But that was not all. She found Milly’s name. GODWIN, MILLICENT, MC
The list went back fifteen years, women she’d never known or heard of. Each had an MC typed behind the name, a date of birth, and a date of adoption.
—
Chapter 24
Scierors tied the figures down, laying open abdomens in single swipes. The helots still twitched as their organs were systematically removed. Heads were lopped off with great machetelike blades which whirred in the firelight. Genitals were sliced off groins. Some were thrown onto the fire whole, others were filleted first, the choice meats added to the boiling chettles of blood. Females, fattened for weeks on corn mash, were hauled screaming from the pens. Wreccans expertly flensed them alive as they thrashed, peeling off sheets of skin…
Erik shivered in the dark. These weren’t just visions, they were memories. They were the feks he’d watched in his past. And he’d seen it all again, in his mind, the instant he’d stepped back into the cirice.
He’d been lucky. Zack’s pickax had nailed his hand to the door. He’d reached the shotgun in time; fortunately, there’d been a round in the chamber. Zack’s knife had flashed. Just as it would’ve sunk hilt-deep into his solar plexus, Erik had squeezed the trigger. The 12-gauge blast knocked a hole into Zack’s chest, blowing him six feet across the room.
Gunsmoke rose, and a static silence. Erik dislodged the pick from his hand, bandaged himself, and entered the cirice.
Its darkness greeted him like an old friend, and its smell. The smell was always the same, like pork roast. The heat lingered in the air; embers still glowed from the great cooking pit.
The memories held him in numb stasis. He panned the flashlight through the nave, more pieces of his grim past. The chettles, the irons, carving knives, stokers, and the stone dolmen. Blood streaked the cinder-block wall, where they’d decapitated countless husls, and there were the iron hooks, from which they’d been hung upside down. Erik stared at all this for a length of time he could not determine. Last, he found himself gazing upon the back wall of the nave, at the uneven double-orbed sheet of gray stone, the—
“Night-mirror,” he muttered.
Suddenly, he felt engulfed in rage. He broke, throwing things. He cleared the racks of utensils, kicked over the candelabra. The smaller chettles he picked up and threw, cracking them. The larger ones he could only tip over. Next, he grabbed a sledgehammer—which they used for cracking open heads—and attacked the dolmen with it. He banged and banged, but the thick granite wouldn’t break. With two-by-fours, then, he managed to lever the slab itself off its seat and slide it off the twin plinths. His rage roiled, carried him, and next he was slamming the sledgehammer against the face of the nihtmir. He slammed at it for minutes, almost mindlessly. When he stopped and looked at the slight damage he’d done, he thought:
Of course. The maintenance shed, outside. Lawn equipment and…
He dashed back outside, around the side of the church. He was giddy with excitement. What a perfect way to announce his homecoming: burning the entire church to the ground. The studs in the basement would carry to the ceiling, then everything would go. He rummaged through the shed where they kept the mowers, and there it was, shiny red. A five-gallon gas can. It was almost full.
The pinkened moon followed him back to the stairs. It made him feel watched.
He unscrewed the cap, was about to douse the pile of wood with gas, when he stopped. Had he heard something? No, he
He set the can down, turned.
“No,” he croaked in his ruined voice.
He was standing before the nihtmir. Its dead gray stone seemed to glow. Yes, he could see it, could see
Something moved there, in the pinkened depths.
A face. A—
He couldn’t take his eyes away.
The face smiled at him, a great maw jammed with teeth.
The smile lengthened, drawing up.
Erik screamed. He ran out of the cirice, up the stairs, and into the woods, his fear propelling him like a missile, away, away from that hideous unholy visage.
«« — »»
He lay awake now in the front seat of the van. He was staring up through the trees at the moon. The moon was pink. “Protect me, God,” he whispered. “Protect me.” But in his desperate prayer, he didn’t see God. All he saw was the perverse pinkish moon, and suffused in its sphere, the memory of her horrid face remained. Grinning at him.
—
Chapter 25
It was a dream. Of course it was.
It
Milly was unwrapping her warm legs from Ann’s face. Ann had no breath. “That wasn’t bad,” Milly said. “You’re learning.”
Milly’s naked body shined pale white in the lamplight. Excitement filled her nipples. Ann sat up, wiped her mouth off on her wrist.
“Let’s see if I can find it,” Milly said. She was bending over one of the dresser drawers, looking for something.
But Ann was aghast. Her father’s pallid form lay still in the bed, his face sunken. Needles jammed in his arm led up to inverted IV bottles on wheeled stands. Suddenly, his old mouth popped open, and he groaned.
