An excerpt from my novel. (Horror and strong language)

silverbolt

Hey people, i thought id post this here and see what people think.

What follows is one of the central encounters in my horror novel - i realise its going to be out of context as you dont know what goes on before it or after but i can answer any questions.

The idea is that 7 children come together to fight a monster that is preying on other children. The idea with the book is that gradually it slips from pure horror to a more science fantasy based around Celtic folklore and mythology. This chapter is part of the pivotal stages in the first act as two of the children go up against the creature - which will turn out to be god who has gone insane.

This chapter in regards to two of the teenagers Simon (whose best friend was killed by the thing) and Siobhan (whose baby cousin was killed) having got their hands on a gun go hunting for the monster.


“Did you get it?” She asked as the two stacked their bikes close to the gate.
Simon looked up and down the road before reaching in and pulling the gun out. He held it in one hand away from both of them and ensured the safety was still on before handing it to Siobhan to look at as he reached into another pocket for the clip. She held the gun as he had in one hand pointing away from them.
“I got three bullets, that should be enough to……well you know.”
Simon took the gun back and slipped the clip into the grip. He awkwardly racked the slide back. The noise of the metal was so loud it sounded like a horn being blown in challenge. Both looked at the house. But it was still with nothing stirring within.
“Maybe….”
“It’s there.” Simon replied to Siobhan’s unspoken question. “It’s in there waiting.”
He knew he was correct in this, the creature, the monster, the ghost old man clown was in the house and he was fairly sure it knew they were out here.
Without another word they headed round to the front door. It was shut, solid in the frame.
“I never shut this.”
“Someone may have come along since.”
“Maybe.”
He reached out with one hand and gave it a push. The door swung open easily on its hinges with a faint squeal.
“Shut it and left it on the catch?” Simon said disbelievingly. He looked up and to the right. The gouge he had made from the metal pole was still in the wall. The top half was lying on the floor. The smell was still there, strong and foul. Siobhan wrinkled her nose in distaste.
“Was this smell here before?”
Simon nodded.
“Yeah. Was the first thing I noticed as well.”
“Is that the room?” She pointed to the door to the left and like the front this too was shut. This one also popped open at a push.
There was no sign of the clown or anything that indicated it had been here. The rocking chair was gone.
“It was there, by the window.” He gestured with the gun.
Siobhan spotted something on the floor by the sill, there was two grooves in the dust, from the rockers of a chair. It wasn’t this that the girl had spotted though.
As she moved toward it, it became clearer. A penknife with red casing, the blade was still out but it was twisted and blackened as if partially melted.
She knelt onto the balls of her feet her knees popping loudly. She didn’t know why she felt the urge to get a closer look at it. She almost reached out to touch it but pulled her hand back at the same time.

Siobhan looked up, feeling at the edge of her mind a niggling sensation that something was different. Something had changed suddenly in the last few seconds. Standing swiftly she headed toward Simon who seemed to be further away as if the house had been stretched somehow.
No that’s not it. It was if it had suddenly got darker like the sun had suddenly set.
“Its darker.” She said. “As if it was evening time.”
Simon jumped as if he had been goosed, his eyes widened further. He genuinely hadn’t noticed. Until she mentioned it. Her seeing of the darkness made it for him as well. He didn’t know if it got dark because she mentioned it or because he simply hadn’t been aware of it.
“Stay close.” He whispered grabbing her upper arm and pulling her toward him. “We mustn’t get separated.”
“Which way do we go?”
The room they were in had two exits, one back out the way they had come and another to the right of the window.
“This way.”
“Why that way?”
“I don’t know but lets see what we can see.”
Their footfalls were quiet almost silent but in the dead of the house were coming to the two children as incredibly loud. It was if a gong was going off each time their trainers touched down as they moved across the lounge. Siobhan slipped her hand into Simon’s free one, needing the touch of another human being, of a friend in this alien environment. His palm was sweaty but she didn’t mind knowing that her’s was as well. Their fingers interlocked. Hansel and Gretel invading the witches house.
Siobhan opened the door and Simon entered in first, the pistol raised, elbow bent and muzzle pointed at the ceiling as a hundred movie cops had done in a hundred movies before him. The door screeched on rusty hinges and Siobhan gritted her teeth.
She was awfully nervous she could feel fear biting around inside her stomach, gnawing at her to get out.
‘This is mental.’ It screamed at her. ‘What the **** are you doing?’
‘I’m helping a friend.’ She popped back almost instantly. But that fear that feeling wouldn’t go away, this was very dangerous and downright **** stupid. She and Simon had really walked into the lions den and were about to poke it with a sharp stick right in the eye. Her tee shirt was stuck to her from worried sweat and felt horribly sticky as she moved. Her jeans felt too tight as if she had worn a pair too small for her. The only part of her that seemed ok was her feet and those seemed to be primed to run back out the door.
The door led to the remains of a kitchen. A collapsible metal table lay on two legs the other two snapped at some stage and lay at a crazy angle against a fridge whose door had been ripped off, a sorry looking chair with no seat or back stood against one wall.
The cooker was an old white job with concentric ring electric hobs. The entire thing was stained with grease with brown runners of muck down the front and at some point it had lost three of the five knobs. The sink was ceramic and cracked down the front, one tap was crooked and water stained. Beside the sink was a gaping hole where a range had once stood but was now long gone. An archway led to a cold room that smelt even worse of rot than the rest of the house. Simon stuck his head in and immediately recoiled from it retching.
“**** that’s foul.” He laughed nervously. Siobhan smiled wanly at him. She looked round the kitchen and felt almost sad that this house had fallen into such a dilapidated state. She could imagine a family living here years ago, working, playing and living. Had this place ever rung out to the sound of laughter, of people talking and raising a family. How different had it been for them? What had happened to them? Why were they not here now?
In truth the man who had inherited the house from his parents had been one of five siblings. Three had died before hitting the age of twenty and the other had moved to England and never returned. He had been a turf cutter his entire life working in the bogs as he had done since he was a small child and as his father had done all his life. He had stayed on, he never married, never had children. He had died alone but content with his lot in life. Happy in his own unassuming and country existence. No dreams of glory or riches, fame and fortune. Just to know that he had done what he had to be a cog in the ongoing play of society.
“Where is this thing?” She wanted to know. The silence was beginning to grate on her, the darkness to overwhelm her. Again the feeling of this simply being too big for her. She was ahead of Simon now moving toward the door leading back into the corridor, he was looking at the hole where the range flue had been, the concrete cracked and crumbling.
“Simon….” She began but then the kitchen door slammed back in its door frame.
Both of them screamed blindly a release of pent up tension. It was so unexpected and yet so expected at the same time.
Siobhan saw nothing concrete for a second, she only saw a strange heat image as if the air itself was wavering in a weird way. Inside the haze was a swirling kaleidoscope of multi coloured lights that span and swirled around themselves. It was like the whole thing was dancing to a tune unheard moving to a music soft and faraway. There was almost a form in there, something she could identify but her eyes and her brain couldn’t quite grasp it making the image hazy and inconsistent her eyes refusing to focus on it.
“Jesus Siobhan.” Simon screamed behind her. “It’s a werewolf, a ****ing werewolf.”
A werewolf.
And it was.
Whatever she had seen before was gone and replaced by a special effect from a horror movie.
The monster was coated in long brown and blond hair that poked out through its tattered ripped Christian Brothers school uniform. The hair looked wiry like the bristles on a brush and stuck out at almost every conceivable angle through rents tears and cuffs. It wore the dark navy jumper of the senior years and the shield emblem was almost skull white the sheep, laurel and crown almost three dimensional with their intensity. Three pom poms dotted the front of the jumper.
The head of the creature was like an Alsatian dogs but with severe differences. The eyes were far bigger more human like - with a cold intelligence lurking inside. The mouth and nose were part of a muzzle like a dogs but with oversized fangs that extended past Its lower and upper jaws to create an almost caricature setting that was brutally terrifying. Its hands and feet were distended claws each with five digits ending in savage talons yellow stained and looking very sharp.
Simon reached out and grabbed Siobhan by her tee shirt pulling her back towards him. She gave a strangled gasp as her momentum was suddenly arrested as Simon hugged her to him, holding her to his chest with his left arm over her shoulders. He raised the gun and though he didn’t realise it he looked like the two had just posed for a movie action hero poster.
He never took time to aim, never took time to make sure. He pulled the trigger.
With a BANG that echoed throughout the house and caused the ears of the two to ring the gun went off. Acrid blue smoke billowed from the gun fogging around the room. The muzzle flashed and a small hole appeared in the wall almost a foot from the creatures chest. It jerked its head toward the impact as if startled, as if it didn’t know what a gun was. As if it had never seen one before. Those eyes so full of intelligence looked from the hole to the gun before locking its foul gaze on Simon.
“You missed.” Siobhan screamed looking at the creature.
“I wont miss twice.” Was the reply.
The werewolf took a step forward.
Siobhan felt Simon jump beside her, his form twitching against her rigid body.
Simon fired again and again it echoed horrendously around them, the ringing in their ears intensified as more smoke filled the air and their noses began to reek of gun accelerant. But at least it diminished that cloying smell of rot.
This time Simon didn’t miss. He hit it directly. In the shoulder. It howled a cacophony of gibbering canine voices that reminded Siobhan of the noise hyenas made in wildlife documentaries. The impact knocked the creatures arm out wide.
“Go. Go.” Simon screamed, he gave Siobhan a shove and she nearly fell at that action. She held her footing though and was able to lurch away back through the door into the living room.
It roared then. An animal roar of lust and impending violence. Siobhan and Simon both screamed at that.
‘He alternates’ Siobhan thought about Simon. ‘Between fear and rage. One minutes he’s raging to kill it, the next hes frightened of it. But he wont stop fighting it.’
His rage was too intense his desire for vengeance too potent to allow fear to overcome his own inner iron will. If Simon didn’t get killed by it then he would not stop until it was dead.
Siobhan was at the living room door way. The door to the outside world was tantalisingly close.
“You killed my best friend you ****er.” Simon howled behind her.
He had stopped she realised. She did as well, she was in the door frame then half in and half out of the living room and hallway. Panting through the sheer adrenaline she span round.
Simon was in the middle of the room, legs spread both arms extended with the gun in a double grip.
The werewolf was mirrored in her own way. It was stood in the doorway to the kitchen it’s pose almost exactly like hers.
In some way, she realised that she was the angel on Simon’s shoulder and it his demon. They were equal distances apart and Simon was in the epicentre of the two.
‘He’s going to become obsessed.’ Siobhan’s mind voice spoke up to her. ‘Without you he will become obsessed and driven into a battle of it’s choosing. It will pull him into the Dark.’
The word was given a noun status. Like the name werewolf, the place it took its victims also became something proper. Something real.
‘How do I stop him?’
‘You don’t, you go with him and stand beside him.’
Then she heard the creature speak. It opened its snout and words that sounded as if a demonic dog had learned English came out.
“I’m going to kill you to.” It’s gaze fell on Siobhan standing frozen. “You and your little bitch.”
“Your not touching her.” The snarl that came from Simon was no less intense that the monsters. “You. Are. Not. Touching. HER.”
With the last howled word Simon pulled the trigger again.
For a third time the gun went off and this time he hit it in the head.
The werewolf’s head snapped back from the slug.
Again the monster roared. But it was a roar of anger, not pain. Siobhan realised that they were not doing any damage to it. They had surprised it by bringing a weapon but damaged it? No.
Simon however was almost hypnotised. He lowered his numbing hands still holding the gun to the floor. It’s fur was so real, the blood that leaked from the two wounds so red, so vividly red. Brighter than anything more alive, more intense than human blood. Its teeth were so sharp looking like a Star Trek hologram come to life. It moved a step toward him and its movement was so sanguine so sinuous. So lethally graceful. He stood entranced watching it.
Siobhan proved her worth then, she proved that she was right to insist on Simon bringing her along to this confrontation.
She saved his life.
Siobhan saw what was coming, she saw Simon standing there immobile and she saw it move toward him. She watched as its right hand claw twitched.
She jumped forward, taking the three steps to the middle of the room in one and grabbed the back of his tee shirt.
Simon gave a strangled yelp as she yanked him back exactly a tenth of a second before that talon slashed through the air where his throat had been. The wound would certainly have been fatal, it would certainly have killed him there if she hadn’t been.
“Come on.” Siobhan shouted pulling Simon back. “We’re done here.”
“We’re not done.” Simon snarled back and his face was so angry so violent that Siobhan almost let go. “It’s not dead.”
“We are done. You’ve fired three time and its not dead.”
This seemed to register home with Simon as he realised that the gun he was holding was empty. And without it he and more importantly (to him) Siobhan were defenceless against the creature.
The werewolf sprang but they were not there, the two stumbled out into the daylight. With a half run half trip the two made it past the gates where both times it had made no attempt to follow.
Maybe subconsciously they thought it couldn’t cross the boundary past the house because at this point they fell gasping into the grass on the far side of the road.
The werewolf wasn’t done though, the bullets hadn’t even hurt it, just made it angry and it was not going to stop until it had eviscerated the two impertinent brats who had dared challenge it.
“Oh **** its coming.” Simon said leaping to his feet. He raised the gun again.
‘No ammo.’ Siobhan’s thought bounded round like a squash ball in a court. ‘Run Simon. Run, you’ve done your George and the dragon routine. It’s time to go.’
But Siobhan didn’t go, she stood beside her friend and gibbering and slathering the Werewolf came at them.
What happened next shouldn’t have done. It went against everything normal and physical. It was amazing and impossible
Simon squeezed the trigger.
The gun fired even though it should have been empty. But what a shot. The recoil nearly blew the gun out of his hands, it jerked his arm up over his head and knocked him backwards into Siobhan who caught him as he let out a yell of pain. There was no bang from the weapon there was an artillery cannon roar, the muzzle had nearly a foot of flame come from it.
The bullet wherever it had come from struck the thing in the head and half of it disintegrated in an explosion of gore right out of a movie. This time the thing really felt pain. It howled in agony, it left side of its head was gone, the top jaw shattered. The left eye was completely gone as was the top of its skull and ear and a torrent of blood and ichor ran down its face. In a startlingly human gesture the werewolf raised both hands to the wound. With its one good eye it glared at the two children now sitting in the grass staring open mouth in horror and awe. It stood five feet from the two.
“Siobhan take the gun.” Simon said.
“What?”
“My arm.” Simon grunted. “My arms numb, I cant hold it.”
Siobhan reached over and took the gun from unresisting fingers.
She never had a chance to use it. The werewolf having already began its retreat. It had turned and was loping away in a strange lumbering gait like its hips didn’t weren’t aligned properly. It was still holding the wound in its head. Siobhan didn’t know why it had left them, they were helpless lying in a ditch with a gun with no ammo and one dead arm. But was the gun empty now? It had been empty before and had still gone off and nearly knocked Simon’s arm out of it socket with its power. How did three bullets become four? How did that bullet hurt it when the other two it had barely noticed? Siobhan tried to think but adrenaline was sending her mind into overdrive she couldn’t concentrate on it properly.
Then it was gone, back into the house or into wherever it had come from away from the two children.
The front door slammed with a strong sense of finality. This battle that had barely lasted two minutes from the werewolf’s appearance to its retreat was over.
“Its gone.” Siobhan whispered. “it’s gone, we did it.”
“We didn’t do it. We got lucky.” Simon retorted. He looked angry and in pain.
“Well I’m not pressing my luck any further.” Siobhan said. “Lets get out of here.”
She rose and pulled him to his feet.

They went to Gailey Bay where they had discussed going after It in the first place. To Siobhan it seemed more to be the place where they ran to get away.

“How’s your arm?”
“Numb. Feels like its been electrocuted.” Simon’s right arm still hung limp at his side, he had movement but no strength in it. The gun rested on a rock beside them the slide still locked back from when it had fired that last gargantuan round.
“Are you sure you only brought three bullets?”
“Yeah I’m sure.”
“You missed once, hit twice.”
“And those two had no effect on it.”
“So where did number four come from? And for that matter why did it go off like a cannon? And why did it hurt it when the others didn't”
“I don’t know.”
Siobhan bit her bottom lip. It made no sense. For that matter none of it made any sense to her.
She looked at Simon to see him looking right back. His green eyes stared straight into her blue ones. As she watched they filled up with tears.
“Christ Siobhan what the hell have we got ourselves into?”
“I don’t know.” She echoed his statement.
Her emotions overwhelmed her looking into the features that an hour ago had been so strong but were now just the features of a very frightened fourteen year old boy. And she knew that she too had the same expression on her own.
She couldn’t hold it in any longer, everything she had gone through the last few weeks bubbled over to the surface.
As one two children still years from adulthood burst into tears.
They collapsed into each others arms and held each other as they wept taking comfort in the warmth of each others bodies and the strength of their friendship. The sun painted them in a yellow glow as the water lapped against the sure.
They held each other so tightly and mourned for the end of what they knew as children and for what was yet to come.