by David Risen
Cassandra scowls at Eric and levels herself before him.
“That’s right, fool. I’m one of those maleficent spirits that make things go bump in the night – the reason your children wake up screaming unintelligibly about monsters. Rest assured, my kind hates your kind.”
Eric’s eyes contort with grief.
“You will pay,” he growls.
She releases another hateful, brittle laugh. “And how, exactly do you propose to make me pay?”
He shakes his head. “Not me. God will make you pay.”
She throws her hands up in the air. “Oh, yeah the almighty God! Where is he and why would he allow his children to be held in such a state as this if he’s so benevolent?”
She steps toward him and leans close to his face.
“Allow me to impart a bit of wisdom. God doesn’t care about you or any of his other children. This entire episode that you call creation is a monument to his own ego.”
He shakes his head. “You’re wrong.”
Cassandra smiles. “Let’s see, shall we.”
She purses her lips to suck in his soul, but just as she opens her mouth, a blinding flash of red light like a shockwave throws her thirty feet into a rotten, wooden fence.
She ploughs through it and lands on her back in the dirt.
When she looks up, the vengeful spirits are gone.
She climbs to her feet slowly and looks about the empty field behind the courthouse and Hotel.
What happened?
She looks up to the sky. The giant pentacle sealing Skitts Mountain off from the world – a fiery, glowing pentacle burned into the dome of souls surrounding the city – flickers and dims.
Her dark eyebrows spike as she realizes what it means.
The newcomer is indeed Father Fury.
Father Fury is in his most powerful form since the previous round of creation. How had the sisters managed to trap him with him wielding that kind of power, and why has he come?
She climbs to her feet just as he appears between the two dark buildings, once again wearing his tattered leather coat.
“What did you do to them?” she says gaping at him with trepidation as if he were a large spider.
Rider shakes his head. He still stands in the shadows, so that all she can see of him is the vague silvery outline of his face and his imposing silhouette.
“I don’t remember.”
She nods. “How did the sisters manage to trap you here with that kind of power at your disposal?”
“They didn’t. I tore a hole in the dome and jumped in.”
Cassandra’s eyes bulge. “How did you know how to accomplish that?”
Rider sighs and stuffs his hands in his pockets.
“I didn’t. The Sisters accidentally sent me someone who told me how.”
Cassandra’s eyes narrow with interest. “Who?”
Rider huffs. “They threw everything but the kitchen sink at me. They sent Archangels, demons, other witches, and when none of that worked, they sent the Devil himself.”
Cassandra’s mouth falls open.
“Lucifer?”
Rider nods.
She shakes her head. “So, in the state that you’re in, you can see spirits?”
“Not without help.”
She gives him an incredulous look.
“So, if you can’t see spirits, how were you able to see Lucifer?”
Rider nods. “The sisters. They bound him to a body.”
Her eyebrows spike.
“They broke his curse? How can mere mortals have the power to break a curse placed on a soul by God himself?”
Rider steps into the moonlight. “What are you talking about?”
She shakes her head.
“It doesn’t matter anyway. What the wicked bitches did backfired. Lucifer told me exactly how to get in here.”
She cocks an eyebrow. “Why would you do that willingly?”
He snarls. “My whole goddamn life is a lie because of them. I’m gonna set this whole thing free.”
She squints at him. “Do you know about the vale?”
Rider shakes his head.
“This is a spirit prison. If you were here in a body, I wouldn’t be able to see you, and you wouldn’t see me.”
Rider looks as though she punched him in the gut.
“Are you saying I’m dead?”
She shakes her head. “No, but I think you left your body somewhere. That also means that you’re not getting out of here until you break the seals. You are the only soul in creation capable of doing that.”
Rider steps toward her.
“How?”
She squints and looks down at the ground.
“I’ll need to give this some thought. Let’s get back to safety, and then we’ll discuss how to proceed tomorrow.”
Cassandra says nothing throughout the long and quiet walk down Main Street. In front of the forbidding hulk of brick and concrete that was once a coal refinery converted into a lumber mill before it closed, they turn right onto Whitaker Street.
She seems completely lost in her own thoughts until just before they reach the rotting hulks of duplexes that once housed the workers of the mill.
She stops in the middle of the road and turns around to face him.
“The area ahead is warded against intruders.”
She raises her left hand and it glows green with energy.
She touches him on the chest and for a moment the spot on his black, leather coat that she touched glows.
Rider gives her a look of concern.
“What was that?”
She smiles. “I just gave you a little of my energy, so that the warding will accept you.”
“Who’s there?” growls a voice of sandpaper and razorblades from the shadows in the thick trees to the right.
Rider’s head follows the sound.
“It’s me,” Cassandra says turning and looking in the general direction of the voice.
An ape of a man appears from the shadows. His face and build is not unlike a Neanderthal Man.
Low hairline of closely cropped brown hair.
Thick lowbrow with his eyes deeply set in his thick skull.
Arms bigger than most people’s thighs.
In the center of his pasty forehead glows a character like a single letter. It looks much like an upside down and backwards L. If it didn’t glow with a red light, Rider may have thought it a tattoo.
“Where’s your escorts?”
She looks down at the broken remains of the road and shakes her head. “Hayden ambushed us.”
The Neanderthal’s beady eyes find Rider, and he furls his thick brow.
“Who th’ hell is this?”
Cassandra glances back at Rider and then looks back at the man.
“He saved me from Hayden. This is Father Fury.”
The man’s eyes linger on Rider for a moment – a look of deep disdain contorting his primitive face, and then he shakes his head slowly.
“I don’t like him.”
Cassandra turns her palms up. “He hasn’t even spoken.”
He gives her a shrewd grin. “Been around a long time. I can read a man, and this one’ll get us all killed.”
Cassandra huffs. “He’s Father Fury. Be nice. He’s the only spirit in creation who might get us out of this mess.”
He takes a step toward Rider.
“I’ll be watching you. Stay away from Cassandra.”
Rider purses his lips. “Who the fuck is this monkey-headed-knuckle-draggin freak?”
Cassandra turns to face Rider and offers him a calm smile.
“This is Cole,” she whispers. “We have a history.”
Rider frowns.
She holds up her hands. “Leave him alone.”
Rider smirks and eyes him.
She shakes her head. “You’re tired.”
She looks back toward the woods. “Merk, are you there?”
Another man – a scrawny, shirtless one with a chest
like a Greek statue appears from the shadows.
“Take him to Sarah’s old house and guard the door so he can get to sleep.”
She eyes the man she called Cole. “And you will leave him be.”
Rider opens his eyes and gasps. Just beyond the metal footboard of the full-size bed, a ghost stands.
Raven hair.
Lips painted red.
Pale skin.
Eyes glowing red.
Youngish face.
As quickly as he sees her, she disappears.
He sits up and looks around the otherwise empty room of scratched-up hardwood floors, textured wooden walls with white paint flaking off in sheets, and windows without dressings peeking out over the street at the gray day beyond.
A light tap sounds on his bedroom door.
He looks down to find that he’s wearing only his jeans.
He stands. “Come in?”
The door opens, Cassandra steps inside, and smiles.
“Hello, sleepyhead.”
Rider squints at her. “How long was I out?”
She closes the door. “All day, but we’ve managed.”
Rider frowns. “What can I do for you?”
She nods and sighs as if she’s uncomfortable with what she’s about to propose.
“I’ve been very careful to hide who I am, because if any of them knew, they would take me captive and use me for their own benefit.”
Rider sits on the side of the creaky bed and massages his temples.
“Okay, so who are you?”
She takes a step toward him. “The Sisters of Divinity call me The Abysmal Matron.”
Rider snaps his head around to face her. “You?”
She nods and paces right. “My real spiritual name is Mother of Chaos.”
Rider rubs his bristly chin. “Why are you tellin me this?”
She squares herself before him. “Because you are my spiritual mate. Only the two of us in concert can put an end to all of this.”
Rider rubs his face, furls his brow, and looks at her.
“So how do I know you’re not pullin my leg?”
She gives him a hurt look. “You’re not attracted?”
He holds up his hands. “I didn’t say that. You’re a beautiful woman, but....”
She grins sarcastically. “Were you expecting love at first sight?”
Rider shrugs. “What do you think I should do?”
She stands up straight. “I’m sending you with our strongest warrior. There’s only one way through the warding that guards Hayden’s area of town, and that’s through the water treatment plant. You must find your way through the sewers and into Hayden’s stronghold. When you arrive, you must kill him.”
Rider squints. “How does killing Hayden help me?”
She nods. “Hayden is the seal.”
Twilight in Skitts Mountain, Tennessee.
Rider climbs down into the depression in the mountain where the remains of the wastewater treatment plant lay crumbling.
A rusted, chain link fence surrounds the compound. The facility itself sits in a three-foot flattened recess in the ground surrounded by concrete retaining walls. Ragweed and reeds surround the three concrete reservoirs now empty and devoid of anything but a few puddles of rainwater.
A red brick building stands in the center of the facility no larger than an average size bedroom. The glass in the windows is a memory, and rust covers the window frames and door.
The monkey-headed-knuckle-dragging Neanderthal Man that Cassandra called Cole stands by the rusty gate with his thigh-size arms folded and a sour look on his primitive mug. The upside-down L tattooed on his forehead glows brighter than the night before.
Rider smirks as he approaches him.
“Hi there, beautiful.”
Cole scowls at him. “You don’t need your tongue to do this. Open your trap again, and I’ll rip it out by the root.”
Rider ignores him and surveys the three empty concrete reservoir pools that look like giant circles molded into the earth.
“How am I getting to Hayden’s turf through here, exactly?”
Cole grins balefully, as if delivering the disturbing directions gives him great pleasure.
“You have to climb down into the left pool and go all the way to the bottom. It smells like old shit in there, so you oughtta be right at home. There’s a huge sewage main on the left that will take you all the way to the other side of town. Just stay to the left, and look for manhole number 43.”
Cole opens the gate and Rider steps inside.
Cole follows behind him.
Rider traipses over to the edge of the deep concrete reservoir, and looks down to find that it’s at least twenty feet deep, and the bottom is thick with silt and sediment.
A faint puff of air wafts up from below smelling like rotting flesh.
Rider looks over his shoulder at Cole who is gaping down into the abyss from behind him.
“How do we get down there?” Rider says.
Cole huffs.
Rider peers back down into the hole.
Something slams hard against his spine between his shoulder blades sending him hurling into the concrete reservoir.
Rider doesn’t even have time to gasp. He slams face first into the stinking sediment at the bottom of the pool. The blow knocks the breath out of his lungs.
He rolls slowly over on his back in time to watch the monstrosity of a man jump off the edge of the concrete reservoir and land feet first.
He grins at Rider.
“Don’t look at me like that. You oughtta be right at home lying in shit,” somewhere Rider noticed that the rhythm and accent of his speech was like that one might discover in New Orleans – that Cole has a Creole flavor to his words.
Cole advances on him slowly – as if he were merely stepping across the den to pick up the TV remote.
Rider scrambles to his feet.
The Abysmal Spike flares around his right arm and he swings blindly at the hulking buffoon.
Cole leaps backwards, laughing.
“Kitty’s got claws.”
He reaches into his black trench coat and produces a very old sword. The hilt is comprised of a wooden handle with a bejeweled pommel. The pommel holds a gem that glows bright red.
The abysmal spike in his right hand hums and vibrates in its presence.
Cole smirks. “Remember this?”
Rider gapes back at him blankly.
“I found it here. Reason I can hold it is that it’s both a spirit sword and a physical one. Cassandra says that it’s called the abysmal spike, and part of it is linked to your soul.”
He nods at the glowing, red spike snaking down his right arm and coming to a sharp, four-foot point in his hand.
“Difference between you and me, is that I know what to do with it. Served in the Roman Spanish Brigade and fought in every major war man ever waged all the way up ‘till they dishonored the whole thing with those damn pee-shooters.”
Rider glared at him.
Cole sneers at him. “You just gonna stand there holdin’ your little prick, or are you gonna come over here and take a shot at the title?”
Rider scowls. “We’re supposed to be on the same side.”
Cole laughs. “I’m on my side, and I hate you pretty boys. Cocky, arrogant, and loud, and you got nothin to back it up.”
Rider’s eyes narrow. “You sure about that?”
Cole grins. “Make your play, Sister Angry. Difference ‘tween you and me is that I want to die, but to get my goat, you gonna hafta beat the murderinist sombitch that ever walked the planet.”
Rider furls his brow. “And how do you think Cassandra’s gonna feel about that?”
Cole chuckles. “That whore’s th’ same as any other that ever strutted her stuff in here. Everything she does is for her. You c’n have my sloppy seconds, but you gonna hafta take me down first.”
“You realize you’re a fucking idiot, right?”
Cole smirks. “You gonna
talk all day, or you gonna deal with me? You don’t wanna fight, fine. I won’t kill you. I’ll just take that little sickle out of your hand, bend you over, and do what all real men do to pussies.”
Rider roars and charges him.
Cole side steps Rider and slams the bejeweled pommel of his sword into the back of Rider’s head.
Rider stumbles forward. His forehead smacks into the stained, concrete wall.
Before he recovers, Cole’s giant hand clutches a fistful of hair on the back of his head and smashes his face into the concrete three times.
Rider falls to the silt floor of the reservoir and curls into a fetal position.
He feels Cole hovering over him, and then he hears him laugh.
“Aren’t you just precious all curled up on your bed of old shit like a little baby?”
Rider barely heard him.
“Great thing ‘bout this sword. It also kills souls.”
Rider looks up at him. The massive man kneels at his side and smiles paternally. Rider considers the dark eyes of the man and beyond, he sees the name of the man’s soul.
A burned place presides above the word as if he were once named something else, and something burned the name away and scrawled another name below it.
The name is written in a script that Rider has never seen before. Its characters different than Phoenician, but somehow, he understands the lettering.
And the word the letters spell equal sounds that linked together to form a simple, damning declaration.
“Fratricide.”
Rider finds himself walking involuntarily through the woods.
His host this time is unlike any other. Each time a leaf of the foliage scrapes across another or a twig snaps, he sees the sound waft off it. He sees colors all around him that he didn’t know existed, and he can see the air.
He stops walking as the woods gives way to a large clearing that someone has fashioned into a garden.
Forty feet away, a large hulk of a man wearing a kind of tunic made from animal hides stabs the soft soil with a stick sharpened into a spear. Sweat streams down his face.
The internal emotions of his host are that of sadness and pity.
“Cain?” he says, his voice is as smooth as silk and completely without age or youth.
The man cringes.
He looks up and upon seeing his face, Rider recognizes him immediately as the man he knows by the name “Cole.”
