The Second Sight – Episode 12

THE SECOND SIGHT 12

®20+ SNVL

SICKENING MURDER

Location: PASTOR GEOFFREY SAM’S RESIDENCE

This field around Mrs. Sam looks a little weaker, a little bit less-intense than the one he has seen around the widow, but it is there all the same, shrouding the woman completely, so real and powerful that she looks almost invisible in it.

The mad man growls with sudden fear, and the knife drops from his hand. He holds up his arm protectively, tottering backwards, his countenance now filled with and fear.

Boat launches himself at the man.

His right shoulder hits him in the midriff. His momentum sends both of them crashing into an armchair.

With amazing strength and swiftness the mad man squirms out from under Boat, but Boat lashes out with a savage elbow, catching him brutally in the back of his head.

This time the tramp groans with pain as he is driven to his knees. Boat bounces off the armchair with his right fist swinging.

For the second time his blow catches the man flush on the jaw. He moans this time and topples forward. He falls on his face, but bounces off the floor with the fluid grace of a gymnast and totters toward the door.

Once again Boat is gripped by a maddened fury which he cannot control. Maybe, just maybe, he had wanted to hit out at these evil things, but I hadn’t been able to, until now.

They are now in a body, and have taken shape, and now he can hit them and maybe hurt them!

He reaches down and pulls at a low table. There are some expensive-looking chinaware sets on it, and they came smashing down to the floor, some breaking into fine pieces.

Boat lets out a roar he hardly recognizes as coming from his throat, and charges the door just as the tramp shoulders it open and stumbles outside.

Boat runs out of the door, still gripped by sizzling fury, and then he comes to a halt with a shocked little gasp.

The sun is gone!

The sky is dark with the same bleeding clouds he had witnessed at the cemetery.

An ominous wind is blowing, bending branches of the trees along the street and sending fine dust into the air. Lightning flashes across the sky with terrible frequency, scything the air with alternating brilliant silvery flashes.

It is not like any weather Boat has ever seen.

The tramp topples down the steps, and then turns to fix Boat with that evil red stare. The demon, eyes as red as blood, evil mark blazing on its forehead, glares at Boat with blatant and live evil.

Thunder booms in six quick successions across the sky, shaking the ground, and then there is a horrible tearing noise from the sky above me.

Boat looks up, alarmed, and just then there is a final ripping sound, and then a fine, rectangular glass tears off from glass structure on the roof.

The glass comes down straight at the tramp, who is staring upwards, face filled with insane glee, hands and body dripping wet with Pastor Sam’s blood.

Boat watches in awestruck horror as the glass strikes the base of the madman’s neck. His head shoots off his body like a basketball, spirals once, and hits the ground with a resounding thud-flop-clash sound, landing upside down, his facial muscles still stretched in a grotesque grin.

The decapitated body does a crazy samba-like shuffle, and then falls sideways.

Blood shoots out like the sprinkler on the lawn, decorating the courtyard with a bright, crimson splatter.

The table drops from Boat’s nerveless hand as he stands transfixed with horror.

There is a flash of red as the demon leaves the body of the dead tramp.

Finding his voice finally, Boat lets out an insane yell and jumps down from the top steps, swinging his fists furiously at the evil red haze still streaming out of the dead body.

He can feel it all around him, hot and stinking, sizzling with an evil presence, suffocating and unpleasant.

He can see half demonic faces in there, numerous eyes, a million ancient humming voices driving him deaf as that evil red mist swirls around him in a shroud, and then converging into a single ray of red as it shoots over him.

Boat stares helplessly after it, screaming his head off, raising his face towards the sky as the red cloud ascends.

And then he sees them.

The black crows are now lined up on the roof.

The same black crows he had seen at the cemetery.

The demon cloud hits the crow in the middle.

It is the same huge crow, the one which seems to be the leader, the single crow which had remained behind at the cemetery, the one in his room, the one in his garage!

Its eyes glow red orbs of hatred at Boat … a terrible bright demon stare!

Boat’s yells die in his throat as they stare at each other.

He can feel its baleful eyes tearing into his soul, delving, delving and delving, wanting to tear his brain away.

Suddenly it flaps its gigantic wings, and then it lifts off, followed by the other crows.

Thunder rumbles in the sky, lightning slashes relentlessly. The wind, now almost reaching gale-force, tears into Boat, striving to tear his cheeks apart and wrench the skin off his body.

And then, as suddenly as it has started, it stops!

Just like that!

Abruptly!

The sun appears out of the gloom as the crows turn northward. The black shadow of the great crow falls over Boat, and suddenly his breath stops as he stares at the shadow of the crow on the ground!

He shudders with chilled horror at what I sees.

He can see the shadows of the crows, and they are normal bird-shaped shadows…

But the shadow of the huge crow, the one with the white collar, is not the shadow of a bird!

It is the shadow of a three-legged beast!

The beast has ugly deformed hands which have three fat claws for fingers. On top of its abnormally huge and ugly head is a long, sharp horn!

Yaw Boat looks up with a heart thudding with fear, but the crows are now specks disappearing into the horizon, framed against the evening sky in a perfect inverted V-formation.

Boat’s stupor is broken by the scream of Mrs. Sam behind him.

She is standing in the doorway, covered with the blood of her husband, and she is staring at the body of the headless man, and the upside-down grinning head.

Trembling, Boat climbs the steps up and takes her shivering body in his arms.

He holds her as she trembles and weeps.

He says nothing. He just holds her. His mind is on other things.

What was that shadow all about?

A three-legged giant beast with three fingers for a hand, a huge malformed head and a horn!

What in the name of Hades had that beast been?

Of course he knows it is one of those terrible demons with red eyes which had possessed the body of the crow.

But why? What does it want with him?

Yaw Boat is a very scared man as he holds Mrs. Sam.

___________________

THE GROUNDING

Location: Various

The cops and paramedics swoop down like famished hawks which have sighted a well-fed chick.

They arrive in their ambulances and sedans, making a din terrible enough to bring back extinct species.

They cordon off the area and the professionals go to work. Gloves are snapped on and orders are barked out, as they go about their duties with precision and dedication.

They take the shocked Mrs. Sam to hospital.

She is so devastated that she had slipped into some sort of sobbing fit by the time the cops arrived. She cannot not speak; she just goes on sobbing even when the tears will not flow anymore and all that comes out of her throat are scratchy sounds.

Even though Boat had done his best to clean her hands of the blood, she still stares at her fingers as if her husband’s arteries are still pumping bright-red blood on them.

Unable to get anything sensible from her, the cops turn to Boat and vent full-spleen frustrations on him. They coop him up in the house and grill him. Still unsatisfied, they invite him to take a ride with them to the police station where four huge detectives swing questions at him like wedding confetti.

Yaw Boat stays cool and calm, and sticks to his story; he tells them that he and Pastor Geoffrey Sam had been preparing to take a trip to Takoradi to see Pastor Paul Anderson, who is a mutual friend.

He had come down to Fairview to relay a message, and found them being attacked by the madman.

The cops grill him as if they can see lies spilling off his lips, but all the evidence points to the fact that indeed the madman had gone berserk and attacked the pastor.

They cannot reach Pastor Paul Anderson on the phone.

The only one who could have given them another version is Mrs. King, but she is in her own little world, and it might take some hours, even days, before she can come out of her shock.

There is no way Boat could’ve told them the real truth about the demons that have invaded the madman and used him to murder the poor pastor.

Finally, when it is quite dark, they let Boat go. He is not a suspect, not yet, but he should make sure not to leave the country because blah, blah, blah…

Fact is, Boat isn’t bothered about being a murder suspect, or being thrown into jail.

What is there to fear after what his eyes have beheld?

He isn’t worried about his present situation. There are more urgent questions to be answered, and the Fairview cops with their pathetic threats are the least of his worries.

Crazy things have happened, things beyond his comprehension. He does not even try to make sense out of the series of events anymore.

Anderson is not a madman after all.

He had known exactly what he had been talking about.

Samson Basoah and Boat had been wrong!

Totally wrong.

The unthinkable has happened, and Boat has to face that fact.

He knows he is walking that thin line between sanity and madness, and he knows it is going to take all his willpower and something special to stop his brain from exploding.

And all along questions are plaguing him.

Questions he has no answers to.

Why the white crows?

Why had Pastor Sam been killed?

Why did the pastor’s wife have the amazing force-field which had made the demon flee, and how come the pastor himself didn’t have a protective force-field?

And then there is the screaming question: can Anderson be right? Has Yaw Boat been manipulated into a state of total sin to allow his body to be occupied by a demon?

Anderson has been proven right on the ability for humans to see into another realm, so why won’t he be right about the rest of it?

If it is all true, is Boat now ready to succumb to Anderson, and change his life to become some sort of weird demon-hunter?

The answer is no!

Damn it, who can bear such a life? To see those uglies and chase them? No bloody way!

There is only one thing to do now!

He needs to see Anderson fast and let him take away that damn gift, this crazy ability to see into the spiritual realm.

This is no horror movie.

He has just witnessed two violent, diabolical murders! Lives have been snuffed out with the flippant nonchalance like a snap of fingers. Evil has reared its head, and now Boat is staring into the mouth of hell.

Buthe cannot take it any longer!

He needs his father badly. His father can help him, but he is out of the country, and there is the likelihood that Anderson’s warning will come true, and something really awful can happen to Boat before his father returns, and then he will be beyond help!

He drives back to Accra as if the Devil is after him!

It is not until he is fifteen minutes away from Accra that he finally decides on his next line of action.

He parks on the side of the road and puts in a call to his travel agent.

Boat wants the agent to book him on a flight with BeachAir, the private airline company that provides quick shuttles across the country.

He is going to Takoradi.

With Pastor Sam out of the picture and his wife slammed into her own world, the only option is to get to Anderson himself.

The Boat’s family’s travel agent and friend, Peter Amuzu, however, has bad news for Boat.

AMUZU

(tiredly)

Sorry, Yaw. BeachAir is not flying anymore. The Supreme Court slammed an indefinite ban on it and froze all their operations. They’re grounded.

BOAT

(numbly)

Grounded?

AMUZU

Yep. Tax evasion, Yaw. Serious sh*t. Millions of Cedis involved, plus the company is up to her ti*ts in debts. It has been using a front all this while, and it seems the Chief Executive was taking the shareholders for a ride. He embezzled the lot of money but he’s been nabbed by the police. Serious scandal leading to BeachAir being grounded. Where have you been, Yaw? It is all over the newspapers and airwaves!

BOAT

(tightly)

Damn! I need to get to Takoradi, Peter. I need another flight, or I might have to drive all the way to Takoradi.

AMUZU

(quietly)

Drive to Tadi? You have to wait three days then before venturing out.

BOAT

(impatiently)

What are you talking about? From Accra to Tadi is not more than three hours for me.

There is a short pause, pregnant with meaning, and that is when Boat’s ears begin to heat up, and the hairs on the back of his neck begins to bristle.

AMUZU

Are you telling me you haven’t heard the news, Yaw?

BOAT

Heard what? What news?

For no apparent reason at all Boat’s heart begins to pound severely.

AMUZU

(calmly)

Where have you been, Yaw? There was a freak earthquake that has rendered the whole stretch of road from Winneba to Cape Coast impassable. Quake also affected the entry from Kumasi. All entry points to Tadi are blocked. Authorities project that it will take at least three days to clear a temporary entry into Tadi. All local flights to Takoradi are booked tight. I’ll see if I can squeeze a flight for you tomorrow on one of flights, but I doubt it, seriously.

Boat barely hears him.

All he knows is that from the moment Mr. Amuzu began talking about that freak earthquake, Boat’s heartbeats began accelerating, and his body suddenly goes numb.

A terrible kind of headache starts on his forehead just below the hairline, and its sudden ferocity brings tears to his eyes.

The phone is like a million tons in his hand. His brain pounds, and his body shakes. A terrible heat is rising from deep within his belly, engulfing his whole body. He can hear Peter’s anxious voice, calling from far away, asking if he is fine.

The phone drops from his nerveless fingers. He stares at his trembling hands with horror mounting in his heart.

Everything now makes terrible sense to him.

The murder of Pastor Sam and the tramp, the problems of BeachAir, the freak earthquake that has rendered Takoradi inaccessible by road…they are not mere coincidences, no, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Something sinister is brewing.

The horror of it hits him, and his brain refuses to accept, to understand, to allow. It is madness, surely he must be wrong…

Oh, dear Lord, let him be wrong, take his mind off this horror!

But everything indicates that he is being boxed in!

For some reason, some very obvious reason, he is being kept in Accra, marooned!

Something desperately wants to keep poor Yaw Boat away from Pastor Anderson!

Avenues were being closed!

He is being slowly but surely set aside, waiting for the axe to fall.

Something somewhere, somehow, is manipulating events, boxing him up tight in Accra so that he will never set foot outside its boundaries, until whatever needs to be done to him is done!

Some evil fiends wants him to stay where he is!

He is being marooned … quarantined!

Boat’s fears knows no bounds.

It is so complete that he can feel it turning his blood to ice and fire, buffeting me with equal doses of heat and coldness.

He fights the panic, clenching his jaw and his stomach muscles. Surely there are other ways he can connect with Anderson, not necessarily on a physical level.

He can make use of technology.

He will visit the website of Pastor Anderson’s church again and search the web relentlessly. There will be another way of getting Anderson to take the damn curse off his neck.

There is a sudden spattering thud on the bonnet of the car, then faint scratch sounds follow, and then his head come up slowly.

The big white crow is sitting snugly on his bonnet, looking at him, inhuman eyes blazing red, filled with inexpressible fury!

A dirty bird, a hateful bird with evil eyes, keeping tabs on him and monitoring his moves, ready to wreak the next special delivery of death and horror.

His fear crystallizes into sudden fury.

He flings open his glove compartment, grabs the huge gun Bob had given almost a year previously, and which he has put in his glove compartment after his meeting with Pastor Paul Anderson.

Boat opens his door and flies out of the car with a massive cry of horror, anger, fear and disgust.

The gun is a Magnum .375, old-fashioned shredder, Dirty Harry style, baby.

He has not used it before since he coerced Bob to get it for him. Before meeting Anderson, he had even been toyed around with the idea of getting rid of it.

The scene is different now.

Boat really wants to use it now.

He wants to fill that crazy fat white crow with so many bullets that it will explode into smithereens.

His maniacal war cry shatters the air as he levels the gun at the crow.

BOAT

(screaming)

Motheeeeer-fuuuuuuckeeer!!!

He fires, and the gun bucks in his hand, startling him with its harsh sounds.

The white ugly crow glides off his bonnet with slow, deliberate, sluggish steps … majestic, unperturbed and absolutely cool.

Boat holds the gun in both hands and goes on firing point-blank at that horrible bird.

The crow flies lazily up into the trees bordering the road.

None of the bullets has hit that evil bird!

Yaw Boat looks into the trees with impotent fury.

High above him, on the tallest tree, a pair of deep red eyes are fixed on him.

He sees no crow, and he sees no movement because it is quite dark. He hears no sound … but he sees those evil red eyes blazing down at him.

This is real horror … real death!

He looks down at his trembling hands, and he quails inside as he realizes what he has done.

If another motorist had come by, if an eye-witness had been around, it would have been straight to the jailhouse for him.

He enters the car in a daze and leans back against the seat wearily.

And after a while he allows his thoughts to crystallize. He faces what had happened with cold reality, and accepts it for what it is.

He is a pretty good with a gun.

In fact, he is a natural with a gun. Bob had forced him to take shooting lessons, and his prowess on the range had been phenomenal.

One of his instructors once jokingly said that Boat had an in-built radar in his eye that held targets and directed his bullets straight at them.

But just a couple of minutes ago he had fired at that crow from point-blank range. Granted that he had been afraid and in an uncontrollable fury at the same time, but he just simply couldn’t have missed from that range.

He had fired a full clip of bullets at that bird which had moved without haste, without a care in the world, and still he had not been able to hit it.

The reason is simple, really.

At some point between his gun and the body of that bird, his bullets had simply vanished into thin air. The space between his gun and the bird had somehow swallowed up all his bullets.

So simple, so frightening!

Evil at its finest!

His hands are quite unsteady as he puts the gun back in the glove compartment.

Overcome with emotion, he drops his face into his hands. His mind fights it, and he tries to stay strong, but to no avail. The tears well up in his eyes, hot and searing, a direct result of all the accumulated badness in him, but he brushes them aside angrily.

It is not the time for tears and certainly not the time to turn yellow.

He is in deep trouble, and he has to find a lasting solution to that problem.

He knows, as he fights the tears away violently, that he is going to be gobbled up whole if doesn’t play his cards well in a game where his unseen and unknown enemies have all the aces, and more, under their sleeves.

To be continued…

©Aaron Ansah – Agyeman
All Rights reserved.

 

ALL EPISODES OF THE SECOND SIGHT