Free Hellhound on My Trail by D. J. Butler Page B

similar action with his twelve-gauge. Mike felt better when the pistol had a fully loaded clip in it.
    He would have felt even better with more alcohol in him. He was starting to feel distressingly sober.
    The passage looked like it was a natural cave, to Mike’s inexpert eye, but the walls of both sides were honeycombed with large holes of some sort. The puffing of his own breath around the flashlight obscured his vision a bit, as each step he took was into a fog of his own making. His footsteps were loud and crunchy in the darkness. He walked fast, conscious of the demonic things somewhere at his back, and shoved bullets into his second clip as fast as he could manage.
    When both clips were loaded and the gun back on his belt he realized he didn’t hear the footsteps of the others behind him. He stopped, and then his curiosity finally got the better of him. He took the light in his hand, and poked his head into one of the holes. The depression in the wall was barrel-sized and sank down away from the passage. He shone the light down and looked to see what was inside.
    The depression was full of skulls.
    A hand from the darkness grabbed his wrist.
    “Chingado!” Mike shouted.
    “No seas maricón!” Chuy hissed, spattering blood from his lips. “You gonna call your friends, you chickenshit joto? You think you can make me do anything I don’t wanna do anymore?”
    “Jeez,” Mike panted, trying not to look at his brother’s ghost. Chuy stood in shadow, but Mike thought he could see every cut and every drop of blood on the mutilated specter. “Jeez, Chuy …”
    “You don’t get away from me, hijo de puta, comprendes? You’re blood, and that means you’re mine forever, you got it?” Chuy’s teeth shone white as the moon behind the sheets and rivulets of blood that fell from them and spilled out his mouth. He looked like a wild beast, feeding. “I’m gonna teach you a lesson, this time!”
    Mike wanted to pull back but the hand held him. Chuy’s face danced in rage.
    “Chuy, I … I never …”
    “You never what, puto que eres? Me cago en ti!”
    A loud boom reverberated through the tunnel.
    Something tumbled into Mike’s side, nearly knocking him down. He spun around with his gun and the Maglite, and had his finger on the trigger, about to squeeze, before he realized that the thing in his sights was the mop-headed Chicano kid. He froze, smelling his own sweat and fear.
    “Don’t walk slow on my account!” Twitch called. “The boy’s got his own legs.”
    Mike turned and stumbled away from the niche of bones, fixing the beam of the flashlight on the ground and not looking at anything else. His heart raced at a thousand miles an hour and the rest of him felt numb.
    The passage descended slowly, and as it dropped it opened up, the ceiling rising to twelve or fifteen feet over Mike’s head and the walls as far apart. The space didn’t make Mike feel any more comfortable. He stared at the pool of light, willing Chuy to leave him alone and hoping not to run into any more giant insects.
    And then the passage abruptly ended.
    Mike stopped, staring at the wall of yellowish brick and the iron door that barred his way. He pulled at the handle; it turned, but the door didn’t open, and Mike saw that there was an antique-style keyhole in the handle’s shadow.
    “Mab’s knuckles,” Twitch commented as she and the kid joined him.
    “What’s the holdup?” Eddie hissed from the back. “This ain’t no Sunday picnic, whatever Twitch might be whispering to the narcoleptic!” He caught up with the others. “Damn.”
    “Can you turn into a—” he almost said fly , “worm or something?” Mike asked Twitch.
    “Even if I could,” she said, “that door’s iron.”
    CRASH!
    “What does that mean?” he asked.
    Everyone turned to look back. A flicker of colored light told Mike that the Hellhound had finally smashed through the trapdoor and was in the tunnel behind them.
    “What it means,” Eddie