by Sean Platt
But what if He is calling me to intervene? What if He is using the vials to call me?
God had made odder requests.
Acevedo had long believed there was a reason for his faith, some greater good being served. It wasn’t enough to deliver sermons on Sunday. And while he’d done his share of charitable works — community outreach, feeding the homeless, raising money for children in crisis, and countless other things — Acevedo had always felt another purpose. To serve as God’s soldier in the war between good and evil.
But the vial isn’t God’s. Perhaps He is testing me?
Acevedo’s head hurt as he tried to reconcile what he felt versus what he was seeing — evidence of the his dreams’ reality. If the boy was real, then the damage he would unleash upon the world was likely real as well.
Isn’t it?
“Why would you have me do this, Lord?” Acevedo stared at the gun on the seat beside him. “I need some sign.”
Acevedo slipped the gun into his brown leather jacket, worn loose over a light-blue polo, and got out of the car.
One test left: He had to find out the boy’s name, to see if it was the same as in his dream. Proof that there was something greater than Acevedo’s imagination at play.
He closed the car door behind him and walked slowly toward the park, heart beating harder than he wanted.
A cool breeze blew through his hair as children’s laughter made him nostalgic for his youth — the rare times he’d been happy, before his father’s drinking had ripped the family asunder.
As Acevedo approached the swings, he fished the black leash and stack of papers from his interior jacket pocket and approached a woman and a young girl standing at a picnic table. The woman was helping the small girl unknot her shoe laces.
“Excuse me.” Acevedo held up one of the Missing Dog flyers he printed yesterday using some photo of a husky from the Internet. “Have you seen my dog? I was walking him in the park this morning, and he got away.”
The woman studied the paper, then the leash, and filled her face with apology. “I’m sorry, no, I haven’t seen him.”
“OK. Can you call the number at the bottom of the page if you do?”
“Yeah,” the woman said, taking the paper and showing her daughter when the girl asked to see. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Acevedo made his way to a few other parents and children, waiting for the moment the boy’s mother would spot him. If she saw him speaking to others, she probably wouldn’t think much of him approaching her children.
Acevedo spoke to the other parents and children, the gun gaining weight in his pocket. He felt unreasonably certain that the bulge would be spotted by someone. He had not yet dreamed of what would come next for today. He’d opened his eyes to the real world after seeing the boy on the playground. There was no telling what would happen next, and the thought of how many things could go wrong soured his stomach and beaded his forehead with sweat.
But he had to play it cool and make his way to the boy on the swings.
As Acevedo drew closer, the boy’s mother finally ended her call and headed toward her children. Perhaps she’d sensed the danger, or had seen him making rounds and wanted to be there when the stranger with the papers and leash finally arrived. She pushed her daughter on the swing.
“Higher!” the girl shrieked, her laughter infectious.
Even though it hurt Acevedo’s odds of doing what he had to do, the priest was glad to see that she wasn’t yet another absent parent spending more time with her eyes glued to her phone than her children.
He made a point of talking to one more person, a pizza-faced boy of around thirteen, sitting at a table, screwing around with his skateboard’s wheels while secretly admiring a huddle of girls at one of the other tables.
“Hey, man, you seen this dog?” Acevedo held up the paper.
The kid, with bright-blue hair hanging in his face, shook his head, “nah, man … sorry.”
“Thank you.”
Acevedo turned and steeled himself to approach the boy from his dreams — the harbinger of worldwide destruction.
The kid’s mom looked at him sternly, as if sensing his motives. Or perhaps she thought he was a pedophile hunting for prey.
“Hi,” he said, meeting her eyes, pretending he wasn’t even aware of her children, “have you seen my dog?”
Acevedo handed a paper to the mom. She looked at it as the boy dug his feet into the dirt to stop his swing. He looked up. “Can I see?”
The boy looked at the paper, then at Acevedo. “What’s his name?”
The priest looked down, realizing that he hadn’t even put a name below the dog’s picture. He cursed himself for his stupidity, surprised that the boy was the first person to ask.
Acevedo thought, then said, “Luke.”
“As in Skywalker?” the boy asked with a smile.
“Yes,” Acevedo said, returning his grin. “Me and my son are big Star Wars fans.”
“So’s my Dad. That’s why he named me Luca. My mom wouldn’t let him name me Luke.”
Luca. It is him.
The gun weighed a thousand pounds in his pocket.
Kill him now, before the fourteenth!
Acevedo held his smile. The mother’s eyes caught him by surprise. She was staring, not smiling — as if she could pull the plans from his mind. As if her maternal senses saw through the gauze of his guise.
Luca said, “No, I haven’t seen him, mister.”
“How about you?” Acevedo showed the daughter.
He could feel their mother’s eyes like hot lasers. His heart raced, thinking about how to best shoot the boy. Shoot his mother first, so she couldn’t protect him, or just shoot the boy in the head, and then run?
But as the little girl said no, she hadn’t seen the dog either, Acevedo felt a blade of guilt twist so deeply into his gut he could hardly bring himself to raise his eyes to the mother.
A proverbial devil and angel were battling for the priest’s mind.
I can’t kill her child in front of her.
YOU MUST. IT IS THE ONLY WAY.
No. We don’t know for certain. I could be nuts!
YEAH, BUT HE HAS THE SAME NAME. IT IS HIM! HOW ELSE CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE DREAMS? THAT YOU DREAMED HIS NAME?
I don’t know.
YOU DO KNOW. YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN A GIFT. THOSE WHO HEAR THE WORD OF GOD, HIS INSTRUCTIONS FOR US, ARE BLESSED. IT IS NOT FOR US TO WONDER WHY HE ASKS WHAT HE DOES. WE CANNOT KNOW HIS WILL, BUT WE MUST ACT UPON OUR DUTY TO FOLLOW HIS WORD.
This isn’t His word. God would never ask this.
OH?
That argument had crumbled with Abraham, and all that God has asked of his children since.
Acevedo’s sweaty palm reached into his jacket, fondling the butt as his other hand clutched the papers and leash.
DO IT!
The priest looked up into the mother’s cold eyes and saw something other than the harshness of a mother protecting her young. He saw a kindness, as if some part of her saw what he was about to do, and was reaching into his heart, begging him not to.
It was so subtle, and perhaps he was imagining it, but there was something in the mother’s eyes, her crooked smile, and the way she put her hands on her boy’s shoulder that crushed Acevedo’s heart and ripped the will from inside him.
“OK,” he said with a sigh, “thank you.”
Acevedo didn’t hand them a flyer. He wouldn’t want them to call the number and fall deeper into his lie.
He turned and walked away.
The mother called out, “Good luck finding Luke.”
Acevedo couldn’t turn back, tears already flooding his eyes.
He’d failed to act. He’d ignored the word of God.
And because of it, the world might perish in days.
Sixty
Marina Harmon
Marina sat in the van’s rear, still cuffed, wondering when Acevedo would stop somewhere and pick up a pair of bolt cutters o
r perhaps try some of that telekinesis he’d used to free himself. The longer he waited, saying they had to reach Luca, the more she felt like a prisoner.
“So,” she said, “tell me more about this Luca Harding you’re going to kill.”
Acevedo found Marina’s eyes in the rearview. “What do you want to know?”
“Who is he? How do you know he’s the vessel?”
“I already told you. I dreamed it. As for who he is, he looks like an ordinary boy.”
“A boy? How old?”
“Around ten, I think. I don’t know.”
“You’re going to kill a ten-year-old? Based on some dream?”
“It’s not just a dream!” Acevedo snapped, glaring back at her angrily.
“How do you know it’s not just a dream?”
“The same way your father knew, perhaps. Or the same way your father came back and gave you messages? I don’t know how or why, only that God has chosen to tell me for a reason. He must want me to act.”
Marina couldn’t believe the priest was about to kill a boy, based on a dream.
“How do you know the boy is the vessel? How did you even come to dream about him?”
“Well, at first I thought maybe I was losing my mind, dreaming of some kid I never saw before. This kid was holding vials, same as the one given to me by your father, and I kept seeing the date October 14 over and over. As the date drew nearer, the dreams changed. The boy opened the vials and unleashed evil upon the world. A voice in my head said I had to stop him.”
“By which you mean kill him?”
“Yes,” Acevedo said, staring at Marina in the mirror again, “but don’t think I didn’t wrestle with it. Or I just dreamed up some nonsense and planned to find and kill him. First, I tested my dreams to see if he was real. I had dreamed that he’d be at a park on the Sunday before the fourteenth. I went there and saw him. I went up to him, to find out his name. The kid’s name was Luca, same as I’d dreamed. Then I knew it wasn’t just a dream. I had a gun, and was going to shoot him, but for some reason, when I looked at his innocent face, then into his mother’s eyes, I lost my nerve.”
Acevedo drew a deep breath and continued.
“I went home, and questioned everything. I thought about the vials and wondered if they weren’t making me crazy like your father seemed the last time I saw him. I met with your father, and told him about the boy. I asked him what I should do.”
“What did he say?” A chill ran through Marina.
“He said I should listen to the vial. Of course, back then I didn’t think it was the vial talking. I thought it was God. So I tried to ignore the voice, but every night my dreams grew more intense. The voice got louder, more insistent, ordering me to find the boy and kill him. The dreams told me that this would all happen on October 14 at 11:15 p.m. Despite the dreams, I still wasn’t sure I could kill him. He was a child, after all. So I sneaked into his house, which was difficult because the boy’s father was still awake. He was working in his office and didn’t even see me as I crept down the hall toward the boy’s bedroom.”
Marina’s chill grew colder as Acevedo spoke faster.
“I stood over his bed, gun in hand, waiting with my eyes on the clock. As 11:14 came up on my watch, which I had made sure was running true, I trained the gun on his head. I stared at him, waiting for something to happen, my finger trembling against the trigger. My heart was beating so damned loud, and that minute seemed to take an hour. The entire time I kept asking myself if I could really do it. Could I shoot a child to save the world? But as the minute stretched on, I began to doubt myself. Started to think that maybe I was going crazy. Maybe your father’s vials were doing something, because by all accounts this was a normal kid, sleeping in his bed. As the seconds ticked down, I felt this awful feeling like I’d become some sort of crazy monster. Then it happened.”
“What?” Marina asked from the edge of her seat.
“He vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“Yes, he vanished. Poof, just gone. There were these dark swirls around where his body had been, and I was so scared that I nearly shot at them, at the empty bed. I ran from the room, from the house, and went home, certain I’d damned the world. But then, after a few days, when nothing happened, I thought maybe I’d dreamed it all. Or had lost my mind. I even started watching the news to see if he was reported missing, but not a peep about the boy. So I took a chance and drove past the house again a few times, just to see what was happening. Then I saw him, playing in the front yard with his sister, and his father on the porch. And I decided the vial was messing with my head and I had to do something about it, so I locked myself away.”
“So why do you think he’s dangerous now?”
“Because I saw him in my dreams again, and he’s not alone. He’s with others who are infected, and they’re planning something big. I need to stop him.”
Acevedo’s dark eyes returned to the mirror. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
“I don’t know what to think. We’ve seen so much. But you also said the vials have a corruptive force on anyone who isn’t pure, right? What if the vials are trying to get you to do something awful?”
“I thought that for a while, myself. I mean, I don’t want to kill a child, whether he’s infected or not. But there’s the aliens’ brilliance. They find someone innocuous to burrow into, someone that nobody would suspect, like a child. But we can’t see Luca as a little boy. We must see him as the threat he is.”
Marina said nothing. Acevedo kept driving. After a while, she broke the silence.
“And what happens after you kill him? Did your dreams, the vials or whatever, tell you what happens next?”
“No. I just hope that God gives me the strength to finish the job this time.”
Marina looked down at her cuffed hand, tugging to no avail. Even if she escaped, Marina wasn’t even sure if Acevedo was wrong in killing the boy. The aliens’ attack on the van had changed everything. It was hard to deny a threat that was trying to murder you.
Still, Marina couldn’t help but wonder if Acevedo was on the wrong path, his thoughts twisted by the very vials they were collecting.
Sixty-One
Paola Olson
Paola woke to see Desmond staring down at her from the other side of the glass.
Her head was dizzy. The last thing she remembered was going to bed.
“How did I get here?” she asked, starting to sit up.
Paola’s head pounded as she moved too fast. She stopped short of standing from the mat.
“What’s going on? Where am I?”
“You’re in the facility,” Desmond said, matter-of-factly, missing his usual delicate tone.
Something was wrong.
“Where’s my mom?”
“She couldn’t make it. We had to put you here for your own safety.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t remember?”
Paola shook her head, trying to sort through cloudy thoughts. “No. Remember what?”
“Oh, you did something very bad,” Desmond said. “You’re here for your own good. To make sure you can’t hurt any of the others.”
She stood up, tears welling in her eyes as she approached the glass door. “I hurt someone? Who?”
Desmond turned his head sideways, looking at her oddly enough to click something inside her.
“That’s not Desmond,” The Light said.
She met his eyes, and saw that The Light inside her was right. There was something festering inside him — The Darkness.
“You’re not Desmond.”
“Ah, so you were on to me. I had a feeling, so I had to take some preemptive action. I hope you don’t take it personally.”
“I want out!”
“Perhaps, in time.” Desmond smiled. “For now, I need you here, where I can keep an eye on you and you won’t endanger my plans.”
“What plans?” Paola asked, angrier by the second.
“I just want to finish what I started on the other world.”
Darkness spreading across the land, roaming monstrosities, killer tornadoes, and bodies stacked in rows flashed through Paola’s mind.
“You won’t take this world.”
“I won’t?” Desmond smiled wider. “And who’s going to stop me? You? The so-called Light? Rather pompous of you to call yourself The Light, don’t you think? High and mighty, behaving as if your wants are different than mine.”
Paola’s mouth moved, but she wasn’t driving the words. It was The Light, leaving her voice. “I’m not seeking to destroy. I seek to create.”
“I’m creating, too.”
“I saw what you created on the other world.”
“No, it’s different now. I’ve learned. We’ve learned our lesson. We’re looking to do something different this time. We’re not seeking to destroy humanity, not all of it, anyway. They have their place in our paradigm. As will you, your mother, and friends, if you choose.”
“What is it you’re planning?” Paola took control of her voice.
Desmond smiled, seeming pleased by his thoughts. “Oh, something grand, my dear. Something this world has been waiting for, even if they didn’t know it. Something your people have needed for so long — order. A new order.”
Desmond turned to leave.
Paola called out, “Why did you come here? What do you want from me?”
“Just your cooperation, dear. I’ll come to you when I’m ready.”
“And if I don’t cooperate?”
Desmond turned, leaned both hands on the glass door, and looked down at Paola.
“Do you really want to know?”
His dead eyes insisted she didn’t.
Sixty-Two
Boricio Wolfe
Boricio woke in a small dark room, sitting on a cold concrete floor, arms bound in front of him in a straitjacket.
What the fuck?
He squirmed in the jacket, trying to break free, but he could barely move his arms.
Boricio screamed, “Rose!”
