Legion's Arc

Chapter 16 of 22

Legion circled the gray church and beat its body against the walls with its fury and hunger growing stronger and stronger. Inside, people screamed and dragged the pews toward the doors. Margaret stood at the front. She was in her seventies, her face hard from years of loss. Legion had taken her three sons in the woods, and she had never forgiven the creature. She pulled an old book from behind the pulpit. Her hands did not shake. She had waited her whole life to read these words. "Push them tighter!" Diana shouted. She shoved a pew against the door with the townspeople. Wood scraped stone. Diana had brought this thing here. She had burned the book and the shirt, and this was what came of it. She threw her weight against the barricade and prayed the old woman was right. Legion clawed at the boards. Its many mouths howled as one as rats began to boil out of legions’s body and spill to the floor. It smelled the warm blood inside. The blood that it deserved from every generation that tried to lock it away and forget it like trash. It slammed its shoulder into the front doors, and the pews slid an inch across the floor. Margaret read louder. The words were old and strange, learned from sermons when she was a girl. She did not stop for the screaming. She did not stop for the pounding. Each line came steady from her mouth. Outside, Legion shuddered. The rats at its edges twitched and broke loose. It felt its own body loosen. Something else was inside that church. Something that pulled at the will that held the swarm together. It fought back. It pressed harder against the doors. Margaret spoke the last line. Her voice fell quiet. Everything outside went still. The howling stopped. The pounding stopped. The townspeople held their breath and looked at one another. Diana stepped back from the barricade. For a moment she believed it had worked. Then the front doors exploded inward. Splintered wood flew across the pews. Legion poured through the broken frame, still whole, still bound. The ceremony had loosened the swarm but had not broken it. It had made the creature slower to hold, and it had made the creature angry. People ran for the far walls. Legion swept toward the pulpit where Margaret stood. She did not run. She lifted the book and shouted the last line again, straight into its black eyes. The swarm split around her. Rats scattered from the sound and could not close in. Margaret had bought them a gap in the wall of fur and teeth. "The book," she gasped to Diana. "It answers to a book. There is one that made it. Find it and you can unmake it." Legion pulled itself back together behind her. Margaret's voice gave out. The swarm surged forward and took her. Diana stepped forward to help but it was over so fast there was nothing she could have done. All around Diana, the rats ran by but never touched her. Diana made a run for the door and stopped as she saw legion staring at her as if it recognized her.