Free The Demon Senders by T Patrick Phelps Page B

bring me to a therapist. A head-shrinker was in my immediate future.
    I have no recollection of what the head shrinker said to me or how he made the nightmares end as quickly as they did, but I did remember his face. And I remembered it when the guy at the pond told me he’d seen me before.
    “You were the doctor who got rid of my nightmares,” I said. “But how…”
    “I remember every one of my patients, Mac. Every one. And I remember I helped you out. Stopped those haunting dreams from coming, didn’t I?” He didn’t pause for an answer. “They were about your mother drowning, weren’t they? Those dreams you kept having.”
    Something smacked me into awareness all of a sudden. “What did you do to make those nightmares stop?” I asked.
    The man looked a bit nervous with my question. As if he was hoping I wouldn’t have asked that question. “Mac, all that matters is that I helped you out. Now, if I was whatever someone told you I was, why would I have helped you?”
    That smack of awareness brought something else to my forefront. People age in all different ways. Some people’s bodies and looks fall apart as they get older and some hold it together remarkably well. But this man, whom I hadn’t seen in around twenty years, hadn’t aged a day. He looked exactly the same as he did when I sat in a brown leather chair in his office, all those years ago.
    “What did you do to make my nightmares stop?” I asked again. This time my voice was chock filled with confidence and certainty. He must have sensed my sudden change and realization because his face changed in a flash. The half smile half sneer he had on when I first saw him, dropped the smile part and turned into a hundred percent sneer.
    Then, what I needed to push me closer to a hundred percent certainty happened. The man’s face went all sorts of hazy right in front of me. Not so dramatic that he started to morph into another person, but enough for me to know. It went hazy in a flash then the haze sort of swirled like what you’d expect to see if someone’s face turned to liquid and a hurricane was passing over.  
    I didn’t hear the noise like I heard the thunk when I dropped the rock, but there was a click that sounded somewhere in my brain. Like the sound an old fashioned wall switch makes when the circuit it controls is opened. Everything instantly made sense. From the crow following me around and starving itself to death, right up to Rachel telling me I was a sender and a part of the never-ending battle between good and evil. I was different. Special, and I was the last one to see it. That creepy old guy I picked up that night knew it right away. I knew, as soon as that click sounded, that both creepy old man and the hazy-faced bully in the bar, they hated me almost as much as they feared me. And this guy, this doctor, he was terrified of me as well.
    “You little fuck ball,” he snapped.
    “What did you do to make my nightmares stop?” I needed to know what he did though I had no idea why I needed to know. And my asking that stupid question over and over again brings us to my first mistake.

    <<<<>>>>

    He coiled back, cocked his arm and sent his fist flying directly at my face. He had at least four inches of height on me and his reach was longer than I expected. I saw the punch coming and lurched backwards to avoid taking the blow. His punch missed completely and the force he used to send the punch flying made him lose his balance. He stumbled towards me, giving me the perfect opportunity to throw a haymaker of my own.
    My aim was true and I caught him square in the jaw. His head snapped hard to the left, his knees buckled and he dropped to the ground. I jumped on top of him, pinned his arms beneath my knees and gave him another straight shot to his nose. His nose cracked like any nose should when it meets blunt force trauma, but not a single drop of blood came out.
    He was still conscious and was squirming to get away from me. I remember