THE SECOND SIGHT
Chapter 52
BOAT
(horrified)
Jesus! His own kids?
Grant nodded.
GUY GRANT
He lodged a complaint at the police station that some strangers attacked his sons, and even though Mary told them Ray was responsible, the cops turned deaf ears as well. You see, Ray is not the sort of man you want on your back, and even his own father is scared of him. He reigns here, Yaw, and that’s why I want you to stay away from him.
The doctor who had been talking to the two brothers walked forward and gently led Mrs. Mary Mensah inside.
Nicole came back to us, her pretty face set in furious lines.
NICOLE
(furiously)
That man is a beast! There’re a lot of scars on that poor woman. He’s been hurting her for ages! He should be stopped!
GUY GRANT
(smiling grimly)
Maybe he would lose his head just like Yaw said.
I smiled wanly, wishing once again that I had kept my mouth shut.
We said our good-byes then, hu-gged all around, and then we left after I promised to look in on them on my way back from Portville.
Black clouds were gathering in the sky again as I drove out of the hospital, and little growls of thun-der were already warming up the sky.
NICOLE
(anxious)
The weather forecast predicted a stormy day. Do you think we should wait it out?
BOAT
(gently)
Nope. This is one sturdy car, and I want to make it to Portville today. I need to see you father.
The rains came down in grandeur just then, whooshing down in slanting torrents accompanied by slashing winds.
The powerful windshield wipers did their rhythmic dance, battling the shower of water adequately. The rain bounced off the macadam, trying its best to create little rivers in the small grooves and potholes.
It blotted out the sights, and it felt as if we were all alone in the world and I gave a contented sigh.
I was aware of the woman beside me. She was relaxed in her seat as she grabbed a few of my CDs and fli-pped throu-ghthem. She selected one – a Women of Faith album I kept in my cars to impress Elaine – and slotted it into the car’s CD player.
A moment later the sweet voices of the ladies filled the car, and although I had always hated their songs – and gospel music in general – I found myself enjoying it that morning.
Everything seemed just right ; the two of us alone, the rain beating an irregular beat on the roof, the sweet music floating around us, her presence beside me, her mild perfume mingling with mine…she being all-woman, and I being all-man.
The silence was pregnant with the sound of our awareness of each other, and for a moment I almost succu-mbed to the urge to reach out and touch her hand.
If it had been in the movies or a storybook our eyes would have met and held, and without a word I would’ve parked the car and our li-ps would have made a rhythm of their own.
But out here in reality it was all about the awareness, and the fact that it was a sweet moment – maybe more for me than for her.
She had an un-derstanding with a young man in her life, and she might be feeling nothing but sisterly affection for me.
We just met anyway, so what was all these sentimental twangs I was feeling anyway?
Had I forgotten about my angel Elaine so soon, the girl who had been ordained to be my evil wife from the beginning? Hadn’t I been entertaining hopes of letting Paul Anderson drive out the demons in her so that I could be with her?
Who was this lady that was suddenly tweaking the fixed settings of my emotional and sentimental pa-ssions?
When we got to the outskirts of the town I put my foot down on the accelerator, though not all the way down. The road was slic-k and we-t with rain, and I wasn’t very familiar with the terrain. Over-speeding in those conditions could land a man straight in the morgue, and thus I drove carefully.
A sign flashed past, neat white lettering on a green background:
You are now leaving Jackson Peak.
Safe Journey, and do come back!
The road stretched out in front of me, bordered on both sides by thick trees and green shru-bbery.
The wind howled and the rain lashed, but thankfully there wasn’t much lightning.
I had nothing against nature, but sometimes lightning had the tendency to freak me out.
I wasn’t afraid of the thing, but it was very unpredictable, especially if you happened to be exp-osed to its wrath on an empty stretch of road trapped in a moving metal manufactured by man.
I had once read about a man whose head had been burned right off by lightning; one blast, and his head had been charred black.
NICOLE
(suddenly, gently)
One thing about me, Yaw, is that I don’t like being lied to.
I chanced a startled look at her, somehow disturbed by that cool voice.
BOAT
(carefully)
I don’t recall telling you a lie, Nicole.
HEADLESS
She turned those eyes on me, and I was once again startled by her beauty.
She was as fresh and clean as a drop of dew on a budding petal. I marveled at the smooth texture of her skin, the gentle sweeps of her features; she was the kind of girl you never got tired of watching, amongst other things.
Her eyes were still fixed on me although my attention was once again on the road, and I felt her gaze all the same.
NICOLE
You implied Guy Grant was an old acquaintance whose wife you helped convey to hospital last night. From what I gathered from Guy, what his wife is suffering from is not something that happened last night. His gratitude, to you, was profuse, and it indicated something heavier than the mere conveyance of a sick woman to hospital. And those powerful emotions he felt, about having his Sam back and starting a family with her in the near future? Please, Yaw, don’t lie to me! You can decide not to tell me the truth, and I’ll un-derstand and respect that, but don’t lie to me. I don’t want any lies between us, Yaw.
I glanced at her; she was composed, her voice soft, but for a moment – a very poignant moment – I thought there was another message in those words.
The ‘between us’ part of her speech did it and I liked the feeling it created.
Once again I turned my attention to the road, taking my time to negotiate a sharp reverse curve.
BOAT
No lies, Nicole. From now, no more lies.
We drove along in companionable silence for a while, and then she spoke again.
NICOLE
(softly)
I was wrong about you. I was quite unprepared for someone as young as you, and I’m convinced that you’re not a mature Christian – forgive me, I mean no offence – but these facts really made me lose sight of what you truly are, or could be. I think I’m convinced, somehow, that you also have some form of
the gift, right?
The road had straightened out, and it lay flat and beautiful ahead.
It was bordered on both sides now by thick oak trees, evenly-spaced, but their thick branches and leaves interspersed, creating a heavy continuous curtain of green on each side of the road.
Also read – The Second Sight – Episode 8
Thankfully, some authority had taken the trouble to keep the space above the road free of offshoot branches.
I glanced at Nicole, and had just decided to tell her a little bit of the truth about me, when the hu-ge black Ford van emerged from the bend behind me and bore down on my car.
The driver was driving recklessly, and he had to step down ha-rd on his brake to avoid smashing into the back of my car. There was a harsh squealing sound behind us, and Nicole spun in her seat to take a look back.
BOAT
(irritably)
That driver must be mad to drive like that! Where in the name of Hades is he in a hurry to?
The driver behind me flic-ked his headlights, blew his horn and turned on his left indicator light. I slowed down and spun the wheel of the car to the right to give him more room to overtake.
The moment he swung into the other lane I became afraid.
I could not explain it, but suddenly I sensed the danger all around us, the palpable menace that was so strong that it caught in my throat and for a terrible moment I could not breathe.
Nicole screamed, leaning toward me.
NICOLE
(alarmed)
Yaw! What’s wrong? What’s happening to you?
Something was beating ha-rd in my heart, causing me to be acutely aware of danger. My head spun round, and then I saw it.
de-eper in the branches of the oak trees, a pair of eyes was watching me, keeping pace with the car.
A pair of blood red eyes…bloody eyes!
Eyes filled with undiluted hatred, eyes that meant to inflict nothing but absolute horror.
The Legion!
The demons that had killed my father were back!
Fear crystallized in my heart, and my foot eased off the accelerator. I was vaguely aware of Nicole clutching my arm and shaking it, her voice anxious, close to real fear.
The eyes had been moving along with the car, but now it seemed to change direction, and they headed straight toward me, hu-ge and determined.
They pa-ssed across a thick branch, and suddenly that particular tree branch snapped off from the mother tree, turned over once, and shot toward my car!
It was a hu-ge, stout branch, its tip cleanly shaped into a knife-tip menace as if by a master sword maker.
Its sharp edge was hurtling toward my car at top speed, and although I stepped ha-rd on the accelerator, that branch veered off course like a guided missile, hurtling toward me at great speed.
I slowed down hard, causing Nicole to shoot forward but luckily she was in her seatbelt, and it cushioned what would otherwise have been very ugly accident for her.
That terrible branch slowed down too, still locked on my window, and then I saw that lodged in its trailing branches were the red blood eyes!
It wants to kill me, Good Lord sweet Jesus it wants to kill me, I thought frantically.
And then the Ford van was nosing forward, and soon it was opposite me, between my car and that hurtling piece of death…and I turned my attention to the driver…and then my blood ran cold.
It was Ray Mensah…
It all made perfect sense suddenly, and I shuddered involuntarily, my body cringing from what was going to happen.
BOAT
(helplessly, horrified)
Oh no, no, no!
Ray Mensah’s thick chin was thr-ust out pugnaciously, his beady little eyes turned to mine, his expression mean, his right hand raised, making shooing gestures at me to get off the road.
But he wasn’t the one who scared me.
I could see that in the seat behind him, filling the whole of the back space, was that dark cloud-thing. It seemed to be sparking, static-like, ba-rely held in check, breathing, alive, devouring!
My eyes were horrified, my heart agonized, as my attention was drawn to that evil-guided tree branch beyond Ray Mensah.
BOAT
(terrified)
Oh sweet Jesus, oh no, no, no!!
The hu-ge branch exploded into Mensah’s car throu-ghhis window.
The sharp edge entered Ray’s ne-ck just below his chin, and sliced it right off. He never knew what caught him. His head shot off his ne-ck in a thick spray of blood that flooded the windshield.
His severed head bounced off the window on the pa-ssenger side of the car, cannoned off, and fell out of sight.
For a moment Ray Mensah looked like somebody’s bad idea of a horror movie. His headless body was still in the seat, hands gripping the steering-wheel.
And then that black cloud covered him completely; the black thing appeared to be taking on a form now, a sort of macabre being with hu-ge wings.
It reached into that body, and suddenly it was moving out of the Ford, streaming into the air in a thin line, and just for a moment – a very brief moment – I seemed to see something else in that formless black line: a screaming transparent face, a face which seemed to be formed from water, taking form, elongating, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Ray Mensah…screaming in agony, and then it was gone, lost in the de-eper clouds above.
The Messenger of Death had claimed another victim.
The hu-ge Ford van screeched on the slic-k road, lurched off it, and smashed headlong into one of the trees. There was the nasty shriek of tearing metal as the Ford wasted itself on the tree.
I swung the wheel ha-rd to the left and brou-ght the car to a shuddering halt behind the maimed Ford.
My door was open even before it came to a complete stop, and I leapt out just as the pair of red eyes slammed out of the Ford and moved into the trees.
Tbc..