CHAPTER 18
First comes a hand.
It settles softly, almost tentatively in the grass. The pale fingers flex, then dig themselves into the sod. I’m reminded of hands gripping flesh, fingers digging into necks and forearms, of bruises and abrasions, of the god’s hands entwined with my own, cutting off Leah’s airway.
Hand over hand, the god pulls itself from the pitch-black mouth of the box. Pale gray, nearly white, forearms emerge, and then elbows too sharp to be human, and then the top of a head that gleams in the lantern light with black, inky liquid.
The god rests in the grass with its head hanging low, its shoulder blades flared like wings above.
Does it breathe? Is it catching its breath? Its back is flexing and contracting, so it must.
It’s this—the sight of the clever machine that is a body working—that makes my throat seize. This isn’t imaginary.It’s not a hallucination; it’s not whatever manifested itself in the basement. This is a tangible body made of flesh and bone and muscle. It’s real and it’s coming for us.
The god’s head snaps up.
It has no eyes. There wouldn’t be any, would there? This thing came from a deep, dark place that wasn’t meant to ever be touched by light. It has a gash stuffed with sharp teeth for a mouth that stretches from ear to ear.
The god straightens from its prone position on the ground. It’s tall—at least eight feet—and thin in a sharp and angular way. Though there are no eyes, I feel its gaze on my skin and in my head. Its teeth hover over the pulse point in my neck despite it being thirty feet away. Hot breath breaks over my skin. There’s no looking away from the inhuman thing that’s caught me in its fist.
The god’s presence ripples through the cultists on either side. They tilt away as it makes its way down the aisle. I understand. The closer it gets, the stronger the tuning fork at the base of my skull vibrates.
The crosshairs sway, and the ones with the hollow piecestock,tock,tockdelicately. The god doesn’t flinch, not outwardly. Inside, I feel it recoil from the sound.
Being restrained doesn’t stop my body from trying to make itself small. It’s an unconscious movement born in the same instinctual corridor of the brain where horror and reverence are housed. I didn’t need to see this thing take down prey to know it’s a predator. The hair rising on my neck and the sweat coating my body tell me that.
Its feet thump on the steps leading up to the deck. One, two, three, and then it’s here. The god is here, towering above me.
It’s pale like something you’d find under a rock, with oily black smears marking its limbs. Scars litter its skin, mostly in pairs. The culprit: the stick Ellis held in one of the memories. A cattle prod. A few of the scars are sloppy asterisks. Bullet wounds. The worst are the two ragged crosshairs branded into its belly. A foul smell bleeds from its body. It’s the raccoon that got trapped under our trailer’s skirting until its bloating body burst, releasing the smell and alerting us to its presence.
Pools of shadow form in the contours of its skull; the craters of its collarbones; the ravines formed by its expansive ribs. Ellis said they feed it more now than ever. And still it looks like a starved dog left to rot in its cage. That doesn’t make it any less terrifying. A sick lion might not be able to take down a buffalo, but it could sure as hell destroy me.
One of the cultists lets out a quickly cut-off whimper. The god shifts its attention toward them, revealing the source of the smell.
Black liquid leaks from open wounds on the jut of its shoulder blades, the back of its arms and elbows, and on the sharp knobs of its spine. There’s even one on the back of its head. I’ve seen similar in the nursing homes where my mom worked. Bedsores. Wounds where the—
skin presses to wood, to iron, you try to uncurl, try to twist, the only way to move is in, to shrink and shrivel and wait
It turns to me again. Its attention is a wet snail draggingits body up the tops of my feet, the length of my calves, across the tender skin of my thighs, my navel, the meeting of my ribs, to the squeezable expanse of my neck. My breath hitches, then comes out shuddering.
“A sacrifice given in supplication,” Ellis says loudly. “Blessings returned tenfold.”
Ellis pulls out a long, vicious knife from somewhere. The gleam in his eyes is just as vicious and twice as maniacal. He raises it in both hands until it’s extended above his head.
This is it, I think.This is it.
There’s a commotion behind the lantern barrier. Ellis’s attention shifts to the rising voices. I want to look, but I can’t tear my attention away from the god.
The god itself is statue still. There’s a twitch at the corner of its mouth so subtle it might have been nothing more than the light sitting odd on its craven body. But then its mouth grows until it’s a grin as sharp as the killing blade itself.
“Keep her still—” Ellis starts.
There’s a wet squelching sound, and then the sort of silence that’s attached to a moment so incomprehensible no words fit around it.
A figure lurches into view. Youth Pastor’s neck is slick with blood turned black by the night. His face is slack with surprise. His hands hover around the wound, so I don’t see it at first.
Embedded just below his jaw is half of a metal claw clip.
Ellis cries out, “Don’t—!”
