The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  This last memory was like a thunderbolt and it stopped her dead cold. She replayed it in her mind, not knowing where it came from.

  "It was a nightmare, is all," she said aloud to the rain. She had slept the night before and surely that was where it had come. "It's only a nightmare!" she called out loudly. The rain's only response was to come down harder than before. The words felt like both the truth and a lie at once and in confusion, she ran again, even faster than before.

  In a minute, she had lost herself in a maze of trash strewn back alleys that ran behind the dirty little hovels that passed as homes in that low rent neighborhood.

  She cried. Logical or not, she cried. In truth, she bawled. She remembered another dream, perhaps the same one, and in it Father Alba seemed so resolute as her fingers, hooked like claws came at his face.

  "Talitha, please know that you are forgiven for what you are about to do. Yours has been a hard life and I..."

  "Shut it, Alba..."

  Talitha squeezed her head hard with both hands and cried harder drowning out the memory. It was an alien sensation to cry. Or at least to cry so freely. There had been tears since her return from the Void, but always they had been light and were over with after only a minute or two. Anything close to hysterics would only bring out the demon, who got off on her misery, relishing it. So she had held back, despite the fact that it felt more and more that she was losing herself, becoming someone terribly cold and dead inside.

  There had been no mourning the loss of Brian Galt. He had died. Murdered actually. Talitha had come back into her body and looked upon her cabin and knew in a second whose blood it was soaking the walls and making her hands so slippery. She hadn't cried. Even when she had found his body deep in the forest, broken and tumbled, almost unrecognizable, she hadn't cried. Not a tear.

  Instead, she threw a wall around her heart that had held firm like steel until Jim Anderson. Falling for him, and so quickly had been completely unexpected, especially from a logical point of view. And perhaps that's how she allowed it happened. Who could have guessed that two people with only the extremes of loneliness in common would have been smitten so quickly. Yet there she was allowing that first kiss, begging for it, in reality. It had been illogically wonderful.

  She missed him already.

  "You ok?" A black man of forty or so, stood huddled beneath a tattered and weathered oversized patio umbrella. He had made a home of sorts beneath it and all of his worldly possessions were stacked in green bags around him. The smell alone had Talitha categorizing him immediately as alcoholic and homeless. His tone wasn't polite, it was more his way of announcing himself so that she would notice him and move on. She did, still crying.

  Two blocks later: "Hey baby! Come on over here, get out of the rain!" The alleys were more populated than the empty streets. Most of the houses had little more than stoops in the front, but a good number of the backyards had covered porches and under them little throngs were gathered, here and there.

  "Come on baby. I got some weed."

  Talitha stopped at the word weed. The man had used the word as if it were an enticement. It made no sense. She glanced into the yard and indeed, there seemed to be a veritable bumper crop of commonplace weeds, dandelions, and such, growing in abundance.

  Through them, a man of about her own age sauntered toward her. "Watcha doing back here, baby?" He was tall and broad with white teeth and skin the color of mocha. His tone was pleasant, but it ran inharmoniously with an insidious corruption in his eyes. These ran up and down her slim body. It was an unpleasant hungry look and it grated on her.

  She remembered a man just like him once. He had come too close, thinking he was only dealing with a tiny slip of a girl, but he didn't realize what a monster she was. He had no idea how much pain she could dish out in a flash.

  "I like the way that dress clings to you, very nice." The man with the weeds said and then made a low grumbly moan of desire deep in his throat.

  "Go away," she warned soft and dangerous. Talitha marveled at herself suddenly. Her tears had turned to cold rain and a feeling gripped her that she had not thought possible; she wanted to hurt this man. It was a desire like she had felt so many times when the demon had controlled her. She would come alive from the black of her subconscious and it would be there, a need to lash out, a need to hate, a need to make someone pay.

  "Go away?" he said with amazement. "Bitch, I live here. You must be on crack. Are you? Is that what your deal is?"

  "Crack?" She fought the urge to look down to see what he was talking about, instead she gave in to the hate that roiled inside her chest. Talitha took a step forward and now a smile that wasn't matched by the cold look in her eyes flashed across her face.

  The black man's eyes blazed at the smile. "Yeah, you want some hail? You gotta attack, strawberry?" His look was like a wolf's and so was hers.

  "First you call me baby, then bitch and now strawberry?" she asked shaking her head. She was going to enjoy this, she always enjoyed the pain. "These are improper ways to greet a young lady such as myself. First of all etiquette would suggest that when addressing an unfamiliar individual you should use..."

  "Talitha."

  Out of the gloom, further down the alley her brother materialized through the grey of the rain. Even with his hood thrown forward, she could see his eyes. He loved her. She hated him.

  Her breath came in heavy and she held it, feeling white-hot anger flash through her arteries. His presence was a catalyst, the spark of a primer that set her world aflame. She gave in to the hate that had no beginning. She should hate. If anyone had cause, it was her.

  "Go away!" she cried out and her small slim hands drew themselves in to form rock hard deadly fists.

  "This isn't smart, Tal."

  "What do you know about smart?" she screamed at him. Hate! It was a drug that she needed. To be rid of love, she would need to hate and she tried to hate her brother. Will was a goody-two-shoes and a moron and Jim was worse! And stupid little Brian...he was...he was...

  Brian was sweet and perfect.

  "I know killing this guy won't help," Will said advancing.

  "Hey, what the fuck," the black man exclaimed, his head swinging back and forth between the two intruders in his world. A world he thought he ruled. "You two think..."

  "Go mind your own business, Will," she called out interrupting the man. "He has a gun. I would be only defending myself." Talitha stepped closer to her victim, as if protecting her soon to be kill from another predator. Her reasoning was flimsy to hear even as she said it and a touch of shame cooled her hate.

  "Tal, I know what's going to happen. You'll kill him and then you'll wish you hadn't," Will kept his voice calm. Talitha cast a quick look up at the man. He was a drug dealer and a thug and very likely a pimp, judging by the smells and sounds emanating from his tiny home. She didn't know if he deserved death. "Are you trying to find a reason to hate yourself?" Will asked.

  "No, I want to hate you," she said, but her words sounded horribly false to her own ears. She had no clue what she wanted. Her insides were a great pain of chaos.

  The black man watched this little encounter with an odd expression on his face as if he were the butt of a practical joke. "What the fuck? I ain't the one gettin killed here," he intoned with confidence as his hands went to the back of his jeans.

  Talitha presumed that he was reaching for the pistol that she knew he had tucked into his waistband. Now was her chance to let lose her pent up hate, to become savage. It was a chance to stop her mind from dwelling on its own pain by inflicting some of her own. Her eyes flicked to her brother, who hadn't moved. He hadn't budged, even to reach for the gun that she knew he still carried.

  This was peculiar. He must have seen or perhaps knew that the thug next to her was reaching for his gun, yet he did nothing. Did he actually want her to attack the man? Or was the man not going for his gun at all, as she supposed? The second question answered itself as she saw the black pistol emerge from be
hind him.

  The sight of it was a relief. It was a permission slip from the teacher, a doctor's note excusing her from gym class, a get out of jail free card. She could now kill him with no qualms.

  Liar!

  No qualms? Of course she would have qualms and doubts and misgivings. They would nag at her and always she'd know that she had killed a man who might not have deserved death. That he was a bad man wasn't doubted by her, but what were his crimes that merited the ultimate punishment? There was no way to know.

  She sighed, tiredly.

  And then with inhuman speed she struck the man three inches below the center of his chest, forcing his diaphragm to contract and contort. For a second the man's eyes were huge white globes in his dark face and then he pitched forward, no longer concerned with his pistol or the crazy white people. All he cared about was his next breath.

  For Talitha it was déjà vu. She had seen this once before. She had done this once before.

  Chapter 7

  Will

  In his mind Will saw the alley. It was a muddy bog from the rain, and Talitha would add the dull maroon of a man's blood to it. He saw it all. She wanted to kill; to drown her pain in another man's death. He felt keenly his sister's agony over the loss of Jim Anderson, however beneath that was the wild selfish pain over the loss of her own life. Her past had been horrors piled on horrors and her future—doom. The days she had left on Earth would come and go and then...the Void would have her once again.

  It was a strange vision filled with knowledge, but absolutely no understanding and it scared him badly. Bad enough for him to briefly put aside his fears for his wife and child.

  He ran out of the factory after his sister, but as he cleared the police tape and the debris he saw her sprinting away. She was a blur. Only an Olympian would have any hope of even keeping her in sight, and he was no Olympian—though he could drive. He knew where she was heading and he pushed the station wagon to its top speed. As he came upon the alley of his vision, his mind thought bog once again and fearing that the old pathetic station wagon would only get stuck, he left it and hurried along the one time dirt alley. The sides nearest the haphazard fences were the firmest and he kept to them, until he came to her.

  What anger and pain was on display in her eyes!

  For his entire life he could count on his Talitha to be emotionally collected where anyone else would've fallen apart. Yet just then, with no provocation, she wanted to kill this stranger.

  Emotionally it pained him to see her like this. "Talitha," he called out.

  His vision, capricious as always, failed him at that point. Nothing came, not even a hint. Will forced himself to rely on his other, lesser abilities and stayed calm and spoke calm. He advanced on her with deliberate slowness and made no sudden movements, even as the man went for his gun.

  Will had a gun. It was stuck in the front of his jeans, beneath the grey sweatshirt that he wore. And despite the rain making his clothes cling to him, he could've had it out in a flash, yet he stayed his hand. In this situation, the gun was useless. Yes, he could pull it out and point it at his sister, but he couldn't shoot her. She was too important to him.

  Amy Harris had known about his ability to see the future but had passed it off as nothing. That was an insanely stupid thing to do, unless she had some Gypsy trick to counter his ability. Increasingly, he thought this to be the case, which made Talitha even more valuable. He couldn't afford to hurt her. So he watched, sending out silent prayers that his sister would regain some sense of herself as the black man drew his piece.

  The gun came around as if in slow motion and Will was struck with a horrid sense of déjà vu. Only the night before he had looked down the midnight black barrel of a pistol that was a twin of the one coming to bear on his chest. It was then that Talitha struck. The move was too fast to see. A blur of a white hand and the man was down, his eyes bugging out in a dreadful manner.

  "He'll live," Talitha answered the question that had formed on his tongue. "What's wrong with me, Will? I'm going crazy." Her eyes did indeed sparkle with madness.

  Will was no psychologist. "I don't know...stress? Grief? Everything?"

  For a long while she didn't reply, but only looked down upon the man with barely tamed ferocity as he slowly recovered. His gun sat in the mud near his right hand and Will had a feeling that if the man went for it, she would kill him. She radiated hate that rivaled the demon that had possessed her for the last eight years. The man in the mud seemed to sense the same thing and pulled his hand back toward himself timidly.

  "I want to kill him so bad," she said turning back to her brother. "Why? Ba'al Fie-ere is gone, yet I want to kill this man."

  The young black man nearly had his breath under control, but clearly the talk of his possible death had him too afraid to do anything except lay in the cold rain as still as he could. Unexpectedly Talitha knelt down next to him.

  "Look at me," she commanded. With the rain coming down into his face, he had to squint up at her. Even so he had a handsome face. "Are you a killer?" she asked. As she waited for him to answer she drug the pistol from the mud and sniffed at it. Will got the shivers remembering how the demon in her had done the same thing. It was cold in the rain and the shivers didn't leave him. He wrapped his arms about himself, noting the man...the guilty man shivered as well.

  He was a killer.

  "No...I thought you was looking for some crack," the man lied.

  Too late Will turned away and Talitha saw his look of judgment. She knelt down on the man's back, forcing him deeper into the mud. He groaned at the unexpected force. Then there was silence, but for the rain. It came down steadily and loudly, jumping into the puddles all around them. Will continued to shiver.

  "What should I do, Will? Should I kill him? Part of me wants to, badly but another part begs that I don't and still a third wonders if I should suffer a murderer to live? That part of me wants justice."

  "Can you honestly judge a man?" Will asked, wondering how any of this had come to pass. One moment they were in the factory, the next she was running away as if death were upon her heels and now this.

  "I don't have to," she replied. "You have judged him. I saw it in your eyes. You know the truth."

  "But we don't do that here..."

  "Because, no one has your vision! Wouldn't you kill him if he were threatening your baby?" she asked and pressed the gun into the back of the man's head, thumbing the hammer back. Even with the sound of a million raindrops all about them, that noise was loud. It had such dreadful purpose.

  "Talitha, stop! I don't know what he's going to do. If I did then yes, I would kill him, but I don't see his future. Maybe he's going to change, make amends..."

  "Ha! Yeah right," she exclaimed loudly, manically to the heavy clouds above her. "Are you going to go to church? Are you going to repent?" she asked the man.

  "I...I..." he sputtered pathetically.

  "Talitha, look at me. Why are you doing this? The demon is gone, you don't have to act like this."

  "I don't know why!" she shrieked. The misery in her voice was plain to hear and so was the fear and puzzlement. "I feel so..." she looked around in the mud for the answer. "Strange, I guess. Everything I feel or want or think seems magnified. I don't understand it."

  "Maybe you're feeling a delayed reaction to your grief," Will suggested. "Maybe now that you're freed from the demon, your emotions are... I don't know suddenly uncorked and you're overflowing like a bottle of champagne."

  "Champagne? It feels just like that. My desires are suddenly uncontainable. I'm hungry like I've never felt before. And I'm angry. It's like a swarm of enraged bees are in my mind, running over everything."

  She paused suddenly, her brown eyes going wide. "Wait, I know. It was that damned priest who did this to me!" Abruptly, she sounded savage again. "He kept questioning me, bringing things up and then... he touched Jim. And his hands weren't gentle like they should have been. Jim saved me! And who knows, maybe he saved us all,
and that...that priest! His hands were cold, as if Jim was a science experiment to him. All he cared about were facts and...and..."

  Her face went slack with sudden realization and she came off the shivering man beneath her, and knelt in the mud next to him. "That would've been me. I would've done the same things, except I would've been worse. I would've mapped out angles and bone fragment trajectories. All the spatter would have been..." Talitha stopped and began to blink rapidly, but the tears came in spite of that.

  "The other Talitha was right. I was so useless before her," she said to her brother. "I think I want to get drunk. I've never had champagne before. Do you have any champagne...uh...mister..." She tried to give him a smile and despite the rain and her misery, she couldn't help but be beautiful.

  "Jackson is his first name, but he goes by J-Bird" Will prompted. The man's name was just suddenly there in his mind.

  An inch from the mud, Jackson's eyes went wider than they had and he shook his head, no. "I got some forties if you want them. You can have them, ok? They're yours, anything you want." His tone was pleading and the sound of it struck the pretty smile from Talitha's face.

  "No, they're not mine. It wouldn't be right. I, uh...I'm sorry Jackson for hitting you so hard." She tried to look contrite and he nodded his head in a tiny way, still afraid.

  "We don't have time for that either way. Tal, we have to go." Will held out his hand to his sister. She didn't take it right away.

  "What do we do about him?" She nodded Jackson's way. "Do we leave him to continue selling drugs and running his brothel? Or do we threaten him or perhaps beat him or maybe break one of his legs?"

  "Hey..." Jackson started to say, but Talitha, as if by magic had him by the collar and yanked him in close.