Part 18 (2/2)
”Don't let this happen to us, save us, we're sorry, we're so sorry, they won't let go of us, I can't feel my body, I'm not moving my body, dear G.o.d, don't just look at us, do something, do something to save us, he's going to kill us, he's sick, he's crazy!”
Uncle Tim's box projected garbled rage through the tinny speaker, ”YOU KILLED ME! I AM NOT CRAZY! I AM NOT CRAAAAAZY!”
The floors were boiling with pools of the abysmal liquid. The room was thick with yellow death fog. The machine's lights were murky through the reek. Laughter and voices of the dead seemed to rejoice louder and louder, their decibel level near eardrum bursting. w.i.l.l.y cupped his hands to his ears, yet w.i.l.l.y could somehow hear his uncle's words project from the box.
”Each of these people were responsible for my death/they wanted my property for the city interstate project/I refused to sell, and they hired some goons to burn my place down/these people had their helping hand in my demise/I burned to death/the flames ate my body for fifteen agonizing minutes before I perished/death will make them pay/death has given the dead the power to see their dreams and ambitions come true/ENJOY THE SHOW, w.i.l.l.y!”
w.i.l.l.y watched, afraid to take a step in one direction or the other. The black oil was a half inch pool on the floor. The tide neared his feet. w.i.l.l.y caught swirls of reds, greens, and flesh tones within the black. Watching the oil, hearing his uncle rant, and seeing the mechanical machines work, he truly believed this was all the work of the dead.
There was nothing w.i.l.l.y could do to stop it.
Those fourteen people suddenly s.h.i.+fted stiffly, their bodies working independently of themselves, as if their bodies were made of screws and mechanical joints. They were like the machines, and what he witnessed next proved that theory correct.
The rattling against the house occurred in all the upstairs rooms, through the walls, even the windows (which shattered one by one), and the roof. Through the bas.e.m.e.nt ceiling, the wood splintered and down rained hundreds and hundreds of coins. The coins were drawn towards the people who were hobbling and resisting their own bodies, but losing the battle as they were each forced to stand in front of a mechanical machine.
”Oh G.o.d no!”
”Noooooooo!”
”You're breaking my bones!”
”I can't control my body!”
”Why are you doing this to us?”
”I'm in ag-ony!”
”Gaaaaaaaaaaawd!”
w.i.l.l.y winced as the sounds of bones breaking increased. Wrists snapped. Shoulders were dislocated. Necks cricked. Legs were twisted backwards. Faces were wrought in agony as coins pierced into their bodies right through the skin, but they didn't bleed. They weren't damaged. They were compelled.
One of them grabbed the ”Shock Meter” with both hands. The machine was overcome with coins and cash, the money flying in all directions as it kept raining down from the ceiling and getting sucked into the machine. As more coins entered it, the steel grips crackled with electricity, and soon, the woman holding it shrieked until bits of her skin fluttered in the air as sizzling burning meat, then into ashes, as she burned into a crisp black skeleton in less than ten seconds. The corpse toppled backwards, the crispy exterior flaking to nothing to reveal the steel box hidden in her back.
An older man punched the speed bag on the mechanical machine, and when he did, his own face imploded as if hit by a brick thrown at the speed of light. His head was thrown off of his shoulders, the brain disa.s.sembling itself mid-air and striking the wall as splatter. w.i.l.l.y could only guess that how hard the old man punched the bag ended up coming back to his own head with triple the force. The shotgun for the ”Duck Hunt” game was in a middle aged woman's hands. She pulled the trigger and out the back of her head shot out b.l.o.o.d.y quarters, dimes, and pennies. Two men who looked like brothers were being attacked by the tiny figurine clowns at the circus who'd escaped their box. Lions were chewing out their throats, while clowns were setting their clothes on fire. The figurines of the audience whooped and hollered as the two victims met their horrible demise. Madame Rousseau spoke in her box, the harsh female voice of the bayou making predictions for the older woman in her eighties, specifically how the woman would strangle herself to death. The older woman did indeed strangle herself with her own hands, but the woman's fingers pressed so hard they broke skin and threaded through muscle until she twisted her own head off. When the head struck the floor, coins, jewelry, and money overflowed out the neck's stump, out her eye sockets, and ear holes.
The other victims were dying, and w.i.l.l.y knew he couldn't save them, but he could save others outside the house from further harm. Whatever powers compelled his uncle to do these things, the man wasn't sane. w.i.l.l.y did the only thing he could think to do in that moment, standing in the room of dying people. w.i.l.l.y gripped the wooden tower containing his uncle's head by two hands and threw it down as hard as he could.
”w.i.l.l.y/NOOOOOOOOO!”
The gla.s.s around Uncle Tim's head shattered. The head rolled out, instantly melting in the oil. The wood parted to show off gears and pulleys and steel mechanisms at work. Flames shot out of Tim's wooden head, and then it sank in the oil that kept rising higher and higher from the ground. The rest of the room became victim to the heat. The mechanical machines and the remains of the victims sank into the black mess, instantly engulfed and then vanis.h.i.+ng as if they'd never existed at all.
w.i.l.l.y rushed the stairs, only to tip forward and land on top of them in his haste. His ankles had melted into the black. Flames rose up from beneath the stairs, cooking him in moments. While his flesh was scorched, w.i.l.l.y finally understood what powers possessed his uncle. Death had its way with his uncle's imagination. What ideas, hopes, and dreams were stored in the man's heart and soul were taken by the dark forces of the afterlife. Enough dead people had been committed to the earth that they had gained a certain power and freedom to make their ideas real.
As w.i.l.l.y watched the flesh from his fingers turn to blackened and cooked bone, he also learned something else. Death wanted to play games with the living. His suffering was their pleasure. His sorrow their celebration. Death had fooled his uncle into playing their game of human suffering. Now they were done with his uncle, as death was finished with w.i.l.l.y.
The spirits of the dead now had greater ideas and ambitions to exploit.
The fire weakened the stairs. w.i.l.l.y crashed through them just like his uncle did all those years ago and burned alive in a scorching blaze of burning black tar.
The voices floating about the room rejoiced.
w.i.l.l.y's voice joined the throngs of the dead.
NEAR THE END.
Angel was the first to reach the truck in the road. She screamed, backing up from the driver's side door. Brock remembered her boyfriend was in the seat, and how his body had been pulped by coins. He eased Angel aside, though firmly, sensing movement about them in the woods. The sounds of the dead were at a deafening roar, the words emanating millions of voices strong. Brock lugged out the flaccid corpse, the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d's sticky blood covering his hands. Brock placed him on the street.
Hannah had grabbed Angel by the arm and lead her to the other side of the truck. Brock moved to the driver's side, the keys still in the ignition. He was so grateful there wasn't a steel slot covering the ignition that he cried out in joy, but n.o.body could hear him over the din of the dead.
Turning the keys, the truck started right up. Brock checked to make sure everybody was inside. Angel and Hannah's face was turned in terrified frowns, eying the blood, overwhelmed and horrified that they had to sit in it. He too was covered in congealed blood.
He flipped on the headlights to reduce the darkness. After driving a half of a mile, it became apparent what they were hearing that was so loud. In the road, coins, money, jewelry, all of it was magnetized to a house down in the woods. The coins and jewelry clanged together, kicking up wild sparks. They could see the house where the change was drawn to. The roof, the s.h.i.+ngles, every inch of the ranch style house was chocked full of holes, as if an entire fleet of M-60 guns had been unloaded into it from all angles. And the decimation continued. Wooden boards were see-through to the point walls collapsed as the storm of money continued to filter inside. The sight was confusing as it was an inspiration to step on the gas that much harder.
Angel kept watching in the rearview mirror, and when the money storm calmed and went silent, she turned her eyes from it until a great explosion rocked the earth so strong it almost sent the truck off the road.
”Look!” Brock turned to his side mirror and watched the house literally explode, everything firing up miles high. There was no fire, no smoke, only coins spreading across the sky, each individual piece sucked towards something nearby, each coin going their own direction.
”What the h.e.l.l is happening?” Hannah kept mouthing to herself. ”It doesn't make any sense at all.”
Brock couldn't instill comfort in either of them, he himself trembling. It's what Chuck had warned them about. The next big thing. The ideas of the dead were battling to come to fruition, and Tim Hawker's idea was about to conclude with a big a.s.s bang.
”Keep your eyes open,” Brock shouted. ”Something's happening very soon!”
The first indication things were coming to a head was the black oil billowing up from pockets of the ground everywhere, as if ghosts had struck their payload, the black crude issuing with geyser ferocity, spitting up head-high and gus.h.i.+ng continuously.
”Drive faster!” Angel demanded, lowering in her seat and scared to death.
Hannah hugged Angel, and Angel returned the gesture, both of them stealing what comfort they could from each other.
That left Brock alone to face the chaos.
Driving on, new events began to transpire. The trees, the road, and in the farther distance, the houses in the residential area, the cars, the windows, the roofs, even the corpses, formed new steel slots somewhere on them. Coin-operated devices, he thought, that's what they were, like machines in a mechanical museum.
Brock heard the rumble in the air, and then the voices on the air stopped.
Then it began to rain.
THE GRAND FINALE.
It wasn't raining water when the sky grumbled. Flashes of copper and nickel came down. They were sucked into the coin slots that were located on inanimate objects. The slots devoured the coins. Escaping the woods and driving into the residential areas, they watched the corpses in the street who'd taken in the coins jerk to life. This time, they were rotting, their eyes sunken into their bodies, their muscles atrophied and their arms and legs moving at a sluggish pace against rigor mortis. Black oil oozed from their bodies as if they could burst open with the black stuff at any moment. Trees renewed by money stiffened in every yard, the wood bending and creaking as their root systems broke dirt and the branches came to life, swinging and batting at the truck, denting the driver's side door, and Brock cried out as one of the tips of the branches sliced across his cheek through the shattered window.
Slamming down on the gas, Brock overcame the living tree that chased after him in the rearview mirror. ”G.o.dd.a.m.n! Did you see that? Did you see that?”
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