The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

"Brian?" Jim prompted gently.

  Her smile was sad but sweet at the name. "Yes, Brian. You see I have this great guilt when it comes to him. I also have this huge knowledge deficit when it comes to love. I don't know if I'm allowed to love again, if that would be ok. And I don't know if I'm being disloyal...or hurting him or even sinning. But now, I don't have time to waste on worry. I'm not going to let anything happen to you or Will, so that means our time is short."

  "You're too late. I've vowed not to let anything happen to you and since you can't break a vow, it looks like you're going to have plenty of time for worrying," Jim said. Her words of dying for him had the odd effect of putting him in a happier mood.

  Her smile had slowly slipped away as she talked about not knowing about love, but it came back at his words and she said, "Is the vow in writing? Contractually, if it is not in writing..."

  He kissed her then.

  It was the only way he'd ever win an argument with her. The kiss was fantastic and frantic as well. It was like two rivers coming together. The waters were turbulent and full of energy at first, but then became smooth and calm, intertwining in such a fashion as to appear seamless.

  The windows of the station wagon fogged in a ghost like fashion to start with, and soon nothing could be seen in or out and still they kissed. Jim kissed her not only with passion but meaning as well. He didn't think he would ever be able to express his feelings for her in any better way than this kiss, but he didn't try to be the world's best kisser, he only tried to show her the depth of his emotions. And though his penis was fully erect in seconds, the kiss was less about sexuality and more about love.

  But as with all things, it came to an end, but unlike most things, it ended with a smile. "That was good...but we're being stupid. We may have to face Ba'al and we're acting like a couple of teenagers."

  "How should we be acting? Remember our pledge to be happy?" Jim said wiping at his mouth.

  She leaned him and kissed him again, a briefer kiss, as if this one was just to remind her lips of how he tasted. "I don't know." Her smile faltered slightly. "I just wish Will could be happy as well."

  "Should I kiss him too?"

  She punched him playfully and Jim kept his face neutral, holding back a grimace of pain, until she leaned over him to wipe away the fog from his window. The punch, like a hammer, had gone right to the bone in his upper arm and it got Jim thinking.

  "Talitha, your other self can't read your mind or your thoughts right now, can she?" he asked.

  "No, it's only the thoughts right at the change over," she leaned back, still looking through the window. "I believe it has to do with what's called working memory. The brain is much more active, dynamic you might say when it stores working memories, which it does on a continual basis..."

  "So your answer is, no?" he interrupted.

  Her eyes glared at him, but a ghost of a smile played behind her lips. "I ought to powzer you, but I saw how well you handled my last punch. You think I didn't notice, but I did." Jim raised his hands in mock surrender and she said, "Why do you want to know?"

  "I'm afraid that your worse half might show up tonight and I won't be able to tell you apart. So I came up with a plan...if you think it's stupid, we can go with another one."

  "Let's hear it. I'm tired of doing all the thinking around here." She couldn't conceal her impish side when she was happy.

  "We have a code word...or a phrase, something simple that only we would know."

  "That's a good one, it's smart. You pick the phrase, since it was your idea."

  "Ok, but you may not like it," he said and she scrunched her face at him in puzzlement. He continued, "I ask you: who am I and I'll know if it's you when you answer: You're Spider Man."

  She glared at him with more bogus anger and then she launched herself into his arms and they kissed until a knock came at the window several minutes later.

  "Are you two done in there? It's getting late," Will said from just outside the car door.

  They jumped apart like teenagers getting caught necking in the woods.

  Chapter 26

  Will Becomes William and the New Name

  When Talitha said the word Osteoblast, a word Will had never heard before, he saw perfectly the vision of a black barreled pistol—the same one that lay heavily inside his coat pocket. It flashed a very bright lick of flame and from the angle he saw this, looking dead into the deep bore of the barrel, he knew he'd be on the receiving end of the bullet.

  There were two curious aspects of the very brief image that had him puzzled. First, was the great sharp pain that exploded in his chest at the end of the vision and second, was the faint feeling of hope that seemed to hang around the edges of it.

  The excruciating pain had him more worried than curious. In the movies, people tended to slump over in a quick manner after being shot in the chest and they never seemed to linger in pain, much less even groan. But, he knew he would feel great pain. It would hurt right through to his spine and it frightened him. It was this agony, even more than his upcoming death that had him heading into the liquor store where he purchased his second bottle of Wild Turkey of the night.

  He had it open and drank straight from the bottle even as he paid, earning a dubious glance from the clerk. Feeling an urgent need, he looked about, but there wasn't a bathroom in sight and only a single door behind the register.

  "Can I use your bathroom?" he asked the clerk, but the man hesitated until Will dropped a ten-dollar bill on the counter.

  "Right through there," the clerk was all smiles now and cocked a thumb at the door. The bathroom hadn't been cleaned, ever by the looks of it, but Will touched nothing other than his own skin and the bottle. However, even when he was done he didn't leave the foul smelling little room. He leaned against the wall and sipped at his whiskey, looking into the dirtiest possible mirror that could still cast a reflection. There was a need deep within him to rub at his chest where the bullet would strike and he indulged the need between sips, wondering how that little spark of hope could keep him going.

  That hope was the other intriguing thing about the vision.

  It was mostly curious because hope wasn't a normal feeling for him. The last time he could remember feeling that wonderful sensation had been on a Thursday morning, seven months previous.

  Stepping out of the shower, he saw Lisa, still in a jumble of sheets blinking at him from the bed. She had yawned and stretched, never looking more like a sleepy kitten than at that moment.

  She is pregnant and the baby will be girl.

  He knew it.

  "I hope she has Lisa's eyes," he had thought.

  That was it. His last hope. That hope had lasted the thirty seconds he took to climb back into bed with her, whereupon he saw his daughter's blue-green eyes in a quick simple vision and fell in love for the second time in his life.

  Now, he breathed a heavy sigh and the smell of urine got past the swelling in his nasal passages making him grimace, but still he didn't leave. That feeling of hope nagged at him. There was no meaning to it. No explanation. It was just there within him, buried under a great avalanche of icy fear.

  It wasn't a magnificent hope either.

  It felt more like Hail Mary pass from deep within his own end zone, or a gambler's hope at pulling an inside straight with all his money on the table. But what it felt most like was some sort of a trick to keep him heading to the factory.

  Without that little glimmer of hope he knew he would never go—he would just drive home in that jalopy of a station wagon and let the future take care of itself.

  "You're a liar," he said to the man with the broken nose and black eyes and the swollen face staring at him from the other side of the dirty mirror. There was another reason that kept him going. Obligation, a sense of duty.

  "Craapp," he groaned and went to see the clerk.

  "I need to make a phone call, long distance to Maine. Ten dollars should cover it." Will said and handed over a twenty.

  "I don't
know..." The man was trying to bargain and Will fought a strong urge to pull the gun out, but instead glared at the man with a ferocity the clerk had seldom seen. "The phone is right here."

  The clerk stood there for a moment while Will dialed, until he saw the glare hadn't left Will's face and then he moved off to give Will some privacy.

  The call was painfully brief. Will wanted to linger there on the phone listening to the best part of his life tell him about her day, about when the movers were arriving in the late morning, about how the baby was kicking like mad, but after five minutes he started to feel the urgency, the demand of the future. It was like having the warden come to his cell, telling him that it was time and that the Governor hadn't called.

  He forced himself to say his goodbyes and didn't start crying until he hit the cold of the night air. Squatting on the curb next to car, he let the self-pitying tears silently fall for a few minutes and he remembered the day eight years before when his own father had cried out his frustration just as he was doing.

  His father would be dead soon. The thought struck him like a gong and it reverberated all through his body. It dried up his tears and he did just as his father had done after his long cry. He tucked away his fears and his sorrow in a deep part of himself and hardened his features.

  Climbing to his feet, he called out softly to the fogged window of Father Alba's old station wagon, "Are you two done in there? It's getting late." He smiled at Talitha and Jim's reaction and gave them a few seconds to arrange themselves in a decent manner before getting into the car.

  "Hey Bro, what's up?" Talitha asked trying to appear as if nothing had been going on. She was a laughably bad actress and Jim sitting as stiffly as if he was in the front pew at church was even worse.

  "It's time to get going," Will said simply.

  Her face lost a little of the pink she had high in her cheeks, but she nodded, "I think we're ready, what about you?"

  "I have hope." His cryptic answer caused her eyes to narrow and even Jim craned his head around to eye him.

  The big man gave him an odd look. "Would you say you had high hopes?" Will thought he was serious and was about to give him a straight answer when Talitha giggled and began singing.

  "Will's got high hopes, he's got, high hopes..." She broke down laughing.

  "You guys are weird," he said it good-naturedly and took another swig.

  The two of them, Talitha and Jim chatted lightly for part of the ride, but as the minutes ticked down, their mood became somber, as Will knew it would.

  When they finally quieted, Will said, "I've got good news: if we can kill Luke it means you two will live."

  "What about you?" Talitha asked.

  Will lied by way of a shrug. "One way or another we're going to find Luke tonight. I want us to have two rough plans outlined depending if Ba'al has been summoned or not. In a perfect world he hasn't been and we only have to deal with Luke and a gypsy...and more than likely evil Talitha. If so Jim takes care of Talitha and I try to neutralize Luke. That scenario actually frightens me the most, since it will be three against two and Luke is crazy and Talitha is even crazier."

  "I think it would be wise not to view her in that way...or me for that matter," Talitha cautioned. "We're not schizophrenic, but separate entities."

  Before yesterday, if asked, Will would've said she was suffering from multiple personality disorder, but he'd never really talked to her other evil half for more than a few minutes in all of the last eight years. Now, however he'd talked to her enough to know there wasn't a shred of his sister truly in her and he could believe that she was indeed a separate person.

  "I'm sorry, Sis. Calling her crazy or schizo means I'm calling you that as well, right? I won't do it anymore," Will said honestly, but immediately went back to his planning, which was coming to him on the fly. "I want Talitha ahead of us the entire time, that way she can sniff for traps and if she were to switch over, we'll have an extra second to react."

  Talitha and Jim nodded in agreement at this, but Will expected a little more trouble at what he planned on saying next.

  "If evil Talitha makes an appearance, she'll likely try to take another hostage." Will paused a moment to gather his thoughts. "If the she does we have to kill her even if it means killing the hostage."

  Silence greeted this.

  Jim shook his head, as he drove. "No, there's another way. We can chain her up and leave her in the car, or maybe get handcuffs, or..."

  Talitha patted his arm. "Not at two in the morning. And if we wait, Luke will have moved the bodies. I'm afraid it's now or never and Will's plan is sensible. Talitha and Luke count on us not harming the innocent, but in order to save many more lives we have to be able to sacrifice them as well as ourselves."

  There was a pause—Will began to see the flash of the gun, and the boys tied to their boxes, the visions overlapping. He gritted his teeth and shook his head. "Talitha is right. I need to know, both of you, that you'll kill me if it comes down to it."

  "I will if I have to," Talitha said without hesitating. Jim however was silent and she gave him a poke. "I would if I were you, Jim. He really messed up your nose."

  "It's not funny," Jim growled testily.

  "And it won't be funny if Luke gets away and sacrifices a thousand girls," she retorted.

  "Fine! I'll shoot your brother." Jim slowed down and took a turn into the neighborhood; they were getting close.

  Will got a funny chill at the way Jim had spoken. "This is all just in case. Ok? If I have to die, so be it. But if I do, one of you had better get Luke." They both nodded and he went on, "Scenario two: Ba'al is summoned already. I'm hoping that Talitha, good or bad will challenge Ba'al. If that happens we'll have a tiny amount of time to kill the gypsy. We can't hesitate. Kill her and be done. This will send Ba'al back and leave us with only Luke and Talitha to deal with."

  "But what about Terry?" Talitha asked. "She won't be able to make it back to her body if we don't."

  Will closed his eyes feeling sick of himself. "If Ba'al is there, we won't be able to save Terry. We don't have a sword or even a knife to form a connection. Terry is going to have to make it back on her own, if she's strong enough."

  Talitha looked glum at this and the corners of her mouth came down. "We can only do our best, but if you can save her, please do," she added quietly.

  "There it is," Jim pointed at the building looming up out of the mist. "Wow, maybe they're someplace else."

  Will leaned down to get a better view and saw that half of the factory had basically disappeared and the rest looked like a great black pile of rubble. At the sight Will felt a foolish hope that he was mistaken about how the night would end, but the re-occurring vision of the gun told him otherwise.

  "He's in there. Don't get your hopes up. Drive past it about a block, I want to be able to sneak up on them if at all possible."

  Jim did this and as they were getting out of the car, Will had a stupid idea, one that he wished he had thought of before. "Tal, check the glove box."

  It was right there.

  Perhaps the one thing that might have saved Father John: a flash light. Will looked at it guiltily, but it gave him another idea. "Look for a bible or some crosses." They searched, but they found nothing and only Will wore a cross, the heavy pewter one that Father Alba gave him.

  The vain search seemed to have taken the steam out of all of them. Jim looked like he was sweating despite the cold, while Talitha's face was pinched so tight with worry that she was almost unrecognizable as his beautiful sister and Will didn't dare check his own reflection in one of the mirrors, afraid of what he would see.

  "Let's say a quick prayer, ok?" he asked. The others nodded and waited for him to begin and he went with the Our Father. The one Jesus had taught.

  The prayer was over in less than a minute and his mood of fear hadn't been improved by it. Will sighed heavily. "Let's go, Talitha first."

  Jim and Talitha paused and after a sheepish look at Will, they kissed
. It wasn't a romantic one, but under the circumstances, it couldn't have been. It did look tender though and Will felt a moment of jealousy.

  Pulling the black gun from his pocket, he waited for them to finish, letting his fear chew away his insides. He didn't have long to wait and when it was over, it sadly reminded Will of a kiss goodbye.

  "Who am I," Jim asked when their lips separated. A question Will found very odd.

  "Spider Man." Talitha answered brightly and then with a shy look to her brother, said, "We can go now."

  Will shook his head in wonder, as Talitha walked forward, ducking under some yellow crime tape. She led them to what was left of the front of the building. It now appeared as a great, blackened skeleton; walls without rooms formed its ribs and the entrance, still with some shape, its head.

  Talitha walked slowly, her steps lighter than a cat's and she barely disturbed the ash-covered parking lot. Near the entrance, she paused and studied the ground.

  "Luke's been here recently; see how this impression has held its shape. And this one as well." She pointed at the soot-covered asphalt and with the night as dark as it was, Will didn't see a thing until Jim shown the light on it. She then bent low and sniffed over the prints. "I smell Luke and Terry, but there's another woman with them. I guess he has a brought a gypsy along."

  "Then it's official. From here on, no talking unless we need to," Will said.

  Jim now shown the light on the entrance and they could see that the doors had been pulled off and the foyer was a scorched and smoldering mess. It looked like one of the thousands of dungeons in the void and this was mainly because the walls were black and peeling like the skin of a burn victim. Many demons skin their prey and leave the rotting flesh hanging, where it will eventually turn black.

  Seeing this gave both Will and his sister a pause; she turned back to him, even in the dark, her eyes were wide. Will gave her a quick nod to go on, but her hesitation drew so far out that Jim finally stepped forward to give her a nudge.

  She moved then, but slowly and carefully as before and now Will could hear the faint sound of her near continual sniffing. He gave the place a tentative sniff himself, but it smelled just like a fire pit from a campsite.