The Demon Senders (31 page)

Mac then felt his legs being pulled and his body dragging across the snow and twig-covered forest floor. Justin and Kevin were still screaming to him but their voices were no longer angry. Their screams of hate, anger and fear had become invitations. “Come into the water, Trevor. We’ll show you the secret in the pond,” Justin said.

“You can help us get free from it,” Kevin pleaded. “The secret is what held us down when you tried to save us. We know that now. We know you tried to save us but the secret had us trapped.”

“Help us, Trevor,” Justin added. “Everything will be okay again.”

Mac felt his body pulled off the forest floor and onto the hard, sharp-edge rocks. Then he heard the shot.

“Mac? Mac, can you hear me?”

Mac lessened his hand’s pressure. He recognized the voice.
 

“Mac, don’t move. Do you hear me? Do not move.”

It was neither Kevin or Justin calling to him now. It was the voice of a woman. She was close and her voice was dripping with a riddled warning he could not solve. “Rachel?” he mumbled. “Rachel, is that you?” He went to roll onto his side, when the voice, still sounding several feet away, screamed again.

“Do not move, Mac. Stay right where you are. I’m coming. Do not move.”

He felt cold. His legs were burning with pain. There were cuts and deep scratches running from his ankles to his knees. He felt as if his skin had been torn away from his legs, leaving nothing but muscle and sinew to brace his legs from the cold air. Mac clawed the rocks, searching for a handhold to pull him back towards the woods. He felt the woods would be safer than wherever he was. On rocks? On the outcropping? He didn’t know. All he knew was the pain in his legs, the frigid air blanketing his entire body, and then, the voices calling to him.

“Don’t go into the woods, Trevor. He’s waiting in there for you. Come into the pond. He can’t come in here anymore.” It was Justin, whispering to him. “Hurry, Trevor. He’s coming for you.”

“Get into the pond, Trevor. The secret will save you,” Kevin said, his voice a bit louder than Justin’s and much, much deeper than the voice Mac recalled. “Hurry.”

Mac’s shivering grew intense. His ears filled with whispers, his eyes, still squeezed closed. Slowly, he felt a numbness move down his body, calming him and removing the pains. The whispering stopped.

He was at peace.

Jen stood silently, hiding behind a tree, gun still raised and aimed a few feet away from Mac. Her first shot was errant but it was close enough to send Mac’s attacker into the pond. But she knew he wasn’t gone. She knew Henry wasn’t finished with Mac, and he wasn’t finished with her.

Mac had grown quiet and still. Too still, but he was no longer inches away from falling into the pond. Still, he was too close. Henry could easily emerge from the water, grab Mac’s legs and pull him under the freezing cold water. She risked a step closer to Mac. She had to move him further from the pond. Into the forest. Maybe he would wake up and together, they could get back to the fire. Back to some degree of safety. Another step, then she felt the air turn colder. The now familiar scent of rotting death filled her nose.
 

Colder, still.
 

Her eyes glassed over from the stench and her stomach heaved and spasmed. Then she heard him speaking.

“Plain, little Jennifer.” The voice sounded like a twisted wind, bent through trees and formed sounds into words. “Come to have another go with us? We knew you’d be back.” The voice was cut with a deeper sound, scratching, gnashing like grinding teeth. “That’s all you ever wanted, wasn’t it, Jennifer? To be desired more than anything else. To be an object of lust. Yes, then, Jennifer. We desire you. We want to be inside you. Come closer.”

Through her stinging eyes, she saw movement. She shook her head, demanded that the voices vacate and trained her eyes on the movement.
 

It was Henry, she was sure. Climbing up out of the water, reaching for Mac.
 

“You are desire, Jennifer. Our desire. Man’s desire.”

She saw him, fully out of the water now and leaning over Mac, his arms extending towards Mac’s legs.
 

“You. Are. Sex.”

Jennifer screamed.

She leaped out from behind the tree and charged towards Henry. Screaming with each step, she aimed her body directly at him. She saw him stand straight, open his arms as if he were readying himself for a hug. She lowered her shoulder and drove her full weight directly into his chest. Together, they plunged into the pond.

<<<<>>>>

Mac heard the screaming then the splashing. The cold left him as quickly as it had enveloped him.

“Mac.” Someone was calling his name. “Help.” It wasn’t Justin or Kevin. It couldn’t be. “Mac!” It was a woman’s voice. Her voice smothered with water, drenching and diluting her tone but not her urgency. Another scream for help. For him to help.
 

“Jen?” he questioned, asking much too softly for anyone to have heard. “Jen?” he said, louder, clearer and more directed. “Jen,” he yelled as he clambered to his feet. She was in the water, struggling against something. Or someone.

He dove towards the water, his chest bouncing roughly off the rocks. The moon slipped out from behind a dark cloud and poured its light on to the pond. Mac saw Jen fighting with a man, both were torn in their focus between keeping their head above the water and forcing the others below. The man was winning.

“Henry!” Mac screamed. “Leave her alone.” Henry did not comply with Mac’s command. He paused a beat, looked Mac squarely in the eye, smiled, then slipped silently beneath the water. Jen, breathless and exhausted, twirled herself around, looking and preparing for Henry’s attack. “Jen,” Mac said, “swim towards me. Grab my hand.” He extended his hand towards Jen, who was three or four feet away from the rocky outcropping. “Hurry. We’ll fight him together, like we said.”
 

The water was perfectly still, Jen’s head and the top of her shoulders were the only things breaking the mostly frozen surface of the pond. The moon’s light became diffused as thin clouds stretched out their reach across the sky and buried the moon’s light behind them. “Jen?” Mac questioned. “What are you doing? Swim to me. Hurry.”

“He has my leg,” she said, her tone too sullen. Then silently and swiftly, she disappeared beneath the surface.

<<<<>>>>

“The water is clearer here. Much easier to see here than any other place in this world. Tell me, Phillip, what do you see?”

“I know what it is,” Phillip said, his face contorted into a question. “Why doesn’t it cause pain?”

“That’s not what it’s for. That’s not what it was ever for,” the ancient one said. “Tell me, Phillip, tell me what you see?”

Phillip felt empty. There was no pain, no remorse, regret or fear. “Why did Henry think it would destroy you and why did he warn me not to look at it?”

“Tell me what you see.”

“A crucifix. I see a crucifix.”

“Henry believed, erroneously, that seeing this crucifix would remind me of what I rejected.”

“But the crucifixion happened centuries after you were cast out of heaven.”

“There are only three times here. The past, the present and the future. Over the millennia after my choice was made, the three have blended into just one: The present. All that happened and all that is happening, is ‘now’ for me. Henry understood this, much to his credit. But he believed that seeing this crucifix would alter my time. He thought that my past was hidden from me, clouded and murky like the waters where you began your journey, and that this crucifix would clear my vision. He believed this symbol would let me know what was done for me. For you. For all of us. And once I learned the meaning behind this symbol, I would retract my choice, leave this realm and he could rule as he sees fit. But I cannot retract my choice.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have no past. I only have ‘now.’ I am always making the choice to reject Him. I will always reject Him. But you, Phillip, you still have a past.”

<<<<>>>>

The pond’s surface was much too still. Mac screamed at the pond, demanding that Henry release Jen and for Jen to swim toward the surface. Mac thirsted for the pond’s surface to erupt with activity. But it remained too still.
 

Suddenly, a hand shot out of the water. Fingers splayed wide, reaching, grasping. Mac pulled his hand back, as his nightmare came flooding back to his mind. The frigid air surrounded him, whispering to him that this was only a dream. Then, he saw another hand emerge, that of a child. “Justin,” he said, then shot his arm towards it, grasping only air. The other arm, the one belonging only to his dream, slipped beneath the water again. “Justin! Kevin!” he screamed.

The arctic air left.

<<<<>>>>

“What are you saying?” Phillip asked.

“Your initiation. The burning, ripping pains you felt when you found yourself here, was it complete? When your pain ended, did you still feel something inside? Something hidden. Something you were too afraid to recognize.”

“I don’t know,” Phillip said.

The ancient one said, “You do know. You know you locked some hope away. It is still inside you, someplace that only this,” he said as he lifted the crucifix to Phillip’s line of sight, “can allow you to reveal.”

“There’s nothing left,” Philip snapped, turning away from the ancient one. He thought of charging him, taking the crucifix from his weak grasp and using it as weapon.

“I rule this realm only because I have no time. I know, I always know what still remains inside of me. But I am always making my choice.”

Phillip turned to face him. “What do I need to do?”

“Take this back. Hold it. Make a new choice.”

<<<<>>>>

Mac’s thoughts cleared. He shook his head to evict any remnants of the terror the frigid spirit had deposited. He stared at the water, ready to grab Jen’s hand if only it would break the surface again. “Jen,” he sobbed, “please. I’m sorry. Please, give me your hand.”

The surface remained still.

Mac saw bubbles drifting to the surface, breaking into nothingness as they finished their journey. The clouds parted and the moon bore its light down. He could see something just beneath the surface. Something struggling to rise. Striving for the surface.

Mac adjusted his body on the rocks to afford him greater reach. He plunged his hand into the horribly cold pond and felt blindly for what he had seen. “Jen,” he screamed into the pond. “Reach for my hand.”

There was a slight stirring in the water. A promise of hope. Then, seemingly directly out of his dream, the reaching arm shot through the surface. Mac grabbed and pulled with all his strength. He sensed a familiar force opposing his pull. Strengthening his grip, he shifted his body on the rocks, gaining more leverage and pulled.

In his nightmare, his mother’s hand slipped from his. In his past, the hand of one of the boys he had frightened and who had jumped into the same pond was pulled away from his. In that moment, Mac refused to lose. He shot his other hand forward and grabbed Jen’s hand.
 
He screamed and pulled against his nightmare and against his past.

Jen’s lungs were burning. Her vision, already occluded by the pond’s dark water, began filling with the deathly color of black. She felt Mac pulling her arm and Henry pulling her legs. Soon, she knew, it wouldn’t matter who had the stronger pull. Soon, she would be nothing but the lifeless object two tug-of-war contestants were trying to pull to their side. The deathly black color painted over what remained of her vision.

<<<<>>>>

Phillip held the gift and made a different choice. His past swirled around him, flashing images of his life. Memories of pain and joy competed for dominance in his mind, each thought dissolving the thought before then instantly morphing into the next. He heard the ancient one talking somewhere in the distance, his words an unintelligible mumbling of sounds, admonitions. The swirling slowed, then steadied his thoughts on to the object he held in his hands.

Phillip was called to a different home.

Henry screamed in anger and fear as his strength left him. He lost his grip on the sender’s leg and began to sink hopelessly to the bottom of the pond. He wasn’t being sent back, that he knew. He was being called back. Cell by cell, he felt his body being torn apart, and he watched with his dying eyes as the dark green of the pond was replaced by the murky darkness of the other realm.

Henry screamed.

Mac insisted on making a quick stop at the hospital. Jen assumed he wanted to have a doctor check her out, despite her repeated insistence that she felt fine. After Mac had pulled her free of Henry’s unexplained loosened grip, he quickly got Jen out of the water. She was hypothermic, slipping in and out of consciousness, but she was breathing and alive.

Her carried her to the fire, laid her on her side, stoked the fire with dry wood and covered her with all the blankets they had brought. Jen returned to awareness ten minutes after being pulled from the frigid water and after laying so close to the fire, her shivering abated after fifteen minutes. The two said nothing to each other and they laid, holding one another, till sleep relieved their watch.

“I told you, Mac, I feel fine,” Jen said. “I appreciate your concern for me, but really, I’m fine.”

Mac said, “I need to visit someone. Someone I met in the in-between. That’s why I’m here. I still think you should get checked out by a doctor, however. But if you promise you feel okay, I’ll drop the topic.”
 

“Mac,” Jen said, “the world thinks that I’m either dead or was kidnapped. If I check myself in to this hospital, they’re going to find out who I am. If that happens, who knows what becomes of us and our mission.”

They were standing outside of the hospital’s entrance. “There’s a coffee shop down the hallway on the first floor and the cafeteria is in the basement. If you just want coffee, I’d suggest the coffee shop. But if you’re hungry, I’d suggest drinking coffee in the coffee shop and you and I can grab something on the road.”