The Descendants

by Kirk Kilgrave

  She stared at their interlocked hands and tightened her grasp on them.

  “I know what you’re feeling, Logan.”

  Her tone was so free of emotion that a shard of fear stabbed him, immediately making him think that she was upset with him, but looking at her sullen expression, he was more curious than anything about what she was feeling. “Is that a bad thing?”

  She let go of his hand and turned away from him.

  A spike of worry enveloped him. “I’m not a bad guy if that’s what you’re thinking.” Logan took her hand again, but this time she didn’t grasp onto it. “If you’re worried, I have good intentions.”

  She nodded. “I know. And that’s the problem. I don’t want…”

  He didn’t like the sound of that. This time, he withdrew his hand. “Are you breaking this off between us? We haven’t even gone on a date yet. Oh, maybe that’s the problem? If it is, well, I plan on taking you out, Eloise. We’re definitely going to—”

  She straightened, extended both hands, and placed her palms on his cheeks. “Shhh, okay?”

  He wagged his finger at her. “We’re not in a library, so you can’t do that.”

  A smile flickered on her lips, but a moment later, she flinched as if stung with pain. “No, will you just please listen?”

  Fear struck his heart. “Okay.” He swallowed, afraid of what she might say.

  “I know what you’re feeling all the time, every moment we’re together. I can feel your heart and soul, Logan.”

  He didn’t think her abilities extended that far. He felt violated, like he couldn’t keep his secrets private.

  “I’m an empath. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I’m inundated with feelings from everyone around me. If someone’s mad or sad or happy, I feel it. Maybe not to the full extent of what they’re feeling, but I won’t lie, feeling so many different emotions one after another, well, it’s easy to judge others without all the facts. That’s the most difficult part, trying to not to jump to conclusions and to stay impartial and to be non-judgmental.”

  He tried to put himself in her place by envisioning himself walking through a department store during the winter holidays encountering a throng of people rushing past every couple seconds, many of whom are tense or upset about the long lines and all of the tasks they still had ahead of them. The exercise wore him out, and he’d simply fabricated that predicament. What would that really feel like? He truly couldn’t imagine it.

  “That sounds exhausting,” he said finally. When Eloise didn’t respond, he said, “How is all that possible?”

  “I was born with it. The same way I was born with my other abilities.”

  “Sounds like a curse.” Realizing he may have spoken out of turn, he got prepared to apologize.

  “No.” She turned to him and held up a hand with a look of desperation. “Please don’t apologize.”

  Could she read his mind? Is that why she knew what he would say? Blood rushed into his face quicker than it ever had before. Since she wanted sincerity, he said, “Did you just read my mind?”

  “No. I can’t do that, and I wouldn’t want to. But I feel what you’re feeling. Just a moment ago, I could tell you got really worried. I’ve been like this for over a dozen years. After so much time, I got pretty good at inferring emotions. I’m not always on the dot, but I’m pretty accurate.”

  “You’ve got a built-in bullshit detector!”

  She cocked an eyebrow and bumped his upper arm with her own. “I’ve never heard that one before.” Then she smiled, perhaps to show her sarcasm was meant good-naturedly.

  Logan thought about everything she’d shared. It didn’t take long to comprehend why she took this moment to tell him who she truly was and the difficulties she faced. Before he got too attached, she wanted him to know what he’d be dealing with if he wanted to take the next step with her.

  And it worried him. “To be honest, that scares me.”

  She nodded. “I know. I could feel that from you a little.”

  “But it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

  “Ghosts scare you.”

  “True. But you’ll be around to tell me if they’re there. And the more you get exposed to something, the more you get used to it. At least, I hope it’ll work out that way.” When she nodded at that, he said, “What else have you got for me?”

  “I work full-time, but otherwise, I travel around the state to help people the same way I’m helping you. It doesn’t leave much time for romance or anything else. But it’s my calling. I don’t know why it happened, but I feel it’s the right thing to do.”

  Logan noted her disappointment, not in Eloise’s expression which gave nothing away, but by the way her shoulders sagged inwards. It forced her arms forward at an awkward angle, like they would soon buckle and snap.

  He couldn’t imagine enduring such a burden every day, any time he went out in public. Sometimes, he found it tough to work through his own emotions. He couldn’t imagine a flood of feelings rushing at him from all angles whenever she went anywhere with people around. The closest analogy he could imagine was to have each person you met throughout the day trying to sell you something you had no interest in. If that happened to him on every day of your life, he would probably lose his mind. An outpouring of compassion flowed out of him.

  “But you know what makes it worth it?” she asked. “When I help someone and feel their relief and appreciation, there is no better feeling in the world.”

  “Really?” he asked, shocked that anything could make up for such a dismal day-in, day-out experience. It immediately made him think of the Pixar film they’d seen separately a few days ago. “What about at the movie theater? That must be madness. Stuck with all those people. All those feelings…and no way to get away from them.”

  “I only see Disney or Pixar films in the theater.” Tears entered her eyes. “That’s probably why I love their movies so much. For the most part, they aren’t dark or negative, and to have an entire room full of people feeling happy or joyous at the same time during the film is so indescribably uplifting. It’s one of the best feelings in the world!”

  “Wow!” he said. “Next time Pixar comes out with another movie, you have to come with us.”

  “It’s a date!” she said with a big grin.

  “What else have you got for me?” he asked.

  “You don’t give up very easily, do you?”

  “Not when I have something worth fighting for.”

  She searched his eyes for a long moment. “You’re for real, aren’t you?”

  If she wasn’t interested, she wouldn’t have framed her question that way. He liked that she spoke her mind without reservations. It fit in well with how his family communicated.

  “At some moments,” Eloise said, “you’re very much into this, but in others, you’re scared.”

  He nodded. “I’ve got to know: what happened to your friend? The one who recently died?”

  Her lips quivered and she lowered her eyes and batted her eyelashes a number of times before she met his stare again. “She was murdered in a haunted house.”

  “By a ghost?”

  “By a man who was influenced by a ghost.”

  Logan’s muscles cramped up. Nothing he’d read online or in the books he’d gotten from the library mentioned that people could be so overcome with a spirit’s emotions that they didn’t act of their own accord. The idea horrified him.

  “And now,” she said, “you’re freaking out.” As she continued to inspect his gaze, her shoulders firmed up, and her arms no longer looked like they would snap.

  “Kind of,” he admitted. “I didn’t know ghosts could affect us that much. Have they ever affected you that way?”

  “No. I have techniques to ground myself and prevent that sort of thing from happening.”

  “You’ll have to show me sometime.”

  “Definitely.” She nodded. “My life is…difficult. I can’t expect everyone to accept me.” She wince
d at the thought. “Or even understand me.”

  “I want to understand.” Logan recalled how Eloise had risked her reputation in high school by defending those who’d been bullied. Now he got why she’d done it; Eloise felt so much of the anguish and fear and humiliation of those victims that she wanted to let them know that someone cared about them, that they hadn’t endured that embarrassment alone. She not only assisted those with supernatural afflictions, but she also helped those who’ve endured human indignities. He had such admiration that she often put herself on the line for others and never asked for anything in return.

  He reached over and took her hand in his once more. “You’re special, Eloise. We haven’t really talked too much about our pasts, but I can only imagine that you’ve been very lonely…for a very long time.”

  Her face crumbled. Eloise scooted closer to him and wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you,” she said, barely managing to get the words out. She clung to him and sobbed with practically no sound, her body quivering against his.

  Logan held her tightly. “You’re not alone anymore.” He felt like they had made a soul connection, something real that went beyond words, something that bound them together, something that made him feel accepted and loved, perhaps not yet romantically but spiritually.

  Eloise released him, turned aside and sniffled a few times, and then wiped the tears from her eyes and face. “I didn’t expect that to happen.”

  “I’m glad it did,” he said. “I’m really glad to know you, Eloise.”

  When she turned back to him, her eyes sparkled, and she kissed his lips before she laughed, only to place a few fingertips to her lips and looked around at his siblings.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, grinning. “I’m just happy.”

  “Me too.” Logan loved that he could express himself freely without fearing her response because she knew what he was feeling the moment. It sort of smashed the idea that she’d invaded his privacy because it lent their relationship an authenticity that could potentially help them avoid misunderstandings and work past any issues without keeping secrets.

  Eloise took in a deep breath and let it out as her smile faded. She scanned the area around them. “It’s been almost a day since this entity last visited.”

  “Uncharted territory,” he said. “You know, since Lucretia made her presence known, she dropped by pretty often.” Logan yawned. It surprised him, given the fear that death may strike at any moment and the strides he’d made in his relationship with Eloise, but not sleeping in over thirty hours had that effect.

  “You can go to sleep,” she said. “I’ll keep watch.”

  “What if you fall asleep?”

  “If she visits, I’ll feel her emotions.”

  “Even while you’re sleeping?”

  “When we’re asleep, we’re completely vulnerable. That’s when we’re most open to spiritual disruption. If there’s a sudden shift in my dreams, I’ll realize something doesn’t quite fit and force myself to wake up.”

  “I could never fall asleep under those circumstances.” He wondered if his body would ever enter a deep sleep, which might end up making him groggy. Did she have the same problem? That idea made him worry a little, but it wasn’t enough to make him overlook his fatigue.

  “When you do my job,” Eloise said, her voice cracking, “you adapt.”

  He laid his head on the pillow and closed his eyes. Hearing Eloise shift beside him, he reflexively reached out blindly, found her hand, and clasped it.

  Rest came fitfully, but at some point during the night, Logan heard a panic-stricken, silent scream nearly puncture the quiet. It took only a moment to recognize that the ragged, imperceptible shriek came from his throat.

  22

  With weary eyes that barely budged despite demanding that they do just that, Logan felt a presence nearby. Obviously, he couldn’t see anything, which made it impossible to determine what lurked in the vicinity. But he didn’t need to catch an eyeful of whatever crept among them to know that something ominous had visited them.

  And the entity must have picked its way through the family room. He hadn’t awoken from a whoosh of air hitting his face, nor had a sound split the air. Yet he could sense it. His chest felt tight, like someone sat on it, making it difficult to breathe. An iron-tinged scent hit his nostrils.

  That odor alone didn’t spur any thoughts as to what might elicit that aroma. Until he recalled biting his fingernail last week. Blood had crested over his skin, and it smelled like iron.

  What had happened? Had someone gotten hurt? He called upon his eyelids to life but they wouldn’t. However, behind his lids, he could sense the dim morning light peering through the windows.

  The fragrance of blood, more than any other scent, made him want to burst into action. He called upon his muscles to move. They wouldn’t. It felt like he’d wrapped his torso tightly in blankets. He made another effort, this time pushing his shoulders to move, so he could twist around onto his stomach, prepared to launch in any direction in which he spotted an enemy.

  How was this possible? What could have prevented him from opening his eyes or moving? He felt trapped inside a broken body, one that could only rely on his ears and the thick tension in the air around him. Which made things all the more grim since he couldn’t guess why his muscles wouldn’t work.

  Once more, although he commanded his brain to follow through on his request, his muscles refused to shift even a centimeter. Something had to have restrained him. Lucretia must’ve returned. Maybe she’d placed a spell on him. That might explain his condition.

  But she was in spectral form. Could she perform that ritual without a body? After all, if she was only composed of energy, she couldn’t talk to set the enchantment in motion. Or could she? Logan hadn’t noticed any passages in the books he’d read that stated whether such a feat was possible. On second thought, Eloise mentioned that she communicated with ghosts, so it might be conceivable.

  He took in snippets of air that felt like they barely scraped through his neck, making it feel compressed, as though the oxygen strained his throat as it passed into his chest.

  His brain was foggy, making it difficult to concentrate. He had to hasten that ability. This time, rather than attempting to move his appendages, he put all of his efforts into cracking open his eyelids.

  They barely budged. A streak of alarm lashed his body, but even that didn’t prompt him to move. His paralytic condition reminded him of the movies, where the bad guy injects a drug into the hero’s bloodstream, making it impossible for him to fight back. So he was back to thinking Lucretia was in the vicinity and had cast a spell on him.

  But if she had, why hadn’t Eloise noticed and put a stop to it?

  There were too many unanswered questions, and with his inability to move, Logan felt another scream preparing to tear from his vocal cords. It didn’t happen.

  Strangely enough, he only let out a slight whine that barely resounded in his own mind, let alone registered an actual sound. He sucked in a breath, but the second he performed that task, his throat threatened to close up again, cutting him off from taking in more oxygen.

  Unable to speak, move, or see anything clearly, Logan felt more than helpless. He felt abandoned. Yet his siblings and Eloise were supposed to be nearby. Where were they? Had the witch gotten to them before mounting this attack? Moisture surged into his eyes.

  Logan couldn’t let that happen. He needed to see in order to discover what attacked him. He tried to force the tears back. He couldn’t survive while relying only on his sense of smell.

  At that moment, he recalled having endured a similar nightmarish predicament in the past. He’d once researched the issue and now recalled that he’d just suffered from an episode of sleep paralysis. It most often affected those who didn’t move smoothly between different stages of sleep or those who had disrupted their sleep patterns. Over the past few days, in between missing two nights of sleep, he’d s
lept throughout the daylight hours of an entire day.

  That realization stopped the tears from mounting. It also relieved so much of his anxiety that he finally blinked. A burst of excitement stretched through him. With that accomplished, he blinked rapidly to dry his eyes, but his smeared vision from the excess moisture was unsteady, tilting left to right, up and down.

  He just needed to continue to relax and wait this out. In the past, he’d always spent a helpless minute or two before he regained full bodily function. So far, he presumed less than thirty seconds had passed since first awakening. He now lowered his expectations and continued to loosen up.

  Then a troubling thought hit his mind. All of that might be true, but previously, while he may have struggled to breathe evenly, he’d never felt like a great weight pressed down on his chest. Now that he’d flushed the moisture from his eyes, he’d moved them enough to see clearly. He looked down toward his stomach to find out what may have caused such pain.

  A luminescent light-skinned black woman with thick, curly dark hair that barely passed her jaw straddled his chest. Lucretia bared white teeth, which mangled her face in rage, her wide eyes glaring at him. But even that hideous expression couldn’t shatter the smooth, sinewy beauty of her face.

  Finding a woman wrapped in chains straddling him while choking him out was frightening enough. But to endure that torture while incapacitated took fear to a different level of terror. He was so overcome with fear that chills racked his body, and if he didn’t compose himself he’d begin to lose consciousness. Chains tinkled above him, swinging back and forth, eliciting the slight sound of wind passing through the air, making him concentrate on the situation, not the ghost that loomed over him.

  Logan now found himself struggling even harder to capture enough air into his lungs. It made sense: the witch pressed her weight down on him. Only that didn’t add up. This woman was a spirit. She was not composed of matter. So why did so much pressure push down on him?