They are here. They are everywhere. They are are gods, more or less.
Sean Tolbert survived an accident and began a journey into the supernatural part of himself that was never supposed to surface. He must learn how his abilities can help solve the r...
Baby Tee's father was about saying grace, his large hands tented just below his cleft chin, eyes closed, his lips opened to frame the words, before it all began. Before a Champaign glass shattered in uncle Yochua's hand, wine mixing with blood as rose instantly sprouted in the man's forehead, spraying geysers of red blood everywhere while his eyes were still opened and for a moment it seemed he contemplated whether to fall off he chair or laugh and say that it was all some trick. Uncle Yochua was very fond of pranks.
Baby Tee heard his mother gasp softly even with the whole commotion, as everything seem to disintegrate and leap flying everywhere. The doors and windows shattering, everything shaking, everyone taking a hit from the numerous bullets that assaulted them from all direction. Baby Tee's father had leapt and tried to shielded his wife, but as they both fall to the floor, a pool of blood rapidly spreading underneath them, it was evident they were both dying too.
The white man at the dinner table had reacted promptly, throwing over the table which had shielded Baby Tee. The white man's conjured fire only ended up setting the tapestries ablaze after blasting a hole through the wall before he too fell and blood seeped from every hole the bullets made.
The boy's ear rang with gun shots, his brief life flashed before his eyes. He knew what was happening, young as he was, he knew who would bother them over here in the middle of nowhere for vengeance. He knew about the Order of the ankh. He knew he was going to die. He knew he didn't want to. He didn't know when he 'used the mirror', wasn't even sure he could or should. But he had. all it left him with was a memory of a warm tingling sensation in his arm, and sharp displacement in space. He felt warmth tickled down both his nostrils, and something unforgiving throbbed behind his eyes, something that had nothing to do with the silent tears clouding the things he could see through the crevice in the door of the cupboard under the stairs.
His mother was on the ground beside Papa, her white dress slowly wicking from the blood that spreading around. His breath hitched like each one was a weight he couldn't carry but had to—in silence. Then the light went off and the only light was from the fire burning, fast spreading.
But the dark crept in closer, towards his eyes, his head tilt to the side, but he tried to stay awake biting his lower lips. His trousers were soggy and plastering to his butt, and he couldn't blame it on sweat.
He shuddered at the sound of the door coming cleanly off its hinge and landing with a bang inclined on the dinner table.
It was then the strange man entered, followed by four other men all clad in black and wearing ski masks except for the bald man that first entered both his hands in the pocket of long high collared coat that made Baby T think of John Wick. The bad kind.
He looked around the room with the same look mother would wear when she counts the chicken in the coop making sure they were all accounted for. His gaze was then fixated on the white man whose real name Baby T. never learnt. The man who stayed in his room while he slept in his Uncle's room. The man who had taught him on how to use the mirror. He kicked the man just as easily as if he weighed nothing, rolling his body supine. He squatted near the body, rifling the dead man's pocket.
T heard creaking wood on the steps above him, his heart did a drumroll pounding at his ribcage, he wanted to shout, to tell his friend to go back up playing the game he had insisted on instead of joining them for dinner. To find somewhere to hide. But all T did was close his eyes as a lump gathered in his throat spilling an acrid taste that gathered just behind his tongue, the part that would make him gag had he reached to touch. One bullet from one of the men, the boy heard his friend fall with a thump.
The man stood up, the fire was spreading now and Baby T could see more of the man's face, the worry lines on his forehead as he looked about the living room once more. He walked towards the stairs, looked up at where T's friend laid dead. T could see his hand the ring on it with a symbol that had been whispered whenever his parent thought he was asleep or distracted: a ankh. An inverted ankh.
"spread out, find me the token." He said, "it must be here somewhere."
He walked up, came back moments later. He bent beside T's Father and began checking his pockets, he looked disappointed.
He looked up expectant at the potted aloe on a tripod. He picked it up and smashed it on the floor, then on to the next flower pot mother decorated the house with. She always wanted to be as close to nature as she could. The man turned back, hastened to where dirt pooled with gleaming ceramic shards. He picked something from it. a coin. It gleamed in the light of the burning, the boy knew the coin. His father and the white man had shown it to him when they tried explaining who they were and who the enemy is. The roughly spherical coin with the head of a man surrounded by a solar disc on one side and an inverted ankh on the other.
He straightened up and gestured at the men who followed him.
In the darkness of the cupboard, he could hear his father tell him over and over again, "you are a child of this same sun... never forget that." It was all in his heard, he knew. The chant continued, unheeded, meaningless in the light of the fact that he'd sooner die than live to say the words out loud.
The air was now rank with smoke, it stung his eyes, his legs were too weak to stand. The darkness clawed closer and shadows moved around till they covered him till he was blissfully unaware of the smoke, the crack of burning wood, and everything crashing down on what remains of his family. A pyre to be seen from miles.
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