The Necromancer (24 page)

“Kill it,” Roger huffed, holding his bad arm to his chest and pointing at the demon with the other. “Kill it before it gets away. Beware...of its blood... It burns.”

Nyle Cranley aimed a rifl e at the demon from his seat in the wagon and fi red with a resounding BOOM, blowing a hole in its head and sending fl aps of scalp, chunks of skull and brains across the dead leaves. It choked. It twitched. It fl opped over. And it died.

*****

All Hallow’s Eve

The beast quivered and bucked into her with ferocity as she stared vacantly into the dark. Jessica continued to beat her fi st against the door.

Tears fl owed down Susanna’s expressionless cheeks.

There was no more forgiveness, not now—not ever.

No redemption. No love. No God. Only emptiness and loss, sorrow and despair. Only corruption reigned now. Utter and relentless corruption. Death was preferable to living.

Ambrose continued to change: Beast to man; man to beast. Chanting in guttural tongues.

He roared and dragged his claws down Susanna’s

shoulders and across her breasts, digging deep canals of blood in her fl esh.

She cried out from the pain, but her eyes remained distant, her mind empty. Her body felt the injuries; she felt nothing.

There was a crash in the other room, and a scream, and Jessica’s calls and her banging on the door stopped. A scuffl e ensued. Then gunfi re.

Ambrose glanced at the door and briefl y focused on what was taking place behind it. There was a lull in the gunfi re.

One last shot.

Then everything fell silent again and Ambrose threw his head back and roared—half man, half beast—as a fi nal tremor rumbled through his body.

A moment later, the door burst open.

*****

windows in one section of the building shed light. From outside, the house appeared placid, almost inviting.

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Doubt assailed Corwin’s determination. The house seemed harmless enough; innocent enough. But he cast his doubts aside. They had left Roger and Edward lying back there, halfway down the hill, injured by some thing which could not have been wrought by God’s hands, but by Blayne’s...or the Devil’s.

Corwin dismounted some distance from the house and tethered his horse to a tree. He signaled the men to do likewise and to remain quiet as he led them up to the building.

When they reached the door, Parris peered into one of the windows. Jessica pounded on a door to an adjoining room, crying to be let in. Parris recognized her from Salem Village, but did not remember once seeing her at one of his services.

He nodded to Corwin, and Corwin nodded to Wilfred Brown and Morley Lawson. They pulled back from the door with their pistols drawn and charged, each assaulting the door with one hard and effective stomp, tearing it off its hinges and causing it fall in fl at on the fl oor with a loud slap.

Jessica screamed with a start and turned to them in mid-pounding, simply staring at them with her bloodshot and tearing eyes as they entered the house. First Corwin, then Parris followed Wilfred and Morley inside, each the living symbol of authority and piety.

“We have come for Reverend Blayne, if reverend such he be,” Corwin said. “Where is he!” he demanded. He nodded at the door she had been pounding on. “In there?”

But Jessica said nothing.

Without prompting, Wilfred stormed up to the door and reached for the handle, but he didn’t live to grasp it.

Anster leaped at him from nowhere and fi xed his teeth in Wilfred’s throat. In seconds the dog was ripping threads of 220

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vein and rags of tissue from his neck as blood spouted across Corwin’s coat.

Corwin, Parris, and Morley stood stupefi ed as the dog rent their compatriot’s twitching body apart between a series of barks and growls.

Morley shrugged off his shock and started to Wilfred’s aid, but Corwin caught his arm and pulled him back.

“It’s too late,” he said. “We can do nothing for him now.”

Corwin aimed his pistol at Anster and fi red, blowing a crater in the side of the dog’s head, splitting it open like a melon and spraying the wall with blood. Anster keeled over and his brains plopped out of his skull and slid across the wet fl oor.

Morley doubled over and vomited.

All Corwin could think was
, That shot should not have
been able to cause that much damage. Never have I seen...
Then, thought abandoned him.

The dog howled terribly. It shouldn’t have been able to, but it did. Corwin at once felt pity and horror at the sound as a sickly heat rolled up the back of his head and neck.

After a moment’s hesitation, Corwin reloaded, barely taking his eyes off the wounded animal.

Anster’s furry hide tore open in ragged slits from his head to his belly and branched outward, folding back in scarlet slabs of meat. His entrails spilled out onto the fl oor in thick, noodle-like clumps with a moist, muddy sound and writhed and heaved as if they were sentient beings in their own right.

This wasn’t the result of a mere shot fi red in fear.

This thing was changing. But was that possible? Corwin had seen many a strange happening in his lifetime, especially in the 221

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past six months, but it still unnerved him to be witness to such an abomination. Corwin fancied himself a reasonable man, and reason dictated that such metamorphoses simply weren’t possible, weren’t...natural. Were his eyes deceiving him? If they were, he certainly wasn’t going to stand there and close them in hope of restoring them to reasonable vision. The damned thing howled a howl such as he had never heard from any beast before.

Anster’s anatomy was taking some kind of perverted shape; that much was apparent. It was giving birth to itself.

A sopping-wet embryo was growing like fungus in the mess on the fl oor, and it made the air rife with an earthy fetor and decay.

As he fi nished reloading, Corwin looked at Parris and Morley. They stood still, mortifi ed and afraid, with their mouths gaping open.

“Fire!” Corwin yelled.
“
Fire! Both of you! Fire now!”

Morley blinked twice, then aimed his pistol and pulled the trigger. The shot plunked into the heart of the mass, and it let out a shrill, sad cry as black blood poured copiously from the wound.

Parris fi red, striking the creature in its nascent head, and the poor, wretched thing cried again.

It was rising from its womb, still changing, still growing. It lurched forward, its limbs raised toward Corwin, seeming to beckon or plead, but, Corwin thought, more likely to attack. It lunged at him clumsily and he fi red, almost feeling sorry for the creature, but far too frightened to allow his sympathy to slow him from his duty and knowing when he pulled the trigger that it was the right thing to do.

It pitched forward at his feet and hit the fl oor with a thumping wet slap, wheezing chronically, laboriously, as one of 222

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its eyelids opened for the fi rst time and peered at him through a stringy fi lm of its own blood and amniotic fl uid.

It reached for him again, but it was slow and Corwin merely stepped back to avoid a grasp he was certain would be caustic.

Morley had reloaded and decided to send the

miserable creature to the hellfi res from which it had spawned.

He advanced slowly, cautiously, until he stood less than a foot from Anster’s head, and shot the beast in the part of its anatomy he supposed was its face. It sighed and belched up an odor fouler than the stench already permeating the air, and then it sank into a smoldering stew of putrescence.

*****

he acted immediately, without forethought, and reached for the door, but fi nding it locked, kicked it in himself.

The door fl ew wide open, casting light directly on Susanna and her molester. It looked humanoid, but its shape was somewhere in that lonely, ungodly abyss between the distinction of man from beast. It wore a black robe which was hiked up over its tail, revealing its furry legs and cloven hooves.

Its body trembled. It roared—in triumph or ecstasy or anger, Corwin could not tell.

The girl beneath it was limp, her mouth and eyes wide open. Corwin could only conclude that she was dead, for her eyes didn’t move, didn’t blink. The fi xed expression on her face made it evident that the terror she experienced during her rape would have been suffi cient to incite her death.

He raised his pistol unconsciously and leveled it at the murderer, but when he pulled the trigger nothing happened.

His face fell. He had forgotten to reload and now the creature was dismounting its victim and rising to its feet, shuddering all 223

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over in a way that brought chills to the sheriff ’s bones. It had its back to him. There may still be time.

Corwin turned to Morley and Parris hopefully.

“Your pistols,” he said to them lowly. “Are either of them loaded?” But they just stood there dumbly.

Corwin turned back to the other room. The creature was standing fully erect now, the robe having fallen to full length, allowing Corwin to view only the back of its head.

He didn’t know what to do. There was no time to

reload. He looked around desperately for a weapon, but there was none.

Then it turned and faced him.

Parris and Morley gasped.

It was Reverend Blayne. Corwin knew he should have expected as much, but he didn’t expect this.

“Sheriff Corwin,” Blayne said casually with an air of superiority. “How pleased I am to see you.” He looked over Corwin’s shoulder at Morley and Parris. “Reverend Parris. Mr.

Lawson. I am so glad you could come.”

Blayne’s manner was disarming. Indeed, Corwin

hadn’t expected anything that happened up till now, but he also couldn’t allow these events to divert him from his purpose. He spoke:

“We are not here on a friendly visit, Blayne,” he said.

“We have come to arrest you on charges of practicing the damned art of witchcraft, and with us—whether peaceably or by force—you will return to Salem to stand trial.”

“That is Reverend Blayne,” Blayne said sternly.

“You may be a reverend of the Devil, but not of the Lord, our God,” Parris said.

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Blayne laughed.

“Maybe so,” he said. “However, I am returning not to Salem with you, but am staying here...with my wife.” He glanced back at Susanna’s still and naked body.

“You are mad!” Morley cried out. “She is dead. Any man with an ounce of reason can see that.”

“I am the mad one?” Blayne said, smiling and nodding smugly. He looked directly at Corwin. “Tell me, Sheriff: Am I mad? Am I truly the mad one when you and a mere handful of men ride up here virtually defenseless against forces you have yet to fathom?” He looked at Wilfred’s mutilated body and the molten remains of Anster beside him. “You have killed my pet and companion...” He tilted his head upward at an angle and gazed searchingly at a distant corner of the room. “...and also one of my demons. But at what cost? Two of your men are quite injured. A third is dead,” he said, nodding at Wilfred’s corpse. “You and Reverend Parris and Mr. Lawson are here.”

Corwin’s brow bunched up. Something was wrong.

What was it? What was it that Blayne was getting at?

“Tell me, Sheriff: Where are the rest of your men?”

At once, Corwin’s heart seemed to leap up into his throat. Beads of sweat collected on his forehead. Where
were
his men? Cedric Aldrich was with Roger and Edward, looking after them. But the rest should have been right behind him.

Where were Milton Ramsey and the Cranley brothers? Why weren’t they here?

“Should I tell you, Corwin?” Blayne said in a slow, deep, haunting voice, answering his unspoken question as if he had read his mind.

Corwin did and said nothing.

*****

The Necromancer

Milton Ramsey and William and Nyle Cranley stood by the door as Sheriff Corwin nodded to Lawson and Brown to kick it in. Milton wasn’t a guard or hangman like the rest of the men, and this witch-hunting was new to him. He was a little scared, but his boy was suffering the same kind of torments that the affl icted girls were, and it had to be stopped.

He had heard the rumors about Blayne and the Harrington girl, that they were responsible for everything that was going on in Salem, and he volunteered to help. To help his boy. To serve justice. To kill the warlock Blayne and his damned witchwife Susanna.

They shall suffer for what they are doing to my boy. I will make
it a certainty. They will suffer miserably. Then, they will die.

Lawson and Brown stomped on the door and it caved in. At once, they rushed inside and Corwin and Parris followed.

But as Milton’s foot crossed the threshold, the house vanished and a huge, yawning pit gaped up at them blackly. Milton’s foot plunged into nothingness and he lost his balance and fell forward.

Nyle Cranley dove to the edge of the pit and reached for Milton as his scream echoed off the walls of the hole. Nyle seized an ankle as he belly-fl opped hardly on the ground. The whole of Milton’s body smashed into the rough hewn wall of the pit, breaking his nose and ribs and decorating his face with blood. Nyle spread his legs and free arm away from the pit’s mouth to keep himself from being dragged in with Milton.

Nevertheless, he began to slide.

“William!” he cried out to his brother. “Take my feet...

fast!”

William dropped his rifl e and did as Nyle said.

“Pull, William! Pull!”

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William pulled, and pulled hard, but his laziness over the years had made him weak. Nyle was always the strong one, the hard-working one.

“Pull harder!”

He strained and grunted and gained ground slowly.