J. Gonzalez - They

“Listen to me,” Vince said. “Stay where you are, I’m coming to get you.”

“It came so fast,” Frank continued, babbling now. “It ripped me open and I laid there on the floor and watched as it possessed Mike, made him cut his throat and then… I don’t know how, but I got away. They were still performing the ritual as I crawled away. I saw the book… the Liber Daemonorum saw the words they’d written on the wall and that’s when I knew. I should have paid attention better! Should have… realized what they were up to.”

“Tell me where you are,” Vince begged. “I’m coming to get you.”

“Don’t let yourself be led to them, Vince. Don’t let them find you. They’ve got… something horrible in store… for…” Frank’s voice grew weak.

“What? What do they have in store for me?” Vince was agitated. Now he was on his feet, ready to go.

“Not for you…” Frank’s voice trailed to a weak whisper. “…the… world…”

“Frank?”

The hiss of an open line.

“ Frank ?”

With panic rising, he jabbed the hang-up button. His nervous system was on edge. He hesitated, frozen, not knowing what to do. Not knowing what he could do. The only thing he could think of doing was calling 911.

He hit the 911 button on his cellular, then Send. When the 911 Operator got on the line, Vince got right down to business. “I just got a call from a friend of mine who says he called me from a phone booth in Fountain Valley. He told me he was hurt, but before he could tell me exactly where he was, I lost the connection.”

The sound of fingers typing on a keyboard. “And your friend called you at this number?”

“Yes.”

“Is this a cell phone, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t trace cell phone calls, sir, but one of our 911 operators just took a 911 call from somebody reporting an injured man lying in a phone booth on the corner of Brookhurst and Talbert.”

Vince checked his pockets to make sure his wallet was there, then headed outside, locking the door on the way out. He got in his car, keeping the phone to his ear as he started his car. “That’s it. He said he was hurt and that he was bleeding. Can you send—”

“We’re sending a unit right now,” the 911 operator said.

By the time Vince zoomed out of his cul-de-sac his heart was racing, and his mind was clouded with a thousand thoughts and images, all careening madly from the past and racing towards the present.

IT TOOK HIM twenty minutes to drive from Newport Beach to Fountain Valley; there had been a traffic jam on Harbor Boulevard from a three car accident, and Vince found himself boxed in, unable to move forward. By the time he was able to inch his way around the accident along with everybody else, he realized that by now Frank would be at the hospital. As he raced up Harbor Boulevard toward the 405 Freeway, he wondered what hospital Frank would be taken to. The only hospital he could think of was Fountain Valley General, which was just across the street from the phone booth he’d called from. How convenient for Frank to have called within close vicinity to an Emergency Room.

When Vince pulled into the parking lot of Fountain Valley General, he squealed to a stop and rushed out of the car toward the Emergency room. He was panicky and out of breath, but he was also worried.

He was standing at the Emergency room entrance, not even paying attention to the traffic of patients and doctors and orderlies moving back and forth past him. He came out of his semi-trance-like state and moved over to the registration desk. An overweight black woman glanced up at him with wide eyes. “Help you?”

“I’m looking for a patient,” Vince said. “He would have been brought in by paramedics. Big guy, covered with tattoos, black hair. He was hurt… stabbed, I think.”

The black woman shrugged. “Dough’no. We just got an Emergency run ten minutes ago. You family?”

“Yes,” Vince said, the lie springing to his lips easily. “I’m his brother.”

“Lemme see.” The woman ran her finger down a roster, and Vince looked out at the Emergency Room waiting area. It was half-full of the usual—people nursing cuts, broken bones, women consoling children. His mind refused to let what Frank told him die a quiet death. Maybe there was some truth to it, no matter how crazy or how wrong it all was. Vince a half-human, half-demon hybrid? It was absurd. Maybe The Children of the Night believed he was, but it was ridiculous. There was no God? Vince had long believed that, but if there was no God, there couldn’t be an evil creature named Hanbi that was the father of Satan and Pazuzu and all the other demonic creatures that had sprung from the spiritual imaginations of ancient civilizations. There could not be one without the other. However, if millions of people believed in a benevolent God, why not an evil being? It explained some of the imagery from the dreams he’d been having. Especially the one where the hippie tried to kill him. Why else would a burned-out hippie guy try to kill a child? Simple. He’d bought into the idea that Vince was to be the gateway to the emergence of Hanbi, which in a way resembled the emergence of the Christian Anti-Christ. And what if they all believed this so much that it was now permanently embedded in their psyches the same way Christians believed Jesus Christ was the Son of God, the Messiah, their Savior?

Vince shuddered. Why the hell not? It would explain some of the other dreams: the one with the adults wearing those black robes and cowls, chanting in a semi-circle while a toddler-Vince was placed on a raised dais to be worshipped. They had been worshipping him, tripping out, going on with their weird mix of religion and hallucinogens, and it had just gotten scary and dangerous and then his mother had seen it for what it had really been. Something scary, and just plain wrong, and she’d split. But somehow they’d tracked her down, and then found him. Their conviction in him had never wavered; they’d been permanently hard-wired.

A rush of activity interrupted his thoughts, and he turned toward the commotion. A pair of EMT’s was wheeling somebody in and Vince stepped away from the counter to get a better look. “Sir?” the black woman behind the counter said, but Vince wasn’t even listening. He had to see—

He rushed up to the stretcher as an EMT tried to hold him back. “Please step back, sir.”

“Frank!” Vince craned his neck to get a look.

And as the stretcher was whisked passed him, Vince got a quick glimpse of Frank as he was wheeled down the hall to OR. The brief glimpse was all Vince needed to see; Frank was unconscious, pale, and very bloody.

An orderly gripped Vince’s arm to hold him back. “Sir, please…”

“I’m his brother!” Vince said, his voice tinged with anguish.

“Sir?” The orderly had a firm grip in his upper right arm, and now a nurse joined him, one Vince hadn’t noticed before. The nurse was an older woman, in her forties maybe, and together the two escorted Vince to the waiting area. “We’re doing the best we can,” the orderly said. “And the best way you can help us is to remain calm.”

Vince nodded, fighting back the tears that threatened to spill out. He had to be strong, not only for himself but also for Frank.

“What’s your brother’s name?” The orderly was friendly, and had an open face that was sunny even in such dire circumstances.

“Frank,” Vince said, not looking at the orderly. “Frank Black.”

“Is your brother allergic to any medications?”

Vince shook his head. “No. I don’t think so, no.”

“How old is he, sir?” The nurse asked this question; her voice was kind, gentle.