Finding Midnight

by T. Lynne Tolles

  “That didn’t really happen, did it?” he said with a laugh, as he placed newly poured beers in front of both of them.

  “Oh, YES, it did!” Summer said.

  “Trust me…you’ll never see me blowing green Jell-O out my nose, at least not on purpose,” he said.

  “Good to hear.” Summer laughed.

  “And, well…as for being a…you know…I’d never hurt you,” Jackson said sweetly.

  “I think most psycho killers might say the same thing,” Summer joked.

  Jackson laughed heartily just as Nick and Tori came up for air, and when they thought Jackson and Summer weren’t looking, they knuckle-bumped one another. The rest of the night was full of laughter and getting to know one another, ending with an exchange of numbers by Jackson and Summer. On the drive home with Nick and Tori, Summer was besieged with an interrogation the CIA would applaud.

  Tori wanted to know every detail of the conversation she missed while smooching, though Summer kept her answers vague in an attempt to not reveal too much to Nick. She didn’t want too much information getting back to Jackson.

  The three of them said their goodbyes when they pulled up to the cottage behind the shaggy dogmobile. Nick sat with the engine running until Summer was safely in the cottage then they pulled away.

  Chapter 6

  The night was inky black from lack of moonlight. Outside the window, a gentle breeze fluttered the leaves about the trees, making them rustle. Inside the tiny one-bedroom cottage, all was silent aside from the gentle breathing of its sleeping inhabitant, but the relaxing calm that reigned over this little home nestled against the tree-line of the vast woods behind it would soon be shattered.

  A low rumble of thunder sounded in the Cascade Mountain range above, swelling in volume and resonance as it traveled downward like a curling wave of water gaining momentum and mass only to meet the shore with a deafening crash. A blinding light lit the bedroom making the lump under the covers stir in her sleep. Less than a second later, an explosion of sound rattled the walls and shook the windows, making Summer bolt upright in bed.

  Feeling muddled from being ripped from a deep sleep, she rubbed her eyes and looked around the room, realizing what woke her. She listened as the angry thunder continued grumbling at its lightning counterpart, like two quarreling siblings—thunder always getting in the last word.

  Summer pulled back the covers and got out of bed. She was making her way to the kitchen when she heard a loud crash that shook the ground, as if an angry giant had hurled a boulder down the mountain side. A growl, deep and guttural, followed it, making the earth beneath her feet tremble in vibration. She jumped into shoes, grabbed her coat, and ran out the door.

  Boom…Crash…Growl… These sounds came from beyond the small graveyard and garden. Summer bolted in the direction of the main house. Near the mansion, she fell into a large indentation in the ground that was a good six inches deeper than the surrounding area.

  Growl…Boom…Summer righted herself, feeling the earth below her quake with another impact. The noise lie within the woods. She darted towards a large opening of splintered tree trunks and broken branches when another lightning bolt lit up the sky and radiated outward and towards the very woods she was approaching. She ran in the direction of the source of the commotion, all the while wondering to herself, am I insane? I should be running away, not heading to the disturbance, but her feet had another agenda and THEY sprinted towards the noises within the forest.

  It was a miracle she didn’t kill herself running in the dark through the forest with the debris of splintered logs and branches left in the wake of whatever she was headed for. This thought crossed her mind as she tripped over a rock, which launched her in the air like a rocket and deposited her into the soft organic matter of undergrowth under an ancient tree. She spent no time at all righting herself and continued her pursuit of the source of ruckus. The path zigzagged this way and that, seeming to head back to the house.

  Crash…Growl…Boom…A long, hideous squeal of pain pierced her ears. Soon after, there was a howl so loud and so close she felt sure she should be able to see something, but the forest was too dense. The smell of rotten eggs grew stronger with every stride, making her eyes water and her stomach churn. Ten more strides and she did see something.

  Something she’d never seen before—there within feet of the clearing behind the house but still sheltered by the forest, were two unmoving forms. One was the size of a small horse or donkey, and the other seemed to be a man. They were twenty feet or so from one another. The man was in a crumpled heap up against the trunk of a tree in an unnatural position that looked painful. The large animal was black and furless and lay unmoving on its side with the remnants of a splintered trunk protruding from its middle. She thought it very likely dead. A pie-shaped arc, which started from the creature’s mouth and fanned outward, still smoldered. It looked as if the creature had tried to torch everything in the vicinity with its dying breath.

  There was nothing to be done for the creature, but a moan came from the man and Summer turned her attention to him. He was trying to turn onto his back from being practically wrapped around a tree. Black stains soiled his shredded shirt. She assumed the lack of light in the forest was making the blood look black. Either way, black or red, there was a lot of it. If he didn’t get some medical care he would bleed out in a matter of minutes.

  She pulled him away from the trunk and laid him flat, and then ripped off the remains of his shirt to use as a compress against a nasty gash on his side under his rib cage. She pulled at his belt until it was free, and then quickly wrapped it around his upper thigh to slow the bleeding at yet another bad laceration. She tore several long strips from the bottom of her nightgown to make another compress for his leg, and then secured both compresses with more strips from her gown. He rolled to his side and she jumped a bit, for she could have sworn his face changed to something fanged and gargoyle-ish and then back to that of a man. She told herself it was just the lighting playing tricks with her.

  “Are you okay?” Summer asked.

  “Not exactly,” he said hoarsely.

  “Can you walk?”

  “With help, yes, I think so,” he said wincing.

  “My name is Summer,” she said, helping him to a standing position. She supported much of his weight as they hobbled forward toward the creature and out of the forest, back to her cottage.

  “Hunter, my name is Hunter,” he said behind clenched teeth.

  She stumbled once under his weight, but kept them moving. She had a thousand questions for Hunter, but it was taking every ounce of her strength to keep them upright and moving.

  She would have taken him to the main house, but there were no lights on and she didn’t want to scare Ms. Midnight in the middle of the night with a strange, injured man and an even stranger story. It was a workout, but they made it into the cottage where she deposited the man on the couch after shoving the mysterious envelope the sisters had given her out of the way.

  She turned on the lights and grabbed her cellphone, and turned back to Hunter on the couch. She nearly dropped the phone as his face once again morphed from a handsome human face to something nightmarish, and back again. She noticed too that the dark stains were indeed black, NOT red. It hadn’t been a trick of the light. Her mind flooded with questions and doubts and she wondered what she had brought into her new home. The only thing she knew for certain was Hunter was something other than human.

  The look on her face told him he had better explain things about himself and fast or she’d be no use to him as a caregiver.

  “What…what are you?” she stuttered as panic started at her toes and worked its way up her body, into her chest making it incredibly hard to breathe or think.

  “I don’t mean to scare you, Summer,” he said, clearly in a great amount of pain. “I’m a demon and…” That was all he could utter before passing out, his face morphing back into something only nightmares are made of.

&nbs
p; “A demon?” Summer said out loud to an unconscious Hunter.

  She sat for a moment after Hunter’s declaration. She thought back on the dragon shadow she had seen at her window and her meeting with Daniel, the fallen angel who’d confessed to watching over her all her life. Not to mention the vampire she’d had a date with earlier that evening.

  Now a demon and whatever that creature was in the woods? Sister Mary Louise certainly never told her all these things in her teachings. Had she been just sheltered from these things at the orphanage? Or had she somehow plunged into some strange supernatural dimension? Maybe she was still asleep? She almost got up to see if she’d find her body in bed but the thought of yet another supernatural event like astral projection was too much to handle.

  She looked at Hunter once more. The blood smeared around his wounds and seeping from his compress was indeed black. This was real. She wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t in some strange dimension. She had helped a demon into her home. A real demon. He had deep-set eyes below a broad, protruding brow. He had large canines both top and bottom that extended past his lips in both directions. But the most prominent features were two small horns set high on his forehead just at the hairline.

  What should I do? I’ve always helped something or someone if I could. Should I call the ambulance? What would the police or paramedics do with him? If only she could have spoken to him more before he passed out, she thought. What would Dr. Stuart do if he were in her shoes? Then she knew what must be done. Dr. Stuart would stop the bleeding and dress the wounds, then ask questions when the patient was able to answer.

  With that decision, she went straight to work, boiled water in the teapot, and grabbed some towels and a first aid kit.

  With all that black blood, things looked bad, but after cleaning up the wounds and giving him a few stitches with a needle and dental floss, the bleeding stopped and she had him bandaged up in about twenty minutes. She was cleaning up when his face morphed into a less scary and quite handsome human form and his eyes opened.

  He looked around, ran a hand over his side, and realized he was patched.

  “I wasn’t sure if I should take you to the hospital or if there was somewhere else I should take a demon, but instead of you bleeding all over, I thought I should just stitch you up myself,” she said, picking up the last of the soiled towels.

  “Thanks. Are you a doctor?”

  “I’m a vet. Well, a vet doing my internship under another vet, but I have my degree,” she admitted.

  “Lucky me,” Hunter said, sitting upright on the couch, hissing through his teeth with pain.

  “As far as I can tell, your anatomy is pretty much the same as a human, aside from the black blood,” Summer said.

  “Yes. Very similar. A little less delicate than humans and faster healing, but pretty much the same.”

  “So do you want to explain to me what was going on out there and what that dead creature is in the woods?”

  “Oh, crud. I need to check on something.”

  “You need to what?” she said with her hands on her hips.

  “Can you take me back to where you found me? I left something there.”

  “You’re kidding right?”

  “No. It’s important.”

  She stared at him for a long time before she agreed, but opted to change into some actual clothes for this trek into the forest.

  *****

  As they walked slowly back to the creature, she said, “Are you going to tell me what you were doing and what that thing is in the woods?”

  “I’d rather not, but I don’t think you’re going to let me leave things unexplained,” Hunter said.

  Their eyes met and she gave him a disapproving look.

  “Right,” he said. “Well, the creature you are referring to is a hellhound.”

  “A hellhound?” she replied as they came within a few yards of the beast. Its skin looked like what Summer assumed an elephant’s skin might look like, with a slight sheen to it, but she noticed strange tattoo-like images here and there, similar to scar tissue but bright red on the black skin.

  She ran her finger over the red marks and asked, “What are these?”

  “Sigils,” he said distractedly.

  “Sigils? What are sigils?” she asked.

  “They’re kind of like a monogram or a seal. Each one represents a high demon lord,” he said.

  “Does that mean each of these demons own this hellhound? Like a brand on a cow?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Think of it more like an artist’s signature,” he said impatiently.

  “An artist? What?”

  He sighed. “An ancient story claims that after a great battle between demons and angels, a great tear between Hell and Earth was made. This hole left Hell open to anyone or anything to enter and leave at will, causing chaos and disobedience for all. In an attempt to correct this problem, the great demon lords traveled to the lake of fire and created the hellhounds. They would serve to guard the gates of Hell. When they were done, each put their hand upon the hellhound leaving their mark—a sigil—upon it in remembrance of their great deed to both worlds,” he explained.

  She continued to examine the animal, admiring it. It was similar to a dog but the size was more like a donkey or small horse. She’d seen very large Mastiffs and there was a bit of a resemblance, but this animal was still much larger. The head alone was the size of a large medicine ball and the pads of its paws were the size of dinner plates or bigger.

  She was quite certain Hunter had ducked out of the immediate area for a moment, but she was too intrigued by the hellhound to concern herself with what he was doing. She walked completely around the hound, inspecting everything she could, admiring its muscle composition and wondering how fast it might have run. To fight something like this, Hunter must be much stronger than he looks, she thought.

  As she made her way around the animal for a second time, a rustle in the bushes nearby caught Summer’s attention. She heard a tiny yelp and more rustling and crunching of leaves. She neared the undergrowth cautiously and crouched down to see the source of the noises. She heard another yelp and then one red eye and one gold eye peered out from behind leaves. She fell backwards on her butt, landing in a large pile of leaves. She stared at the mismatched eyes. They stared back at her like two little flashlights of red and gold peering from the underbrush, when they suddenly blinked. Summer jumped again. The head seemed to cock to one side and then back again and a small, black, hairy creature took a step towards her, away from its refuge.

  It stopped, midway, as if making sure Summer was not a threat, then yelped again looking at the hellhound near her. Summer looked at the hellhound, then back at the little creature, and it dawned on her that this was the hellhound’s offspring, now all alone and motherless.

  “Hey, little guy. It’s okay. Nothing’s going to hurt you,” she encouraged the pup.

  It whined and trotted out from under the brush and to its mother and sat staring, as if expecting some reaction. The pup licked its mother and yelped again, then nuzzled its head against her and looked once more at Summer when the mother gave no response.

  “I’m sorry, little one, about your mother,” Summer said.

  The pup stood and again cocked its head at Summer and inched forward towards her. Soon it was close enough to sniff her shoe and give it a lick. It moved near her knee to smell her jeans, but remained near its mother for protection. Soon he was within an arm’s length; she slowly reached out her hand letting him smell it before attempting to pet him. Finally, a pet on the head was allowed and he made himself comfortable staring at his mother, his head on Summer’s leg while he received some much-needed love and attention.

  She guessed he was about thirty pounds. He had floppy ears, two little horns protruding in front of his ears and feet three sizes too big for his body. His hair was velvety soft and stood straight up in all directions giving him a fuzzy-ball effect—which looked hilarious with his illuminated red/gold eyes. He had a
trocious breath—definitely the source of the rotten egg smell, but he was all puppy.

  Just as Summer was getting a face full of licks from the foul-breathed pup, Hunter emerged from the forest once more, stunned to find Summer in the company of a hellhound pup.

  *****

  “Where did that come from?”

  “He was under that bush. His mother must have kept him nearby,” Summer said, petting the pup. “Did you find what you’d lost?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She asked, “Why doesn’t the mother have hair like he does?”

  “It singes off from the heat in Hell; eventually it stops growing back and voila. I’m guessing the pup has not been down to Hell since he was born or his hair would be singed too,” Hunter told her.

  “What should we do about this little guy’s mother?”

  “Her body will be taken at dawn,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Taken at dawn? What do you mean? Who will take her? And where will they take her?”

  “The reaper will come and dispose of her as he does all of Hell’s creatures when they die,” Hunter said, watching her and the pup.

  “Where will he take her?”

  “To the lake of fire to return her to that from which all Hell’s creatures are born,” Hunter explained.

  “What was she doing here with her pup?”

  “What all hellhounds do—she was protecting the gates to Hell,” Hunter said, kneeling down to give the pup a pet. The pup growled and looked to Summer. She nodded her head and the pup allowed Hunter to pet him.

  “But there’s no gate here,” Summer said, looking around.

  “The gates move around; that’s why a hellhound is never seen in any one place and it makes it almost impossible for someone to find the location of a gate,” Hunter said.