A PATH OF FLAMES By Lee Hughes

The momentum builds with Part 12 of The Osseous Box...

A Path of Flames

The scream was real, though it sounded well practiced, to the point of being pitch-perfect. Masakra tipped back the bulk of his head and joined in. The noise the large man emitted sounded like the something a deaf-'n'-dumb might make at the point of orgasm.

Masakra released the mush that was now the remains of the man's genitals. The screaming morphed into desperate groaning. Masakra gripped the man by his jaw and yanked down on it, opening it as wide as it would go. He started to push a meaty fist into the open maw. He had to yank on the jaw some more until it dislocated and then he could fit in the rest of his hand. The tortured man resembled a Boa Constrictor that was attempting to swallow a calf whole.

"Masakra." A voice interrupted.

The seven-foot tall brute aired a puzzled grunt and looked around. A slight man stood in the arched doorway. His face was thin, calm, and scarred. The newcomer didn't move any deeper into the room. He looked to the badly abused man that was choking on Masakra's ham-sized fist.

"The Master has new work for you."

Masakra looked back into the face of the man he was about to empty the insides of. His ugly face disappointed. He looked to the newcomer with a forlorn, pleading look.

"Now, Masakra."

Masakra vented his frustration by opening up the fist that was lodged inside the man's mouth. That act tore open the corners of the mouth. The tear worked all the way back to just before his ears. Masakra took back his fist that now had a bracelet of teeth around it and lumbered towards the doorway.

*

Rupert Lodwicke grinned. "Did you know that if you slice just there, just below the spleen then it will relieve earache?"

The man looked at him as though he were mad. Lodwicke just kept on grinning and nodding. "Go on, try it!"

"I decide on how to torture you." The man said as he went about picking his own spot to start with the cutting.

Lodwicke sighed and muttered, "Amateurs."

The torturer made a cut. Lodwicke grinned and giggled. "Deeper, cut deeper!"

The torturer took a step back, annoyance spread over his face. "Would you just shut the fuck up? I'm trying to work."

Lodwicke looked down at the fresh cut the man had made in his abdomen and shook his head. "You call that work? I wouldn't even give you a job gutting fish."

"Gentlemen." Came a voice over by the doorway.

The torturer looked over and nodded respectfully.

Lodwicke flashed the man a smile and said, "Charles, good to see you again."

The man, Charles shook his head not knowing whether to laugh or be angry at the blatant familiarity. "Lodwicke, enjoying yourself?"

"I would be if you had some half competent cutters about."

"The Master has a job for you."

"Lodwicke's eyes lit up. "Do I get to do some cutty-cutty?"

"As much as you like." Charles said, nodding to the torturer to let Lodwicke down from where he was hanging, shackled by his wrists.

*

Billy crawled out of the embers to the noise of jubilation. He was dizzied still from the transition of being alive to being dead, then rising like a broken phoenix from the flames. The noise that greeted him was a louder, more prominent version of the chorus that had filled his head all those nights ago when he had bashed in the skull of the man in the townhouse and given himself over to the Devil.

He stood and looked around. The galleries were filled with obscene looking well-wishers and those that just wanted to rubber-neck at the man that had managed to break open The Osseous Box and bring them all closer to a freedom they'd been eagerly awaiting.

Billy began to feel self conscious as he realised he was standing there naked with everything a-dangling.

The throng ahead of Billy parted to permit a slight man with a latticework of scars upon his face an unhindered passage. The man reached out with his palms open and facing upwards. He gestured all about himself. “Welcome Billy!”

More shouting erupted.

The man tipped his head in the direction he'd come, turned and retraced his steps. Billy hoped he'd interpreted the nod correctly and followed after the man.

Billy followed him down a hallway and into an ante-chamber.

“There's a selection of clothes hanging upon the wall, you should fine something that both fits, and is suitable.”

Billy went to work freeing this and that from pegs that had been driven into the wall.

The man stood quietly, waiting until Billy was fully dressed and said, “Billy, the Master wishes to meet you.”

Billy felt butterflies in his gut, they weren't fluttering they were having epileptic fits. He could remember how the Master had showed his displeasure. The echoes of his own legs snapping had a rebirth and rampaged through his head.

“You ready?” The man asked.

Billy took a deep breath and gave a nod. He had no clue what to expect. A few moments ago he had seen some of the inhabitants of damnation and they had been a mixture of the monstrous and the loathsome, whilst others had looked pretty much human, apart from the visible wages of their sins.

The man moved over to a set of large doors and pushed them open with the theatrics of a well versed showman. “The Master will receive you now.”

Billy felt a fear like he had never known before. He noticed the man grinning at him with a malign mirth. He didn't relish being the source of the man's amusement so forced himself forward with what he hoped looked like sure and confident strides.

The slick grin never let the man's mug. Billy did his best to ignore it.

Once he was through the doors they swung closed removing any option of retreat.

The hall was cavernous. Fire pits were dotted about the floor and spewed forth fountain like flames. The heat instantly brought a layer of sweat to the back of his neck.

At the far end of the hall was a high-backed wooden chair. A shadow spilled from is across the floor at an impossible angle.

A voice came from everywhere in the hall. Bombarding Billy's senses from every which way.

"Congratulations are in order. As you know I punish without mercy, but also reward when it is due. And it is most certainly due in your case." An arm reached out from the chair. Its surface lumpy, ending in a gnarled fist. Billy looked in the direction that the Master was motioning.

Billy saw someone in the far corner. He was sure they hadn't been there when he'd entered. He knew in this place, this world of the diabolical that he shouldn't take anything for granted, so he kept his questions unvoiced.

The figure left the trappings of shadows that hung in the corner.

Billy recognised her immediately. It had only been days since he had seen her but with everything that had happened it felt like a lifetime.

"Carol?"

She smiled, and carried on with her practiced and sultry walk.

Billy was glad she didn't look the same as when he'd last saw her. Laying in death upon the floor, her cunt ruined by a half-born demon's paltry excuse for escape. She was wearing a gossamer robe that hugged her in all the good places.

Billy remembered the twisted things they'd done together in such a short space of time. He grinned remembering how much of a dirty bitch she was.

Her smile worked its voodoo just like the last time. Billy grinned and she said softly, "I knew you'd do it Billy, that's why I vouched for you. Now I'm yours again." She finished her sentence by pulling open her robe.

Billy remembered each and every puckered scar. He did however forget where he was, and what company he was keeping. He was unabashed by his erection. He reached out to touch her scar patterned breasts.

Her grin widened. "You've still to add some markings, remember?"

"I remember, yes, I remember."

The voice interfered from all directions. "That reunion will have to wait. There is work to be done."

*

The slight man with his face smitten with scars grinned some more as the large doors closed behind Billy and Carol.

"Have fun?" The man asked.

Billy didn't smile back. "Yeah," he said as he started to bend his body into that of a back-water, inbred, attic secret.

The man was more intrigued than shocked as he watched Billy contort into the shape of an ugly hound.

Carol seemed unperturbed as she reached down and patted the flank of the cursed hound. She purred and cooed, "Good boy!"

Billy howled as she stroked him and became eager to get away. Carol followed after Billy. The galleries were emptying as the monsters and the sinners headed out into the labyrinthine hallways from which the Beast had once escaped.

BIO:


Lee Hughes's short fiction has appeared on or in, Cern Zoo: Nemonymous 9, Thrillers, Killers 'N' Chillers, Microhorror, A Twist of Noir, Every Day Fiction, New Flesh Magazine, The Daily Tourniquet, Powder Burn Flash, Blink-Ink and FlashShots. Find out more at:

http://www.leehughes.net/

A PATH FAMILIAR By Lee Hughes

Part 11 of Lee's on-going series 'the Osseous Box'...

A Path Familiar

Jon was dead on his feet and he needed to sleep. The dog and Tobin were keen to carry on. Just a few hours slumber, is all he wanted.

*

It'd been three days since the Box had been broken and the beast released. That was one messed up day that Jon was sure he'd never forget.

After the beast had fled, they'd gone about the task of finishing off the demon-hound that was partly made up of broken dead-man. Tobin took to the chore of hacking it to bits and then he burned it to ensure it wouldn't find a way to work its harm the following night, or any other.

The dog that had gone missing up on the mountain trundled through one of the gaps where a gate had once hung. It sniffed at the wreckage of the car, did the same at the smoke that rose from the makeshift funeral pyre and went to stand a little ways apart from them, staring in the direction of the beast's escape.

The dog came to heel as Tobin's father said a handful of prayers that lost their meaning in the distance from his lips to Jon's ears.

Jon could tell the dog had the scent of the beast; it must have been like a Bisto waft to a human nose.

Tobin and his father had grabbed a few things and tossed them into the boot of a knackered car that had been parked over by the ramshackle barn. Jon knew he had two choices that night. He could either stick around and explain the unexplainable, or go with the Preachers in case there was anything he could do whilst hoping that the world got to see the beast. That would be one-step towards being pardoned for all the deaths that they would be laying at his door. He opted for Tobin's piece-of-shit car.

The car proved useful in trailing the dog as it bounded after the beast's scent. Jon sat in the back, a hand pushing up at the roof. He was sure there was no suspension on the car. After the third field, he was positive of it.

The car stopped. Tobin turned in his seat. "We'll have to get out here."

"Thank fuck," Jon said, and clambered out of the car. His back cracked. "I'm sure I'm an inch or too shorter now. How much did you pay for that?" He nodded at the heap.

Tobin shrugged. "Nothing. Got it from scrap and did it up myself."

Jon stared at the wreck and wondered if the only tool at his disposal had been a big hammer.

Jon saw why they couldn't go any further. The moon was sprinkling the sea with silver. "What now?"

Tobin's father didn't turn around. "We get the ferry in the morning and try and find the scent from there."

"Okay, sounds like a plan. But, what if the Beast heads north towards Scotland and we start south?"

"We'll head south. From one generation to the next the original tale of how we became Preachers tells us that the original Preacher headed north after putting the Beast in the Box."

Jon couldn't really find any fault in that, he tried, but couldn't. "What time's the first boat off this rock?"

"Half-seven," Tobin said.

"That'll work. Any time later and some of the corpses will probably start getting discovered and they'll close the port," Jon said, he noticed Tobin's father had been quiet and was staring out to sea. "What's up?"

Mr. Preacher remained quiet for a few moments before replying, "It was my job to keep watch and make sure that the Box was never uncovered, I've failed."

Tobin reached out a hand; his father didn't shrug it off.

It was a very touching moment but Jon reckoned they didn't have the time for any 'Little House on the Prairie' sentimentality. "Okay, so we've established you feel guilty for the Box being broken. Though I don't think you should. It's not like someone wandered up the mountain and found it just sitting at the top with a hammer next to it with which to break it open. Look, a psycho that turned into a dog-thing at night was the one that found it. He killed a shit load of people. Hey, I dug it up. But I don't feel guilty. The psycho had a knife to an innocent woman's throat." Jon stopped there. He realised he was going into the territory where he'd remind Mr. Preacher that his wife and eldest son were dead."

The old man nodded following an awkward silence. He turned his back to the sea. "I'm arthritic in both legs and my right shoulder. I'd just slow you boys down. Besides, I might be of better use here. There's still the body of that woman up on the mountain. She'll be found before you've even managed to get to the mainland. I'll go get her, I'll get the man you said about in the garage too, if you give me the address. I'll give them both a respectful resting place and prayers, until you've gotten a good head start. Take the remains of the Box."

"Why?" Jon asked, feeling as if he'd just dropped one burden and a moment later he'd picked up another.

"If you catch up with the Beast and if you manage to better it, what will you keep it in?"

"Yeah, suppose you've got a point, though I wasn't too keen all those, 'If's.' you were using."

*

On the second morning of the hunt, Jon's main fear became real as he saw his mug-shot on the front of the daily papers. Tobin's portrait was there, but only half the size as if they only wanted to find Tobin half as much

.*

Jon looked at the situation back on the island as if he had been the one investigating it.

Concerns would have been raised from one of two places with each easily leading to the other. It might have been Beth being absent from work for a second day running. Someone would have gone around to her house, rapped on the door, and garnered no answer. Police would have turned up and made a forced entry to certify she wasn't sprawled in a mess at the base of the stairs.

Mr. Preacher had said he'd take care of Mordecai's corpse. Yet, there'd still be a bounty of evidence. Mordecai had been missing of the bulk of his gullet so there would be gore staining the concrete floor.

Then there was the visitor's centre approach. Again, Mr. Preacher said that he would remove Beth's remains. It wouldn't make much of a difference, not even if he closed the blinds and locked the doors.

Someone would have gone up there to use the services and found them closed and complained. An irate grunt from the Department of Tourism and Leisure would have been up there in a flash to see what was going on. They would open up and be faced with the stains of slaughter in the kitchen, and the open butchery in the gift shop. Mr. Preacher would never have been able to clean it all up.

Then there was the big hole in the heart of the floor that Jon had been forced to excavate by the psycho. He knew there was no way that old Mr. Preacher would have been able to fill it in, not with his arthritis. If he'd tried, it would have likely ended up his final resting place.

Jon could easily visualize the appearance of flashing lights, complete with the noise of 'nee-nawing'. They'd find Beth's car parked halfway down the mountain in the car-park, his prints all over the passenger's door and interior. They'd head to the Preacher's farm, figuring that two of the Preacher family hadn't turned up for work the morning after a massacre. The police would find the remnants of a funeral pyre, and with a little more searching, would come up with the bodies of Mordecai, Beth, and Mr. Preacher's own family.

The prints found on the car would match his on the police database. Once Mordecai had been identified it would add another link to him. Jon started thinking fast. There were two hunts now on, the manhunt for him and the demon-hunt.

*

They'd kept to the countryside as much as they could. With their pictures being bandied about here and there, it wasn't worth the risk cutting through populated places.

The duo had discussed in bewilderment at how the dog had followed the scent through towns and cities and that no one had seen the passing of a great, big Hell-Beast.

Tobin had come up with the most credible answer. "Perhaps it learned its lesson after last time when it got slain and then imprisoned."

"So you reckon its gone invisible?"

"It’s a demon, who knows what it can, or can't do."

"Well that's gonna make it a piece of piss to find."

"We've got the dog, and the dog has the scent."

They looked down at the Alsatian.

*

Jon was now on-the-record knackered. Tobin sighed and gave in. They'd stumbled across an old and outwardly forsaken cottage. The pair had bartered. Jon had started the bidding at a four-hour rest. Tobin had counter offered two. They settled on four.

Tobin stared at the cottage. "It looks rundown."

Jon tested the door and said, "You should feel right at home."

"What?" Tobin wasn't sure he heard Jon accurately.

"Nothing," Jon said, and used his shoulder as the key to the door.

*

The interior showed that no one had lived there in quite a few decades. The furniture was gone, including the carpets. There was just one busted chair in the middle of the dusty room.

Tobin said, "You sure you want to take a nap in here?" He turned back to Jon who'd already claimed himself a spot in the corner. He closed his eyes. "Four hours. You can talk to me again in four hours."

*

Jon opened his eyes. He wondered whether it had been such a good idea to sleep on the concrete floor.

"Tobin?" He called, noticing the lad and the dog weren't in the room. The large holdall that they'd been carting the relics of the Box within was gone too. He rubbed at his neck as he wandered through into the other room. At one time in the distant past, it had been a kitchen.

There was a window covered in enough shit to make it only one-step up from being a wall. He walked over but didn't relish rubbing his sleeve to make a cleaner spot. He made do with the hazy view it offered.

He saw Tobin walking through the feral vegetation of the rear garden, the dog following. Jon made for the backdoor. It was hanging on off its elderly hinges just like the front door, only Jon wasn't accountable for this one, time was.

Jon was about to shout something. He could see that Tobin was chatting to himself just like a mentalist. He was on the cusp of shouting a witty observation but something held him in check, it felt somehow wrong, he kept quiet.

He watched as the one-sided tête-à-tête continued for another few minutes. When the conversation seemed to be winding up Tobin appeared grave, but nodded as if in accord with himself over something.

Jon waited until Tobin was utterly done flapping his lips before putting his own to work. "You all right?" He asked.

Tobin looked over as if he hadn't been doing anything abnormal. "You're awake."

Jon noticed the look on Tobin's face so kept his answer straightforward, "Yeah, the four hours we'd agreed upon was up. Where's the bones?"

"I buried them."

"I thought we needed them?"

"It seemed the right thing to do, it felt right." He pointed behind him. "There's a ruin back there, it's Wulf's hut."

Jon waded through the grass, passed Tobin and the dog. He could see the leftovers of a small building. Nothing more than a four-foot high ring of roughly hewn stones with a break where the door would have stood.

It struck Jon hard seeing the bodily image of the chronicle that Mordecai had told him. There was a moment where it seemed a dizzying coincidence. Then he realised that they were now on the identical route it had taken all those centuries ago.

Jon ignored the absurdity and asked, "I take it that's who you were talking to?"

Tobin nodded. "Wulf's now at peace, it's been a long time in coming, but he was prepared to wait for an eternity if it kept things as they should be." He seemed disinclined to elaborate.

Jon wasn't going to let it drop. "So what are we supposed to use now if we manage to beat the thing, a Safeway's carrier-bag?"

The dog moved off through the deep grass to continue the hunt. Tobin started after the dog and said, "Mine"

BIO:
Lee Hughes's short fiction has appeared on or in, Cern Zoo: Nemonymous 9, Thrillers, Killers 'N' Chillers, Microhorror, A Twist of Noir, Every Day Fiction, New Flesh Magazine, The Daily Tourniquet, Powder Burn Flash, Blink-Ink and FlashShots. Find out more at:


http://www.leehughes.net/

THINE IS THE KINGDOM - by Lee Hughes

The inimitable Lee is back with the latest part of his classic tale...

Part Ten of the Osseous Box.

THINE IS THE KINGDOM

Tobin Preacher was out pinching rooks from the sky when he stumbled upon the thread of blood.

His knuckles grew white as his grip tightened upon the sack of rooks.

He looked back towards the farm, he knew he should go and fetch his father.

Watching the mountain had been the life's work of his father. As it had his father before him, so forth and so forth, back to the darkest of times.

He knelt and touched the blood.

He knew what it heralded. Again, he thought of going back. However, there was the fear that he might be 'crying wolf'

Tobin straightened, worked the bolt on the rifle to spit out the spent shell and fed in a new one.

***

They'd known that there was something important buried on the mountain. The Preacher family had been holding a vigil over it, waiting for this very day.

They didn't know much about what it was hiding. They knew just enough to know that they were doing the Lord's work. Moreover, that it was inevitable that the day would come when it was uncovered. When that happened, it was their job to keep it a secret and re-bury it somewhere safe.

***

Tobin made easy work of Snaefell, long sure strides ate up the distance.

He slowed as he reached the summit. He watched the ribbon of blood coursing towards the Visitor's Centre.

Tobin was surprised that his older brother Vinnie hadn't noticed the phenomena and investigated.

Vinnie worked as the cook in the little cafe whilst his mother worked the Visitor's Centre. They'd figured it was the best way to keep an eye on the place whilst Tobin and his father took care of the farm.

***

The cafe was empty.

Tobin smiled.

Vinnie would be at the back of the kitchen having a smoke.

The first thing he saw when he went through into the kitchen was his brother slumped dead on the floor with a knife planted in his face.

Tobin became awash with rage.

He snapped the rifle to ready. He was already thinking the worst for his mother.

He moved as if he was on the hunt as he worked his way to the door of the visitors centre.

With the door open, he saw a man standing with a shovel raised. He also recognized his mother's shoes poking out from behind the counter.

Tobin didn't hesitate. He trained his aim and put a lump of .22 into the man's shoulder.

The man spun and dropped to the floor.

Tobin looked around and saw another two dead bodies. A woman with her throat cut and a man who'd been beaten to death.

He walked over to where his mother's feet were sticking out. He needed to see the rest of her, see what the bastard had done to her.

Strangled, the monster had strangled her. In return, he had shot the monster, which, however wouldn't be enough. He felt like putting another bullet in, this one in the man's brow. He took the blanket from the woman with the sliced throat and used it to hide his mother.

At the hole he stared at what the man had been about to bash. It was a box, about the size of a chest from a boy's pirate comic. This one was crude and made of bone.

Tobin stared at the man. The wound wasn't fatal. The man had blacked out through shock. He'd seen the same happen with birds and small animals, alive but inert.

Tobin pulled the shovel from the man's grip and tossed it. He looked into the man's pale face and couldn't for the life of himself see anything of the madman or murderer in his features.

"He's saving it."

Tobin knew that voice. He'd gone to school with him. "Mord…" he let it hang, as there was no one there.

"The Beast has been working through minions to find the box and to break it, freeing an abomination that could bring Hell to Earth. The man you just shot, Jon, he was helping me to find it."

Tobin listened to the vapid voice learning what it was that he had to do.

***

Tobin knelt beside the man. This was all new; he'd removed bullets before from rabbits. However, they'd been dead; you didn't need to perform surgery when you were readying them for the cooking-pot.

He got the toolbox from out the back and wrenched the bullet free with a pair of needle-nose pliers

Jon's eyes flew open and he screamed. His eyes were wild as if he didn't know where he was. He slumped back down and began to remember.

Jon's teeth clenched when he hissed. "Fucking bastard!" He flung up the fist that was connected to his good shoulder.

Tobin managed to move most of his head in time but still managed to earn himself a jarred-jaw.

"Hey!" Tobin pushed himself backwards to get out of the way in case Jon tried to have another go. Tobin made fists and wanted to give him one back twice as hard.

He loosened the fists and used a hand to rub at his jaw instead.

Jon looked down at his bared shoulder and the swelling about the puckered hole.

"You shot me."

"I thought you were breaking the box."

Jon looked up and thought about what had been going through his mind in the moments before being shot. If he was being honest with himself then he had to admit that there was something inside his head urging him on to break it open.

"Next time try a rugby tackle." Jon managed a dry smile. Even that trinket of a smile vanished when his eyes took in Beth's body.

Tobin noticed him staring at the dead woman.

"Your wife?" Tobin asked.

"No. Only met her for the first time yesterday, she was only helping me. Now she's dead. She was covered before you shot me, where's the blanket?"

Tobin pointed at the feet that still stuck out from behind the counter.

"I took it from her."

"Why?" Jon's eyes hardened.

"She's my mother. The man, the one in the kitchen, that's my brother."

Jon's eyes softened. In the real-life game of Paper, Scissors, and Rock, dead mother beats dead librarian.

Jon nodded over to the first-aid box.

"Can you do the honours?"

"Sure, was gonna patch you up but you came to."

***

Jon winced as he pulled the tourist tee-shirt down over the crude dressing on his shoulder. It looked like it had been done in the style, a La Generation Game.

Jon nudged the Box with his feet. "We were planning on dumping this thing."

Tobin nodded. "We still are. We need to go back to the farm and tell my father about mum and Vinnie. Hopefully he'll also know what to do next."

"Why would he know what to do next?"

"The Preachers have been keeping watch on this mountain since the first Preacher, way back when."

Jon gave a lopsided shrug. The young man before him seemed a little too calm considering his mother and brother had been murdered on the same day. He couldn't help but ask, he still had a copper's curiosity.

"You don't seem all bent out of shape considering, you know." He tipped his head towards the feet.

Tobin looked to the bashed in remains of the man who had slain most of his family. "Who's there to get mad at?"

Jon conceded it made sense, although not much. "Let's get a shift on. It's starting to get dark and I'm pretty sick of this mountain. In fact I'm sick to the back teeth of this island."

***

Tobin started Vinnie's car.

Tobin had driven it off road from the car park and up to the visitor centre.

Jon didn't want to look in the backseat. Tobin hadn't wanted to leave his family on the mountain. So, they were sprawled on the backseat in some kind of clumsy embrace.

Tobin had said there was room for Beth. It had given Jon the vision of an old joke, how many elephants can you fit in a mini? Only there were no elephants, just dead people.

She'd be fine where she was. He just wanted to get the box hidden again before it all came out and there they were standing in the middle of the whole mess with five dead bodies to answer for.

***

Jon watched as Tobin and his father made two trips for the bodies and carried them inside. Tobin hadn't bothered to introduce them to each other so Jon decided to stay in the car whilst they said their goodbyes, or whatever it was they were up to.

Now that the backseat was empty, he found himself stealing glances towards the boot where the Box was. Darkness had pretty much fully descended; there wasn't anything for him to look at. He noticed the keys were still in the ignition and turned the radio on.

Jon had only just managed to find something to listen to other than Radio 2 when the windscreen smashed through.

"Shit." He did he best to cover himself from the debris.

He could hear a savage growling as whatever had smashed the windscreen climbed through.

Jon opened the door and allowed himself to spill out. Opening the door had turned the interior light on.

The sight made him move back further.

It was the beast from the previous night. It had changed somewhat in appearance. Its features were pretty much fubar'd. The beast had made its nocturnal home out of Billy even though he was dead. Jon could make out bits of the human face that hadn't been caved in all stretched and distorted.

"Tobin!" Jon hollered.

He gained no answer. He ran for the door and banged on it.

"What's up?" Tobin asked.

Jon hiked a thumb over his shoulder.

There was something big thrashing about in the car.

"Dad, get your gun."

***

They fired volley after volley of shots into the car. Tobin worked away with his puny .22, his father churning out big noises with his double-barrelled shotgun.

Jon realised what the thing was trying to do. The Box was in the boot, there was no way it could break in from the outside. Getting inside on the other hand and tearing through the soft of the seats would be a doddle.

The air filled with the stink of cordite, but still the thing thrashed within the car, causing it to rock like there was one hell of a fuck going on inside.

Jon looked around for something to use to beat it unconscious as he had the previous night.

He gave up looking when he heard the explosion. At first, he thought one of the Preacher's had gone and hit the sweet spot on the fuel tank. There was no smoke, no flames; just the back end of the car in tatters.

The monstrosity had made it to the Box and broken it.

They watched in petrified awe as the back-end of the car issued forth a sulphurous stink. From the mist something hideous formed, disgusting in design and repugnant all over.

It stretched to release the kinks it had earned in its seven-hundred year imprisonment.

Tobin let fly another shot. The beast barely felt it before bounding off to fulfil what it had started out doing all those centuries ago.

Jon's reaction said it best. "Oh, fuck."

The beast was returning to Hell and when it got there, it would lead the others out.


BIO:
Lee Hughes's short fiction has appeared on or in, Cern Zoo: Nemonymous 9, Thrillers, Killers 'N' Chillers, Microhorror, A Twist of Noir, Every Day Fiction, New Flesh Magazine, The Daily Tourniquet, Powder Burn Flash, Blink-Ink and FlashShots. Find out more at www.LeeHughes.net

THE SHAMAN PEOPLE By Lee Hughes

Following on from Lee's The Jesus People, now we have...

The Shaman People

It was the quietness that struck a chord. There were so many people watching, yet there was no noise. It unsettled some. But for Nathan and Cynthia as they dropped down out of the cabin of the ambulance they ignored it, they were used to all the different versions of silence that there was, and there were many.

Nathan put the brace around the neck of the young female passenger. There was blood seeping down from her nose and a little trickle coming out of her left ear. There was nothing else he could do other than talk calmly and try and keep her conscious whilst the firemen went about cutting the car apart.

What made it worse for the young woman was that the driver, a man of a similar age was dead. It was the set of his neck, hanging on his shoulders like a branch that had known something stronger than a breeze and had been half-snapped from the trunk proper.

*

Cynthia was at the wheel, running reds and not sparing the horses. Nathan was in the back doing what he could for the woman. He smiled at her, she tried to return it, and her brain seemed to forbid it. Nathan looked to Cynthia. The whole sum of her concentration was on the road ahead. Nathan opened his kit-bag. He gave another look at Cynthia. There was no way that she could see what he was getting from his bag.

He held the bone-thing almost reverently. It looked like a femur with the marrow removed and the outside etched with designs and symbols. The ends were plugged with coloured corks which he removed.

The young woman watched him, consciousness was fleeting. She saw him remove the stops. The paramedic pulled down her oxygen mask and set the bone to her lips. He met the other end with his own and began to gently suck.

Carefully, Nathan returned the stops to the etched bone and placed it back into his kit-bag. He looked at the young woman. He had taken the chore of life's balance out of God's hands and placed it within his own. Her life or her death was now at his discretion, just the way that he liked it.

The back doors of the ambulance were yanked open and the porters helped get the stretcher down from the back. Nathan began filling the doctor in about her vitals etc. He watched as they rushed her into the building.

They didn't know the way that life really worked, the pecking order of who gets to make the big decisions. The doctors were not buffer zones between life and death. They were merely caretakers of the flesh whilst more important people like himself catered to the essence of life.

Nathan checked the time. He looked up to Cynthia. “Another five minutes and the shift is over.”

“Thank, God, I'm knackered,” Cynthia said as she moved back to the cabin of the meat-wagon.

*

Nathan Louis finished scribbling down the woman's name on a strip of masking-tape and set it on the shelf with the others. He moved over to another shelf. The bones on that shelf were the ones that contained the spirits that he would return, cleansed and purified and ready to go back to their rightful vessels.

That was where he saw his main power. Not in his ability to imprison the spirit, but in finding out if the vessel was worthy of its return. He would check the spirit of the young woman and then decide whether or not to return her to health, or to keep her where she was.

Nathan picked one up; the roughly placed tape announced the name of the person as William Sanders. Nathan had deemed this man worthy of being returned to health. The man had come under his scrutiny after they'd attended a call to a block of flats that had been the target for an arson attack. Mr. Saunders was found with third degree burns. Deeper investigations by Nathan had revealed that it was Willy himself that had started the fire, along with another dozen or so blazes. Only Nathan knew this.

*

He moved through the corridors without anyone questioning him. The folks thought him a man who just loved his job and following up on the broken people that he ferried through its doors. Some couldn't understand it, but they were the ones that didn't care.

He smiled down at Willy, ignoring his char-grilled face. Willy's eyes were vacant, staring dead-ahead through shiny and blistered lids. Nathan looked over his shoulder, there were no curious eyes monitoring him. He withdrew the bone. He uncorked it, set it to the man's crusted lips and blew the man's soul back in deep. Nathan moved his lips from the bone to the man's ears.

“More fires, I want to see more fires.” Nathan pocketed the bone and left.

As he came out of the room he bumped into Father Charlatan. As Nathan preferred to call him, false religions were the bane of Nathan's earthly chore.

“Maybe you should think about becoming a doctor rather than being a paramedic. You seem to spend more time inside the hospital than out of it.” The Father's words were good natured, though Nathan didn't care much for them.

Nathan smiled. “Well, sometimes it's good to not just wash your hands of something, see things through to the end.”

“Then there'll be a place for you in Heaven,” the Father said with a smile.

“That's reassuring,” Nathan replied and gently pushed past the man of the cloth.

Father Charleston watched the paramedic's exodus. There was something he didn't quite like about the man. He was pleasant enough; it was something that he couldn't quite put a finger on.

Father Charleston entered the patient's room. The man had been catatonic ever since he had been brought in. Father Charleston thanked Heaven for small mercies for the fact that he was lost in a seemingly endless coma, as the man was burned as though he'd been gallivanting in Hell with a coat made from petrol.

He paused as he entered; William Sanders was staring at him, a slick grin on his grilled lips.

*

Father Charleston sat in the hospital chapel. He was one hundred percent sure that he had a good idea concerning the problem in the hospital. There were so many people with deathly wounds and sicknesses that just would not die. People spoke of the strength of their spirits. True, inner strength of the spirit can be miraculous, but not to the extent that they were seeing.

The times were dangerous enough without people dabbling in mischief. The search for the Osseous Box had begun. The signs had become apparent and the Beast sought the box's whereabouts.

They'd no idea how to begin their own search for it. Until now, Father Charleston knew how they could commence the hunt. He went to the nurses' station to use their phone.

*

Danny waited in the bathroom. He'd seen enough in the spare room to realise that Father Charleston was on to something. And it was about time. They'd had no leads on which to go on. And with the enemy's hunter already at work time would soon grow too short to steal back the advantage that the Enemy had taken. Danny rested a hand on the Alsatian's head to keep it quiet.

*

Nathan slammed the door shut on his car; he was feeling pretty good about himself. Every day it became less of a vocation and more of a destiny. The false Gods of so called Good and Evil were welcome to their petty squabble. It mattered not a jot to him. He worshiped only the power that he wielded. None of the people of the earth were destined for Heaven or Hell. They were merely beings awaiting Nathan's judgment.

He worked his way up the path. Tonight he would examine the spirit of the young woman from the car accident and decide whether to heal her waning spirit or archive it. Nathan envisioned anarchy, and good people hindered the advance of the bedlam. His separating of those that sought peace from pandemonium would make for a purer populace.

“Mr. Louis?” called a voice.

Nathan paused and grimaced. He recognized the voice, it belonged to Father Charleston. Nathan turned and wore a smile like it was an infection. “Something tells me this isn't coincidence.”

Father Charleston held his hands up. “Banged to rights. I just wanted to say that what you're doing at the hospital is tremendous. Your visits to the sick are having a wondrous effect. William Sanders returned to the land of the living today just after you left.”

“Thanks, I do what I can.”

“Well, whatever magic you're weaving don't stop!” Father Charleston chuckled as he said the last.

Nathan however did not smile back. He could see it in the priest's eyes, he knew something, maybe not everything, but he knew enough to be curious and land on his doorstep.

“Fancy a cuppa?” Nathan asked.

“That would be great!” and Father Charleston began up the path.

Nathan moved to put his key in the door, and as if by magic the door opened by itself. Father Charleston pushed from behind and whoever had opened the door dragged Nathan inside.

*

Father Charleston stood with the Alsatian at his side. He stared at the townhouse where the Enemy had begun its hunt. The whole building was still cordoned off. The police had found the savaged remains of eight people, all of which had been identified as members of a cult. Bystanders had talked of a misshaped dog-thing bursting through the windows and taking off into the night.

Father Charleston looked down at the dog. “Good luck, Danny, and God's speed.”

The dog appeared to nod and then took off at a dash, the scent of the obscene still fresh after the passing of two days; it began its urgent hunt.

Father Charleston turned and walked in the direction of the hospital. He carried with him a bag. Within it were the bone-cages of the imprisoned souls. It was time to return them to their rightful bodies. Nathan Louis would never dabble in the affairs of God's and Devils again; his shamanistic and pestilent work was now removed, along with the poisonous beat of his dark-heart. The time of the final reckoning was nearing, there was no place for the insolence of magick and the mischief of trickery, there would be enough of that with what the Enemy had to offer.

BIO:

Lee Hughes' short fiction has appeared in or is due to appear in the anthology Cern Zoo Nemonymous 9, Thrillers, Killers 'n' Chillers, A Twist of Noir, MicroHorror.com, The Daily Tourniquet and Powder Flash Burn. To find out more visit: leehugheswrites.blogspot.com.

THE JESUS PEOPLE - by Lee Hughes

The prolific Lee's latest...

THE JESUS PEOPLE

Billy had needed clean clothes so he'd made the victim strip. He'd left the fool doubled over, naked, winded in the road. He stood before the building. He made sure he looked presentable.

Carol answered. She looked happy to see him. "Billy, we’re just having some refreshments, come in."

Billy smiled and stepped inside. He was surprised to see that the interior wasn’t all decked out with God-stuff. Billy followed her to the lounge. There were eleven other people in the room. A handsome man leant again the fireplace. A few women in the room ogled him. Billy figured it all out. The handsome man was the one that used his looks to suck in the girls. Carol was the one that led the men in by their cocks. He sighed. Her job was to hook the fish and reel them in.

Billy sat down ignoring the rest of the catch. He looked for things to steal. Silence fell when a man walked in. There was an air of confidence about him. Carol and the handsome man looked at him with lust. Behind, was his entourage, three of them.

The man's smile grew wider. "Welcome, I’m Quinn. . . and Jesus loves you."

His tone rode through the air. Somehow managing to pick everyone up and put them in the saddle of his words. This was preposterous. He might just be a low-life criminal, but he was smart enough to understand that the man was running a cult.

Billy stood up adjusting his pants as though he was a stranger to them. "Where's the bathroom?"

Quinn smiled. "Up the stairs, second door upon the left."

He didn’t need to piss. He just wanted to take something away from this farce, other than nonsense spilt from the bible. Billy went to the bathroom. He opened it and closed it to give the impression that he'd entered.

Down the hallway he moved, praying that the floorboards didn’t tell tales on him. Billy listened at the wood of the door. He opened it and slipped inside. Once the door was shut he flicked the switch. His eyes widened. The room was a myriad of sexual toys. From whips and chains to items that would kill during sex, or afterwards.

There was a loud crash from the hallway and screaming from downstairs. Billy knew the loud crash was someone kicking in the bathroom door. He looked for a weapon. He settled for a baseball-bat that had been wrapped diligently with barbed wire. The barbs were decorated with dried blood. He was already lifting it up. He could hear the footfalls of people outside.

His heart thumping drowned out the screams. Billy started towards the door. It door swung open, two men rushed in. Each gripped a soiled machete.

"Seems this one has some balls on him," said one.

"The question is whether he gets to use them before I chop the fuckers off," said the other.

Billy knew his chances of surviving this were slim. These lunatics were dripping with blood. Billy swung the bat.

The barbs whistled through the air. "You better believe I’m willing to use em."

He had a flashback of half-killing the night-watchman. Billy took a step forward. Another step, they'd be in swinging distance. Billy was about to swing when a voice from the doorway swept in, "Wait!"

It was Quinn, the false Messiah. The thugs stopped. Carol was talking in his ear. Her hands and face smeared with blood.

"It appears daughter Carol believes that you might be different. Are you a wolf, or a lamb?" Quinn said.

Billy didn’t put much thought into it. "I’m no one's sacrifice." He kept his bat aloft.

"Will you prove it?"

"Yeah," said Billy.

He knew enthusiasm would be what kept his blood in his veins. Quinn left with Carol still at his shoulder. Carol smiled at Billy. It differed from earlier. This new smile was sly, like the cat that had caught the mouse, but was keeping it for later.

They paraded down the stairs and into the lounge. It was a mess. There were bodies strewn upon the floor. Another was bound and blindfolded. Ghouls worked blood art upon the walls. A hand fell upon his shoulder.

A mouth teased his ear, whispering, "Which are you Billy?"

The blood started to fire up the cylinders in his body and the engine came alive. Just as it had when he had bashed in the watchman's skull. The hand on his shoulder began to stroke where neck became shoulder. Instead of calming the burgeoning fire of anger it was stoking it, getting him excited, it broke him.

He ran at the blindfolded man, his barbed-bat high. The man was silenced as his head caved in. Billy didn’t blink as the bat knocked the jaw away. The barbs stripped flesh as they rioted across the skin. Billy kept swinging. He felt like a winner. Everyone that had slammed him for being useless were silenced. Billy was more than the sum of his past life. He was greater, something that only gods could possibly fathom.

He swung that bat longer than needed. His arms burned and his face was flushed. He couldn’t remember when he had started to get the stitch in his side. All he could think about was this new echelon of being that he had ascended. Shoulder to shoulder with the gods.

Billy let the bat fall from sprained fingers. The stench of excrement mixed with the stink of the blood conjured up a perfume that swamped the room.

Whispers rode the tiny distance between lip and lobe, "Do you feel fantastic?"

"Yes," he panted.

Her hand slipped from his neck. Downwards until her fingers met his. She lowered him. She manipulated his arm like an amateur puppeteer. Dipping his hand into the blood. She ran his hand upon the wall in far from delicate designs. The art was childish, stray strokes and lopsided crosses. Truly childlike, but the innocence had been aborted. Once Carol had deemed the art done she licked at his fingers.
.
"You know why we just did that?" Carol asked.

Billy wasn't sure of anything. "No." His mouth was too dry for anything more than monosyllabic answers.

Quinn stepped forward, "We can now move forward."

The gathered smiled at Billy.

Billy watched from the floor. He was dizzy with the exertion and could hear a continuous pealing of dull and rusty bells. The bells rang out in moody exultation. Billy closed his eyes to hear the cacophony of tolls, he fell asleep to its lullaby.

Billy awoke. He could still hear the noise of another realm letting out joy at his arrival. He knew the noises came from a faltering mental health.

Carol’s voice broke through his musings, "Do you like the new you?"

He could hear her voice but he couldn’t see her. He rolled onto his back. She was standing naked and scarred. He spied the maps of injuries old and new that lapped at her skin. The stains marred only those parts that could be wrapped in secrecy beneath the folds of dresses and sleeves of blouses.

She smiled as though the white-puffed marks were awards and merits for all things deviant. "Each one reminds me of a pleasure." She ran a finger down a six inch track of damaged skin. "This was a gift from a man on my eighteenth birthday." Her finger strayed and circled a nipple that quickly grew erect, "Do you want me?"

He wanted to read her scars like Braille and to decide what art of his own to add to her atlas of horrors.

His soul had been awakened by murder and his sexual awakening had arrived through the medium of pain and bondage. They spent the whole of the next day in bed fornicating. In the evening, she led him downstairs.

They dined and the conversation was candid. Quinn asked, "What do you know of the great battle?"

"Not much."

Quinn seemed surprised, "And yet he still granted you a place in his ranks. We're going to pave the path for his arrival."

"How?" Billy asked.

"The hordes cannot move like us. We will lend them our bodies and we shall set the world afire."

Billy didn't believe in Heaven and Hell. Yes, he had felt like he had been instilled with greatness through his act, but the act was his own doing.

Breakfast was a simple affair. Billy noticed the door to where he'd committed murder was closed.

"Where are the bodies?" Billy asked.

Quinn looked up from his newspaper. "Disposed of. We'll be performing the ritual tonight and we'll be gone by the morning."

Quinn asked that Billy did neither of two things. The first was to leave the house. The second was that he didn't enter the front room.

Billy found himself bored in the kitchen. He winced as he put pressure on an unhealed wound. It had been ecstasy when the lash had swiped through his skin. Now it annoyed and pained him every-time he leant against something. Carol was preparing candles the colour of midnight. She brushed him off as she was busy.

Billy was about to say bollocks to it all when a warmth rode over his skin. It felt like a multitude of hands switching between massaging and gripping. His head became heavy once more with the chorus of the damned. Billy found himself paralysed. A whisper started in his skull, Chosen as my finder. Billy’s legs gave out. The obscene whispers continued. The whispering began to stroke pain into his legs. It stroked until it broke them. In that single solitary second between consciousness and the void he realised that the Devil was real and had made him his creature to be.

Billy awoke in the front room. The walls were still daubed with the scribbling. They had long ago ceased to be crimson and had drifted through the rainbow to shit-brown. He tried to sit up, pain creased his legs.

"I did tell you not to try and leave," Quinn said.

Billy looked about. Everyone was there. All wearing robes of red. He glanced down at himself. He too was wearing a red gown. He legs were straightened with homemade splints.

The light in the room came from the slippy lids of black candles. Billy didn’t want the Devil to redecorate his soul.

Quinn began muttering beneath his breath. Billy strained his ears to try and unlock the secret to it but couldn't. The others took up the black prayer. It reached a volume that was angry and filled with fervour. He knew he was in too deep.

The candles suddenly raged to life. Tall and robust flames of deepest red danced upon the candles. A breeze came alive in the room. Frolicking about the robes, lifting them in dark merriment. Billy could feel the touch of the other-world. They worked themselves into a frenzy. Billy looked away from the lunatic faces to the walls. Those symbols that had been developed with blood were coming alive. Seeming to slide all over the walls.

Billy pushed himself across the carpet to the corner. He huddled and watched as the Devil’s champions began to convulse as if electricity was being poured into their mouths. One of the nameless ones broke first. He was snapping his head as if fitting. His arms outstretched, his fingers drawn into tight claws. Tumours broke out like leprosy over his features. Billy gawped as he watched rips evolve in the man’s cheeks.

The nameless sinner turned his head, he was staring right into Billy’s eyes. There was no look of pain, it was pleasure. Billy saw something in the man’s eyes, fire. Bright tongues of flame wiped away the blue of the iris. The rips in the cheek grew. Widening until teeth could be seen. Needle-point teeth. Pushing and pecking like a hatchling prodding at its shell. The sinner pulled at his robe. Dragging it from his skin until he was naked. Busy in the throes of bestial labour, birthing something diabolical.

Others were beginning to show signs of their short devilled pregnancies coming. Quinn was shaking with holes being punched through his flesh. His head arced back, he screamed once as the demonic thing tore through his abdomen, the waste of Quinn toppling backwards. The demon collapsed to the floor. The demon that had been chewing its way to freedom through the man’s cheek did the same. The others were finding their demises in the same manner. Carol's devil-child was still born, leaving her ruined.

Billy felt something. It started like a hunger in his stomach. Billy didn’t need to eat. Satan fed him his own fiery meat. His children, His misfits, His thieves, His pride, and His fall. Billy howled as the demon took control of him. The demon put him to sleep as it stretched its limbs. His broken bones mended. It carved Billy, working him until it was something resembling a dog, more a cur. Something ragged that you’d have on a rope or didn’t mind kicking. The hound knew it was the favoured one in its master’s eyes. It moved, sniffing at its brethren, lapping now and again at the loose blood. Its front legs were too long to be a true quadruped. Its Master had designed it for a new role, hunter. The work to be conducted by the swell of the moon.

It scratched at the wood of the door, howling in frustration. Again and again it struck its head against the door. It turned, spied the windows. With badly proportioned muscles bunched, it struck glass. Its weight and momentum kept it going right through the pane. It landed with a sprawl upon the pavement. It panted and wheezed. It stretched its legs and took off at a lumbering speed. To the spectators the dog looked a mutt, a misused animal that belonged more to the gutter than the hearth of a family fire.

The Beast was free.

BIO:
Lee Hughes' short fiction has appeared in or is due to appear in the anthology Cern Zoo Nemonymous 9, Thrillers, Killers 'n' Chillers, A Twist of Noir, MicroHorror.com, The Daily Tourniquet and Powder Flash Burn. To find out more visit: leehugheswrites.blogspot.com.