GNELFS

by Williams, Sidney

  Tomorrow, help. Tonight she would watch over her and pray.

  ~*~

  Althea sat at the desk in her home office, a small converted bedroom with a desk, a lamp and room for her computer and printer. Atop the clutter of paperwork rested the Gnelfland Bedtime Storybook. She'd stopped on the way home to pick it up. She tried to keep abreast of the latest items for children, but the Gnelfs had soared to popularity recently and she hadn't had a chance to look them over.

  Thumbing through the brightly colored pages, she glanced at simple phrases and studied the images. It was hard to imagine the comical figures being frightening even to a child. Gnelfs were bumbling, well-meaning nomads given to occasional altercations with dragons and the usual villains, nothing too vicious or violent. Still, there was no judging what it might be about the Gnelfs that frightened Heaven. Perhaps they aroused latent anxiety, something related to separation from her father or other trauma in her life.

  As to the event with the slashes, Althea remained uncertain. Some explanation existed, and though Heaven's mother didn't seem the type, abuse by Gabrielle couldn't be ruled out. She might be angry at the child, following the breakup of the marriage. She could view the child as responsible, or she could resent being tied down by her. The possibilities were really limitless. Althea had seen any number of such scenarios played out time and time again.

  Abuse would be a more reasonable explanation than the bizarre supernatural occurrence Marley might favor to explain the cuts. He meant well, and was quick to call her if necessary, but she was concerned about his willingness to accept an otherworldly cause. People were usually more threatening than ghosts.

  Opening the drawer at her side, Althea slipped out the package of Virginia Slims. She smoked infrequently, but sometimes the need arose.

  As she exhaled, she rose and paced across the room. If the child was being abused, she'd need to look into it. The doctors who had treated Heaven had probably already passed word on to Child Protection, but suspicions wouldn't give the agency much to go on. Besides, Althea knew that organization was already overworked and understaffed due to recent state budget cuts.

  She thought about giving Marley another call, but dismissed the idea. She didn't want to hear him postulating potential explanations. He was young, and his zeal became frustrating at times.

  They had met when he had contacted her about a year earlier seeking help for a child from his congregation who had been molested by her uncle. They'd been able to defuse a potentially harmful situation and get the child out of danger, and they had stayed in touch. They didn't always agree on things, but they had developed respect for each other's position.

  Althea was aware she might need him if this proved to be an abuse situation. If Gabrielle Davis was mistreating her daughter, they would have to find help for them both.

  She was headed back toward the desk when she heard movement at the window. She pulled her robe tight. She hadn't given much thought to Peeping Toms, but the office was at the back of the house. The protective cover of the shrubbery might provide even more inducement to horny kids than the thought of glimpsing her body.

  She switched off the light but could see nothing in the back yard. Moonlight offered enough illumination to give her a view, but the shadows were still. Perhaps it had been her imagination. She was about to draw the curtains when the sound repeated. Now it came from across the room, or had it been inside her head? Could there be something wrong with her perception? She dealt with such problems so often it was hard not to be concerned about herself.

  She fumbled for the lamp switch again as she peered through the darkness in the direction from which the sound had seemed to come. Before she could turn on the lamp, however, it tumbled over the edge of the desk. The shade bounced aside, and the bulb shattered against the hardwood floor.

  She froze. Barefooted, she knew any move could leave her with a fine sliver of glass in her foot. She had visions of thin and razor-sharp fragments on the floor.

  Carefully, she began to calculate where she might place a foot safely, and was about to make a move when another sound, something like a grunt, came from across the desk.

  She turned, keeping her feet in place to look in that direction. The slit in her gown opened with a whisper. She felt something like a breeze and realized the fabric had parted near a calf.

  In her turn she must have snagged the cloth on the edge of the desk, she decided. That could be the only explanation. Her fingers slipped through the fabric and touched her skin, making sure there was no cut. When she was satisfied the flesh was not broken, she straightened again, peering through the darkness.

  She could see no sign of movement in the thick shadows cast by the moonlight coming through the window. She told herself there was nothing to be afraid of. What had happened to the child could not be repeating itself with her. It would be ridiculous to think something from a patient's psychosis could be manifesting itself within her.

  She prepared again to take a step, but as she lifted her foot the lamp cord suddenly tangled around her ankle, and she was thrown off balance.

  She tumbled, arms flailing as she struck the floor. The impact jolted through her shoulders and knocked the wind from her lungs. Shimmers of pain curled along her backbone.

  She groaned and was about to sit up when she realized she was moving. The lamp cord was still tangled around her leg, and she was being tugged along, dragged.

  She began to kick to free herself, but the cord, now forming a slip knot, was only drawn tighter. She tried to look downward to figure out what was pulling the cord, but she could see nothing in the darkness. Something told her there was nothing to be seen.

  On her back it was difficult to find traction. She tried to dig her fingers into the floor at her sides, but the wood was hard and slick.

  She skidded in a quick slide, past the desk in the direction of the fallen lamp, toward the shattered glass. When she realized that, she began to struggle harder, and tears came to her eyes as she thought about the razor sharp slivers. She hadn't wanted them in her feet, yet now they would . . .

  Jagged edges striped her legs. Stinging sensations pulsed through her nerve endings, and she was aware of the warmth of the blood flowing from her. The backs of her thighs were ripped open as if small cat claws were being raked across her flesh.

  The hem of her gown was pushed upward, exposing more flesh. Tiny glass slivers were soon embedded. She screamed as a large shard cut through her panties and gouged a chunk of meat from her buttocks. She gritted her teeth, trying to prepare for the pain she knew would follow. The streaks up her back were quick, narrow, parallel lines that shot up to her shoulders. Pain hammered at her brain.

  By the time her head reached the area where the glass had been, most of it had been absorbed by her body, so only a few tiny fragments remained to stick in her scalp.

  She was drawn only a few inches farther before the movement stopped and she was left lying there, her own blood soaking her gown and running onto the slick floor. The cord went limp and dropped to the floor with a light tap.

  For a few moments, Althea lay still, her heartbeat a scatter gun, her breathing coarse and labored. The pain was not acute, but terror was ablaze within her. She could make no sense of what had happened. Tears streamed down across her cheek as she rolled over onto her side and began to touch her back.

  The worst gash was the one on her buttock. Otherwise she had only minor sliver punctures and scrapes. She touched the deep wound and found her hand covered in blood. It was going to require stitches, and that was going to be embarrassing at the emergency room. It was as if some cruel joke had been played, as if some twisted sense of humor had made her the brunt of a cruel prank.

  She wept, because above all she felt violated.

  ~*~

  When Tanner answerd his door and saw Danube, his mouth dropped open. "What do you want?"

  "A word."

  The writer remained in the doorway, blocking the entrance with his body.
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  " You upset the hell out of Gabrielle."

  Danube looked down at the porch planks beneath his dark shoes rather than display anger. He was weary of explaining. When he looked back at Tanner he had squelched some of his frustration.

  "If you'll let me talk with you for a little while …"

  A wisp of a breeze swept down under the cave of the house, bringing a feeling of dampness and chill.

  "Inside," Danube added. He'd spent enough hours under uncomfortable conditions.

  ~*~

  They sat in living room armchairs, facing and eyeing each other.

  "Where the hell do you come from?" Tanner asked.

  "Far away."

  "So what do you want here?"

  "Something unusual happened.”

  “How do you know that?"

  "I have to know."

  "Why are you so damned mysterious? Did you have something to do with this?"

  "I've come only to help," he said without inflection, bored. "Something dark has come here, Mr. Tanner."

  The imperceptible accent flared in Danube's voice. "Who I am does not matter, and you probably would not believe my answer. What matters is this: what is happening has to be identified and dealt with."

  "Heaven's upset, probably about her mother's divorce," Tanner said. "That's all. Don't come at me with some kind of mumbo jumbo about dark spirits."

  "You were there. Did it appear to be something which could be explained within your usual perception of reality?"

  " No, I can't explain it, but that doesn't make it something supernatural."

  "The forces behind it are what make it something beyond the normal realm. The child is under spiritual attack. I would not have been sent here if some disturbance in the spiritual fabric had not been detected."

  "Detected by whom?"

  "The order I serve, The Order of St. Marius. A circle of nuns once sanctioned by the Vatican, now serving on their own, forgotten by most.”

  “What do they do?"

  "Struggle to keep the powers and principalities of darkness from interfering in the human realm. It is a difficult task, insurmountable. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

  Tanner laughed. "What did you do, slip out of the mental institution in Penn's Ferry?"

  "Your tact escapes you, but I have been called worse, Mr. Tanner. A time far back might have had me exacting retribution. I'm too weary for that now. I need your help. Tell me what I must do to convince you. I don’t have time for trial and error."

  "You're sincere as hell, aren't you?”

  "I am."

  " Unbelievable."

  "You deal in mysteries, Mr. Tanner. You put together pieces of puzzles. This is the same. It is just that some of the pieces lie in corners where you might not otherwise look."

  "What do you think is going on?"

  "Somehow, or in some way, something has come into contact with the child. Something from the other side, the spirit world."

  "Ghosts?"

  "I do not suspect spirits of the dead."

  "Then who or what?"

  "There are many things out there. I will need your help to establish contact with Mrs. Davis. She is resistant.”

  Tanner's eyes grew skeptical again. "How do I know you're not some kind of pedophile trying to get to her kid? Crazier schemes than this have been cooked up."

  "I have lived a long time. There was a point when I indulged in vices, though they were far more conventional than you’re implying. That is past. I have sworn an oath to the sisters. If I were driven by lust I could find ways to indulge myself without concocting elaborate ruses to lead me to little girls."

  Tanner's eyes were still filled disbelief.

  "I cannot blame you for not trusting me," Danube said. "We must talk for a while. Give me information. We will worry about convincing you of the other matters later."

  "What motivates you?" Tanner persisted. "Why this commitment if you're not really a priest."

  Again the breath sighed heavily from Danube's lungs. "My father betrayed a friend once. I've spent most of my existence trying to atone for that."

  The silence followed, finally giving way to Tanner's voice: "I don't know what I can tell you that will be of value."

  "What did you see when the child was attacked? Were there any unusual smells? Sounds?"

  "How do you know I was there? How do you know everything?"

  "I thought we were beyond that."

  "Okay. I was there. Smells, sounds? Just her screams. We were talking, I think. Heaven just started spinning around. There was nothing there, but her clothes tore. Cuts started appearing. It was like something invisible was making swipes at her with a blade."

  "Did you hear anything?"

  "Just her screaming."

  "Had she given any indication of anything else unusual?"

  "I think she had some kind of nightmare after she was over here the other night. Her mother said the Gnelfs had been preying on her mind."

  Danube held up a hand to halt his speech. "Gnelfs? What are Gnelfs?"

  "Cartoon characters, the story is that they're nomads, half-gnomes and half-elves. Glorified elves really. Not something you'd think a child would normally be frightened about."

  "She has what? Seen these on television?"

  "Yeah. They have books about them too."

  "And before this incident she was frightened of the characters?"

  "For some reason."

  "Do you have something that shows these things?"

  "I tossed the disks. Let me see if I have something." He riffled stacks of magazines until he found an issue of Time that pictured the little characters in an upper-corner inset on a cover featuring Tom Cruise.

  Inside a feature in the television section profiled the creators, a couple of young men in their twenties, who worked at a studio in Hollywood, maintaining their individuality even as the popularity of their creations climbed.

  Danube studied the various illustrations, his red eyebrows wrinkling as his blue eyes scanned the two-page spread.

  "They certainly do not look frightening," he said.

  "Does that give you any insight into what you need to know?"

  "I need to talk to the mother and the child."

  Tanner threw up his hands. "I don't know about that. I mean Gab and I haven't known each other that long. I kind of thought something had sparked there, but she wants to devote herself to getting the child well. She kind of pushed me out tonight."

  “She cannot handle this crisis alone. She will need support. The people she turns to for help will not be prepared."

  "You're the only one that can help, right? But she doesn't trust you, and she doesn't know me that well. How do you expect me to get you in to talk to her?"

  "You have to try," Danube said as he rubbed his beard, smoothing it down over his jaws. "If you don't it might be too late."

  Chapter 9

  Gabrielle stood in the doorway for a long time, peering over at Heaven's still form. The child seemed to be resting well now, at last. Satisfied she would not be disturbed, Gabrielle walked back into the living room

  With the TV turned down, she flipped past newscasters, romance website promos, old movies, talk shows and fake talk shows on how to combat cellulite. None of it looked interesting. She rested her head, wondering if she would be able to sleep if she tried. Her temples were throbbing, and her vision was blurring.

  Standing, she clicked off the television. No way could she follow a plot even if she landed on something she wanted to see. Yet somehow she knew if she lay down she would be wide awake again, worried and restless. Instead of walking back to the bedroom, she headed toward the kitchen. Perhaps warm milk would weave whatever magic it offered. She opened the refrigerator, took the carton from the shelf, and filled a glass which went into the microwave.

  ~*~

  Heaven awoke abruptly, snatched from quiet slumber. As she came awake she felt her hair being yanked, and her head twisted painfully to one side.
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br />   She looked up into the eyes of the Gnelf Master whose fist was tangled in her locks. He bent toward her, his leering face only a few inches from her own.

  "'Lo, girly," he said through his grin. The foul reek of his breath seeped out through his yellow teeth. She wanted to turn her head as the smell gagged her, but he held on too tightly.

  "Lot of people have been by to talk to you, haven't they?"

  "You hurt me."

  He pulled her hair tighter. "Oh? You were hurt? It could be worse, a lot worse, little bitch. A lot worse."

  Her face showed him her fear, and he began to laugh, and behind him his followers joined in the laughter, a chorus of grunts and heaves, like pigs gagging.

  "We hurt that whore that came in here asking questions. We could have hurt anybody we wanted. Your mommy if we'd chosen. It was just easier to get the other bitch. She was alone, like you are now. We can do anything we want to."

  "No."

  "Oh, yes. Yes." He tugged at her hair, bending her sideways over the edge of the bed so that the stitches ached in her wounds.

  "Want me to rip you inside out?"

  "No!"

  "Want us to rip your momma inside out?"

  "Nooooo!"

  With his free hand he brought the sickle around and raked it across the pillow at Heaven's side. The fabric of the case split open with a harsh ripping sound, and the tip of the blade plunged down into the interior with a belch of escaping air.

  It was an old feather pillow, and as he yanked the sickle upward it burst open, the small feathers spraying into the air in a sudden white cloud.

  They fluttered upward then began to rain down, snowflakes. Tears filled Heaven's eyes as the Gnelfs standing around the bed began to laugh.

  "That could have been you," the Gnelf Master said. "Except when you rip a little girl open it's all red and slimy. The skin splits open and the blood runs everywhere."

  "No. Don't say that." She sobbed.

  “The blade hooks on her intestines and they come up out of her like snakes—did you know you have snakes inside you?—and then it pokes at her liver and splits it open so that it spits out this ugly stuff that's green—"