The Demon Signet (35 page)

The sound of his voice uttering those words still had Ian waking up in the middle of most nights, and he tried to push the memory of the monster away from him now. It was all over with anyway, right?
Right?

Unable to stop it, Ian found himself being passed down the long line of demons that Solomon had brought before him, bound and announcing each of their names and peculiar powers for the wisest man to ever live. Once he reached the back of the line, Ian, as was the case every night, was left at the end of Solomon’s
Testament
and the warning issued there.

…And at once the Spirit of God departed from me, and I became weak as well as foolish in my words. And after that I was obliged by her to build a temple of idols to Baal, and to Rapha, and to Moloch, and to the other idols. I then, wretch that I am, followed her advice, and the glory of God quite departed from me; and my spirit was darkened, and I became the sport of idols and demons. Wherefore I wrote out this Testament, that ye who get possession of it may pity, and attend to the last things, and not to the first. So that ye may find grace forever and ever. Amen.

Yeah. The sport of demons…

When he awoke, the sun was just breaking the plain of his property in Hanover, Pennsylvania. He dressed unceremoniously and forced himself to make his daily coffee. Waiting for it to stop percolating, he leaned against the counter and rubbed his eyes, summoning the will to exist another day. He found himself focusing, as he often did, on the black King James Bible that sat resting beneath half an inch of dust on a bland bookshelf in the living room. He had bought it on a whim from the hospital bookstore while recovering from his injuries, but had never opened it. He’d come close once or twice, but his fiancée’s broken body seemed to be imprinted in the leather cover beneath the gold letters. The memory of her being dragged across the snow by that devil still infuriated him, and he wasn’t interested in seeking answers from a God he’d already blamed for so much pain in his life. With Thanksgiving just a few days away, the year anniversary of the event creeping slowly upon him, the wounds in his soul were only growing more infected. He moved his gaze off the Bible, not even remotely tempted to open it.

When the coffee was done, Ian poured it into a mug. He added a shot of liquor to it and then sealed the cap, taking the mug with him out the front door and to his pickup. Leaving the solitude he’d come to prefer behind, he drove off his property.

Eleven months…that’s how long it’d been since he was released from the hospital, since he was questioned mercilessly by what seemed like every government agency, some of the acronyms across their IDs he’d never even heard of before. Coming out of that whirlwind left Ian wanting nothing but solitude, and for more reasons than one. In addition to the general grief that saw him into exile, there was also the issue of what had been left inside of him…that little companion the ring had birthed. Though it rarely made a show of itself anymore, he wasn’t about to put others at risk by keeping their company. The last thing he needed on his conscious was to walk into some elementary school and start shooting for no reason. He didn’t trust himself to win the battle if ever that other personality began wrestling for control again. It was constantly on his mind, the fear of that happening…as was the guilt of what he’d done to Heather the day she died. He wasn’t fit for human contact anymore, so it was to be a quiet, secluded life for him, which he thought he might enjoy if it weren’t for the torment that did keep his company. After selling his veterinary practice, he was able to get by with the profit and working a little from home. It wasn’t the life he’d imagined for himself, that was for sure. Only a year ago, he was thinking wife and kids. But instead… He looked into the rearview mirror, sweeping his gaze over his lonely property. Yeah, instead he was dealt
this
.

The sun shone through the windshield, and he pulled the visor down. The drive to North Carolina would take about seven hours. He ran a hand through his long hair and scratched an itch on his bearded chin. He spent a moment too long studying the picture of Heather that was clipped to the underside of the visor, and he had to swerve to avoid striking a guardrail.

Seven and a half hours later, the afternoon sun hiding behind some incoming clouds, he was walking through the cemetery. He pulled his coat tighter as a brisk wind blew dead leaves across his path. He hated the cold and regretted not moving to Florida or southern California or something. After this winter, perhaps he would. He was sure there were still some warm spots in the country where he could purchase some solid sanctuary. The cold had a way of inserting him back into that damn blizzard, and he longed to forget its icy grip, the Camaro, the ring…all of it.

Finding the tombstone, he approached it with caution, like Moses before the burning bush. There was no denying the feel of this ground being hallowed.

He watched his breath materialize in front of him and thrust his fingers, disfigured from frostbite, deeper into his pockets. This was the third time he’d made the trip…the third time he’d come to stand before Marcus’ grave and study the inscription engraved across the marble, beneath his name and the dates he had walked the earth.

The boys inscribe their names in capitals in the snow, and in the morning’s thaw the writing disappears; will it be so with my work, or will the characters which I have carved outlast the brazen tablets of history? Have I written in the snow?

Beneath the question was another inscription, an answer provided by his loving parents.

Indeed, Son, you have recorded your legacy across the mountainsides and upon the fleshly tablets of numerous hearts. Your work, as short as it was, will forever follow your name through all who shall come to hear of it. We will see you soon, and share in your eternal rewards! We love you.

Ian frowned, and a tear slid down his face, disappearing into his beard. “Your legacy should’ve been better, longer. You still had so much to do, my friend.” The bitter feelings toward God began to swirl again, but the questions of why and the accusations of it all being unfair had exhausted his mind long ago.

He stood there for an hour, thinking of the times they’d spent together. Basketball, X-Box… It was a shame that Ashley’s parents never got to meet him, never got to know the man their youngest daughter had fallen in love with.

Ashley
…

On the drive back to his home, he wondered again at the soldiers, the helicopters, and the obvious cover-up that was concocted in the aftermath of it all. It left him wondering just what in the hell was really going on, what place the ring might have on the world stage. What exactly was it that they had gotten themselves in the middle of? And, as always, the line of questions took him back to the rental car, to the missing person who had driven it before them. If their plane hadn’t needed to land at the regional airport, they would all be getting ready to sit down for Thanksgiving dinner together, Heather and their child, Ashley and Marcus. To think that his fiancée and his unborn child, along with Marcus, Joyce, George, and a hell of a lot of others were all in the ground because of some maintenance quirk, maybe something as small as a single screw… It was maddening, that something so insignificant could, in an instant, rewrite entire lives, turning them from promise to horror in the blink of an eye. How was one supposed to find meaning in something like that? Like this? How did you accept it and move on?

He tried to put it out of his mind. His mother’s birthday was coming up, and his stepfather wanted him to come to the surprise party. He was supposed to get back to him tonight with an answer. He thought about his real father, the assistant pastor caught screwing his neighbor’s wife on a church pew. Had his brother’s death stolen his father’s faith as it had his own? He didn’t doubt it.

His mind drifted, as it usually did, to Ashley. He hadn’t talked to her since the week following the incident. He would write her tomorrow. He’d been putting it off for too long.

Looking up into the rearview mirror, the sun setting beside him, he saw the same black SUV that had followed him into the cemetery. It followed him all the way to Hanover.

****

Ashley was older now, pushing forty-five, though as she sat down on the park bench, she felt more like ninety-five. The years had been far from kind to her, and she was ready for the end. The nightmares, the pain, the questions, the fear… She was tired of their incessant company. Nothing she set out to do in life, once finally being released from the loony bin, had helped at all in moving beyond the horrible events that had taken place more than fifteen years ago. Her fervor for social justice had fizzled out immediately, and she’d abandoned all hopes of finishing her Ernie Davis novel. She just couldn’t find it in her shattered heart to care anymore. The burden was too much, and despite her parents’ gentle objections, she finally turned away from everything she’d spent her life building, moving instead into the embrace of the West Virginian mountains. It was there that she took up a new type of writing, and for a little while it seemed to help. She’d gotten an agent who had helped her land a big contract for her first crime novel,
The Best of Intentions
. She turned the book into a series, selling over a million copies of each. She enjoyed writing crime fiction, or at least so long as it distracted her from that Christmas Eve. But the escape into the alternate world of her characters didn’t prove so great a shield from reality after all, and soon she couldn’t bring herself to type another word of anything.

She crossed her legs and leaned back against the wooden bench, her eyes looking out past the liquid expanse before her. It was almost ten o’clock in the morning on a pleasant June day, and the clouds were dancing gracefully across the lake’s surface. For a moment, she was stricken with grief at the prospect of her aged parents and her brother receiving the news. It wouldn’t be easy for them to hear, and she knew she should just wait a little bit longer, until her parents passed. But today was a bad day, and she was sure she couldn’t wait any longer. She would apologize in the note and pray they would understand.

A tear ran down her cheek, and she relived the moment she opened her eyes in the hospital to see her parents standing over her, tears of great sadness but also relief dripping from their eyes. They’d lost their oldest daughter, but the National Guard had found their baby just in time.

Her hand rested on the two books sitting on the bench beside her. Without looking, she opened the cover of the first and extracted a folded piece of paper. Her hands worked the letter open, and her eyes dropped to the words, though she knew them by heart. Ian’s message had been written nine years ago, just days before he’d supposedly leapt from his second-floor window, killing himself in the same manner that his older brother had so many years before him. A quote from his mother even served to blame the suicide on Ian’s long-lasting failure to accept his brother’s death. “He’d never gotten over it, and it haunted him until his last day,” she’d said. And maybe it was true, but his mother didn’t know the whole story, what had happened to Heather, what he’d seen. And she certainly didn’t know about the people who might want to kill her son.

The note told of all he’d learned about Solomon’s ring while expressing his belief that someone was following him. At the time, she’d thought he was just being paranoid. But now she knew better. For everything had changed when a Catholic priest knocked on her door last year with questions from another planet. He wouldn’t tell her how he knew about the ring and what had really happened out on Interstate 81, but he had shared with her a tall tale of conspiracy and coming doom. He’d said he had traveled from Jerusalem, where he was searching for an ancient object that could change the world forever. She’d told him that she was tired of ancient relics and didn’t want anything to do with any sort of them. He’d then asked her what it was like, wearing the ring. She’d asked him to leave.

The priest—Father Baer, he’d called himself—left her with a warning.

That warning had been disregarded by one of the books beside her. She’d published O
f Idols and Demons
, her new novel, independently in just a matter of months, simply because she didn’t think she’d be around long enough to see its release once the big houses got done fighting over it. Her name alone would sell a million copies regardless of the publisher.

Of Idols and Demons.
It was her account of what had happened on their way home from Canada. If the priest’s story was right, about what the ring was and what it might unlock, and if his warning had any merit at all, then what she had just done would definitely be bringing attention her way. Soon, the very people that had thrown Ian out a window would come to pay her a visit as well. But she didn’t care. She was ready.

Crossing her legs, the dull pain of the bullet wound groaning in protest as it always did, she closed her eyes and thought of Marcus.

When a jogger found her lying there, a pool of blood beneath the bench, she had a 9mm in one hand and a Bible in the other. The name inside the Bible belonged to one Marcus Jude Hatfield. There was a picture of him and Ashley within the pages, arms around each other, a ski slope in the background. They were smiling, their faces shining with the glow of fresh love. The gun was registered to her, though she’d never bought one while alive. Her copy of
Of Idols and Demons
was gone, and in fact, the book would be canceled a week after its release.

For the few fans that were able to order copies in that first week, they were left to wonder at the book’s final paragraph.

In a world that continues to grow smaller, with health and freedom diminishing at an alarming rate, with America being dissolved into the new Union and a police state ensuing…could what the priest told me be true? Could there be an ancient conspiracy that is finally beginning to reveal itself now, in our day, and all that is missing from its ultimate fruition, from the nations being deceived, is one powerful object? Could it be so that world rulers have become the sport of idols and demons and that, as it says in the book of Psalms, the nations, kings and rulers of the earth have set themselves against God, conspiring in vain against Him? If so, perhaps it is also true what the psalmist says, that God will laugh at them and shatter them to pieces in his wrath.