The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [4]
Most importantly, I am impressed to add, is that significant ingredient, which makes this entire matter the head-turning, blue light special that it is. This ingredient is the fact that there is not one shred of concrete, out-in-the-open, eye-popping proof for the masses.
After a hard day of “right to know” rallies before government buildings, it’s enough to drive the more fervent believer to drink. And to make the skeptics laugh.
I stopped laughing way back; in Sunday School, in fact. Moses, Adam and Eve, baby Jesus and those silly felt board wise men the instructors displayed while all us impressionable youngsters sat littering the carpet with cookie crumbs.....somehow these stories were all missing something. I, for one, longed for yarns containing wondrous and even frightening imaginings, stories of witches in flight, of tree fairies and ghouls and giants at the end of beanstalks, of mythical lands both over the rainbow and at the center of the earth. When other kids would ask where Jesus was, I wanted to know if Bigfoot was real, whether ancient serpentine sea creatures exist in modern lakes surrounded by a populace who swears to their existence, and, of course, if physical beings exist upon other planets somewhere, out there, beyond the vastness of the outer space between our worlds.
But as I matured something struck me, an observance the clergy folk sort of overlooked among the tedious fundamentals. It was a little tidbit in Genesis chapter six concerning the “sons of God” falling from the sky and sleeping with the “daughters of men” to create races of unearthly beings. This youthful discovery marked for me the beginnings of a lifelong obsession, and I uncovered truths which proved there was more to the Genesis account than dangerous angelic liaisons.
And in plunging myself into the depths of mankind’s folklore, I found similar “sons of God” embedded within the tales and legends of cultures both familiar and ancient. In them I beheld their offspring, the very ghouls and giants and fairies of whose stories I had so passionately longed to hear.
They were everywhere, and they had been with us all along. In many different ways, doing many inconceivable deeds, in many forms.
As we take pride in the comforts of modern technology and civilized intellect, they are there to humble us with the reminder that there still exists within our culture the power of primitive folklore.
They do exist, inhabiting that point where human imagination meets that strange movement of shadow in the corners of our eyes.
I am a believer. And this, in my opinion the most rational explanation of my belief, was the course in which things were supposed to have happened. I expected everything to amount to something else, and now nothing appears to make any sense. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
But it happened for me on the evening of January second, 1995, when I awoke into nightmarish chaos; when that movement of shadow chose to step into full view and return my gaze as I turned to behold it.
Follow me now, and stay close.
I’ve something further I’d like to show you....
PROLOGUE
The Wraith-child
---1968---
The driver of the ice cream truck hadn’t expected much money changing hands, particularly with his hands, today. It was supposed to be a slow day, and kids were supposed to be in school, but this was his only income