The Book of Paul -- A Paranormal Thriller

by Richard Long

  “I don’t want any gold! Just get me the fuck out of here!”

  “Sorry, lad,” Paul replied, sadly shaking his head. “You play a significant role in the grand design and though I seriously doubt you’ll ever be taking a stroll down the red carpet, it’s an important part nonetheless. If Martin fails to fulfill his obligations, I’ll need another young buck to rely on. You’re Plan B, son…assuming you survive this arduous challenge.”

  “You promised you’d help me,” Michael cried, testing the grip of the nails, wincing with pain as he pulled his left palm up a fraction of an inch.

  “Why, you ungrateful wretch!” Paul spat at him. “I’ve held back on your training until the last possible moment. All your other siblings save one have endured the most grueling labors imaginable to prove their worthiness…most of them dying in the process! I’ve spared you countless duels, wrapped you in a big, warm, fuzzy blanket. Even now, when my associate here would like nothing more than to practice his finely honed craft with you until the second before Martin arrives, I remain by your side, shielding you from the pain your brothers gladly welcomed. And you have the nerve to complain?”

  “Please!” Michael yelped. “Just get me the fuck off this table!”

  “Get yourself off,” Paul snarled. “The Striker told you how. If you had an ounce of testosterone between your shivering legs, you’d have made some decent progress already. But before you make a wholehearted effort, let’s quickly review your options, or you’ll have no time left to choose between them. Option one: You can remain in your current position and extract only one hand, pretending you’re still fully subdued and helpless when Martin busts in here, your body blocking his view of this pistol,” he said, concealing the loaded Beretta on the altar between Bean’s left hand and waist. “If he looks away, thinking you can’t move a muscle, you just grab the pistol and shoot him in the back.

  “The other, more courageous—or cowardly option—depending on your viewpoint, would be to yank all four limbs off and hide in the darkness of the hallway, firing as many rounds as you can when you hear footsteps coming, praying one of them finds its mark.”

  “How about this option? How about you pull these fucking nails out?”

  “Think about what you’re saying,” Paul replied calmly. “What makes you think it’ll hurt any less when I pull ’em out than if you tug your limbs free? Remember lesson one: It hurts a little less when you do it yourself. However, if you choose that alternative, you’ll pass up your only real chance at ambushing a seasoned veteran that you have virtually no other possibility of defeating. I’ve thought long and hard about this, it’s a brilliant plan! If you don’t wet your panties and have anything resembling a decent aim, you could actually pull it off. You could win!”

  “I don’t want to win,” Bean whined, almost in tears. “I want to get out of here!”

  “Is that what the Book told you?” Paul challenged him. “Is that what it said as it led you to this holy place? You have the power inside you, boy. If you didn’t, you never would have heeded the Book’s magic call. Remember how good it felt to hold it in your arms? To follow its tug? It was leading you, son, like it’s led so many others. If you listen again, it might even lead you to freedom and glory.”

  Michael stopped moaning. Stopped caring. He was doomed. Doomed. But as he experienced that ultimate surrender, another part of him shrugged it off like a mother lifting a car to rescue her trapped baby. Michael stopped…and stared at the Book.

  Paul smiled at the change in him, at his own little Turning. “Good luck, lad…I wish you all the best,” he said, backing out of the portal. The Striker followed wordlessly like a pale shadow. “You’ve always meant a great deal to me, son. Just not as much as Martin.”

  Martin picked up the top footlocker and slammed it on the floor. It weighed a ton. He opened the footlocker below and pulled out six ammo clips for the pistols (three painted red, three blue), four slim throwing knives and a CO2 cartridge ice-pick injection device of his own invention. That was for Bean. Martin found it very useful for interrogations where time was a critical factor. Once he explained what the CO2 would do upon being injected directly into the bloodstream, the subjects were remarkably compliant and confessed with a 96.5% accuracy rate. He’d bet every coin in his treasure chest that the kid would tell him where the remote was hidden in less than thirty seconds. Even if he didn’t, Martin would still get the satisfaction of watching his frantic expression as his brain exploded.

  Martin put on his custom-made, fatigue-green, pleated nylon vest and slipped all his accessories into their sewn-in sheaths, feeling a sharp twinge of anxiety that he didn’t have two injector units to balance the symmetry. He groaned and took out one of the throwing knives on the left side, substituting the prick-pricker in its place, then rushed to the bathroom mirror to see how it looked. Fuck. It would have to do.

  He quickly threw on his jacket again, pulled out the pistols and loaded the new clips of ammo into the chambers, red for one pistol (right pocket), blue for the other (left pocket). He holstered them in their interior straps, in case he had to pull a Wyatt Earp, did a few quick-draw warm-ups just to make sure they were perfectly positioned, and once he was satisfied that he had completed his preparations with the utmost attention to detail, he bolted into his blindingly bright room, sat in his white-on–white chair and closed his eyes.

  Martin breathed slowly and deeply, ridding his mind of his previously frantic internal dialog. When he opened his eyes again, this is what he saw:

  It may not look like much to you, but in that calm blankness Martin witnessed something so astonishing all he could do was gape. And blink. And gape even wider than before. The place he always called the dream world appeared, but now he could see where it was and what it was and what it had to do with him. He saw beyond the curtain of dreams into the other place. The wondrous place. Then the voice in his head started up again, but this time it wasn’t Paul, or Johnny, or the “new” him shouting with another walkie-talkie message.

  It was the voice of the angel.

  “Come,” the angel said. Everything was golden. The sky. The clouds. The angel’s face. Suddenly, more clouds gathered and the sky grew dark…darker…black. When the light returned, it was flickering. Candles. Groans. Crying.

  He was in the castle of Lord Firth. Firth and his son were lying in a bloody heap. His daughter was crying, pleading for her life. Paul was too strong to be stopped, so Martin begged him to spare her. To his complete surprise, after much shouting and ridicule, Paul agreed, but only if he would swear a blood oath of unending loyalty.

  Martin made his vow to save the girl. In blood. In the Book. Paul embraced him and said he was going to take him to the special place, as he had promised so long ago. The girl was bound and gagged, for her own safety, Paul assured him, and they entered a chapel where Paul tied her to the foot of a cross burdened with the nailed figure of an angel. Together, they climbed on the altar. Paul taught him the chant and they traveled beyond the curtain of dreams to that wondrous place he called the Maelstrom. When he and Paul returned, Paul kissed both his cheeks in congratulations.

  The girl looked up at them, still bound and whimpering, her eyes soaked with fear. Paul opened his sickle. Martin thought he was going to cut her bonds. He slit her throat.

  “You promised!” Martin cried, falling to his knees.

  “I promised to let her live. I didn’t say for how long. You’ll have to toughen up if we’re to finish this quest. You won’t fare too well against Johnny’s seed if you’re getting all weepy for this mongrel.”

  Martin wanted to hit him, to kill him, but he was too distraught to do anything but cry. Paul let him sob for a moment. Then Martin flipped the switch, stood up and walked from the chapel without another glance back at the girl. He never even knew her name.

  “Come,” the angel said again. The castle of Lord Firth disappeared and he was in an underground temple, carved from the living rock of the cavern. The Master had
been chained to the altar by a group of armed, angry men. Suddenly a girl appeared from out of nowhere, weeping with fear. Next a boy appeared, but he didn’t look fully human. What they did to him was so awful Martin looked away, silently asking the angel to spare him the rest.

  Then, in a blinding flash, he was in a small candlelit chapel, staring at a huge cross burdened with a crucified angel.

  “Are you ready?” a voice said. It sounded like Paul’s. It came from the cross. The same angel who brought him here was looking down at him, his face contorted in agony, his body pierced everywhere with long, rusty spikes, his skin painted red with blood.

  “Do you understand?” the tortured angel asked, his face kind and loving despite his suffering. Martin nodded. The angel smiled and his face changed into his own.

  Jolted by the shock, Martin found himself sitting in his chair again, staring into the whiteness. He ran from the room and down the stairs, his feet pumping furiously, streaking to Paul’s apartment faster than he had ever run before.

  “Do you understand?” the angel’s voice echoed as he ran.

  Yes, Martin answered silently as his feet flew faster and faster.

  I understand.

  He knew what he’d hidden from himself for so long. What his vow really meant, what Paul wanted him to do. Even if he died trying, he would never let that happen. Death would be a far better fate. But if today was his day to die, he had one more duty to perform, a responsibility more sacred than any quest he could attempt, any treasure he could acquire. He loved her more than he could ever love anyone. He had loved her for an eternity. Should he survive the battle with Paul, it would mean nothing without her.

  He had to save Rose.

  Have you ever had a crush on someone who has a crush on someone else? And then you try to get them to like you more by putting down the person they’re crazy about? Doesn’t work too well, does it? I took my chances anyway and sure enough, it made matters worse. Even though I pointed out how loyal I was to stay by her side while Martin abandoned her in a foolhardy attempt to find a remote control that might not even exist and would probably get himself killed in the process like a big, fucking idiot…Rose glared at me with even more contempt. “I can’t wait for him to come back here and kick your sissy ass,” she said defiantly.

  She knew what a risk she was taking speaking to me like that, knowing I could end the conversation with a slight tip of her chair. Still, she continued taunting me, making fun of my talents, challenging me to put on a show for her like I was some kind of trained seal.

  “Okay, if you can see Paul whenever you want, what’s he doing right now, Kreskin?”

  I closed my eyes. “I can’t see him,” I lied, opening them again. “He’s blocking me.”

  “Oh, he’s blocking you. How convenient. And when your mother begged you with her dying breath to use your amazing powers and search for Martin, which was…let’s see, eight years ago…somehow you couldn’t pick up on his cosmic vibrations until last month, when you found a nice scrapbook about him, which was written by Paul in Martin’s handwriting, in a secret chapel in a squatter slum with a gigantic crucified angel!”

  “When you put it that way, it does sound a little…”

  “Crazy?” she said, cutting me off again. “Crazy? Crazy? Crazy?”

  I wanted to say something equally offensive, but I stupidly kept defending myself. “You think I’m so full of it, but if it weren’t for these visions, I wouldn’t have seen you get snatched by Paul, I wouldn’t have come here and…”

  Uh-oh.

  “You watched him take me!” she yelled, her face red with hate. “I knew you were in this with him, you fucking liar! How could you let that fucking maniac do this to me? Because you showed me your fucking suitcase? Because I know how fucking sick you are?”

  “If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it already,” I pointed out, after she hurled every conceivable invective at me. “Paul has it in for you because you’re Johnny’s daughter. I told you the truth. I saw a flash of Paul grabbing you, then nothing until I saw what he did and where you were. I came here as soon as I could and found Martin cleaning your wounds. He told me to wait with you while he looked for that fucking remote control. That’s it. End of story. I hate Paul as much as he does. As much as you do!”

  “That’s not possible,” she seethed, glaring at me like she wanted to pick up those knitting needles and give me a more thorough understanding of what she’d endured.

  But she was still in that chair, wasn’t she?

  We both remained silent for a moment. She wasn’t sure what to believe anymore, which, frankly, seemed like a pretty good deal to me…until she spoke again. “Here’s what I think. I think you’re crazy. I don’t know if Paul is Martin’s father or yours, but I do think you’re his partner. I think you’re a sick, twisted fuck. And a world-class liar.”

  I got huffy with her, as liars do, hoping that would intimidate her enough to shut her fucking yap. “Look, I don’t care what you think. I’m not crazy and I’m not a liar. If you want to be pissed at someone, save it for Martin. He’s the one that left you here. Not me.”

  I know that wasn’t very nice, but it shut her up. If only for a few seconds.

  “Okay, we’ll play it your way,” she said, digging back in. “Let’s assume you do have your weird little visions…and you don’t know where Paul is right now because…how did you put it? He’s blocking you? But now that he’s out of range, why don’t you tell me what Martin is up to, since he obviously has more important things to do than protecting me from you.”

  I closed my eyes, seeing Martin clear as a bell. He was climbing Paul’s stairwell as silently as a ghost.

  “Well?” Rose demanded.

  I stared at her blankly. I was getting so tired of this. I looked down at my hands, filtering out more angry insults. If I answered her question, there would only be more. The same thing had happened to me. Questions. Always more questions.

  Suddenly, I had a flash of inspiration.

  “Once upon a time…” I began, opening my eyes. Then I began reciting, word for word, the story Paul told me. I didn’t say more than six sentences when her eyes lit up and her expression changed from “Who is this fucking madman?” to “He knows it too!”

  “My mother told me a story like that!”

  “Exactly like that…or kind of like that?”

  “Not exactly,” she said, closing her eyes, picturing her mother perfectly. “Her story started out differently. It isn’t about a boy, it’s about…”

  “A girl?” I asked eagerly.

  “Not just girl…a Goddess.”

  Michael didn’t think he had it in him. Neither did I. When the fourth nail came out, it took more flesh with it than the others. He didn’t scream that time. He was in a different state of mind, a more purified consciousness. The only thing he felt was hatred and its ever-dependable sidekick, the lust for revenge. Oddly though, his thirst for vengeance wasn’t directed at the instigator of his current torment, but at the man Paul said would be coming in only a few more minutes…to kill him. Martin. His fucking asshole brother.

  “We’ll see about that,” he hissed, tossing the loose clump of flesh to the filthy floor.

  He limped over to the lectern, which isn’t too easy when you’re limping on both feet, and placed his bloody hands on the Book. As soon as his red, dripping palms made contact, he felt something very peculiar, first in his perforated feet, then his hands.

  He didn’t bother looking at his feet. Why should he? The evidence in front of his face was convincing enough. There wasn’t a drop of blood on the ancient leather hide of the book. There wasn’t a drop of blood on his hands either. Nor were there holes. Or scars. It was like nothing had ever happened to him. A new strength came surging into his legs. His feet felt like a pair of anvils. His arms swung like wrecking balls.

  The door was open now. The hallway beyond was as black as a crypt at midnight. But that didn’t bother Michael. He p
icked up the sleek, cold Beretta, smiled at the angel and walked into the darkness like he was strolling along the Left Bank at sunset. When the darkness swallowed him up completely, that didn’t bother him either. His eyes were shining from the inside now. And Michael Bean could see.

  Martin climbed the stairwell with both guns drawn. They looked the same, but the ammo was different. Which one he’d use depended on what he saw.

  When he reached Paul’s apartment, he got his first big surprise. The door was open. That was not good. He stopped and listened. He heard footsteps inside. He waited until they stopped before proceeding. He was ready. No, he was more than ready. He was itching for it. The sooner he smelled gunpowder, the better.

  He crept inside, his footsteps silent as a ninja’s. It was quiet now. Very quiet. He moved from room to room. Ready. Tense. Then he heard them. More footsteps. He stood still, listening. He couldn’t tell which hallway they were coming from—the corridor he navigated last night or the one just ahead of him, past the room with the tattered couch.

  Was that the hallway that led to…the chapel?

  He didn’t move for the longest time. Keening his ears like a dog.

  Then he heard them. More footsteps. Soft. Cunning. Light.

  They didn’t sound like Paul’s clomping boots, but they sounded much too sly and stealthy for that stupid little creep, which could only mean two things. Either he’d grossly underestimated Bean’s abilities—or somebody else was in there.

  He moved between the walls. He didn’t care if he was seen. Or heard.

  He trusted in his power. Bullets could come. They would miss him. Nothing could harm him now.