Charles had been back for several months now and he was enjoying the life he led. The fact that the Lord hadn’t returned made him a little worried, but Pastor Erik’s soothing voice on the radio alleviated his concerns. The Lord would come back when he was ready, in the meantime, one still had to live the life written in the holy book. The children that had been recently adopted had now adjusted to his exacting standards, so there was still hope their souls would ultimately be saved. He just needed to keep them on the right path until the eventual return of Jesus Christ.
It was now time for Sunday dinner, so Charles stood in front of the full length mirror in the master bedroom of the house as he made some last minute adjustments to his tie. It had been a family tradition handed down by his father that the family would be dressed in their Sunday best when they sat down for dinner. They had all attended church services and the children then went to Bible study in the afternoon. Now it was time for a feast to commemorate the end of another week as they all waited for the Second Coming of the Lord.
There was a knock on the door. Charles combed his hair before answering. “Come in.”
His oldest boy, seventeen year old Eli, poked his red head through the doorway, “Mother says dinner is ready.”
Charles kept looking at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t quite six feet, but he was tall enough. Blue eyes behind wire rimmed glasses and his hazelnut brown hair was beginning to turn grey. “Get the other kids to their places, I’ll be along shortly.”
“Yes, father.”
Charles put on his coat as he heard a parade of footsteps going down the wooden stairs. He made sure the second floor was quiet before opening the door and walking down to the dining room. The house had evidently been occupied by a wealthy Asian family forced out as soon as Kansas seceded. It had an old colonial style common back during the frontier days of the town. Their closest neighbor was a mile away and it would take Charles half an hour just to commute to work at the city center. He preferred the solitude, since his children would not be distracted by their peers, allowing them to focus on their homeschooling and their faith.
When he made it into the living room, all twelve of his children stood up. As he slowly walked over to the head of the table, Charles glanced at each and every one of them to make sure not a ribbon or tie was out of place. All the boys were dressed in their little suits and all the girls wore white and blue dresses. Charles pushed his chair back with a slight squeak and sat down. The moment he took the cloth napkin from the table and placed it on his lap, the children began sitting down, according to their respective places. Within minutes, nobody said a word as the children merely stared at their gleaming white ceramic plates as the steaming bowls of food sitting on the table remained untouched. One of the younger boys tilted his head up slightly but soon looked downwards again when he saw Charles looking at him intently.
Lisa walked into the room as she carried a large serving dish with two whole chickens from the oven. She placed it on the table in front of her husband before taking off her apron and placing it on top of a nearby cabinet. Then she readjusted her dress before sitting down beside him.
Charles frowned as he stared at the pair of roasted chickens on the table. “Why did you cook only two? There are twelve of us. It won’t be enough.”
“We’re out of ration slips for meat and poultry,” Lisa said. “Sorry, but I was so busy with the laundry and their school syllabus, I forgot to tell you about it.”
Charles’s backhanded slap caught her right on the cheek. It wasn’t a hard blow, but all the kids heard it. One of the younger girls gasped before she realized it and immediately looked back down on her plate, along with the others. Lisa rubbed her reddish cheek for a few seconds as she looked out into the window and kept staring into the night.
The silence was broken when Charles clasped his hands together in prayer. “Well, I guess this will have to do. Some of us will not be having a full plate, but that is nothing compared to what the Lord endured when he was fasting to save us all.” He turned to look at a twelve year old boy who was sitting at the far end of the table. “Wesley, I believe it is your turn to say grace. I think the one with Paul in Acts ought to be appropriate for this evening.”
Wesley had freckles on his cheeks and was a bit on the pudgy side. He figured he would get only a small piece of meat, since he had failed his Bible memory test just a few days before and had a broken tooth to prove it. Wesley clasped his hands together and closed his eyes as he tried to remember the exact words to the verse. “When he had thus spoken, he took bread and gave thanks to God in—”
The boy’s prayer recitation was interrupted by a loud crash coming from outside of the house. Everybody looked at each other in surprise. One of the younger girls thought it was Jesus finally coming back as she clenched her eyes shut and prayed even harder. Charles frowned as he got up from his chair and angrily threw the napkin on top of his still empty plate. Who could it be at this time of the night? he thought.
Charles walked over to the window and looked outside. He soon noticed that his car was burning. A high sheet of flame was roaring on top of the hood. The only thing around them was endless stretches of grass and farmland, so they surely would have heard a car coming in since everything was so quiet. A seething anger began grow in his head as Charles started to make his way towards the back door in the kitchen. He was head of the morality council in this entire county and if anyone dared play a trick like this on him there would be hell to pay. The back door had a large glass window above the door knob and he noticed a teenage girl standing outside, near the old stone well. He fumbled the lock as his hands kept shaking with a combination of rage and impatience. If that girl had torched his truck, he would exact a very strict punishment on her, whoever she was.
When he finally got the back door opened and pushed the screen door aside, Lisa ran up behind him. “Who is it?” she said.
“Stay here and make sure the kids don’t eat the food,” Charles said tersely as he threw back the screen door and walked out past the back porch with his fists clenched. His steps were slow and deliberate as he got closer to the girl. “Hey, you! Did you set my car on fire?”
The girl had reddish brown hair and she seemed supremely confident in herself as she just stood there with her arms crossed. “No, it wasn’t me. One of my friends did it.”
Charles stood a few feet away from her and looked around. White hot feelings of anger and barely suppressed outrage were boiling inside of him. The lens of his glasses was nearly steamed over despite the cold night air. “Where are these friends of yours? Don’t you punks know who I am?”
The girl nodded. “I know who you are. I also know you have my brother. His name is Timmy and he’s around seven by now. If you hand him over to me I’ll make sure you won’t get hurt.”
“What are you talking about, you little jezebel?” Charles hissed. Who did this young punk think she is? He would show her just who she was messing with! “I run the morality council in this entire area! I can have you put in prison just on my say so! What’s your name and who are your parents?”
“My name’s Tara and you don’t know about my parents,” she said. “My brother Timmy is here, the records from Wichita said so. I’m asking you one more time to give him back to me.”
Charles couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “W-what? How did you get access to the council databases? They’re restricted!”
Tara shook her head. She wasn’t telling him anything. “That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”
Charles had his hands out as he moved forward to try and grab her. “Why you—”
Just before he could get his hands on her, he sensed some sort passing blur, as if a presence suddenly appeared at his left side, right where the night was darkest. As he turned slowly to his left, Charles noticed he was standing right next to some sort of pale skinned creature. It was something he might have seen when he sneaked off and watched one of those horror movies in the drive–
in theatre all those years ago. Only this time it was real. Charles stifled a scream as Patrick Gyle placed a clawed hand on his shoulder and threw him down onto the ground.
Lisa had started screaming as soon as she saw some sort of naked, white hairless demon standing over her husband. The older kids got up from the dinner table and they all started running into the kitchen to see what was going on. The younger kids were still too scared to even get up but as Lisa’s screaming continued, the spell Charles had over them broke and they all joined in with their adopted siblings as they crowded the kitchen to look outside.
Tara glanced at Gyle standing over Charles as she walked past them and headed towards the opened back door. “Keep him covered for me, willya?”
Gyle nodded silently as he glared at the man lying near his feet.
Tara walked up into the kitchen as she brushed past Lisa, who just stood there dumbfounded. The kids all moved backwards as they silently stared back at her. Tara looked at the younger kid’s faces but she didn’t notice Timmy among them. After a minute, she soon recognized an eight-year old kid with dark hair standing near the doorway that led to the dining room. It was Tyler Olsen alright.
She walked up to the wide eyed little boy. Timmy’s old playmate. She was so glad to see him. But where was her brother? “Tyler? It’s me, Tara. Remember the trailer park back in Phoenix? We were neighbors and you were my brother’s playmate. My brother Timmy. Remember?”
Tyler’s mouth dropped before he ran up to her and hugged her as he started crying. “Tara! Oh my god! D-did you see my parents?”
Tara hugged him for a bit, then gently pulled him away from her before leading him into the dining room. The other kids were too busy watching Gyle outside so it was just the two of them in the hall. She knelt down slightly so they were in eye contact. “I’m sorry, but your mom is gone. Your dad is hurt, but he’s safe over the Federal border. I can take him to you if you want.”
“Y-yes, please,” the boy sobbed. “I-I hate it here. They force me to read the Bible and they b-beat me up. Take me away p-please. I wanna g-go back to my d-dad.”
Tara nodded. “I will, Tyler. I have to find Timmy first. Where is he?”
Tyler started crying even harder. “They b-beat him u-up! He didn’t wa-want to follow them so they beat him up bad!”
Tara’s heart started to pound, it felt like it was about to burst from her chest. Oh god, was her brother hurt? She hoped he would still be alright. Maybe they put him to bed upstairs or something? “Wh-what? Where is he? Tyler, please tell me where he is!”
The boy just kept bawling as he pointed to the side door, it lead out to where a small hill was. “They put him out th-there!”
Tara quickly got up and sprinted to the side door. The doorknob had one of those twist locks so she just shifted it counterclockwise and got it open. She could hear her pounding breath as she ran out into the night once more, the only illumination was coming from the house behind her. Did they tie him up to keep him up there? she thought as she ran up the base of the small hill. Tara was thinking there was maybe some sort of shack or structure that held her brother prisoner as her strides slowed for a bit as she made her way up. The hill had patches of grass and a tall, skeletal tree was right on top of it. When she got up near the top, she noticed that the raven was there as it perched on something. It looked like a vertical stone slab sticking out of the ground.
“I’m sorry,” the raven said.
Tara knelt down as her heart sank. Her breathing came in shallow gasps. A sudden tidal wave of unbearable pain crested inside of her and was about to drown her soul. Deep inside, she knew what it was. She shook her head rapidly from side to side, thinking it couldn’t be real. It had to be just a dream she could wake up from. “No. No. No.”
Tyler made his way up to the hill, it took him a few minutes. The little boy’s leather shoes were caked with dirt as he stood behind her. His tears had dried and he was calm. “T-Timmy had a lot of guts. He didn’t listen to them and didn’t want to eat. He would call out to you every time they hit him, and they hit him a lot. Then one day my foster dad hit him too hard and too many times. Timmy just didn’t wake up. T-they buried him up here.”
Tara didn’t say anything as tears rolled down her cheeks, her heart a tightly coiled ball of pain.
19. A Parliament of Owls
Alabama
Everyone was on high alert as the ship entered the great sunken forest. The captain had unveiled a harpoon cannon mounted right at the center in the bow of the upper deck. The gun was a massive Kongsberg 90mm breech-loading cannon that had been imported from Iceland and had several rolls of cable attached to the harpoon. The warhead looked like a giant dart sticking out of a cylindrical metal cannon. He had ordered that two men were to man it at all times the moment the outskirts of the forest came into view. Several swivel mounted searchlights were also attached along the railings of the upper deck to provide extra illumination at night.
Tyrone Gatlin stood in the pilot room as he manned the ship’s wheel while the deck lights helped to see through the pitch black darkness ahead. He checked his watch and it was getting close to midnight, the witching hour. Captain Pillinger was sitting on his high mounted chair just behind his right shoulder. As Tyrone looked out at the huge swath of half sunken trees ahead of them, he couldn’t help but marvel at the unnatural, flooded landscape. It was as if a magical forest of gargantuan, mutant trees had suddenly appeared in the bayous, right after the rains had caused a massive deluge that sunk most of the southern states. He remembered driving along the well-maintained highways near Talladega Springs just a few years ago. Now all that he was seeing was totally alien, it was as if they were in a completely different world. The dark waters around them must have been at least twenty or even thirty feet deep, and that would make the gnarled trees along the waterways as tall as sixty or even eighty feet high if the land wasn’t flooded over. There was no way that ordinary trees could have grown in less than a year into the giant oaks that surrounded them, with branches that were the size of concrete building columns. There was something bizarre about the whole forest, it was as if some god had pulled it out of a nightmare and placed it smack dab in the middle of the entire state, as to what its purpose was, he had no idea.
All the men that were out on the decks were fully armed with assorted hunting and semi-automatic rifles. A few of them had night vision goggles as they stared out into the darkness. The searchlights had been swaying back and forth as they ran their bright white beams along the opaque water, hoping to catch a glimpse of their quarry, the elusive and monstrous great horned serpent, the Sint-Holo. A few men on the lower decks had placed plastic buckets of fish pieces, blood and assorted entrails to throw them into the water as bait to bring out the great snake into the open. Chumming had been declared illegal in the state years ago, but since there was no longer any means of enforcing the law, every single idea was now in use. The smell coming from the bait buckets were awful, so the men who did the chumming had worn handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses.
One man absentmindedly placed a small wooden crate in front of the wheel house, right beside the forward window. Captain Pillinger immediately noticed it as he got up from his chair and started cursing at the man who placed it there. The hunter just shrugged as he came back and picked up the crate, then he carried it back down the stairs and out of sight.
“Stupid dumbass,” Pillinger hissed out loud. “Putting that crate right in front of the wheel house. What a dipshit!”
Tyrone glanced over at the captain. “What was in that crate?”
Pillinger just snorted as he climbed back on his high chair. “What do you think? It’s a box full of dynamite.”
Tyrone exhaled slowly. He was somewhat relieved that JJ Glanton, the first officer, didn’t accuse him of taking anything from the captain’s cabin. It was clear Pillinger had obviously taken him under his wing, and he didn’t want to jeopardize that trust. It was the voice of the being inside the lock
ed box in the captain’s quarters that sent shivers down his spine. The unknown creature said that the entire ship was cursed, and it was heading on a journey of doom. Tyrone was getting mixed feelings since the god in his dreams told him he must take part in this journey in order to fulfill something that was needed. What that was, Tyrone had no idea. The voice in the box had asked to be freed, but Tyrone was reluctant to break the trust of the captain. He had a feeling he would have to free whatever was inside that box, but he just couldn’t bring himself to disobey the directive of his superior.
A sudden bump underneath the ship’s hull jolted him and Tyrone nearly jumped. Several of the men leaned over the railings to see what it was. The harpoon team swiveled their weapon, hoping to get that perfect shot, while the ones attending the searchlights tried to get a bead on whatever was in the water.
“False alarm!” A voice from the lower deck shouted. “Just a sunken log!”
Pillinger got up and poked his head out of the open window. “Get some poles and push the damn thing outta the way! Make sure it steers clear of the paddlewheel!”
Several people shouted back to affirm the order.
Pillinger turned to look at Tyrone. “We’ll be going around these waterways for up to a week until we find that big ‘ol snake. If we don’t find it by then, I’ll take us south to the other sunken forest that sprouted up near Okefenokee. I can let you off on the way there when we get close to Columbus. Of course, if you change your mind, you can stick with us. We can use you. Don’t worry about Glanton, I know he hates you, but I can deal with him.”
Tyrone smiled at him. “Thanks for the offer, Captain. But I think my god or whatever it is that’s talking to me in my dreams would want me to continue on to Macon.”
One of the men operating the searchlights swiveled to his right and pointed at the water below. “There! Over there! I saw something!”
“Five degrees starboard, Tyrone,” Pillinger said as he looked out of the side window.
A World Darkly (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 3) Page 27