by August Arrea
“So where are they?” asked Liam.
“Where’s who?”
“Me so-called cobbers,” said Liam, looking around the garage for a glimpse of the rest of their friends he was certain were crouched out of sight behind one of the cars sniggering over the attempts to give him a good-natured fright. “My guess is they’re responsible for playing with the lights.”
“Liam...” It was all Max could do to keep what calm he had intact and not crack Liam on the side of his head.
“Tyler...Billy Goat...James...I know you’re out there hiding somewhere giggling like a bunch of little kindies,” Liam called out. “Nice try, but pretty weak if you ask me you amateur dags.”
The sound of Liam’s voice echoing loudly throughout the cavernous garage made Max grit his teeth until he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Can ya shut your gob already?” he barked under his breath while grabbing hold of Liam roughly by the collar of his shirt. “This isn’t a joke. Can’ya get that through that thick melon of a’ed you’ve got?”
By the look in Liam’s eyes, Max had managed to take hold of his full attention.
“Now for the last time, can you for once do what I ask and go. I’ll explain later...but for now just move your arse and get the hell out of here!”
“Your breath,” remarked Liam oddly.
Max cocked his head and gave Liam a look of utter disbelief. Really, we’re going to comment on the state of my breath at a time like this? he thought to himself. That is until he, too, took notice of the small plumes of vapor escaping from his mouth with every breath he took. It was then both boys became alert that something remarkably freakish was happening. The warm, sultry evening suddenly gave way to a sharp, biting cold, as if winter itself had arrived full tilt and gave the last lingering nights of summer a bullying shove aside. The abrupt uncomfortable change moved through the boys’ thin cotton clothing like hundreds of sharp needles pricking the suddenly goose-fleshed skin of their stiffening bodies.
“Bloody ’ell...there ’tis again,” Liam mumbled through chattering teeth as his body shuddered. “Good trick, I’ll give ya that.”
A sudden jolt of dread moved through Max as he let go of Liam and again turned his attention back to the darkened garage.
“I told you it’s not a trick,” he muttered under his breath as his ears caught a most unnerving sound.
Something was there, of that there was no doubt. He could sense it. Worse, he could hear it. Strained, long-drawn, mucous-filled breaths, like someone at the receiving end of a brutal strangling struggling for breath. It was all just as his father had warned him so persistently. As was his nature, Max refused to give in to his veins fighting to reverse the flow of his blood and allow himself to go pale, and instead bravely took several steps out into the open, and importantly away from Liam, to face the thing that had chosen to stalk him.
“So, here I am,” he called out. “You want to take me on, then let’s give it a burl. But leave my friend out of it.”
“Who the ‘ell are you talking to?” asked Liam as he stood shivering.
“You ’ear me?” shouted Max, paying no mind to Liam.
He waited, and at first there was no answer; not a sound of any kind. Only the persistent coldness of what felt like the inside of a meat locker turned on to full arctic blast. Then, from somewhere amid the shadows, there came a noticeable scurrying, like the patter of feet—rodent feet—only larger.
Much larger.
“I’m not falling for it,” Liam announced in as brave a voice as he could muster, even as it was clear in the way his feet started to slowly retreat that he was no longer certain he was the victim of a friendly prank.
“Stand still,” ordered Max in a way that made Liam freeze in his tracks.
The scurrying continued. More unsettling was the fact that whoever—or whatever—was causing it seemed to be darting to and fro with a dizzying swiftness to all corners of the garage that was far too quick for any human—or animal, for that matter—to move. And then suddenly it stopped. The silence only heightened Max’s angst, especially when he suddenly felt something lightly, yet most definitely, tap against his left shoulder. His eyes slowly shifted with a guarded hesitancy to look to see what it was, and found what appeared to be the sheen of something wet soaking itself into the fabric of his shirt.
“What is it?” whispered Liam, taking notice of Max’s diverted attention.
The two boys could almost see the other’s heart rise up into their throats as they witnessed more of the mysterious wetness drool down onto Max in thick, stringy drops. Whatever “it” was, it was coming from directly above them. And it was breathing, horrible hoarse breaths, like a diseased smoker gasping for air through a hole puncturing the trachea. Max was visibly trembling now, though he was certain it wasn’t prodded by the intense cold. And even though there was absolutely nothing the world as a whole could present at that precise moment that would prove itself as more challenging and unpleasant than the simple task of having to look and see what had positioned itself over them, Max took a steadying breath and forced his eyes to roll themselves upward. And when he did no amount of courage salvaged from deep within could have prepared him for the terrible sight awaiting him.
~~~
At the same exact moment Max’s cry of horror pierced the Australian night, Jacob Parrish awoke on the opposite side of the world to the drumming of rain pelting his window, his hand still clutching the rosary that hung around his neck and rested on his chest. Before turning in for the night and finally dozing off, he had managed to make his way through more than half the beaded strand.
Outside, the thunder and whistling winds that had raged through the night had finally receded and dissipated with the inky blackness of night giving way to the early morning downpour that fell with the almost peaceful, soothing patter of a tropical waterfall.
Struggling to open his eyes that remained weighted with the sands of sleep, Jacob managed to direct his gaze at the clock on the night stand a few inches away next to his bed. When he saw the time, he bolted upright, leapt to his feet and like a gazelle fleeing a lion on the hunt he made a mad dash for the bathroom.
He couldn’t remember the last time he needed to set the alarm on his clock to wake him for school. His grandmother had performed the role quite well ever since she came to stay, jolting him awake every morning an hour before the start of school with three sharp knocks on his door that grew increasing louder every ten minutes that followed the longer he stayed in bed. Before that, it was his mother who took on the role of human reveille. Why he had not been graced with a wake-up call this morning, he had no idea, and with just ten minutes before the start of school he had no time to find out.
Jacob squeezed a dollop of toothpaste across his toothbrush sending half over the edge of the bristles to splatter on the sink in his rush. With one hand he quickly gave his teeth an abbreviated brushing while wetting his other hand under the faucet and running his fingers through his thick, bed-matted hair in a frenzied effort to smooth out the wayward strands. Not his best look, but it would have to do today. Tossing his toothbrush into the sink, he quickly spit out the mouthful of the frothy paste and rushed back into his bedroom. No time for rinsing.
Luckily for him he was already dressed with the jeans and T-shirt he had worn the day before and fallen asleep wearing. He raised his arms and gave his underarms a quick sniff. He was good to go, but fumbled through a pile of clothes on a nearby chair for a zip-up hoodie he could slip on to cover up his fashion faux pas of repeated wear. He then retrieved his book he attempted to read the night before from the floor next to the bed and shoved it into his backpack that he flung over his right shoulder while shuffling his feet dressed in hole-eaten socks into his sneakers. Five minutes left. He wanted to look in on his mother before he left, as did every morning before heading off to school, but there was no time. Throwing open his door, he rushed out into the hall. He was just about to tear down the stairs when he glanced t
oward his mother’s room and stopped dead in his tracks. His grandmother was there, sitting on the needlepoint-covered chair outside the closed bedroom door.
“You didn’t wake me this morning. I overslept.”
She remained silent, sitting quietly with her hands folded in her lap and her head bowed.
“Grandma?”
“I thought it best to leave you sleep.”
“On a school day?”
Jacob sensed something was wrong, the way she kept her face turned away from him and dabbing at her eyes in as inconspicuous a manner as possible.
“What’s going on? You okay?”
When she finally looked toward him, his heart quickened in his chest at the sight of her face. She had been crying. Tears had left shiny streaks across her cheeks forming droplets along the edge of her jaw. Her eyes were red and glassy and fixed with an unmistakable look of resigned sorrow.
“What—?” Jacob began before quickly swallowing down the rest of his question. He already knew.
“I’m sorry, Jacob.”
His grandmother stretched out her hand clutching a balled-up tissue.
No! It wasn’t possible. Not after last night. Not after all his pleading and praying.
Jacob shrugged off his backpack which fell onto the floor with a loud thud and made a rush toward his mother’s bedroom, but his grandmother rose up from the chair and blocked his way.
“It’s too late, Jacob.”
“The hell it is!” snapped Jacob.
He could have easily shoved her aside, but to his surprise she demonstrated an unexpected strength that managed to keep him at bay.
“You don’t understand...I CAN FIX THIS…!” cried Jacob.
“You don’t understand...It’s not in your hands to fix,” she replied in a restrained voice, yet just as passionately.
With his frustration raging and uncontrollable anguish coming in fiery bursts like a volcano erupting inside him, Jacob turned his unbridled distress onto the nearby wall with a hole-making punch. Then as the lava filled every inch of him with its painful burning, Jacob slowly receded down the hall toward the stairs as though backing away from an approaching bear whose path he’d stumbled upon in the woods.
“We have to let her go,” his grandmother said softly. “She’s in a good place now, healthy and free of pain. It’s what God wanted.”
“What God wanted?” A flash of anger and hatred came together and merged to shape a look that had never before revealed itself on Jacob’s face. “WHAT GOD WANTED?”
He turned and darted down the stairs as fast as his feet could carry him before the bear he was fleeing from had a chance to pounce on him, tearing out the front door and into the torrential downpour being wrung from the shroud of black clouds that canvassed the sky. Parked in the street in front of the house, his friend Wray was already patiently waiting to give Jacob a ride to school. Upon catching sight of him, she cracked open her window.
“About time Sleeping Beauty,” she ribbed jokingly.
Jacob paid her no attention, and Wray’s fresh-faced smile quickly disintegrated as she watched him purposefully cut across the lawn—a path his mother had regularly scolded him for taking—and race away from the house as fast as his legs could carry him.
He’d always been a fast runner. Had he not acquired a fondness for wrestling, he might very well have flourished on the high school racing track. His feet pounded along the slick asphalt and cemented sidewalks, splashing through the pooling puddles as he raced down one street before veering down another, cutting through neighboring yards and leaping over shrubs and picketed fences framing picturesque homes that lined his path like hurdles in a marathon. He was like a wild stallion, heading for nowhere and galloping like mad to get to there.
His mad zig-zagging took him to a creek bed that bordered the northern end of the neighborhood that was now running loudly with the rainwater stirring it. Without even the slightest break in his stride, Jacob bounded over the stream and continued forward disappearing into the blanket of woods beyond. Still, no matter where his feet carried him, or how swiftly, he couldn’t manage to outrun the sound of his mother’s voice playing over and over again in his head.
“There is nothing else that can be done.”
It was a tormenting chorus coming at him in heart-stabbing swells. For a while it looked as if finally, she was getting the upper hand on the merciless disease that had ravaged her well-being for such a long time. Such hope was dashed when Isabeth Parrish shared with her son the news from her doctor that things had taken an unexpected turn for the worse: her latest test results revealed the sickness had spread. With a vengeance. She was dying, and yet Isabeth revealed the crushing news to Jacob as calmly as if she was letting him in on her plans for a summer vacation. Only from this vacation she had no plans of returning, and the thought terrified Jacob. He could say he had already lost his father. Yet to lose something requires one to have had it in the first place. He had never known his father. The only explanation he was given was that he had simply disappeared long before Jacob was born, and the subject was never spoken about again. And although Jacob would now and then wonder about the man who had given him life and where he was in the world, he had come to accept the absence of not having a father. Now the one remaining pillar besides his grandmother he had left in his life was about to be snatched from him, and that was something with which Jacob found himself unable to make peace.
“It’s okay, Jacob...”
The sound of Isabeth’s voice continued to ring in Jacob’s ears. The towering trees he weaved his way through offered little respite from the chill of the unrelenting shower falling from above, while those whose time had long ended lying broken and decaying across the sopping ground presented a checkered obstacle course of twisted and gnarled branches that Jacob cleared with the graceful ease of a bounding buck. A strong, sweet smell of wet forest earth filled the air, but it was the fetid scent of death which met Jacob’s nose; the same ever-present bouquet of decay he had come to know inside his mother’s bedroom, which even the lavender candle when lit on the dresser couldn’t keep at bay. Witnessing his mother’s physical beauty slowly come under attack was hard enough, with her long thick dark tresses first falling out in strands, and then shaming clumps, until she was left with a dome of baby-smooth skin; wondering silently whether her entire insides were somehow becoming an empty hull, hollowed out by the poison being pumped into her body and slowly deflating her in the process until she was nothing but skin and bones was even worse.
But the smell…
It was a constant reminder of death itself, as though its presence had somehow wormed its way inside the house and accompanied his mother up the stairs and into her bedroom as she grew weaker, hovering silently in the corner like an unwelcome guest waiting with festive patience for her to close her eyes one last time so it could move in and collect its grim reward. Yet no matter how desperate Jacob’s bid to outrun both the sickening stench and his mother’s voice, they kept fast to him—tormenting him.
“I knew the day the dove showed up on the ledge of my window that my days were drawing to a close, and that my Beacon had come to see me home,” she had told him just the night before, when the sounds coming from the thrashing storm outside—and the distinct whispering of voices—drew him out of bed and down the darkened hall to his mother’s bedroom, where he found her kneeling on the floor beside the opened window framed by delicate linen curtains being whipped about her by the wind like angry ghosts.
“What are you talking about...what Beacon?” asked Jacob, still trying to come to terms with the news of death Isabeth had only moments before dropped on her son like a head-crushing anvil, no matter how comforting she made her voice to deliver it.
“Each soul of every person born is assigned a Beacon,” explained Isabeth while gently stroking the head of a dove that was huddled in its usual spot on the windowsill ever since the day several weeks back when it first appeared and refused to leave. “They take
the shape of the birds you see gathered in the trees and flying through the air. Their sole purpose is to shadow the one soul they’ve been given the duty to keep a vigilant watch over during its time on Earth from the moment it cries out at birth to taking its final breath upon death, when it then accompanies the soul to its afterlife, much like a lighthouse guides a ship on a fog-choked ocean.”
Jacob gave a skeptical glance at the dove cocooned in his mother’s hands bobbing its head skittishly as the thunder rumbled loudly in the distance. He had long learned to quietly tolerate his mother’s deeply rooted religious beliefs, but he found himself having to bite his tongue over her latest revelation.
“Or perhaps,” he offered trying to mute somewhat the unmistakable sarcasm heard in his voice, “it’s just some free-loading bird looking for the handout of birdseed you feed him every day, and not your soul.”
Isabeth smiled slightly. It was just the sort the response she would expect from her pragmatic son.
“And who exactly told you all this business about birds being Beacons?” asked Jacob.
Isabeth breathed a somber sigh. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Jacob was suddenly jolted free from the haze of the memory encircling him when his foot snagged against a stray tree root or rock along the sloping, uneven muddied terrain causing him to stumble forward before falling headlong into a hard tumble that sent his body head over heels downhill. Painful grunts were squeezed from him with every thudding thump his body made each time it hit the ground in what seemed to be a never-ending somersaulting fall from which he could not slow or stop. Then, as his rage became more red-colored and he wrestled with all his might to break himself free from whatever invisible hand gripped him and sent him spiraling like a bowling ball down a polished wooden lane toward a neatly arranged grouping of pins, there came a sudden, instantaneous brief moment when it seemed as if time stalled noticeably and gravity had come to a nonexistent end. Jacob felt the rolling of his body slow considerably and he managed to twist himself upright and regain his footing on the ground in a way no living thing had ever before been known to move. And not a moment too soon, as Jacob discovered the second gravity returned as he came to an instant motionless halt and found himself staring at the pointed end of a branch only a few jarring inches away from his torso, which would have most assuredly impaled him had he continued in his downhill plummet.
