The Further Adventures of Val Williams # 2 - The Awakening, pt. IV

Abbott was in way over his head. The blue mist had turned thick and sticky. He wasn’t sure if it was okay to breathe.

Overhead the sun shone. No, not the sun, orange and red beams of light that poured down slowly and cloudily.

The skeletons were climbing out of the ground.

But that’s impossible, the paranormal investigator from the FBI thought, they have no muscular system. How can they move, they’re just withered old skeletons.

He truly couldn’t believe it was happening.

***

It was a fifteen minute walk to Victory Square, but Dagda and Boann had made it in under ten. All their planning, all their improvising, all their mischief. It was finally going to happen, after all these years, they had opened up the gate of hell and they were finally going to see their friends again. One of their friends was particularly important to Boann: Angus.

Angus had been trapped in hell for more than a few lifetimes with the rest of them. Dagda and Boann had been the only ones to escape. But, Angus might have been Boann’s son, although she couldn’t remember. It had all happened so long ago.

They strolled into the cemetery, out of breath.

***

Abbott put on his glasses, for a better look. They were skeletons all right, the odd shred of dried flesh here or there. The mist was thinning out and taking shape around the skeletons. They were becoming … something, Abbott couldn’t quite tell what.

The mist was providing a kind of ethereal flesh for the dead, and more. Clothing. He saw something begin to extend and take shape from one of the things’ arms. A shield with a cross on it.

I’d better get out of here, Abbott thought, it’s the blue mist. It’s making me hallucinate.

***

Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.

Why do I smoke, when I know I’ve got to run occasionally in this line of work.

I see the lights in the sky. I see all the years of work and pain and struggle coming to an end, before my eyes. All the progree in the world, all the hope of society, however ugly it may seem at times, blotted out not by shadow, but by light.

How could I have been so stupid. It’s the kid. The kid believes he’s a werewolf, and he’s found a way to convince the people he’s been attacking that he‘s a werewolf, too. Four victims and the kid himself, that makes five. A perfect number in a perfect pattern to cast the light of hell into the world.

Damn, I should have killed that kid.

Now hell pours down from the sky.

But there’s still a chance. I’ve just got to find him.