Chapter 11

The constant squawking of seagulls resonated like a broken car alarm. The kind that screams all morning from a light bumper-to-bumper tap. The sort of collision your insurance never hears about. Faint sunrays caressed my back as I came to. The smell of saltwater was pungent, and every step landed on a shaky plank, some were even missing. Did I misstep There was a black hood covering my face, and through the strands of cotton, I saw the silhouette of a vessel. My wrists were handcuffed, and a dark presence was next to me. It nudged me with the butt of what felt like a semi-automatic rifle.

"One came too, Zeus."

Brief silence.

"Right, the first one. Not the girl, she passed out soon after. Screaming the name 'Dee Dee' so fucking loud. Yea, Dimitri Davenport," continued the mysterious man.

My initials, I forgot Aries nicknamed me that long ago, it didn't stick. I should've known then she had a thing for me, lack of common sense is hereditary in my family. I should be paying more attention, but hallucinating has a way of making reality look easy. Am I being kidnapped Yes, but at least I'm not seeing dragons, colors, hearing strange noises, or seeing a man cry blood.

Suddenly the black hood was yanked off my head. I squinted and saw the vanishing point in the golden-brown sunrise, and the dawn-silver sparkles of the ocean, as it shone blue across the horizon. It startled me, the calmness, no waves, the Goliath known as the sea was finally sleeping.

Zeus' face dripped into my point of view. I found myself looking down like a trained dog when he attempted eye contact, traumatized. Is reality back yet, or am I...

"You're learning already. It is wise to bow before the Messiah," Zeus said.

The moment I heard his voice, flashbacks of the older black man being shot over and overplayed in my head. A very unfamiliar hand clasped my shoulder.

"That man's destiny was death by the righteous one. Insubordinate attitudes are cancer. Trust you will remember this lesson well," Apollo advised, as he pushed me further down the pier.

I saw three people near the entrance of the vessel, black hoods covering their heads. They looked lifeless. I wondered which one of them was Aries. Next to them sat an uncountable amount of valises. The boat they were loading us onto had grayish barnacles covering the sides. All strangely shaped like empty eyes, judging us all. Whoever owned this death trap hadn't used it in some time. I struggled to remember every swim lesson I had in my life as I was escorted inside.

The bottom part of the boat held four cabins, a meeting area, kitchen, and an odd-looking iron maiden contraption. Corroded and silver-plated to reduce the weight, with an Egyptian man's face sitting at the top, it was molded to make the man's face look like he was screaming in agony.

On the circular brown table in the meeting room was a mixture of everyone's wallet, phones, and accessories. He was going to sail us off the grid. I spotted Aries' phone with the red Anime case. Is she alive Apollo shoved me into a seat in the meeting area. No one else was around, and a buzzing sound clicked near my right ear.

"On the River of Styx, we lose who we were. Find our darkness, and emerge in the daylight. The image is the first to be removed," directed Apollo as the other soldier held me down. I barely fought, too consumed in understanding what was happening as the hair clipper thrust its way into the back of my head.

"Please!" I screamed.

My pleas did nothing, clumps of my hair plummeted in front of me to the ground, like falling black clouds. I had nothing more than a dark Caesar, but the helplessness reminded me of a sheep being sheared. Are they going to mold me Next came a strong smell of melting steel. Well, what I thought was melting steel turned out to be a branding iron.

"Open your mouth," Apollo ordered.

A six-inch-long, thick piece of tree bark was presented in front of me, riddled with teeth marks. Simultaneously, the heat on the back of my neck began a waterfall of uncontrollable sweat.

"Open your mouth!"

The statement repeated, I heard it, but still couldn't gather my mind. Selfishness and fear took hold of me. My life didn't flash before my eyes, my death did. On this boat, they would turn me into a mutilated zombie of myself, a shell of whatever Dimitri Davenport was. Victim to the very stories I love to read, trapped in a conspiracy web that no one would ever believe. I'd rather be seen as the 'crazy' one. The brave one who escaped, sold his story to publications to be called a liar. It didn't matter who believed. It didn't matter who had sympathy. So…I opened my mouth.

When Apollo got close with the tree bark, I clenched my teeth so tightly on his hand that it nearly severed his index finger in half. I kicked myself up out the chair, hands still tied behind my back, and donkey kicked the person behind me. The sound he omitted proved to me that I caught him in his family jewels. He dropped the branding iron, causing panic, all I found was the smell of the burning carpet.

Sprinting forward, I rammed my body into the door ahead, forcing it open, nearly bruising my ribcage. There was that calm again, the forgiving, baptizing, redeeming ocean. The deck was wet, and I slipped like a white girl in a horror movie, running through the woods in tennis shoes. Slamming hard on my face, nose bloodied, two teeth now shaky in my mouth. But eventually, I approached the edge of the boat. If I planned on biting Apollo again, my teeth would permanently be in his flesh, no longer belonging to my gums.

The pain never reached me, never stopped me. I stood back up and hurled myself overboard. To my surprise, I sank like a heavy stone. Blood washing away as I screamed on the way down. My loosened canine tooth was now going the direction I wished to go, floating up to the surface, some hair follicles too, waltzing with the bubbles.

Panic invited gulps of saltwater inside me. Lack of paying attention to the amazing feats of Harry Houdini pushed my inevitable to the forefront. I struggled to keep my eyes open, a picture of the sun from underwater waved before me. I kept myself from looking down. I was headed there anyway, neighbors to a sunken ship harboring gold. My open-mouthed skeleton next to some forgotten booty. Why get a preview At that moment, I accepted death.

"Zeus was not like Ankh. You could say they both rented space within a single mind."

JOURNAL ENTRY #015 OF JOHN VINSON

If you find this, and I'm dead…find Jasmine, and bury me next to her.

This is what they don't want you to know. The truth behind 'The Black Horse.' They say the best code is the one everyone can read, but not understand.

Ankh, Zeus, real name Ken Williams, the elusive psychopath that no one knows. The mental chess-playing apparition, let me slow down. A snail's pace, the Pro-black magazine is nothing but a racial ploy. Ken was really following in the footsteps of his pretend daddy, a man by the name of Cyrus. Both of them infected the magazine's pure soul and turned 'The Agenda' into a smorgasbord of clues. An undercover newsletter within a newsletter. Patterns, blueprints, locations, all disguised in plain paragraphs. You'd need a mind like John Nash to figure it out, minus the schizophrenia. It's how they communicated undetected. Complex puzzles, numbers, words meaning other words, and places. By 'they' I mean the modern-day Illuminati, the powerful, elusive Black Horse.

Regardless of their sick bond, think John Muhammad and Boyd Malvo. All things fall apart. Uncontested power poisons the ratchet and righteous alike. And every son eventually overthrows his father.

Cyrus lured Ken to a graveyard, under the influence of the pale moonlight and frightening flashbacks of his time in MK Ultra. He challenged Ken to a contest, which of them could exhume the dead. In his old age, most believe Cyrus, unknowingly began unearthing his own grave. When the tip of his shovel hit the coffin six feet below, Ken stabbed him to death and buried him in the same plot. The dead lying atop the dead. Some theorist believe that Ken sacrificed him that night as an offering to an alien god. An unknown entity referred to as 'The Great Old One.'

News spread of Cyrus' death within So Ken and another Black Horse member killed the staff at A snail's pace, protecting the underground organization, then desecrated the place and fled to Mexico.

Surprisingly, he was well connected south of the border, leading most to believe that The Black Horse may have already been established internationally, and various forms of A snail's pace existed elsewhere.

Ken underwent face surgery, obtained a new identity. When he arrived back to the states, his name was Ankh, and his new role within The Black Horse was born. Using the darknet to recruit new brainwashed cronies.

How do I know so much, you ask Well, his 'River of Styx,' his attempt to create followers by taking that twisted voyage into the sea, happened more than once. It initially failed, and over eight people drowned, some never heard from again. One of those people was my little sister, Jasmine. She was going through a hedonistic phase, probably looking for a bacchanal, not a totalist cult under the umbrella of a secret society.

I was just a cop on a case, not knowing I would uncover an insidious plot ran by sickos, a conspiracy that's been going on since the beginning of time. We all figured it was a boating accident. I didn't plan on confronting the fact that she was led to the sea and probably died there. Who knows… she could still be living.

Because of my tie to Jasmine, the only way I could've stayed on the case was…well experimental. An ultra-improved version of Operation Sundevil, post commercial internet. A collaboration of sorts between the CIA and FBI, a sleeper cell project. Where my memory would be wiped clean and replaced with new ones. They'd hire a shadow officer to pretend to be a distant relative to coast you along back into society. Put you unknowingly in the right place, and then 'reactivate' your old memories with the code word when the infiltration was complete. Real granular stuff, I probably could've done it, but by then the spirits owned me, and not the holy kind.

I was taken off the case, and my addiction took me off the force. They thought I was mad. In time, I felt the same, until some 'members' burned down my apartment while I was still in it sleeping. Lucky for them, I was divorced by then, alone. My only roommate was the echoes of my children's feet running through the hallways of my memory. My pet was the faint scent of perfume my wife wore on our honeymoon. She looked like a blooming rose that night when her dress slid off.

I survived the fire, but months of research, detective work, my journal was scorched in flames. So I had to start over, I had to start at entry #015.