Hunters: A Trilogy (118 page)

With a rippling inferno, the blue fire spread amongst the darkness like ignited gunpowder. Standing in amazed horror, they watched as the black mist caught fire. It crackled and spat, tiny specks of blue fire leaping from one particle to the next. The two men, Maggie’s escorts, who stood below, cowered in fear as the rippling sheet of fire roared around them. Upon seeing the intensity of the blaze, they turned to run back into the cave. The fire was merciless – a flashing arm of blueness reached down and seared them like a flamethrower. In an instant they had become nothing more than a pair of stumbling fireballs. They ran around in flaming circles for a few moments and then, with a loud ‘whoomph’, the two men disintegrated in a burst of fire, their demise sending a plume of glowing ashes into the air.

In seconds the dreadful fire had disappeared completely. Where once the black mist’s presence had been master of all it desired, there now only remained a thin veil of smoke, a quickly dispersing cloud that filled the air with a strong smell of burning manure.

Junior whooped loudly, reaching across to high-five Mikey.

Tori turned to the cave, staring into the darkness, she said, ‘Well…come out into the light, you coward. Come out so that we may cast our eyes upon your face, whoever you are. Come out – now!’

With a bloodcurdling chuckle, the Dark One obliged her bidding.

As he stepped into the light of day, the Hunters, who, under normal circumstances, should have all immediately focused their attention upon his presence, did not, because rather than looking at the one thing they had been dreaming of for a lifetime, the beast they had been running from and battling against for so long, they all had turned to stare at Tori instead, they couldn’t help themselves.

With a gasp, she had fallen to her knees, sinking to the ground with all of her unbounded energy seeming to have disappeared in that one expulsion of sighing breath. Tori knelt upon the frozen earth with her whole being deflated; she seemed to have shrunk. Looking up at the man who stood in front of the cave, and with tears streaming down her face, the beautiful woman sobbed once and then tried to rise to her feet. ‘You!’ she said, and then flopped back to the ground as her legs once again gave way.

In one bound, Red was by her side. He plucked her from the ground, and with his right arm wrapped around her slender waist, stood next to his wife like an oak tree, effortlessly holding her upright.

She leaned against him until her strength returned, breathing deeply for a while and standing there with her eyes closed, thin jets of breath drilling out from her nostrils and pluming angrily into the freezing air. In that one moment she looked like a dragon, and a livid and vengeful dragon at that. Her blue eyes flashed open, Tori was back and whatever it was that had taken the legs from under her, was now obviously about to be nothing more than history. She stared at the man, the thing, as it stood smiling flamboyantly in front of them.

He was short, very short – perhaps only five-and-half feet in height, and he didn’t appear to be in good health. In fact, upon closer inspection, they saw the filthy state of him. The clothes he wore were nothing more than rags that hung from his bony frame in tatters, making him seem like a badly-dressed scarecrow.

The other thing they saw was that he had parts of his body missing.

Ken saw that his left eye was nothing more than a blackened socket with a strand of something unmentionable hanging from the weeping hole; it dangled and flapped against his scabrous cheek. As he stared at the wreck of a man, wondering how he was even still alive, never mind standing there and wielding such power, Ken began to realise that he recognised him – the man’s face, as ruined as it was, reminded him of someone, someone he knew.

Just as the realisation dawned, Ken heard Tori speak, and her words provided the answer to the question, the one that all the Hunters were asking themselves. They too had seen the horrible similarity of the abhorrent thing standing before them. The man’s uncanny likeness to George leapt out at them, he may as well have been the old man’s double.

Tori said, ‘I thought you were dead, Henry – why are you here, why is it you have allowed this thing to take flower within your soul?’ She stared at the dripping monster before her, and with the anger filling her with energy, Tori brushed Red’s thick forearm away from her waist and stepped forward.

The thing chuckled at her, the thick sound of hatred oozing from its parted lips like hot treacle. The man, within whom the Darkness had found such solace, raised a hand to his face and plucked off one of the many scabs laying there. The removal of the scab left a suppurating wound on his face, the uncovered lesion dripped a yellow tear of pus.

The onlookers stared in horrified fascination as it trickled down the side of his neck. He lifted the scab up and studied it carefully through his one remaining eye. Even though they knew what he was going to do next, the way in which Henry licked his lips and then popped the crusty morsel into his fetid mouth, was still a grotesque sight. The action was in fact so monstrous that Michael, who couldn’t help himself, retched loudly and once more hurled a stream of bile onto the ground next to him.

Wiping a hand across his face, he looked up and said, ‘You are one filthy sonofabitch, you’re a goddamned animal!’

Henry laughed loudly, saying: ‘Yes, indeed – I am
the
animal! An animal who will see all of your entire species in this dimension returned to the darkness!’ He coughed and, after pausing to spit out a mouthful of his own vile phlegm, looked at them with his baleful eye. ‘Yes…’ he sneered, ‘…and by the time my fire has finished burning, this entire parallel will be filled with nothing more than animals, for your pathetic species are only that, tiny specks of animal shit who sit in miniature vanity amongst the vastness of my endless playground! You dare to imagine that you are the only ones who matter, the only things of any value!’

He chuckled again and Ken knew that it wasn’t Henry who they were listening to. Henry, whoever he may have been, was long gone. No, this was merely the husk of his former existence, a hollow shell that was now completely filled with the Darkness. However, in a sick twist, the voice it spoke with did actually sound somewhat like their mentor’s own, gently-persuasive tones. The backwoods slang was nowhere to be seen, a well-spoken voice had taken its place, George’s voice. The Demon looked at Ken, his face creasing into a wicked grimace as he saw the realisation in Ken’s eyes.

With a small laugh, a sarcastic sound of patronising anger, he said, ‘This is
my
universe,’ and raised his arms in an exaggerated expression of ownership of all that lay around them. He paused, before saying: ‘And you and all of yours are nothing more than a passing amusement to me, nothing more!’

He looked directly at Ken.

Then, with his cracked lips curling in resentment to reveal a row of blackened stumps, the Demon shook his head and said, ‘And you, Mister Robinson, you are my greatest disappointment! A great waste indeed – you should have come to me when you had the chance, I have given you several opportunities and yet you still stubbornly refuse to acknowledge my presence within you, it is such a shame because we would have made a great team! Still, even I can’t win them all, but it will be you who lives to regret that denial, albeit not for long…’ He winked at Ken.

As his eyelid rose, they saw that the previously bloodshot eyeball had now turned a deep yellow. The Demon stared at them and they heard his voice deepen. ‘Ah yes…Henry,’ he sneered. ‘Dear old Henry, that poor, jealous little man, so desperate to keep up with his brother’s wonderful deeds, so desperate to achieve some form of recognition, so filled with avarice!’

Tori cursed him. ‘You bastard!’ she spat. ‘Henry was sick, he was a sick old man, he never knew what he wanted – he didn’t know anything, anything other than his work!’ She snarled at the beast and her rage once more ignited the blue fire within. ‘He was amongst the brightest minds we have ever known! He would never have willingly allowed you into his soul, never. George loved him!’

Her fury hurled itself at the monster standing before them. Blue light flashed across and sliced into the side of Henry’s rotting face. The Demon howled in anger and rage, his whole body shook for a moment, quivering as though in the grip of an uncontrollable fit.

And then, right before their eyes, they witnessed the departure of Henry.

The face before them seemed to melt into an unrecognisable mess – in an insane moment of total horror, they watched as his lower jaw fell away from the rest of his face. It just tore away and tumbled down his chest to land with a wet thud on the ground below.

They stood in mesmerised disbelief and watched as the thing reached up and tore out its own tongue, the piece of flesh made a horrible stretching noise, before snapping with a wet, twanging sound. The Demon tossed the steaming tongue over its shoulder, and then turned to speak to Tori in its own voice.

Fixing a horrible yellow eye upon Tori’s face, it said, ‘No, he wouldn’t have, and in that assumption you are quite correct, but he didn’t have to invite me in because I already had the key to his soul, I had the key!’

The thing shrieked with laugher.

With a gurgle, it said, ‘I have all the keys to those who leave their bitterness and anger in a place where I can find them, hidden in the bottom of their carefully disguised lives, waiting behind the curtains of their sad, lying existences. I can see them all, and the keys always fit the lock!’ The thing turned its face away and looked into the cave behind, listening for a while. With a lecherous creasing of its ruined face, it turned back to them and spoke once more.

‘Henry never loved George…whoever he is…no, he hated him, and that hidden hatred gave me the combination to his soul! And I have to say that we made a great team, a fuckin’ wonderful team! But, and it’s always the same with you fuckin’ pricks, you just had to come and interfere, didn’t you!’

Black mist, its grains so finely separated that it appeared to be sand, began to ooze from the hole where the unfortunate Henry’s jaw had been until a few moments previously. The voice took on a metallic, hissing sound. ‘Anyway, enough of this small talk, my task here is completed and you cannot stop the flowers! My sweet yellow flowers have been planted, in a few moments they shall bloom and then it shall be summer, summertime for everyone – and it’s going to be a hot one…’

It paused, and then giggled, before saying: ‘Flowers…ah yes – the old woman? Yes, she loved her flowers, she was a very flowery woman indeed, right up until I pulled her fuckin’ head off she was! A very flowery, stubborn old woman – she screamed a lot, too!’ The Demon threw its head to the sky and let out a gibbering roar of laughter. The dust from within began to bloom from its mouth, spewing into the purple sky and hovering above them like the awful liquid that Tori had seen above Jeremiah just before she killed him.

Ken had seen enough. ‘Sod this for a game of soldiers,’ he thought. ‘The mist’s gone, so let’s see how he likes chewing on some hot lead’ He yanked his pistol out from the holster and cocked the action. As he was bringing the weapon into the aim, Ken felt the strangest of things; his hand had become hot – red-hot!

He looked down at the pistol.

To his utter amazement, saw that it had started to glow with heat.

‘Fucking hell!’ he yelled, flinging the pistol away as quickly as he could. He was only just in time. As the pistol left his hand and sailed through the air, it exploded with a loud bang – the superheated ammunition, blowing apart the weapon and filling the air with the sound of whining metal. Ken heard the pieces falling like tinny confetti and realised that he had been seconds away from losing his hand, and most likely his life, too. The pain in his hand was immense, looking down he knew the blisters would be but a few seconds away. He knelt down and pressed his burning palm flat onto the freezing surface of the icy slope.

Looking up, he saw the Demon laughing at him.

‘Fuck you, leper-head!’ Ken said. It was all he was able to come up with at the time, his hand was killing him and the fact that he was now beginning to wonder what exactly the hell they were going to do next, both ensured that he had very little time for pleasant exchanges with the dripping beast that stood grinning to his front.

The Dark One sneered at him. ‘You should know that such things are not permitted here,’ it said. ‘Only I have control here, and as for you…’ the dripping face blew a cloud of black snot in Ken’s direction, ‘…I will deal with you in a short while, after I’ve finished with these pricks!’

It snarled and turned back in the direction of Tori.

Bellowing out something in a language they had never heard, and with the blackness swarming around its head, the beast stood and laughed as its last remaining foot-soldiers came rushing out of the cave.

However, the burst of hysterical laughter soon stopped.

As the four men ran into the daylight, turning to their master for instructions, they took one horrified look at his disintegrated face and kept on running, screaming and wailing as they burst past Ken. Throwing their weapons to the floor and yelling out some fearful cry, the men rushed past to run helter-skelter down the steep path away from the lair. The sight of their disorganised cowardice was almost comedic, and if it hadn’t been for the horrible tearing sound filling the air, Ken would have definitely burst into laughter himself. As it was, the time for laughter was long gone – the only time left, was the time to die.

With a roar, Red and the others leapt forwards, Tori and Junior blasting their blue light into the leprous remnants of Henry’s body, the trio rushing forward to kill the last fragments of the Darkness that lay trapped within the rotting remains of George’s twin brother.

Only Michael Wildeman remained, the boy had dropped to his knees and was dragging the cloth bag from his pocket. Like a child emptying out the last of his precious marbles, Michael tipped the bag upside down and caught the two metal ships in the palm of his left hand. Ken and Jane watched as he calmly carried out his task, gently separating the ships he placed one in each hand, the pointed end of each medal facing toward the Demon.