by Wood, Rick
It was a beautiful world.
This was a good life.
She had lived it well.
A portal of fire engulfed the horizon before her.
Rising off the ground and growing from a small spark to a thrashing, manic, spewing, intense circle of flames covering the skyline, it poised.
“Come on then you son of a bitch,” she spat. “Do your worst.”
With that, a demon sprang out of the portal. Her jaw dropped – this was no demon like she had ever seen before, in person or in picture. She felt its presence overwhelm her, unscrupulous power protruding from its pores.
It was hideous. Disgusting. Foul. Carnivorous. It terrified her, shook her, took hold of her. She could smell its heat, taste its flickering flames alighting its arms, hear its anger in its growl.
“And to think,” whispered her final words, staring straight into the eyes of evil. “You were once a great man.”
Its arm turned into a spike, sharp and pointed for at least six feet beyond it.
This spike rapidly grew bigger and bigger, faster than was visible to Stella’s eyes and, in doing so, went straight through Stella’s chest, through her chair, and dug into the ground behind her.
The monstrous creature allowed this spike to be free if its arm, leaving it wedged in the ground through Stella’s heart.
Stella’s body sank further down the spike. Blood gurgled down her chin. She coughed on it a few times, her chest doing all it could to catch breaths that didn’t come.
She saw the smile on the awful visage of the fiend’s features.
Her eyesight went next.
Then she felt the heat of the flames disappear from her skin.
She ceased hearing the growls and the flickers that had attacked her ears.
She could no longer smell the hatred that exuded from this creature.
But for a few final moments, she could still feel the edge of her fingers, quivering in the rabid heat. She stretched her hand out, trying to grab whatever it could. A helping hand, a loved one’s reassurance, maybe even her own skin – anything that allowed her to feel something just one last time.
But she didn’t feel anything.
Because her hand went limp.
7
6 January 2003
Jenny fiddled with the phone wire whilst vacantly glaring at the handset. She knew she should use it to call Lacy and tell her she was going to be late.
But it would only annoy Lacy. It would only cause further problems.
Jenny was fighting for the world.
That’s what she’d told her the previous night. She could still hear Lacy’s response echoing in her mind.
“Once, you were fighting for me.”
It made Jenny’s eyes well up. The two people in the world she loved the most, and one was evil, the other annoyed with her.
“What’s the matter?” came Derek’s irritatingly well-spoken voice, interrupting her trail of thought.
“Oh, nothing,” she lied, shifting her position, lifting her head from her resting arm. She sat forward, forcing herself to pay attention.
Derek’s study was a tremendous but stuffy room. His bookcases were full of dusty literature, spewing vast amounts of information about demonology, paranormal, supernatural, cults – it had everything.
Well, almost everything. It didn’t have a book on what to do when you need to prevent your best friend from bringing forth the apocalypse.
“It’s arrived,” Derek announced, sitting beside her with eager trepidation, clutching a sealed envelope.
“Well?” she prompted.
He directed her an anxiously lingering glance, then ripped it open. Inside were two letters. The first, a coherently written letter, the second, a list.
“What does it say?” Jenny asked.
Derek cleared his throat.
“Dear Mr Lansdale,” he began. “I apologise I am unable to share this information with you in person, but unfortunately, we each much meet our fate. Enclosed with this letter is a list of names. On this list you will find all the most powerful people in the world in our field. Paranormal investigators, exorcists, psychics, priests, and mediums. Even telepaths, empaths, and those whose powers still remain undefined.”
Jenny took the list in and mulled it over as Derek continued to read.
“I have arranged this list in order of importance, relative to power. Retrieve them. Train them. Under your guidance, you can build your army. They will all be ready, they will all know something has risen. This is our only chance.
“Remember, this comes to us all eventually. I may as well face it with dignity. Stella Clutchings, psychic extraordinaire.”
“That it?”
“No. It finishes with a final sentence. Trust that boy.”
They shared a moment of contemplation, a silent understanding of the perplexity of what had been delivered.
“Why is she writing this with such sorrow?” Derek thought aloud. “As if she has…”
He trailed off.
“What was her name again?” Jenny asked with a sudden spark of thought.
“Stella Clutchings. She was an incredibly powerful psychic; we wrote to each other a few times.”
Jenny paused, deep in thought, a vague memory inching its way across her mind. She abruptly stood and reached for her bag. She withdrew a newspaper and shoved it in Derek’s direction.
He took this newspaper and, as he held it in his hands, found that the newspaper was trembling.
The headline read:
Woman stabbed through heart with giant spike.
The first few lines went on to say a psychic, by the name of Stella Clutchings, had been found dead, stabbed through the heart with –
That’s when he stopped reading.
Derek bowed his head.
“What do you think it is?” Jenny asked, leaning toward him.
He shook his head. His eyes welled up but he fought it, willing himself to retain his dignity. He would not answer that question willingly, though he knew that he should.
“Derek, a giant spike isn’t something just anyone can… What do you think?”
Derek looked up at her. He held her eye contact, silently pleading, desperately urging her not to make him say it.
“Derek?”
“Who do you think did it?” he spat. “A woman who had the knowledge to help us build an army, and she’s dead the day she writes this letter. Who do you think?”
“No, Derek, we don’t know –”
“Get out of denial, Jenny, for the love of God!” Derek stood, withdrawing a handkerchief and dabbing his sweaty brow. He turned his back to her, his hands on his hips, an expression of frustration worn across his perspiring skin.
Jenny closed her eyes, dipping her head and covering her face.
This isn’t Eddie, she reassured herself. This is whatever has taken over, whatever has taken control. This is not Eddie.
She kept thinking it over and over, as if repeating it made it true.
This is not Eddie, this is not Eddie, this is not Eddie.
Despite her mental protestations, she was not entirely convinced.
“So, what do we do now?” Jenny prompted.
Derek turned toward her and nodded to the list.
“We do what we must,” he began. “We find those names on the list. We train them. We protect them. Until it is time.”
“But, Derek, how do we protect them from someone who could do this?” She lifted the newspaper, indicating the picture of the woman on the front with a solid spike stuck through her chest.
Derek shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
“We do what we can, and what we must. Nothing more, nothing less.”
He placed a reassuring arm on Jenny’s shoulder, the gesture somehow providing a momentous boost of comfort.
But it still wasn’t enough.
8
8 January 2003
“You’re not listening, son!” belted the booming voice of
Father Douglas.
I proper hate this fat, bald twat, Martin told himself, doing everything he could not to voice his opinion.
The heat was unbearable. His perspiration soaked through his shirt. His knees bent with exhaustion, his back ached from rigorous movement. He could barely see in front of him, such was the ferocity of the sweat dripping from his brow.
But this bastard saw none of that.
He saw none of Martin’s continuous efforts, none of the frequent attempts at getting these spells right. None of the constant retrying, and retrying, despite the relentless berating of Martin’s conceived lack of effort.
“Curl your hands around in a circle; quickly, boy!”
Martin did what he was told.
He furiously rotated his arms, trying to create this fire ball he could supposedly create.
How the hell was he meant to make a fire ball?
I mean, a sodding fire ball! Out of nothing?
Was this bloke mistaking him for Edward King or something?
Martin didn’t feel he could ever amount to the status of the legend he had heard so much about. He was not the heir of hell. He didn’t have these inherent tremendous powers.
He was a scumbag. A failure. A kid with no future, raised as an illegitimate catastrophe, an irritating fiasco of a dead, disabled woman.
“You don’t believe you can do it,” snarled Douglas, circling Martin like a shark. “That’s why you don’t get it, my lad. You think all you can see is what is visible right in front of you. You are a let-down. A nothing.”
Martin went to retaliate but resisted. He had spent so much of his time at school fighting against teachers who told him he wasn’t worth shit, and it got him nowhere.
He needed to do this. For the world, if not himself.
Though he truly did not understand why it couldn’t be someone else.
Why him?
I’m no one.
“What are you thinking about?” Douglas demanded, rushing up to within inches of Martin’s bowed head, spewing odorous, panting breath from his haggard old face. “About how much of a failure you are? Think it and it will become true.”
“No…” Martin shook his head, then stopped himself once more.
The fate of the world.
Derek.
Derek believed in him.
Cassy believed in him.
They sent him here because they thought he could do something.
They were wrong.
“No, what?” growled Douglas in an exaggerated sneer, nothing but contempt consuming his face. “No, you are a failure? No, you can’t do it? No, you don’t believe what you can see?”
“What is your problem?”
Martin couldn’t help it. No one had ever pushed him like this. He had never let anyone. Not a soul.
No authority figure, no friend, no person, nothing.
Why should Douglas be any different?
Martin tried to calm himself. Did all he could. Told himself to suck it up. Told himself to believe.
“That’s what I thought,” Douglas laughed mockingly. “Just a talentless nitwit. Someone with no past, no present, and no future. A nothing.”
Martin leapt forward and planted his fist into Douglas’ face, sending the old, incessant tormentor sailing back onto his arse.
It felt good. It felt so good. But as soon as Martin did it, he regretted it. He knew it wasn’t the right choice to make. However much Douglas deserved it, it was the rise Douglas was trying to get.
Martin had grown up enough in the past few months to recognise when someone was simply trying to get a rise out of him.
Douglas stayed on the floor. He wiped his lip, dabbing a small patch of blood where a scab had fallen off his mouth.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” Martin stuttered.
“No, you’re not,” Douglas smirked with hostility. “That was the first bit of emotion I got from you, don’t ruin it.”
“Why do you always do that?” Martin cried out. That wall he’d built, the resistance to this kind of ridicule; it was tumbling down.
“You think it’s a coincidence your mum just happened to be chosen to be one of the devil’s three?” Douglas proposed, using the wall of the church to climb back to his feet. “You think the devil just happened to gravitate toward her? You don’t think there’s something about you?”
“There ain’t nothin’ about me, mate.” Martin shrugged. “No one does nothing for me my whole life, and now you’re suddenly telling me I’m cracked up to be the world’s last defence.”
“I can’t tell you who you are in all this,” Douglas passionately defied, stepping closer to Martin. “I can’t tell you, because then all of this, all the things we know you can do – will come from a place of false belief. You need to know yourself, before you can be told.”
“I ain’t got no idea what you are on about!” Martin shouted, gesticulating with his hands in pure exasperation. “All you keep saying is just noise to me, I don’t get it. I don’t get what you want from me.”
“And you won’t.”
“I don’t know what the hell that means! I am no one! No – one!”
Martin turned his back to Douglas and marched toward the exit from the churchyard, and paused. His hands rested against his hips with annoyance, his foot tapping and his head shaking.
“You’re right,” Douglas mused. “You are absolutely right, boy. You are no one. And, the way you think, that will be how it stays forever. A big fat nobody.”
Martin kicked his bag in frustration, sending it sailing across the yard. He turned back toward Douglas with one fist clenched, and the other hand jabbing toward his supposed mentor with furious rigidity.
“Fuck you!” he screamed. “And fuck all of this!”
He kicked open the gate and marched away.
Where to, he had no idea. Somewhere. Maybe where this guy wouldn’t lecture him about him being nothing. Where there was not a weight of expectation on him. Where he no longer had to possess this knowledge that the world was going to end.
Douglas watched him go, deep in contemplation.
“Are you sure he is who he says he is?” he serenely asked.
“Give him time and patience,” came Cassy’s voice from behind him.
“Unfortunately, those are two things we don’t have.”
9
Jenny despised early mornings. Not being able to lie in was something she shunned. She treasured her sleep, and her mornings when she didn’t have to get up for work were invaluable.
But on this day, she didn’t mind waking up early.
Because on this day, Lacy had a morning off as well. Lacy didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn, pull on her nurse’s uniform, and force herself to the hospital for another mundane shift.
And she looked so damn beautiful in Jenny’s arms. Curled up as the little spoon, nestled into Jenny, fitting so perfectly into the slot of her body.
She fleetingly recalled a hazy memory of Eddie meeting Lacy for the first time. Having faced a negative reaction from her parents to her coming out, she had dreaded what would happen next. But Eddie was more supportive than she could have possibly imagined. If it weren’t for him, she probably wouldn’t have been comfortable enough in herself to actually enter a relationship with Lacy.
Of course, her parents had eventually come to accept her. They were a generation that weren’t used to people being honest about their sexuality. It just took time.
But with Eddie, it hadn’t even been a question.
The voice of experience talking, she scoffed sarcastically to herself.
She had been so young. Eighteen years old. Twelve years ago.
Jesus, was it that long ago? Twelve years?
Yet here they were. The woman Jenny loved most in the world lay asleep next to her, still filling her with giddy joy.
Those fluttery feelings still swarmed around Jenny’s belly; butterflies of ecstatic elation any time Lacy’s name was mentioned.
La
cy was so much cooler, so much calmer than Jenny. But that was good. Lacy soothed Jenny’s anxieties.
“Are you watching me?” whispered a spirited voice from between Jenny’s arms.
“Maybe…” Jenny playfully retorted.
“You know, some people might think that was creepy…” came an equally playful voice from Lacy as she turned over to face Jenny. “But me, I think it’s just sweet.”
Lacy leant in and placed a soft, sweet kiss against Jenny’s lips. They rested their foreheads against each other and left them there, breathing each other in.
“I love you,” Jenny told Lacy, stroking her hand down the side of her face.
“I know,” Lacy answered, knowing such a response would infuriate Jenny. Leaving it just a beat, she finally replied, “I love you, too.”
They shared another delicate kiss.
“Have you got much to do today?” Lacy asked.
“Yeah.” Jenny pondered over her day’s schedule. “Me and Derek, we have a list of people we need to recruit. We’re kind of working our way through that.”
“How’s it all going?”
“Oh, you know…”
Jenny turned over and sat up. The loving moment was gone. Her thoughts turned back to Eddie and the task at hand. Back to the apocalypse, the evil, the empty salvation.
“What is it?” Lacy asked caringly, sitting up.
“It’s just…” Jenny trailed off. She didn’t want to bring this into their home life. Their bedroom was a place for love and relaxing, not a place for heavy conversations about the fate of humanity.
But she was deeply troubled about this war. Issues of ethics and tactics and humanity always sat in the back of her mind. She needed to vent in some way.
But there were some things too tough to say aloud.
“Talk to me, Jen,” Lacy pleaded. “You know I’m here for you, for anything.”
“No, I don’t want to trouble you.”
“After this long, you really think that’s still an issue?”