Matt Hults - Husk

Frank neared within ten feet—

“Or…”

—Five feet—

“You can watch me tear him apart!”

Frank struck.

The beast swung around to meet him, but Frank anticipated its awareness. He ducked the assault and rammed his shoulder into its midsection, feeling the ungodly husk of meat and bones succumb to the impact. Its putrid outer skin stretched, pulling apart seams that expelled noxious odors of the grave.

But he knocked it off balance.

It took a step backward, suddenly battling gravity. Frank claimed the advantage and plunged his fingers into a row of stitches over its bicep. He seized handfuls of fibrous muscle. With a tremendous shout he yanked a huge slab of meat from the arm holding Paul, simultaneously unfettering other strands of black sutures. A sickening chorus of wet tears and sinewy rips declared Frank’s success, and the arm cracked in half, dropping Paul to the ground. The remains dangled from leathery tethers.

“Go!” Frank shouted.

No sooner had he spoken when the monster’s broken arm snapped back into place. The shredded tissue bound together like a cluster of octopus tentacles while the stitching rethreaded itself. The beast flexed its claws and turned its eyeless gaze toward Frank. He suddenly found himself staring up at a mouth large enough to engulf his whole head.

He gazed back. “Oh, shit.”

The beast lunged.

Frank parried a slash from one of the smaller arms then dodged a fist that punched a pothole in the dirt. He retaliated with a barrage of quick jabs. Each strike pulled away a wad of more stitching. Reeking liquid splashed from the ruptured sutures and droplets of gore cascaded over his face.

Frank growled through his disgust and snared another fistful of bindings, tearing a bundle of muscle from the monster’s right leg.

“Not so strong now,” Frank shouted.

One of the human appendages reached for him. He grabbed it and held fast. The beast pivoted for a second assault and he ducked, twisting the joints, executing an arm lock. He braced one foot on the thing’s thigh and tore the captured limb off the body. It pulled away to the sound of snapping twine and ripped fibers.

A pestilent river of yellow fluid spilled from the hole.

Frank flung the severed arm aside. “For a ‘ god ’ you don’t seem to be holding together so well. Also, you smell like an asshole!”

The monster roared. It swung a massive paw and raked Frank’s back with its talons as he attempted to dodge. Adrenaline muted the pain, but the impact spun him around—throwing him into the other claw-tipped extremity. Its razor sharp points sliced across his chest.

They cut deep, severing muscle, scraping bone.

Night air rushed into the wound, chilling his nerves before being flushed out by a deluge of hot blood.

Frank staggered and fell to his knees.

The creature caught him before he hit the ground, clamping his body in its arms. He twisted and kicked, squirming to break free.

Frank’s struggle slowed when he became aware of other movements pushing against his body. He looked down to see the creature’s hide bulge and swell, stirred from within.

A line of stitches unfurled along the monster’s right side and the half-skeletonized head of a dead woman emerged from the gash. It sprung forth on an impossibly long neck, trailing slime-soaked purple hair that dangled from the remnants of her scalp. Frank stared in horror. Trapped by the beast, he was unable to avoid the head’s lipless teeth when they bit into his abdomen.

On the other side, a mummified dog’s skull burst from the creature’s huge chest. Its jaws gnashed, sinking fangs into Frank’s shoulder.

He screamed and thrashed in its grasp, fighting to escape.

The creature laughed in his face. Its vertical mouth disgorged a foul breath of postmortem gases along with the bodies of five dead rattlesnakes that nipped at his face.

One tore off his eye patch, exposing the empty socket beneath.

The beast’s demonic voice boomed. “Now we’ll see how well you hold together.”

“Let me go,” Mallory yelled.

She struggled against Tim’s grip, knowing he was only trying to protect her but furious with him for keeping her from helping her dad get back to the church—even after the monster had dropped him.

She dug her nails into his skin. Kicked at his feet.

“Please, Tim!”

“No! You go out there and you’re dead!”

In the parking lot, her dad stumbled toward them. He’d reclaimed the gun with his good hand and kept it aimed at the creature.

“Dad!”

Tim finally released her once her father reached the church steps, and she flung herself at him, clutching him around the neck. She wanted to remain calm, to be the action-oriented heroine she’d been at the barn, but once they were reunited her emotions overflowed, and she collapsed into sobs.

“Are you okay?” she cried. “I heard your arm break. Oh, God, Daddy, I heard it all the way over here!”

“I’ll live,” he said. “We have to help Frank, though.”

They looked to the parking lot and saw the other man hoisted into the monster’s arms, clutched in a titanic bear-hug.

Her dad aimed the gun with his good hand, but then lowered it again. “I can’t shoot with this arm. Even if I could, I’d probably miss or hit Frank.”

“Guns won’t stop it,” Tim said. “But I know what will: Kane’s body.” He turned and pointed at the cemetery. “The coffin is right there. That’s what this thing wants.”

Her dad’s expression went gray. “Kale Kane?”

Tim nodded. “It made us dig him up. It had Mallory.”

“Frank said the entity could bring that maniac back to life somehow. I don’t think I believed him at the time, but—”

Frank screamed.

Mallory flinched at the sound, not wanting to look.

“Get in the doorway,” her dad ordered.

Mallory shook her head. “But—”

“Do it, Mallory. I’m not leaving you.”

Tim slipped his hand into hers and pulled her to the top of the steps.

Her dad edged away from them, facing the graveyard. He snapped up the pistol, aiming at the coffin, and fired his final five rounds. Three of the shots missed, sparking off the fence and putting scars in nearby tombstones. The other two bullets opened dark holes in the cheap boards surrounding Kale Kane’s body.

Mallory spun to see if the creature had responded when—

“Look out!” Tim screamed.

Before she knew what was happening, he yanked her through the church doorway. His quick action gave her only a second to glimpse the twelve-foot long log that hurled out of the darkness toward them. It smashed through the steps and tore the whole staircase off the building, leaving a dusty cloud in its wake.

Mallory rushed back to the opening to find her father already climbing the ruins.

“Get inside,” he shouted. “It’s coming!”

Mallory didn’t hesitate this time. She joined Tim and dashed through the entryway.

Beyond lay a large, open room, lit only by fragile threads of outside light that stitched together the two opposing rows of boarded-over windows set in the building’s longest walls.

Another object rocketed toward them, this time a bolder the size of a car tire. It hit the church two feet above the double doors, punching through the forward vestibule and out the opposite wall, leaving two enormous holes in the building’s skin. Mallory and Tim ducked into the musty interior under a hailstorm of debris. Wood exploded across the one-room sanctuary, clattering over the rows of old pews and off the floor.

Mallory spun around, searching for her father.

He hurried close behind them. “Come on, kids, keep going.”