B. Larson: Shifting

The sizzling lead spray reached out like a hand, past the Preacher, past me, over Holly Nelson’s ducking head, and caught Nick Hackler full in the face and chest. He fell back with the shock of it, dead before his eyes could close, dead before he hit the cheap dirty carpet of the hallway. I glanced down into his dead eyes for second and thought of those awful squirrel sausages he’d been so proud of.

Then the Preacher’s axe took off the fused arm with the shotgun and the metal barrel crashed to the floor. The bleeding stub flailed, but the Preacher kept Nick back with his left hand. I saw then he had his Bible in that hand, pressed against Nick’s chest. He lifted the axe high again.

“I pass judgment upon thee and thine and cast this thing back into the pit from whence it came!” he cried out. His voice rolled out over us all. The axe removed Nick’s lolling head with a single clean stroke.

We pushed the whole mess over the side and took five more steps forward.

The thing that got the Preacher came next. It was a steel beast, a massive thing with whipping cords and no arms, but it had two legs of round smooth metal. It rattled and clattered and farted blue smoke as it approached. Despite the strange configuration, I knew what it was right away, I had spent too many summers looking at just such creatures, repairing them, to not know one now. It was the contents of a car’s engine compartment, all assembled together into a nightmarish configuration.

It stumped forward and appeared to have no weapons, but very soon its plan of attack became very clear. It would simply push us off into the pit that was now filled with the tree and the flopping remains of a dozen other horrors. It must have weighed near a thousand pounds and the floor sagged under its weight.

The Preacher and I tackled it, grunting, but it was like children tackling a giant. Spark plug wires lashed about and sought to wrap around our necks. The battery opened up chambers and gouted acid.

“Vance, get over here! Heave all at once now!” I shouted and Vance put his shoulder against it. It took another step, ignoring us, and crushed down on Vance’s toes. Vance howled. He struggled but his foot was pinned under those round metal legs-they were exhaust pipes, I realized in a blurry moment.

We heaved together and it shifted off-balance a fraction, and then rocked back.

“That’s it,” gasped the Preacher, straining purple. “Rock it.”

We did as he said and the spark wires whipped harder. Holly cut at the wires with her knife when they wrapped around our necks or wrists.

Thump, thump, we rocked it and the stiff legs were up and off the ground. Inside the thing’s barrel chest, I heard pistons chatter angrily. It farted another stinking blue cloud of exhaust, and then it went over.

Vance and I managed to jump back, but the Preacher went with it. The thing had managed to wrap too many wires around him, and they went over in a lover’s embrace.

“John!” I cried out. And then he crashed down into the basement. I only had time to hope he had gotten on top of it. It weighed so much more, perhaps he had ridden it down, instead of the other way around. It was his only hope for living.

Then it was my turn. More things came. Lots of them.

There a flat metallic thing of chrome or stainless steel. A bumper? A the hood of a car? Or maybe a medical table? I couldn’t tell but my sword rang on it and cast only sparks, made no cuts, and we tossed it off over the side into the pit, screeching and hammering on it. It vanished and we took on a procession of things in its wake. They were smaller things now, but they came faster. Lobby chairs with wooden feet that bent impossibly, a bookcase with attached books that snapped like a thousand hungry mouths, an office computer with a glowing face on the screen, the ficus tree from the lobby, and much more. Some things I could identify, others I could not. I rounded the bend and headed down the homestretch to the lobby. I could almost see the Hag at the table now, and the lantern was shining brightly, more brightly than it ever had. It was as bright as a thousand rainbows in there, almost a bright as the summer sun.

Carlene’s body came at me from behind after I turned the bend. Somehow the Hag had awakened her flesh and gotten her up out of the basement. There wasn’t any hesitation left in me, that had been beaten out of my mind over the last hour. I throttled her with both hands. She thrashed at me with newly grown tentacles, even though she should not have been able to breathe. Vance finished her with his Mauser.

After that, all I could think of was Carlene’s face and that of her baby, who Monika held somewhere back behind me. It made me deeply angry, and that anger replaced the horror and the dread and the fear and kept me going.

It went on for minutes or perhaps hours, I’ll never know how long. It was wild and sad and terrifying beyond any nightmare of my childhood. I couldn’t remember much of the things I fought after Carlene until suddenly there were no more of them coming.

I stood before the Hag and she faced me.

“My champion,” she said. She reached out a delicate hand, as if to caress me. Instinctively, my saber lashed out to take her hand.

I slashed that wrist with all my strength, without hesitation, but it was as if her flesh were made of iron. The blade rang off and vibrated painfully in my hand.

She laughed at me, and I stepped forward, furious, and cut at her neck. The blow did nothing but shock my hand so greatly that I almost dropped the sword.

She shook her head, mocking me. “Child, don’t play the fool. Why would I give you a blade so sharp that you could not be stopped?”

I stared at her and my sides heaved with exertion. My eyes were full of dull hate. I made no attempt to answer her. I thought of the pistol I had carried, but it was long since emptied. I glanced back at the others. Vance was there, so was Holly. But they were stock-still. The lantern had them in its gaze. I saw all of them, except for Wilton. None of them were moving.

“Because, child,” she continued gently, “it is enchanted for sharpness, but it is also enchanted so that it can’t harm me. There is only one thing your sword cannot cut, champion of mine, and that one thing is me.”

I understood then, my sword, the gift she had given me, was a trap. I dropped my saber and stepped forward. She pulled her lips back in curling peels. She reached for my throat as I did for hers.

Her grasp was strong, stronger than any woman’s I’d ever known. I gripped her, but could not squeeze her throat. It was like squeezing a block of wood.

She grinned at me as her fingers sunk into my neck.

“Yield,” she said, “yield and serve me and I will spare the rest of them. I have need of a strong champion, and I have chosen you.”

With a flickering movement, I tossed off my glove. It was no longer my hand. It was still hand-shaped, but there were only three fingers and a thumb now, and those fingers were claws, really, not fingers at all. Thick boned scaly claws flexed in a permanent curl. I applied my warped hand to her neck, and squeezed with all its new unnatural strength.

Her breath became labored. Mine all but ceased. I whistled and choked and swallowed through my closing air passage. I was losing, I knew it, but I figured I might as well make her feel my rage before I died.

“All you have to do is look at it,” she hissed out. “Save yourself, fool. Gaze into the Eye.”

The light in the lantern beckoned me, but I stared at her hideous face instead. The black claw tips dug in, making a row of dimples on her dead-white throat. She should have bled, but I doubted there was any blood left in her body. I felt her neck giving way, folding inward slowly like thick cardboard. There were no more sounds that I could make, I could barely get down a gasp of air now and then.