ANGRY SPIRIT PART 2 Chapter Five

Nathan and Miranda stared at the devastation. The walls dripped with a myriad of colour, from a wild variety of liquids and sauces, all empted with vicious abandon about the kitchen. Bright red rivulets of ketchup flowed and mixed with brown sauce, cooking oils, barbecue toppings and much, much more. Every wall and a good part of the once white ceiling were a messy wash of culinary decoration, applied by an unseen angry hand.

The floor lay beneath a carpet covering of broken plates, cups, saucers and dishes. The devastation was total.

"What the hell just happened to us?" Nathan began, in a hardly audible, hoarse voice. "The place is completely wrecked! Did we do this?"

Miranda remained silent, her vacant stare firmly fixed on the chaos that had engulfed them, and left them both completely shocked and incapable of recalling any recollection of the incident.

"I need a drink!" Nathan exclaimed, before beginning a precarious retreat to the living room. "Why don’t you join me?"

"No, I’ll start clearing this mess up," Miranda replied, her words were emotionless, almost mechanical.

"Just leave it. We can sort all that out later."

"You don’t get it do you, Nathan?" This time the medium’s reply was quick, animated and laced with more than a little anger. "You invited him in! There’s no telling what he might do now. Look at this lot Nathan… look at it! This is just the beginning, this is just his way of scaring us, and showing us how powerful he his"

"So, now you’re saying all this is my fault?"

"Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying! If you hadn’t been so damn arrogant and cavalier about this, we would still have a chance of beating his influence and exorcising the evil from this house."

"Oh, please! Don’t start preaching all your medium crap at me. I know better than anyone what this ‘thing’ is capable of. I’ve lived with it for almost a year. You dare to call me arrogant and cavalier, can I point out that I’ve lost my wife through this. My home is being demolished on a daily basis, and I’m scared to sleep at night because whatever, or whoever this Joshua Edwards is haunts my dreams and terrorizes me there too. So, don’t you stand there and judge me with your spiritualist crap!"

Once the shock of their previous ordeal began to subside and the hours passed, between them they cleaned away the carnage. A sense of calmness returned, albeit strained as each tried to remember the part they had played in the terrible event. A piece of their life had been stolen and a black void remained un-chartered in their mutual memories, either by design of some mysterious invasive entity or by their tormented subconscious placing an impenetrable barrier between reality and images too horrific to be recalled and analyzed by a rational mind. Whatever the cause, whatever its origin, some all powerful intervening entity had deemed that it should remain a mysterious non-event, locked away in the darkest corners of their lost memories.

"I think I’ll have that drink now!" Miranda announced out of the blue.

"I thought you didn’t drink!"

"I don’t usually," she smiled. "However, on this occasion I think I’m justified in making an exception, don’t you?"

As Nathan poured out successive, generous measures of scotch for them both, with a speed and regularity he quickly found amusing, he found himself laughing when his sensitive companion began to display clear signs of its intoxicating effect. Falling into girlish fits of giggling and slurring her words into undecipherable sentences. Eventually an embarrassing bout of hiccups reduced them both to uncontrollable and hysterical laughter.

"Do you know?" she began, in an intoxicated stutter. "I’ve always considered myself quite good, as a medium, when it comes to coping with spirits. Obviously, I think I need a little more practice when it comes to coping with the bottled variety."

No sooner had she ended her drunken admission than Miranda’s chin fell heavily onto her chest and drunken sleep claimed her. Nathan, passed her an amused glance, then after refilling his glass and lighting a cigarette he attempted, albeit partially successfully to regain enough soberness to leaf through the unread daily newspaper, previously discarded on the floor beside his chair.

By the time he reached mid way through the awkwardly oversized pages, an uneasy feeling of being watched distracted his attention from the gloomy news paper articles. At first he consciously resisted the urge to cast a suspicious gaze around the room.

With increasing determination he struggled to maintain his focus on the printed columns before him. Trying desperately to ignore the lengthening shadows which were beginning to encroach upon the room as the daylight outside faded and gradually the suns rays were replaced with the softer and less intrusive amber glow from the twilight sky.

Pausing to turn the page, he allowed himself a raking inspection of the dimness around him. His curiosity began developing quickly into a growing sense of pending dread, until, with an inevitability he had long since learned to accept as the normal state of affairs he discarded the newspaper and gave in to lure of whatever presence purged his attention.

First, turning his head towards the kitchen door, illuminated by the light from the fluorescent tube on the ceiling beyond its frame, he scanned slowly along the wall, where the mysteriously formed initials ‘J.S’ still remained faintly visible.

The more he inspected the more he became aware of the sound of his increasing heart beat thumped heavily in his ears. The hairs about his neck bristled from anxious anticipation. Whatever the cause of his nervous stimulation was close by and its influence over his senses was now overwhelming. He was not alone, of that he was certain.

A gasp of horror escaped his lips when his eyes fell on his intoxicated companion. No longer was she slumped in her chair, immobilized by drunken sleep, she was sat tall and rigid, her eyes bulging wide, like a doomed rabbit, caught in the headlights of a speeding car.

Her emotionless glare was intense and fixed in Nathan’s direction. Despite many useless attempts to rise from his chair and coax Miranda to alertness, he found himself held captive by an inescapable force.

Beads of sweat formed icy rivulets before disappearing into his dampened brow. The muscles of his upper arms and legs began to ache and cramp from repeated exertion in his desperate bid to free himself from the steely grip that imprisoned him.

"Don’t try to fight it Nathan!" said a male voice in a low and calm manner. "I am of no threat to you."

Realizing that the mysterious voice was emerging from Miranda’s mouth, yet her lips showed no sign of movement. Her face never faltered from its stone-like stare.

"Who are you? … What do you want?" Nathan’s reply was quick and laced with panic.

"Who I am is of no importance. I deliver a warning and my time is limited, so listen well and heed my words without question.

"Why should I listen to you? Whatever you are, you’ve done nothing but tear my life apart for the last year. Now you expect me to believe you have some kind of concern for my welfare and well-being."

"You have but one chance to escape the terror Joshua Edwards rains down on you. One chance to hear this warning and act upon it. I don’t have the power to present myself to you again."

Nathan remained reluctantly silent, allowing the voice to continue.

"You must leave this house within three days. Return to the portal. Only then can I use what power I have left to help free you.

"What is the portal? Where is it?"

"I must leave now, heed my warning well, it is your only …"

Suddenly the voice faded away and in that instant Miranda’s eye lids slowly fell, concealing her bulging pupils, indicating her return to merciful oblivion, and free of the presence of whatever intruder had invaded her being.

Retching, and gulping in lungs full of air, like a person defying the last throws of drowning, Miranda emerged into panicked consciousness.

Nathan instantly felt free of the force that had held him and leapt towards his shaking companion, locking her in an assuring embrace, while offering words that fell woefully short of comforting her.

"It’s okay … it’s okay. It’s all over now! He’s gone!"

"Was that Max?" Miranda asked, in a hoarse voice. "He came through me didn’t he?"

"Yes I think he did."

"What did he say?" She looked confused, annoyed that she had no recall of the conversation, despite the fact that the words had been issued from her own lips.

"He came to warn us." Nathan replied hesitantly. He had no wish induce panic on top of the shocking ordeal she had just experienced.

"Just tell me what he said!" Her voice no portrayed obvious anger. "If he risked being discovered by Edwards, he must have had something important to say."

"He warned that we must leave this house within three days and find the portal. Whatever that is?"

"Are you sure that’s what he said?"

"I’m positive!" This time annoyance resounded clear in Nathan’s voice. "I’m hardly like to forget what is said when a dead man speaks to me, am I!"

"Max is not dead," Miranda almost screamed. "He may be trapped in another dimension, surrounded by spirits and powers that we can’t begin to understand, but don’t you ever tell me that Max is dead. Never! Do you hear me?"

"Okay, okay! Whatever. I’m sorry, okay.

If Nathan’s words were intended to calm the young medium, they fell far short of doing so. In fact the opposite proved true, when Miranda leapt from her chair and began to pace the room furiously.

"Why three days. What’s going to happen in three days?" She repeated over and over.

"You tell me. You’re the medium! I’m more concerned about this damn portal we have to find. What’s that all that about?"

Suddenly Miranda stopped pacing, as if some sudden realization had dawned on her. "That’s it! It as to be!"

"What is?"

"The portal! I think I know what he meant."

"Then stop talking in damn riddles and share it for God’s sake. I wish just once, this unholy mess would starting making some kind of sense."

"Do you remember your nightmare?"

"Which bloody nightmare?" Nathan exclaimed. "My life has been filled with damned nightmares for the last year!"

"The first one. The one where you said I was there with Max. You said we held a séance and somehow Joshua Edwards held us prisoner in a room somewhere."

The color began to wash away from Nathan’s agonized face as he recalled painful images from the event in question. Images that he had tried, so hard to hide away in his subconscious. Now Miranda was asking him to bring them out in all their terrifying glory and relive them.

"Come on Nathan … I know it’s hard, but, it’s vital that you remember as much as you can. The key to finding the portal is in their somewhere and, if I’m right in what I’m suspecting it will close in three days time and Max will be trapped in that dimension forever."

Nathan’s reaction was one of instant anger. The painful task of reliving the worst experience of his entire life had singed his nerves to the point of snapping. His emotions in consequence soared to unbearable levels;

"That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it. All you care about is getting your damned boyfriend back!

"That’s not fair Nathan. Of course I want Max back, but you have to understand that without him, there is no way to stop all this chaos. If that portal closes there is no way of stopping Edwards. He will carry on gaining power from unsuspecting victims until his rule of terror is absolute in both dimensions."

Lighting a cigarette in a vain effort to calm his tattered nerves, Nathan realized that Miranda was right. Try as he might to find a less drastic alternative he resolved to take on his deepest fears and recall as many dark memories as his remaining sanity would allow.

"I wish there was another way to do this, Nathan. I really do." She reached out and took his hand in hers. The tears in her eyes and the anxious tremble in her voice were clear signs that her sympathy and understanding were sincere in every way. She more than anyone realized the gravity of her terrible request was pained to expect him to comply with her dire pleas.