Sleep No More: Unbidden Part Five

By TJ Park

Part 5 - the white knuckle conclusion of the terrifying supernatural horror thriller

Dawn reveals the extent of death and destruction wreaked upon the Clarkson property. The ground is soaked with blood, the survivors torn apart with losses too shocking to fathom. Doug Mulcahy gathers his share of the precious opals and makes one final bid to escape. The Clarksons will have to fend for themselves. But with escape in sight, Doug hesitates. Perhaps the Familiar can be beaten, if Doug can unlock the dark secret of its origin. Clues point back to the strange little house, the murdered woman and her vengeful partner. It's time for Doug Mulcahy to face his demons, in a terrifying showdown back where it all began...

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Mar 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781460706343

TJ Park

TJ Park is an Australian novelist and screenwriter. He was raised on a steady diet of Stephen King novels, British science-fiction television, and the cinema of John Carpenter and Sergio Leone. Not much else is known about him. That's just the way he likes it.

Book preview

Unbidden Part V: Sleep No More

Chapter Fifteen

Tossing its head, the familiar raised its disarranged face, sigils trying to reassert themselves in the proper places for eyes and mouth, ears, flaring nostrils. Solomon promptly head-butted the familiar, knocking the sigils into disarray again. The familiar fell into a lolling heap.

Doug backed away clumsily. He had left the rifle behind, but managed to pick up Scott’s shirt, marvelling at how he had employed it like a matador’s cloak. Then he caught up to Scott, whose pale, heaving chest stood out like a beacon in the pearly pre-dawn light.

Together they watched the final, shocking rout of the familiar.

The monster was crawling on its belly, behaving in a cringing, servile way toward the bull, but that was only to give it time to slip past so it could escape up into the tree. Claws racketed out and sank deep into the trunk as the familiar began to clamber up into the thin foliage. It went slowly. Doug wouldn’t have believed such a thing possible, but in its clash with King Solomon the monster had been injured.

The King watched this from less than a metre away. Then he lost patience and smacked into the familiar again, pitching the monster away from the tree with a toss of its horns. The familiar’s claws tore great chunks from the bole as it went, enough to fell the tree as if axed.

The familiar groggily tried to get up and Solomon mowed into it again, grinding the monster into the earth. Horns busied its skin like tent poles scouring tarpaulin.

The familiar tried to slip away, leaping to gain more room, but then fell over without the King’s help, its hindquarters tipping over stiffly. Solomon butted the familiar again casually, then stood there and watched.

The monster tried a different direction. It fell down again. It dragged itself forward by its forepaws, and made some small headway, though hindered by the deadweight of its hind legs. After a short distance it stood up on its forelegs, trying to hold itself upright. Instead, it leaned and then collapsed to land flat on its side, snarling.

Jesus Christ, Doug barely whispered. I think its back is broken.

King Solomon didn’t understand what he was looking at, and not liking it, he charged. Doug and Scott could only watch, the boy shaking as if rocked by a gale.

The familiar rose into the air again, caught up on Solomon’s horn like a kitten held up by the scruff of the neck in its mother’s mouth. But apparently that was not Solomon’s intention. The exasperated bull laboured to discard the familiar, whipping its limp weight from side to side.

In that moment, Doug felt the beginnings of hope.

***

Immune to fire, bullet and blade, the familiar was never given protection against the beast of the field. Its architect could hardly have imagined it needed such a thing.

Now it was coming undone.

***

Solomon swung the familiar about on its horn, the monster’s limbs dragging through the grass. The familiar’s expression had gone slack, the sigils drifting. The sigil-eyes were gone, replaced by flat likenesses. They only moved when the head moved.

Bowing low, Solomon vigorously shook and stomped up and down with his forelegs to rid himself of his burden. The familiar finally slid off the lowered horn and fell to the earth in an untidy heap.

Solomon nudged the still form, then roughly shovelled it into a new position. It did not stir again. The floating sigils had trailed to a dead stop, the red in them faded, gone the colour of wet newspaper. The depthless coat went dull.

The King snorted and made some small hops in a gait peculiar to bulls. That was the extent of his victory dance.

Next to Doug, the boy was leaping high on the spot, cheering. A mottled red patch bloomed on his chest from beating his fists there.

The familiar’s head was lying on the cushion of its mashed cheek. Its switchblade mouth hung open, a gravestone-tongue protruding. Its sigil eyes, an ashen eight-ball and a broken heart, had lost interest. They were stopped clocks. Dead.

The boy howled with frenzied delight. Doug was worried he could suffer a stroke, or gain the King’s attention. The boy could not have cared less about either. He whooped and hollered and cheered.

Doug put a hand out to settle him and the boy took that as permission to move, springing forward toward the familiar. To do what? Spit on it? Drop a rock on its head? To have his turn?

Doug caught him just in time. The boy squirmed with a strength more elastic than a grown-up’s. Doug struggled not to let him wriggle from his grasp.

The boy cursed him, but did it happily.

Scott’s ruckus finally did get Solomon’s attention. Apparently the King did not like what he saw – forgetting the familiar, he made a menacing, stunted charge toward them. Just what an adversary used to playing dead might be waiting on . . . for the opponent to turn his back.

***

That the familiar was not charmed against the might of other living creatures could be considered a terrible oversight. Yet it was safeguarded against fire, bullet and blade.

It meant Solomon should have concentrated more on trampling its opponent under crushing hooves, not by piercing and goring. Because interpreted loosely, a bull’s horns could be considered a blade.

***

The familiar sprang from the ground, sigils flaring, to clamber up Solomon’s back with the wriggling speed of a lizard. Once there, it began to rake and rip. Long, dark strings looped through the air about beast and monster, separating out into impossibly large gobbets of blood.

Scott’s cheers died to stunned silence.

Solomon went wild, trying to buck the familiar off. The familiar’s lower half slid away, evidence that its useless hind legs were not part of the act. It didn’t matter. The forepaws dug in, climbing higher to hoist all of the familiar’s weight on top of Solomon, always one paw or the other hoeing in to hack and slash.

Blood ran down the King’s flanks in shocking black tides, flying off like sprinkler sprays as he whirled about, bucking with high backward kicks as flashing claws continued to swipe ragged divots from his shoulders, exposing muscle and sinew. Too soon, Solomon’s prickly snorts became baffled and wider-spaced, his actions more sluggish. An offbeat stroke shockingly laid open the white tines of his ribcage.

In a desperate move, Solomon slammed down on his side, either to throw off his attacker or to flatten it. The familiar hung on grimly, refusing to let go.

Solomon sat up with a heavy grunt, thick gluey ropes hanging from its snout. The familiar rose as well, still pinned to him like a leech. The bull regained his feet slowly, twitching in shock. The familiar clambered up again to resume cutting its mount into sheaves.

Solomon tried to buck again, and staggered in a half-circle, shifting like a heavily-laden canoe pulled the wrong way in a strong current. Then some of his old defiance returned, enlivening his dull features. He charged at nothing, folded in his head and slammed into the earth, flipping over to try and dislodge the familiar once and for all. The monster was squeezed into the impact as if between rollers. A paw projected out from under the bull’s mass, closing and opening on air.

Then Solomon kicked himself upright again and ran a short distance from where he had up-ended the familiar, turning about and snorting to confront his opponent . . . except the familiar had remained on his back all the while. It began carving fresh channels across the old.

King Solomon spent his last moments lunging at phantoms, each charge shorter and slower than the last, until he stopped and stood in place on trembling legs as the familiar swatted his neck into tatters. Finally, the majestic bull leaned forward, the weight of the rider telling. Forelegs buckling, Solomon crashed down, a bellow cruelly cut off as the ground snapped his jaw shut.

But his hind legs refused to give and they steadied in place, stalwart, waiting for the rest of him to regain his feet.

The familiar slid down the incline of the bull’s back, riding side-saddle. It gripped a horn in each paw. And pulled.

Solomon’s snout was lifted into the air, jaws open for a mournful bellow never properly begun, a sole moaning note carried away on the wind. Then his mouth stayed hung open, trailing thick strings of blood and saliva.

The King was dead before his horns were snapped off.

Released, the unadorned head thumped to the dirt. The standing hindquarters failed in the same instant.

The familiar slithered off the lifeless mound, a long horn grasped in each paw.

Its sigil gaze hunted around for Doug and Scott . . . found them.

Still holding on to its trophies, the familiar attempted to stand. Its top half succeeded, but its hindquarters lolled off to one side in a rubbery heap, throwing the monster off-balance and bringing it down short.

Doug was thinking furiously. All he needed was something of a good length, like a heavy branch or a long-handled tool from the machinery shed, anything that would keep him out of reach of the monster’s claws while he took his sweet time bashing its head in. He almost licked his lips in anticipation.

The familiar looked directly at Doug, and perhaps saw optimism there. Its sigil eyes drew back from its face to make way for a mouth of bloody spikes, growing large and spreading across the black pit that approximated its face, grinning insanely.

The familiar raised the broken horns in each paw and stuck them