Primal Fear (30 page)

Harry started out toward the side of the house, making his way to the bulkhead.  The box full of explosives was becoming unbearably heavy, but he pushed on, wading through the snow, his teeth gritted in determination.  He kept a watchful eye on the writhing shape of the demon, certain it was about to come after them.

It did move then, uncoiling in a long ribbon of motion, swooping down from its place above the house and sweeping gracefully earthward.

“Harry,” Charlie hissed from beside him.  “It’s coming.”

They froze, staring up into the deepening twilight.  The beast swept past them, coming to bear only a few feet above John’s upraised arms.  It contorted in the air above him, thrashing back and forth through the storm, filled with rage but for some reason sparing the young Eskimo when it could have easily crushed him flat.

Harry stared into the falling snow, trying to make out what was happening.  It was only when John’s hands began to move that he understood what his friend was trying to do.  He recognized the patterns John was forming in the air and knew their purpose all too well.

John was summoning Wyh-heah Qui Waq, conjuring the demon of the wind to his own command, just as Jha-Laman had done two-hundred years before.  But when the ritual was complete, when the great beast was no longer bound by the rites of incantation, it would kill him where he stood.

“He’s buying us some time,” Harry said, and stepped into the darkness of his cellar.  “Let’s not waste it.”

The damage to the house seemed worse here, the debris lying in piles to every side, the floors above hanging down wherever the cellar’s ceiling had given way to their weight.  Water from a dozen broken pipes coursed down the foundation walls to freeze on the floor below, and every few moments, the sound of creaking wood stopped them dead in their tracks.

“If you want to leave the box here and get back outside, I’ll understand,” Harry told Laurie, setting his own load down on a relatively dry patch of cement.

“Tell me what to do,” Laurie told him.

He pointed along the foundation wall, tracing a line along the entire front of the house.  “Start laying the bundles of dynamite about every ten feet or so, right up against the wall if you can.  If there’s any water there, try to avoid it.  Charlie, you take the back wall, same deal.  I’m going to be following along with these.”  He held up a roll of heavy wire and a handful of blasting caps.  “We have to move fast.”

Laurie nodded and moved on, dragging the box behind her into the darkness and stopping every few seconds to lay out a small pile of explosives.  Charlie followed suit, stopping only to wipe a thick sheen of sweat from his forehead before making his way toward the back of the house.  Harry started to prepare as many lengths of wire as he could, stripping the sheathing off at either end and then dropping them into his own box of explosives.

The work seemed to take forever, the howling of the wind through the fallen house above them serving as a grim reminder of what John was facing outside at that very moment.  Working together, they managed to lay out most of the explosives along three walls of the house.  Laurie was about to head for the fourth, the foundation wall barely perceptible beneath the fallen ceiling, when Harry pulled her back.

“Not enough time,” he said.  “This will have to do.”  He handed out several lengths of wire, pointing towards a small box of blasting caps he’d left in the middle of the floor.  “We have to wire them now, one cap for each bundle and then a lead to every cap.  Charlie will help you out.”  He demonstrated the procedure for her, his hands moving confidently over the wires and contacts.  “I’ll wire them all into a main line as you go.”

They worked quickly together, barely exchanging a word as they tied off each bundle of explosives to a single master wire, feeding the wire slowly back toward the bulkhead door.

The groan of timber came again, this time from the far end of the cellar, where Laurie was tying off the last few caps.  She looked up, startled, and Harry could see a fine sprinkle of dust raining down on her from above.

“Get out of there!” he shouted.

She left the final bundle undone, moving towards him as quickly as she could.

He grabbed her by the arm and led her towards the door, letting the main wire unroll from its spindle as they crossed the cellar.  A thunder of falling wood roared behind them, the first floor finally giving in completely to the tremendous weight that had crashed down upon it.

The three of them stumbled out into the storm, struggling through the fallen snow for the cover of Slater’s driveway.  Harry turned to look for John and saw that the demon’s movements above his head had become even more violent.  It was certainly on the edge of attack, John’s hold over it slowly coming to an end as the ritual neared its climax.

Harry reached into his pocket, tugging out a detonating lever.  He twisted the handle back, trying to make his numbed fingers work long enough to secure the bare ends of the main wires to their respective contacts.

“Hurry,” Laurie urged.  “Something’s happening over there.”

Harry hand-tightened the last screw, his eyes already rising to check on John.  He looked up just in time to see the demon rearing back, its massive form unfurling above John like a giant snake, the snow caught within its form going completely black in this new configuration.  John’s arms had fallen to his sides, his strength gone, depleted by this final attempt to control the demon of the wind.

“John!” Harry shouted.  “Get out of there!”

It was no use.  Even if John had heard him, it wouldn’t have made a difference.  He didn’t have the strength to run, didn’t have the energy to fight.

The demon struck before Harry could call out again, slamming one spiraling tendril into the ground beside John’s passive body, flinging him flat onto his back into the snow.  His duffel bag was thrown another ten feet further into the yard, its precious contents scattered in every direction.

John’s body came down like a broken doll, his limbs falling limply out beside him. 

Above him, the demon moved in, ready to strike again.

Chapter Twenty Six

Harry pushed the detonator into Laurie’s hands.  “Wait for my signal, then hit it.  All you have to do is twist it counter-clockwise and be ready to run.”

Laurie nodded, falling into a crouch to minimize her exposure to the wind.

“Charlie, come with me.”  Crossing the yard, Harry dug the P’oh Tarhei out of his pocket, his eyes fastened to the demon’s contorted shape.  He held the artifact up over his head, coming to a halt only fifteen yards from John.

“Hey!” he shouted.  “I got what you want right here!  Come and get it, you son of a bitch!”

The demon coiled in upon itself in the frigid air, twisting towards Harry, its huge form losing some of its cohesion to the motion.

“Are you nuts?”  Charlie backed off, moving slowly away from him.

“No.”  Harry swallowed.  “At least I hope not.  Go check on John.”

The demon hovered closer, looming over him.  He had the terrible sensation of staring into the face of death, the same way he imagined a helpless animal must feel as it stared down its deadliest predator.  For just an instant he swore he could make out a ghostly pair of eyes in the swirling snow, eyes devoid of any sense of compassion, of any notion of mercy.  They were the eyes of something dead inside, something that could not conceive of anything beyond its own relentless lust for destruction.

Confronting the formless beast now was somehow worse than facing the reanimated tupilaq in the caverns earlier that afternoon.  As ferocious as that had been, it had been a solid entity, and anything solid—at least in theory—could be destroyed.  This creature, composed of spiraling snow and freezing wind, seemed completely invulnerable.

And it was coming for him.

The motion was so perfectly executed, so smoothly enacted, that at first he couldn’t even perceive it.  But in a matter of seconds he understood what was happening.  The demon was reshaping itself yet again, merging with the driving snow to conceal its advance. 

Harry held his breath, counting off the seconds.

The demon had become all but invisible in the howling storm.  Only a disturbance in the blanket of snow on the ground betrayed its coming, a ripple of motion that moved against the direction of the wind.

Harry watched the ground carefully, trying to time his move as precisely as he could.  If he reacted too early, his plan would fall apart at the seams; too late and he would be dead before he even had a chance to set it into motion.  He waited until the shifting snow was only ten feet away and then hurled the P’oh Tarhei high overhead toward the ruins of the house.

It spun through the turbulent air, falling end over end into the burning debris.

The demon reacted instantly, sweeping past him on a gust of wind so powerful it knocked him flat.  He lay in the snow and watched as the shape of the creature reappeared, converging on the rubble to begin its search.  It swept over the fallen timber like a wild beast, hot on the trail of the shard of wood and bone that Jha-Laman’s descendants had safe-guarded for generations.

He started to make his way towards John. 

Behind him, a triumphant bellow rose into the air.  He didn’t have to turn to know that the demon had found what it was looking for.

His first impression was that John was dead, that the demon’s attack had crushed the life out of him in a single blow.  Crouching beside him, Charlie looked up when Harry approached.  “He’s all right,” Charlie told him.  “Wind’s knocked out of him.” 

And as Harry knelt down beside him, he saw the dimmest flicker of acknowledgement in John’s eyes.  The young man’s injuries weren’t extensive; there just seemed to be a few superficial cuts and bruises, though Harry didn’t know how much more he could take.

“John?  Can you hear me?”

John’s head rolled weakly in his direction.  “Yes.”

“We’re going to get you out of here just as soon as we can.  But first you have to help me.  We gave it what it wants, now we have to stop this thing, right here and now.  I can’t do it without you.”

John nodded, groaning as he tried to lift his head.  Finally, he gave up, settling back into the snow.  “You’re . . . you’re going to have to give me a minute here.”

“Okay, just tell me what I have to do.  And don’t go dying on me.”

“Not if I can help it.”  John winced as a fresh stab of pain racked his body somewhere deep inside.  “I think I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

Laurie tensed, shivering in the wind.  She watched the wreckage of the house carefully, waiting for any sign of the demon’s resurrection.  It had relinquished its hold on the falling snow, had surrendered the driving winds to the forces of nature, all in its longing to regain the P’oh Tarhei.

It could manipulate the wood and bone, Harry had told her, just as it had controlled the natural elements of the storm, altering their properties to rebuild its stolen flesh.  The memory of its physical existence was still ingrained within the beast.  It had, after all, spent more than two centuries in the impenetrable guise of the tupilaq.

Given the chance, it would surely attempt to regain that form.

Now she saw that Harry had been right.  Some sort of bizarre transformation was taking place among the ruins, an impossible act of metamorphosis and regeneration.  A hulking shadow began to rise from the clutter of timber and stone, a huge form that seemed as if it might go on forever.  A long, thin arm emerged from inside the shadow, taking on shape and substance as it grew.

The demon was reshaping itself one final time, duplicating the substance of the P’oh Tarhei to meet whatever monstrous proportions it had devised to create for itself.

“No,” she whispered, “oh no, no.”  She raised her voice, hoping Harry would be able to hear her above the rising wind.  “Harry!  It’s coming!”

And when she looked down to check the connections on the detonator one last time, she almost screamed.  One of the wires was missing completely, its bare end lost somewhere in the thick carpet of snow at her feet.

*     *     *     *     *

“I won’t allow it,” Harry said.  “Find another way.”

“It’s the only chance we have.”

Harry hadn’t expected John to propose this sort of plan, never would have thought such an act might become necessary.  But in the end, necessity had become the bottom line.  

According to John, they simply had no alternative.

And his logic held up, the pieces of his argument falling into place a bit too smoothly for Harry’s liking.  It all stemmed from Harry’s decision to give the demon the artifact it had attacked the house for: the P’oh Tarhei.  With the demon once again gaining physical form, they had the chance—slim though it might be—to destroy the tupilaq and return the demon to its imprisonment beyond the sky.  But only if Harry was willing to play by John’s rules, only if he was willing to let John go through with the plan he wanted to put into action.

“Harry, we can do this.  I can do this.”

“Not if I don’t let you.”

“It’s beyond that now.  We’re past talking about morals and ethics here.  This is bigger than that.”  John sighed.  “We’re talking in circles now, all right?  I already told you there’s no other way.”

Harry felt his resolve crumbling.  The sounds of the demon’s resurrection were growing louder every second.  The longer they stood here arguing about it, the less chance they would have of succeeding at all.  But still, what John was proposing . . .

“I can’t let you do it, I just can’t.  Christ, I’m a police officer.  You’re talking about suicide.”

“Not suicide.  Sacrifice.  Think about it.  Jha-Laman gave up his child.  So did the men he traveled with.  And Slater, he tried to give up those children, but he couldn’t work the magic that was supposed to go with it.  It begins with death, just like Mahuk warned.  To open a passage, a gateway to the other side of the sky, a spirit must be set free to pass through.”

“John, look—”

“I’m willing to be that spirit.  I’ve got nothing left to lose.  It’s my destiny, Harry.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

“I can feel it.  It’s what Mahuk was getting at.  If I was meant to come here, to fight Wyh-heah Qui Waq, and if I was meant to die in the process of banishing it forever, then so be it.  It’s bigger than me.  Bigger than both of us.”

Harry considered another tactic, another moment of protest, but in the end, as a chilling howl began to rise from the wreckage of his home, he finally gave in, knowing John was right.  There was no other way, at least none that he could imagine.  But allowing a man to give up his life, to stand by and just let it happen . . . it ran against everything he stood for.  Everything he believed in. 

“I still don’t like it,” he said at last.  “I still wish there was something else we could try—”

“There isn’t.”

“I know.”  He stared hard at John for a moment, trying to think of something to say, some words of final comfort he could offer the young man.  But there was nothing.  What could he say that wouldn’t sound hollow?  What could anyone say at a time like this?

“Listen, I—”

“Be well, Harry.  Take care of your wife, your friends.  Never forget what we did here today.”

Harry nodded, hoping his expression said everything he couldn’t put into words.

John grinned weakly, a glint of fear in his eyes despite the confidence in his words.  “Now get the hell out of my way and let me get to work.  Just don’t forget about those explosives.  I’m going to need every bit of help you can give me.”

John looked past him, toward the house.  And then he closed his eyes, his lips moving softly around an incantation that Harry knew was an invitation to death, a summoning to the spirits to come and claim his soul.

Charlie grabbed Harry’s arm.  “You can’t let him do this.”

“I have to, Charlie,” he said.  “Believe me.  This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

Harry turned toward the house, just in time to see a shape beginning to emerge from the darkness.  It was huge, a blackness within the shadows that he couldn’t tear his eyes away from.

And it was still growing.

Laurie fell to her knees, searching desperately for the second detonator wire.  She stripped off her gloves, pushing the snow aside in huge handfuls; the fierce bite of the frigid air on her skin was a small price to pay if it meant making a better contact with the missing lead.

She started to crawl back towards the house.  The wire would have to be in that direction, she reasoned.  If it had fallen off after their run from the cellar, it would have wound back up toward its source.

Three frantic minutes passed this way, but still she couldn’t turn up the missing strand in the sea of blowing snow.  And then, only twenty feet from the house, a terrible sound snagged her attention.  It was the sound of wood groaning, of natural elements stretching beyond their boundaries, the sound of supernatural chaos creating itself from the order of reality.

She looked up slowly, towards the house’s crooked, crumbling peak.  A huge shadow was beginning to grow there, taking shape from the ashes of its past.

Laurie froze, her mind reeling, her eyes refusing to close, her hands stopped dead on the ground, six inches from the exposed copper end of the missing red wire.

Whatever shape Harry might have envisioned for the demon’s resurrection, it couldn’t compare to the sight that greeted him as the terrible spirit finally made its appearance.  The towering form of Wyh-heah Qui Waq reared up from the ruins of the house, howling in rage.  Its features had changed somehow, in ways too subtle for Harry to put his finger on, but the results of the mutations were easy enough to assess.  The demon looked more ferocious now, the tupilaq’s form more threatening than the one Harry had first glimpsed in the caverns.

Its eyes burned with greater fury, its maw opening to reveal a sneer more malevolent than any Harry had ever seen before.  It was almost as though its recent period of formlessness had only fed its outrage, and now, once more in solid flesh, the beast had become twice as deadly.

The memory of its shape had been altered, either through pain or through rage, in the end corrupting its shape even further.  It took one shuddering step in Harry’s direction, its eyes falling coldly upon him as it advanced.  They were as black as coal, filled with the promise of coming death, with an unspoken threat of approaching damnation.

He felt a nameless fear inside, something primal, ingrained so deeply into his psyche that it couldn’t be denied.  This was the fear that held its roots in man’s first stumbling steps into the unknown at the dawn of humanity, the fear that whispered from the first graveyards in the dead of night.  And this was the fear that would freeze him in his tracks and push his mind into permanent darkness, unless he could look away before it was too late.