Mark Edward Hall

Chapter 11

Annie needed to think. She should not have taken the drugs. But she’d been angry at Doug and she’d done it out of defiance. Now she was sorry. Her actions had reminded her of the other Annie, the Annie she’d left inside the walls of this soulless house more than a decade ago. That Annie was not the woman she was today; confident, self assured, happy. The other Annie was sullen and pensive and almost always afraid; a little girl who had hidden in her room and had welcomed the dreams because reality was so painful.

When she’d become old enough she’d left of her own volition. The shock had been almost too much for her father to bear. He’d never suspected that there were two Annies. The need for the drugs as well as the dreams had ended with their parting. So much had happened since that day. She’d found love beyond her wildest expectations, happiness with a good and kind man so unlike her father. Daddy had worshiped money and power, and what had it gotten him? His own self-imposed prison, a place to hide from the very things he’d once sought with such fervor. Doug needed none of those things. He knew exactly who he was. He had his morals, his confidence, his manhood, his soul.

Now her mother was gone. She’s the one who’d paid the ultimate price for Daddy’s sins. But was Mama totally guiltless? Annie guessed not. She’d played the part very well. Rachael had been a good actress, but Annie knew down deep that despite the pretences, she’d never had real happiness with her father. And now, she’d been mercilessly killed by one of her father’s enemies. How could Daddy have been so careless? The thought that wanted to intrude upon her unspoken question made her heart hurt so she pushed it aside.

Annie wondered why she’d been left alone until now. Surely her father’s enemies had known for years where she was. If they’d wanted her dead they’d certainly had ample opportunity to carry out such a wish. Had she been left alone because she posed no real threat to them? After all, she knew no names. She’d never cared enough for her father’s concerns to inquire. Faces she remembered, for all the harm that could do; most were just vague recollections as they came and went in an endless parade, bearing gifts and peddling deals, pandering shamelessly to Daddy, but hiding secret thoughts of jealousy and hatred for his power and his successes. She thought of the whispers she had managed to overhear from the sanctity of her haven, whispers grasped by childish ears as unwilling to listen as they were alert for forbidden information.

She felt an uneasy chill come over her at the dim recollection of those times. These were things she had never discussed with Doug, things even she had never been able to quite grasp herself, the details lost in the reticent silence of this old southern house and its mysterious aura. Now the house was awakening something inside her, reminding her of things best left alone.

Doug’s suspicions intruded once again, and she wanted to dismiss them out of hand. She wanted to get angry at him all over again for even suggesting . . . but she could do neither of those things. She knew her father. Doug was right about that. And she knew this house. This is the house she had been brought to on the day she was born, and it was as much a part of her life as the house on Beacon Hill overlooking Boston Harbor. But the house was not what mattered. After all, it was merely geography, wasn’t it? Wherever she had lived the restraints, and yes, the nightmares had always been the same. The outside world was something to be witnessed from a distance, to be protected against at all costs; as though the traffic that droned by beyond these hallowed grounds had been part of a world that didn’t exist. More, she understood now, a world that had been abjectly denied her.

It isn’t safe out there, darling. There are those who wish us harm simply because of who we are, because we are more fortunate than they are.

But Annie knew the real truth of the matter. It wasn’t her father’s good fortune that made people hate them. It was much more complicated than that. Ah, but now she was too tired to pursue demons. Perhaps later. Now it was time to see to her father, and get the details of her mother’s murder.

—–

Edmund De Roché sat alone in his private study tucked away in the east wing of his house. He had given strict orders not to be disturbed until his daughter and the man she had married arrived. The telephone beside his deep leather chair was on a private line, the number known only to a select few individuals. The study, though it boasted several lamps, was nearly in darkness. Only the small leaded glass lamp on the antique stand beside his chair burned, and that threw its light onto burnished mahogany rather than into the room. The curtains were all drawn. On the lamp table sat a half-filled bottle of single malt Scotch whiskey and an almost empty glass.

The only sound in the sanctuary was the soft, undulating stirrings of Strauss’s Operetta Indigo coming out of twin speakers on a bookshelf above the desk. Indigo was De Roché’s favorite operetta, but he loved the waltzes as well, especially Blue Danube and Rosen Aus Dem Suden. He always thought more clearly while under the influence of such timeless masterpieces. They did not make music like this today. They hadn’t in years, perhaps never would again. The stuff he heard occasionally at intersections that blasted from car speakers was a travesty; all low-end and no substance. Primal trash conjured by simple minds, as far removed from real music as paste was from unblemished diamonds. Perhaps when he was king of the world he would destroy all those who pursued such endeavors.

The thought caused a small smile to form on his handsome face, but his moment of self absorption was short-lived, for now it was imperative that he think clearly.

Rachael was gone, snatched from his grasp and slaughtered like an animal before his very eyes. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been expecting something. Since the announcement of his possible presidential candidacy, his friends, and his enemies, had all been frantically jockeying for position. Everyone wanted to be on board for the game of the century. The old axiom, ‘keep your friends close, your enemies closer,’ had never held greater meaning. The problem was, he could no longer tell one from the other. Had it been friend or foe that had struck at the very heart of his defenses, rendering his security forces and their accompanying technology mute? He could not be sure. No one had seen or heard anything until it was too late. It was as if a ghost had entered his grounds, his house, slaughtered his wife and vanished.

He’d been awakened in the night by what he believed was a scream. He turned on the bedside lamp, his heart pounding in his chest. The illumination sent a soft umbrella of light into the bedroom. Glancing toward the far side of the bed, he was shocked to see that his wife was absent. Frantic, he picked up the phone and called security. Assured that the perimeter was secure, and that nothing was out of the ordinary, he began to relax.

“Just a dream,” he said to himself, “just another of those damned dreams.” He’d been having far too many of them in recent months.

He got out of bed, put his robe and slippers on and went looking for his wife.

Out in the hallway, not more than a dozen steps from his bedroom door he found her hanging on a wire, suspended from a ceiling light-fixture, a massive steel fish-hook piercing her trunk. Her head was canted to the side and her tongue hung from her mouth. Her eyes were wide open and vacant with shock. Blood ran from her nose, her mouth and the wounds on either side of her body, dripping from her saturated nightgown and pooling on the fine Oriental carpet beneath her.

In a state of shock, the horror rising in him like a tide, De Roché backed away from the carnage that had once been his wife, stumbling against his bedroom door. “Oh, sweet Jesus!” he said in a small, moaning whimper. “That son of a bitch did this. That monster was here!”

Within minutes security guards were taking the dead woman down and a small army of them was searching the rooms and grounds of the estate.

His initial reaction after seeing the carnage was that the Collector had done this. However, after giving it some careful thought, he was no longer as convinced as he had been in that moment of horror and grief. De Roché’s enemies were many and varied. One did not live the kind of life he lived without making them. He supposed it could just as easily have been a traitor in his ranks, or a conspiracy of two or more who’d planned it to make him think it was the Collector. After all, the people closest to him knew of the demon’s existence and of what it was capable, although, as far as he knew, none had ever confronted it.

He’d looked at the cameras a dozen times since last night. They told him nothing. One moment Rachael was walking down the hallway toward the bathroom, the next she was hanging from the hook. The particularities that existed between those two events had been skillfully eliminated from the recordings. He and his security chief did not know how this was possible, for the technology was digital and there had been fail safes installed to prevent tampering. Further reason, he supposed, to suspect the Collector’s cruel cunning. The beast was a master of sleight, a magician of the highest order.

But even though he knew these things, he was still not entirely convinced the murder had been committed by the demon. The audacity of such an act was almost too blatant, even for him. It had been years since he’d seen or heard from the Collector, and although De Roché had wished a thousand times that he’d never struck the bargain and that the demon would vanish from the face of the earth, down deep he knew that it was far too late for that. The Collector was a monster, this was indisputable, but it was no fool. It was still out there, hiding in the place that it hid, waiting, and watching. And it would get what it wanted when the time was right. Or so it believed.

Beside him the telephone rang, interrupting his reverie. He stared at it in apprehension before picking it up.

“Yes?” he said, knowing instinctively who the caller was. “Yes,” he said three more times nodding his head each time as if to punctuate the word. He sat suddenly forward in his seat, a troubled expression on his face. “In New Hampshire?” he asked. “When? This morning? You say it’s on the television now? There were writings in Aramaic but they’re not being made public? Yes, I know what they mean. A symbol, you say? What sort of symbol?” De Roché listened for a long moment his face troubled. “Dear God,” he said finally. “He has renewed his search for the object. Now listen to me and hear me well; I do not want it falling into his hands. He took it from me once and he lost it. It must never again come into his possession! The object is mine! I am the one who found it and I am the one it was meant for. Do you understand me? Good. Yes, they are here and I am preparing to receive them. Now you do your part and I will do mine.”

De Roché hung up the phone, picked the remote control unit off the table beside him and pushed a button. The stereo went silent as a paneled wall beside the fireplace slid to the side revealing a wide screen television. De Roché snapped it on and tuned it to CNN. A chaotic mix of reports and video footage ensued, giving De Roché an overview of the situation in Exeter New Hampshire. There were many questions and few answers, of course. A news conference was scheduled for later and authorities were vowing to get to the bottom of the situation as quickly as possible.

After a few moments De Roché snapped the set off. A small bitter smile touched his lips. The Collector, he thought. The son of a bitch has resurfaced and he just left his calling card in New Hampshire. He wanted me to know. He wants me to be afraid. De Roché’s mouth felt dry and his tongue tasted like acid. He picked his glass up and took a sip, licking his lips, trying to moisten them. He sat thinking for another moment, his mind reeling.

It was time to deal with his daughter’s husband. Now that Annie was pregnant and safely in his care, McArthur would no longer be needed. If allowed to live he could pose a serious threat to the future. But above all else McArthur’s death would be of great satisfaction to De Roché. He hated McArthur to the core of his being. He always had.

Edmund De Roché knew things about McArthur. Perhaps things even McArthur himself had forgotten in his passion to be normal. The man possessed some sort of gift that made him much more complex than ordinary men. He saw things. He sensed things. He had the ability to see inside of people. He had the ability to see the future and perhaps change it. It was the very reason he had been chosen to be the father of Annie’s child. If the choice had been De Roché’s, McArthur would never have been a part of Annie’s life. As far as he was concerned McArthur’s gifts were dangerous. His life as a simple man, a carpenter, it was all bunk! De Roché was no fool. The man was an enigma. What bothered him most, however, was that he could not see deeply enough inside of McArthur to know if McArthur was aware of Edmund’s deceits.

McArthur had been brought to De Roché’s attention many years ago, and he’d followed his many childhood escapades with great interest, as had others. In the end he had reluctantly given his daughter up to the man in exchange for the greater good. Now Annie was back in the fold, pregnant with the child that would alter the course of human history, and McArthur would not live long enough to be of any trouble to anyone else ever again.

De Roché was not a man who believed in divine intervention, but he supposed that Rachael’s death had been the necessary catalyst to set the final act of this drama into motion. By serendipity or design it did not matter. The deed was done, and it was time to move on. Of course Annie could never know the real truth of her mother’s death. As far as Annie was concerned Rachael had been shot by an intruder. Period!

Rachael would be laid to rest here in Palm Harbor. Of the two homes this had been her favorite and it was fitting that she should remain here. The funeral would be tomorrow. De Roché was not a man who let grass grow under his feet. Nor was he a man who wasted time on grief. It was a non-productive emotion that would have no place in the new world order. So tonight there would be a celebration of Rachael’s life. Guests had been invited and the wine cellar would be opened. There would be a feast, the likes of, De Roché Manor had not seen in years.

The old man picked up the glass of scotch, lifted it to his eyes and swirled it in his hand. The amber liquid whirled around the bottom of the glass causing a tiny cyclone to form. At the center of the cyclone, darkness was born, spiraling out and away, licking at the vessel’s walls, growing, until it had transformed itself into a black and fluttering mass, like a hapless bird trapped in some cosmic attic.

“You want out of your cocoon, don’t you, you bastard?” Edmund whispered. “And there’s only one thing that can release you. There’s only one thing that can give you the ultimate power. Well, not as long as I’m alive. When the object is discovered, and it will soon be, I will be its master. And its power will be used at my discretion. If you want war, war is what you’ll get. I will defeat you and your ambition. You had the last word, but you will not have the final word. You will pay for what you or your henchmen did in my home on this terrible day. The child and the artifact will both be mine and I will use them as only I see fit.”

A single crimson point of light cut suddenly through the dark and swirling mass inside the glass, startling the old man with its livid intensity. His heart sped up suddenly, beating in a series of rapid and painful lurches, and for a moment he thought it might actually burst out through his chest.

Then a voice from some long forgotten past found his ear:

“I’m watching you, soldier,” said the voice. “I’ve been watching you since the day you found the artifact in that muddy ditch and made the bargain with me. I haven’t forgotten. If you think I have then you are sorely mistaken. I never forget a bargain or those who owe me. And I never forgive those who try to betray me. I always collect on my bargains.”

Edmund closed his mind against the assault, knowing that at least for now, he had the power to do so. He was uneasy, however. His silent enemy, his Lost, Forgotten and Forsaken enemy had surfaced suddenly and done damage, and this could only mean one thing; it was gaining in power. The object was closer at hand than it had been in centuries. His heartbeat finally stabilizing, Edmund put the glass to his lips with a trembling hand, upended it and downed the fluttering darkness that spiraled within.

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