The Demon Signet

by Shawn Hopkins

  His submarine was diving, the periscope losing sight of himself.

  “What’s on your finger?”

  Heather’s voice brings him from thoughts not his own. He looks at his hand on the wheel.

  “You took it from me while I was sleeping?” Ashley wants to know.

  Ian stares at the ring on his finger, confused. He doesn’t remember putting it on. Part of him, an increasingly stronger part of him, doesn’t care. He senses its power, a potential that he hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface of. But there’s still enough of him left to understand that its power is a dark one. He sees shapes emerge beside the car, keeping pace with its speed—shapes with flapping wings and flame-filled nostrils.

  In that instant, he is faced with a choice. Surrender to endless power and all its corruption, or fight for that tiny voice circling the drain of conscience. He hears Marcus begin to pray, and in a moment of added strength he can’t possibly explain, he pulls the ring off his finger and throws it on the floor at Heather’s feet.

  ****

  “What the hell was that?” Heather cried, quick to move her feet away from the rolling ring that Ashley had cast to the same spot the day before.

  Before Ian could answer, however, a loud crash and violent impact slammed them all back against their seats. Marcus turned and looked out the back window. “It’s him!”

  Ian glanced into the rearview mirror and saw the Camaro bearing down on them again. The tinted windows of the flat-black machine reflected only the rear of Joyce’s Saab. Ian could see in the reflection both Marcus’ and Ashley’s horrified faces looking out the back window just before the next impact had him struggling with the wheel.

  Ian needed to lose the Camaro now and no longer cared about adhering to the GPS. He pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floorboard, and the Saab’s engine whined as it climbed further ahead of the Z-28.

  “Can we lose it?” Marcus asked.

  “We’re sure as hell gonna try,” Ian responded.

  But the Z-28’s V8 engine had at least 330 horses under its hood and getting away from it at all would take a miracle—and that was besides the driver’s ability to maneuver it through the impossible.

  Houses flew by on both sides of them in a Christmas-colored blur. The Camaro hung with them, remaining at a distance, speed matched.

  Signs for I-81 started to appear.

  “Do we get on the interstate?” Heather had one hand on the dashboard and the other on the headrest. She kept looking back and forth between the road ahead and the Camaro behind, her golden hair pulled back in a ponytail and wagging with every turn of her head.

  He nodded. “We need traffic, something to lose him in.”

  Ashley frowned, tendrils of fear regrouping and breaking from their huddle. Her eyes were staring out the back. “What is he doing?”

  The onramp for 81 was coming up, and Ian almost passed it before turning the wheel hard right, the Saab’s tires screeching against the salted asphalt. As the car straightened and shot south onto 81, the Camaro continued on straight, disappearing from view.

  Big eighteen-wheelers littered the road ahead, and Ian found their company strangely comforting. He passed a few, taking the car up to eighty miles per hour despite the posted limit of fifty-five. If they could get onto another road soon, then they stood a chance of losing the Camaro. Because even though it passed the onramp, none of them doubted that it would be back.

  Ian pondered this. The driver had been able to find them in the Adirondacks, the diner, and at Joyce’s house. So maybe that was why he had rolled on by, maybe it was his way of taunting them, letting them know they were as good as dead already, and that he had all the time in the world to get what he wanted from them…that he rather enjoyed their futile efforts of escape. But how was he able to find them? He found his eyes straying from the road ahead, answering the question with an intense focus on the ring that was lying at Heather’s feet.

  “Give me the ring,” he said to her.

  Heather hesitated. “Why?” She seemed afraid he might put it back on.

  “I’m gonna get rid of it.”

  Ashley leaned forward in the back seat. “You think it’s the ring?”

  Hadn’t they already said as much? He stared ahead. “Yes.”

  “What happened to you?” Marcus asked, observing his friend in the reflection of the rearview.

  Ian lifted his eyes to the glass, and their eyes connected for a second. But the shame was too great, and Ian turned his gaze back to the road, his hand still held outstretched, anticipating Heather’s compliance. “I’m sorry, Marc. You know I don’t believe any of that.”

  “What happened?”

  It was a question that Ian was asking himself. He couldn’t explain it, the power…the darkness. He hardly had any recollection of what he had said, as if he’d been asleep while someone else controlled his body. And yet, he had been very aware of the sense of control—which was ironic because he hadn’t had any amount of control over himself. It was like a drug. No…a presence. And that presence had been whispering something, had been feeling around inside him, searching. His eyes went to the ring again. His insides leaped at the sight of it, his chest tightening and his breath catching. But the feeling wasn’t coupled with joy and hope and love, like when spotting the girl of your dreams, but rather the promise of supremacy. Ian tried discerning this feeling, finding it bizarre that such an offer—that’s what it seemed like anyway—would tempt him this much. He never had any desire for power or control, yet that little taste of it seemed to have sparked a newfound need for it. There was a lust there, circling his being and forcing him to crave that which the ring had to offer, whatever it may be.

  “Ian!”

  Heather’s voice snapped his attention from the bronze loop just in time for him to avoid ramming into the back of a slow-moving station wagon. He swerved around it and sped past.

  “Give it to me,” he said again.

  Hesitating for another second, Heather finally reached down and picked it up. She held it cautiously, afraid that just touching it might warp her judgment and turn her into something else—as it seemed to have done to Ian. But before she dropped it into Ian’s hand, her eyes were caught by its dark stone, holding her transfixed for a second.

  Ian snatched it out of her hand and rolled down the window. He extended his arm out into the cold and flicked his wrist. Then he brought his hand back in and rolled the window up. “Well, that should be the end of it.” He sighed, hopeful. He checked the mirrors for the black muscle car, but there was no sign of it. He leaned back against the seat and tried to relax, to ignore the tremors rumbling through his body. He tried thinking back through those hateful words that had infiltrated his way of thinking, how they had managed to corrupt his worldview. He could sense a remnant of those evil ideas hiding themselves within the shadows of his mind, waiting for some opportunity to revolt against whatever good was left in him…whatever purity the ring hadn’t stolen. He looked over at Heather and knew that nothing would ever be the same again. His heart broke at the sudden realization even as something sinister rejoiced at it. Two personalities. One wanted to do what was right and the other to do whatever the hell it wanted. Depravity versus morality; the fallen state in Adam versus a general revelation that proclaimed a better way; the conscience… But the part of him that longed to be good, that moral compass that incessantly prodded him toward decency, honor, and all the other attributes of Goodness was now in the hands of a much stronger foe. He was afraid that, after all this time, God had finally given him over to his bitter heart and that the result would be far more catastrophic than he had ever imagined. He needed help. He needed Marcus, needed Marcus’ God, the God he’d rejected after his brother’s suicide. It was the only lifeline out of the encroaching darkness, the only light to which he could move toward…

  But the hand squeezed tighter, and the desire for the Light faltered. If he could cry, he would. But crying was for the meek, the lowly in sp
irit. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Bullshit. Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Where was his blessing of comfort? It had been years since Jimmy’s death, and he hadn’t received any measure of this promised “comfort.”

  The Light grew smaller.

  Twenty-four

  Marcus stared at the back of Ian’s head. He wondered if his friend really believed he’d slipped the ring back into his pocket without anyone noticing. And then he found himself questioning whether or not Ian even knew what he’d done. Something was definitely wrong with him. What had come out of his mouth was about as foreign to his true convictions as words could get. Though he guessed it was possible that Ian had always been a closet racist and that for some reason he had just decided… No, Marcus would’ve been able to pick up on it. There were few things that Marcus could detect in people with such accuracy, but that was certainly one of them. It was almost as if his friend had become…possessed. But by what? How? And of course, the answer was right there, resting in Ian’s pocket. What else could it be? As much as logic and reason wished to dismiss the thought, there it was, a hard pill to swallow for sure, but the only thing on the menu.

  He looked over at Heather, wondering if she’d caught Ian’s sleight of hand too, but her attention was on the passing road beyond the car. He ushered Ashley across the leather seat toward him, and she rested her head in his lap, still crying. He had tossed the puke-drenched floor mat out the window, but the acidic stench of stomach juices still clung to the warm interior. He stroked her hair, trying to comfort her from something he could never hope to protect her from.

  “He wants the ring, doesn’t he?” Marcus asked Ian.

  Ian’s fingers flexed on the wheel. “Seems obvious, doesn’t it?”

  Heather’s gaze narrowed on her fiancé. “Obvious?”

  He sighed impatiently. “It’s been the common denominator in every situation. We’ve been carrying it around, and he still wants it.”

  “What do you think it is?” Marcus probed.

  Ian shrugged, whispered, “Power.”

  Marcus’ hand paused in Ashley’s hair. “What happened when you put it on, Ian? You changed.”

  But Ian only said, “He can’t have it back.”

  “Who, Ian? Who is he?” Just putting the ring on seemed to have infused Ian with insight regarding their situation.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to his right and asked, “What are you hiding from me, Heather?”

  Heather was stunned, but the blank look on her face crumbled under the guilt already answering his question. “What are you talking about?”

  Ian moved the car over into the right lane, intent on avoiding two tractor trailers following the speed limit. Then he turned away from the road and stared into her eyes. “What are you hiding from me?”

  “Ian…”

  “Stop lying to me, Heather.” His voice was eerily calm, controlling.

  Ashley was sobbing.

  As Heather opened her mouth to object again, a speeding SUV nearly sideswiped them as it flew past.

  Ian swore at the driver, and Marcus was relieved that his friend’s attention had been temporarily diverted from Heather’s secret.

  The SUV’s brake lights lit, and it suddenly swerved in front of the Saab, nearly clipping the front end. Ian leaned on the horn, hurling expletives at the vehicle’s rear. Spittle sprayed the windshield.

  Ashley covered her ears and closed her eyes, and Marcus thought he could hear her whispering prayers.

  Ian stepped on the gas and brought the Saab closer to the SUV, still leaning on the horn. But then the SUV swerved back into the middle lane. The truck in that lane had started to shift over into the right, cutting the driver off in a delayed effort to clear a path for him. Ian followed the SUV into the middle lane, pushing on the gas and prodding the SUV up between the two eighteen wheelers.

  Marcus saw a wicked grin spread beneath the stubbly shadow of Ian’s face and braced himself.

  The SUV was halfway past the trucks when the truck in the left lane suddenly swerved to avoid a dead deer that was sprawled beside the median. The truck’s trailer broke into the middle lane, causing the driver of the SUV to turn away. But the wheel had been turned too hard, and the SUV went crashing into the trailer that was only now straightening out in the slow lane. The long trailer careened onto the shoulder and began swinging up toward the cab when it struck a snow bank and flipped over, pulling the cab down after it. The whole truck then went sliding down the road’s shoulder like a forty-ton toboggan.

  The SUV spun off the road and came to a violent stop against a row of trees, the windshield exploding.

  Ian simply laughed and gave a mock salute to the pinned driver of the SUV as he sped around the scene and continued on.

  Marcus turned and stared in horror at the scene left behind. “You have to go back!” he shouted to Ian.

  “Like hell I do.”

  “Ian!”

  But of course, Ian didn’t answer, just dipped his head with a smirk and set his eyes on the empty road in front of them, challenging it. Challenging everything.

  Heather began screaming at him, begging him to go back. “What’s wrong with you?” she shouted.

  Marcus watched as the truck in the left lane came to a stop, the driver hopping down onto the road and making his way across I-81 to the crumpled SUV and toppled tractor trailer, a phone pressed against his ear.

  Then out of nowhere, a black sports car appeared. It roared down the highway at an impossible speed, and the overweight truck driver, hobbling through the center lane, stood no chance of getting out of its way. The Camaro struck the heavy man at over a hundred miles per hour, the car’s low orientation taking the man’s legs right out from under him. The trucker’s body hit the tinted windshield and bounced high up into the air, where he seemed to hang for a while before landing on his head. By then the Camaro was already coming up on the Saab.

  A pain in his arm pulled Marcus’ eyes off the scene. Ashley was squeezing him, her nails digging into his skin. Her face was ashen. Sheer terror chased the color from her trembling lips. He took her hand in his and looked to Ian. No matter what was happening to his friend, no matter what that ring had done to him, right now they needed him to drive. “Ian,” he said.

  Ian looked up to the mirror.

  “Drive.”

  Ian’s eyes shifted in the glass, going from Marcus’ eyes to the scene beyond, to the Camaro now only fifty yards away. Ian pushed the gas pedal to the floorboard, and the needle on the speedometer climbed past one hundred. More trucks dotted the long road ahead of them, and their rectangular bodies quickly grew into wheeled dinosaurs as Ian zipped past them, swerving left and right over the slippery road.

  Ian’s phone rang.

  Heather picked it up with tremulous hands, and Marcus watched as she tried to decide whether or not to answer it. Maybe it was her parents, her brother, or maybe it was—

  The phone started doing things on its own, the screen activating without Heather’s touching it. The phone answered the call, put it on speaker, and moved the volume all the way up as Heather sat staring at it, dumbfounded.

  Ambient noise came through the speaker.

  Ian cut back into the right lane in order to avoid a slow truck in the left. The truck driver didn’t like the Saab’s aggressiveness and pulled on his horn in protest. Half a second later, the sound of the blaring horn came through the phone as a hollow echo.

  Marcus looked back and caught the end of the Camero’s own maneuver around the truck. He could see the bearded driver sitting high up in his cab and waving a long finger at them.

  Then, through the phone, a low, hungry voice said, “Give it to us.”

  Heather rolled down the window and threw their last phone onto the highway like it was a bomb about to explode.

  No one objected.

  But the Saab’s radio turned on, and the voice came slithering through the car’s stereo instea
d. “We will have it.”

  Heather frantically tried shutting the radio off, but it wouldn’t stop. She started striking her palm against it, screaming.

  “Stop it,” Ian ordered.

  Exasperated, Heather pulled the blond hair out of her face and stared at him.

  “What do you want?” Ian calmly asked the radio.

  “You know what we want,” came the answer.

  Marcus was shaking. The church basement didn’t hold a candle to this.

  “What is it?” Ian breathed, his voice demanding.

  “The key.”

  “The key to what?”

  Silence.

  “To what?” Ian screamed.

  “To the end,” the voice finally came back.

  “The end of what?”

  “I am the Crest of Dragons.”

  Ian struck the steering wheel. “The key to the end of what, you bastard? What the hell is it?”

  “You know, ring-bearer.”

  Ian had the ring out of his pocket and in his hand again. He wasn’t looking at the road, just staring at the bronze object.

  “But you are unworthy, aren’t you?” the voice taunted. And then, suddenly, the voice was gone, replaced by another Christmas song.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Heather demanded. When Ian didn’t answer her, she leaned over, snatched the ring out of his hand and, before he could react, threw it out the open window after his cell phone.

  The Camaro veered off onto the shoulder, its wheels locking and disappearing beneath a shapeless cloud of smoked rubber.

  Ian was furious. He leaned over and grabbed Heather by the throat, squeezing with a strength not his own. “You bitch!” he screamed.