7:15
Officer Robbins sat in his car eating a ham and cheese sandwich and sipping coffee that was still too hot to drink. The unmarked ford’s engine was running and the heater was on full blast. It would’ve been too cold to sit there otherwise. It was parked halfway down the block but still close enough to see the front of Linda’s house.
He’d been there for just over an hour and he hadn’t seen anyone enter or leave. Linda carefully peeked through the closed blinds in the front room. She was looking right at him. She knew she was being watched. It was obvious. The ford was the only car on the block with billowing white exhaust pouring out the tail pipe.
“Jesus. They think I’m a damn fool.”
She went into the dining room mumbling curses under her breath.
Opening a drawer on the china cabinet she muttered, “Goddamn, fucking Canon City hicks.”
She lifted the nine-millimeter handgun out of its resting place,
“They think they’re smarter than me,” she said with a cold smile.
Linda quickly screwed on the silencer, extending the guns length another four inches. That would make it more difficult to hide, but her heavy winter coat would provide enough coverage. It hung down past her knees. She could have hidden a shotgun under it, if she’d needed to.
Standing in front of the full-length mirror in the bedroom, she pulled the thick brown coat up over her shoulders. She checked the safety on the side of the pistol before tucking it against her stomach and wrapping the coat around it snuggly. The large black buttons would be left undone. She couldn’t have those getting in the way at the wrong moment. Pulling the belt forward, she tied it tightly around her waist and the nine-millimeter barrel. A brightly colored scarf was wrapped over the back of her head, across her mouth and over her nose. She pulled the brown hood on so it hung down, hiding as much of her forehead as possible.
Only her eyes and hands were showing. The rest of her was perfectly disguised and due to the extreme weather, would look no different from anyone else who’d dare venture out on a day such as that one.
A cold blast of snow and wind chilled her when she stepped out onto the back porch. She didn’t bother locking the door, she never locked the back door. It was Canon City for Christ’s sake. There wasn’t any crime there to speak of.
Feeling inside her coat pocket she found the broken seam and felt her way through until she found the cold steel of the pistol. She held onto it tightly as she slowly made her way down the slick steps. She couldn’t have a gun falling out the bottom of her coat.
She smiled to herself, My oh my, what would the neighbors think?
She laughed under the scarf as her feet crunched across the frozen white grass in her back yard.
Sally watched closely as her grandmother started down the alley on foot. She stayed far back from the window, in the shadow of the room until Linda was out of sight. This was her opportunity. She went out the back door and across the yards, entering where her grandmother had just left. She was scared to death that she would come back and catch her looking through her things. She didn’t know where Linda had gone or how long she would be so she had to find it quickly.
Her job was an easy one. The forbidden prophecy was there, on the bookshelf, sitting between a dictionary and a hardbound copy of Paradise Lost. Sally glanced at the back door before sliding it out. She flipped through it quickly, scanning the pages. It seemed to be all there, but she’d only seen it once before. She couldn’t be sure.
Hurriedly she went back to the door and creaked it open slowly. Her eyes scanned the yard and alley. There was nobody in sight. Sally almost slipped descending the icy steps but caught the iron railing with her right hand just in time. She looked around nervously once more before heading back to her car that had been parked two blocks away.
Linda walked down to the end of the alley and made a left. She crossed Elm Street and stepped up onto the sidewalk. Halfway up the block she could see the white exhaust drifting up from the back of Officer Robbin’s car.
He noticed her coming up the sidewalk slowly, in his rear view mirror. She was being blasted by the icy wind. He only glanced at her momentarily, and then went back to watching her house. As he sipped his coffee he had no clue that the home he was now looking at was empty and the suspect he was supposed to be staking out was now coming up behind him, clenching her long coat tightly together, trying to stay warm.
It took her a couple of minutes to fight her way through the howling wind and the barrage of whipping snow. When she had gotten up along side of his car he looked over at the old woman. Linda stepped over into the grass beside the concrete. Her left foot found a slick patch of packed snow and she let out a helpless wail as she fell onto the ground. The policeman watched her fall.
“Shit.”
He jumped out of his car to help her to her feet.
“Jeez ma’am, are you alright?”
“Oh my…oh…I don’t know.”
“Let me help you.”
He took her arm and pulled her up to her feet, “Are you hurt?”
“Maybe, if I could just sit for a moment…” she said in a weak, pathetic voice.
“Sure. Here, sit in my car.”
He led her slowly to the passenger door and opened it for her. Linda reached out with her left are to support herself and she lowered her body down into the ford. Her right hand never left the deep pocket of her coat. With the door shut, Robbins walked around and got in the driver’s side. She looked out the windshield as he closed the door. There was no one else on the street. It was just them and the storm.
Turning he said, “Would you like me to call someone for you…”
The barrel of the silencer was pressed hard against his right cheek. His eyes became wide as hers narrowed.
“What the fuck?” he cried frantically, jerking away.
The nine-millimeter made a loud pop sound inside the car. Blood splattered out the back of his skull and onto the snow-covered glass. His body twitched only once and then became still.
“It was so nice of you to help me officer,” she teased, reaching over and turning off the ignition.
She grinned as she stared over at his dripping face. Sliding over, she gently laid him down onto the seat. Linda tucked away the pistol, checked herself in the rear view mirror and opened her door. She casually peered around as she closed it from the outside.
Looking down through the windshield she was satisfied that it looked like an empty vehicle. Anyway, without the defroster on it would soon be covered with a thick blanket of snow, just like all of the other parked cars.
She crossed the street grinning under her scarf. She carefully made her way up the frozen steps and entered her house through the front door. She had no need to hide any longer. Her little problem had been solved. She could now leave without anyone following her.
She began to gather up her things. It was time to go. He’d be coming soon, and she wasn’t going to keep him waiting.
7:16
Sally was flipping quickly through the pages trying to find where she had left off at her grandmother’s house. When Jack sat up she jumped back from the counter.
“Shit!”
“It’s all right. It’s me”
“Goddamn it Jack, you scared the hell out of me.”
He got to his knees and then pushed himself up, off the dark carpet.
“I didn’t accomplish a thing. They wouldn’t listen to me.”
Sally’s eyes didn’t leave the book. She scanned down each paragraph searching for the answer Lisa had hinted at that morning.
“Wait. I may have found something. Listen to this.”
She began to read from the second section of the forbidden prophecy. It explained the nature of the spiritual energy.
“The living spirit is the same in all living things, save one difference. The soul of a man has consciousness. Other life does not.”
Jack watched her finger following the words across the page.
“What does it mean?”
Sally looked up, “I guess its means that say, a dog’s energy, doesn’t have an individual will. It has astral matter inside it, but that’s not what controls it.”
“So what controls the dog? What makes it bark or eat or…whatever?”
“It’s all run on instinct, I guess. Its brain.”
“So animals don’t have a consciousness? They don’t think?”
“No, not on a spiritual level anyway. Just a physical one.”
Jack thought of a cartoon movie he saw once, “Okay, so all dogs don’t go to Heaven. So what?”
Sally continued reading, “The soul of a man can exist inside a shell not of human form.” Sally sat back and thought for a moment, trying to see the significance of the last line. Jack spoke up, “Jesus. I get it now. The binding ritual.”
“Huh, what about it?”
“Don’t you see?” We could lock the son of a bitch inside. Trap him.”
“What? Inside a dog?”
“No, not a dog. It would have to be big enough to contain him. A horse maybe, or a cow.”
The entire conversation was beginning to sound like some kind of science fiction daydream he might’ve had when he was a kid.
His eyes met Sally’s, “It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
She smiled at the desperate, almost embarrassed expression on his face, “No crazier than anything else I’ve heard in the last couple of days.”
Jack remembered the relentless yapping of his neighbor’s dog. He would’ve loved to lock Killien inside of it. He hated that animal. But Killien’s energy inside of him had pushed so hard against his flesh it had made his gums bleed and muscles ache. He was afraid that if he locked him inside a dog it would soon be the size of a grizzly bear. That wouldn’t work at all. They needed something bigger. Much bigger.
There are horses in fields all over Penrose, but what am I gonna do? Go steal one?
And even if they were successful in binding him with an animal, wouldn’t he then be in control of that animal? Would energy with a will of its own take over the body, overpowering the instinct?
If so, escape for his soul would be no more difficult than starving himself to death. It would be an agonizing, painful way to die but as Jack thought of Killien passing through the center of Hell, he assumed the powerful entity could endure just about anything.
Binding the energy would only be a temporary solution. But it was possible that, if the animal could be kept alive long enough, Killien’s energy signature would no longer match his. It would then match the flesh in which it was bound. It would have to start over with someone else.
Naturally Killien would know that would happen. He would most likely kill the body immediately. Jack thought about the next day’s headline.
Suicidal Horse Jumps in Front of Bus
or
Depressed Stallion Plunges from Royal Gorge Bridge.
Jack was sure Killien would find a way even if he were trapped inside a stall.
Horse Breaks Neck in Bizarre Alfalfa Accident.
There had to be another way.
But how? How do you cage something that Hell can’t even contain?
The answer had to be somewhere within the lines of the book. It was the only hope they had. As Sally kept reading Jack said a quiet prayer to a God he hadn’t spoken to since he was a child. It went just as he remembered it used to. There was no answer. God did not reply.
The silence was deafening.
copyright ©2002 Brian Holtz
All rights reserved