The Uncanny Tales of Crush & Pound 5
by Christopher D. Carter
© 2013
Text and Illustration Copyright © 2013 Christopher D. Carter
All Rights Reserved
Also by Christopher Carter:
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound Annual 1
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 1
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 2
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 3
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 4
Discover other titles by Christopher Carter at:
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Next Issue
About the Author
Chapter 1
*
Twisted Minister
*
The great willow tree reared back one heavy limb to the ground, and with the release of a mighty twist, the witch was driven rocketing backward into a candle factory at the end of the street. Cheering from the treetop, Pound held onto the trunk and braced for the witch’s return. In a fiery burst of flames, the candle factory exploded, and the charred, smoky form of the witch strode out from the remnants of the damaged storefront. Carefully, the smoldering carcass weaved her hands in a whirl, and the smoke and flames cleared from the witch’s body. She laughed at the pitiful attack that the tree had made, and forming her hands into an ‘X’, the witch aimed a hex upon her adversaries. The venerable tree spun like a top when the anticipated spell struck the trunk near the top, and Pound was nearly thrown to the street on impact. Fortunately the lower limbs weaved a net of branches into a protective fiber, catching him in mid-descent and saving his life.
“I need more help,” he thought to himself. Seth was hiding behind an elm tree next to the sidewalk, and Pound transmitted a mental summons to wake the sleeping hardwood from its slumber. The roots of the elm blanketed the surrounding yard in a hefty radius and burst through the surface of the earth at Seth’s feet. Seth fell backward in surprise, and when he made a dash for cover, the lower limbs reached down to snatch him off his feet. The limbs then passed him up the outer boundary of the branches to the center of the treetop in a symphony of motion that could only compare with the wave a millipede’s legs from head to tail.
“Seth! Go after the four trees into the city!” commanded Pound.
“What should I do when I catch up with one?” Seth called, still in a daze of confusion from the elm tree’s sudden animated emergence.
“Those bewitched maples were small trees in size. The elm that you’re riding is large enough and strong enough to capture them and bring them back here to me one at a time, and I’ll remove the enchantment,” replied Pound, though he had doubts of his own power over the witches’ spells. All he could do was to try and hope for the best when Seth brought the first enchanted tree back to him.
When Pound turned his attention back to the witch, she whirled her hands in a spell and threw a fireball at the trunk of the willow, which then smashed into a thousand tiny cinders on the scaly bark. The cinders grew tiny legs, and the flames scattered up the trunk of the tree like cockroaches scattering in the light. Reacting quickly, the many limbs snatched the cinders and flicked them into a small circumference around the base of the roots where the flames were easily smothered in the dust.
“Tis a pity that you stand against us,” said the witch as she hovered in the sky. “When Drakthos has your friends, you will be persuaded,” she cackled as she pointed to the church that now floated menacingly above Sherry and Dr. Tatum. Phil had already been taken by the other witch and flown to the top of one of the skyscrapers downtown.
“Keep telling yourself that sister,” exclaimed Pound, and he summoned two more elm trees to protect Sherry and Dr. Tatum. Standing by their side, the elms spread their limbs and shielded the two ladies from the possessed building. Then he had his own willow tree reach out and ensnare the unsuspecting witch in a balled cage of limbs.
“Let me loose!” she screamed, and red flames and black soot shot out from between the rails of the spherical cage.
“Not a chance,” Pound answered weakly, and then his eyes rolled into his head as he lost momentary consciousness from the strain of the battle.
**********
Using both hands and the tree’s wooden appendages, Seth steered the elm toward downtown, following the destruction of the maple as it wrapped its tendrils around the streetlights and cars. When he rounded a corner, he was surprised to see a car flying through the air at him like a missile. The elm bent backwards deflecting the auto into a neighboring building as it protected Seth with its lower limbs. The carved face on the maple made eye contact with Seth, and it was as if he were staring into a mirror and seeing an evil version of himself.
“Perfect. How lucky can I get,” said Seth sarcastically as the two trees faced each other in a standoff. The elm stepped forward and snatched the trunk of the maple, and the two trees shook violently as they struggled with one another in a battle of strength. The softer maple limbs began to break under the impressive strain that the elm tree exerted on the smaller hardwood, and for a moment, Seth believed he had this fight won. Then he heard a whoosh of air coming up from behind, and his heart fell into his stomach with fear. Instinctively he ducked, and the witch zoomed by his head, barely missing his skull with an outstretched claw. She then turned and wrung her hands together in an incantation. Ice crystals formed between her hands in long sharp points, and she hurled the frozen daggers at his unshielded body. The topmost limbs of the elm reacted without hesitation, yanking his body to the side and catching the blades of ice in its bark. Seth felt the tree shudder in pain, and before the witch could attack with another spell, the elm lifted the smaller maple like a baseball bat and swung a direct hit, dead center on the witch’s midsection. Stricken with a blow that would have killed a normal person, the witch’s body sailed through the air and slammed back-first into the second story of a building, collapsing to the street below in a heap.
The elm lowered Seth to the sidewalk, and he ran over to examine the witch’s remains. He placed his fingers on her neck, and to his astonishment, there was still a pulse. Her eyes fluttered open and shut a few times, and Seth surmised the battle was nowhere near over. Desperately he reached into his pockets for a weapon, and when he pulled out his hands, the only tool he had in his pocket was a tube of extra strength adhesive. Thinking for a just a moment while the witch was still groggy, he opened the tube and coated her bare hands with the sticky substance. He then ran back to the elm and hid behind the trunk to wait for the inevitable.
Patiently Seth let time pass by, and conflicting thoughts drove through his mind as he watched the events unfold. He had just enough time to disappear inside a building and escape the witch’s wrath, but he knew the time for confrontation would have to come eventually. Though he was outmatched, Seth decided to push doubt to the side and stand his ground in this battle. Over the next few moments, the evil witch twitched like a marionette, miraculously rose to her feet, and glared over at Seth with a wicked grin. Perhaps he should have fled, he thought to himself as she broadcast her hatred directly at him.
“You’ll die for that!” she screeched and wrung her hands together in a spell as before. Her hands glowed as power surged through her fingertips, and when she raised them over her head to aim the mounting power surge at Seth, she found that her hands would not separate.
“No!” she screamed as the power between her hands glowed and burned. The power then crept up her arms in a skulking dance to her midsection. In seconds, she was engulfed in a corona of white hot energy, followed by a blinding
supernova. Seth covered his eyes from the intensity of the explosion, and when the dust had settled, there was no trace left of the witch in the street.
“That came in handy,” quipped Seth as he slid the adhesive back into his pocket.
**********
“How did we end up in this situation?” Sherry remarked to Dr. Tatum as she shook her head in disbelief. “I mean, really. If I told this story to a shrink, they would have me put away.” Remarkably, the demon Drakthos had taken possession of an entire church building, and they now found themselves being chased by a floating chapel that seemed bent on their destruction. To add to the confusion, they were being protected by two large trees that Pound had enlisted in their battle for survival. The two gigantic elm trees enveloped Sherry and Dr. Tatum beneath their canopy, and for a moment, Sherry thought that they stood a small chance of surviving. The church then swooped down and pressed its weight against the outer limbs of the trees in an effort to get in closer to the ladies.
“Grab onto the lower limbs and pull yourself up into the safety of the trunk,” shouted Dr. Tatum to Sherry. The trees had leaned forward far enough that the climb was easy, but Sherry was still fatigued from her previous injuries. The arm that had been injured in the helicopter ride ached with the strain of exertion.
“I don’t know how long I can keep this up,” said Sherry. A sadistic laugh creaked from the bowels of the church as it caught the meaning of her comment, and the demon possessed building seemed to change its method of attack. Instead of fighting a battle with the trees, the Moravian church floated upward and hovered overhead just out of reach of the trees. The enemy was prepared to wait them out.
“Now what should we do,” asked Sherry.
“As long as there are trees between us and the church, we’re safe,” Dr. Tatum rationalized. “If we can’t get out of the trees to safety, then maybe we should move the trees to safety.” She then whispered into the creases of the bark, and the end of the elm tree’s roots began crawling in rhythm toward the skyscraper downtown where Phil had fled. The second tree followed instinctively, and they made their way downtown followed by a floating church.
“Sickeningly, this reminds me of a Halloween parade,” Sherry said with a nervous laugh.
**********
When Pound awoke, the memories poured back into his mind with a rush. The willow tree had managed to contain the witch in the spiral cage, and amazingly she was no longer putting up a fight to get free. She was also unaware of the fate of her sister at the hands of Seth, or as Seth would point out later, at the fate of her own hands.
“Sweet dreams,” she purred from behind the wooden cage. “You looked so innocent and helpless while you slept. Are you sure you should be involved in this fight at all?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“A man with your powers should be king,” she replied with a hiss.
“No . . . no,” he said shaking his head, but he could not avert her gaze. “This must be some sort of spell, a spell to control my mind,” he thought.
“Yes, you are mine,” a voice whispered to the conscience within the depths of his mind. He belonged to her now, and he would no longer be able to control the elms that protected himself and his friends.
**********
Twenty feet from the skyscraper, the elm trees groaned to a stop. Sherry, Dr. Tatum, and Seth were all surprised that their wooden guardians had paused suddenly for a moment. Seth found himself located a hundred yards away from his two companions, and he took in the sight of the Moravian church, detached from the ground and floating above them ominously in the sky, as a bad sign.
As the trees swayed to a stop and the menacing building hovered over Sherry and Dr. Tatum, an incredibly discouraging thought occurred to them, that something must have gone wrong with Pound.
“Why did we all stop?” Dr. Tatum asked Sherry.
“I don’t know, but if we don’t do something fast, we’re going to regret it,” Sherry answered. After her experiences in the darkness of Drakthos’ dimension, she found that being quick and decisive had enabled her to survive in the worst of circumstances. She looked back at the levitating church building as it approached the outer limbs of her tree in particular, and she wondered if Drakthos was aware that their protectors were incapacitated. The foundation of the building made contact with her elm tree and began to push on it where it stood. The tree swayed as it no longer posed any resistance to the demon’s prodding, and with the tree leaning on its side, Sherry found that there was no time left for hesitation. They had to make a run for cover before the possessed church learned that the trees were no longer capable of guarding the field agents. Sherry climbed down to the roots first and then ran as hard as she could to the front door of the nearby skyscraper. Opening the entrance door outward and slipping inside, she waited for Dr. Tatum who soon followed in behind her. Luckily for them, the demon-possessed church was still pre-occupied by the now silent trees, and they had escaped for cover within the enormous building without much time to spare. The possessed church building pressed forward on Sherry’s tree and knocked it off balance onto the street. The stain glass windows squinted, and a deep, resonant laugh echoed between at street level while the church plowed over the tree as if it were a blade of grass under a lawn mower blade. One after the other, the church bulldozed over the two elms that Sherry and Dr. Tatum had abandoned, leaving nothing but splinters and busted logs laying in the streets.
“Mom would be shocked to catch me running away from church,” Sherry submitted with a nervous laugh.
“No doubt,” agreed Dr. Tatum. “Look! It’s after Seth now!”
As they observed through the front windows, they witnessed the detached wooden structure glide on air towards their comrade who had ducked into a narrow side street for cover. The possessed church had been too slow to thwart their escape, but Seth was another story altogether. It hovered over to the seam of the alleyway between buildings and loomed ominously above the dead end intersection, leaving no way out for Seth.
“Seth! Stay where you are!” yelled Dr. Tatum to him.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Seth agreed. “I didn’t bring my tithe with me!” he joked with nervousness.
“What are we going to do?” Sherry asked Dr. Tatum.
“I thought that I saw Phil get dropped off on the top story of this building by one of the witches. Since we can’t leave now, we should find Phil,” she answered coolly.
“What about Seth?!” prodded Sherry anxiously.
“The sooner this story comes to a close, the sooner he can get away,” she answered. “I don’t want to leave him, but I don’t know of any way to stop a witch, much less a rogue church. If we can get to Phil and the Quilt, maybe we have a shot. I hope,” Dr. Tatum explained with a twinge of doubt as they ran to the interior of the building. When they tried the elevator controls, nothing happened. “Phil was dropped off on the top story by one of the witches. We need to get to the top somehow, but this storm must have knocked out the electrical panels, so we’ll have to use the stairs.”
Together they began running up the endless set of stairs, flight by flight. When they had reached the tenth story, they stopped to catch their breath. Sitting on the bottom step of the next story Sherry rested her head in her hands in thought.
“I can’t make sense of this, Doc. Witches, demons, traitors. Why has this stuff happened to us? What did we do?” Sherry asked in a tone of despair.
“I don’t know, Sherry,” Dr. Tatum replied, putting her arm around her to comfort her. No words passed between them as they sat together on the steps.
Then the strangest event imaginable happened in the stairwell. Snowflakes began to fall, and their eyes became heavy. Dr. Tatum and Sherry Lance succumbed to the sleep spell that had been woven for them.
**********
“Sherry! Doc!” the voice called from the distance. Sherry walked down the tunnel of light,
and she awoke to see a familiar face.
“Seth,” she said as she opened her eyes and placed her hand on his cheek.
“What happened?” Seth asked while helping her to sit upright. He did the same with Dr. Tatum as she began to stir.
“We were climbing the stairs, and that’s all I can remember,” Sherry replied, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Me, too,” said Dr. Tatum. “What time is it, and why do your clothes look a hundred years old?” she said as she felt the drab potato sack clothing that he now wore.
“It’s morning. I lost you two yesterday outside the building, and I hid in an alley all night. There was no way out, and I was awake for most of the evening, waiting for that demon possessed church to do something, but it seemed determined to wait for me. I drifted off after 1:00 am, and when I woke up at daybreak, the church had moved, though I can’t be certain where it went. Anyway, I was glad to see it was gone, and when I was sure that I could make it to the front door down below, I sprinted the distance as fast as I could go,” he explained. “I ran up the stairs and found you guys here. As for my clothes, that’s a mystery to me, but your outfits look dated as well,” he said as he pointed to the frilly period dresses they now wore.
“You mean we’ve been asleep for almost an entire day, and our taste in clothing has been cursed, too?!” Sherry asked with a frown as she rubbed her hand across the frilly, drab dress.
“I guess. The last time I saw you was when you escaped from the church and ran into the building,” he replied. “But outside, things have changed, too. Almost like we’ve gone back in time,” he continued.
“So where are the church and the witches now?” asked Dr. Tatum.
“I do have some good news there. One of the witches blew herself up,” Seth replied with a smile, and he expounded with his hands thrown up in the air. Then looking as if he were dreading his next sentence, Seth pointed up the stairwell. “Something strange must be happening up there, but I have a feeling we should keep moving to the top of the building. It looks like the weather will get worse as we go up though.”