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  “I’m beginnin’ to wonder if that was Daddy a-tall,” Bullfrog said as he scratched his head, agitating the various varmints that took up weekly residence there—at least until Saturday night, when he took his bath. “I got to add-mit we was all some skirred that day up on the ridges. I think it was a nut done escaped from the funny farm.”

  “Yeah! Me too!” Keith agreed. He was in a hurry to get to his stash for a smoke and a snort and a pop. He was so desperate for a fix he would have agreed to kiss a porcupine just to get going.

  “Yeah!” Bubba said, tossing in his opinion, along with his bad breath. A passing fly didn’t stand a chance when Bubba opened his mouth.

  “I think you’re all full of shit,” Sonny said, and picked up the just-delivered edition of the Butler Weekly Messenger. “Ah, crap!” he said, after quickly scanning the front page.

  “What’s the matter wif you?” Keith said, his eyes watering, his nose running, and his hands shaking. Keith was in dire need of a snort.

  “There ain’t nothing in the paper about no monsters or ghosts or hobgobblins.” He tossed the paper on the bed and stood up, pulling on his boots. “Come on. Hell, there ain’t nothing up yonder on the ridges to be scared of!”

  * * *

  The Old Ones were now finally free of the earth. They had crawled slick and slimy and grotesque from the stinking pools of filth. They sat for a time by the pools, regaining their strength. Soon they began howling for something to eat.

  The coven members had been busy during the early morning hours, rounding up some tasty morsels for the Old Ones to feast upon.

  A deacon and his wife from a local church were tossed screaming to one of the hideous creatures. A teenage boy and girl, both of them drugged to the max, were given to another. A local minister, pastor of a small country church, was tossed to yet another of the ancient ones. A hitchhiker, captured only hours past, was fed kicking and screaming to a creature. A hunter had been taken in the Conners Woods. He was paying for his poaching . . . with his life.

  The Old Ones ripped the flesh from living beings and stuffed their mouths full, while coven members sat and watched, satisfaction shining from their eyes as their ears listened to the screaming and begging of those being devoured alive, and the permanently bubbling pools of stale putrid blood gurgled and spewed their noxious stench.

  The Old Ones varied in size, from no larger than a child to the size of a great ape. They had arms and legs and a head and were vaguely human-appearing. The hide was a mixture of scales and hair. The head was huge, the mouth wide, with long misshapen teeth. The toes were webbed, as were the hands, the fingers and toes clawed.

  They were neither male nor female. They were all things. All things evil.

  Maggots began crawling out of the stinking holes of bubbling blood, hundreds of them, identical to the maggot that had attached itself to Carl’s ankle. And they were hungry. In the basements around town, the coven members scooped them up with shovels and tossed them outside, to breed and eventually spread all over Butler, Virginia. The maggots were a mottled white-gray, the size of a big man’s thumb, with very sharp teeth. They would eat anything living.

  * * *

  “Help me, Bubba.” The voice sprang out of a pool that had appeared by the side of the house and it just about scared the shit out of Bubba.

  “Whut the hale-fire was that?” Bubba hollered to his brothers.

  “Hit sounded lak Daddy’s voice!” Keith said. Keith was feeling much better. So much better he felt he could do anything, whip anybody, and maybe even flap his arms and fly—if he took a notion to do that. He had located his stash and toked and popped and snorted. Now he was floating—at least in his mind.

  “What the hell would Daddy be doin’ down in that there hole?” Sonny questioned. He stepped closer and took a sniff. “Phew!” He stepped back.

  “Help me, boys,” the voice pleaded. “It’s your pa, boys. Get me out of here.”

  “I tole you that was Daddy!” Keith hollered. He knelt down by the putrid pool. “Daddy, you should have tole us boys about this old cesspool. We could have fallen in there and drowned.”

  The pool sighed with a parent’s patience. “Right,” the voice said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Daddy ain’t never said he was sorry about nothin’,” Sonny said, suspicion building within him. He backed further away.

  Backed right into something cold and grave-smelly just as Keith screamed when a hand came out of the pool and clamped around his ankle.

  Sonny turned around and looked into the dead eyes of his mother.

  “Come to Momma,” she croaked, putting a cold hand on his shoulder.

  Sonny let out a squall that could have easily been heard five miles away and jumped back, slamming into Keith just as Champ was crawling out of the pool, still holding onto his son’s ankle.

  Bullfrog grabbed up a shovel and gave his father a whack on the back of his head, breaking the handle and doing no damage to his dad’s head. But his dad did turn loose of Keith’s ankle.

  Keith was gone.

  He was off and running with a speed that would have put a greyhound to shame. His mother was right behind him, her head lolling from side to side due to her broken neck, her hands outstretched, dead fingers working like hungry spiders.

  “Come to Momma!” she croaked, loping along just behind him. “Momma wants her baby boy.”

  “I ain’t meanin’ no disrespect, Momma,” Keith shouted over his shoulder. “But there ain’t no fuckin’ way that’s gonna happen.”

  Keith kicked in the afterburners and started putting distance between them.

  Back at the house, the other brothers had armed themselves with clubs and were proceeding to defend themselves against Champ.

  Keith gave one final whoop and was over the ridge and headed for anywhere that would get him far away from this place.

  “You hold him off, Sonny!” Bullfrog yelled. “And me and Bubba’ll get the truck.”

  “Me?” Sonny said. “Hell with you.” He ducked a blow from Champ that would have taken off his head.

  “I’ll get the truck,” Bubba said, and took off. He got the truck, all right. He jumped in, cranked up, ground the gears, and took off for town, leaving his brothers behind. He ran into his mother as she was heading back to the house, having given up the chase for Keith. The impact tossed her onto the hood. She grabbed hold of the radio antenna and held on, grinning and slobbering at Bubba through the windshield.

  “Oh, Lordy!” Bubba hollered, and mashed the gas pedal to the floor, spinning the wheel back and forth, the truck careening from side to side on the gravel road, trying to dislodge his mother. She held on, grinning and slobbering and howling at him.

  Bullfrog and Sonny had run into the house and grabbed up shotguns just as Champ jumped through a side window. The boys let him have it, the buckshot tearing smoking holes in the man and knocking him to the floor. Champ promptly got right back up and charged. The boys fired again, and again the man went down. This time the boys took off out the front door and managed to get to their father’s truck and crank it.

  Champ ran out of the house and jumped into the back of the truck, holding on with one hand and pounding on the top of the cab with the other as the boys tore down the gravel road, running wide open.

  Meanwhile, Keith had cut across country and was now entering the edge of Conners Woods.

  * * *

  Earlier, Pastor Speed had driven to Sheriff Rodale’s office and had found him in and sober. Rodale had apologized and both men had bawled and squalled for a couple of minutes. Then they’d decided to take a ride out into the country in the sheriffs county unit. They had turned off the blacktop and onto a gravel road that wound up into the mountains, toward Champ Stinson’s place.

  Deputy Harry Harrison had slept in his car the previous night, about ten miles from the Stinson place. He was now driving back to town, on a gravel road that would take him past Champ’s place and eventually up to Dee Conners’s A-fra
me. This time he was going to kill Carl Garrett and screw Dee Conners and grab all the cash around and get the hell gone.

  At the same time, Deputy Mike Randall, still smarting from Harry giving him the slip, was heading out toward the Conners Woods. He had looked all over town for Harry and had not found him. Mike had a hunch Harry was hiding out in the country. He’d find him.

  At Dee’s house, Jesse and Sonya sat on the front porch, drinking coffee and talking. Carl was in the back, fitting together a flamethrower and checking the refill tanks. Dee was in the kitchen, fixing coffee and wondering how to tell Gary that his girlfriend, Janet, had checked herself out of the clinic and had vanished. Doctor Bartlett had just called, informing her of the girl’s decision. The other teenagers were sitting quietly in the den, listening to the conclusion of a statewide news broadcast on the radio.

  “There’s nothing on the news about what’s happening here,” Lib said. “If no one is coming in to help us, I want to leave!”

  “Where would we go?” her boyfriend asked, glancing at her. “We don’t have any money. There isn’t a quarter of a tank of gas left in the car. And if we did make it out of the county and told people what was happening, who would believe us?”

  “I think if we tried to tell anybody about what’s happening, the cops would put us all in the nut house,” Susie said. “I mean, think about it, people. Things like this just don’t happen!”

  “But it is happening,” her boyfriend said. “And we’re caught up in the middle of it. I think we’re safer staying right where we are.”

  Lib raised her head. “What’s that sound?”

  Dee came out of the kitchen, a cup of coffee in her hand, Dingo by her side. “I heard something too. But I don’t know what it is.”

  “Somebody is honking a horn,” Carl said from the back porch door. He pointed up the gravel road. “Hear the car coming?”

  They could all hear it now. The vehicle was a long way off, but coming up fast, the engine howling under the strain.

  “Somebody’s running toward the house, Carl!” Dee said, pointing to the woods.

  Dingo started barking angrily and Susie began screaming as a rock came slamming through a window, just missing her head.

  The front door burst open, Jesse and a wild-eyed man rolling on the floor, fighting.

  “Halp!” Keith hollered from the edge of the woods.

  Chapter 28

  Becky picked up a heavy ashtray and clobbered the wild-eyed man on the head, shattering the ashtray and stunning the man but not knocking him out. Jesse rolled away from him, got to his knees, and gave him a short right to the side of the jaw just as Peter hit him across the neck with a poker from the fireplace set. The man slumped to the floor, dying before their eyes.

  “That’s Mister Phillips!” Jack said.

  “Halp!” Keith hollered from the edge of the fence. Dingo was out the back door in a blur of snarling and fang-showing.

  Harry Harrison slid to a stop and jumped out of the car, a gun in his hand. He left the car in the middle of the road, blocking it.

  Shapes began materializing at the edge of the timber, all around the A-frame.

  Another rock was hurled at the house, bouncing off the side. Chanting began, a one-word chant, the word becoming louder and louder: “Kill. Kill. Kill!”

  “Arm yourselves,” Carl said in a calm voice. “And shoot to kill.” He picked up his M-16 and turned just as Sonya screamed a warning and Harry came charging through the open door. He leveled his pistol at Carl and Carl gave him a three-round burst in the belly. The deputy dropped his .357 and stumbled out onto the porch, falling to the ground, screaming and holding his shattered stomach.

  Jesse picked up his pistol from the floor and moved to the open door just as Bubba rounded the curve in the road and slammed on the brakes. His mother was still holding on to the hood. Bubba was sitting in the cab, scared out of his mind and screaming incoherently.

  Rodale and Speed rounded the curve from the other direction and slid to a halt in a spray of dust and gravel just as shapes sprang out of the timber, surrounding the car, beating on it with clubs and fists.

  Bullfrog and Sonny rounded the curve and hit the brakes. The brakes didn’t hold and the truck slewed in the gravel and left the road after slamming into the rear of Bubba’s truck. That dislodged the woman from the hood.

  It also knocked Champ out of the bed of the truck and he went rolling on the ground, howling and snarling. Sonny and Bullfrog were thrown from the cab and landed hard.

  Keith was jumping up and down outside the fence, hollering for somebody to come help him.

  “Do you know that nitwit, Dee?” Carl asked, his eyes taking in the hooded shapes growing closer to the house.

  “Yes. He’s a dopehead. But harmless. I’ll let him in.”

  “Hurry, then. We don’t have but a couple of minutes.”

  Another rock came crashing against the house. Whoever was throwing them had a powerful arm.

  Mike Randall came around the curve, saw the traffic pileup just in time, and almost wrecked his unit bringing it to a stop.

  A thrown rock spiderwebbed the left side window. Mike saw the dozen or more shapes—he wasn’t exactly sure what they were—surrounding the sheriffs car, pounding on the metal with fists and rocks and clubs. Several more of the things jumped out of the woods and ran to Mike’s unit. Mike spun the wheel, floored the gas pedal, and ran over them. He dropped the car into reverse and backed over several more. They screamed as the wheels crushed the evil from them.

  Champ Stinson leaped onto the hood of Mike’s unit, pressing his grotesque face against the glass. Mike could see the buckshot holes in the man’s stomach and chest. A slimy-looking yellow-greenish liquid oozed from the holes.

  With a silent scream on his lips, Mike jerked his .357 from leather and emptied it through the windshield and into Champ’s belly. The force of the hollow-nose slugs impacting sent Champ rolling off the hood, but he was far from being dead. Mike floored the gas pedal and drove right into those creatures on the driver’s side of Rodale’s unit. The car, already overheated, stalled. Mike fumbled for his speed-loader, a prayer on his lips as the creatures began surrounding his unit.

  Rodale found his courage and began shooting at the hooded shapes just as very accurate gunfire from the house knocked several more spinning to the ground.

  “Don’t shoot my momma!” Keith yelled at Jesse. “That’s my momma out there somewheres!”

  Carl had stepped over the unconscious form of Harry and was walking out toward the front fence, the twin-tanks strapped on his back and the nozzle of the flamethrower in his hand. Sonya was in a prone position on the front porch, busy working her 35-mm, the camera humming and clicking.

  Carl opened the gate and stepped closer to the mass of howling creatures. He realized that most of them were human, but some of them were grotesque beings from only God and Satan knew where.

  Carl hit the trigger and sent a stream of thickened gasoline onto a group of yowling coven members. Their robes ignited with a whoosing sound and they ran screaming in all directions. Carl turned and gave another group a dose of earthly retribution, and that took the fight out of the rest. They scattered, screaming curses and dire threats down on the head of Carl.

  Carl hooked the nozzle, pulled out his 9-mm, and calmly shot as many as were in range of the Beretta. The hand-loaded, exploding ammo tore smoking holes in the backs of the coven members and sent them on their way to personally meet their object of worship.

  Champ and his wife had vanished into the unfriendly timber.

  Then Carl shocked them all by saying, “Get out here, people. We’ve got to drag these bodies out there in the clearing and burn them.”

  “That ain’t decent!” Rodale said, getting out of his car.

  “Do you want to meet them again?” Carl asked him.

  Pastor Speed settled the argument. “The young man is right. We’ll burn them. Ned, do you have anything to drink in your car?�
�

  Rodale looked shocked. “Yes, Brother Speed. Why?”

  “ ’Cause I need a good damn slug of it, that’s why!”

  Rodale looked on, his mouth hanging open, as Brother Speed unscrewed the cap and knocked back a good three ounces of sour-mash booze.

  The preacher wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, capped the jug, tossed it on the seat, rolled up his sleeves, and said, “Now let’s set about doing God’s work, boys.”

  Carl laughed and said, “Welcome to the human race, Pastor.”

  Speed looked startled for a second, and then his lips curved in a wide smile. “Quite right, Young Mister Garrett. And might I add that it’s good to be back!”

  “Carl!” Dee shouted from the porch. “Harry Harrison is still alive.”

  Carl walked to the porch and slipped out of the flamethrower harness. “Go on in the house, Dee. You too, Sonya.”

  As soon as the door closed, a single shot ripped the stillness that had just begun to resettle over the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  * * *

  “The preacher took a drink of hooch?” Jim said, eyes wide. “And said a cuss word too? Lord, have mercy! I always miss the good stuff!”

  Mike had called in to Dispatch, and Jim and the two state troopers were at the scene minutes later. Soon the black smoke began spiraling upward into the blue of the Virginia sky.

  With everyone working together, a huge pyre had been built and the bodies dragged to it and tossed on. Gasoline was poured over the bodies and Carl ignited the pyre with the flamethrower. The dry wood burst into flames and the smell of burning human and non-human flesh quickly filled the air.

  Dee recorded it all on film.

  Jim pointed a finger at the Stinson boys. “I oughta put ever’one of you in jail!”

  All four of them started whining.

  “If those grotesque creatures are really the boys’ parents,” Speed said, “I should think they’ve had punishment enough, Jim.”

  Jim nodded his head in agreement. He had found, much to his surprise, that he was beginning to like the new Pastor Speed. Sure was a welcome change from the old. “You boys want to stay out at the home place?” he asked them.