"Watchman, How Much Longer the Night?"
Canto XIII
The Reward of the Wicked
Scene 1
"I have sinned by betraying innocent blood."
— Matthew 27:4 (NRSV)
The information from the computer files started to confirm connections between many of the pieces of their puzzle. Detective Bauer had assembled files on Martin Sardis, and forty-nine abduction victims and runaway cases. Although Bauer obviously thought the folder was securely encrypted, Rab extracted the files within mere minutes, to Ziolkowski's surprise. Rab recognized some of the teens, the ones who had been taken away while they were captive. Jimmy confirmed that they matched the faces and names from the papers in Sardis' office. It was time to talk to Bauer directly.
Ziolkowski, Vance, Sean and Jimmy walked out of the morning sounds of the city streets into the dumpy apartment building where Bauer lived. The rusted mailbox in the lobby held Bauer's name at 3C. A creaky, musty stairwell led them to the third floor and a hallway of cracked plaster and graffiti. They knocked repeatedly on the apartment door, but no one answered. Finally, Ziolkowski forced the door open.
Inside, they saw Bauer sitting in a recliner directly opposite the door. Empty beer cans and a pint bottle of rye littered the floor. The detective looked at them bitterly, his hand on a pistol that rested on the arm of the chair.
"Leave me alone!" Bauer shouted at them. He raised the pistol, but rather than pointing it at the intruders, he placed the barrel under his own chin. "Just go away!"
"Bauer!" exclaimed Ziolkowski, seeing the man's grip tighten visibly on the gun.
Vance took a deep breath to feel the celestial energy around them. "Put the gun down," he said in a calm, clear voice. Immediately, Bauer lowered the gun and laid it on his lap, although his hand remained close to it. Jimmy and Sean looked at Vance intently. They had never seen him use such an ability before.
My turn, thought Jimmy. He stepped closer to Bauer and began speaking softly, encouragingly, letting God or the angels supply the words. He wasn't really conscious of the words he said, but Bauer relaxed, and then slid into tears.
It took them a while to get Bauer to talk clearly through his anguish. He was plagued with guilt over what he had done, knowing that those kids had suffered. He always suspected the teens were being slain, but by the time he was sure, he was in too deep. Bauer knew it was all unraveling, and that whether Sardis succeeded in his plan or not, He himself was finished. The cash couldn't make up for any of it.
They calmed the detective down sufficiently to learn that the ritual would take place at the abandoned St. Pedr's church. Bauer had witnessed Sardis use supernatural powers, and was convinced that he was a sorcerer who was possibly capable of releasing Hell on earth. To anyone else listening to this, it would have seemed like mad ravings. To the Sentinels, it was a call to action. They had until midnight, according to Bauer. Tonight was the night something terrible was going to happen.
Scene 2
"oooh. 10'oclock. That's when the monsters come out..."
— Bill Cosby
Clouds hid the sun throughout the late April day, and the breeze was cold on the skin. The Sentinels gathered as planned at McKinley Park. Tired and edgy, they knew they needed to plan carefully. But they also needed rest.
"So, we know something is going on, where, and when," Sean said. "What's to stop us from calling 911 tonight and letting the police take care of it?" The question was on everyone's mind, so he went ahead and said it aloud.
Vance voiced the answer that was also on everyone's minds. "Because we're Sentinels. This is our duty. Whether the police are involved or not, we need to be there to put an end to this."
Jimmy also spoke up. "Personally, I would be surprised if Detective Bauer was the only public servant on the payroll of Mr. Sardis. If he's up to something big, you can be he's covered his tail. Calling the police might tip him off faster than it would bring help."
"And this place isn't near anything in particular, said Rab, referring to the map on her computer screen. "It would probably take a while for someone to actually arrive..." Rab trailed off while looking closer at her screen and scrolling in.
"Hey, guys, it looks like there's a big cemetery next to the church. Does that make anyone else... nervous?"
"Didn't one of those book titles say something close to necromancy?" asked Billy.
They thought a while on that one. Who's to say whether zombies or other kinds of undead actually existed? The unthinkable was now a regular part of their lives.
"Right," said Vance, breaking the silence. "Let's plan on getting what we need, including rest. Meet at Denny's in Hickory Hills at 10 PM. Sean, call Ziolkowski and tell him he can meet us there. We'll need holy water. We'll need salt. And we'll need guns."
Scene 3
"I don't see why you two are so nervous. This is my kind of neighborhood! Lots of shadows and lots of things to climb on!"
— Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler), Uncanny X-men #130
A storm was blowing in from somewhere when Jimmy parked his motorcycle, placing it in the brush off the road a short ways away from the Church of St. Pedr. The gusts were growing violent, the temperature was dropping, and he could feel that the rain was imminent. Except for the lightning, the darkness was almost complete. Jimmy could make out the glow coming from the windows of the church through the trees. He snuck closer, moving from the south. As lightning struck with greater and greater frequency, illuminating his surroundings, he was able to move more quickly. Soon he came up between the pair of vans parked next to the church's south wall.
Amidst the sound of the thunder and wind, Jimmy heard something else. A foot on gravel? He dropped to his belly and then rolled to his left under the van. When the lightning flashed, he watched a pair of feet walking down the side of the church, past his hiding place, and on toward the back of the church.
With a bright flash and an almost simultaneous roar of thunder, the rain came down. The drops were heavy and bounced off the gravel in a spray. Even though I'll be wet before this is over, this ain't such a bad place to be at the moment, Jimmy thought. He scooted toward the front of the van and was able to see a bit more clearly up and down the side of the building. Over his shoulder, a dangling wire caught his attention. Hmmm. Jimmy flipped over onto his back, pulling a little penlight from his pocket. The small light was sufficient to show him the pattern of wires, cables and tubes in the engine compartment above him. I don't know what is attached to what, but I bet that if I mess with enough of these, it might slow down whoever wants to drive away. He produced a pocket knife and set to work.
Footsteps again. Jimmy watched as the wet boots—of a patrolling guard, he thought—approached and walked past him in the other direction than before. When the feet had moved away, Jimmy rolled across the space between the two vans and went to work under the engine there.
Scene 4
Francine: "What the hell are they?"
Peter: "They're us, that's all, when there's no more room in hell."
Stephen: "What?"
Peter: "Something my granddad used to tell us. You know Macumba? Voodoo. My granddad was a priest in Trinidad. He used to tell us, 'When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.' "
— Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Vance slowed his van down and shut off the headlights a short way from the church. The lighting provided a strobe image of the road and the surrounding trees. Before they got too close, he made out a place where the ditch was shallow and the trees thinly spaced. As he parked his van among the trees, Ziolkowski's Camry slipped through the ditch and parked beside him.
Vance, Billy, Sean, Rab and Ziolkowski followed the road on foot toward the church, approaching from the north. They could see by the flash of the lightning the cemetery between them and the church.
"Can we just go down the road and bypass the cemetery all together?" Billy asked in a whisper. The group paused and surveyed the possibilities.
"If we go around the cemetery," Ziolkowski said quietly, "we'll come around that low wall in direct view of the front doors to the church. If they have any guards posted, they'll see us before we can get close."
Sean could see where Ziolkowski's line of reasoning was heading. "And if we go through the cemetery, we'll have cover until we're rather close to the building." With a bit of uneasiness, they entered the cemetery walls through the road gate and began moving toward the church.
When the lightning flashed, they could see their warm breath in the cold air, briefly, before the wind carried it away. A flash and thunder that shook their bones brought the start of a heavy, cold rain. The big drops hit the ground so hard that a mist began to form around their ankles.
The cemetery was larger than they had calculated, but seemed long abandoned. Broken headstones and crumbling mausoleums were staggered among the dying willows that flailed in the violent winds. Beyond the cemetery, they could see, through the trees, the steeple and spires of the church silhouetted by the lightning.
At first, one of the main two track roads through the cemetery seemed to lead in the general direction of the church, making their journey easy. When the road curved away, they struck out through the gravestones toward the steeple, trying to use the lightning to save them from tripping on the stone, or slipping on the wet ground. They stuck close together, trying not to use their flashlights.
"Did you see that?" whispered Rab. The group stopped.
"See what?" asked Vance.
"I saw something move over there." She pointed to a rotting mausoleum off to their right.
"Over there!" hissed Billy, pointing ahead of them. A shadow disappeared behind a tree. The group moved forward cautiously. Stepping past the tree, Vance stopped abruptly. Sitting on a broad monument in front of them was a boy, maybe about 13 years old, huddled naked and defenseless against the harsh weather.
As the others gathered around Vance to look at the boy, the child stood up and leapt casually down from the monument. A flash of lightning exposed the long open gash in his chest. Drained of life, the creature glared with its black eyes at the intruders. Suddenly, more shapes emerged all around them in the dancing mists, and then the once-innocent corpses rushed at the Sentinels in a frenzy of claws and teeth.
The sight of the youth, with their exposed wounds and feral eyes, was almost too much for them to handle. As the dead kids rushed in, only Sean held his ground. He pulled up the pump-action squirt gun—one he and Jimmy had filled with holy water that afternoon—and let the boy have it. The lithe monster ignored the water completely, to Sean's surprise, and latched onto him with cold hands. Sean dropped his holy water-gun and knocked the kid back. Then, as the growling creature came at him again, Sean punched the boy once, twice. The blows seemed to bounce harmlessly off the teen's wet skin. The third punch hit the boy square in the face and knocked him to the ground.
Ziolkowski hand hovered over his pistol at first, but as the dead kids came at him, he quickly pulled free the long metal Maglite at his belt instead. His first swing was defensive and instinctive, but he clipped the teenage girl's shoulder strong enough to spin her to the side. She regained her balance and grabbed at the rookie officer's arm, snarling in fury. Ziolkowski brought the metal barrel of the flashlight down hard, and felt the weight break through the bone of her skull. The girl dropped face down in the mud at his feet, lifeless once again. The horror of what he had just done made Ziolkowski fight to keep his stomach.
Billy, Vance and Rab were holding their own, but Billy had received a nasty gash on his face. Vance was using his own heavy flashlight as a club, but had failed to strike any of the kids with enough force to make a difference. Billy was holding off two of them — for the moment.
Rab slapped the clawing hands away as she fought to get into her backpack. Something Vance said earlier... Falling back to stand between Vance and Billy, she was finally able to extract what she wanted. Somewhat desperately, she stepped forward and swung to left and swung to the right with her improvised weapon. Immediately, one of the creatures flailing at Billy wailed and ran off into the night. THAT's better, she thought to herself. I really don't want to die being eaten by these.... things.
Ziolkowski and Sean bracketed one of the ghoulish teens between them and knocked it down. Before it could get back up again, it too began wailing and trying to crawl away. The men looked around defensively. Two of the undead teens lay motionless in the mud. Two others were crawling in retreat. The other three had run from... Rab.
Rab stood there in the rain, her shirt torn, holding a half-empty canister of salt.
"They run when they're hit with salt. Vance, how did you know we should bring salt?" Rab asked.
"Just one of those things I've read. Some stories about monsters are true, I see," said Vance, a bit surprised himself.
Sean retrieved his holy squirt gun. "But not all of the stories, apparently. What were those things?"
"Some kind of zombie, I think," answered Vance, examining his own torn sleeve.
"These things were so quick!" said Rab. "I thought zombies were slow!"
"So did the makers of those zombie movies," said Billy. "Apparently, they were wrong. That tells you what kind of research they did. They probably didn't even interview real zombies," he said mockingly, motioning toward the still corpses at their feet. His humor and bravado didn't mask his horror at having his life threatened by abducted teenagers, murdered and running naked through a cemetery in an icy rain. They all understood how he felt.
The group moved through the cemetery, following the fleeing murder victims. Very shortly, they came to a wide, freshly dug area. One of the teens was still digging his way back into the dirt.
"Salt the grave," commanded Vance. "We don't need anyone digging their way out again."
Rab quickly poured some salt over the muddy earth, then noticed the wet label on the canister illuminated by the lightning. It was the drawing of the girl with her umbrella. 'When it rains it pours.' I bet this isn't what they had in mind.
Scene 5
"It was a dark and stormy nightmare."
— Dream, in Sandman #2: "Imperfect Hosts" (Neil Gaiman)
Jimmy rolled out from under the van and crouched in the rain. Cautiously, he slipped alongside the side of the church building to the front corner. He normally relied a lot on his sense of hearing to keep him out of trouble, but the white noise of the rain and the constant thunder were frustrating him. He felt like his radar was being jammed.
Waiting at the corner, he thought he heard a voice in the distance. He took a quick look around the corner and then pulled back to think. The front doors were apparently not closed entirely, as a thin line of light fell out onto the steps. There were two black sport bikes parked in front of the building. Their riders were currently standing guard at the front door of the church, seemingly unaffected by the rain. That way was blocked. Both of the men were looking away from Jimmy, toward the cemetery to the north.
The cemetery's edge was marked with a long, low wall. The Sentinels and Ziolkowski stumbled onto another two-track road that led to a gate in the wall near the church. Peering carefully around the edge of the wall, they could see the two big men posted at the front doors of the church less than 30 meters away. Lightning continued to dance across the steeple and its flanking spires and the rain continued mercilessly. Getting past the guards was going to be an obstacle.
"I'll pull the guards away. You get inside!" Ziolkowski hissed. Before any of them could argue, he stood up and ran toward the front of the church, yelling at the men posted there. A moment later Ziolkowski was running away along the side of the church building, with the two guards in close pursuit. The Sentinels watched as the chasers faded into the woods after Ziolkowski, and then made a dash for the front door.
Jimmy heard the shout and looked around the corner in time to see Ziolkowski throw something at the guards. They immediately chased after him, and the three disappeared around the other side of the building. Jimmy ran up the steps to the front door and saw his friends coming toward him from the cemetery. Jimmy pulled on one of the heavy bronze doors and ducked inside.
The light in the church was unsteady, provided by lanterns and old-fashioned flame torches. Water drizzled down from holes in the roof, and rubble from the ceiling had fallen among the pews in many places. Seven wooden and stone gallows dominated what he could see of the nave, in a circle in the center of the building. From iron rings embedded into each construct, seven of the abducted teens dangled by their wrists, apparently unconscious. A crowd of people, all robed in dark, hooded cloaks with metallic trim stood in a circle around the ring of constructs, chanting. Jimmy saw a set up steps leading upward off to his right and headed up for a better angle on the situation.
Sean, Billy, Vance and Rab came running through the double brass doors, but then stopped to assess what was going on.
"Sebet babi petu..." the robed disciples chanted. Above the chant, they could hear one voice, shouting.
"Prepare for the coming of the Seven! I call thee forth from the depths of thy hidden retreat!..."
Vance had heard more than enough. He pulled his Springfield pistol from the holster, yelled, and fired a shot into the air over the cultists. Billy pulled out a borrowed pistol, and Sean had his Glock in hand.
Many of the robed disciples milled in confusion. Some of them continued the chant. Those closest to the Sentinels began to rush toward the intruders, but kept their distance when the guns were pointed directly at them.
Vance, Sean and Billy moved forward with their pistols ready, trying to push back the robed disciples, who yelled and cursed at them. The disciples fanned out, trying to flank the Sentinels. Between the robed forms, the Sentinels got their first good look at what had been done to the church.
In the choir loft, Jimmy could see clearly what had been done to prepare for the ritual. In the center of the nave, an amazingly deep pit had been dug with nearly vertical sides. It was well over 10 meters across. A narrow part of the floor remained as a walkway from the far edge of the pit near the altar out to a platform in the center of the hole. The man moving across the walkway to the center of the pit was tall and slender, dressed only in a hooded black cape and a leather codpiece. The narrow face was framed with a neatly trimmed mustache and a short gray beard. The same face as in the photo in Bauer's office, and in the portrait in the office at Covenant House. Sardis.
Parts of the walls of the church had collapsed a bit over time, leaving a rubble of broken plaster and loose bricks in various places of the church, including, Jimmy saw, the corner of the choir loft. Over to each side, he noticed that there was a narrow ledge at this height that ran along the sides of the nave. He scooped up a loose brick in each hand, stepped up on the railing of the loft, and calmly leapt the one and one-half meters or so to the ledge. He froze in place momentarily at the sound of a gunshot, until he realized it had come from Vance. They can deal with things on the ground. I'm going to get to the victims. Crouching and quiet, he moved forward until he was near one of the gallows.
Scene 6
"I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness..."
— H.P. Lovecraft, From Beyond
Sardis had reached the central platform. He seemed completely unconcerned about the presence of the intruders. Drawing an ornate ebony blade, he reached in to the air and began to yell something in the same strange language of the chant. The sound of another gunshot echoed loudly through the room, and Sardis dropped to a crouch, a trickle of blood now running down the outside of his left shoulder. Vance was surprised to see that the shot had come from Detective Bauer, who jumped up from behind the altar and rushed down the walkway toward the sorcerer. Sardis swiped at Bauer with the dagger, but Bauer ducked under the swing and tackled Sardis. They both landed hard on the concrete.
With a yell, several of the robed cultists rushed at Billy and Vance. A trio of gunshots sounding like lightning crackle, and three men fell to the floor groaning. A flying brick struck one of the cult members hard. A second brick followed, and another grunt was heard as the masonry connected again. Sean risked a glance over his shoulder and smiled to see Rab quickly picking up two more bricks from the rubble.
Jimmy threw the bricks he was carrying into a group of cult members and then hopped the short distance to the top of the nearest gallows. The arm of the structure was an 8x8 beam of wood, extending about 3 meters out over the pit. An iron ring ran through a hole near the end of the beam, and an intended victim was bound by leather tethers from their wrists to the ring. Jimmy stepped confidently out over the pit. Unexpectedly, he lost his balance and fell to his knees on the beam, barely catching himself before he tumbled off. What the...? Jimmy couldn't remember the last time he had lost his balance. Regaining his composure, he shimmied out to the iron ring to get to the girl hanging there.
One of the robed cult members had gotten in close to Billy. He swung hard and hit Billy on the side of the face. Billy spun with the punch and stepped aside and back, giving him enough distance to bring the gun up on the man. Over the man's shoulder, he could see Sardis on his feet, choking Bauer and bringing his dagger up to strike. Over the noise, chants and shouts of the disciples, he could hear that Sardis was again proclaiming in the strange language, with a crazed expression on his face. The man in front of Billy noticed his distraction and charged again. A round from Sean's Glock struck the man and took him down out of Billy's line of sight.
Vance glanced beyond the cultists and also saw Sardis prepare to strike. He took a breath and squeezed the trigger as Sardis screamed a final phrase. "... Maskim xul masku!"
The bullet that left Vance's pistol flew true, striking Sardis above the right breast. As the bullet exited Sardis' back, a spray of blood and flesh showered the inside of the cape he was wearing, but went no further. A seemingly insignificant, lonely droplet of blood escaped through the hole in the cape created by the bullet and continued on through the air.
The dark force summoned to the pit by the final words of Sardis' demonological ritual groaned with anticipation, sounding a deep, shivering note through the entire building. The dark force hungered for blood to enter the pit: the blood in Sardis and Bauer, the blood already spilled but trapped on the platform, and especially the blood moving through the air above. The blood that would release the energy and open the gate. The blood that was the key to bringing Hell to earth. The droplet yielded to gravity and fell in a graceful arc... to land on the walkway. Denied its taste of blood, the malign pit groaned once more. With no release in the material world, the ritual energy collapsed and drained back into the abyss from which it was called.
As Sardis struggled to remain on his feet, the bullet from Billy's gun struck him in the hip and lodged there. Sardis fell face down onto the hard floor.
Jimmy had managed to lift the hanging teen below him and lay the limp form across the beam up so he could work on the knots at her wrists. He winced as a brick thrown by a cult member breezed past him. Once she was free of the bindings, he wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her back along the beam to the edge of the pit. When he reached the other end of the beam, he slipped to the floor behind the gallows structure and laid the unconscious girl on the floor.
Three angry disciples were advancing on Jimmy when a low groan filled the building. Everyone paused and looked around in confusion. A moment later, a second low vibration shook the building, and Sardis fell.
Scene 7
"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot."
— Dream, in Sandman #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (Neil Gaiman)
When Jimmy reached Detective Bauer, he saw that his wounds were serious, but, amazingly, he was alive. Sardis had cut him with one end of the knife and beaten him senseless with the other. Jimmy placed his hands in the blood and began to pray for the healing power of God, his commission from Raphael.
The robed disciples had fled after Sardis fell. When Ziolkowski came into the church, out of breath but unharmed, he was aghast at the scene inside the church. He reported that the cult members were fleeing into the woods on foot. Their vans, it seemed, would not start.
The rest of the drugged teens were brought down with difficulty and a few close calls. Anyone working next to or over the pit seemed prone to clumsiness and an inability to concentrate clearly. Among the Sentinels, only Jimmy had the skill to climb out and rescue those hanging there. As they worked, Sean filled in the rookie cop on all that had happened.
Once the teens were safely down, Ziolkowski called the Sentinels together.
"I'm calling in the authorities now. Get out of here while you can."
"How can you possibly explain this?" asked Billy, motioning to the room around them.
Ziolkowski smiled through his fatigue. "I think I've got a story close enough to the truth that it will hold water. But not if you're still around. Go!" His phone was already open in his hand.
A few moments later, Ziolkowski was alone with Detective Bauer, who was remarkably free of bruises, but still suffering pain from the vicious knife cut he had received. Ziolkowski checked on the four wounded cult members who could not flee, each with a gunshot wound. They would live, but they needed serious medical attention.
The storm started to fade the moment Sardis fell. By the time the Sentinels were back on the road, the rain had completely stopped, and only an occasional rumble of thunder sent them on their way.
Scene 8
"You see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible."
— Lewis Carroll
The headlines in the newspaper the day following the storm were unusual, to say the least. Covenant House charity director involved in occult rituals said one paper. Human sacrifices? Bodies of 42 teens and children found said another. The national news organizations picked up the story as well. Separately in a local paper a headline noted Intense storm in Palos Hills area not forecasted.
Other news stories followed up over the next few days. Covenant House charity a web of lies. And Facts don't add up in Covenant House incident.
The Sentinels learned that a few of the cult members had been picked up for questioning, but none of them had been charged with anything. Martin Sardis and the four wounded cult members were all under police guard in the hospital, as much for their own protection as to keep them from escaping. They were charged with a variety of crimes, but the case was complicated. The trial would be a circus, of course, but what can you do?
Detective Bauer was admitted to the hospital; however, his condition rapidly worsened, and he died in intensive care before being able to say much. Jimmy was a quite shaken at the news. Bauer's condition when he last saw the detective was not life-threatening. Was the blade poisoned? Or did someone visit Bauer in the hospital to keep him quiet?
The Sentinels noticed some things that didn't make the paper. No mention of the two toughs that Ziolkowski had ditched in the woods, for instance. Nor Cynthia Wier. The Sentinels tried to track her down, but she had vanished without a trace. Reporters were refused entrance into St. Pedr's due to 'safety issues,' and despite the church being a crime scene, it was demolished within a week after the night of the storm. The only explanation offered was that the demolition was "due to miscommunication". A small paragraph in the Sun-Times was the only attention it received.
Vance met up with Ziolkowski for lunch the day after the church was torn down. The bar's kitchen fixed a mean burger, and the high-backed booths kept conversations from floating too far.
"What did you tell them?" asked Vance anxiously, as soon as the server had walked away to fetch their beverages.
"I told them that I had been investigating the Covenant House on my own time. That I had followed a Covenant House van to St. Pedr's. That I had contacted Detective Bauer, who met me there. That we interrupted a strange ritual in the church.
"I didn't say anything yet about Bauer's deeper involvement. I don't know what he told them, but he hadn't been charged with anything before he died. All of the employees of the Covenant House, of course, checked out squeaky clean, even though I suspect many of them were wearing robes at the church that night."
"So they don't know about us?" asked Vance.
"I'm sure the detectives involved are trying to figure out why the pieces don't add up. They know that the ballistics don't match up on the wounded cultists. But I never mentioned you. Bauer and I talked before the sirens arrived that night to coordinate our stories. He agreed not to mention your existence. Our story is that some of the disaffected cult members took off their robes and assisted us to stop the ritual. I told the investigators that some of them were armed, and were forced to fire on their former brothers in self-defense. Then they fled with the rest."
The server returned cheerfully with their drinks and took their food order. She seemed to catch on that the two men weren't in a mood to make small talk and moved off quickly to attend to other customers.
"How did you explain how the victims were lowered down?" Vance asked.
"They weren't. There was no way Bauer and I could have gotten them down. Our story was that they were taken down by the cult members in preparation for the next part of the ritual before we interrupted."
"But didn't any of the cult member witnesses contradict your story?"
"The ones held in custody all refused to say a word before talking with their lawyers, and then they refused to say a word after talking with their lawyers. From what I understand, the ones found in the woods gave such wildly divergent stories, that my story might seem like the only floating boat in the water."
Vance had a nagging question waiting to be asked. "Are you in trouble, under suspicion, or at risk of losing your job?"
Ziolkowski sighed, but smiled. "As far as I know, no. But possibly. I'm being treated as a witness, so my access to information about the investigation is limited. I've been as cooperative and helpful as a boy scout shooting for Eagle. I did receive a verbal reprimand for acting so rashly while off-duty, and outside of city limits. Cook county and the State boys are all involved at one level or another. I'm sure I'll spend too much time in court answering questions before this is over.
"We really don't know what we stopped, do we?" asked Ziolkowski.
"No, not really," admitted Vance. "The information we put together indicates an occult ritual. Possibly a human sacrifice to gain mystical power, or even a... summoning." Vance thought that mentioning demons was a little beyond what anyone could swallow.
"Do you believe in that mystical stuff?" Ziolkowski asked.
"Well," said Vance, "there are things that are not easily explained." He tried to choose his words wisely. "How does one describe the indescribable, or explain the unexplainable? Intuition? Magic? Parapsychology? Myths? There are those that use occult terms to provide those explanations. There's a seed of truth in those explanations somewhere. Regardless, Sardis believed, and that belief made him do terrible things."
Author's note: Thus concludes our heroes' experience (Cantos 10-13) of Scott Mitchell's storyline for The Reward of the Wicked. When I first prepared to lead them through the role-playing, I admit that the tasks before the characters seemed a little daunting. The circumstances made it clear that neither Bauer nor Sardis would survive the final scenes, and that the survival of all the characters themselves would be very uncertain. The result surprised me.
Rolling dice can do that. And, of course, the deep role-playing experience of the players provided more insight than the characters themselves would have had. In the big picture, it was really the balance of abilities and willingness to collaborate among the characters that proved to be a key asset time and time again.
Our story will continue with a look at "Dark Chicago". . .
The Reward of the Wicked by Scott Mitchell. ©2002 Creative Illusions, Inc. All rights reserved.
:: End Canto 13 ::
7th Seal Image: Pat Loboyko. ©2005 Scott Mitchell.
The Archangel Uriel - "Fire of God." Or the "Regent of the Sun" as Milton calls him. The angel of salvation, presider over hell, and guardian of the Gate of Eden
Image ©2001 Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, www.shadowscapes.com.
