Part one: Hermanway House

Chapter one

Oh, yes, it was just my luck. I was broken down in the middle of freaking nowhere, the boondocks if you will. I pulled the coarse, moth eaten blanket up higher on my chin. This old house –with a completely stone dead cell phone. It was cold, quite drafty indeed. I pulled up my blanket, and punched the old balled up backpack into a more or less lumpy form. I placed my flashlight by my side, and then rolled over on my side, the old grey board beneath me creaking like an ancient hound dog moaning at the moon.

I heard heavy breathing, and sure it was mine, I consoled myself, thinking “Hold your breath, you won’t hear it then.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. I heard it even as I pinched my nose closed, filling the entire capacity of my lungs with stinging, bitingly cold December air, not exhaling a bit for several seconds. Then there was a slow, cold chill that I felt seep through the room, and it seemed even to penetrate through my skin, to my very bones. It felt like absolute zero; I was going numb, I was so cold.

Then, I saw a faint white form take shape on the wall, as though someone were making smoke signals within the room. I was frozen in half astonishment, half incredulity. I was seventeen, and nearly eighteen…Unless, was it past midnight? Then I’d legally be an adult. What a place to come of age in, I thought dismally. Why were---hey, get a grip, you’re an adult, for crying out loud, I told myself. But still, I was a bit disturbed at what I’d seen. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, berating myself for being foolish. I was too tired, and too cold to trust my senses. Yes, I needed to get a fire going. I reached for my flashlight and was suddenly alarmed. It was not there. I had specifically placed it there so that it would be within reach. Now, it was gone. I had barely finished uttering a prayer that I wouldn’t die of hypothermia and that my family was blessed, when I felt an icy finger on my shoulder. I would have shaken with fear if I wasn’t frozen stiff with cold and numbness of the chill and shock. This is not happening, I say NOT HAPPENING! Screamed every single rationally thinking cell in my brain. I then exhaled through frozen parted lips as I felt another spot of icy temperature on my shoulder next to the first one.

Then another, another, and another. I shook inside, frozen stiff outside. My eyes were watering; I hadn’t closed them for at least a minute since I had prayed. They were wide open, frozen as the rest of me was in the shock and the cold. Suddenly something in me gave way and I spun around as if my life depended on it. I saw the form of a gaunt, pale, brown haired girl in a torn, dirt stained blue checked dress. Her long tan hair fell in tangled shocks over her shoulders and behind her back. Her eyes seemed to glow with a faint white light in the surrounding darkness. In fact, she was so pale, she seemed to glow. She was unearthly pale, pale enough to be dead, in fact. That was my last thought before I blacked out.

Chapter two

I slowly fought to withdraw from the cold, binding reaches of sleep. As I came conscious, I was first aware of the burning sensation in my limbs and a dull weight on my wrists and ankles. I felt something pressing down on my torso.

I opened my eyes to gaze up at flickering shadows playing on eaves underneath a ceiling whose boards were grey with age. I slowly recognized the cold feeling of metal on my ankles and wrists. The weight on my torso seemed to dig tiny splinters into my skin—it had to be a wooden thing of some sort. I groaned as I tried to sit up. I heard the rattle of chains, and realized I must be in handcuffs with long chains attached. I managed to get into a crunch position, but after that, the thing on my torso, more definitively over my navel, prevented my sitting up further. I recognized the wooden thing to be a very rough wooden pole, with saw horse supports at either end. All the same, it still rested heavily on my stomach.

“Well, she has come to, now has she,” I heard a deep, raucous voice say. I saw a dark, shadowy figure approach me, and saw what looked like some outlandish weapon in its left hand. I wanted to scream, but for one reason or another, I was rendered unable to vocalize my sheer terror. Was I…………..dreaming?

With that thought, I lapsed into blackness once more, barely hearing the far off clink of metal on metal.

Chapter three

I was aroused by an absolute freezing sensation as I came to realize that I was somewhere, face down in something wet and very cold that I couldn’t breathe. I ached, and a pain in my upper hip was throbbing to my heartbeat like another organism having convulsions. I was ultimately clueless in my drowsy stupor as to where I was and who I was. As far as that went, I might as well have been a species from the phylum Arthropoda. All I knew was I was in pain and was asphyxiating. That was all that mattered. As I came to, I had the strange sensation that I was burning up and freezing at the same time. I tried to sit up, more curl up, to get out of the wet, unbreathable substance that filled my mouth and nostrils. I managed to roll over onto what I would come to see was my uninjured left thigh. Immediately I recognized the availability of oxygen, and my lungs began their ultimate job: supplying me the oxygen I so desperately needed. My breath came in tremor-like sobs for how long, I do not know. I finally managed to open my eyes, and saw that I was in a world of absolute white, mixed with the dark, shadow tones of nighttime grey. The ground beneath me was wet, white, and slightly fluffy, slightly crunchy, and icy to the touch. It was snow.

I saw as my teary eyes adjusted that the snow on my left was stained scarlet. I was bleeding. My limbs still burned, and I began to shiver uncontrollably, all the while, my thigh throbbing so painfully. Where was I, who was I? “Take a break, Gail,” I thought to myself after several minutes, as my memory seemed to return. “Gail, Gally, come on, last night, last year, age, anything…” I was speaking and thinking the words in random increments so that a person listening to my incomprehensible ravings would hear “Gally…on, last..ni…year…a, thing…” memories finally seeped into my baffled consciousness. I was Gail Ama Sahran, born on December 21, 1990 (Anno Dominie) I had been returning home from Coorville College, and had a tire blow, a car battery give, a tank empty, a cell phone die. I’d stopped at an old abandoned house by the road to stay warm, and I had seen some figure, that of a girl, a Wha must’ve been a ghost, appearing as a haunted looking child, so frail her bones were almost visible. I’d come to and ached for several minutes, seeing shadowy figures. That led up to now. So what was missing?

EVERYTHING!!!!! “You are delirious!” my conscience finally screamed as common sense returned to me.

“oh, my, Oh, my ooomyyyyy….ohh…….I….I…am…..d-d-d-d-r-eeea-ming!” I shivered. What in the heck was going on? I buried my face in the snow, trying vainly to awaken myself. I was awake. That, and delirious. I was definitely running a fever, and freezing at the same time. So, like what now, I thought, the adrenaline rushes of the last half hour slowly subsiding, giving way to enveloping loneliness. I was alone, probably dying, by the following: blood loss, high fever, hypothermia, and what next? I had a puncture wound on my upper thigh that was bleeding at a trickle, and I had no way to remove my clothing to inspect the injury without dying of hypothermia. I was too stiff and achey to move, and too cold, and too badly hurt. Yet it was the only way to keep from freezing to death.

I literally forced myself to stand. It like I was pushing a pair of scissors into my injured thigh, but I still did so. I reached down (which wasn’t very far because the snow was waist high) and grabbed numb fistfuls of snow to place over the wound. This helped tremendously. I clapped my hands and rubbed my hands over my core, trying to warm my inner body first as I had once read in an emergency manual on hypothermia: warm core first, then warm extremities. I did so nearly unsuccessfully and then began to clomp around on frozen stiff legs. At first I felt like a rusted over robot trying to beat the deterioration, but slowly I warmed up and began to move more and more fluidly, falling less and less often into the snow. Gradually, the sheets of flakes that flew from the skies to the ground began to lessen and a pink glow painted sky and snow alike a rose color. It was beautiful. The sun was rising. As the greys faded to whites and roses, then golds, the sun rose above the dismal midwinter horizon. I began to hum a few bars of the old tune we’d sung in the middle school choir. “Da, da da Da-da daaa… the snow begins to fall….in the bleak of the blizzard….the sun shall someday call…on the morrow….the stars will rise….oh, sit by, watch, wait, while the fires blaze tall….come on near spring, we’ll see the flowers…through the hazes of mist. Da, da…da…da, da…something, something something…..” I chanted in a low, cracked voice that was unrecognizable as that of the chorus’s lead mezo soprano. As the time passed, I paced away, plowing deep tracks in the snow until I could walk easily, singing, the sun rising, the world turning a dazzling white-gold color. Then, as the clouds receded, the world turned even brighter until I could barely see. Yet the meager warmth the weak winter sun brought was well worth the near blindness of the glaring light that bounced off the snow. I continued my pacing for well over three hours, until the pit of my nearly frozen stomach threatened to eat through the back of my coat. I was famished. “Hmm, let’s see, I last ate at….five o’clock on what I am guessing is yesterday evening. Long time. Maybe even more than just 24 hours. Who knows, ya know,” I mused aloud, my now more or less normal voice filled with strange cheer. I was…was I going crazy? Nah, I didn’t think so. I hoped not. It wouldn’t help the situation any at all.

My injured thigh had long since the first application of snow gone numb. The pain no longer ailed me, but I still burned with chill and heat. I then turned towards the rough, overgrown structure of weather beaten grey boards that was the source of my living nightmare. I didn’t want to go any nearer to the accursed house than I was now, at maybe two hundred yards away. But I outright had to if I had any reasonable hope of making it to my car, my first aid kit, the ancient route 66 highway and let alone safety.

I took a deep breath and began to meander slowly towards the road as I took the longest route conceivable around the house to my car. I was in the rear of the property, and I was, even at the distance of 300 yards, very skittish about so much as glancing at the structure. My conscience reprimanded me, saying that I was acting like a scared four year old, but I could not help myself. It took me a good half hour to make it three hundred feet from the end of my paced out trench, towards my car. After another exhausting hour, I finally flopped down in the front seat of the Toyota Camry. Icy blood dripped onto the plush tan seats. I would worry about that later. The first thing I did was manually lock every single door on the car, and then dig out the first aid kit. I found the scissors and gingerly cut the material of my pants away from the wound. It was a painstaking process of trying to remove frayed, bloodied fabric fibers from my bruised, bleeding skin. Finally I revealed a five square inch portion of my leg which had a deep octagonal crevice in the tissues that oozed blood at the touch. Why wouldn’t the platelets do their jobs, I wondered.

But, regardless of what I wanted, the wound still bled. I pulled wads of gauze out of the kit and taped them on with a spare roll of duct tape, replacing the inadequate medical tape, which wouldn’t stick because of the smears of blood.

After finishing my work, I sighed, then shivered, pulling my coat closer about me. I drifted off, not heeding the age old warnings of freezing to death. I awoke to the “ca-ca-thrump!” of my car door opening. When I saw through the icy window the figure, I screamed in terror. The creature had dark oily grey skin on its hands, which were like that of a human’s. It’s pale ice blue eyes seemed to radiate its apparent odium. I was horrified beyond description.

I felt a cold hand grip my shoulder, and my mind flew back to my experience with the child the previous night. There was no doubt in my mind that she was some sort of specter or phantom. Now as the dark cloaked figure gripped my shoulder, the thought came to me that she might have been a banshee. Was she? Or was she? If she was, I might not see the next day.

“GAIL!” My conscience screamed, “GET A GRIP!” Yet, I could not. “I have come for you,” said the figure in a deep, raucous voice that I recognized as that of the figure from the night before. My lips parted in a silent scream of horror.

Suddenly, I knew. The girl ghost had been a banshee. Now what would happen to me? I had no idea. No earthly idea whatsoever. All I knew was that it would not be any good.

Unless….could I escape….fate?

Chapter four

The creature that had me by the shoulder pulled me out of the car and dragged me over the snow back to the house. I did not blink; at all. For one reason or another, I had the offbeat notion that the creature was more powerful if I was afraid of it. I didn’t show fear. Accept for my wide, steel grey, unblinking eyes. I tried to tell myself in the silence of the snow, that it would be alright; that I was just having a nightmare. It did not quite work, but I did manage not to show fear. If this creature, this being, was conscious, it would probably react to my show of emotions. If I didn’t show emotion, it might not be as harsh, or at least as cruel. Possibly. Or possibly not.

I didn’t bother struggling, as I sensed vaguely that it was much stronger than I was. I still had enough sagacity to think with slight rationality. As it hauled me through the door of the house, I began to writhe in its grip, my sense of weakness dismissed as the helplessness of imprisonment came to me. I had to get away. Out of the house. I undulated like a snake in the creature’s arms. I then gathered all my strength and bit its arm. My captor gave a macabre groan and covered my face with an icy grey hand. I again bit, my teeth tearing through the robe that covered the creature’s wrist. There I sank my incisors into the scaly feeling flesh. I didn’t dare think of what I was doing, for otherwise I would have quickly fainted from absolute revulsion at the very thought of it. The creature emanated another unearthly groan, and I felt something wet on my face. I released its wrist and felt more wetness. It was blood. Or so I thought. The creature struck me across the face and then turned, flinging me upon the floor beneath an old broken window. I saw in the dim shadowy light that the creature’s robes had fallen to the floor, and so had the creature. It had vanished. In the air above the monster’s garments, a swirl of white mist began to form. It swirled in a maelstrom of white, shining wind until from it formed a floating figure of immaculate white, that seemed to shimmer transparent, in the rays of winter sun that streamed from the window. At first the apparition seemed to be a gathering of white rags suspended in midair, but slowly a pair of outstretched arms took shape and then a neck emerged from the mist. An intense, august face formed and began to take on features. It’s lips were full and shining white just as the rest of the figure. The specter had a high, noble brow, narrow, ardent eyes, and a cascading mass of misty, transparent white hair.

I lay still on my side, stunned and stricken by the blow that the creature had dealt me. Even as I gathered enough strength to move, I did not, lying still, my eyes riveted upon the august form of the specter that hovered menacingly over the spot where the creature had vanished. The form of the woman gazed intensely at me, as if she were looking through me into my mind. Her severe and scrutinizing gaze alarmed me so, I didn’t dare to move. The floating woman figure tilted up her chin, her head at an angle, and let forth a soprano wail. A banshee.

What was for me now, I wondered. My eyes widened as she released another wail. Then, she turned her head back to its original position. Gradually, her glowing white face began to turn electric blue, the color of the electrical sparks one may see when plugging in an electrical cord. Her eyes first began to glow like gleaming blue embers, and then her face, hair, arms, and garbs of misty cloth.

“Gail Sahran,” she said, her voice at a high, transparent wavering pitch. “You have defeated the fiend of this house, the house of Jannas Hermanway. I am phantom of the late woman called Attu, also known as Medea. I was legally known as the late Medea Hermanway. My daughter Jannas was killed by the fiend that you too were attacked by. Jannas’s phantom attempted to warn you of the fiend. Yet I find you were deaf to her speech. Why is this? Whatever the case, you have allowed both of us to finally rest. The fiend was nearly killed by a poison snake. It was his half-phantom that attacked you. The fiend attacked me too, and it was with it that I met my end. We thank you. Yet beware, as the fiend’s half brother, the Kiskan lives yet!” said the phantom of Medea. With that, the specter let out a last keening wail and vanished in a flash of light. I crept up to sit upon my knees, and saw the form of a limp, silent form lying on the ancient grey boards. I saw that the form was that of the fiend and came to see that it was covered in red. Blood. I must have hit an artery when I had bitten its wrist. I knelt and wept there on the floor for the insanity of the last day and night. I wept for the woman and her child that had been lost to the fiend. And I wept for my lost innocence. Then I wept as the feeling came searing back in an electric cascade of pain in my wounded thigh. I then stood, tall and august, walking into the snow stained scarlet like blood by the glare of the setting sun.

Part two: Revenge of the Kiskan

Chapter five

I stood, letting my leg stretch. Three weeks of physical therapy for the wound and the broken bones I had gotten while walking to Jersey City. After leaving the nightmare of the old house behind, I had walked five miles by the roadside trying to reach the town of Jersey city, ten miles away. At the halfway point, I’d stumbled and broken my arm ankle and wrist in the fall. Luckily a motorist had seen me and graciously provided makeshift splints of coiled newspapers for the ride to Jersey City. There an ambulance transported me to the hospital in Oscola Hills. Then after treatment and maggot therapy my mom drove me home to Amacuul. For several weeks I was in a cast and had regular maggot therapy to remove the diseased therapy from my thigh wound. All the doctors were mystified at what sort of weapon had produced such a fissure in my leg, and let alone one of such uniform shape. Even the stereotypically cheerful nurses seemed a bit edgy when they saw it. It bled “unusually profusely” as Doctor Gammot had said. They did say that I had done the best thing I could’ve to prevent infection by putting snow in it. And then sealing it was also a good thing.

All in all, the entire ordeal was of much, much less discomfort and peril than the awful night and day I had spent in the abandoned house by highway 66.

After stretching, I took a couple of steps, feeling free for the first time in weeks. I was going back to college in a week, but tonight I had a date with my boyfriend, Jared. He was one of the only person I dared to tell about my experience. When the doctors had asked me what had happened, I had told them I didn’t know, that I’d been unconscious. Secretly, I knew that the puncture was the product of the fiend’s mysterious weapon. Jared had reacted as if he were talking to a perfectly sane individual, which of course he was. He didn’t even question me as to my thoughts upon the matter, but simply let me narrate the tale in my own good time. A few days after I had told him, he said his great grandmother Marsha had once seen a ghost. I wasn’t surprised, because the old lady had always been extremely superstitious, and believed in such supernatural beings.

He said that not only had she seen one, but she’d caught the doings of one on tape. He showed me the armature video of the incident, and I saw books flying through the air. It was slightly chilling, but nothing at all like my experience with the Hermanway phantoms and the fiend. He didn’t comment much except for briefly saying that he knew that I had seen what I had seen, that I wasn’t crazy, that he believed me. The belief he had in me added confidence to me, overruling my doubt. So that night, I put on my navy blue satin evening dress. As I saw the distinct, octagonal scar on my upper leg, I sighed. The dermatologist had said I would probably carry the scar for life. I berated myself for being so self-pitying, reminding myself of how many people out there had much worse things to worry about than cosmetic concerns. Ah, but I do, my memory fired the scene where Medea’s phantom had told me of the Kiskan. Kiskan, schmiskan! My common sense dismissed the entire ordeal as a simple hallucination. Yet I knew, deep down, it wasn’t. So what was I supposed to do to protect myself from a supposed monster that was seeking vengeance for its half brother that I had killed? I had no idea in the vicinity of the universe. Well, maybe I did. Keep constant vigil. Say hello to sleepless nights. Whatever would I do to get through exams? I sighed, my common sense saying “spoofum smoofum. It’s phoney baloney.” The mental rhyme relaxed me momentarily, and I enjoyed the rest of the evening.

When I returned home that night, I lay down, without taking my makeup off. “Hello Gail. So you think you can get off with murder, ehh? Well, think again, because I know where you are, Gail Sahran, I know where you are. You cannot hide!” crooned a vile voice. Then from the shadows jumped a vast, shadowy form with snarling white fangs and glowing amber eyes. It’s teeth contacted my forearm, and I cried out and sat up, instantly finding myself in my room, on my bed. I caught my breath, my pounding heart slowing back into its steady rhythm.

“Gail! Gail! You yelled, I thought someone was breaking in. are you okay?” my mom asked.

“Yeah, oh no! I’m NOT!” I shrieked, seeing ragged gnashes on my forearm like those made by a wolf’s teeth. They oozed blood and smarted sharply.

“Oh, Gail, what happened?” my mom asked.

“Look mom, I—I don’t know. I…dreamed there was something after me and it bit me. I…oh, I just don’t know.” I began to cry, and my mom bent over me like I was five, having a night terror. I was embarrassed, being a legal adult, but comforted at the same time.

Just then my dad walked in the door. He saw my arm, and asked “What happened to you?”

“She dreamed a wolf or something was attacking her, and now she’s got tooth marks on her arms. She needs stitches.” My mom said for me.

“I…I’ll drive myself to the hospital and see the doctor,” I mumbled, composing myself as well as I could.

“Gail, are you sure you wouldn’t be better if one of us drove you?” asked my dad.

“Yes!” I snapped, feeling as if they thought me incapable and crazy.

“Gail, you need us to drive you, you had this…experience. What did you have to drink, and eat when you went out with Jared?” my dad demanded.

“I had Italian spaghetti, breadsticks, sweet tea, rice pudding and a side of asparagus. Satisfied? Well, if you’re not, smell my breath. You know I wouldn’t even be able to obtain alcohol--I’m not at the legal age!” I snapped back, brushing my mom aside.

“I am driving myself, you like it or not. I am a legal adult now. I can leave whenever I want.” I couldn’t believe I had even said that. What was I doing? These were my parents.

“Fine. But be back before twelve, understand me.” My mom commanded.

That was the last nerve. “I am coming back when I feel like it! Now go! I’ve got to get dressed!”

I didn’t even do so, but instead wrapped a bandanna over my new wound and fled to my now repaired car. Down the street I drove and into town, all the while glancing into my rearview to insure that the Kiskan wasn’t tailgating me in a monster truck.

Soon I was just outside Amacuul Medical Center. So, what’re you going to tell them, brain surgeon? I thought. Hmm…not that a dog bit me…no, a dog didn’t bite me. If I told them I didn’t know again, they’d send me to the psych ward. Then again, if I told them what had really happened, I’d end up with the same outcome. Case closed. So, smarty, what do ya tell ‘em, huh? I asked myself. Umm….call mom and dad. They’ll have something…no, no, no nooooooooo! You just fussed them out, remember? I realized what a jerk I’d been, and what a dummy. Like, putting the noose around my own neck. So what do I say? Okay, a dog bite. Then you’ll have to get a rabies shot. Ugh. And it’ll cost mucho. So what do I do now? Call Jared. I did, and he came right out to the parking lot, because he was eating at a restaurant across the street. As usual, he listened without commenting and then gave me a monologue. “You need to apologize, and then get a gun. A gun. You heard me. Obviously, there is something to what the phantom told you. And see a psychic. That should help. A gun should kill any solid thing. Like how you killed the fiend, breaking an artery, the Kiskan has to be solid. Anything with teeth to rake open your forearm is solid. A bullet will damage anything solid. So get a permit, and get a gun. That simple. And the psychic, she’ll be able to tell you stuff…I think. At least they do on television. Anyway, it’s worth a shot. Maybe she can contact Medea and get you some more information on how to deal with the Kiskan. And, oh, yeah, look up werewolfs on the internet. Or in the library. That may be what the Kiskan is. And look up mythological creatures, and any called fiends. And for now, let me do the explaining, and you just act hysterical, so I can do the talking. Okay?” Jared finished. I thanked him, and we went inside the waiting room for an agonizing wait during which I probably lost a quart of blood.

Finally, after several eons of waiting, my name was called. The right side of my bathrobe was stained red, but I was used to seeing blood, as all women are. My arm hurt, but after the ordeal at the house of Medea Hermanway, it was bearable.

We went down a hall, and into a generic doctor’s examination room. The nurse asked what had happened, and I looked expectantly to Jared, letting him do the story weaving in his law student language. “She was going for a walk, and her own dog bit her. It has been inoculated for rabies, I assure you. Now, she simply needs stitches and an anesthetic. I expect that you’ll be feeling more, should I say, calm in the morning, won’t you Gail?” I nodded and pretended to sob. That’s me, melodramatic with a capital “m”, I thought, barely containing my laughter. The nurse nodded and wrote on a yellow pad. In came the doctor within the short side of two minutes. The place was bathed in an antiseptic, and then the stitches went in. I didn’t look until the strings to the sutures had been cut and all that was visible were the black threads undulating above and below my skin. I was given a clinical strength dose of Tylenol and then sent on my way. Jared drove me home because I was a bit foggy from the pain medicine.

All I could do was mutter “’night” to my parents before I sank back down onto my bed. My next dreams were of deep labyrinths of tunnels that led to what disembodied voices around me called “center earth.” What a predictable thing that was, since I’d watched lord of the rings that afternoon.

Chapter six

The next three days passed without hazard. Then when I pulled up in the parking lot of Amacuul Med., I everything froze in the hourglass of time.

There, in front of the building, I saw a looming silhouette that played on the side of the concrete block building in the orange sunset’s afterlight.

I screamed, a bloodcurdling shriek, that pierced the still evening air, rendering the pacific atmosphere in two.

The shadow was perhaps ten yards tall and five yards across. It loomed upon the blank white wall of the medical center. I fished in my glove box for a weapon that wasn’t there, that had never been there. A howl was let up from somewhere in the shadows among the cars, and my blood pulsed with liquid terror. The Kiskan. And so I shouted “KISKAN! KISKAN! Where innocent and dying lie, turn away, stalk me nye!” the rhyme came from nowhere, and for an instant, I thought that I saw the faint white forms of a beautiful woman and her gaunt, sallow child mouthing the words to me. Then they were gone, and so was the orange shadow as its living, breathing counterpart let forth one last ravaging cry before disappearing into the shadows. My breaths were shaky sobs for several minutes until I composed myself enough that I felt I could walk without falling over. The fear I experienced was so deep, so intense, that it consumed my thoughts, my feelings, my person. All that existed within the fear was fear, morbid fear alone. I prayed with all my might that I would never again see or hear the Kiskan, yet this was not to be so.

Chapter seven

I got into my car and then pulled out from my driveway; my own driveway, one I payed the bills for. I had rented an apartment in Grayville, the town in which Coorville College was. It had been two months since the attack of the Kiskan, and I was less tentative than I had been in the weeks following the day and night at Hermanway house. Ha, Kiskan! I thought to myself. So, are you afraid of a gun? Maybe. Maybe so. I smiled smugly, thinking of what I could do now without worrying. For weeks I had shivered in fright if I went outside at night. Like a little child afraid of the bogeyman. But now I didn’t shiver anymore. I still wasn’t going to any horror movies, though. Way too many bad memories of that kind of stuff.

I chuckled, and then gasped. On the shoulder of the road was a sign with the image of a werewolf that said: I am waiting, for you, Gally. -K

I almost heard faint evil laughter, and shivered. There I was, back to the shivering. What a wimp I am, I thought. Silly, silly, silly. Not logical, at all. My rationally thinking brain scolded. As I stopped at the red light, I stroked the jagged scars of toothmarks on my forearm, and knew with growing trepidation that the Kiskan was waiting.

Chapter eight

A moment or two after I drove through the stoplight, I sat down beside Jared. We were in a diner, hotdogs before us. Lunch. I told him about the sign by the road. He looked at me, his beautiful green blue eyes veiled by a dark mist, and said, “I am the Kiskan.” His eyes jolted like lightening and turned crimson, and suddenly fangs and the body of a wolf erupted from him. Someone unseen screamed “WEREWOLF!” He lunged, and his teeth connected with my neck and shoulders, his claws slashing my face. I shrieked and fell down, blood spilling over me. I closed my eyes in mortal terror and then I felt the jaws leave me, and felt the shocking blow of an impact. I opened my eyes again, heaving for breath, and saw that I was back inside my car. Covered in blood. Slashes on my face, gnashes on my shoulders, chest and neck. Pouring blood.

Blood was splattered on the windshield. My blood. And I was in the car…… I moved my arm, and pain like that of a knife erupted through my chest, muscles, bones…. I was in the car… a white thing—the airbag! I was in a car crash! And the Kiskan…JARED! I was…I had dreamed it….A seizure? NO, a vision. But….GET OUT OF THE CAR! My thoughts whirled in a tempest of adrenaline, the like of which I had never experienced before. I could smell gasoline in the air….I cut through my seatbelt with a pair of scissors on the dashboard and then fell out onto the ground. I crawled over the grassy curb and collapsed on my stomach at the feet of an African American couple.

The woman was talking in a half yell to her husband, saying “Hurb, OH, my, oh, gosh, oh,….Hurb, you did already call paramedics…We—we’re okay, car’s not, right, but her…oh, the poor child! The woman pulled on her curly black hair, pulling it back.

I rolled over onto my back, groaning, ranting incoherently, “I…not…I, dreamed, sleep, slept, wolf…Kiskan….’tacked me….JARED! …wolf…then I went unconscious.

Chapter nine:

Manya stared at the pale, limp form at her feet. The poor girl! Just a teen, and so hurt…covered in blood…From the crash? But it looked like dog bites, like a Rottweiler had been attacking her. She had said something about a werewolf, someone named Jared…a Kiskan. A Kiskan, what was that?

This poor, poor child….

Then she scrubbed blood from her forearm, onto the dry winter grass, and pointed to an area of disfigured skin, a scar, saying, “ I slept, the Kiskan, the wolf, attacked…while I slept…attack…teeth, fangs…” She pointed to the scar… a dog bite. A bad one…

Manya’s husband, Hurb, had already begun compressing the profusely bleeding wounds. Manya thrust aside her horror and worked beside her better half to save the girl.

Part three: Medea’s Book

Chapter ten

I vaguely remembered the couple pressing on my wounds, making them hurt like nothing describable. Yet it did save my life. For that I was forever grateful. I was taken to the emergency room where blood transfusions were immediately administered, and soon after the wounds were sutured. I was then given a room there. I spent three days in and out of a drowsy stupor, given intravenous fluids and antibiotics as well as a rabies vaccination. The antibiotics were to prevent infection from bacteria that had entered the wounds. The rabies vaccination was due to the bite wounds. I felt it had been unnecessary, as the Kiskan was indeed of supernatural origin, but I had enough sense to keep my mouth shut about it, lest they think me senile.

On the fourth day at the hospital, I finally came to long enough to eat a meal. The nurse allowed me a thin soup and crackers, my mom sitting by my bed, silent, handing me things that I needed. They said that Jared was on a school trip to Quebec and wouldn’t be back for another day. He had sent a card via airmail and ordered some flowers which sat on my bedside table. I was truthfully grateful that he had not come back yet. I could not look again into his eyes, the eyes that had turned to the red fury of the Kiskan.

I still felt “like crap” for lack of a slightly sufficient phrase that isn’t obscene. It wasn’t just achey, but traumatized. The Kiskan, Jared, were they the same? Was the Kiskan really Jared? Or was that just the dream? Had I really seen the sign by the road? Most of all, why was it me? Why was I the one who had to put up with all the crap all the terror, trauma, the thing that destiny took me by the hand and said “hey, you,” for. Why? I wasn’t special, no stronger than anyone else, no more virtuous, and no more prepared. Why? And why in this situation did I have to have parents who were strictly realistic and thought at the height of rationality? Who did not at all believe in the supernatural? Or was I crazy? At the moment, I didn’t really know. I pushed aside the soup bowl, and said to my mom “ What time is it?”

She didn’t reply at all, just sat staring, her eyes twice normal size, pupils locked onto the opposite wall. I groaned, not again, not again, I prayed, and stiffly turned my injured neck to the opposite wall.

“Medea,” I whispered.

The beautiful face of a woman had vaporized on the opposite wall. Her hair was showering over her shoulders in cascades of blue, her hands twined around a rectangular shape.

“Gail,” she murmured, “Gail. The Kiskan is defeatable. It is not mortal but not immortal. It is of evil. You are not, Gail. Evil, you are not. The house. Look in the house. You will live Gail, if you find the power within the house. Farewell…” she sighed, and then in a brilliant flash of silver light, she vanished.

A grey leatherbound book rested on my food tray. I took it in my hand, mother saying “Gail, Don’t!” Inscribed on the cover in brilliant blue was the phrase The House Of Medea. She relaxed after seeing that it didn’t bite, and took it from my hand, murmuring, “Who was that, Gail?”

“Medea Hermanway,” I stated.

“Is …was….she…a…a.—”

“A ghost? She prefers phantom. So I take it. Phantom sounds more respectful.”

“Phantom or ghost! I don’t give a flipping parakeet’s difference! She’s a ghost!” my mom screeched.

After a few minutes, my mom began to leaf through the book, scanning its contents. After she shut the rear cover, she asked me “Oh, Gail, you never told me.” “Why?”

“Hmm…let’s see…okay, wild guess, but you’d think I was senile?” I retorted, defending my purposes.

“Oh, Gail, my little girl, you never told me. You never did. But I suppose you are right. Richard and I wouldn’t have believed you. But Gail, I know that it’s true. When I spoke to Jared about your accident, he mentioned having a dream at the same time that you were dying. He’s worried for you, Gail. The Medea phantom person…she has this written in here…There are parts that say ‘for Jared’ and ‘for Gail’ and ‘for Opan’ that I can’t read. Do you know who Opan is, Gail?”

“No, I don’t,” I said, taking the book from her hands. I looked, and saw that it was so. I could only read the parts that said “for Gail” the rest that had someone else’s name over them I could not read, for it was as though the ink had been washed out by water, smudged and stained so that it was illegible. I read the parts below my name, which told a story of great morbidity.

The pieces put together went as follows:

It was a hard thing, yet I left my husband’s resting place to live in the farmhouse of his late sister. She left a will that I should take it if James died. Thus, we left. Five year old Jannas and I moved to the farm and tended the garden and did the chores alone, sitting under the windmill in the late afternoons. All was well for two years. Until the first of the hauntings began. Jannas and I saw several specters about the place a few times a week for several weeks until the full moon. Then the haunting stopped. So it continued for a year. We began to hear thumps and crashes from the attic. We hired a man to stay in the attic at night to see what caused the noises. On the first night, he went up with his candle and lay down on the cot. All was well until midnight when I heard screams from up the stairs. He came flying down the stairs, his eyes glowing red. He had turned into the fiend. He ran at us, waving a rifle and firing crazily. I stabbed him with a fireplace poker.

Jannas and I ran from him to the river, and hid, crouching in the reeds and mud, until morning. Only then did we dare venture from our hiding place. We found our house empty of the man, his belongings still in the attic. It was violently disturbed in the attic, his bed was ripped apart, the straw stuffing of the mattress scattered hither to, and his clothing was in shreds on the floor. There were claw marks on the boards as well as splattered blood. Jannas and I slept outside on the porch that night and the next. The man’s brother came to our house a week after the man had left. He insisted upon seeing the place where his brother had slept. Thus we showed him. Jannas had to run for the police because he turned against us. As they took him from the house he was ranting, going mad, shouting that he would avenge his brother.

I later heard that he was attacked by a werewolf. Then the first man returned. We had just begun to sleep inside the house again, and Jannas ran to me while I was in bed. She said that the door was being banged on. She ran back, and was hit in the chest with a projectile from the fiend’s weapon. She died there. I ran into the room, and was also hit. But I was hit in the leg, my wound an octagonal shape that poured blood, much like the one of my daughter. I ran through the night to the river to escape, but I fell into the waters and was washed away, left to bleed out in the river. The fiend then stumbled and was bitten by the poison snake, creating its half-phantom form, for he should have died, but he was of such complete evil, the spirit that possessed him still managed to grip his body.

I later observed, in phantom form, the second man returning, burning the mattress and clothing of his brother. He made an oath to destroy any that had seen his brother. He then dubbed himself the Kiskan, after his family’s name. Thus is the tale of the Kiskan. To you, Gail, should you need know, he is neither mortal nor immortal but of evil. The same spirit grips him as it does his half brother, yet his own rage and hatred only amplifies the effects, allowing him the same powers as a true phantasm.

The Kiskan is able to appear through dreams and attack its victim. It may attack through the face of a dear one, but do not blame the one whose face it bears image of. It pains Jared as it pains you. He too is to be injured in this quest. I cannot tell you what is precisely the Kiskan’s weakness, yet I may hint, for the fiend gained an amount of control over me when it took my life. To tell all I can, you must look in my house.

My time of spirit grows shorter although I have still power. If all else fails, look to the stars on water. Yet the secret of the stars will come at a great price. Look first to the house. I looked at the pictures that followed. There was a sepia photograph of a sallow, gaunt little girl with pale hair, delicate eyes and a fragile smile. Jannas. A photograph of a regal woman with cascading pale hair was Medea, beside a handsome dark haired man, her late husband. What followed was a photograph of the house, also in sepia, with the figure of an old lady standing in the door. Mr. Hermanway’s sister. The last of the graphics was a hand-drawn page, yellowed with age, that bore a red rose, a pale blue star, and a candle with a flame. When I held the page so that the light hit it fully, I saw the silver glint of words that said “bear these signs in mind of power and care. –M-”

I lay back, hoping that Jared would return soon.

Chapter eleven

Within the next week, I was able to function again, thanks to the groundbreaking (might I add backbreaking?) exercises and routines of the Amacuul Medical Center’s psychical therapy team. My ribs ached badly, due to the prognosis of being badly bruised. Thus I walked with the assistance of a cane, which I hoped to lose within the next fortnight.

I had faced Jared on Saturday, and was now on my way to see a psychic, whom happened to be an old friend of his great aunt. Jared was driving, and I felt freedom and openness unlike I ever had before between the two of us. When he had first visited, I had fussed at my mom, making her steam off in a huff, not wanting anyone present for the confrontation. There were many tears, and many guilty confessions made. I showed him the book, and he had spent an hour reading what was written for him in its passages.

We had come to the consensus that I was to obtain a gun, a knife, a bomb-whatever I could to defend myself. Jared admitted that in the passages of Medea’s book, he had read that when I was “hurt beyond endurance,” that a close warrior would have to continue on in my stead. There was no one that I trusted more for that than Jared. Thus I had phoned the sheriff’s office for information on gun safety courses.

Unfortunately, the nearest opening was not until summer, and then we decided to go through with plan B, to see a psychic. Thus we sped onwards towards Edna Kuiper’s house, nervously awaiting her prediction. I fingered the spine of Medea’s book, hoping that for our effort, some good would