The Librarian And The Knife Of Death

Strangely Scary Funny

Brian Yansky

Keeping It Weird

Copyright © 2024 Brian Yansky

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to an actual person, living or dead, or actual events, is coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

First Printing: January 2024

Created with Vellum

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter One

Olive and I walked out of the Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin, Texas, after spending a pleasing hour having drinks in the cowboy bar with its leather sofas, cowhide barstools, longhorn head over the fireplace, cattle branded-carpet and long, elegant serving bar. We talked about the time-cat who had told us our love affair might mean the end of humankind. It was a sobering claim. (On the one hand, who thought a love affair, even a great one, was worth the destruction of human civilization? On the other hand, examine the source of the claim. Cats were notorious liars.) Also, we talked about barbeque and the TV shows Fargo and Shinning Vale. While we were talking about Shinning Vale, an ancient white-haired gentleman in a tuxedo and a white-haired woman in an evening gown, lipstick so red it could stop a speeding train, did a tango in the lobby. It was their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

They cast a potent spell.

Olive and I had sex in the bathroom after watching them. All the stalls were busy with similar sounds to ours. Probably more than half the bar had gone off to have sex after watching them.

There was magic in the ordinary world. I’d seen it plenty in my travels. The tango was another example.

We walked out to the car, which I’d parked along Sixth Street. We were holding hands, and the universe seemed to be smiling at us and we were smiling back—or so I thought until we got to the space where the car should be and there was no car. No 1965 Cadillac Deville, which also happened to be a time machine. We turned to each other, and I saw fear in Olive’s eyes. No telling what she saw in mine.

I looked up and down the street. There were glints of light from the bright sun on windshields and shadows on the other side of the street. There was no Cadillac Deville.

“It’s not here,” Olive whispered.

“No, it’s not,” I agreed.

We could not get home without the time-machine. It was that simple. Also, in the wrong hands, a time machine could lead to some serious changes in the time-line and perhaps the end of the world as we knew it. Maybe this was how the time-cat’s warning would come true.

We walked up and down the street just in case the car had moved itself somewhere else.

“Maybe it’s playing a joke on us,” Olive said.

“Maybe,” I said.

We were engaging in a very common human act. We were fooling ourselves.

There was no time-machine on any of the nearby streets. Our time machine had a ticking clock. Each ride in the Cadillac Deville lasted for a specific amount of time. Those were the cosmic rules. Olive and I had a little over an hour to find the Deville Time Machine before it would go back to Eden without us.

We might not ever get back.

Why not just take a bus? Because no one knew where Eden was. Not even Edenites. It was on a magic mountain next to a haunted wood. Try finding that on a bus schedule.

“Could someone else have called it back?” Olive asked.

“No,” I said, though the truth was I wasn’t sure. It was unlikely, but there were powerful people in Eden, people being a relative term in this case. Creatures. Occasionally Deities. Angels. Demons. Time-traveling cats. Talking trees. My hellhound. And more. Much, much more.

I was pretty sure someone had stolen the car, but did they steal it because they knew it was a time machine or because they just thought it was a cool ride?

We talked to the valets just outside the hotel. None of them had seen a car towed off. However, I didn’t trust their observational talents. They were college boys who weren’t particularly attentive unless a pretty girl walked down the street. I asked one of them for directions to the security office. He told me to enter from the side and take the first narrow stairway down. The office was tucked away in the basement. He told me to watch out for the Driskill’s famous ghost. He snuck a smirk at his friends.

“Already talked to her,” I said. “She doesn’t know a thing about it.”

That wiped the smirk off his face.

I hadn’t really talked to her, but I had seen her wander through the lobby. She hadn’t seen me see her. She was too wrapped up in her sorrow. A lot of ghosts in the flatlands were.

We found the office. There were two men in the office who introduced themselves as Fernando and Jeff. I asked them if they had security video of the street and they did. At first they said they would like to help me but couldn’t share the video without their boss’s permission. They revised this after I gave them a hypnotic suggestion that they really wanted to help me because we were old friends.

We watched video footage. I saw us pull up in the Cadillac. We got out. Fernando sped up the video. About five minutes later, the car was towed away.

“What’s that on the side of the truck door?” Olive asked. “Is it some kind of picture?”

“An armadillo,” I said.

We retreated to the hotel bar. I used my phone to look for the Armadillo Towing Service, but there wasn’t one listed. We had coffees. We talked over the theft of the Deville, and both arrived at the same conclusion. The theft was not random. The tow truck showed up minutes after we went into the Driskill. Someone had been following us. The men who hooked the car up and pulled it away were all armed. I could see the guns under their jackets.

“The mortician made a call,” I said.

The mortician who had been so willing to provide us with cadavers (for a price) that we might regularly transport to Eden to provide a food source for Olive’s zombie father had informed someone we were in town. We had, after all, communicated by messages carried by crows before Olive and I made the trip to Austin. So, the mortician would have time to talk to someone about us. Or possibility someone had visited him and he’d told them about us. Either way, we needed to have a talk with Mr. Black.

“How did they know we were here?”

“Some kind of tracker on the car or they followed us.”

We called an Uber and took it back to the funeral home. We had the driver go around the block to the back. The funeral home was crouched behind a dying strip mall. It looked seedier than before. We pulled up in the back lot where the hearses were parked. One of them was a classic from the 1970s—a sleek Cadillac with a vinyl top and chrome grill and trim. The other two were modern. I thought it best we enter where they loaded and unloaded bodies.

We walked in the back door and down a narrow, white hallway (white tile and white paint on the walls and ceiling, giving it a clinical feel) and into the room where they prepared the bodies. It was sterile—same white walls and tile, but colder. It was probably ten degrees colder than outside. There was the sharp smell of embalming fluid. We passed by stainless steel tables, sinks and drains, and embalming instruments neatly arranged on shelves.

I heard voices. I thought they were back down the hall, but then I saw, with my third-eye, there was a hidden door in the back of the room. I opened it and Olive and I walked into a chapel.

The chapel walls were adorned with symbols of the devil. Candles burned in every corner. The worshipers were dressed in black robes. Some of them wore hoods that hid their faces. Some didn’t. They stood around a surprisingly accurate statue of Lucifer. The worshipers were holding hands and chanting in low voices.

“Devil worshipers?” Olive said.

“Amateurs,” I said.

Mr. Black, dressed in black of course, with a trimmed pointed beard I now recognized as modeled after the dark prince, spoke with the authoritative voice of a seasoned public speaker. “My fellow Satanists, I have done a deed for the Serpent himself by helping one of his top demons. I cannot give you the details, but know that our little church of the damned will soon be rewarded.”

There were some appreciative and affirming sounds made by the other devil worshipers. Someone said, “Way to go.” A few members of the congregation clapped.

“We’re going to be honored at the next Southern Satanist Churches Convention over in the Piney woods next month. I think I can promise you that.”

“Those snooty Houston Satanists will be green with envy,” a small white-haired woman in heels said. She looked like someone’s grandmother. She probably was someone’s grandmother.

“Always lording their membership superiority over us,” another said. “Payback time.”

There was more congratulating each other and even talk of ritualistically sacrificing a virgin. They argued about whether this could be a male instead of a female. We stood quietly in the shadows, unnoticed.

“What did you do for this demon?” someone finally asked.

“Something important,” Mr. Black said, importantly. “I cannot give you details.”

“I can,” I said, stepping out of the shadows. “He stole my car. Or rather, he gave someone information that allowed them to steal my car.”

A nervous woman swung around to see me.

“This is a private meeting,” she scolded. I thought she was seconds away from shaking a finger.

Others agreed that it was private. Some said that we needed to leave immediately or we would be charged with trespassing. Olive showed them a little witchery. I felt the magic come off her fingers. A wind came through, blowing out candles. The doors behind us slammed shut.

“Let’s do call the police,” Olive said. “I’m sure this is the kind of arrest the news stations would love.”

The congregation became very docile then.

“No need for that,” Mr. Black said.

The others were in complete agreement.

“Mr. Black,” I said. “You have been used.”

He tried to straighten up his posture. “I would like you to leave now.”

“We need our car back.”

He said I’d better leave before something bad happened

Olive spoke a spell and a second wind whipped through the room and stripped the robes off some of the worshipers. That got their attention. There was a scream. One of them called on Satan to protect them.

“He won’t,” I said.

“Not against his own son,” Olive said.

The color drained from Mr. Black’s face. He was thinking about the crows. Who communicated with crows? He was thinking he had maybe made a mistake.

“That’s not right,” Mr. Black said. “That can’t be right. The demon said you were working for the other side.”

“What demon?”

“The demon.”

“Describe this demon.”

I expected him to describe my sister, Lilith, or maybe Lola, who was a friend or an enemy or both; I wasn’t sure. When he described Charles, I knew that couldn’t be right. Charles wasn’t someone who would ever be described as a demon. He was a hotel manager, a weasel.

But one thought led to another the way they often did. If it wasn’t Charles, but was someone who looked like Charles, then it likely was Jack. Somehow, the evil spirit had escaped the body of the mayor into his brother, Charles, before I killed the mayor.

And now he was here. And he’d stolen our time-machine.

“There have been rumors,” someone said, “that the Dark One’s son is walking among us.”

“Meet the Anti-Christ,” Olive said, nodding her head toward me.

“This is all ridiculous,” Mr. Black said. “They’re lying.”

“Is it?” I said. “Father, if you can hear me, send us a message?”

Lightning struck the church. I was kind of surprised. I didn’t think my father really watched that closely. I had been going to try a hypnotic spell where everyone saw the traditional devil shadow, horns, and tail appear on the altar. Make a threat. Disappear. The lightning was better, more authentic. When I looked over at Olive, I realized the source. It was good to have a witch girlfriend.

A fire started over in the corner and several of the devil worshipers put it out. There were a few “Oh Michael, what have you done?” Even a “Satan forgive you,” from the woman wearing the pearls.

Mr. Black began telling me how sorry he was and how he had no idea he was involved in an act against the anti-Christ. He would never in a million years do anything to harm the son of the Prince of Darkness. The demon had tricked him.

“You’ll need to do what you agreed to do for Olive and her father,” I said to the mortician.

“Of course.”

“They’ll be a new discount,” I said. “Free.”

He hesitated and a young woman wearing pearls said his name in a way that made it clear he would regret any more hesitation.

“Of course,” he said.

I said I needed to know where the towing service was, and we went to his office. He made a few calls, and one of their church members gave him directions.

I persuaded the mortician to let us to borrow the classic hearse. It was possible, I thought, that Jack had just stolen the car to lure me to a place where he could have his revenge on me. Kill me slowly. Kill Olive. He might not know it was a time-machine.

“You know we’re likely walking into a trap,” I said to Olive as I pulled the car out of the lot.

I looked at the time. We only had 29 minutes before we’d lose our ride home. The only good thing about that was Jack would lose the car/time machine. It would escape him. Of course we wouldn’t.

“I’d say it is a more without a doubt situation,” she said.

“I suppose he’s still angry.”

“You did cut the body he inhabited into little pieces and feed them to the fish.”

“Good point,” I said.

I hit the gas and ran a couple of red-lights as day gave way to night and our time, like the grains of sand in an hourglass, slipped into the “you will never get home” lower bulb.

Eden was the first place I’d felt at home since—since ever.

I put the pedal to the metal, a phrase Master Lee had liked to use. We had a few close calls, but at last we turned down a street with warehouses, abandoned from the look of them.

“Perfect place for a murder,” I said without thinking.

“You’d better change your attitude, Mister,” Olive said.

“You’re right,” I said.

“We are going to get our time-machine and go home no matter how many monsters we have to kill to do it.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said.

“That’s better,” she said. “Don’t call me ma’am.”

Chapter Two

At the end of the street was the chop shop. At least that was what it looked like to me as we pulled up. It was the only building on the street with lights and obvious activity. We parked in the shadows.

The sounds of clattering metal, pounding hammers, air compressors, and revving engines grew louder as we got closer. There was a faint night breeze and the strong smell of gasoline and motor oil riding on it.

The bright lights spilled out from the open garage door, illuminating the surrounding darkness. As we got closer, I could see workers. One was crouched beneath a sleek black sedan. Another leaned against a tool cart, puffing on a cigarette. A group huddled around one car. A Cadillac Deville. My Cadillac Deville. A fat man in blue overhauls carried a sledgehammer from a bench over to the group. They made way so he could get next to the Deville. He swung the hammer and smashed it into the windshield. It didn’t shatter or even crack. The big man put his weight, a considerable poundage, into his hammering. The windshield didn’t seem to notice. He had to give up after a dozen hits.

“Ready?” I said to Olive.

“As I’ll ever be,” she said.

We walked into the garage. There didn’t seem much use in sneaking around. Too many of them to fight our way to the Deville. And I didn’t even see Charles until we got in. He was toward the back. A couple of bodyguards, heavily armed, were on either side of him.

“What was your plan?” Olive whispered.

“Get into the car and drive away and disappear into the Temporal Nexus.”

“Right,” she said. “In need of detail.”

“He’s here boss,” a beefy guy in jeans and a t-shirt (but not a mechanic, no grease stains) carrying an automatic rifle shouted. Several others stepped out of the shadows and circled us, all with automatic weapons. I could see with my third eye that two of them were Supernaturals, probably vampires.

Something came out of the shadows. He was thin and tall and wore a top hat and a suit with tails. His face was basically a skull. I could see with my third eye that magic was sparking off him like sparks from fireworks. He looked like a nightmare, but I had to admit he was a well-dressed nightmare.

“Won’t you please follow me,” he said. There was a faint southern lilt to his words.

We followed him. Not that we really had a choice with all those guns pointed at us. Workers paused as we passed. There were many very expensive cars in this shop. Some were on lifts. Some were clearly being taken apart and others were clearly being put together.

I could see, as we got closer to Charles, that he was Jack. Charles, what was left of him, was faint as a setting sun on the other side of the horizon.

Jack leaned casually against a grimy workbench, a smug grin. There was a mocking familiarity to his posture.

“Surprise,” he said.

“What do you want?”

“Give me a chance to savor our reunion. No need to rush.”

There actually was. I had to keep myself from looking at my watch. I thought we had about six minutes left.

“Why am I here, Jack?”

“I’d like to say to satisfy my bloodlust with a long and painful execution, but there’s another reason.”

“Which is?”

Jack examined his nails in feigned nonchalance. “You have something I want.”

“What’s that?”

“You know.”

“I know,” I said. “But why don’t you tell me, anyway?”

“So,” he said. “You don’t know.”

“I know,” I said. “Of course, I know. But I want to hear you say it.”

“If you don’t have it,” he said, “I will at least get to kill you. That would be a nice consolation. I feel I owe you. I want to torture you until you beg me to kill you.”

“I think you’re missing the point of torture. You’re supposed to be trying to get information.”

“No reason it can’t be a pleasant experience,” he said. “Can you give me what I want or not?”

“Fortunately, I do know what you want. It’s in the Collection of Curiosities.”

“We’ll see,” he said.

“All right. We’ll see. Let’s see.”

There were crows up in the rafters of the warehouse. I wasn’t sure if there was enough to call them a murder, but I thought so. I hoped so.

“You put it in the Collection of Curiosities?” he said.

“I didn’t say I did,” I said.

“You either did or you didn’t. Which is it?”

“I didn’t.”

“I was there when your Master Lee died. The same thing will happen to you if you don’t tell me the truth.”

“You killed him?” I said, quietly, but I felt anything but quiet.

“You and your girlfriend will die just like he did. A foolish death. Or we’ll all go for a ride in this time-machine back to Eden and you’ll give me the Knife of Death and I will let you both live. A generous deal. Otherwise, the girl dies now.”

The top hat smiled. He did have some large teeth. They seemed too large for his mouth. I heard him speak without moving his lips. Some kind of telepathy. He wasn’t speaking to me, though. It was to a demon, one of the big ones stuffed into a suit.

He came up behind Olive and pinned her arms behind her. She struggled, and the demon tightened his grip. He was smiling.

That smile didn’t last. He began to scream. He was trying to let go of Olive, but she wouldn’t let him. The demon’s hands turned bright red and swelled. Blisters spread over them. The man was howling by then. His hands turned black, and the blisters spread up his arms. Jack waved a hand and Olive flew against the wall.

I started to move toward her, but Jack put a gun to my head.

“I can’t possess you, but I can possess her,” Jack said to me. “She will never come back to you. She will never be yours again.”

“Don’t you give it to him,” Olive shouted at me.

“All right,” I said to Jack. “All right. I don’t want it, anyway.”

I glanced at my watch. We only had two minutes left.

I slowed my breathing, centering my hypnotic gift. I visualized a police raid with lots of sirens and cars. I created the illusion. The warehouse exterior flooded with bright light as officers unleashed high-powered spotlights on the building. The piercing sound of sirens was convincing, I thought. I was proud of their authenticity. Crisp orders were given and repeated and echoed as the raiding officers rushed the warehouse. Everyone except for Jack seemed convinced. The gangsters started running for the exits, most firing guns as they did.

“It’s not real,” Jack shouted.

Most turned. Some stopped running. I called down the murder of crows and they attacked everyone. Even Jack. In a second he had spread death over them and every crow was falling, but some of them were still causing fear and disorder among the gangsters as they landed on their heads.

He shouted again. “It is all an illusion.”

But it wasn’t. Somehow, the illusion had come to life. That was what I thought at the time, anyway. There were real bullets flying through the air and some of the gang members were falling to the ground. They were coming from the police I created, which was impossible except that since it was happening, I guess it wasn’t.

Jack was spun around by a bullet in the shoulder. He healed himself in a second. He turned to Olive and raised his arm and I knew he was about to strike down Olive.

I slid a dagger from my wrist sheath and flung it towards Jack. He knocked it aside easily with a swing of his arm. But Olive, who had made her way toward me in the confusion, sent up a cloud of magic. It seemed to confuse him for a second. Meanwhile, all of his men were running all over the place, shooting at the police, disorganized enough to cause some friendly fire.

I ordered the Deville to open its doors and Olive and I jumped in. I could see by the timer we had seven seconds before we would lift off.

Olive flashed me a fierce grin. Even disheveled by combat, she looked beautiful and powerful, practically glowing with unleashed power.

Jack killed Bubba Lee? Was it possible? I thought it was. Master Lee was powerful and would have been hard for anyone to kill. But Jack wasn’t anyone. His powers were unique. If he got the drop on Master Lee, he might have killed him.

The Deville drove into time. We flashed away from the warehouse. A second later, we were in the basement of the library.

“How did you do it?” Olive asked as we sat in the Deville among all the treasures of the Collection of Curiosities.

“I didn’t,” I said.

“But you—”

There was a clearing of a throat. Since a car didn’t have a throat, it sounded like a backfire from an exhaust pipe.

“I may have made a little call,” the Deville said. “Officer down. Tends to bring them running.”

I laughed and then Olive and I were both laughing, and then, and I swear this was true even if I didn’t see how it could be, the Deville joined in and we were all three laughing.

Chapter Three

We were both coming down from the rush of adrenalin through our bodies.

“How could he know about Bubba Lee?” Olive asked

“I don’t know. Unless he was involved in his death. It’s not that hard to believe.”

He was powerful. When I’d recently learned that my best friend back in my teenager days in Port A., Lola, had not been murdered or even kidnapped, I’d suspected her of killing Master Lee or getting him killed. She’d denied my accusations when we reunited. I had been unconvinced by her denial because how could anyone, even Supernaturals, get the drop of Master Lee? It was one of the aspects of his death that I couldn’t get past. He was always so aware of his surroundings and masterful at fighting. How had someone got the jump on him? Blaming Lola was hard for me. I just didn’t want to believe she’d do that to him. Now, maybe, there was another possibility. Jack was old and his power was immense and it was possible something like him might be a match for Master Lee.

“Why would he kill your mentor?”

“I don’t know.”

I told her about the Knife of Death.

“We don’t know how long he had control of the mayor. Would the former librarian have looked for the knife for him?”

“If the price was right, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“That’s why Jack wanted to know if I brought the knife. He’d had the librarian look for it. He couldn’t find it. He thinks I brought it to the library.”

“Still doesn’t tell us how he was involved with your mentor.”

If Jack killed him, then I was going to kill Jack. I didn’t know how I’d do it, but I would or I would die trying.

Before Master Lee came into my life, I was headed down a dark road. I think without him, I would have taken the path of least resistance. Small-time criminal. Drinking and drugs. I might not have ever left Port Aransas. Master Lee got me to see another path. I owed him.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

I walked Olive up out of the library, leaving the Deville to self-repair itself. When we walked outside, it was dark. I looked at my watch. It was 2:30 in the afternoon. Time hadn’t moved while we’d been gone. It never did.

So why was it dark?

I showed Olive my watch.

“It shouldn’t be dark,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Weird.”

“Did we do it by going in the past to Austin?”

“Maybe,” she said, “but it’s happened before.”

“Gets dark in the middle of the day? Day is just going along like always and all of a sudden turns dark as night?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, like that. OK. See you later, Babe.”

“You work the dinner shift?” I asked.

She said she did. I said I’d probably be over for dinner. We kissed. One kiss led to another and another, and we made out for a while. Then she left.

I watched her walk away. She knew how to walk.

I sat on the front porch of the library in one of the big patio chairs. I gazed up at the stars and the wanning sliver moon that was now filling the dark sky. When day turned to night, you had to ask yourself if you could depend on the world to be what it was supposed to be.

I looked around for my hellhound, Fluffy, who had run off into the haunted woods before I’d left for Austin and not come back when I called for him. No hellhound in sight, though. I wasn’t worried yet. Of course, there were plenty of things out in that wood to worry about, but Fluffy was a hellhound. He could take care of himself.

I thought back to Master Lee. How he’d taught me martial arts and about being a supernatural and how he’d never let me down. I told myself what I had told myself a million times. I was responsible for his death because I’d asked him to find out what had happened to Lola, worried she’d been kidnapped or murdered and had not just run away. I didn’t know how to find her, but I knew Master Lee had ways. I begged him to use them and get her back.

Master Lee kept much of his past hidden from me. I knew a few things. One was he’d worked for the government at some point hunting down criminals, Supernatural criminals. I knew he’d been a monk in a Tibet monastery and been taught the ways of many martial arts. I knew he’d been a sailor, possibly a pirate at some point. He had many experiences and connections. He could find Lola. I believed that.

Then I thought of Jack. That gravelly voice, the smug swagger, predator written all over him. I’d thought he looked familiar because I’d seen many of his type, some Supernatural and some not. They infected the world like a virus.

But now it felt more personal, like maybe I’d met him somewhere. It could have been on my travels. It could have been when I was following the missions the angel sent me on. If I was honest, I knew I was trying to make up for the bad things I’d done with those missions. The bad things I kept buried. I could have met him then, but I thought it was earlier than that. In my teens. Where? I couldn’t think where.

A crow landed on the railing.

“Welcome back,” the crow said.

“Thank you.”

“I have a message from you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Do you suffer from debt? Do you owe the IRS or Supernatural gangsters, who will torture you for your inability to pay? We have operators standing by ready to help you consolidate your debt problems. We—”

“Hang up,” I said.

The crow looked a little disappointed, but nodded and flew off.

I saw a four-legged beastly figure coming across the bridge in the faint moonlight. Fluffy. I felt relieved. When he saw me, he half-barked, half-roared and came bounding up the gentle rise where the library had been built so that it could oversee the town. He jumped up onto the porch. I got out of the chair. His greetings could be effusive. I braced myself as he bumped into me and gave me a giant tongue lick, coating my arm with hellhound spittle.

“Easy boy,” I said.

He calmed down. I knew if he jumped up on me, I was likely to crash through the railing down into the bushes below. He let me pet him with only a few licks of the giant tongue.

I was considering going down to my apartment and trying to catch an afternoon nap. The darkness was triggering my weariness. Many hours had passed in Austin, even if they hadn’t passed here. It was like I had jet lag. My time was all messed up. Just a quick nap.

But then I saw something that had not existed in Eden before I went to Austin. There was a dirt road out-of-town up the mountain. In the past, at least the past since I’d been in Eden, the past I’d experienced here, there had never been a road beyond Lord Blackstone’s mansion at the edge of town. Now there was.

Roads appearing out of nowhere were likely to be dangerous. That was a well-known fact. But what could I do? I had a sweet-tooth and a curious nature. No one was perfect.

“Let’s go have a look,” I said to Fluffy.

It wasn’t like I didn’t know what curiosity did to the cat. But before it killed him or her, what wonders the cat must have seen? Anyway, the truth is no one gets out of here alive. Maybe satisfying a curiosity wasn’t the worst way to go.

Chapter Four

It was steep going at first. The trail was still in a wood but it didn’t have the feel or the look of the haunted forest that was just across the creek which ran down from the top of the mountain.

The moon floated above the trees, dappling the trail with pale moonlight. Fluffy and I made our way up the winding path toward the top of the mountain. I scratched him behind one tufted ear. He made a little sound of pleasure, something between a purr and a pleasure growl. One advantage of his lion size was he was easy to pet while you walked.

“Squirrel,” he shouted and went running off.

A few minutes later, he came back.

“Love squirrel,” he said.

“Do you?”

“Tastes like chicken,” he said. Then he yuk, yuk, yucked.

I had a feeling that hellhounds that chortled were unusual.

Fast as he was and powerful and deadly in a fight, I thought he didn’t actually catch and eat the squirrels he chased. I had the feeling he might be a catch and release hellhound when it came to squirrels. I could be wrong.

Up ahead, a sudden blinding flash of white light filled the forest. I couldn’t see a thing. Fluffy was whining and growling at the same time next to me. Then he moved in front of me and planted himself, growling so deep the earth shook beneath my feet.

I was still blinded. I fought to see and through the blinding white. I saw a figure. Nine or teen feet tall. Broad-shouldered, with flowing silver hair and white wings arched from his back, feathers glowing softly.

“Hello Gabriel,” I said.

“I have a mission for you.”

The Archangel Gabriel was the messenger of God. His voice was rich and melodious and resonated through the forest. His voice was familiar. It was the voice that had said exactly what he’d just said to me hundreds of times over the last decade. He directed me to a place I was needed. I had trusted that voice all those years. Now I was less sure because of our past meetings in dreams.

Gabriel gazed down upon me, his brilliant aura giving him authority. “I’ve been sent by the Creator to command you to help us with the battle to come. You have been chosen. It is a great honor.”

“I’m afraid you’ve wasted a trip,” I said. “I’m already trying to stop Armageddon.”

Gabriel shook his head solemnly. “Not to stop it, Kevin. Start it. The Lord God orders you to start The End of Days, and as prophesied in the Bible, these will lead to Armageddon.”

His eyes were starlight. They were blue and not yellow, but that was what they reminded me of.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Gabriel stepped closer. He reached out one massive hand to squeeze my shoulder in a fatherly, affectionate way. Up close, the pressure of his raw divine presence was crushing, but I refused to step back.

“All is coming to fulfillment as the Lord has ordained. The pieces are in position, and you, Kevin, are the chosen catalyst. Praise be God.”

“Why me?”

Sighing, Gabriel straightened, wings spreading. Silver light cascaded around us.

“Recently, a vision came to me as I slept–a vision straight from our Father’s heart,” He paused for dramatic weight. His giant wings, height, and divine light gave him gravitas.

He continued, “I saw a figure wreathed in star flame, with eyes of silver. And I heard the Creator’s own voice speaking. ‘My catalyst has the blood of the Betrayer. But there is goodness in him. Through him, men and women will be reborn and the betrayer’s time ended.’”

“You’re saying he wants me to be the anti-Christ?” I said.

Gabriel gripped my shoulders, his touch searing even through my jacket. “You are the son of the betrayer. You will betray the betrayer. It is the Creator’s will.”

I would be betraying the betrayer who also happened to be my father. True, he had not been in my life through my entire childhood and into adulthood and was the ruler of hell and had maybe only come into my life because he believed I was the anti-Christ, but still my father.

“Betray him how?” I asked.

“You will bring Armageddon. His followers will follow you, the hero who led them through the End of days and to the last battle. And then you will show your true self, a soldier of the lord. And they will be confused and weakened. The battle will be ours and you will earn your white rings.”

“I’ll become an angel?”

“You will be transformed.”

“He can do that?”

“He can do anything. He is the Creator of this universe. All of your sins will be forgiven.”

“When you came to me and gave me missions, you knew this was coming?”

“God did not tell me exactly what was coming, but he told me how special you were and that you would play a part in the rebirth of men and women that is to come.”

“He was testing me?”

“And you passed.”

“All of it was a test?”

“For the good of heaven.”

The good of heaven. The bad of Hell. There it was again. I felt suspicious of both. What did rebirth mean?

“I don’t want to be the one who brings the End of Days,” I said.

Gabriel held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. He stepped closer again, halo dimming to a soft glow around his majestic head. His touch was gentle–almost fatherly–as he cupped my shoulder.

“I know your heart, Kevin. It is good. You have done good works. But now you must face the most dangerous monsters of all.”

My relatives? I suspected there were more than a few people in the world who felt this way about their relatives. My brothers and sisters were demons, so technically, they were monsters. Still, it made me defensive. It was all right for me to call them monsters, but not for someone else to call them monsters. Though I didn’t have much experience with family, I thought this might be the way a lot of people felt when it came to family.

“What will come of it?” I said.

“Heaven has faith in you.” His rich voice shook the trees. “God loves you.”

“And if I say no.”

He sighed. “I have seen you become a man from the time I first came to you. I am on your side. I caution care. God is a jealous god and sometimes a vengeful one. He does not tolerate disobedience. Do not directly refuse him. I will bring you another message soon, and you must be ready to act.”

With a final gust of Starfire, Gabriel vanished in a swirl of silver feathers. Fluffy gave a low growl of disapproval. I concurred.

The path forward disappeared. The path had been to the angel, to the message.  We turned back down the mountain toward home, toward Eden. Heaven and Hell would have their battle and one would win and one would lose. And I was supposed to light the fuse. I was supposed to make sure the right side won.

The right side. Surely heaven was the right side. But I couldn’t help wondering what would happen to humans even if the “right” side won.

Chapter Five

When we got back to town, Fluffy walked with me to the café. I decided it was time the town started to get used to the idea of me having a hell hound around. The street lamps were on. It was a little after five in the afternoon, but it looked like midnight.

There were people on the streets and the three teenagers (the one who died recently trying to poison The Tree of Life was still dead). They were sitting in the park at the center of the town square at one of the picnic tables. The early birds were going into the café.

Sara Raintree walked toward us. Fluffy’s tail wagged. I didn’t blame him. She was a beautiful woman with a kind heart and an accomplished healer witch.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Fluffy,” I said.

He wagged his nubby tail harder and looked into her eyes. His were red because he was excited.

“Hello Fluffy,” she said.

“I named him when I was a kid,” I said.

She petted him. “I’ve never actually seen one of these. I’ve heard of them.”

“He’s friendly,” I said. “Until he isn’t. Mostly, that’s when I’m threatened.”

“I’ll be sure not to threaten you,” she said.

“He likes you.”

“I imagine when people see your hellhound, the pool dates will become a lot further off.”

Since I’d taken over as librarian, the town had had a pool, apparently very popular, on how long I would last before being eliminated from my position, which for the librarian of Eden almost always meant being eliminated from life. At first I’d laughed it off, but it persisted even now, several weeks into the job. It was beginning to irritate me.

“I hope so,” I said.

She smiled. “Nice to see you, librarian. And nice to meet you, Fluffy.”

“Like her,” Fluffy said as she walked away.

“Me too,” I said.

We crossed the street to the café. Naturally, Fluffy, all 400 pounds of him, got plenty of looks. When we got to the café, I told Fluffy to sit, which he did, and stay, which I wasn’t sure he would.

“Pretend you’re a statue,” I said.

“I am a statue,” he said and froze. He made himself so still, I didn’t think he was even breathing. He looked like he was made of stone.

I went inside. The café was about a third full, which was about average for dinner. Breakfast and lunch were the busiest meals in Lucy’s. Several people asked me what that was outside, and I told them a hellhound.

A few people believed me and a few people didn’t.

I saw Rip in the back. I’d expected to see him since he took most of his meals at the café and he was not one to miss a meal. He had at least three every day.

I asked if I could join him, and he told me to sit myself down.

“What does he eat?” nodding toward Fluffy, who was still standing still as a statue outside. “Hellfire?”

“Whatever he can catch,” I said. “He goes off into the forest and finds food. Sometimes I feed him stinky meat.”

Olive stopped and asked me what I wanted for dinner; at the same time, she dropped off Rip’s cheeseburger and fries.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” I said.

“Not very healthy,” she said. “We have a nice veggie plate tonight.”

“How old are you?” I said to Rip Van Winkle.

“Old,” he said.

“See,” I said.

“Not really,” Olive said.

“Over a hundred?” I said.

“Certainly,” Rip said.

“See,” I said to Olive. I turned to Rip. “You’ve eaten thousands of hamburgers, haven’t you?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Makes sense to eat like a man who’s over a hundred,” I said.

“But you’re not exactly human, are you?” Olive said to Rip.

He shrugged. “Not exactly.”

I think I’d know for a while “not exactly” was the answer to that question, but what I didn’t know was exactly what he was. In the past, he’d hinted that he’d met King Arthur once. And he did call those twenty years he’d slept a long nap, so that was another hint.

“Fine,” Olive said. “A burger and fries coming up.”

“Have you ever heard of a knife called the Knife of Death?” I asked him as he tore into his hamburger.

He didn’t talk with his mouth full. He wasn’t that kind of old man. When he was ready, he said, “I’ve heard of such a knife, but I do not know if it exists. I don’t want to shock you, but many stories are not true.”

“Seems that an ancient evil spirit who happened to inhabit our former mayor and now inhabits the body of his brother thinks it’s true. And he thinks it might be in the library’s special collection.”

“Just because he’s evil and ancient, that doesn’t mean he’s not susceptible to the wiles of a storyteller.”

“So, it’s not true,” I said.

“You know what a myth is?” he asked.

“I’ve heard the term before.”

“People always think a myth is an untrue story. That’s not it. It is a story that may or may not be true. I can tell you a story about the Knife of Death that may or may not be true.”

“A myth,” I said.

“Very good, Grasshopper. You want to hear it.”

“Please,” I said.

So, he told me the story:

One day, Death went to the creator and told him he had a little problem. It seemed that an immortal had appeared on the list of his pickups for that day.

“That does present a problem,” the creator agreed.

“The list is the list,” Death said.

“Quite right, you are,” the creator said. “The list is the list.”

“So we agree.”

“Naturally.”

“So, how do I make the pickup?”

“Ask him to come with you.”

“But what if he won’t come willingly? They often do not you know. In fact, 99% of them do not come willingly.”

“I supposed as much,” the creator said.

“I don’t think I can force an immortal.”

“It seems unlikely,” the creator said.

“Sooooo-oooh?” Death said.

“Let me think about it,” the creator said.

“Fine.”

Meanwhile, Death went about his business. There was a battle between barons on a field in England, which led to a war between kings and queens and countries all over Europe. It kept Death busy for a long time. Since time didn’t exist for Death, he couldn’t say how long exactly, but long. The immortal he was supposed to pick up stayed alive. Strange things began to happen. One day, time ran backwards. Another day, several extinct species returned, including the saber-tooth tiger.

Death went back to the creator’s castle and his servant told Death that the creator was out in his workshop. He told him the creator was expecting him, which was always true because the creator knew everything (or so he said).

Death went to the workshop. He could smell the acrid scent of metal being forged as he approached the small wooden shed floating in Outer Space, of all places. Wisps of smoke curled out through the gaps between the rough-hewn planks that formed the walls and ceiling.

Death went inside. The creator stood with his back to Death, his broad shoulders hunched over a small forge that pulsed with heat. Death told the Creator what had happened.

The creator said nothing.

Tongues of flame licked around the creator’s strong arms as he worked a bellow to stoke the fire hotter. Death watched silently as the Creator poured glowing molten metal into a mold on a heavy stone workbench. Even from a distance, Death could feel waves of heat rolling off the orange liquid.

The creator was like this sometimes. So involved in something he seemed not to hear or see anything else. But, of course, he was a multi-tasker. He could be doing dozens of other things in other dimensions and universes.

The creator grabbed a pair of metal tongs and picked up the molten metal that had hardened somewhat and plunged the mold into a barrel of water, unleashing an angry hiss of steam. A second later, he held up a jet-black blade that seemed to absorb all the light around it.

“Here you are,” the creator said to Death.

Death eyed the sinister-looking dagger. He analyzed it.

“Hmmm,” he said. “I believe this might just do the trick.”

“I call it the Knife of Death because it is, well, will be, technically, your knife.”

“Very appropriate,” Death said.

Death drifted closer, tendrils of inky shadow rippling around him. He could feel a strange energy thrumming around the knife. It resonated in his very essence.

“Hmmm,” he said. “Even my scythe gives the immortals naught but a faint chill. Are you sure this will work?”

He held it up, turning it so the smoky metal caught the light from a star. “I forged this from the primordial void itself — from the essence of oblivion and utter destruction in the moment of creation of the universe. If that doesn’t do the job, I don’t know what will.”

Death didn’t point out that the creator always said he knew everything. Death hadn’t lasted eons by speaking his mind without care around the Creator.

“Yes,” he said, watching the knife in the light. “Yes, I think it might do the job.”

Death reached out a single skeletal finger toward the dagger. As he brushed the blade, images of endless silence and darkness flowed through his mind, creating an almost irresistible longing for the life beyond this world. It was like holding oblivion in his hand.

“Extraordinary,” Death murmured.

Death was spellbound. Something that seldom happened.

The creator looked up, his ageless eyes boring into Death with intensity. “Use it only on immortals. It could end a whole species that is not immortal. You hold the power to end civilizations, worlds, life itself in this universe. Weld it carefully.”

Death inclined his hooded head and reverently wrapped his skeletal fingers around the hilt of the knife. He felt the longing in it. The longing for destruction. It made him uneasy. He did what he did because it had to be done. He did not feel any passion for it. The knife was different.

“Go now and do what must be done,” the creator commanded.

Death vanished without another word, sweeping across galaxies and dimensions until he came to the small blue planet where the immortal dwelled. He found the god relaxing beneath a tree, watching wispy clouds drift across an orange sky as the light faded towards evening.

Death stood silently behind the immortal, perceiving the infinitesimal motes of life energy. He drew the Knife of Death from within his robes. The blade seemed to drink, the last rays of light vanishing over the horizon.

The immortal turned and looked straight at Death, an expression of mild surprise on his weathered face. A faint smile touched his lips before drifting away.

Death said nothing. He stepped forward and plunged the knife into the immortal’s heart. No blood flowed. But the god’s smile faltered as his skin paled to an awful, bloodless gray. Cracks spread across his face and down his neck. He opened his mouth but made no sound. His entire body became brittle and turned to dust. A wind from far away in time and space swept the dust to oblivion.

An emotion stirred within Death’s empty ribs that he could not place. Triumph, perhaps. No. Satisfaction? Relief? What was it? He found the sensation vaguely troubling. Uneasiness. Yes, that was it. An uneasiness. He returned the Knife of death to his robe. Death vanished into the gathering night, leaving only silence behind.

Chapter Six

Inoticed that outside it was clear and light, but it was the light of dusk, the sun starting to fade away.

“That’s some story,” I said.

“Told to me by a wizard who I used to play chess with.”

“Here in Eden?”

“No,” he said. “In another place.”

Rip had a few fries left on his plate and he ate them.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” I said. “What other place?”

“I don’t mind,” he said, smiling as he chomped on his last handful of fries.

My hamburger arrived with a side of fries, and I knew my fries wouldn’t be safe with him around, but he had just told me a story and I felt I owed him; when he asked if he might help himself to a few fries, I said yes.

“Any fall out from killing the mayor?” he said nonchalantly.

“He was trying to kill me,” I said, “and also was inhabited by an evil spirit who is now in his brother’s body.”

“He can move from body to body?”

I nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Just met him in Charles’ body in Austin. Actually, he tried to force Olive and me to bring him back to the library. He wants the Knife of Death.”

“He can’t have it,” Rip said.

“No, he can’t,” I said.

“Why now?”

“I think he thinks that I brought the knife here.”

“Did you?” Rip said, taking another handful of my fries.

“No.”

I saw Mrs. Blansky walking by out on the street with her pig Boris. I thought the pig was significantly bigger. I had a nervous moment thinking Fluffy might be remembering bacon I’d given him and see Boris as a meal, but he was still a statue. Only his eyes followed Boris.

“And now Lord Blackstone is going to become the mayor. Traditionally, the mayor is a villain and the librarian a hero. A town needs balance. So perhaps this is not such a bad thing. Does he still want to kill you?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“As far as villains go, we could do worse,” I said.

He took another handful of fries. They were going fast. I ate some.

“The Knife of Death could be in the Collection of Curiosities,” I said. “I don’t know everything that’s in there.”

“There have been powerful magicians and even wizards who were past librarians. If one of them acquired such a curiosity, they would certainly hide it in a place it would be hard to be found.”

“I need to find it,” I said.

“He thinks you have it,” Rip said. “He’ll try again.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“If the Knife of Death can kill any living thing, then you have to wonder what this spirit you call Jack wants it for? Who does he want to kill?”

I did have to wonder, but I sure didn’t want to; it made my fingers and toes tingle. It was what I got instead of a gut feeling. Jack had something in mind for the knife.

I finished my coffee and said I’d see Rip later. I had to get out of the café. It felt hard to breathe. The air came easier outside. Fluffy said, “No more statue?”

“No more statue,” I said.

The last traces of daylight were fading behind the western peaks. Fluffy padded along at my side as we went down the street. The air held the first chill of evening. Now I just wanted the quiet of the library and the comfort of a good book before bed. But as we crossed the little park that was Eden’s original Garden of Eden, I couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding. Fluffy seemed to share my unease. His ears pricked, and he scanned the dark paths between the oak trees, nostrils flaring.

“What do you smell, boy?” I murmured, more to soothe my nerves than because I expected an answer.

“Getting yourself in trouble again, I see,” she said from behind me.

Whirling around, I saw a slim, grey cat perched on a park bench, casually grooming one outstretched paw. Two unsettlingly intelligent golden eyes gleamed up at me through the gloom. The eyes were familiar even if the color of her coat had changed.

“The time traveling cat,” I breathed. Fluffy bounded over to bunt his huge head enthusiastically against her. The cat tolerated the hellhound’s affections for approximately three seconds before putting a halt to it with one elegantly extended claw tapped on his nose. Fluffy stopped and became perfectly still.

“Get your beast under control, librarian,” the cat said, delicately smoothing her ruffled fur.

Fluffy backed away to my side.

“Anything strange happened here?”

I told him about the dark in the middle of the day.

“That’s not strange for here. What else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, something is going on somewhere in this time.”

“How do you know?”

“I went to the future and there’s nothing there. That’s how I know.”

“You mean you think Olive and I have ended the human race?”

“Projective analysis shows a drastic narrowing of probable survival outcomes for terrestrial sapient life on earth because you and your girlfriend are together. But this is different.”

“How?”

“Everything is gone.”

“Animal and plant life.”

“You’re being dense,” the time-cat said. “The whole universe. Just not here.”

“But that’s not possible.”

“My first thought. But then I remembered that anything is possible. Something here in this time makes the universe of the future not exist. Naturally, I thought of you, but now I’m not so sure.”

“This is a lot to take in.”

“I’m warning you. If I find out you have anything to do with the universe’s missing in the future, I will have a team of assassins here faster than you can say, black hole.”

Fluffy licked my hand. I absently petted him.

“I don’t,” I said. “At least I don’t think I do.”

Fluffy let out an excited yip. I turned to see Olive approaching up the lamplit path. I imagined she’d just got off work. I could see a few hesitant steps as she saw I was talking to the cat.

The time-traveling cat frowned, then sighed. “I’ve moonbeams to attend to. Moonbeams and moonbeams before I sleep. And also, a universe to save. Watch your step, librarian. And watch hers, too.”

The cat disappeared. Olive walked over and we sat together on the bench. Fluffy wagged his stub and Olive petted him. “Now, what does she want?”

“She thinks maybe we’re going to do worse than end humankind.”

“What’s worse?”

“She doesn’t know, though. It could be something else. It might not be us.”

“What?” she said.

“End the universe of the future.”

We sat in silence. After about a minute, Olive said, “Do you think we should break up?”

“Do you think we should?” I said.

“I mean, if it’s the universe.”

“We’d have to,” I said. “But the cat doesn’t know. She’s kind of quick with the blame, don’t you think? First, it’s we’re going to end humankind and now it’s the universe.”

“Profiling?”

“No cat treats for that cat,” I said.

“If it’s the universe or us, then we have to break up,” she said.

“Sure. Once we know.”

“If the cat has something more than just a suspicion,” she said. “That’s what I think. We need more substance.”

“Come on, let’s head back to my place,” I said. “I need a drink.”

“I think I might too,” she said.

Both of us were uneasy as we walked to the library.

Soon we were seated cozily hip to hip on the sofa in my apartment, sharing a generous pour of honeyed whiskey as Fluffy dozed on the floor next to us. The liquor burned away some of the chill of the time-cat’s predictions. The rest of it slipped off because of my proximity to Olive. It started when our knees touched. Then her azure nails brushed against my wrist when she handed me a second glass of whiskey.

We kissed.

I could feel the heat of her body as we pressed against one another. We kissed and pulled back. She traced one finger down my cheek. Then we were kissing, and it was a rush to get each other’s clothes off. The heat between us, the groping, the press of skin, melted away the time-cat’s prediction of the future. Everything dropped away but the moment.

Later, back in the bedroom, we lay entwined in contented silence as moonlight spilled through the high curtained windows. Scattered clothes and an empty bottle gave the room a well-used look. Fluffy kept a stoic watch at the bedroom door. I smiled into the silk of Olive’s hair, breathing her in. I pressed a kiss to her temple. I had one of those moments when I knew, without the faintest doubt, there was no place else in the world I wanted to be.

“Whatever comes,” she said, “we’ll face it together.”

“Whatever comes,” I said.

In that moment, with her arms around me, the time-cat’s warnings felt far away. But I knew we’d have to deal with them, figure out a way to love each other without destroying the universe.

Chapter Seven

Iwoke slowly, blinking against rays of sunlight spilling through the windows. I felt the naked body against me and for a moment I felt relief. Her sleepy eyes opened.

I kissed her. Real. When you were a dreamwalker, it was always good to have that confirmation.

“Good morning,” she whispered.

“It is,” I said.

I drew her close for a lingering kiss, her hair silky against my cheek.

Eventually and reluctantly, we parted. I rolled out of bed, collecting the scattered clothing of yesterday, deciding that my wrinkled t-shirt would not work for another day. She slipped on her clothing from the night before.

“Time for coffee?” I said.

“A quick one,” she said.

Leaving her, I went into the kitchen to make coffee. Fluffy wagged his stub from the floor. I petted him. He followed me out of the room and into the kitchen.

“Time to eat?” he asked. “Time to eat? Time to eat? Time to eat. Time to-”

“OK,” I said. “I get the idea.”

I had got out what stinky stinky meat I had left and put it in the biggest bowl I had, a mixing bowl. He ate it in three bites. I made coffee.

I expected Fluffy would want to go hunt in the haunted forest on his own.

“Time to eat, time to eat. Time to—”

I interrupted his refrain and promised him I’d let him out in a couple of minutes and he could hunt.

The coffee machine started to gurgle. I opened the fridge to examine contents. I didn’t have much beyond basics like eggs, bacon, milk, and orange juice. As the machine gurgled, my thoughts, drifting dreamily back to images of Olive and I the night before. They made me happy.

“You ever been in love?” I asked Fluffy.

“Love stinky stinky meat,” he said. “Love more stinky stinky meat. Love—”

“Got you,” I said.

Olive came in and we carried cups of coffee upstairs and out onto the front porch. We sat in chairs. Olive checked her watch and said she only had about five minutes. It was cool outside; the early mornings were often cool in Eden. Fluffy didn’t run off into the woods. He lay at my feet.

The sunlight came over the mountain, just for us. That was how it seemed. The hummingbird feeders hung along the porch railing, drew darting flashes of emerald and ruby. Even the hulking haunted woods just on the other side of the stream seemed less dark and haunted this morning.

“Beautiful here,” I said.

She smiled, but I could see she saw something besides just the beauty.

“We’ll figure out how to be in love without destroying the universe,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

Olive finished her coffee and reluctantly announced she should head home to change for her breakfast shift at the café. I told her I’d see her over at Lucy’s. We kissed several times. Then she hurried off down the street. The sun was up and spreading a warm light over the town.

I watched Olive until she disappeared from view. I loved that girl. I realized I’d never really been in love. I’d been in like a few times, even like you very much a few times. This was different.

I poured out undrunk coffee and set the empty cups by the door.

“Walk time boy,” I said,

Fluffy nearly knocked me over in his eagerness to get off the porch.

We wandered on the path that followed the stream. I expected Fluffy to take off any second into the haunted woods. He could, no doubt, jump the stream, though it was probably fifteen or twenty feet wide.

We came to the bridge, and I saw, walking across it, the mocking man, who was about ten inches tall and dressed in his usual lumberjack outfit and was carrying an axe. Next to him was a woman, a mockingwoman I guessed, who also was about ten inches tall and also had an axe. Both axes were flung over their shoulders and their blades glinted in the sun.

“There’s the librarian,” he said to her in a loud voice. “I had to keep him from walking into one of the headhunter’s traps. Never watches where he’s going.”

“Never watches where he’s going,” she said. “That’s the way the biggies all are. Don’t see nothing if you don’t tell them.”

“Don’t see nothing if you don’t tell them,” mocked the mockingman. “Big feet, just step wherever.”

“So big they think they think they invincible but they not. No. No. Biggies not so big.”

“Who’s this?” I asked the mockingman.

“This my girlfriend, Griselda. She a mockingperson. You notice?”

“I did,” I said.

“They food?” Fluffy said, eyeing the little people who were, I suppose, about the size of squirrels.

“No,” I said.

“Taste like chicken?”

The mockingman and mockingwoman raised their axes off their shoulders.

“He’s kidding,” I said.

“Not funny,” the mockingman said.

“Not funny,” the mockingwoman said.

“Nice to meet you, Griselda,” I said. “I’m Kevin.”

“I’m Kevin,” she mocked. “You the librarian. I know you. You known in the woods. Big man. Son of Satan. Librarian of Eden. Save town. Big man.”

“Big man,” the mockingman said. “How my girl, Olive, big man?”

He looked quickly at Griselda, which was wise because she swung her axe at his head. It should be noted that she did not swing it with the blade side aimed at the head. Still, he ducked just in time to avoid brain damage.

“Ex-girl,” he said.

“Ex-girl,” she said. “You remember.”

“I remember,” he said.

“Good thing you remember.”

“Going to the café?” I said.

“Yes,” the mockingman said.

“See you there then. By the way, Olive is fine.” I did owe the mockingman for saving my life once, but he had threatened it many times, too.

Fluffy said, “Hungry, hungry, hungry.”

The mockingman and mockingwoman walked into town toward the café. Fluffy ran into the haunted woods. He disappeared after about three seconds. I stood over the rushing stream. A fish jumped out. A very large fish with bulging eyes. It said, “Beware the eyes of march.” Another fish, or maybe the same fish swimming in circles, jumped up, “Beware the eyes of march.”

“It’s not eyes,” I said. “Ides of march.”

“They watching,” the fish said.

Another jumped up. “They watching you.”

“Who?” I said.

The fish were gone, of course.

What eyes?

Another warning. They seemed to be piling up. I walked back into town toward the café.

Chapter Eight

Iheard a Stevie Ray Vaughn riff drift through the air above and around me.

“Good morning, Edenites! I’m your host Marta, back after a short hiatus, coming at you live with all the news and olds and everything in between.”

The affable voice boomed out over the town. I realized I’d missed her.

“Wynonna Whitmire reports that her crow, Edgar, who we all know as the life of the Christmas party every year, has gone missing. He was last seen with a murder of crows flying over the haunted forest, chasing a villain from the village of Waylaid who had stolen Wynonna’s heart, which she takes out and recharges at night in her garage. The heart was anonymously returned, but Edgar has been gone for three days now. Please relay any news you might have to Wynonna directly or to me if you’d prefer.”

Being a recent arrival in Eden, I had never met Edgar and never witnessed him at a Christmas party, but I had heard before that he was an entertaining mimic.

“In related news,” Marta continued, “reports have come in from The Bar manager Polly concerning a seven-foot chicken-legged gentleman in top hat and tails who brought a talking frog to the bar. He downed a boilermaker, then up and disappeared right before her eyes. The frog, however, remains. Not to put too fine a point on it, the frog won’t shut up and he is driving Polly crazy. If anyone would like a talking frog or knows anything about the man who abandoned the frog, please get in touch with Polly.”

The talk of a talking frog made me think of my talking hellhound. I looked over at the bridge, hoping to see him racing across it, but no Fluffy.

“Moving on to community events, this Saturday marks the 25th annual Monster’s Ball. Eden’s unlicensed cryptozoologist Alice Von Vestburg will host. Costumes are not required if your appearance is monstrous without them.

“Finally, Madam Zelda will offer free readings next Wednesday on the other side of the bridge at midnight. She plans to harness the moon’s cosmic energies to channel messages from beyond. Bring your own candle and crystal.

“Final finally, a special election is being held today for mayor. You can vote at the table set up in front of the Church of Disorder, which has reappeared today, any time before seven tonight. There is only one person’s name on the ballot, but you can write in someone if you so desire.”

The broadcast concluded with a final sad and haunting trumpet solo that I thought came from a Bob Seger song.

I walked over to the café. It was already busy. I sat at the counter next to Rip Van Winkle. I saw the mockingman and his new girlfriend down at the other end. They seemed to be ignoring each other. I felt a little bad about that. I shouldn’t have fanned the flame of jealousy. It always did well enough on its own.

The cook, who looked like Pancho Villa, stepped out and glared at both Rip and me as he poured himself a glass of water. He hadn’t forgiven me or Rip for the time I had to put Rip on the cot he kept in the kitchen for his naps. Pancho took his naps seriously. But Rip had fallen asleep at our table in the café and was in need of a serious nap. This was a man, or a reasonable facsimile, who had once napped for twenty years. I had to put him somewhere.

“I had a strange crow message about you this morning,” Rip said to me.

Olive interrupted by asking me what I wanted, and I ordered pancakes. If the world were coming to the end, I would want pancakes. Since it was possible not only our world but the whole universe was coming to an end, it seemed like I should order pancakes for breakfast for the foreseeable future.

“You know,” she said. “Special election is today.”

“I heard.”

“I’ve already voted. I wrote in my father’s name.”

“Does he want to be mayor?”

“He says no, but if the people call him to duty, he’ll serve.”

When she’d left, Rip said that he doubted the town was ready to have a zombie as mayor, but he could be wrong. People surprised him sometimes.

“What was the crow message?”

“It was from the goddess, Morgana. She wanted me to warn you that the stars were lined up in such a way that you almost certainly will have a visit from Death today. She said she hoped that you would have a gentle passing.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” I said.

“You should have ordered bacon with your pancakes,” Rip said.

I motioned for Olive, who thought I wanted more coffee, and brought the pot.

“Could you add bacon to my order, please,” I said. “And cherry pie with ice-cream and a waffle.”

“You’re serious?”

I nodded. She shook her head. I accepted a refill, too.

Rip and I talked about death. He had been through a war and had seen a lot of it. He thought it was one of those things that gave life more meaning. I wasn’t so much against death as I was against old age. Rip agreed with me there.

Then we talked about football and Armageddon. He wanted to know how I was getting along with that project. I told him I was brainstorming different ideas for the End of days, which was a lie, but I didn’t want him to think I was lazy. My breakfast came, and I ate it all while Rip and I brainstormed ideas for the End of Days. He thought a day when all the machines caught a virus and stopped working would be a good start. I liked the idea of new reality shows like Survivor Apocalypse and Reality Rapture, televised and streamed, of course; more hunger games than The Bachelor. A Demonic Dance off and Dancing with the Demons were some other programs we thought had potential.

“You’re pretty good at this,” I said, finishing up the last of the cherry pie.

“To fight a demon, you have to think like a demon. I will be fighting on the side that tries to prevent an Armageddon from ever happening.”

I paid for Rip’s breakfast, as per our agreement, and hurried over to the church to cast my vote. I was going up the library stairs when the day, which had been sunny and temperate, turned dark and stormy, even a flash of lightning from the other side of the mountain.

Death appeared on my front porch.

“Gooooood mourning, librarian,” he said.

“That’s morning,” I said.

“You say tomato and I say tomatoe,”

He was looking like his usual self. Black robes, bad posture, scythe.

“What can I do for you?”

“I keep getting these delay notices on your death date and time. This has never happened before and it is beginning to perplex me. You must know someone in high places.”

“Not that I know of,” I said.

“This job does not allow me to eat and sleep. Of course, I don’t need to eat and sleep, but that is beside the point. I am busy all the time. You have made me hesitate. I dooooo not like to hesitate.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“There is something at work here. What is at work?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have my knife?”

“The Knife of Death?” I said.

“Exacccctly.”

“I don’t.”

“You get my knife and you give it back to me and I will not visit you again.”

“So, you’re not here to, you know, collect me.”

“Not toooday. Not ever if you give me my knife. An offer I have never made. You get my knife and you give it to me and I will not visit you again.”

“Immortality?” I said, just to be clear.

“Something like it. Someone might murder you, but otherwise you will live on and you will not age a day from the day you give me the knife.”

“That is a tempting offer,” I admitted.

“I have never given it before.”

I saw all the dead people I’d seen in my life. I saw them all at once, some that I had killed. A banshee wailed from the haunted woods.

“She loves to flirt with me,” Death said.

He disappeared.

Chapter Nine

Ihurried over to the library. As often was the case, the government man was waiting. He looked angry, which was sort of a go-to state for him. I looked at my watch. It was one minute before nine.

“On time,” I said, putting my ring into the lock on the door.

“You killed him. I have it on good authority you killed him.”

There was an aggrieved tone.

“Killed who?” I said.

“The mayor. I told you I was going to make out a complaint against you and you killed him to stop me.”

Wow. Just wow.

“I killed him because he was inhabited by an evil spirit and, honestly, from what his brother told me, he was a psychopath even before the evil spirit came along. He murdered several people. Your complaint had nothing to do with anything”

He said he didn’t believe me and stormed into the library.

“And I intend to complain to the new mayor,” he said as he walked over to the morning paper, The New York Times.

“As is your right,” I said.

“You’d better not kill him. You may think I’ll have no recourse, but I will.”

“I’m not going to kill someone just because they annoy me,” I said. “As a rule, anyway.”

Did I give him a look? Yeah, I gave him a look. He had nothing to say or anyway kept what he had to say to himself. Probably for the best.

As I ascended the stairs to the second floor of the library, the lights flickered and then went off. Emergency lights on the wall flipped on. They were faint.

At the end of the hall, I saw a room that was not there before. It had a plaque in red above the door with what appeared to be blood dripping down it and onto the white door. It was enough blood that it dripped all the way down to the floor. The plaque read ROOM OF DEATH. Probably a good idea to turn around and walk back down the stairs to the first floor. Maybe a better idea to run.

But I was the librarian, and this was my library. I couldn’t ignore something like a room with blood dripping on the door.

I opened the door and walked into the room. I was taken aback by the smell. Not the usual musty books of many of the old library rooms. This was more graveyard with a touch of mud of a freshly dug grave smell.

The shelves were lined with books on Death. Almost all of them had Death in the title.

The lights were still out, and the room had only candles to provide light. There was a window on the wall facing out and flashes of lightning did add to the candlelight.

The other walls were adorned with tapestries and paintings, each one depicting different interpretations of Death throughout history. Some showed the figure as skeletal, while others portrayed it as a skull on a human body. They were interesting but only vaguely captured Death’s true look.

Of course, there were stacks of books covering most of the room. As I made my way through the stacks, I felt a sense of foreboding. There was more here than just Death. There was the next world. I could feel the presence of those dark places where wispy spirits mourned the loss of life—a far too common portrayal of that world beyond our world, the afterlife.

I noticed a small desk in the corner, covered in parchment and quill pens. It seemed as though someone had been studying Death’s existence long before the room revealed itself to me. One of my predecessors, I supposed, a librarian trying to unlock secrets. I knew that those before me had often been the kind of men who looked to find secrets in the world.

I imagined them through the ages in this room reading book after book trying to find out the truth about Death. Trying to find out a way to avoid him.

I called out for the best three books on Death and three volumes flew at me and one hit me in the head, knocking me back a few feet. Why were the big books always the best shots? I felt my head for blood. Some blood, but not a deep cut. I picked up the books from the floor. A chorus of books were grumbling that those three were not the best, not by a long shot; they had simply been the fastest today. The books implored me to try again. They wanted to be read. That was true of all the books in the library. They all wanted to be read.

I made my way to the table at the far end of the room.

The first book had intricate illustrations of Death wearing his usual hooded black robes, with only darkness visible underneath the hood where his face would be. His hands were nothing but bone, and he carried a long scythe over his shoulders. He looked pretty much like I’d seen him look in person. The text explained how Death was in so many places at once. It seemed that Death was thousands and one at the same time. The thousands were a hive mind. Same as Santa Claus. Well, with a few important differences. Each operated with autonomy, but remained connected to and coordinated by a central consciousness.

Each single Death knew what the others did and could communicate at will. The Deaths would look the same to humans. In fact, they would assume there was only one Death. They would be right and they would be wrong.

The second book told stories about Death. One story was an old European folk tale about a doctor who managed to trap Death in a tree by some ancient magic. He prevented anyone from dying. It was a doctor’s dream at first. No more death. The townspeople rejoiced. Humans all over the world rejoiced. At first.

But soon they realized that no new babies were being born since Death was trapped. Some cosmic force had stepped into the story. No Death. No new life. And the elderly and suffering people just kept getting older and sicker, with no end in sight to their misery. Finally, the doctor went into the woods, freed Death, and allowed the natural cycle to resume. Death had to do what he did, and the living had to have it done to them in order to make room for more living.

The third book contained philosophical writings on Death. It pointed out that all men desperately sought ways to avoid death, to prolong their lives and achieve immortality, but no one escaped death, not even the great heroes of myth. All of creation was born and died and in-between what happened happened. A beginning, middle and end over and over.

Everyone had a specific time to die, and that time was written in the stars. Death always collected the soul when a mortal’s time was up. It was impossible for a human to escape Death when Death came for them, as impossible as day escaping night or night escaping day. It was the same everywhere.

Best to accept what could not be changed.

I shouted out that I wanted a specific story about how Death lost the Knife of Death. At first no book flew out from the many books. I heard some mumbling and a little grumbling, and finally a thin volume flew to me. I read it.

The Knife of Death was given to Death first by the Creator, but somehow it was lost by Death to a goddess. The book was a little vague on this point. It hinted that Death had fallen in love with the goddess. She used the knife to kill her husband, a god who had abused her for many years. But then she continued to kill gods and improve her position in her world. Finally, she was the most powerful of all gods and goddesses until she fell in love with a goddess and that goddess killed her to gain the power of the Knife of Death. Soon she herself was killed by a brother.

This was the way of the Knife of Death. Whoever owned it was eventually killed by someone who wanted its power. They, in turn, were killed. And on. And on.

One night a human who was known as the greatest thief of all time, Samson, son of a king in a kingdom on the sea, found his way into the world of gods and stole the knife. The knife then passed into the world of men and women. The thief was killed by his brother and then the brother by a king. The king used the knife to murder his uncle, and then his wife killed him and claimed the throne. And then her son killed the queen and became the emperor; then the son who had killed his mother was killed by his nephew. Around and around, it went like a homicidal merry-go-round. Someone killed to get the knife and then were killed by those closest to them who, in turn, were killed by someone close to them. I heard that sweet and terrifying music of the wooden horses and the grinding carnival song. It made me think of clowns, which I had a serious problem with.

The knife caused jealousy and envy and greed, all of which some humans had plenty of without the knife. Maybe it was fairer to say it focused the feelings, and it inspired action. Murder.

Death always arrived to escort the human out of the world too late. By the time he came to pick up a soul, the knife had moved on.

For thousands of years, the Knife of Death was passed from hand to hand, leaving a trail of death and misery in its wake. But now, it was missing. Lost to the world, waiting for its next unsuspecting victim to fall under its spell. Almost as if the knife had a life of its own.

And all this time, Death had looked for it and been unable to find it. He must have felt like it was the knife itself that was escaping him, keeping its freedom, destroying whatever touched it. Maybe the knife was just doing what it was made to do.

Death wanted that knife back. He needed it back.

Maybe I had only survived my appointment with death because I was somehow linked to the Knife of Death. But how?

Chapter Ten

Iwent back downstairs and out onto the porch and looked for Fluffy. No Fluffy. I called his name. No Fluffy. Most likely he was off chasing squirrels or eating something he’d killed. I wasn’t worried. Not too worried, anyway.

I closed the library to the public. Then I went to my apartment and my bedroom and put the ring in the place made for it and the entrance opened and I went from my bedroom into the first chamber of the Collection of Curiosities. The air was thick and musty, and the walls had a faint glow to them.

The entry room had the sword I’d often used and believed was Excalibur. In the first main chamber were mostly objects that had disappeared throughout history - Amelia Earhart’s lost plane, a crystal goblet rumored to have belonged to Anastasia Romanova, even an ancient Mayan sarcophagus that seemingly held no mummy within. Dozens and dozens of other items. This was the first chamber today, but it was not always the first chamber. The cave chambers of the collection changed, like the library. I thought the collection might expand and contract and that at any one time it might not have something it had before.

Someday, the sword and the Deville Time Machine might both be gone. So far, that day hadn’t come.

A little further on were weapons. A flickering torchlight alongside the legendary swords of Charlemagne’s paladins. Their hilts glimmered with impossible colors as I passed. The Bow of Odysseus, the bow only a hero could string. Further on there was the Staff of Moses, a gnarled piece of wood that had once parted the Red Sea and brought forth water from a stone. Attached to the wall was the Horn of Roland, said to have been sounded by the legendary knight. A little further on was the Spear of Achilles, said to have been forged by the gods themselves. The guns of Wyatt Earp and the rifle of Annie Oakley. But amidst all these famous weapons, there were also humble and unassuming one. A simple slingshot that, in David’s hand, had felled Goliath.

It was history. This collection was full of bits and pieces of our history as a species. It held some of our most important moments in our movement forward. Stumbles, plenty of stumbles, and terrible deeds right in there with great ones. But we were moving forward and here were relics that were records of that movement. The collection was awe-inspiring and humbling.

I wandered for hours this time (I had always been more purposeful in the past, more in a rush, trying to save someone or something). I saw more of the immense collection.

In the Chamber of Marvelous Machines, according to a plaque next to it, was an engine designed by Charles Babbage, clicking away at calculations no human could match. Beyond that lay the Loom of Fate carved out of obsidian and ivory, threads of silver and gold woven into tapestries depicting the great deeds of heroes yet to come. A legend, sure, but a vivid story of how men’s futures were determined.

There was no Knife of Death in all of this, though. I had hoped that Death knew something I didn’t, knew that it was in the collection somewhere. I thought it might come to me the way certain things in the collection had when I needed them. It didn’t. It might or it might not be in the collection, but how would I ever find it?

When I turned back, I was startled by an unfamiliar sound. The loom had begun to weave, and three minutes later there was a bill of sale or a copy of one. The bill of sale was between the Collector and a librarian named King Whitehair. One Knife of Death to be sold from the Collector to the wizard librarian, King Whitehair for the price of one life, King Whitehair’s.

He’d sold his life to get the Knife of Death in the collection? That seemed a little extreme. I thought it couldn’t be merely to possess it. Or did he think once he had it in his hand he could force the collector to take something else as payment besides his own life? Or maybe it was more noble. He wanted to get the knife away from the world of men and women, and hide it away in the library’s collection where it could not spread death.

The more I learned about the knife, the more I believed that though the Creator had likely made it to help Death do his job, the knife had something in it that the Creator had not intended, some darkness, a desire to destroy.

I folded the bill of sale up and put it in my back pocket.

I left the collection and went upstairs and out the front door of the library, which locked behind me. I went to the café to find Rip and when he wasn’t there, I went to Rip’s house. He came out on the porch and motioned for me to have a seat in one of the porch wicker chairs.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“Have you ever heard of someone named the Collector?”

“Only bad things,” he said. “He lives in the Haunted Woods. You best stay as far away from him as you can.”

“What’s he collect?”

“Not stamps,” he said.

“What?”

“Not coins.”

“What?”

“Living creatures, evil relics, things of that sort. They say he has dozens of magical animals and even a few human ones locked up in his collection.”

“I’ve got to see him. Do you know where he is in the Haunted Woods?”

He tried to dissuade me from visiting the Collector again.

“I don’t have a choice,” I said.

“You say that too often,” Rip said. “Most of the time when people say that they mean they do have a choice, but they don’t like the choice they have.”

“I have to go,” I said. “He has something I have to have.”

“He’s an evil man,” he said. “Maybe he can’t help himself. He needs to collect, but he’s still evil.”

“He is a man, though?”

“A Supernatural. I don’t know what kind. Not a magician or wizard, though.”

“I have to go,” I said again.

“Better let me go with you,” he said.

“That’s all right,” I said. “I appreciate the offer, but I can’t risk taking you. You’re kind of famous. You would be an addition to his collection.”

“And you aren’t?”

“It’s not your job to go.”

“He’ll have minions. Evil men like him always have minions.”

I had to admit this was true.

“I’m going,” he said. He stroked his beard. “The only thing you need to decide is whether we’re walking together.”

I decided that we would. He got his hat. I also saw he was carrying a gun, which I’d never seen him carry before.

We crossed the bridge over the fast-moving stream and into the haunted woods. At first it didn’t look all that haunted. The trees were tall and straight and full of healthy leaves (except the tree that had been poisoned by Diana on orders from Beelzebub, Lucifer’s right-hand demon, because she thought it was The Tree of Life).

But after a short while, the forest began to turn. The trees became gnarled and twisted, their limbs reaching out like skeletal fingers. Vines creeped up them and strangled the green away; the once-lush foliage was replaced with scrub brush and weeds. The woods were shrouded in shadows, and it was hard to shake the feeling that something threatening was just out of sight. The air turned damp and the pungent smell of decaying leaves, moss, and mildew hung in it. The silence was unnerving. Suddenly, it was broken by the screeches and screams of monkeys in the trees above.

Rip looked up. “I don’t care for the monkeys,”

We walked through the haunted forest along a path in the darkness of the thick trees and finally came to a small clearing. There was the cottage built into the mountain. The house, adorned with twisted branches and skulls, but the walls were stone like the mountain.

“That’s it,” Rip said. “That’s the Collector’s.”

Chapter Eleven

The heavy door was rusted metal and adorned with intricate carvings of twisted creatures. I could hear, with my third eye, the sound of suffering. They were near.

Rip led us up to the door and used the knocker to bang six times before stepping back. We waited in silence for what felt like an eternity before the door finally creaked open.

Standing in front of us was an old woman, hunched over. Her dress was worn and the shawl over her shoulders in tatters. Her long white hair fell carelessly over her shoulder. I knew she was a witch, but I also knew she couldn’t use her powers. They were locked away from her somehow.

Something howled, a long pitiful sound.

“What’s that?” I asked the woman.

“I am Mira, the collector’s housekeeper. He’s expecting you. Follow me.”

We followed her into the house. We passed shelves lined with jars filled with various substances, bones hanging from strings on the ceiling, and strange symbols etched into the walls. It was dark, cave-like, in the house. No electricity. Just candles on the wall. A damp chill closed around me. I felt a clammy hand on my neck. I swung around, but nothing was there.

But then I saw them with my third eye, which sometimes allowed me to see spirits who wandered the earth or were trapped in a place. There must have been thousands pressing against me, pressing all around me, ghosts desperate for a second of human warmth. They faded into the air, but I could still feel them.

These were definitely ghosts who were trapped.

“He waits for you in his office,” she said and she pointed down a hallway.

“H waits for us,” I said.

“Like the spider,” Rip said.

The housekeeper pretended not to hear us.

We walked down the long hallway to the end. The Collector was standing by a window that looked out into darkness. He turned to us. He was tall and thin, with long spindly limbs. His skin had a pale, grayish pallor, and his jet-black hair was slicked back neatly from his angular face. He was dressed in a dark tailored suit and vest, with a blood red cravat at this throat. His long, thin fingers were covered in rings and jewelry.

His smile was like a claw ripping skin off your face. I wanted to look away, but I didn’t allow myself to.

“Please,” he said, motioning to two chairs over by the desk, chairs that looked like they belonged in a museum. “Have a seat.”

As we walked over, I looked around. The room was stuffed with things. All kinds of things. Every surface and corner had strange artifacts, stacks of books and scrolls along the walls, glass jars containing murky liquids and mysterious floating shapes, taxidermy animals staring glassy-eyed from the walls, cages of birds I’d never seen before, a copper robot in the corner, a mummy wrapped up and in an open coffin just behind the desk. Too much to take in.

I breathed in the dusty, stale air—old paper, preserved organic matter. It was like walking into an ancient, long-forgotten attic. As we threaded carefully between teetering piles of knickknacks and scientific equipment toward the large oak desk at the back, the floorboards creaked loudly underfoot. A grandfather clock ticked steadily in the corner. When it opened at a chiming, a little man I recognized as a mockingman danced out. He was wearing a jester’s uniform. He made a little bow after his dance and then disappeared with the wood platform that he had come out on, the door shutting behind him.

We sat down in the chairs the collector pointed us to.

The collector’s desk was perhaps the only clear surface in the entire office, but it was strewn with odd sketches, diagrams, maps, and more stacks of paper and books. Pinned to the walls above the desk were dense notes and sketches.

As we waited, I felt his intense eyes scanning us up and down. The S.O.B. was assessing us, forming an opinion of our worth to his collection. He lingered over Rip.

“Rip Van Winkle,” he said. “Was it really thirty years?”

“Twenty.”

“And did you dream?”

“Constantly,” he said.

“And do you remember your dreams?”

“Like all memories, a flutter of faint images and occasionally something in the foreground, lit like a searchlight lingering over it.”

“Ah,” he said. “Yes, I would like to understand the world of dreams. And who better to teach me than a man who slept twenty years? I myself have never dreamed. I have a condition that keeps me locked away from them.”

“Pity,” Rip said.

That was it exactly. The man wanted pity from us. I saw what Rip meant when he said he was like a spider. He was spinning a web then. He hoped to catch us.

The collector turned to me. “And you are the son of Lucifer who served the angel Gabriel for a long time. A study in contradiction, I think.”

“Served isn’t quite right,” I said. “He guided me to situations where I was needed.”

“How noble. Like a superhero.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I said.

“Batman,” he laughed. Even as the laugh became a smile, his voice turned scornful. “A tortured soul out to right the wrongs of the world.”

“I don’t see it that way,” I said. “I try to help people who need help, that’s all.”

“Is that all?” he said.

Maybe he knew what more it was, or maybe he was just guessing.

“You already know why we’ve come,” I said.

“Looking for the Knife of Death is what I’ve heard,” he said.

“You have it?” Rip asked.

“Maybe I do,” the Collector said. “Yes, I think maybe I do. But where among all the many things that I have is it?”

“What do you want?” Rip asked.

“He wants me,” I said.

“Let’s not be hasty,” the Collector said. “Before we start talking price for a knife, I may or may not have, I need to know how it was you learned of my collection.”

“Your fame has spread all over the mountain,” Rip said.

“Don’t humor me,” the collector said, still looking at me.

I saw no reason not to tell him about the bill of sale. One Knife of Death to be sold from the Collector to the wizard King Whitehair for the price of one life, King Whitehair’s life.

“There’s a note in one of the librarian’s journals about your collection. It called it second only to the library’s.”

“The library’s great collection,” he said, and bitterness crept into his voice. “We’ve all heard of it, but we do not know, do we? We’ve never been allowed to look.”

“Who is we?” I said.

“Other collectors,” he said. “Great collectors, but none as great as me.”

“I could judge,” I said.

“You would not be impartial,” he said, but he looked closer at me. “But perhaps you could see mine and I would know the truth from your eyes. Is mine the greatest or is it the library’s? I will ask you this question after you have looked and you must answer it.”

“All right,” I said.

Rip gave me a look. I saw his worry in the eyes.

The collector sat back in his chair, fingers steepled as he regarded me coolly. “Perhaps you will even see your way to show me the library’s collection after you’ve seen mine.”

“Perhaps,” I said.

He rose abruptly to his feet. “Come. I will show you my collection. Then you shall tell me what you think. And you will show me your collection. Let’s shake on it.”

He extended his hand.

“The knife too?” I said.

His lips curled into a sly grin. “The knife too.”

I shook his hand.

“Lead the way,” I said.

The Collector pressed a button under his desk, and a door appeared on a wall. He went to it, and he whispered words and it opened. He ushered us down a hidden stone staircase. As we descended into the mountain, the air grew heavy and damp. Our footsteps echoed.

At the bottom lay the vast subterranean chamber housing the Collector’s trove. We followed as he led us through a maze of tunnels extending outward from the main cavern.

Many of the passages were narrow, forcing us to go single file. The walls pressed close, covered in a thin film of slime that created a shadowy pale light.

The Collector guided us and gave commentary as we walked, describing the origin and significance of his most prized specimens.

In one rough-hewn cavern, we passed iron cages filled with miserable creatures. Monsters. They reached through the bars with twisted appendages, their pleading whimpers echoing off the cold stone.

In another grotto lay enormous glass vats, the liquid preserving nightmarish specimens. The Collector gestured to a heavy wooden door barred with iron. “My relics from the Necropolis of Xanadu. Mummified priests, sacred artifacts, and scrolls from the Library of the Dead.”

His sharp eyes gauged my reaction, hungry for the envy and awe he expected. I remained impassive.

“Not impressed?” he said.

“Oh no,” I said, “Very impressive.”

I made sure my voice sounded anything but impressed.

After what felt like hours, we entered a chamber filled with weapons and armor. My pulse quickened. This was where it would happen.

The Collector went to a velvet case and retrieved the dagger within. “This is what you seek. It is one of my greatest possessions. You will need to give me a lot more than a look at your collection to get it.”

I took the blade and examined it closely. It could pass as the real Knife of Death. The ornate hilt, the razor-sharp obsidian edge. It could pass, but it was a fake.

I met his gaze. “It’s exquisite work.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Ancient even,” I said.

“From the Jinn when the world was young,” the Collector said. “Unique in its own way.”

“But not in the way of the Knife of Death.”

“A counterfeit,” Rip said, almost sounding relieved.

The Collector smiled. “King did not realize his mistake until he woke up in his cage. This is, in fact, a knife of death. It has killed many times.”

“I don’t suppose you have the real one in some vault,” I said, stalling to get a good look with my third eye at what dangers were in the room.

The Collector laughed, a cold, mirthless sound. “Afraid not. No need to worry, Librarian. You will have no need for a knife in your future. You and Mr. Van Winkle won’t be leaving here.”

Chapter Twelve

“Have you ever seen The Maltese Falcon?” I asked.

“What?” The collector sounded insulted but also a little wary.

“The movie.”

“No.”

“The whole movie, everyone tries to find this statue of a falcon said to be made of gold. They kill for it and steal for it and destroy lives for it. No one gets it in the end. It turns out they were after a fake. But some of them believe the falcon still exists. It’s just somewhere else. So, at the end of the movie, they go to look for it. They chase a rumor it’s in Europe. Anyway, the detective, Sam Spade, is asked by one of the cops what the falcon was and he says it’s the stuff dreams are made of.”

“What does any of this have to do with anything?” The collector said. “Did you not just hear what your fate will be?”

“I heard,” I said. “You’re like that crowd chasing the bird made of gold. You think each new thing you collect will give you what you want and need, but it won’t.”

“I’m going to collect you next,” he said. “It will give me what I want until the next thing to be collected comes along.”

“Your collection isn’t bad, but it’s not near what the library has. Sorry.”

“I don’t believe you. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

“You should believe me.”

“King died too soon for me to get into the collection, but I believe you are stronger. You will take me when you’re ready, and I will take what I want from the collection. So, you see it’s immaterial, which is better. Soon, the best of them will both be mine.”

“I bet you never even had the Knife of Death,” I said.

“I had it all right.”

He seemed to feel the need to impress me all of a sudden. I wasn’t sure why.

“Sure, you did.”

“It was taken from me,” he said.

“By who?”

“A sea captain from the Far East sailing to New York. My ride home.”

“From where in the Far East?” I said.

“China. Over a hundred years ago. I killed a boy in a small village who had found the knife in the burial place of a famous monk. It was sheer luck. He’d showed too many people in his village his prize. One of them told a relative who told another relative and then someone else, and it got back to one of my sellers. He tracked the boy down. I made the long voyage myself with two bodyguards. That’s how important I knew it was.

“We killed the boy and everyone in the village and in the end, the knife was mine. It was authentic. I felt the power. You hold it, and you know you can do anything, kill anyone. No one would be safe.

“On the voyage back, the sea was rough and tumultuous, tossing our ship back and forth like it was a toy. Finally, we came to a small island the captain knew. He said our only chance was to get in the longboats and row to the island. He was a grizzled and weathered man, a man of the world and the underworld. He made his move. He had his men attack and kill my two bodyguards as we were getting into the boats. He overpowered me and took the knife before I could scratch him with it. One scratch was all it would have taken.

“He stranded me on the ship. He and his crew rowed to the island. I crashed the ship and somehow managed to swim in. I searched for the captain the next day when the storm passed. He’d disappeared. The knife was gone with him.”

“Now it’s time to go,” I said to Rip.

“I had the knife,” the Collector said, a little petulant, I thought.

“I believe you,” I said.

“You won’t be going anywhere, Librarian.”

The surrounding air shimmered, shadows flickering at the edge of my vision. One by one, the collector’s minions appeared, encircling us slowly with swords and daggers glinting. My pulse raced. I drew Excalibur.

Rip, next to me, started changing. I was surprised, and I wasn’t. I thought his beard was a bit too thick. His beard thickened even more as fangs pushed from his elongating jaw. Fur sprouted on his hands and up his arms. He shifted into a massive wolf.

Excalibur gleamed in my hand as I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Rip. We killed some minions.

Cautiously, Rip and I backed toward the door. We had nearly exited when I heard the sounds I’d heard before, the whining, the crying, the pain and the agony of the collector’s collection.

I stopped.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Rip warned.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “Just don’t be stupid.”

“I think I have to be.”

“Really?”

I shrugged.

“Oh crap,” Rip said.

Already, new minions were appearing all around the collector. Rip changed back into a wolf and leaped forward, slamming into the nearest of the collector’s men. His claws shredded through them as I raised Excalibur, blasting back two other minions with a pulsating wave of energy. The collector roared, unleashing more of his shadow forces.

Back-to-back with Rip, I slashed and parried, cutting through the assault. We battled our way to where the Collector stood sneering by a large iron door. He was a very good sneerer, but he’d changed by the time we got to him. It wasn’t true that bullies always caved when they met a force that fought back, but it was true in many cases. The collector was one of those bullies who feared physical pain.

I held Excalibur’s tip to his throat and pressed it until blood trickled down his throat.

“Tell them to open all the cages.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“No.”

I pressed the blade against his throat harder and blood soaked the collar of his shirt.

Three vestal virgins, a manticore (body of a lion, spiky porcupine tail, and the face of a man with three rows of sharp teeth), a cockatrice (chicken-like except that it had feathers and a lizard’s tail and beady yellow eyes), a unicorn, and a small tribe of pygmies all rushed toward the collector. I shoved him toward them.

“Open all the cages,” I shouted, and those who’d been freed started opening cages, some using magic.

Meanwhile, the collector was screaming for help.

“Should we stop them?” I said as we walked down the hall with Rip.

Rip shrugged. “I think he’s being judged by his peers. That’s the way it works in a democracy.”

I was for democracy which, as some old Englishman said, was the worst form of government except for all the others. On our way out, we were stopped by a beautiful woman. I thought she must be a goddess, but she said she was a Sybil.

“You have done us a great kindness,” she said. “I will do you one. The knife you seek is in the past. That time when you lost the two most precious things in your life, one true and one not. The knife is there. The very night after you went to the old man for help, he met her in the little bar, The Shadow Lounge. What you seek is there.”

I wanted to ask her more questions, but she disappeared. Literally.

I couldn’t do anything for Fluffy. I knew he was in some pain. I would take him to Ruth for healing spells when we got back to town. I hoped he could make it. I wouldn’t have a chance of carrying him.

Chapter Thirteen

We walked through the haunted woods. Rip had changed back into human form, that of the wily old gentleman who neglected to mention he had a wolf in him.

“You might have mentioned you were a werewolf,” I said.

“I might have,” he admitted.

“Do you change during a full moon?”

“I’m not that kind of werewolf,” he said.

“There are more than one kind?”

“Several.”

“You worry about people in town?”

“You know people.”

“But we have vampires in town and a zombie and, well, other creatures. All kinds of other creatures, I think.”

“Exactly. It’s best not to advertise. People who I want to know or I need to know, I’ll tell.”

“What about those werewolves we heard howling outside of town for a while?”

“Not of my pack. I think they were likely looking for trouble. I kept track of them. They never came that close to Eden.”

“Do you ever lose control?”

He shrugged. “I have the violence in me. But over the years, I’ve gained control over it, even when I shift.”

That was what I wanted to hear. I hoped it was true. I petted Fluffy on the head. He was walking with some difficulty. I thought he’d make it as long as we didn’t have any more trouble on the way back to Eden.

I thought about what the Sybil had said. How could the knife be involved in the death of Master Lee or Lola’s disappearance? That time was over ten years ago.

Rip asked me what the Sybil had meant. I told him.

“I’ve seen the Maltese Falcon,” Rip said. “You go looking for something like that and maybe it takes control of you. It’s dangerous.”

“I’ve been thinking since I found out Lola was alive that she had to be involved in Master Lee’s death, even though she’s denied it. I just couldn’t believe someone could get the drop on Master Lee. But Jack is not someone. He’s something. And now that knife might have been involved. Maybe the knife has some answers for me.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Rip said.

“What?”

“You know what you’re thinking.”

“It might be my only chance,” I said.

“You can’t.”

“Maybe I have to,” I said. “It’s in my past.”

“It’s dangerous,” he said. “Not just for yourself.”

I knew he was right and that I should put the idea out of my head. This was my time. I should stay in my time.

“It’s not like I would be going back just for me. This is Death’s knife and it shouldn’t even be in our world. Maybe I’m supposed to get it.”

“The Knife of Death is dangerous in anyone’s hand. But you’re the librarian and Lucifer’s son. The knife has probably been looking for someone like you.”

“And what if Jack gets it? What then?”

The woods were getting darker. The trees were thicker and maybe leafier. I turned to check on Fluffy, and he wasn’t there.

I pulled out my phone, which had very little charge. I flashed it around to look for Fluffy. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow move. Something ran out of the light. I’d only seen it for a second. It looked like a skull with antlers. It was taller than me but the body seemed human like. Of course, it had antlers.

“Um,” I said.

“Saw it,” Rip said.

“What was it you saw?”

“Most likely a wendigo. That’s my guess. It could be something else but that cadaverous look and the antlers say wendigo to me.”

“Never seen one,” I said.

There was yet another monstrous creature that I had hoped was mythical, or maybe a metaphor that turned out to be real. It had happened at an alarming rate in the past few weeks, but even before that I’d discovered quite a few in my travels around America.

“Lucky you,” he said.

“Cliff notes version?” I said.

“Always hungry, cadaverous, antlers on a skull sometimes, claws. Very strong, very fast, can control the weather, as in make it dark all of a sudden in a wood. Seen frequently in horror films for effect. But it’s the perpetual hunger that is particularly bothersome.”

“I’m guessing they’re not vegetarians,” I said.

“Preferred food is humans. They aren’t particular beyond that. Man, woman, child. They long for human flesh.”

“I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”

“I would say we stop and build a fire because I believe that fire will kill them, but I think if we stop, we’re done for. Speed kills. You’ve heard that, right? Even among the Supernatural, they’re fast.”

Then, as if to illustrate the understatement, the Wendigo ran past us and grabbed my sword, which was the one weapon that we had that maybe could have killed it.

“Maybe we should run,” Rip said. “I could transform. You climb on my back. We run. Well, I run. You ride.”

“I’m not going to ride you,” I said.

“No time to get squeamish.”

“I’ll pass.”

“You’re not going to be one of those stupid macho librarians who gets himself killed needlessly, are you?”

“He has my sword.”

“There are other swords.”

“Not like that one. I say mine, but it really belongs to the library. I don’t want to be the one to lose it.”

The Wendigo crashed down in front of us with a bone-chilling roar, its emaciated body poised to strike. Razor-sharp claws flexed at the ends of its long, bony fingers, and its eyes glowed red with bloodlust.

Rip shifted swiftly into a hulking werewolf, fur bristling, fangs bared. He swiped a heavy paw at the Wendigo, but it leapt nimbly aside. I saw it up ahead dug into one of the tall thick trees; the blade glinting in the dim light that filtered through the forest canopy. Was he trying to lure me to it or just trying to keep us from running?

The Wendigo pounced on me. I rolled away. Rip tried to take him down from behind, and it spun and raked its claws across Rip’s side. Blood splattered against a tree trunk.

Rip stumbled but quickly regained his footing. Together, we began to circle the crouched creature, looking for an opening to attack. It followed our movements with darting eyes, hissing through pointy yellow teeth.

My heart pounded as we slowly closed the distance. The Wendigo leapt straight at me, jaws snapping. I barely managed a deflecting block. I heard its gnashing teeth as it missed taking off my right ear by inches. Its fetid breath washed hot over my face and I gagged at the smell of rotting flesh.

I needed to get to my sword. It was only about twenty or thirty feet in front of me. The Wendigo turned when Rip tried to rush it from the left. I thought Rip might finally dig his sharp teeth into the creature, but it was too fast. The Wendigo slashed at his muzzle. Rip reeled back, then lunged forward, jaws snapping as the creature nimbly danced out of reach. Rip’s energy was flagging, and he was losing blood.

I made a break for my sword, rushing toward the tree.

Rip charged at the same time, but the Wendigo launched itself into me like a missile and drove me straight into Rip’s path. We collided violently and crashed in a tangle of limbs. Dazed, I struggled to rise. Through blurry vision, I could see the Wendigo rushing toward us, a nightmarish grin on its face. My limbs felt heavy, and I moved as if in a dream. I thought he’s spelled me. In a second, he was upon us. He spoke something, and a python rose out of the leaves and wrapped around us like a thick rope. He had Rip and I, face of face. In about three seconds, the snake’s giant body had us wrapped itself around us from foot to head. Its body tightened around us and I heard its soft hiss and its head floated around me. Its ancient eyes looked into mine. They were hypnotic, and I felt myself struggling not to stay awake.

I smelled the Wendigo’s past as it sniffed my body. I had visions of its killing. The poor, filthy villagers carrying buckets of water up toward one-room huts. The last of a line of marching Roman soldiers, their feet pounding the ground, their swords jiggling. The Wendigo taking them and storing them in a cave like meat in a freezer, eating them for days. A girl on a white horse, wandering too far from her family’s estate. English voices shouting for her as the Wendigo took down both horse and girl. So many dead.

The snake seemed to be under a hypnotic spell of the Wendigo. I tried to break the hypnotism with my own, but I couldn’t get through to the snake.

Up close, I saw how emaciated the flesh of the Wendigo was. Matted fur and leaves clung to it in clumps. I met its feral gaze. I heard its thoughts. This was no mindless animal driven by hunger alone. The gaunt creature surveying us hungrily set traps and hunted its prey intelligently. I knew it would toy with us as it had done with its prey over and over in the past. Even now, it was getting pleasure out of our pain and helplessness. It would leisurely strip the flesh from our bones while we were alive. It would eat us as we were breathing.

The Wendigo’s lipless mouth stretched into a gruesome imitation of a smile. It turned toward Rip, whose thrashing and cursing grew more violent as it approached. One swipe of the Wendigo’s claws across Rip’s face caused a cry of agony and turned him back into human form. He looked bad. Possibly I looked just as bad, I didn’t know. I tried to make the snake let go, but it tightened its grip as if in a reaction to my suggestion. I felt myself slipping away.

Before the Wendigo could do whatever it was going to do to us next, a ferocious snarl sounded from behind it. Fluffy burst from the bushes, hackles raised and hell fire flickering around his jaws. I’d never seen that before, and I wondered if he instinctually knew the Wendigo was susceptible to fire.

But as the two clashed in a blur of fur and fangs, fear and dread came over me. The Wendigo moved with such speed, evading Fluffy’s snaps and dealing vicious blows. Already blood dripped from numerous gashes where those hook-like claws had dug into Fluffy’s fur. The hellhound was still hurting from the fight with the collector. I didn’t see how he could keep going.

They tumbled to the ground in a snarling tangle of fur and claws and snapping jaws. Sickening cracks rang out; Fluffy and the Wendigo clashed and clawed and bit like animals. The Wendigo wailed. Fluffy had finally managed to claw it and snap off a body part.

I felt the Wendigo’s power weaken, and I focused on the python. I felt it pushing back. The snake holding me was not an intelligent animal. I latched onto its primitive mind. So basic. Fight, flight. Hunger. Wait, that was it. Fight or flight. I made it see a much larger snake, a whale of a snake, mouth open, about to snatch us all from the tree and eat us all. The coils of the snake slackened. Pouring all my will into the connection, I gave it a final mental shove. With a hiss, the serpent released its hold. It uncoiled and slithered off.

Fluffy whipped his head violently, flinging the maimed Wendigo against a tree. Fluffy advanced, a menacing growl rumbling from his massive barrel chest. The Wendigo made a quick jump left, and its claws dug into the neck of Fluffy. Blood poured from the hellhound. He seemed dazed. The Wendigo moved in for the kill.

Free, I rushed for the sword stuck in the tree as the Wendigo’s razor-sharp claws and teeth dug into Fluffy, who howled with pain. I yanked the sword out and caught the Wendigo from behind. It swung its head around, those evil, ancient eyes burrowing into me, demanding I freeze. I fought the spell off.

My blade sliced through the air in a silver arc and into the Wendigo’s arm, which fell away from his body like a limb from a tree. Black blood sprayed everywhere. An unearthly screech filled the air as the Wendigo recoiled, clutching the spurting stump. I struck again and again, ruthlessly stabbing, cutting him up. I had to be ruthless. Anything less and it would recover. The beast fell back onto the forest floor. With a sobbing gasp, the Wendigo went to its knees. I swung the sword, and the head landed on the forest floor with a thump as the body collapsed in the opposite direction.

Rip staggered up behind me.

“You all right?” I said.

“All right,” he said.

I went over to Fluffy. I petted him, and he licked my hand. We walked down the trail toward Eden. It was slow going, but we made it back.

Chapter Fourteen

Itook Fluffy and Rip to Sara Raintree’s cottage on the outskirts of Eden. She hurried us in when she saw us. Fluffy wagged his stub of a tail profusely, even though he was in pain. He liked her. Of course, he liked just about everyone. No wonder he didn’t do well in hell.

“You’re all hurt,” Sara said. Then she scolded a little. “What have you been getting into?”

My arm throbbed where the Wendigo had raked me with its vicious claws, but Rip had blood soaking through his shirt and Fluffy had cuts and wounds all over.

“I’m fine,” I said. “They’re a mess.”

“You’re not fine,” she said, “but you’re first Mr. Van Winkle.”

Sara Raintree ushered us further into her cozy cottage. She asked for details about what we’d been fighting. Ripe told her. She examined each of us.

“Wendigo scratches can fester,” she said.

She gathered jars of herbs and vials of colored liquid, mixing up a thick, pungent salve the hue of honey. She handed Rip and me a murky potion that tasted of bog moss and sour grapes. After a sip, both Rip and I hesitated to take another.

“Quit being little boys,” Sara scolded. “You need to drink it down.”

“Do we get a sucker?” I said.

“Drink,” she said.

She kept watch on us until we did.

Next she applied the salve generously to our wounds, wrapping them in clean linen.

She directed Rip to sit down at the wooden table and helped remove his blood-soaked shirt. I winced as I saw the deep gashes across his chest. Sara immediately began cleaning and dressing the wounds with a practiced hand, applying pungent herbal salves.

Rip grimaced, but he kept the stoic look of a man with a long beard. Once she had bandaged him securely, Sara turned her attention to Fluffy. The poor hellhound was covered in knife cuts, bites, and Wendigo scratches. She soothed him with gentle pets and words while treating each small wound with salves and soft comforting words that seemed to soothe him. They were magic, even if they weren’t actually magic. I thought she might have some hypnotic abilities. Fluffy’s stubby tail wagged despite his obvious discomfort.

Finally, Sara guided me to a chair and examined the jagged claw marks on my arm. She cleaned out the cuts, which were deeper than I had realized. She applied a healing poultice and wrapped my arm snugly.

I was grateful and thanked Sara. Rip told her he would bring her some of his famous dandelion wine. She smiled and said she would look forward to it. I forced payment on her.

“You may experience some side effects,” she warned cryptically.

Rip’s eyes lit up at the prospect.

“You mean like hallucinations?”

“Possibly,” she said.

Groovy!” he said. “Even the talk of it reminds me of the lovely sixties.”

He’d told me a few times how much he enjoyed that decade.

We both thanked her. Rip, as usual, was hungry. He decided to walk over to the café for some dinner. I said I’d grab something later.

“You might tell Olive about our trip to the woods and mention that I went to the library without any dinner and looking in pain,” I said to Rip.

“I can do that,” he said, winking.

I walked back to the library with Fluffy. Once there, Fluffy, looking exhausted and in some pain, lay on the rug in the living room where the shelf of newspapers and a few magazines were. The ghost of the library, Captain Bennett Longstreet, appeared. He said he’d had to run off a ghost from Dicken’s book Great Expectations.

“Miss Havisham. She isn’t even technically a ghost in the book. More of a ghost wannabe, I’m afraid. Walking around in the wedding dress she was wearing on the day she was abandoned at the altar and cursing all men. A cursed woman, but I had to chase her off just the same. This is my haunt.”

“Everything else OK?”

“Except that you let your hellhound inside. I never, in my day, let a dog in the house.”

“He’s not a dog.”

“Close enough.”

Besides being a captain in the Civil War, he had been in charge of the library briefly.

“Have you ever heard of the Knife of Death?” I asked him.

“Stories,” he said. “Only stories. I will say that I have heard the Creator was very angry with Death for allowing it to find its way to the world of men. Seems he was afraid of the trouble it might cause among us. Some say the right person can send it flying around a room and kill everyone in it he or she wants it to. If it is real, it must be a dangerous weapon.”

There were other powerful and dangerous weapons in the world. I wondered what made this one the one Jack wanted so badly.

I headed back to the warm familiarity of the second floor; Fluffy got up from his comfortable spot, trotting at my heels, maybe worried I was going to get into more trouble. I browsed leisurely through the shelves, running my fingers over leather-bound spines with cracked and faded titles, hoping something might catch my eye. I loved the feel of a library, the excitement that I’d find something in those rows and rows of books, the thrill that it would be something that moved me in some way. Books did that. They moved you into understanding and feeling awe and everything in between. They made you laugh and cry, occasionally both at once. They made you feel things. I couldn’t imagine a life without books.

A gnarled wooden staff rapped sharply on the floor behind me. I whirled around to see a wizened old man, stooped with age and draped in fraying grey robes that brushed the dusty floor. He had a long silver beard and hair that spilled over his wrinkled face.

“Oh, do pardon me,” he wheezed with a polite nod of his head, “I did not mean to startle you.”

“Which one are you,” I said.

“Which one?”

“Which Merlin?”

“There is only one,” he said.

“Which book did you come from?” I thought there were at least ten books that had Merlin as a character.

“Geoffrey’s The History of the Kings of Britain, ll86.” He leaned closer and inspected me with one ice-blue eye, the other milky and unseeing. “I could not help but overhear you were searching for a worthy read. Do consider Geoffrey’s wonderful book. And now I’ll tell you something. If you seek the Knife of Death, you must remember this one truth.”

“What’s that?”

“Magic always comes with a price,” Merlin said, his voice low and gravelly. “Powerful objects like the Knife do not simply offer themselves up to anyone. Only those willing to sacrifice and risk everything have a chance to claim such an artifact.”

“I don’t really want the knife,” I said. “I want what it might tell me.”

He leaned back, surveying me with his one piercing eye. “Tell me, librarian, what has drawn you to chase after this knife? Do you seek fame? Glory?”

“None of those things,” I said.

He smiled then. “You are like King Arthur and his knights, then. The legends speak of Arthur and his Round Table and their great quests and deeds and battles for glory. But they never chased mere personal glory. No—it was to hold aloft the torch of truth and justice in an age of darkness! Their deeds still inspire goodness and decency in the hearts of men even centuries later, for such is the eternal gift bequeathed on humanity by those noble knights of Camelot! Is your search for the knife a hero’s quest, then?”

“I’m no hero, but I need to find it. I need to know if it killed my teacher and I need to keep an old and evil spirit from getting it.”

“A noble search.”

I had another thought. I tried it out on him.

“This may sound a little crazy, but I think the knife might somehow be involved with Armageddon. I might use it or may it’s the spirit, Jack, who plans to use it and I have to stop him.”

“The knife has been at the heart of great battles before,” Merlin said.

“I don’t know how it’s involved. I’m not even sure it is but I feel like it is.”

Shadows shifted across his worn face. “There are dark days ahead.”

I felt for the first time the inevitability of Armageddon.

He leaned on his staff.

“It’s true that the great heroes of the Round Table brought light to a dark world and built a great kingdom. But the world has become conflicted, and a darkness hangs over it. The battle is coming. If the knife plays a role, you must make sure it is not a role of destruction.”

I thanked him for his advice.

I watched pensively as Merlin’s hunched form shuffled away. If the knife played a role, I had to control it. I could not allow Jack to use it for his purposes, which would be to bring more darkness into the world. Likely, he would make some deal with Lucifer and heaven would be defeated.

The Knife of Death might be the only weapon in the world, in the universe, that could make a difference in the battle between white winged and black-winged angels.

I sat down on a dusty armchair that hadn’t been there a moment before, staring absently at the darkened rows of books without really seeing them. The knife had a purpose of its own. What was that purpose?

I wished I had Master Lee to talk to.

I wished I knew which side I should fight on when the war broke out with the battle of Armageddon.

Chapter Fifteen

Ileaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. I didn’t fall asleep, but my mind wandered. It went to a memory I always kept close: Master Lee and I were out on a boat he “borrowed” from a rich Houston oil baron who only used it twice a year. We went for a ride out into the Gulf of Mexico, and he took me to a little island between Padre and the Texas coast in Laguna Madre. I remembered his craggy face, the wind blowing back his hair, that smile of his as he told me a story of how he overcame gangsters in Shanghai not long after World War II who was picking up young girls off the streets and selling them as sex slaves in New York.

“It was 1947, and I had just arrived in Shanghai. The war had ravaged the once exotic city. As I walked those filthy, vandalized, war-torn streets, I witnessed sights that shocked even a battle-hardened veteran like myself—orphans begging for scraps, emaciated mothers clinging to crying infants, desperate people everywhere doing desperate things to stay alive.

“One night, I spotted some men forcing young women into the back of a truck. I’d heard about these men who kidnapped girls off the street and forced them into the sex trade. It is another old story of evil done in the world. We have too many of them in our past and our present.

“As the truck pulled away, I pursued on foot through Shanghai’s narrow alleys. When it stopped near the docks, I sprung from the shadows; I took out all seven of them. I freed the girls. At first, they did not even move from the truck. They were like caged birds who’ve never been free and whose door was suddenly opened. I realized the men had been abusing them for a long time. You line up the abusers and the abused and you know the truth is, the staggering number would be on the abused side. It’s one of the great shames of our world.

“As they stood in stunned silence, I said,. ‘Be safe, sisters,’. It was a small act, Kevin. I knew my small act would not fix the broken city. I knew the suffering would go on.

“But the world is often changed by small acts. Do what you can and you will be worthy of the gift of life.”

We fished on a little island and caught some flat fish flounders and cooked them on a beach and ate heartily. Near sunset we went back. It was a great day. I had many good days with Master Lee.

He knew how to make me work hard and at the same time how to make me believe that the hard work would lead somewhere. Evil and suffering exist too much in this world, but Master Lee never seemed overwhelmed by hopelessness or hardened against the suffering of others. Before I met him I looked the other way often in my childhood because I was a kid and I was afraid. I was powerless and the ones in power could humiliate or worse, those of us with no power. I should have fought more, but I let little humiliations and worse things done to others go. I stayed out of other people’s problems. I didn’t get involved.

Master Lee lived by another set of principles. He did not look the other way. He did what he could. He showed me. He didn’t just tell me. She showed me the power of small acts of kindness. I began to believe, and I tried to change. I fought my weaker self to change.

Now when I was weary or discouraged, I thought back to that perfect memory of Master Lee and me out in the gulf- the sun on my face, Master Lee at my side telling me stories. Telling me how to be better. How could I now look the other way when it came to Master Lee? I had to know how he died, how he was killed.

The Knife of Death was back in time, the Sybil had told me. She was obviously referring to the night of Master Lee’s death and Lola’s part in it. Maybe she played a significant part, or maybe Jack had somehow tricked her into helping him trap Master Lee. I needed to know.

I got out of the armchair. I had to go back to the night of Master Lee’s death. I knew I couldn’t stop his death. Not without chancing changing the future, my present, maybe everyone’s present. I couldn’t stop his death, but I had to go back anyway and know the truth. If the Knife of Death was there, maybe I would find it. Maybe I could use it to give some meaning to the death of Master Lee.

Chapter Sixteen

As I came down the stairs, I heard a knocking at the library door. I hoped it wasn’t a salesperson, and I was lucky because it wasn’t. It was Olive. She was carrying a bag that looked like it might have food in it.

I swung open the door and smelled a hamburger and fries and realized how hungry I was. Olive came in and said that Rip had told her I was in the library doing research.

“He said you got beat up by a wendigo,” she said.

“We didn’t get beat up.”

“You look like you did, and so does he.”

“You should see the wendigo.”

Olive stepped in.

Fluffy hurried over to greet Olive, swaying unsteadily. He wagged his stubby tail, but his eyes were glassy and droopy. Whatever Rachel had given him was much stronger than what she’d given me.

Olive petted him and looked him over.

“You went to see Rachel?”

I nodded. “Why don’t we go down to the apartment? I’ve got some Eden beer. I’ll get you drunk.”

“Really?”

“I think I have only one, so probably not.”

“But you never know.”

“Not with Eden beer.”

“Let’s give it a try.”

It was possible because occasionally one beer did give me a bit of a buzz. Other times, not. The brewer was a man who might or might not have been a leprechaun. His name was Finley. He was from the old country and when I asked him which one, he said that there was only one. Right. He made each beer a little differently. I didn’t know what was in them, but I knew it was more than barley, water, hops, and yeast. There were some secret ingredients.

He was a very large leprechaun. Possibly six feet four, six five, and on the heavy side with a beer belly, which he liked to say was just good advertising. He liked his product. No apologies.

We went downstairs, and I got a plate and thanked Olive for bringing me food and she said she would eat some of my fries with her half of the beer, and we sat at the kitchen table and talked and I ate and we passed the bottle back and forth.

I told her I was going to time travel back to Port Aransas and the night Master Lee was murdered or the night I thought he was murdered and learn the truth. I had to. I watched for a reaction. At least she didn’t immediately tell me I couldn’t do what we both knew I shouldn’t do.

“And what will you do about it?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Then why do you have to go?”

“I’ll know about the murder.”

“You’ll know, but you’ll be able to sit there and not do anything when he’s murdered? Really?”

“It’s already happened,” I said. “I’ll just be seeing what happened. I won’t do anything.”

“You won’t stop his murder and so endanger everyone’s future? I know what he meant to you. But you also know even doing something small can have a big effect. Stop time in Eden. Make it a ghost town. Someone living who was supposed to die. That could be big. Especially someone like your teacher. Maybe Eden wouldn’t even be here when you get back. Maybe the world wouldn’t be here.”

“I won’t do anything back then in Port Aransas, but here, in this time, that’s different. I’ll come back knowing and maybe I’ll have something to do.”

“He’ll still be dead.”

“If Lola killed him, then she deserves to die.”

“What about your father?”

“Why would he kill Master Lee?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll see and I’ll know. Not knowing—that’s the worst.”

“You think it might be, Jack?”

“He said he was there,” I said.

“This is dangerous,” she said. “We’ve been lucky so far about using the time-machine.”

“Except for that little time-loop in Eden that one time. The Groundhog Day that went on for a few weeks.”

“Right,” she said. “Except for that. This could be a lot worse. You’re risking a lot.”

“I want to know about Master Lee. But also, I can’t let Jack get the knife. If he gets the knife, no telling what might happen..”

I didn’t tell her about the feeling I had that the knife would have some use in the battle of Armageddon.

“You’re right about that,” she said. “He wants the knife for something.”

“I have to stop him.”

“We have to stop him,” she said. “I owe him a little something for our visit in Austin. Maybe even before that. What would you do with the knife if you got it?”

“I might give it back to Death.”

“That creeps me out. You hanging out with Death.”

“It’s not like we’re going out and having a beer or watch a football game.”

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” I had to admit. “Anyway, I might give it to him. It belongs to him. It doesn’t belong in this world.”

“All right,” she said. “All right then. When are we going to Port Aransas?”

“We aren’t. There’s no we.”

“Oh, there’s a we,” she said. “You think I’m going to let you go back there by yourself?”

“I’m a big boy. I’ve been working alone for the last decade.”

“Not this time.”

“You said yourself the timeline is at risk. It’s always at risk when we time travel. But this is going back a decade. This isn’t like going to Las Vegas or Austin, using it for transport really, setting it a minute before we leave and then not doing anything in that minute. This time we’re going back ten years. I’d say that’s significantly different.”

“You need me.”

“Even if that’s true. It’s too dangerous.”

“I have to admit that time cat did freak me out a little talking about us causing the end of the world, but I’m going just the same.”

“You don’t think that might be a good reason for you not to time-travel together?”

“I have to make sure you don’t do anything stupid, which I think you might.”

“I might,” I admitted.

“I need to be there,” she said. “I need to go with you.”

“The end of humankind,” I said. “It’s sort of a big gamble.”

“Then don’t go at all,” she said.

“I have to,” I said.

“Then I have to,” she said.

“All right,” I said.

“All right?”

I shrugged. “We were in this together. Whatever this is.”

“You want to go now?” she said.

“I’m still hurting from this afternoon’s activities, and I need some sleep. The past isn’t going anywhere.”

“So tomorrow morning?”

“Early enough,” I said.

“Probably easier if I spend the night,” she said, coming around and sitting on my lap.

“I think that would be easier,” I agreed.

I kissed her, and then we were and holding each other and we went back to the bed. I was feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, but as soon as I laid down in bed with her, those worries started to fade away.

“You know,” she said, tracing circles on my chest with her finger. “I think we never know how long we have, any of us. But maybe especially us.”

“True.”

“We shouldn’t waste time.”

“True,” I said.

So, we didn’t.

Chapter Seventeen

Iwas sitting in the library at my desk, surrounded by stacks of books and a few ancient artifacts, lost in my work. Suddenly, a gust of wind swept through the room, startling me. I looked up and saw a figure standing before me, bathed in a halo of light. I knew then that I was in a dream. Eden would not allow the archangel into town. Also, I was both inside myself and watching myself at the same time.

The archangel Gabriel towered over me. The light that radiated from Gabriel was blinding. His golden hair cascaded down his back in soft waves. He was dressed in a white robe, and his wings were spread out behind him, at least ten feet across.

Gabriel’s voice echoed through the library, filling the dream. “I bring a message from the Creator. You have been chosen. Praise be to God.”

“You already told me,” I said.

Gabriel shrugged. “He wanted me to check on your progress.”

“I thought he knew everything,” I said. “Sees everything.”

Gabriel said, “That’s what he tells us, but the truth is we’ve all caught him faking it from time to time.”

“I haven’t done anything if you want the truth,” I said.

“I’m an angel,” Gabriel said. “Of course I want the truth. And I know, because of our relationship all these years, that when you say you haven’t done anything, that what you mean is you haven’t made any significant headway.”

“Right,” I said slowly.

“You don’t mean that you haven’t tried. You don’t mean that you have ignored God’s order.”

He nodded slowly and deliberately, and I nodded back. “That’s what I meant.”

“That’s what you meant. Good.”

“I have given it some thought.”

“Good.”

I was going to come up with a story about my thoughts, but something got in the way. I think it was my conscience. That little voice could be very dangerous.

“But what about all the innocent people?” I had to ask. “The children? What about all of them? If I do what the creator and Karl are asking, I’ll be killing millions who don’t deserve to die.”

“Humans will populate as before. Your species breeds quickly and you die quickly. It is the way of humans. The creator promises to have a new and improved model ready to go.”

“Model. Is that what we are?”

“He’s been working on it.”

“So, we’re like machines to him? Robots.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re flesh and blood.”

“We can be replaced, though?”

“Everyone in the universe can be replaced.”

“Doesn’t matter if millions die?”

Gabriel whispered. “You are not seeing this clearly. You’re not giving your mission the proper amount of effort. He will know.”

A sense of dread washed over me. I was going to end the world of men and women. I’d thought about this before when Karl told me I was the anti-Christ and I was destined to bring about Armageddon. But I fought this destiny. Now I had to fight the creator too who wanted to create a new model of human.

“I don’t know if I can do this.”.

I had a vision of Armageddon then. These visions were starting to come more frequently, and I realized that they were probably like billboards. I was getting closer to the time when I would have to exit. I would have to do what maybe the two most powerful creatures in the universe wanted me to do.

The glorious armies of Heaven stood ready, resplendent in their shining armor, and with swords drawn, awaiting the hordes of Hell that would fill the sacred battleground. This was the final clash between good and evil. It had come and everything would be changed afterward.

At the front of the angelic army stood the Archangel Michael, first among the celestial warriors, champion of God. His handsome features were stern and focused, his blazing sword Night bringer was gripped tightly in his hand. Flanking him were the Archangels Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael, along with Saint Peter, who held the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Behind them spread the massed ranks of cherubim and seraphim, glorious beings of light and flame. They had that look. They were ready to smite for the lord. Humans had had that look many times in our past.

On the opposite side of the battlefield, monstrous creatures snarled and roared, flexing claws and baring fangs. Demons and devils of all hideous shapes and sizes, condemned souls, and the great black-winged fallen angels up into the air. At their head was Satan himself, Lucifer, Karl, once the brightest angel. He was bathed in hellfire; his dark wings spread wide. His eyes were blazing with hatred. I knew that hatred was for the God who had imprisoned him in hell. This was a day he had waited for, planned and plotted for.

Lucifer hefted a massive fiery sword and bellowed a challenge to the warriors of heaven.

“Let’s have some fun, Little Angels of Heaven. Today is a good day for you to die.”

With a deafening blast of horns and nightmarish shrieks, the legions of hell surged forward. The angels raised holy banners and let loose battle cries as they marched out to meet their enemies. When the two armies collided, heaven and hell and earth all shook.

Sword met sword, light clashed against darkness, claws and hooves against steel and feathered wings. Angel and demon fought in close combat, stabbing and slashing, smiting with holy power and hellish magic. Titanic struggles littered the battlefield. Saint Peter crushed a demon prince beneath his boot while fending off a dozen foes. Gabriel cleaved through swarms of horrors, his golden armor burning any demon that drew close. Mighty Michael dueled with Satan in the chaos.

The black-winged angels and white-winged angels attacked each other with such fury that the world below, the world of men, began to crack and break open and a fire spread from the battlefield over the world. And the world joined in the battle. Men and women fighting men and women everywhere. It was not country against country; it was the allies of heaven fighting for heaven and the allies of hell fighting for hell.

Satan spread his burning wings and took flight, soaring back to where Michael stood bloodied but unbowed amidst a circle of slain enemies. The two ancient adversaries eyed each other across the battle-scarred field, raised their swords, and flew at each other for one final epic clash that would decide the battle.

When they met, there was such an explosion that the whole earth, every last inch of it, was covered in fire, a fire that could not be extinguished. Everything and everyone was destroyed.

But there was someone missing. Oh, yes, the most important someone of the universe. Where was the creator? He was nowhere to be seen. He was absent.

The vision ended there. I knew what I was seeing. The end of humankind. Not the end of the white-winged angels or the black-winged angels or God or Lucifer, but the end of humankind.

“Why isn’t he at Armageddon?” I said. “Your god.”

“My god?” he said. “Our god.”

“Your god.”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “Perhaps your vision is incomplete.”

He looked away when he said this.

“I thought angels couldn’t lie,” I said.

“I am not lying,” he said.

“Why isn’t he there?”

“God works in mysterious ways.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“I honestly don’t know where he is,” Gabriel said. “His is a perfect plan. You are part of it. I have given you the message and now you must do as the Creator orders you to do or risk his wrath.”

“I’d be the cause of so much death.”

“You can’t see far enough to know his plan.”

“I can see far enough to see our destruction, the destruction of our world, everything

“Close your eyes, librarian.”

“I’m already asleep,” I said, “so I think they’re already probably closed.”

“Close them.”

“I did.”

He showed me another vision, like watching a film unfold before me. It was a future beyond Armageddon, where the world was better. This was the Creator’s new and improved world. The sun shone bright and warm; the skies were clear and blue, and the fields were lush with greenery. Animals roamed freely without fear or aggression towards each other. They didn’t need to kill to stay alive.

But what struck me the most was the people. They were kind and compassionate, living in harmony with one another. There was no greed or corruption, only love and unity. Families were reunited, and there was no more suffering or pain.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was a world too good to be true. And then I remembered the vision before the end of humans. Then it really did seem too good to be true.

“This is what will come after Armageddon,” Gabriel said softly. “A new beginning for humanity.”

“You believe that?” I said.

“Destruction must happen before a new world can be created. But a destruction that humans are doing to humans themselves. It will only get worse. God would not step in if he didn’t have to.”

“And destroy everyone and everything,” I said.

“The new world will not forget the old. It will just be better than it was. He will keep what is best of your world.”

It was true this world was cruel. Children with cancer. Wars. Famine. There was a list of failures by the Creator, a long list. And there was a list of his biggest failure, us. But were we just a failure? What about all we had overcome? What about the ways we had bettered ourselves and our world?

“How do I begin the End of Days?” I asked.

“Lucifer will help you. He will empower you. Endear yourself to him, to all your family, your demon brothers and sisters. Pretend to join them. The Creator wishes this. At the most important moment, you will switch sides and we will be victorious.”

“If I refuse?”

“Pillar of salt sound familiar? All Lot’s wife did was look where she wasn’t supposed to look.”

“Right,” I said.

“I’ll be back soon. Have something for me. A plan. You don’t want to anger the Creator.”

Gabriel disappeared.

When I woke, it was the middle of the night, and I was bathed in sweat. I got up. Olive remained asleep. Fluffy followed into the living room. He sensed something was wrong, and he put his head in my lap when I sat on the sofa. I petted him.

Destroy the world. Didn’t get much more wrong than that.

Destroy the world.

It was a long time before I could go back to sleep

Chapter Eighteen

The morning sun cast a warm glow on the small café as Olive and I stepped inside. The café was slightly smoky and had the stout smell of brewing coffee and hash browns and bacon. I felt a comforting sense of routine settle in as we approached the table where the four members of the Ghostbuster team were already enjoying their breakfast.

“Mind if I join you?” I asked.

Ryan, Gabriela, and Camila looked up from their meals, offering friendly nods and gestures of welcome. Walt told me to sit myself down.

I pulled a chair over. Olive brought me a cup of coffee and took my order. I stuck to bacon, sausage, eggs, toast and OJ that morning. Light breakfast.

“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” I inquired, sipping my coffee.

Walt, the leader and the scientist with a perpetual air of seriousness, leaned forward and said. “We’ve got a situation at the Church of the Out of Order. Some kind of evil spirit has taken residence, and we suspect the new priest might have something to do with it.”

Gabriela said, “I don’t think it’s the priest.”

Camila shook her head. “Gabriela is not a good judge. She thinks the priest is hot.”

“Is he?” I asked her.

“Hell yes,” she said. Then, upon reflection, “Maybe hell isn’t the best modifier.”

“I do think he’s hot,” Gabriela agreed, “but he also seems deeply spiritual and good at his job. He just doesn’t strike me as mixing in the dark arts.”

Ryan said that the spirit was more a nuisance than a threat. “It quizzes people on their sex lives and past indiscretions. Most people just ignore it. Except for this one old man who wouldn’t shut up about his sex life. I don’t believe him about the grapefruit, though.”

“You don’t want to believe him,” Camelia said.

“Sometimes these spirits begin as a nuisance,” Walt said, “and work up to something worse.”

We talked a little more and then they went off to do what they could at the church. No one ever knew when the church would leave, so they wanted to get there and be sure to anchor it in Eden for the morning so they’d have time to convince the spirit to move on.

When they were on their way out, I saw Rip was on the way in. He came over and sat with me and I knew I’d need to buy him breakfast. I owed him many breakfasts for information and for helping me stay alive as recently as yesterday. I paid my debts.

I asked him how he was doing and he said it was mostly aches and pains. Rachel’s healing creams had already healed up some of his cuts and bites. I mentioned my dream and my meeting with the arch-angel Gabriel in my dream.

“It’s always something with you,” he said.

I admitted it was. “And I had visions of Armageddon and one that Gabriel delivered to me about a kind of utopia world after humankind is improved and rebooted.”

“He wants you to start the End of Days?” Rip said.

“Said God wanted it.”

“So Satan and the creator both want Armageddon.”

“Seems that way,” I said. “Gabriel tried to make me think I had no choice.”

“Divine purpose,” Rip said.

“We have to follow the creator’s wishes. If we don’t, bad consequences. He turns us into pillars of salt.”

“What’s worse?”

“What he did to his most faithful servant.”

“Remind me.”

“Job had a good life with wealth and a large family, but God decided to let Satan test Job’s faith by destroying his possessions, killing his children, and infecting him with all kinds of physical afflictions. Even so, Job refused to curse God. Everyone believed the worst of him. They thought God was punishing him for doing something wrong. In the end, God restored all of his fortunes. He even gave him new children. But that’s what always got me about it. He gave him new children, like the old ones could just be replaced. Now I understand. That’s how he feels about us. We can all be replaced.”

“He wants a new and improved model,” Rip said. “To be honest, we could use some improving.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” I said. “I think we have to get there. We have to work our way through our faults. We have to become better. We can’t just be made better. We aren’t robots.”

“Unless we are,” Rip said. There was that twinkle in his eye, but I couldn’t tell if he was joking with me or serious.

I thought about this.

“No,” I said.

“No?”

“I don’t believe it. I don’t want to.”

“I’ve been around a long time,” Rip said. “I’m not sure I can tell the difference.”

“Free will,” I said.

“You think?”

“We make choices. The robots can’t.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“How can I refuse the Creator?” I said.

His fingers tapped on the table, almost as if he was tapping out a code.

“The creator isn’t going to be easy to refuse,” Rip said. “Angels have lost their wings for less.”

“Then maybe I don’t refuse him,” I said. “But I have to change the story he’s writing. I can’t be the one to end humankind.”

I studied Rip’s face. He was an old man, but he moved like a young man. I had only seen him turn wolf the one time, but when he did, he moved like a wolf in his prime. It was as if he’d stopped aging.

“Your wife and daughter—” I started, not even sure what I would ask.

He interrupted. “Long gone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Living a long life it not all it’s made out to be. You lose everyone again and again. It’s hard enough to lose them once. Hard enough to take the ride and watch them one by one get off. You should think about that if you’re ever allowed eternal life.”

For a second, I thought he knew I had been.

“You have eternal life?” I said.

“No. Not me.”

“I have to convince him, the creator, that we’re worth saving.”

“The Creator valued us once,” Rip said. “He saw us as his greatest achievement. More than the angels.”

“He needs to see us as more than just something he can replace.”

“You may not have to worry about that,” Rip said.

“What do you mean?”

“Lucifer and his army will be tough,” Rip said. “They’ve been waiting for eons. They’ve been made tough by being imprisoned in hell. They’ll have secrets that God, who claims to be everywhere but is exaggerating, won’t know.”

“They might win,” I said. “That’s true.”

“And then what will happen?” Rip said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “A dark age, I suppose. Humans enslaved. “Lucifer will rule.”

Olive brought our food.

“Meanwhile, we eat,” he said and sniffed the food like he was being presented a gourmet dinner.

“I need to come up with a plan. Something I can show Gabriel the next time he comes.”

“That’s a tough one. In the old days, you’d just have some people killed and become a king.”

“Ah, for the good old days.”

“Rock star?”

“Big following,” I said. “Not big enough.”

“Maybe run for office.”

“Take too long,” I said. “Too many steps. I don’t think the creator or Lucifer will let me put off the final battle for decades.”

I looked at my watch and saw it was time to open the library. I told Rip I had to go and then told Olive, as she was delivering plates of food, that I’d see her at the library at eleven.

“I’ll take my break then,” she said.

A good thing about time travel in the Deville was you left and returned in the same minute. A fifteen-minute break was plenty of time to go off for hours or days and return long before the break was over.

Olive leaned out for a kiss so I kissed her, which got some oohs and ahas from the table and many looks from other tables. Guess we weren’t keeping our relationship a secret. I hurried over to the library.

Chapter Nineteen

Unfortunately, I was a few minutes late getting to the library, and Mr. Rosenbottom was there waiting, fuming about missing three minutes of his time reading the New York Times but really just fuming at my being three minutes late.

He told me he knew the new mayor and had pull with him so he was definitely going to get me fired.

“You can try,” I said. “That’s your right as a member of the community.”

“You may have a lot of people fooled in this town, but not me. Someone who can’t be on time, doesn’t dress properly, and does not follow the rules should not be the librarian.”

“Hey, you’d make a good librarian, wouldn’t you?”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Of course not. Maybe you should try to get appointed by the new mayor.”

He spun around and walked over to the table where the latest New York Times was waiting for him.

I went upstairs to the section where the librarians had written notebooks of notes on being the librarian. Some of these were only a few pages long, but some of them were whole notebooks. I closed my eyes and tried to see through my third eye into which notebook might have something on the Knife of Death. I couldn’t really see, so I tried trusting that my third eye might see without telling the other two and I picked one of the notebooks.

Before I could sit down with it, a demon appeared about three feet in front of me. I tensed. But then I saw it was my brother, Dread, the one who had helped get me out of a cell where I was being held by my sister, awaiting execution. The execution was going to require four horses, which was why she didn’t execute me right after she, as judge, found me guilty of treason. She had no facts, but, well, it was a trial in hell. Facts weren’t really important. My brother, along with my old friend Lola, who was now a demon, got me free.

Yes, the Lola who had maybe been responsible for Master Lee’s death had saved me from execution. She’d also tried to kill me at least once when she and some of Lucifer’s demons wanted to invade Eden.

“She didn’t kill you,” I said, referring to Lilith, our sister, who I thought might discover he was involved and consider his betrayal worthy of death.

“Father stepped in,” he said. “He wasn’t too happy with Lilith’s trying to kill you after he ordered that no one harm you. He gets a little testy when someone ignores his orders.”

“Take away one of her credit cards?” I said.

“Actually, he gave her a choice. Twenty-four hours of torture or lose her second favorite castle.”

“Tough love,” I said.

“Well, she did disobey him,” Dread said.

“You’re serious?”

“You don’t disobey father.”

“I think someone may have told him what you said at your trial too, which got him thinking she might be about to make a power move. No one is more dangerous to a tyrant dictator or king than his family. Our father has always said that. Check the history books. He seemed to think it was time to remind everyone who the Prince of Darkness is.”

“We live in a dangerous world.”

“I didn’t really stop by to talk about all this,” Dread said.

“Why did you stop by?”

He handed me a card. It was a big one as a card went. It was about the size of a sheet of notebook paper but was card stock thick. Black on front. A traditional picture of the devil: pitchfork, horns, long tail red. It had a big raised lettering HAPPY FATHER’S DAY across the front.

“Sign it.”

I’d never had a father before. Or maybe more accurately, I’d never known that I had a father until recently. I’d never expected to have one. I felt uneasy about it.

My half-brother handed me a pen.

I opened the card. Inside, there were already about fifteen or twenty signatures. I signed it. I wrote, So glad you got in touch, but I wasn’t sure if I was being sarcastic or sincere. Both at once, maybe.

I handed the card back to him.

“No party?” I said.

“At a restaurant downtown.”

“There’s a town?”

“Of course there’s a town, Hellville. It’s about twenty miles from the Dark Lands, which is what the public on earth thinks all hell is. Hell has different sections. Hellville had thousands of creatures living in it. We all have apartments or second homes in Hellville, we children of Lucifer. There’s a black sea, cliffs, even clean water.”

“Anyone can live there?”

“No. The important demons, fallen angels, and some humans who have risen through the ranks to freedom.”

“I don’t have a gift,” I said. “I didn’t think about Father’s Day.”

“Hard to find something for someone who has everything,” he said. “Sort of like buying a present for an emperor. The restaurant is right in the square. Come if you like.”

“Maybe I will,” I said.

“I’ve got a few more stops. See you.”

“Sure,” I said.

He disappeared.

I sat there for a few minutes thinking that I actually did have a family now even though I didn’t know them at all, including my one parent. People always said that you didn’t get to pick your family. That was obvious, but now I thought I understood a little better that lamentation.

I looked through the notebook. No mention of the Knife of Death, though there was a story about Death taking the wrong person on New Year’s Eve in Eden and having to come back later and do a return and take another. I skimmed through ten notebooks over the next two hours and it was in the last one, right at eleven, that I came upon the story.

The skies darkened as the winds began to howl, whipping the calm morning sea into a churning froth. The captain, an Asian-American, gripped the wheel of his small fishing trawler, the Wave Whisperer, and squinted through the stinging salt spray at the growing swells around him. His crew of three scrambled to batten down the hatches and secure anything that could go overboard in the building tempest. Their freight, a rich man, hidden in robes, traveling with two bodyguards from Istanbul, hid something. He had a curved knife in his belt that sparkled even in the dark.

The Wave-Whisperer was an old vessel, with creaking timbers and a temperamental engine. As the waves crashed over her bow, the deck tilted, sending the crew sprawling. The engine sputtered, then died. They were adrift in the heart of the storm.

“Abandon ship!” the captain cried over the roar of the wind. The men scrambled over the slick, pitching deck, fumbling with the straps, securing the small lifeboat. The rich man demanded that the captain save him and that was when he saw the first mate swing his bodyguard over the side. The captain shoved the rich man off, too, but not before taking the Knife of Death from him.

The first mate shouted for the captain to hurry, but as he pushed away from the sinking trawler, a massive wave crested over the side, snapping the mast and swamping the ship.

The captain leapt overboard into the frothing sea. He gasped for breath between punishing walls of water. The life-boat was far away. He kept swimming. After what seemed an eternity, he felt rocks underfoot and crawled onto shore, collapsing in exhaustion. The Captain survived, and he carried the Knife of Death with him.

But what happened to the captain and the knife? No one knows.

This seemed to back up the story told by the Collector. No one knows. I thought maybe I did.

Chapter Twenty

Olive arrived at the library about five minutes after I told the government man we were closing. We went down to my apartment and into my bedroom. We were tempted by the proximity to the bed, but Olive said, “We need to focus.”

“Absolutely,” I said, but I would have been more flexible.

I opened the Sherlock Holmes book and put my ring into the lock and the wall moved, revealing the Collection of Curiosities.

“We’ll need to hurry,” she said.

She only had fifteen minutes and time wouldn’t freeze until we were in the time machine and moving through time. We stepped into the Collection of Curiosities. I got the sword that might or might not be Excalibur and folded it up into the pocket knife it could become, which was very useful for travel. We went to the 1965 Cadillac Deville and climbed in. I pulled down the visor, and the key fell into my lap. I fit it into the ignition and turned it, and the car started.

“Welcome back, Man,” The Deville said. “Ready for a groovy ride?”

The Deville, ever the hipster, worked in groovy at least once a ride.

“Ready,” I said.

“Where? When?”

I told it.

The Deville took off. We drove through time and space; it felt like flying. I gave it a date, which was the day after I’d gone to Master Lee’s. It was just over ten years ago that I went to Master Lee’s trailer and asked him to find Lola, who I believed had been taken.

No one else believed it, though. The police and the social workers thought she’d done a runner. She was close to aging out, and everyone knew she was ready to be free of the system. Even I had to admit I’d probably think she’d done a runner if I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t do it without telling me. We were best friends. If she’d taken off, she’d call or text me from the road.

No one believed me. Just another foster kid gone missing. The police were always ready to explain away a missing foster kid that way. Anyway, I didn’t have any proof. After a week, I went to Master Lee and told him that I was sure someone had taken her and I needed him to help me find her. He didn’t dismiss my worry, and he didn’t ask me to wait another few weeks before acting.

He went looking for her that day.

I never saw him alive again. I always believed it was because he went to look for Lola. They found his body months later when it washed up on Padre. It had been mostly eaten by sharks and was unrecognizable. Closed casket funeral. I blamed myself. I was the one that got him involved.

I wondered if Lola had been taken or if she had got into something and pulled Master Lee in. I tried to look for her again and got nowhere. I didn’t know how to investigate then and I was down to a few weeks before I’d age out of the system. I did my own runner when I turned eighteen and I never made my way back to investigate.

Until now.

We landed in the parking lot of The Shadow Lounge, a bar over by the marina. The air had the salty smell of the gulf and the smell of fish and fried foods from the restaurant across the lot. A drunk was peeing in the bushes. The Shadow Lounge was that kind of place.

He said, “Are you here to take me?”

“Take you?”

“You aren’t green. I knew you wouldn’t be green. I knew they were all wrong about that. Look just like us. That’s what I said. And look at you. Look just like us.”

He’d seen us land, and I worried this was one of those things that seemed small but turned out to be big. The guy became some kind of leader in the alien community. It was pretty unlikely.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Seems like he’s had a little too much to drink.”

“I’m sober as a priest,” he said. He slurred the word priest though, which lower the credibility of his statement.

“We’re from Colorado,” I said.

“Colorado,” he said. “Alien haven.”

“Boulder,” Olive said.

“Woke, hippie dippy,” he said and stumbled off toward the marina.

I opened the weathered wooden door into The Shadow Lounge and paused to take it all in. It hadn’t changed much in the decade since I’d last been here. Dim lights, cracked vinyl booths, and the faint smell of old beer and cigarettes hanging in the air. The jukebox in the corner was playing a scratchy George Strait song. I glanced around, noting the bartender was still the old man that had been the bartender ten years ago. He still looked not a day over eighty.

Now I noticed something I hadn’t noticed then. He was a Supernatural of some kind. He was many days over eighty.

“Witch doctor,” Olive said.

“The bartender?”

“I looked for help in a lot of places when my father changed. I looked through the witch doctor directory because one of the witches in my coven said there were witch-doctors who specialized in zombies. He was in there.”

The patrons were the usual crowd of salty fishermen and weather-beaten locals.

The old buoy and fishing net still decorated the back wall. Faded photos of sports teams and local events covered the rest. The pool table in the back looked even more used. Over the chatter and clinking of glasses, I noticed a laugh that sounded familiar and saw one or two faces I vaguely recalled.

Then I saw a face I more than vaguely recalled. Lola. In the corner. But not the Lola of my time. The Lola of ten years ago, still a teenager, still my best friend. Seeing her at that age took me back, and I remembered how we had watched out for each other. How important she had been to me. I had other friends, but no one even close to what she meant to me. No one I could count on in the same way.

When one of my foster homes got bad, the drunk head of the house going from a yeller to the next step—coming home after a long night of drinking, looking to wail on whoever was available for any infraction (real or imagined) of his rules he often made me his target. She got me out. She’d had to use something she got on our social worker to do it. She would never tell me what, but that social worker quit that office not long after and moved somewhere else. There were things you couldn’t repay. Not really.

“Is that —” Olive said.

“Yes.”

“She was a beautiful girl,” Olive said. “Boys must have followed her around everywhere.”

“They did,” I said.

We sat in the corner, and when the waitress came over, we ordered beers.

“That’s a seedy-looking guy she’s with.”

“I don’t know him,” I said.

He looked in his forties. First impression was that he had done time and was going to do time again. He had gray mixed with black hair, gray eyes. I didn’t think he was a demon, but he had demon blood in him. Humans with demon blood were still human. Only pure-blood demons had the true demon power and nature. The exceptions were cases when Karl transformed them. He would do to Luna in the future when she would become Paris. That was the other thing they always did; they took a new name. They were reborn.

Master Lee walked through the door and to the table where Lola and the man were. Seeing him again brought up all kinds of feelings, most of them good.

“Is that him?” Olive said.

“That’s him,” I said.

We watched as he sat down.

Everyone looked relaxed. It looked like an arranged meeting, maybe a trade: Lola for the Knife of Death. What had gone so wrong? How had Master Lee ended up dead and what happened to the Knife of Death?

That man looked vaguely familiar. That was when I realized what I should have seen right away. Jack could be anyone. Jack could be the man with Lola. He could be the bartender. He could be any of the men or women at the tables. He could be here already.

I looked with my third eye and I saw.

Lola had not been taken or, for that matter, run away. We were all wrong about Lola. By this point, she had already made her deal with the devil. Maybe the deal was she’d get him the Knife of Death. Maybe it was that she’d get him, Master Lee.

“Maybe we should go,” Olive said.

I didn’t know for sure. It could be she made a deal with Jack, too. It could be her ambition had got the better of her. She’d always had that ambition. She’d always had big plans and was willing to do anything to make them come true.

“Jack is here,” I said.

“Which one?”

“It’s a set-up.”

“If it’s Jack, he’ll have already recognized us,” she said. “We need to get out of here. Get back to the car.”

“Can’t,” I said. “I still don’t know.”

This was my chance, my one chance.

It happened fast when it happened. Lola pulled out the knife. She stabbed the man next to her in the heart and shouted for Master Lee to run for the car.

Master Lee said, “Can’t.”

He was fast. He was always so fast. He grabbed the knife from her.

Within seconds, the room was filled with demons. There were seven of them. One of them looked like a normal human, but with red eyes. The rest were all around seven feet tall. They seemed to all come from the same source, maybe brothers and sisters. They had red, scaly skin and long, sharp claws at the ends of their hands and feet. Their eyes were solid black. They bared mouthfuls of jagged, yellow fangs while flicking long, pointed tongues. Two of the demons had large, curved horns protruding from their foreheads. These were not demons from hell. I was relieved about that.

The demons snarled and growled, their muscular tails swishing behind them. The largest demon wielded a spiked club that it dragged across the floor, scattering sparks. They closed in on Master Lee.

The bartender pulled out a shotgun and shouted for the demons to take the girl and the man alive. Jack was in the bartender then. It was dizzying how fast he moved from one body to another.

Master Lee told Lola to run.

“Give me the knife,” she said.

I stood up. Olive grabbed my arm.

“You can’t,” she said.

Master Lee swung around toward me and threw the knife right at me. Somehow I caught it by the handle. As I caught it, one of the demons stabbed him in the back and the others were on him in a second. He must have been stabbed twenty, thirty times in a matter of seconds.

I looked around for Lola. She’d disappeared.

“Run,” he screamed. I heard it in my head, but I realized I’d seen his lips move. He was dying, and he was too close to death to make any words. I saw the shadow wrap around him and the flutter of Death’s robes.

Lola was gone. I took a step toward him, but I knew I was too late. I killed a demon coming at me and looked around for Lola. She was gone. How could she have had the knife?

“Come on,” Olive said, yanking me toward the door.

I resisted, but I could see it was no use. Master Lee was lying on the floor.

The bartender, Jack, fired his shotgun at us. A light over us exploded. Pieces of wood from the wall flew through the air. I felt slivers dig into my left shoulder.

We banged out the door and ran across the parking lot. I heard the door swing open behind it. It banged so hard against the wall it came off its hinges. All of them were rushing after us. One was faster than the others and pounced on me just as I reached the car door. Its clawed hands swiped at my face as I ducked and twisted away. I felt its hot, sulfurous breath on my neck as its jaws snapped shut inches from my throat.

Adrenaline surged through my veins; I clutched the knife Master Lee had thrown at me and slashed wildly at the demon. It recoiled with an angry shriek as the blade cut into its arm. Black ichor dripped from the wound.. The demon turned to black ash and dust. I staggered back, gasping for breath.

I heard a car door opening on the other side.

The parking lot echoed with the pounding footsteps and guttural cries of the other demons as they bore down on us. You’d think seeing their fellow demon turn to ash would be a deterrent, but it seemed to enrage them and, let’s face it, more known for rage than brains. Not the sharpest tools in the shed.

I whirled to face the oncoming horde. Olive already had the car running. As I yanked open the door, she scooted over and I dove inside and slammed the door shut just as clawed hands scrabbled at the windows. I hit the gas. The tires screeched as we fishtailed out of the parking lot, the pack of demons trailing behind before the car entered that twilight state of travel that felt like flying.

A second later, we were back in the cavern under the library where the Collection of Curiosities was.

“Close one, man,” the Deville said.

“I’m sorry,” Olive said

“Me too,” I said.

“You couldn’t have saved him.”

“I could go back and save him now,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

She was probably right. I was thinking about what happened. It didn’t make sense unless—.

Chapter Twenty-One

Olive said she’d better get back to the café. Her break was nearly over. We both looked around the Collection nervously, but I couldn’t see any changes. It was out in town that we had to worry about. Fluffy was waiting for me in my bedroom. He turned circles when he greeted me, knocking me halfway across the room. Then he greeted Olive but was gentler with her.

Olive laughed. I loved her laugh. I was glad I was with her every time I heard it. We went up the stairs to the main floor of the library. I remembered how one time I’d gone back in time and when I came back to Eden, people told me they’d repeated the same day over and over for several weeks. Some knew it had happened, and some didn’t. I hoped nothing like that had happened.

I walked Olive out. I told her I’d see her later. I needed to get my head a little straighter before I went to see if the town was still there and the people in the town were and all that. Fluffy looked longingly at the woods across the stream. I thought he might run off into them. To him, the haunted woods, which still scared everyone in Eden, including me, were homey. I guess when you grew up in Hell, maybe they would seem a little like home. Surely they had haunted woods in hell if they had castles and towns, or at least a town. My idea of hell was changing a little.

I sat at my desk, replaying the bar scene in my mind: Master Lee throwing me the knife, the demons descending on him, his final silent shout to run as they stabbed him to death. After over a decade of believing his disappearance was my fault, I realized that it had more to do with The Knife of Death than my sending him out to find Lola. He had already been looking for her because she stole the knife from him.

She had been planning to use it to get Lucifer to give her what she wanted. I was pretty sure she didn’t know he was my father at that point, but somehow she’d found out about the Knife of Death. She’d realized how important such a weapon could be for Karl. She’d realized he’d give her a lot for it. Paris even. Her dream. Go to Paris.

I kept replaying that moment in my mind. She had the knife. She must have come to the bar because Jack had Master Lee. Somehow he’d tracked down Master Lee. Only Lola had already stolen the knife from him. She’d come back to trade the knife for him.

I sat down on the sofa in the library living room. Fluffy curled up at my feet. He made no comment. She could have run off, but she’d come back to save him. Only she had no intention of giving it to Jack. She planned to kill him and get out of town.

She didn’t understand what Jack was. She didn’t realize that stabbing him, even with the knife, wouldn’t kill him. It just killed the host, whoever that unlucky man had once been.

I wish I could talk to Master Lee. Even just a few minutes. Just hear his voice again. Ask him what I should do with the knife now. I pulled out the weapon that cost him his life. I turned it over. I felt how strong it was. How sharp.

I held the knife up and looked at it more closely. It glimmered, its polished obsidian surface seeming to suck in all the surrounding light. Strange runes were etched along the flat of the blade. The handle was made of bone, yellowed with age, and seemed to almost pulse with a life of its own in my hand. Intricate carvings of exploding stars wound around the handle. The knife felt strangely lightweight. I felt its hunger. Light as a feather, yet heavier than a mountain. It wanted me to go back and kill everyone in the bar. It promised me I would feel all I wanted to feel. Revenge for Master Lee. Revenge for myself. Justice.

I stood up without even knowing I was standing. I even took a few steps toward the stairs before I stopped myself.

It was strong.

I should give it back to Death. As a side benefit, I could live forever if I did. His promise. Live forever. It was the dream for as long as men and women had been living and dying. The dream to live forever. No fleeting moment in the sun and all that. I could lay out in the sun just as long as I wanted. I would escape the slow decay, the step-by-step walk ever closer to Death, losing a little more time each day I got closer.

All the stories about escaping death. The pacts with devils and gods and witches and evil spirits for just a chance to be immortal. All the stories—the fountains of youth, the cloaks spun from timeless threads, the Dorian Gray deals.

All I needed was to give the knife back to who it belonged to.

That was all.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Iwalked back out onto the porch and Fluffy followed on my heels. I sat on a chair. The sun was high in the sky. I could hear the monkeys over in the haunted woods. They were screeching. Maybe they felt the knife I was still holding in my hands. I put it away.

Even briefly handling it, I sensed there were layers upon layers of magic etched into the ancient bone hilt - both wondrous and terrible-and they were calling to me. I went back into the library and down to the Collection of Curiosities and to the famous cloth of Byzantine known for its powers of containment. I wrapped the knife in the cloth and put it in a glass case.

Master Lee had thrown me the knife for a reason. I couldn’t give it to Death. I didn’t know how it was possible, but I had the knife because Master Lee wanted me to have it. He must have had a reason. He must have known something, seen something. He had a purpose. I had to figure out what it was.

I went back out to my apartment, and I told Fluffy to stay and guard the knife.

“Want to go,” he said.

“You need to guard the knife,” I said. “It’s an important job.”

“Important job?”

“That’s right.”

“Awright.”

I needed to talk to Rip. I walked over to Rip’s house, looking for any changes in the town as I did. I knocked on the door. He answered and told me I looked like hell and I realized my clothes were torn and I had blood on my shirt.

We went back to the kitchen, which seemed to be Rip’s favorite room. We had that in common. He poured me coffee and got out the milk and sugar bowl and told me he couldn’t watch me degrade my coffee and made a show of not looking and I proceeded to degrade away with three teaspoons of sugar and a long pour of milk. Just right.

I told Rip what had happened when I travelled back in time to Port Aransas. He asked me if I noticed any differences in Eden since I’d been back.

“Not yet,” I said.

Then I asked him the question I’d been wanting to ask him. “Who do you think got the Knife of Death before I went back and got it? Who possessed it before I went back in time to possess it?”

“You always got the knife,” he said.

“I know, but before.”

“There was no before.”

“But before I travelled back in time, I’m saying,” I said.

“You always travelled back in time,” he said.

“That’s just confusing,” I said.

“Welcome to time travel,” he said.

“So you’re saying I always got it?”

“As far as I know. I only live on one timeline, though. I live in a linear way. I’m limited. Some advanced creature, multi-dimensional type, might see it another way.”

“No doubt,” I said, but I had plenty.

“No doubt,” he agreed.

“You know any of those? Multi-dimensional types, I mean”

“I know of those. I don’t know any.”

“You mean a story.”

“A legend,” Walt said. “There once was a creature that transcended time and space. They called it the Chronos Serpent. It’s said to have lived through countless dimensions and timelines, witnessing all of existence at once.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So, it sees all these different people getting the knife?”

“Maybe.”

“It’s from our world?”

“No. It’s not from any world we know of. It was, is, will be from the very fabric of time. Something essential, like the cells of time, of the universe. It slithers through every dimension, every timeline, seeing all that was, is, and will be.”

I sat back in my chair. “What does this Chronos Serpent look like?”

“No one knows. It’s said to be formless, taking on the form of its surroundings or whatever its observers expect it to be. Some claim it appears as a serpent made of pure energy; others swear they’ve seen it as an old man.”

“Think I could find it and talk to it?” I said.

“Good luck,” he said.

“What do you think I should do with the Knife of Death?” I asked.

“I think you should probably do whatever you think you should. It’s your story. Your teacher gave it to you.”

“Technically, threw it at me.”

“He threw it at you for a reason.”

“I know he did,” I said.

I drank my coffee. I told Rip I’d see him at the café for lunch. He asked me what time I was asking him to lunch. I said 12:30.

“My treat,” I said.

“If you insist,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Iwent back to the library to get Fluffy so that I could take him for a walk. I got the Knife of Death from the collection and a sheath that had the first Bowie knife, named for its creator Jim Bowie (not the great singer who wrote Heroes, Starman, Space Oddity, Life on Mars) who died at the Alamo along with Davy Crockett and a group of Texas fighting against the whole army of Santa Ana.

It was cool enough to wear a jacket, and I wore one so I could hide the Knife of Death under my coat. I thought it would be safe. After all, I had a hellhound with me. Who was going to take it from me?

I thought we might go by the grocery store and get some of that stinky stinky meat that he liked. But I took him down to the trail along the stream because it was a nice walk and he saw something in the Haunted Woods and jumped the stream (it was an impossible jump unless you were a 400-pound hellhound with massive leg strength) and ran after whatever he saw. It could have been assassins or demons or a squirrel. I shouted for him to stop, but it was like shouting at a tornado.

I ran back to the bridge and went across it, thinking I wanted to be sure it wasn’t demons or ninja demons or something like that Fluffy was chasing. I didn’t go far into the woods. Just far enough, it began to change into its haunted self. Twisty tall trees, shadows that moved. I didn’t see anything unusual, though. Unfortunately, I didn’t see Fluffy either. I guess I’d just have to trust a hellhound could take care of himself.

I turned to go back to town, and there she was. Lola. Now Paris to everyone else who knew her but still, always, Lola to me. She was not thin and waif-like anymore. She had put on some muscle. She was a demon and a quite beautiful one.

“Fancy meeting you in the Haunted Woods,” she said.

A coincidence? Doubtful.

“You literally sold your soul to the devil,” I said. “I’m pretty sure you imagined you’d be seeing some haunted woods.”

She shrugged.

I watched her closely for signs that she knew I had the knife. It was possible she or some of her demons had diverted Fluffy away for a reason. I was on the wrong side of the stream. She couldn’t do anything to me in Eden. Here in the haunted woods was another story.

“Fluffy is chasing an altered squirrel,” she said.

“I figured.”

“You figured an altered squirrel.”

“I figured you probably diverted him.”

“I had a memory today that wasn’t there before,” she said. “At least I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. That night, Master Lee was killed. You. The Knife of Death.”

“That night Master Lee tried to save you and you betrayed him and me and got him killed? That the one you remembered?”

“That was that spirit, whatever, the one you call Jack. He was in Tommy Lee’s body. And I was trying to save him.”

“I know,” I said.

“You know?”

“I figured it out.”

“You were double-crossing Jack.”

“I was naïve,” she said. “I didn’t realize what he was.”

“Now you know?”

“I know what he can do. I understand how hard he is to kill.”

“He’s a danger to us all. Including Karl.”

“If he gets the knife,” she said, “he’s a true danger.”

Two demons appeared on either side of Lola. The demon on her left was tall and muscular, with blood-red skin and curved horns protruding from its forehead. It had a snarling, fang-filled mouth and claws like daggers at the ends of its hands. Its eyes were solid black and full of malice. It had a slobber problem, greenish like swamp moss.

The demon on her right was shorter, but more powerfully built. Its skin was charcoal gray, and it had a reptilian ridge going down its back. Its face was distorted into a permanent scowl. It had beady, yellow eyes. A spiked tail lashed back and forth behind it. It flexed its clawed hands.

Both demons had an intimidating, predatory presence befitting their demonic heritage. I’d noticed that there were different castes of demons. These muscle demons were animalistic and tended to grunt and speak with limited vocabulary. They served a higher order of demons, those with a more sophisticated vocabulary and refined looks.

“I’m going to need the knife now,” she said. “It will be a great help to us in the battle to come. Give it to me and I promise I will keep it out of the hands of humans.”

“Is that what you said to Master Lee?”

“You know I stole it from him. But he stole it from someone else. He was not the saint you think he was.”

“I never thought he was a saint. A good man who had done some bad things, but a lot more good.”

“All I wanted to get away from Port Aransas and the life I was going to have if I stayed there. I needed to get away.”

“What about now?”

“Now I need the Knife of Death. That simple. I have it and I can be truly free.”

“From Karl?”

“You want to escape?”

“Escape?” she said. “No. I want to have my own castle in hell. I want to become a player in the game.”

“I can’t give it to you,” I said.

“Don’t make me summon the rest of my demons. I’ll have less control over the situation. You’re human. Fragile. Any one of them might kill you.”

“You can’t have the knife.”

I pulled the knife out of the sheath. It glistened in the light, almost as if it was lit from within.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “I can feel it wants to kill.”

“It does,” I admitted.

“Give it to me, Kevin. You can’t get away. You’ll die for nothing.”

“I have the knife. Are you sure you can win?

“Then you leave me no choice,” she said. “Last chance.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll take it.”

The air crackled with dark energy as more demons materialized around me. There were at least a dozen now, surrounding me in a wide circle, their eyes glowing red, yellow, and black. Some appeared vaguely humanoid, but with leathery bat-like wings, claws, and fangs. Others looked more demonic, with twisted horns and spiked tails. One had the head of a goat and cloven hooves that clicked on the stone floor. Another was serpentine, covered in green scales with a forked tongue flicking from its mouth.

The largest demon towered over the rest, well over seven feet tall. It had crimson skin and bulging muscles. Its face was contorted in a permanent snarl, revealing rows of jagged teeth. I thought his last appointment with a dentist was likely never. In one clawed hand, it hefted a gigantic axe with cruel barbs along its double edge.

Though they varied in appearance, many of the demons had that same guttural growl. They were communicating like a pack of wolves.

I gripped The Knife of Death tightly, my heart racing. The largest demon charged first, swinging its massive axe down towards my head. I rolled out of the way just in time, the axe biting deep into one of the great old trees of the haunted woods.

As I regained my footing, two of the smaller demons leapt at me, claws extended. I ducked under one and slashed out with the knife, opening a deep gash across its torso. Black ichor spurted from the wound. A demon became black ash and dust. The Knife of Death struggled to get out of my hand. It wanted to attack. If I was more of a magician, if I had stronger magic and a better understanding of magic, maybe I could let it attack the demons and it would move from one to another and come back to me. But I didn’t think I’d be able to control it if it got away. Probably it would kill everyone within its reach, including Lola and including me.

Another demon knocked me to the ground while I was struggling to keep hold of the knife. Its fangs snapped at my face. I summoned every bit of strength I had. Fear was a good motivator. I managed to shove the demon away and stabbed it in the neck before it could bite my head off. It turned to dust a second later.

The other demons had time to close in while I was fighting Sharp Fangs. They tightened the circle around me, like a noose closing around a throat. One swiped at me with its claws, shredding my shirt and leaving deep scratches across my chest. Another punched me and another kicked me and weapons appeared all around me and I remembered Master Lee and the demons stabbing and biting and clawing him to death.

Just as the demons began to rip me apart, a ferocious barking erupted from outside the circle. Well, not exactly barking. More like growls or roaring growls.

Fluffy came bounding into the fray, knocking demons aside, left and right. He bit off one clawed hand and spit it out. He grabbed another and tossed him or her (sometimes it was hard to tell with demons) into the woods.

The demons screamed in anger and I thought maybe, just maybe, a little, fear. I drove the knife into the eye of the demon who was bear hugging the life out of me. Blood spurted out of the eye and the demon became dust and ash. I slashed at others. Although they were not the sharpest tools in the shed, they did observe what happened to their associates when the knife cut them. They backed away. The noose of bodies around me loosened.

Seeing my chance, I leapt on Fluffy’s back.

“Go!” I yelled.

He hesitated, ready for more fight, but then he obeyed, barreling towards the bridge leading out of the haunted woods and to Eden. We raced over the bridge with the pack of demons in pursuit, their enraged shrieks echoing behind us.

They stopped at the bridge. Eden wasn’t letting these demons in. Even Lola had to stop. She cursed the town loudly.

“I won’t ask so nicely next time,” she screamed at me.

She had helped me escape my sister, who was trying to execute me, and I owed her for that. On the other hand, she had tried to kill me herself a couple of times now. I owed her for those attempts, too.

She would have killed me to get the knife. It was time to stop thinking of her as anything like the girl who had once been my friend. She was a demon.

I petted Fluffy.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Like demons,” he said.

“Sure, you do,” I said.

“Taste like chicken,” he said and sniggered.

Chapter Twenty-Four

We walked down the street went to Lucy’s Cafe. I told Fluffy he had to stay outside. I was sorry. I told him to lie down.

“Go inside?” Fluffy said.

I shook my head.

He grumbled a little and lay down.

The lunch crowd was gone. All that was in the café were two old-timers having pie and coffee and arguing about whether there was a unicorn in the haunted woods. One argued it would be impossible for a unicorn to survive in there. One of the many haunted, evil creatures would have killed it and drunk its blood by now. The other old man argued that the surviving unicorn was the cagiest of cagy unicorns. He or she knew how to evade the many creatures that hunted it.

“Beat the odds,” he said.

“Became unicorn stew for some witch,” said the other.

They saw me and asked me to settle their argument, but I said I’d never seen a unicorn. Not entirely true. I may have seen one scamper across a frozen field in Alaska once. I had been freezing to death though and might have been hallucinating. I followed it anyway and an hour later found a warm little house and a kind, friendly couple who nursed me back to health.

This was something I learned again and again in this world. There were good people in it. I thought there were even more good people in the world than bad. Maybe just one more, though. The good couldn’t stand to lose anyone.

Lucy came out of the kitchen, and the second she saw me, hurried over to my table.

“Where’s Olive?” she said.

“She’s not here?”

“Would I ask you where she was if she was here, hon?”

“Good point,” I said. “She told me she was coming back to work right after her break.”

“She never came back from her break,” Lucy said.

For a second I worried about our time travel. Maybe it had somehow erased her when she came back. But if we had changed something, wouldn’t it have been changed by the time we came back and wouldn’t we be unchanged because we had been the ones who had done the changing?

Or maybe not. Time travel was complicated.

“I’m going to go over to her house, make sure everything is all right,” I said.

“I don’t like to worry. You come and tell me if you find her.”

I promised I would.

I went over to Olive’s father’s house, Fluffy by my side. We had to stop a few times along the way for Fluffy to mark all of Eden as his territory, but they were only momentary stops. We climbed up the stairs. I banged on the door.

The professor answered a minute later. He looked gaunt and pale. Of course, he was a zombie, so it was his natural look. I noticed he walked with a limp.

“Who’s this?” he said.

I realized he’d never met Fluffy. I introduced him. He petted Fluffy. Fluffy was quick to decide on people. Probably something he learned in hell. He decided the Professor was OK and turned his body to allow more petting.

“Have you seen Olive?” I asked.

He hadn’t seen her. He looked a little concerned. Probably because I looked a little concerned. We both turned, hearing something, and then saw a crow land on the railing of the porch. It had a message tied to its leg. The Professor unfolded it.

“It’s for you,” he said.

He handed it to me.

We have Olive. She isn’t harmed. Yet. Bring me the Knife of Death and I won’t kill her. I warn you I’m hungry. I will eat her alive if you’re not here in twenty minutes. I’m at Screaming Pond in the Haunted Forest.

Hungry Jack

“Did you read it?” I asked him.

“I read it,” he said. “What are you going to do?”

“He’s not bluffing,” I said. “He’s exactly what he sounds like. A psychotic killer. An old and evil spirit. I’m going to give him the knife.”

“I’m going with you.”

“Too dangerous.”

“I’m going,” he said. “Anyway, I’m already dead. And she’s my daughter. And I know where Screaming Lily Pond is.”

I thought about these points, all good ones.

“All right,” I said.

We made a quick stop at the library and I ran down into the Collection of Curiosities and grabbed a couple of things, one being the sword that might or might not be Excalibur.

Fluffy, the Professor, and I went into the haunted forest. The monkeys were loud. At least they stayed in the trees. That wasn’t always the case. We walked down a trail and came to a split. There were a lot of these in the Haunted Woods. The woods tried to confuse you. Then they tried to kill you. They were devious.

But the real threat didn’t come from the haunted woods this time. Whatever traps were laid out by the woods were nothing compared to what Jack would have waiting for us. Even before we could even get to Jack and his minions, we ran into a band of headhunters who looked heavily armed and out hunting for heads.

There were six of them, their faces covered in intricate tribal tattoos and piercings. They were short, thickly muscled and armed with spears and machetes. Their dark skin blended perfectly with the dense foliage of the jungle, making them almost invisible. They had a strong, earthy scent that smelled of smoke and blood.

The headhunters spoke to each other in a guttural language, their words sharp and quick, like the snap of a whip. I turned to the Professor. He was smiling. He shook his head, almost as if he had heard a silly joke.

“No need to worry,” he said.

I turned back to the headhunters and saw the binoculars around their necks that I hadn’t noticed. Maybe because I had been experiencing a quick flow of adrenalin.

“There!” one of them said, pointing. “A beautiful Quetzal.”

The others all raised and pointed their binoculars toward where he was pointing.

Some oohs and ahh’s.

“Out birdwatching today?” the professor asked.

“Hello Henry,” the one who had pointed out the Quetzal said. “How the dead today?”

“Getting along just fine,” the Professor said. “This is the librarian and his hellhound, Fluffy.”

“Heard about you,” the headhunter said, looking at me. “Witch doctor say you going to save the world or destroy it. He not sure. See you another time.”

They kept walking.

We walked on. The professor said that I should be sure to look for the binoculars. If they weren’t wearing them, then they weren’t birdwatching and might be hunting. No one was safe when they were hunting.

“They’re complicated,” he said.

“Good to know,” I said.

And there was one more surprise before we got to The Screaming Pond. He fell in with me as we walked. Obviously, the professor didn’t see him. I wasn’t so sure about Fluffy, but if he did, he realized that the ghost was harmless.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them from killing you,” I said.

He shrugged, but didn’t look upset.

“I have to give it to him. He has Olive. He’ll kill her.”

He gave me a look he’d given me many times when I was young. It meant that I was fooling myself.

“I know he plans to kill us all,” I said. “I know that.”

Then another look. It was him telling me I’d better figure it out because if I didn’t, it was going to be my own fault. He’d been hard on me sometimes and comforting others, and I always knew I could count on him and that he cared about me. The one adult who did. It was everything to know that. It changed me.

“I’m working on it,” I said.

He looked a skeptical and then tried to embrace me but when right through me. He floated away up into the sky.

“I’m working on it,” I shouted, but he was gone.

“I’m assuming you weren’t talking to yourself,” the professor said.

“A ghost,” I said. “My teacher when I was a teenager.”

“Nice to see old friends,” he said.

I nodded. Nice. Sad. Both.

“This monster that has my daughter,” the professor said. “He’s the one who possessed the mayor?”

“Yes.”

“All right then,” he said. “All right.”

“All right what? I said.

“I’m already dead,” the professor said. “If there is any sacrifice to be made, it must be mine. I need you to get my daughter out of the forest.”

“And me,” Fluffy said. “I help.”

“Of course you will,” the professor said.

“We won’t be leaving anyone behind,” I said.

“If it comes to it, I have to be the one,” he said. “Please, promise me.”

I nodded, but I had no intention of leaving him.

“You have a plan?” he said.

“I’m working on it.”

Then he said, sounding a lot like Master Lee, I thought. “Work faster.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Imight have to give the Knife of Death to Jack to get Olive free, but I couldn’t let him get out of this haunted woods with it. I couldn’t do that no matter what the risk to myself. I was well aware that the Time Traveling Cat’s warning that Olive and I could bring on the end of the world might have to do with Jack and the knife.

I saw a group of bodies up ahead. They were spread out in a thinning section of the haunted woods. The thin ghoul in a top hat stood in front of the group. I could see with my third eye what I’d seen when I’d met him in Austin. Dark magic was sparking off him. He took off his top hat, swung it down as he bowed.

“So glad you could join us,” he said.

I saw Charles (Jack) to his right and just behind him. Charles was much less Charles and much more Jack now—a mocking familiarity that was unlike Charles’ more timid posture was clearly in charge. I didn’t know if Jack could inhabit demons or angels, but I thought probably not. If he could, he would prefer them and their powers. He had some power over the ghoul, though, I thought.

“Where is she, Jack?” I said.

“Olive will be so glad you’ve come. And look who you’ve brought, her father. A zombie. Don’t see many zombies these days. You’re a dying breed, Professor.”

“So are you,” the Professor said.

If Jack was bothered by this insulation, he didn’t show it.

“Where’s Olive?” I said.

I counted six demons. The demons were hulking and brutish, with bulging muscles that seemed grotesquely swollen under their crimson skin. Their faces were misshapen and beastly, with flaring nostrils, bared fangs, and curved horns sprouting from their foreheads. Beady yellow eyes glinted with malice. They wore only loincloths made from tattered animal hides. Some of them had stooped postures that seemed better suited for all fours. Everything seemed out of proportion. Monsters.

I could see clearly that all of them together were not half as strong as the ghoul in the top hat. So, while the odds were not more overwhelming than the other demons I had recently faced, this group, with the ghoul and Jack, was much more deadly.

“Olive is being guarded by several of my best creatures in a place you’ll never find. Give me the Knife of Death, and I will tell you where she is.”

I stared defiantly at Jack. “I’m not giving you anything until I see Olive is safe and unharmed.”

Jack smiled a tight smile. “This is a simple trade. I thought you wanted your girlfriend back with her mind and body in-tact. Was I wrong?”

“You were wrong to think me simple. I need to see Olive. I need her here before I’ll give you the knife.”

Jack scowled. Behind him, the ghoul in the top hat watched silently, an eerie grin on his skeletal face. The hulking demons shifted restlessly, fangs bared out as they hissed. They were good at it, like a pit of vipers.

“You said you wanted to make a trade,” I said. “If you don’t—”

I turned away as if to leave.

The demons growled. I pulled out the knife.

“Hold on now,” Jack said. “Just hold on.”

I turned back, and we locked eyes.

“Stare-down, Bro,” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, but didn’t look away.

Neither of us did. Finally, he told his ghoul to get the girl.

The ghoul disappeared in a swirl of blue smoke. A few moments later, he reappeared with Olive at his side, clutching her arm in a vicelike grip. I scanned her quickly with my third eye for any sign of injury or worse, while keeping my expression stony. I was feeling a little stony if the truth be told. I thought I had a plan that might work, but now I was having second thoughts and doubts. It was not the best time to have them.

“Satisfied?” Jack asked mockingly. “Now, the Knife.”

“Order your ghoul to let her go.”

Jack’s face darkened.

Olive said, “Don’t give it to him! Don’t you do it, Kevin. I won’t be responsible for what he’ll use it for.”

The ghoul yanked cruelly on her arm, making her cry out in pain. My hands clenched into fists. I wanted to rush over to her, but I knew the ghoul could snap her neck with a flick of the wrist.

Jack snarled, “The knife. Now!”

I held the Knife of Death up, the blade glinting dangerously in the dim light filtering through the trees. Jack’s eyes fixed greedily on it.

“Let her go and it’s yours,” I said coldly.

A tense moment passed as Jack seemed to weigh his options. Finally, he gave a brisk nod to the ghoul.

“Do it.”

The ghoul shoved Olive roughly away from him. She stumbled but didn’t fall. That was because her zombie father moved a lot faster than anyone thought he could and caught her and held her up.

“The knife,” Jack ordered.

His ghoul was beside me in seconds. He’d planned for me to be distracted by Olive’s fall, but even though I wasn’t, he managed to be beside me before I could make a move against Jack.

“The knife, Mr. Librarian,” he whispered in my ear.

I handed him the knife. He gave me a strange look. For a second, I thought he was going to stab me with it, but he took it back to Jack. He teleported. This time I realized it wasn’t magic exactly, but a supernatural ability.

Jack held the knife in his hands and he said, “You have no idea what you’ve done, my young friend.”

I kind of did, though.

“I’m not your friend,” I said. I turned to the others. “Time to go.”

We were backing away as Jack held the knife up in triumph. Then he seemed to order it to fly out of his hands. He flew toward us as the demons rushed along with it. Jack was smiling. Big Jack-O’-lantern grin. I thought this was his true smile. A second later, it faded.

“Time to go,” I said again as the knife and demons converged on us. The Professor scooped up Olive, who stumbled. We ran. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fluffy tear into the nearest demon.

“Fluffy. Come.”

I slipped between two hulking demons, barely avoiding the claws that slashed at me. I could hear Fluffy growling and snarling behind me. A burst of purple light whizzed past my shoulder, striking a tree. I turned and saw the ghoul aiming another swirling ball of energy at me.

As the knife caught up to me, I pulled the true Knife of Death from my pocket and brought it up just in time to block the other knife. They collided, blade to blade, and the one that Jack had thrown was cut in two and fell helplessly to the ground.

The copy machine in the Collection of Curiosities was much more powerful than I’d imagined. It had done a passable job on the knife of Death. I could tell the difference because I had the two knifes side by side but I hoped that Jack wouldn’t be able to right away. He hadn’t.

Jack screamed in an ancient language and more of his army of the dead appeared behind us. Some of them were on black stallions.

Another purple blob of deadly magic rushed toward me. I grabbed a broken branch and swung it as hard as I could. The branch shattered from the impact, but it was enough to deflect the deadly orb the ghoul had sent. It careened wildly and struck one of the demons instead. The creature roared in agony. A gaping, sizzling wound spread over him.

Olive and her father were ahead of me. More energy balls split trees and exploded craters around me as I weaved through the haunted forest. I risked a glance back and saw the ghoul gliding after me, his face contorted in rage as he flung orb after orb at me. Jack was nowhere to be seen.

“Fluffy,” I yelled because he was lagging back.

Ahead, I spotted Olive and the Professor.

“Go down in it,” I shouted to them.

They ducked down a ravine, slipping and sliding on the loose earth. I followed. The sound of splintering trees and enraged roars echoed around us as Jack’s demons gave chase.

We half-ran, half-tumbled through the ravine until the sounds faded above us. Something had stopped them. The horses, maybe, wouldn’t go down the ravine. The demons were confused.

I risked a pause to catch my breath. Olive was panting heavily, but unharmed. The Professor, with his undead constitution, seemed ready to keep going.

“We have to keep moving before they pick up our trail again,” the professor said urgently.

Olive shook her head. “Wait, I think I can get us out of here.”

She’d recovered. That’s what I thought. Her color had returned. They’d beat her and tortured her, but she’d been healing herself.

Witches appeared above us on broomsticks and some more modern witches on hoverboards. They flew down like birds on the demons. I saw the twist of fury on Olive’s face. I’d never seen it before.

Olive glared at them and began speaking a spell.

I punched her in the jaw. She collapsed.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Professor looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had.

“Can you carry her?” I said.

“Why would you—” he started to say.

I interrupted him.

“Can you carry her?”

He picked her up. We hurried down the path. Fluffy stayed just behind us. I was sure he could run ahead, but he kept a step behind and once even stopped and turned to take on a demon who’d got away from the witches and follow us.

I stopped to make sure he wasn’t overtaken by others, but he turned and ran toward me a second later. We made it to the bridge after about twenty minutes. Olive and the Professor were on the other side. We crossed. The ghoul and the demons arrived a few seconds later. They couldn’t cross the stream. Eden could hold them off, even the ghoul.

They made noises over there and shouted threats but after a short while left.

“You want to explain yourself?” the Professor said, coldly.

Olive groaned.

“He’s in her, Professor,” I said. “Jack.”

“How?” he said.

“I’m not sure. Maybe he threw himself into her when he realized the knife was a copy. I lost sight of him at one point. He must have circled around behind us somehow.”

I looked at her. My Olive. His Olive. She was waking. I put my hands on her head, digging in with my fingers. I tried to push into her mind, hoping I’d see some way to throw Jack out. A second later, I was thrown ten feet, nearly landing in the stream.

I jumped up. My right shoulder was aching. I was running toward her, but I knew I wouldn’t make it. I used my hypnotic suggestion to try to put her to sleep. I could feel Jack shove me out before I could talk her into sleep. But then I could feel the surprise from Jack. Olive did something. Took a step toward my suggestion. Something that Jack didn’t expect she could do.

I saw her drop to the ground. She was unconscious. I didn’t think it would last long.

“We’ve got to get her down to the Collection of Curiosities before he wakes,” I said.

The professor flung her over his shoulder and we rushed her down the stairs and into my apartment and through my apartment, down into the collection. We had to go back through four chambers before we got to the room with the cell in it. I didn’t know much about it. I didn’t even know for sure it if could hold the spirit I called Jack. I’d read that it had once held a god named Apollo. If the evil spirit was more powerful than Apollo, it probably wouldn’t matter that the cell couldn’t hold him.

We put Olive in the cell, and I set the controls for maximin lock.

“How do we get him out of her,” the Professor said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“We’ve got to do something,” he said.

“We are in a great and unusual library,” I said. “Maybe the answer is here somewhere.”

Libraries had magic in them. What was inside books was magic. Written language was how we talked to dead people, important ones from the past. How we listened to them, anyway. And in the present too and maybe in the future. It was all there in the written word. There was that book that began, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Bible got that right. Words gave us everything.

“Right,” he said. “Back to basics. We need to do research.”

“We find a way,” I said.

We went upstairs. I allowed the Professor to go up to the second floor with me even though it was reserved for librarians normally. I did a search the way a librarian was able to do a search in the Eden Library. I told the library we were looking for a book that could give us information on an evil spirit, probably pre-Christian, who didn’t have physical form but was able to move from human to human. I asked it to give me a selection of books that might have information on this spirit.

“How old is this monster that has possessed my daughter?” the professor asked, wandering over to a small room that had the title “mythology” over it.

“Old,” I said. “Older than Romans and the Greeks. Maybe a lot older.”

The professor said he was going to take a look in the mythology room. I walked down the hall. The library had changed shape to add a room for my search. It was accommodating in that way. There were hundreds of books on a dozen shelves; an enormous table in the back with four chairs; a sofa and two armchairs on a thick Persian rug in one corner.

It was not an easy room to stand in. At first, the room didn’t look that different from other rooms in the library. But then I began to see and feel its difference. The books radiated a darkness, their secrets from the shadows. The room was dimly lit. As I looked closer at the titles, shining my flashlight over them, I saw they were all about evil spirits and demons. No big surprise there. But the feel of them, sinister almost. That surprised me.

Looking around, I noticed the walls were decorated with eerie paintings depicting scenes of possession and exorcisms.

The room had the scent of decaying books, though the books didn’t look as if they were in worse shape than other old books in the library. I smelled the stench of sulfur and brimstone. As I got close to the books, I could taste the smell, metallic like copper or blood. I touched one of the books and I felt the pull of its rough pages. It wanted to pull me into it.

The professor came in and only then did I realize I’d been in the room for some time, almost like a dream. He put his hand on one book and I saw his face go slack. I rushed to him and pulled him back. He shook his head as if recovering from a sucker punch.

“We’re going to need some special gloves,” I said.

As a librarian in the Eden Library, I had several pairs on my desk in the lobby. I went downstairs, ordering the Professor not to touch another book or listen to what they said, if they said anything. I hurried down, and I decided to take some other precautions besides gloves. Earplugs.

When I came back, I could tell by the pained look on the Professor’s face that the books had been talking to him. I handed him gloves and earplugs. I noticed one of his fingers had fallen off.

I pointed the finger out to him.

“So it has,” he said, picking it up and putting it in his pocket. “I’ll sow it back on when I get home. Stress sometimes makes me come apart a bit.”

“Sure,” I said. “I can see that. Maybe you should put the earplugs in.”

He did. I could hear the books whispering, the dark and evil spirits within some of them. I could hear the whispers from their pages echoing in the dimly lit room. Their voices, barely audible at first, grew in intensity. An icy finger traced its way along my back. I really hoped it wasn’t a real icy finger. I shook it off.

One book, its pages yellowed and brittle, beckoned to me with a seductive tone. “Embrace the darkness,” it hissed, its words slithering through the quiet space. “I can make you feel things you have never felt. I can give you pleasure that will live in your forever.”

Another volume nearby unleashed a lamentation that sounded very similar to one of the nuns I had as a teacher in second or third grade. “You are insignificant,” it moaned, its voice heavy with despair. “You are a stain on the world. You come from corruption and you are, like all men, doomed to a life of despair. It is no more than you deserve. Read in me the failures of men and know the darkness in your heart, the futility of life.”

A third book, worn and weathered, whispered sinister secrets about the townspeople that might or might not be true. It also brought to my mind people from my own past who had harmed me in some way. “Harm those who have harmed you,” it urged. “Revel in their suffering, for vengeance is your birthright. Spread hate and you will rise above all others. Find them and punish the world.”

The whispers of the books grew louder, weaving together. They painted vivid images of destruction. I put the earplugs in. Enough with the Ulysses tied to the ship mask listening to Sirens. I was drowning in darkness. Best to wear earplugs sometimes.

Once I had the earplugs on and gloves, I could distance myself from the voices and focus on the written words. I found stories of possession and one story of a spell a priest used to free a girl from an old, evil spirit. They were all Christians, though. I doubted they’d be effective on Jack. Then I came upon a story about a series of murders in Rome during the Roman Empire.

The streets of ancient Rome were dangerous, especially at night. But the recent string of horrific murders plaguing the city had the entire population on edge. Over a dozen young girls, both slaves and patricians, had been found tortured and killed in alleyways and private homes across the city. The modus operandi was always the same—the girls were restrained, beaten, and brutally murdered. But the most chilling aspect was that each time, the murderer turned out to be someone close to the victim — a father, brother, or lover — who seemed to have been possessed by a malevolent force.

The renowned philosopher Lucretius took a particular interest in the case. He had a reputation as an amateur detective, often assisting the local magistrates in solving crimes. In this case, he enlisted the help of his friend Praetor Flavius Caesar. One night, the two men were patrolling the dark streets, looking for any clues, when they came upon a grisly scene - the body of a young slave girl tossed in the refuse, maimed and discarded like trash. From the looks of it, she had been killed just hours earlier. Lucretius examined the body carefully and saw no signs of a struggle. He deduced she must have known the man.

All the victims knew their murderers. In one case, it was a brother. In three others fathers. Several uncles. Several husbands. They speculated the gods were involved or a witch or demons. But these were normal men who acted in despicable ways and afterward couldn’t remember doing what they’d done. They had no memories of committing the actual murder, only being overcome by a blind rage and waking later drenched in blood.

Three men, so far, had killed themselves in a traditional manner for the time. They sat in a bath of warm water and they cut their wrists. Their notes spoke of their profound self-loathing after what they’d done. They could not get past their acts.

Stumped as to a motive, Lucretius and Flavius visited a witch. They asked her for the truth of what had happened.

The old woman said that witches were not at fault. This was a beast much older than even Rome. It lived in shadows, but it could possess men and women. She had heard a story once that the beast lived in the old catacombs beneath a church in the city.

She knew of no way to kill it, though she believed fire would force it out of the body it was in. Perhaps fire would even kill it, but she was not sure about that. She advised finding a way to imprison it. If they could isolate the beast and stay far enough away that it couldn’t possess them, perhaps they could imprison it in its crypt.

Descending into the dark, clammy tunnels by flickering torchlight, the men searched until they came across, all the way in the bottom of a chamber, a grisly altar piled high with stolen items belonging to the murdered girls. There was jewelry, a diary, clothing and private things.

Lucretius and Flavius saw a soldier in uniform. He begged them to help him. But then he smiled, and they knew he thought he had them. But they were ready. They both stabbed at the soldier with their torches as they backed out of the chamber. Lucretius threw his at the soldier as they moved into the larger cave and he hit his mark. The body burned, and the soldier dropped to the ground and rolled, trying to put it out.

It gave them a chance.

They closed the door to the crypt.

The witch was waiting out in the cave behind them.

She began to mumble words, softly at first and then more loudly and faster, as if she was stabbing the air with them. The ground shook and above them the ceiling collapsed and rocks and boulders filled the opening to the crypt.

But the tremor had loosened the whole cave, and rocks and boulders began to fall everywhere. Flavius and Lucretius scrambled over the shifting rocks and boulders, struggling to keep their footing as the ground shuddered beneath them. Dust and debris rained down from above.

The witch was unfazed, steadily picking her way through the chaos, her lips moving incessantly as she continued her arcane incantations. She seemed to know exactly where to step to avoid the cascading rocks.

Lucretius tripped and fell with a cry, narrowly avoiding being crushed by a massive, plummeting boulder. Flavius grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet, urging him onwards. They could see daylight glimmering ahead; the cave entrance was so close.

With a final massive quake, the ceiling caved in behind them in a deafening roar of stone and dust. Flavius and Lucretius dove for the exit, rocks pounding the ground at their heels. They tumbled out into blinding sunlight, gasping and bleeding, as the cave collapsed in on itself with a rumble.

The witch stepped calmly out behind them, unruffled. She disappeared. The two Romans returned to Rome, satisfied that they had locked away the demon murderer in the cave, buried beneath tons of stones, his tiny room a coffin that would hold him for all time.

*PostScript I am the librarian who wrote up this imagining of an event I read about in an ancient volume lost to me before I came to the library. If you are reading this, you suspect what I suspected. The spirit escaped.

The catacombs were dug up by archeologists in the first decade of the 19th century. It is only conjecture, but I believe the spirit survived and found a new host then and has been with us ever since.

Again, he walks the earth, and he spreads destruction.

I showed the passage to the Professor.

“It could be him.”

“It’s possible. If it’s him, we know he has a weakness. Fire.”

“You think something directed you to the book?”

“I’m the librarian. It happens here in the library.”

“We don’t know if fire kills him or forces him to respond to it,” he said, “but it is something, at least.”

“I’m going to pay the ghostbusters a visit,” I said.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Iwalked over to the Ghostbuster lab and office. Ryan and Camila were working, fixing a machine on a table. Parts were spread all over it. They were talking about the fifth dimension but, it turned out, they were not discussing the micro-dimension of space smaller than an atom (which you’d expect from science types like them), but the band 5th Dimension, creators of the song “The Age of Aquarius”. Ryan thought the song was great, and Camila thought it was ridiculous. They tried to pull me into their argument, but I refused to give my opinion.

Walter was at a computer doing something, and I went over to him and told him what I knew about Jack. He was an old spirit that moved from body to body here on earth but may not have done that wherever he came from.

“And where do you think that might be?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“The primordial soup?”

“Something like that.”

“An evil god?”

“Hard to say,” I said. “What makes a god a god? He can do things we think only gods can do. He’s likely immortal. Is he worshipped? I don’t think so. Does he have a good origin story that lives up to say, Zeus, and his brothers and sisters? No.”

“I see your point,” Walt said. “Anyway, what matters most to us is he has kidnapped our Olive. He has stolen her body and her consciousness. These are unforgiveable acts.”

“I have him locked up in a special cage in the Collection of Curiosities, but I’m worried he might get out and I’m worried for Olive, of course. Can you help?”

“We’ll try, of course.”

Walter called the others, Ryan and Camila and Gabriela, over and asked me to tell them what I’d told him. I did. He asked for ideas and no one had any, so he said they had better do some tests on the creature. Maybe the tests would give them some sense of how bad the situation was.

We walked over to the library. They carried their machines for detection and analysis and possible extraction. Fluffy was at the front door to greet everyone. He was a dog who enjoyed greeting friends as much as he enjoyed tearing off and eating the limbs of creatures that were a danger to me or him. He was, in short, the perfect hell hound.

We walked downstairs to the Collection of Curiosities and to the chamber where the cell held Olive’s body, now possessed by the evil spirit I called Jack.  The professor had come down to the collection to sit with Olive while he read a book titled Evil Spirits 101. He greeted everyone and thanked them for coming.

I asked the ghostbusters what their various machines were.

Walter pointed at the large device Ryan was carrying. In his smooth, professorial voice, he said, “The main machine here is what we call the Spectral Extractor. The Spectral Extractor has precisely calibrated electromagnetic fields to destabilize malevolent spectral entities, forcing them out of the physical host body while leaving the host unharmed—most of the time. We can customize the wavelength and amplitude of the fields to target specific spirit energies. You can see how it will be useful in the case. This spirit will likely have a strong presence.”

“Most of the time?” I interrupted.

“Some of these malevolent spectral entities integrate with the person so completely they become symbiotic. Can’t harm the spectral entity without harming, most likely killing, its host. These are subtle matters and extremely powerful spectral entities. They require sophisticated calculations and exact settings.”

“Possible brain damage, too,” Gabriela added, “if we aren’t very careful.”

“But if we’re successful,” Walt said, “The spirit gets funneled out of the body and into the Extractor. We’ll take it back to the lab and our Containment Unit, a large tube-like structure made of a special metal found only in one cave in Argentina. The metal was taken to a dwarf workshop where the containment unit was made by specialists in such matters. It’s heavily shielded to prevent escape. We’ve captured many entities over the years using the two in combination.”

“You have them stored there?”

“Too dangerous,” he said. “We transport them to another realm.”

“You mean, like death?”

“Exactly like death,” he said. “The Obliterator module neutralizes particularly violent specters by dissolving their essence entirely. We can’t be certain where they go, but we are certain they no longer exist on earth.”

Walter continued, “Now, specters rarely leave willingly, so extraction can be an arduous process. This is another delicate operation. That small black box that Gabriela carries, the Spirit Scanner (Gabriela pretended to be a model from a game show, holding a box in one hand and using her other to caress the box and smiling the universal model smile The box had metal switches and different colored buttons) can shoot nanobots into the body as reinforcements. The scanner runs psychometric algorithms to produce a real-time map of spectral activity within the subject’s mind and body. This lets us track the spirit’s movements and pinpoint areas of resistance. That better informs extraction strategy and allows us to target weak spots in the spirit’s defenses with the nanobots.

“I’m impressed,” I said. “Did you invent these machines?”

“Some of them, yes. Mostly I adapted other machines, though.”

“Walter is a genius,” Gabriela said. “He was famous down on the flatlands for landmark work among a small group of specialists. Of course, the wider scientific community knows very little of his work. It isn’t applicable to their system of beliefs.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Walter said. “The important thing is always the work. Let me continue. We monitor vital signs closely and can pause the procedure if the host body shows distress. The silver box that Camila carries on her back (it looks like a metal backpack, but it has black hoses hanging off it) can be another storage unit. If there’s too much of the spectral spirit, the extractor may not have enough room, so we’ll store some in the other unit until we can get back to the lab.”

“We have some supplemental tools as well. For example, the Spectral Shield here (he opened his coat, and I saw what appeared to be a tin—I knew it wasn’t tin though—vest, shaped like a bulletproof vest, over his body) creates a protective barrier against malicious entities during the extraction process.”

He pulled out a magician’s wand, or that was what it looked like, anyway.

“We also utilize this Psycho-Resonator wand.”

“It emits spirit-disrupting ultrasonic frequencies. We can use it to weaken a specter’s grip before extraction or to prod it out of the host during the procedure. The Resonator provides more focused effects.”

“And we have an array of formulas and mixtures for spectral manipulation and control in the backpack Gabriela carries. Our technologies utilize cutting-edge supernatural science. I assure you, we will do everything in our power to remove the evil spirit without harming Olive.”

I should have been comforted by all these technologies that would be used to free Olive of Jack, but I wasn’t. How could human technology be a match for Jack? He could travel from body to body. For all I knew, he couldn’t even be killed. If he didn’t have a host, he might just lie in wait for the chance to get one. I thought of him in the crypt for maybe hundreds of years. He was still able to inhabit one archeologist and find his way back to the world. He was something even the ghostbusters had never come up against.

He warned me we would have to time the immobilizing shot he would give her. He could only do that by turning off the force-field around the cage for a second. I was resistant to the risk. Jack might escape. But then I thought it through. Jack didn’t just randomly possess Olive. He took her because he knew how much she meant to me. He planned to use her not only to get free. He was still after the Knife of Death.

Jack was up close to the energy barrier of the cell. Walter walked up on one side and Ryan on the other.

“I’m disappointed in you, librarian,” he said. “This cage won’t hold me. You must know that.”

“I know. I needed to keep you away from others while we come to terms.”

“I have her,” he said. “I can take her completely any time I want.”

“And lose the knife forever,” I said.

“An idle threat.”

“Death has visited me,” I said. “He has made me an offer for the knife you can’t. Immortality.”

I had him. He knew I wasn’t lying, and he was trying to determine if such an offer would be enough to make me willing to lose Olive and my struggle to stop him. I thought he and Death might have some connection I didn’t know about.

I moved quickly. I held up the librarian ring on my finger and turned the energy barrier off. Walter stabbed Jack with the needle. He grabbed Walter’s throat with Olive’s long thin fingers and for a second I thought Walter was a dead man and maybe all of us would also be (except for Gabriela and Camila who would be dead women) but Ryan stabbed him with a second needle and for a second I saw Olive in the face that was mostly Jack now. The body of Olive collapsed onto the cage floor.

Walter rubbed at his neck and cleared his throat.

“Let’s begin,” Walter said. “We shouldn’t count on those shots keeping him out long.”

I turned off the force field again and opened the cage door.

Ryan powered on the Spectral Extractor, and it began humming, lights blinking in rhythm. He aimed it at Olive and she writhed, face contorting. After a minute, Walter checked the Spirit Scanner’s display.

“No effect yet. Increase amplitude.”

Ryan adjusted some dials and the machine’s hum grew louder. Olive’s back arched off the table as her mouth opened in a silent scream.

“We’ve never encountered a monster like this before,” Walter said. “No effect.”

The Scanner showed minimal spectral displacement. Walter had Ryan increase power again and again, but Jack did not budge from Olive’s body. She thrashed violently on the floor. I could see the life draining from her.

“It’s not working,” I said.

“Increase the setting,” Walter ordered.

“Are you sure?” Ryan said.

“Do it,” Walter said.

He did. It didn’t work.

“Maximum,” Walter said.

“No,” Gabriela said.

Walter had a mad look in his eye. He almost seemed to have forgotten all of us. His machines were failing him. He turned toward Gabriela and for a second I thought he was going to strike her. Then he got hold of himself.

“No,” Walter agreed. “Turn the machine down. Gabriela, hit it with a focused nanobot blast.”

I could tell by the way he said this that he thought it had little chance of working. Gabriela aimed her Spirit Scanner and pressed a button. A high-pitched whine pierced the air as a concentrated beam of nanobots shot into Olive’s forehead. She wailed, limbs flailing.

On the Scanner display, we could see the spirit recoil from the nanobot attack, but it still maintained possession even though it seemed unable to wake Olive.

Walter amped up the Extractor fields again. The lights on the machine flickered as it unleashed its supernatural force. The stone walls shook.

Olive’s back arched so severely I worried her spine would snap. She gasped for air, fingers clawing at nothing. The Scanner showed Jack had not moved one inch. Olive’s head thrashed back and forth, blood trickling from her nose.

“Stop this,” I shouted.

The professor was already over at the machine and he told Walter to stop.

Walter shut it down. Ryan killed the power. The room fell quiet except for Olive’s ragged breathing. After a tense minute, her vitals stabilized, though she remained unconscious. They backed out of the cell and I put the energy field back up.

“I’m sorry, professor, librarian,” Walter said.

My heart sank.

“There must be something more we can try,” I said

Walter said, “We’ve taken this as far as we can. It’s too established in her for us to do anything.”

“There’s got to be something.”

“We’ll kill her,” Camila said. “She’s already weakened. This spirit is like a boa constrictor, squeezing the life out of its victim. She’ll remain only as a whisper of her old self before long. He’ll have total control.”

I saw he/she was waking

“So that’s it?” the professor said

“I wish I could think of something else to try, but I cannot,” Walter said.

“Unless,” Camila said. “Maybe we could try pure magic instead of science.”

“Lord Blackstone?” I said.

“Someone more specialized,” Camila said.

“The exorcist?” Gabriela said. “Father Matteo. The handsome father Matteo.”

“This spirit isn’t even from the Christian tradition,” Walter said. “It won’t work.”

A spark of hope flickered in me. “I’ll go get him.”

“It’s a waste of time,” Walter said.

“You said there were no more scientific things to try,” I said. “We’ll try something else.”

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll keep guard here and make sure the spirit remains contained.”

“I’ll go with you,” Ryan said.

“I’m going back upstairs to the library,” the professor said. “I’ll keep looking for some ideas.”

Ryan, the professor, and I went upstairs. I told Fluffy to stay with the rest of the ghostbusters and guard the prisoner. Who was the prisoner, though? Jack seemed to hold all the cards.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Ryan and I went to the Church of the Out of Order. I hesitated outside it. I’d been in churches before, but I hadn’t known then that Karl was my father. Now I wondered if I’d draw a strike of lightning. Ridiculous, of course. I stepped into the church. It was a relief when no crack of lightning followed. There wasn’t an earthquake or even a tremor.

The girls were right. The priest was handsome but older than I’d expected, possibly late forties. He was standing up at the altar. He’d been talking when we came in, but there was no one else in the church. His hair was black and as he looked us over, I thought his eyes seemed especially alert. He was draped in the simple black robes of his vocation.

“Father Mateo,” I said.

“You are the librarian,” he said. “I have been expecting you.”

I looked to Ryan, who shrugged.

“You know about the evil spirit?”

“Evil spirit?” he said. “No. I thought perhaps you were here because you’d heard about the monster.”

“The what?”

“Something one of my parishioners saw in town. The big foot? He thought maybe it was the big foot.”

“No one told me.”

“That is what he likened it too. Out on the square at midnight. But you have not heard?”

“No.”

“Then you are here for another reason? An evil spirit, you say. What can I do for you, my son?”

“Do you know Olive?” I asked.

“Of course. Lovely girl with sunshine smile. Brings me chicken soup from the café.”

I told him what had happened.

“Gabriela and Camila said you had some experience with such things?” I said.

“Back in Italy. Long ago. Yes. I was the exorcist’s assistant. A boy, but I learned. I will get my bag.”

He disappeared behind the altar and was back in seconds carrying a big black bag. Ryan and I both offered to carry it for him but he was adamant it remain in his hands.

I took him to the library, and he was properly impressed by all the books and by the magic in it. Then we went downstairs and into the caves of the Collection of Curiosities. He stopped a few steps in.

“I can feel the beast even from here,” he said.

“A monster,” I said. “I don’t think he’s from hell. This is something else.”

“Very old,” he said. “Yes, very old. Older than our savior, Jesus Christ, when he visited our world. This is something from the depth of darkness.”

We went through a few chambers and into where the ghostbuster team and the cage were.

The Father looked at Olive.

“Look at me,” he said harshly to her, to Jack.

Olive turned to him and hissed. Then she laughed. Not Olive. I had to quit thinking of the person before me as Olive. Jack was in control.

“I see the monster in her,” the priest said, and then starred at her. “I see you.”

“Of course, you see me. Your creator gave you eyes. I see you, too. All the moments of your weakness. The women you’ve seduced. I know about each of them. But you don’t see what I really am. None of you. Not even you, librarian. I am the nightmare you have not yet had. I am the monster under your beds.”

“I’m coming for you, monster,” the priest said. “I going to send you back whence you came.”

“If you could do that, priest, I would be grateful I would even let you live, annoying as you are.”

I thought he meant what he said. It surprised me, but I didn’t really understand. Where could something like him wish to return?

Father Mateo opened his satchel and brought out a brass bowl, vials of oil, an ornate crucifix on a long chain, and other ritual objects. Chanting in Latin, he poured oils into the bowl, lit them, and wafted the smoking mixture over Olive’s rigid form in the cage. She did not back away. Her eyes locked on him.

“Begone, foul creature!” the priest intoned, clutching his crucifix. He sprinkled more oil on the flames. Olive screamed and stepped back in horror. The priest stepped forward. “Go back to hell.”

“I am not from hell, Priest. Look to the librarian for that. I am from the sky. I am from the beginning.”

For the next half-hour, the priest went through rituals, brought relics out of his bag, spoke incantations and invocations. Jack toyed with him. In his frustration, the priest got too close and Jack grabbed him by the head. He yanked him against the bars and kissed him on the forehead.

The priest collapsed. Camila got down on a knee. She put her fingers to his throat.

“He’s dead,” she said, looking up at us.

I looked at Jack.

“He was getting on my nerves.”

“So, you killed him?”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “Don’t tell me you didn’t want to kill him yourself. All that old mumbo jumbo. I have walked with creators of universes. It’s time you and I have a talk.”

“I’ll be right back.”

I got everyone to pack up and leave, and I went up with them and let them out of the library. I thanked them for trying. The professor thanked them.

“He was so beautiful,” Gabriela said.

“And he did his best,” Camila said.

“Could you tell the Doc,” I said, “and ask him to come over in his mortician capacity with his guys.”

“Sure thing,” Ryan said.

The professor and I went over to the living room. The professor sat on the sofa. I sat in an armchair. Fluffy sat next to me and I petted him.

“What did he mean he walked with creators?” the professor said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I can hardly see my little girl in that body anymore,” the professor said, and looked very close to tears.

Then he collapsed. I jumped up, thinking he’d had some kind of attack, but before his head touched the sofa, my father appeared and the professor’s head landed in his lap.

“Poor, poor man,” Lucifer said, and he massaged the professor’s head.

I realized he was just sleeping and was relieved.

“What do you want?” I said.

“Is that anyway to greet your father?”

“Sorry. What do you want, father? I’m a little busy right now, what with Jack possessing my girlfriend and killing a priest.”

“You can’t blame him about the priest. They do tend to annoy one.”

“He was just doing his job. You still haven’t told me why you’re here,”

“This poor man’s daughter and your lover is possessed by the one you call Jack. I thought you could use my help.”

“I could,” I said.

“Fine.”

“You can free her?”

“In a sense.”

“What sense?”

“I can pull your girl and Jack to hell. I can make sure he will never leave hell.”

“And Olive?” I said. Even as I said it, I knew that he would ask a steep price for his help. Probably he would ask me to start Armageddon. The time-cat said the love between Olive and me we would destroy the world. Maybe this was how.

“No one can help her,” he said. “The spirit has entwined himself with her. But I can free her from Jack, allow her to move on to the next world.”

“No,” I said.

He shrugged. “Your cell won’t hold him long, you know? Too powerful.”

“What is he?”

“A monster not of our world. Give me the knife and I will free your lover.”

“How are you here? I thought you could only come in dreams?”

“You thought right,” he said. “The knife for my help. Think it over. Better I have the knife than the one you call Jack. He wishes to use it to kill the universe.”

“Why?”

“Revenge, which, as you know, I heartily approve of. However, in this case, I will help you stop him. Call me.”

He disappeared, and I woke up in the chair, Fluffy lying at my feet, the professor snoring on the sofa.

“I know what to do,” I said to Fluffy.

He looked, justifiably, doubtful.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It was dark outside. I went out to the park. The lamps gave off faint light. I became a tree hugger. I hugged the Tree of Life. I called Death. I wasn’t sure if he’d hear me or if he’d come even if he did hear me, but I thought he might be waiting for a call from me. I thought the Tree of Life might be an amplifier.

Death didn’t come.

But I had a vision.

I was in a room that was all windows, and outside that room were stars. It felt like I was floating in this room and like the room was floating. It seemed to me something big was about to happen.

“Big bang,” The Creator of Everything said.

“About to happen?” I said.

He nodded.

The Creator of Everything was purple and had eight long arms with eight powerful hands. There was something elegant about those hands. I guess they were the hands that had created the universe.

The Creator of Everything seemed to have no hair on his body and wore only a swimsuit with yellow stars on its dark blue color. He was twelve feet tall. He had golden eyes. He sat at the end of the table. Seven others sat around the table.

The seven others sitting around the table had varying appearances, each distinct and unique from the others. One had a body made of shimmering stars and a head of swirling galaxies, while another was in seven dimensions at once and his form sometimes appeared human and sometimes pure energy and sometimes a volcano, an ocean, a mountain. Another was a dog, a yellow dog, I thought. Yet another had a human-like form but was blue and was covered in fur. One had roughly a hundred eyes all over his body and very nice hair. One had wings made of fire but icy eyes, the kind you would not like to see on someone passing you in the night.

“Take the shapes I have chosen for us to speak to one another,” the Creator said.

They took human shapes. An old woman with long, white hair. A young man. A girl. A very fat man. A beautiful woman. A man who looked like Santa Claus. A woman who looked like my favorite foster mother, Mrs. Johnson, who would have adopted me but the day after she filled the papers had a heart attack.

The Creator spoke in a language I didn’t know. Except I understood it perfectly. So that was weird.

He told the other creators who, obviously, were gods to go off and create universes. He told them not to be afraid.

He looked right at me then. “You are human and mortal and will not be creating any universes. But there is something unusual about you and I would like to discover what it is before you die. You will see this as the moment of beginning, the creation story, the making of universes and galaxies and worlds, but I see everything at once and the other Creators see everything at once and so this is the beginning and the end and everything in-between. It is, however, the first time we’ve met face to face.”

“Even universes end?”

“Everything,” he said, “is always beginning and ending and everything in-between if you know how to see. Mrs. Johnson has written your story, and you have changed what she wrote, so something very odd is happening and I’d like to know what.”

“I’ve always been a fan of rewriting,” I said.

“You know what will happen?”

“No.”

“Your time is limited.”

“I know.”

“Time will always seem like a river to you. That is no way to see time, but that was the best I could do for humans.”

“I know.”

“I like to be surprised. If you can surprise me, I would be very grateful. It has been a very long, long time since I’ve been surprised.”

“I’ll try,” I said,

I was back at the tree in the garden. I let go of it and backed away.

The Time cat appeared on one limb. At least its head was attached to its body this time.

“Now you’ve done it.”

“Done what?”

“You couldn’t just play your part and move on.”

“Apparently not,” I admitted.

“You’re going to cause me a lot of paperwork.”

“Sorry. What did I just see, exactly?”

“How should I know?”

“I saw the creator of everything and seven other creators.”

“Then you saw the creators of the seven universes and the creator of the creators. I can’t believe you saw them. I’ve never even seen them.”

“How do you know about them, then?”

“Stories,” he said. “We all tell stories. And we cats with nine lives tell more than most.”

“Can you tell me how to kill Jack?”

“No,” the time cat said. “I still think you might be the end of the universe, but you will make a good story no matter what happens.”

He disappeared.

Chapter Thirty

The night darkened over the tree. Death stood over me.

“Did you bring me the Knife of Death?” he asked.

“I have it,” I said.

“I know you have it. Will you give it to me?”

“My father wants me to give it to him. He says he can put Jack in a place that would keep him from ever returning to earth. I could save a lot of people. All I have to do is give him the knife.”

“I can’t say if heeee can or can’t or will or won’t. I don’t seeeeee the future like thizzzzz. I seeeee what I need to seeeee.”

“You live in the world of spirits.”

“It’s been called that.”

“I read a myth. Is he old as the stars? Jack, I mean. Do you know how old he is?”

“He was not there in the beginning.”

“Not as old as you?”

“No.”

“Would the Knife of Death kill him?”

“It will kill anything,” Death said.

“Can you kill him and not Olive?”

“I am Death,” Death said. “I can send the spirit you call Jack to the next world and save the girl, but there will be paperwork. There will be a lot of paperwork.”

“Come to the library, the Collection of Curiosities. The cage is in the third chamber. I’ll meet you there when you’ve filed the paperwork.”

“The paperwork comes afterward.”

“You don’t know if you can kill Jack, do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Even with the knife, you don’t know?”

“With the Knife of Death, I can kill anything from this universe.”

“But you aren’t sure,” I said, “because the myth is true. There’s a creator, but he created seven Creators who created seven universes. If this spirit isn’t from this universe—”

Death shrugged. A very long shrug. What did that mean? I didn’t know. I never could read a shrug.

“But you can get Olive free of him and send him away, even if he’s from another universe?”

“Probably,” he said. “Possibly. It is likely he is from this universe because he is in this universe. But to kill him with the knife, I need him to have a physical form. Possibly I could isolate the kill after it is done, not to include the girl. Possibly.”

Possibly.

So, I had Walt and the ghostbusters say they could turn their machine up to the highest setting. Most likely, Olive would die and Jack would enter someone I cared about and a citizen of Eden who I was supposed to take care of. The priest exorcist was dead and never had a chance against Jack; I should have known better. My father would take Olive and Jack to hell and kill Olive and imprison Jack. At least with my father, Jack wouldn’t inhabit another human and wouldn’t be a threat to humans everywhere.

And now there was Death. Possibly.

“Not good enough,” I said.

“I need my knife back,” Death said.

“You’ll have to wait,” I said and walked away, hoping I wasn’t going to be cut down from behind by his scythe. I may have closed my eyes when I walked, trying to see with my third eye instead.

“You will see me,” Death said. “Again. I will visit you soon.”

I went to find Walt.

Chapter Thirty-One

Walt was back at the lab. He’d left Ryan in the Collection of Curiosities. I asked him to help me and told him it had to be done in a few hours. I was sorry to keep him up so late. He said he hardly slept at all at night these days anyway.

“As the great Betty Davis said, ‘Getting old is not for sissys.’”

Jack was getting stronger and stronger. I thought Olive was fighting him, but she wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. If Jack got free, he would probably destroy all of Eden.

Walt said he thought he could do it, but he would need Ryan and me to make a trip to the graveyard while he got things ready. He told me to grab the black bag, third from the left on the second shelf, down in the storage room. I did.

Ryan and I left and went to the graveyard.

The caretaker wasn’t around. I noticed one grave had been freshly dug and realized it wasn’t one dug so much as dug up. It was Diana’s. Another failure. The girl who I couldn’t stop from poisoning what she thought was the Tree of Life and was poisoned by the poisoned.

Her corpse was gone. I thought I knew who had taken it and I thought I knew why. The headless mother and the daughter might be returning at any time. Two more worries for me, but two worries I would have to deal with later.

Ryan and I looked for other graves and he pointed to the former librarian’s grave and we dug up that body. He’d died when I first came to town a few weeks ago, so the body wasn’t in terrible shape. Not that he didn’t look dead, and a bit eaten away. He did.

We put the body in the body bag, and we hurried back to Ghostbusters’ lab. The machine took up an entire corner of the lab. Walt had Camila and Gabriela were working on it and three robots I’d never seen before. They looked like they were made of copper and in the shape of humans, but with unformed faces. They were working so fast they were hard to see move.

“Where did they come from?” I asked Ryan.

“Walt only brings them out for special occasions,” Ryan said. “He built them a hundred years ago, but has made modifications.”

The machine had a large metal framework suspended over a waist-high operating table. Intricate arrays of brass tubes and glass containers were fixed to the framework. They were filled with mysterious liquids.

The master control panel stood on a raised platform, connected to the machinery by thick bundles of copper wire. Two of the robots grabbed the body bag Ryan and I had lowered to the floor. They lay it out on a table and within a couple of minutes, they had embedded assembled and machine parts, wires, circuits in the body with the decaying organs and a waxy substance. Parts of skin fell off when they worked, though they were careful. They stitched the body back up. Cluster of small glass containers were hooked up to pressure pumps. Ryan said they contained various stimulating agents that would be injected directly into the muscles and circulatory system.

Dials, gauges, and meters showed liquid flowing through tubes and into the body on the table.

Walt said, “The former librarian is more decayed than I’d hoped.”

“He was never the most helpful guy,” Ryan said.

“All show,” Camila said. “No depth. Look at him now.”

“Is this really going to work?” I said.

“We’ll see in a moment,” Walt said. “Of course, you realize this isn’t Frankenstein. It’s really just a machine using a human form. The robots have wired him up.”

“So he’s more of a robot?”

“More of, but not exactly because of the biological parts that will be reanimated.”

Walt flipped a switch, and a pulse of galvanic energy coursed through the wiring and into the corpse. Combining different concentrations and timings of currents, the dormant flesh began to have a little color. About as much as the Professor. In fact, there was a zombie look to the former librarian.

“No brain,” the professor said.

“No brain,” Walt agreed.

The eyes of the corpse opened. I saw the confusion and the pain in them. I saw what seemed to be life.

“Seems sort of alive to me,” I said.

“An animated corpse, without memory or consciousness. Its brain functions are completely machine. But maybe it will be enough for what you want.”

It looked real enough to bother me. I had to admit that.

The robots got him off the table. At first he stumbled, his legs not working. But Walt made some adjustments and ordered the robots to do something. After another couple of minutes, the corpse was walking only a little more stiffly than the professor. I gave the knife to him.

“Time to go,” I said.

It was near midnight by the time we came up on the library’s porch. I opened the front door of the library, and I heard Fluffy howling.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Iran down the stairs and the ghostbusters and the robots carrying the former librarian followed me. I went through my apartment and into the Collection of Curiosities and into the chamber where the cage that held Jack/Olive prisoner was.

Fluffy was pinned up against the wall about ten feet above the floor of the cave. He was struggling, but I could see he was being strangled by an invisible force and he was failing, losing strength. The professor was pinned against the wall just to the left of Fluffy, but he was not struggling to breathe, likely because he didn’t breathe.

Then I saw Jack, still in the cage, but at the bars, two of them bent. Not quite enough for her to step out, but close.

“Stand back, librarian, or I kill your little pet. You can’t stop me, anyway. No one can stop me now. These bars are melting.”

He was right. I could see they were melting even as he spoke. They’d be gone in a few seconds.

“Now,” I shouted to the ghostbusters.

They came in and the former librarian was in the front of the others and he had the Knife of Death out and he was running toward Jack. The ghostbusters were moving toward the cage but more slowly, hesitantly.

“Stab her,” I shouted.

Jack had only a second before the corpse that looked alive and angry and determined stabbed him and Olive with the knife. He did it. He made the jump. Fluffy fell the cave floor. Olive fell onto the cave floor. Jack inhabited the corpse-robot. The second he did, the ghostbusters used the Spectral Extractor to suck the spirit, who couldn’t stay in the corpse, into the machine before it could jump to one of them.

The corpse robot blew fuses or something and dropped to the floor. I ran to Olive, using my ring to open the cage door. She was still lying on the floor, but when I lifted her head up, I could see Jack was gone from her. I just couldn’t see what was left. The professor came rushing up. He got down on his knees.

“You’re going to be all right,” the professor told her.

Fluffy came running up. He had the knife in his mouth and I took it from him and put it in the sheath on my belt and petted him.

“Hungry,” Fluffy said.

There were drawbacks to a talking hellhound.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“You better take her to see Doc,” I said to the professor. “I need to make sure Jack is taken care of.”

Olive looked at me. She tried to speak but couldn’t. I reached into her mind. I couldn’t get far. I thought I heard something, not words exactly, but something like words. “Kill it.”

I wasn’t sure that was possible. He might be immortal. I nodded just the same, but I thought she felt my doubt. The professor picked her up and carried her off.

I returned to the lab with the ghostbusters. We brainstormed possible methods to neutralize Jack. Unfortunately, since he was currently without a physical host, we came up with nothing. He could remain imprisoned in the machine, but what if he found a way out? He was like a poison released on the world. He wouldn’t give up trying to find the Knife of Death, either. He would come for it, for me.

We talked about how he probably couldn’t be killed and our only alternative was to imprison him somewhere. But where would be safe to keep him?

The professor came back and reported that the Doc had Olive under sedation. He wanted to be part of the decision about what to do with Jack. I told them about my father’s offer, but everyone agreed the Knife of Death couldn’t be in Lucifer’s hands. As far as threating the world of men and women, it was almost the same as Jack’s desire to destroy the universe.

“What’s he got against the universe?” Walt asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I might have an idea,” the professor said. “I read in one of volumes on the second floor about a race of beings that lived in this universe before the creator destroyed and remade the universe.”

“Destroyed and remade?” I said.

“There was another universe here. It was populated with creatures made of pure energy. They had no physical form. Sound familiar?”

“And the creator destroyed it?” I said, “This creator seems to destroy as much as he creates.”

“Seems that way?”

“Killed them all?”

“But maybe one survived.”

“Jack,” Ryan said. “Just our luck. We get one who is a psycho killer.”

“Maybe he wasn’t,” I said. “You see your whole civilization destroyed and everyone you cared about killed. Maybe you just want to punish.”

“Are you saying he’s justified in doing what he does?” the professor said.

“Of course not,” I said. “I just—you could see how he’s become what he’s become.”

“I don’t care why,” the professor said. “I just care that we find a way to stop him.”

“According to one of the books, he was once buried deep in a crypt in the catacombs. He’d been burned. Fire was effective in neutralizing him. I don’t think it can kill him.”

“Something can kill him,” Walt said. “If there was this universe and if it was destroyed, it had to be destroyed by something.”

“The creator,” I said.

“The Knife of Death can kill anything,” the professor said.

“According to Death, it needs to be a physical form. And probably the host would die with Jack.”

“You talk to Death?” Ryan said.

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“But Death Death?” Camila said.

“Just a couple of times. He wants his knife back.”

“He possessed my daughter,” the professor said. “I can’t allow him to return or survive.”

I want to do this. I need to make sure he never possesses anyone again. I insist. You stab him, me. We do it in your cell. You stab him and if I die too, then I die too.”

“Too dangerous,” I said. “We need to find another way.”

“There is no other way,” the professor said. “If the knife doesn’t work on him, then you put him back in the machine and try something else.”

Everyone was silent.

“You’re sure about this?” I said.

“I’m ready. Honestly, I’ve been ready for some time. Let me do this. Let me choose how to go out and do something good while doing it.”

There was a chance he might survive, and the Knife of Death might only kill Jack. It was a small change, I thought, but it was there.

We took the machine with Jack inside back to the collection and the cage, which had some damaged bars but would still keep the spirit from escaping—at least for a few minutes—if things went wrong.

Walt offered to be the one to stab the professor with the Knife of Death, but I couldn’t let him do it. I knew that Jack couldn’t inhabit me. If everything went wrong and he looked for someone else to escape to, I needed to make sure that wasn’t possible.

The professor went into the cage, and I followed him. The ghost busters positioned the spectral extractor and the containment machine in the cage. I would release Jack and he would go into the professor immediately. I would stab him. If anything went wrong, I would use the extractor to pull him back in and dump him into the containment machine. Walt was just beyond the cage with a flamethrower. We knew fire would at least paralyze him while he found a new host.

The professor stood by the machine and I opened the escape port and I could feel Jack coming out. I saw a bright white light with my third eye. I could feel it searching for another host and finding only the professor. It was desperate. It entered the professor.

I waited an extra second to be sure, and it was too long of a second; I was hit by a tsunami wave of magic. I was thrown against the cage bars. Walt shot the flames from the flamethrower at Jack. The wave disappeared, and I rushed into the screaming, burning professor. The heat blasted my face and crawled up my arms. I stabbed him in the chest.

I felt my legs go out on me then. I fell. The burning followed me as I lost consciousness.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Iwoke up at Doc’s. Olive wasn’t in the office. Rachel, the witch, was in the room. I felt the coolness on my arms and face.

“How’s that feel?” she said.

“Much better.”

“Good,” she said. “You should go home and get some rest. Drink lots of fluids. I’ve given you a salve to use.”

“Where’s Doc?”

“He decided to let me handle you. I’m very good with burns.”

“Where’s Olive?”

“She went over to Doc’s after she learned about the professor.”

“Oh.”

“No one blames you.”

“He didn’t make it?”

“I’m afraid not,” she said.

“No one else was hurt. The monster was destroyed. Most folks seem to think you’re a hero.”

“Most?”

“Maybe you better give Olive some time. She’s pretty upset now.”

I sat up. Rachel said she had to get home and get some sleep. I thanked her and said I was sorry to keep her up so late. She left.

I put on my shirt and hurried over to Doc’s.

As I climbed the steps to the front door, I could feel a knot forming in my stomach. I took a deep breath to steady myself before knocking. I had to talk to Olive even though it was ridiculously late.

Doc shouted for me to let myself in and I shuffled inside. It turned out Doc and Olive were both still up. They were drinking tea in the kitchen. When Doc saw the way we were looking at each other he said he was going to go to bed. He hadn’t been up so late for a long time.

“Guest room is made up,” he said to Olive. “You come get me if you need anything.”

I sat down at the table and told Olive what had happened. She thanked me for telling her but the way she was looking at me was like she thought I’d killed him.

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured.

She was crying but she angrily wiped away the tears.

“Why didn’t you stop him?” she demanded. “How could you let him sacrifice himself?”

“He was set on it, Olive. There was no talking him out of it. All I could do was respect his choice.”

“You should have found another way. He wasn’t thinking straight”

“He chose his way to go out. He wanted to do something good. That’s what he told me. It was a noble thing to do.”

“Noble. You let him sacrifice himself. He’s dead because of you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There had to be some other way.”

“We couldn’t think of any.”

“Sorry? That’s all you can say?”

“What is it you want me to say?”

“Why didn’t you come and get me?”

“We had to stop Jack. Your father knew the danger. We both did. We all did. All I can say is he’s a hero.”

“People are saying you are the hero.”

“Your father is the real hero,” I said.

“You let my father sacrifice his life. How can I forgive that?”

“Maybe you can’t, “I said. “All I can do is tell you how sorry I am.”

“Not good enough,” she said. “It’s just not.”

She told me to get out of Doc’s house. She only wanted to see me when I came to the café for food and she waited on me. She wanted to have nothing to do with me in the future.

“So that’s it?” I said.

“That’s it,” she said.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Iwent back to the library. Fluffy greeted me at the door. I petted him and we went downstairs to the apartment. I got into some sweatpants and stumbled into bed.

What seemed like only seconds later, I was woke up by my half-brother, Dread. He had another half-brother, Desolation, with him. I guess I was lucky our father hadn’t been around to name me. They said they wanted to take me to Hellville. Father wanted me at his Father’s Day party.

I said to thank him, but I’d pass.

“Not an option,” Dread said.

“You’re going to have to learn, little brother,” Desolation said, “when father says he wants something, he means you don’t have a choice.”

Fluffy growled at them, but they ignored him.

“Still,” I said.

They pulled me up out of bed too fast for me or Fluffy to act, and a second later there was that familiar smell, brimstone and fire. We were out on the street. I was in sweatpants and a t-shirt and socks. There were demons walking down the street.

“Welcome to Hellville,” Dread said.

The brick street underneath my socks radiated heat that seemed to sear my feet even through the fabric. All around me, demons of every shape and size wandered the sidewalks and alleys. Some had twisting horns curling out from their heads, while others had sharp spikes jutting out from their spine and shoulders. Their skin came in sickly shades of red, green, and gray. A few demons even had multiple heads or limbs. The pungent stench of sulfur and smoke hung heavy in the hot, stagnant air. Neon signs advertising establishments like The Burning Pit, Torture Treasures, Hellfire Haberdashery, and Devilish Delights glowed ominously along the street. The stores themselves looked grimy and unwelcoming, with blacked-out windows.

As Dread and Desolation pulled me further down the fiery streets, I took in more of the twisted sights around me. Strange creatures lurked in every shadowy alley we passed. I saw a hulking beast with a bull’s head and a man’s body hefting a huge battle axe. Further down, a creature emerged that looked like a massive centipede but with a gaping, fanged mouth and hundreds of tiny black eyes covering its head. It scuttled out of the alley, eliciting shrieks from a group of demons nearby.

My nostrils burned from the choking smells. We passed by a storefront with a swinging sign that read “Ye Olde Monster Parts” which displayed severed limbs and other body parts in its filthy window. Next to it sat a squat brick building billowing putrid yellow smoke from its chimney. I caught a glimpse of bloody aprons through its smeared windows. There was a sound of meat cleaver or hatchet chopping.

In the distance, bursts of flame erupted from behind buildings, lighting up the night with eerie flashes. Unearthly shrieks and howls echoed down the narrow streets lined with crooked lampposts that glowed sickly green. It was a town of shadows, a land of shadows.

We turned down a street lined with spiked fencing dripping in barbed wire. At the end loomed an imposing structure built from blackened stone. The ornate sign above its entrance declared it Purgatory Pub.

“Lucifer’s son needs your clothes,” Desolation said to a somewhat normal looking man, though he did have three arms.

“Up yours,” he said.

Desolation seemed glad for this response. He hit him so hard he banged against a building. He pulled the clothes off the unconscious creature using some kind of magic and they were on me.

“How’d you do that?” I asked.

“We have special powers in Hellville, compliments of father. You have to know how to access them, though. You don’t.”

I stood uncomfortably in the ill-fitting clothes Desolation had stolen for me. The black jeans were too tight and the Metallica t-shirt was about three sizes too big and, of course, with an extra sleeve. At least the boots fit decently. Dread and Desolation led me into the depths of Purgatory Pub. It looked like the seedy lovechild of a goth club and a slaughterhouse.

Dark wood covered the floors and walls, illuminated by flickering torches. The large U-shaped bar in the center was crafted from rough black stone and had tall barstools made from bones. Behind the bar, a chalkboard listed drinks like Sour Scorcher and Murder Margarita and Homicidal Martini. A bartender with crimson skin and curved ram horns cleaned a glass with a rag, eyeing us as we walked past.

Along the far wall stood a small stage where a demon band played growling death metal, the singer’s serpentine tongue lashing the air. The rest of the cavernous space was filled with rough-hewn wooden tables packed close together. Most were occupied by demons and other hellish creatures, eating, drinking, and socializing in the dim atmosphere. The clatter of plates and chatter competed with the music.

I caught glimpses of dishes on tables as we passed bowls of writhing maggots, bubbling eyeball stew, and piles of charred bones with bits of burnt flesh still clinging to them. The smell of smoke and charred meat hung heavy in the hot air. Servers with leathery faces carried platters of gruesome fare to the tables.

In the back corner, my large family (the family I’d never known until recently) was gathered around two large tables pushed together. Most of my 23 brothers and sisters had inherited our father’s demonic traits—horns, claws, wings, and red skin of varying hues (though they might appear as human as anyone if they wanted to). As we approached, their conversation died down and all eyes turned to me. Aunts, uncles, and other extended family were there as well, packed into the space.

My sister Lilith, who had tried to kill me not too long ago, flashed her fangs at me in a gruesome approximation of a smile. “Welcome home, brother! We’ve missed you!” She stood and attempted to embrace me, her black wings knocking plates and glasses askew in the process.

Brothers Claw and Fang each seized one of my hands in their clawed grasps for eager handshakes, their pointed teeth bared in sharp grins. “Good to have you back,” Fang said. He whispered, “I never wanted you to be drawn and quartered. I was glad when you escaped.”

Rotten breath billowed across my face. I nodded weakly at them all as Dread and Desolation led me to an empty chair wedged into the crowded table. Servers swooped in, depositing drinks and heaps of food. I identified charred mystery meat and congealed blood sauces, but there was a lot I couldn’t identify. I skipped the food. The drink I’d been handed was smoking slightly. I sipped it. Not bad, actually.

Conversations resumed around me. They reminisced about childhood antics. Some questioned me about life among the humans. This was my family?

At the far end of the table, one sister did not join the celebratory mood. Scourge sat glowering; her face partially obscured by lank, jet-black hair. Her eyes, black as oil, bored into me. Finally, she said, loud enough to cause conversations to pause at our side of the table, “The prodigal son returns. The one who has been off helping humans and doing good acts that make the jobs of our demons that much harder. And we welcome him back like he’s one of us. He has been working against us for years. We should be frying him over a pit.”

“You’re just jealous,” Desolation said. “You know he’s the one and you’re jealous.”

“Mind father’s wishes,” Dread said. “You know what will happen if you don’t.”

That silenced her. But she continued to shoot me dark looks. I did my best to avoid eye contact while deflecting increasingly suspicious questions from other siblings about my life in the human world.

Finally, Lilith slammed her fists down. “It’s time you declared yourself one of us or one of them.”

The table went silent. I froze.

“Do you all really not see what’s going on?” Lilith swept her arm, sending plates and glasses crashing. “I tried him and was going to kill him because I saw this. Our brother is here to take what was ours. We were to lead the battle to end all battles, and now Lucifer favors him. Will we allow it?”

A few said no. Scourge said, “Hell no.” Most said nothing. They waited. Lucifer was not at the table, but I could feel him close by. I thought they must feel him too.

Lilith pointed one long nail at me. “You are not the anti-Christ.”

Desolation grabbed Lilith’s arm. “It’s time to let it go, Sister. We will all get a turn to show we’re the one. Father has promised.”

She wrenched her arm free, eyes burning into me. “Father had him brought here. He has already made up his mind.”

She lunged across the table, swiping her nails at my face. I jerked back just in time. My chair toppled over. We stood eye to eye.

“Enough,” Lucifer said, suddenly appearing beside me. “Let’s go have a drink at the bar, son.”

Lucifer put his arm around my shoulders and steered me away from the chaos. Lilith hissed as we passed her. We made our way to the long stone bar. The bartender silently poured two shots of tequila as we sat down on the barstools.

My father grinned and held up his shot. “To family!”

I clinked my glass against his and choked down the burning liquor. He waved the bartender over for another round.

“You have news for me?” Lucifer asked with a sly smile.

I took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about the End of days. I want to start the cult of Armageddon right out in the open. You will give me the power to seduce each soul by whispering in all ways, social media and, with my own apostles, we support the grievances they feel. How they have not been treated fairly. How they have lost when others less deserving have won. We will show them how the world is against them and only we are for them. Only by the rise of D.A.R.K. (Demonic Alliance for Ruination and Khaos) will they come out the winners we know they are. We will lead. They will see we are the only ones who understand their dark souls. I will be a great influencer and cult leader. How’s that sound?”

“Go on,” Lucifer said.

I continued, “We’ll create a culture of chaos. That’s how we win. We turn neighbor against neighbor, create paranoia and grievance, hate. Lots of hate. I can do it.”

“You’ll need teams of demons and humans>

“You can help. Some of the siblings. I need a persona, a role to play. I need to work on this, draw up a plan. We’ll create a virus of chaos. It will spread everywhere”

“I like that. A virus of chaos. Has a nice ring to it. And you’ll use all of our contacts on earth and inspire the angels to struggle against us. We will have the right atmosphere for Armageddon in no time. Work on a plan of action.”

The bartender brought us two more shots. We toasted again, and I welcomed the burn of tequila.

“I knew you’d come around,” he said.

I hadn’t planned on asking him the question I’d been wanting to ask him. It just kind of came out, like it had been waiting for a moment when my guard was down.

“Can you tell me anything about my mother? Now that I have this big family, I’ve started thinking about her.”

Lucifer waved his hand with disinterest. “Ah, your mother. I confess I don’t remember most of the women I’ve been with. Most were of no consequence.”

“Nothing?”

He stared into his empty glass. He looked up at me. “Fine. I remember her.”

“And?”

“I don’t experience what you humans call love. But with her, I came close. I have to admit that.”

He gestured for two more shots. I waited silently for him to gather his thoughts. It seemed like I’d waited years because I had.

“Her name was Sophia. You have her eyes. A little soft. It will help you with convincing the world you are earnest about saving it. But she was strong. She had a fire in her soul.”

“Where did you meet her?”

He smiled ruefully. “New York. We created quite the scandal in hell at the time. The Devil seduced by a mortal woman? One night was acceptable, of course. But I kept seeing her. I even brought her to hell.”

“She was beautiful?” I said.

“Thick dark hair and eyes that flashed like lightning storms.” His smile turned wistful. “That passion, that fire. I had to know her.”

Lucifer’s face had softened, his usual cocky grin replaced by something gentler.

“What else?” I said.

“Her fire lit up the parts of me I thought long burned away,” he said. “She would not be cowed or seduced by tricks or deception. But eventually she fell for me. Somehow, she made it on equal terms. A human woman and the King of hell. We were an unlikely couple.”

“How long were you together?”

“I offered her riches and power and when she told me she was pregnant, I offered to raise you as here in hell as my own. But she didn’t want that. Sophia made me vow our child would be raised apart from the machinations of Heaven and Hell. Safe. It angered me, but I agreed.”

We drank in silence for a few moments. I swirled the smoky liquor, absorbing his words.

“What happened to her?” I finally asked.

Pain flashed in Lucifer’s golden eyes for an instant before the smug mask hid it.

“She’s gone.” His voice was cold, final.

I sighed, the tequila making me reckless. “I think maybe you were wrong. I think maybe you did love her.”

Lucifer’s mouth tightened. He tossed back another shot. “Doesn’t matter now. She made her choice and paid the price.”

He said he had somewhere he had to be. He said Dread would take me home.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The next morning on my way to the café, I met Ryan on the street and he said that Gabriela was missing.

“You haven’t seen her, have you?”

“No,” I said.

“It’s a little strange. I don’t think she slept at home last night.”

“A boyfriend?” I said. “She met someone?”

“It’s possible,” Ryan said. “I’m going to head over to The Bar, see if Claude saw her leave with anyone.”

“Let me know,” I said.

Olive wasn’t back to work that morning at the café. Lucy had drafted her daughter, Taylor, who was a potter and didn’t like working at the café but would waitress when Lucy was shorthanded. I sat with Rip in the booth he’d scored by being an early bird. Taylor asked me if I wanted coffee and I ordered coffee and special.

I told Rip the professor was dead and Olive and I had broken up again. He said he was sorry.

“I’m going to miss that old zombie,” Rip said. “He was a good chess player.”

“He was a great man,” I said. “A hero.”

“Olive has to mourn him,” Rip said. “You have to give her some time. She’ll realize it wasn’t your fault when she has some time to think about it.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Anyway, poor guy is gone now. Ashes to ashes. Dead for good. Probably.”

People in Eden generally stayed dead but there were notable exceptions.

“You and he rid the world of a threat. It was a good death for the professor.”

“He’s a hero.”

Lucy’s daughter, Billie, took my order. She was a friendly woman a little older than me.

I told Rip about my vision after we had finished talking about my breakup with Olive. He was surprised to hear there were only seven universes. Seven seemed a good number, but if there were a thousand, I wouldn’t have felt that different. It was learning there was more than one that was disconcerting.

Was Mrs. Johnson, the creator of our universe, really my Mrs. Johnson? That wouldn’t entirely surprise me.

“So, you think one of your foster mothers created the universe?” Rip asked.

“Why not?” I said. “Someone had to.”

“Did you hear Marta this morning?”

“Missed her.”

“She said a storm is coming.”

“Looks clear to me,” I said. “A blue sky.”

“Marta only talks about metaphorical storms. She sees the weather as a bringer of messages.”

“Any specifics?”

“She said that people who travelled through time should be more careful.”

“I don’t suppose anyone besides me and whoever I bring with me in the Deville travels through time, do they?”

“Not to the best of my knowledge,” Rip said.

“Didn’t think so,” I said.

“You paying for my breakfast?” Rip asked.

“Always,” I said.

He thanked me and got up.

“Better get a metaphorical umbrella,” he said and left the café.

THE END

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I’m working on book 6 in the series, The Librarian and the Monster, due out on March 28. There’s a librarian, of course, all the main characters in books 1-5, including the town of Eden which is a prominent character. It begins with a monster. It ends with, well, I can’t tell you that. More strange, more scary, more funny and more description to come before publication. You can preorder right this very second if you like. Here’s the link: My Book

If you feel so inclined, check out my blog and sign up for my newsletter. I send out free or discounted book notices, stories, little news shorts, about once a month Also, when you sign up you get a short collection of strangely scary funny stories for your reading pleasure. They’re short and strangely scary funny like most of my fiction.

http://brianyansky.blogspot.com

Here’s a sample story from that collection.

My Girlfriend is a Bad-Breaker Upper

We fought all the time. Then we made up. It became the basis of our relationship. No one has ever made up more profoundly than we did. We were like great actors or great musicians or Olympic athletes. We were the one percent of the one percent. But if you’ve ever been in a similar relationship, you know it’s doomed. It’s like you’re dancing on the edge of a cliff. Sooner or later, you’ll take the wrong step.

The night of the sooner or later we were out at her house in the country. We were sitting on the porch in the dark, the woods all around us, the air still like before a storm. Both of us were seething after stumbling into a discussion about our past failures at monogamy.

“I saw you flirting with him at the party,” I said. “Touching his arm. Laughing. Leaning into him. You flirt with every guy you meet. You just can’t help yourself.”

“And you keep trying to get Mandy alone, don’t you? Everyone sees the way you look at her.”

“Mandy is just a friend. But you—I know you’ve cheated. You don’t love me. You never did. That was just another act. I want my secrets back.”

“Take them,” Lucinda shouted. “You were a fool to trust me. No, wait, that’s not right. I was a fool to trust you.”

“I was the fool,” I shouted.

“Yes, you were.”

We were both on our feet, in each other’s faces. Hers was a pretty face, but not then. Her fingernails dug into the skin of my arms, where she grabbed me. I saw the demon. Maybe she saw the same demon in me. The porch creaked ominously beneath us. Wolves, or maybe the wind, howled just beyond the yard in the woods that were always growing closer and closer to the house, threatening to strangle it.

We went inside because we were afraid we were making so much noise we’d wake the dead. They were sleeping in a graveyard just down the road. Some of them were light sleepers, according to the neighbors.

My girlfriend started throwing things as soon as we stepped into the living room. Books, keys, pens, anything she could get her hands on. She had a decent aim. I was hit three out of four tries.

“You’re just like your father,” she said.

“You are just like your mother,” I said.

It got bad then. We found ourselves in the kitchen.

I knew our sex was going to be epic. After a fight like this, we’d make love on the roof, we’d swing from the trees of the spooky forest. But the next second, I saw the truth. We had danced right off the cliff.

Who pulled the knife? Who got the ax out of the closet? Who loaded the gun?

I drove down a gravel road. But I want to be crystal clear on one point. When I left her, she was alive. There was blood on the kitchen floor, but she was breathing.

I kept driving down that country road and then turned onto another and another. I couldn’t remember how to get back to the main highway. It was dark. No lights except for the pinpricks in the black sky. I was completely lost. The woods around the road became thicker and thicker. I began to feel like I might never find my way back.

Suddenly, I came to a clearing and saw another graveyard. This one spooked me because it had garden gnomes on nearly every gravestone, a headless chicken running around a crypt as if it was trying to find something, and someone, a boyish man, waving. I slowed, and the car’s headlights flashed over him. I thought I was looking in a mirror. How was it possible that I was in a graveyard waving at myself? Strange days.

I pulled over and parked. I would ask myself the way out. If I couldn’t help me, who could?

When I got out of the car, I didn’t see anyone, not even me. The graves all had strange symbols carved into them. As I walked past the stones, I knew I’d been here before. I saw myself again on the other side of the cemetery. I was in a splash of moonlight.

“Hey,” I shouted.

A car passed by on the road, blowing its horn. I turned to look at the car, which was a hearse. It sped off down the road. When I turned back, I was gone, but the gnomes were all gathered over there and broke out into the song “Be Good to Yourself” by Journey. I had to admit, they had some nice dance steps to go with it.

I got back into my car and drove. And drove. And drove. I spent hours. I kept coming to dead-ends. At one of the dead-ends was my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Thompson. I still had a little thing for her. Was that weird? I went by a third graveyard not long after seeing her. There were more dead people in this county than living.

Finally, I ended up back at my girlfriend’s. I pulled down the drive. I couldn’t decide what to do, so I turned on the radio. It was the Carpenters. “Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down.” But rainy days and Mondays did not get me down. What got me down, really down, was my girlfriend with a knife.

I closed my eyes. When I opened them, I was in my girlfriend’s bedroom. She was asleep. I sat down on her bed. She had pretty hair. She could have been in a commercial selling hair products. I had the urge to brush it. She bolted upright.

“Oscar?” she said.

“Boo,” I said.

She shivered. That made me feel a little better. After all that driving, it was nice to finally affect something, someone.

“You shouldn’t be here. Please, just go.”

“Now you’re going to be polite?”

“Like you were polite that night? Like you didn’t have an ax in your hand?”

“I didn’t.

“Oh, right? That was me. Ax and knife. I dropped the ax, though.”

“This is why I keep coming back here.”

“Liar. It’s the sex.”

“No, it’s not.”

“We had an epic fight, but we never got to the sex.”

“Because you stabbed me.”

“No use casting blame now. If you want to have sex, we’ll have sex. Then go and never come back.”

“You’re trying to cast me out with sex?”

“I need you to go,” she said.

“You just want to have sex with a dead person,” I said. “That’s what this is about.”

“What do you want, Oscar?”

“I want you to learn how to break up with someone without killing them.”

“I’m working on it,” she said. “It was an accident both times.”

“It was three times.”

“No. Oh, yeah, right, Eva. I forgot about her. I was thinking boyfriends.”

“But you didn’t mean to stab me, right?”

“Of course not.”

“It happens, right? A slip of the knife sixteen times and you’re burying me out in the backyard like I’m some pet.”

“In my defense, you were dead, babe. I had to get rid of the body.”

“And chopping off my head with the ax?”

“You’ve always been so critical. I saw it on a Law & Order. If you separate the body from the head, it’s harder to make an ID.”

“Really?”

“Actually, now that I think about it, the murderer got caught.”

“Where’s my head?”

“I threw it in the lake. That’s what they did on the show.”

“This isn’t working. Talking to you isn’t helping me.”

“You need to just get over it. Everyone dies.”

“I’d like to get over it,” I said.

No bright light for me. No tunnel. No welcoming arms. No matter where I drove, I always ended up back at her house.

I started breaking things in the room. The glass lamp. The plate and cup by the bed. I needed her to focus. Find better words. Otherwise, we might be together forever.

I don’t know how long I drove aimlessly through those creepy back roads, passing graveyard after graveyard. It felt like hours. But eventually I ended up right back where this whole nightmare started - at the bottom of the gravel drive leading up to Lucinda’s house.

“I really hate this place,” I muttered. My fingers tightened around the steering wheel. I considered throwing the car in reverse and speeding off into the night.

But what were the chances I’d get anywhere?

Lucinda and I had been in love. I’d prayed for it to happen to me and then it had. It finally had. Once upon a time I couldn’t imagine us ever not being in love. I believed in it. But then once upon a time fell apart.

What did that religious chick say? More heartache is caused by answered prayers than unanswered ones.

Even with the fighting, I thought we might find a way back to that love. Wrong. I’m not sure I really saw it until she stabbed me sixteen times. It was a little late then.

Before I could decide what to do, my car lurched forward of its own accord, crunching up the gravel drive. I stomped on the brakes, but it was useless. I was at the mercy of some dark force pulling me back to that house.

My headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the sagging front porch and peeling paint around the eaves. The house itself had changed. It was like that freaky scene in The Shining when the beautiful woman in the bathroom turns into an old hag right when Jack Nicholson is kissing her and about to go all out lover-man on her, she changes. Lucinda’s house was no longer the well cared for renovated house it had been seconds ago.

I stepped out of the car, my boots crunching on the gravel. The house beckoned to me. I walked up the porch creaking stairs. Over the front door was a sign. ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.

As I crossed the threshold into the house, a cold wind whipped through, slamming the door shut behind me. I jumped, startled by the bang. Moonlight filtered in through cracked and dirty windows, casting an eerie glow over the interior. I made my way into the kitchen. Blood everywhere. Puddles on the floor. Counters stained. A handprint on the cupboard. Splatters of blood across the wall.

I turned away and saw the door to the basement. I went through it to get away from the blood. I admit I had a weak stomach and was about to throw up all over the floor. I descended the rickety stairs, feeling my way in the dark. At the bottom, I hurried through the shadows, searching for an exit. Suddenly, I smacked into something smooth and cold. I pulled my lighter out of my pocket and flicked it on. A mirror. My reflection stared back at me. I looked bad, very bad. My skin was sallow and my body bone thin, my eyes sunken, my mouth sagging on one side. I touched my face and flesh came off and stuck to my hand. There was nothing like a piece of your face sticking to your hand to make a bad day worse.

What had I been thinking, anyway? How often did the basement turn out to be a good place for someone who had been murdered?

I turned away from the mirror to run back up the stairs, but they collapsed into a pile of rubble, trapping me in the basement. More rubble began to collapse into the basement and I ran to the other side to avoid being buried alive, although, technically, I was dead.

I heard a voice. At first I didn’t know where it was from. Then I realized it was from the mirror. Somehow, it had not been broken in the crashing of beams and floorboards. The voice was me calling to me. I ran for it. I didn’t have much of a choice. If you couldn’t trust yourself, who could you trust? I jumped into the mirror. I heard it cracking behind me, and I knew there was no way back.

When I woke, I was in Lucinda’s bedroom. She was awake and sitting in the chair.

“I heard you in the basement,” she said.

“You need to get those stairs fixed.”

“You tripped, I hope.”

“You want me to be here,” I said.

“The hell I do. I want you to leave me alone and let me get on with my life.”

“And I want us to be even.”

“How can we be even?”

“You killed me.”

“So now you want to kill me?”

“I would if I could,” I said, “but since I can’t, I’d like you to kill yourself. What do you say?”

“Go to hell.”

I had thought a lot about where I might go if I ever got out of my being trapped here in this house and on these county roads. I was no closer to knowing my options, if any, than when I was alive.

I broke her glasses.

“If I could kill you again, I would,” she said.

She was a killer at heart. I should have seen it.

I ran at her then, hopeful I could carry her out the second-story window with me and land on the earth below and break her neck. I went right through her and out the window and landed hard on the ground. I passed out.

When I came to, I found myself on the ground.

I got myself up off the ground feeling achy, which seemed like something someone without a solid body shouldn’t feel. Unfairness seemed to follow a person even into death.

I went back inside. The house looked like it had before. I decided to try another way out. I went up to the attic, thinking maybe I could escape through the roof. The pull-down ladder was missing several rungs, but I climbed up anyway. In the attic, a wardrobe with foxfire gleaming at its core beckoned me closer. Against my will, I felt myself staggering toward it when suddenly the wardrobe burst into flames.

The fire spread across the attic. I fled downstairs, the roar of the fire chasing me. I made for the back door, bursting outside into the night air. As I ran, I almost sobbed with relief. But after several minutes, I looked up to see the house looming once again before me, looking no different. I was back where I started, beneath Lucinda’s bedroom window.

“Lucinda, Lucinda, where for art thou Lucinda?” I shouted.

She leaned out the window. “Go away, Oscar. You might as well go away. What good is this?”

“I keep thinking if I had just left you—”

“You would have never left me,” she said.

I walked out into the woods. I thought if I left the car, maybe I could walk away.  I came to another graveyard. They were everywhere. A circle of men and women, hooded figures in the graveyard, were performing some dark ritual over a crypt. A hooded girl was tied to a tree, and the leader raised a dagger to plunge into her heart.

I ran up to them and got the knife away from him and stabbed him in the heart, and the others ran off. I took the hood off the girl. It was Lucinda.

“Stab me,” she said. “It’s the only way.”

I hesitated for a moment. I still had feelings for her, even though she had killed me. But as I looked into her eyes, I saw desperation and exhaustion. I thought she was right. It was the only way.

I raised the knife and held it over her heart. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m just so tired,” she said, tears streaming down her face.

I plunged the knife into my chest.

Lucinda let out a cry of pain. Her body went limp.

She opened her eyes. “I will never let you go.”

I woke up inside a crumbling old church. I saw myself hanging from the cross. That seemed unlikely. I went up to the cross and looked up at myself. It was me, all right.

“How did this happen?” I asked.

“You know how.”

“Not really.”

“You made yourself a martyr.”

I got myself off the cross.

I threw him/me over my shoulder and carried him/me through the dark woods, patches of moonlight providing the only illumination. Owl hoots and wolf howls echoed around me. I kept expecting a pack to appear. I stumbled over gnarled roots and around gravestones covered in creeping ivy. Mist curled around my feet, further obscuring the path. Haunted woods and graveyard.

In the distance, I spotted a light flickering through the trees. As I drew nearer, I saw it was a lantern hanging by the door of a small cabin. Maybe I could get help. I knocked on the weathered wooden door. “Anyone home?” No answer. I turned the handle, and the door creaked open. I stepped inside, the floor creaking under my weight.

“Oscar?” A familiar voice spoke from the shadows. Lucinda stepped into the lantern light. “What the hell, Oscar? Now you’re following me?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” she snapped. “I sold my house to get away from you. Sold it for a lot less than it was worth because everyone says it’s freaking haunted. That we ten years ago.”

She did look older, now that I looked at her.

My body was feeling pretty heavy, so I dropped myself on the floor.

A wry smile twisted her lips. “Still obsessed with me, aren’t you? You’ll never be free of me.”

I heard it, the satisfaction in her voice. She lunged forward, shoving me against the wall. I grabbed her wrists, struggling to push her off me. She clawed at my face, drawing blood. We wrestled violently, knocking over furniture and shattering dishes. Finally, I managed to restrain her arms.

“Do me right here,” she said. “Remember the sex, Oscar.”

It was all tangled up. She was right. I would never be free of her. Not like this.

“I forgive you,” I said.

The me on the floor, recently on the cross, sat up. “About freaking time.”

“No,” she said. “No, you don’t.”

“But I do,” I said.

“You can’t.”

I walked outside. I knew the way. I finally knew the way.

The End

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36