Crowley's Window (Novella)

by Gord Rollo

  “Easy, Abby. It’s me, David. Hold still and I’ll untie you, okay? Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “David?” Abby said, confused, but slowly regaining her senses. “How did you manage to find me?”

  “Your mother. She told me everything.” David started undoing the straps on Abby’s arms. “She’s really messed up but I think she’ll be okay. I told her you and I would help her.”

  “What about Crowley and his followers? Did you kill them all?”

  “There was only three people here, but yes, I had to kill them. Two men and one woman. I had no other choice. It was them or us.”

  “Was Reverend Crowley one of them? Big guy with white hair wearing a long black robe?”

  “I don’t know. They were just dressed like normal people. Don’t think I seen any black robes though.”

  “Damn,” Abby said, sitting up to rub her sore wrists. “He might still be…look out! Behind you!”

  Marcus Crowley was charging, a living shadow moving fast, dagger in hand, and before David could turn to defend himself, the evil reverend plunged the knife deep into his exposed back, dropping David to the floor where he screamed and then lay in a heap at the madman’s feet.

  “David!” Abby screamed.

  Crowley kicked the policeman hard, eliciting a cry of pain, but David was down and out, in no shape to defend himself or Abby. Crowley laughed and turned his attention to the girl. “You fool. Thought you could escape me that easily? Don’t count on it. You’re going back to Hell, woman, even if I have to cut out your boyfriend’s eyes and take you there myself!” He bent down and prepared to slice out David’s eyes in front of her. The thought of that happening was more than Abby could bear.

  “Leave him alone you bastard!” She shouted, feeling an incredible power growing within her, something primal that had always been inside her but sitting dormant and unused until now, when she needed it most. Crowley ignored her, lifting David’s head and prepared his already bloodied blade to cut.

  Abby’s mind searched the room, seeking anything she could use as a weapon and finding only the multiple rows of glass jars. Without thinking she sent out a wave of telekinetic energy, lifting the jars free of their shelves and hurled one of them at the reverend’s head. The jar flew true as an arrow, smashing hard off Crowley’s skull and staggering him sideways away from David. He looked over at Abby, not understanding how she’d struck him, but raising his hand to his injured head to determine the damage. His hand came away bloodied, the shock on his face turning to rage.

  “You little bitch!” he screamed, raising his knife high and heading for Abby now. It’s time I taught you a little respect…” he started to say, but that was as far as Abby let him get. She let loose a torrent of glass jars, row after row of them, glass, honey, and the eyes of murdered children splattering against Crowley’s face and body, ripping him to shreds with the strength of a thousand razors, not even affording him the opportunity to back down or even time to scream. He fell dead to the floor, a useless sack of sticky wet meat; unrecognizable from the man he was thirty seconds earlier.

  A feeling of victory and sweet revenge came over Abby, and she savored her triumph for a moment, but her senses were telling her there was still great danger close by. It wasn’t until she felt a tugging on her inner spirit that she looked up with her mind’s eye and sensed the portal into Hell’s prison still open above her. Clawing his way through the void between worlds was Aleister Crowley, still clinging to the fingerprint trail left from Abby’s astral projection. He was following her back to the land of the living, and seeing how close he was, he’d be in this room within a minute. What would happen then? Would he still be able to take over Abby’s soul and unleash Hell on Earth as he’d planned? Abby had no way of knowing but certainly didn’t want to find out.

  My eyes! she thought. It was my eyes that led me to him in Hell and now he’s following his way back to them. They’re his anchor here…his doorway.

  Without hesitation, Abby reached up and gouged her eyes back out of her sockets, pulling the sticky orbs free from her face but not harming her ability to see the mental images around her at all. She cupped an eye in each of her hands, seeing a 360 degree view of the room, with David and the dead reverend near her feet surrounded by glass, blood, and hundreds of crushed and leaking eyeballs. Above her, Aleister Crowley crawled closer, his bloodshot eyes gazing down on her filled with hatred and the timeless despair of the damned.

  “Back to Hell, asshole,” Abby said, smiling up at the vile creature who’d once been a man, slowly closing her hands into tight fists. Blinding pain sliced into her head, ripping connections loose and severing her ties with the void above. Abby squeezed tighter, screamed one last time, and then everything went dark.

  * * *

  Abby woke to the smell of fresh flowers and for a moment thought she was still in the clutches of Reverend Crowley. The flowers were roses though, not lavender, and accompanied with the clean pine-scented smell of disinfectant in the air, she presumed she must be lying in a hospital bed somewhere. She reached out with her psychic abilities to make sure, but was surprised to find no mental images filtering back to her. She reached out her left hand, spreading her fingers wide but again there was nothing.

  My god! I’ve lost my abilities. They’re gone!

  Abby wasn’t sure whether to panic or rejoice. She felt neither emotion, actually. Instead she just felt tired and empty inside, and more than a little disoriented being completely in the dark for the first time in years.

  “Abby?” A male voice spoke from off to her left. She turned her head in that direction, but wasn’t one hundred percent sure who it was.

  “David?” Abby guessed. “Is that you?”

  “Sure is. Sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up. I wanted to be. I just slipped out for a quick coffee and here you are, wide awake.”

  “What about you? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I was a bit banged up, but Crowley’s dagger didn’t hit anything vital. Other than still being sore, I’m okay now. It’s you we’ve been worried about. You’ve been asleep for nearly five days.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “The doc said you were in a coma but I knew you’d come back to me. Your mother and I have been here waiting for you every day.”

  “My mother? She’s here?”

  “Down in the cafeteria. I’m sure she’ll be up soon. To be honest, there’s a decent chance she still might end up getting arrested, but the investigation is so bizarre no one really knows what to do. Until they decide, she’s being allowed supervised visits here with me. Watching over you has really helped turn her around. You’ll have to make up your own mind, but I think she was as much a pawn in this mess as you were. She feels horrible about everything and needs you to forgive her more than anything in the whole world. She gets that it might take some time, though.”

  Abby wasn’t sure what to say. She needed time to figure out what her feelings were regarding her mother. She knew her father had been an accomplice to multiple murders and had been willing to sacrifice his only daughter to the manic he worshipped. Her mother, she wasn’t ready to believe was entirely innocent but that was a problem for another day. She had more important matters to talk with David about.

  “I have to tell you something important,” Abby said. “I’m blind.”

  David laughed softly. “Ahh…I already knew that. You’ve been blind for six years, kiddo.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. I’ve lost my sixth sense…my psychic powers are gone and I can’t see anything the way I used to. No visions. No mental flashes. No nothing. I’m completely in the dark now.”

  “Well, you’ve been through a lot. You never know, it might come back to you in time, once you’ve had a chance to rest.”

  “And what if it doesn’t?”

  “Then I’ll be your eyes, beautiful. I’ll take care of you.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

 
“Then go get the doctor and send my mom in to talk. I wanna know when I can get out of here and go home.”

  “To the carnival?”

  “No. Home to your place. Our place.”

  “Well that part might be a little tricky. I don’t have a place right now, remember? My wife threw me out.”

  “We’ll figure something out.”

  “I know we will. I’ll live in my police cruiser as long as you’re with me.”

  Abby smiled. “You sure know how to charm a gal, fella. Can we at least hang up some curtains for privacy?”

  David squeezed Abby’s hand, and kissed her.

  PART 3

  ABBY AND DAVID’S HOUSE

  Billington, Pennsylvania

  Six Months Later

  All in all, things were going terrific for Abby and David. They were wildly in love and the pieces of their shattered lives were slowly coming together. David and his estranged wife had legally filed separation papers and as soon as the law permitted they’d be getting an amicable divorce. After that, plans for a quiet no-frills wedding would begin in earnest. Abby and her mother had begun to patch up their relationship. The courts had ultimately decided to be lenient and sentenced Ingrid to mandatory psychiatric counseling and five years probation for her passive role in the crimes. Although there would be no jail sentence, time was still needed to heal all the damage that had been done between mother and daughter. Abby had forgiven her for what she’d been a part of, but it was going to be hard learning to ever trust her again.

  That had been why they’d decided to move to Billington. It was still in the state of Pennsylvania so David had been able to transfer to the police department here easily enough, but it was still neutral ground for both of them. Billington offered a fresh start away from anyone who might know them, or be even remotely familiar with anything that had happened last summer. All Abby and David wanted was to be left alone.

  Unfortunately, there was someone keeping their eye on the young couple, staying in the shadows and making sure he was never noticed. Of course, being so small it was relatively easy for him to hide.

  “Damn you, Abby,” Mister Chollo whispered, watching his old friend follow her new man into their two bedroom bungalow through the plastic binoculars held in his tiny hands. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done. It may not be today, but soon I’ll take care of you the same way I did that bastard back at the carnival.”

  It had been the diminutive Chollo who’d killed Ray Jensen in the woods six months ago, when the drunken teen had came sniffing around Abby’s trailer looking for trouble. He’d been protecting her, just as he’d been doing for years, doing exactly what his master, Reverend Crowley had asked him to do. He’d been part of the Reverend’s devoted flock since Chollo had been an orphaned boy and he’d been honored when Crowley had asked him to join the traveling show to keep a close eye on his prize young woman. For a while, they’d even been friends.

  But Abby had destroyed everything Chollo held dear in this messed up world and he’d never forgive her for what she’d done. One thing Crowley had taught the little man well was how to hold onto and nurture hatred. Abby might think the worst of her nightmares were over, and that now she’d earned the right to live happily ever after, but she was wrong. Dead wrong!

  Mister Chollo set down the binoculars and pulled out a chrome plated gun from his jacket pocket. He checked that the clip was fully loaded and ready to fire.

  It was.

  “Soon, Princess. Very soon…”

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  I hope you enjoyed my little tale about Aleister Crowley. I’d had the basic idea for a story about a blind fortune teller with real psychic powers for a long time, but I had no idea what to do with her or who she was going to have a run in with. Then one day out of the blue Tom Moran from Sideshow Press showed me a piece of art that he had painted and asked me to create a story based on the painting. It was a travelling circus scene in the background, with a young girl being led away from the sideshow by a mysterious man with a big knife on his belt. I don’t know how or why but instantly my blind fortune teller character stood up in my mind and started screaming, “I can handle this one, boss. Just give me a chance!” I did just that, and I really like the way it eventually turned out. I’m even toying with the idea of continuing on Abby’s adventures in a series of follow up novellas. I’m just waiting for inspiration to strike… or for Abby to start talking to me again.

  As an added bonus and a personal thanks to all of you wonderful people who continue to support me and my stories, I wanted to give you another story for free to show my appreciation, but I wasn’t sure which story to include. After thinking about how messed up Abby Hawkins’ family life was and the rather strange people who made up her new circus family, I wanted to give you something that played with a similar theme. I took a look in the old vault and the story that caught my eye was a collaboration that I did years ago with a good friend of mine named Everette Bell. Everette lives in Kentucky and him and I have never met in person but we’ve spent countless hours together online first as fiction editors at a defunct webzine called Sinister Element, then later as co-writers of four or five decent movie scripts that still haven’t seen the light of day (but can still be bought if anyone is interested!).

  Our short story, Memories of a Haunted Man, almost suffered a similar fate. We wrote it and had it accepted for a small press horror anthology called Terrible Beauty, Fearful Symmetry, but the publisher went belly up just as the book was going to print and I doubt anyone other than the contributing authors and editors ever actually saw it. Everette and I even sold the movie rights to this story once upon a time to a guy who was putting together a trilogy-of-terror type film, of which our story was going to make up one of the sections. We got paid for that film option but unfortunately that was the last we ever heard from the filmmaker and to my knowledge the movie was never made. Regardless, it’s a good story dealing with another highly dysfunctional family and I’m happy to finally have more people have a chance to read it.

  If you enjoy the story, please take the time to check out more of Everette’s excellent work. You can find him on the web here:

  http://www.wartoothebooks.blogspot.com

  Again, thank you for your support. It means the world to me!

  BONUS SHORT STORY - MEMORIES OF A HAUNTED MAN

  Toni knelt in front of her son in the foyer and wrapped the scarf around his neck.

  “How come we had to come to Canada, mom?” Robert asked as his clumsy mitten-covered hands pulled his woolly hat down over his ears. “Why couldn’t we have stayed in Tennessee?”

  She understood her son’s heartache, but there was no choice. The doctors had only given her father Sam a year, and that was if everything went well. “Honey,” she said with a sad smile. Her complexion was white as the snow on the ground outside their Nova Scotia home, and her curly raven hair was the same shade as the sadness she felt about losing her father. “Robby, Mommy had to come take care of Grampa. He’s really sick. Can you understand?”

  Robby nodded his head. “Yeah, I guess. I suppose it’s not all that bad here.”

  “That’s the spirit, honey,” Toni smiled. “Besides, we’re not looking after Grampa all by ourselves. Aunt Pam is gonna help us out.”

  “That’s good. Why isn’t Uncle Dave here with aunt Pam?”

  “Now, Robert, mommy told you we don’t want to bother aunt Pam with that right now. Be glad she’s offered to help.”

  Pam’s relationship had gone south years ago, but Dave and her had stayed together for a couple years just to make sure it was dead. Toni’s older sister—as dear as she was to her nephew—had a gift for solitude and loneliness. With Dave gone that meant husband number three was no more, and it wasn’t that she didn’t try. She had always been a loner. As far back as Toni could remember, the only person Pam had ever had a relationship with besides herself was their father. And soon that would be ending.

  “Okay, I won’t say anyt
hing. Promise.”

  Robby’s eyes dropped to the floor, and his chin began to quiver. Sensing his distress, Toni hugged him. “What’s wrong, big guy?” she asked gently.

  “Is Grampa going to die while I’m at Stan’s house?”

  She felt her son’s pain and shook her head reassuringly. It took everything she had to keep from breaking down herself. She couldn’t understand why this was all dragging on, why Robby had to suffer watching his grandfather decay into nothing. “He won’t die while you’re away, but remember what mommy told you, okay? If Grampa does die it won’t be sad because he’ll be up in heaven. We’ll miss him terribly, but he’ll be in a far better place.”

  The boy practically clubbed himself in the face with his mitten as he wiped his tears away.

  ***

  When Toni walked into the kitchen, she was wiping her puffy tear-stained eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said to her sister seated at the table. She was trying hard to keep her mixed emotions in check, part of her wanting to laugh, part ready to burst into sobs. “This whole thing has been so hard on Robby.”

  “I know,” Pam sympathized. “It’s been hard on all of us.”

  Pam had the same black hair as Toni only it was cut in a bob and streaked with a hint of gray. Their father’s suffering had marked a turning point in their relationship. The four-year difference in age no longer meant anything, their considerably different lives having been suddenly thrust together. Seeing Toni in such bad shape tore at Pam’s heart; she wanted to say something, do anything to help, but she felt numb.

  Pam let go of her warm coffee cup and leaned forward onto her arms, wrapped in the warmth of her blue polar fleece. “I was able to rent the house down the street. With Dave out of the picture, I can finally put my attention on dad where it belongs.” Pam continued after another sip, “We can take turns watching Robby and caring for dad.”