A Guardian of Innocents

by Jeff Orton

  “Oh, fuck me...” he whimpered.

  I turned my head towards him, said, “No thanks,” and stretched out my left arm and sent one muffled bullet zipping through the air. It landed perfectly in the center of his forehead, puncturing the leather and smashing the skull beneath. He stood there for a second, maybe two, looking so incredibly stupid, before he collapsed to the floor.

  Milton screamed something unintelligible. I think it was probably his son’s name. I wasn’t paying much attention.

  My right arm emerged from behind my back as if it were thinking on its own. My index finger pulled down on the trigger even before the UZI was aimed at the audience.

  The men began scrambling out of their seats. The ones with the best reaction time were ironically the first ones to get hit. My aim on the first sweep was a little high, and only those standing upright were struck, but that included Milton, whose white vest exploded with red bullet holes.

  I’m guessing I killed, or at least mortally wounded, half the men on the second sweep, as my arm moved from left to right. My mind was so gone, enthralled by the bloodlust. I didn’t even feel I was in control of my own body, of my own movements and actions.

  Two of the men raced up an aisle on my left and the UZI let loose another salvo of bullets in their general direction. The one closest to me went down, but I missed the other. He was opening a door at the back of the auditorium. I aimed at him, but the gun responded with only a dry clicking noise.

  I was already one clip down—son of a bitch!

  I raised Troll’s gun, but the guy was already out the door and gone. I moved forward to jump off the stage so I could chase after him, but I stepped on something which rolled beneath the weight of my foot and sent me crashing onto my back. It was a puddle of empty shells from the spent clip of the automatic weapon.

  I felt something crack on the fall and hoped it was only the lenses of the binoculars in my duffel bag. I got to my knees and fished out the second clip for the UZI from one of the lower pockets of my cargo pants, not hearing a damn thing because the ringing in my ears sounded like the piercing whistle of a tea kettle. As I was fumbling to get the first clip out of the gun, another man got up from the floor behind the second row of seats and made a break for the door.

  I snatched the pistol from the floor and unloaded it on him. Being temporarily deaf, I only knew the gun was firing by the insignificant baby kick it produced with each round. All the shots missed except one. It nailed him in the back of the knee. And now the gun with the silencer was empty.

  In the space of about a half-second, I contemplated retrieving Da Vinci’s weapon and decided against it. I was losing too much precious time as it was, and I had a survival knife in my bag if I ran out of ammo. My only challenge was to find the guy who’d escaped; there would be no struggle in killing him. I knew this in my heart, my gut.

  The man with the wounded knee was moaning as he tried to crawl his way up the aisle to the same door his predecessor had left through. I got the second clip in the UZI, but not without great difficulty; my hands were trembling from the adrenaline shock. I got up and felt only a small twinge of pain in my lower back. I knew it would feel a great deal worse tomorrow.

  I jumped off the stage and fast-walked up to the hobbled man, who looked up at me with a red, tear-streaked face.

  “No! Get away from me!” he cried.

  He was thinking this was God’s punishment. He had watched last year. Last year, when the fourteen-year-old had been raped. Since then, on a regular basis, he even masturbated to the memory of it. And this was his punishment.

  I knew I had to conserve ammunition, so I gave the trigger only a very gentle squeeze as I leveled the UZI at his head. Blood spattered into the air in a fine mist as his face caved in.

  I was consumed by a sudden desire to take my knife and cut out every man’s throat to ensure no survivors. But my senses were detecting only the vaguest signs of life, and from only two men, one of which was unconscious. The other one I was pretty sure was drowning in his own blood from a punctured lung, and would be dead anyways in a minute, minute and a half.

  I bounded up the short steps of the navy blue carpeted aisle with an almost fully loaded UZI and went in search of my stray quarry. I went through the door and found myself in another gothic tunnel, this one a long straightaway. I felt as though I would pass out, but I knew deep down this was one of those rare occasions when the mind is explicitly sovereign over the body, telling it what it will and will not do without compromise.

  He made it back into the house. Was he calling the police?

  No... He was too afraid they would ask him why he had been in the theater. What had everyone been there to see? The impression I was getting was that he had opted to either flee the house or find a hiding spot to wait out the onslaught. Driving wasn’t an option for him, though I couldn’t tell why.

  I broadscanned the area as soon as I emerged from behind another sliding two-way mirror which was located in what I assumed was one of the guest bedrooms. My gift was telling me the man (name as yet unknown) had flown downstairs in search of a hiding place, silently cursing himself for not taking his own car to the party. Seems he had bummed a ride from a friend and had watched that friend take two bullets to the chest. This man hadn’t thought to grab the car keys from out of his friend’s pants pocket before escaping the theater but now wished from the depths of his miserable soul that he’d possessed that foresight. He’d been too busy running for his life to think of details.

  I was working my way towards him, carefully probing every corner of the house. The Halloween decorations were all over the living room and dining room. There were the typical spider webs in the doorways, a Frankenstein head sitting in the middle of a table full of snacks and a plastic hand sticking out of a bowl of candy corn.

  But then I saw something truly peculiar in one of the many wall mirrors of the house. I was stepping quietly through a hallway that connected the game room to the living room, when my reflection stopped walking beside me, and then just stood there... looking at me as though I should stop as well.

  A blonde haired guy who looked like me and was dressed like me was pointing towards something. His black face paint glimmered in the soft, dim light of the house; there were streaks where some of it had rubbed off. I noticed he wasn’t wearing the same pullover hat I’d brought with me. I reached up and discovered it was gone, probably slipped off when I fell.

  My reflection’s blonde locks looked wickedly contradictory on top of all that black. Though I stood where I was, my reflection walked up to the mirror towards me and placed one hand on the glass. With his other he pointed towards the kitchen and dining room area of the house.

  Suddenly the image metamorphed into a face I hadn’t seen in years, the black face paint quickly melting away. I wasn’t surprised to see it was the same ghostly specter that had appeared to me three times before. He smiled at me then. A big smile, gleeful.

  I heard his voice echo in my head, though the image’s mouth seemed hardly to move, like a ventriloquist. “If you allow, I can assist you.”

  I didn’t know what I should say. Stupefied, I only asked, “How?” with a hushed voice.

  “Just say yes, and I’ll show you.”

  I had a bad feeling in my gut about that offer, like someone had just offered me a milky white glass of water that smelled of chemicals.

  “Trust me,” his voice spoke up again, “You would be in prison right now getting your ass shanked if I hadn’t intervened last time. By the way, who do you think it was that kept turning the power back on every time you blew the breaker while you were trying to fry that guy’s nutsack?”

  I had no way of knowing if his words were true. But then I thought of how I’d found my truck the night of our last encounter.

  “Alright,” I answered, “Help me kill every man here. Help me free those kids. And while you’re at it, make sure the police never find out I was the one who did this. What do you want in return?�
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  “Only your trust,” he replied. His image then reverted back to my own reflection, a reflection that once again perfectly mimicked my movements. My hair was teased and matted. My eyes were wild, twitching. There were various droplets of blood on my face and clothes.

  I wondered for a few seconds if he might reappear, but then I remembered why I was in this mansion. My focus returned. I ran into the kitchen through a swinging door in the dining room and swept the place with an intense scan, searching for my prey.

  When I did this, a feeling of immense power enveloped me. The colors of the kitchen seem to sway and liquefy. I knew instantly where the man was hiding and I knew he was George Thorpe, a father of three children by two different women who had both divorced him for his adulterous ways. George was now praying to a God he had neglected his entire life, begging that I wouldn’t find him.

  I opened the cabinet doors below the kitchen sink and observed him cowering behind an assortment of overturned cleaning supplies. George’s squeal of surprise was comically high-pitched. He kicked some of the cleaning crap out at me, as if that might somehow fend me off.

  A box of dishwashing detergent spilled its contents onto the side of one of my shoes as I lunged in after him. I grabbed one of his pistoning legs by the ankle and hauled him most of the way out with a degree of strength that startled me. I knew I wasn’t this strong, even hawked up on adrenaline. Plus this guy had at least fifty pounds on me.

  George’s arm caught and wrapped around the thin piece of wood the two cabinet doors would latch onto when closed. How this was supposed to help him, I don’t know.

  Looking back, it would have been best if I’d just shot him then. Both he and I would have been spared a lot of horror. But at that moment I was filled with a perverse desire to look into his eyes as he died and softly whisper to him my reasons for ending his life.

  I yanked his ankle hard enough to make the thin piece of cabinet frame snap in his arms. He went sliding across the marble floor as though it were greased and crashed into the stainless steel refrigerator on the other side of the spacious kitchen.

  I set the UZI down on the counter and slid the duffel bag off my shoulder. Yes, I do realize now this was incredibly stupid, but I was so engrossed in the moment, my brain wasn’t working properly. My hand slipped inside the duffel bag and extracted the knife. It seemed to almost shine in the brighter lights of the kitchen.

  George’s eyes grew very wide as he pondered the blade, but then he noticed the temporarily discarded gun.

  “Think you’re fast enough to grab it before I start slicing?” I hissed.

  One drawback to speaking was George’s discovery of my approximate age. It occurred to him I was considerably younger, therefore possibly weaker. For a brief moment in time, he actually found his balls. He mulled over an idea about wrestling as he got up from the floor. Maybe he could get past me with minimal injury and claim the weapon lying behind me.

  But he looked at the serrated edge of my survival knife and the demon-possessed gleam in my eyes, and his little flicker of courage was snuffed. He decided it would be best to just run.

  My hand glided over the UZI—and it lifted up. The grip of the gun found my palm as though it were magnetized.

  “Holy shit!” I cried. I wanted so badly to see if I could do that again, but knew I had other pressing matters to attend to.

  I almost took George’s legs out from under him, but he was about a half-second too fast for me. The bullets blew away the bottom third of the swinging door as it swung back into the kitchen.

  I scanned for him as I rushed into the dining room. His mind was swimming in panic, and I relished the feel, the taste, of his fear. I could feel every cell of my body pulsing with energy. I believed without question that it was possible for me to jump through walls and fly up to the chandeliers if I so desired.

  I was back in the large, high-ceilinged living room and glanced to my right towards the foyer to see George unlocking the front door. I aimed the UZI, now a little afraid that he might actually get away. But as he opened the door, it was pulled back shut again by some unseen force. The locks turned back by themselves, shutting him back in. I stared in awe as even the little security chain curled up like a five-inch gilded snake and found its niche in the door. I didn’t think I caused this to happen, though. At least, it didn’t feel like I did.

  George backed away two steps, not believing what his eyes were telling him. He saw me in his peripheral vision and bolted for the stairs. He had made it to the second floor walkway when he came to a sudden halt and fell on his ass.

  I couldn’t see what he had seen until I made it over to the bottom step of the staircase and laid my hand on the golden banister. The second floor walkway was completely dark, the stairway was lit only by candles that rested in a few half-oval cubbyholes along the wall of the rising steps.

  The orange light of the candles danced in the darkness as I observed that the Phantom Stranger had decided to coalesce in front of a terrified George. He loomed over him like the Reaper come to collect a soul.

  But his clothes had changed somewhat. The apparition was now wearing an expensive black suit, probably Italian. Armani, Versace, some shit like that. There was a bit of color now as well. His button-down shirt was a deep shade of burgundy, but there wasn’t that much of it to see due to the double-breasted blazer he was wearing over it.

  His shoulder-length brown hair rested on his collar. He appeared perfectly solid, as though he had every right to exist in this material, corporeal world.

  The specter gazed down at me and smiled, his voice booming, “Jeshua, how wonderful to see you!”

  George was very aware that he was now trapped, and cringed when the man in black bellowed his greeting to me.

  “Allow me to assist you up the stairs,” the apparition said.

  I felt an invisible presence engulf me as I was lifted off my feet. It was almost like some kind of see-through gel that felt both alive and hungry. It filled up my mouth and nostrils and gathered me up into the air not by one centralized point (like my belt or collar or whatever) but carried my entire weight as though I were fragile and to be delivered with care. My body felt stiff and restricted, as though tied from head to toe like a mummy.

  I glided up the stairs towards them, gradually at first, then picking up speed as I joined them on the second floor. I was gently set down on my feet before them, and was granted control over my limbs again.

  “What the fuck! Oh man, what the fuck!” George cried over and over again. My eyes locked with his and I felt the bloodlust well up within me again.

  “I think it would be best to kill him now,” the apparition stated simply, as if pondering what to have for lunch later. It was then I noticed the necklace around his neck, a talisman of some sort. A bronze four-pointed star with a black gem in the center.

  George clambered to his hands and knees, attempting another escape, but the same invisible force that had elevated me up the stairs now fell upon George and threw him against the wall. He was pinned there with his arms and legs stuck out like an impaled insect in a laboratory. The impact knocked down a nearby hanging mirror, which fell to the floor with a loud crack.

  Never had I seen such ostentatious displays of the supernatural. I was dumbfounded.

  “So what are you waiting for?” the man in black asked, only the merest touch of impatience in his voice.

  My senses were all confused. I was suddenly unsure if this guy was one hundred percent guilty. Something in the back of my thoughts was trying to still the rage, trying to cork the volcano.

  “Did you know what you were going to see tonight? In that theater!” I snapped at him, “I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  “That’s not important, Jeshua,” the stranger answered for him, “He would have seen it, enjoyed it, and come back next year for an even more outlandish show.”

  I ignored him. My eyes remained locked with George’s. He was too terrified to even attempt speaking. He
was thinking this felt just like a ride at the state fair, one of those rides that spins around and glues you to its circular wall as the floor drops out. The only thing holding you to the wall is a law of physics known as centrifugal force.

  “I...” he gasped, something was choking him. In his thoughts, I heard all the guys at his office making some vague jokes about last year’s party, but none of them seemed to have the guts to come out and say what specifically went on at this so-called annual spectacle. The only thing George had been able to figure out for sure was that it was something sexual. This was his first year as a senior partner at the Law Offices of Milton & Associates, and he had yet to celebrate his first Halloween after-party.

  Out of breath, I whispered, “He didn’t know kids were gonna be involved.”

  The apparition sighed, “Guess it’s up to me now.”

  With that, George’s head whipped around, turning more than three quarters of the way around his neck, which snapped with a muffled crunch. The spirit released him, and he fell to the floor dead.

  “Time’s about up, I’m afraid,” the specter said, “The police are already en route. It’s unfortunate you didn’t have the benefit of a soundproof studio this time. That maid you saw heard all the gunplay... Oh, well. The key is inside Mr. Da Vinci’s jacket pocket. Inside, on the left.”

  I should have been more upset with George’s death, but my thoughts were more preoccupied with his comment about the cops already being dispatched.

  “What about the other girl? Tessa? Where was she taken?”

  “There’s no time for her,” he responded, an annoyed coldness to his voice, “She’s already been loaded into that van you saw approaching before you came in. Those men are very well armed. You wouldn’t stand a chance against them anyways. Go now. Save the ones you can, and get out of here.”

  I found myself trusting this ghost-guy less and less. I stretched out my senses and found I could not only feel Tessa and the two men on the other side of the house, I could see them as well. The image was blurred in places, but I could fuckin’ see them! This being had somehow enhanced my telepathic gift ten-fold.