HURRY, AJ, I NEED YOU.
AJ sat up straight and looked around the room, wide-eyed. He shook his head to clear it. He had heard Clover’s voice. Except that wasn’t quite right, was it? He hadn’t really heard anything. It was almost as if he had thought it. Those words, her words, had suddenly been in his mind, and he had sensed her, damn it. He now knew she was alive, there was no doubt about that. But for how long?
AJ could feel the time running out as an almost physical thing, like blood running from an opened vein. He felt small and helpless, like a child. Of course, as a child, he’d never awakened in an unfamiliar room that looked like it had been furnished from a yard sale in the seventies and stank of cigarettes, bad crank, and straight up human funk. He looked up as Logan came out of the bathroom.
“You all right?” Logan asked, taking a closer look at him.
“Yeah, why?”
“You look like you saw a ghost.” Logan stared a moment longer, raising an eyebrow ever so slightly.
AJ opened his mouth to tell Logan of what he’d heard, that he was certain Clover was alive, but snapped it shut again, darting his eyes to the cop in the room. He had been perfectly nice and helpful…but they didn’t know him.
Logan nodded his head almost imperceptibly, and then turned to the cop, who sat at the small, stained table. “Can we go now?”
The officer nodded and stood. AJ got off the bed and found his shoes. The three of them left the motel room and got back into the police car and headed to the hospital.
***
John adjusted his bed so he was more or less sitting up, reclined. He flipped through all nine channels at his disposal, still hopelessly searching for something that wasn’t on. There was a church channel. Skip. A Spanish channel. Skip. A rerun of Three’s Company. Barf. Channel after channel broadcasting crap flipped by, then renewed the cycle again with Teletubbies.
John clicked off the TV. If he’d had his gun, he might have shot it in disgust, put the fucker out of its misery. He groped for the little buzzer that rang at the nurses’ station just down the hall. He could hear it faintly as it went off, then dropped the control indifferently beside him on the bed. A minute or so later a young, pretty brunette walked in.
Real classy-lookin’ dame, John thought. It wasn’t the first thing to cross his mind, but it was one of them.
“Yes, Mr. Lubbock?”
“Call me John, will ya?”
“Of course, John. Now what did you need?”
“Could I get something to eat?” John asked.
“Well, the lunch is served in another hour—”
“Ah, come on. I’m dyin’ here.” He gave her his most endearing puppy dog grin and, to his delight, it initiated a small but sincere smile from her, and the intensity of their eye contact was bumped up a notch. It was almost as if she just noticed he was there.
“Welllll…okay. I’ll go downstairs and see what I can find. Any special cravings?”
“How ‘bout a doughnut?” John said, the words popping out before he could stop them or say anything else.
Are you fuckin’ kidding me? John thought, wishing now for his stitches to bust so he could roll over and bleed to death. A fuckin’ doughnut, you fat fuck?
“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m not promising anything.” She smiled at him again, and his pulse quickened.
“Thank you, uh…”
“Sherri.” She stuck her hand out to shake, and he took it, then in a flash of boldness that was totally unlike him, he kissed it. “Thank you, Sherri.”
She blushed and took her hand back. “Well, it’s good to see you have some of your energy back.” She laughed and turned to go. John watched, admiring the way she swung her hips. The door shut behind her, and the moment was over.
John blinked twice, and then looked down at his hand. He tried to clench it into a fist. A dull, throbbing pain began in his shoulder and spread down to his tingling fingertips. He was able to close it a little bit at least. Not much more than a twitch, really, but he had to be positive in a situation like this, right?
Sure, he was worried about his arm. But he was more worried about last night. He had blacked out shortly after being shot and had no idea what happened. Again, he tried to stay positive, to believe the best possible scenario until he was told something else: Terrance came back to normal, then he and Logan shot Steve full of so many holes he whistled when his body fell lifelessly to the ground. Yeah.
John continued to think these things over until his door opened again, and Sherri poked her head in.
“Good news, John.”
“What? My stocks are up?”
She giggled, and he fell for her all over again.
“No…I got you some doughnuts. And you have visitors,” she replied and swung the door open, stepping inside and letting AJ and Logan in.
“John, how ya doin’?” AJ asked.
“I’ll let you all catch up,” Sherri said and set a plate containing two glazed and a sprinkled doughnut down on John’s bed tray.
“Thank you, Sherri, you’re the best!”
She looked back at him and smiled as she left.
“What did the doctors say?” AJ asked, trying not to glance down at the bandaged, lifeless limb.
“They said it’s possible I could lose the use of it, but that it’s unlikely. I’m lucky. Nowhere near the damage that coulda been done, and I guess the bullet missed some major artery by about an inch, otherwise I likely woulda bled to death.”
“Jesus Christ,” AJ said.
“Kid, I’ll be fine. I’ll have to do physical therapy and all that happy shit, but doc thinks I’ll gain a hundred percent use back. Best case scenario,” John said. “Now, shut the door, will you?”
Logan closed the door, and then stood, leaning against it, to keep out any surprise visitors.
“Is she okay?” John asked quietly, not quite looking at AJ.
“She’s alive, but they have her. He has her.”
John ran his good hand over his face. “I’m so goddamned sorry, kid. We’re gonna get her back, you understand me?”
AJ nodded, not quite trusting himself to speak unless he had to. His eyes burned and the world around him blurred…but only for a moment.
“Is she okay?” John asked quietly, not quite looking at AJ.
“She’s alive, but they have her. He has her.”
“How do you know?”
AJ shook his head, frowning. “I… Fuck man. I just know. I heard her in my head this morning.” He shot a quick look to Logan, raising one eyebrow as Logan had done at the motel, hoping Logan would make the connection. Logan nodded, and AJ turned back to John. “I have a feeling she’s okay, but she won’t be for long.”
“Did they get the book?” John asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.
“No,” Logan said, pulling his trench coat back to reveal an ancient leather satchel hanging against his left hip, the strap slung diagonally across his body. The bag was taut on its strap with the weight of the book. He pulled out a makeshift bag, which had started life as a hotel sheet, three of the book corners pushing out of the cloth. It looked to John like some alien cocoon, and it gave him the chills.
“That’s something, though, right?” John asked, looking back and forth between AJ and Logan. “Didn’t you say as long as we got this book, we’re good to go, yeah?”
“It’s something, yeah,” AJ said with a sigh.
“It’s everything,” Logan said.
“So, what do we do now?” John took a doughnut off the tray as an excuse to look away. AJ shrugged, chewing his thumbnail, and looking at Logan for an answer.
“The only thing we can do,” Logan said. “Wait for The Calling.”
AJ and John shared a look, neither knowing what Logan was talking about.
“What’s The Calling?” AJ asked, adding a sportscaster inflection to his voice.
John caught what may have been laughter rising on Logan’s face, just for an instant, before the man’s age and experience crushed it.
“It’s like having a dream while you’re awake, like a vision.”
“And…” AJ prompted.
“And you will speak with the Entities, with Jha’ask and Enopac. They will tell you the time for confrontation has come.”
“Then what?”
“You…confront Him,” Logan said in perfect deadpan. John wasn’t sure, but it might have been an attempt at humor. It reminded him of someone finding a particularly interesting tool after having lost it for a long time. It was a little rusty, but you had to try it out a little at a time, making sure it still worked.
“But how do I find him? Do they show me?”
“No. You’ll just know, like you do with Clover.”
AJ felt more to the bone straight up exhausted than he could ever remember being. He crossed the room and sat heavily in a chair with a sigh and a slump.
“You all right?” John asked him. All at once, the kid didn’t look so good.
AJ shrugged. “This is all so fucking strange, man. Every time I think I know its asshole from its elbow, it grows another arm or something, you know? It feels like I’m suffocating.”
“Listen, kid,” Lubbock began, setting his doughnut back on the tray. “You’re handling this better than anyone could expect to. Besides, it’ll be over soon enough, I s’pose.”
“I hope so, John. I really do.” AJ ran his hands through his hair and looked at the floor.
***
The pain, the pain, oh, God, the pain, was the only thought running through Steve’s head. He had entered a new realm of physical, psychological, and spiritual agony since returning to Daed Sixxez without the book.
Daed stood back, examining Steve where he hung on the wall, like someone studying their own painting. He could keep someone alive and in pain for a very long time; He had developed a talent for it.
Daed had started by pulling his eyes out. He had held the first one out in front of him and forced Steve to watch as He popped it between cold, pale fingers. He pulled out Steve’s teeth. And his tongue. Then off came his toenails, his fingernails, and his cock. He had beat him, cut him, and burnt him. The body now only vaguely resembled that of a human being.
Daed had gone about doing all this one thing at a time, slowly and methodically. And he enjoyed all of it, every minute, relished every scream.
He could hardly wait to hear Munroe scream that same way, it would be sweetest music to His ears, each drop of crimson blood would be the twisted liquid joy only one such as Daed Sixxez could feel.
When He was done with the boy, He would do something with the girl. He had big plans for her. After the circle closed and His powers were complete, He would make her a slave, a mistress. He licked His lips as He thought of all the things He would do to her and what He would make her do to Him. Images of sick, nasty sex ran through His head as He took a solid grip on one of Steve’s ears. He braced His other hand against the side of the man’s head and pulled.
Inhuman, primal screams issued from the bloody, toothless hole that was the mouth as the wet, meaty, tearing sound of the ear being separated from the head began. More blood ran out of the body, dripping and splattering the gore-streaked bricks of the grimy floor. If the holes of Steve’s missing eyes had still been capable of sight, perhaps they would have seen Daed’s grin of sadistic glee spreading wider.
The ear landed with a plop, sending up tiny splashes of blood. The focus came back to Daed’s black eyes. The grin wasn’t as wide anymore, but it was still there. He licked the blood off His fingers and turned away from the ruined form on the wall, leaving it to twitch and shudder in the dark. He walked away, unknowingly stepping on Steve’s other eyeball and popping it as He went.
He had things to do now, things that must be done in order to prepare for the confrontation ever-so-close at hand. Over the last few nights, the moon had risen into the sky like a soul leaving a body. It was a fat, white orb and perfect but for one thing: it was not yet full. In two days’ time, the moon would be complete; a wide, open eye to watch as He claimed His throne and brought the end to man.
When it rose in forty-eight hours, it would be a killing moon, a harvest moon, and it would be red like the blood He had licked off His fingers, the blood that was now trickling down His lower lip. Daed wiped absently at the rivulet, smearing it across His chin.
In two days, His circle would close forever, one way or another. He knew this was His last chance to control this level, this ring of life. He would either be triumphant and rule or be defeated and banned from this realm forever.
This seemed a little odd to Him. He didn’t know it was possible to kill a god and didn’t know how it could be done. If only He’d gotten that fucking book…
No matter. He would be victorious. He could smell it in the air, the smell of victory was the heavy stink of rotting flesh and bodies bloated with gas and time. He could taste it like the salty, coppery-red taste on His tongue.
He knew it, and he knew He had to prepare. There would be no more attacks on the boy. No more undead minions would be sent out into the night, Munroe was too strong for them now, and his powers would only increase as the confrontation drew nearer. Daed would rest, conserve every last ounce of his Hellish strength, for win or lose, Daed knew the battle would be the biggest of His long and strange existence.
***
Clover stood where she had stood since she had first awakened from one nightmare into another. She had no idea how long she had been there, there was no time. There was fear, there was pain, and there was Him. She had managed some sleep, from pure exhaustion, but had been awakened by screams that held more suffering than she ever thought possible.
Clover had no way of knowing for sure that it was Steve Nielsen screaming, but she thought that it was. She wasn’t too sure how she felt about it, either. He had willingly betrayed them, had stolen her away into the night and delivered her unto the threshold of madness. This warranted a punishment, but she didn’t think Charles Manson or Hitler or even Dick Cheney deserved to go through the things that could make a man scream like that.
However, she didn’t feel remorse either. Clover was numb to it all, like her arms had become after being outstretched for so long. The numbness ended in her shoulders, but a deep, dull ache spread throughout them and down into her back. She couldn’t feel her legs from below the knee, but above, they were two knotted and weakening pillars of fire.
“Have a nice rest, my sweet?”
She looked up and saw Daed Sixxez approaching her. “Can I sit down or something?” she asked, not expecting much or making eye contact.
“But, of course, my dear, all you need but do is ask.” Daed gave His hand a lazy wave, the gray matter that encased her grew warmer, the feverish heat uncomfortable on her skin. It moved, shifting and turning, making dreadful skittering-whisper noise—the sound of thousands of spiders teeming across a mausoleum floor—as it reshaped itself, and Clover found herself sitting in a terrible throne. Her wrists were secured to the arms of it, her legs to the base.
“Now then, how’s that?” Daed asked, leaning a little closer. She watched lice hopping gleefully in the matted clump of His hair and saw the dried smear of blood on His chin.
“B-better.” The sight of Him seemed to freeze out and kill everything inside her that was once good or kind or beautiful. And as disgusting and vile a creature that He was, she was terrified to learn it was getting steadily harder and harder to look away from Him, to break the stare that was almost involuntary in its beginnings.
It seemed He was slowly taking her mind for ransom, holding it against her will just as He was holding her body. Finally, she was able to break the eye contact and look down again, this time at her lap. Before she did, she saw a smile form on His lips, a demented grin on the face of all evils. He moved to her side and bent in close, whispering in her ear, the smell of death riding His words as if they were a pale horse.
“Fight it, my sweet. It’s so much more fun when you fight it.” He reached out with one blood-slicked finger, circling it into her ear, then dragging it down her neck and once more to her left nipple. Her skin threatened to crawl right off in defense of the touch, and a sudden throb of agony pulsed inside her left breast, growing, and then fading, finally fading, when He moved His finger away.
“You’re wrong,” she whispered.
“Really?” he asked, His voice playful like a child.
“Soon you’ll be dead, too.”
He laughed at her.
“You’re afraid—” she began.
“Afraid? Of a boy?” The playful note drained from His inflections, replaced with something angry, something deadly.
“You’re terrified of the very thought of him! You—”
“Silence!” He roared in her ear, making her jump. He moved around in front of her in a single fluid motion, kneeling, and taking her head in His hands.
“I don’t have to keep you alive.” His black eyes bored twin pits in her soul, and, staring into them, her brain itched. It threatened to give way, to let Him completely in before she again looked to her knees, shaking hard.
Clover had never feared for her life before, had never been put in a situation where she thought it was likely she would die. She decided in the interest of self-preservation it would be best just to keep silent and not antagonize Him until AJ showed up.
God, she wished it would be soon. She wanted to see him more than anything, and prayed she would live, too, no matter what followed. The only thing that would make her happier would be to watch him rip the sinister, sneering head off this monster shaped like a man.