The Second Sight – Episode 11

THE SECOND SIGHT EPISODE 11

®20+ SNVL

CROW CEMETERY

Location: FAIRVIEW ROAD

Boat stops on a lonely stretch of road and takes out his phone.

He searches for Pastor Geoffrey Sam on Google and soon finds his man’s contact:

Sam, Geoffrey, Rev. Christ Redeemed. Ch. 39th Street, Fairview Avenue, blah, blah, blah.

YawBoat calls the number.

The call is picked up by a hesitant female voice. Probably the pastor’s wife.

Boat asks to speak to Pastor Geoffrey, and her voice becomes even more hesitant. She demands to know who is calling and why he wants to see the pastor.

BOAT

(angrily)

Put the damn pastor on, would you?

A moment later a male voice speaks calmly into Boat’s ear.

PASTOR GEOFFREY

(kindly)

Pastor Geoffrey Sam here. Who-

BOAT

(cutting in)

Name’s Yaw Boat. Pastor Paul Anderson gave me-

PASTOR GEOFFREY

(calmly)

I know, Mr. Boat. I’ve been expecting your call. Pastor Anderson instructed me to send you to him when you show up. Do you want me to come and get you, Mr. Boat?

BOAT

(curtly)

Stay put. It is shorter to Takoradi from Fairview. I’m on my way to you, Pastor. Please expect me within an hour.

Boat cuts the call, engages drive, and speeds hard towards Fairview Avenue.

Yaw Boat devises a new way of driving as he hurtles towards Fairview Avenue.

He has realized that if he drives hunched over the steering-wheel with his eyes glued to that portion of the road just in front of the bonnet of the car, and really concentrates, the terrible sights become limited to the uglies which rise out of the road; thankfully those demonic entities they are not that many.

Fairview is one of the new residential areas, lying sixty-five kilometres from the capital. It is not as overpopulated as some of the old counties, but it has had its fair share of ugly scandals.

The most recent one had been of a police chief who had been busted for child pornography. They had found enough tapes in his cellar to make Edgar Hoover’s collection seem like child’s play.

They had found him mauling a girl of twelve who had been reported missing for two months.

Certainly Fairview isn’t one of Boat’s favourite places, and he doesn’t even remember the last time he had been there.

Boat tries to perfect his new driving technique as the big car eats up the miles.

He is sorely tempted to gaze at the colour hues that flits in and out of his side-vision. It is a most maddening quandary; he is so damn scared of the sight of the demons, and yet he feels an almost irresistible urge to gaze on them and see what they are doing.

As Boat leaves the busy hub of the central towns behind, he slowly comes to realize that the demons thrived where humans are present.

Driving through the lonely road where there are no settlements is easier because he doesn’t see many of the uglies.

Boat feels the need to urinate very strongly.

He has been holding on tightly for a long time, keeping tight control over it. He is afraid of getting down to urinate and seeing some of those evil things on a lonely stretch of road.

However, it soon comes to a point where he can no longer ignore it.

He either has to take a leak or risk the real danger of doing it in his boxers.

When that realization is acknowledged, he looks up warily and gazes around him.

Green vegetation is spread out on both sides of the road. The sky is clear and lovely. Everything looks normal.

Plus, he is just twenty-minutes away from Fairview.

He swings the car over to the side of the road and stops.

He gets out, slams the door shut, and rushes to the side of the road, unzipping his fly and tugging frantically at the hole in his boxers to take out his member.

A few drops of urine actually stains his boxers before his pole is completely out, and then the amber liquid gushes out violently.

He almost cries with the joy of the relief in his bladder.

Finally he does a multiple toss to clear the hole of any lingering liquids, and tucks the boy into his boxers, zips up … and then the fear hit him suddenly!

It is a paralyzing feeling of dread that grips the nape of his neck and tightens his spinal cord, a terrible panic that grips his throat and makes him tremble.

It is almost like the deep fear he feels when he wakes up from the nightmare he has having lately, where the squishy limping sounds creeps, creeps, creeps up, gaining slowly but relentlessly, cold fingers reaching out to touch.

Funky Grounds come alive, baby!

Standing by the side of the road now, facing the bushes, Yaw Boat knows, with a chilling inner certainty, that if he turns around now he will witness evil.

All his instincts scream, warning him not to turn.

And yet there is also that certainty that if he doesn’t turn ice-cold fingers will reach out, vibrating with passion, and touch him.

A half-moan rises from his throat as he draws in a sharp breath. With his knees shaking with great panic, Yaw Boat turns around slowly.

He sees the cemetery across the road then.

It was amazing that he hasn’t seen cemetery when he stopped to urinate.

If he had seen it he certainly wouldn’t have stopped, not even if he had urinated all over himself.

It is a huge cemetery.

The headstones and crosses rise up from the graves, white and cold, eerily unpleasant, seeming to call out to him.

Old and fresh wreaths are lying here and there on graves.

The graves are neatly-kept in rows and lanes.

A cold cemetery, covering hundreds of cold bones, rotting flesh, sinister smiles; a place as remote and unknown as the beginning of time, a point in life as separated from the land of the living as love from hate.

The sudden sight of the cemetery, the spectral silence all around him, the aura of the atmosphere and a whole lot of factors scare the hell out of Boat at that point in time.

But nothing scares him half as much as the sight of the crows in the cemetery.

There are hundreds of black crows in the cemetery.

They are perched on the headstones of the graves, making sharp black contrasts to the snow-white stones.

Black crows with black eyes and baleful stares. They are perched there, absolutely immobile and silent, and they are all staring at Boat.

It isn’t necessarily the great number of crows that makes Boat weak at the knees, though.

It is that most awful terrible precision in which the crows are arranged!

The first frightening thing is that none of them is perching on the grounds of the cemetery, or on the graves.

They are perched only on the headstones of the graves!

The second frightening fact is that there are three crows on each headstone. No single or two crows on a stone; just that eerie precision: three crows on a headstone!

The third frightening fat is that they are not huddled together, but two crows are on the outer edges of a headstone, and one is in the middle.

And it is a precise arrangement, and his boggled mind knows that the distance between one crow to the other on a single headstone is the same for all the headstones.

Suddenly Yaw Boat wishes that he had not gotten out of the car. He wishes he dad stayed put in his car and sweated out the pain in his bladder all the way to Fairview.

Terror takes hold of him, and keeps him rooted to the spot.

There is no sound. Just him, and a few hundred crows, staring each other down.

At that moment reality is gone, and sanity is distant.

Boat knows that he has moved from the physical world into that terrible zone where those battles between good and evil takes place.

He is aware that it is a very dangerous moment for him, and that death – in the most awful kind of way – is just a breath away.

The world as he knows it is a different place, a universe that has retreated; He has been catapulted into the micro verse, a place where danger is magnified a thousandfold, a place where soft gloves are traded for spiked terrors, where the very wicked evil thrives … and he stands out like a drop of blood on snow, in a battlefield where he totally a novice, like a newborn baby in a fence with raging bulls.

The heart of Funky Grounds!

He is weak, he is unprepared, and he is so vulnerable. He is aware that in a just a tick of a second he can lose his life.

This is evil ground, a place with fangs, and he is so helpless!

Boat can feel the pull of evil from the crows, and can almost read the terrible thoughts running through their minds.

He can see their evil converging, directing, massing up, and finally waiting to be projected.

Panic stings his heart, and I can feel the hairs on his body rising up, standing as straight as hackles. He can even feel them greying with fear as his whole body gets poisoned with soul-cramping terror he is feeling.

This is a living fear. His heart is beginning to go into palpitations, and he is dimly aware that something has to happen fast to break the evil powers that he knows is going to be unleashed with terrible consequences on him.

And then the truth strikes him suddenly!

They don’t want him to go and see Pastor Geoffrey Sam!

They are here to stop him from going to Fairview, dear Lord, and they would hurt him very badly if that will stop him!

Boat suddenly sees that the skies have suddenly turned very dark. Ominous clouds have gathered, and the sun has lent a strange red tinge to them, making it seem as if the sky is bleeding from a mortal wound.

Yaw Boat trembles and moans as the heads of the crows, as if from a silent signal, perceptively angle forward slightly, indicating that the moment of take-off is just a microsecond away.

He suddenly has a vivid image of those sharp beaks digging into him, tearing flesh and veins and vessels, gouging the life out of him, eating him alive…

All because he is deviating from a terrible agenda by seeking out Pastor Sam who will take him to Pastor Anderson!

The terror that is gripping Yaw Boat is considerable!

He has never been so scared in his life.

The wings of the crows began to rise as they prepare themselves to take off and come him.

He knows they are coming for him.

There is no doubt about that.

His breath is laboured, and in that state of distress he opens his mouth, and for the first time in so many years a silent sincere prayer passes through Yaw Boat’s lips.

BOAT

(distressed)

They’re going to hurt me. Dear Lord, please help me out here!

And then a heavy truck appears around the bend in the road!

It is a dirty truck, lumbering along under the weight of something heavy in its trailer.

A heavy plume of black exhaust fumes trail it, and as it passes the place Boat is standing he peers into the car to see the driver, and suddenly he gasp with absolute shock when it dawns on him that there is nobody in the truck!

Boat bends double, as if he has been given a physical blow in the guts.

Maybe he has imagined it all! That must be the explanation! Maybe he just hasn’t looked into the truck really hard enough!

How can that huge truck be without a driver?

But Boat knows, he suddenly I knows, even though his brain denied it, that the truck has no driver!

He knows too that he has just received help from a very unusual place from a most terrible attack from the crows.

Yaw Boat knows that truck chugging along has not just appeared on the scene.

Maybe he had been so engrossed by the terrible sight of the crows that he barely paid attention to any sound around him, but he knows that isn’t so.

He had not heard the approaching truck’s engine.

He had prayed with terror, and immediately that prayer was answered.

It is like what Anderson had said: there is a terrible war going on, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, in a world unseen by the ordinary human eyes, but visible to those with the gift of a Second Sight.

One side now doesn’t want Boat to see Geoffrey Sam, and so terrible crows have been sent to stop him.

The other side wants him to see Geoffrey Sam, and so a truck has been sent to break the threat of the crows.

It is like that; he doesn’t know for sure, and yet he knows for sure that is what is happening.

Crazy maybe, but that is just what Yaw Boat feels; call it a sixth sense, intuition, a hunch …whatever, but that is the way of things now.

Boat knows without a doubt that if the truck hadn’t appeared he would have been crow food for sure. Maybe they would not have eaten him completely, but they would have done enough, hurt him enough, to make me turn back.

The black eyes of the crows swing in unison towards the truck with a tangible fury.

The truck chugs along, and then lets out an ear-splitting wail from its twin horns. It is a harsh, grating tintinnabulation of a sound that makes Boat’s hands fly instinctively to his ears.

And again he knows, with that same strange ability, that it isn’t just the truck’s horns. That sound is something else; there are weapons in that discordant blast.

Its effect is all-consuming, breaking a uniform line of order, giving a discordant note to the evil that had converged.

Boat notices with grim scared eyes that the sound of the horns makes the crows twitch suddenly, and then they sh00t into the air with sudden caws and cries of sudden dismay.

But not all of them flee.

One remains.

That one is perched on a huge headstone in the middle of the cemetery.

It is a little bigger, a little blacker and has dark eyes filled with much, much more malice.

The others seemed to have been getting their cue from that ugly crow. It is the only one among the hundreds of crows which has a white collar.

Yaw Boat stares at that crow, and it stares right back at him.

Its stare throws Boat so hard that he reels back.

It is like taking a peek into hell!

Suddenly the crow’s eyes changes from unfathomable black to a deep red like blood, and that also changes to yellow flames!

Such evil!

Yaw Boat reaches out to hold his car and steady himself.

The evil crow blinks once, and then its wings flap, and it takes off. Boat watches it until they had become little specks in the sky, and then he walks on trembling legs to his car.

With fear in his heart he drives like a madman all the way to Fairview.

______________

FAIRVIEW MAYHEM

Location: PASTOR GEOFFREY SAM’S RESIDENCE

The effects of his strange encounter with the crows wear off slowly, but by the time Boat enters Fairview he had recovered enough to put a human expression on his face.

Somehow, with the sky above his head and solid ground under his feet, and with people all around him, it is easier to accept what had happened to him at the cemetery of horrors.

Fairview is doing fine.

Boat is mildly surprised to see how fast the town has grown. Big stores have sprung up, and massive infrastructure additions has brought nice improvements.

The centre of Fairview is now transformed by beautiful buildings and sights that have not been there the last time he had been around.

He drives past what appears to be a small casino. It is not really big, but it is located in the little valley that leads down to the northern tip of the town, and Boat mentally makes a note that maybe it is time he and Bob take a trip down to Fairview to expand business.

They can sell cocaine here and make some great profit margins.

The street address to Pastor Geoffrey Sam’s residence is a long stretch of shiny wealthy tarmac with impeccable houses lined along each side of it.

The lawns are green, manicured and squishy clean.

Clean laundry flap on the lines as Boat cruises by.

Well-fed kids ride bikes and skates under the watchful eyes of plump and bored housewives. A serene atmosphere and an air of relaxed luxury permeates the neighbourhood. Sleek cars are parked in the driveways. Men in well-tailored suits come down stairs, kiss wives, lift up kids with delight.

A good neighbourhood … full of hell!

Mammoth uglies reign supreme everywhere, clamouring all over the children, embedded in husbands, smashing into wives and impaling them.

It is a terrible sight, and Boat cruises along, doing his best not to look.

Such well-to-do families from the upper class of society … and demons are living right there with them!

It is so pathetic that Boat can barely watch.

Suddenly a tramp lumbers into the street with outstretched palms, almost stepping right in front of his car.

The man, who appears to be mentally unsound, is in tattered shorts and a faded green T-shirt with fading words across the chest which reads: Lousy T-Shirt from Grand-Father.

Boat honks instinctively, caught unawares by the mad man’s sudden movement. The man gestures toward his mouth with his fingers. He wants money to buy food.

Yaw Boat scoops up some coins from the cup holder in the car and tosses them to the mad man, and then he accelerates past him.

Finally Boat sees Pastor Geoffrey Sam’s address on a finely-crafted slab in front of the house, and he turns his car into the driveway.

The Pastor’s residence is one of the nicest houses around. Big and well-designed, it is painted snow white and full of glass.

There are three cars parked in front of the house. One is a little green two-door Alpha Romeo. There is a huge Ford family van with the logo of the CHRIST REDEEMED CHURCH on it. The third car is a sleek BMW.

Boat parks behind the Alpha Romeo and gets out.

A power sprinkler is on the lawn, doing a spiral watering of the beautiful lawn, dropping little showers of water on his shoes and peppering the legs of his trousers with tiny brown stains.

A fat, white cat is lying on a settee on the terrace, lazily regarding a cockroach crawling up the arm of the settee.

The lawn spreads lushly all around the house, and to Boat’s right is a creditable swimming-pool surrounded by brick-roofed summer huts.

On top of the roof is a fancy structure that looks like roof house, done mostly in glass, shimmering in the sun, casting out rainbow colours.

A huge Alsatian dog is squatting under the nearest hut, and it has a leash around its neck, fastened to a pillar. It gives a mighty bark and cocks its head to regard Boat, finds him unworthy of his vocal aggression, and puts head back down on his paws.

Yaw Boat climbs the steps to the front door and presses a hand to the door-bell. A melodious bell sounds biiing-bong somewhere deep in the house over the strident voice of Kirk Franklin doing one of his frenzied numbers.

Boat puts his thumb on the bell and presses three times in succession.

Biiing-bong…biiing-bong…BIIING-BONG!

Kirk Franklin’s music stops, and a male voice calls from the room. A moment late the knob turns, and the door swings open.

The man standing there is fat, short and bald.

He is wearing a black suit two sizes too small for his explosive girth. The pastor’s collar around his thick neck is biting into the folds of flesh, and Boat notices that its topmost edge is very dirty.

A thick moustache completely hides his upper lip. Beads of perspiration has formed on his bulbous nose. He smiles and dabs at his nose with a huge white handkerchief.

PASTOR GEOFFREY

(warmly)

Mr. Boat, I presume?

He is holding out a small, wet hand.

Yaw Boat shakes it carefully, fighting hard against the sudden urge to wipe his palm on his trousers.

The Pastor’s hand is clammy and hot, as if he had been engaged in something not so pious before Boat showed up. Boat wonders briefly if the pastor had been slipping one to his missus before he rang the bell, and the sudden intrusive vision of the pastor’s fat buttocks moving up and down in sexual bliss nearly makes him burst into laughter.

BOAT

Yes, I’m Yaw Boat.

PASTOR GEOFFREY

Geoffrey Sam at your service. Please, do come in. I’ve been waiting for you.

He stands aside for Boat to enter.

Boat moves past him into the room, taking a cursory look at the expensive and beautiful living-room.

And that is when the fat cat outside shrieks.

It is a terrible, ear-splitting, violent sound that grates on the ears.

That shriek is not normal; it belongs to nightmares.

Boat spins round, his eyes riveted on the cat.

It is standing on the settee, hunched so severely that its body has almost formed a perfect C. The hairs on its body are standing straight, all the hairs, so amazingly straight – and for one wild moment it doesn’t resemble a cat but looks uncannily like a porcupine.

The cat’s eyes seem to bulge from its face.

The lazy Alsatian dog is also giving out one terrible braying sound. The cat bounces off the settee and flashes between the legs of the startled pastor.

Boat turns to watch it as it disappears through a door that leads from the sitting-room.

The dog is still howling, back-pedalling with its snout pointed vertically up into the sky, its tail stuck so deeply between its legs it appears almost tailless, its buttocks close to the ground as it retreats in a pitiful gesture that portrays both fear and confusion.

It is the saddest thing Boat has ever seen a dog do.

PASTOR GEOFFREY

(alarmed)

What is going on?

Things are happening too fast, and Boat’s focus is momentarily thrown off-guard.

A female voice speaks behind Boat, and he turns again.

A woman has walked into the living-room. She is tall and awfully thin. Her breasts, however, are gigantic, straining at the green blouse she is wearing.

Boat assumes that she is the Pastor’s wife.

MRS. SAM

(confused)

Geof, what’s wrong with them?

She sees Boat, and comes to a startled halt, her hand flying unconsciously to her chest. She must have caught Boat staring at her ti*ts.

There is a sudden startled gasp behind Boat and once again he turns to face the doorway, and that is when Boat sees the tramp.

It is the same mad man who had begged for money to buy food, the one he had given coins to.

The mad man is rushing up the steps, a huge scary knife held in his left hand, its tip pointing upwards. One edge of the knife is sharp, whilst the other edge is serrated.

Pastor Geoffrey Sam is rooted to the spot with fear, his face filled with terror as he makes little screeching moans in his throat.

Without fully comprehending what is going on Yaw Boat moves in instinctively, his lightning-quick reflexes which have saved his life in many a brawl coming to the fore.

At an early age Boat had befriended a man who used to teach major arts of fighting – Kung Fu, karate, jiu-jitsu, aikido – to police and army officers.

The old man had crafted his own brutal hand-to-hand combat art which he called GojuFist. He had found an avid student in Yaw Boat, and most afternoons, after school, Old man Wailer Vroom had used his backyard to teach young Boat, and he had become incredibly good at GojuFist.

Boat reaches out, and his hand hooks into the sodden collar of the pastor’s coat, and then he yanks the man of God backward into the room, at the same time kicking out at the door, causing it to swing forward.

The tramp growls in a terrible voice as spittle and froth flies and rolls down his chin, and his expression changes from anger to maniacal fury.

And then, after seeing the mad man’s face fully, Boat finally understands what is going on, and the chilling terror freezes his heart.

He sees that the eyes of the mad man are now a terrible red … and burning crimson red on his forehead is the mark of the beast: 666!

The mad man is not acting on his own.

He has been possessed!

The damn demons haven’t been able to use the crows to stop Boat at the cemetery, and so now they have possessed this mad man to make sure that Boat doesn’t go to see Pastor Paul Anderson.

A red-eyed demon has possessed him, just like the green-eyed beast had possessed Ralph Stebbins!

The shock hits Boat with such relentless force that he stands still, immobilized, still holding onto the collar of the pastor.

The door has almost swung shut, but the destitute hurls himself at it with blind fury, and it the door flies off its hinges.

The pastor’s wife is now screaming shrilly, and the dog outside is now barking wildly.

Geoffrey Sam is struggling now, his eyes bulging wide, and Boat releases him just as the mad man enters the room.

With a roar of fury Boat meets the mad man.

His fear is discarded as insanity propels him forward.

Insanity from fear, from stress, from the nightmare he is living in because of the venomous evil all around him, and he holds nothing back as he swings at the demon-possessed mad man.

His fist smashes into the man’s jaw with all the force of his power behind it.

Any ordinary guy would have dropped to the floor in a faint.

That punch style is Boat’s favourite GojuFist punch, a technique which involves breathing in to garner force and breathing out with the blow so that it connects with the force of your soul.

Before that day, no man has been known to survive it.

He feels the impact jarring through his arm, twanging, causing a sharp pain in his shoulder. He has never hit anybody that hard.

The mad man should have been pole-axed. He should have collapsed with a broken jaw and a bleeding nose.

But tramp’s head moves back just a fraction, and that is all.

Boat shakes his hand, aware of the sharp pain across his knuckles and knowing that he has bruised them badly with that blow.

It had felt like running his hand into the heart of cast iron.

And then the tramp’s right fist sinks into Boat’s belly, knocking the air out of him.

Yaw Boat falls down from the blow, his vision clouding.

He fights against the pain, trying to stay in the real world.

Pastor Sam tries to flee.

Boat’s screams as he lays on the floor joins that of the woman as the mad man raises the knife in his hand, and brings it down savagely.

The pastor, trying to flee, stumbles at that moment, and that action propels him forward, and the knife, aimed at his neck, plunges almost to the hilt just below his right shoulder and just a hair’s breadth short of his spinal cord.

He squeals with terror as blood turned his coat a darker shade, and spews all over the knife and the wrist of the hobo.

The crazy attacker tries to pull his knife free, but the serrated edge get entangled in flesh and cloth, and so he plants his right foot against King’s spine and pulls.

The knife comes free with a ripping sound.

Pastor Sam wails as a crimson hole appeared in his back. His hands grope at the wound, as if he wants to massage the pain away.

His eyes turn to his wife imploringly.

The demon-possessed mad man growls, raises his blood-stained knife, and steps forward, his maddened eyes fixed on the pastor.

With uncanny speed he lunges again. The pastor’s wife screams over and again as the knife zooms in and hits the back of Sam’s fat neck.

King seems to pivot slowly towards Boat, the tip of the knife protruding from his throat like some obscene Adam’s apple.

He makes some sort of guttural sound as blood pours down the sides of his mouth and down his throat.

His eyes seem to glare at Boat accusingly for a moment, and then he performs an almost graceful pirouette and falls down at his wife’s feet.

His body jerks spasmodically in his death throes as his hands reaches out and grabs his wife’s feet, his face filled with agony and horror.

The mad man is almost on top of the pastor, growling with hatred, bending for the knife which is still stuck in the pastor’s neck.

Boat struggles to his feet, bent over with pain, and stumbles forward drunkenly, afraid that the mad man is going to ki*ll the woman too.

Boat is almost in tears.

He just cannot believe what is happening!

It has just been not more than two minutes since the demon-possessed killer entered the room, but he has acted with unbelievable swiftness, accuracy and brutality.

The savagery and sheer senselessness of the attack fills Boat with a fury so deep that he can barely breathe, and yet his feeling of helplessness and inadequacy brings a bitter taste to his mouth.

Such evil, such crass violent that needs to be punished and extinguished, and yet there is nothing he can do to harm these forces of darkness.

He struggles forward, his horrified eyes picking up the fact that the mad man has planted a dirty foot on King’s head and has pulled out his terrible weapon, almost decapitating the poor man in the process.

The mad man turns on the woman.

Oh, no, you piece of sh*t, Boat tries to say, but of course nothing comes out. He is too scared and numbed to be capable of any coherent thoughts or speech.

And then, thankfully, it happens.

Just as the mad man nears Mrs. Sam and raises the knife to strike her, the woman she begins to glow.

It is the same dazzling force-field that Boat had seen on the poor widow.

To be continued…

©Aaron Ansah – Agyeman

All Rights Reserved.

 

ALL EPISODES OF THE SECOND SIGHT

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