The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel
(August 14, 2016)
21. Weird Battle in the West
Comfort the hare.
Jeff the Gnome looked around—the voice seemed so close he felt sure that Granny Gypsum somehow stood right at his ear—
No. I am in your head, looking through the eyes of a terrified animal. Set the hare down and comfort it. I will help.
Jeff put the trembling jackrabbit down on the sandy soil and with hands gentler than his heart, he started to stroke it. He heard his own mouth speaking strange words, words in an ancient language he did not even understand. Granny Gypsum was speaking through him, to the little animal. The hare's trembling ceased, its ears rose like two defiant flags, and it stared, as they all did, at the monstrosity standing fifty yards away, dimly sketched by the fringe of the red lantern's glow.
As tall as most men, but shorter than Ford and Stan. Shaped not like a human, but more like—like—like a football on end, except for the weirdly-jointed legs. Hard to tell in the ruddy light, but it must have been a pale green, its skin rugose, ridged and wrinkled.
No head, but a human-like face showed at the top, eyes far too wide apart, squashed nose, bristles of coarse hair, a grinning slit of a mouth. It had . . . three human arms, two on the right, one on the left. Three other weird arms, insect-like or ratlike, ending in cruel pincers or sharp claws. A vertical, writhing, glistening slit pierced it all the way from where the human face's chin would have been, if it had one, down to the lower pointed base. This quivered and oozed slime.
In a ringing, commanding voice, Ford called out a spell of banishment, and the thing . . . laughed.
It was a horrible sound, gurgling and mocking, a sick sound, a triumphant and hateful one that made them feel like the target of its contempt.
Stanley broke the spell with a contemptuous retort of his own: "Laugh it up, sleazeball!"
Its laughter dying the creature took a step forward. Tripper, the cord leash tight in Mabel's grip, barked and snarled, his hackles bristling. Another dog might have read his posture and the sounds he made as "Touch my pack, you son of a bitch, and I'll rip your throat out!"
Except the monster had no throat.
Dipper gulped. The thing reminded him a little of the Shapeshifter, and it filled him with the same kind of dread. Teek was murmuring a prayer. Mabel was all about calming the poor dog, not concentrating on anything else. Wendy was muttering, "Come on, come on, come on, let's kill this thing!" But she sounded scared.
Only the hare remained calm. Without his own will behind the action, Jeff bent close to it and spoke into the long ear: "Your kind has short lives. Yours will be shorter than some others. But you have tasted the goodness of life, and death is a moment of pain and will end as soon as it begins. Then you will find yourself in a green world of long grass and succulent roots where summer is eternal. Others of your kind will meet you there. No enemies are there. You will live forever, and soon enough you will forget this world and its pains. But we will remember you. We will remember."
Jeff shivered inwardly, a passenger in his own body as Granny Gypsum drove. He kept thinking, Let it be like she says, let it be, please, for all the creatures that do no harm and want to be good, please let it be.
All around the shambling horror, red caps erupted from the grass. Two dozen Gnomes loosed arrows or hurled spears, each arrowhead or spear tip dosed with secret Gnome formulas. They arced true and struck, and stuck—
"It has substance!" Ford shouted.
But the missiles did not stop the monster. It swatted them loose, the way a grizzly might swat at mosquitoes, turned, and briefly pursued two Gnomes, who vanished in the way Gnomes did.
"Now! Go!" Jeff said quietly to the jackrabbit. He felt Granny Gypsum leave his mind. But all on his own, he shouted, "Blood must pay!"
Astonishingly, even heroically, the jackrabbit ran true and straight for the creature. The monster did not even seem to notice the animal, smaller even than a Gnome, until the rabbit made the greatest and longest leap of its life.
Then the monster jerked toward it. The slit along its body opened into—a mouth. An enormous, vertical mouth, rows of teeth and folds of pulsating, nasty, glistening wet flesh inside. The jackrabbit arched into the opening, the obscene lips closed with a sick wet crunch, and rumbling with its coarse, harsh laughter, the creature turned away from the vanished Gnomes and resumed its move, not coming straight for the defending group, but evidently trying to flank them to the right.
Ford snapped, "Don't lose your courage or your focus. Move to keep those of us with firearms facing the creature—me at point, Stan to my left, Dipper to my right. It will try to get close and then rush us. Watch for that!"
Dipper clenched the weapon. "Where's Jeff?"
"Right behind you. Don't worry about me."
"What happened to the rabbit?" Mabel asked. She had picked up Tripper and was holding him, his front paws over her shoulder.
"It's gone," Jeff said. "It's a secret weapon, though. Someone's taking care of it."
"But it died!" Mabel wailed.
Jeff's voice was reassuring: "That's only one way of looking at it. The rabbit doesn't think so."
Just then Ford staggered, groaning. The monster had launched an attack—an invisible one.
This is all my fault. I led my family to be slaughtered here! Mason and Mabel and my brother! I've led them all to their deaths!
Ford could hardly keep his footing. He saw himself as a puny creature dominated by Pride, made foolish and blind and deaf by Pride, wasting all of his talents because of Pride—
Anger rose within him then, not useless or wicked anger, but an anger ignited by the creature's hypocrisy and malignity, a—he dithered mentally, but then thought, A righteous anger!
Would a man dominated by Pride surrender to the love he felt for his wife, his brother, his nephew and niece? Would he even know what love is? I know! I know!
He hung onto that. Like a mantra, mentally he repeated, "Love is not proud! Love is not proud! Love is not proud!"
The monstrous creature lashed out again, mentally—he felt that his mistakes, his blundering, his obsessions, only hurt everyone he loved, everyone he esteemed, he was the cause of loss, the only cause, the—
Guilt clenched inside Ford so painfully that at first he thought he was having a heart attack—but then—
"Get out of my head!" he shouted aloud. "You—you heretic! Hypocrite! False prophet! We know who you are—failed priest, disgraced missionary, evil in the sight of your own God!
The pain eased suddenly. "It's using mental attacks!" Ford yelled, gasping. "Don't believe the lies it hits you with. Resist them—it serves the Father of Lies, remember that!"
Dipper winced as he, too, felt something invade his thoughts: I've let Mabel down! We've drifted apart, and she's needed my help, and I'm too wrapped up in wanting Wendy and in my stupid writing and my guitar, and—
All at once he saw with terrible clarity that everything he liked, making music, writing stories, even researching mysteries—everything was worthless, was stupid and useless, in the end helped no one, inevitably disappointed them, caused them pain—
Wendy reached back and touched his neck, and he felt her in his mind.
Dude, you're suffering! Don't believe whatever it's saying to you! It's lies, all lies, like Ford said!
—Wendy! I'll never be good enough for you—
Forget that, lover! I'll decide that. I love you, man, and I love you because of who you are and what you are and for loving me and your sister and your Grunkles—
His heart beat more easily then. And like a weightlifter straining to raise an impossible burden, he fought within himself, and the weight rolled away—
"It lies, everybody!" he yelled. "It tries to find your weak points! Don't let it!"
Stan got hit next—Pretender! Your whole life has always been a lie! Not good enough for your family! Your father hated you! Your mother died alone and you weren't there! You sent your brother into hell—
Ah, but Stan was made of different stuff. "Can it, Ugly!" he shouted. "You think you can con a master scammer? You're the liar, you're the fraud, and we know it and you know it, and if there's a God you pray to, He knows it, too! Don't try that on us, you freak. You doomed yourself and damned yourself! It's all on you!"
"Don't break ranks," Ford warned as they shuffled more, keeping the same relative positions with regard to their enemy. "Hold your fire until you can't miss!"
They all staggered as a furious voice, unheard by ears, burst into all their heads at once: "I cannot be defeated!" It was a strange voice, part human, part the screech of rats, part the cry of a Gnome, and part—unforgettably, awfully—the scream of a perishing rabbit.
It is a terrible, heart-piercing sound, and once heard, it can never be forgotten. All the anguish of all the helpless prey in the world vibrates in the scream of a rabbit aware of its death, and it is a hopelessly hard heart that can hear it without pity.
"It's afraid," Jeff said.
Teek held something up—a rosary, wrapped around his fist, with the crucifix dangling. "You betrayed this!" he yelled, and though his voice broke like a fourteen-year-old's and though it quavered with fear, it still held confidence and belief. "You're not strong! Not strong at all! You're weak and scared and—and weak! You're the one that's doomed!"
"You butt-face!" Mabel added firmly.
That made Teek laugh. He yelled, "Mabel, I love you, and I don't care who knows it!"
She said, "That's good, 'cause I love you right back!"
"Hold onto that!" Wendy said. "This devil can't stand against love!"
"It's trying to wear us down," Ford said. "Looking for an opening. Wait until it's close enough so you can't miss—wait until you can't miss—"
Jeff yelled, "Gnomes! Get ready!"
Miles away, Granny Gypsum sat slumped in her armchair, blind eyes closed, chin on chest—and yet she saw it all, this time through the eyes of the faithful dog. "Almost time," she murmured. "Almost time. Everyone must act at once, or we lose and it wins. Almost time, young Jeff. Stone of the mountain! Coldness of the glacier! Hare, O Hare, your spirit may be beyond my thought, but know you did well! Small prey, fearful animal, may the hares of your Paradise know what a great thing you have done this night and forever honor you for it! Jeff—"
"Here it comes!" Jeff yelled. "Gnomes! Now! Everyone, wait, wait—Hit it now!"
And a shock like an erupting volcano shook the earth.