That brought him back to one of two options. He either had a brain tumor, or he was losing his mind.
Is there a worst kind of hell for someone who prides himself on being reasonable? Who prides himself on his intellect and the decisions he makes. His life had been nothing but a constant striving towards reason and balance. There was no place for the unexpected. Walther simply wouldn't allow it because he made sure that he planned for every eventuality. Nothing caught him off guard.
Walther always smirked at people who complained of bad luck. To him, bad luck was nothing more than an eventuality that you didn't plan for properly enough. Car accident? You weren't careful enough. You didn't pay attention to what was going on around you. Even if someone else ran into you, it was still your fault. In Walther's world, you should have seen it coming.
Walther believed that the more you were prepared, the more lucky you were. And vice versa, which is why this situation terrified him so much. It couldn't be explained. And because it couldn't be explained, he hadn't been able to foresee it. And if you can't foresee something, you cannot plan for it...
Walther couldn't imagine anything worse than losing his mind. A brain tumor could be explained. You can attempt to treat it. Remove the malignant growth if possible and continue with a normal life. A tear in his psyche was something beyond his ability to fix. How can you fix something that is no longer rooted in reality?
The fact that this was all so real scared Walther to the point of wetting his bed for the first time in almost forty years. There was no rational explanation for it and Walther managed to will the need to piss away. But the fear was real and it lingered.
The physical manifestations of dread were too numerous to ignore. Even though his heart was racing, his body temperature had dropped and his breath was shallow. He was immobile, unable to control his body. Commands to sit up, move a finger, turn his head, were all ignored. When Walther breathed through his mouth, he saw vapor expelled. That explained the gooseflesh, he thought triumphantly. The room was freezing cold.
But that gave birth to other questions. How could it be freezing cold in the beginning of summer? The nights were already balmy enough for him to have left the sliding door and windows open for a draft. And even if it were possible for his room to have turned into a meat locker, perhaps a faulty air conditioner unit, it still didn't explain his irrational fear.
This had to be a break in his psyche.
Walther managed to force his eyes to roll around in their sockets and look around. The view was limited of course, and Walther couldn't see most of the room. It convinced him that he was probably alone. It was the middle of the night, but the streetlights offered enough illumination to see that he was alone in the room.
Not only was his mind betraying him but so was his body. Walther was drenched in sweat and he was sure that his teeth were close to chattering.
Only a few seconds had passed since he opened his eyes, but it felt like an eternity.
Walther was scared, but he also started to get angry through frustration. He didn't have the ability to coax movement from a single fingertip. It also felt like there was a weight on his chest keeping him from breathing properly. Was he imagining it, but was there also pressure on his head, keeping it pressed to the pillow?
Seconds passed. Nothing changed. Panic began to set in.
Was he suffering a stroke? Had his mind finally snapped? So much so that his body was now in the last throes of death?
Then he remembered he still had a patient to visit. What would become of Eleanor Kraye if he couldn't get up? He had come for a power nap, knowing that visits to the police station took hours, especially if you were a suspect. Troy would have been his wake-up call.
Walther cursed himself for deciding to take a quick nap. Yes, he had come off a double when Troy had phoned him and asked the favor. The sketch artist always took two to three hours and the sheriff did say he would phone him when the patient was on her way home, so naturally, being tired, Walther decided to get in bed. He even changed into his usual sleep wear - boxer shorts and a t-shirt. He felt he needed to catch a few winks after the long day. Especially after the day he had had at the hospital. Losing two patients in a single day was soul destroying. He had never before lost two patients within the space of a month, let alone the same day.
He was tired.
That, compared with the strange happenings over the past few days, drove him to bed. As an intern at med school all those years ago, he had learned to survive on two to three hours sleep a night. With the Corona pandemic at its peak, he had easily fallen back into that routine of managing to get by with only a few hours’ sleep, catching whenever he could. Since the pandemic, his body didn't seem to want to get back into its normal rhythms. Short spells of deep sleep that dumped him straight into REM seemed to be the norm now. Going to bed, Walther was convinced that the power nap would recharge the batteries, but instead, something had happened.
His eyes seemed to be the only organs still capable of free will. In pure panic mode, they were thrown from one extreme to the next. Not really seeing anything but jumping from left to right.
And then, seemingly from nowhere, Walther managed a gasp of breath, as if he were a drowning man finally able to break to the surface.
It gave him hope. He might be able to regain control of his body, and hopefully his mind.
Walther thought of a checklist to perform. Perhaps that would focus his mind away from the blind panic to something worthwhile. How do you reboot your mind and your body? This made him think of his senses. Some of them seemed to work.
He still had sight. Although limited to the position he was lying in, he could at least see some of the room. That was a relief. At least his mind hadn't completely broken and he was still able to recognize his own room.
He felt a coldness on his skin, which indicated a sense of touch. It didn't amount to much or set his mind at ease but at least it was something. He could still feel.
Walter tried taking a breath through his nose and that reminded him of his sense of smell. He seemed to regain some of his ability to breathe more normally, albeit it still shallow. It felt as if an invisible weight was seated on his chest and something had his head in a vice-like grip. He took another tentative breath through his nose. He didn't smell anything. At least he didn't smell gas, so that wasn't the reason for his paralysis or disorientation.
There was movement at the window.
His head wouldn't follow the command just yet, but his eyes darted there faithfully.
It was merely the drapes moving in the breeze coming in through the open window. But, something was wrong. Usually he would have heard the drapes rubbing faintly against each other like caressing fingers.
Walther should also have heard the noise from the main road a block away. Traffic wasn't as frequent as in the big cities but you could always hear at least a single vehicle every few seconds, even at this time of night. Havensford was a town of almost eighteen thousand souls. It was never this quiet. Someone was always up and driving about. Deliveries had to be made. Police and security personnel had to patrol, Uber drivers had fares from night owls and party animals.
But Walter didn't hear anything.
No rustling of the curtains or the leaves in the tree by the window. No dogs barking. No insects. No cars. Nothing. It was an unnatural deathly silence.
A fresh batch of gooseflesh erupted all over his body.
Something was eerily wrong.
It felt unnatural.
Walther had never been this afraid in his life. He was a man of science. A man known for his intellect and steadfastness. He was known as a dependable rock, a man that based every decision on fact and logic.
But this was something else. Walther couldn't explain his fear. It was irrational, which made him even more terrified. This state he was in defied all logic.
And then his breathing went back into panic mode as the light in the room seemed to dim. Slowly but surely, the light filter
ing in from outside seemed to fade as if a dark mist had rolled into town, dimming the streetlights. But it wasn't outside. The growing darkness was inside his room. Even the LED lights from his home security panel dimmed.
There was a growing darkness in Walther Black's room and it seemed to coalesce into something resembling a solid object. It seemed to weigh down upon him as he lay helpless on his bed. All sound was gone, even his own panicked breathing was lost to his ears.
And then the darkness seemed to move. It flowed slowly, sinuously, almost erotically towards the foot of the bed. Walther could feel his frozen testicles shrivel and retract as if he was in mortal danger.
The silence and his immobility intensified as a silhouette took shape at the foot of the bed. The darkness formed into the shape of something resembling a human being. First a head. Then shoulders, arms, trunk, and legs formed from the dark. It was huge. At least seven feet. It seemed to reach up almost to the ceiling. A dark figure made of something anathema to light. It wasn't a specter. This was a solid being that started to take form in front of Walther's terrified eyes. He tried to close his eyes but couldn't, as if he was forced to bear witness to the birth of this dark thing. And a thing it was.
Walther could see more and more detail as the dark flowed into the thing, making it solid. A whimper escaped his mouth, but that was all. No scream would come. No cry for help would blush forth. Apart from the whimper, Walther's vocal cords also seemed to be frozen.
His terror was complete as he voided his bladder. Walther registered the wet heat for only a second before all his senses were compelled to focus on the dark intruder.
It was a thing of nightmares.
Only once it had consumed all the darkness in the room, did Walther realize that he could see light from the streetlight filtering in again. He wished that he couldn't see. The light showed the thing in all its spectacular horror.
Its head was elongated into massive jaws, giving it a misshapen head, eternally bowed forward. It had four perpendicular eyes, two facing forward, two at the side of its dark skull. Were there two more, further back? Walther couldn’t be sure. Thankfully they were all closed.
Walther did not want it looking at him. He somehow knew that the madness he feared would become a reality if he were to look into those eyes.
The nightmare had a single horizontal slit for a nose between the front facing eyes and its massive mouth. Its skin looked wet and clammy, like black slime, and yet, when he looked at the body, Walther realized that the thing was covered in a hard, almost leather-like reptilian skin.
Its body was also armored with what looked like sections of hardened carapace, as if from a giant insect. Its torso, midsection, shoulders, upper arms, forearms, upper legs, and calves were completely covered with hardened shell. It stood there as if modeling its grotesquery for him.
It opened its mouth and licked its black lips. Walther's entire body seemed to convulse in an involuntary shudder. The tongue was forked, about two feet long and blacker than tar. It brought attention to four rows of serrated black teeth that seemed to glisten in the gloom. Its teeth seemed to be as thick as Walther's thumbs.
Walther wanted to scream but couldn't even illicit another whimper. He wanted to run through the glass door and jump over his balcony to whatever fate may await him. He didn't want to lie here and die like a coward. But his body refused his commands and he meekly lay still, unable to do anything but shiver.
The thing wasn't finished with the show yet. It slowly unfurled one claw, then the other. Its hands were massive, almost as big as Walther's head, and each of its six fingers ended in retractable claws. The thing showed this off by extracting and retracting each of the six inch claws in slow, deliberate fashion.
His breathing painfully fast, his heart almost bursting from his chest and his body unresponsive, Walther wished for a quick death. There was no fight or flight instinct that could kick in. Walther knew now that this was what prey felt like in that moment before the predator took them down. Walther could only wish for complete sensory shut down and hopefully a painless death.
Then the thing opened its eyes. And smiled.
His panic was now complete and it drowned out all incoherent thought.
The thing's amber eyes were like storm lanterns within the darkest of nights. They beckoned. Called out to him. Mesmerized Walther Black completely.
The smile however, seemed completely wrong on that elongated face. It didn't belong. Something like that should not smile. It made a mockery of God's Creation.
Walther didn't think it could get any worse.
Then the thing opened its mouth again. This time wider and wider. It's maw extending and opening impossibly wide.
It grabbed Walther by the ankles and pulled him closer. It ripped his boxer shorts and t-shirt off him, spinning and throwing him around like a rag doll, as if he weighed nothing.
He was completely helpless before, but now, lying naked before the thing, completely at its mercy, Walther truly knew what it felt like to be defenseless.
The nightmare only intensified as the thing leaned over and pulled Walther's feet into its mouth. The pain was excruciating but no sound escaped his lips.
Walther's screams echoed only in his mind.
CHAPTER 32
The ride home was a quiet one. Eleanor didn't talk to Deputy Giles, except to find out if he would like something to eat or drink. He declined graciously, had walked her to her front door, insisted to go into the house first to “look around.” He finally allowed her into her own house and left her alone when he deemed that everything was safe and secure. He urged her to lock all the doors and check that her windows were closed and latched and then returned to his squad car, which was parked on the street, across from her house.
After a visit to the bathroom, she found herself in the kitchen, where she plugged in her TASER. She was still contemplating whether she should put the kettle on when there was a soft, almost polite knocking on her back door. It was just after one, it had been a long day, and she was tired, but Eleanor should have known better than to just open the door.
“Don't be alarmed Eleanor,” the stranger said.
It was so unexpected that Eleanor didn't know how to react. It was the tall, glowing stranger from that afternoon. The one that was invisible to Sheriff Troger.
“I mean you no harm,” he said, offering her his two hands, palms facing upwards. “I am here to help, and perhaps you can help me, too,” he said by way of explanation. “May I come in?” When he got no reply from her, he simply stood standing outside the door.
Eleanor knew now what the term dumbfounded meant. Her brain seemed to have shut down and she didn't know what to think about the man in front of her or why he was here. Or how he had found her. Or how he knew her name.
Feeling helpless and simply giving in to the situation, she nodded and moved out of the doorway so he could enter. There wasn't much else to do. She was too tired to object.
He was a huge man, and although he didn't have to duck to walk into her home, his head was only a few inches short of the door frame.
He entered her kitchen as he had arrived – completely silently. Even in the glow of the kitchen lights, Eleanor could see the almost phosphorescent glow that emanated from him. Her numb, tired, dumb mind kept shoving a description to the fore, but she was lax to even acknowledge it. Nonetheless, if someone had asked her at that very moment in time to describe the tall, silent stranger, she would simply have said that he was angelic.
“I have to apologize,” he said in a soft-spoken but deep voice. “Etiquette dictates that I never enter a home with my weapons without gaining the host's permission first, but these are extraordinary circumstances, and I apologize for the lapse in decorum.”
Eleanor simply looked at him, her tongue and thoughts still at a loss.
“Please, sit.” She eventually managed.
If he had been here to kill me, he could have done so already, she thought. Hell, there are a milli
on more effective ways of getting rid of someone than knocking on their door and hoping to be invited in. Especially with a deputy sitting in a squad car at the other end of her house. With his car windows open, he would hear me scream. Even a stupid killer would not take such a gamble.
Even the dining chair didn't make a sound as the big man pulled it from under the small round table and lowered himself into it. Eleanor grabbed one of the remaining three chairs and sat opposite him. A salt and pepper shaker in the center was all that separated them.
“So?” she asked, surrendering herself to the moment and what was to come. Her .38 and TASER lay in evidence bags somewhere in the evidence locker back at the station. Her spare TASER was busy recharging, the shotgun was with the girls. A drawer with old and very blunt kitchen knives was behind her, and the deputy was too far away to be of any help. She made peace with the fact that she was completely at his mercy. She could only hope that he was sincere in his offer of peace and cooperation.
“You are a remarkable woman,” he surprised her.
Eleanor hoped that he wouldn't see the blush she could feel coming on. It burned all the way from her neck to her hairline. How embarrassing! She felt like a school girl with a teenage crush, and that didn't make sense. Yes, the guy was tall, and handsome, but dark he wasn't. He had fair hair, almost silver, and gray blue eyes that verged on being lilac. And he was a big man. Certainly very muscular; not her type at all. She liked the quiet nerdy type. Like her. Someone who blended in. This guy was quite the opposite.
She kept reminding herself that Lucifer had been the brightest star in heaven before the Fall. She knew better than to take anything at face value.
“I apologize,” he said, noticing her discomfort. His eyes however, never wavered from hers. “The intent was not to make you uncomfortable. I merely stated a fact. You are remarkable because you are one of the few humans with the Sight. You can see me, where most cannot.”
Of course! Eleanor thought. He isn't hitting on me. It's not like I'm attractive or anything, I just have the Sight. It was the sarcastic voice, obviously.
Stirring Embers: An urban fantasy action adventure (The Light and the Void Book 1) Page 21