The Intruder: The Dogs

The cough of the intruder broke the still night once again. The package retrieved from the previous outing was only part of the complete treasure. One third. Tonight, the intruder was more than one thousand kilometers away from the initial place. The body that was Ted was now buried, and yet his spirit still haunted, if that was the word, the memory of the intruder. Theodore Maxwell, a 25-year-old Caucasian male, naked after showering and observing himself in a mirror, was dead from a slit throat. The intruder was not generally a murderer, and he would have liked to pass through the neighbourhood unnoticed. The blasted dogs, though. How he hated dogs.

The intruder felt the surface of the brick wall, cold to his touch, through the material of his gloves. These he wore out of habit. The intruder had not needed gloves any more than he needed to breathe, and the dry coughing laugh of his was a matter of habit too. Dogs were the only creatures alive that could hear it. Just like a predecessor, the intruder was able to grow dim in the sight of humans. Unless they were specifically looking for him, he was for all intent and purpose, invisible to the naked eye. Except to dogs.

His predecessor was known in the other place as RF. However, it was not a bloodline that he carried. RF was a teacher, a mentor of sorts, to the intruder. RF had a name, the intruder did not. RF, although himself a powerful magician, was still human and suffered from the greed of humanity. In various shapes and forms, he still required the subversion of other humans to do his necessary evil. The intruder was not human though. Not entirely. His form was human out of habit, much like the breath and the gloves and the crouching and the walking. The intruder could easily take on another form now, but he did not.

To explain his existence requires an open mind. A sceptic would have considered him “walking dead” or “zombie”, but this is not in fact an accurate assessment. The intruder is not human. The intruder chose a human form during a disastrous experiment in a dark time, an age of terrible crimes against the natural order. He was godlike, and yet he was not a god. His power exceeded that of the closest living thing, and yet he was taught by a living being. The intruder was not evil, and yet he personified evil. Satan, if he existed, laughed at the intruder. God, if he existed, chose not to laugh.

The gloved hand moved across the brick wall to the window. A mute sound from within, and the window disappeared. The intruder was now inside, and the window reappeared behind him. It struck the intruder as ironic that his power over certain things still did not manage to avoid the necessity to break in and steal. He was the intruder after all. This was how he operated. The rules of the game, as it were, prevented him from obtaining the treasure unless he broke in. Nature had imposed the rules after his crude magic in the dark time, and now he was obliged to follow them. He could be almost invisible, but not to dogs. One more bite in the correct place and he would have to recover.

The intruder’s patience was growing thin. Many centuries were taking their toll on his patience. Recovery from canine attacks took decades. Here he was, less than a month after killing Ted, a festering wound on his ankle, trying to cut corners. Patience, ah yes. Two hundred and seventy years he had searched for the treasure after hearing about it. Five hundred and twelve years he had searched before then for a cure to his immortality. Vampires, werewolves, silver bullets, stakes through the heart, buried at a crossroads face down, and yet he still stalked the earth. Even ancient sourcery failed, whereby he took a name and then an invocation to eliminate that identity did not work. All that it did, in fact, was wear his patience to a razor-thin line.

So the treasure now was his salvation. Three parts, in different areas of a small country previously unknown to him. Lead was the core material of the treasure. It carried in it a dark and mysterious force that even RF would not understand. The crimes of before would be righted by the treasure. The intruder would revert to his original form and forever be free from his curse of immortality. Seven thousand years, innumerable earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves, an ice age, and yet he still existed. Ah yes, patience.

The sleeping sounds of silence were everywhere in this house. The intruder stood still for twenty minutes to be sure that even the family dog was asleep. At last he crept towards the staircase and made his way up the balustrade, his sandals an excellent grip on the polished wood. He knew that all stairs in all houses made a noise. He also knew that this staircase was especially noisy in that it did not make a sound. The absence of noise was perhaps more evidence of an intrusion to a family dog, and the comforting sounds of the creaking banister would keep it out of the intruder’s way.

(to be continued …)