The Knowing Box Set EXTENDED EDITION: Exclusive New Material

by Ninie Hammon

  Daniel had suggested they go explore the labyrinth of antiques in the attic of the furniture store to get Becca’s mind off how helpless they’d all felt. Old Mr. Walker owned the place. He loved kids—played Santa every year in the parade—and went to Daniel’s father’s church, and he’d been glad to let the kids poke around, long as they didn’t break anything. Instead of unlocking the big bay doors in the back of the building where furniture could be hauled upstairs, he’d pulled down a rickety ladder that extended through a trap door like the entrance to most attics. Then he shut and latched the door behind them so they wouldn’t accidentally fall through it, and told them to holler for him when they were ready to leave.

  The attic ran the whole length of the building. It was dusty, laced with old spiderwebs, a museum of strange-looking lamps, hat-racks, vases, clocks and pictures of ugly, unsmiling people in big gilt frames. Little mouse pebbles crunched under their feet, courtesy of what was probably a whole city of mice that had found comfy homes in the overstuffed chairs and couches. There were huge windows on the front of the building overlooking Commerce Street, and on the back overlooking the back side of the cemetery and the Eastern Orthodox Church across the alley about half a block away. The windows didn’t open, so there was no way to get even a breath of a breeze, and their movement disturbed ancient dust that hung in the air like fog.

  Daniel was examining a stool, trying to figure out if it actually was an elephant’s foot or was made to look like one, when he heard Becca cry out. She was standing in front of the window overlooking the church. When he and Jack rushed to her side, she could only point. When Mikey came huffing up a moment later, he let out a little squeak of alarm, too.

  It was instantly clear what was happening. Five-year-old Joey was making his way along the narrow ledge that ran around the edge of the round roof of the church. Lying in the gutter twenty feet ahead of him was a soccer ball, and in the side yard of the church thirty feet below were the six Bad Kids.

  Jack had raced to the trap door and began to bang on it, hollering for Mr. Walker to come and let them out. But the old man must have been in the front of the store and didn’t hear Jack’s cry, or was with a customer and was ignoring him. Whatever the reason, Mr. Walker didn’t come to unfasten the catch on the door, so they were trapped in the attic, forced to watch helplessly as the drama unfolded, like sitting in front of a television screen with the sound turned off.

  A piece of brick beneath Joey’s foot suddenly crumbled away and he went down on one knee, grabbing at the tiles on the roof to keep his balance. Becca gasped. The boys watching from below laughed uproariously.

  Daniel could feel his hands ball into fists, saw Jack’s jaw clench in anger.

  Roger Willingham picked up a rock. He threw it at Joey, but missed, and it bounced off the roof tiles three or four feet away.

  Joey cried out something. He was facing the window of the furniture store, and even from where they stood, they could make out the terror on his features.

  Victor Alexander picked up a rock then. His aim was better. He was the short stop on the Little League team.

  The rock hit Joey in the shoulder and he cried out in pain, lurched forward, and barely maintained his balance. They could see Cole yell something at Victor, but couldn’t hear what it was. Then he and the others launched a hail of stones that fell around the little boy—but didn’t hit him. Joey began to cry, quickly ramping up into a piercing wail the three could hear inside the store attic even with the windows closed.

  “They’re trying to knock him off there,” Jack whispered.

  “That’s why they got him to go up there in the first place,” Becca said.

  “I don’t think so,” said Mikey. “If they wanted to hit him, they could. I think they’re trying to scare him so he’ll cry.”

  “Why would they want—?” Daniel began and then Jack grabbed his arm and pointed. Though Jack, Becca and Daniel couldn’t see who it was from their vantage point, it was obvious that somebody was coming down Baxter Street along the side of the furniture store toward the church because the Bad Kids suddenly dropped their rocks and ran around to the other side of the building out of sight.

  Beatrice Cunningham, the pharmacist’s wife, came into view moments later, about to cross the alley. She heard Joey, looked up, and her scream rattled the windows. After that, it didn’t take long for a crowd to begin to gather.

  Finally, the four in the attic heard the catch on the door unfasten and they scrambled down the ladder past a surprised Mr. Walker, who was sputtering “…busy so I couldn’t—” and raced out the side door of the store. The Bad Kids were no longer on the far side of the church. As the wail of a distant siren grew louder, the six boys casually crossed the alley and were sauntering up it toward Jack, Daniel, Becca and Mikey. The furniture store door was sunk into an alcove between the building and the dry cleaners next door and Jack put out his hand, motioning the others to stop there, out of sight. They could hear the Bad Kids’ voices as they approached, but the boys never even glanced in their direction—their eyes glued on the developing emergency on the other side of the alley.

  “…should keep them busy for awhile,” Cole said. “Get your bikes and meet me at Allsup’s Station in five minutes.”

  “Is everything we need—?” said Vic or maybe Roger.

  “You think he’ll forget something?”

  “No, I just…I—”

  “It’s all there and we’ve got a lot to do.”

  Then they heard an odd sound, like laughter—but with a harsh, vulgar ring, an ugly parody of amusement.

  “We’re gonna make ’em squeeeal,” it was a voice none of them recognized. Not a human voice. The Bad Kids walked on down the alley, rounded the corner and disappeared.

  Becca spoke softly after the awful sound died away. “The demons…their demons are so excited they’re hopping up and down, jumping around like the monkeys in that cage at the zoo. They’re planning something more horrible than anything they’ve ever done.”

  Now, Jack is determined to follow them. His question “if we don’t stop them, who will?” hangs in the air.

  There’s a beat of silence. Daniel’s mouth feels dryer than dust, than sand, than salt. He manages to form words anyway. “Don’t act like you’re going alone,” he tells Jack.

  Jack is curt, but firm. “The bike’s too slow with both of us on it. We’ll lose them. You and Becca and Mikey go get Bishop!”

  The memory that had downloaded into his mind with the clarity of a high-def video ended there, cut off like Daniel’d flipped off the television set, leaving the warning in Jack’s phone message reverberating in his ears. Jack had been curt, but firm this time, too, but Daniel could tell he was afraid—just like he’d been afraid before. He knew a lot about Jack, not facts and information, but about who he was, what kind of person. He had been absorbing more from the bursts of memory than scenes and sights. Jack was the best, the only real friend he had ever had.

  Daniel felt a wave of the helplessness he’d felt all those years ago. How do you fight…?

  Didn’t matter. Daniel had no intention of fighting anybody or anything. All he wanted was to do as Jack had instructed: get his family and Theresa to safety. He picked up his cell phone and punched the speed dial to Emily’s number.

  She answered on the first ring, didn’t give Daniel a chance to speak but blurted out, “Daniel, listen—”

  Daniel? Emily never called him Daniel. Something was wrong. She didn’t continue, though, sounded like she’d been cut off. But Daniel blew by it. He didn’t have time to listen to her prattle on about her afternoon spent decorating for Dancing with the Stars.

  If that was, indeed, where Emily had been.

  Daniel felt a chill as deep as the one in the pit of his stomach when he’d heard Jack’s words, but a different kind.

  Was Emily really at the church? Or was she with…Daniel couldn’t bring himself to say the man’s name. He’d used it that one time when he’d conf
ronted her and then never said it or thought it again. In Daniel’s mind, his wife was having an affair with What’sHisName.

  And just like that, Daniel knew he couldn’t do it anymore. It felt like a tumbler had clicked into place somewhere deep in his soul. Wondering and fearing, doubt, suspicion—he’d even checked the mileage on her car!—he was done with that. He hated what this was doing to him as much as he did what was happening to their marriage. He suddenly no longer cared about the consequences—to his life, his ministry. He would not live like this. Emily was going to have to make a choice. It was either her marriage or…Emily was going to have to chose between him and WhatsHisName. Now. Today.

  * * * * * * *

  Jack felt his throat constrict. Daniel! Victor Alexander was with Daniel? But maybe not. Maybe Daniel had gotten Jack’s message in time and—

  No, Jack’s warning had been too late. The proof was sitting right there in front of him. Daniel wouldn’t have run without Theresa.

  Cole’s gloating smile slowly drained off his face and his eyes went completely blank for a moment. Then he spoke, and Jack knew that every speck of Cole Stuart had left the building and some other, darker entity had wholly taken over his being.

  “Where’s Becca?” The voice was a deep, raspy rumble, foreign sounding, totally other. Theresa cringed. Jack wondered what she heard that he couldn’t.

  “How would I know where Becca Hawkins is?” Jack said. “We were friends when we were twelve years old! I haven’t seen her since…I don’t even remember when.” He paused, then sneered. “But even if I did know, do you think I’d tell you?”

  Cole’s insolent voice returned. “Wrong on both counts. She said there was a strand that connects you two. So you do know and you are going to tell me.”

  There was a sudden boom, then a rumbling roar followed by smaller explosions and the sound of a dozen machine-guns. The fire had spread to the fireworks factory. It’d be virtually impossible to control now, and it was coming their way.

  An image, a flash, an expelled memory burst into Jack’s consciousness as real as Cole and Theresa and—was he imagining it—the smell of smoke. No, he wasn’t imagining it. The smell was coming through his nostrils and from the scene in his mind, too.

  He is in Hell. It must be, there is fire everywhere, flames all around, and he can hear the horrified, agonized screams of the damned.

  There’s a figure in the flames. Jack can only see him from behind, but he’s familiar all the same. Someone Jack has seen before.

  The flames back up from the figure, move out of his way as if shoved by an invisible hand, and he walks through them unscathed. Then the figure turns slowly to face Jack.

  It was gone then, vanished as instantly as it had appeared, though the image left behind a whiff of smoke. Or was the smoke real, here?

  Cole reached out with his left hand, took hold of the piece of tape over Theresa’s mouth and yanked viciously. It came away with a ripping sound that left the area around her mouth raw and Theresa couldn’t stifle a cry.

  “Want me to slit your throat, sow?”

  “You think you scare me, fool?”

  Jack could tell she was scared, though, but he was proud of her determination not to show it.

  “Cut my throat and you gone send me immediately and forever into the presence of Jesus.”

  A wave of something—revulsion, rage, hatred…fear—washed across Cole’s face and a shudder ran through his whole body. He seemed to lose his focus; his concentration faltered. Jack tensed. Another moment’s inattention and—

  Then Cole looked up at Jack. His lone remaining eye was nothing but a black hole in his head and Jack imagined he could see flickering there, the reflection of flames. Cole cocked his head toward the metal cage of the old elevator and Jack noticed for the first time that there was a brand new padlock on the old metal bars.

  “Brought a lock and chains with me, just in case,” Cole said. “But I’m not going to need chains.” He gestured with his chin, his hand holding the knife to Theresa’s neck unmoving. “Get in there. Sit down on the floor and stick your feet and legs out in front of you—through the bars. Unclip those handcuffs off your belt, stick your hands and arms through the bars and clip the cuffs on your wrists.”

  Cole was right. He didn’t need chains. This was a well-thought out jail cell. Cole could use the remainder of the duct tape on the roll on the floor to tape Jack’s feet together. He’d be unarmed, defenseless.

  No, not defenseless. “Your most powerful weapon is your brain, soldier,” Sergeant Carson used to bellow. “Use it!”

  Think.

  Cole was a massive powerhouse, could probably have bench pressed four hundred pounds even before the demon took control. With the monster dumping gallons of his own adrenaline into his bloodstream, the man whose muscles stretched his shirt tight was the Incredible Hulk on meth.

  But hand-to-hand combat was more about leverage than strength. Jack was a trained fighter; this guy was—at best—a barroom brawler. Those muscle freaks spent all day in the gym building all their ‘ceps—biceps and triceps. They never worked on cardiovascular. Or flexibility. Jack had him there.

  And there was the rage factor as well. A man jacked up on adrenaline could not think clearly, made stupid mistakes. There’d be other issues with all that adrenaline, too—if Jack could survive long enough to take advantage of them.

  Which, in truth, wasn’t likely. The odds were definitely stacked in Muscle Man’s favor. If he got inside on Jack, started whaling on him…still, a chance at survival was better than the certain death of being locked in that cage.

  “No,” Jack said.

  Under other circumstances, the shock on Cole’s face might have been comical.

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “How many things can no mean?”

  Cole’s eyes narrowed.

  “You’re the same stupid jock you were twenty-six years ago, Cole. You think I’m going to waltz over there and let you lock me up?” Jack set his feet wide apart. “You want me to get in that cage…?” He crouched and continued in a parody of a little-kid dare. “…make me!”

  Time stopped while Jack waited to see if Cole would take the bait.

  A flush rose up Cole’s neck and into his face, bright as a sunburn. Then the man literally roared, made a sound Jack couldn’t believe had been produced by human vocal chords.

  “I’ll put you in that cage, nigger!” He tossed the knife aside contemptuously. “With my bare hands. But I won’t have to lock the door. You won’t be going anywhere after I break both your legs off at the knee-caps.”

  Cole stepped out from behind the chair and lunged at Jack.

  Jack was already turning, with Theresa’s long-ago words ringing in his head. “Dog’ll chase you just cause you run,” Theresa had told Jack and Daniel one evening as they sat on her front porch watching fireflies. “‘Specially mean dogs. It’s in they nature. They can’t help theirselves.”

  Jack ran.

  Cole chased him.

  CHAPTER 30

  The Kobayashi Paper Products warehouse wasn’t completely dark. Through the ten-foot windows high up on the walls near the ceiling, the two halogen lights still burning out by the fence in back and the parking lot lights in front shown down in strips, like flaming spears stuck in the warehouse floor.

  The lone bulb dangling from the ceiling that provided light in the security guard’s office area had been behind Jack’s head, which meant Cole’s eyes would take longer to readjust to the dark than Jack’s, because he’d been looking at the light and Jack hadn’t.

  Every little bit helped.

  A conveyor belt appeared out of the darkness in front of Jack and he had no choice but to dive under it and slide on his belly to the other side. Lost a step, maybe two, but Cole would have to…

  Jack heard Cole grunt, then a screeching rumbling sound, but he didn’t look back. Then he heard a crash off to his left. Cole had gone neither under nor over the belt, he’d
gone through it. Ripped it up off the floor and tossed it into the mountain of boxes.

  Perfect. Keep it up, macho man.

  Out of sight in the darkness between puddles of light, Jack leapt to the side of the main aisle he was running down, shoved himself into a tight space between a stack of boxes that opened up wider once he got past them. Then he threw his shoulder into the boxes, shoved with all his might and the pile of them began to sway, back and forth once before it toppled over into the main aisle, right in Cole’s path. Jack heard Cole roar and saw boxes fly through strips of light, like they’d been made of Styrofoam instead of loaded with reams of typing paper, probably a hundred fifty pounds each.

  Jack squeezed around behind the next pallet of boxes and then the next. Dumping each one in turn into the main aisle, heard Cole roaring and cursing as he picked the boxes up out of his way and hurled them in all directions. But they were slowing him down. Jack gained a few seconds on him with each load. More important, Cole was doing exactly what Jack hoped he would do, was banking on him doing. Cole was using energy.

  That was the thing about adrenaline, Jack had explained to uncounted dozens of recruits over the years. When you’re suddenly forced to fight for your life, your body dumps the hormone into your bloodstream. The process starts with the amygdala, the thingamajig responsible for the fight-or-flight reaction. That primitive body part has one responsibility—to keep you alive—and it will do whatever it has to do to accomplish that task. It will give you almost “superhuman powers.” Equally important, it will deaden pain. Adrenaline is the most powerful anesthetic known to man. It will even slow down time, or seem to because of your faster reactions to stimuli.

  But the human body paid dearly for adrenaline-induced superpowers. It was like pouring rocket fuel into the gas tank of an old Studebaker. It might go fast, but it wouldn’t go far. And given enough time, the engine would blow and it wouldn’t go anywhere at all.

  Regardless of Hollywood hype—it was more entertaining to watch intense hand-to-hand combat go on for half the movie—real fights were over in minutes because the human body was simply not designed to hold out for long at that level. Cole had an exceptional body, but it was human. The beast possessing him would continue to dump ridiculous amounts of adrenaline into his blood to force his body to perform, no matter what the cost to Cole. Jack was counting on that. His only hope in this mouse versus elephant altercation was to continue to drive Cole until his engine blew, force the hulk to expend energy while Jack conserved his own.