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John and Sandy shared the passenger seat after closing the door
behind them. He found the automatic lock on the door’s armrest and engaged it.
The two then huddled together in a mass of wet clothes, shivering.
“Do you have the key?” Ian asked anxiously.
John fished the hanky out of his soaked pocket and almost threw it
at Ian in an attempt to rid himself of the thing.
The couple’s collective face looked chalky, as white as
confectioner’s sugar. “You’ve met the object of our troubles,” Ian
acknowledged, trying to mask his own uneasiness as he quickly unfolded the cloth
and inspected the key then refolded it on his lap.
“Either you think I’m a lousy driver or you must not have
gotten a very good look at the damage to my car.” John quipped with a nervous
sarcasm. “Sandy shot at it through the car roof, and when we smashed into a
buttress at the end of my driveway, it fell into a ravine.” He tried to clear
the tremble in his voice and when that didn’t work, he used the pain in his
hand and ankle as an excuse to break eye contact with the priest. The throbbing
cut on his palm still oozed blood from the wound, but keeping a tight fist
around the gash would help it clot. It was the least of his problems. His
exposed foot was also covered in an amalgamation of blood and muck, and he could
only manage a limp-walk on his tip-toes. It would most certainly need medical
attention.
As he watched John take inventory of his wounds, Ian said soberly,
“Your're still alive. You should be commended,” obviously impressed that their
innards remained anatomically correct in such close proximity to the demon. He
looked back at the crumpled car through the eve-painted beads trickling down his
window and shook his head almost in awe at the creature’s power, though he’d
seen it do more than just buckle a car roof. Then he looked back down at the
hanky-hidden key, pondering. An avalanche of concern fell across the creases on
his brow. After a moment, he said to them without taking his gaze from the
folded cloth on his lap, “You’re no longer safe. I imagine it doesn’t take
too kindly t’not finishin’ a job.” Then he whispered in a voice that
sounded like the cold, parched curses of a re-animated mummy, “None of us are
safe.”
With dark locks of hair plastered around her pallid face and
shoulders, making her look like an unwanted doll uncaringly tossed into a rain
puddle, Sandy said, “I-I shot it. It’s dead, right?” She shivered
epileptically.
“If it were only
that easy,” Ian deadpanned as he turned to stare at his tattered reflection on
the windshield.
John quickly put his arm around Sandy to help warm her. “What
the hell is that thing?” he demanded.
“I’ll explain later. Right now we’re out in the open where
it can have its way with us. We need t’find shelter.”
“We need to get the hell out of here, that’s what we need to
do. As far away from here as possible. Whatever this, this animal-thing is,
it’s after that key,” John said pointing to the folded, wet cloth on Ian’s
lap. “Neither of us want to be anywhere near it when that thing comes to
collect.”
“Believe me, I’d like nothin’ more than for the two of you
t’just up and go. This isn’t your fight, though its outcome will affect us
all. But don’t you see? You survived it, and it won’t just let you be, not
now. It’d just as soon kill you for the sheer fun of it and use you t’try
and get t’me.”
John flashed the priest a look, partly of dreadful concern and
partly disbelief. “What do you mean use us to get to you?”
Ian paused just long enough to look out into the brooding darkness
that enfolded the truck, casting his eyes as deep as the sobbing shadows would
allow, quickly scanning the night’s belly then said, “I’ll explain
everythin’ the best I can only when and if the time permits me, but
right now we’re sittin’ ducks if we stay here. How far are we t’your
house?”
“We can’t go back
there!” John almost laughed at him as if it was the most absurd notion he’d
ever heard.
Ian wasn’t returning the sarcastic glee. He engaged the
Kenworth’s transmission with a grinding squeal. “We can. It won’t think us
t’go back there. Thinks we’re afraid of it, that we’ll run--exactly what you
want to do. Goin’ back will throw it off our tail for a wee while, and
that’ll give us a little more time. We need more time.”
“More time for what?” John demanded, though the inflection in
his voice betrayed his actual need for the knowledge.
“Damn it man, if we stay here, we die! It’s as simple as
that.” Ian cried. “Now where do you live?”
Finally, hesitantly, John nodded for Ian to drive on.
A profound anxiety filled the truck’s cabin as they approached
the driveway entrance but thankfully, nothing bolted out at them from below the
now cracked buttress. John pointed to the deep ravine in which the thing had
fallen, but Ian knew that it was no longer there. It was, by now, following the
road, either boldly or in the clandestine cover of woods flanking it, looking
for the car. It wouldn’t be long before it back-tracked to the house. Or maybe
it was already there, anticipating their return.
He turned the
Kenworth right onto the gravelly driveway and as if it were another heavenly
sign, the truck jerked and stuttered all the way up to the garage before finally
dying, signaling to Ian that the battle would be waged right here and
imminently. No more running and no where to go. He would have much rather
encountered the hellish offspring on the familiar ground of his Scotland but
knew that location would play no role in the outcome. It would only serve to
bolster a precariously fragile confidence.
Through the drizzle, the lamp post from the garage and the lights
still on inside the house shed a filmy luminescence on the damage the demon
inflicted. Two holes the size of artillery blasts--one on the first floor
entranceway and one on the second story--laid the house open to the elements.
Obviously, being inside would not stop it for long, if at all. But it was all
they had.
Until the Kenworth finally gave up the ghost, he had even
fleetingly considered their proposal of running. Maybe that would have given
them more time to think of a way to bring this intolerable journey to an end.
But he also knew that they were just as easy a target in that truck as they
would be in the house. None of them would have the capacity, however
insufficient, to defend themselves in the constricting confines of the truck’s
cabin. No, he would have to face it eventually, and he had come too far in the
confrontation to retreat now.
This was his Bannockburn, and he felt every bit as uncertain as
Scotland’s ancient hero Robert the Bruce must have felt that day nearly seven
centuries ago when his meager army of guerrillas, vastly outnumbered, won
Scotland’s independence against King Edward II’s highly-skilled and
highly-armored forces. If those were insurmountable odds that were defied in the
name of freedom, then these were one-hundred fold greater. He prayed diligently
for the same outcome.
Sandy helped John up the porch steps and Ian followed, but he
insisted on being the first to go in. He entered the foyer through the
splintered doorway holding his shaking crucifix out like a rookie policeman with
his outstretched, readied pistol, quickly looking left, then right, expecting a
surprise, getting nothing. He finally motioned for the other two to enter.
“Hurry,” he said. They did so, quickly and gingerly walking across glass and
metal and wood.
“Now what do we do?” John asked as he surveyed the gaping hole
where the doorway once was. “That thing can just waltz right back in here.”
Ian though a moment as he took in the surroundings then said,
“Okay, here’s what we do . . .”
First, he placed his crucifix just outside the shattered doorway
on the porch. Then the three--more Ian and Sandy than John--pulled the
entertainment center into the foyer and in front of the gaping hole. Behind
that, they put two large book shelves to help secure the breach.
To John, Ian said, “Go find anythin’ your grandfather has
that’s religious--Bibles, rosaries, crucifixes, anythin’. Then bring them
back t’me. Go, now!”
John quickly pulled two pictures, one of Jesus praying in the
Garden of Gethsemani and the other of a white dove superimposed on a golden
cross, from the foyer walls and limped around the house searching for rosaries
and Bibles and other items. Meanwhile, Ian and Sandy brought in the dining room
table and managed it onto its side in the living room in front of the picture
window. Then, they placed the couch and love seat on top of each other behind
the table.
Upstairs, they dragged two large dressers and placed them, back to
back, against the splintered hole where the bathroom door used to be.
Next, they went back down into the kitchen and put the small
kitchen table in front of the bay window there. Behind that, they shimmied the
refrigerator, then they disconnected the stove and lodged it behind the
refrigerator.
John returned a few minutes later. In his possession were three
pictures, one Bible, two small crucifixes, two sets of rosary beads and a
twenty-gauge shotgun with some shells.
Ian was about to say something, but John interrupted him, holding
out the rifle saying, “A bullet slowed it down once, maybe it can do it again.
As meager as it may be, I want something to defend ourselves with.”
Ian dismissed the shotgun and just took the other items. “I know
this sounds a bit antiquated, but we’ll use these as talismans,” he
explained as he went from window to window. “This creature doesn’t seem
t’like anythin’ that pertains t’holiness or God. That’s what kept it in
its own little hell for hundreds of years, and hopefully these’ll keep it out
of here--for a while, anyway.” He placed one religious object at each of the
windows and back door, leaving one window in the dining room and almost the
entire second floor without religious or material fortification.
Once finished, all three stopped and listened intently. Wind
howled through the cracks, rain knocked on the window panes with unsynchronized plinks
and planks, rumbles of disdain echoed hollowly through the rooms. Mother
Nature, it seemed, didn’t even want to share the same space as the nightmarish
basilisk lurking somewhere out in the autumn tempest.
After having done everything they could have to prepare their
defense, the three gathered in the living room.
Sandy hovered at the hearth and threw some more wood onto the
embers from the fire John had made earlier while he got some more hand towels
from the kitchen for everyone to dry themselves off with.
Handing a towel to Ian, John asked, “Do we really want to know
what that thing is or what this is all about?” He then joined Sandy at the
fireplace.
After pondering the question and as he dried himself off, Ian
decided that fighting against something they knew nothing about threw the
already stacked odds completely over to the creature. If they--and the
world--were to have any chance at all, they needed to know what they were up
against. Their wile and faith, if not already drained, would be the only thing
they had to use and to use it successfully, they needed to know their opponent.
“In the book of Genesis,” he started as he made a sign of the cross, “and
again in the book of Ethiopian Enoch in the Apocrypha, the holy writers speak of
fallen angels that come down from heaven, presumably after the Great Rebellion
by Satan, and seduce or rape women here on earth. The women are impregnated with
entities that are half-human and half-angel--half fallen angel. They gave birth
to what later church fathers called Watchers.”
John looked at the debris on the foyer floor and wrinkled his
brow, almost in disbelief. “Tha--that’s what this beast is, some demonic
mutation or something?”
“Aye, I guess that’s one way of puttin’ it.”
Sandy was quiet, trembling almost uncontrollably. John put his arm
around her.
Finally the glowing embers had caught the new kindling on fire.
Large flames began dancing in the hearth behind the couple.
Sandy stopped hugging herself and put her hands behind her for
warmth.
“I loosed the beast quite by accident,” Ian continued as he
tossed the damp towel in frustration to the floor. He went to the barricaded
window and from a small gap looked out into the dark ranks beating down.
“Those catacombs I was diggin’ through were burrowed a millennia ago under a
monastery that one of Saint Ninian’s converts had founded. In seventeen-ninety
nine, a particularly wet year--even in Scottish terms, several of the tunnels
collapsed. Under that rubble, some thirty monks--the entire monastery at the
time--were lost. Also lost were some ancient relics that were handed down in
succession from the Apostle Andrew t’Saint Ninian, along with the carefully
guarded papers that told of their existence and the beast which the papers did
not. With the help of those old documents I uncovered, I was diggin’ in that
very tunnel that your grandfather had dug, searchin’ for--”
“That key I gave you,” John finished. “That was the relic
you were after.”
Closing his eyes, visualizing the event, he said, “Aye, given
t’Peter by Jesus, then t’Andrew by Peter before his own crucifixion. Andrew
was sent t’evangelize the west and in doin’ so past on the keys.” Opening
his eyes quickly, he continued, “But the key wasn’t where it was supposed
t’be. In fact, not in the tunnel at all. That’s when I came upon the
Watcher, though I didn’t know what on earth it was when I first laid eyes on
it.” He took his gaze from the torrent outside and stared dolefully at the
floor, blame for letting the hellish specter free obvious on his rugged face.
“You’d not believe the scores of ancient documents--documents that I read
with my very own eyes, mind you--that speak of these very creatures. Some of the
medieval knighthoods were established specifically t’hunt these demons down.
I’d always thought that the stories of them were legend, nothin’ more.” He
cocked his head slightly and with a stark realization almost chuckled, “Heh,
who’d’ve ever dreamed . . .Who’d’ve ever known that . . .” He fell
silent and shook his head in quiet loathing as he returned his watch out into
the drenched night, contemplating what other ancient truths he’d tossed aside
in disbelief, forsaking them in the name of enlightenment.
Warmed and now curious, John joined Ian at the window, wanting
some questions of his own answered. “How’d you know that my grandfather had
taken the key and where to find him?”
“First by deduction, then mostly by monastic and kirk records.
The monastery kept written accounts of those who helped re-excavate the
catacombs which ceased completely when the Second World War broke out. The
monks, in turn, would say special prayers for them and their families. A type of
repayment, I suppose, since they couldn’t pay with money. Your grandfather
helped re-dig part of a vein that I was trying t’finish. In doin’ so, he’d
uncovered one of two very special rooms that had housed the sacred keys--”
John’s eyes widened with a new worry. “Keys? You mean
there’s more than one?” The mere thought sent frigid spikes down his
back, making him contemplate his place by the fire once more.
“The other key has
been taken care of. It’s no longer of any concern at this point in time.
Anyway, I hadn’t realized that the first room should have had a key until I
uncovered the second room. The ancient documents I’d uncovered spoke of two
keys, and I thought I’d find them together. But apparently they were
separated, one in each of these rooms, and I only recovered one. One was
missing.”
“You said there were others who helped re-excavate. How were you
able to single out my grandfather?”
“See, the beast wanted that other key, too. By the time I
secured all the records of those who helped dig out those tunnels and figured on
a course of action, bodies from those families started turnin’ up dead. The
damnable thing always seemed t’be one step ahead of me. But as long as I woke
up the next day and everythin’ in nature seemed t’be be as it should, I knew
the Watcher hadn’t found the key yet.” He shrugged off some cold still
lingering in his wet clothes. “Soon there was only your grandfather left who
could’ve had it. Once Amos Walker’d been singled out, it was just a race
t’see who could get t’him first. The kirk your grandfather belonged t’in
Oban had forwarded baptismal and confirmation documents on t’St. Jude’s in
Thurmond, New York where your grandfather first moved, so I went there. And from
there, I traced him here.”
As John wiped the sweat and rain from his forehead with his towel,
Ian and Sandy watched quietly. It was obvious from the painful look that dulled
his eyes and sallowed his face that he was contemplating the deed his
grandfather had done all those years ago that left lives in the balance now. A
quiet, sadness rang in his voice when he said more to himself than to anyone
else, “If he’d have just left the key where he’d found it or told someone
of its discovery, then none of this would be happening now. I guess I just
don’t understand why my grandfather would have taken something that didn’t
belong to him.”
As if trying to come
up with a comforting justification that was hard in defining, Ian finally
replied, “The part of Scotland Amos was from was very poor at the time, John,
which was probably why he came t’the States t’begin with. Empty bellies and
empty pockets make the best of men falter at times. Maybe he thought he could
sell it or trade it for food. I’m sure your grandfather was a good man.
Don’t let go of that.” He rubbed the stiff pain in his purple-yellow-bruised
neck, but rubbing seemed to make than pain worse. “Besides,” he continued,
“If he’d’ve not found that key and taken it with him, what’s goin’
t’happen if we don’t stop the Watcher tonight would’ve already happened a
month ago when I accidentally freed the creature. Then there would‘ve been no
time t’stop it. Off-handidly, Amos actually did us a great favor.”
That thought seemed to comfort John only slightly.
Finally warmed enough to not stutter when speaking, Sandy said,
“Maybe it won’t be back. I shot it. I-I killed it, right? You said it was
half human. Humans die.”
Eyes back diligently searching the nightscape, Ian said, “Our
physical bodies die, but the soul lives on so in essence, we don’t really die.
Neither will it.”
“So why only you?” John asked as he finally decided to rejoin
Sandy by the fire. “Why aren’t there more people hunting this thing down?”
Ian almost laughed. “And who would you have me call?”
“Weren’t there other priests at the monastery? Doesn’t the
Pope have his own army or something?”
“Everythin’ happened too fast. If I’d not acted on my own
and quickly; if I’d ‘ve tried t’convince people what I’m tellin’ you
right now, I doubt any of us would be standin’ here, and you’d certainly not
be alive.” He finally turned his attention completely from the window and
faced John and Sandy. “You’ve yet t’ask me why it wants the key.” He was
silent for a moment, eyeing each, trying to read there faces, waiting for a
reply. Finally, he asked accusingly, “You’ve touched the key, haven’t
you?”
Both John and Sandy didn’t speak but looked to each other for
the response, then each slowly nodded.
“So you’ve seen where the key can take you?”
“We saw something--some place,” John replied.
“What you saw was Hell,” Ian said grimly. “And it wants
t’bring Hell here. Here, right where we stand,” he emphasized with a
sweeping motion of his hand. “It wants t’open the door t’the Apocalypse
with this key, and we’re standin’ on ground zero.”
“If it can’t be killed, then can it be stopped?” John
implored, the inflection in his voice revealing the sheer unbelievability of the
events of the past hour. “Can we, I don’t know, somehow send it back to
Hell?”
Unlike John, the timbre in Ian’s voice rang eerily confident.
“It’s out there, and it’s coming,” he said. “We’re certainly goin’
t’find out soon enough.”
He looked back out into the night. The entire world seemed to have
been washed away, leaving only an empty void. Empty of everything, that is,
except them and the Watcher. If only the world was empty save just him
and this couple. If only three lives were at stake--even better,only his--then
the consequences of what was to come wouldn’t seem to dire. If only . . .
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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