Somewhere in the northern mountains
The moon rose over the darkening tops of the snowy mountains. The flame was slowly dying in the ashes of the fireplace in the small wooden hut.
The old man stood, his body shaking as if possessed over his creations. At last! He has finally done it! He has finished the task appointed to him by the stars. At last, maybe now, finally, at the eve of his years, he will have some peace.
“I've done it.” He murmured, looking over his creation, shining in the dying light of the fireplace. “I've finally done it! It’s finished!” He clapped his hands together, almost collapsing into the leather covered chair that stood behind him, exhausted but finally relieved.
“Father?” A young man by the name of William, no older than twenty, dressed in an old fashioned peasant clothing had carefully stepped into the dimly lit room.
The teen’s gaze caught the light from the dying fire, and settled on his old father, half lying there, sprawled over the leather chair.
“Are you all right?” William asked, silently stepping into the room, afraid to disturb the old man that sat in it. For years now the teen had learned to stay away from his father when he entered that chamber. His mission, whatever it was, had consumed him and not once did the young man beg the stars to rid his father from that burden of what he had to create.
“Oh…” The old man coughed. “Yes, I’m fine.” He said, groggily pulling himself up from the chair he was sitting on.
“Here, let me help you father.” William offered, landing the old man his hand to lean on. “Um…” He glanced out the cabinet’s dark window. “Look father, that’s a weird light to see during the night…The sun, had come down hours ago…” He mumbled, almost uninterested in the sight he was seeing but the old man’s reaction to his words was violent. He snapped his head towards the window, his eyes widening in fear.
“No… no…” He stuttered.
“Father?” William looked at him, confused.
“No!” The old man shook away his son’s hand and pushed him into the wall, down to the cupboard that stood there.
“What are you doing?!” William looked at his father, astonished as the old man opened a secret passageway in the cupboard. Carved into the stone behind the cabinet was a tunnel that the old man had dug out years ago just for this moment, a moment he prayed would never come.
“Father! What’s going on!?” William demanded but the old man ignored him. He quickly turned to the table he was working at and gathered the pile of hand written pages that was laying there, hurriedly thrusting them into his son’s hands.
“Guard it with your life!”
“What?!”
“Just stay there!” The old man ordered, pushing his son further into the hidden opening. “Whatever you do…whatever you hear, don't come out!” He said rapidly, his words practically toping one another.
“Run.” The old man whispered as he closed the door to the secret passage way in the face of his astonished son, knowing that he will not see him again in this life.
Seconds later, just as the old man got up from his crouched position the door to his small chamber was broken and his greatest enemy, the one that he was working so hard all these years to help defeat, stood before him, smiling brightly as his savage guard walked in.
“I have been waiting for you.” William heard his father say with a hard cold voice that he had never heard before.
“Good, then we will not waste our time in small talk. Hand it over old man.”
Another voice answered, smug and filled with confidence, one that William didn't know and never heard before.
“You will never wield it's power.” The old man warned.
“Well, it’s a good thing that I don’t need to.” The other man answered. Then, William heard a terrible noise, like the naked howl of a starved bloodhound, more terrible then any horrible terror filled banshee shriek that you might hear at night.
William's blood froze in his veins as he heard his father screaming. Then nothing, dead silence, as if everything and anything had died in the small house because of that awful shriek.
William held his breath. Perhaps, he hoped, the intruders had left the cabin.
He was just about to lean forward and press himself against the barrier of the secret door when that smug voice returned, closer than before.
“Search the place,” He ordered, “Kill anyone that you find, and then burn it down.”
William gasped. Surely, he did not mean what he said. He wanted to kill his father.
Then, before he could wallow further in his thoughts the smell of smoke and burned flesh filled his nostrils. His father was dead.
William held tightly to the pages entrusted to him by his father. He pushed himself away from the now singed doorway and down the tunnel, running away from the burning hut.
He ran until his feet had given out from underneath him. He fell on the hilltop, crying out into the night. He will never go back to that place again, never bury his father. He watched from the top of that dark mountain how everything he knew and loved burned down to the ground.
---
Miles away on the bank of a large lake, in a house too modern for the time it was built at, the smug gentlemen returned to the monsters that sent him. He was bearing the loot he had stolen from the man he watched killed by the beast that accompanied him.
“Do you have it?” The blood freezing voice asked as he entered the dark chamber of the foul monster.
“Yes, everything is here.” The well-dressed man shivered as he laid the three ruby set boxes in front of the monsters feet.
“Open it.” It ordered.
“I…” The smug man gulped. “I cannot…”
He screamed in pain as the monster’s angry shriek nearly knocked him senseless.
“It’s the child!” The man yelled through his pain. “Please! It is meant for the child!”
The monster shrieked again. “Then find him!” It ordered.
“Yes…”The not so long ago smug gentleman scrambled to his feet and bowed. “Yes…the first children will be arriving by morning. We will find him soon!”
He left in a hurry. He couldn't stand being alone in the same room with that being for more than a couple of minutes, and even though it had promised him everything that he wanted he did not know what horrible price he was going to pay for his riches. He didn't know that he was gambling away his soul.
Our time
“MOM!!!!”
The loud scream echoed through the narrow hallway.
Lilith, a tall, redheaded woman in her twenties raised her head from the salad she was making to look at the stairs, half visible in her sight from where she was standing at the kitchen counter. She giggled and smiled to herself.
“The triplets are at it again.” She said to her husband, Greg, who sat across from her in the kitchen, looking as amused as she was from the sounds of the three little kids.
It was a normal morning at the Tepes residence.
The three blond seven-year-old siblings; Casey, Morgan and Jon Tepes, were fighting again over, well, whatever they could find to fight over at that particular time.
This time, for all intense and purposes it was because of a broken toy. Casey, the youngest of the trio, broke it but she blamed it on her five-minutes-older brother Jon, and he in turn blamed it on Morgan who was the oldest of the bunch. The screams were getting louder by the second, reaching all the way from the second floor downstairs.
“Mom!”
Jon stumbled down the stairs, followed closely by his two eager siblings.
“Mom! Morgan broke fluffy!!!” Jon screamed, jumping behind the counter to hide next to his smiling mother, clinging to her dress.
> “Did not!” Morgan howled, making a failed attempt to claw at his brother. “Casey did it!” He pointed at the young girl beside him and then later gasped in horror.
“Why are you blaming me all of a sudden?!” Casey screamed in a high pitched voice as her eyes had quickly filled out with big, shiny tears.
“Oh! Casey! Please don’t!” Jon and Morgan immanently stopped their bickering and all of the attention in the room shifted on to Casey who was sniffing very loudly by now.
They all knew from past experience that once Casey started crying in the morning she would keep whining all day long and won’t give any of them any peace.
“Casey, its okay! I did it! Really!” Jon ran out from behind the counter, taking his sister’s hand in his and stroking it gently, trying desperately to calm her down.
“No! I did it!” Morgan screamed, forgetting their early fight and grabbing Casey’s other arm to pull her towards himself, sticking his tongue out at Jon who pulled her back.
"No! It was me!” Jon howled as Morgan pulled Casey back and Jon tugged her again. Casey’s sobs got even louder than they were a second before.
At this point Lilith had decided to end the little fiasco.
“Boys! Boys! Please stop it! You are going to rip poor Casey apart!” She laid one hand on Casey's shoulder and smiled at her sweetly as the others let her go. Lilith patted Casey’s little head, turned and opened the drawer that was in the counter behind her. She got out her secret weapon which she reserved especially for these kinds of events.
“How about a cookie?” She asked the triplets as she placed the cookie jar on the table, studying the suddenly intrigued, almost hypnotized, faces of the three little kids. The room went silent immediately as all of the blond kids’ eyes glittered in anticipation at the thought of the wonderful treat in their mouths.
"I knew that would work." Lilith winked at Greg who laughed as she handed out the treats.
Once each one of the triplets got their cookie (Casey got two because she was still sniffing and fake crying. She knew exactly how to milk the situation for all it was worth ), the siblings thanked their mother and had completely forgotten the reason they were down in the kitchen in the first place, went back upstairs to finish playing, not even thinking anymore about their broken toy.
“Don’t forget one of you goes to visit grandma today!” Lilith called out to them from downstairs as they ran up, their little feet pattering on the carpet.
“Oh no…”Casey frowned as she entered their bedroom. “Who's turn is it this time?”
She asked, sitting down on the floor and watching her siblings as they took their place beside her on the fluffy carpet. Jon moaned and made a grossed-out face.
“Mine.” He said, hanging his head low as if preparing to watch his own death sentence being carried out.
Morgan grinned, triumphant. He knew it was actually his turn but he was happy for his brother’s short memory and wasn’t about to give himself up for the same 'Death sentence' as Jon had.
“Good luck buddy, you’re going to need it. Enjoy grandmas’ pinching.” He said, smiling widely, doing a little dance in his head for evading yet another horrible night at his grandma’s. It was the second time he tricked Jon into going in his place.
Jon didn't respond but only huffed in surrender, flinching at the thought of his cheeks being pinched by the ‘loving’ grandma, the woman that he would prefer to call 'The old hag'.
None of them actually liked her and their mother insisted at least one of them go visit her once a month. The triplets had devised some sort of a schedule for this chosen torture and each time someone else went. Well, at times when Morgan didn't cheat and made the other’s go in his turn.
---
“Did you have fun at grandma’s today, honey?”
Greg asked his stepson later that night as the two left Jon’s grandma’s house and went down to the car that waited in the driveway. Jon climbed inside with a grim expression; he was defiantly ready to go home.
The boy was already waiting at the door when Greg had driven up the driveway and practically hugged the seat and tied himself up with the seatbelt as soon as Greg had opened the car door for him.
“Sure…best time ever…can’t wait to go again…”
Greg laughed at his son’s enthusiastic demeanor or rather the lack of it. He may have been only seven years old but the kid knew very well how to express and project his opinions and thoughts to others. In fact, all the siblings could do that, it was really amazing to watch.
Jon sighed and looked out the window. He knew that Greg was only teasing him so he had decided to just ignore his over easy stepfather on their way back.
The visit was as horrible as always. Actually, it went exactly as it was expected and Jon sat now, relaxing at the back seat of the car, playing mindlessly with the sit belt and listening to the sounds of the road.
Only half way there he had realized that Morgan was the one that was supposed to go and he unknowingly went in his place. He was already planning a revenge on his ‘lovely’ siblings for making him go like that and listen to his grandmother’s 'Life improving lectures' That she never passed the opportunity to gladly give.
Every two weeks, when it was time to go visit their awful grandma, it was the same story. Two of them were allowed to stay home while the third had to go and take one for the team and ‘suffer’ a day at their grandma’s house. The visit, among other unimportant things, included the followings:
Sickening and horrible food, grandma’s medicine in order to prevent them from getting sick in the first place, lectures about everything from appearance to education and of course the infamous cheek pinching routine.
“Well, next time its Casey’s turn. The Poor kid.”
Jon smiled to himself, thinking about his baby sister. If there was a black sheep in the family, in his grandmother’s eyes it would defiantly be Casey.
“Can’t wait until grandma checks out her new drawings.” He chuckled to himself, imagining the look on his grandmother’s face when she sees Casey’s gore drawings and lyric words; she always complained that Casey was too much like her brothers and didn't act like a proper lady. Jon was already planning to sneak Casey's notebook into her 'Grandma Visit Bag', which their mother had always prepared for them before these horrific trips.
The calming noise of the rain that had started earlier and the steady ride in the car against the black asphalt had soon made Jon doze off and close his eyes, his head falling sleepily to the side against the back seat.
It was a long day after all and he was tired, so in his clouded mind he thought that he would allow himself to sleep all the way back, not worrying himself with his planed revenge.
For what seemed like a good amount of time everything was calm and quiet, but then there was a sudden loud crack under the wheels and the car literally jumped into the air, tittering Jon to the side and making him scream in horror.
“Wow! Dad! What’s happening?!”
Jon cried from his seat, panic evident in his voice and features as he grabbed onto the seatbelt that bound him, terrified of the possibility of falling out of the deranged car.
“It's okay, honey. Calm down. We’re fine.” Greg told him, obviously scared but attempting to remain calm for his stepson and holding to the wheel as tightly as his hands allowed him. He didn't know what was wrong with the vehicle, he didn't see anything on the road that might have hit them but he didn't want his son to worry. He was the grown up in this situation so he had to take control and make sure that his son feels as safe as possible, even if he himself felt completely distraught.
Greg steadied the car and kept it on the main road, slowing down and attempting to stop completely so he would be able to get off and see what exactly happened to the tires. Just as he thought the worse was behind them and he had just ran over a rock or something of that sort the car jumped again, higher, swirling on two wheels, almost flipping over and off the road.
“DAD!”
Jon screamed, terrified. He almost flew out of his seat, his little hands clawing into the leather interior, the seatbelt painfully digging into his skin.
Jon heard the horrible sound of the tires as they blew under the pressure of the swirling vehicle, and then the car flipped over twice. His screams got lost in the noise of the wreckage. When the car did finally came to a stop it landed on the dirt path at the side of the road right on the edge of a bottomless black abyss, the noise of the crash still echoing in the distance.
Jon was the first to wake up, his head aching. He could smell the smoke that was coming from somewhere in front of him. He growled in pain and raised himself to a sitting position and that’s when he saw it, a black cloud over the hood of the car, streaming the toxic fumes up into the dark sky and hissing in the creepy silence that seemed to spread around them.
“Da…d…DAD!”
Jon crocked in pain, tears wiling their way out of his eyelids. The little boy was scared and as far as he knew, completely helpless. He couldn't come up with a plan on his own to come out from this predicament, he needed his siblings and the only one that could have helped him wasn't answering his frantic cries.
Greg was lying unconscious; his body leaned against the wheel. He was alive but Jon didn't know that. In his seven-year-old mind and from the shows that he saw on TV late at night with Morgan (Casey was too afraid to watch), his father looked dead, because that’s how dead people looked in the movies, quiet and bloody.
”Aaggh...” Jon looked down at his own bloody hands. “Dad…" He whispered as he tagged at the seatbelt. “Dad…” Jon manage to unbuckle his sit belt with his trembling hands, and crawled to the shuttered door and kicked it out, his weak body falling to the dirt as he leaned over the edge of the back seat interior.
“Daddy…” He cried, getting weakly to his feet and stumbling to the front door where his father still lay unconscious against the wheel.
”Dad?” His eyes rested on Greg’s cell phone. He knew that if he would call a grownup they would be able to help him, that’s what mom told him to do in case of an emergency and this was defiantly one.
Winds Of The Apocalypse Page 1