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Bill squinted past his thrumming wipers at the reflection of his
headlights as they bounced from the slick road while storm-tossed branches
above, like charred and naked skeletons, waved him cautiously along. John
hadn’t answered his phone, so he was going to make a personal visit to get the
skinny on his new romance. Actually, he hoped John would be too busy to answer
the door. Or maybe he was at her place breaking in her bed or couch or floor or
kitchen table. Nah! If he was getting anything, it would be at his own place. He
knew John well enough to know that he felt more comfortable in recognizable
surroundings. Probably wouldn’t be able to get it up if they were at her
place. But if John was indeed home without a juicy story to tell, then a good
scolding was in order.
He whistled along to Another One Bites The Dust by Queen and
played imaginary drums on his steering wheel as he slalomed the serpentine Deep
Hollow Road.
Rounding a bend at the crest of a hill, he had to swerve to miss a
large, downed pine bough. Other, smaller branches littered the road ahead, but
those posed no threat to his Ram. This was by far the worst fall storm he’d
seen in years. A few inches of rain had already fallen and he couldn’t
remember thunder and lightning of such magnitude in a storm this late in the
season.
Just ahead was another hair-pin turn and the periphery of
on-coming headlights. Bill slowed down to give himself more reaction time and
hugged the inside of the curve so as to avoid any surprises for either driver.
He was probably being over-cautious, but the truck, after all, was only four
months old, and he loathed scratches--and D.U.I’s.
Upon rounding the turn, an unexpected sight caught his breath and
made his heart thump painfully in his chest; it was a car, smashed and crumpled
in the other lane.
He turned his music down and slowed then stopped across from the
wreckage. There was something oddly familiar about the car.
He turned on his dear spotting light and shined it on the
wreckage. It was still idling and the headlights were still on, but no one was
in it, at least no one that he could see. It looked as though it had rolled over
several times because all the windows were smashed out, littering the seats with
crystalline debris, and the roof was severely caved in.
Whose car was that? Something about it sparked an uneasiness with
its familiarity.
He looked up the macadam to see if he could spot anyone walking
the road ahead of him but saw only rain and a lonely darkness that seemed eager
to fill in the spaces where his headlights now occupied.
He studied the car another long moment, thinking. Where, where did
he know this car from? Then it came to him like a quick, painful slap in the
face. The color, the make, the model, the proximity. Was this--was this John’s
car? Oh shit, no, it can’t be!
But then a loud thud and a shutter that shook the entire truck
gave Bill something even more horrifying to worry about.
Sandy was dead-quiet. She was afraid of speaking about their fate,
as if by putting it into words would somehow make it irrevocable. She just let
John hold her, warm her, not remembering why she had ever been so afraid of
showing him her scars. They seemed so trivial now.
She held onto him tightly, feeling his warm, strong body
protecting her. Felt his heart beating loud and strong and confident despite the
look in his eyes. She was falling for him and felt equally sure that he, too,
was falling for her. In the past, adversity and fear had been the tool to strip
her relationships bone dry. Now, however, it was the mechanism that seemed to
help it flourish. But she wondered whether those seedling emotions would ever
get the chance to blossom fully beyond this night.
She thought over and over again what the rugged-looking priest had
said about Hell coming. She thought that she had lived through hell. Hell was
her station in life. She prayed that there was a heaven, a reprise from the pain
she’d endure through this lifetime, but knew with certainty that the other
existed. It was an agonizing certainty that manifested itself every time she
looked into a mirror. Hell? She knew it intimately, at least in the physical.
But the spiritual? She had never given it much thought. Who did, really? It was
hard for her to imagine things getting any worse than what she had already lived
through, but now the possibility of something infinitely worse was on the
horizon. She could feel it, sense it, making her soul quiver within. Somehow,
she knew in her heart that this night would not end well.
John felt hopeless, nervous, scared, sad. He fought between a
faith whose cornerstone was a belief in the supernatural and an intellect that
found it difficult to accept anything that couldn’t be explained rationally.
Had he not seen with his own eyes what that key had conjured up in the attic,
smelled the reeking creature himself, seen its quicksilver eyes, felt the
death-like grip that now mamed him, he would have dismissed Ian as a demented
and ludicrous man and most certainly would have ignored his calls, unplugged the
phone and spent what was surely turning out to be a wonderful evening with
Sandy.
But now he couldn’t dismiss anything. They had been thrown
headlong into a nightmare where mistakes held the severest of consequences. But
as much as he wanted to wake from this nightmare, he knew that he couldn’t
just pinch himself and wake up sweating, alone in the dark, in the cold comfort
of a bed and a shot of Scotch (God, to have that bottle now!). This,
unfortunately, was real.
He let out a soft sigh, then in between kissing Sandy’s forehead
reassuringly and stroking her knotted hair, he thought about the twins. He
remembered little things like how Johnny Jr. would slurp the milk from his
cereal bowl and then smile up at Daddy with a milk mustache and say ‘moooo’.
How Abbey tried to be Mommy when Mommy wasn’t around, dressing in high heels
and make-up, clomping around the house giving orders to Johnny, tripping over
the vacuum cord while trying to clean. He’d never forget his little angel
making him the best egg-shell, potato chip and Velveeta omelet for breakfast a
little girl could make on the birthday everyone had forgotten but her. Cartoons
and pitched tents on the living room floor, hugs and kisses for no reason at
all, poopy diapers and three in the morning feedings. He wouldn’t trade those
memories for anything in the world and would easily give his life to spare them
the after-affect of this night.
And then there was Sandy. Her eyes, her smile, her caring
tenderness, the instant bonding John had never experienced before with a woman.
She was cultivating feelings within him that he thought had withered under a
long frost. He realized that there were now three special reasons for which to
fight.
But fighting what? And at what price or consequence? Those notions
scared the hell out of him. This was a night for which college and grad school
had not prepared him.
Ian paced the floor, thinking. Every time he’d look up from his
thoughts, two sets of eyes quietly looked to him for guidance. He liked that,
missed that. He was, after all, a leader--a spiritual leader. But at the same
time, their stares soured his stomach for he had no answer to the question their
gazes asked; he had no idea how to stop the Watcher. All this way and all these
weeks and still no clue as to how to stop what he had inadvertently started.
Kill it, he thought. Can’t . . .or can I? Even
that, he was unsure of. But he reasoned that if the march of time couldn’t
return it to dust, then nothing he could think of would, either. The world
lays in the balance. Keep thinking.
Then something John had mentioned pricked his mind, and he
couldn’t shake it. Send it back to Hell. Send it back--yes, but how? How?
How, damn it, how? Instinctively, he knew that would be the mechanism, but
the particulars still swam in the soup of his thoughts. He was frustrated that
he couldn’t put the notion into a workable idea yet, but at least he was onto
something.
Suddenly, deadened cries in the distance outside broke Ian from
his thoughts. He peeked out through the barricaded window and saw an individual
running up the bemired driveway, the rain and winds diluting his screams into
muffled whimpers.
“Expecting company?” he asked sardonically, a trace of worry
in his voice.
By now, John had also heard the cries and recognized them. “My
god, that’s Bill!”
He hurried to the window as best he could and glimpsed out as Bill
slipped and fell into the rain-sodden muck at the end of the driveway but
quickly regained his feet and staggered in exhaustion to the front porch.
“We’ve got to let him in, Father!”
As he clamored up the steps and lunged headlong into the
entertainment center blocking the doorway Bill blared, “John! John, it’s . .
.it’s . . .What the hell is it! It’s after me, let me in, let me in, damn
it!” He pounded on the back of the entertainment center and tried to move it,
but it wouldn’t budge. “Please, mother, God, let me in, John, let me in!”
John limped to the foyer, “Hold on Bill, we’ll get you in
here!” he shouted. “Come help me move these things out of the way!” he
ordered to the other two as he tried to move the first of the book cases.
Before she could move, Ian gave Sandy a quick and adamant finger
to stay put as he relayed to John, “Hold on, wait, you can’t just go lettin’
him in here like that. You don’t know what your dealin’ with, here.”
Pointing to the horrific screams coming from beyond the barricaded door opening,
he said, “That might be the Watcher.”
Bill’s voice became energized with terror. “John, oh my God,
it’s.--I see it! It’s coming up the drive! Let me in, goddammit! Let me
in!” His pounding became more determined, more frenetic. It was as though he
was trying with every ounce of muscle within him to literally punch away the
obstacles that kept him from safety.
John turned to Ian. “It’s my friend Bill out there,” he said
determinedly, “now we have to get him in here, quickly.”
Again, he started to move the book case out of the way, but Ian
quickly prevented him, forcing himself between John and the case and forcing out
the words in a hardened rush, “Remember when I told you back in the lorry that
the creature would try t’use you t’get t’me? I didn’t tell you how.”
He paused briefly then said, “It can--it can somehow take over the bodies of
those it kills, like--like a puppet doll. I’ve seen it myself, man. It
probably already got t’your friend and is usin’ his body as a mask t’get
at us, get inside and snatch the key. The creature could take it more directly,
sure, but it likes t’play. It’s the cat and we’re the wee mice. It wants
t’show how much more clever it is than we are. I know this beast only too
well.”
The entertainment center rocked momentarily. The desolate cries
Bill made sounded primal, beast-like. A second later, the glass in the picture
window broke, but Bill couldn’t gain entry that way, either. He screamed and
wailed like a baby, but he kept trying to get in.
With a determined look on his face as he stared down the priest,
John yelled over his shoulder, “Bill, can you make it around to the back
door?”
A faint sob and what might have been ‘I don’t know’ was the
response.
“Go out back and I’ll let you in the back door.”
Frantic footsteps
left the front porch.
Making sure a round was loaded and disengaging the
safety, John readied the twenty-gauge, glared his green eyes directly at the
priest and said sternly, “I’m letting my friend in. That’s
non-negotiable.” As fast as his aching foot would allow, he quickly went down
the foyer hallway towards the dining room. Ian followed.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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