Spookshow V: Half-Boys and Gypsy Girls, page 25
“Oy! Which one of you retards brought the marshmallows!”
The cult members spun around. Two of them held long knives, but a third produced a gun from the folds of his robes and aimed it squarely at the intruder’s torso.
“Don’t even bother with popgun, mate.” Gantry ignored the weapon, searching the hooded faces of the group. “Szandy! Show your ugly face.”
One man had kept his back to the Brit, but he turned around now. Szandor LaVey, high priest of the Church of Satan, leered at the newcomer with eyes so bloodshot that Gantry wondered with what he had juiced his veins. His lips gibbered wetly as he smiled. He held something big tucked under his arm and when he turned fully, Gantry saw the severed head of the deer. Its eyes reflected the fire and gore dripped from the neck stump.
“Gantry,” was all the priest said. His smile broadened even wider, as if he couldn’t be more pleased to see the man.
“Santa’s not gonna be too happy with what you did to poor Rudolph there,” Gantry said, nodding at the gruesome thing. “That’ll put you on the naughty list for sure.”
A fifth figure loomed in the smoky haze of the bonfire, hovering over the limp form of the prisoner. Clutched in both hands was an enormous battle-axe, deadly on both ends. He watched the priest like a hawk, awaiting his cue.
Szandor LaVey’s eyes bulged from their sockets, his pupils dilated in a fever. He staggered to his left, teeth chattering as he forced out just a few words. “Just. Fucking. Kill. Him.”
Gantry looked at the cult member with the gun. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, son.”
The man pulled the trigger. The gun blew up in his hand. He dropped to his knees, cradling the bloodied catastrophe of his gun-hand against his chest.
“Told ya,” Gantry said.
The rector of the group was shaking hard, seizing in some type of fit. He seemed unaware of the misfired weapon, as if caught up in some delusion only he could see.
The cult charged. Gantry pulled the pin and tossed the flashbang into the fire.
~
Billie ducked when she heard the first pop, unaware that it was a misfire. The second explosion was louder. The bonfire blew, erupting flames 30 feet into the snowy night. Mockler shot to his feet and brought the shotgun to bear. “Get Owen,” he barked. “I’ll take care of the others.”
They ran into the clearing, their footing unsteady as they hit the loose slabs of shale. The detective fired a warning shot over the heads of the dark figures and two of them bolted into the darkness. Smaller fires blazed over the basin from where the flaming shrapnel had landed and smoke was everywhere. A figure charged out of the smoke at a dead run and tackled the detective to the rocky ground. The shotgun went off, its bark echoing up the canyon walls.
“Ray!” Billie called out. The smoke was impenetrable and she had lost sight of him. Only the glow of the bonfire shone through the hazy fog, a compass point from which to navigate.
Kaitlin tugged her arm. “Come on,” she urged.
Hanging onto one another, they scrambled into the fog, their shoes tripping on the loose shale and icy rocks. Billie fell hard on one knee, cursed and pushed on.
“Oh God,” said Kaitlin.
“What’s wrong?” Billie gripped her friend tight, afraid to lose her in the smoke. Then, Kaitlin gave out a sharp cry of pain and fell back against her. The momentum brought both of them down. Billie struggled to get up, pinned under Kaitlin’s dead weight.
“Kaitlin!” She shook the woman, but Kaitlin remained limp, her eyes closed.
A horrid sound shrieked through the smoky air, a pitch so foul it was like nothing Billie had ever heard. Then, something came tumbling down the shale incline and rolled against Billie’s knee.
Owen Rinalto’s dead eyes looked up at her, his mouth twisted in a rictus of pain. Billie screamed and kicked the severed head away from her.
~
Szandor LaVey ate dirt, his face pushed down into the slime by Gantry, but the cult leader didn’t seem to care. He kept repeating a phrase over and over through chattering teeth.
“It is done. It is done.”
“Shut up, you stupid bastard!” Gantry pushed his face further into the muck, hoping to drown the bald-headed git. He’d clearly lost his marbles somewhere between the church and the gulch of the punchbowl. How else could he explain cutting the head off of an animal with a chainsaw? He snapped his eyes right and left, wondering where the antlered head had fallen.
When the unearthly sound shrieked through the gorge, Gantry’s blood went cold. He’d heard that sound before. Spinning round, he finally understood what Szandor had been blathering about.
It was done. The bastard had succeeded.
The body of the naked boy on the rock was now upright, descending the stony berm, but something was all wrong from the neck up. Where Owen’s face should have been, there was now the grisly head of the buck with its rack of antlers rising majestically above. The hide of the beast was sutured into the flesh of the man in some obscene fusion and a foul, dark blood dribbled from the flared nostrils. The great antlers swung about as it turned in Gantry’s direction.
Then, it came on, the sharp rocks cutting the naked soles of his feet.
Chapter 31
“SZANDOR, YOU USELESS twat!” Gantry roared, rolling up onto his knees. “What have you done?”
The monstrosity that was once Owen Rinalto shambled forward, its great antlered head dipping low. Its nostrils flared hot with steam like a toro about to charge. Gantry pushed himself up, his knees wobbly and his footing uneven on the broken shale. The little strength he possessed had been spent tackling the demented church leader. There was nothing left in his limbs to face the perverse creature before him.
Szandor LaVey was a different story. He sprang up and chittered like an ape, his eyes mad with glee at what he had accomplished. The man’s wits were dashed, his words garbled into a rambling prattle of gibberish.
“Knock it down, Szandor.” Gantry seized the church leader by the collar, shaking him. “Whatever trick you pulled to make the damn thing, undo it!”
The glassy eyes of the deer head shone in the firelight as the thing picked up steam. Old Scratch had found a new vessel and John Gantry wondered if he should have stayed dead back in that sterile morgue. On his best day, he was no match for the demon. As sick and weak as he was, he posed as much of a threat as a blind kitten. Game over.
The malignant thing charged, the ten point rack rushing in fast at the Englishman. Self-preservation kicked in. Gantry yanked the Satanic priest hard and pushed him into the path of the charging monster. The impact knocked LaVey and Gantry both across the stony ground. Gantry crashed into the fire and Szandor LaVey sprawled atop him, his lung punctured by the antler’s strike.
Detective Mockler was seeing stars as his breath was choked from his windpipe. The robed figure was on top of him, his hands locked around the detective’s throat, crushing the life from him. His attacker was grunting like an animal, but, over the man’s animal noises, Mockler heard Billie’s voice cry out for help. His groping hand found the barrel of the shotgun and he swung it hard against the man’s skull.
The figure tumbled sideways and Mockler rolled up fast. Gripping the barrel in both hands he swung again and heard a loud crack as it connected with the man’s temple.
Scrambling up the loose rock, he couldn’t see Billie in the miasma of smoke, but something else rose up near the fire. Mockler blinked, trying to decipher what he was seeing. A man in a mask? The smoke cleared for a moment and he saw the naked form of the man they had come to rescue, but his head was gone. In its place rose the antlered head of the buck.
A mask, he thought. A trick of the light. Then, the monstrous deer-headed man bolted forward, antlers down. It slammed into LaVey and Gantry, hurtling them both into the fire.
Mockler charged, racking the slide of the shotgun and levelling the barrel at the monstrosity. The stock seated into his shoulders as he aimed and when the grotesque thing swung about to face him, he fired.
The blast of a 12-gauge Mossberg was enough to flatten anyone, especially at this range. The thing with the antlers stayed on its feet even as its flesh was flayed with buckshot. Mockler pumped the slide again, spinning the spent shell from the chamber. The thing charged at him.
The shotgun clattered lengthwise against the sharp antlers, saving him from being gored in the face. Landing hard on his back, he gasped as the wind was knocked out of him and panic bit deep when he couldn’t breathe.
Get up, he snarled in his own head. Move.
Black blood dribbled from the beast’s snout, splattering hot on the detective’s face. He rolled away when the antlers hammered down, but he wasn’t fast enough and something sharp pierced his ribs. The pain was blinding, but he snatched the horns in a tight grip and held on, keeping the monster’s head down. The idea flashing hot in his head was simple, if ridiculous. If he kept the antlers down long enough, maybe Billie, wherever she was in the hazy smoke, would have enough time to get away. He wasn’t strong enough. Slick with blood, the horns slipped from his hands and he felt cold air rush into the puncture wound in his side.
The sickly stench of burnt hair roiled in Gantry’s nose, the scorching pain of fire clawing his sanity. He rolled out of the flames to the cold shale, his coat smoldering and his hands blistering badly. His ears registered the report of the shotgun as it echoed through the gorge and he looked up in time to see the abomination take Mockler down, goring him with its antlers. His eyesight blurred from the smoke, but, even through the haze, he knew the demon was turning toward him.
Digging into a pocket, he found the short nub of chalk hidden there. No ordinary chalk, this piece had been cured with the dusty bones of a forgotten saint that Gantry had ground into powder himself. Scraping the chalk over the large stones and slabs of shale, he drew a protective seal around himself, muttering the incantation that would trigger its power. The language was foreign and he prayed that the pronunciation was correct. The thing with the horns lumbered closer. He felt something hot on his ankle and spun about to see Szandor LaVey breaching the circle…or, what was once Szandor. His flesh was charred and sizzling. The only part of him that wasn’t burnt black were the whites of his eyeballs. The rector of the diabolical church clawed at him, snarling through his agony. Gantry scrabbled to his feet and kicked the man back into the flames. Szandor LaVey’s hands clawed at the night sky and, then, he became still and thrashed no more.
When Gantry swung back around he was face-to-gruesome-face with the stitched together deer-man. Its nostrils blew hot on his face and the rancid smell made him gag more than the smoke. The chalk was gone from his hands, lost among the stones. The protective circle unfinished.
He scrambled for something to say. If he was going to die, he’d go down swinging, even if all he had the strength for was a flip word. “Scratch,” he spat. “You’re a damned ugly sight. They should have sewn that thing’s rump to your neck.”
The creature raised one hand and Gantry steeled himself for the blow, but no strike came. Its finger stretched, pointing to the fire behind him.
The flames licked up in an unnatural way and shifted into a human form. Gantry’s first thought was that it was LaVey but the man’s remains lay at the base of the pyre, still and dark among the orange flames. The fire at the apex incandesced into the shape of a woman and, when it spoke, John Gantry staggered back.
John?
Gantry fell to his knees. “No,” he whispered and shut his eyes against it.
What have you done, John?
He opened his eyes and she was still there, the woman in the fire. His voice cracked. “Ellie.”
Was it worth it? asked the woman. Did you get what you wanted?
“Don’t, Ellie. Please…”
Do you know what’s it like, John? Down here in the fire.
“Stop!” He cupped his hands over his ears and began to rock back and forth like some troubled half-wit. The tears blurred his vision, so he shut his eyes. “I can’t save you! I tried!”
Do you ever think of me? Or have you pushed it from your mind like every other sin that you committed?
Gantry coiled up tight, his brow pressed against a stone and his voice no more than a whisper. “Every day. Every bloody day.”
A timber in the fire popped and the wood crumbled, sending embers up into the night and the woman in the fire dissipated in the sparks. The antlered thing tilted its head down to regard the whimpering man at its feet.
Billie reeled from the horror around her. Everyone was down, leaving her the last one standing. Kaitlin was unconscious, Gantry coiled into his own personal hell and Mockler was collapsed on the shale clutching a hand over his ribs. The detestable thing with the antlers turned to her. It seemed to gloat over its fallen enemies, to challenge this last woman standing on the rocky slope.
Billie held no weapon in her hand, not a gun or a blade or even a rock from the ground. She had nothing.
The creature did not speak, but she sensed it communicating something to her. A challenge.
Come. Try me.
“I won’t fight you,” she said.
It shambled closer, raising its arms wide as if demanding she look in awe at what it could do.
“I’m not impressed,” Billie spat. “You are nothing. Just hatred and violence. You are less than nothing.”
Its nostrils blew hot, its chest puffed out. She couldn’t tell if it was angered or simply winding up before striking.
“I used to wonder what Hell was,” she said. “Looking at you, now I know. It’s a garbage heap, where everything useless in this world is tossed.”
The thing blew hotter, rage building toward the unarmed woman. It lowered its antlers to charge, but then it faltered, hesitating.
Billie understood why when she felt a chill pressing in from her left. Owen Rinalto stood there, looking on in horror at what had been done to his earthly remains. He turned to Billie and asked why but she had no answer for him.
The hybrid creature shook its head to dispel the hesitation. Its footing was unsteady but still it prepared to charge. Then, the shotgun went off and flesh stripped away from its torso, causing the monster to stumble sideways.
Mockler was on his knees, the barrel of the gun smoking. He pumped the action again, priming another round, and hollered at Billie to get back. The second blast brought it down, the antlers rattling heavy against the stones. It thrashed, struggling to rise.
Another voice went up in the night, stringing together a thread of obscenities. There was a glint of light as the broad axe swung down hard. It sunk deep into the buck hide and a pitiful cry gurgled from its maw. Shoving a boot onto its neck, Gantry yanked the axe free and swung it back like some mad lumberjack. The second blow docked the head from the body. Both parts of the thing flopped lazily and didn’t move.
Gantry let the axe drop and fell back onto his rear on the stones. He sat wheezing at the gore before him. A figure shambled past him and he watched Billie climb the loose shale to where the deer head lay. Gripping it by the horns, she hurled it into the fire.
~
“Any word?”
“Not yet,” Billie said.
“Bloody doctors,” Gantry said. He dropped into the chair beside Billie. The waiting room was quiet, the two of them the only occupants at this hour. A page rang out over the hospital’s PA system. “Where did Kaitlin scamper to?”
“She went for a walk,” Billie said. “Hospitals make her uneasy now.”
“Can’t blame her. Wretched places these are, like sterile abattoirs.” The gallows humour was crude and unneeded at a time like this. He realized that when he saw her turn away to hide her tears. “I’m sorry. My mouth runs on like a bad faucet. He’s going to be alright, Billie. I promise.”
“Are you psychic now?”
“He’s a tough bloke. It’ll take more than a goring to take him down.” He patted her hand to reassure her, careful not to touch the bandage over her scraped knuckles. “If anything, I’d be more worried about what he’s going to tell his bosses back at the copper station.”
Billie turned to look at him. A detail she hadn’t had a chance to consider yet. “He can’t tell them what happened. They’d think he’s crazy.”
“I know, but Mockler’s a bit of a straight arrow, isn’t he? He’ll feel compelled to explain something. You should convince him otherwise.”
“I don’t think there will be anything to report,” Billie said. “Did you see that fire when we left?”
“Aye.”
They had all seen it, an inferno ripping through the basin of the gorge. The four of them had limped down the shale slope like a troop of battered soldiers. Mockler had to be propped up part of the way, Gantry huffing hard to keep him from collapsing. Crossing back over the train tracks, a crackling roar ripped open the night air and they turned to see the fire blaze up above the treeline. They sallied on like drunken sailors until they reached the car.
“There won’t be much, but a few crispy bones by the time the authorities tromp through the ashes,” Gantry said as he leaned his head back against the seat. “So it’s best for your boyfriend there if it remains unsolved.”
Billie wiped her palms together. She had scrubbed her hands thrice since arriving at the hospital, but they still felt grimy. A nurse marched past them at a brisk pace and moved on, then, the waiting room was quiet again.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
He grinned. “You can ask anything you like, but I can’t promise I’ll answer.”
Billie considered her phrasing. “That woman who appeared in the fire. That was your wife, wasn’t it?”
