Abel’s face swam to the surface, the eyes maniacal, gleaming with hatred, then it was gone, and he saw a glimpse of Selena before it changed into a conglomeration of countenances. Dozens of eyes and mouths opening and snapping flowed across its face. Ears formed and changed into a mixture of fingers that scraped the air, which then became an empty hole filled with darkness. The darkness seeped like pus from a wound and reached toward him, its edges becoming sharpened into black razors.
Evan watched the blades of shadow lengthen and then shoot toward him, and he welcomed their touch, knowing it would be nothing compared to the agony of touching Shaun’s dead skin.
A gear the size of a tractor tire fell from the ceiling and smashed into the Abel thing.
Its head split with the impact, the reaching darkness recoiling and evaporating in a billow of black smoke. The gear traveled into and through it, all the way to the floor, splattering its greasy flesh in every direction. Some matter landed on Evan’s bare arm, burning before he wiped it away.
The Abel-shape knitted itself back together, its form becoming whole before several more pieces dropped away, its shed skin hissing like meat in a frying pan.
A sprocket at least two feet in diameter crashed into the floor inches from Evan’s left leg, and he stood, backing away from the churning form before him.
The Abel-thing moved forward, two large pincers of bone erupting from its chest, slicing the space before it as it came. A chain fell in a clattering pile somewhere in the dark, and more flesh sloughed off the revenant.
No!
The howl in Evan’s head was the rending of souls, the tearing of time. Malignant and dark, it was the sound of death itself.
The Abel-thing staggered forward, the pincers dropping from its body and shattering into dust as they hit the floor. It pointed an arm in his direction, the fingers trying to form a fist, but they fell away too, first liquid, then flakes of ash. Eyes bulged in sockets lining its ever-changing face as well as its chest. One by one they exploded outward in pulses of milky fluid, until its body was awash in an acidic pool burning its dark hide into smoke.
Evan’s heart thundered as Abel’s face came into focus one last time, his features etchings of ancient hatred carved in a melting canvas of flesh.
The horrific amalgam lunged toward him again, its unhinged mouth lined with a hundred teeth. He put his arm up, bracing for impact as the abomination slammed into him. Its teeth flayed through the flesh of his forearm, and it bit down hard, cutting to the bone.
Evan grunted and toppled over, his free arm bracing his fall. He stared into the primal shine of Abel’s eyes. An abyss waited there, hatred churning behind the swirling irises.
You’ll not live!
Evan grimaced with the sound of so many voices intertwined in rage and agony. His fingers brushed something hard on the floor and he grasped it. His eyelids fluttered under the immensity of the pain, but he caught a glimpse of Shaun’s supine form on the floor, and leaned in closer to the Abel-thing.
“Neither will you.”
Evan heaved himself upright and rammed the winding key he held into its unblinking right eye, which burst under the pressure. The key’s tip was mashed into a sharpened point from disrupting the gears, and it slid into Abel’s head like a knife. He pushed harder, feeling the slimy tissue give way beneath the unforgiving steel.
The thing screamed, and Evan’s eardrums tore. Blood leaked in rivulets down the sides of his face, but he shoved harder, the key sliding in all the way to its grip.
Its teeth released the hold on his arm, and the creature shrunk away. Evan lost his hold on the key, and nearly collapsed, the feeling in his ravaged arm mercifully numb.
The mutating darkness expanded and contracted as it staggered, a writhing tumor. It pawed at the black steel embedded in its face, but the key held fast in its flesh. It cried out one last time and tried to move toward him again, but fell, exploding into a mixture of noxious wax and muddy soot that splashed the floor and ran in every direction. The key tinkled once as it bounced end over end, and then laid still.
Evan shook and waited for the stinking pool to re-form, but other than smoke and bubbles, it didn’t move.
The crashes continued in the windings above him, and hot shavings littered his hair, burning for an instant and then gone. The light stuttered and flashed in an epileptic nightmare that made him shield his eyes as he looked up.
The crescent moon’s mouth was open in a silent scream of suffering, its eye gouting bursts of light in erratic discharges. Cracks blossomed in its silver skin, and more ill light poured through them.
Good night moon.
Evan turned and sat on the floor, hearing more and more gears and sprockets fall, shuddering the ground with their impact. The pendulum let loose and dropped, landing with a hollow gong before tipping forward like a sequoia cut at the base.
He didn’t look up when it fell or when the air of its passage brushed his face. The sounds of destruction pounded his ruined eardrums, but he didn’t hear even a whisper.
Evan hummed under his breath, a tune from many years past. Something about a baby’s bed and soft dreams, a song Elle used to sing when Shaun was young. Shaun’s fine hair slid beneath his fingertips, and Evan closed his eyes to the melody in his head, as the clock came rushing down around him.
28
The sun was warm on his face, and so bright everything was a red glow before he opened his eyes.
He looked up into a canopy of branches filled with oddly shaped leaves. They looked like long arrowheads with vibrant blue veins running through their structures.
A scent came to him, something warm and wholesome, reminding him of his mother. Baking bread, or the smell of her flower garden in June. The scent made him think his stomach would growl, but he realized he wasn’t hungry. He was satisfied, as if he’d recently eaten.
Evan smacked his lips, watching the shimmer of blue sky through the gaps in the leaves, a blue so deep he knew no one could say a name for it.