Let"s hope not. Conner gazed toward the town. "Don"t hear no more shootin". The boys must be finished. Let"s round "em up."
Lit by moonlight and the fading mill fire, they crunched through the thicket and found the trail to Lowensport. When they arrived on the sh.e.l.l-paved Main Street, the town stood dark, still, and eerily silent. No more shots, no more screams. The fires at the east end had burned out. Dead bodies, mostly men and women clad in the austere black garments of the Jews, lay this way and that, littering the street, hanging out windows, collapsed in doorways. From several houses, babies could be heard squalling.
"Should we collect up the babies, sir?" Corrigan asked.
"Naw, let "em sit in their own s.h.i.t fer the night. We"ll put "em all in a boat in the morning," Conner said. "Whoever finds "em can raise "em." He rubbed his hands together in the seeming success. "We gotta bury all these dead Jews tonight. Norris, give a call."
"Conner clan!" yelled Norris with hands around his mouth. "Come on out! Front"n center!"
Conner meandered past several houses, looking into windows and doors. Only a few of his own men lay dead, but each and every house was occupied by a dead Jew. Most of them were killed by shots to the head. The more comely women and teenagers had been stripped and raped first. Conner liked the sight. Yeah. My men did a d.a.m.n fine job. They killed everything that moved.
Five minutes later, though, no one had reported to the street.
"Conner clan!" Norris bellowed again. "Git out here! We got work ta do!"
After another few minutes, Conner began to feel a little ill.
"Maybe they all went back to camp after the killin" was done," Corrigan speculated.
"Maybe, but that weren"t their orders," Norris replied.
"Let"s look around," Conner said. "I only seen two or three"a our boys dead. Why ain"t n.o.body comin" out?"
The answer awaited them around the next corner, in an alley between the general store and the blacksmith"s.
"Holy G.o.d in heaven," Norris muttered.
Now Conner began to feel very ill.
They"d found the rest of the men-piles of them, heaped in the alley. It was as though they"d tried to converge on something from all sides but had been routed.
"They been...pulled apart," Corrigan whispered in shock.
Not one body of the dozens and dozens remained intact. Limbs had been torn from sockets, heads twisted off necks, rib cages cranked open like macabre cabinet doors, revealing glistening innards. Several skulls looked popped like gourds, and Conner had the awful notion that bare hands had done the popping.
Only now did Conner know true fear. "It was that G.o.d-d.a.m.n thing."
"The second one," Corrigan added.
"Our boys killed every Jew in Lowensport," Norris moaned. "Then that thing killed every one"a them..."
"We gotta get back to the camp!" Conner suddenly exclaimed. "The women and children!"
They ran through the night, reloading their weapons. Several more dismembered bodies littered the way, men who"d obviously fled the town in terror, but then- That thing caught up to "em! Conner knew.
The worst that could be feared awaited them at the camp: another slaughter. The Sibley tents had been torn down, and the wooden shacks allotted for Conner"s lieutenants ripped asunder. The few men left to guard it had been the first to go; a mound of their body parts greeted Conner on the trail, and a ma.s.sive gush of blood still moving. Deeper in the camp were the women and children.
None had been spared in the nightmarish onslaught. More heads and limbs had been flung to all sides. Many women lay spread-legged in their death poses, obviously raped first or afterward. Bile rushed up as Conner thought, How many women can that unholy thing rape in one night? Norris collapsed to his knees when he found his wife armless and somehow eviscerated through her s.e.x. Corrigan wept openly at the sight of his wife and two children, the children picked apart, and the woman pulled in half at the waist, swirls of intestines packed down her throat. Conner, Norris, and Corrigan trudged through the whole of the camp and found not one living soul. Whereas his men had at least spared the infants of Lowensport, that thing had not repaid the gesture in kind.
"What in G.o.d the Father"s name are we gonna do now?" Norris croaked.
"Weren"t no G.o.d the Father here to night," Corrigan whispered.
"All we can do, men, is head for the hills," Conner said, hands numb from the horror he"d witnessed. He gazed out into the night. " "Cos we know G.o.dd.a.m.n well that thing is still out there somewhere. We gotta high-tail it outta here now."
Norris looked at the litter of body parts. "Before it finds us."
II.
The Present It had taken Judy several minutes of gear jamming and bad language to reacquaint herself with stick shifts sufficiently enough to drive the beaten black step van. The beastly vehicle roared and rattled as she pulled away from Croter"s house. Twilight seemed to press down on the road running along the field-either that or the van"s headlights were unduly dim. She saw no cars either way. Don"t smoke the crack, she kept telling herself. Instead she flooded her mind with the nightmare the day had brought. Golems. Magic circles and dog-head divination. Asher Lowen not only a shadowed drug kingpin but a Kischuph warlock. Then: Seth! She needed to call him right now, even though she had no idea what she would say. What? Seth, honey? I have to put the mezuzah back in the bas.e.m.e.nt to maintain the warding spell; otherwise Asher Lowen with be able to find Gavriel"s skull, which, by the way, is buried in our bas.e.m.e.nt. Oh, sure. He wants to make a golem out of him...
That wouldn"t wash, she knew. I"ll just call him up and tell him not to come home. I"ll tell him I"m flying to Tampa to-night, and I"ll explain later. That probably wouldn"t work, either, but she could think of nothing else. She whipped out her cell phone as she drove, then moaned when she saw that the battery was dead. s.h.i.t! She immediately thought she could call him on the redneck"s phone, then moaned again when she realized Seth"s number had been stored in her phone for so long, she"d forgotten the actual number. I"ll have to recharge the d.a.m.n thing first. The wall of switchgra.s.s seemed to hiss as she drove faster down the road. Minutes later, she"d parked in front of the house and was rushing in.
s.h.i.t! she thought again when she flicked on a light switch and nothing happened. She flicked several more. Nothing. You gotta be kidding me! Not a power failure! Not NOW! She wouldn"t be able to recharge her phone. But she knew she had a spare battery upstairs already in the charger. Up she went, huffing, and snapped it in. Finally! Something goes right for me, she thought when she saw she now had nearly a full charge. Before dialing Seth, though, she saw she had six missed calls.
She listened to the messages, all from Seth. The last one said, "Judy, d.a.m.n it, I"m getting worried. You haven"t called back. I know it"s probably nothing, you probably went to bed early "cos you weren"t feeling well, but I"m coming home to night. I have to know that you"re okay..."
"s.h.i.t!" she yelled aloud this time. To night? Tonight is now! She called him at once, then wilted when she got his voice mail. Obviously he was already on the plane and had to turn his phone off during the flight. All she could do was leave a message: "Seth, I"m okay, but...don"t come home! I need you to trust me on this. When you get in, don"t leave the airport in Salisbury. I"m coming there right now and I"ll meet you. Please, honey, I know it sounds crazy but don"t come home!" At least he"d get the message when the plane landed. But for now- thunk.
Judy froze. The noise had sounded deep, and it didn"t help that the house was dark. Had it come from...
The bas.e.m.e.nt?
Her sweat turned cold. Was Asher in the bas.e.m.e.nt right now?
Or something even worse?
I should never have taken the mezuzah out of there, she thought too little, too late. She went back downstairs, convinced at first she"d simply leave, go to the airport, meet Seth. But...
All this time she"d been wondering if any of this was true, in spite of the astronomical coincidences, Croter"s conviction-and murder-and then what D-Man had said when he"d been attempting to rape her again: Maybe Asher"ll make the next golem with your body...
If she didn"t believe it, why should she be afraid? Once and for all, she thought next, and went downstairs. She grabbed a flashlight. Then she got the pistol and the mezuzah from the van.
She walked around the side of the house.
s.h.i.t, she thought yet again.
The bas.e.m.e.nt doors lay open.
She crept down, the flashlight glaring ahead. What shocked her worse than the noise she"d heard was seeing the hidden door pushed partway open. From within came a faster digging sound. When she stepped closer to the pitch-blackmaw- The digging stopped. Then Judy screamed when an inhuman shriek shot out of the room and pierced her ear-drums. Something"s in there, she knew, but what?
The flayed shriek doubled after another step toward the doorway. Something impossible in her made her want to see it, and she suspected that the intruder"s howls of rage had something to do with the presence of the mezuzah itself.
And its contents.
As Judy edged toward the hidden door, it flew open, and some impossibly thin figure lurched out. It glimmered as if wet. Her flashlight only caught a glimpse as it attempted to rush her, her own shock compressing her senses, but she made out empty sockets for eyes, a sc.r.a.p of hair on its head, and a thin face like a muck-splotched skull. Judy blindly raised the mezuzah; the thing howled again, then flinched backward into the front corner. It wants to get out of the bas.e.m.e.nt, she realized, but it can"t confront the mezuzah...
The single glimpse of its face was all she could bear. Now its rack-skinny form huddled, its k.n.o.bbed back to her, as it appeared to burrow into the floor"s raw earth with skeletal hands webbed by clay. It"s trying to dig its way out. She was staggered by the wetness of its thin clay skin whereas she"d have thought after over a century the material would"ve dried to dust. Just more proof of the validity of its occult existence. She thought of using the gun but then rejected the idea. It"s just bones covered with clay, internal organs long gone, no blood. But she couldn"t let it escape.
Could it really dig its way out?
She remembered what her text had said: "Warding spells, prayers of exorcism, and Judaic icons are thought to keep golems at bay." At least that part works, she thought. "Golems may only be destroyed by severe impact, dismemberment, or fire..."
She took another step closer and this time its shriek made her skin crawl. The closer the proximity between the thing and the parchment prayer, the more agony the thing felt. Beside her sat one of the barrels, the one that contained rusted sledgehammer heads. She set the mezuzah down to face the corner, then lifted out one of the heads. It probably weighed ten pounds. "Jesus!" she yelled when she heaved it forward.
The impact collapsed one side of the thing"s rib cage. Judy collapsed the other with a similar blow. Now only a spine comprised the creature"s back. "f.u.c.ker!" she shouted, heaving a third rusty head.
Fwack!
The blow cracked the thing"s skull, sending a third of the cranial vault flying to bits. This is getting easy, she dared to think next. It continued to dig, however hopeless the effort; the damage from the blows of heavy iron reduced its progress to sluggishness. This time Judy grabbed another hammerhead and walked right up to the goilem.
Fwack, fwack, fwack!
She drove the metal block"s b.u.t.t down repeatedly into what was left of the thing"s skull...until no skull remained at all.
Another blow from the side crushed its ancient spine, and separated the figure into two shivering pieces. Still, somehow, a supernatural impulse in its arms caused it to continue digging- FWACK! FWACK!.
-until the next two blows pulverized both shoulders and sent the broomstick-thin arms to the floor.
"You"re done," she muttered. Two more blows-for the h.e.l.l of it-snapped the clay-sheathed thigh bones. Judy dropped the iron block and sat down on a barrel to rest.
Some of the fragments jittered in the dirt, the skeletal hands especially. I guess I believe it all now, hmm? She even laughed to herself.
She took the flashlight into the hidden room, then gasped at the northwest corner. Just like Croter said... Before Judy had intervened, the goilem had managed to disentrench a foot of earth. Half buried at the bottom sat a moldered skull.
That"s where it would stay. And here"s where this will stay, she thought when she placed the wooden mezuzah and its potent prayer back in the cabinet.
Once back in the main bas.e.m.e.nt, she looked at the bag of crack, paused, and gulped. Later! she swore to herself. The yearning to smoke several pieces made her feel like something bending and about to break.
Not yet .. .
She rushed up the steps and slammed the double doors closed. Then she got in the van and drove away, and she knew she wouldn"t stop until she got to the airport to meet Seth.
III.
Seth parked a few minutes before midnight. The house stood dark, not a good sign, and when the sky rumbled he shirked at the ma.s.s of black clouds rushing to obscure almost all twilight. No doubt the storm was to blame for the bad signal message every time he"d tried to call since getting off the plane in Salisbury.
What could be more f.u.c.ked up? he fumed when he entered the foyer and found all the light switches dead. No cell phones and no electricity...
"Judy! I"m back!" he called out. The dark house seemed to suck up the words. Please be upstairs asleep in bed, he prayed, but when he burst into the bedroom, flashlight in hand, no Judy awaited him.
What is GOING ON?
His heart raced. He picked up the landline, got no dial tone, then hurled the phone across the room. Can"t even call the police "cos there"s NO PHONES!
The answering machine blinked. Backup battery, he remembered. There was one message on the machine. Maybe Judy had left a message on the landline as well. I wonder if it"ll play the message on battery power. He pressed the b.u.t.ton.
"You have one message," came the generic voice, then: BEEP! "Uh, Mr. Kohn, I"m sorry to leave a message like this. I called the number on the finalization doc.u.ments, and got your forwarded number. This is Mr. Karlswell, from the Schoenfeld Funeral Home. I, uh-oh, this is so strange. I"m afraid there"s been a... misadventure at the cemetery, the most despicable sort of vandalism. I"m sorry to inform you, Mr. Kohn, that the plot where you buried your wife two years ago was...vandalized very recently. Believe me, the police are looking into it. You see, sir, your wife"s body was...taken. Umm, I"m terribly sorry about this, Mr. Kohn. Please call me as soon as possible."
"End of message."
Seth stared at the machine, mouth agape. What in the name of... First, Judy gone, unreachable, and now...
Someone stole Helene"s BODY?
Too much was piling up too fast. He had to find Judy, find out what had caused her to leave such a strange message herself.
He ran back downstairs and out, determined to drive to the police station. Approaching the truck, though, he paused, irked by something. The prestorm breeze caused the endless switchgra.s.s to hiss, but secreted in that hiss, he swore he heard a woman"s voice: "Seth?"
He froze, peered across the road. The high gra.s.s swayed; the breeze disarrayed his hair. Who is that? That"s not- "Judy!" he yelled. "Is that you?"
But there was a figure, just a foot deep in the switch-gra.s.s. It seemed half hidden, timid as it looked right back at Seth. It was a woman, for sure, but it wasn"t Judy.
"Who are you?" Seth demanded. He jogged across the road, then the figure pulled herself within the tall stalks.
"Wait!"
Seth barged right into the wall of gra.s.s, thrashing through. Rapid footfalls guided him. "Stop, d.a.m.n it! I need to talk to you!" he shouted. More thrashing up ahead, then it stopped. Probably one of the rehab girls from Asher"s clinic, Seth figured. Fell off the wagon. "Listen, I won"t hurt you, I just need to know where my girlfriend is."
"Don"t come closer, you wouldn"t understand," came the soft, feminine flow of words.
This is crazy, he thought, but stood still. The corroding twilight and the stalks made her details almost impossible to see. Almost. The woman was stark naked standing only feet away from him. "How did you know my name?" he asked.
"Oh, Seth..."
Her voice sent a chill up his back. "Let me explain." And then the gra.s.s shivered as she shouldered through more high stalks. Seth made out the flat abdomen, curvaceous thighs, and firm, pert b.r.e.a.s.t.s. But she seemed dark. She"s all dirty, Seth guessed. Must"ve been living out here for a while.
"Judy is waiting for us," the voice flowed.
"What? Where?"
"At Asher"s." The gra.s.s hissed again. "But they need something in your house, in the bas.e.m.e.nt."
"That makes no sense! Judy"s at Asher"s? Why?"
"That will be explained later. I"ll take you to her now, but first you have to go into the bas.e.m.e.nt and get the skull."
The skull. Seth stared.
"It could mean her life, and all of ours," she said, dark eyes fixed on him. "You must trust me. You"ll understand it all once we"re there. But you have to get the skull first."
It could mean her life? Seth could fathom none of this, but it seemed now there was only one way to find out what was happening. Just get it, he told himself. And get Judy... "All right," he said, and stomped out of the gra.s.s back to the house.
Crazy. The skull? She must mean Gavriel Lowen"s. And it"s been in the bas.e.m.e.nt all along? But what on earth- Again, he severed the questions to prioritize the next step. He threw open the double doors, tromped down the steps, and grabbed a flashlight.
"Holy s.h.i.t," he murmured at the disa.s.sembled skeleton on the floor. Was it the rest of what Judy had found in the hidden room? Covered with clay, he realized when he picked up a thigh bone. The clay was moist. Stick to business. Then I"ll get to the bottom of this. The hidden larch door stood open; Seth walked right in. The hole dug in the other end couldn"t have made it easier. There, half covered, was the browned skull. Seth pulled it the rest of the way out, then left the bas.e.m.e.nt.
Now this kooky girl"s got some explaining to do. He rose out of the stepwell, turned, then froze. The woman stood right there before him, brazenly naked but somehow smeared with something.