The Lord of Always

by David Brian

  George gave a sharp rebuttal, insisting I, “Hold fast. We are not yet done with prepping those bottles.”

  As he spoke he opened his pocketknife and began cutting lengths of string into equal measures, each piece several inches long. He then tied the strips, fashioning surprisingly impressive netting in readiness for securing to the brass hooks of the tool belt.

  “You have skills,” I said, touched by the quality of his handiwork.

  “I’ve been around a long time, son. Bound to pick up a few tricks along the way… there was a time when I used to make my own fishing nets; even impressed myself with the beauties I produced, back then.”

  Just as I thought our labors were close to being finished, I discovered the strangest of our preparations was still to come. Molly once again returned from the kitchen, this time brandishing a sizable porcelain bowl, scissors and a full wrap of bandages. I am sure my eyes widened, my brows rising in confusion as George instructed me to remove my shirt.

  “What! Why?”

  “Just trust me. And it’s best if you can refrain from asking questions, at least until after we’re done. At this point it’s imperative I concentrate.”

  I watched with rising horror as George opened the pocketknife and used it to cut a deep gouge across the center of his palm.

  “Jesus Christ! George. What the hell are you doing?”

  Molly hurried positioning the bowl beneath the wound, catching her husband’s free flowing blood until the receptacle in her hands contained a worrying depth, perhaps several inches or more, of carmine fluid.

  “We need something to give us a little extra protection, and a little extra zing!”

  “Your blood?”

  “Well, I admit lamb’s blood would be just as effective, but why should those poor little buggers suffer, eh?”

  George sank his damaged hand into the bowl and instructed me to add an amount of salt. Without questioning, I poured a cupful onto the back of his hand, watching quizzically as he spidered away with his fingers, mixing blood and sodium into a lumpy, wet-sand concoction.

  George instructed me to stand with arms outstretched. Then he placed a bloody handprint in the centre of my bare chest. Any protestations I considered were quickly stifled, as George began reciting an unnerving incantation. It was a recitation emitted in the same bizarre angel tones heard during his exchange with Anat.

  George’s lips moved in soft whispers, though whatever power was being summoned within him raised through his throat in a soul chilling onslaught. The harshest of winter winds carried on his breath. I couldn’t stop myself shuddering as goose flesh pimpled to attention. Ice entered my lungs, and gnawing cold claimed a hold as I watched with fearful fascination, my own exhalations of frosty vapor turning to lingering mist before my eyes; almost in slow motion it loitered, before rising to disperse, carried on the gentle breeze of a pleasant July evening.

  George traced his forefinger across my torso, encompassing the hand imprinted on my chest with a bloody circle and a number of obscure runes. Only once the sigil was complete did he stand back and admire his handiwork.

  “What the hell is going on?” It was a valid question.

  “It’s what you might refer to as a masking spell. Anat and her foul minions won’t be able to track you now…at least, not quite so easily.”

  “Magic! Seriously? I don’t believe in magic. Besides, your faith in this masking spell, it doesn’t exactly sound convincing.”

  “I have faith in my abilities. And I said it’s what might be called a masking spell. I didn’t say that it was magic.”

  “So, what then?”

  “It’s complicated. All you need to know is that it will offer some additional protection. In spite of how things may have seemed in the village, archons do not rely on vision as a primary sense. With this sigil on your body, unless one of those things happens within normal sightlines of you, then you should remain concealed. Okay?”

  “Should? Great.”

  “Haha! You found it,” George declared, ignoring my sarcasm and turning his attention toward Molly, who had again reappeared from inside the cottage. She was carrying a strange looking knife, with a blade that must have been eighteen-inches or more in length. The blade itself was dimpled, pitted as though it had been heated in a furnace and then beaten with a ball-peen hammer. The handle of the knife was intricately fanciful, and fashioned from what appeared to be ivory, although the black-dye hieroglyphs cut into it were unlike anything I’d previously seen.

  George gestured Molly to pass me the blade.

  “What’s this for?” I asked examining what to all intent was a double-edged machete.

  “It’s a little extra insurance, son. The buggers won’t like this up ‘em. They don’t do well with iron, and this blade is almost ninety-percent ore.”

  “I thought we were relying on your magic concoction?”

  “I told you already. It’s not magic. But it will do us just fine. This here knife, consider it a little extra something.”

  I didn’t bother with further questions. Besides, I likely wouldn’t have understood any half-assed explanation, even if he was willing to humor me with more words. I decided George enjoyed talking in riddles, and that I was way out of my depth in trying to decipher them. All I really wanted at this stage was to find Roz, and then get the hell out of this nightmare.

  “So, what happens now?”

  “We’re nearly ready for the off, Frank. But not quite yet.”

  I watched with baffled confusion as George walked the line of plastic bottles, topping each of them with the bloody contents of the bowl in his hands. There were a lot of bottles, and it struck me that an inordinate amount of George’s life fluid seemed to be pouring from the porcelain receptacle – an amount that seemed far in excess of the several inches of blood I previously noted. I wondered how he could spill so much blood without becoming faint…it was a question that remained unvoiced, my ponderings broken by George’s barked instruction.

  “Get on and start capping them bottles, lad. Then we’ll be good to go.”

  It didn’t take long before we completed the task of readying the belt about my waist, fully laden with almost two-dozen bottles nestled into the netting straps. George used the string to fashion a shoulder strap for the mottled knife, and this allowed me to carry the weapon on my back, its handle positioned handily at my left shoulder.

  We loaded the barrow and rucksack with the excess of bottles and salt. These final tasks completed, we were at last ready to confront the evil before us.

  George turned to Molly, cupping the old woman’s face and planting a kiss to her lips. His actions displayed tenderness beyond anything he had previously allowed me to witness.

  “Once we’ve departed, you need to lock the doors. Go make yourself a pot of tea, and then stay in the lounge. You’ll be safe inside the square I laid down.”

  She stroked his cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I have faith in you, George Smoke.” Molly’s words sounded reassuring enough, but her eyes betrayed the worry.

  The couple enjoyed more words and a tender clasping of hands, and there followed a brief but wholesome exchange of well-wishing between the three of us. And then it was time…

  Chapter 26

  I need to get the hell out of this nightmare…

  It had been several minutes since the attack commenced, the Bedford M-Series, being driven by Pte. Norman Kaylor had exploded in a vibrant fireball of ignited diesel and twisted metal. Kaylor, and whichever poor sod was riding as his ‘plus-one’, died instantly. After the initial heavy bombardment, the assaults were now becoming more sporadic, but it had only been a minute or two since a mortar round landed within sixty-meters of the truck behind which I sheltered. The velocity of the explosion created a storm of debris, showering our position and coating everything with a layering of disturbed sand.

  Our supply convoy had taken heavy fire, and we didn’t have anything decent to hit back with. Air support had been calle
d in, and the drone of the approaching aircraft signaled relief was imminent. I turned and faced the figure cowering beside me. For Pte. Billy Gray it had been a baptism of fire. This was his first week in this North-African shit-hole, and I could see that the attack – and probably more so the cries of the wounded and dying – had instilled him with an I’m about to shit myself dose of fear, though there is no shame to be admonished for such emotions, certainly not by me. Doubtless some would deny it, but I suspect these are worries which have visited every man in this unit at some point of this Godforsaken tour.

  We are, for the most part, boy soldiers. We shouldn’t be dying in this barren hellhole. We need to get the fuck away from this nightmare…I want to go home.

  What’s going on? How can I be stranded on a desert road, fighting Egyptian forces? It seems like only moments ago I was tearing open the tips of my fingers upholstering high-end sofas, a job I’d had, and loathed, since shortly after leaving school. It was a line of work to which I had no intention of returning, not once I finished my National Service...assuming I survive National Service and this bloody stupid war they have us fighting.

  But I did survive the army. Didn’t I?

  None of this is right.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  I’m done with this place.

  Wasn’t I in Cornwall? Yes. Cornwall. Rosalind is in trouble. My heart skips a beat, and I return to remembering the events leading to my seeking out George Smoke. My mind reaching for details of that time, but a plastic spoon bruises into my lip, spreading a liberal amount of blended mush about my mouth…

  I open my eyes to the sight of an attractive, smiley faced young woman. She wears a nurse’s uniform. The woman drags a spoon over my top lip, scooping an excess of unpleasant smelling mixture from my face. She once again attempts to find my mouth with the unpleasant slop.

  “Open wide, Frank,” she encourages, almost squealing with delight when her laden spoon finds its target. “There’s a good chap!”

  I am not seated in the best position for being fed mouthfuls of baby food, and it feels as though a crumpled, multi-folded blanket is adhered to my sweating butt cheeks...

  Am I wearing a nappy?

  The high-back chair does little to support my frame; I’m slumped to one side, my head tilted to an uncomfortable and awkward degree.

  My chin rests loosely on my chest.

  Through barely open eyes, I look past the girl feeding me, beyond the row upon row of elderly disabled being drip-fed spoonfuls of swill, and a measured feeling of relief skips through my system as I recognize the three approaching figures.

  The nurse surrenders her seat as my family arrive and, after a brief exchange of pleasantries, hands the feeding bowl to my son before hurrying away to secure additional chairs. The woman offers a touch that warms my heart, and I wonder if perhaps she might be Rosalind’s grandmother. She speaks gently, “Hello, Frank”, I’ve missed you.” Then she plants a kiss on my sticky mouth. The state of me does nothing to deter her affection.

  If this is Rosalind’s gran, then her behavior is inappropriate.

  The younger woman I recognize as my daughter. I know this for sure. And when Barbara messes her fingers through my hair, and throws her arms around my neck, I feel safe. I no longer feel lost.

  It feels good.

  Peter starts to spoon feed me mouthfuls of the liquidated mush; as he so often does. It occurs to me that food tastes better when there is family around.

  “You’re doing great,” he tells me as I clear the bowl. I like this. I like us all being together.

  But I cannot stay with them.

  This aged woman does resemble Roz, at least somewhat. But this cannot be so. I remember now. Roz needs my help. Yes, I feel like she is here with me. But in another time, in another place, I have to save her. I pull the black pouch free of my trouser pocket, and then I remove the pliable fragment from the bag, rolling the translucent fiend between my fingers, marveling at the feel of this piece of evil.

  “What’s he doing?” I hear Barbara ask.

  “He’s hallucinating,” the old woman says. “It’s happening a lot lately.

  She is wrong. I am not hallucinating.

  Peter sighs, and then says, “I just hope that wherever he currently is, it’s a happy place.”

  I remember. I remember where I am soon to go. It is not a ‘happy place’. As I surrender to the past, I fear it just as much as I do my future.

  Chapter 27

  I doubt more than thirty minutes passed between the time we finished prepping and when we began pushing the laden barrow up the steep climb toward Penhale House. As we approached the summit of the hill, I saw a sight which stopped me in my tracks.

  Barely ninety meters in front of us, a young couple stepped from beyond the field gate. My jaw slackened as I stared up the lane, watching myself take hold of Roz’s arm and hurry her across the blacktop. I felt I should call out to the couple – though what I might have offered by way of an explanation I cannot even begin to imagine. Anyhow, such thoughts were dispelled by George signaling the need to remain silent. He took a firm grip on my bicep, veritably manhandling me from the tarmac. I left the barrow discarded on the lane as he dragged me to the seclusion of the roadside foliage.

  “They must neither see nor hear us. Not yet. Do you understand?” he said, peering timidly from our bushy sanctuary.

  “Sure,” I replied, my heart weighing even heavier now, having been presented with this fleeting glimpse of my one true love.

  We remained concealed for barely more than a minute before George moved gingerly from our place of hiding, making to retrieve the barrow.

  “Hurry, lad,” he urged. “It’s time to make our move.”

  George hoisted one of the axes free of the barrow and carried it to the center of the road, standing it down on its head. I realized then, I had seen this axe before. Earlier this same day, and yet at a later hour than this, it would save my life.

  We were just short of the main gates when my other, still leading Roz by the arm, turned and pulled her toward the direction of the house. I knew what was happening, just as I knew what was coming next. The thing pursuing them was close, its movements not dissimilar to a jellyfish moving through clear water as it shimmered and pulsed toward them. There would be no time for both to make it safely inside. I watched my other pull the door key from his pocket and stuff it into our wife’s fist.

  Roz cries out, questioning his actions, the fear in her voice palpable.

  “I’m trying to buy us some time,” he replies. “I want a word with this freaky fuck!”

  Again, Roz calls my name, urging that I join her.

  “Do it! Get inside and close the door. Now!” we plead in unison.

  I watched Roz stuff the key in the lock, and even though I know she will make it, still my heart skips frantic beats. The door closes with a bang, and she at least is safe from this particular fiend; though once again my wife has been lost to me, trapped within the confines of this grand house. As my other reaches for one of the stone lions guarding the porch, I remember the urgency and fear straining these actions. The statue is heavier than he expects – was heavier than I expected. With two hands and a lot of effort, he wields it.

  My other reaches the bottom step, and as he does so George taps my shoulder. “Go on, lad… It’s got to be now or never. Just remember, these buggers can be tricky.”

  I make my move just as the other me lifts the statue above his head. So intent is he on smashing the creature closing on him, he fails to notice my presence. I dart forward, as per George’s instructions, utilizing the shade of the railings and trees running parallel to the property’s drive. I remain intent on getting closer to the house, staying concealed until the last possible moment. Keeping low, I moved adjacent to the front of the property. My other is about to hurl the statue, then at the last moment he hears my shoes scuffing the gravel underfoot. The surprise on his face would have been hysterical had the situation be
en less dire. The archon too spotted me, and at the last moment it diverted course, intent on cutting short my approach.

  It failed.

  As the archon closed on our position, I rugby tackled my doppelganger…and reality disappeared, lost amid a myriad explosion of color and thunderous rumblings that seemed to shake the very foundation of my being, embroiling my world in a tide of topsy-turvy sickness. A thought flashed through my mind: Did the archon catch up to us? Have I become a victim of the creature’s brutal finality?

  And then nothing but darkness…

  George was kneeling beside me, calling my name and shaking my shoulders.

  “What happened?” I asked, my voice a scratchy whisper as I fought to halt the bile rising in my throat.

  “You did it, lad. You overcame the archon.”

  “How?”

  “It’s impossible for two objects to occupy the same moment in space and time. Once you came into physical contact with the other you, then you merged back into a single entity. It’s a process that tends to cause a bit of disruption to the reality fields; certainly enough distortion to upset one of these buggers.”

  “It’s dead then. I killed it?”

  “No. But it’s knocked senseless and long, long gone from here. It won’t be coming back any time soon.”

  I stared at the dark, rundown features of the house, its bleakness once again setting my pulse racing. Then I realized the redness of the overhead sky, the mountainous carmine rocks stretching upwards toward a blood-sky that was now home to an ebony sun; the sol was massive, perhaps twenty-times greater in size than the orb under which I usually spent my summers. “George?” I whispered. “Look at the house. It didn’t work.”

  “It did work. We are now at the right moment. And, more importantly, this time I’ve got your back.”

  “So, what now?”

  “Now? We stick with the plan. We find your wife. Get her – and any other unfortunates we are in a position to help – away from this damn house. How’s that work for you?”