by Heidi Angell
“I guess I should have given her more credit,” Bryce muttered as he hung up the phone.
Grant turned back to Clear. “So, you are pretty sure Kat wasn’t there?” He asked, trying to remain calm.
“I… I don’t think so,” Clear murmured weakly. She was still pale and although he had done his best to clean them both up after she had come to, she was still damp. He could only begin to imagine the horrors she had seen in her vision. She couldn’t even tell him. He felt an urgency more than ever to push her to find Kat, but she looked on the verge of collapse. Her eyes were red rimmed from crying and she was so pale. But he couldn’t just sit here, so he moved in on Louis.
Louis wasn’t looking so hot himself. The man was trembling from head to toe. He flinched when Grant came over to him. His eyes were flashing around the room in a manic way. For the first time in his life, Grant actually enjoyed seeing fear on someone’s face.
“Louis, Louis, Louis. You and your dad have been very bad.”
“How?...How….How?” Louis kept muttering like a raving lunatic.
“I would say within the next two hours your family home will be invaded by the police and all your dirty little secrets will be coming to light.”
“How?... How?...” he kept muttering, almost as if he were not paying any attention. Grant reached out for him and he flinched back, screaming like a mad man! “Don’t!! Don’t touch me!! You are evil! You suck the soul out!! Don’t you touch me!!!!”
Grant hesitated, but firmly placed his hand on Louis shoulder and clamped down as the man squirmed and pulled and contorted himself in an effort to get away. “The thing is Louis, there is one little girl that I am most interested in. She isn’t in your father’s basement, is she?”
Louis’ eyes were rolling around in his head and he began to thrash about shouting, “How? How?! How!” Flecks of spittle flew from his mouth and Grant could totally understand how people could think others were possessed. The man was beyond irrational and reaching a breaking point. Grant couldn’t have him completely losing his mind. He released the man, but this only calmed him slightly.
Grant walked over to check on Clear. “Are you alright?” he murmured.
Clear looked up at him with large eyes and nodded minutely. “He is absolutely terrified,” she whispered, nodding at Louis.
“Who knew I was so scary?” Grant tried to quip.
“Not you.” Clear took a deep breath and tears began leaking from her eyes. “Me. He thinks I am a monster.” She wrapped her arms around her knees hugging them to her. Grant squatted down next to her, rubbing her arm.
“Kinda ironic, huh?”
Clear shook her head. “The monsters think I am scary!” A ghost of a smile crossed her lips, but it was twisted cruelly by disgust.
“Nothing wrong with them being afraid of justice, no matter what guise she wears.” He hoped that reassured her. He looked back at Louis. The man was hardly calmer. If Clear was right, then Grant would only get anything from him if Clear were out of the room. He sighed.
“Clear, why don’t you go sit down in the back room? You’ve seen and done enough. I’ll take it from here.”
Clear looked at him and as comprehension crossed her face, she screwed up her courage. He could see it in the tightening of her eyes and mouth. “Grant… we don’t have Kat yet. If I leave, he may calm down, but he won’t tell you what you need.” She ran her hands across her face. “I didn’t come all this way to lose Kat now.” She pulled herself up and her back was ramrod straight. She walked over to Louis and struck him in the face.
“Listen to me, you son of a bitch!” she hissed, leaning into his face. “One way or another, you will tell me what I want to know, whether you like it or not! Where is Kat? Where is the girl you sent Bella to get for you?”
The man looked like he was a moment away from a massive coronary, the blood had completely drained from his face and he was gasping in shallow breaths through bloodless lips. He was pulling so hard to get away from her that the chair was in danger of toppling. She held on to his shirt barely keeping them both upright. She stared deeply into his eyes and he tried to look anywhere but at her.
“Bruha…” he whispered and then his whole body went limp. Grant ran to him, checking his pulse, praying he had simply fainted. His heart still raced, but was slowing. The man had indeed fainted. Shit! Grant turned to look at Clear.
She was trancelike, staring off into space.
“Clear?” He reached out to her and her hands were cold and clawing. “Clear!” He screamed in absolute terror. What the hell had just happened!
Chapter Seventeen
Clear didn’t know what had happened. All she knew was that suddenly she was free inside Louis’ mind, able to shuffle through whatever memories she wanted, not needing to bring them to the forefront. It was very disorienting here. The man’s terror was still coursing through her body, but despite his abject fear, she was able to poke and prod. But she couldn’t bring anything out like one can do independently.
Slowly she began to figure out some processes. It was like grabbing at lines and following them through thoughts, ideas and into memories. Unfortunately, none of the ones she had followed so far had anything to do with Kat. She kept tripping along through the strangest paths, feeling ever more frustrated. Suddenly there was a line that was brighter than the others. Clear grabbed onto it, following it to a source. The source was Kat.
And Kat was terrified, clinging to a bedpost. She had been cut and sliced and the bed was soaked in blood. Clear couldn’t imagine how she was still alive. She wept in fear at the site of Clear… but then Clear realized that it was not the sight of Clear, Clear was seeing from Louis’ perspective.
The Louis/Clear walked over to Kat and caressed her soft hair, then grabbed a fistful by the roots and pulled her up by it. Kat squealed in pain and twisted as he directed her. She began whispering, “Please, please stop! Why? Why are you doing this?”
Louis never said a word, but began to beat her. Each punch squelched and Clear felt desperately ill. The only time he stopped was to pull his belt off and begin to beat her viciously with it. The slapping leather opened up the wounds and Kat fell silent, only having the strength to gasp at the worst pain.
Clear desperately tried to pull back, to stop Louis from doing this! He was going to kill Kat! Her heart was breaking as Louis dropped the belt, pulled Kat up by her hair again and kissed her deeply, licking the blood off her lips. She whimpered in fear and pain.
Louis began to punch her in the face, screaming, “You were such a disappointment! You could never be what I needed! Because of you, I killed Bella; but Bella was better than you! Bella was 100 times better! You bitch! You stupid fucking bitch!” His arms began to feel heavy and Clear groaned as he looked back down at what had once been Kat’s face. Her skull had collapsed, and her nose was a burgeoning mess of blood. Her lower lip had been split wide open and teeth had been knocked out.
Louis let go of her, unable to hold her up anymore and gasped, staring at what he had done. He decided that she definitely looked better like this. As he got his breathing under control, he stood up straight. Yes, this was much better. He pulled her body into a resting position on the bed and curled up next to her. Now everything would be alright, now that bruha would let him go and leave him be. What she wanted was destroyed so she would leave him be.
As Clear cringed watching him cling to Kat’s corpse, she realized what he was thinking. The nausea began to ease. This wasn’t real. This hadn’t happened. This was simply what he wanted to do to Kat. What he wanted to do because he was so completely and utterly terrified of Clear. She swallowed down the bile. And if this is what he wanted to do, then Kat must be alive somewhere.
Clear groped about for some lines attached to this line, because that pattern had already made itself clear. Memories, thoughts, ideas all seemed to be connected to the same source. She had to find the line that would lead her to the truth about Kat and where Kat was.
Clear was feeling weak and ill. Being trapped inside the mind of a mad man was a very terrible and vile thing. She had direct access to every thought, every twisted idea that had come into his mind. And it was in this darkness that she would find the answers about Kat. So she continued to wade through the mire of evil in this man, looking for some hint of where Kat was. She found that the darker strands seemed to be linked to real events. The darker the strand, the less he seemed to want to remember it.
She had now had several encounters with Kat and was deeply impressed with the girl. Kat had repeatedly, and to the immense disappointment of Louis, refused to be compliant. She was full of attitude and snarky. She refused to let him see any fear in her, no matter what he did to her. She spit in his face, called him a murderer and a coward and repeatedly threatened that her dad was going to get him. Sadly all of this angst actually excited him more. His father had told him to get rid of her. She was going to get him caught. But in the moment, he didn’t care. She was so remarkably beautiful and completely unfazed by him.
At least that is how it seemed to him. He had none of the disdain for Kat that he had for Bella. As a matter of fact, the fact that Kat didn’t have the freedom, Clear knew that their relationship was basically the opposite of what Louis had with Bella. He was Kat’s Bella, hanging on everything she said to him, desperate to find a way to get her to notice him. Except that where Bella had turned herself inside out to get Louis to notice her, Louis was contemplating ways to turn Kat inside out to get her to praise and notice him.
He was surprisingly curious about his own psychosis. He knew that he wasn’t normal and often, particularly after torturing Kat, he would drag himself down twisted memories with his father. He blamed his father for what he was and Clear had to desperately fight away from these memories as she knew that they would not be productive in getting Kat back and could possibly break Clear’s own fragile mind.
At one point in an effort to flee from another one of these twisted reminisces, Clear literally tripped over the darkest thread she had yet seen. As a matter of fact, if she hadn’t tripped over it she probably would not have even seen it. What could have possibly made this memory so dark that it had been all but invisible?
Instantly Clear knew that this was the thought that would lead her to Kat. The secret he was most desperate to keep from the witch. She grabbed on tight and followed it through so many dark and twisted encounters with Kat. Several times she thought about switching out to another thread, but if she could just stick to it, part of her knew that she would eventually find the way to Kat.
Chapter Eighteen
Grant was becoming frantic. He had no idea what was going on, but Louis had been unconscious and Clear had been catatonic for nearly a half-hour. He kept checking their pulses and both seemed stable, though Clear’s pulse had leapt up several times. It was the only change in her otherwise frozen state.
Not knowing what else to do, Grant called Anne. Anne had personal experience with Clear’s unique condition and abilities. As a doctor, Grant hoped she would be able to give him advice about how to proceed with Louis as well. As the phone rang, Grant realized that he had himself in quite a predicament. He didn’t know what to tell anyone should he need to call the EMT’s. He was so far off the reservation right now.
Anne finally picked up the phone and Grant was grateful for the interruption to the turn his thoughts had taken. “Hello?” Anne murmured groggily.
Grant realized that he had no idea what time it was. “Anne, it’s Grant… I have… a.. well, a situation. I need your help.”
“Grant?” Anne whispered, sounding very confused. “I thought you were in Chicago? What…” He could hear her crawling out of bed. “What are you doing?” He heard a door close and her volume rose a bit. “Is Clear alright?”
“I don’t know. That is why I am calling. I was hoping you might be able to tell me.” He filled her in as much as he could, without mentioning the incredibly illegal nature of what he and Clear were currently doing. “And she hasn’t moved since. I think this is psychic-related, but I couldn’t very well tell that to the EMT’s… and I thought you were really the only person who might help me know what to do,” he finished, hating how helpless he sounded.
The line was quiet and he wondered if Anne had gone to sleep. Finally she sighed on the other line. “You said their pulse rates are steady?”
“Yes.”
“Check the dilation in her eyes,” Anne instructed.
“Uhhh…”
“Get a light and shine it in her eyes, are they dilating?”
Grant looked around for a light. He had nothing, so he used the screen of his cell. Clear’s eyes dilated ever so slightly. “Uh, yeah.”
“Both?” Anne asked.
“Yes, both eyes are dilating,” Grant confirmed.
“Is she rigid?”
“Completely. Her hands are clawed up. She hasn’t moved at all since this started.”
“Blow into her eyes, see if she blinks.”
Grant did and Clear closed her eyes against the breeze. When the breeze stopped, she opened her eyes. He didn’t know what it meant, but seeing her move released a well inside of him. He felt less afraid. “Yeah, doc. She reacted.”
“Now, pinch her. See if she flinches.”
“What?” Grant was more than a little baffled, but did as he was told. She didn’t move. Not at all..”
“Okay, now… go over to the guy. Are his eyes open?”
“No. He fainted… I’m pretty sure.”
“I don’t think so,” Anne murmured. “Pinch him, but watch Clear.”
“What?”
“Pinch him, but watch Clear’s reaction. Preferably wherever you pinch him, look for a reaction in Clear.”
Grant pinched Louis’s arm and looked at Clear’s arm. It jumped. “What does it mean, Doc?” he asked in awe, all sense of well-being gone.
“It would seem that Clear’s powers are growing… exponentially,” Anne murmured. “She is… well… somehow she got inside his head. She is literally inside him right now. This is…. It is so completely opposite of what we were trying to achieve.” Anne sounded bitter and angry. Grant was a little afraid that she was angry with him.
“So…well, how long will this last?” he asked uncertainly.
“I don’t know! As far as I know, this is the first time this has ever happened… I don’t know if she will be able to find her way out.” Anne sounded afraid. That made Grant even more afraid.
“So… what do I do?” Grant whispered.
“I don’t know,” Anne whispered back. “I guess you just have to wait.”
Grant felt ill as he hung up. He gently caressed Clear’s arm. “Oh God,” he murmured. “What have I done to you?”
An hour later Grant was starting to drive himself crazy with all the ‘what if’s’. He had entered the fourth ring of hell and could not possibly beat himself up anymore. Not only was he going to lose his daughter, but he may have lost Clear as well. He was going to lose his job for this and he would be truly and utterly alone with nothing to change it.
As he began to contemplate how things had turned out the way they were, Clear began to twitch. At first he didn’t notice it really; then he realized that her fingers were spasming ever so slightly. He moved over to her and looked for anything in her face. Her eyebrows had tightened. Something was happening!
“Clear?!” he whispered, putting his hands on either side of her face. “Clear, are you there?” he pleaded. She didn’t respond, but suddenly her arms began to tremble ever so slightly. He began to rub her arms. “Clear, please, tell me you are ok? Clear, honey?”
Suddenly her whole body went limp and he was barely able to catch her dead weight and guide her to the floor without banging her up too badly. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she began to seize!
Grant grabbed his wallet and shoved it into her mouth to keep her biting off her tongue and then held onto her tightly as her body began to jerk and flop
about uncontrollably. He tried to protect her head by cradling it in his lap. He was afraid he was going to hurt her as hard as he was holding on, but was more afraid how much she would hurt herself. Her back began to arch sharply, her feet and head pressing into the ground.
She peaked with her back curved in a perfect bow shape and then she collapsed. Her eyes were closed and the trembling had stopped. Grant rubbed her arms and face. “Clear, please. Oh God, Clear!” He was surprised to see her face was wet and thought that it was from his own tears when he touched his face and realized that he was crying, but then her eyes opened and the tears were flowing free. She tried to pull herself up and Grant grabbed her and pulled her up to him, hugging her fiercely. Her arms weakly came around him and they sat there like that for a moment. His heart was pounding a whooshing in his ears. He could feel that she was breathing and that was all that mattered. The seizure had stopped. She was alive. God, she was alive.
Suddenly he became aware that she was weakly trying to push him back. He could hear her rasping words. He pulled back. “What?!? What can I do?” he pleaded.
“Water..” she rasped. He ran to the back office and got her a glass. He ran back to her and she took a small sip then smiled at him. “I found her,” she whispered.
Grant was so overwhelmed and in surprise that he didn’t understand what she was saying. She must have seen the confusion on his face, because she whispered. “Kat… I think she is ok.” Grant fell back on his butt. He tried to process what she was saying. Only ten minutes ago he was certain that he had lost the two women he loved most in this world, and now Clear was telling him that he was going to get them both back. It was such a mind shift that he just sat silently for a moment. Then he looked up and realized Clear wasn’t the only one who had come back around.
Louis, still tied to the chair, was staring at Grant and Clear malevolently. Grant had not believed that a face could hold such Evil, but he was watching it now. And it made him desperately afraid for Clear and Kat.