Lucky's Girl (38 page)

Darkness was spreading out in beams of un-light from Grove Island. A vast inhalation, held for a terrific moment, then an exhalation from a being who straddled
worlds
. Not completely here, nor completely there, one who would hunt the forests of mortal man in the flesh. Neither all man nor all wolf, possessing eyes seeing from the Darkness of this world to the absolute Darkness of its own.

The un-light unfolded from the crown of the Big Tree, gnarled, malformed and titanic, its roots sinking down to the last time the Wendigo had walked amongst men, seeing the world through his eyes, tasting it with his tongue, feeling it with his skin. Through his Tribe he had bathed in the blood of thousands sent by a feeble King Amongst Men. Faithless, false and weak, they had rejected the Marriage of Man and Beast, the return of Man to his true nature.

Some men preferred their constructs, their tools, their buildings, their impotent clay Gods, their false hierarchies, their struggles, their
ideas…
to their true nature, to their real desires, to a
real God
. They would rather be slaves in prisons of words than live in the
real
world. They would take these hollow prizes over the hunt, over the kill, over the survival of the strongest and fastest.

But tonight, The Big Tree, The Wendigo, The True God of the Faithful was here, The True God of the Faithful was now. The Tribe, the Pack, was alive!

Black beams of un-light were opening like a hand over Elton, falling first over the church. It inspired a sound of many bodies disentangling from a writhing mass of true human ecstasy. A great sigh of contentment, a moan of pleasure and
hunger
at what was about to unfold. The great doors opened, the congregation spilled out to prepare the bonfire.

Tonight would be the Fulfillment of the Covenant of Their God and Their Prophet, the Bringer of the Great News that Their God is Here, Their God is Now!

Tonight Lucky would be wed. The girl was to be his First Lady, his Alpha amongst women, to take a seat of High Honor next to the Alpha of the Pack, Blackie. She was Jenny, daughter of the Traitor, the Judas who had denied Lucky, and had sided with the Pigs of the System to keep him from sharing the Great News that Their God is Here, Their God is Now!

With great wisdom she had seen through her father’s lies and corruptions, through all of his false Gods and Idol Worship. She had seen that Lucky was the Prophet, and that her place was beside him. She would not repeat her father’s crimes, and their love would heal the wounds the Traitor had inflicted on Lucky’s pure heart.

***

No matter how injured, or tired or scared, all humans can sense the approach of Darkness and Silence. They instinctively know what the first men had known; that the world and light are but passing things. Darkness is older, and would be there to witness the death of light. And in that final Darkness, The Gods of the Outer Dark would climb upon their thrones of chaos and all of creation would die. Every thought, every word, every hope, every dream would cease. There would be screaming, and there would be death, and then there would be no more.

And now, in Elton Township, Darkness and Silence had returned. Buried under clotted leaves and soil, cocooned in the fibrous roots of the Big Tree, the eyes of the Wendigo had begun to stir. In the Silence and Darkness they tore open the fabric of the roots encasing them. They rose in human form, razor thin, in starving need of sustenance. Five women of the Most Faithful crawled on the ground to the living meat.

The first sacrifice was still lashed to the Big Tree, her obese form swelling against the ropes, skin splitting and fat running into the ground and disappearing, the thirsty roots of the Big Tree drinking deeply.

Her brother had been tied to the other side of the tree. He had given himself freely so that His God could walk the world of men once more. He awoke, seeing the five women Most Faithful crawling towards him.

He smiled. “You’re so beautiful, so beautiful!”

They raised their heads, struggling towards him.

Tears of joy ran from his eyes, his penis growing hard as a rock. “This is my flesh, I give it unto you! This is my blood, I give it that you may have eternal life!”

A trembling had run through their flesh, and a convulsive wrenching deep within. Heads tilted back, blood running from tightly shut eyes, agonized screams as their eyes open again with two irises, glowing a cold grey. Teeth had elongated and blood poured from gums, stretching and creaking as bone grew in place and stretched into snouts. Hair sprang from skin as arms and joints crunched in gristly unison.

The transformation completed, they were bones and fur and skin, stretched tight over giant teeth and bulging eyes.

They stood to regard the sacrifice.

Rapture became terror. Praise became screams. Ecstasy became evisceration.

***

The shrieking carried out across the dry expanse of Lake Elton and over the roof of the empty church, the sound amplified by the canopy of Darkness and Silence holding Elton in its embrace. There was no sound of wind, neither bird nor crickets; there was no light from the stars, and every other source of illumination struggled to shine.

Darkness devoured light, and Silence devoured sound.

Except for the screams of agony, except for the pleas of despair; those things were louder as they nourished real Silence and Darkness.

And the screams came to the ears of the prisoners of Elton’s new paradigm; Jerry and Errol, Kenny, Frankie and Jake in the tiny police station, and to the Faithless, hiding in trailers and cabins.

No one spoke until the screaming had ended. It had gone on and on. After Jake had told them of the sacrifice, of the vision given to Lucky and the Faithful and Most Faithful, they knew that nothing would be beyond imagining tonight. Until the dawn came, Elton would live in Darkness and Silence, and in that place, death would reign supreme.

Frankie let out a gasp: he’d held his breath the whole time. They all had. “Tell me that didn’t sound like Wally, please somebody tell me that wasn’t Wally!”

The sound had been small and feeble, as if from a child hiding in a closet. Nobody answered. Finally Kenny cleared his voice. He rapped his knuckles on the bench, making a curious, deadened sound, like it had come from far away. “The light… and the sound… I can’t see out that glass door anymore, and everything sounds like we’re in a decompression tank.”

Errol’s teeth clattered. “Should we try to make a run for it?”

Jake whispered, “We’ll never get past the Faithful.”

Jake had told a crazy story, fragmented and baroque, of hideous orgies covered in dreck, bestiality, lycanthropy, mass hypnotic visions, and trees with eyes. They had listened in stunned silence. They all knew Jake had been traumatized. He’d witnessed the inversion of morality and sanity. Lucky’s kingdom was sick in the extreme. He was Manson and Jim Jones combined at the very least. His ability to bend people to his will verged on the supernatural, but that didn’t explain humans living with wolves, people who seemed to have forgotten their lives and had regressed to savagery.

And they’d killed people. They were pretty certain Doc Pete was dead, he’d told them of a burned man eaten alive. And they didn’t doubt Fat Sally was dead. Jake’s description of her was dead on. And everyone who had tried to escape Elton earlier – those people were probably dead too.

The other parts of his story must have been the concoctions of severe trauma.

But this Darkness, this Silence; this was more than a lack of electricity.

You could feel it.

Kenny turned to Jerry in the darkness. Four lanterns fought to illuminate the room, and although the flames hadn’t guttered, it was several degrees
too dark
.

“Jerry, we need flashlights. Something. Now.”

Jerry shook his head. “My maglite’s in my cruiser. I’ve got others but no batteries. It wasn’t a budget priority.”

Frankie wheezed. “There’re Maglites in the getaway bag.”

Errol leaned down to the big black gym bag, pulling out four high powered LED lights with attachments to fit to the barrels of the AKs.

Jerry shook his head. “
Getaway bag
.”

Kenny gasped. There were two more Krinkovs and lots of magazines. And two more Kevlar vests.

Jerry covered his face with his hands and gritted his teeth. “Can you make this make sense for me, Errol? Frankie?”

Frankie coughed. “I’m a survivalist. Been planning for the big one for years.”

Jerry laughed, but it was cold and bitter. “And now you’re lying again.”

Kenny shook his head. “Fuck it, Jerry, this is a godsend. Who fucking cares?”

He couldn’t understand the betrayal unfolding between Jerry, Errol and Frankie. He picked up a Krinkov, snapping the powerful light to the barrel. He inserted a magazine, racked it and clicked on the safety. “Just like the movies. All the bad guys carry these.”

Jake looked up. “Grampa says gooks and ragheads use them because they can get full of mud and sand and keep shooting but…”

Jerry interrupted him. “These are steel core Teflon-coated bullets. I guess Torgeson should have known it was the end of the world.”

He held one of the magazines, popping out a bullet. He held it up to the light then tossed it to Errol. Once a cop always a cop. “You got something you wanna tell me, Errol?”

His face betrayed him. Errol looked at the ground and shook his head.

Jerry looked at Frankie, prostrate and bleeding from the mouth. “How ‘bout you, Frankie?”

Frankie coughed again and whispered, “This isn’t the time, Jerry. One day we’ll sit back and have a drink and…”

Jerry’s face was a mask of ice, a cold realization coming over him. He was a fool and he’d been taken for a fool and used as a fool, probably for a very, very long time. He didn’t know what it was or how it worked, but he’d been used. His very incompetence had been part of their plan. There was a reason that bar existed, there was a reason a town like Elton had an unnecessary mailman and a sheriff it couldn’t afford.

And he’d been so far gone for so long he hadn’t seen it.

By the feeble rays of lantern and flashlight, a lifetime of lies, betrayal and deceit were highlighted.

Errol shook his head. “I don’t think that drink’s happening, Frankie.”

***

A new sound emerged from Grove Island. A chorus of voices, inhuman. Human but unlike, wolf-like but not, otherworldly but from no world that should be. They bounced between earth and sky and back again, high pitched, mewling and growling, a need of unimaginable hunger put to voice. A chorus joined by the ethereal cries of wolves and the unhinged gibbering of the Faithful. The Faithful were all around them, at all points of the compass, their keening coming from everywhere around Elton, but the wolves and this new sound – that was coming from Grove Island and moving towards them,
fast.

They had thought Jake’s story a confabulation, a flight of ideas resulting from obscene trauma, a regurgitation of nightmare images inspired by a real life one. But now…

Human vocal chords couldn’t make sounds like that. Neither could wolves.

CHAPTER 18

Lucky hung above the dais, suspended on a bower of force, the will of a real God holding him aloft in an invisible embrace. His body shook, spasms passing through muscle and bone. The beast within, the spirit animating the Most Faithful, fought against his iron will to take his body.

Soon.

So soon.

His mouth filled with saliva running red with traces of blood.

So soon.

The Covenant to be fulfilled…

The Union of Man and Animal…

The return to flesh, and the end of reason and meaning, and all those cares.

Man and his abstractions, man and his System, man and his stupid reasons, man and his weakness masquerading as everything worthwhile. Mercy, love, pity and faith. Lies for the herd, lies for slaves to salve the crack of the whip.

He descended to the ground, holding the beast in check by will alone, landing gracefully on to a floor smeared thickly with the human animal; shit and blood, sweat and cum, all mixing to fill his nostrils. The smell of man in his natural state, in his rightful condition. No shame, no regretting his body’s desires.

He walked down the aisle to the doors, reminding him that so few days ago he’d worn that laughable Christ outfit to begin the process of undoing. First he’d appealed to their need for a shepherd, then he’d spoken of a new Covenant with a real God, a God who was Here, a God who was Now.

Did they realize he wasn’t speaking of the God they’d known?

Did it matter when none could deny the miracles?

They had come of their own free will, and the New Covenant had been revealed. The torments of the human condition, the disunity between man and his desires, along with the solution; the return of humankind to his true nature.

The Union of Man and Animal.

Truly, their God was a mighty One and worthy of praise.

Lucky turned to walk out the same doors he’d first entered through.