Michael Chase stood motionless before the window in the darken room, safely out of sight of his defiant wife forcing sleeping bags into the trunk of their little car in the driveway. Pinching his blue eyes closed, he leaned against the window frame and silently reprimanded himself for not being able to convince her not to go; they had heatedly discussed this trip to examine a plot of land that her Grandmother had never mentioned, for nearly a week.
Emma never spoke of her Father’s side of the family at all. It was her one saving grace when she met his father. How his father had known of her connecting to a strange family living in southern Utah, Michael would never know, but her lack of knowledge was the only reason his father had even considered giving him permission to marry her. Of course he too had to promise to ensure she never found the secret.
It was a promise that had carried them back and forth across the United States, to seven different locations, ten different job position, and dozens of different homes. Even through the birth of four children … the first three in rapid succession and then Jason three years later. With the exception of a few must returns: the death of her mother, and then a dear Aunt a few years later, he had managed to keep Emma out of Utah for nearly twenty years.
Where had he gone wrong? How could he have known a simple moving truck repair would leave him jobless in Salt Lake City. Shaking his head he reminded himself; it wasn’t the moving trucks repairs that had cost him his job, actually it hadn’t cost him anything he had merely been notified that the Hotel deal his company had in the works had fallen through, taking his position with it ... Oh but there was a light at the end of the tunnel; they could find him a position there in Salt Lake. There, where he really didn’t want to be, furthermore his family was homeless. The money he had deposited on a new home in Reno, had left them with little in the bank, and was going to take months to retrieve. He was grateful when Beth; Emma’s younger sister, offered to move into her own basement in order to make enough room for his family on their main floor. Then the job crunch came along and Rob her husband lost his construction job. Overnight he had become the sole bread winner in the house.
Spring brought new job prospects, and few more coins in his pocket. Allowing the innocent trip to a local swap meet, where a precariously placed china plate caught her attention and before he knew it she is the proud owner of a set of chine dishes she insisted would match the one they had packed all over the country. The set of dishes they had feasted on their first year of marriage, but had been carefully tucked away when money became more available. He knew she clung to them for memories, but thought they were their memories of a year spent without children. Never had he heard the story of the china’s journey to this country, until she compared the two sets. Suddenly he was sick to his stomach thinking how he had carried the catalyst with him the whole time.
When she discovered the envelope marked; return for reward, at the bottom of the crate, he hoped it would include returning the dishes. But he should have known better. His father’s stern warning echoed in his head for hours when she returned from the Attorney’s office declaring she had just inherited land in southern Utah.
That twenty year old warning had returned to haunt him. “Keep her out of Utah son or run the risk of her discovering her true destiny.” He had not seen his father’s eye’s glow with such intense hatred, since he would sit at the edge of his bed reciting the dark story of the legend to him as a goodnight story. A nightmare was what it really was. Perhaps it was more in his father’s head than in real life. Because when Mike attended school in Southern Utah, the family members he had met that recalled it; looked upon it more as a myth or made up legend than the reality his father had always placed upon it.
Glancing back out the window, he pondered why he had never told her of the story. Now it was too late. Now she would think him crazy, manipulative, a poor loser. And a loser he surely was to come, for if the demons were real; it was his promise to father that he would put a stop to it; to her if need be, before the world was lost forever.