10:05 A.M.
Jubilee of Life Churchyard
In the churchyard, the crowd parts to allow the three-wheelers and Mick to pass through to the now waiting ambulance.
The EMT’s take over for Jacob and the Reverend, securing Mick and moving him in back of the vehicle, its lights still flashing but sirens silenced.
Though in the worst pain of his life, apart from bumps and bruises, the break appears to be worst of Mick’s problems. An EMT helps Mick’s sobbing mother into the back of the Ambulance and shuts the doors.
Janice, the custodian, sees a lone, wide-eyed boy standing near the far corner of the church, leading to the snake pit. He has an empty burlap bag with a red rattlesnake stamped on the front in hand. His lighting stick lay on the ground before him as he stares at something beyond her line of sight.
A percussive, insectoid clicking, sound begins to fill the air.
The boy’s deer in the headlights look disturbs Janice. Running toward him, she stops a dozen feet before him and yells out, “Son, son, are you alright? Come back here and we’ll go get you some nice lemona…”
Before she finishes speaking, the high pitched sound thickens into an hissing clatter, like handfuls of teeth and sand hitting glass fighting with the drone of already dying cicadas. The dissonance overtakes the buzz of humanity surrounding ambulance.
The boy never answers her as he is quickly knocked flat by something. A flopping mass of chaos, all tentacles, scales and shadows.
As Janice’s eyes catch up with the shock of the boy falling, she sees tangled teeth and tails as the boy disappears, devoured by the repugnant horror.
12.
10:06 A.M.
Jubilee of Life Churchyard
Reverend Corwin and Jacob Tilden are watching EMTs close the doors to the ambulance when they hear the custodian’s scream. Turning at once, they witness the small boy being enveloped by the tangled, convulsing sphere.
“Sis…Sisturus…Sisturusma…mah…
Sisturusmachia,” a stone faced Reverend Corwin mumbles, bowing his head.
“No, Marvin, don’t say that,” Jacob replies in a loud whisper. “That’s just a story, an old legend. Reverend,There ain’t no such thing.”
Raising his head first and then his eyes to meet Jacob’s, Reverend Corwin shouts above the crowd, “The devil has rolled his way into town.
Jacob, the devil…is here.”
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