Anomaly Flats (21 page)

And they were both wearing the same stupid shirt.

One of the Lewises launched himself on top of the other Lewis, and the Lewis on bottom caught the other Lewis with his feet. He grunted as he gave his legs a mighty push, and the Lewis on top flew backward, straight toward Mallory. He screamed as he flew through the air, limbs spinning and slipping. He spun around on the slippery floor, making eye contact with Mallory for only the briefest moment…and that moment was all Mallory needed. In that split second, she could see the rage and the murder in his eyes. She squeezed the trigger three times, and three red holes blossomed in Evil Lewis’ chest. He fell to his knees and gazed up with clouding, astounded eyes as blood seeped through his lab coat and pooled onto the floor. “No,” he whispered. Then his body fell limp, his eyes tilted back, and the evil clone was dead.

“Oh, thank God!” Lewis cried, struggling to his feet. His face was covered in bruises and lacerations; his right shoulder had been dislocated, and he walked toward her with a limp. “You saved my life,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes. “I thought you’d left, but…Mallory…you saved everything.”

“I’m a hero,” she agreed, smirking as she gave Lewis a hard pat on his good shoulder. “And now I’m gonna go.”

Lewis grinned, despite his pain. “I guess you’ve earned that right,” he said happily. “Although I was hoping you’d at least stay for a—” But his voice trailed off as he slid his gaze to the shelves over Mallory’s shoulder. The corners of his mouth fell, and the blood drained from his face, leaving his cheeks powdery white.

“What?” Mallory asked, tilting her head. “Are you having a stroke? Do you smell burnt toast?”

“Mallory…” Lewis raised a finger slowly and pointed to the shelves.

Mallory furrowed her brow as she turned. “What—?” But she didn’t have to finish her question. She saw what made Lewis blench.

The clone had knocked a can of green beans off the bottom shelf as he fell.

“Oh…” she said, exhaling sharply. “That’s…not good, is it?”

Before Lewis could answer, a low thrumming began emanating from the shelves. The hum grew louder, and it grew more powerful, until the quick
whump-whump-whump
became so fierce that more cans began rattling off the shelves and falling to the floor below. A strange red light whispered itself to life, burning into existence like a slow ember somewhere in the center of the aisle, near the canned asparagus and spreading like wildfire until every shelf in aisle 8 glowed red with hellfire and heat. The cans began whispering urgently again, their gentle urgings replaced with a thrilled chatter of ends reached and destinies fulfilled. The temperature dropped another twenty degrees. There was no doubt that Mallory’s breath was now pluming out in a thick, billowing mist. She instinctively reached for Lewis’ hand and found it already open and waiting. Each clutched the other as they waited for the end of the world.

“What happens now?” Mallory whispered, her voice hollow and strange in her own ears.

“I don’t know,” Lewis answered. The honesty pulled at his voice like a boulder.

Then the shelves exploded, answering at least a part of the question.

Cans burst apart and rocketed to the far reaches of the Walmart, and a syrupy tsunami of canned fruit and vegetables rained down from above. Peaches splattered against the juice boxes in aisle 10. Peas pelted the Hawaiian rolls in aisle 1. Corn kernels peppered the ladies’ hosiery. Globs of sauerkraut plopped down on the antiperspirant aisle, destroying all hope of deodorization.

One entire half of the store became the victim of culinary bombardment.

Mallory shielded herself from the food explosion by throwing up her arms, and they were pelted by Spaghetti-O’s and a surprisingly wide assortment of beans. She grimaced at the onslaught, but she bore it with an appropriate amount of dignity.

Once it stopped, she lowered her dripping hands and peered into the new and awful landscape of aisle 8. Every single can had been launched clear, and the shelves had burst into shards that now littered the floor like shrapnel from some Great War of Capitalism. The frames of the shelves had remained bolted to the ground, but the backs of the shelving units, which had so recently been made of thin metal, now glowed with red and yellow swirling mists. They roiled behind the shelves on both sides of the aisle, but the mists did not break the plane into the aisle itself. And there, on the right side, not far from where the Spear of Rad now lay beneath a haphazard heap of shelf debris, there stood an innocuous wooden door, strong and unsupported, and wholly unaffected by the churning hell-mists that surrounded it.

Aisle 8 had shown itself for what it truly was: a portal to the lair of an ancient and powerful demon.

“Lewis,” Mallory whispered, forcing her voice to choke itself out, even though her throat was staunchly against the idea. Lewis made some sort of questioning whine in his chest, which was all he could muster under the circumstances. “I want you to know something.” She gave his hand a squeeze.

He tapped his thumb against her fingers and managed to say, “What?”

Mallory closed her eyes. She leaned her head down so her lips were close enough to his ears that there was no danger of being misheard. “I blame you for everything.”

They stood like that for several long minutes, in total silence, waiting for the ancient evil to emerge from his weathered wooden door. Lewis didn’t try to pull his hand away, and Mallory didn’t bother releasing it. No matter who was to blame, they were in this together, here at the end of things.

But the door remained closed. The mists kept swirling, and the thrumming kept humming, but the door did not open. Mallory didn’t know how long they stood there, hand-in-hand; time didn’t exist here, in aisle 8 of the Anomaly Flats Walmart. It might have been minutes, or it might have been hours, but after a certain amount of time, however long that time was, it became abundantly clear that the door was not going to open.

“What’s happening?” Mallory asked. She supposed that perhaps she should be glad that there wasn’t a writhing, oozing evil slithering out of the old oak door, but somehow, the creature’s total absence was even more terrifying. “Why isn’t it coming out?”

She felt Lewis’ hand tremble within her own. “It’s waiting for us,” he whispered.

Mallory snorted. “It’s waiting for
us
? To go down
there
?” She finally released Lewis’ hand, only to find that her fingers had cramped and needed to be pried loose. “Perfect. He can keep waiting. Forever. I’m going to Canada.”

She handed him the pistol. But she didn’t make a move to leave.

“This needs to end,” Lewis said, his voice quiet and trembling, but unmistakably resolute. He turned and looked Mallory squarely in the eyes. “You can end this,” he whispered.

“Me?! No, no, no, no, no. You, sure. We, maybe, though probably not. But me? No way. You want to go down and fight the demon? Be my guest.”

“I couldn’t fight a child in this condition,” Lewis said sadly, clutching his dislocated shoulder and tilting his bruised and beaten face so that the fluorescent lights gleamed off the swollen welts. “Not that I would ever fight a child. But you know.”

“This isn’t my fight,” Mallory snapped. “I may have made the clone, but the beet-demon was licking its lips down there in its stupid dungeon
way
before I came to town and pushed you into a lake.”

Lewis sighed heavily. “I know,” he said. “But you’re the only one with the strength to end it once and for all.”

Mallory squinted down at him, sniffing at his words for another jab at being sturdy. She decided to let it slide, if for no other reason than Lewis would probably be wearing his skin around his waist soon, and that seemed like punishment enough. But that didn’t mean she was ready to sacrifice her life to try to kill the thing waiting for them on the other side of that door. “You know,” she said, “I’m not particularly convinced Anomaly Flats is worth saving.”

Lewis looked up at her, his eyes sad but firm. “If you really thought that, you wouldn’t be here.”

Mallory crossed her arms. “You think you know so much,” she said, annoyed. And the part that was so annoying was that he was right. She
had
come back for a reason. Or maybe for a lot of little reasons that added up to one big, stupid, ill-advised ball of reason: she felt guilty; she didn’t want Lewis to die; she didn’t want to be single-handedly responsible for the decimation of an entire town; and she couldn’t deny that Lewis had been right when he said the people of Anomaly Flats were worth saving. They were weird, and they were scary, and some of them had swarms of flies coming out of their throats…but they didn’t deserve to be flayed alive.

She reached down and snatched up the Spear of Rad. “Fine,” she said, testing the weapon by giving it a few stabs through the air. “But if I die in there, I’m going
Poltergeist
all over this stupid town.”

“Honestly,” Lewis said, pushing his glasses up his nose, “dying should be the least of your worries.”

Chapter 20

Mallory stood before the weathered oak door, holding the spear so tightly in both hands that her knuckles glowed white. She frowned. “Do I just knock, or…?”

“I think you just go in,” Lewis said from his hiding spot behind the end cap.

“
You
go in,” she grumbled under her breath. She tapped the pointy end of the spear against the door three times. It made no sound whatsoever. “If I save the town and destroy the all-powerful, indestructible demon, can I go?”

“Not
if
,” Lewis said, trying to sound encouraging and failing all the way. “
When
.
When
you destroy the indestructible demon.” He thought about this for a second, and then he added, “I’m not sure ‘indestructible’ is an appropriate adjective for a demon that you’re going to destroy.”

“That’s what worries me,” she said.

She reached out, grabbed the knob, and pulled. The door swung open on its hinges, perfectly silent. She peered into the darkness of the doorway; a set of stone steps wound around to the left and down, down, down, along a curving stone wall that was sparsely lit by small torches spaced unevenly down the staircase. Mallory glanced around the doorway, which was set into the shelving unit. Behind the shelves was another unit, and another aisle, and there was no way the stone steps
actually
went back into that space. But looking through the door, there was no mistaking it; the ancient evil’s dungeon went back much farther than the Walmart shelving unit should have allowed.

It was very disorienting.

Adding to the unease that permeated the air was the fact that the torches on the wall looked eerily familiar. “If this leads to the Check Into Cash, I’m letting the whole town burn.” She turned and raised an eyebrow at Lewis. “I don’t suppose I can just nick the bastard and run?” she asked.

The scientist shrugged. “It’s been a while since I read the manual. But I’m pretty sure you have to drive it all the way through his heart.”

Mallory shook her head and gazed sadly down at the crowbar. “Drive it through his heart. Got it.” She took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway into the darkness.

There was an unmistakable chill in the air. Mallory drew her arms up against her chest as she crept carefully down the stairs, holding the point of the spear out and trying her best to peer around the curving staircase into the darkness below. “This is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid,” she whispered. Her voice did not echo, like she’d thought perhaps it would. And then she noticed all the other sounds that weren’t there; the torch flames didn’t crackle, the walls didn’t drip, and her footsteps didn’t make so much as a single scrape. It was as if someone had muted the volume on the entire world.

But she could still hear herself whispering, and that gave her a strange sort of comfort.

“Stab the heart, run away,” she instructed herself. “Stab the heart, run away. This is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid. Stab the heart, run away. This is stupid, run away.” But instead, her feet kept moving forward, easing themselves down the stone steps.

Before she knew it, Mallory was standing at the foot of the staircase, in the lair of the ancient evil of Anomaly Flats.

“Hello?” she whispered. She didn’t know
why
she whispered it; she didn’t want to hear a response from whatever else might be down there, and she wasn’t particularly keen on announcing her own presence to it. But her entire body seemed to be operating on autopilot now, and she couldn’t really fault it; this was nothing if not uncharted territory.

Her heart dropped into her shoes when she heard a voice from the back of the chamber say, “Hello.”

It seemed like a good a time as any to vomit in the corner.

So, she did.

“Are you all right?” the voice asked as Mallory wiped her arm across her mouth. It was a man’s voice, and it sounded unreasonably sincere. She found a strange sort of vindication in the fact that the ancient evil was, indeed, male.

“Fine,” she said sourly, returning her full attention to the Spear of Rad and holding it defensively in front of her chest. “Do me a favor and impale yourself on this crowbar, will you?” She tried to keep the quaver out of her voice, but she was under no illusions that she was actually managing to do it. She could feel her throat vibrating with every syllable.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” the voice said, slow and syrupy-sweet as honey. “Though I’m not sure I would if I were able.”

“What do you mean?” Mallory asked, squinting into the darkness. She couldn’t see anything beyond the halo of light thrown by the torch bolted to the wall above the bottom step. She had a feeling that the chamber went much,
much
farther back. She waved the point of the spear in a slow arc before her, in case the ancient evil decided to pounce. She didn’t know if the movement of the spear would help, but she also didn’t know that it wouldn’t.

The voice in the darkness chuckled. “I’m in a bit of a fixed state,” it admitted. Then, “Where are my manners? I imagine you’d do well with a bit of light.”

On his command, an orange glow with no discernible source filled the chamber. It was warm, and welcoming, and Mallory felt her shoulders involuntarily relax a bit. She could see the entire room now, and it wasn’t nearly as large as she’d imagined; it was just about the size of a basketball court…which meant she had no trouble seeing the ancient evil where he stood at the far end of the room.

He was tall, but not overly so, and his clothes were surprisingly plain and hellfire-free. He wore brown linen pants and a white, long-sleeved waffle shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He wore a dusty brown cowboy hat, and with his head tipped down, she couldn’t see his face beneath the brim. He was slim, and in good enough shape to send an involuntary flutter through Mallory’s stomach (
Seriously? Now?
she scolded herself), but it was the man’s chains that really demanded most of the attention. He had shackles around each wrist, and another pair clamped tightly on his ankles. Thick, heavy chains linked them to gleaming stakes in the stone wall behind him. Even from the distance, there was no mistaking the finality of those bonds.

“I hope you won’t think me a poor host for not greeting you at the door,” the creature said, raising his hands as far as he was able, the chains clanging until he had pulled them taut. “I’m not quite as mobile as I’d like to be.”

“Who
did
that to you?” Mallory blurted. She had a strong feeling that she shouldn’t provoke a primeval demon, but seeing him in chains was such a shock, she couldn’t help herself. Besides, odds were she was going to meet a horrible, painful end down in this dungeon, and if she was going to die, by God, she was going to die a well-informed woman.

“Protestants,” came the easy answer. He said it as if the idea was terribly amusing to him. For all she knew, it was.

Mallory took a deep breath. Her life had rocketed so far past surreal, it wasn’t even worth wondering how she’d managed to find herself in this particular predicament. She decided just to roll with it and see how it all played out. But even so, she wasn’t quite ready to approach the imprisoned creature. Not yet.

“So you’re just stuck there? A bunch of Protestants overpowered something like
you
and locked you into the wall?” she called out.

The ancient evil snorted. “People…can surprise you,” he said, with a little laughter in his voice.

Mallory frowned. “You sound awfully chipper about it. All things considered.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be,” the man admitted. “But when you’ve lived as long as I have, any bit of surprise is an opportunity to smile.”

Mallory glanced down at the ancient spear in her hands. Then she looked back up at the man chained to the wall. He looked pretty spry for being a few million years old, restraints notwithstanding. “This might be a weird question…but you
are
the ancient evil, right?”

The man on the other side of the room smiled. Mallory couldn’t see it, but she could
hear
it, somehow. “I suppose that’s as accurate a description as most of the others,” he assented. “I wouldn’t go around calling myself evil…but I see where others might get that idea.”

“And you’re the one responsible for…all this?” She waved her hand up in the general direction of the town above. “For Anomaly Flats?”

“It may be more accurate to say that Anomaly Flats is responsible for me. I found myself helplessly drawn to its singular qualities some time ago. I’ve become a bit bonded to the fabric of the town over time, it’s true. But Anomaly Flats was a dimensional oddity long before I came to town.”

Mallory took a step toward the creature. “Look, don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, trying to sound braver than she felt, “but I’m supposed to stab you through the heart.” She cleared her throat. “With this magical crowbar from space.”

The ancient evil shrugged. “Makes sense,” he admitted. Then he raised his head, and his dark eyes bored into Mallory’s, a sneer creeping up along his lips. “I’d probably be more surprised if you’d said you came here in peace.”

Mallory gazed into his face. His features were confusing; that was as specifically as she could describe them. His dark eyes seemed to almost radiate light, but that might have been an optical illusion caused by the fact that they were constantly changing size and shape. First almond-shaped, then round, then up at the corners, then down, and on and on and on, as if they couldn’t make up their minds. His nose, too, blurred through a series of various shapes and sizes, and his mouth flickered above his ever-shifting chin, trying on a different set of lips each half-second that passed. He was a never-ending slot machine of features.

“What’s wrong with your face?” she blurted.

“I’ve always liked it myself,” he said, pretending to be taken aback by her brazenness. Then he smiled through his shifting lips. “I just can’t seem to settle on any one look. I often try to assume features that appeal to the person I’m addressing, to put her at ease...but I confess, I’m having a hard time pinpointing what exactly those features might be for you, Mallory. And in any case, wearing a mask is disingenuous; and I think I owe you a bit more than pretense.”

“Ah,” she said, as if that all made perfect sense, although it made absolutely none whatsoever.

“Does it bother you?” he asked.

“It’s not what I expected,” she admitted, taking another step closer.

“And what did you expect?” he asked, clearly amused. “Slime? Entrails? Pus and blood and sulfur and ooze?”

“I mean…yeah.” She shrugged.

“I would imagine so,” he smiled. “I’ve seen the drawings they’ve made of me.”

“And the wood cuttings?” Mallory asked. She took yet another step in his direction.

His pulsing eyes gleamed with interest. “Someone made wood cuttings? How wonderful.”

“Wonderful isn’t…
quite
the word.” Mallory shifted the weight of the Spear of Rad, and she was almost close enough for its ages-old but razor-sharp point to pierce his chest.
Just another few steps
, she thought.

“Do you really mean to run me through?” He asked this calmly, almost passively, as if he’d just asked if she wanted cream in her coffee.

“I can’t really think of a reason why I shouldn’t,” she said, working hard to keep her voice even. “You know. All things considered.”

“How about because I’m fettered to a wall and completely helpless?” He spread his hands again and jangled the chains.

“Something tells me you’re probably a little less helpless than you let on.”

The ancient evil clucked his tongue. “The things people must think of me up there…” he mused.

“They
think
that you shove hot sticks up people’s asses and skin them alive and sew their heads onto decapitated deer bodies,” she snapped. She knew she probably shouldn’t take such a cavalier tone with an old demon, but the scenes from the woodcuttings disturbed her so,
so
much.

The ancient evil laughed, a loud, long, throaty chuckle. “I see why you brought the spear,” he said. He shrugged one shoulder up to his face and wiped the tears from his eyes on his sleeve. “Humans are so…imaginative,” he said gleefully.

“Are you saying you
didn’t
do those things?” Mallory said, squinting and trying to seek out his face for lies. It was a difficult thing, since the entire
face
was a lie. It cycled through its seemingly endless array of options and gave nothing away.

“It’s not really my style,” he grinned. Then he bobbed his head a bit and added, “Well, the impaling. I
did
do that. But you have to understand, that was a different time. That sort of thing was expected. It wasn’t even my idea; it was the suggestion of the town’s mayor at the time. He said, ‘I suppose you’ll be shoving red-hot pokers up our arses now,’ and I thought, ‘Sure, yes, I suppose I can do that.’ But I’m really more of a slash-and-burn kind of guy, to be honest.”

“I’m not sure splitting hairs over which
type
of eternal hell you prefer is really all that important.” Mallory took one more step, and she was finally close enough to reach the evil with the spear. The stakes that held the chains into the walls glittered more brightly, to the point of blinding Mallory if she looked directly at them. It was almost as if they were made of light.

“You may be right,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to upset you, Mallory. I just want to be honest with you.” He peered directly into her eyes and said, “I will never lie to you.”

His gaze had a strange effect on her knees. They suddenly felt watery, and she had the overwhelming urge to collapse. She closed her eyes and shook her head, shaking the memory of those eyes from her mind. “You know my name,” she said without opening her eyes, trying to change the subject. “What do I call you? Just…Ancient Evil?”

The demon laughed lightly. “You’re right. I’m being a terrible host; I completely bypassed proper introductions. You
can
call me the ancient evil if you’d like. But I’d much prefer it if you called me Chad.”

Mallory blinked. “The great and powerful ancient demon is named Chad?”

The ancient evil raised an eyebrow. “Is it really that surprising?” he asked.

Mallory thought back to all the Chads she’d known throughout her lifetime. She shrugged. “No, not really,” she admitted.

Chad indicated the weapon in her hand. “I assume that’s the Spear of Rad?” he said. Mallory nodded. “How wonderful,” he smiled. “I’ve heard stories of its power, but I’ve never seen it up close.” He jangled the chains again. “I’ve been a little tied up.”

“Prison humor,” Mallory muttered. “Hilarious.”

“You have to find joy where you can,” Chad said. “Would you mind…could you hold up the spear? So I can get a decent look?”

Mallory hesitated. She assumed this was some sort of trick. But his bonds did appear to be incredibly secure, and while Lewis had told her to pierce the ancient evil through the heart, she assumed that driving the spear through his skull would probably do the trick, too. So she raised the weapon, but she kept the tip pointed at the demon.

He tilted his head so he could read the engravings on the side of the spear. In the strange, source-less light, the etchings almost seemed to be written in flames. “Sponsored by Dish Network,” Chad read. He nodded sagely. “I should have guessed.”

“Wait, it
really
says that?” Mallory asked, incredulous. She pulled the spear back and examined the runes along its shaft. She couldn’t make heads or tails of the markings, but a nerdy scientist and an ancient evil couldn’t both be wrong. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It is truly a weapon of extraordinary power,” Chad said, leaning back against the stone wall. “It would definitely do the trick.”

“Well,” Mallory said, shifting the spear in her hands, “what’re we waiting for?” She gripped the shaft and took a series of deep breaths, trying desperately to work up the will to stab a well-mannered, human-looking demon through the heart.

“I assume you’ve been told what to expect when you run me through?” he said.

Mallory snorted. “I expect you’ll die a pretty painful death.”

Chad smiled. “Yes, I imagine that’s likely true. But the future doesn’t look good for you, either.”

Mallory tensed. Was this some sort of ancient evil trickery? It seemed likely. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“This room is a cell meant for keeping me locked away. That is its only purpose. Once that becomes no longer necessary, the room has no more reason to exist. When I die, it will collapse in on itself, compressing into literal nothingness.” He gazed up at the heavy stones set into the ceiling. “How much do you think each one of those weighs?” he mused.

“Come on,” Mallory scoffed. “You really expect me to believe that?”

“I told you I would not lie to you,” he said simply. “If you want proof, I can deliver it. The spear is sharp enough; cut me.”