Into Eden: Pangaea - Book 1 (11 page)

As Jesse sat on the bank taking great breaths and coughing, he looked across the river in alarm. Crashing through the bushes on the water’s edge, the lion leaped into the water and headed towards them. The beast floundered, then, as quickly as it had leaped in, it scrambled back out and up on the bank. The lion roared in anger across the water, but would come no closer. Still, it roared again and again, a menacing, loud roar intended—no doubt—to frighten the two.

Enoch stood on the opposite bank from the lion and shook himself off. Then, looking back at the roaring lion, he said, “Go eat dirt!”

Rejoining Jesse, Enoch consoled his human friend, “We should be safe now. Just be glad those were lions and not tigers.”

“Why’s that?”

“Tigers are good swimmers.”

Jesse took off his bow and quiver, and lay on his back on the bank. He ignored the lion for the time being and began to think of their increasingly bad situation. Just a day and a half out of Albion and already they had lost their transportation, all their food, and half of their money. They were on one side of the river, a lion was on the other, the road was on the other with him, and their maps and compass were at the bottom of a very deep river. He did have his bow so could shoot game if they saw some. But he did not have his firesticks to start a fire to cook the meat.

Just then the tin box with the firesticks bobbed to the surface.

“Enoch, I’m exhausted. Could you get that?”

Without replying, Enoch trotted down to the river and retrieved the buoyant firesticks. Across the river the lion gave another roar.

“Your momma wears combat paws!” Enoch shouted back at him.

When Enoch returned with the firesticks he looked down at Jesse, “Want some more bad news?”

“How could anything possibly get worse?”

“Never say that,” Enoch replied in all seriousness. “The gods don’t have a sense of humor.”

“So what is it?”

“You’re hurt. By the looks of it, quite badly.”

Jesse sat up, and looked down at his chest. The lion that he had killed had mauled him in its brief attack. He had been so consumed with trying to save his life that he had not realized that he had been injured. But now his wounds hurt like crazy. His white cotton shirt now stained pink as the blood was beginning to replace the river water, and the bandages that had been wrapped around him to bind the wound in his side were shredded. Jesse stripped off his tattered shirt and quickly began to re-arrange his bandages to cover the claw marks that raked his chest. He bound them as tightly as he could and put his shirt back on.

“You need to stay put for a while,” Enoch told him. “Give those new wounds a chance to heal some.”

“We’ll stay put,” Jesse replied, “but only long enough for me to regain my strength. Then we’re heading on. There should be a town up the road about fifteen miles from here—if my reckoning is correct. Then we can spend the night in a real bed. Get some new clothes and pick up a new horse and wagon. Should be in Whitehurst in no time.

“Very well. You lay here and rest while I go hunting. You’ll need to eat if you’re going to regain your strength. With that Enoch ran off in search of small game. Within the hour he was back with a couple of rabbits flopping from his mouth.

“You skin them, lion-slayer,” he said. “I’ll go gather sticks for the fire.

Jesse hated skinning animals, but it was either that or go hungry. He wasn’t about to eat the things raw. Within a few minutes Enoch had gathered enough wood for a good sized fire and Jesse had constructed a small spit. The leather seal on the tin box had kept the firesticks dry and before long Jesse had two rabbits roasting. As they sat enjoying their dinner the lion roared again from across the river.

“Does the kitty want something to eat?” Enoch yelled back. “Why don’t you chow down on your brother?”

“Enoch! Quit antagonizing him!”

“Like it could make him any madder than he already is? I don’t think so. Believe me Jesse, if that lion could find a way across that river we’d both be dead meat—antagonism or not.”

Jesse finished the rest of his rabbit. Not bad, really. He threw another log on the fire. It was going to be another cool night and his cloak was in the saddlebag at the bottom of the river along with his blanket and his gold. For a while he just stared into the flames, thinking over the day’s confusing events. Much of it surrounding the attack was still blurry—like it had happened in a dream instead of in the waking world. “Enoch, what happened back there?”

“I wondered when you’d get around to asking. Those lions were spirit-hosts. They were inhabited by two unclean spirits by the names of Castor and Pollex.”

“What is an ‘unclean’ spirit, and how could you possibly know their names?”

“An ‘unclean’ spirit—my naive human friend—is a spirit that is evil. Evil to the core. Some people refer to them as demons. Surely you must have felt that when it tried to possess you.”

When Enoch said that, Jesse could feel the hair standing up on the back of his neck. The unclean spirit had nearly succeeded in possessing him, too. But at the last minute it abandoned its attack. “It tried to possess you as well?”

“Yes,” Enoch replied, “but I fought it off. Then it tried to leap into you. For a moment I thought that it had succeeded. You looked as if you were in some sort of a trance, but when you fell off the wagon Pollex decided to leap to the same host as his brother, Castor. That’s when I knew that we had to make a run for it. Either it would try again in its attempt to possess us, or it would have killed us both. There were only two choices.”

“But how do you know its names?

“Do you remember when I told you that even dogs have names for each other?”

“Yes.”

“Well these so-called, ‘lower animals’ actually have a very high-level of communication. Cats and dogs may not be able to speak audibly, but they do communicate with each other by a means of telepathy that humans never develop. When a human tells a dog to go fetch a stick, they are fascinated that the dog can learn that simple command. But do they ever stop to think about how these animals communicate with each other in their daily lives? They develop friendships and teach their young in the same way that humans do, only without the hindrance of human language.”

Enoch went on, “The instant that I sensed the lions I knew who they were and what they were about to do. I tried to warn you, but I was too late. The horse knew it too, but there was nothing that he could do to warn you. You are correct that Castor-Pollex is angry with us. We have made a powerful enemy today. In life, he was Nephilim. Smarter than you. In death he has found a host that is more powerful by far than either of us. He has the mind of a genius with the instincts of a predator. Combine those with the madness of a serial-killer and six-hundred pounds of muscle and you have Castor-Pollex. Did you notice that neither the ox nor its driver had been eaten?”

“Yes...”

“That’s because Castor and Pollex weren’t hungry. They kill for the sheer fun of killing. It excites them. Right now we have the river between us. But sooner or later we will have to face him again. And between now and then we’d better think of a way to kill him or he most assuredly will kill us, and enjoy every minute of it. What’s more, we need to find a way to kill him to prevent them from leaping into us. I had a hard enough time resisting just one of them. I’m not sure that I could fight off two together.”

The sun was now down and the moon was low in the sky, reflecting on the river. Jesse laid back and looked up at the stars. Despite the day’s events, it was beautiful out here. Just then he heard the lion roar from across the river.

The next morning Jesse and Enoch were up at sunrise and walking south parallel to the river. Jesse’s claw-marks hurt and the wounds on his chest were swollen and red, but thankfully they had stopped bleeding. Jesse didn’t want to go on, but he forced himself to, every step being a torture. The thing that kept him going was the thought of taking a real hot bath and spending the night in a real bed in the next town. As they trudged along Jesse was too exhausted to even talk. The fact that they didn’t even have a trail to walk on made their progress that much more difficult. Across the river signs of habitation were getting scarce, and the livestock had changed from cattle to sheep. There were no farms on the side of the river that they were on, just miles of fields covered with hay and an occasional copse of trees. Every now and then they could hear Castor-Pollex as he roared from the bushes beside the river. Enoch always seemed to have a quick retort for the lion, but Jesse just ignored him. “He’s just trying to let us know that he hasn’t forgotten us,” Jesse told Enoch.

“And I’m just trying to let him know that we’re not afraid of that walking carpet.”

“I am.”

“Well…maybe I am too. But I don’t want him to know it.”

When the sun was high they rested under a pecan tree growing by the river. Jesse scooped up mounds of the brown nuts and had a feast, cracking them open with a rock. “Want some?” he asked Enoch.

“Naw,” the dog replied. “I’ll just feed on the next rodent that crosses our path.”

“The town up ahead is called, ‘Pecan Grove,’ so maybe we’re getting close.”

“Maybe,” Enoch replied, and then took off running after a squirrel.

By late afternoon Jesse was exhausted, and ready to call it quits for the day. That’s when he observed that they had passed two farms in the past mile or so. Farms meant people. And people meant (maybe) a bit of civilization. Within fifteen minutes or so they could see several houses clumped together on the horizon beneath towering trees. Pecan Grove! Jesse thought, so he picked up his pace. In an hour they were there, but to Jesse’s disappointment, the town was no more than a collection of seven small, thatched-roofed houses. This cannot be Pecan Groove, he thought. It must be further down the river. They looked over at the buildings and saw a young boy of perhaps forty playing by the river.

“How far to the town of Pecan Grove?” he yelled across the river.

“Pecan Grove?” the boy said. “This
is
Pecan Grove.”

“Oh…” Jesse replied back. “Then how far is it to the bridge?”

“What bridge?” the boy inquired.

“The town bridge!” Jesse yelled to him.

“The town does not have a bridge.”

“What about an inn? Is there an inn in Pecan Grove?”

“No sir. Nearest inn’s in Whitehurst.”

“And how far is that?”

“Pa says it’s the end of the earth.”

“Then how many miles to the end of the earth?” Jesse was getting a little frustrated having to pull every detail out of the lad.

“Thirty.”

The disappointment was more than Jesse could endure. He collapsed against a pecan tree that shaded the river, and then spoke to Enoch, “This is where we’re spending the night. I can’t walk another foot.”

“I guess that rabbit’s on the menu again tonight.”

“Yeah...whatever. I’m just incredibly tired. You kill it. I’ll skin it. We’ll eat it.”

The two of them ate rabbits grilled on a spit by the river as they had the night before. Getting food in your stomach tends to improve one’s outlook on life, and after the meal was over Jesse was ready to talk some more before they slept for the night.

“Enoch, I’ve been thinking about our conversation last night. You told me many things that I did not know.”

“Such as?”

“About spirit-hosts and Nephilim. I mean…I know that my grandfather was a god. But dad never talked about it, and I never asked. My tutors never approached the subject, either.”

“For starters, Jesse, your grandfather was no god. Oh, they who fell from heaven called themselves ‘gods’ because they wanted the worship of their human subjects; and they were more powerful than ordinary humans, but ‘gods?’ I think not. But since you’ve asked, I’ll tell it to you as best as I can, but my father never discussed the theological aspect of our lineage, and it was best not to trouble him on such things.”

Enoch went on, “The gods—as they are called—once lived in the heavens. They were, in fact, angelic beings that in their natural form look very much like humans. But there was a great war in heaven, and they were cast down to the earth. Many of these exiles took permanent human form and married human women. The results of these unions are the giants such as me, your father, and Hezron. But some of them took on the forms of animals. Once they were in animal form, they had animal passions and mated with the creatures whose forms they took. These are the an-nef. The problem is, an-nef and giants are not fully human, and not fully angelic. Their spirits, unlike humans, can exist outside of their bodies. So when Nephilim die, their spirits seek out a compatible host to possess. This fact was discovered by accident many years ago when a giant died, and the next day his cat showed up at the front door demanding to be let in and fed. His widow fainted on the spot.”

“You’re kidding me. You’re not just making this up?”

“I wouldn’t kid about a thing like that, Jesse. I’m as serious as a hungry saber-tooth.” Then Enoch went on, “After it happened once, giants and an-nef alike tried to escape their eternal fate by putting caged dogs and cats in the rooms with the dying, but they were not always successful. You see, even the lower animals can resist a spirit when it tries to enter it. And in the case of many animals, pigs for example, entering their mind will actually drive them insane. In time we discovered that only three animals were really suited for spirit hosts, cats, dogs, and humans. The possession of a human, however, was banned by imperial decree, ‘Any spirit that possesses a man, his host is to be taken to the desert, bound and left to die. That is the law of Atlantis.’ In time we learned which breeds were the most compatible as hosts. Black cats for one. Ever hear that it’s bad luck to have a black cat cross your path? Now you know why. Another is the large, black dogs such as me which your father raised. Even then a leap at death is not certain, but there are many spirit-hosts walking the face of the earth today, and yesterday you met two of them.”