Good Riddance (RB Vs. The Shadow God, Chapter 22) · 3:08pm Jul 15th, 2022
Previously, on The Shadow God:
Sledgehammers!
And now:
We resume our tale of woe and misery with Craig and Todd on the ground, Detective Eubanks pointing a gun at them. He wants to know what they know.
The detective kept his pistol poised on Craig. “My … partner …” Eubanks wiped his mouth. “My partner …” he began again.
“Are you talking about Underwood?” Craig asked. “What about the prick?”
“D-d-deeead!” Eubanks spat, wiping his mouth again.
Craig manages to calm him down a little, and they head inside Craig's house. Which, you may recall, is the current resting place of Craig's mother.
Cut to Mark, who is watching them. He decides to wait for an opportunity.
Cut back to Craig, who has just found his mother's corpse.
“Dear God, NO!” Craig screamed out. He rounded the refrigerator and found his mother slumped in the corner between it and the cupboard, her body seemingly eaten from the inside out.
Eaten from the inside out? You want to elaborate on that, narrator?
No?
Oh well.
Eubanks goes for his radio to report the body. Craig decides the last thing he wants to deal with right now is more police, so he grabs the radio from him. Like any good police officer, Eubanks' response to this is to immediately shoot Craig in the chest. Craig, of course, is fine because he's invincible. This spooks Eubanks, who decides that Craig and Todd must have had something to do with Underwood's death.
Todd manages to grab Eubanks' firearm. He tosses it to Craig, who points it at Eubanks. Todd grabs some rope, and they set about tying him up. Eubanks makes a snide remark about Craig's father, and Craig pistol whips him hard enough to knock him unconscious.
“Finish tying him up,” said Craig. “We gotta go.”
“Where?” Todd asked. “The church?”
Craig shook his head. “Back to the cave.”
“The cave?” Todd asked incredulously. “It’s caved in. We can’t.”
Craig shook his head again. “It wants us to think it’s caved in.” He thought for a moment. “If Sledge was a mirage, then I think those stalactites were a mirage as well. Did you actually feel any of them hit you? A sliver of rock? Anything?”
Todd held the rope, thinking. “I felt a rumble,” he said.
“Yeah, and that’s all we felt,” said Craig. “Something’s trying to keep us away from that cave for some reason and I intend to find out why.” He looked at Eubanks as Todd began wrapping the rope around him.
So. We're going back to the cave. Could we not have just stayed there, or maybe rearranged events a little so that they only had to make one trip into the woods? I feel like this could have been streamlined in editing.
Assuming there was editing.
Anyway, the two head off. Cut to Mark, watching from the shadows outside the house. He sees Craig and Todd running off up the hill, and wonders where Eubanks went. Despite saying he wanted to kill Eubanks earlier, he doesn't take this opportunity to do so. Instead, he looks at his magic photograph, which has now changed from Underwood's picture to a picture of either Craig or Todd (we aren't told which).
Speaking of Craig and Todd, we cut back to them just as they're entering the woods. When they arrive at the clearing, they notice a fog is starting to roll in from the direction of the cave. They enter the fog and continue walking until they reach the log circle. They enter the trapdoor and find the cavern is completely intact.
After several minutes of walking, Craig shined his light on the ceiling and saw that the stalactites were hanging awkwardly in a way he didn’t understand. The pointed tip was attached to the ceiling while the bottom was circular and wide. They were upside down. Everything was surreal.
After a while, the two boys notice footsteps coming from behind them. They stop and confront the source. It's Mark.
“Craig,” said Todd, taking a few cautious steps backwards. “I think you’re right. I think something dreadful has happened to him.”
Craig nodded. “They’ve brainwashed him or something,” he said. “But we’re all still friends till the end. He’ll side with us again if we can get back inside his head.”
Impressive that you can tell he's brainwashed just by looking at him, before he's even said a word.
Mark rushes Craig and knocks him to the ground. He does this instead of just shooting him because he's evil and thus an idiot. Speaking of his gun, it falls to the cave floor.
But just as Todd went to retrieve the gun, Craig or Mark kicked the weapon into the darkness.
“I lost the gun!” Todd shouted.
Craig screamed in agony. “Aaaaaahhhhh! He’s trying to bite me!”
Like I said. An idiot.
Mark bit his tongue and let the blood drip onto Craig’s face.
“What are you doing?” Craig screamed, feeling his head fall off the side of the cave floor. Goose bumps broke over his skin as he realized he was hanging over the side of a large cliff.
“I shed my blood onto you!” Mark answered. “The ultimate sacrifice! Craig Johnson shall perish at my hands!” He laughed viciously and then his laughter was cut short.
Todd jerked Mark’s head back by the hair and jammed the gun into Mark’s temple. “Rot in Hell, motherfucker!”
Before Mark could react, Todd pulled the trigger, scattering fragments of Mark’s skull everywhere.
Friends. Till. The. End.
Mark's body suddenly turns into a skeleton. They toss the skeleton over the cliff.
Todd sat Indian-style on the cold, cave floor, weeping.
Craig slipped a comforting arm around him. “It’s gonna be all right, Todd.”
Todd shook his head. “He’s gone forever, isn’t he?”
God I hope so.
The boys notice a ledge that leads down along the side of the cliff. They head down.
Cut to Father Spiers. He's assembling his army:
Father Spiers gazed out upon the sanctuary of his church and saw that the work being done was good. Everything was going as planned. The townspeople were filling in, their faces and mannerisms distorted into zombie-like trances. They marched single-file down the main aisle, taking their seats, not speaking a word to anyone as their gaze fell forward as if waiting for instruction.
Ridley and the TSGA are there, too.
Spiers profoundly wished Ridley would go away. He gazed upon the members and found that Mark Williams was still missing. He knew Mark had not yet completed his task. And he also knew that he would not succeed. Craig Johnson was an important part of this ceremony and Spiers knew he would soon be here to participate…whether he wanted to or not.
Right, so, here's a thing that's been bothering me: Does the Shadow God want Craig alive or not? Ridley's whole deal is that he is trying to kill Craig through Mark, but he's an underling of Father Spiers's, and the Father seems to want Craig alive here. And earlier the Shadow God himself literally said that he needed Craig for the Day of Awakening. So, like, which is it? What's our antagonist's goal?
Cut back to Craig and Todd, still making their way down the cliffside.
“Nice, Craig. Real fucking nice.”
“Hey, would you cut that out?”
“Cut what out?”
“All that cussing,” said Craig. “It’s not very characteristic of you at all.”
“I find it liberating,” said Todd. “I never in my wildest dreams would’ve imagined that cursing could relieve all this tension and anxiety that has been building up inside me for the past week.”
“Well at least keep it to a minimum,” Craig suggested. “Ease into it. It’s very strange to hear a saint transform into a sailor in the blink of an eye.”
“Fucking a, it is!”
Wow, an actual joke that's kind of funny! There's a setup, a punchline, the whole nine yards!
The two continue on their not-so-merry way. Suddenly, they hear scratching, and when they shine their flashlight in the direction of the sound, they see words carving themselves into the rock.
“I KNOW NOT” was the first inscription. “AM I MY BROTHER’S KEEPER?” was the second. “
Those are the words from the Bible verse,” said Todd.
“And the same ones from Spiers’s kitchen wall.”
More writing: “AND THE SHADOW GOD WENT OUT FROM THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD AND DWELT IN THE LAND OF THE DARK WORLD.”
Todd tries to chicken out, here, because he's Todd and being a coward is one of his two character traits. Craig, instead, asks the wall a question, doesn't get an answer, and then notices that there's a massive pile of millions of human bones ahead.
On the very top of the massive pile, there was a number of skulls neatly aligned to form a morbid kind of pentagram.
In case you didn't think it was evil enough, I guess.
Craig shined the light over the many dusty white bones. It seemed everyone that was killed in the Dead Woods was taken here, dumped and left to rot.
Okay, so. I know the "millions" is probably hyperbole, but let's say there's a million bones in the pile. An adult human has 206 bones in their body. That means that around 4,855 humans would have needed to die here to make the pile. Now, we don't know how long this pile has been here, but that's still a lot of deaths. You'd think someone would have noticed the death toll by now.
Anyway, the two notice that the cave continues past the bone pile. Craig wades his way through the bones, and eventually Todd goes in after him. They make it to the other side.
Then, there's a noise behind them. Craig looks back into the bone pile; there's movement. The bones begin reassembling into skeletons, and soon there's an army of them. They begin to give chase.
Suddenly, the boys began to hear the whispers. They always heard the whispers before they ran into a portal of the Dark World. Craig scanned the darkness in front of him. There was no trace of blue light anywhere.
“The whispers, Craig!”
Craig looked sideways at him.
“Where are they coming from? Them?”
Craig’s mind ran rampant. Could the skeletons of the deceased be the whispers they heard from the Dark World? Was that the message they were trying to send? If so, it seemed everything was falling into place. The whispers were the voices from everyone who was unjustly killed by Spiers.
The whispers tell them to run. And then we get the best line in the book:
“Just run,” said Craig, running another thought in his mind: Maybe the skeletons were much like the animals in the Dead Woods. Maybe Cain was controlling their bodies, but not their minds.
WHAT MIND, CRAIG? he thought. THEY’RE FUCKING SKELETONS!
They should put "THEY'RE FUCKING SKELETONS!" on a t-shirt. I'd buy it.
The boys notice that there's a sharp upward incline ahead of them in the tunnel, and they can see blue light filtering down from above.
They stopped running abruptly and slowly began advancing toward the blue light, their minds hypnotized by its extreme beauty. With their sudden trance, they had totally disregarded the skeletons behind them.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Todd asked, his eyes glowing blue.
Craig nodded, walking ahead of Todd, transfixed by the brilliance.
“Come to me,” said a voice from beyond.
Craig and Todd marched forward, their bodies straight, militant.
They emerge into a vast cavern. The source of the blue light keeps drawing them closer, the temperature sharply rising with each step they are made to take.
Craig manages to break free of the light's pull by forcing his eyes shut. He grabs Todd by the hand and, squinting (apparently squinting is fine), leads him away. The skeletons emerge from the passageway, but it seems they can't approach the light.
The two boys head deeper into the cavern. They find a door. However, just as they reach it, they notice the skeletons have followed them. Somehow.
The door has no knob. Craig manages to shove it open, and they run through. The passageway they emerge into has wooden walls. The skeletons appear to stop at the door.
Craig and Todd have a little fight over whether they're making any progress or if they're trapped down there forever. Craig slaps Todd hard enough to knock him to the floor.
Craig tries to calm himself down and realizes that something about the cave is messing with his head.
He felt like beating the shit out of Todd, but that wasn’t him thinking it.
They hug it out and set off once again. Soon, they come across a brick wall. There's an opening at the bottom, and on the other side of it is a wooden staircase. At the top of the steps, they find a wooden door.
“What is it?” Todd asked heartily.
He smiled, looking earnestly at him. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said.
“What?”
“We’re at the church,” Craig whispered, dumbfounded.
So ends the chapter. Two chapters and an epilogue left. See you tomorrow, folks.
I think that's a pretty big ask at this point. I mean, it would require the author to have people he can communicate with.
Case in point!
Or at least recognizable as a joke!
This story has clearly damaged you :C