Psycho Therapy (31 page)

“Every communion, we drink of the flesh and the blood of the Christ,” Parker began. “God, the Holy Ghost, our redeemer, has requested his followers to step up and show their true selves. Worship and honor Him, or walk out of this church and forever be banished from this brotherhood.”

Parker announced the next sentence with inhuman enthusiasm. “God has finally asked for our flesh in return for his flesh! God wants our blood to be spilled upon this church hall floor in reverence of Him. Call it a reverse communion.”

Cheers ripped through the silence, responses forming throughout pockets of the crowd that yes, yes they would tear their flesh asunder for their Christ in heaven. Parker turned down to him, eying him with vehemence. “Your flesh, your blood, Craig, will set you apart from the evil that rips the fabric of all our lives.”

He couldn’t speak through the waded-up dish cloth stuffed in his mouth and the duct tape securing it in place, though he begged, pleaded, and prayed the man could understand that he wanted no part of this.

“Our flesh, our blood, for Christ!”

“Our flesh, our blood, for Christ in heaven!”

“Our flesh, our blood, shall it rain down and vanquish the fires of hell!”

The chanting was shouted at so many decibels, his eardrums were on the verge of breaking. Suffering the horrible noises, he randomly caught Hillary and Dr. Krone, Sr. in ragged clothing, passing about weapons. They ranged from razor blades, double-sided axes, hatchets, beveling tools, scythes, chisels, chainsaws, pinch clamps, maces, baseball bats with nails driven through their core, staffs, sledge hammers, jackhammers, logging saws, and many other implements that were handmade and equally as deadly. He then watched the congregation systematically follow-up on their promises and hacked the flesh from their own bodies. The flesh itself slapped the tiles in horrific layers as more joined in the horrible display. Blood pooled and splashed the floor in a rising current.

Parker Stevens removed a boning knife from his white ceremonial robe. He worked three incisions at his hairline, peeling and edging back the flesh to the bare skull. He threw down the scalp after long moments of vocalized agony and raw determination that ended in him delivering a series of raucous laughs, “Your mother was an easy fuck, Craig. She took it any way I’d give it to her!”

The congregation stood with bare, gleaming muscle tissue. Fleshless. Some had worked down to their skeletons, grimacing and crying in revelation and speaking in tongues, eyes rolling in socket pools of blood, hands and faces dripping with gore. Bodies were splayed on the floor worked over by jackhammers and chainsaws by their fellow brethren. The massacre sparked Parker’s lust to shed Craig’s flesh and blood, the man’s face split and sectioned by bullets of thick running blood.

“It’s your turn. The blood is the wine, the flesh is the bread, and Christ is very hungry!”

Parker raised the boning knife to carve up Craig’s face.

Craig closed his eyes. He was done being afraid.

You have to be as morbid and creative as the machine.

Craig combed his mind, digging deep, growling from the pit of his throat, and he dredged through the confines of his mind for the help he deserved.

And that help suddenly surged out from the crowd! Brandon was headless from Tina’s previous attack, but he could navigate his way up to the podium. He clutched a concrete saw, the blade as wide as a tire, the teeth spokes inches deep. The device whirred and churned promises of mutilation. A shot of white gasoline vapor coughed out from the motor. That’s when the blade landed on Parker’s face and split it in half. The preacher faltered from the podium, howling in mortal terror, and landed on the cushion of flesh and blood below the pulpit. He drowned in it, lavishing every drop, as he added to the pool of red.

Brandon untied his arms and legs, Craig rising to his feet. He could think freely, and the thoughts would come to life, he believed, because so much energy was in the air for the taking. Random arcs of static electricity would branch out along the walls and into the members of the congregation.

Craig stared at his headless father. The man patted his back and gave him a thumb’s up.

“Um…thanks, Dad.”

The congratulatory moment concluded as fast as it had begun. Half-fleshed faces, bodies turned inside out, and deviously armed villains watched them, enraged. Phlegm and blood-choked throats roared threats. Exposed eyes sized them up. Parker Stevens was back on his feet. He was soaked in red. He was incensed, his face split in half, the nerves dancing and exposed.

The preacher pointed up at them. “They have chosen to disobey God’s word. We must expel them from the house of the Lord immediately!”

Give me the Browning shotgun. No—two of them!

The blink, he clutched the weapons in each hand. Brandon revved up the concrete saw. Two against hundreds, Craig thought, wouldn’t suffice. He scrambled to think. Who else was on his side? Who could protect him? His mother, wife, and Alice were out of the question, but he had one other ally.

“It’s about time you thought of me…”

Edith materialized between him and his father. Her chest was sodden in blood. The bullet wound was a black circle center masse. She was pale as death, but a spark of life glinted in her eyes. She craved payback. It was amazing, Craig thought, that a soul could be called back up from death and become flesh and blood again.

“So what are you arming me with?”

“Well,” Craig paused, “what do you want?”

She raised her fists and flipped the congregation off. “
Hmmm
, how about a blow torch?”

Craig imagined it. The device was simple, a large steel tank for the fuel and a long metallic nozzle. Edith strapped on the tank, eager to do some damage. “This is for my children, you bastards!”

Whoosh!

Blankets of liquid flame shot out into the crowd a caustic fiery orange.

Craig opened fire, enjoying twin shotguns.
Ba-boom! Ba-boom! Ba-boom! Ba-boom!

Brandon swung the concrete saw at anyone who dared to draw close to the stage, swiping arms, torsos—claiming guts—and heads.

Pick-axes, hatchets, spinning daggers, and saw blades were heaved in their direction. Brandon’s chest was hit with the saw blade, half of it buried in his chest. The blow didn’t faze him. Edith accepted an axe to the shoulder. She didn’t bother to rip it out. Craig dodged three knives and a handful of nails.

“Where the fuck are they getting this shit?”

That’s it! Think like they do.

He imagined a grenade in his fist. In a blink, there it was. Craig ripped the pin free and lobed it into the crowd.

Ka-boom!

Shrapnel tore apart the core of the congregation upon detonation. Chunks of the pew exploded and shot across the room in flames. But the group kept coming. The numbers failed to diminish.

Craig dodged a flaming head, “Dr. Krone keeps them coming!”

“Perhaps this isn’t the place to fight them,” Edith argued, raising her voice. “It’s an unending army.”

Brandon’s neck nodded in agreement, coughing up two spurts of blood.

“You’re right.”

Craig was out of breath. He narrowly missed a clever slicing off his nose. They were backed into the corner.

Edith suffered a nail in the eye.

“It’s up to you to think us out of this.” Edith’s eye coughed out yellow pus and blood. “We’re seconds away from being sacrificed to God. Make up your mind, Craig!”

The flame thrower released another caustic plume. Faces melted in waxy layers. Phalange hands and skeletal bodies swarmed behind the row of flames, scrambling, scratching, crawling, shoving, kicking, punching, slicing, climbing, and clamoring for their demise.

“What am I supposed to think up now?”

Edith shouted, “Somewhere safe!”

“But nowhere is safe. Dr. Krone keeps showing up and ruining everything. How can I get to one of the machines? It’s the only way to stop this shit.”

Brandon was struck by four axes at once. He tipped to the side, but he didn’t fall. Craig ducked to avoid the next saw blade.

“What about under the stairs?”

“Under the stairs? What stairs?”

“That damn basement,” Edith cried. “We couldn’t get through those doors. There has to be something down there. The wires connected to the machines. They channeled into the wall. Perhaps they lead down there, whatever’s behind those two locked steel doors.”

Craig agreed, “You’re right.”

A rope with a railroad spike attached to it struck his leg above the knee. He yanked it out with a mean jolt of pain. “Shit—shit!”

“Save us, Craig.” Edith clasped his arm. “Take us with you. You can do it. You have no choice.”

Static electricity cut into him. The Krones anticipated his next move—or was it the machine? The congregation reached the podium, advancing at once. Skeletons and de-fleshed attackers and burning shells of bones closed in, ready to dismember them.

“I’m as good as dead—again!” Edith barked, throwing her head back in a war cry. “Craig, hurry the fuck up!”

“You’re not dying,” he shouted. “You can’t die twice.”

He ducked and rolled to avoid the chainsaw thrown at him. The flames surrounding them were no longer a deterrent. The heat was billowing and the smoke was black and thick enough to snuff him and everybody else dead. He coughed, choking and gagging on what couldn’t be expelled from his lungs. He leaned up against the wall and sheltered his body.

Static electricity shocked him one jolt after the other. He tightened his eyes. Held his breath. Listened to Edith and his father fight the crowd. Their footsteps were feet away from him. Fifteen seconds they had left before they would be overtaken.

He refocused again and again on the same image. The static failed to abate. The electric prickles raised gooseflesh and heated the blood beneath the skin. He was zapped and a section of his arm popped with hot blood and melted skin. And that’s when Edith unleashed a blood-curdling scream, and Brandon’s body toppled onto him defeated.

The Stairs

Edith was sprawled on the stairs, bleeding from numerous wounds. Brandon was slumped below her. He had picked free the axes and knives plunged into his torso, but the saw blade in his chest was stuck. Craig used the guardrail of the stairs as a crutch, his knee still bleeding from the railroad spike wound. They didn’t have much time to act before something else would come after them.

Edith gazed up at him with one good eye. “You did it, Craig.”

He pointed down the stairs. “Let’s move, if you can.”

Brandon’s father offered a hesitant thumb’s up, though three of his fingers had been severed clean. The rubber mat squeaked under their feet. Brandon only carried one Browning—one of Craig’s—due to his damaged hand. Edith abandoned the flame thrower pack. She was too damaged to carry the weight. Craig had kept hold of the remaining shotgun.

They walked the rest of the way to the solid steel double doors. “Well, this is it.” Craig sized up the door. Blue-white arcs of electricity shot up and down the entrance.

“Hurry it up,” Edith demanded. “Dr. Krone’s on his way.”

He aimed the gun at the door.
Ba-bam!
The connections issued sparks from the door, but it failed to unlock.

The electricity crackled along the walls and stairs in branching lines. Brandon fired at the door to the same dismal effect. Steps pounded from the head of the stairs, loud and incoming. The foundation rattled beneath them. Wooden beams splintered and cried in protest to an unknown, incredible weight. The stench of death arrived. Female laughter—laughter he recognized—reverberated down to them. Plaster rained in pockets from the ceiling from the pounding of incoming steps.

He gave up on the easy solution. “The guns aren’t going to open the doors.”

Edith wildly shook her head. “Then what?”

The threats were echoing down to them—

“
You owe her an apology
.”

“
I see your father in you, Craig
.”

“
You abandoned me when I needed you the most
.”

“
You care to slam that barstool over my head again, asshole?
”

“
Come to Christ willingly…come to Him
.”

“
I’ll feed you to the monsters in hell—you won’t dine and dash in my restaurant, Mr. Horsy!
”

“
I’m just an easy fuck to you, Craig
.”

Dr. Krone had enlisted everybody in the fight, Craig realized. Brandon turned from the stairs to Craig. The Browning was directly aimed at him.

“This was all a fucking trick,” Craig gasped. “You were never on my side.”

Edith’s eyes refocused on him. Her mouth was a pink slit, menacing and grim. “I told you, Mr. Horsy, you wouldn’t win. You can’t. I’m at the helm. The machine grants me everything. I keep feeding it souls, and it keeps feeding me strength. Soon, I will have control over you, and that’ll be another soul for the machine. Eventually, the boundaries will expand well beyond this house.”

Ba-boom!

He ducked in time. The shot meant for him pinged against the steel door, and the double doors separated. Shadows spread over the bottommost steps. The villains of his mind hadn’t arrived, though they were seconds from showing themselves. He charged through the doors, threw them shut, and had just enough time to blockade the entrance before he witnessed the secret in the room.