FOR THE DAYS ARE EVIL_ Chapter Nine_ THE GIRL WITH SILVER EYES

 

"Live wisely, redeeming the time, for the days are evil." 

- Paul of Tarsus

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

Lucas swore at himself. It was his fault. He had let his mind wander down dark halls of festered memories.

The first time he'd found himself in "Hell," he had lost focus.

"Eyes blurred with the past do not see clear enough to hit the mark," his mother had warned him.

Adding, "A spear has no branches."

Moira began to whimper. 

Lucas dropped her limp body to General Donovan's smoldering carpet.

Yes, he had brought them to the general's office.

But not totally.

Outraged Time and Tide demanded their penalty for being violated.

Somehow misty after-images of Renaissance Venice billowed throughout the office.

Ghostly figures in fine robes pointed aghast at the intruding visitors from the future.

Donovan's secretary, Blanche Devereaux, screamed shrill as the carpet beneath her heels misted away into the rippling Grand Canal.

The flailing woman sank into the waters, now once again billowing fog.

Donovan sprang from his chair and reached for his secretary, 

but his fingers went right through the woman's spectral wrist.

The office resumed its normal state ... except for the gibbering Moira prone on the carpet.

General Donovan turned slowly towards him as if against pressure. 

Lucas thought it might be the pressure of choices better off not made. 

Lucas knew the feeling.

  

The general snarled, "Lucas, what the hell have you done?"

Mother once said, 

"Son, no matter how badly you have bungled affairs, never admit it to your enemies. Always thrust it back upon them. They have done worse ... and on purpose."

He forced his face to become as hard as the life into which he had been born.

"Right back at you, General. You sent a trusting subordinate after a book of the damned, and she paid the price."

At Donovan's feet, Lucas hurled the movie poster emblazoned with the girl with silver eyes holding the deadly volume.

"Now, another woman, who did not see you as you were, has paid the price for it."

"Damn you, Lucas."

"Of course, I thought you knew."

Lucas wondered if his true Hell would be to roam dark streets alongside all the people he had sent there while alive.

The hate-filled eyes of the general bored into him, and Lucas felt he would find out sooner than later.