by Gary Tenuta
He attempted to smooth his hair back with a sweep of the hand and tugged at his singed jacket. One sleeve was ripped from the cuff to the elbow. His pant legs were covered with tiny burn holes. He thought about those horrifying minutes he was trapped inside the raging inferno. He wondered now if he would ever tell Ravenwood––or anyone, for that matter––that he’d come this close to blowing his brains out with his own gun rather than burn to death. He was one lucky son of a bitch.
Ravenwood’s voice interrupted his rambling thoughts. “I gotta ask. Did you see the body?”
Kane nodded. “What there was left of it.” He winced as he flashed back on the gruesome sight. “Burnt to a crisp.”
Ravenwood’s shoulders lowered as if relieved of a heavy burden. “Ashes to ashes.”
Kane didn’t respond.
“Can’t figure out about that book, though,” she said, as she cranked the wheel to make the freeway entrance. The SUV careened heavily to the right and then straightened out. She flipped the siren switch and the numbers on the speedometer jumped from 75 to 90.
Kane tightened his seatbelt. Her comment reactivated his previous train of thought about the old man. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I might know how that book could have ended up at my house. I mean, you know, Linda’s house.”
Ravenwood shot him a glance.
He shook his head. “I mean, I can’t imagine how Pete could ever have had possession of the damn book in the first place…”
“But…?”
“But when Pete moved into that little mobile home, there wasn’t room for all his stuff. So, like a dumb ass, I offered to store a bunch of it in my basement. You know, when Linda and I were still married. Bunch of boxes. I never even looked to see what was in them. Just stacked them up under the stairs. Some were labeled, though. I think one was labeled ‘books’.” He looked at Ravenwood. “That’s the only thing that makes any sense. If it’s in the house, that might be how it got there.” He shook his head again. “I mean… hell I don’t know. What do you think?”
Ravenwood gave the accelerator nudge. The speedometer jumped from 90 to 100.
CHAPTER 78
As the SUV lurched to a stop in front of Linda’s house, Kane was already out of his seatbelt. He did a double take as he looked at the living room window. The inside of the house was on fire. “Oh, Jesus…” He tore out of the vehicle and raced to the front porch.
Ravenwood grabbed a small blanket from the back seat and ran after him, cell phone in hand, calling in the fire and requesting an Aid Unit.
Kane tried the door but it was locked. He pounded on it. “Sarah! Linda!” Then he remembered Linda kept an extra key inside a fake rock in the garden next to the porch. He found the key, opened the door, and was nearly forced back as a thick cloud of white smoke billowed out.
He took off his jacket, used it to mask his face and entered the house, scanning, searching every direction. “Sarah! Linda!” There was no answer.
Ravenwood caught up with him, masked her face with the blanket and checked the kitchen. Nothing. There seemed to be more smoke than fire and it was stinging her eyes. The main fire had to be in another part of the house.
“Ro! In here!” It was Kane’s voice.
“Where are you?”
“I found Linda! I need help!”
Ravenwood followed his voice to the den. The room was consumed in flames. A bookcase had fallen, blocking the doorway and Kane was trapped inside with Linda’s body draped in his arms.
Ravenwood braced her foot against the bookcase, put her whole weight into it and gave a massive shove. It moved enough for Kane to squeeze through. He quickly made his way to the living room and got Linda out of the house. He laid her on the cool grass of the front lawn near the sidewalk.
Ravenwood came to his side. “Is she––?”
“She’s breathing but unconscious.”
“The Aid Unit will be here any minute.”
Kane nodded. “Stay here. I’m going back in.”
The fire was spreading rapidly and Kane had to dodge the flames as he entered the living room. “Sarah! Sarah! Where are you?”
“Daddy?” The voice was weak.
Kane stopped, listened. “Sarah! Where are you?”
“Daddy?”
Her voice sounded distant, muffled. The basement? He rushed to the basement door and yelled down the stairs. There was no reply. He moved back to the living room and called out again. “Sarah! Talk to me! Where are you?”
He heard her say his name again. He moved quickly toward the back of the house and threw open the door to the laundry room. Sarah was cowering in the corner beside the washing machine. “Sarah!” He grabbed her up and got her out of the house just as something inside exploded with a dull Whomp!
He carried her across the yard and put her down next to her mother. He brushed Sarah’s hair back from her face. “Are you all right?”
She was shaking and dazed, barely cogent and seemed almost oblivious to what was happening. She looked down at her mother. “Mommy?”
Kane knelt beside Sarah and held her close. “Your mom’s going to be okay. The ambulance will be here in a minute. They’ll take her to the hospital and the doctors will take care of her.” He looked at Sarah’s eyes. They still seemed distant. “Do you remember anything about what happened?”
Sarah nodded unconvincingly. “There was a man… I don’t know who he was… He wanted something… A book…”
Kane held her firmly by the shoulders. “Did he find the book?”
Sarah shook her head, no. “There was a light… then the fire... the man… he disappeared.”
Ravenwood stood up and started back to the house.
Kane reached up and grabbed her by the arm. “Where are you going?”
She looked down at him. “The book.”
“Let it burn.”
She pulled away from him and headed toward the house.
Kane called out to her. “Ro!”
She hesitated for a moment at the door, then shielded her face with the blanket and ducked into the house. She found the basement door, flipped on the light, and hurried down the stairs.
The cool air of the basement was a welcomed relief to her burning eyes. She quickly made her way to the back of the stairs and spied the pile of boxes, just as Kane had described. She began pulling the boxes out. Kane was right. Several of them were labeled. Finally, she found the box labeled ‘Books’. She dragged it out and ripped it open. She turned it upside down and the books spilled out onto the floor. There it was. The tiny, ancient book that had been Crowley’s obsession, the motivation for all of this insanity was in her hand. Now it was she who held The Keyes Of The Gatekeeper. She shoved it into her pocket and made it out of the house just as the Fire and Aid Units were pulling up out front.
***
The paramedics were putting Linda into the back of the Aid Unit when Ravenwood walked up to Kane.
He looked at her. “Did you get it?”
She nodded. “You want me to drive you and Sarah to the hospital?
“Thanks, no. We’re going with them.” He gestured toward the Aid Unit.
Ravenwood gave Sarah a hug and turned back to Kane. It was a solemn and uncomfortable moment. There seemed to be no words to make it less so. She put a hand on his arm. “Hell of a night.”
One of the paramedics slid the side door open and addressed Kane. “We’re ready,” he said.
Kane helped Sarah into the Unit and then turned to Ravenwood. “Talk to you tomorrow.” He stepped up into the vehicle and the door slid shut.
Amidst the activity of the firefighters and a small crowd of neighbors that had gathered on the street, Ravenwood watched the Aid Unit speed away, lights flashing, siren blaring. When it disappeared around the corner she got into her SUV and headed home.
Two hours later, Sarah’s mother died.
***
Ravenwood opened the ornate glass door of her antique curio-cabinet and placed the Keys Of Th
e Gatekeeper on the shelf next to her own copy of Crowley’s Book of the Law.
She closed the cabinet door and nodded. Another job, well done. Not just any job, either, she reminded herself. I saved the whole goddamned world. Okay, so I had a little help. She smiled as she thought about Kane and all she’d put him through. She tried to push back the temptation to wonder what, if anything, their relationship could develop into. Of all the strange mysteries she’d encountered in her life, one of most puzzling was how she’d come to feel genuine affection for the man she’d once loathed. She shook her head and grinned. Grizzly bear on the outside. Teddy Bear on the inside.
After a quiet celebration with a glass of wine, she turned out the light, climbed into bed and drifted off to sleep.
EPILOGUE – 1
In the weeks that followed, Kane’s life took on a life of its own, quite different from what he’d known before. In spite of his own self-doubt and apprehensions, he was adapting well to his new role as a single dad with a daughter at home. Home, of course, was his apartment. It was too small for the two of them but the dog-eared pages of the Homes For Rent magazine on his kitchen table promised that would soon change.
••• ••• •••
Sarah, too, was adapting––slowly, painfully at times. Her inner confusion about what exactly happened on that terrible night was massaged into an acceptable, albeit very odd, scenario that her father concocted with Ravenwood’s help:
The whole thing had been a home invasion burglary gone horribly wrong. The hooded stranger was a mentally deranged drifter from out of town who had drugged Sarah with a mild hallucinogen. In the midst of it all, her mother had somehow managed to call Kane, alerting him to the situation. He, in turn, alerted the police who were immediately dispatched to the scene. The hooded stranger had not “just disappeared” in the way Sarah had mistakenly perceived it. When the stranger learned that Linda had phoned the police, he was in a fit of rage. As an act of revenge, he set the house on fire and escaped in a panic. He was apprehended just a few blocks away by the police who had arrived at the scene. The book? There was no book. It was nothing but the product of the stranger’s deluded imagination.
••• ••• •••
Thanks to Ravenwood’s “resources”, Pastor Pete’s death was a non-story that resulted in little more than a one-inch block of small print buried in the middle of the obituary page in the Seattle Sound Times.
••• ••• •••
Bloodhound Morran’s column in the Eye conceded that the bizarre string of preacher killings had apparently come to an end with the death of Harlan Bodine, the eighth victim. The investigation, while still active, seemed to have taken a back seat to newer, more pressing issues.
••• ••• •••
The fire that destroyed Moorehouse Manor, in which Rye Cowl had burned to death, was the result of faulty wiring.
The tragic death of the rock-star made minor headlines in mainstream papers across the country but earned some splashy 30-second spots on TV news and on pop-culture entertainment programs, enhanced by clips of old concert footage punctuated by some pseudo-philosophical comments from a random sampling of Cowl’s head-banging fans and a few mundane words of mourning from sobbing girls with running eye-liner, multiple eyebrow-piercings and bad tattoos.
Maybellene was auctioned off to the highest bidder.
••• ••• •••
The remaining members of Mega Therion held a press conference during which they promised their fans they would carry on with their music. The response of the fans to this announcement was underwhelming at best.
••• ••• •••
The infamous cinerary urn that once contained the ashes of the Beast, and which was securely sequestered away in the evidence locker of the SPD, was found to have mysteriously disappeared.
••• ••• •••
Kane and Ravenwood met casually, off-duty, at least twice in the weeks following the incident. One occasion was dinner at a nice restaurant on the waterfront, a situation that Kane found a bit disturbing––not because he didn’t enjoy it, but because he did enjoy it. In spite of his self-imposed––yet quickly diminishing––skepticism about their future, he found himself looking forward to their next date: a movie followed by dinner at the Space Needle. It was a far cry from his normal weekend with a beer and popcorn and a ballgame on TV. But nothing, since he’d met Ravenwood, seemed normal anymore. Things were changing, seemingly beyond his control, and he was slowly warming to the idea that it just might be for the better. Stranger things had happened. Besides, she promised she would finally tell him the origin of the old saying, “Colder than a witch’s tit.” He grinned and marked his calendar for Saturday, the 14th.
EPILOGUE - 2
Midnight, Friday, the 13th…
Ravenwood glanced up at the mansion, it’s windows glowing red in the night like the eyes of an angry, helpless beast. The real Beast, of course, was inside… burning. She allowed herself a congratulatory grin.
Kane stood beside her, holding her hand.
“Ashes to ashes,” she said softly as she watched the old home dying.
She turned to Kane. He looked down at her. His dark eyes warm, inviting. He put his arms around her and drew her close. She felt his breath against her lips but the anticipated kiss was interrupted by an unfamiliar voice.
Hello, my dear Rowena. It’s so good to be in you.
She awoke with a start, sat straight up, terrified. With a swift, instinctive move, she scooped her service weapon off the nightstand but then realized she was alone in the room. She’d been dreaming. The pounding in her chest slowly receded. She set the gun back on the nightstand but her sigh of relief was cut short by the unexpected return of the voice.
Yes, rather astonishing, isn’t it? I certainly never expected to be here, I can tell you that. But I know you will make an excellent host.
The voice was coming from inside her own head. “No!”
Oh, yes. It’s my time, don’t you see? In spite of your wasted effort––although, ingeniously conceived, I must say––there’s really nothing you can do to stop me. I’m here. Simple as that.
Ravenwood’s eyes darted toward the little book in the curio-cabinet. She tore out of bed, rushed to the cabinet, flung the door open and grabbed the book.
Wait, the voice commanded. What are you doing?
She opened the drawer of her nightstand, pulled out a box of matches and set the book on fire.
Fucking bitch! Stop!
She let the burning book fall to her feet. It flared up with an unnatural brilliance. The carpet caught fire. The flames crackled and spread like a wave across the floor. The drapes ignited. In mere moments the entire room was ablaze.
What have you done? I won’t let you die here! Bitch! I’ll transport you from this inferno and see to it that you live to regret this! I’ll be with you forever! Alhem-amech-selah! Aum-ha!
“I don’t think so,” Ravenwood said. She grabbed her service weapon from the nightstand. “Vete al Diablo, again, asshole.” She released the safety and shoved the barrel into her mouth.
Simple as that.
***
A personal note from the author:
Thank you for reading Ash: Return of the Beast. I hope you enjoyed the ride. You may be interested to know the solution to the Messenger’s riddle, presented to Cowl in this story, was derived from a discovery I made during the course of my work with English gematria. If you’re curious to know more about my work in this area, please visit my website (The Secret of Nine) at www.secretofnine.com.
Thanks again.
About the author:
Gary Val Tenuta, a native of Washington State, is a former contributing writer for FATE Magazine (U.S.) and BEYOND Magazine (U.K.) and the author of The Ezekiel Code (www.ezekielcode.com) which was an amazon.com “bestseller” in two categories for over 57 weeks. He has been a guest on numerous radio programs including Dreamland,
hosted by best-selling author, Whitley Strieber, and The X-Zone hosted by Rob McConnell. Ash: Return Of The Beast is his second novel.
Tenuta’s award-winning short story, A Bite Out Of Time, is available on Kindle for just 99¢.
Enjoy the exciting book trailer at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9tZb3OOL_0
A Bite Out Of Time is set primarily in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. Blind Man’s Bluff (an up-and-coming folk/rock group) is playing a New Year’s gig at the Backstreet Ballroom, an historical old building on the outskirts of the city.
Many years ago, or so it’s said, the members of something called the Blood Cult held bizarre, depraved rituals somewhere deep in the bowels of the old building. It’s just an urban legend, of course. Isn’t it? Well, no matter. Vince Blaylock, the lead singer with the band, couldn’t have cared less. A full-fledged hippie, a poster child for the Love Generation, and a rising young rock star, Vince was just thrilled to be playing the Ballroom, the hottest venue in town.
Everything was just groovy – until he stepped out back to grab a smoke between sets. But you know, a dark alley behind an old building in the middle of the night is probably not the best place to hang out... alone. I mean, something’s gotta happen and it’s probably not going to be good. Right? And you know the ironic thing? His friends used to tell him it would be the cigarettes that would kill him. You’re probably guessing that’s not what killed him and you’d be right about that.
You’re probably guessing it was a vampire and you’d be right about that too.
