing the dirt floor with gushes of warm red.
Jennifer, shivering looked up. There, where the beheaded woman had been standing, was a shadowed form. The figure was naked, female, glistening wet with some kind of oily viscera, its skin mosaicked leather, with thick black talon like nails.
Its midriff perfect, its breasts hard and firm, its arms, muscular and tensed; its body was sleek and simply formed, almost mannequin-like in stature. But then, unfolding huge bat-like wings opened from its side, its silhouette reconfigured into something else other than human.
In its hands, the shovel Jennifer had brought along as her last remaining weapon. Its silver blade was now red from the blow it had delivered to Alison's neck.