Saint Jack and Toad

The following excerpt is an example of the wonderfully written thrills the novel holds for the reader:

'How far can someone walk into the woods? Only halfway, for after that you're walking out. Past the halfway point through the jumble of trees and brush, on his way out of the woods, Jack happened upon a small clearing. What he saw there made him halt in his tracks. The Dark of Evil was here, a creeping thick tendril shifting along the ground mist-like, hovering a few inches above the earth, drawing in all light and reflecting nothing but complete absence back to Jack's eyes, an incorporeal probing presence that was the opposite of God Almighty.

Jack could feel emptiness radiating from it like heat from sunlight. It's negation crawled around the edges of the trees, coated the exposed roots and seeped through the branches of the brush. He stared at it, only half-surprised at the sight of its presence, for he had felt its power here long before. He felt it attach itself to his gaze as though wanting the nutrition of his vision.

'Look away, Jack,' cautioned the crystal.

Jack either ignored the crystal's counsel or was unable to act upon it. He continued to stare at the drifting fog before him and, his eyes fixed upon it, watched the dark smoke begin to coalesce. It was assuming shape.

'Look away, Jack!' demanded the crystal once again, with increased urgency this time. Jack was still unable to comply, to shift his gaze away, mesmerized as he was by the birth of something occurring out of the blob of blackness in front of him. He could only stand and stare at the metamorphosis of form until it completed itself.

With a sudden final push of transformation, Jack was offered a completion of form that froze his heart with terror. Now he exchanged wonder for horror. His brain reeled from the sight suddenly in front of him, a six-foot high snarling slavering representation of Cerberus, the three-headed, dragon-tailed hound that guards the adamantine gate of Hell itself. He wanted to shut his eyes against the sight, but couldn't do it. He could only look.

'It's not real!' came the voice of the crystal, shouting now. 'Look Away!'

Jack couldn't move his eyes away from it. The phantasm refused him permission to leave, keeping him locked him to it, forcing immobility into his body and mind. It was the eyes that held him now, the half-dozen gleaming eyes of the beast that locked upon him. They held him as securely as spikes pinning him to a tree. Gleaming, greedy, glowing eyes floating within the thrashing skulls of a beast whose bulk was infinitely deep. The eyes, six ignescent greenish orbs, were the most tangible features of the monster. The eyes and the triple grinning salivating mouths. Otherwise Jack felt as though he was staring down into the opening of a dark well at midnight. Like its master, the hound's essence was an absence of substance, it's body a displacement of the light and energy of the universe, a dark slash and missing piece torn into the fabric of Life.

The crystal now feared for Jack's life, knowing the danger he was in. 'Jack, it's in your mind!' it shouted to him. 'I cannot save you from yourself ! Shut it out! Shut it out! It cannot harm you unless you choose to make it real! Look away!'

Appealing as the idea was, Jack remained incapable of achieving it. He couldn't disbelieve the creature away. It was too real. And so it remained stubbornly and terrifyingly before him. Jack was a little boy again, a child dreaming of ogres and monstrosities loitering in his closet and beneath his bed and, like a child, found the dream to be horrifying real. But there was no bedroom night-light to be clicked on that could dispel the beast now.

'Jack! It will kill you if you allow it to! Jack!' Hopeless. A river of ice encircled Jack's heart as the fictional beast commenced opening its three massive jaws, revealing the immense destructive power of its fangs and a throat awash with drooling decimation. Three roars that were more the screams of lost souls, akin to the shrieks of banshees, issued forth from the beast's three throats and ripped through the woods. Jack could feel the mooring of his faith slipping away from him. Faith seemed a negligible contrivance next to the threat of this horror.

The hulking beast began to advance towards him, its three snarling skulls sensing victory over its intended prey, already tasting Jack's death.

'I cannot help you!' shrieked the crystal, 'unless you cease to believe in it!

Jack! Listen to me! Jack!'

But Jack was powerless to disbelieve. His only remaining capability was to stagger backwards, away from the slavering beast stepping towards him, its six lime-green luminous eyes fixed upon him and gleaming with joyous anticipation over the thought of his destruction.

It was inevitable now, that destruction. Or seemed so. As Jack stared into the widening three maws of the beast, the jaws dripping drool, the heads now cheek to horrifying cheek and all eyes focused on Jack, the beast and the doom in its jaws stepped ever closer. Jack could smell now the stench of dissolution on its sour breath and understood that death, his death, was only moments away.'