The Conduit

Chapter 1 - Salvation

New Year’s Eve 2000 – Roughly 21 months earlier 

A cry rings out in the darkness of a secluded and sparsely wooded area in rural Missouri somewhere between Seymour and Mansfield, but the stillness of the night absorbs the distressed cry almost completely, almost immediately, almost.  An expectant ear just happened to be waiting for it to come. A shrouded figure patiently waited hours in the darkness for the sign of distress he knew would come, and now he turned in that direction.  It was roughly a mile away as the crow flies.  His hog would get him there in less than a minute but he left his Harley miles away to the southeast when he began to follow the trail of death stench. 

            Call it a gift, call it a curse, call it what you like, either way he was glad to have it.  Being able to smell death before it arrives allows him opportunities that no one else would ever have, but he would never smell his own; he was immortal; the first born; the cursed one.  

He had been drawn there by the smell of death, but this was not an ordinary death.  By the smell of it, this was not an accident, or the death of a beloved old father or mother; it was unexpected, unwanted, and undeserved.  This was death at the hands of another, death at the hands of evil, which gave it that special smell and separated it from all the others.  This was the kind of death that drew him, the kind of death he had a chance to change and he wanted that more than anything. 

He had witnessed change throughout the ages.  This special day of bimillennial change that celebrated the coming of the year 2000 was taking place this night and supposedly held change that made the world hold its breath.  Some partied to Prince’s song that this New Year’s Eve was about to make obsolete, others cowered hoping their money was still in the bank in the morning.  Still others hoped above hope that their missing little girl would not be found dead the next day.  This special evening, this New Year’s Eve would hopefully be yet another opportunity for the shrouded man in black to make a difference.

            “Go ahead, scream agean.”  A deep southern drawl came across heavily from the man who must have been about forty years old.  “Do ya really think I would bring you all the way out he’a and remove your gag, if I thought someone would hear?  It’s what I wonted.  Go’on do it agean.”  The full blue-jean outfit –shirt and pants – looked right on the thin but ruggedly built man.  He removed his hat before speaking again. “Please”. 

His arousal was evident.

            “Let me go!”  The blond girl, about seventeen or eighteen, struggled against the cords that bound her wrists together.  She started to get up, and in mid-motion the point of a boot dug painfully into her side.  Breathing hard and choppy and now laying curled on the ground, she struggled against the pain and then sobbed to be release.  “Please let me go.  I’ll do anything you want; just don’t kill me.”  Though she pleaded for her life, she knew deep down that she would not be left alive and tried to brace herself against the thought of unimaginable torture she somehow knew was about to come.  It started in the form of another kick to the side.

Still, someone else knew death was coming and the dark figure had already exploded into action toward the cry for help.  He had gained ground quickly because he was in perfect physical shape but there was still a half of a mile between them and more than just a lifetime balanced on the scales, innocence was about to fall.

            “I said please!”  The kidnapper shouted at the girl after he delivered the second kick.  “Now scream!”

            She tried to scream but was interrupted by waves of pain and it came out as a growl of anger instead, until she saw her kidnapper draw back his leg again.  This brought a piercing scream of fear from the girl and an excitedly pleased look to the tobacco chewing kidnapper’s face, which abated the kick for now.  He spat instead before chewing trough a smile, but then his face took on a concerned look.