Page 93 of Dead Vengeance

“I don’t know!” This voice comes high and anxious, but there’s no mistaking it. It’s Jem’s voice. I’d know it anywhere.

“Because you fucking told them!” someone screams.

“I didn’t!” Jem shouts. “I didn’t, I swear.”

“Then how did they fucking know?”

“Maybe they followed you?” Jem throws out, desperation clinging to every word. “Or maybe it was… I don’t know, someone else.”

There’s a laugh. A third voice. I don’t recognise it any more than I did the first.

“You know what?” Jem yells. “You don’t have to believe me. I don’t give a fuck. I’m getting out of here.”

The next voice is hard and cold. “You’re not going anywhere.”

There’s a scuffle, some scraping of shoes over head, but not like they’re on a stone platform. It’s a squeak, as if they’re on linoleum like we have at home, and their shoes are catching on it.

I know it’s not real. I’ve seen what this thing can do. But hearing that, hearing Jem’s breath fast and harsh, a sound from him like he’s hurt, like he’s just been hit, I can’t help it. I scramble up the stairs, prepared for the thing’s skeletal face, prepared for spiders, ghosts, whatever awful images this creature can cook up.

But I don’t come out onto a stone platform in a weird old temple or ruin like I’d expected. It’s not sunshine through the ceiling that hits my face. It’s harsh fluorescent light, emanating from a plastic casing that’s yellowed with age. It shines down sickly on a small kitchen, messy, dirty plates and food all over the benches, empty beer bottles. The people in this room, Jem and three other people I have never seen before, are all frozen, stopped still in time, like statues in a museum, or a hologram display waiting to be set in motion.

Jem’s directly in front of me, so close I could reach out and touch him. And opposite, by the fridge, some guy. Some guy with a gun. Pointing it at my brother.

Then a sharp crack splits the world apart, and my brother slams down on the floor half an inch from my face, his eyes staring at me, already lifeless, a hole in his head, blood everywhere.

A scream rips out of me. I can’t help it. I scream, and I must fall, because it hurts. It hurts my shins and my thighs, and I stumble, but I don’t stop. I run. Bolt out of that place and away, through the temple corridor, on and on through darkness, vines catching at my feet, walls either side of me scraping my arms, bare walls and plants and carvings and nothing that looks like a doorway.

I run on. Blind. Anywhere, just to get away from it. That image of Jem. Dead on the floor. That place. That small and dirty kitchen. To escape all of the horror of what that thing showed me.

But more than all of it, to get away from something that felt… real. Too real.

So exact and so minute that I can’t turn back to face it. Not for anything.

A branch snags my shoe, and I’m tumbling, stumbling, trying to get my footing, but it’s too late. My hip hits first, then my shoulder, and my head snaps down a second later, slamming into the floor. I hear a door bang—a wooden door—then press a hand down to try to push myself up. My fingers meet carpet.

It’s a rug. Some soft rug on the floor of a room that’s lit by natural sunlight. My hands dig in, searching for purchase.

Head spinning, body aching, heart pounding, I gasp in air from my run, trying to figure out where I am, what’s happened.

It’s like Archer’s house. Like it in the wooden walls and the tall window off to my left that’s letting in grey daylight and a view of dark and stormy clouds swirling about the sky that must have come out of nowhere.

But it can’t be. This room has none of the floral decoration, the warm and rustic touches, fresh flowers and fresh bread that make everything achingly cosy. This place is…

It’s demonic.

Every wall is bolted through with shelves and shelves, stacked and dark, covered in books—big and old books with hard spines and bizarre writing. There are strange jars, filled to the brim with blobs of things that I don’t even want to know what they are. There are skulls, bowls overflowing with herbs or potpourri or god knows what. Some kind of plant matter. More jars with what looks like.. Are those animals’ feet? Rocks and shells and feathers and… bones.

A wave of dizziness, driven by fear, sends me spinning backwards, where the backs of my legs meet a desk with a hard thump. I reel forward again, tripping, planting both hands on the rug, blink once, twice, then realise… the whole thing beneath me is a gigantic pentagram, taking up almost the entire room.

This is wrong. This is so wrong. How the fuck have I ended up here?

In a panic, I thrust myself up, using the shelves as leverage, reeling back to get off this symbol, as though just standing on it might suck me straight down to Hell. My back hits the wall, and I raise my eyes to red and bloody-looking writing, scrawled enormous across the wall: DEAD VENGEANCE.

My heel catches when I try to get away. I tumble to the left, landing in the window casement with a bump. With a bump and an eerily floaty feeling of displacement.

This room, all darkness and supernatural horror, like I’m on the film set of a bad sixties Hammer Horror movie. But outside… that’s Archer’s yard. That’s Archer’s barn. And there, on the ground, is Archer.

Archer leaning over Fabian’s body. Fabian laid out long and still. And Archer’s hands bloody, wrapped around a stake that he’s driven straight through my colleague’s body.