The Eye of Madness (2 page)

Nehemya Gavish had chosen to remain behind and not crossover ten years ago after suffering a fatal heart attack. He stayed because he felt it his duty to watch over his grandson. Rebekah, Malakhi's mother, was six months pregnant with him when Nehemya died. Malakhi's father had disappeared soon after he found out about Rebekah's pregnancy. They never saw him again. In truth, Nehemya felt his daughter needed to be watched over almost as much Malakhi. She was just nineteen years old when her son was born.

Malakhi and Nehemya were having breakfast together, as they had done so many times in the last couple of months.

“Do you know what I enjoy most about breakfast?” Nehemya asked, giving his grandson a wink.

“Blintzes and bagels?” Malakhi asked. Bagels were a staple in the Gavish home, but Malakhi didn't care for them unless they were slathered with cream cheese and lox. However, they reserved these treats to special occasions because of their shoestring budget. Rebekah Gavin earned a meager living as a waitress in the restaurant formerly owned by her father. The new owners were not generous with their employees.

“No …” Nehemya laughed and patted his grandson's head with a cold hand characteristic of Impals. Malakhi had gotten so used to this interaction he didn't notice the chill anymore. He was just glad to have his granddad here. “The thing I like best about breakfast is getting to share it with my handsome grandson!”

Malakhi giggled as Nehemya reached down and gave him a cold poke in the belly. He flashed a sly grin and then handed him a bagel he had been concealing under the table. A generous portion of cream cheese and lox topped it.

“Where …?” Malakhi began but Nehemya held up a single luminescent finger to his lips. He glanced over his shoulder towards the next room where his daughter was getting ready for work, and then turned back to Malakhi. “It's our little secret, okay?”

Malakhi beamed from ear to ear at his grandfather's surprise. Being the well-mannered boy he was, he could not accept it without some reciprocation. Seeing Nehemya's plain bagel, Malakhi took his knife and sliced the loaded bagel in two equal halves. He placed one half on his grandfather's plate as he took a slow and savory bite of the other half.

Malakhi thought of all the things he and his grandfather had done the last couple of months, this moment was one of the best. They had visited the ocean on more than one occasion. He remembered Nehemya joking that he didn't think he would need to use sunscreen due to his current skin condition. In some ways it was a disturbing thought, but it was just another example of Nehemya's good humor about any situation. He was always in a joking mood. Malakhi was not sure if this was his normal personality or it was because he was an Impal. His mother assured him his grandfather was the same as ever.

“He looks like I remembered him when I was six years old,” Rebekah told him. “He used to be slim before he got older.”

Impals never resembled their appearance at death. Their eternal appearance seemed to hail from a time when they were happiest and most comfortable.

They travelled together free from worry of detention or harassment. The Israeli government was tolerant of the Impals. They were probably the most tolerant government on the planet. Most other nations were rounding them up and relocating them. Of course, there was the extreme example of the United States under the leadership of General Ott Garrison. He was putting them through the Tesla Gates as fast as he could capture them. Publicly he was rounding them up for their own safety; privately he was sending what he believed to be demons back to Hell. It didn't matter to him if they were shredded out of existence or transported back. He was doing his service for God and country.

The Jewish community as a whole had seen these tactics before, used with similar mantras and motivations. They learned from the mistakes of history, even though the mistakes were not their own.

Many Israelis had adopted the symbol made popular by the American resistance. They now displayed it almost as prominently as the Star of David. The Myriad, a half solid and half transparent infinity symbol, was an icon representing man's eternal existence. It suggested that flesh and spirit are both an important part of infinity. It recognized that flesh and blood are not a requirement for being a human being. This symbol was called the Myriad because it represents many for infinity.

Malakhi owned one which he wore on a dingy red string around his neck. It resembled a sideways number ‘8'; made from half pewter and half clear plastic. He got it for his birthday present a couple of weeks earlier at the local bazaar. His mother remarked that when the sun hit the plastic it shimmered like an Impal. He wore it with pride. His pendant made an ethical statement, but also reminded him of his grandfather.

It shimmered in the light of the morning sun coming through the small kitchen window, drawing his eyes down as he placed the cream cheese and lox covered bagel on Nehemya's plate. It was a distraction that would haunt him because, when he looked back up, his grandfather seemed strange.

Malakhi first thought Nehemya was upset that he gave half of his bagel back. This was before the unsettled expression grew into one of panic. His grandfather was fading. When Nehemya was little more than a vapor he heard his grandfather's faint voice say, “I love you, Malakhi.” Then, he was gone. A half-eaten bagel on his plate and crumbs in his seat were the only evidence he ever existed.

Malakhi shrieked, causing his mother to charge from the other room, her hair still in rollers. They cried and called for Nehemya for several minutes before they realized their search was fruitless. Malakhi collapsed in his mother's arms and wept for the loss of his grandfather. Rebekah mourned the loss of her father, now for the second time.

The landlord of their small apartment complex was not tolerant of noise in the thin walled building. He also happened to live right next door. He was a heavy set, balding man whose harsh facial features were a perfect match for his unforgiving personality. He never spoke to Rebekah unless it was to collect the rent money. Malakhi knew to tread lightly in the hall, lest he receive a scathing lecture from the man.

The knocking at the door did not register with them. When their landlord began to scream in agony they forgot their grief. The knocking was replaced with a dull thumping as if someone were taking deliberate steps down the hallway. The thumping, however, was barely audible over the man's horrified screams. The odd thing, the thing that made the hair stand up on the back of their necks, was the noise. It permeated through the thin walls with horrifying clarity.
Hhhhhhhhhh
. It was as if a reptilian choir filled the hallway, all humming the same note. As horrible as the poor man's screams were, this noise was worse.

Malakhi started to walk to the door, but Rebekah stopped him. The small closet next to the front door was open a crack. In the sliver of darkness, she saw unnatural movement. It was as if the dark itself struggled to get out. The only thing keeping it back was the light streaming in through the window. She did not know how or why, but Rebekah knew the absurdity in the closet was somehow related to what was happening to their landlord. She threw herself across the room, slamming the closet door with one fluid motion. She grabbed Malakhi and rolled into the warm sunlight.

The room closest to the front door was little more than a sitting room. It would seem cramped if more than three people sat there. Malakhi and Rebekah's apartment was a mirror image of their landlord's. His sitting room was on the other side of the wall.

As Rebekah lay under the window cradling her frightened child, the floor vibrated. The noise was still drowned by the man's screams, but she could feel someone taking hard and deliberate steps on the other side of the wall. He was no longer outside their door; he had gone back into his apartment. His screams ripped through the thin wall making it seem as if he were right beside them. The single noted hiss underscored his cries like a thousand slithering creatures, all locked in a chorus of wicked synchronicity.

Just when they thought they could no longer take the noise, they heard a crash. Rebekah's head shot up, her eyes drawn towards the source of the shattered glass … towards the window. The sitting room windows in the two apartments were only about three feet apart, so Rebekah had a clear view. Their apartment was about four stories above the busy street below. Mr. Zahavi, the landlord, flew through his window in a fatal dive toward the hard concrete. Seeing a man die was horrible enough, but the truly horrible thing was that there seemed to be no fear in the man, none whatsoever. There was no flailing of arms, and no screams. In fact, the man could have been on trampoline for all the fear he showed. It was a stark contrast to the screams of pure horror from seconds before.

“It was almost as if he were relieved to die,” Rebekah thought to herself, but never shared with another soul.

She wanted to turn away, wanted to hide her face from the gruesome act. Yet, she found she could not tear her gaze from Mr. Zahavi as he fell lower, lower, lower …

He landed on the hood of a taxicab with an impact hard enough to collapse it and shatter the windshield. His body was thrown forward where it smashed into the back of a bus before crumpling on the pavement in a bloody and battered mess. He was dead, there was no doubt, but something was peculiar.

Rebekah saw two people die in the last two months. One was an elderly man who suffered a heart attack in her restaurant and the other was a young boy who was hit on his bicycle by a city bus. Both of them were still there, or at least their spirit was. They all remained, trapped by the cosmic storm. The man and the boy both remained, standing over their body in a state of shock and bewilderment. But they were here, and they were visible. Mr. Zahavi was not standing over his mangled body, he was gone like her father and all the Impals around the world.

Rebekah squeezed Malakhi tight and tore her eyes from the sickening scene below. As she held her weeping boy, her own grief began to wash back over her. She replayed the image in her mind of her father vanishing. His terrified face etched in her psyche for eternity. This played over and over in her head in a never-ending loop. The more she tried to block the image out, other unpleasant memories drifted into her head. The day of her father's funeral was now spliced into this tormenting mental movie.

As she wept, something else crept into her mind, another memory more recent and every bit as horrible. She opened her eyes and turned her head toward the closet door. It opened with an ominous groan. She held her breath as she focused on the door. Her breath escaped in a single blood-curdling scream at what she saw in the moving and undulating darkness.

CHAPTER 3

MAJOR GARRISON

“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”

~Bram Stoker

Major Cecil Garrison had endured more in the past twenty-four hours than most people do in a lifetime. Up until yesterday, he worked with a covert organization, made up of both military and civilian combatants. Their sole objective was the rescue of Impals from the clutches of Major Garrison's own father, General Ott Garrison. Yesterday, they evacuated several hundred Impals to an island in the English Channel. The success of this mission came with great costs.

The leader of the resistance, Colonel Danny Bradley, was killed. Cecil had returned to their base later to find their camp raided by the military. Everyone, including his wife and daughters were gone. He received the emotional jolt of his life when he found that his wife and others managed to escape. However, his youngest daughter was the one who betrayed them to the military. His oldest daughter died in the raid, but her Impal managed to escape with his wife and make it back to him. Cecil decided to cling to the hope that his father would not hurt his youngest daughter.

The eye of the storm passed over the United States several hours before it did Europe, but the results were the same all over the world. The Impals vanished, including his eldest daughter. The darkness was no longer a figure of speech or a metaphor for evil and despair. It had become those things incarnate. Cecil was outside when he heard the screams of his wife from the upstairs bedroom of their secluded cabin. His wife, Barbara, was now alone in a dark room.

Cecil bounded up the stairs to the cabin porch and flung open the front door, knocking over a rocking chair sitting nearby. Upon hearing the screams, everyone emerged from the kitchen. They were about to ascend the stairs when Garrison flew past them, taking three steps at a time. He bolted through the bedroom door before any of them reached the first step.

As Cecil clambered into the darkness, he found himself no longer in a dark room, but in bright sunlight. He was lying face down, staring at white fiberglass. The dull and dingy white he recognized as the bottom of a canoe. It was the same canoe from when he was a boy at church camp. Something slimy and cold moved over his lower calf and a moment later he felt white-hot pain light up the back of his leg. In an instant, he forgot about his wife, forgot about Impals, and forgot about the past thirty years. He was twelve years old again and he was a terrified little boy trying to escape a nest of angry water moccasins.

Jerking his body up, he spun around on his seat. The snake still clamped its fangs into his lower calf. He screamed and yanked the snake lose, pulling a small divot of flesh from his leg with it. He tried to fling the snake overboard, but the motion seemed to take an eternity. The snake turned and glared at him. Cecil's blood dripped from a sinister reptilian smile. In an instant, he saw something that froze his heart. The eyes were not the slitted eyes of a reptile. There was intelligence in these eyes. These eyes projected an evil only humans are capable of committing. He knew what and who he was facing.

This serpent abducted six children, five boys and one girl. He killed her the most brutally because she had made him angry. Her short haircut and football jersey caused him to mistake her for a boy. This was what he loved, catching little boys and molesting them with a sickening perverted creativity. He then took his time dismembering them while they were still alive. After flying into a rage on discovering the seven year old girl's true gender, he sodomized her. Instead of beginning his dismemberment at the shoulders and hips, he started at the first knuckle of each finger. He took his time worked his way up in three-inch intervals. It took all night and the poor girl lived through most of it.