The Seventh Seal Read Free Page B

he brought his hand back toward his face, he recognized the
odor of spray paint.  Using his sleeve as a damper on the powerful beam of the
flashlight, John aimed it up toward the top of the door.  A crude and shaky
hand had sprayed a red circle on the brick, and a five-sided star filled the
space inside.  The hair on John’s neck rose as gooseflesh broke out on his
arms.

Chapter 7
     
    John stood and slung the duffel bag around his head and over
his left shoulder to keep it from swinging into his legs.  He walked through
piles of leaves, kicking up the pungent odor of a dying autumn and forced out a
brutal sneeze that rattled his sinus cavity.  As he approached Reggie’s house,
he saw the pentagram inside the circle painted above and to the right of the
front door.  John flashed the beam toward the neighbor on Reggie’s left and saw
the same thing.  Reggie’s neighbor on his right owned a two-story colonial with
white siding, and it gleamed like weathered bone in the fading light.  John did
not see the pentagram symbol anywhere on the front of that house.  He walked onto
the colonial’s front porch.  Old, wooden planks bent under his feet and cracked
with protest as he moved toward the living-room window.  A deserted, two-person
swing squawked at him as the wind blew it in each direction.  John’s survival
instinct warned him at the same time his rational mind catalogued observations
of the house.  The glass storm door and first-floor windows of the white house
reflected the last rays of the sun.  He cupped his hands around his eyes and
peered through the living-room window.  The furniture remained upright and it
did not appear as though a struggle had ensued here as it had in Reggie’s
house.
    When the beam of the flashlight lit the face of the young
man standing in the living room, John lurched back and held the porch railing. 
The boy, sixteen at most, wore shoulder-length hair that fell in greasy
strands.  A white shirt covered his torso, with spreading circles of darkness
under his arms and neck.  His blue jeans clung to his hips, and both knees
poked through the holes.  Bare feet kept him fastened to the living-room floor.
    At first, John mistook the boy for a Halloween zombie like
those people put on their front lawn to scare kids – the decrepit Rust Belt
cities like Cleveland welcomed the opportunity to celebrate, even with the
macabre holiday of Halloween – but this boy was definitely alive.  Time passed
in awkward, loping increments.  John’s hand held the light on the boy’s face. 
The boy’s eyes reflected it back, giving him a feral quality.  With synchronized
movements, John stepped backward, toward the porch steps, as the boy advanced
toward the front door, and toward John.  In one motion, John jumped from the
top step and landed on the moist wood chips of the neighbor’s landscaping.  He
heard the tumbler of the front door and the hinges swing the door open.  A
deafening roar followed a flash of light.  John threw himself to the ground as
another blast rang his ears amidst the burning fragrance of gunpowder.  He
recognized the sound of the twelve-gauge shotgun from his time as a youth
hunter in the Pennsylvania woods.  Now another youth was doing the hunting, and
John was the prey.  John crawled through the hedgerow that separated the white
house from its neighbor, the red house.
    “Servants of the dark one suffer to the revelation!”
    John heard the words spew from the boy, but the ringing in
his ears made it difficult for him to focus on them.  He jumped up and ran down
the driveway of the red house into the backyard.  John glanced over his
shoulder and saw the boy walking toward him.  The young man did not run and he
did not stray from his course.  His bare feet sloughed forward over shards of
broken glass, penetrating his skin like miniature daggers.
    Another shotgun blast.  John heard the individual pellets
lodge in the side of the garage.  Judging from