by Don Sloan
Robinson got his blade free and came in with a high overhand stab directly aimed at Nathan’s heart. Nathan met the knife in mid-stroke with his own, parrying it off to the side. Then, he counterattacked, a quick slash, aimed at Robinson’s face. The blade cut into the other man’s left cheek, carving a path down to his chin. Robinson jumped away, surprised. His eyes were blazing with a manic fury, however, and he seemed not to feel the pain. He bled from the cut like a prize hog in a Fort Worth slaughterhouse.
“Think that’ll stop me? Watch this.” And he threw his leg up and forward, his booted foot connecting with Nathan’s chin. Nathan staggered back and dropped his knife. Robinson came rushing in, roaring like a big new diesel train engine on an open track.
He crushed Nathan in a bear hug, pinning him, and began dragging him over to the counter.
“You won’t even be able to jack off when I’m done with you.”
Nathan, still in a daze from the brutal kick, felt Robinson pull one of his arms over toward the counter. There, he put the hand down carefully and splayed the fingers. He began sawing on the little finger. Involuntarily, Nathan yanked the hand back, but Robinson still held him in a firm grip and now held the big knife across his throat. Nathan began to struggle.
“You’re right. This’ll take too long with a knife. Where’s my cleaver?”
Nathan began to struggle wildly; Robinson just held him firm and pressed the knife in until Nathan could feel the pressure of it against his neck. He stopped moving and stood still.
“That’s a good little homo. Now just bear with me a minute.” Robinson dragged Nathan over a few feet and opened a drawer, pulling out a meat cleaver.”Ah, here we are. Now, hold still.” With the knife still at his throat, Nathan allowed his hand to be flattened onto the counter once again. He watched as Robinson separated his little finger and his ring finger on his left hand from the others, then he raised the cleaver. “Now hold still. This might sting a little.” And with that, he brought the cleaver down. Thwack! Nathan’s two fingers moved a little ways off, while the stumps began bleeding copiously.
Nathan had seen enough. Fighting off nausea and light-headedness, he broke free of the other man’s grip and dove to the floor for his own knife, trailing blood. He found it quickly and stood up before Robinson could recover.
“I’ve had enough, you psycho son of a bitch,” he said, and he quickly closed the distance between them. Robinson now had the cleaver, not the knife in his hand, and before he could get it above his head and into striking distance, Nathan drove his own long blade deep into Robinson’s heart, killing him instantly. The man fell to the floor of the cabin. Nathan huffed and sweated as though he had just run ten miles and he could still feel the adrenaline thrumming through his body. He looked down with mixed emotions at the wreck of a man at his feet. What a waste! he thought. If he’d had a cell phone he would have called the sheriff and the EMS. He stared at the bleeding stump of his hand. Better get a tourniquet on that, because for some reason this didn’t feel like a dream to him anymore. He knew he was going to have to patch himself up and somehow hike—or hitchhike—his way into town in the morning and try to get on with his life—minus two fingers and with a broken nose. Maybe he could find a good surgeon to reattach the fingers. He headed over to the drawer next to the refrigerator, hoping to find some Ziploc bags to put the two digits in with about a dozen cubes of ice. His hand throbbed; his face ached. He didn’t think he would get any more sleep that night, unless he passed out.
Then he saw it: Robinson’s cell phone! Of course. A man—even one as anti-social as Robinson—would have to have some way of getting help in case of emergency. He opened the drawer and found the bags. Then, he went to the counter and carefully picked up his two fingers, dropping them in the bag. He came back to the refrigerator and opened the freezer compartment where he pulled out enough cubes to fill it and keep the fingers cold until he got to the Emergency Room.
He reached for the phone and turned it on. He would claim self-defense, of course. The cleaver was still in Robinson’s hand; and surely there was a history of the man’s mental condition. He dialed 911.
He heard the operator say, “911. Please state your emergency.” And then he saw his body begin to dissolve.
Chapter 23
Sarah was in the kitchen and dropped a plate when Nathan re-materialized beside her, clutching the freezer bag beside him. His face was a bloody mess, but at least he was home.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you, Sarah,” he said.
“Oh, Nathan, what happened to your face, and your hand?”
“It’s a long story. I’ve got to get this bag into the freezer and fashion a tourniquet.”
She stopped him with a kiss. “Wait just a minute.”
He tried to smile. “I appreciate the thought, I really do, but now’s not really a good time—“
Suddenly, he felt strange. The hurting in his face disappeared. He reached up a hand to feel his nose and it was in perfect alignment. He pulled the hand that should have clutched a freezer bag away. There was no blood on it. He looked at his other hand, where the two stumps should have been. He wiggled his fingers—all of them—and turned a surprised face back to Sarah. “You knew it was an illusion? But how?”
“Same kind of thing happened to me. A horrific dream that I’m sure was intended to scare me off, then I wind up back here with all my wounds—well, my physical ones, anyway—healed. Nathan, I’m really scared now.”
“Yeah, this last episode of mine really got my attention, too. He’s toying with us now, Sarah—playing kind of rough at that—and what if the next time there’s no coming back? Does he have that kind of power?”
Sarah came into his arms and began to cry softly.
Tipton tried mightily to keep a straight face as he went about his errands in the village that Saturday morning. With the nor’easter still at gale force, only a few businesses were open, and fewer still had any supplies, but that didn’t matter much to the old man; his needs were easily met: a sharp hacksaw from the hardware store; some duct tape; and a new carpenter-grade hammer, heavily weighted to drive home the extra long ten-penny nails he also bought; some ten-foot, two-by-six boards: just a few odds and ends he could have the boy throw into the back of his Toyota 4X4 pickup truck.
Yes, sir, he thought. It surely was good to be alive.
He’d been waiting for this day a long time—ever since Moira had laid the curse on him. He closed his eyes and sighed as he got into the truck and fired it up, the heater going full blast and wipers swatting the snow back and forth, back and forth.
Moira had been lying there on the altar that cold winter’s night in 1914, Tipton recalled, buns up and kneeling, with that baggy old housedress rucked up over her hind end, just waiting for him.
This wasn’t like usual, though, where she fought him like a wildcat. Usually, when he raped Moira, she had to be chased around the room until he put the shadow between them, and even then he had to wrestle her up onto the altar and into position.
That time, in 1914, it had only taken a growl from Bakka for the young woman to bend further over and present herself so that Tipton could take her in the same way as dogs and other animals do; it made him feel dominant. He didn’t care how it made Moira feel. This had started when she was fourteen, soon after he had washed ashore from the Elizabeth Ann. But not this time. This time she had even seemed to enjoy it, he thought.
After they were done that day, she surprised him. She had produced a knife from under the bodice of her dress and told him to take his clothes off and to keep his hands out of his pockets if he wanted to live. He had done so reluctantly, not able to summon the shadow once again to help him.
Then she had cut him all over in many places, carefully and deliberately, never deep enough to kill or injure him severely. But she had paid special attention to his genitals, forcing him to lie on his back while she performed a crude circumcision. Tipton’s blood had flowed freely and he had sc
reamed like a child. Finally, she had stood over him, keeping the knife always at the ready, as she had begun to recite a terrible—and yet wonderful (at least to Tipton’s ears)—incantation.
“From this day forward,” Moira had said in an exultant voice, “you will continue to live and prosper, William Willingham, or Thomas Tipton, or whatever you may call yourself henceforth. But you must do me a service.”
Willingham/Tipton had looked up at her, his scrotum hurting terribly, but feeling hope at her words springing forth like new wine in his breast. “What do ye want, missy?”
“I have given the fourteen houses along Beach Avenue their own voices and they are alive—the last one of them only today—and in celebration of that legacy, I am appointing you and your dark beast guardians over them from this day forward. They are to be kept up and preserved, so they may continue to converse with one another freely. You are to acquire each of them and you are to rent them out periodically so they may have a steady supply of stories to tell through the years. You and your dark beast will murder and maim, and cause all sorts of mayhem up and down the boulevard so they may be entertained. Do you understand?”
Willingham/Tipton groveled at her feet. “That’s more than fair, my pretty lass. Is there anything else I can do to achieve eternal life?”
Moira had still held the knife in front of her, ready to stab or cut again if need be. He had remained crouched on the tile floor by the altar.
“You will kill a young woman in this house a hundred years from tonight.“ Her mouth puckered alluringly again in what might have been a half smile. “She will be a blood relative of mine—a descendant. Her death will be a balm to my soul.”
“I understand,” he had said quietly.
“Also, henceforth, you will not touch me again. You are a most foul individual and I ought to kill you here and now as a human sacrifice to my Dark Lord.”
He had timidly touched one of her ankles. “Please spare me!”
“I can afford to be merciful now that I have rendered you harmless to myself. Now go. And don’t let me catch you or your beast lurking down here again.” She had given him a kick in the face with one of her black boots and he had picked up his clothes and scurried for the opening that led to the relative safety of his gaming room.
As he scuttled away, Moira retained the secret smile on her face, even as she felt her nether regions burn with the recent memory of his wretched invasion. But she also had a surprise in store for Willingham/Tipton. Oh, yes, a very nasty surprise indeed.
Bakka was in man-form, walking along the beach at night. Snowflakes, fat as softballs, pelted him as he moved along the shore, looking for something.
There! He stooped and picked up a wooden carving. He made a pleased growling noise deep in his throat. He looked farther down the shoreline and saw another, and another.
They had answered his call and had come ashore to join with him. With their help, he would wield a power so great and terrible nothing could stand against him!
He gathered them all up, twenty-four in all, and made his way to the house of the woman he had heard called Sarah.
There, he would climb to the attic and lay them out to dry on the windowsill, awaiting his first command to bring forth unspeakable horror on the sleepy seacoast town of Cape May, and far beyond.
Chapter 24
Back in the present day, Tipton knew now that all he had to do was to shove the packet of deed transfer papers he had pre-prepared (and pre-notarized) under their noses tonight for their signatures and then sacrifice the girl on the altar down in Moira’s sub-basement. He wasn’t exactly sure how he would do that yet, but that wasn’t a big deal, he thought. If necessary, he would use the idol to get her down there. He would kill the young man after forcing them both to sign the deed transfers to both their houses.
Thinking this, he reached deep into his pocket—and found no idol!
When had that thing slipped away? Digging deeper, he discovered a hole in his pocket. Curse his rotten luck! he thought. He began a frantic search of his bedroom floor and then went all up and down the house and stairs. He looked and looked, growing more and more frantic with each passing moment. His anger began to build. He directed it toward the young man. Surely Nathan must have gotten hold of it somehow and planned to use it against him. Yes, that was it! His hysteria and frustration reached a fever pitch as he went into the kitchen. He kicked over a tall bar stool and it crashed to the hardwood floor. Damn the young whelp! He would pay for this with an excruciating death!
But deep inside, Tipton also began to slowly nurture growing seeds of doubt and fear. What if Nathan used the shadow’s power against him? Tipton quivered at the very thought. This could prove to be a catastrophic turn of events! He might not be able to fulfill his dark mission. He decided it was time to act. He pulled a Smith & Wesson 9mm automatic pistol from a kitchen drawer and walked to the elevator beside the kitchen.
“What is today, Nathan?” Sarah asked. She was standing a few feet away from him in the drafty old kitchen, looking out the window into the white world beyond the house. They had passed an uneventful night in Sarah’s house.
Nathan glanced at his Timex Classics watch. “Saturday, January 31. Why?”
“Just wondering. Do you realize, if we pull out now, we’ll never understand what is going on here?”
Nathan considered this for a moment. “Well, that’s true. I suppose we could have one last go at the old bastard. Catch him off his guard.” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and was surprised to find an object in his left hand pocket. He pulled it out. It was a carved wooden object in the shape of a man. He held it up in front of him and they both looked at it.
“What is that?” Sarah asked.
“Not sure,” Nathan replied. “I picked it up off Tipton’s staircase just before I was transported last time. Must have put it in my pocket and forgot it was there.” He looked it over carefully for a long moment.
“Let me see it,” Sarah said. The moment she touched it the object gave off a strange thrumming sound and began vibrating in the palm of her hand. A familiar black mist began to arise from the kitchen floor, and Nathan shouted for Sarah to drop the idol before it was too late!
This time, Bakka had chosen a more traditional form, although he was now over seven feet tall. He was materializing as a huge black man, heavily muscled as he became more distinct, wearing a purple shirt open down to his waist. The shirt was tucked into his breeches, which clung to massive legs, as though he had been bench-pressing Volvos for a few years. He wore a heavy beard upon a cruel and ill-formed face, like a badly-shaped Halloween mask from a local supermarket. But the red eyes were what most captured Nathan and Sarah’s attention: glittering with such malevolent glee that they thought all the world’s malice was rolled up inside this being, just waiting to be let out.
Dear God, thought Sarah, what had they done?
They found themselves awakening on a desert island in what appeared to be the Caribbean. They were flat on their backs on a sandy white beach, each in designer swimwear.
Nathan raised himself onto an elbow and looked over at Sarah. “Well, I must say, the shadow-god is improving on his dream-states if this is any indication. You look mah-velous, dahling.”
She sat up, pulling the string bikini more snugly into place onto her slim body and gave him a lop-sided grin. “Well, you don’t look so bad yourself for a pasty white boy from Philadelphia. But this is new twist, isn’t it? Isn’t that thing supposed to be scaring the daylights out of us and not pampering us on some remote desert isle?”
“Privilege of new ownership, I guess,” Nathan said, settling down onto his back again.
“Still,” Sarah said, getting to her feet, “there’s nobody else I can see here. No cabana, no bar selling mai-tais—or even drinking water for that matter. Nathan, we may be marooned here.”
“Well, that would put rather a damper on things, wouldn’t it? Except for one thing.”
“What
’s that?”
“It has to bring us back when we say. We’re its new masters now, remember?”
“Yeah, well, I don’t remember either of us telling it to send us here.”
Nathan scratched his chin. “You’ve got me there. Kind of wonder how sentient that thing is.”
“How what?”
“Sentient. Whether it can think or not. Whether we ought to be calling it a ‘him’ or an ‘it.’ Whether or not it or he has critical thinking abilities. Whether or not it is truly evil.”
“Oh, come on, Nathan! You looked into those eyes! Don’t tell me you didn’t see evil incarnate there.”
He thought about it a moment. “I did see the potential for evil. And I have no doubt that under Tipton’s guidance it or he has wreaked some carnage in these houses over the past several decades, as the houses have told us in our dreams. But is it or he truly evil? I’m not sure. Perhaps he just wanted us out of the way for a while for our own safety.”
“From whom? Tipton?” Sarah asked.
“Exactly. We were about to go and visit Tipton and I think he knew that. So, voila! He sends us to our own island paradise for a while until he can deal with Tipton himself.”
“That’s a pretty thin postulate, counselor.”
“I’m a CPA, not an attorney,” Nathan retorted.
“Well, either one, it sounds pretty lame. I’m going to search for fresh drinking water in case it decides to leave us here indefinitely.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” said Nathan as he fell in behind her.
Chapter 25
Tipton crept up the final two rungs of the ladder leading into Sarah’s bathroom from the room below. Luckily for him, Nathan had left it unlatched after he had gone down to retrieve Moira’s diary the night before. He stealthily pushed open the small door that led into the half bath and crept inside. He stood upright, then, quietly, he opened the door into the main hallway. It was dim in the half-light of the noonday old house, but the silence was complete, like the inside of a mortuary. He made his way down to the foot of the oaken staircase, where he paused, listening. He thought he heard a heavy breath inhaled like a wet bellows.