by Rik Hunik
Chapter 2
Eddie suffered through a night of fitful sleep and disturbing dreams which he couldn’t remember when he woke up. He still felt tired but his bladder was painfully distended and the bedside clock, to his surprise, read twelve minutes after eight. On his way to the bathroom he stubbed his little toe on the doorframe and almost lost control of his bladder. When he flushed the toilet the water swirled around and around, filling nearly to the rim before slowly going down. He worked on it with the plunger but it helped only a bit.
Disgusted, and now wide awake, he put some water on the stove for tea but when he turned on the burner there was a pop from behind the panel. After considerable poking and prodding he discovered a little door that flipped down to reveal a fuse box. From behind him Sue said, “I didn’t even know stoves had fuses.”
“It must be pretty old. I guess we’re having cereal for breakfast.” He got the bowls and the box of corn flakes out of the cupboard while Sue got the milk. When he opened the jug his nose wrinkled and he turned his head away, quickly recapping the jug. “That is sour.” He said, pushing it away. “How about some toast?”
Sue took the bread out of the bread box and opened the bag, then looked at Eddie with dismay before she put her hand into it. “It’s all moldy.”
A quick check showed that all their food was spoiled. The deli meats smelled rotten, the fruit was soft and discolored, with dark ugly spots and fuzzy patches of mold. They figured out that after the power outage the refrigerator had blown the breaker when it tried to start.
But that didn’t explain why all the other food in the cabin had spoiled overnight.
A gloomy light cast a pall on the cabin and when they looked outside, they saw a sky full of ugly gray clouds threatening rain. “Let’s get out of here,” Eddie said, putting into words the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that made him not want to be here anymore.
Sue hugged herself and said, “Good idea, we can eat breakfast in town. You go ahead and pack our stuff, I’ll tidy up out here and wash the dishes.”
They had only planned to stay for the weekend so packing didn’t take long. When he came out of the bedroom with their two small suitcases Sue had taken all the rotten food out to the garbage can and was now at the sink gathering the dishes. He heard a loud crash and clatter of silverware as she dropped a handful in the sink and said, “Oh damn.”
He saw blood running down her hand before she grabbed the dish towel and wrapped it around her left forefinger. “How bad is it.”
“I may need a stitch or two, but not an ambulance.”
“Let’s get you patched up so you don’t bleed to death.”
“You better hurry.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Not that much, but look at the sky. Those are ugly clouds and they’re building fast. I don’t want you to be driving in the storm that’s going to drop soon.”
In the few minutes it had taken him to pack their suitcases the clouds had grown thicker and darker, piling higher, growing more menacing. He wrapped a gauze pad and first aid tape around her finger and they hurried to the car, the wind gusting hard enough to take their breath away.
Fat drops of rain smashed on the windshield as they drove away from the cabin. The downpour got so bad they had to slow to half their speed to let the wipers keep up, but when they finally arrived at G.R.Baker Memorial Hospital the rain had diminished to little more than a drizzle.
The emergency ward was packed but it was the weekend so there was nowhere else to go for treatment. Eddie noticed that a lot of the patients seemed to be victims of violence, with bruised faces and limbs. One guy had a gash on his arm and it was bleeding through the bandage somebody had put on it for him. It could have been an accident but another guy with a bandage on his forearm looked like he might have been stabbed.
The nurse behind the window took Sue’s name and medical number and the nature of her injury and then they had to stand until vacant seats came up in the waiting room. Eddie was near the tv, which was tuned to a news channel. A blonde anchorwoman was listing a series of churches that had burned or been blown up across the province since last night, speculating about some militant, anti-religious group.
The next story was about a riot in downtown Vancouver, followed by a recap of other riots across the province with equally puzzling reasons for starting. When they started talking about murders he turned his attention elsewhere. Too much bad news depressed him and so far he was not having a good day.
After sitting for nearly an hour the waiting room was still nearly full but Sue was close to being called in when an ambulance arrived and disgorged a pair of victims of a nasty automobile accident. They had to be attended to first, which caused further delays, and then another accident victim arrived which caused more delay.
Sue nudged Eddie and said, "It hardly seemed worth waiting for my insignificant finger wound"
"You know it needs a stitch or two and you're already on the list so you can’t leave."
It was well after lunch before they got out and they were both starving. Exhausted by the stressful drive into town and the extended wait in the Hospital emergency ward, they bought a couple of twelve-inch sub sandwiches, sat down in a booth and devoured them completely before heading home.
They took a hot shower together, then relaxed on the couch to watch a movie. They both fell asleep before it was over.
Eddie woke up a few hours later and warmed a can of thick soup for supper. While they ate they watched the early news out of Vancouver. It was uniformly bad, full of car accidents, riots, murders, fires, and even a huge explosion, all in the Vancouver metropolitan area. It was like a year’s worth of disasters were happening all at once. Even the weather report was bad, with windstorms and thundershowers province wide.
It was so depressing they shut off the TV and started a game of crib. Sue was shuffling the cards when somebody started knocking on the door and then kept knocking and knocking. Annoyed by the persistent pounding, Eddie went to the door and whipped it open, but his angry comment died in his throat when he beheld a rumpled, agitated Sam Campbell, leaning on one arm against the doorjamb, his other hand half raised to knock some more. He dropped it to his hip.
“Sam, what are you doing back in town?”
“I shouldn’t have left.” Sam glowered at him and declared, “You played that game, didn’t you?”
Eddie backed up from the ferocity of the statement and Sam pushed into the apartment after him. Eddie knew Sam had to be talking about “Forces Of Evil” and Sam sounded so certain that there was no use even trying to deny it. “Yeah, so what?”
Sam closed the door and locked it behind him. “You lost, didn’t you.” He was glowering again.
Eddie backed up another step. “Well, yeah, but what’s the big deal?”
“It would have been nothing much if you had won.”
“It was the first time we played. I’m pretty sure we could win if we played it again. Me and Sue are both pretty good at games.”
Sue came out of the dining room with her cards in her hand. “What’s going on over here?”
“Get me a drink and I’ll tell you. In fact, you better pour a round because this is a doozy of a story to swallow, but make it snappy because we have to get out of town before nightfall and back to Tibbles Lake before it’s too late.”
Sam downed his drink in a single gulp and motioned for the others to do the same. Ed hesitated a second, then gulped down his whiskey. Sue sipped hers.
Sam said, “I don’t expect you to believe this, at least not right away, but all I want you to do for now is suppose, just suppose, for the sake of argument, that what I’m going to tell you is absolutely true. Can you do that?”
Eddie had no idea what Sam was getting at but he didn’t continue until both Eddie and Sue nodded.
“ I can’t explain how or why, and I don’t have time to tell you how I found out, but that “Forces Of Evil” game is more than just a game, it is an arcane tool f
or fighting the forces of evil. When you lost the game last night you created a rift for the forces of evil to break into our world and start taking over.”
Eddie whistled. “You’re right, that is a doozy. I’m not saying I believe you, because I don’t, not even for a second, but, just for the sake of argument, I’m asking, what can we do about it?”
“You could have prevented the problem by playing the game again right away until you won, but you didn’t, so now the forces of evil have been gathering for a whole day and they’ll be that much harder to defeat.”
“How could we have known that?” Sue demanded.
Sam shrugged and smiled apologetically. “You couldn’t, which is exactly why you were there that night instead of me. I don’t blame you for what happened; we were all manipulated by forces we didn’t even suspect were there. I should have known better than to leave town when I did but I'm sure it was no coincidence that I was called away, making the cabin available this particular weekend, or that the power went out when it did, or that the generator didn’t work, or that you found the game. No, we’re all victims, we don’t have time to point fingers, we all have to fight back now or suffer the consequences.”
Eddie poured more drinks for himself and Sam. He was amused by the story, and willing to play along, but a bit disturbed by Sam’s intensity. “How can we do that?”
“We have to get back to my cabin on the lake so you two can play the game and win.” He tossed back his second drink and set the glass down with a bang.
Sue downed her drink, grimaced, and said, her voice husky from the whiskey, “That sounds easy enough. Let’s go.” Eddie downed his drink and followed them out.
The sun was already touching the horizon and painting the cloudy sky orange when they climbed into Sam’s dark green SUV and headed down Dragon Lake Hill. They could hear sirens and several plumes of smoke were visible over the downtown core and the West Side, but the main streets seemed quite calm, even if it did feel like the calm before a storm. Most people seemed to be hiding out in their homes so there wasn’t much traffic, but all the vehicles drove too fast.
