Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (62 page)

“
Ohhhhhh, yes, yes, yes, yesssssssssssss, let us have this one!
”

“
No!  We need to focus on the other two!  They will open the way for us!
”

Shannon didn’t know when it started, just that it came on strong and had to happen.  It was like when she had the flu and was set to vomit.  There w
as a sense of building up to it; a few heaves, a cold sweat.

“
Let us have her now!  Yesssssss, let us have her!
”

Shannon turned and looked around the room.  “You can’t have me.  No one can.  Not anymore.”

“
The insolence!  The insolent child!
”

“
I will have her!
”

“Leave me alone,” she said.  Her voice cracked, and she felt her bottom lip trembling.  There was a sensation of
something swelling in her belly.  Then a swelling of her brain.  Something laughed just behind her.  It sounded like one of those hyenas on The Discovery Channel.  She heard things sliding on the walls, only she couldn’t see anything there.  It was all around her.  There was a chattering, like those wacky wind-up teeth you bought in gag stores.  The whispers crawled up her spine and over every follicle of hair.  “Leave me alone.”

They didn’t hear her.  The Others did as they pleased.

“I’m…I’m not afraid…”

“
Yes, you are
.”

“No, I’m not!”

“Shannon?” said Mrs. Taylor, stepping over to her.  Officer Regus was right behind her.

A moment before it happened, Shannon felt it, and tried to stop it.  “No…no, please, don’t!  Don’t come any clos
er!  Just stay—”  The vomiting finally occurred, though it was a vomit of a different sort.  It didn’t come from her mouth, but from her everything.  Her pores and her heart.  Her soul and her eyes.

Officer Regus and Mrs. Taylor
were hit by an invisible wave.  They suddenly froze, as if captured in a picture.  She heard both of them screaming, though their faces were perfectly plain.  They were inside there, trapped inside their own immovable bodies.  Though they were frozen, their lungs worked just fine.  They screamed through ordinary faces as first Mrs. Taylor’s left leg spilled open, and out poured her muscle and sinew, swimming across the floor, each piece of tissue suddenly given life.  Officer Regus’s tongue became angry with her, and launched itself out of her mouth and crawled along the floor, leaving behind a slimy trail like a snail’s, only red.

Something was pushing against the walls of Officer Regus’s stomach.

Each piece of their bodies was now an individual living creature on its own.  The eyeballs in Mrs. Taylor’s face sprouted legs like a tarantula, and as she screamed, they climbed out of her face, unfolding membranous wings, and buzzed around the room.  From beneath her skirt dropped her intestines, slithering and moving and looking out at Shannon curiously with various dilated eyes that popped open.

There was still something trying to get free of Officer Regus’s stomach.  Her belly was swollen enough to make her look ready to give birth.

And still, both women screamed in petrified agony.

Shannon wanted to avert her eyes, but she couldn’t. 
Arrested to the spot, she stared unblinkingly.  The hands on Mrs. Taylor elongated, then separated from the wrists, the sound of the bone popping almost as loud as their combined screams.  When the hands finally tore themselves free of the sightless librarian, they plopped to the ground, and each bit of sinew immediately became like tendrils feeling for their surroundings.  The hands felt one another, and started fighting like two cats in heat.  They even made similar sounds.

“
We are almost there!  Yes, yes, yes, yesssssssssssss!
”

Officer Regus’
s belly swelled even larger.  Now, something was squirming against the skin, fighting to get free.  Her police shirt split, as did some of the flesh, but it still would not spill.

Mrs. Taylor’s screams finally ceased when her jaw opened wide, so wide that it broke itself free and pushed each
tooth out of the sockets, the gums now gushing blood.  The lower and upper gums split, revealing eyes that blinked lazily, as though they had just woken from a long slumber.

“
I have these two!  Do you see?  Do you see?  I have gotten through!  Yessssssss!
”

Blood pooled at the feet of each woman.  They both remained upright and as still as mannequins.  Only Officer Regus still screamed, though she was mostly gurgling and choking now. 
She finished screaming when her stomach finally burst, and out fell a bulbous wet sack of viscera, which hit the floor and exploded.  A soupy mix of muscles, bones and tendons crawled away on their own, each tiny piece fighting for its own survival.

“
We are come!
” came a chant.  “
We are come!  We are come!  We are Legion!  We are come!
”

Shannon dropped slowly to her knees, horrified, and unable to speak for a moment.  When she finally did, she spoke through gushing tears.  “Please…please, no more…”

“
She begs!  She begs!  Hear how she begs!
”

“
She said she doesn’t fear us!  She knows now!  She knows!  Yes, yes, yessssssss!
”

All around her, windows cracked and burst.  The glass of water in Officer Regus’s hand, still there,
now shattered, driving shards of glass through her fingers.  Books were flung at her from shelves, and the works of J.K. Rowling and William Diehl and Mark Twain all laughed at her as the physics from another world poured into hers.

Shannon’s eyes rolled to the back of her head.  She closed them, and thought she was about to faint.  It would have been better if she had.

The scene outside of Cartersville Elementary School hadn’t changed much.  Leon sat in his Nissan, parked on the side of the road across from the building.  He’d double-backed, following the current of leaves.  They weren’t bobbing and whipping around in any kind of a breeze—though, the wind
was
blowing—but rather they were just gliding sideways, and without spinning or spiraling or dancing the way they normally would in an airstream.  And…snow?  Was it snowing now?

Leon watched a few flakes land on his windshield.  Within the span of a few seconds, the snowfall began to intensify.  A few flurries at first, then great swaths of white flakes.  He didn’t recall snow being anywhere on the weekly forecast, and Leon checked those frequently.

The squad car of Officers Graham and Belle was exactly where it had been all along.  Kids were letting out, hopping into buses. 
How many of them see it?  How many of the teachers notice the leaves?
  He wagered only one or two, the rest were just too busy ushering kids to the correct bus or directing them to the cars of their parents.

Leon checked his cell phone for the time: 3:20
PM
.  Where were the other cops?  Graham and Belle had said that Cartersville detectives were on their way.  He had a mind to call the guys at APD, the ones that would still speak to him, but worried that, after his public disgrace, he might wear out a welcome fast even with them. 
Who wants to keep listening to a corrupt cop on suspension?

The wind picked up, rocking his car, yet it still didn’
t affect the physics at work on the leaves: they still didn’t dance or spin, just
moved
sideways through the air.  He remembered the rain coming in sideways on Avery Street, just before everything went south, just before David Emerson vanished from the face of the earth.

The
first of the buses were just pushing out, their kid cargo all set, and some of them going crazy in the back.  One of the kids rolled down his window and spit at him as the bus was passing Leon’s car.  The gob smacked against his windshield.  If he hadn’t been focused on CES and the strangeness with the leaves, he might’ve taken down the bus number and reported it to the school.

Then, he saw the glass crack.  It started at one of the windows on the west wing of the school.
  “What—the—fuck?” he said slowly, stepping out of his car.  The snowfall intensified, collecting in his hair and on his jacket.  He watched as what few children were remaining waiting outside on the curb started shouting.  A few teachers turned and saw the cracking windows, then looked back and forth at one another in consternation, then concern.

The ground trembled. 
An earthquake?
Leon thought.  Georgia had a minor fault line that rarely got active enough to stir anything.

The leaves were still moving horizontally towards CES.  The large sign that was announcing
BOOK FAIR FRIDAY
suddenly cracked down the middle, and then flattened as though some invisible giant had stepped on it.  A few windows cracked on some of the parents’ vehicles.  Then, one of the tires on one bus exploded.  Then another one.  Each one sounded like a gunshot.  Flames suddenly leapt out of the back seat of Graham and Belle’s squad car.  Then more flames shot out of the gas tank of a van.  A moment later, both vehicles exploded.

Now, children were screaming, and teachers were panicking.

All of this had happened within the span of a few breaths.  Leon bolted across the street.  The earth was still trembling, but this was no earthquake.  These symptoms were different, yet familiar.

As Leon approached the school
, a wave of foul air assaulted him, like sulfur mixed with sewage and onion breath.  The air felt like it was being sucked towards the school.  As he approached the flaming squad car, Leon was temporarily lifted off his feet—that had only ever happened to him once before during a tornado while visiting family in Connecticut.  He landed back on his feet, staggered past a pair of teachers trying to herd a group of confused and frightened kids, and shouted, “Get them away from the school!  Get them outta here!  Now!”  He didn’t know if any of them had heard, or if any would listen if they had, but he had to try.

When he approached the front doors, a pair of teachers were running out.  One of the glass doors shattered and the glass flew inward, not outward like it would from an explosion.  Leon stepped inside, reaching for his gun by reflex, but finding that he’d left it in the car.  He didn’t e
ven know what he wanted it for—this couldn’t be the Rainbow Room or the
vory
making a move, not like this—but he would’ve felt better having it.

The
marble floors of the front atrium had cracked in places, and were being covered in the dust that had fallen from the ceiling.  A group of six kids were being hustled out by a fat, waddling teacher…a teacher who looked like her hair was smoking, and had burns on her left arm where the sleeve was blackened.

Graham said they moved Shannon to the library
.  Leon had been to CES once long ago to pick up the child of a friend, and remembered the library being near the front lobby…

There!
  It was exactly where he recalled, with a big sign above it saying,
MRS. TAYLOR’S QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
A ROOM WITHOUT BOOKS IS LIKE A BODY WITHOUT A SOUL – MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
.  The door was made of wood, and strangely hot to the touch when he opened it.  Out came smoke, yet it didn’t reek of any smoke Leon had ever smelled before.  It didn’t even make him cough, only gag like smelling a dead body that had spent a couple days roasting in the sun.

He started to step inside, but paused.  Just over the threshold were the bodies of Officers Graham and Belle.  At least, he thought it was them.  Amid a puddle of meats and immolated flesh, there were what appeared to be the charred remains of a police uniform, perhaps two of them.  The gunbelts were strangely untouched, and he reached down to lift one, and unholstered it.

“Shannon?!” he hollered.

The room was filled with this smoke, which he now noted was
dark black with flecks of gray tendrils.  Leon held his breath, and stepped inside.  “Shannon Dupré!”  No answer.  The earth was still trembling.  Outside, he heard more screaming, and another explosion.

The acrid smoke burned Leon’s eyes.  He stepped through, staggering over uneven ground, catching glimpses of strange formations through the smoke.  An overturned bookcase here, an unidentifiable puddle of sludge there, and every so often…well, they
looked like freestanding doors, each one of them painted red and with a large golden horse engraved on them.

With the
smoke swirling around him, he could barely tell when he was about to hit a wall, and did so twice.  “Shannon?”  When he spoke, he gagged at the aroma.  “Shannon Dupré!  It’s Detective Leon Hulsey!”

When the smoke started to clear, he got a better sense of where he was. 
I’m back in a hallway
.  He blinked. 
How did I get here?
  It was a long hallway, with red carpet and fake lit torches hanging from sconces in the walls.  He turned around, looked through the library behind him, at what few desks and bookcases he could make out, then ahead.  It looked like a hallway in a hotel more than any school. 
They must’ve done some remodeling
.  There were two more doors like the freestanding ones, red and with a golden horse engraving, only these were connected to white walls.