Screams cut the night, screams of unimaginable terror. Rick’s screams.
“We’re all one. We’re all the same. Come home to me, Alan.”
Rick’s screams grew worse. “Stop it.” I said.
“Everything you have, I gave you. It all started with me.”
“Stop it!”
“Such beauty,” he hissed. “Such beauty.”
I pitched forward and lumbered toward him. Bernard rose from his crouch but made no attempt to defend himself. With a primal scream of my own, I slashed the blade down across his face then back across his throat. Swinging my arm in a violent repeating arc, I slashed again and again across the crimson mass, spraying us both with blood and bile. Bernard staggered back, still grinning, and finally fell back against the wall.
Winded, I slammed the knife into Bernard’s belly, fell back and dropped to my knees. I reached beneath my shirt, fingered the crucifix my mother had given me.
Do you still believe?
I slowly regained my feet. Spattered with blood, I watched the creature watching me, slashed and punctured but still standing and still staring me down, still grinning.
Do you still believe what it stands for?
Blood pulsed from the thing steadily, and he slowly sank to the floor, sliding along the wall until he was sitting in the mixture of flesh and bone.
I stepped closer. “Do you believe in Hell?”
“Hell is on Earth,” it gurgled. “See what’s right in front of your eyes. The whole planet, they’re all damned and don’t even realize it. They’re already in Hell. I’m just closer to the core, and now, so are you. You’re all fucked. All of you, fucked.”
Are you still afraid of the dark?
With a quick tug I snapped the chain holding the crucifix around my neck, pulled it out from under my shirt and held it tightly in my free hand. The flashlight had become surprisingly steady.
Do you still believe He can protect you?
“Do you believe in a God who never punishes?” I asked.
That He loves you?
“A forgiving God?”
That He has never forgotten you?
“Rather than a vengeful God?”
Are you still afraid of the dark?
I saw the crucifixes dangling in Julie Henderson’s windows, her reality protecting her, remembered the day my mother had pressed this crucifix into my hand and told me she loved me. I remembered how not long afterward, she was dead, and all I had left of her was what I now held in my grasp.
Do you still believe?
“Tell me… do you believe in that kind of God?”
Blood ran from its mouth. “I don’t believe in God at all.”
“No,” I said. “But I do.”
I slammed my fist down into its mouth, past its slimy gums to the sticky wetness of its tongue, and as it tightened its jaws around my wrist, I pushed my hand deeper and stabbed the crucifix into the back of its throat.
It vomited up my arm with such force that I toppled backwards and crashed to the floor. I dropped the flashlight and it rolled away, sweeping circular light across the walls as it went with a strobe-like effect.
I saw my arm, slick with its blood up to my elbow. I saw the nightmare forms watching from the shadows.
“I gave you your beliefs.” The thing that had once been Bernard stared at me with its wet white eyes then began to convulse and writhe. Faster and faster still, it became an impossibly rapid blur of frantic, hideously violent movement.
Growls and whispers circled me like a pack of wolves, and the old mill began to tremble and quake.
The building was coming down all around us.
CHAPTER 36
As the building shook, pieces of ceiling began to fall, the walls crumbled and the floor split. I got to my feet, stumbled through a pile of debris and saw a thick piece of old wooden beam within reach.
I snatched up the board and closed in on Bernard. His bloody form sat collapsed against the wall, still a blur, still writhing and shuddering with inhuman force. I raised the board over my head.
He stopped, suddenly still, the violence now around him, transferred to the collapsing building. The wet eyes opened, looked up at me with something akin to innocence. “Alan?” His voice was high-pitched, like when we were kids. “Alan? Help me, it’s—it’s so dark here, I can’t find my way out.”
I held the weapon suspended above me.
“I’m afraid! Alan, I’m—I’m afraid!”
“You’re a lie. You’re not real.”
“But I’m you, Alan,” he said. “I’m you.”
I swung the board as hard as I could. It connected with the side of his face, splitting it open. He slumped over onto his side, spasms wracking his body, and with the mill imploding around us, I raised the board like a bat and smashed it down again and again, disturbingly calm and collected—cold—while I pummeled his head to a thick soupy pulp. I stood staring down at what I had done, oblivious to all else.
Maybe he was right.
I heard commotion in the distance followed by labored breathing, and somewhere through the numbness I heard Rick screaming my name. Everything came back into focus and suddenly he was standing behind me. His clothes were dirty, he was scraped and disheveled and had a small cut on the side of his face but otherwise looked unharmed. He was shaking from what appeared to be equal doses of fear and anger. “I saw him down there,” he said. “I fucking saw him.”
I looked back over my shoulder, but darkness had swallowed the creature.
“This way!” Rick called.
I dropped the two-by-four and dodged a chunk of ceiling as it hurtled past me and exploded against the floor. Shielding my face with a forearm, I ducked and ran toward the sound of his voice. The floor tilted and shook, and I lost my balance but kept running, rubble falling all around me.
Rick had found a pair of large vertical windows against the back wall of the building that reached to the floor and had been boarded over. By the time I got to him he had begun smashing the wood with his fists. It splintered and we both began peeling and tearing the pieces free. Ignoring his bloodied hands, Rick kicked and punched at the breaks until he’d made an opening large enough for us to squeeze through.
He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me toward it. “Go! Go!”
I pushed through, the jagged edges tearing at my shoulders and legs, and was met by a burst of fresh sea air. I tumbled to the ground, found myself lying on sand and surrounded by the tall grass that signaled the beginning of the cliffs along the rear of the property. The fireworks had ended but the sky was clear, and a three-quarter moon perched high above provided enough light for me to find my bearings.
I knew even then that if we took the time to negotiate the steep slant of the cliffs we’d never make it. The building would topple and crush us before we could reach the cover of overhang on the beach below. We’d have to run and jump and hope to do so with enough velocity to clear the beach and reach the water. From there, it was a matter of pure luck. The drop was not enormous but considerable—at least ninety to one hundred yards. Even if the water was deep enough at our point of entry, we’d have to pray the tide would bring us back to the beach in enough time to find safety against the base of the cliff. Otherwise we’d have to swim to deeper water and hope to get far enough to avoid the falling rubble.