I still felt and looked awful after yet another night of horrendous dreams, but despite the pain I knew it would cause, I decided to drive around to the places where I knew Ty frequented. Even if it killed me, I was determined to go. My chances of survival hinged on finding out what this thing was.
As I stood with my hand on the door, I felt like my heart was going to pound thorough my chest. Leaving was excruciating and the stronger his hold on me grew, the more it hurt. I pushed through and lumbered from the house on rubbery legs.
A few feet from the car I stopped to throw up. Just like the other day, it was thick and black and came without warning. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand then looked up to the car and almost fell over. He was there, in the driver’s seat. Grinning at me, he raised his arm and pointed to the hood of the car. Scrawled in the dirt was “1 more day”.
I threw my keys as hard as I could against the windshield, leaving a small chip in the glass and screamed “Leave me alone!” My elderly neighbor across the street stared at me aghast and tugged on her small terrier’s leash to hurry him along. “No, not you Mrs. Miller,” I said weakly. “Him.” I pointed to the now empty car.
I wrenched open the car door but found it empty. As I climbed in there was knocking on the front window of the house but I ignored it. He was trying to find anyway possible to keep me from leaving but I wasn’t giving in. I vowed to myself to press on, until the car wouldn’t start. “You tricky bastard! You thought of everything.” I know virtually nothing about cars so while futile, I still took a look under the hood. Nothing looked out of place so I slammed the hood and drug myself back into the house.
Already feeling feeble, I lay on the bed and tried to come up with a way out. I was running out of time. I knew it with every fiber of my being that I was going to die. He was going to get me. He would take my life and maybe even my soul.
If I was stuck in the house, I knew the internet would be my only source of information but I had no clue where to start. Searching Johnny Two Wings wouldn’t be helpful so I tried the museum’s website on the off chance they still had some information about that exhibit listed, but that was a bust. The page had been taken down.
For almost another hour I wracked my brain while blowing up Tyler’s phone to find out what the hell this thing was. I left my room briefly to get a drink and saw it him sitting in his usual spot in the middle of the living room. Looking into the dead eyes and viscous sneer for the hundredth time I finally lost it.
I went to my golf bag that was stored in a rack near the door and grabbed a nine iron, the first club I came across. Standing over the statue I raised the club and gave him one last chance, “What’s your name asshole? If you don’t tell me, you’re going to be rubble in about five minutes!” He didn’t move and instead sat there with his back to me. “I know you can talk! Tell me your name!”
Still nothing and being chagrined for screaming at a piece of rock made me even angrier and with all my strength I brought the club down on top of his head. The next minute was a blur. I rained a string of repeated blows to the statue while a river of obscenities flowed from my mouth. I swung and screamed until I ran out of energy and dropped the bent and twisted club to the floor with a thud. Panting heavily, I collapsed into the recliner and was so exhausted mentally and physically that I didn’t have the energy to cry. I still had no answers, the statue looked completely untouched, and despite the pummeling, he hadn’t even budged.
“I can’t believe that I’m going to be killed by something called Johnny Two Wings,” I lamented. “At least it could have a tough name like Apollyon The Destroyer.” While you don’t want to be killed by him, he sounds gigantic and fearsome. I started to think about the name Apollyon and why I knew it. Somewhere in the Bible, Revelation I think but that didn’t sound right. I thought back on the first time I sat at table and tried to figure out his name. Something with an A. “Alnico, maybe?” I looked it up on my phone only to discover that it was a type of magnet.
For several minutes I sat in the chair muttering to myself every imaginable thing it could be. When Al Pacnio ran through my head I thought I was sunk as it was unlikely that an Academy Award winning actor was currently trying to supernaturally murder me. But it was close, it was something that sounded Italian. “Al … Alleasi … no Alichi … Alichino?” It was worth a shot and I tried it in my phone. The first thing that popped up in the search engine both made my blood run cold and reenergized me at the same time. The good news was I wasn’t actually having a psychotic break. The bad news though, was a whole hell of a lot worse.
Energized for the first time in days, I flew to my computer and began to search in earnest. “Alichino, I’ve got you now you son of b–“ I heard something in the doorway of the room and there sat the statue, just like a dog who comes when you call his name. “Did you hear your name you bastard?” He didn’t respond or move but that was fine with me. While I hated his presence, at least I knew where he was. To me that was far less creepy than him running around the house.
With the right name in hand I quickly found out a lot about my house guest and began to read aloud to myself while I scribbled notes. “Alichino, a powerful demon thought to reside in the lower circles of hell is generally thought to be a lieutenant of Beelzebub Prince of Hell who ranks only below Satan himself. Holy crap!” Before I continued reading I paused to make sure Alichino was still in his spot and thankfully he was. “Let me guess, you like to hear what people have to say about you?” After chiding myself for trying to hold a conversation with a demonic statue, I went back to my reading.
“Small pockets of cults devoted to Alichino began to pop up in Northern Italy and Southern France in the 1100s. Though their origins are unknown, it is generally thought that much of the information regarding rites, rituals, and beliefs were brought back to Europe in books and scrolls captured during the first Crusade. The cultic following of Alichino was short lived however, as most of the devotees were wiped out during the Medieval Inquisitions.”
I looked down to the door again, “Still there. You really must love hearing about yourself.” I continued to pore through the background information and didn’t find anything overly helpful to my situation other than a picture of one of the only three remaining statues of the demon and it was a perfect match. “At least I’m on the right track.” The second page of information looked far more promising being titled Rites, Ceremonies, and Human Sacrifice.
“Followers of Alichino believed that wealth and good fortune could be received from the demon in exchange for a human life. Either sacrificed directly during a ritual where the victim’s blood would be poured directly on an idol, or most often through more surreptitious means by infecting a victim with a cursed object.
A special rite would be performed to infuse an object, often a knife or other blade, with demonic energy. The cursed object would then have to pierce the intended victim to both obtain their blood to be offered to an idol and to infect with them the curse. In lieu of a secondary object, it was said that an idol itself could be used, thus all known statues of Alichino are seen holding a blade or spear of some kind coming to a sharp point.
Once the idol was offered the blood, the demonic spirit was said to drain their life force which he would then use to manifest himself and bless his followers. Infected victims were said to gradually become weaker over seven days, at which point they would die if they had not committed suicide before then after being driven mad by the demon. In a recently discovered correspondence by Frenchman who was a long-suspected follower of Alichino, the curse was reportedly used to assassinate a local regent who was trying to crack down on cultic activity in that area.”
As I continued to read I found that what the demon told me appeared to be true. If I wanted the curse gone, all I had to do was sacrifice someone directly to the idol or pass it onto someone else. I think that’s what it really wanted, to pass the curse onto another to spread more pain and destruction while driving me insane in the process.
I scoured the internet late into the evening and even paid out a lot of money to access several scholarly journals to try and get every last bit of information on the calamity that had befallen me. Unfortunately, not a bit of it was good. Nearing midnight, I was exhausted, frustrated, and hopeless. Unsure if I was going to survive the night, I typed out a letter to Kris explaining everything that happened. I asked her to forgive me and to remember that everything I did was for her protection and I really did love her. Exhausted from the emotion of solving the demon’s mystery, I fell into a deep sleep.
© 2018 Robert Crouse All Rights Reserved
If you haven’t read the past installments the links are below.
I – II –III– IV– V–VI–VII–VIII– IX
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