FIFTEEN YEARS. One-fifth of the average human lifespan, give or take. Yet time tended to behave oddly; it was never static, and people felt it differently depending on circumstance. For a child squirming in his desk on the last day of school, those final minutes before the bell rang could seem endless. When that same boy passed through adulthood to old age, those same minutes could pass without his knowing.
Fifteen years. For the Reverend Amos Flesher, they must have been an eternity.
He hung in a web of scintillating red ropes. His body had shrunken and seized up; his feet, which had once touched the ground, now dangled nearly a foot above it. His skin was as brown and dry and moistureless as a chunk of liver forgotten in the back of a freezer. He looked somehow wooden. His toes were curled and hooked upward in grisly curlicues, like awful genie shoes. His lips had thinned away to transparencies, his teeth brown and cracked. The fretwork of ropes creaked softly like the hull of an old Spanish galleon on the night sea.
Micah swept the flashlight past this horrible sight, moving left . . . His breath caught.
“Pet.”
His daughter stood behind the Reverend. Motionless, her face crawling with dread. Micah stepped toward her. The flashlight disclosed another shape behind her. Its fingers curled possessively on Petty’s shoulder, its upper body swathed in darkness.
The Big Thing. The Flute Player.
“Daddy, please.”
Micah could not tell if it was his daughter who had spoken or the thing behind her—it was an uncanny mimic, as he recalled. He held up his hands in surrender.
“She is all I want.”
“Ass, gas, or grass,” the Big Thing said in his daughter’s voice. “Nobody rides for free, Daddy-o.”
Micah nodded. Instinctively, he knew what to do. He pulled the knife from his pocket and unfolded the blade. He approached the Reverend. The slit in his back, the one Shughrue had carved into it all those years ago, was still wet, still . . . weeping. Gingerly, Micah touched the tip of the knife to its edge. A membrane burst, spilling noxious nectar down the Reverend’s flesh. The smell was that of a cracked-open coffin. Micah glanced at Amos’s face, wondering if any of this was registering; the Reverend’s eyelids were fissured with tiny dry cracks that seemed on the verge of ripping open, spilling his eyeballs down his cheeks.
Micah turned his attention back to the slit. He drew the blade across it, severing the protective sac. Something turned inside the wound, fat and slug-like; the sight was reminiscent of a cat stretching itself on a warm windowsill.
“Micah, what are you . . . ?” Minerva said somewhere behind him.
The thing began to push itself out forcefully, with hard flexes and shoves. The Reverend shook helplessly; a second rip spread across his abdomen, and a desiccated loop burped through the split. His crotch—which was essentially sexless by now, just a flaccid free-hanging tube like a spent condom and a terribly distended and elongated sack with a pair of BBs rolling around inside—swayed lewdly, parodically. Micah stumbled back, the sight so overwhelming that his knees buckled, fear rushing through his brain as the thing muscled its way out with determined thrusts and the other thing, its helpmate, laughed the same way his daughter did at Scooby-Doo and Scrappy on the Saturday morning cartoons—
The thing slid out of the Reverend’s back and landed on the floor. At nearly the same instant, the ropes mooring the Reverend let go. The Reverend fell gracelessly and crumpled to the floor in a boneless heap . . .
Then Amos Flesher began to shriek.
His screams drilled through the air and ricocheted off the walls. They started out hoarsely, his vocal cords seized from disuse, but built to a lung-rupturing pitch. They were the gibbering bleats of a lunatic—a madness so profound it was all but unimaginable.
“No, Daddy!” he squealed as he bucked and writhed on the stone. “You don’t love me anymore you don’t love me never stop loving meeeeeee!”
Micah was overcome with pity. Amos Flesher was a devil—the cruelest man he had ever encountered, and he had run across many in his lifetime—but to see him there, naked and wizened as he shuddered on the floor with a kind of horrid, lascivious glee . . . Micah wanted to do something, if only to shut him up and end his misery. But he could not. He was completely paralyzed.
The Reverend’s hands—brown and sinewy and hooked into talons—danced in the air. His legs moved as if he was trying to climb an invisible staircase. He began to rip at his wasted body. His skin tore all too easily. Chunks of his chest and arms ripped free like enormous scabs. He screamed and laughed until he ran out of breath and began to gag helplessly as his hands rose to his face, scrabbling at his cheeks and nose and finally his eyes, which burst dryly, like spore bags, releasing splintered puffs of matter.
“Daddy!” he mewled, crawling blindly toward the thing that had lived inside of him for fifteen years, feeding on him in some terrible way, wrecking him in a manner no human should have to experience. “Pleeeeeaase, oh pleeeease, don’t leeeeave me, Daddy!”
He scrabbled toward the wet pink baby-thing, moaning and spluttering. The Big Thing left Petty’s side; it strode forward, and with quick, methodical ease, it stepped on the Reverend Amos Flesher’s skull. A sickening crunch. The Reverend’s reedlike legs jittered. Then they quit moving.
Micah waited, his breath whinnying out of him. When the Big Thing did not move, he took a wide berth around the squirming baby-thing and went to his daughter. The Big Thing knelt, fingering the remains of Flesher’s broken skull case. The Reverend’s brain was pale and dry, leeched of moisture, like some kind of cheap, crumbled cheese.
Micah knelt in front of Petty, inspected her for injuries. “Did it hurt you?”
She shook her head. She seemed both alert and hazy at once, as though trapped in a very vivid dream she was helpless to wake from.
“Are you okay?”
“Are you here?” she said. “Really here?”
“You are not dreaming, Pet. I am here.”
“I’m scared.”
“Me too. More than you can imagine.”
“It said you owed its daddy. What do you owe, Dad?”
Everything, Pet. Everything I can possibly give.
Micah turned to the things, the father and its doting son. “I know what you want. But you have to let them all go.”
The Big Thing squatted beside the baby. For some time, they held a silent palaver.
“What if we want . . . everything?” the Big Thing finally said.
“You do not want them,” Micah said evenly. “You never did.”
The two things conferred further. The Big Thing appeared to chuckle.
“Yes,” it said. “Just one of you will do.”
“And you must lift the curse. Take it back.”
A smile touched the corners of the Big Thing’s mouth. “Curse? My father should be outraged. Was it not exactly what you wished for?”
Micah said nothing. In time, the Big Thing nodded. “As you wish. My father is merciful.”
Micah turned to Ebenezer and Minerva. “Take her,” he said. “Quickly.”
“Micah, no,” said Minerva. “What are you—?”
Micah turned away. He couldn’t stand to look at them. He had known from the outset that it would come to this. He had realized—in the deepest, most honest chamber of his heart—that it would have to end like this. It was the only way. The creature would take all of them, or it would take Micah alone. But Micah had to give himself willingly. And he knew the thing wanted him so, so badly. For he was surely the only member of his species who had ever caused it true fear, true pain, in its vast and fearsome life.
Micah turned back to confront his daughter’s agonized face. He hugged Pet tightly. With her arms pinned to her sides, she was too surprised to return it. He felt the heat of her body and the rapid beat of her heart. He tried to imprint it in his mind: her warmth, her innocence, all the love pouring out of him into her.
“I love you, Pet.” She shimmered before him. “I love you so much. And your mother, of course. More than anything on earth. You be sure to tell her that, okay? You tell her how much I love you both. Will you do that?”
His daughter nodded obediently. He wondered if she had any idea of just how much he loved her. Does a child ever understand the irrational, endless love of a parent?
“Go, then,” he said. “And do not ever come back. Do you hear me?”
“No, Daddy. I won’t go without you.”
“It cannot be any other way, my love. You do not understand, but you have to trust me. I am begging you.”
Minerva and Ebenezer stood in the sputtering light of the lantern. Micah appealed to them next. “Go. Now. What in hell’s name are you waiting for?”
“We can’t just—” Minerva started.
Micah stilled her with a look. She knew, too. As did Ebenezer. This was the only possible way. The cards were stacked against them. Those cards had begun to stack the moment Micah had accepted Ellen Bellhaven’s request to take her to Little Heaven to find her missing nephew.
Micah tried to let go of his daughter. His arms wouldn’t unlock. He wanted to hold her forever. But he had to let go.
His arms wrapped around her, the comfort he felt with her in his hands—his hands. He saw them now in the flickering lantern light. Hard, callused. A killer’s hands. At first, he hadn’t wanted to hold Petty when she was an infant. This memory came to him, clear as spring water. He had been afraid that some of his evilness might invade her tiny body. But he sensed a change in himself the moment she was born, right in his very atoms. His arms, his hands, his entire body was changing in subtle ways in order to accept this sweet burden he’d been given. She fits perfectly in my hands, he remembered thinking when the doctor gave her to him. They have shaped themselves to her without my even knowing—
He let his daughter go. It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. “Go, my Pet.”
“No!” the girl screamed, clutching at him.
The Big Thing chuckled, enjoying the touching family moment.
“We can accommodate two,” it said.
“You will have to take her,” Micah pleaded with Ebenezer and Minny. “Please.”
They grabbed his daughter’s arms. Her screams intensified as they dragged her away, legs kicking wildly. Ebenezer whispered something into her ear. At that, Petty stopped kicking. Her eyes shone in the dim, the brightest spots in the chamber.
“I love you, Daddy” was all she said.
“Blow me a kiss, darling.”
She did. He watched it float through the dark air, then reached out and snatched it. Micah put his daughter’s last kiss in his pocket. “Thank you, baby. I will need it.” They left him, Petty trembling, still disbelieving, her body limp as a wrung dishrag. Minerva followed her, stunned and softly weeping. Ebenezer was last; he departed with a terse but compassionate nod. The three of them crawled into the tunnel. The Big Thing followed them out, leaving Micah with its daddy.
Micah exhaled. He pulled himself together. He unbuttoned his shirt in the flickering glow of the lantern. The baby made gluttonous sucking sounds. His hand trembled as he stretched the skin of his stomach taut. Old flesh, wasn’t it? It had felt a lot, carried him through so much. It bore the nicks and scrapes of its service.
It is not an easy thing, stabbing oneself. Micah had scarcely considered how it ought to be done, never having harbored those thoughts. Fast and declarative seemed best. Cut fast, cut deep.
Micah heard the rope ladder banging against the rock as Petty and the other two climbed up it. Go on, baby. Keep going. Never look back.
He hissed through his teeth as the knife slid into his belly. He jerked the blade across in a straight and bitter line; his flesh readily opened up. He dropped to his knees, swooning as blood soaked into his waistband. Deep enough? He sensed the thing would have its own methods of opening him up.
A delicate touch on his shoulder. A red rope had descended from the ceiling to alight upon him. It wasn’t painful. The warmest kiss. He batted it away. That couldn’t happen yet. He had one final task to complete.
He dragged his bleeding body over to his backpack and rooted inside. His hands closed around the bricklike object he’d carried many miles. He pulled it out. The baby issued a quizzical burble.
Micah had purchased it from an acquaintance from his sad old, bad old days. He had purchased it before heading off to find Ebenezer, meeting the man in a parking garage and paying in cash. Such transactions should carry no trace. The man he had bought it from asked no questions regarding its usage—men like the seller made it their business to proffer product without moral consequence. He only told Micah that it was enough to do the trick, which had sounded about right to Micah.
He turned to the baby. Showed it what he was holding.
“I hope,” he said laboredly, “you are not afraid of enclosed spaces.”
“DADDY!” the Long Walker shrieked.
Petty—who was up the ladder by then, although her progress had been slowed by her tears—looked down at the thing, which stood at the bottom of the basin watching as they ascended. Pet was startled by the childish pitch of its voice. Its huge moonface was split in a rictus of rage—the expression of something that had been tricked most awfully.
It turned and fled back into the tunnel, its huge legs sawing through the dark air.
“Move,” Minny said to Petty. “As fast as you can, little girl.”
SEVEN STICKS OF TNT wired together in a bundle.
“How many seconds do you want me to rig the timer?”
This was the question the man Micah had bought it from had asked. A cheap plastic egg timer, the kind you’d find in kitchens all across America, was wired to the fuses and strapped to the dynamite with duct tape.
“Three seconds,” Micah told him.
“Three? Jesus, man. That’s not nearly enough time to run clear of the explosion. That’s barely enough time to blow your nose.”
“Three,” Micah said again.
Micah twisted the knob on the egg timer as the baby-thing watched him. He could sense its worry—though perhaps it was faking again? It began to hiss menacingly as it crawled toward him. In the lantern’s glow, Micah at last got a sense of its true shape: the light shone through its fatty covering to display a network of brachial and spiny limbs. It moved quickly, its nails clickety-clacking on the rock. Its voice filled his skull.
Oh no no don’t you dare do not DARE—
Micah could hear the other thing coming now, too. He pictured its mouth opened in a tortured leer as it raced through the tunnel to protect its precious father. It was getting closer, steaming toward him—
You had to be calm in the cut. That was the key. You had to hold your mud for that extra half second, even with the hammers of hell pounding down on you. Everything hubbed on that. It really did. If you acted too soon, you could lose it all.
The Big Thing tore into the chamber, its body billowing up and out to blot the lantern’s light. Micah waited until it was fully inside; then he hurled the TNT down the tunnel it had just vacated. He turned to face them. The baby’s fleshy face twisted in rage. The Big Thing stood rooted, momentarily perplexed. Micah opened his hands to them as blood sheeted down his stomach.
Sorry, fellas, but it had to be done.
Micah wore a blissful smile. He looked less threatening when he smiled. So much less the badass. Ellen always said he ought to smile more often. And right now he did. For her.
THE EXPLOSION ROARED out of the cavern. A hail of black dust and rock splinters shotgunned from the cleft to spray the sand in a wide radius.
Minerva and Eb and Petty were clear of the blast zone by then. They stood three abreast, staring gape-jawed as more dust and rubble sifted from the cavern. They could hear the rock giving way as the interior began to cave in.
“No,” Minerva whispered. “Micah, oh, Micah, what did you do?”
MICAH CAME TO some time later. He was still alive. It came as a shock. Not an entirely welcome one, under the circumstances.
The lantern continued to burn. Squinting, he could see it was partially covered in a coating of black, coal-like dust. Someone had scraped some of the dust off and relit it.
He saw chunks of stone on the floor, their jagged contours swimming in the light of the lantern. A fine haze of soot hung in the air. He looked down at himself. The edges of his gaping stomach wound were crusted with the same black soot. The ragged, bumpy edges looked like a dog’s gums. The smell of explosives was sharp in his nose.
But he was still alive. The chamber was still here. It had not caved in.
Naughty boy.
The voice sent a spike of panic through him.
You must be punished.
He rolled onto his side. The tunnel was gone—in its place a solid fall of rock, a few chunks of which had rolled across the chamber’s floor. So it had worked. He was dimly amazed that the cavern hadn’t collapsed around him. But this thing had immense power, so it was not absurd to think it had found a way to protect its lair from the blast. At least Micah had sealed them all inside.
He stood dazedly. He couldn’t see anything past the apathetic light shed by the lantern. He flinched as something touched his shoulder. A red rope had descended from the ceiling to lick at his flesh. He did not fight it this time. It felt too good. The ropes spooled down in great multitudes, all with shining inner cores. They attached to his flesh and gently lifted him up. He almost laughed—even as the blood sheeted down him. Such a delightful sensation. They held him in a loving embrace. He could not move. In that moment, he didn’t want to.
The lantern light fell upon the Big Thing, which had moved into a corner. It produced a flute, which it raised to its lips. The flute made no sound, but the Big Thing danced anyway, legs kicking and feet shuffling, happy in whatever way it could be.
The baby mewled somewhere behind Micah. It, too, had survived the blast. Of course it had. Micah heard it slapping closer to him, though he could not chart its approach.
A chill raced through his body when a cold tongue brushed his calf. He flinched, unable to help it. No, he thought. Do not get weak-kneed already. It will get worse. His eyes fell upon the Reverend’s body covered in a dusting of black soot. So much worse.
The Big Thing had stopped playing its flute. It seemed to bear Micah no ill will for the explosion that had trapped it here. Perhaps it could get out easily enough. Perhaps a few tons of blown-apart rock and a lack of breathable air meant nothing to it. The thing stared at him in the fluttering light.
“It must be said, you are strong,” it said in obvious appreciation. “Stronger than any of your kind we have encountered.”
The baby made a gargling rasp—a note of agreement? Something coiled around Micah’s ankle and constricted mercilessly.
“That does not matter, does it?” Micah asked.
The Big Thing shook its head almost sadly. “Time and pressure will split the strongest rock,” it said distantly. “In fact, time alone is sufficient.”
The baby slid between Micah’s spread legs. In the lantern’s light—which was now dying out, Micah noted with worry—it didn’t resemble a baby at all. It was much older and more unspeakable. His eyes couldn’t grasp the true shape of it, or didn’t want to; his gaze skated off its awfulness, shying from it like a nervous horse. It began to mount him. Micah moaned. He couldn’t help himself. The Big Thing retreated to the far side of the chamber. A chalice had been grooved into the rock. It folded its enormous body into that indentation, tucking its legs up to its chin. It closed its eyes and went still: a toy in a cupboard waiting for its owner to take it out and play with it again.
The lantern’s flame blew sideways, frayed by an unfelt wind. It would go out soon. Micah was terrified at the thought of being alone in the dark with this thing. The light made it slightly less maddening. Would he die when the air ran out? He hoped to God it would be so.
The thing had reached his knee now. Its body was wet and hard like a naked tendon. It made a snuffling noise that a dog might make rooting for scraps under a dinner table. This, too, almost made Micah laugh. Instead he cried. He realized he’d actually been doing this on and off for some time. It was of no matter. He could cry all he liked.
The flame whumphed and spluttered, the kerosene nearly gone. The thing was slipping inside of him now. It didn’t hurt so bad. The red ropes might have something to do with that. He didn’t dare look, but he could hear his insides shifting with a soft squelch. He took a few hiccuping inhales, the sort a boy makes before he dunks his head underwater to see how long he can hold his breath.
Oh God, he thought wildly. Please let them be safe. Please let them live without wondering, without too much burden, without without without—
The lantern’s light winked out. Darkness overtook him.
In that darkness, a voice: