“Untie me.”
She quickly went back to work with the rope. Peripherally, she saw Chris scoot away from her in the darkness, possibly looking for sanctuary behind one of the pews. Up on the pulpit, a pinpoint of light sparked through the darkness: Meg’s lighter. The flame shook and wavered until the girl was able once again to light the candle. This time, her brother did not yell at her to blow it out.
Meg approached the altar and the mangled corpse that lay across it. One bloodied arm jutted out at an unnatural angle. Meg moved with the lethargy of a somnambulist while the candle’s flame jittered in her hand. Above the girl’s head, it began to snow through the opening in the roof.
Kate finally got the rope untied. Todd pulled his hands into his lap and rubbed his wrists before climbing to his feet. He was staring up at the snow coming through the roof. “We need to get out of here. Fast.”
Kate rushed up to the altar and snatched the bag of ammo from beneath it. As she stood, she locked eyes again with Nan Wilkinson’s corpse. Ice clung to the woman’s silvery hair and her skin looked cold and brittle, like porcelain.
“Come with me,” Kate said, grabbing Meg by the wrist. The motion caused Meg to drop the candle.
“My brother,” Meg said.
“We all need to get out of here.”
The hands against the windows began banging on the glass—all of them in unison, like some orchestrated percussive beat. Kate pulled Meg down off the altar just as the snow above their heads began to solidify and come together. At the center of the blustery mass was a tendril of silver light, like light spilling out of a keyhole.
“Here!” Kate shouted, tossing Todd the handgun. Dragging Meg by the wrist, she ran toward the farthest wall. Meg was as lifeless as a rag doll in her grasp.
Chris began whimpering from behind one of the pews.
Todd press-checked the nine-millimeter, then took several steps backward. The mass of snow rotating above the altar seemed to darken and take on form, like a shadow. Watching it, Kate found herself hoping that Chris had been right—that perhaps this was sanctified land and no evil would dare cross its threshold. But as the swirling mass of snow and light above the altar became thicker and more prominent, she knew that was not the case.
They were going to die.
The carpet beneath the altar suddenly went up in a blaze of white flame: Meg’s dropped candle. A second later and Nan’s outstretched arm went up, too, filling the nave with a dark black smoke and the acrid, gunpowdery reek of burning flesh. As the black smoke rose up out of the hole in the roof, it commingled with the twirling mass of living snow hovering just above the altar. Briefly, like a sheet draped over a mannequin, the smoke brought the creature into frightening relief—the human-shaped head with the distended jowls and the hollow pits for eyes; the thin stalk of its neck; the heart-shaped scurf of its upper chest…
Todd fired two, three shots at it. The rounds passed right through the cloud of smoke, carving funnels in their wake. Meg clamped hands to her ears while her brother shouted something unintelligible, the fear in his voice undeniable now.
The creature swooped down and glided just above the pulpit, its near-formless arms trailing behind it like the tentacles of a giant squid. Its belly licked the flames, causing the massive thing to shriek in agony and pull up toward the ceiling. Kate felt the wind of its movement against her face.
“Burn it!” Meg screamed beside her, clutching onto Kate’s forearm with both her hands. “Burn it!”
Indeed, the creature’s scaly flank glowed as red as embers in a bonfire as it pulled rotations above their heads. Charred bits of scurf fluttered to the altar like confetti.
Just as one of the windows shattered behind her, Kate lunged forward and pulled one of the wall sconces from its seating. Charging up to the altar, she plunged the sconce into the flames, the heat from the growing inferno stinging her eyes and causing sweat to pop out of her pores.
“Kate!” Todd yelled at her. “Get down, Kate!”
Meg wailed and curled up in one corner. Directly above Meg’s head, one of the townspeople was attempting to climb in through the shattered window.
Proffering the flaming torch above her head, Kate stepped down off the altar and joined Todd, who was holding the pistol in both hands now, a look of utter perplexity on his face. Blood streaked his white skin—cheeks, forehead, neck, and chin.
Kate waved the torch and the creature pixilated into dust. Snow rained down from the rafters while more poured in through the opening in the roof.
Farther down the narthex, more windows imploded as fists were driven through the glass. Ghoulish shapes shimmied up over the sill and dropped down into the church.
“There’s a side door!” Todd shouted, pointing clear across the pulpit.
“Okay!” Kate shouted. It felt like the building was getting ready to shake apart. She turned to Meg and called for the girl but Meg wouldn’t move; she’d drawn her legs up into a fetal position and simply sat, rocking back and forth in the corner.
“Come on,” Todd said, grabbing Kate’s arm.
Kate pulled her arm loose. “Wait!” She ran to Meg and pulled her to her feet. Meg stumbled but followed. Kate shouted for Chris, too…and the boy popped up behind one of the pews, his flesh prickled with sweat and his priestly garb hanging off him like quilts. He hurried toward them just as something—something big—moved behind him in the shadows. The darkness seemed to separate from itself just as a white curl of powder engulfed Chris, bringing him screaming to the floor.
“Chris!” Meg shouted, and it took all of Kate’s strength to hang on to the girl.
Chris attempted to stand…but just as he got his feet under himself, something partially transparent and shaped like the blade of a hunting knife (only much, much bigger) speared out of the mist and plunged straight into Chris’s right shoulder.
Chris’s eyes bulged. His mouth dropped open and, a moment later, a black string of blood oozed out. He staggered and would have fallen, had he not been speared to the thing behind him.
A second curled talon appeared, this one the size of a school bus fender and about as solid as a strip of film projected onto a cloud of smoke. It sprung forward, reminding Kate of nature specials she’d seen as a kid, where scorpions jabbed their poison-tipped tails into the backs of spiders. The talon pierced Chris’s left shoulder, making the boy’s head roll loosely on his neck. Blood continued to spill from his agape mouth, staining the holy vestments he wore.
Meg buried her face in Kate’s chest.
Later on, Kate would recall Shawna Dupree’s words when thinking back on this event—about these things wearing people like puppets—because that was exactly what appeared to be happening. The darkened shape behind Chris seemed to loom up over him as it slid its bladed arms farther into Chris’s back. As it did so, Chris’s body jerked and squirmed, like a sock being fitted with an oversized foot. The cloud shape then seemed to fade into Chris’s back, as if sucked through a black hole, and as the last vestige of the creature withdrew into him, Chris’s eyes flipped open and his neck cocked at an angle in a mockery of life.
Everything went deathly silent. In the shadows behind Chris, Kate could make out the crenellated silhouettes of the townspeople inside the church while others paused halfway through the broken windows. They were surrounded.
“Hey,” said the Chris-thing. “Hey, Meg. Come on. Come here.”
Meg would not look at it. Kate hugged her tighter.
“Come on, Meg. Sis. Come on, little sister.” The Christhing shuffled forward, its steps as awkward as a toddler’s. He had the same empty look in his eyes as Eddie Clement had had when they picked him up on the side of the road. “Hey, now…”