The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [57]
He locked and shut the car door, activated the car alarm, zipped up his jacket, and enjoyed another drag. He took in the scene around him and the eerie strangeness he associated with it all, until the passing moments afterwards brought him away and across the corner intersection and into the direction of the curious streetside motel, which beckoned his arrival.
Max was scarcely afforded no more than a rapid rundown of reasons for the urgent summons...a murder...a missing reverend’s daughter, an unexplained link to Ralston’s Crow Job gig...each reason as insightful as a pocketful of posies tattooed upon the rubbery-white ass cheek of an alcoholic social worker. But the very fact that his police lieutenant informant and long-time friend had never been known to cry wolf with these matters was enough in itself to get Max out of bed and come running.
Just as he came running long ago, almost three decades ago, when a young Matthew’s desperate screams echoed from within the bowels of a ramshackle building condemned by both the imminent wrecking ball and the widespread rumors of a ghost child inhabiting its treacherous inner sanctum. A handful of roving children knew Max only as the s’curity man back then, but on that fateful day he became a belated savior. He was enough of a savior to come running when he did, driving away the wicked monsters young Matthew claimed to have seen moments before Max’s arrival; he was belated long enough for those same elusive terrors to seize the opportunity and steal away an even younger Nigel who lay dying in Matthew’s arms, taking him with them into a dark and timeless realm far beyond the material reaches of Max and their decadent lair.
The fate folks upstairs, as Max often later referred to them (if there were any), had initiated a web of impact and influence upon both Matthew and Max which sparked a unique closeness between the two and each of the years which followed found Max increasingly aware of the boundlessly epic saga taking place in secret all around him, a secret he found himself able to reveal in part to an older and more prepared Matthew in later years, to later still share and discover together with him.
This was an ancient saga straight from the storybook of God, who, if we all behave ourselves, may likely come down to tuck us in our beds and read it to us just before He bids the earth good night. Max was of the restlessly curious breed who simply could never stand to wait that long and who made it their quest to get their hands on an advanced copy. Even if they had to obtain it page by page. What transpired from the events that came down that day in the Fall of ‘68 was to Max, like a succession of pages from that secret saga falling from the sky, Max’s lap being the lucky recipient time and again from that day forward.
Matt McGregor, on the other hand, hadn’t quite been able to face, nor develop, an appreciation for this sort of thing until his teens, which to him was no less boring than the meaning of life...and no less feared...even though the “God’s storybook” metaphor was originally his. For awhile, what he had experienced with Nigel and the monsters that took him was a nightmare, was something he did not want answers to, had no desire to rediscover. In those days, Maxwell was like a father figure or big brother who often dropped by for family dinners or for outings with himself and Matt. In consideration for Matthew, Max managed to keep any details of his struggles for the truth surrounding Nigel to himself until later years when Matt wanted to know. Otherwise, Max shared with him as often as he could the comparatively down-to-earth exploits of a ufologist’s efforts