So yeah, Paxton was strange, too. Cute, but strange.
As soon as he fell out of sight, the other girl turned in a fluidly graceful way that seemed more akin to a spider than human and leaped into the hole after him. “Paxton!” Cassie screamed. “Look out!”
The quiet from down there was disconcerting until she heard the grunts of two people fighting. Melanie muttered something and then all went silent once more.
She’d lost the flashlight in the fight with the duplicate — or whatever the hell that thing had been — but it was still turned on. She rushed over to where it lay, in one of the intermittent patches of foliage and grabbed it up. With the light and a vague memory of the direction their guns had flown, she was able to locate them in short order.
Maybe it was dumb to take the time to look for them, but she didn’t have anything else to fight with. Surely Paxton could handle some little blonde princess, even if she was possessed or whatever.
Right?
Balancing the flashlight and two shotguns was an awkward affair, so she hurried to the edge of the sinkhole and set the smaller gun on the edge. She took a moment to peer over, but she didn’t see anything at first.
Am I too late?
She dropped onto her butt and slid forward and down, landing lightly on her feet. She couldn’t remember if she’d pumped the slide after her last shot, so she pumped it now, with the flashlight clasped in her hand between her palm and the pump. The other girl was straddling Paxton. It didn’t look like she was strangling him or anything, but she held her hands up and above his chest and some weird-looking black things speared down and seemed to go into his head. It was tough to see from this angle, but his jaw hung slack and his eyes stared blankly forward. The slow movement of his chest told him that he was alive, for the moment. Stunned or in a trance — she couldn’t tell.
Okay, universe, I get it. You win.
“Hey!” Cassie shouted. “Let him up, or I splatter your pretty little brains all over the wall!” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. The range was close enough that she didn’t know if she could shoot at Melanie without hitting Paxton with some of the buckshot.
She hoped that Melanie wasn’t a hunter and wouldn’t pick up on that.
Slowly, the other girl’s head turned and fixed Cassie with a dire gaze that elicited an involuntary chirp of terror. Thick, black lines cascaded up Melanie’s neck and over her cheeks like some sort of tribal tattoos and thin tendrils of the darkness looped up and over into her eyes. Tiny spider veins of shadow shot through the whites and the pupils themselves were so large that they overwhelmed the colored part of the eye.
“I’m busy,” the other girl hissed, then flicked her wrist. The shadows descending from her palm silently pulled away from where they’d breached Paxton’s head. The violation left no wounds, which Cassie supposed was a small comfort. They still gave off a definite sense of wrongness. Melanie lazily waved her free hand in Cassie’s direction.
Once again, the shotgun twisted out of her grasp, though it didn’t have as much room to fly this time. On the return gesture, a shadow speared from Melanie’s hand and bifurcated. Before Cassie had time to move or even gasp, the twin tendrils slammed into her shoulders and slammed her back into the far wall of the sinkhole. They looked vaporous, but they had the consistency and strength of iron bars. She squirmed, but there was no wriggling loose. Her arms and legs were theoretically free, but the continuous pressure kept her from doing anything other than flailing about.
“I’ll get to you later,” the other girl snapped. She turned away to focus on Paxton.
Helpless, all Cassie could do was watch as the other woman resumed the silent showdown.
I stood in a low hut built with earthen walls and interwoven leaves on a wooden lattice for a roof. A banked fire against one of the walls brought a little light and presumably warmth, but I was still out of phase with wherever and whenever we were — I didn’t feel it.
A weeping woman knelt on the dirt floor in front of the fire, cradling a small figure that was too limp to be anything but dead. She rocked back and forth, alternately weeping and crooning words in a language wholly unfamiliar to me.
The only shadows in the small hut were those from the fire and something told me that I was alone here. My vaporous opponent was nowhere in sight, but where — never mind when — was I?
“Sumer. The southern part of modern-day Iraq. Over seven thousand years ago, the people who lived here found a land of plenty and founded one of the first civilizations in your recorded history.”
The voice was my dad’s, but the cadence was all wrong. “Dad?” I whispered, loath to disturb the weeping woman. I needn’t have bothered — isolated by her grief or by my state of existence, she paid no heed to me.
As though the voice hadn’t heard me, it continued. “In the grand scheme of things, the Edimmu is nothing. A spirit of the air, taking sustenance from the dying and the young. Even here, in one of the first pinnacles of ancient history, the darkness is ever-watchful.”
Another figure entered the hut. The weeping woman turned to the new arrival. He was a powerfully-built man, though of what I would consider below-average height. He wore a leather vest, linen-looking pants, and sandals. The handle of a sword jutted over one shoulder. Hawk-like, his eyes swept the room. For one heart-stopping moment, he looked right at me, but then he continued his inspection as though nothing were amiss.
“Did you see me?” I whispered. If he did, he either couldn’t hear me or paid the question no accord. The newcomer snapped something at the woman. She bowed her head before scurrying from the room.
“Wherever there is darkness, there will be those called to stand against it.”
The newcomer reached into a pouch at one hip and drew out a familiar object — the ceramic pot that had once imprisoned the Edimmu. “If you can make that, you should go ahead and just kill the thing,” I muttered under my breath.
As though responding to my musing, the voice-over continued, “The champion stands for the light, but knowledge is the ultimate temptation. The Edimmu is little more than hunger and memory. If he can chain the hunger, perhaps that memory can be of use to fight the darkness. Or — perhaps not. The champion’s soul will always be his own, but he is not infallible.”
The newcomer — the champion — spoke quiet words of power and the pot began to glow with a soft blue light. In one corner of the hut, the shadows thickened. I got the vague sense of an echoing scream. The light intensified and the room brightened as tendrils of shadow were pulled into the piece of ceramic in the champion’s hand.
“For a time, he will contain it, but time passes ever on, and the darkness is ever-watchful.”
“Great,” I muttered. “You should go into the fortune cookie business, anonymous voice-over guy. How about some simple instructions on how to kill the stupid thing?”
Silence was my only reply. I realized that despite the reduction of shadow by the absorption of the ancient Edimmu into the pot, the room was growing dark once more.
If it had lost me, it seemed that it had found me again or grown tired of the game. I felt, rather than heard, what seemed to be a rush of wind, and then I snapped back into the fight. The liquid shadow surrounded me in darkness, causing me to freeze for a second in confusion at the sudden change in environment.
That was all the opening it needed. Another surge of shadow took me in the chest. A mind-numbing cold slammed into me and I screamed into the void as darkness swirled over my face.
I staggered, clutching my chest, and bounced off a broad-shouldered young man holding a plastic cup. If the impact jostled him, or if he even noticed it, I couldn’t tell, because I hit the floor and flailed in a forest of legs before I realized that it was just another shift in space and — based on the clothing of those around me — time.
With a grimace, I sat up and coughed. I felt as though I’d swallowed a piece of ice the size of a softball and it had lodged somewhere in my sternum. Tha
nkfully, I was still out of phase, though it was weird that I could feel the people around me and they didn’t notice my interaction with the environment. I guess it was better than phasing through them. That would have been too Patrick Swayze for my blood. For a moment, I considered punching someone to see what happened, but I disregarded it as pointless and immature.
Rock music pounded my ears, though the lyrics were distant and muted. Enough of the bass remained that I could recognize it for what it was. I climbed to my feet and looked around.
I’d never gotten around to attending college, but I felt correct in assuming that I was, for some reason, at a frat party. That — to be honest — was a little odd, but if I was keeping score it didn’t even make the top-five of the weird stuff I’d seen today. Young men and women circulated around, some dancing to the music, while others sat on the scattered furniture. Sitting or dancing, pretty much every one of them had a drink of some sort in hand.
“This is random,” I muttered to myself.
This is the past.
I jerked in surprise, then groaned as I realized that the Edimmu’s voice had come from a place more internal than I’d grown accustomed to. I rubbed at the knot of ice in my chest.
“Get out,” I hissed. “Get out of me.”
But I’m so cold, it replied. There was a hint of playfulness behind it. Besides, I can’t make you do anything without your permission.
I began picking my way through the party to an unoccupied wall. Maybe it was ironic that I’d choose to be a wallflower, but at least with something solid at my back I only had to keep my eyes in one direction.
It was probably moot with the monster in my freaking chest. Hopefully, it wouldn’t decide to reenact the dinner scene from Alien. Yeah, it was a vision quest or whatever, but who knew how trauma in here translated out there. Part of me insisted that it was just like any other dream, but I couldn’t take that leap of faith, especially given that an ancient spirit seemed to have taken up residence in my ribcage. Finally, I decided that it was waiting for a reply and I snapped, “Melanie didn’t look too cooperative.”
She tends to be a little hot-headed. Italian blood, I suppose. I wanted to talk, and I thought this might be a helpful venue for that.
“So, talk,” I muttered. “This is getting boring.”
I’m trying to understand you. Helen and Melanie, I understand. They have concrete desires. A need for power, control over their circumstances. You, though. You never wanted it. Your Mother gave you the gift, but you’ve never so much as abused it. Why?
The thing’s words were silken, almost comfortably hypnotic. To keep myself focused, I examined each party-goer in turn and gave them a funny name. The jock in the letter jacket with the buzz cut was Biff. His curly-haired date was Buffy. “Because it would be wrong. It’s bad enough, using it to imbue trust in people so that I can help them. I don’t expect that you’d understand that sort of thing, being a ghost vampire or whatever the hell you are.”
I do not kill. I feed on what remains after others kill, or disease takes. You send them on their way — are we so different, you and I?
“So, you’re a vulture or a jackal. Much better.” I considered its words in conjunction with the fact that Bobby’s parents, despite what must have been a horrible death, had left no shades. No wonder — it ate them. I shuddered.
What I am is thousands of years old. I have seen men and women of power. Warriors, priests, and harlots. Parents, scholars, and soldiers. All alike in their own weaknesses, no matter what lies they chose to cloak themselves in. You are not so different, I think. There must be something you want.
“I want to see Justice League,” I said. “They really left it on a cliffhanger, there. Superman being only mostly dead, and all that.” The guy with the shaved head was Captain Picard. I dubbed the couple making out on the couch next to Jean-Luc Bonnie and Clyde. As I looked past them at the next person in line, I realized that it wasn’t a Bonnie, after all.
It was Cassie.
Her hair was longer and her clothing consisted of little more than the typical nonexistent short skirt and top that girls leaned toward when clubbing or, apparently, going to frat parties.
I’d have been lying if I didn’t say that she looked damn good in it.
Ah, and now you see why I’ve brought you here.
“What, so I can see somebody I know kissing a dude at a party?” On the couch, Cassie pulled away for a moment and drained a bottle of beer before standing on wobbly feet. She gyrated and started grinding on the seated guy to the cheers and wild whoops of those around them. I looked away. I didn’t know whether my embarrassment was for her, or at the intrigued reaction that her actions inspired in me.
Your comrade, your fellow champion. You thought yourself the white knight to your damsel in distress, but she’s just another harlot. The Edimmu paused, considering. Is she what you want? If so, there is nothing stopping you from taking it.
I snorted. “For something so old, you sure are stupid, aren’t you? I’ve been pushed. Yeah, you can make someone do anything you want, but it’s a living hell if it’s not something you want to do. I see that in Mother’s eyes. Hell, I lived through it. Do that to someone, a thinking, feeling person?” I laughed. “You don’t understand people at all. Which is kind of sad — what have you learned, in all that time? Pottery?”
Do not mock me!
“Or what? You’ll show me more scandalous things that my friend has done?” I shrugged. “She’s human. Making mistakes is part of it.” I thought about the blue coin in Cassie’s pocket and the wary glance she’d given me when I’d studied it. “The thing you don’t understand about the human condition is, it’s not just about our screw ups. It’s about how we come back from them. I don’t want to see this. I don’t need to see this.”
I didn’t put anything into the statement, but the room seemed to go blurry. For a moment, I cringed in anticipation of another attack, but when none was forthcoming, a realization hit me.
This was in my head. Sure, the imagery came from the Edimmu — but it was playing the crap on my equipment. The cold feeling in my chest shifted, but I clenched my fists and bore down. There was no spell for this, but the intensity was similar.
This was my house. And the party was over.
The room shattered. For a moment an empty nothingness surrounded us. With a wordless shriek, the coldness in my chest rushed out, but I reached out and seized the fabric of its being in my hands.
“Leaving so soon?” I laughed, then we shifted once more.
Chapter 17
The dream might have been going down at my house, but my understanding of how things worked was still a little shaky. I flashed into existence in the Renaissance, but I did so twenty feet in the air. Arms flailing, I fell onto the seats and bounced off the armrests.
It hurt because my head said it should hurt, but as I sat up with a growl I reminded myself that this was all happening in a really vivid dream. The pain dissipated.
That, at least, was handy.
“Dad!” I yelled. “I could use a hand right about now.”
I hadn’t made a conscious decision, but the movie had skipped back to the scene inside of Helm’s Deep where Aragorn urges Theoden to ride out and fight, in order to give the women and children of Rohan time to escape through a tunnel. Meanwhile, a deep chuckle overwhelmed the film’s soundtrack in response to my call. I turned to look.
Shadow pooled at the base of the screen, but it wasn’t the same effect that I’d seen when I’d been here last. My push to come back to this place had worked in more than one regard. I’d brought the Edimmu here with me.
“C’mon,” I whispered. “Any way we can rustle up a little deus ex machina, here?”
“For death and glory?” Bernard Hill intoned. If that was an answer, it wasn’t much of one. I resigned myself to the fact that I was on my own.
“Thanks for nothing,” I muttered. The shadow giggled in response. The sound reflective properties of t
he theater made its laughter painful and overwhelming, like a thunderclap at point-blank range. I resisted the urge to cup my hands over my ears and forcefully told myself that it didn’t hurt. It didn’t seem to work as well as it had the first time.
This means something to you, doesn’t it? Something special. Shadow pooled and surged up and over the first row of seats. It flattened suddenly. For a moment I entertained the fantasy that I’d heard a low cry of pain as it came closer to the cone of light from the projection system. Despite that, the black mass advanced at an interminable pace.
I tried to remind myself that this was my head, but the creeping doom made it difficult.
“Sure,” I said.
Viggo replied up on the screen. “For Rohan. For your people.”
A simple story. Heroes and villains. Life in shades of black and white. Treachery and loyalty are simpler to recognize. It’s so unlike your own life, is it not?
“There’s a bit more to it than that,” I countered. “But sure, to some extent. How about you? Do you see yourself as the hero or the villain?”
The shadow crept lower, trickling underneath the seats. What I am is ancient. I am beyond such simplicities as you describe. I am power and knowledge and desire. Is this what you desire? To be a hero? Is that what drives you? The shadow halted its advance, as though the thing were pondering some deep subject. I could give you the opportunity for such heroism, you know. There are other worlds than this. I could find you such a place if your own does not suit you.
I couldn’t help it — I laughed. “Let me get this straight. You’re going to zap me into some alternate reality version of Middle Earth. If that was even possible, what do you get out of it? In case you’re not keeping up with current events, I barbecued your precious book. It’s gone.”
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