The Bighead (44 page)

Follerin’ the Voice…

(XIII)

Get ready,
Alexander thought. Old themes from the Army
haunted him.
Cover, concealment,
suppression, teamwork…
But all that
wouldn’t do dick for him now—he was alone…

The thing—The Bighead—stepped into the
hall. It was grosser than he’d remembered from his glimpse
upstairs. It was naked now, veneered in sweat. Its cock was more
than obvious.

Easily over a foot long, half-hard,
slicked with blood that was going crusty as dried tempera
paint.

And the stench…

Alexander almost heaved-ho. The smell
of the thing overpowered him: a meld of offense—something akin to
ass sweat, week-old underarm b.o., old shit and stale piss and
halitosis and dick-stink and God knew what else, all distilled down
by the heat of the earth to launch into the priest’s face like a
chain-mailed fist.

Wait, wait,
he thought.
Don’t do
shit…

Its warped shadow crossed the hall,
stopped, looked at the wall. Then it picked up the pick ax it had
no doubt picked up twenty years ago, raised it, and—

Dropped it.

Instead, it stuck its hand into the
hole that Jerrica had generated, pulled, gusted a single breath,
and—

The wall toppled like Leggo
blocks.

Then the thing entered the new-formed
entry.

Alexander already had the Webley
revolver cocked, ready to go. He thought a moment about what Jesus
said, about his need to “grow” a “pair of balls.” Alexander grew
them, then walked into the rough-hewn aperture…

The Bighead stood before a clump
of…something, its arms outstretched, its hideous face gazing high.
Then Alexander took a look at the clump…

Shit…

It was a raddled,
desiccated corpse, or so he thought. A whey-faced
thing.
Dry as wicker—a
body composed of something semblant of corn husks—all coagulated
against the wall in a crisp meld. A shroud of cobwebs veiled its
form like a caul.

Most obvious, though, were the
horns.

Horns, like a ram’s, jutting from its
forehead.

A heirarchal demon,
Alexander surmised.
One
of Lucifer’s incarnates. Dead…but…somewhow, still vaguely
alive…

Maybe its body was dead, but it’s mind
had remained alive all these years, to call its progeny
back.

But—
Why?
the priest wondered.
For what purpose?

Fahter and son. The son
come back to see to its father’s proper burial. Or, in this case,
its father’s proper…return…

It was talking to him—talking to The
Bighead.

It was feeding thoughts into its son’s
malformed head.

But what thoughts?

“
Hey! Bighead!” Alexander
shouted.

The thing twirled at the insult.
Alexander got another good, hard look at its face, and that was all
it took. He fired—

BAM!

—
right into the
face.

The big bullet plowed into the
wedgelike forehead. The head jerked back—

Then the thing smiled, raised its
thumb and index finger and plucked the puny bullet out of its
forehead. The big raw-clam eye winked.

“
My ass is grass,”
Alexander figured.

The priest, expecting to die, watched
speechless, looking at the face of the thing that had occupied this
room for two decades. The face seemed frozen in a yawn of anhydrous
rot, its bundled devil’s horns protruding. It looked back at him
with hole-punch eyes,

And blinked.

(XIV)

TAKE ME BACK, OH MY
BEAUTIFUL SON. I’VE WAITED HERE SO LONG. TAKE ME BACK TO MY
MASTER’S CHASM, THE ONLY DOMAIN WHERE I CAN LIVE AGAIN.

BUT YOU—YOU, MY SON, YOU
ARE PART OF THIS WORLD YET PART OF OURS. YOU CAN LIVE
HERE
AND BRING MORE OF
THE MASTER’S BROOD INTO THE LIGHT…

GO FORTH, GO FORTH AND
MULTIPLY….

(XV)

The priest sensed the strangest thing:
it wasn’t the monster talking into his head, it was the dry-rot
corpse, the dead body but the live brain…

The Bighead threw the corpse over its
shoulder and left.

(XVI)

Alexander followed,
grabbing one of the alcohol lamps. One bullet had mushroomed on the
thing’s forehead; he only had three left—he had to make them count.
The thing didn’t seem to care, though. It must know that Alexander
was following it with a weapon, but
it
didn’t care.

Not good,
the priest thought.

But he had to give it his
best.

Think, priest.
Remember,
he heard.

All the men he’d killed in
the field—
dozens.
All the whores he’d fucked.

No! I am
forgiven!

Are you?

Yes!

The thing walked on with its
vermiculated father slung over its back like a sack of horse-feed.
It was walking down the ridge-trail.

It was walking toward the
lake…

On the shoreline, the priest saw,
Charity lay still.

She looked fine, untouched,
unmolested. When The Bighead walked to the edge of the water,
Alexander knelt at Charity, swaying the lamp forward.
No, no, she’s all right.
Christ, he’d seen the size of The Bighead’s cock—like the
business-end of a softball bat. If The Bighead had raped her, she’d
be ground to pulp now, bleeding like a tap. But—

There was nothing.

Charity, in other words, was all
right. There was only The Bighead to contend with.

In shimmering moonlight, the thing
walked on. But only then did the priest see that the lake
had…drained.

The field of upended stones lay
settled there, pentangled, ancient yet perfect. Alexander thought
of the circles of Stonehenge, the basal plinths of Babylon, and the
dolmens of Osiris. All portals to another place, all doorways,
allegedly, to the netherworlds….

The Bighead was walking towards it,
through the reduced muck of the lakefloor.

It was taking its father…back…to the
egress of hell from whence it had come.

Alexander ran after it.

“
Hey, melon-head! Ya
fuckin’ ugly motherfuckin’ nibblenuts freak. Take me on! You can’t
leave before you kick my ass, can you!”

The figure came to a momentary halt,
then continued.

“
Deformed cracker demon
bastard! You chicken? You got no balls? What, you’re only man
enough to fuck with
nuns?

Well, grow ourself a pair
and fuck with
me!
”

Another falter, another pause. Then it
continued.

“
You inbred creeker hunka
shit! You’re great when it comes to raping women and butt-fucking
old men! But—look at you!—I’m giving you a fight and you’re
walking away!
You got no
guts. I’ve seen kindergarten kids with more balls than you, you
pissant walking shit-heap! Coward! Chicken!” Then Alexander took a
wild shot with the Webley—
BAM!
—and hit Bighead’s husk-dry
progenitor in the back. Dust sprayed out.

The Bighead stopped. He dropped his
father in the lake slime and turned—

The bulb-face glared. Needle teeth
shimmering like tinsel. The great hook hands upraised, and the
penis dangled like a flap of raw porterhouse.

“
You are one panty-waist,
creamcake, homo, dick-lickin’ wuss! I’ve seen scarier baby
toys!”

The Bighead sloshed closer.

“
Hope ya don’t like it and
want to do something about it, you ball-less little nun-raper! Come
on over here and kick my ass…
if
you can, twinkie! Yeah, big bad demon crossbreed
tough guy. Don’t make me laugh! I know little girls who could kick
your Fire Island, pink-champagne-drinkin’ coward ass!”

Alexander knew he only had
two bullets left now. He drew a bead down the Webley’s barrel. He
remembered how that first shot had mushroomed on the thing’s thick
head…
Gotta get to the brain,
he realized, and there was only one way to do
that.

Through he eye.

“
You beat up old ladies,
you man-butt-lickin’, tip-toein’- through-the-tulips fairy
motherfucker! Hey, Tinker Bell! Come and take your whuppin’ like a
man!”

Steady, steady. The priest’s eye
opened wide behind the sights.

“
Come on! Peter-suckin’,
tutu-wearin’ little twerp! Come on!”

Alexander drew in a breath, then let
half of it out, just like the D.I.s in Army had taught him.
Then—

He dropped hammer.

BAM!

And again.

BAM!

The Webley’s twin slugs socked right
into The Bighead’s big eye, punched through the back of his head.
Clumps of greenish-white brains flew like little parakeets, then
slapped hard into the drained muck of the lake.

The Bighead stared at him with a fury
in its other tiny eye. He roared a quick objection, quaked,
then—

Thank you, God.

—
then fell backward and
collapsed.

SLAP!

Dead.

It was only then that Alexander
realized he’d shit and pissed his black cleric slacks
simultaneously.

—
| — | —

EPILOGUE

“
You sure you’re all
right?” Alexander asked.

“
I’m fine,” Charity
replied. “Tired, shocked—”

“
Understandable.”

“—
but I’m not hurt. Not a
scratch.”

Dawn was just breaking, Luntville
twenty miles behind them now. Charity’s dark-brunet hair sifted
intricately in the breeze from the Mercedes’ open
windows.

“
It killed everything that
moved,” Alexander reflected, one hand on the wheel, the other
lighting a Lucky Strike, “and it raped every woman that crossed its
path. But it didn’t so much as even
touch
you. I wonder why.”

Because it knew that I was
its sister,
Charity answered in
thought.
It couldn’t hurt its sister, its
own blood.

But, of course, she couldn’t tell the
priest that. She could never tell anyone. All she said in reply,
instead, was, “Who knows? I guess God was with me.”

“
I hear that. He was with
both of us.”

“
But what do we say? What
do we tell people, about what happened back there?”

“
We don’t tell anybody
anything,” Alexander sternly suggested.

“
Yes, I suppose that’s the
best thing to do,” Charity agreed, resting back in the leather
seat. The Appalachian Mountains passed serenely to their left,
dawn-tinged, wide-open fields and pastures to their right. She
closed her eyes, let the wind run like fast water over her
face.

Then the car…began to
weave.

Charity looked up, confused. “Father?”
But the priest, cigarette dangling, seemed to be clenching the
steering wheel, his face beet-red and crimped in pain.

“
Father Alexander! What’s
wr—”

The Mercedes swerved back and forth,
rubber screeching. The priest’s right hand pawed haplessly at his
left shoulder, and the left side of his chest.

And all Charity had time to do after
that was scream.

««—»»

What the—,
Alexander thought.
What…happened?

“
You wrecked the fucking
car, that’s what happened,” came the reply. But it wasn’t Charity
who’d said it.

No, it was Jesus.

Bewildered, the priest cast a
questioning glance. Yes, it was Jesus again, this time dressed in
beige Dockers and yet another black t-shirt, this one emblazoned
with the white letters: CYBER-PSYCHOS, A.O.D. He was sipping from a
bottle of Yoo Hoo. And He chuckled, “Yeah, man, Halford’s gonna be
pissed. Look what you did to his Merc! Man, it’s a good thing
you’re a priest, ’cos you’d never make it as a driving
instructor.”

Alexander looked. The Mercedes had
indeed crashed, its clean, white front end crushed, wrapped around
a tree. Steam gently eddied from the bashed grill. Pale green
antifreeze spurtled onto the shoulder.

“
Charity!” he shouted, and
rushed to the wreckage where he could see her lying still in the
passenger seat.

“
Forget it,” Jesus
said.