This place? This was where they were taking her?
She was led up the stairs, pushed through the doors. It was a narrow edifice, the walls pressing in from either side, rough-hewn beams overhead. A crowded aisle, pews to either side. Like some goddamn frontier church in Dodge City or one of those places, she thought.
Claustrophobic.
Cave-like.
Yes, the den of animals, the warren of beasts.
She smelled the stench of death right away. There were shadows clustering amongst the pews, many of them. The shadows came out to greet them, becoming people or something like people. They rushed in towards her. Dirty, oily hands fondled her. Moonstruck faces. Grinning sawtoothed mouths. All those people were taking hold of her and the smell that came off of them…sweat and body odor, blood and meat and filth.
She was pushed up towards the altar.
It smelled like urine and bloody viscera.
Bodies were dumped there, three or four of them, all slit open like salmon, what was inside carefully cleaned out and dumped into buckets. And high above, where Christ had spent so many years nailed to the cross, there was another effigy now. Christ was gone.
There was a corpse nailed up there.
The corpse of an obese woman that was dark with dried blood. Her breasts were immense and flabby, her stomach swollen, her thighs pale and meaty. She was open in places and Macy could plainly see the crude black stitchwork that held her together. But the suturing had burst in places and it was evident that she had been stuffed with dry leaves, hay, cane straw.
Yes, gutted…then stuffed.
A totemic effigy.
A straw hag.
Macy stared up at the abomination speechless. It was profane, grotesque. Candles had been thrust into the corpse-woman’s mouth and the hollows of her eyes. They were lit, burning, guttering, casting eldritch shadows over the blood-drenched obscenity the altar had become.
The girl yanked Macy’s lead and tossed her to the altar, into the dirty straw and bloody carpet, there amongst the slaughterhouse of human husks, limbs, and snaking entrails. Macy squirmed in the bile and slime, staring up horrified and awestruck at the plucked, stuffed, and slit goddess of the new church…
61
Louis was running.
Maybe from the town and maybe from himself, but mostly from the clan coming after him. He was running and running, trying not to think of what had just happened back there. Trying not to think of anything else but the clan hunting him down. Trying not to see Michelle and that look in her eyes or to remember that it was her, really, that had put the clan on him.
He couldn’t think about that.
Because the only reason he’d stayed in this goddamn town was because of her and now she was a stranger, a sadistic queen wasp with her very own hive. If he hadn’t stayed, then he would not be a player in this nightmare and Macy would be with him. Not out there. Not dead or raped or worse…just like them.
Not now, though, not now.
He couldn’t worry about any of that now.
Already his lungs were aching and his feet were getting sore, his clothes drenched with sweat. Jesus, he was too old for this shit. Just way too old. He needed a hiding place, but everything he saw-house, alley, or hedgerow- just looked alive with threat. Dark places where gnarled hands could find him, bring him down and do the most awful things.
He rounded a turn on Main Street and paused. He could keep going and maybe run right out of town…if he could keep this up for another mile or so. Or he could find a car or a building, some place to hide. There simply wasn’t the time to check every single parked car for a set of keys. If he started that, they’d be all over him.
He looked down Main, looked down the side streets and interconnecting avenues. He stood there, hands on his knees, panting and panting. Jesus, he just couldn’t go on like this. If he didn’t find a safe place or a car to get out of town with, then this would go on until dawn, maybe even longer than that. The clan would run him right to death like dogs running a stag.
Main Street twisted and turned like the back of a snake, lots of sharp corners and tall buildings and leafy trees to obscure things, little rolling hills. There were so many places to hide. He imagined that most of the stores and buildings on Main would be locked. One or two might be open, but again, he just did not have the time to be checking doors. His instinct was telling him just to go home. But if Michelle wanted him dead, then she would no doubt direct the clan there.
If she remembered where home was.
Louis looked behind him and, yes, they were coming. He saw them crest a hill behind him, maybe a dozen of them washed down by the moonlight. He could hear their pattering feet and their shouting voices. Why the hell didn’t they just give up? Why didn’t they go after someone else?
Maybe there isn’t anyone else, Louis. Maybe you’re the last one.
Christ, that was unthinkable. If it were true, if there were thousands of them out there…he’d never make it. He just couldn’t make it.
He took off running, getting a second wind now. His body was aching and he was just glad that he had not smoked in like seven or eight years. He’d picked up jogging about three years back, but that hadn’t lasted. He wished now that he’d kept up with it.
More of them now.
The fast ones had come over the hill first. The young and fit ones, the middle-aged people lagging behind. But now they were all coming down the hill.
Louis put forth a burst of speed, coming around one of those sharp corners and sprinting through shadows thrown by a row of buildings. He darted down an alley, came out the other side and jogged down an avenue, cutting through yards and the parking lot of a gas station. He paused, trying to catch his breath. He could still hear them.
He ran down a narrow side street until he linked up with Providence, which itself ran south to north right through the middle of town. He crossed the Providence Street Bridge which spanned the Green River and the sounds of his pursuers faded into the distance. He kept going, trying to put as much distance between himself and them as possible. If he followed Providence Street for about six or seven blocks, 7 ^ th Avenue would cut across it and then it was just a short hop to Rush Street. If he wanted to do that, of course. And he was thinking he did. Because he knew that neighborhood and though people were crazy there, too, he knew where quite a few of them kept the keys to their cars.
Providence was one of those streets that was partially commercial and partially residential. You’d pass two blocks of private homes, hit a couple bars, maybe a furniture outlet or a truck depot, pass some more houses and there was a beer distributor and a little hole in the wall hamburger stand or a fried chicken joint. Lots of little shops and taverns, their storefronts changing all the time as an archery supplier went out and an upholstery place came in. Lots of the storekeepers lived right above their businesses as their parents and grandparents had.
Louis had grown up just off Providence on Middleton Street. Though his parents were long gone as were most of his relatives, the house he grew up in still stood, though the second story had been taken off following a fire fifteen years before. But he had grown up on south Providence Street and he knew every nook and cranny, every courtyard and cul-de-sac. Every old empty shed and tucked away warehouse. When he was a kid there’d been a big red barn on the corner of 5 ^ th Avenue and Providence with a large fenced in yard where they used to play. Years ago it had been a livery stable, but that was long before his time as were the old street cars that used to run up and down Providence. The tracks were still there, he was told, under the present street, along with the remains of the brick road that had housed them.
