Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (169 page)

Finally, Jess found control of her legs, the sight of the lengthy, sharp-edged blade helping her to take charge.  “Ben, I think you should back away and come over here with us.”

Ben seemed to snap awake, as if suddenly he had been released from a temporary lobotomy.  Maybe he’d noticed the sword as well – or maybe it was the flames.  He turned and stared at Jess, ballerinas of fear pirouetting through his eyes.  “No shit!” he said before starting to run.  Not a single second passed before Jess and Jerry were doing the very same thing.

“Who the hell
is
that?” Jess managed to ask mid-run, the words coming out in huffs and puffs.

Jerry answered in the same out-of-breath way.  “You mean
what
is that, don’t you?  It ain’t no man.”

The conversation went no further as the three of them carried on their rapid retreat from the hooded creature.  The snow slowed their running down to less than half its normal speed and Jess couldn’t help but worry that if they
were
being pursued each of them had slim hopes of getting away.  “Is that thing following us?” she asked, trying to increase the speed of her clumsy, snow-bound strides.

“I don’t know,” said Ben, looking back over his shoulder.  “Let me see.”

While Jess tried to catch up with Jerry a few yards in front, she waited anxiously for Ben to reply from behind her about whether or not they were being pursued.  After several more, exhausting strides, Jess’s racing heart surged with panic and she could wait no longer for Ben’s answer.  She stumbled to a stop and looked back.

For some reason, Ben had stopped several yards behind.  He was still following after Jess, but was making slow, almost laborious progress.  Beyond him, she saw nothing but snow and darkness.  The crisp, bright flames that had held her mesmerised were now gone.  So too was the hooded figure. 

“Ben,” she called out.  “What are you doing?  Get a move on!”

It was a few moments before he replied to her.  “I…I don’t feel right.  I…”  He fell down in the snow.

Jess panicked.  She had to go back to help Ben – she knew that without even thinking about it – but going back to help him meant going back towards the creature with the sword.  She had to go, she decided, but sure as hell wasn’t going alone.  Jess turned around and yelled.

Up ahead, Jerry stopped in his tracks, swaying and tottering like he couldn’t gain control of his knees.  When he came to a stop finally, he immediately understood something was wrong and started running back towards her.  Not waiting for him to catch up, Jess trudged her way over to Ben, who was still down on his hands and knees, face buried against the snow.  Her feet found the tracks they had flattened when they’d run in the opposite direction and moving became a little easier. 

Within a few moments she had reached Ben.  “Hey, what’s wrong,” she asked him, getting frantic.  He looked up at her and the sight immediately made her stomach churn.  His face had turned white as the snow he lay in, except for his lips, which were bright red with blood.  “Jesus, Ben!  Are you ok?  What’s happened?”

Jerry came rushing up beside his friend and instantly dove into the snow.  “Ben!  Ben, what’s wrong?  Man, you’re bleeding.”

Somehow, Ben managed to laugh meekly at his friend’s arrival.  Scattered specks of blood flew from his mouth, covering the nearby snow in pinpricks of red. 

Then Jess saw something that made her stomach churn even harder.  “One of your fingers is missing!”

Ben stared down at his hand as though he didn’t quite recognise it.  Jess thought that he looked mildly stoned, and, instead of looking at his dismembered digit, he was looking at a vase of multi-coloured flowers.  The strangest thing of all, Jess noticed, was that the finger stump was not bleeding.  It was capped by a glistening patch of red, but it wasn’t moist.  The wound seemed more like the surface of sandpaper.

Jerry put out a hand towards his friend.  “Come on, B-Dog.  Let’s get you out of here.”

Ben reached up to take his friend’s hand, but when he made contact something terrible happened.  His arm crumbled away at the shoulder as though it were made from ragged clumps of brittle clay.  The stump bled for a few seconds before seeming to glaze over.  Ben looked up at them with the same look Jess imagined soldiers had when they realised they were holding their own intestines:
Mortal panic. 
Now she saw that Ben’s face had taken on the same sandpapery quality that his finger wound possessed.  In fact, she noticed with increasing dread, he was dead. 

It took several more moments for Jerry to understand, unwilling to believe that his best friend was gone, but when Ben’s entire body crumbled away to blood-coloured dust in his very arms, Jerry finally seemed to get it.  When the scene was finally over, with only a fading pile of red sand against the white snow to suggest anything had ever existed of Ben, Jess allowed herself the luxury of screaming.  She didn’t stop until she was completely out of breath. 

It went on for some time.

Chapter Thirteen

Harry’s world felt better from beneath the snug security of a plush blanket.  It was still freezing inside the pub but at least the thick quilt prevented the loss of what little body heat he had.  Despite the fact he was now able to keep his temperature at a more tolerable level, Harry still eagerly awaited the power to click on.  It’d been almost two hours now.

“Come on, old man,” Damien shouted.  The lad had declined one of Old Graham’s blankets – it would no doubt ruin his hardman image – but he was closest to the fire and probably just as warm as the rest of them in his padded coat.

“Yeah,” Nigel joined in.  “Haven’t you picked anything up on that piece of junk yet?”

Old Graham sat on a footstool by the fire, fiddling with the radio.  It hissed and crackled, almost harmonising with the crackling spit of the fireplace.  “I’m trying,” he shouted.  “Nought’s happening.”

“When was the last time you even used that antique?” Damien asked.

“It’s been a while, but I knows how to work a bloody radio, lad.  My generation grew up with the things.”

Lucas reached out a hand from his perch on the armrest of the two-seat sofa (Harry and Steph still occupied the cushions and her thigh was still touching his).  “Give it here, old timer.  I know my way around a gadget or two.”

Old Graham obliged and handed over the crackling device.  Lucas immediately set about twiddling the knobs and pressing buttons.  A frown filled his face gradually like liquid filling a beaker.  “The thing’s a dud, old man.”

“Nonsense!  I’ve used the thing a hundred times.”

“Well it’s gone on strike tonight, fella.”

Harry was curious and scratched at his chin.  “I’ve never known a radio to switch on and not pick anything up.  They usually get something, even if it’s only faint.”

Lucas shrugged.  ”Not if the antenna’s faulty; you’d get nothing but static.  Let’s say you’re right though.  Let’s assume the radio is working and still we’re getting nothing.  What does that mean?”

Harry started to think about it, but couldn’t come up with an answer.  “Well, I guess it would mean that nobody’s broadcasting, or that the radio waves aren’t getting through.”

“Exactly,” Lucas said, as if he was revealing the most obvious fact in the universe.  “So those are two options.  The third and final one is that the radio has popped its little electrical clogs.  What’s the most likely, Harry Boy?”

Harry felt silly but worried at the same time.  “Well
I guess it
is
just the radio, or the weather affecting things.”

Lucas smiled as if he’d successfully explained algebra to a monkey.  “There you go!  No need to assume the wor-”

Old Graham cried out.  “Got something!”

Harry and Lucas broke their discussion and turned to the old man; so did Steph, Nigel, and Damien.  Old Graham waved his hand at them all and ushered them closer.  His left ear was half an inch from the radio’s speaker.  At first, all Harry could make out was more hissing and crackling, but as he got closer…

“What is that?” Harry asked, finally hearing something.

“I don’t know,” said Old Graham without turning his attention away from the radio.  “I can’t make it out, but something’s definitely there.”

Everyone gathered round and listened to the radio pop, hiss, and crackle, but behind those noises was something else.  At first it sounded like horns blowing – trumpets even – but then there was…

Voices?
  Garbled, disembodied speech that made sense to Harry for only mere seconds: …
Pillars…Salt…Sin…

Nigel straightened his back and stepped away from the radio, which quickly returned to giving out nothing but empty static again.  “Did anyone else hear that?  Could anyone understand it?”

Old Graham shook his head.  “Not really.  Something about salt?”

Nigel shook his head.  “Pillars.  It was pillars.”

“Pillars of salt,” Steph added helpfully.

Damien turned his back on the group, walked back over to the other side of the fire, and then turned back around to face them.  “Pillars, Salt, Sin; that’s what it said.”  He pulled at his earlobe.  “Guess my hearing’s better than you old farts.”

Harry felt like screaming ‘
shut up’
at the top of his lungs, but refrained due to the fact that Damien had actually been helpful before his snide remark.  “He’s right; it did say that.  Pillars.  Salt.  Sin.”

Lucas sat back down on the perch of the armrest.  “What in heaven does that mean then?  Sounds downright biblical.”

Harry didn’t disagree and thought about it for a moment, finally wondering:
Who’s broadcasting it?

 
”So does anybody know what Pillars of Salt and Sin actually means?”  Harry asked the question earnestly because he had no idea.

Steph was the first to offer an opinion: “Isn’t it from a Coldplay song?”

Harry raised his eyebrows.  “You think we just caught part of a song playing?”

Steph shook her head and seemed to doubt her own answer.  “It didn’t sound like singing, and the line in the song goes quite quickly.  The words on the radio were drawn out and slow.”

“Plus that song doesn’t contain the word, sin,” Damien added.

“No, it doesn’t.”  Steph agreed.

“Okay,” Harry said.  “Anybody else got ideas?”  He looked around and raised his eyebrows.  “What about you, Lucas?”

“Can’t help you there, fella.  It’s probably nothing but Prayer Time with Father Bob for all I know.  You can find all kinds of religious stations if you fiddle about enough – especially at times like these.  Either way, I need to go and visit the latrine again, so I’ll leave you folks to ponder.”  Lucas got up from the sofa’s armrest and headed towards the toilets while the rest of them continued their conversation.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” said Old Graham wrapping a wool blanket around himself and pulling it tight around his shoulders.  His words still fluttered slightly as the cold strangled his central nervous system.  “No point worrying about it now.  I’ll put the radio on the bar if anyone wants to have another go, but my only concern right now is keeping me bones from turning to ice.”

Nigel pulled his own blanket up around his shoulders; it made him look like a floating head beside the fire.

“Yeah, it’s getting a little
too
nippy for my liking.  Do we have any more wood for the fire?”

Steph nodded and headed off towards the bar, but before she got there the sound of screaming made her turn back around.

 ”What in the blue hell was that?” said Nigel

“Sounded like screaming,” Steph answered.

Harry agreed.  He got up from the sofa quickly and placed his beer bottle down on one of the nearby tables.  “It
was
screaming; someone outside.”

Steph stepped away from the bar.  “Harry, where are you going?”

“Outside.  Someone needs help.”

“I’d advise against that, Harry Boy.”  Lucas was returning from the toilets.  “You go out in that weather and you might not come back.”

“We can’t just do nothing,” said Harry.

Lucas walked over to him by the pub’s exit and pointed to the frost-covered window.  “Look out there, fella.  You’ll be blinded the second you step outside, and trying to make it in a straight line for ten steps will leave you a disorientated sot.  You’d probably struggle to walk ten steps in a straight line on a normal night.”

Harry scowled.  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Damien stood laughing by the fire.  “He means you’re a worthless drunk, Harry, and everybody knows it.”

The hackles on Harry’s neck tightened.  “What did you just say to me?”

Damien stepped towards Harry, but was still a good nine feet away.  “I said that you’re a no-good, piss-poor drunk, and that if someone is hurt out there, screaming for help, the worst person that could turn up to help them would be you.  Probably just puke on ‘em and pass out.  They’d end up having to get an ambulance for
your
sorry ass.”

Harry wanted to use words to retaliate – he was a civilised man after all – but none came to mind.  The only thing that entered his head was a blind, boiling rage.  He leapt at Damien’s smug, laughing face, crossing the nine feet before his heart could even beat once.  His first punch landed square and no more blows were required.  Damien’s nose scrunched up, spreading across his cheeks, until both nostrils were gushing blood.  The young thug didn’t go down though and instead just staggered backwards, holding his nose in stunned bewilderment. 

After a few moments of confusion, Damien grabbed a hold of himself, dropping his hands out to his sides and straightening up his body.  His nose dripped a viscous meld of blood and mucous; it ran down the light-blue shirt inside his puffer jacket. 

“You just shot yourself in the head, mate,” said Damien.  “If I were you, I’d go in those toilets, take off that cheap-ass belt around your cock-less waist, tie it round your alcoholic neck, and hang yourself.  Cus I’m going to kill you.  I’m going to slide a knife in your belly and laugh in your face while you die.  I’ll be the last person you see and I’ll be laughing my ass off.”