by John Corwin
"We are rebirthed," Wood said.
Simion nodded. "Reborn."
The other two ghouls repeated the word, revering it. Martin recognized the fourth one as the executor they'd captured at the cemetery. How curious. What made it possible for the stones to pull essence from the afterlife?
Martin pointed at their fourth. "How did you bring him back?"
"The Savior showed us."
"Right, but how? What makes it work?"
"We don't know. Only Savior knows."
Hardly. Some factor intrinsic to Lucas Fowler made it possible. Whatever it was he must have passed it on to the ghouls.
Simion grabbed Martin by the arm. "Time to find him."
"I need my pipe." With it, he could speed his recovery.
They allowed Martin to grab his pipe and tobacco before two of them secured him by either arm. The group marched outside, Simion in the lead, Wood just behind him. She placed her hand on his shoulder and joined hands with David Young, the original ghoul. Why he wasn't the leader remained a mystery. Neither David nor the new ghoul had spoken a word, but the newest member had a crazy look about him. His eyes rolled and cast about wildly. He seemed an instant away from going berserk. An instant away from tearing Martin to shreds. A bead of sweat ran down Martin's nose and gathered atop his lip.
Simion grunted. A Blight scar exploded open, blowing everyone's hair straight back before it sucked them in. Martin gasped as the hop wrenched his innards like a rocket ship on takeoff.
Martin sucked in a deep breath. "This is not the proper way to hop. Seekers shouldn't tear such cavernous scars."
"We are learning," Wood said.
"You should be able to open a scar without breaking windows and displacing enough air to suck you in. I know some experienced seekers who could help you."
"They want us dead," Simion said without looking back.
"How did you find me in the first place?" Martin asked.
"We sensed your essence in the Savior."
Martin tried to pry more information from them but could hardly catch his breath as Simion hopped them across town in a series of violent shifts. By the time they reached their destination, Martin's ears were ringing and his stomach heaving. His wardens let him go. He fell to his knees and produced nothing more than a line of acidic saliva.
"I can't handle another trip like that. For God's sake, you must learn how to do that properly."
"Savior is here."
"Lucas is not your savior. I made him what he is. Without me, none of you would be here."
Wood scowled and jerked Martin to his feet. "Do not dare put yourself above him, mind thief. We know what your kind does."
Martin looked around. They were close to the west side of town near the perimeter. Other than a few dilapidated industrial buildings, there was nothing else. No people and no cars. Sounds from a nearby highway filtered through a strip of trees. That was it. No Lucas.
"There's no one here but us."
"We feel him here. He's here but not here."
Realization hit Martin. "My God, if he's not here or the Blight then he might be in the afterlife."
Simion paled. "Is he?"
"Where else could he be?"
"Forever," Wood said, her eyes widening.
Simion positioned his face inches from Martin's. "Bring him back."
"But I had nothing to do with his disappearance. Look here, I need to understand how you're sensing him. For that I'll need to link with you."
The ghoul's eyes narrowed. "If you harm me, they will tear you apart."
Martin's mouth went dry. "I promise I'll not harm you. I simply need to listen in."
He had to be cautious anyway. One misstep and he might invite psychosis upon himself. He lit his pipe and clamped it between his teeth. Closing his eyes, he took several deep breaths to calm his rapid heartbeat. Extending a thin thread, he directed it at Simion and touched it to the top of his head.
Blood. Screaming. A homeless man torn to shreds. Dead men scattered in an alley. Rank hot air thick with flies. Terrible pain. The sides of a dirt pit. Layers of limbs and bodies.
Martin fought to steady the stream of images. The other man's brain was a maelstrom of agony and confusion. If Martin didn't control the flow soon, the pain would overwhelm him. He countered the flow by adding loops to his thread-thin probe and inserting a reversed current to impede the neural impulses. Usually he didn't have to think about such minor safeguards, but the wrenching trip and lack of rest had weakened his usually superb cognitive abilities.
The influx of random images slowed to a manageable pace but he wasn't where he needed to be. He saw the sides of the pit again and smelled the odor of rotting flesh. Had they killed so many people? The subject, Simion, was experiencing pain in this particular memory stream. Now that Martin had control of the flow, he no longer felt the pain in his own body, merely interpreted the signals that indicated it. The subject looked side to side. Bodies filled a pit. Some wore leather clothes. Some had paint on their faces. They looked Native American. Could the occupant of Simion's body have been alive that long ago? How did he speak English?
Fascinated as he was, Martin couldn't linger. Simion's current state of mind was impatient and angry. If his subconscious was in such an uproar, it must be quite difficult to maintain calm. Martin probed short term memory for the feeling Simion had described. Most people didn't hold much at once in their short term. Usually items were recorded to long-term memory or quickly discarded. Simion's reservoir of temporary memory was filled to the brim. His mind was too hyperactive to properly purge enough short term items. It made even the most attention deficit disordered people Martin had studied look normal by comparison.
During his years as a Transcendist, he'd probed deep into the minds of chum and Scion alike, searching for elusive answers. This man's brain could hold the keys to so much if only he had the time to look.
"Have you found it yet?" Simion asked.
"I'm sorry, your mind quite the mess. I'll need several more minutes."
Simion clenched his fists tight enough to crack them. Martin redoubled his efforts.
If he'd possessed his full faculties, this process would have been much easier. Multiple threads searched faster than one. But one was all he dared risk with this man, especially since Martin's mind was in no shape for multithreaded thought processing. He finally located the correct memory stream and latched onto it. A wave of nausea overwhelmed his safeguards. He staggered. A strong hand gripped him and kept him upright.
"You found it," Simion said.
Martin opened his eyes and let the sickening feeling guide him like a compass. A brick building squatted in the middle of an open space. Its single door was secured by a bar across the outside. Just outside the door, the nausea thickened to the point where Martin had to pause for breath to prevent dry heaves. He looked through a dirt-encrusted window. The building was a shed. Empty shelves lined the walls and a workbench sat in the center.
The connection between Lucas and the ghouls acted like a quantum umbilical chord it seemed, never severing despite their physical or dimensional locations. Unfortunately, in order to identify the connection, he needed to enter the Blight. The mere thought of another gut-wrenching journey inside was too much.
"Simion, I'm going to help you open a proper Blight scar."
The ghouls looked at each other, confusion in their eyes.
"Simion?" Wood asked.
"Yes," Martin replied pointing at Simion. "Him."
"He is Agony."
"I know he's hurting—"
"No, he is Agony Reborn. I am Strike Reborn." Wood pointed to David Young. "This is Hurt Reborn, and our child is not yet named."
Child? Martin gazed at their newest member. The ghoul shivered and clenched his teeth as if sick. Even more so than earlier, he appeared ready to either explode into rage or expire right on the spot.
"Is he okay? He looks ill."
Simion—Agony nodded. "He is coping. It
is all we can do to keep the madness away."
Martin cleared his throat. "Well then, back to business. Agony, let's work on opening a proper, quiet Blight scar." He'd taught Tollee how to do it after her attunement. Most seekers picked it up on instinct, but arbiters generally guided their progress by watching through the eyes of an experienced seeker and imprinting the base knowledge on an initiate. Martin still had the imprint stored somewhere but it would take him too long to dig through everything. Unlike other Scions, arbiters could use the extra space in their brains for efficient long-term storage. It wasn't that others didn't use a majority of their brain; rather it became jumbled with irretrievable fragmented memories and processes. Martin's mind was usually a beacon of order, but he'd let some of that organization lapse during the past year thanks in part to his afterlife experiments.
"I will watch as you open a scar." He extended the mind probe into Agony's occipital lobe and gave the ghoul the go ahead.
Agony stared at the air in front of him. His muscles coiled, teeth clenched. Heat rose in his face. Nothing happened for a second. Adrenalin spiked. A quantum fissure ripped through the air, creating a sphere of charged plasma that pushed the air apart so fast, it created a vacuum. The resulting collapse of air culminated in an ear-shattering sonic boom. Martin had already plugged his ears, but the shock wave knocked him back a few feet. The ghoul was pushing too hard. He had no focus due to the inefficient purging of his short-term memory.
For the first time, Martin doubted his ability to repair a mind flaw. Something was fundamentally wrong in the way these creatures dealt with the normal world. Perhaps their quantum images, i.e. spirits, simply didn't mesh with the physical bodies they now inhabited. Perhaps they'd been in the afterlife too long. Whatever the case, it would take a team of arbiters to fix it. He decided to search for the Blight scar imprint in his mind and found it after several minutes of deep searching.
"You will experience slight discomfort during the imprint," Martin said.
Agony nodded.
After the procedure, he had Agony open another scar. This time, the silver lining appeared as it should. Instead of staying small, however, the air fractured and crackled into a web of fissures, sounding like popcorn as it reached critical temperature. Mercifully no sonic boom erupted.
"Much better." Agony almost seemed to smile.
Strike came to his side and stared at the glistening web. "We should all learn."
Martin decided not to mention that Blight scars were generally invisible because they were so small. Seekers could open and see them when they were little more than microscopic seams in the quantum fabric. The ghouls with their overcharged minds simply shredded the quantum fabric into a mess. If they continued to meddle with it in such a clumsy way, they might open permanent fissures which could pose a significant danger. He sighed and imprinted Strike and Hurt, but refused to interface with the newest ghoul. The risk to Martin's mind was too considerable. Thankfully, the ghouls didn't press the point.
Agony's connection to Lucas had shifted a few feet during his tutorial. It seemed Lucas had entered the shed. Martin removed the bar from the door and opened it. It would be easier to trace him from within the Blight if he didn't have to worry about the Blight constantly resetting the door shut behind him.
"Let's enter the Blight, shall we?" Martin said.
Even though Martin was far from energized, he'd formed a plan. Once they determined Lucas's location and how to retrieve him, it would be a simple matter for Martin to reactivate his control imprints on the boy, the ghouls' savior. Once he controlled Lucas, he would control the ghouls.
Chapter 33
Lucas knew they'd made a terrible mistake coming inside the brick shed. Exhaustion and fear made terrible companions to reason. He and Alexia had made it across the road after running down the sidewalk and rushing through a crosswalk. Seconds later, the spirits had followed. When the cars had shifted positions, some spirits were knocked flying or slammed to the ground as two objects tried to coexist in the same location at once.
That hadn't slowed them much. The spirits couldn't be physically harmed. After crying out in pain and writhing on the ground, they'd resumed their steady march after Lucas and Alexia. The shed had appeared to be the perfect place to hide. Since it was already barred shut, Lucas could open it, enter, and seconds later the door would shut and bar itself as the world reversed their changes.
After the door shut itself, they squeezed into the far back corner of the brick shed where a stack of plywood boxes formed an additional sound barrier. Bricked glass allowed a trickle of red sunlight inside.
"I'm so tired, Lucas," Alexia said. Red rimmed her eyes. She yawned and dropped to the concrete floor, leaned against the brick wall.
Lucas had never been so exhausted. Or thirsty. Or hungry. What he wouldn't give for a slab of raw meat. Even the most disgusting things he could imagine seemed edible now. But this world had nothing for the living.
"Were your parents good people?" Alexia asked.
Lucas closed his eyes. "Yeah. They never had much money, but they always took care of me."
"Then why are they here? Why is that little girl here? Are there infants here?"
"I think we all come here when we die. Or maybe part of us is always here. Like the Blight." He hadn't seen any infants yet. The mere thought made him shudder with revulsion. Then again, infants might not know enough to go insane.
A tear escaped Alexia's eye. "I'd prefer oblivion." Her chin trembled. "What sadistic force gave us life only to endure this?" A tear trickled down her cheek.
Lucas hesitated, sat beside her, put an arm around her. She rested her head against his shoulder. He leaned his head back against the wall and resisted his own tears. No response to what she'd said came to mind. He looked at her. She was already asleep. Her body against his felt natural and reassuring. The short time they'd spent together seemed longer, like he'd known her all his life. Now they truly seemed destined to know each other for the rest of their lives. They'd die in one sort of agony or another, side by side, from thirst, or from despondent spirits raking the life from them.
Babbling, crying, pleading came from outside the door and rose in volume. Voices called out to loved ones. A man screamed. Fists pounded on the door until it rattled. Lucas squeezed his eyes shut. He was exhausted but too tired to sleep. The little girl's voice rose above the racket. Instead of singing about Mary's little lamb, she'd started chanting nursery rhymes which seemed even creepier to Lucas.
Lucas buried his face in Alexia's hair and wished the madness away.
* * * * *
Something jerked him awake. Alexia was still sleeping on his shoulder. The ambient light of the shed had dimmed considerably. The air was stuffy and humid. The spirits had gone silent. It was so quiet he feared he'd gone deaf. Nausea wormed its way up his throat. It was the same feeling he had any time the ghouls came too close. He stiffened and looked around. Alexia mumbled but stayed asleep.
Whispers pierced the silence. Nearly inaudible and unintelligible. Feet scraped against the concrete floor. Something bumped a shelf. Lucas's heart froze over and his bowels tried to empty.
"Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home," said a tiny voice in a half-whisper. "Your house is on fire and your children are gone."
Alexia jerked awake and screamed. Lucas yelled and leapt to his feet. Over the top of the plywood boxes, dozens of dark eyes stared back in his direction without seeing him. The spirits were packed inside so tight, they'd blobbed together, heads and arms poking from the blob like some horrific monster. None were moving or making much noise. They seemed to be asleep even with their eyes wide open. Alexia pressed herself to Lucas. He'd already backed himself in the corner.
The little girl came around the corner of the boxes and peeked. "All except one and that's little Anne, for she crept under the frying pan."
"What's she talking about?" Lucas asked.
Alexia shook her head. "We're trapped. There's no way we can get
past those things."
The other spirits burst into animation. Bedlam ensued. Their calls and screams created such a din that Lucas couldn't hear himself talk. The girl put her arms out.
"Mommy, I want a hug." She started to sob. "Mommy are you there? I won't run away any more, I promise. I'll always look both ways before I cross the street like a good girl."
The apparitions roiled around the corner. The girl reached Lucas and Alexia first. Her arm lanced through Alexia's stomach and into Lucas's ribs.
"Mommy!" the girl screamed.
Lucas's mouth opened in a silent scream. "Go away. Go away." Icy needles plunged into his body, sucking his energy dry.
Alexia took several gasping breaths as she tried to cry out. Her eyes dulled and she slumped against Lucas. He could barely hold her up. More spirits reached them. Their greedy hands speared into Lucas and Alexia like shafts of barbed ice. His remaining strength evaporated. His legs collapsed. Alexia fell on top of him. Lucas saw his parents emerge from the mass of apparitions. Their faces were stretched and contorted. Torturous longing filled their eyes. His mother called out his name.
"Mom, help." Lucas held out his hand. It shook with the effort. His mom took no notice. "Dad, please." Lucas's arm dropped uselessly.
A familiar laugh rose above the din. Lucas looked up. A myna looked back at him, cocking its head to the side. A flash of heat pulsed in Lucas's head. His eyes focused on a point in the air. Despite the intense pain, he felt in complete control of his senses, like discovering how to use a muscle he'd never had control over before. Like figuring out how to wiggle his ears for the first time. A black scar parted the air. Lucas gripped Alexia tight and dragged her inside as the last of his strength evaporated.
* * * * *
Lucas couldn't feel his arms but his legs ached. He opened his eyes. Alexia's body had pinned his arms to the floor. She lay bent in an awkward position, one leg splayed, and the other angled so her foot pressed against his stomach. He pulled his arms free and shook them. Sensation returned with a painful, prickling vengeance. Then his eyes locked onto the familiar desk against the far wall. They were in his apartment.