Like a Rat Out of Hell

Where in the World is Arlo Grimm Part 37: Like a Rat Out of Hell

The shrieking of the rats was tearing apart whatever was left of my nerves. Nausea coursed through my belly and I wanted to vomit. Pain lashed at every muscle, every fiber. Rats snapped at my legs and the exposed flesh of my sides. One hand hit the altar floor and they nipped at my fingers. Blood ran from small wounds. Pain radiated through my fingers and hands.

The locket…

Only an arm’s length in front of me…and I could not get it.

The heat from within me, from fever, and from without, from the flames, had grown intolerable. I was ready to hit the altar on my face and that would be the end. Rats and disease would consume me long before the flames sweeping through the church cremated what was left of my body.

From the corner of my eye something hurtled past me. Shrieking. Something furry with a singed tail and a mouth full of gleaming teeth and an attitude Cheetah would have been proud off. Bob was suddenly a flying monkey, well, more like a leaping monkey, but to my fevered vision he put any of those rejects from Oz to shame.

Bob landed smack on the demon’s grotesque head, wrapping his arms about the monstrosity, his body covering the thing’s glowing anti-lit eyes for a moment.

“Jesus…” I whispered, knowing the monkey had just given me the only chance I was going to get.

I had virtually nothing in the tank but I used the fumes. I forced myself up, flinging away rats and grabbing for the locket.

Getting it.

My hand closed around the locket and a sudden surge of strength washed through me. Rats vanished and along with them all the wounds they had made in my skin. The greenish boils disappeared and the fever drained from my body as if I had plunged into a cold stream. It was still intensely hot from the flames in the church, but in comparison that heat was nothing, at least for the instant.

It would be the end of me soon, however, if I didn’t move now.

The demon was gyrating, its green-gray mottled hands grabbing at the monkey locked to its head. Bob shrieked as the thing tried to tear him free, as if its very touch was causing him pain.

I came to my feet, shaky, wobbling and lunged, just as the demon hurled Bob. Bob flew again, this time ricocheting off a pew and landing in a furry heap on the aisle floor beyond the circle of flame that trapped Lansing.

I slammed into the demon, and it felt like grabbing a branding iron. I let out a shrill scream and almost jumped back out of reflex, but I knew I wouldn’t get another chance.

I swung the locket up as the demon grabbed both sides of my ribs with blistering searing pain and tried to throw me back the way he had Bob. He achieved it, though I didn’t fly quite as far. But he achieved it an instant too late. Because I had dropped the locket over its ugly bald head.

I hit hard, at the edge of the altar, pain splintering through my hip and side. The welts where his hands had grabbed my ribs faded. I pushed myself up, knowing even if the locket did anything to the demon the flames throughout the church were spreading faster now and would kill me just as surely as Praetallious. Smoke clouded the room, black and billowing. I started coughing, having trouble getting air.

From the altar, Praetallious was doing some sort of weird, shrieky gyrating dance. He could not pry off the locket, couldn’t even touch the thing, in fact. He cast me a vile look, but it was brief, because he was already starting to…

Dissolve. That was the only word I had to put to what was happening. He was dissolving in great sloughing chunks. An arm dropped off and shattered into vanishing fragments as it hit the floor. Then the other arm followed, with the same results. His body just seemed to collapse into itself, crumbling to the altar. The locket melted, gold absorbing into the floor. Praetallious’ head hit last, somehow still shrieking, but like the rest of his now vanquished form shattering to vanishing fragments.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m melting, just freakin’ die already!” I yelled it more to steel my own nerves as I finally reached my feet, than out of anything else. I could barely walk as I staggered down the three altar steps. I couldn’t deny the waves of relief coursing over me at seeing the damn thing going back to wherever it had come from, but I knew any victory would be short-lived if I didn’t get out now.

My eyes met Lansing’s. She was still paralyzed within the circle of flame.

“Get the hell out!” I yelled at her, waving my arm like an idiot.

“I can’t—I can’t!” Terror laced her voice. Something about the flames.

We all have our phobias, I guess.

Without even thinking about it, I hurled myself at her. Right through the first wall of flame, into her, and both of us through the backside of the blazing circle. This time I took a few burns and I was going to need a new bra, but we ended up on the floor together outside that circle of fire.

“We have to get out of here!” I yelled at her, getting back to my feet and offering her a hand up. Well, duh, but what else do you say in a situation like that?

Lansing nodded, some of her terror gone, but I could still see reflections of flame in her eyes and knew she was having a hard time keeping it together. We staggered down the aisle, reaching Bob, who lay unmoving on the floor. Lansing reached down, gently picked him up and cradled him in her arms.

“Is he…?” I asked, suddenly liking that monkey a whole lot better than I had in the beginning. If not for Bob…

“Dead? Yes, quite.” She said it without much emotion, and that struck me strange. I was ready to cry over him and he wasn’t my pet.

Then Bob opened his eyes and I think he might have smiled. It’s hard to tell with a monkey because they always kinda look like they’re smiling. Evilly.

“You said—”

Lansing uttered an uneasy chuckle as we reached the front doors.

“He’s been dead for 600 years or thereabouts. He gets over it…”