XI. Scourge
“This way," Doody said, shuffling back into the sitting room, "this way."
He was the only one who did not walk with his eyes fixed on the ceiling. This Scott was able to tell when he spared a glance at the man. A glance was all he could spare, for at that same moment he heard Ingrid begin to cry. Her arms were clutched around his waist.
"What are we going to do?" she muttered--and then screamed as the ogre let out another long, ululating howl.
Doody swept his cane unmistakable command for silence. Too late. The whole house began to shake anew as the ogre's enormous feet pounded towards the entrance to the cellar. A flight of steps on the far end of Doody's sitting room led straight to it. Scott looked at them, and remembered how the ogre at Ingrid's house in Norwalk had gotten itself trapped in the basement. The stairs had broken under its weight.
"We need to leave," he said to Doody. "Like right now."
"My dear boy, I could not agree with you more."
But he wasn't making his way towards the street exit. He lurched to the gramophone instead, next to which was a crude wooden crate. He instructed Scott to open it.
An ancient rifle lay inside. Its stock was wrapped in filthy cloth. The bolt handle was rusted.
"A kickshellac," Doody said. "You must take it--"
The cellar door exploded off of its hinges. Splinters of wood skittered like insects over the stairs.
"My God!" Ingrid shrieked.
Scott seized the gun. He knew next to nothing about firearms but there was no time to consider the issue. The ogre was breathing behind him as it made its way down the steps. One of the stringboards gave away with a hard crack! that brought a howl of surprise from the beast.
Ingrid and Dixon ran to the other side of the room. Scott helped Varion as best he could with a limping Doody. They reached the door but Dixon, in a panic, was having trouble with the chain. His fingers clawed and shook at the knob.
"It's stuck!" he gibbered. "I can't get it I can't get it oh fuck oh Jesus!"
Scott held his weapon up to Doody. "How do I use this!"
The man did not look disposed to answer at first. He was clutching his chest, his breathing coming in hoarse, dry gasps. "Pull the bolt back and drop it into the notch," he got out.
Scott grabbed the bolt-handle--and froze.
The ogre, too tall for the environment it now occupied, was hunched over him. Its yellow eyes hovered in the gloom not more than ten feet away. Coated with thick, black hair, its body cast a lumpish shadow on the wall that seemed to dance in the candlelight with a life of its own.
"Shoot it!" Varion cried
But fear of the monstrosity held Scott in place. When it reached for him he screamed and dropped the kickshellac. When it lifted him off the floor he screamed again. Its mouth opened. Through his panic, Scott could smell its breath, its sweat--it was the same abhorrent smell that had been hanging over the town all afternoon.
Higher and higher up he went. Scott's panic was like being under dirty water--cold blackness pressed through his every pore, making his heart race, his body shiver. A muffled, distant voice from the surface shouted a warning that he was about to have his head bitten off. Nothing could be done about it. The ogre's hairy hands were squeezing his ribs, making it near impossible to draw breath. Hot, foul air from its gullet baked his eyeballs. Something sharp and wet touched his neck--
And the cellar shook with a heavy explosion.
Scott heaved a deep breath of air as he was dropped to the floor. The sound of splattering liquid came from nearby, accompanied by a series of raspy, choking coughs. He saw the beast topple into the gramophone, smashing it to pieces. Its arms were clutched to its throat. It fell to its knees, and then flat onto the floor.
Scott blinked. He sat up. His hands felt round his neck. It was still attached to his body, a fact for which he was most grateful. But what had happened to the ogre?
Ingrid got to his side within seconds. Was he hurt? Was there blood anywhere? Had the monster bitten him? Nothing she said was coherent, but Scott assured her as best he could that no permanent damage had been done.
Not to him at least. Rupert Doody was another matter. He had collapsed to his knees, the kickshellac he had fired moments earlier gone from his hand. His other hand--the one affected by the disease--was pressed to his chest. He tottered for a moment, and pitched forward before anybody could react. The sound of his heavy head hitting the floor caused Dixon and Varion to fly to his aid.
He was choking for air as they turned him over. Nobody could understand why at first. His neck began to turn blue; his eyes flickered upward, showing their whites.
"What's wrong, Mister Doody!" Dixon shouted hysterically. "Talk to us please! PLEASE!"
But Doody was beyond talking. Scott, still grappling with the shock he had received, wondered if shrapnel from the kickshellac had somehow pierced his throat, cutting off his breathing. His eyes scanned the floor for blood. There was none.
Meanwhile Doody continued to die. The last of his consciousness was trickling away. He gasped in a quick, dry breath before going completely still.
"What do we do!" Dixon screamed through flowing tears.
And then Ingrid, through tears of her own, told them. "He's prone!" she screamed. "Lift him up! Get him into a sitting position! NOW!" she shrieked, when nobody moved.
Varion grabbed one arm--Dixon, the other. Together they hoisted his torso forward. Ingrid grabbed a pillow from the couch and was able to get it behind his head before he was set against the wall. Now Doody resembled a drunkard passed out in an alley. His legs were splayed; his arms were limp at his sides. But he was drawing breath again--clean, deep gasps of it.
Everyone waited. Scott had forgotten about the ogre, though its smell permeated the cellar, and the sounds of ruckus from outside were still present. At last Doody blinked and looked around. His lip quivered.
"So that," he rasped, "is what it's like to be able-bodied. I feel so...so alive." His chest began to hitch again, but when Ingrid jumped a little he waved her off. "Quite all right, my dear. I haven't laughed in so long." His head turned towards the ogre. "Is the beast dead? I believe the bullet struck its throat."
Scott rose and walked to the ogre. Its huge black body was motionless. A puddle of dark blood did indeed spread from its neck. He gave its upper arm a tentative kick, ready to leap away should it reach for him. When it didn't, he placed his boot against the side of its head and pushed, so its face came away from the floor. Two sightless yellow eyes came into view. Its mouth, rife with jagged fangs, hung in a silent scream. Pieces of flesh lay everywhere in a muck of tacky blood.
"It's dead," Scott heard himself say.
***
Minutes later Varion and Dixon were helping Doody up the basement steps. The steps were splintered in places, and one of the stringboards was almost broken in two, but everyone made it to the top. The lower floor of Doctor Bowershim's house reeked of the dead ogre's scent. Scott stepped in something that squished as he tried to feel his way through the darkness; on the instant he knew what it was.
"That fucker shit on the floor.”
"Scott," Ingrid scolded from somewhere, "not now."
She was right. They needed to find a place for Rupert Doody to rest. His heart, he explained to them not long after Scott's inspection of the dead beast, was healthier than his body, but only just. He then asked to be taken upstairs, away from the corpse. This level wasn't high enough, however. Even without proper lighting Scott felt certain of that. A hole gaped in the wall where the ogre had broken through. Beyond was the street, which had gone eerily quiet over the last ten minutes. Scott didn't know what that meant. All he knew was they were still vulnerable here.
They got Doody up another flight (after a stop in the kitchen for the deterging of Scott's shoes) to a half-landing when something that should have been obvious from the start occurred to him. "Is Doctor Bowershim in the house?" he asked.
"On vacation," Doody replied. "A golfing trip in the gulf."
"They have golf in this region?"
Doody gave him a look. "They have it in the progressive?"
"That reminds me of a joke," Varion said. "What's the most dangerous thing in the skies?"
Scott smiled. "What?"
"A doctor flying a Beechcraft Bonanza."
Everyone laughed except Doody, who only looked puzzled. He directed them to the house's master bedroom. It was at the very end of a long hallway. Inside were three ornate candelabras, which Varion set about lighting once Doody was propped in a large, canopied bed. Ingrid closed the door and locked it.
"Does anybody know what time it is?" Dixon wondered aloud.
"Barely nine-thirty," Ingrid told him. "I saw a clock downstairs."
"Wow is that all? This is going to be a long night."
Scott went to the nearest window and peered out. The scene beyond was not encouraging. A girl’s body lay in the middle of the intersection, her form little more than a bundle of rags. The scream she had died with was still fixed upon her face. Her party dress, once white, was splattered with red. It looked like one of the ogres had taken a very large bite out of her torso. Beside her, undamaged, a pink ribbon--one that he recognized—fluttered in a breeze.
"Scott?" Ingrid said from behind him.
He turned to shoo her back--he didn't want her to see. Her eyes were too quick for him though. They found the dead girl, and the dark circles beneath them seemed to grow even darker. Ingrid's lip quivered. She laid her head against Scott's chest, saying nothing.
"Look away," he pleaded.
"No," she said, “I don't think I can do that."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm here to stop all of this from happening. I have to look. I have to s-see..."
A flood of tears washed her words away. Scott brought her in closer, bearing her body up. A mere hour ago, the girl in the street had been alive and happy, playing with her friends at a party in the celebration of love. In one fell swoop, that party had come to a very bloody end. It brought all the doubts back in a suffocating rush. What chance did they have fighting a thousand monsters like the one that lay dead in the apartment below? He was a man who worked a terrible job in a grocery store meat department; she was a high school dropout. What they were attempting was nothing short of ridiculous. They couldn't win. But for Doody's teachings, which were intangible at the kindest, they had no weapons to fight with.
And of course the monsters were just part of the challenge. Woodward Cambridge, the conductor of all the madness, was still waving his baton from some hellish pedestal in his castle on Coldfrock Lake. This at least was how Scott had come to imagine him. The lunatic vampire who supped on the blood of young virgins. And speaking of lunatics, there was also Nancy Semeska, sister of Cambridge and wicked stepmother of Ingrid. Was she now a conspirator in her brother's crusade for a policed society? It seemed so. In fact it was a safe bet she was in the region at this very moment, assisting with the reorganization of his forces. Fortifying him with a strange power that was even more potent than Lisa's.
As Ingrid continued to weep, Scott's mind went back to his time in the Huron County jail. Less than a week had passed since then, but it already felt like years ago. Lisa had broken him out with something she called pouting jennies--grotesque, disembodied female heads that floated from place to place like Kongming lanterns from a fever dream. They were harmless, Lisa had kept insisting. Harmless--yet they had reduced the police on duty that night to jabbering circus clowns.
Weak magic...that?
Nancy's, he’d been told, was stronger. More deadly.
"Scott?"
He lifted his head to see Dixon standing next to him, his face flickering in the gloom.
"There are three more bedrooms off the hall if you and Ingrid want to use one. Varion and I will take turns sitting with Mr. Doody tonight." His mouth came open to say something more, but then he noticed the girl in the street. "Oh my god," he whispered.
Scott thanked him best as he was able. Ingrid's head was now buried in his chest. He knelt and lifted her off the floor, curving his arm behind her knees. Her head came to rest on his shoulder as if she no longer possessed the strength to raise it.
***
It was still dark when he awoke.
Blinking, he sat up to survey the small guest room he and Ingrid were in. A candle flickered on the nightstand. Next to it, a golden pocket-watch ticked. Everything seemed tranquil. Yet he had not meant to fall asleep, and cursed himself as his hand reached for the watch. It was one-ten in the morning.
Slow, so as not to disturb Ingrid, Scott slithered from under the counterpane. His PJs consisted of a light shirt and cotton pants, and the room felt chilly despite the season. This minor annoyance meant nothing next to what waited in the hall. The smell of the dead ogre had wafted up the stairs, and was more pungent than ever. Cupping a hand over his mouth, Scott turned to the door of the master bedroom. He opened it a crack, saw Varion look up at him suddenly, then slipped inside while pulling it closed again.
Doody was sleeping on the bed. Dixon, also asleep, was sprawled over a nearby chair.
"How is he?" Scott asked, looking at the odd lumps beneath Doody's quilt.
"He fell asleep about two hours ago," Varion replied. "Everything seems okay at the moment. We just have to make sure his head stays propped up." He gave Scott a small smile. "Your girlfriend was pretty keen to see that. I think we got his airway open with about ten seconds to spare."
"She reads a lot."
"Dixon too. We first met Mr. Doody on a bridge outside of town. He was throwing food to the fish in the river. After that encounter Dixon wanted to remember everything he'd ever read about Joseph Merrick."
Scott's eyes returned to the man snoring on the bed. His knowledge of Joseph Merrick--England's famous Elephant Man--came mostly from old photographs. There was no denying the resemblance between the two men.
"Maybe they're related," he said.
"I doubt it. Merrick's relatives have been traced all over England. But I'm willing to believe it's the same illness that's ravaged them both. You know what's funny?"
Scott placed himself on the edge of the bed. "Tell me. I could use a laugh."
"Not that kind of funny. But Dixon and I"--he stopped here for a moment, smiling at Doody--"we've been in the region for what? Five months now. And never once did we consider the turmoil it's in. We knew about Woodward Cambridge of course. And the dambuhala. But Bowershim had never been touched by any of it until tonight."
"Weren't the locals worried?"
Varion shook his head. "I don't think so. Even with its proximity to Coldfrock, Bowershim is small. No one could imagine Cambridge being interested in it. It just has the one doctor. And a hatchery."
"The dambuhala don't care about what's serviceable. They go where the food is."
"Is it true Cambridge doesn't have control of them anymore?"
"Yes," Scott answered, though he had no real proof of this. The idea of anybody controlling the ogres seemed too ridiculous to consider. He couldn't figure out how in God's name the madman had worked out the idea to summon them in the first place. On the one hand, there was the infantry--soldiers armed with kickshellacs marching from town to town, enforcing the ideals of a new order. On the other, there were the ogres--savage, bloodthirsty creatures which could in no way be related to anything administrative. The two factions could not be less alike. How did Cambridge feel they could be used together in an equation?
"...I don't think so, at least," Varion opined.
Scott looked at him. "I'm sorry, I got lost in my thoughts for a bit. What don't you think?"
"A revolution," the other repeated. "It will never work. I don't mean you and Ingrid," he added, raising his hand, "I'm speaking in strict reference to the indigenous. How could they rise up in battle against Cambridge when all they know is love and compassion and harmony?" A harsh laugh leaped from his throat. "Jesus it's like the nineteen-sixties here. Maybe we should just sail over to Cambridge's castle and tell him to peace the fuck out."
"Nuclear disarmament," Scott agreed, smirking. "You bring the incense, Varion, and I'll bring the prayer beads."
"Did you clean your shoes, by the way?"
"Yep. In the kitchen, remember?"
"Good man. Can't be spreading stink around. How did you meet Ingrid?"
Scott lifted his head, startled.
The look on his face made Varion grin. "You're a very cute couple. I'm curious."
"I was a senior in high school. She was still a freshman at the time. It was love at first sight."
"For you or for her?"
"Me."
Varion was silent for a moment. "Well she loves you back now," he informed. "It's in the way she stands next to you. She's proud of you. I don't especially like pride but when it comes to love I don't think a girl can help it."
"You're not--"
"I know I'm not a girl, Scott. But I sure know how girls think and how they feel."
"I wasn't going to say that. I was going to ask if you're proud of Dixon."
It was a long time before Varion's answer came. His eyes settled over the still snoring Doody, as if the sleeping man's mouth might fall open and impart some of his own wisdom on the subject.
"No," he said at last, never once looking at Scott as he spoke. "No. I'm very pleased with Dixon. V