Since all I did Thursday was edit this story, I am just posting the last chapter, slightly brushed and polished. I have to go over it all again to make sure everything is in the right place.
But not tonight!
Chapter Fifty Three
Gabe got sleepy and was put to bed. Bubby went into the bedroom and slept on the floor below Gabe’s crib. He was almost always in the child’s presence. Everyone went to bed, tired and sleepy.
At about 2:00 AM Bubby opened his eyes. Deep in his knowing heart there was alarm. He stood up growling quietly.
A long wind came calling. It was a breath from the earth. A portentous sigh. Some rain spattered the window in the bedroom where Gabe and his parents slept on. Out on the sofa, Elvin muttered in his sleep and rolled over. Lou snored her delicate snores upstairs.
OZ padded silently into the bedroom and sat down cross-legged on the floor near the crib. He put his hand on Bubby’s shoulder. “Wait,” OZ said. Bubby looked at him wide eyed, his teeth slightly bared. He sat down on his haunches.
The grey mare outside cried out in fear and could be heard stepping about and snorting, pulling at her tether rope. They could hear the bush she was tied to whipping in the wind. She must have pulled loose for her distressed noises ended.
A low hissing sound filled the room, like many occult voices in a mass moving together. The sound was as if there could be an army of demonic angels singing their peculiar cadences as in one voice. They were coming closer. Bubby whined high up in his nose and shivered.
The room seemed to shake. There was a sound like a rolling earthquake. Still the people slept on, as if somehow enchanted. Dog and manikin kept watch together. Full of foreboding, they waited. The room rocked in slow waves to the sound of the voices. A lamp crashed to the floor. Gabriel stirred.
Two miles away, in Milltown, down at the waterfront, grey translucent marchers emerged from the water looking even less corporeal than the good salt water of Port Gardner Bay. Mindlessly, they lurched and wandered eastward toward the river and the farms and mountains. Having no need for bridges the foremost of them were already breaching the river and heading for the home where our people slept on. The stream of them seemed to be without end.
The very earth quivered under their exigency. Birds woke and cried out in distress. Dogs barked and then were silent, going into shelter as they could. A few people noticed that something was amiss and began to wake and sit up, listening intently. Hands were held and eyes filled with tears. A wave of arcane fear swept over the very farms and fields.
“They are coming for the child,” said OZ to Bubby. “Hold, dog.”
“There will be a battle that is in no part ours,” he added. “This child is the culmination of two ancient bloodlines. For some reason the dark ones and their warriors believe that taking him will cement their cause on earth. You will see that the dark ones have not forgotten how to make their workers.”
Bubby leapt up into the crib and laid himself over the sleeping child as if his very body could somehow protect him. He spoke no word, but he would perish if he must for this little being. His heart was adamantine.
The room rolled and heaved. A scent of sulfur rose up. Finally, the parents sprang from their bed and ran to the crib in terrible fear.
“He is here, Doug and Jen. He is still here. Hold! Battle is coming. The grey imps of hell approach. Watch and wait,” said OZ! Doug stood at the head of the crib and Jen stood at the foot. They waited as bidden. Elvin and Lou tumbled into the room, awakened at last. Elvin looked about as if deep in analysis, Lou wept and shivered in her flannel nightgown.
Outside, in the kindly garden, a ring of wicked fairies danced in celebration, thinking to see the victory of evil over all hope. For fairies are not the benign creatures of popular literature written for children. They had come up out of their hides in the hollows of the earth when they heard the marchers’ voices. Their little shrieks of joy added to the bellowing sound.
A sudden beam of piercing light hit the wall opposite the window. A light like a nearby sun. The horizon outside the window was aglow with brilliant white light, light like the very end of all things earthly. A sunrise never seen yet began. Mighty militant orbs took position in the sky in complex patterning, dancing with power and joy and virtue. They seemed to be numberless with more arriving to complete the pattern constantly until night fled away. The family in the house watched and held onto each other. OZ stood between the crib and the window as if in ready position. Bubby lay across the child.
The land continued to roll. Great groans were heard down in the rocks in the bones of the land as if all the magma might spill out at any moment. The wind sizzled and roared and whipped all things loose and moveable. Many things went missing that night, blown far and wide away.
Doug looked into the sky and said, “Your Will Be Done, on earth as in Heaven.” He may have wept a little, for he was only a young human man. His wife was seized with silent resolve.
“So be it,” said OZ.
The others, agreeing, said “Amen!”
Then dark met light. But as dark has no real power before Heaven’s light. It was more like a scouring of the earth. The darklings kept coming in their masses, calling their hideous callings. As they neared the house beams of brilliant intense light swept them into oblivion.
The orbs dropped lower, maintaining their precise patterns, and now ringing with song. Their beams passed through all normal earthly matter causing no harm. Not so the grey marchers! The dust of them flew away and vanished.
However, one, more clever than its fellows, slipped into the house through the kitchen door behind the house. Unseen, leaning slightly askew in their weird way, it slipped through the living room and into the bedroom. Silently, it lurched toward the group gathered around Gabe’s crib. Springing around to the front it leapt toward Gabe, but OZ stepped between them. Both OZ and this creature of evil fell to the floor, a pile of dirty dust and a destroyed Thumbie. OZ had taken the full power of the attack into himself, and at the last moment had used all of his secret ability to dissolve the substance of the Spookie, for Spookie it was, but no more.
OZ lay on the floor, oddly broken, tumbled in his Carhartts. Perhaps he had learned something about love. In his mind, love would be a verb, for sure.
What is there to say about the family’s feelings? Their hearts were broken, but full of gratitude, even while the cleanup continued outside. Gabe wriggled out from under Bubby and stood up in the crib reaching toward OZ. Even Bubby couldn’t think of much to say.
The ringing chorus continued in the sky as the Lights dipped and wove their patterns and swept the earth below clean of the remaining grey marchers.
The land stopped moaning. The wind settled down. Birds went back to sleep. People, still startled and frightened, but calming as the earth itself calmed, continued to watch from their windows and porches. Many prayers continued to go up.
As the natural morning light came up, the Lights gathered themselves up higher and higher in the sky until they could no longer be seen or heard. The morning broke clear with partial cloudiness. There was still some grey dust on things until the first good rainfall.
People continued as people always do.
OZ was buried and honored, near his other, ZO, just off the garden. His place was marked with granite.
Doug and Elvin built the addition to the house, and they did ok without OZ.
Elvin and Lou were married at last.
As mentioned, Jen became a midwife and teacher.
Gabriel was always a special boy, and his story isn’t really told here.
Families were formed. Children were born. Adults lived and died. There was a lot of home cooking.
Things improved technologically. Progress really took off.
It can’t all be told, for this is only a fable, my dears. Only a fable.
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