by Quil Carter
“Elish?” Ellis tried to pull me towards the main area of the precinct, and it was perhaps then she realized that she wasn’t leading me, I was leading her. “Elish, where are you trying to go?” She attempted to let go of my arm, but in a flash, I snatched her wrist. opened the blue metal door, and tossed her inside.
I was expecting a landing before the stairwell, but I realized we were both in a medium size room with the stairwell at the other end. This was no ordinary room though, there was dimpled foam on the walls, thick chunks of it, and on the ceiling, too.
And in the middle of that room was a metal table and two chairs, and coming off of one of the chairs, were chains and cuffs.
An interrogation room, and a soundproof one at that.
Sister, sister, torturing people she wanted to get information from. How chimera-like. I would love to see her in action. I bet she could get a confession out of anyone.
“Elish!” Ellis barked. “What the ever-loving-fuck!” I closed the metal door and locked it. Ah, peace at last with no outside ears to listen.
“Elish!” Ellis pushed me away, anger blazing in her eyes. “You better tell me what the fuck is going on, or I’m calling Dad. Who were you carrying to that laboratory?”
“Where’s the evidence, Ellis?” I said simply. I took a step towards her. “You will show me those surveillance tapes right now.”
Ellis glared up at me. “You’ve lost your mind,” she said. “What the hell happened?”
I shook my head, and unholstered my gun. “Are you going to make this difficult? Show me where the evidence is, Ellis. I won’t ask you a second time.”
Ellis’s eyes flickered down to the gun, but they didn’t widen with fear, no, she stared at it with disbelief, then said to me, “What happened to you?”
I pulled the trigger on the gun, and Ellis jumped back as the bullet lodged itself into the floor, the thunderous racket being absorbed by the dimpled foam walls that swallowed both the screams of the interrogated, and the loud curse words that shot forth from my sister’s lips.
“Fine!” she cried. She let out a choked sob and leaned against the table in the middle of the interrogation room. Her eyes closed. “Elish… I’m sorry.” A hand cupped her mouth and she turned away from me, with shaky steps she walked to the door.
My eyes were on her, and the gun was still clenched firmly in my hand. She led me, and I followed behind. Funny how much I had been following people today, and yet it was I who was the leader.
The taps of my shoes and her boots echoed off of the walls of the stairwell. No more foam encased this place, it was grey-painted walls and recessed lighting that gave the narrow flight of stairs the foreboding mood that was deserved of any basement worth its salt.
Down we went and my feet eventually stepped upon concrete. There was a large television dead ahead against a naked wall that bore without modesty its pink insulation, covered only by a thin piece of plastic. The TV was resting on a wooden entertainment center, and underneath it was a VHS player, a DVD player, and a closed laptop. It was a place where electronics went to die, and from the looks of the computer chair beside it, so worn its fake leather was sloughing off in bits, where furniture went to die too.
We turned to the left, and in front of us I saw rows of metal shelving, ones reminiscent of grocery aisles in stores. These five rows of shelving stretched in both directions, lit only by a scattering of light bulbs, the kind that hung down like convicts in nooses. Those lights illuminated white plastic boxes with black lids, hundreds of them, if not a thousand, each with a set of numbers and letters written in black jiffy marker.
Ellis walked ahead, her arms clasped around her chest. She didn’t have to check any database; she didn’t have to look up where this evidence was… Ellis knew exactly where to find it. As if she’d been here often.
“What lies you all have spun, little sister,” I murmured. My eyes lazily grazed the plastic totes of evidence as I walked past them. I laughed and shook my head. “Oh, how many lies have I been told, Ellis Arwen? When did we start telling each other lies? We’ve always been so fucking honest with each other.” I roughly shoved one of the totes, my head shaking back and forth.
“We were trying to protect you,” she snapped. Her lips, adorned with deep red lipstick, pursed tight. “Because we were worried… we were worried you’d… really do it this time.”
I laughed louder. “Really do it this time?” I exclaimed. “I find it so amusing how many people destroy my life then tell me they were trying to protect me. Am I the only one that finds that fucking hilarious?”
“Elish!” Ellis spun around, her eyes desperate. “I know you’re in there. Somewhere, I know you’re in there… listen to me.” She framed my face with her hands. “Trust me… turn around and go home. Just turn around and go home. I won’t tell Silas about the car accident, whatever happened to you… I won’t tell him. Just please, Eli, don’t make me show…” Her voice trailed off as I raised the gun and pressed the barrel into her temple.
“Don’t test my madness, little sister,” I whispered. “I already have Daddy locked up and beaten half to death. Don’t make me do something I won’t be around to regret.”
Her expression was a mixture of both disbelief, and horror. “What did… what did you do to Silas?”
“SHOW ME THE FUCKING TAPES, ELLIS!” I screamed.
“OKAY!” she cried back. Her face crumpled, then she turned, grabbed a tote from the top shelf and slammed it down by my feet. “There!” she screamed, fresh tears springing to her eyes. She sunk to her knees, her hands clasped over the back of her head. “I’m sorry, Elish. I’m sorry!”
I holstered my gun and took the lid off of the tote.
The first thing I saw was a clear plastic bag containing bloodied clothing. I ignored the painful surge in my heart and pushed it aside. I then saw a DVD in a clear case, with our birthday and the current year scrawled in silver pen, it was resting on top of a black duffle bag, a remote phone beside it, both wrapped in clear plastic.
I took the DVD and turned from her. “Call Nero and Garrett,” I said, the plaguelands more full of life than my tone.
She sniffed and nodded, and as I walked towards the television I saw, I heard the low beeps of the remote phone.
And when I put the DVD in, I heard a low pleading voice:
“Something’s wrong with Elish. He’s snapped. He’s so unhinged; I’ve never seen him this bad.”
“He has the DVD. He’s about to watch it.”
“I CAN’T! He has a fucking gun, Nero. He’s shot it. We’re in the basement.”
“You know they can’t hear us, you fucking designed it!”
“I think he… I think we’re fucked Nero.”
“I think we’re all fucked.”
The TV turned blue for a second. I stood in front of it with the remote in one hand, and a gun in the other, and watched as an aerial view of a roof top, came into view.
There was a time stamp underneath the feed. The roof empty.
I skipped ahead until I saw a figure emerge. It was Vlad carrying the same black duffle bag I’d just seen.
That part was the truth.
I watched him in silence as he began to set up the sniper rifle which had been hiding in the bag. He loaded the bullets, they were silver bullets, the one that I was shot with.
I saw no other guns.
Behind me, I could hear Ellis’s heartbeat echo in the open basement. It was fast, yet slower than mine.
I began to fast forward the DVD, using the lowest speed. This wasn’t the part I was interested in.
Vlad positioned the sniper rifle on the tripod, looking out of it again and again. He settled in, for over half an hour he waited.
Then Vlad reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out… it was the remote phone. The man said a few words into it, then there was a smile, and Vlad put the phone on top of the black duffle bag.
Then the shot, and the kickback.
Ellis began t
o quietly cry behind me.
Another shot. Another shot.
Vlad’s lips moved and he looked towards the remote phone.
Then I realized that the phone must still be connected to the call.
Whoever was on the other end, wanted to hear him kill his target.
Ivan.
That’s how Ivan knew.
Then I saw another figure.
A figure that ran towards Vlad with an expression of demonic rage on his face.
It was… it was Julian.
Julian had a rifle in his grasp. Vlad put his hands up, but before they were even fully raised, Julian riddled him with bullets. Vlad Jackson’s body jerked back from the impact of the rifle, blood and cloth flying, then he stumbled, tripping over the sniper rifle as he did, and fell to the ground.
It was all Vlad?
An eerie feeling clawed out of the pit in my stomach as I watched Julian.
Not enough time had passed for Finn to be…
For Finn to be…
… shot.
I watched, my mouth dry, as Julian stood there, for what seemed like an hour he stood there, staring at the tripod.
Then he walked to it. He put his own rifle down on top of the tripod, kneeled down…
… and then there was kickback as he pulled the trigger.
Behind him, a burly figure burst from the door, quickly followed by two more.
Julian whirled around.
Nero charged him, but he charged past him, pushing him out of the way. He barked something, and Garrett and Ellis drew their guns. Julian dropped his.
Nero looked through the scope of the rifle, his eyes becoming so wide they seemed to glow.
His mouth moved.
I could read it.
“He fucking shot Finny!”
“He fucking shot Finny!!”
He turned and backhanded Julian as Ellis and Garrett held him.
Julian’s terrorized eyes bulged, his lips moved.
They spoke to him in angry snarls, Julian cowered down. Oh, how fast his lips moved. Pleading, pleading. What silver-tongued lies did he stir up for them?
Nero grabbed Julian, Garrett punched him in the side of the head, fuming with rage. Then… they dragged him out of sight. They took Julian back down the stairwell.
And it was over.
“At first, we were going to arrest him and bring him to Silas,” Ellis said behind me. “Silas was so hysterical over you being shot, we knew we couldn’t tell him right then. Silas was… inconsolable. It was even worse than when you’d been kidnapped.” I heard her take a step towards me, her heart thrashing. “Julian ran off. We decided to track him ourselves, but he found us first.”
A shaky breath was inhaled. I still hadn’t moved.
“Elish… Julian told us... that if you found out what he’d done… it would break you. That you’d have another heart attack; that you’d commit suicide. He told us, the only person who would truly suffer for his impulse… was you, and that if we loved you, we’d forget what we saw.”
It had been Julian…
Julian killed my partner.
I let a man who had already hurt my sengil, and shown he was obsessed with me, kill him. I’d allowed a sociopath around my most innocent, my most vulnerable.
And the Master of Lies weaved his manipulative words into quite the tapestry for my siblings. Julian had gotten to my brothers and my sister.
They’d… they’d rather me be with a murderer, an obsessive crazed man, then… then be alone?
Are you fucking kidding me?
“You let me welcome this murderer back into my arms?” I whispered. “You watched me take him back and you said nothing?”
My siblings, the brothers and the sister I grew up with… who I loved. The siblings I had done everything I could to make up for my years of being reserved from them. I helped them, whenever they asked something of me, I did it. I loved them dearly… I asked their assistance to find out who the spiders were. I bore my heart to them, I asked them for their discreet help.
Ivan told me I was amongst spiders…
But I never fathomed I had a garden full of them.
“We told Julian to go back to the greywastes,” Ellis said quietly. “But… when Julian told Silas his plans, Silas forbid it. Then you started dating him and… the mountain of lies only got worse. Because we saw that you were better with Julian. We… we didn’t know what the fuck to do, Elish.” She stared at the ground, drops falling from her eyes to darken the concrete underneath our feet. “You were so destroyed after Finn died. We were all terrified you were going to try and kill yourself again… and your heart… we were scared, Eli. We just wanted you to be happy.”
By… allowing me to sleep with the man who killed my best friend? My partner?
My eyes shut tight, my teeth locked firmly together. The steady pressure inside of my head multiplied to a painful level. It was growing, expanding, there wasn’t enough room to contain it, but still it grew. It grew like a balloon being inflated inside of a tight net.
“You gave me to the man who killed my partner?” I said through my clenched teeth. My chest began to heave, my face and ears burned. “You allowed him to move into my apartment? You allowed me to fuck him in the same god damn bed Finn and I shared?”
“Elish…”
“You let me fall for the man who shot my fucking boyfriend in front of me!” I cried. I threw the remote against the wall, my control dripping away like water being poured through open hands. “You, you sat back and watched me, watched him… the three of you and fucking Silas… you’d rather I be with the man who murdered my sengil of almost eighteen years? And you claim it was for my own good!?”
Ellis turned, her eyes closed. The expression on her face told me she didn’t want to say what she was going to say next.
“Silas didn’t know until yesterday,” she admitted quietly. “He didn’t know until he looked at the evidence himself, because he’d promised to show you. We… we kept it from him too, Eli.”
I stared at her, unable to wrap my reeling mind around what she’d just said.
Silas… Silas had nothing to do with this?
Silas was innocent?
Silas was innocent.
The words echoed through my head, slamming themselves against the stone walls and creating craters with every impact. Silas was innocent. Silas was innocent. Again and again they threw themselves at the protective fort I’d erected around me, until they broke through and found the weak man crouched down in the center, hands wrapped tightly around his shaking frame.
Silas was innocent.
And those three words hounded him, screamed at him. They changed tone from mocking to patronizing, hissing to cries of disbelief. They replayed on fast forward until the man inside of my brain screamed at the top of his lungs, a loud declaration of victory for the madness that had been relentlessly assaulting the remaining weak shreds of sanity.
That was the end of my rope. Once again, Elish Dekker had reached the threshold of what he could handle.
The snap inside of my brain was so loud, I was sure Ellis could hear it.
She needs to run. I can’t handle this.
And that was the last conscious string of thought I had.
~
This part is painful to write – but it is the truth. All of it. I will not sugarcoat it; I made a promise when I started this book that I would write it how it happened. No one will be spared, especially not me.
~
There were no more crazed laughs, no further hallmarks of the chimera whose mind has reached its outer limits. What I did, I did without thought; I did without reason. I did the most terrible thing I had ever done with no guilt or remorse at the time, just a stone-cold insanity that had me crushed in its clutches.
I raised the gun I was still holding, and I shot Ellis. I shot my own sister.
She was thrown backwards, a scream echoing the cold basement. She fell to the floor, a crater of cloth blown away from
her stomach.
Then behind her, a scream.
Nero burst through the darkness, a stream of light behind him from a basement door to outside. “Elish!” he screamed. “Stop! No! WHY!?”
I raised the gun, and as Garrett ran behind him, both their eyes bright flares of terror, I shot him too. I shot Nero in the arm and again in the chest, and he fell to the ground beside his twin sister.
“Fuck, Elish!” Garrett screamed. “Stop!” He put his hands up, too terrified to cry. “Stop, baby. Baby, please stop.”
I stared at him, my head tilted to the side. “Oh, Garrett,” I murmured. Garrett ripped his jacket off and pressed it against Nero’s wound. “You were fighting it from the start, weren’t you?” I stepped towards him, my brother and sister on the ground twisting and groaning. Garrett’s attention was shifting from Nero’s to Ellis’s unsure of who to help. “My loyal brother. I remember you screaming that you couldn’t do it. Look at you refusing to go along with them. It was eating you inside, wasn’t it?”
Garrett’s face scrunched. He looked up at me. “We have to get them to the hospital,” he pleaded. He put his hands up and slowly began lowering them towards the gun. “Help me, Elish. We… we have to get them to the hospital.”
I raised the gun, Garrett’s hands retracted. I pointed it at his head, my own shaking back and forth. “No,” I said simply. I reached into my pocket, and into the Ziploc bag I had stuffed inside of it. I pinched the powder I could feel against the tips of my fingers. “I have no intention of bringing them to the hospital, brother.” Before he could react, I flicked the powder underneath his nose. Garrett recoiled back, his nose wrinkling.
“Elish…” Nero said weakly. “Eenie-Meenie… we wanted to fucking protect you.” He tried to get up, a pool of blood underneath him, but he collapsed with a groan. “I just wanted you to be happy for once.”