Edge of End (28 page)

Elizabeth and I exchanged a look. She
shrugged and followed Malcolm. I looked at where the light was
supposed to be but now covered by the misty blanket. Although it
was out of my sight, I could feel it, better than
before.

We marched out of the
yard, all our eyes scouring every direction, but not one single dog
emerged from the mist. We hopped over the fence, and suddenly I
felt the presence of demons
swimming
in the dense mist before
us.

“
Malcolm,” I reached for
his arm. “We’re not alone.”

“
I know.”

“
They are in the mist,”
Elizabeth said. “Are they nearby?”

“
Just above us,” I
whispered. “We could run, I guess. We're nearly there.”

“
Yeah. The last few hours
we only run,” she smirked.

“
Elizabeth, we’ve got to
get through this.”

“
I’ll try as hard as I
can,” she said. There was a hint of resentment in her
voice.

“
Hey!” Malcolm said
looking Elizabeth up and down. “Jonathan, you run first, then
Elizabeth. She can go between us. That way we’re going to be able
to protect her easier.” He looked at her obliquely. “Don’t you mind
if Jonathan is on the lead? You did your job well back in night,
now it’s Jonathan who hears the call of the light.”

“
Sure,” she
said.

“
Okay,” he turned to me.
“We’d better to stick up to the road this time. No more houses.
Clear?”

“
Okay,” I agreed walking
toward the old Ford parked at Elizabeth’s house and opened the
front door.

“
The old story,” I heard
Malcolm grumbling. I liked my last shield. Better that than
nothing. When I returned to them I was lifting my shield in front
of me. “Elizabeth, follow my every move.”

She nodded. Taking a deep breath, I
broke into a quick run. As my feet pounded the street, a wail
pierced the air that hovered around my head and poured into my
brain. The demons were gathering, soon flying along with me–just
above my head. They were so close that the flapping of their wings
rushed over me. I lifted my shield up above my face.

“
Don’t get lost in the
mist,” I shouted back to Elizabeth. “They’re coming! Get
ready!”

I felt every damn move they made. My
power allowed me to understand them, but whether it was going to be
enough to defeat them and let me through was an entirely different
story.

I saw a road sign on the
right side of the road and a thought suddenly hit me. I quickly
made my way to it. I uprooted it and kicked the sign off the pole–I
now had a long spear in my right hand and a
shield
in my left.

“
Like a warrior from the
middle-ages,” Malcolm said teasingly. He snorted with laughter. I
arched my eyebrows.

We began moving through
the mist. My power was pulsating in my hands. I was craving a
fight, craving blood.
Hold tight,
I told myself,
you’ll
soon have your chance
.

As I finished, a demon with its wings
spread wide came out of the mist swooping towards me. I held the
pole back in preparation and at full power I whacked it as hard as
I could.

The shattering of its bones sounded
over us. It shrieked and fell backwards to the ground rolling and
within a split second the mist had swallowed it up.

“
Good strike,” Elizabeth
said from behind. I grinned slightly, nevertheless, she didn’t see
my face.

“
Another two are coming at
us!” I warned my comrades.

My intuition didn’t let me down.
Suddenly I was face to face with their two hideous faces with their
coal colored eyes fixed on us. Their long fang-like teeth were
hungry for our blood.

I managed to shove the first away with
my shield. Then I did the unthinkable, I leapt high up into the
air, much higher than the other demon was flying. My piece of pipe
met its head and pierced through it, cracking open its skull. The
monster rebounded and slammed back into the ground. It slid back a
meter or two and then just stopped.

Malcolm grabbed the first one I had
knocked back with my shield and punched it twice in the chest. The
beast roared, sending shockwaves of thunder through the air. It
tried to break free, but Malcolm had everything under control and
was holding onto its leg tightly. With one more punch, the monster
fell to the ground.

“
Are you okay?” I asked
Elizabeth.

“
Somehow,” she muttered,
her eyes looking back and forth. “Be careful, I’ll be right behind
you.”

“
Glad to be back,” Malcolm
said cheerfully.

“
He can’t be serious, can
he?” Elizabeth looked at me in indignation.

“
Oh, he can,” I replied
and hurried ahead tightening my fingers around my makeshift
spear.

With my trusty homemade
weapons, I was able to fight and defeat another four flying demons.
My heart beating excitedly as I realized that we were closer to the
light than ever. Even though I couldn’t actually see the light and
the
town
was
doing its best to conceal my destination behind the mist, I still
felt its bright presence. It was going to transport me back to my
real body.

“
We’re almost there,” I
called out to Elizabeth panting hard. “We’ve almost made
it!”

“
I can’t see the light,”
she replied worriedly. “What if we’re just running
around?”

“
No, I can feel it. I
don’t know how, but I can,” I said jovially.

“
Yeah. I understand you,”
she murmured.

I stopped for a second and looked at
there. Yes, she knew what I was talking about as she had been
feeling the call of her house back in night.

“
Keep running,” Malcolm
distracted me from Elizabeth. I turned around and darted
ahead.

Could I handle the travelling the
remainder of the way? I had become much stronger than I had been
before I went into that last house to get Elizabeth. My power was
continuing to increase, growing with each step I took.

From nowhere, a doglike creature
rushed towards Elizabeth that had sniffed out the weakest and most
vulnerable of the group, but I was ready to defend her no matter
what. I halted and pivoted, sheltering Elizabeth in my arms, and
then I held my shield up high in the air. The beast smashed against
the car door, rolling backwards. I released Elizabeth and, raising
my spear, I stabbed right through the dog’s chest. As the spear was
removed, a tar-like substance hurried to empty its body–its black
blood. The thirsty ground sucked the blood up greedily.

“
Jonathan,” Elizabeth
called my name appalled. “Just a second more and that beast would
have torn me to shreds. How on Earth did you know?”

“
I told you, I can feel
them. Somehow, they’ve become a part of me. Somehow we’re
connected.”

Malcolm came to a halt beside us.
“Your power has reached its peak,” he murmured staring down at the
motionless dog. “Soon you’ll be the strongest thing in the town,
but it’ll last only for a moment, then the light will fade, and
you’ll be taken straight to hell.”

“
Don’t be in too much of a
rush to bury me,” I winked. “We’ve still got time. Come
on.”

I took Elizabeth’s hand and was about
to start moving again when a great stream of the enemy swooped over
the top of us. In shock, I raised my eyes.

“
Jonathan?” Elizabeth’s
voice trembled with fear.

“
What the fuck?” I
muttered to myself.

The monsters had planned their attack
simultaneously. En masse they fell from the mist and swooped down
on us. With no hesitation at all, I grabbed Elizabeth by the, and
we ran.

We ran as fast as we had ever run, the
beasts on our tails and quickly gaining.

It was my duty to ward them all off,
to fight them. The first demon attacked me from my right. I stopped
its strike with my shield. It was all systems go. I then took hold
of my spear and used it to violently stab the second beast that was
attempting to block our path.

From behind, Malcolm struggled as he
tried to protect Elizabeth, but the old man wasn’t as fast and
strong as I’d become. With great ease, I slaughtered and disposed
of another five beasts. My glory was quickly interrupted by
Malcolm’s desperate yell. One of the flying monsters had snatched
him up by his shoulders its dark piercing nails dug deeply into the
upper part of the older man’s body.

“
Malcolm!” Elizabeth cried
out. “Jonathan, help him.” She dashed towards the old man without
waiting for me. Another demon blocked her way and she instinctively
jumped onto it punching it in the head and sending it to die on the
ground.

But I was too late. With a few simple
flaps of wings that sent powdery dust flying up into the air, the
beast soared up into the mist taking Malcolm away. We lost sight of
our old companion; he had disappeared behind the cloudy
mist.

“
They have him Jonathan,”
Elizabeth proceeded shouting. “Do something. It has taken him
up…”

I ran close to her and grabbed her by
shoulders. “He’s gone Elizabeth. I can’t help him anymore,” I shook
her. “I’m not Superman, I can’t just fly after him.” Her eyes fixed
on me for a moment. “Get a grip and let’s get out of this fuckin’
town.”

She blinked and nodded. I shoved her
forward roughly. We were by ourselves. We had no Malcolm to guide
us, to lead us towards the light. We had no one to warn us of any
potential dangers. I now had to watch out for Elizabeth on my
own.

Malcolm had never liked her, and he
had tried to convince me to dump and get rid of her on a number of
occasions but in the end he had helped to protect her.

After what we had been through the–the
dangerous house, the night–Malcolm had become my teammate but now
he was gone. I was ready to share my passage with him. Malcolm’s
soul didn’t deserve to be sucked by demons, torn apart and be
scatter around Satan’s worlds. But I was no longer help for
him.

With my heart sinking, I proceeded my
way up the street.

Now the
town
had its own plans
for the old man who had defied it.

The loss of Malcolm filled
my soul full of doubt. What if I wasn’t able to reach the light? No
light, no way back and no chance to change myself and my identity,
which meant
I would burn in hell
forevermore
.

Time was ticking, and the amount of
time we had left before the passage would close up was becoming
less. Even though I did not have my own body, I could still feel a
great heaviness and tiredness in my legs. We had been running a
while. Elizabeth was hardly moving, dragging herself along and
slowing me down. In all probability, Malcolm had been right about
her; she was preventing me from reaching salvation, but I knew it
was never going to be easy. I had accepted the challenge, and
whatever happened, I was determined to take charge and follow it
through.

“
Jonathan, I can’t run
anymore,” Elizabeth wailed. “My legs–”

“
You have to Elizabeth,” I
pulled her closer to me. “We’ve got no time to stop for a
rest.”

We ran on. More creepy
roars filled the air. What was the next move of the
town
?

“
You sent that devil to
death with a single strike,” I reminded Elizabeth.

“
It just happened,” she
said back. “I didn’t really realize what I was doing.”

She had become stronger too, and the
fact worried me. If my suppositions were right, then her house was
moving somewhere around us. We wouldn’t know for sure as the mist
was blanketing the surrounding houses from our sight.

Then a powerful sensation of danger
overwhelmed me. I halted immediately staring into the mist. My eyes
narrowed and I could feel the jittery nerves in my
hands.

“
What is it?” Elizabeth
wheezed breathing quickly trying to fill her lungs with air. “Do
you see something?”

“
No,” I replied slowly.
“But something’s changing,” I added a little later.

“
What do you mean? Is the
passage closing?”

“
I don’t know, I just can
feel the changes,” I looked down at her. “The town is up to
something different. It knows we’re reaching the passage. It
doesn’t want to let us pass.”

“
Drop me here Jonathan,”
she cupped my face, gazing into my eyes affectionately. “I’ve held
you back enough. This is not my way, this wasn’t Malcolm’s way
either. This is your way and you have to work it out
alone.”

The last vision twinkled in my
narrowed eyes. In my mind’s eye I saw the devil wearing Elizabeth’s
face.

“
From now on my way is
your way,” I said forcefully. “I’ve struggled too much to let you
go. I may fail, but I won’t leave you Elizabeth.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but I
covered it with mine. I kissed her eagerly as if it was going to be
our last one.