Talent
by Mr. House and Her Son, the Amazing Dog Trumpet
© 1999 FacistsInHeaven
Chapter the Fifteenth: Opening Shot.
“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we are not alone. ”
It wasn’t early enough, the first of the frosty nights had reclaimed the neighbourhood and the red, orange and yellow leaves from the day’s breezes lay in sugary piles on the side of the driveways and the street. My windows were misted and I had to start the blowers even though the engine hadn’t warmed up enough. I was chilled anyway and shivered and blew as I backed the car out of my drive. It was dark, the street lamps were spaced far enough apart that they illuminated the area in small oases of silver circles in the gloom. The street was quiet so I was able to pull straight out and I used the lights from across the road to show me where the other kerb lay. I straightened up to drive away and glanced in my rear view mirror.
My street might be about four or five hundred yards before it disappears around the bend to the left, leading to the sports fields. I had thought I saw the lights of a car wink and checked again to see if one of the local youngsters was joyriding around without headlights (they’d done it before, ours was a quiet suburb). No car, but the view was slightly obscured by the misted rear window, I flicked on the rear wipers and watched the lights flare in the crystal flashes caused by the blades moving the dew drops around. I froze. The street was a long tunnel, dark trees lined it and the street lamps provided alcoves of receding darkness. There was no car at the end but I saw a movement. Or rather, the sudden disappearance of one of the islands of light. The whole bend at the end of the road was smothered in blackness. Then the next lamp winked out... And then the next..
I spun around to look out of the rear window directly. The advancing blackness held a darker shape in it’s centre, a lumbering shape of indistinct dimensions, its lope bringing it towards me.
It had already closed about a third of the distance between us as I sat there.
I locked the shift into drive and booted the gas. The car lurched forwards with a short squeal from the tires. I watched the scene recede in the mirror and set off swiftly away from it. Whatever the beast was, it saw my movement and began to accelerate towards me. I could make out its gigantic musculature as it bounded after me. The hair on my neck prickled with the oppressive force of its intention and despite the fact that the vehicle’s gearbox was doing a sterling job at moving us along, the black thing was getting bigger in my rear view.
The direction I was travelling was going to take me into the open farmland before Reddington and I realised that my chances were going to be poor if I lost the race with this brute. The main road curved away to the East and the lights of the first set of houses we dimly visible in the crisp distance. I had to change my direction and decided almost too late, to throw the car into the nearly invisible side track of the old Erking farmstead. The dirt track rushed us up and over the hillock next to the front meadow and would eventually meet the main road again a short way to the North. The engine was gunning as fast as it could go, the four-wheel drive shuddering with the gravel and I knew that most of the underbody was going to need a repair if I ever got out of this.... If I could manage to get to the wide paved main highway, there was a good chance I could get the speed necessary to reach help. The rutted farm track made it difficult to keep a good view of where I was going and at the last minute, I just made out the fence around the old duck pond at the fork in the track. The car nearly lost a headlight as it broadsided on a fence post and I only just managed to regain traction on the gravel. As I roared away on my new direction, the back of the car shuddered from a massive blow from the black mass that had almost been on me. The pond water flashed high in the moonlight as my pursuer slid past me. I left the scene shrinking in my rear-view mirror. This was a different path, one I had no idea where it went. I rarely even drove past this place, let alone, came on to the farmstead. The lights of habitation were still ahead of me but now across the open meadows of the farm. Hedgerows lay as black walls in front of me, I would have to find way through if I was going to avoid death. The car hugged the side of the hill as I followed the contours of the land around towards the East again, the moonlight showing an open expanse of meadow leading ahead over a higher ridge. The top of the lumbering monster was jogging over the horizon of my mirror once again and I urged myself faster across the (thankfully) flat and open grass.
The narrow opening in the dry-stone wall leading into the ridge was taken at a slight pitch and the car settled once more into it’s determined climb up towards the night sky. As I crested the hill, the race was lost. The foul beast managed to leap onto the back of the car and took the rear window out in one blow. I just yelled in fear as the snarling mouth full of black teeth roared in triumph. It was perfect evil, the aura of malevolence palpable with it’s urgent need to kill me.
I wish I could claim that I had made the move with some cleverness, but truth to tell, it was just that I hit a pothole. The car suddenly swerved to the side and sent the black beast tumbling once more off to the ground. I straightened up and again headed to the top of the hill. The ridge was steep enough that I lost sight of the ground as I hit the top, and the car leaped into the air as it crested. The gearbox shrieked as all four wheels left the ground. Then the moon flashed back up across my line of sight and I landed once more. Ahead of me was the wide top of the ridge stretching downwards to the Eastern edge of the farmlands. Along both sides of the narrow ground were vertical pillars of standing stones. They formed an avenue that lead to a point maybe a hundred metres away where a circle was formed, the moon hung directly in my path. I had landed in the middle track of the avenue and knew that the only way I could go was straight down the narrow corridor. With the glass missing from the back of the car, I could hear the inhuman roar of the beast as it leaped at me once more. I tried jibing from one side of the path to the other but that just slowed my forward progress. I was sobbing with fear and frustration as I felt the inevitability of my defeat lay over my shoulders.
The stones flickered past my sides in a grey wall that led me to the end of the ridge. From where I could see, the circle of stones I was approaching began to loom larger and larger in my field of vision. I realised with a dreadful finality that there was no way I was going to get through the narrow gaps between them. What had appeared as a widely spaced ring of pillars had begun to show itself as a near wall of closely packed monoliths. As the last of the avenue’s stones flashed past I knew I had reached my end and, howling with desperation, I threw my arms across my eyes and waited for the impact. The sudden deafening silence was possibly more shocking than any crash might have been. The engine’s roar was suddenly silenced and the crashing from the suspension as I had been leaping over the rough terrain dropped away to stillness.
I dropped my arms and looked out.
The car was dead centre in the ring of old standing stones. Their wide-spaced forms casting long shadows on their neighbours in the beautiful silver light from the huge Autumnal moon. The engine had stalled and the car just sat there hissing and creaking from the heat adjustments. A light swirl of dust gently blew around me as I slumped back in my seat. The blue-black landscape all around was still too. I looked swiftly around but realised that the predator was completely gone. No trace was around, except for the lost rear window. I closed my eyes and let my head slump against the steering wheel, letting my held-in breath go out slowly.
The quietly malevolent voice in my ear was more than enough to have me screaming and trying to climb out the side window. On my passenger seat sat the ugliest character that could possibly have made it in a cartoon horror flick. It’s potbelly glistened with a oily film and its thin, scaly legs ended in vicious clawed feet that tore into the fabric of the seat. It’s head wobbled atop its spindly neck and bulging eyes viewed me with malice from the grey-green wax of its gruesome skin. It eyed me with disgust and sneered.
“You are just soooo fucking lucky” it grinned at me as one who has just lost a hand of poker. Leaving me in no doubt that I would be in for another as soon as it could arrange it. The foul stench of it’s spittle dripped from it’s slimy mouth as it continued, “the luck of that cunt bitch Mab is with you, you fucking shit " it said in its weasly growl of a voice. “The Erl King’s hill has been your safety.. this time you cunt.” It spat. “We will have you next time! My master will not be beaten by your puny cunt friends. He knows of you already and will not fail us. We will feed on your rotting corpse, your lovers will eat the shit from your pus-filled arse .” It reached over and ran the sharp talon of a fingernail along my forearm, there was a sharp discharge of electricity as it approached my skin and I realised I was being protected by some sort of force field but it continued despite being in obvious agony. I felt the fiery pain of the cut and had to jerk my arm away from the attack.
“Not so fucking sure of yourself now are you CUNT! It spat, suddenly, holding my gaze with it’s fearsome visage. As I watched, the reptilian horror began to change. Slowly it melted to become something altogether more familiar. The hate-filled eyes of the leader of the three thugs from the car park leered out at me.
“If you had known that your little game would have brought my master’s attention to me you might have been less stupid, you cunt fuck. When he found me and offered me this I knew I was going to have you. And I will!”
Shrieking, it cartwheeled over the back of the seat and leaped out the back window into the night.