Catharsis (Book 1)

by D. Andrew Campbell

  Once I had finished with my food supply (for that was what they were to me), I would leave them in the street where I had found them, and then I'd hide nearby to watch them until they awoke (I couldn't bring myself to just abandon them to the night and the real monsters who prowl out here. I'd stay near them to make sure they were safe.). Typically my wait was seldom more than a few minutes before the person would slowly - and quite groggily - shake themselves awake. It was like watching a person react to an alarm clock when they had been deep in a REM sleep cycle. I could tell they knew something was off, but they never freaked out upon awakening. It was just a shaky rise, a rubbing of the head and neck and then a slow stumble on down the sidewalk.

  Even when I followed them (at a safe distance, of course), the behavior didn't change much. Over time their gait would even out, their heartbeat and breathing would get stronger (thank you super senses) and they would just continue on their way like nothing ever happened. I'm not sure why, but they seemed to have no memory of what I had done to them. And no ill effects, from what I could tell.

  After watching this phenomenon several times, I eventually became emboldened enough to confront and attempt to speak to one of these people after I had left them on the street. They showed no recognition of me whatsoever.

  Once, out of curiosity, I even let an old lady I had chosen to drink from see me before I attacked. I even made sure she knew it was me as I bit into her (I feel bad for the fear she must have felt because I could taste it as it came out of her.). Afterwards, once she was up and hobbling on her way home (She had a cane. The elderly were an easy target for me until I felt strong enough to tackle bigger meals.) or to the market or wherever it is old people go, I walked up to her and asked for directions. Aside from the obvious distaste she had for speaking to a teenager of the street (I had used some of my ill-gotten gains to buy new clothes and wash up, but I couldn't really get rid of that I'm-living-on-my-own-without-parents look.), she didn't seem otherwise bothered by me or my presence or what I had done to her.

  I don't know what this is I've become now, but whatever it is it's highly adapted to hunting people and getting away with it. This dark hunger that envelopes me has made me faster, stronger and smarter than any living human. Not only am I better than anyone I'll ever meet, but I'm also engineered to feed on them and have them never suspect it even happened.

  And with all this power in me, I only wanted to use it do one thing: find the man whose scent I would never forget and finally, willingly, let the darkness have its way with him.

  Having Mr. Black's scent (I have to call him something, and I don't have much to go on. I considered "Mr. Deadman", but it felt too unwieldy and to the point. He had dark skin, so Mr. Black it is.) burned into my brain has helped make tracking him possible, but living in a large city and having to wait weeks before I could begin my hunt has made this a real challenge. Most of anything that could lead me to him has dissipated by the time I'm able to make my way back to the two houses where last I saw him. There's not much for me to go on, but I don't need much, either.

  I've found that I can pull up the darkness easily now and push energy into it to feed a particular sense or ability that I want to use. It’s incredibly taxing on me to do and it drives my need for food higher, but the payoff is worth it. Within a week of arriving at the houses and beginning my search in earnest, I find enough of his scent in the air to track him to his home.

  The house that reeks of him is not what I expected to find when I track him to his lair (And he has to have a lair - like a super-villain would. All bad guys have some kind of evil fortress they can slink back to at the end of the day.), though. It's a large, two-story, well-kept house in a very nice part of town. I had prepared myself for a run-down apartment building or even a fortified estate like a mob boss (In my mind I had both extremes covered, and yet I still ended up being wrong.), but not for a house with a three-car garage and a massive front lawn and a beautiful brick walkway to the front door.

  This is the home of a doctor or a lawyer or the CEO of a successful business, not the primary home of a man running a drug cartel (Or drug business, or whatever they call it these days. I'm not up on my drug lord slang.). Regardless of what my eyes may tell me (innocent, upscale house of a well-to-do family), my nose is not deceived by this false front (the faint tang of the drug's poisons underlay Mr. Black's pervasive scent). This is my destination. This is where my retribution shall occur.

  My searching has been primarily occurring at night (fewer competing scents on the street, and the few cops I have encountered are easily evaded in the dark alleys) and that has worked out to my benefit. It is well after midnight now but not quite far enough along to be dawn, so it is the perfect hour for me to make my visit. As long as he's home, then he should either be asleep or most the people around him will be, which is perfect for what I intend to do.

  Ignoring the motion-activated flood lights that kick on as I leave the side walk and cross the lawn (At least I ignore them as well as I can while using the darkness created by my new black hoodie and tinted sunglasses. I've learned over the past few weeks to be more prepared for events like this.), I head straight for the Black residence's front door. I have no intention of entering the house through such an obvious method, but it will allow me to get close enough to verify that my target is indeed still inside the house. I'm not going to waste my time breaking and entering if he isn't home.

  Once on the front porch, I reach out and grab both sides of the door frame so that I can brace myself for what I intend to do. Leaning in and pressing my nose to the crack of the door, I inhale deeply and violently to pull in as much air as I can as quickly as possible. Holding the air in my lungs isn't necessary as all the information is transmitted to my brain as soon as the air passes through my nostrils. Huffing the air out, I smile; this is the right place. He's home right now.

  Resting my forehead against the green metal door of his house (For his home he invested in metal, but for his "businesses" he settled for wood.), I run through my final verification before I can commit to entering: listening for how many people are inside the place tonight. I can pick out eight strong scents, but I'm thinking several of those scents are employees and I'm hoping those particular people aren't around at this time of night. Shifting the darkness in me from one sense to another one so that I can push it beyond what it might normally be capable of, I'm able to determine five separate heartbeats in the house. All of them are rhythmic, steady and most definitely asleep, although two of the heartbeats register as both slower and stronger than the others.

  "Odd," I whisper to the closed door, but that is as far as the thought goes. I don't really care about the other four heartbeats or their irregularities. I've only come here tonight for one of them. The others are extraneous to my plan.

  Stepping back from the front door until I can get a clear line of sight of the massive roof of the place, I look up so that I can judge the distance I'll need to leap vertically to get myself up on to it. The house's lower levels are stonework and easily climbable, but the upper half is all cement board (Thanks mom for making me watch all those home improvement shows with you, or I never would have known what that stuff was called.) and that would prove much more daunting. I don't have the time (or patience) to work out how to climb a smooth surface like that, so a thirty-foot vertical jump it'll have to be.

  The darkness in me is nearly tapped out after a whole evening of searching (and I knew I was close so I pushed it more than I should have) and examining the house to verify its occupancy didn't help, but I dig down again to pull the energy for a jump of this magnitude. The cold warmth fills my legs (I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but that's the best way for me to describe it. It's a combination of the deliciousness of hot cocoa flowing down your throat on a chilly winter day mixed with the cold, guilty dread of knowing it was the last packet in the house and your father is shoveling the driveway and expecting to come in and have his own warm mug any moment.) with enough en
ergy for what I need to do, but it has brought the hunger with it this time. I will need to feed very soon.

  "Don't you worry," I tell the hunger as it begins to gnaw at the edges of me. "Inside this house is a meal I will happily unleash you upon. You will get your fill."

  The rush of hurtling straight upwards like this using nothing but the power of my own muscles will never get old for me. Even though I don't like everything that's happened to me recently, this is a thrill I will happily keep experiencing.

  Landing on the roof with the softness of a squirrel jumping from a tree, I make as little sound as possible as the shingles accept my weight. Roofs always have some kind of viable access point to the house due to the fact that builders and architects never expect a person to be able to get up on one without the owner of the house knowing about it; it's just a matter of searching and being open-minded. Sometimes it’s a chimney that can be shimmied down, or an unused window that can be carefully removed or in the case of this house, an attic vent to help relieve pent-up heat in the summer months. The vent is twelve inches across so getting in through it isn't a problem, but the addition of superhuman agility only makes the adventure easier.

  Once inside, it's a simple matter to tune into the two strongest heartbeats (one of them has to be Mr. Black) and make my way across the attic until I can find an entry point into the house. One set of well-greased and noiseless attic stairs later (Lucky for me - but not him - Mr. Black has done a good job of keeping up on the maintenance and repairs.), I find myself standing in the upstairs hallway of a lavishly decorated home.

  Listening to the melodic bump-th-bump of the stronger of the two hearts (Not that it matters, the sound of the two strongest heartbeats are coming from the same place in the house.), I turn around slowly in the hallway until I can orient myself on which direction to go next before realizing it's obvious. A dozen feet in front of me are a set of large, double doors standing slightly ajar.

  "The master bedroom," I hiss as the hunger begins its ascent in anticipation of soon being fed. "Of course. I should have thought of that."

  Breathing shallowly through my mouth to try and slow the hunger's onset (And quell a bit of my own excitement at the thought of the delicious revenge that awaits.), I quietly bound down the hallway and push the doors open the rest of the way.

  The smell of him was strong before when I was in the house, but being in the same room as him is almost overwhelmingly intoxicating. My brain has been so zeroed in on his scent during the search, that being this close to its source is enough to make me stumble. The soft carpet absorbs my impact and muffles any sound I might have made, but I still laugh softly to myself.

  What kind of dark hunter of the night are you? I think to myself as I regain my feet and stand over the sleeping forms in the large king-sized bed. You can't even enter the room of sleeping prey without tripping over yourself.

  And then I stop. He's not alone in the bed.

  Part of me knew he wasn't alone due to the extra heartbeats I had picked out, but I had just assumed I was hearing the hearts of some random women he was with or maybe a bodyguard lying nearby. That's not the case.

  What is nestled in front of me in the bed is a dark-skinned man snuggled into the silky, high thread count sheets of his luxurious bed with his arms wrapped around a small girl of about eight years old. Her head is resting on his chest and his arm is draped lovingly over her hip and leg (Saying the word "lovingly" burns every part of me, but there is no other way to describe the way his hand has gently and protectively curled around her.). Behind him and spooned up against his body is a stunningly gorgeous woman about the same age as my mother. I'm looking at Mr. Black, but I'm not seeing the man who shot me in cold blood in that house's hallway.

  What I'm seeing is a man, his adoring wife and his beloved child. A family. That fainter, faster heartbeat I ignored earlier was his kid, and my ears tell me he has more than one of them. I'm not getting ready to get revenge on the man that destroyed my life and caused me to kill my best friend, I'm getting ready to tear apart a happy, loving family. I'm getting ready to kill this girl's father.

  I had prepared myself to come in here tonight and release my fury on a demon of a man. A man that would put poison on the streets for his own personal wealth and gain. A man that would shoot an unarmed girl in a hallway without any remorse. A man that took the only thing I cared about in this world anymore away from me.

  I came here to slay a monster.

  As I stare at the three sleeping forms in the bed in front of me, I don't try to stop the tears as they roll down my face. No matter how tightly I squeeze my eyes shut now, I realize I couldn't stop them even I wanted to.

  With the salty water splashing soundlessly into the carpet at my toes, I know I have to accept who I am. And I have to accept what I am going to do – not only in this room, but for the rest of my life.

  There are two monsters in this house tonight, but only one of them will open their eyes in the morning.

  "Please forgive me," I say to whomever will listen, and then I close my eyes and give myself over to the dark pull of the hunger.

  EPILOGUE

  Growing up as a young girl and listening to the bedtime stories my father would tell me, I always thought it was easy to tell the difference between good and evil in the world. The good guys wore white or had "prince" in their name or saved princesses from the clutches of dragons or at the very least you were happy with the choices they made at the end of the story. Bad guys were simple and evil and driven by greed or lust or the maniacal need to lock young women in towers with fire-breathing reptiles. When my father read those books to me, it was easy to know which side was which, and I always knew which side I would be on when I grew up.

  But then you get older and you realize the world isn't divided into black and white or good and evil. Everything is a shade of something in-between. No person is purely good or completely evil. We all have sins and poor choices that we want to keep hidden or a redeeming quality that makes those around us consider us a good friend when no one else will. In real life we don't have evil wizards putting people in dungeons or princes that ride the countryside looking for good deeds to perform. We have teachers that inspire us or big name chemical companies that wantonly pollute the earth. But that chemical company also helps create drugs that save kids with cancer, and that teacher might be worried his past life and arrests will come back to haunt him.

  Every villain is the hero of their own story. No living person does evil acts for the sole purpose of enjoyment. It’s not part of human nature. We rationalize what we do so that our actions make sense in our head. The chemical company executive tells himself that pollution is a necessary byproduct of being able to keep the drug costs down. The teacher convinces himself he doesn't need to tell his employers about his previous arrests because it shouldn't affect how he teaches kids now. Their actions may be wrong and may even qualify as "evil" in a spectator's eyes, but that is not their intention.

  Standing in Mr. Black's bedroom, I realized I no longer knew who the good guy was in my own story any more. I was no longer the hero going out to slay a monster in its lair at night. I was an assassin planning on murdering a man while he slept. Maybe this man did deserve to die because of how he earned his money, but he wasn't doing it to ruin the world. He was doing it to provide for his family. He was the hero in that house, and from now on I will be their monster.

  That is a decision I must learn to live with, and it is a decision that I will spend the rest of my days rectifying.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The writing of Catharsis took me nearly a year to complete, and it was a process that I never could have done alone. I owe debts to many people for this book turning out as well as it did.

  Thank you to my wife for her faith in me and her continued pressure to get me to sit down and finally write something. Taking that first step into writing a novel was nerve-wracking and her belief in my ability was inspiring. And another thank you to her f
or helping me find the free time to sit and write. Writing is a lonely venture, but it becomes much more bearable when those around you are supportive. Thank you, hon.

  My apologies and a thank you to my daughters for their patience as their daddy spent a lot of time in his office (and the quiet closet IN the office) writing and working on his novel. They were very understanding and helpful, and their love helped guide me. I hope I have created a book that my daughters will be proud of once they’re old enough to read it.

  Thank you to my parents for raising me with a love of both reading and creative expression. That foundation helped make me the person I am today. My parents also did a wonderful job of convincing me I could become anything I wanted to be once I grew up, and that faith helped foster my delusion of becoming a novelist. A delusion that has now become reality.

  My journey into becoming a published writer was made immensely easier through the advice of Megan Powell, an old friend who had been down this path before. If you haven’t checked out her book, No Peace for the Damned, on Amazon you really should. It is worth the download.

  My book would not have become what it is without my “early readers” helping me out by taking a look at the rough draft and letting me know if I was going in the right direction. Your willingness to give up free time and read my manuscript and comment on it was a life-saver for me. Thank you Madison Carmichael, Lesley Gaylor, Abby Hurt, Pat Lehmann, Kevin Stumpf and Brenna Terrell.

  And finally a thank you to my editors for reading my early draft and giving incredibly detailed story feedback and catching some of my many, many errors. Your ideas were invaluable in shaping the final product. I hope you’ll be willing to work with me on my next book once it’s ready. I am eternally in your debt Rachel Desmarais, Jillian Hayes, Grace Haza and Kara Rebholz. And a special thank you to Madeline Snipes for being the first person to ever read my completed manuscript (While dodging through my horrible misuses of “its” and “it’s”.) and give me verification of its success as a story (Even if you did hate me for the ending!).