“Agreed,” the other three said, almost in unison.
John grabbed Babbitt under one arm, K’chal slipped a hand under the other, and the two men eased the stunned Cockney to his feet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A few hours later, the members of the team were back at their places, around the low, wide oaken table in the sitting room of St. John's Rectory. There were cups, glasses, a mug and a bottle of Green Tea in front of them. It was night, and the light from three old-fashioned lamps threw a soft warm glow over the entire scene.
The Rectory’s old black Bakelite phone sat on the table in front of John. He held its also bulky receiver wedged between shoulder and ear. He was in mid-conversation with the Reverend Arthur Medhurst.
Miles across London the reverend lay back on a stack of pillows in his hospital room at London General. Electronic equipment still beeped out the steady rhythm of his heart, and a tangle of intravenous tubes still made sure his medication was administered accurately and on time, but he was no longer under the oxygen tent. The hospital phone rested on the pillow next to his head, so he could use all of his energy to sound as cheerful and positive as he could without drawing too much on his weakened reserves.
“I’m sorry I was briefly incapacitated, dear boy. But it appears my absence wasn’t all that greatly missed.”
John shook his head, though the old cleric couldn’t see it. “That’s about as far away from the truth as ya can get and still be on this planet, Reverend. And y’ don’t have to put on an act for us.” He grinned. “I know yer a tough old bird. Y’ damned Brits with yer stiff upper lip and all that.”
“Now, now, John,” the reverend said, trying for his paternal voice. “Doctors are prone to exaggerate the situation, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah,” John said. Then his smile faded and he became more serious. “Anyway, thanks for yer help. I woulda been a gonna without it.”
The reverend was tempted to try and push this aside, but decided instead to play it straight. “You are welcome, dear boy.”
“When yer a little stronger, I only have about a million questions for ya.” John kept the inflection light, but he meant every word.
The conversation, short as it had been, was taking a lot out of the old cleric. He decided to end it quickly so he could rest. “Brendan is being taken care of, as we speak. And this time I assure you he will be kept in the most serious confinement available: a prison, not a hospital. I do look forward to getting out of here, very soon. Until then, God bless you all.”
“Thanks, Reverend.” John heard the tiredness in his old friend’s voice and was glad the conversation had reached a point where they could end it. “We’ll be in to see ya as soon as the doctors will allow it. And God bless ya, too.”
The Reverend Medhurst moved the phone and sunk back into the pillows. He was glad it was over … at least for now.
He was asleep a bare few minutes later.
In St John’s Rectory, as John ended the call and placed the handset back on its base, K’chal asked the question they were all wondering about. “Babbitt?”
“It sounds like he’ll be institutionalized for the rest of his life; under top security.” John said. Jennifer, Daniel and K’chal all mumbled their agreement with the news.
There was a pause as they all sat, lost in thought for a moment. John finally broke the silent reverie.
“So, K’chal. Ya don’t remember anything about what happened? Or who exactly the old dude is?”
“No.” This confession obviously perturbed K’chal. “The few elders in my tribe that are still alive say he was a Karadji, a kind of medicine man, who died so long ago even the storytellers have forgotten.” He shook his head. “Except for vague dreams that are gone almost before I wake up, the painting you have is the closest I’ve ever come to even seeing him.”
“So why did you send it to me?”
“I was not the one responsible for that.” There was no animosity in K’chal words; it was just a statement of truth. “I had never even seen it until Jennifer showed me a photograph she had taken.”
“Then who could have sent it?”
“I am afraid it is just one more mystery in a long line of them,” K’chal said. He tried for a light smile, but didn’t really make it.
John sat deep in thought … then realized what K’chal had just said.
“Listen, mate. It would seem to me that the painting really belongs to you. I’d be glad to get it back to ya.” He was genuinely sincere.
“Wow!” Daniel cut in. “I thought you really loved that thing. That’s damned generous of you.”
Jennifer didn’t speak, but she smiled at John, her grin of admiration obvious. He didn’t appear to notice.
“Maybe it can help ya figure out some things, K’chal.”
“Friend, John,” the native Australian responded. “It is a truly magnanimous gesture, but whoever was responsible for the painting sent it to you, not to me. There must have been a reason for that.”
“What reason?” John frowned again. He’d been doing that a lot lately.
“As I said: just one more mystery in a long line of them.”
Daniel sensed that K’chal was uneasy talking about something so personal to him, so he attempted to both change the subject and lighten the mood.
“Curiouser and curiouser, as Lewis Carrol would say. Anyhoo, where are we at?”
K’chal was glad to be off the subject of his strange alter-ego. He waved a hand to encompass them all. “Well! Working as a team, we have been able to drive back the darkness ... to win at least this battle.”
“If not the war,” Jennifer added.
“True,” Daniel nodded, serious now.
“If there’s one thing we’ve learned through our encounters with it. It’s that evil is never destroyed ... it just changes shape.”
They all nodded sadly at his very true remark.
“And yet it appears the good Reverend felt it important enough to have spent a great deal of his life trying to protect Brendan Babbitt from that evil out there.” K’chal opened his hands to include the Rectory. “Out ... here.”
He thought on this for a second and added. “And who knows how many others he has helped … ones we know nothing about.”
“There have been many,” Jennifer affirmed.
“But it appears the good Reverend Medhurst may be unable to continue ... or may at least have to curtail his efforts somewhat,” K’chal continued. He frowned and rubbed at his chin. “And there is little doubt that he brought us together to try and help him in his work. So I find myself wondering ... do we continue this work as a team, or go our separate ways again?”
There was a long silence as they all thought on what K’chal had just said.
No one else spoke, so John stepped up and at that moment became the quasi-leader of the team. Of course he never realized it. At least not right then. “The Reverend tried to explain it to me once: there is strength in numbers. Together we’re more able to protect each other ... and others, whatever comes. This battle may be over, but I’m beginning to realize there will probably be other … problems that need our help.”
He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, looking into the far distance, intent, thoughtful. “I suggest we stick together. We don’t go looking for trouble, but we do our best to resist the … thing, the force, the evil I first felt in Amityville. We fight any attempt it makes to harm us … or anyone else who might find themselves under attack through no fault of their own.”
Daniel groaned playfully and grabbed his back. “I can feel the pain already.”
John smiled. “It could be worse, mate. Y’ could be alone with only yerself t’ talk to.”
Jennifer placed a hand warmly on the New Yorker’s shoulder. “Just let it happen, Daniel. Embrace the mystery.”
“It is all one kind of mystery or another,” K’chal noted.
Daniel relaxed and shrugged in agreement. “The world’s full
of ‘em, isn’t it? I mean, we oughtta know.”
Jennifer, John and K’chal nodded in agreement.
John spoke again. “So we knock ‘em down one at a time ... right?”
Jennifer raised her glass and swept it around the group. “I’ll drink to that. Cheers!”
Daniel grabbed his mug from the table and raised it high. “Skol!”
K’chal lifted his cup and did the same. “Here! Here!”
John reached for the bottle of Green Tea on the table and then joined in the salute. “Here’s mud in yer eye, as we say in Australia.”
*******
In a darkness so complete it could be anywhere, or any size, a bright, but unseen light-source illuminated a tall, almost throne-like chair, its construction incredibly ancient ... and, nearby a smaller, simpler chair placed facing it.
Jennifer sat in the modern chair.
On the throne sat an old woman, Old Mother. She must once have been a great beauty. Even now, though hundreds of years old, she had a presence that defied description. Both women wore long dark robes, the hoods turned back.
Old Mother’s voice was a mixture of honey and gravel, at once gruff and warm. “Young daughter! You say he was able to access the True Light?”
“He did more than access it, Old Mother,” Jennifer stated. “Although he doesn’t appear to understand yet exactly what it was or how it happened ... he used it with an ease I didn’t believe possible. His transformation was instigated by the Autochthonous Gaian the sisterhood has long attempted to understand … but his command of the light was him and him alone.”
Old Mother frowned. This news clearly triggered a world of differing emotions in her; some perhaps not pleasant. “You must bring him to The Holy Circle, as soon as you are able without alerting him to what that might mean. He must face the Ordeal. It is the only way we can be sure if he is indeed the one, The Light Warrior. Or if our hopes are to be, yet gain, dashed.”
Jennifer couldn’t hide her concern at what this might mean. “But, mother ... he could die.”
Old Mother’s answer was gentle, filled with warmth; but still stern. “I sometimes forget child, how young you are. In time you will come to understand that some things are inevitable.”
Then, the smile abruptly gone, she issued a stern caution. “But be warned, young sister. We know you saw fit to interfere once before, against or wishes … and sent him away, back to America.”
Jennifer couldn’t hide her shock. “You knew?”
Old Mother shook her head, and sadly grinned. “Of course we knew. But do not deem to try our patience, again. Bring him to us. And do not warn him of what we plan.”
Jennifer had to fight back the desire to protest again. She knew it would be useless; in fact it might end up in someone else being given the task. She couldn’t allow that. So, although reluctant to do so, she answered the way she knew Old Mother would expect her to. “Yes, Old Mother.”
Still, the ancient matriarch of the Sisters of Antediluvia -- a coven of White Witches dedicated to the triumph of light over darkness, for countless hundreds of years -- was not so easily fooled. She made a mental note to carefully watch over young Sister Jennifer from this moment on.
*******
In the center of a wide, almost waste-like field, in what was once the distant outskirts of London, there was a unique structure that almost no one could remember ever not being there.
Over the years the surrounding neighborhood had become a highly developed industrial area, then degenerated into an unmapped maze of old and often crumbling warehouses.
At first glance, the structure seemed innocuous enough. The tall brick walls that surrounded it were topped with shards of glass sunk into concrete, but even that was not particularly unusual – not in the early 1980s, when security was becoming a big deal.
This structure was carefully designed to attract no attention at all. But more than a casual glance would have revealed far more. So, by carefully planned choice, no casual observer was ever allowed to see what was behind those tall, thick, double-layered brick walls.
Huge rolls of triple-thickness barbed wire stretched off both left and right, completely encircling the first large open compound. A second heavy-duty wire fence, only a few feet shorter than the brick one, also circled the area, completely hidden from view. There was one more wide open space between the inner fence and a series of high-security buildings, and the entire expanse was under the watchful scrutiny of armed guards in crows nests, spaced every fifty feet. The place was meant to be both secluded and fortress-like. Any old soldier still alive from World War II would have thought it looked surprisingly like a German prisoner of war camp.
It was only when an invited visitor or a new inmate passed through the structure’s extensive and entirely invisible security systems and approached the front of the first building that the sign designating its purpose became obvious. It was a modest brass plaque set into the brick of the building. It wasn’t fancy, but it left no doubts. It read:
HALLENBURG HIGH SECURITY PRISON
FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE
The windows in each of the buildings inside the inner wall were heavily barred. Each door was massive, with a series of top-security locks and checks. Visitors were welcome, but the government had decided that the inmates in this prison should never leave here.
Ever.
Late one night, in the early 1980’s, the silence of the compounds’ brightly lit inner yard was shattered by a loud and mournful wailing. Moments later a crazed shriek, so loud it hurt to hear, challenged the siren’s wail.
The shriek rose to fever-pitch ...
… then raced off into the distance. As abruptly as it had begun, it was gone.
Something unheard of in the entire history of Hallenburg had just happened.
A prisoner had escaped.
THE END
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