A trick, he realized. All this time she"s been one of them.
"And, of course," she added, "that wouldn"t be any way for them to treat your sister."
My...sister?
"You should have read those books a little more closely, Phil," she said. "We"re both Creekers, but we"re perfect. It took a long time for our father to breed us. Trial and error, for ages."
Then Phil thought back to the books about inbreeding.
The more intensively inbred the community, the more astronomical the chances of an undefected birth. One chance in thousands, he remembered. And Susan and I are it.
"We"re living proof, aren"t we?" Susan said. "No red eyes, no black hair, no physical deformities. We"re the offspring the Creekers have been trying to produce for a hundred years. But-" She took another step closer. "Too bad for me I was born a woman. The progenitor has to be male."
The Mannona, Natter said.
"You," Susan said. "Haven"t you realized that by now? It"s you."
Then Phil remembered what Vicki had told him about Creeker speech-dyslalia-how spoken words were inverted. Skeet-inner meant skin-eater. Ona-prey-bee meant praise be to Ona. And now: "Mannona," he said in a voice that was dark as the room. "And Onnamann."
"The Man of Ona," she translated.
Me, Phil thought.
The darkness seemed to hush.
The moonlight radiated.
Phil"s heart slowed.
"We"re hybrids," Susan informed him.
Vicki had mentioned that too, hadn"t she? Hybrids. Ona, she"d said. The female inbred of the demon and the Creekers. Most of the Creekers don"t even look human. Because part of their bloodline isn"t human...
And what had Natter said, just moments ago?
Tonight we start anew.
Something thunked to the floor. Phil stared down. It was Vicki"s head-cleanly severed-just dropped from Susan"s scarlet hand.
Poor little wh.o.r.e, Natter"s black voice remarked.
"The whole thing, I"m sure you realize now," Susan said, "was a set-up. To lure you here at precisely this time."
"Why?" Phil asked dryly.
"It"s generational."
"What is?"
The fertility of our G.o.d, Natter answered.
"Skeet-inner," Phil whispered. "Ona..."
The thing you saw when you were ten, Vicki"s dead words echoed now.
Two more figures-Druck, and another male Creeker, grinned as they came out of the obsidian dark. But they were dragging a third figure by-its elbows.
The figure was naked. Bound and gagged.
The figure was Sullivan.
Watch, Natter said in Phil"s head.
Druck, with his double-thumbed hand, raised Sullivan"s head by the hair. Then he chuckled.
Then he shoved Sullivan into the room"s darkest corner.
Phil couldn"t see anything; it was too dark. But he could hear sounds, and the sounds were familiar. A wet, slavering sound. A sickly, wet grinding like ravenous animals at a trough...
We give you this day, your daily flesh...
And next: thump!
The dark corner seemed to eject what remained of Sullivan: a skinned, glistening-red corpse.
And only now did Natter himself surface from his own darkness, just a deformed face in a black robe and black hood. "My daughter," he said. "Now you, too, must go on your way."
Susan shed her clothes, then turned her succulent body to face Phil in the moonlight.
"You"re our saviour, Phil. You"re the one. You should feel honored to serve our G.o.d in such a way."
Phil could only stand numb and look back at her.
"And someday, brother," she finished, "I"ll see you again, in paradise."
Then Susan, with no reluctance, stepped into the deadly dark corner and disappeared, where, within moments, the skin was eaten off her flawless body, and she was spat back out onto the floor.
"My son, my G.o.d." Natter"s face seemed awed now in its deformity. "A few of us will remain, to tend to your needs. You will be the father of a new and holy race. A perfect race. The answer to our prayers for all these years. The answer to our call and to our duty."
Druck and the few remaining Creekers left the room. Then Natter slowly backed away. His disjointed hands raised high. His great scarlet eyes closed, and then his malformed face lifted.
"Praise be to you, my son," he said in the deepest piety. "Praise be to the Mannona..."
Then Natter, the Reverend, was gone.
Phil"s eyes fixed on the corner. He could just barely see it now, just a trace of what he"d seen more completely all those years ago.
He was looking at his heritage, at his predestination, at the real reason he"d been brought into the world.
To make a new world, he realized.
His entire life up to this point had all been a lie. Only now did the truth shine plain to him. It was here, his true reality, right there in the corner, just a few yards from where he now stood.
And from that same abyssal and holy corner, another voice seeped into his head. It was a beautiful voice- A woman"s voice: My lover, my husband, my son, it said.
There was a cosmic ringing in his ears, and unfathomable visions swimming behind his eyes. Visions from the lowest places of the earth...
I"ve waited so long, the voice wept to him. But now we will always be together.
More vague features formed. The corrupted, bent limbs, the demonic face and razor-toothed slit for a mouth. The pet.i.te n.o.bs of its warped forehead, its high, full b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the faintest glimmer of its s.e.x.
My love! It"s our wedding night, it rejoiced.
Phil stared, agape.
Come to me now.
Behind him, Phil heard the tiny click as the door was finally locked.
THE END.
Edward Lee has had over thirty books published in the horror and suspense field, including Flesh Gothic, Messenger and City Infernal. He is a Bram Stoker award nominee, and his short stories have appeared in over a dozen ma.s.s-market anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories of 2000, Pocket"s Hot Blood series, and the award-wining 999. Several of his novels have recently sold translation rights to Germany and Spain. His movie, Header, will be available on DVD in mid-2007. Meanwhile, City Infernal, Messenger, Ghouls, The Bighead, and Family Tradition have been optioned for film. Upcoming ma.s.s-market novels include House Infernal, Golemesque, and The Order of the Scarlet Nuns, while he is currently at work on a limited-edition hardcore horror novel ent.i.tled Minotauress. Lee lives on Florida"s St. Pete Beach. Visit him online at: