Michael Devaney - The Elisha Pool

After making a call to Andrew requesting him to send backups to discreetly secure Stephenson’s house, Finn and Andria scurried back across the street to the cemetery to backtrack the muddy footprints to their origin point. Like birddogs on the hunt, they followed each print, step for step, leading toward Stephenson’s ill created Judas Portal. But even without the footprints, they’d have eventually had little problem finding the cursed portal; only needing to follow their noses.

Once they topped the hill leading toward the back half of the cemetery they encountered an invisible barrier of disgusting odor that turned their stomachs. The foul smell from the portal had steadily reeked up from the malignant waters to cast a wide net of stench hundreds of feet in all directions.

Instinctively, Finn and Andria cupped tight seals over their noses and mouths to fend off the God-awful smell to keep from vomiting. After struggling through several bouts of the dry heaves their nausea subsided enough for them to push on.

With noses tightly pinched and eyes down on the ground, they tracked the meandering footprints another ten minutes to the portal’s location. Once there Finn again contacted Andrew who, in turn, ordered the two of them to stand guard over the cemetery’s entrance until a second Powers Group security team could arrive. Before hanging up Andrew made it abundantly clear that all human contact with the portal’s malevolent liquid must be avoided at all cost.

Finn and Andria had no problem doing as they were told. Anything was better than standing amid such a foul stench. They made it to the entrance gate of the cemetery in record time and stood guard until help arrived.

Because of the sensitivity of both the Monkey’s Paw and the Judas Portal , The Powers Group not only took immediate action to secure the crime scene and the cemetery, but they also began concocting a believable, although untrue, cover story.

As for Mr. Stephenson, even if the gunshot wound to Stephenson’s head could have been tastefully covered by a mortician, an open casket funeral for him would have been impossible considering his sudden, unexplainable young appearance. He would have looked so good and youthful, in fact, that there’s no doubt the embalming and mortuary teams that prepared his body for viewing could have secured the next decade’s worth of work from his nonagenarian friends on the spot.

Thankfully though for The Powers Group, it was Owen Stephenson, the grandson, that had responded as the next of kin. He’d had enough of his grandpa’s antics and wanted no part of the possible problems stemming from an open casket viewing. By the time Owen got to Stephenson’s house his grandma’s decayed body (DNA test later confirmed her identity) had been removed and Stephenson’s death was sold to him as a suicide.

“I was afraid something like this might happen,” Owen had remarked through tear filled eyes. “The old man had started acting crazy. I guess he finally lost his marbles.”

What remained now for The Powers Group was to figure out how best to discreetly dispose of Mr. Stephenson’s body without raising alarm from any of the relatives or local townspeople and how best to secure the Judas Portal he had opened beside his wife’s gravesite.

In the end, to avoid explanations about his grandpa’s appearance, Owen agreed to have his grandpa’s body flown out-of-state and cremated, easily solving the first issue. But securing the Judas Portal, with so many intangibles, would not be so easy.

Since there was no known method of un-creating a Judas Portal, the only remaining option left to The Powers Group was to somehow cover and contain it so that no access was ever allowed to the site. But with Grandma Stephenson, supposedly already dead and buried on the site, any future visitation from family or friends could pose a potential danger. But Andrew was already one step ahead of the issue.

“The area must be deemed a governmental environmental hazard area with a strict no access policy,” Andrew said. “We’ll pay to have Grandma Rachel’s remains (now a gooey skeleton missing the top half of its head) moved to wherever the family agrees along with whatever expense it takes to accommodate Mr. Stephenson’s ashes to be buried beside her. Maybe a fancy, free-of-charge family mausoleum would suit them.”

As a precaution to keep visitors from the cemetery, The Powers Group stationed a bogus, but official looking, hazmat crew around the outside fence on a constant twenty-four-hour watch. The production was complete with hazmat suits, signs and marking tape.

Immediately following the “phantom” exhumation of Rachel Stephenson’s remains; The Powers Group went to work concealing the Judas Portal. To permanently secure the site, a six-foot wide ditch was dug twenty feet deep to fully encase the top and sides of the portal in poured concrete walls. They then concreted six feet high on top of the ground and double slated over the top of the entire Stephenson burial plot. Beyond that they caged the entire one-acre perimeter with a ten feet high fence, including fencing across the top. Huge DANGER TOXIC HAZARD and KEEP OUT UNDER PENALTY OF LAW placards decorated the fence on all sides warning visitors to stay away. They would maintain twenty-four-hour surveillance of the site through continuous running video cameras as well as alarms triggered by motion detection devices.

Finn stood by the window in his newly assigned office with his back to the open door examining the vexed Monkey’s Paw when a familiar scent wafted into the room. It was a soft, balanced mixture of Jasmine, Lavender and Sandalwood.

“Come in, Andria,” he said.

“Wow! That’s impressive. How did you know it was me?” she asked, passing over the room’s threshold.

“Mere deduction, my dear,” Finn joked. “Now that we’ve worked so closely together, I’d recognize your fragrance anywhere.”

Andria rolled her eyes. “I have the storage container Andrew suggested we use for the Paw artifact,” she said.

“Great,” Finn said. “Bring it over. The sooner we get this thing under wraps and out of our custody the better. Its history for wreaking havoc on the lives of its possessors makes me nervous.”

Andria laughed as she approached him.

“A couple of months ago, I’d have scolded you for being so superstitious,” she said. “But after having first-hand experience with that hideous thing on the heels of our recent dealings with the Death Mask , I’m totally onboard. These supernatural artifacts are “next-level” stuff; well beyond anything I curated at the Atlanta Museum of Curiosities.”

“For sure,” Finn agreed. “They’re definitely James Bond — Indiana Jones material. By the way, did Mr. Game mention code names to you?”

“Code names?”

“Yes. Andrew said that as new agents dealing with so much secrecy, code names may serve us well on future assignments. I thought the names might be randomly assigned to us, but he suggested to me yesterday that we should choose our own so it relates to our personalities or hobbies or whatever we fancy the most.

“You mean like 007?”

Finn nodded his head yes.

“Neat!” Andria squealed.

“No doubt,” Finn said, smiling. “The only guideline he gave me was that each name should not be more than three syllables, preferably two.”

“So, does Mr. Game have a code name?” Andria asked.

“Yes,” Finn said. “He’s called the Warden…I also thought that, other than individual code names, we should have a team code name; even if it’s just for kicks.”