Hag Night, page 31
But no one had an answer.
Wenda was aware at that moment that Rule was watching her. He had not said anything in some time since his comparison of her to Athena. Even in the dimness of the waning lantern and the shadows reaching across his face, she could see he was looking at her. More so, she could feel him looking at her. He had something on his mind and she just hoped like hell it had nothing to do with warrior maidens and virginity.
Without prompting, he said, “I’m thinking about the nature of evil. How it establishes itself, how it is fertilized like a crop, generated and ultimately harvested. The idea of spiritual evil is pretty much archaic in our modern society, but I think the three of us know that it in fact exists. I’ve never doubted it. I’ve always seen it as a force of nature like wind, rain, fire, and storm…an elemental force and certainly one of the oldest, something that no doubt predates our little world here by an unfathomable amount of time.” He had their attention and saw it. “I spoke earlier of evil being seeded in Cobton and causing a blight here that continues to this day. You probably thought I spoke metaphorically in a sense, that my mind was too mired in the classics to consider this problem rationally…for after all, what do I know about Cobton except what I found in the old archives and heard as the twice-told tales of old-timers? Other than my visit here when I was young that cost the life of my brother…what evidence do I have to support my theory that this is an evil place that attracts evil deeds and evil entities like a magnet attracts metal filings?”
“We’ve seen all the evidence we need,” Wenda told him.
He nodded. “Sure. But have you considered the epicenter of this evil? Because there is one and it’s down in those catacombs I spoke of. It’s there, I think. It’s festering and malignant and it needs to be cut out at its source.”
“So we’re back to that?”
“Yes. It should be done. What’s down there has to be destroyed.”
“Griska,” Wenda said.
He shrugged. “Maybe. And maybe I’m talking about something even worse than Griska. Something that has taken habitation here and regenerated evil again and again.”
“And what is that?”
But Rule admitted he did not know. Only that he could feel it as he’d always felt it in Cobton. That it existed, he did not doubt. No more than he doubted that it was now rising up for some reason to spread and multiply, to germinate its foulness. “I think we’re on the edge of something…something large in scope and complex in nature. Call it a blueprint if you want. Something Griska might have had in mind when he first came here. To establish Cobton as a vampire colony and then spread that pestilence far and wide. Whether by coincidence or design, we happen to be here when this evil of his is just coming to term. We’re in the not-so enviable position of being able to stop it or at least cripple it before it goes too far. I think we need to take advantage of that. I think we need to destroy Griska and his flock and the silent malignancy that empowers them before they spread their wings cross this county, this state, this country, and maybe this whole damn world.”
Wenda looked disturbed by the idea. “And how do we do that?”
“By going down into those catacombs and destroying them.”
“We’d better wait for dawn.”
But Megga shook her head. “They won’t let us live until dawn. If we’re going to do something, we’d better do it soon.”
14
Megga was trying to make Wenda see how important it was that they move on this, but Wenda, of course, was too worried about risking their lives. She would have risked her own in a minute—and had—but she did not like being the caretaker of other lives. It scared her and Megga knew it. She was too cautious, too conservative. And that would cost her. That would cost all of them because Megga was somehow tuned into the undead outside and she knew they were gathering now. They knew what was being discussed inside the house and they knew it was a threat to them. Rule had somehow ferreted out the truth of there being another who stood behind Griska.
This was something Megga herself had not even seen in her mind.
But it was true.
It was real just as she now knew the vampires were indeed massing to spread out of Cobton, to carry the plague from town to town to town. It was an ancient plan and they would not be interfered with.
Though she knew how dangerous it was to open her mind to them, she did so, casting about outwards for the one mind whose intensity and dominance could not be doubted: that of Griska. It was out there burning like a hot ember and she could feel its heat, feel herself drawn closer to it like some suicidal moth flying closer and ever closer to a flickering candle flame.
She thought she was reaching out for Griska, but the opposite seemed true. Her mind was sucked into some black vacuum with force and urgency. She was not in control. Heat waves blew over her from the searing ember of the vampire’s mind.
Come, little one. For certainly you are welcome here in this place.
Like a thumbtack driven into a wall, her consciousness was firmly affixed inside that of Griska. She thought with his thoughts and looked out through his saturnine eyes. His mind was a buried tomb of hot wind that carried a multitude of anguished voices, perhaps the leeched souls of his victims. It was a place of rank contamination and seeping venom…like waking up inside of a black carcinoma, an infesting, parasitic malignance. But for all of that, for as appalling as it was, as much as it made her essence feel violated and submerged in filth—and it did, like drowning in a narrow casket of black mud—it was also…absolutely incredible. She saw through not just one set of eyes, but dozens. At first it made no sense. Her brain could not contain it all or hope to process even a fraction of it. It was like watching fifteen or twenty TVs simultaneously and hoping to follow the action and plot on each screen. It all came at her in a jumble of noise…but slowly, patiently, she was able to focus her view so that she looked into each set of eyes individually.
It was…amazing.
She saw the house through the storm and realized she was looking through the eyes of Griska’s brides and children out in the blizzard. They watched and watched and did little else. She knew that he could look through their eyes, but they could not look through his. It was because he was the leader, the progenitor, the all and everything. He was the…the master, just like in those creaky old vampire movies they showed on Chamber of Horrors.
But it wasn’t just through their eyes that she could see.
It was through the beady eyes of rats that scratched in the walls and nested in the cellar. Through the bleary eyes of a spider hiding in the corner of the sitting room. Through those of bats hanging in the attic. An owl that swooped over the rooftops of Cobton. And even from a fly on the mantle woken by the warmth of the fire. She looked through its multi-lensed eyes, seeing a stunning, nearly hallucinatory panoramic view of a world of giants: Wenda and Rule and even herself. Gigantic monstrosities, distorted and wavering as their images jumped from lens to lens.
Then she heard a voice that shattered all of it like the glass of a mirror.
The virgin.
The virgin.
That damnable virgin.
She must be culled, she must be felled.
The Mother fears her.
The Mother…the Mother that is as much filth as the virgin herself is purity.
Yes, the Mother, the Queen of the Dead.
Megga’s mind was filled with images of her…maybe not who she really was, but a series of subjective images.
Yes, yes, yes, Megga understood now.
She was the one that stood behind Griska. She was the source and the wellspring that Wenda could dam.
And as she realized this, Megga knew that Griska had invited her into his head so she would know. It was vitally important that she knew. Her job was to demoralize the others, yes, but to corrupt Wenda at all costs so her soul was no longer white sugar but dirty soil writhing with crawling things.
Fell the virgin. Desecrate her so that I may make sport and spectacle of her violation. That I may lay her well-used and well-plucked rind at the feet of the Mother.
Then Megga was back in her own head and the connection was severed like a plug pulled from a socket. She was alone in her head and she knew what had to be done. If she wanted to walk side-by-side with the Queen of the Dead, then she knew very well what she must do—
“Megga!”
That voice, that shouting, droning voice.
“MEGGA!”
She snapped out of it and Wenda was standing over her, shaking her by the shoulders. Megga wanted to kiss…no, she needed to kiss her because that was the beginning of seduction that was the beginning of desecration. She reached out for her and Wenda slapped across the face. She slapped her again. And again.
“Bitch!” Megga cried out, shoving Wenda away.
“Snap out of it! We have to go now,” Wenda said. “Something’s happening. It’s happening…right…NOW!”
Wenda kept talking, but Megga could not seem to understand what she was saying. She understood the slapping just fine because that was pain and she reacted like any animal would to it. She looked at Wenda whose eyes were wild and desperate. Wenda wanted to escape, she knew. She wanted them to run out of there to…to begin the hunt. Wenda had murder in her heart, more so she had extermination in her heart and she wanted Megga to follow along.
Megga shook her head from side-to-side.
No, no, no. What Griska had promised her was not this existence she’d known all these years which was one of struggle, hopelessness, and inner turmoil, rebellion at all of the above, but something savory and mellow. Something sweet like a warm chocolate dissolving in her mouth, the sugar buzz firing innumerable endorphins in her head. A feeling of peace. A feeling of belonging and being not alone, but part of something bigger. She could already taste that chocolate in her mouth…the sugary, almost orgasmic satisfaction of it as hot red liquid chocolate filled her mouth.
Blood. Not chocolate, but blood.
Megga wanted to taste it and swim in it. She wanted to drown in it.
“ALL RIGHT, GODDAMMIT!” Wenda shouted at her. “IF YOU WANT TO STAY, THEN STAY!”
Good, she was going away. Thank God, she was going away.
Megga blinked, then blinked again.
Now she could see what Wenda feared. What sent her running with Rule in tow.
They were coming through the walls.
The vampires were crawling out of the woodwork.
Wenda had slammed the door shut as she departed. Now tiny white threads were sliding beneath it and crawling up its face like climbing ivy on a fence. It was impossible, but she was seeing it. Now those threads were thick as tree roots. They grew in great profusion, growing and clustering, taking on the general form of a human body. Yes, now the roots were branching into rootlets and slender tendrils and wire-fine fibers. Megga was seeing a near-perfect human form made of those knotting growths. Now they were melting into a whole. Dirty, gray, straw-like hair rose from a head like a nodding white puffball. A jagged depression became a sardonic, grinning mouth of long, sharp teeth. Yellow eyes winked open.
Everywhere.
It was happening all around her. The vampires were not entering the room as mists or shades or even wolves, they were growing themselves into it. Fibrous bodies were assembling on the walls, tendrils climbing and writhing, whipping and joining and knotting like puppets made of white yarn. They grew up out of the corners, from beneath the baseboards, creeping cords winding around the edges of the window casements like creeping masses of fungi. A gray fibrous mass fleshed itself out in the chair Wenda had been sitting in and Megga found herself looking at a little girl who kept counting her fingers, licking the white palings of her teeth.
As the vampires bloomed about her like graveyard orchids, the door swung open and Megga gasped, thinking, thank God, thank God, Wenda’s come back for me, she’s come back to save me from myself. But it wasn’t Wenda. It was another woman. She walked with a soundless, light step. She was naked, long-legged, the hair drifting from her scalp so blond it was nearly white. But there was something wrong. Something terribly wrong and Megga knew it. She saw that as it walked its skin seemed to billow and flutter like a balloon fed by a gas jet. And as it got closer to her, she could see minute cracks in the flesh that the light passed clean through.
In the back of her head, she heard her own voice. It was the confused, fearful voice of a little girl. This isn’t right. Something just isn’t right here…
The woman moved closer as the other vampires took shape along the walls. She walked with a strange side-to-side sort of motion, making a kind of rubbery sound of the sort a blow-up doll might make if it was to walk.
Then Megga saw what it was.
Not a vampire exactly. Not even a woman exactly.
As it got closer, she could see it had no eyes, just black holes in the face. It smiled a big, lunatic, moony sort of grin. There were no teeth behind the smile. In fact, there was nothing. It was hollow. The light from the fire caught it, shining through the holes of its eyes and the cavern of its grinning mouth…and there was nothing inside it.
It was a walking skin.
A human peel.
And as it got closer and something bunched inside Megga in feral terror, she could hear its voice in her head. A scraping, scratchy sort of voice that had very little volume and very little substance: I shed my skin, did I not? I wore the body and face of the tender one, did I not? Yes, this was the beldam that they had killed. It had shed its skin to wear the likeness of Bailey. It was dead now…but its skin was very much alive. It came after Megga like a sock without a foot in it, a living membrane, a walking pelt.
It needed a body to attach itself to.
It would wear Megga’s.
When it reached for her, she screamed. She tried to push it away, but there was no true way of fighting it. Her hands pressed into it and it gave instantly, hot air rushing from the mouth. And then it was on her. It did not grip her so much as it affixed itself to her, sticking to her hands and adhering itself to her face. She could feel it moving on her, sliding over her and consuming her. It was appropriating her, assimilating her, ingesting her.
Megga was on her feet, tearing and clawing at it.
The casing had all the substance of a pair of nylon stockings. Yet, it clung and moved, gluing itself to her. She stumbled, staggering this way and that, finally going to her knees before the fire. She knew what had to be done and she did not hesitate. Before it completely webbed itself to her, she shoved it into the fire. As she herself was singed, the skin shriveled, blackening and curling, the whipping blond hair igniting. The skin screamed with a hollowed, empty sound like a shriek coming from a pipe. As it blazed and Megga cried out from the pain and the stink of burning hair, she pulled it free. On the floor, it curled up like the sloughed skin of a snake, blackened and smoldering, great holes melted through it. It tried to creep away before collapsing in a smoking, crackling heap.
Then Megga ran.
The vampires did not try to stop her. They touched her with icy fingers and hissed inside her head with voices like leaking steam valves. MEGGA MEGGA MEGGA MEEEEGGAAAAA. She shut them out. She pressed hands over her ears. She would not listen to it. PLEASE MEGGA MEGGA MEGGA OH PLEASE OH SWEET DEAR MEGGA MEGGA MEGGA MEGGAAAAAA. One of them was growing from the wall right next to the door like fingers of woodrot trying to imitate a human being. It fattened and fleshed out, lifting its faceless clumped head to her.
She hit it.
She hit it with a balled-up fist right where its face might have been and it…exploded. Like a stepped-upon fruiting body of fungus, it came apart like a juicy, black tomato, spilling foul yellow ooze that leaked in rivers.
Then she was through the door.
She was out of the house.
She was in the storm. It took hold of her in frozen hands, gripping her, squeezing her, throwing snow in her face and shoving icy air down her spine. Crying out for Wenda and Rule, she plunged headlong into the night, frantic and half-mad. When hands reached out and took hold of her, she screamed.
15
As soon as they stepped outside, the wind found them.
Holding Rule’s hand, Wenda and he walked side-by-side into the blizzard. If something were waiting for them out there—and, no doubt, something was—then they would face it together. Head-on. She was aware of the forms standing out just beyond the periphery of the storm. They got no closer. Not just then. She could feel the cool emptiness of them. Not human beings. Not things with souls. Just animate hunger. They were breathing hides and no more.
It wasn’t far to the Georgian house where Doc and the others had run after the incident with the bus. That all seemed ages ago now. No more than forty feet, but never had that distance seemed so long as it did at that moment. Antique houses rose up around them in the blizzard like ghost ships coming out of sea fog, phantasmal and weird.
“We’re in incredible danger,” Rule said.
And, yes, Wenda figured they were at that. But what choice had there been? With dawn getting closer and more subtle modes of persuasion failing, the vampires had dropped all pretenses and simply forced themselves into the room. Something which was either an act of desperation or a herding maneuver to force them out into the storm. Either way, it worked.
They pushed on through the tomb of the blizzard, clutching hands tightly, waiting for it, tensing, expecting to be attacked at any moment. But they weren’t. In fact, nothing happened until Megga burst out of the storm, screaming their names. They took hold of her and they were three. It wasn’t much with what they were facing, but it was something. Megga, of course, was nearly out of her mind, gibbering and stuttering over what she had seen and what had touched her. She wanted them to know, to understand, to feel the depths of her horror…but in the end she just fell silent. Words could not convey what was in her head.
