The Final Rule (29 page)

“Fuck the rules.” Jon inhaled a watery breath.

Ellis kissed Jon’s palm. “I need you to do this for me, Jon. We have to finish this.”

Because according to the rules they had no other choice.

He tried to be as gentle as he could as he picked up Ellis, but he still whimpered.

“I’ll go with you.” Leon said.

“No.” Jon nodded at the truck. “Get Terrance to the hospital.”

“After we drop Terrance off I’ll bring the truck back and get him,” George said. “We’ll meet here in thirty minutes.”

Minutes, hours, days… It made no difference. Jon walked toward the woods.

“Jon? We’ll meet here, right?”

He didn’t answer because he didn’t want to lie.

Thunder reverberated from the air to the ground, but it seemed faint compared to the gravel crunching under Jon’s feet.

He walked and he didn’t want to.

And every step brought him closer to hell.

The burn in his arms made his muscles tremble, yet they didn’t give out. A grinding ache in his knee made taking the weight of his body excruciating, but he didn’t fall.

Jon wanted to fall. He wanted to crumple to the ground unable to move another inch. Then he wouldn’t have to do this. This terrible thing.

But he was the staff and Ellis was the spear.

Overhead, the sky blackened. Under the trees, the day turned to night. Jon’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. What he thought were shadows moved like a living thing but they stayed back. He didn’t know if it was because he was on the road or because he held Ellis.

He hoped it was Ellis.

Jon held him tighter.

Every breath Ellis exhaled passed through Jon’s shirt and warmed his skin. He counted those breaths, only he couldn’t be sure why.

“I love you.”

Ellis saying those three words used to bring Jon comfort. Now they ripped him apart. “I know.”

“Don’t be angry.”

“I’d never be angry at you for this.”

“Not me. Everything else.”

Jon dropped his chin. But after this moment, anger would be the only thing Jon had left. “I was thinking we could paint it blue.”

“What?”

“The house on our island.” Jon swallowed around the lump in his throat.

Ellis laughed a little. “Only if you paint the shutters lime green.”

“Lime green?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the most hideous color I could think of.”

“Then why would you want to paint it that color?”

“Because then we would always appreciate just how beautiful the blue is.” Ellis traced Jon’s jaw.

The gravel road narrowed into a sloping curve. Passed the tangle of briars hugging each side of the road, the gray shape of a truck emerged. Rust pot-marked the body, broken glass laid on the ground under the doors, and dry rotted rubber hung from the wheels in shreds. Apparently even inanimate objects were not immune to the destructive power of
The Big and Terrible
.

“I’m sorry,” Ellis said.

“Not your fault.”

“I’m sorry it has to be you.”

“Also not your fault.”

A deep growl rolled under the ground and the things in the shadows hissed. Rage and fear washed out from the old house, crashing into Jon with enough force to make him stumble.

Ellis shivered. “It’s terrified, Jon.”

Good. It was about time it suffered.

The cloud cover swelled until it spilled out of the sky to consume the tree’s tops.

Jon reached the porch and Ellis said, “Stop.” He took the first step. “Jon, stop.” He did. “I need you to listen to me.”

What else could he do?

“I don’t know what’s in there, but something tells me it will be horrid.”

“Hasn’t everything been horrid so far?” And it kept getting worse and worse.

“No.” Ellis sighed and laid his head against Jon’s shoulder. “There have been wonderful things too.”

“But they don’t matter anymore.”

“They will. I promisss…” Ellis’s eyes glazed over.

Jon had seen enough men die to know Ellis was close.

“Inside, Jon. Take me…hurry…”

Jon carried Ellis inside the house.

The absence of light turned the old furniture into blurred shapes and the patches of dark it created pulsed. A large swell moving under the carpet stopped a few yards away. Then the bump split down the middle, revealing splinters of black that scraped together. It closed and another hole appeared. Faster and faster the mouths rose to the surface until the gnashing of teeth surrounded Jon with the sound of nighttime insects.

“…hurts…” Ellis said. “…hurts, Jon.”

Did he mean the creature or himself? Ellis whimpered and Jon had his answer.

Whatever this thing was hadn’t blocked the door. There was still a chance Jon could get Ellis out.

While Jon might be able to run away from
The Big and Terrible
, there was no escaping the death towing Ellis away.

Blood welled up through the bruised flesh on Ellis’s stomach. Wet warmth soaked through Jon’s shirt and ran down his thighs.

“Jon…where are you?”

He lowered Ellis to the floor and cradled him. “I’m here. I’m right here.”

“I need to give you the light.” Ellis brushed his fingers across Jon’s chin leaving behind a bloody streak. “You’ll have to carry it for me.”

“You do that and he’ll die.” The heavy stench or rotten earth followed
The Big and Terrible
out of the darkness. He was still the dried out shell of a man, wearing stained overalls and a dirty shirt, but something had changed since the last time Jon saw him.

“Don’t listen to him…” Ellis exhaled a watery breath.

“You better listen to me, Jon. If you want Ellis to live.”

“Take the light…”

“Sure, Jon, take the light. Watch him die. However, if you carry him out of here right now, he’ll live. That light inside him? It will heal him, but only if it has a reason to. As long as I’m alive it has all the reason in the world.”
The Big and Terrible
grinned, revealing mottled gums and missing teeth. “Bet he didn’t tell you that part, did he, Jonny Boy? Bet Ellis didn’t tell you if you took him away he’d heal.”

“Is that true?” Jon cupped Ellis’s cheek. “Tell me.”

“Yes.”

“Then the hell with all this.” He started to stand up.

“No.”

“If I can save you, damn it, I will.”

“No, it has to be like this…the light. It enters through the wound.”

“Please, Ellis…”

“Save him, Jon. Get him as far away from me as possible, then he’ll be right as rain.”

A shudder ran through Ellis’s body. “Rule number five…Jon. Rule…”

“You still have time, Jon.”

Jon looked up.

“You can still save him. All you have to do is walk away. But once the light leaves, it will be too late.” The gnashing of teeth grew louder. “You don’t want another death on your hands, Jon. Especially not Ellis’s.”

But leaving wasn’t what Ellis wanted.

Jon stayed on his knees holding Ellis while his breathing slowed until his last sigh left him slack in his arms.

“No…” Jon kissed his cheek. “Please, please no…” But he was gone.

Like Jon’s brother. Like his friends. Like so many people who were lost to the darkness every day—sometimes by the hands of another, sometimes by their own—Ellis had lost the fight that no man would ever win.

An unfair battle with unbeatable odds.

A war that often arrived on waves of suffering that left behind complete destruction and wounded survivors.

Jon buried a scream against Ellis’s neck as sorrow ripped through his chest, shredded his soul and broke him open.

The wound…

The usual insidious tone to the voice in Jon’s mind had been replaced by something kind and loving. An echo of the man who held his heart.

The wound, Jon…

He rocked Ellis.

The light enters through the wound.

He kissed Ellis on the forehead.

You are the staff, now deliver the spear.

The Big and Terrible
watched him with glistening black eyes, but there was no power left in its gaze.

Jon left Ellis on the floor and stood. Ribbons of shadows covered Ellis’s body and lapped at Jon’s feet, but never touched.

The veins under the old man’s weathered skin pulsed. “Leave, Jon, or I will make you suffer.”

Jon walked toward it.

“Don’t be a fool, Jon.” It backed away into the shadows. “Leave now and I will let you live.”

“Unfortunately for you there’s nothing left for me to live for.”

Jon followed
The Big and Terrible
into the darkness.

Rule number eight.

There had to be a rule number eight. Something about life’s a bitch, bad things happen to good people, or the joke’s on you.

Jon stood with Danny in the warehouse, surrounded by the still shot of the second worst moment in his life. A time when bullets filled the air, screams echoed, and two men ran for their life. Bodies hung, frozen in mid fall. More lay on the concrete floor.

There had been a time when only his brother’s death could compare.

Not anymore.

Ellis was dead.

And for what or who? A world that didn’t give a shit? People who never knew Ellis or what kind of man he was?

“I still don’t understand,” Jon said. “In fact, I understand less now than I ever did.”

“Then open your eyes.”

“My eyes are open.”

“Then look and you will see.”

“I will see?” Jon threw out his arms. “All I see is death, Danny. Terrible, ugly death. Everywhere. All over.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.” Jon met Danny toe to toe. “Yes, that’s all I see.”

“Then look again.”

“There’s nothing else.”

“There is always something else, if you choose to see it.”

Jon curled his fists. “I…am…tired…of…these…games.” He stepped back. “I’m done. With all of it. With you. Rudy. And the goddamned rules. Let me die or whatever because I can’t take anymore.”

“Is that what you want?’

Was it? Jon rubbed his chest. But there was no easing the pain swelling inside him. There would never be. Like death, it was forever. “Will I quit hurting?”

“If you die?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes.”

“Just yes?”

“It’s a simple answer for a simple question. The pain will leave but so will everything else.”

“Like what?”

“The happiness and the love. You can’t have one without the other. Haven’t you figured that out? There are two sides to every coin.”

“Why can’t there just be happiness? Why the pain?”

“Because everything has to have balance. Light, dark. Life, death. Good, evil. Even the smallest particle exists in balance.”

“So there’s no way out.” Jon laughed. “It’s just hell for everyone.”

“You can choose not to experience any of it.”

“How? You just said everything has to have balance.”

“You can choose not to exist at all. You can choose to have never experienced any pain, suffering, sadness, or loss. But remember, everything is balanced.”

Jon would never know friends, lovers, and laughter. He would never see Ellis’s smile, feel his body, know his heart, or be watched like he was the most precious thing in the world. Jon would never know pain, but he would also never know love.

An experience that was worth all the suffering in the world.

Danny smiled. “You know, Ellis feels the same way.”

Feels.

“Where there is destruction there is creation,” Danny said. “Where there is death, there is life.”

“What are you saying?”

“Rule number five.”

Everything happens for a reason.

Darker than night, and as endless as the heavens, the nothing surrounded Jon, snuffing out his senses. But he didn’t need his eyes and ears to tell him
The Big and Terrible
was there with him. Its presence made the light inside Jon burn as it tore out of his chest.

Millions taken by
The Big and Terrible
cried out. Not the ones it had killed, but those who’d been robbed of their souls.

Trails of light touched the blackness with a hiss. The sound followed the ribbons as it ignited in a hail of sparks eating up the blackness

Shadows retreated and highlights cut
The Big and Terrible
out of the nothing, exposing it for what it was.

A well of fear that gave birth to hate, bigotry, and greed.

The sallow flesh of what was once a man sloughed away, revealing oily fluid reeking of stagnant water. As the white threads moved closer, smoldering stains spread across the overalls it wore.

The light coiled around
The Big and Terrible,
burrowed through the shell containing it, and poured back out the burning holes eating away its chest.

Bones glowed under the globs of muck sliding away in burning clumps.

The Big and Terrible
opened its mouth and a brittle scream boiled out. The sound was countered by the intake of air.

Ellis’s ribs expanded and he bowed off the ground. The gaping wound on his side sealed just as one separated the flesh of
The Big and Terrible
.

Jon fell to his knees.

Color filled his pale skin. Bruises faded. Jon laid a hand on Ellis’s chest and his heart beat against Jon’s palm.

With every new breath, life poured back into Ellis, chasing away the glaze in his eyes. Recognition replaced confusion and he put his hand over Jon’s.

Everything has to have balance.

Where there is evil, there is good.

Where there is death, there is life.

The road runs both ways.

Rules number four, five, six, and seven.

Jon ran his hands over Ellis’s back and sides, kneading flesh and muscle. Real, this was real. Not a dream. Not a ghost. Ellis was alive.

Jon’s tears mixed with the blood matting down Ellis’s hair.

The gashes in his soul left behind by loss were refilled with hope.

“It’s okay.” Ellis shushed him. “Jon, everything will be all right.”

It would and that made him cry harder.

The smoke rising off
The Big and Terrible
gave birth to flames. They raced down its collapsing body, across the floor and up the walls following the blanket of oil. The old furniture and wood walls made the perfect fuel.