Husk (44 page)

Ahead, Frank saw the Lexus that had rammed his Blazer sitting unattended on the roadside, along with an unoccupied squad car. Beyond them waited the turnoff to the cemetery.

“
On the other hand,” he added, “Evil remains constant.”

* * *

Melissa looked around, searching for what could be done next.

In the last several minutes she had coordinated with other police and several civilians to gain control of the situation along Highway 55 and mold order out of the chaos.

Two backup squad cars arrived seconds after Frank had left the scene, one responding from the prowler call at the Weiss residence, and another from the Damerow farm investigation. With the combined assistance, they attended to several problems at once and treated the situation.

Dangerous debris had been cleared from the street.

Flares were set up around Hale’s cruiser while his injuries were seen to.

An ambulance was on its way.

In addition, while the workers completed those tasks, Jimmy Gibbs backed his battered but operational eighteen-wheeler onto the roadway’s shoulder, allowing the backed-up traffic to pass.

With a majority of the mess sorted out, Melissa removed herself from the scene to go after Frank. Hurrying down the road, she went to where Rebecca Fleming waited near her friend’s overturned Ford.

“
How are you doing now?” Melissa asked.

Rebecca glanced up and her teary expression answered the question.

Melissa knelt next to her. “Look, I have to go after Frank, but I need you to stay here and do something for me, all right?”

She straightened up. “If it’ll help get our kids back, then yes, anything.”

“
Good. Now, I don’t have a whole lot of time to explain, so you’ll just have to trust me. Once the police are done here, send them to this location—it’s an old cemetery off 19.” Melissa handed Rebecca a crude map she’d penned onto a page from her notepad, leaving out the details of what awaited them there. “Tell them that’s where I went, and where your children have been taken. That’s all I can really say without sounding insane.”

Rebecca studied the directions and nodded her understanding, though the expression of fear never departed her features.

Over the black fields on the other side of the road, arcing bolts of red lightning streaked across the sky.

They looked at each other, speechless.

With no other way to clarify the situation, Melissa turned and raced across the road. She hurried to where Jimmy Gibbs paced beside his truck, speaking on a cell phone.

“
I need a ride,” Melissa ordered.

“
Huh—what?”

She grabbed the phone out of his hand and snapped it shut, handing it back.

“
Christ, officer, what in the hell has gotten into you?” Jimmy asked.

She opened the cab’s door and pushed him toward the step, urging him upward. “I said I need a ride. Now get behind the wheel or you’re under arrest.”

When he finally complied she rounded the semi and climbed in the passenger side.

“
I need you to turn around, go west,” she ordered.

“
What for?”

“
I don’t have time to spell it out for you, so just do as I say.”

“
Can’t you take a cop car?”

“
No.”

“
Why not?”

“
They’re too small,” she said. “It’ll be able to control them easier. But not this sucker. This beast is way too big to maneuver in all those trees. Going forward and backing out along the driveway is about all it’ll be able to do. Now, let’s move—we don’t have much time.”

Jimmy gawked at her with puzzled, frightened eyes. Deciding to use his uneasiness to her advantage, she drew her Smith & Wesson and checked the breach. “We’re not moving.”

Jimmy glanced from her to the pistol.

Staring back at him, she let the slide snap into place.

Without another word, he put the rig in gear, and they rumbled on their way.

CHAPTER 54

Grunting, lifting, pushing upward, drudging beneath a bestial sky that flashed and boomed with clamorous activity, Tim raised the forward end of Kane’s coffin over his head and, working in unison with Mallory’s friends, they helped free the killer from his earthen tomb.

Another barrage of thunder crossed the heavens, extolling their efforts.

It had taken them several grueling minutes, but his plan had succeeded. The box and its rotting contents now rested above ground, leaving Tim alone in the grave.

Becky came to the grave’s edge and helped him up. She brushed away moist clods of dirt that had broken loose from the casket and tumbled over his head and shoulders.

“
I can’t believe we did it,” she said, gasping. “What now? What do you think it wants us to do with him?”

Catching his breath, wiping sweat from his eyes, Tim had little time to answer before Lisa shouted, “What’s that?”

Tim pivoted. He looked to where the others had directed their attention, and saw that a halo of bright amber light now encompassed the Mercedes, beaming outward from its interior.

Oh, no. Mallory!

* * *

Mallory’s eyes fluttered open. To her surprise she had lifted out of her seat and was floating upward, out of the car and away from danger, into the nighttime heavens. She gasped and looked up, immediately raising her arms to shield her face before her head passed through the vehicle’s roof and emerged unharmed outside.

What’s happening to me
, her mind cried. Then she rewound her memory of the night’s terrible events, recalling the unimaginable horrors she’d encountered.

Removed from the car, she looked up.

The sky overhead looked vast and clear, not stormy at all. Billions of radiant stars filled the sky, orbs so beautiful and mesmerizing her fear suddenly melted away and left her feeling—

Mallory jerked awake in her seat, blinking, shocked to discover the light from her dream now filled the car.

“
Mallory.”

That voice!

“
Not yet.”

She came fully awake and remembered where she was, in the car, trapped with the creature. But what was happening? What was going on?

“
You can’t die. Not yet.”

D-die?
she worried.
What’s it talking about? I don’t want to die.

Suddenly, the intolerable agony in her chest vanished.

A fresh surge of strength swelled through her body. She gasped and looked down to see threads of flesh and muscle stitch the wound in her chest together, pulling is shut. The split skin merged, leaving no trace of an injury.

She drew in a deep breath, no longer needing to measure her intake of air in fear of debilitating pain. She flexed her arm, moving it without the faintest hint of discomfort. Her whole body felt rejuvenated, energized.

Healed!

* * *

Tim stood motionless, awestruck by the sight of the light radiating from the Mercedes. Given its intensity he expected the car to burst into flames, but as they watched, it didn’t appear to generate any heat.

Suddenly, Adam bolted.

He took off without warning, sprinting away from Tim and the others, snaking between tombstones.

“
Adam, don’t,” Tim yelled.

The Mercedes went dark in the periphery of his vision.

“
Oh, God,” he whispered. “It’s going after him.”

Adam hit the fence and clambered over, ripping dead plants out of his path in his attempt to reach the woods. The second his feet touched the ground, a massive old elm tree suddenly fell toward him.

No,
Tim thought.
It leaned toward him.

Dead bark whittled halfway to dust by a hundred years of insect borrowing exploded off the tree’s trunk in all directions.

Adam looked up. The branches descended.

He tried to alter course at the last second, but slipped. His feet shot out from under him, and he dropped to the ground, raising his arms in a futile effort to ward off a thousand wooden hands.

The withered branches snared his arms. His legs. His waist.

They hooked into his clothes and scratched across his skin, all assaulting him in unison from dozens of directions. His screams came in rapid bursts, eventually elongating to a single incoherent primal cry when the tree lifted him off his feet and hoisted him into the air.

Tim shuddered.

Becky had stumbled up beside him; her hands clutched his arm for balance.

They watched the tree flex and bend, marveling with unblinking eyes. More branches bowed inward and came together around Adam’s struggling form, creating scores of detailed faces out of the complex network of interwoven limbs, skeletal specters that themselves formed an even larger inhuman mask of wood. Tim gawked at the unfathomable immensity of its nightmare design, once again staggered by the scope of the monster’s power and control.

“
Now, see the fate of those who refuse me,” the beast proclaimed. This time its words vocalized out of thin air.

The elm’s branches tightened.

Adam’s screams changed pitch, escalating toward madness.

“
It’s going to pull him apart,” Becky howled.

“
No,” Tim shouted. He unleashed the word with such unexpected force it felt like his voice box might burst. “No! Stop or Kane is history!”

He jerked away from Becky, grabbed one of the shovels, and swung it over his head with every bit of strength he had left. The blade slammed into the center of Kane’s coffin, hacking away a chuck of the cover.

The creature stopped.

Adam—barely visible within the cocoon of sticks and twigs—hovered spread-eagle in the tree.

“
You want Kane in one piece?” Tim hollered. “Then let him go, right now.”

“
You dare—”

“
I said let him go,” Tim repeated. He raised the shovel for another swing. “Let him go or I’ll chop this fucker into so many pieces you won’t know where to begin putting him back together.”

The multi-face demon snarled with unparalleled anger. “You’ll bring me Kane, or Mallory will be the one in pieces.”

“
First put him down, then we’ll do what you want.”

The tree’s grotesque sculpture made one more vicious snarl then melted into nothing. Overhead, the network of branches disintegrated when the possessing force evacuated, raining to the ground in a shower of shattered wood. Adam fell through the storm of mulched branches and vanished into the wreckage at the base of the trunk.

“
Adam,” Becky screamed. “Adam, are you okay?”

 
A weak, almost inaudible reply issued from the elm tree’s remains.

“
Oh, Jesus,” Becky mewed. “He’s hurt. We have to help him.”

But Tim snared her shirt when she started to run.

“
What are you doing?” she cried, struggling to break free.

He held on, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Listen, whatever happens, stay in the cemetery, got it? That’s why it needs us, because it can’t come in here itself. We’re safe as long as we stay where it can’t get at us.”

Her body still shook with aftershocks of fear, but she nodded her understanding. “Is that what you were talking about when we first got here? When you said there was a way for all of us to get to safety?”

“
Yeah.”

“
But how can you be so sure?”

“
Experience,” he replied. “Go get Adam, but have him come to you. You can help him over the fence if he needs it, but don’t make the same mistake he did. I don’t care if both his legs are broken; he comes to you.”

“
What are you going to do?” she asked.

He took up the belt tethered to the coffin. “You saw how bad that thing wants this box of maggot food. Well, it’ll have to make a trade for it. Now let’s hurry, before it tries something else.”

While Becky and Lisa ran toward where Adam had fallen, Tim began dragging Kane’s casket through the thick weeds, closer to the cemetery’s fence and the ever-waiting Mercedes.

CHAPTER 55

After the mysterious amber light dissipated, darkness took up its place, leaving Mallory shaken despite her unexplainable revival. She searched the car with frantic glances, finding the other seats vacant. She couldn’t recall when the car had come to a stop, or where the others had gone once it had. Why would they just leave her here? Or maybe they hadn’t, maybe the car had done something to them?

Outside, the headlights cast white beams into an old cemetery overrun with tangled vegetation.

She couldn’t remember coming to a cemetery.

Further distressed by her new surroundings, Mallory began struggling with her bonds. She unclipped the seatbelt and groped for the door handle.

* * *