Cole nodded. “Should I get the shotgun?”
“No. I’ve still got mine. But,” she added as she took a look into the next room, “I don’t think a gun will do either of us any good.”
Cole’s hand reflexively tightened around his weapon. Some of the thorns scraped against his fingers, but he was more concerned by the way the irritation in his hand suddenly felt as if someone was holding a match against his skin. The wheezing voice coming from the next room, however, was more than enough to distract him from a bit of pain.
While keeping her flashlight pointed into the room, Paige held her weapon so the curved blade was ready to be swung.
As he followed her into the room, Cole noticed the etchings on the outside of the door frame. They were similar to the strange letters he’d seen in the other room, but the symbols inside this one had been scratched and clawed until they’d almost been gouged from the brick. Somehow, the marks still showed up like stubborn water stains in a leaky basement. The room stank of urine and worse. There were no furnishings or anything else in that cramped space apart from a few short bones on the floor next to the door and a large figure rocking anxiously in the opposite corner.
The beam from Paige’s flashlight played along the walls and reflected off the smooth, rounded surface of Henry’s corner. Even though it appeared to have been made from the same brick as the rest of the walls and floor, that corner had been worn down to glassy perfection, which hugged Henry’s body like an old rocking chair. Although that body was more compact than the last time Cole had seen it, Henry’s flesh was still gnarled and twisted into something alien and unnatural. A hole in the ceiling opened up to show the bottom of a pile of rubble that could very well have been the same pile he’d scaled while searching the mansion grounds. Dirt trickled in to patter upon the floor in a dusty drizzle that blended nicely with Henry’s voice.
“I’mGod’sfavoriteHespeakstomeandtogetherwemakeh armony,” Henry mumbled in a single, continuous stream. As he spoke and rocked, his head lolled back and forth with a hypnotic rhythm. His lips twitched and his mouth hung open to reveal a few sharpened teeth that had pushed through his jaw and split apart several of his old teeth in the process. “SitandwaitsitandwaitsitandwaitwaitwaitforGodtocallmyname.”
Paige stepped into the room, keeping her hands where Henry could see them. When she spoke, it was in a soothing voice that almost blended in with Henry’s seamless mumbling. “Where’s Misonyk?” she asked. “Where is he?”
When Henry shook his head, the disconnection from his spine made it difficult for him to stop. “I made a friend,” he said in a slower, clearer voice. “He’s…like me.”
From behind Cole, a coarse howl rolled through the subterranean confines. It was definitely coming from outside, but that didn’t make Cole feel any better. The howl didn’t sound like it came from an animal nor did it sound like it came from a man. It was more like the sound a demon would make while getting its bony wings torn off. After the first hellish roar, it tapered off into something more familiar.
Familiar, but still unnerving.
“Uhhh, Paige?” Cole whispered.
She waved quickly at him and nodded. “Can you hear that howling? Are those more like you, Henry?”
Curled up in his corner, Henry looked as if half of his body mass had simply folded in on itself. His arms were wrapped around his knees and his chest heaved with strained breaths. When he rocked forward to get a closer look at Paige, it was easier to see the deep groove that had been worn into the corner behind Henry as well as beneath him. “They weren’t like me. Not at first. God told me to hurt them, so I did. He said they’d help us, and they will. They did. They like to run with me. They…like me.”
“How many did you hurt?”
“Don’t know. God didn’t teach me to count. God told me about you,” Henry said as he bared his teeth. “He said you wanted to kill me.” Furrowing his brow, he clenched his eyes shut and let out a groan that boiled up from the back of his throat. “You tried to kill me! I remember!”
Paige held her weapon behind her back. “I want to hear about God,” she urged as she took a few steps toward Henry’s corner. “What did God say? Where is he?” When she saw the happy gleam in Henry’s eyes, she added, “Can you take me to him?”
Henry kept trying to see what was happening in the shadows behind her, but Paige pulled his attention back to where she wanted it to be.
“I…didn’t mean to make her,” Henry said.
Paige narrowed her eyes and asked, “What?”
“I was looking for someone. She reminded me of the pretty lady from the saloon.”
“Saloon?”
Henry nodded, but could only manage a slight bob before letting his head swing along its normal course. “The golden-haired one. She…so pretty. Her friend was so pretty. I thought she missed me. They all screamed at me. Just like they did the first time I…” Henry’s eyes shifted and his brow twitched. On anyone else the expression would have seemed vaguely contemplative. On Henry it looked as though a caterpillar was slowly crawling beneath the skin of his forehead. “I don’t…I don’t…I hear His voice now. I hear him!” Suddenly, Henry twitched and he flopped into his corner as if he meant to curl into a ball of filthy, knotted muscle. “God don’t like it when I think too hard. AgoodmanobeyshisLordandhonorsHimwithswiftstepswhenHecalls.” In a voice that had suddenly cleared, Henry said, “I’m hungry. God will provide! Godwillprovide! I’m so hungry.”
When he pulled himself to his feet, Paige shouted, “Henry, no! Stay here! Tell me about God!”
But her words were lost amid whatever else was swirling through Henry’s mind. He shoved past Cole and ran across the hall. Cole looked into the den and was just in time to see Henry squat beneath the hole leading outside and then jump straight up through it.
“Cole?” Paige called out from behind him. “Did he get away?”
“I sure as hell couldn’t do much to stop him!”
“Grab one of those Half Breeds,” she said as she anxiously patted Cole’s chest, “and I’ll help carry it to the car.”
“You want to bring one of those dead things with us?”
“That’s right. You made it this far, so don’t punk out on me now. We need to get moving. Half Breeds only howl for a few minutes before they start hunting, and we need to make sure we don’t lose sight of them.” She made a straight line for the Half Breed directly beneath the entrance in the ceiling. “This one’s perfect,” she said while pointing to the werewolf carcass as if it was the prettiest Christmas tree in the lot. “Hand him up to me and we can get the car started before the rest of those things start running.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Just do it!” she growled with more ferocity than the monsters outside.
Chapter 23
The phone in Cole’s pocket chirped in its familiar way. Despite the squealing of the tires against the pavement and the dangerous pull of the steering wheel in his hands, he reflexively dug the phone from his pocket and flipped it open. Angrier at himself for answering the damn thing than he was at the actual ringing, he snarled, “Yeah. What is it?”
“You guys doubted me, but I found the place,” Walter said from the other end of the line.
“What?”
“I’m in Janesville. I’ve been scouting all the parks all day long and I finally found one that fits my vision!”
Turning his head away from the phone, Cole announced, “Walter found his park.”
Paige was in the backseat with the dead Half Breed across her lap. Although the werewolf had shrunken a bit since it was killed, it didn’t shift all the way back to the putrid, gnarled thing it had been while it was asleep, and it was still a long ways from anything human.
“Great,” Paige said as she pulled up a handful of the werewolf’s fur and started cutting it away with her hunting knife. “That just gives us a fat load of nothing, since we’ve already found our own way to get to Misonyk.”
