The Book of Paul -- A Paranormal Thriller

by Richard Long

  “Can you make a stop at the nearest police precinct?”

  “No need. We’ve been keeping the officers in the lobby.”

  “Perfect,” I said with a tired but happy sigh, not surprised in the least by his comment. I rubbed my hands together and looked down at The Striker. “But give us a few minutes alone before you take out the garbage.”

  I heard The Striker groan as soon as I closed the door on Ryan. I could tell from the way he was dragging his legs that he was indeed paralyzed, but only from the waist down. He pulled himself up into a sitting position and rested with his back against the cross. After he arranged his useless extremities in a cross-legged pose, he propped his elbows on his numb kneecaps and rested his chin on his fingertips.

  “Feeling better?” He said nothing. “I assume you’re aware of what happened earlier.” I pointed to the now vacant altar, opening my shirt so he could have a peek at my new necklace. “Nice, eh? I’ll bet you didn’t think I had it in me.”

  “Oh, I know you have it in you. But I do believe you’ll require some assistance with estate management.”

  “I appreciate the offer but Ryan seems more than capable.”

  “You shouldn’t have let them live,” he said, his perforated eyelids still drooping.

  “If Martin hadn’t taken out Paul, we’d all be dead. Why would I want to kill him?”

  “Them. They both have to die. That’s why you need me.”

  “I think I’ll do better on my own,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “What you will do on your own is die. You have no idea how powerful they are together and how much danger you are in. You will not survive, no matter how many of these books you read. You are going to need help. From me.”

  I laughed. “There is no fucking way I would ever trust you.”

  “Trust is highly overrated. The Master never trusted me for a single second of his long life. Nor I him. Yet we had a mutually advantageous relationship for many, many years. I scratched his back. He scratched mine.”

  “So where’s the itch?” I asked, more than a little intrigued by his proposition.

  “I want protection. Starting with the best legal representation money can buy. I want to be found guilty of murdering Rose Turner by reason of insanity. I will confess to eating her flesh and cremating her bones and supply the suitable evidence. Then I want to be incarcerated in a reasonably comfortable prison with impenetrable security. The facility where Johnny Turner currently resides will be perfectly adequate. And finally, at a time of my own choosing, I want to be declared sane again, and released.”

  “Well, that sounds easy enough,” I said, rolling my eyes. “And what do I get out of it?”

  “It will be easy,” he said, without a trace of a smile. “Easier than you could imagine. That’s what money is for. And what you’ll get is exactly what I want. Protection.”

  “How are you going to protect me from inside a nuthouse?” I scoffed.

  “I will rally the Knights and ensure their loyalty,” he said, unperturbed, holding out a finger with an angel-head ring on it. “I will also deliver my extremely lethal and dedicated followers, whose exploits on our website have kept you so enthralled. But the most important thing I have to offer is the answers you’ve been seeking. The answers you’ll never find in those books, or even his Book. Like what to do about Angus Kelly…The Black Hand Man…and of course, Johnny the Saint.”

  I got such a chill when he said it that I wanted to turn up the thermostat. I stepped away and considered his offer and my own agenda. Questions. Answers. I thought about how far I’d already gone in my quest for knowledge. How much I’d sacrificed. And yet, I still knew so little. Would he deliver? Was he bluffing? ‘Save your questions for him,’ Martin told me. Did Loren really know? And if he knew would he actually tell me the truth? ‘Use him,’ Martin said. But what if Martin was using me? What if he steered me closer to my doom with every scrap of misinformation? I looked up at the angel, hoping he would give me a sign. All I saw was a thin trickle of blood leaking from the tabernacle in his chest.

  “Okay,” I said, a bit too eagerly. “You have a deal.”

  I could always change my mind later, right?

  “Wrong,” he said, reading it. “We’ll have our final confrontation on some distant day, but if you betray me on this arrangement, I’ll betray you in kind. And I assure you…you will not survive my treachery.”

  “Alright,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I don’t find your terms unreasonable.”

  “Very good. Let’s shake on it.”

  I walked closer and grabbed his hand. It grabbed me back twice as hard. I tried to pull away but he nicked my wrist with one of his long fingernails. Then he let me go.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked, pulling back, covering the tiny cut with my palm.

  “A deal like ours needs to be sealed the old-fashioned way. In blood.”

  “Okay asshole…you say you’ve got answers? I’ve got questions. Why didn’t the Book heal Paul? What happened to me when I went with him to the Maelstrom? How could my tattoos disappear…and my implants?

  The Striker started laughing in that deep, deep voice. “You don’t know anything, do you? Paul taught you nothing. Nothing! You don’t even know who you are!”

  “I’m William Kelly, shithead! Now answer my questions!”

  “Yes, you’re William Kelly! But who is William? And who is Paul?”

  “Stop going around in circles!” I shouted, so angry I almost kicked him in the face. “I’m the one asking the questions! Answer me!”

  “I’m afraid all my explanations will be useless,” he chuckled, slurping my blood from his fingernail. “By sunrise tomorrow you will recall nothing. Nothing at all. Perhaps we should save this interrogation for a later date…after I’m safely incarcerated.”

  “Ryan!” I shouted. “Get this piece of shit out of here!”

  “Wise choice,” agreed The Striker, waving happily as I made room for the jumpsuit guys to truss that fucker up. “Be sure to get a good night’s sleep, sweet William. You never know what tomorrow will bring.”

  After they showered and changed and grabbed Mrs. Morgy, they went back downtown and picked up Martin’s car.

  Rose gasped when the attendant brought it up. “You have a Goat?”

  Martin nodded proudly. He didn’t like to draw attention to himself, but he couldn’t resist buying the rusted silver 1968 Pontiac GTO when he first saw it up on cinderblocks near a tarpaper shack in West Virginia. He bought it for fifty 1978 dollars. The dentally challenged owners thought he was a complete patsy. He would have smiled at them if he could. He was smiling now. The Goat was in cherry condition. Dark, dark blue and shining like a mirror. He paid the attendants to wash and wax it every week, whether he drove it or not.

  Martin climbed into the driver’s seat and leaned into the butter-soft leather upholstery. He needed more legroom and pushed back the button on the six-way power seats. He congratulated himself again on being so handy with a wrench as his battered body relaxed.

  They swung by the local U-Haul and hitched up a trailer, then went downtown and cleaned out both their apartments. Essentials only. Gold. Guns. The softest clothes, sheets and pillows. The bloodstone and the rest of Rose’s gem collection.

  When they finished packing, they cruised over to the Hank Hudson Drive. Martin lowered the convertible top and kissed Rose, her face glowing with joy as the New York skyline opened up to their view. She kissed him back harder, knowing it would be the last time she saw it for a long, long time.

  Johnny wiped the sweat from his brow, exhausted but hopeful. Rose was safe…she had the key…and she had Martin. That was what mattered most. The Striker was alive. That was good for him and Rose. Not so good for the rest of us.

  “You have failed,” Loren jeered at him, his eyes sealed beneath fleshy, punctured lids. He spoke aloud, oblivious to the cops who were wheeling him down the corridor to his holding cell.

  “Looks like you�
��re the one in the shit,” laughed one of them, tugging on Loren’s numerous restraints. He was wrapped up tighter than Hannibal Lector on the gurney.

  “It is finished,” Loren continued silently. “The Turning cannot be stopped.”

  “I know,” Johnny replied. “But it’s not over. The Clans will unite. I’ve seen it.”

  Their children will die! Loren’s mind screamed.

  Johnny the Saint peered far into the distance. He saw the twins being born, saw Martin place the slippery bundles in his daughter’s waiting arms. He smiled. But only for moment. He saw the planes streaking through the air. Nothing could stop them. And worse, nothing could stop the Turning. Unless…

  “You can still redeem yourself,” he called to me. “If you don’t open the Book.”

  “Why should I listen to you?” I silently replied.

  “Because I’m trying to save your soul.”

  I stared at the open door of the library for a few moments.

  “That’s very kind of you,” I finally replied, sucking in a deep, long breath before closing the door of my mind, “but I’ll have to do that myself.”

  This is where William was going to explain what happened when he opened the Book. Where he described what it was like to lay his hands on the cover, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, wondering again if he had only imagined the power he felt when he swore his oath of loyalty, when he was indeed saved, yet broke his vow nonetheless. He would have told of his reaction when he saw the rows upon rows of miniscule Ogham marks that went on and on and on. He would have complained about the substitution cipher code that guarded the script, how he so cleverly solved the riddle, how he realized that the Book began at the end and ended at the beginning. He would have reveled most of all in an eerie, suspenseful report of what occurred when he spoke the first words of the story aloud—how the Book came alive and the portal opened.

  He would have engaged your imagination with vivid adjectives and strained similes, attempting to speak of the unspeakable, describe the indescribable, as the force tore through him. He would have offered his conjecture that the Book was burning away every trace of Sophia’s contamination when she took complete possession of it for those few crucial seconds and freed Martin of his vow. He would have told you everything, neglecting to confess his role in our defeat, and the penance he still pays. But the Book will allow only this account. As to the rest, what was seen and unseen, we will not permit it. I will not permit it. Not now. Not yet. Not until we near the end and that revelation cannot alter the certainty of our triumph.

  William has always been the storyteller. It would not have been fair to deprive him of his first and still most important role. He deserves our full respect, and all of the credit. He has done a splendid job, in our opinion. In his opinion, surely. When we release him, so he may finish in his own inimitable manner, this chapter will remain forever as we have written. As I have written.

  There is always more to say. Always another story.

  You have likely come to the conclusion that William wrote this Book from the vantage of hindsight and the wisdom that perspective usually affords, but which has been sadly lacking in this case. You will have certainly assumed he survived the entire ordeal. It would never occur to you or to anyone else that he wrote it long ago and we obliged his intent in the painful manifestation of his own prophecy. No one would ever think such a thing. That, as William was always so fond of saying, would be impossible.

  William has always been the writer in our family. No one in all of time has exceeded his ability to spin his words into an inevitable web of actuality. That is his gift and our curse. My curse. Yet before I relinquish the pen and our grip on him, I thought of a clever ending to our chapter that seems worthy of his talent and our intrusion. Let us know if you agree.

  While William was in the library, our loyal servant Ryan patiently awaited him outside the locked door, so he could fulfill his imperative duty. After a long while, he began to grow deeply concerned. He knew it was not his place to interrupt, that it could even be mortally perilous. Still, he was under strict orders to transport William and the Book to safety at the preordained time. Cautiously, timidly, he pressed his face against the door, rapping upon the wood as lightly as he could and still be heard. When he received no reply, he spoke as softly as he knocked.

  “Sir, are you alright in there? Can I be of any assistance?”

  There was no answer.

  “Your car is ready, sir. Your father gave specific instructions that you were to be escorted safely home before nine o’clock this evening. It is of paramount importance.”

  When William at last opened the door, his simple reply carried more weight and substance than any of the words or phrases he made before or since, in this or any other book.

  “Yes,” he said. “I remember.”

  He smiled. Martin looked in the rearview mirror and smiled. Rose was sleeping peacefully on the big back seat. She matched the leather and chrome perfectly. They’d been talking for hours before she dozed off. Hours. He couldn’t believe he had so many words inside him. She couldn’t either.

  He suggested a drive upstate. Pay Johnny a visit. Bust him out. Rose shook her head and said with absolute certainty, “No. He wants us to stay away. Let’s go somewhere else.”

  Somewhere else. They were heading west now. Fast. At this rate, he calculated they would be at the farm shortly after sunrise. He wanted Rose to see the wheat field in the early morning light. See how beautiful it was. Maybe they could even have that picnic.

  He glanced backward every few minutes. Making sure she was still there. He watched with complete concentration, immersed and absorbed in every breath, every twitch of her hands, every pulse in her veins. Then he looked back at the lines on the highway.

  He smiled again. Naturally. Honestly. It looked so different from the old imitation, the clumsy mask he tried to carve. Just thinking about Rose made the muscles gripping his mouth rise and bloom. He was here and she was here and they were here together. She would sleep and he would drive and watch her and guard her. Forever.

  Before this moment, Martin could never understand why people talked about forever. He was trapped and would always be trapped in the smells and rhythms of the moment. But now he could see all those moments linking arms and stretching out a long, long way.

  He sighed and smiled again. A final surrender. And he knew from a place deep inside that he could not…would not…ever kill again.

  Tonight.

  I woke up this morning in a huge mansion on Fifth Avenue, right across from the Met. I can see the banners hanging from the columns right outside my window.

  The bedroom is pretty high up. Five floors. Everything in the room is white. White sheets, pillows, carpet, furniture…everything. On the sheets, right in the middle of the king-size bed, I found this ledger book, mottled black, blue lined pages. Blank.

  So was my head. I couldn’t remember anything. Where I was, how I got here, anything. I thought I must have been on a real bender, but I didn’t have a hangover. Then I got really scared because I couldn’t remember what day it was, what month, what year.

  I freaked out even more when I couldn’t remember my name. I went a little crazy at that point, searching around the room for my clothes. I found them folded neatly on a white bench at the foot of the bed. Black pants, black turtleneck…really soft and expensive. But no wallet, no identification. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I didn’t recognize my face. I thought I was going to totally lose it, but the more I looked at my reflection, the more it seemed to fit, except…I looked so young.

  Everything else seemed okay: big muscles, blond hair, blue eyes, smooth, pale skin. But something was missing. On my chest? Wasn’t something there before? Some scars or something? I don’t know. I don’t remember where I got this necklace either. With a key on the end. I looked around the room for a lock box, but all the drawers were empty.

  I got a little pissed and started throwing things aroun
d, but then I calmed down and jumped in the shower. By the time I was finished, I was laughing. Loud. I got dressed and the clothes felt really good on me. I whistled a happy tune, opened the door and saw a gigantic elliptical staircase going all the way down to the bottom floor. White marble steps. Black iron railing. Black on white.

  “Is anybody home?” No answer. So I walked down the staircase. There are long hallways going off in both directions on every floor. Lots of doors. The wood looks really old. Carved. Ornate.

  When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I was in a big hall with really high ceilings. I must have been gawking, and I got a huge jolt when I heard a voice behind me.

  “Is something wrong, sir?”

  I grabbed my chest and laughed. The guy who asked me the question—Jacob, I learned—was very old and very scared. I don’t know why, but that made me laugh even more. I slapped him hard on the back, like we were old buddies, and asked, “Could you be telling me what the hell I’m doing here, you rickety old rascal?”

  Jesus Christ. I have an Irish accent.

  The old fucker didn’t say anything, but he looked like he was going to faint, especially when I shook my head and headed for the front door. He threw himself in front of me. “Out of my way,” I snarled, like I was really angry. But I didn’t feel angry.

  And get this: He dropped to his knees in front of me. His knees!

  “Forgive me, Master, but you left explicit instructions last evening that you were not to leave the house under any circumstances. Not until tomorrow. You said you wouldn’t be…ready…until then.”

  “Master?” I asked, but part of me was chuckling inside. The old geezer stared up at me like I was going to chop off his head or something, but he stood his ground and started pleading with me again.

  “Master, I’m following your direct orders. If you came downstairs, I was to request that you return to your room immediately…and begin writing in the book that was left for you. The journal.”