by Lex Sinclair
Joe raced over to his friend, trembling, knowing there was nothing he could do to help Jake, other than be there, holding his hand, catching his head as it fell forward into his chest.
Out of love and respect for his dear friend, Joe closed Jake’s eyes, placed a hand on his head, whispering that he was sorry. Then, clenching his hands into taut fists so hard that the fingernails dug half-circles into his palms, he pivoted, and glared at the thing with the goat’s head, leering at him, gleeful at seeing the tears brim in his eyes.
‘D’you see how easy that was - killin’ him, I mean?’
Joe didn’t answer; instead his entire body shook with a rage he’d never felt before.
‘Oooh, ya look kinda pissed off, Joe. Well, put ‘em up and let’s see how good a fighter you really are, shall we?’
The thing with the goat’s head stood right in the centre of the floor; Joe circled him, never once taking his eyes off his opponent, sizing him up, moving his head side to side; his face blank, void of emotion, while the demon feigned trepidation. Yet somewhere deep beneath those blazing red eyes, Joe thought he saw the creature before him, expressing rage due to the fact that Joe did frighten him, even if it was only very slightly.
Joe kept a firm gaze on the creature, as it pivoted. Then, in a blink of an eye, he threw a stiff, straight-arm jab in the thing with the goat’s heads’ face, missing him by inches.
It blinked, and for less than a second, the creature had been surprised by the lightening speed and the accurate punch. It knew Joe had deliberately meant to not hit it; he merely wanted to unsettle it.
The ex-champ threw another stiff jab... and this cracked the creature on the snout, knocking it backwards a step, no longer as confident as it was when it’d said all the horrid, yet truthful things his ex-wife had been doing behind his back.
‘Bit too slow reacting then, weren’t you, huh?’ Joe goaded.
The creature leered at him. ‘D’you honestly think that one measly gentle punch is enough to prevent me in snapping you into pieces, Joe? But as he said that, Joe grasped the opportunity; saw that it wasn’t concentrating hard enough, and threw another straight punch into its face, stunning it into silence, momentarily. The punch was harder than the first one, connecting with its snout once more, rocking it on the balls of its feet.
Seeing this, Joe moved in and threw a one-two combination with blurring hand speed. Then he followed with another straight, once again. He kept circling the creature, throwing jabs at it, but now the thing with the goat’s head got its hands up to protect itself from a barrage of blows. The demon was a steady learner - one whom now regained some of its initial confidence by parrying Joe’s lightening-fast jabs. But when it grew so confident that it chose to throw a punch of its own, it hadn’t anticipated Joe to have a great defence as well as a great offence. It’s punch - unlike Joe’s - was a wild, swinging shot, which missed Joe’s head by a country mile, sending the creature off balance, presenting Joe with an open target. He didn’t require a second invitation, he landed two clean punches into the face of his opponent, and then a hook into the ribs, where his clenched fist met ribs and flesh. The thing with the goat’s head grimaced, stumbled across the floor space, and thought Joe would let it recover, but was sorely mistaken when another barrage of blows broke through the high-held guard and thundered into its face. Then just as the blows stopped bashing its head, its body was rocked by numerous blows to abdomen and ribs, instantly knocking the wind out of its lungs.
Joe finished his attack with an overhead punch that came crashing down the demon’s head. When his bare knuckles came into direct contact with its opponent, he knew by feel as well as sound that he’d broken his hand for the second time in his life. He couldn’t help but emit a yelp as a lance of pain shot through his right hand so that he was unable to clench nor move his fingers without sending a pain so powerful it could have sent him to his knees had he not possessed an incredible willpower. (It was the same hand he’d broken before defending his WBC middleweight championship of the world, against an opponent whose head seemed to be made out of concrete, not bone.)
The creature saw Joe squeezing his eyes shut, holding his crippled hand, keeping it down low by his side, so that it wouldn’t know - but it was too late for that.
The demon backhanded Joe with its right arm (and had Joe’s right hand not been broken, it would have been raised and blocked the creature’s attacking arm) whipping Joe’s head to one side in a sudden movement. Then it kicked Joe where it hurt, taking great pleasure in watching the mortal crumple to his knees, bending over, face changing colour from pale to bright red, and finally to purple, where veins pulsed.
As it strode forwards and gripped Joe by his hair and yanked his head back, Joe threw a wild uppercut into the creature’s groin. It gasped, yet continued to hold Joe’s head back as far as it would go and drove a knee into the side of his head. The impact was ferocious. Joe collapsed onto his side, inhaling and exhaling deeply through his nose. The whole right hand side of his head had gone numb with a dull, relentless ache. He felt a massive hand seize his unprotected throat and squeeze. The grip was extremely fierce. Joe understood that if he didn’t do something pretty hasty, then he’d end up like Jake, Sherri, Michael and Hugh.
He kicked the creature in the groin again, and the hold was broken. However, that wouldn’t be for long. Soon the creature would regain its breath and attack yet again, showing no mercy (not that it would have in the first place) and snap his neck, the way Joe snapped the leg of a dead chicken.
The backs of his legs bumped into something immovable, and Joe saw that he’d bumped into the makeshift altar, where his three dead neighbours stood, looking desolate at him, not allowed to interfere with his fight with the devil.
Joe leapt up onto the makeshift altar, struggled to stand upright again, but managed to do so by using the communion table, where he righted himself. He felt a little bit safer having a height advantage over his adversary, yet that advantage would soon be lost when the creature got onto the stage, too.
He grabbed the five holder candlestick and threw it at the thing with the goat’s head, expecting it to swat it away without blinking its blazing red eyes; however, the fur on its head caught alight with orange flames, and in an unexpected panic, the creature started smacking its own head before the flames engulfed it in an unstoppable wrath.
Joe arched his head back and stared aghast at Corrie, suspended in the air, whose eyes had fallen into the back of her head, at the whites of her eyes, big and round above the flickering light from the bracket torches on the rock walls spaced evenly apart.
I’ll get you down from there, Corrie, if it’s the last thing I ever do!
As Joe stood there on the makeshift altar amongst his dead neighbours, an idea came to him. It wasn’t a great idea, or anything that would make his predicament any better, although if he didn’t act now, there wouldn’t be a later.
While the demon busied itself putting the flames out, Joe leapt off the stage and landed on the creature’s back, wrapping his arm around its neck, squeezing with all the strength he could muster, until he heard the sweet, lovely sound of the thing with the goat’s head choking; he squeezed some more, then broke the hold and threw punches at the abdomen as hard and as fast as he’d ever done in his whole career. Then he bent his arm and rammed the point of his elbow into the snout, knocking the creature to ground.
He was amazed that he’d actually knocked the demon off its feet and made it look weak for the first time since he’d laid eyes on its ugly visage.
Joe didn’t risk standing still any longer. He darted over to the other side of the cave towards Jake’s speared corpse, and using his feet against the rock wall as leverage, extracted the staff from his dead friend’s chest. Joe didn’t know why this seemed like a good idea at the time; it was something he did solely on intuition, just the same as when he swung the s
taff with the replica of the goat’s head made out of gold against the wall.
The ringing sound reverberated around the demon’s lair, bursting their eardrums; yet, in spite of the fact that he’d go deaf, Joe swung again, and saw to his relief, the creature clapped its massive, talon-shaped hands over its pointy ears, mouth stretched into a yawn; its screams being drowned out by the echoing BONG, rocking the foundations underfoot.
Every time the creature got to its knees, in spite of the permanent damage he was inflicting upon himself, Joe swung the staff with the goat’s head against the rock wall, the aura emanating from him palpable. By the fifth time, his head was literally pounding from the inside, giving him the impression that his brain might explode at any moment. But Joe couldn’t care less any more. After every deafening boom, he’d glance up to see if there was any change in Corrie’s condition.
There wasn’t...
On the seventh time, Joe looked down at the staff with the dented golden goat’s head... and then at the coils of smoke swirling languidly where the entrance was, obscuring anything on the other side, preventing any of the other residents of Willet Close from gaining access to the lair.
Joe lifted the staff overhead where it gleamed in the flickering light and threw it into the mist... where it disappeared without a sound... into nothingness...
The demon was still on the floor, eyes no longer burning with fury; blood oozing out of its ears and trickling down over its white matted fur, incredulous that it was bleeding and on its knees, losing the battle against a mortal, whose spirit was filled with a goodness it would never comprehend in a billion years of evolution.
Smiling, Joe understood now where his strength had come from - but also the symbol the thing with the goat’s head feared the most. He pulled out the gold crucifix Martha had taken out of her bedroom and put around his neck earlier that evening, silently aware that he’d need the crucifix to defeat the demon; because the crucifix represented what made Joe special from all his other opponents over the years, and now against this evil adversary: Joe had faith. He may not have said so aloud, but he exuded faith and integrity; was kind and loyal to his friends and neighbours. He loved those that hated him; forgave those who’d trespassed against him (like Jenna-Marie), and never spoke ill of anyone.
Joe was a good Christian, even though he never went to church, said the Lord’s Prayer every week; confessed his sins or read the Bible. Yet he chose the righteous path, when other, lesser people would have taken the easier but unholy path.
He held the gold crucifix in his hand, approaching the thing with the goat’s head, drove a hard knuckle-sandwich into its face, and then -while it was clutching its busted nose - looped the chain around its neck.
The creature let out a long, guttural cry as the cross touched its unholy flesh; eyes wide, flaming with an eternal struggle that it had no chance of defeating. Joe ignored the cries (not because he couldn’t hear them, but because he’d lost his hearing) and rested a hand atop the goat’s head, closed his eyes. A thousand images of death, abuse, rape and other terrible, sinister acts raced through his mind at roughly the speed of a speeding bullet. The images were soaked in a crimson shower.
What he was seeing was tearing his soul apart; because what he saw was two thousand years of evil that had been committed on earth in front of the eyes of the Almighty Father by the one He cast out of Heaven for being unholy.
Joe was shaking, convulsing right the way through his body, as though he were being electrocuted. His teeth chattered inside his mouth. But he opened his mouth while suffering from this powerful seizure and yelled out above the reverberating booming still thundering in his broken eardrums. ‘I RENOUNCE YOU OF ALL EVIL!’
The thing with the goat’s head exploded... evaporating in a cloud of smoke, like an elaborate magic trick. Coils of smoke swirled up into the dimness now surrounding Joe, dissipating in the air. When he looked at the makeshift altar, he saw that the wooden velvet-covered communion table had disappeared - so had the pagan symbol smeared in blood. The flickering candles had been extinguished, and now Joe found himself in the cold darkness, shivering; a high-pitched ringing blocking out all sound. Nevertheless, as relieved and elated as he was to have defeated the thing with the goat’s head, he was also sad he didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to his dead friends, whom had stood on the makeshift altar, unmoving, helpless. Believing in the power of good over the power of evil hadn’t been the only reason Joe had overcome the demon, but also the presence of the departed he cared so much about.
‘Goodbye, my friends,’ he whispered into the gloom. He couldn’t even hear his own voice over the din of ringing.
Corrie was lying on the ground, filthy, crying hysterically, disorientated. Her hair was mussed and loose strands obscured her scarlet face; her chest rose and fell rapidly. But then in the surrounding gloom, she saw Joe standing, unmoving; his eyes downcast, impassive, looking as though he’d lost something that he’d never find in a million years... something had escaped him that was irrevocable, leaving such a profound emptiness that he stood in the centre of the lair, part-human, part-apparition.
Corrie gazed wonderingly at her brown-white nightgown, utterly perplexed at where she was and how she’d got here in this dark, dank cave, where snaking fissures lined the uneven walls. She was glad that Joe was with her, yet unnerved by the vacant expression that stole his face of his usual warmth and kindness she knew he’d possessed whenever he was in her company prior to now.
The swirling, dense mist had dissipated instantly with the thing with the goat’s head and the absence of burning light, creating amorphous shadows. Now the opening was clear once again, allowing access to enter or exit the enclosure.
The seizure that had quaked through Joe’s anatomy had also gone. However, his limbs were leaden and stiff. He felt as though his feet were cemented into the ground. If he could have moved or collapsed he would have done so, without any hesitation whatsoever, yet no matter how hard he tried to force his body to work for him, like it had done instinctively for the best part of his life, it just refused to respond to him now.
Joe understood with a total sense of clarity that from now until the day he also departed from the world like his friends and neighbours, not only wouldn’t he be allowed to forget what had happened tonight, but that he’d physically never be the same again. His eyelids weighed down on him like a ton of bricks, so when he saw three figures silhouetted by the entrance of the demon’s lair, he couldn’t be certain if his eyesight was deceiving him or not.
His heart jolted when a hand rested upon his shoulder, and even though he’d normally jump out of sudden fright, his body remained motionless.
In front of him he could just make out the familiar features of a haggard-looking woman, deeply-etched with wrinkles that had burrowed into her skin and sagged terribly. Her mouth worked soundlessly. Joe wished above all things right then that he could hear Martha’s croaking tone of voice comforting him, telling him it was going to be all right. And yet, if Joe had been able to hear her, that’s precisely what the elderly lady was telling him.
Naomi leaned forwards and kissed him with great love and affection, then raced across the cave towards her daughter, hoisted her up, embracing her, saying ‘Thank you,’ to him over and over again for rescuing her precious daughter from a certain death and having her soul destroyed.
When mother and daughter had eventually broken away from each other after an emotional reunion hug, they walked back to the ex-champion of the world, hand-in-hand and gazed at him longingly. There was a mixture of sadness and tremendous, unexplainable euphoria, sparkling in their eyes. What he and Jake had done, together, was so noble and meaningful that Naomi and Corrie could never repay him, even with all the gold in fort Knox.
Joe didn’t remember much after this: even months after this unforgettable night, except, somehow walking - although it felt more like floa
ting - out of the demon’s lair, and seeing four shrouded skeletons cloaked in long black robes, sprawled at awkward angles around the cave.
There was something Joe had to do that was of great importance. He approached Emma, who was squinting in the darkness and said as clearly as he could, unsure if
Emma would be able to hear him because he was deaf and couldn’t hear himself properly, ‘Jake’s...’ he was lost for words. A burning, prickling sensation began stinging in the corners of his eyes, into his throat. Fortunately, Emma didn’t need for him to say any more, she knew what the next word was without him having to utter it to her. And, amazingly, she gave him a sombre smile, nodded once.
‘I know...’ she said, tears brimming in her eyes.
‘If it hadn’t been for him... I’d be dead, too,’ Joe said, speaking truthfully. After all, Jake had barged into the lair and distracted the thing with the goat’s head, who’d spent a lot of energy using the staff, which was a source of power, to kill Jake. If Jake hadn’t entered when he did and the thing with the goat’s head which was struggling to beat Joe in a fair fight would have summoned the staff to spear Joe instead when his back was turned.
Together the group of survivors lifted Jake up off the filthy floor. (This was no place for a great, magnanimous person to be laid to rest.) In spite of the roaring pain shooting through Joe’s spinal cord, arms and neck, he carried Jake in his arms and wended towards the entrance to the dark tunnel. With all the strength, patience and ebbing willpower, he and the other brave women dragged Jake’s heavy carcass and themselves out of the burrow where they collapsed, exhausted on the bank beside the rippling canal.
Joe couldn’t hear the wind, yet the cooling breeze on his dust-covered face sent a surge of life through his engorged veins. He breathed deeply, inhaling and exhaling, as though he’d been under water for far too long and had only now resurfaced, gasping for air... for life.