Dead Voices (54 page)

The face floated at her feet, suspended in the whirling blackness as it drifted closer, rising from the depths of the earth. Caroline’s eyes were open, staring at her with a cold, hollow gaze, as though they were seeing nothing at all — or else piercing right through to her soul! A freezing draft of putrid air blew upward into Elizabeth’s face, making her hair stream back over her shoulders. She hugged herself and rubbed vigorously on her upper arms, but that did nothing to stop the wave after wave of numbing cold or the lances of blinding panic that skewered her mind.

“This .can’t ... can’t be ... happening!” she heard herself say.

“You have to hold her down,” a hard, commanding voice said from behind her. “If you are to have control over her, you must hold her down just as the book described it.”

Elizabeth shot a terrified glance back at Graydon, her eyes widening with confusion.

“Go on!” Graydon commanded. He had to shout to be heard above the roaring wind that raged up from the grave. “You have to grab her by the shoulders and wrestle her down. Hold her there! Otherwise,
she
will have control over
you
!”

Elizabeth’s eyes flashed back down in front of her when she felt an icy chill encircle her ankles. Caroline’s hands and face were more clearly resolved, and her thin, dead hands were wrapped around Elizabeth’s legs, tugging violently as she tried to yank her off balance.

“Don’t let her get control of you!” Graydon shouted. Elizabeth kicked her feet back, breaking the hold; then she dropped to the ground and, not knowing what else to do, reached out into the blackness until she felt her hands connect with something that felt like decaying cloth.

The dress Caroline was buried in
! she thought as an ache of sadness exploded in her heart. Beneath the cloth, she could feel her dead daughter’s thin shoulders, like cold, unflinching marble.

“Do it! Pin her down! If she gets a hold on you, she’ll drag you down with her!” Graydon shouted. His voice sounded far behind her; it had a curious echo effect to it. Elizabeth barely noticed it as Caroline struggled in her grasp, trying to break the hold she had on her.

Hot tears flooded Elizabeth’s eyes, blurring her sight as she flexed her numbed arm muscles, forcing them to come to life. Blind panic filled her mind. She didn’t see how she could resist the brutal force that was welling up at her from her daughter’s grave. There was no shaking, no violent churning, as there had been in the soil when this madness had started; just an inexorable upward push that made Elizabeth feel as though she were helplessly riding a hydraulic lift. She winced when the hooked fingernails sank into her upper arms and squeezed tightly.

“You
have
to control her!” Graydon continued to yell. “She’ll only yield if you can prove that you’re stronger than she is!”

Sweat broke out on Elizabeth’s forehead and mixed with the tears streaming from her eyes. A thick, salty taste filled her mouth. Elizabeth felt her heart stop and go ice cold in her chest as her dead daughter’s face loomed closer and closer to her own, condensing like wispy clots of smoke into a twisted, tormented expression of pain and effort.

As the struggle continued, Elizabeth saw with stark horror that her blurred vision of Caroline’s face hadn’t been just the result of her own tears. There was a thick, creamy white fluid smeared all over Caroline’s face. It reminded Elizabeth crazily of vernix, the thick mucouslike substance that, along with blood, covers a baby at birth. She saw worms crawling within that curdled white fluid. Breathless from her efforts, Elizabeth wished she had enough air left in her lungs to scream. Her brain was completely overloaded as she looked down at the horribly distorted vision of her daughter.

Vision
? she thought.
No! This is too damned real to be a vision or hallucination!
Caroline’s jaw made a horrible clacking sound as it worked back and forth, gnashing her teeth. Elizabeth knew it was impossible for there to be any air in her daughter’s dead lungs, but she could see the thick, milky fluid bubbling as Caroline’s mouth opened and closed, like a fish gulping in water. The coiled tension in her daughter’s corpse built steadily, ready to explode up at her. Elizabeth wasn’t sure whether the explosion would be physical or mental.

Caroline’s lips twisted and twitched as she tried to form words, but the fluid covering her face choked her, filling her mouth and throat, making it impossible for her to speak.

How can she speak? How can the dead speak
? Elizabeth wondered crazily as she heaved forward, trying to pin her daughter’s steel-hard shoulders to the ground.
What in the name oj Heaven and Hell could this ... this apparition possibly have to say?

“You have to clean her mouth out before she can talk to you.” Graydon’s voice boomed from the darkness behind her. “Remember the description in the book?”

Frantic with fear, Elizabeth looked behind her and was stunned by what she saw. Graydon was still standing with her within the protection of the pentagram, but beyond the white lines of the star, the night was a riot of activity. Where there had been silent, moonwashed tombstones and a gently sloping hill before, now the night was swirling with strobing red and blue lights. At first, her eyes saw only confusion, but after a moment, the chaos resolved into dozens — hundreds — of twisted, humanlike figures.

“I ... How?” Elizabeth said, no more than a strangled gasp.

“Pin her with your knees and scoop it out with your hands ... either that, or else suck it out,” Graydon said.

Behind him, the spinning madness of figures intensified. Elizabeth saw horribly deformed shapes, sick parodies of humanity with hooved feet and clawed hands, horns, and gaping, fang-filled mouths. Wicked, sparkling eyes watched the struggle unblinkingly. Elizabeth had the distinct impression they were all willing her to lose the struggle. Arms were upraised, and legs kicked high as the figures silently twisted and leaped in the flickering red glow of flames. Dimly, at the edge of awareness, Elizabeth heard the wild shrieks and doom-filled moans as the figures’ increased their frantic dance.

“I ... can’t!” she sputtered. The pain of Caroline’s fingernails gouging into her arms was too intense; the upward thrust was unrelenting.

“You must!” Graydon shrilled. “If you don’t, she’ll have you under her power!”

Shifting her legs forward, Elizabeth tried to brace Caroline’s shoulders, but her daughter wiggled and twisted, resisting all of her efforts. Slowly, like two heavy-laden ships on an inevitable collision course, their two faces came closer and closer together until, nose to nose, they touched. Caroline exhaled a bubbling expulsion of rotten breath. The icy wind from the grave streamed viciously around Elizabeth’s face, pushing her back violently; but she strained her neck forward and brought her mouth closer to her dead daughter’s mouth.

“
Go on! Do it now!
” Graydon shouted. His voice was almost lost in the rising cacophony of shrill wailing all around them.

With all the effort it takes to breathe in a strong gale, Elizabeth sucked in her breath and then pressed her lips hard against Caroline’s cold mouth. There was a jolting shock as their lips met. Elizabeth exhaled noisily through her nose and then sucked hard, as though giving her dead tlaughter some perverted form of artificial respiration. The rancid taste of dead flesh and sour milk filled her mouth, making her stomach revolt.

“She can’t speak until you get her mouth clear,” Graydon hollered.

Elizabeth gagged down the rush of vomit that exploded into her throat as the worms wiggled inside her mouth, churning the sickly fluid. She spat the stuff out, took another deep breath through her nose, exhaled, and then sucked furiously on her dead daughter’s mouth again. Thick chunks of horrible corruption filled her mouth. Twisting to one side, she again spat out the sickening fluid. When she looked down. she saw that Caroline’s mouth was still bubbling with milky clots. Nausea compressed Elizabeth’s stomach as though it were in a giant’s steely grip.

Steady, rapid pulse beats hammered in Elizabeth’s ears, almost — but not quite — drowning out the rising sound of demonic voices screeching at her from the surrounding red-lit night. Embracing her daughter’s corpse as though cradling a baby, Elizabeth pressed her lips to Caroline’s a third time and, with what she knew was her last effort before she collapsed, sucked more of the horrible-tasting liquid into her mouth. Involuntarily, she swallowed some before she could turn and spit it out. A coldness like death filled her seething stomach.

Shuddering with the effort to hold Caroline down and not vomit, Elizabeth looked down at her daughter’s face. The hollow, glazed eyes had taken on a deep, throbbing semblance of life. The irises pulsated with a dull blue glow that steadily intensified, drawing her awareness like a magnet. Try as she might, Elizabeth couldn’t look away. Then, finally, as the last few ounces of strength faded from her arms, a violent upward explosion sent her reeling backward. She collapsed onto the ground like a useless, wrung out cloth.

Cringing in horror, Elizabeth watched as the figure of her daughter materialized more clearly and then, floating up out of the dark ground, rose into the air. For several paralyzing seconds, the pale, desiccated figure, dressed in the frilly white funeral dress, hovered high in the night sky; then it settled like a perching bird of prey onto the rounded top of her gravestone, just outside the protective pentagram. Luminous and shimmering, the eerie blue glow of Caroline’s body filled the night around her, blending at its extreme edges with the chaotic red flickers that colored the space outside the pentagram.

Elizabeth couldn’t look away from the vacant stare of her daughter’s dead eyes. Caroline regarded her mother with the unnerving, unfocused gaze of a blind person. Her waxy white face was immobile, expressionless.

“Go ahead! Speak to her!” Graydon commanded. “Tell her what you have to tell her.
Go on!
”

The frantic, excited tone in his voice surprised Elizabeth, and she had the fleeting impression that he might have succeeded beyond even his own wildest dreams.

Elizabeth cleared her throat, but the rotten taste of the creamy fluid still clung to every taste bud, making it impossible to speak. Wave after wave of nausea crested within her, threatening to spew the contents of her stomach onto the ground, but at last, after taking in a breath of fetid night air — a breath that might possibly be her last, Elizabeth thought — she spoke.

“Caroline ... honey ... I can’t ... can’t believe this is really you.”

Squatting on the tombstone, the apparition of Caroline moved her mouth. Her face and jaw muscles contorted with effort; rotten tendons stood out like steel cables beneath the pale skin of her thin neck, but no sound came from her throat.

Elizabeth looked up at Caroline’s lifeless face and cold, staring eyes. This certainly looked like her dead daughter, but she was so far removed from the loving, happy child Elizabeth remembered, that she told herself this could be nothing more than an illusion, a projection.

“I don’t ... I don’t know how to say what I’ve wanted to say to you for — for so long, “ Elizabeth stammered, tears coursing down her cheeks. She tasted salt in the comers of her mouth. “I just — since that night, I’ve been wanting to tell you how much ... how sorry I am that you — that I never wanted for you to die. I hope you can believe that, honey! I just couldn’t ... couldn’t —”

Her voice choked off with a gagging sound, and she watched in horror as the figure of her daughter subtly shifted. The pale, dead skin of her face stretched and started to flake off, dropping to the ground in paper-thin pieces and exposing the worm-eaten bone beneath. Flat, yellow teeth caked with dirt flashed into a widening smile that exuded evil.

This isn’t an apparition, a ghost
, Elizabeth told herself through the roaring maelstrom in her mind.
I struggled with it; it had weight. strength. substance. I’m staring at the actual animated body of my dead daughter!

Caroline’s decomposing face twisted as, with great effort, her mouth tried again to form words. Elizabeth waited, shivering with tension until, at last, her dead daughter raised her arms and reached up into the smoky night sky. With a rough, ripping sound, her body stretched up and up. The gauzy funeral dress disintegrated. Pieces fluttered to the ground like fog. Caroline’s frail arms lengthened and thickened, and her thin chest expanded with a roaring intake of breath. When the thing that had been Caroline spoke, its voice echoed like a cannon shot.

“You ... have ...
failed
!” the visage bellowed, glaring down at Elizabeth. Dull echoes rolled in from the surrounding night, intensifying rather than fading as they reverberated.

Elizabeth crouched in a tight ball on the ground, her hands rising protectively to her face. Between slitted fingers, she looked up into the night sky as the shape that had been her daughter ...

No
! her mind wailed.
This isn’t Caroline! This can’t be Caroline!

... towered above her. It kept expanding until, little by little, the face and figure of Caroline Myers dissolved into that of a grinning, leering demon. Cold power radiated from its green. cat-slit eyes. Filaments of blue flame danced and twined around its blackscaled body, casting dizzily wavering shadows as its cruel mouth stretched into a wide, evil grin. A thick, forked tongue flicked serpentlike from between its pointed teeth.

“You are now within my power!” the horror growled, beastlike, as it reached forward with both clawed hands and made a violent grasping motion. “And now your soul is
mine!
”

NINETEEN

The Sacrifice

1.

“I wish to Christ you’d stop telling me how fuckin’ stupid I’m being,” Norton said angrily.

With Norton’s revolver pointed at the base of his skull, Frank was driving slowly down Mitchell Hill Road, just waiting for an opportunity to catch Norton’s guard slipping, even just an inch. They left the few houses that lined the road far behind them. The headlights of the cruiser washed the tree-walled road as if they were passing down a long, narrow tunnel. Flashes of moonlight cut through the thick leaves overhead.