The lead Annunaki closes the distance quickly, and the arms from the fog hold me securely in place, pinning me down for the feast of demon lords. I sense their hunger, their angry and jealous desire to feed on my spirit. A pair of pinhole eyes advances across the ceiling as well, while the third pair holds back, perched on the wall, waiting for the right moment. But the room continues to darken above the glowing green fog, and the cloaks of the Annunaki are swallowed in the darkness. All I see are the beady, yellow eyes, hissing and spewing profanities in an ancient unknown tongue. Each word is like a bark and a cough, full of rage and pain. The eyes call to each other as the maneuver towards me as a pack. The demons are hunting… ironic that their prey hunts them as well… or at least did before I set out to reap the Beast.
And how’s that goin’ right now, Henry?
The leader of the pack is now only yards away and suddenly, rage flickers within me. I cease struggling with the clutching dead arms and grab the Harpe’s shaft with both hands and quickly swipe downward. Two of the arms are severed and fall into the fog with gargled, airy screams. I pull one leg free and step back enough to balance my weight for another more powerful blow. The obsidian blade sears through bone and rotting flesh, clipping free the remaining four arms with ease, just as the demon lord is within reach. He stretches out a hand, blacker than shadow and lightning quick, almost reaching my throat. I’m thrown off balance a bit and take a few steps back. When he advances again, I’m ready, and stepping to his left, I swing horizontally under his outstretched arm. The tip of my scythe rips through the cloak and penetrates the spirit within. A high-pitched scream of animal-like terror pierces my ears, and the cloak falls empty around my sickle. I shake it free quickly and silently rejoice when I see the black shadow man sucked into the fog and through what I assume is an impromptu hellhole ready to claim another victim.
The other five Annunaki leave the baby swaddled and cooing in Buddha’s lap, and join the hunting party moving in my direction. I can’t keep track of all seven, but I’m acutely aware of the demon lord on the ceiling, now directly above me. With an abrupt hiss, it drops from the rafters above. I step back and watch it land mistakenly on white, hazy form, sitting unaware, upright, and meditating. The collision of the two spirits is like the mixing of dye and water. The now possessed and polluted human spirit springs to its feet, flailing wildly. A second later, it shudders and convulses, dropping to the floor in a seizure. Other spirits rush to its aid, unaware in the physical plane that the demon has accidentally invaded the faculties of their fellow worshiper. A horrible scene unfolds, but one that works in my favor. The possessed man comes out of his seizure, and springs on those trying to help him, attacking them like a meth-crazed lunatic. The room of spirits erupts into chaos. Many of them try to escape, but the panicked crowd can’t get past the possessed.
In the chaos, I drop to my hands and knees. They’re hidden in the thick fog rolling along the floor, while my head and back are blocked from the Annunaki’s sight by the crowd of anxious, fleeing spirits.
I scramble on all fours towards the Buddha. When I get close, I look back and witness a disgusting and shameful feast. The remaining six Annunaki, hungry for human life force, have formed a tight circle around the possessed man, pinning him down. Their heads are clustered together as they feast like starving hyenas on the human spirit, eating away the man’s soul, both to feed their eternally empty bellies, and to release their brother, trapped within. The shrieks from the demon lord captive in the human’s spirit are gut-wrenching. It sounds as if he’s being eaten alive, along with the vessel he possesses.
It’s now or never, Henry. Time to finish the job.
I rise to my feet and stand at Buddha’s lap. The baby kicks happily away in the soft linen blanket that has been carefully swaddled around it. Its chubby little cheeks are full and round. I hesitate. Its toothless gummy grin is wet with drool as the baby cheerfully coos at me. It looks… perfect. The poster child for marketing baby products, the perfect model for televised ads, and every innocent little girl’s fantasy… the perfect, healthy, happy baby. The infant coos and giggles at me as I stand over it, nervously gripping the Harpe’s shaft.
I can’t do this! I can’t kill a baby.
The doubt washes over me, and I can’t recall why I’m even here. The noise behind me fades away as I focus on how beautiful and perfect this innocent little baby seems to be.
Maybe I have this all wrong.
I reach down into the nest of blankets and extend my finger, brushing the soft chubby fingers of the infant. He gently grabs my finger and tries to suck on it.
“You must be hungry…” I softly whisper, enraptured by the joy and beauty of newborn life.
But the baby’s mouth isn’t completely toothless. Something in the baby’s mouth pierces my finger and shoots a searing pain up my arm. The fog clears from my thoughts instantly, and I yank my hand back with a shout, taking the Lord’s name in vain.
“Ouch! Jesus, that hurt!”
The baby’s eyes go black, and red irises angrily glare at me. That chubby little face contorts with powerful muscles drawing down its brows in an angry expression and stretching a fang-filled grimace across its hideous goblinesque face.
That’s when the squalling begins. A raspy, unfettered, angry cry fills the rooms. The volume is eardrum pounding, rattling my eyeballs in their sockets. The Annunaki cease their feeding frenzy and turn to find me, Henry Halfmoon, standing at the crib of the Beast, with the Harpe raised high above my head, ready to strike like God’s lighting.
The most desperate and hateful chorus of ancient profanities rushes out from under the black cowls of the Annunaki. They turn quickly towards me and bolt across the room. Their arms outstretched, and their dark cloaks flapping wildly behind them. I look down at the Child once more, and the goblin face is gone. Once again, the cherub face of innocence coos and smiles at me.
What the hell?!
I close my eyes to hide the sweet face and try to wash away the thoughts of its innocence. Disgusted with myself, I hammer the scythe down just as the pack of demon lords close the distance and crash into me.
But not before my obsidian blade rips the Child’s body and soul in half. Knocked out of the second-story window, I fall to the street below. The Beast’s infant body rains down onto the fog-covered pavement in jagged, unequal halves.
Fritz is there waiting for me. He pulls me to my feet.
“Took you long enough, bruh!”
The Annunaki scream from the window above and leap into the air above us. But before they can land, my guardian death angel strikes the pavement with his sickle… and unzips Hell.
The two halves of the goblin child, the Beast, are sucked into the stinking black void. When it falls in, the hellhole also sucks in the fog surrounding it. The Annunaki land just in time to be caught in the tidal ebbing of the fog and are pulled screaming and cursing into the Pit behind the god they failed to protect.
The ruckus on the street empties the area of frightened gargoyle demons, Wolfmen, and shadow men. And when the Pit is closed back up, Fritz and I stand alone in a crowd of white, hazy forms drifting unaware up and down the bustling streets of Chinatown.
We stare at each other for a while and silently take in the reality of what we had just accomplished. I gaze up at the sky, noticing the first signs of dawn. Time is so odd here. I still can’t get used to it.
“How did you know I would fall into the street with the Child, Fritz? Seems a little fortuitous that you were in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.” But Fritz doesn’t answer me. He only shrugs his big, bony shoulders under the dark-grey reaper’s cloak.
I take one more look around, and still dazed with disbelief, I ask, “Did we actually… win?”
Fritz doesn’t answer immediately. He quietly calculates the damage, the events, the smell of the air, and the next name that, in that very moment, is scrawled onto the shiny black blade of his sickle in blazing blue script… Hen
ry H. Halfmoon.
Epilogue
The door to Heaven is ripped open in the dimensional fabric. From top to bottom, Fritz’s scythe smoothly opens a vertical ten-foot incision. Soft, clean light fills the city street, spilling out in warming rays. The rift widens into a great circle, welcoming home those souls who bear the Trinity Seal.
This time, it opens for me.
I’m stunned at the beauty of the landscape within, barely distinguishable beyond the bright wash of the doorway’s light. But there’s something even more glorious than the Edenesque rolling hills and lush forests. He’s in there waiting for me. No! They both are!
Yeshua. He’s waiting to meet me, face to face. My heart quickens at the thought, and the world between worlds, laden with fog and plagued by demons, feels like a dismal holding tank, a dirty hospital waiting room, compared to meeting the Savior of the World in His own eternal land.
But there’s someone else there as well… I can feel his familiar presence and, if I’m not going crazy, he’s approaching the door from the other side and coming towards me!
He’s tall and radiating with living light, though just saying that makes me sound crazy, I know. But the light itself is alive, dancing around him as if it's celebrating his presence. I can only liken it to the way a remora clings to a shark, not feeding on it, but dependent upon it to be fed. The light clings to the being who suddenly steps through the vertical portal and stands in the thick roll of fog on New York's filthy Canal Street.
“Hello Henry…” the deep soothing voice washes over me.
“Dad!” The light clears, and I can see his face. His eyes blaze with brilliant blue star-like fusion. But everything else about the man is the same… only infinitely more beautiful. Perfected, if you will.
“You’ve done well, son. I’ve come to take you home.” Dad motions to the entrance to eternal bliss behind him.
I’ve done well? Is that true? Did I stop the Beast? Won’t this happen again?
“But… Dad… what about Semjaza?”
“What about him, Henry?”
“I never saw him after the ritual. And while I took on the Annunaki, and reaped the Beast… Semjaza is still out there.”
Dad smiles, light spilling from behind his teeth in a flash. “He escapes often, Henry. And when he does, he commits the same sin. Over and over, since the beginning, it’s always the daughters of men who he’s after… and as soon as he has his way with some poor girl, the angels lock him up again.”
I look towards Fritz, who is cowering off to the side, outmatched and intimidated by the heavenly being I speak with.
“Fritz? Did you…”
Fritz shakes his great cowled head. “No, Son of Halfmoon. No one can reap angels, not even a fallen one.”
My dad suddenly turns towards Fritz and says in a rather admonishing tone, “And yet I hear that you’ve been skewering devils lately.”
“I admit,” Fritz bows reverently, “that I have violated the ordinance.”
“He did it to save me, though! Dad! You can’t be upset with him! He was just protecting a friend.”
“Friend?” Dad’s perfect eyebrow raises. “Fritz is commissioned to reap. I didn’t know he had a double assignment as a guardian.” Dad turns to Fritz. “At what point did angels befriend their charges?”
“I admit, Halfmoon, I have gone farther than what is allowed. As a matter of fact, I have already been informed of my punishment.”
Dad nods and turns to me again. “Henry, it’s time to come home.”
The look of my guardian death angel, drooping his head and forlornly watching the happy spirits bounding, singing and soaring above the heavenly planes through the door, breaks my heart. Suddenly, the Harpe becomes heavy in my hand, and I’m aware that I’m still clutching its shaft. The obsidian blade absorbs and devours the soft white heavenly light.
“Actually… I’d like to stay.”
Dad doesn’t hear me. He just walks back into the portal and starts down a gilded walking path. He turns to look behind as the door shuts, and the last expressions I see are surprise, then confusion, then… pride? The door slams shut, and I turn towards Fritz.
“You don’t mind if I come with you, do you?”
Fritz just stares at me silently from under his dark cowl. And though I can’t see his face (and quite honestly, don’t want to for fear of being incinerated) I suspect that my good-natured guardian death angel is choking back a tear.
“So,” I continue without waiting for Fritz to respond, “tell me about this new assignment of yours.”
“Sasquatch.” Fritz grumbles like a ten-year-old grounded from video games.
“Bwahahaha!”
“Geez. It’s not funny, bruh!” Fritz is beyond annoyed with my outburst.
After I compose myself, I catch up to Fritz, who’s already heading off to the Hudson side of Manhattan. He’s headed west.
“I’m coming with you, Fritz. Wait up!”
“You sure you’re up for this, bruh?” Fritz stops and turns his cowl towards me. “You know you probably won’t get another chance at Heaven until… well… I don’t know. Maybe never.”
I think about Mom and the opportunities I’ll have to see her when the moon is full. I think about my best friend, who broke the rules to save me, more than once, and I think about the Harpe, vibrating in my hand when demons are near, and thirsty for the action of supernatural battle.
“If you’ll pardon the cliché, I’m ready to go with you to Hell and back, Fritz.” I put my hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s go hunting.”
THE END
Acknowledgements
A special Thank You to the following professionals and loving supporters who made Henry Halfmoon possible:
TS95 Studios ~ Cover Design
SJS Editorial Services ~ Editing
RaeAnna Goss ~ for the trip to New York, the research, your patience as I pieced it all together, and being my first beta reader.
Natalie Herrod ~ for being the second beta reader to indulge me.
Michelle Chadd ~ for the priceless input.
Jonathan Goss ~ for the motivation to push through the resistence... and for not letting me take shortcuts.
To the staff at Starbucks (Main & Stephen Yokich)...
...you spoil me.
About The Author
Huck Warwicks
Huck Warwicks is a pen name. You probably already knew that. I chose it becuase I write Middle-Grade Fantasy as well, and did not want to bring the dark elements of Henry Halfmoon to an age group that is still beautiful, innocent, and deserving of clean, safe adventures.
Huck was the name of my favorite literary character as I was growing up (Thank you Samuel Clemens). 'War' denotes action, violence, struggle and strategy. 'Wicks' conjures my love of magic, wizards, the unknown, and the dark side in every man's psyche.
Books By This Author
The Traveler's Leage Series
The Traveler’s League Book Series was born when I strayed from the normal bedtime routine of reading, and instead created new worlds full of funny characters, action, magic, and adventure. Since then, my kids and I have committed ourselves to entertaining other children through writing books that create magical adventures and friendships. All the books in the series are available on Amazon.
Ages 8-13
Henry Halfmoon Page 19