The axe struck again. The door frame was almost half gone. One more swing, and Angel could reach around and open the door from the other side.

Brock repeated himself, shouting above his lungs, "I don't know s.h.i.t, but you're staying still or you'll end up like James!"

Pressing down hard on her back, Brock began removing the screw. Inches up from the bone, the axe shattered another long sliver of the door. Angel's hand reached through it, twisting the doork.n.o.b. Angel jerked the door open. Brock kept at work, staying still, staying calm, and unshaken. Angel was standing above him now, raising the axe up high. Moments from taking the swing, Brock almost had the bolt free. He couldn't keep his eyes off Hannah's back if he was going to finish this. Any moment, Angel would be bringing down the axe over his head.

Throwing aside the final screw that came loose, Brock dropped the drill and kicked out his legs, tripping up Angel who fell backwards. She lost the axe, and Brock suddenly had an idea. Reclaiming the power drill, he spun Angel onto her back and pressed his knees up against her back.

"Hannah, help me hold her down! Hannah, are you okay? Say something."

Hannah didn't respond. Her body remained on the floor unmoving. He couldn't check on Hannah until he was finished with Angel. His sister could pick up that axe again and take a killing swing if he didn't do this first.

"Hannah, wake up! Are you alive? Please be alive!"

Lifting up Angel's shirt, Brock tested for the screw on her shoulder blade and drove the drill head into her back. Knees anchoring her down, his one arm pinning her still, he went to work, praying under his breath that Hannah was okay and that this too would work on his sister.

"Hannah, please answer me!"

Legs cramping, his arms losing their strength, and terrified Hannah didn't survive the crude surgery, that she died because of his mistake, that she died like James did, he tried his best to finish Angel as fast as he could.

A lamp in the corner shattered.

Angel bled from her deltoid. A long slender opening like a gummy fish mouth bled.

The coins are coming out of her too.

Hurry!

Brock was cut on the side of the neck by a flying dime, the equivalent of shaving at twenty-five miles an hour. Brock stiffened, his face shrinking in pain as he began working out the second screw.

"Hannah, I love you," he said, afraid she was dying and he wasn't saying anything to her. Brock had no choice but to save Angel, or else the coins firing out of her would not only kill her but kill him too. "If you're awake, answer me."

Nothing.

Lifting up the screw, the last jerk of the power drill, the bolt came free. Brock was thrown backwards into the wall from what burst out of Angel.

NOT ANYWHERE CLOSE TO SAFE.

Black blood burst everywhere. It covered him and the dead bodies littering the floor. All of the liquid was spewing out of Angel's back. After the tide was finished, Angel was left a pale, flaccid thing bunched up in the corner of the room. Hannah had her face to the ground and remained non-reactive. Before Brock could process the events, the room began sizzling and stinking of burning hair and flesh. The deep down decay of the oldest corpses in history. The end result was a room filled up with yellow fog. The dead corpses in the room began to dissolve, and in the end, they turned into the same black mephitic mess he had witnessed during this whole ordeal. The walls began to corrode, the wood giving to the black's heat.

Brock lifted Hannah to her feet. She was roused awake. "Uhhhhhhhh."

"We have to get moving. Can you walk?"

Hannah clutched her head. "Y-eah, I think so."

Angel had a long pink scar going down her back in the shape of a box. His plan had worked. The box itself, made of steel, had been cast across the room, purged from her body.

Hannah double-timed it once she caught the black oil oozing up the walls, eating through them, and still devouring the dead bodies into red, purple, and yellow paste. Overhead, chunks of the ceiling came down, bringing with them sizzling pieces of wood and paneling.

"Get out of here! I'm carrying Angel. Don't turn back, Hannah. I want you out of here!"

Brock urged Hannah towards the hall where she had to overstep Chuck Durnham's corpse. She turned back to Brock, not wanting to leave him behind.

Brock shouted, "Just go! I'm right behind you."

He shot towards the other side of the room, dodging puddles of boiling, frothy black. Brock scooped up Angel, carrying her over his shoulder like a fireman would a victim in distress. Hoisting her up, he muttered, "You were always a dainty little thing, and thank G.o.d you are!"

Half the room was missing, it being a boiling pot of death. Brock weaved and shuffled, nervous at how the ceiling kept creaking and breaking randomly. Wallpaper was eaten through, the room so boiling hot. It stank of infernal death, what kept clinging to him and filling every breath he struggled to take in. The dead spoke, but one dead voice carried over the rest, and it was James's.

"Run/get out!/Escape before it's too late!"

Other dead voices overpowered James's words. "You'll escape and find yourself facing a worse death/a far worse fate/you will die a horrible merciless end/boiling to death will sound like nothing when you face the end when it does come!"

Lunging through the door and staggering into the hallway, his back and knees aching, Brock swore he wouldn't do a lick of physical work ever again in his life if he survived this terrible ordeal. Rushing towards the stairs, he was stopped by a perilous, yet belittled voice. It was Chuck, turning up his head ever so slightly and saying one last thing before dying, "The big event's going to happen very soon/very soon/the big show is about to begin."

Brock charged up the steps. He was determined not to end up as Chuck. He could hear the axe man be broken down by the boiling oil sledge that engulfed him.

The stairs collapsed one at a time. Each one he stepped on broke moments after he treaded across it. Brock blew out a grateful breath of air when he saw Hannah stand in the doorway upstairs. She was holding the way out open. Hannah reached out to pull him through, and he collapsed onto the front yard, unable to lug Angel's body an inch further.

Brock took in the words of the angry dead playing in the sky.

Hannah helped him carry Angel as far away from the house as possible. They both held an arm over Angel's shoulders, carrying her like a wounded solider. Without speaking, they looked behind them as they moved and caught the house's roof collapse. Every window shattered one-by-one. The walls came next, then the very foundation was swallowed whole by the black oil that burned so hot they could feel its intensity against their backs.

Working back towards the woods, they kept on moving. Brock said, "Chuck said one last thing before I escaped the house. He said the big event is happening soon. Whatever that means, I don't want to be around for it."

Angel coughed and whinnied in pain. She was struck by a wicked jolt of agony. She slipped from their grips, landing on all fours, and stared up at them in terror. "Whu-what's happened? Why am I here? Why are you here?"

"Listen, Angel, I removed the mechanical device inside of you, and don't ask how. There's no time. You don't need coins in you to live anymore."

Hannah helped her up to her feet, and they began running as fast as they could.

"Where are we going?" Angel managed to speak out-of-breath. "What's going to happen now."

Brock did his best to describe the situation, everything Chuck explained to them as he was dying. Then he said, "We're getting the f.u.c.k out of this town."

Angel pointed up the road. "Up ahead in the road, it's not too far! The bridge out of Blue Hill isn't far at all."

They were about to run when they noticed what was happening around them.

The woods began to move.

PUNISHMENT.

w.i.l.l.y kept his distance from the foot of the staircase and the box containing the wooden head of his uncle. While footsteps kept coming down the stairs, the mechanical machines started working again; their lights flashing, their mechanisms working on their own. Voices of the dead, the hushed, the accusing, the vile cursing, the berating, the amused kept cycling and recycling. The words, the voices, they were worked up. Their energies doubled. What they had to say was much more important now. The walls leaked black oil. The oil kicked up steam as the black clotted rivulets of foulness sweated down the walls. The reek of death was pungent to the nose, yet the sight of the people walking into the room from the staircase was much worse to take in.

There were fourteen individuals who walked down the steps one at a time like automatons. Their legs and arms were stiff the way they couldn't bend very much. Their faces were clenched as if fighting a force that was making them walk. Their eyes were wide and ghastly, their mouths crying out to w.i.l.l.y for help.

"Don't let this happen to us, save us, we're sorry, we're so sorry, they won't let go of us, I can't feel my body, I'm not moving my body, dear G.o.d, don't just look at us, do something, do something to save us, he's going to kill us, he's sick, he's crazy!"

Uncle Tim's box projected garbled rage through the tinny speaker, "YOU KILLED ME! I AM NOT CRAZY! I AM NOT CRAAAAAZY!"

The floors were boiling with pools of the abysmal liquid. The room was thick with yellow death fog. The machine's lights were murky through the reek. Laughter and voices of the dead seemed to rejoice louder and louder, their decibel level near eardrum bursting. w.i.l.l.y cupped his hands to his ears, yet w.i.l.l.y could somehow hear his uncle's words project from the box.

"Each of these people were responsible for my death/they wanted my property for the city interstate project/I refused to sell, and they hired some goons to burn my place down/these people had their helping hand in my demise/I burned to death/the flames ate my body for fifteen agonizing minutes before I perished/death will make them pay/death has given the dead the power to see their dreams and ambitions come true/ENJOY THE SHOW, w.i.l.l.y!"

w.i.l.l.y watched, afraid to take a step in one direction or the other. The black oil was a half inch pool on the floor. The tide neared his feet. w.i.l.l.y caught swirls of reds, greens, and flesh tones within the black. Watching the oil, hearing his uncle rant, and seeing the mechanical machines work, he truly believed this was all the work of the dead.

There was nothing w.i.l.l.y could do to stop it.

Those fourteen people suddenly shifted stiffly, their bodies working independently of themselves, as if their bodies were made of screws and mechanical joints. They were like the machines, and what he witnessed next proved that theory correct.

The rattling against the house occurred in all the upstairs rooms, through the walls, even the windows (which shattered one by one), and the roof. Through the bas.e.m.e.nt ceiling, the wood splintered and down rained hundreds and hundreds of coins. The coins were drawn towards the people who were hobbling and resisting their own bodies, but losing the battle as they were each forced to stand in front of a mechanical machine.

"Oh G.o.d no!"

"Noooooooo!"

"You're breaking my bones!"

"I can't control my body!"

"Why are you doing this to us?"

"I'm in ag-ony!"

"Gaaaaaaaaaaawd!"

w.i.l.l.y winced as the sounds of bones breaking increased. Wrists snapped. Shoulders were dislocated. Necks cricked. Legs were twisted backwards. Faces were wrought in agony as coins pierced into their bodies right through the skin, but they didn't bleed. They weren't damaged. They were compelled.

One of them grabbed the "Shock Meter" with both hands. The machine was overcome with coins and cash, the money flying in all directions as it kept raining down from the ceiling and getting sucked into the machine. As more coins entered it, the steel grips crackled with electricity, and soon, the woman holding it shrieked until bits of her skin fluttered in the air as sizzling burning meat, then into ashes, as she burned into a crisp black skeleton in less than ten seconds. The corpse toppled backwards, the crispy exterior flaking to nothing to reveal the steel box hidden in her back.

An older man punched the speed bag on the mechanical machine, and when he did, his own face imploded as if hit by a brick thrown at the speed of light. His head was thrown off of his shoulders, the brain disa.s.sembling itself mid-air and striking the wall as splatter. w.i.l.l.y could only guess that how hard the old man punched the bag ended up coming back to his own head with triple the force. The shotgun for the "Duck Hunt" game was in a middle aged woman's hands. She pulled the trigger and out the back of her head shot out b.l.o.o.d.y quarters, dimes, and pennies. Two men who looked like brothers were being attacked by the tiny figurine clowns at the circus who'd escaped their box. Lions were chewing out their throats, while clowns were setting their clothes on fire. The figurines of the audience whooped and hollered as the two victims met their horrible demise. Madame Rousseau spoke in her box, the harsh female voice of the bayou making predictions for the older woman in her eighties, specifically how the woman would strangle herself to death. The older woman did indeed strangle herself with her own hands, but the woman's fingers pressed so hard they broke skin and threaded through muscle until she twisted her own head off. When the head struck the floor, coins, jewelry, and money overflowed out the neck's stump, out her eye sockets, and ear holes.

The other victims were dying, and w.i.l.l.y knew he couldn't save them, but he could save others outside the house from further harm. Whatever powers compelled his uncle to do these things, the man wasn't sane. w.i.l.l.y did the only thing he could think to do in that moment, standing in the room of dying people. w.i.l.l.y gripped the wooden tower containing his uncle's head by two hands and threw it down as hard as he could.

"w.i.l.l.y/NOOOOOOOOO!"

The gla.s.s around Uncle Tim's head shattered. The head rolled out, instantly melting in the oil. The wood parted to show off gears and pulleys and steel mechanisms at work. Flames shot out of Tim's wooden head, and then it sank in the oil that kept rising higher and higher from the ground. The rest of the room became victim to the heat. The mechanical machines and the remains of the victims sank into the black mess, instantly engulfed and then vanishing as if they'd never existed at all.

w.i.l.l.y rushed the stairs, only to tip forward and land on top of them in his haste. His ankles had melted into the black. Flames rose up from beneath the stairs, cooking him in moments. While his flesh was scorched, w.i.l.l.y finally understood what powers possessed his uncle. Death had its way with his uncle's imagination. What ideas, hopes, and dreams were stored in the man's heart and soul were taken by the dark forces of the afterlife. Enough dead people had been committed to the earth that they had gained a certain power and freedom to make their ideas real.

As w.i.l.l.y watched the flesh from his fingers turn to blackened and cooked bone, he also learned something else. Death wanted to play games with the living. His suffering was their pleasure. His sorrow their celebration. Death had fooled his uncle into playing their game of human suffering. Now they were done with his uncle, as death was finished with w.i.l.l.y.

The spirits of the dead now had greater ideas and ambitions to exploit.

The fire weakened the stairs. w.i.l.l.y crashed through them just like his uncle did all those years ago and burned alive in a scorching blaze of burning black tar.

The voices floating about the room rejoiced.

w.i.l.l.y's voice joined the throngs of the dead.

NEAR THE END.

Angel was the first to reach the truck in the road. She screamed, backing up from the driver's side door. Brock remembered her boyfriend was in the seat, and how his body had been pulped by coins. He eased Angel aside, though firmly, sensing movement about them in the woods. The sounds of the dead were at a deafening roar, the words emanating millions of voices strong. Brock lugged out the flaccid corpse, the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d's sticky blood covering his hands. Brock placed him on the street.

Hannah had grabbed Angel by the arm and lead her to the other side of the truck. Brock moved to the driver's side, the keys still in the ignition. He was so grateful there wasn't a steel slot covering the ignition that he cried out in joy, but n.o.body could hear him over the din of the dead.

Turning the keys, the truck started right up. Brock checked to make sure everybody was inside. Angel and Hannah's face was turned in terrified frowns, eying the blood, overwhelmed and horrified that they had to sit in it. He too was covered in congealed blood.

He flipped on the headlights to reduce the darkness. After driving a half of a mile, it became apparent what they were hearing that was so loud. In the road, coins, money, jewelry, all of it was magnetized to a house down in the woods. The coins and jewelry clanged together, kicking up wild sparks. They could see the house where the change was drawn to. The roof, the shingles, every inch of the ranch style house was chocked full of holes, as if an entire fleet of M-60 guns had been unloaded into it from all angles. And the decimation continued. Wooden boards were see-through to the point walls collapsed as the storm of money continued to filter inside. The sight was confusing as it was an inspiration to step on the gas that much harder.

Angel kept watching in the rearview mirror, and when the money storm calmed and went silent, she turned her eyes from it until a great explosion rocked the earth so strong it almost sent the truck off the road.

"Look!" Brock turned to his side mirror and watched the house literally explode, everything firing up miles high. There was no fire, no smoke, only coins spreading across the sky, each individual piece sucked towards something nearby, each coin going their own direction.

"What the h.e.l.l is happening?" Hannah kept mouthing to herself. "It doesn't make any sense at all."

Brock couldn't instill comfort in either of them, he himself trembling. It's what Chuck had warned them about. The next big thing. The ideas of the dead were battling to come to fruition, and Tim Hawker's idea was about to conclude with a big a.s.s bang.

"Keep your eyes open," Brock shouted. "Something's happening very soon!"

The first indication things were coming to a head was the black oil billowing up from pockets of the ground everywhere, as if ghosts had struck their payload, the black crude issuing with geyser ferocity, spitting up head-high and gushing continuously.

"Drive faster!" Angel demanded, lowering in her seat and scared to death.

Hannah hugged Angel, and Angel returned the gesture, both of them stealing what comfort they could from each other.

That left Brock alone to face the chaos.

Driving on, new events began to transpire. The trees, the road, and in the farther distance, the houses in the residential area, the cars, the windows, the roofs, even the corpses, formed new steel slots somewhere on them. Coin-operated devices, he thought, that's what they were, like machines in a mechanical museum.

Brock heard the rumble in the air, and then the voices on the air stopped.

Then it began to rain.

THE GRAND FINALE.

It wasn't raining water when the sky grumbled. Flashes of copper and nickel came down. They were sucked into the coin slots that were located on inanimate objects. The slots devoured the coins. Escaping the woods and driving into the residential areas, they watched the corpses in the street who'd taken in the coins jerk to life. This time, they were rotting, their eyes sunken into their bodies, their muscles atrophied and their arms and legs moving at a sluggish pace against rigor mortis. Black oil oozed from their bodies as if they could burst open with the black stuff at any moment. Trees renewed by money stiffened in every yard, the wood bending and creaking as their root systems broke dirt and the branches came to life, swinging and batting at the truck, denting the driver's side door, and Brock cried out as one of the tips of the branches sliced across his cheek through the shattered window.

Slamming down on the gas, Brock overcame the living tree that chased after him in the rearview mirror. "G.o.dd.a.m.n! Did you see that? Did you see that?"