Chapter 4

I ignore every traffic law on the way home. As soon as I realized Benny’s corpse is now my one-way ticket to battling a demon, I dropped everything and ran. It was late enough that no one was around the office building, except for the janitor, so running like a madman into the parking lot went unnoticed. 

As I slam my car into park and run up the driveway, my only thought is that somehow he discovered Benny’s body and beat me here. My nightmare is that I’ll open the front door to a bloodbath with no trace of my family anywhere. 

I shoulder-blast the front door open and it slams into the wall of the foyer, rattling the pictures nearby. Frantically searching back and forth, the smell from the kitchen catches my nose. I sprint down the hallway to find my wife with her back to me at the stove, and my daughter, my beautiful, precious daughter, sitting at the table with a coloring book. 

I rush to her. Picking her up in my arms and squeezing every ounce of love out of her. 

“Serena, my baby, I love you so much.”

“Daddyyyyyyy,” she giggles into my ear. 

I almost melt then and there. I’m so happy she’s safe. 

“What are you doing home so early?” my wife asks. She brings me back to reality. I set my daughter back down on her seat at the table, and pat her on the head. She giggles again at the gesture. I walk over to the stove. 

“Kathryn, thank goodness you’re okay. There isn’t really time to explain,” I start to say. Then in a whisper, “I need to get you somewhere safe. Things have escalated.”

The change in her eyes tells me she understands the sense of urgency, but I still worry she doesn’t understand the full scale of the situation. 

“How much time do we have?” 

“Honestly, I have no idea. I just know we can’t be here. I’ll go start packing.”

I give her a peck on her cheek, when suddenly there’s a knock on the door. 

No. No, no, no, no. 

We look into each other’s eyes and I worry it’ll be for the last time. 

“Who is…” she can’t finish her sentence. The fear in my eyes is enough of an answer for her. 

“I’ll get it!” my daughter shouts behind us and jumps from her chair and the table. 

“NO!” 

We both scream at her, my wife reaching out as if to pull her into her safe embrace. The look on my daughter’s face is heartbreaking. I walk over to her and pick her up. 

“I’m sorry, baby. We didn’t mean to scare you. It’s late, and we don’t know who it could be. Let me answer the door, OK?”

She looks up at me with her big, tear-filled eyes, and slowly nods up and down. 

“Serena, you know I love you more than anything in the world, right?”

She nods at me without saying anything and nuzzles into my chest. I need to protect her; at all costs. I give her one last squeeze and set her back down on her chair. Looking over at Kathryn, we share another look of concern as the knocking continues. 

As I step away, Kathryn takes my spot next to our daughter. I give them one last look before heading down the hallway towards the door. Each step is agonizing. The fear of whatever stands beyond that door and the control it has over our fate is absolutely frightening. Finally, I reach the door and pull it up. 

“Hello, old friend,” he says to me. Despite the nighttime darkness that surrounds him, he still has a hood pulled up over his head. His eyes glowing beneath it, sends a shiver down my spine. 

“Are you here to kill us?” 

He laughs, and the sound grates against my ears like nails on a chalkboard. It’s anything but funny. 

“Now why would I do something like that?” 

“Then why the hell are you coming to my house? How did you even find it?” 

This time he just answers with a grin, and then he sniffs, like a cat, tilting his head back. He sniffs the air around us. I can see the faint outline of his nose moving up and down with each action. It’s…unsettling. 

“You should probably know that you can’t hide from me, Clayton.”

Another shiver shoots straight down my spine. This time I can’t hide it and my shoulders shake back and forth. It’s embarrassing. 

“Why haven’t you attacked us yet?” I ask. 

“I think you know why, doctor. Think back through everything you’ve heard about us over your lifetime. All the legends and stories. Why do you think I’m standing here at the foot of your threshold playing nice?”

He can’t come in. He has to be invited in. The dawning realization of that almost gives me some glimmer, some faint light, of hope. The change in my emotion must have been evident on my face, because he smiles that creepy smile again. 

“Before you think you’ll be safe for any period of time in there, we do have ways around this…inconvenience of ours. In 24-hours I can have this place surrounded, day or night, and you’ll have nowhere to go. Shortly after that, we’ll begin our work to enter your home. So I suggest you play nice, and maybe I’ll reciprocate that kindness to you and your family.”

That’s a lot to digest, and the roller coaster of emotions is starting to exhaust me. Or maybe that’s another one of his tricks that I’m not aware of. Either way, the footsteps down the hallway don’t register in my brain until the last second. 

“Do you work with my daddy?” A tiny voice breaks the silence between us. I almost jump looking down at my daughter by my side. 

Oh, God no. 

“Hello there, little one,” he says as he squats down to her height. “You must be Serena. Is that right?” 

Somehow his smile is a little less creepy to her, or maybe that’s just the angle. Serena nuzzles against me, but I can feel her slowly nod her head up and down. 

“My name is Jahkobah, but my friends call me Jahko. It’s very nice to meet you.”

“That’s a funny name,” she says with a laugh. My heart skips a beat. How will he respond to that?

“It is funny, isn’t it?” he says with a chuckle. “It’s a very old name. One that has been in my family for many, many years.”

“I like it!” she says enthusiastically. “You should come in and have dinner with us!”

My heart drops through my stomach. If what I know is true, then that means…

Jahko stands up and adjusts his clothes. He looks me in the eye, and for some reason, I can tell that nothing has changed. 

“I wish I could, little one, but that decision is left to your father,” he says while staring holes into my eyes. 

Then it clicks. 

The owner of the house must invite him in; not just anyone. A sense of relief washes over me, but his previous threat lingers in my mind. I can’t simply wait him out. Apparently, there is no waiting with him and his kind out there. I need to make a decision, and fast. One that will protect my family from any harm. 

Finally, Kathryn comes in from the other room, and places her hands on Serena’s shoulders. 

“Come on. We need to leave Daddy to talk with his friend,” she says, ushering her away. 

Kathryn looks over at Jahko during the interaction, and I can almost feel the anger and ferocity emanating off her. She’s still ignorant to what Jahko is, and I hope she doesn’t do something we can’t come back from. I stare at her, hoping to catch her eye. After a lengthy time, she turns to look at me with the same ferocity. I beg with her through my eyes to not escalate the situation and let me handle it. I can tell she wants me to act a certain way, but that might end poorly for all of us. Her and Serena move towards the kitchen and I can hear my daughter’s tiny voice bouncing off the walls away from us. 

“So, where does that leave us, Clayton?”

I turn my attention back towards him. 

“I think that question is best left for you, Jahkobah.”

His eyes flicker at the sound of his full name. My only intention is to remind him that we are not friends. 

“You’re still our best chance at curing this virus, Clayton. I have no intention of hurting you, or your family…yet. Can we please sit down and have something that resembles a civilized conversation? We aren’t animals, you know.”

If he still believes I can be helpful to him, then maybe I do have some cards to still play in this game. Time is ticking, and I can’t afford to postpone this any longer. Out of the frying pan, and into the fire as they say. I turn sideways to open a pathway into the house. 

“Jahkobah, would you please come into my home?”