Dark Creations: Dark Ending (Part 6) (12 page)

These questions flooded his brain as he watched the woman beside him.
She brushed a wayward lock of hair from her brow with long slender fingers that looked soft and supple.  The urge to hold her soft, supple hand compelled him to get a closer look. 

He lowered his window completely and leaned
to the right, over the center console so that he could have the best possible view of her.  The headlights of the car behind her haloed her ginger curls and she glowed ethereally.  He wanted to catch her attention, to strike up a conversation with her as the leading men in movies always did.  He leaned further so that his hand rested on the passenger seat with his head nearly poking out of the window of the van.  The woman glanced at him then straight ahead before looking to him again, a double-take that made his heart leap to his throat.  He was about to speak.  His mouth was still open, after all, but his words froze in his throat just beneath his heart. 

The woman in the car, whose mouth curved delicately to form a perfect, plump, pink bow, furrowed her brow and twisted that luscious mouth into an expression of disdain, of disgust.  He remained as he was, unmoving, paralyzed by shock
, and a sensation that could only be described as what he imagined being blasted in the chest with a cannon would feel like.  The raw, ragged pain intensified when she scrunched her features harder and erected her middle finger at him before racing off away from him.

Arnold was left sitting for a moment, stunned and in the same exact position he’d been in when he’d moved to look more closely at the woman in the sedan.  The angry blare of
car horns snapped him from his misery long enough to act, but the pain remained and tore the air from his lungs.  He returned his upper body to the driver’s side of the van, all the while struggling to breathe.  He then depressed the accelerator and began driving again.  The chirpy female voice of the navigation system squawked gratingly that his turn was approaching.  His turnoff was two traffic lights ahead, and a right hand turn, at that.  He was in the left lane and needed to get over soon, yet a stream of cars continued to flow.  He put his directional on to signify he needed to switch lanes when he spotted the woman’s silver sedan.  Seeing her car set off a firestorm within him.  She was in his sights once again, a fortuitous break he interpreted as a sign.  He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to force back the encroachment of a burst of anger so potent and unexpected, his body trembled. 

Sweat trailed between his shoulder blades as he jerked the steering wheel with such aggression, the front end of the van l
isted right.  Tires screeched and horns blasted as Arnold veered rashly into oncoming cars. But he only heard the protests faintly, the sound of them muffled as if they were occurrences taking place from land while he remained at the bottom of a vast ocean. 

The van crossed
lanes and tailed the sedan just as she was veering off, making a right-hand turn at the second traffic light; the very same traffic light his GPS navigation system ordered him to turn at.  Surely, her course merging with his portended something of significance. They were destined to cross paths.  The fact that the turn sent them down a side street, a street with few cars and even less lights lining it, supported his theory.  The long, dark, winding road loomed ahead and a trill of excitement stole down the length of Arnold’s spine.  It had been a long time since he had been engaged in a true chase. 

Her headlights sliced through milky fog and mist that had just begun to fall
and Arnold felt every bit the predator he truly was. Romantic thoughts fell from him and thoughts of a future with the girl he pursued seemed as absurd as a lion keeping house with a lamb.  She was his prey, plain and simple. 

Every cell in his body stood at attention, readied to act.  The smarting and longing he’d felt earlier dissipated and his senses heightened.  Arnold inhaled deeply. 
The air was heavy and laden with the salty scents of night.  Only soon, those salty scents would intermingle with new ones, exciting ones.  Musk, the scent of the woman’s deodorant, if she wore any, and various other products would soon merge with the nighttime smells, but the metallic scent of blood would ultimately prevail.  That was the scent he so desperately craved. 

Thinking of the coppery scent of blood caused Arnold’s heart to hammer and his own blood began rushing so loudly behind his ears, it drowned out every other sound.  He stomped down harder on the gas pedal until it touched the floor and sped so close to her rear bumper, he nearly tapped her car with his.  He avoided the collision and swerved
into the lane beside him, crossing over twin solid yellow lines.  He knew that oncoming traffic could come at any moment, but he did not care.  Pure energy was coursing through his veins, an adrenaline rush unlike any he’d ever felt before.  He raced ahead and paced her.  She looked over her shoulder and did another double-take when she saw that a car was not only rushing beside her on the two-lane stretch of road, but that he was the driver, the same man she had gestured to so rudely. 

Fear etched her features and twisted them unattractively.  Seeing her face contort as it had, Arnold decided that the chase had lasted long enough.  He tugged the steering wheel sharply to the right, into the silver sedan.  In the instant his car began to careen toward hers, the woman slowed considerably.  Arnold did not sideswipe her as precisely as he’d hoped to, but his bumper did graze the port side of her car, just missing the driver’s side door.  Metal shrieked and sent sparks in every direction.  The woman’s car
bowled sharply to the right toward the shoulder.  He continued to turn his wheel right as well, forcing her car there.  Trying desperately to maneuver away from him, she sped ahead, unexpectedly zigzagging left then right in an attempt to return to the road.  Arnold smiled to himself.  It had been a long time since he’d encountered prey so cunning.  The ginger-haired woman was proving a worthy target, and he was enjoying himself immensely.  He raced ahead and paralleled her a second time and he repeated his tactic, only this time, he succeeded at hitting her door directly with his front bumper.  The screech of metal scraping against metal was followed by the loud crash of a high-speed hit.  The woman’s body wrenched violently, pitching to the right as she gripped the steering wheel and her car followed suit.  The sedan hurried headlong into a pine tree and exploded into its trunk.  Wood splintered in every direction and the tree sagged and canopied the car’s roof. 

Arnold, no longer rushing, pulled
over just past the accident.  He checked his reflection in the rearview mirror and smoothed a tuft of hair that stood on end at the crown of his head. He also noticed that his glasses were perched precariously on the tip of his nose.  He slid them back into place and slipped out of his seat.  He climbed out of the van and moved to the sedan. 

When he arrived at the driver’s side door, he saw that the woman was slumped over the steering wheel.  He
opened the door then tapped her shoulder gently and she stirred.  But when she opened her eyes and saw his face, she tried to shove past him and run.  He pushed her back into the driver’s seat and climbed in astride her. 

“Get off me!” she screamed and tried to rake his face with her
fingernails.  “Help me!  Somebody help me!” she continued as she thrashed and flailed. 

Arnold like
d some resistance, but the noise, her irritating screams, began to annoy him.  He punched her squarely in the nose and effectively silenced her.

H
e felt bone yield beneath his blow and euphoria bubbled and brimmed just beneath his skin.  Blood flowed from her nostrils in steady streams.  Arnold inhaled deeply, savoring the metallic scent, and was gripped by the urge to strike her again, as well as a stirring below his belly button.  He raised his fist high, answering a call that beckoned him as seductively as a lover, and brought it down hard against her skull a second time, then a third and fourth, again and again until he felt the ecstasy of release.  He collapsed, exhausted, and took in his handiwork. 

The woman’s face was caved in.  Teeth we
re strewn on the front seat and her nose sat far askew from where it had been originally, swollen and bloodied.  Her entire face was now pulpy and gruesome.  She would not be recognizable, not to anyone. 

Arnold felt his glasses make their way down his nose and slid them upward.  He glanced at his watch and realized he needed to go.  The world needed to end and he had to stop taking chances
like the one he’d just taken, and the one earlier at the bar.  Though he’d thoroughly enjoyed both, had been gratified and thrilled to utilize his skills, he knew his maker needed him.  He did not want to disappoint Lord Terzini.  He would accomplish the task he’d been charged with, the most momentous task in history.

Chapter 10

Inky clouds rolled in overhead and the night seemed to grow even darker under their ominous bellies.  A low roll of thunder growled in the distance and the treetops swayed, their leaves swishing and rustling in warning.  A storm was coming.  Jack could smell it in the air, the heavy, earthy, metallic-tinged scent that precedes a springtime thunderstorm.  But that was not the only storm looming on the horizon.  Another one waited, but it was not a weather-related event.  It was a momentous tempest that would call upon every able-bodied citizen of Eldon to fight for their lives. 

Jack considered the enormity of his circumstances, the responsibility he had to his fellow man, as his car idled quietly
on the dirt lane a safe distance from the house he believed Terzini’s members would seize first. The SUV he’d ridden in was parked beneath a willow tree, partially concealed by its drooping tendrils and fronds as he anticipated Joe’s arrival.  He surveyed the house through binoculars for the slightest sign of movement.

On the outskirts of Eldon and on a remote
, rural road that was sparsely inhabited sat a small raised ranch style house.  The siding was a jaundiced shade of pale yellow and the trim was an equally sickly gray. The overall shape of it was that of a long box sitting atop stacked bricks with two second-story windows facing the street that looked like oversized eyes, watchful and waiting.  Jack could not help but think how it would serve the house well if it were vigilant.  He knew no such phenomenon was possible, but if it were, the people living there would be better off, for it would be under siege not once, but twice, in the coming moments. 

He regretted that his life had come to this, that he’d been reduced to acting in a rogue fashion, taking hostages and barging into the homes of unsuspecting
people.  But he did not have another choice.  No one would listen to him when he’d tried to explain what was happening when he’d approached them at their jobs under normal circumstances.  And now, their circumstances were so far from normal, he doubted he’d recognize the meaning of the word in relation to his life ever again.

Panic swelled in his chest.
  He could not believe he held the sheriff captive and was about to force his way into the home of woman and her grown daughter.  He almost wished he had not done the rushed research he had on the lonely shoebox of a house on the outer edge of town.  He would have rather been surprised when he learned that a woman in her sixties lived there with her daughter who was in her late twenties.  He hated the idea of terrifying them as he was certain he would.  But two towns had been overtaken already.  Eldon would be the third if he did not do what he was about to do.  He needed to keep that in mind, keep repeating it to himself as a rally cry, as a war cry, because they were, in fact, at war.

Headlights flashed briefly in his rearview mirror then dimmed
and refocused his attention to what needed to be done as opposed to what he wished he could do.  A second car had arrived, Joe’s car.  Joe pulled up slowly and stopped beside him.  He lowered his window and the interior lights revealed that Mayor Sheldon’s plump face, framed by the rear window, was an unhealthy purplish-red.  He wriggled and twisted, but his hands had been cuffed behind his back. 
Another happy hostage!
Two down, two more to go
, Jack thought grimly. Daniella was in the passenger seat and Ryan rode in back with Mayor Sheldon.  Joe and Daniella opened their doors and climbed out.  Jack and Alexandra did the same.  Ryan remained in the back seat of Joe’s car with the mayor and James switched places with Jack so that he could stay behind with the sheriff.  Jack approached Joe after threats were issued to both prisoners that they remain quiet. 

“We’ve got to do this
now,” he said to his friend.  “We need to get in there first, before Terzini’s guys get here.”

Joe nodded in agreement and grabbed a backpack from the front seat then slung it over his shoulder. 

Jack was about to start walking toward the house when he saw Alexandra make her way to Daniella and hug her tightly.  “This is crazy,” he heard her say into Daniella’s hair.  “I can’t believe any of this is happening.  This whole thing, it’s a nightmare,” Alexandra continued and her words landed like a sledgehammer against his chest. 

“First those monster
s at the farm, then Melissa being taken, and now this,” Daniella replied and her voice trembled. 

Hearing their interaction, the raw emotion in both their voices made Jack contemplate
going to where the girls embraced and telling them he was sorry, apologizing for the fact that life as they’d known it had ended.  Innocence could not be replaced like a missing toothbrush.  It could not be restored like power during an outage.  Their belief that life was devoid of boogeymen and monsters, that the “good guys” never did anything bad to save those in need of saving, had been abolished.