Hunters: A Trilogy (110 page)

The young man looked around the faces of his family, and said, ‘What is this thing? George said you had the other half…’ His question was addressed to them all.

Ken slid his latest beer to one side, and stood up. ‘Give me two minutes and I’ll be back, don’t anybody move, we’ll do this together,’ he said, then turned away to tramp down the steps and head over to the extension.

Entering the building, he made his way over to the safe and twirled the combination lock back and forth a few times, eventually swinging the heavy door open, which, in its usual fashion, made a loud metallic squeal. He reached inside the safe and slid out the black velvet-covered case. He clunked the safe door shut, twirled the lock and then headed back over to where the others waited on the veranda.

Ken slid the velvet case onto the table and said, ‘Tori, what do we do now? George said something about it being only Mikey who should touch these things…’ He looked across at her with his eyebrows raised questioningly.

Tori took a seat and bade the others to join her, waiting patiently as they did so. Eventually, and with everyone seated around her, she said, ‘Yes, I believe that once the twins are reunited then it can be only Michael who has the power to touch them, let’s just see what happens, shall we – Michael?’ She looked at him and motioned with her head towards his, as yet, unopened box.

The young man stood up, reached over and removed the glass spike from the box’s hasp, placing the beautiful, ruby-coloured object carefully down next to it. Then he gingerly lifted the lid and reached into the box. The expected glow of green light was nowhere to be seen. Unlike when they had witnessed the black ship being handled by George, and unsuccessfully used by Jack, in this, its current location, the little medal just seemed to be sitting in its box, peacefully resting, switched off perhaps…

Whatever may have been occurring, there was no sign of any light.

Although they didn’t actually see his hand make contact with the thing inside, the onlookers were still able to tell precisely when his fingers touched the black ship. Michael stiffened, almost as though an electrical current had been passed through him. Standing rooted to the floor and staring straight ahead, the way in which his face went blank and then began to shine…seeing things that only his ancient ancestors would have seen…was horrifying to witness.

Every one of them felt their blood chill.

Michael said, ‘I…ohh…I never knew, I…’

His eyes widened and then he fell into a deathly silence.

As they watched, his friends and family saw what can only be described as an intense flash of life itself, flying across his face. It was almost as though his face had become some speeded-up, cinematic screen. They knew it was impossible, but it lay before them nonetheless.

Blackness and light, stars and suns; babies being born, raging wars, moons, blood, fire and water – image after image raced before them. In that one skip of a second, they imagined they were able to see everything, everything they had ever witnessed, everything they had ever done, and everything they would ever do, it was all there, laid bare before their very eyes.

Michael’s own eyes had turned into the most intense blue that most of them had ever seen. They became brilliant, blazing blue orbs of fire. Then it was gone, almost so quickly that it seemed not to have happened at all. Michael staggered, his legs buckled slightly and he propped his free hand against the table in an effort to support his wobbling body.

Red rose hurriedly to his feet, reaching out with a giant paw to offer support.

‘Don’t touch him!’ Tori hissed the warning out and instantly grasped Red’s thick wrist, reiterating her command as she did so. ‘Do not touch him, not yet – wait!’ In silence, Red sat back down, but he never took his eyes off young Mikey.

They waited until the young, blue-eyed Hunter had regained some semblance of composure. After a short while, Michael straightened up from the table, removed his hand from the box and used it to brush the dark hair away from his forehead.

In that single moment, whilst doing that one simple act, Ken was able, without a doubt, to see the almost unreal resemblance to his long-lost friend. Young Mikey was, just for that split-second, the very image of one dearly-missed and sadly-departed, Michael Wyppen.

Then, and just as the other, older, Michael would have, Mikey looked at them and smiled. ‘Jeesh!’ he whispered, ‘that was something else, huh? I felt like I was on a space ship or something; everything was just rushing past me like blurring lights, and…’ he paused, to stand there blinking like a miner reaching the surface after a long shift. With a shake of the head, he said, ‘I saw things; there were so many things, I…I saw everything!’ He looked around uncertainly, and then after a few moments, gently wriggled himself between Tori and Junior to resume his sitting position on the bench.

Tori slid Ken’s box towards him, ‘Now, try this one,’ she said.

Without hesitation, Michael opened the velvet case and reached inside. As his hand touched the other ship, the expression of surprised ecstasy that crossed his face was a familiar one to Ken. He nudged Jane with his elbow and felt her return nudge against his arm.

Michael sat there, looking into space once more, this time there were none of the strange images that had crossed his face before. All they saw was an immediate lifting of his spirits as he sensed all those marvellous things, the sudden clarity of life and almost spiritual feeling that they themselves had felt all those years ago. Mikey sat gently shaking his head, and in the very same way his predecessor had been overcome when he’d touched the ship for the first time, he too, started to cry – they all saw the silver tears escape and track their way down his cheeks.

He lifted a hand to his face to brush the tears away, and then grinned widely once more, whispering: ‘Wow!’ There was no need for any other words; they knew by the serene expression upon his face that he had just experienced something beyond mere words.

After sitting in silence for a short while, Tori asked Michael to join the ships, to place them next to each other so they touched. Now was the time they would be shown the true meaning of the strange and powerful objects.

As they looked on with bated breath, they saw the young man slide the black ship from within its metal prison. He placed it onto the velvet next to its twin, the slightly more silvery of the two ships that lay within its beautiful box. Michael placed it down gently; they all heard the soft metallic noise as the objects touched each other. There were no other reactions, at least none they witnessed, the two exquisitely-designed miniatures of the spearhead simply rested next to each other in peaceful harmony.

It was somewhat of an anti-climax, there was no crack of thunder, menacingly pealing across the hills behind them, or even a flash of some awfully powerful green light that magically transported them all to another dimension. Michael Jack Wildeman didn’t grow to be ten feet tall, spitting fire and brimstone – effortlessly killing each and every Demon within this dimension, and several other neighbouring ones, too. No, the two objects just rested on their bed of black velvet, smooth metal flanks glinting dully in the half light of the early evening.

For some unknown reason, Michael seemed to understand the proceedings. With a grunt, he leaned forward, and with total confidence picked up both ships, slid them into the bag, and without another word stuffed them into his trouser pocket.

Rising from the table, he slapped Junior on the shoulder. ‘Come on then, partner,’ he said, with a grin on his face, ‘let’s get some food, I’m starving!’

In no time at all, the little ships, and everything they stood for, were nothing more than another one of George’s mysteries.

However, not to Tori they weren’t. She sat quietly by herself for a while, listening to the others as they messed about inside the house. Tori knew exactly what awaited them, she knew precisely what part the ships would play, and she knew that it was to be a vital part. She smiled sadly to herself, then rose to her feet and went to join the others in the kitchen.

After their meal they gave the place a quick tidy up, Jane saying that she didn’t want to come back from their trip to a messy house. Ken raised his eyebrows. She winked at him and said, ‘We’ll be back soon, and I wouldn’t think anybody is going to feel like tidying up after this little trip!’

Knowing what it was that his wife was doing, and thoroughly subscribing to her positive attitude, he set about lending a hand. If he’d been able to see the future, Ken wouldn’t have bothered with any tidying up, because, in truth, it was to be a complete and utter waste of time and effort.

And just for once, his wife, Jane, had been completely and utterly wrong.

At last it seemed as though their day was done, all the cleaning tasks had been completed; there was nothing else left to do other than to wait the night out. At some time around seven-thirty pm, they retired onto the veranda to sit and have a few quiet drinks, making idle banter and generally talking about anything and everything, except the unknown horrors they were sure to face at the breaking of tomorrow’s new dawn.

That particular subject was avoided, neither deliberately nor subconsciously, but it just wasn’t discussed. Tomorrow was sure to come, and they were sure to depart, everyone knew their part and, to put it frankly, they just couldn’t be bothered. After everything that had happened recently, getting out of bed early and then going to stand in some weird rectangle, which, apparently, was going to be found sitting on the barn floor, was hardly news of the week, was it?

Had they known exactly what standing in said rectangle would actually lead to, and the shattering end results of such a ‘non-event’, then there was a fair chance the Hunters would have most certainly been discussing the next day’s planned events, and the chances of them meandering quietly off to bed without a care in the world, which they did within an hour, would have been absolutely zero.

Yes, if they had known that the following day was to be the beginning of the biggest event to have ever taken place in their lives, no matter how old they happened to be, then there would have been no sleep for any of them ever again.

But most of them didn’t know, and that was a good thing.

And so, without that knowledge, they all, to a man, and almost to a woman, slept the sleep of the righteous. Sometimes being on George’s side has its perks. Undisturbed sleep being one of them.

Tori didn’t sleep, though. Not a wink.

***

By 05:15hrs the following morning the whole team had washed, dressed, taken some food, a few hot drinks, and carried out one last check of their equipment. At last it was time to go. Shoulder-to-shoulder they strode purposefully over to the barn, the crimson glow of a new dawn casting its radiance onto their faces, setting the walls of the whitewashed farmhouse ablaze with a fluorescent pink radiance. The Hunters’ long shadows, rifle muzzles sticking out from the edges, stretched out behind them as they walked with their faces held into the rising sun. Other than the sound of crunching gravel coming from beneath their feet, the farm was shrouded in a deathly, almost morose, silence.

If Jane had taken one last glance over her shoulder, she would have been horrified to see the cracks that had started to appear upon the walls of the house. Like a tiny mosaic of spiders’ webs, they began to spread across every surface of the place. It wouldn’t be more than two days before the entire house would need a complete redecoration. Within a week it would be a pile of dust, and in less than a month the whole place would have disappeared completely. Their time in this parallel was at an end, and with it would also end everything they had ever built, or imagined they had ever built.

Fortunately, she didn’t look back. None of them did.

The rectangle was there, just as George had said it would be. A large grey steel affair, sitting upon the floor of the barn, with glass corners linking the four metal beams of its sides together. As they looked, the Hunters noticed that the inside of the glass was pulsing to the beat of some unseen power-source.

Tori stepped into the rectangle, looked down at her watch and then turned to the others. ‘Come and join me, the time is near,’ she said. ‘Everyone squeeze in and make sure that you hold onto all of your stuff, anything not connected to you will not be transferred!’

Without a word they joined her, stepping swiftly into the perimeter of the device, making room for each other. Eventually, all six of them were standing side-by-side, weapons clutched tightly in their sweating hands.

The atmosphere was bizarre, to Ken it felt like they were standing outside the Headmaster’s office, he and his gang of guilty cohorts about to be called in as one and then lambasted for some heinous crime committed on the playground. He was also filled with the desire to let out a long, rip-snorting, fart. The absolute madness of that ridiculous thought ran through his mind with unbridled clarity. Without being able to help himself, he giggled loudly. Even though he tried to make it sound like a manly cough, his efforts were to be of no avail and giggle he did – Ken actually giggled.

The sound of his childish mirth immediately started the others off.

All of them either did some giggling, or some chuckling, of their own. Red sounded as though he was choking. In seconds they were in fits of laughter, a strange sensation of complete freedom filled every fibre of their being; a sense of total release smothered them, seeming to disperse all of their yesterdays with the ease of the wind blowing out a candle. There were no more yesterdays, no more fears, and no more memories. They were free.

Then the feeling was gone, its departure leaving them standing in silence.

Michael said, ‘Yes, it’s always like this, it…’ He turned to Tori, asking, ‘Whenever we leave somewhere it’s always going to be the same, isn’t it – the freedom?’

Tori nodded, saying: ‘Yes, it’s their way of letting us feel the change, there are no yesterdays, not anymore, from this point on there is only tomorrow, it’s time to move on, time to go!’ She stretched out her left arm and encircled his broad shoulders within her grasp.