Pavel Kravchenko - Project Antichrist

The castle they wouldn’t get the chance to finish. We couldn’t stay at the beach cottage Grace had rented for long. We might have stayed too long already.

I looked up toward where Brome and his wife were talking. I needed him back to begin deciding where to go next, but they showed no sign of returning.

Sighing, I lifted a towel to wipe the sweat off my face. When I brought it back down, a white sailboat rocked on the waves in front of me, three hundred feet off the shore. A lean forty-five-footer, it looked just like the boat I had always wanted but never got around to buying. Three men, all clad in white, seemed to be staring in our direction from its deck.

“Iris,” I said barely audibly, but she heard me and lifted her head. Following my stare she turned and saw the boat, just as a black banner flew up its single mast. Iris and I jumped to our feet at the same time.

“Annie, go inside,” Iris said.

The girl stared in astonishment, and for a moment I thought with dread that I would have to scare her. She studied our faces briefly, gazed at the boat and, thankfully, got up and ran towards me and the porch. I heard her pause in the doorway behind me, then the door closed.

Iris was slowly walking backwards, eyes on the vessel. Taxing my creativity, I assumed what seemed to me a protective position in front of the cottage door. Exactly what degree of protection either me or the old plywood door would provide when it came right down to it remained to be seen. I suspected it wouldn’t be a high degree.

Of course, by then I’d more or less pieced from my companions’ hints what had happened on the roof of the black building. I say hints, because a loud discussion of the event’s origins and implications, the kind we would undoubtedly have commenced back in our dorms a decade ago, had never taken place. I’d simply gathered the witnesses’ statements in a process no more involved than an insurance adjuster’s would be, and everyone was content. I kind of believed it, too, not because it was plausible, but because I didn’t think Iris or any of the others were lying. Either way, the knowledge, if it could be called that without being a memory, of having mysteriously defeated a super-strong alien in hand-to-hand match failed to bring comfort. First of all, I had no idea how I did it. And second, I doubted that my latent wrestling skills, outstanding as they may have been, would stop a bullet or seventy, fired from a rapid-fire machine gun.

Our own hands were empty. All the firepower had been discarded in Jimbo’s office, even the infamous “Silver Killer.”

There was movement in the left corner of my vision. Brome was running. He must have told Grace to stay where she was, because she was running about fifty feet behind him. In the other direction the beach lay barren as far as I could see, aside from an elderly couple taking a nap under a red-white-and-blue umbrella two cottages over. They were close enough to be awakened by gunfire, but so what?

Ten maddening seconds later a small boat appeared from behind the ship and sped towards the shore. In it sat a lone man, and as he came closer, I relaxed and leaned heavily on the door. The man — a kid, really — waved and grinned from under a mess of blond hair. I couldn’t help grinning back. Iris stared, wide-eyed. Brome stopped running and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, but I saw that he was also relieved. Grace, who must have been scared out of her wits, caught up to her husband and hung on his arm, looking up at him for answers.

“A black flag?” I called out. “Why not a warning cannon shot to ease our minds?”

“Someone could have heard it,” Bogdan shouted back. Then, as the boat continued towards the shore, he jumped out and ran the last fifty or so feet beside it. On the water. Even to me it looked spooky. From Brome’s direction came an audible gasp.

“Hey, no freaky stuff,” I managed weakly. “We got a kid here.”

“Sorry.” Both Bogdan and the boat now reached the beach. He went up to turn off the engine. In the following silence he bowed and added with a round gesture, “All aboard.”

“Going where?” asked Brome.

“There’s somebody I want you to meet,” Bogdan said. “And you know who are close. They picked up your trail. They’re angry. We have to leave. Now.”

“Won’t they continue to pick up the trail no matter where we go?” I asked. It never even occurred to me to wonder how he’d found us.

“Not after I work over the house here. The only thing left to find will be my signature.”

“So that’s it?” said Iris. “We disappear? All of us?”

Bogdan nodded, grin gone. His barely out-of-acne-age face looked apologetic.

“For how long?”

“Hello,” a small voice said behind me. Bogdan grinned.

“Annie!” Grace screamed before he could return the greeting. “Come here, baby!”

The girl ran towards her. “Sorry, mommy. Uncle Paul is mumbling in his sleep. Can daddy run on water too?”

Grace dropped to her knees, clutching the girl close, as though she was the only thing left real in the world. Brome put a hand on his wife’s shoulder, then removed it. Bogdan turned to him.

“For now. Then you decide.” To me, it sounded like he said, “Forever.”

“Paul is hurt,” I told him. He nodded again.

“I know. I brought a good doctor with me. Come, we must hurry.”

“Are we going on a cruise, daddy?”

“Yes, baby. A good long cruise,” Brome replied. As he did, Grace started crying.

We arrived at the island on the second night. Bogdan’s doctor — a smiley young man who looked not a day older than Bogdan himself — turned out to be good, all right. As we approached the unfriendly piece of barren rock jutting out of the foggy ocean, Paul stood on the deck beside me, and the hand he had placed on my shoulder did not feel hot. Under that hand, my broken collarbone throbbed, but didn’t really hurt.

“Underwater lair or a secret cave leading to a lagoon encircled by sheer cliffs, what do you think?” asked Paul.

“Neither,” Bogdan’s voice replied before I could place my wager. “Just cheap smoke and mirrors. Look.”

He pointed and we looked, and suddenly the barren rock was out of focus. As we came close it melted and disappeared into thin air, replaced by a different island. A small picturesque beach greeted us, from which a narrow stairway wound up the slope of a mountain towards a solitary house built on top of and seemingly into the rock. The disguise might have been smoke and mirrors, but it certainly didn’t look cheap.

We docked at a short, sturdy, wooden pier. Bogdan and the doctor came ashore with us, leaving the third member of the crew, who had identified himself only as Davy, with the yacht. We climbed the stairway in single file and silence. Brome carried Annie, asleep on his shoulder. Grace, calmer now, gazed around in wonder.

At the end of the stairway was an iron gate in a wall made of limestone. There was no guard, and the gate hung open. Inside was a fruit garden, which in twilight looked dominated by apple trees.

Through it our procession reached the front door. The huge, two-story house was built in swank, modern style, but still managed to suggest serious regard for functionality. Somehow the weird angles and spheres made sense.

The main doorway was also unlocked. Bogdan led us in without knocking. We found ourselves in a high-ceilinged hallway, illuminated brightly by a crystal balustrade. Despite the modern construction, the interior décor was decidedly retro, with curvy-legged furniture and carved banisters. Several portraits in thick ornamental frames lined the walls.

“Dr. Livesey will show you to your rooms,” Bogdan said. “You are safe here. Get some rest.”