The Twins of Noremway Parish (32 page)

Chapter 21

Meanwhile, back at Teret Finley’s house, she and Decon sat on the bed in each other’s arms, humiliated, crying. Neither had put any clothes on. “I can’t…how can they just come in and take them?”

“
Look, honey, we’ll get them back.” He was rubbing his wrists where they had been banded.

“
No we won’t. You don’t know! You’ve catered to the traditional ways your whole life! I’ve spent years fighting against this, teaching about social change. Do you know what kind of wall I keep running into? An immovable, impenetrable, massive, ugly wall! You can’t change it.”

“
We can change it. Now let’s get dressed and march up to the chancellor’s house, and have a little chat with our renegades.”

“
Renegades? Ha! That’s what they are probably calling
us
. I’m done.”

Decon went out into the living room where he had stripped off his clothes in a fit of passion. Teret stayed in the bedroom. He managed to find his cloak in the darkness, but he had his work cut out for him to find his under-garments. After several minutes he found them and started to pull them up his legs.

Then with the suddenness of the harvest rains, Teret let out an enormous shriek. “Teret!” Decon cried and started to run, tripping over the under-garments halfway up his legs. He fell flat on his face. The shrieking intensified. He could see flashing orange light coming from the bedroom. A massive fire had erupted inside. He finally got up and ran into the bedroom.

“
Decon, help, something’s got me!” He ran into the room. She was floating in the air. Flames on her bed blazed beneath her. In her struggle with whatever invisible entity had hold of her, she had knocked the lantern over onto the bed. The flames bit at her feet, burned and charred the flesh. “I’m sorry, Decon. I love you.” Whatever held her lowered her into the flames until her body caught fire. The naked flesh of her legs seared to the bone. Up her legs, to her round stomach and breasts, the fire burned.

“
Teret, no!” He ran back into the living room to grab his cloak to use to pat out the flames but to no avail. She was badly burned on her face, breasts, arms, legs, the baby inside her likely cooked to a crisp. Suddenly, the entity that held her flung her through the wall with a force powerful enough to blast her through to the outside.

In the darkness, she appeared to be a flaming woman flying through the sky. Decon gave chase, holding his cloak in one arm, wearing nothing but his leggings. He chased her until they reached the square directly in front of the cathedral. Whatever invisible entity was holding her carried her flaming body into the air.

“
Burn the witch! Burn the witch!” Rita Morgan chanted. She carried a large flaming stick that she waved around as she chanted.

Decon ran to Rita, grabbed the stick out of her hands, and brained her with it repeatedly. After she hit the ground, he kicked her in the gut and the chest. Then Teret’s body fell to the ground, and he picked her up. The infirmary was a half-mile away. He could do this. He sprinted through the dark, not giving a second thought to the howling wolves around him, stumbling frequently, but didn’t stop until he reached the doctor. How could this night have turned into such a horror? Just a half-hour before he had been making love to her and relishing in the fact that they were both proud parents, not only of the twins, but of a child still being created in the womb. Now she was dying in his arms and the children had been taken away, the fetus murdered.

After several hard knocks, Bartholomew Plague opened the door. “What happened?”

“
She’s burned. Bad. Take care of her. I gotta go.” He handed her off to the doctor and began running in the direction of the chancellor’s house. Urey and Phoenix were to blame for this. For the first time in his adult life, he didn’t think about what Ragas would do because it didn’t matter anymore. He was going to kill them both.

***

Decon made the quarter-mile trip in less than a minute. He’d never been so angry. His mind raced so quickly he couldn’t even be sure he was thinking. Adrenaline pumped through his veins. When he arrived, he kicked in the door despite his feet being bare. He immediately saw Franz Phoenix standing in the room, groggy, holding his head. “Alright, you son of a bitch, you’re dead!” Decon said, launching himself at the sheriff, who barely managed to duck away.

“
Get down on the ground now! I’m not going to tell you again,” the sheriff ordered, taking a swing at the friar. Decon disobeyed and went to tackle Franz. He slammed him to the ground, punching him. Franz tried to free his hands, but Decon was on top of him, pummeling him, breaking his nose, shattering his remaining eye-socket. Blood splashed everywhere. The mushy pulp, from underneath the eye-patch, oozed down his cheek. Decon got up. “Chancellor, where are you?”

Urey emerged from the darkness. “Decon, we can talk about this.” His face was bloodied, his nose mashed to one side, courtesy of Rita Morgan.

“
The hell we can.” As Decon approached, fists raised, Urey began screaming. His bent nose grew into a large snout, and the rest of his human features seemed to disappear as he transformed into a giant wolf. “What the hell?” was all Decon could manage to say. The wolf rushed him, much like he had at Franz that day when he nearly killed him, and utter blackness filled Decon’s world.

***

Franz Phoenix saw, through his one remaining eye, the chancellor perform his transformation act and then nearly knock Decon’s head off. Urey rushed past him and ran out the door to the outside world.

The sheriff managed to pick himself up and dragged the friar by the feet down the hidden set of stairs to the open solitary cell. Julian and Gaylen were both screaming and alone on the floor of the open cell. He quickly pulled them out, placing them on a worktable just outside the cellblock, and dragged Decon into it. Locking Decon in the solitary cell, he said, “Decon Mangler, you are charged and
convicted
of the crime of treason against Noremway Parish. You are hereby sentenced to a fate worse than death—life of eternal solitude.”

It was eighteen years before anyone would see Decon Mangler again.

***

“
Very good, Chancellor,” Zuriz Falcon said, speaking from the shadows. He spoke in that eerie cadence of the devil. “You have come over to the Darkness, very good.”

“
You are quite the manipulator, you know that?” Franz Phoenix said. He liked the sound of “Chancellor.”

“
I have been an advisor for many a world leader. I know how to stack the cards to get the hand I want. I am the Father of Darkness, after all.”

“
Skilled sleight of hand; I was just a pawn in your little game.” Franz eyed him wearily.

“
Of course you were, Chancellor. And so was Ghora Urey.”

“
How about Rita?”

“
What about her? She’s inconsequential.”

All the memories had come back to Zuriz Falcon and he found himself capable of using all the powers granted him. “It’s too bad what happened to Teret Finley out there,” he said. Franz, who was unaware of what had happened to her, only nodded.

“
Tell me she’s alive, at least,” he said.

“
Oh, of course she’s still alive. I wouldn’t dare think to kill someone as beautiful as her. Although, you know, she is no longer beautiful.”

“
I see.”

“
Now that the twins are ours, we can take over the parish, and when the Inner-Crescent falls, the earth will be ours. We couldn’t have Teret Finley disrupting the story; you see, the story teller has combined with her soul. She can change the story in any way she wants now. Well she could, but I think the fire destroyed her eyes. Those are the means by which she can tell stories.”

Phoenix said simply, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“
No matter. Not important for you to know.” Then Falcon turned to the worktable on which the twins of Noremway Parish lay. “Ahh, my darling children.” He stooped and scooped up Gaylen, ruffled his dark hair, and kissed his forehead.

Then he stooped to pick up Julian, and found himself blinded by an incredible heavenly light. Pain shot through his eyes and into his brain. He held Gaylen as tightly as he could, fearing he would drop him.

The darkness dissolved around him and he found himself staring into the bright yellow sun as he appeared in the middle of the desert.
What the hell?
he thought. He couldn’t move; he couldn’t change into a dark mist. He had lost all his powers–he couldn’t do anything but lie there. For all appearances, at the moment, he was stranded somewhere in the harsh desert with the sun beating down on him while, beside him, a single baby cried.

To Be Concluded in The Book of Ragas:

The Twins of Noremway Parish, Part II
.

About the Author

Eric R. Johnston was born and raised in the Flint area of Michigan. He was raised to appreciate science and history. Eric's father was an "in-home Carl Sagan," explaining the nature of the cosmos in easy to understand terms, teaching his children about stars, planets, worm holes, and black holes.

His introduction to science fiction came in the mid-1980's with reruns of the original Star Trek series. In fact, his earliest memory of going to the movie theater was to watch Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in 1986. The following year saw the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and he was hooked on science fiction.

In the following years, he became an avid reader and writer. He developed a love for the science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror stories that were popular in the early- to mid- 1990's. Bruce Coville, R.L. Stine, Christopher Pike, and others. Eventually his tastes grew into more sophisticated writing such as Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Chricton, Ray Bradbury, among many others.

He wrote his first complete short story when he was in 8th grade. It was a simple tale about a group of teenagers who try to conjure up the spirit of a recently deceased super model. The story bordered on sadistic and entered the realm of the obscene, but it was an interesting foray into the world of creative fiction.

In college, he double-majored in English and History, taking an emphasis in American Literature and American History. He then earned a teaching certification in secondary education, teaching Social Studies and English. Currently, writing is his full-time job, but he substitute teaches, a combination of long-term teaching assignments and day-to-day assignments, and during the summer he teaches a remedial reading course.

He lives in both Davison and Attica Michigan with his fiancé, his daughter, and two step-daughters.

http://ericrjohnston.webs.com/