Riverwatch

Chapter Twenty-nine: Decision Time

"Can I come in?"

Jake nodded and stepped back slightly, allowing Katelynn just enough room to get through the door before he quickly closed and locked it thoroughly. He then checked the locks twice before peering out the keyhole into the night.

Katelynn watched all this without a word.

Jake didn’t look so good. His hair was uncombed and wildly tangled. A five o’clock shadow lay heavy on his face.

Jake turned to face her. He put one finger to his lips and motioned for her to follow with his other hand.

They went through the living room, where Katelynn saw Sam asleep on the sofa, looking even worse than Jake. The large circles under his eyes were exaggerated by the pale, pasty color of his skin. One hand lay atop the blanket that covered his body, and Katelynn could see that it trembled while he slept.

Jake took a seat at the table and with an unsteady wave of one hand indicated she should do likewise.

"What happened to Sam?"

Jake shook his head. "He showed up here a few hours ago but passed out before he could tell me anything. I haven’t bothered to try and wake him."

"What’s going on, Jake?" she asked in a quiet voice.

For several long moments she thought he wasn’t going to answer. He sat there without moving, silently staring at the table, a distant glazed look in his eyes. When at last he did answer, his voice was a low monotone. "Earlier, when I told you that you must have been dreaming, I was wrong. It’s real, Katelynn. It’s real, and it’s out there somewhere. Waiting to kill again." He told her everything that had happened from the time she left him in the Roost until he called her to come over.

Katelynn didn’t say a word the entire time he spoke, she just patiently heard him out.

When he was finished, she got up without a word and started out of the room.

"Where are you going?" he called after her, then reluctantly got to his feet and followed.

He found her in the living room, sliding the video back into the VCR.

Watching it a second time, Jake felt the fear that had been gnawing at his gut for the last few hours come back for a second course. Knowing Gabriel was telling the truth gave his plea for help that much more of a punch. It was no longer the fanciful ravings of a lunatic; it was stark, cold reality. Jake shivered with the implications.

Again, Katelynn didn’t say a word, only quietly got up when it was over and returned to the kitchen.

Jake spared a quick glance over at Sam, saw that he was still asleep, and followed her.

She was sitting at the table, waiting for him.

"I’m afraid there’s more, Jake," she said.

He looked at her, thinking he was about to get the second half of a one-two punch.

"Does the name Edward Beckett ring a bell?"

He shook his head.

Taking a deep breath, she began her story. "Beckett was a minister, a traveling one, who spent a good deal of time around these parts in the late 1700s. He kept extensive journals of all he did and saw. I’ve been using some of his works as references on my thesis.

"In October of 1763, Beckett arrived here in Harrington Falls just in time to witness the one and only witchcraft trial this town has ever seen. The man who was accused, and later convicted of the crime, was Sebastian Blake."

"What’s that got to do with Gabriel and the thing you keep seeing in your dreams?" Jake asked.

"I’m getting to that. It seems that Blake was practicing what everyone considered to be black magic. Among other things, he supposedly had a demon familiar, a kind of magical companion, that followed him and did his biding."

Jake nodded that he understood. He was familiar with the concept of familiars from their weekly session of Swords and Sorcerers.

"At the trial, several witnesses came forward and admitted to having seen this familiar. One of them even claimed to have survived an attack by it. The authorities took them at their word and searched Blake’s house, but they never found the familiar. They did find a statue of a demonic-looking creature carved from stone, so life-like in its appearance that they believed Blake had used a living beast as a model. That was all the evidence the authorities needed to convince the jury that the witnesses were telling the truth. For Blake, it was the final nail in his coffin.

"Beckett recorded all this in his journal, including a description of the beast, and went so far as to name it Blake’s Bane. I believe the statue you found in Sebastian Blake’s tomb is the statue Beckett mentions in his journal."

They sat in silence for a moment, digesting the implications.

"What happened to Blake?" Jake asked.

"They supposedly sealed him alive inside his tomb as a warning to anyone else that might be tempted to fool around with witchcraft," she answered matter-of-factly.

Jake stared at her in surprise. "Are you kidding?"

She shook her head.

"Nice neighbors." said Jake.

Katelynn went on. "It is my belief that statue was not a model of Blake’s familiar, it was the familiar itself, somehow transformed into stone. And by breaking into the tomb, Kyle unwittingly provided what the Nightshade needed to secure its release." Katelynn finished.

They sat in silence, lost in their own thoughts.

"What do you think happened to Gabriel?" Katelynn asked.

"Something broke into the nursing home and ripped him to shreds."

The Jake and Katelynn jumped in surprise. They looked up to find Sam leaning against the doorframe, wrapped in the blanket in which he’d been sleeping. On his face was a blank expression and his voice was utterly devoid of emotion.

He’s in shock, Katelynn thought.

Sam went on, "I went to the nursing home. I managed to sneak past all the cops and got to the third floor in time to see them photographing the scene. What was left of him looked more like raw meat than the remains of a human being."

He shuffled into the room and took a seat opposite Jake, retreating into silence.

Loki chose that moment to come wandering in, eyed them all, and then settled down on the floor at Katelynn’s feet.

She reached down to stroke his fur in an effort to calm her rapidly fraying nerves. "So it was Gabriel who was trying to warn us through the Ouija board?" she asked.

Sam nodded. "I should have known it was him. Only Gabriel called me Sammy. When that message came up, I was simply too stunned to act and then Dana’s seizure delayed us all. By the time I got to the nursing home, it was too late. Gabriel was dead."

"Then what I am seeing in these visions…"

"Is this Nightshade, Moloch", Jake finished for her.

"What do we do now?" Katelynn wondered.

Jake answered without hesitation, "We’ve got to stop it."

She looked at him. "What do you mean `stop it’? How?"

"Kill it, I suppose. What else can we do?"

"We’re not talking about some rabid dog that you can just track down and put out of its misery. This is a, uh," She struggled, not quite sure what to call the thing. A beast? A demon? Just what in the name of God was it?

Jake watched her confusion, thinking that while he might not know what to call it, he at least knew what it was.

Evil.

With a capital E.

"What do you suggest we do?" he asked Katelynn in reply. "Just let it keep killing people?"

"Of course not! I just think there might be someone else better qualified to do the job. Why don’t we tell the cops? They can call in a SWAT team, or the National Guard, or somebody. They’re trained for this kind of thing. We aren’t."

Jake laughed. "Yeah, right Katelynn. I can see it now." He mimed picking up the telephone and dialing a number. "Yeah, hi. Is this the police? Good. My name is Jake Caruso and I just wanted to let you know that there’s some creature from Hell loose in Harrington Falls and that’s what has been killing people. What’s that? Oh, of course I have a description. He’s red, with cloven hooves and a forked tail, and usually carries a pitchfork."

Katelynn stared at him for a moment, then sighed. "Okay. I get the point. But I still don’t think it’s a good idea for us to get involved. We don’t know anything about stopping this thing. We don’t know where it lives, what its weaknesses are, nothing. How are we supposed to kill it? Drive a wooden stake through its heart? Shoot it with silver bullets? Wrap it in iron chains and drop it in running water? What?"

"I don’t know. But there’s got to be some way to stop it, or else there’d be thousands of them out there. The Elders managed to do it, according to Gabriel. So can we!"

"Come on, Jake! This isn’t a game of Swords and Sorcerers where you can drink a healing potion or receive a resurrection spell and everything will be all right again. Wake up to reality. This thing has been savagely killing people, including two cops. And you can bet your ass they had guns and knew how to use them!"

Jake turned to Sam, who’d been silently watching their exchange. "What do you say, Sam? Are you with me?"

Sam’s gaze met his own, and in his eyes Jake could see a rage that smoldered like a white-hot ember. Sam’s voice was flat and hard, but this time full of emotion, his anger barely held in check. "I want to kill that motherfucker. I don’t care how we do it. I just want it dead."

"All right! That’s my man!" Jake said clapping him on the back. "We’re gonna send this mother right back to whatever hell it crawled out of!" He turned back to Katelynn. "So? Are you with us or not?"

Katelynn stared at the two of them. They were really going to do it, whether she agreed to go along or not, she could see that. Had they both gone completely nuts? She was convinced they had.

"No." she said, then once again more firmly. "No, I’m not going with you. And I won’t sit here listening to you any more. You’ve got to be out of your mind, Jake. You heard what Sam said. This thing ripped Gabriel into little pieces. If he was one of these Elders with their mystical powers and still got torn to shreds, what do you think it will do to the two of you?"

"I guess we’ll just have to take that chance," Jake replied calmly.

Katelynn could see the hurt in his eyes, but she ignored it. If he wanted to be mad at her for trying to save his life, let him. He’d done dumber things before. "Then you’ll do it without me."

Katelynn got up and walked out of the kitchen.

A few moments later the two men heard the front door open and close, then the sound of her car starting in the driveway.

Katelynn wasn’t coming back.

Jake looked at Sam, and then shrugged. "So be it. We’ll just do it on our own." He got up, filled a mug with coffee for each of them, then sat back down and started to plan.