She looked bound, and gagged possibly, sitting cross-legged with her back to a large tomb. The original shadowy figure jerked about, towering above her, gesturing with his hands as if to explain some important matter. But there was no sound. The cemetery was silent.
I could feel Oscar shaking with rage at my side, hands clasped around his gun. Suddenly he aimed through the trees at the two shadowy figures, and I had the fearful thought that he would start firing, giving away our position.
I reached out and placed my hands atop his, and he looked at me. I saw he was drowning, so I shook my head and gently lowered his hand, holding the pistol. He was still shaking.
“I have an idea,” I whispered.
He nodded.
“We’ll surround him. You come at him from one side. I’ll come from the other. As long as we watch out for one another—and for Becky—and fire smart, we can avoid getting in each other’s way. Then he’ll be forced to make a move. We’ll have the upper hand.”
“I like it. But no lights. We’ll be like the wind, and get this son of a bitch.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll come from behind him.” He hoisted his Beretta, then vanished into the trees.
I took a few deep breaths, wanting to get control over myself. My heart was racing like a jet plane. I could feel the blood pumping thunderously in my veins. When I felt a little calmer, I turned and headed out.
I ditched the flashlight in order to feel less encumbered. I imagined I was a cat stalking its prey in the cemetery, moving unnoticed among the leaves, skulking through the headstones and keeping low to the ground…
This fantasy helped me overcome the panic in my soul. Imagination (visualization) is good for that sort of thing—bringing one’s thoughts under control. More effective than talking.
Before long I was crouched less than ten feet from the two shadowy figures. I could only locate the stationary one—whom I suspected was Becky—resting, bound and gagged, against the large tomb.
The other shadow was nowhere to be found.
Not good.
I couldn’t locate Oscar, either. I hoped he was tailing our guy. One of the drawbacks of splitting up—it adds an extra element of confusion. But it also ensures that more ground will be covered. Sometimes sacrifices must be made.
I waited another moment for any new developments. When things stayed the same, I made the decision to move. Squatting, I crept from headstone to headstone until I had reached the tomb.
It was Becky, all right. In the sallow trickle of moonlight, I could make out just enough of her features: long gray hair, smooth face, a few forehead wrinkles and eyes wide like bright-blue almonds. Becky was a tall woman, almost six feet, and the first time I met her she made a joke about how none of her pants fit her in high school. Even now, with legs tucked beneath her, the ankles and calves jutted out several inches. She was an elegant example of a woman, and I knew Oscar adored her.
Her hands and feet were tied with heavy, frayed rope. Mooring rope. I had seen the same bindings in those awful trophy pictures kept in the photo album. Her mouth was also sealed with a strip of black fabric. Her eyes were open without looking, staring straight ahead. I thought maybe she was in shock, but even when I was next to her, squeezing her shoulder, they remained glossy.
“Becky? It’s me, Jack Evens.”
Still nothing. Was she asleep? Sedated?
“Come on, Becky. Let’s get out of here.”
My hand slid down her back, making for the hand bindings, but then stopped. Warm liquid met my fingertips. I just about passed out.
“Oh shit, Becky, no. No…”
Her body slumped, doubling over at the waist. A large black knife handle protruded from her left upper back. Blood oozed from the wound in copious amounts, soiling her shirt. It looked like he had plunged the blade right through her heart. She’d probably died instantly.
As I let her body flop over onto one side, wanting to cry but feeling too numb, a burst of gunfire rang out. I leapt to my feet. They had sounded from my left, back the way we’d come.
I made a dash in that direction, stopping short. I had damn near fallen and broken my neck. Mom and Sylvia’s headstones crowded my feet, names and dates carved in marble, barely legible in the gloom. A host of memories flooded in at the sight of them and I dropped to a knee, gazing into the two holes.
“Mama? Aunty Sylvia?”
I expected no answer but coming upon them dug up like this and making out their wood and brass coffins down there at the bottom of the graves overwhelmed me. I felt a strong urge to acknowledge their presence.
Kneeling on both knees, I gazed into the earthen holes, each almost seven feet deep. I was unable to move or to breathe. A heavy-duty shovel with a yellow handle lay to one side, shrouded in the mist, beside the mound of freshly turned soil. It was some time before I noticed the pair of figures standing behind the mound.
I stood, slowly raising the .45.
“Lose it,” the killer said, “or the fat one gets it.”
“Don’t,” Oscar said. “Shoot us—shoot us both now!”
But I tossed the piece into the nearby ferns. I wasn’t about to let him take Oscar too, not after seeing Becky.
They moved around the edge of the dirt, into full view. The killer had Oscar with one arm around his waist, the other holding a gun to his temple. It only took a second for me to recognize Oscar’s 9 mm.
“Good, good,” the killer cooed. “You’re a man of honor.”
“You should’ve wasted him!” Oscar yelled.
“You—shut up!” The butt of the Beretta landed upside Oscar’s forehead, jerking his body like a rag doll. He slumped in the killer’s arms, looking ruined.
“You and your friend here made a valiant effort,” he said, “coming and trying to sneak up on me. Bravo.”
“Let him go,” I said. “It’s me you want, isn’t it? So why do this to him—to her?” I tipped my head toward Becky Patterson’s corpse.
He chuckled. “Actually, I don’t want any of you. This isn’t my grand design. I’m merely a pawn in a much larger game. I’ve explained all this.”
“Then let him go. The two of us can handle this like men.”
The killer sneered, his voice lilting in a singsong, “Just because I’m a pawn doesn’t mean I don’t want to win. At the moment, fat one here is giving me considerable leverage. And the tall bitch served the same. All to get to you, Jack Evens—Vessel. And now you’re ours to dismantle.”
“You haven’t got me yet,” I said. “Come on over here and try.”
Another chuckle. “You’re quite the fool. It still boggles my mind that such a big deal has been made about you. To me, you’re nothing but an insect, psychic gift or not. For Christ’s sake, you certainly don’t know how to use your gift effectively. You’re not even conscious of what is happening at this very moment. Take a look around, Vessel. You will see that you are crucified.”
At his words, I turned my head to one side and saw the air there flickering. It looked like electricity or underwater currents flailing about. I watched spellbound as more “current” shapes appeared among the graves. They were quickly solidifying, becoming harder, more discernible.
“Those whom I serve are all around you,” the killer said. “The Dream Beings. The Eaters of Souls and Matter. It would be wise to offer them proper respect.”
The currents all at once collapsed with the rushing force of a freight train, converging on a single point directly to my left. Mist tornados swirled up, and I saw a face like nothing I’d ever witnessed peering through the haze. Ice-pick teeth, rounded head, long, whiplike hair, a single glowing cyclopean eye and a strange appendage groping in my direction, heading directly for my head—
Pain poured into the world, and darkness enveloped me as I heard a single gunshot fired. I turned to see Oscar’s brains evacuating his large
bald head, as his body toppled to the ground.
Then I was falling—weightless, submerged in blackness—headlong down into the bowels of the earth.
Chapter Eighteen
For a time I was lost. Wandering in a dark, vast landscape, I climbed over craggy outcrops of lose boulders, through thick red dust and dry, hot air until I reached the top of the spectral mountain.
The sky above flickered with black storm clouds stabbed by daggers of lightning. I held out my arms to both sides, relishing the mountain wind on my neck and chest. The air felt strong, pure, cleansing.
When the sky finally cleared, I was down on my knees, arms still raised. Golden beams of sunlight streamed down in thick ribbons, piercing the heavens and staining the hard soil with bright yellow.
I saw…things moving along the sunbeams. Some going up, some going down. Streaming with them, in them, through them—and I felt my heart pulled from deep within as I bore witness to a montage of soft, smiling faces, some gliding up and some gliding down on the beams.
The faces belonged to majestic beings beyond description, appareled in clothes of purity and grace, wings fluttering, faces full of compassion, lips gentle and eyes steadfast and piercing, drawing me to their euphoric gazes.
A few of them I thought I recognized; two, to be exact.
I began to cry. Tears fell fast down my cheeks, and I closed my eyes. Take me away from here, I thought. Take me home…
I sensed strange hands and fingers on me, buzzing electricity, an inner thrumming through my bones and blood. They wrapped me in what felt like fresh, warm sheets and my heart soared. I doubted I could ever stop having these emotions. And I was suddenly very aware of the profound beauty of all things.
Chapter Nineteen
When I awoke, the dark was on every side and I blinked, noticing the varying shades of blackness. I became half-conscious of an unrelenting pain surging through my body, tender spots across my skin, scrapes and bruises. Something hard lay underneath me, supporting me. I had to reach and grope it with my hands, but it was wood, solid and smooth, with a convex shape.
I felt along the walls to either side, running my fingers through damp, clumping soil, and then it suddenly made sense. My vision gradually returned and I stared at the lofty opening where mist poured down into the hole. I could see clouds in the sky up above, and the shifting shadows of figures standing around the grave.
I started wheezing, rasping, clawing at my chest. I beat furiously at the walls. “Help! Let me out of here!”
“How’s the weather down there, Jack?” called the killer. “You tumbled right on in, just as we planned.”
Then another voice spoke, a voice alien and asexual, whose tones and inflections gnawed at my ears. “The river of suffering flows through you…,” the voice said. “You are lost…Christ in the center of the Earth…we come in dreams…world of dreams…crucified you will…crucified in dreams…is you…Jack Evens.”
“No, no, no…” I groaned. I was so terrified that I could hardly think straight. I tossed my head from side to side, recalling the horror of my recurring nightmare, which had now become a reality. I squeezed my eyes tight against the truth, against the world, willing it to go away—willing it to be false, an illusion—a dream.
I couldn’t tell if it was Mom’s coffin I was lying on, or my Aunt Sylvia’s, but either way it felt horrible to imagine myself entombed with them, imprisoned in the earth as they were, left to molder and decay. To be forgotten. I was still alive, goddamn it. I still had life force pumping through my veins.
“Let me out!” I screamed. My gaze darted up top and I saw the killer flanked by a pair of ghostly alien beings with muscular, spherical torsos, cone-shaped heads and each with a burning eye placed in the center, as well as triangular jowls filled with razor-sharp teeth.
They seemed to support the killer from his two shoulders, inexplicably manipulating him, as a puppeteer manipulates a marionette. Then they disappeared suddenly, and a moment later the killer returned carrying the yellow-handled shovel.
“That about wraps it up for you, eh, Jack?” he said. “One less parasitic conduit to facilitate the workings of good in the world. See you in your dreams, pal.”
He hefted the shovel and scooped dirt from the mound, tossing it down on me. The stones and heavy dirt clods pelted me like gothic rain, adding to the pain I was already experiencing. Another scoop—and another and another. In no time, half my body was covered.
I seethed inwardly, raging at God that this had become my fate. Why, I asked him—why? He had endowed me with powers beyond my reckoning and now they were to be squandered and wasted in a premature death? It didn’t seem right.
I wept—I wailed. I tried to stand, but the combination of pain and the assault from above made it impossible. I was forced to lie still and helpless as the killer proceeded to bury me alive.
My thoughts turned darker. I felt no hope. I felt like I was drowning in death. But then something happened.
I heard a sound—a gentle trickling, like water in a stream. It intensified until it was almost a roaring wave. The earth heaved underneath me and the walls shook with such violent force that I cringed.
Then it came, seeping and spewing out through the roots, stones and soil. It came from deep in the dark earth where it had once been secreted. A river of blood. It trickled down the walls, moving in small rivulets, splashing my clothes and skin, onto the coffin lid and beneath it, saturating the dirt.
I began to laugh, maniacal, joyous laughter, as the killer cast down his condemning shovelfuls. The blood from the earth let loose more vigorously, gushing full blast out of the walls, bubbling from underneath like water in a sauna and filling the grave.
Closing my eyes, I saw a light in the dark, nothing but endless, flowing light. I heard the killer speaking to his alien buddies up on the surface in a harsh, panicky voice. The rain of shovel dirt ceased. I felt calmness wash over me, a form of tranquility I had never experienced—one imbued with primeval power.
I was lifted. Not by tangible hands, but by something else, something cushiony and liquid. The blood. It flooded the grave at an incredible rate, filling in the hole and somehow bearing me up with it, floating atop its crest like a crimson wave. I didn’t sink or submerge. I lay suspended, hovering.
The blood rushed with the sound of a roaring ocean. And in it I detected the choral voices of all the beings with whom I was connected, spilling out of the heavenly realms and permeating my thoughts and senses. I felt renewed, refreshed. I was Lazarus resurrected. I was ready to shine my light into the world.
Chapter Twenty
When I opened my eyes I was back in the cemetery. I was standing, arms to either side, in a pose of the crucifixion. The wave of blood had receded back into the two graves of my relatives, but it bubbled and pulsed in the dirt below me, like water boiling in a kettle.
I felt renewed, restored and reinvigorated, my insides thrumming with psychic power. For the first time in my life the power which I’d been born with—which made me so special and yet so accursed—operated in me with full consciousness and clarity. I smiled and grinned at the world, lowering my arms. I would finally lay claim to my rightful power, but this time I was choosing it, not passively receiving.
I was asserting.
I was resurrected.
I was free…
“What the fuck?” I heard the killer shout.
My willful stare penetrated his soul.
“No!” he screamed.
This new power coursing through my veins was both terrifying and wonderful. I felt like I could smash him with ease. I was in control of my gift—not only in control, but totally supported by spiritual beings who’d baptized me in a wave of blood. And yet I remained clean, pure, not a drop of blood on me.
Still I wondered who was guiding me, whose purity and grace had come to me in this, my moment of humanity
?
But the killer raised Oscar’s 9 mm and fired...and then the king came tumbling down. My fame was robbed from me as pain exploded in my left shoulder. Now real blood, not spiritual blood, splashed before my eyes, covering me instantly. Grabbing at my arm I felt hot, searing heat, and I fell to the ground with a strangled cry.
“You’re not as tough as you think,” the killer said. He fired again and my thigh was plugged through with molten iron, staining and moistening the dirt beneath me. The pain was too much and I collapsed into a shuddering heap. I could hardly think, only feel, and the feelings screamed out embarrassment and shame. What happened—and so quickly? Where had my saviors gone?
Then he approached, out of the surrounding gloom, to stand above me like a Titan. Leveling the Beretta at my head, its gaping muzzle seemed like a portal to hell. I prayed that it would all be over soon, and with no more pain.
“You see, I too am a vessel,” he said. “Only my allies are not afraid to come on scene and get their hands dirty. And where are those who work through you?” He whipped his head around, black hair flailing, rallying the forces at his disposal, the strange spherical beings which glittered about him like starlight. They appeared to have some trouble remaining solid—remaining matter. Many had vanished into thin air.
But several of them were resilient enough to sustain the forces of physical reality. These harder beings whose single eye stared unblinkingly gathered around the killer, overshadowing him, and it became difficult to tell them apart.
“This is the end of you and your sacred mission,” he said, cocking the hammer. “Time to wipe another stinking soul off the face of the Earth.”
His finger tensed around the trigger.
I was about to close my eyes and give over to it, when a sudden twist of movement caught my attention. The motion swooped forward and then somehow I was able to recognize it. Recognizable movement? That made no sense, but I was in no position to debate with myself. I was half on my way to a dirt nap.
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