I strapped myself into the shoulder harness - and heard the brothers buckling up behind me. When we had reversed fifty yards, the tipped truck became a blur on the road below, and the sheeting snow almost entirely camouflaged the bony specter. Like a macabre motorized sculpture crafted by graverobbers, the bone heap stood sentinel by the side of the road, perhaps waiting for the doors on the overturned SUV to open. “I just hope they’re scared enough to stay put.” “We ain’t leavin’ nobody,” Knuckles assured me. “We can’t leave them trapped,” I said, and the brothers behind me were in vociferous agreement.
With the nerveless aplomb of an experienced getaway driver, Brother Knuckles engaged his safety harness, raised the steel plow off the pavement, shifted gears, and reversed up the driveway. Instead of proceeding with its usual mechanical insistence, the thing retreated from the overturned SUV and waited, retaining its basic form but continuously folding in upon itself and blooming out new vaned and petaled patterns. Or it would then come after us, here in the second truck, and later in the day, the cooling tower would be crowded with eighteen chrysalises. When they were harvested, it would carry them away to crucify them on a wall as it had done with Timothy, transforming their mortal forms into nine chrysalises. How it would do to them what it had done to Brother Timothy, I didn’t know, but I was certain that it would methodically gather them to itself, one by one. I assumed the beast would either pry open the doors and reach inside for the nine men or pluck them as they tried to escape.
The Russian and the eight monks could exit only by the back hatch or by the doors turned to the sky, but not with ease and not with haste. THE slowly turning tires on the port side uselessly sought traction in the snow-shot air.
The SUV rolled forward.īefore Romanovich could build any speed, the creature arrived, reared up, extruded intricately pincered arms, seized its prey, and tipped the vehicle on its side. Out of the north came the monster, harrowing the field of snow, moving less quickly than before, a sense of ominous intention in its more measured approach.Īmazement, fear, curiosity, disbelief: Whatever had immobilized Romanovich, he broke free of its hold. Knuckles pumped the horn, and the brake lights on Romanovich’s SUV fluttered, and Knuckles used the horn again, and the Russian began to coast forward, but then braked once more. “He’s waiting for another look at it,” I said.
0 kommentar(er)
