The Weeping Thing Ch. 04

"Emelina said that to me, but what does it mean?"

"Just imagine the scene, if you can." Donald averted the question. "These six young girls, tied up inside the church..."

"Why did Cabot choose the church?" Matt asked. "Why didn't he just take them somewhere else, besides the center of the whole fucking town where everybody could see what he was up to?"

"Because he couldn't do that." Donald explained. "Other than the coven and the people that sided with them, nobody really wanted to see these girls die. They were kept inside the church because it was hoped that the Lord would come down from heaven and influence them to repent. And the girls did repent, over and over again. Each time, Cabot was there to say that their repentance was a lie. The official pastor tried to intervene, but the coven's familiars would influence people's dreams and perform black miracles. These so-called miracles would further make the girls look guilty. Do you know what familiars are?"

"Demons that do the witches' bidding."

"Right." Donald nodded. "These are minor demons. They would possess cats or dogs and screech or growl at the people trying to step into the church. Or they would possess the crows. The birds would come swooping down and cawing as if they'd gone crazy. They'd scratch at the town's children who stepped up to the church windows to see the girls. The entire town was in a panic over what was happening in their midst."

"So the crows are still possessed over two hundred years later?"

"I'll get to that in a minute, but basically the answer is yes." The other man replied. "First, let's go back to the scene at the church because it's so important. Emmie and her friends are in there and they're slated to die a most gruesome death. Of course they're terrified of this. Half the town wants to burn them, while the other half is trying to put a stop to this. This was dragging the entire affair much longer than it should have taken. On top of that, Emmie was suffering and slowly dying from her internal injuries.

"Pan had been hanging back and watching as all of this was taking place. He was just a shadow then, with no real substance or power. Pan knew what he had to do to change all that. In a dream he went to Emmie. Worship me, he said, and I will set you all free."

Matt shuddered at the words.

"It was done simply enough." Donald went on. "Pan was the god of song and dance. All he wanted was for Emmie to worship in his name. Emmie told the other girls about her dream and they all talked about it. They'd already been praying to God and Jesus, and that hadn't done them a bit of good. Still, none of them were willing to turn their back on everything they'd ever been taught. None of them, that is, except for Emelina. She made up a song about the six of them dancing in the clearing. Emmie called her song The Watcher In The Woods. It was about how Pan would tease her friends and her while they were in the clearing. She sang that song for the rest of the night and well into the next morning."

"Cabot killed her, didn't he?" Matt asked. "I can't even begin to tell you how I know that, but it's what happened, isn't it?"

"Yes, he did kill her." Donald nodded, gravely. "Cabot went into the church, got wind of what she was doing and he beat Emmie until she was dead. The coven already had the idea that some kind of spirit was watching over the girls, because their familiars were telling them this. Cabot, well, Cabot wasn't taking any chances." He sighed. "About the only good thing that came out of that whole mess was that right before she died, Emmie pledged her soul to Pan."

"You call that a good thing?"

"That's the only reason she's still around." Donald revealed. "Pan took her soul, right at the moment she died. If he hadn't done this, the familiars would have sucked her soul away and used it to strengthen the coven. You want to know what happened next?"

Donald was giving Matt such a creepy look, that Matt nearly didn't answer.

"What?"

"Pan surrounded Emmie's soul with his own aura. Together, they went from being two things with no substance, into one tiny speck of real material. Pan was the sperm, so to speak, and Emmie was the egg. The result was a tiny, little piece of flesh so small that it floated through the air and right into Cabot's nose. It went down his windpipe and made its way into the pit of his stomach." Donald gave Matt another eerie smile. "That's when Pan started eating Cabot from the inside out."

"Oh, thanks for telling me that!" Matt grimaced. "Seriously, thanks a lot! It isn't bad enough that I've been having all these nightmares about blobs of meat and fucking crows attacking me. Now I have to add that crazy shit to the mix! Thank you for that, Donald!"

Donald started laughing.

"That's it, man." Matt rounded up all the fast food trash. He took a moment to step out of his truck and toss it all into the nearest trash bin. A moment later, he was hopping back in and cranking up the motor. "I'm taking you back to Margo's and I'm dropping you off. Right after that I'm getting all my shit together and getting the hell out of this state!"

The truck lumbered out into the street.

"You can't run away from this, Mattie." Donald said.

"Oh, yeah? You just watch me."

"Do you want to hear the rest?" Donald asked. "Emmie made me promise that I would tell you everything."

"I do not want to hear the rest." Matt hastily replied. Only a moment later, he was blowing out a deep breath. "Fine. Go ahead and tell me."

"Basically, all bedlam broke loose. Cabot was being chewed up internally. This was painful enough that his screams ended up waking the entire town. The other members of his coven didn't know what to make of it at first. Once they figured it out, they pressed their advantage. The Devil was in their midst, they said. The remaining five girls must be put to death at once. And so, Emmie's friends were all dragged out to the edge of town. Wooden posts were dug into the ground and the girls were all burned to death.

"They had all seen how Cabot had murdered Emmie in the church. They'd also seen what had taken place right after Emmie had pledged her soul to Pan in her dying breaths. Together, the girls decided that if they could stick it to Cabot by doing the same thing, they should just go ahead and do it. With their eyes full of tears and their voices breaking off, all five of them began to sing what they could remember of The Watcher In The Woods. When the flames began consuming them, they too gave their souls over to Pan. This allowed Pan to absorb their souls into his tiny, new, fleshy form.

"By this time, Cabot was in a screaming frenzy. He was bleeding profusely from the mouth, nose and anus. The souls of the five additional women gave Pan enough power to seize control of Cabot's mind and body. Before the entire town, the combination of Pan and Cabot began to reveal all of the atrocities and wrongdoings the coven had ever committed. This weakened the coven greatly in the eyes of their detractors. The coven tried to burn Cabot as well, claiming that he was now being possessed. He managed to elude them and ran off into the woods."

Matt pulled to a stop before Margo's house. "Go on."

"The coven quickly ordered their supporters to gather into a lynch mob. They broke off from the rest of the townsfolk to have a secret meeting. The coven couldn't take any chances of Cabot getting away from them, because he would become the ruin of them all. This is when they brought together a whole horde of familiars. They cursed these minor demons into the flock of crows, because the crows could cover more ground and strike faster than any other minions they had at their disposal.

"It took a couple of days before the crows found Cabot. When they did, they did their best to tear the man to pieces. He wasn't Cabot any more by then, but one hundred percent Pan. The god sought to save himself by reshaping the man's body into something smaller and more compact. This is how Pan turned into the Weeping Thing. He still had the souls and memories of all six girls residing within him.

"The crows couldn't finish Pan off, so they flew back to tell the coven where he was. The lynch mob went out and found him, tore him to pieces and set him on fire. It was only through sheer luck that a small piece of Pan survived. This because he managed to squeeze the last of his body under the roots of a large tree."

"The bad guys got away with it." Matt deduced.

"What?"

"The bad guys, the coven." Matt elaborated. "They murdered Emelina and her friends and they damned near killed Pan. The only one that got their just desserts was fucking Cabot!"

"Not all of them got away with it." Donald revealed. "Pan was still around, but he was only about the size of a human hand. He couldn't do all that much physically. Within his being, on the other hand, he had the spiritual strength of all six girls added to his own. With that, he was able to do a few things.

"Before, he could only enter Emmie's dreams, because she was somehow more open to his influence than any of the others. Now, and as you've seen for yourself, Pan is able to enter into anybody's thoughts. He plagued one member of the coven with vivid visions of the burning girls, until the woman felt guilty enough to set herself on fire. With the allure of the six naked girls, Pan was also able to draw the conscious state of one of the warlocks into his universe while the man was having a dream. Pan was able to crush the man's soul in the dream and leave his physical body empty and catatonic. This man eventually died in real life because he wasn't getting anything to eat."

"That's comforting to know." Matt looked at him squeamishly.

"At Tabitha's insistence, Pan even managed to convince her brutish father to hang himself at the edge of town, close to the spot where she was burned." Donald concluded. "As for the rest of the coven, who knows what happened to them? They fled along with the rest of the town. That was when the sounds of the Weeping Thing, the sobs of the slain girls, began to be heard by all of the residents. The coven did manage to get one last shot at Pan though. They bound their familiars to successive generations of crows. This is the reason why the crows are still hounding Pan until this day. In fact, Pan stayed in a state of perpetual hibernation for over two hundred years, up until I came along. I used to take long walks in the woods behind Margo's place. This is how Pan first became aware of me."

"And then he recruited you?"

"More or less." Donald conceded. "Emmie had a lot to do with that, too. I guess I awoke some kind of motherly instinct in her when she noticed how depressed I was. She wanted to smother me with love and I'd been looking for exactly that for a long time." He chuckled, "Besides, she was pretty horny after two hundred years of not having a man around. Pan's physical form may have been in hibernation, but Pan's universe had been active for that entire time. All six of our girls were fully aware of the passing of time."

Matt shook his head. "I can't even begin to grasp that. Didn't, uh, didn't Pan try to hump any of them?"

"I don't fully understand the mechanics of that." Donald said. "Pan can become part of us and he can live through us, but he can't exist in a physical form by himself." He cracked the truck's door open. "You've got a decision to make, Mattie-boy. Six were taken and six must be given. What this means is that our six nymphs did not choose to give their souls to Pan entirely out of their free will. They were forced into it thanks to Cabot and his coven. This created a disharmony for Pan. He can't progress any further until this is rectified and taken care of."

"Atonement." Matt said. "I think I can understand that part. The women gave their souls involuntarily, and so six people have to give their souls up voluntarily. And I just happen to be lucky number six, don't I? Tell me this, what happens when you do find a sixth person?"

"One of two things." Donald answered. "Pan will be able to bring all six girls back into this physical world, into our world, because the six of us have volunteered to take their places..."

"I'm not liking that option."

"Oh, don't worry too much about that. None of the girls wants to come here anyway, at least not permanently. Emmie's the only one who's even wanted to take a peek at the way we live nowadays. I made the mistake of mentioning nuclear weapons to them once. The girls have not forgotten about that. They are terrified of our modern world and its weapons of mass destruction, because it matches so closely to what they were indoctrinated regarding hell and fire and brimstone and all that."

"What was option number two?"

Donald smiled at him. "Are you sure you're ready to hear this? From what I've gathered, there is a certain amount of energy released at the moment of physical death. This is what allows a soul to become separate from its body. This energy is given off every time a soul enters the universe, as in birth, and every time a soul leaves this universe, as in death. Pan's been hoarding this energy from the five of us that have recently given our souls over to him. He only needs one more soul, he says, so that he can close his little universe away from this one. Once that is done, he can remake his entire universe in any way that he pleases, and appoint himself as the one supreme god over it."

"Whoa, whoa!" Matt grabbed at the sides of his head. "Information overload! There's only so much I can take. I think you lost me back at the fucking burger joint!"

"I won't burden you with any more then." Donald grinned. "But I will invite you to a warm beer. I guess you left a box of it in Margo's house the last time you were in there."

"What beer?" Matt asked. "Oh, shit, that's right! John gave me a box of beer, was it last night? Geez, I forgot all about that. Where'd you find it?"

"On the floor next to the living room couch, right where you left it. It's going to be warm, though, unless we leave it sitting outside and it's a cold night. We haven't gotten around to inventing refrigeration in Pan's world yet."

Matt glanced toward Margo's darkened house. "What about all the crows?"

"Oh, they're gone now." Donald replied. "They gave up once they realized they couldn't get through the bedroom door. After Pan burped me out in the hallway, I went and boarded up the broken window, and I..."

"Do you have to say it that way?" Matt made a repulsed face. "That Pan burped you out? That sounds disgusting!"

"How else do you want me to say it? Pan vomited me out like a bad tuna sandwich. Pan shat me out like yesterday's dinner, and I came out a living, breathing, walking turd." Donald began laughing like a loon.

"I hope you're not wondering why you weren't getting laid when you were still alive."

"My dry spell with women is now over, my friend, and I am very much still alive." Donald countered. "And maybe, in a way I'm even more alive than you are. So, do you want to have that drink with me or not?"

"Sure, I guess." Matt shrugged. He slid out of the truck, locked it up, and started following Donald over the front lawn, which was looking pretty neglected as of late.

"If you don't mind my exclusive company, we can have that beer in Margo's house." Donald said, as he went on ahead. "But if you want to try your luck with one of the gals, you're going to have to follow me back into Pan's world. You know, it's actually more about your personal choice than it is about luck, since you've already got at least three women good and ready to jump your bones on the other side."

"Oh, yeah?"

"That's right." Donald nodded, as he escorted the other man around the side of the dark house. "Four if you count Remember, but she's going to take a little more wooing because she's still a lot on the old fashioned side. That is entirely understandable considering that she's from the early Nineteenth Century."

As they reached the back of the house, Matt shivered. He said, "It got cold all of a sudden, huh?"

"I guess it did. That's weird." Donald paused to glance around. He pulled open the back door to reveal a very obscure kitchen. "Keep your hand to the wall on your right and follow the sound of my voice."

The cold seemed to intensify within the house.

Hardly had Donald stepped five feet in, when he said, "Something's very wrong here, Mattie-boy." His stride quickened. To the room, he called out, "Pan, where are you? What's happening here?"

In the living room, Donald added, "Watch the coffee table and the couch. Pan!"

In the hallway, they were both gripped by an icy terror that left them both trembling.

Donald shoved open the door to the second bedroom.

"Pan's not in here!" He cried out, as he next stepped to the master bedroom. He jerked open what was once Margo's door. "Pan!"

In the darkness, Matt could hear Donald flipping the light switch back and forth, to no avail.

They heard a combination low groan and rumble coming from deep within the room.

"Something bad is happening, Mattie." Donald said fearfully. "And it's happening in Pan's universe!"

Matt sensed the other man slip away from him and further into the black bedroom.

"What should I do?" Matt asked.

"I don't know if there's anything you can do!" Donald shouted back at him, as if he was being overtaken by panic. "Something bad is happening! What if I can't get back any more? Pan! Open up, Pan! Don't leave me out here!"

From a corner of the bedroom, Matt heard a wet gurgling that hade him sick to his stomach. Right after, he heard the rustle of Donald's clothes rushing toward it.

"I think Cabot got loose!" Donald screamed. "I think Cabot's having it out with Pan once and for all! Pan told us this might happen, because he's been eating all those crows with those damned familiars in them. He said it was necessary to counter all the black magic the coven put on the girls!"

"What can I do?" Matt repeated.

"Wish us all good luck, man!" Donald shouted. "If I don't make it back, you have one of those beers in my honor. It's been a blast, Mattie-boy, but the party's moving over to Stage Two!"

For the next few minutes, Matt might have blindly stood there and wondered what was happening in the room. Then, he heard the snapping of bones as Pan crushed Donald's body into oblivion.

"Oh, God." Matt whimpered, before backing up into the hallway.

As fast as he could manage it, the terrified man abandoned the hallway. He took quick steps and trailed his fingers along the wall as he traced his way to the back door.

"I've got to get out of here." He muttered. "I've got to get back to..."

Back to what, Matt asked himself. Back to his shitty job? Back to his shitty life? The only thing he'd really miss from his world was his truck, he quickly realized. Matt loved that thing because it was the only thing that hadn't turned its back on him or stomped all over him like everything and everybody else had.

"Fuck!" Matt blurted out. "I'm nobody's goddamned savior!"

In the darkness, he turned to face the void of the hallway.

"Fuck!"

Matt recalled how Donald said he might not be coming back. For a second he fumbled around looking for the coffee table. Matt plunked his keys down on it. The sound of the keys hitting the table rang out heavily in his ears.

"I know I'm going to regret this later." Matt mumbled, before he started back down the hallway and into the master bedroom.

The sound of whatever was rumbling within Pan unnerved him enough that he was thankful he could not see it. Surely, he would have bolted away if he had.

"The bed is around here somewhere." Matt said, cautiously sweeping out with both arms until he caught the end of a mattress.

Matt clambered onto the bed, even as Pan groaned and gurgled to one side of it.