The Second Sight – Episode 58

THE SECOND SIGHT EPISODE 58

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CHANTING A PSALM IN HELL

I walked toward a signboard tilted wildly to one side, bearing a red arrow on a white background that pointed up. The wording on it said ‘Devil’s Drop’, and it had the proverbial skull and cross bones, also in red.

Small half-erased warnings under it told unauthorized people to stay KEEP OFF.

The path was twisted, rocky and overgrown with weeds. It led upwards, but it was obscured by the driving rain and darkness.

I wasn’t worried.

I knew I would find them.

By their stench, and by the magnetic pull of our opposing powers.

Welcome, death.

The wind lashed the rain against my unprotected face and neck.

I saw the BNI agents and the cops emerging from the tall grass, walking past me toward the building below.

They gave me strange looks, but none of them stopped. Instead all of them gave me a wide berth, and one even crossed himself quickly.

I didn’t know what they saw when they looked at me, but I guessed it was enough to scare them.

I could feel the evil within the storm … evil that reached out for me and then withdrew, howling, at the last second. The elements of hell had descended, and they used the freak weather for cover.

They puffed, hissed and huffed in the tall grass, lashing it across my legs. They were the hideous gnarled things with fangs that came toward me disguised as rain, drawing their cold talons down my face.

They warred with my mind, howling and whispering into my ears, drawing me away from the rocky path and the gyrating grass … car-ssing, cooing, driving me crazy until…

Funky Grounds…

I was on the path, but I wasn’t on it.

I saw the sign, a skull over crossed bones on a bloody red background, and I was approaching, and suddenly one of the eyes of the skull opened.

Yes, this was the nightmare at last, the nightmare that had plagued me for one week running after I slept with Elaine in the dark, before all the craziness started!

This was it!

I was now living the nightmare!

It had become real!

It was filled with yellowish pus which dripped down one of its shrunken cheeks, and it winked, and the words appeared below it:

Funky Grounds…

I was in a forest now, dense and w-t. The wind still scre-med, and the demon-rain still fell. They came at me, their evil fangs gaping wide, their blazing eyes mocking me…

And behind me came the slithering sounds that chilled me to the bone.

I was aware that something sinister was just behind me, breathing down my neck, climbing slowly, slowly, slowly, smiling an all-fangs kind of smile, icy fingers wriggling in anticipation, just inches from my nape…something that came forward with a squishy, dragging kind of footstep, a heavy tread, filled with ominous horrors…

It was tittering, as if enjoying a funny joke, keeping it cool behind me!

I wanted to turn, but the icy fear of the hell I would find behind prevented me. The trees made those terrible faces at me, reaching out to bite, scre-ming with their booming voices into my ears, reaching out with spiked branches to tear and trample…

And then the forest was gone, and I was in the cemetery; the tombs stared at me, bathed in skin-crawling moonlight, looking so ugly and inevitable, shimmering in the hammering rain and howling wind…

I knew deep down somewhere that this was all an illusion!

This couldn’t be true! Couldn’t be right!

I was not in a cemetery because I was still climbing the grassy hill leading up to the heart of Devil’s Drop.

But the evil incarnate was playing with my mind! Dragging me from that hill and slamming me into this damn cemetery, forest, wherever they wanted me to be!

They wanted to terrorize me and wear me down, to kill my soul!

That was why my mind was being played with!

It couldn’t be real! It wasn’t real!

But suddenly the headless little girl appeared beside my right th-gh, all rotten as if she had been buried alive for a month, dripping ghoulish flesh, one rotten finger pointing at something behind me, warning me, begging that I look back at that squishy thing about to bite my neck…

The evil incarnate had managed to steal my mind again slammed me into the cemetery scene of my nightmare!

And then the tombstones began to break and explode outward, hurling sharp-edged slabs at my neck, and that slushy fiend behind me touched my neck for the first time, its fiery hot tongue slobbering at my nape, its sharp-edged fangs trying to find a purchase on my neck and chew it out hunk after hunk… and all the while it was whispering, whispering, whispering…

Do yoush remembersh meesh?

And then the evil dead began to squirm out of their coffins, hissing with vengeance, their eyes blazing, coming at me with mo-ns and howls, rotten and dripping human flesh that smelled like the inner depth of dead hell, reaching out, drooling over my flesh, intent only on chewing me up…

Fear.

Horror.

Git away from me, evil!

My heart was beating too fast. I knew I was losing it, going mad!

I needed help out of this lie, out of this atrocity!

The undead zombies were all around me, reaching for me, trying to eat me.

I could feel their evil rotten hands all over me!

I fell to me knees, and as they swarmed over me, their horrible hands firmly grabbing me, their rotten faces peeling to reveal worms underneath, I opened my mouth and scre-med shrilly!

BOAT

(shouting)

The Lord is my Shepherd! I shall not want!

It was a scre-m that tortured my voice, for I raised my head to the skies and bellowed it out for fear that any moment lost would mean instant insanity…

And then they were gone, the dead zombies, but I couldn’t breathe. I was choking up because…

I was now underwater!

There was hærd violent seawater in my mouth, blasting into my nostrils with cruel abandon. I tried to swim upward, but I found to my horror that I couldn’t move my limbs.

I was gripped tightly in the arms of a foul-smelling sharp-teethed seaweed that held me tight and immovable, twisting my body so cruelly that I found my face ground into the sandy floor of the sea, forcing sand into my mouth.

I struggled, but in vain. I scre-med, but no sound came out. I could feel my lungs about to burst as the pain increased beyond my physical capabilities…and then I saw it…

A black hissing mass, flowing menacingly towards me through the murky waters of the sea…

That same hissing mass I had seen in Samson Basoah’s secret room…

That terrible anaconda!

Its forked tongue lashed out furiously, its eyes filled with potent evil. It swayed toward me sinuously and effortlessly, and now my terror was so complete that all I could do was make gagging sounds.

It loomed larger and larger, its sleek scaly body trailing behind it, ugly jaws now gaping wide open. The seaweed seemed to throw me then at the snake, and as my body shot freely through the sea that evil reptile turned gracefully, jaws still gaping, and then my head was in its mouth, then my shoulders…

The anaconda was swallowing me wh0le!

I could feel its sticky fluid on me now, lubricating me as it swallowed. I could feel the heat, the slimy disgusting wetness and then appalling stench in the darkness around me as if it had just eaten a thousand rotted corpses…

But I was dying, I was getting eaten, I was being swallowed by an anaconda…oh Lord!

The scre-m was from the very depths of my soul, and from the core of a heart that had taken as much terror as it could…

BOAT

(scre-ming)

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures! He leadeth me beside the still waters! HE RESTORETH MY SOUL!!

And the sea disappeared, and the seaweed disappeared, and the anaconda disappeared!

And there I was, on a narrow rocky path, hemmed in by tall grass, climbing up and up as the rain, wind and rumbling thunder kept me company.

I stopped.

I was p-nting, and fear still clutched my heart, refusing to be banished. I could still smell the sickening stench of the reptile, and still feel seawater in my mouth.

I took great swallows of air and bent low, holding unto my knees as I retched and vomited the stink of the fear, purging my system and my mind…

Slowly my heartbeats normalised, and my fear diminished. For the first time I felt the sliminess and sand on my skin and saw that my shoes still had tendrils of seaweed on them.

Living evil!

BOAT

(weakly)

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake!

Psalm 23!

I had never quoted more than the verse sentence of that Biblical chapter, and here I was, finding strength and direction in that, being rescued from the jaws of the most heinous evil by my heartfelt prayer!

When I straightened finally and got to my feet the weather changed at the same time.

THE PRESENCE OF THE ENEMY

The temperature simply dropped.

It was cold already, with all that bitter rain and terrible wind.

My clothes were soaked through and already my teeth were beginning to knock against each other, and then suddenly the temperature just shot down – to several hundred degrees below zero, I was convinced – and the air was s-cked from me as my lungs struggled to cope with that sudden change.

Evil had still not left me!

They were persistent and wicked!

The coughing fit followed, and I bent almost double as my body shook with the whoops and the spittle flew from my mouth.

My hand came away from my mouth, and to my horror I found it smeared with red.

Blood.

Some org-ns in me were bleeding.

It was a biting cold, worse than the Eskimos’ worst nightmare.

My ears were frozen, and the blood stopped circulating in my face and neck. I tried to breathe shallowly, but even that little intake of precious air bit my throat and nostrils as if somebody was doing his damnedest to drive knives into them.

My heartbeat was erratic now, and could barely walk.

My lungs scre-med for fresh air, and suddenly the raindrops had changed to iced particles with sharp points and edges, slashing into my face like knives that cut up my face to smithereens.

Raising my hands to cover my face was suddenly the toughest task I had ever performed.

Working with the slowness of an arthritic-stricken old man I raised my trembling hands to cover my face, and immediately the spikes began working on them, cutting the back of my hands open, but no blood came out because that terrible cold froze it quicker than any medicine invented by man could.

I tottered like a drunken man, barely able to raise one foot after the other. My eyelids seemed frozen, and my eyes felt as if they were being pulled out forcibly.

There was a sudden stitch in my side, and taking in even the minimum of air stretched my heart to its end.

All around me was ice….

The wh0le mountain was now frozen ice!

I knew then that I was dying.

I dropped to my knees – no, that was not it; I was brutally driven to my knees by that killing weather – and with the heart of Hercules I tilted my head back and looked into the black heavens.

And then I bellowed.

BOAT

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, FOR THOU ART WITH ME! THY ROD AND THY STAFF THEY COMFORT ME!!

It wasn’t actually a bellow, though. It came out sounding like a rat’s squeak because of my hurt throat.

But it was enough.

The cold was gone instantly.

And so was all that frozen ice!

I was back on the hilltop climbing upwards towards that Devil’s Drop where the pregnant women were waiting.

The rain and the wind remained, though, and just maybe the rain came down a mite h-rder, and the wind blew a mite severer, but compared to that arctic freak cold, it was pure bliss.

I laughed deep in my throat – but actually it was kind of hysterical, I guessed – and I wondered whether that other sound I made was indeed a snicker, as I had intended, or just unclad sissy crying.

Whatever it was, my heart and lungs were freed from that agony, and I gulped in sweet air with total joy.

Thunder roared up above with violent succession, and I looked up slowly.

I had come to the end of my journey.

I was on Devil’s Drop.

The grass was sparse here.

The ground was brown rock, dyed jet-black by the rain. Crazy rocks stood out from the land all over. I was very high up, and below I could hear the roiling sea crashing on the hærd rocks and reefs below.

The pregnant women were lined up in a huge semi-circle along the edge of the Drop, linked arm to arm. I saw the remains of a protective metal railing, chest high, lying in the ground or jutting from the ground here and there.

All the railing had been removed – forcibly in the dark of the night, no doubt – and that wide space remained.

The women themselves were standing straight and stiff.

They were all unclad.

Their body hair was gone: head, armpit, pubis, eyebrows and eyelashes. Their huge bellies stuck out like appendages …

One hundred and three unclad and pregnant women with no hair anywhere on their bodies, standing with linked arms…and as God was my witness I had never seen a more pathetic and macabre sight since.

Their bodies shivered from the rain and the wind, the cold no doubt terrible, and I felt a deep compassion for them, and a seething fury at the ones who could reduce the wonder and magic of humanity to such base insult.

On each forehead the mark of evil blazed:

666.

Drawn in blood, inflamed with evil and burning with intent.

Their eyes were different, too. I saw all shades of colours, and all sorts of shapes.

So many women lined up, their number almost forming a complete circle around me.

Terrible and disgusting demon eyes glared at me from the faces of the women, and I knew they were not themselves; they had all been occupied. I could see the fury in those eyes, the sheer malevolence and their determination to hurt and destroy.

Latent evil.

The Legion had spread itself into the pregnant women!

Such blatant disregard for decency was too much for me, and it triggered off an alien fury in me.

I was so consumed with wrath that I trembled. B

ut I remembered how cunning the Legion was. The wh0le scene had been calculated step by elaborate step since the very first time I had seen the story of the missing pregnant women on GTV.

My journey up here had been predefined to fill me with unreasonable anger, calculated to make me careless and to fly in with all guns blazing.

But I was careful, really careful. I fought for control as I stood watching rigidly, forcing my little reasoning capacity to the fore.

I wasn’t going to get through this hour working solely with the passion of the heart. This was a fine chess game, the final entrée, the great decider, and I needed to be prepared and strong.

And so I just stood there and waited, watching all those unclad big-bellied, demon-occupied women dispassionately. The wind buffeted them, directing them ever so gradually toward the great fall beyond.

Finally they split through the middle, and Andrew Okai appeared.

He was dressed in an all-white affair.

His was an expensive and elegantly-tailored white suit, complete with a white shirt, shoes and tie. He was the perfect picture of elegance even in that crazy weather.

But something strange was going on here.

He was standing bang in the centre of the rain, but I noticed that his clothes were not w-t – and were definitely not getting w-t. The rain belted him as much as it belted me, but it was like water off the back of a smooth stone: he was completely dry.

But then he was no ordinary human being. Even from the distance that separated us I noticed how different he was.

Something bad had happened to him.

Something really bad.

It began with his hair.

The once black mass was now a freak thing; one side was still black, and the other side was entirely grey. It wasn’t a hair dye application, no. This was for real.

His forehead appeared bigger and flatter. His eyes, dear Lord, were absolutely round now, and he had no eyelids. Just those huge round things, and of course they blazed amber with traces of red: burning fire, the eyes of a demon.

BOAT

Thou prepares a table before me, in the presence of my enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over. Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me, all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord ever! Amen!

ANDREW-DEMON

Andrew Okai’s beaked nose seemed longer and thinner now, and his ears shot out of the sides of his head like antennae, the tops honed down to points, with tufts of grey hair bunched around the tips.

His l-ips were so thin that it appeared like a slit, and when he smiled I noticed that his teeth were filed somehow to sharp little points, and that instead of a tongue there were hundreds of wild green things in his mouth, beating around like little snakes.

ANDREW OKAI

You wouldn’t believe where I’ve been!

When he spoke little tendrils of smoke emitted from his mouth, nostrils and ears, and his smile was as mean as a venomous snake’s k-ss.

BOAT

(dispassionately)

Can guess. You look like sh*t. Like some real funky sh*t from Funky Grounds!

He threw back his head and roared, a high-pitched emission that sounded more like a bleat.

ANDREW OKAI

I like that. I really like that.

And just before he stopped laughing and closed his mouth fire burst out from his mouth, and was quickly stopped as he closed his mouth.

And then I knew, somehow, that Andrew Okai had become a Devil, or something close to it. I knew too that if I failed in my attempt to put him down the world – at least for some particular staunch Christians – would be a very horrible place indeed.

ANDREW OKAI

Oh, Yaw, Yaw, Yaw! The power you passed up. If only you knew the sheer power you would’ve commanded I’m sure you would’ve been more cooperative. I’m going to rule the world, boy, and I have you to thank for that.

I wiped rain from my eyes with the back of my hand.

BOAT

(quietly)

You have nothing that I envy.

The smile died from his face, and he looked at me with his fire eyes blazing.

He was pissed off, because I saw smoke emerging from the corners of his eyes this time, and from his nose, curling slowly upward to be lost in the slashing rain.

He snarled, and that evil face was suddenly filled with enough malevolent intention to freeze the heart of the less endowed. It didn’t faze me one bit, though.

ANDREW OKAI

(menacingly)

Is your life that unimportant to you? Why, that makes our little game all too easy. Less fun, maybe, but easy.

BOAT

(angrily)

Cut the crap, demon! Why did you bring me here?

He smiled an all-fangs smile, and deep down in his throat I saw a raging inferno, and suddenly I understood why he was not w-t despite the heavy rain; he was burning hot in,side there.

ANDREW OKAI

To kill you, what else?

BOAT

By blackmailing me with the deaths of these pregnant women?

He pointed a finger at me, and I saw that his hands, too, were quite different.

To be continued…

©Aaron Ansah – Agyeman

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