Matt Hults - Husk

She straightened up. “If it’ll help get our kids back, then yes, anything.”

“Good. Now, I don’t have a whole lot of time to explain, so you’ll just have to trust me. Once the police are done here, send them to this location—it’s an old cemetery off 19.” Melissa handed Rebecca a crude map she’d penned onto a page from her notepad, leaving out the details of what awaited them there. “Tell them that’s where I went, and where your children have been taken. That’s all I can really say without sounding insane.”

Rebecca studied the directions and nodded her understanding, though the expression of fear never departed her features.

Over the black fields on the other side of the road, arcing bolts of red lightning streaked across the sky.

They looked at each other, speechless.

With no other way to clarify the situation, Melissa turned and raced across the road. She hurried to where Jimmy Gibbs paced beside his truck, speaking on a cell phone.

“I need a ride,” Melissa ordered.

“Huh—what?”

She grabbed the phone out of his hand and snapped it shut, handing it back.

“Christ, officer, what in the hell has gotten into you?” Jimmy asked.

She opened the cab’s door and pushed him toward the step, urging him upward. “I said I need a ride. Now get behind the wheel or you’re under arrest.”

When he finally complied she rounded the semi and climbed in the passenger side.

“I need you to turn around, go west,” she ordered.

“What for?”

“I don’t have time to spell it out for you, so just do as I say.”

“Can’t you take a cop car?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“They’re too small,” she said. “It’ll be able to control them easier. But not this sucker. This beast is way too big to maneuver in all those trees. Going forward and backing out along the driveway is about all it’ll be able to do. Now, let’s move—we don’t have much time.”

Jimmy gawked at her with puzzled, frightened eyes. Deciding to use his uneasiness to her advantage, she drew her Smith & Wesson and checked the breach. “We’re not moving.”

Jimmy glanced from her to the pistol.

Staring back at him, she let the slide snap into place.

Without another word, he put the rig in gear, and they rumbled on their way.

Grunting, lifting, pushing upward, drudging beneath a bestial sky that flashed and boomed with clamorous activity, Tim raised the forward end of Kane’s coffin over his head and, working in unison with Mallory’s friends, they helped free the killer from his earthen tomb.

Another barrage of thunder crossed the heavens, extolling their efforts.

It had taken them several grueling minutes, but his plan had succeeded. The box and its rotting contents now rested above ground, leaving Tim alone in the grave.

Becky came to the grave’s edge and helped him up. She brushed away moist clods of dirt that had broken loose from the casket and tumbled over his head and shoulders.

“I can’t believe we did it,” she said, gasping. “What now? What do you think it wants us to do with him?”

Catching his breath, wiping sweat from his eyes, Tim had little time to answer before Lisa shouted, “What’s that?”

Tim pivoted. He looked to where the others had directed their attention, and saw that a halo of bright amber light now encompassed the Mercedes, beaming outward from its interior.

Oh, no. Mallory!

Mallory’s eyes fluttered open. To her surprise she had lifted out of her seat and was floating upward, out of the car and away from danger, into the nighttime heavens. She gasped and looked up, immediately raising her arms to shield her face before her head passed through the vehicle’s roof and emerged unharmed outside.

What’s happening to me , her mind cried. Then she rewound her memory of the night’s terrible events, recalling the unimaginable horrors she’d encountered.

Removed from the car, she looked up.

The sky overhead looked vast and clear, not stormy at all. Billions of radiant stars filled the sky, orbs so beautiful and mesmerizing her fear suddenly melted away and left her feeling—

Mallory jerked awake in her seat, blinking, shocked to discover the light from her dream now filled the car.

“Mallory.”

That voice!

“Not yet.”

She came fully awake and remembered where she was, in the car, trapped with the creature. But what was happening? What was going on?

“You can’t die. Not yet.”

D-die? she worried. What’s it talking about? I don’t want to die.

Suddenly, the intolerable agony in her chest vanished.

A fresh surge of strength swelled through her body. She gasped and looked down to see threads of flesh and muscle stitch the wound in her chest together, pulling is shut. The split skin merged, leaving no trace of an injury.

She drew in a deep breath, no longer needing to measure her intake of air in fear of debilitating pain. She flexed her arm, moving it without the faintest hint of discomfort. Her whole body felt rejuvenated, energized.

Healed!

Tim stood motionless, awestruck by the sight of the light radiating from the Mercedes. Given its intensity he expected the car to burst into flames, but as they watched, it didn’t appear to generate any heat.

Suddenly, Adam bolted.

He took off without warning, sprinting away from Tim and the others, snaking between tombstones.

“Adam, don’t,” Tim yelled.

The Mercedes went dark in the periphery of his vision.

“Oh, God,” he whispered. “It’s going after him.”

Adam hit the fence and clambered over, ripping dead plants out of his path in his attempt to reach the woods. The second his feet touched the ground, a massive old elm tree suddenly fell toward him.

No, Tim thought. It leaned toward him.

Dead bark whittled halfway to dust by a hundred years of insect borrowing exploded off the tree’s trunk in all directions.

Adam looked up. The branches descended.

He tried to alter course at the last second, but slipped. His feet shot out from under him, and he dropped to the ground, raising his arms in a futile effort to ward off a thousand wooden hands.

The withered branches snared his arms. His legs. His waist.

They hooked into his clothes and scratched across his skin, all assaulting him in unison from dozens of directions. His screams came in rapid bursts, eventually elongating to a single incoherent primal cry when the tree lifted him off his feet and hoisted him into the air.

Tim shuddered.

Becky had stumbled up beside him; her hands clutched his arm for balance.

They watched the tree flex and bend, marveling with unblinking eyes. More branches bowed inward and came together around Adam’s struggling form, creating scores of detailed faces out of the complex network of interwoven limbs, skeletal specters that themselves formed an even larger inhuman mask of wood. Tim gawked at the unfathomable immensity of its nightmare design, once again staggered by the scope of the monster’s power and control.

“Now, see the fate of those who refuse me,” the beast proclaimed. This time its words vocalized out of thin air.

The elm’s branches tightened.

Adam’s screams changed pitch, escalating toward madness.

“It’s going to pull him apart,” Becky howled.

“No,” Tim shouted. He unleashed the word with such unexpected force it felt like his voice box might burst. “No! Stop or Kane is history!”

He jerked away from Becky, grabbed one of the shovels, and swung it over his head with every bit of strength he had left. The blade slammed into the center of Kane’s coffin, hacking away a chuck of the cover.