Marcus had been to the Kulas home a number of times since Hannah's treatment had begun. Each time Hannah's progress was mirrored by the landscaping and state of the house itself. The first time he had come definite signs of a negative presence were apparent everywhere. Over the weeks that followed the Kulas family had been slowly making progress, repairing damage faster than the demon could cause it. The last time he had been at the house the grounds had been tidy, the grass neatly trimmed. The trees had been green and lush. The windows were completely unbroken.
Things had changed. Things had changed quite drastically. Marcus stared down the driveway towards the house and clenched the steering wheel so tightly the leather seams made small creaking noises. The tension in the muscles at the sides of his jaw made his face twitch and ache, and his brow was so furrowed that his eyes were little more than slits.
To his left and right the trees were all blackened and bent away from the house. The grass this far from the house was still a little green, but the tops were singed. As Marcus rolled down the driveway the grass turned brown, then black, and finally in a circle around the house the grass was completely gone. The ground where the grass had been was charred and cracked.
The Kulas home looked positively dejected, the outer walls were slightly buckled and the roof was listing to one side. None of the window frames were rectangular any more, they slouched in the middle and only small shards of glass hung on making them look like smiling mouths with erratic glass teeth.
Marcus rounded the final bend and the circular driveway in front of the house came into view. The fountain in the middle of the driveway was split right down the center and a thick brown fluid bubbled up from the middle. The reservoir below the fountain was cracked in a number of places and the dark liquid was sloshing over the sides and running out of the cracks and onto the driveway.
Marcus parked his car a short distance away and got out. He walked around to his trunk and got out a small backpack. As he lifted the pack it made a clanking noise that echoed dimly off the front of the house. Marcus slung the pack over his shoulder and as he turned he caught a flash of movement from behind the fountain. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small silver cross. He held it in front of him and walked around the fountain.
As he came between the house and the fountain he saw a form hunched over the edge of the fountain. It looked like a woman was washing her hands in the filthy sludge. Marcus was about to ask her what she was doing when she rose and turned to face him, her soft yellow dress was stained all across the front with dark smudges. Brown sludge ran in rivulets down from her wrists and dripped off of cracked fingernails, higher up a glistening red substance had coated her arms to just above the elbows. The woman's hair was matted and hung in front of her face. Even still Marcus knew just by her size and stance that it was Olivia.
Marcus didn't want to know the answer but asked anyway, "Olivia, are you okay?"
Olivia twitched a bit and reached up to push the hair away from one side of her face. She smoothed her hair back with one hand, smearing her hair and face with sludge and blood. She blinked a couple times and blood in the corner of her eye and replied, "I knew you would come." Her voice was unnatural: it was the same strange medley he had heard in Hannah's voice so many times before. Somehow the demon had gotten into Olivia.
"Come into the house," came a deep rumble from Olivia's throat.
Marcus darted a glance towards the house. The sun was just going down. There was still light, but not for much longer. The house seemed almost pitch black now, in a few minutes there would be no way for Marcus to see inside without a flashlight. Even though Marcus had a good flashlight in his pack, he knew that as soon as he got inside it would be useless. It was a fairly simple thing for an entity this powerful to shut off a flashlight.
Marcus weighed his options and decided on the easiest answer. "No," he said. "I'm not going inside."
"Fine," came the throaty response, "We stay out here." Olivia smiled, chuckled and took a couple steps towards Marcus. It was a horrible smile, one that looked to be almost painful for Olivia. It was as if someone was lifting her by the corners of her mouth. The muscles twitched and she started to cry, the fresh tears cutting a clean path down the smudged side of her face.
Marcus raised the cross a little higher and said, "Stay back. You don't need to be that close to talk."
"You think that thing is going to stop me?" Olivia cackled.
"Yes," Marcus replied, "it is. I said stop." He thrust the cross in her direction and whispered a short prayer.
Olivia stopped dead in her tracks and threw her arms up. She moaned, "What! How? You aren't even a believer!"
"You're half right. I don't believe in God, but I believe in the power of this symbol and the words that I speak."
Olivia started to circle him at a distance of about ten feet. Marcus could clearly see the substance on Olivia's arms now, it was definitely blood. He started to grow worried about Van and Hannah. What f the demon had killed them to add to its power? He started to ask, "Where is your fam..." and quickly corrected himself to, "...the father and the daughter?"
Olivia took a step back and two shapes moved into sight in one of the windows of the house on the ground floor. In unison Van, Hannah, and Olivia said, "We are here." They spoke with four voices. Each one spoke in their own voice, but at the same time one deep voice underlaid them all.
Marcus staggered back a step at the sound of their voices. He felt a tightness in his chest and abdomen, as if someone were squeezing his guts from inside. Van and Hannah stepped back from the window and in a moment were coming down the front steps towards Marcus. The whole family moved towards each other, finally stopping when all three were shoulder to shoulder facing Marcus.
For a long time they stood facing him. All three of them wore the same painfully manic expression. Finally they said as one, "You will stop."
Marcus looked around, a slightly baffled expression on his face. He asked, "Stop? Stop what?"
All three expressions darkened. Six fists and three jaws clenched at once. All three shouted, "STOP! Stop destroying our kind! Stop 'fixing' us! You are a killer! You will be treated like a killer!"
"I'm a killer? I haven't killed anyone. You are..." He didn't get a chance to finish. The trio before him rose in volume and screamed, "KILLER! KILLER! KILLER! KILL THE KILLER! KIIIIIILLLLLL!" They started twitching and laughing. Their bodies shook with psychotic energy. All three moved in unison, their arms flailing wildly. Marcus took another step back towards his car. He was sweating profusely now, a cold sweat that soaked through his clothes and drew the night chill in to him.
Marcus wondered if anyone from his class at school had ever faced anything like this. He wished that any one of his colleagues was here instead of him. He was about to break and run when all three jerked violently and collapsed into a heap. They fell one on top of the other, with Olivia at the top. Her arms fell across her chest.
All three let out a collective sigh and the whole area was silent. Marcus was frozen to the spot upon which he stood. He wanted to run but needed to know if the family was okay. Marcus tried to will one foot forward, but neither seemed to be responding. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.
He leaned forward and allowed one foot to swing out to prevent him from falling on his face. The second step was easier. Two more steps and he stood before the pile of bodies. He leaned over and reached out to check Olivia's pulse. As his fingers neared her throat he jumped, startled. His cell phone had gone off and was vibrating in his pocket. He let out a small nervous laugh and reached towards Olivia.
Suddenly she was up and clutching him. She wrapped her arms around his head and started screaming and clawing at him. Marcus screamed, "Shit!" He stumbled backwards with Olivia firmly attached to him, her arms around his head and her legs locked around his waist. He tried to pry her off, tried to shove her away, but her strength was inhuman.
He felt something solid thump into his back and heard a crack and a scream. Olivia's grasp loosened and he gave her another shove. This time she flew off him and landed heavily on her back. One of her feet was bent at a terrible angle, it must have been between him and the tree he had slammed into.
Olivia looked up at him from the ground. Her eyes were filled with darkness, and the dreadful smile was back. In his pocket the phone danced. Olivia looked him square in the eyes and said, "Maybe you had better answer that."
Marcus wasn't sure what to do. He didn't want to look away in case Olivia attacked again, but he wanted to know what the hell was going on. He fished the phone out of his pocket and glanced at the display. It read, "Colm: Cell". It couldn't be a coincidence. Marcus held the phone up to his ear and pressed the button to answer the call. He barked into the phone, "What?"
Colm's voice was tinged with panic, "Marky! It's a fuckin' trap, man! Get outta there!"
Marcus slapped the phone closed and looked around wildly, further back along the driveway a set of headlights were approaching. Marcus started, "What the hell?"
Olivia started screaming at the top of her lungs, "Help me! HELP! He's trying to kill me!" She had her arms up in front of her face as if she were afraid that Marcus was going to hit her.
Marcus glared at her. What was she trying to pull?
That's when the first shot rang out. A bullet whizzed over his shoulder and buried itself in a tree nearby. Marcus started running flat out for his car. He got to the car door and fumbled with the handle for just a second. It was all it took, in that second another bullet slammed into his left arm, jerking it forward. Marcus felt pain shoot up his arm and then a sudden numbness. His vision swam and he stumbled into his car, his face slapping against the side window.
From behind him Marcus heard a man shout, "Stop right there, Doctor Coburn, the next shot is going into your head."
Marcus turned around and saw a man with a cast on one leg and another on his left arm propped against a tow truck. In his good hand he held a pistol, it was pointed unerringly at Marcus' head. The good arm didn't waver at all. The man holding it had rough brown hair, long and unkempt, and his face was obscured by a wild beard from a bit below the eyes down. The only things that were clear on the man's face were his eyes. The were bloodshot and all around them the skin was puffy and reddish.
Beside the man stood a small woman in coveralls. She was strikingly beautiful in a rough tomboyish way. She was standing beside the man with a worried expression on her face. Her eyes shifted from Olivia to Marcus and back before she said, "Ma'am, are you okay?"
Olivia wept a tear from her cheek and said, "Thank you! Thank you so much, I thought he was going to kill me. He's insane. He killed my family, he killed them..." Olivia's voice trailed off and she raised an accusing finger at Marcus and started sobbing.
The woman in coveralls said, "Lloyd, what should we do?"
Lloyd replied in a voice that was teetering on the edge of murder, "We should off this fucker. He killed David."
Marcus' eyes went wide. It was starting to all come together. The blood on Olivia's arms when he got here, the sudden arrival of a man intent on killing him. The demon wanted him gone, and had set up some elaborate plan to get rid of him. The demon had little direct influence over Marcus because of he knew how to protect himself from the supernatural. Marcus clutched his shoulder and tried to staunch the flow of blood a bit. Apparently the demon had realized that a man with a gun was far more dangerous than anything the spirit realm had to offer.
Marcus took a step away from his car and said, "Wait. Things aren't what they seem here, you're being tricked. I didn't kill David, I don't even know him. Just give me a chance to..." Marcus was cut off by the the sound of breaking glass and the crack of a gunshot. He spun around and saw that Lloyd had shot out the driver side window of his Lexus. Marcus' could hear nothing but ringing. His vision swam and pain flooded his head. His right arm shot up reflexively to the side of his head and came away coated in fresh blood. Marcus' heart raced and his flight instinct kicked in. He stumbled backwards and half ran, half crawled to his car.
Another shot went high over him as he ripped the door of his Lexus open. He threw himself into the car and pulled the door closed after himself. Several more shots buried themselves in the car, one near the front by the tire and one in the door. The car alarm was sounding at full volume. The high pitched series of whistles and chimes were almost completely muffled for Marcus, but must have been ear splitting for his attackers.
Marcus pressed the silver disc beside the steering wheel but at first the alarm didn't shut off. Marcus pulled his hand back and cursed, apparently the engineers at Lexus hadn't taken into account the fact that the owner might be drenched in blood when they tried to use the fingerprint scanner. Marcus used a clean corner if his shirt to wipe off his finger and then tried again. This time the alarm went off and Marcus quickly blurted out, "Pert Em Hru".
The car sprung to life and Marcus made certain he kept himself sheltered behind the car door the whole time. The shots stopped for a moment and he heard a muffled voice say, "Bella, what the fuck! Get off me!"
The woman shouted, "No! Stop! You can't just kill him, you're a cop!"
Marcus was curled on the seat in a way that made it difficult to reach the pedals with his feet so he shifted the car into drive with one hand and pressed on the accelerator with the other. The car lurched into motion and Marcus spun into a vertical position in the driver's seat. He felt the car bump off the driveway and risked a peek above the dash to make sure he wasn't heading towards a tree. He jerked the wheel to the left and brought the car back onto the driveway. He cranked the wheel in the other direction and spun the car around the fountain and directly towards the tow truck that was mostly blocking the driveway. He jammed the pedal down to the floor and the Lexus roared to life. It shot forward and just ahead of him Marcus saw Bella struggling with Lloyd.
Lloyd lashed out and shoved Bella backwards a couple steps. He brought the gun to bear on the speeding car. For a moment Marcus considered ducking and letting the car slam into Lloyd, pinning him between the Lexus and the tow truck. The gun bucked slightly in Lloyd's hand and a bullet tore through the windshield near Marcus' head. Tiny shards of glass spat out and peppered Marcus' face, leaving tiny cuts. He swerved away from the tow truck, just barely grazing it as he sped past on the side of the driveway. He pulled back onto the driveway and straightened the car out. From behind him two more shots rang out, but neither connected with the car.
In a few seconds Marcus had wound his way off the estate grounds and turned North along the street. He needed somewhere safe to go where he could sort this out. He needed medical attention. He needed to get somewhere fast. Marcus drove blindly for several blocks, swerving at full speed through residential streets in the hope that he might evade any sort of pursuit. After a short distance the panic began to subside a bit. He turned onto the freeway and slowed down a bit. The wind from the hole where his driver side window had been felt good and he realized there was only one place he could go. He needed bandages and back-up. He had to get to Colm.
Marcus was feeling weaker by the minute but knew he couldn't let himself slip into oblivion until he was safely in his old neighborhood. When he pulled off the freeway his car was soaked with blood. He felt incredibly tired. His vision was swimming when he finally got to Colm's house. Marcus stumbled out of the car and pulled himself up the sidewalk towards the house. When he got to the front gate he realized he was no longer walking. He knelt in front of the short white picket fence and couldn't remember when he had fallen to his knees. Marcus tried to scream for help but all that came out of his throat was a soft croaking noise. Between the slats of the fence he saw a shaft of light from ahead, the front door had opened and a dark form stood silhouetted at the end of the sidewalk. Marcus recognized it as Colm and smiled for a moment before he collapsed, unconscious, against the fence.