by ML Banner
“What the hell are you doing?” demanded the Giant from the front of the house, not yet visible.
“We were going to look for the damn kid,” answered the woman. She had shrunk back toward the front and now some of her head was partially obstructed by the house’s corner. Enough was showing though.
This might be his chance: all three were outside, although he didn’t yet see the giant.
Tom quickly snatched up the rifle and flipped off the safety. There was a round in the chamber. Both he and the rifle were ready. He trained the open sights on the woman, who had stopped at the rear corner of the porch and was now peering toward his back yard. Her hands were cupped around her eyes, her head rotating like a lighthouse beacon, apparently searching for the lost boy in the darkness. It was time.
His finger lightly touched the trigger.
“Do not repay evil with evil,” a young voice sounded softly behind him.
Tom spun around, immediately bringing his rifle’s sights on the boy, who calmly stood his ground before him.
“You have heard it said,” the boy continued with the silky conviction of a TV preacher, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Tom just gawked at the boy’s ghostly face, barely visible in the auroral luminescence. The boy didn’t appear to be a threat, and so Tom lowered his weapon. He was captivated by the kid’s confident tone, and his wisdom, well more advanced than his apparent years. Tom blinked back disbelief at what sounded like a charismatic preacher, rather than a boy who was maybe nine or ten years old.
“Kid, your parents or friends took my home that I built with my own two hands, shot me and left me for dead. Why do they not deserve to die? I have the right to take back what is mine.” Tom felt like he was justifying his actions, or planned actions to this kid, but he didn’t know why.
The boy didn’t move, although the auroral light played games with Tom’s vision, making the boy’s body appear to flutter. Tom tried to get a sense of the kid’s demeanor, but his face remained hidden behind the auroral murk. He wasn’t even sure why it mattered what the boy said or thought of what he had planned to do. Why was he arguing with him anyway? Then he was horrified, because he realized then that this boy was Drew and Tom was trying to convince Drew that his chosen path of revenge was justified. He knew logically that his mind was filling in the boy’s blank spots with Drew’s face, and that this couldn’t be Drew since Drew was dead. But for a moment or two, he actually wondered if he was speaking to Drew, and not this strange kid. He must be losing his mind.
Then the image was gone.
“Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. On the contrary: If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Tom felt hot burning coals all right. He was more fiery than when he started on this path. This kid, definitely not Drew, was fanning the flames of his anger.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Tom huffed, more loudly than he intended. “Why are you quoting scripture to me, boy? These evil men and woman deserve to die. It’s their lives I intend to take. Whether you approve of it or not is not my concern.”
The crack of a large twig snapped behind Tom. The boy’s head pivoted only slightly, in the sound’s direction. Tom had completely forgotten to pay attention. But before he could react, something heavy struck the back of his head. He dropped his rifle, tumbled to the ground, and came to rest on his back.
He glanced up, his vision now foggy, and saw a hulking form standing over him.
“I won’t miss you this time,” said the man above. It was the giant’s unmistakably hollow tone.
Tom could see the giant’s arm swing forward, ever so slowly, as if he were relishing this moment. Connected to the end of this movement was what looked like Tom’s own Sig Sauer pistol.
He had experienced nightmares such as this many times before, where he was incapable of moving while someone was about to shoot him. But where he usually rose from the nightmare in a hot sweat, still filled with terror, this time he knew he wouldn’t wake. And instead of the usual anguish, he felt peace. This time, all of his nightmares would soon be over.
He heard the boy holler, “Wait! We need him,” immediately followed by two quick cracks of a powerful pistol, which made Tom jump. He mentally braced for the searing pain that would come next, especially because he assumed the giant knew what part of him to hit this time.
But just as quickly and as surprising as the shots were, the giant toppled over like a felled pine tree onto the pile of building materials in front of him.
Tom’s eyes flicked open just as the big man came to rest beside him and then another form swam into Tom’s field of vision. This shadow was unfamiliar. And although he couldn’t see the man’s face hovering over his, he could feel his gaze.
It was a cold set of eyes, like a January rainfall leeching into his bones. He shivered as if he were lying in a wet snow drift rather than resting on ground still heated from another perpetually blistering summer-like day.
The shadow looked up at the boy. “Come with me,” the specter demanded, but in an unexpectedly smooth voice, dripping of European upper-class.
The shadow grabbed the boy’s shoulder and tugged. The boy offered no resistance, but said something like, “Check his back pocket.”
Several gunshots came from the house. At least Tom thought this was happening, but he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming it now, as his vision was swimming in a pool of unreason. It was no doubt from the rap to the skull he took from the giant.
Tom tried to lift his head with great effort.
The shadow didn’t duck or react in the way normal people would when there was gunfire. He calmly turned and fired off one shot in the house’s direction. Letting go of the boy, the shadow bent down to Tom and said, “I won’t kill you if you don’t interfere.” He grabbed something and floated away.
Tom’s vision faded, blackening around the edges, until there was nothing.
12
“Who fired those shots?” the woman hollered.
“That guy?” Shorty answered, stretching a scrawny finger outward, pointed toward a moving cloud of darkness.
The blurred shadow of a man gracefully bisected the blackness in front of them, just as a hot breeze might blow over a field of sun-dried weeds, bristling their tips as it passed over. The apparition gusted toward the kid, and their now-dead comrade.
For a couple of breaths, neither of them reacted, as if they were watching a reality TV show.
Shorty broke free of his own stupor first. “Shoot him,” he begged. “I left my gun inside.”
The woman shuddered at the realization that Shorty was talking to her and that in her hands she possessed the only means to strike out at this malevolent figure. She also knew deep down who this person was and that if she missed, it was a death sentence, or worse.
Still, she raised her pistol as if some other person were controlling her hands and fingers, resisting her frantic mental directives. She fired wildly. Her bullets never came close to the man—she wasn’t sure he was a man—in the shadows. The shadow stood without the protective cover of fear that graced all other humans. It was as if he knew her bullets had no chance of finding him.
In a blur, the dark figure fired back at them once, barely missing her: she felt the round pierce the air by her check. This lit a blaze under her panic-soaked kindling.
“Run!” she yelled. Her feet and legs accepted her own command before Shorty’s did. There were no more rounds being fired at them, and all she could hear except for her heart exploding rhythmically in her chest were the flomp-flomp-flomp of Shorty’s footfalls behind her. She pumped her legs as fast as they would go until she and then Shorty were inside the front door. They both kicked at it with all their might, floppi
ng the door closed with a loud thump, latching it from the inside.
The shadowy figure would not easily enter, but they couldn’t leave.
They crawled across the wood floor until they reached the side bedroom the kid had been sleeping in. Tentatively they peered out the window, gasping for air. It was a horror movie playing out before them and they were the character actors who always found death in the most gruesome ways.
What the shadow did next horrified them even more, as they watched their own horror movie unfold.
“What the hell is that?” Shorty begged, not really wanting to know the answer.
“I think it’s gas. He’s dousing the house with gasoline,” she breathed through rapid puffs.
“Shit! He’s going to burn us alive?” Shorty just understood the ramifications of the dark figure’s actions. “Who the hell is that?”
“Who do you think?”
They watched the shadowy form crumple up a piece of paper, light it and toss it at the house.
The woman glared at the flames dancing outside the window, frozen in amazement and terror. Finally, she broke free.
“Wait, don’t leave me,” pleaded Shorty.
“I’m not waiting to burn to death,” she huffed. She unlatched the door, threw it open and blasted out the door, firing her weapon into the blackness.
Shorty quaked and then cowered into a human ball, unable to move from his place on the floor. His eyes shut, like separate lids to the same coffin. He tried to ignore everything, including the popping sounds coming through the front doorway. If he had paid attention, he would have heard a short silence, and then a single pop and then more silence.
He was surprised how quickly the heat enveloped him, and how loud the crackle of burning wood was. Just their luck that the survivor’s house was made of wood.
But that was their fate. If they hadn’t chosen their greedy ways, stealing from the Teacher and then coming to this place, stealing from the homeowner, and then killing him, perhaps it would have been different. They should have just made their way to Cicada and skipped this place entirely.
Shorty heard a crash on the other side of the room and felt a whoosh of hot air, like a colossal dry tongue lapping up its next meal. He glanced upward and saw the fire was now inside the house, and that a window had blown out and the flames consumed the wall and were eyeing the ceiling.
His horror movie played out exactly as he suspected. Like other character actor roles, he would be forgotten immediately. There wouldn’t even be a mention of him in the credits. He didn’t care. He just didn’t want to burn.
He grabbed his rifle.
His next action was quick and with little thought applied to it. Entirely reactionary.
He cycled in a round, turned the Trapper 94 30-30 toward his face, slid the barrel into his mouth—not easy with the large fixed sight—and he pulled the trigger.
~~~
She was surprised by it all, thinking death would have been more painful.
She was pretty sure her wound was mortal. An involuntary cough dislodged a trickle of thick saliva and blood that slid down the side of her cheek.
The thought of this no longer terrified her any more. It would be over and she would finally get some rest.
She looked up and was startled to find the shadow man everyone called Scarface calmly standing over her, scrutinizing her eyes. She started to hyperventilate.
“Where is it?” He said. His voice was smooth, and... British. She had never heard him speak before. And now to have him standing over her, demanding the Cicada map that they took from the Teacher, she was hitting a full-on panic. She would experience horrible pain at her death.
The woman tried to lift her head as she spoke. “I...” Too weak to elevate further, she stopped and coughed. Another glob of blood shot upward, geyser-like, slowed and then fell back, splattering her forehead. Her head dropped back to the ground, and she answered, offering no more resistance, “I don’t kn...”
Scarface considered putting a bullet in her brain, but remembered the Teacher’s explicit instructions to make them pay. He also needed to know something which was much more important to him than where the map to Cicada was. He holstered his Glock. Sticking out his forefinger, he slid it into the open wound in her chest and slowly dragged it out, torturously slow.
The woman groaned in agony.
“Tell me how you found out about this place? Who told you?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed, then lost focus. They stared out into an abyss, not really seeing Scarface any more. It was a sign that her time was almost upon her.
Like a cobra striking, Scarface flicked his bloody forefinger against the woman’s cheek; a crack that brought her back. She mumbled something unintelligible.
He leaned closer and considered her last words, spoken barely above a whisper. His head hung close to her for another moment, nodding in acknowledgement. He had what he needed.
Scarface stood up and contemplated the life he’d just taken, waiting to see if she was still cognizant of him hovering over her. When her eyes flashed back, hazy and wild, he spoke his final words to her. “You shouldn’t have stolen from the Teacher.”
He turned and walked away, leaving her to die.
Hell’s Requiem Playlist, Track 9
Song/Artist: When The World Is Running Down by The Police
Keywords: feel lonely here; waste time with tears; deep throat; world is running down; make best of what’s still around
13
It sounded like a Red-Tailed Hawk, screeching above, telling the avian world that the dying animal below was its sole property. Tom knew he should have felt nervous, as he was most probably the animal that the raptor was calling dibs on. He couldn’t help but grin.
His eyes flicked open, revealing a misty fog which equally matched his mental one. But this fog almost instantly stung his lids, and he reflexively forced them closed again.
Instead, he held fast to the mental images streaming to his consciousness from his dreams and lost memories of the past: mornings in the Fall, when the early temps dropped enough to create a thick haze. Before the Event, he had always preferred the heat of the day. But there was something so beautiful and peaceful about a morning fog. One such memory involved his son.
He smiled at the long pushed-aside recollection of taking Drew on his first hunt. They waited on a high ridge, at the edge of his property, overlooking the valley. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the light of dawn started to leak into the valley, revealing a magical mist that clung to the valley’s floor. A Red-Tailed Hawk made its rounds, patrolling for its breakfast. And even though Drew was anxious for the fog to lift, so it would reveal the herd of deer they knew to be hiding in its cover, Tom didn’t want that moment to end.
He also treasured his mornings alone, when the fog would pour in and fill the valley, rising all the way up to his hilltop property. His mental memory jukebox easily selected from the pool of flashback favorites, grabbing one he hadn’t played in a while. Mimi and he had just had one of their many arguments. Tom left her in the house and marched out to his favorite chair to contemplate their difficult lives together. As he sat there stewing, he watched the fog cover the ground around him. The mist appeared to almost take on an ethereal form, as if it were a living being. Its fingers slithered above the reach of grass, until it was close to him and it reached out and clung to his boots. He had tried to kick it away, dispersing its grasp. But it was unrelenting, gathering in strength, before it covered him.
This morning’s fog was very different.
It was very warm now, even this early in the morning, so the conditions weren’t right for fog. And there wasn’t even the slightest hint of moisture in the air, a necessary requirement for fog. Plus, the morning fogs he recalled were so pleasant for their dewy fragrances. This one was astringent and completely unpleasant.
Tom coughed a reply to this. His lungs fought with this fog-soaked air, tightening with each breath, through lips that were parc
hed and cracked.
No, this wasn’t a fog. This was smoke. Something was burning, something big.
He snapped his head in the direction of his house—at least, where it should have been. But there was nothing there. He turned to the other direction, thinking his bearings were off and that he somehow had gotten spun around. Through the smoke, and the pile of building materials, and the distant hilltops in the east, he was at least anchored. He knew where he was and where his house should be. Looking again, there was nothing. Where his house had existed only yesterday, there were now churning billows of black smoke. His irritated eyelids batted back the blaze’s stinging vapors. But he looked once again, sure that he was the problem. His house had to be there.
He lifted his head, which throbbed a relentless ache that pulsed throughout with each beat of his heart. A spike of pain pounded the back of his neck. And he swore it felt as if someone were clobbering a tent-stake directly into the back of his skull with each movement.
But neither the pleasant memories nor the pain would change reality: his home had been burnt down. Little was left but some errant wood beams thrust into the sky like expectant outstretched hands, seeking sympathy from God where there would be none.
Little licks of fire cowered in the blackness, searching for unconsumed fuel. The burnt mass that at one time was his home appeared to be still smoldering. It emitted thick plumes of black smoke that made the area around him seem like night even though he knew it to be morning. The billows of smoke floated over him and hung on as if to torment him further, reminding him that all he had built was now gone.
He forced himself to a sitting position, not so much to further examine the destruction, but to see if he could focus or if his concussion was serious. His head swam at first, then it started to clear.
The smoke was bad here, accosting his eyes and making them water even more. It would be worse when he stood. If he could stand.
