Oculus

by S. E. Akers

  It seemed he did plan on moving mountains. “You may want to contact Professor Grey and tell him not to rush back,” I urged, eyes flaring.

  Silas turned to me, his face looking as carved and stony as a mug on Mount Rushmore. “I’m not that fond of cute either.”

  I mouthed a noiseless, “Sorry” to go with my shrinking frame.

  Silas honed his stare. “Oh, how I wish absolving your guilt would be as simple as brainwashing that head of yours or cutting out your heart,” he groaned and then reached behind his back. “But hopefully, this will do the trick.” With a little crafty sleight of hand, he presented me with a silver collar fitted with a crimson stone — totally out of thin air. “Go ahead, Ms. Wallace. It practically has your name on it.”

  I gently swiped my fingertip across the cabochon. “A proustite?” I questioned, surprised that I was holding a real one in my hands. I’d only felt the stone’s signature vibe through its totem when Tanner had gone over it in this very room. “Where did you get this?”

  Silas beamed proudly. “It’s mine, and it would have already been at your disposal if you had taken me up on my meditative instruction weeks ago. But alas, you chose to seek the advice of the skilled masters on YouTube,” he groaned.

  From my deepest personal thoughts to my period, I felt like he’d implanted a video camera in my head that was giving him a live 24-hour feed. “You pulled that one out too?”

  “No,” Silas assured, oddly offended. “That I stumbled across innocently when going through the search history on the library computer.” He barked out a dry huff. “You make me sound so intrusive.”

  Considering how much I was relying on his help, I let that one slide right off my back and straight over the daggone mountain. “So I’m going to meditate all of my guilt away?”

  “Meditation is as much about clearing one’s mind as it is about uncovering the things that plague a person’s thoughts,” he explained. “The proustite will aid you in doing that by drawing out what clouds it. The visions it manifests will seek to bend your reality. That way, you can genuinely see how fierce their hold is over you and feel how destructive they are to your soul.”

  My muscles tightened nervously. “How much ‘seeing’ and ‘feeling’ are we talking about?”

  “That depends on how thick your cloud is. Your eyes might see faces . . . Your ears may hear voices . . . But rest assured, your insides will feel every ache of torment your soul has been bearing for as long as you’ve struggled with all that bottled-up guilt. I cannot say how physically painful it will be, but pain you will feel, Ms. Wallace. Pure and undiluted. I’m afraid it’s a necessary part of the stone’s magical process.” Silas took a step closer. “Imagine how sad you feel right up until the time a tear breaks from your eyes and then the swell of relief you feel afterwards. That’s your soul cleansing itself. But it’s only a fraction of the suffering it holds. A hundred-fold is what waits for you while under the proustite’s spell. And when you do fully open the door to purge its suffering, the stone won’t release you from your physical torture until the job is done.”

  I swallowed back a rush of nausea trying to climb its way up the back of my throat. Ugh… Nothing is ever EASY around here.

  “You’ve collected a vast amount of gloom for someone your age and in such a short amount of time. Ask yourself this, Ms. Wallace . . . How can you ever hope to truly feel the sunshine when you are drowning in a sea of grays?”

  “I wouldn’t say I’ve been drowning,” I countered. Maybe treading water instead of wading, if anything.

  “Please refresh my memory. Exactly how long did it take you to pull one little memory from your golden topaz before you were given a push?” he asked.

  My lips pressed together thoughtfully. “I stand corrected — But in all fairness, it was a pretty big memory.”

  With a roll of his eyes, Silas went to retrieve what appeared to be a galvanized metal pail sitting beside the door. He pulled out four picture frames and placed them on the floor. They were the ones from my bedside table — Katie, Gallia, Beatrix, and Daddy. I already knew I wasn’t going to like which way this was headed.

  “You must come to terms with each of their fates so you can finally move on,” Silas announced. “And if you cannot, you’ll never be more than a little girl playing pretend with her sword.”

  Now there was a whipping crack of sincerity.

  “Now, I’m sensing a few reservations, so I feel I must illustrate my point. Is that all right?” he asked.

  “Fine,” I agreed, knowing I had more than a few floating about.

  Silas positioned himself directly behind me. “I want you to take three quick steps forward,” he instructed.

  Despite my misgivings, I did as he asked. Of course I didn’t make it very far, not with him snatching hold of my head to keep it firmly in place. My backside hit the floor with a harsh “THUD” just as soon as he released his grip. And I was pretty sure I felt a touch of a push helping me down there as well.

  “Do you see what happens when your eyes and feet carry you forward, but your head remains in the past with your heart?” he posed. “Where do you end up?”

  I glared up at him as I twirled the collar around with the tip of my finger. “On my ASS?” I submitted testily.

  “What a fast learner you are,” he bragged. “And that’s been some of your problem this summer, the faces you see before you. You need to bury the past before you can move forward.” Silas pointed to the pictures. “You feel solely responsible for all their fates.” He shook his head. “Four deaths . . . My goodness. You may want to abandon that wand of yours, grab a black hooded-cloak, and start wielding a scythe.” Silas reached into the pail and pulled out a wad of fabric. He reshaped the item with a curt pop and tossed it to me. It was Simone’s bloody pillbox hat.

  “My mistake — Five,” he corrected. “I suspect you need to tend to her as well. That’s why I never cleaned it. I wanted it fresh.”

  I slung it onto the floor as I rose to my feet. Of course you did.

  Silas motioned to the pictures again. “Every one of them loved you enough to die for you.”

  I pointed to the bloody hat. “Not that one.”

  “Well no,” Silas agreed. “But I read her thoughts right up until the end. It was like sitting on the other end of a confessional. Even though Simone ultimately allowed it to happen, her heart was torn to pieces. The only thing you should offer her is forgiveness to heal your wounds and possibly some pity. She does not deserve a single ounce of your guilt. But the rest of them granted you the most precious gift a person can give and they did so because they wanted you to live. How can you continue to tarnish their gestures by not letting go and moving on? When you get down to the bottom of it, it’s actually very selfish on your part,” he scolded.

  I’d never really thought about it like that before, which ironically had me feeling even more guilt.

  “But I will say in your defense that you’ve been too distracted with everything else to give each one the attention they deserve. So, that is what I am offering you . . . all the precious time you need to shut everything else out and deal with them.” Silas straightened his frame to the unrelenting stance of a slave driver. “Now, you will remain locked inside this room until you acknowledge your issues and resolve them. I won’t move along with your training, I won’t let you out, and I won’t serve you any meals until that head of yours has thrashed them all out. And don’t even think about asking for any bathroom privileges.” He pointed to the metal pail. “I think you know what that’s for.”

  “You’re not serious,” I countered.

  Silas’ flinty expression never faltered. “Be glad you skipped breakfast.”

  My mouth cracked open. It seemed he most certainly was. “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “Call upon the powers of that proustite and then devote all of your heart’s focus to these five beings,” Silas demanded. “Talk to them, Ms. Wallace. Cry if you want. Yell, if need be. I
don’t care which route you take. Do whatever you feel is a means to an end, but mark my words — I’ll not let you out of here until this matter has been put to bed,” he vowed. “Running in the direction of something may seem like you’re moving towards it, but you’re actually running away from something else, and it is high time you stop the distractions.”

  Dampening my glare was impossible, knowing I was looking at the demon-seed offspring of Jillian Michaels and Dr. Phil. All I needed was a cheek swab and a DNA test to prove it.

  Silas made a steady march towards the door. “And just so you know, Professor Grey’s return is irrelevant. You still have no idea what I am and what tricks I hold up my sleeve. Don’t think for a second that you’ll be missed around here.”

  “You do realize that you’re locking me in a room where I can call him, don’t you?”

  A hearty round of laughter exploded out of his mouth. “You do that,” he urged, unable to muzzle his chuckles. “I can hear the Diamond Talisman’s cries now. Help me! Help me! Silas has me trapped in the totem room and is forcing me to deal with my feelings!” The droll-looking house steward shook his head as he wrapped his hand around the knob. “Do me a favor? Call Ms. Kamandha with that one. I bet her cackles boom at the speed of sound from across the globe.”

  Though the slam of the door was irritating enough, the truthfulness behind his claim galled the hell out of me even more.

  “You could’ve at least left me something to sit on!” I yelled. Then I spun around to find a cushy velvet floor pillow lying in the center of the room, along with a fresh roll of toilet paper resting on top of it.

  Smartass…

  My head fell back after I’d pitched the roll into the pail, gnawed by my latest trumping. What the hell is HE?

  Resigned to getting on with “my therapy”, I nestled my rear into the cushion, crisscrossed my legs, and then released a lengthy stream of air. The glowing lights floating around the enchanting setting began working their magic, lulling all of my senses into submission. And though I was as ready as I could be, I felt like a kid waiting for a doctor to stick them with a six-inch needle. Seriously? My perfect summer had already turned into one mother of a schoolyard bully, and this “mental housekeeping” endeavor of his might end up being the final shove that sends me straight over the edge. I stared at the proustite collar hesitantly. The stone looked as red as a cherry now, but the more troubles it quelled, the darker it was supposed to turn. With the landfill of buried emotions that I had to excavate, this thing would probably look as black as an onyx when it was all said and done. My anxiety surged while thoughts of how miserable this was going to feel whirled in my head. And even worse, how long before it would release me from the clutches of its spell? Five deaths in just under nine months? My palm flew up to my forehead and gave it a chastising smack. Correction — Six. Harper Riverside… I still felt bad about him too. Crap! And the cab driver in Catemaco…and the three bikers. I supposed I needed to lump them in there as well.

  Without thinking about the stone’s rigors for a second longer, I lifted up the silver collar and locked it around my neck with a hasty “click”. Though the sound barely scored the air, I instantly felt like a gun had gone off and left a bullet hole in the center of my chest with the spread of a hollow-point .44. The feeling was HORRIBLE. It fanned throughout my entire body, filling it with the most intense mix of sadness, remorse, and raw anger — all the makings of a suicidal cocktail. There was no alleviating it either. Every calming breath I attempted simply tightened its strangle even more. My insides felt like a thorny and twisted mess of briars, which proved far more debilitating than a prison cell lined with premium-grade iron. Knowing this was what my unmasked soul suffered with on a daily basis had me downright alarmed. No wonder I’d never stopped to truly focus on it, not even a watered-down version of it. The pain was so crippling my subconscious had to have set my mind on autopilot, searching for interruptions to divert me from the brunt of its torture. And it was at that moment when the thought crossed my mind as to why I’d been so obsessed with discovering Tanner’s feelings. It was the perfect distraction, on top of my training, and an underlying warning cry. I’d lost so many people close to me already. A small part of me feared I might lose him too before I could tell him how I felt — not just feel my emotions, but hear me breathe the words. However knowing what I did now, those sentiments would remain locked away in my heart, never crossing my lips.

  I shifted around as I tugged at the collar, feeling the ache of its strain. Crap… This is going to be HARD.

  It wasn’t long before a gray mist began gradually spilling into the chamber. Its creep was heavy and painfully mirrored the choke my emotions had on my soul. Soon all I could see of the radiant totems were a few random, somber glows. I braced myself for what their fall into darkness would inevitably bring and begged the stone to make haste with its punishment — and show me a little mercy along the way.

  Slowly but surely, all the individuals I’d deemed as my victims appeared one by one. Their eerie likenesses steadily circled me like a carousel, in living color and all poignantly real. Their stares never left me for a second, and no matter how blank or loving their gazes seemed, each pair of eyes stabbed my soul like icy daggers. That was bad enough, but the worst was hearing their voices whisper in my ears and not being able to carry on a conversation with them. I would have killed for any of them to tell me they were off in some better place existing as happily as they could be. I would have settled for something as simple as a confirming nod from any of them, but nothing ever came. I soon realized how truly screwed I was when looking at Katie’s face didn’t loosen the stone’s clasp for a second — and she hadn’t gone anywhere permanently.

  So as I lay there, writhing in gut-wrenching pain and sweating profusely from my mystical soul-flogging, I began doing the only thing I knew would set my soul free and end its agony: making my peace with each of them so I could say my final goodbyes. I figured starting with the one’s I didn’t know very well would be the easiest. Wrong. They were each just as hard in their own way. Well maybe not the three possessed bikers from the Drive-In who all turned out to be degenerates, but the cab driver in Catemaco was pretty daggone rough. The vision the proustite plucked from my mind was the last image it held of the man, sitting behind the steering wheel of his cab with an arrow skewering his head. He’d made no willing sacrifice for me at all. I may not have wielded the ax, but I was the one who’d unknowingly led that lamb to the slaughter when I’d compelled him to stay put. The only way I could absolve my guilt over his death was by making a point to find out if he had a wife or kids and seeing if they needed anything. The strain on my soul loosened a tiny bit once I’d made that affirmation and then I actually felt some of the pain in my heart showing signs of fading, right along with all four of the men’s images slowly disappearing. Of course it wasn’t enough to spring me into a series of backflips by any means, but it made me think I was on the right track. Hopefully.

  Coping with Harper Riverside’s death was grueling, even though it was ultimately his headstrong attitude that had got him shot in the first place. But the cold hard fact remained that Lazarus and his henchman wouldn’t have been in town if it weren’t for the diamond. Knowing I’d taken a malachite blade in the gut to save his son went a long way when it came to dealing with my guilt over him. But thinking about that ended up throwing Ty, Kara, and Mike into the mix of my conscience-stricken recollections. They weren’t as difficult to tackle, but the thought of what could have happened if I hadn’t saved them still had me cringing. Samuel even worked his way into my visions. But I still didn’t regret not healing him that day. Seeing his eyes fall on me like a random stranger would have been agonizing, especially after losing Daddy so soon. I only wished my surrogate father had never got hurt in the first place, which again was direct collateral damage from me.

  I swiped my hand across my brow and then pressed my stomach against the hard floor just as another wicked pang struck.
So it seemed no matter what degree of guilt my heart and soul held, this stone was hell-bent on breaking me — one way or another.

  Simone’s image came forward as my fingers stroked the nap of her round woolen hat. And the stone didn’t let me off easy with her either. It flashed a repeated scene of her body liquefying — her frame completely intact one second and then a drippy corpse wasting away the next, over and over like a twisted glitch in a DVR recording. Closing my eyes didn’t help, so I resorted to focusing on her essence buried deep inside me. Silas was absolutely right about Simone. All I could offer her was my forgiveness and a whole lot of pity. Though I did promise to give my blade an extra-hard twist when it was piercing her bitch-sister’s heart, seeking its vengeance for the horrors Helaine had inflicted on Bea and for Ganjhi taking his life. I figured the remorse I’d sensed from the former Blue Topaz Talisman entitled her to a little something. And I hoped by some chance, that all three of their otherworldly essences could feel the precise moment when it happened from wherever they were like the invigorating whip of a cool breeze on a stale muggy day. That, or they could hear me stomping out the happy-dance I planned on doing atop Helaine’s remains. And I prayed she was wearing something white and ridiculously expensive too.

  It wasn’t long after I’d placed Simone’s hat off to the side that her image started to dwindle away. Then I turned to the four portraits and eyed them one by one as I drank in an ocean’s worth of memories. Grief and guilt tossed my mind like a ceaseless stream of waves, battering me from all directions while I bobbed along in my somber blue sea and waited for a far off halo of land to lift my spirits. But the only way to find it was holding on for dear life while the stone navigated me through my own mental shark-infested waters. I was really dreading this part. And I already knew their bites were going to be brutal. But it wasn’t simply the unjustness or all the “whys” I’d bellowed to the cosmos until tears were burning my cheeks that had me so distraught. That was only the tip of the iceberg. It was all the blame I felt for their deaths. That’s the part that lay underneath the surface weighing on my soul, right along with all the regrets my heart couldn’t let go of — all the future missed moments I would never share with the three of them and the one’s I’d robbed from my bosom friend. That was what my nutshell held, and it was about to get one hell of a crack.