Chapter Forty-One

 

Eric unlocked the back door and stood with his hand on the knob, waiting. Bernie and the receptionist were standing with him, ready to slam the door closed behind him.

Outside, the monsters had begun to break through the blanket again. An imp was clawing at the window.

“You sure you don’t want us to go out there with you?” asked Bernie.

He might’ve laughed if the situation weren’t so grave. The big guy looked scared out of his mind, and yet he was offering to join him on this suicide mission?

“This is what I came here for,” he said. “I have to do this alone.”

The receptionist laughed nervously. His eyes remained fixed on the window. “You’ve got some balls, man. I’ll give you that. I’m going to have nightmares about this shit for the rest of my life.”

“Sorry to drag you into all this.”

Now he turned his gaze to Eric. “Sorry? For what? I’ve never felt more alive!”

Eric blinked. “Seriously?”

“It’s like I’m a kid again. All of this… Witches. Monsters. Magic spells. Don’t you feel it? It’s like anything is possible!”

He considered this for a moment. “Huh.” He supposed in an insanely optimistic sort of way, it was true. All this time, he’d been fixated on all the bad things, on all the other horrors that might be out there. He hadn’t considered the other side of the coin. How many more miracles might there be? How much more wonder?

“If I died today, I think I’d go happy,” agreed Bernie. “Just knowing I got to be a part of something like this.”

“Totally worth it,” said the receptionist.

Eric smiled. He remembered that eleven dollars it cost him to get into The Dirty Bunny the previous night, how annoyed he was by that. But now… It was worth it, he decided. Every penny.

The pulse shot past him. The scratching at the window immediately stopped.

“That’s your cue,” said Bernie.

Eric jerked open the door and ran out onto the porch, his dagger held high, ready for any imp, super imp, ogre or other miscellaneous monstrosity that might have survived the pulse. But as Bernie slammed the door closed and snapped the lock shut behind him, he found nothing waiting for him but thick smoke blowing in the wind.

Lightning flashed overhead. Thunder rolled. Wind howled. But nothing stirred.

The scene was so eerily dark and ominous that he had to fight back the urge to turn and pound on the door until they let him back in. His eyes stung. Great, black smoke devils swirled in the gloom. To the left, a tree was burning. The flames cast an angry, red glare upon the haze. Distant howls drifted to him from far out in the fields.

It was such a strange storm, with fire and smoke, but not a single drop of rain. In fact, the air felt baked. It dried his lips and parched his throat.

Coughing, he lifted his phone in front of his face and read the screen.

ONE O’CLOCK

Eric turned a little to his right and started across the yard.

STRAIGHT AHEAD

He raised the dagger again and blinked tears from his stinging eyes.

His stomach felt like it was full of slithering eels. His heart was racing. How did he get himself into these messes?

Then something moved to his left. He turned to face it, his dagger poised to stab, but his heart sank as he saw the shape that was moving through the settling smoke, a shape that was twisted and crooked and as tall as a tree.

A giant.

Eric dived out of the way as an enormous, horned fist fell from the sky and struck the ground.

Knowing well that he was still in danger, he leapt to his feet and backed away, narrowly dodging the giant’s other hand as it swept across the yard, carving a shallow trench in the grass with its immense fingers.

He couldn’t outrun this thing. The best he could hope for was to run back to the farmhouse, but not only would that not save him, it would put everyone inside in danger. The blanket might kill the thing, but its smoking corpse would probably flatten most of the building on its way down.

His only chance was to stay on his toes and use the dagger.

He stuffed the phone safely back into his pocket and fixed his gaze on the massive beast.

The thing bent over, its misshapen head descending through the clouds of smoke. Lightning flashed. The smoke parted. And for just a moment, he saw the thing’s face.

He’d seen a lot of terrible things, but this was particularly horrible. Its mouth consisted of oozing folds of glistening, black flesh and countless rows of jagged teeth that took up its entire face. Its bulging eyes were both crowded to one side of its head. It had no neck, and where it should have had a chin, a huge, warty growth was sprouting from between sagging folds of wobbling flesh, oozing yellow slime down its meaty chest.

Ever the optimist, Eric decided that standing next to this guy probably made him look like one very sexy English teacher.

Maybe something was wrong with the part of his brain that was supposed to self-destruct when things like this happened and plunge him into comforting madness. He should be lying on the ground right now, drooling and giggling, blissfully unaware of his impending doom. Instead, his strange little mind was still cracking jokes like this was just another day at the office.

The terrible face withdrew back into the smoke as a gust of wind swirled the choking air around him. When it cleared, Eric had just enough time to dive out of the way before the monster’s grotesque foot ground him into the dirt.

Moving quickly, he rolled back to his feet and ran at the monster’s elephantine heel, plunging the blade into it.

The giant let out a terrible roar and the foot lifted, vanishing back into the smoke.

He didn’t dare linger. He turned and ran.

Behind him, the foot crashed to the earth again, pulverizing the grass where he’d just been standing.

The advantage here, it seemed, was that the monsters were just as blind in this smoke as he was.

It was a little thing, but it was a chance, and the only one he was going to get. He turned and ran toward the field, putting distance between himself and those long legs. Then he turned and shouted, “Over here, ugly!”

He didn’t have time to add a more creative insult. Two massive footsteps shook the ground and he barely managed to run from the giant’s path before it shot past him and stormed into the cornfield.

Now if he could just remain quiet long enough for the dagger to carve its way into the giant’s foot, he might just have a chance.

But the thought had barely crossed his mind when a trio of imps emerged from the smoke and crouched before him.

Eric cursed and took a step back.

The one in the middle snarled at him.

He shook his head. He was out of breath. His heart was still pounding. His whole body ached. Maybe they could tell he wasn’t as much of a challenge as he was at the beginning of the night because they didn’t immediately pounce him. “You know,” he told the little monsters between labored breaths, “compared to that thing out there, you guys are almost cute.”

The imp on the left cocked its head as if it hadn’t ever thought of that before.

“Almost,” Eric reminded it.

Somewhere out in the field, still dangerously close, the giant let out a terrible roar. Was that the cursed blade doing its work? Or was it just pissed off because it had lost him? It was hard to tell.

The imps didn’t seem concerned. They stood their ground, each of them staring at him with those huge, bulging eyes.

“So how do you want to do this?” he asked them. He pointed the dagger at the one in the middle. “You take one, I’ll take the other?”

All three of them cocked their heads at this. None of them moved.

Tough crowd.

“No? Didn’t think so. Well, let’s get it over with then.”

But they still didn’t pounce. All three of them turned their bulging eyes out toward the corn and then they scurried off toward the farmhouse.

Eric watched them disappear into the smoke.

Was it something he said?

The giant howled again. It sounded even farther away now. And that definitely sounded like pain.

A fourth imp ran past behind him, darting by on its way back to the farmhouse.

He turned and took a few steps toward the corn. His cell phone chimed at him.

HE’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!

Eric froze. The magic man. He could almost feel him there, moving toward him.

As the first stalks of corn emerged from the haze, a super imp burst from the field and darted past him without even sparing him a glance.

His heart racing, he turned and looked after it. Seriously? He just took on a giant and they were acting like he wasn’t worth their time?

He fixed his eyes on the field again. Something was out there. A dark figure was moving toward him through the corn. He could see it pushing through the stalks. A black shape in the mottled shadows, bright flames dripping and smoldering from his sleeves.

Eric stood gripping the dagger, his heart racing.

Two ogres emerged from the corn on either side of him. They regarded him for a moment, but their big eyes drifted toward their master and they only stood there and watched.

Apparently, this terrifying demon of a man didn’t need their help. Eric was but a bug in his path, ready to be squashed.

BE CAREFUL!

He slipped the phone back into his pocket and held the dagger in both hands. This was it. This was the final battle. He was about to come face-to-face with the magic man.

His heart was hammering.

Overhead, lightning flashed. Thunder shook the ground.

The magic man pushed through the final stalks of corn and then stopped and stood there, letting Eric look upon him clearly for the first time.