The Mission
This story was written by my father, Peter Benavage.
The streets are wet and the late night air is not black, but a misty gray. A solitary figure moves resolutely through the mists; he is a man with a mission. Dapper, in trenchcoat and bowler, his black moustache sharply defined against his handsome face, he strides toward the site of the impending rendezvous. He reaches the warehouse, enters, and descends into a subterranean chamber. The atmosphere of the chamber hangs dead and misty around him, and the opaque light that transfuses through the sole source of illumination, a high window well, barely reveals the walls and vaulted ceiling, which are enshrouded by nitre and cobwebs. The dapper man mechanically glances at his watch, steps to the center of the crypt, faces the window well, and waits.
Suddenly, there is an icy gush of wind in the well, and a strange mist begins to drift into the chamber, flowing to within ten feet of the man. The mist congeals, and forms a phantasma no mortal ever perceived before, except, perhaps, in the darkest recesses of the mind. A phantasma is a ghastly spectre, clad in what would be the style of the grave, and with a pallid complexion that blends with the hue of its habiliments. The body has perfect form, except that in place of eyes it has two huge, red sockets.
The young man, stunned by the appalling features of the apparition, nevertheless drives himself to overcome his paralytic fear, for he knows that he must carry out his predetermined mission. He leaps back from the death grip of the spectre, withdraws a metal cylinder from his trenchcoat, and with eyes transfixed upon the spectre’s hideous visage, stands firm.
The spectre drifts closer; the icy hands are but inches away from their mark; their coldness pierces to the man’s very core; the ice begins to freeze his soul’s flame. The man draws a pin from the cylinder. The spectre is helplessly sucked into the hollow, vacuum cylinder. The pin is replaced, and the man rushes triumphantly into the street with his prisoner. He is running when lightning hits the metal cylinder he holds.
As he lies in the street, dying, he sees the phantasma escape from the broken container, and vanish into the ground. As the last breath leaves his lips, he hears a voice from somewhere in the darkness:
WHAT IS TO HAVE BEEN, IS TO BE; AND WHAT IS TO BE, CANNOT BE CHANGED. I AM THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, THE BEGINNING AND THE END. THE WILL OF GOD TRANSCENDS THE WILL OF MEN.
© 1969 Peter Benavage.
