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As he entered into the next room, John accused angrily, “I
thought you said that those crosses would act as talisman and keep that thing at
bay. If it had taken over his body like you seem to think, then why didn’t the
cross you put out there bother it like you said it would?”
The cross! Damn, he’d forgotten. In these final moments, Ian’s
humanity was catching up with him, fogging his exhausted mind when it most
needed to be clear. And with John’s revelation, he knew that he’d made a
grave mistake. The look on his face said as much, though now he couldn’t look
John in the eye. Staring at the floor, rubbing away an anxiety as gruff as his
whiskered chin, he quickly but quietly said, “Hurry and let the man in.”
Shot gun in position, John pulled away the curtains over the back
door window. A small golden cross partially obstructed his view to the wet and
absolute darkness beyond the open five-by-five porch. He unlocked the door and
flipped on the porch light. No sooner had he chased back the night revealing an
ill-lit, bleak and muddy yard, Bill rounded the back of the house, slipping
twice in the carpet of sludge as he tried to stop his forward momentum, yelling
in terror all the while.
The back door was situated so that it was on the far right side of
the house. Bill had come around the left side away from the creature he said was
coming up the drive and still had to traverse all but five feet of the house’s
entire forty foot length to get inside.
John cracked open the door just enough to let his friend hear his
encouragement, “Hurry up, Bill! You can make it!” He quickly closed it back
up but was ready to fling it open at the last second. His finger nervously
twitched on the trigger as the shot gun was situated for a quick shot, if need
be.
Unfortunately, the porch light was insignificant. The rain seemed
to halt its progression into the deeper well of night, and its low wattage
couldn’t completely dispel all the shadows, for some hung on grudgingly and
ominously close to the porch. Those patches of darkness seemed small enough to
betray the creature that lurked somewhere in their midst, but even they seemed
ominously alive, ready to aid their god on its conquest.
Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, John sees movement among the
sable swatches of night-canvass to his right but is too focused on Bill nearing
the porch on his left--a look of relief transforms Bill’s face as he makes the
steps--John lowers the gun to quickly swing open the door--cold rain washes mud
from Bill’s pallid face--two steps up, almost to a freedom that was temporal
at most inside the deficient citadel--a larger adumbration brakes rank from its
fellow shadows, large and sooty and fast--no God, no!--John throws open the door
and pulls up the shot gun to fire at the night that seemed to come alive in
front of his eyes--Bill, thinking that he’s made it, smiles exhaustingly as he
reaches up at the opening door--in an instant, quicker than the round he wants
to fire, a black hand appears in front of Bill’s abdomen, no, not in front of
but through his belly--blood and entrails splatter the door and
John--Bill spasms and jerks momentarily, not even having enough time to scream
the agony he surely felt for that instant, then becomes flaccid--the black
appendage tosses Bill’s body to the porch like a rag doll and reaches out for
John--he fires a round at it and screams obscenities as he closes the door.
“No, not Bill! Please, no, not Bill!”
Ian grabbed John and pulled him from the door way, his face
disfigured from fright and shock.
A second later, a bloodied corpse crashed through the door window
and lay in a heap next to them.
“Oh Lord,” Ian dispared, almost having to turn away.
Sandy ran into the dining room and upon seeing the wet and
blood-spattered corpse of Bill on the floor, screamed in shock.
John was frantically reloading the shot gun as he went to her,
“Sandy, go into the other room! Go!”
She turned to leave but stopped and huddled at the dining room
entranceway.
A lightning strike hit dangerously near, flashing instantly
through the large unbarracaded picture window in front of them, flickering the
lights momentarily. A rattling explosion followed almost simultaneously, shaking
the floor under them, and each jumped reflexively.
Suddenly, thoughts flashed across Ians mind: torrid fire,
unquenchable heat, utter, eternal agony: Hell. The Hell the beast had so fondly
spoken of earlier. Even if that strike of millions of volts of electricity had
hit them dead on, it’s magnitude would have been but a drop in the Lake of
Fire; not even enough force to cause a ripple. But those thoughts quickly gave
rise to an idea. He didn’t know if it would work, but something was better
than nothing. He’d have to act quickly.
Without warning and simultaneously, the rest of the back door and
the dining room window beside it imploded, showering them with glass and wood
and a cacophony of blood-congealing sounds and howls and shrieks of damnation,
partly the storm and partly something altogether different.
Play time was over.
Ian cried out, “I’ve an idea, John. How many rounds do you
have?”
“Six more,” John yelled back.
“Just keep shooting but when I tell you, high-tale it t’the
living room and out the window.”
John nodded then shot arbitrarily into the dining room window, not
really expecting to hit anything but letting the creature know they weren’t
going to just lay down, not by a long shot.
Ian went to Sandy who was trembling, pacing, alternately ringing
her hands, biting her nails and hugging herself.
“Come help me,” he said. They went into the living room and
began moving the couch and love seat and table away from the window. The two of
them moved the barriers from the large picture window just enough to squeeze
through. Bill had already taken care of knocking away the glass.
“What are we doing?” she asked as she watched Ian then stoke
the still-burning fire John had built earlier with another small log, making
sure its flames would lick a little higher.
“Stay near that window,” he commanded, “and when I tell you,
get outside and away from the house as fast as you can, understand?”
“What about John?”
“I’ve told him the same, he’s fine, now stay by that window.
And don’t go out till I say. I don’t want either of you t’be outside with
that creature any longer than need be.”
Sandy stood, as instructed, ready to leap out the window on his
command. She appeared more frail to him now as she watched silently. She seemed
to have withered somehow in her own skin when only a short while ago, she looked
vibrant--scared but alive. Now, terror had eaten her away just as completely as
being inflicted with anorexia would have done. He stood a moment, looking at her
pale, shivering skin, damp hair, the emotion in her eyes--part dread, part
sadness. He blinked once. For a moment, just a split second, she reminded him of
Fiona. On a lesser scale, Fiona had not looked much different on that day when
they said goodbye before she left for Inverness. Now, he too, felt a sudden
sadness.
Without giving much thought as to why, he took off his long coat
and handed it too her. It was waterproof and still warm and dry on the inside,
if not a little smelly.
“No, no,” she pleaded pushing back the coat. Then, she stared
aghast at the deep bruise ring around his neck that the coat had once partially
concealed.
Ian noticed her look of concern but just said reassuringly,
“You’re goin’ t’live. And after havin’ been through this, I don’t
want you catchin’ your death from pneumonia.” He held it out once more, and
this time she did take it and put it on.
Afterwards and without another word spoken, Ian rushed into the
kitchen.
Back in the dining room, another deafening shot rang out,
reverberating through the entire household like the repercussion of an artillery
blast.
In the corner of the kitchen where the stove once sat, a copper
tube, like a snake, rose from the kitchen floor. At its base, a gray metal
valve. Ian hurried to it, bent down, took a deep breath and let out a long, slow
sigh. Then he completely opened the valve, and natural gas hissed into the
kitchen air. With that, he yelled back to Sandy, “Get out, now!”
He didn’t have time to see if she had heeded his command because
he was only half-finished. He ran through a doorway in the back of the kitchen
which led into the dining room where John was firing off another round. This
blast, though, wasn’t at empty space, for there was something coming through
the hole where the window once was. It was a hulking piece of flesh and bone and
muscle with the dour color and substance of an oil slick moving over rough
waters. Its form was misshapen with incredible bulges, reeking with the stench
of a million rotting souls and shrieking with a sharp cry that excised the very
air around it, “Key, key, key, key!” the only words it could say.
It reached for John, but he sent it reeling back with another
point-blank shot that seemed only to retard its inevitable encroachment and make
it more blasphemous.
Those unblinking,
pupil-less eyes, the color of stirring sulfur pits, stared him down from beyond
the window, almost daring another round as it started more determinedly through
the hole once again.
Wide-eyed, John began
to back up as he fumbled in his pants pocket for another shell.
Then suddenly, the demonic griffin caught sight of the priest, and
its eyes brightened malignantly, losing interest in the imbecile and his toy
gun.
“John, your work is done,” Ian said, never taking his eyes off
the hideousness in front of him, trying to look formidable, unafraid, trying to
figure out how something that size could have squeezed into Art’s body. He was
both in awe and terrified. “Get out, now, by the front window. The girl is
already outside. Take her and get as far from here as you can.”
John started to say something, but he interrupted. “Go! Trust
me, you don’t want t’be around much longer. Hurry, man. It’s my fight
now.” Again, he said, “Go!”
John didn’t bother reloading. He just backed up cautiously,
slowly, resisting his screaming intuition to keep his eyes on the Watcher just
long enough to give Ian a look of intense concern, even pity. Once he had backed
up to the dining room entranceway, John then turned and hobble-sprinted down the
foyer hall.
Ian tediously pulled the white cloth from his pocket and opened it
as he walked over Bill’s corpse and centered himself by the window. “See
what I’ve got?” he asked in an arrogant tease, displaying the damnable,
onyx-colored key in his hand. “You’ve waited a long time and have come a
long way for this.” He retreated to the entranceway to the foyer hall, waving
the clothed key in the palm of his hand.
In the blink of an eye, without a sound or the disturbance of one
shard of loose glass still hanging from the broken pane, the Watcher was now
through the window, standing at the opposite end of the dining room from him.
Those familiar molten orbs brightened like a super nova at the sight of the key.
Veins the size of subway tunnels pulsed in its misshapen head, its long,
twig-like fingers clawed out for that key, its razor-edged teeth chattered like
a chain saw with an abominable excitement.
Ian swallowed hard, but his determined look remained steady.
“Remember what you said t’me today, what you were goin’ t’do t’me?
Well, now’s your chance.” He clenched his teeth. "Make--me--suffer!”
It took a stride towards him, crying out in a gale of animosity
that pushed Ian’s hair back and almost made him stumble.
Ian backed up slowly. Tauntingly, he uttered, “I never said
it’d be easy though.”
He ran down the narrow hall, almost sliding headlong into the
bookcases as he tried to veer into the living room too sharply on the hardwood
floor. Standing in the middle of the room, he turned to face the Watcher who was
now sentried under the archway like a troll under the bridge to freedom,
blocking any escape by that route.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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