There was no Beast of
Brent Prior, only men infected with some shape-shifting,
body-altering virus that maddened the sane, corrupted the virtuous,
and set them after the ones they loved.
"It was yer brother who
killed yer woman, not the hunt," he told Callow. "He cut off her
hands and feet. Doctor Campbell---" He cast the pallid physician a
glance. Campbell, his bare hollow chest tattooed with bruises,
sneered back at him. Grady continued, "Campbell might have been
able to save her, had she not gone into labor. The fact remains,
she was bleedin' to death when we found her. It was a miracle she
was able to give birth."
It was only as the words
tripped from his lips that he remembered Kate was standing with
him. Now she whirled around to face him, her eyes wide. "Give
birth? What are you all talking about?" The pistol trembled in her
hand.
Grady raised a hand to
placate her, but she was possessed now by the need to know the
truth. Before he could stop her, she rushed forth, pistol hanging
limp by her side, and stopped before Neil.
"Are you not cold?" she
asked him. "Why are you undressed? Please tell me what's happening,
Neil?"
Around her, the men
watched with interest but again, none of them moved.
Neil stared.
Grady cleared his throat.
"It's all right, boy," he said reassuringly, "we're here to take
you home, and that's exactly what we're goin' to do."
It was only then it dawned
on him what had been bothering him about the boy, apart from his
obvious imperviousness to the chill air. Though the light was
faint, Neil was staring straight at his sister, and the silver
clouds were gone from his eyes.
Oh Jesus...
Kate, weeping, reached a
hand out to touch Neil's cheek. "Did they hurt you? Please say they
didn't."
"Kate!" Grady said
suddenly, and began to move toward her. The men watched him, and in
their postures he sensed the sudden tension. He saw Kate frown, and
knew she'd finally, through the veil of her concern, seen Neil's
eyes and felt the directness of his gaze.
Neil leaned away from
Kate's touch as if she had mud on her fingers, then looked up at
Stephen.
What he said in that moment brought
Grady to a halt and sucked the breath from his lungs.
"May I kill her now,
Father?"
28
It hurled itself through
the open window, its chest narrowing like a mouse trying to squeeze
through a crack half its size, and slithered into the
room.
Tabitha stumbled backward,
her hand frozen in front of her face as if it might at any moment
sweep aside this cruel mimicry of reality and restore the world to
normal. Her lips moved in silent denial as the oily creature
gathered itself into a crouch, its angular head cocked, watching
her with feral interest.
"Get
down
, child!" Mrs. Fletcher yelled
from the doorway, but Tabitha did not obey. Couldn't, for what she
was looking at filled her with so much dread she felt it entirely
possible that her body might freeze and shatter into a million
pieces. It was the devil, she knew, sent up from Hell to claim her
for betraying a blind boy's trust, and it would not be at all tidy
or careful in wrenching her soul from her body. From the look on
its dark face, she guessed it would enjoy it too.
She continued to back
away, breath locked in her throat, until she collided with the edge
of the bed hard enough to send a hot lance of pain down her left
leg. Discomfort flickered over her face, but with it came
clarity.
"Jesus Christ in Heaven,
girl, will you
move?
"
The command registered.
She broke from her paralysis and ducked. Beneath the window, there
was a faint creaking sound as the creature's joints tensed. The
white mist of its eyes burned and coiled and licked against the
thing's blackened cheeks.
It sprang.
Instantly, Tabitha found
herself tugged out of her crouch and off her feet as the creature's
hind claws snatched at her. She crashed into the bed and hit the
floor, her nose slamming against the floorboards hard enough to
send dazzling fireworks of pain into her brain. She whimpered and
crawled toward the door, expecting at any moment to feel wickedly
sharp teeth piercing the flesh on her back, puncturing the organs
inside with torturous delight. She was bleeding, the warmth of it
trailing down over skin made cold by fear.
"You
bastard
," a voice said and Tabitha
flopped over on her back. Mrs. Fletcher stood by the bed, the
creature weaving on the floor like a charmed snake in front of her,
the malicious smile still spread across its black hide face. It
looked like the embodiment of sinful glee.
Mrs. Fletcher pulled the
trigger. The creature flung itself to the side with a victorious,
crackling laugh, avoiding the bullet and mounting the wall opposite
the bed. The window shattered in its frame, the report deafening in
the small room and a moment later, they heard the tinkling of glass
in the courtyard. "Get out of here!" Mrs. Fletcher shouted at
Tabitha, as she quickly reloaded, the smell of fear and gunpowder
thick in the air. Tabitha moaned and tried to ignore the stinging
pain in her ribs as she scrambled to her feet. The creature readied
itself to pounce.
Tabitha ran.
The seething shadow roared and leapt
from the wall.
Mrs. Fletcher cursed,
snapped the rifle closed and swiveled on her heel, gun raised in a
desperate attempt to track the flight of the creature as it closed
in on the wailing girl.
Tabitha put her hands over
her head as she crossed the room, tantalizingly close now to where
the charwoman waited, gun poised.
The rifle roared; there
was the thud of a bullet striking thick hide and Tabitha looked up
just as the falling creature snapped to the left, slamming into the
wall, but still falling. She lurched out of the way with a
frightened wail, but not fast enough. It landed heavily, crushing
her feet and she screamed, her nails clawing at the floor. The
monster thrashed, blood spurting from the shilling sized hole in
its back. From between its snapping spittle-flecked jaws, a black
tongue flickered, as if tasting the floor.
"Help me!" Tabitha
shrieked, now slamming her fists against the floor and jerking her
legs in an attempt to be free of the hideous thing that had her
pinned. Hard, moist, scaly hide rubbed against her exposed skin.
"Quickly!" she pleaded, uncertain how long its own agony would
preoccupy it, how long before it realized its prey was caught
beneath it and those nails found her flesh again. And then the
memory of her brother's words came to her,
He
did it to me. He scratched me
.
Mrs. Fletcher deftly
chambered another cartridge and rushed to where Tabitha lay. She
seemed uncertain whether to put another bullet into the raging
creature first, or help the girl. To Tabitha's relief, she opted
for the latter, and, rifle clenched in her right hand, held out her
left. "C'mon, grab hold" she said, face flushed, as Tabitha reached
out.
Their fingers touched.
Tabitha gasped in exasperation. "Come closer. I-I can't reach.
Hurry!" It was clear that the charwoman was trying to keep her
distance from the creature, but her reluctance only frustrated
Tabitha, who could already feel phantom claws shredding her
flesh.
Mrs. Fletcher eased
forward, and Tabitha's hand slid into hers. The charwoman tugged,
and instantly Tabitha was free. Her relief was brief, and quickly
became confusion, then finally dread. Mrs. Fletcher hadn't pulled
hard enough to move her that quickly. Which meant
that...
The creature had moved.
Mrs. Fletcher released her
hand and back-stepped, fumbling with the rifle as she went, her
eyes raised to the top of the wall, which still bore the dark smear
of blood where the creature had smacked into it.
"Now, child," Mrs.
Fletcher said in a low voice. "Go now while the door is
clear."
"What about
you?"
"Just
go!
"
Tabitha didn't wait to be
told again. On her knees, she turned, all too conscious of the
swollen black shadow hanging over her. Got her feet beneath her,
one hand braced on the floor for balance.
Behind her, she heard the
click of the rifle being cocked.
"Now!" Mrs. Fletcher
cried, and Tabitha ran.
The gun banged; the
creature shrieked again, and blood flew.
Tabitha crossed the
threshold, and Mrs. Fletcher's tremulous sigh filled the vacuous
silence left by the report.
29
"Listen carefully," she
told the girl. "I want you to run, get out of this house and find
someplace safe, though God knows I can't say if there's such a
place left in Brent Prior tonight. Stay off the moors, lock
yourself in somewhere until dawn. Now go!"
The girl did as she was
told, gone down the stairs in an instant. Mrs. Fletcher gave her
time to clear the house, then, and only then, did she allow the
bile to rush into her mouth, and the fear to caper down her spine.
But it didn't last long. She knew there was no time to entertain
the revolt of her stomach. The creature still clung to the ceiling,
almost above her head now, a steady patter of its blood dripping
down to tap like a metronome against the floorboards. Its movements
were sluggish now.
Mrs. Fletcher sighed
shakily, and struggled to keep her mind off the girl. She should
have sent her running as soon as she saw her by the stable door,
but in her panic, she had suggested the first thing to come to
mind, and it was only through luck that she hadn't been
killed.
I didn't want to be
alone
.
But there was no time for
such regrets, and it had worked out all right in the
end.
For Tabitha, at least. And
for now.
The creature was not yet
dead, and the danger was close. Mrs. Fletcher reached into her
pocket and found to her dismay that there was only one cartridge
left. A single bullet. Her heart sank. She had already skewered it
with a pitchfork and shot it twice. If the final shot didn't kill
it, or if she missed, she was as good as dead.
Watching the shadow
overhead, she loaded the rifle, and whispered a hurried request to
God, if he was watching, to please help her, to guide the final
bullet home, to end this horror once and for all.
She raised the rifle, and
the creature turned its eyes on her. The white light had faded to a
storm cloud gray that swirled within sockets too wide for its head.
It was dying, shriveling, wasting away of its injuries. Strings of
blood drooled from its upside-down maw, its tongue floundering in a
wheezing mouth.
"Good," Mrs. Fletcher
said, with a surge of hope.
The creature released its
grip from the ceiling, tearing chunks of plaster with it as it spun
around in the air so that it was right side up again. Grainy dust
plumed. As it fell, and the charwoman tracked it, finger tensing on
the trigger, it began to change.
And when it hit the floor,
it did so with human feet.
Mrs. Fletcher's mouth fell
open, and, without realizing she was doing so, lowered the gun
slightly. She wanted to scream, to wake up, to weep, to die,
anything but stand here feeling her sanity break away like pond ice
in the springtime. Indeed, for a split-second, she imagined she
could hear it crackling.
He shuffled closer on
broken limbs, his skin suppurating and leaking blood.
It was Master Mansfield.
"Florence," he said,
weakly. He was naked, and his bare legs wobbled as he stopped in
front of her, the bones beneath making sounds like broken glass
being crunched in a fist. "Help me."
Stunned, and uncertain,
sure now more than ever that this was nothing more than an
intensely vivid nightmare, or witchcraft at work, she kept the gun
raised, the muzzle mere inches from her master's throat.
"You're not real," she
said. "It's a trick of the devil. Away with you!"
She started to pull the
trigger, but the man-thing cowered away from her, his
blood-streaked arms crossed protectively over his head like a child
anticipating a blow from an irate father, and she hesitated,
listening, as a peculiar sound drifted from beneath the cradle he
had made around his head.
Sobbing.
Yet, she kept the gun
trained on him, too afraid to give in to the ache inside her that
told her
yes, this is the master, and you
need to help him. He's sick,
because she
had seen what he had tried to do to the girl, what he wanted to do
to
her
.
Teeth clenched, but with
her resolve trembling like leaves in a gale, she swallowed and
sidestepped, moving around the master just as she had in the stable
earlier. She brought the rifle back up and aimed at his
head.