The Second Sight – Episode 9

THE SECOND SIGHT EPISODE 9
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THE STEBBINS MONSTER
Location: BOAT’S APARTMENT
Stebbins’ voice is no ordinary whisper.
His voice has changed. It has become a thick, full-throated kind of voice which belongs to dreadful sewers and mouldy caves!
This is not Stebbins’ voice at all, and as Boat watches, oddly fascinated, Stebbins’ eyes change to a terrible green again, and the mark blazes furiously on his forehead in red blood.
His lips twist into an ugly snarl as his face changes from that of a human into that of a hideous beast.
His lips are drawn back from huge teeth, his nostrils flaring, and a dreadful guttural sound comes from his throat.
Somehow, Boat doesn’t feel so much fear now, only a terrible sense of doom, aware that death is near, and wishing desperately for it.
Stebbins’ grabbed two of the railings, and then he forces them apart, causing the metal to whimper with outrage.
Boat’s terrified eyes bulge with acute shock. These are not cheap aluminium railings. These are tempered cast iron, designed to repel force and pressure, and can give a lot of anxieties to even a power sawing machine.
They cannot bend so easily, and no hands are supposed to be able to rip them apart like that!
And Stebbins has just pushed them apart, as if they are made with clay.
Yaw Boat watches – strangely calm – as the green-eyed, slobbering, fury-filled Stebbins steps through the huge space he has created in the railings, and comes towards him, grunting furiously in that amplified sewer-voice.
When he looks down, however, Boat sees that Stebbins’ face is changing rapidly into flesh version of the green demon he has seen!
It is no longer Stebbins!
The green demon inside him is now taking shape, emerging!
Boat’s mind finally snaps from the unfair punishment it is being subjected to.
He screams loudly!
Somehow his feet bundled up under him and pushes upward. He makes a mad dash for the open windows, wishing to get as far away as possible from the evil incarnate.
The Stebbins-beast thing cuts him off cleanly, almost gracefully, and then it hammers a huge fist with brute force into Boat’s ribs, cutting off his breathing and driving all the strength out of him.
A back-handed slap follows, catching Boat flush against the side of the face, and knocking him off his feet.
Boat falls into a foul liquid which his sick brain identifies as his own vomit and urine, and he lies there, gasping for breath, and staring up at the Stebbins-beasts with his eyes bulging out of their sockets, literally!
Blood oozes out of Boat’s nose and split lips.
The monster towers over him, face still rapidly changing so that Boat can barely recognize the original Stebbins’ facial features.
The look on that face is pure evil now. The beast raises his foot slowly, deliberately, ready to bring it crashing down into Boat’s face.
Withthat abnormal strength, Boat has no doubt that it will disintegrate his skull to pulp.
As Boat watches in horrified stupor, waiting for death, something amazing happens.
The foot of the beast is still raised over Boat’s face, and Boat can see past that dirty foot – which, to his horror, has foot rot – to that hideous face, and suddenly, the snarl of the evil being above him changes to a confused whimper.
The monster’s neck turns to one side, and it bends lower to get a better look at Boat’s face.
Suddenly its rage disappears, and Boat sees apprehension written across that evil face, there is a sudden look of fear in its eyes.
The monster lowers its foot gently, taking great care to put it far away from Boat’s face.
It gives another whimper of fear, and then rapidly the demon recedes.
The green eyes vanish, the evil face vanishes, the mark on its forehead disappears, and soon it is only the thin and tall figure of Stebbins standing there in mild confusion.
That is when Mary’s sharp, shocked voice cuts through the dawn air.
MARY
(screaming)
Mr. Stebbins!
She comes out through the French Windows.
She is draped in a long cloth, and her face looks shocked as she runs to Boat’s side.
She pushes Stebbins out of the way and looks down at Boat, her face terrified.
MARY
(horrified)
My good gracious, Yaw! What did you to do him, Mr. Stebbins? Why are you here? How did you get in here, Mr. Stebbins?
She is speaking to Stebbins, but as she speaks her eyes go to the railings separating the balconies, and for the very first time she sees the twisted and abused railings, and her mouth fell open in a silent “O”.
She looks from Stebbins to the railings and back with horror written all over her face, and when Stebbins begins to shamble away, she does a sensible double take and steps aside for him. Boat and Mary watch him go, and when he goes through the railings to his balcony and into his room they finally look at each other.
MARY
(tremulously)
What’s going on here, Yaw, my love?
BOAT
(trembling, whispering)
Believe me, Mary, you don’t want to know. Please help me up.
Mary takes Boat’s arm and supports him into the bathroom where she cleans him of vomit, blood and urine.
Her eyes are dazed and full of questions all the time, but simply refuses to talk to her about the horrors she had evidently witnessed, the only reason being that Boat has refused to think about what had happened.
But not for long.
Not ever for long, because eventually thoughts of Anderson come flooding back into Boat’s head.
So, everything Anderson had said has come true.
Samson and Boat have been so very wrong.
Boat’s life has changed in the blink of an eye, and he knows deep down that nothing is ever going to be the same again.
He has always prided himself in being strong and fearless. Under different circumstances he could have whipped Stebbins with one hand tied behind his back, but this thing has reduced him to a nervous wreck.
It has taken his mind and twisted it into an insane spool, bringing to the fore all man’s dreaded fears, and has exposed his vulnerability and terror so completely that even thinking about it brings helpless tears to his eyes.
In all the whirlwind of unexpected horror and its unpredictable future, there is one thing Boat is absolutely certain of: he just can’t handle it!
The hell he has witnessed is not meant for human eyes, and no mind is supposed to grapple with something as evil as that.
Boat is not a coward, but when he remembers that horrible green face, he quails inside. He simply cannot survive sights like that. It will make him insane. He needs none of it. He isn’t cut out to see spirits, and certainly he doesn’t want to be an Unblind or whatever the hell that is!
He can’t fight demons and principalities and fiendish ghouls!
…My heart bleeds for you for the terrible times ahead of you…
Anderson!
Always Anderson!
What he had seen has freaked him out terribly, and he isn’t ready to take on such evil, and nothing is ever going to convince him to do battle with stuff like that.
As Mary helps him into bed, his mind is made up. He resolves that as soon as it is day, he will go and see the pastor Anderson has mentioned in his letter.
He will force that pastor to take him to Anderson … and then Boat will beat the crap out of that damn Anderson and demand that he lifts whatever evil spell he has cast on him.
Boat isn’t some latter day Moses who was going to lead God’s people out of captivity. Damn it, Moses had had a magical staff, or something silly!
How is Boat going to be able to face such inhuman terror? He had felt his mind ready to snap when that thing came through the railings, and he had felt the blood building up in his head like a choked dam, building up behind his eyes, ears, nostrils and throat.
A second longer of that horror and all his veins would have burst, and blood would have spewed out of every orifice in his face, and out of every pore! His brain would have exploded as if it had been packed full of gelignite, and he would have died a really messy kind of death.
He rests in Mary’s arms and tries to sleep … but sleep eludes him because he is scared of shutting his eyes, scared that if he opens his eyes that thing will come back.
He wonders if he is ever going to have peace again!
________________
FUNKY TOWN
Location: THE STREETS
It is now morning.
Yaw Boat lies in bed and looks through the French windows.
Sunlight is filtering through, and the sky is clear and bright. Another day has dawned, and Boat meets it with apprehension and trepidation.
He wishes he can stay in bed for the rest of his life. He had thought that the onset of day will bring relief and lesser fear, but during the short transition from darkness to daylight, his fears has increased, and the horror of that evil face is still so real that he can still see it even with eyes closed.
He turns restlessly in bed as the door opens and Mary walks in, carrying a laden tray. She clears the little side table and sets the tray down.
MARY
(unsteadily)
Would you like to brush your teeth now, my love?
Her voice is not holding its usual underlying note of lust and wanton sultry sexy desire. Her voice is like that of a lost little girl, and it makes Boat smile fleetingly.
Boat gets up and walks towards the bathroom. He opens the door, and then he just stands there, unable to enter.
He cranes his neck, trying to peer into the bathroom, and then he looks through the tiny space on the edge of the door where it is hinged to the wall.
Mary, sitting at the foot of the bed, regards him silently with eyes filled with fear.
Finally Boat enters the bathroom on sick legs; they just won’t stop wobbling, and he thinks briefly that maybe he can do with a walking-stick.
He almost chuckles with self-pity; just one night and one sighting, and he seems to have aged fifty years.
When he comes back from the bathroom, clean and groomed, Mary pours tea into a porcelain cup. She adds cream and sugar and hands it to him wordlessly.
He props his back against the headrest and sips the delicious tea. She hands him a buttered toast.
BOAT
(gently)
Are you not having breakfast, Mary?
MARY
(absent-mindedly)
Took mine an hour ago. Mr. Stebbins moved out.
She is buttering another toast as she speaks, and she is not looking at him.
A jolt passes through Bolt, and he spills tea into the saucer. His hands are not quite steady.
Mary stares fixedly at the spilt tea as if it is the most important thing in her life.
BOAT
Huh? What was that?
MARY
Mr. Stebbins, my love. Early this morning a moving company came in with a truck and loaded up his stuff. He drove away shortly after they left. The agent just put up a to-let sign for Mr. Stebbins’ apartment. So, Mr. Stebbins is gone for good.
The silence afterwards is like a physical animal that roars between them, threatening to decapitate one of us. The feeling is so uncomfortable that after a while Boat feels like screaming.
She puts two buttered toasts on a plate and puts the plate within his reach, and then she finally looks into his face, and there no denying the fear in the depths of her eyes.
MARY
(softly)
This morning I tried to make love to you again because you were so restless after … after… that thing with Mr. Stebbins. You slapped my hands away, Yaw.
BOAT
(aghast)
For real?
He spills more tea, and it forms a bigger pool now in the saucer. He is trembling again, and it isn’t nice.
It is scary.
MARY
Yes, my love, and that was not all. You kept thrashing around in bed, murmuring a whole lot of gibberish. You were very distressed indeed. When I was cleaning the balcony this morning I noticed that apart from the vomit there was also urine. Now don’t get me wrong, my love. I’m not trying to humiliate you but frankly, you’re the most self-assured guy I’ve ever known. You’re the coolest. Your rock-solid confidence and charisma is what I love about you the most, but now you’re suddenly scaring me, you and Mr. Stebbins. I tried not to think about that gaping hole in the railings, but it’s impossible. I would never have thought Mr. Stebbins, or any man for that matter, will be strong enough to bend those cast iron metals like that! Now he has moved out, and you’ve started trembling and spilling coffee. You’re even scared to enter your own bathroom. What is going on, Yaw?
He sighs miserably. She is looking at him intently, and there is unease in the depths of her eyes.
He is silent as he forces himself to drink all the tea and eat all the toast bread. She takes the plates and cup from him and carefully packs them on the tray.
Without a word she begins to stand up, but he reaches over and holds her hand, drawing her close to him.
He drags her close, hugging her from behind, and she relaxes against him. His arms are around her, and she can feel his body trembling.
He puts his cheek against her hair and speaks softly.
BOAT
(carefully)
Something bad happened to me, Mary. I don’t know how you will take it, but yesterday I met a damn pastor who told me that on the stroke of midnight I’ll start seeing stuff …evil stuff that no other eye can see. He called it being Unblinded, you know, so that I can see things in the spiritual realm. It sounds crazy, I know, but it really happened, Mary. This dawn, out there on the balcony, I saw something really bad about Mr. Ralph Stebbins. It made him really mad when he realized that indeed, I saw it. He wanted to ki*ll me.
She goes rigid, and then she turns herself within the circle of his arms and looks at him with her brow puckered with fear and confusion.
MARY
Stuff? Evil stuff? In the … what? Spiritual realm?
That is when, once again, Yaw Boat recounts that terrible meeting he has had with Reverend Paul Anderson to Mary.
He realizes that his fears begin to dissipate a little at a time whilst he tells her about the whole scary experience. Her expression changes from disbelief to incredulity to concern by the time he finishes.
She doesn’t freak out, though, and she doesn’t bombard him with a million questions. That is one of the things he likes about her. She has a sensible head between her shoulders, and realizes that the last thing he needs is nagging and the stress of being bombarded with questions he simply does not have answers to.
MARY
(hoarsely)
That is quite an extraordinary tale, quite incredible. If anybody but you had told me I would’ve laughed it off as being the ramblings of a mad man. I don’t know what to make of it, my love. I suggest you go home and wait for your father, Yaw. He would know what to do to help you under the circumstance.
He nods, and perhaps because of her understanding and level-headed suggestion he finds the terror beginning to assail him again, and so he kisses her, quite long and tenderly, and they end up making love.
But it is not with the same bestial violence they are used to.
This time it is gentler, more personal, more giving, because there seems to be an unspoken fact between them that their relationship is going to be very affected, and it is possibly the last time they will be together.
Afterwards she fusses over him a little, and then she excuses herself because she has to be in the office.
She hesitates at the door, however, and gives him a long look … and he sees the fear lurking in the depths of her lovely eyes. There were questions on her mind, he is aware, perhaps thousands of them, but she just sighs and slips out, closing the door gently.
Yaw Boat, alone and terrified, stares at the ceiling. He has no answers even for his own questions. Yeah, life is that crazy sometimes, and filled with quite unexpected and unpredictable lines that can lead a man straight into the yawning fangs of death in the cruellest of ways.
There were no constants in life, none. In the blink of an eye Yaw Bawa has moved from being the drug-using, alcohol-slurping, fornicating teenaged son of a millionaire to a freaked-out little bundle of a boy, too scared of even his own shadow.
He has been catapulted into an insane world, a world where his eyes have become his enemy, a world where his feet are almost firmly-planted on Death Avenue.
Finally,realizing that he needs to start addressing his terrible problem, he stands up and gets dressed.
He leaves the apartment, locks it, and descends to street-level to his car, and his heart is in his mouth all the time.
As he drives out of the garage he finally allows the thought which had been plaguing me the whole night to crystallize, no longer able to flee from it. It stares him straight in the face and refuses to budge until he admits it.
Why did that demon – or whatever the hell it had been – spare Boat’s life?
It was a simple question, but its answer scareds the living bejesus out of him with all its implications.
That Stebbing-Thing had admitted that Boat had to die.
That death sentence had been final, had left no avenues open for debate.
It had been a simple statement, a direction of action that left not even the simplest of spaces available for uncertainties.
It had then blasted its way through the railings and attacked.
It had raised its foot to mash Boat’s brains in.
And then, at the very last minute, it had paused.
It had taken another look, a second look, at Boat’s face, and it had seemed shocked, and it had whimpered with fear … and then it had retreated!
The question is, what had that demon seen on Boat’s face that had made it look so scared?
What the hell had it seen?
At first Boat doesn’t want to admit the evident answer staring him in the face, but it simply can’t be avoided.
It pushes itself into his brain and knocks around some, and so Boat finally admits it.
…since the day you were born, you have been carefully manipulated and controlled by evil forces to achieve a terrible aim…
Anderson’s words, once again!
Could it be true?
It had to be true!
That green piece of evil spared his life because it had seen something superior, recognized a vessel which had been prepared, ready for occupation by a superior demon!
It had seen a vessel for its master!
Alarming as it is, that is the only answer!
It fits very well.
The normal interpretation is simple: that evil entity had been scared after that second look.
It had seen something meant for its master, and had been alarmed because it had almost destroyed it.
That is it, the one positive fact, and it tells Boat that he is in one big trouble.
He sighs unhappily and rubs a hand across his face, and then he begins to pay heed to the happenings around him.
He had been aware of extra movements for a while, a kind of translucent bright lights flitting in and out of his vision, but he had been so lost in thought that he barely paid any heed to them.
A loud horn blasts behind him, and just then his eyes pick up what had been happening, and the sudden shock is so terrible that Yaw Boat sits transfixed in his seat.
His car veers off the street and smashes into a street lamp, and one of the headlights shatters with a tinkling, glassy, exotic sound… chinklinnng!
Luckily, he had been cruising, and although he is thrown forward by the impact straight into the steering wheel because he has failed to wear the seatbelt, the crushing pain is fast and gone, leaving him a bit breathless and with a lingering soreness in his chest, but otherwise he is unhurt.
Yaw Boat looks around him in agony, his stomach heaving as he gasps for release from the fresh terror all around him.
Sudden sweat break all over his body, and a crippling cold sweeps over his body. He sits in his damaged car, chilled to the bone, his eyes darting frantically in all directions as he watches them!
BOAT
(in great horror)
My God! Oh, my God! Oh, sweet Jesus!
They are everywhere!
If he ever doubted it, if he had been hoping, if he had been deluding himself, here then this is the proof!
Here is it, the reality of all realities.
There is no doubt now!
He has really been unblinded!
He sits in a petrified stupor, barely hearing the cacophonous blasts of angry horns all around him. He looks, and he moans … and something dies inside me!
The demons are all over town!
They have come to have a funky party!
They float all around Boat, in all forms and colours, translucent, ugly, and infinitely evil.
They ride on top of cars, sit on buildings, hover in doorways, float on trees and, worst of all, drape themselves around people and recline inside people!
Yaw Boat sees one particularly huge and bulbous demon perching comfortably on a sleek, upper-class woman who is getting out of her car. The demon’s blazing red eyes are fixed malevolently on her.
Yaw Boat sees a serpentine, orange creature with scaly-looking skin and huge teeth worming its way down the open neck of a man with a pastor’s clerical around his neck.
A brownish ugly mess with huge fangs is curled up snugly on the head of a crippled beggar sitting on the sidewalk.
Boat’s breath comes erratically now, and his fear is galloping up his throat uncontrollably, his panicked eyes ready to explode right out of his face.
It is not a sight for human beings.
He shuts his eyes tightly, and forces himself to breathe and withdraw from the horror. It is, after all, his sanity at stake here.
With his eyes still shut, he forces himself to accept the fact that what is happening is real, something Anderson had warned him about!
He forces himself to understand that this is not his mind conjuring madness and horrors! He forces himself to understand that soon, very soon, this stinking ability to see into the spiritual realm will leave his body, and everything will be fine again!
His breathing become a little bit more regular, and the panic slowly subsides. Calmness and rational acceptance come back to him, and then he slowly opens his eyes.
And even then he is still not completely prepared for the stark evil he sees!
Just to his left is a prostitute, hitching up her mini-skirt and straightening up a seam in her stockings. Behind her is a fat, short, greenish creature on stunted legs, moving forward with mad intensity, pink eyes alight with evil, drooling terrible goo from its gigantic vertical mouth.
This vile demon suddenly jumps up, holds the whore’s legs, and scampers up her thighs, disappearing under her skirt, leaving only three stubby feet sticking out.
Soon Boat can see the demon’s legs jerking spasmodically, obviously with great enjoyment.
BOAT
(horrified)
Oh, Lord! What the hell are you doing to her, you piece of sh*t?

To be a continued…
©Aaron Ansah – Agyeman
All Rights Reserved.

 

ALL EPISODES OF THE SECOND SIGHT

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