Sacrifices Read online

  Chapter 1 - To Trap a Demon

  April, 1981

  “God and Science are both true, but our inability to understand either fully is the basis of both our confusion and discontent. For if we truly understood and accepted where God resides, we would never doubt, never be afraid or ever feel lost, not even for a moment.” Lucille Johnson

  Born Lucille Abilene Johnson, but known to her family and friends as Cil, my Aunt Cil was an amazing woman. A dark brown-skinned woman, standing about five-foot ten, and built like an Amazon, Cil taught physics at Spelman College. Simply dressed and often stoic, she appeared monolithic to me as I grew up in her shadow like a sentry guarding the gates of Hell which, in fact, she was. As the Gatekeeper, her job was to cast demons back into their own world. Suffice it to say, Cil had her complexities and secrets, the depth of which, even today, I’m still discovering. Her detractors called her “Cil the Fanatic.” I, too, thought she was a bit intense when I was younger. Yet, the longer I live, the more like her I become.

  One day about a year before my birth, Cil was on the northern end of the Baffin Bay, Canada, right below the Arctic Circle, one hundred miles from any human life. She was digging. Seemingly mad, she landscaped and sculpted the icy terrain for some unimaginable arctic vineyard. Her six foot staff drove through the snow and ice, time and time again. And that same staff swept way the debris.

  And while she was unbothered by anything human, it was the non-humans she found to be a nuisance. That day she was literally being chased by demons. Before she could see or hear them, she knew they were there. Then, from behind her she heard, “Gatekeeper!”

  Cil turned to face her accusers saying nothing. The four arctic demons appeared before her as half man, half polar bear beasts. The biggest of them spoke again, “Are you here to banish us?”

  Cil was a beautiful woman. Statuesque and athletic, her brown skin was flawless and her beauty not fully appreciated in her time. She removed the knit covering from her mouth, revealing dark brown lips which spoke through the cutting wind a simple reply, “No.”

  The beasts, as was their nature, did not believe her. They bared their teeth. As the foursome began to circle her, Cil's gaze remained steady and straight ahead. The smallest of the behemoths spoke in agitation, “We have not tasted a human spirit in ten years and still you pursue us here?”

  Cil replied, “Truly? Might it be that it is your own past that haunts you. Surely, by now, you know that there is a price for everything. Whatever this day is, your own sad existence has led you here.”

  The biggest demon growled in disapproval and leaned in towards Cil's right side, opening his foul mouth to unleash a torrent of arctic air cold enough to freeze a normal person in seconds. Cil leapt into the air with a back flip that carried her outside of their circle of doom. In quick succession, she swung her staff into the knee of one middle-sized bear, severing its leg, and into the snout of the other bear to her left, breaking it as well. Before either hit the ground, she ran three steps and slid beneath the legs of the biggest bear and sprung up upon his shoulder, her staff pulled tight across his neck. She accomplished all of this before that largest beast could release a second breath. Within another second, his neck was snapped and he too was falling to the ice. This left the smallest demon aghast and bewildered. He turned to run but, before he could take a step, Cil's staff pierced his right hind leg felling him as well.

  She walked over to retrieve her weapon. As she removed it, she said to the departing evil spirit, “You could have just walked away. Go now and do not return.”

  It turned Cil’s stomach to let that one demon go, but it was a part of the plan. Then, she returned to her icy garden. At last, Cil completed her task and stood to survey her work. Looking around the harbor, there was no obvious purpose to Cil’s labors which is exactly as she wanted it.

  She looked over her right shoulder and called to her sister, “Deborah, can you see it?”

  The recently-wed Deborah, made herself visible and then affirmed “Yes, I can see it. But you know that little one will alert Matasis and the council that we were here digging?”

  Cil smirked for a second, “I’m counting on it.” She reflected on Rob’s death last Fall. It had brought a sense of urgency for her and her sisters. They had realized for some time that something had to be done if any of them wanted to live and raise families in some semblance of peace. Rob had kept the four of them safe all those years, moving them from place to place around the world until they were old enough to fend for themselves. Now Rob, the most daring of saints, was gone. With his death there was no turning back. This was simply the first move in a series that Cil had planned. Cil took her sister’s hand and smiled at what her handiwork revealed.