314 Book 2 (6 page)

“Are you okay?” asked Alma as she stood beside Aubrey. That’s when she saw blood on Aubrey’s fingers. “Oh my God. What’s the matter.”

Aubrey fell to her knees as the coughs turned to wretches. She heaved, and her right arm began to spasm. Alma gripped her wrist, but the girl’s arm shook with incredible strength, flinging out of Alma’s hand and slamming again and again into the gravel.

“Holy shit,” said Rachel.

“Is she having a seizure?” asked Stephen, emerging panic evident in his tone.

“Honey?” asked Alma as she tried to grab the girl’s hand. “What’s happening?”

Aubrey shook her head violently, flinging droplets of blood against the white van’s side. Then her coughs turned to vomit, but it was as if the only thing in her stomach was white foam, speckled with bright red blood. Her arm continued to shake, but was independently violent compared to the rest of her body.

“Help me hold her,” said Alma as Aubrey’s hand continued to smash into the gravel.

Stephen approached reluctantly, and then Aubrey shocked them all by standing on her own. She stood rigid, both arms straight down at her sides, and her vomiting ceased. The foam and blood dripped from her chin as Aubrey looked at Stephen, and then opened her mouth.

Someone else’s voice came from Aubrey’s open mouth, like a
call from within a cave, “Look what you’ve done.”

“Holy
hell!” Stephen staggered back. He tripped and fell to his butt, and then dragged himself backward, desperate to get away.

Alma thought
it had been the strange voice that frightened Stephen, but then she looked at Aubrey. There were fingers sprouting from her open mouth, clawing at the girl’s cheeks and pulling her mouth wider.

“Jesus!” Rachel ran from the bartender and stood beside her
terrified husband as she tried to help him stand. “Alma, get away from her!”

Aubrey turned to face Alma, and the fingers within her mouth
worked to pull the gap wider. Aubrey’s jaw popped and then a woman’s hand pushed through and reached out to grab onto Alma. Aubrey’s body fell forward, slamming into the gravel as Alma backed away in shock and terror. The hand clawed at the ground in an attempt to drag the girl’s corpse forward.

Alma was too focused on the grotesquery scrambling her way to see Jacker’s approach. The big guy was uncompromising as he dealt with the horror. He kicked Aubrey’s corpse in the side with all his strength and the waif of a girl spun across the gravel
, away from Alma. “Fuck this place! Get in the van.”

“What about Aubrey?” asked Alma, still shaken by what she’d seen.

Jacker grimaced and nodded in the direction of Aubrey’s twisted, blood soaked body. “I’ve got a strict ‘No Demon’ rule about riding in my van.”

Aubrey’s corpse shook as the hands within struggled to pull
free. Her head was now split. Her jaw dislocated as the other arm sprung forth and writhed, like two snakes pushing free through a small opening in a tied bag.

Alma was transfixed as the corpse convulsed. The creature within was trying to pull itself free, mangling the bartender’s body as it did. White foam and yellow bile squirted from Aubrey’s torn jaw, slathering the demon
’s arms as they slid in and out. The demon’s hands were searching for something to grip to tear the opening wider. The hands pushed at Aubrey’s neck, and then slithered back within her to start trying to force their way through another spot. Suddenly the girl’s stomach bulged, pushing her skin out and her shirt up to reveal a hand within, like an adult sized fetus trying to push her way through a mother’s belly. The skin split, and blood gushed forth along with a bulbous sack of pink, veiny flesh. Within the sack was a woman’s face, pressed to the skin like a suffocating person trapped inside a plastic bag. She pushed her fingers into the membrane and ripped it open so that she could emerge. The woman’s face was covered in blood, her white eyes the only break in the mask of red. She screamed out, “Look what you’ve done!”

The woman’s teeth fell out of her mouth as she scrambled to crawl free of Aubrey’s corpse.

“Get in the damn van!” Jacker picked Alma up and forced her into the vehicle before sliding the door shut. He raced around the other side and got in as Rachel pushed some of the boxes in the back aside so she could watch the twisting horror they were fleeing. Jacker hit the gas too hard, and the gravel spit up and into the demon’s face, pelting her with the sharp stones as the van struggled to grip the road. The creature’s face was shredded by the rocks, her skin tearing away as if made of liquid, revealing the skull beneath.

The tires suddenly found their grip and the van surged forward, back onto the road headed out of Widowsfield. Rachel grabbed Alma and pulled her into an embrace, as if comforting a terrified child. “What is going on? What did we get ourselves into? Stephen!” Her questions turned suddenly accusatory. “What did you get us into?”

“They’re not just going to let us leave,” said Alma. She was nearly hyperventilating as she stared out the back of the van.

“We’ll see about that,” said Jacker as he stepped
harder on the gas, revving the engine as the van hurtled forward.

“Fuck,” said Stephen. “There’s fog ahead. That can’t be good.”

Alma turned her attention back to the front of the van to see what they were headed into. A flash of a memory stung her with near physical pain as she saw the thick mist rolling over the roadway ahead, shrouding the woods that bordered their exit. A green light burst within the cloud and revealed a silhouette of a man standing on the side of the road. Then she heard chattering of teeth in the distance.

“He’s here,” said Alma.

“Who?” asked Rachel.

“The one the children follow,” said Alma. “He controls the mist.”

“As if I weren’t freaked out enough already,” said Jacker, never bothering to slow the van down as they entered the fog.

Alma remembered the day her father drove her away from Widowsfield. He was frantic, and yelled at her to stop making noise i
n the back seat, although she’d been unaware that she was even humming. The fog seemed to devour them, closing in around the car as if they’d plunged into cloudy water, and there were things floating in the air around them. Shapes slipped through the fog, providing only scant glimpses of the creatures within. Alma saw claws, and undulating, arched backs that had spikes protruding from the spine, along with eyes that flashed when the green electricity zapped. Then there were the children, just silhouettes in the fog ahead until her father drove through them, causing them to dissipate with the parted cloud. And always present, hiding in the mist, was the presence of the one the children would come to call The Skeleton Man. She had stared at the fog until the black wires started to descend from the sky, and that’s when she couldn’t stand to watch anymore.

“Alma!” Rachel shook her friend and Alma gasped as if she hadn’t been breathing.

“What’s going on?” asked Alma. “What’s wrong?”

“You were humming with your eyes closed the whole time
we were in the fog,” said Rachel.

Alma looked out of the van’s windows and saw that they were driving through a neighborhood, and the mist was gone. “Did we make it out of Widowsfield?”
Alma took her hand out of her coat pocket and realized that she’d been clutching her keys while humming.

“I don’t know where
we are,” said Stephen. “We came out of the fog and now we’re here. Wherever ‘here’ is.”

It was overcast and the street was empty as they drove through the unfamiliar town. There was no sign of life and Jacker slowed down as Stephen dug out a map from the glove box.

Alma stared at the plain, ranch style homes, with wire fences separating the backyards and manicured bushes decorating the front. Some of the lawns were cut short, while others had been allowed to grow for a few weeks, each property line delineated by the differing height of the grass. Then she saw a plastic deer beside a rose bush outside of a green home, and knew exactly where they were.

“This is Widowsfield,” said Alma.

“Are you sure?” asked Jacker. “I drove straight. We should be on our way back to Branson.”

“We’re not,” said Alma. “I remember this street.”

“Damn it,” said Stephen. “We must’ve gotten turned around somehow.”

“No,” said Alma. “We’re on the other side of town, near the cabin. I remembe
r driving past that green house before, when I used to come here with my father.” Her voice trembled. “The cabin should be up here on our right.” She leaned forward, between the driver’s and passenger’s seats and then pointed to a white house. “There, that’s it.”

“Are you sure?” asked Stephen, unconvinced.

“Positive. Behind us is the Jackson Reservoir, and if we keep going we’ll be back at the school,” said Alma. “The last time I was here was with my mother.” Alma thought that was true, but when she said it she felt like she was lying. “Is that true?”

“Are you asking me?” asked Rachel. “I don’t know.”

Jacker stopped the van in front of the cabin. “Have you found Widowsfield on the map yet?”

Stephen was flipping through the booklet in haste, but was getting more frustrated by the second. “When did you buy this?” He
closed the book and looked at the date on the front: 2009.

“What does it matter?” asked Jacker.

“It matters because Widowsfield isn’t here, man.” Stephen opened the book back to the map of the county they were in. He pointed at a large green block where Widowsfield should be. It just said, ‘Private Property.’

“Should I turn around?”
asked Jacker.

“Fuck if I know,” said Stephen.

Rachel sat up straight, rigid and alert. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

“Chattering teeth?” asked Alma, wondering if Rachel cou
ld hear the nerve-racking sound.

“No, hush.” She put up a finger to keep the others qui
et, but all they could hear was the rumble of the vehicle. “Turn off the van.”

“Uh, no,” said Jacker as if Rachel had just asked him to do the stupidest thing he could’ve possibly considered.

Rachel opened the sliding door on her side of the van as the others berated her for it. “Be quiet! I think I heard someone screaming.”

“So your first thought is to open the door and investigate?” asked Stephen, critical of his wife’s decision.

They heard a high pitched cry for help, dulled by distance. It sounded like a child.

“You heard that, right?” asked Rachel.

“I heard it,” said Jacker. “Not sure how much I care though.”

“That sounded like a kid,” said Rachel. “We need to go help.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Jacker. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We just watched a demon bitch squirt out of Aubrey’s stomach. That seems like a pretty good reason to get out of town.”

“I’m not going to stand by and let a little kid get hurt,” sai
d Rachel. “Who’s coming with me?”

Alma and Stephen both got out with Rachel. Jacker was left alone, and grumbled as he turned off the van. He opened the door and got out, complaining as he did. “This is a bad idea.”

“It’s coming from that house,” said Rachel, ignoring Jacker as she pointed at a two-story home they were parked beside. Like most of the neighborhood, the home was fairly standard. There were preened bushes in front, and buds of new growth in the flowerbed beside the walkway. The grass was recently cut, and a green hose stretched from the side of the house out to a yellow sprinkler set in the yard. The wooden, slatted shades of the home were drawn, hiding whatever was happening within that had caused the child to scream for help.

“No, Mommy!” They heard the young boy scream again, which hastened their steps. Rachel got to the door first, but Stephen moved her aside, intent on being the first to go in.

“It’s locked,” said Stephen as he tried the handle. Then he jammed his thumb on the doorbell and they all heard it chime from within.

“Help!” screamed the child.

“Watch out,” said Jacker. “This is my specialty.”

Stephen and Rachel moved to either side of the door as Jacker prepared to do the same here that he had at Alma’s apartment a
couple days earlier.

Alma remembered meeting Jacker. He’d burst through her door, having been sent there to protect her from her father, who had come to confront Alma about returning to Widowsfield. She knew that she hadn’t met Jacker before the moment he burst
through her door, but she couldn’t recall why he’d been there. A sense of impending dread consumed her, as if she were a schoolgirl that had forgotten to do her homework.

Jacker kicked the door, but it didn’t open. Instead, the trim that housed the deadlock cracked and a sliver of space was revealed. Stephen hit his shoulder into the door, breaking the trim further, but a chain lock stopped his entrance.

“Get away from us!” A woman yelled from within, and then a butcher knife slashed through the gap of the partially opened door.

Stephen staggered backward, into Jacker, as the woman within reached through the opening to
slice at him. Rachel and Alma screamed in shock and Jacker cursed at the crazed woman.