Blink {Featured}

Chapter Twenty Nine

In John's dreams Marty whispered into one ear, and Semila screamed into another. Without fail, he awoke drenched in sweat and panting. The grief wanted out, but John would not acknowledge his loss, his pain. He had to focus, he had to go back and save Sem. Not just save her, stop Grimsol. If he could stop Grimsol, these last few hellish months would be different. As he reached for the support bar at the edge of his bed and pulled himself up, his hand trembled, and he knew he couldn't do this much longer. How many nights could he go without rest? Today had to be the day he did it. If not, he'd take a damn pill, he swore it. Just for a few hours of peace. The boxes waited for him, and eggs and bacon on a plate someone had left just inside the door. No time for that now, he needed to find the bloody picture today, this morning. Get his plan into action.

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At last he found it! He glanced at the fray-edged image in his left hand, then at the one in his right. The first had to have been taken the day before the other--the photo Semila had handed him in the black box. Yep, they looked almost identical--luckily Samantha had tied a pink ribbon on one of the pipes for a span of days, which happened to be during the time she had taken the photo Semila had stolen. This had to be the one.

The eggs and bacon lay cold and untouched on the plate. Days after dropping the lottery ticket at his own doorstep, John had started rummaging through the boxes to place where the photo had been taken, as it seemed Samantha had forgotten to write the date on this specific photo. He had thought it would be a few months back. Turns out it was nearly two years ago. For two years he'd been struggling to walk, to escape the black hollow of his soul, to escape Grimsol's wickedness, and finally he had done something other than be pathetic. Things were looking up, and he had a plan to save Semila. Mentally he ticked things off his list:

First, find the photo. Done. Second, get help from angels, or death, or someone upstairs with enough power to crush Grimsol. Point number two was vital. There was no way in hell John could defeat Grimsol without help, and he now knew that the Bible didn't kill the demon, only expose the truth of his form and weaken him. Maybe he could cart along a box of Bibles instead of trying to make contact with an angelic being from a realm beyond the natural?

Using the iPad, John spent the next few hours researching, first where he could get a box of free Bibles--a search he gave up within a few minutes because he couldn't figure out how he'd Blink them all into his soul--and then different mythology, theology and angel-ology, on what people thought angels were, who god was, how the supernatural worked, how beings from other realms could be contacted. Most of it was crap, chubby babies with wings, luscious women with soft whooshing robes. Gods with six heads and eleven arms, or with eight breasts and a desire for bestiality, or with the head of an elephant. Some said that Lucifer was the only god with power, others said YHWH was the only god. Some said Muhammad, others Buddha. John gave up searching gods. Who knew who was really up there? If, maybe, he could at least get help from some kind of angel, someone like Semila or Death? Searching further, he found some sites that said angels had four faces, or the faces of animals, or four wings. Some said demons were angels in disguise, come to save us all. Just as he was about to give up, he found an obscure blog with the right information. A man claiming that angels looked like us, that they appeared in different forms, and that Death stood in the middle ground between warring factions of angels and demons. This fit the closest with what John had seen and heard. The blog spoke about many things, the angelic and demonic realms, God, the powers at war in the heavenly places, even comatose experiences of a dark place.

Unfortunately the blog was anonymous--no name, no references to a city or country, no phone numbers or even references to names of any humans. Only angels and death. Comically, the site included a contact page detailing "how to make contact with angels" and "how to make contact with demons". When John clicked the "contact a demon" button, a big red popup box covered his screen reading "No, John. Not this one!!!!!!!!!!!".