with laughter as his spasms grow worse and he begins to spin like a top.
“Jesus God!” Snow shrieks, falling away in horror.
“Go!” Starker grabs Snow and throws him toward the stairs. “Go!”
Rooster stands paralyzed, holding the flashlight on Nauls, who comes to rest, laughing through the blood and pain, holding an eyeball in each hand as if in offering, hideous moist strings dangling from them and dripping blood. “We’re going where there are no eyes,” he says, his voice little more than a garbled growl now. “Where everyone is blind… yet everyone sees.”
Blood suddenly spews from his mouth, eye sockets, nose and ears. Like something has exploded deep inside him, the blood sprays free as his screams return, this time as raspy, animal-like squeals. “He’s here,” he gurgles, choking on the blood as it pours out over his bottom lip. “He’s—”
Nauls flies backwards, crashes into the far wall like he’s been thrown by something savage and powerful. His body slides to the floor, swallowed by the shadows there.
Rooster feels Starker’s enormous hand clamp onto his arm and yank him back just before he fires a burst from the AK-47 into the darkness. Together, they run for the stairs. “Don’t look back!” Starker yells out.
But it no longer matters.
The darkness, and all that dwells within it, follows.
In the room upstairs, Snow lurches about, lost in the dark, his guns at his side and his mouth open, soundlessly forming words—perhaps prayers—while something speaks to him from the surrounding shadows only he can hear. The voice of a woman, a young woman asking him why, her voice oddly hollow as she shuffles about nearby, hidden in darkness, her breath cold and rapid on the back of his neck. But when Snow turns there is only night, moonlight and fog beyond the blown-out windows. The scarecrows watch a field of weeds, a dead forest and a path to nowhere, an empty road no one will ever cross again.
The voice, different now—neither male nor female and no longer entirely human—whispers his name.
Snow wants to run for the door but can’t move. He knows, understands for the first time, what is coming, and still cannot move. He trembles and begins to urinate. As the .45s drop from his hands the fire appears from nowhere, sweeping over the ceiling then down the wall and across him, engulfing his body in seconds. Oddly, Snow feels no burning sensation, no pain, only sorrow and hopelessness the depths of which he never believed possible. He stumbles, flaming arms and hands held out in front of him as if to embrace some invisible presence. He sinks to his knees. Eyes wide, he stares at something through the growing inferno and laughs maniacally.
The last thing Snow sees is Starker and Rooster rushing up the stairs.
Outside, Landon runs with all his might, the tall grass and overgrown weeds slowing him as he wades toward the road. The van, he thinks, just have to make it to the van and I’m free. He ignores the scarecrows’ dead stares and does not look back, even when he’s certain there is something right behind him, closing in with impossible speed and ready to swoop down and pluck him from the field like a hawk closing in on a mouse. He bolts through the last bit of field and jumps the final embankment down to the road. Pitching forward on landing, he catches himself, and now on pavement, takes a quick look back. No one coming, nothing behind him. He pulls the revolver from his belt just in case, sees the farmhouse in the distance. It’s on fire, the flames creeping up through the roof, lapping night. He turns and runs for the van but pulls up short after only a few strides. It’s gone. He looks around frantically. This isn’t possible. He parked it there himself, out of the way, just as Rooster instructed.
“Yeah, I need this shit.” He heads off down the road, running right down the center lane through the darkness; the fog-shrouded moon his only guide. Every now and then he looks back. The farmhouse, the scarecrows and the fire grow fainter and fainter until the night swallows them whole and he is alone in the darkness.
He slows his pace a few minutes later, finally opting for a fast walk. His chest heaves as he tries to catch his breath and a sharp pain digs at his side. Landon keeps moving, knowing eventually he’s bound to run into something—a car, a house—anything. He notices a slight incline to the road. He pushes on, trying to forget the things he saw back there. All he needs is a car. He can hotwire anything and be long gone from this place for good. He kicks it back up a notch, jogging up and over the sloped portion of road. In the distance, he sees an outline of a building. Set back quite a distance from the road, it is merely a silhouette, but a hulking one. Must be a house, he reasons, then increases speed and veers off pavement onto grass.
Running across the field, he watches it become more and more defined the closer he gets. Within minutes Landon realizes it’s a barn.
Beyond it is a farmhouse.
A farmhouse guarded by scarecrows…a farmhouse in flames.
“No fucking way.” He comes to a stop between the barn and the house. He’s gone in a circle, but how is that possible? He ran straight and in the opposite direction the entire time.
Shadows drift through the weeds before him. Landon steps back and raises the revolver. He can hear screams and smells a suspicious burning odor. Beyond that of burned wood, it is sickeningly sweet and similar to the stench of charred meat.
A baby cries somewhere nearby. Landon whirls in the direction to find only darkness. Blind with terror, he runs but trips over something and pitches forward into the grass and dirt. He scrambles to his feet, sees what he fell over. A wooden stake…a cross of wood…
The scarecrow, he thinks, his mind shattering. It’s gone.
From behind him, shuffling movement.
A strange shape comes toward him through the tall grass, hobbling like a crippled man.
Only this is not a man.
Landon fires the revolver. Keeps firing even when the revolver is empty and makes only clicking sounds.
And then something coarse covers his head, cold dead hands wrap around his throat and he hears another scream shred the night, unaware that this one is his own.
In the farmhouse, Starker and Rooster run through the burning front room, trying to find a way out in all the madness and confusion. The darkness is alive, shifting and thick with the shrieking cries of countless dead, nameless lost souls all wailing in the night with violent fury. Rooster sees a pillar of fire and realizes it is Snow kneeling before them, his body wrapped in blankets of flame.
Like a cold winter wind, something follows them up the stairs, gusts into the room and cuts through them. It feeds the flames and Snow’s body becomes a firestorm. Yet he doesn’t topple. Instead he struggles slowly to his feet.
Rooster shoots him, emptying his gun.
Snow finally topples over and the fire spreads, racing up the walls and along the floor in search of more victims.
The strange wind passes, surging out to the field beyond the doorway, and Rooster feels some part of himself go with it. He stumbles after it, dazed and fighting the gripping cold suddenly rising from the depths of his body. He finds Starker standing next to Snow’s body, staring at it with a strange look of…satisfaction? He throws the AK-47 aside, drops down, and eyes ablaze with passion claws at the burned heap that had once been Snow, ripping charred meat in stringy handfuls he hungrily devours.
And as the fire spreads, Rooster understands. He feels it too. Lust not for sex but violence, death, mayhem, destruction and pain…as if these things have been his destiny all along. Rather than reload the 9mm, he drops it and reaches for a combat knife tucked in his boot. He slides it free, already salivating as he closes on Starker.
Behind him, Nauls slowly ascends the stairs, his hollow eyes piercing the smoke and darkness, his mouth twisted into a hideous demonic smile.
Rooster slams the blade deep into Starker’s lower back, pulls it free and stabs him again. He seems not to notice at first, but then collapses from his knees to his side and lies there laughing, his large teeth
