The Bighead (43 page)

“
I’se lied too ’bout
somethin’ else! I told ya you were born a year before the rape—but
that was a lie! Yer mama got raped by that thing that come out the
lake, an’ nine months later gave birth ta the Bighead! But after
the Bighead et its way out yer mama’s belly, I’se heard somethin’.
I’se heard
another
baby cryin’ from inside, so’s I looked inta yer mama’s poor
dead remains and I pulled
you
out!”

Charity’s features didn’t
change at the revelation.
Twins.
Somehow, now, she already knew most of
it.

“
The Bighead’s father and
my father are the same,” she said.

“
Yes!” Annie squealed. “The
Bighead was a monster, but you were perfect, a perfect little baby
girl! But ya both come from the same womb, from the same loins’a
the devilish thing that come out the lake thirty years ago and
raped Sissy whiles I watched!”

More pieces fit, flying together.
Charity’s mind felt plugged in to someone else’s know, and she had
a good idea who that someone else was…

Even the full brunt of the truth came
as no real surprise now:

My father was a
demon…

But…

More.

And The Bighead…is my
brother…

(VII)

Alexander raced up the steps,
following the footfalls of the pieces of human shit who’d killed
Jerrica. But Christ had warned him of something else…

He couldn’t imagine what that might
be, yet his old Army LRRP instincts switched on. He was ready, in
other words—or at least as ready as he could possibly be,
considering.

The main hall upstairs had dimmed, the
alcohol lamps running low on fuel. But at the far end, toward the
entry, he could see Dicky and Balls scrambling to make their exit,
Dicky still screaming at the rude insult Alexander’s teeth had paid
to his nose. But then—

The entire abbey shuddered—

A titan
CRACK!
filled the hallway—

And so did throat-flaying
screams.

The priest stopped in his tracks.
Stared. His mouth open in bewilderment and horror—

Jesus was right. There’s a
world of hurt coming right down my alley…

Because at that same moment, Alexander
got a good, hard look at what had knocked down the door.

(VIII)

Dicky threw up when he saw it. A
monster, yes sir, with a head big as a propane tank, an’ fucked up
eyes, an’ a mouth like a hole fulla nails. He fell pukin’ ta the
floor when the thing roared, brought both forearms down so hard on
his back that alls his ribs along the back’a his spine broke
lickety split. Then he felt his pants bein’ tored off, and
then—

Dicky, a’corse, was too out of it now
ta really know what were bein’ done, but what were bein’ done
shorely weren’t good. The monster poked two big fingers right up
his butt, then two more, then the thumb. Dicky were screamin’ holy
hail, he were, knowin’ he was dyin’ but not carin’. He just
screamed an’ screamed as the monster grabbed a hold’a the end’a his
spine inside his butt, then pulled, and that were about it fer
Dicky Caudill.

The monster, cackling like
a rooster, pulled Dicky’s spine clear out his asshole. And,
a’corse, what were connected ta the other end’a his spine was his
head, an’ the monster pulled
that
out Dicky’s asshole too.

One
hail
of a job…

Then, the monster, The Bighead, turnt
ta face Balls.

And you know what The Bighead done
just then?

Shee-it.

He looked at Balls, thens he looked at
the priest at the other end’a the hall.

And then—

The Bighead sniffed the
air.

And walked back out the
door.

(IX)

“
God saved you,” Alexander
said, sighting the pistol on Tritt Balls Conners’ face. “Why I
don’t know, ’cos you are about the most worthless piece of shit to
ever walk the earth. Give praise and thanks to God, for saving your
sociopathic mother-fuckin’, trailer park ass.”

“
Fuck you, priest,” Balls
Conner had the audacity to spit back. “It weren’t yer fuckin’ God
that done saved me. It were that thing. It were The
Bighead.”

The Bighead,
Alexander thought.
Yes.
Of course. What else could it be?
He’d
heard the stories, he’d seen the temple of upright stone dolmens in
the lake, and now—he’d seen the monster itself.

The Bighead.

“
Get thee behind
me…”

“
Shee-it, holy man. Ya
smelt me out that fast? But I’se ain’t Satan, I’se just one’a his
friends, made human on earth to walk amongst ya…” But as Tritt
Balls Conner continued to speak, his voice descended to suboctaves
that vibrated in Alexander’s diaphragm and guts. And he lost the
redneck, white-trash drawl. “I am a myrmidon of the Morning Star. I
am his vassal, his holy servant. There are many like me, Father.
Too many for you to fight. Give up and admit your defeat. Throw
your weapon down and join us…”

“
I’d rather burn in hell
forever,” Alexander said. But he was convinced.
Demons. Devils.
There were all kinds.
They were everywhere. And sometimes…they were human.

I’ll just kill myself, get
this over with,
he reckoned.
I don’t need this shit. I’ve been through too
much as it is.

“
Join us, priest, and live
with us forever,” Balls bid in his new, majestic locution. The
voice was timeless and pristine, articulate and
strangely…
honest.

“
That thing which just left
is as much my brethren as you are. Open thine eyes and behold the
light of truth. Join us. Come with us, man of faith.”

“
Eat my fuckin’
shit-stained shorts, you ass-motherfucking-
hole,
” Alexander spake after a bit of
consideration. He cocked the Webley’s hammer, then dropped
it—
BAM!
—and
watched the imposture’s kneecap explode in blood. Balls fell,
laughing.

“
I believe in God,”
Alexander said. “Sometimes I don’t really know why, but that’s
tough. If I’m wrong, if I’m gonna burn in hell or rot in my grave
with my entire life wasted…then I don’t really give a flying fuck.
All I know is this, scumbag. I’m blowing your shit
away.”

Balls’ familiar drawl
returned posthaste, the real demon in him making an expeditious
exit. “Fuck you! Ands fuck God’n Jesus’n the Holy Fuckin’ Ghost’n
the Virgin Mary ta boot! I’ll’se cornhole all of ’em, I will, I’ll
fuck ’em all so’s hard my dick’ll be stickin’ out their mouths!
I’ll’se
fist-fuck
yer God, an’ pop yer Virgin Mary’s cherry, an’ I’ll’se make
yer damn Jesus lick the shit off my stick. So’s help me, holy man,
I’ll’se pop a wad’a my peckersnot right in yer God’s face, then
I’ll’se piss up His ass!”

“
You ain’t doing shit
except dying, shithead,” Alexander guaranteed. He’d taken all the
blaspheming he cared to, thank you. His finger gently retracted;
the hammer fell again.

BAM!

The big bullet took the top off Tritt
Balls Conners’ head clean off, and spectacularly redeposited the
contents of his cranium onto the abbey’s slate foyer.

“
Fuck it,” Alexander
said.

(X)

“
The men, Annie explained,
“the townsmen. They shot the thing dead right back there on the
shoreline, and then they’se throwed it into a room in the abbey’s
basement, and bricked the room up!”

“
Them stones, them stones
in the lake! They’re some kinda temple—some kinda
doorway
—been there
thousands’a years they say! And ever now’n then…somethin’ come
out!”

COME, Charity heard.

“
Your father! It was your
father! And the Bighead’s too!”

COME.

Annie sobbed on as they made their way
back up the wooded trail. But her sobs cessated only when the great
hook hand snapped out of the wavering trees.

The voice in Charity’s head now struck
like a bell—

COME. COME. COME.

Annie’s screams alternated with more
explanation, as the hulk of shadow ripped off her clothes and
hauled her down into pockets of darkness. “Why you think no man
ever wanted ya? Why you think all them men left ya in yer bed? It’s
’cos you ain’t like normal folk, Charity!”

Charity stood and did nothing as the
great shadow continued to maul her beloved aunt. And all those
memories, then, replayed in her mind. All the men putting their
penises into her, then getting up to leave without even finishing.
Leaving her so unfulfilled she thought she would die.

Because I’m not like
them,
she realized now.
I’m not even fully human…

Annie gagged in the weedy darkness.
“There ain’t but one man on this earth who’ll love ya, Charity, an’
it ain’t no man!”

Then she gagged some more, screamed
amid a wet tearing sound.

“
Yer brother!”

Charity stared.

“
Kill yerself, darlin’!
It’s the only way! Kill yerself ’fore he kin git ya!”

But Charity just watched, what little
she could see. The moonlight revealed only snatches: the old
scarred breasts, the white abdomen, scarred thighs being pushed
apart as the demonic buttocks pumped on.

“
Kill yerself ’fore he kin
git ya, ’cos—’cos—”

A crackling of bones finished the
exclamation. The shadow grunted and came. A further crunching sound
showed Aunt Annie’s head being palmed open, large pieces of skull
falling like broken nutshells, brains being calmly stuffed into the
black-gash mouth.

Then The Bighead stood up.

It grinned, the same primeval face
she’d seen in the peephole. It’s foot-long-and-then-some cock
remained hard, throbbing upward, a line of semen like white string
depending from a puckered piss-slit. The gargantuan penis pointed
at Charity as if in accusation.

The Bighead’s great hook hands reached
out.

Charity collapsed.

(XI)

He knew it was coming.
Jesus had told him.
Why bust my ass
looking for it?
Alexander reasoned.
I’ll just wait. I’ll let
it
come to
me. And what was there to be afraid of? It was only a
birth-defected demon hybrid. God was on Alexander’s side,
or:
At least He better be, otherwise I’m
in a hopper of shit.

So the priest sat and waited, and he
knew exactly where to wait. Why hadn’t it occurred to him before?
The basement—the wanly lit warren in which he now stood—was the
focal point of everything, wasn’t it? Tonight, and twenty years ago
when the nuns had been raped and slaughtered, when dying priests
had been eviscerated and sodomized where they lay, and when the
ten-year-old version of what now stalked the shadows had fitfully
tried to break down the cryptic brickwork. Two decades ago it had
tried and failed. Tonight, though, it would return—older now, and
stronger—to finish the job.

Yeah, let Bighead do the
work. ’cos I gotta see what’s behind that goddamn wall…

Alexander hid at the far
end of the corridor; it reminded him of waiting in the bush behind
an Stoner machine gun and a defensive perimeter of integrated
Claymores. Waiting and waiting, scratching your crotch-rot, digging
at bug-bites the size of bullet holes, and waiting some more.
You
knew
Charlie
was coming, you just didn’t know when.

The alcohol lamps guttered,
painting the walls with an appropriate eeriness. He hefted the
clunky gun in his hand, flipped open the antiquated
receiver.
Four bullets left. If you can’t
do the job with four, you got no business trying.
He flicked his butt, felt a pang of regret
realizing he had no more.

An odd, even impossible wind blew
through the corridor; the lamp flames nearly blew out. At once,
Alexander felt prickly in a static caress, and cool in spite of the
heat.

Then, as he knew, the footsteps
approached, thudding down the stairs to the basement.

(XII)

It weren’t a dream at all, no sir! No,
The Bighead remembert! The dream’a the castle’n the angels’n the
crusty, dyin’ ol’ men. An’ Bighead ruckin’ ’em all up…

It weren’t no dream. It
were
real.

Back a long times ago when he were
just a tike…

He remembert it all now.

Ands he remembert somethin’
else:

He remembert walkin’ down these
self-same stairs…