Dirty Secrets

Part 84

Junebug raised his weapon and squeezed off three rapid rounds at the creature. BANG. BANG. BANG.

The demon retracted its lip, showing razor-sharp teeth, and roared the terrible cry of one hundred shrieking voices from hell.

Junebug collapsed as though a sudden weight had fallen on him. Scrambling to his knees, mouth agape, he escaped into the darkness, stumbling down the hill, running for his life.

"Get your ass back here!" Rose shouted, struggling to her feet.

The primordial creature rose up on its hind legs, its tail lashing the ground, its narrow red eyes unblinking. 

Packer drew Lyla closer as the monster turned its scaly upper body toward Rose, exposing the row of spikes down its spine.

Jack flattened himself against the driver's door, his chest heaving, his eyes bulging in their sockets.

Lyla convulsed when she saw Keenan's corpse rising from its pine box through the fluttering patterns of the inferno. Surely, this must be some illusion of smoke and shadow, a product of her imagination. But it wasn't. 

"No, no, no." She trembled.

Packer watched in disbelief.

With his decayed hands on the edges of the coffin walls, Keenan slowly, ever so slowly drew himself up into a seated position, scraps of embalmed flesh crumbling away as he burned.

Rose took a tentative step toward the beast, a wicked glint in her eye. "They sent you here, didn't they?"

The demon extended its neck, glistening darkly, and cocked its monstrous head.

The corner of Rose's ragged lips peeled back in a grotesque smile to reveal her wired teeth. "You were sent to watch over this place, weren't you?"

The creature's nostrils flared.

She shifted her eye toward the truck where Lyla trembled in Packer's arms, Jack cringing behind the door of the cab.

With a crooked finger, Rose pointed to the trio and issued a stern command. "Kill them."

The creature bellowed a horrifying cry, its eyes burning brighter. It clawed the ground, salt and cinders flying.

Consumed by a sense of utter hopelessness, Lyla was a husk, on the verge of disintegration. She couldn't draw a single breath, her disbelieving eyes clouding.

But the demon didn't attack. With four great leaping strides, the creature propelled itself into the fiery grave.

Through the roaring flames, Lyla watched it seize Keenan's incinerating corpse, sinking its claws deep into his ankles. Keenan frantically kicked and screamed but he was powerless to stop the creature from dragging him out of his coffin, through the inferno, and below the surface through a widening chasm in the ground. 

WHOOOOOSH! The fire went out as they disappeared underground in a towering plume of smoke.

"Noooooo!" Rose yelled, her cries ringing in Lyla's ears. She hobbled forward, her brows arched in shock.

Lyla lost track of Rose in the expanding, rolling, thick cloud of smoke. Then, through a brief clearing, she watched the madwoman lurch headlong into the smoldering pit, apparently desperate to rescue her son. But it was too late.

Lyla pushed open the door of the cab and descended from her seat.

"No!" said Packer. 

Let's get out of here!" Jack said breathlessly.