In his entire life, he’d never actively wanted to kill anyone, yet here he was with all this blood on his hands. He’d done it because he didn’t want any of the youth group members getting away and running off to summon the cops while he and Sindie were still here. Not out of concern for himself, but for Sindie. These were murders committed in the name of love. He didn’t want her winding up in jail. A girl like her didn’t belong there, regardless of anything she’d done. She was too pretty. Too smart. Too talented. She was meant for bigger things. Fame and adulation. He acted in the interest of saving her future.

  His sense of panic spiraled out of control as he herded the teenagers around the room, dashing here and there at breakneck speed to keep them from getting to the door, swinging the machete whenever any of them miscalculated and got within range. Sometimes he slipped in the ever-widening pools of blood and crashed to the floor, but so did they. He kept scrambling back to his feet and chasing them down, hacking away with wild abandon until just one was left. The one who almost got away, a slender auburn-haired beauty who managed to get around him and break for the door while he was busy trying to wrench his machete out of a dead guy’s skull. She made it to the door and got halfway up the staircase before he caught up to her and rammed the machete into her back. This was done with enough force that the blade went all the way through her body and emerged through her abdomen. He held the girl in his arms in her dying seconds, crying and whispering apologies.

  Then he carried the body back down to the basement and set it gingerly on the floor. Sindie didn’t so much as glance his way. She only cared about the kids in the closet. For now, there was room for nothing else in her world. Her inattention left him in an emotional vacuum, allowing depression to seep in along with a heavy dose of unwelcome introspection.

  This horrendous thing he’d done … it wasn’t who he really was. The furthest thing from it. He was a good guy, a guy who’d never meant anyone any harm. Except none of that was true anymore and never would be again. There was no taking any of this back. His soul was tainted forever. He flashed back to his brief flirtations with the notion of escape and wished like hell he’d acted on the impulse.

  He stopped turning in a circle and stared at Sindie. The machete slipped from his fingers and clattered on the floor. She still didn’t glance his way. She’d resumed yelling at the kids in the closet and pounding on the door.

  Without really thinking about what he was doing, he turned away from her and eyed the open door in the far corner of the room. He’d neglected to kick the door shut again when carrying the auburn-haired girl’s body back into the basement. From here he was able to glimpse the bottom few stairs through the open doorway. In another moment, he started walking in that direction. He waited to hear Sindie call out to him, but she never did. If she had, he would’ve stayed. He reached the staircase and started climbing. Halfway up, he paused, giving Sindie one last chance to call him back down.

  She didn’t.

  He kept going.

  Before long, he was back outside in the sunlight. It was late afternoon getting toward early evening. That fall chill was in the air again. Sirens were blaring somewhere in the distance. A lot of them, from the sound of it. He wasn’t worried about that. They weren’t coming this way. This was a town awash in chaos and confusion. Littleburg’s legion of Satanists were out in force, collecting pure souls wherever they could be found. Feeling no need for hurry, Micah took his time ambling across the parking lot toward Sindie’s Kia Sorento. The spare key Sindie had given him after buying the SUV a month ago was in his pocket. He took it out as he reached the vehicle and hit the unlock button on the key fob.

  Micah didn’t feel bad about taking Sindie’s car for the simple reason of having no other options. He was moving through the world now in a steadily thickening haze and willfully not thinking about much of anything. The numbness that had overcome him in the aftermath of the basement massacre felt like it might become a permanent thing. He couldn’t imagine a life spent feeling this way.

  He couldn’t imagine a life.

  The route he took out of town allowed him to see ample evidence of the Luciferic darkness overtaking the community. There were bodies in the street, gunned down, run down, or hacked to pieces with various edged weapons. Others dangled from tree limbs and power lines. One was nailed to an upside down cross in front of a church. Cops and other first responders were out answering calls, but it looked to Micah as if they were merely going through the motion, doing the bare minimum for show. Later on, this would give them a level of plausible deniability should any concerned citizens of Littleburg attempt to alert outside authorities as to what had happened here. It all corresponded very neatly with what Sindie had told him at the beginning of this madness. The Satanists were in control here. They ran things and were in charge of the official narrative. What was happening here today looked like the apocalypse, but soon enough there would be little discernible trace of it. Much of the carnage he was seeing blended in seamlessly with the ubiquitous Halloween decorations anyway.

  He was on a narrow and winding stretch of State Road 96 on the outskirts of town when he saw the woman step out of the woods and into the middle of the road. She stopped there and turned toward him. The numbness enveloping him in the aftermath of what he’d done at the church was pierced by a new sense of wariness. A tingle went up his spine as he drew near the woman and realized who she was.

  The priestess.

  She was wearing the heavy velvet cape he’d seen her wear at each of the midnight masses he’d attended. That white plague mask with the long beak again covered the top half of her face. Beneath the cape, she was nude. Her chin jutted defiantly outward, as if daring him to run her over.

  He tried to picture himself doing it. The interstate junction was about a half mile beyond where she stood. Despite the hopeless feelings gripping him, he was aware a part of his subconscious mind had been leading him in this direction all along. This was his exit from madness. His portal to freedom. And this strange woman stood in the way of it. He sat in the Sorento with his foot on the brake a while longer, fretting about what to do. Now that he was this close to being gone from this rotten place, he felt the tantalizing allure of something other than oblivion. This horror he’d experienced could be put behind him. He could work on forgetting what he’d done. Life could be okay again somewhere else.

  Somewhere far away.

  Then he heard her voice in his head.

  Come to me.

  After putting the SUV in park, Micah got out and began to walk toward her, leaving the door open and the engine running. He did this with no thought of hastily retreating to the SUV and driving away. There was no contingency plan here. He did it because it was the easiest thing to do. He wouldn’t be needing those keys again and he didn’t care if someone came along and stole the Sorento. The only reason he bothered putting the SUV in park was because exiting a vehicle that was standing still was easier than getting out of one that was still moving. There were things he did instinctually, without conscious thought. There was no room in his head now for anything other than the priestess and doing as she commanded.

  Below the surface, a faint and distant part of him was worried. He didn’t seem to be in control of his own body. An outside consciousness had invaded his mind and was somehow compelling him to do what it wanted. A consciousness that might not have his best interests in mind. The woman standing in the road was no ordinary human female. She might not be human at all. She might instead be some kind of creature beyond his understanding. A succubus or some other kind of demon. A supernatural entity, the existence of which would terrify any sane person in control of their own faculties. That description, however, was one that no longer fit Micah.

  He got to within a few feet of her and dropped to his knees in submission. It seemed like the right thing to do. He’d tried to get away, which was obviously not allowed. He was showing his acquiescence, his surrender to her will.

  “Stand.”

  This time she spoke with her own voice rather than transmitting a message to his brain. The effect was the same. Her voice conveyed an authority that was absolute. Disobedience was not possible.

  He got to his feet and bowed his head. “I’m sorry I tried to leave. I know it was wrong.”

  She reached out to touch his face with her fingers. He shuddered at the physical contact, becoming instantly erect. Her touch vibrated with some of the magic he’d felt in the woods last night.

  “You can never leave this place,” she told him, stroking his skin with her fingertips. “You belong here. You belong to Satan.”

  He nodded. “I know. It won’t happen again.”

  Her hand came away from his face and her fingertips glided lightly down his chest and came to a stop at his abdomen. “You’re right about that.”

  She tore away his shirt and punched her splayed fingers into his lower abdomen. Elongated fingernails that were now more like talons parted his flesh and began to dig around in his guts. Mind-bending agony ripped through him, but he was unable to scream or attempt to get away. Her iron will kept him in place as she tore out his intestines and wrapped them around his throat. More organs and a lot of blood spilled out of the open abdominal cavity, landing with a series of wet, squishy plops on the faded and pitted backwoods asphalt.

  Micah didn’t die right away.

  The priestess exerted her will again, keeping him upright and cognizant for several more minutes. She did this so he could have a prolonged pain experience. And because she derived immense pleasure from his suffering.

  After she finally let him die, she dragged his corpse into the woods. He would make a fine meal later that night.

  THIRTEEN

  The real name of the man known to generations of Channel 39 viewers as Count Victor von Gravemore was Morrie Goldman. Morrie had a genuine affinity for horror films that dated back to his childhood in the 1950s. His favorites were still the ones that first sparked his love of the genre. The Universal monster films and countless b-movies he saw at Saturday matinees as a child. They captured his imagination and inspired him in ways that resonated deeply with him to this day. Throughout his career as a horror host, he’d been hearing from viewers about how his show was what got them through some of the toughest times in their lives. Hearing this always warmed his heart, and when he thought about it in private moments, knowing he’d touched so many lives in a positive way brought a tear to his eyes.

  What his viewers didn’t know was the same was true for him. The show was what he lived for, the thing that kept him going through all these lonely decades. He was fortunate the show had endured for so long and against all odds. When it first started, he’d been given a ten-week tryout contract. This came after months of relentlessly lobbying the station manager with his pitch for the show. The manager was skeptical. He said horror host shows were “old hat”, besides which he had a hard time believing horror-centric programming could succeed in such a conservative community. To the man’s great surprise, the ratings were strong from the start and actually improved in subsequent weeks.

  Morrie was given a substantial pay hike and a longer contract, which the station had routinely renewed every year since then. In those early years, he hadn’t imagined he would still be at it several decades later. When he was young, he’d harbored dreams of moving to Hollywood and getting into the movie business as a performer. He yearned to see himself on the screen alongside his heroes. The ones who were still alive by the time he became a young man, anyway. People like Vincent Price and Christopher Lee.

  Alas, this aspiration was never realized. Doing a show in a small town was one thing. The audience wasn’t big and thus the pressure of performing adequately wasn’t more than he could handle. Unfortunately, he lacked the confidence needed to uproot his life and move all the way across the country to a huge, bustling city he was sure would feel like an alien world. It scared him in a big way and eventually he let go of that dream.

  He still felt some wistfulness whenever he thought about his years of trying to talk himself into taking that risk. The intervening decades had taken much of the edge off his regret, however, and consequently he didn’t think about those days very often. Things could have turned out much worse for Morrie Goldman. He’d made a comfortable life for himself doing something he loved and had made a career out of celebrating his favorite film genre.

  After all these years, Shock Theater remained Channel 39’s most popular piece of locally produced programming. Thus he was not overly worried when he was summoned to the station manager’s office at the end of the final host segment for Motel Hell. His only concern at that point was the time factor. Getting from his set to Greg MacReady’s office would take several minutes, then of course he’d need several more minutes to get back to the set after the meeting concluded. Without even factoring in the length of the meeting, he’d be cutting it close to get back in time to do the intro segment for Videodrome.

  His initial impulse was to decline the invitation. No meeting with the station manager could possibly be short enough to allow for a timely return to set. “Perhaps Mr. MacReady has forgotten,” he told the young intern who’d been sent to fetch him. “Today is Halloween and I am in the midst of hosting an all-day horror marathon, just as I have every year for decades. I’m not sure how an event of this magnitude could possibly slip his mind, but it must be so because otherwise he would surely know I will not have an opportunity to visit his office until after the marathon is over. Explain this to Mr. MacReady and pass along my apologies.”

  The gangly intern was thin to the point of looking starved. His protruding Adam’s apple was among the most prominent Goldman had ever seen. There was something almost grotesque about it. It was especially noticeable when the young man was nervous.

  Like now.

  “I just can’t do that, Mr. Goldman. Mr. MacReady told me not to take no for an answer.” The intern’s face was red and he was speaking in a higher register than usual, a reedy tone that grated on Goldman’s ears. “He knows the marathon is still going and he said to tell you it doesn’t matter. Attendance is mandatory, not optional. Um, his words, not mine. Obviously. I’m sorry, Mr. Goldman, but you really need to go.”

  Goldman frowned. “Jesus. What’s so all-fired important that he has to see me right now?”

  The intern shrugged. “I don’t know, Mr. Goldman. He wouldn’t say. I’m sorry.”

  About eight minutes later he was standing outside the closed door to MacReady’s office. He was still more irritated than concerned, but by then a tiny dollop of worry had entered his mind. There had been little room in his head today for anything other than the marathon, always the most important day of the year for his show, but between segments he’d heard a bit about the strange wave of violence taking place throughout Littleburg. According to his crew, reports of violent acts were continuing to come in with no indication yet of the strange outbreak beginning to ebb. He didn’t believe Channel 39 would cut the marathon short to go to breaking news coverage of the developing story, but something like that could explain why he’d been ordered to MacReady’s office.

  He knocked on the door and opened it when he heard the manager say, “Come in.”

  The office was small and unassuming, the opposite of what an outsider might expect for the boss of a television station. It looked more like the office of a junior accountant at a small firm, with the inexpensive, second-rate furnishings and the piles of haphazardly stacked paperwork on MacReady’s desk. An executive at a station in an even moderately larger market would definitely have a more impressive desk than the embarrassing office supply store reject MacReady sat behind. Channel 39, however, wasn’t even really a small market station. Littleburg was more of a micro-market. Its operating budget was a reflection of this reality. Nobody was getting rich at Channel 39, not even the man behind revered local institution Count Victor von Gravemore.

  MacReady rose from his seat behind the desk and the two men shook hands, with the manager then gesturing for Goldman to sit in the chair opposite the desk. Goldman did so as MacReady sat down again.

  Goldman frowned as he glanced to his right. Three people he recognized were crowded into the little couch against the side wall there. One was a middle-aged man named Hal Meyer. Hal was Channel 39’s programming director. At the opposite end of the couch was Jerry Russell, a studio technician. Seated between these men was the channel’s evening news anchor, Joyce Mitchell. Other than Goldman himself, the bottle-blonde stunner was the closest thing the station had to a star. All three had rubber masks clutched tightly in their laps.

  Goldman looked at MacReady. “What’s going on here?” Another rubber mask was face-down on the station manager’s desk, with only its white interior visible. “Did you call me in here to tell me you’re all going to a Halloween party and are leaving me in charge? Because I’m afraid I’m not up to the task, not with the marathon still going on.”

  MacReady chuckled. “That’s not why I called you in here, Morrie.” He rearranged his features in a way meant to convey a shift to a more somber demeanor, but he didn’t quite succeed. The expression looked forced. He was unable to conceal the trace of a smirk at one corner of his mouth. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it.” He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Morrie … we’ve decided to let you go. It’s time to take the station in a new direction.”

  Goldman gasped and felt a tightness in his chest. “This has to be a joke. How can you cancel Shock Theater? My ratings are still good.”

 

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