The World Ends Tonight Read online

  The World Ends Tonight

  by Rick Wood

  © Copyright Rick Wood 2017

  Rick Wood Publishing

  Cover Design by Rick Wood

  Copy-Edited by LeeAnn at FirstEditing.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced without express permission of the author.

  For Joshua, Joey, Millie and Elodie

  I’ll let you read them when you’re old enough!

  “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

  John 14:1-3

  1

  15 June 2002

  Two years, six months since millennium night

  Kelly hesitated. She edged through the room, wandering aimlessly, her thoughts twisting, contorting into troubled questions. As she dawdled past Derek’s ageing book collection she allowed her fingers to gently trace their dusty spines, leaving a finger trail amongst the dirt of Derek’s library.

  “Eddie really looks up to you, you know,” she spoke, a soft absence in her voice.

  “Well, I believe, someday,” Derek replied, “we will all look up to him. He’s destined for great things, as I am sure you realise.”

  Managing a feeble nod, her body slumped against a nearby desk. She folded her arms and huffed, unaware she looked so troubled. She got lost in her heavy thoughts, her perplexed conundrum, glaring gormlessly at a faint coffee stain ingrained in the carpet.

  “Why don’t you tell me what it is that’s troubling you?” Derek asked, stroking his neat beard inquisitively. He leant gently against the bookcase, making sure not to disturb his excellent collection of old and sacred texts.

  “I don’t know…” Kelly muttered with a vacant shake of her head. She glided to the books, gazing at them absently, then drifted to the window, her eye contact remaining free of Derek’s.

  “He thinks the world of you, you must know this,” Derek assured her. “He would do anything for you.”

  “I know. And I believe that.”

  “So, what is it?”

  “It’s… night terrors.”

  “Is Eddie struggling to cope with your sleep issues?”

  “Oh no, Eddie’s being brilliant. Out of everyone, he’s the only one who has experienced first-hand what I went through. He knows how to help me.”

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  “It’s Eddie’s sleep. He’s getting really bad night terrors, sometimes worse than mine. They are getting more and more frequent.”

  Derek paused. This threw him. It wasn’t like Eddie to have night terrors; the last time Eddie had a sleeping problem was because he was being disturbed and troubled by the demon Lamashtu. In fact, these issues were what prompted Derek to meet Eddie. A chance encounter, though some could argue it was fate.

  But Eddie had disposed of the evil entity latched onto his soul, Derek had made sure of that. Since then, Eddie had trained his mind to become calm, a sea of serenity, a resolute gathering of complicated thoughts that never seemed to trouble him. So it was strange for him to be having them now, especially as an exorcist at the top of his game.

  Then again, Eddie had gone to hell. To rescue Derek. And God knows how much trauma and insomnia Derek had suffered as a result of that experience.

  Surely the ordeal had put a strain on Eddie’s psyche just as much, even if he hadn’t shown it.

  “I’m going on a journey,” Derek announced. “To find answers. To find out why Eddie has these powers; to find out more about these prophecies. Hopefully, when I return, I will have more knowledge to guide you.”

  “But what should I do in the meantime? He’s so… vacant, sometimes.”

  Derek leant against the desk beside Kelly. Normally he would react strongly to anyone leaning on his desk, especially when there were organised papers that they may be obstructing.

  But when it was about Eddie, it didn’t matter.

  “Have you spoken to him about this?” Derek asked.

  “Briefly. I mean, not really. It’s just tough when he spends so much time supporting me.”

  “Maybe you should try talking to him.”

  “He’d deny it. Tell me nothing’s wrong.”

  “Maybe there isn’t.”

  “But how could there not be, when he’s going through this?”

  Derek shifted uncomfortably, mulling over useless ideas, dwelling on trails of thought that led nowhere. He couldn’t deny it – he didn’t have the answers.

  Everyone always looked to him for them. Expecting him to know what to do. But in all honesty, sometimes it just came down to lucky guesswork.

  “What do you think I should do, Derek?”

  Derek stood, pulling his tie up, tucking his shirt in and rearranging his suit jacket. Tidying himself up was an act Derek had come to recognise in himself as an avoidance technique. A way of distracting himself from having to deal with whatever was in front of him. He felt strongly about always appearing smart, but fidgeting with his clothes were a sure sign of his discomfort that anyone else would just pass off as his ‘tidiness.’

  He told himself to stop it.

  He looked into Kelly’s melancholy eyes. She was so young, so innocent. Derek couldn’t have been happier for Eddie and Kelly as a couple; but there was no denying that she didn’t have the life experience Eddie had, and maybe that made it a struggle to cope.

  Truth was that Eddie could deal with his night terrors and any issues that came his way better than Derek could, and better than Kelly could. Kelly needed the support, but Eddie... Eddie was something far more than they were.

  “Eddie is the best man I know,” Derek told her. “He is strong, and knows the difference between right and wrong more than any of us. Maybe talking isn’t something Eddie necessarily needs to do.”

  She nodded, forcing a weak smile.

  He was right.

  Of course, he was right.

  “Trust in Edward King. We owe him that much.”

  2

  25 July 2002

  Two years, seven months since millennium night

  Bandile had known, ever since that sweetly menacing little girl had visited the side of his deathbed, that his decision on that fateful night would be his fatal undoing.

  He had wrestled with the ifs and buts of his decision, entertaining notions of what it would mean if he had said no.

  But that hadn’t been an option. He was young and selfish, and did not want to die.

  If he’d have greeted death and denied the devil, maybe he would have been rewarded by a place in heaven.

  But he was young, foolish, and cowardly.

  Though, if he was honest with himself, the only thing that had changed was that he was no longer young.

  The devil had saved him from death and bestowed all the riches that could be brought to him. The devil had given him the gift of foresight, as selected though his prophecies were. He’d been given everything every man had ever dreamed of

  Unfortunately, it had come at a cost.

  And any idea of saying no disappeared as soon as they had come. He had to follow his duty. He had to follow the path set out for him by hell. It was not something anyone could defy.

  One does not simply contemplate facing the wrath of a creature made of pure evil.

  Now there he was, part of the Devil’s Three. Along with a disabled woman and a dead man, he had formed the triad that had called on the devil to restore the antichrist into its rightful body.

  And they had succeeded.

  Bandile was on his knees, in disbelief at wh
at he was seeing. He was a big man, having had to work with his hands in hard labour to survive growing up in huts in South Africa, and had grown muscles that filled his black frame, giving him a lean, intimidating posture. But even now he found his lip quivering and his body trembling at the sight of what was happening.

  Edward King, the man with a reputation as a noble exorcist with heartfelt intentions, was diving the sharp end of a knife into the throat of the girlfriend, Kelly – who had been captured by Bandile to be part of the Devil’s Three ritual as ‘the suffered.’

  Eddie pulled the knife away and Bandile, along with all other transfixed eyes in the room, watched intently with dropped jaw. Kelly’s helpless eyes looked up at the man she loved as blood sprayed haphazardly from her neck and all over the room, fizzling out into a gushing puddle dripping along the floor.

  Derek Lansdale, the man he had fooled so easily, watched on in shock, gasping.

  “How could you…” his feeble eyes cried, crumbling as his body collapsed into an inconsolable heap on the floor.

  “It was the only way…” Eddie whimpered.

  Eddie’s body stiffened, his joints contorting in various directions. His shed his skin like a snake’s, peeling off and floating into ashes. His features moulded into a malevolent mess, red eyes looking over the room, claws and beastly features bursting out of him in a painful transformation.

  Bandile glanced around the room. Two young women, supposedly friends of Eddie, backed up against the wall. Jason Aslan, who had been ‘the dead’ as part of the ritual, disappeared into floating pieces.

  Eddie’s skin was now dark and blood-red, with veins sticking out all over his body.

  Bandile was not going to waste any more time in this room. He had done his part.

  He turned toward the window that already had a few cracks tearing up its surface and leapt toward it, smashing through and leaving the disrupted living room, tumbling onto the painful bumps of a small hedge below.

  He jumped forward and ran.

  And he did not stop running.

  He endured all the weather. From the beating of the furious sleet, to the frozen temperatures of night, to the harsh heat of the following day.

  This continued for longer than he could tell. He had no distinctive home, and was scared to return to any places he’d once haunted, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. He couldn’t make sense of much in those early days, his mind awash with tormenting, chaotic thoughts shooting through his brain and exploding into fragments. He grew paranoid, anxious, even seeing things he wasn’t entirely sure were there.

  For days at a time all he would do was run, run, run. He would steal food, sleep under discarded newspaper in shop doors, beg for mercy from those who tried to rob him only to find he had nothing.

  Then he ran some more.

  Finally, he broke down. Collapsing on his knees in the middle of a busy town centre, he held his hand out for food, glaring with dizzy vision at the people who bustled past him. They all ignored him. He had nothing.

  He stole. He fought. He wept.

  He was a shattered wreck of a man.

  His strong, muscular body deteriorated rapidly under the stress of his mind and the heavy strain upon his body. He starved, his dry throat parched, begging the devil for quenching that would never come.

  He never once considered praying to God. He knew he would not be welcome there anymore.

  The devil had offered him salvation. This was anything but.

  His ribs became visible through his chest.

  His bones ached.

  He became accustomed to the headaches of dehydration, the emptiness in his stomach, and the pains in his chest as he yearned for anything to sustain his miserable existence.

  He longed for the devil to do something.

  Bandile had done his bidding. Was he not coming to offer some salvation?

  He knew he deserved no mercy, but he at least deserved a reward. A place in hell, away from the torture, somewhere the devil could hold him high and rave about his triumphant contribution to the cause.

  Then, one day, shivering in the doorway of a broken-down factory on a cold, lonesome night, he heard footsteps approaching.

  He closed his eyes, hoping that whoever it was would leave him alone. Wished that they were not going beat him, or humiliate him, or mutilate him.

  Then again, he decided, perhaps they would grant him the sweet release of death.

  “Pafetick,” one of them declared, in a screechy, anarchic voice. “Fort ee woz meant to be some big man?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” came a gruffer, more assertive voice. Bandile felt the owner of the voice come down to his level, but he closed his eyes tighter, wishing to be left alone. “Oi, open yer fuckin’ eyes.”

  Bandile did as he was told.

  The owner of the first voice was stood, his head tilted to the side. He was topless, and unhealthily skinny. Every inch of his body was covered in tattoos, all of them either tribal, or scary laughing faces, or of the crucifix hanging upside down. A pattern of engrained ink ran along his lips, like the shadow of his teeth, adorning his face with ceremonial tattoos, even covering his eye lids and his ears with black patterns.

  The other man, crouching down to Bandile with an arm rested on his shoulder, had a large beard. He wasn’t as heavily tattooed, but still had his forehead marked with upside-down crucifixes and tears marked down his cheeks. He wore a long, brown coat that made him look homeless, and the hand that rested on Bandile was beneath a tatty, fingerless leather glove. Bandile noticed a swastika decorated his knuckles, and he immediately grew wary of a racist attack.

  “Wh – what do you want?” Bandile begged.

  The crouching man shook his head.

  “My name is Dexter, and this behind me is Bagsy,” he introduced with a rough, gruff, common voice containing a mixture of accents. “We’ve been waitin’ f’you. Nah you’re ’ere under a fuckin’ doorway. What is going on?”

  “I – I don’t understand.”

  “’E sent us mate!” screeched the one called Bagsy. “We been waitin’ for yous to lead us!”

  “To lead you?” Bandile echoed.

  “We worship him, in his name,” Dexter explained. It took a few seconds for Bandile to realise they meant the devil.

  Satan worshippers… Bandile thought to himself. And they want me to lead them?

  “The antichrist has risen,” Dexter continued. “The heir of hell is here.”

  “Really?” Bandile responded, not knowing whether to be worried or pleased. He had seen it happen, but had since disbelieved his eyes.

  “Yeah, an’ we’re worried ’bout these hoomans who fink they can do ’im in. They be raisin’ an’ army, or so we ’ere.”

  It took Bandile another few seconds to adjust to their voices and understand what they were saying. He assumed by ‘humans’ they meant Derek Lansdale, and assumed that by ‘do them in’ they meant… Well, to bring about a fatal end, or something to that effect.

  “Okay,” Bandile confirmed.

  “So get up, you’re comin’ wiv us,” Dexter told Bandile, grabbing him to his feet. “An’ we ain’t got no time to lose.”

  3

  20 March 2003

  Three years, three months since millennium night

  Derek watched from the study window as the unsettled trees collided against each other in the frantic wind. Tree branches bombarded the air with venomous strikes. The rain bashed against the house, a salvo of attacks against the window, beating against it like a broken drum.

  He wanted to sleep.

  More than anything, Derek wanted to sleep.

  “And the reports are coming in this hour of more mysterious disappearances,” came a voice over the radio Derek had forgotten he had left playing. “Many of the world’s greatest, most noble figures have vanished without a trace. In more than eighty reported cases across the world, law enforcement officers have said that there were no signs of struggle, and the world is yet to come to an
explanation that satisfies all the conspiracy theorists that–”

  Derek turned the radio off.

  Glancing a sight of himself in the reflection of the window, he flinched at the pronounced bags beneath his bloodshot eyes. His collar was open, his tie hung three buttons down, and his shirt was half-untucked. He had never allowed himself to deteriorate to this state of scruffiness in his life.

  But he had a meeting. He couldn’t go to bed yet.

  So he waited, watching the violent weather attack people running by, sending bins flying against the debris of a nearby field.

  “Derek,” came a well-spoken, elegant female voice from behind him.

  He did not jump. He was expecting this.

  The news report on the radio had left him in no doubt as to what was happening.

  He turned around confidently, bestowing his eyes upon the most beautiful creature known to man. A faultless woman, with lusciously smooth black skin, long, black hair, and a white dress that glided off her curves as if by magic. Gabrielle was an angel through and through, there was no doubt about that. And, for someone who was thousands of years old, she did not show it.

  “I suppose you’ve come for me, have you?” Derek prompted with an air of irritation in his voice.

  “Yes,” Gabrielle confirmed. “Are you ready?”

  Derek turned back to the vile storm. The weather was no coincidence. The end was near and the environment was furiously retaliating; though most people would be gazing at the spring gale thinking it was an ordinary storm, with no idea of the omen it was announcing.

  The heir had risen. The devil would follow. And then the depths of hell would be unleashed.

  It made sense to go with her.

  To be evacuated. To run. To save himself, along with the other people deemed good enough to rescue.