The Twins of Noremway Parish (25 page)

“
Quit your babbling, fool.” Franz walked away without explanation. Johnny gawped at him, but said nothing. He was sure that he was in some kind of trouble. He didn’t know what, but when Sheriff Franz Phoenix wanted to pin something on you, by golly, he was going to. That was the talk among the folk in Noremway Parish, anyway.

Franz continued walking with no specific destination in mind. He simply wanted to enjoy the harvest air. The cathedral up ahead looked empty today. Kids were playing in the sandy roadways, playing a stickball game, some playing “Catch Me,” others playing a game of “Toss-a-Me,” which was played with hard metallic spheres. He watched the game with genuine interest. The way it was played offered an unpredictability element; something he relished. The object was to toss the To-Sphere to another player who tossed it back. The ball was hard, heavy, and slippery. Therefore, it was hard to handle. The winner was the one who dropped it the least.

The idea was that if the ball hit the ground—whether as the result of a bad throw or a dropped catch—a player was not allowed to pick it up with his hands. He had to kick it high enough to be caught. Not necessarily a difficult maneuver, but occasionally the metal sphere flew wild, careening into oblivious bystanders. This was what he was hoping for as he watched the kids play.

His attention was then diverted by the hard beats of a horse’s hooves on the hard-packed roadway. Whoever was coming up the road was coming fast. Who would be riding that fast?

When he saw Rita coming, he briefly considered busting her for speeding because she was going so awfully fast, but the expression on her face was convincing enough to make him think that maybe she had a legitimate problem. He could
at least
pretend to care.

He held out his hand in a “STOP” gesture. She reigned in the horse, stopping it just before it reached the sheriff. Her face was red, her black hair a frazzle of frizz all over the place. “Close one there, Rita. Now what’s the hurry? Don’t tell me some horned devil has been staring at your goodies now. Or are you just late for your appointment at the salon?”

“
Sheriff, I need Plague. My daughter–she’s dead! And my neighbor died too, I think. This is her horse. She died and fell off it, so I just took it. I hope that’s alright…oh, what am I saying? Who cares if that’s alright? SOMEONE MURDERED MY ABIGAIL! CUT OFF HER HEAD!”

“
And the tragedy is what? That you didn’t die too?” She didn’t hear his little quip. “Look, Plague is busy. Take me to your dear headless daughter. Sounds like if she was beheaded there isn’t a lot a doctor can do for her, anyway. Call me a pessimist...”

She hopped off the horse and ran around back. “It took me all the strength I had to get here. I need Plague!”

During this exchange between Franz and Rita, the kids continued tossing the To-Sphere to one another. A kid in a short blue shirt threw the ball high—much too high. It sailed over his friend’s head, clearly at least five feet higher than he could have possibly reached even while jumping. Not a big deal–it was all part of the game. Another kid ran after it and attempted to kick it back into play. Often kicking these balls accurately required vast amounts of skill. The player reared back to get a running start toward the shiny metal object before kicking it. It sailed high and wild (as they so often did). Franz could see exactly where it was heading; the sun reflected brilliantly off its surface. He could see its arced path and knew that Abigail’s beheading wasn’t going to be the last of Rita’s bad luck today.

The metal sphere smashed into Rita Morgan’s face. Franz laughed (there was a lot he found amusing today). Then he jogged his way to Rita, who was now lying face down in the sand, the blood gushing from her broken nose, creating red mud below her face.

Turning her over and clearing the red mud from around her nose and mouth, he checked to see if she was still breathing…she was.
Unfortunately,
he quickly thought.

The kids who had been playing Toss-a-Me jogged over and asked for their sphere back. Franz found it in the sand and handed it to the kid in the blue shirt, and they went back to playing the game, laughing, crying out, and doing all the number of things kids of around that age do. They didn’t care one bit about Rita Morgan’s well-being. Nor should they have, Franz thought. She was a public nuisance.

“
Rita,” he whispered. “Rita, are you alright?”

Her hair was messy and tangled. Her nose was bent to an impossible angle across her face. She was now the picaresque resident crazy (as if she wasn’t before). She started coughing. Blood came out her mouth—blood from her nasal passages most likely.

“
Rita, are you alright?” he asked again. She didn’t look alright and, frankly, he didn’t care a rat’s tail in a wolf trap how she felt.

She opened her eyes; those small, beady black eyes. He shuddered.

“
My…daughter…dead,” she managed to breathe out.

“
Yes. You already told me.”

“
Abigail…dead. Her head…naked…she’s naked; dead and naked.”

“
Dead and naked? You didn’t tell me
that!
Why are we standing around yapping our jaws?”

***

As soon as Franz Phoenix pranced out of the jailhouse, the Darkness that had overtaken Gool came out in full force. Initially unaware of the infestation of the Darkness, both Plague and Urey underestimated Ortega Gool’s stamina. Indeed, the fact that he could still be so strong and agile while having lost such copious amounts of blood was almost supernatural. Plague would have been hard pressed to come up with a medical reason for it. Luckily, he was smart enough not to waste his time. First, he had to contend with stopping the murderer from trying to shove his own severed forearm down his victim’s throat. Gool kept shoving it down and yelling “Eat it! Eat it!”

The chancellor quickly grabbed Franz’s crossbow from the display case at the front of the jailhouse, near the sheriff’s desk. It was bolt-action, and fully loaded, capable of holding up to fifty arrows at a time. “Ortega,” he said. “Step away from the deputy.”

Gool suspended his act of force-feeding long enough to respond. “Aye, sure you have. I heard you. You aim to kill me to save those little devil babies. We will have them yet!”

Urey didn’t respond. He could sense the presence of the Darkness, but Gool was somehow different, and it did not surprise him in the least that what he said made no sense.

“
Step away from the deputy. Let us help you. Surely you will die without proper medical treatment,” Plague pleaded, although Urey knew this wasn’t the truth. Just as he knew he himself could not be killed through traditional means either, and he suspected that now the same was true of Franz Phoenix. There had been an infestation in the parish, and traditional death for those infected seemed to have taken a holiday.

Except the deputy was dead or dying; the young man had been innocent in everything, especially the Darkness,

Gool scoffed and went back to shoving the arm into the deputy’s mouth. “Eat it, dammit! Eat it!” He shoved it down hard, filling the deputy’s mouth completely. If the process of being stabbed in the face and neck hadn’t killed him, having a large forearm shoved down his throat surely had.

Then, after realizing the deputy was probably already dead, Gool decided that he would eat the arm himself. He took a large bite out of it, seeming to find it delicious.

Plague glanced at the chancellor. “Urey, what the hell?”

“
Step back, Ortega, or I
will
shoot.”

“
Might want to try a better threat, Chancellor,” he said with a sinister smile, but he stepped back anyway, probably to see what more fun he could have.

Neither of them noticed just how strong he looked. He did not appear to be suffering life-threatening effects of severe blood loss, which would have been something Plague would have found worthwhile under normal circumstances, but his mind was on the deputy, whose face was mutilated; his eyes stabbed out, his neck and face pierced up and down with sharp bone. He was missing several teeth, and his nose had been destroyed. His condition was serious, but just how serious was yet to be determined. Would he live?
That’s not right,
Plague thought.
Could he live?
But that was not right either, because he had yet to ascertain whether he was even still alive.

***

Chancellor Ghora Urey felt the dark power growing within him, and it seemed to find a kindred spirit in Gool. The Darkness had somehow infected the prisoner and was changing him.

Urey’s internal struggle was immense as he fought tooth and nail against the urge to transform into a wolf and tear through Plague, and join Gool in a sinister quest for domination of the parish; oh, the horror of it. He was the great grandson of the greatest chancellor the parish had ever known, but he was now irretrievably a creature of the Darkness.

He remembered something that had happened so quickly that it had slipped his mind. The dark cloud, almost invisible, that had entered the jailhouse, swirled around the prisoner and then disappeared. If he had any deeper explanation than that, he’d be a happy man. Unfortunately, he was left with the possibility, even
probability
that Gool was another recruit in the army of Darkness; another henchman.

He himself felt like nothing more than a bit player, a pawn in a game played between evil and more evil.

What was it with Franz Phoenix? He knew Franz was more involved in this than anyone, and he hated him for it. Franz was slowly taking over control of the parish, despite the fact that he pretended the chancellor was still in charge, e.g. he let himself be kicked out of the jailhouse. It was all an act.

The chancellor’s true authority now was tenuous at best, nonexistent at worst, and he knew that despite all appearances to the contrary, Franz Phoenix had taken control of Noremway Parish.

Chapter 16

As the chancellor wrestled with his inner-demons, Zuriz Falcon looked on, unseen in the shadows, with the amusement of a child at a circus. Looking upon Ghora Urey, he knew the wolf was out of the bag. He laughed to himself in a loud, uproarious laughter that no one else in the room could hear. The laughter echoed through the halls of darkness, the places between worlds, the gulf between good and evil, the thin line between fact and fiction.

***

Urey could hear the voice of the wolves; the eerily human yet canine voices spoke their insidious cadences in his mind, telling him to turn away from Gool, to just let him go, to kill the doctor. He readied the crossbow to fire, hands shaking as he aimed it at Plague’s back. The power inside him begged him to shoot–
ordered
him to shoot.
Kill the doctor. He means to separate the twins. They must not be separated.
The voices grew louder, more insistent. Even though the voices were only in his head, he could feel the incessant pounding in his ears.

“
Help me,” Urey choked as his hands shook. He clearly struggled to breathe. His face was as purple as the trim on his cloak. His eyes bulged out of his skull in an amazing display of ocular dexterity. His face contorted, forming inhuman features seen only on the fearsome wolves that haunted the parish nights.

Gool’s eyes met Urey’s and recognition lit them like the fire of the blazing sun.

***

Plague was oblivious to the internal problems facing Urey. His focus was entirely on the patient in front of him. Gool seized the moment, wrapping his good (and heavily muscled) arm around Plague’s neck, positioning him like a shield between himself and the chancellor. Urey reacted instantly, but he was too slow for Gool, who had seemed to take control of the situation easily . That blazing fire seemed to taunt him.

The Darkness,
Urey thought
. It’s testing me
.

***

Urey aimed the crossbow at Plague’s heart. He didn’t want to do it, but the impulse to do so was too strong. The demons within told him to fire an arrow through his heart. “I…just…can’t…do…it,” he said, struggling with the weapon. The outward conflict was not as evident as the inward, but it was still quite clear that the chancellor seemed not to be in complete control.

“
Chancellor,” Plague croaked. He tried to wriggle out of Gool’s strong grip, but the arm around his neck was much too powerful. He was too concerned with loosening the prisoner’s grip, on opening an airway, to notice that Urey had the crossbow aimed directly at him.

“
I…can’t,” Urey said, and inexplicably offered the weapon to Gool. “It’s happening! I can’t take this anymore!” After the prisoner took the crossbow from him, Urey fell to the floor, clearly in pain, as he convulsed in a violent seizure.

Gool let go of the doctor, letting him fall on his hands and knees, coughing, rubbing his neck, massaging his air passages, trying to restore normal function. Plague saw the chancellor’s writhing convulsions and crawled to him. He quickly removed his cloak and placed it under Urey’s head to prevent him from smashing it into the hard floor. “Help me with him, please,” Plague pleaded.

But Gool ignored the request. He had more interest in the crossbow Urey had just given him. He’d never actually shot one before, but once he figured out the mechanism, he didn’t hesitate to shoot. He walked to the convulsing man, pushed the doctor out of the way, and said, “You’ll thank me for this, Urey, you truly will,” and pulled the trigger.