Amber

by Dan-Dwayne Spencer

  “And I wanna date with Sally Field, but that’s not going to happen,” Roger sneered. “The image Arland forced into my mind is going to be with me for the rest of my life.”

  Stoney said, “Let’s hope the rest of your life is longer than the end of the week.” He got out of the van and headed into the library.

  I retorted, “Good point.”

  Jimmy was the next one out, pushing his way past me and Roger to get to the door.

  Roger motioned to his dirty clothes and mud matted hair. “I’ll wait here in the van. I can’t go in any place like this. I can’t believe how stupid I was to play in the mud like a two-year-old.”

  I glanced across the street. There on the corner stood a DX service station, the answer to Roger’s problem. “Let’s go across the street. I’ll get the restroom key from the attendant and give it to you so you won’t have to face….” I stopped and started over. “Anyway, I’ll let you go first.”

  He thought it was a great idea. Especially since he didn’t have to explain how he ended up with mud all over him on a bright, cloudless day. We promise to wait by the van for the rest of the group after we cleaned up.

  I stepped into the station’s glass-enclosed office, and asked, “Hey bub. Where’s the key to the john?”

  The uniformed attendant, with the name Josh embroidered on his shirt, wiped the oil from his hands as the bell rang. A customer needed service. Hurrying out to greet the driver, he yelled over his shoulder at me, “Don’t need one. The door won’t lock. Just give it a good pull.”

  I shrugged and casually headed around the building to where Roger waited. The restroom, located on the back of the station, was unimpressive. Scrawled numbers and a variety of vulgar pictures by local artists decorated the walls. Thankfully, it wasn’t completely filthy, but not where I’d want to spend the rest of my day either. As promised, I let Roger go first. He took his time, I had no doubt he would have to wash each garment in the sink before putting it back on.

  For a while, I waited by the door. The back of the gas station had a gravel drive-around where the mechanic parked cars, either ready to be picked up or needing to be fixed. After stomping across the loose rock drive, checking out the parked cars, and throwing rocks into the thicket of woods standing seventy-five feet away, I walked back to the front of the station where the blacktop melded into the concrete drive leading up to the gas pumps. The attendant finished wiping the windshield for the customer and sent him off with a smile. I strolled over to him and casually ask, “Hey Josh.”

  He grinned. I assumed he knew I read his name off his uniform.

  “You lived here in Blue Eye very long?” I asked.

  “Yep, all my life. Why? You need directions?”

  I watched my shoe as I drew invisible circles on the concrete drive. “No. I’m kinda like a history buff, and this town looks old. Do you know what the oldest building here is?”

  “That’s easy. It’s the old post office,” Josh replied. “You’re on what we call Main Street. It’s State Highway 13 but we don’t care, we call it what we want to. Go straight south till it intersects with State Line Road. It’s right there by the square. You’ll know it by the US flag flying over the building.” He stuffed the rag into his back pocket. “White building with a porch and a hitching post in front.”

  “A what?”

  “You know, for horses. It was something the city council said had to be preserved with the building as a historical landmark.”

  “And, this building is still used as a post office?” I had to admit to a little surprise.

  “Yep, it is.”

  “Other than that, what’s the oldest building here?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the old Ark Baptist Academy building there.” The attendant pointed across the street to the library. “They stopped using it for a school back in the 1930s. Since then, it’s been one thing or another. Right now it’s the library, at least till the new one is finished. I hear they may turn it into a public elementary school. Who knows? Personally, I think it would be a good thing. After all, I’d hate to see the old thing go derelict and eventually get torn down.”

  “I hear this town was named after a postmaster who had blue eyes.”

  “Yep, they changed the name to Blue Eye some time ago.”

  I must have sounded a bit shocked, “It hasn’t always been called Blue Eye?”

  “Nope. It’s named after old Albert Butler. Legend says he had the most amazing blue eyes ya ever seen. Heck, this whole town’s always been named after him. They used to call it Butler’s Barrens. Even the Cemetery was called Butler’s Cemetery before they changed the name to the Blue Eye Cemetery.”

  “Sounds like, he blessed a lot of people to be remembered so fondly.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s one way of putting it.”

  Roger came from around the side of the building.

  “Hey dude, you take a bath in the toilet? You’re all wet.”

  With a grimace, Roger shrugged, and for once, he didn’t jab back with some sarcastic comeback. He didn’t even stop but headed straight for the van.

  I yelled to him, “I’ll be there in a while.” He kept walking away from me. In a softer voice, I added, “After I clean up.”

  I said goodbye to Josh and went around to the restroom to clean up.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Blue Eye

  I did my best to rub the demon gore off of my pants with a wet paper towel, soap, and water. And mostly, it all came off. After checking myself out in the mirror, I headed back to the van where Roger waited. To my surprise, the entire group sat in the van except for Roger. He lay on top of it, letting the bright sun and warm wind dry off his clothes.

  “Did you find where the book is hidden?” I asked.

  “No,” Jimmy said. “But we found something. They have a really old book here in the library. It probably dates to when the town was established.”

  “Great,” I replied. “Did you check it out of the library?”

  “No,” Jimmy answered. “It’s in the rare book collection and they won’t allow it out of the building.”

  “We read over most of it, here and there, but we saw nothing unusual,” Flower added.

  “So, you want me to look at it. Is that what you have in mind?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Stoney said, “you might get some vibe off of it and point us in the right direction.”

  I yelled up to the roof of the van, “Roger, you ready to look at some old book?”

  “I’m ready to stop seeing demons every time I close my eyes.” He paused. “Yeah, why not?” He slid off the roof and landed flat-footed. “Lead the way.”

  I looked over at Stoney and then to Flower. “Okay then. Let’s get this done.”

  The librarian went straight to the volume, laid it on a reading podium, and even opened it for us. She insisted we wear the white cotton gloves the library provided, before returning to her desk. I looked the binding over and picked it up. No visions emerged from the secret place in my psyche. I even slipped off my glove and held the leather cover with my bare hand. No apparitions, no warning, and no help to find The Book of Uriel.

  “Sorry guys. This was a waste of time,” I said.

  “Wait,” Roger spouted. “Do you see what I’m seeing?”

  “I see it. It’s a handwritten book with the history of Blue Eye, Missouri exaggerated into fifty-five chapters,” Jimmy huffed.

  “This is not the biography of a town,” Roger said. “The letters are rearranging themselves. It’s like it was written in some kind of code and it’s deciphering itself.”

  Flower said, “We don’t see any of that. What does the encoded text say?”

  “There’s a lot here about angels in general and the powers attributed to them.” Roger read on. “Here’s the story of Venus turning into Ishtar. There’s even a poem written in Latin.”

  “Great, this must be The Book of Uriel. We found it.” Stoney exclaimed.

  “I
wish it were, but the very first page said this book was written by some angel named Zerachiel. Most of the text is opening up to me, but the drawings seem locked. I guess we mere mortals aren’t supposed to see what angels see. I wish that part would unlock like everything else did. But no chance, I guess.” Roger read more of the text. “Here is a reference to a book written by Reuwel, the angel of secrets, and the text scripted for the eyes of the blessed.”

  “Maybe that’s the book we’re looking for?” Flower asked.

  “Wait,” Roger called out. Then he lowered his voice again.

  The Librarian put her finger to her lips and gave me a hard stare. I nodded and looked away, hoping she would return to her work.

  Roger loudly whispered, “The very next paragraph tells about a book written by Uriel the faithful. This says the book contains the key to holding back the night. It’s all kinda cryptic. It continues: ‘light and dark can’t exist together. Light casts out darkness; therefore, darkness waits for the light to exhaust itself before rising. In the depths of night mortal champions hold the principalities at bay.’ What’s a Principality?”

  I didn’t have the answer, and nothing popped up in my mind’s eye. Everyone else fell silent. I looked up, and the librarian stood next to me. “A Principality is someone who is given charge over a province or territory.” She wasn’t smiling. “I don’t know what games ya’ll are playing, but you had better not have written in this book.” She whirled around and looked at the pages one by one. “I think your time with this volume has run out. To be more precise, I think your time has run out in this library. Please leave.”

  Confusion filled me. She was kicking us out for getting a little loud when she just made everyone in the library turn and stare. Roger flipped through the next few pages and scanned what he could before a security guard headed our way.

  Stoney grabbed Roger’s damp collar and pulled him away from the rare book section, passed the checkout desk, and out into the parking lot. All the while, Roger protested there was more left to read. “Get off me I need to read the next few pages,” Roger declared. “I’m going back in there.”

  Stoney stepped in front of Roger. “Getting arrested would be a fatal error at this point on our search.”

  Jimmy put his hand on Roger’s shoulder. “If you could have read the book without yelling, you could still be reading,” he scolded.

  “Why could Roger see the prophecy in the book and I couldn’t?” I asked. “I’m supposed to be the prophet.”

  “That wasn’t something prophetic,” Flower said, “It was a code. Think of it like a puzzle. Roger saw right through it.” She put her hand over Jimmy’s hand, resting on Roger’s thin shoulder. The both of them visibly calmed down. “Roger, where do we go from here? What did you read in the book?”

  “I think we need to go to the cemetery. It’s where The Book of Uriel should be. I’d be certain if that harpy let me finish reading.”

  A strange expression blazed across Flower’s face. “Get in the van. We have to go.”

  Stoney said, “We don’t know the way to the cemetery. Which way do I go?”

  “It doesn’t matter we need to leave now,” she insisted. “That librarian probably wasn’t all she seemed to be.” She closed her eyes and mumbled to herself, “I should have thought of it before.” Opening them, she said, “What if that librarian was a supernatural Principality, a sentry protecting a sacred artifact? A sentry’s duty is to sound an alarm. There could be scores of demons here any minute.”

  Roger interjected, “But they don’t know where the thing is any more than we do. If they knew about this book… Well, it clearly describes where The Book of Uriel is hidden.”

  “No, they don’t know its whereabouts,” Flower said. “Their knowing about it doesn’t mean they understood it. If they guessed the importance of this book, then it stands to reason… they had it watched.”

  Jimmy asked, “Surely, angels can read—and it tells where to look for the other book—what’s stopping them from getting ahold of the important book and the talisman too?”

  Roger’s eyes lit up with excitement. “Because they couldn’t read it any better than you guys could. My gift allowed me to read it. The angels don’t have our supernatural gifts.”

  “Like I said,” Flower demanded, “let’s get out of here before Ishtar’s faithful shows up or it will be a replay of the Woodstock battle—only this time none of us will survive.”

  “Drive behind the DX service station there’s a gravel drive-through. I saw it earlier, and I need to ask Josh for directions.” I said.

  Stoney waited behind the station with the van, while I asked Josh how to get to the cemetery. The fallen angels weren’t the only ones who could put up sentries. Jimmy and Roger staked out the edges of the building just in case Ishtar’s cronies spotted us.

  Minutes later I returned with the directions, “Head west down State Line Road. It follows the border between Arkansas and Missouri. I’ll tell you when to turn as we go.”

  Jimmy raised his hand and called out, “We have company.”

  Across the street, two black and white State Police cruisers pulled up in front of the County Library.

  “That prince-a-harpy called the cops,” Roger sneered.

  “Those may not be real police. We’ve already seen how they took over Sheriff Briggs,” Stoney warned. “They could be demons in disguise.”

  I glanced toward the woods. There, standing in the clearing between the gravel and the trees, stood the little girl who delivered the news of Rose’s abduction.

  Flower called out, “Everyone back into the van.”

  Stoney had it moving as we climbed in. When he heard the doors slam shut, he put his foot down on the accelerator pedal and threw gravel back at the child-like demon. Staring through the back window, I watched as the child transformed into something subhuman. She cracked her legs into the awkward backward position that the demon’s bodies usually took on and lunged for the van at breakneck speed.

  Stoney didn’t let up on the accelerator and continued to sling rock as he drove up on the concrete. Finally able to get traction—the wheels screamed—leaving black, stinky tread behind. The van catapulted up onto the road, careening from side to side to stay upright.

  The demon-child chased on all fours. Her arms and calves extended, claws digging into the pavement, she advanced on the van. From the library’s parking lot, the State Police cars joined the chase. Sirens blaring, they raced behind the slathering blond demon.

  The demon’s stride hastened before it clawed into the blacktop with its cricket-like back legs and leaped. Landing with its front claws, it dug into the van and carved gashes in the metal. It climbed up onto the roof.

  “Take your next right,” I yelled.

  Stoney made a hard right turn. The creature’s hindquarters flew to the side from the centrifugal force. Clinging to the top of the van by a single claw, its bones cracked as the thing twisted out of control. It roared a scathing cry and grabbed at the van with its other arm. A grinding sound of metal on metal, then a thud as a claw ripped through the van’s roof—missing Stoney by inches.

  “Up ahead, follow the curve to the west and the cemetery is right there,” I screamed, all the while dodging more claws penetrating the metal above my head.

  Stoney aimed the van between the black wrought iron columns. The low bannered arch above connected the columns and was inscribed with white metal words, Blue Eye Cemetery. When the creature hit the banner, it bounced off the van into the roadway, leaving a claw dangling like a stalactite in the VW’s roof.

  The van jolted as it left the meandering gravel road cut through the cemetery. Brakes locked and out of control, it skated across the manicured turf. Wheels dug trenches as it skidded, the vehicle’s momentum hurled it past grave markers and over the memorial lawn. Ahead, a tree stood directly in the path of our non-stop trajectory. I covered my face with my arm as the unstoppable and the immovable collided.

  The VW
struck the huge tree and bounced upward a couple of feet. The chrome bumper took most of the impact and broke off, wrapping around the trunk like a cigar band. The sudden stop threw me out of my seat, and Jimmy tumbled over on top of me. Stunned, we lifted our heads and inventoried ourselves for injuries. Miraculously, we had survived with nothing more than a few bruises. The van wasn’t so lucky. From where I sat looking through the shattered windshield, I could tell the front wheels were off the ground. The badly dented front end had ridden up the tree trunk at least two feet.

  Seconds later the pursuing police cars slid up to the cemetery’s entrance, and three officers stepped out of the cruisers. They appeared to be two older men and a rookie cop. I blinked and focused on my gift. The scene outside the cemetery gate changed—the older officers were demons. The one we threw off the van limped over to where the demonized officers conversed.

  We piled out of the van, expecting them to charge at us. The blond-demon whined and reverted into the child. One of her arms dangled, broken. She lifted it toward the police officers, who nodded and put a hand up to the entrance of the cemetery. What looked like Christmas lights behind frosted glass flickered at their fingertips.

  The tallest officer pointed at us and ordered his rookie partner to arrest us. The young man stepped through the entrance, gun raised.

  “Down on the ground all of you.” He yelled. “What kind of stunt driving was that? And why were pieces of your van flying back at us?”

  “This one is for real. I don’t think he’s a demon,” Jimmy loudly whispered.

  Roger replied, “What gave it away? The fact he has us in his gunsight, or that the demons can’t step through the gate.”

  “What?” I choked the word, then suddenly, I understood. The other officers weren’t entering the cemetery. They were acting like this place had the same kind of barrier around it as the carnival had.

  “I told you to get down on the ground,” the rookie officer repeated. He approached, careful to keep about twelve feet between him and us.

  I looked over at Flower. She nodded and got on her knees. We followed suit.