Christmas Eve on Haunted Hill (8 page)

          There was no sign of the
screaming girl, though he could still hear the sounds of her distress.  At
first he didn’t see anyone other than Greg, who was standing at a side of the
bed with the baseball bat raised above his shoulders, poised to deliver a blow
at…something.

          Luke stooped to pick up
the flashlight.  He swept its beam to the left, aiming it at the floor as Greg
brought the bat down in a vicious downward arc.  The beam revealed the bottom
half of a person whose torso wasn’t visible.  Luke saw legs clad in raggedy red
trousers.  It was then that he understood, at least partly.  The screaming girl
was under the bed and this person was trying to get at her.

          The bat made a loud crack
as it struck the assailant’s legs.  Greg delivered the blow with every ounce of
strength he could muster, Luke was sure, but the howl it elicited from the
person in the red trousers sounded more like outrage than an expression of
pain.  Greg raised the bat and brought it down again.  This time there was a
louder crack.  Luke belatedly realized it was the sound of splintering bone. 
In the midst of this, he realized he was hearing more sounds of struggle from
the other side of the bed.  He swept the Maglite’s beam in that direction and
saw another pair of legs jutting out from under the bed.  These, though, were
the shapely and toned legs of a young woman.  A perfect bare ass was also
visible.  Like the guy in the red trousers, she was trying to get at the girl
under the bed, whose screams had given way to frightened, desperate squeals.

          Figuring he could handle
the female assailant without it, he dropped the tire iron on the bed, tucked
the Maglite under an armpit, and knelt down to grip the nude woman’s slender
ankles.  Gritting his teeth, he got his feet braced solidly on the floor and
began to pull her out from under the bed.  The woman screeched in surprise and
began trying to thrash free of his grip.  But Luke managed to maintain his hold
on her and kept working at pulling her away from the bed.

          Once he had her clear of
the bed, he planted a knee in the small of her back to hold her in place and
ducked his head down to peer under the bed.  He had the Maglite in his hand now
and the beam revealed the face of an attractive young blonde girl.  Like the
girl beneath him—and the boy from the stairs—she looked like she was probably
eighteen or so.

          He could also see the face
of the man whose legs Greg was continuing to pummel with the bat.  Except that
“man” wasn’t quite the right word.  This was more of a thing, a creature of
darkness walking around in a hideous, twisted facsimile of a man.  Its flesh
was blackened and leathery-looking.  Rotten.  The eyes were blood-red orbs. 
There was nothing about it that seemed human.  And yet Luke detected a hint of
something subtly familiar in those blackened features.

          The bat rose and fell
again and again, pulverizing bone, but the thing in the decaying Santa suit—for
that’s what it was, Luke saw now—seemed oblivious to the effects of Greg’s
brutal assault.  Its rotted lips pulled back to show nubs of yellow teeth
protruding from blackened gums.

          “
Welcome home, son
,”
it said.  “
Now crawl under here with daddy so I can finally finish the good
work I started so long ago
.”

          Luke felt something dark
and cold slide up inside him and curl around his heart.  There was a painful
tightness in his chest.  Memories from ten years ago came rushing at him
again.  The bodies and pieces of bodies.  All that blood.  His narrow escape as
he fled screaming into the night.

          Seeing her chance, the
girl who’d been trapped under the bed scampered out from under it, surged to
her feet, and ran out of the room.  Luke heard her racing down the hallway and
then thumping down the stairs.  This was followed by the sound of a startled
shriek and then a crash.  Surmising the cause of this wasn’t too difficult. 
She’d tripped over the body at the bottom of the stairs.

          But this wasn’t a
calamity.  She’d undoubtedly gotten another good fright, but she’d get to her
feet again in very short order and run out of the house.  And that was a good
thing.  It was a victory.  It meant he and Greg had accomplished what they’d
set out to do.  They had saved the girl’s life.

          Luke finally managed to
clear the thick lump in his throat.  “Greg, take this other girl and get out of
here.”

          Greg stopped swinging the
bat.  “What?”

          “You heard me.  Take her
and go.”

          Greg grunted.  “No fucking
problem.  But you’re coming with me, amigo.”

          “No, I’m not.  I have to
stay here and let my father finish what he started.  That’s the only way this
ends.  It’s destiny.  I never should have lived in the first place.”

          The thing that had once
been his father laughed softly, a low graveyard rumble.  “
Good boy
.”  It
reached out to Luke with a gnarled hand.  “
Come to poppa
.”

          “Fuck that.  Fuck
all
of that.”

          Greg’s booted feet
thumped on the floor as he came quickly around from the other side of the bed.  Grabbing
hold of Luke’s overcoat by the collar, he hauled him to his feet and propelled
him toward the door.

          “Get moving.  I’m right
behind you.”

          Luke stumbled over an
uneven floor plank and crashed against an edge of the doorframe.  Somehow he
managed to hang on to the Maglite.  When he got turned around and was able to
sweep its beam across the bed, he saw something that shouldn’t have been
possible.  His father had emerged from under the bed and was now standing on
legs broken in numerous places.  Shards of black bone jutted from rips in the
fabric of the red trousers.

          Silas Herzinger—or,
rather, the creature that had once been that man—took an unsteady, herky-jerky
step toward Greg, whose back was currently turned to him.  He began to raise
the heavy-bladed axe clutched in his gnarled hands.  Luke opened his mouth to
shout a warning, terror rising up inside him again as he realized the words
would come too late to save his friend.

          Somehow, though, Greg
sensed the looming threat and whirled around in time to raise the bat and
deflect the swinging axe blade.  This last-second defensive maneuver saved him,
but the axe hit the bat hard enough to send it flying out of his hands.  The
Silas-thing began to draw the axe back in preparation of taking another swing
at its now defenseless intended victim.  Recognizing that the creature’s focus
was only on Greg, Luke knew he had to act now or his friend would die.

          He pushed away from the
doorframe and took a running leap at the creature, hitting it with his shoulder
at about waist level.  The impact caused the thing to lose its footing and they
tumbled to the floor together.  Luke heard the axe hit the floor with a heavy
thump as it slipped from the creature’s grip.  Snarling with rage, the
Silas-thing clawed at his face with its twisted, blackened hands.  A fingernail
traced a bloody groove down one side of Luke’s face.  But Luke had the
advantage of leverage, having landed atop the creature.  He’d also managed to
hold on to the Maglite.  Bracing his free hand against the rough wooden floor,
he raised himself up high enough to take a swing at the thing’s face with the
heavy flashlight.

          The thing howled in pain
and renewed fury as the blow landed with sufficient force to break its
jawbone.  It lashed out at Luke with its talon-like nails again, drawing
another hot line of fire across the middle of his face.  Blood spilled from the
gash and trickled into Luke’s mouth.  But he ignored the pain and swung the
flashlight again.  This time the rotten bits of flesh and sinew holding the
shattered jawbone in place gave way.  The jawbone flew away and went skittering
across the floor.  Now lacking the bottom half of its face, the black wedge of
dead flesh that was the creature’s tongue twitched as it hissed at him.

          Recoiling in disgust,
Luke looked away and noticed the fallen axe.  He grabbed it by the handle, got
to his feet, and tossed the Maglite on the bed.  The situation was far from
under control.  Greg and the other girl were locked in a struggle Luke had been
oblivious to while grappling with the Silas-thing, but now he heard them
grunting and banging around on the other side of the room.  Because the Maglite
had landed facing in this direction, he caught only fleeting glimpses of the
struggling figures.

          The Silas-thing sat up. 
The black wedge of flesh dangling below the roof of its mouth twitched as it
hissed at him again.

          Gripping the axe handle
in both hands, Luke raised it high above his head.  “
Stay down, you rotten
piece of shit!
”

          He screamed as he brought
the axe down with all his might, the heavy blade cleaving straight through the
top of the thing’s head all the way down to its neck.  Bracing a booted foot
against the creature’s shriveled chest, he pried the axe out and swung it
again, this time redirecting his aim so that the blade chopped through the
neck.  The head came away from its shoulders and went flying.  Luke heard it
smack against a wall and fall to the floor.

          Somehow, though, the rest
of its body remained animate.

          It reached for him with
gnarled fingers.

          Screaming again, Luke
swung the axe, burying it in the thing’s chest.  He immediately pried it out
and swung yet again.  This went on for a while.  He kept screaming and swinging
the axe, how many times he didn’t know.  By the time Greg’s hand landed on his
shoulder and stopped him from raising the axe yet again, the thing on the floor
was in several unmoving pieces.

          As he stood there
sweating and panting heavily, the shriveled, severed limbs began to
disintegrate, as did the remaining scraps of the Santa suit.  Within moments,
it was all just a pile of dust on the floor.  This made no sense in any normal,
rational world way.  It didn’t seem like something that could possibly be
real.  But Luke knew what he’d seen.

          It’d been real all right.

          He’d tangled with the
ghost of his father and won.  Or maybe it’d only been partly his father.  Maybe
in death the darkness in his father had become something more like a primal
force of evil.  He didn’t know.  He wasn’t exactly an expert in things
supernatural.  He didn’t even know if he’d truly vanquished the evil forever. 
Maybe he’d only earned them a respite, one they’d do well to take advantage of
while they still could.

          Somewhere else in the
room the other girl was sobbing.  She was no longer possessed, apparently.  He
could only imagine this was somehow related to the destruction of the
Silas-thing’s physical form.  She kept mumbling the name “Spence” over and
over, her voice cracking in anguish each time.  Spence had to be the dead boy
on the floor.  Her boyfriend, maybe.

          Greg let out a breath,
sounding shaky as he said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here, man.”

          Luke nodded.

          He had no argument with
that idea whatsoever.

          Together they helped the
girl up and guided her out of the room.  Her sobbing subsided some as they
hobbled down the dark hallway to the staircase.  When they reached the foot of
the staircase and she saw the body of the other boy, she cried out in anguish
again.  This time the name that came warbling out of her mouth was Bradley.  It
was difficult to tell which death distressed her more, but Luke felt she’d
seemed a bit more broken up over Spence.

          The pretty blonde who’d
fled the house earlier was standing outside in the swirling snow, which hadn’t
let up in the least.  Greg had wrapped the other girl in his coat and had her
cradled in his arms.

          When she saw her, the
blonde frowned.  “Is she still possessed?”

          Luke shook his head. 
“No.  Whatever had her, it’s gone.  It’s over.”

         
I hope
, he added
silently.

          Greg put the other girl
in the back of the Wrangler, closed the door to keep out as much of the cold as
he could, and looked at Luke.  “Ready to get out of here?”

          Luke thought about it.

          He turned away from Greg
and looked at his former home.  There had been good times here, yes, but they
seemed so far away now they might as well have happened in another lifetime or
not at all.  This was only a place of horror now, for himself and anyone else who
visited this blighted ground.  He thought again about how the Silas-thing had
so quickly turned to dust, remembering the stories he’d heard earlier tonight
about how it became corporeal again every Christmas Eve.

          There was only one way to
put a real end to the horror on Haunted Hill.

          They had to destroy the
evil’s home.

          Luke looked at Greg. 
“Let’s torch it.”

          Greg expressed some
concern about the bodies still inside.  Those boys had loved ones who’d want
the remains recovered.  He wondered whether they should go inside and remove
them before burning the place down.  If they left the bodies in there and
torched the place, there could be serious legal ramifications.