The Dark Horde (28 page)

Robbo clapped Didge on the back. “Easiest hundred bucks you’ll ever make!”

“I’ll say!” Didge answered.

“You haven’t made your money yet, Didge,” Bill said. “Let’s get started or else the bet’s off and you don’t get shit.”

And so on that fateful night, they began their séance, hidden from the watchful eyes of school staff. Outside the wood shed, wind and rain formed eerie flutelike acoustics, harmonising with the voices of the five boys, as they chanted:

“Spirits be with us.”

Calling their name...

Minutes passed, marked by the candles that waned with their patience. Didge, Robbo and Gary shuffled with discomfort, dusting dirt from their backsides. Bill leaned forward to put his finger on the glass. “C’mon guys, you all have to put your finger on.”

The others obeyed. Mike was trance-like, staring at the glass.

“Is there a spirit within this glass?” Bill said.

Moments passed in slow-motion as the wind frolicked outside.

Bill spoke again, louder, “
Is
there a spirit within this glass?”

More anxious moments, suspended in surreality...

“C’mon guys,” Bill said. “You have to focus!”

“I’M FOCUSING! I’M FOCUSING!” Didge shouted as he leaned forward to bring his face centimetres from the glass.

Robbo and Gary laughed.

“Didge! Take it seriously!” said Bill.

“How can he?” said Robbo.

Didge sat back. “I
am
taking it seriously!”

Outside, a gust of wind rattled the door and the eaves of the wooden slabs that formed the roof.

Didge, his back to the door, jerked to look behind him. The others looked too, breaking the chain of hands. Except Mike, whose eyes hadn’t left the glass.

Robbo burst into laughter. “You get a fright, Didge? It’s just the wind, you fucking idiot!”

Didge pushed up the glasses sliding down his face and turned back around.

“Something’s close,” Mike said without looking up. “I can feel it.”

“You can
feel
them?” Gary asked Mike. Meanwhile Robbo loomed behind Didge.

Mike looked at Gary and spoke with a strange assuredness, “
Yes.
”

“BURRHRHR!” was the sound Robbo made as he grabbed Didge’s shoulders from behind and shook him violently.

Didge jumped up in panic, almost fell into logs stacked nearby and turned around to Robbo, who was now clutching his stomach in laughter. “JESUS FUCK MY CHRIST! Don’t do that!”

Then the front door flew open and a chilling wind charged in...

Seeping into their souls.

In a moment, the candles were extinguished, leaving them in cold, dark silence. No one moved.

“Um, I think someone better close the door,” Robbo said.

Then two eyes lit up near the top of the doorway, piercing red eyes staring from the icy darkness... The shape of convex slits. In the dull red light of those eyes, suggestions of the owner’s towering body could be seen: dog-faced, hairy and muscular, bearing massive claws that caught the crimson light.

“
WELLLCOMEEE
,” it boomed in a rich, gravelly voice.

They had time to utter a plethora of expletives, before the window facing the campsite smashed inward. The screening blanket came ripping down as another of the dog-faced intruders stepped through the opening. Before they had time to react, the window on the opposite side of the ten-by-five metre hut smashed in too, as a third beast entered, leaving no exits available.

Robbo jumped towards the wood piled in the corner, Didge screamed and curled into a ball and Gary was motionless in shock.

Bill turned to Mike, “What the fuck have we done?”

Mike didn’t move or answer. Darkness obscured his expression.

Such terror. Such helplessness. Time to play.

The demons rushed in, one grabbing Bill by his shirt back and flinging him at the far wall where wood lay piled a few metres deep. He windmilled the air a moment before impacting heavily against the logs. He ricocheted backwards and landed face-up on the floor, his head and chest covered in blood, unmoving.

The second demon, the one that had entered through the door, grabbed Didge by the throat and lifted him off his feet with one arm.

Robbo picked up a thin log that he swung like a baseball bat. “FUCK YOU!” he screamed at them, tears streaming down his face.

The demon holding Didge was closest to Robbo and it turned its terrible gaze to him to answer, “
Ohhh Robert. We willlll!
”

As it finished its words, its free hand grabbed the back of Didge’s neck. Didge could only scream as the demon’s sharp claws sliced through his flesh and gripped his spine. The demon snarled at Robert, revealing wickedly pointed teeth, before unleashing a primal roar as it yanked out Didge’s spine with such force that it snapped and the severed vertebrae thrashed the air. Didge slumped lifeless to the ground as blood spurted from his neck onto Robbo and the beast he faced.

The third demon stepped on Gary’s leg as he attempted to dodge past for the window beyond. Gary squirmed in agony beneath the crushing weight of the creature’s foot. Vainly he grabbed a nearby chunk of wood and tried to club his assailant.

It laughed as it looked down at him...

The futile death throes of the trapped victim.

It swiftly grabbed his ankle and moved its foot over his knee, still pinning him. Then it started to bend his knee backwards, steady, unrelenting. In unbearable pain, Gary desperately hurled everything within reach at the monster...

Savour the moment. Smell the fear. Taste the torment.

A horrific snap of splintering bone sounded as Gary’s knee gave way. His leg bent upward at a crazy angle, blood from around the wound soaking his pants and the ground he lay on.

“Ple-e-e-ase! Just kill meee!” Gary said, delirious.

The beast loomed over Gary as it gripped his other ankle and stepped on his remaining knee. Its horrible, drooling snout slackened into a smile.

“Paaatience,”
it said.

And then his other knee was violently snapped forward too. He screamed a final time and then was still.

Pity they break so easily.

Through eyes blurred with tears, Robbo could see Gary lying motionless on his back, knees pointing grotesquely upwards in the hellish red glow.

The demon furthest from him sniffed Bill’s bleeding and limp body. Horrified into inaction, Robbo watched the demon lift Bill up by his ankles, then grunt as it swung Bill’s body around in a circle, smashing his head against the edge of the woodpile so hard that brains splattered in a wide arc from wall to ceiling.

Then Robbo noticed that Mike still sat cross-legged on the floor, staring into limbo, untouched by the carnage.

“MIKE! DO SOMETHING!” Robbo shouted.

Mike made no response.

And now Robbo had the attention of all three demons, their wolfish visages a menagerie of fur and blood, crowned by merciless red slits for eyes...

Closing in for the kill.

Swinging his baseball bat-sized log, Robbo rushed the beast nearest the open doorway. But in a fluid motion, it caught Robbo’s wrist that held the log and twisted him down to the floor. His wrist cracked and his weapon rolled away.

Maintaining its grip on his arm, the beast braced a foot against his right shoulder and ripped his arm from its socket. Blood squirted in pulsing jets from the gaping wound as he convulsed helplessly in shock.

Then systematically, it tore each of his other limbs from his torso...

Mike heard his friends’ chilling screams fade and felt their warm blood washing against his legs. The deed was done.

I’m so sorry, Bill. I’m sorry to all of you guys. I had no choice.

Then the stench of the creatures became intoxicating and he looked up to see that they were standing over him, blood-soaked, exultant.

One of the demons spoke,
“You have done wellll. You shall be rewaaarded.”

Mike restrained a smile. “Rewarded?”

“WITH A QUICK DEATH!”
it answered as it struck the side of his head with its powerful claw.

He was dead in a heartbeat.

WEDNESDAY 9:10
PM

Brian leaned forward as he asked the question, flicking cigarette ash into an ashtray. He sat over a beer with Dr Bernard Russell the psychiatrist, at a small table in the corner of Zagame’s, a quiet bar and bistro on the main shopping strip of Ivanhoe. The establishment had only a couple of staff looking bored and a handful of patrons chatting over drinks. Pop from the 60s and 70s played in the background, preventing conversation from travelling.

This place seems safe enough, but there’s a world of forces seeking to thwart me, including my own fucking police department, so how can it be safe? But more importantly, what choice do I have left? I have to keep fighting, to beat this demonic scourge and regain my life, or else die trying...

Otherwise, I might as well put a gun in my mouth now and blow my fucking brains out.

“We have to know what they are first,” Bernard answered, looking at Brian steadily. “And frankly, we can’t even be sure whether
they
are an actual physical entity, or no more than a disease of the mind.”

“Well doctor.” Brian blew a plume of cigarette smoke. “I’ve shot one and had another gouge my hand, so they’re real alright. They bleed purple and infect humans with their blood, taking control of them somehow.”

Bernard raised an eyebrow. “But what if your perceptions are merely symptoms of the disease? Hallucinations, as it were?”

“Then yours are as well.”

“I know. That’s what concerns me. We have yet to obtain physical, independent evidence of their existence.”

Brian stubbed out his cigarette and sat back in his chair. “Dr David Dawson, the pathologist I spoke to here in Melbourne, had concrete evidence. He showed me their blood cells.”

“Oh yes and...?”

“I’ve been unable to contact him since.”

Bernard looked away into space. “Hmm.”

“In a way, I guess, I could have done more to help him,” Brian continued. “When we last met, he told me that all of the evidence he had accumulated on the case had gone missing and that his colleagues were acting suspiciously. He was beginning to believe that they were conspiring against him.”

Bernard returned his gaze to Brian. “Similar to your experience at the police station?”

Let’s not go there again.

“Um, in some ways, I guess... Anyway I told him that I was unable to do anything about it, that that was the responsibility of the state police and I haven’t been able to get in touch with him since.”

“Yes well, hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it?”

Brian folded his arms and said with raised eyebrows, “Is it, doctor? Should I know now what I should have done?”

Bernard held up his hands to ward Brian off. “An inappropriate choice of words for the situation, I’m sorry.”

“Hmph,” Brian said and took a large mouthful of beer.

“Anyway, I think that the key to understanding what’s going on, Brian, is in understanding Henry’s words.”

“Go on,” Brian said, his eyes not moving from Bernard’s.

“During my time of consultation with Henry, he talked at length, usually under the influence of hypnosis, about these entities he called the
Dark Horde.

“His description of these entities was similar to yours. Including the eyes, vividly. He claimed he had the power to bring them into this world, that he was their channel. And yet he was in constant fear of this power he believed he had. He believed that if he let them into this world, they would destroy life as we know it on this planet. And he believed that they could sometimes control him and that they would eventually succeed in making him let them in.”

“Well, it looks like he
has
let them in,” Brian said. “And that this
Dark Horde
, whatever it is, is real. So I ask again,
how do we stop them
?”

“Henry claimed that there was no way to stop them. That we could not kill them. And that to them, we are as ants are to us.”

Brian sighed in frustration, finished his beer and reached for another cigarette, the last of a packet he’d bought only this morning.

“So you’re saying we’re fucked then. What’s to understand?”

Bernard licked his lips and leaned forward for emphasis. “If he is their channel, it means they need him to get in.”

Brian shrugged as he lit up. “So?”

“And they still do.”

Brian scrutinised Bernard’s expression. “What makes you say this?”

“It’s something I gleaned from hypnotherapy sessions with Henry. The
Dark Horde
need to
maintain
a
living
link with this world in order to
maintain
access. I think this means that Henry is still alive.”

“It’s possible,” Brian agreed.

“And that he’s keeping a way open for them to reach this world,” Bernard said.

Brian shrugged again. “So why not just kill him?”

“I believe they already have that covered. I believe they’ve been grooming specific others to take over, such as Danny.”

Brian’s head spun with the possibilities.

Bernard continued, “I believe it’s also the reason why you’re still alive. Because they need you too.”

Brian’s hand instinctively moved over his belt holster. “And just
how
would you know all this, doctor?”

Over behind the bar, the phone began to ring...

Bernard saw Brian’s hand movement and smiled. “Because they need me too and hence I also still live. And this, Brian, they’ve told me to tell you... I’m afraid we’re both pawns of the
Dark Horde.
”

Brian shook his head as he drew his pistol and pointed it at Bernard underneath the table. “Believe me when I say I don’t care anymore who I have to kill. I’ve already tried to shoot my girlfriend and half the officers I work with, so there’s not much stopping me from shooting you.”

Bernard smiled. “It’s too late for that, Brian. And besides,” he looked over at one of the bartenders standing at the phone by the bar, “that phone call’s for you.”