Hell Snake by Bernard Schaffer & Ralph Compton

Author:Bernard Schaffer & Ralph Compton [Schaffer, Bernard & Compton, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

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John Deacon watched the Children of the Forest swarm through the house and grew impatient. He could hear glass breaking and furniture being tossed aside, but not one single scream had rung out. A naked creature muttered to itself as it shuffled along the porch, going back and forth from the window to the door, stooping to peer in as if the people inside might suddenly appear from one point in the room to the other, and Deacon realized he’d made an error. For all of their hunger and feral ferocity, the Children of the Forest were complete idiots.

The people inside the house had escaped, he thought. Somehow they’d gotten away undetected.

“Form search parties and check this entire property,” Deacon called out to his followers. “Tear down every barn and shed if you must. I want them found.”

The acolytes rode off in different directions, leaving Deacon by himself. He looked up at the second-floor bedroom window where the Children had gained entry. He maneuvered his horse around to look into the house through the open door and windows downstairs. All he could see were the creatures, stumbling into one another. Their destruction was pointless. In their frustration at being deprived of their next meal, they pulled framed pictures off the wall and tossed them across the room. They ripped a tablecloth off the dining room table and tore the cushions on the sofa apart. None of it would help find anyone.

Deacon rode around the side of the house and saw the corpse of the creature who’d been shot at the back door. The door was closed and the creature’s body was collapsed against it.

He surveyed the rest of the ranch from behind the house. Barns and animals and storage sheds, and way in the back more storage sheds.

Just beyond those sheds was a round hill the top of which would overlook the rest of the property. The hill was groomed, with a clear path leading up to the crest, which, to anyone else, might have looked like a fine picnic area, or a place for someone to set up an easel and paint the land below.

To John Deacon, whose mind did not encompass picnics or painted landscapes, the hill was immediately identifiable for what it was. A place for the dead.

Deacon rode to the edge of the property and leapt down from his horse. He took off his mask and set it on the ground, then hiked up the hem of his robe and made his way up the trail to the top of the hill. By the time he reached it, he was sweating with anticipation. To his right was a flat patch of earth covered with grass and flowers and a wooden cross with the name Edna Sinclair engraved on it.

Next to the cross was a second one, at the head of a still-raised part of the ground. Although it had not yet been flattened by the wind and rain, grass had sprouted across the rectangle of dirt.

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