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Tony Stewart’s

THE NIGHT OF THE DARKNESS

EPISODE 57

“Mary, are you alright?”  Joseph called out as he knocked loudly on the door.  But his question was not answered.
  “Are we sure it came from here?”  Martin asked as Joseph began to knock again.  
  “I am pretty certain that it was.”  Joseph replied, “Mary, please open the door.  We need to know that you are alright.”
  “Shall we break in,” Martin asked, “or do you have a key, William?”
  “Yes, I do.”  William replied as he fumbled in his coat pocket to locate his house keys, but stopped short in his actions when the sound of the lock opening could be clearly heard, followed by the door handle being slowly turned from inside the room … then all eyes locked in on the door as it slowly receded inwards to eventually reveal Mary’s terrified face looking back at them.  Sitting upright against the bed-head, Mary’s face was so twisted it was almost beyond recognition.  Her mouth resembled a stroke victim, her eyes a vulgar impression of a pop-eyed cartoon character. 
  Mary’s facial expression, and the tenseness her body displayed as she held the bed sheet so tightly up against her neck, gave one the impression that her mind was on the point of snapping into complete unreality – yet her voice was about to reveal she was capable of not only speaking clearly, but seductively.  The entire situation was bordering on madness, both in Mary’s bodily appearance, and the surreality of the situation.
  “Joseph, it is so nice of you to drop in to see me.” Mary’s voice dripped with the sweet taste of honey and the promise of excitement to come, but the face still retained the twisted, unbounded expression of some unseen horror that seemingly filled her with terror.  “Can you come closer, darling.  I need to tell you something, but it is a secret.  It is not for your friends to hear.”
  Joseph, in fact the entire ensemble that gathered in the doorway, were at a loss to understand what was going on.  But Joseph was more than just wondering … every nerve in his body was suddenly on edge. 
  “What is going on, Mary?   How did you open the door from over there?”  He asked.
  “Oh, you are the one for questions, aren’t you, Joseph?.”  Mary said with an accompanying giggle,  “Forget about that, darling.  Tell your friends to go away and lock the door behind you as you enter … then come closer; join me.”
  Joseph was totally confused with the situation.  There was no way possible for Mary to display such a portrayal of her body going through a complete breakdown, yet have such an enchanting, seductive, clarity of speech; the more Mary spoke, the more his own nerve ends threatened to explode – then for the fraction of a millisecond the entire structure of the room changed and he was suddenly talking to Arkerious.  But as quickly as the vision had exposed itself to him, it disappeared … and the room returned back to the image he had witnessed when the door had first opened.
  Joseph had no idea whatsoever what had just transpired, but he knew what to do instantly.  He spun on his heels and faced William and Martin who were still standing in the hallway beside him and looked them in the eyes as he spoke.
  “Wait here.”  He commanded with authority,  “Do not move no matter what happens out here, or in there, and do not try to come into the room until I open the door.  Do not try to enter regardless of the circumstances, or what you may hear from within.  I am not asking you for promises; I am telling you what to do.  Or more specifically, I am telling you what you must not do … you must not enter the room.”
  Then before either William or Martin could get a word out Joseph walked into the room, slammed the door shut and reset the locks before turning back to face Mary.
  “Oh, that was so masterful, Joseph.”
  The tone in Mary’s voice, in no uncertain way, indicated to Joseph that she was pleased with his actions towards his friends; that she now found him to be so strong; so forceful in his manner … and this feeling made him feel very uncomfortable
  “Now come closer, darling, and get your reward.” 
  But Joseph ignored her words and took his eyes and ears off Mary’s ambiguous appearance in the room with her still grotesque, fear induced face and seductive oral offerings, and placed them on the lump that occupied space beneath the blankets and alongside Mary.
  “This is the most ridiculous thing that I have faced from you yet, Rangor.”  Joseph snarled contemptuously, “For a creature with the powers you are said to possess, you are rather childish in your actions, childishly theatrical in part, but what is worse, you are damaging the sanity of my friends to boot.  I think that it is time that you left; in fact why don’t I help you get to where you need to be a bit faster?”  Joseph suddenly extended his arms, opened his hands and flipped them over, an action that instantly made the bed covers fly off the bed and exposed a human size version of the Punjaniti residing in wait beside the pitifully hunched up body of Mary.    
  Joseph’s actions had taken the creature by complete surprise and it had little chance of avoiding the full impact of the continuous barrage of pure energy that then came out of Joseph’s hands.  The force of the released power bursts began to pulverise the beast.  The electricity crackled in the air as streaks of red, green and blue screamed across the room; every single atom of unrestricted power attacking the writhing creature with vigour and attitude.  Joseph was not really aware of what was happening in the room, nor how what was happening was being made to happen.  He only knew that he was following his newly discovered instincts to the letter.  And now he could see Rangor attempting to retaliate and fully expected his own body to be badly scathed as a result of the retaliation.  But the torrents of energy that surged from the creature towards him buckled under the strength of an invisible shield that was somehow protecting him; each and every thrust of power the creature fired in retaliation proved to be a waste of time.  It soon became obvious to Joseph that Rangor’s shield, unlike his own, was damaged; allowing many of the surges Joseph discharged to penetrate Rangor’s shield  judging by the constant physical and oral expressions of pain and surprise displayed by his nemesis.  
  But despite the reactions that he was getting from his opponent, Joseph found an unexpected need for more power; a need to finish this battle right at that very moment, and from somewhere buried deep inside he immediately found a way to fulfill his wish.
  From both hands the room exploded with light and violence as an unbelievable stream of power made its way from the tips of Joseph’s hands into Rangor’s chest.  The noise that was produced from the extreme bursts of released energy threatened to deafen them all.  Rangor seemed to be pushed into a new world of pain and discomfort with every passing second.  Pushed to the point where Joseph was beginning to feel uncomfortable in this one-way battle; guilty of perhaps becoming over obsessive in his attempt to destroy a completely hapless opponent.  The apparent destruction of a life-force was happening with too much ease for Joseph’s liking.  It felt too much like murder, and little like the conclusion of an honourable battle where a pardon could be considered, rather than an obligatory brutal imposition of death.  However, as if taking umbrage to Joseph’s compassionate guilt, somehow, despite what Joseph was doing to him, Rangor, now well and truly out of the bed, his feet planted firmly on ground, began to increase to a much more familiar size; the size he had used to threaten Joseph at the garage.  Larger and larger he became, until his ongoing physical increase threatened damage to the entire room.  At the same time, as the battle continued with renewed vigor from both sides, smoke of a dozen colours quickly began to fill the room, flooding it with such speed and volume the individuals in the room became invisible to each other within seconds.  Bright light sparked, spluttered and ignited within the thick fog – then exploded.  The noise so loud it sounded like a battlefield … the walls began to vibrate, as did the floorboards in the hallway, and the fog in the bedroom grew even thicker.  Then, in the invisible darkness of the colour saturated room, unseen by all but one of the three participants locked within the battle-zone,  a second violent explosion somehow took place; an explosion so strong, so violent, the entire building began to rock in a most violent and dangerous way for all within its confines.

********

Outside in the hallway, as it had been from the very moment Joseph shut the door on them, Martin and William’s world was also changing for the worst. 
  They had been doing their utmost to restrain their inner need to enter the room, but now they were being unexpectedly forced to do their utmost to retain their footing as the floor beneath their feet threatened to be ripped up by the force created by whatever was going on in the room.  The sides and bottom of the locked door allowed slivers of multi-coloured flashes to produce psychedelic hallucinations in the hallway, giving a strange eeriness to the corridor as years upon years of sunken dust was released into the air from beneath the rising floorboards.  Then suddenly, what seemed an ultra-sonic boom exploded inside the room, the ensuing vibration so volatile it threatened to completely bring the hotel down to ground level.  So brutal was the force of the explosion Martin found him thrown down to the floor, and immediately fallen upon by William.  The two men struggled valiantly to untangle themselves, though it seemed an an impossible mission as the inconsistency of the vibrations that shook the building seemed to be endless.  The more they tried to move, the more they were thrown about.  But a second later everything went quiet.  The dust began slowly drift back down to the waiting floor boards.  The strange distorted sounds the bursts of energy Joseph and the Punjaniti had produced in their pursuit of dominance had by now completely ceased.  The two men, their faces now grimy from the mixture of sweat and floating dust, looked at each other as they rose back to full height , each sensing a mixture of fear and confusion in the other’s eyes.
  The seconds rolled by at a snail’s pace as William and Martin remained where they were, but their patience was running thin; becoming more nervous by the moment … and were, individually, mentally threatening to enter the room regardless of the orders that Joseph had invoked.  But before they could take that provocative action they heard a click of the lock … and Joseph called them in.
  Cautiously, Martin turned the door handle and the two men entered the room.  William, petrified with thoughts of the carnage he expected to find in the room, slowly began to cast his eyes around the room as he followed Martin through the doorway, but  the only thing that was in any way out of place was to find Joseph sitting on the edge of the bed, his arms consoling Mary whose tear drained face was buried in his chest.  There was no display of damage whatsoever to be seen anywhere in the room,and to their eyes, there was no damage to Mary’s face or body.  Certainly nothing like the way she had appeared when the door had been ajar prior to Joseph’s entering the room.
  “What happened?  What was all that noise … and the lights?”  Martin and William asked in a joint effort to obtain instant answers to what they had imagined was taking place in the room while they were forced to remain in the corridor.
  “As much as I am not wishing to make life any harder for ourselves than it already is, I am afraid that we may not have gotten ourselves off the hook just yet.”  Joseph replied in a sombre tone.
  “Could you please be a tad more specific, Joseph.”  Martin requested.
  “What took place here, what happened to Mary …” Joseph began, but faltered in his reply.  Instead, he placed his hand in the air and signaled for a moment’s space before he replied.
  This further delay didn’t suit William and Martin’s current disposition too well, but they both reluctantly nodded their acceptance of his request.
  Inside his private world, Joseph felt like telling them nothing at all.  Simply saying nothing had happened; he had never heard any noise outside of Mary’s loud, uncontrolled sobbing.  There was nothing wrong and they had better get moving if they wanted to leave for London today … there were many things that they had to do, including reviving Rosetta and her father.  But he knew that would be doing the wrong thing.  He had to face what had really happened, even though he really didn’t understand what had happened, only what his instincts had told him to do, and on this thought he began.
  “What took place here, in this room; what happened to Mary … was the Punjaniti advising me that he still had unfinished business with us.  We are not safe at the moment … in fact we may never be. We still have to do battle with him … whether we like it or not.

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Episode 58 … due shortly