Possession (5 page)
Authors: S.K. Falls
LIBRARY
W
hen
I woke up early the next morning to an empty house, Dax was on my mind. I’d
tossed and turned with nightmares of him being bitten by giant dogs. I briefly
pondered heading up the hill in a taxi, but the memory of Oscar’s disapproval
stopped me. I sat on the edge of my bed, torn. What should I do? I wanted answers
so badly, but it was clear that Oscar and Dax didn’t want to give them to me.
And
then, like a bright bolt of lightning, the answer came to me: research. I was
good at research, having had to do mountains of it for papers at school. Even
someone like Dax Allard had to have an electronic trail, right? Were there any
questions the Internet couldn’t answer?
I
brushed my teeth and showered, and, by the time I stepped out of the bathroom,
a plan had coalesced in my brain: I would dig out my old bike from the garage
and drive to the library. I wanted to harness the power of the written (and
digital) word to find out all I could about the weird creature in the woods and
the howling I’d heard last night...and by extension, hopefully about Dax Allard,
too.
I
scarfed down a granola bar and some coffee and headed outside into the foggy
morning. My Volvo, gleaming in the muted sunlight, greeted me in the driveway.
I stood staring at it for a long moment. When had it arrived? Had Dax been to
my house?
I
crunched across the gravel toward it, and my gaze immediately lit upon the note
in the windshield. My heart beating an erratic pattern, I pulled it free of the
wipers with trembling fingers.
Ms.
Beaumont,
it said in
devastatingly perfect cursive,
My
sincerest apologies. You’ll find your car in acceptable condition once again.
See
you tomorrow.
Dax
Allard
I
could smell his scent on the paper—wood smoke and an underlying spice—and it made
me dizzy. It was all I could do to not hold it to my nose and breathe it in. Relief
surged through my veins. If he’d brought this here today, if he’d written this
note, it meant he truly was okay, just like Oscar had promised. I slipped the
piece of paper into my back pocket instead, and smiling, got into my car.
The
inside, too, had been thoroughly cleaned, and as soon as I turned the key, heat
began to blast through the vents.
Wow.
Tentatively, I tried my window.
It rolled down smoothly. I wasn’t surprised to find the gas gauge on full and
the windshield repaired; I hadn’t noticed it before because the note had
monopolized my attention.
My
head swimming, I began to back out the driveway. Who
was
this man?
I drove
to the library with the windows down and the heat on, just because I could. Dax
Allard or his personal mechanic hadn’t just returned the Volvo back to
acceptable condition; it was now
better
than it had been before the
breakdown. I was able to coax it to just under sixty as I raced down the highway
toward the library Eden shared with Grantonville, a nearby, slightly larger
town.
I sang
along with Toby Keith on the only station I could get out here in the boonies,
my hair whipping around in the damp, chilly breeze. Though the sun was out now,
there’d be more bad weather heading our way—the clouds on the horizon looked an
angry purple.
This was
Eden’s winter of storms.
The
library was a tiny shack-like building that leaned slightly to one side. It
smelled like mold and dust, and the roof leaked. But it was all I had. The
librarian looked up in surprise when I walked in, putting a plump finger in her
book to hold her place.
“Can I
help you?” she asked in an affronted tone, peering over her glasses.
“Would
it be all right if I used the computer?” I pointed to the lone desktop machine
sitting sadly in the corner. “The Internet’s working, isn’t it?”
“More or
less,” the librarian replied, still watching me suspiciously. I wondered when someone
had last been in here. She pushed a clipboard with a form toward me. “Sign in,
please.”
I scrawled my name in the topmost row and plopped down in front of
the computer. The connection was sluggish, but thankfully, it still worked. I
pulled up the search engine and, with fingers that suddenly felt stiff and
cold, typed in
Dax Allard Enterprises.
It
pulled up the official Dax Allard website, which was rigidly professional and
gave me no information at all. It had Dax listed as the CEO and Oscar as his
assistant. No one else, not even Oscar’s daughter Victorine.
Closing the
website, I scrolled down and saw mentions of some of his philanthropic
endeavors. Wow. He gave a
lot
of money to charity. I’d be kept plenty
busy. There were people from every kind of non-profit foundation—AIDS to animal
welfare to women’s rights—singing Dax’s praises.
After
reading fifteen minutes’ worth of carefully-worded press releases, I blew out a
frustrated breath. There was nothing listed here that would help me make sense
of any of what had happened. Pretending to lean down to itch my ankle, I tossed
a look over my shoulder at the librarian. She was still behind her desk, about twenty
feet away, engrossed in her paperback.
Turning
back to the screen, I typed in
Large dog with red eyes.
The very first
website that came up talked about an entity called, straightforwardly enough,
The Black Dog. It said apparitions of big black dogs with red eyes were
associated with the devil or with hell. Apparently these phantom dogs were
believed in some parts of the world to be portents of death, and were also
called Hellhounds. They were ridiculously strong—virtually indestructible.
My hands
began to get clammy and I felt my breathing speed up. Virtually indestructible.
Associated with hell. I thought about the searing heat of the dog’s teeth, the
way its body felt like it was made of iron. Could it have been responsible for
those animals I saw on my first day back in Eden, the charred ones on the side
of the road?
The
website went on to say that the Black Dog didn’t typically attack people or
cause harm unless it was threatened. But I definitely hadn’t threatened the
thing in the woods. I kept reading, but there was nothing about what I really
was curious about: people who were able to kill these Hellhounds with their
bare hands. People who gave off enough heat to power a small city.
I felt
like I was missing something obvious, like the answer was in these pages but I
just wasn’t seeing it. I clicked on links from one website to another and read
sentences here and there.
...these
beasts were created by demons to act as protectors...
...demonic
entities, representatives of the Dark World...
...gates
of Hades...
The
words began to slowly sink in to the folds of my brain. Red flags began to pop
up, their siren call finally getting through to me.
Hades.
Hellhounds. Representatives of demons. They were demon-created... did that mean
they could only be
demon
-destroyed?
My heart
began to race, thoughts swirling around rapidly in my head—it was hard to focus
on any one. With shaking hands, I typed in
How to destroy demonic creatures.
A long list of websites came up, but the only real information stated was
that demons and their creatures couldn’t be destroyed easily. I couldn’t resist
rolling my eyes: That was something I’d figured out on my own.
But then
I stumbled on a small website run by a group of demonologists that had something
different to say. According to them, there were ancient shamanic rituals and
special ingredients that could be employed to destroy certain kinds of demons,
though the outcome wasn’t always successful.
One
article listed a story that had been passed down from generation to generation
in an Inuit tribe. It told of a fearsome demon in human form that’d been
captured by the tribe’s spiritual leaders. As they’d recited the chants and
performed the ritual to destroy it, the demon had shrieked in agony, banging
against its iron fetters. Its howls were said to have pierced the night, waking
every creature that slumbered.
The
article stressed over and over again that these shamanic rituals worked only on
demons of the most powerful, terrifying kind—the kind that took human form and
walked the earth with the sole intent of seducing humans to steal their souls.
I
thought back to last night: the agonized howling, the screaming that I’d been
so sure had emanated from Dax, the ear-pounding banging. My flesh was riddled
with goosebumps as I pondered the impossible. Was Oscar trying to kill Dax,
whatever he was? But he worked for him. And Dax had left me a note this
morning, so he wasn’t dead. It didn’t make any sense. I shook my head to clear
it.
Okay. What
did I know about Dax Allard?
He was
stronger than any human I’d ever encountered—he’d turned to dust a creature
from hell that seemed to be made of iron. His hands had steamed, as if his skin
was extremely hot to the touch—as hot as the creature’s mouth had been on my
skin. His own arms, when he’d wrapped them around my waist, had been scalding hot.
A temperature like that on a normal person would surely signal impending death.
His eyes were a color I’d never seen on any person, and they’d seemed to shine
when he was fighting the hound. He was impossibly beautiful. There was
something that drew me to him...his soul reacted to mine with an electric charge
that was almost tangible.
The
puzzle pieces began to fall together, arranging themselves into a shape I
recognized, but was trying my best to not see. I still didn’t have all the
answers; I didn’t understand everything I needed to in order to know the whole
truth. The rituals didn’t quite fit into what I was beginning to understand,
but that still didn’t stop realization from dawning. Faced with facts I
couldn’t deny, I knew in my soul that this was true:
Dax
Allard was a demon. He was here to steal my soul. And I’d fallen in love with
him instantly.
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About
the Author
A
huge fan of spooky stuff and shoes, S.K. Falls enjoys alternately hitting up
the outlet malls and historic graveyards in Charleston, SC where she lives and
imbibes coffee. Her husband and two small children seem not to mind when she
hastily scribbles novel lines on stray limbs in the absence of notepads.
Since
no writer’s biography is complete without mention of her menagerie of animals,
you should know she has one dog that doubles as a footstool, a second that
functions as a vacuum cleaner, and a cat that ensures she never forgets that her
hands are, first and foremost, for pouring cat food.
Also by S.K.Falls
World of Shell and Bone (written as Adriana Ryan)
Secret for a Song (coming June 2013)
