Freeney

by Clay Zimmerman

  A grimace befell Simon. “What madness is this?” He conceded. “He has The Book! Somebody, stop him!”

  But his footman ranks were woefully depleted. Alabaster was truthfully the only one who could’ve realistically answered the call for help but he seemed to be profoundly disturbed by the supernatural occurrence concerning The Book. He was visibly unsettled, his nostrils flared with indignation. He hadn’t exactly leaped to fulfill his master’s commands either, it could be noted.

  Gary looked on with horror as the energy beam coalescing in The Book discharged dramatically into the very depths of Alabaster. He was rendered immobile from the blast, a vain attempt to shield himself with his forearm. The beam flowed steadily into the creature for what seemed like a great deal of time.

  Then it finally ceased.

  There was no more aura to be seen from The Book or Patrick who complicitly collapsed from the exhausting emittance.

  Alabaster, the great hulk, was in much worse condition. He was struggling immensely from some vengeful form of dysentery, he appeared to be bubbling from within. His expression twisted and contorted, finally, and it had the look of excruciating pain, he threw his arms out, concerning his back, arched rigidly. A mercurial, blinding light was seeping through the crevices of his hyde-like flesh, which favored as though it were hardening. And rapidly at that. The skin crackled and split sporadically. Now every orifice on his face was overcome with the vociferous, uncontainable light. It was undeniably consuming him from within.

  Alabaster let out a last roar of despair before he was overwhelmed by an inescapable burst of light which convoluted the large sanctuary chamber in it’s entirety. All that remained of poor Alabaster was a neatly composed pile of sooty ashes.

  Freeney was distraught with emotion. “No, my beautiful gargoyle!” He lamented. Stooping over, he grasped a handful of blackened remains.

  Jumping up to his feet, wringing his hands at a nonexistent audience, “There will be hellacious torment to pay for this!” He was gritting his teeth with rage. “I will spare no expense, give no quarter. The kingdom of Heaven will be brought to it’s knees with --------- ach!”

  His diatribe was cut short from the severed iron beam having impaled him through his lower back. It was none other than Challista on the other end, twisting the rod to slump Simon’s paralyzed carcass to the ground.

  “You ruined my family, you bastard!” She proclaimed with righteous fury. “Aaaaaaahhhhhh!”

  She began screaming hysterically. It was all too much for her psyche to withstand. She collapsed into a traumatized, sobbing, wide eyed ball there and began sucking her thumb like an infant.

  The scene relaxed now as a motionless period was allowed to permeate through the cavernous hall, the only sound, a celestial tonality emanating from the still open portal to the Crystal City. There was a various assortment of body parts, corpses, muck and grime, ash and soot, smoke and sticky haze. It was deplorable.

  Ultimately, some movement.

  Challista remained in her child like state, whimpering and muttering to herself indecipherables. Maddy was the most apt, perhaps the only one of the trio having not been incapacitated in one shape or form.

  She rushed quickly to his aid. He was already stirring.

  “O, Patrick.” She caressed his face. He was eerily calm. Like a mother who had just given birth, serene in her contribution. He simply shot back a playful smile.

  “Where’s Martin?”

  Her expression turned to concern.

  “I don’t know. He took a hard fall.” She furtively glanced over her shoulder. “Come on, let’s get him.”

  Patrick effortlessly popped up. They hurried over to the disheveled heap that was Detective Martin Rosicky. He was lying face down, unconscious but still breathing.

  It took the two of them using all their strength to flop him over. He was not a slender fellow.

  “What do we do?” Madison gasped.

  The unspoken prospect of being the only ones alert enough to answer for all of this a real factor. Of course, it wasn’t their fault but who would believe them? Whatever they said.

  “Slap him.” Patrick suggested.

  Maddy’s eyes replied with incredulity.

  “Seriously?”

  But it wasn’t such a far-fetched solution. Never mind that Patrick himself had not offered to do so.

  “Can we do that?”

  Which was a silly response. They’d already broken so many laws and unquestioned boundaries thus far. But it aptly demonstrated their innocence.

  Patrick nodded in approval.

  Madison summoned the courage to do what surmounted as a pat on Martin’s cheek.

  “Harder.” Patrick whispered.

  WAP

  But Maddy grew tired of the games.

  WAP

  WAP

  But it was finally enough to rouse Martin from his involuntary slumber.

  “What?”

  Martin reluctantly returned to this plane.

  “It’s ok.” She consoled him. “The monster’s dead. Patrick killed it.”

  Martin’s eyes bulged with the severity of the update.

  “Simon! Where is he?”

  A dedicated dog catcher, his first concussion induced coherent phrases concerned his culprit.

  He hopped up like a rake having been stepped on by accident but it wasn’t long before he could deduce that there would be no need for a post custody interview.

  “God damnit!” He slammed his fist into a cupped hand, secretly relieved that there would be no threat to the world from one Gary Simon. But this was one asshole he really wanted to see suffer and rot away in a dungeon somewhere.

  Challista killed him, the kids thought but didn’t say. They understood the adult need for paperwork and also the injustices of it that may follow.

  “We need a blanket or something.” It was a matriarch that had seen her entire family slaughtered before her very eyes in a most gruesome and insidious way.

  The gentleman Rosicky took off his beige, now tarnished, trench coat and draped it over her but she was not looking to be disturbed. She leapt up with terror and urgency. Howling, screaming, she thrust off the trench coat. Stark naked, she bolted out of the sanctuary with deceptive velocity.

  The trio was reluctant to follow after her. There was no guarantee as to what was outside of the church and she was not to be reasoned with. Though pity they felt, it was for the longevity of this Earth to which their hearts turned.

  It was a new day. Along with it, unsettling and disturbing questions. The worm had turned. The rules had changed. All the tales were true. They wished they could somehow capture this series of events in a mason jar and seal it from the imagination of man. Sequester it from the collective mind.

  Rosicky retrieved his nice trench coat from the floor. It was then that he was reminded of the police frequency walky-talky in the breast pocket. It wasn’t on but he knew they would be coming. And he did not want to answer any questions. He did not want to deal with his peers. He did not, in any way, want to be associated with this grotesque and sickening occurrence.

  “We should set fire to this place.” He muttered. “And never speak of it again.”

  This didn’t sit well with the kids.

  “But the portal to Heaven, it’s still open.” Maddy chimed. “What if more of those things get in there? Then nothing will matter.”

  Martin regarded this with mixed emotions. Was he really having this conversation with a 14 year old?

  But it was difficult to argue. The scenery was still fresh and the point was more than valid. There literally was a portal to Heaven open and hovering before them. The implications of this were staggering.

  As a group, they crept over to the pulpit where the portal lay some feet above. The Crystal City could be seen shimmering and gleaming in all it’s glory. They could even make out the sparsely scattered imps harassing it’s citizens in a frenzied and desperate way. Surely they were overwhelmed with the experie
nce having never prepared for a day when those walls would have been breached. They would probably be corralled eventually. But after what amount of destruction.

  “We have to stop them!” She proclaimed.

  The kids looked to Martin for reaction but he was bemused and lacking of a concrete response, flummoxed.

  “Patrick,” the debate moved to the two young ambassadors of Earth. “It’s up to us.”

  Patrick, the more cerebral of the two, considered this. But serendipity had more to contribute. Some poor footing on Rosicky’s part, the stumbling over the latent corpse of an unfortunate imp, caused a slight collision with the podium where it was revealed that there was a hidden stow away compartment located inside. An out of place looking wooden panel, not affixed by any competent means, was jostled loose allowing for the encounter of yet another interdimensional portal. How long had that been there? Nobody knew. But it was decidedly different in nature.

  This thing took on the attributes of a sinister red glow and a much lower vibrational tonality. The animalistic instincts endowed to us could communicate effectively the evil what lied there in.

  “Look, there’s another one.” Patrick indicated. Though it’s presence had not escaped any of their awareness.

  Upon closer observation, it could be determined that this was in stark contrast to the Crystal City apparition. Here we have the portal to Hell. And it was quickly deduced that this was most likely the mysterious introductory point of the ghastly imp creatures.

  Martin had been reduced to a strictly observational role, an unwilling captive of the proceedings. Perhaps internally he had conceded on some level that his ultimate mission was the apprehension of Simon and anything beyond that was no more than speculation and quite arguably unnecessary. He was vastly out of his element. So much for training. There was just no protocol for Biblical disaster containment and the events he’d endured found him musing about retirement on some tropical island getaway, exotic drink in hand. He didn’t want to stay. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to pull the covers over his head and make it all go away.

  But it was not going away.

  He even flirted with the idea of using all his expertise in tracking down individuals intent on evading detection and cashing in his chips as far as his public life was concerned. He could, for lack of a better phrase, flip the script and use all of the techniques he’d gleaned from the very fugitives he’d hunted for years to change identities entirely and become a veritable ghost, existing solely off of the grid and neatly under the radar. He could wash his hands clean of this ridiculous, macabre charade. Besides, he’d done enough, saving the world and all. Is that ok?

  Martin looked on helplessly as the kids unilaterally came to a conclusion about what was to be done next. Another jug of the ‘Jesus juice’ was hastily retrieved from the antechamber and administered into the Super Soaker 250’s auxiliary reservoirs.

  Patrick looked young Maddy square in the eyes and gaged her, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Yes, Patrick.” She shot back firmly. “What choice do we really have?”

  The question lingered in the air.

  “Our friends are gone.” She continued. “This town will never be the same again. We…..will never be the same again. The police are looking for us. And I don’t trust them. And my father!” She exhaled in defeat. “I don’t even want to know.”

  Patrick weighed this carefully. Then Maddy pressed on.

  “But even if we could pick up the pieces, Patrick, it wouldn’t matter. Someone else will have to go through this again. There will be another Freeney. Our town might be safe for now but what if this happens somewhere else? We were lucky!”

  She capped off her thesis with a firmly placed jab to Patrick’s chest, driving the point home. It was a terribly astute thing to say. Most girls her age would be clamoring eagerly to a return home and the comfort and warmth of their beds. Perhaps her angle was somewhat influenced by the prospect of being greeted with her dad’s iron clad rule and the idea of making a clean break altogether had entered her mind on more than one occasion in the past, as some young people are prone to ruminate.

  The couple’s eyes met in a heartfelt gaze, “Do it for Rory.” She uttered.

  And this carried the desired effect. Witnessing the horrific death of their dear friend who’d sacrificed his very life for them had thoroughly robbed them of their innocence. And they knew it. It was a climactic moment in their evolution.

  Patrick gently, calmly, reached out and grasped Maddy by the shoulders with nothing more than his fingertips and delivered a priceless, once in a lifetime kiss to his story book crush.

  When their moment finally subsided, they were looking at the floor, a little embarrassed perhaps or self-consciously aware. They took a deep breath, ventured another glimpse into each other’s eyes, then descended into the portal to Hell.

  “Well, that was brave.” Rosicky mused quaintly.

  Two otherwise normal teenagers had just willingly entered into the gates of hell in hopes of saving the world, armed with nothing more than communion wine enhanced Super Soakers.

  Maybe it was good, their innocence, their naiveté. Anyone more practical would not have made that decision. But by that same logic, perhaps yet they were the only ones suitable for the job. That which exposes them to great danger is also that which protects them from it.

  Rosicky considered all this as he drew in the environment with his mind’s eye. Sparks crackled from the Bible bonfire still smoldering in the corner.

  No. This was no world he wished to inhabit any longer.

  Martin made another glance around the room to make sure no one was watching. He retrieved the flask of Wild Turkey 101 from inside the breast pocket of his trench coat and gulped down a generous apportionment. Then, he reloaded his 9mm service pistol, took a deep breath and heaved himself off of the podium and into the portal to Heaven.

  The End