Riverwatch (10 page)

The night was oddly silent, the usual symphony of tree frogs and crickets absent. The fact that she could no longer hear that earlier shrieking only served to heighten her anxiety.

She peered into the gloom ahead of her.

Lights from the neighboring homes occasionally pierced the thick foliage, causing shadows to dance on the edge of her sight. Several times she thought she saw movement, but when she looked directly at that spot, nothing was there.

As she descended the few steps to the stone walkway that led to the drive, a low, furtive rustling reached her ears. She stood still, listening.

After a moment she heard it again. It was coming from a stand of bushes off to her left.

Cautiously, she moved a few steps closer.

"Here, Kitty," she called softly.

The bushes rustled again.

She stepped closer, now just a foot or two away, feeling the cool moisture from the dew-laden grass that had soaked through the material of her slippers onto the soles of her feet.

The rustling came again, this time accompanied by a plaintive meow.

The sound made Martha smile, and she lowered the broomstick in response as relief surged through her system. It had been one of her cats, after all.

Poor baby’s probably trapped in the hedges and can’t get out, she thought. Laying the broom down on the lawn, she softly crept forward the last few feet, not wanting to scare the little darling, and reached out with both hands.

"Easy, baby," she said. "Momma’s here to help you."

Very gently, she parted the bushes and pushed her head into the space she’d created.

She didn’t even have time to scream.

*** ***

When Moloch was finished, he hefted what was left of the corpse under one arm and turned toward the house.

His meal was not yet complete.

There was another human inside. He could hear the loud thumping heartbeat in his mind, and from its resonance could tell it was a male.

The sound made him eager.

As he started walking slowly toward the still-open front door, his body hunched so that the corpse’s heels dragged along the lawn after him and he began to laugh.

A low, chilling laugh.

A laugh that would’ve sounded only partially human, had anyone been around to hear it.

Chapter Eleven: Legends of the Past

Later that evening, Sam found himself finishing his rounds at the nursing home earlier than usual. The patients were quiet that night, their requests relatively few, so that when he was done with his rounds he made his way down the hall to the last room on the left, eager to tell Gabriel the events of that morning.

Gabriel was expecting him and Sam quickly took his usual seat by the window. This time their roles were reversed, as Sam told Gabriel of the morning’s events with Jake. Gabriel listened quietly throughout the telling, never interrupting, though he did lean forward with a surprising amount of interest when Sam was describing the condition of the statue they found in the tunnel. He shook his head sadly when Sam mentioned finding Kyle’s body, and for just an instant Sam thought he saw the wet glisten of impending tears in Gabriel’s eyes.

"Pretty amazing, don’t you think?" Sam asked when he finally ran out of steam.

"Yes, indeed, Sammy. Quite a tale. Tell me, what do the police intend to do now?"

Sam thought about it for a moment, and realized that he really didn’t know. Had the Sheriff told Jake to stay away from the mansion, or was his friend intending to resume work on the renovations in the morning? He didn’t remember hearing any discussion about the issue, but figured that since it was a crime scene that the work would have to be suspended for at least a few days, and told Gabriel so.

"Seems you had quite an exciting morning, my young friend. So exciting that my story seems so dull and uneventful in comparison that I think we’ll just forget about it for tonight, don’t you think?"

Sam shook his head. "Not a chance, Gabriel. We practically have all night to talk, and there’s no way I’m going to miss one of your stories." Every time he came up here, the old man had a tale to tell and they were always so incredibly interesting that Sam sometimes found himself looking at his own works with an air of resignation, his own story lines seemed so uninteresting in comparison.

Gabriel watched closely for a moment, as if gauging the sincerity of Sam’s reaction, and then agreed with a smile.

"Tell me, Sammy, how do you think it was that Man left behind the life of a wanderer and began to settle down in one location, changing from a society of hunter-gatherers to one of agriculture and domesticity?"

That was an easy one. Sam had learned the answer years before in secondary school. "As the great beasts began to die out, and Man’s numbers started to swell, a more constant food source was required to survive. It became impractical to move large groups across such vast distances while following the herd animals, so they turned to a more stable food supply in the form of whatever crops they could grow."

"And how did they learn to do that?" Gabriel asked.

"Well, ah, I suppose they just figured it out."

It was a weak answer, and Sam knew it, but it was the only one he had. He’d never considered the question before, having taken the stock answer his schooling had taught him and leaving it at that.

He looked over at Gabriel, his eyebrows raised questioningly.

"I’ll tell you how they did it, Sam. They had help."

"Help?"

"Yes, help. Help from a race of people who had come before them, and had learned to do it on their own. You see, your history books only tell you the basics. Of how Man slowly adapted, leaving his ancestral ways behind. But that’s not really what happened. Did you really think humanity managed to do it all on their own?" Gabriel asked, and for the first time Sam heard something besides simple good cheer in his friend’s voice. For just a moment, he thought there was a touch of arrogance there, too.

"Long ago, before Man ascended from his primal beginnings, there was another age, the Age of Creation it was called, and in this time other beings ruled the land. The wisest, gentlest of these were known as the Elders. They were the most important link in man’s transition from brutality to civilization. The Elders were human in appearance, so much so that if you were to pass one on the streets today you would see no difference. Your mind and your soul might notice something, for the Elders were different. They were more civilized, more at peace with themselves and the world around them than any other race from then until now. If you were not completely anesthetized by the wonderless world in which you now live, you would recognize the differences between our races."

Gabriel paused for a moment and in the silence Sam was struck by the odd notion that what Gabriel was speaking of himself, that he had lived and walked among the Elders.

"They used harmony to create a vast civilization that spanned the globe. They raised cities of wonder, full of joy and light, whose sparkling towers reached for the heavens above with grace and spirit, and let all who saw them know that these were a people to be respected. A people to be loved.

"Some of the Elders took a liking to the ape-like creatures that were Man’s ancestors. Slowly their confidence was won with offers of food and other gifts. The Elders began to teach them, discovering early on that several of these beings had a rudimentary intelligence different from the other creatures of the wild. It quickly became a mission of the Elders to raise these creatures up from the level of the beasts around them and give them something more."

Gabriel turned to face Sam, his eyes shining with intensity. His hand shot out from under the bedclothes and grabbed Sam’s wrist. "Think of it, Sam! A whole race devoted to bettering the lives of another. What hope they must have had! What joy! What a wonderful world to have lived in!"

His grip loosened, and Gabriel slumped back against the pillows. "That was to prove their undoing, their downfall."

Sam was eager to hear more. "What do you mean, ‘their downfall’?" he asked. "Did Man turn against them? Destroy them?"

"Not directly. You see, there was another race competing with the Elders for supremacy. These winged, vaguely reptilian creatures were the antithesis of the Elders, full of cruelty and rage, but no less intelligent. They preyed on the lesser races. They called themselves the Na’Karat, but it was their habit of swooping down out of a dark night sky to attack their prey that earned them the nickname, ‘Nightshades’. They hunted many different kinds of creatures, but enjoyed hunting those primeval humans more than any other type of game. Man had more intelligence, and therefore had a richer, deeper notion of fear, and it was fear that the Nightshades were after. They fed on the meat, but it was the fear that sustained them, fear that fulfilled their warped sense of spiritual need.

"Where the Elders sought to help the humans, the Nightshades wanted nothing more than to allow them to wallow in their primitiveness. They were cattle, nothing more, and the Nightshades treated them as such, herded and corralled and hunted for the sustenance they could provide."

"So, what happened?"

"War happened, Sam. War. The Elders couldn’t sit idly by and watch this occur. They went to arms against the Nightshades and swore the conflict would not end until the humans were freed and allowed to prosper as befitted an intelligent race. Where once was peaceful coexistence, now was racial hatred. Vast armies marched out of our great cities."

"Armies led by those who would later become legends – Michael, Uriel, even Gabriel – marched onto the fields of battle. Down out of the sky came the ‘Shades to greet them, in numbers so vast the brilliant blue above was blotted out by their forms."

Sam could see it all in his mind’s eye, his writer’s imagination filling in the details. He saw the armies of the Elders marching off to war, their raiment golden in the sunlight. He imagined heroic stands against incalculable odds, the armies of good triumphing over those of darkness, conveniently forgetting that war is never that simple or bloodless.

He realized suddenly that it had gone quiet. Gabriel was sitting and studying him. Sam felt uncomfortable under the intensity of that gaze but he wanted to hear the end. "Who won?" he asked.

Gabriel smiled a tight, bitter smile in response. "No one won, Sam. Battle after battle raged, the best of both races lying to rot in the bright sunlight of those fields strewn with the dead. Cities crumbled under the onslaught and the dark caverns of the Nightshades were routed and destroyed. The numbers on each side dwindled. Yet still they fought on in their stubbornness, the war continued on not for the noble reasons it had begun but out of pure hatred and vengeance for all those who had fallen before. Every man, woman and child on both sides joined in the struggle. Before long, what had once been a glorious civilization was now a decrepit ruin. The few surviving members on either side saw the destruction, and mourned for what had passed from the world. They kept on fighting until there were too few remaining for the races to survive. Both the Elders and the Nightshades dwindled in number, bled into extinction by their own foolishness. Out of the ashes of their conflict came Man, for he had watched and learned as the battle raged. Freed from the one predator that had effectively culled their numbers, they multiplied rapidly. The wisest of them remembered the lessons that the Elders had taught them and slowly led the others in that long climb toward civilization."

At that moment Sam’s beeper went off, signaling that another patient somewhere on the floor needed him.

"Damn!" he swore, not wanting to leave.

As if sensing Sam’s thoughts, Gabriel smiled and said, "Go on, Sammy. It’s all right. I’m sure we’ll speak of this again some other time."

Sam thanked him for the story and slipped out the door, his thoughts on the Elders and the sacrifice they might have made for mankind had the tale been true.

Behind him, in that last, lonely room on the left, the final member of an all but forgotten race smiled another tired smile.

It was done.

The seeds had been sown.

All that was left was to see if they bore fruit.

*** ***

After all that had happened that day, Jake didn’t feel like being alone. Sam was at work, so hanging with him and talking it all over was out of the question. While Sam was allowed visitors, especially during the night shift when no one else was around to tell him differently, Jake didn’t feel like making the forty-five minute ride into Glendale.

A quick glance at his watch told him Katelynn would be home by now, so he turned his Jeep in that direction and drove across town to her place.

As he neared the top of her walk he realized that she was sitting in the large swing on her front porch.

"Hi. You look tired," she said, as he sat down next to her.

"You have no idea," he replied. "Hey, is that new?" He pointed to the red gemstone she wore on a gold chain about her neck.

"Sam’s friend, Gabriel sent it over this afternoon with a note saying it was his way of saying thanks for spending time with him this morning. I called and told him I could not accept something so obviously expensive, but he sweet-talked me into keeping it." She smiled. "So what the heck. How did the morning go?"

"You’re never going believe it, Katelynn." He told her about the day he and Sam had shared; the discovery of the break-in, the investigation of the tunnel, their finding Kyle’s body deep underground.

Listening to him, Katelynn understood the source of the feelings of unease she’d had the night before. She’d suspected they’d find something unusual, but she never would have thought they’d find a corpse.

At least not yet.

"A secret tunnel from the house leading to the family crypt? Sounds like one of Sam’s novels, Jake."

"No kidding. The Sheriff was ticked that I opened the door, but he got over it pretty quickly. I think he was as spooked as I was over the whole thing."

"What do you think happened to Kyle?"

"I don’t know. The Sheriff thinks it was a drug overdose, something like that." Jake chuckled, "Sam would probably tell you that an ancient curse had just arisen to claim its first victim."