The Incubus, Succubus and Son of Perdition Box Set: The Len du Randt Bundle (16 page)

‘Hold on,’
Justin said and took her hand in his. He raised her hand with her index finger
sticking out to about eye level and turned it slowly to estimate the damage.
‘This is deep,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know,’
Rebecca said and flinched when he pressed the tip of her finger. ‘I went out to
feed Lotus and he went nuts. When I tried to calm him down by gently stroking
him, he bit me.’

Justin walked to
the bird cage. The yellow Lovebird—mostly quite docile—flapped its wings
aggressively and rammed itself against the side of the cage. Something was
definitely bothering the bird. Should they worry about it? Should they take it
to the vet? Would the bird eventually tire and return to normal? Justin didn’t
know what to do in situations like these. He looked back at a terror-struck
Rebecca and figured that he would have to attend to the bird’s needs later.
‘Come,’ he said, and taking her hand, gently guided her to the bathroom. ‘Let’s
first get this cleaned up for you.’

*    -    -   
-    *

Justin watched
the news while Rebecca prepared dinner. As long as the dishes were done, his
part of kitchen duty was fulfilled. The smell of home-made Lasagne flushed out
the aroma of dirty socks and other damp smells. In the kitchen, Rebecca was
softly humming to herself. An image on the television caught his attention and
he turned up the volume.

‘Rick and Martha
Evans continue the battle with medical staff and lawyers even a week after
their son, Timmy Evans, had allegedly been brought back from the dead by an
unknown man.’

‘Yeah, right,’
Justin said.

‘Discrepancies
about the Timmy Evans Trust Fund will be settled by the High Court Judge this
coming Friday.’

The telephone
rang. Justin muted the television and answered the phone with a curt, ‘Hello?’

‘Hello, Justin?’

‘Yes...?’

‘This is Lance.’

Justin flinched.
His boss calling him at home after hours could not be good. ‘Hey Lance. What
can I do for you?’

Lance hesitated.
‘I...the company needs you to go to another site.’

Justin didn’t
say anything.

‘One of the
engineers on a mine that we do outsourcing for is going on leave for a week and
we need someone reliable and able to fill his spot.’

Justin paused
for a moment. Long enough for Rebecca’s humming to fill his ears. ‘By when do
you need an answer?’

‘Right now, if
possible,’ Lance said. ‘Look, I know this is short notice, but we need the
replacement on site by tomorrow morning.’

Justin bit his
lip. Rebecca wasn’t going to like this. He closed his eyes and took a deep
breath.
She probably needs the time alone anyway,
he thought.

‘Justin...?’

‘I...erm...all
right. I’ll go,’ Justin said. ‘Where’s the mine?’

‘Wonderful,’
Lance said and let out a sigh of relief. He supplied the necessary directions
and contact names and numbers of people that Justin would be working with
during the coming week. Justin scribbled it down as quickly as possible, making
a mental note to write it over more intelligibly just before he went to bed.
‘Just give me a call if you need anything, okay?’ Lance said.

‘I will;
thanks.’

Justin replaced
the receiver and drew another deep breath. Getting this past Rebecca wasn’t
going to be easy. He closed his eyes for a moment, and for that one specific
moment in time everything was perfect again. He still had his old job. The two
of them were still madly in love, like dating school children on a Friday afternoon.
He missed those days where he was the man in the house, and wondered what went
wrong.
Losing the job was what went wrong. That’s what!
He opened his
eyes again to the reality of his life and reluctantly made his way to the
kitchen.

*    -    -    -   
*

He was right.
Simon hated admitting it, but Justin was right. What good was Superman’s flying
ability if he couldn’t control it? What good were any super hero’s abilities
without the means of controlling it? But Simon was no super hero. He was just
an average Joe trying to get by each day, which brought him to his next
question.

‘Why me?’

The only answer
to his question was the persistent howling of the dogs in the neighbourhood.
Simon wished that he had the ability to make them stop. But he didn’t. Not that
he was aware of, anyway. He took off his shirt and placed a damp cloth on his
face. The heat wave was slowly driving everyone out of their minds. Maybe it
wasn’t such a bad thing, considering that no one could remember that it was he
who raised Timmy from the dead. He wondered how much
he
actually had to
do with any of it; both the resurrection and the people’s convenient memory
loss.

‘Why am I so
different?’ Simon asked out loud. ‘Why can I heal one person, and not another?
Why do I
have
to know certain things about certain people?’

Simon took the
cloth from his face and walked over to the mirror where he stared deeply into
his own eyes. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘Why can you do these things?’

The mirror
merely mimicked the same question, awaiting the same answers. Answers that
didn’t come.

*    -    -   
-    *

‘So you’re
telling me that there is no one else that they can send?’

She took it
worse than he hoped she would. Justin shook his head. ‘I’m the only guy they
trust enough to get the job done without losing the contract.’

‘What about
Simon? I thought you said he was good.’

‘He’s
brilliant,’ Justin said. ‘But they got him working on a more important site.’

Rebecca turned
her back on her husband. A tear streaked down her cheek. She closed her eyes
and clenched her teeth. It was now or never. ‘If you leave,’ she said, ‘I’m
going to my parents’ place, and this time I mean it.’

‘That’s actually
a good idea,’ Justin said and softly placed his hands on her shoulders.
‘Getting out for a while might just be what you need at this point in time.’

‘That’s not what
I meant,’ Rebecca said and shrugged off his hands. ‘If you go I’ll leave. And
it won’t just be for a while.’ She turned to face him. ‘If you go, I’ll leave
and I will
never
come back.’

*    -    -    - 
  *

Becky won’t
really leave, Justin thought as he lay on the bed in the four star hotel room
that Cybernetics Computers booked him into.
She might go to her parents’
place, but she won’t leave for good.

He sat up and
flung his legs over the side of the bed. He had a few minutes to brush his hair
and teeth, get dressed, and have a rushed breakfast before taking the twenty
minute drive to the mine.

Despite their
few minor setbacks the past few months, there weren’t any real concerns for
either of them. All married couples had their bumps in the road. It was part of
life. He didn’t understand how Rebecca could get so upset about the whole
on-site thing. It was just for a week. At least he now had a job. He didn’t
like the idea of going away any more than she did, but he
had
to do it.
Everything he did, he did for her.

‘What are you
looking at?’ he asked the reflection in the mirror with a frown. The reflection
frowned back. Justin brushed his teeth and then combed his hair. It had grown
quite a bit over the past few weeks. He would have to make another appointment
with the barber sooner or later. Justin flicked on his watch and only then did
he realize that his wedding ring wasn’t on his finger.

‘Now where did I
put it?’ Justin asked and looked around. He closed his eyes and tried to
visualize what he did the previous evening. No. He could distinctly remember
going to bed with it. He yanked the blankets from the bed and flapped it around
to see if it didn’t perhaps fall off while he was sleeping. Did he go to sleep
with it on? Now he couldn’t remember. Memories overlapped. It didn’t make any
sense. He knew for certain that he didn’t leave the ring at home, because he
could recall spinning it on the counter at the reception desk when he booked
into his room. Or was it the previous time he booked into a room? He thought
harder, but the more he tried to remember, the more images muddled his memory.

‘Oh well. I’ll
have to look for it when I get back,’ Justin said and headed for the door. The
ring could have been in one of the pockets in the clothing he wore the previous
evening. It could be under the bed; wrapped between the blankets. Anything.
Perhaps room service would find it and leave it on the bed stand for him.
No
time to look for it now.

He was about to
leave when his cell phone rang.

*    -    -   
-    *

‘It’s dead,
Justin!’ Rebecca shouted into the receiver.

‘Calm down,
Becky,’ Justin said over four hours’ drive away. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Lotus! He’s
dead!’

‘Take a deep
breath and tell me what happened.’

‘I...I don’t
know. I wanted to feed him this morning and he just lay that the bottom of the
cage.’

‘Are you sure
that the bird is dead?’ Justin asked. ‘It might just be sick or something.’

‘
His
neck
was completely twisted around,’ Rebecca refuted Justin’s argument.

‘It’s neck?’

‘Someone killed
our bird!’ she raised her voice almost to a frantic scream. ‘Someone came in
here and killed our bird!’

‘That’s absurd,
Becky,’ Justin said while trying to keep his voice as calm and collected as he
could manage. ‘Who would break into our apartment just to kill a bird? And why?
Was anything stolen? Is there any sign of forced entry?’

‘I don’t know,’
Rebecca said. ‘Justin, please come home. I’m really scared. I don’t want to be
alone anymore.’

Justin didn’t
say anything for a while. ‘I can’t come home,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you visit
Tanya until I get back? In fact, weren’t you supposed to go to your parents’
place for the week?’

‘I don’t want to
go anywhere,’ Rebecca said. ‘I want you here with me.’

‘I can’t be
there right now, baby.’

‘Then I’m
leaving,’ Rebecca said. ‘I can’t take this anymore.’

‘Are you going
to your parents’ place?’

Rebecca didn’t
answer.

‘Becky?’

‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I’m going.’

‘When will you
be back?’

‘I warned you
before,’ she said. ‘I’m not coming back.’

‘You’re
kidding,’ Justin said. ‘Becky, you
know
that we both need me to have
this job. We discussed this, remember? Short-term pain for long-term gain.’

‘Goodbye
Justin.’

‘Becky, I...’

The line cut
with an abrupt
click
.

*    -    -   
-    *

She managed to
avoid his phone calls for three days, but by Thursday Rebecca realized that she
wouldn’t be able to avoid him any longer. She needed to talk to him; not just
about the work issues that she wanted to resolve, but because she
needed
to hear his voice. Somehow his voice always made her believe that everything
was going to be okay, no matter how dire the circumstances.

‘Rebecca
darling,’ her mother’s muffled voice came from the other side of the door. ‘Are
you all right in there?’

‘I’m fine,
mother,’ Rebecca lied.

There was a
pause on the other end of the door and then her mother spoke again. ‘Well, let
me know if you need anything, okay?’

‘I will,’
Rebecca said; glad that her mother could catch a hint. ‘Thank you.’

On her knees in
front of the toilet, Rebecca thought about Justin before she jerked forward and
once again, threw up.

‘Justin,’ Rebecca said and her grip
tightened around the telephone. ‘I…I’m pregnant.’

Robert almost didn’t hear the knock
on his front door. He looked up, but made no effort to get up. He didn’t expect
any visitors; neither did he want to entertain hawkers or door-to-door
salesmen. He rubbed what little grey hair he had left with the palm of his hand
and after waiting a moment, re-adjusted his reading glasses and continued
filling out his crossword puzzle.

Another knock;
louder than the first.

Robert looked up
again and sighed. He rubbed the stubble on his face and frowned. ‘Who’s there?’
he shouted down the hallway.

No answer.

‘Whatever you’re
selling,’ Robert yelled from his couch, ‘I’m not interested!
Now git!
’
There was a moment that nothing happened. Robert leaned forward and looked down
the hallway at the door. He couldn’t see the silhouette of feet in the thin
strip of space between the floor and the door. Whoever it was must have left.
Robert grinned.

A sudden
slamming on the door, like someone banging against it with a fist made Robert’s
heart skip a beat. He fumbled with his glasses and threw the magazine on the
table next to his couch. ‘I’m coming!’ Robert shouted as he made his way down
the hallway towards the door. ‘Hold yer horses!’ He mumbled something under his
breath as he pulled his robe tighter. He pressed his eye against the peep hole
but couldn’t see anyone. ‘Who’s there?’ he demanded.

No answer.

Robert unlocked
his door, but kept the chain on. He then opened it a crack and peered through
it. ‘Who’s there?’ he asked again. Again no one answered. ‘Stupid kids,’ Robert
said and closed the door. He considered locking it, but waited a moment
instead. He would catch them in the act and teach them a lesson. On the first
bang Robert yanked open the door. The sudden silence was just as disconcerting
as the fact that there was no one standing on the other side.

‘What the
heck—?’

An invisible
force struck the door, breaking the chain right off and sending a stunned
Robert flying through the air. He crashed into the floor with a sickening
thud
and struck the back of his head against the side of his wall unit.

The door slammed
shut.

‘Who...who’s
there?’ Robert yelled. Someone was in the apartment with him. Even though he
couldn’t see anyone, he could feel it. He could sense the presence of something
terribly evil. Robert dashed for the telephone and dialled an emergency number.
Before it could ring on the other side, an invisible intruder ripped the phone
from his hand and flung it across the room where it shattered as it crashed
into the wall.

Robert clutched
his chest. Pain stabbed into his left arm. He took one look at the pieces of
broken telephone and dashed for the door. Halfway there, a frying pan flew out
from the kitchen and smacked him on the side of his head. The force of the blow
snapped his neck and he fell to the ground, lifeless.

*    -    -   
-    *

After a long
week, Justin opened the door to a quiet apartment with a lingering odour.
Instead of the cheerful voice of his wife as greeting, a damp smell and the
overwhelming silence was his only welcome. He made his way to the living room
and dropped his bags on the floor. The apartment seemed darker than usual,
almost as if no light came through the windows anymore. Justin moved to the
windows to open the curtains but was side tracked by the smell. It got worse
the deeper he moved into the living room.

The bird, he
thought and walked to the cage. There was no doubt about it; the odour was
indeed coming from the bird cage. Justin held his breath and looked inside the
cage. The bird was lying on the bottom of the cage; stiff and dead. Justin
leaned forward to take a closer look. Rebecca was right. Its neck had indeed
been twisted around. There was no way that a bird’s neck could do
that
on its own. Justin took a few steps back from the cage and exhaled slowly. His
stomach churned and he almost lost his lunch.

The place is a
mess, he thought. Although no more of a mess than usual, the apartment had a
dirty feel to it that he hadn’t felt before. Dirty dishes lined the living room
table, clothes were strewn on the floor, and the bed was unmade. This was the
norm in the Greene household where both worked a full time job, but for some
reason, it really bothered Justin. He picked up the plates and carried them
back to the kitchen where he placed it in the sink. He ran hot water over the
dishes to loosen up the hardened left-over food and would re-fill the sink with
soapy water once he returned with Rebecca.

Now for the hard
part. He took an old newspaper and breathing only very slowly through the
mouth, made his way to the bird cage. Justin wrapped the newspaper around the
dead bird and carried it to the garbage bin where he promptly disposed of it.

‘What a dump’
Justin said as he drew back a curtain. He wondered if it was the exposure to
the overly-neat hotel rooms that made him aware of what a mess their place had
been all along. How did that motivational speaker once put it?
Those who
have nothing to do are so busy doing it that they don’t have time to clean up
the mess that they live in.

‘Indeed,’ Justin
said and surveyed the apartment. With the dishes stashed away and curtains now
open, the place appeared somewhat better; but not a whole lot. Either way, it
would have to do for now. It was getting dark and Justin had to meet Rebecca at
her parents’ place. He took the garbage bag and sealed it with a knot. When he
returned from the garbage bins, Justin grabbed his phone and keys and locked
the door.

*    -    -   
-    *

Something was
wrong. Something evil was brewing. Simon could sense it, and so could the
animals in the neighbourhood. There was something in the air; a sort of aura
that made a person feel uncomfortable. Dogs became vicious, cats strayed
further from home, and birds in the neighbourhood died in large numbers. Not
everyone noticed this. Not everyone paid attention. Simon did.

What’s the
use of having this gift if you don’t know how to control it?

Simon looked up
at the skies. He wondered if God was up there, looking down back at him.
‘Justin is right, Lord,’ he whispered. ‘Why give me abilities that I can’t
control?’

A dog barked and
jumped up at Simon. A thin fence was the only barrier between him and the
agitated animal.

Simon hunched
down in front of the dog and established eye contact with it. It immediately
stopped barking and backed down. Whimpering it ran back to the yard and
disappeared into its kennel.

Something was
bothering the animals, and whatever it was, it was getting worse.

*    -    -   
-    *

The demon needed
human flesh to create a physical body for itself. Using a small piece carved
from Robert Richardson’s arm, the demon moulded a skeletal body for itself.
Arms formed, and then legs. Veins and sinews raked along the arms and legs like
thousands of miniature vines. As the arms and legs strengthened, the demon
pushed itself up from the ground. It used a table to pull itself from the
ground, and with the weight, the table tilted, sending a flower-filled vase
crashing to the floor. The sound of the shattering glass overwhelmed the demon
and it jerked up and fell back into a bookshelf. As muscles formed over the
face, chest, arms, and legs, a thick liquid-like substance ran over the limbs,
covering the muscles and veins. The liquid settled and became what appeared to
be flesh.

Three blocks
down a dog barked.

The sound ripped
into the demon’s mind. It hissed a coarse scream and flung some books off the
shelf. The falling books exploded like mortar shells around the demon and it
clutched its unformed ears in a vain attempt to filter out the noise. Two
stories up an old lady burned cookies in her oven. The smell stabbed at every
muscle and nerve ending. Next door, someone turned a key in a lock. An
ambulance siren rang a few blocks down. Three houses down the road someone
hammered a nail into a wall. The demon screamed, but again nothing more than a
coarse hiss escaped its half formed mouth. The sound was lost in a dry gurgle
because of a not-yet-fully-formed throat. Upstairs someone moved a chair. The
demon slammed its first on the table. Nails, hair, and skin now slowly formed
and the jaw snapped into place. Every inch it moved shot a whole new sensation
of pain through its body.

A car engine
exploded to life.

A few birds
chirped in explosive stereo inside the demon’s head. It smashed its fist
through a door in the hallway. The pain stabbed up its arm and into the nerve
centre of the brain. Someone a few blocks away flushed a toilet. The last piece
of flesh formed around the demon’s face. Gun shots from a television set at the
old age home down the road.

Everything
burning.

Everything
exploding.

The taste of blood.

And just like
that, everything stopped.

The demon fell
to its knees and used its hands to keep it from collapsing onto the ground. It
breathed heavily, each heartbeat an explosion in its ears. Then the exploding
sounds faded and the demon opened its eyes. It could see. And just then, the
demon remembered where it was.

*    -    -   
-    *

It took a fair
amount of pleading and promises from Justin to convince Rebecca to move back.
The only real reason she finally gave in was for the sake of the baby. She
still loved her husband, but he had a lot of cracks to fix before he would be
in her good books again. The first half of the trip back home was spent in
uncomfortable silence where both of them waited for the other to speak. Justin
finally caved.

‘I got rid of
Lotus.’

Rebecca looked
at him. ‘Did you see his neck?’

Justin nodded.
‘There’s no way a bird could do
that
on its own.’

‘So you believe
me?’

‘About?’

‘About the
strange things that have been happening in our house lately.’

Justin threw a few
possible answers around in his head. No reason to work her up on the way home.
He could tell her that he believed her. He could just as easily tell her that
it was she that did it for attention; or an alternate personality. He could
also change the subject.

‘I believe that
someone
killed our bird,’ he said. ‘I just can’t figure out who or why.’

Rebecca didn’t
have the answers. She was hoping Justin would. Whenever something went wrong,
Justin always had an answer. If there wasn’t an easy answer for a problem, he
would invent one. Now that safety zone had been shaken. There were no answers,
right or invented. There was nothing to make her feel that everything was going
to be okay.

‘So tell me
about the pregnant thing,’ he said.

Rebecca’s face
lit up. ‘I took two tests,’ she said. ‘Just to be sure.’

‘And...?’

‘They’re both
positive.’

‘We should get
another one,’ he said. ‘Just to be
very
sure.’

‘There’s one in
my bag,’ Rebecca giggled.

Justin smiled
and for a long moment didn’t say anything. They were getting another shot at
the chance to become parents. This time, however, he felt ready for the
responsibility. He couldn’t pinpoint what or how, but something within him
clicked in place and he felt ready for the challenge. ‘How far along do you
think you are?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure,’
Rebecca said. ‘But I have an appointment with the doctor on Thursday. I think I
might be six or seven weeks now.’

Justin worked it
back in his mind. It was the night he gave her Lotus; the same night he took
her to dinner. He smiled at her and for the briefest moment everything seemed
perfect again.

‘Where’s your
ring?’ Rebecca asked.

Justin’s perfect
picture shattered and his stomach twisted. ‘It’s...I...’

Rebecca looked
at him expectantly. There was no getting around this one.

‘I lost it,’ he
said and turned his head slightly down and away from her.

For a long
moment there was only silence. Justin could feel her staring at him. ‘Okay,’
she said with a voice far too chirpy to be trusted. ‘We’ll just get you a new
one.’

Justin frowned.
‘You’re not angry?’

‘No,’ Rebecca
said and then changed the topic back to the baby and how they were going to
turn the study into the baby’s room and which accessories they had to start
saving up for. Only a wooden cot would do. ‘None of those carry cot fold-it-ups
in my house, thank you.’

Justin smiled
and stroked her hand. Deep within he knew that everything was going to be just
fine.