The Corruption Within

by Ty Griffin

  “Listen, Veikr,” I whispered. “You want dominion over me, right?”

  “Indeed,” he growled with greedy pleasure.

  “You want me to be compliant, eager to obey, without having to fight over this decision?”

  “Yes,” Veikr hissed.

  “Then let’s make a deal.”

  The offer must have caught the spirit off guard. I felt the internally possessed version of a blink, and he hesitated a moment before saying, “A deal?”

  “Yes. If you try to force me to run right now, I will fight you. Apparently when I fight you are going to cause me pain, and so you will likely win. But it will be a fight. And for every decision you try to get me to make, you will have to fight me. More than likely you will win most of those, maybe even all of them, but it will always be a fight. I’m just that stubborn.”

  I could tell Veikr was considering my words. After a moment, he asked, “What is it you are proposing?”

  “A pact. You allow me to check on Kayla. In fact, you have to work with me to help Kayla in whatever way I deem necessary.”

  “And what do you offer in return?”

  I sighed. “Me. If you help me help Kayla, I will let you tell me what happens next. I will let you decide where I go to begin accumulating power for you. That is what you want, isn’t it? Control of me and to gain more power for yourself?”

  “Yes, that is what I want, Vessel. I desire power.” His words exuded a deep, nearly lecherous greed.

  “It’s a deal, then? You help me help Kayla, and I will let you decide where I go afterward? It’s not full control over me, but it would be a step toward what you want.”

  “Be warned, Vessel. Agreements like this among my kind have a power of their own. If you break your vow with me, the consequences would be … severe.”

  “I’ll keep my word if you do,” I said flatly.

  He was silent for a moment as he considered my offer. “Tell me why, first. You do not even know for sure this girl is in trouble.”

  “I don’t,” I admitted. “I just … I have a feeling she needs my help. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t go until I know for sure.”

  “But why this girl? Is this girl your mate? Is she your blood?”

  “No, just a friend. I only met her a few days ago.”

  “Then why?” he asked again, and I felt a real sense of wonder behind his words. Like I, or maybe all of humanity, was a jigsaw puzzle he could not find the corner pieces for. Like he understood parts of the picture but had no frame of reference to understand the size or shape of the overall image.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, to be honest. She is my friend and she needs my help. Or at least I think she does. And I’m going to do whatever I can to help her.”

  Veikr was silent for a long moment. Finally, I felt a sense of resolution from him inside my chest. “Okay, Vessel. You have a deal.”

  Chapter 14

  ◆◆◆

  “So what do we do first?” Veikr asked.

  “Well,” I said as I continued to walk down the sidewalk. “I don’t know. I don’t know her last name, so I can’t just look her up. I guess I could try the hospitals. I don’t even know if she is in a hospital, and if she was, I doubt the nurses would tell me, since I don’t know her last name. I was hoping that artist lady was heading to Kayla’s and I would be able to follow her, but she’s long gone by now.”

  “The artist lady may not be as far away as you think, Vessel.”

  “No? Do you know where she is?” I asked excitedly.

  “Possibly,” he hedged. “As you were fleeing the barkeeper, I saw her walking the opposite direction. She had stopped and was about to enter a shop several doors down. I believe it was a florist. It is possible that she is still there, shopping for flowers.”

  “That’s perfect!” I exclaimed as I turned right down the next street. I had run two blocks east before turning right. And after the episode with Veikr, I had walked another couple blocks south while we talked. Taking the second right turn had me heading west, in the same direction Genevieve had gone. If I ran four blocks west before turning north, that should allow me to avoid walking past Gabe’s bar and end up close to the flower shop. I knew she may not be there by the time I got that far, but I had to try.

  I took off running again, and after a quick reminder Veikr powered my body enough to allow me additional speed. I had to be careful to not run too quickly. A shaggy-haired kid in jeans and a flannel shirt flying by at Olympic speed was sure to draw unwanted attention.

  I ran the four blocks west at a quick but reasonable speed and shifted to a full sprint when I turned north up an alley. I paused a second at the following block to check for traffic before crossing the street and sprinting it as well. As I got close to the end of the alley, I slowed down to a walk before entering the sidewalk.

  I leaned against a lamp post, trying to catch a glimpse of Genevieve without raising suspicion while fighting to regain my breath. Apparently Veikr’s powers did not include overcoming the body’s need for oxygen. In the back of my mind, I wondered if that implied other physical consequences for taking advantage of Veikr’s power but buried the thought as a worry for another time.

  “There she is!” Veikr said.

  “Where?” I demanded, letting a trace of frustration into my voice. “It’s not like I can see you point.”

  I felt a tinge of heat in the muscles in my neck and recognized Veikr’s instruction to make me turn my head to the left. “There, Vessel,” he said with more than a trace of annoyance. “Almost three full blocks to the west.”

  “Three blocks? You can see that far?” I asked.

  “Yes, I can. Do you want to stand here in awe of my incredible eyesight or do you want to catch up with the art woman?”

  I figured at that point running would draw unwanted attention, particularly attention from Genevieve, and while I wasn’t a seasoned stalker like Gabe apparently was, I was pretty sure it would be best if she didn’t know I was following her. So I started off in a hurried walk, trusting Veikr to let me know if she entered a building or turned down another street.

  After I had jostled through pedestrians and dodged cars for a few blocks, Veikr said, “Wait! Stop!”

  I stopped just short of entering the next crosswalk, abruptly enough that a man about to cross right after me bumped into my back. “Excuse me,” he grumbled while giving an accusatory look, and continued crossing the street.

  I barely paid the man any attention as I looked all around, trying to find the potential threat. “What is it?” I whispered to Veikr.

  “I lost her,” he said.

  “Lost her? I thought your eyesight was incredible?”

  “Line of sight, Vessel, line of sight. I can see a great way, but I can’t see through stone or a crowd of people.”

  “Doesn’t seem all that incredible,” I grumbled.

  “How far can you see, human?”

  “I’m just saying if your eyesight is so spectacular, I wouldn’t expect an old lady to be able to lose you so easily. I mean, I guess the power would be helpful if we were following someone in a cornfield, as long as the corn hadn’t grown too high. But here in the city, it’s almost useless. You’re basically the opposite of Spiderman.”

  I felt Veikr’s rumbling frustration growing in my chest and smiled to myself. It was a petty, childish jab, but part of me enjoyed poking the bear. It was the only way I could figure to exact a little revenge for the torture he had put me through.

  “Who is Spiderman?” Veikr asked.

  “Uh, he’s a super—”

  “There she is!” he interrupted, and before I could ask he added, “To your left, a block and a half. It looks like she is knocking on a door.”

  I looked but couldn’t make out anyone from that distance. Trusting the spirit’s direction, which I realized was possibly very foolish, I headed to the south. A few minutes later, Veikr said, “Stop here. That one across the street is where she was knocking. She must have
gone inside.”

  The building was a two-story red-bricked rectangle wedged between two large brick buildings partitioned into multiple shops each. Beside the large black door was a panel of a half-dozen doorbells, each with a little white tag listing the tenants’ last names.

  With a quick glance for oncoming traffic, I jogged across the street and up the four concrete stairs to the building’s front door. I read over the list of names, hoping one would strike a memory of a name said in passing. None of them sounded familiar. I briefly considered ringing each individually and asking for Kayla, but my mild social anxiety would not allow that.

  I stood for a full minute, debating what to do next, when the door opened, revealing a little white-haired old woman on the other side. I jumped at the sudden movement, and the old lady did too. She let out a squeak and clutched her hand to her chest.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said, giving my least creepy, un-demon-possessed, teenage boy smile. “I’m just coming to see my friend, Kayla.” I realized as I said it that if I was wrong about where Genevieve was going, things were about to get awkward, but I tried to hold a confident smile and ride it out.

  She eyed me warily and said, “It’s okay, I suppose. Though you nearly gave me a heart attack. The doctors want me to have a procedure to put in a stent, but they said my insurance won’t cover it. I think them doctors just don’t want to operate on an old woman like me. ’Fraid I’ll die on the table.”

  I stared at her blankly, trying to remember what I had said that created the opportunity for this conversation. “Oh, uh, yeah …” I fumbled to find the most polite response that would get me away from her. I squeezed past her into the building and muttered, “Yeah, between the doctors and the insurance companies …”

  “Oh, don’t even get me started on the insurance companies,” she said with obvious excitement to get started on the insurance companies. “My husband worked for the phone company for fifty-two years. Never missed a day of work in his whole life and never missed a payment on his premium once. But when he had a heart attack a few weeks after his retirement, do you know what that insurance went and did?”

  “Uh, no, ma’am?” I said as I tried to slowly back away.

  “Dropped him. They dropped him on the spot. That just ain’t right, if you ask me.”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. That’s terrible,” I said from nearly ten feet away.

  I guess she took the hint, or maybe she decided the story deserved to be told to the whole world, because she waved a dismissive hand toward me and walked out the door, still proclaiming the evils of insurance companies. “The Bible says ‘money is the root of all evil’ and that’s the god’s honest truth, if you ask me” was the last thing I heard before the door shut behind her.

  The click of the door latch had not finished echoing through the hallway when Veikr said, “What was that about?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head to untangle my thoughts from that conversation and turned down the hallway. The hallway walls had once been white, but years of handprints and moving furniture had faded them to a dingy almost-white covered in dents and scuff marks. The floor, similarly, no longer displayed the original smooth, sandy color of its laminate cover but instead was a mishmash of cracks, tears, dents, and streaks, evidence of decades of heavy use and little care.

  To my left was a rack of metal mailboxes with locks whose keys presumably were held by the individual tenants. There were five plain brown doors down the right side of the hall. Each door had a square plaque on the front, and the center three had dull brass lights just to the right side.

  The door to my right was labeled “Stairs,” which I assumed led to stairs to the second floor. I figured the last door was probably another set of stairs and that the three doors with lights were three apartments, with an additional three apartments upstairs.

  “Uh,” I said, “now that I’m here, how am I supposed to find the apartment she’s in? I can’t just wait here for her to come out. If she’s in one of the upstairs apartments, I wouldn’t see which one she comes out of, and I don’t want to go knocking door to door.”

  “Walk up to the first door and I can peek in,” he said.

  “You can do that?”

  “Great power, Vessel. Great power.”

  Shrugging my shoulders in acquiescence, I stepped to the first door. The rectangular plaque had in bold typeface the letter A. I had to resist the urge to knock on the door, just out of habit. “Now what?” I asked.

  “Step closer, Vessel. I cannot completely leave your body, so you will have to be within a couple inches of the door.”

  I stepped forward until my nose was barely an inch from the door and fervently hoped no one would open it to see me standing there within kissing distance. When Veikr partially removed himself from me to peer inside the apartment, it felt like an unweaving, like his existence was intricately wrapped up with in mine and was slowly pulling strands apart into two separate threads—but not completely. Like the fabric woven of the two of us was separated down to the halfway point, after which we remained a single, seamless piece. It was unnerving, and a prickly sensation traveled down my spine.

  Looking down, I could see the top half of Veikr sticking out of my waist, his large black wings pulled in tight against his back. He stuck his torso through the closed door like it wasn’t even there, and by the movement of the muscles in his back, I could tell he was looking around. After a moment, he pulled himself out of the door and wove himself back into me. If the separation had been unnerving, the reabsorbing was downright repulsive. There was a quick, oily, slithering sensation, and then he was back, occupying an intangible place inside me.

  I shuddered before asking, “What did you see?”

  “Nothing. The lights were off and it was quiet. Either the tenant is not home or they are asleep. Either way, I do not think this is the apartment of your friend.”

  I walked to the next door, and this time I was prepared for the sensation when Veikr separated himself from me. Again, he shoved his head through the door as if it were made of mist, looked around for a moment, then returned inside me.

  “No one is here, either,” he said. “There is some really nice stuff in there though. I could help you get through the door if you’d like.”

  “No, Veikr. We’re here for Kayla, remember?”

  “Fine,” he grumbled.

  The third apartment’s tenant was, in fact, home and apparently was a large middle-aged man who enjoyed watching television in his boxers. The last door did end up being to another set of stairs, which I took to inspect the additional apartments.

  The hall upstairs looked identical to the downstairs, down to the worn laminate and brass light fixtures. The first apartment on the second floor, labeled F, contained a young Asian couple cooking something that smelled delicious even through the heavy door. I contemplated knocking on the door to ask the couple what they were cooking, but realized I was just trying to procrastinate. The fewer apartments that remained, the greater the chance Kayla would be in one of them, assuming that was where Genevieve had been heading in the first place. I didn’t know what I would find when I finally found Kayla, and I wasn’t sure I could handle whatever it was.

  After an internal rebuke, I pushed myself on to the next door. Veikr unwound himself from my existence enough to shove his head through the door marked E. Almost immediately Veikr flung himself back through the door, and the sudden, unexpected rush of his slithering return nearly made me vomit.

  “She is here, Vessel. And she is coming toward the door.”

  With a quick thought, I started walking toward the stairwell door I had just come through, hoping Genevieve would use the other stairway, since it would be closer to the exit once she got downstairs. “Are you sure it was her?” I whispered.

  “I do not know who your friend Kayla is, Vessel. But the artist lady you called Genevieve was in there, as was the girl you were with the first time we met. Although,” he added, “her hair is now bla
ck.”

  “Yeah, that’s Kayla,” I said.

  I made it to the stairwell door just as Kayla’s door opened and Genevieve stepped into the hallway. I kept my back to her, hoping she wouldn’t pay attention to a stranger walking away from her, and entered the landing before the stairs.

  I stood at the door listening and heard a door close, footsteps gradually growing fainter, and another door opening and closing. I was fairly confident Genevieve had indeed walked to the other stairwell and gone through that door, but I waited another couple minutes to make sure she was gone. I figured it would be smart to not show up the instant Genevieve had left, in any case.

  I waited maybe five more minutes before entering the hallway again and approaching Kayla’s door. It was only after I had knocked that I realized I had been so concerned with finding Kayla and making sure she was okay that I had not considered the possibility she might not want to see me right then. If something had happened, like I feared, she may not want to see any man. And it wasn’t like we were all that close in the first place. She was, in all honesty, my only friend, but that didn’t mean I was her only friend. I may have just been a fun distraction for a couple days; maybe I was giving way too much importance to our friendship.

  I was considering running for the stairs and letting her assume someone had ding-dong ditched her when the door opened. Kayla stood there wearing a simple black T-shirt long enough to reach just above her knees. Her hair had indeed been dyed black, so dark it almost seemed to absorb light.

  It was obvious she had been crying. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her cheeks were marked with little lines of dried tears. Down one cheek was a long, angry scratch, and she had several finger-sized bruises on both arms. From the way she stood with her arms folded over her stomach, I could only see one of her hands, but her knuckles were bruised and scraped. Whatever else had happened, Kayla had fought.