by Karl Morgan
Chapter 5
After a couple of hours, Bill glanced into the backseat and noticed that Mary was asleep with his dogs again. Seeing his reflection, Chachis got up and hopped into the front passenger seat where he could pet her. He glanced at his white poodle, and rubbed her ears with his free hand. “That’s a good girl.” She climbed over the center console and found a spot in his lap to lie down. Bill kept petting her gently and watching the almost empty roadway ahead of him. He reckoned they were about halfway to Provo, causing him to reflect on their new mission. Images of beheaded children flooded his mind and he fought to suppress them. He focused on the road and tried to keep from thinking such horrific thoughts again. He knew that he and Mary could stop it or, at least, he hoped they could.
When he glanced in the rearview mirror again, he saw three black SUVs approaching at high speed. They were in the left lane so he stayed well to the right of his lane so they could pass. He reasoned the trucks must be Federal agents on an urgent assignment and let it go at that. Chachis began to growl. Zelda had awoken in the backseat and began to yip nervously. Mary opened her eyes and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know what’s gotten into the dogs,” he replied. He glanced in the rearview mirror just as the first of the SUVs passed them on the left. The other two were about fifty yards behind him, with one in each lane. But there was something else too. It had to be a reflection of the glass, but he could see a right angle of intense light, as though a light shone behind the top corner of a door. The front SUV was now in his lane about twenty yards ahead and was gradually slowing down. The second was almost beside them and the third only ten yards behind. They were blocked in. Bill looked frantically about and noticed a thin hand with long fingers extended from the angle of light, reaching for Mary. Zelda lunged at the hand, grabbing onto two fingers and not letting go. It was suddenly intensely cold in the cabin as the three trucks began to slow, forcing Bill to slow down as well.
“Bill, what’s happening?” Mary shouted. Then she noticed Zelda holding onto the hand and screamed. The sound frightened Zelda and she released the hand which instantly slipped behind the angle of light which then disappeared. “My God, Bill, what was that thing?” The side windows of the SUV on their side lowered and two masked men in black uniforms pointed automatic rifles at them. “Bill, don’t stop! They’ll kill us for sure.”
Bill glanced at her in the rearview but noticed only how his own eyes were glowing red again. He could feel his muscles pressing against the fabric of his clothes and he was gasping for breath. Chachis had moved to the passenger seat and he glanced to see if she was fine. Her eyes glowed as well and she had doubled in size. All four vehicles had pulled over onto the shoulder and now were stopped. Mary was crying, but Bill could not comfort her. This was not the time for such emotions. The fifteen men from the SUVs were standing on the passenger side of his car, motioning for them to exit. Zelda growled and it was a terrifying growl. He glanced at her and she was now the size of a bull mastiff.
One of the men spoke in a heavy accent, “Mr. Watson, we know what you have done and now you will all pay with your lives.”
Bill opened the driver’s door to get out. Mary shouted, “Don’t do it, Bill!” But he was already outside. The terrorists stepped back slightly at the sight of his red eyes and changing appearance.
“You have one chance to repent!” he growled in an inhumanly loud and sinister voice.
“Kill them all!” the terrorist leader shouted.
The two passenger doors opened on their own and the dogs attacked the terrorists like a pack of starving wolves. The terrorists fired on the dogs, but the bullets did not seem to affect them. Bill jumped and found himself floating in the air. He dived into a group of terrorists, pummeling and kicking them relentlessly. The leader jumped on his back and began to stab him in the neck, but the knife could not cut his leather-like scaly skin. He jumped into the air and flew back over the freeway and dropped back-first onto the pavement, crushing the leader’s body against the concrete. The remaining terrorists fled toward the mountains and he moved to stop them when an odd shadow passed over him. A second winged monster hovered fifty feet over his head holding an SUV in each hand. Mary flung the two vehicles at the retreating men, crushing them under the weight. Bill stood panting for air with the anger pulsing through his body. After a moment, Mary and his dogs stood in front of him. They were back to normal, but he was still filled with rage. “Bill, it’s okay now,” Mary said calmly.
But it was not quite over yet. There was something keeping him in this form. He glanced down at the body of the terrorist leader. He was shocked to see that same angle of light next to the body. An odd form moved out of the leader’s body and began to crawl through the open door. Bill reached down and grabbed the shadow of a creature and pulled it away from the angle of light which instantly disappeared. The creature squealed in anger and fear as he examined it. It was about three feet tall and very thin, with greenish-gray skin. It was nude but did not have any gender, just smooth skin everywhere. Its hands and feet had long digits with curving talons for nails. It hissed at him and bared its three-inch fangs. “What manner of foul beast are you?”
The creature hissed and then replied in a high-pitched hissing voice, “Your time is at an end, spawn of Satan. Your world is our world now.”
Bill’s eyes glowed so brightly that red light illuminated the creature and it shrieked in terror. Bill snapped its back and it fell limp. He reached down and grabbed the terrorist leader’s knife and chopped off its head. He tossed the body off the side of the road and then flung the head far into space.
Bill was his normal size again. Mary approached and put her arm around his shoulders and kissed his cheek. “What do you think that thing was?”
“I don’t know, but could you feel the hatred and anger coming from that miserable creature? I could feel the violence and horror exuding from its skin. Now I understand why Dom and our father are concerned. That thing was not from this universe.”
“How is that possible? Where else could something be from?”
“I don’t know either. That’s just the feeling I had when I held it. Did you see the angle of light it was trying to crawl back into?”
“Yea, that was really strange. Do you think it’s a portal to another universe?”
“That would make sense, I guess.”
“Bill, I think we will eventually have to go through one of those to find out what’s happening.”
“I think you’re right. Let’s get out of here. We still have to get to Provo tonight.”
“Bill, that terrorist called you by name. That means they know who we are and will try everything they can to kill us and our families.”
He kissed her cheek and said, “Sis, you’re right, which is why I have to find my family before they do. You drive, okay?” She nodded and they climbed back into the car and drove away.
When they arrived in Provo, they went to the daycare to check the area and to get precise directions from their hotel. After dinner, they went to the lobby bar in the hotel to have a nightcap. They sat at a small table away from the few other guests. “Bill, did you know you were adopted when you were young?”
“No, my parents waited until I was a teenager to tell me. They didn’t want me to have a stigma or something.”
“Mine didn’t need to tell me. I was five when my mom died in a car wreck. I have no recollection of my father from my childhood. I hated him so much for deserting us, and I always hoped to find a brother or sister out there someday.” She held his hand. “And now I have a brother.”
“And a father,” he added. She frowned and pulled her hand away. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Mary.”
She leaned toward him and whispered, “It’s not that, Bill. My adoptive parents are very religious. Now I find out my father is the Devil. I’m not sure how to process that. You remember what we did to those terrorists. It’s like we’re devils too in a way.”
S
omeone pulled a chair up to their table and sat down. They turned and saw it was J.C. Emmanuel. “Hi, guys!”
“J.C., what are you doing here?” Bill asked.
“I just wanted to answer Mary’s question.”
“Huh? How did you know?” she asked.
“Illusions, right?” Bill guessed.
“Yea, something like that,” he chuckled. “You have to understand that this open cooperation between my father and yours is unusual, but not unheard of. This same kind of thing seems to happen about once every thousand years. The most horrible things start happening all over the world. At first, your father gets the blame and he is glad to get it. But then things get worse and worse until he has to admit it was someone else. Each time it happens, we get closer to the cause, but we still haven’t gotten there. That’s why you two are the ultimate act of cooperation.”
“Ultimate act?” Mary quizzed. “What do you mean?”
“Well, your father is from one side, and your mother was one of ours.”
“My mother was an angel?” Bill gasped. J.C. nodded.
“But my mother died in an auto accident,” Mary noted.
“That’s true, but she should not have,” J.C. replied. “This current phase of evil began about one hundred years ago. My sister Prudence volunteered to be your mother, but obviously, we could not raise you. We needed human parents to make sure you two could remain hidden. After she gave Bill to his adoptive parents, she cried for months and changed her mind about having a second child. She grieved over the separation for more than twenty-five years before she relented and had you, Mary. Her one condition was to raise you as a human and be your mother. Both of our fathers begged her to reconsider, but eventually they gave in. Then five years later, there was the auto accident where she died. You have to know that should be impossible. We still do not know how that happened.” He sat back and sighed, glad to have that burden off his chest. Mary was crying and Bill sat dumbfounded.
“I know how it happened, J.C.,” Bill replied. The other man stared at him blankly. “There is another plane of existence. I believe it bumps into this one every so often, maybe every thousand years, like you said. When that happens, these evil monsters can open doors between the two universes and slip through. We saw that today!”
“What did you see?”
“It was like an angle of light. I saw one in my car and a hand came out to grab Mary, but my dog attacked it. Then later, after our fight with the terrorists, I saw another next to the dead terror leader’s body. Something was crawling out of his body and trying to slip away into one of those angles. I grabbed it. It said our time was over and it was their time to rule. Then I killed the miserable bastard.”
“That was that awful head you sent to my dad?” J.C. asked.
“I threw it to him? I just threw it away. I didn’t know what happened to it.”
“This is all too hard to believe. I don’t know what to say,” J.C. mumbled.
Mary put her hand on his and said, “Bill and I have to go through one of those doors to stop this.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mary.”
“I don’t think there’s any choice now,” Bill replied.
Mary poked her head through the open door between their adjoining rooms at seven o’clock the next morning. Bill was sitting on his bed with his cell phone against his ear. He looked at her and smiled, signaling he needed five minutes. She nodded and returned to her room to finish getting ready. “Yes, honey, we’re in Provo, Utah. It should be about a six-hour drive once we get going, but I have to handle something here first.”
Audrey sighed and replied, “What do you have to do there? I didn’t know you knew anyone in Utah.”
“It’s a bit complicated, but I promised to do a favor for my father.”
“I know you said you met your biological father. I am very happy for you, but it seems convenient that he is already asking you for favors. What are you supposed to do for him?”
“Please don’t take this wrong, but I think it’s better if you don’t know just yet.”
“Bill, all of this is starting to scare me. Tommy showed me an article on the Net yesterday giving someone with your name credit for stopping an invading terrorist army in the Imperial Valley. Was that you?”
“Yeah, it was.”
“Bill, are you crazy? You could have been killed. They had a report from a police officer who had been wounded there that you decapitated the dead terrorists. Is that true too?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Honey, I think there is something you’re not telling me. None of this sounds like the gentle man I married. What’s gotten into you?”
“Audrey, please try to be calm. I don’t think a telephone call is appropriate for this discussion. I want to tell you everything face to face tonight when I get there.”
“Bill?”
“Honey, please, let’s not talk about this right now, okay? You won’t like anything else I could tell you. If we’re next to each other, it will make more sense. Please?” She disconnected and he tossed his phone onto the bed. “Dammit!” He sat there just staring at the phone, upset and angry that she had hung up on him.
“Bill, what the hell just happened?” Mary said from the door, pulling her suitcase behind her.
“Were you listening to my phone call?”
“No, of course not. What happened to your phone?”
He glared at her and looked at his phone and back to her. “What?”
Mary walked over and picked the device from the bed and held it toward him. “Bill, you never went to the store in Vegas to get a new one. Did you forget that just two days ago, there was a bullet hole through the middle of this thing?” He stared at her open-mouthed, unable to find any words to say. She began to laugh and he joined in. She tossed him the phone and said, “Illusions, right? Let’s go have some breakfast so we can take care of those kids.”
It was 8:40 a.m. when they arrived near the daycare center, well ahead of their deadline. As they started to exit the car, three SUVs parked along the curb pulled away at high speed in different directions. A young woman ran screaming out of the building holding her neck as blood gushed out around her fingers. Bill ran across the street toward her. Another car approached him and honked its horn. Bill jumped into the air, kicking off against the hood of the car and landed on the sidewalk near the bleeding woman. He knelt down next to her as she gasped for breath, choking on her own blood. He pushed her hand aside by his and looked into her eyes. He heard her say, “They took them. God help us, they’re going to kill the rest,” but her lips did not move. Bill removed his hand and saw that her neck wound was healed. She coughed again and then sat up as though nothing had happened. Just then, Mary sprinted by with pistols in both hands and ran into the daycare. The woman whispered, “Thank you.”
“Call 911. My friend and I will help. How many children were taken?”
“Six. There were two in each car. My God, I think they’re going to sell them as slaves or rape them. They’re just little girls, only two or three years old.”
“Have faith, Cindy. We will fix this.” Bill kissed her forehead and ran back across the street to his car and opened the door.
“How do you know my name?” she shouted but he did not reply. She took her phone and dialed.
Chachis and Zelda sat patiently on the front seat. “You both know what to do, okay?” Bill asked. The dogs nodded and jumped out of the car.
Mary smashed down the door to the main room, crushing one terrorist under it. She glanced around the room to assess the situation. There were at least fifty children and fifteen terrorists. Two beheaded teachers lay dead in pools of their own blood. Two terrorists at the far end of the room each held a small boy with long knives against their throats. She could feel the anger growing inside her and prayed it would be enough to save these children. “Mary Stewart, we’re glad you could join our little party. Where is your friend, Bill Watson?” one of the
men holding a knife to the throat of a child said.
Mary felt like she was on fire, so full of hatred for these monsters. That was when she noticed the angle of light near the leader’s head. He began to laugh. “This child will die because of your failure Mary! Now is our time to rule.” He held the knife high, ready to plunge into the little boy’s throat. She jumped into the air, firing on the terrorists, hitting each in the throat as she flew forward. The children began to scream and run about as the dead and dying terrorists fell around them.
Chachis was running down the street, but was no longer the toy poodle she had been a minute ago. Now she was as large as a rhinoceros, running fifty miles an hour through the streets of the city. Zelda was equally huge, except she ran in the opposite direction with the SUV a few blocks away. Bill was flying over the interstate south of Provo as the last SUV sped away at top speed. Within a few minutes, he was directly above it and began to laugh.
The terrorist swung the knife downward toward the child’s neck, a look of glee in his eyes. The blade was an inch from its target when Mary’s arm grabbed his. He looked up at her glowing red eyes and screamed. She ripped off his arm and threw it out the window. Then she shot him in the forehead. The other had released his prisoner and ran for the exit. She fired at him, hitting the back of his head and he fell dead to the ground. Mary panted for air, the level of excitement now ebbing. She found herself surrounded by crying children who were too afraid of her to move. She tossed her pistols out the broken window and sat down on the floor, and was immediately enveloped by the children, hugging her and trying to be near her. Several SWAT officers rushed into the room.
One of the SUVs sat at the traffic light, waiting to turn left and make its way out into the desert and safety. The two men sat in front with two small girls in the backseat crying. “Don’t worry, children, we will find you good husbands.” The two began to laugh. A giant monster landed on the hood, smashing the engine compartment and twisting the frame so that the rear wheels lifted off the ground. The men screamed as the monster swiped at the roof and ripped it off. They fumbled for their weapons and the beast attacked the driver, biting his head and shoulders off and spitting them out onto the roadway. The passenger jumped from the vehicle, but the monster landed on top of him, ripping him to shreds with its long claws.
