Rising Fears (19 page)

And why not? thought Jason. Why shouldn’t I get comfort in this fashion. It’s more than I deserve, for letting them die.

"Please, Daddy," said Aaron, and reached out to touch Jason’s arm with a small hand that was half-human, half-monster. A gnarled hybrid of innocence and destructive evil that flickered before Jason’s eyes, as though trying to decide whether to appear as salvation or damnation.

He turned away. Two shots rang out. Jason fell to his knees. "No!" he screamed, and all the terror and anger and anguish and loneliness of the past years were packed into the scream. It was so loud that his voice grew hoarse and raw and he could only sustain it for a few seconds. A few seconds of eternal hell, reliving his family’s death again.

And perhaps worst of all, Lenore was no longer screaming. She was gone.

***

***

Lenore had screamed as long as she could, but finally Cowles – or the demon that was pretending to
be
Cowles – hit her on the head with his gun and she fell insensible to the ground.

She woke in a dark place. Bound and gagged, and she couldn’t see where she was. She glanced around and then screamed around her gag as she saw Cowles, staring at her. The man pressed his knife on her cheek, and leered. "Don’t worry," he said. "I won’t kill you…yet." He licked his lips again with that strange, black, diseased tongue. "Like you all said, waiting is part of the fear. Knowing what will happen. It makes you…delicious."

***

Jason wandered, lost among the mist-wraiths that moved all about him. He reached out to touch one of the ghostly apparitions. The shadow passed right through him, or he passed right through it. One or the other.

"Lenore," he shouted. But it was no use. He had lost her.

A dark shape blossomed ahead of him, and he realized that it was the general store. The destroyed window and his truck were still there. One of the signs that had been affixed to the window flapped gently in the slight eddies of mist that whirled around the window.

It was a child’s sign. Written in black crayon.

go BaK to THE BegINIng

Jason stared at the note for a long moment, then realized what he had to do.

He got in his truck, praying it would still start. It did, and he pulled it out of the store with a screech of ruined gears and growls from a shredded chassis, then began to drive.

***

Cowles grinned at Lenore. He touched her bound arm. Caressed it. "Almost time, my beauty," he said, and again pressed his knife against her face. This time, however, he broke skin: she could feel a trickle of blood drip down her cheek.

"Almost time."

***

Jason rushed dangerously through the mist. He knew where he had to go, but did not know if he could find it.

Ahead of him, two shapes appeared in the mist. A small shape holding hands with a larger one. A voice whispered, "Please, Daddy."

Jason closed his eyes and drove right through the apparitions.

Two shots rang out.

He refused to be deterred, though, driving until he reached the house. Little Sean Rand’s house. The place where this had all started. The beginning.

***

Cowles licked the blood –
her
blood – off the knife. "I think you’re scared enough to eat," he said.

He fumbled with his pants.

Lenore screamed.

"No?" asked Cowles in mock surprise. "No loving, my dear?" He raised the knife high over his head. "That’s all right, I guess. You taste fine as you are."

And he plunged the knife down.

***

Jason rushed down the stairs in time to see Cowles stab at Lenore with the large knife he held.

"No!" screamed Jason, and shot. Cowles jerked once, the knife missing Lenore and embedding itself harmlessly on the wooden work bench he had tied Lenore to.

Cowles, bleeding but still smiling, pulled the knife free and raised it to again attempt to skewer Lenore.

This time Jason took no chances. He emptied almost his entire clip into the rapist’s body, the
demon’s
body. "You…can’t…
have her
!" he shouted. Cowles jerked and jittered, a marionette with cut strings.

The madman took a step toward Jason. Another. He held the knife high.

"I will have her," said Cowles.

"No," said Jason, and shot again. The man fell. Jason went and stood over him, then fired one more time, point blank into the rapist’s face. "I won’t let you," he said as the clip popped, the last bullet spent.

Jason pulled his pocket knife from his belt. Lenore was shaking in clear terror at how close she had come to dying, shaking her head in denial.

"It’s okay," said Jason as he sliced off her cords. "It’s okay, you’re safe now." He removed her gag. She was still shaking her head.

"No," she finally managed as soon as the gag was off.

"It’s okay," Jason repeated. "I got him this time."

"No," said Lenore, and looked at him with shining eyes. "
You
can’t kill
my
fear."

And as soon as she said that, Jason heard Cowles rise up again behind him. Jason spun and shot, but the gun simply clicked on a dry chamber.

"Out of bullets?" said Cowles in mock pity. "So sad." And he stabbed Jason. Nothing fancy, just directly into his chest, an upward stab that reached through his body cavity and pierced Jason’s heart.

Jason had only a moment to be surprised before he fell.

***

***

Lenore watched Jason fall and screamed. Then she screamed again as the stricken sheriff grabbed at her leg from where he had fallen.

"Run," gasped Jason, then closed his eyes and was silent.

Cowles again licked the blood from his knife. Lenore rushed past him, screaming, and the demon laughed. "Run all you like, sweetheart." She turned in time to see Cowles stab Jason again, then kick him hard. Jason’s blood spilled, mingling with the bloodstains that were already on the floor. It must be Sean Rand’s house, she realized with terror. This was where the monster was born.

Lenore ran up the stairs and out of the house, into the mist, crying.

Then she stopped and looked back. The mist eddied, allowing her to see the house clearly for a moment. It was dark and ominous, the power that had been born of a child’s fear infecting the happy place like a malignant tumor.

Lenore squared her shoulders…and went back in. Jason was still down there. Dead, perhaps, but still down there.

She went in, and went down into the basement. Back into Hell.

Cowles was not there. Jason was, though, his mouth bubbling blood as he tried wretchedly to breath. His life was ebbing, his wounds clearly fatal.

"Go," whispered Jason when he saw her. She shook her head.

The sheriff’s eyes closed. She wept.

"So touching," said Cowles, and she spun to see the rapist standing at the foot of the stairs behind her. He flicked an imaginary tear from his eye. "True love conquers all," he said. Then he glanced at Jason’s still form. "Or maybe not."

He touched his crotch, massaging it, and Lenore felt like vomiting. But she didn’t. She held herself back from the precipice of panic into which she wanted to throw herself.

She reached down. Took Jason’s gun from his slack fingers. And she faced her fear.

She tried to raise the gun with trembling hands. The rapist laughed, and as he did his skin went slightly transparent. She caught a glimpse of something reptilian and vile and knew that to be raped by this creature would be far worse than anything she had ever imagined possible. She would be violated not by a human who had lost his humanity, but by a demon that had never had such experience at all.

Then the laugh ended, and Cowles was a man again.

Lenore felt like the gun weighed a thousand pounds. She couldn’t hold it up. She lowered the barrel, and Cowles laughed that hideous, mutated laugh of his. "You can’t do it," he chuckled. "Too afraid. Besides, even if you could," and here he gestured at the gun Lenore held, "no bullets."

Lenore closed her eyes, trembling, waiting for the end to come. She felt Cowles grasp her hand.

But wait! It wasn’t Cowles, it was Jason! She looked down and saw the sheriff put something in her hand. It was the bullet. The golden bullet that he had shown her and Albert earlier: the one that was the remains of the bullets that had killed the sheriff’s family.

She loaded it quickly. She had taken some gun training after her first encounter with Cowles, and though she had never completed the course, she still remembered how to load and chamber the bullet.

She looked back at Cowles. The man was no longer smiling. Something was different.

Lenore aimed the gun at her fear. And
she
smiled.

"No," whispered Cowles.

"You don’t scare me," she said with disgust. And pulled the trigger.

Light speared out of Cowles as the bullet hit him. He bled, but it was not blood that seeped from the wound. Rather, he oozed light. He fell to the ground, and as he fell Lenore once again glimpsed the creature
beneath
Cowles; the demon of her fear.

This time, she knew, Cowles would not miraculously resurrect. He was gone.

She threw the gun away and leaned down to Jason. She put his head in her lap and brushed the blood away from his lips. "Don’t leave me," she said.

Jason’s eyes opened. Just a crack, but even as they dimmed Lenore could see that something about the sheriff was different. Something had changed.

***

***

Jason opened his eyes.

He was in the basement still. But Lenore was gone. So was the blood that had been all over the basement just a moment ago. Cowles had disappeared. All was as it had been before any of this nightmare had begun.

He broke down crying, huge sobs that came from deep within him, from a well of feeling that he had covered over on the day that he had buried his wife and son.

"What is it, my love?" asked his wife tenderly. Then, with an impish grin, she asked, "Are you still worried that I’m having that affair with the gardener?"

Jason laughed through his tears, then said, "My fear. It wasn’t losing you. It was dying…and not finding you there waiting for me."

Elizabeth kissed his cheek and held his hand to her heart. "Some things, even fear cannot steal," she said.

Jason smiled and looked down at his son. The boy was still holding the pad and black crayon that he had held on his last day of life. Comprehension dawned in Jason. "The notes…" he said.

Aaaron smiled that beautiful grin of his. "I drawed you letters, Daddy. Drawed
everyone
letters. Did you like them?"

Jason smiled and hugged his son. "We helped you as much as we could," said Elizabeth. "Sent you the messages, led you to the truth."

"And it worked!" shouted Aaron gleefully.

"Yes, sweetie," said Elizabeth to their boy. "It did." She turned back to Jason. "You saved Lenore. And in so doing, you saved yourself."

She stepped away from Jason then, drawing Aaron with her. Jason reached for them and said, "No, don’t go."

"We have to, Jason," said his wife. "But we’ll be waiting. Have no fear of that."

She smiled, then disappeared. At the same time, Jason cried out as one of the wraiths appeared before him. Then he composed himself as the wraith changed, morphing into someone familiar.