by Wood, Rick
Jenny sighed.
Lacy was right. Of course she was. She always was.
That was the most annoying thing about her. Always the voice of reason.
Jenny mustered the courage to say what was troubling her. She forced the words to her lips, willed herself to be mentally resolute, urged herself to fire these thoughts out of her mind.
“Derek thinks…”
“Derek thinks what?”
She sighed. Another hesitation.
Just say it.
“Derek thinks there’s no way to save Eddie.”
“My God.” Lacy raised her eyebrows. “Really?”
“He thinks…” Jenny wiped away a stray tear. “He thinks there’s no way back for him. As in, this is it. We are going to have to kill him.”
She covered her face. Lacy was out of the bed like a shot, getting to Jenny as quickly as she could, spreading her arms around her and holding her tight.
Lacy let her just cry for a few moments. Let her feel the emotions she was feeling.
Then she decided she needed to be honest. Or it would just come back to bite her.
“Maybe he’s right,” she uttered, waiting for the inevitable reaction.
“What?” Jenny pulled away and stood back.
“I’m not saying there’s no way to save him. But maybe, him not being able to be saved – maybe it’s something you need to prepare yourself for.”
Jenny folded her arms and shook her head in fury.
“So, you’re on his side?”
“God, Jenny, I’m not on anyone’s side. I think you should do everything you can to bring him back. If you think he’s in there somewhere, do it. I’m just saying…” She shrugged, looking around herself, trying to find the words. “Just, maybe… you should be prepared. You know, just in case.”
Jenny’s head dropped. Her eyes closed. Her face scrunched up.
She had been so strong for so long. So mentally guarded. This whole thing was a nightmare. A complete and utter nightmare.
“I can’t give up on him.”
“I’m not saying that.”
Lacy rushed back to Jenny, placing her hands on her arms, resting her forehead against hers.
“I know how much he meant to you – means, to you. But I was there.”
Jenny sniffed. She looked back to Lacy.
“I saw him shift too, and…” Lacy again struggled for words. “And I don’t know how you come back from something like that. This isn’t just something within him. He turned into that something. Maybe you just need to be ready for the fact that this may not be Eddie anymore.”
Lacy’s hands ran through Jenny’s hair. Jenny lifted her hands and grasped them around Lacy’s arms, holding tightly, taking every bit of comfort she could.
Before Jenny knew it, she was scrunched up against Lacy’s chest, with Lacy’s arms back around her.
Lacy took Jenny back to bed and allowed Jenny to lay in the comfort of her arms. They stayed like that until the morning alarm finally went, and Jenny knew it was time to meet with Derek.
10
8 September 1986
Thirteen years, three months until millennium night
Jenny lay on her bed, a magazine propped before her. She couldn’t say what magazine it was, or even what the article was about. But she still convinced herself she was reading it nonetheless.
Somehow, she had always been aware of these feelings, but she was torn as to what to do about them. She’d had them her whole life, but it was only now, at the tender age of thirteen years old, that they were beginning to make sense.
She jumped at a rat-a-tat-tat against her window, and abruptly sat upright.
Eddie’s innocent face appeared at the window, tears in his eyes.
Jenny rushed to the window and opened it, quickly ushering him in. It was pouring down with rain and Eddie was drenched.
“Oh my God, Eddie, how did you get up here?” she gasped.
“I climbed the drainpipe,” he stuttered between broken tears, clutching one of his hands over his eye.
Jenny rushed to her wardrobe and withdrew a towel. She wrapped it around Eddie and guided him to the bed.
Still, he clutched his eye, crying so much his whole body was convulsing.
“What is it?” Jenny asked, reaching for his hand. He flinched his head away.
“Dad was drinking again,” he sobbed.
Slowly and carefully, she placed her gentle hand against the fist Eddie pressed against his eye, softly lifting it down.
She practically choked on her breath as she cast her eyes over a huge, shining black eye.
“Oh my God, Eddie!” She gulped. Her whole body stiffened.
He withdrew his hand again, adamantly returning it to cover his eye.
“You’ve got to do something about this. You can’t let him get away with doing this to you. You have to say something.”
“Say what?” he barked through gritted teeth. “And to who?”
She instantly froze, aware that his outburst could well have woken her parents. She paused for a moment, waiting to hear if there was movement.
Nothing.
They were safe.
Without needing to say a word of instruction, she drew her duvet back and allowed Eddie to lay down. He lay on his side so that the pillow would cover up his blackened eye and he would be able to withdraw his hand.
Jenny pulled the duvet over them, laying opposite him so they were both facing each other.
She took a tissue from a tissue box beside her bed and used it to dab his visible eye. She wiped away his tears, then threw the tissue to the floor and smiled at her best friend.
“Why does this have to happen to me?” Eddie deliberated, his tears drying up. His hair, still wet from the rain, was soaking the pillow. But Jenny didn’t care.
She could easily change it in the morning.
“It could be worse,” Jenny smiled, attempting to liven the mood.
“How?”
“You could be Mrs Jenkins. Married to a bald husband, with fourteen cats and shrivelled-up old lady tits.”
They both chuckled at the expense of their maths teacher.
“True,” Eddie confirmed, a smile finding its way to his face. “So what’s up with you? I feel like I just keep having all the problems.”
“That’s not fair, Eddie. Things are really tough for you.”
“Still. What’s new?”
Jenny sighed. She contemplated.
Maybe she should tell him.
But how?
How does someone approach something like this?
“Eddie…” she sighed. “Have you ever, like, thought you might, like, feel something, but, maybe you aren’t sure if it’s, I don’t know, right?”
Eddie’s eyes narrowed.
“I have no idea what you mean.”
Jenny hesitated and dropped her head.
“Never mind.”
“No, go on, Jen. This sounds like it may actually be something interesting.”
“Well,” she tried, lifting her head up. “What do you think, of, like… people who are… gay?”
Eddie shrugged. “Never really thought about it. Why?”
Jenny closed her eyes and shook her head. She loved him, but sometimes he could be really stupid.
“Oh!” Eddie suddenly cried out, realising. “Are you? I mean, do you think, like… you might be?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. I mean, how can you be sure of something like that? But I feel like it. I’ve always felt… I don’t know.”
Eddie remained silent. Jenny couldn’t read him. Couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“What if I was? Would that make me a bad person?”
Eddie took a long pause to think about this, in which time he peered at Jenny. Her face turned weak, her heart skipping a beat.
Finally, Eddie replied.
“You’d still be you,” he decided. “And whoeve
r you are, you’re still pretty awesome.”
Jenny smiled.
That’s when she knew he would be her best friend forever.
Dear Martin,
We are doing our part. We hope your quest is going well in doing yours.
We are finally in possession of the list Stella Clutchings sent us. A list that will give us the names of the most powerful people in paranormal science in the world.
This is our chance. Our piece of the puzzle. This is what we can do to help back you up.
You will never have to fight this fight alone.
Any time you are on the front line, look back over your shoulder. You will see us, fighting with you. Covering your back. Giving you an army to wage this war with.
Only this comes with a warning.
Eddie has started. Whatever he and the devil are doing, they have started. Essential people have started dying.
And the deaths are committed, almost certainly, by the hand of whatever Eddie has become.
We should really stop calling him Eddie now. He is no longer Edward King. Only, I don’t know what other name to call him.
Just know that whatever he brings our way, within you lies the balance. Within you lies what we need to face him.
To face ‘it’ I should say.
Stay safe, my friend.
I have all the faith in the world in you.
Yours,
Derek
11
15 January 2003
Three years since millennium night
Tourists moseyed up and down the cracked paving slabs, marvelling at the magnitude of the architecture around them.
Martin scoffed.
The Church of Nativity was a tourist location to them. A religious pilgrimage. A lovely family holiday.
They had no idea the significance of this building. All the streets they were walking up and down, road 90, where they may have travelled up the coast, the fellow holiday makers they flung their arms around – all of it would be gone. Engulfed in ravenous flames, all nearby souls destroyed, nothing that the God they travelled here to pray to could, or be willing, to do about it.
No, they had no idea that this church was currently home to an angry boy who could hold the key to stopping all of this.
Or so he was told.
He didn’t feel like the key to humanity’s salvation. He didn’t feel like a messiah, a hero, an apocalypse-denying legend.
He felt like a fool.
A teenage scumbag with no family, no hope, and not a possession to his name besides the clothes on his back.
He perched on a set of steps, watching a visiting mother spit on a handkerchief and rub it on the face of a toddler. A nearby father clung onto another child, laughing and joking with him, happy. Making memories.
It was something Martin would never have.
He never knew exactly what happened to his mum following the ritual that brought forth the heir to hell from within Eddie. Naturally, he’d known she’d died. But he had never known what she had endured in doing so.
It occurred to him that, although he may never have this precious family dynamic, he was not necessarily unlucky. So many people, unlike him, had something to lose.
Maybe that was why he’d been chosen for this. Because he had nothing to lose; no emotional attachments. No home, no friends or family who would miss him if he disappeared to Israel to undergo training with some overbearing, balding priest.
But many people did. And they stood to lose it all.
That was what was at stake.
He sighed and shook his head to himself. He couldn’t stand another session of being taunted, told he was nothing, ridiculed about his insignificance. Father Douglas was right, and that’s why it hurt so much.
It was something he would never be able to change.
Shoving his hand into his pocket, he felt a ruffled piece of paper. He withdrew it and unfolded it, reading it.
It was another letter from Derek, which had arrived a few days ago. A letter he had stuffed into his pocket with hopes of reading later.
It forewarned him that Eddie had started.
I have to stop calling him Eddie. As does Derek. He is not Eddie.
The heir of hell had started.
Time was running out, and Martin was getting nowhere. Besides the dent on his self-esteem, Father Douglas had nothing to show for the time he had spent with him.
Maybe Cassy had gotten it wrong? Maybe she had him confused with someone else?
Then he read those final words Derek had written.
Stay safe, my friend.
I have all the faith in the world in you.
No one had ever called him his friend.
No one had ever had faith in him.
Martin couldn’t decide who was the bigger fool; him or Derek. Derek, for his unfaltering, positive belief that something good would come out of an awful situation. That Martin would amount to something.
Or whether it was Martin; the bigger fool for believing Derek.
The family he had noticed at the bottom of the step now passed him. A young boy swung between the parents.
But there was a young girl.
Where had she gone?
“Hello,” came an inquisitive child’s voice from beside Martin.
Looking to his left, he saw the wide eyes of the young girl he had noticed earlier.
Why was she standing there, just watching him?
Her family had paused. From a distance, they were watching. Letting their daughter talk to him, but being warily cautious from afar.
“Hi,” Martin mustered, confused. Why was she talking to him? It defied social etiquette. Martin was antisocial at best, and not one to ever communicate with strangers besides a grunt when he bought some food.
“You look sad,” she told him.
Martin smiled and gave a slight laugh.
“I am,” he admitted.
“Why?”
Sighing, he glanced to the family watching, then to the clear blue sky above. To the birds in the trees, the sun in the sky, the laughter of distant children in the air.
“Because everything’s going to end,” Martin told her, in the midst of a knowing, resolute smile. Despite meaning it literally, he knew it would not be taken so.
“Why is everything going to end?” She tilted her head.
“Because all of this, all the people, all the buildings, all of it – it’s going to be gone. And I can’t do anything about it.”
He held eye contact with this little girl, who looked momentarily upset. It looked like tears were bubbling in her eyes, a slight quiver in her lip.
Then she looked back at her family.
Her sadness ceased.
She turned back to Martin with a smile. Unexpectedly, she placed a hand on his shoulder.
“I think you can,” she nodded.
She wrapped her arms around Martin, gave him an abrupt, tight squeeze, then ran back to her family. Her father gave Martin a slight nod and they carried on walking, enjoying their holiday.
Martin watched them go until he could see them no longer, then watched the space in which they had left.
An act of kindness, from a young child to a stranger. For no reason other than because she could.
That was what he was fighting for.
That was what was at stake.
He shovelled the note in his pocket, stood up, and marched back to the Church of Nativity.
12
16 January 2003
The dust wafted from the browned pages of the old book, forcing Jenny to cough. How could a book be so dusty? When she had started this venture with Derek, she’d had this stereotypical vision of all books about demonology being big, dusty slabs of writing with broken leather bindings and unappealing, crammed writing inside – she never realised how accurate her expectation would be.
Having seen Eddie’s bookcase, and Derek’s bookcase, she knew that there were loads of books that weren’t so tatty and outdated. New editions, ne
w found accounts, intriguing memoirs.
But no! She ended up having to bring home Demonic Forces in Today’s World.
‘Today’s world.’ Hah. More like ‘ancient world.’
She flicked to a random page and read the title:
‘Vampyrs in Cities.’
Jenny was new to this supernatural world, having entered it solely to save her best friend, and would be the first to admit she knew little about it; but was still fairly certain that ‘vampyrs’ weren’t an actual thing.
Not as far as she knew, anyway.
“Hey,” came Lacy’s chirpy voice from the doorway.
Jenny looked over her shoulder and smiled.
“Hey, you,” she replied.
No matter what she was doing or where she was, just a simple waft of Lacy’s voice or glimpse of her smile was enough to make Jenny go weak at the knees.
Even after all this time.
Lacy glided forward and leant over Jenny, scooping her arms around Jenny’s neck. She kissed her on the cheek and firmly embraced her.
“What you doing?” Lacy enquired.
“Oh, you know,” Jenny answered, as if she had a clue what she was actually doing. “Research. Reading. This and that.”
“This book looks a tad old.”
“Yeah, it is. I think it even dates to before Derek was born.”
They giggled. Lacy slid to Jenny’s side, stroking a gentle hand down Jenny’s bare arm.
“Hey, Jen,” Lacy nervously peered up at her girlfriend. “I have a question to ask.”
“What’s that?” Jenny replied, still peering at the small writing of the book.
Lacy positioned herself so that she was on one knee, Jenny’s hand in her hands, gazing up at her.
“Jen…”
Jenny paused what she was reading and turned toward Lacy.