Beyond the Smiling Rock

The post-Turning world is an unfolding mystery! Join us as we further explore the saga of Shamblin' Sam and Ella, Queen of the Damned!

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***** * *****

Beyond the Smiling Rock

When Ella came to herself, she burst into tears.

“What’s wrong, ma’am?” Siris asked. “What’d ya see in there?”

“The Beast,” she said.

She looked down at the rock, and thought further upon what she witnessed, not just through David’s eyes, but through his mind.

David was not alone in there.

The Beast from her dreams was with him.

Most of what Ella encountered was the memory of that event, but being in David’s mind, seeing it through his eyes, she also caught glimpses of other memories, triggered by his actions and the unfolding scene before him.

He’d escaped when he was ten. Ended up on the streets, selling his body to survive. He fell in with people as bad as, or worse, than those he left.

He went from being a child prostitute to a hired killer after a john took David under his wing and pulled him out of one life of crime only to initiate him into another.

By the time David returned to the Angel Cult, he’d done at least as many bad things as had been done to him.

Yet in quiet moments and dreams he was haunted by visions of the inquisitive boy.

Of course, he’d encountered many a mirror after escaping the cult, but what he saw was a blank, an empty space where a face should have been.

He was an object upon which others superimposed their fantasies.

Not a person. Just a plaything. A toy.

It was only when he crested his twenties and asserted control over others that he began to see his face; but it reflected an adult man distorted with misery and rage, so when the inquisitive boy came to him, he did not recognize the boy’s face as a younger version of his own.

Ella felt terror, sadness, and anger.

David hoped to escape the Beast, but instead created a den where from it could kill and feed forever.

The smiley face was not an accident, nor was the sacrifice of the five children.

The five children sat in a circle around the rock, but if one had seen them from above, they could have traced a pentagram between them, with the rock right in the center.

The smiley face was the dark entity’s idea of irony; a joke at the expense of the onlooker; a ruse to fool them, put them at ease, and lure them into a false sense of security.

After David decimated the cult, the crime scene was cleaned up and the house eventually destroyed, but no one paid any mind to the smiling rock.

The Angel Cult unwittingly worked for the devil. Or a devil, anyway. “I gotta go talk to Sam, Colt. Stay here. I’ll be back.”

She ascended the goon ladder.

“You look shaken, kiddo,” Sam said.

“I am,” she replied and explained as much of the situation as she could, then told him about the Beast. “That’s what was in my dreams. Before we even got to the city, it was calling to me, and now here it is, Sam, and if we don’t do something—” She drew a ragged breath. She was shaking.

“You gonna be okay, Ella?” Sam was concerned, and a little miffed, the way he would be when his daughters kept stuff from him until he’d have to clean up some disaster he could have headed off at the pass if they’d only trusted him; but he learned with his daughters that his love for them had to be greater than his irritation at their youthful mistrust. This was the only way they learned.

So he stowed it, as parents often do, because it wasn’t about him. It was better, ultimately, to give them the space for their own thoughts and feelings, because that freedom to move is more likely to encourage them to come forward when things get dire.

“I’m not concerned about how I am!” She yelled at him. “I watched children die! This is why Siris tried to shoot us! There’s been others, Sam, I just know it, and there will be more if we don’t do something!”

Sam set the rifle aside and gently placed his hand on her shoulder. “I understand. But I’m gonna ask you to take a moment and calm down, so we can both get our bearings. If there’s one thing I learned over the years, kid, it’s that we need a level head to fight an uphill battle.”

If anyone else in the world, before or after the Turning, called her kid, she would have taken offense, but Sam was like a father to her.

His warm regard made something inside her fold like a wave, back into the sea, joining the depths to surge forward with the tide.

Ella moved in, hugged Sam, and cried. He put his arms around her as tears of his own silently ran down his cheeks.

When she pulled away, he took some tissues out of his pack and handed her one. They cleaned themselves up. Ella surprised herself by smiling at Sam, and he smiled back.

“Would your ma have any advice about this?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “We got to bind it, and exorcise it, using its name.”

“How do we do that?”

Sam didn’t want to answer, and wasn’t even sure his answer was right, but his intuition told him it was what Ma would have suggested: “I’ll bet you can go back into the EYEGOONS, but farther back. Way farther back to whatever primitive time fixed the Beast to this landscape. There, at the beginning, at its creation, you’ll find its name.”

“I’ll try it,” Ella said. “Maybe Colt can help.” She turned to climb back down, but Sam stopped her.

“These entities,” he went on, “as far as Ma would say, have no soul, no free will. They’re forces of nature that overtake the human will through a gradual and persistent weakening, like termites in the wood, cancer in the cells. By the time we catch on, it’s often too late. This is what happened to David. If you allow it in, we’ll have to make damn sure we get it out before we move on, or it will corrupt your thinking.

It’s a psychic parasite, but it’s also a vicious beast, as you already know. It eats you from the inside, but only if you let it. Our will, our free will, to persevere by choice rather than succumb to its uncontrolled hunger—this is our saving grace, Ella. You got it in spades, girl. Don’t forget that.”

The EYEGOONS buzzed and a familiar theme started to play.

They both looked down and saw Colt staring up at them with his arms raised, as if to say: What’s going on here?

Siris laughed hard, clutching his belly, and both Ella and Sam were glad to see it. The man suffered perhaps more than even he could know. He was simple, and confused, but not evil.

Sam chuckled. “Well, that skull-for-brains never misses a chance for levity, does it?”

Ella shook her head, but she laughed too. Colt was a friend, for sure, but who was this Doose guy?

Ella realized she described her vision of David but forgot to mention Doose. She made a mental note to ask Sam about it later.

Mysteries built upon mysteries inside mysteries.

How long had the Beast preyed here?

She would find out soon enough.

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