They (49 page)

“
What
?”
It got me? What got him?

“Listen carefully,” Frank said, and now Vince detected the urgency in his voice. He felt his stomach roll in his abdomen. “They were one step ahead of us. I don’t want to get into it now, but I got away. I’ve…managed to elude them at least for a little while, and I had to call you…to
warn
you…”

“Where are you?” Vince heard his voice, panicked, frightened.

“I’m at a phone booth, somewhere in Fountain Valley…maybe Hun
tington Beach.”

“Listen,” Vince said, thinking quickly. “Hang up now and call 911. I’m leaving for the hospital now—”

“
No
!” Frank’s voice was a hiss of pain. Vince cringed; his nerves were on edge. “Listen to me…I know everything now…I put it all together and…I know why…why all that happened to us…happened…why we had the same dreams…why we…why we went through what we did when we were kids…”

“Frank,” Vince muttered, feeling the dread rising. He didn’t want to hear this. He just wanted to find Frank, find him and help him, but he felt powerless to do anything except listen.

“You were wrong, Vince,” Frank said, gasping, breathing heavily now. “I was right…about most of it. Our parents…The Children of the Night… it’s all
real
…”

“Frank, I know they’re real,” Vince said, trying to inject an inflection of authority in his voice, a sense of reason. “I know these people think they’re performing some—”

“They don’t
think
anything, Vince!” Frank barked. “They
know
! It’s the
real thing
. The Children…they’re the
real deal
. They put us through those rituals…they exposed us because it was all part of the
plan
. And…” A wheeze in his breathing. “…and our minds suppressed it…it’s like those Vietnam vets that bury the memories of the war in their subcon-scious…they carry it with them and then it starts coming out…just a little bit…at a time…”

“
Frank
!” He did not want to hear this, he DID NOT—

“…they brought us to the rituals because…because it was part of the plan…and you…” his breathing grew heavier, as if he were struggling. “You…”

“Frank you don’t have to say this,” Vince begged. “Please, just hang up and call—”

“…you’re important to them,” Frank said, ignoring him. Vince wasn’t even sure if Frank was listening to him, if what he was telling Frank was even registering. “You’re important to them because they’ve worked at bringing you into the world for so long. And then your mother almost ruined their plans by taking you from them—”

“
Frank
!” Vince shouted. He closed his eyes, not wanting to hear this, knowing what Frank was going to tell him, but not wanting to hang up either.

“—but they
found
you, they actually found you almost ten
years
ago! Can you fucking
believe
that!”

And what Frank said about the Children finding him ten years ago stopped him. He opened his eyes, suddenly frozen. “Ten years…”

“Yeah? Can you believe that?” A hiss of pain. Vince could dimly make out the background noise of traffic. “They’ve been working at you, prepping you for ten years now.”

“Prepping me for
what
?”

A soft gasp, a hiss of pain. “I can’t get it to stop bleeding.” Frank’s voice broke. He began to sob. “Oh God, it really got me…”

Vince felt his chest tighten up. “
What are they prepping me for, Frank
?”

“You’re it,” Frank said, and Vince could barely make out what he was saying through his tears. “Just like you said…I know you weren’t serious about it at first, but in a way you were right, Vince. They didn’t bring you into this world to be the Anti-Christ, Vince…they brought you here to be the Red Opener—”

“
What
?” Was Frank kidding him with this shit?

“You are the Red Opener,” Frank continued. “You’re not the Anti-Christ. You’re the doorway that will allow Hanbi entry into this world.”

Suddenly, Vince’s mind went back to that day when he’d walked into his mother’s bedroom for the first time in over twenty-five years. His mind flashed on those symbols drawn in thick blood on the bedroom walls, those strange words that looked to be indecipherable gibberish and one of those words now leaped out at him.
Hanbi
. “I don’t know what that means,” Vince said.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” Frank began, his voice tinged with pain. “I learned some of this in my research, but I didn’t think the Children were that heavily into him. In ancient Assyrian myth, Hanbi is the father of Satan; he’s also the father of the demon Pazuzu.”

“Father of Satan? I don’t understand. How can Satan have a father? I thought he was originally an angel—”

“No! He wasn’t an angel because there’s no such thing as angels! There’s no such thing as God, either! Just shut up and listen!”

Vince held his breath and listened, his heart hammering madly in his chest.

“Hanbi is its oldest name,” Frank continued. “He’s known as Hanpa in Western Civilization. Throughout ancient history he’s been known by many names. Ancient Mesopotamia has a myth about a being called Hanbi, a creature that was mentioned in numerous oral stories. A few archeologists believe he was actually worshipped by primitive man, by Neanderthals. The Assyrians and the Sumerians had numerous gods and demons. Pazuzu was known as an evil god of the wind who brings disease to man. Belial was an evil underworld deity who became Satan in Judaism. He was also known in other Middle-Eastern cultures as Shaitan. He’s mentioned in the Book of Enoch as Satanael, the leader of the Grigori, or the Watchers…the so-called angels that became enamored with human women and came down to earth to mate with them. The ancient people of the South Pacific islands called him Dagon. The original Native Americans had a name for him too; I can’t pronounce it, and I can’t pronounce the name given to him by the ancient Europeans. Despite the different names within the different cultures, he’s the same thing.”

Vince’s mind was rebelling at the information. He tried to say something, tried to interject a word of reason, but he couldn’t.

“Hanbi’s name faded and died out as man evolved and developed a system of religion and government. In time, the religious scholars of the time took those old myths and assigned them to the evil spirit of the thing he spawned: Satan, Lucifer, Pazuzu, Behemoth, Melek Taus. The list goes on. Satan became the ultimate bogeyman for all the Abrahamic religions that sprouted up for one specific reason. To divert attention from Hanbi.”

“You’re not making sense,” Vince finally said.

“There’s a book called the
Liber Daemonorum
,” Frank continued. “I thought it was bullshit when I first stumbled on this thread. Thought it was a bunch of Lovecraft crap, but apparently even H. P. Lovecraft built his mythos and his fictional book
The Necronomicon
off the mythos of ancient Mesopotamian myth and legend. The
Liber Daemonorum
is the oldest and most rarest book on black magic ever compiled. There’s a French translation from 1328 or so, by Protassus, but it’s based on fragments from ancient Mesopotamia and Sumeria…in the ancient Sumer language as well as another language…one that is still unknown to modern man. The
Liber Daemonorum
is the most recent reference to Hanbi we have. Protassus claimed to have had access to older manuscripts, including one in Arabic, which had been translated from Sumerian. The Children of the Night…they went back there in ’65…went to Iraq and came back with ancient Sumerian artifacts. Those artifacts were probably those missing fragments!”

“This is crazy,” Vince said.

Frank coughed and Vince could sense he was struggling, but he continued on. “Long story, short, The Children of the Night have reached all the way back from beyond the Dark Ages. Yes, they’re descendants of the old Devil cults of medieval Europe, but they used their reach and their influence to locate a copy of the
Liber Daemonorum
and the missing Sumerian fragments. They used these to set things in motion…to bring Hanbi back into this world. And the only way to do that is through a half-demon half-human hybrid.” Frank’s voice became a parched croak. “You.”

“I thought you said I wasn’t the Anti-Christ!”

“And like I said, you’re not. Remember the soul-cracking your mother went through? You were the reason for that…to bring something through…so it would inject a bit of itself into the child that was growing in her womb.”

“Where’s Mike?” Vince asked.

“He’s dead,” Frank said. “They’re going to make it seem like he went crazy, raped and killed his granddaughter, then killed himself.”

“What?” Vince’s stomach plunged down an elevator shaft.

“Turn on the news. It’s already starting.”

Vince went into the living room and snatched the television remote. He turned on the TV, still talking to Frank. “What got you, Frank? How badly are you hurt?”

“Pretty fucking bad, buddy,” Frank wheezed.

Vince switched to a local news channel and for a moment was confused by what was on. He was watching a live feed from somewhere in Huntington Beach. A middle-aged woman with blond hair and pleasant features was weeping. “I never thought,” the woman sobbed, tears streaming down her face. “I never thought he’d be capable of this…of doing this to a little girl!”

The camera cut away to the newscaster in the studio who updated the viewing audience that a man authorities were identifying as Michael Peterson had killed himself by slicing his throat open with a broken mirror shard after killing his three-year old granddaughter. Vince gasped. “He what??”

“Don’t believe a word she says,” Frank said. “She did it. She orchestrated it. She was one of them the whole time and Mike never knew it.”

Mike’s wife Carol one of them? How was that possible? Had she been a cult member this whole time? A sort of sleeper-cell-like cult member waiting for the right time to obey the commands of the unknown shadowy figures of the organization? “What happened to you guys, Frank? Tell me.”

“We dropped everything off with Billy and went to Mike’s house to get…to get pictures of his kids,” Frank said, his voice wheezing. “We were going to disappear. Billy was going to help. But they beat us to it. They were at the house, waiting. They’d just performed a ritual and… something came out…something came out and ripped me open.”

“Listen to me,” Vince said. “Stay where you are, I’m coming to get you.”

“It came so fast,” Frank continued, babbling now. “It ripped me open and I laid there on the floor and watched as it possessed Mike, made him cut his throat and then…I don’t know how, but I got away. They were still performing the ritual as I crawled away. I saw the book…the
Liber Daemonorum
saw the words they’d written on the wall and that’s when I knew. I should have paid attention better! Should have…realized what they were up to.”

“Tell me where you are,” Vince begged. “I’m coming to get you.”

“Don’t let yourself be led to them, Vince. Don’t let them find you. They’ve got…something horrible in store…for…” Frank’s voice grew weak.

“What? What do they have in store for me?” Vince was agitated. Now he was on his feet, ready to go.

“Not for you…” Frank’s voice trailed to a weak whisper. “…the… world…”

“Frank?”

The hiss of an open line.

“
Frank
?”

With panic rising, he jabbed the hang-up button. His nervous system was on edge. He hesitated, frozen, not knowing what to do. Not knowing what he
could
do. The only thing he could think of doing was calling 911.

He hit the 911 button on his cellular, then Send. When the 911 Operator got on the line, Vince got right down to business. “I just got a call from a friend of mine who says he called me from a phone booth in Fountain Valley. He told me he was hurt, but before he could tell me exactly where he was, I lost the connection.”

The sound of fingers typing on a keyboard. “And your friend called you at this number?”

“Yes.”

“Is this a cell phone, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t trace cell phone calls, sir, but one of our 911 operators just took a 911 call from somebody reporting an injured man lying in a phone booth on the corner of Brookhurst and Talbert.”

Vince checked his pockets to make sure his wallet was there, then headed outside, locking the door on the way out. He got in his car, keeping the phone to his ear as he started his car. “That’s it. He said he was hurt and that he was bleeding. Can you send—”

“We’re sending a unit right now,” the 911 operator said.

By the time Vince zoomed out of his cul-de-sac his heart was racing, and his mind was clouded with a thousand thoughts and images, all careening madly from the past and racing towards the present.

IT TOOK HIM twenty minutes to drive from Newport Beach to Fountain Valley; there had been a traffic jam on Harbor Boulevard from a three car accident, and Vince found himself boxed in, unable to move forward. By the time he was able to inch his way around the accident along with everybody else, he realized that by now Frank would be at the hospital. As he raced up Harbor Boulevard toward the 405 Freeway, he wondered what hospital Frank would be taken to. The only hospital he could think of was Fountain Valley General, which was just across the street from the phone booth he’d called from. How convenient for Frank to have called within close vicinity to an Emergency Room.

When Vince pulled into the parking lot of Fountain Valley General, he squealed to a stop and rushed out of the car toward the Emergency room. He was panicky and out of breath, but he was also worried.

He was standing at the Emergency room entrance, not even paying attention to the traffic of patients and doctors and orderlies moving back and forth past him. He came out of his semi-trance-like state and moved over to the registration desk. An overweight black woman glanced up at him with wide eyes. “Help you?”

“I’m looking for a patient,” Vince said. “He would have been brought in by paramedics. Big guy, covered with tattoos, black hair. He was hurt…stabbed, I think.”

The black woman shrugged. “Dough’no. We just got an Emergency run ten minutes ago. You family?”