The Dark Horde (14 page)

Seconds or hours may have passed. The room materialised around Mary in all its disturbing detail: overturned and broken furniture, ransacked cupboards, smashed hi-fi equipment and plates, torn clothing and ripped papers and posters. Nothing it seemed was spared the destruction.

Tears began to flow. This was too much to bear.

“Henry! Heee-nryyy!” she called, placing a hand against the doorframe for support.

And still no answer.

I must find out what happened to my son. I won’t leave until I know.

She stepped forward over the wreckage of a couch in smashed pieces and cast her eyes around the broken remains of wooden chairs and the coffee table she’d given him for his birthday. Only the wind stirred outside.

What could possibly have caused such destruction?

Hand over her mouth to stifle her cries, she moved across the room to where doorways led to the two bedrooms, the bathroom and kitchen. Standing atop a jumble of papers and books at the junction of the doorways, she could only see violent disarray throughout all the rooms. The carnage screamed catastrophe, that something terrible had happened to Henry.

Yet said nothing about where he was now.

Her eyes were drawn to the only area of clear floor in the flat. It was a circle of blackened carpet a couple of metres wide, in the centre of the second bedroom Henry used as a study. It was surrounded by black candle stubs amongst splintered furniture, computer and hi-fi equipment, piles of occult books and papers covered in Henry’s scrawl. The foul miasma of decay seemed to originate from this room.

What new depths had Henry’s madness descended to? It had been years since his last relapse. Surely this could not be!

He must still be alive, I must have hope. I’ll contact the police and get them to put out a search for him. Immediately.

Next to her foot, Mary noticed a cassette tape amongst other rubbish. It had a label with a dated note in Henry’s handwriting. In trembling hands, she picked up the cassette and read the label:

I, Henry Anthony Wilcox, testify that this recording contains my final words. I pray that someone will find this and comprehend its message.

God save us all.

Henry Wilcox 07-04-89

Her mind began to implode.

MONDAY 9:46
PM

Vincent contained a grin and tried to appear serious in his reply. “Amy, of course not!”

“Me first and then you, okay. Then you can go to sleep. In that order.”

Vincent stroked her hair, prompting Amy to resume. “Of course.”

Must hold on. Make it last longer. Think about anything but the gorgeous woman whose lips are currently locked around your penis. Recite the alphabet or phone numbers. Think about what Aaron, Bruce and Jason are doing, about what happened to Frank and his dad. Nah, don’t think about that...

Amy paused. “Is that enough?”

She didn’t like going down on a guy at the best of times, let alone after they’d been camping for a day already and not showered. Being drunk helped, but now she was just tired.

Vincent was summoned back to earth by the questioning tone of her voice. She’d stopped.

“What’d you say?” he said.

Amy brought her head up almost level with Vincent’s. Straddling him on all fours as he lay on his back in the tent, she said. “I want to feel you inside me.”

The swaying torch attached to the apex of the dome tent overhead cast revolving silhouettes as Vincent hesitated to respond.

She kissed his lips. “C’mon. Up you get. Your turn to do some work.”

Vincent sat up slowly, brushing his hair from his face.

“Or do you want me to go on top?”

“Nah, it’s okay,” he answered.

Easier to control. And her sense of rhythm was bad anyway.

Vincent embraced Amy with another kiss as he assumed a position over her and reached for the tent’s side pocket where the condoms were. Realising that he couldn’t kiss her and reach the side pocket at the same time, he turned away from her whilst she lay there rubbing her vulva and nipples.

Outside in the forest around the tent, a herd of kangaroos bounded past in rapid flight.

“What was that?” said Amy, turning her head to the noise.

Rolling the plastic sleeve of the condom on, Vincent shrugged. “Just roos and stuff, I s’pose. There’s no one around for miles. We’re in the bush, remember?”

Amy looked angry. “It’s not like I’m gunna forget that! What, am I stupid?”

She better not decide ‘she wasn’t in the mood anymore’. That was easy for her to say. She didn’t have a raging hard-on built up with pressure that had to be released or he’d have severe groin cramps for the next day. Now was not a good time to start worrying about the wildlife.

“I didn’t mean it like that! I’m sure the noises are nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” she replied.

“I love you,” Vincent said as he plunged his dagger in.

Amy sighed with pleasure as Vincent entered her. “I love you too.”

Not really true, but what else could she say to him now?

Suddenly, the fabric of the tent was torn asunder. Standing two-and-a-half metres over them was a huge beast covered in dark fur. Powerful arms ending in long claws like scythes flexed in the light of a near full moon. Its wolfish snout curled to reveal jagged teeth and issued an ominous growl, reeking of death.

Amy screamed and Vincent turned in disbelief. He stared in horrified rapture as a swift claw shot forward and grabbed him by the throat. Lying prone with the collapsed tent in pieces around them, Amy continued screaming as the creature flung Vincent into the trees on the opposite side of the campsite like a rag doll. He landed some distance away with a heavy crash of branches. Then it turned to face her, licking the drool from its lips and fixating her with the demonic gaze of red slits.

With morbid amusement, it appraised the human quivering before it. Restrained was the lust to kill, for patient were they in their preparation. Humans with their pathetic little minds could not understand events as they were, as much as they did not understand the nature of reality or the insignificance of their role in it.

Amy overcame the paralysis of fear and tried to stand. But its response was quicker, snatching her ankles in one hand and yanking her towards it. Her naked belly slapped its naked chest, then it lifted her off the ground by the vice-grip on her ankles. Its head lowered to her upturned crotch and she began screaming again.

Savouring the moment, it breathed in the pungent scent of the prey, smelling the arousal now laced with terror. A victim ripe for the taking.

Bruised and bleeding, Vincent tried to shake off dizziness and find his feet. He sought to extend his left arm to grasp a trunk and felt an intense, burning pain. Looking down, he saw his forearm broken at a crazy angle and soaked with blood.

Then he heard Amy screaming and saw the monster holding her aloft in the moonlight about ten metres away. Its head was buried between her legs.

Something snapped.

Vincent charged across the campsite towards the creature. Barely conscious of his actions, a smoking brand from the campfire found its way into his right hand en route.

Though Amy twisted against the beast and punched its body, it would not relinquish its hold. Suspended upside down, her heart pounding in her head, she was helpless. The world became blurred with tears and pain.

She felt a sudden jerk as the beast kicked out at something behind it. She glimpsed its clawed foot striking Vincent in the face as he advanced. There was a sickening crunch and he collapsed.

Time to silence this interruption.

It released the female to fall into a crumpled, weeping heap. “STAY!” it commanded with a voice like coarse razors, reinforcing the point by pressing its index finger against her head.

Then it pivoted to the male in a broken, bleeding heap.

Vincent lay in the dirt struggling with agony, when he felt claws close around his throat. He could only cough and bleed as the creature lifted him to bring him face to face.

Demonic red slits stared at him from a slavering wolfish face. Folds of hairy flesh curled back from its blackened gums, revealing a malevolent smile of savage teeth.

End it now.

Then he saw Amy over the beast’s hulking shoulder. He saw her grab her handbag and some clothing from among the tent remains and run...

Vincent felt a sense of relief that he should die to save Amy’s life. Nothing else mattered now. Looking death in the eye, he raised a thumb in salute.

“Pretty good!” he said grinning.

Still holding Vincent under the chin, the demon slammed his body into a nearby gum tree. Delirious with pain, Vincent felt his ribs crack and prayed for a quick death.

Pinning Vincent to the tree with one arm, the beast swiped across his exposed belly with the other. Blood and bile bubbled out of his mouth as he felt its claws slicing through his flesh. Cutting him open like a can, it doubled back on its arc through his abdomen to drag out his intestines and hold them up to his face.

“Pretty! Hahaha!”
it boomed.

The end was upon him. Vincent smiled at his slayer and spoke through a gurgle, “I’m dead but she’ll get away.”

It laughed again and dropped him to the ground. His entrails piled onto him. Feeling the approach of oblivion, he closed his eyes for the last time...

His last memory was a rasping whisper in his ear like a knife in the dark,
“I can smell her for miles... I WILL find her.”

MONDAY 11:35
PM

Where am I?

Somewhere, a cruel voice answered,
“Home.”

Who is that?

Again it answered,
“Your true calling.”

What’s going on?

A third answer,
“We have returned.”

Then there was light, revealing an earthen chamber with dark recesses. Before him leered a huge wolf-faced creature that stood upright in purple bloodstained robes. Its piercing red eyes flashed with malice.

Screaming, he ran into darkness, not caring where except away from the horrible visage. Then he was falling, blinded by eternal night.

Somewhere above him, a voice called...

“Henry! Remember!”

Murmurs in the gloom. Red eyes flicker. Hairy figures wait. Guttural groans resonate. A pungent stench stifles the smell of blood. Claws scrape against stone. Restless. Eager.

Torches burst aflame, shedding a sickly light that flickers through palls of fetid smoke. Illuminated is a chamber massive beyond description, its cavernous walls fading into murk at the limits of perception...

Filled with the
Dark Horde
beyond number.

As one unholy mass they begin to moan, a rasping discordant sonority that carries from one horizon to another. The
Dark Horde
in their many millions, cast their impious gaze upward to the central stone: a fifteen-metre monolith of agony and lust. A bloody pillar of stone with the likeness of knotted ebony flesh, barbed spikes gracing its vile surface like hairs, impaled on which hang the weeping bodies of ravaged humans.

Dominating the altar on which the Elders stand.

In purple robes of putrefaction, the Elders line the perimeter of a round platform etched with arcane symbology, its inscriptions shining like molten cracks in hardened lava. The great and terrible pillar pierces the platform at its centre, a monument to eternal torment.

The
Venomed One
, a scorpioid abomination six metres tall, stands alone before the pillar. Exultant, it raises a long barbed tail and massive pincers to the ceiling soaring overhead and throws back its head set with a mass of green eyes like mirrors. Its oversized mandibles quiver as it unleashes a heaven-smashing scream.

The world shudders. The pillar twitches.

As one almighty mass the
Dark Horde
begin to howl, an earthquake of lustful malice. As one they cast their malevolent gaze upwards, to the corrupted centre of the unholy service towering over them.

And as one they wait with fervent anticipation...

With each roar from their scorpioid leader, the uncountable chorus increases in volume and fervour, the air becoming so turgid with the malignant resonance that it seems solid. Never wavering, in unison, the demonic legions maintain their diabolical din.

Awakening to the sound of slaughter, the putrid pillar begins to pulse with unearthly life.

The
Venomed One
, a crimson-coloured juggernaut, now paces in a circle around the infernal spit-roast of humans that is the central column. With merciless deliberation, it considers each of the victims in turn. Some lie unconscious but breathing, others lie with eyes open, their minds blank with terror, and yet others lie as lifeless, dismembered lumps. Long spikes tear the humans’ flesh even as they impale them, the horrid twitching of the pillar drawing fresh blood with each undulation.

Aroused by the sacrificial offering, thick purple ichor begins to drip down the sides of the monolith, hardening like some hellish candle.

The crimson juggernaut stops before its chosen first victim and roars with such deafening fury that it drowns the swamp of noise around it. Its huge pincer punches into the chest of a horrified male, sending forth an explosion of gore. The male screams in agony as the pincer closes around his heart, then is silenced as his torso is ripped apart. Roaring again, the grim task-master tears out the still-beating chunk of meat, beating in synchronicity with the pulsing tower. The
Venomed One
raises its prize in triumph to an ecstatic audience.

The scorpioid abomination turns to the gory centrepiece and impales the human’s heart, fluids rushing down the pillar’s sides as the pulp is mashed and ground. The
Venomed One
roars with thrill. The
Dark Horde
scream with ecstasy. The walls rock with the intensity.

Undulating ever faster, a dull ruby glow emerges from the bloody spire. Dark sappy fluids leak down its barbed sides with new passion.