Page 85 of Going Home in the Dark

Hornfly hove into sight with all the drama of a sea monster suddenly rising out of the waves to tower over a ship. He appeared to be bigger, stronger, uglier, and even more fierce than he had been while holding a severed head in the Liberty Park pavilion. He seemed to fill the archway between the hall and the parlor. Clearly, he had taken time to refine and practice his entrance.

“Praise Beta,” declared Pastor Larry, thrusting out of the armchair. “Praise Hornfly.”

“Isn’t he a handsome boy?” Britta said. “Isn’t he the most handsome boy you’ve ever seen?”

“Hail Beta!” the reverend cried. “Hail Hornfly!”

The amigos were chilled head to foot and back to front.

If Hornfly had not been standing there, if he’d been lying in a huge black bassinet that was skirted with black taffeta, hooded and flounced with black organza, this moment would have been like the end of the last chapter ofRosemary’s Baby, except absurd.

“Hail Beta! Hail Hornfly!”

At least from this side of the publishing process, it seems to have worked well to minimize the number of words devoted to setting, atmosphere, and the thoughts of the characters in order to provide answers to the many remaining questions without losing momentum, as would have been the case if the bones of the chapter had been fully fleshed with another four thousand words. One hopes it worked well fromyourside of the publishing process.

“Hail Beta! Hail Hornfly!”

48Wayne Louis Hornfly

So there they were, the three amigos, still in the parlor with Britta and Pastor Larry and Hornfly, where it seemed that nothing good could happen. Although Saint Mark’s Ladies of Compassion and Saint Mark’s Gentlemen for Jesus still gathered here twice a month, as they had done twenty-one years earlier, this wasn’t an evening when either group had scheduled a meeting. Considering that the reverend and his lady friend had set these hours aside for the satisfaction of their lust, it was unlikely that they were expecting anyone to visit—unless they were even more degenerate than yet revealed.

Getting past Hornfly would be next to impossible. Even if the amigos could somehow distract the eater of people and slip away, they were not likely to get out of this place alive. Surely slime monsters molting gobs of fungus, like the one that removed Ernie from the window seat, would be waiting elsewhere in the house to block their escape. Beta had condemned them to death, and although it weighed only forty-eight thousand tons and was only nine thousand years old, it was nonetheless a formidable enemy.

Stepping out of the archway and into the parlor, Hornfly spoke in that game-show-host voice that was scarier than it should have been. “Spencer Truedove of Chicago, Robert Shamrock of all points on the compass, and Rebecca Crane of Malibu, welcometo your execution. Twenty-one years ago, on Halloween night, we laid down the rules, and you broke them by Thanksgiving. You were saved by the despicable squish they call Alpha, a disgusting human-loving sentimentalist, when it repressed your memories regarding the truth of Maple Grove and became your guardian. By returning from afar, where we couldn’t get to you, you have brought about your own destruction.”

Pastor Larry thrilled to the monster’s threat. “Hail Beta! Hail Hornfly!”

Addressing the amigos, Hornfly said, “Which of you losers would rather be devoured first, sparing yourself the horror and terror of watching your friends be eaten? Do we have a volunteer?”

“Before we get into all of that,” Rebecca said, “I have a few questions.”

“Questions? You have no right to ask questions of us. You have a right to die and nothing more.”

Britta regarded Rebecca much as the Red Queen in Wonderland regarded an annoying child like Alice. “You had your chance to ask questions. No one denied you the chance. You had a thousand stupid questions. Now you die, and my son will no longer fall under your malign influence, which he has since he was fourteen.”

Raising her chin defiantly, Rebecca said, “I have not posed questions to Mr. Hornfly, only to you. You were tedious. In whatever form it takes, Beta is far more interesting than you.”

“Bite off her head,” Britta told Hornfly.

“We don’t like this Rebecca person,” Hornfly said, “but we also don’t like being told what to do. We will bite her head off, but only when we’re ready. Besides, she has called us ‘interesting.’”

“More interesting than Alpha,” Rebecca said.

Spencer and Bobby were gaping at Rebecca, and their gape was not intended to convey as much as a glance conveyed, only this:What the hell are you doing?

Rebecca was fearful but not flat-out terrified, which surprised her. It also concerned her, because controlled terror, rather than merely fear, made the mind sharper and inspired greater caution in a lethal confrontation. Terror didn’t cancel courage. Heather Ashmont had been more terrified of Judyface than anyone in the cast, yet she was the hero who stood against him effectively, the only survivor.

“What I want to know, what Ineedto know,” she told Hornfly, “is how you ate Björn Skollborg’s head so fast. So far as I could see at the time, no major teeth were involved.”

Hornfly was such a hideous beast that it was difficult to interpret his facial expressions, but he appeared to swell with pride. “We produce an acid so intense it dissolves bone and flesh instantly. Even as the substance of Skollborg dissolved, we sucked it into ourselves. Not a drop lost. A construct like Hornfly is for the purpose of destroying humanity on the Day of Fun. It’s designed to be as lethal as possible. Thus the acid thing.”

“Fascinating,” Rebecca said. “I would never have thought that a fungus could develop such biological-engineering skills.”

“Well, we are an immense colony of integrated funguses with an enormous brain and millennia with nothing to do but prepare to kill ninety percent of humanity.”

Rebecca began to understand that terror failed to overcome her because she sensed a powerful ally nearby. This was a convincing psychic perception, a supernatural awareness, not just a hunch, and certainly not just a wish such as that unicorns were real and would come prancing into the room. Of course thepresence of Bobby and Spencer gave her courage—dear friends always did that—however, they weren’t the ally that she couldfeelclose and then rushing closer, a building pressure.

Stalling for time, she said, “Why the name Wayne Louis Hornfly for your avatar, or what you call a ‘construct’?”

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