The bullet plunged into his lower right abdomen and Alex gasped. He collapsed to one knee, clutching the wound, deep crimson trickling through his fingers. It felt like someone had inserted a red-hot knife into him. He held the area in a futile attempt to reduce the searing pain and stared in perverse awe at the amount of bleeding. He heard Eva screaming, and although he knew she was close, she sounded far away.
He glanced up and saw Mitchell advancing. It was dark and difficult to perceive, but Alex had the distinct suspicion that he was smiling. It dawned on Alex that something wasn’t right about the man. There was an unnatural aura about him that could almost be felt. He was growing more sinister with each passing second and the night around him seemed to condense and take shape, like a great mass hovering around him.
Suddenly, Eva was at his side, looking him in the face. Alex blinked and the act seemed to take forever, like he was stuck in a slow-motion depiction of reality. He felt sort of like he did - before the world had changed to its current state - when donating blood. Afterward, he’d be too dizzy to walk, so the nurses or techs or whatever they were, would have him sit, drink apple juice and eat chocolate chip cookies to return his blood sugar back to normal. He felt himself sitting backward, on his rear end and thought, No juice and cookies this time. Then he was flat on his back, staring at the stars; cold, fading embers in the black sky.
*********
Alex glances at his father as Johnny Cash finishes “Burning Ring of Fire.” “How do you know when it’ll come, Dad?”
“I’ve told you before, Alex.” He points at the windshield. “Watch the road.”
“I know,” says Alex, looking forward nervously again, as any fourteen-year-old without a driver’s license might. He handles the Chevy Silverado with veteran grace, however, as he’d been behind the wheel on numerous occasions. These are different times, like his father often told him. You need to be able to take care of your mother and the twins, drive them away from danger if I’m not around.
“I just like to hear it,” Alex continues.
Mr. Dash sighs and appears upset at the boy’s request. This, in turn, makes Alex uncomfortable for asking.
Music fills the cab again, this time Waylon Jennings singing, “Good Ol’ Boys.” Alex thinks of the old tv show, The Dukes of Hazard and how cool it might be to have a Dodge Charger to race away from danger in. A pickup truck, though, will be more practical, he supposes. Or maybe a spacious SUV.
His father begins, though with hesitation, it seems. “You were young…it was when I was still a police officer. I was on patrol in my vehicle when I saw a burst of light coming from that farm back there,” he says, thumbing behind him. Alex’s eyes are wide as he occasionally glances at his father. “I get out to investigate and find…” his father’s eyes drift off, an expression of great concern washing over him.
“A large figure,” adds Alex.
“Yes.” His father nods. “In the cornfield.”
“And then you stop and get out.”
“There had been reports of…” His father stares out the passenger window. Sometimes he would look off into the distance when telling Alex things. The boy figured it was his way of believing in what he was saying. As if he needed to concentrate on the memory to convince himself that his words were not make believe.
“Reports of strange…lights. The farmer, Mr. Reece had seen them. And his son, too.”
Alex reached over and turned the music volume down. This was his favorite part of the story. Truth, he corrected himself. It isn’t a story. It’s the truth, dummy.
“I go into the field, maybe twenty yards or so, and that’s when I see him.”
“The giant,” says Alex. “Gray.”
The father nods, still staring out the window. “Yes.” His fists ball up, the knuckles white. They begin to tremble.
*********
Eva held Alex as he stared skyward. She shouted something, but he couldn’t understand it. She too, had blood on her and for a moment, Alex feared that she had also been shot.
Only on her hands…it’s only on her hands. Got to be mine.
She reached down to her pants pocket. Alex lifted his head from the ground and watched as she withdrew a flare gun. In his lightheadedness he almost wanted to laugh, recalling how she’d almost shot him earlier in the day. She quickly loaded the gun, then rose and turned toward Mitchell, aimed and fired. The bright round raced toward their assailant and struck him in leg. It bounced off, however, causing no apparent damage.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Mitchell shouted something at them and then brought the rifle into firing position. Eva returned her eyes to Alex. They were heavy with emotion, glistening tears on the verge of spilling. “I remember,” she said.
Clumsily, Alex took her blood-soaked hand in his. “You remember…us?”
Then, the tears spilled and as they raced down her perfectly sculpted cheekbones, she nodded. “Yes.”
His sight weaved in and out of a heavy gloom, like he was on a train, passing through a series of tunnels. Darkness…then light…then darkness… Alex felt weightless; if he didn’t hold tight to Eva’s hand, he might drift away into the night sky, out into the atmosphere. Once past Earth’s orbit, he’d drift into space. Gone.
He struggled, but managed, “Then…I don’t have to… tell you…”
Eva shook her head, a strand of her golden hair falling from behind her ear. He wanted so badly to reach up and caress her face, but he’d lost his strength. She knew this, so she leaned close to him. “No, you don’t,” she whispered. “I love you, too.”
Her voice became a distant echo, a barely audible sound carried away by a gentle breeze. His head became too heavy and Alex lowered it to the ground. He found the sky suddenly peculiar. Something high overhead moved across the night; distant lights at either end of a shapeless thing. One green, one red. An aircraft.
Can’t be, thought Alex. Hasn’t been an airplane in…forever.
The thing continued across the black, star-sprinkled canvas, shrinking into the distance, merging with the other nocturnal bodies in the sky. Then, impossibly, another one, travelling in the opposite direction. Alex’s eyelids fluttered, struggling to remain open.
Then came the roar of an engine. It too, was a far-off sound, coming from the other end of a vast, open expanse. But no, Alex knew, it was right here. He’d felt the gust of wind generated by the arrival of a black and white police cruiser. Red and blue emergency beacons flashed across his vision, repelling the dark in dazzling sparks of brilliance. A burst of energy, spawned by this manifestation, compelled Alex to prop onto his elbows. And then he saw him.
The driver’s door opened; the words, Sunset Bay Police, revealed by the flashing red and blue. A man, medium height, with a stocky build stepped out from behind the wheel and Alex recognized his father.
GLUNK!
Something struck the cruiser. Eva covered her head and Alex knew that Mitchell had fired again. The officer – Mr. Dash – swiveled, his pistol already in hand, and fired twice, the sound like a shockwave rattling Alex’s bones. Mitchell dropped the rifle as he was struck once in the chest and once in the right arm, the second shot spinning him around as he hit the dirt.
Mr. Dash, keeping his aim on Mitchell, directed Eva to get up and get into the cruiser. Once she was in, he scooped Alex up and lifted him from the ground. In the dreamlike movement Alex saw Gray emerge from the cornfield behind the police car; the landscape surrounding him different in some indeterminable way.
Then, from farther down the road came a heavy, almost mechanized sound. A constant, red light was projected, which streamed across the cruiser with a scrutinized, probing thoroughness. Like it was being…scanned. Gray waved, urging Officer Dash to hurry.
Alex, his eyelids nearly shut, stared longingly at his father, big and strong, just like he remembered him. But how? How was he here? How was this possible? Was he already dead and this was what Heaven was like? Maybe he’d soon see his mother. Where were Henry and Annabelle?
Alex opened his mouth to speak – or at least thought he had – but what came out was gibberish. Just sounds and exhalations. Placed on the back seat, he felt Eva lay a hand on his chest and then she said something that he couldn’t understand. He felt the cruiser buck into reverse, plunging back into the cornfield it had come from.
Alex floated over a great chasm. Behind him, on the precipice, the giant and Eva watched, then faded into shadow. For a moment, he was alone, adrift in a gentle current. On the nearing cliff appeared his parents, Henry and Annabelle. They were smiling. A great darkness bloomed from the abyss below and reached for him.