Jon Merz - Vicarious

Haritu would not permit me to drink from the river and I’m glad he forbade it. The temple is a gray granite pockmarked with bizarre script that is worn away in places. Jungle vines have overtaken the majority of the place so that it is very difficult to see unless you look at it directly.

I know what I must do now, but I am loathe to do it. Already, the sun dips in the sky and the cold winds have returned to plague us again. Haritu whimpers quite a bit. I have seen much fear in my life; I have seen it play across the faces of man and beast alike, but Haritu’s fear is so overwhelming, I fear he may run away and leave me here alone.

I pray I am wrong.

13 May

I was not.

Haritu has vanished and I am left on my own. Part of me wonders if he truly ran back to the world or whether the jungle simply took him. I slept fitfully last night, my head filled with strange dreams. I woke once hearing a series of screams that seemed to drift all about the jungle. Are they spirits of those killed by the demon? I feel haunted by a presence lurking in the jungle and yet I can explain nothing about it.

I’m sure this sounds like so much silliness, but even as I write this, I feel compelled to stop often and look up. I’m certain I will see someone looking at me, but I do not.

Dawn arrived today with a heavy gust of cold wind. I feel like I am touching the world of death here. I shiver and sweat at the same time.

Does the demon know I am on his trail? Does he rest in that temple even as I write these words?

Is he waiting for me?

Perhaps I will go right now and see.

Perhaps tomorrow.

14 May

I will go today. This will be my last journal entry until I return. I shall leave my belongings outside the temple in case something should happen to me inside. I will take only my revolver, knife, crucifix, holy water and bible. I don’t know how else to combat an emissary of Satan. I pray these tools will be enough.

It has grown warmer and the cold winds have ceased.

Does he know I am coming today?

I miss Margaret. I love her so.

God keep me safe. God keep us all safe.

The journal ended there.

Lauren let her arms fall by her side. She felt exhausted.

And absolutely terrified.

If Graham Westerly was unable to kill him, she thought, how in God’s name are we supposed to succeed?

Curran switched off the eleven o’clock news and leaned back into the deep cushions of his sofa. Tonight had not gone the way he’d wanted it to. By the time he picked up Kwon and they’d finally managed to part the traffic and get themselves back down into position on Charles Street, Darius had already closed up shop for the night.

Kwon had wanted to go to Darius’ house and keep watch from there, but Curran had said no. All they had at this point was…well, nothing. Sure, Lauren had identified him as the guy she’d seen stalking her. But that was all they had. And if Darius spotted Curran, he could either disappear entirely or make Curran’s life hellish by claiming the homicide detective was harassing him for no reason.

Better, Curran suggested, that they have some type of proof to go on first.

That had been before Lauren’s phone call.

The way she sounded on the telephone, the nervous tone to her voice, Curran knew she’d found the information they were looking for. When she told him about it, Curran felt his inside go cold. The idea that the serial killer he’d been stalking for so many years was truly attempting to do something incredibly evil beyond all his expectations shook him hard.

Maybe deep down he’d known someone as skilled as the Soul Eater could only have the most foul of purposes for existing. Maybe the way he left the dead over the years had almost conditioned Curran for news like this. And even as many times as he’d privately denied the possibility, the way he felt when she uttered those words was more of a sickening feeling of having been right all along.

The dreaded ‘I told you so’ voice spoke up from his instinct.

Lauren had phoned from her friend’s house in Brighton. Curran felt good about her being there — he considered her safe from the Soul Eater.

At least for now.

No telling what this guy will do once we start coming for him, he thought.

But what to do now?

He sighed. The faint yellow glow from the floor lamp threw dim light all over the room. Curran liked keeping the lights on low, preferring soft subdued light to the harsh brilliance of fluorescent bulbs. Especially on a night like this when the cold November winds howled outside his windows. The dim light felt warm. And Curran had purposefully set his thermostat higher tonight. He could hear the creaks and pings of his radiator pipes pushing heat into all parts of the house.

Curran let his eyes close.

All things pointed at Darius as being involved somehow with the Soul Eater. Lauren told him the Soul Eater assumed the guise of a man. That meant in reality, Darius was something else.

A demon, she’d said.

Curran tried to wrack his mind for images of what a demon actually looked like. Did they have wings? Could they fly? What about horns? Scaly skin? A pointy tail?

He almost made himself laugh. The truth was probably a lot more terrifying than that.

And I’ve got to deal with it.

Nifty.

Lauren said there wasn’t much in the way of being able to take this guy down. He might fall to bullets when disguised as a man. But she’d quickly countered that by saying the last guy who tried had disappeared.

That made Curran feel even better.

A small part of him still privately wished this would simply turn out to be a lunatic who’d gotten his head around some old legend he’d once heard of. The killer had simply chosen to become this Soul Eater. Maybe he truly believed it, but that wouldn’t make him a demon.

And it would mean Curran could take him down legally and without having to resort to supernatural defenses — of which Curran was completely naive.

Proof, he thought. That’s what I need. Something that will connect Darius one hundred percent. Even if it’s only one hundred percent in my mind.

Because something still held him back. That tiny fragment of logic that had swollen in size after his faith had been so thoroughly destroyed by the pedophile priest, demanded its due.

But even Curran couldn’t justify everything logically. Too many strange occurrences had transpired. Too much weird stuff.

Spooky was more like it.

His eyes felt heavy. He needed sleep.

He stabbed out the quickly dying cigarette butt into the ashtray next to his favorite armchair. I ought to drop this habit, too.

Tomorrow, he decided. Maybe tomorrow he’d go and discuss things with his Captain. Get some advice. The craggy old bastard, a police vet of almost thirty years, he’d know what to do with something like this.

Either that or he’ll order me to get a psyche profile.

Curran padded into his bedroom and slid under the covers. He lay on his back, the way he always did when he first went to sleep. His hands folded across his chest, timing the rise and fall of his respirations. Tongue tip behind his upper teeth. This was the way he’d once read Soviet special forces used to sleep right before hey embarked on a mission. Curran had tried it and found it worked wonders for him.

His conscious mind began shutting down. The buzz of the workday slowed and the replay images of everything he’d seen during the previous fourteen hours faded to black. Small patterns appeared behind his eyelids and Curran felt his body begin to grow heavy, like it was sinking into the mattress itself.