Part 18 (1/2)
The axe struck again. The door frame was almost half gone. One more swing, and Angel could reach around and open the door from the other side.
Brock repeated himself, shouting above his lungs, ”I don't know s.h.i.+t, but you're staying still or you'll end up like James!”
Pressing down hard on her back, Brock began removing the screw. Inches up from the bone, the axe shattered another long sliver of the door. Angel's hand reached through it, twisting the doork.n.o.b. Angel jerked the door open. Brock kept at work, staying still, staying calm, and unshaken. Angel was standing above him now, raising the axe up high. Moments from taking the swing, Brock almost had the bolt free. He couldn't keep his eyes off Hannah's back if he was going to finish this. Any moment, Angel would be bringing down the axe over his head.
Throwing aside the final screw that came loose, Brock dropped the drill and kicked out his legs, tripping up Angel who fell backwards. She lost the axe, and Brock suddenly had an idea. Reclaiming the power drill, he spun Angel onto her back and pressed his knees up against her back.
”Hannah, help me hold her down! Hannah, are you okay? Say something.”
Hannah didn't respond. Her body remained on the floor unmoving. He couldn't check on Hannah until he was finished with Angel. His sister could pick up that axe again and take a killing swing if he didn't do this first.
”Hannah, wake up! Are you alive? Please be alive!”
Lifting up Angel's s.h.i.+rt, Brock tested for the screw on her shoulder blade and drove the drill head into her back. Knees anchoring her down, his one arm pinning her still, he went to work, praying under his breath that Hannah was okay and that this too would work on his sister.
”Hannah, please answer me!”
Legs cramping, his arms losing their strength, and terrified Hannah didn't survive the crude surgery, that she died because of his mistake, that she died like James did, he tried his best to finish Angel as fast as he could.
A lamp in the corner shattered.
Angel bled from her deltoid. A long slender opening like a gummy fish mouth bled.
The coins are coming out of her too.
Hurry!
Brock was cut on the side of the neck by a flying dime, the equivalent of shaving at twenty-five miles an hour. Brock stiffened, his face shrinking in pain as he began working out the second screw.
”Hannah, I love you,” he said, afraid she was dying and he wasn't saying anything to her. Brock had no choice but to save Angel, or else the coins firing out of her would not only kill her but kill him too. ”If you're awake, answer me.”
Nothing.
Lifting up the screw, the last jerk of the power drill, the bolt came free. Brock was thrown backwards into the wall from what burst out of Angel.
NOT ANYWHERE CLOSE TO SAFE.
Black blood burst everywhere. It covered him and the dead bodies littering the floor. All of the liquid was spewing out of Angel's back. After the tide was finished, Angel was left a pale, flaccid thing bunched up in the corner of the room. Hannah had her face to the ground and remained non-reactive. Before Brock could process the events, the room began sizzling and stinking of burning hair and flesh. The deep down decay of the oldest corpses in history. The end result was a room filled up with yellow fog. The dead corpses in the room began to dissolve, and in the end, they turned into the same black mephitic mess he had witnessed during this whole ordeal. The walls began to corrode, the wood giving to the black's heat.
Brock lifted Hannah to her feet. She was roused awake. ”Uhhhhhhhh.”
”We have to get moving. Can you walk?”
Hannah clutched her head. ”Y-eah, I think so.”
Angel had a long pink scar going down her back in the shape of a box. His plan had worked. The box itself, made of steel, had been cast across the room, purged from her body.
Hannah double-timed it once she caught the black oil oozing up the walls, eating through them, and still devouring the dead bodies into red, purple, and yellow paste. Overhead, chunks of the ceiling came down, bringing with them sizzling pieces of wood and paneling.
”Get out of here! I'm carrying Angel. Don't turn back, Hannah. I want you out of here!”
Brock urged Hannah towards the hall where she had to overstep Chuck Durnham's corpse. She turned back to Brock, not wanting to leave him behind.
Brock shouted, ”Just go! I'm right behind you.”
He shot towards the other side of the room, dodging puddles of boiling, frothy black. Brock scooped up Angel, carrying her over his shoulder like a fireman would a victim in distress. Hoisting her up, he muttered, ”You were always a dainty little thing, and thank G.o.d you are!”
Half the room was missing, it being a boiling pot of death. Brock weaved and shuffled, nervous at how the ceiling kept creaking and breaking randomly. Wallpaper was eaten through, the room so boiling hot. It stank of infernal death, what kept clinging to him and filling every breath he struggled to take in. The dead spoke, but one dead voice carried over the rest, and it was James's.
”Run/get out!/Escape before it's too late!”
Other dead voices overpowered James's words. ”You'll escape and find yourself facing a worse death/a far worse fate/you will die a horrible merciless end/boiling to death will sound like nothing when you face the end when it does come!”
Lunging through the door and staggering into the hallway, his back and knees aching, Brock swore he wouldn't do a lick of physical work ever again in his life if he survived this terrible ordeal. Rus.h.i.+ng towards the stairs, he was stopped by a perilous, yet belittled voice. It was Chuck, turning up his head ever so slightly and saying one last thing before dying, ”The big event's going to happen very soon/very soon/the big show is about to begin.”
Brock charged up the steps. He was determined not to end up as Chuck. He could hear the axe man be broken down by the boiling oil sledge that engulfed him.
The stairs collapsed one at a time. Each one he stepped on broke moments after he treaded across it. Brock blew out a grateful breath of air when he saw Hannah stand in the doorway upstairs. She was holding the way out open. Hannah reached out to pull him through, and he collapsed onto the front yard, unable to lug Angel's body an inch further.
Brock took in the words of the angry dead playing in the sky.
Hannah helped him carry Angel as far away from the house as possible. They both held an arm over Angel's shoulders, carrying her like a wounded solider. Without speaking, they looked behind them as they moved and caught the house's roof collapse. Every window shattered one-by-one. The walls came next, then the very foundation was swallowed whole by the black oil that burned so hot they could feel its intensity against their backs.
Working back towards the woods, they kept on moving. Brock said, ”Chuck said one last thing before I escaped the house. He said the big event is happening soon. Whatever that means, I don't want to be around for it.”
Angel coughed and whinnied in pain. She was struck by a wicked jolt of agony. She slipped from their grips, landing on all fours, and stared up at them in terror. ”Whu-what's happened? Why am I here? Why are you here?”
”Listen, Angel, I removed the mechanical device inside of you, and don't ask how. There's no time. You don't need coins in you to live anymore.”
Hannah helped her up to her feet, and they began running as fast as they could.
”Where are we going?” Angel managed to speak out-of-breath. ”What's going to happen now.”
Brock did his best to describe the situation, everything Chuck explained to them as he was dying. Then he said, ”We're getting the f.u.c.k out of this town.”
Angel pointed up the road. ”Up ahead in the road, it's not too far! The bridge out of Blue Hill isn't far at all.”
They were about to run when they noticed what was happening around them.
The woods began to move.
PUNISHMENT.
w.i.l.l.y kept his distance from the foot of the staircase and the box containing the wooden head of his uncle. While footsteps kept coming down the stairs, the mechanical machines started working again; their lights flas.h.i.+ng, their mechanisms working on their own. Voices of the dead, the hushed, the accusing, the vile cursing, the berating, the amused kept cycling and recycling. The words, the voices, they were worked up. Their energies doubled. What they had to say was much more important now. The walls leaked black oil. The oil kicked up steam as the black clotted rivulets of foulness sweated down the walls. The reek of death was pungent to the nose, yet the sight of the people walking into the room from the staircase was much worse to take in.
There were fourteen individuals who walked down the steps one at a time like automatons. Their legs and arms were stiff the way they couldn't bend very much. Their faces were clenched as if fighting a force that was making them walk. Their eyes were wide and ghastly, their mouths crying out to w.i.l.l.y for help.