Back to the Cemetery
“This thing could use a cowcatcher right now,” noted Bernard, as Dennis veered the hearse toward a tractor-sized orange ogre that was advancing toward them on a dozen thin multi-jointed legs.
“Like that truck in Jeepers Creepers?”
The hearse bashed into the crawler doing forty, hurling it thirty feet into a sidewalk planter, where it broke apart on the red-brick corners.
“Careful.” Bernard lowered the forearm he had reflexively raised when Dennis accelerated toward the miscreation. “Jeepers Creepers. Is that the one with the pervy gargoyle?”
“Yep.” Dennis stopped at the intersection.
“You and I could slap one on this baby in a single afternoon,” Bernard noted.
Dennis raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Might look pretty badass.”
The hearse shook with the boom of something landing hard on its roof.
“Aaah, cripes!” exclaimed Bernard.
A firehose-thick scorpion’s leg bashed the windshield, cracking a spiderweb network of white lines right in Dennis’s line of sight.
“Dammit!” Dennis swerved. “Get off my car, you big tick!”
“Watch out!” Bernard’s side of the windshield was mostly clear. He was able to see the light pole coming at them with terrifying velocity.
Dennis braked, hoping to throw the thing into the pole. But it stayed in place, bashing at every window with its claws.
“How are you gonna…?” Bernard didn’t finish his question. Dennis ducked to see under the breakage and gunned it. Seeing that he was torpedoing toward the church drive’s iron fence like a bullet, Bernard raised both forearms this time.
The hearse crashed into the black gates with a roar to match the hitchhiking demon’s. Dennis, having wrecked a few times before, knew to lean right so his head wouldn’t hit the wheel.
There was a split second of relative silence. Then Bernard screeched like a monkey.
Dennis popped up, “What!?”
Bernard took a deep breath of relief. “When your head hit my lap, I thought it was…no longer attached.”
Their horrific hijacker recovered as well and shrieked its rage.
The rear window cascaded inward. Then Bernard’s.
Now it was Bernard’s turn to crowd into Dennis’s side. The windshield caved in as a single piece, covering the pair like a blanket.
A shout, in a familiar voice, said, “Get down as much as you can!”
Dennis pushed Bernard’s head down and lay over him.
Staccato gunfire punched the air, plunking pumpkin flesh. The stalks withdrew, then the hearse rose six inches as the abomination leaped off with an enraged roar.
“Come on!” Dennis dragged Bernard toward him as he opened his door.
* * * *
“Good boy!” Elaine told Bravo.
The dog had posted himself at the door as always, his tail held high. It was clear that the thunder frightened him, but duty called. His pleasant-smelling charges came first.
Per Ysabella’s instructions, the little girls were given lots of paper and colored markers from Brinke’s bag—a step up from crayons for the smaller girl. “Girls, can you draw me a picture of a storm, like this one over the sky of our town?” Leticia asked.
The little ones quickly set to work, losing their fear of the storm as they drew. As Emera raised a red pen, Elaine stopped her. “Hey, I have an idea! Let’s make the lightning green, like pretty trees!”
“Okay!”
* * * *
As the latest and loudest burst of thunder boomed, Elaine turned to Leticia. “I’m sorry I was ever angry with you about leaving. You certainly can’t be blamed.”
Leticia smiled at her friend. “Don’t think I’m gonna give up on trying to get you to come too.”
“Wook!” Wanda raised her and Emera’s latest drawing, completed in minutes. It depicted the Green Man on Emera’s bracelet, smiling placidly as he blocked red lightning with one hand and projected green lightning with the other.
The mothers stared at each in astonishment. “That’s…brilliant.”
* * * *
Conal, the pumpkin demon, forced his giant face into the window frame and opened his jagged-toothed maw with a cry of rage. He blasted another stream of pumpkin-seeded placenta onto the gymnasium floor, dispensing hundreds of his horrific offspring.
Much of the mess landed on McGlazer’s back, shocking him out of his pain trance. The spores spread instantly and wound their tiny twine vines around his face and neck before they were even out of their shells, drawing lines of blood and trails of pain.
McGlazer dug his fingernails into his own flesh to gain purchase under the wire razors, breaking them apart at the expense of deep gashes in his fingers.
“How much longer on the corndog!?” Stuart shouted.
“Half!”
Three full-grown pumpkins reappeared at the high windows and reached in again. Their vines, having grown longer from the mystical rainwater, brushed against the embattled Community Center occupants now.
Soon their prey would be within easy reach to strangle and drag across the broken glass of the window frames, to consume or simply dismember as they saw fit.
The rain suddenly ceased.