Husk

Derrick pulled the hem of his shirt over his mouth and nose. “Go,” he ordered, pushing Mallory in the direction of a trap door leading downward.

Fresh tears filled Mallory’s eyes, but her fear urged her onward.

She scurried down the ladder—jumping the last six feet—and spotted Elsa huddled in the corner of the room.

“Elsy,” she cried. The girl had tucked herself into a ball, knees up, arms clasped around her legs, head buried in her chest. “Elsy, get up. We have to get out of here.”

 The roar of the inferno vibrated in the air. Perspiration streamed off Mallory’s face, mixing with the hail of dust and debris that floated down from the building’s rotted timbers.

 She heaved Elsa to her feet and dragged the girl across the floor. Derrick had already dove into the chute and clambered out of sight.

Elsa stumbled at first, then started moving on her own. Mallory lunged into the chute ahead of her.

The passage quaked in correspondence to a thunderous crash behind them. Mallory’s mind conjured an image of the creature flinging itself through the walls of the tack room, imploding the aged framework under its bulk in one last effort to seize her before she got out of reach.

Why me? Why does it want me?

But when she looked back, the beast had taken Elsa.

Mallory gaped, and a bullet of grief put a hole in her heart.

The chute had been cut in half. A burning heap of ravaged lumber now occupied the area where Elsa should’ve been.

Because of me, because I went first.

Wracked by sobs of anguish but unable to repress the animalistic urge to get away, Mallory hurried up the shaft, toward the silo. Hot air rose at her feet. She maneuvered her way through the opening and dropped to the floor.

“Oh, yeah,” Derrick breathed in the darkness. “No way that big-ass thing can get in here.”

“Help me find the way out,” she demanded.

Except for a weak orange glow pulsating through the chute, the silo was a pitch-black void. Mallory’s hands quested in the dark. She hunted for the exit hatch, unable to remember its exact position in correlation to the barn chute.

She alternated between searching the wall and wiping tears from her eyes. “We have to find the others and get the hell away from here. We may not have much time.”

Derrick’s labored breaths haunted the darkness like unseen ghosts. “What do you mean?” he wheezed.

She remembered how the stranger had seemed so unstoppable, able to resist their harsh attacks without the slightest sign of discomfort. And even when they had eliminated their opponent, the second beast had arrived, having taken shape from the medley of refuse scattered about the floor. Was it possible the two attackers were the same being? And if so, could it switch bodies again? She didn’t want to believe it, yet —

“Oh, my God,” she cried, realizing where she was.

“What?” Derrick pleaded.

Mallory trained her attention on the gloom above their heads. A lightning pulse lit the sky. Its blaze shone down through the silo’s broken cover and illuminated the suicide dummy overhead, dangling from its noose.

Mallory gasped.

Rather than hanging motionless, the dummy thrashed about, fighting its securing line like someone who’d survived the drop from the gallows only to die of strangulation.

“Oh, shit,” Derrick screeched, flattening to the wall. “What the hell is that?”

The lightning faded, and two globes of searing-hot light distended out of the darkness, radiating from the eye sockets of the dummy’s pallid mask.

Screaming a string of obscenities, Derrick turned and attempted to climb back inside the chute leading to the barn. He jumped up and grabbed onto the ledge with both hands, but the thin metal bent under his weight, and he dropped to the floor.

Looking down on them, the suicide dummy shifted and became more relaxed, as if sedated by their fear. With its free hand, it reached above its head and clutched the rope. Its fiery eyes made every action visible. The light gleamed off the old butcher knife Mallory had seen on her first visit and now the dummy’s fingers clamped down on the blade’s handle, changing the prop into a weapon. In one swipe it freed itself from the noose.

“Oh, shit,” Derrick continued to scream, “oh, shit!”

Machinegun bursts of lightning flickered overhead. Passing through the stroboscopic flare, the demonic dummy appeared to teleport toward them, its shape found, then lost, then found again in the blast.

Seconds before the beast cut itself free, Mallory heard the metallic shriek of rusty hinges. She scanned the room, looking for its source.

Ten feet across the silo, a fire-lit square hole opened in the darkness.

“Mallory,” Tim shouted. “Mallory, are you there?”

“Yes!”

 The creature dropped in front of her, blocking the way, casting the cold shadow of a mountain.

Thunder clashed.

The monster lunged.

Tim yelled.

Mallory tried to dodge right, but Derrick’s strong hands seized her shirt and pulled her to the left. He caught her by the shoulders, fingernails digging into her skin. There came a sound similar to cutting through a watermelon rind. Then she collapsed against him, propelled backwards by an irresistible force. Agony clutched every nerve in her body. She looked left, to the strongest source of the pain.

The butcher knife’s handle jutted from her chest.

Her shirt turned red around it.

Stunned silent by disbelief and pain, she looked up from the wound, immediately finding Tim across the room, gazing back in shock. She tried to speak, but couldn’t. Then the dummy jerked the knife out of her in one quick action, the blade trailing thin streamers of her blood. Derrick released his grip at the same instant, letting her fall against the wall. Her legs buckled and she slid to the ground.

She glanced around in a daze—to Tim, to the thing, to Derrick edging away from her. Astonishingly, she didn’t feel any pain now, only a numbing ache that squeezed her upper body.

Maybe it’s not too bad? she wondered. Maybe the blade didn’t go too deep?

But when she raised her other hand to the wound, she reeled with alarm at the feeling of warm blood flowing between her fingers.

Gushing.

CHAPTER 48

Despair seized Tim’s heart, striving to tear it in two.

It had been horrifying enough to find that the creature already occupied the silo with Mallory, but when Derrick yanked her in front of himself to act like a human shield, he’d almost collapsed from shock.

In the middle of the room, the creature stepped back and looked down at Mallory. She was defenseless; one more slash would finish her off. And yet, in spite of her vulnerability, the knife-wielding beast let her collapse to the ground.

Instead, it turned on Derrick.

The boy crept away from where Mallory had dropped, sliding along the silo’s wall in an effort to remain unnoticed. When he saw the thing face him, he screamed and dashed for the exit.

Tim knew from bitter experience that raw speed couldn’t outmaneuver this monster, and he turned his head when the knife’s blade hacked into Derrick’s face, stopping him in mid-stride. The boy collapsed to the floor with a