Apparently, he still had much to learn about how demons thought or were the theatrics Mark’s doing? He had no way of knowing. The fact remained, leaving his brother there under the control of the Fallen Angel wasn’t something he was willing to do. He needed to somehow rescue him from the trouble he didn’t know he was in.
Cody wished the Warrens could help him; he had found in his research Mr. Warren had died several years before, and Mrs. was too old to help with something of this caliber on her own and found no one else who seemed reliable, or nearby. The only tools easily found, were Rosary beads, crucifixes, and holy water. He wasn’t sure they were worth anything more than to make him feel better.
As he approached the Catholic store, his arm began to tingle, then as he crossed the threshold, the tattoo hidden beneath a long-sleeve shirt began to burn. The pain was agonizing, forcing him back to the street.
The Nun behind the counter watched him pace in front of the store, rubbing his arm. He forced himself back inside, wincing as he walked, every step brought the pain in his arm to excruciating levels. The agony became intolerable, doubling him over. He cradled his arm against his chest, as his vision blurred. In his misery, he didn’t hear her approach.
“You’re quite a mess,” she said reverently. Offering her hand, she continued, “Take my hand, I’ll help you to the door.”
Cody grasped her hand. Unexpectedly, the touch of her warm hand caused the pain in his arm to subside. He looked into her kindness as his color returned to normal.
“Thank you.” Glancing around the store, he said, “I need to get a few things.”
“You’re going to need more than a few crosses for what lies ahead.” Her voice was stronger than previously. “Have you spoken with anyone?”
“Sorry?” He said, flashing surprise.
“I can see from the state you’re in, you’re on a dangerous road,” she said, leading him closer to the door. “I’ll call Father Luke. You wait outside.”
“I can’t…I don’t have time.” Tears pulsed, ready to flow. “I just need a Rosary.”
“It won’t help.” She paused, assessing him as they continued to the exit. “You don’t even know the prayer. You can’t do this alone.”
“Have you been speaking with Hector?” Cody said with a chuckle.
“Sorry, I don’t know a Hector,” she replied. “Please, wait for Father Luke. He knows what to do in situations like yours.”
“What do you know of my situation?” He stared at her as she pulled the door open.
Hector stood on the sidewalk outside, arms crossed in front of her chest. Cody stumbled out, and his arm began to tingle again.
“Were you responsible for what she said?” he demanded.
“Not directly.” She smirked.
“What do you mean, not directly?”
“I told her Watcher, who then relayed it to her. At least she listens.” Cody started away from her toward his car. “You should wait for Father Luke.”
He shook his head but didn’t stop until he reached his car.
“I can’t believe you’re going,” Hector said with a quivering voice from the seat next to him. “If you go anywhere, you should go the opposite direction.”
“I have to go. I promised Tyler. He needs my help, and I can’t leave him there.” He started the car. “Besides, you said we should get together.”
“Not in these circumstances. You can’t do this. I’m telling you, this is a horrible idea.”
“Don’t you think I know how bad of an idea it is?” he continued with a flippant tone. “But I can’t leave him there. Where’s his Watcher? Why isn’t she intervening?”
“Probably wasn’t instructed to.” Hector shrugged.
“Can’t you get a message to him then?”
“He knows, but it’s not how we do things. We guide and watch over you. We help you make the right decision.”
Cody laughed. “Good one. Where were you all those other times?”
“Oh, believe me, Cody, I was there, whispering in your ear. But in the end, you made your own choices.”
“Just like now,” he said sharply. “I am choosing to go see my brother, and hopefully, get him out of this mess.”
As he pulled away from the curb, she vanished. Cody drove for many hours without seeing her in the car. He knew she was there; it was her job, to be with him always. Parts of the Angel Hierarchy confused him, like how were messages sent? Was there another Angel who flew back and forth between Heaven, or did they use telepathy?
“Yes,” Hector said, sitting next to him. “We don’t physically need to be in the presence of Archangels and above to know our orders or for them to know what is happening. They see everything. The real important stuff is passed up to the Cherubim, then to God.”
“I see.” He tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. “Then they know.” She nodded her head. “And they don’t see this as a problem?”
“If you’d turn around and go home, there won’t be a problem.”
He shook his head, glaring at the highway looming in front of him.
Chapter Eighteen
When they were past the first and the second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city; which opened to them of his own accord: and they went out, and passed on through one street; and forthwith the angel departed from him.
Acts 12:10, KJV
As he crossed the border into Wyoming, the rain began. It wasn’t heavy, but a nice drizzle that greened everything instantly. He’d never seen the land as vibrant. The typical bland had been replaced. Everything he saw, though he’d seen the landscape more than once, seemed new. Tyler had told him the night before it’d been raining steadily for a few days; periodically it stopped for a few hours allowing the much-needed moisture to soak into the ground, then start again.
Shoshoni was around five hours away, and he still wasn’t sure how he felt about it. While he didn’t harbor any ill will for the town or its residents, he had not had the slightest desire to return there after his parents died a little less than five years ago. What was the point? The times he had been there were to see them.
Looking at aerial pictures from a maps program, he was a little disgusted on what he saw. The lawns were brown. At first, he had assumed the photos had been taken in the winter until he had seen the green trees.
He felt his dad’s disappointment at the state of the yard he had tended to the point of obsession. The rest of the town was just as bad. He guided his mouse through the streets, seeing the death of his memories. Maybe this was why Tyler agreed to take this on, but what were the benefits of it?
Tyler had remained evasive, maybe he didn’t know, but Cody was sure they would know soon enough.
Ahead, amber warning lights flashed, slowing him. The arrows of the sign flashed, pointing him to the right. At low speed, he drove onto the bumpy detour approximately one-thousand feet.
A man in a green oilcloth parka waved for him to stop. His plastic-covered, black cowboy hat with a Sheriff Badge pinned in the front center repelled the rain as he approached the car. Silver-rimmed, dark sunglasses concealed his eyes. Reluctantly, Cody rolled the window partway down, allowing rain to splatter his face.
“The road is washed out,” the deputy said. His face had a waxy texture. “Where ya headed?”
“Shoshoni.” Cody squinted up at the officer. “Is there a different way from here?”
“Unless you want to go back down to Laramie, then up from there.”
Headlights from a semi-truck blazed by on I-25 headed south. The officer grunted and bared his teeth. Yellow pustules formed on his cheeks, popping, then melting the skin. Cody slammed the car in reverse. Looking over his shoulder, he backed the car the short distance back to the highway. The flashing sign no longer flashed its yellow arrows. Without pause, he shifted the car and sped away.
“I’m coming. You don’t need to send more of your henchmen.”
During times like this, he wished Hector would appe
ar, for nothing else but comfort. He turned up the music hoping to calm his nerves, and it did to a point.
He didn’t understand what was happening. The chances he’d learn the answers the minute he arrived in Shoshoni were slim. After consideration, he was sure the reason Tyler hadn’t given him any information was that he didn’t’ have any to give. He was doing what he was manipulated into doing by the Fallen Angel. He felt sorry for his brother, knowing how easy it was to for anyone to scam him. Cody wished after all the failed schemes, Tyler had learned a little more restraint, but it wasn’t in his DNA.
Cody decided when he reached Wheatland that he’d stop and stretch his legs. No one at the gas station paid him any attention as he walked to the back of the store to the restroom.
The acrid reek of urine caught him off guard as he stepped inside. Though the room was clean, the continual missing the urinal by thousands of road-worn truckers had taken its toll and was beyond covering; the only thing to do was tear the building down and start again.
He quickly washed his hands and hurried out of the restroom to the fresher air of the gas station. Glancing at dust-covered items on the shelves, he shook his head and returned outside. He stood under the awning watching the gray clouds swirl with the wispy white ones. The air here was clean, even standing so close the gas pumps.
The bell on the door clanged, Cody glanced at the man leaving the gas station. His long, graying beard was stained with coffee along the lower lip—or was it chewing tobacco? A quicksilver gaze darted toward him, but the man did no more in acknowledgment. Cody nodded at him with a thin smile, remembering how outsiders in small towns made the locals nervous.
“Nuthin’ to smile about, youngin’,” the man said in a raspy voice as he walked to the rusting green pickup truck on the other side of the pumps. “Ya should be goin’ the other way, not where you’re goin’.”
“Thanks for the advice, Hector.”
The man stopped but did not turn. “My name ain’t Hector. But you should listen to ‘im if he’s tellin’ ya to go the other way.” He returned to his truck, and it rumbled to life.
Cody stared at him as he circled the pumps toward him. He slowed, turning his icy glare toward Cody. Cody expected the man to stop, but he didn’t. The moisture from the rain kept the dry ground from covering him as the truck tires peeled-out.
“I have to go,” he said. A slender, older woman looked at him with a scrunched brow, then shook her head. Once he sat in the confines of his car, he continued, “I have to get him out of whatever he’s gotten himself into.”
Again, he hoped for Hector to materialize, but she didn’t. He didn’t blame her. She had done her job warning him, and he hadn’t taken her advice. He was headed to Shoshoni, and whatever waited for him there. The rain started coming down harder when he returned to the highway, slowing his pace to a crawl.
Ahead, another detour sign flashed; he was leery after his last experience. A car passed him, slamming on its brakes, cutting him off. He slowed more to give the car room. It swerved into the detour route, braking again. Soon its taillights were no longer visible in the deluge. He maneuvered carefully down the detour, which was an exit to the road leading off somewhere in the prairie. The rain had slowed the other car’s pace considerably, allowing him to see it racing up the other side of the detour.
At the bottom of the ramp, he stopped at the intersection, though, more than likely, it had been safe for him to continue through without stopping. He moved across the intersection. Near the fence, a scarecrow’s dark tattered coat flailed in the wind. Six fence posts down, another scarecrow with the same frayed black coat and white bowling-pin shaped head stood.
Movement in the side mirror caught his attention. He swung his head to look out the back passenger window. The first scarecrow had moved from its post near the fence, rushing toward the car. The second turned its white face toward him. Black eyes pierced the air thick with rain, and its dagger-toothed mouth gaped.
Cody’s foot slipped from the gas pedal; the car coasted to a stop.
Before his foot regained contact with the pedal, the first scarecrow had reached the car and had somehow pulled the passenger door open. Cody shrieked and pushed himself against the door. The creature was in the car. Its coat whipping around the interior. It flicked toward him, snapping at his arms and face. His fingers tried to pry the door latch, but they slipped off without moving it.
The other scarecrow had approached the car, but Cody didn’t see it as he slapped at the whipping tendrils of the coat. A gnarled boney hand pushed from the dark confines of the coat, pointing at him. Again he tried to release the door latch as the hand came closer, but there was no movement.
“What do you want?” Cody screamed. “Leave me alone.”
The creature squealed, its white head tilted back. The teeth in its maw extended in rows of yellowed, reeking blades. The other creature scratched at the window, frantically trying to gain access to the car. Cody jumped, learning of its presence from the sound of its claws on the glass. His head twisted toward it. The window reflected his horror.
“Groway,” the one in the car said in a deep, growling voice.
What did it say? Cody’s bladder released (though he had relieved himself minutes before in the vile gas station restroom, his pants became soaked). A growl, only a beast could make, erupted in the car. The scarecrow swirled and fluttered in the passenger seat, reducing to an old, black trash bag and a plastic milk jug, then was sucked out of the car. He gasped for breath. His stare was so wide it hurt as he watched the other blow away, catching in the barbed-wire fence.
“Primitive,” Hector said, leaning out to pull the door closed. “But the question is, did it work?”
Cody heard himself scream; he didn’t like the shrillness of it and winced. Staring at her, he didn’t say a word as he got his breathing under control. He didn’t remember a time in his life he’d been as frightened.
Taking a moment to find his voice, he said, “Thanks, I thought they were going to kill me.”
She laughed. “I didn’t do anything that was all you, buddy.” He stared at her, his mouth once more in an O shape. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I made the noise?” Anger rose in him.
“Yup.” Her face glowed with elation when she noticed his wet crotch. “Looks you had an oopsie.”
“What?” Her observation trailed to the wet front of his pants, and he followed. “Dammit. This is such a good place to change my pants.” He scowled. “Wait! You didn’t make those scarecrow things go away?”
“Nope,” she said again, extinguishing the green beams behind her eyelids. “Those were some good-ole-fashioned-lower-level-demons. And they don’t want you going to Shoshoni either, which should tell you something about what you’re planning—”
“Hold on. Those were demons?”
She nodded with a smirk. Cody stared through the windshield at the black trash bags caught in the fence. The clouds had parted, showing a sliver of blue sky. He shook his head, opening the car door then realized the car was still in gear and put it in park.
“Of all the stupid things I’ve gotten myself in, this has to be the cherry on the cake,” he muttered pawing through his suitcase for a dry pair of jeans.
“Icing,” she called out from inside the care.
Without caring if another motorist came by, he removed his shoes, then pants and underwear. The fresh air caused gooseflesh to rise on his bare ass. He jumped into dry pants and slipped his shoes back on. “Dammit, Tyler!” He slammed the trunk closed. “Good-ole-fashioned-lower-level-demons don’t want me to go to Shoshoni. I have half a mind—”
“Yeah, you’re going back.” Hector cheered as he closed the door.
“Nope.” He glared through the windshield and moved the car forward. “We’re going to get Tyler, then getting the fuck out of there.”
Chapter Nineteen
Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which the
y ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.
Titus 1:11, KJV
Tyler anxiously circled the lobby, waiting for Cody to arrive. He also needed to speak with Mr. Bel about the woman who claimed ownership of the store next to the hotel. She had stayed firm in her belief there was no need to fix her building, but hadn’t so much as opened the doors in more than thirteen years. Nothing he said convinced her to allow him to update it or even the apartment on the second floor. Mr. Bel had agreed to speak with her over a half-hour ago but had still not joined them.
The toilet flushed in the woman’s bathroom, and she returned to the lobby. She sat on one of the worn chairs, and her fingers commenced fidgeting in her lap. They shared a glance now and then but didn’t speak. Any sound, inside or out, caused her jump, and then her breaths became heavy. Tyler didn’t help soothe her nerves with his pacing.
“Is he coming down?” She demanded. “I don’t have time to sit around waiting for him. Lord knows…” She flinched as though she expected to be slapped for saying the word. “I have other things to do.”
He assessed Mrs. Johnston, wondering what she had to do that was more important than speaking with Mr. Bel. Her bright-pink fleece jacket was covered with cat hair, as were her gray sweatpants. Maybe, she had to pet one of her cats. He smirked.
“You aren’t too old to take over my knee, you know,” she said, staring gravely at him. “I’ve whipped your ass before, and I’ll be happy to do it again.”
“What?”
He remembered the time he and some neighborhood boys had torn up her flowerbed along the street with their bikes. She had gotten into her car and chased them. Unfortunately, he was the only one she had caught as he had stupidly gone home.
Before he reached the front door, she was on him; her spindly legs were faster than expected. She had grabbed his arm, spun him around, and began swatting his butt. His mother had heard him call out, and came to the door. She didn’t intervene. When Mrs. Johnston had finished teaching him a lesson, she nodded with a grunt at his mom and said hello, then left as though nothing had happened.
Home Page 11