Bloodstained Oz (11 page)

The hands slapped and clutched and felt for a way into her haven.
Elisa held her breath and clenched her hands into fists.

“If anyone’s in there, please help me!” The man’s voice was strained
and dry. Whoever was out there sounded human, but she wasn't foolish enough to
trust that.

Elisa crouched low, ready to strike.

The rear flaps of the wagon opened and a dark shape lunged halfway into
the interior. Elisa had been expecting one of the winged monkeys, with teeth
bared and the blood of her loved ones smeared on the vile hands and feet.
Without taking a moment to get a good look at the intruder or wonder how one of
those unholy things had entered now when they had been unable to before, she
struck out.

Her fist collided with nose and cheek, flesh and bone and cartilage.
The man staggered back, withdrawing almost all the way out of the wagon. He
spat curses, blood streaming from his nose. The knuckles of her fist throbbed
from the impact but she could tell he’d felt it far more than she had.

“Lady, you have to let me in!”

Covered in sweat and dust and wearing the clothes of a prisoner, the
man lunged for her wagon again. In that moment, she understood her error. The
crosses had kept the evil out before. This man was human after all. Criminal
or not, he was a human being, and fleeing from the things out there in the
darkness. Elisa’s heart surged and she reached for him, pulling at his arm,
helping him into the wagon.

As he began to haul himself into the wagon’s interior, his hand caught
one of the crucifixes that Stefan had adorned the entrance with and tangled
into the rosary beads.

“Listen to me, there’s some dangerous things running around out there
and one of the worst is right behind me. We’ve got to hide somewhere!”

He might have said more, and she might have answered him, but before
either could speak again, the man’s eyes went wide and he was jerked from
behind. Something started pulling him out of the wagon.

The stranger held on desperately, his eyes as wild and frantic as a
horse tethered near a raging barn fire. The tendons in his neck and shoulders
stood out like cables, but his strength was not enough. She heard his scream,
saw the crucifix tangled in his fingers tear loose from its anchor and watched
as something almost as tall as the wagon hauled him into the darkness.

The man who’d been climbing into the wagon was not small. He was a
little over average height and even through the prison garb she could see the
lean muscles of his body. If she'd passed him on the street and been worried
that he was dangerous, she’d have avoided him. Now, looking at the man as he
struggled against the thing that had grabbed him, he looked like a child.

The thing he struggled against was some kind of metal man, an
impossible thing, but it had been a night for impossible things.

The crucifix in his hand swayed and darted on its beaded necklace, but
he was too busy trying to stay alive to give it much thought.

“The cross! Use the cross! They can’t abide it!”

Though the man struggled, he could not free himself from the metal
man’s grasp.

Elisa wanted nothing more than to stay exactly where she was, to be
safe inside her wagon and then, maybe, to wake in the morning and find
everything the way it should be, with Stefan peddling his elixirs and trinkets
and Jeremiah sleeping in her arms. But nothing in her world would permit her
to watch a man, even a criminal, be murdered before her eyes.

She grabbed the shovel from inside the wagon and slid out. Quickly she
moved toward the giant and the convict, her weapon cocked back over her right
shoulder, and then charged. The shovel swung in a wide arc and whistled as it
cut through the air.

The edge of the shovel blade slammed into the hollow back of the tin
man and drove a dent into the metal. The noise was not as loud as she
expected, but was followed almost immediately by a muffled scream from inside
the thing.

Elisa swung again and again, feeling the impact from every blow as it
ran up her arms and into her elbows. The mechanical thing spun toward her,
letting go of the prisoner, and she saw the red eyes and bared teeth of the
wicked little thing crouched inside of the metal man’s chest.

The convict fell to the ground and shook his bloodied arm, several
lacerations marking where the tin fingers had scraped his flesh. He did not
stay on the ground, but instead rose to his feet, looking at the cross in his
hand.

Elisa danced backward as the tin man made a lunge for her, and she
swatted the metallic head with the flat of her shovel, hearing the ringing
noise that echoed through the head even as one of the handles on the side of
the skull crumpled under the impact. From within the deep sockets of the
carved tin face, something wet rolled out and struck the ground. Elisa stared
in horror at the wet, ruined eye that looked up from the dust.

The tin man took advantage of her distraction, reaching out to grab her
weapon, the thick fingers clutching the handle of the shovel and squeezing
until the wood snapped in half just above her hands.

From somewhere deep inside of the chest she heard the thing with the
red eyes screaming at her. “I’ll feast on your blood, you vicious sow!”

The prisoner moved forward then, staggering briefly before he corrected
his charge and shoved his hand into the opened chest of the tin man. The hand
held Stefan’s cross, and when it touched the thing inside, it screamed, the
sound echoing eerily inside of the metal torso.

Two small hands reached out and grabbed the man’s arm, and at the same
moment, the arms of the tin man went suddenly slack. The little monster’s tiny
fingers clutched hard, tearing the prisoner’s shirt sleeve into shreds and
drawing fine lines of blood from his exposed skin. Still the man held on, his
arm shaking and his face twisted into a mask of hatred and revulsion as he held
the crucifix impaled inside the monster’s chest.

Elisa moved to her left and saw the tiny vampire pinned within the tin
man, its face made even more hideous as it screamed and wailed its pain out
into the night. The cross was driven into its chest and where the vampire’s
skin and the crucifix met the flesh had blackened and was rotting away.

The convict pushed harder, and something in the vampire’s chest broke.
The little monster let out one final wail of pain and then the tin contraption
around it fell backward with a groan and a dozen explosive bangs.

Elisa looked the man over, her breaths rapid and stressed. The
prisoner looked at her and shook his head, at a loss for words.

She pointed to the wagon. “We’ll be safer in there,” she said softly.
“There are things out in the night that should not exist.”

He nodded and moved toward the wagon. In the distance screams still
carried through the darkness and prompted them both to move faster. They were
not the screams of people, but of things that neither of them wanted to
consider too closely.

Elisa climbed back into the wagon and the man made his way in after her
and drew the opening closed before settling back against the canvas. His body
twitched with exhaustion and his face was drawn down in a pained scowl. They
sat across from each other and did not speak, but instead listened to the wind
and the screams, each lost in their own thoughts and nightmares.

      Thin gray cornstalks whipped at Gayle’s
face as she dashed through the withered remnants of her father’s last corn
crop. There would never be a harvest. Leaves stung her cheeks and the stalks
broke as she ran over them. Her eyes were wide but she had no tears to cry
now. Terror had overcome her so completely that she could not have wept. Her
heart pounded and in her mind she could still hear the voice of the pale man
with his beautiful eyes and hideous face, her parents’ blood smeared on his
cheeks.

      Evil. Surely, he was a demon, just the
sort she had always been told about. Sometimes Gayle had doubted that such
things existed, but now she knew better. Evil was real.

      And it was after her.

      Her breath rasped in her chest, coming
too fast. She thought her lungs would explode. Her foot caught on a bent corn
stalk and she stumbled, fell to one knee, and scraped her hand on a stone
jutting from the dusty earth. The night was so warm and close around her that
she thought it was hunting her too. And how could she escape the night?

      In the moment that she pushed herself up
again to run, she heard noises in the corn behind her. Low to the ground.
Footsteps, running, and the snapping of leaves as she was pursued.

      Gayle would not look back. She knew
what was chasing her. Not the evil man, the demon, but the living dolls with
their cruel, porcelain faces. He ruled them, and they would kill for him.

      Kill her. Or bring her to him so that
he could drink her blood, just as he had her parents’.

      The field was uneven. She staggered
again but kept her footing, crashing through the corn stalks. A numbness began
to fill her, a terrible emptiness as she thought about the farm next door, and
the one after that, and the town beyond. All of them were so far away, and she
was so small. Gayle was fast for her size, for just a little girl, but not
fast enough.

      Behind her, the noises in the corn grew
louder, and the porcelain dolls began to laugh.

      “No,” Gayle said, not so much in
defiance as in prayer.

      Then she felt the first one grab at her
leg, heard others pacing her in the corn to either side. They were upon her.
Any moment they would drag her down, and then all would be lost.

      “No!” Gayle said, and she stopped
running.

      The little girl turned, blond hair
flying around her head as she spun, and stomped one foot down as if in some
childish tantrum. Her shoe shattered the porcelain doll that had grabbed hold
of her a moment before.

      The others rushed through the corn,
appearing all around her, beginning to surround her. Gayle did not wait. She
screamed, more hollow inside than ever, and attacked them. She grabbed hold of
the largest one she could reach and swung it at the others, shattering two of
them with a single blow. Their faces cracked into pieces and the bodies
collapsed.

      Three tiny ones came at her feet, one of
them carrying a knife from her mother’s kitchen. Gayle kicked them with all
her strength, one, two, three. The first two shattered on contact, but the
third shifted slightly and grabbed hold of her leg. Its fingers pushed through
the skin on her leg and she cried out in pain.

      Then they were upon her, cruel, doll
faces enjoying her terror, claws sinking into her flesh. The porcelain people
got underfoot and tripped her. Gayle fell, screaming once more as they rode
her to the ground, a swarm of them now flowing from the corn field, covering
her, holding her down.

      They were laughing at her.

      She opened her mouth for one, final
scream.

      “Hush,” said a soft velvet voice, and
she looked up to see the bloodsucking demon standing in the corn off to her
right, just watching as they crawled all over her.

      Her mind felt like there were spiders
crawling all in her brain, like she was about to go completely mad. The
pale-faced man, the blood-drinker, would have her now. He would take her, and
tear her open, and she would join her parents in heaven. If the demon did not
destroy her soul along with her body.

      The dead, damned look in its eyes made
her wonder.

      Gayle shrieked, thrashing against the
porcelain people. Two of the dolls were thrown together, their heads
shattering with the impact. She fought them, unwilling to let the evil take
her without a fight.

      Then, as if in answer to her cry, the
night was split by a thunderous jungle roar. The doll people paused for an
instant, and between them she saw a huge lion burst from the corn. It lunged
from all fours, but landed on its two hind legs with its huge front paws in the
air. It grabbed hold of the pale, velvet, hideous man’s shoulders, opened its
massive jaws, and bit his head clean off with a crunch of bone and a wet
tearing noise that made Gayle shudder.

      The body collapsed and broke apart into
little more than dirt, just another layer of dust in the fields of Kansas.

      Instantly, the porcelain people stopped
moving. They fell to the ground, tumbling off of her, and simply lay there,
faces expressionless and innocent as before. Just dolls again. Whatever evil
influence the pale man had held over them had died with him.

      At last, Gayle felt her tears coming and
she could cry again.

      When the lion came over and scooped her
up in his arms, she did not scream or fight. He had come in on four legs, but
he could walk on two, like a man, so he was no ordinary lion. But he had
killed the monster, had saved her, and she had no strength left to run.

He cradled her in his arms and carried her back toward the barn. As he
took her away, she could not help but look back at the still forms of the
porcelain people scattered in the field behind her, unable to shake the
certainty that they were not really dead, that they would come to life again,
and that they would have her blood, once and for all.