Текст книги "Rushed"

Автор книги: Brian Harmon

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter Eighteen

“The foggy man…” Eric breathed.

There was nothing out there to obscure his vision, yet the mysterious figure was partially faded from view in the gloom, as if he were shrouded behind a heavy haze.  It was exactly as Annette first described him, and every bit as terrifying as he’d imagined.

“Friend of yours?”

Eric turned and looked at Father Billy.  “You don’t know about the foggy man?”

“Should I?”

“He got here before me.  He’s supposed to be trying to get to the cathedral first.”

“Then what’s he doing here?”

Eric had no idea.  “He’s been leaving these…things…along the path.  Monsters.  Two of them have tried to kill me so far.”

“Monsters?”

Eric peered outside again.  The foggy man was no longer there, gone as quickly and mysteriously as he’d appeared.  In the spot where he’d been standing, there was now a large box.  “What the hell?”

Father Billy pushed him aside and looked out.  “Where’d he go?  What’s with the box?  You expecting a package?”

“Nothing I’d care to open.”

Father Billy turned and looked at him, his eyes narrowed.  “You said he was leaving monsters for you?”

“Yeah.  One was in a wardrobe in an old farmhouse.  The other came through a kitchen door in an abandoned resort.”

“What did they look like?”

“Hard to explain.  Huge, kind of—”

“Hard to explain?  Or hard to comprehend?  Like you just can’t quite make parts of them out no matter how hard you looked?”

“Yeah.  I guess.  I was too busy running for my life to look very hard.  All I know is I’m supposed to break their focus.”

“Break their focus…?  Aw fuck.”  He pressed his face to the peephole again and stared out at the box.  “He’s leaving you fucking golems?  I can’t believe this shit!”

“Sorry.”

“It’s a little fucking late for sorry!  He’s already dropped another one off.  At my church!  Son of a bitch even gift-wrapped it for you!”

“How considerate.”

Father Billy cursed bitterly and slammed the peephole closed again.  “I need to think.”

“So what the hell’s a golem?  Isn’t that some kind of fairy tale creature or something?”

“Jewish folklore, actually.”

“You’re Jewish?”

“No.”

“Right.  Didn’t think so.”

Father Billy sat down again and rubbed tiredly at his eyes.  After a moment, he said, “So how the hell did you get away from the other two?”

“Guy named Grant drove a tractor through the front porch of the farmhouse to stop the first one.”

“Not bad.  And the second?”

“Fell off a four-story building.”

“Impressive.”

“Lucky, actually.”

“Impressive luck, then.”

“I’d rather not rely on luck to get through another one.”

“Me neither.”

Eric stood beside the door, staring at Father Billy.  “So why is it you know about golems, but you don’t know who the foggy man is?”

“I never claimed to know everything.”

“No.  You only acted like you did.”

Father Billy glared up at him.  “I’ve had some experience with the weird, okay.  I used to be mixed up in some pretty heavy shit.”

“Heavy like waking up from crazy dreams with irresistible compulsions to drive out into the country and then go strolling through a deadly crack in the universe?  That kind of heavy shit?”

“Not exactly, no.  More like I used to work for some people who made weird shit like this ‘crack in the universe’ their business.”

Eric lifted an eyebrow.  “Now that sounds interesting.”

“It was.  I’ve seen some weird-ass things, let me tell you.”

“So you guys were…what?  Like Men in Black or something?”

“What?  No.  Nothing so glamorous.  It was…  Well, to be honest, I couldn’t tell you what it was.  At first, I thought it had something to do with the mafia or something.  I was hired by a guy named Saulkin.  Never even knew his first name.  This guy’s job was to find—as he put it—‘items of interest.’  I never knew what these items were.  I never even saw the items.  I just ran errands for the guy.  I gathered information.  Me and two other guys.  That was our job.  We weren’t supposed to ask questions.”

Eric sat down across from him, interested.

“Wasn’t always ethical work.  I don’t know who Saulkin worked for.  Never met them, but I heard they were some scary-ass dudes.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was in real deep with something way more fucked-up than the mafia.”

“And you came across these golems working for Saulkin?”

“No.  I never actually saw one.  But I heard about them.  There was supposedly this guy who knew how to make them.  Used to hear about a lot of things like that.”

“So, what kinds of things did you see?”

“Mostly I just heard things.  But I did have a run in with some kind of witch.”

Eric raised an eyebrow.  “A witch?  Really?”

“She was some kind of crazy-powerful bitch.  Turned two hard-trained men into raving lunatics and made a third vanish off the face of the earth, all between breakfast and lunch.”

“Wow.’

“Yeah.”

“How’d you get away?”

“Crushed her against a concrete wall with a Jeep.”

“Ouch.”

“Not ouch enough.  They told me she was still alive when they took her away.”

“Still alive?  What happened to her?”

“No idea.  When they told me I hadn’t killed her, I went straight out and got passed-out drunk.  No one ever told me what they did with her and I never asked.  I only hope they put her where she’ll never get out.  I still have nightmares about that bitch.”

Eric sat there for a moment, taking these things in.  It was a lot to swallow, but given all that he’d already seen, why not add a secret, supernatural organization and a real-live witch to the mix?  He had no reason to doubt that these stories were true.  “So how is it you know so much about me?”

“I don’t know anything about you, per se.  I told you my job was to gather information.  Well, my last assignment was to gather information from the cathedral.  We only knew as much about the place as was absolutely necessary, of course.  As always, it was all on a need-to-know basis.  So all we knew was that there was something at that location that was of interest to Saulkin’s employers.  There were three of us there that night.  I was keeping an eye out, so I didn’t go in.  The other two did.  Neither came back.  That was when I decided that maybe I wouldn’t come back either.  I’d known for months that the only way to leave was to die or vanish, so I vanished.  Eventually, I ended up here.  And as far as I know, they still think I disappeared with my partners that night.”

“So that’s how you know there’s nothing but death waiting for anyone who goes inside the cathedral.”

“That’s right.  That…and the gas station attendant told me.”

“The gas station attendant?”

“Yeah.  I expect you’ll meet him a little farther up the road.  Little guy.  Kind of funny.  Acted like he knew me.  Knew about where I’d been.  Told me I’d be smart to never go back there, which of course he never had to worry about.  He never said it outright, but he managed to suggest that I’d be safe if I kept to the fissure, that no one bad would ever find me again.”

“And it was around that time that you came across the church?”

“It was, actually.”

“Nice.”

Father Billy nodded.  “I know.  It may not seem like much of a life, but at least I’m alive.  Thanks to him.”

“You really think they’d have killed you?  The people you worked for?”

“Definitely.  Still will, if they ever find out I’m still alive.”

“Which is why you shoved your gun in my face instead of shaking my hand when I showed up.”

Father Billy gave him a grin that was almost charming.  “Couldn’t let you die out there.  God wouldn’t like that.  But I couldn’t chance you being one of them either.”

“Understandable.  But how did you know I wasn’t one of them?”

“I could see it in your eyes.  It takes a certain kind of person.  You don’t accidentally get mixed up in their business.”

Eric had no idea what that meant, but he thought it was something akin to a compliment.

“Anyway,” Father Billy went on.  “The gas station attendant told me about the cathedral.  He said that it would always reject those who came looking for its secrets.”

“Including me.”

“Including you.  It’s happened before.  He told me that the cathedral sometimes calls to people in their dreams.  They’re drawn to it, compelled to go there or else be driven crazy.”

“That definitely sounds like me.”

“Everyone dies there.  That’s all there is to it.”

“So my choice is madness or death?”

Father Billy sighed.  “I can’t, in good faith, let you go blindly into that cathedral.  But I also can’t stop you and leave you to the insanity of the dream.  What I can do is make sure you know what your options really are.”

“I understand.”

“The choice is yours to make.”

Eric nodded.

“But right now, we have to deal with the golem.”

“Right.  That thing.  What is it, anyway?”

“In Jewish folklore, it’s an animated creature made of inanimate matter.  Like if you made a man out of clay and brought him to life, for example.  These aren’t the same things.  The guy who told me the story gave it the name.  I doubt there are any real golems by that exact definition.  I don’t think these things have anything to do with Judaism, for starters.  And I don’t know what they’re made of.  But the basic principle seems to be the same.  It’s not a living being, but a creation of some kind, brought to life for the sole purpose of ambushing passers by.”

“Which explains why it can be stopped by breaking its focus,” Eric realized.  “Limited intelligence.  Limited attention span.”

“Exactly.  And that’s the problem we’ve got right now, isn’t it?  Finding a way to break its focus before it kills one of us.”

“So far, driving a tractor into one and dropping another off a four-story roof has done the trick.  But I’m guessing you don’t have a tractor and I know this church isn’t tall enough.”

Father Billy contemplated this for a moment and then rose decisively to his feet.  “I think I might have something that’ll be just about as good.  Wait here.”  He turned and stalked across the room, leaving Eric to sit and watch after him.

At the far end of the church, he opened a door and disappeared into what might have originally been the church office.

Eric stood up and returned to the homemade peephole in the front door.  The box was still there.  Wooden, not much larger than a microwave oven, it was easily the most ominous object he’d ever seen in his life.  Was there really a monster hiding inside?  It was hard to imagine anything so terrifying emerging from such a small package.  But then again, the warped dimensions of the wardrobe monster had not been remotely related to the physical size of its home.  It had poured out of that wardrobe like a spring-loaded snake from a novelty peanut brittle can, its terrifying bulk filling the cramped bedroom before clawing its way through the hallway and chasing him to the front door.

He recalled the second golem, the resort monster, and its spongy green and black flesh that vaguely resembled tree bark.  Maybe they weren’t so different from the golems of Jewish folklore after all.  Perhaps the myth had a very real origin.

One never knew.

Looking out at the yard, he realized that he’d forgotten to snap a picture of the corn creeps.  That would’ve been a good one to show Karen.  He had no idea how he was going to describe that particular oddity.

He glanced back in time to see Father Billy step out of the church office and lean two shotguns against the wall beside the door.  He went back inside and returned a moment later with a holstered pistol on his hip, carrying an assault rifle and a small duffel bag.

Apparently, the good father had turned the church office into an armory.

“I thought you said it was safe here at night.”

“Doesn’t hurt to be prepared.  Never know when some dumbass is going to show up with a golem or something.”

“Fair enough.”

“Way I heard it, there was a guy out there somewhere who could make these things.  Caused all sorts of trouble.  You can probably imagine.”

Eric thought he just about could imagine it.  How many hapless people could one of these things kill before someone figured out how to stop it?

“This…‘foggy man’ of yours apparently knows the same trick.”

“Apparently.”

“The problem here isn’t necessarily breaking the golem’s focus.  I think I might be able to handle that.  It’s that goddamn box.  Even if we find an adequate distraction, it’ll just return to wherever it’s tethered.  That first one went right back to the wardrobe.  The second one…you said it crashed through a door?”

“Yeah.  From outside.”

“I’m guessing whatever it was hiding in was sitting just outside the door.  Maybe even a box just like that one out there.  You would’ve tripped it as soon as you came close enough.  And that’s where it returned after you knocked it off the roof.”

Eric considered telling him that the creature fell off the roof of its own accord, but decided it was unimportant.

“It stands to reason, then, that this one will always return to that box.  Meaning I’ll be attacked by it every time I go out my fucking door.”

“I’m starting to see why you don’t care much for company.”

Returning to the front doorway, Father Billy placed the assault rifle on the chair next to the one that dropped the three corn creeps.  Turning to face Eric, he reached into the duffel bag and withdrew a stick of dynamite and a coil of fuse.

Eric actually took a step back at the sight of the stick.  “Do I want to know how much explosives you keep back there?”

“I doubt it.”  Father Billy cut a short length from the fuse and fitted it to the stick of dynamite.

“Grenades too expensive?”

“Yes, actually.  And they’re harder to acquire without drawing attention to yourself.”  He held the prepared stick out for Eric to take.  “This is for you.”

“What?  No.  I don’t know anything about dynamite.”

“You know you don’t want to be right next to it when it goes off, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then you know something about dynamite.  In fact, you know more than enough to do the job I’m about to give you.  You see, my theory is that if you destroy the container a golem is tethered to, you’ll get rid of it for good.”

“Sounds reasonable,” guessed Eric.  “Either that or they’d just be free to go where they please.”

“That’s also a possibility,” Father Billy admitted.  “I’m going out there and I’m going to get its attention.  Then I’m going to run like fucking hell.  You’re going to watch for it to chase me out of sight and then you’re going to light the fuse, run out there and drop this in its box.”

“No way.  I don’t want anything to do with that.”

“You’d rather be the bait?”

Father Billy made an excellent point.  Reluctantly, Eric took the dynamite.

“Come on.  Let’s get this over with.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“Obviously, I’ll be fucked.  Now let’s go.”

Father Billy didn’t wait for him to protest further.  He slung the duffel bag onto his back, shouldered the assault rifle and picked up the weapon he’d used to greet Eric.  He then slid open his homemade peephole and surveyed the yard on the other side.  Nothing had changed.  The box remained where it was.  Neither the foggy man nor the corn creeps had returned.  He slid the panel closed and pulled a lighter from his pocket.  “Take this.  Light the fuse as soon as it comes out of the box.  When it’s followed me around the side of the building, run out and drop it into the box.  Then run like hell.  If I’m right, it’ll either vanish or it’ll return straight to what’s left of the box, so you don’t want to be anywhere near it.”

Eric nodded.  He didn’t like this.  But at least there was a plan.  He hadn’t had a plan all day.  He was flying by the seat of his pants.  And he couldn’t keep relying on dumb luck to save his ass.

Father Billy, who was no father to anyone, opened the door and stepped out into the gloom.

Eric closed the door behind him and watched him through the peephole.

Nothing happened at first.  Father Billy made his way slowly across the yard, his body tense, ready to spring away.

But step-by-step, nothing happened.

Eric began to think that the golem would ignore anyone but him, that others could walk right up to the box without disturbing it.  He had just begun to wonder if this plan was doomed to fail when something enormous exploded from the top of the box

A great, howling visage burst upward with the speed and force of an automobile airbag inflating in a collision.  It swelled into the sky, raining down broken branches from the massive trees as it rose higher and higher.  Two stories tall, it dwarfed Father Billy in its shadow.  Massive teeth bristled from a long, fleshy snout and terrible eyes the size of tractor tires blazed like molten rock.  Long, coiling tendrils unraveled themselves from the creature’s body and snaked across the sky.

It was a huge mass of pale gray flesh against the dark canopy of branches, but somehow its body resisted any attempt he made to grasp what it looked like.  It was more than just a great ball with a gruesome face rising into the sky, but that was as close as Eric could come to describing the thing.  Whatever made up the lower half of its massive torso seemed to be too strange for his limited, human mind to comprehend.

Father Billy was moving in an instant, across the yard and around the side of the building.

Not surprisingly, he was also swearing like a longshoreman.

Eric lit the fuse to the dynamite.  The instant it caught, the object became even more frightening than he ever imagined.  In just a short amount of time, this unremarkable brown stick was going to detonate with catastrophic force, blowing itself to dust and taking with it anything in the immediate vicinity.  If the fuse burned before he could deposit it into the box, it would, at the very least, blow off his hand.

He tossed aside the lighter and looked out one last time to make sure they had gone.  He saw the creature’s long, fleshy tails sliding across the rocky ground, away from the now empty box.

Bracing himself, he opened the door, stepped over the corn creep carcasses and ran as fast as he could go toward the foggy man’s murderous gift.

He could hear the golem howling behind the church and hoped Father Billy was okay.  It was by far the largest of the three monsters the foggy man had left for him.  He doubted even the world’s largest bulldozer would faze it and it appeared to be free-floating, obviously leaving it immune to falling.  He would be lying if he said he wasn’t relieved that he didn’t have to find a way to break its focus all on his own.

He was sure something would happen to try and prevent him from completing this task.  It was far too simple.  Surely he could not be so lucky.  Yet nothing attacked him and nothing blocked his path.  He ran to the box and dropped the dynamite inside without any trouble.  Relieved, he turned and ran back toward the safety of the church.

He only made it halfway back before he spotted the golem.  It was rising up into the air behind the church, its crazed eyes shining down at him.

Father Billy was screaming something he couldn’t make out from this distance.  But he didn’t need to understand the words.  He knew perfectly what was going on:  It knew.

Somehow, the thing knew what he had done.  By tampering with its box, he’d managed to divert its attention from Father Billy to himself.

It simply didn’t seem fair.

It was coming for him, clambering right over the church roof, tearing up shingles and knocking aside the already-leaning steeple.  Pieces of it rained down between him and the door.

Booming gunshots rang out as Father Billy tried to draw the monster’s attention, but it seemed to know which one of them it wanted.

He stood frozen with fear, trying to decide what he should do.  He could still make it to the church.  It wasn’t that far, but he’d never survive.  The building wouldn’t protect him from something this big.  This thing would only tear the small structure to pieces searching for him.

Behind him, inside the box, the dynamite fuse continued to burn.

A tone rang out from his front pants pocket, alerting him to a text message.  Numb with fear, hardly realizing what he was doing, he pulled his phone out and glanced down at it.  One word stared up at him from the little screen:  RUN!