Anathema (19 page)

On that day, none of them spoke as they tromped through the woods, except to ask Pastor Timothy what they might expect, or how close they were to its lair. Of course, Timothy had no answers for those questions. On the few occasions they did speak, Jarvis noticed there was a strange look in the twins’ eyes, They were vacant and distant, like they were in this world, but gazed into another. Jarvis saw the same look in his parents’ eyes just before they were swallowed up by the monster. And this morning, Jim had the same look in his eyes as they stood on his front porch. Was Jim Anderson heading to his doom? Were they all nearing the brink of death?

"Jarvis? Are you okay?” Jim asked.

Jarvis nodded. “I'm fine.” He touched his cheek and realized he was crying.

"We need to stop a sec, I need to plant another charge."

Jarvis wiped his tears away and gave the group an embarrassing smile. No one said anything. They all understood, but Pastor Timothy smiled back. There were tears in his eyes as well.

Jim unwrapped another bomb, squatted, and wedged it between a pair of stones. He set the timer for ninety minutes. As he stood, he spied movement to his left. A dark, shapeless figure scurried through the thorns and brambles.

"Did you see that?” Jim asked.

"No.” Jarvis looked over his shoulder. “But I heard
something
."

"Whatdaya think it was?"

"Dunno, but I don't wanna hang around to find out."

"Amen to that,” the preacher affirmed.

Jim threw the duffel over his shoulder, and the weary group moved forward.

As they moved deeper into the woods and closer to the cave, the air was heavier and the stench stronger. Foliage began to die. Leaves were curled and yellow. Seen from a bird's eye, the most severely affected parts of the woods began at the cave. From this point, death spiraled outward. The further away the spiral turned from the center, the healthier the trees and brush became. But it was apparent, given time, the decay would eventually dominate all of the woodland.

Jim became aware that, other than the mysterious shape in the brambles that seemed to be following them, there was no other wildlife present—not a rabbit, a deer, a rodent, or even something as annoying as a mosquito. Nor were there any signs that proved animals ever existed here. The woods were poison.

He paused again to place the second to the last charge. This one just a few yards from the cave's entrance. When he was finished, he noticed everyone gazing through the skeletal branches of the treetops.

A heavy, dark cloud rolled across the sky. Its blackness so complete no light could penetrate it. As it moved, it sucked the color from its surroundings, turning everything a monochromic gray.

"What the hell is that?” Jim asked, shading his eyes with his hand to get a better look. “Doesn't look like any cloud I've ever seen."

"It's Darkness,” Pastor Timothy muttered. “Lord, help us now."

The cloud folded in on itself, as if invisible hands were kneading it like dough. And in that swirling, massive cloud, they saw the smiling face of Evil.

It started as a black, pencil-thin line across the horizon. Like a vampire, it grew huge and strong by sucking the life force from the living as it crept across the sky.

Birds fell to the ground, shriveled, and mummified. Wildlife dropped dead in their tracks and rotted to dust in an instant. Trees became barren as the leaves yellowed and dropped from their branches. The cloud continued to feed and grow until it was as black as obsidian.

Near the quarry where Vince met his demise, it sent down thick, twirling tendrils. These tendrils would be picked up and reported by local and national weather services as a cluster of funnel activity. But these were much more than just a few small tornadoes.

The tendrils broke free of its parent and slithered across the ground like oversized snakes. As they moved, they grew in girth until they melded together into a great, oily pool that slowly spread across the landscape.

The black cloud rolled on, preparing to drop its next batch of children near Miller's woods.

Darkness had arrived, and it came with chaos.

Chapter 27

Larry Taft loaded the last of his stuff in the back of his Cutlass, closed the trunk, and slid into the driver's seat. He didn't bother locking his house; if anyone wanted it, they were welcomed to it. He had to get the hell out of Dodge.

Fast.

Jarvis was right. He should've adhered to his late father's wish and never sold the Miller place, no matter how much money was involved. Since the sale, the town has been going to hell. Granted, the things that've been happening were small—exploding light bulbs, cracks appearing in the sidewalks, the asphalt of Main Street buckling—but the frequency at which they'd been happening was weird. Strange coincidences? Taft didn't think so.

But even more frightening to Taft was the thought he might be losing his mind.

He heard things.

Voices.

Children's voices.

Bad voices.

And, oh, the things they told him to do. Like rape his secretary. Burn down the reality office, kill Bob Wright, his next-door neighbor. All for no reason whatsoever. A couple of times, he actually thought about doing those things and ... he liked it.

Then there were the dreams. His sleep was haunted by women. Not the
va-va-va-voom,
big-tittied, pouty lipped sluts that danced at the Wolff's Den in the next county, but old crones with gray, papery skin that stank of shit and decay. They'd come to him, wrap themselves around him, love him. On more than one occasion, he'd wake up to find the sheets sticky with semen and he'd have an erection so hard it hurt.

Last night, the whores came again. This time, when he climaxed, it wasn't semen that spurted from him. It was blood, and when he woke, the sheets were stained red.

He scrambled out of bed. His entire body was bloody. The sheets, blankets, and mattress were saturated. There was so much blood. How could one person lose so much and still be alive?

Larry stripped off the bedding, and his eyes grew as large as saucers as he dropped to his knees in disbelief. His stomach did a couple of flip-flops just before he threw up last night's dinner.

The foot of the bed was caked with dirt and sand, leaves and pine needles.

And strips of putrefied flesh.

Human flesh.

Taft started the car's engine and shook a cigarette from its pack. He'd given up the nasty habit about fifteen years ago, but after his horrific discovery, the first thing he did was go to Cal's to pick up a couple of packs of Pall Malls. He was surprised to see the orange and black closed sign hanging in the window of the Gas-n-Go when he arrived. Cal never closed up shop unless it was for a good reason. Maybe he was sick. Or he overslept. Or he was unknowingly doing the mattress mumbo with a couple of decaying chicks (Larry was sure such a hideous pleasure wasn't reserved just for him). Or maybe he was dead. Nothing would really surprise Taft anymore.

The fact that the doors to the Gas-n-Go were locked was no great shake. There was another convenience store on the outskirts of town, just off route seventeen. He'd just do his business there. If they didn't have Pall Malls, that'd be okay. Viceroys, Winstons, Chesterfields, or any other brand would be just fine.

Of the two packs he bought, there were only a half dozen cigarettes left. As soon as he was out of town, he'd stop at the first place he saw and buy a whole case of cancer sticks. If he was going to die, it would be on his terms, not because of some kind of ghosts in a haunted, backwoods, bumfuck town.

The car bottomed-out on the street and sent a shower of bright orange sparks to the pavement as Taft backed out of the driveway. Shifting the Cutlass into DRIVE, he sped down the street and turned right onto Chesterwood Lane, heading toward Main Street. There were other ways out of town. He could've continued on Chesterwood and came out by the strip mall near the quarry, or instead of turning right, took a left and hooked up with the freeway. But the way he chose was the quickest, most direct way out.

The homes that lined Chesterwood were all brightly painted, but the odd cloud that had suddenly appeared overhead made the colors look washed out. It was like looking at a world on a color television whose picture tube and color adjustment was shot. Reds were pinks; blues were green; oranges and yellows were a muddy brown.

As Taft cruised down Main Street almost twice as fast as the posted fifteen miles per hour, he passed the Sew What!, and it occurred to him he hadn't seen the two lesbos that ran the place for quite some time. He'd always see them walk past the reality office about noon as they headed to the Hamburger Hut for lunch. Maybe they had the same idea and hightailed it out of town as well. He remembered the last time he walked past the boutique, there was an awful stink, like spoiled meat, coming from it. He had intended to report it to the sheriff, but had forgotten about it until now. The stench coming through the car's ventilation system helped him remember. This triggered another thought: he hadn't seen old lady Hapcord for a while, either. That old bitch was always getting her face into places it didn't belong. She always thought she was better than anyone else in town. Maybe the lesbians had gotten fed up with Edna's holier-than-thou attitude and had their way with her in the back room.

Taft chuckled nervously at the thought. He was more right than he could've imagined.

Suddenly, the steering wheel spun in Taft's hands. The car squealed over the center line.

"What the hell?” he muttered. The stub of his cigarette dangled from his lips, and ribbons of gray smoke curled from the corners of his mouth.

He yanked the car back on track.

The wheel spun again, and there was a thud as the left side of the car jumped the curb. Now the Cutlass traveled down the street, half-on and half-off the sidewalk.

Taft struggled to reposition the car, but it wouldn't move. With both feet, he slammed on the brakes. The pedal went to the floor, but the car didn't slow. Now the accelerator pressed to the floor. The engine screamed as it picked up speed: twenty, thirty, forty-five miles per hour.

A panicked Taft leaned forward and clawed at the gas pedal. It had become attached to the car. The cigarette fell from his mouth, dropped into his lap, and smoldered there until it burned itself out.

He sat back up and stared out the windshield. Taft watched the utility pole as it grew from a toothpick into a wooden monolith.

Just before it filled his vision, Taft brought his hands to his face and prepared for impact.

It was impossible to separate Taft's screams from the sound of crumpling metal as the Cutlass wrapped around the pole.

As the windshield shattered, thousand of diamond-like glass pieces peppered the real estate agent. The engine was pushed back through the firewall, pinning him against the back of the seat. He heard a muffled pop as the pressure broke his ribs, and smelled cooked flesh as the hot engine sizzled against his arm. The steering column was pushed forward, and Taft was impaled on the stock. It ripped through his chest, then tore through the back of the driver's seat.

Gore spurted from his mouth like a garden fountain. One of his eyes popped from its socket and dangled on the end of reddish-blue tissue. Rich, black blood bubbled from the chest wound with each beat of his stressed, failing heart.

The rear of the car lifted off the ground, then fell back down, blowing out the tires when it slammed against the pavement. The trunk popped open. Steam hissed from under the hood.

At the point of impact, which was about waist high, the timber splintered. Sounding like broken bones, wooden daggers broke away from the rest of the shaft. Now there was a twist. More snapping and popping. And with a groan of a tired, old whore, the utility pole began to fall,
whooshing
through the air like a knight's sword.

It landed squarely in the center of the car's roof and, sounding like a bottle being uncorked, the rest of the windows blew out, covering Main Street with glass pellets.

The pole made a deep V-shape in the metal, and Taft, who was already pinned to the seat like a beetle in a bug collection, felt the weight of it crush his skull. He heard the crack of bone as his head split in two. He felt the viscosity of his brain as it oozed through the opening. He felt his heart stop. But just before his brain shut down, he saw the faces of the children staring at him through the crushed windshield.

Bob Wright was about to cook himself a late breakfast and watch the second half of
The Price Is Right
when the crash rattled his windows.

"Jesus-jumped-up-Christ!” Bob croaked with a voice roughened by too many years of unfiltered cigarettes. He tottered out to the porch.

Dressed in a pair of bright red boxers and a matching sleeveless undershirt, his belly stuck out in front of him like a semi-inflated basketball. His spindle legs were the color of chalk and as smooth as plastic. If there was a stripped nightcap on his bald head, he'd look just like one of those cement lawn gnomes people so fondly displayed on their front yards.

Bob squinted and looked toward the quarry, but without his glasses, everything was a big, soft blur.

In Bob's realm of life, failing vision was one of the three curses of growing old. First was the loss of hair, an affliction that made its appearance in Bob's life when he was only thirty-two. Second, the loss of vision, and third, and most devastating according to the Big Book of Bob, was that your pecker stayed as limp as an overcooked noodle all the time. He'd already suffered the first two and had a feeling the third wasn't far behind.

But despite his diminished sight, he was able to make out colors and familiar shapes. Now, as he scanned the street, he saw nothing unusual and assumed a bunch of hoodlums were probably raising hell at the quarry. Damn kids. Neighborhood was fine when they were little, but now they're just out of control. Running ‘til all hours of the night. Bustin’ things. Disrespecting elders. When he was a boy, his father would've tanned his ass with the belt if he misbehaved. Nowadays, parents were afraid to discipline their own kids. Children's rights. Bob never heard of such a steaming crock in all his fifty-seven years. In his day, children's rights were dictated by the parents, not the government. But that's what happens when you let a bunch of bleedin’ heart fairies run the country.