Fires Rising (8 page)

The evil that promises man the end of days…

And as he stopped for a moment to reflect upon the uncommonly empty church, he couldn't help but again lament over the demise of his former home, The Church of St. Peter, once bustling daily with parishioners, now dead and being eviscerated beneath the unsympathetic throes of Henry Miller's construction workers.

T
he beam from the penlight in Jyro's hand pinned the odd shadow on the wall, its tall shape still that of a praying Virgin Mary, the stains near her womb nearly black now. Behind him he could feel Timothy's presence, the tall boy peering closely over his shoulder, also seeking an answer within the tainted gloom.

"Jesus, it stinks in here."

Jyro grunted, his mind suddenly rolling in the past—of the devout Catholic ardor he'd shunned years ago while living on the streets. How on his first night sleeping beneath the clouded moon he sought the shelter of a dumpster in an alley, only to encounter a veteran vagrant who took exception to his territory being invaded. The two men, both sodden with drink, had argued, then fought, the conflict coming to an abrupt end when the crazed bum flashed a switchblade at Jyro. Jyro had fled into the night, coming away from the experience with a slashed lip and the ongoing anxiety of entering into some other drifter's domain. From that point forward he knew it would take much time and strength to learn the unwritten laws of the street, so he reached out and sought the protective shelter of the local churches, praying to God daily for some miracle to come along and deliver him from the evils of the cruel world. But as his appearance and cleanliness sunk to repellent levels, even the usual accepting hand of the church rejected him, forcing him to remain on the streets, bitter and resentful of God's chosen path for him.

"Reeks of evil," he replied, staring at the shadow, thinking for a moment that it had moved slightly.
Like before.

He entered the bathroom and stepped to the left, allowing Timothy to squeeze in alongside him. He moved the beam from the penlight across the cracked tiled floor.

No sign of the moving blood puddle.

"Did we really see it come in here?" Timothy asked, massaging the rosary. "Or am I crazy?"

Jyro took a step forward. The edge of the porcelain sink nudged into his bruised hip. A burst of pain shot across his midsection and he grunted out loud. The dead flashlight he'd left there toppled in with a clunk.

"You all right?"

Breathing deeply despite the stench, Jyro angled the penlight's beam toward the backed-up toilet. Motioning with his head, he replied, "No. Not at all."

Timothy's eyes traced the beam. After a deadly pause, he whimpered, "Dear God..."

Beneath the diffused glow of the penlight was the puddle of blood. It was pooled around base of the toilet: a foul moat welling and rippling like a gush of dark lava. Thin streaks of it flowed up along the porcelain surface like veins, glistening as they vanished over the soiled rim, into the sludge.

In a sudden sweat, Jyro uttered crazily, "Drink this, for this is my blood."

As If in response, the sludge in the toilet gurgled. Once at first, and then twice, and then like a science experiment gone bad, the horrid stuff spewed over the brim of the toilet onto the floor, soaking up what remained of the stirring blood.

Looking bewildered and nervous, Timothy stuck the rosary out. Its small charms dangled like pods in his shaking hand. Jyro heard him utter something but couldn't make it out over the bubbling sounds the sludge was making. He stepped back and hit against the doorjamb, unable peel his eyes away from the erupting sewage.

Timothy leaned forward, arm still outstretched, fear and curiosity painted on his face like grease. He shook his head back and forth.

"What's happening?" Jyro's eyes darted between the boy and the toilet. For a crazy moment, he hoped for all this to be some run of the mill plumbing issue, one they could walk away from once and forever, never to look back. But his instincts told him otherwise:
If this were your ordinary backed-up toilet, you wouldn't have felt compelled to come in here in the first place. There was blood on the floor, and you saw it seep in here as if it were alive. And when you came in here, you saw it rise up to meet the sludge, and the sludge move down to meet it.

The blood. That which brings life.

Timothy didn't reply. Jyro pressed him, more urgently now. "What do you see, kid?"

"I
don't know
," he answered sharply, and then the toilet exploded, spraying them with shards of porcelain and thick, brown sludge.

Jyro screamed so loudly it hurt his throat. Both he and Timothy cowered and screened themselves with their arms. Shouts erupted from the hallway. Jyro heard someone call out, "What the hell's going on in there?" but no one ventured in to investigate.

"Kid, c'mon!" Jyro grabbed Timothy by the arm. The slanted beam of the penlight bobbed and weaved across the bathroom walls. "We need to get out of here!"

Timothy didn't move. Terror had him: eyes bulging, body trembling like a bundle of charged wires, mouth downcast as if weighted.

Jyro shook him, but the boy remained unresponsive. A whisper fell from his lips, "Oh my God…"

There was a dull sound, an odd shaking thump that Jyro felt in his feet. He looked toward the toilet…and saw something rising up from its shattered remains: a hideous bulk of malformed
legs
—vestiges of some freshly slaughtered carcass bound together like a hunter's bounty. The thing was
moving
, shaking loose its foul coating of waste…and then the animal legs—those of deer's perhaps—rendered themselves apart from one another with brutal tearing sounds:
Phrrrrak! Phrrrrak!
Huge claws burst out of the thing. They latched onto the edge of the shattered porcelain and pushed upward, the central bulk from which they surfaced rooting firmly into the toilet's plumbing. Jyro gasped as the massive thing rose up to the ceiling, a misshapen lump of feces wrenching back and forth and to and fro like a birthing animal, black craggy slabs of sewage sliding from its splitting surface, leaving behind slick patches of blood.

He spun away from the thing, a silent scream snared in his throat. He lunged for the exit but the door slammed shut in his face with a deafening crash, closing out the weak splay of light seeping in from the hallway...and his ability to see the creature.

Timothy, having remained impossibly quiet to this moment, screamed bloody terror in the dark. He turned and began kicking and flailing against the wall. Jyro pointed the penlight at him, and the boy shrieked at him,
"Get me out of here!"

"Over here!" Jyro pulled the beam away from Timothy and aimed it at the door. He managed to grab hold of the knob, but it wouldn't budge. He banged the door. Timothy stumbled over and did the same, their arms and fists colliding roughly. Jyro could hear the shouts of the others in the hallway. Someone outside was attempting the doorknob, but to no good use.

The thing behind them turned out a monstrous croak, startling immediate silence into them. They ceased pounding on the door and cowered against it, listening helplessly to the ensuing squelching noises the thing was making.

Jyro looked over his shoulder. He threw the penlight's beam at it. The shadows the thing made melted and moved behind it: an utter abomination, seven feet of writhing, sputtering feces anchored from floor to ceiling, its surface roiling and shifting as various shapes took hold of it, deformed human hands and animal legs and claws, bestial faces emerging to scream only to melt back into its dark, jagged bulk. It seemed not formed of anything wholly solid, but vacillated amoeba-like, spitting hunks of itself onto the walls and floor that swiftly surged back into its massive collective like water being propelled by air.

"What is it!"
Timothy screamed, shoving back against the door, tears bursting from his eyes. Jyro felt the boy trembling alongside him, offering his own sheer terror no comfort at all.

As if responding to the boy's voice, the thing jerked toward him, its repositioning midsection bending sideways and showing signs of an apelike face within. Somewhere deep inside its churning mass, a series of bellowing snorts surfaced, like those of an angry bull.

Jyro and Timothy huddled against one another, wobbly with terror.

"You're not real!"
Timothy shrieked, shoving back against the door.
"You…can't…be!"
The thing swayed back and forth like seaweed in the ocean and coughed a storm of foul matter across the small tiled room. The severed pieces throbbed like little hearts and rolled back into the bulk like drops of mercury returning to a silver pool.

Seeing no alternative but to seek out God for assistance, Jyro began to pray: "Be gone, foul creature, to hell from where you came!"

From above came a ghastly sucking sound. Jyro pointed the penlight overhead and saw root like tentacles of sludge writhing and twisting across the ceiling. They moved to a point just above their heads, then separated from the ceiling and wriggled down towards them. Jyro could see ridges on the pale underbelly of one, like those on a snake.

Jyro and Timothy screamed,
"No! No!"
They hunkered down, jerking their gazes about the dark room in an attempt to defy what they had already come to know: that unless they got the door open, there'd be no getting the hell out of there.

Again they slammed the door with their fists, screaming in desperation, "
Help us please! Help! Get us out of here!"
The doorknob shook back and forth, but the door itself remained impenetrable.

The tentacles continued their downward approach. Timothy tore away from Jyro and slid on his knees across the wet tiles. Jyro shouted, "No!", fell to his knees and grabbed the boy's belt.
 

A tentacle slithered around Timothy's waist. The tip of it, soft and wet, brushed against Jyro's hand. He screamed and let go of the boy.

Dear God, help us…

Timothy looked down and saw what had him. His eyes swelled. He kicked and flailed. "Ahhh! Get it off! Get it off!"

"Oh Jesus, no," Jyro cried.

They fell from the ceiling like vines—a forest of winding root-like things ringing around Timothy's arms and legs, leaving dirty wet trails on his clothing. The boy screamed and clawed, whipped his head back and forth, but was unable to free himself. "Help me, please, help me…"

One tentacle channeled out of the darkness and latched onto Jyro's bicep. Jyro pointed the penlight's beam on it and saw two amphibious eyes glaring back at him, black and wet and multi-faceted. They blinked and rolled in and out of its mucky body, as if trying to focus on him.

Jyro screamed and swatted at it.

The tentacle coiled around his bicep and traveled to the nape of his neck, leaving a cold wet track of sludge on his arm.

He dropped the penlight and clawed at it, burying his fingernails into its soft pulpy skin. It hissed at him. A chunk of writhing flesh tore away and Jyro watched incredulously as it slithered into the darkness. All the other tentacles started hissing then, as if in their spurt of development had just now formed throats.

They floated across the floor and curled around their ankles, thighs, wrists, waists, little puckering mouths taking bites out of them.

Timothy kept on kicking and flailing wildly, although Jyro could see his efforts waning. The tentacles swelled and bulged, pulling the boy across the floor toward the massive bulk.

Jyro eyeballed the penlight and with his free hand on the floor and snatched it up. The light swam across the wall where the Virgin Mary shadow had been and he noticed that it was gone now—dark water-stains included. He banged on the door and cried out, "Help me!" Again the door shuddered back and forth, but its grain remained impassable.

He spun and pointed the light past his feet, toward the bulk. He saw a dark trench in its side. A
mouth,
he thought with sick horror, and at that moment an oily forked tongue slid out and whipped back and forth.
 

Timothy kept on screaming, fingernails scraping madly at the tiles. He jerked his head back and forth. The tentacles drew him closer…closer to the massive flickering tongue and gaping mouth.

Jyro screamed
"NO!"
realizing all too suddenly that he too was now being dragged toward the bulk. The bangings on the door went on and on. Ahead, one of Timothy's feet was off the ground. The monstrous black tongue was wrapped around his foot. By accident, the penlight's beam fell upon the rosary, still gripped tightly in Timothy's hand; the boy, out of fear or pain or shock, had forgotten that he still possessed it.

Oh my God…look!

It wasn't the rosary itself that gave Jyro the sudden hope that escape was possible; it was the sludge and liquid
around
it that made him realize they could actually come out of this alive.

He screamed, "Timothy! The rosary!"

Timothy, his foot now inches from the bulk's mouth, twisted his neck around and saw the rosary dangling from his hand.

And around it, eighteen-inches of dry clean floor.

The waste was unable to come into contact with the rosary.