The Emerald Tablet: Omnibus Edition

by JM HART

  Ducking behind a dumpster wasn’t an option. Father McDonald’s legs were liable to snap, so they kept walking. The man watched them go by. Father McDonald’s hands were casually stuffed into his pockets and Sophia’s hoodie was pulled up over her head. They kept their heads down, and cautiously passed him by.

  “Hey, you two,” the tall man said in a thick Scottish accent. “It looks like you could use a good meal. Come on in.” He chucked his smoke to the ground and ground at it with his heel. He pulled the door open and held it for them.

  The duo looked at each other, as if having a conversation only they could hear.

  “Thank you,” Father McDonald said. They walked into a kitchen, entering the back of a cafe. “You and the wee hen can sit here.” The man showed them to an empty table away from the others; no TV screen, low lighting and hardly anyone was in the place. Perfect.

  “I’ll be back.” He came back with a coffee, a milkshake, hot fish and chips, toasted club sandwiches and a bottle of water.

  “Thank you,” Sophia said, pushing her sleeves up to her elbows.

  “You’re welcome, hen. It’s a slow night, what can I say? It’s mayhem out there. Where are you two headed? Trying to get out of the city, or did you just come down from them hills?” He couldn’t help looking at Sophia. Strange young lady, he thought. Her eyes were constantly looking past him and over his shoulder as if he had something on his back. He turned and looked behind him, but there was nothing. She looked above his head and he too looked upwards. But there was nothing.

  “We’re heading south,” Father McDonald said.

  “What’s south, that’s not north? This whole country is about to be put to sleep and under lock and key.”

  “Why are you open? Why aren’t you leaving?” Sophia asked.

  “No point running, hen. The virus is everywhere. No purpose in leaving. What do you keep looking at, young lady? You’re giving me the creeps. You’re making my skin crawl.”

  “Seeing if you have the virus.”

  “You can tell?” He took a step forward and looked her square in the face.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He glanced at Father McDonald. They didn’t look like a pair of hustlers. “Well! Let’s have it.” Feeling uneasy, his heart started to race. His stomach boiled and churned, as if he had eaten a bucket of hot peppers. He was scared; he didn’t want to be one of the infected. Last week he was elbow-deep mopping up the blood of his dear brother, an infected. They had shared the restaurant for twenty-five years and his brother had never missed a day, not even when his kid was being born. Last Wednesday, he didn’t show. He didn’t answer his home phone or his mobile. So, for the first time, Joe had closed up shop, went to his brother’s house and banged on his door. Silence. He checked around the back, took the spare key from the top ledge and let himself in. The old black-and-white checked linoleum floor was now red and black. A bloody axe by his brother’s side and a gun in his hand. His baby brother had removed his wife’s head before shooting his son and biting down on the barrel of the gun.

  “No. No, you don’t have the virus,” Sophia said and smiled.

  He dropped to his knees; his hands clasped in prayer, he raised them to the ceiling. “Thank God!”

  “Do you want to know why?”

  “Sophia!” Father McDonald warned.

  “Sure, maybe I can prevent someone else from getting it. Maybe it’s my blood type or something.”

  “That’s why. Because you think of others first, and you think that there is good in everyone. Last year you were in a motorbike accident, weren’t you? Drunken joy riders lost control and cut you off. Your leg was crushed between your bike and their car. You freed yourself and, dragging your crushed leg along the road, around to the other side of the car, you checked on the others. The driver was breathing. You smelt fumes, but you didn’t stop. You reached up, opened his door and dragged him out. Seconds later, the car exploded, scorching your face. You lost your leg. You have a prosthesis attached to your knee, and still you don’t hold a grudge. You believe there is a reason for everything. I could go on, but I think you get the message.” She smiled gently. He was standing with his mouth open in amazement. He wasn’t sure what to say or do; everything she said was correct.

  “Who are you, a psychic? What’s my past got to do with me not catching the virus?”

  “The virus affects the brain. It is a small evil parasite that feeds off negative thoughts. When we get angry or scared, we create a different energy. They feed on fear, rage, pride, jealousy, envy and anger. Simple.”

  “The Evil Eye. That’s why I wear this,” he said, pointing to the string around his wrist. “My mother put it on me when I was a wee ’un and every time it fell off she would put a new one on. I continued to put it on after my bar mitzvah. I always wear my watch over it. I made the choice to keep wearing it even though we stopped going to the synagogue. My mother was asked to leave because she refused to stop studying her father’s way of teaching, which was reserved for men over forty. She told me it was what her dad’s father taught him, and he taught her, and they had continued to study even after they left Israel. The string is a protection, a reminder to be good — not to judge others or bring shame upon them, and to look towards God for guidance. Treat others how you would like to be treated, she always said. ‘Life is too short.’ So I always wear the red string. Wait, I have some for you.” He pushed his way through the swinging door and they watched it move back and forth. Within a few swings he emerged with a tiny packet. He opened it up, mumbled a blessing, and tied it to Sophia’s left wrist. He did the same for Father McDonald. He then held their hands together and prayed.

  “Thank you, you’re very kind,” Father McDonald said. “God bless you.”

  “If you like, you can stay the night here.”

  “Thank you, but we don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  “Shouldn’t you be telling someone in authority what you know about the virus?”

  “It won’t save people from themselves,” Father McDonald said. “The authorities will just think she is a crazy young girl, some religious nut and lock us both up. I’ve learnt to let God guide Sophia — as much as I’ve wanted to end her pain and confusion.”

  People in the restaurant were looking at them suspiciously — or was it his paranoia? “Wrap that up and bring it with us,” Father McDonald said.

  Sophia unfolded a napkin and wrapped her unfinished sandwich, sucked back the rest of her milkshake, and stuffed her hot chips into the empty waxed cardboard cup, putting it under her jacket.

  “How much do we owe you?”

  “Nothing. It’s on me. Call me Joe.”

  “Thanks, Joe, and may God bless you. Come on, Sophia.”

  They flipped up the hoods on their jackets and stuffed their hands in their pockets. They stepped out of the cafe to hide amongst the very thing that was seeking them out in the dead of the night: the dark, swarming invisible mist. It moved amongst the motorists, floating through open car windows, circulating amongst the passengers, up nostrils and into open mouths. Sophia watched in horror. Families began to argue as the virus impregnated their bodies, spreading across the brain, killing off neurons and consuming their souls.

  Cars suddenly screeched to a stop, drivers and passengers jumped out yelling obscenities. Sophia and Father McDonald hid in the shadows. The brawl escalated, affecting oncoming traffic. Another car screeched to a halt. Men and women jumped out of their vehicles and randomly started beating into each other. Bystanders watched; some seemed to enjoy the violence. A few horrified people looked down at their shoes and walked briskly away. No white flags were raised, no sirens wailed.

  “Maybe we should go back to Joe’s and wait till morning. It’s harder to see the swarm in the dark. We can leave at first light?” Sophia said.

  “Agreed. Let’s go.” They headed back to Joe’s cafe, but the sign said “closed”. Sophia and Father McDonald turned to leave when Joe flicked on the lights
.

  “I figured you might come back. It’s a little rough out there. It smells a hell of a lot worse than usual. I have an apartment upstairs, come.” They followed Joe into the back of the cafe, up an old narrow staircase that led into his apartment above.

  “May I use the bathroom, please?” Sophia asked.

  “Second door on the left, hen.”

  “You can sleep on the couch if that is okay. I’ll make up a bed on the floor for your granddaughter. She is very gifted,” Joe said as Sophia closed the bathroom door.

  “Sophia is very blessed. The couch is more than enough, thank you.”

  *

  Before first light, they delicately walked downstairs trying to avoid any squeaky steps, careful not to wake Joe. They wanted to evade any offer for them to stay for breakfast. Father McDonald left a thank-you note and promised to keep him in their prayers. The bell on the front door jingled when the door opened and they closed it behind them. The street was quiet and an early morning fog was lifting. A few yards away a crow was walking over a dead body, a victim of the night. The crow behaved as if inspecting the carcass before purchase. Another crow landed on the dead man. The two crows cawed at Sophia and Father McDonald’s approach, making their claim, eyeballing them. The empty street intensified the noise of the birds. Father McDonald couldn’t walk past the body. He stopped, shooed away the birds and prayed for the man’s soul. He took his Bible out and opened the book randomly. Sophia stood next to him with her hands by her side. “The word of the Lord came again unto me, saying, Son of man, set your face against the Ammonites, and prophesy against them; And say unto the Ammonites, Hear the word of the Lord God; Thus says the Lord God; Because you said, Aha, against my sanctuary, when it was profaned; and against the land of Israel …”

  A light began to glow around the body and the crows took flight. An ethereal body slowly, painfully, separated from the man’s physical being, crouching on one knee and ripping itself away from the body. Sophia, feeling the man’s pain, allowed her aura to expand and her energy to feed his soul with her light. The spirit of the man broke free from the chains of his physical body and his spiritual essence stood tall. He looked back at his body lying in the street, beaten, bloody, discarded. He turned to Father McDonald and nodded thanks and floated into the sky.

  They watched him ascend, his soul sparkling like a million stars. It soared up into the gorgeous colors of the morning sky. Suddenly, a swarm of blackness appeared from behind the buildings and descended on the man’s ascending soul. She felt the pain of the man’s soul, as they dominated it, pulling it apart, fighting each other for a piece of its light until his spiritual essence was completely absorbed.

  “Oh God, don’t let them see us. Quick, Sophia, help me with the body.”

  Sophia broke away from the feelings of pain and helped prop the body up off the road next to the storm water drain, where they wriggled under it to hide between it and the gutter, praying the corpse would restrict their light.

  The demonic entities had finished devouring the soul and Sophia peered through a gap near the man’s armpit, watching the swarm hover. The mass was turning, searching below, and began to unite: the winged entities were imp-like, forming, defragmenting, reforming, shapeshifting until they became one giant monster with the head of a bat, the torso of a man with leathery wings, claw feet, and a long, sharp, jagged scorpion tail. It was a giant of a beast. It dropped from the sky onto the street and the impact rumbled like thunder through the ground; the buildings shifted and windows exploded as cracks opened wide along the street and the road collapsed, creating a sinkhole.

  Sophia and Father McDonald lay under the dead man’s body not daring to move. Sophia held onto her necklace, her precious family heirloom, for courage. She squeezed her eyes tight and imagined being at home, when she began to feel a gentle summer breeze ruffle her favorite dress. Then she saw the wind touch the tip of the tall blades of grass; she feasted on the familiar fields and flowing river, the place she called home. She felt at peace and took a deep breath and breathed in the beauty of the day.

  Father McDonald, too, felt a breeze, a gagging stench, as the beast sniffed and snorted at the dead man’s body.

  Sophia kept focusing on the gentle breeze in the fields and her image was getting stronger, panoramic. She felt her hair whipping across her face, the wind building around her, bursting with energy, changing to gale-force. Suddenly her hair and her clothes froze. Her state was shifting: flashing between the fields and lying under the dead body. The states merged into one existence and storm clouds from the fields appeared in the sky above the beast and lightning flared. The wind intensified. Debris went flying as a twister developed and traveled towards Sophia and Father McDonald; Sophia had become the eye of the storm. Her inner storm, which had been building up and up, exploded from her solar plexus and the two storm cells emerged and blasted the demon into a million pieces again, back into its weaker viral state. It was scattered in every direction for miles and miles. The ferocious storm lasted less than half a minute then the wind disappeared leaving a few leaves floating in its wake. Father McDonald and Sophia rolled out from under the body and staggered to their feet.

  Sophia held her head, feeling groggy and unsteady. “I don’t drink alcohol, except for a sip from the chalice, and I certainly never will if this is what it feels like. Maybe, if this ever ends, I can teach teenagers how to get high on light. I can start up a club.” Sophia rapidly blinked, trying to clear the fog from her eyes. “Focus! What am I thinking, what was I doing?” Her vision was blurry and her ears were ringing. She waited for her blood pressure to return to normal as she harvested her energy. Father McDonald put his arm around her, to steady her on her feet. She felt the warmth of his body and looked up at his lanky frame. He was old and fragile, but nevertheless a tower of strength to her. “We have to run,” she said, pulling at his arm weakly, “before they regroup and come looking for us.”

  The sound of a horn blasted from the alley. A four-door blue sedan sped around the corner, heading straight at them. Sophia jumped out of the way as the car braked and the tyres screeched while the car turned in an arc and came to a stop beside them.

  The passenger side window rolled down and the driver leant across and shouted, “I had a dream! Get in.” He looked in his rear-vision mirror. “You did all this?”

  Sophia smiled at Joe. “Not all of it.”

  “Get in.”

  Without further hesitation they jumped in the car. They raced along the streets as fast as Joe dared, dodging abandoned or burnt-out cars for about five minutes until he finally slowed down. “Heck, what happened last night?”

  “Thanks, Joe. What was your dream?” Sophia asked, rummaging in her backpack. She opened a paper bag and pulled out a white sage stick. She broke off a piece and handed it to Joe.

  “In my dream we were cooking in your family’s bed and breakfast and you were laughing and shimmying in the kitchen. The next scene was I had to get up and leave Glasgow immediately to find you both. So I did. What’s this?”

  “It’s white sage and it will help keep you free of negative energies. If you are going to stay with us, you are going to need it for protection from the dead and the living.”

  “The dead?” Joe started chewing.

  “We’d better tell you our story,” Father McDonald said. “You need to know what you are getting into. You might recognize me if I shaved off my beard and got a haircut,” Father McDonald said. “My name is Ian McDonald. I am a minister of the church and this is Sophia. Her family died years ago and she has been under my care ever since.”

  “No need to shave, I recognized you both. Didn’t know where from. After a while I remembered watching the tube. I was about to turn it off, had my finger on the button when your wee smiling face popped on the screen. Yesterday I recognized Sophia first when she smiled. She didn’t look like she was being held against her will, and you, sir, didn’t come across as anything but a God-fearing man.”

&nb
sp; Sophia sat back in her seat and closed her eyes. She visualized a reflective sphere around the vehicle, a cocoon of emerald-green, purple, yellow, orange, blue and, of course, a soft touch of red for vitality — a seamless mirror. Anyone or anything that looked at them would see no more than a reflection of themselves. Good would see good, and evil would see evil.

  They had been driving for a while and were entering the center of the waking city of Edinburgh. Sophia leant her head against the window, watching people with half-open eyes. They walked without purpose along the sidewalk like zombies. No hint of emotion, just moving machines, religiously following a well-worn path. There was a man with a briefcase in his hand, his eyes hidden behind black, police, frameless glasses. He reminded Sophia of some of the characters in an old classic movie, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

  Joe wanted to put his foot down and hightail it out of there, but he knew it would only attract attention. He held the steering wheel tight, gripping and un-gripping. Rubbing his sweaty palms on the leg of his pants and mopping the perspiration from the side of his face onto his shoulder, he looked into the rear-vision mirror at Sophia. “Can you see if they’ve got the virus?”

  She wondered about telling him. Is ignorance best? Maybe not. “Yes.”

  “Are there many?” Joe asked.

  “They’re all infected, Joe. Their souls are hanging by a thread to their body. The demonic entities can’t take up a hundred per cent residence because the body will perish. A fragment of the soul is trapped, tethered to the body while it’s used as the devil’s puppet.”

  “What does it look like? Oh, my god, did you see that guy’s face at the lights? It just transformed and snarled like a monster as we passed. Why aren’t they attacking? Why are they still driving?”

  “Robotic behavior. They can’t see us, they can only see a reflection of themselves. The virus looks like a grey cloud filled with tiny metallic flies. They are passing in and out of people’s noses, mouths, eyes and ears. Some latch on and hang off the body.”