Silent Ground: Part 1

by Quil Carter

  “Stop the truck,” Sasha suddenly gasped when his stomach gave a nauseous lurch. “S-stop!”

  Kheva took one look at him and pulled to the side of the paved single-lane road. Sasha opened up the truck door and leapt out, and before his boot even hit the rain-soaked dirt, vomit shot up his throat like acid and spurt from his mouth.

  He got sick on the side of the road, heave after heave emptying his stomach. The force of the lurches had him on his knees, tears, snot, and drool running down his face as his body violently shook.

  By the time his stomach heaved for the last time, Sasha was seeing stars in his vision and the dark cold woods around him was spinning. He stumbled, trying to get himself standing, and had to steady himself against the side of the truck.

  He wiped his mouth and spat onto the ground, then slowly got back into the vehicle, short puffs of air falling from his mouth.

  There’s a dead man behind me, Sasha whispered to himself. Oh, fuck, I helped kill him. I’m a murderer. I’m going to fucking jail for this. No way this doesn’t get found out.

  Kheva shifted the truck into drive and pulled off of the road. “What little faith you have in me, nightcrawler,” he murmured. “Disappointing.”

  Sasha looked over at him, his mouth open. “You – you killed him,” he said breathlessly. “You fucking killed him. He’s dead.”

  “Indeed,” Kheva said in the same low tone. “If you knew what that man had done, and what he continues to do, you would be at peace with his death.”

  I know what he’s done, Sasha said to himself, and true to Rob’s promise, Kheva heard nothing. I know he was one of the men who raped Kel. But… that means he should die?

  Kheva really does love that crazed man. Or is it guilt that drives him to do it since he looked to be the ringleader?

  Sasha didn’t have any answers to that question. He only had enough information for an ignorant guess. It was an absurd notion to even think about asking Kheva his real motivations, though deep down, he wished he could.

  He wished he could just talk to Kheva like a person. Get to know him, and help him with the demons Sasha knew he was carrying around.

  I know they’re there because I’ve seen them, Sasha said. I know why he’s fucked up, but that doesn’t mean he can just kill whoever he wants, it doesn’t mean he can torture and rape the dude’s boyfriend. Whose only crime was dating a rapist.

  Even if Gavin’s murder was justifiable, it doesn’t mean torturing Joey was.

  “You have no idea how our mind works.”

  Sasha’s head rapidly turned to Kheva’s and his heart dropped. He’d heard that?

  That must’ve been all he’d heard, judging on the fact that Sasha was still alive.

  “You never taught me,” Sasha responded quietly.

  “Fear, misery, loneliness, pain… any powerful negative emotion grows our abilities,” Kheva explained. “It feeds them. It thrives off of negative emotion as we thrive off of each other’s blood.” Kheva’s eyes hardened. “You will never meet a normal nightcrawler. We’re all tortured, destructive, emotionally fucked up men. Some of us have real mental disorders, some of us had such miserable lives we retreated into ourselves and created new personalities to take over. Some of us are irrefutably broken and compensate for it by breaking others, and those broken souls do unto others as was done to them, and as such the cycle continues.” Kheva reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of squished cigarettes. “The only man who’s broken that cycle is myself. I decided not to wallow in my misery, I decided to break free of the dysfunction and create my own small family where they cannot find us.”

  Sasha gaped at Kheva. He couldn’t believe that the Master Nightcrawler was actually speaking with him so candidly. Kheva had never been that sort of person; he was closed off, easily annoyed, and when you fell past following orders and entered into a casual conversation with him, it was walking on a razor’s edge with bare feet.

  The shock of it was enough to temporarily steer Sasha away from the horror that had happened on that road. “They?” Sasha whispered. “The other nightcrawlers? There’s like… a group of them?”

  “There is,” Kheva replied with a light nod. “There’s an older generation which seems to love to order us around, and the younger generation. The older generation does not refer to themselves as nightcrawlers, but that is irrelevant, you’ll never meet one.”

  “Who are we?” Sasha asked. “Why do we have these abilities? What are they for?” Then something else popped into his head.

  And his cheeks reddened when Kheva plucked out the quick thought.

  “No, you cannot become a super hero.”

  Sasha was quiet for a second. “What am I supposed to become?” he asked, his tone subdued. “Why did you bring me here?”

  Sasha’s words lingered on the air before being sacrificed to the low rumble of the truck’s engine. Kheva didn’t answer him, his eyes remained on the road, lit up by the twin headlights and illuminating the grey gravelly pavement, and the occasional bright flare of an insect.

  Usually Sasha liked silence, but once he’d stopped interacting with Kheva, the reality of what had happened came creeping back to him like smoke through a closed door. He began to feel nauseous again, a deep pit of fear and guilt soon gathering with every passing minute.

  Unable to stand the silence, Sasha decided to ask Kheva another question.

  “Is the reason I was able to hurt Gavin so easily… the same reason I was able to get into Nik’s mind?” Sasha asked.

  “Yes,” was Kheva’s short and quick reply.

  And he said nothing more, the cab returned to its heavy silence.

  Eventually, Sasha’s eyes wandered out the window and he was surprised to see twinkling lights in between the trees. It looked like there was a convenience store in the distance, one surrounded by a sparsely occupied parking lot, and then further on, thick woods.

  It was too dark for Sasha to know if they’d passed it coming into town, everything looked different at night. Admittedly, Sasha just wished to be back at home. The evening had left him fried and frazzled and all he wanted was to be someplace he felt safe.

  And Ciel Lake is where I feel safe? Sasha thought to himself. He just murdered someone and yet I want to be back home with him. I get strength and security from him…

  How fucked up is that…?

  Kheva parked the truck in front of the convenience store and opened the driver’s side door.

  There’s a damn dead body in the back of the truck and he’s stopping at a convenience store?

  “You can pick out something if you wish,” Kheva said as he exited the truck.

  Sasha stared through the windows of the Gas ‘N Go convenience store, there was only one other person in the store besides the two female tellers. The two women conversing with smiles on their faces, one of them holding a coffee.

  “Sasha?”

  Sasha’s locked gaze broke, but his mouth had ceased moving. Kheva didn’t make him respond, he closed the truck door and walked to the entrance of the store.

  Absentmindedly, Sasha looked through the passenger side mirror, half-expecting cop cars to show up. He could see it perfectly in his head, the bright blue and red flashes, the short whoop of the siren. When he was little, Uncle Lex would always lift him up so he could look out the window when an emergency vehicle went by, he’d never had a fear of them until now.

  We’re going to get caught… Joey’s going to remember what happened and he’s going to go to the police. He knows Kheva’s name; he’ll recognize both of us. We’re going to go to jail for the rest of our lives…

  The Master picked up several random things in the small aisles, then asked for something from the glass displays that held convenience food under heated lamps. He was passed the food, then paid for it with cash, and walked out about ten minutes after entering. In that time, there were no police cars, nothing to set off the warning alarms inside of Sasha that already seemed half-sprung. It was… quiet,
all quiet.

  The door opened and Kheva got back into the truck. As soon as the door closed, the smell of pizza filled the air. Usually it would make Sasha salivate and jump around, much like Kel did whenever he was around junk food, but now it just made his stomach curl.

  Kheva handed him a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper, and when Sasha took it, he also handed him a peanut butter Oh Henry chocolate bar.

  Which was actually Sasha’s favourite, even though he’d never mentioned it. Another one of Kheva’s many gifts.

  “You have too many morals, nightcrawler,” Kheva said when they were back driving on the single-lane road. There were woods all around them and they hadn’t passed any cars. Sasha wanted to see the dirt road underneath the truck’s tires; he wanted to just have this night over with. “You should feel no guilt over what happened. He deserved worse.”

  Sasha knew this, he’d seen it with his own eyes; he’d felt the terror crushing Rob from the inside out. But… that was only a small part of it.

  It was everything that had happened. He was confused, shocked, stunned into a stupor that he could only temporarily break out of.

  “What about Joey?” Sasha whispered, unsure if that was a question that would get him beaten.

  “He’s alive,” Kheva said simply. “It would’ve been easier to kill him, but I decided to save you the nightmares and allow him to live.”

  “The memory thing… he won’t know what happened to him?”

  “No.”

  Sasha stalled, another question on his tongue. He decided to just say fuck it and ask, if Kheva did want to hit him for it, he didn’t care.

  “Why did you have to rape him?” he said timidly. “After everything else we did to him?”

  Surprisingly, Kheva answered without hesitation. “Trauma weakens the natural block you’ve already experienced when trying to infiltrate a human’s beacon,” Kheva explained. “He was in turmoil, but I needed to make it worse. I’ve had memory blocks fade after a couple years and I couldn’t risk this being one of them.”

  Sasha hated how that actually made sense. He wanted to be angry at Kheva over torturing Joey past what was needed to summon Gavin. But it sounded like that was the only way to save that guy’s life. How fucked up was that?

  Sasha let out a slow breath. “I just… want this night to be over,” he said. “I want to go home.”

  “You want to go to where you feel safe,” Kheva said, echoing how Sasha felt. “Your safe spot is no longer your apartment, it’s in my house. That’s good you’ve admitted it.”

  Sasha didn’t have any feelings towards what Kheva had said. When he’d mentioned it before, Sasha had felt guilty, like he was betraying Jobe and Lex, but now there was nothing inside of him to counter his own thoughts. He just nodded instead, and Kheva carried on.

  The truck drive back home was made mostly in silence. Sasha stared out the dark window, feeling only brief inklings of relief when they hit the dirt road, and more of them when he started recognizing several of the forks in the rarely-used road. It was full-on relief however when the lights of Ciel Lake broke through the trees, enough for him to almost want to cry.

  The night was over; they were home. Finally, they were home.

  When the truck pulled into the open field, Sasha could already see Kel standing on the drenched porch with Jye beside him. This made Sasha smile faintly, that was the last place he’d seen the two as well and it was almost fun to believe that Kel and Jye hadn’t moved from that spot the entire evening.

  Kheva didn’t park the truck in its usual spot, instead he turned right, towards two sheds that edged the forest, both on the opposite sides of where the shed Sasha had been locked in was.

  The headlights illuminated the two structures, both made out of sun-bleached boards with no windows, and then Kheva cut the truck motor. The cab fell to silence, all except for the familiar jingle to remind the driver to take the keys out of the ignition, then there was nothing but the sounds of their breathing.

  Kheva opened the door to exit the truck and Sasha did as well, and when he looked towards the lit-up porch already he saw Kel running towards them like an excited dog whose master had returned from a long venture.

  “Did you do it, Master?!” Kel’s excited yet shrill voice rang out over the lightly falling rain. “Is he dead? Is he dead?”

  Sasha froze, the blood draining from his face. Is he dead?

  The… the fucking plan all along was to murder Gavin? Sasha’s world spun and his stomach gave another nauseous lurch.

  “We were successful; he’s dead,” Kheva said simply, but just as an excited squeal echoed throughout the field, Kheva’s sharp voice cut through it. “Sasha is overwhelmed; he doesn’t need your spastic energy right now. Calm yourself and help me bring him into the shed.”

  Sasha groaned and ran his hands down his face. He didn’t want to see Gavin’s dead body; he didn’t want to have to hear his corpse scrape along the dirty truck bed. This was all too much for him. This was all just… just fucking too much.

  Then he felt Kheva’s presence behind him, and he said in a growled tone, “He and five other men raped Kel so badly he needed surgery. They brutalized him and used him like an animal. They pissed on him, shoved a light bulb up him and broke it, burned the tips of his fingers with lighters.” Suddenly a hand grabbed Sasha’s arm and spun him around––and he was then eye-to-eye with the same demon he’d seen face Gavin on that road. “They had no intentions of letting him live, and the horrific abuse he had to endure turned him into the Kel you now know. His mind was unable to cope with it.” Kheva’s glowing yellow eyes glared into his. “Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t seek out every man who did this if it had been done to Jobe.”

  Sasha stared at him, stunned and frozen. Did that – did that actually happen? This wasn’t at all the story that Rob had told him. Kheva was acting like he wasn’t even there, but… Rob had said he was. Sasha had been inside of Rob’s head.

  What – what had actually happened?

  The way that Kheva was glaring at Sasha, the conviction behind his words. Kheva would have to be a world-class actor to pull off that performance, and Kheva was not a man to show emotions often.

  Well, no matter what the truth was, one thing was for sure: Gavin had been there, and Gavin had done terrible things to Kel.

  Enough to break his mind, enough for Kel to do something that only nightcrawlers could do… retreat into himself and put a different personality in your place. Rob was who Kel had been before this incident… or at least that’s what Sasha was being led to believe.

  “I would have,” Sasha whispered not breaking eye contact. “I understand why you did it, I’m just… kind of shell-shocked about the whole evening.”

  “You’re allowed to be,” Kheva said, wiping rain water from his face. He unlatched the truck’s tailgate and Kel hopped up, appearing unfazed by Kheva bringing up such horrible past events. “Just don’t let me hear an inch of guilt over that man. He deserved it, and he will not be the last.”

  Sasha stood back as Kel dragged the blue tarp over to the edge of the truck. The sound he had been wanting to avoid filled his ears, but he stood there and watched the two of them unload the body.

  He felt something beside him, and when he glanced down he saw Jye sitting by his leg watching with curious brown eyes as Kel and Kheva carry the body into the shed. Sasha reached down and scratched his head, and smiled when Jye began to nuzzle his hand.

  “So, you’re happy I’m back?” Sasha said to the serval quietly. He petted the African cat’s damp head, an eruption of purrs sounding soon after. “I suppose I do feed you, you have to love me.” Nothing like a tamed giant cat to make you feel better. Sasha did miss Lex’s cats; they seemed so small now since he was used to seeing Jye.

  Sasha stood and waited for Kheva and Kel to leave the shed, but instead a light turned on inside and he heard muffled talking. Soon after, Jye decided to walk up the two wooden steps and into the shed and he hear
d Kheva command the cat to stand back.

  “Sasha, hold Jye back,” Kheva called.

  Even though the last thing he wanted to do was go into that shed, he knew better than to disobey Kheva. Sasha walked towards the shed, noticing a thick electrical cord running into a small hole in the grey boards of the house.

  As Sasha thought about it, he seemed to recall Kel mentioning a freezer in there.

  Another sickening pit of nausea formed. They were probably going to stuff Gavin’s body in the freezer, maybe throw it into the lake or something. Sasha had watched more than his fair share of murder mystery shows, there were a lot of ways to dispose of a body, especially when you lived in a rural forest with a lake right there.

  They could also just put it in the forest for wild animals, or burn it without––

  Sasha suddenly gasped, both hands being thrown over his mouth.

  Gavin… Gavin…

  Gavin… Gavin was now entirely naked, strung up by his feet and dangling over a white bucket.

  There was a cut across his throat, a deep laceration that showed blood so thick it was black, and deep red meat and tendons.

  And his blood… his blood…

  It was draining into the bucket.

  Oh fuck, the sound… the fucking sound of the blood splattering into the container, like the rain outside pattering against plastic. Pitpitpitpit.

  Sasha stumbled back and grabbed onto a near by wooden counter. All of a sudden, he couldn’t breath, and as he stared at the nightcrawler, Gavin’s feet bound with rope and his grey arms dangling down askew, Sasha thought his own mind was about to break.

  “What’s wrong, Sashy?” Kel asked happily. He emerged from behind a partition in the wall, now wearing a grey plastic apron and holding a bloodied knife in his hand. “It’s nice he won’t go to waste.”

  Go to… waste?

  Go to waste?

  “What the fuck?” Sasha cried weakly, he tried to take in another gasping breath but his lungs seemed to be refusing it. “What the fuck?”

  Kheva then walked in front of Sasha, a power saw in one hand and a face shield in the other. “What?” Kheva said, his eyes flickering over to Sasha. “What did you think you were eating all this time?”