Ethan Eternal

Chapter 8

“The Night of Treasures”

George did not have an umbrella. He refused to even consider the idea. Rain was a pleasure of the world… something bound by no man or God. It was a pure and perfect gift from the earth that so many had never truly embraced or understood. To George, it was to be cherished and savored. The rain at night gave no evidence of where it had come from. It merely was. There was no better time to know the glory of this sweet chill. Night afforded a privacy to indulge in such wonders.  It was to be tasted slowly and prolonged… and so he stood at the center of an empty concrete parking lot… delighting in the cold.

            Basking in the damp dark, the giant turned his face to the sky. He shut his eyes loosely and thanked the night. The rain was a friend he welcomed eagerly for it shared his mind and recollection. With each frozen drop, the past returned in brilliant clarity. The perfection of pounding noise drew him inside his thoughts and there he found them… each of them… bound and waiting for his attention.

            They were his prisoners in the darkness. They were his precious tiny treasures… polished… dusted… admired at his behest. He would find them here in the rain… he always had. They came to him willingly… as though seeking the affections of the madman that had made them. They cried without sound. The rain drowned their wailing. That was unfortunate… but sometimes George could detect a word or two amidst the clamor of noise. Occasionally he would hear them as they were before he made them… when they were still young children.

            His lips pulled away from the ivory beneath. His mouth opened in a hate filled snarl. He did not smile. His expression took no clear form. His face only tightened with a bitter rage against itself as his closed eyes tightened and soon the moment… at last… arrived.

            Like something putrid and foul… his mind became a sullied bubble that arose from within him self. It burst with an orgasmic pain that shook the massive man… pierced him like a thousand shards of frozen glass… and drew a sound from his open throat not unlike one might expect from a demon that had managed well in this world.

            George was no demon… just a man… but both more and less as well. What you or I might think of as humanity or the characteristics of a person would almost seem alien in the presence of someone like George. Perhaps once he had been a person of some kind… maybe even a good one… but long ago something had twisted his mind… killed his heart… and birthed a new life beyond the realm of reason. The thing that called him self “George” lived within the body of a man… but had long since transcended the restraints of morality or virtue. He was something else now.

            Another bubble of memory exploded within his mind as George cried out to the sky. This time it was a brown skinned boy from Tijuana. He struggled to restrain the vicious act inside him… for it was almost too much to hold. In times passed, he had lost control of the children’s ghosts and succumbed to a blood lust no horror story could match. He would be more careful tonight.

            The boy screamed and struggled. He thrashed his broken arms in all directions… but they would not help his escape. He had no legs. George had seen to that. He recalled how he had removed them… the sound of tearing cartilage… the smell of sweet young blood. When he was there with the boy, there was not much time to savor his work. The child only lived for a few minutes… but as the rain pulled the images into view… George remembered well the fullness of that old sweetness.

            The boy crawled on broken bones. Sobbed and screamed as he fought for every inch. All reason had left him by this point. Only the mouth of the cave remained in his seven year old brain. He would never reach the sunlight… but George let him think he could. Less than half the distance had been traversed before the boy’s skin grew pale… and death seemed but a breath away.

George had followed close behind. When the boy seemed to be fading, he reached down and picked him up carefully. He held the youth in his arms and looked deeply into those terrified auburn eyes. There seemed to be a peace there… something George had never known. Death drew near. The giant watched him carefully. He brushed away the child’s hair and smiled. A strangeness took hold of the boy’s face. The giant had not been kind before. The ginger touch of the great man’s hand was perplexing… even to a mind so close to oblivion.

 Just as the moment appeared imminent… and death seemed softly welcoming to so hard a struggle… George seized the back of the boy’s head and covered his tiny mouth and nose with the other. The boy screamed again under the weight of George’s grip. The giant pressed harder. He would not let death have the boy on its terms. Death was his to master. The boy would die not from a choice to let go of life or as an escape from the unrelenting pain… but because George willed it so.

With a sharp twist of one hand, George claimed his prize. He had always taken what he wanted… and he always would. The boy became his that day and took a place within the halls of a mind consumed by evil. Here he would remain… prisoner to a master that had made him. The boy belonged to George.

The giant sensed that he was not alone and so he opened his eyes. He turned his face away from the storm and glared across the empty lot. Blue lightning revealed a tall steeple to his left and a grassy field beyond. The church had been abandoned for almost a year now. Young bandits had set a fire that the congregation could not afford to repair. The black evidence of that night remains even now. Charred openings in the roof of the once beloved building can not hold back the waves of falling rain that now eagerly fill the tattered hallways of the white church. All inside is stained with ruin.

The front entrance to the church rests atop a long slope of concrete steps. Simple iron rails flank the path to a door now sealed by plywood and nails. Sometime between the fire and now, vandals had come to paint their taunts and insignias across what white remained. What was once a place of reverence and worship now stood as a symbol of chaos and corruption.

 In the dark, George could see a figure standing at the broken doorway. No more than a grey silhouette of a man… the intruder stood without detail or motion. The giant stared for a moment and then began to walk toward the former house of God. The figure did not move. As George reached the steps, the man at last stirred.

“I was told that you would be here.” A voice emerged from the figure. It was a familiar tone accompanied by an accent from a Central American nation of vague locality. It was the voice of Carlos… a soft spoken yet brutal assassin.

George made his way up the steps until the rain was behind him and a wind ravaged awning broke the sky above. He stopped a few feet from Carlos and glared at him with a knowing certainty. Carlos would not meet his eyes. Though he was a seasoned killer… possessing a sense of proficient experience… he was also wise enough to know the man that now stood before him… and careful enough to avoid any chance of confrontation.

“Where are the others?” George growled lowly.

“They will come when I call them. I had to be sure it was you.”

George nodded. He appreciated caution among his subordinates. It was a quality far too rare among their kindred.

“Call them now.”

Carlos did not hesitate. He already had a phone in the palm of his left hand. As he flipped it open and dialed, he asked with a careful tone.

“What should I say?”

George smiled like a snake.

“Tell them to bring their toys. We have a game to play.”

The mysterious assassin… cold blooded killer of men… known among criminals as one of the world’s most vicious enforcers… did as he was told.

            (to be continued…)