Marvin Roth - Hanky and the Thousandsleeper

Hanky emptied the contents of the box out onto the coverlet of his bed and began to count the money. He suddenly knew how to do it. It was fun. Forty five dollars and seventy two cents. Satisfied and smiling, he stuffed his cash assets into the pockets of his pants. Next, he got down on his knees to find his backpack, which had been stowed under the bed. It didn’t take him long to locate it. He pulled it out and walked over to his dresser. He packed underwear, socks and a heavier sweater for cold nights. In the bathroom he found a bar of soap and his toothbrush and placed both into the backpack as well. He spotted the comb on the sink. He’d never even used the comb, although his mother kept nagging him to comb his hair once in a while. Shrugging off the memory, he packed the comb also. He took another look around the room and left. Quiet as a mouse he tiptoed down the stairs. From his parents’ bedroom came the sound of his father’s snoring. Luckily, his parents were still asleep. Once they got up they would not even miss Hanky, because it was common practice for him to go over to his grandfather’s house early in the mornings on most days. In the kitchen, he picked up to apples, a piece of sausage and half a slice of bread and stuffed the snacks into the backpack. He escaped into the great outdoors through the backdoor and realized suddenly that he was leaving his childhood behind at this precise moment. The feeling of having lost something truly precious was about to overwhelm him. Hanky stood still for an instant, his shoulders bent in sorrow, in his parents’ garden. Then he straightened himself up much in the manner of a soldier who is exuding courage and pushed the painful thoughts aside with great determination.

Initially he had thought it might be a good idea to bring his bicycle, but then he decided against it. The bike was way too colorful and anyone who paid attention at all would have remembered it. First he’d simply walk and once he’d made some progress, he’d decide what to do next.

The engine had suddenly stopped. First it had begun to stutter a bit until it finally gave up completely and all it heard was a loud “BLOM” sound. The creature looked around helplessly and searched its victim’s memories for any indication that would allow it to determine what was wrong with the Honda. Sometime later it dawned on the creature that the vehicle had probably run out of fuel. Now what? First, it would have to pull the useless automobile off the road. The thing motioned its host body to get out of the car. Whatever was still left of Walt Kessler actually made an attempt to resist the thing. Its body moved much like that of a drunken man and his eyes radiated a panicked crazed expression. With all of its force, the thing catapulted Walt into the final frontier of his awareness and seized full control of the host body. Initially, the thing had been convinced that it had already destroyed Walt’s awareness. However, his conscience had apparently only been in a state of disempowerment. After a while, Walt’s body stood up straight and walked around the truck in clumsy steps as if it was walking on stilts. He pushed himself against the vehicle with every ounce of strength he had and forced it over the edge of the road in slow motion. Beyond the edge of the pavement was a small overhang, overgrown by brush. The car rolled down the slops... slowly at first but then picked up speed until it came to a full stop in front of a tree about 300 yards down the hill.

From the darkest corners of his mind, Walt Kessler was compelled to witness how his Honda rolled down the hill. He sensed that his spirit was about to die. The being inside of his body was much too strong to defeat. Rage and fury welled up inside of him. No, no one would ever be allowed to exploit his body! He felt brutalized and dirty.

He would have to do something - anything -while he still had some strength left. But what could he do? On the mental level he would never be able to defeat the thing in his brain. He would have to come up with some kind of a trick. Walt knew that he would perish. I would be his final battle. His last assignment, a task he would have to master. He considered his options as the thing steered his body and followed the road, which soon would bring them into the next town.

“I’ll have to distract the creature and confuse it so it will not search my thinking,” he thought.

Walt made attempts to control certain areas of his body. It took a while until he was successful. He transmitted a command to his right index finger and told it to move slightly forward and back. The finger obeyed his command and after a few minutes had passed, he knew that the thing had not even noticed what was going on.

Yawning, Padre Frank Marcus steered his service vehicle, as any polite person would have referred to it, down the road in the direction of Madison. The car was a nineteen seventy eight Lincoln Town car and every part of it seemed to rattle.

His church and his Parrish were both located in this big small town, as he often called it with a smile on his face. The Bishop’s residence was a long way from Madison and Padre Marcus, as his parishioners liked to address him, only had to visit him every three months to deliver his report. Padre Marcus considered making the trip a chore and he despised the fact that he had to justify what he did on the job. After all, he was quite advanced in age and he certainly knew how to run a church. The Bishop was a vain and haughty man and Padre Marcus resented him.

Now that he had the trip behind him, he would be able to live in peace for another three months, so he tried to put the memories of the encounter behind him. He had virtually left in the dead of the night to make it home as early as possible. A new day was dawning and the land was illuminated by the fresh morning dew. The road sloped slightly downhill through a small valley seamed by grassland and fruit orchards before it climbed back up in gentle curves to take him across the next hill.

In the morning twilight the priest suddenly noticed a movement in the valley below.

Quickly he ran his hand across his glasses to make sure they were in place and focused even more intensively on the way ahead. Yes, indeed, someone was crossing the road. The silhouette was staggering or limping and now it actually fell to the ground. The head of the individual turned around and stared in the priest’s direction.

The creature was mulling over its options of getting into a new host body as quickly as possible when it realized that its right leg had gone completely stiff. It tried to continue to walk on it and did not know why the body was reacting like this. It rocked back and forth and suddenly the other leg stiffened up as well. Walt Kessler’s body was losing its equilibrium and dropped forward. Instinctively, the arms thrashed toward to front to break the unavoidable fall. While it keeled over, the thing felt a person come closer even before it heard the vehicle. Its host body dropped hard on the asphalt and the creature turned its head. The approaching automobile came to an abrupt halt just a few feet in front of Walt Kessler’s body. The car door opened and a senior priest descended from it. The creature knew what a priest was. Immediately the creature escaped Walt Kessler’s body and overwhelmed the spirit of Padre Marcus.

A deafening scream came from the priest’s mouth and he touched his head. A piercing pain was penetrating his skull and he felt kind of foggy. He sensed how another spirit was taking over his body.

“My God,” he thought, “the Evil One has taken a hold of me. God help me, please .”

“And so it is!,” the priest heard a soundless voice tell him and next thing he knew, an incredibly powerful force pushed his spirit into the very bottom of his being.