A SECOND
SIGHT
Chapter 12
FUNKY TOWN
Location: THE STREETS
It is now morning.
Yaw Boat lies in bed and looks throu-ghthe French windows.
Sunlight is filtering throu-gh, and the sky is clear and bright. Another day has dawned, and Boat meets it with apprehension and trepidation.
He wishes he can stay in bed for the rest of his life. He had thought that the onset of day will bring relief and lesser fear, but during the short transition from darkness to daylight, his fears has increa-sed, and the horror of that evil face is still so real that he can still see it even with eyes closed.
He turns restlessly in bed as the door opens and Mary walks in, carrying a laden tray. She clears the little side table and sets the tray down.
MARY
(unsteadily)
Would you like to brush your teeth now, my love?
Her voice is not holding its usual un-derlying note of lust and wanton sultry s-×y desi-re. Her voice is like that of a lost little girl, and it makes Boat smile fleetingly.
Boat gets up and walks towards the bathroom. He opens the door, and then he just stands there, unable to enter.
He cranes his ne-ck, trying to peer into the bathroom, and then he looks throu-ghthe tiny space on the edge of the door where it is hinged to the wall.
Mary, sitting at the foot of the bed, regards him silently with eyes filled with fear.
Finally Boat enters the bathroom on sick legs; they just won’t stop wobbling, and he thinks briefly that maybe he can do with a walking-stick.
He almost chuckles with self-pity; just one night and one sighting, and he seems to have aged fifty years.
When he comes back from the bathroom, clean and groomed, Mary pours tea into a porcelain cu-p. She adds cream and sugar and hands it to him wordlessly.
He props his back against the headrest and sips the delicious tea. She hands him a bu-ttered toast.
BOAT
(gently)
Are you not having breakfast, Mary?
MARY
(absent-mindedly)
Took mine an hour ago. Mr. Stebbins moved out.
She is bu-ttering another toast as she speaks, and she is not looking at him.
A jolt pas-ses throu-ghBolt, and he spills tea into the saucer. His hands are not quite steady.
Mary stares fixedly at the spilt tea as if it is the most important thing in her life.
BOAT
Huh? What was that?
MARY
Mr. Stebbins, my love. Early this morning a moving company came in with a truck and loaded up his stuff. He drove away shortly after they left. The agent just put up a to-let sign for Mr. Stebbins’ apartment. So, Mr. Stebbins is gone for good.
The silence afterwards is like a physical animal that roars between them, threatening to decapitate one of us. The feeling is so uncomfortable that after a while Boat feels like screaming.
She puts two bu-ttered toasts on a plate and puts the plate within his reach, and then she finally looks into his face, and there no denying the fear in the depths of her eyes.
MARY
(softly)
This morning I tried to make love to you again because you were so restless after … after… that thing with Mr. Stebbins. You slapped my hands away, Yaw.
BOAT
(aghast)
For real?
He spills more tea, and it forms a bigger pool now in the saucer. He is trembling again, and it isn’t nice.
It is scary.
MARY
Yes, my love, and that was not all. You kept thrashing around in bed, murmuring a whole lot of gibberish. You were very distressed indeed. When I was cleaning the balcony this morning I noticed that apart from the vomit there was also urine. Now don’t get me wrong, my love. I’m not trying to humiliate you but frankly, you’re the most self-as-sured guy I’ve ever known.
You’re the coolest. Your rock-solid confidence and charisma is what I love about you the most, but now you’re suddenly scaring me, you and Mr. Stebbins. I tried not to think about that gaping hole in the railings, but it’s impossible. I would never have thought Mr. Stebbins, or any man for that matter, will be strong enough to bend those cast iron metals like that! Now he has moved out, and you’ve started trembling and spilling coffee. You’re even scared to enter your own bathroom. What is going on, Yaw?
He sighs miserably. She is looking at him intently, and there is unease in the depths of her eyes.
He is silent as he for-ces himself to drink all the tea and eat all the toast bread. She takes the plates and cu-p from him and carefully packs them on the tray.
Without a word she begins to stand up, but he reaches over and holds her hand, drawing her close to him.
He drags her close, hu-gging her from behind, and she relaxes against him. His arms are around her, and she can feel his body trembling.
He puts his cheek against her hair and speaks softly.
BOAT
(carefully)
Something bad happened to me, Mary. I don’t know how you will take it, but yesterday I met a damn pastor who told me that on the stro-ke of midnight I’ll start seeing stuff …evil stuff that no other eye can see. He called it being Unblinded, you know, so that I can see things in the spiritual realm. It sounds crazy, I know, but it really happened, Mary. This dawn, out there on the balcony, I saw something really bad about Mr. Ralph Stebbins. It made him really mad when he realized that indeed, I saw it. He wanted to kill me.
She goes rigid, and then she turns herself within the circle of his arms and looks at him with her brow puckered with fear and confusion.
MARY
Stuff? Evil stuff? In the … what? Spiritual realm?
That is when, once again, Yaw Boat recounts that terrible meeting he has had with Reverend Paul Anderson to Mary.
He realizes that his fears begin to dissipate a little at a time whilst he tells her about the whole scary experience. Her expression changes from disbelief to incredulity to concern by the time he finishes.
She doesn’t freak out, though, and she doesn’t bombard him with a million questions. That is one of the things he likes about her. She has a sensible head between her shoulders, and realizes that the last thing he nee-ds is nagging and the stress of being bombarded with questions he simply does not have answers to.
MARY
(hoarsely)
That is quite an extraordinary tale, quite incredible. If anybody but you had told me I would’ve laughed it off as being the ramblings of a mad man. I don’t know what to make of it, my love. I suggest you go home and wait for your father, Yaw. He would know what to do to help you un-der the circu-mstance.
He nods, and perhaps because of her un-derstanding and level-headed suggestion he finds the terror beginning to as-sail him again, and so he ki-sses her, quite long and tenderly, and they end up making love.
But it is not with the same bestial violence they are used to.
This time it is gentler, more personal, more giving, because there seems to be an unspoken fact between them that their relationship is going to be very affected, and it is possibly the last time they will be together.
Afterwards she fusses over him a little, and then she excuses herself because she has to be in the office.
She hesitates at the door, however, and gives him a long look … and he sees the fear lur-k-ing in the depths of her lovely eyes. There were questions on her mind, he is aware, perhaps thousands of them, but she just sighs and sli-ps out, closing the door gently.
Yaw Boat, alone and terrified, stares at the ceiling. He has no answers even for his own questions. Yeah, life is that crazy sometimes, and filled with quite unexpected and unpredictable lines that can lead a man straight into the yawning fangs of death in the cruellest of ways.
There were no constants in life, none. In the blink of an eye Yaw Bawa has moved from being the drug-using, alcohol-slurping, fornicating teenaged son of a millionaire to a freaked-out little bundle of a boy, too scared of even his own shadow.
He has been catapulted into an insane world, a world where his eyes have become his enemy, a world where his feet are almost firmly-planted on Death Avenue.
Finally, realizing that he nee-ds to start addressing his terrible problem, he stands up and gets dressed.
He leaves the apartment, locks it, and descends to street-level to his car, and his heart is in his mouth all the time.
As he drives out of the garage he finally allows the thought which had been plaguing me the whole night to crystallize, no longer able to flee from it. It stares him straight in the face and refuses to budge until he admits it.
Why did that demon – or whatever the hell it had been – spare Boat’s life?
It was a simple question, but its answer scareds the living bejesus out of him with all its implications.
That Stebbing-Thing had admitted that Boat had to die.
That death sentence had been final, had left no avenues open for debate.
It had been a simple statement, a direction of action that left not even the simplest of spaces available for uncertainties.
It had then blasted its way throu-ghthe railings and attacked.
It had raised its foot to mash Boat’s br@ins in.
And then, at the very last minute, it had paused.
It had taken another look, a second look, at Boat’s face, and it had seemed shocked, and it had whimpered with fear … and then it had retreated!
The question is, what had that demon seen on Boat’s face that had made it look so scared?
What the hell had it seen?
At first Boat doesn’t want to admit the evident answer staring him in the face, but it simply can’t be avoided.
It pushes itself into his br@in and knocks around some, and so Boat finally admits it.
…since the day you were born, you have been carefully manipulated and controlled by evil for-ces to achieve a terrible aim…
Anderson’s words, once again!
Could it be true?
It had to be true!
That green piece of evil spared his life because it had seen something superior, recognized a vessel which had been prepared, ready for occu-pation by a superior demon!
It had seen a vessel for its master!
Alarming as it is, that is the only answer!
It fits very well.
The normal interpretation is simple: that evil entity had been scared after that second look.
It had seen something meant for its master, and had been alarmed because it had almost destroyed it.
That is it, the one positive fact, and it tells Boat that he is in one big trouble.
He sighs unhappily and ru-bs a hand across his face, and then he begins to pay heed to the happenings around him.
He had been aware of extra movements for a while, a kind of translucent bright lights flitting in and out of his vision, but he had been so lost in thought that he ba-rely paid any heed to them.
A loud horn blasts behind him, and just then his eyes pick up what had been happening, and the sudden shock is so terrible that Yaw Boat sits transfixed in his seat.
His car veers off the street and smashes into a street lamp, and one of the headlights shatters with a tinkling, glas-sy, exotic sound… chinklinnng!
Luckily, he had been cruising, and although he is thrown forward by the impact straight into the steering wheel because he has failed to wear the seatbelt, the crushing pain is fast and gone, leaving him a bit breathless and with a lingering soreness in his che-st, but otherwise he is unhurt.
Yaw Boat looks around him in agony, his stomach heaving as he gasps for rele-ase from the fresh terror all around him.
Sudden sweat break all over his body, and a crippling cold sweeps over his body. He sits in his damaged car, chilled to the bone, his eyes darting frantically in all directions as he watches them!
BOAT
(in great horror)
My God! Oh, my God! Oh, sweet Jesus!
They are everywhere!
If he ever doubted it, if he had been hoping, if he had been deluding himself, here then this is the proof!
Here is it, the reality of all realities.
There is no doubt now!
He has really been unblinded!
He sits in a petrified stupor, ba-rely hearing the cacophonous blasts of angry horns all around him. He looks, and he M0-ns … and something dies inside me!
The demons are all over town!
They have come to have a funky party!
They float all around Boat, in all forms and colours, translucent, ugly, and infinitely evil.
They ride on top of cars, sit on buildings, hover in doorways, float on trees and, worst of all, dra-pe themselves around people and recline inside people!
Yaw Boat sees one particularly hu-ge and bulbous demon perching comfortably on a sleek, upper-clas-s woman who is getting out of her car. The demon’s blazing red eyes are fixed malevolently on her.
Yaw Boat sees a serpentine, orange creature with scaly-looking skin and hu-ge teeth worming its way down the open ne-ck of a man with a pastor’s clerical around his ne-ck.
A brownish ugly mess with hu-ge fangs is curled up snugly on the head of a crippled beggar sitting on the sidewalk.
Boat’s breath comes erratically now, and his fear is galloping up his throat uncontrollably, his panicked eyes ready to explode right out of his face.
It is not a sight for human beings.
He shuts his eyes ti-ghtly, and for-ces himself to breathe and withdraw from the horror. It is, after all, his sanity at stake here.
With his eyes still shut, he for-ces himself to accept the fact that what is happening is real, something Anderson had warned him about!
He for-ces himself to un-derstand that this is not his mind conjuring madness and horrors! He for-ces himself to un-derstand that soon, very soon, this stinking ability to see into the spiritual realm will leave his body, and everything will be fine again!
His breathing become a little bit more regular, and the panic slowly subsides. Calmness and rational acceptance come back to him, and then he slowly opens his eyes.
And even then he is still not completely prepared for the stark evil he sees!
Just to his left is a prostitute, hitching up her mini-skirt and straightening up a seam in her stockings. Behind her is a fat, short, greenish creature on stunted legs, moving forward with mad intensity, pink eyes alight with evil, drooling terrible goo from its gigantic vertical mouth.
This vile demon suddenly jumps up, holds the who-re’s legs, and scampers up her thi-ghs, disappearing un-der her skirt, leaving only three stubby feet sticking out.
Soon Boat can see the demon’s legs je-rking spasmodically, obviously with great enjoyment.
BOAT
(horrified)
Oh, Lord! What the hell are you doing to her, you piece of shit?
TBc…