by David James
We all laughed, even little Kendra.
I smiled at the way we ate together, the Littles and I. It felt so consoling, so real and not at the same time. Time flew swiftly by, as always.
For a moment, all was well.
Chapter Five
Cold Memory
-Calum-
The night was cool and calm as I made my way back towards my tiny home just after midnight. Mrs. Little hadn’t wanted me to walk home, but I convinced her that I was getting picked up by my Mom the next block over. I needed to walk, to have a little more time all to myself.
I needed to be alone, even though I didn’t want to be.
The sky moved like ink alit with a gray, foggy darkness, and even though there was a chill in the air, I felt warm. The edges of my mouth felt sore from smiling too hard.
I felt light.
For the first time in days, I felt like writing a song, and I thought of the words I might string together to make something beautiful:
Happiness like a bittersweet lament cried-
by a thunderstorm in the middle of a furious sea.
A fallen tree in the middle of a forest sleeping-
on a bed of wild roses.
So cold the river, so fast-
that the stones polish to gems-
a thousand of them glistening under a sun-
so yellow it’s gold. The sun falling down-
painting the trees orange-red.
I walked slowly with my hands shoved deep in my pockets, my backpack slung firmly over my shoulder. A brush of wind licked at my face and then went on to touch the leaves of the trees beside me. Even though it was autumn, I felt the warmth of summer; everything was light beneath the shadows.
I looked down and focused my eyes on the sidewalk, looked at the many cracks and uplifted stones molded in the pavement.
Interesting, I thought. Nothing is ever perfect, always cracked around the edges somewhere.
Maybe that’s what perfection is: Flawed.
Suddenly, a breeze carried an uneasy feeling my way, but I pushed it away before it meant anything.
I reached down to stroke the jagged leaf of a weed, finding it to be much softer than I anticipated. The bristles woven tightly into the vein of the leaf felt prickly, and they seemed to shock me when I touched them.
The night was electric. I could feel it like the beginnings of a storm, the way the air ebbed and pulsed around me like a liquid current. I felt powerful, like I always did days before a full moon. When I was young, I used to think I was a superhero, someone made real by belief. But, no. Still, my walk was stronger, my stance more firm. Out of the corner of my eye I could almost see flickers of electricity dance on wind.
I was deep in thought when a voice called out from behind a tall bush to my right, making me jump and drop my backpack from my shoulder.
Just when I thought I could forget, a memory came back as cold and real as before; a raspy voice twisting like dark shadows in the night: “Hello, Calum. Calum! My little boy.”
My feet froze, taking my whole body with them into an icy, unmoving coma. I knew the voice so well, it crushed against me like a brick wall.
Dad.
“How have you been, little boy? You look well.”
The wind gushed against his voice, slamming into it in steaming puffs of fog in the black night air.
His voice was higher than I remembered, different. No matter how much the wind howled, I couldn’t erase the memories I had of that voice screaming at me all night long.
In a second I was five years old again.
“Dad... Get away,” I breathed.
A sharp shiver ran up my spine.
I found my feet and forced them to step back.
I stumbled. My hand reached down and grabbed at the cement. I felt the tiny, loose stones dig themselves deep into my palm and pull blood out.
I needed to stand.
I needed to run.
Move! my mind screamed, but I did nothing. He shouldn’t be here. Why is he here?
He reached out a hand but pulled back almost at once. He looked away and down, as if he was listening to something.
I tried to breathe but choked.
My bloody hand was still glued to the sidewalk, the salt-like pebble tears of cement burning through my nerves.
He stepped forward with his arms open like he expected me to run into them for a hug. His tongue reached out, licking his lips.
I dug my hand further into the ground and pain shot up my arm. Then, as fast as I could, I stood.
He smiled. “Calum.”
Even though the autumn air flooded around me, I could not take a breath from it.
His eyes were glazed over and there was a red fire in them, a burning that looked like hunger. His face was calm, but his wicked grin was both painful and sweet to look at. It was too wide for his face. He was pale, nearly white against the moonlight. His tongue continued to caress his lips as if they were covered with an endless amount of sugar.
Suddenly his entire face twitched. His fingers clawed at his scalp and dug deep. He let out a high-pitched bark. “No! Go away!”
I tripped on a fallen branch and stumbled back. He grabbed my arm and his touch felt cold, frozen. The icy feeling matched the fire in his eyes perfectly, as though rage lived there instead of a soul.
“I’m doing this for you,” he said, his voice deranged and mad. His head snapped back as his mouth fell open. “Don’t you hear that song I’m singing? Didn’t you see the words I wrote for you?”
Red liquid dripped from his lips as he sang:
One, two, I see you.
Three, four, kill some more.
Five, six, bones like sticks.
Seven, eight, blood to taste.
Nine, ten, do it again.
One, two, I’m coming for you...
Beads of sweat moved down my scalp.
I saw my words, red as blood, blaring in my mind: The sun falling down, painting the trees red.
Burning lights flared in his black eyes. His hand became tight on my arm.
“Let go!” I shouted, trying to pull my arm back in a weak attempt that only made him grip harder.
My strength vanished, my emotions gone.
His other hand shot to my throat and grew tight around it. His head twitched from side to side rapidly, turning nearly full circle like an owl’s. I heard his neck crack, break.
At once his voice was calm and too steady, monotone, different.
A new voice, as if he was not what he had been: “I won’t stop until you’re dead, and you have two days left.”
My heart caught in my throat. “What?”
Time froze.
The wind stopped blowing.
My heart was about to explode when suddenly the half-moon seemed to shine brighter, framing us in a second of light. That was all I needed to make a move. I didn’t think. I grabbed my arm back and ran toward where I knew Mom would be.
“Two days!” Dad screamed after me as I ran, his voice a growl.
The words ran after me, speeding down the street trying to catch me.
“I’m coming for you...” I heard him hiss.
I didn’t stop running until I reached my front porch.
I looked behind me.
No one.
A headache was starting to form deep in my head, warning me of my impending nightmares. Dizzy static, tinted blue, threatened me.
I grabbed the door handle, turned, and pushed.
The house was dark, mimicking the blackness of the night, though it felt much different. It smelled familiar, like home. I instantly locked the door and felt better.
Kate.
Dad.
Kate.
Dad.
My thoughts rushed together in a sea of something terrible.
I didn’t even bother taking my shoes off as I lay down on my bed. A ghostly wind beat harshly against my closed window. I heard a crack like someone’s neck was being broken.
I
jumped.
My fingers ran over my birthmark. Then, almost instantly, I was asleep.
I dreamt a lament that night, a horrid song of lingering misery of moments I could never leave behind.
Black night shivers.
Cold memory lingers.
Red eyes burn.
One thousand beautiful reasons to live,
And I can only think of one to die.
Father.
Shadow around every corner,
False warmth in every smile.
Black.
The whole world becomes black with him.
It is a nightmare.
Horror.
When I awoke during night’s chorus, shivering, hands like ice, I had forgotten it completely. My only thoughts were cold memories of Dad and Kate.
I tried to forget.
I fell back to sleep hoping-
ignorance would be my complete bliss.
-Kate-
He was in pain. I could tell.
As he dreamt, horror traced his face in jagged lines. Sweat poured down from his hairline, rolling right over his closed blue eyes.
Those eyes, I thought, swearing. Those eyes are dangerous.
He was pretending to be innocent, but I knew he understood the game he was playing. How could he not? I knew since I was twelve he would be the one to die.
I am so close to victory.
I whispered for him to trust me. My voice was so quiet it was nothing more than a lingering thought on a breeze, floating in through his window from below. It was inception, the smallest of ideas planted so it would grow and burst into a want, a need, a desire so fierce it would eat him alive. Anything painful.
I knew, after all. His secret was no more.
He was dangerous, just like his father.
I reached down and brushed a finger against the snake that was curling around my leg. It was a gardener, harmless, so I killed it, twisting it into a knot until it split in two.
Pop.
“The devil is here,” I whispered. “If there’s only two days until the Orieno execute Calum’s capture, I have to do this soon. I have to get him first. I have to.”
I could see Calum’s power pulse around him. Hints of blue light played in the air around his body, and even with his eyes closed I could see them glow like two stars in the night.
Everyone around him acted like Calum was normal. How did they not know? Even with the binding spell, how was he keeping this a secret?
He was smart, but I was smarter.
The Orieno would not get him first.
Hell had no place for the damned like Calum Wade.
Chapter Six
Night of Shadow and Rain
-Calum-
Night demised in ice.
Morning was born in inferno.
Sun beat through my window, waking me in an ocean of warm sweat. At once I smelled hints of burnt air, the fragrance raw, influencing my headache like gasoline on fire.
Lying face up on my bed, the ceiling of my bedroom seemed to rush towards me, falling as if to crush my memories. Only for once I didn’t want to forget, not this dream. There was something about it, something that made me want to remember it in detail as though it held secrets and whispered truths.
I tried to remember.
My head jolted up, bringing my body forward so that I was sitting on the damp bed, hair pushed forward, and mouth dropped open so that breathy shots of hot air escaped. Sitting up so fast, blackness threatened to take over my world and tinges of blue colored the gritty edges of my vision.
I wondered about the downcast light, feared that because I was beginning to see it more and more, there was something wrong.
A candle on my bedside table flared, saturating the entire room in a yellow glow, shining brightly even as the sun beat it senseless; I caught the flare from the corner of my eye. I didn’t remember lighting it.
I blew against the flame until it left the wick and ran, fading to smoke.
My heart was beating so fast I didn’t care about anything but my dream. My dirty hair was chunked into thick, wet pieces and I could feel my eyes bulge out from my pale face, searching the room for a shadow of the man I had seen in my dreams.
Black, everywhere.
Sounds of breath, of fear.
I was in a place full of smoke, gray and bleak, the air heavy around me. It was cold, too cold to be a dream, but it was. It could have been nothing else.
I was shivering, rubbing my hands on my crossed arms to warm myself. My eyes darted around the place searching for a sign of something familiar, anything at all, but nothing formed out of the vapor.
“Hello?” I yelled. My voice wavered slightly and seemed to only carry a few feet as if it had been sucked up by the gray.
At the sound of my voice the smoke shifted, its hazy tendrils reaching toward me like fingers, curling in anticipation.
I tried to run but my feet were stuck to the ground with such conviction that I could not make them budge.
The fingers came closer, moving toward me like the hair of ghosts.
My mouth opened to scream for help, for anyone that might hear me. My voice shivered again, mimicking my shaking body, and just as my cry for help escalated to a level beyond wavering, one twist of gray reached completely forward and placed itself against my lips, blocking any sound from escaping. Instead, the sound exploded in my ears, ringing as though the dead were living in my mind.
I was frozen, unable to move, to speak. Only my eyes darted back and forth, seeing gray murkiness and ghostly lines.
“Sssoo...” an obscure voice echoed. The sound was like glass breaking, like a thousand nails being dragged down a dusted chalkboard.
The voice poked a nerve deep inside me, telling me to run, forcing me to think of only death. It was horror beyond horror. I could smell the demise in the air, feel the hot pulse of annihilation on my lips and hear the shattered sound of death in the voice.
“You...” the voice echoed again, resounding. “You have found a way to fight me. You... You think you can defeat me? You... You’re hidden from me... You have no idea...”
My finger twitched as I tried to run away.
It was no use.
“You see, Dreamer?” the voice said, the darkness echoing like laughter. “You are no match for me. You think you are an equal to me? You... You are nothing. You... are nothing... to anyone. They can only keep you safe for so long.”
And with that a solid shape rose from somewhere deep within the smokiness. Loud, cackling laughter crackled in the death-filled air, making my head spin. The gray swirled around the mass like a tornado, rotating up in a spiral. And as the haze cleared, the dark laughter grew louder and more sinister. The laugh had two tones intermixing: Deep base, high shriek.
“You will be nothing, Dreamer,” the man said, if it could be called such a thing. The form that had emerged from the haze looked like death, happy death. His pale face was tilted back in hysterical laughter, his yellowed teeth showing sharp as fangs, and his arms tilted up to an unshowing sky.
He leaned forward, smiling, and leveled his eyes on me. They were the color of blood. They glowed red with fire, crimson flames flickering within them.
“Dad?” I asked.
Laughter like nails grinding slowly down a chalkboard screamed back. “I am not the man you think I am.”
“Who are you?”
“Fool! I am one of three and none of the sssame. It isss time,” he said, the blood in his eyes matching his voice.
Slowly, he extended one hand and pointed a gray finger at my face. It reached farther and farther until it was right between my eyes, nearly touching my skin.
A wicked grin lit up the man’s face and a burst of fire exploded in his eyes.
The finger reached out the few more inches it needed to touch me and I felt the hot, blinding contact of the thing as it licked my bare skin.
“No!” the man shouted, the fire in his eyes blazing like an erupting volcano.
/> Light exploded through the haze in fierce, blue heat.
The man was gone in a howl.
Hastily, I rolled out of bed and made my way downstairs, rubbing my eyes until they felt sore, raw and awake. As alive as I wanted to be. I reached slowly up and touched the spot in between, wondering.
Could Dad be the Bloodletter?
I thought, What does that make me?
I stopped in the hallway next to a mirror. I wanted more than anything in that moment to keep walking, but I had to see. I had to know if I was the same. I held my breath, closed my eyes, and turned to face my reflection.
Two days, he’d said last night, while Kate had given me three.
How many did I have left?
When my eyes opened, I saw me. Just me, with the shadow of my past looking back.
~
“No more, Mom,” I said, my mouth full with warm eggs. “Seriously, I’m stuffed.”
“Oh, come on,” she said, spooning more on my plate. “If you don’t eat it’ll just go to waste.”
I puffed a drone of tight air onto my plate and the eggs quivered. This had become our Saturday morning ritual; Mom making breakfast, usually scrambled eggs or omelets with a side of bacon and burnt toast, me eating most of it and her settling for a bowl of bran-something, scowling with each bite.
“So, how is Tanner?” she questioned me. “How is everything going at school? I feel like we haven’t talked in a long time.”
“Tyler, Mom,” I said, ignoring the fact that she couldn’t remember my best friend’s name. “He’s good. Same old.”
She set her mug of coffee on the table, the liquid splashing out in drops too light to be only coffee. Looking out the window, she said, “Are you sure? Nothing new?”
My mind raced. Dad. Kate.
“Mom, there’s something...”
I touched my neck in the spot where it was still tender from the night before. Every time I mentioned Dad’s name it was like someone threw a blanket of cold unease over the house.