The Harrowing (18 page)

The Martin-thing grinned, a horrible sight. Its voice was sibilant, loathsome. “Stupid bitch, with all her screaming. Hardly the mood.”

Robin forced herself to smile, to make her voice seductive. “I’m here now. We can do anything you want.” She moved infinitesimally back. “Don’t you know I was jealous, when you were coming to Lisa instead of me?”

The thing in front of her cocked its head. “You didn’t ask. You have to ask.”

Robin pulled her shirt off. “I’m asking now.”

The Martin-thing lunged at her, incredibly fast. Robin turned in a flash and tore down the hall toward the stairwell.

The creature was right behind her, feet scuttling on the floor like insect claws, rasping breath hot on her neck as it gained on her. She felt hands in her hair, a sharp pain—and she was yanked backward.

Robin cried out. The thing shoved her against the wall by the stairwell door, pinning her between its hands, and shoved the bloody ax against her face. She could smell blood. Patrick’s blood.

And more horrible: Martin’s face was right up against hers, twisted and grotesque. A stench like burning rolled off him; the alien voice purred against her ear. “Sweet Robin. It was you, you know. It was you who let me through.”

Robin’s eyes jumped to meet the creature’s black gaze. The ravening thing stared into her eyes and she thought she would go mad.

“You wanted to die Thanksgiving night. Your darkness let me through. A perfect gateway.”

Robin’s throat was tight. Her eyes spilled over with tears. “No…” she whispered.

“
You caused it all
.”

Darkness opened in Robin’s mind, a rush of nothingness.

The thing raised the ax. She could barely register the dull gleam of the blade. Her legs gave way and she began the slide into unconsciousness.

Then the Martin-thing suddenly whipped its head to the side. “Not one step,” it hissed.

It raised its arm, brandishing the ax.

Robin turned her head and saw Lisa halted in the hallway, gripping a carving knife. She looked at Robin, eyes wide.

Both girls were frozen. The creature smiled…

Then the stairwell door flew open and smashed into its head.

Cain burst through the doorway, holding a baseball bat with both hands. He shoved the door hard against the wall, pinning Martin behind it. Robin jerked free.

Lisa ran forward and threw her weight against the door, trapping Martin to the wall. Robin lunged and leaned her weight against the door with Lisa.

The Martin-thing writhed under the door, snarling and foaming like a rabid animal. The girls strained to hold it.

Cain staggered back, lifted the bat, and slammed it against the side of Martin’s head.

Martin’s eyes rolled up and the thing went limp against the wall, still pinned by the door. The ax fell from his hand, thudded on the floor.

Robin and Cain found each other’s eyes.

The only sound was their ragged breathing, and Lisa’s sobs.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Logs burned in the hearth, rolling orange flame.

In the center of the lounge, the round table was set up with five chairs. Candles flickered at the points of a pentagram chalked on the surface.

Martin’s limp body was propped up in one of the five chairs. Lisa and Robin were winding clothesline around and around his torso, tying him to the chair. They wrapped him over and over, a thick coat of ropes, threaded through the slats of the chair—but they had no idea of the strength of the thing inside him or whether the ropes would hold at all.

They had thrown blankets over the arched windows to block the firelight, and they’d rolled back the cabbage-rose carpet. Cain was on his knees, shoulder wrapped, drawing a large pentagram with chalk on the bare floor around the table while keeping a wary eye on Martin; the ax, wiped clean of Patrick’s blood, was close by his side. A Coleman lantern beamed a star of yellow light from a side table. Rain fell in a steady curtain outside. It all had a sense of unreality.

Robin tried to focus entirely on the rope in her hands. With Patrick lying dead two floors above them, any kind of thought was unbearable.

Cain finished the last line of the pentagram and stood up, brushing chalk from his jeans.

Robin bent over Martin to tie another knot—Lisa suddenly cried out behind her, “
Robin!
”

Robin glanced down. Martin’s eyes were open beneath her. She gasped and pulled back, her heart pounding madly.

Martin looked up at her, his eyes hurt, dazed. The side of his face was bruised, pulpy from the blow of the bat. He muttered weakly, “Robin? What’s…happening?”

The others gathered warily, Cain brandishing the bat Martin looked around at them all shakily. “I was in the attic. You left. Then…what? I don’t…remember.”

He gasped, seeing his own blood-soaked shirt. “Oh my God. Robin…” He looked up at her, trembling, terrified.

Robin hesitated. “Martin?” She stepped carefully forward. Cain said sharply, “No—”

Robin leaned in toward Martin and slapped him hard across the face.

Martin’s eyes popped open wide, flaming black. Quick as a snake, he lunged up at Robin’s throat, mouth wide, teeth bared, cords straining in his neck.

Robin jumped away just as Martin’s teeth closed on air with a sickening crunch. Lisa jolted back, freaked.

The Qlippah writhed in Martin’s body, sliding in the chair, hissing and spitting. “You dare? YOU DARE?
Let me go
.“ All pretense of humanity was gone. It strained at the rope, chest bulging, eyes popping, bellowing like a bull.

Cain raised the bat high, ready to strike. Martin bucked, the ropes scraping at his skin, opening flesh. But the Qlippah seemed to be contained by Martin’s physical form—the smallish body unable to break free of the layers of rope.

The table began to shake, rattling on its legs. Lisa and Robin froze in disbelief.

Cain shouted, “You’re going all right. Back to the Abyss.”

The table stopped. The Martin-thing grinned up at him, a chilling sight. “No precedent, counselor. You’ve lost your fifth. The star is broken.”

Cain’s face hardened. He turned, shot Robin a look through the flickering yellow light.

Robin nodded, took Lisa’s hand, pulled her toward the doorway. “Come on.”

As they passed Cain, she whispered to him, “Be careful.” Their eyes met and he brushed her fingers with his before turning back to the thing that had been Martin.

Robin pulled Lisa out through the arched door, into the hollow darkness of the main hall.

Lisa was sobbing through clenched teeth as she and Robin climbed the shadowy main stairs. “I can’t stand it. I can’t.”

Robin stared upward into the dark. “Just a little bit more,” she said, hoping her voice was steady.

On the second floor, Robin and Lisa stepped into the blue light of the laundry room.

Patrick’s body lay on the floor in a pool of blood, his eyes wide and staring.

Lisa crumpled into sobs again. Robin’s eyes filled with tears, her heart twisting in her chest.

They both knelt beside him on the warped linoleum. Lisa cradled the blond head in her lap. She passed her hands tenderly over his eyelids, shutting his eyes, then stroked his face and hair.

Robin held his hand in hers and thought fiercely,
You saved us. I’ll never forget what you did I’ll never forget you. Never. You ‘re part of me forever
.

They were both silent for a time, holding him. Lisa seemed almost calm, dreamily stroking his hair. Then Robin met Lisa’s eyes.

“He would want us to, you know.”

Lisa nodded. Robin looked down on Patrick’s body, swallowed through the ache in her throat. “We need you, cowboy.”

In the long, shadowed space of the lounge, Cain gritted his teeth against the throbbing in his shoulder and bent to light candles at each of the five points of the chalk pentagram on the floor.

The Qlippah watched from Martin’s body, its head lolling grotesquely against the chair back. “Don’t forget the fairy dust,” it gibbered. “You have to sprinkle it on me and knock your heels together three times.”

Cain stood, fought a wave of dizziness at the pain. He breathed in shallowly, slid his left hand into the front pocket of his jeans for his lighter, stepped to the fireplace to light the candles on the mantel.

The Qlippah watched greedily with Martin’s eyes. “You know you don’t believe this bullshit. Can’t do kike rituals if you don’t believe. Better men have tried.”

Cain ignored the leering thing. He stooped to one of the duffels, pulled out the printout of the ritual they’d lifted off the Web. The title at the top read, “The Greater Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.”

The Qlippah looked straight into the fire. The flames suddenly leapt up, blazing, showering sparks into the room. Cain jumped back from the burning pinpoints.

The Qlippah smiled loftily with Martin’s mouth. “Are you a priest now? A
rabbi?
You, who believe in nothing! Son of a syphilitic whore, and not just in a manner of speaking…”

Cain stiffened, his hands clenching.

A smile twisted across Martin’s face. The Qlippah’s voice became cunning, crafty. “Want to know who your father is?” it crooned. “I can tell you. It’s not pretty, but at long last you would know.”

Cain turned on it. “Shut up,” he whispered. In his hand was a switchblade. He snicked it open. The blade gleamed silver in the firelight.

Martin’s face rippled and dimpled, as if snakes were moving under the skin. The Qlippah’s whisper was sibilant, inhuman. “You’ll fail. You’ll fail because you come from dirt. You come from scum.
You are not worthy
.”

Cain’s face was drained of color. The hand holding the knife dropped to his side.

Something thudded on the main stairway.

Cain came back to himself, spun toward the sound, brandishing the knife.

There was another thud, another, and then a soft dragging, coming toward the doorway of the lounge.

Robin and Lisa appeared in the doorway, pulling Patrick’s body between them on the polished floor, panting at the strain of the dead weight.

For a moment, an animal rage played across Martin’s face, then the Qlippah bared its teeth in a hideous grin.

“Ah. Company. Daddy’s best boy.”

Cain stepped forward to help the girls drag Patrick’s body to the table. The three of them stooped and, straining, lifted the corpse into a chair Cain had placed on one of the points of the chalk pentagram, across from Martin’s splayed form.

The corpse slumped heavily in the chair. Lisa wrapped her arms around Patrick’s torso and held him up from behind. Robin wound rope around him, tying him up into a sitting position, trying not to think too hard about what she was doing. She glanced at Lisa, saw her face was deathly pale but determined.

Across from them, the Qlippah squirmed and jeered in Martin’s body, the ropes chafing flesh. “Clever children. Extraordinary children. But doesn’t it say in your little do-it-yourself manual? It doesn’t count if he’s
D E A D !
”

The Qlippah bellowed the last word, an earsplitting shout. All the windows rattled, as if some huge force were shaking the Hall.

Robin recoiled. Beside her, Lisa sucked in her breath, eyes wide with terror. The rattling continued all around them, deafening.

Then it abruptly stopped. Nothing but the sound of their own tortured breathing.

The Qlippah grinned around at them ferally, tongue lolling from Martin’s mouth. “It doesn’t count if he’s dead,” it crooned again.

Cain stared down at it grimly. “It doesn’t say that. It says we all need to be here.” He looked at Robin and Lisa, flanking Patrick’s lifeless body. “We’re all here.”

He picked up the printout of the ritual, then hesitated, glancing at Robin, a stark, uncertain look. She met his eyes, mouthed
Yes
.

With an almost graceful formality, Robin, Cain, and Lisa all took their places at the points of the pentagram Cain had drawn—the Qlippah squirming in its chair on the fourth point, Patrick’s body tied to the chair on the fifth.

Robin stared down at the chalked pentagram, and despite her apprehension, she felt a rush of something like excitement. There was a palpable energy about the ancient symbol—a sense of power and infinity.
It worked for someone, all those years ago. Maybe it can work for us
.

Cain looked down at the printout they had made of the
Key of Solomon
.

“First we mix our blood.”

Robin and Lisa blanched as he lifted the knife and cut his palm, then stepped forward and let the blood spill into the bowl he had placed in the pentagram on the center of the table.

“Why don’t we all hump instead?” The Martin-thing suggested, pumping its hips upward spastically. “That’ll bond us.”

This is what evil is
, Robin realized.
So close to human, but a perversion of all that is human. I understand now.

Cain passed the knife to Robin. The blade gleamed. She clenched the knife in one hand and

sliced into her palm. The sharp pain was almost surprising. She thought briefly,
After all this, I wonder if I’ll ever feel again
.

She held her palm over the bowl, felt her pulse throb in the wound. The blood flowed black into the metal bowl, mixing with Cain’s.

Robin looked to Lisa, unsure of how she’d handle it, but Lisa didn’t hesitate. She stepped forward and slashed her palm grimly, looking down at Martin with eyes like ice.

Then Cain took the knife from her and cut into Patrick’s stiffening palm, squeezed the dead flesh together to force blood into the bowl.

When he turned to Martin, the Qlippah started to thrash in the chair, ranting. “Nooo… stay away, scum….” Its voice turned to a deep, mindless bellow, like the lowing of an ox.

Cain grabbed one of the hands bound tightly to Martin’s chest and cut into it. Robin stepped quickly beside him to catch the dripping blood in the bowl.

The Qlippah’s bellows turned to crooning. “Ahhh…lovely…deeper…
cut
me….”

Cain turned with the bowl of blood and placed it on the table, then stepped back to stand at his point of the pentagram. Robin and Lisa moved into their points.

Cain lifted the book and read in a strong, clear voice.

“We come together in the name of the Unknowable Unknown to banish this unclean thing from the body of our friend Martin Seltzer.”

The candles flickered on the mantel as if on an altar. With fingers pressed together, Cain touched his forehead, the center of his chest, his right shoulder, and then his left shoulder as he recited from the book, his eyes intense as a priest’s:

“
Ateh…Malkuth…ve Geburah…ve Gedulah
…”

The Qlippah spat at them, writhing in its chair. “This little Jewish ritual didn’t help poor little Zachary and his poor little friends, though, did it?”

Robin and Lisa looked into each other’s eyes and followed Cain’s hand motions on their own bodies, speaking over the Qlippah in concert with Cain.

“
Ateh…Malkuth…ve Geburah…ve Gedulah
…”

The Qlippah convulsed in Martin’s body, screaming over them in a rage.

“They
burned
. They
screamed
as they
burned
.…”

Cain looked straight at the squirming creature, clasped his hand on his chest, speaking over it.

“
Le-Olahm, Amen
.”

Robin was struck by the power in his voice, even as she and Lisa clasped their hands on their chests, repeating firmly, “
Le-Olahm, Amen
.”

The rappings started again, a wave of knocking in the ceiling and walls. The chair underneath Martin rattled in tandem, bucking on the floor.

Lisa backed off her point of the pentagram, staring around at the walls, her eyes wide and glazed. The walls bulged with the pounding.

The Qlippah giggled horribly. “You’re next, Lisa. I’m coming for you. Coming all over you—”

Cain shouted, “Lisa!”

Lisa whirled to face them, unseeing. “No…” She bolted toward the arched door of the lounge. Robin lunged and grabbed her arms. Lisa struggled against her in sheer terror. “It can’t—we can’t—it can’t work.”

Robin shouted in Lisa’s face, her voice rising above the rappings, above the laughter. “Lisa.
Think
. None of this is possible at all, but it’s happening.” For a moment, Lisa’s eyes seemed to register.

Martin’s eyes grew crafty, the Qlippah shining through them, rippling on his face. “You’re going to die to save this pathetic Shell? He betrayed you. He knew what I am, and he used you to call me—”

Lisa flinched, looked toward Martin’s heaving body. He flung his words at Lisa. “He used you, and Cowboy
died
for it.”

Robin spoke fiercely, her voice raw. “Don’t listen. It lies.” She dug her fingers into Lisa’s arms. “We have to believe it. We have to do it. For Patrick. For Martin.”

Behind them, the Qlippah bellowed. “LISAAAA…”

Lisa twisted out of Robin’s grasp with a guttural cry, but she faced the Qlippah, eyes blazing. “Fuck you.” She stalked back to her point of the pentagram. Robin followed and the three of them took the same breath.