* * * * * *
Every fiber of my body ached in pain. I could barely see through the fabric wrapped around my head, but I appeared to be in a log cabin. I remembered the slaughter that brought me here, I may not have been the one to send the dead to the afterlife, but I had played my role in their suffering. Because of me, many men and women didn’t tuck their children into bed that night.
“Good t’ see ya awake, partner,” a man said from across the room. “Ya gave us all a nasty scare last night.”
“Ugh…,” I groaned, using a hand to shield my eyes from the painful light in the room. “W-where am I?”
“Grimsby. T’is a small, remote village on the Louisiana border,” the man replied, stepping into the light. “You’re ‘n Texas, if there was any doubt about that.”
I could see from the man’s clothes that he was a doctor, but it certainly wasn’t a hospice and he was the textbook definition of a country bumpkin. He saved my life though, and in my books that was more than enough—though I might not be too keen with him taking a blade to me.
I looked around in search of something familiar that might allow me to remember the course of events that brought me to this village. There was nothing, much like my memories, I was without a single piece of my recent past. There was, however, one item on the dresser of my prior life. It was a cowboy hat, charcoal in color and exactly like the one my father wore. It was a pleasant memory, of which I had very few.
“Yer eyes ain’t deceiving ya, partner,” the doctor said. “This ain’t no hospital… and I‘m barely a doctor. Fear not, though, yer wounds were well within what’s been passed down ta me from my pa. Yer healing, I’ll say that much, at least… unless you go tearing up ‘em stitches like a raving fool.”
“I-I… you’re right, of course,” I said, laying my head down upon the bed. “I’m not deserving of your kindness.”
“Ah, don’t go quittin’ on me like that,” the doctor scolded. “Yer gonna need to fight if you wanna live, besides, you’re one of us.”
“…One of us?”
“The good ones,” he said. “Us human’s gotta stick together, ya know.”
“You’re aware of creatures of the night?”
“I’m sure big city folk don’t rightly talk much ‘bout it, but it doesn’t take, whatcha call it, book smarts, to know there’s something more ta life than what we’re told.”
“They died… to protect me… a stranger.”
“Yer damn right they did,” he said, “and their sacrifice will be in vain unless ya man up and fight for yer damned life!”
The doctor shoved a concoction of herbs in my face and told me to drink up. I didn’t know what was in it, but after all they’d done, I couldn’t exactly refuse. If they had wanted me dead, they could’ve gone about in; less messy ways that didn’t involve dozens of them being torn apart by that frightful beast.
“Do ya know what yer name is?” the doctor asked.
“Horace McKidrict.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Any idea what brought you here? Other than that monster nippin’ at yer heels, I mean. It ain’t like we’re on the map, or anything.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m getting the feeling that answers going to repeat itself more than a few times durin’ this con-ver-sa-tion, partner,” he said with a chortle, “All right, at least tell me the day.”
“I… I haven’t a clue. Tuesday, does that sound about right?”
“No, it’s not Tuesday,” he replied, “though yer only four days off.”
He might not have been the best doctor, but he was humorous, and right now that’s exactly what I needed; .I felt the sharp pain and slow burn of a ruptured lung but it felt good to laugh and escape the despair that had plagued me for far too long now.
“The year’s 2014,” the doctor said, “the month of October, to be exact—.”
“No, it can’t be!” I cried, rising in bed despite the agony. “That’s just not possible. Two years… two goddamn years of my life… gone completely from my mind.”
“You’ve got a nasty case of amnesia there, partner…,” he said unenthusiastically. “Two years is a long time ta not remember.”
“That’s not possible,” I said my thoughts going to the beast that stalked me. I didn’t have a clue what the demon wanted, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to stay around here and wait for the rest of the village to be sacrificed in my name.
“What isn’t possible is ya getting’ more than a mile before ya collapse to the ground. Like it or not, partner, yer gonna be here for awhile.”
I fell back in bed, head pounding and groaned in agony. The doctor was right. I wouldn’t be going anywhere for awhile. I was in his care now.
I would find the demon. It wanted me; it was going to get me, hopefully at full strength and armed with decades of experience and training. The doctor may have been keeping me alive, but that single thought was the only thing keeping me sane. I would have my vengeance. I would have theirs, too.
“So tell me,” the doctor began as he rubbed some alcohol on my exposed cuts. “Do ya have any idea what that demon was? I reckon yer the only feller who might rightly know.”
“It’s called an Abaddon.”
“A what?” he asked with eyes wide. “I should’ve specified English partner.”
“I don’t know what language it was named in,” I said with gritted teeth, “but I doubt it’s a tongue still spoken.”
“Why is it here?” he asked as he drew a sampling of my blood with some skill, what does it want?”
“It wants me… for reasons that elude me.”
“Oh!” the doctor hustled over to the dresser. “This was lying there beside ya… I picked it up and wanted ta give it ta ya.”
“I didn’t have anything with me,” I said. “It must belong to another.”
“No, no, it could only have belonged ta one such as yourself,” he said. “The woman in it is far too pretty ta have lived here.”
The doctor handed a worn out photograph to me. He was right, the woman was much too beautiful to have been born in this backwater, but she was also much too beautiful for one such as me. Whatever the connection was, it cut through me like a dagger, one I would feel for many years to come.
“I… I don’t know who this is,” I faltered with my finger lingering on the woman’s image. “I’ve never seen her before in my life… and the girl… she’s much older than two.”
“Aye, that she is,” he said in agreement. “Perhaps more than just a few years have been lost ta ya.”
“Perhaps.” I echoed.
I placed the photograph as far away as I possibly could and rolled on my side. The pain was almost unbearable, but I would do just about anything to keep those faces from my mind. Whoever she was, no doubt the monster would have the answers I sought. Right now it only left another wound in my heart.
“Aye, well I’m sure it’ll come ta ya soon enough,” the doctor said. “Just give it some time.”
I tried to block the images of the woman and young girl from my mind, but the harder I tried the more it pained me. The only thing that seemed to still my thoughts was of the Stetson on the dresser, something about its presence was oddly comforting and I found myself thinking of the life my father had lived.
He was a good man, strong and resolute with a sense of humor that could flush the worry from my head. He was sort of like this mysterious hillbilly doctor in that regard.
The last time I saw my father, I was being taken away for training at the age of ten. I was far too young to be separated from my parents, but he told me that everything would be okay. A place for everything and everything in its place, he told me, as if that would’ve made any sense to a child whom only wanted to see his friends and family. It was God’s work, the people that took me called it.