Preview Mask of Evil

CHAPTER 1
I am naked, cold and wet, where am I and who am I?

The road was wet and the rain was still pouring down on the car as the young blond nurse Eva Torres, was returning back home after doing a twelve hour shift at the hospital. Eva had been driving for half an hour, she sipped the cup of coffee she had at the side, as the lively music played in her car. She wanted to get home soon and she just wanted to rest.She was tired after all the cases she attended to that day which seemed like it would never end. The one delivery case that she could not get out of her mind was the young pregnant mother who gave birth to an unusual looking baby. The child seemed like a cross between a human and an extra-terrestrial.The newborn baby had deep green coloured skin, with strange looking almost elfin features, with unnaturally large pointed ears.I thought the baby even smiled at me, thought Eva amused.She suddenly saw a large flash of lightning, which was followed by a loud explosion. It was then that she saw something on the road which made her freeze.What was that mound in the middle of the road?It was moving. The car was getting closer.The person, it looked like a man, he was right in the middle of the highway.Eva had to stop, she could not avoid him. She was going to stop the car and phone the hospital, she had to help this poor man.Eva gets out of the car, it is still raining heavily. The rain beats down rhythmically onto the road, the car and on the two people in the middle of the road.She hears the flapping of wings, she looks up and she gets startled as a large bird or bat-like creature flies closely past her almost hitting her across the face with its large wings.She walks up to the man, who looks unconscious. "Hello, can you hear me?" she asks him."Yes, yes, I can hear you, please help me," he says."Can you walk?", Eva asks him.She looks at him and notices that he is bruised on his face and severely injured on his shoulders. He can barely move his legs. He must have bruised his legs as well from the impact of the fall. It was as if the man was just thrown out onto the highway or like he was just thrown to Earth.Eva tried to phone on her mobile, but she could not get connected to the hospital. "It must be the rain, which has even spoiled my phone. I cannot ring the hospital.""Please don't take me to the hospital," he told her."But, you need someone to look at your wounds, let me get you out of the rain."He put his arm around her neck, as she helped him onto his feet. He struggled to get up. They moved slowly towards the car.Eva could see that the man was weak, he was muscular and about six feet tall, naked, with water dripping off his body like waves.The sound of police sirens could be heard in the distance, gradually getting nearer.The police were on their way she thought to herself or on some other police business."Lady, please get me out of here soon, there will be too many explanations needed, if I am still here.""Okay," said Eva, as she closed the doors of the car and drove away just in time before the police cars arrived at the scene of the stranger's arrival.She handed the wounded stranger a long coat and a thick blanket she kept in the car, to cover and dry his body. He does not remember who he is. He looks like a lost child. He is lost in the woods and he needs to find his way out, she thought to herself.


Back home, a big brown friendly cocker spaniel comes to meet Eva and her guest at the door. The dog is friendly. Eva makes the tall stranger lie down on the sofa in the living room. She attends to the stranger, cleaning his wounds. She gives him a set of clothes to wear, her father's clothes, which she never got rid of after he passed away two years ago. She showed the stranger to the bathroom where he could bathe and slip into a change of clothes. The clothes she kept of her father's were just reminders of him, the care and concern he had for her, for all the years of her life. It was just her way of holding on to the memory of her dear father. He brought her up single-handedly, after her mother walked out of the door when she was six and never returned. Her father was a dedicated police officer, and so he would get into a lot of close calls while he was doing his job. It was Eva who would take care of him when he returned home and she would nurse him back to health. She liked taking care of people, which was the main reason that she became a nurse, as well as the added bonus of watching injured and broken people heal and get back on their feet once again, ready to take on the world."What's your name, stranger? My name is Eva"."I can't remember.""We'll call you Henry for now," said Eva with a smile. Eva still wore her nurse's uniform, she had no time to change attending to Henry, this man somehow mattered to her she felt.There was a knock on the door. The dog is the first to rush to the door barking. The rain had not yet lessened, it was still raining heavily, with flashes of lightning lighting up the summer sky, like a fireworks display."I wonder who that could be?" said Eva walking towards the door.She turned to Henry and said, "We'll just say that you are my cousin Henry who is visiting me from out of town.""Hi, Olivia," said Eva opening the door to see her neighbour standing in the rain with a pink umbrella and with a pack of food in her hand. It was common for Olivia the nice Swedish neighbour to visit during the evenings to have dinner with Eva. Olivia had made this a habit over the last few months.  "Hi Eva who is your friend? Will you not introduce me?" says the pretty blond girl."I'm sorry, Olivia meet my cousin Henry," said Eva turning to the wounded man lying on the sofa, "He had an accident, when he went for a walk to the park this evening. He lost his way coming back home and slipped into a ditch in the pouring rain. I was really shocked to see Henry walking back in the rain, when I was returning from work. We need to get you a mobile phone, so that you can contact me if you are in trouble, Henry", said Eva turning to the injured man on the sofa."I'm Olivia and I'm pleased to meet you. I come back home early from work. I work in the primary school down the road," says the tall young Swedish girl, "would you like a bowl of soup?", she asks the stranger."Yes, I would. That's a good idea.""Henry, just rest here a while and we will get some dinner ready. I will go and change out of these wet clothes," said Eva switching on the television. The news was on."Henry, that's a nice name, you look a lot like that actor who acted as Superman a few years ago," said Olivia with a warm smile, as she sat on the sofa opposite Henry and opened a packet of sandwiches which she offered Henry.Henry was famished and he greedily started to eat the sandwiches as if he had not eaten in days.
Olivia leaves the home of Eva and as she walks into the car, her mobile phone rings."Yes," she says, "the Eagle has landed and he is being cared for by Eva."She listens to the voice at the other end of the phone, nods her head and says seriously, "Yes, we will wait a few days...yes, I will be careful."


That night Henry is cold as he lies on the sofa in Eva's living room.Henry is passing in and out of consciousness. He looks out of the window which is illuminated by the light of the moon and the lightning and he suddenly sees a shadowy figure possibly that of a woman looking in through the window. But he thinks it must be his imagination and his fevered brain which is causing him to see things.The nurse looks at Henry lying on the sofa and sees him shivering.Eva decides to keep him warm. She does not know this man but somehow, she seems to trust him and she has a feeling that they share a connection. Eva is a good judge of character, especially after twenty years of working in the hospital and coming into contact with people from all walks of life. Eva sensed that this man she had saved that night was a special person.Eva lies down beside Henry to warm his cold body, as they lie together on the sofa.

The next day Eva goes to work at the hospital. Henry leaves the home with the pet dog on a leash.He walks into a park. He observes the children playing, the joggers exercising around the park, the other dog owners walking their dogs through the beautiful green park. There is peace and contentment in the air.Henry smiles to himself.He has so many questions. Who is he and why is he here? All this does not seem familiar to him. This world is quite different from the one which he has left, he thinks to himself. However, he still does not remember who he is and where he has come from. He looks again at the strange marks at the center of both palms of his hands. The symbols resemble flames, they are unusual, he had tried to rub the prints off but these marks seem determined to stay on his body.He remembers having seen other strange markings on his body.Some of the markings resemble objects like there is one of a rod, a cloak and round circles.Maybe these are his birthmarks or the shadows of tattoos he had removed years ago.He looks at his watch and notices that time has flown while he was lost in his silent reverie, only interrupted by the sounds of children playing happily in the park and the sounds of dogs barking as they scamper around playfully, happy to be out in the open once again.The dog walks him back home. It was a case of the dog leading the owner back home.



Henry continued to stay with Eva. She was a very kind hostess.It was Eva's day off on Saturday, so she decided to take Henry to the local market to do shopping and to see a movie before returning home."Henry, what would you like to have for dinner tonight," said Eva with a smile as they moved the trolley down the shopping aisle."I enjoy your spaghetti dish," said Henry. "Yes, I'll make that for tonight," said Eva. She was happy that the two of them got on so well together. She had had previous relationships which ended badly for her."Hi, Eva, how are you and who is your friend?" said a petite young brunette, who was also doing her shopping."This is Henry. Henry meet Sandy, she and I would work together at the local Cafe, the Golden Spoon.""Hi Henry, I'm pleased to meet you," said Sandy."What have you been up to Sandy? Are you still at the Cafe?", said Eva."Yes, I'm still working there. Are you working anywhere Henry? We need someone to work at the Cafe. You remember the lazy lout who worked at the cafe? You may remember him, it was Jim who left last week.""Thanks, Sandy, yes, a job would be great," said Henry."I'll bring Henry over to the Cafe on my way to work," said Eva."Catch up with you later," said Sandy as she moved away with her shopping trolley.

That night as Henry was getting ready to go to sleep, he saw a shadowy figure standing near the front of the house.He looked again and there was no one there.














Henry gets a job working at the Golden Spoon Cafe. He has to serve tea and coffee to customers, as well as prepare breakfast in the kitchen.There are three other people working in the Cafe with Henry.Two of the staff members Alicia and Sandy agree with Henry and show him the ropes of working in the Cafe. It is the Cafe Manager Jake who seems to have an issue with Henry."Hey Henry" says Jake the Manager who is stocking the fridge with soft drinks, "would you take the garbage bags out from the kitchen, they have been there for the last hour?""Yes, Jake, I'll do it now.""Then you need to clean the windows, which are really looking filthy after the rain and storm we had here last week," said Jake gruffly."But, Jake, I wiped all the windows last evening," said Sandy."Yes you did and that does not change the fact that it rained again last night and more dirt has stuck to the glass," said Jake in an angry tone of voice."I'll do that Jake," said Henry taking out the trash bags through the large blue door in the kitchen leading out to the back of the cafe, where the garbage vats were lined up.After disposing of the five large bags, Henry took up a bucket and filled it with water and started to clean the windows of the old place.The windows were wiped the previous evening by Sandy, Jake thought to himself and here he was re-cleaning the windows, maybe Jake wanted the windows to become sunlight reflectors or perhaps he did not like the fact that Alicia and Sandy got on so well with him.Then yet again, according to what Alicia had told him, it seemed that Jake and Eva were an item a couple of years ago and he did not like it when she broke up with him, due to his alcoholism.Jake was a violent man and he had also been in prison for six months for assaulting a customer who questioned him about an item on the day's menu. It seemed that the customer told him that the breakfast served that morning was stale and the two fried eggs were cold.No one wanted to get on the wrong side of Jake. He was a stocky man about six feet four inches and looked like a lumberjack, with his broad chest and large hands. The man would have been more comfortable chopping wood than serving breakfast at the Cafe.No one wanted to annoy Jake, especially when Jake did not like you or when he was jealous of the man he had just employed who was living with his ex-girlfriend. Jake was now having an affair with Sandy but he never got over Eva.


On his way to work one morning Henry saw a poster of a missing person. A person was abducted and the posters can be seen all around the town. "Man carried away by Raven," was the title of the poster, with a photo of the man, whose name was Brad Fergus. Brad was a slim bespectacled man, who must have been feather-weight to get carried off by a bird, even a large one.Eyewitnesses say that they saw a large raven carry away the person.It was not a hoax as Alicia, the forty something woman, who worked at the Cafe, knew the man's sister Julie who worked at the hairdresser on Brite street. "Brad worked in the Post Office," said Alicia, he was walking back home on Saturday evening, when Margery saw him being attacked by two large raven looking birds and one of the birds carried poor Brad off, as he screamed for help.""Wasn't there anyone else around who could have helped him?" asked Sandy."Everyone must have been enjoying Saturday evening at the local club," said Jake gruffly, as he walked into the room.The world was a strange place thought Henry to himself. Nothing could be stranger than the fact that he suddenly appeared on the highway and he was lucky that Eva was driving back home after work and spotted him and came to his aid.



Henry was cleaning the windows of the cafe, when suddenly everything blacked out and he could not move. This was now becoming a frequent occurrence. Henry cannot work as he seems to suddenly go into a trance-like state without any warning signs when it is about to occur.The trance states come and go quite frequently. Jake did not like this and he started complaining to Eva when she reached Henry at work the next morning."Our man Henry here, goes into a daze and watches the planets," said Jake, "He will have to leave if this continues, Eva. I only gave this Joker a job because I know you.""Just keep him for a few more days, till I get him another job. I am sure that he has been through a lot and his mind needs to heal. His body healed but his mind needs more time," said Eva forcefully, as she dropped Henry off at the Cafe and carried on to her job at the hospital.



It is now three months since Henry has been living in this quiet Town of Quakenville with Eva and working at the local Cafe. Henry does work, but not all the time. It seems that he gets distracted and is lost in his own world. This has been an issue with Jake the owner of the place. Eva is always given an earful, when she comes to reach Henry to work every morning.A lady keeps watching Henry as he sits in a trance looking at the skies. She watches from her black car. She is a pretty looking woman, with her long flowing black hair and penetrating gaze. She seems to know something about Henry as she watches him intently. The lady in the car does not notice a policeman walk up to the car."Miss would you move your car please, this is not a spot to park.""Sorry, Officer," says the young woman as she drives her car away. As the car passes the Cafe, she cannot help but look once more at Henry with concern.



Eva collects Henry in the evening on her way back home. Eva is tired after her day at work and does not notice an animal cross her path. As Eva hits hard on the brakes at the last minute, the car skids and moves to the side of the road."Eva, are you okay?," asks Henry who is sitting in the front seat."I'm fine," says Eva, "Just a bit shaken. I did not see that fox cross my path earlier, until the last second. I definitely need a cup of coffee."Eva gets the car back on the road and drives back home. In the distance the car can be seen.The mysterious lady follows them back home in her car. She parks her car behind bushes and sits in the car for awhile.
 Later that evening after Eva has gone to bed. The lady with the dark hair and an air of mystery about her walks to the window of the house. She looks in and she observes Henry sketching images on sheets of paper. He seems to be doing it all while he is in a trance. The lady goes to the side of the house, where there is an open window.The room is in darkness only lit by the light of the moon. She sees a desk near the window, with a number of papers of sketches done by Henry. She crawls into the room through the window and picks up a stack of these sketches. She climbs out of the window just in time, before Henry walks into the room and switches on the lights and places his fresh stack of paper with sketches on the desk, closes the open window and goes up to the bedroom. He snuggles into bed with Eva who is already asleep. Eva wakes up and they make love before cuddling up together and falling into a deep sleep together.

The next morning as Eva goes to the desk to pick up her file for work, she notices a pile of sketches done by Henry the previous night."Henry you did some more sketches last night," asked Eva."I really don’t remember, are they any good?" asks Henry.Henry has no memory of all the sketches which he has created."Yes, some of them look good, they are filled with a lot of signs and symbols. These ones here have illustrations of swords and winged bats. I wonder what all these strange designs symbolise? Perhaps we could also have an exhibition of your sketches someday" asks Eva."My drawings aren't that good. I've no idea what they all mean darling. Maybe we should show it to an expert.""Yes, I could do that, we have a consultant Psychologist, Doctor Charles Hawes who visits the hospital twice a month. I will take a few of these and show it to him," says Eva, putting the ten or twelve drawings into her work folder. They drive off to work.


A few days later Henry loses his job at the Diner. Henry is depressed and confused with his life. Eva is worried about him. One day Eva comes back home from shopping to find that he is not at home. Henry walked out of the house that day. Eva takes the car and asks one of the neighbours an old lady called Rose if she saw him leave as she did her gardening."Yes, I did see Henry walking by, he seemed to be in his own world and did not notice me. He could have gone to the beach," said Rose. Eva goes to the harbour and finds Henry sitting at the edge of the jetty, with no memory as to how he got there.

Henry keeps getting more and more depressed. Henry starts getting irritable and angry just staying at home. He tells Eva that he somehow feels imprisoned and that he needs to find his purpose. He feels that he is wasting his life.Eva is worried that something has happened to Henry. She has fallen in love with him and wants to help him to discover his identity. Eva decides that it is about time, that she gets a detective to find out who Henry is and where he has come from. Eva had checked the news reports and the web to find out if Henry was in any photographs as a missing person. She was unsuccessful.

Henry took the dog out for a walk on a Saturday afternoon. The dog returned home, still on his leash, but without Henry.Later that day Henry is dropped off at Eva's door. She hears a knock on the door and sees Henry standing at the doorway with a blank expression on his face. She sees a black car drive away. Eva wonders to herself why the stranger who brought Henry back home did not wait to be thanked. She was getting worried and was about to take the car out again and check the park and the cafes near the beach.



Henry takes the dog out for a walk when it is just turning to dusk. On his way back home, he suddenly hears a growl behind him. A wolf-like animal starts to chase Henry down the road.The wolf is hot on their heels. Henry and the cocker spaniel run for their lives.Henry and Benji just run into the gates leading into the house and shut the door, both shaking and scared from the experience.Henry looks around and he is surprised to see that there is no one behind him. There is no wolf, there is no such animal or was it just his vivid imagination?"Benji, did you see the animal chasing us?" asks Henry, "Of course you can't tell me, you are just a dog," says Henry with a smile.As Henry shuts the door and walks into the room he gets a horrible smell in the air.He moves to where the scent is coming from and is shocked to find three dead rabbits, butchered and bloodied at the center of the living room.He has to clean up the mess before Eva returns from work.He does not want to scare Eva about all these strange and scary occurrences he has been experiencing.He may need to leave the house and stay somewhere else.Henry does not want to put Eva in any danger, from anything coming after him from his past.He only wishes he knew who he was and who was coming after him?














It is early evening, it is dark outside. Henry is sitting at the large windows overlooking the garden. The lights are off in the room. There is a small dim light shining over the sketch book, in which he is doing his sketches. He ran out of loose sheets of paper, so Eva got him a proper sketch book. Henry's trance-like state is broken when he suddenly catches a glimpse of three shadowy figures opening the gate and creeping along the garden. The sprinklers in the garden have come on automatically.Two of the figures move towards the front door. He can now hear them trying to force the door open with a key. The door knob keeps moving as they try to break in. The other burglar is opening the window at the side of the house. The street lights are a couple of meters away from the house, so the area in front is dark. It was almost impossible to enter the home from the back, as there was a dense growth of vegetation, on the other side of the backyard.Henry is now worried, what should he do if they enter? He is not armed.He has nothing to defend himself. It would be foolish to approach the men without any form of weapon in hand. Henry is now more nervous than afraid. He is undecided about how to handle this situation and how to react to these intruders entering his home.Henry drops the stack of papers which he has on his desk while going for his mobile phone, to phone the police, when he notices something strange. It seems that the drawings which he has done on the blank sheets of paper come alive. The cube which he had drawn comes out of the paper in a three-dimensional form and grows larger and larger surrounding him. It seems that the crooks are not successful in opening the door to the house, so they decide to break the glass section of the door, in order to enter.As the glass gets pounded from the outside, Henry decides to phone the police or just raise an alarm.Henry will use the element of surprise on the criminals.He switches on all the lights in the house. The men are now about to enter. The third man is getting in through the window. All the men are armed, two with guns and one with a knife.The stars which he had sketched on paper seem to rise from the white sheets of paper and move towards the door and the windows, through which the thieves are climbing through. The man at the door instinctively throws his knife aimed at Henry. The knife bounces off the large force-field of the cube in which Henry is standing and falls to the floor. The spinning electrically charged stars which are like hazy forms of light, strike the other two criminals and they fall to the floor in an electrocuted state, unable to move, scream or escape.Henry phones Eva at work, after phoning the police. The police are surprised when they arrive at the house. Eva is equally surprised when she sees the criminals on the floor, with shocked expressions on their faces, unable to move or to speak. They have to be lifted out of the house by the officers. The men look like they are frozen."Sir, what did you do to these men?" asks Officer Davis a tall African man with a thin moustache.At that instant a loose wire from the side of the room, comes off the wall and a portion of the plaster breaks and the wire falls to the floor sparking away."Definitely, a loose wire, must have caused them to get electrocuted," said Henry."Yes, it certainly looks that way," said another policeman who was photographing the scene of the crime.



Eva phoned her friend's husband Andrew who was a carpenter and he was at home fixing the broken glass on the door and the broken window hinges.Once the police and the carpenter leave Eva speaks to Henry about what really happened. He finds it hard to explain."So what really happened Henry and how did you manage to incapacitate those three men. I hope that you didn't do anything foolish," said Eva with concern."I admit I was nervous, because I didn't know what to do. I thought of throwing some of the paper-weights which I have on the desk here", said Henry picking up a snow-globe."I'll need to get some alarms fitted into the house. This neighbourhood is not safe, not like when my parents were living here forty years ago.""I'll tell you what happened. It was almost magical. You know the sketches which I do when I go into a trace. Those sketches seemed to come alive on their own as if by magic. The sketches fell to the floor by accident. The sketch of the cube became a shield which protected me from the knife while the stars I had drawn became three dimensional stars which hit the thieves coming in through the windows.""Here, " said Eva, "take these papers with your illustrations and show me if they come to life now.""I don't think it works that way, "said Henry as he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate to make the stars, circles, cubes and triangles come to life.Eva kept watching the sheets with the abstract art as Henry tried his hardest to concentrate."Maybe it was just your imagination," said Eva."I hope that I'm not losing my mind. I cannot remember who I am and now I could be even losing my marbles," said Henry."I don't think you are," said Eva," come let's have dinner and make sure to check all the doors and windows before we tuck in tonight."


Crime in the city has been increasing. The local newspaper of the area is constantly reporting the rise of crimes. Old age pensioners are being attacked in their homes.The story of violence in the neighbourhood is spreading like a virus to all cities all over the world. Every life, in every city, in very neighbourhood is being affected by the story of violence, as the forces of evil shroud humanity in its mantle of darkness.


It was a Friday night, the time when every family gets ready to rest in front of the television after a busy week of work. Eva and Henry suddenly hear a noise outside on the street opposite their home. It is the sound of a woman screaming for help. It seems to be a mugging in progress."Eva, should we do something to stop this crime which is happening just outside our home?" asks Henry."It would be dangerous for you to go out and face the attacker. On the other hand we need to do something. I will phone the police and inform them that there is a woman being attacked on the street," said Eva."I'll go out to see if I can scare the attacker away," said Henry."Take something with you, maybe a stick," said Eva.They could hear a woman scream in the darkness and it was distinct in the stillness of the night.Henry did not wait, he could not wait, he picked up a large stick of wood from the side of the door, it was an old piece of wood and he rushed out of the house swinging it in his hand.He ran across the street in his pajamas, to the spot where he saw a masked man attacking a woman.The man had a knife in his hand. The woman's blouse was ripped and she lay on the floor in a pool of blood. The woman was injured in her stomach and she was bleeding. He hoped that the ambulance would arrive to save the poor woman.The mugger turned around, with his knife and ran towards Henry, who just managed to side-step out of the way but he was slashed across his chest as the mugger raced away into the darkness. Henry just about managed to swing the wooden piece of wood and give the masked man who was about six feet tall a glancing blow on the back of his head and across the back of his right shoulder. The man shrugged it off like it was a fly attacking him.Luckily the woman was not seriously wounded. The slash on the side of her stomach was not too deep. She was attended to by the medics who arrived at the scene of the crime and she would be out of danger soon. The man had tried to rape the young woman who was on her way back home after working late.Henry was happy that he had prevented the crime from having a tragic outcome. The young woman could have lost her life. He was happy that he had come to her assistance.The police arrived and took statements from the victim and from Henry. The woman whose name was Kendra thanked Henry for coming to her aid and she thanked Eva for calling the police and the ambulance. The police detective James Richards also thanked Eva for calling them and Henry for trying to do something about the crime they saw. Though they told him that it was a foolish thing to approach the attacker on his own and he should not attempt such a foolish stunt in the future.Eva was really upset with Henry for risking his life, though she knew that it was the only way they could have saved the girl's life.

On their way to the supermarket, Eva and Henry see that there has been yet another burglary in the neighbourhood. The small jewellery store around the corner from the house was robbed. The shutters are smashed, the door was broken and all the display cabinets in the jewellery store are empty."The jeweller of the store will be at a terrible loss," says Eva."The police have arrived," said Henry, as he saw detective James Richards with his team searching the area for evidence and photographing the scene of the crime."It's a good thing old man Jarvis was not in the store, nor was his wife Mabel.""They usually close at five, so the crooks decided to wait and rob the store and hour later," said Henry.That night as they watch the local news on Television, Henry seems to notice something extra-ordinary happening on the screen, as the news is being reported about the increase in crime and violence in the city. The police are in a panic as there are not enough police on the force to put an end to the crime spree.Henry is not just seeing the news, he seems to be watching a little more and he is puzzled.