Sacrifice (24 page)

Mark and Paul grabbed shovels, and dirt flew across the basement floor. In minutes Marc’s shovel hit wood. Scraped free of dirt, a ragged inscription on the wood read:

MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON HIS SOUL.

It took two of them to pry up the board and toss it aside. Underneath they found a canvas bundle about the size of a small suitcase. The canvas was stiff and brittle from centuries in the ground. Holes peppered the sides. Paul freed it from the earth and heaved it up at the base of the steps. Dave tried to untie the rope that bound it, but it disintegrated in his hands. He unfolded the edges of the canvas with a creak.

A discolored skull sat on top of a pile of bones. All but two of its teeth were missing. The bones underneath showed massive damage. Many of the larger ones were snapped in two. The smaller ones carried a host of cracks and chips.

“I don’t think they just buried the Woodman,” Jeff said. “The bundle is too small.” He picked up a cracked femur. “I think they hacked him up after he was dead.”

“Maybe before,” Ken said. “Who knows how sanitized the story the got after everyone left the mill that day.”

Dave climbed up the stairway and threw open the trap door. He disappeared onto the first floor.

The basement door crashed open. The silhouette that filled the doorway had on a peaked cap, and a pistol hung from his hip. The boys froze.

“Police! Don’t move,” boomed the voice of Constable Pickney.

Paul launched a shovel full of dirt into the constable’s face. The cop sputtered and took a step back from the door.

“Run!” Paul yelled.

The boys stampeded up the stairs. Dave stood by the main millstone and turned in surprise. “What the…?”

“Cops!”

The Half Dozen scattered in every direction, each in search of a window or door to escape the mill. Paul and Bob climbed to the second floor where two rooms accessed a balcony. Dave threw the trap door shut and rushed to the main door. The rest searched separate rooms on the first floor.

Ken made it to the mill’s main entrance. The walls were pinned with cheap flyers about local happenings.

A wet slap that sounded like a fish hitting a dock sounded behind him. Ken turned and the doorway behind him was blocked, filled with the nightmare hammerhead squid from his post-lightning dream.

The creature’s body throbbed as it hovered a foot from the ground. Its skin oozed a glistening mucus that smelled of rotting fish. Black tentacles whipped out against the walls and pulled the pulsing dark mass forward. At its base, razor teeth gnashed at the air.

Ken fumbled at the locks to the front door. The deadbolt jammed. A tentacle whipped by his head and slammed into the door frame. The creature shrieked and Ken heard it in the middle of his head.

He beat the deadbolt free with his fist and yanked open the door. A rush of cooler air blew back the creature’s foul odor. Ken jumped onto the front porch and leapt over the railing.

As soon as his feet hit the grass, he felt wrong. His friends were inside and he was outside. That thing would devour them.

But that thing couldn’t be real. It was some figment of his subconscious. It was a trick to get him out of the house. He jumped back onto the porch.

The squid blocked the doorway. The two eyes at the tip of its head rolled to face Ken. Two tentacles shot at to grab Ken.

Ken held his fear in place.
It isn’t real,
he thought
.

The tentacles passed through him, crossed at his waist and dropped to the floor. Ken looked the squid dead on.

“Eat shit, Silas,” Ken said.

The squid shrank and morphed into the Woodsman, the same pointed-nosed man with the swept-back hat Ken saw on the village green when this whole trip through the looking glass began. His eyes blazed with hatred.

“Run while you can,” the Woodsman said. “You’ll all die in here tonight.”

He vanished.

Ken knew now that their plan would work. Why else would the Woodsman work so hard to disrupt it? But he needed the rest of the Half Dozen, and if the Woodsman was creating a personal nightmare for him, what was he doing to the others?

Ken dashed back into the building.

Jeff ran into the room that had been the miller’s office, now containing a small desk and some reproduction books and documents. He threw the lock on the window and shoved. Nothing. He slammed his fist at the frame but it didn’t budge. He was about to leave when he saw her outside the window, looking in.

It was Katy, all eye shadow and lipstick, in her prom dress. She looked beautiful. Jeff could only stop and stare. “Katy?”

“Jeff, I followed you here,” she said. “What are you doing?”

“Katy, run,” Jeff pleaded. “The constable’s out there. Get out of here.”

“Jeff, it’s prom night,” Katy said. “It’s
our
night. Let’s go. It’s not over for hours.”

She looked radiant, more beautiful than he’d ever seen her. What had he been thinking to miss this moment with her? He grabbed a lamp from the desk and smashed the window.

“Katy, run. Now.”

“Jeff, this will be our night.” She slipped the shoulder of her dress down to her elbow. Her pale white breast glowed on the moonlight. “Everything you want will be yours.”

Jeff’s heart throbbed in his chest. He had to get out of here, with or without the rest of them. He’d hoped that on prom night he and Katy would…

But she wouldn’t do a public strip tease in the middle of the night. This couldn’t be real. It had to be… He stepped back from the window.

“Screw you.”

Katy looked devastated. “Jeff?”

Jeff looked deep into her eyes. They were green with rid rims. It wasn’t his Katy at all.

“You’re gonna burn, Silas,” he said.

Katy’s face turned angry and she disappeared. Jeff looked out the window at the street in front of the mill. Deserted. No police car. The constable sure didn’t do foot patrol, if he was even back from the movie theater at all. And if he was, why would he change into a uniform to chase them from the mill?

Ken’s flashlight lit the wall of the room and Jeff turned around.

“You okay?” Ken said, out of breath.

“Yeah,” Jeff said. “But the Woodsman won’t be.”

Paul broke left for what was the miller’s bedroom. The door by the old rope bed led to the sluiceway and the top of the locked waterwheel. He could climb down the slimy buckets like a ladder, distract the constable from outside, and give the others a chance to escape. He threw the lock on the door.

“So this is how you are going to end up?” said a voice over his shoulder.

Paul whirled. His father stood in the corner of the room. He wore his NYPD dress uniform, dark blue with great gold buttons and a chest full of multicolored ribbons. He had been buried in it.

“Dad?”

“Look at you,” his father said. “Breaking into public property. Sneaking out at night behind your mother’s back. Christ, you embarrass the hell out of me.”

“How can you…” Paul couldn’t process these events as fast as they were coming.

“You chase one spirit, you don’t think you can see two?” his father replied. “Don’t think I haven’t been watching you.”

Paul had always hoped that was true, that somehow his father could see his accomplishments.

“You are a damned disappointment, and this stunt tops it all. Painting the water tower, for the love of God! Stupid and reckless!”

His father stepped closer. Somehow he still towered over Paul, just as he had when Paul was a boy. The air filled with the sweet tang of Aqua Velva, the only aftershave his father ever used. A familiar knot tightened in Paul’s stomach, just like when he’d been caught with fireworks at age six.

“Now you’ve let these five idiots talk you into something really retarded,” his father said. “As if breaking into a museum wasn’t felony enough, now you’ve joined them in here, with the constable downstairs ready to make multiple arrests. My son, whose picture should be on a police force ID, will instead have it on a mug shot.”

“Dad, we have a good reason. Kids will die if we don’t—“

“If you don’t perform some ridiculous ritual you hear from a fortuneteller,” his father finished. “Just listen to how moronic that sounds. Father Caverly wouldn’t even hear you out, the idea was so dumb.”

“The thing tried to kill me,” Paul said.

“Because you screwed with it,” his father said. “Leave it be and it will leave you be. Don’t flush your future for these people. A good cop learns some evil is best left alone.”

It was his father’s voice, but those could never be his father’s words. How many times had his father pointed out to Paul the words “To serve and protect” on his citation for bravery? The man who died in the line of duty standing up to the Mob didn’t think any evil was too monstrous to confront.

“Get out that window,” his father said. “Get to your car and go. This isn’t your fight.”

Other words rang in his ears, years old but still crystal clear. “
I’m a cop. Every fight is my fight
.”

Paul squared his shoulders. He looked his father in the eye.

“Every fight is my fight,” he said. “Especially against you, Silas.”

The image of his father wavered and melted into the Woodsman. In the pale light his features looked more demonic than ever. His lips curled into a sneer.

“You just missed your chance to survive,” he said. “You’re going to die here, hero.” The Woodman shrank to a vertical line and disappeared.

Paul’s pulse raced and a wave of weakness washed over him, like in the aftermath of an averted accident. He leaned against the wall for support. He guessed that wasn’t the first fake cop he’d seen in the last few minutes.

“That thing’s gotta die,” he said to himself. He knew his real father would have agreed.

At the other end of the second floor, Bob hit a dead end. The corner room had no windows.

“Motherfucker,” Bob cursed.

The door slammed shut behind him. He played his flashlight beam back at it. Two eyes flickered at the bottom gap. He trained the beam on it. A rat’s head eyed him from under the door.

“Holy shit!” Bob nearly dropped the flashlight. Fucking rats. This place was centuries old and was lousy with ground grain. It had to be crawling with rats. Panic lit inside him like a wildfire. He backed up to the corner. He kept the shaking light trained on the rodent, like it was some magic weapon that would keep the thing repelled.

The rat sniffed twice. Its whiskers pointed up, and its lips split into a smile filled with needlelike teeth. It shrieked liked nails on a chalkboard.

Bob broke out in a cold sweat. He remembered his stepfather’s house, the rat on his chest in bed. He shuddered with the stark, limitless terror only a defenseless child could truly experience.

“Oh, fuck,” he whimpered. He sagged against the corner. His knees went weak and he slid to the floor.

The rat squeezed under the door and bolted for him. Bob dropped the flashlight and shielded his face. The beam lit the wood floor like a huge slice of pie, the door bottom fully illuminated. Dozens of eyes flickered in the dark stripe at the base of the door.

The first rat scurried up Bob’s jeans. The claws dug through and scratched his leg. It perched on his knee, bared its teeth, now clearly more like fangs, and shrieked. Needles of pain pierced Bob’s ears.

Then came the stampede. A horde of rats squeezed under the door, a filthy, matted sea of pulsing fur and sharpened teeth. They swarmed Bob, climbing his legs and arms, jumping into his hair. Claws gouged his scalp. Teeth ripped the skin from his neck. Bob tried to fight, but the weight of the mass was too great to flex a muscle. Stinking fur muffled his cry for help. His tongue touched it and it tasted like sewage. Warm blood ran down his face.

The door burst open. A flashlight shone in his face through the roiling mass of rats.

“Bob!” Dave shouted.

Bob knew Dave was too late.

Dave dropped to his knees in front of Bob. He reached through the rats, grabbed Bob’s shoulders and shook. Rats climbed up Dave’s arms.

“It’s not real!” Dave shouted. “Whatever you see isn’t real!”

In his terror, he couldn’t translate.

“Bob!” Dave shouted. He shook Bob again. “It’s the Woodsman!”

The message sank in. The Woodsman. A trick. A mind trick. It wasn’t real.

The rats vanished. The weight that immobilized Bob lifted. He saw Dave inches from his face. The room was empty.

Dave shook Bob again. “You with me now?”

Bob nodded. “Yeah, I’m here.” His heart slowed back to normal.

Dave stood and extended his hand. Bob grabbed it and Dave pulled him to his feet. Bob scanned the empty room for rats.

“What did you see?” Dave said.

“You don’t want to know,” Bob said. He took a deep breath and scooped up his flashlight. “Let’s waste this thing now.”

Dave led Bob out of the room. Bob yanked at his arm.

“The constable!”