Hallowed (51 page)

The creatures swarming around me turned their grim eyes to me in barely contained hate.  The tight formation loosened around me, and I could see patches of sky again.  Before my eyes, the moon itself shuddered and broke apart into two gigantic pieces. The pieces were consumed by the vortex with a clap of thunder akin to a sonic boom.  The stars seemed to rain from the sky.

Trying to control my trembling arms, I lifted the book into my eye line, blocking the horrific sight of the world coming to an end.  “Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil!”  I vaguely realized that I was speaking the words in Latin, a language I had no knowledge of.  “May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.”

I knew then that something was helping me.  Something powerful.  I continued undaunted, my voice rising with the sudden burst of passion I felt.

Extending the Bible above me with one hand and lifting the crucifix from my chest with the other, I shouted the Latin words forth: “And do you, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.”

At that moment a flood of morning sunlight burst through the clouds.  The creatures touched by the light wheeled every which way, shielding their faces and wailing in pain.

“Amen!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.  Blinded by the sunlight, I dropped to my knees and began to feel along the ground for the hole I sent Claudia down.  Two large hands took my wrists and tossed me firmly several feet into the stone pit.  I looked up.

It was one of the creatures.  Yet this one was different, perfect though not in the same way as the Fallen Ones disintegrating around me in the sunlight.  Instead of being a caricature of a human being of a single sex, its gender was impossible to identify.  Rather, the creature was “complete.”  Its body radiated a celestial white light.  The chill that had surrounded me since first entering the cavern dissipated.  I felt warmth so comforting it was like a freshly drawn bath enveloping me.

It turned its eyes on me, its formidable masculine nature unyielding and protective.  Its lips found my ear and sang in a smooth baritone voice: “
Thank you for being my surrogate warrior here on this plane.”

Then in the next moment,
I sensed the female nature of it—the maternal, the sensual--and shuddered, its presence almost overpowering to me as it sang in a melodious soprano voice:
“Give my love to Henry, son of Franklyn for remembering the apples one last time.”

Two sets of hands pulled me up into the most beautiful sunrise I have ever experienced until that morning and since.  My father held me at arm’s length by my shoulders then turned me to face, to my great surprise, my mother, who flung herself at me, tears in her eyes, patting my body as if checking for broken bones.  Once satisfied, she planted kiss after kiss over my face and hugged me fiercely.

Just like in the hallucination we’d just experienced, I stood in the dew-covered grass below the foundation of the house.  At my heels was the large cave opening through which we had just evacuated.

“We tried to go back in but some… force was blocking the way,” I heard Claudia say.  She lay in the grass, cradling the teenage girl whose face was obscured by a blanket.  She seemed to be gently rocking her.  I’d never before seen her appear so maternal.

At a distance from the rest of us, Hank and Tracy sat side by side a few yards away.  Both looked like ten miles of bad road.  Tracy was busy enjoying a cigarette like it was the first one she’d had in years.  My uncle was sipping something from a leather flask, and since he’d always been a Jack Daniels man, I had a good idea what.

I had lived to see another sunrise in this world, and I found myself surrounded by the people I loved most in the world.

I stepped discreetly over to my father as Mom started over to Claudia.  “How are you feeling, Dad?”

He gave me a look of impatience.  “I’m fine.  Why?”

“I know it was your heart. Don’t try and play it off,” I hissed, casting a side-long glance at my mother.

He laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it.  “I’ll live.”

I turned and stood in his path, giving him a look of immovable stubbornness I’m sure he was used to seeing from his wife and not his son.

“Ok, I’ll see the doctor about this, Paul,” he reassured me weakly, giving me a smile that was half irritated and half impressed.  “I promise.”

“This is her.  The voice I heard calling me,” Claudia explained to me as we gathered around the girl.

“Where did you find her?” Dad asked.

The girl gazed up at us, her eyes staring in dazed confusion at the world around her.

“Where am I?  Where did the house go?”

The cigarette dropped from Tracy’s frozen fingers.  She slowly rose to her feet, eyes widening.  Claudia grabbed my hand, almost unconscious of the act.  We watched as Tracy stumbled dazedly over to the girl, who gazed up at her, recognition slowly seating itself within her eyes.  The teenager looked one way then another, as if trying to orient herself or to make sense of something, then her eyes rolled back into her head and she passed out into Claudia’s arms.

“Hank, you still have those smelling salts,” Dad asked.

“Who is she?”  My uncle rose and handed Dad a small bottle, his eyes studying the girl at his feet. “Jack, who is she?” my uncle repeated, this time an urgent edge to his voice.

“Courtney Noble,” Tracy Tatum stated flatly.  “The girl I thought died in the house fire in ‘83.  The girl whose name I’ve been using since that day.”  Then she turned to Uncle Hank and fixed him with compassionate eyes.  “She’s your daughter.”

My uncle just stared at Tracy.  Slowly, he began to shake his head as if to clear it, then grabbed a handful of his brother’s sleeve in his hand, steadying himself.  “Dear God, we’re still down in the cave, aren’t we?” he moaned plaintively.  “This is another twisted illusion.”

Tracy stared at the girl with a look that had transformed in the course of a few seconds from horror to slowly dawning wonder.  “It’s incredible! She hasn’t aged a day in twenty-one years.  It’s as if no time has passed for her.”  Her glistening eyes found my uncle’s, then the bough broke and tears began to flow.  “Hank, this is my fault.  I never should have taken her to this damned place.  I’m so sorry.  So sorry.”

My uncle shook his head more emphatically with every word she spoke, until finally muttering: “Not possible.  It defies reason.”  His knees dropped out beneath him and my father caught him by his arms.

“I thought I was the one that had trouble seeing the intangible,” my Dad murmured under his breath as he helped his brother to his feet.

Claudia tucked the blanket beneath the head of the girl we knew as Courtney Noble and stepped away with the rest of us to give my uncle his privacy--though Tracy remained beside him, resting her head on his shoulder.

Hank simply studied the unconscious face of the girl lying in the grass, his own expressionless.  At some point, he began to quietly sob in Tracy’s arms.

“Look, Jack,” Sheriff Brannigan’s voice came from behind us.  That was when I first noticed BeBe Brannigan and Deputy Nick in their street clothes instead of uniforms.  “I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but if you’re going to do what we talked about, you better goddamn do it before the locals start showing up asking questions.”  He and Nick started over with Dad to the two trucks parked beneath the apple trees behind the house.  “Lord knows how I let myself be dragged into this,” he complained under his breath.

Sheriff Brannigan watched with a stoic expression as Dad carefully wired the explosives just inside the perimeter of the hole.  He cast a look back at me where I stood just over his shoulder and gave me one of his frowns.  Just as he was about to protest, BeBe said, “I’m giving you a helluva lot of latitude here, Jack.”

“Believe me, when I tell you that if this weren’t necessary, I wouldn’t involve you or Nick,” he replied.  “I’ve never been more convinced that a thing is necessary in my whole career as a law officer.  I’d stake my name on it.”

After a moment, BeBe gave my father a single nod.  “Good enough for me.”

When Mom wandered over to check on our progress, I read my father’s look without a word and headed her off.  “Dad wants us to go wait over by the trucks with your uncle.  He says that these explosives are volatile stuff and a little unpredictable.”

Claudia and Tracy were already over at the trucks with Uncle Hank.  Tracy and my uncle sat inside the cab, lying between them was the fourteen year old girl that I was not yet capable of calling my cousin.  After what I’d just been through, I would never be able to take anything at face value again.  Perhaps that’s what had always made my father such a good investigator and my uncle such an astute judge of character, I realized.

It was then that I spotted my own car parked in the distance behind the others.  “I saw the keys inside, so I just brought her up the fire road,” Deputy Nick said from behind the truck parked next to us.  He removed a wooden box and a spool of what appeared to be grey wire from inside the compartment in the back of the truck.

“C’mon, kid.  Learning new ways to blow something up might come in handy later in life,” Nick said congenially, tipping me a wink.

I joined Deputy Nick at the crypt that doubled as an elevator.  When I saw the hanging towel and the apples on the ground just where I’d left them, I laughed out loud.  “God, it feels like a lifetime since I did this,” I told Nick, explaining the circumstances and how I had gone after Claudia into the cavern on my own.

The Deputy gave me a wide-eyed look and smiled.

From behind, I heard Claudia’s voice.  “You did that for me?”  When I turned, I found her standing before me, beaming.  Nick turned his back to us and suddenly found something else to capture his attention.

She’d never know the almost overpowering terror I’d felt in those moments before my descent.  I was no fool, of course.  I wasn’t about to let a moment like this pass without basking in the light I saw in her eyes.  My girlfriend’s eyes.  A warm feeling rushed through me.  For the first time since this had all begun, I was thinking of the future again.

She leaned forward and gave me a long lingering kiss, cut short by a quickly spreading blush on her cheeks and the appearance of Mom and Tracy.

Clearing my throat awkwardly, I found the key still in its hole and unlocked the gate for Deputy Nick.  “Did you guys have any trouble finding all this?” I asked Tracy.

“Actually, it was me who spotted it,” Tracy replied.  “Up until that point, Jack was running around in that house’s foundation like a maniac, trying to find some trace of you two.”

Ignoring the glare he was receiving from my mother, Nick handed me one end of the grey wire on the spool and began to step backwards down the steps that led down into the interior of the crypt, letting it unroll.  “Hey, I can just imagine how worried he must have been.  You, only sixteen and going into this place on your own.  Hell, I’m nearly thirty and I’m getting the heebie-jeebies right now.”

Nick stopped, his eyes widening.  The front of his shirt blossomed black, and with horror, I realized that I was witnessing all the blood from his jugular draining out of his throat.  A dim beam of sunlight reflected off the blade at his throat in the hand of the figure behind him.

I dropped the grey wire and staggered back from the threshold of the crypt, yelling, “Get back!” and reaching for the shoulder holster at the same time, thanking God that Dad had never asked for it back after we’d escaped the cavern.

I may have had just enough time to pull the weapon from the holster and turn it on the pale figure emerging from the depths of the crypt, but Claudia grabbed at my arms in an attempt to support me and managed only to get in my way.  I lost my balance and fell to the ground, the gun dropping from my hand and out of reach.

I watched in slow-motion horror as the object of my nightmares stepped over the limp body of Deputy Nicholas Baxter and staggered slowly from the crypt; the ghostly white blood-drenched face of Nathan Graham.  His chin dripped steadily with blood.  His lips were mangled.  Both forearms seemed covered by long red sleeves down to his elbows.  Massive chunks of flesh around his wrists were missing as if he had torn the skin off along with the zip-ties like an animal escaping from a trap.  This also explained why several teeth were hanging broken from their sockets.

He was a pale visage of death itself.

Tracy and my mother drew back instinctively, while Claudia moved closer, attempting to pull me out of the way.  He swept Claudia up in his arms, the knife rising with almost dreamlike motion to the cream-white flesh of her throat.  From this distance, I could see his cold dead eyes now—devoid of any semblance of humanity--and the black ooze that dribbled from its corners.

From the corner of my eye, I saw my mother double over, seizing her stomach.  She sucked in a lungful of breath, then seemed to gag.  “
This must end
,” I heard her croak.  She then made a whining sound deep in her throat.  “Oh God,” she managed.  “What-is-happening-to-me?”

Tracy gathered her about the shoulders, recognition in her eyes.  “Fight it, Mrs. Graves.  Push it out with your faith!”

I heard as my mother chuckled in response and looked up at Tracy, a dark glow in her eye.  “
This one believes only out of fear.  It is a shallow faith,”
the creature said using my mother’s mouth.  It was fully capable of using Graham to speak, I knew.  It was choosing to use my mother only as a show of its power.

Suddenly, someone rushed forward and scooped something from the grass.  A moment later, Uncle Hank held my father’s gun on Graham.

A smile appeared on its torn lips and the yellow orbs in his head rolled around to fix upon my uncle.

“Do it, Hank!” Tracy growled.

My uncle’s hand trembled.  I began to calculate the odds of my seizing the beast’s arm before he could make the cut, but I was held immobile by my own doubts.

“
The Ancient Fathers want you and only you
,” the unrecognizable voice spoke from my mother’s throat.  “
In their mercy, they will let the others walk away
.”

“It’s lying,” Tracy hissed at Uncle Hank.  “They are the Masters of Lies.”

“Why me?” I heard Uncle Hank ask Graham.

The eyes of the thing that was once Graham rolled in impossible directions in their sockets and it gurgled something that might have once been laughter.  “
Your very existence offends the Fathers
.”

“Okay,” I heard my uncle pronounce in a voice that was entirely exhausted, and I felt my heart sink.  I could see all the blood drain from Claudia’s face in shock and horror.  “I’ll go with you, but I need you to let her go first.”

“
Your attempts to deceive me are feeble, Priest
.”

“You know by my vow as a priest,” Uncle Hank stated.  “We value all life as sacred.”

I watched in amazement as the Graham-thing shoved Claudia to the ground, yet retaining a grip on her collar.  It held a single arm out to my uncle, the knife still in its hand.

“
Come now, oh man of God
,” its bemused voice hissed from the throat of my mother.  “
Join with us.  Become Legion.”

“All life is sacred,” my uncle said calmly, the wrinkles of concern in his face smoothing out.  “But there’s no human life left in that body.”

He fired, the bullet catching it directly between the eyes.  Graham’s head rocked back, and a black blossom bloomed on the face of the crypt.  A split second later, the ooze dissipated into a cloud but my attention was on the knife that remained in its hand.  I dived, grabbing Graham’s arm and slamming it back against the open door.  The knife dropped from its lifeless hand and the inert body collapsed forward, scattering the apples I had laid in the grass.

Uncle Hank dropped the gun to his side, his chin falling to his chest.

My mother began to spasm and Tracy lowered her to the ground.  “Hank?” she called.  “Has Mrs. Graves ever received your blessing?”

Uncle Hank could only stare at Tracy blankly.  “A blessing?”

It was then that my father and BeBe came running up.  Dad fell to his knees next to my mother.  “Is she shot?” he cried.

My mother’s eyes opened again, and she seized my father’s throat in her hands.  He gasped, eyes widening in surprise.  It was an attack from a direction from which he could never have predicted.

“No,” Tracy screamed, attempting to wrench my mother’s hands apart, but they must have been vise-like.  “Hank!”

“Mom!  No!” I yelled, releasing Claudia and falling into the grass next to her.

Uncle Hank drew the vial of holy water from his pocket and began to pray over her, but she ignored him, focusing all her energy on my father.

“
All those years, you left her alone to enforce these futile laws of yours
,” she said between clenched teeth.  “
All the emotional pain, the anxiety she suffered at your hands and you promised her it was over, this pitiful ineffective crusade you attempted to wage against us.  All that time, this dark sweet resentment she harbored for you
.”

“Kaaah...,” my father attempted.  His eyes found hers and just stared, seeming to search deep inside those crazed eyes for hope.  His eyes softened and his hands relaxed from around the hands that sought to end his life.  There was love in those eyes.  Through the pain and the confusion, he had somehow located the love.

For a moment her grip intensified, causing my father’s eyes to roll back into his head, then without warning, she let him go and threw her head back in a scream of pain, leaving him gasping for air.  She rose and leaped upon Claudia, shoving her to the ground.

“
And you, the harlot
,” she barked, clawing at her face, ripping at her hair.  “
She distrusted you from the beginning and the designs you have on her child, her only child.  She knows that you don’t truly love him.  No one can ever truly love him like she can!”

I attempted to grab one of her flailing arms, but she swatted me away roughly.  There was an intense sting, and I felt blood running down my arm.  I looked up to see Graham’s fallen knife in my mother’s hand. Claudia barely held the straining hand just out of reach of her face.

With a dark satisfaction, the creature growled from the throat of my mother: “
I’m going to cut your lips off so you’ll never again be tempted to kiss him with that foul mouth.
”

“Get off my daughter, you sick fuck!” I heard Tracy bellow, the voice different yet familiar, because I’d heard it once before in the cavern below.  She grabbed the knife in her bare hand by the blade itself and dragging it physically away from Claudia’s throat.

My father watched in frozen fascination as my mother turned and faced Tracy, letting the knife drop to her side.  Indifferently, Tracy released the knife, the blood running briskly from between her open fingers.  They both simply stared at each other eyes shifting in their respective sockets as if both of them were watching a particularly active ball game.

I gathered Claudia up against my chest and pulled her clear.  She blinked with confusion at Tracy and asked me in a meek voice, “What did she just say?”

“Me and my family here are going to make it good and damn clear that you and your kind will never bother anyone ever again,” Tracy said in an even voice.  “Now stop hiding in there!  Come out and face me, you pussy!”

My mother clenched her teeth and drew back a step.

“Get out of her, you cowardly piece of shit, before I go in there after you!”

I watched as my mother, brought the knife up and into Tracy’s side, then dropped lifelessly backwards into the grass.  Blinking in confusion, my mother looked from one bewildered face to the other as my father rushed to her side.

Uncle Hank grabbed Tracy, but she sternly shook her head at him.  “Not yet,” she gasped.  “Bring Claudia.”

Overhearing them, Claudia pulled gently out of my arms and rushed to Tracy’s side as her legs folded weakly beneath her.  She fell against Claudia, and she and Uncle Hank lowered her gently to the grass.  Her eyes found Claudia’s face and gazed lovingly at her the way only a parent could.

“Now I don’t hardly know her,” a thin voice murmured with wispy breath.  “But I think I could love her.”

She blinked at Tracy in confusion, tears streaming down her face.  “Dad?”

“I’m so proud of the way you turned out.”  Ronnie told his daughter, a robust smile blooming on Tracy’s face.  “I spent my life denying the little gifts I was given; my health, the love of your mother, the fleeting time I got with you.”  He swallowed painfully and winced.  “I love you, daughter. More than you’ll ever know.”