The Chosen

^{CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE}

chink! chink! chink!

“How do you like that shit, you bald fuck!”

Paul felt high he was so charged up. Who knew what would happen, but what did that matter? At least he’d get his digs in.…

He swung the long, hickory-handled sledgehammer ever upward at The Inn’s ornate granite transom—

chink! chink! chink!

—bringing its butt, steel face as hard as he could against the inordinately large amethyst set into the stone mount.

Feldspar remained whimpering on his knees at the entry.

Then, finally:

chink! chink! chink-CLACK!

The amethyst popped out of the transom mount and clacked to the second step of The Inn’s front stairs.

“Magwyth, huh?” Paul cackled. He raised the sledge high. “Well you can stick your bald head between your legs and kiss your ass good-bye—”

“Don’t…be…hasty, Paul.”

“Why?” Paul snapped. “I know all about you now, and all I gotta do is bust this big rock and you’re out of here.”

Feldspar composed himself, managed to rise to his feet. He donned the sackcloth hood, and spoke like an incantation. “Why not, first, consider your options? If you destroy the fount of my protection, I’ll still kill you. Or…you can desist. And join me.”

“Fuck you,” Paul replied.

“You can join me forever, Paul.” Feldspar’s eyes seemed to widen in circumference, something beneath them reaching out… “Forever, Paul. Some of us are born to serve—”

Magwyth, Paul remembered from the book. Servant of Demons.

“—and those who I serve are immortal.” The stolid stare focused, sharpening to an awl-like glint.

Paul felt adrift.

“Be immortal with me, Paul. I will show you wonders.”

Paul froze, the sledgehammer poised. At his feet lay the amethyst, large as a goose egg, its purple facets sparkling. All he need do—

Immortality, came an intruding thought.

All he need do—

Live…a voice seemed to whisper…forever…

Paul blinked. “I said it before and I’ll say it again. FUCK YOU!”

Feldspar howled.

Paul brought the sledgehammer down so hard he nearly came off his feet.

The amethyst shattered…

Feldspar fell to hands and knees, roaring. He seemed to be convulsing within the muck-brown frock, while his endless bellow buffeted high into the night.

Finish him off! Paul’s instincts shouted back.

He dashed up the steps, took a deep breath, and again raised the heavy sledgehammer. Then he brought it down—

From somewhere a hideous chuckle rumbled. Feldspar’s hand snapped up, caught the sledgehammer just under its head…

Then he rose back to his feet.

The sledge was jerked away and flung into the trees. The awful, black chuckling rose.

And Paul was left to stand staring into the face of the real Feldspar.

The real Magwyth, Servant of Demons…

««—»»

All the accesses, she knew, were barred now. Vera scrambled across the silent atrium, then back into the kitchen. The elevator! she remembered. In the pantry!

From the basement she knew she could escape out the back, through the long bogus sewer pipe that emptied out behind The Inn.

Her heart beat insanely fast. She sprinted back through the RS kitchen, barged into the pantry, and pressed the down button on the elevator plate.

Then she heard the screams.

God Almighty…

They were human screams, she realized. They were—

The elevator doors thunked open.

—Paul’s screams…

It was as if she suddenly had fallen into a trance. Vera backed away from the elevator; the doors reclosed without her. She turned and, almost calmly, went back into the kitchen.

She stood a moment, looking around amid the harsh overhead light. There it is, she thought, and then she leaned over to—

Paul’s horror locked him down in rigor. The thing that Magwyth had turned into seemed to unhinge its jaw. Breath like corpse-pit gas gusted from the stretched maw lined with rows of needle teeth. A slick, sinewy hand clamped his throat, as the maw stretched open further to admit the entirety of Paul’s face…

—pick up the big revolver Feldspar had killed Kyle with. The old gun felt heavy as a brick in Vera’s hand, and it was still warm. From outside, Paul’s screams rose to a fever-pitch.

Vera hefted the revolver. Then she—

Its eyes had transformed into huge spherical nuggets the color of sick urine. Its nostrils were but rimmed pits. And as the abysmal maw descended, eddying chuckles, Paul could see the nublike horns protruding from the twisted, grayish forehead…

—sprinted through the restaurant, crossed the atrium, and strode to the foyer. She gazed out onto the front stoop before the floodlit courtyard. Saw the big amethyst crushed to dust. And saw—

I’m dead, Paul thought stoically. If the taloned hand’s grip on his throat didn’t kill him, certainly the jagged maw’s saw-rows of teeth would. It’s going to bite my face off. But first, and worse, was the thing’s tongue, which then reeled from the trapdoor mouth. Not a tongue but a cluster of fleshy, wet tendrils, akin to tentacles, each blood-red tip moving independently to lick his face, squirm under his lips, and shudder down his throat…

—not Feldspar but some demented thing straddling Paul. It’s going to kill him, she thought very methodically, and then me.

Unless—

Then the tongues rejoined, a mass of convulsing flesh, and shot fully down his throat. They were so long…Paul could feel them writhing now in the pit of his stomach…

—what she’d read in the book was all true. They were immortal, they could not be killed unless the energy of their protection—the amethyst—was diffused. Kyle had died at the hands of Feldspar, but only after his pendant had been stripped of him. But did the same vulnerability apply to Feldspar himself?

She raised the gun.

“Paul!” she shouted—

“Paul!” came the shout. The thing’s spread mouth backed away just as it was about to close to slough all the flesh off Paul’s face, much like eating the icing off the top of a cupcake. The taloned hand lifted off his throat, and the primeval face then turned to look back at the source of the shout…

—and then nearly fainted at the sight of the face which turned to look at her…

The face of Magwyth…

The angled, pointed cheekbones, the huge yellow eyes, and the sprout of tentacles roving enfrenzied from the slitlike lips.

The face in her dreams…

Vera squeezed her eyes shut as she squeezed the revolver’s cold, clunky trigger— Ba-BAM!

Paul’s eyes locked open. A mammoth sound cracked in his ears, then a CRACK!, then a titanic wet SPLAT! The thing’s warped head exploded.

The heavy pistol fell from Vera’s hand. Hot and sooty smoke stung her eyes. Her ears rang.

A plume of vomit-colored slush vaulted out of the thing’s head. Some of the pulp shot so far it landed in the heated fountain in the center of the cul-de-sac.

The figure shuddered…

Then it fell over limp to Paul’s side.

And dissolved to nothingness.

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