"Are you guys okay?" Tonya couldn't see anything until Ducky switched on his phone's flashlight app. Its blue light revealed her friends' faces in highlights and shadows. Priya's teeth glinted in a smile but Ducky's mouth was dark, agape. He backed away from Tonya as far as the narrow space allowed.
"How did you do that?" asked Priya.
"Shh." Tonya held her finger to her lips. She whispered: "I'll tell you once they've gone."
They stood silently, listening to the firefighters' and ambulance attendants' boots tramping above their heads. When all was quiet, Tonya pressed her fingertips to the roof of the cave, feeling for life energy on the ground above.
Nothing. She was about to tell her friends they could go when the Entity boomed in her head: Feel me rise!
The voice made her gag as if it were ramming itself down her throat. Her breath came fast and shallow. She swallowed acid reflux. They mustn't get trapped underground. The Entity knew where they were.
"We have to leave." She drew energy into the tree roots around her, animating them one by one. Like pythons, they wormed upward and punched passage into the light.
To make sure it was safe, Tonya scrambled up the root ladder first. As she emerged the ashy ground began to shake.
"Hurry!" She pulled Priya up by the hand. Ducky climbed out with Lynette slung over his shoulder.
A crack split the Earth beside Tonya, tumbling dirt and trees deep into the ground. They backed away as the widening crack tilted charred trees left and right, like a comb parting hair. The rift shook the forest so loudly it could be heard over the fire, which suddenly went out with a whoosh.
Tonya had no time to wonder at this miracle because a giant head and hands emerged from the crack in the earth, followed by shoulders, and then a torso. The Entity was composed of dirt and bones, roots and flesh entangled. It stepped out of the hole, rising to fifteen feet tall. Turning its head to smile down on them, it revealed too many undersized teeth. The effect was comical until she realized they must be human teeth, grave-robbed from the cemetery. Waldock had raised a gruesome colossus made of rotting bodies, roots, and earth.
Priya and Ducky stood staring with Lynette propped up between them.
"Run!" Tonya shouted but Ducky set Lynette down and picked up a shovel. He started hacking at the giant's shins, dislodging clods of dirt. The giant stood arms akimbo, watching Ducky tire himself as each clod of earth chipped off, flew back into place.
Blowing Tonya a kiss and waggling his tongue obscenely, the giant picked Ducky up with both hands, turned him over his knee and started to spank him. "Naughty, naughty little man. Never attack your superiors."
Priya ran at him, launching herself up his knee and torso like climbing a cadaver tree. When she reached his shoulder, she hacked at his neck with the side of a shovel. Ducky wriggled free as the giant turned on Priya and blew with hurricane force, sending her toppling backward.
Well, aren't you going to attack too? The voice was in Tonya's head.
"If I did, you'd probably make me kill myself with an axe."
The giant's voice boomed: "Some other time." He dusted his hands and strode toward the Highway. Over his shoulder he said: "Ta-ta. I have things to destroy and people to slaughter."
# # #
Priya was so surprised by the giant's retreat that at first she didn't notice the firefighters closing in. She shouted: "Run!"
Priya led Tonya and Ducky, who carried Lynette, to the barn where she'd hidden her car. For once it started on the first try. She hit the gas and headed out of town until she saw two fire trucks parked across the road ahead.
Priya screeched the tires in a fast U-turn and set off in the opposite direction, but soon spied a second roadblock made of police vehicles. To their left, the forest fire had died leaving an impassible zone of charred stumps, fallen trees, and ash. To the right, corn fields and pastureland beckoned. Priya turned into a farmer's gravel drive and when that ran out, took a bumpy overland route toward the Town of Loon Lake.
"This thing's pretty good off-roading," said Ducky from the backseat.
"Yeah, it loves the bang, bang, thump on its undercarriage," Priya said sarcastically.
"The important thing is we're still alive," said Tonya. "You almost got yourselves killed."
"Why didn't you help us fight?" Priya kept her eyes on her driving.
"I told you to run."
"He's unstoppable, like reverse Humpty Dumpty," said Ducky.
"Will he really attack the town, just to kill people?" Priya remembered the giant's parting words.
"I'm afraid he might," said Tonya.
"Can't anyone help us?" asked Ducky. "What about your Aunt's friends?"
"I wouldn't know where to find them."
"At least we know where It is." Priya pointed as the giant passed them, striding across fields in the direction of Loon Lake. He stepped over fences with his long legs while she had to detour, her car crawling over the rough ground.
Priya smacked the horn in frustration. "Can't we stop him?"
"We should hit him with the car," Tonya said. "We could knock him down and run him over until he's a mound of dirt."
Priya glanced beside her at Tonya's clay-stained face. "That might work if I drove a tank."
Suddenly, Tonya grabbed the steering wheel and aimed them at an old stone fence.
"What are you doing?" Priya gripped the wheel in her left hand and tried to shove Tonya away with her right.
Tonya held on with both hands, keeping the car on target as the fence grew larger in Priya's windshield. Priya braked but Tonya looped her foot over and floored the gas pedal. The tires spun and the car smelled of burning oil but Priya couldn't stop it from moving forward.
"Let go!" Priya punched Tonya in the side of the head and she backed off, but only long enough to grab Priya's neck and start choking her.
Priya saw stars. The world went black and wobbly. She heaved on the parking brake, sending everyone flying against their seat belts. The last thing she saw was Ducky wrestling Tonya off her.
# # #
The car felt still and quiet. Priya tried to open her eyes but the lids refused to lift. Like emerging from the bottom of a pool, it took a long time to break through the surface and regain consciousness.
"I'm so sorry!" Tonya was bent over her, sobbing.
"Out of my car!" Priya wasn't driving another inch until she left.
"It wasn't me. I wasn't in control."
"You tried to kill us."
"Let me hold her in the back seat," said Ducky.
"No."
"Could I ride in the trunk?" Tonya beseeched with clasped hands. "If Waldock's men find me alone out here, they'll kill me."
"All right," Priya looked at Ducky. "But if she tries anything..."
She waited while Ducky helped Tonya into the trunk and tested that it was locked. Ducky stretched Lynette out on the backseat and came to sit in the front.
"If we go north, we can look for an open road." The east-west highway was barricaded but Priya didn't think they could block every route. Even if she had to explore every deer path and farmer's driveway, she was going home.
"Lynette needs a doctor," said Ducky. "Let's go back to the hospital."
# # #
It was dark in the trunk and it banged her head when they hit bumps but that was nothing to the emotional bruising. Who could she trust after her own brain betrayed her? Waldock had made her into the perfect weapon against her friends.
He had done it by invading her mind. Could she enter his along the same pathway? She remembered the sensations just before Waldock seized control of her body. There had been a tingling and then a rush of his power flowing into her, first a trickle then a torrent, obliterating her ability to resist. Reaching out with her mind, she tried to force her will back along the path of the remembered current.
Nothing. She sensed no trace of the route he used to get in.
Tonya tried to draw energy from the earth, but could feel nothing through the metal trunk. Her newfound powers had abandoned her just when Aunt Helene expected her to fight.
And how was it Waldock had prevented his Entity from burning underground, even after she soaked the earth in gasoline? His magic was said to come from the dead, not life. Protective wards were her Aunt's specialty.
Could she be conspiring with Waldock? Maybe she had lied about needing help to fix her tire. Wasn't a tire made of rubber, a natural substance that could be 'healed' the way her Aunt healed everything else? Did she rescue her from Len only to delay Tonya and her friends so the Entity could rise unopposed? She could have lied about the cancer too. It seemed very convenient her Aunt reappeared to tell her to fight, then left town so Tonya would have to face Waldock alone.
The implications made her head spin worse than the bumpy trunk ride. If only she been trained to use magic properly this never would have happened. What she wouldn't give to be out of this trunk and free to face her enemy!
A gale force wind rocked the car, blowing open the trunk. There was a blinding flash and when it faded the car was gone. Tonya felt the rasp of asphalt under her toes. The sky turned dark and she shivered. Purple lightning flashed between thunderhead clouds.
Teeth chattering in the icy wind, Tonya craned her neck to see a giant crouched atop the Town Hall, sneering down at her.
"About time it rained in Loon Lake!" he announced, and it began teeming.
Her enemy had zapped her out of a car onto Main Street, and he controlled the weather too! What couldn't he do?
Exactly, what indeed! Any final requests?
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Thank you for reading this far. There isn't long to go now.
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Maaja