36. Faith and Patience (D1)

__ R. Lee Munson leaned against a tree, his right arm steadying himself as his shaky knees threatened to bring him back down to the ground. With his back to the girl and Doug, he looked headless, his face hidden from their view below a bowed head while his eyes reformed in their ruined sockets.
__ "What makes this so hard," he said in a strangely soft voice, "Is that everything is frozen." Then he chuckled.
__ Doug could only stare shaking, partly from the cold, partly from terror. He glanced from Munson's back to the little girl - what was her name, Maggie? - smiling up at the reanimated murderer.
__ Maggie looked to Doug and said, "See, I told you it was you. You did it, Doug. You did."
__ "I-I did?"
__ Maggie nodded as Munson slowly turned around. Doug was thankful for the darkness. He could see the dark hollow shapes that once held his eyes, now slowly forming dim whites and amoebic irises.
__ "M-Munson?" Doug tried.
__ Munson nodded. He cleared his throat tentatively like a flu victim testing his voice after an all-night fever. "I'm cold."
__ "I can imagine."
__ Munson slowly shook his head. "No you can't, Doug. ... You can't."
__ Doug watched as Maggie approached the articulate zombie and reached her hand out to him. "Hi again," she said.
__ Not sure he was believing what he could see through the dim, Doug thought Munson smiled down at her. "Thank you, little lamb. I'm sorry I left you."
__ "You did what you were s'posed to, Mr. M."
__ He nodded again and shivered under his blood-crusted jacket. To Doug he said, "Ever have your intestines frozen sixty degrees below normal body temp, Testerbird?"
__ Still stunned, but suddenly remembering Ardy, Doug said, "I don't know how you— How I—. We have to go after her."
__ Munson looked down to Maggie. The little girl clarified, "The Crazy Boy took her, I guess, after he shot you in the eyes."
__ Doug stammered, "He sh-shot you in the—"
__ "Doug's right," Munson smiled to the girl. "We have to save Ardelene. She's important to this whole thing."
__ "What do you mean," Maggie smiled back, "Important?"
__ "Later, child." Then to Doug, in that same soft voice, "Where, Doug? Where was this?"

__ No pain.
__ Nothing but bloodlust and ferocity. Ferocity personified.
__ That's what Ardy was feeling inside Deer Head. The creature was called "Legad" at least in its own mind. His head was swirling with promises she recognized as false but apparently Legad thought of them as the largest pot of gold at the end of the most beautiful rainbow ever. Inside his head she saw her own torture. She saw his plans bobbing in a pool of blood. He planned to rape her. He planned to eviscerate her with his fingers. He planned to break the bones that had not yet been broken.
__ And from what Ardy could determine, the only thing keeping him from starting his chores was that he didn't know what he could do to her without making her pass out. Any one of the incredible horrors he gleefully played with in his mind would undoubtedly shock her into unconsciousness. It seemed important that she survive the pain to bring him his pleasure.
__ The psychic connection started to weaken as Ardy mentally cringed away from the terror film she starred in within the creature's mind. Then she found herself kicked out forcefully as another being pried itself into its mind. This third brain was ancient and dark, more vicious than anything Deer Head was dreaming. This was a persona who existed since time began. The only thing Ardy could get from him before going back to her own body was that he wanted to make someone suffer, someone he could never make suffer but would try nonetheless.
__ He wanted to make God cry.

__ Doug followed as Munson and Maggie lead the way through the woods. Maggie kept step behind her Frankenstein friend who didn't seem to need to see in the dark to navigate his way around the trees of Palley's Woods.
__ "Munson?" Doug called as they hiked. They had all been silent for the past fifteen minutes or so.
__ "Yes, Doug?"
__ "What about your friend back there?" Doug remembered it was Munson's running off, the whole adventure outside the safety of the Psychic Parlor that got Ardy taken. It was all because he thought Ardy could resurrect his murder victim. It was all because he wanted to repay Clyde Morrow, to bring him back to life so that he wouldn't go back to hell again when he died.
__ "What about Mr. Morrow?" Munson said without slowing or looking back. He had obviously thrown in the name to acknowledge to Doug that he was fully aware of his original reason for coming out to the woods.
__ "If I'm the one with the resurrection powers, as Maggie says, don't you want me to revive him?"
__ "It's too late, Doug. Hell already has him."
__ Doug jogged up a couple steps to close the distance on Munson's back. "But you were in hell. You came back."
__ "That wasn't my plan, Doug. That was God's."
__ "What about all that redemption you were babbling about? I thought you had to confront him."
__ Munson continued his pace, Maggie jogging alongside like she were running to the playground with her friends.
__ Doug jogged up again, this time within reach. "You can't just leave him there, R. Lee. It's because of you Ardy came out here—"
__ Munson suddenly stopped and whirled on Doug. He took the skinny store owner by the collar and lifted him back off his heels and slammed him against the rough bark of a tree. The air knocked out of Doug's lungs with a cough. "Look, Doug, that wasn't the reason I came out here. I came out here so that you and Ardy would come looking for me, so that Legad would come looking for her, so that Maggie would find me and lure you to me to bring me out of hell for the last time, so that he would not be prepared for the return."
__ Munson took a deep breath and loosened his grip on Doug's collar. He smoothed the other man's shirt and placed a palm against his cheek. "If you can't just have faith, Douglas, you'll never understand anything."
__ As Munson and Maggie resumed their brisk walk, Douglas sniffed back a tear and forced his chin to stop quiverring. "Who?" he called after them.
__ Munson stopped and turned. His eyes were blue and warm. Doug could swear that wasn't their color earlier when they'd first met.
__ Doug repeated, "Who? When who returns."
__ Munson smiled and took a deep breath. "The first teacher, Doug."
__ "Teach—?"
__ "The Christ."

__ Ardy was starting to feel more clear, though somewhat loopy. Her head swam in big round circles and she no longer felt her arm and leg. In fact, her whole body was floating, waving like flotsam on a polluted creek ridge. Every time she looked at Dear Head she laughed at him.
__ "Vlagh ju rhunkus gungy," the Head said.
__ "Oh, shut up," Ardy said, and laughed again. "I can't even understand you."
__ Suddenly the creature stood and placed its bloody human hands to its animal head just under the devil horn antlers and pushed ceilingward. Ardy watched, wide-eyed, as the Deer Head peeled back off a bloody human face. As she watched, the head dropped behind the boy she now recognized as the Pizza King kid, the delivery boy from the shootout. Ardy realized the look she was giving him was one of saucer-eyed horror, but all she could do was bust out laughing.
__ "Now you shut up!" Pizza Boy said, peeling bits of gutted dear head and brains from his cheeks and nose. "If I hadn't hit this stupid thing and totalled the car, we'd be at the church by now!" Then his anger surged and he brought a crimson fist down on Ardy's bandaged broken arm.
__ Her laughter suddenly electrocuted by a white hot flash of agony, Ardy heaved and thrashed on the bed. That caused a chain reaction through her body, waking up her leg even through the tranquilizer and heavy drugs Legad administered that he had found in Munson's car. She quickly collapsed to a shudder and merciful unconsciousness.
__ Shuddering himself, more with anger and ferocious despair, Legad screamed until his lungs burned. Then he reared back and punched Ardy's body as hard as he could.
__ At least that's what he had planned to do. Someone grabbed his arm as he extended it backward and twisted it behind him until it snapped at the elbow. This time all Legad could do was whimper as his Master forced him to his knees.
__ "It seems I made a mistake choosing this vessel," the Master hissed with a shushing paper-tear voice that chilled even Ardy's unconscious spine. With that, the Master reached down and snapped an antler off the roadkill deer's head.
__ And pushed it into Legad's ear.