DARKNESS RISING
THE EAST SALEM TRILOGY BOOK TWOBy LIS WIEHL PETE NELSONThomas Nelson
Copyright © 2012 Lis Wiehl
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-59554-943-3 Chapter One
Abbie Gardener could remember sitting on the back of a very broad, gray, docile plow horse named Bob. She loved Bob.
"You are a very special girl," her father had told her, but she knew fathers always told their little girls they were special.
"Why?" she said.
"Because Jesus loves you. Do you believe Jesus loves you?"
"Yes, Papa."
"Did you say your prayers last night?"
"Yes, Papa."
"Did you say your prayers this morning?"
"Yes, Papa."
"That's a very good girl. You must say your prayers every morning and every evening before bed, and the Lord will protect you and keep you safe."
And she had done so for many, many years. But lately she couldn't remember if she'd prayed or not. It troubled her greatly. She was often certain that she had, but the next minute she wasn't sure, and two minutes after that she'd forgotten what it was she was trying to remember.
Bob pulled a plow. He was a good horse. I used to feed him green apples.
She suddenly realized where she was. She was not a little girl. She was very old. She was in the same town where she'd lived her whole life. East Salem, New York. But she was not in her home. She was not on her farm. She was in a nursing home.
Why am I here?
It was dark outside. The clock on the bed stand had jumped ahead again. Beside the clock there was a small paper cup with two pills in it and a glass of water. She'd promised the girl in the blue jacket she'd take the pills before she went to bed, but she hadn't.
Because it was coming.
It was coming soon, she knew, because it knew she couldn't fight it any longer.
She went to the window in her nightgown and looked out. She looked at the floodlight in the parking lot and saw that it was raining.
"Of all the gifts in God's domain, I think the most sublime is rain," she sang. She could only remember the hymns she'd learned as a little girl. There were so many more, she knew, but she couldn't remember them. Only fragments. "A mighty fortress is our God ..." She suddenly realized that she needed to lock the windows.
She tried to find the button to call the girl in the blue jacket to tell her she must lock the windows. Where was the button? Was it a blue jacket? Was it green?
She wanted to lock the door, but there wasn't a lock to lock.
The bracelet on her ankle itched. She wanted to take it off. If she didn't remove the bracelet, the thing that was coming would use it to find her.
Bob pulled a plow. He was a good horse.
She went to the window. It was still raining.
"When God first saw the world in pain, I think he wept and called it rain ..."
She thought she saw something moving on the lawn, in the shadows just beyond the light in the parking lot. Had she said her prayers tonight? Perhaps she should say them again, just to be safe.
"Our Father, who art in heaven ..."
How did it go? Why couldn't she remember?
"Our Father, who art in heaven ..."
"Our Father ..."
"It will come for you one day," her father had told her. But it wasn't her father. It was another man. The banker? "You have been chosen. You have been given gifts, and you will fight and be strong, but you will live to be very old and too weak to fight, and then one day ..."
She looked out the window and saw a shape in the rain, or rather a hole in the night where rain was supposed to be. It moved slowly, deliberately, wending its way toward her.
Where was the button to call the girl?
But when she checked, the windows were already locked. Good.
It drew closer.
She looked around the room for anything she might use to defend herself. The chair was too heavy for her to lift. Her umbrella was one of those short, collapsible ones, not the long kind with a sharp point that might have been useful. She would fight it even though she could not win.
She moved behind the bed.
The thing was outside her window now. She saw it rise up, translucent at first, or made from darkness, absorbing light. She could see through it to the parking lot beyond.
Then it came through the window.
She could smell it before she could see it, a stench like rotten eggs, fetid and metallic—she could taste it at the back of her throat, harsh and revolting.
The entity began to take solid form, drawing molecules from the air and the walls and the floor. She saw its heart first, black and horned, sprouting arteries and veins like vines, wrapping around stone-gray bones. As it grew, it gradually stood upright, the vertebrae of its long neck like a string of black beads. "You'll know it by the form it takes," the man had told her. "In the olden times, brave men fought it and called it a dragon, but it's a demon by any name or shape."
Scales great and small covered its skin. Unsightly blisters spread across the underbelly. The room turned cold. A month ago they'd killed the girl. Abbie had tried to warn the girl, but she was too old.
"What a friend we have in Jesus," the old woman sang. "All our sins and griefs to bear ..."
Fully formed now, the thing tossed the bed aside and stepped toward her. The room was dark. It looked like some kind of animal, but nothing she'd ever seen before.
"What a privilege to carry ...," she sang, louder now.
"WHERE IS IT? WHERE'S THE BOOK?" it said, commanding her not with sounds her ears could hear but with words that impaled her thoughts. A month ago they'd killed the girl because they knew her father was the one. The next. The girl, Julie, had tried to find him, and they killed her. Then they burned down the girl's house to kill her mother and sister. Had they killed her father too? If so, the book was the only hope left, the only thing standing in their way. Abbie tried to remember where she'd hidden it, then laughed, because she couldn't remember. What better hiding place was there than one the hider couldn't find?
"Get thee behind me," she answered.
"WHERE'S THE BOOK?"
"Is this the book you mean?" she shouted as she grabbed the Bible from the shelf next to the bed and held it up like a shield.
The beast cried out and slapped the Holy Book from her hand, sending it sailing across the room. It stepped closer, reached out, and pressed a bony finger to her lips. She struggled, lashed out at it, but couldn't back away. She felt all the air inside her being sucked out. As the air left her lungs, the air outside her body pressed in. She was being crushed beneath an invisible weight.
The demon lifted its finger from her lips, and she could breathe again, gasping.
"WHERE IS THE BOOK?"
She looked at him defiantly and spat in his face.
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," she said. "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside—"
The beast again pressed its finger against her lips, and the air rushed out of her. She was unable to breathe, her vision dimming. Slowly, life left her body as the room and the sky and the world pressed down on her. She heard her bones cracking but she felt no pain, no fear, and she was able to finish the psalm silently, reciting the words in her head as she died: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever ...
Then darkness.
Then light ...
Chapter Two
"Into the lions' den," Dani said.
"Danielle and the lions," Tommy said. "That has a ring to it. Hopefully we'll get the same...
