Eric nodded. He didn’t like this. But at least there was a plan. He hadn’t had a plan all day. He was flying by the seat of his pants. And he couldn’t keep relying on dumb luck to save his ass.
Father Billy, who was no father to anyone, opened the door and stepped out into the gloom.
Eric closed the door behind him and watched him through the peephole.
Nothing happened at first. Father Billy made his way slowly across the yard, his body tense, ready to spring away.
But step-by-step, nothing happened.
Eric began to think that the golem would ignore anyone but him, that others could walk right up to the box without disturbing it. He had just begun to wonder if this plan was doomed to fail when something enormous exploded from the top of the box
A great, howling visage burst upward with the speed and force of an automobile airbag inflating in a collision. It swelled into the sky, raining down broken branches from the massive trees as it rose higher and higher. Two stories tall, it dwarfed Father Billy in its shadow. Massive teeth bristled from a long, fleshy snout and terrible eyes the size of tractor tires blazed like molten rock. Long, coiling tendrils unraveled themselves from the creature’s body and snaked across the sky.
It was a huge mass of pale gray flesh against the dark canopy of branches, but somehow its body resisted any attempt he made to grasp what it looked like. It was more than just a great ball with a gruesome face rising into the sky, but that was as close as Eric could come to describing the thing. Whatever made up the lower half of its massive torso seemed to be too strange for his limited, human mind to comprehend.
Father Billy was moving in an instant, across the yard and around the side of the building.
Not surprisingly, he was also swearing like a longshoreman.
Eric lit the fuse to the dynamite. The instant it caught, the object became even more frightening than he ever imagined. In just a short amount of time, this unremarkable brown stick was going to detonate with catastrophic force, blowing itself to dust and taking with it anything in the immediate vicinity. If the fuse burned before he could deposit it into the box, it would, at the very least, blow off his hand.
He tossed aside the lighter and looked out one last time to make sure they had gone. He saw the creature’s long, fleshy tails sliding across the rocky ground, away from the now empty box.
Bracing himself, he opened the door, stepped over the corn creep carcasses and ran as fast as he could go toward the foggy man’s murderous gift.
He could hear the golem howling behind the church and hoped Father Billy was okay. It was by far the largest of the three monsters the foggy man had left for him. He doubted even the world’s largest bulldozer would faze it and it appeared to be free-floating, obviously leaving it immune to falling. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t relieved that he didn’t have to find a way to break its focus all on his own.
He was sure something would happen to try and prevent him from completing this task. It was far too simple. Surely he could not be so lucky. Yet nothing attacked him and nothing blocked his path. He ran to the box and dropped the dynamite inside without any trouble. Relieved, he turned and ran back toward the safety of the church.
He only made it halfway back before he spotted the golem. It was rising up into the air behind the church, its crazed eyes shining down at him.
Father Billy was screaming something he couldn’t make out from this distance. But he didn’t need to understand the words. He knew perfectly what was going on: It knew.
Somehow, the thing knew what he had done. By tampering with its box, he’d managed to divert its attention from Father Billy to himself.
It simply didn’t seem fair.
It was coming for him, clambering right over the church roof, tearing up shingles and knocking aside the already-leaning steeple. Pieces of it rained down between him and the door.
Booming gunshots rang out as Father Billy tried to draw the monster’s attention, but it seemed to know which one of them it wanted.
He stood frozen with fear, trying to decide what he should do. He could still make it to the church. It wasn’t that far, but he’d never survive. The building wouldn’t protect him from something this big. This thing would only tear the small structure to pieces searching for him.
Behind him, inside the box, the dynamite fuse continued to burn.
A tone rang out from his front pants pocket, alerting him to a text message. Numb with fear, hardly realizing what he was doing, he pulled his phone out and glanced down at it. One word stared up at him from the little screen: RUN!
Chapter Nineteen
Eric ran for the woods and the golem followed.
The thing howled, its terrible voice rolling across the clearing like slow, rumbling thunder, filling him with bone-chilling dread. Beneath this awful howl were the sounds of splintering wood from the church roof, the booming echoes of the rifle and Father Billy’s bellowed curses, all mingling into a single, chaotic din at his back.
Almost as soon as he entered the woods, he could hear the thing tearing through the heavy branches directly behind him.
How long did it take a stupid fuse to burn?
Seconds dragged on as he ran for his life. He wove between the trunks of the massive trees, hoping to slow the creature down, but he could hear the thundering crash of these same trees smashing to the earth behind him, some of them startlingly close.
Finally, he heard the explosion. A great, hollow concussion that struck his ears like a crack of thunder. At the very same instant, the golem cried out in a dreadful, howling shriek that might have been agony or rage or even simply despair. It was difficult to know for sure.
The howling stopped. A hush fell around him.
He dared a glance back over his shoulder, hopeful that the ordeal was already over, and glimpsed one of the forest’s massive trees crashing down from above him, shattering branches in its path as it hurtled toward him.
Eric bolted out of the way. He felt the ground tremble with the force of the impact. A great gust of air rushed past him and dust and debris rained down around him. He was not sure how close he came to being crushed, but he strongly suspected that he had missed certain death by mere inches.
High above him, the golem howled again.
So much for getting rid of it by blowing up its box.
He ran as hard and as fast as he could go, but it didn’t seem to be enough. Somewhere in the nearby woods, another tree crashed to the ground close enough to rain splinters onto him. He couldn’t keep this up forever.
As he shoved his way through some dense underbrush, something scraped his left arm, drawing blood and wrenching from him a frustrated curse.
He had no idea how he was going to survive this. There was nowhere to go. The thing was obviously perfectly happy to spend the rest of the day pulling up every massive tree in this forest in search of him. How could he even hope to break its focus?
Another tone rang out, the sound of the cell phone, still clenched in his left hand, alerting him to another text message. He glanced at the screen.
LEFT
This was new and surprisingly bossy behavior for his cell phone. But given that he was out of ideas and terrified for his mortal life, he found it hard to turn down freely given advice. Since he was only running blindly through these woods anyway in hopes of not being crushed to death or eaten whole by a two-story monster, he humored his phone and turned left.