Matt Hults - Husk

The two regarded each other with sober eyes.

Tim made several additional strikes with his own shovel, each hit producing an identical hollow-sounding thump.

They cleared the last of the dirt in less than two minutes, outlining a rectangular, flat-surfaced coffin.

“There it is,” Tim mumbled to himself, studying the box’s dimensions.

He had expected to uncover a modern casket made of steel or hard wood, one with a glossy outer finish, copper trim, brass handles, and a curved top. He also operated on the assumption that the coffin might be sealed inside a plastic or concrete grave liner, something he’d learned about after his grandmother’s funeral of several years ago. What they’d found proved to be far less exquisite. Whoever conducted the burial did so at a minimal expense, having utilized a simple particle board container just large enough to hold a body, with no grave liner at all. Realizing its flimsy construction, Tim stepped to the coffin’s edge, indicating for Becky to do the same, afraid their weight might be too much for the cover to hold.

“How are we going to lift it?” Becky asked, wiping her eyes.

He took their two shovels and tossed them out of the grave. “There are steel eyebolts screwed into each corner,” he said, pointing. “They probably lowered it down here using two ropes, one fed through each end. Maybe we could lift just one end at a time if we had something to use as a line. Do you have a belt on?”

“No, but Adam does,” she replied. “He wears the dumb thing with everything he puts on.”

“Adam, we need your belt,” Tim ordered.

“My what?”

Adam and Lisa lingered several yards away, their attention shifting between Tim and Becky in the open grave to the quiescent car in the parking lot.

“We need your belt to lift this thing,” Becky told him. “Now, hand it over and start helping, or you and me are through.”

The boy studied her expression for a moment, then began unbuckling the leather braided belt. “All right,” he replied, handing it over.

Tim took it and squatted down over the casket’s lower end, furthest from the headstone, over the dead man’s feet. He squeezed the belt’s end through one of the dirt-caked eyebolts, then threaded it back through its own buckle to form a closed loop.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.” He helped Becky out of the grave, then climbed out himself. “We’re going to need everyone’s help for this.”

The sky above them launched tortuous spears of light toward the ground. Several shots vanished just beyond the tree line, brightening the entire region. Everyone flinched with the immediate explosion of sound that followed.

“Shit,” Adam screeched. “That was close.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tim responded. “Now, everyone get over here and pull.”

Adam and Lisa shifted nervously but finally joined Tim and Becky at the grave’s brim. They took hold of the belt and began hauling up the casket. After three good tugs, the box broke loose of the earth compacted around its perimeter and lifted several inches upward.

“Yes, that’s it.”

The coffin tilted to the tethered side and raised farther, a foot off the ground, two feet.

When the container’s opposite end had come away from the grave’s far wall, Tim went to the headstone. From that end of the hole, he lowered himself back into the grave, landing where the coffin’s head had rested. There, looking down at the sloping casket, Tim saw its surface highlighted by another flash of bright lightning. For a split second he imagined he could see straight through the coffin’s lid, the lightshow allowing him a glimpse of the corpse inside, eyes open, looking back at him.

He banished the thought and dug his fingertips under the casket’s edge before it could return, lifting while the others pulled.

Inside the slanted coffin, the body of Kale Kane shifted with each tug.

Frank sped north on County Road 19, summarizing for Paul what had taken his daughter and what the monster intended to do with her.

“A sacrifice?” Paul blurted.

Frank nodded, shouting his reply over the vehicle’s blaring engine. “This thing is going to kill your daughter and harness her life energy—her considerably abundant life energy—to permanently bond itself with Kale Kane.”

“After bringing him back from the dead? You can’t be—”

“I am serious, Mr. Wiess,” Frank interrupted. “And everything I’ve said will be nothing compared to what will happen if we don’t save your daughter.”

Paul shook his head, his eyes shimmering in the street lights. “But it doesn’t make sense. Mallory doesn’t hear voices or see visions or anything like that. She worries about what boys will think of her hair style, or how many friends she has on her Facebook page. She’s a normal teenage girl.”

“Her power isn’t something you can see,” Frank replied. “She may never realize how gifted she is, but the entity knows it, and that’s all that matters right now.”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out an automatic pistol. “Have you ever used one of these before?”

Paul gazed at the gun as if it were a poisonous snake. “No.”

“There’s a double safety,” Frank said. He tapped a small button near the trigger and depressed it with a click. “The other you press with the thumb of your firing hand, got it?”

Paul nodded.

Frank passed the weapon over, and Paul accepted it with a hesitant hand.

“Keep a firm grip,” Frank said. “It’s loaded and chambered. You’re ready to shoot.”

“Fantastic,” Paul replied.

“I know how much this is for you to have to accept on such short notice, but believe me, it’s all true. If we don’t stop this beast from getting possession of Kane’s body and killing your girl, we won’t just be up against one of these things but an entire legion of them.”

“A legion of what… Demons?”

“Spirits, demons, monsters—it doesn’t matter what you call them. It simply boils down to Good and Evil. The problem with humanity is that we divide ourselves on the definition of what is Good and end up killing each other over whose beliefs are right.”

Ahead, Frank saw the Lexus that had rammed his Blazer sitting unattended on the roadside, along with an unoccupied squad car. Beyond them waited the turnoff to the cemetery.

“On the other hand,” he added, “Evil remains constant.”

Melissa looked around, searching for what could be done next.

In the last several minutes she had coordinated with other police and several civilians to gain control of the situation along Highway 55 and mold order out of the chaos.

Two backup squad cars arrived seconds after Frank had left the scene, one responding from the prowler call at the Weiss residence, and another from the Damerow farm investigation. With the combined assistance, they attended to several problems at once and treated the situation.

Dangerous debris had been cleared from the street.

Flares were set up around Hale’s cruiser while his injuries were seen to.

An ambulance was on its way.

In addition, while the workers completed those tasks, Jimmy Gibbs backed his battered but operational eighteen-wheeler onto the roadway’s shoulder, allowing the backed-up traffic to pass.

With a majority of the mess sorted out, Melissa removed herself from the scene to go after Frank. Hurrying down the road, she went to where Rebecca Fleming waited near her friend’s overturned Ford.

“How are you doing now?” Melissa asked.

Rebecca glanced up and her teary expression answered the question.

Melissa knelt next to her. “Look, I have to go after Frank, but I need you to stay here and do something for me, all right?”