by Casey Herzog
“If I were to put myself in his shoes, then I would be feeling the same thing. It shouldn’t be like this. My trust for my father might’ve been shaken, but at least I got it back. I never thought I lost his trust, but how could he have no doubts when I became something I didn’t even recognize.”
I didn’t tell Julian and my father about the voices slowly awakening from whatever my mother had done to them to keep them quiet. I wanted to ask my father about any flaws on her body that he made notice of, but to do so would only make him level his icy stare at me again. I took a moment when I was close enough to look at her face and I tried to remember the photo I kept of her by my bed. There didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary, but I couldn’t be sure when my mind could be playing tricks on me.
“It might sound trite, but time is the only thing to heal wounds going this deep,” Julian said, staying close and keeping my spirits up with his words of encouragement. It was really the only thing keeping me from losing it. Having these voices speak of my mother like she was evil had certainly been an eye opener.
“Just when I think everything is normal, things change. I guess I should be used to it by now. I seem to be a magnet for inexplicable things; it must have something to do with the evil still residing within me,” I said, watching for anything to indicate this was the path most traveled. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear my mother was trying to purposely lead us away from safety.
“I don’t want to worry you, but I have been losing time. By my calculation, I have to assume I have been away from the school for at least a full day.”
I didn’t want to mention what happened with the animals; it didn’t seem to be a good time to bring up the kind of power it took to make them into a confetti spray of ashes. I had to say something, and this was certainly something of a concern. I thought I was the only one able to wield the power it took to do something like that, but it seems there are others.
“It appears we all have issues we are dealing with, but your susceptibility to whatever this force is must have some kind of underlying reason. Is there something weighing down your consciousness that would allow for the possibility of something to get inside you? There were animals attacking us, and something came to our rescue. Then, I saw you standing nearby in the snow.”
My revelation took him by surprise, and he looked down at his hands, wondering what other insanity might befall him.
“I wish I could tell you something more than just conjectures, but I feel like I’m living in the same nightmare you did. The only difference is, I don’t seem to recall what happened, which makes me less likely to embrace the darkness willingly.”
Julian had never been judgmental, and his disappearance when I was suffering had never been fully explained.
“Let’s go back to when you had to leave the village for the outlying areas. I know you said you were helping someone, but could you be any clearer than that. It’s a little vague. I’ve been reluctant to speak to you about it for fear of sounding accusatory, but we can’t avoid it any longer.”
I felt like I had aged and had maturity unlike other people my own age.
“I was hoping you weren’t going to bring it up, and I fear you won’t like the answer. I remember it like it was yesterday, but it feels like it happened to somebody else. I can’t explain it, and if I were to try, I would have to say it feels like somebody else’s memories.”
Things were starting to make a little more sense, but there were still a lot of questions and not enough answers.
“I know this can be hard to handle; I’ve been there myself in a different way. The power seems familiar, but there is something strange about it. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say all of this began when you disappeared when I was going through my trials with Jasper.”
This was the first time I had mentioned his name, and I tried to leave it out of the conversation because the subject matter was something I wanted to forget.
“I had a feeling you might say that, but I was hoping there might be another explanation. I didn’t believe it myself when I told you I couldn’t be by your side because of something else coming up. You mean more to me than an afterthought, and I would never have chosen someone else over you.”
I thought the same thing, but his gesture for helping others was not something I was going to question extensively.
“I was helpless, and I surrendered to the dark side with the poison of the evil seeping into every part of my life. I was almost lost, and the corruption of my soul had tainted everything around me. The only thing getting me through was the thought of you and those I considered family.”
I’d told my father some of what I had gone through, but I left out crucial pieces of information because they were too embarrassing. It was a tragic game, and I was on the losing side. I carried the load for the magic community and the weight on my conscience was too much to bear.
I heard thunder, and the words of the shrouds were whispering too low for me to hear what they were saying. They needed to gather their strength before we reestablished communications. Apparently, they were using each other to make themselves whole again. I attempted to reach out with my mind, giving into their influence and inviting them to speak to me. They were not open minded enough to take the leap of faith.
“If I could’ve been there, you know nothing would have kept me away. Maybe we should both give each other a break. Our friendship is an unbreakable bond; it would take something extraordinary to pull us apart when we need each other the most.”
I felt the same way, and I hung onto the belief we could weather any storm together. My father, on the other hand, had welcomed with open arms the peace without fully understanding the price we all had to pay for it.
“In my heart, I know what you say is true, but it still sticks with me regardless of the circumstance behind your disappearance. We need to get to the bottom of what happened to you. I fear things are going to get worse before they get better.”
It seemed I was saying that a lot, but at least I had these few months to compose myself. I was still weak, fighting the influence of the evil, but I’d found a way to cope with something not many would be able to.
“Gillian, you have always been all I needed. If I thought I had a chance, I would gladly put my name on the list of suitors. Our love is eternal and we always help each other to stand when we can’t do it ourselves,” Julian said, his words conveying a wisdom and guidance I lacked when I was facing the evil. I didn’t know what else to call it, but it seemed fitting considering how I was easily manipulated. I had to thank Damien for his continued belief and solidarity. He was the one who did stand by me and paid a high price.
The one thing Jasper did which I regret the most was to offer me a partnership. It was complicated, and one taste made me want to do bad things to those people who cared for me the most. It felt good, and the evil could come back the moment I allowed it to have power over me.
“I’ve always known how you felt, Julian, and I wish I could’ve returned the love I felt coming off of you in waves. You know how important you are to me, but I love you as a friend and brother.
“During the crisis, I was out of my mind. I couldn’t even begin to explain to you how good it felt to let the pain wrap me up in a blanket of warmth.”
I loved the pain and it was like a drug that was still growing inside me to this day. The happiness I had with my beloved, William, was still threatened by how easily I could succumb to a force beyond my own understanding.
“I can’t possibly know what you went through, and this might pale in comparison, but I need you to help me to figure this out. It seems like a big coincidence for this to be happening to me when your mother just came back into your life. There’s always a pattern; you only have to look to find it,” Julian said, leaving me with more than enough to deal with, but at least, I had him here to ground me to reality.
“This thing with my mother has me wondering if I truly knew my parents. They obviously h
ad lives without me, and I never did feel a need to bridge the gap between us. Their stories were probably fraught with dangers. I’d always believed my father was my hero until mother died.”
It was nice to have somebody to talk to even though the suspicious circumstances of Julian’s arrival were still very much a mystery.
“You can’t expect someone to reveal all of their secrets. I’m sure there are things I would rather keep hidden in the dark corners of my mind. Everybody has demons they want to have excised from their lives. Your parents would be no different than any of us. That might be hard to hear, but they are, after all, human,” Julian said, using a stick he had in his hand to help push through obstacles in our way.
“You have no idea how much it means to me to have you here, Julian. I felt like I lost my best friend, and I guess I still have some lingering resentment for how you abandoned me when I needed you. It’s a touchy subject, and I regret ever doubting the strength of your friendship.”
Abandonment was something of a theme in my life, including when my mother died, and then, my father deciding to hide and make me believe he was dead.
“You have the right to your feelings. I did nothing to convince you we would always be in the thick of things together.”
I was glad he was here with me, but I was also a little hesitant considering what he had done with the animals and to my mother. There was no point in trying to unravel the time he had lost until we were back on sacred ground.
“I wasn’t in my right mind; that force bled into me was because I made it possible. I opened myself up because the pain of losing my father was too much. I should’ve been stronger in the face of adversity,” I said, looking for the silver lining and thankful my friend was here.
No one talked about it, but when we settled in the community, magic had been instrumental in protecting the village. Nobody wanted to mention how it was inefficient in dealing with what happened to me. The evil should’ve been no match for the protection touching the village. It only went to show the evil was stronger and used me to fight back when it was faced with extermination. It was possible Jasper was using me to bypass the protection, but I couldn’t say for sure.
“You’re not the only one who has things to make up for. I’ve seen you scrambling to give some peace of mind to those villagers still hesitant to stand in your vicinity. I know you’ve noticed. I’m certain it hurts you deeply to have their mistrust heaped onto your shoulders.”
Julian had seen my angst, and instead of confronting it, he decided to leave it alone for me to deal with on my own.
“You have been a good friend, and I forget sometimes I’m not the only one who has suffered. My father tangled with Jasper, and I still don’t know the full effects of the injuries plaguing him. I’ve watched him from afar, and there are times he stops and catches his breath or has a pronounced limp.”
Jasper had almost killed him, but he was as much a victim as anybody else. I could’ve been in his shoes, completely unhinged with my mind shattered into a million pieces.
“Everybody thinks their problems are the worst. We secretly listen with glee when we hear somebody else going through something even worse. We want to believe what we are going through pales in comparison just to get through the day,” Julian said, suggesting I see that my life and my problems were pretty insignificant compared to the fate of the free world.
“People act like they know me, but how could they unless they walked a mile in my shoes? They could probably say the same thing about themselves, and I never take that into consideration when I watch them walk by me with indifference.”
I was just getting back to a semblance of who I was, but I would always be touched by evil, no matter how much I wanted to deny it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was another hour before we came to an obstacle more daunting than anything we had faced on this expedition. There was a wall of ice higher than the eye could see, and climbing it didn’t seem like a good idea.
“We can go around, but it will probably take us longer, and I’m not sure Damien has time. We make this decision together.”
I didn’t understand why my father was giving us a say when he was older than the both of us combined. It was a little shift in his attitude that I found unlikely without some extraneous reason behind it. It could be he was turning over a new leaf when he came to being in control all the time.
It was getting dark, and there would be no decisions made until the crack of dawn when we could see what we were doing. Mother still hadn’t awakened. The crack she had taken from the back of the ax must have done more damage than previously thought. I was tempted to wake her up without waiting for her to do it herself, but my father stressed it was better for her to find the strength on her own.
“I’ll stay with your mother while you and Julian find something for us to eat. I’m not exactly picky; whatever you can find will suffice until we get back home.”
Leaving him with mother was not a good idea, but he had made his feelings abundantly clear. This left me with only one avenue to explore.
“If it’s all the same to you, Julian will be staying with you. I’m not sure I can trust you to do the right thing if she wakes up while we’re gone. You have to admit you might be a little biased when it comes to mother.”
I was only human, and my suspicions of my mother still didn’t amount to much.
“I’m your father. If you can’t trust me, then who can you trust? Could you honestly say the reflection in the mirror looking back at you is really your face? Does the face looking back at you deceive you?”
I didn’t like him putting the blame on me, and getting into a heated debate was not going to solve anything. I could only do what I could, and it didn’t seem to be enough. I made an effort to slow things down in my mind, but I was driving myself crazy.
I didn’t know why everything felt so heavy. It was so much more than I could carry. If I just let go, I would be set free and the fire raging inside me would burn everything in its path. I knew I wasn’t the center of the universe, but the responsibility of magic had been in my hands. What I had done with it left people with a bad taste in their mouth and a fear it was going to happen again.
“I do look into the mirror, and sometimes I don’t like what’s looking back.” I walked away feeling like my father was disappointed in me. It was not something I felt when I was growing up, but after mother died and he spent time in the asylum, his opinion of me seemed to change.
Julian tried to reach out to me with a comforting hand, but I rebuffed his advances. I really didn’t feel like talking about it. I stepped away from them, knowing my past was following me around like an anchor around my ankle. I was being dragged down. It felt like an insurmountable task every morning just to get out of bed. The only thing making my life easier to swallow was teaching my students. If I could reach just one and teach them a sense of morality, then I was doing my job right.
I went in search of food, but there was also another reason that became clear when I was far enough away to let the voices in.
“I’m sorry it took us this long to get in contact, but your mother really did do a number on us. We took the risk because we thought it was worth it to finally have some peace. Death would be preferable, but your mother can’t bring herself to kill what is keeping her alive. We may feed on one another like cannibals for any scrap of magic we can find, but your mother is worse than all of us combined.”
The voices were not exactly a fan of my mother’s, and it became painfully obvious their dislike was born from the pain she inflicted on them on a daily basis.
“You don’t have to worry about her for the time being as she’s a little indisposed. I would like some idea if what we are doing here is the right thing. Coming this way was my mother’s idea and it could’ve been just another one of her misdirections.”
I didn’t want to have these thoughts about my mother, but the voices sounded like they knew what they were talking about.
> “I’m glad to hear that. We were wondering why she didn’t finish one of us off. Talking to you was an unforgivable offense, and she must have thought she was justified in hurting us.”
The voices were surprisingly clearheaded. I didn’t think I could’ve been that clear with everything they had been through. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, and speaking to them made me believe they were just as much in the dark about what was happening as I was.
“I don’t want to give you any false hope, but I have to believe in something. I’m going to put my trust in you until you give me a reason to take it back.”
All I could think of was William and how I wanted him to be with me. I remembered stealing kisses from him and the look on his face was priceless when he was caught with his mouth open. It was something I wanted to do to make him believe the affection I felt for him was real. I was falling deeper in love every day, and it didn’t matter he was sequestered to the monastery. He was always there giving me his guidance. I could literally hear his voice in my head screaming for caution.
“I know only one way you can help us, but it would take an amazing amount of courage to even consider it. We sense there is something more here than your mother, and it’s very cold, a chill in the air that we have never felt before. You must be very careful because this thing has malevolent thoughts. It’s very dark and it touches us with a freezing hand.”
Their idea of me letting them take my body over to escape the imprisonment they had endured for many years was something I needed to give more thought to.
“I’ve already told you what you ask is too much. I wouldn’t even consider trying to force the issue. There’s something inside me, and maybe the dark force you sense in the air is what will ultimately destroy all of you if you try to take its place,” I said, trying to cover up the pain and willing myself to face my misdeeds with less hesitation.
“We know all about what you have gone through, and we regret any part we played in it. One of us did the unthinkable and consumed the essence of another one in a desperate act. It was twisted, and we suspect Jasper was the recipient of the blackness which was the result of one of our minds breaking.”