Helltown - Jeremy Bates Page 0,5

those for whom I have offered it. Tuere nos, Domine Satanus!”

“Shield us, Lord Satan!” the assemblage cried.

“Protege nos, Domine Satanus!” he shouted.

“Protect us, Lord Satan!”

“Shemhamforash!”

“Hail Satan! Hail Satan! Hail Satan!”

The high priest sank the sword into the woman’s belly.

Mark’s infidelity, detouring through Cuyahoga Valley National Park, the maniac in the car behind her—these were the first thoughts Darla had entertained, or at least the first ones she could recall, since the crash. But with each passing second she felt herself becoming more lucid, more self-aware. It was as if she’d been in a black abyss deep underwater, and now she was floating upward toward the surface, to the world of the senses. Indeed, she could hear voices, she could smell some kind of incense, she could feel…oh God, the pain! Her body throbbed, nowhere and everywhere at once. Still, she held onto the pain, she wouldn’t let it go, because where there was pain there was consciousness.

The surface drifted closer. She could almost reach out and touch it.

Darla’s eyes cracked open. She made out several men hovering over her, their faces lost in the shadows of their cowls.

A fireball exploded in her abdomen, far worse than the pain that had lured her from the void, and with wide, glassy eyes she saw that the blade of a sword protruded from her navel, blood pooling around the wound, coloring the surrounding flesh a blackish red.

She screamed.

CHAPTER 1

“Groovy!”

Evil Dead II (1987)

The headlights punched ghostly tunnels through the shifting fog. Birch stripped bare of their fiery Autumn colors and towering evergreens lined the margins of the two-lane rural road. A cold rind of moon hung high in the starless sky, glowing bluish-white behind a raft of eastward-drifting clouds.

Steve slipped on his reading glasses, which he kept on a cord around his neck, and squinted at the roadmap he’d taken from the BMW’s glove compartment. “We’re on Stanford Road, right?” he said.

“Yup,” Jeff said, one hand gripping the leather steering wheel casually. He was eyeing the rearview mirror, either making sure their friends were still following behind them in the other car, or admiring his reflection.

Steve wouldn’t be surprised if it were the latter. Jeff was about as vain as you could get. And Steve supposed he had the right to be. Not only was he tall, bronzed, and blond, he was also athletic, successful, and charismatic—the proverbial stud every guy wanted to be, and every girl wanted to date.

Steve himself wasn’t bad looking. He kept in shape, had neat brown hair, intelligent brown eyes, and a friendly manner that girls found attractive. However, whenever he was hanging out with Jeff he couldn’t help but feel more unremarkable than remarkable, intimidated even.

“I don’t see this End of World road anywhere,” Steve said, pushing the glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“No duh, genius,” Jeff said. “The End of the World’s a nickname.”

“For Stanford Road?”

“Yup,” Jeff said.

“Why’s it called The End of the World?” Mandy asked from the backseat. “Does it just end?”

“I’m not walking anywhere,” Jenny said. She was seated next to Mandy.

“Will you two give it a rest?” Jeff said, annoyed. “I have everything planned, all right?”

Mandy stuck her head up between the seats to study the map herself. Her wavy red hair smelled of strawberries and brushed Steve’s forearm. “Hey, the road does just end,” she said. “What gives, Jeff? Can you tell us what we’re doing out here already?”

“Sit your ass down, Mandy,” he told her. “I can’t see out the back.”

“Noah’s still behind you, don’t worry.”

“Sit down!”

“Jeez,” she said, and flopped back down. She mumbled something to Jenny, and they giggled. They’d been doing that all car trip: mumbling and giggling with each other, like they were schoolgirls. Steve found it hard to comprehend how they could be so comfortable with one another, considering they had met for the first time only a few hours before.

Jeff glared at them in the rearview mirror, but said conversationally to Steve: “You know, legend has it that cutthroats and thieves hang out along this road and rob anyone driving through.”

“That’s bull,” Mandy said. “How do you rob someone in a car?”

“With a giant magnet,” Jenny said, pulling her blonde hair into a ponytail, which she secured with an elastic band. “It drags the car right off the road, like in the cartoons. Pow!”

“Right, just like that,” Jeff said. “And you’re in med school?”

“So how?” Mandy asked.

“Because the road doesn’t just end,” Jeff told them. “Part of it was closed down, yeah. But you