A Latent Dark

by Martin Kee

  As he pealed the envelope from the man with a sticky, wet squelch, a bloodied hand shot out and gripped Salazar by the wrist with the speed of a striking snake. Blue eyes looked up at him appearing more like tiny glass beads from a mask of red.

  Salazar nearly slipped on the slick floor as he wrenched his hand free. He fled through the metal doorway. Once outside, he slipped the note from its sheath beneath the yellow glow of the docking lights.

  It was aged considerably, the paper yellowed and ancient, but the ink was fresh, the writing almost whimsical, as if written by a teenage girl.

  To: The Pope, The Vatican, Vatican City

  Dear Mister Pope,

  You recently hired this man, The Reverend Lyle Summers, to track down a pilot for your Confessional facility in the city of Rhinewall. Whether you deny that this facility even exists at all, or that the Vatican has been funding the project for a century, is inconsequential. The facility has been destroyed.

  What you may or may not realize is that this machine, while good intentioned, was erasing the very souls you claim to save. We know you have more machines like the one in Rhinewall. We will find them.

  This letter can be taken one of two ways: you can read this as a reminder of your misguided cruelty and hubris. Learn your lesson and walk away from it.

  Or, you can read it as a declaration of war. It was you, after all, who fired the first shot.

  If you choose the latter, then please understand that you will not win.

  There will always be more of us than you. We are every person you ever knew. We are every person who died in your foolish crusades or your cruel, senseless inquisitions. We are your distant ancestors and your late mothers and fathers.

  We watch you through the cracks in the walls, from that place your eyes refuse to see. We are the dark piece of your soul that you spend your life trying to deny, control, ignore and repress. You may live your lives however you wish, but sooner or later, you will be one of us.

  We are your shadows; ignore us at your peril.

  You cannot defeat the dead.

  -Hel

  The hissing from the scarlet ribbon man followed Salazar as he fled from the ship.

  ~

  Epilogue

  Two men and a young woman emerged from the woods. The men were bearded, all three of them unwashed and filthy, yet they walked casually, the way friends out for a weekend hike might stroll through the wilderness. In this case they were simply happy to be alive.

  They had passed Lassimir along the mountain ridge. There were a few new tents now that the soldiers had gone. The wilderness had already begun to reclaim and recycle the ash and ruins from the war. John saw a cluster of homes nearly overrun with vine. The residents didn’t seem at all bothered.

  “It’s just up ahead,” James said, cutting through some brush.

  The cabin was exactly as James had left it. He opened the door, letting Sarah and John inside. The smell of wood and furs hit him like a soft pillow and for a moment he just stood rapt at the doorway. When he eventually entered the threshold, John was sitting in his chair, Sarah on the couch, stretching out her legs.

  It was twilight, and the sounds of the wilderness welcomed them back with all the nocturnal calls of home. He walked over to Sarah with heavy, exhausted footfalls. She scooted over to make room and gave him a small smile as he sat beside her. The couch creaked.

  “So…” he said, but stopped as the three of them all looked at one another.

  They all felt it—that connection. After some time, they would attribute it to the bond that forms between people who have peered over the edge and into the void of their own mortality together. In the end, they would simply call it friendship. For now, it felt like some strange kind of magic.

  “So, this is my cabin,” said James, lamely. “I… I don’t usually have visitors.”

  “I can tell,” said Sarah, looking around, amused. “It looks like about twenty years of man.”

  James blushed and John smiled, closing his eyes, hands clasped behind his head as he reclined in the chair.

  The cabin seemed smaller than it had before. Perhaps it was that it had never been so full of people, or maybe he had just never noticed how small it was to begin with.

  Like a prison, thought James. I built myself a nice little prison cell, didn’t I?

  “It’s definitely going to need more rooms,” said Sarah.

  Alarmed, James looked at the priest.

  John shrugged back at him. “Well it isn’t like I can go back to Bollingbrook,” said John, stretching. “The archbishop will probably issue a warrant for my arrest on charges of heresy. I’m a wanted man.”

  “And I’m,” Sarah jumped into the conversation, but hesitated, frowning. “I… don’t know what I am,” she said. “I just need time to think, I think… before I go back... If I go back…”

  Dinner was a meal of stored meats and jams that James dug up from the pantry. Much of it was stale, in need of throwing out for the raccoons. Tomorrow would be a hunting expedition, maybe a side trip to mark some trees for cutting.

  John and Sarah watched him eat, exchanging bemused glances across the table to one another as food cascaded down the front of his beard. James still ate like a barbarian.

  “Your parents,” John said to her. “I know what you said. But consider them. They’re undoubtedly worried.”

  She nodded and looked at her food, poking it thoughtfully. “I should also inform my aunt and uncle about my cousin Charles… assuming they haven’t heard already.”

  “You still sound like a priest,” James said, a crumb tumbling down his beard.

  “I guess I still am,” said John. “I couldn’t tell you what religion at this point, however.”

  “Oh?” James said. “You could always start your own.”

  John made a face. “Ugh. Who wants that?”

  “You could write about it,” Sarah said. “Write about Skyla, what she did. How you rescued her.”

  There was a brief pause as both men simply looked one another before bursting out laughing. She frowned at James, who sat back in his chair letting out a breath.

  “What?” she asked. “What did I say?”

  “She didn’t need either of us,” James said. “We were both terrified for her. We traveled together for miles fearing the worst and she never needed us once.”

  John looked around the cabin. He shrugged. “I doubt it could have gone any other way. We had to know, right?”

  “That we did,” James agreed.

  He looked at the corners of his room, now lit by warm ambient light from the lamps. There would be no more night terrors from the shadows and if there were, James had a feeling he could learn to deal with them.

  “What about Gil?” John asked. “Do you think she’ll be safe?”

  “She’s survived that long on her own,” he said. “It wasn’t like we didn’t offer.”

  “I know,” said John. “She’s just so…”

  “Young?” he said. “All alone, with nobody to help her but a raven?”

  John went back to his food. After a while he spoke again. “Maybe I’ll go back to Rhinewall. There is going to be a need for aid, medical care. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like for some people. And the empty ones, the subjects.” He shivered.

  When Sarah spoke again, it shattered the air in the room with bitterness, her face a twisted mask of guilt and regret.

  “It’s my fault,” she said, her lip trembling. “Lassimir, it’s all my fault… I should help them. I should help them build the city. I can’t look my parents in the eye again… not after…” She made a pained expression and tossed her food onto the plate, disgusted.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” John began, placing a hand on her shoulder. “The Reverend Summers—”

  She recoiled from his touch. “Don’t!” she said, not meeting his eyes. “Don’t make excuses for me. I knew what I was doing. I wanted to do it, all of it.” She shuddered. “He might hav
e planted the seeds, but I tilled the soil.”

  James thought about this. He looked around his cabin, his prison. Now that his reunion with the place was over, it felt cramped and cold. He finished his food and walked inside his closet. Boots, jackets, hiking equipment all flew from the door. He emerged again holding a pair of rugged boots.

  “These should fit you, Father,” he said. “And that jacket. I have some shirts you can use Sarah. They’ll fit if you roll up the sleeves.”

  The other two stared at him with mouths agape. James looked back at them as a small grin stretched his beard.

  “If you’re going to act like a couple of outdoorsmen,” he said, “the least you can do is try and dress for it.”

  *

  “She looks happy,” Skyla said from the ivy-laced archway.

  “She is,” said the teenage girl beside her. Rhia was dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a black one-piece shirt. Her hair was bobbed, held in place with a pin shaped like a cartoon kitten. Skyla could only stay there for short periods of time, mere seconds in the real world. It was hard enough on her body even with the goggles on, so Rhia always made a point to take time off to see her niece. The cafeteria could run itself and it wasn’t like anyone was going to argue with her.

  Lynn sat in a garden, staring at a wall of vines. She traced them with her finger, making lazy loops in the air, watching them grow.

  “Should I talk to her?” Skyla asked.

  A look of concern swept over Rhia’s face. “She’s still regressed here. She’s living in her comfort space… but you can try.”

  Skyla walked across emerald grass through the fantasy garden her mother had created for herself. A butterfly the size of a suitcase flew by, streamers trailing from its wings. She sat next to her mother on the stone bench.

  “I have to go, Mother,” she said. “I’m expecting company soon… I… just wanted to see how you were doing.”

  Lynn made a face and dropped her hand. “Well good. I’m expecting Billy soon and I don’t want to keep him waiting.”

  “Mom…” she asked with hope rising in her chest, “is Billy my father?”

  Her mother turned to face her. Lynn looked as she did when she was fifteen. Dark curls fell over her shoulder as she laughed. “Sure Rhia, Billy’s your dad. I swear, sometimes you just can’t tell the truth from the lies can you?”

  Skyla closed her eyes as the chill ran down her back. She opened them and Lynn was again staring at the wall. Her shadow spread out behind her, forming strange flowers with black petals.

  Skyla stood up. “I’m going, but I’ll see you again.”

  “Of course you will,” her mother said, a hint of recognition behind her eyes. “Don’t be late for class. Billy and I can’t keep making excuses for you.” And it was gone.

  Rhia waited for her at the archway. Out along the vast hall of the asylum, she caught glimpses of other inmates, trapped in prisons of their own making, all of them content to stay in the same place.

  “That went well,” she said to Rhia. She smiled and wiped a tear from her cheek, only to be reminded that it was trapped behind the goggles.

  “Keep coming back,” she said. “It helps, I think.”

  A pained expression crossed Skyla’s face. “You know, everyone in Bollingbrook called her a whore. She was healing people in secret wasn’t she? Healing their shadows.”

  “Healer… prostitute…” Rhia shrugged. “She was doing what she needed to do so that the two of you could survive.”

  Skyla nodded then looked down the hallway. A girl was approaching through the corridor woven in imaginary trees. In her wake, vines sprouted and choked the tree trunks, blooming bright-jeweled flowers. Skyla waved at the girl in the distance. Melissa waved back.

  “I still have your book,” Skyla said.

  Missy grinned. “Keep it. I’m building my own myths.”

  They exchanged the sort of smile that only passes between old friends as Skyla faded into the trees. There was the faintest twinkle and then she was gone.

  Melissa approached her, the grass changing a shade in her wake as realities pressed against one another before finding a compromise. A fuzzy border marked the boundary. Rhia considered it.

  “You can let people have their own realities you know,” she said. “You don’t have to dominate every landscape you cross.”

  Melissa drew a line in the air and a vine grew. It sprouted pink flowers. She let it fall and dissolve, then turned to Rhia, a heavy question knotting her forehead.

  “So, I realize you’re not really a god,” she said. “What I don’t understand is why all those people think you are.”

  “They think I’m a god because they need to believe that there is a god. People need to feel connected to something bigger than themselves, even if they know it’s just myth. I can be Hel, or Athena or Mary or whoever they need me to be.”—As she said the names, the world around them shifted slightly, each populated by different people— “It’s like community service.”

  Melissa thought on this for a moment. “So there are others like you?”

  Rhia took a long thoughtful breath. A ferret scurried past their legs, unnoticed.

  “Yes and no,” she said. “All myths are based on someone’s reality. Lynn and I… and Skyla, we carry a family trait that made it easy for us to see into this place while we were alive.”

  “Oh.” Melissa drooped as disappointment settled over her.

  “But…” Rhia said, thoughtfully. “That isn’t to say that anyone here couldn’t do what I do. I’ve seen children create their own castles and fight their own dragons. I’ve seen old men sail ships of their own making across seas bluer than the sky… knights duel in meadows made of gold. If your will is strong enough you can live in any fiction you want.”

  “So anyone can be a god,” said Missy.

  “Or goddess.” Rhia nodded.

  “Even me?” Melissa’s eyes became huge.

  “Even you,” said Rhia.

  “How?”

  Rhia leaned over to Melissa and as she did, the world shifted again. Lynn and her forest world dissolved as enormous black pillars shot up from the ground like breaching whales. They stretched across one another in a crisscross pattern until they formed the walls of a vast temple. The roof split and cracked as a million stars spread across the ceiling like a wildfire of ignited jewels.

  The teenage girl from the cafeteria changed as well, her image shifting into a goddess painted in dramatic monochromes. Her eyes glowed with ancient wisdom and horrible secrets; black robes blew in a cold wind, lapping at the stone floor.

  Hel smiled and leaned over to whisper in Melissa’s ear.

  “I’ll teach you.”

  *

  Skyla emerged from her closet, the darkest room in the house. Her temporary home hadn’t been difficult to obtain; most people had fled Rhinewall, or perished in the destruction of the lab. She wasn’t sure how long she would be able to stay here, but for right now, real estate was a squatter’s market.

  She crossed the room, cluttered with books that towered up next to her mattress; books on lock picking, tinkering, history, fiction, mythology, aeronautics, animal behavior, psychology, philosophy. A straw nest sat in one end of the room, sprouting from an upturned hat on a dresser. Three small, black beaks emerged from balls of fluff, asleep at last. A breeze drifted in through her window and rustled their down. One of their beaks yawned, a perfect pink triangle in a cloud of gray.

  Skyla looked at the clock, wondering if her new assistant had gotten lost. Her house wasn’t easy to find. In fact, it was damn near impossible to find without an invitation.

  Someone knocked at the door and she jumped, a thrill running up her chest. She wondered if she would ever get used to that sound.

  Me, expecting houseguests, she thought, giggling.

  Dodging between stacks of books and lamps, Skyla took one last glance over at the newly furnished assistant’s quarters, complete with a bed, lamps, a desk, workbench, all
of it encroached by books. Skyla took a deep breath and flattened out the front of her shirt. Shaking her hands, she reached for the doorknob and turned.

  A girl with an eye patch stood on her doorstep wearing a tattered cap, shabby clothes and too-big shoes, looking more like an escapee from the circus. She grinned and Skyla couldn’t help but smile back. The raven on the girl’s shoulder greeted Skyla with a croak and she felt tears well up in her eyes at the sight of Orrin. He winked at her.

  The girl fondled a huge steel ring, which hung from her neck on a cord. Her hand was missing a finger.

  “I hope we aren’t late,” the girl said. “Orrin kept telling me to hurry. He says he really wants to see his babies.”

  Skyla offered her own damaged hand and smiled. “You must be Gil.”

  ~

  Author Bio

  Martin Kee is an author, gamer, husband, Redditor, cyclist, paper-modeler, reader, and musician. He is the author of A LATENT DARK (2012) and BLOOM (2013)

  He lives near San Francisco with his wife and their myriad of pets. He is a huge fan of technology, cats, dinosaurs, robots, bad science-fiction films, humor, books, steampunk, horror, ravens, and strangeness.

  You can follow him on twitter @fersnerfer, and on Facebook. His blog of recent and upcoming works can be found at www.marlanesque.com