Chapter 2
Ichabad spread his wings wide and glided over the vast ocean, the salty wind smothering his body like balm to a wound. It seemed as if an eternity had passed since he’d felt, smelled, and tasted such refreshing air. What a fool he would have been had he refused this assignment!
Actually, refusal would have never been an option to begin with. Enraged at such blatant rebellion, Master would have torn Ichabad’s head off and popped it into his mouth like a succulent grape.
“Yes” was the only answer one gave Master if one valued his life.
A large land mass abruptly materialized to Ichabad’s right, outlined against a pink sunset. Ichabad nearly lost his balance as both fear and excitement gripped him. The structures jutting up from this land were humongous! Most of them capable of containing several villages each.
Astounding!
Ichabad flapped his wings and headed for this intimidating yet remarkable piece of land. Drawing closer to the shore, he became bombarded by sights of harbors and boats of various shapes and sizes; by dazzling bridges and dizzying roadways; by carriages and architecture made from such beautiful material, he wondered if even Master could fashion such magnificence. What surprised him the most, though, were the number of creatures flooding the streets and alleyways.
Flying around a shiny, finger-shaped building, presumably some sort of glass or metal tower, Ichabad dove in for a closer look. Hundreds of vehicles – all lacking beasts of burden to pull them – weaved through and around the city with mesmerizing speed. For a brief moment, Ichabad wondered if these were gigantic insects, moving in a coordinated harmony as ants in a colony would. But these were no insects, he quickly saw. The beings below climbed into these colorful contraptions and steered them away with some unknown power.
Many of the carriages were long and red, with an extra compartment on top for carrying additional occupants.
This was madness! How was he supposed to choose from among so many? If he chose randomly, he could inadvertently skip over the best prospects. And even if he could isolate and grab the right ones, it would be risky in such a populated area, which seemed to have no intentions of slumbering any time soon.
Ichabad passed a sign, with bold symbols that must hold some significance: L…O…N…D…O…N.
He wondered if this was the name of this bustling, confusing city.
Looming over a second land mass to the west, heavy storm clouds accumulated.
They called to him.
He wasn’t exactly sure why. He just sensed that if he steered himself in their direction, he would find souls with a darkness matching that of the clouds. This was how it worked in his own land. Where the dark clouds were, there his master’s servants gathered.
He altered course and headed for the storm, a sense of impending success lifting his spirits. Not long later, he flew into the gray storm clouds, the cold wind blowing fiercely so that he waved and tottered, struggling for control. As he swooped down and out of the clouds, he found that he was nearly over his new destination. A welcome sight compared to the colorful and chaotic city he’d just put behind him.
This land before him was greater in its appeal, for it reminded him of his old home, from long ago. The hills and mountains were lush, and some of the structures were akin to castles and dungeons.
Ichabad was pleased. Pleased that he’d recognized Master’s finger, pointing the way through this majestic thunder storm.
Ichabad soared just below the clouds. Over the fields, over the pastures, gardens, and hut-like dwellings, all tenebrous mysteries in the twilight. Many of the dwellings still contained light, which meant this world’s inhabitants weren’t nocturnal. Perfect. Their ocular limitations would enable him to approach nearly undetected in the inky shadows of night.
Which dwelling would he enter first? Which one, which one?
Lights twinkled in abundance on the distant horizon, signaling the presence of another city. But Ichabad would shy from places teeming with life. He preferred a quarantined setting, where beings such as himself could roam without interference.
Espying a pile of ruins below, he decided there would be an ideal spot to gather his thoughts and plot his next course of action. Gliding down, he perched directly atop the pile, gleefully soaking up the rain as he wrapped his leathery wings around himself.
The coolness, the darkness, and the thunder were a taste of paradise.
As he sat there, awaiting further guidance from Master, he noticed a white dot at the bottom of the hill from which he was perched. Homing in with his binocular vision, he discovered the dot was a bright room, belonging to a rather diminutive dwelling. A young boy guarded the window, his body unmoving.
A ripple of excitement coursed through Ichabad. Perhaps he had stumbled upon his first victim. Even if the boy didn’t meet the specifications Master had set, Ichabad was tempted to take him anyway. The experience would be thrilling.
Upon crossing through the gateway, something dramatic had happened to Ichabad. The influence he held over everyone’s fate finally hit him, with a sensual delight falling over him at the implications of his new power. When carrying someone into the gateway, he could easily deposit them wherever he desired, whether it be in deep space or pure nothingness.
Ichabad decided it was time to make first contact. He probably wouldn’t take the boy. Just establish communication. Maybe learn some things concerning this culture and its planet.
Ichabad leaped off the ruins and landed on his feet with a light splash. Lest he be seen, he would not take to the air; rather, he would walk down, where his olive green skin would blend in with the ground.
When he was half-way down the hill, however, the boy’s light winked out.
Ichabad stopped.
Had he been seen?
No, the boy was most likely retiring for the night. Or, the boy was waiting in ambush, because he really had spotted him.
No matter. The boy was no match for him anyway. In a matter of seconds, he could strip the boy of his flesh and leave him to die. Then eat his flesh for breakfast. Now would be an ideal time for this, in fact. Ichabad always consumed his first meal about this time of night.
Making his way around the dwelling, pushing against the violent gusts, he paused several feet from the dwelling’s front porch. The rain and lightning had eased off, but the thunder still shook his belly with pleasing strength. He was just deciding on how best to break into the dwelling when two outside lights burst on and the boy stepped onto the porch.
Hot desire burned in Ichabad’s chest. He knew at that moment he would take this child. With or without Master’s approval. He desperately needed the thrill of abducting another being; the thrill of absorbing their fear as he whisked them from one realm to the next. And with this child’s apparent innocence, the fear would be unquestionably stronger.
The boy suddenly held up a tubular object, which emitted a strong beam of light. Ichabad strayed to the right and approached the porch from the side, out of the beam’s reach.
He could practically feel the boy’s fear already.
Even with his sweater and thick undershirt, David shuddered in the gusty dampness. He slowly passed his flashlight over the surrounding area, probing through the light drizzle for any sign of movement.
Could his mind have conjured up the whole thing?
Father was right. If there had been someone looking for help, they would have made another appearance by now. Maybe I’m just losing it, David thought.
Without warning, David’s flashlight went dead. A severe shock jolted his hand, and he tossed the flashlight to the porch. It clattered and rolled, trailing battery acid through its end.
What had caused that?! He was positive he’d put in brand new batteries just the other day. Maybe they were defective. Even so, why would he feel such a potent shock?
His hand still hurt.
David was suddenly overcome with an inexplicable sense of anxiety. He shouldn’t be out here. Perhaps it was time to go inside and forget about the whole thing.
To his left, there arose a series of exuberant splashing sounds. As David listened, there was no mistaking it. It was the splashing of feet on rain flooded ground.
In a few moments, the splashing stopped.
David rotated his head slowly, toward the direction of the noise. A short figure stood beyond the porch lights, hidden in the shadows. Yes, this was definitely the same person he’d seen just minutes ago. Only they were much shorter than he’d originally thought.
The stranger’s breathing came rapidly, deep and ragged, the lungs more befitting of a huge bodybuilders’, not a small persons.’
Okay, David thought. He should definitely go in now.
For some reason, David found it difficult to move. He was rooted there, inexorably drawn to the figure’s shrouded face. He could only make out the eyes, shining with a green luminescence at certain angles. Like the eyes of a cat in the dark.
Two horrible facts immediately entered David’s mind.
One: this was no midget.
And two: he’d made a terrible mistake coming out here alone.
A scratchy, guttural voice rasped out of the stranger’s mouth, speaking in a haunting and unusual dialect.
Not Irish, by the sounds of it.
“I…” David was going to explain that he didn’t understand what the stranger was saying, but his voice caught in his throat. He was paralyzed with indecision, unsure of what he should say or do.
Suddenly, the stranger was silent. He stretched out a stubby hand with long, clawed fingers, extending it toward David. David’s head instantly went numb, buzzing with a faint electric hum. The hairs on his whole body stuck up, tingling with static. At that moment, he could barely think or function.
When the numbness released his mind, he found himself leaning against the cottage, next to the door. He had to get out of here!
“Ahhhh,” the stranger sighed, “I understand now. Such a simple language. Had I enough time here, I could have learned it proficiently within days, without borrowing it from your mind.”
Terror gripped David’s heart. Yet his fascination was growing. What was this thing? What did it want with him? Was he making some sort of first contact?
David furtively inched toward the door.
The things cleared its throat. “Now then, let me ask you: are you unruly in spirit?”
David paused, caught off guard by the question.
“Are you full of shrewdness and hatred?”
“W-what?” David’s hand snuck along the wall, searching for the doorknob. Though his curiosity yearned to see where this encounter would lead, his common sense warned him it wasn’t leading anywhere pleasant.
“Yeeees,” the thing hissed. “You are unruly in spirit. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here now, sneaking away from your own habitat to find me in the early hours of darkness.”
David groped for the doorknob as it took a step towards him. “Yes, I think you’ll do nicely.”
The thing leaped towards David.
David’s hand found the doorknob.
The thing’s cold palm touched David’s forehead. A dazzling white light filled his vision, robbing him of sight. No, the light wasn’t in his eye. He was in the light.
Something dark rushed towards him.
Then he went unconscious.
The light in Carl’s study went out, and sparks spit from the computer tower and power strips along the floor as the whole system blew out. Carl jumped back from his chair, cursing.
What on earth was happening? There’d been no nearby lightning strike. Yet his computer seemed to be frying itself. Even his surge protectors appeared to be overloaded. A thin layer of smoke crept up from behind the monitor.
The light came back on, and the hairs on Carl’s body raised up. His whole body tingled with static electricity. Cursing some more, Carl was irate at this outlandish situation. Wasn’t this what happened to a person’s body before lightning hit them?
Within a few seconds, though, the static wore off. Carl then dove to the floor and felt the power strips. Hot. Piping hot. He rapidly undid all the plugs, knowing his computer was shot for good. He’d have to make a trip to the closest department store come morning, a trip he was loath to make. He hated to navigate around those insolent sheep that clogged the long country roads.
A sound like rushing wind pulled his thoughts away from the computer. Carl got up and brushed aside the curtains. A heavy wind whipped through the hills. But it also sounded as if the wind were coming from within the cottage itself.
He stepped into the hallway and looked to his right, where the hall branched off into the kitchen. Worry tightened his chest. A blustery wind swept into the kitchen, whipping the curtains and playing havoc with the open screen door.
Open?
Carl immediately went on red alert. He rushed into his study and opened the drawer to his mahogany desk. Someone must have broken into the cottage. Or else David was out on the porch, looking for that phantom person of his.
Still, didn’t hurt to be cautious.
His hand surfaced from the drawer with a black pistol, while his other hand disengaged the safety. He re-entered the hall, gun held low but ready. Carl had never gone to Vietnam, or any other war for that matter. He was no soldier. But if someone broke into their home with malicious intent, he wouldn’t hesitate to greet them with a bullet if that’s what it came to.
Carl flattened himself against the wall and leaned his head into the kitchen. A few objects had toppled over, and the screen door continued to open and shut rhythmically, like a mad animal snapping its jaws. Otherwise, nothing else was amiss.
After briefly surveying the porch area and calling David’s name a few times, Carl shut and secured both the screen door and the main door. It was only after returning to his study that he noticed the door to his and Laura’s bedroom was open.
“Laura?”
Maybe she had gone to the lady’s room. Or to check on David.
Had she been the one who’d left the door open? Carl could feel his skin turning warm with dread. Something was extremely wrong here. He gripped the gun with both hands and tip toed to the room.
A quick glance inside revealed that the bed was in disarray, a pillow lying neglected on the floor. At the other end of the room, their plasma screen TV and DVD wore black burn marks. They’d been fried, just like his computer. Only to a much greater degree. It was almost as though the power surge had been more prominent in this room.
The acrid smell of burnt plastic and wires hung in the air.
Scanning the room, nothing else appeared out of place. Making his way around the bed, he braced himself for what he might find. A horrible image flashed through his mind of Laura lying murdered beside the bed, bloodied and beaten, an all too common reality not only in thrillers, but in actual life as well. But he refused to believe his wife was dead, succumbing to a natural syndrome that befell nearly every human being, where one refused to accept the inevitable fact that they might be the next tragedy.
To his relief, all he discovered was a book lying on the floor, its cover facing up. It was Laura’s favorite Jane Austin novel. Sense and Sensibility. Something she always said that he should acquire.
“Laura?” He said again, louder than before.
Maybe an intruder had already come and gone, and she was hiding in the closet, unwilling to venture out just yet. The notion was absurd, considering Laura would have responded to him by now, but Carl wanted to cover every possibility.
Maybe, for whatever reason, she was in shock and couldn’t respond.
As he crossed the room to the closet, nerves wound tight, a shudder of revulsion passed over him. A presence was in the room, vile and malevolent. Carl didn’t believe in anything as nonsensical as ghosts or demons. He believed in only what he could touch and see. But he knew without touching or seeing or hearing, that this presence was as real as the gun in his hands.
Carl reached the closet. He took one hand off the pistol, wedged his fingers into the thin crack of the closet’s sliding door, and flung it open. He defensively stepped back, as if he expected some psychopath to come charging at him, shrieking and yielding a knife or club. But the closet was empty, save for the clothing and shoes.
“You must be full of hatred,” a raspy voice suddenly spoke behind him, “or else you wouldn’t be so eagerly bearing a weapon.”
Before Carl could turn to confront whoever had spoken, a cold, scaly palm smacked his neck. Then he was traveling up a gray tunnel toward a speck of light that grew into an all consuming light. It was blinding, and the air was a mix of both icy cold and scalding hot, swirling together in a confusing and frightening sensation.
Carl’s last thought was that he was dead or dying. Then a blotch of solid ground materialized and rushed up to him through the brightness. Covering his face with his hands, he screamed as he crashed directly into the piece of earth. Then everything became a blank.
Gender:
Points: 1001
Reviews: 8