Vampires in Devil Town (24 page)

Forty-five

Rachel felt as though she had gone on autopilot. She had no idea what awaited her and she didn’t really care. She opened the front door onto the sight of the two corpses. She nearly slipped in a puddle of foul smelling blood. It looked like one of the girls had been violated as well, her pants around her ankles, her underwear shoved to the side. Rachel looked away. She didn’t want to see that. Knowing these two had been vibrant teenage girls only ten minutes ago made her want to burn these people out even more.
  The house quivered around her. She didn’t like the way it felt but she didn’t really pay it any notice. She didn’t like the way a lot of things felt. She resigned herself to the fact that she didn’t really have a choice in any of those matters.
  She knew if there was something in here it would have to be down in the lower sections of the house. Whoever stayed in this house had to have a place to hide during the fire. But she was not in a hurry to go down there. She figured it was best to make sure the upper floors of the house were empty before walking into the very heart of the beast.
  Moving slowly toward the back of the house, she saw the staircase ascending to the second floor. Hearing voices coming from up there she closed her eyes, straining to listen, desperately hoping one of the voices was Jacob’s. Try as she might, she couldn’t figure out if any of the voices were him or not.
  Brandishing the can and the lighter in front of her, she slowly walked up the stairs. Once on the landing she turned to her right and gently pushed open the bedroom door. She didn’t know what it was she witnessed upon opening the door but she knew she didn’t have time to figure it out.
  A man and woman lay on the bed. The boy she had seen earlier crouched on the far side of the bed, his mouth clamped to a striking blond woman’s neck. Something that looked like a book lay in the middle.
  Rachel rapidly approached the bed and began spraying the can. She didn’t need to wait for an explanation. These people had to be the Devils. If they weren’t, she was willing to live with that mistake. The only person in this house she was concerned about was Jacob. Nothing else mattered. And if it turned out that Jacob was dead then she would find some way to destroy this house. She wouldn’t care how much time and energy it took.
  The shooting flames brought the threesome out of their collective stupor.
  The boy removed his mouth from the woman’s neck and looked at Rachel, confusion in his eyes.
  The bed caught fire and began burning quickly.
  The man stood up slowly in the bed.
  “Take her!” he shouted.
  Zack lunged across the room at her. Rachel backed up and shot fire at him. It caught on his clothes and he stood there as if deciding to pursue her or put out the flame.
  Rachel turned to run. Jacob was not in this room and that was who she had come for. She darted down the stairs, wondering if all of the people upstairs were going to follow her.
  
  Ilya and Ernst followed Rachel out of the room. Ilya was also weak, paler than usual.
  “Ernst? What’s happening, Ernst?” she stammered.
  Zack stood at the foot of the burning bed, flapping his arms and screaming, “Help me! Dear God, I’m burning!”
  But the room was now empty, save for him. He was all alone. Feeling betrayed. If they had just followed his plan then everything would have worked out fine. He wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. He would see their plan never came to fruition. They couldn’t use him if there wasn’t anything there. What did it matter whose bodies the old gods inhabited? He had his heart set on Charlotte. Something had drawn them together. But Ilya and Ernst hadn’t even listened to him. Not only did they not even consider his plan, they’d made him use Charlotte as meat. Not even worthy of being consumed by the Dark Fire. And Zack, caught up in the violence of the moment, had taken her blood, had taken her sex, as if that could somehow bring her back to life. It hadn’t. And now he was alone and confused and mad as hell.
  They wouldn’t expect him to do this. He found something sweet about that revenge. Maybe he was still feeling some lingering madness but he liked that thought. He was the sure thing. He knew that’s what Ilya and Ernst thought.
  A sure thing.
  Fuck them.
  If life was this painful, why would he want to continue living after death?
  His skin burned.
  The bed burned before him, its flames licking the ceiling. The book still lay in the middle of the bed. Zack hoped it would burn too.
  Spreading his arms, he collapsed into the bed, throwing his body on the book, merging with the flame and tasting darkness.
  
  Following the rumble that now threatened to topple the whole house, Rachel found the door to the lower level. She pulled it open and darted down the slippery steps, nearly losing her footing. At the bottom of the steps was another door. She pushed this open and entered a room that looked like some kind of spartan dining room, adorned only with a large table.
  This room contained two doors. The rumbling seemed to come from her right and she was convinced she also heard screams coming from that direction. She darted through the room and opened that door.
  This door opened onto something that looked like the interior of a church. There was a large altar at the far side of the room, blood covering its smooth gray surface. At the back of the room was another door. She ran to meet the door, pushing it open to see the raging Dark Fire and, in front of the flames, a crumpled form.
  God, she hoped it wasn’t Jacob.
  She ran to the person on the floor, not even realizing the fire didn’t seem to generate any heat. She put a hand on his shoulder and he turned his face toward her. Whatever it was, she thought, it had once been Jacob. The sight of him removed the life from her body. She collapsed onto the floor and screamed, tears pouring from her eyes.
  She wasn’t even aware of Ilya and Ernst entering the room behind her.

Forty-six

Stranger things happened when Ilya and Ernst entered the room.
  The Dark Fire pulsed with even stronger life, emitting a white light that was nearly blinding.
  Rachel crouched next to Jacob, holding him, rubbing him, saying over and over, “Oh, Jacob, what have we done?”
  Ernst stormed across the room, Rachel snapped away from her ministrations, staring up at the intimidating man.
  There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. She was lost. All was lost.
  Ernst grabbed her from behind her neck, pulling her up, pulling her close to him and whatever power she thought she had left. He raised his other hand, prepared to swipe it across her neck.
  And stopped.
  He looked behind her, his eyes growing wide.
  It pleased Rachel to see that look in his eyes. She thought, maybe, it was fear.
  His hold loosened.
  Rachel turned toward the fire, following his gaze. She was prepared to charge into the fire. She would do that before letting him and his bitch get to her.
  Tongueless, near death, Jacob moaned from the ground.
  Rachel’s eyes adjusted to the light of the fire and yet another wave of disbelief grabbed her, pulling her into the undertow.
  People emerged from the fire. They looked like ghosts. They had the coloring of ghosts but these people were more substantial. They stepped from the fire, ethereal, and gained definition the farther they walked from it.
  Sometime during the proceedings, Ilya had moved next to Ernst, leaning on him.
  “We have to get out of here,” she said.
  “No!” Ernst shouted.
  “Yes,” Ilya returned. “This is the end. We have to run.”
  “I’ve waited lives for this!” Ernst screamed, shoving Rachel out of the way as though she stood between him and his grand prize.
  The people surrounded Ilya and Ernst, a multitude of hands taking them down to the floor. The ghost things, the other Devils, fell upon them, each of them squirming for a piece, squirming for a taste, stealing the flesh and drinking the last bit of life from Ilya and Ernst.
  Rachel moved closer to Jacob, feeling his warmth against her body, happy he was still alive.
  The group of people surrounding Ilya and Ernst laughed as they suckled and Rachel didn’t think she had ever heard a sweeter sound than that.
  “It’ll be okay,” she whispered to Jacob, taking his bloodied head into her lap.
  The ghost people were now tearing Ilya and Ernst apart. Rachel could hear the sickening rending of flesh as they did this. She couldn’t bear to watch until the screaming had stopped. When she was left with the roar of the fire and the somewhat contented moans of the dead, she turned, watching as they carried the remains back into the flames.
  After the last of the Devils had filed back into the Dark Fire, a bright light filled the lower chamber of the house. It was a cleansing burst of fire. A hungry burst of fire, devouring the house around them, taking it back into whatever dimension it had come from, leaving Jacob and Rachel to sit in the hollow, trying to piece together what had just happened to them.
  Rachel spread Jacob out on the ground and moved her hands over him. She knew she wouldn’t be able to undo the damage in a single night but, given time, just about anything could heal. For now, she only hoped to make him well enough to walk back up to his car. She was way too tired to carry him and she just wanted to go home.
  
  Surrounding the house, the other Devils, in all their various forms, watched…
  The house was no longer burning. But something was different. The predatory Devils, the ones who took the shape of wolves and dogs, gave pause. They no longer felt protected. There was a time when they would make sure no harm could come to the two powerful figures that lived in that house. But that time had passed. Now they knew they were being watched by the good Devils. The ghosts, the ones who inhabited the trees.
  They didn’t know what to make of this.
  And so they watched.
  And they waited.

Conclusion

Several months later, Jacob lay on the bed in the guest room of Rachel’s parents’ house. They had both agreed they would not take him to the hospital. She thought her parents would go insane at the sight of Jacob, demand a doctor be involved. That was when Rachel had broken down and told them everything. The legend of the Devils was powerful in Lynchville. Just the mention of it made them stop questioning her.
  Rachel had nursed Jacob back to health with her hands. It was a long tedious process, running her hands all over him, all over his broken places. He did not heal all at once. The damage was extensive. He was still not up and moving more than a couple of steps at a time.
  Rachel thought they needed to put the incident behind them. At least for a while. She knew Jacob knew far more about the situation than she did. She waited to restore his tongue. She didn’t want to know what happened to him for the moment.
  Eventually, she couldn’t put it off any longer.
  He begged her. Scrawling on a little notepad beside his bed, he begged her to give him the gift of speech once more.
  One miraculous and oddly twisted afternoon, Rachel clenched her mouth over his. This was the first instant they had shared any erotic contact since that night. Her tongue explored his mouth, at first so empty. Gradually, she felt the tongue come back to life, growing, taking shape and awkwardly moving against hers.
  His speech was clumsy at first. He didn’t like the way it made him sound so he practiced only while alone. After nearly a week, while Rachel sat bedside and massaged his knee, he said, “So, we did it again, didn’t we?”
  “I’m not exactly sure what we did but, yeah, we did something.”
  “Do you think that’s the end?”
  “Honestly?”
  “No, lie to me. That should be the basis of every relationship, I think.”
  “Oh, I see, he’s got his tongue and his sarcasm back.”
  “Fuck you. Yes, honestly.”
  “No, I don’t think it’s over. Is that what you want to hear?”
  “No, not really.”
  “What the hell happened back there? I felt like I walked in on something I knew nothing about.”
  “Oh, well, they decided to fill me in on it as they went about rendering my body. I think we stopped them from some kind of heaven they called the Dark Fire.”
  “How did we do that?”
  “Their bodies were vessels for some kind of god. Each of them contained one of these gods. They said the gods needed some form of human vessel and they had served that role too long. The boy you saw, he was to be one of the new vessels.” Jacob took a deep swallow, looking almost like he wished he didn’t have his tongue back. “You were to be the other one.”
  “Jesus,” she said. “So what happened to the gods?”
  “I think the others carried them back to the Dark Fire. There was a ritual they were trying to perform but they weren’t able to carry it out. The gods could still be out there, looking for bodies to inhabit.” He paused, looking out the window. Rachel couldn’t tell if it was a look of longing or a look of fright. “They could be in me or you.”
  “For now, let me pretend you didn’t say that. I haven’t sacrificed anyone yet, so I prefer to think I’m evil god free.”
  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
  “What else are we supposed to do?”
  “I’d like to leave.”
  “So when are we planning to get the hell out of this town?”
  “How ‘bout as soon as my legs will carry me?”
  “Sounds great.”
  “You know, if we get married first, we can call it a honeymoon.”
  “That sounds even better.”
  She leaned over the bed and kissed him on the forehead, trying not to smell the fear leaking from his pores. She held his hand while they sat quietly, looking at the early summer sunlight through the windows and thinking about the beautiful fire that burned beneath the Sad House.

Wayne Hixon lives in Illinois where he has no phone and no television.
Vampires in Devil Town
is his first novel. You can email him at [email protected].