After the prayer circle, Erik and Dovecrest headed off towards the altar while Mark went into town where he was more likely to confront the demon. It would probably head there next. They hoped to drive it back to the altar before dark.
“I’m worried about Vickie, though,” Erik said as he and Dovecrest walked through the woods.
“She’ll be fine,” the Indian said. “We need to finish this up quickly so you can get back to her.”
“Yeah.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes. The position of the altar was so obvious to Erik now that he wondered how he ever could have not known about it. The thing resonated evil.
“I’m just not sure about one thing,” Erik said.
“What’s that?”
“How did this…thing…get here in the first place?”
Dovecrest didn’t say anything for a few moments, and Erik thought he wasn’t going to answer him. Then he replied.
“Demons are really nothing more than human sins in the flesh,” he said finally. “This one calls itself ‘Wrath.’ It has always existed, as long as there has been sin. These demon worshippers from early times merely woke the thing up by worshipping it. They woke it up and brought it here in the flesh, instead of just in the spirit.”
“So this thing is the personification of wrath?”
“Pretty much. We burned the devil worshippers at the stake. That was the colonists’ idea. That’s how they dealt with witchcraft. So when the cult leader was killed, he placed a curse on the land so this demon would get brought back again the first time someone disturbed his spirit.
“It’s been my job to keep watch all of these years. I’m surprised it took so long, actually. I’d just about given up and thought the demon was trapped permanently on the other side. I should have been more prepared.”
“It’s easy to get complacent,” Erik said. “My son tried to warn me. I wouldn’t listen. It’s just that, this is the modern world. You just don’t think about things like this as being real.”
They were almost at the altar now. The thing seemed much closer than it was before.
“I told you it moves,” Dovecrest said, as if reading his mind.
“So what exactly do we do at the altar?”
“We wait. When it comes back and goes through the portal, we follow it in.”
“That’s if it doesn’t kill us first.”
“Don’t worry. If Mark does his job, we will be the least of its concerns. It won’t pay any attention to us. You do realize that the Great Spirit is more powerful than the devil.”
“Of course. But that’s not to say that the ‘Great Spirit’ won’t lose a few troops along the way.”
Then they broke through the trees and into the field where the altar stood at the center. It was the same field, but Erik knew it was in a different place.
“We need to stay out of the way, but as close to this thing as we can get,” Dovecrest said.
He skirted the edges of the field and found a secluded spot behind a large oak tree.
“This looks good,” he said. “We might as well get comfortable.”
Erik sat down on the ground and tried not to think about the last time he’d been here, and the carnage that had ensued.