“It is a long story.”
“I have time,” Joseph said.
“I can tell you that the child is special,” von Straker replied. “Somehow my Führer knew that he would be born here and he sent me to retrieve him. But I have decided not to take him back to my homeland.”
“Then what do you intend to do with him?”
“I had a dream,” the German officer said. There was a long pause where he seemed to be recalling the dream. When he resumed he spoke softly. “Something to do with the future. Something terrible . . . I cannot adequately explain it.” He stopped again, this time staring at Joseph. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Have we met before?”
“I cannot see how,” Joseph said, and then he too hesitated. There was something in his psyche from the long night past where he’d lain buried in sand dreaming of the apocalypse. He shook his head to sort it out, but it was useless, everything was all muddled.
“No matter,” von Straker said. “I have decided that the child cannot be allowed to live.”
Joseph took a tentative step closer. He’d been having similar thoughts, of course—his experiences inside the tomb, his own prophetic dreams, coupled with the note Anwar had left on the seat of the car were enough to make him believe that something beyond the norm was at play here.
“I will not hesitate to kill you,” von Straker said.
“Tell me of your dream,” Joseph asked suddenly.
Von Straker said nothing.
“Please,” Joseph prodded. “I would very much like to hear about it.” The eastern horizon was brightening now and he could see the German officer more clearly. The man looked disheveled and haggard, his eyes haunted. He held the mewing child protectively against his body as the hand that held the gun trembled.
“I do not have time to tell stories,” von Straker said. “Tell me why I should not just kill you here and now?”
“I don’t think you want to kill me,” Joseph said. “If so then I would already be dead. And I do not believe you are capable of killing the child.”
Von Straker said nothing.
“We are the only survivors.” Joseph said. “The child needs us to protect it.”
“I told you, I have come here to kill the child.”
“But you find it nearly impossible to do so. Don’t you?”
Von Straker licked his lips and chanced a quick glance down at the child. Joseph saw sweat dripping from his brow. “He is wearing the medallion,” von Straker said.
“Yes, and now it is too late . . . he is in your thrall.”
Von Straker looked back up at Joseph, his eyes haunted and confused. “I have seen a vision of the future.”
“You saw something,” Joseph replied. “You cannot be certain that it was of the future.”
“If it was, then the child needs to die.”
“Go ahead then, kill him,” Joseph said. “I will watch you.”
Von Straker stared at Joseph and did not move. “What should we do?”
“You should go back to your Führer, tell him what happened here. Tell him that there was no child.”
Von Straker gave his head a rueful shake. “I would not be believed. My failure would end in a firing squad. I can never go home again. I am now and forever a man without a country.”
“Go. Leave the child with me,” Joseph said. “I will see that he is taken care of. It is the best way.”
The gun recoiled in von Straker’s hand and Joseph saw the flame lick from the barrel at the same moment he felt the searing pain of the bullet as it entered his chest. He collapsed on the ground and knew no more.
Von Straker set the child gently on the sand and quickly stripped the dishdasha robe from Joseph’s body. Discarding his military uniform he dressed in the robe.
Later that afternoon von Straker flagged a fishing vessel sailing upriver toward Karnac. Knowing English as he did, he successfully passed himself off as a British citizen who’d lost his wife and other members of his archaeological expedition in a great sandstorm.
The fishing party took them to Karnac and from there von Straker made his way to Cairo where he and the child eventually slipped out of the country and made their way to the United States.
As World War II raged and the country was busy with the war effort, nobody gave a second glance to the man and child traveling together across the country, and not a soul noticed as the pair vanished somewhere deep in the middle of America’s heartland.
Epilogue
Present Day
“Senator Grant? Senator Grant? Please, may I ask you a few questions?” The young female reporter followed the distinguished looking gentleman with the full head of white hair up the steep steps of the capital building, her heels clicking audibly on the hard granite surface.
After several moments the senator finally stopped, turned and faced the young woman. He was an exceedingly tall man. His shoulders were wide inside the jacket of his immaculately tailored Armani suit. His belly was flat, his body finely sculpted. His face was unlined and extraordinarily handsome for a man of his age—that which no one had ever been able to determine.
His expression was one of mild amusement. “And what may I do for you today, Ms. Cole? Ms. Allison Cole, is that correct?” There was a barely perceptible smile on his full lips; his tone was mild, only slightly patronizing.
The reporter blushed, ignoring the denigrating tone, flattered that the handsome senator had remembered her name. Quickly regaining her composure she said, “Rumor has it that you are planning to make a run for president. Is that correct, Senator Grant?”
“There are rumors all over Washington,” the senator said. His mild tone remained intact. He made a wide sweep with his arm as if to take in the entire town. “It is what this place feeds on. That and lobby money. It is time for those things to change.”
“Can I take that as an affirmative then, Senator? Are you going to throw your hat into the ring?”
“Tell you what, Ms. Cole,” the senator said. “Why don’t you accompany me to my office and we’ll talk there.”
Allison Cole could barely believe what she’d just heard. “On the record?” she said.
“Absolutely,” the senator replied. “You may print everything I say.”
The senator’s office was spacious and luxuriously furnished. There were wide windows overlooking the city and the Potomac River beyond. It was a glorious early spring day and Washington was resplendent in cherry blossoms.
“I love the sun,” he said, standing at the window, basking in it. “It is nearly a religion to me.”
Normally the outer office would have been abuzz with activity, staffers and lobbyist and such, but today all was quiet. Allison Cole had purposely picked this day, which was a Saturday, to corral the senator and try to get him to talk. Others had tried and failed, but Allison remained diligent, calling his office at least twice a day for the past three months and cornering him whenever she found the opportunity. Up until now the senator had ignored her doggedness. Now . . . well, now she was absolutely heady with anticipation.
The buzz around Washington was that Grant, if he chose to run, had enough star power to go the distance. He was handsome, soft spoken, articulate and gracious. And the issues were clear enough. The senator had a consistent voting record and his constituents liked him. Recent poling had shown that the general populace liked him as well. He was neither radical right nor left, but clearly in the center of most issues. The perfect candidate to bring consensus to Washington.
What wasn’t clear, and what Allison wanted to know, was a little more about the senator’s personal life, which, for the most part he kept tightly under wraps.
“You wish to know more about my . . . personal life. Isn’t that correct, Ms. Cole?” the senator said turning from the window. “Sit, won’t you?”
Allison took a seat, stunned. It was almost as if the senator had read her mind. “Yes,” she said. “I, and most of America, would very much like to know more about you.”
The sen
ator proffered his hands, palms up, in a gesture of acquiescence. “Everyone knows I grew up in the American heartland, Ms. Cole,” he said. “My mother died in child birth. I was raised by a loving father who worked very hard and took great care to see that I went to the best schools and had every opportunity to succeed.”
“Yes, senator, correct. But nothing is known about your family before that time. What do you know of your ancestors?”
“Absolutely nothing, Ms. Cole. My family were immigrants. As you are well aware, America is a nation of immigrants. Besides I do not concern myself with the past. The future is what is important, not the past. The past cannot hurt you.”
Allison Cole cleared her throat. “You’re right of course, senator. But as you know, America has an insatiable appetite for information about their public figures. Celebrity is America’s favorite pastime.”
“I am hardly a celebrity, Ms. Cole.”
“But you are a public figure and if you should decide to run for president, you will be a celebrity.” Allison Cole smiled flirtatiously. “Trust me on that.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when and if we come to it.” Senator Grant said.
“What about your life now, senator?”
“You want to know about my love life, isn’t that correct?”
Allison blushed. “I think every woman in America would very much like to know about your love life, Senator Grant.”
“There’s not much to tell, I’m afraid. I’ve never married and have no children.” His voice was so soothing Allison nearly swooned. “As far as the women I date, well, that is a private matter.”
The senator was in the process of loosening his tie and unbuttoning his collar button. Allison sat forward in anticipation, wondering what on earth the senator was up to. From beneath his shirt he produced a large golden amulet. An edge of it caught the sun and beamed a golden light into Allison’s eyes. Her face went suddenly slack. At the top of the amulet she saw the symbol of the sun with its rays spreading out over a great bird of prey on top of which rested the head of a man. Leaning in closer she noticed that the face on the symbol actually resembled the senator. No, she thought. Impossible. Must be my imagination. Her eyes trailed down to the lower half of the medallion and her mouth fell open in surprise. Oh my God. Is that a swastika?
“Beautiful, isn’t it, Ms. Cole?”
“Ye . . .yes,” she stammered. “It’s very beautiful. Where did you get such a thing?”
“Let’s just say it was a gift from someone very dear to me.”
“Wow,” she said, but something was wrong. She felt all tingly, and her brain seemed to be going numb. Allison tried to make sense of the moment but it was no use. She could no longer make sense of anything. She stared at the senator mesmerized and imagined his face changing—catlike, slits for eyes, demonic. She tried to shake it off, but the hypnotic feeling held her transfixed. A million suns exploded inside her brain and she felt the heat consume her as cities and forests incinerated. Her bladder relaxed and she was only vaguely aware of the warm wetness spreading out beneath her.
By the time she left the senator’s office she was satisfied that she had the story she’d been dreaming about for months.
The senator was destined to be the greatest president in the history of the United States. His campaign slogan would be:
An immortal Breath of Life for the American People.
The Hero of Elm Street
“Jimmy Coombs was the undisputed hero of Elm Street,” Luella Coombs told her daughter-in-law and her three grandchildren on that stormy October night in 1956. “He was my husband’s son, but I loved him as if he was more than that, I loved him as if he was more than a step-son who happened to be the same age as me. What we shared is hard to put into words. I don’t believe I ever felt quite the same way about anybody before or since. Jimmy was a very special person in my life.”
The three children, Maggie, Eddie and David, anticipating a story, stared up at their grandmother with wide, expectant eyes, while Frannie, their mother, abruptly dropped the knitting she’d been working on into her lap. She was looking at her mother-in-law a little anxiously.
“Good Lord in heaven, Frannie. It wasn’t like that,” the older woman burst out, seeing the distressed look on her daughter-in-law’s face. “Not like that at all. What on earth are you thinking, for goodness sake?”
Frannie did not answer Luella’s question, just continued to stare stonily at the older woman. That’s when Luella Coombs threw her head back and began to laugh uproariously. A voluminous flood of tears spilled from her eyes and ran down her seamed cheeks. The woman guffawed heartily, her large-bosomed chest hitching up and down, her old Boston rocker working back and forth a mile a minute, creaking at every seam and joint. The children, not having the slightest idea why their grandmother was laughing, watched her in puzzlement. After a time the old woman managed to get herself somewhat under control. She pulled her glasses from her face and dabbed at her wet cheeks and the corners of her eyes with the hem of her apron. “Oh my,” she said, barely able to stem another fit of laughter.
“Why do you cry when you laugh, Gram?” eight-year-old Eddie Coombs asked.
“Oh, let me see,” the woman replied. “Well, they tell me that laughing is nature’s way of healing all the heartaches this life has to offer. I’m not sure that’s true, but I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve got first hand experience with heartache. In my lifetime I’ve had my share.”
Eddie’s expression fell into a puzzled frown.
“But I’m done crying,” Luella said a little too quickly. “And a person who doesn’t ever cry has got to find an outlet for his or her emotions. I do it by laughing.”
Eddie looked even more confused now. “Well, why don’t you cry?”
“I can’t, little Eddie. As much as I want to sometimes, I just can’t bring myself to do it. I suppose I got it all out of my system years ago. The heartaches are all gone now and good riddance to them. When you get to be my age all the things worth crying over have passed. There are only so many cries inside a person, you see. And after they’re all used up you cry only when you laugh.”
The boy nodded in understanding but Luella could see that he was just patronizing her, that he didn’t understand at all.
Frannie continued to stare stonily at the older woman, her mouth slack.
“Why are you so shocked?” Luella asked her. “Earl was my husband, and I loved him! You know that. There was never a man could compare with him, even though he was thirty years older than me. But Jimmy . . . Jimmy and me shared a different kind of love. It wasn’t exactly a brother and sister thing either, although I suppose that was a little bit of it. You know how siblings sometimes sense one another’s moods? Especially twins? Well, it was sort of like that with us. But Jimmy and I weren’t related in the physical sense. We were linked in a special way instead, in a way that can’t be explained in ordinary terms. It’s a bond that only happens to a person once in a lifetime, if they’re lucky. You see, Jimmy and I were able to sense one another’s thoughts and moods, even from across great distances. I guess you could say we were joined at the soul. And I know this to be true, because that joining remained long after Jimmy had passed out of this life.”
“Is this a ghost story, Gram?” Eddie asked, his eyes lighting up with anticipation, but his grandmother didn’t answer him. She just sat there rocking, a faraway look in her eyes, a fond little smile creasing the corners of her seamed mouth.
“Mom,” Eddie said, turning to his mother now. “Is this a ghost story? Gram said she was gonna tell us a ghost story.”
“I’m not sure this is a good night for a ghost story,” Frannie said, looking nervously toward the window.
That very morning Hurricane Camille had thundered ashore in the Carolinas and was now roaring mightily northward, destroying most everything in her path. And although the worst of the storm hadn’t yet reached the coast of Maine, it was on a collision course, and the wind was already bl
owing at gale force. More than two hours had passed since the electricity had gone out. Candle flames and hurricane lanterns fluttered and guttered in and around the shadowy kitchen where Gram, Frannie and the three children had taken refuge near the comforting warmth of the old cast-iron cook-stove. Outside the wind pushed the sea thunderously against the headland and tree branches lashed at the windows like cold, dead fingers.
“Nonsense!” Gram Coombs snapped. “This is a great night for a ghost story. The best kind of night, I suspect.” She sat forward in her old rocking chair and leered down at the children who were congregated in a semi-circle at her feet. “Besides, this isn’t just any old ghost story, this one’s true.”
“Is it really?” ten-year-old Maggie asked, her eyes sparkling with wonder.
“Now don’t you go scaring these children with your nonsense, Ma,” Frannie said, going back to her knitting. “I don’t want to be up all hours of the night comforting nightmares.”
“Lord in heaven, Frannie, this one’ll tickle their funny-bones more’n anything else.”
Frannie shot the older woman a distressed look. She’d stopped wondering years ago where her husband, Dan had gotten his streak of mischief from. In her day, Gram Coombs had probably been a worse hellion than any of her kids. The evidence was there in those sparkling green eyes and that mischievous little smirk.
“I sure wish Dan was here,” Frannie said, suddenly missing her husband very much. “I warned him the storm was coming, but he wouldn’t listen. I can’t believe he went driving all the way up to that damned Air Force Base on that damned stupid electrical job with that shyster he works for. Lord knows, they’ll be caught right in the middle of this mess.”
“Ain’t gonna do no good to worry yourself sick over it, dear,” Gram said. “Dan can take care of himself. He’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
“I’m not worried so much about Dan as I am about us,” Frannie said, but Luella suspected this was a lie. Her love for Dan was more like obsession, Gram knew.
Servants of Darkness (Thirteen Creepy Tales) Page 21