Читать книгу Hanky and the Thousandsleeper - Marvin Roth - Страница 15

Just minutes after sunrise, Hanky got up. He had not gotten any sleep during the night, but he felt refreshed and rested all the same. He dressed in his usual gear and looked at himself in the mirror. What he saw did not please him one bit. He looked like a man in a child’s costume. For now it would have to do - at least until he had made it out of his home village. He could no longer even fathom how he could have walked around in these ridiculous outfits. As soon as he would arrive in the next town, he would change his appearance. The way he looked now he would stick out like a sore thumb. They’d track him down immediately. They - in other words his parents, the police and possibly the newspapers - would certainly be looking for him everywhere. They’d be searching for a handicapped young man who could not manage alone.

Nonetheless, he could take care of that later. For now he was dressed appropriately. On the small shelf where he kept his “treasures” he also stored an old cigar box. He pulled it out and opened it. His entire savings were in the box. It wasn’t much. But he had helped farmers every now and then when they were unloading hay and had done other jobs that a simpleton could do. They’d always given him a little pocket change. He had never needed money before, so he had saved it up in the cigar box.

Hanky emptied the contents of the box out onto the coverlet of his bed and began to count the money. He suddenly knew how to do it. It was fun. Forty five dollars and seventy two cents. Satisfied and smiling, he stuffed his cash assets into the pockets of his pants. Next, he got down on his knees to find his backpack, which had been stowed under the bed. It didn’t take him long to locate it. He pulled it out and walked over to his dresser. He packed underwear, socks and a heavier sweater for cold nights. In the bathroom he found a bar of soap and his toothbrush and placed both into the backpack as well. He spotted the comb on the sink. He’d never even used the comb, although his mother kept nagging him to comb his hair once in a while. Shrugging off the memory, he packed the comb also. He took another look around the room and left. Quiet as a mouse he tiptoed down the stairs. From his parents’ bedroom came the sound of his father’s snoring. Luckily, his parents were still asleep. Once they got up they would not even miss Hanky, because it was common practice for him to go over to his grandfather’s house early in the mornings on most days. In the kitchen, he picked up to apples, a piece of sausage and half a slice of bread and stuffed the snacks into the backpack. He escaped into the great outdoors through the backdoor and realized suddenly that he was leaving his childhood behind at this precise moment. The feeling of having lost something truly precious was about to overwhelm him. Hanky stood still for an instant, his shoulders bent in sorrow, in his parents’ garden. Then he straightened himself up much in the manner of a soldier who is exuding courage and pushed the painful thoughts aside with great determination.

Initially he had thought it might be a good idea to bring his bicycle, but then he decided against it. The bike was way too colorful and anyone who paid attention at all would have remembered it. First he’d simply walk and once he’d made some progress, he’d decide what to do next.

The engine had suddenly stopped. First it had begun to stutter a bit until it finally gave up completely and all it heard was a loud “BLOM” sound. The creature looked around helplessly and searched its victim’s memories for any indication that would allow it to determine what was wrong with the Honda. Sometime later it dawned on the creature that the vehicle had probably run out of fuel. Now what? First, it would have to pull the useless automobile off the road. The thing motioned its host body to get out of the car. Whatever was still left of Walt Kessler actually made an attempt to resist the thing. Its body moved much like that of a drunken man and his eyes radiated a panicked crazed expression. With all of its force, the thing catapulted Walt into the final frontier of his awareness and seized full control of the host body. Initially, the thing had been convinced that it had already destroyed Walt’s awareness. However, his conscience had apparently only been in a state of disempowerment. After a while, Walt’s body stood up straight and walked around the truck in clumsy steps as if it was walking on stilts. He pushed himself against the vehicle with every ounce of strength he had and forced it over the edge of the road in slow motion. Beyond the edge of the pavement was a small overhang, overgrown by brush. The car rolled down the slops... slowly at first but then picked up speed until it came to a full stop in front of a tree about 300 yards down the hill.

From the darkest corners of his mind, Walt Kessler was compelled to witness how his Honda rolled down the hill. He sensed that his spirit was about to die. The being inside of his body was much too strong to defeat. Rage and fury welled up inside of him. No, no one would ever be allowed to exploit his body! He felt brutalized and dirty.

He would have to do something - anything -while he still had some strength left. But what could he do? On the mental level he would never be able to defeat the thing in his brain. He would have to come up with some kind of a trick. Walt knew that he would perish. I would be his final battle. His last assignment, a task he would have to master. He considered his options as the thing steered his body and followed the road, which soon would bring them into the next town.

“I’ll have to distract the creature and confuse it so it will not search my thinking,” he thought.

Walt made attempts to control certain areas of his body. It took a while until he was successful. He transmitted a command to his right index finger and told it to move slightly forward and back. The finger obeyed his command and after a few minutes had passed, he knew that the thing had not even noticed what was going on.

Yawning, Padre Frank Marcus steered his service vehicle, as any polite person would have referred to it, down the road in the direction of Madison. The car was a nineteen seventy eight Lincoln Town car and every part of it seemed to rattle.

His church and his Parrish were both located in this big small town, as he often called it with a smile on his face. The Bishop’s residence was a long way from Madison and Padre Marcus, as his parishioners liked to address him, only had to visit him every three months to deliver his report. Padre Marcus considered making the trip a chore and he despised the fact that he had to justify what he did on the job. After all, he was quite advanced in age and he certainly knew how to run a church. The Bishop was a vain and haughty man and Padre Marcus resented him.

Now that he had the trip behind him, he would be able to live in peace for another three months, so he tried to put the memories of the encounter behind him. He had virtually left in the dead of the night to make it home as early as possible. A new day was dawning and the land was illuminated by the fresh morning dew. The road sloped slightly downhill through a small valley seamed by grassland and fruit orchards before it climbed back up in gentle curves to take him across the next hill.

In the morning twilight the priest suddenly noticed a movement in the valley below.

Quickly he ran his hand across his glasses to make sure they were in place and focused even more intensively on the way ahead. Yes, indeed, someone was crossing the road. The silhouette was staggering or limping and now it actually fell to the ground. The head of the individual turned around and stared in the priest’s direction.

The creature was mulling over its options of getting into a new host body as quickly as possible when it realized that its right leg had gone completely stiff. It tried to continue to walk on it and did not know why the body was reacting like this. It rocked back and forth and suddenly the other leg stiffened up as well. Walt Kessler’s body was losing its equilibrium and dropped forward. Instinctively, the arms thrashed toward to front to break the unavoidable fall. While it keeled over, the thing felt a person come closer even before it heard the vehicle. Its host body dropped hard on the asphalt and the creature turned its head. The approaching automobile came to an abrupt halt just a few feet in front of Walt Kessler’s body. The car door opened and a senior priest descended from it. The creature knew what a priest was. Immediately the creature escaped Walt Kessler’s body and overwhelmed the spirit of Padre Marcus.

A deafening scream came from the priest’s mouth and he touched his head. A piercing pain was penetrating his skull and he felt kind of foggy. He sensed how another spirit was taking over his body.

“My God,” he thought, “the Evil One has taken a hold of me. God help me, please.”

“And so it is!,” the priest heard a soundless voice tell him and next thing he knew, an incredibly powerful force pushed his spirit into the very bottom of his being.

The thing cheered. Whenever it had found a new victim, it felt invincible. All cozy now, it stretched its invisible tentacles inside the new host body and began to control all of its functions. Now it would get into the priest’s car and run over Walt’s body. This bastard had given him way too much trouble. Revenge, yes revenge was what the creature now wanted more than anything. I walked around to the other side of the car, climbed in and got behind the steering wheel. The engine would not start until it had made several attempts and its rumbling was worrisome at first. The creature shut the door, put the automatic transmission in D and looked straight ahead. But Walt Kessler was no longer there. He had left the scene. The thing began to search for him instantly with its mental sensors, but failed to locate Walt.

It contemplated whether it should get back out of the car, but thought better of it when a large truck appeared on the horizon on the top of the hill. The creature started to roll.

“He’s very likely dead anyhow,” the priest said.

Barely a minute later, the priest’s Lincoln passed the truck on the other side of the road.

From the trenches by the side of the road, concealed by the high grass, Walt Kessler’s incredibly tired eyes observed the car take off. A smile appeared on Walt’s lips before he fell into the deep sleep of a man who is terribly exhausted.

When Hanky had walked for about ten minutes and had almost left the village behind him, he noticed two things. His legs had taken him into this direction as if on auto pilot, as if they knew where they needed to carry Hanky. Moreover, this was not the way that would take him to his grandpa’s house.

Hanky was torn: Should he turn around and talk to his grandfather first? Yet something told him that he did not have any time to lose. So he kept following his trail and walked even faster. In front of a house, which was close to the Prisco town limits, he spotted a large truck that was parked there. The engine was already idling when the operator jumped out of the cabin and walked over to the house. Apparently the man wanted to pick something up inside the house before he hit the road.

“He probably forgot something!,” Hanky told himself.

Hanky had seen the man before and knew that he lived in the small house with his family. They’d lived there for about two years. He was frequently gone, because he liked to do the long hauls. They paid much better. Hanky was just approaching the truck when an idea flashed in his head. The trailer the truck was pulling was covered with a tarpaulin on top. In the back, it was tied down with a transparent piece of plastic rope. But not completely. At the bottom of the tarp, a small area was still open. All Hanky had to do was pull the rope out of three or four of the eyelets. He did just that and created an opening, he could slip through. Hanky pushed himself through the opening as fast as he could and made it into the loading area. As soon as he was inside he heard fast footsteps approach from the house. Next, he recognized the noises of a closing truck door and the howling and grumbling of the powerful engine. Rocking just a little bit, the truck began to move.