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“You know what’s wrong with him?” I ask.
“I’ve seen that look before,” Lottie frowns. “It was a couple of years back, some young lads were playing with a spirit board in the woods, and one of them accidentally summoned a—”
Lottie’s words are cut off by a scream. I whirl around. The vegetable tent shakes as a black mist envelops it. People scatter in all directions. One of the festival judges staggers out the door of the tent, bleeding from his nose and eyes.
“Help!” he yells. “It’s horrible. It’s—”
But his words cut off into a piercing shriek as he’s dragged back into the tent by an invisible force. A moment later, a spray of crimson decorates the side of the tent.
“What is this?” I yell, shaking Father Maxwell’s collar.
“Look what you’ve done, priest,” Agnes huffs. “You’ve gone and led it straight to Grimdale.”
“Led what? What is that?”
“That,” the priest says as he crosses himself frantically, “is a demon.”
35
Bree
Idon’t have time to contemplate the absurd notion of a demon crashing the Grimdale Giant Vegetable Festival, because the village is panicking. People scatter in all directions, knocking over stalls and shoving each other out of the way. I see Alice and Dani grab hold of my dad and Mr. Agincourt and drag them away from the tent.
A cacophony of screams and shrieks rises from the tent, and the whole thing shakes. More crimson splatters the walls. It looks like a terrible horror film, but it’s real.
Blood. That’s blood.
My heart leaps in my throat as the screams abruptly cut off.
The tent flap opens.
Something slithers out.
Has Jack the Ripper returned?
No, something worse.
My stomach lurches.
A demon.
The creature is made of shadow. It moves along the ground like a snake crossed with a sinister wind-up toy. Its edges blur, so it’s impossible to focus on it for more than a moment without your eyes going wonky. Scraps of tent fabric and other…bodily stuff…hang from the tips of its curved horns, and a whip of fire flicks from its ghastly maw of a mouth to set the tombola booth alight.
It moves through the festival with a tremendous wave of wrongness, a sense that it is completely out of time and space. It is not supposed to be here.
And it knows only one thing – it knows only horror.
Stunned, many Grimdale residents freeze, unable to believe what they’re seeing. I wave my arms, urging them to flee. But I’m too far away. All I can do is watch in horror as the creature slithers and skitters through the crowd, slashing with its claws of shadow and burning with its fire whip. The fruit and vegetables on display wither and rot in its presence, and where its body slithers, it leaves behind scorched earth.
Blood stains the green grass and paints the Whack-a-Mole booth with rivers of crimson.
“What do we do?” I cry, dropping my lion.
“We must stop it before it hurts more people,” Björn says sternly.
“You have my sword, brother.” Pax sets down the giant duck.
“Pax, no!”
