“Micah, what are you…?” Minerva said somewhere behind him.
The thing began to push itself out forcefully, with hard flexes and shoves. The Reverend shook helplessly; a second rip spread across his abdomen, and a desiccated loop burped through the split. His crotch—which was essentially sexless by now, just a flaccid free-hanging tube like a spent condom and a terribly distended and elongated sack with a pair of BBs rolling around inside—swayed lewdly, parodically. Micah stumbled back, the sight so overwhelming that his knees buckled, fear rushing through his brain as the thing muscled its way out with determined thrusts and the other thing, its helpmate, laughed the same way his daughter did at Scooby-Doo and Scrappy on the Saturday morning cartoons—
The thing slid out of the Reverend’s back and landed on the floor. At nearly the same instant, the ropes mooring the Reverend let go. The Reverend fell gracelessly and crumpled to the floor in a boneless heap…
Then Amos Flesher began to shriek.
His screams drilled through the air and ricocheted off the walls. They started out hoarsely, his vocal cords seized from disuse, but built to a lung-rupturing pitch. They were the gibbering bleats of a lunatic—a madness so profound it was all but unimaginable.
“No, Daddy!” he squealed as he bucked and writhed on the stone. “You don’t love me anymore you don’t love me never stop loving meeeeeee!”
Micah was overcome with pity. Amos Flesher was a devil—the cruelest man he had ever encountered, and he had run across many in his lifetime—but to see him there, naked and wizened as he shuddered on the floor with a kind of horrid, lascivious glee… Micah wanted to do something, if only to shut him up and end his misery. But he could not. He was completely paralyzed.
The Reverend’s hands—brown and sinewy and hooked into talons—danced in the air. His legs moved as if he was trying to climb an invisible staircase. He began to rip at his wasted body. His skin tore all too easily. Chunks of his chest and arms ripped free like enormous scabs. He screamed and laughed until he ran out of breath and began to gag helplessly as his hands rose to his face, scrabbling at his cheeks and nose and finally his eyes, which burst dryly, like spore bags, releasing splintered puffs of matter.
“Daddy!” he mewled, crawling blindly toward the thing that had lived inside of him for fifteen years, feeding on him in some terrible way, wrecking him in a manner no human should have to experience. “Pleeeeeaase, oh pleeeease, don’t leeeeave me, Daddy!”
He scrabbled toward the wet pink baby-thing, moaning and spluttering. The Big Thing left Petty’s side; it strode forward, and with quick, methodical ease, it stepped on the Reverend Amos Flesher’s skull. A sickening crunch. The Reverend’s reedlike legs jittered. Then they quit moving.
Micah waited, his breath whinnying out of him. When the Big Thing did not move, he took a wide berth around the squirming baby-thing and went to his daughter. The Big Thing knelt, fingering the remains of Flesher’s broken skull case. The Reverend’s brain was pale and dry, leeched of moisture, like some kind of cheap, crumbled cheese.
Micah knelt in front of Petty, inspected her for injuries. “Did it hurt you?”
She shook her head. She seemed both alert and hazy at once, as though trapped in a very vivid dream she was helpless to wake from.
“Are you okay?”
“Are you here?” she said. “Really here?”
“You are not dreaming, Pet. I am here.”
“I’m scared.”
“Me too. More than you can imagine.”
“It said you owed its daddy. What do you owe, Dad?”
Everything, Pet. Everything I can possibly give.
Micah turned to the things, the father and its doting son. “I know what you want. But you have to let them all go.”
The Big Thing squatted beside the baby. For some time, they held a silent palaver.
“What if we want… everything?” the Big Thing finally said.
“You do not want them,” Micah said evenly. “You never did.”
The two things conferred further. The Big Thing appeared to chuckle.
“Yes,” it said. “Just one of you will do.”
“And you must lift the curse. Take it back.”
A smile touched the corners of the Big Thing’s mouth. “Curse? My father should be outraged. Was it not exactly what you wished for?”
Micah said nothing. In time, the Big Thing nodded. “As you wish. My father is merciful.”
Micah turned to Ebenezer and Minerva. “Take her,” he said. “Quickly.”
“Micah, no,” said Minerva. “What are you—?”
Micah turned away. He couldn’t stand to look at them. He had known from the outset that it would come to this. He had realized—in the deepest, most honest chamber of his heart—that it would have to end like this. It was the only way. The creature would take all of them, or it would take Micah alone. But Micah had to give himself willingly. And he knew the thing wanted him so, so badly. For he was surely the only member of his species who had ever caused it true fear, true pain, in its vast and fearsome life.
Micah turned back to confront his daughter’s agonized face. He hugged Pet tightly. With her arms pinned to her sides, she was too surprised to return it. He felt the heat of her body and the rapid beat of her heart. He tried to imprint it in his mind: her warmth, her innocence, all the love pouring out of him into her.
“I love you, Pet.” She shimmered before him. “I love you so much. And your mother, of course. More than anything on earth. You be sure to tell her that, okay? You tell her how much I love you both. Will you do that?”
His daughter nodded obediently. He wondered if she had any idea of just how much he loved her. Does a child ever understand the irrational, endless love of a parent?
“Go, then,” he said. “And do not ever come back. Do you hear me?”
“No, Daddy. I won’t go without you.”
“It cannot be any other way, my love. You do not understand, but you have to trust me. I am begging you.”
Minerva and Ebenezer stood in the sputtering light of the lantern. Micah appealed to them next. “Go. Now. What in hell’s name are you waiting for?”
“We can’t just—” Minerva started.
Micah stilled her with a look. She knew, too. As did Ebenezer. This was the only possible way. The cards were stacked against them. Those cards had begun to stack the moment Micah had accepted Ellen Bellhaven’s request to take her to Little Heaven to find her missing nephew.
Micah tried to let go of his daughter. His arms wouldn’t unlock. He wanted to hold her forever. But he had to let go.
His arms wrapped around her, the comfort he felt with her in his hands—his hands. He saw them now in the flickering lantern light. Hard, callused. A killer’s hands. At first, he hadn’t wanted to hold Petty when she was an infant. This memory came to him, clear as spring water. He had been afraid that some of his evilness might invade her tiny body. But he sensed a change in himself the moment she was born, right in his very atoms. His arms, his hands, his entire body was changing in subtle ways in order to accept this sweet burden he’d been given. She fits perfectly in my hands, he remembered thinking when the doctor gave her to him. They have shaped themselves to her without my even knowing—
He let his daughter go. It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. “Go, my Pet.”
“No!” the girl screamed, clutching at him.