The Devil's End Read online

  “You just wanna stay here so you can play with the puppy,” Luke accused poutingly. “I wanna stay too.”

  “You’re coming with me, young man,” Carol insisted firmly. “The dog’s going out to the garage. I guess we’ll have to stop at the grocery store to get him some food too. Well, I need to go anyway. I just hope he doesn’t get very big. I don’t want to be spendin’ half my salary on dog food.”

  “He looks like a German shepherd to me,” Luke declared proudly.

  “Great, that’s just what we need,” Carol sighed. “Well, let’s go, Sport.”

  She wiggled into her gray suede jacket and tossed her son his coat. “We’ll be back soon,” she said to Lana as she opened the front door. “Don’t forget to put those papers down, now. I guess you’ll have to unwrap some plates and glasses to get some.”

  Lana forced a smile. “All right, Mom.”

  After her mother and brother were gone, she dutifully took the puppy straight to the garage, turned on the light and set him down on the concrete floor. Sam immediately began to investigate the new environment.

  The garage was cold; besides newspapers, she would also have to put something warm down for him to sleep on. An old towel stuffed into a packing box would make a nice bed, she decided.

  Sam seemed quite contented sniffing around Luke and Lana’s bicycles while she stayed with him, but as soon as she closed the door behind her to collect the things she needed, he began to whine and yap, loud enough so that she could still hear him when she went down the hallway to get a towel from the bathroom. She hoped he wouldn’t keep that up all night; none of them would get any sleep, and although she and Luke would willingly make the sacrifice, their mother would take about five minutes of it before throwing a total hissy fit. The whines soon became frantic howls; Lana strongly suspected she would have to try to sneak the puppy into bed with her.

  By the time she got back out to the garage laden with box, towel, newspapers, and water dish, she was certain the whole neighborhood was aware of Sam’s demand for company; the acoustics in the garage amplified his piercing wails. She put the box down sideways and bunched the towel up inside it. Sam immediately pulled the towel back out, his stubby tail wagging gleefully. Lana shook her head.

  “You’re gonna be a real pain in the ass, aren’t ya?”

  Sam was eager to confirm the accusation; as soon as she put the papers down, he stepped on the water dish, spilling the water and getting most of the papers soaked, then began shredding them with his teeth and paws.

  It wasn’t until Lana turned off the garage light to go back into the kitchen that she was able to see the distinct shape of a man’s head through one of the dusty garage windows. He had apparently been watching her, and even now that the garage was dark, he remained standing there like a Peeping Tom with infrared vision.

  Convinced that he had to be some kind of pervert—or worse—Lana backed nonchalantly into the kitchen and locked the door behind her, then dashed through the house to check the front door and windows. Sam began to howl again in protest of being left alone in the dark, which made Lana more nervous, but as far as she was concerned he could yap his head off until her mother got back home.

  Only after making sure the house was secure did she dare peek through the living room drapes. The man was not standing on the front porch; she couldn’t see him anywhere. Maybe he had gone away.

  She let the drapes fall and headed for her bedroom to write her letters when the doorbell rang. It had to be the man she’d seen at the garage window. He hadn’t gone away after all.

  Pausing in the hallway, her pulse racing, she wondered if murderers or rapists rang the doorbell. She timidly walked back to the living room and leaned against the front door, her ear pressed to the wood. Sam was still yapping away in the garage, adding fuel to the fire of anxiety. Now she was afraid to look out the window. She barked at the door with forced aggressiveness, “Who’s there?”

  There was no answer; only the shuffling of feet on the other side. It was the last thing she wanted to do, but she made herself step over to the drapes and pull them aside. The sight of the dark, looming shape on the porch initially filled her with dread, but then she suddenly realized who it was. It was only Spiro.

  The tenseness rapidly drained from her muscles; Spiro, of course. He’d probably heard Sam’s commotion and had come over to check on him, or else had a nasty message from his mother to deliver about the racket. Lana unlocked and opened the door with a sheepish smile. “Spiro! I thought you were some ol’ creep…you really had me there for a while,” she admitted, now feeling pretty foolish.

  He kept his eyes lowered, and as she spoke he shuffled nervously from one foot to the other. “I heard Sam, so I sneaked out to see if he was okay.”

  “Oh, he’s just pissed off about being left alone. I guess after being played with all evening, he’s already pretty spoiled.” Lana stepped back. “You wanna come in?”

  Spiro shook his head. “I hafta go back home. If my mama finds out what I did, she’ll get mad at me. I’m not s’pose to go out my window.”

  “Well, guess you’d better get back, then; Lord knows I wouldn’t want her mad at me. No offense, but…anyway, don’t you worry about Sam, he’ll be just fine,” Lana assured him. “He’ll probably end up sleeping with me tonight.”

  Her last words urged Spiro to steal a glance at her face. His eyelids fluttered as a vision flashed of Lana in her nightgown, lying sweetly unconscious on her bed. He could watch her sleep for hours and hours, study the contours of her body all he wanted while she dreamed…

  Oh yes, Spiro, any time, any time…

  “Huh?”

  “I said I guess I’ll see you later, Spiro.” Lana looked away and started to close the door, musing over the strange look on her neighbor’s face. Something about it made her a little uncomfortable.

  Spiro stumbled backward, eyes still transfixed on her face. “Yeah, later.”

  “I knew you were going to do this. I just knew it!” Marla crossed her arms firmly over her breast and shook her head stubbornly. “I am not going down there. I told you on the phone, I’m staying right here in the car. I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day, thank you.”

  “Good grief, what’s the big deal? You really think dead people get up and move around? Come on, how dumb can you get? I thought you were the logical one.” Nancy poked her friend on the shoulder with the flashlight she had taken from her dad’s shop.

  “I don’t care if I’m being illogical or anything else,” Marla responded testily, shoving the flashlight away. “I just don’t want to go, and that’s final. If you’re sure there’s nothing to be afraid of, why are you so desperate for me to go with you? Let’s just forget the whole thing.” She restarted the Cultass’s engine.

  Nancy opened the passenger door. “Turn the damn car off—I’ll go alone. I’m not afraid, and I’m sure not desperate. I just thought it would be fun to go together.”

  Marla switched off the engine; the even rumble under the hood fell silent. “Yeah, probably so you can scare the shit out of me. I know you, Nancy Snell. Well, I already got that done this afternoon, so now it’s your turn. And don’t stay down there too long.”

  Nancy climbed out of the car and made a production of locking the door before slamming it shut. “Better lock yours too. Zombies can smell fear a mile away.” She giggled and turned on the flashlight. After obnoxiously shining it in Marla’s face through the windshield, she turned the beam on the trees bordering the path.

  The three-quarter moon was shining brightly, but the sky was cloudy and yielded little light from above. Without looking back to see if Marla might change her mind, Nancy set off boldly through the black gape that would take her to the ancient cemetery.

  The night was still except for the occasional hoot of an owl and the rustle of tree branches as small nocturnal creatures scurried am
ong them. As soon as Nancy was out of sight of the car, she slowed her pace, her senses honed to absorb every nuance of the experience. In a way she was glad Marla was being such a fraidycat; embarking on such a chilling adventure alone was far more rewarding than having someone else along.

  For a few moments the clouds moved away from the moon, bathing the treetops with an eerie glow, accentuating the mood Nancy was creating in her mind. She was a true horror fan, and loved nothing more than to have the crap scared out of her, although such a feat had become increasingly difficult to accomplish. She’d desensitized herself with too many gory movies and bloodcurdling novels. But this, she thought, was nice. She willingly conjured visions of coming to the graveyard and seeing skeletal fingers breaking through the earth’s crust, reaching for her, or of having a large pair of dusty black shoes suddenly appear in the lowered beam of her flashlight before she could even get there…

  It had been her idea to break into the tomb in the first place, and she was glad she hadn’t been deprived of the honor of being first to see what lay beyond the metal door. It was strange the way it had seemingly opened by itself in front of Marla, but even though Nancy had a fetish for the supernatural, she didn’t really believe in it; she believed in nothing without empirical evidence, and so far her personal experience with such matters had sadly lacked evidence of any sort. The idea of one of the Obers rising from his or her coffin to open the door of the tomb was deliciously frightening, but Nancy knew that no such thing had occurred.

  Too bad.

  She reached the end of the path and paused, moving the light beam up to illuminate the clearing before her. Shadows stretched beyond the eroding grave markers and fell across brown, needle-covered ground. No corpses reached up to push back their dark blankets of earth, but Nancy found the general atmosphere quite satisfying to her lust for things ominous.

  She was aware that her morbid preoccupation with death and torture stemmed from her inability to cope with her own mortality, her own eventual demise; consequently she sought to discover its mysteries beforehand, though such efforts were, of course, frustratingly futile. She had watched hundreds of actors and actresses die in hundreds of different, gruesome ways, the art of special effects making the deaths progressively more realistic, and Nancy had watched closely, raptly, an enthusiastic recruit studying a training film. How else was one to prepare? She had dreamed countless times of embracing the cold flesh of a corpse, looking deeply into its sightless eyes and screaming, Tell me what it’s like! What does it feel like to be dead!

  They never answered her; their bloodless, dry lips hung open but remained silent. She’d heard that mortuaries glued or sewed shut the eyes and mouths of their still, pale customers lest they spring open during the funeral services and thereby cause mourners to prematurely join those who no longer breathed. One day she would be the one to make sure such precautions were rendered; she planned to become a funeral director, of course.

  She moved slowly toward the tomb in which the remains of Myrantha and Nathaniel Ober lay. They, like the others who surrounded them beneath the ground, knew the secrets of the dead. And possibly a whole lot more. The legend of the Obers having been witches had snared Nancy’s attention like the scent of cheese to a mouse. She didn’t actually believe in witchcraft— again, she’d never personally seen it practiced, let alone with results—but it was somehow a part of the vast unknown that encompassed the grave, and the discovery of any truth connected to death would give her a glimpse of what she so desperately wanted…needed to see before she too became absorbed by it. Her heart quickened slightly as she circled around the entrance of the tomb.

  Yes, the door was indeed opened, but just barely. Nancy stepped closer, the beam of the flashlight seeking beyond the crack and revealing a narrow view of some large, dusty object. One of the coffins, on the left. Myrantha’s.

  She swallowed, forcing down the lump that had suddenly become lodged in her throat. But she was more elated than frightened. It had been almost three years since the idea of getting into the tomb had first occurred to her, and she had feared that her plan would just become one of those things forever talked and dreamed about until it was absurd. Of course, the talking and dreaming and speculating was the guaranteed fun part; she hadn’t wanted to rush into action for fear of being disappointed. But wasn’t it lucky that, just when she’d decided it was time for truth or consequences, all that had been required was a little push.

  She moved up to the door and gingerly began to tear away the dead vines that had prevented it from opening any farther, her eyes still glued to what she could see of Myrantha’s coffin. When the impediment was cleared, she pushed the rough metal surface with her hand, the full length of the box coming into view as the door swung inward, groaning on its rusty hinges. It stopped when it came into contact with the coffin on the right.

  Everything was coated with a thick layer of dust, but as the light played on the filthy surfaces, Nancy realized with dread that a few places had been fairly recently disturbed: the edges of the coffin lids, the floor. An animal, or…?

  She moved the beam of light up to survey the back wall and uttered a gasp of surprise. On it was hanging an inverted black iron cross surrounded by strange symbols painted in red. Whatever they meant, Nancy was already convinced that the rumors about the Obers being involved in witchcraft hadn’t just come out of thin air. She shuddered slightly, wondering if just looking at the symbols would invoke some mystical, dark power. The wind whipped up behind her suddenly, as if to say, Oh, but of course…

  Eager to assume the role of idiotic horror movie heroine, she stepped over the threshold of the small chamber and returned her attention to Myrantha Ober’s dark narrow coffin. The camera was rolling: this was the moment she had been waiting for. Finally, the payoff (unless the graves had been robbed): to open the lid now inches from her fingertips and see a body that had been dead for seventy years. Would there be anything left of it?

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Nancy knew she was going to be extremely disappointed if inside the box she only found something she might have pulled out of the vacuum cleaner bag. The air inside the tomb was heavy, chokingly musty, and hinted vaguely of the stench of decay; she resisted the urge to take a deep breath before opening the lid of Myrantha’s eternal bed. She trembled slightly when her fingers touched the wood, hyping herself up with the idea that she wasn’t just going to see a dead body.

  She was going to see a dead witch. Grasping the edge firmly, she began to lift.

  Marla glanced at the clock on her dashboard for the fortieth time since Nancy had disappeared into the path; she’d now been gone for seventeen and a half minutes. What was taking her so long? A few horrible possibilities had already presented themselves, and they took turns assaulting Marla’s fragile patience.

  The worst scenario was, of course, the most unlikely, but in view of what had happened earlier that day, Marla couldn’t completely rule it out, insane as it was: Nancy had gone into the tomb, and the Obers had been waiting for her, their mortal bodies revived by the power of the Devil—Gramma Colter had insisted vehemently that all real witches were in cahoots with the Devil. They had enclosed her within giant batwing arms, amused by her vain struggles and muted cries for help; pressing against her, their bloodthirsty lips pulled back over ivory daggers, their excitement grew; the beating of Nancy’s human heart, like a fluttering sparrow waiting to be crushed in the tight grasp of an ogre’s hand, sounding like sweet music to their hellish souls. Sinking their fangs into the soft flesh of Nancy’s shoulder, they had begun to drink…

  Marla sighed, shaking her head. No, no, that was vampires; witches did something else…but what? Maybe Nancy had gone through the metal door of the tomb, and whatever had made it open earlier made it shut again once a victim had been lured inside, kind of like a marble Venice Flytrap. That seemed a witchy sort of thing. Or perhaps the tomb itself had some kind of power, and was hungry for a f
resh body in its bowels…

  Such were the fates Nancy would dream up if she were sitting in the car, waiting for Marla to reemerge from the path. Stupid, asinine notions, really. Hollywood horror. Nothing that would ever actually happen in real life. Still, Nancy could have somehow locked herself in there accidentally, the dumb shit.

  Chances were, though, Nancy was playing a little joke, planning to stay down there so long that she would be forced to get out and look for her, and at the worst possible moment, Nancy would jump out from behind a tree, or from the tomb itself—very generously supposing Marla would even go that far without a flashlight—and yell BOO! just for the sadistic pleasure of seeing her best friend fly in several directions at once, and/or scream, wet her pants, and faint in rapid succession. Marla wouldn’t put it past her at all. That sort of thing was right up Nancy’s alley, which was one of the reasons Marla had refused to go with her in the first place.

  Whatever was causing the delay, Marla had no intention of even stepping out of the car, much less going in search of her friend in that dreadful place, without light or weapon. At the most she would wait another fifteen minutes, which would be more than fair, then she would go back home and make an anonymous call to the police and let them go find out what had happened to Nancy.

  Another five minutes passed. Marla began to gnaw on her fingernails.

  Then suddenly there was movement in the path— something big and black swaying between the trees, barely visible beneath the subtle moonlight grudgingly permitted through the clouds. Marla straightened up in her seat, her eyes riveted to the approaching figure. It had to be Nancy…didn’t it? But Nancy was wearing a white sweater and blue skirt. Whoever (or whatever) was coming up to the head of the path was totally clothed in black.

  Invisible fingers clutched around Marla’s throat. The impossible had happened—the Obers had risen from the dead. They had killed Nancy, and now one of them was coming to get her…