THIRTY-EIGHT
Father Ross could hear Dex Dexter screaming in protested even from inside the house and that ominous chant of the creature’s name.
Minx rolled onto its side and propped itself up on its bony elbow and looked at the priest through a mask of dripping gore. Even now its face was beginning to reform before Ross’ sickened gaze. Shattered bone and muscle shifting back into place accompanied by the sound of nauseating pops and cracks.
The creature smiled and it looked for a moment like the whole bottom half of its face would fall away the maw was so wide. Again it chuckled wetly clearly enjoying this new turn of events.
“Minx...” Ross was cut off by three rapid shots from outside.
He backed away towards the living room door as Minx slowly pushed itself up until it was on its hands and knees. Another two muffled shots rang out.
“Do you know the last rites, Father?” Minx gurgled.
Ross’ back hit the door, he reached behind him and fumbled blindly for the door handle, never daring to take his eyes off Minx, who was now slowly crawling towards him.
“Minx, stop this,” Ross pleaded.
“Stop what?” The demon slurred with all the innocence of a child killer. “It’s my fans,” it added. “Not me.”
As if hearing this, the crowd outside began chanting its name louder still. Another shot followed by raised voices in Russian.
“Take a look,” Minx said crawling closer still.
Ross found the door handle and flung open the door. He staggered down the hallway and over to the front door. He was about to reach for the handle but suddenly thought better of it. He glanced behind him as Minx appeared in the living room doorway and using the door, it pulled itself unsteadily to its feet. Where it waited leaning against the door for support.
Ross knelt down and pulled open the letter box so that he could peer outside.
“Christ,” he uttered. The crowd were massed just in front of the stage. Dozens upon dozens of them blended into one writhing mass. Three men whom the priest assumed were security men stood on the low stage with their guns thankfully pointed into the air.
Again each of them fired once into the night sky but the crowd didn’t so much as flinch. They could have quite easily rushed the three men and trampled them to death, but they waited, not out of fear, but as if they had been instructed to do so.
Dex Dexter was being held helplessly above them, they tossed and flung the beleaguered host about like a rag doll. He was naked now and his pasty body was battered and bloody. “Help me, help me!” He screamed in vain as he tumbled from hand to hand.
Finally the crowd rushed forwards like a tidal wave and the three security men were swallowed up in their midst. A moment later they too were raised up but unlike the unfortunately host they were handed almost gently towards the back of the crowd where they disappeared out of sight.
Then the mass of people moved back to the front of the stage once more like a single entity made up of hundreds of mismatched unrelated moving parts. And then an eerie silence fell over them.
“Minx,” Ross pleaded. “Let Dexter go,” he tore his eyes away from the surreal gathering and peered off through the letterbox to the side of the arena, where he could just see the main production office some way off, high up on a grid of scaffolding.
Perhaps a hundred more people were gathered around the bottom of it, pushing and pulling at the base of the structure which was swaying alarmingly.
“What?” Minx said from the room behind him. “And deny him his farewell performance?”
A scream of utter terror dragged Ross’ horrified gaze back to the host who was still aloft the crowd. Dexter was tumbling over and over, faster and faster as he was roughly past from one person to the next. Some would merely pass him on as if he were painful to the touch. Others were clawing and punching at him as he passed.
“Please...” Was all Ross could muster at the pitiful sight. Then Dexter suddenly disappeared as he fell into the throng.
Ross heard Minx draw in a long painful rasping breath. The priest closed his eyes for a moment in anticipation of what was to come.
“Tear him apart,” Minx hissed.
Despite his revulsion, Ross couldn’t help but look back out of the letterbox once more as Dexter’s high pitched shriek cut through him like a knife. All he could see now was the crowd fighting rabidly amongst themselves to get at the naked man. Each as eager as the next to obey their demonic obsession’s request. And he was damn glad that was all he could see.
High up in the production office Michael Davis and the others, all clinging onto anything solid as the whole structure threatened to topple over, weren’t so lucky.
They had literally a bird’s eye view of the slaughter of Dex Dexter.
Dozens of willing hands tore and gouged at the host as he fell amongst them. His pale skin burst and ripped open under the assault showering those attackers closest to him in thick dark blood, and they revelled in it with an almost orgasmic glee, rubbing it all over their writhing bodies. Some were so intent on rendering Dexter apart that they used their teeth to rip into his flesh.
It was a feeding frenzy that would have put a pack of wild dogs to shame with its ferocity. Made all the more horrific by the banality of the attackers appearances. Normal everyday looking people driven to an act of unspeakable violence.
“They are going to kill us all!!” Someone screamed from somewhere just behind Davis who had wedged himself between a computer hard drive stack and the director’s control desk to avoid being flung around like a rag doll. But it may just as well have been from a million miles away for all his terror addled brain could register it.
“No,” he muttered as the realisation of his predicament finally forced its way through the fog of fear and into his consciousness. “Just me.”
He reached for the small box holding the charm which he kept in his inside jacket pocket. “Fuck no!” The whole left hand side of his jacket had a long jagged rip in it and the pocket was gone. His hand came away bloody from a wound on his side he hadn’t even noticed taking whilst being flung around the room. Bloody and empty.
The prefabricated structure shuddered violently again, at first he barely registered it but then gradually he became vaguely away of the sound of violent hammering from outside the door. The mob were just outside now, Minx’s army come to deliver him into the wizened hands of their new God.
At least Dexter had stopped screaming he thought absently. He let his gaze fall through the cracked Perspex window and down to what was left of Dexter’s body. The crowd had literally torn him limb from limb and worst still they were throwing his arms, legs and what must have been his crushed head into the air, passing them from one to another like an obscene game of human volleyball.
A fate he was sure to follow, or worse still when he was at the mercy of the creature he himself had tortured so unsparingly these long months. Unless.
Davis turned to take in the room around him which was in chaos. Miller the director was sprawled unconscious or dead on the floor half crushed by his beloved bank of large monitors. Many of the others were clinging onto anything they could to stop themselves being pitched forwards into the rapidly weakening observation window.
Davis didn’t care about any of them, Christ he could hardly remember half their names. He didn’t even flinch when he saw Tiff his long suffering assistant laid awkwardly amongst the debris covered in blood. No, it was the figure leant over her trying in vain to stem the flow of blood from what he could now see was a vicious looking wound on her neck that he needed.
He needed Nico Gorodetsky, he needed the Russian and not because the big man had sworn to protect him. The producer knew it was too late for that now. No, it was because Nico had a gun.
He staggered over to him twice nearly falling as he tripped over a body here a piece of smashed electronics there. “Nico!” He shouted above the din coming from just outside.
“Nico,” he said again and half knelt half fell next to him.
The Russian had his hands clasped over Tiff’s throat, thick blood was seeping through his fingers, and his face was set in grin determination as he tried to keep the young woman alive.
“Nico, I need your gun,” he said softly.
Nico barely glanced at him. “You’re not shooting anyone Davis,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s too late for that now. These people, these people cannot help what they are doing.”
“I know that,” Davis replied as a strange sense of calm came over him. “And I don’t want to shoot just anyone... Just me.”
Gorodetsky looked at him in disbelief.
“If that creature gets a hold of me...” His voice trailed off as he contemplated that nightmare scenario.
The two men held each other’s gaze for the longest moment and after an age the Russian’s face softened in realization. He gave a slight nod of the head and motioned to his side.
Davis reached into Gorodetsky’s jacket and pulled out the small pistol. And despite the sweltering atmosphere it felt ice cold in his hand.