The Innswich Horror (18 page)

Zalen opened a sack; in it were hanks of
freshly butchered meat. “Yeah, and if the meat’s still in the bags,
then what the hell is…”

The question didn’t necessitate completion.
I suppose, deep down, I already knew before we raised the lids of
the smokers. I shined my flash inside, then we both recoiled.

Smoke billowed up from Onderdonk’s
pink-blistered face, while tendrils of it hung off the hair on his
scalp. More smoke, as well, issued from the mouth agape in horrific
death; the eyes had curdled cloudy white. A powerful, pork-like
aroma spread a ground fog throughout hodgepodge of shacks. Another
smoker sealed the fate of Onderdonk’s boy—a pitiable sight, indeed.
The lower body-weight, and the probability that the boy had been
“cooking” longer than his father, was demonstrated by the fact his
eyesockets were filled with bubbling humors. Steam from the poor
lad’s poached brain keened from his sinuses and ears.

“God save us,” I croaked.

“The fullbloods got to them,” came Zalen’s
hopeless appraisal, “which means they may still be here.”

The prospect seized my heart like a
vulturine claw and squeezed. We all but slithered in the direction
of the motor, eyes never blinking. But, still, my questions
remained in a maelstrom. “Previously, you told me that women made
pregnant were allowed to keep their firstborn, but the others must
be relinquished to the fullbloods.”

“Yeah? So what?”

“But you also told me that
you yourself fathered Mary’s third or fourth child. What kind of a
treacherous cretin could deliver
his own
child
to those things in the
water?”

“I didn’t have anything to
say about it, Morley. We don’t have a
choice
here—don’t you get that? If
I’m ‘treacherous,’ then so is your beloved Mary.”

I wouldn’t hear of it.
I
knew,
I knew to
the marrow of my
soul,
that Mary’s misgivings were levered upon her; if she did not
comply, her son, brother, and stepfather would be made fodder for
the fullbloods.

“And the kid we had was an accident,” he
went on. “I suppose back then I actually loved her—before she
joined the collective.”

I winced at the excuse.
“Only the unGodliest of men could proclaim to
love
a woman he was prostituting out
like a commodity.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,”
and then came a snicker. “And I don’t believe in God anyway.”

“I should say that’s obvious—”

“So if your God really
exists, you’re gonna have to do a lot of praying to get us out of
this.” We both arrived at the truck; in the back bed stood two cans
of petrol. Ducking down, Zalen took one and carefully emptied it
into the vehicle’s fuel tank. “And,” he went on, “you can
pray
that this hunk of
junk starts…”

“One last question first,” I importuned and
gripped his shoulder. My curiosity burned like a brand-iron.
“Answer what you refused to answer before.”

“Come on, Morley, we have to—”

“I insist! You said that the ritualism is
just veneer founded in ignorant traditions of old: occultism used
as ‘icing’ to cover something else.”

“Yes!”

“So what about the babies?
What about the sacrifices? If the sacrifice of newborns isn’t
an
occult
oblation, then what else
can
it be?”

“It’s not sacrifice, for
God’s sake. They want the newborns to study them—to study
us.
Their brains, their
cells, their blood—everything, to see how they grow. Like what I
said before—the microscopic things in every cell that make us what
we are…
that’s
what they study,
that’s
what they experiment with.”

“Their understanding of the genetic sciences
must outweigh ours a thousandfold,” I said. “So that’s it.”

“Yeah. Sacrifices to the
devil? Black magic? It’s just a bunch of what my grandfather used
to call codswallop. Ornamentation, Morley, to fool the ignorant
masses:
us.
”

It was with little
positivity that I contemplated the potential of his explanation.
Based on the little I’d read I knew that, in theory, the study of
human genes (particularly human genes still in developmental stages
such as infancy) could not only enhance understanding of human life
but could
alter
human life. I was forced, next, to ask, “What is the purpose
of their studying us on a genetic level, Zalen?”

“That’s the worst part,” he said. “They hate
us, Morley. They want to wipe us out, but not by brute force.”

“With what, then?”

“With disease, deformity, sterility.”

“Of course,” I croaked, aware now of the
ramifications. “Via research and experimentation on the newborns,
the fullbloods could identify our biological vulnerabilities and
produce viruses, malignancies, and contagious disease mechanisms
that could lay waste to the human race from a multitude of
angles.”

“That’s right. That’s what they want to do
eventually—”

“And you’re helping them!” I snapped.

He frowned in the
moonlight. “I thought I was helping
you.
I’m helping you and your
precious Mary escape. Remember that.” He turned then to the
bedraggled vehicle. “Start praying, Morley. Pray to your God that
this has a starter button instead of a keyed ignition…”

I actually did pray for
that, but before the prayer was done, I’d leapt back, yelling in
fright, for when Zalen opened the truck’s dented and paint-faded
door, he didn’t
lean
in, he was
pulled
in—

—by a pair of long, thin,
bizarrely jointed and musculatured arms with hands more resembling
the forepaws of a frog, but with slick, webbed digits nearly a foot
in length. I never saw its face, though I clearly understand
what
it
was by
the pungent smell which gusted from the truck when Zalen opened the
rusted-patched door. It was the smell of a
fish-
pile tinged by the earthy
stench of creek scum. Creek scum, too, was what the thing’s skin
looked like. It took moments in these wedges of shadow for me to
compose reactive thought. I did seem to see its bump-pocked sickly
green skin
shine
as if wet, and as the commotion ensued within the truck I
also heard wet
sounds
,
slopping
sounds, and then sounds which were more refined and more
ghastly.

Only the word
evil
could describe what
I heard next, though to make direct simile I’d have to say it
sounded like someone dislocating the joints of a raw chicken, only
the “chicken,” in this case, was Zalen. A heftier tearing sound
followed, after which came a great, wet
splat
as all of the long-haired
malcontent’s internal organs were tossed out of the truck, and
after that came the addict’s destitution-worn black rain
jacket.

Then came the arms, uprooted at the shoulder
sockets.

Then the legs.

It’s taking him apart,
piece by piece,
I realized.

And last came the torso, though Zalen’s
genitals appeared to be absent from the groin. I could only hope
that the chewing sound I heard from the truck was my
imagination.

I do not consider myself a coward, however,
for not attempting to intercede with my pistol, for what you must
understand is that the above dismantling of Cyrus Zalen expended
only a matter of a few seconds. Instead, I rolled behind a rotted
tree stump of considerable breadth. Reflex more than my conscious
brain directed my positioning; I lay on my belly, both hands
outstretched gripping my weapon, doing my best to establish a
firing lane over the area I knew the creature must venture into if
it were to pursue me. Shooting eye lined up over the weapon’s small
sights, I waited.

And waited.

Come out!
I pleaded.

No significant movement
could be detected within the truck, though I believe I
noticed
minor
movement. A moment later—and for
only
a moment—the faintest greenish
luminescence seemed to fluoresce within, and I could only judge
that it was coming from the passenger side of the vehicle’s
interior. A second later, it was gone.

What guided me to re-examine Zalen’s torso I
can’t imagine, but as I did so I made the sickening revelation that
the cad’s head was no longer in connection with his neck. Why had
the batrachian monstrosity within ejected everything but the
head?

Something arched in the darkness, thumped,
then rolled to answer my question.

Zalen’s head.

The head grinned in a
manner that mirrored Zalen’s snideness to perfection. The whites of
its eyes, in a faintness that was less than minute, glowed with the
same greenish ghost-light I’d noticed in the truck. “Think about
what you’re doing, Morley,” came Zalen’s corroded voice, yet a wet,
slushy titter now companioned the words. “You don’t have enough
bullets to take them on, but you
do
have choices.”

The dead words wracked me in a
near-paralysis. Zalen’s head chuckled when I shakingly aimed the
gun at its brow. I noticed, too, that the torn and bloody stump of
the neck glowed phosphorically with the thinnest tendrils of
whatever netherworld-elixir had been administered into it—the
reagent, I presumed, that had also reanimated Mr. Nowry, Candace,
and Lord knew how many others.

“What… choices?” I finally managed.

“Join Olmstead’s town collective—”

“Bombast,” I said in spite of my revulsion
and fear. “I will not be a party to infanticide, nor will I aid and
abet the enemies of my race.”

“Jesus, man. If you don’t join them, you’re
dead. Oh, sure, you might take down a few of them with that
peashooter of yours, but they’ll get you eventually.” The severed
head winked. “And when they do, it won’t be a pretty sight.”

“I’d sooner shoot myself.”

“Well, that’s the
only
other
choice
you have. If you’re not gonna join them then you better do yourself
a big favor and put that gun to your head right now and pull the
trigger, Morley. That thing in the truck just pulled me apart in
less time than it takes to bat an eye. You have any idea how much
that
hurt?
” and
then the dead mouth bayed wet, mushy laughter.

When I looked up, I spotted the silhouette
of the thing standing just outside the truck now, staring at me in
great attendance. The eyes which shined in the darkness were
gold-irised and seemed the size of adult fists. Its evilly webbed
hands hung down well below the joints that sufficed for its
knees.

“Of course,” the wretched head continued,
“if you’re gonna kill yourself, you’ll need to kill Mary
first—”

“Mary?” I exclaimed.

“If you don’t join the collective, they’ll
do things to her that will make the Holy Inquisition look like a
couple of kids playing in a sandbox. They’ll torture the daylights
out of her, Morley, with their chemicals and their tools, and then
they’ll kill her, and then? They’ll bring her back just to do it
all over again.”

“Shut up!” I yelled and put the gun to the
head’s eye.

“But none of that’ll happen if you join the
collective. You’ll have your Mary, happily ever after.”

Tempting as they may have been, I knew that
I could not fall prey to his promises. If I agreed, they would kill
me just the same, for what I knew. I prevaricated, biding
time—there was still the fullblood at the truck to deal with—“Let
me think about this,” I delayed—but then I looked back to the truck
and saw that the heinous, scum-skinned creature was no longer
there.

“Too late,” Zalen intoned with a
chuckle.

If was from behind that the slime-gloved
hand came round and encompassed my entire face; I was hauled back,
unable to breathe, and my pistol fell out of my hand. The foot-long
fingers encased the full of my head, and thin as they may have been
they exerted such force that I knew only seconds would be required
before my skull burst like a pressured gourd. Zalen’s execrable
head continued to cackle as my struggles grew more enfeebled;
worse, the aberration’s other flagitious hand was slipping its way
beneath my belt and into my trousers. What I suspected is had used
Zalen’s genitals for were about to be duplicated with my own.

“Looks like your God hit the road, Morley,”
hacked another splattering laugh of the evil head. “Can’t say that
I blame Him…”

It was almost merciful the way my
consciousness dimmed just as the marauding hand clasped my genitals
and began to twist. Would my skull erupt before I ultimately
smothered? I felt the thin, boney fingers tightening, slickened by
frog-slime. It seemed to temper itself then, as though it would
uproot my privates and collapse my head simultaneously; but as I
felt what I was certain were my last heartbeats, the abomination
released me as if electrically shocked, leapt upright onto its
hideous feet, and released a bellow so cacophonous and inhuman I
thought I’d go mad merely from the sound.

A sound like a rising and falling shriek
intertwined a wet, slopping-like splatter.

I thudded to my side, desperate to recover
breath. Moving clouds over the woods unmercifully afforded more
moonlight at the same instant I looked up…