I lowered myself into a seat to one side, close by the fire. Removing my wet coat and resting in on my lap, like a kind of protection. I put my rucksack back on. I have no idea why I kept the bag and all the money? Maybe it was simply holding on to something familiar because so much around me had turned to madness.
All eyes swivelled to me, watching me lower into position. I felt like a lump of meat thrown before hungry predators.
"This him?" the son asked, his large round, slightly bulging eyes pa.s.sing over me.
"Yes," the old man answered, one hand grabbing at his crouch as if something down there was biting him.
Once he had received his answer the son turned his gaze back to the fire. Now rocking backward and forwards slightly. His lips moving, but saying nothing.
The old couple kept their eyes locked on me. The woman slowly shaking her head from side to side. The old man still pulling at his pants.
"Not a pleasant night. Is it?" the bus driver asked.
My mind was numb; I couldn"t have answered even if I tried. What was happening? Who were the other three people?
"a.s.sociates of mine," the smoker simply answered. "Other fallen angels you could say." As if reading my mind.
Smiles played around the old couple"s faces. Faces old and wrinkled and dead of any other emotions. It looked like it had been a long time since a smile had been etched on them.
The son said nothing. Rocking. Dribbling. Muttering.
"This has been their home and prison for many long months," he stated.
Prison? I didn"t understand.
"It has taken longer than we antic.i.p.ated in getting you here," the woman said. "We would have driven you directly here, but we needed more souls, the harvesting needed to continue."
The old man stood, hobbling over to the fireplace and lifting the poker, he then proceeded to stab at the embers. He didn"t replace it after, but kept hold of it; gripping it like a club.
"Yes, a prison. No more than two of us able to leave at any one time, because of not having enough strength, enough energy," the smoking man said, with smoke slowly trailing out the missing chunk in his neck. Blood bubbled around the slit the smoke escaped from. Bubbles expanded and popped in a sickening display.
"Soon we will have all the power we need."
"Soon," the other three whispered together.
Power? I was getting more confused. Why would angels need more power? Imprisoned in mere walls made by mortal man?
"Ah, he"s beginning to understand," the son stated, moving his head to look directly in my eyes.
I lowered my gaze, unable to stare into those ever-shifting eyes for too long.
Smoker stood, coming to stand beside the old man, whom still leant against the fireplace. I felt like I was being surrounded. A pack of wolves positioning for the kill, and smoker was the Alpha male.
He rested one blood soaked arm on the thick oak mantelpiece, which was covered in dusty black and white photos, sat in thick wooden frames.
"See, we need human energies your souls to keep us alive," the smoker said matter-of-fact.
The son clapped his hands together sharply, making me jump.
It made no sense.
The smoker started to move about the room. Talking as he walked. "This is a large old house. Many things fill its corners." He looked directly at me. "Books. Many books. Old ones, some new. The bible also." He picked up an old dog-eared copy of a black book off the mantelpiece. The New Testament written on the cover in faded fake gold leaf lettering.
"Truly an amazing book. Wouldn"t you agree?" He let it slip from his fingers; it dropped with a thud to the dusty dark carpet. A collection of pages ripped from the binding and spread out across the floor like a pack of cards.
"A book we created to administer control to beings who wandered aimlessly."
His words made less sense with every sentence he uttered.
The old woman, who had been just watching, spoke. "You"re a primitive race. Still searching for things that don"t exist. Reaching for the unreachable. Needing beliefs and G.o.ds in order to feel you have a purpose in your pitifully short, pointless, lives."
"Your purpose is food for us!" Smoker said out the corner of his mouth, accompanied by bubbles of spit. "It has always been this way, since the very dawn of your kind."
"With a nudge from us," the old man added.
"At certain times we come to your planet to harvest souls. Energies to run our bodies and crafts," he announced, fingers lowering the cigarette for one moment.
Crafts? The image of the long channel and buried object sprung to mind.
"Yes. He"s beginning to see," said the son in a kind of lazy lisp.
"Crash-landed eight months ago while en route to the harvesting grounds. Landed no more than a couple hundred yards away from this very spot," said the old woman.
Angels and ships? I had a hard enough time comprehending the fallen angel bit. Now things were shifting. Or was I just being dense? The answers were right in front of me. Sometimes the answers were so illogical, so unbelievable, that the mind just flatly disbelieved.
"We feed on your bodies. As already mentioned, we harvest the body"s essence. The last time we were here was 1917 to 1920. Some would call it the Spanish Influenza, we call it the Harvest. In three years we collected almost one hundred million souls worldwide. Six hundred and seventy-five thousand souls from your country of America alone. Almost three percent of the world"s population in one glorious. .h.i.t," smoker said matter-of-fact.
The old woman took over. "The last major collection before that was 1347 to 1352 by your calendar. Collecting across China, Western Asia and almost half the population of Europe almost seventy-five million souls. Bubonic Plague, or The Black Death, they named that one. " She let the figures sink in.
"Of course at certain times we have been in the background, wars and such. Nothing major, just taking what we need to tide us over. On average about half a million a year. Until now." She coughed, dribble issued from her mouth.
Smoker took over once again. "We are trapped here; our ship is damaged, needing substantial repairs. And in the meantime we each need a host with which to hold our body"s energy bodies that were injured during the crash. Bodies that are now being repaired."
My head was spinning. Host. Needing death to support whatever they are? Having already caused tens of millions of deaths in the past. Were they going to collect that much this time? Or more?
"What"s my part in all of this?" I found myself asking. Hands gripped tightly to my soaking wet coat.
Smoker smiled. "We need souls the same as you need fossil fuels, and food. We can also absorb energy from live victims. Not as much as feeding on the soul itself. More like what you would call a blood bank. Drain a little at a time, an endless supply."
Feeding off my energies?
"But when we feed it leaves the host slightly confused, sometimes returning to a primitive subconsciousness." Smoke seeped out the hole in his torn neck.
"Like the king in the small book," the son interrupted, looking at the bible resting on the floor beside smoker"s boots. "Neb-Neb-Nebby-Nebuchadnezzar. He became like an animal of the field, feeding on gra.s.s, utterly insane for seven years." He gave a twisted smile, as if thinking himself clever for remember that small fact.
"Indeed." The bus driver"s reanimated corpse stated. "Doing things they can"t remember; having no control over."
The bodies in my garden! My twisted dreams! They had been feeding off me, causing me to feed on others.
"We have bodies with which to feed from. Taking the bodies and souls of those who lived in this house," the son said.
"But I," the smoking man stated, "had no body to take as a host." His hands flashed over the bus driver"s battered remains. "I can use this for only so long feeding. Harvesting numerous souls from the incidents we cause. But when it comes down to it, a dead body is not good with delicate things. Repairing delicate components of our crashed ship, for example."
It started to make some kind of twisted sense. Masquerading as a fallen angel, supposedly imparting a message, they had read from the bible that they said they created then imparted it to me, while all the time using my as they call it energies, to fuel their stolen bodies. As he sat before me talking, feeding all the while.
If he had said he was an extra terrestrial what would I have done? But masquerading as a spirit creature, taking facts and information from a religious point of view, strange as is seems, sounded more realistic to me. Allowing me to leave myself wide-open to him.
Now I comprehended the bodies around my home. As they took control of me, I had done things for them. Causing more death, harvesting for them because they couldn"t, then disposing the bodies in shallow graves, and then waking up oblivious to my deeds. That"s why my nails where filled with mud. My body covered in blood. They had also made me believe my farmhouse had been snowed in. Possibly to keep me in one place. I can"t remember the last time I had left my home? Months?
Also each time they came they made the deaths look like they were caused by some other fatality, a virus or a plague. What would the cause of all the souls they would harvest be put down to this time, a virus?
It was all too much for my mind. I felt myself starting to blackout, darkness started to creep into the edge of my vision.
I could feel their gazes upon me, waiting for something?
But I didn"t know what they would do to me if I fainted. Why had I been brought here? Why were they telling me this now? I needed to get away from here. Far away.
I sat dumbfounded. I felt like they were closing in on me. Smoker and the old man stood beside the fire. The old woman and the son sat staring at me from the couch. All gla.s.sy eyes fixed on me.
"Now," the smoker said, "I need something from you." He shifted his footing. "See we can"t just take a living body. We have to prepare it, mould it."
"The old couple were easy, aged, having less resistance. The son was also easy, being disabled he done whatever we asked of him. He imprisoned his parents, while doing our bidding. That was until the time came when they were all ready, then simply taking them."
Smoke poured from his throat and neck. "Now I need to take a host body. One I can sustain for a longer period of time. One," he motioned to the bus driver"s body, "that isn"t impaired in someway." His gla.s.sy eyes were bored into me.
The old man"s hand was still wrapped around the metal fire poker, holding it like a weapon.
Smoker flicked his cigarette into the flames.
The son and mother stood.
I was trapped.
27.
The Harvest I moved quickly, knowing what they meant to do to me. I tossed the wet coat between the smoker and old man. The old man turned as if it was some kind of weapon flying towards him. Smoker didn"t even flinch, but continued to move towards his prey.
Then my coat achieved what I had attended it to. It went into the fire. Being soaked in rainwater it caused the fire to crackle and spit. Then billowing smoke poured out the hearth, obscuring everyone from view, in a cloud of dense grey choking smoke.
I dropped to my knees and headed for the door, scrambling like a quadruped.
Smoker screamed, shouting at the others to find me. Now the rooms only light source had be extinguished.
I crawled along on hands and knees. The smoke stung my eyes and filling my throat. It was different from the hotel fires smoke. The smoke in this room had a pungent woody taste in the back of my throat. Overwhelming. My head b.u.mped into a table, items fell on me, and a small vase of some kind hit me on the head, and then shattered on the carpet. My hand reached for it, grasping around until I felt the thin neck in my shaking grasp.
A leg brushed against me. Without thinking I forced the jagged remains of the vase into the leg. A howling scream filled the room. I stood and scampered for the open door.
I fell into the hallway, coughing smoke from my straining lungs. There was a little light coming from the stairwell. Behind me trampling feet could be heard.
The front door.
I tried to reach for it, but the bolts slammed into place. I tried to pull them but they wouldn"t budge.
Behind, the son emerged from the greasy smoke. He stood like an ancient Greek statue, his bulging eyes now all bloodshot. His large feet planted wide apart. He saw me.
I ran forward grabbing another larger vase from the dusty sideboard, tossing it with all my strength at the unmoving giant. It hit him square in the bulky chest. It simply fell to the floor, shattering. He was unaffected. I headed for the stairs. The son"s eyes were obviously affected by the smoke, because I brushed past him, pushing him with all my strength. From behind I saw the old woman now coming to lean on the back of her son.
His hands rose to his eyes to rub away the black soot and smoke. With his hands raised he didn"t see me, as I pushed hard. He stumbled backwards, but not enough to fall. One large hand helped steady him against the doorframe.
I sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I didn"t know the layout of the house, I just needed to find a window to get away. A short hallway ended at the top of the stairs. Another set of narrower steps led up to yet another floor.
There was only a small leaded stained gla.s.s window, which I proceeded to kick at. The gla.s.s shattered, but the lead that had been holding the gla.s.s in place simply twisted, but didn"t give. I headed for a door.
Four doors exited the hallway. Sod"s law. The first I pushed open was the toilet. The window was far too small to climb through. I moved to the next door. Already I could hear giant boots stomping on the stairs. I could hear the two old people shouting, trying to get their son out the way, so they could churn up after me. The noise propelled me to move faster.
The rest of the doors I noticed, like the door downstairs, were nailed shut.
I pushed against the closest. The frame squeaked but held.
My heart was jumping in my chest, banging wildly in my ears.
I grabbed at the small table that was resting besides the pealing wallpaper. I used it as a battering ram. The nails protested loudly. But they were all rusty and weakened; they gave way after the fourth battering, and a final vicious kick.
I turned and tossed the table down the stairs, it hit the son square in the chest. He tottered and fell backwards like a heavy falling log. He tumbled against the other two, all three now landing in a twisted heap. The smoker was stood to one side, watching everything. Smoke trailing out his nose like steam from a bull"s nostrils in cold weather. Now the others were out the way, the corpse of the bus driver started to climb the stairs, his eyes never leaving mine.
I pulled my gaze away and kicked at the door again, causing it to finally fling open. A smell rushed over me. It smelt like dead bloated chickens left in stagnant water. I went to gag but held back. Instead I spat flem and the initial taste from my mouth. Then I saw what the smell was; dead bodies piled up, men woman and children, old and young. Obviously what they would call the harvest. I call it a ma.s.sacre.
Trapped inside the nailed shut room they had become food to these beings. One possibly a body for the smoker. But either left too long, or not compatible, they had all died.
Suddenly I panicked. If they couldn"t get out then how would I? But I felt a prang of relief as I realized they were all bound by hand and foot. I felt momentary guilty for feeling pleased they had been tied up like animals.
I moved into the stinking room. Bodies piled up in the corners and over each other. Decomposed and vile. I jumped between them. The floor all slippery with body fluids and waste, my foot landed on an arm, it moved under my weight, the muscles coming away from the bone. I fell forward, stretching out my hands to catch myself. One hand hit hard floorboards, jolting my shoulder, but my collarbone held under the impact. My other hand hit a head; two fingers sliding into its decomposed eye orbit reaching into the cranial cavity. I could feel the remains of a soggy watery eye and mushy brain matter on my fingers. I closed my eyes tight and pulled myself to my shaking feet, wiping my hand on my jog suit pants. I vomited over the remains of the teenage boy.
Sound behind me.
I kicked with my foot, slamming the door shut.
The window was also nailed closed. I looked around. Nothing apart from stinking carca.s.ses, and what seemed like a million buzzing flies. I kicked at the window, it shattered. I kicked at the jagged knife-edges protruding from the sill. Outside there was an overhanging roof, from the porch below, leading to a side door of the house. Red tiles, slippery with moss and rain that was still pouring relentlessly.
I pulled a coat from a body. Both arms were tied, but they gave way at the shoulder joints, with a sickening popping sound. The coat slid off the putrid flesh. I tossed it onto the sill, not wanting to have gla.s.s fragments penetrate my skin.
I jumped and rolled out the window, just as the door flung open and smoker came striding through.