The Travelling Man (34 page)

She moved along the long hallway until she reached the staircase. She stopped in her tracks as she suddenly caught a sound coming from below. She instinctively ducked down behind the banister and peered through the railings as a figure emerged from the kitchen. She could hear the steady clack of sensible shoes and Mrs. Fiorentino passed beneath her clutching a shiny cleaver. The sight of the silver blade out of its natural environment sent a shiver down her spine and terror tickled at the back of her neck as small hairs stood involuntarily up on end.

She waited until the landlady had passed out of sight and, despite her gnawing fear, she knew that she had to follow. Something told her that her friends were in trouble and she tried to think of her mother and what she would do. Unfortunately, she lacked her mother’s size and power; she could only hope that she had inherited her smartness.

She had to lean heavily on the railing as she descended the stairs, praying that they wouldn’t creak even under her tender weight. When she reached the bottom, she followed in the same direction as the landlady and found a door beneath the staircase. She pried at the opening slowly and carefully. There was a set of stone steps leading down into the dark and Ellie had to take a deep breath before she entered.

Her immediate reaction was to recoil at the smell wafting up out of the dark. Once, several years ago, there had been a cat that used to come around the house. The thing was a ginger tom that hissed and scratched at anyone that came near it; everyone except Ellie. For some reason, the cat used to come and sit on her lap in the backyard. She’d tickled it under the chin and fed it milk from a saucer, but every night it would leave and it would never come into the house no matter how hard she tried to tempt it. Then, all of sudden, it had just stopped coming around. A day had gone by, followed by a week and then two. At first she had been heartbroken at the desertion but then, after her mother had explained the nature of wild cats, she had started to accept the loss. The smell had started maybe two weeks after the cat’s last appearance. It was a sickly putrid smell that rolled around her insides and stuck to her hair and clothes. Eventually, her mother had pulled the cat from under the house where it had got stuck; it had starved to death with shock and terror at its own predicament. The same smell now floated up from the basement; it was one of fatality and fear.

She moved downwards as carefully as she could muster. Her legs felt weak and her stomach rolled over at the smell emanating from beneath her, but she pressed on with her mother’s face at the forefront of her mind. The closer that she got to the bottom of the steps, the more certain she was that she could hear somebody moving about in the darkness. A faint glowing light shone out from around a corner and she crept towards it, trying hard to ignore the fear.

She reached the edge of the wall as the dirt floor rounded the bend and she could hear the worrying sound of metal clashing against metal. She risked a peek out and saw Mrs. Fiorentino shrouded in the shadowy light of a single lantern, sharpening the cleaver with expert precision. The woman was dimly lit and most of the basement was covered in darkness. As the landlady paused for a moment, Ellie could hear an odd sound of creaking metal as though something heavy was swaying from side to side.

Mrs. Fiorentino placed the silver cleaver down on a table, which had been wheeled into the room leaving twin sets of tracks in the dirt floor. She leaned forward and picked up the cloudy looking glass lantern, holding it up at shoulder height. Now Ellie could see the object of the landlady’s interest and a hand flew to her mouth to prevent a scream spewing forth.

Kevin, Jeanne, and a man that she recognised as Mr. Lesnar from the mine due to his oddly shaped body, all hung upside down, suspended by their ankles from hooks in the low ceiling. There were other vague shadows of diminishing size, and shapes hanging in similar positions surrounding the small dimly lit circle, but Ellie was glad that the lighting was so poor as she had no desire to lay her eyes upon them.

Mrs. Fiorentino was humming merrily to herself as she inspected her quarry; the sound only added to the creepy sight before Ellie’s young eyes.

“You’re awake, I see,” Mrs. Fiorentino said to Kevin as the big man stirred.

“What are you doing?” he slurred in reply.

“Just a little preparation,” the woman replied politely.

Jim Lesnar stirred back to consciousness from his hanging position. His wounds had been dressed and the buckshot from the shotgun removed from his chest and shoulder.

“And Mr. Lesnar, too,” the landlady noted.

Ellie could see the misshapen man’s body as he was stripped of his shirt. He bucked and writhed against his chains, tendons straining and eyes blazing. She initially assumed that his anger was at his restraints but Ellie could see his anger rise as he noticed Jeanne on a hook between him and Kevin.

“Let me go, you crazy bitch!” the mine owner spat in rage. “You have no idea just who you are messing with. I am the anointed one. I am the chosen and he will rain furious anger down upon your blasphemy!”

“Oh, I don’t think so, my dear,” Mrs. Fiorentino tutted. “My visions were quite clear when God spoke to me, and so were his instructions,” she smiled.

“How dare you!” Mr. Lesnar yelled in a shocked tone. “I have been selected as Mr. Grange’s replacement; he has laid his hand upon my shoulder and chosen me. You filthy whore, you’ll pay the price in blood and screams. I am the light, I am the future, I am the divine, I am…”

His words were cut short and turned into a gurgle of choking blood as Mrs. Fiorentino stepped forwards and neatly slit his throat with a long thin blade. Ellie couldn’t tear her eyes away from Mr. Lesnar as his face crumpled into shock and panic as though he was discovering that he was only a secondary character in someone else’s story and not the lead as he had thought.

Ellie looked on as the landlady tore open Kevin’s shirt, exposing his large muscles but fragile flesh. Mrs. Fiorentino poked and prodded like a butcher examining a prize pig, looking for the tender morsels. She plucked a small boning knife from a collection of sharp looking implements lying next to the cleaver on the portable table. Ellie wracked her brain for a diversion as Mrs. Fiorentino used the small blade to carve small lines along Kevin’s waist.

“So tough,” the landlady mused, shaking her head. “All sinew and muscle and no juicy fat.”

She moved along to Lesnar and examined him the same way, again shaking her head regretfully. “Like old mutton, but this little piggy,” she said, turning to Jeanne in the middle, “this little piggy is just right.”

Ellie fought the rising tide of panic as Mrs. Fiorentino tore open the dispatcher’s blouse, exposing soft and tender flesh. Ellie could only pray that Jeanne was unconscious and not dead. There didn’t appear to be any visible wounds on her and her mouth was taped. Ellie quickly surmised that there would be no need for the gag if the woman was already dead.

Kevin started strain hard against his bonds. “DON’T YOU TOUCH HER!” he roared. “YOU LEAVE HER ALONE!”

Mrs. Fiorentino ignored him and started to squeeze Jeanne’s breasts and sides. “Very nice,” she nodded appreciatively.

Ellie tried desperately to think of something, but her ears were full of the thick blood from Mr. Lesnar’s throat still dripping onto the floor. Jeanne’s eyes suddenly snapped open as Mrs. Fiorentino poked her somewhere especially sensitive, and they were immediately filled with sheer terror. She turned her head and saw Lesnar hanging next to her and she began screaming from behind her taped mouth. Ellie saw the woman’s eyes fill with tears as she swung her head in the other direction and saw Kevin suspended next to her.

“Well hello, sleepy head,” Mrs. Fiorentino smiled. “So nice of you to join us.”

At that point, Ellie knew that she had to find something, anything, to stop the madness. She crept backwards and headed quickly back into the house. She ran from room to room, desperately trying to find inspiration. There were no weapons, there was no power, no telephone to use and no one to call in any case. She tried to ignore the aches in her failing body and to still the violent coughs in her reedy chest.

She ran into the main drawing room and saw an old gramophone. Her grandmother had owned a similar model, favoring the crackly sounds over modern technology. Once, during an electrical storm that had knocked out power all over town, they had spent an evening listening to her old records rotating beneath the needle.

There were a multitude of vinyl records stacked neatly alongside it and only one caught her eye. If the crazy landlady thought that she was on a mission from God, then perhaps he should put in an appearance.

CHAPTER 22

here there be dragons

Jeanne struggled uselessly against her restraints. One minute she had been looking out over a red sky lit evening, and the next she was hanging by her ankles with a mad woman armed with a bunch of vicious looking kitchen knives.

She had recognised poor Jim Lesnar hanging dead next to her and that had been horrific enough, but her heart had screamed in protest when she’d seen Kevin on her other side. Mrs. Fiorentino had torn open her blouse and delicately snipped away her bra and Jeanne was painfully aware of her nakedness in such close proximity to Kevin. It wasn’t that she hadn’t often thought of them together in an intimate manner, but this was hardly the most romantic of settings. She couldn’t see Ellie and prayed that the girl was safe.

Mrs. Fiorentino moved in close but the masking tape around Jeanne’s mouth made it impossible to speak or even scream out loud. The landlady’s face was a mask of careful concentration, devoid of anger and only full of a job to do.

Jeanne felt the touch of steel press into her side and Kevin roared again in wild rage but Mrs. Fiorentino paid no attention. Something creaked in the ceiling above him and Jeanne caught sight of plaster dust falling as Kevin strained with all of his considerable might. She could see that, given enough time, Kevin might be able to wrench himself free from his shackles, but there was no time. Jeanne flinched and tried to swing out of the way of the blade but Mrs. Fiorentino caught her firmly by the belt loop on her pants and held her steady.

“Now, now, my dear,” the landlady hushed. “We don’t want to spoil the meat with all of those terrible fear hormones, now do we?”

Jeanne could see no way out of her own death and subsequent carving; that was until the air was filled with the echoes of gospel music. The song crackled and whined as the music filtered downwards through the darkness. High-pitched choir voices were praising God in his heavens and Mrs. Fiorentino suddenly stopped in her tracks and tilted her head to one side like a dog hearing a whistle.

“Is that you, Lord?” the landlady asked in awed tones.

“When I think of what I've done today
That I should not have done today
When I think of what I thought today
That I should not have thought today

Lord I thank You for mercy
Lord I thank You for mercy
Lord I thank You for mercy, today.”

The music sounded old and the voices eerie as they drifted through the blackness around them. Jeanne heard the metallic clatter as Mrs. Fiorentino dropped the knife and it struck the table on the way down. The landlady turned and started to walk slowly towards the singing voices, with her hands clasped against her chest in silent prayer. Jeanne held her breath tightly in her lungs, hoping that the distraction would be enough.

Kevin took the opportunity to start swinging himself from side to side. He heaved his large frame with every ounce of strength and Jeanne heard the beam above him start to creak and splinter. She barely had time to wonder just how Mrs. Fiorentino had managed to hoist them up in the first place, but suddenly Kevin was flying off to the side as the metal hook holding him in place tore free of its moorings. He crashed to the ground and Jeanne heard him grunt as he hit the floor hard and something broke.

She heard him moving out of her sight line and then she was being lifted up and free of her own hook. His hands had been bound behind his back like hers and so he turned around and put her shoulders in his hands as he hoisted her upwards. Once the rope around her ankles was free of the hook, she fell forward over his shoulder and he set her down gently. She hopped over to the table where the knives were sitting and grabbed the first one that she could get hold of. “Back into me, slowly,” she told Kevin and he followed her instructions.

She felt for his rope and cut through as carefully as she could until he broke free. They were both free of their bonds quickly after and Kevin double-checked that Lesnar was dead, he was. She threw herself into Kevin’s welcoming embrace and kissed him fiercely. He winced in her arms and she pulled away quickly, worried by his pained expression as he leaned heavily to one side.

“Ellie!” she suddenly remembered and they both moved for the steps to follow Mrs. Fiorentino.

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Ellie made sure not to crank the gramophone too much so that the record played slightly too slowly and added to the ghostly nature of the music. She’d turned the volume up as loud as the machine would go and the house had been filled with the off-speed choir.

She kept a vigil by the door, waiting and hoping that the landlady would hear the music and come to investigate. Her prayers were rewarded when she saw the woman emerging from the basement; her face was filled with a strange expression of joy and fear.

Ellie kept to the shadows out of sight and waited for Mrs. Fiorentino to pass by towards the drawing room. She eased herself out of her hiding space and tiptoed back towards the basement steps in the hope of saving Deputy Kevin and Jeanne.

She reached the doorway when, inexplicably, a hand clamped down hard on her shoulder. Mrs. Fiorentino had been at least 20 feet away from her when she’d checked only a split second before and yet the woman had covered the distance in only the blink of an eye.

Ellie turned back around in terror and stared into the eyes of madness incarnate. Her shoulder was screaming in agony as Mrs. Fiorentino’s fingers dug into the tender flesh.

“Wicked child!” the woman hissed. “A spawn of Satan sent to stay the hand of God and prevent his servant from her duties.”

Ellie squirmed under the steely, vice-like grip and the dancing light in the woman’s eyes.

Suddenly, a large hand exploded out of the doorway and took hold of the landlady’s wrist. Ellie gasped in relief as Mrs. Fiorentino released her grip and she shrank away as Deputy Kevin staggered out of the darkness. He looked the worse for wear and one arm hung loosely at his side, but he was a big powerful man and he towered over the landlady.

“Now you’re in trouble,” Ellie told the woman angrily.

“Stupid child,” Mrs. Fiorentino laughed.

Ellie looked on in shock as the old woman grabbed hold of Kevin’s forearm and threw him across the hallway with effortless ease. He smashed into a tall cabinet with glass doors which shattered under the impact. Jeanne stepped out next and ran at Mrs. Fiorentino, screaming a fierce battle cry, but the older woman swung a swift backhand and Jeanne’s nose crumpled under the impact.

Ellie could see now just how the landlady had been able to heft her prey onto the hooks in the basement. For some reason, Mrs. Fiorentino had been imbued with superhero strength, but she wasn’t trying to save the world; rather, she was trying to end it.

Ellie kicked out with what strength she had left and struck Mrs. Fiorentino hard on the shin, but the woman didn’t seem to notice. Ellie cried out as the woman grabbed her around the throat and lifted her up off the floor to eye level.

“I am God’s chosen light on earth and I have his power,” Mrs. Fiorentino declared proudly. “I am his word and I will be his hand.”

There was a flash from behind as Kevin limped over and smashed a sturdy chair across Mrs. Fiorentino’s back. The wood exploded into shattered pieces but the landlady didn’t blink. Instead, she flicked out her spare hand sending the deputy tumbling backwards. Jeanne plunged a knife taken from the basement’s selection into the woman’s back, but again Mrs. Fiorentino didn’t seem to notice or care.

Ellie started to choke as the grip around her throat tightened, and then the hand started to loosen ever so slowly. She slid down to the floor gasping and coughing just as she heard Kevin start to thunder across the hallway towards them in one final attempt to slay the dragon. Ellie tried to cry out that Mrs. Fiorentino’s strength was gone; wherever it had come from, it had been snatched away just as quickly. She tried to tell Deputy Kevin but her throat was too scorched from the choking and words wouldn’t flow.

Kevin charged with a wooden lance outstretched in front of him, a broken leg of the chair complete with a jagged tip. Ellie rolled to one side and dragged Jeanne with her. She kept her face away from the impact zone as she could tell that it wasn’t going to end well.

The sound was horrific as the chair leg pierced Mrs. Fiorentino’s back and exploded wetly out of the front. Kevin had put every single fibre of his being into the blow but he was no longer facing a super human; now, it was an elderly landlady, frail and fragile.

Ellie kept her eyes tightly closed as Mrs. Fiorentino was sent spinning through the doorway and tumbling into the darkness below. She felt her way to the door and closed it, “Here there be dragons,” she whispered, remembering a bedtime story book that her mother used to read to her. “Or at least, there were.”

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Matt Kravis hated the plan. It seemed like it could have no possible chance of success and yet he was following it as instructed. Cassie seemed to have that effect on him; it was an emotion that he hadn’t felt since his sister had died and he’d given his life to this journey.

The red rain still fell heavily, making it almost impossible to see much more than a few feet in front of you. The sky overhead was a portent of doom as lilac lightning flashed across the blood sky, a sky that seemed to have fallen considerably in the past hour alone. The world around them was unquestionably shrinking and they would soon wink out of existence.

The monster that now called himself Gilbert Grange may be coming to an end but he seemed determined to take them all down with him. Granton had been sucked into a black pit of literal and metaphorical despair. All Kravis wanted was to see the thing that had murdered his sister pay for its crimes; the only trouble was that he had no idea just how to make that happen. This thing seemed capable of twisting the very fabric of reality and living beyond the realms of mortality and all Kravis had was hope.

He slipped away unnoticed from the fading battle as stamina ran low and blood ran freely. He edged his way through the church grounds and past the cemetery. Thankfully, he appeared to be unobserved as he crept towards the rear entrance to the church in a very wide arc.

He reached the rear door and found it unlocked. He opened the door as quietly as he could manage but suddenly a hand snaked out of the darkness and yanked him inside.

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Will Daniels struggled to stay upright. Blood seemed to seep from several wounds on his body, inflicted on him by people that he had once considered to be friends. Someone had plunged a steak knife into his left shoulder and it still poked out from its vantage point. His right eye was heavily swollen and his nose felt broken as it lay flaccid across his face. In spite of his injuries and his almost overwhelming fatigue, he still stood, albeit on weakening legs. His grieving heart fuelled the fire and he kept the image of Sera’s battered and violated corpse in the forefront of his mind.

The battlefield around him was strewn with the fallen figures of both armies. In reality, he couldn’t actually remember whose side he had been on or even what the sides were anymore. The fierce battle had quickly descended into a free-for-all where weapons struck out indiscriminately and no one seemed to care just who they were fighting.

He used an iron railing taken from a bloodied auto mechanic as a makeshift crutch. He limped his way through the remains of the war until he spotted his prey. Glenn Jordan appeared to be in even worse shape than he was. The diner owner had a vicious looking head wound that had spilled blood all over his face like the “Carrie” poster that Will remembered from his youth. Glenn’s left arm hung loosely and uselessly from the shoulder and his collarbone jutted out at a grotesque angle through the pale flesh.

Will hadn’t witnessed Sera’s murder first hand, but during his earlier struggle with Nancy Travis the vision had come into his head, projected in stunning HD. Nancy was a legal secretary over at Jimmy Galloon’s place and she had been a hellcat. He didn’t know just how they had ended up fighting but her sharp nails and unerringly aimed knee at his groin meant that he took her seriously. He vaguely remembered that they had been on the same side at one point but that had soon faded until there was only the battle and the blood. He had finally managed to subdue her with a swift and brutal knee to the temple that had left her prone. But the vision that had come to him was crystal clear; it had been Glenn Jordan that had desecrated poor Sera and he had done it with a smile on his face.

He used his metallic crutch to limp his way across the blood-sodden ground towards the man that had stolen his future; the odd thing was that Glenn Jordan seemed to making a beeline for him as well, with just as much hatred burning in his eyes.

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Glenn spotted Will Daniels through the throng of fallen and ready to fall bodies. The vision in his head had been clear and he had been shown the face of the enemy. Will Daniels was the Antichrist, sent to destroy them all, and Glenn had been chosen by the hand of God to save them.

He had battled his way through those who would seek to block his path and he had managed to smite down the disbelievers before him. His arm was an extension of heaven and it thrummed with power. He clasped a metal steak mallet that he had plucked from the dead hand of someone; he couldn’t quite remember who he had plucked it from, and every time that he tried to remember, his mind rebelled. The odd thing was that the mallet was engraved with the name of his diner which should have meant that its wielder must have been someone he knew, or even worked for him.