by Shaun Meeks
“Dillon, I’m never too busy for you. Let’s go have some tea.”
We walk to the back of the church and head towards the rectory. “Did you see the detective here earlier?” I ask.
“I’m afraid not. I was hoping to. His son could use all the help he can. What an awful thing to have gone through,” he says, and I agree. “I mean, no child should be forced to see things even a grown man or woman couldn’t handle. Children are resilient, but their minds are still so frail and easily scarred.”
“I know. Poor kid.” We walk into the rectory and he leads me to his office. “When did you speak to Garcia last?”
“Last time the two of you were here. When I saw what happened, I was hoping he would come by with his son and there’d be a chance to talk after. I would like to offer the boy some solace. What kind of tea do you want?”
“Earl Grey,” I say absently, thinking about a few things, mainly what I saw in the warehouse. It was a disturbing thing, seeing all the kids the way they were, especially the detective’s boy who was strapped to the table. I’m lost in thought and almost don’t hear Father Ted come back into the room. He sets the tea down in front of me.
“How’ve you been, Dillon? This job was probably hard on you even.”
“It was,” I say, and give him a few details, right up until the junkie/shadowy man died. “I didn’t really have a choice. He was a threat to the woman I love and to God only knows how many others. I’ve never done that before, taken a human life, and to be honest, I’m struggling with it. It’s hard on my conscious.”
It hasn’t been that hard, to be honest, but I am talking to a priest, so it seems like a good thing to say. It’s better than what I want to say, which is I’m glad the bastard is gone and can’t hurt anyone else. I bite back those words for good reason.
“There’s a reason murder is a sin. Even a righteous murder weighs on a good heart, Dillon. How’s your tea?”
“Just how I like it. Earl Grey. Hot,” I say with a smile and mimic Jean Luc Picard, even though I haven’t bothered to drink any of the tea. “Where’s your little friend, Peel? I thought he’d be here too. I really like the way that guy smells.”
“He’s down stairs. Sometimes he goes down there when church is in session just in case I bring people back here.”
“Want to go down and tell him it’s okay to come up? I can come to.”
“After,” Father Ted says, and lifts his cup up. “Let’s finish our tea and talk some more. It’s a while since you were here, and so much has happened.”
“Okay,” I say, and look around the room.
“So, how come you were hoping to talk to Detective Garcia?” the priest asks, and leans back in his chair, his face frozen with a perma-smile.
“Well, it’s been a few days since I killed the shadowy man at my apartment and I just wanted to touch base with him. He seems so different lately. So…” my voice trails off, but my lips keep moving.
“Different? How so?”
“He…he seems…so…oh wow.”
“Are you okay, Dillon? You sound strange.”
I shake my head and open my eyes wide. I lean over and try to put the tea cup down and it misses the table. The china shatters on the floor and warm tea hits my shoes. They’ve seen worse days.
“I’m…kin…kinda ti…tired.”
“You look it,” Father Ted says, and puts his own cup down with ease. “That must be the poison working already.”
“Wh…what…poi—”
“Don’t try and talk, Dillon. There’s no real point. Just sit back and relax, let the poison go to work and you’ll be dead in no time.”
I give him a look to show him I’m confused, and he smiles.
“You have no idea what’s going on, do you? Is this the part where I tell you the whole thing, where the evil villain finally reveals the master plan that you fell prey too? I’m not too up on these Earth things so, I think I’ll just sit back and watch you die. It’s really for the best, Hunter.”
“T…Ted…why?”
“Ted! Ted! Why me, Ted?” the priest mocks, and then laughs. “Well, the least I can do is give you that one. Father Ted is dead. He died nearly five months ago. He was sitting right here in this chair, drinking this shitty, hot beverage and then, off to the land of his little God he went. Peel was the one who found him, you know. He’d crossed over a few days before, came over as a bit of a scout to see if you or the priest was around. When he found this dead body, he almost went in it himself, but knew it’d be better to call on me, so I could come and claim it.
“The universes are changing, Dillon. If you go out into the universe, you can sense it, smell it in the stars. The people you work for are on the way out. Our group, our organization feels now is the time to do what we want, to use the Earth and be free to come here on our own. Why should we listen to these stupid laws made by beings who are beneath most of us? To protect this world? Have you seen what this place is? Earth is a cesspool and a realm of gluttony and degradation. Why shouldn’t we be allowed to come?”
My eyes slump a little and he chuckles at the sight of it. He must be loving the fact that he defeated me.
“I took your priest’s body and set this all into motion. I raised the Colossus’, earthbound monsters that are much worse than my own race, and set up a plan to get you to bring me the book that would allow me to call every monster, demon and being from here to the surface. Better to prepare the world for what lies beyond here by showing them what’s right in their own backyard, right?
“That’s why I came to the hospital and introduced you to Detective Garcia. I knew you would help him and knew your friend, Godfrey, would be able to get it. That lizard bastard has a way of getting his filthy claws on anything he wants. And he did. It seemed so easy. All I had to do was get the book from you, remove the great monster hunter from the equation, and it would all come together. My group, the organization, they want you dead so bad. So many feel you are going to really get in the way. But I had the Colossus’, so how hard could it be?
“Everything seemed so perfect, but you are a tough bastard, Dillon. I will give you that. You live up to the stories I’ve heard of Treemors. Even killing the homeless man I managed to convince to attack you not once, but twice, came as a bit of a surprise.
“And yet, here you are, sitting in my chair, dying just as you should. Not as tough as you thought, are you?”
“Not as stupid as you thought, either,” I say, and sit up, done with the act. I’ve heard enough to know this imposter needs to die. Guess my days of killing humans, even ones with otherworldly beings in them, isn’t over after all. “Don’t look so surprised. I knew you weren’t Father Ted before you even brought me the tea.”
I reach behind me and pull out my Tincher and my gloves. The fake Ted fumbles his way out of the chair he’s in. He knocks his tea over and is crying even though I’m not even approaching him yet.
“How? How could you know?”
“You said you felt bad for Garcia’s son,” I tell him plainly. “Bad move.”
“So? It was all over the news.”
“Was it? The kids being found was all over the news. Garcia never reported his son missing and had taken the boy out of there before coming back to get the rest of them. So, there’s no way the real Father Ted could know that without talking to the detective first. You should learn to lie better.”
“Wait…please…I can tell you things!”
“Of course you can. I hear that all the time. But to be honest, you’ll say whatever you can to get out of this. I won’t believe a word you say. I have no faith in your kind. The only thing I have faith in, is this.”
I raise the Tincher and head after him. It’s not a hard job. The faker cringes in the corner of my dead friend’s office and I simply plunge the blade into his chest. He convulses once and I feel the familiar vibrat
ion run up the blade of the knife as it comes into contact with the visiting soul inside. I look away though as I free the blade, and send the spirit back to where it came from. Even though it wasn’t Ted in that body, it’s still the face of the man I once cared a lot about. I look up at the ceiling, his body quakes again, and then slowly slumps to the floor. I draw my knife back and walk to the kitchen to wash the blade off.
That didn’t feel as good as I would have liked it to. I know it wasn’t the real Ted in there, I’ve been doing this long enough. There’ve been times when I’ve had to do the same thing to another creature that took over a dead human, but this is different. This felt personal. It was far worse than killing the junkie I’d thought was the shadowy man. Worse by a long shot.
Once the blade is clean, I dry it and walk out of Father Ted’s office. I need to do something about his body, but not yet. There’s still work to do.
I’ve been in the basement of the church more than once. I know the place well. I don’t even bother to turn on the extra light on the stairs, I just walk down and halfway to the bottom I see candle light flickering.
“Is he dead already, Kenta?” Peel asks from below. “That seems to have gone fairly easy if—”
His words die on his false lips as he sees me standing at the bottom of the stairs, my Tincher in hand. I still feel sick from what happened above, but there’s rage here too. And determination. I’ve been played, made to feel like a fool and I don’t like it.
“You’re here,” Peel says, and backs away from me, but there’s nowhere to run. “Does that mean Kenta is dead?”
“Yes. I killed him, the bastard hiding in my friend’s body. Were you really expecting to come out of this on top?”
“It was worth a try. So, I guess now you’re going to send me back as well?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I rip you open until I find your centre, your spirit, and I’ll just put it out altogether. I haven’t decided yet.”
“What can I do or say to help? I don’t want to die. I don’t mind going back, but I don’t want to die. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
I can’t help but to laugh, though there is no humour in it. I’m pissed off and the sound is bitter and sarcastic.
“Nothing wrong? You stole kids, killed three police officers, murdered another friend of mine, stole the body of someone close to me, and for what? The book? For some stupid plan to get the world ready for your kind? You’ve done nothing but what’s wrong.”
“It’s not that simple, Hunter. You have to know that.”
“Really? The one up there, Kenta, sure made it sound simple.”
“That’s because Kenta is a Creel. You know their kind. They’re rash and harsh, from a world of pain and misery. What else do you expect from them? But I’m telling you, there’s more to it all. A bigger picture. You can either understand it, or just get in the way. Either one you choose the future will happen regardless. Things are evolving.”
I shake my head and slowly begin to walk towards him. He’s afraid. I can tell by the way his fake shoulders slump as he backs into the wall and raises hands made of old tea bags.
“I’ve been hearing that way too often. An organization is coming, one that wants to put the powers that be in their place and destroy the hunters right? Is that your plan?”
“It’s more than that, Hunter. For too long the kind you serve has controlled everything, keeping the rest of us in their shadow, but we refuse to stay there. Why are the universes and realms free to them, but barred for the rest of us, the ones they don’t deem fit?”
“To protect the worlds chosen, the ones not ready for what is out there,” I say, and that’s just how it is. My job is to protect the Earth and humans from the truths beyond the stars that they’re just not ready for. They can barely handle the things on their own planet, day-to-day lives. How would they react to what is out there?
“And who decides who’s ready for what?”
“Not you, and not those you follow.”
“Keep thinking that way, Hunter, but you can’t stop what’s coming. If it takes a war, there’ll be a war. And then, how will you manage to win, to walk away? Soon, you’ll be on the other end of a Tincher and I wonder how much mercy there’ll be.”
“About as much as I’m going to show you.”
I move in closer and there is no mercy, not from me, not today. I don’t send him to his home world, there’s no point. If there’s a war coming, maybe I should start snuffing the lights out of them all, just like I did these two.
“My God, Dillon!” Garcia says, as he looks down at Father Ted’s body. “You killed him too? What in God’s name is wrong with you?”
“He was already dead,” I tell him, and explain everything that happened. “It was Kenta and Peel from the beginning. He put us together so that I would help find the book and then they set you to kill me when they took your son. All so getting the book would be even easier. Saying it out loud sounds like something way too complicated, full of too many ways for it to go wrong, but it almost worked. I did get the book and you shot me and left me for dead. But it’s over for now.”
“I don’t even know what to say. Father Ted was a good, honest man. How long had he been dead for?”
“Five months.”
“Five months?” he says the words, as though he doesn’t believe them. “All this time, every Sunday I saw him, it was all a lie? How could that thing lie so well?”
“Who knows. Maybe it was a preacher on his own world.”
“And my son’s first communion, I guess that was nothing too. How am I going to explain it to Phoenix?”
“Why would you?”
“Because it wasn’t real. He’ll have to do it again.”
I shake my head and walk over to Garcia, pulling him away from Father Ted’s lifeless body. “That’s the problem right there, detective. In your son’s eyes it was very real. He doesn’t need to know this to feel as though it was. Telling him will make his already shaky faith crack a little more. The real Father Ted told me a lot. In the end it comes down to this: having belief and faith that something is true is more powerful than finding out something is false. You can build a foundation on trust and hope. Nothing can be built on knowing the world you live in is a lie.”
And as those words leave my lips, I think about everything that just happened and what I’m here to protect. This world lives under a blanket of falsehoods and lies. People live in a cocoon of safety they don’t really have. If the truth finally comes out and everyone wakes up from the dream they’ve lived in of a perfect world, how long will it be before the walls around them crumble and fall. How can a place built on nothing by fairy tales and lies stand up to the tidal wave of truth that’s threatening to wash in?
Time will tell.