by Arjay Lewis
“You were difficult even in those long-ago days, Frisha. But we ne’er did anything to cause this.” Caleb moved to keep her attention as Eddie and Marlowe limped toward the opening.
“Didn’t ye?” Frisha scoffed. “I am a prophetess, I know what ye said about me behind closed doors. But thee, despite our affair a thousand years hence, thought me weak, my ways strange.”
“Yes, but you have only grown bitter in the last three hundred years or so,” Caleb spoke in Greywacke’s commanding voice.
“I was ne’er welcome. Look at me now!”
Effortlessly, Frisha turned her staff toward Eddie and Marlowe, and a blast of energy emanated toward them. In a move of surprising agility, Marlowe rolled, grabbed, and threw Eddie and his staff down the open stairs as the brunt of the blast struck him.
There was a tremendous flash of light, and a loud “boom” as energy discharged around Marlowe like a bomb.
Eddie looked up and yelled, “Marlowe!”
A smoldering remnant of his robe fluttered to the ground.
The old man was gone.
Eddie tried to get up, but instead, his foot slipped and he fell down the steps. He tried to cover his face as his flesh smacked against the hard stone walls and floor. He rolled and rolled, but as he finally reached the bottom of the stone staircase, he struck his ankle against an outcropping and yelped in pain.
His staff rattled down the stairs after him. Using it, he pulled himself up and leaned against it for support. He walked slowly and painfully through a stone arch at the bottom of the steps.
Above ground, Frisha deflected another volley from Caleb.
“Enough of this,” she bellowed, and with a twist of her staff, a bolt of energy went forth aimed at both Caleb’s left and right flanks. Each bolt struck at the exact same moment, detonating with another loud “boom.”
Caleb fell to the ground, the staff tumbling from his insensible fingers.
“I knew that would do it,” Frisha looked down at her defeated enemy. “Apparently, thou art no longer as great a seer as in thy previous incarnation.”
She strode purposefully to the top of the temple stairs, “I have seen everything leading up to…”
She glanced around the Terrace, and there was something amiss with the fallen wizards. Her mouth fell open in an unpleasant expression.
One of them was missing.
Eddie!
She looked around a second time. “It cannot be,” she uttered in shock. She stepped to the unconscious Caleb, then on to Drusilicus, and Ahbay.
There was a small “thunk,” and she turned with her staff raised. An unripe nut lay at her feet.
Something whooshed through the air, and struck her on the head.
She spun and looked down to see another nut. She glared up at the trees, where dark figures crawled in quick movements.
“I did not see this,” she murmured to herself with a frown. Another nut landed at her feet, and then objects began to rain down on her from all around, as thousands of squirrels threw nuts, rocks, and small branches at her.
She fired beams of light at the attacking rodents, but they moved so fast, she missed. They continued the assault.
She gave a cry of frustration and ran to the opening as she was pelted unmercifully.
She ran down the stairs, as the hieroglyphs up and down the monument as well as the very top began to turn dark red.
The color of blood.
Across the Great Lawn, Cerise stopped to pull off the sopping wet slippers. The dew had formed, and the slippers were now heavy with moisture. She couldn’t understand how she got here. Without her purse, she didn’t have a cell phone to call the police and report the strange fireworks at Cleopatra’s Needle.
She was almost out of the park when she noticed a kiosk for a nearby pay phone, probably one of the few left in Manhattan.
As a cop’s wife she knew what to do. Dial 911, and announce "officer down" to the dispatcher— that would get an army of police here quickly.
She prepared to run again, but found she had stopped all forward progress.
“Damn!” Cerise said, as she tried in vain to make her legs work. “Now what?”
Her head snapped up, the bunny slippers fell from her hand, and with her expression blank once again, she spun about and headed in the direction of the blood-red, glowing obelisk.
Fifty-Nine
Wilcox’s car pulled over next to the vans parked on Fifth Avenue in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He got out and strode resolutely around the building and onto the path that led into the park.
He pulled open his cell phone. “Sam.”
“I’m here,” came the answer.
“We’re at the museum.”
“Okay, come through the arch and head to your right. There’s a lot of weird stuff going on. Someone is doing a light show at Cleopatra’s Needle. There’s a man lying on the ground at the bottom of the stairs. I think it’s Vasquez.”
“Is he dead?” Wilcox walked faster.
“I’m too far away to tell,” Sam replied.
“No point getting injured for him,” Wilcox dismissed. “We’ll be there in a minute.”
Wilcox closed the phone and turned to Conners. “You go on ahead, through that arch and to the right. I’ll alert the teams.”
“Yes, sir.” Conners trotted off, his hand near his holstered pistol.
Wilcox inserted his earpiece and spoke into the radio, “Okay men, we’re moving in. Have your weapons ready, but don’t fire unless I give the order.”
Sam, smoking a cigarette and still dressed as a jogger, strode through Greywacke Arch.
“Hey, Wilcox,” Sam gestured. “He’s over here.”
Wilcox followed, and peered at the dark park all round him. “I thought you said there was a big light show.”
“There was,” Sam said, looking up. “It just stopped, and became one color, don’t know why. Plus, the street lamps just went out.”
On the ground at the bottom of the Obelisk Terrace stairs lay the large figure of Luis Vasquez. Wilcox knelt and gently slapped his cheeks. Luis stirred and moaned.
“You awake, Vasquez?” Wilcox declared.
Luis’ eyes fluttered and opened. “Aw Jeezus, I must have died. Only in Hell would I open my eyes to see you.”
“Enough with the wisecracks.” Wilcox turned to Conners. “Get him up and cuff him.”
“Cuff me?” Luis said, as Conners struggled and gasped to pull the big man upright. “What for?”
“For annoying me, Vasquez,” Wilcox goaded.
Conners looked at the big man’s wrists. “Sir, the cuffs won’t fit.”
“Use restraints.”
“Man, I hate those plastic things,” Luis whined. “They cut into my skin.”
Conners dutifully took the flexible plastic strip and put it around Luis’s massive wrists and secured them with a metal hook.
Luis grunted uncomfortably, shook his head to clear it, and tried to recall how he ended up on the ground. He’d seen Cerise and wondered what she was doing there.
“You want to tell me what is going on, Vasquez?” Wilcox ordered.
“I was out for a stroll,” Luis quipped.
“All the way from New Jersey? You were last seen at your partner’s house. How’d you get here so fast?”
Luis shrugged. “I’ve taken up power-walking. Guess I wore myself out. Thanks for gettin’ here before someone thought I was a drunk and rolled me.”
“No one would rip you off, Vasquez. You don’t own anything of value,” Wilcox jibed. “What do you say we have a look up there?”
Wilcox looked around as teams of men arrived dressed in black and in their night-vision goggles. He nodded and they slowly ascended the steps, Conners and another man each holding one of Luis’s arms.
There was a huge peal of thunder, and all of the men turned to look as a lightning bolt struck the Great Lawn only a few hundred feet from them.
“Jesus Christ!” Wilcox
yelled as a wave of heat washed over them, and the ground opened up where the lightning hit.
“What was that?” Conners yelped.
“Calm down men,” Wilcox commanded, as he sensed fear from his teams. “It was just lightning and it—” His words stopped as his mouth fell slack.
A loud voice echoed through the trees and slopes of the park. “Come forth!”
Black smoke issued from the hole in the Great Lawn, as a figure on a white horse rose out of the pit. The horse unfolded a wide pair of pale, feathered wings and took to the air. The rider, dressed completely in a white, monk-like robe and hood, held up a large bow. He pulled a flaming arrow from a quiver on his back, and waved it over his head as he flew above the treetops.
“That can’t be good,” Luis observed, as they all stood agape.
∞∞∞
Eddie crouched as low as his swollen ankle allowed and slid into the room. It was brightly lit by a dozen metal braziers containing small fires, which cast flickering shadows everywhere.
The room was as large as the inside of a cathedral. In the center was a round pool of water, what could have been called “a reflective pool” centuries earlier. The walls were made of huge, rectangular, polished stone blocks with elaborately carved symbols. Eddie observed the bas-relief sculptures of snakes, sinister birds, as well as human and demonic figures.
It’s all of his different forms, Eddie thought, as he recognized the figure of the giant Native-American Malsum on one stone block and the Shinto Amatsu Mikaboshi on another.
On the farthest wall was a pair of large metal doors, most elaborately detailed. They gleamed, and Eddie guessed that they must be made of solid gold. Six wax seals ran along the center, and Eddie could see a tarnished spot near the top where a seal had been recently removed.
“The door with the seven seals,” Eddie whispered. “And one is already gone.”
The inside of the building extended upward in a square shape higher and higher. It was like being inside a pyramid, each story growing smaller as it rose, with plants hanging down from each level. The stones it was made from were twice as tall as Eddie.
“It’s called a ziggurat,” a voice echoed from the middle of the building. Abraxas stepped into view in full demonic form near the artificial pond. He came out from behind a metal statue, which was the mirror image of his current persona, with large horns on the head, and the heavily muscled body. In the statue’s arms lay the tiny figure of Rosita.
“No need to hide, Newling,” the demon retorted, as he stared at his burnished dopplegänger. “You are in my domain now.”
Eddie stood up, used his staff for support and limped toward the demon. “What did you call this thing? A zig—what?”
“A ziggurat. It’s how the Babylonians built the Hanging Gardens, and even further back it was the design for the Tower of Babel,” Abraxas gestured at the walls around him. “I know, I was there. I insisted all my temples be made this way.” He stared down at Rosita on his statue’s outstretched arms. “Mortals used to sacrifice their first-born to me.”
“She isn’t the first-born,” Eddie lurched closer.
“She will do.” The demon looked a bit pensive. “I remember it so well. It was so sweet, giving me their small ones, in hope of favorable crops and good fortune. To open the seals for them…”
As he spoke these words, there was a rumble and the ground shook under their feet. Eddie moved to sit on one of a series of ornamentally carved marble benches in rows that faced the statue. On the gold door, the next wax seal near the top trembled, crumbled, then fell to the ground.
“What just happened?” Eddie felt fear burn in his throat like bile.
“Not much. A figure called ‘War’ on a flying red horse has just been released. He will set all of mankind to start to kill each other.”
“Not much?” Eddie repeated.
“You have been killing each other for centuries.” Abraxas gave a dismissive wave, and looked at little Rosita. “I was considered a god by the Assyrians and by the Basilidians, and hundreds of cultures long since dead. I wore a beautiful visage or a terrible one. They adored me, sacrificed their small ones to me and I took care of them.”
He turned to Eddie with anger in his eyes. “Then the wizards got involved. I don’t know what their problem was. I could be this form, or one much more pleasing!”
Abraxas spun around and his body changed. The flesh shifted until his body was that of a huge human, the size and perfect proportions of Michelangelo’s David, though still red. A pair of feathered wings opened up on his back, also scarlet. He looked down at Eddie with a serene visage, and Eddie stared in awe.
“This is what I was,” the huge figure spoke with a voice that was like music, “when I was worshipped, and my name was synonymous with magic.”
“Oh leave off, Abraxas,” said a voice from behind Eddie. He spun to see Frisha march into the room. “That be ancient history.”
“All I ever wanted was to be loved,” Abraxas’ human-looking eyes brimmed with tears.
Frisha sighed. “I don’t understand how one so whiny was chosen to bring the destruction of the world.”
Eddie held up his staff, but Frisha pointed hers at Eddie in one quick move.
“Don’t try it,” she advised. “I knowst what you will do, and it shall not work.”
“You killed Marlowe,” Eddie’s grip tightened on his staff.
“Yes,” a gapped smile appeared on her face as she held up her staff to gaze upon it with admiration. “I saw his end in my visions. T’was then I realized how great my power wouldst become.”
The demon, still in his angelic form, turned to Frisha in awe. “You have killed the bearer of the Staff of Spirit?”
“That I did!” Frisha boasted. “Nothing left.”
“Not even his accursed staff?” Abraxas was overcome with glee.
“Not a splinter,” Frisha returned her gaze to Eddie. “The fight is over, Newling. The Five is no more.”
“We cannot fail!” Abraxas released a fiendish laugh, his body twisted, and he refashioned into the demon guise again.
Frisha drew closer to Eddie, the head of her staff pointed directly at him. “Put your staff down and kick it away from you.”
Eddie did as he was told, and kicked it aside with his good leg.
“May I sit down?” Eddie asked meekly. “I injured my ankle.”
“Sit, sit,” Frisha allowed, and Eddie lowered himself onto one of the carved marble benches.
“So, what is this all about?”
“It’s about the truth, Newling,” Frisha smirked.
“And what truth would that be?” Eddie scowled.
“That there be no good or evil. There be only power. And whoe’er has the most, wins.” Frisha turned to Abraxas. “Doth the child still sleep?”
Abraxas gave a quick glance at the unmoving Rosita. “Aye.”
“I thought you walked the path,” Eddie snapped. “You know, improve the world, help mankind, that sort of thing.”
There was another minor earthquake. All heads turned to the gold door as the third seal quivered, cracked and fell to the ground.
“Black horseman is out,” Abraxas announced.
“Pestilence?” Frisha asked.
Abraxas nodded. “Now the fun begins.”
Eddie tried to rise, but fell back onto the bench.
“Look at ye, you canst even heal thy own leg, Edward Berman,” Frisha mocked. “Most who carry a staff know how to do such simple tasks their first day. Yet there you sit in judgment of me.”
“I want to know,” Eddie demanded.
“I was ne’er accepted as a peer. They thought me crazed and foolish, so I lived that part for them. Little did they know that I would find the true path--the path to power.”
“What of Trefoil?”
“Trefoil,” Frisha snorted with disdain. “Now there was a fool worthy of the name. A dreamer.”
“What do you mean?”
“You
heard his ravings! Rebuild the world under the rule of the wizards,” Frisha said. “Abraxas, tell him of our shared opinion of that idea.”
Abraxas grew serious. “The problems in this world were caused by wizards.”
Eddie looked at the monster in shock. “What? They were the great thinkers, the leaders of religions—”
“Yes,” Abraxas’s voice boomed. “They were terrible! They took my worshippers away with their miracles and their ‘Thou shall not worship graven images.’”
“Stay calm, Abraxas,” Frisha soothed.
“I was worshipped in every land on this planet,” Abraxas continued, “by different names and in different ways, but I was adored. Then the wizards came forth and called my worship an abomination!”
“Must’ve been bad for you,” Eddie noted.
“Bad? They stopped the devotions, tore down my temples, and no longer gave their small ones as a sweet savor unto me!” Abraxas raged, and almost stomped his feet. “The Five came together and chased me from every place. I traveled the world. I only sought a place where I could be worshipped. But they would reveal my true identity, and drove me away again and again. They were against diversity!”
“Diversity?” Eddie repeated dubiously.
“Yes, all this ‘the Divine’ stuff. Fine for Him, but what about us little guys? I need worship, too!” Abraxas moved back to the great statue and looked down at the child in its arms.
Another tremor ran through the room, and the fourth wax seal shook violently and fell from the golden door.
Frisha sighed. “I do owe some success to Trefoil. He spoke of the amulet, the first step to releasing Abraxas and unleashing his abilities as destroyer of the world. When Trefoil told me of it, a future was revealed to me, in which I was the most powerful wizard on this plane. I set that plan in motion. I only needed to tell that ambitious boy Alex about the Amulet.”
“What does the fourth seal release?” Eddie stared at the three remaining wax circles that adorned the golden door.
Abraxas considered for a moment. “Fourth horseman, Death. Nice fellow, really, lots of fun once you get to know him. Great at parties.”
“And they’re out there, attacking the human race?”