Five Minutes to Midnight

January 1st, 2024

11.15pm

I was five hours into a twelve hour drive from Edinburgh to Penzance, on my way down for Gran’s funeral. A gran I didn’t like and hadn’t seen since I was a kid but had still been harassed into showing up for. I was doing it under duress. It was New Year’s Day for God’s sake. Who has to travel on New Year’s Day for a funeral on the 2nd of January? Who dies on December 30th necessitating the need for said funeral? My inconsiderate, miserly, reclusive Gran on my mum’s side, who used to shut me out in the cold and shout at me for making the slightest noise when I was forced to stay with her, that’s who. The horrible bat.

11.20pm

She’d always been a bit sadistic. Granny Rogers. Nobody liked her. Not even mum, which was why I thought she’d let me off the hook. I mean, I had plans for New Year’s with my new girlfriend, there were no trains or flights on New Year’s Day, I was starting a new job on the 2nd and was broke after hosting my siblings for Christmas. These were all lies/excuses but they sounded plausible and normally mum would let me off the hook when I moaned enough. Not this time. Even after I deliberately stayed out late with the lads ringing in the new year, getting so drunk I hoped I’d sleep through the day, she wouldn’t quit calling until I answered. And of course I answered. Because I couldn’t ignore her, being the good son that I am. Being me. She’d revoluted me money for petrol. She’d told me to bring along ‘Rebecca’. She’d sent me a copy of the funeral announcement to forward to my boss. What she didn’t do was say I could give it a miss. So what could I do? Being me.

11.27pm

I could have just not gone. What could she have done? No time to drive up and get me. And she wouldn’t have even stayed mad for long. But…what can I say? I hated letting anyone down, hated being thought ill of, hated the feeling of guilt…so even though I put it off for as long as I could, fully intending not to go, by the time it got to the eleventh hour and I had to leave or not make the 8am service…I hopped in my car and started driving, fully aware it would be a drive through the night, still hungover and knackered. I knew I was going to regret it. And sure enough, five hours later and falling asleep at the wheel… 

11.36pm

I deeply regretted it. I had to pull in for a nap. I hated pulling in for naps. Especially in the middle of nowhere with charcoal-like trees lining a straight strip of solid black tarmac, not a light in sight and no moon visible in the sky. The last thing I wanted was to rest here but I also didn’t want to join Gran in her coffin the next day, not that she’d be kind enough to share, so I accepted the inevitable and reluctantly stopped for a break. Just a little one. Five minutes. Forty winks, my dad used to say. Forty, thirty-nine, thirty-eight…

11.53pm

Minus nine hundred and one! I made a bad decision. Four bad decisions. Setting out so late I needed to stop. Pulling in for a nap in the middle of a Tim Burton nightmare. Sleeping for longer than the five minutes I’d intended and, worst of all…leaving the doors unlocked.

11.54:55pm

“Thank God! Wake up, kid, hurry up and drive, they’re right behind me!”

“Wh-what? Who..? Wait, what the Hell are you doing, get out of my car!”

11.55pm

And that was how Indiana Jones tore open the passenger door of my 2017 Prius, startling me from my slumber and scaring me as he tumbled inside, babbling and bleeding all over.

“I said drive, are you deaf?” He grunted, settling back in the seat and slamming the door shut. My eyes and ears were trying to communicate to my brain what was happening, but it was too much too soon for me to make sense of, and the most pressing concern my head seemed to have was wiping the drool from my chin. 

“Fuck fuck fuck!” Indy—I don’t know why but that was what came to mind when I saw him, in his cargo pants, ripped denim shirt and faded leather jacket, mussed hair and piercing blue eyes resting beneath a battered, grey fedora—unleashed a tirade of expletives and pressed a hand over a hole in his blood-stained shirt. 

“Motherfuckers!” he spat, spraying a mixture of spittle and blood onto the windscreen and wincing before abandoning the wound and turning his attention to the item he held in his free hand, which my eyes were drawn to as well as he placed it in his lap. A hand-held lantern, Moroccan or Arabian in style, ancient and rust-covered with a ghostly blue flame flickering behind glass panels. “Okay. Still lit. It’s okay, I can do this. I can… What the fuck, kid, are you just going to sit there gawking? What do you want, a season recap? I’ve been shot, I’m being chased, I’ve got the lantern and less than five minutes to save the world so start the engine and get us out of here! Trust me, you don’t want those psychos to catch us, they’ll gut you like they did the rest of my team and that will be the least of your worries. Don’t make me have to put a bullet in you.”

His eyes held me transfixed and his words crashed over me like a tsunami but I still couldn’t understand what was happening. Nevertheless, the mention of the word bullet brought my attention to the gun he was now holding in his other hand, resting on his lap beside the lantern. Instinctively, without taking my eyes off the weapon, I allowed my hands to work, turning the key in the ignition, flicking the headlights on and lowering the handbrake. 

11.56pm

“Okay, man, take it easy,” I muttered, before my eyes went back to the lamp, then to the blood oozing from the wound in his stomach, then to the bruises and lacerations on his neck, then to his eyes, pained, beseeching but also communicating he was deadly serious. “I’m going, alright? Looks like you need a hospital but I don’t know the area so you’ll have to…”

“No hospital! Nng. Gut shot. I’m not gonna make it but it doesn’t matter. We need to put some distance between us and them and stay ahead of them for…aaah…f-four minutes. That’s all. Four minutes and it will all be over and their stupid plan will…”

I’d pressed down the clutch and put the car in gear and moved my foot over the accelerator as the sweating, bleeding Jones grew more agitated, and it was at that point exactly that the rear window of my silver hatchback exploded, scattering shards of glass throughout the interior of the vehicle and making me yelp in surprise.

“Drive!” the uninvited passenger yelled, clutching the lantern close to his chest while bending forward, placing his gun hand on his hat as if to hold it in place.

I didn’t need to be told, I was already jerking the wheel and grinding the accelerator, steering the car from the verge into the middle of the narrow country road, tearing away from the sound of gunfire as a second blast exploded the driver’s side mirror.

“What the fuck-?!” I spat, risking a glance in the rear view mirror and seeing what I assumed to be a muzzle flash, a muzzle flash I expected would drive another bullet into the petrol tank and send us soaring into the sky like a roman candle. 

It didn’t happen.

“What the Hell, man, who’s shooting? What have you gotten me into?”

“Just drive!” Indy said, grunting as he twisted to point his gun back through the shattered rear window. He pulled the trigger, twice, and the explosions next to my ear made me wince. “If you hadn’t wasted time staring at me like a drooling neanderthal this wouldn’t have happened! So just…listen, okay? I’ll be, nnng, out of your life in…”

11.57pm

“...three minutes, them too, and you can go back to sleep. Just…keep your foot down and follow the road, up to the next junction, then take a right towards Glastonhume. Yeah, that’ll do. They won’t expect me to go back there, they won’t be prepared to…”

In the solid wall of darkness ahead, four glaring globes blazed to life and parted, two sets of two, blinding me and making me squint as we hurtled towards them.

“Damnit! They have more agents in the area than I thought. Okay, fuck Glastonhume, next left, kid.”

“Next left? There is no next left, it’s a forest! Jesus Christ, they’re coming straight for us, what are we going to…?”

“I said. Next. Left!”

Dropping his gun into his lap, my very own intrepid archeologist reached across and grabbed the top of the wheel, wrenching it to the left while crying out in agony as he twisted his gut. 

“Fuck!” I howled, struggling to control the car as it bounced off the tarmac onto a near invisible dirt road that carved a path through the densely packed trees. “What are you doing?!”

The rear of the car slammed against a bole and I screamed and shifted down a gear, righting it on the stone and mud spitting lane, eyes alternating between the impenetrable blackness ahead and the road we’d left behind in my rear view mirror, until the headlights of two vehicles flashed past.

“Go!” shouted Indy, snatching his gun up and straining again to look back. “There’s more of them than I thought. You can not let them stop us, do you understand? If they get the lantern and extinguish its flame it’s over, not just for us but for the world. Are you hearing me?”

“Yes, I’m hearing you!” I snapped, no longer intimidated, the stress of the situation pumping me full of adrenalin. “But I don’t know what you’re talking about! Who are they? What’s with the lamp? You better start making sense or I’m stopping right here and bailing out. This is not my problem!”

“You better believe it’s your problem, kid…”

“Stop calling me kid! Tell me what’s happening!”

“You want to know what’s happening, I’ll tell you what’s happening, this ‘lamp’ is the Immaru, an ancient artefact that’s been lit for two and a half thousand years and is said to open a gateway to Hell, at pre-ordained times, when certain astrological conditions are met. I’m part of an international outfit that’s been hunting the Acolytes of Gallus for decades, that’s the demon-worshipping cult who unearthed the Immaru a few centuries back and have been waiting for a chance to recall the Goddess Inanna from the Underworld. She was a Babylonian Princess who was taken by the Galla’s and transformed into the epitome of evil, and if she gets out she’ll make the world pay for leaving her to…”

11.58pm

“Watch out!” I yelled, when a shadowy figure wearing some kind of head torch leapt from the trees dead ahead. “Another one!”

“Floor it!” Indy cried, ducking low as the shape in the headlights shouldered a rifle and fired. 

“Aaaaargghhh!” I cried, as I lowered my head behind the wheel and a bullet carved a hole through the windscreen, exploding the headrest above Indy. “Jesus!”

I didn’t want to knock the guy down but I didn’t want to lift my foot off the accelerator either and the lane was too narrow to swerve around him, so I was grateful to catch a glimpse of him jumping clear, back into the woods as we tore by. 

“This is insane!” I shouted, lifting my head to try and avoid veering off the track. “What are we doing?”

An explosion, the car jolted, started to bump and stutter along the ground and I knew the gunman had shot and blown out a tyre.

“Don’t stop!” shouted Indy, aiming his pistol out the back window again and firing. “Just…gah!...two more minutes! Tonight’s one of those pre-ordained nights when extinguishing the flame opens a portal, but once we’re past midnight there’s nothing they can do. No pressure, kid, but the fate of the world depends on…”

“Can’t hold it!” I gasped, struggling with the wheel as the car did everything in its power to drag itself into the woods. I had to ease my foot off the accelerator, it was the only way to keep control, but that offered an opportunity, for another of the Acolytes of Whatever to burst from the woods and throw himself onto the bonnet.

“Shit!” I cried.

“Fuck!” Indy grunted.

“Stop!” shouted the person in the balaclava and headtorch who was clinging to the front of the car, pressing the muzzle of a revolver to the windscreen. He didn’t wait for a response before pulling the trigger, shattering the glass and hammering a bullet into my shoulder.

The pain that washed through me was like nothing I’d experienced before and as all power drained from my arm, the Prius did what it wanted.

I was aware of my companion reaching out to grab the wheel again, coughing up blood as he tried to take charge of the vehicle, but it was out of control, bumping and crashing at speed down a slippy embankment, grinding through thickets and weeds, dark, black boles flashing past on both sides, scraping the sides, taking off the remaining wing mirror.

The pain in my shoulder threatened to make me pass out. My right hand slipped off the wheel. Indy yelled something about assholes. The faceless, black-clad individual on the bonnet was poking his gun muzzle through one of the holes in the glass, angling it towards the passenger side. I slid my foot onto the brake pedal, not sure what I was going to do but ultimately doing nothing because then we slammed into a tree and my airbag exploded and my seatbelt almost cut me in two and...

11.59pm

“...idiot…”

“Whu..?”

My eyes fluttered open and I jumped, wincing and gasping, steam from the broken engine wafting through the shattered windscreen to fill my mouth and make me hack and choke.

My airbag was deflated, as was the one in the passenger compartment alongside. Somehow I’d survived, though the agony in my shoulder swiftly reminded me I’d been shot, which in turn reminded me of the guy on the bonnet, who I looked for and found past the smoke, pinned between the car and a tree, lying prone, arms splayed, gun gone. 

“...lamp…” I heard him splutter, and the lamp I remembered, along with the crazy story I’d been told, and then I looked at the dashboard and saw the time. 11:59. Almost midnight. After midnight we were safe. That’s what Indy-man said. Along with a whole heap of other shit that didn’t make sense.

Still…

I needed to know, so I shifted slightly until I could see the fedora-hatted hero, slumped over in the seat alongside me, unmoving, silent, dead? 

“Hey…?” I ventured, reaching across with my good arm, clutching his shoulder, pushing him up. His head lolled back against the damaged headrest, eyes shut, mouth open. “Are you…” I let the question dangle. He clearly wasn’t. But the lantern was. Still on his lap, still intact, the strange blue flame flickering fitfully.

I reached down, closed my fingers around its handle, lifted it up. One of the panels, the one with a hinge that served as a door, had popped open, offering me a clearer look at the flame. There was something hypnotic about it, the way it danced, like it was living, the way it glowed, azure blue, like an eye that twinkled and sparkled.  

I shook my head to clear it. I needed to get out of the car. I needed to find my phone. I needed to call for help.

“What happened?” I groaned, as the digital display on the dashboard clock changed to...

00:00pm

…and Indiana Jones brought his head abruptly forward, gently puffing into the lantern and plunging the car into darkness.

“Idiot…” the man on the bonnet hissed again, then his head dropped and banged on the crumpled metal.

“What?”

“Good…work…kid,” I heard Indy-man sigh, as he fell back breathing his last. “In…Inanna will…reward you for…your service…”

Wracked with pain, sweating, I struggled to comprehend what was dawning. My eyes were growing accustomed to the dark, or so I thought, until I realised the moon had broken through to light the sky, or so I thought, until I realised the light came from something else. 

From a strange looking fissure that was zig-zag creeping across the night, accompanied by a rumbling thunder, which wasn’t really thunder but the far-off sound of groaning souls.

It started to rain. The edges of the fissure spat lightning as the gaps in the sky spread wide and a strange red glow filtered through.

“All hail the Coming of Inanna!” a chorus of voices announced, drawing my attention to a group of individuals I hadn’t noticed gathering around my car. Individuals dressed like my Indy, in baggy pants and leather coats and hats, like they were fresh from exploring Mesopotamian ruins. 

“All hail the Dawning of the Era of Gallus!”

It hit me then, like a sledgehammer. The penny dropped. I saw the light. Things fell painfully into place. And as the sky continued rumbling and dark-winged serpents flew through the void out of Hell, all I could do was stare into the lens of an imaginary camera, seek sympathy from an audience that wasn’t there, and say to myself:

“Aw, fu-”