The Adventures of Dead Dan: The Old Religion

by John Rossi

Table of Contents, parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

part 7

E screamed as he ducked, and his last living mastiff soared past him haplessly. It hit the kitchen wall with such force that it went right through it. E stood up and looked through the second gaping hole Dan had opened up in his home, and his last mastiff went limping off down the hall towards the master bedroom as fast as its now injured leg could carry it. It yelped in terrified agony as it retreated.

Dan reached down and picked up his crowbar.

E whirled around, realizing that he had only one more chance to stop this undead monstrosity from tearing him limb from limb. He held up a focus made of a mummified wolf’s paw. Through it, he concentrated all his hate and fury at what Dan had done to his totem animals.

The spiritual essence of the focus lashed out with savage, primal fury. The primordial energy that shot forth from the magical artifact looked like whirling red tendrils that intertwined into a tornadic like crimson funnel that shot out right at Dan’s face.

Its power was meant to assail the sanity of any being it hit with a horrifying assault of psychological pain. That power could call on the ancient, instinctive fear that all humans had of the unknown, and their fear of all that is most savage in nature. It would have shredded the lucidity of any human being it touched. It was truly a cruel weapon in the hands of a cruel Streghe.

Its crimson lashes got about six inches from Dan’s face and began to vanish without ever touching him. E looked on in helpless fear and Drina glared in stupefied awe when Dan proved invulnerable to even mystical attacks.

E dropped the focus from his trembling hand when he realized he did not possess the power to stop the revenant. “What are you?!” E screamed in impotent rage.

Dan’s response was to raise the crowbar and start to come at him.

E cowered in fear, crumpled up into a ball and covered his head as he began to scream in abject terror.

Showing her boundless courage, Drina jumped in front of Dan with her hands out. “Stop!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

Dan did, but he kept glaring at the now cowed E with murderous fury evident in his argent, glowering eyes.

“Dan,” she yelled as she boldly waved her hands frantically in front of his face, praying that her goddess was with her in her moment of need. He finally looked at her, but his expression was almost vacant except for the rage in his eyes.

“Dan,” she repeated desperately, “you have to listen to me. Remember what we came here for: the skull! We just have destroy the skull!”

E looked up at the mention of the focus. Seeing that Drina had distracted the revenant E suddenly got up as fast he could and bolted down the hall where his last dire dog had run off.

Dan moved after him, raising the crowbar, but Drina wrapped her arms around his massive chest. “No!” she screamed. “You can’t hurt him!”

She knew only too well after witnessing his herculean strength that if he so much as flexed he might break her arms. She looked up into his shining, sterling eyes to find them staring back at her with that simmering, argent fury. But he stopped. He stood so still as she looked up at him it was like staring at a menacing, alabaster statue.

E all but flew down the stairs and, when he got into his sanctum below, he closed and locked the door and then started to pile furniture in front of it.

Drina knew where E had gone, since she had been coming to his home for years, and she knew there was nothing E could do to keep Dan out of his ritual chamber if the revenant wanted in.

She continued to look up at Dan as a smothering, eerie silence settled over them. She waited for him to yell at her, to push her away, or to even just move a massive muscle. She waited for him to do anything, but he wouldn’t. He just towered over her, glaring down at her, an ivory juggernaut of implacable silence.

Slowly she released her grip from his torso and moved away from him holding up her hands to plead with him not to move. All he did was just watch her, never taking his eyes off her. She was terrified and fascinated all at the same time. She gently stepped back towards him and waved her hand in front of his face. He didn’t blink, his only reaction was to watch her move.

“Where are you?” she whispered. “What’s come over you?”

There was no answer, just an angry, silent glare.

Suddenly the last dire dog whined from somewhere in the bedroom. He immediately reacted raising his crowbar, but Drina screamed at him again, and he stopped.

“Listen to me Dan, just listen!” Drina pled. “There is nothing here that can hurt you. E can’t hurt you, and his mastiff can’t hurt you. You are the one with all the power here right now. All we need to do is destroy the skull, okay?”

She slowly reached out and grabbed the crowbar. She knew trying to take it from his grasp was nothing less than moronic insanity. “You don’t need this. There’s nothing here you can’t destroy with just your fists.”

She tried to take it but he didn’t budge, or even flinch. “Please, Dan; E can’t hurt you. He threw everything he had at you and he can’t even scratch you. Please,” she implored.

He looked down at her and finally reacted. A look of grim dissatisfaction filled his face, but he let go of the crowbar.

“Oh thank Aradia,” she declared.

If that meant anything to Dan, he didn’t show it.

Drina slowly and carefully reached out towards the gun on his hip and tried to take it, but now he stopped her and shook his head no.

“Please!” she pleaded practically in tears.

Her turmoil seemed to have an effect on him. He reached down and pulled the revolver out. With one hand he opened up the cylinder and then with his other hand he ejected the rounds from the gun onto the floor. He then replaced the gun in the holster.

Suddenly Drina realized what was going on. He had told her in the car the gun belonged to his grandfather, and that might be why he wouldn’t give it up. She prayed that was the reason, because if it was, Dan was showing he could still reason despite this dangerous trance he seemed to be in.

“Just the skull,” she reiterated again.

Dan startled her when he finally moved. It was like watching a statue walk off its pedestal. He moved past her like an ivory tank set on his goals and woe betide anything crazy enough to get in the way.

She moved to follow behind him, but he turned around and stopped her. Then he shook his head “no” and gently nudged her back. He then stopped moving. It became clear he would not move if she followed.

Realizing that arguing with an obstinate, three-hundred pound, unstoppable revenant was just lunacy, Drina repeated: “Just the skull.” A moment of unbearable tension passed as she waited for him to react. She knew if he refused to cooperate, E was almost certainly dead. Finally, he nodded just once, turned and proceeded down the stairs. She gasped in relief.

Dan didn’t bother to stop when he got to the door at the bottom of the stairs, he just knocked it down. The door pushed the chairs and the cabinet E had put in front of it out of the way. What furniture didn’t move out of the way when Dan walked into the room he just swatted aside.

The basement room was replete with ritual paraphernalia of all kinds. There was a whole bookshelf dedicated to occult works, both popular and obscure. Another whole set of shelves brimming with all kinds of strange ingredients and herbs. Tapestries adorned the wall depicting Roman, Greek and Etruscan mythological scenes from various works of history. In the center of the floor not far from Dan there was a verver-like painting on the ground depicting a symbol Dan wouldn’t have recognized even if he had been in his right mind.

E was standing behind a large armchair near the far wall, seemingly hiding. Only his upper shoulders and head where visible but, the moment he stepped out from behind the chair, Dan became aware of the danger. Because Drina had set him off his guard, he couldn’t react quickly enough to do anything about it. E raised an old, double-barreled, ten-gauge shotgun and summarily gave Dan both barrels all at once.

The recoil that followed the ear-pounding explosion was so great it threw E back into the wall behind him. He fell to floor, unable to keep his balance. He hadn’t fired a gun in years and was not ready for the bone-jarring recoil of the old but perfectly functional gun. The blast hit Dan square in the upper chest.

Drina immediately appeared at the top of the stairs and then ran down to see what had happened. She saw E lying on the floor with the smoking shotgun still clutched in his hands. She could see that Dan’s sweater and the shirt beneath it had been blown clean off his powerfully muscled form. On his back, she could clearly see the scars from the bullet wounds that had killed him almost ten years ago.

Dan looked down at his chest to see that all he had to show for the point-blank blast was the loss of his shirt and sweater. Drina and E looked on as he flexed his arms, scanning himself for any damage the shotgun might have afflicted. The black jogging pants he now wore sported a couple of small holes, but other than that, nothing.

Despite the fact that she knew she shouldn’t be surprised Drina still couldn’t wholly contain her shock. At this point, E just gave up. He was beaten. He dropped the shotgun and looked up at Dan with a slack jaw and a glassy stare.

Dan’s eye’s began to glow, and he growled and began to lumber at E, who shrieked in terror. Counting on the expectation that Dan wouldn’t hurt her, Drina did the insane thing and leapt on his back.

Now Dan was truly furious at her continued interference. Unwilling to risk hurting her, he displayed his rage by stomping on the ground and roaring so loudly that E broke into tears, and Drina almost let go. His foot drove a hole right through the concrete foundation of the house nearly a foot deep and, just by flexing in anger, he nearly threw her right off.

She knew exactly where the skull was and, from his back she pointed wildly at it. “There, Dan, there it is!”

He looked over and saw the Dire Wolf Skull on a table, atop a wooden platter covered with an ornate glass top with a bronze-colored handle.

He looked down at the cowering E, he looked over at the skull, and then gently but forcefully lifted Drina off his back. He put her down and then strode over to the skull.

E finally got back up to his feet and began to scream, “Nooooooo!”

Dan swatted the glass top into a thousand pieces, picked up the skull with a furious expression on his face, and turned towards E, holding it out before him. Then, before both their eyes, he crushed it in his bare hands. It suddenly began to decay as though the fossil were still made of bone. Finally it disintegrated, leaving just a dark poof of soot where it once existed in Dan’s hands.

Drina and E collapsed to the ground as the sound of a wolf howling in pain and fury permeated the room so loudly that it shook the foundation of the house. The spirit of the focus cried out in its death throes for a single, earsplitting, horrifying moment, and then it was gone.

Dan looked around with a grim understanding of what had just happened. Drina was on her knees, holding her ears when she looked up. When she realized the focus had been truly destroyed she nearly collapsed to the ground in exhaustion.

E looked up at the beast that had decimated the source of his power. He ran out of the basement and back up the stairs, screaming in frantic panic. Dan watched him go without a word. Drina only looked up as he passed. All her strength was drained by dealing with the truth she had discovered about her old friend, and witnessing Dan’s terrifying power.

She looked up at the revenant before her, unable to equate this undead juggernaut with the seemingly mild-mannered forklift operator she had brought here tonight. He looked down at her with a grim determination, but still maintaining his unsettling, eerie salience. She contemplated how utterly dangerous he really was.

He looked human. He moved among mortals and they might at worst mistake him for a goth enthusiast, given his pale complexion. All the while, they never knew what truly walked among them. If Dan grew angry, if he flexed his muscles and displayed his ostensibly unstoppable might, what could they do? What would the police do when the realized their guns were useless? What would the authorities do when they realized that a hundred men might not be able to overpower him? What would the world do when he ripped through their world as he might rip through paper? What would humanity ever do if they realized that even concrete walls might not be able to keep them from safe from the argent ire of this pale, undead titan?

If humanity ever realized what he was, and what he could do, it would be war. They would need to bring in the tanks, and even then they had to hope that it would be enough. What’s more, if Dan was this powerful and he was just born tonight almost a decade ago, what about his ancient elders?

Suddenly The Silence of Night made a whole lot more sense. What Drina truly wondered was: did the Silence serve to protect the Children of Night from humanity, or humanity form the Tribe of the Dead?

Her contemplation of the terrible truths the night hid from humanity were ripped away by the sudden sound of ferocious savagery from upstairs. The house seemed to rumble with violence as a struggle ensued. They heard E scream in horrified anguish and the sound of his last mastiff roaring in primal fury.

Drina suddenly realized that, with the destruction of the focus, E might have lost control over his last beast. Her fear returned her strength, and she bounded up the stairs. Dan moved behind her with such dexterity that she barely even heard him.

She quickly went to where she thought the sounds had emanated from, the master bedroom. She looked in and let loose an ear-piercing scream, which was filled with sound of disbelieving horror and pained revulsion at what she saw. The life had already left E’s eyes. The now berserk beast on top of his corpse was still ripping his savaged body apart. The damage was so grisly that his chest cavity had been ripped wide open. She could see his now still heart exposed. Only one, torn lung even remained in his chest, the mastiff was shredding the other one with its giant fangs. There was so much blood that the floor had turned crimson.

She couldn’t take it. She turned away into the study directly across the hall and collapsed shrieking onto the floor. Dan quickly moved on the mastiff. Realizing the threat, the great beast looked up. The last thing it ever saw was Dan’s fist. It gave out a yelp that bore an unbearable finality, and then for a moment the house seemed to fill with a dreadful silence.

Proceed to part 8...

Copyright © 2021 by John Rossi