The dampness of the cold, New England air pressed through Mary’s
clothes, causing her to shiver. From within the heavy shadow of a three-story
brick building, she watched the professor get some distance away before
she emerged into the dimly lit street. Mary found herself wondering which
was more odd: That a man of his age decided to walk down a dark street
so late at night, or that a woman as frail as her decided to follow him.
After her talk with him, Mary felt certain he was hiding something about
both the missing urn and the supposed demon haunting poor Justin O’Doul.
She tiptoed from one shadow to the next, hoping the professor didn’t turn
around.
Everything in Danielsport was within walking distance of everything else, so it wasn’t surprising when Dennings walked past the edge of town and turned to the half-mile stretch of road that lead down the hill to the lakeside docks. Mary quietly made her way to the street corner and peered around a group of dark spruce trees. Not a single streetlamp lined the road. It was completely submerged in darkness. Only the lights from a small resort at the end of the road gave any indication of where it went. If Dennings turned around, she wouldn’t know it until she ran into him. Looking back once more down the empty main street, she steeled up her courage and headed towards the docks.
Towering conifer trees loomed up on each side of the road. The trees hissed and swayed, and the darkest feeling crept into the back of Mary’s mind. The haunting noises gave her the creeps as her imagination convinced her there were flashes of movement in the trees, heard the whisper of those watching her. She couldn’t believe she actually was following a man down a dark road. For Justin’s sake she told herself.
Suddenly Denning’s silhouetted figure blocked out a few lights between Mary and the resort, and she froze in mid step. He had stopped just short of the buildings and looked back. Mary instinctively dropped to the ground and crawled swiftly to the nearest bush. Rocks painfully scraped her knees and tore her tnylons as she crept into some nearby shrubs. Dennings kept scanning the road. If he saw her, he didn’t let on.
He turned back to the shoreline and passed by the resort, heading for an aluminum warehouse a few hundred yards down the road. Mary rose slowly with a quivering sigh. She pulled a few strands of hair back from her eyes, plucking out some twigs now tangled. She’d been lucky. For Justin.
She started slowly walking once again, watching Dennings from the shadows on the road until he slipped through a side door of the aluminum warehouse. A pair of large passenger cars was waiting when he got there. She stayed to the edge of the lights, but she was close enough to see the resort was closed up tight from the season. Not comforting. She’d hoped there were people busily doing something there in case she found trouble.
The warehouse was unfortunately windowless, but as Mary quickly checked each side she found a metal frame staircase leading the roof. She scratched her forehead as she looked at the stairs ascending into the darkness of the night. Climbing the stairs would take her from just being a nosy reporter into trespassing. Was this all worth it? Was all this really for Justin? Shoving the growing thoughts from her mind she went up the rickety metal stairs one step at a time, trying not to bang them into the side of the building.
The stairs climbed to a dizzying height until they emptied onto a wire-frame platform that hung about a foot away from the edge of the slick, tin roof. Mary’s head spun when she looked down the sheer drop-off from the roof to the waves smashing violently against the concrete edge of the dock. She fought against the vertigo and leapt the gap to the roof. On her hands and knees she made her way to a small ventilation vent towards the apex of the roof.
Thankfully, the latch to the opening was unlocked, and Mary edged it up ever so gently, only an inch or two. A gush of warm, moist air billowed from the opening, reeking of stale fish and pine. The sound of voices inside bounced off the metal walls and up to Mary.
There were at least two men along with Dennings, and a woman. She had a young, pure voice. “You look upset,” she said.
“There was a girl asking about the urn,” Denning said. “She’s a local reporter, and she’s been talking with the O’Douls.” His voice sounded mechanical. More strained than just an hour ago.
“Reporters,” the woman said in disgust. “Sometimes more dangerous than police. What else does she know?”
“She told me she was looking for you.”
“She used my name?”
“Yes, Don-ji. She asked for Lia,” Dennings said.
The sound of her footsteps echoed to the vent opening, the crisp, distinctive sound of a woman’s high-heeled shoe, as if she was pacing, thinking. “Was this the same girl who awakened your scarabs? The one who has twice annoyed me by, oh how does that old witch say, by intervening?”
“This girl is one and the same.” A new voice, harsher, male, and held a definite Asian accent.
The woman spoke again. “I feel she is becoming a threat. We should have just killed her, and the boy’s mother.”
Mary stifled a yelp. The wind crashing over the roof dried her wide eyes, making them sting and itch, but she didn’t bother with them. The weight of her own body, her own mortality, grew heavy upon her. She had to get help. Kill her? She was in way over her head. This wasn’t about a story anymore. Think Mary, think. What should you do? Run, definitely, but to whom? How could you prove this?
Stuck between courage and fear she raised the lid to the roof opening slightly higher, just enough to push her head through. Dennings and another man she recognized from the college stood facing a gloriously beautiful Oriental woman. Her straight, black hair fell loosely over a dark blue business jacket, and her slender legs were covered with a light gray skirt. Not the typical murderer profile, Mary thought. Behind Dennings stood a gray-haired man who towered over them, his height accented by a black leather overcoat. There was one more though. She’d heard four men’s voices. Where was the fourth?
“Don-ji, honored mistress of our lord and master,” Dennings said. “Allow me to respectfully ask why we need risk killing the others and kidnapping the boy. Can’t we simply find a more willing subject?”
“Because he is already battling for possession of the boy’s body,” Lia said distantly. “That dithering fool of his father jumped into the water before I could steal his heart, thus denying our lord an immortal body. Our lord cannot choose a new body while he fights for possession of this one and cannot return until he succeeds. If the boy dies, he will return to the urn, and we can find a better host, one more fitting for our lord’s return. But fate has given him this one, and we must proceed. Do you waiver on your faith?”
“Never, Don-ji. My only thoughts were of a successful restoration of
our lord. If the boy dies, there might be an investigation.” Dennings bowed
deeply.
“The boy’s father has died and no one seems to care. Would they miss
his mother, or this new reporter? No one in town knows her but you. We
shall proceed as planned. We’ll get the boy and carve out his heart, perform
the ritual and secure the reign of power for Li Po.”
Lia snapped her fingers at Dennings. “But we will deal with this later, now we must prepare.” Below Mary the warehouse seemed to grow dark. No light had been snuffed out, nothing changed, but it was as if darkness began creeping over the room. Mary’s wonderment seized to a terrifying halt when from the darkly lit corner stepped out a walking shadow. Mary covered her mouth, trying not to scream. Never in her deepest nightmare could something like this be manifested. What she first thought was the shadow of a man never formed into anything solid, but instead kept gliding across the floor in a ghostly state. Still the size of a man with arms and legs, his movements where quick, like an illusion of light, hazy around the outline, silent. What was this horrid abomination? Mary’s breath was gone. In the shadow hands it carried two katanas and handed them to Lia, to the Don-ji.
“Kneel,” she said, turning to Dennings and the other man, whose name,
Cal, suddenly leapt into Mary’s mind. Behind them the gray haired man put
his hands on each of their shoulders, and they fell to their knees with
a winch of pain. Then each took their shirts off, and Mary could see the
two men had six small puncture holes in their sides.
Lia held a katana in each hand and crossed them over her head. “It
is time.” The metal rang cold and electrifying as the gleaming swords clanged
together. The gray haired man stepped back as the shadow approached Dennings
and Cal. As it started to circle them, with each step it left a spot of
swirling shadow on the floor, a small void of darkness He circled them
three times until the two men were surrounded by a thin ring of dark.
Lia began chanting in an Asian dialect, the sound of her voice crackling with energy. The shadow stepped aside as she approached the two men, her eyes fiercely glaring. Mary sensed hate and evil pouring from the woman. Lia held the swords out before her, the razor sharp tips pointed at the chests of the two men. The ring of darkness started to flash and swirl violently, hissing with power.
The tips of the swords penetrated the ring, and the air silently exploded. Mary winced as if she’d been next to a lighting strike, feeling the air grow, sizzling with power and presence. Lia’s droning chant grew louder and louder, until her voice reverberated off the aluminum walls. Dennings and the other man suddenly seized, their muscles straining and quivering, but they couldn’t move. Almost like an invisible hand squeezed their chests, holding them tight. Their limbs stretched out and their eyes rolled up into their heads.
Lia stepped into the ring of darkness. For one brief instance, in a flash of light, she transformed into a hideous beast, barely human in build and bearing—a creature with dried, gray skin stretched over gnarled bones and with. two jagged wings reaching out from her back. Mary covered her mouth in terror as the building rumbled and shook all around her. Then again the light flashed, and Lia looked like a well kept, dark-haired Oriental woman.
Lia raised the swords over her head. Dennings mouth peeled open in a scream as she plunged the swords into the men’s sides. Mary stared fixated watching the solid, sharpened metal slice through the tentative flesh. Dennings twisted and cried out, blood pouring from his side, but the force unseen held him in place. The gray haired man casually stepped forward to catch the men’s spouting blood into a silver vial was etched with small figures Mary could quite see clearly. Dennings continued to twist under the pain of the sword, thrashing his head all about. Suddenly he threw it back in exasperation, looking up at the roof, straight into Mary’s eyes.
Mary leapt back, nearly instinctively. What nightmare had she stumbled upon? Until now she’d been too overwhelmed with the ghastly sight all to look away, but now she stumbled down the slope of the roof out of control. Her legs quivered underneath her, and she flung herself against the staircase railing, not really caring if she fell. Some secrets weren’t worth discovering. If she fell, she wouldn’t have to run from them. It would all be over for her, this horror. But fear of an even greater terror than death forced her down the stairs one step after the other. Certainly Dennings had seen her. They would soon be after her. She had to run, one foot in front of the other. Just get to a phone. Call for help. Her footsteps banged on the metal frame of the staircase. Leaping the last few steps she hit the ground with a thud and dashed off into the night, towards the half-mile of darkness until she could reach the safety of town.
The dark road stretched out in front of her, looking longer with each laborious step. Her legs burned, and her long skirt kept getting wrapped around her legs. Tears streamed down, blurring her eyes. It felt like the familiar nightmare where her legs just wouldn’t carry her away fast enough. She glanced over her shoulder at the resort, a blur of lights in her vision. No movement, no sounds. She didn’t want to scream in case Lia and the others were looking for her, but her body, her heart, and lungs, pounded and heaved, yearning to release the tension and fear. What had Lia said? Something about Justin’s heart?
Just as Mary could feel her legs no longer, the comforting lights from town started to appear. She rounded the group of spruce trees on the corner and dashed to a phone booth just outside a grocery store. The store was dark and unoccupied. The street lay abandoned in the eerie night, left only to the mist swirling under amber glowing street lamps. She fumbled a dime into the narrow slot on the payphone and banged out the number for the O’Douls.
Slowly, feeling like an eternity between each, the ringing tone droned at her. “C’mon, Sylvia. Pick up,” Mary whispered. The booth was cold. Condensation quickly formed from the heat she radiated. She turned, looking at direction of the street. It was so quiet. Hurry, must hurry. Must get help.
In the reflection of the metal plate on the payphone, the shadows outside grew darker. Mary screamed and whirled around. She felt his overwhelming presence. The electrical buzz of fear and danger cascaded over her senses, numbing her. Absorbing light of the lamps, the shadow stood just outside the door of the booth.
To Be Continued…