Severed

by Peter Laws

  Ever ran up. ‘Who lied?’

  ‘Hope,’ Milton strained his voice out. ‘Zara didn’t run away at all. She didn’t leave us. She’s been dead and buried the whole time.’

  ‘No way.’ Ever shook his head. ‘That can’t be right.’ Though deep in the dark of his gut he thought, actually yes, that probably is right. Because that just feels right. Like it was something Hope might do. Desperate to find Dust he rushed to the vestry door, where the grown-ups were lamenting at full tilt. He had to climb up on a chair just to see over everybody’s shoulders. Hope was standing in the middle of the room, pleading with them, and now Prosper was shoving through them all to join them.

  ‘We had to, okay?’ Prosper said, and everybody stared at him. He stood with Hope and took her hand. ‘Zara was going to tell the world about us.’

  ‘You knew about this?’ Dust barked at him.

  ‘Of course I knew.’

  ‘But she believed. She wasn’t Hollow, she was one of us.’

  ‘Hope thinks she was a plant. Some sort of Hollow spy come to turn us.’

  Verity was on the floor, nodding her head. ‘She always was … quiet.’

  ‘Bottom line is, she was going to tell,’ Hope said. ‘She didn’t want Micah to do the ritual. She acted all supportive in front of you lot, but she was struggling with it. Then I made her tell me the truth. She was going to tell Micah’s dad what we were planning.’

  ‘But you said she ran away,’ Dust said.

  ‘It was better that way. We thought if you knew she turned Hollow while she was on the farm, it’d …’

  ‘It’d what …’

  ‘Rock your faith.’

  ‘Yeah, right. You lied because the truth would have sent Micah running.’ Dust laughed, but it quickly fizzed into anger. ‘We don’t lie.’

  The room was in chaos, and the more they shouted, the more that Ever understood why this was happening. It was this special, powerful Hollow, sitting in the middle of the room. The one they’d dragged from the car. It was on its knees, tied up, but it was adding its voice to the rest. It shouted its words especially at Uncle Dust, and the scariest part was that Dust was listening.

  ‘See?’ the Hollow said ‘You can’t trust her. And if Hope lied about this, how can you trust this ritual of hers?’

  ‘We’ll use the other way,’ Milton said. ‘The world can still end.’

  The Hollow turned its head to Hope and Prosper. ‘But why do you think they’re so desperate for it to end now? Your farmhouse life was over the minute they killed her. They knew full well the police were gonna track Zara down. That’s why they want the world to end … because you’re running out of time. But listen … the world won’t stop. You’ll just end up in prison because none of it—’

  Milton said, ‘We won’t end up in prison.’

  ‘Ah, but you will, because none of this ritual, this belief—’

  Verity slapped the demon hard across the face. It kept talking,

  ‘—none of it is true. So, get me out of these bloody cables before the police get here.’

  After the slap, the Hollow turned its face to the side and spat out a large globule of blood. Which was the worst image of all. The moment that explained everything. He hadn’t realised it until now, but here was the solid proof that it was tricking them all.

  They’d taken its blindfold away.

  This Hollow, the special one, the one for which all this was for, sat tied in the middle of the room. Only those plastic cables around its wrists were irrelevant because it was staring at each person, and they were all staring back. And nobody seemed to realise that Uncle Dust was turning against the others and soon, the rest would too. Dust called out, ‘It’s over. We’re ending this.’ And Ever heard a smack of thunder so loud that he thought the entire building would collapse. As they argued, the Hollow held them in its gaze, orchestrating the chaos, with a blood-filled mouth and an animal gaze. Any second now, his entire, beloved family were going to turn Hollow, and their eyes would all roll in their sockets to find him.

  His heart gave him the answer. His heart said: Run.

  As they all raged he turned and sprinted into the church. He found Pax sitting there oblivious. She was drawing crayon shapes of Hollows on sheets of white paper. He grabbed her hand. ‘Something’s gone wrong,’ he whispered. ‘We’ve got to get Merit and go.’

  She narrowed her eyes at him. Licked her lips.

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘Gonna tell on you …’ she sang her words, ‘… gonna tell.’

  He hated the way she gazed at him and how the lightning flashed against her bared teeth. He wondered if blood might suddenly come trickling between the gaps and tumble over her chin, and in the light, he thought he saw her eyeballs start to shrink into slits. He stumbled back as she reached out a clawed hand. Then he hurried to the door as the others screamed and wailed in their chaos. He looked back at the vestry, desperate to find Merit and to call for Mum, but he ached to call Dust most of all. But the fear of his uncle scrambling out on all fours was sure to throw Ever into total madness. It’d be impossible to bear such a sight. So, he pushed the door open. It took both hands and before he knew it, he was out.

  He avoided the gravel path, because he knew more Hollows would come that way. A whole army of them were probably crawling here right now, just for this final, brutal and cruel moment. So he turned left instead, where a dark wood ran alongside a field. He bolted towards the swaying, shaking trees and was battered with rain, assaulted by thunder and blinded with flashes of light. The Father was throwing the entire universe at him, trying to stop the escape. Behind him, he could hear that their screams were changing. They sounded different now, which meant the Hollow must have won. He tried to fight the image of their spines splitting through their skins and those long black ears (maybe they were horns) cracking up through their skulls, as they stood as they really were. Then he froze inside, when he heard the smack of wood against stone.

  The church door was flinging back, and his family howled his name.

  Ever … Ever … Eveeeerrrrrrr.

  He screamed as he ran. In fact, he screamed a great deal. But mostly … mostly he wept.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Wren tapped the lever for her windscreen wipers, hoping she might increase the speed they turned. But they were stuck at their top clip, which on any normal day was more than enough. Yet on the night that an entire ocean fell from the sky, they could barely keep up.

  She’d had the radio on at first. She’d hoped it might help scrub away those echoes of Eddie, but all this storm-of-the-decade talk was starting to freak her out. At least she knew it was pointless to turn back and go home. She’d come too far for that. So she turned off the doom-voice of the radio because the rain was getting too loud to hear it properly anyway and splashed the car through bottomless puddles. For most of the journey, the weather hadn’t been quite so epic. Yes, it was stormy and dramatic, but nothing that threatened to stop her car. It was just when she turned into Chervil that the sky seemed to click into full chaos. She looked up at it now and saw the amazingly frequent flashes of white. Each burst of light lit up the fast and frightening clouds that were swirling around the world. Like something from a sci-fi epic, projected on the biggest screen she’d ever seen.

  A large, substantial part of her deeply regretted coming here and there were moments when she cursed her stubborn insistence on proving a point to Matt. Her principles might well put her in a wet ditch. But the intermittent satnav told her she was now only a mile down the road from the church, and she figured she’d be better off getting there to wait out the storm with Miriam.

  The glow of her lights picked out a long low wall to the right, stacked with rocks and large stones. Then she saw a huge beast of a puddle taking up almost the entire dirt track. There was no way she was driving through that, so she slowed down and aimed for the little ridge. She swung to the right and the ridge pushed her front end up. Her beams spilt across the field an
d picked something out at the end of it. She saw a row of dense woodland, but what made her stop dead and stare across the wide field was something else entirely.

  Someone was running through the trees at the other side.

  It was a small figure, leaping over logs and racing between tree trunks. Whoever it was kept looking back over their shoulder, like they were being chased. The wipers weren’t fast enough to clear the view, so she flicked up her parka hood and opened up the door. The roaring hiss of rain blasted her eardrums, but she stepped out anyway and stood as high as she could, one hand cupped over her eyebrows like a visor. Which is when she gasped.

  God.

  It was a boy. A terrified little boy was running through the trees and he wasn’t even wearing a coat. Just a flimsy, sodden sweatshirt from the looks of it. She looked to her right and left and saw nothing but the gaping black void of a road hanging in space. Until the heavens flashed, and the Crooked Church announced itself with a heart-stopping, Gothic crash. It was less than half a mile up, standing proud and twisted on the hill. This was what the boy was running from.

  She couldn’t drive to him; the wall stood in the way. She’d have to hop over it instead. She kept her headlights shining, and though the glow only barely reached the woodland on the other side it was enough to make him out. She swung her jeans over the piled stone and slapped her boots into the mud of the field.

  A horrifying fork of lightning fired across the church again and she wondered if those bright fingers were trying to find her. The laser guns of heaven, taking closer and closer shots at their target. She closed her eyes every time the blind, giant, clumsy forks of light jabbed their way across the field, fumbling to find her as she ran towards the now-screaming boy.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Ever gasped for air as he staggered through an entire army of shuddering, shaking trees. Tall trunks towered above him and he could hear them whispering to each other to get him, to slow him down. The wind joined in, whirling leaves and twigs so they slapped into his face and made him squint. Now that he was out in the Hollow world, he was starting to see that the rules were different. These trees would probably bend over and crouch with a creak. They’d slip their sharp fingers through his hair and hold him in place for Hope and the other new Hollows.

  He winced. This was too much to bear.

  He kept looking back over his shoulder, but it was way too dark to see any sort of movement. Then something happened that made him shriek. He saw a pair of car headlights swing around a bend. All he could think to do was to keep running. Then the headlights slowed and turned. Like vast eyes, they scanned across the field, and stopped … on him.

  ‘Jesus, Jesus.’ He upped his pace. ‘Help me.’

  He heard a car door opening.

  The headlights were too bright to make out what was behind it, until he saw a sight that almost floored him it was so shocking. The Hollow in the car had seen him. Of course it had, and now it was slithering over the wall so it could run at him, across the field.

  That’s when he slowed down and burst into tears. That’s when he decided it was time to give up. But then the sob was scooped up with a thick arm. It slid around his stomach and pulled him close. He went to kick, but the figure behind him spoke.

  ‘Ever, it’s me,’ Milton said. ‘Calm down.’

  He turned to see the old man. He looked normal. His eyes as kind as ever.

  ‘I thought we’d lost you, Big Man.’

  ‘Are … are you okay? Are you still …’

  ‘Still me?’ Somehow in the madness he laughed. ‘I’ll die before I turn Hollow.’

  Ever lifted his finger and pointed across the field. ‘There’s one of them now.’

  Milton groaned in shock when he saw the female demon staggering across the field.

  Another voice crackled from the darkness. It was Hope, panting but looking … normal. ‘We have to get back to the church,’ she gasped. ‘Right now.’

  ‘But … but … Uncle Dust … he says you lied. About Zara.’

  ‘Listen … your Uncle Dust looked at the Hollow’s eyes for too long. That’s all.’

  ‘You all looked at it.’

  ‘We’re fine, but we have to get back cos … look … that one’s getting closer!’ Hope pointed across the field. The Hollow was halfway across, wading through thick mud.

  It called out suddenly, ‘Get off him, let him go,’ in a horribly human-sounding trick-voice.

  ‘See?’ Hope whispered. ‘They want you. They know you’re the only one to stop this. And they’re going to take you away and hurt you every day for eternity. Look at how it calls for you …’

  The Hollow was getting closer, but it was slowing and out of breath.

  ‘And Ever, I know about this one. It’s a nasty, cruel demon. Got twenty kids in her cellar, and she goes down every night just to rip off their toenails.’

  Ever could barely breathe.

  ‘And when she’s finished with the toenails she takes the fingers as well. And when she’s finished with the fingers, she takes the tongues …’

  Ever turned to her and burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry. Take me back, take me back.’

  She nodded to Milton. ‘Take him to Prosper and don’t wait for me. Get this finished now. I’ll stop her.’

  ‘Just leave her.’

  ‘I can’t you idiot. Look at her hand.’

  ‘It’s glowing,’ Ever said, shocked at their powers.

  ‘It’s a phone. She’s calling the police. Now move!’

  The sky cracked again as Milton ran with Ever, back the way they came. As they headed to the church, he kept sobbing and saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ But he stopped to hear Hope calling out to him over the rain, just before she ran to the Hollow. And her words made him better. Just a little.

  ‘Jesus loves you, Ever,’ she said. ‘Never forget that. Do his will and he’ll make this right.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Wren watched the man rush back through the trees, the crying kid locked in his arms. She cupped her hands and shouted through the rain. ‘Get off him, let him go.’

  The boy looked back, but the man only ran faster.

  She quickly grabbed her phone and tried to tap out 999 again, but the screen became instantly wet, and it must have affected the sensitivity. None of the numbers worked. Desperate, she wiped it against her jeans and went to call out again, which was when it fully sank in. The woman wasn’t going with the man and the boy. She’d actually started a mad sprint across the mud, running so fast that she didn’t seem to get slowed by it, not like Wren had. This woman was skimming across the very tip of the squelch and was somehow never bogged down. That was shock enough, to see a woman come pounding towards you in a rain-soaked field. But what made Wren’s heart stop, for a long beat or two, was when the lightning flashed again and lit up the field like a photo shoot from hell.

  It was Miriam.

  Eyes wide, mouth screaming, wet hair slimed against her cheeks.

  At first, Wren was so horrified and confused by all this that all she could do was slowly walk backwards, slipping in the mud. Then the lightning flashed again, because the world seemed keen that she see Miriam open her mouth and scream out her name.

  Wrennnnnnnnnnn.

  She was getting closer, moving at a freakish pace. The thunder boomed loud enough to knock Wren over. But she managed not to fall down. She just pulled her trainer free from the ground with a loud sucking sound, her mind an impossible jumble of shock.

  And ran.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Hands, many of them, pressed Matt to his knees, then the cold wood of the Communion altar hammered off his cheekbone.

  Funny how life can throw up certain mockeries, he thought. The last time he knelt behind a Communion table he was all collared up, praying over the sacred offering of bread and wine. Jesus’s body, Jesus’s blood. Since he jumped the church-ship he’d never expected to take part in such a ritual ever again. And now here he was, at the
most literal Communion service he’d ever attended, not just as a participant but as the integral elements themselves. There’d be no wine and no bread at this Lord’s supper.

  Only real blood and real flesh.

  His.

  The sheer, mind-fuck bizarreness of this entire experience was something he hoped he could mentally process later – he told himself there would be a ‘later’, over and over – but for now, he just kept his cheek where they told him, and tried like mad to figure out a plan. His first attempts at a solution had been feeble so far. He’d kicked and struggled against the cable ties, but it didn’t work. At one point in the aisle he even tried to nut one of these maniacs, but he got punched in the stomach and dragged back in place. So, he tried conversation instead. He’d always been a good schmoozer. Great at parties, was Matt Hunter. Always worth putting him on your list. But every time he opened his mouth he got whacked in the face until they decided to be done with it and slapped a chunk of black gaffer tape across his lips. Now it was impossible for him to clearly say stuff like ‘Had a nice Christmas?’ Or ‘Do you come here often?’ Or ‘I have a family, please, please, please … let me go …’

  He had no idea where Miriam was. That guy Milton and Dust were gone too. But he did see Verity. She stood there looking at him, only because of the angle of his head he saw her at a strict ninety degrees. Sometimes she was smiling, sometimes not, and now and again she shivered as if frozen with snow. She seemed to flit between Verity in the cult and Jess in the alleyway, like a flickering old bulb. It chilled him to see it.

  That habit they had, of changing their names, wasn’t uncommon in groups like this. The whole name changeroo happened in the Bible all the time. God got a kick out of taking a Simon and making him a Peter, a Saul and making him a Paul. There was something powerful in the forging of new identities. It helped with the brainwashing side of cults, too. A key tactic was to give their members an identity that was impossible to define apart from the group. Course they always picked religious-sounding names. You never got a James becoming a Fred, for example. It was always Malachi this or Joshua that, or in this group’s case Puritan names, based on virtues like Blessing or Peace.