Russell’s bony fingers scarcely hid under a waxen skin that reflected the dim light in the room. The shock of hair he’d sported in Saint-Tropez looked replaced by shags of limp gray and yellowish hairs in clumps, stains oozing around them. His brittle lips began to spread, revealing many missing teeth, and out of the opening mouth escaped an oscillating murmur.
To the innkeeper the steady hum sounded like a chorus, and soon that was what it became, a chorus of angels. Its soothing oscillating song lulled his mind—as the yulen’s thin arms curved around his waist and the fingers slowly reached to lock. The angelic choir, sweet and dreamy, made the innkeeper forget why he was at the dresser.
The hands clasped, and the yulen’s normally sized mouth began to spread. The lips stretched beyond anything normal, and just as the yulen’s nose started to move back and up along its head, the innkeeper looked in the mirror. The unbelievable figure behind him began to imprint in his mind’s eye. Slowly the harrowing image began to separate from the misty, intoxicating layers of pleasure the quivering music made. The innkeeper’s mind said ogre . . . monster . . . beast . . . real . . . death . . . flee . . . flee . . . But the phantom vision was too much for him, too ridiculous, and he did not flee. Instead, he tried to turn around, but he was held in place. The mouth in the mirror widened. A black hole expanded, expanded, expanded from the chin to beyond where the nose had been, and where the eyes had vacated. The hideous thing’s face in the mirror neared his head, and maybe it was the smell, but the innkeeper finally roused from the dreamy state. He realized his elbows had been pushing against the thing’s embrace, and with all his might, he forced his arms out and broke the tightening hold.
Reaching to the dresser, the innkeeper’s hand grabbed the first thing it felt, and he plunged the knick-knack box into the ogre’s face. When he saw the box disappear into the face’s black hole, he fumbled grabbing other things off the dresser. He stabbed them at the desisting thing’s head, face, and shoulders, finally pushing away, stumbling to the floor, and running into the bathroom.
“Help! Help!” the innkeeper yelled, dashing to the bathroom’s window. “Help me! Help! Monster! There is a monster!”
Nathan and Gus jumped respectively from sofa and bed.
“Help! There is a monster! Help me please!”
Leeda ran to Russell’s room. Shawn and Sammy headed for the doors. All were already dressed, long experience having taught them to always be prepared to flee at any time.
“Help me escape!” the innkeeper cried, straddling the windowsill, below, neighbors already gathered. “Everyone from the inn get out! My daughters, everyone out! Monsters inside! Ogres and phantoms! Out! Get out!”
Leeda reached Russell first, his deformed face return to normal but his weakened body fell on her when she grabbed him. “Nathan! Nathan!” she called, the others soon arriving.
“Get out, my daughters! Everyone out from the inn! They are monsters! Call the police, the authorities!”
“They’ve been called, Hans!” a neighbor yelled to him from the street, while others reached up to help him climb down an iron trellis festooned with roses. “Get your guns!” he called, hitting the ground. “Lock the doors! Don’t let them escape! The six! Lock them in!”
“The authorities are called, Hans,” said a man helping the innkeeper up.
“And the doors are barred, Hans!”
“My daughters—are they out!”
“All. Everyone is out but the six you say!”
“What happened, Hans?”
“I was attacked, from behind, by one of them,” he said, gulping for air. “Get your guns, we’ll need them. They are monsters. One attacked me. An ogre. The most hideous thing you have ever seen.”
“Are they Wicca, Hans?”
“Wicca, demons, devils, monsters! Strike me dead if I lie!”
“We believe you, Hans.”
“Shoot them if they attempt to come out. It will be an act of self-defense. They will be coming at you as starving bears would. Shoot to kill.”
“Shoot to kill!” a man called to others arriving hunting rifles.
“To kill. Shoot to kill!”
The trapped group hurried down the stairs, Russell held between Shawn and Sammy.
“They really mean it Nathan,” Gus said. “All their lives in these hills, the folklore, the tales, they speak of trolls and elves, giants, ogres and monsters too, and see shadows or feel unexplained breaths on their necks, and they blame the supernatural.”
“They’re surrounding the inn,” Leeda said, seeing lights rushing past the windows.
“Russell’s in a bad way,” Shawn said. “His calling can smell, hear, and feel human presence, and it’s killing him.”
Russell’s body, weak and bent over, writhed a plaintive, painful moan.
Nathan looked ahead, supposing, thinking.
“If you come out we will shoot!” Gus translated they called. “Come out and we’ll shoot!”
“I hate to say it,” Sammy said, “but I wish the people around here would make up their minds.”
As if to send a warning, several gunshots blasted into the air.
“Stay inside or you will be shot! Authorities are on their way!
“You can see all the totems and garlands hanging in the rooms, meant to repel malevolent spirits.” Gus said. “These are superstitious people. Goblins, monsters, so many old stories, they still believe them.”
“Fantastic . . . ,” Sammy said.
“Hobgoblins, witches, warlocks,” Leeda said, they’re raised on it. Norse, Germanic, Celtic myths, they’ve known them all here, and they’re comforting and enjoyable but also corrupt their minds to fear every nocturnal creature.”
“Open the door,” Nathan said.
“Nathan!” they responded thinking him insane.
“Open the door. We’re going out.”
“They’re not kidding, Nathan.”
“We’ll be shot,” Sammy said.
“I think he’s right, Nathan,” said Shawn.
“If they fear as you say, Gus, demons, hobgoblins, Wicca, then I’m going to give ‘em to them. Open the door.”
“I’ll get it, Ace,” Russell said, trying to break from Shawn and Sammy’s arms, but too weak to do so.
“I’ll do it,” Leeda said, striding to the front door.
“We’re going to walk right out of here,” Nathan said. “Shawn, cover or cloak, something over Russell, and between Sammy and you help him walk. Everybody stay together and follow me. Don’t stop. Show no fear. Leeda, the door.”
Leeda unlatched the door and opened it slowly.
“Don’t come out! You are warned! Stay there!” people yelled, Gus translating.
Nathan marched toward the door, the others behind, Leeda falling in.
“Stop or we fire!
“Ready to shoot! Ready!”
“Stop!” Nathan raised his hand, shouting to the gathered townsfolk. “Gus, translate just as I say, and keep walking. Everybody keep walking.”
“Don’t let them pass—they’re shouting,” an alarmed Gus called to Nathan, the rest of the band anxiously inching ahead together.
“Get ready to fire!” several men shouted. Shawn and Sammy held Russell between them, a dark cloak hanging over his head and halfway down his body.
“Harm a single hair on our heads,” Nathan shouted, Gus calling out in simultaneous German, “and destruction will befall this village!”
“Get ready to fire!” the innkeeper called from the head of the nervous crowd. The people held gas lamps, lanterns, and flashlights on the group, and the harsh lights cast weird highlights across their faces and long shadows behind.
“Raise your weapons if they continue!” another man called, and a platoon of hunting irons raised and leveled on the slowly advancing group.
“Harm a single one of us,” Nathan continued, Gus echoing his calls, “and everything across this village will be sacked and destroyed!
“Ready!”
/> “Fire and flames I will bring down on this miserable village! Your crops will burn! Your livestock will fall lame! One hand, one finger on us, and I will summon avenging angels, dark from the sky, and on Black Death’s wings they will fall upon you! With scythes and sickles they will sheer and harvest heads like shafts of wheat! They will slaughter and consume you like bleating lambs, your limbs, heads, entrails, eaten, and dance macabre over your crushed, bleached bones! Dare you touch us! Dare you harm us, you will pay with blood and suffering as on the Day of Reckoning when you shall be tossed into demons’ pits! Harm us and know every carnage, every terror, ravaged on you here, those sleeping, your husbandry, your children!”
“He-he—he bluffs,” the innkeeper called, and Gus translating, the band inching through the awed crowd.
“Behold the beast!” Nathan screamed as he yanked the dark cloak off Russell and revealed the aroused “beast’s” transformation—a black hollow from his chin to where a human brow would be, hands and wrists with postulant skin so thin that the bone joints pinched it. The crowd gasped. Girls lifted garlands of dried wildflowers, spices, and hanging amulets to repel the monster. Against the revolting “beast’s” odor, hands went to noses and mouths, and the people pushed away from the gross, raging figure and its leader making way.
“Monsters will attack you! Ogres and beasts from hell I shall summon!”
Russell’s urge to feed, though weak as he was, pushed him from Shawn and Sammy’s hold, and the gurgling emitted from his mouth, sent the crowd back when his struggling body attempted approach. “Monsters I will summon!” Nathan called, his arms raised skyward. “Mutants come now and dig your curved incisors into their skulls! Drain their blood and burry into their brains’ soft flesh!” he screamed, and then cloaked Russell back with the covering. “Come now—if we be harmed!”
“Let them go,” someone said.
“Yes let them.”
“There are no things as monsters,” someone else said.
“But what was that!” a man called.
“Whatever it was, let them leave the village.”
“Let them go.”
“Yes. Make way.”
“Make way!” Nathan called.
“Make way!” Gus called, the group passing near the end of the mob.
“Put down your guns!”
“And do not follow!” Nathan called, “or I will leave not one stone upon another standing. Not a man or woman or any living thing in this village standing—by the rising Sun!”
“No! No! The authorities will be here any moment!” the innkeeper shouted.
“And we will tell them nothing. It was an imagining what the innkeeper saw.”
“No. Don’t let them escape!”
“There were no monsters! No beasts! You were drunk, Hans, drunk. We saw no monsters! No strangers harmed us. No one was here that the police should follow.”
“Monsters!”
“No one harmed us. The innkeeper was drunk.”
“Everyone go home. Go home. You too, Hans. Go back in with your daughters and any other guests. This is finished.”
“Let night keep her secrets.”
“Let the woods keep what belongs there.”
“Everyone goodnight. Goodnight and go home.”
“And lock your doors.”
“And shutter your windows, tight.”
By the time the mob broke up, the fleeing figures running to the edge of town had faded and vanished into the wilderness.
XII
The Reverend Macon Early sat stiffly in a chair at a sidewalk café fronting the Saint-Tropez promenade, beach, and harbor. He watched the noon’s Sun dance on the blue waters where many luxury yachts anchored. His harsh imaginings were of the many sins occurring on those pleasure palaces that very moment.
His hand lifted a wineglass from his table and he finished the few drops remaining. Immediately, a waiting waiter stepped to the table, “Would monsieur care for another glass?”
“I just finished this one.”
“Well yes, since nine o’clock this morning. Perhaps monsieur would care for another, or for the check.”
“Serve me another, froggie.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Just pour, boy,” Macon growled, watching his sons approaching.
“Hey there, mademoiselle,” Josiah said to a passing woman.
“Hi there, mademoiselle,” Joseph copied awkwardly.
“With all the talkin’ an’ spoonin’ you boys do, I don’t know why you ain’t found our boy,” said the elder Early.
“It ain’t easy, Pa,” Josiah said, taking a chair to sit.
“Who said you could sit?” his father said, and Josiah pushed the chair back and remained standing. “It just ain’t easy to find somebody in this town with only a first name, Pa.”
“I didn’t expect it to be easy, boy, but three days you all been at it. You could almost ask everybody in this town their name in those many days.”
“Well, if they was a mademoiselle,” Joseph Henry grinned, “Josiah probably did.”
“That’s what I suspected.”
“Pa, can we have a little money?” Joseph said.
“Yeah, Pa, one of that fella’s gold coins would do.”
“One each,” Joseph Henry added.
“You want a gold coin each,” Macon said, taking a sip of wine. “Tell ya what. Your father is not an unreasonable man. I’ll give you a coin each.”
“Thanks, Pa,” Joseph said, rubbing his palms.
“When you find our Nathan feller.”
“Oh-Paaa.”
“You just keep at it. Perseverance and The Lord shall deliver, and I shall provide the gold coins. You shall receive from Him the guidance to find what ye seek, boys of mine. Trust in Him but keepin’ your minds clean—or there ain’t no deal—‘cause The Lord won’t provide his holy inspiration to dwellin’ places riddled with filth. He won’t enter into dirt filled uncleansed minds. As disciples of Him, we please Him, an’ we honor Him with keepin’ our minds and our spirits clean of perfidy—that I see surroundin’ us. Cleanse thyselves, and He will guide ye to whom we seek. Youse understand?”
“Yeah, Pa, yeah.”
“Good. Now continue with your work. I’ll be here the day long with my Bible.”
“When we find ‘em—”
“And his gold,” Macon interrupted.
“We’ll get a split of that gold, up front, won’t we, Pa?”
“Pestilence does inhabit your minds,” Rev. Macon said, looking down to open his Bible. “Righteousness in all things under heaven, sayeth The Lord. Our Mr. Nathan’s money, that I’m expectin’ he’s got a lot of and gathered in unholy manner, will become property of the church. The Salvation Calvary Apostolic Reincarnation Church of God Our Sacred Father Devotional Mission Church to do good deeds. It is to that mission that our findings will be devoted. To cleanse, improve and better man’s intemperance. However, to you, as disciples of The Founding, will be devoted a portion, as befitting and by my say-so, as Pastor, Deacon, and your earthly father. Now git.”
“Whoopie!” cried Joseph.
“Thanks, Pa.”
“Yeah thanks, Pa.”
The boys turned, and enthused by their father’s pronouncement, or the sauntering mademoiselles, cavorted down the promenade, slowing and approaching passing strollers.
The Reverend Early sipped wine, and whispered the first line he read from his Bible, “And the dragon stood on the sand of the seashore, and then I saw a beast coming up out of the sea . . .”
>
The “monsters,” fleeing their mountain-town hosts, rambled only several chaotic kilometers walking into bramble and brier in the dark, before the rain started. Luckily, only slightly wet, they found a shepherd lean-to to spend the night.
It rained all night and the morning too, and they huddled under the lean-to’s cramped quarters watching nonstop rain falling from an indifferent gray sky.
“It would’ve been
so much easier if you had just told Nathan how late in season and close to taking you were, Russell,” Sammy complained.
“I should’ve . . . I was . . . I just . . . I . . . ,” Russell managed, shivering on the ground and against Leeda’s shoulder.
“Oh stop it, Sammy,” Leeda said, putting her arms around Russell to warm him. His condition looked dire: eye sockets prominent, scalp scabrous, fingers missing nails, skin pale as death.
“He should’ve told,” Sammy said, “or am I wrong?”
“You’re right Sammy,” Shawn said, “but let it go. He’s in bad enough a way as it is.”
“I’m sorry . . . Sammy. I just didn’t wanna miss out,” Russell shivered.
“Miss out? You mean on all the fun? It’s so much better here than Saint-Tropez. I mean, it’s not raining there and no one’s after our hides.”
“Rest, Russell,” Leeda said, before Russell responded. “You need rest. The rain will clear, and you’ll find a taking, and you’ll be alright. You’ll see. Now stay calm. Calm . . . calm . . .”
“He won’t last long here, Nathan,” Gus said hushed to Nathan, the two standing watching the rain. “And the next ten kilometers, all that Hain shows on the GPS, shows nothing, no village, nothing. And we can’t return to the last one.”
“Someone, a farmhouse, somebody someone’ll appear,” Nathan said.
“You’re optimistic, but he’s the one dying.”
Nathan looked surprised at Gus. Gus looked away becoming embittered with himself for feeling resentment toward Nathan, and speaking accusing words.
Nathan dismissed the comment. His mind remained on the night’s remarkable events, specifically on what he had done—like nothing before. He’d raised his hands and the world parted. There were no monsters, no demons, no avenging black-winged angels plunging fatally from heaven and bringing cataclysm as he warned he could command. But the remarkable feeling that formed in him as he spoke, and firmed in him as he thought—and that Gus would say infirmed him—did not feel wrong or bad.
“I’m feeling better, Ace,” Russell said weakly. “You’ve still got my vote.”
“Always the lackey,” Sammy dismissed.
Yulen: Return of the Beast – Mystery Suspense Thriller (Yulen - Book 2) Page 12