Saltar's Point (39 page)

FORTY-EIGHT

Talcott found the body the next morning. The rain had let up and a rainbow had formed above the mountains in the distance, the light refracting brilliantly through the mist that hung motionless in the crisp morning air. He had followed McGinty’s tracks through the mud like a hunter tracking large game. As he came over the last ridge he paused and stood silent.

John’s body hung lifeless from the largest tree in the valley. His friend and archeological companion looked almost peaceful in the sunlight, no longer tormented by the inner demons that had ravaged his soul for the past few months. Talcott bowed his head, not wanting to believe what his eyes were telling him. He stood silently for a few moments and then made his way back to the manor, slowly now, his heart burdened with sorrow for the first time in what seemed like ages.

Talcott had taken McGinty’s body down and laid him to rest in the local cemetery. I don’t know how many people attended the service. Strangely there were no public records of it, not even a blurb in the obituaries. I’m sure John’s daughter was there, and I can only imagine what Talcott could have said to her, if anything, to make her understand the sorrow he felt in his heart. In the days following John’s death the old tycoon had come to believe that digging up the tomb of the Bedouin had been a mistake. Eerie happenings had begun to take place in the manor and Talcott was scared to death. He couldn’t shake the feeling that what he had unearthed wasn’t the greatest archeological find of the century, but perhaps its biggest curse.

It wasn’t more than a week later that Talcott came to a gut-wrenching conclusion. He wasn’t going to reveal the body to the sciences, he was going to burn it, send it back to the earth in a towering pillar of fire. He worked quickly, building the funeral pyre with his own hands, laboring heavily to do so. The past few days his health had begun to fail, and the rapid changes he viewed in the mirror every morning startled him. The weight loss had been so dramatic that he himself looked like a walking cadaver, a wraith of skin and skeleton.

I guess the most ironic thing was that Talcott never did get to throw that fateful match. He died in his sleep the night prior. The secret chamber that he had built went undiscovered, and Talcott took the horrifying secret that it held to his grave.

The doctor’s listed the cause of death as Pneumonia, (even though the autopsy revealed that his lungs were free of fluid), and so to the residents of Saltar’s Point it appeared as if George C. Talcott had succumbed to death via natural causes. But I know better.

George Talcott died of a plague of his own design, a curse that he brought down upon Saltar’s Point that would haunt the small town for more than a century after his death.

FORTY-NINE

Abby sat at the top of the stairs looking down on them for the last time, the rope that she had so faithfully used to climb them absent from her possession. She would not be going back up. Brenda was with her, not physically but in spirit, urging her onward.

“He’s weak Abby, now’s your chance.”

Abby slipped silently from her chair to the ground and then with a gentle push sent it flying down the stairs, watching as it cascaded end over end in a raucous fashion before settling at the bottom and falling silent.

“Jack hasn’t hurt anyone for a long time and the demon is weak. You have to help us Abby!”

I know.

She thought and said the words simultaneously, her thoughts linked together with action, and then bracing herself she slid down the stairs with as much control as she could, head first, grabbing the support beams along the way. It took her a few minutes, and a few more to climb back into her chair. When she was situated and had regained her breath she rolled across the foyer to the foot of the elevator. There a sobering sight awaited her. The elevator was gone. The lone brass gate stood before her, the elevator resting somewhere in the darkness below. This cannot be happening. Jack must have used it to come back up the stairs, so that could only mean one thing. Someone else had recently used it.

Suddenly the elevator came to life. There was a loud clang as the gears caught hold and the cable began moving in front of her eyes, pulling the elevator upward. Abby took a breath and waited, she knew what was coming.

His head appeared first, elongated skull, pointed chin, ebony black horns, and deep set eye sockets that glowed with crimson fire. His torso was massive, decayed black skin stretched tight over his rib cage. White glimpses of bone shone through the abscesses in his decayed flesh. His arms were long and sinewy, ending in hooked claws nine inches long that hung below his knees. Cloven hooves stood rooted to the floor adorned with tufts of matted and stinking fir. The elevator came to a stop with a loud clang that echoed throughout the house, and then the brass gate slid open as if by some imaginary force.

The two adversaries faced each other in silence, one sitting, the other towering over seven feet and looking downward. Their eyes locked in mutual hatred. The sight should have terrified her, but Abby noticed something about the demon. He had the same appearance that he did the night he tried to kill her and failed, dark but with a translucent glow. She could make out the grain of the elevator’s wood paneling behind the beast and she knew that he could not harm her.

Abby.

His words were heavy, guttural, and when he spoke blackened teeth more than four inches long moved outward like a great white shark about to strike, their tips dripping a foul smelling saliva rank with disease. She did her best not to look away, to meet the demon eye to eye, but her hands began to shake and her head dipped slightly.

I’ll see you in hell yet Abby Darrow.

His words wafted by her in a putrid stench, stinging her eyes and making her want to gag. Then he walked past her as though she didn’t exist and headed for the stairs.

“HE KILLED HER WITH THE AXE!”
             

Ellie woke up screaming, lurching upward to a seated position in her bed. The images in her dream were so vivid, surreal yet tangible at the same time. She had seen it as if she were there, the defenseless woman, her insane husband covered in her blood. He brought the axe down again and again striking at her with fury and resolute evil. She couldn’t shake the images from her head, his eyes, oh God his eyes, how they burned with hatred.

Randall awoke, confused for a second. He watched as Ellie flopped back down on the bed and began to shake. He tried to console his hysterical wife but she had gone into convulsions. White foam and bile poured from the edges of her mouth flinging off in all directions as she shook, coating her nightgown and the headboard behind her.

“Ellie!” He grabbed her by the shoulders as he spoke. “Ellie, wake up. It’s just a bad dream.”

Ellie’s eyes rolled back into her head until only the whites were showing which unnerved him.

“Come on honey, snap out of it.”

He continued to gently shake her, though she was doing plenty of shaking herself and in the back of his mind he knew it wasn’t doing a bit of good. Aiden had entered the room. Somehow through the violent escapade and all of Ellie’s wails Randall heard the door creak. It was a sound that he had learned to perceive easily through countless hours of practice while they were making love, attuned to the fact that there was a small child in the house with his mother’s propensity to wake up at all hours of the night. Randall had thought on numerous occasions to put a lock on the bedroom door but he had never gotten around to it. Now more than ever he wished that he had, damning the procrastinating tendencies he had battled all his life.

“What’s wrong with mommy?”

Aiden was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes but his concern was escalating by the second. Randall couldn’t help but feel for him.

“Nothing champ, she’s fine, just a bad cramp. Go back to bed okay?”  

Randall hoped that would cut it, that the kid would simply crawl back into his bed and fall asleep. Fat chance of that he knew, and he couldn’t blame him. Aiden bypassed his remarks and spoke to his mother.

“Mommy, mommy what’s wrong? Why won’t she talk to me?”

He began to cry, pleading at Randall for answers, answers that he didn’t have. The shaking intensified and Randall reached across his wife for the telephone on the nightstand, readying himself to keep calm as he dialed 911. And then just like that the seizure stopped. Ellie opened her eyes, dazed from the confusion of deep sleep. She looked at Randall, saw the concern in his eyes, and the sweat on his forehead. Aiden was clutching his teddy bear and sobbing uncontrollably. Oh no, it had happened again.

“Aiden come here honey, mommy’s all right. It was just a bad dream that’s all.”

Her son came over to the side of the bed, still crying and clutching his bear tight against his chest. Ellie put her arms around him and his wailing transformed into muffled sobs.

“Randall said it was cramps.”

“Oh he did, did he?”

She shot him a look. Randall shrugged; let’s see her come up with a better line under similar circumstances.

“How long was I out?”

“A couple of minutes at least.”

“Oh god, it’s getting worse.”

Randall nodded, not having anything else to add. Aiden had stopped crying altogether now, content to bury his face in his mother’s shoulder. She rose from the bed cradling Aiden to her chest and carried him back to his room. She called out over her shoulder as she walked.

“I’ll put some coffee on. I don’t think we’ll be getting any more sleep tonight.”

Randall got up and pulled a tee shirt from the top dresser door. You could say that again he thought as he pulled the shirt on over his head.

When Aided was tucked back into bed and fast asleep Ellie made her way to the kitchen. After he had calmed down he was out like a light. It would be so nice to be a kid again she thought, problems could be forgotten as quickly as they arose. Randall was seated at the kitchen table, two mugs of steaming black coffee wafting a wondrous aroma into the air. 

“I would have made the coffee.”

“I know, but I was up anyways.”

“That’s not funny.” She put her hands on her hips.

“Are you complaining again?” His smile was bright and cheery but she knew it was put on for her amusement, that’s what she loved about him so much. He put her worries ahead of his own.

“No, it smells great.”

She took a seat beside her husband looking at him in the soft light. He looked awful. Dark circles lined the underside of his eyes, his hair was matted, skin pale, and until recently she had not noticed the dramatic weight loss. She gauged him with her eyes, fifteen pounds at least.

“I’m sorry this has been so tough on you.” She said, her voice laden with guilt.

“It’s not your fault, there’s just a lot of things going on right now with the investigation and now…”

“This.” She finished his sentence for him.

“Yeah.”

“I had the dream again.”

“I know.”

“It was worse than before.”

He nodded. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“It might help.”

She sighed and took a sip of coffee. “I can’t get the images out of my head, that awful man.”

“Darrow.”

“Yeah, ever since I saw him in town, you know when he offered me a ride, he’s been sticking to me like a bad rash.”

“Jack Darrow has that effect on people.”

“I dreamt that he killed his wife. Chopped her up into tiny pieces. It was so vivid, so horrible, but it didn’t really seem like a dream,” she thought carefully how to phrase her next words, “ more like a premonition.”

“You know detective Connelly was out there yesterday, saw his wife first hand, she’s in bad shape but still alive and there’s no evidence that Darrow has any ill intent towards her. I can’t just go up there and arrest him on someone’s premonition, that’s not how the law works.”

“I know how the law works Randall. I just wish I could set my mind at ease.”

“If it makes you feel any better I could go out there tomorrow, check it out myself, but Peterson would be furious if he knew, so keep it mum okay.”

“What are you going to tell him, Darrow I mean.”

“I’ll think of something.”

She looked down at the table. “I’m scared, he’s a dangerous man, what if something goes wrong?”

“It won’t. But I’ll take Denny along just in case.”

“Promise.” She looked back up at him.

“I promise, now let’s try and get some sleep.”

Jack Darrow lay flat on his stomach, the knife sticking out of his back like a flagpole. Red blood was still pouring from his wounds, slowly draining the life force out of his body. The demon knelt down beside him wishing he could kill him himself, but he still had need for him. Instead he placed a hooked claw on Darrow’s injuries, there was a flash of red light and the blood began to coagulate, stopping the bleeding at once. Darrow’s flesh melded back together, pushing the blade out as it did so. It clattered on the floor.

Wake up Jack. You still have work to do.