Chapter Eleven
I awoke to Andy gently shaking my shoulder. I slowly brought my eyes into focus and looked around at the clock in the centre of the dashboard. Three, almost four hours had passed since he had suggested I sleep.
“We’re here.” He was standing on the side step, with one arm leaning on the open passenger door and the other on the car roof.
“Where’s ‘here’?” I yawned and looked through the window to our night’s accommodation.
The motel was literally a rectangular box comprising twelve rooms. It was run down, and most of the paint had faded or peeled away.
“I dunno. I don’t even think this place has a name.” He looked around at the barren landscape, which was dimly lit by the moon. “Anyway, while you were sleeping I booked a room. We have the same room—with two single beds,” he quickly added.
He didn’t give me the option to object to sleeping in the same room. Usually, someone else making decisions for me would infuriate me, and I would want to do the opposite just to spite them, but not today; today, I was happy to simply follow.
“We are parked around the back of the motel ... didn’t want the car to be easily spotted from the highway. As it is, I want to be out of here by 6 a.m. at the absolute latest,” he said as he pulled his bulky backpack from the boot of the car and swung it awkwardly over his shoulder.
“Spud’s asleep in the back. He should be alright for a few hours,” he said as he helped me out of the car.
I had almost forgotten how badly Derrek had hurt me until I began to move; my bruises throbbed, and I could feel my forehead had swollen. As I stood by the car, I looked through the back window. Spud had sprawled across the back seat and was sleeping soundly.
“You know, that dog saved my life tonight,” I said quietly, as I shook my head. “I should never have put myself in that situation. God! I’m so angry at myself. It’s just so stupid. Who does that? Who just meets someone then invites them into their home?”
“Almost everyone I know.” He looked directly at me. “Just remember, not all us blokes are pigs. Are you alright to walk to the room or do you need me to carry you?”
“I’ll be right to walk.” I was going to hold on to that much of my dignity.
The motel room was befitting to its external appearance. The ceiling was lined with polystyrene that had broken up in parts. There were two single beds sitting alongside each other. Both beds were covered in deep maroon bedspreads, which were stained.
Andy sat on the edge of the first bed, across from where I sat, and dropped his backpack on the floor. I was glad I had managed a little sleep on the drive; my mind was a lot clearer.
“I doubt that you noticed, but tonight, my backpack was already packed.”
I shook my head. Honestly, an elephant could have walked past us, and I doubt I would have noticed. I was too consumed with the need to escape Derrek.
“It was already packed because I was heading to Melbourne tomorrow—well today, now.” He looked at his watch; it had just ticked past 3 a.m. “You know what I want to do right now? I want to pack our swags and take you camping somewhere—anywhere! Watch you try to fish, or eat some of that damper you cook. Just hang out with you and pretend none of this happened.” His face fell. “But I can’t. I can’t take you away from this, Alex. You’ve had a hell of a night, and I wish I didn’t have to make it worse. But I have to tell you this—you need to know. There’s no easy way to say this, Ally.” He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. “So I’m just going to say it. But before I do, know that I had absolutely no idea he would do this to you. If I had any inkling, I would have gotten you out.”
“I know you would have, Andy. But there was no way you could have known. None of this is your fault. If it wasn’t for you …” I stumbled over my words. “Andy if it wasn’t for you, God knows where I’d be now.”
“Alex, you’re missing the point …” He unzipped the side of his bag and pulled out a long bottle of Vodka. He pulled the top from the bottle and took a large swig, pulling a face as the alcohol burned.
“Here,” he said in a thick voice and passed the bottle to me. “Just take this and listen.”
“You’re really starting to make me nervous now,” I said.
“You should be …” He dug back into the backpack again, this time pulling out his laptop. “Remember how I had my friend scour the internet to see what language the book was written in, and I told you the book was bogus?”
He spoke quietly, as though someone may overhear him, although the motel was completely deserted apart from us and the owner, who I saw briefly as we walked to our room.
“Yes, of course.” I leant in towards Andy.
“It suddenly came to me—your crossbow has strange markings as well. I pulled out a photo I have of you holding it the day we bought it and compared it to the book. They’re in the same language.”
“What?” I almost dropped the Vodka bottle. “How the hell can they be the same language? Those scribbles on my bow are just decorations.” He didn’t answer me; he just placed his laptop on the side table between the beds and flipped it open.
“I don’t know what made me do it, but I pulled the security footage of the bookstore.” He stood and began to pace the small room. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before!”
“Andy, you’re not making sense.
“They’re the same!” he blurted.
“What? The same what? You just told me the book and the bow are in the same language. Andy, calm down.”
He took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself. “Ever since you were given that book, I’ve been running a program to scan images from everywhere ...”
“... to find a match for the symbols?”
“That’s right.” He paused. “The computer found a match in the security footage. God! I’m so pissed off at myself!” He began pacing the room furiously again. “If I had just made the connection I could have prevented ... this ...” He gestured towards me. “I should have prevented this,” he growled in a low voice. “I don’t know what the friggin’ hell we’ve walked into, Alex. It’s not good.”
Andy’s demeanour had me worried. He was never like this; he was always calm and easy going.
“Look.” He pressed a button on the laptop and turned the screen to me. An image of a shirtless Derrek filled the screen, captured the morning after we had spent the night at the shop.
My stomach clenched the instant I saw him. I pressed my eyes closed as I attempted to block him from my mind. But he was still too real. I could not forget his scent; the smell of exotic islands. I took a large gulp of Vodka. The burn made me splutter, but it did manage to dull the memory of his scent.
“I told you you’d want it.” He took the bottle from me and shot another mouthful. “This is only going to get harder. You want me to keep going?” he said, looking at me carefully.
I snatched the bottle from him and took another shot—a smaller one. It still burned as it went down. “Yep.” I put the back of my hand to my lips as I swallowed.
“Every symbol on his body matches the language in the book and the one on the bow.”
“That’s not possible,” I said in disbelief. “There’s no way they could be connected ...”
“They are. Alex—he’s not human.”
“What?”
“I know, I know,” he said. “Don’t say anything till you hear the rest. Pass your bow here,” he instructed as he began to type quickly on the laptop. “I want you to see this.” I bent down to pick up the bow, and as I wrapped my fingers around it, the engraved symbols began to glow a deep, intense red, just as the book had done.
“Andy ...” He wasn’t looking at me; he was still typing on his laptop. “Andy! What the hell?”
He turned back to see me holding the illuminated bow in both hands.
“Whoa! The book and the bow ... hmm. That would make sense. They’re both in the same language, so they must both be responsive to human touch,??
? he said as he looked closely at the engravings. “I wonder if I can still touch the bow.”
I was not convinced yet that the book actually burned him, so without thinking, I threw the bow across to him. He caught it with his arms and screamed loudly, as he threw it away. It landed on the floor and immediately stopped glowing. I ran to the bathroom, to get a towel, and soaked it in cold water, wringing some of the liquid from it before returning to him. Even in the time it took to do that, the burns had begun to blister. I slowly lowered the cool towel to his arms.
“I am so sorry, Andy. I don’t understand. I could touch it …”
“I know you don’t believe in the supernatural, but you’re just going to have to,” he snapped as he winced.
“Okay. I’m sorry,” I said as I stared at the bow lying on the floor. “How can this be happening?” I whimpered. “I keep hearing Derrek’s voice in my head ... the way he said it! He’s going to find me, Andy, I know he is.” I slumped next to him on the bed and burst into tears. “It’s one thing to have a psycho hunting me, but now you’re telling me he’s not human! And somehow my bow and that crazy book are both connected to him? Andy, how am I meant to deal with this? I don’t want to believe that he’s not human because that’s just too much right now. But, the way he controls me. It’s like he sucks me into a trance—I know no human could do that. What does he want with me? Andy, he’s going to find me—he promised!”
Andy moved closer, dropped the wet towel, and gingerly wrapped his burned arm around me.
“Stop!” he demanded, giving me a slight shake. “If he does find you, I will protect you. Do you hear me? He’s never going to hurt you again. Do you understand?” He pulled me closer to a full embrace.
“Yes,” I spluttered into his shoulder.
“Now, I need you just to sit here and listen. Can you do that?” he asked as he loosened his arms and picked up the towel. He wrapped it around his arm and then slid back to his laptop.
I nodded, “Yes.”
“Okay, don’t try to think it through. Just sit and listen; we’ll process it all later. His name is not Derrek. In fact, I don’t think he has a name.” Andy paused, watching me closely to measure my response. I just sat still and listened.
“Have that bottle ready ‘cause you’re going to need it.” He hit another key on the laptop.
An image of a painting filled the screen; a painting of Derrek.
“But ... but ... look at the date—it’s ...”
“... painted in 1769.” Andy finished for me. “Yeah I read the date on the painting too. And yes, that is definitely him. And so are these ...”
He pressed a key on the keyboard several times, each time pulling up a different image of Derrek. Each photograph was of him in a different era, as though he had passed through the centuries with only his clothing changing. At the bottom, right-hand corner of each image appeared ‘The Aztec’ and the date it was painted.
“This is impossible,” I said, incredulous at the countless images of him. “What is he? Like a ... a ... a vampire or something?” I could hardly believe the words that were coming from my mouth.
“I’ll admit that vampire was the first thing that came to my mind. But he is Aztec—The Aztec.” Andy shrugged his shoulder as he answered.
“What? Like the ancient Mexicans?” I lifted one eyebrow, dubiously. “He doesn’t look very Mexican.”
“No, they share no similarities, apart from their name. I’ll show you what I found.”
He moved the laptop to the side table so he could type quickly, and so we could both see the screen. A document appeared that included a photograph.
“That’s ...” I pointed at the picture, stunned.
“... your ‘cheap city book’,” Andy interjected. “It’s called The Book of Narveere.”
I shifted the laptop screen slightly towards me, so I could read out loud the text that was sitting below the image of the book:
In the mid-twentieth century, four aspiring historians took it upon themselves to explore extensively into the history of The Book of Narveere—the true origins of the myth and what purpose it served in cultural development.
Their intention was not to retrieve the Book, for they firmly believed the true existence of the Book was false. Their hypothesis: “The Book was to ancient societies as religions are today; a way to explain the inexplicable.” Rose Persival, and Jonah Persival, head of ‘The Narveere Expedition’.
They did not uncover the Book, but they did find scrolls.
The scrolls were written in a sophisticated language for their time, and almost indecipherable to all linguists asked to translate.
The language did not consist of letters or characters, but rather, unique symbols that acted as a code; a code that was never intended to be broken.
All linguists agreed, if the language could be deciphered, the scrolls would be invaluable to discovering vital pieces of human history.
Amongst the scrolls were two that were written in an entirely different language. Linguists were only able to vaguely translate from a small portion of these two badly damaged scrolls.
If one should fall,
They each will fade.
Darkness will come,
Not one will evade.
The scrolls do not reveal who ‘they’ are, or what the ‘darkness’ could signify. Many prophets foresaw the collapse of the greatest leaders—perhaps this poem was little more than a prophecy.
It is said that The Book of Narveere belonged to an ancient man known as The Aztec (it must be noted: after extensive research, it has been discovered that the ancient civilization of Aztec (which existed in Mexico) is unrelated to ‘The Aztec.’ As to why they share a name remains unclear).
The Aztec is described as an ancient warrior of epic proportions. He is described as being of African descent, and as having unique markings across his body; markings that are also found on The Book of Narveere.
The scrolls reference The Black Sword several times, and each time the writer emphasises the incredible need for the Book to remain hidden from The Black Sword. However, the scrolls do not explain the urgency of this permanent separation.
(Veronika and Boris (see images 2.3, 2.4 and 2.8) are said to have once belonged to a society of people known as ‘The Black Sword.’ The Book of Narveere supposedly referenced them several times, but no other evidence has ever been discovered to hold any validity to this society ever having existed. It should also be noted that the scrolls do not say, or even imply that The Book of Narveere should remain with The Aztec.
The second scroll was in considerably better condition, but it consisted of painting, rather than writing.”
As Andy continued to scroll past the painting of The Aztec, the image of a woman appeared. It was only a small picture, and I had to squint to try and make out any details. She had pale skin and black hair that was pulled up into a messy bun. She wore a medieval red and black dress, resembling a wedding dress, which draped over the red velvet chair on which she was sitting. I wasn’t able to see her face clearly, although I could tell she was a beautiful woman. She seemed familiar somehow. At the bottom of the painting, the name ‘Veronika’ was inked perfectly across the page. The name did not mean anything to me. I stared at the image with envy and fear. She was beautiful, yes, but there was something about her—something cruel.
Andy continued to scroll to the last image. The name on this painting was ‘Boris’. It was of a short, stocky man with light brown hair. His face was marked with an undisguisable jagged scar that ran from the side of his nose down to his jaw. I took a sharp breath in shock ... that scar!
“Oh my God! Andy, scroll up—back to the woman.” I edged forward on the bed so I could see the screen better. “I’ve seen her before. I’ve seen him before!” I said as I recollected the brief encounter at the bookstore.
“What? When?” Andy asked sharply.
I stood up quickly, almost falling as the room seemed to spin. It was
either the alcohol I had consumed or shock—maybe both. I paced the small room and pushed my fingers through my hair.
“Oh my God! They were in the bookstore. Don’t you remember? She asked for a book! She said it would be ‘very memorable’.” I could feel my heart begin to pound as I remembered them standing within inches of me.
Andy stared at me for a moment, his brows furrowed.
“And you didn’t think she might have been referring to this book? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought they were weird tourists! We get a dozen of them a week! I wasn’t even thinking about the book at that stage because you told me it was bogus, so why would I think anything of it?” I could feel my stomach turn on itself. “What else does it say?” I asked, desperate for more information.
“Nothing. There’s only one more painting,” he said as he scrolled down.
The next painting was of an image of Veronika’s face in close-up.
“Oh my God!” I screamed. “Her eyes! They are exactly the eyes I saw in my hallucinations.” I wrapped my arms around my waist and backed up to the wall.
It couldn’t be possible. I had been taking medication for years to stop the hallucinations. That’s all they were—hallucinations.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! It was all planned.” Past events flooded my mind. I moved to sit back on the bed. I slumped my head into my hands, rocking back and forth; it was all too much.
“What? Slow down. Calm down Alex,” he said soothingly. He threw the towel to the floor as he sat by my side. “What are you talking about?”
“Her eyes are exactly the eyes I saw in my hallucinations. Not similar, or nearly alike, they are identical—everything was planned.”
“What was planned? Alexandra, make sense!” he demanded.
I turned to face him. “Weeks ago, when I broke down along Mooribilli-Warrangatta Road, the medication stopped working because I became severely dehydrated with the heat ... and I hallucinated again.” I ran my hands over the sides of my face. Even though this whole thing seemed like complete insanity, it was now actually beginning to make sense to me. What I thought had been random and unrelated events weren’t at all.
“Yeah, you had a head trauma, I know. Hallucinations were to be expected.”
“You don’t get it. The eyes are real. They’re not hallucinations.”
Andy rolled his head back. “Ally, have you stopped taking your meds?”
“No! Just listen!” I yelled. “For years I had convinced myself that I was crazy, that what I was seeing and feeling wasn’t real; but I never truly believed that Andy. When the eyes appear they don’t just flash in my mind—I can feel them searching through my memories.” I could hear my own words; if I was listening to someone else talk like this, I would consider them insane.
His eyebrows were furrowed as he considered what I was saying.
I edged closer to him. “Look ...” I held up one finger. “First, within mere weeks of the Mooribilli-Warrangatta Road incident, and having those eyes searching through me, The Aztec arrives—out of nowhere.” I held up a second finger. “Then, Veronika and Boris just happened to be wandering through Warrangatta at exactly the same time The Aztec decides to visit me.”
Andy blinked quickly, as he processed everything I was telling him. I could tell he, too, was beginning to piece together the puzzle.
“And,” my third finger went up, “when Derrek—The Aztec—visited my house, the very first thing he asked about was the bow. I took it off the wall, but he didn’t take it straight away, he just studied it.” I snapped my fingers as a thought suddenly occurred to me. “He must have been waiting to see if it was going to glow.” I sat, shaking my head as I tried to comprehend it all. The entire scenario was preposterous.
“If what you’re saying is true, why didn’t he just do what he wanted the night you stayed at the shop?”
I leant my arms on my knees as I thought. Andy was right. Why didn’t he just kidnap me that night? He could have done whatever he liked, and no one would have ever known.
“He wanted the Book and the bow?” I suggested. “You said so yourself ...”
“You never lock your windows or doors, Alex. Why not just break in and steal it?”
I scratched the back of my head. “Because ... I hadn’t invited him in yet?”
“What? You’re actually going along with vampire mythology now ... that he can’t enter someone’s house without first being invited?” he asked sceptically.
“I don’t know.” I slumped back down, leaning my arms on my knees again. Any credibility to my hypothesis was debunked when he put it like that. I didn’t believe in vampires or werewolves and other such creatures of the dark side.
“You said he knew everything about you?” he asked slowly.
“Yes.” I closed my eyes as the memory of Derrek’s words filled my head: there is nowhere to hide. I will find you. I will always find you. “Everything. Even from before the accident.”
Andy took a couple of paces away, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, before turning back to me and pointing. “You would have to be one of the hardest people to stalk. You don’t have a computer, so he couldn’t hack into your life. You don’t go out to pubs or socialize, and anything that anyone knows about you in Warrangatta is a bullshit rumour. The only people who know anything about you are me, Emilee and Sam and I’m sure as hell none of us were helping him … so your theory of the eyes is making more sense. What if she really could see your memories?”
“This is crazy. For all we know these documents you found on the internet are fakes. Perhaps they’re actors. Maybe all this is just an elaborate setup, you know, like that prank TV show. Or ...” I desperately wanted to believe my own words.
“Alexandra! Enough! Alright, this is happening. This is real. Now get a grip because we need to get a handle on it all!” Andy snapped his fingers as he paced up and down the small room. “Right, you told me you hadn’t hallucinated since you’d been in Warrangatta. You said it only happened to you while you were in the hospital?”
“Yes, that’s right. I didn’t lie to you. The only reason it happened in the desert was because the meds don’t work in extreme heat. I just didn’t think about that before I left—I wasn’t planning on breaking down in the desert.”
He held is hand mid-air to stop me as he continued to place together the information pieces we had into some order.
“What if the meds you’re on make your mind impenetrable?”
I looked at him for a prolonged time. I hadn’t considered that, but it could make sense.
He continued his train of thought. “When they stopped working in the heat this Veronika was able to flick through your memories. That would explain how Derrek knew everything about you, where’d you’d be ... what they’d have to do to gain your trust. They must be working together. It’s the only explanation.”
I ran my hand across my forehead as though to wipe all this information from my brain because it was too much to take in.
“You’re right. She was wearing sunglasses when she came into the store because she knew I would recognise her as soon as I saw her eyes. I hadn’t opened the parcel prior to my trip along Mooribilli-Warrangatta Road, so I didn’t know about the Book. That’s why she was asking me about a ‘memorable book’; she was gauging my reaction. She must have had some inclination I was in possession of it, but she couldn't have known for sure.” I sat back on my bed, exhausted from the mental effort. There was too much evidence to try to deny the validity of the documents Andy had found.
He frowned. “It can’t be just the Book. You hadn’t received it when she first looked into you at the hospital. What else happened at the hospital?”
“I dunno. Um ... nothing. I woke up. All the doctors were astonished at how fast I recovered—apparently it’s unheard of.”
“Okay, what about visitors? Anyone, anyone at all?”
“No, no one.”
“What about anything
strange, odd, out of sorts? Anything?”
“No, nothing.”
“There must have been something. Come on, think!” he snapped.
“Andy! I had just woken from a coma to find my family had died.”
“What about your things? A bag, a phone ... anything unusual about them?”
I paused as something occurred to me. I touched the charm nestled on my chest. “My necklace!”
“What about it?”
“Tess, my nurse, gave it to me. Apparently, it was in my file. I didn’t have any other possessions.”
“But that’s your necklace, right?”
“Well, it is now.” I picked it up with my thumb and looked down at it. “I think it was meant for another patient, but they insisted it was mine.”
“Hmm ...”
“What’s ‘hmm’? It’s a necklace.”
“No, I know that. It’s just a bit odd. You are given a necklace and then receive this ‘all powerful’ book. Your crossbow is now glowing, and your necklace is also a bow.”
“What? Do you think they’re somehow connected? It’s just a necklace. The crossbow, well it was just pure chance I came across it. I found it in an op-shop. Anyone could have found it. I know the necklace is a bow—I just don’t understand how they could be connected, though.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he answered. “Hey, I wonder ...” He sat up straight and leant in towards me.
“What are you doing?”
“I can’t touch the bow or the Book, but what about your necklace?” He moved towards me, leant closer and gingerly touched the tip of his finger on the necklace, quickly pulling back in case it burned. Nothing happened, so he tried touching it again—still nothing. “Hmm, maybe it needs to touch the Book or something to kind of activate it?”
“Activate it?” I raised one eyebrow.
“Well, I don’t know! Just bloody try it!”
I pulled the necklace over my head and moved to the Book and bow. Pain thrashed through my body as I moved, but I kept from crying out.
After trying various ways of touching the necklace against the Book and bow, I sat back on the bed. “Nothing. It’s just a necklace.”
“I’m still not so sure. Why don’t you give it to me for a while, just until we’re out of Melbourne?” He held out his hand. Every inch of me was screaming not to pass it over. “Alex? Hand it over.”
The fact that I didn’t want to part with it only made me realise how important it was for me to do as Andy requested. I pressed my eyes closed and dropped it into his hand. I didn’t feel better with it gone. Perhaps it was because the necklace was my first possession after I woke from the coma, but I felt vulnerable without it.
“I have a contact in Melbourne who I hope can answer a lot of our questions.”
“There are a lot of questions. You think your contact will be able to answer them all?”
“Nope. I think there are only two people on this Earth who will be able to do that, and they are Jonah and Rose Persival. I found some more information on them; nothing really interesting except it’s as though they’ve disappeared. There is absolutely no trace of them anywhere that I can find.”
“This contact we’re going to see—is he a better computer person than you? Could he find them if you can’t?” I asked dubiously.
I knew little about computers, but I couldn’t believe anyone could be better than Andy.
“She—and she has skills that I’ll never have.”
“What if The Aztec finds us before we get there?” It was all too much. I didn’t mean to cry, but tears flowed from my eyes before I could stop them. “I’m so scared, Andy” I sobbed.
He slid along the bed to my side and wrapped his arms around me. “You’re meant to be scared, Ally. You don’t need to be strong every second of your life. He attacked you!”
“It’s not just that.” I wiped my cheeks. “I was drawn to him. He’s done something to me. I feel like I need to be by his side.”
“What do you mean?” He took my shaking hand in his.
“I feel like I love him. Ever since he first walked into the bookstore, he’s all I can think about. To begin with, I thought I was just falling for him; I thought I was beginning to move on from Michael ... but now, when there is no possible reason as to why I would ever love him, I think I do. I know it’s not a rational love; it can’t be. I am scared of him finding me, but I am even more scared of what I’ll do. If it weren’t for you at your house, he would have taken me again.” I could feel my stomach knot and turn again and again.
Andy held me tighter as tears flowed from me.
“It will take less than a week to get to Melbourne. We’ll take all the back roads. We don’t even need to go to a servo or buy food or water. I’ve got enough of all that in the back of my car. No one knows where we’re going, and if our theory’s correct, you are essentially invisible to them because you are on your meds.”
“What about Sam? He’ll know something’s amiss when we don’t show up to work.”
“Nope. Remember, we were going to the city for your meds ... suppose we still are—just a different city.”