The Burnt Refuge Read online

  Had he been seen? Wasn’t this just a dream?

  He looked out and saw it had been a random throw. But more were coming. Someone had spotted the open window and several had followed the lead. They were poor aims however and the only one that troubled him hit the wall beside the window and fell back.

  And then Gerry espied something coming from the distance. It was blanketed by a rushing cloud of dust but as it drew closer, he discovered that it was a patrol jeep. The cops. They were coming. A beacon?

  Did that mean hope for these victims, Gerry thought.

  The jeep stopped at a safe distance from the outskirts of the mob and he caught the silhouettes of three officers concealed by the tint of the jeep’s windows.

  Without warning, his nose caught the familiar, but stronger, pungent smell of burning. He turned his head and saw the smoke everywhere. Very little remained of the bed sheet and the flames were furiously licking at the bed already.

  He rushed forward before noting that he did not know where to start. Contemplating how to put out the fire, he was drawn to a deep, throaty voice from outside.

  Simultaneously, the man below said, “See, sugar, I said we’re safer here. Help’s come.”

  The girl did not reply.

  Gerry gave up the burning, backtracked to the window and looked down. The officers were standing outside their jeep but just two of them, their hands on their holsters. They were on brown uniforms and looked at the mob, their faces betraying intimidation.

  Where was the third guy?

  He found the third officer pushing his way through the crowd. He was a tough, heavyset man with stocky arms which he used to push the people out of his way roughly like he was fording through water in an extra-extra-large bath. His actions didn’t go unnoticed as the crowd quickly began to push him back making his progress difficult.

  Gerry stared at him and his eyes betrayed his disbelief. With the burly frame, his large, round shoulders, that grey, crew-cut hair that looked like he’d kept for ages and that thin clump of beard that filled the sides of his face… that was Joel Broker Senior; his grandpa. Senior! Of course, he used to be an officer here! But he was okay here, fitter than him even; very muscular too.

  Sweat was pouring down Senior’s face, drained by his beard and he grimaced through red, furious eyes.

  “Geroff!” he shouted. “Get away from there! Those people belong to the law!”

  But the mob was obstinate, the people violent and unrelenting, the group just bloody thick. Gerry watched as Senior tried to push his way forward and watched as he was constantly pushed back.

  Senior suddenly stopped. Gerry thought he’d given up until he saw Senior reaching into his belt, withdrawing his revolver. He pointed it to the sky and in a split second, the bang of the gun rocketed, delivering sharp, rasp echoes. After the echoes died, all fell silent, save the crackling of flames. The people stopped, eyeing Senior and the weapon he held. They didn’t look intimidated by it.

  And when he thought he had gained control, Gerry realized his mistake. He’d just added more spark, fuel to an overexcited, raging crowd and he’d put himself on the receiving end. Without warning, the people immediately around him pounced on him, shoved him to the ground and covered him. Multiple blows by cold weapons and gritted fists rained on his thick flesh.

  Gerry could only look on. He clenched his fists and he felt his blood boiling hotter than the flames blanketing the house.

  Why were the others not doing anything?

  His partners had drawn their own revolvers but looked dauntingly as the mob mercilessly and unremittingly pummeled their much braver comrade. They didn’t look like they would’ve helped even if they could.

  Senior was making muffled squeals. The pain was absolute. It crawled up Gerry’s spine.

  So this was what had happened. This was how grandpa had gotten on that accursed chair. The people of Queening were the ones that’d put him in that miserable condition. Was that why he’d been having the nightmares? Was this all the voice wanted him to see? Or was there more?

  He wanted to wake up. The dream was too much to bear… too torturous. He’d seen enough. But he remained where he was. The acrid smell of smoke filled the air. The flames behind him rose.

  The battering didn’t seem to stop and when Gerry was beginning to wonder how Senior had survived it or if the dream was distorting what had really occurred, a loud cry erupted from the front of the house. The door, that solid last line of defense, had fallen. Footsteps shuffled hurriedly beneath him, into the house.

  Sounds of “THERE THEY ARE! THERE THEY ARE!” echoed around the house. He heard the girl utter a loud cry, followed by a muffled howl and sounds of scuffling.

  “We did not do anything!! It’s okay, sweetie?” her father was saying. “Leave her alone.”

  Gerry knew those words couldn’t, wouldn’t help them. These people meant business and business… it just wasn’t nice enough now.

  “Take them out!” a voice ordered. “They’ll be going for the last ride of their miserable lives.”

  Soon a loud jeer emanated as the people beheld their quarries. Gerry watched as both father and daughter were forcefully shoved outside. The man was almost bald. His soft shirt was clawed by several hostile fingers but he made no attempt at a struggle. His daughter on the other side squirmed and wriggled furiously but hands forced her down and restricted her movements. She looked fifteen-ish. Weapons were once again brandished. Even the people that were attacking Senior had stopped and had joined the others in the ululations but they still blocked him from Gerry’s view.

  Then a man disengaged from the rest, made way to the police jeep and then stopped and turned to the rest. He looked old, but not too old.

  “Now these people will pay penance for their transgressions of which they have unjustly punished our fair town with. We will give them their last ride across the town that they have tainted with their unholy filth after which they will surely be burned,” the man said. “Bind them!”

  In seconds a thick rope appeared from amongst them and both father and child were bound. They’d come really prepared. A select people dragged the both of them to the jeep and tied them to its back bumper.

  Gerry realized they were going to be lynched by dragging, an unacceptable way to die for any person.

  Why were they doing this? What did this people do? What sins were so great that they had to be killed this way?

  The other two officers stayed out of the way as someone else got behind the wheels, started the engine, did a round turn and drove into town with the captives firmly tied, writhing and squirming. The girl was screaming her heart out. The mob raced after the jeep, gradually disappearing into the cloud of dust it raised in its wake.

  Gerry watched helplessly as they disappeared. His attention returned to his defeated grandpa. His two deserters of partners were standing over him. Senior’s uniform was caked with blood and his body looked mangled beyond repair. His eyes were so swollen that Gerry wasn’t sure if they were opened or closed. Gerry could’ve passed him for dead if only two months ago, he’d not collected his ashes from the crematorium, if only a month before that, he hadn’t taken Senior on a luxury spin on his wheelchair through Memorial’s Park.

  These people were sick savages. Evil was bred in this place.

  One of his partners brought out his phone and dialed while the other checked for a pulse. They both looked full of remorse.

  The crackle of fire was the only thing to be heard. It took Gerry an instance to remember that he was still in the house. He turned and discovered the fire had consumed every piece of furniture in the room. The bed was nothing more than ashes now. The smell filled the room. Already the fire was tearing through the roof.

  He hadn’t woken up yet. Was there something else the voice wanted to show him? What more was there to see? He felt queasy as he remembered the victims. Their bodies, he wondered how much of it remained now; how much was left to burn. What did they do to deserve such inh
umane treatment?

  Completely lost in thought, Gerry failed to realize the cracks formed on the floor due to weakened resistance to the temper of the flames. Feeling the heat of the flames soar, he made to find a way out of the room and his heart jumped as his feet fell into the ground. He looked down and noticed the cracks. As he struggled to get himself out, the ground around him gave way.

  He felt himself falling.

  Wake up!

  ###

  CHAPTER THREE

  GERRY jumped up and this time he did jump. The torch was displaced from his laps and dropped to the floor with a soft thud. His eyes opened to a befuddling assemblage of the first three colors of the color spectrum. It was a very bright blur that blinded him but slowly started to wane until it disintegrated completely, leaving him staring into the darkness that made him render himself still blind. He squatted to find the torch. He picked it.

  It needs a little shake.

  Gerry almost keeled over in shock. The torch dropped from his hands. He heard it rolling forward. Quickly, he picked it before it went out of reach.

  Sorry, the voice whispered, I did not mean to startle you. Oh wait, actually I did.

  Gerry settled and started to jiggle the torch again. As he did so he thought of the dream. It had been so real. It used to be blurry before he got here. He believed it had to do with the proximity to its apparent source. He could still feel the heat of the flames, the scent of burning ashes in his nose.

  “I still don’t get its significance,” Gerry said as if he’d been enduring the longest conversation with an unknown someone.

  Dreams, the voice said, suppressed memories of a past so dark they shouldn’t leave traces or encrypted visuals of what will be, discernible and explicated only by the assistance of a higher intellect.

  “Dreams,” Gerry said trying to think deeply but disallowed by the voice. “I understand if grandpa had those dreams before he died but why me? I wasn’t here?”

  And I thought you really understood. Retired Officer Joel Broker didn’t have those dreams. I owned them. He was just a carrier.

  A carrier? Gerry was confused. The voice knew. It expressed a sigh.

  I think it’s about time I tell you a bit about myself and exactly why I brought you here, the short of it.

  “That’s as good a start as any.”

  ###

  I used to live here, the voice started, with my daughter. And for a moment it fell silent.

  In that silence and that one sentence, answers flowed through Gerry’s wandering mind as cold water would through his thirsty self; easily, soothingly and yet made him thirst for more. The answers weren’t enough but they came in. Now he understood the connection between the voice and his grandpa but not quite completely.

  “You’re that man I saw in the dream. You’re supposed to be dead,” Gerry said. He didn’t expect anyone to have survived that ordeal he’d witnessed in that dream. His grandpa had barely survived and he’d only been mercilessly battered. And what of his daughter? Had she become another disembodied voice elsewhere?

  Actually, I did die that day. But you’re pushing me ahead of myself.

  “Okay.” Gerry responded apologetically.

  Know first that I’m Festus Bode. I haven’t told you my name before so you wouldn’t go off by yourself.

  And of course Gerry knew he hadn’t bothered to ask.

  I’d lived here for nine years with Abigail. We moved in from Texas prior to some oddities I’ll tell you about soon. Mabel, Abigail’s mum, had died before we moved, when Abigail was about five.

  The details of our moving were highly justifiable. See, I and my daughter (and my wife before she died), we were different from others around us. We had unusual abilities that one of us could not control. We were necromancers.

  “So you could like talk to the dead?”

  If we could do just that I wouldn’t have worried. We could not only talk to them, we could also will them to rise. It was just me and Mabel at first. Abigail never showed any signs of being one. We used our abilities to help people communicate with their loved ones from the grave. We tried to keep it secret at first but, well, secrets generate rumors. People tagged us evil… witches… abominations… even those we’d helped.

  Gerry remembered the locals he’d seen in his dream. They’d been of the same opinion.

  Mabel tried to live with the discrimination. She did for a year. The depression took her. I felt really bad. I knew it was time to move. I wasn’t as strong as she was. I brought myself, and Abigail, here to Queening. I believed this place was as secluded as could be. For a long time we had no problems. I believed things had worked out fine.

  Until the dead started showing up at our doorstep.

  Gerry tried to take in that sentence; tried to imagine if the voice, if Festus, meant what he’d said literally or allegorically. “The dead?”

  It was strange, first-rate scary for me even. One gloomy Wednesday morning, there I was, cup of coffee in hand and thoughts of a restless night in mind. I opened the door and saw Abigail on the verandah and I noticed the stinking corpse in front of her. Most of it was bones and it stretched a squeezed hand at her. She was crying. I knew something had gone wrong.

  We found a way to dispose of it and when she became serener, she explained to me how the body had come to be. The short of it was I realized I’d been fostering a necromancer. I never knew, neither did Mabel.

  Abigail was a late bloomer and she turned out to be the most powerful I’d ever seen. But she had no control over her powers. That was our problem. All she needed to do was sleep and they would come looking for her, right out of their graves, simply for her help. I gave her everything to keep her pacified.

  I couldn’t help it. It didn’t go unnoticed too. Soon the local grave keeper discovered scores of graves uncovered and bodies missing. It wasn’t long before the news that either there was a grave robber around or the dead were roaming the streets was out. It threw the town into a state of fear and insecurity. I tried very much to cover our tracks. I failed. The bodies were traced to us eventually. And then the locals came at us.

  There was pain in Festus’ voice. Gerry felt it as a big weight in his head. He remembered the dream, the flambeaus, the pitchforks, machetes, cudgels. Questions still arose but he kept them, listening expectantly.

  I thought the house would protect us. Abigail thought so too. Eventually, it failed. They drubbed us, dragged us out, tied us to the back of the local patrol jeep and dragged our bodies through the town, every part of it. Abigail didn’t make it. But before she died, she said something to me. She said she was going to take her vengeance on the people when the time was right. I knew when she died. I felt her spirit leaving her. I felt it watching me and her body as the jeep dragged us.

  But I clung to life just barely. I needed to know what she planned to do. When they were done dragging us, they returned our bodies to the house and burnt us on stakes.

  “Then how come…”

  I got my chance. Festus interrupted. Your grandfather’s body happened to lying around. He’d died trying to rescue us.

  That hit Gerry instantly. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t possible.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Joel Broker died that day. His mutilated body was all that was left. As I was being burnt, I attached the last vestiges of myself into him.

  “So you’re saying you were in my grandpa… you’ve been in him all this time?”

  Not just inside him. I lived through him. It was necessary. I however couldn’t repair his broken bones.

  Gerry suddenly felt weak. He crumbled into the chair.

  With his body’s help, I stayed long enough to decipher what Abigail meant. I was partially successful.

  “So now I’m your carrier.”

  Yes, very truly. But I chose to remain the voice in your head. When a new development is to be made, I’ll tell you about it. Here’s where you listen attentively.

  Gerry tuned
his ears as if listening to someone talking from outside.

  She has slated today for something fiendish. I haven’t figured it out yet.

  “Why today?”

  Exactly this day last year, we were killed.

  Gerry seemed to think. Then he remembered the date written on the scrap of paper he’d found. 21st September. Today was 21st September.

  ###

  WAS that the reason the place looked empty? Had the people been aware and left? If so, then why was he here?

  “Why me?” he asked.

  You were the only one available. I knew your father was weak. I knew he was going to die. Then I found you. You were more suited.

  He felt a draft slither past him. It was chilly.

  “Suited for what?”

  For… hold! Listen! Festus suddenly sounded serious.

  Gerry listened. For a few seconds, he heard nothing until the soft taps of someone’s footfalls. It came from outside. He heard the footfalls on the concrete verandah and soon saw the shadow in the doorway.

  Finally someone stumbled in. It was a woman. There was nothing neat about her. Her hair was rough and unkempt and her long, white dress was polluted with brown and black dirt, so much that the white was barely visible. She looked forty-something.

  She glared forward like she had spotted something but Gerry had the feeling she wasn’t looking at anything in particular. Then she moved forward and Gerry noticed her stiff movement. It echoed of not being hers.

  Gerry pulled the torch up and lighted it to draw her attention to him, but cautiously. She kept looking forward, advancing slowly.

  “Hello,” Gerry said quietly. The savagery of this people still scared him. He didn’t want to sound unfriendly, especially as he seemed to be in the wrong place. She didn’t respond to him. She acted like he wasn’t there.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Gerry asked, evidently to Festus.

  I can’t place my finger on it yet. Let’s watch still.

  The lady walked a few steps inside and stopped. A couple of steps separated her from the stairs. Then she turned and Gerry noticed the carving knife in her right hand. It reflected the light of the torch wickedly.

  What was she going to do with it? What sort of evil spirit dwelt among them that they always thought of violence?

  He looked at her face. It was empty of emotions but it was also empty of threat; just blank, plain, almost empty of her facial features in fact. It looked ghostly to Gerry, very eerie.