Old Lies (443 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 2 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Steve St. IHOP of Awesome (View user info) at 2007-01-23 03:49:14 EST
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
When they lifted up the church, they found the bodies. Fourteen small skeletons, each curled up into a little ball of death, laid in the churned up earth.
It made sense. The church had a cellar we were never supposed to explore. The church was another home to me after my father died. I wanted to forget him so I put myself to work. Between home, school and the church I forced him so far out of my mind I'd wake up some mornings and forget. In the moments between asleep and awake, the dream walking, I'd feel fine again.
And now we dig up skeletons hidden behind a closet door.
I drifted in my dream walk state as I looked out over the pit.
And I saw myself among the perfect, tiny bones.
Wilcox gagged and I snapped awake. Daniel Wilcox had stood next to me as they lifted the church, chatting randomly about the crane that lifted the final piece. It was a historical building and was among the first to be moved. It was over a hundred years old and we had to be careful, taking apart piece by piece. Father Anthony had insisted on our care but refused to witness the move himself. And now I knew why.
"Holy shit, Peter," he said. He cleared his throat and turned away. "What are you going to do?"
The construction workers and movers lurked around the edge of the hole. Old, rotten wood and new support beams ringed corners of the frosted pit. Their boots were churning the debris, dirt and snow onto the bones.
"Okay, everyone stop moving," I raised my voice over the rumble of the truck engine. I think my uniform spoke louder than I did. The semi purred on the road beside the old church site. So many neighbours had come out to see the last part of the church be moved that we already had an audience. The throng was thickening with every passing minute and every opened mouth.
I finally stepped out of myself and into constable mode.
"Okay, everyone get back please," I lifted my hands and started towards the crowd. "And could you either move that truck or shut it off? This is now a crime scene."
I didn't know whether to move the truck or not. I thought that kids would climb up onto the back of it to get a better look at the bones if I left it on the road. If it weren't for Wilcox standing next to me, I probably wouldn't have said anything.
I sent Wilcox to get the sergeant. Nearly everyone in town was gathered around me by the time he showed up. I felt dirty for guarding another man's old lies from the people that respected him.
Sergeant Sarich gazed into the hole and whistled.
"Damn near a dozen of them," he said.
"Fourteen," I replied. "I count fourteen skulls but there could be more."
"We should call for backup," Sarich sighed. "Do we have any police tape back at the station?"
I shrugged. "I have never used it."
Sarich was already dialling his cell phone and cutting through the crowd again, "Well, I'll tell them to bring some."
I heard him curse a few times at the terrible reception our town had. Our town was about to fall into a sinkhole so he wouldn't have to worry about that for much longer. The old coalmine that used to feed the town was now our worst enemy. The engineers from the capital came by five years ago when a new house collapsed into a giant black emptiness. They said we'd have another ten years and then the whole area would finally buckle and cave in on itself. They'd ripped out so much over the years that there was nothing left underground.
They started moving the historical buildings at the beginning of the month. The government would be paying for those. Anything newer would be coming out of our pockets. Some people chose not to sign the papers. Some people just left without telling anyone.
There's no crime in a collapsing town.
There was no crime before the town started to collapse either but that's not really the point. I took the post in my hometown to be near my mother. Now they're moving the entire town closer to the city and I'm going to have to start doing my job again. It will still be a four hour drive away but that's still too close for some people.
Sarich sent me home after two hours of standing over the hole. The sky had started to darken and a wind had picked up. He said help would be there in the morning. They dug some snow fence out of Paul Henderson's garage and stuck it up around the hole. I wanted to call it a grave but Sarich glared at me when I tried.
"It's a hole, Peter," he grumbled. "A hole that's going to cause us a hell of a lot of trouble."
I stared at the fourteen skulls and imagined their faces. I imagined how each one died curled up next to another dead body.
Maybe God was collapsing the mine to punish us for not saving them.
I bit my lip and slunk away. Henderson, Sarich and Wilcox were sticking stakes in the ground and setting up the orange fence. Everyone that had gathered in the afternoon had left and come back again with heavier coats. Their breath steamed above them but few spoke. I knew everyone I passed in the crowd. The chill in the air pinked their cheeks and the death in the ground perked their interests. I ghosted through the crowd of hungry eyes and started down the empty street.
My mother leaned heavily against her cane when she answered the door. She had been waiting for me for a while. I could tell by the colour in her cheeks.
"Shouldn't you be in bed, mom?" I mumbled as I hung up my coat.
"It's still early," she shrugged. "Clara was here. She told me what you found underneath the church."
I sucked in my bottom lip and nodded. Moving away from the front entrance, I went to my room. She followed, hobbling along on her black cane. I put my gun in my dresser drawer and sat on my bed to take off my boots. Mother lurked in the doorway, clearing her throat and grumbling to herself.
"You should paint this room in the summer," she said.
"The house isn't going to be here much longer so what's the point," I replied, setting my boots beside my bed on the mat mother had made me when she was in the hospital a month ago.
"You'd like it more if you painted it," she answered. "Peter, you should go talk to Elvy. She'd appreciate some warning."
I unbuttoned my shirt and sighed. "So you think he did it too?"
Mother frowned and turned away to start down the hall. "They're going to come and talk to him. Elvy is your friend and Father Anthony is your friend too. Go tell them what they should do and say."
I listened to her shuffle down the hall and into the kitchen. I got up off my bed and turned off the light and closed my door. I'm not really sure what I have to do tomorrow. Was I supposed to be at work early? Was I supposed to go to work at all? Elvy, Father Anthony's niece, would probably appreciate a call. We grew up together. She was two years younger than me and would spend every summer with her uncle. The summer my father died, she became one of my favourite childhood friends. We had a history. I did owe her a call with some advice. If I had any to give, she would be the first to hear it.
All the thoughts in my head blurred into a grey serenity and I closed my eyes.
I traced my footsteps back to the old church and the day my father died. I spent the night in the spare room Father Anthony had. He used to live in the church until they insisted he move. The spare room was cool at night but it was clean and dry there. I couldn't sleep. Mother had left for the city. They had taken him there to try to keep him alive. He had been injured at an accident in the mine, just before they closed it. I was eight years old and understood that he wouldn't be coming back.
The cellar door rattled, shaking me out of bed.
The locked door was across the expanse of the church. It was tucked in the storeroom beyond the altar and the rows of grimy pews. But I could hear the doorknob shaking in the emptiness.
I got out of bed and crept across the floor. As I got closer, I could hear the scratching. The door would rattle quietly then hands would rake across the wood. It sounded like an animal was trapped behind the door.
A floorboard creaked when I stepped into the storeroom. I squinted in the darkness, straining to hear the scratching again.
A dull wail met my ears instead. My heart started to beat in my fingertips as I took another step closer. My toes buzzed with excitement as I neared the door. What did Father Anthony keep hidden down there?
My hand brushed the doorknob and the wail turned into a howl. Nails rapidly attacked the door, over and over again beating the wood.
A vicious claw swiped at my bare feet and I fell backwards. I panted as I peered underneath the door.
In the dull moonlight, I caught its eyes. Unblinking yellow orbs pierced me, vibrating with anger. It was as if I had trapped it down there. It wanted to hurt me. I could smell its breath as it wafted across the floor. It was a sour smell, like spoiled milk.
I held its eyes for a heartbeat before the thing behind the door screamed at me.
I scrambled back to my bed and hid underneath the covers.
For weeks after, I would feel the golden eyes watching me through the window while I slept.
As I awoke, I felt that sensation crawl up my spine for the first time in decades.
Some one knocked on the front door. I could hear the soft tapping from my room. My mother never understood how I could hear it through so many walls. I wandered out of my room and to the door. Elvy's blonde hair shimmered in the morning sun. It hung loose on her shoulders like it always did.
I opened the door and let her inside. She stepped into my house, silently studying her feet.
"I saw the police cars from the city drive by earlier," she said quietly. "The neighbours won't go away. They keep calling and calling. Peter, those bones aren't his. You have to tell them that."
She finally looked up and I cringed.
"They're going to blame him no matter what I say, El. They won't care if he's got half the mind he used to. If they want answers, they'll get them from him," I answered, leaning against the wall in the front entrance.
Elvy frowned. "Come talk to him. He'll explain it to you and then you can tell them."
I was still trying to shake the dream I had. When I told Father Anthony about the thing behind the door, he told me I had only had a nightmare that night. There was nothing in the cellar and nothing to be afraid of. I always believed him because monsters weren't real and certainly didn't live in the church cellar. But the eyes that would haunt me at night made me want to question what he told me.
Reluctantly, I followed Elvy to the house she shared with her uncle. It was a few streets away. The houses beside it were empty, the owners long gone after word the town was going to collapse.
The front gate had the same creak it always did. The metal cooled my hand when I let it swing shut. Nothing and no one ever changed in this place.
Father Anthony sat in an oversized easy chair, covered in heavy quilts. My mother must have made at least one of them. Her handiwork was easy to spot because her quilt squares were never the same size and her patterns were never consistent. His brown eyes were dusted with a haunted emptiness I didn't expect. I had avoided spending much time with him since the stroke. I hated being reminded of my own mortality.
I had been walking in a haze since I stood at the edge of the pit. As I stood in Father Anthony's living room, I thought my head would finally cave in on itself.
"Hello constable," he said, carefully enunciating every syllable.
I smiled lightly. "Hello Father."
Elvy brought in coffee. I always hated her coffee. No matter where she made it or what type she made, it was always bitter. She brewed a batch at a New Year's party at the hall once that stung my mouth for three hours after I left.
I sat on the old brown couch and stared at Father Anthony. Frail and decaying, he wasn't the man I grew up with. He wasn't anything like that man. But maybe that man wasn't the hero I always thought he was.
"Can you tell me about the children, Father?" I asked, sipping at the cup. Elvy sat down next to me so I quickly covered up my disgust with a cough into my hand. How can you fail so badly at making coffee?
He sat up a little straighter, resembling his former self for an eyeblink. Then he sighed and slunk back into his current shell.
He shifted a quick glance to Elvy who stood and left the room. Without her, the room chilled. Father Anthony's eyes cleared and he lifted his chin up.
"They're not children, Peter."
I gripped my coffee cup tighter, drawing its warmth to my shivering hands.
"Look at their hands, look at their teeth," he closed his eyes. "They come from the underground."
My heartbeat was in the tips of my fingers again. I shot a quick glance towards the doorway, suddenly feeling hating eyes on me. All I saw was the warm summer sun shining through the front window.
I stared for a moment longer, watching a dark car park out front. Sarich and two dark suited men stepped out into the sunlight and towards the gate.
Elvy heard the car door slam and looked from the approaching men back to me. I fixed my eyes on Sarich, waiting for permission or disapproval to cross his features when he spotted me. His eyes were cold when he noticed me. His features wrinkled for a moment then returned to appearing emotionless. I was allowed to be there but there were boundaries.
"Should I make more coffee?" Elvy asked me. I shook my head and set the bitter cup aside. She nodded and walked over to the door.
The two dark suits were detectives from the city. They came down first, before the forensics crew. They wanted to question the church's former caretaker about the bodies. They were looking at this from their cold desks in the city. There were fourteen skeletons found in the dirt of a worthless town. I could hear in their tones that they didn't want to be here.
Father Anthony didn't want to listen to what they had to say. He didn't answer any of their questions. He stared blankly at them, pretending to fall asleep halfway through the interviews. Maybe he really did fall asleep. Wrapped up in his heavy blankets, it was hard to tell.
They pretended I wasn't there. Sarich didn't introduce me and I wasn't in uniform. I was too close to this.
Elvy took Anthony to his bed and the two detectives and Sarich made their exit. If they were going to arrest him, it would be like arresting a tree trunk. He could stand trial but would probably die waiting for the verdict.
Elvy sat next to me on the couch when they were gone. "What did he tell you, Peter?"
I bit my bottom lip. "He said they weren't children. That we should check their hands and teeth."
"Well?" Elvy pressed. "Check them out. Tell those jerks that they aren't children and to leave him alone."
"It was one interview," I replied. "If he would have cooperated they wouldn't have to come back."
"He didn't cooperate because he doesn't understand what's going on," she said, frowning and looking at the broken, dust covered television across the room.
I sighed. "Then why should I believe what he told me?"
"Peter..." Elvy whined. She stood and crossed her arms. "He could never hurt anyone."
I closed my eyes and rested my head against the back of the couch. Out of the blackness of my own sight jumped a pair of golden eyes and I quickly opened my own again.
Elvy's gaze softened when she caught a hint of my panic. She knew me too well. She sat next to me again, taking my hand with concern.
"You should have come to see him more before he got sick," she said. "He's so different now. Remember at my sixteenth birthday party when he caught us kissing? He didn't blush or anything when he opened the door. He just looked at us and sighed. He pointed at you and said 'Peter, I guess this means you're not going to pursue priesthood.' He shook his head and walked out, like nothing had happened."
I smiled at the memory. I left for college that fall and then the academy followed. Every day from that summer was a good day and now I'm forced to look back at my memories and redefine each one with him in it.
"I'm sorry I had to leave," I said. "I'm sorry I couldn't stay for you."
She shrugged. "I'm glad you didn't stay, in a way. Because when you left, it meant you would be coming back a different person with new stories to tell. You wouldn't be like me, left to rot in a small town with nothing to look forward to but summer visits with a churchy uncle in another small town."
I pulled my hand free of hers and put it around her shoulders. I remember her taste when I drift off into the good parts of my past. I should have asked her to marry me. I still could and it's another thing I should probably do.
"You'll always be my first, Peter," she leaned into me, resting on my chest. "Even if you arrest my uncle for a crime we both know he didn't commit."
I lightly kissed her forehead. We sat in our embrace listening to the clock above us tick away. I stopped counting the seconds after a while as Elvy relaxed against me. It was one of those moments that will always make the next seem wrong. That no matter what I did or said, it would never seem to fit in with what came before.
I finally gently shrugged her off and stood. She still sat on the couch, looking up at me.
"I can't promise anything, Elvy," I nervously ran my hand through my hair. "But if he's innocent, I'll prove it."
She jumped up and kissed me. I held her close, trying to convince us both of my words.
I left the house and walked to the station. I hadn't put on my uniform yet and was thankful that I didn't. The fabric was unforgiving and often stiffened in the crisp midmorning air. The dark car was parked out front and Sarich was sitting at his desk. It was like he was waiting for me the way his forehead was creased.
"You shouldn't have been there," he said the second I stepped in the door. "You're getting in the way of a serious investigation with your small town ideas."
"You're from this town too, remember?" I answered, looking around for the detectives. "Have they looked at the skeletons closely yet?"
Sarich's face was sour. "They're still waiting for equipment from the city to come down. They're having a hell of a time keeping people away from that pit. You should put on your uniform and be a cop for once, rather than a church choirboy. You can't protect that man if he killed those kids. I don't care how retarded he is now, he made them suffer and die alone."
I rolled my eyes. "Are there even reports of that many children missing from this area in the time he's been here? What if they were there from the beginning and he just kept them hidden? That church is ancient and..."
"Listen to yourself, Peter," Sarich snapped at me. "You're lying and you know it. You don't believe your own bullshit. I don't care if he was like a father to you and I don't care if you're banging his niece. If you want to do your job, do it. If you want a transfer, the forms are right here."
I glanced down at the sheets, then right back up at him. "I'm not leaving but I'm not going to put him in jail."
Sarich knocked the papers onto the floor with one swipe of his hand. He stood from his desk and pointed a threatening finger at me. "Then you stay away from this because he is going to jail whether you help or not."
I didn't react to him. It was pointless to. I simply turned and stalked out of our tiny station.
It started to snow on my walk home although there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I stopped and watched the trees shake the morning frost off their branches, sprinkling fake snow onto the sidewalk.
Sarich was right. I didn't believe my own lies.
I had to convince myself otherwise.
Wilcox was guarding the pit. They had put him in charge while they went to sleep in their beds. There wasn't much of a crowd at 3 a.m., but he still took his post seriously. He had wanted to be a cop but they rejected him because he was missing three fingers on his left hand. I never asked how it happened but I accepted his friendship easily when I came back and took the post.
I felt bad for my plan to exploit it.
Elvy came with me and we both walked up to Wilcox with kind tiredness on our faces.
"Hey Pete, hey Elvy," he greeted, standing up a little straighter. "Peter, I thought they weren't letting you touch this one."
I shook my head. "I agreed to stay away, but there is one thing I need to do. I think I dropped my flashlight down there the other day. So I asked the detectives and they said I could come and get it at this time since there wouldn't be anyone else here to watch."
Elvy smiled politely, nodding along with my fabrication.
Wilcox didn't believe me but he shrugged and let me pass anyway. They had brought professional police tape from the city. It was a lot easier to duck under than it would have been to climb over the snow fence.
I stepped down the small stepladder they had put at one end and into the cold pit of death.
They had put a stake next to each skeleton. Fourteen markers rose out of the earth, adorned with bright pink marker ribbon. I pulled my flashlight and set it in the dirt. Just as quickly as I set it down I picked it up again.
"Here it is," I called up. I switched on the beam and peered around.
Just a few steps away was a marker. I could hear Wilcox mulling around at the edge of the pit. Elvy stood next to him, straining her eyes to follow my flashlight beam.
I knelt next to the small bones. The skeleton, which had looked so human from the distant ground above, appeared to warp in the darkness. The forehead was much larger and the eyes set further apart. The spine was thinner and longer, curling out from the end of the body like a small tail. It was a tail. I lifted my hand to the next marker and spotted the same thing there.
And then I saw the hands.
The claws that I had heard scratching on the church door surfaced in my mind. The vicious nails on the tips of the tiny hands could have torn me to shreds if I had opened the door that night. The arms were shorter and the torso was more compact.
The teeth were animal fangs set in a person's jaw.
These weren't human.
And those detectives knew it. They had seen what was down here when they marked each of the bodies.
Wilcox called my name and I snapped the switch on my flashlight.
I climbed out of the hole and gave him a friendly wave. I glanced around at the vehicles surrounding the pit. Each was a dark truck or car with none of the markings that a police car should have. Elvy and I walked off in silence. I took her hand when we reached her street. She could feel me shaking and gripped my hand tighter.
"What did you see?" She asked.
I couldn't look at her. "I lied to you before. I didn't believe he was innocent."
She nodded. It didn't faze her. "And now?"
"He's innocent," I replied. "But that doesn't mean the detectives are going to leave him alone."
-=-
I woke up in Elvy's bed. I didn't mean to spend the night. I meant to kiss her goodnight and walk back to my own bed. I knew that Wilcox would tell the sergeant and he'd come by the yell at me in the morning. I imagined him waving the transfer papers in front of my face again. Some how, though, I ended up in Elvy's arms.
But even her comfortable touch couldn't keep the eyes from haunting my dreams.
I gently shook her awake. She rolled over and smiled at me. She kissed me and said she had to go check on her uncle. I traced every curve of her body as she dressed, hoping that I was there for her and not for my own selfish reasons.
Her eyes shined at me as she left the room.
She came back a second later, terrified.
"He's gone," Elvy gasped. "He's not in the house."
It was still dark out when I turned towards the window. He had been in his bed when we had left and was still there when we returned.
"We'll find him," I answered, quickly grabbing my clothes. "He's probably at the hole, that's all. Don't worry."
She was quivering, supporting herself by leaning on her bedroom wall. "But those creatures...Peter the way you described them scared me. What if there are more of them? What if we weren't supposed to find those bones for a reason?"
I pulled on a sock and stopped to meet her eyes. "He caught them before. He can do it again."
She scoffed. "He can't even feed himself."
"Then we should go find him. Now."
We hurried out into the frigid air. The sun was starting to brighten the sky, but it was still too early for anyone else to be awake. We crossed the streets to my house. I slipped inside and grabbed my gun from my room. Elvy waited for me at the front door.
When I stopped in the hallway between my room and the front door, I could smell something was wrong. It wasn't a sense; it was a strong, warning smell.
I glanced into the dark living room and saw my mother's cane propped up against the couch. She'd never leave it there.
"El, I need you to go get Sarich," I whispered. "I need you to go right now, to his house, and wake him up."
Elvy didn't question my tone. She nodded and dashed out into the darkness.
I went into my mother's bedroom, sat on her bed and waited. The bed wasn't empty and what was underneath the covers wasn't moving. I waited for them to return, unable to turn on the lights myself.
Sarich was flustered and angry when he showed up. He slammed open the door and stalked inside, calling my name.
He followed my voice and came into the room, slamming the light switch on and starting a rant that died on his lips.
My mother lay next to me, her body sliced apart. I stared at her blankly, hardly recognising her. Bits of hair and patches of skin remained intact. It was just enough to prove who it was. I couldn't lie my way out of this. Blood had splattered everywhere, coating the floral wallpaper and her soft purple sheets. I touched a matting of blood and hair before I stood.
Sarich's face was white. He stammered a moment as I guided him out of the room. Elvy had waited outside the house this time. We joined her on the porch and I shook my head.
"Where are those detectives, sir?"
Sarich swallowed. "I...I don't know. Their car is still there. All the cars are still there but they...do you think they did that? What's going on? How did you know she was dead."
I dropped my head in the direction of the front door. Scratch marks stretched from the doorknob down. Flakes of blood lined some of the grooves. I turned my head and looked down the street. My mind was still in a haze but I had to keep going. We had to check the bones.
Wilcox was gone when we reached the old church site.
No one was there. No neighbours. No onlookers.
I swallowed and shined my flashlight into the pit. Sarich stood next to me, shining his own flashlight into the hole. Our twin beams darted around, from one spot to another. Fourteen stakes were still standing in the earth but not a single skeleton was lying next to them. Sarich kept searching the ground, trying to find the missing bodies, hoping they would appear out of nowhere.
Elvy was trembling. She wiped away tears with the sleeve of her coat as she took a step closer to me.
I pulled my gun out from my waste band. Her eyes followed my every move as I searched for a trail or any hint of movement. Instead I found a fresh splash of blood and the churned up dirt of a struggle. A hand with three missing fingers was severed and left to rot in the dirt. Human footprints and the many sets of an unknown set circled the pit. They had been trapped for so long in the thick earth underneath the church. Where would they go now?
That's when I remembered the sinkhole in the new development.
'They come from the underground.'
"Elvy go back to the house," I said sternly.
She shook her head, firming her mouth when she looked at me.
I bit down on what I wanted to say. Instead I gritted my teeth and let her follow. We ran through the awakening streets and towards the area of town with the most damage from the worsening sinkhole. The ground was thinnest there.
Sarich followed me like a scared recruit. It was like we had traded places in that instant and I was finally the leader. I wasn't leading at all, though. I just refused to listen to my own common sense.
I spotted a fresh set of footprints when we hopped over the temporary fence they had set up around the area. Elvy followed closely, thinking that I could protect her from whatever was out there. I followed the set of footprints, knowing that if some one had walked the path first it probably wouldn't collapse.
"Father!" I called out. "Are you out here?"
The shells of homes stopped in mid-construction stood like haunted trees around us. I kept on the trail and called out again.
A wail from the darkness answered me.
Sarich and I both turned at once. Following us on the trail was one of the beasts. It was like some one had poured yellow plastic over the skeleton and set it out in the sun. In the brief glimpse I got, I saw how blistered and pocked its skin was. Its eyes were sinister and it bared its fangs at us before disappearing into the long grass that covered the ground of the abandoned lots. A light dusting of snow bent some of blades but the grass was still nearly waist high.
The yellow eyes were still watching us as we moved on.
I could hear laboured breathing ahead and quickened our pace.
Leaning up against a doorframe was Father Anthony. A cut across his face oozed blood and the blanket around his shoulders was torn and streaked with red. Elvy rushed to his side and the two of them knelt in the doorway.
"What are they?" Elvy asked. "Uncle, tell us. What are they?"
He coughed and pulled her close. And he started to laugh. Of all things, he laughed.
I pointed my gun and flashlight towards where the house should have stood. The two were inches away from the sinkhole. Elvy could have fallen in when she had knelt next to him and realized it as quickly as I did.
Father Anthony resisted when she tried to move him.
She panicked and looked at me.
"Can we kill them?" I asked flatly.
Anthony coughed again and shooed Elvy away. He didn't speak until she moved to stand next to me.
"They came out of the mine when it was still in operation. I did a funeral for a man who was killed by the demons. No one believed what had happened and his friend who had watched the attack was looked at like he was insane. He insisted I bless the mine," his voice was clear and alert, like it had been so long ago. "When I went to do the ceremony, I saw one of them."
I gripped my gun tighter. "How do we kill them?"
He laughed again. "I thought I had killed them."
My stomach churned as a howl from the distant shook the air. The sun was starting to rise and the expanse of the sinkhole made Sarich, Elvy and I step back. But Father Anthony remained in the doorframe.
The next scream I heard was a man's voice.
Wilcox was screaming for help. Father Anthony just shivered and pulled his blanket closer as if he didn't hear it. The overgrown grass of the ghost neighbourhood hid so much.
"You weren't trying to kill them, were you?" I slowly said. Anthony looked up at me, trying to hide his surprise. When I caught the hint of it, I knew I had uncovered the last hidden truth. "You were protecting them."
I turned to Elvy, then back to the man on the ground.
"The mine was going to collapse eventually and they were going to seal it off. They couldn't get out again unless you kept them safe somewhere. Why else would you let us find them?" I turned back to Elvy. "Think about it, Elvy. The ground underneath the church is soft enough for them to dig through with claws like that. What was stopping them?"
The wet chomp of flesh and bones being shredded by gnawing jaws broke the silence.
From the ground, Father Anthony chuckled to himself.
"I just had to wait for them to wake up again," he said hoarsely. "I did it for you, Elvy. I made a deal with the devil to keep them from hurting you. But you, Peter, I should have let them kill you that night."
I met Elvy's eyes. She was saying goodbye to me. The sun had breached the horizon and caught a highlight in her hair. I reached out and brushed the bit of sunlight off the strand. I think that was my way of saying goodbye.
Every second I had spent in that church hiding from my own demons I had spent metres away from the teeth and claws of real beasts.
"Peter, look," Sarich said.
I looked towards the road and saw the fourteen living skeletons stalk out of the grass and onto the path. They hissed and slunk low to the ground as they started to circle. Elvy screamed and I lost myself in the pitch. I floated for a second, searching for the peace I used to find in nothingness.
Maybe these were my demons.
My whole life I've been afraid to take chances. It was time to make up for that.
I stepped away from the others and into the centre of the pack. They only wanted me. They killed my mother, they killed my friend and they'd kill the others too if I didn't stop them. I could feel these things when no one else could.
I let them follow me. I lead them out into the grass, listening to Elvy cry with my every step. I turned and smiled at her.
"I always wanted to marry you," I called out.
She didn't reply. She held herself and nodded, forcing out a tiny grin.
I stopped moving when I felt the ground shudder underneath my feet. They neared me, inching closer and closer.
Parallel to where I stood was the sinkhole. All it would take was one wrong move.
I lifted my gun and shot Father Anthony in the head. In one fluid motion, I destroyed all the lies. If I had stopped to think, I still would have done it again. He fell backwards against the doorframe, knocking the thing down as he fell. The ground shuddered and began to collapse. Slow at first, then more and more chunks fell rumbling off. Elvy and Sarich jumped back, calling out warnings to me as the earth started to slide into the darkness. The creatures themselves ignored it until the crack in the soil arched towards where I stood.
I shut my eyes and laughed.
I remembered the taste of Elvy's coffee.
Of all the things I could think of, I remembered that.
I felt her touch ghost across my face and absorbed myself in the memory.
It wasn't until I felt her breath on my neck and her arms around my waist that I realized she was standing next to me.
"I won't let you do this alone," she said, pulling me close. I breathed in her smell, hoping this was all a dream.
And then the ground disappeared from underneath our feet and we floated.
Maybe I was dreaming.
User Reviews
Submitted by czwij (user info) at 2007-06-05 07:56:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
whoa.
gremlins
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2007-06-05 05:59:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment