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 8

The sound of Drina’s weeping broke the stillness. Dan looked down at her as he walked into the study. The sight and sound of her pain began to shake him loose from the trance that had overtaken him when the dire dogs first moved in. He remembered everything that had just happened, but it felt almost as if someone else had done it all.

When his full reason began to return to him, Dan was almost overwhelmed by the shock of the brutality he had levied against the mastiffs, and even the house all around him. He had never thought of himself in these terms before: as some kind of a deadly threat. He had never had a reason to. Now as he watched Drina sob at the death of her friend, he realized he could be an absolute engine of destruction. He began to understand that whatever he was, it gave him a power that could be inhumanly lethal if he wasn’t careful.

What confounded him most was he didn’t know how to feel about it. Drina’s despair quickly began to chase away his own confusion, because he realized she needed help; he just wasn’t sure how to help her. What he did know was that she didn’t need to be near the macabre mess that was lying on the floor behind him.

He quickly but gently scooped her up in his powerful arms and carried her out of the house. He found a set of comfortable-looking lawn chairs next to a small table not far from the back porch. He set her down on one and then kneeled before her.

“Drina, we have to get out of here. The cops might come. Anybody might come. What do we do about these bodies? If anybody sees these dir... these dogs, what will happen?”

Drina looked into his eyes, relieved that they had stopped glowing. She gently touched his cheek and softly replied, “There you are.”

He had no response to that. She was right; he had hardly been himself in the last few minutes. He pressed: “Drina, what do you want to do? If the cops catch us here, how do we explain this?”

“They won’t come here,” she said in a faint voice.

“Magic?” he asked.

“Magic,” she confirmed.

“What do we do, then?”

In reply, she tried to get her cell phone out of her inside jacket pocket. Her hand was shaking so badly she couldn’t operate the dial function or even access her contacts. He gently took the phone from her and asked, “Who are we calling?”

She waited a long while before she could reply with a sob, “My grandmother.”

Dan understood her apprehension at the prospect of having to face her grandparent and apparent mentor after all this. The argument she had with Mama Cat this morning now seemed to make a whole lot more sense. Dan dialed the phone.

After a few moments a nasally voice answered, “Where are you?”

“This isn’t Drina, this is Dan Collins, the revenant you’ve been spying on for the last nine years. I’m here with your granddaughter at her friend E’s house. Things went south, bad. E didn’t make it. Drina needs you, now.”

* * *

Dan came into the house through the back door. He had put the crowbar back in the tool shed and hid his grandfather’s revolver there, planning to retrieve it the next day. He didn’t want to take the chance of his mother’s being awake when he came walking through the door with a crowbar in one hand and a Colt Python in another. That might be a bit difficult to explain this late at night, or any other time, for that matter.

He looked around the home, he had loved and lived in all his life and then closed the sliding glass door behind him. It was the first time he had ever felt like a stranger there, as if he didn’t belong. He stood in the kitchen gloomily looking around at the place he knew so well but was now seeing through different eyes. All his illusions of being anything akin to normal were forever shattered.

Mama Cat had appointed a Streghe named Marco to drive him here. On the way he had contemplated all that had happened today. Power-pressing the forklift at work, turning Drina’s soothstone to silver, breaking the two magical devices, utterly devastating the dire dogs, tearing E’s house apart with his bare hands. Definitely not a normal day.

He wondered with true angst if there would be a normal day ever again. He looked down at the leather jacket Marco had given him. It barely fit over his chest, and he couldn’t even zip it up. Beneath it, he was bare chested. He had been shot, mauled by giant mastiffs and assaulted by seeming black magic, and he didn’t have a scratch to show for any of it. The only loss he had suffered was the hoodie and the flannel shirt underneath it. Unless you count his peace of mind a loss.

When Mama Cat had arrived at E’s farm she had come with her several members of her coven. There had been four women and three men, counting Marco and Mama Cat herself. Once they saw what he had done to the dire dogs and E’s house, their apprehension became apparent. They had told him that E was one of their own, and they would clean up the mess. Dan had no intention of arguing.

When one of the older witches first saw the horrible mess that a dire dog had made of E, she began to cry. The coven were certainly not celebratory about his demise. It was tragedy, and they treated the affair solemnly as they covered up his remains after Mama Cat closed his eyes for the last time. She had offered some kind of prayer in Italian over his remains.

Though Dan had no idea what was said, he could recognize one word: Aradia. He vaguely remembered Drina saying it. Though she did not openly weep, Dan could see tears in her eyes. Drina had said she had known E most of her life, it was obvious that Mama Cat must have, as well.

Marco had actually expressed gratitude about putting down the dire dogs and destroying the focus. He also expressed regret about E. When it was obvious that Dan was not in the mood to talk, the Streghe wisely allowed the revenant to sit in silence during the ride home. Mama Cat had also made it clear with few words she wanted him to leave as soon as possible, and Dan made it very clear that he had no interest in staying.

He understood they had suffered a loss, but nothing that had transpired was his fault. He didn’t blame Drina, he understood her desperation to save her friend. Nonetheless, Mama Cat’s curt attitude was aggravating him, and the other Streghe knew it. They very quickly decided getting him home was the best option.

Dan wondered if he would ever see Drina again. He wondered if she would want to see him after all she had witnessed tonight. If Mama Cat had her way, most likely not. Dan didn’t blame Drina’s grandmother for being protective of her, but her sense of tact was a joke. Dan felt aggrieved by the whole situation, but the grandmother had still been rude. She might be a powerful witch, but Dan didn’t think she was a very wise one.

The thought of not seeing Drina again did disappoint him. For a single moment, tonight at Rory’s, he hadn’t felt so alone. The thought of being able to talk to another supernatural being, another night child, had felt good. Now that prospect was most likely gone.

He walked into the living room and looked down at his favorite easy chair. After he bought it, he had insisted on putting it in the same exact place where his grandfather used to sit while they watched TV together. He slumped down in it, hoping it might bring him some sense of comfort, it didn’t.

All around him the lonely darkness spread out in silence, making his beloved home seem alien to him, as if it were a place he was seeing for the first time. All his life, this place had been filled with vibrancy. Now it felt like a tomb, not because the home itself had lost any of the magic and vitality his family had given it over three generations, but because a dead man was dwelling in it.

There was a truth he had come to accept in the last hour. There was a monster in the woods tonight, but it wasn’t the dire dogs, and it wasn’t even E; it was himself. Sure, the Dire dogs were massive beasts that could kill in a moment, but they were hardly invincible. They were just animals doing what they had been trained to do. Yes, E had murdered innocent people, and he had paid a horrible price for what he had done. In the end, though, no matter how horrible E had become or how savage his dogs were, or what magic powers E was wielding, they were mortal. They had known fear, they had known pain, and they had died.

Dan didn’t seem capable of any of those things.

He knew he should feel a certain sense of grim satisfaction. He had stopped the threat the dire dogs posed not just to the pipeline workers at Beesly Point but to all of South Jersey. Despite that, he found it difficult to feel anything other than forlorn.

When Marco had expressed his gratitude on the ride home he had said Drina had showed a steel nerve and a true savvy to have recruited him. Marco had said that E was probably too far gone to save. None of that had made him feel any better, either.

Marco could not have understood, nor could Drina or, especially, Mama Cat, despite the fact they all seemed to be preternatural beings. Dan doubted anyone who still drew breath could understand. Dan looked out into the lonely darkness and found the silence to be almost unbearable. He was so used to hearing his family moving about the place, talking, living, being a family. The silent darkness around him felt unnatural but, given what he had become, it was warranted.

What would his father have thought of him if he had found out his son was undead. That his only boy, the last living heir to the Collins name, was ostensibly an unstoppable revenant beast? Would his father see him as a monster the way Drina now most likely did?

What about his grandmother, whom he had adored? Would there be a warm greeting and a hug waiting for him were she alive to discover her grandson no longer had a heartbeat? Would she recognize him at all, now given he had been so much smaller when she was alive?

What of his beloved grandfather, his mentor? When Dan thought of what it meant to be a responsible man in this world, he thought of his grandfather. What would Grandpa think if he discovered his Danny boy didn’t have a pulse and could knock down walls with no effort at all? Would the wizened, resolute eyes of the man he had respected most in this world look at him the same way?

The pain of the thought of their rejecting him overwhelmed him. He put his face in his hands. The ache of true despair began to permeate his still heart as he imagined his grandfather looking at him with revulsion. It was almost more than he could bear.

He wondered if the undead could cry.

What about his sister, what if she discovered what he had become? Would Stacy ever let an undead juggernaut near her kids again? He loved his niece and nephew dearly. If Stacy should ever discover what he was, would she be wrong to want to keep them away from him?

Worst of all, what about his mother? If she were to find out he had died all those years ago, what would that do to her? Would she see him as her son, or would she see him as some sort of horrific Doppelgänger who had taken Daniel Collin’s place? A walking mockery of the son she had loved so much.

In his despondency, Dan tuned out the world. He didn’t want to hear or see anything. He wanted to refuse his own senses, because they were no longer the perceptions of a man but those of a creature of the night.

He closed his eyes and lay back in the easy chair with a pained expression on his face. If anyone had seen him at that moment, they would have sworn that he had just died of a painful heart attack.

He didn’t want to feel anything. He started to lose himself in the darkness. He wondered if it would have been better if he had just died the way any normal person would have done.

Numb to the world, he was utterly surprised by the warm, wet sensation that suddenly stroked his hand. His eyes shot open, and he started as he looked down, and there was Chubby looking back up at him. The little dog had that grin affixed to his face that so many pug owners had come to love. They called it the pug smile. Chubby looked up at him with excited eyes, his big tongue lolling out of his little, smushed-in face.

“Chubby?” Dan said in confusion. At first it made no sense to him that the pug shouldn’t fear him, especially since it felt like the rest of the world did. Then he remembered the charm. He unzipped the pocket of his jogging pants and pulled it out. He had put it there for safekeeping after he changed his clothes earlier.

“It works,” he declared softly. Then again why wouldn’t it? Drina was obviously a powerful witch, given all he had seen tonight. He clipped the bracelet closed around his wrist. Chubby woofed at him and wagged his little donut-shaped tail enthusiastically. He reached down and picked the pug up. It immediately began to lick him excitedly.

“Okay, okay,” he said, trying to calm the dog down. All the fear Chubby had of him was obviously gone. In that moment, alone in the living room with the little dog, this simple, pleasant magical charm was nothing less than a miracle. He held Chubby in his massive arms as the enthusiastic pug tried to play with him. The shadows began to recede and Dan tried gently to keep the squirming little ball of fur under control.

Proceed to part 9...

Copyright © 2021 by John Rossi