by Ira Robinson
Especially as obsessively paranoid as the man was.
Carver moved carefully through. He didn't think Malachi would mind his nosing, but there could be traps for those unsuspecting and unwary.
One door served a closet. When he opened it, a couple of brooms and a mop fell forward and he had to brace himself to catch them without dropping the bit of pizza left in his hand. He shoved everything back inside and peered deeper into the shadows but saw nothing but gunk and junk.
Another door led into a hall with two more doorways along the side and one at the end. He slipped into the hall and paced through the thicker carpet laid there. His sneakers were silent beyond a soft shuffle as he came to the first.
It was closed, the wood painted black in stark contrast to the rest of the hallway, the small bulb above, recessed into the ceiling, barely cutting into the matte paint. There were runes, as well, though, mirroring the light with their white, and some of them looked vaguely familiar as Carver squinted. He could not pinpoint their meanings or origins, but knowing Malachi as he did, they were likely something esoteric.
He peered at the latch, looking for any sign it had been trapped in some way, but there was nothing; only the glint of the glass knob.
Gingerly, Carver reached out a finger, bracing his legs to back away or run if he sensed any sort of reaction from the knob when he touched it. But his flesh meeting the surface gave no more sensation than normal.
He shrugged and put his full hand over it, turning it slowly until it swung wide on the hinges.
The room beyond was as darkly painted as the door, with more of the figures lining it in even intervals. Unlike the outer exit, however, the runes inside emitted a subtle and soft white glow, matching the paint they were composed of.
They shimmered oddly, the pattern reminding Carver of a computer monitor and the flickering they would sometimes make when they refreshed, sliding from the ceiling to the floor before dissipating and starting again at the top.
A few of these, too, seemed familiar to him, but he could not place where he had seen them.
"What the heck, Malachi?" he muttered, wishing his friend was there to explain.
Maybe it had to do with the portals Malachi had a talent of creating, or relating to another of his abilities. The man had power in ways unfathomable to Carver, proving time and again his resilience and grasp of things Carver could only vaguely comprehend, even as thick into the esoteric as he was forced to be.
He didn't step in, unsure what it might be for or do to him if he did. Instead, he backed away and closed the door again cutting off the shimmering of the runes and easing the slightly sickening feeling he hadn't realized was building inside of him until it was removed.
The next was a bedroom, Malachi's own.
Carver's unease upon entering such a private sanctuary of his friend tweaked him with guilt, but he stepped into it nonetheless, glancing over the made bed, the end table and lamp that had never been turned off, and the waving curtains in front of the windows Malachi had left open the last time he was here. The room was cooler than the rest of the house, the heat seeping away in the day since his companion was murdered.
He ran a hand across the scars on his arm, shifting it to his neck and pressing against the skin there as he took the last bite of food and pulled himself out of the chamber. If there was something in there Malachi wanted him to see, Carver hadn't noticed it, and being in there felt like an invasion of privacy beyond what he should be doing.
The end of the hall held more promise anyhow.
He opened it and flipped on a light switch near the portal that had a subtle glow of green, phosphorescence powering it. Two lamps kicked on, their shine muted by the Tiffany shades perched atop them.
They shed across shelves of books, the dark wood reflecting with lacquered gloss, with more than Carver had seen outside of a library. His own at home could not come close to the collection his friend had gathered.
Leather spines, hardback volumes, pulp paperbacks, all types awaited a touch, to be picked up and gazed into, their words desperately wanting to be read. Amid them all, objects Carver could not recognize were scattered around, in an unknown order.
Small boxes, some bearing the labels of cheap cigars and antique auto parts, tiny figurines in shapes both human and not, dozens, perhaps, of things that could be artifacts Malachi collected.
A desk stood guard over all of it, sitting in the center with a comfortable looking chair bound in leather as old as some of the books Carver spotted pulled away from it. Another chair was covered with more volumes, stacked as high as the rear would allow them to go. The desk, too, had some but was dedicated more to papers with handwriting Carver recognized as Malachi's own.
He carefully made his way to the center of the room, plopping himself into the chair and sighed as the cushion held him upright. It was glorious, and Carver could imagine the time Malachi must have spent with his back resting against it, his full form relaxing in the comfort.
He glanced around, the white paint of the walls contrasting with the darker shelves, the heavy carpeting in this room deeper than that of the rest of the house. Malachi built the shelves special for himself; they didn't seem to be ones there already. Though, with the place being a a home for a pastor of a church, they could have been.
The books seemed in no particular order, but most of them were aged. Dust coated everything in a a dull mat. For all he could tell, the subjects in the room had belonged to Malachi before he left the priesthood, collected for many years
He shifted the papers before him, some containing notes about things his friend had thought of, seeming random scraps of his mind. There was even a grocery list, though it, too, was at the edge of the desk and coated with a thin layer of grime. Carver blew it, the motes flooding the room glittering in the soft white light of the lamp nearest him before fluttering out of sight.
A heavy fountain pen occupied a block of wood covered in ink, and was probably what Malachi used to write most of what Carver could see. It, like the venerable books around him, were an anachronism, a throwback to a period Malachi loved most, old days and former ways of thinking when people held beliefs in the unknown in higher regard than they did in modern times.
Fifteen minutes of shuffling and squinting at words that were hard to discern, he had no more to go on about what Malachi was trying to call him about than he had when he entered the room. No scribbled notes screamed "This Is It," or traces of his own name at all.
He rose, his legs slightly stiffened from sitting on it so long, his back regretting the move and calling out to return to the comforting grasp of the chair. He crossed to the shelves, his eyes tracing the lines of the spines.
There were many he could not read, written in languages he didn't recognize, though some could have been German or Latin. Most could have been more than fifty years old, their leather bindings darkened with age and disuse, and the paper within the covers yellowed and frayed.
The mustiness was thick, mildew and ancient days miring together and emitting into the confines of a room dedicated to knowledge.
But Carver didn't feel any wiser for standing in front of them, trying to absorb hope he could discern what the hell his friend wanted of him before he was killed.
His mind flicked to the body in the church, the remains of a man he once held close as a dear colleague, who had helped him through more muck and evil than anyone else, and bit back the tears that wanted to come.
No. Time to grieve later. Time for everything later.
Still, Carver stretched his hand up and ran it through his hair, the weight of the guilt he could not help feeling hard to let go. That Malachi died because of him Carver did not question. As much as Malachi had been involved with the war against the darkness, he was never directly a target for their ire.
That was reserved until he found something dire.
He sidled along the shelves, his eyes crossing the spines and titles. Dust and decay, a collection of ancient ways th
at seemed to have nothing to do with him or his quest to find Lisa.
He ran his fingers along some of them, wishing he could drain the knowledge contained in the pages through osmosis, to glean from the words the things he might need now or in the future. A person could study the books in this library for years, though, and still not touch everything the room had to offer.
One volume near the bottom of a shelf caught his eye. The muck caressing the spine of it was less than the others surrounding it, the spine reflecting the lamp light with its dark ruddy leather.
He pried it, the two nearest it falling into place as he drew it away. The tome was heavier than it showed, the pages thick. yellowed like much of the collection.
He carted it to the desk and laid it to rest on the wood, crossing to the other side to flop into the chair once more.
There was no title on this volume, its spine hand-crafted, it looked to Carver, hardened with age and disuse. A few cracks he did not notice before showed themselves as he dragged the cover open.
He flipped to a few other pages, his eyes catching the tips of the handwriting, in a style difficult for him to see through.
How old was this thing? A hundred years? More? Carver couldn't be sure, but it was entirely written by hand in an ink so aged it was faded in many places, and illustrations along the edges accompanied the words.
Malachi had pulled this out recently. It was, perhaps, one of the last things he read, from the way the dust on the rest of the shelves seemed to be placed. The messages, scribbled down by some scribe in days long past rambling without much context, randomly without a table of contents or rhyme.
Carver could understand why Malachi would want something like it though. Hand-drawn pictures of demons, angels, and more lined the thing everywhere. Some he recognized as beings he had seen for himself, but most could have been nothing more than the imaginations of someone who heard rumors of demons, legends, perhaps, of a creation they had no first-hand experience with, themselves.
Would they be able to even handle the sight of a true demon? Probably not.
He was impressed with the handling of it, especially in a book as old as this apparently was. All done by a single person, too.
A bookmark rested near the conclusion of the volume, hanging over the edge of the spine, decorated with tassels on the end. Carver flipped the pages of the text to the one marked, careful to avoid damaging the paper; its brittleness was troublesome to deal with.
More scribbles, the script hard to discern, faded as much as it was. There was a picture of a being with great wings, the feathers trailing to nearly feet-level with the being. Carver had run across similar drawings, sketches, in other chronicles, scanned and uploaded to the Internet.
Long hair and a halo accompanied the head of the angel, a familiar motif in a lot of paintings of the messengers of God, His warriors clad in armor shining the light of heaven in their own way.
The writing described the angel as being named Barachiel, giving the account of his actions on behalf of heaven. He was, according to the comments the anonymous scribe intoned, the defender of guardians, the one who watched over the guardian angels on their duties and kept them safe from harm or interference by demonic forces.
With the description was a prayer. Carver's eyes scanned it, the words of it in better condition than those around it.
"Oh powerful Archangel, Barachiel, filled with heaven's glory and splendor, thou art God's benediction. We, God's children, are placed under your protection and care. We are in a world filled with confusion and demonic influences. Let the joy of the Lord be our strength. Grant that, through thy loving intercession we reach our heavenly home. Sustain us and protect us, that we might have eternal peace and happiness. Amen."
Carver ran his fingers across the words once more before closing the book. A nice prayer, to be sure, enough for any supplicant before God to feel comforted by, especially in their darkest of times, but it did not make Carver blessed.
Maybe it was because he had no real use for angels. They were powerful, they had the ability in their hands to devastate the forces of evil, fueled by the light and life of God. What good did that do when it was never used?
The overt war between the charges of heaven and hell had been over long before Carver was born, perhaps before the first humans dared show their dirty faces outside their caves. They kept their noses out of everything at this point, coming out only when it was necessary and at God's behest.
Why did Malachi have the bookmark there? Maybe the thought of an interceding angels, someone able to protect and give succor, gave him some modicum of comfort.
Carver got none from the prayer. Angels he could take or leave. They did nothing for him. They were absolutely obedient to the will of God in all things, but they did not come down from their lofty perches and lend a hand to the ones on the front lines of the battle to save their perfect holy asses.
Carver was leading the fight, stuck between heaven and hell and doing the dirty work of the entities who should be there taking on these evil and vile forces, the darkness that, even now, threatened to overcome the world, and maybe would do it if his vision and dream had anything to say about it.
Where were they now? Where was this guardian of guardians to tell him where Lisa could be found? Where was he when Malachi was in the throes of death, murdered at the hands of something unspeakable, human or otherwise? This being, this angel on the page, was nothing more than that. A figure, a drawing, a transparent piece of the imaginations of some man crazy, a scribe with naught better to do than to waste his life dedicated to chronicling the downfall of the world one legend, one dream, one imaginary protector at a time.
Carver slammed the book closed, grimacing as the remainders of dust flurried through the air, tossed by the breeze of his vehemence.
He was tired of it. Tired of being caught in the middle of two groups of beings who used him. The forces of heaven were arrayed and standing guard at their precious gates while the demonic legions slavered, wolves among sheep, tearing apart the humanity God thought so wonderful He began a war because of them. And Carver? Carver was between them all, damned to the hell he was trying to clear a demon at a time.
Hell, the power he got came from a demon, not God, not some angel guiding his hand as he exorcised their enemies. Right? Where was God? Where was the fuel He provided?
No, he had no use for angels, guardians or otherwise. He was the only guard worth anything in this despicable fight.
If they couldn't take the chance to protect those who desperately needed it, they were not worthy of worship. That went for God, too. He was, after all, who started all of this. If it weren't for God, none of this would be happening, all for the sake of some Divine Plan that no one but Him could ever understand.
Hell, it was God who made it possible for Lisa to have gotten sick to begin with, setting into motion the life Carver now was forced to lead.
There was nothing in the text to give indication of what Malachi had in his mind when he called, no clue given for him to go on. Carver was, once more, allowed nothing, and his little girl was losing time.
He left the book on the desk and crossed the room to the shelves again, staring at the objects Malachi had collected. They could be useless, or they could contain power worthy of a fight, but Carver was unable to discern the usefulness of any of them.
There was no catalog, no inventory of what the items might be. That was a problem, because messing with magical artifacts and relics could lead to disaster if one had no idea what they were doing with them.
If nothing else, they may be good to trade for something he could really use.
Like an atomic bomb. That would solve everyone's problems real fast.
Jessup was awake by the time Carver returned to the living room, his head uplifted and sniffing as the human padded down the hall. Even in the dim light from outside, Carver could see he was better, but his eyes were still glazed slightly and the tremble in his moves was yet present.
Carver went to the refrigerator and grabbed out some raw meat and filled a bowl with water, returning to the animal with the items in tow.
Jessup hopped down off the lounge, his nose twitching at the scent of the food, and grappled with it in his jaws for only a moment before swallowing it down.
Most of the water was gone within minutes before Jessup lay back down next to the couch and drifted off to sleep.
If only Carver could rest so easily.
There was so much to do, and he had no clue how to start, taken from him faster than he could think of them. But he had to find his daughter. She was out there, somewhere, stuck in a place she could not get free from. He was as sure of that as he was of the scars on his soul.
He felt it in his bones. She was in danger, and every hour passed she was experiencing something terrifying.
He would not be able to move Jessup again for a while, and, for now, his body needed time of its own to recover more. They would rest a while.