39
Salem
God’s Judgment Comes
W e curled up together near the furnace.
We had no blankets, but Rayne laid her coat over me and held me close, her warm arms around me.
She hummed to me as I watched the snow fall through the windows, white drifts piling against the glass.
I didn’t recognize her tune, but it was gentle and slow.
She kept time with her hand, rubbing up and down my back.
Between the warmth of the fire and Rayne’s gentle touch, I was soon asleep.
Scritch, scritch. Scritch, scritch.
Barely concious, I groaned. Loki was digging a hole, and the slow, persistent sound made me twitch.
Scritch. Scritch.
Creak.
Perhaps Rayne had woken up and was going to make him stop...
My eyes flew open as I remembered where I was. The dog wasn’t with us, but something else was.
Rayne’s fingers were digging into my arm, her face lit by furnace’s orange glow. Her eyes were wide, and her head was turned. She was staring at the window beside us.
“Something’s out there,” she whispered. Goose bumps ran up my spine as we stared at the dark window, the glass frosted with ice. “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”
Creak. Scritch-scritch.
I covered my mouth to hold in the terrified whimper that wanted to escape. Something was outside the window; the noise was so close. It was walking around the exterior of the church, sniffing, scratching at the stones.
Screeeech.
Rayne flinched and I held my breath as long, clawed fingers dragged across the glass, leaving a trail through the ice. My heart threatened to burst out of my chest and run away. Could it hear the organ pounding? Could it smell the blood rushing through my veins?
Rayne tapped my arm and silently held a finger to her lips. Slowly—painfully slowly—she rose to her feet and picked up her gun. She looked at me and mouthed the words “Stay down.”
Adrenaline begged me for oxygen, but even my shallow breaths felt too loud. A high-pitched chattering noise, like the buzz of a cicada, sounded from outside. Biting my lip hard, I focused on the pain instead of the fear, holding Rayne’s jacket tightly against my chest.
Footsteps crunched in the snow. They moved, and paused. Moved, and paused again.
Then came the ominous creak of the gate swinging open.
My voice was panicked as I whispered, “It can open gates?” Rayne didn’t take her eyes off the door as the knob jiggled. She hurriedly lifted her gun, taking aim.
“When it gets in, run for the back door,” she said. “Run and don’t stop. No matter what you hear, don’t stop.”
My heart was in my throat. The hinges creaked as the door opened, sending a cold draft rushing into the nave—and Ruth Miller stepped inside.
Rayne sharply exhaled, lowering her weapon, and I almost cried in relief. But Ruth shrieked when she saw us, her hands flying up to cover her mouth.
“Rayne! What are you doing—what’s going on here?”
“Be quiet, would you?” Rayne snapped. “Close the damn door, it’s out there!”
“It?” Ruth closed the door but didn’t lock. Rayne marched down, slamming the bolt into place as Ruth eyed her with suspicion. “You mean the angel? I didn’t see anything.”
“Then you weren’t paying attention,” Rayne snapped. “What are you doing here?”
“I should ask you the same question.” Ruth pursed her lips as she took off her coat and folded it over her arm. “I always come early on Sundays to light the furnace for service. Although it seems you’ve already done that. It’s warm in here.”
“We’ve been here all night. We didn’t make it home in time.” Rayne peered out the window nearest the door. “Curfew hasn’t ended yet, the sun isn’t up. You shouldn’t be out at all.”
“I shall fear no evil,” Ruth said with a small smile. “I have faith, Rayne. God protects his most loyal.”
“Hm. Tell that to Job.”
Ruth’s eyes narrowed, her mouth pursing tightly.
Her shoes clicked on the floor as she came farther inside, her eyes scanning the pews as if she suspected we’d damaged the place.
Rayne came back and helped me to my feet, moving me farther away from the windows as she eyed them fearfully.
When she protectively wrapped her arm around me, Ruth scoffed.
“While the rest of us pray for forgiveness, for mercy, you bring your little whore into the house of God,” she said, her voice deathly quiet. “And we wonder why these deaths keep happening. There can be no mercy for those who spit in the face of the Lord.”
“Come on, Rue,” Rayne said softly. “Don’t do this.”
“Do not call me that!” Ruth practically screamed, startling me. “Get out. Go home. You’re not welcome here.”
“The sun isn’t up yet.” Rayne sounded calm, but her tone had gone cold. Her arm tightened around me. “We’ll leave as soon as it’s safe.”
To my shock, Ruth immediately withdrew a knife from the sheath on her belt. It was a small blade, but sharp, and she held it determinedly. Rayne stiffened.
“I said, get out .” Ruth bared her teeth in a snarl, but she and her knife didn’t seem very threatening.
Not when I spotted the thing standing behind her.
The angel was here.
It towered outside the window, its skinny limbs pressed against the church, its eyeless face bobbing eerily at us through the glass. Rayne saw it at the same moment, and she began to whisper frantically, “Ruth, listen to me, you need to—”
With a terrifying crash, glass exploded into the church as the window shattered. Ruth screamed, and suddenly Rayne was yelling, “Go, go, run! Salem, we need to run!”
Scrambling for the door, I tried to pull it open—but was violently shoved to the floor by Ruth. She threw back the lock and wrenched the door open, then ran shrieking into the gray pre-dawn light, leaving a shocking trail of blood in the snow.
The sound of gunfire made me flinch, covering my head. Rayne stood over me, and took aim again as the beast squeezed itself through the narrow broken window, knocking aside pews, its hooves clattering on the floor.
“Run, Salem!” she yelled, and fired another shot. Scrambling to my feet, I fled into the churchyard. Rayne was close behind me.
The morning air was sharp with cold. Drops of frozen dew clung to the leaves, ice crunched beneath our feet.
The sun had yet to crest the massive trees, and we were in their shadow.
The streetlamps provided meager pools of illumination as we ran through them, drawn to the light like desperate insects.
“It’s coming!” Rayne screamed. “Faster, go—”
With a scream, she was torn from my side.
“Rayne! No!” The beast was on top of her, clawed limbs swiping at her as she rolled out of the way, her rifle dangling uselessly from the strap around her neck. I picked up a stone and hurled it, then another, and another. “Hey! Over here, you piece of shit!”
The beast paused as the rocks hit it, bouncing harmlessly off its morbid body. But those few seconds were all Rayne needed. She jabbed her knife up to its hilt in the angel’s side, and dark blood erupted from the wound. It thrashed and coiled, its limbs flailing like a spider drenched in poison.
It leapt away, fleeing into the trees, and I rushed to Rayne’s side.
“I’m alright, it’s okay,” she said, panting for breath as I helped her to her feet. “We need to keep moving, quickly.”
She’d left her jacket behind, but her skin felt feverishly warm. She had bled through the bandage covering her stitches. I didn’t dare say it aloud, but I worried if she would even make it to the ATV parked at the edge of town.
The streets were filled with the eerie sounds of dogs barking and howling, as if every canine in the village was aware of the creature’s presence. Rayne remained alert, holding her gun at the ready, but her steps began to drag.
“Just a little farther,” I said, as much to myself as to her. “We’re close, we’re almost there, we—”
Sudden movement ahead made Rayne seize me by the sweater and drag me against a wall, the both of us ducking down.
“Holy shit,” she said. “Is that Ruth?”
The woman was crawling on her hands and knees on the side of the road. We ran to catch up with her, but at the sound of our footsteps, she got to her feet and tried to run, screaming raggedly as she did.
“What the hell are you doing?” Rayne hissed as she seized her arm. “Stop screaming! That thing is still stalking us!”
But as Ruth turned toward us, there was only sheer panic in her eye.
Her one remaining eye.
Her face was split open. Her forehead had a dip in it, as if her skull had caved in. Blood foamed around her lips as she mumbled incomprehensibly, her gored eye socket staring at me like a void straight into Hell.
I clapped my hands over my mouth in horror. Rayne was shuddering as she stared, her arm outstretched for Ruth but no longer touching her.
“We have to get you help,” she said, taking one cautious step closer to the injured woman. “We’ll get you to Dr. Hale—”
But Ruth began to scream. Her words ran together incomprehensibly, and I had no idea if she could even tell who we were.
“Please be quiet!” I begged. I looked up and down the foggy streets, certain I could hear something beyond her babbling. A peculiar echo of her voice...
Rayne backed away as Ruth fell to her knees again. “She’s not lucid, she’s going to call the thing right down on us again—”
Tightly, I clutched her hand and whispered, “She already did.”
The angel crawled over the stone wall beside the road, mimicking Ruth’s voice in an eerie cadence—“God protects... God protects...”
Its slit nostrils flared, its eyeless face somehow looking straight into my soul. Its mouth gaped open, thick saliva dripped from its teeth. Rayne’s knife was still lodged in its side, but it didn’t limp nor favor it, as if the wound wasn’t there at all.
It stood directly in our path.
Rayne forced her body in front of mine, backing us away one painfully slow step at a time. Ruth stared at the beast as it stalked toward her, her mouth gaping open listlessly.
“Ruth, move !” Rayne hissed desperately. She moved us even more hurriedly backwards, but refused to turn her back on the horrific scene as it unfolded.
The creature was staring at Ruth, cocking its head from side to side as it muttered, “God protects. God protects.” People were pulling aside their curtains, cracking their doors, daring to peer outside.
Ruth’s head slumped weakly to her chest.
When the beast lunged, Rayne and I ran.
My heart was pounding so hard in my ears, almost overpowering the horrific sounds behind us. But when Rayne yanked me around a sharp corner, I glanced back and realized what I’d heard.
It was the sounds of Ruth being ripped apart. The sounds of tearing flesh and snapping bone, of agonized screams. It was only a split second, but the image remained branded into my eyes, my mind.
My limbs were too sluggish, too heavy. The world moved in slow motion, like a nightmare in which my legs turned to lead and the air to quicksand.
I didn’t dare look back. My vision had tunneled, and all I could feel was the grip of Rayne’s hand, the only thing holding me tethered to reality. Where could we go? How far could we possibly run?
“Here!”
An open door. A waving hand—and the face of an older man urging us toward him.
“Run! Come on!”
The angel shrieked. The ground felt frighteningly unsteady as we sprinted toward the door, toward safety.
We collapsed inside, and the door slammed shut—only to rattle on its hinges when the beast smashed into the other side.