by Bill Bennett
The blast shattered the morning.
They felt it more than heard it.
A buffeting wave of energy that knocked them off their feet, and then they were airborne, hurtling back, arms flying, mouths agape yet too soon to scream, eyes wide in disbelief, and for a moment everything was crystalline in its clarity, sharp-edged and bright, yet insanely defying the very natural order of things.
Because less than a hundred yards away, the Ferris wheel was launching into the air. It shot some twenty or thirty feet above the tops of the surrounding stalls like a gigantic illshapen drone and then for a moment it seemed to hang there, above the fairground, and that moment seemed to stretch forgetful of time, as if the huge fun-ride were being held up by unseen wires pulled by a diabolic puppet master intent on enacting a show so horrific, it would become surreal.
Gummi had been blown back by the force of the blast and he was now on the ground looking back in despair over his shoulder. He could see everything in exquisite detail – as if his eyesight had suddenly become incredibly acute and what he saw before him was a grotesque diorama captured by a massive flash photograph, stopping all movement across its stage in an instant of terror and confusion.
He saw children in the swinging baskets on the gigantic Ferris wheel, their faces frozen in shock. He saw mothers and fathers and aunts and teenagers screaming, their eyes wide and white. Some were falling, their hands clutching the air, their cries unheard, no time for prayer. Others were reaching out to those that had gone, vainly, hopelessly, their faces etched in despair. He saw the bottom half of the Ferris wheel shredded by the explosion, strips and chunks and shards of glinting metal careening out like ballast shot from a cannon, soon to hit a fun-seeker in the neck, or through the chest, or to sever a limb or take out an eye or cleave a trajectory through a skull.
He saw the stalls around the wheel suddenly no longer there, flattened and simply made rubble and debris, smoke everywhere, fires starting instantly, the families and kiddies standing there in a flash dissected into various flung body parts that would later take coroners months to try and piece together, and even then they would fail, like putting together a gruesome jigsaw puzzle with a third or half the bits missing, swept up by an unconscionable cosmic cleaner, never to be seen whole again, only in memorial photographs in funerals and at wakes and across social media and the news, too many to count, across the state, elsewhere too.
He saw Olivier and Marley sprawled out on the ground too – stunned, in shock, each checking the other was all right. And then they were on their feet, racing to the site of the atrocity, wending their way and jumping over the injured, the screaming, the dying, the dead.
And then the stretched moment snapped.
And time became time again.
‘Watch out!’ yelled Gummi as the Ferris wheel plummeted back to the ground and those that had been on the ride of their lives at that moment lost their lives as it smashed into the smoking crater that had once been its base, its foundations, its launch pad.
A horrific rain began to fall: of chunks of torn flesh and shards of bone and shredded clothing, and a cloying shower of wetness that might have been blood or some other liquid freed from a body cavity.
Then came the most surreal of all – the mutilated kewpie dolls and broken pinwheels and the bits of plaster of Paris clown heads with their gaudy colours and their obscene laughing mouths, once wide open to accept a white ball, now shrieking in a grimace of silent outrage. Down came torn packets of cotton candy and bits of hoarding from the ghost train with lurid paintings of ghouls and demons. Down came brightly coloured beach balls and shelf-prizes of giraffes and pandas and cute cuddly teddy bears, all torn apart and violated. Down came the confetti of ripped posters and signage and the remnants of a morning that moments earlier, had been full of fun and laughter and joy.
Marley turned and saw a young man with a camera, videoing everything. He stood among the rubble, with smoke swirling around him, and yet strangely there was a cocoon around him that was smoke-free – as if it didn’t dare come close. He was tall, slim, wore tight black jeans with a large silver buckle, a black cowboy shirt, and he had white hair even though he was only eighteen, nineteen. As he filmed he seemed to stand impervious to the horror around him. He was devoid of any emotion, like an anthropologist documenting a cultural rite. Something caught Marley’s eye – it was his belt buckle. It was a goat’s head, replete with horns. The sign of Baphomet.
She drew her weapon and yelled out to him to stand still – to drop the camera and put his hands in the air. She rushed over through the carnage and debris and through the coughing eye-watering smoke, but when she got to him he was no longer there. He’d disappeared.
Olivier raced up beside her, looking around. ‘What did you see?’
‘I think I saw who did this,’ she said and holstered her firearm.
Even though they were miles away Freddie and Joe heard the explosion. Freddie immediately called Gummi, but couldn’t get through. ‘No communications. Either the Golden Order’s done that, or the blast has taken out one of the towers.’ He pocketed his phone.
‘You want me to turn around, boss?’ Joe asked.
‘No, Gummi’s either alive or dead. If he’s dead, I’ll regret it till the day I join him. If he’s alive, then he’s of more use to us there. We can’t afford to waste another moment. Even this stopover has put us behind. We keep going – and fast.’
Joe looked across at him, smiled, and stepped on it.
Early in the afternoon they left the interstate and began to drive north into the wooded hill country of West Virginia. Freddie stopped for a meal and a coffee break, and while wolfing down a burger and fries, he checked his map app on his tablet.
‘They’ve chosen the site well,’ he said to Joe, studying the satellite view of the Deep Sink Mine on the map. ‘I don’t like this.’
The mine lay at the end of a remote valley, surrounded on three sides by mountains. A narrow track led in, traversing the mountains in a series of sharp switchbacks before dropping down to the mine site.
‘There’s only one entry and exit,’ Freddie said. ‘No doubt they’ll have lookouts guarding that road. But they’ll hear us coming. Sound in that valley will carry for miles. What worries me is that we could get trapped. We could get partway in, then they could block our escape. It’s too dangerous. I think the best thing to do is drive some of the way, leave the car and walk in. Keep to the woods and hope we don’t get seen.’
A couple of hours later they were passing empty houses with front doors papered with eviction notices, disused industrial plants with chains and padlocks on their rusted gates, shops boarded up with signs in their dirty windows declaring that EVERYTHING MUST GO! CLOSING DOWN SALE.
The road turned into a pot-holed track that took them deeper into the woods. It wound through lichen-covered forests as it led up towards dark mountains, their peaks shrouded in mist. Somewhere up ahead, beyond those mountains, the Deep Sink Mine waited for them. Freddie sat beside Joe, trying to combat a growing sense of dread. The malevolent energies of the approaching Dragon Knot were now hitting him in waves. Good and bad energies were like magnetic poles – the closer they got, the stronger they repelled. And the Dragon Knot was trying to push him away.
And yet it seemed more than that. He had an overwhelming feeling that some catastrophe was about to happen. He breathed deeply and used his slow exhalation to try and quell his unease. Joe swung the wheel as the vehicle climbed higher, winding around the narrow muddy track that clung to the side of the mountain. There was a deep drop to one side. A bottomless drop, it seemed. The track was barely wide enough for their vehicle. And it was wet and muddy. If another car came the other way, Freddie thought, what would they do? Even with Joe driving it would be near impossible to reverse. And if a car came around a blind corner fast, it could be disastrous.
He sat back, breathed deeply again, worked through his fear. Nothing bad was going to happen. They would find a place o
ff the track soon where they could hide the car, they’d walk the rest of the way in, as planned, and then they’d meet up with Skyhawk and Lily who should already be there, somewhere, waiting for them. Hopefully Lily would have made contact with her mom again, and they would then figure out a way to release her.
He looked out across the valley. Something was approaching, a black dot against the ghostly white, high in the sky above the mist, heading straight for them, coming in fast like a guided missile.
What was it?
Was it an eagle?
CHAPTER 24
It was easy. An amateur could have done it. He’d relished a challenge but there’d been no challenge at all. It was pathetic, really, how little care they’d taken. The first step in any hunt such as this was identifying your prey, and Dr Skinless had been able to obtain recent photos of the Hag and Belt without much trouble at all.
The Hag had been a little more difficult because she’d kept no photos of herself, of course. He’d searched her apartment thoroughly, which had been a nauseating exercise because of the reeking stench of all the cats she’d laid down with Sleep Eternal. He’d vomited several times and while he’d conducted a thorough search, as any forensic accountant would, he could not get out of there fast enough.
He’d then sought out some neighbours – it seemed she had no friends – and meeting them had been a nauseating exercise too, because they’d humiliated him. He’d gone down to the pool where a group of elderly residents were lazing about, already drinking cocktails and it wasn’t yet mid-afternoon. There’s no doubt he would have looked strange to them, he was aware of that, in his mask and his cape and his full top-to-toe black suit. Not to mention his cane. They probably thought he was on his way to scare the bejesus out of a bunch of kids at a birthday party.
Amid their jokes and jeering he asked them if anyone had, by any chance, a photo of the woman in 1403. He explained that she’d recently died while on a trip back to her home country and her family needed a recent photograph for the memorial service. Everyone around the pool tut-tutted their faux sympathies and someone, a woman named Peggy, offered up that she’d taken a shot of her a few months back, but that it might not be appropriate for a funeral service. That elicited shrieks of laughter from the group – they all obviously knew of the photo to which Peggy was referring – and when the noise had abated somewhat Peggy explained that she’d used a long telephoto lens to capture a picture of her dancing naked on her balcony under the light of a full moon.
Again there were gales of laughter and guffaws – and on her friends’ taunting she searched back through her photos on her smartphone, found the pictures, and brandished the best shot of the Hag totally skyclad, breasts drooping, head arched back and arms extended to the night as if she’d been caught cavorting in a creepy ceremonial dance. Dr Skinless asked for a copy and without hesitation she air-dropped the picture into his phone.
The group must have found this hilarious too – the thought that the photo of her dancing naked would be seen in a gilt-edged frame on her casket – because they hooted and chortled and one of them, a balding man wearing only a swimming costume that was barely visible under the overhang of his wobbling gut, stood up unsteadily, came over to him and tried to take his mask off, to the snickering glee of his half-smashed audience.
His name was Randy – that’s what they called out to him as they egged him on – and emboldened by their encouragement he suddenly leaped up to the tall man’s height, ripped off the mask and revealed Dr Skinless’s condition to them all.
They all fell silent.
Staring at the inner workings of his skull.
One of the women fainted.
One of the men choked on his cocktail olive and needed a friend to thump him on his back to prevent him suffocating.
Dr Skinless grabbed his mask back from the stupefied Randy, stepped away from them, no one daring to move; all of them stunned and speechless at what they’d just seen. And in a blink, he was gone.
Later, he would discover with not a little self-satisfaction that the police took ten days to find Randy’s body. Or what could best be described as a body, because forensic scientists would later describe to the media in almost reverential terms the level of technical expertise required to skin the man so perfectly. They subsequently put an alert out to look for a sushi chef – a master sushi chef – because that’s the only type of person they believed could have done such a job. Not even a gourmet butcher would have done as good a job.
Dr Skinless had left the hapless pathetic man pinned to the wall of a disused warehouse way out in swamp country. Nailed Christ-like, with his arms extended, his torso without its outer layer of epidermis tissue all shiny and red. And beside him nailed to the wall he left his replica, his shadow, his skin. Newspapers detailed how veteran cops vomited when they saw it. Later they determined that the man had been alive when he’d had his skin removed. No doubt, Skinless mused, the cops would later wonder how much pain the man must have endured before he finally died. He chortled at the thought of it.
Belt’s photo had been easier. She’d been featured, without her permission, in a mountaineering magazine. Although her face was indistinct, Dr Skinless used the latest rectification software to create a useable picture – and facial recognition software to conduct a highly sophisticated search of all online assets: social media, news reports, photo libraries. And so it didn’t take much time at all to find the headline story in the Mountford Bugle: MOLLY AND QUINCE DEAD. WAS IT WITCHCRAFT? The story featured photos of the newspaper’s own reporter and photographer, now deceased, and underneath there was a picture of his prey – the Hag and Belt, together at the doorway of what looked to be some kind of hunter’s shack.
That’s all he needed. Confirmation of their recent whereabouts. Even if they fled after the picture was published, he would still find them – no matter where they went, he would find them. That’s how confident he was in his tracking abilities.
Dr Skinless hadn’t developed the skills to travel – and so he used a special potion, reduced down to two pills – one to get him there, the other to get him back. All he had to do was take the pill, put himself into a particular Baphomet-prescribed meditation, set the intention of time and place, and he would be there. And for Dr Skinless, ‘there’ was Mountford, Alaska.
They watched through the grimy front window of their trapper’s cabin as he stood outside, in the ripping wind, looking at everything in a slow methodical way, as if nothing would go unnoticed or unrecorded.
His four-wheel drive was parked behind him. He carried a folded newspaper in one hand, his other hand rested lightly on a pistol on his hip. His uniform was dutifully pressed and laundered. His hat on his head defied a whipping wind. He was in his early 60s, with thick strong arms; he stood proud, with a clear still gaze; not a man to be messed with, Belt thought.
He finally stepped up onto the porch and knocked solidly on the front door. He smiled genially at Belt as she opened the door. It was a warm friendly smile that she didn’t trust for a moment.
‘Morning, ma’am,’ he said, politely taking off his hat, revealing a head of white hair, thinning on top, to match the white of his eyebrows. He presented his badge. ‘Sorry to disturb you like this, but I’m the local sheriff, if you hadn’t already guessed by now.’ He smiled and nodded back to his vehicle, the sheriff insignia emblazoned on the side door. ‘Dave Luckshott’s my name. Mind if I come in for a moment?’
He went to walk inside but Belt blocked him. ‘My grandma’s not feeling well. What’s this about?’
The sheriff’s smile waned fractionally. ‘Well, ma’am,’ then he paused and retried the smile. ‘What’s your name, by the way?’
‘Lina,’ said Belt. That’s the name they knew her by down in the town. Lina Svoboda. Not that anyone had ever cared to ask for her last name.
‘Well, Lina, you may not of heard, being so remote up here and all, but there was a murder – suicide down in Mountford a day ago – a repo
rter and a photographer working for the local newspaper.’ The sheriff opened up the paper and on the front page were pictures of Molly and Quince, the couple the Hag had poisoned. Underneath the photos was a picture of herself with the Hag taken by Quince.
Belt smiled at the sheriff. ‘Yes, they came and took some photos, asked some questions. Grandma and I are aware there’re these stupid rumours going around that we’re witches or something …’
‘Well, you gotta admit that is a little freaky,’ the sheriff said, gesturing to the bones hanging from the ring of poles surrounding the shack.
‘Let him in,’ hissed the Hag from inside. Belt opened the door wider and the sheriff stepped into the smoky gloom.
The Hag was sitting in a rope chair by the pot-bellied stove. She had a blanket over her knees. She looked weak and frail. How did she do that? Belt wondered. Make herself look so infirm so quickly?
‘Ma’am, don’t get up,’ the sheriff said, advancing towards her, the Hag making no attempt to stand. ‘You might have heard what I was discussing with your –’
‘Granddaughter,’ the Hag said, wheezing asthmatically. ‘Yes, I heard. Sit. Sit,’ she said impatiently, gesturing to another chair by the stove.
‘And you might be?’ the sheriff asked, sitting opposite her, taking out a notebook.
‘Mrs Mathilda Svoboda,’ the Hag lied.
He wrote it down carefully, checking the spelling with her as he did so. When he finished, he looked up and asked politely, ‘Can I call you Mathilda?’
‘No,’ the Hag snapped. ‘You cannot. You can call me Mrs Svoboda.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, and then looked around the room, once again taking in everything, like he was a humanoid digital scanner. ‘And what are you ladies doing here?’ he asked casually.