Part 1

Part 2

Morning came and I haven’t put the shotgun down yet, still sitting at the end of the bed and checking the windows. It seemed like the tapping stopped sometime around dawn. I hear my wife’s alarm clock go off and the sounds of her rousing from her sleep.

“Morning honey,” she mumbles, brunette hair a mass of frizz and tangles.

“Morning,” I say simply, making sure she’s okay.

She gets out of bed and heads to the bathroom, I hear the kids alarms go off next and my boys are heard roughhousing in their room.

My wife, Sandy, comes out of the bathroom, toothbrush in hand, and is about to motion for me to go contain the wild animals that are my fifteen and thirteen-year-old boys. She stops when she spots the shotgun in my hand. She quickly spits out her toothpaste, “Fred, why the fuck are you holding the shotgun?” she looks me up and down with her soft brown eyes. “Are those the clothes you had on when you came home yesterday?”

‘Honey I got visited by a guy who is probably not human in the least and he threatened the family if I don’t return a red blade-like object that came from some mysterious excavation site,’ is the most truthful thing I want to say. It also sounds batshit insane and the more I play the sentence over and over in my head the more I question my own sanity.

“Fred?” Sandy pokes my shoulder.

Apparently, I was staring off into space while trying to think up a logical response to her completely rational question. “I… Uh… someone was on the lawn last night. Was banging on the door and wouldn’t go away until I got the shotgun.”

Sandy cocks her hip and shoots me one of those emasculating wife stares. “So rather than call the cops you reach for the shotgun?”

I cock the shotgun and clear the ammo out, before heading back down to the closet to put it and the shells back. “Just wasn’t sure if it was a prowler or kids.”

Sandy pokes her head out of the bedroom, “And speaking of… Colin, Trevor! Shake a leg!”

I close the closet and see my boys bounding down the steps in various states of dress dragging their backpacks and heading to the table. They start fighting over cereal and I quickly resolve it, before a good scolding and getting them prepped for the bus. They finish up and are soon out the door with coats and sneakers on.

My wife follows down next, wearing her robe, “Don’t you have that job today?”

I nod, looking at the time, “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Then get motivated.”

I do, and head out the door, give the wife a kiss and I’m heading back to the site, making sure my toolbox is with me.

…

Same as the first morning Timothy is there at the gate, he undoes the chain and we all head to the mansion again. He props the doors open and the crew heads in.

I get the business squared away first, Chavez and Pete on the scissor lift to finish a few touches on the walls while Bob and Mike get to mixing the quick set and filling in the gash in the floor. They also work on making sure there’s a barrier between the gash and the rest of the work area, so we can work on the rest of the flooring.

During this prep work, I notice Mike eyeing the doorway. “Mike, you taking in the scenery?”

Mike points to the roof on the outside, “Steepled…” he leans into the doorway, shining a light up to the ceiling, “Flat.”

I look to Mike, “Attic.”

Mike pulls out a laser measurer, “Steeple peak is… 53ft.” he leans in, “Ceiling is 50ft.” He leans out again “low point steeple is 44ft.” he leans back in, “Flat ceiling is 50ft.”

I grumble a bit, “Our last day here Mike, get the job done, that thing’s probably on the fritz.”

“My eyes aren’t on the fritz Fred!”

“Damn your eyes.” I see Bob looking at the same thing as Mike, “Bob, do something!”

Bob seems startled but manages to compose himself and get back to setting up his tools.

I walk past the crew as they prep and pop open my toolbox. I find the strange object, or artifact, or whatever out of my toolbox and head toward Timothy.

Timothy is observing Chavez and Pete when he spots me coming.

“This wound up in my toolbox,” I say, holding the object out in front of me.

Timothy looks it over without touching it, then looks to me after a solid minute. “This came from here?”

I nod, “From inside that gash in the floor.”

Timothy holds his right hand over the thing for a moment, then he starts guiding his hand back and forth over it slowly.

I have no clue what he’s doing, I’m about to ask, but as I look up I notice his eyes seem to be a more intense blue then they were before, specifically his right eye.

Timothy stops suddenly and just grabs the thing with his right hand, and pulls it hard out of my grip. “Thanks for returning this.” he turns it over in his hand again, his eyes seem to be a normal shade of blue again. “It’s a very rare find.”

“That’s what your associate said.” I was hoping to fish for some info. If this Belial guy knows Timothy then Timothy should know him.

“Associate?” he looks at me quizzically.

I nod, “Yeah, tall guy, kind of yellow eyes, way too perfect teeth?”

Timothy seems completely confused. “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone like that. All my associates are here.”

I figured it was time to stop trying to get him to spill the beans and just come out and say it. “Listen the guy shows up last night, tells me he wants that thing, and then tells me his name is Belial and that you know him.”

Timothy’s face goes slightly pale, “You’re certain he said Belial?”

I just nod.

Timothy looks to the object and then walks to the doors. “Sorry for this but I hope you have everything you need inside.” and he shuts the doors.

I’m a bit dumbfounded at this point, “I thought you were concerned about ventilation?”

Timothy just walks right past me and toward the barricade. “Ventilation is the least of your worries at the moment.”

I turn around and the entire crew is dead silent, not sure what to do as we hear some banging, a few doors closing and then some rustling past the barricade. I just come out and say it, “We have this one last day to get the floor cleaned, and get that gash and the smaller scrapes and holes plugged. Move it, now, and then we get the fuck out of here.”

The crew seems pretty much on board and the sounds of work soon overpower anything else.

…

Almost half an hour since Timothy left I suddenly feel a hand on my shoulder and I spin around out of sheer instinct.

A small round bottle is shoved into my hands

“That’s for you,” Timothy says before he hands the bottles to the rest of the crew.

I look and see it’s just a small round glass bottle with a long spout at the top and a cap.

Timothy doesn’t have the object in question any longer and now he heads toward the barrier again, as he passes me I grab him.

“I need at least a ‘what the fuck is this’ explanation and a ‘who the fuck is that’ for this Belial guy.” I glare at him.

“That,” Timothy says as he points to the bottle, “is for protection from Belial.”

“That’s half of my questions, Tim.”

“Timothy.”

“Who the fuck is Belial?” I reiterate.

He looks up to the angelic statue and I turn to see the large statue of Saint Dinah. “He’s her opposite.” before he can elaborate he’s back behind the barrier.

Just finish up today and get the fuck out, is all I can think of. I grab a pressure washer and start working alongside my guys to get things rolling.

…

It’s the end of the day, and it’s cleanup time, Timothy opens the doors and checks outside for something, and we all start loading up the trucks.

Timothy looks around seemingly satisfied, “This is quite excellent work Fred, thank you.”

I nod, hoping we can finish up shortly. “The gash in the floor is fully repaired, it will take a full 24 hours to cure but you can walk across it without much issue. We cleaned up the main hall here, got the walls, statues, ceilings and of course the flooring squared away.”

“And the Amphitheater,” Chavez says as he and Pete seem to be pulling equipment from the left side of the room.

Pete’s face is pretty pale as he walks by but I stop them regardless.

“Amphitheater?”

Pete just looks to me and shakes his head.

I sigh, “Chavez, that wasn’t in the order.”

Timothy chimes in, “How did you get into the Amphitheater?”

I’m never going to get out of this place, am I? So close, yet so far.

Chavez happily shows us down the left-hand side of the hall and clicks on the lights.

A pair of massive fifty-foot double doors stand right in front of us, and reach from floor to ceiling, the ceiling looks like it tapers to a dome. It’s not so much that there’s a pair of massive fifty foot tall double doors right in front of me that are almost twenty feet wide, it’s what’s on the damn things that bother me. Carved into the marble are pictures of armor-clad angels with feathery wings. Under their feet are various horrible looking creatures, a few of the angels stand over said defeated creates with spears shoved in them, others are in the process of smiting them. As the doors go up the carvings get weirder, not just feathery Angels but these other winged humanoid things, they look like lizards with wings. Stranger still is at the very top of these doors is a huge lizard-like figure, massive bat-like wings spread out, holding a shield with a cross on it and a huge spear. It’s hard to see fully, but the doors seem to meet, or at least have to meet, in the middle, where his face would be. If you could call it a face, it was mostly a lizard head, with horns, over a long snake-like neck.

Chavez takes a knee in front of the doors and starts reciting God’s prayer.

One of them clicks open.

“Voice activated doors?” I ask, hoping there’s some kind of rational explanation and wondering why we haven’t left yet.

Chavez gets up and opens the door enough to walk in. He drags one of the lamps in and powers it up, motioning for us to come in. “We found this door here, and I and Pete cleaned it up, it was easier than the rest, the floor here is different.”

I look down and, thank God, there’s a seam. I finally found a seam in this place. But the seam is from Marble to Granite, and as I walk in it’s pretty clear that, oddly, everything is made of granite in this room.

Stacking up into the darkness, so high I couldn’t even tell, were chairs. These chairs were large, stone chairs. They all culminated around a central chair. A chair is an understatement, this was a throne. The chairs all surrounded the ‘stage’ we found ourselves on in a huge crescent.

I turned to Timothy, whose gaze was transfixed on the central throne, that far away look again in his eyes.

Chavez was, again, the only one to speak. “Saint Dinah?”

Timothy nods and leaves the room. “I did not know how those doors opened. Thank you, Chavez.”

I click the lights off, and pull the lights out, making sure everyone is out of the now perfectly dark room. “Good work guys, now let’s get packed.” I’m now overly invested in getting out of here as fast as possible.

Pete leans over to me, whispering, “The door outside, and the amphitheater doors are on the same wall, but there’s no structure on the outside that could fit that.”

I notice this as well as I walk outside the mansion, and then back inside. “Pete.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t think about it.”

Pete just frowns at me, “I guess that’s the best bet.”

I give a final examination of the place before we kill the last of the lights, and I do have to say the place is looking nice. The white marble floor is polished to the point where I can see my reflection, the gash is sealed up nice and neat, and just looks like a vein in the marble. Everything is looking perfect inside, the walls, the ceiling, the floor. I give a little nod to the Saint Dinah statue and head to the door as the lights are taken down. I do my headcount and once again I’m short a Honduran.

I walk back inside and find Chavez kneeling in front of the statue of Saint Dinah, only the light from the setting sun reflecting off the floor to light the room softly. “Chavez, end of the day, let’s go.”

“I’m staying,” he says simply. I notice the bottle that Timothy handed him is empty.

“Did you drink that?” I said, a bit shocked, “do you even know what is in that Chavez?”

“God’s Blessing.” Chavez stands up and he just looks, for lack of a better word, happy. Like a man without a care in the world.

“I’m not just leaving you here Chavez, the client isn’t going to like you hanging around here.”

Timothy chimes in, walking back from behind the barrier again, “Actually Chavez agreed to assist me in a few things going forward.”

I turn to look at Timothy, “You ever think I might not want to lose a member of my crew?”

Chavez speaks up, “Mr. Fred? It’s okay. I want to stay here. I want to help Saint T-”

Timothy interrupts, “He volunteered, it was hard to say no to him.”

I give Chavez a look.

He just smiles and extends his hand. “Nice working with you Fred.”

I ignore it, “Get your head on straight, I’m your ride.”

“I’m staying Fred.”

I turn and shout, “Chavez I’m not staying here any longer, okay? I’m out, done, finished!” I stop for a second. I didn’t say ‘Finished’ I said ‘Finito’, but for some reason, it came out as English. “I’m 100% done with this place, okay? I’m out. Job’s done, you want to stay? Enjoy.” I head towards my truck, look to my toolbox, ensure nothing else is there that shouldn’t be, close it and out I go.

As I head out of the doors Timothy starts to close them behind us, him and Chavez still inside. Timothy looks to me before he closes the doors, “The remainder of your payment is in the truck. Everything we discussed. I cannot fully express my gratitude.” He shuts the doors and we load up.

I check the truck and there’s an envelope with the second half of the payment. I’m pretty shocked and I count the bills a few times, I’m up a good ten grand. I’ve heard of getting a tip but this was a bit overkill. I know one pair of kids whose college fund is going to be in a good place after all of this.

…

At home, I’m doing the husband thing and cleaning up the dishes from the wife’s dinner. Sandy and the boys are asleep and that’s when I hear a crash in the garage. I run to the closet, grab the shotgun and fill it with a few shells before I rush in. I’m kind of expecting him at this point.

My toolbox and all the tools are strewn about all over the floor. I see my garage door opened slightly and suddenly something small and almost glass-like hits me in the face. I look down to see what looks like a chunk of the object that was in my toolbox, about the size of a half dollar, land on the floor.

“That is but a pittance, Red Fred.” I turn to the voice and I see glowing yellow eyes in the darkness, “Not nearly what I need.”

I pull the gun and go to shoot, but I feel a tug against my entire body as if someone grabbed onto my sweatshirt from the front and pulled it downward. I barely take a step forward but it’s enough to get me to point the gun down at the floor.

I look up as Belial’s hand is dropping from being in midair, steam rising off the black rings on his fingers. “Weak… not this weak though.” Another hissing laugh, “He offered you protection, how noble.”

Before I can take aim a tool shoots off of my workbench and smacks into the shotgun, which lands a few feet from me. I lunge for it but it suddenly leaps off the floor and into Belial’s hand.

Belial takes the shotgun and places it against his shoulder, looking down on me. “As if a little bauble could do anything against me.”

I try to get up but he places his foot on my shoulder, I can’t move.

“You’ve done something very foolish, Red Fred.” he soon is crouching down onto his haunches over me. “You’ve hidden the only thing that can help me move up from a puppeteer to God,” the shotgun barrel now slides under my chin as I see Belial’s face illuminated by the light coming from the doorway. “But there’s hope for you yet!”

I’m shaking at this point as I’m not sure how the tables turned so fast.

“You can fix your mistake, and in return, I’ll spare you and your family’s lives!” his voice wheezes, but not as much as it did before. He somehow seems stronger. “Despite how I look, I’ve done quite a bit to exist in this world. Possessions’ normally a lesser demons game, but the discovery of that Sanguine Amber…” he cocks the shotgun, “I could not resist.”

I’m sweating and slowly try to get to my feet. I’m on my hands and knees by the time I feel the barrel at the back of my head.

“Now this is your next course of action: You will leave here, right away, and retrieve for me the Sanguine Amber you found. You will bring it back here, and give it to me. In return, you’ll be at my side rather than in my path,” I swear I can hear his grin somehow, “Nod if you understand.”

I just nod, what else could I do?

“If you do not bring me the amber, if you do not return home, or if you somehow reach out to Timothy for aid, I will go upstairs and I will make your children watch as I violate your wife in every way you can and cannot imagine.”

I clench my fists, “If you lay a hand on her I’ll-”

“You’ll what, mortal?” I hear the safety slide off. “Bleed on me?”

I relax, and I hear the safety slide back as the gun clatters to the floor.

“You’re on the clock, Freddy.”

I look up and the garage is clean, the door isn’t open, there isn’t even a sign that I had dropped the shotgun, as it’s sitting neatly on my workbench. I get to my feet, shaking, and turn to see a figure right behind me, causing me to shout in fear.

Sandy is behind me and she punches me in the shoulder, “Jesus it’s just me! Why are you so jumpy Fred? What is going on?”

I rub my shoulder where she nailed me and I try to figure out how best to protect one’s family from someone who’s clearly not from this world. That’s when I remember what Timothy handed me at the worksite. I rush to the closet to find my coat.

“Were you on the phone? I thought I heard you talking to someone.” Sandy asks.

I pull the bottle out of my coat, and turn to her, pressing the bottle into her hands. “Sandy, I know this is going to sound batshit nuts but I need you to drink this and share it with the boys okay?”

“They’re asleep Fred,” Sandy says curtly. She looks at the bottle, and raises an eyebrow, “This isn’t some random point where you poison us all and run off to Malibu with some bimbo is it?”

I grab her by the shoulders, looking her dead in the eye, “I’m asking you to trust me. Just drink half the bottle, split the rest with the kids, okay? I need you to do that for me right now. Just drink half.”

Sandy is clearly worried now but she undoes the cap on the bottle, “Okay Fred, okay. Calm down.” she takes a swig, then another until the bottle is half empty, and caps it. “So I drank it what…” she trails off and suddenly closes her eyes, opening them again and looking right into my eyes. “Oh, wow that’s probably the best water I ever drank.”

I nod, “Make sure you give it to the boys, okay? I left something at the worksite and I need to get it.”

Sandy just nods, “I love you, Fred.”

I let go of her shoulders, “I love you too, just make sure the kids drink that and keep the doors locked, okay? Don’t let anyone inside.”

Sandy just nods again, “Okay Fred, be careful.” she walks up the stairs and waves, smiling serenely as I rush out the door, lock it, and make my way to my truck. In retrospect, I should have kissed her.

…

I was driving swiftly, fast enough to be a little worried but not fast enough to get pulled over.

I got to the gate of the worksite in roughly an hour, which was a pretty good time from my house. I saw the gate wasn’t chained up anymore, which seemed odd because Timothy had to undo that chain every time. Did he never leave the mansion after they closed the doors? I drove down the driveway and hit my brights, knowing it might be dark in that main hallway, and ran to the doors. “Timothy! Open up!” I slammed my fist on the door, “Damn it Timothy open the damned door!” I look to see there’s no padlock on the door and jostle the old doorknob, swinging the doors open. “Chavez! Timothy!” I shout into the empty room expecting an echo, but I hear no such sound.

I’m hit with a musty scent, the smell of rotting wood and mildewed fabric. I look around, pulling out a flashlight. The boards are letting light in from the front, there are no statues, no marble floor, just a set of collapsed staircases and a rotting subfloor with a few ripped and torn rugs and graffiti. I take a step outside, and just confirm it’s the same place, then peak back inside. The barricades are gone, the marble ceilings, the walls, the seamless floor. It’s as if it was never there. I run through the ruins of this ancient mansion, the mansion is mundane, old, too ruined to fix, should be knocked down. I try a door or two, each opening to rotting room after rotting room. I eventually became overwhelmed with the fungus in the air, and I stumbled out the door, falling to my knees near my car. As I tried to catch my breath, I tried to figure out what the Hell was going on. I turned to look at the old mansion behind me, and I could only think of one thing:

The site we were working on was gone or was never here in the first place, and the amber was gone with it.