"Then what I am seeing in these visions…"
"Is this Nightshade, Moloch", Jake finished for her.
"What do we do now?" Katelynn wondered.
Jake answered without hesitation, "We’ve got to stop it."
She looked at him. "What do you mean `stop it’? How?"
"Kill it, I suppose. What else can we do?"
"We’re not talking about some rabid dog that you can just track down and put out of its misery. This is a, uh," She struggled, not quite sure what to call the thing. A beast? A demon? Just what in the name of God was it?
Jake watched her confusion, thinking that while he might not know what to call it, he at least knew what it was.
Evil.
With a capital E.
"What do you suggest we do?" he asked Katelynn in reply. "Just let it keep killing people?"
"Of course not! I just think there might be someone else better qualified to do the job. Why don’t we tell the cops? They can call in a SWAT team, or the National Guard, or somebody. They’re trained for this kind of thing. We aren’t."
Jake laughed. "Yeah, right Katelynn. I can see it now." He mimed picking up the telephone and dialing a number. "Yeah, hi. Is this the police? Good. My name is Jake Caruso and I just wanted to let you know that there’s some creature from Hell loose in Harrington Falls and that’s what has been killing people. What’s that? Oh, of course I have a description. He’s red, with cloven hooves and a forked tail, and usually carries a pitchfork."
Katelynn stared at him for a moment, then sighed. "Okay. I get the point. But I still don’t think it’s a good idea for us to get involved. We don’t know anything about stopping this thing. We don’t know where it lives, what its weaknesses are, nothing. How are we supposed to kill it? Drive a wooden stake through its heart? Shoot it with silver bullets? Wrap it in iron chains and drop it in running water? What?"
"I don’t know. But there’s got to be some way to stop it, or else there’d be thousands of them out there. The Elders managed to do it, according to Gabriel. So can we!"
"Come on, Jake! This isn’t a game of Swords and Sorcerers where you can drink a healing potion or receive a resurrection spell and everything will be all right again. Wake up to reality. This thing has been savagely killing people, including two cops. And you can bet your ass they had guns and knew how to use them!"
Jake turned to Sam, who’d been silently watching their exchange. "What do you say, Sam? Are you with me?"
Sam’s gaze met his own, and in his eyes Jake could see a rage that smoldered like a white-hot ember. Sam’s voice was flat and hard, but this time full of emotion, his anger barely held in check. "I want to kill that motherfucker. I don’t care how we do it. I just want it dead."
"All right! That’s my man!" Jake said clapping him on the back. "We’re gonna send this mother right back to whatever hell it crawled out of!" He turned back to Katelynn. "So? Are you with us or not?"
Katelynn stared at the two of them. They were really going to do it, whether she agreed to go along or not, she could see that. Had they both gone completely nuts? She was convinced they had.
"No." she said, then once again more firmly. "No, I’m not going with you. And I won’t sit here listening to you any more. You’ve got to be out of your mind, Jake. You heard what Sam said. This thing ripped Gabriel into little pieces. If he was one of these Elders with their mystical powers and still got torn to shreds, what do you think it will do to the two of you?"
"I guess we’ll just have to take that chance," Jake replied calmly.
Katelynn could see the hurt in his eyes, but she ignored it. If he wanted to be mad at her for trying to save his life, let him. He’d done dumber things before. "Then you’ll do it without me."
Katelynn got up and walked out of the kitchen.
A few moments later the two men heard the front door open and close, then the sound of her car starting in the driveway.
Katelynn wasn’t coming back.
Jake looked at Sam, and then shrugged. "So be it. We’ll just do it on our own." He got up, filled a mug with coffee for each of them, then sat back down and started to plan.
Chapter Thirty: Riverwatch Again
Sam awoke to a hand gently shaking his shoulder. In the dim light he could see Jake standing over the bed. "Time to go," his friend said.
Sam nodded to show he understood.
As Jake disappeared back into the living room, Sam swung his legs out of bed and quickly dressed. A passing glance at the clock told him it was 4:00 a.m.
He slipped out of the bedroom and moved down the hall to find Jake waiting silently by the front door. Loki stood beside him, but Jake indicated to the dog that he was to stay and the Akita complied. Sam nodded that he was ready, and the two of them left the house and climbed into the Jeep.
They had settled on a simple plan. The two of them would climb the Rock, a tall outcropping of Stone that overlooked the Quinnepeg River and set up a watch. As the highest place in town, and one that overlooked the Riverwatch mansion, it seemed a logical place to start. All of the attacks had been at night, under the cover of darkness. This had led the two of them to hypothesize that the beast either chose not to be out and about during the daylight or could not. Either way, it would attempt to return to its hiding place before the sun came up. The Rock’s height gave them the best possible chance of spotting it in the air and there was always the possibility that it might actually be hiding in Riverwatch, despite the search the police had made of the premises earlier. Jake and Sam intended to be on the Rock before then, so that they would have the opportunity to see it when it returned. That would give them an idea of what they were up against.
After that, they’d figure out the rest of the plan.
For his part, Sam found himself now wondering just what the hell they thought they were doing. He didn’t doubt for an instant that this creature really existed. He’d seen enough in the last several days to convince him of that. He also knew just what horrible acts of violence the beast was capable of committing, and yet, here he was actively going to seek the thing out, to discover where it lived. His anger had cooled slightly and this gave him some perspective on the situation. Katelynn had been right. They had to be nuts to try a stunt like this. This thing could kill them without batting an eye. He turned to voice his opinion to Jake, when his friend said, "We’re here."
Sam glanced out the window as Jake pulled the Jeep over and parked it on the side of the road. From where Sam sat, the woods seemed to extend for miles out from the road, though he knew that just a few hundred yards away they suddenly dropped off at the edge of the Quinnepeg River. Next to the shoreline loomed the Rock, though they couldn’t see it from the street.
"I don’t know about this anymore, Jake. It seems kind of crazy to me."
Jake wasn’t pleased. "I thought we agreed."
"We did." Sam agreed. "It’s just the rest of the plan that bothers me. Sure, we might actually see this thing, but then what? What happens if it discovers we’re up here? Have you thought of that? Gabriel didn’t give us information on how to stop the Nightshade. I don’t particularly like the idea of trying to fight it off with my bare hands!"
"It’s not going find us." Jake said as he climbed out of the Jeep, looking back in through the open door. "We’ll be hidden in the trees, well out of sight. All we’ve got do is hang around long enough to see if it’s still in the mansion, and then we’ll get the hell out of here and call in some help."
"Like who?" Sam wanted to know, making no move to get out of the car.
"How the hell should I know?" Jake replied in exasperation, and shut the door in Sam’s face.
Sam watched as Jake crossed to the other side of the road, stepped over the old stonewall that lay crumbling at the edge of the trees, and disappeared into the darkness on the other side.
The silence that settled on the Jeep in his passing seemed to weigh heavily on Sam. Fear had come to replace the anger he felt earlier when th
ey’d decided on this course of action and seemed to settle about his shoulders like a wet cloak. Being alone in the dark was not the best idea at the moment. Should he stay here, and hope the Nightshade didn’t see him hiding in the car, or join Jake and pray it never looked in their direction? Neither alternative held that much appeal to him. It only took him another second to make up his mind.
Sam opened his door and got out of the Jeep. "Hey, Jake!" he hissed into the darkness. "Wait up!"
Ten minutes later they were settled in on the top of the Rock, doing their best to blend in with the landscape. The stone they sat upon was wet with the evening’s condensation, and its coldness quickly sapped the heat from their bones. The wind whistled lightly through the trees around them, rustling the leaves, sounding like voices calling out to them from the darkness. Below, a thick fog lay a few inches above the water, swirling about in the light breeze like ghosts dancing in the night. None of this made Sam feel any better about his decision to leave the Jeep.
Sam glanced out over the water. From where they sat the tall spires of Riverwatch were clearly visible in the light of the moon. It was there that they suspected the Nightshade had been hiding since the most recent killings.
They sat quietly in the darkness, ignoring their discomfort, lost in their own thoughts until Sam broke the silence about half an hour into their watch.
"I think I have it figured out."
In the dim light Sam could see Jake’s head turn toward him. "Have what figured out?"
"Why there’s been no evidence of Gabriel’s version of history."
"Why’s that?"
"Because mankind just hasn’t recognized it for what it was when we saw it."
Jake chuffed, a trait he’d probably picked up from Loki. "Run that by me again."
"Think about it. If these things were supposed to have had their own civilization like Gabriel said, there should be some kind of physical record of their existence, right? I mean, if we can find evidence of man’s earliest ancestors walking across the plains of Africa, then there should be some clues left behind that these two great races inhabited the world before we did. Hell, Gabriel even bragged about the Elders’ great cities. Why isn’t there any evidence of them?
Jake pondered this for a moment. "Beats me."
"Maybe there is evidence. Think about it, Jake. How many unexplained coincidences and unsolved mysteries are there concerning the ancient world? Hundreds, right?" Sam’s voice started to rise in excitement.
"So?" replied Jake. He wasn’t sure where Sam was going with this. "And lower your voice, will you?" he added irritably.
"I’m talking about hard, substantive evidence that Gabriel’s story of the Age of Creation is true. Evidence that’s always been right under our noses, we just didn’t recognize it."
"Like what?"
"Like who built the statues on Easter Island, for instance. They’ve stood there for centuries, yet no one knows one iota about the people who built them or why they were built in the first place."
Jake stared at his friend in disbelief, though the darkness prevented Sam from seeing his expression. "That’s your evidence? A bunch of lousy statues no one knows who built is your proof that some highly developed civilization ruled the earth before we did? Don’t you think that’s pushing things?"
"But that’s just it, Jake. It’s not the only evidence. It is just one example. There are others just like it. Look at the pyramids. Even today, with all of our modern technology, we still couldn’t replicate even one of those pyramids and get it as mathematically precise as the Egyptians did, and they used only their hands. And what about the Mayans and the Incas? Two incredibly advanced civilizations with both a spoken and written alphabet long before our ancestors in Europe had learned the value of writing. Both groups also had enough respect for geometry and astronomy to create a calendar that many argue is even more accurate than the one we use today. How else could they have done it, Jake, if not with a little help from someone else, like the Elders?"
Jake was interested now. Sam was actually making some sense. He remembered such theories had been evoked in the past, though they usually revolved around some extraterrestrial intelligence landing in flying saucers for a neighborly visit. Such ideas had always been scoffed at, with valid reason, in Jake’s opinion. But Sam’s idea struck a little closer to home. A prehistoric, intelligent race of "others," for lack of a better term, was just as good a theory as any other for explaining how man had managed to rise from naked, bestial savagery in such a short period of time, if you looked at things on the cosmic scale. It seemed impossible for them to have done it on their own. Jake turned back to stare out into the night, pondering this new twist.
Sam’s mind was still going a mile a minute, as he sought to collect his thoughts into a coherent argument. Everything suddenly made sense, and one simple answer could explain hundreds of mysteries.
"But why don’t we have any relics, any ruins, from these people? Every other civilization has left something behind, some record of the past, why not this one?" asked Jake.
"There wouldn’t necessarily be any ruins left. It’s the way they did things back then. Look at Troy, for God’s sake. That’s a perfect example. By the time Heidelmann actually found the place, he found not one city, but twenty-two cities, each one built on the ruins of the others, the materials of the former scavenged to form the building blocks of the next. Maybe that’s why some of the earliest human establishments were built where they were; they were building on the ruins of the civilization they remembered of old."
Jake wasn’t buying all that, however. "There’d still be something left, Sam. Some reference, some clue that they’d been there before us."
"But there is, Jake! What’s the one constant myth that can be found in hundreds of cultures? The myth of a great and shining civilization destroyed by some tremendous cataclysm in the earliest days of recorded history. Atlantis."
"Can’t you see it, Jake? Those last violent days, as the race you’ve nurtured grows into adolescence while your own dwindles into its final days, your ranks and those of your enemies diminished beyond recovery by centuries of warfare?"
Sam began pacing back and forth across an exposed portion of the Rock, no longer, hiding, completely in view should anyone be looking in their direction.
Knowing that in his excitement Sam had forgotten what they were doing here and their need to remain undetected, Jake turned to tell him to shut up and sit down.
The words froze on his lips.
From over Sam’s shoulder, Jake could see a long, dark shape diving out of the night, its form darker than the darkness it descended from, silhouetted in the light of the stars it blotted from view.
The sight shocked Jake into immobility.
Down, down it came, traveling dozens of feet in seconds, hurtling toward its target, Sam’s unprotected back.
Jake tried to yell, tried to scream, to break the paralysis that gripped him, as raw, undiluted fear squeezed his heart like a vice and threatened to shut down his nervous system. Yet still he couldn’t move, couldn’t warn his friend of death approaching from the night sky above.
Everything seemed to happen at once.
A sharp, shrill shriek filled the air, as the Nightshade gave voice to the sheer pleasure and anticipation of the kill to come.
Sam spun around and looked up, seeing for the first time that dark shape hurtling towards him.
The moon reflected off the claws of the beast’s outstretched talons as they prepared to rip and tear into its prey.
Jake’s paralysis broke.
He reacted without conscious thought; his body sideways without a word, his legs extended out before him in a wild kick with all the weight of his six foot frame behind it.
His ankles struck Sam’s legs at a point just above his knees, knocking his friend’s legs out from under him, throwing him into an uncontrolled fall that forced him right over the edge of the Rock toward the water below.
With a sha
rp cry, Sam disappeared from view.
Knowing he had scant seconds to escape, Jake wasted no time in thinking about his response. He simply let his body continue the arc it had begun, throwing himself sideways and following Sam off the edge.
One moment the solid surface of the Rock was beneath him, the next he was falling through space. The drop seemed to last forever, until with a sudden impact he plunged into the icy waters of the Quinnepeg.
The fall took him deep, and the cold of the water seemed to suck the air straight out of his lungs. He frantically fought to the surface, feeling the weight of his wet clothes trying to drag him under, and he gasped with relief when his head broke clear of the water.
He found Sam coughing up a mouthful of water just a few feet away.
"You okay?" Jake asked him.
"Yeah."
"I guess we found it," Jake said weakly.
Sam chose not to reply.
Jake was about to continue when a whistling sound alerted him to the oncoming danger.
"Down!" he cried, not even bothering to look up, instinctively knowing that what he heard was the sound caused by the rush of air over the surface of the Nightshade’s wings as it plunged toward them from above.
Jake dove again, dove deep to evade those deadly claws that plunged into the lake in search of his tender flesh. He struck out for shore at the same time, heading in that direction, hoping that the Nightshade’s eyesight wasn’t sharp enough to see him beneath the water in the darkness. He planned to come to the surface a fair distance from where he’d gone under, hoping it would buy him enough time to figure out how to get out of this situation.
Jake stayed down as long as he could, until his lungs were screaming for oxygen and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he couldn’t hold out another moment.
He broke the surface of the water some thirty-five yards from where he’d gone under, having covered two-thirds of the distance to the other bank.
A quick, frantic look above told him the sky was empty for the time being.
It was a blessing, though there was no telling how long it would last.
Riverwatch Page 19
