Husk (49 page)

* * *

Mallory cheered along with Tim and her father when the hulking creature dropped to its back, smashing three grave markers to rubble beneath its bulk.

But, what next?
Mallory wondered.
Won’t it just switch bodies again?

The church shook.

Mallory backed away from the window, looking to Tim and then to her dad. With the light from Kane’s coffin extinguished, the old sanctuary had reverted to a cavern of shadows.

“
Now what’s happening?” she cried.

“
Look at that,” Tim shouted.

A glowing light had appeared within the cemetery, shining upward from the gaping pit of Kale Kane’s open grave. Mallory moved closer to the window, gripping its frame with tense fingers. Black light spilled skyward from the earthy excavation outside, impossibly
black
light.

The eerie luminescence began to expand across the churchyard. The soil piled around the parameter of Kane’s grave suddenly collapsed inward, the walls crumbling away like sand falling through the neck of an hourglass.

Inch by inch, the grave began to widen. Slow at first, then faster.

The killer’s headstone tilted and fell forward, vanishing into the fissure.

“
I think we’d better move,” her dad said.

The hole continued to broaden. Clusters of weeds dropped out of sight, followed by two flanking gravestones, and then a third, fourth, and fifth.

They turned from the windows and hurried through the building’s wreckage, making their way outside.

* * *

Jimmy’s truck still shifted from side to side on its massive shocks. Melissa dropped out of the cab and hurried around its front end to look for Frank.

She rounded the bumper and came to a skidding halt at the sight of the odd glow rising from Kane’s empty grave.

Tentacles of electricity leapt out of the hole where Kane’s coffin once rested, lashing through the air. They sparked off the nearby fence posts in a series of blinding flashes. She threw herself backward against the dented grill of the semi when one jagged tendril sputtered across a portion of fencing not far from her feet, scorching the metal, leaving it steaming. In its wake, the sturdy iron bars appeared cracked and colorless; even the grass around them was now ashen and brittle.

The lightshow ceased a moment later, replaced by a pallid mist that billowed out of Kane’s dilated gravesite. It flowed between the rows and swirled amongst tombstones. In seconds the churchyard vanished within the haze, leaving only the entity’s giant legs visible at the edge of the phenomenon.

Melissa froze where she stood. To her right, she detected the sound of people moving inside the devastated church building, and to the far left, she registered three separate voices exclaiming words of amazement pertaining to the lightning strikes. She knew she should do something—warn the people to stay back, see if anyone in the church was hurt, find Frank—but when she finally started to turn, a fleeting glimpse of movement redrew her attention toward the misty land ahead.

* * *

The entity lay trapped, unable to vacate its anatomy of interconnected corpses.

Kane was gone. Its powers were gone. All was lost.

The ground vibrated. Fear became a phantom saber cleaving wounds of pure terror to its core.

The time had come to return to the others, to the torment, to the place where numbness would be a sacred blessing.

* * *

Melissa screamed and fled backward when two gigantic, talon-tipped claws solidified out of the mist and lunged toward her with savage speed.

Pinned where she stood by fear, Melissa looked on while the massive hooks dropped down and closed around the entity’s body, clutching it in a ghostly grip. They jerked back, hauling the monster into the impenetrable haze and out of sight before her mind had a chance to contemplate a reaction.

Melissa remained flattened against the big rig, shaking, watching the spiraling plumes of vapor that coiled over the land where the monster’s shape had just been.

“
Melissa,” Frank’s voice called.

She jumped at the sound of her name, raking an arm over the truck’s ruined grill, cutting herself and drawing blood. The pain enlivened her. Still shivering, eyes wide and directed forward, she shuffled back along the semi, averting her gaze from the mist-laden graveyard only long enough to sidestep Kale Kane’s extirpated remains. Nothing recognizable remained of the killer, save for a molted green arm that lay in a liquid puddle of half-rotten flesh and embalming fluid.

She found Frank near the cab’s midsection and almost forgot about everything else when she beheld his condition.

She knelt at his side. “Jesus Christ, Frank, you look like you went through a meat grinder.”

He smiled. “Melissa—”

“
Keep your voice down,” she warned. “Look, I knocked the entity-thing into the cemetery and something weird happened. Something
really
weird. I don’t understand this supernatural shit like you do, but I think we better get the hell away from this place and I think we better do it fast. Can you move?”

“
There’s nothing to fear,” he answered.

“
You don’t get it. Something’s out there, something even bigger than the entity.”

Frank shook his head, wincing from his injuries. “Not anymore, there isn’t. You did it, Melissa. You sent it back to where it came from, back to where it belongs. You saved us… Look for yourself.”

She traced Frank’s line of sight to the stoical slabs of the old churchyard, finding most of them now illuminated by the truck’s headlight. The mysterious fog had already evaporated into the night.

The entity’s body was gone.

A wide trench cut across the ground where the beast had fallen. The scoured trail led deeper into the cemetery, to the vacuous pit of Kale Kane’s grave. Numerous headstones had been knocked flat to the right and left of where the body passed, some crumbled to ruins and imbedded in the dirt.

Melissa heard footsteps approaching. Paul Wiess and two children poked their heads around the front of the semi to gaze at her with questioning faces.

“
She did it,” Frank said.

“
It’s gone?” Paul asked.

Frank nodded, struggling to sit up. “We’re safe; you, your daughter, all of us.”

“
What about you?” Paul asked.

“
I’ll live. We’ll all live tonight.”

“
Lay still,” Melissa told him. “We have to get you an ambulance.”

Off to the left, three more teenagers made their way out of the woods, approaching cautiously. “Mr. Wiess? Mallory?” a girl’s voice called.

“
Becky, is that you?” Paul asked. “It’s all right, kids. It’s over.”

Above them, in the truck, Jimmy poked his head out the cab’s window and glared down at Melissa. “Can I please have my keys back so we can get out of here?”

She tossed the set back to him. “Get on your radio and call for an ambulance. Hurry!”

Directing her gaze skyward while they waited for backup, she discovered the menacing storm clouds that had been growling overhead for the last few hours had vanished without a trace. The nighttime heavens appeared clear and glowing, filled with glimmering stars from horizon to horizon.

EPILOGUE

September

Mallory met Tim at the usual spot by the lake. She pulled her car into the small parking lot and spotted him sitting in the shade on one of the nearby picnic tables, dressed in his tank top and running shorts. The moment he saw her, he jumped down and rushed over.

“
Sorry I’m late,” she said, exiting the car. “I suppose you’ve already gone through the warm-up routine, huh?”

“
I have to show you something,” he said eagerly. “Follow me.” He took her by the hand, beaming like her little brother on Christmas morning. He led her across the grass, to where his gym bag waited on the table he’d been sitting at.

She regarded him with a quizzical gaze. “I take it we’re not going for our run today?”

“
Yeah, sure we can. But you have to see this first.”

He stopped in front of the table and looked her in the eyes. She gazed back raptly, knowing his were the only set of eyes she could ever look into and find the level of trust and devotion she needed to get on with a normal life after their experiences at the churchyard.

“
I went back,” he said, not having to specify a location.

Mallory gaped at him, blinking. Her mouth fumbled to make the words that would express her shock.

“
It’s okay,” he rushed on. “In fact, it’s better than okay. It’s amazing.”

“
But why would you want to go back there?” she asked. “That cemetery…”

“
It’s changed.”

“
What?”

He opened the gym bag, exposing a vibrant bundle of wondrous flowers. Mallory gasped in amazement at the radiant nebula of colors, hues so rich and powerful her eyes seemed unable to focus on just one color.

Like the stars.

“
They’re all over the place out there,” Tim said, handing her a blossom that had to be half the size of a dinner plate. “Hundreds of them. Thousands!”

“
But what are they?” she asked, testing the silken petals with her fingertips.

“
Something new,” he replied. “Something we’ll have to tell others about in time, but I wanted to share them with you first.”

They sat in silence, sampling the blend of exquisite aromas emanating from the blooms.

“
Do you ever dream about it?” Mallory asked.

“
No,” he replied. “You?”

“
Not yet. Hopefully we never will.”

“
I don’t think we will,” he said, gazing at the flowers. “I think they’re a promise. You know, like the rainbow, but just for us.”

She leaned up against him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

“
You want to go for that run now?” he asked, holding her close.

She shook her head. “Maybe we’ll just walk today.”

* * *

The kids were out; Paul and Rebecca were alone.

They sat together on the couch in Rebecca’s living room, the only light coming from the images on the television screen.

Paul remained speechless, mouth agape.

Rebecca stared with an equal look of astonishment.

“
Y-you say you found this video in your trash?” Paul asked, clearing his throat.

Rebecca nodded, still staring. “I accidentally threw out the electric bill with a load of other papers, and when I went to look for it, I found this DVD at the bottom of the bag.”

They watched in silence for another minute. Gasps, moans, and seductive whispers exuded from the speakers.

Paul gestured to the women in the movie. “I’m no expert, but I’m guessing that’s not how a peace pipe is meant to be used.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MATT HULTS lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife and two children. Husk is his first novel.

* * *

Preview of:

JAMES ROY DALEY’S - TERROR TOWN

~~~~ PROLOGUE: CLOVEN ROCK

The people that lived in Cloven Rock considered the town’s final Monday a beautiful one, like most of the days in the recent weeks. The sun was shining; the air was clean and warm. Flowers bloomed and birds sat among the branches singing songs only birds could understand. Dogs chased master’s Frisbees and people said hello to strangers, not to suggest that thousands of tourists roamed the beachfront or the area that passed as the downtown core. That wasn’t the case; there were only a few. If you asked one of the locals why things were this way, the answer would be simple: Cloven Rock was an inclusive town, an uncomplicated town, a town that didn’t encourage a vacationer crowd even though sightseers would have flocked to it religiously. Many residents thought the town was special and they were right. It
was
special. It wasn’t a small place trying to be a big place. It was a town without civic uncertainty.

The Yacht Club Swimming Pool, a Cloven Rock favorite, had a full house the day before the town was lost. They also had an open door policy; if you were respectful, courteous, and didn’t pee in the pool, you were welcome anytime. Also on that day, friends sailed the calm waters of Cloven Lake and children built sandcastles on Holbrook Beach. Kids played in Easton Park while the people on the large wooden deck at the Waterfront Café enjoyed the spectacular view. The post office closed early. An ice cream store called Tabby’s Goodies was doing good business and a mile and a half up the road the men and woman working at the Cloven Rock Docks fought for, and won, a fifty-cent raise. Spirits were high at the Docks, and the personnel were getting along just fine. It wasn’t surprising. Nearly half the workforce was related and the other half was considered family.