Hag Night (25 page)

Trembling, head thrashing from side-to-side, Megga heard a hot-breath moaning escape her lips.

Then…Morris screamed and ran for the door. He threw it open and charged out into the darkness. And Wenda was hot on his trail.

15

Bailey opened her eyes and they were
like clear glass, shiny and wet, as if they were covered in the translucent nictitating membrane of a reptile or a bird of prey. Those eyes looked up at Doc, staring right through him like he wasn’t even there. Something in the gaze, that was more of a knowing leer, made his heart beat fast and dried up the spit in his mouth.

“Bailey?” he said in a voice weak as a newborn kitten.

She looked like she was going to say something to him, but then her head thrashed back and forth and a clear, watery mucus ran from her nostrils. Her whole body began to move, not just twitching but seeming to ripple with a liquid roll of muscles as if every neuron in her body were misfiring. Her limbs were flailing, eyes rolling, head whipping from side-to-side. It was like the mother of all seizures and in her weakened state, Doc knew she wouldn’t last long. Her body alternately went rigid, then loose and boneless. She lifted her head maybe three inches from the sofa and let loose with a vicious and guttural shriek.

“HELP HER!” Reg cried.

But there was no helping her.

It was like she had been invaded by some destructive demon that was intent on finishing her off. As Doc held her, he was amazed at how strong she was, how she moved against him and how he was forced to move with her. The mucus ran from her, drool bubbled
from her mouth. Her back arched. Her teeth snapped shut, then chattered wildly. Her lips were writhing worms as they pulled away from her gums and he saw that her upper central incisors had grown narrow like the teeth of a rat, long and sharp.

“DO SOMETHING!”
Reg practically screamed.

He was out of his head, pacing back and forth, but refusing to get any closer as if what she had was catchy and Doc was pretty sure that it was. Bailey settled down for a moment and looked up at him with eyes that were hot, burning with what seemed to be lust. Her tongue licked along her teeth, then jutted in and out of her mouth. Under the circumstances, it was appalling.

“Help me hold her!” Doc cried out.
“Goddammit! Get over here!”

She threw her head back again and let out a broken wailing noise that was high-pitched, nearly deafening. It never truly subsided. It shrilled out of her while her lips
pulled away from gums and teeth and her eyes rolled back white. Then it fragmented, becoming something like a hysterical cackling that raised gooseflesh on both Doc and Reg, who, by then, was there with Doc trying to hold Bailey down as tremors rolled through her body. Her head was thrown back on her neck and it was like she was trying to drive it right through the sofa. There was not just drool but pink foam slavering from her mouth by then as if she were rabid. As her body went through an almost serpentine sort of basal writhing, her hands came up, clawing at the air. Doc got one of them down, absolutely astounded at the strength in the limb which he felt could have thrown him clear across the room. Her free hand went right at Reg’s face, the nails just missing his eyes and scratching red welts down his cheek.

“Jesus
Christ,”
he said, finally trapping the arm, but learning, like Doc, that grabbing it and then holding on were two different things. It was like trying to capture the whipping tentacle of some huge squid.

The way she was snapping her teeth, Doc was certain she would bite her tongue off. Miraculously, that didn’t happen but her spike-like incisors were scraped along her lower lip again and again, several times sinking right into it, and the result was that the mucus and pink saliva blossomed with blood that stained her teeth and ran down her chin. With her head still thrashing, gouts of it flew into the air and spattered the faces of the men who were trying
to help her.

Her body jerked with rapid-fire convulsions, then settled back into the sofa. A fine trickle of blood ran from her left nostril. Her face was contorted into some pale fright mask smeared with red. She let out a series
of hoarse, barking sounds from her throat. Then she opened her eyes and they were a juicy, opaque red like the bellies of blood-swollen ticks. Her jaws were open, lips pulled back, those terrible fangs ready to strike. She looked up at Reg and made a low, throaty sort of hissing sound like a snake and he let go of her arm, his ass hitting the floor.

“Oh, man,”
he said.
“Oh my God…”

Then her eyes and mouth closed and it seemed it might be over. Her limbs went limp and her body, though trembling minutely, was no longer clashing against itself. Her teeth were still
chattering and she was a mess from the bloody discharge that came out of her, but the worst had passed. Doc dug a hankie from out of his pants and wiped her face clean of the blood and saliva, which had formed sort of a snotty slime on her cheeks and chin. Her face was burning hot to the touch, droplets of fever sweat exuding from her pores. There was steam rising from it in the cold air and it stank with a morbid foulness that reminded him of warm vomit. It was gagging.

“Is she…?”

“No, no. She’s alive,” Doc said, feeling for her pulse, which was barely even there. Her breathing was shallow. It rattled in her chest. He could see her eyes moving beneath the lids and jaws working side-to-side like she was chewing on something or trying to form words. He brushed a strand of blonde hair from her face. It was greasy with sweat. “Bailey? Honey, can you hear me?”

Her lips parted with a bubble of blood and her eyes opened.

Doc nearly fell right over.

T
hey had changed again.

The whites of her eyes were a dark red, the color of arterial blood. But the irises were a brilliant milky sort of blue, the pupils like black beads. They looked at him and he felt weak inside. They seemed to spear right into his head and he had trouble catching his breath for a moment. They did not move like the eyes of
a human being, but like those of an animal—darting about in the dark, bruised-looking sockets like those of a trapped beast.

Then they closed and it began again.

It was like something in her was fighting against the infection that was taking her over and fighting with everything it had. Her body began to shudder again, then it went wild with convulsions. It went stiff like a piece of lumber, then soft and pliable and quivering. Again, Doc held her and Reg did the same. The contortions were nowhere near as violent this time. She kept arching her head on her neck and pounding it into the sofa. More blood ran from her nose, from her mouth. A trickle of it came from her left eye as if her tear ducts were filled with it. She made croaking noises in her throat. Her teeth chattered and ground against one another.

Her mouth opened and she screamed.

Then she sank back down into the sofa, her chest rising high one last time as she gasped for air…then it sank back down, the breath leaking out of her. One eye was closed, the other stuck half open. She smacked her lips a few times.

A trembling went through her limbs.

Her fingers shook.

Her lips pulled up into a horrible sardonic smirk, then relaxed.

And she went still.

Doc felt for a pulse, put his head to her chest to ferret out a heartbeat. Finally, sighing, he shook his head. Trying to keep the emotion out of his voice, he said, “She’s gone.”

Reg was shaking, his eyes filled with tears. “What…what do we do?”

Doc wiped his eyes. “Throw some more wood on the fire. Get it blazing high. Then I’ll tell you.”

16

Amazingly, and thankfully, Bailey was barely aware of any of it. Her mind was oddly dislocated from her body as often is the case in the worst trauma. It seemed, at times, she could see herself flopping about on the sofa with Doc and Reg trying to hold her down like she might float away. But mostly, she was lost in a fog of dreams and disjointed memories. Selling chocolates door-to-door as a Campfire Girl in third grade. Playing softball in middle school. Listening to her mother singing as she made up treat bags for Halloween. Rushing down the stairs as a child, seeing all the Christmas presents under the tree, but being less amazed by them than she was by the twinkling array of lights on the tree itself. But mostly she remembered the sunshine. Running in it, playing in it, glorifying in it, feeling it on her summer skin and reveling in its warmth and purity.

These are the things that went through her head as she neared death and a darkness like black oil seeped up from somewhere far below, spreading a virulent malignance through her body that crowded her out of her own head with primal hungers and impulses until she was no more. And before it consumed her completely, she recognized that she was unclean, she was polluted by the black horror of it.
No, no, not this,
she thought and then thought no more.

17

A split second after Morris ran out the door, Wenda was on her feet. The knife was in her belt and the stake was in her hand. She charged out the doorway into the dimness of the hall, moving more by instinct than anything else.

I’ve got to get him,
she thought.
I’ve got to bring him down.

Had she been in a relatively sane state of mind, the wording of her thoughts might have amused her.
Bring him down.
Like he was an animal that had to be brought to earth and killed. But she was not in a sane state of mind. What she was doing was purely instinctive. She had to stop him. She had to get to him before he got outside.

She heard him stumbling off in the darkness.

She went after the noise, wishing she had brought a lantern with her.

He was out of his head and she knew it. He was driven to mania and terror from those thin
gs outside getting into his mind. And probably by one in particular: Griska. Even the name left a sickening taste in her mouth. She came out into the entry and a shadow vaulted out at her.

Morris.

He blindsided her and sent her crashing to the floor. Her stake clattered away from her.

“GET AWAY FROM ME!”
he cried as he cut away towards the kitchen.

Wenda scrambled around until she found her stake and went after him.

“STAY AWAY!” he said. “STAY AWAY FROM ME!”

He was in an absolute frenzy, it seemed. Tripping and falling, crawling on all fours. Slamming into walls and upsetting things from shelves. Swearing and gasping, punching out blindly, kicking and sobbing.

Wenda raced after him.

She got into the kitchen and Morris, sensing her, jumped away through the archway into the dining room. He was dead-ended and she knew it. She went after him and he made a squealing sound as she bore down on him. He went to the windows and began slapping his hands against them. Wenda grabbed him with one hand and threw him backwards. He stumbled, hit the floor, then was up and scrambling over the heavy oak table before she could get him. She jumped at him as he tried to get back into the kitchen and then they were fighting. He was trying to hit her and kick her and she was doing the same. His fist glanced off her cheekbone at the same time she brought the blunt edge of the stake down on his head.

He made a yelping sound and shoved her away.

She banged her hip against the table, but would not go down.

“MORRIS!” she shouted.

He took off, bouncing his way through the kitchen, scattering copper pots and pans, reviling her with a string of obscenities.

Wenda gave chase again. He was completely fucking loco by that point and she’d already decided that she wasn’t going to be gentle when she found him.
I’ll bash his goddamned head in.
She heard rather than saw him wing his way clumsily out of the kitchen and she was on his heels. Back in the entry, he saw her and darted back, swinging. She got out of his way and swung the blunt end of the stake again. This time it connected with his fist and made a hollow popping sound as it smashed against his knuckles.

He yelped again and ran.

Wenda wasn’t sure what he was up to. He was like some crazed animal trying to bull its way out of a cage. The door was right there and yet he hadn’t made a try for it. Maybe, in his confusion, he didn’t really know what a door was.

She followed him again.

He cut down another corridor on the other side of the kitchen. This one led to the back door and she knew it. Maybe he was smartening up. Maybe he’d found his way out. She got to him before he got to the door and, again, he turned to fight, going for her throat and slamming her up against the wall near the cellar door and with enough force to knock the wind out of her. Wenda slid to the floor, dazed, and Morris jumped on her. He straddled her, wrapping his hands around her throat. And Wenda knew that while he was many things, he was not a killer. He was being compelled to do this.

Probably by Griska.

He tightened his grip and she could get no air. He was grunting and sucking air through clenched teeth. She could feel his penis against her crotch. It was standing hard, straining against the material of his jeans. And she knew as she saw black dots before her eyes that he was going to strangle her unconscious or beat her down, then rape her. That’s what this was about. That’s what he was supposed to do.