The Serpent and the Crow

Book 2: Chapter Nineteen

Edgar had fallen asleep to the static on the television. Flies buzzed around his head. The sound melted into the miasma of white noise. He could do little to swat them aside. He could only jerk his head when one landed on him.

They tied him to a computer chair. The bindings bit into the skin of his wrists and ankles, cutting circulation and making movement near impossible.

Wade had made sure he broke the wheels off with his boot, rendering him immobile. The shed was sturdy enough to imprison him.

The television came alive as if snapping out of its static snowfall. There was more to the Harding home video. Edgar's eyelid fluttered at the loud commotion on the screen.

"All hail the Emerald Eye. All Hail the one true God."

He moistened his lips. He watched the camera tracking a huge naked man. A snake tattoo ran down his spine.

"What the fuck is this shit?" Edgar croaked.

"I have bought you an offering. Will this quench your thirst?"

Edgar sat to attention. Unsure if he was hallucinating. The heat that had forgotten to leave with the two detectives. He watched, trying not to blink from the sweat that hung from his brow.

The man on the video waded through a dim cavern, and into deep water, bearing something in his arms.

"Emerald Eye hears me. Long have I served you, and my father before me, and so on. You have not repaid the Gift of death with life."

Edgar wanted to avert his gaze. But he had a sense of duty to witness. He thought it unbearable to look upon the mutilated remains. A girl, no older than six or seven, died in the arms of the man.

He noticed other individuals in the video cloaked in black hoods. More out of view of the video camera.

One by one, the cloaked hessian figures disrobed. Naked. Two women stood there with sagging breasts and copious pubic hair. One woman looked to have been someone's great grandmother. Two other men were not young, either. Liver spots made more horrible by the knee-deep water.

Followers posed in worship. What were they worshipping?

"What the fuck is this?" Edgar shouted.

The hair on his back crept as if disturbed by someone breathing close to his skin. It made him uncomfortable feeling he was witnessing this all alone, in the shadowy folds of the shed. Tied up. No escape.

The people on the screen seemed frozen with their arms out. They waited for something to appear.

Edgar's mind tried to rationalise his experience. His eyes stared into the television set. Moments passed. It seemed like he was in the cave with them. Except not knowing what would come out of the darkness. Edgar closed his eyes, unable to expect what would come out of the dark. And then it happened. Something answered the call.

It was something Edgar had wished he had never seen. He would have given anything to be somewhere else. But it was too late. What he witnessed could not unsee nor forgot. The image seared itself into Edgar's mind. He screamed. Whatever he saw had made a grown killer tremble.

END OF BOOK 2