by M. Leighton
I felt his hands at my neck. He lowered them to my shoulders, slipping his fingers under the edge of my robe. His hands slid down my bare arms, pushing the robe off as they went and leaving a trail of fire in their wake. Chills spread across my chest and belly, several body parts tightening and tingling excitedly.
“I-I haven’t-,” I stammered. “We can’t—”
Thankfully he interrupted my pitiful attempts at coherent speech, saving me from having to make the most embarrassing speech of my life.
“I know,” he whispered, his eyes never leaving mine. “You need to get warm, though.”
All I could muster was a nod of agreement. I stood perfectly still, flushed and warm, while he pulled the tank over my head and let it drop to the floor. Then, his eyes never leaving mine, he squatted down in front of me and hooked his fingers in the band of my pajama pants. Slowly, he slid them over my hips and down my legs, his smoky eyes blazing passionately into mine.
When I stood before him in nothing but bra and panties, every inch of my skin on fire, he let his eyes fall inch by inch down to my feet. As they made their way back up my body, he rose to his full height. He was so close I could feel the heat coming off his body in thick, steamy waves.
His eyes bored into mine. They mirrored the desire that I felt boiling inside me. When he bent to brush his lips over mine, I was already mindless with passion. But then he, too quicky, he broke the contact and turned away.
He paused in the doorway to look back at me, his hand on the knob. One side of his mouth lifted in a lopsided grin. Then, just before he pulled the door shut, I saw his eyes dart to the mirror at my back. I could’ve sworn I saw him frown right before the door closed with a soft click.
I took my time in the shower. When I got out, I brushed my teeth, combed my hair and rubbed lotion into my still-sensitive skin. After I dressed, I wandered out to the living room. The television was on, but Derek wasn’t watching it. He was standing at the window, staring out into the night.
I walked to the couch and sat down, making myself comfortable. I didn’t know what to say after what we’d just experienced so I said nothing at all. I’d let him take the lead.
He neither spoke nor moved for the longest time, so long in fact I wondered if he even knew I was there. It startled me when he asked, “When did you get the mark?”
“What mark?”
“The tattoo. The one on your right shoulder blade.”
“Oh. That,” I said, suddenly understanding why he’d frowned into the mirror in the bathroom; he’d seen the spot on my back. “It’s not a tattoo. I’m not sure what it is, actually. At first I thought it was grease from the garage floor, but...”
“And now?”
“Well,” I paused to think. “I’m still not sure. It keeps getting bigger and bigger and changing colors. And it’s starting to look more like…”
“Like what?” He prompted.
“Like, um, flames I guess.”
“How long ago did you first notice it?’
“I don’t know, a couple of weeks I suppose. Why?”
“When was the last time you looked at it?”
“It’s been a few days I guess. Why?” I asked again.
“The dead grass and flowers around your father’s grave,” he said.
“What about them?”
“Go look at your shoulder.”
His imperious tone rankled. But rather than taking exception and making a snide comment, I simply stood and walked back into my bedroom to do as he asked. Besides, with the way he introduced the subject, I was too curious not to go look.
I closed the bathroom door behind me, not wanting him to sneak up on me while I was topless. When I turned to get a good look at my shoulder, I saw that the flames had spread. They formed a wide base that spanned my right side, from my spine to my armpit. The flames licked up toward my neck and now, woven among them, were vines of the greenest green. In some places, their shoots wrapped and twisted around the flames as if they were choking the fire. But in other places the heart-shaped leaves on the vine disappeared into the flames, like they’d been burned up in the heat.
I pushed my top down and went back into the living room. Though the mark (as well as the other physical transformations of late) bothered me, it gave me some consolation to know that Derek evidently knew something about it. I’d never have dreamed that I’d draw that much comfort from just not being alone in all this, whatever “this” was.
“So what does it mean?” I said without preamble as I stepped into the living room.
“Obviously the flames represent your ability to wield fire. At this point, that’s no surprise.
“And the vines?”
“Another mystery.”
“Why? The way you made it sound, it has something to do with plants.”
“Well, if the display of dead vegetation at your father’s funeral was any indication, I’d say you can control earth, too.” His tone and expression made it seem like that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
I would marvel over the control earth thing later. Right now I just wanted to know why he made it seem like such a bad thing. “Then why is it such a mystery? You figured it out quickly enough.”
“It was my understanding that each twin can control one of the four elements and when one twin defeats the other, he absorbs the second power. And yet you…” He shrugged in his customary way.
In my head, I finished his statement. And yet I was apparently gifted (or cursed) with two.
“What could that mean?”
“Honestly?”
“No, lie to me,” I snapped sarcastically.
“Honestly,” he snapped. “I have no idea.”
I walked back to the couch and sat down again. Derek turned back to the window. We were both lost in thought for quite some time before he broke the silence.
“Why were you wet?”
I looked at the back of his head, puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
“In the garage. Why were you wet?”
My mind was so overwhelmed it took me a minute to change gears. “What? Didn’t you see all that water in the garage?”
Derek turned to look at me. “The garage is dry, Carson.” A hint of concern shadowed his handsome face, but I also saw the tiniest bit of pity, like maybe he thought I was buckets of crazy and felt a little sorry for me. And that irritated me.
“Well it wasn’t. It was raining in there, falling up, like it was coming from the ground. Everything was wet, even the inside of the car.”
I was glad to see the pity leave his expression, even if it was replaced by an anxious frown that wrinkled his brow. “It was raining upside down?”
“Yes! All over the garage. Trust me. I know what I saw.”
“I just don’t see how that’s possible, Carson.”
“Well, it came as a shock to me, too. And if you don’t believe it then—”
“Oh I believe you,” he interrupted, cutting short my rising indignation. “It’s just that you shouldn’t be able to see that, much less experience it.”
“Why? What do you mean?” I felt like a three-year old, always asking why.
I saw him hesitate for an instant before he spoke, as if he was weighing the merit of telling me the truth. “It rains upside down in the Darkness,” he said gravely. “Things are very different there, almost completely opposite of this world.”
“And…”
“And the Darkness can’t be seen from here.” Derek turned back toward the window, the gesture casual and uninterested.
“Well, I’m just telling you what I saw.”
“Is that why you were so afraid?”
I didn’t answer. If he’d balked at the upside down rain, what would he say about the gruesome untouchable people in the shadows?
“Don’t even pretend that you weren’t scared to death. It was so strong I could feel it.”
I thought to ask him about that, but the topic at hand seemed more important. I’d have t
o add it to my ever-growing list of things I didn’t have the answers to. “No. I was afraid of all those people.”
Derek whirled back to face me, his frown back, so deep it was nearly a scowl. “What people?”
He gave me flack over my garage floor raining, but believed this?
“I don’t know. People. Hurt people. They were…” I trailed off, struggling to find the words to describe what I saw.
“They were what?”
“I don’t know. They were there, but not there. Like, I couldn’t touch them, but, after a while, I could feel them touching me.” Even as I spoke about it, the remembered fear formed a tight ball in my chest, that overwhelming sensation of powerlessness still fresh.
Derek walked to stand in front of me, looking down into my face as if trying to see inside my head, inside my soul. Whether or not he found what he was looking for, I don’t know, but he turned back toward the center of the room, ran his fingers through his hair and began to pace.
“These people,” he said. “Tell me about them.”
To the best of my ability, I described in intimate detail the scene that had terrorized me in the garage. Derek’s expression grew darker and darker the longer I talked. When I reached my conclusion, starring Derek as my rescuer, a black thundercloud had settled over his face.
“What does it mean?”
“That’s why he wanted me to find you,” Derek said absently, speaking more to himself than to me.
“Who?” He resumed his pacing, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Who, Derek?” Still he ignored me. I got up from the couch and stepped in front of him. “Who?”
“Who what?”
“Who wanted you to find me?”
“Fahl.”
Dread curled its icy fingers around my stomach. I could remember the smell of him, Fahl, and the way he made me feel, as if he’d just left the room. It was etched permanently onto my mind. “What does he want with me?”
“That’s the million dollar question.”
It took a few seconds for what he’d said to sink in. When it did, it brought anger with it. “Then why did you do it? Why did you lead him to me? What if he wants to kill me or something?”
“He doesn’t want to kill you, Carson. Anyway, I had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” I spat, remembering another of the many wisdoms my father had drilled into my head.
“Not always.”
“And why is that?”
“It’s a long story,” Derek said dismissively, walking around me to continue pacing.
You should be glad that I gave you this assignment rather than keeping you…with me, I remembered Fahl saying to Derek.
“What? Do you- do you work for him?”
“I guess you could say that,” he said distractedly, still pacing, deep in thought. “I needed him to do something for me and this is what he wanted in return.”
The pacing was driving me crazy. “Derek! Stop!”
“What, Carson?” His temper flared as quickly as mine had. “I’m trying to think,” he growled.
“Well, I need some answers. I’m kind of freaking out here.”
“I don’t have many answers for you. Not right now at least. There’s a lot I don’t know either, okay?” His patience had obviously come to an end.
We stared each other down, neither of us ready to budge an inch. After several minutes, I realized that I wanted, needed, more answers and we were getting nowhere fast this way. So, grudgingly, I tamped down my anger as deep as it would go and I began again.
“Alright, look. Let’s start over,” I suggested agreeably. “Would you please tell me about this man and this place? Maybe knowing more about all this will help me make sense of what I’ve seen, of what’s happening to me.”
Derek glared at me, but I could see his temper fading as he considered my proposition. After a put-upon sigh, he said, “Alright. What do you want to know?”
“Who’s Fahl?”
“I don’t really know,” he said. I puffed up instantly, certain he was just being difficult. Seeing my reaction, he merely raised one dark brow then continued, in no hurry to assuage my curiosity. “I don’t know if anyone does. He’s a very powerful man over there, maybe the most powerful. I mean every hell has a devil, right?”
“Over where?”
“Carson,” he began, his tone laced with frustration. “Do you know how hard this is to explain?” I said nothing. Running his fingers through his hair again, another gesture of frustration, he continued. I was grateful he was at least willing to try. “I call it the Darkness. I think different people call it different things, have for thousands of years—Purgatory, Limbo, the Chasm, Misery, a parallel universe. Whatever you call it, it’s the place that’s all around what we can see and touch in this world. It hovers in the dark, always just outside human reach and perception. But it’s real.” He paused. “And it’s evil,” he said grimly.
“How do you get there?”
“I was called, summoned, just like I think you might be one day. There’s no other way. At least not that I’ve found,” he answered then paused. “Yet,” he added emphatically.
“Called? By whom?”
“Fahl.”
“To do what?”
“To make good on your deal.”
“What deal?”
“I told you before, people make different deals, have for…forever I guess.”
“But I told you I didn’t make any deals. What does he want with me?”
“And I told you that maybe you didn’t make a deal, but somebody did. Probably one of your parents. Not just anyone can make a deal for you. Besides, I don’t think that’s all he wants with you.”
I thought of the letter from my mother and an ominous cloud settled over me. “And how do you make good on your deal?”
“Depends on the deal, I guess, but I think with twins there’s always a fight.”
“A fight?” I asked. Derek nodded in answer. “A fight for what?”
“A fight for your life.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, unable to disguise the tremor in my voice.
“Somehow he finds what people need most and he gives it to them. For a price. With twins, it’s like hitting the jackpot. He gets two for the price of one.”
“But I don’t understand,” I repeated, but in my gut I thought I probably did.
“It’s kill or be killed, but either way you lose. If you lose, you can never come back here, never move on. You die, but not really. You’re trapped in the darkness,” he said gravely.
“And if you win?”
Derek laughed bitterly. “No one really wins. You can’t kill a man without becoming the monster.”
I felt like I was about to hyperventilate. I couldn’t kill someone, especially not my identical twin. To look into her face, so like my own, and end her life, condemn her to an existence like those other people I’d seen. No way!
Suddenly, I was overcome with the urge to run, run far and fast. And then hide. Forever if need be. I was certain I couldn’t handle what he was suggesting. Heck, I wasn’t even sure I was strong enough to handle what had happened in the past month. Who could?
Then I remembered the girl in the garage asking me to save her. What if that really was my sister?
“So you’re saying that I’ll have to- have to kill my sister or be doomed for eternity?” I felt the weight of it, the hopelessness of it pour down on me like thick, black tar, drowning out light and air. “Is there no other option? No way to…to…”
“Not that I’ve been able to find,” he said, shaking his head. “Yet,” he said again. “But…”
“But what?” I felt my entire being latch onto the possibility in that one word, the hope of a “but”.
“There’s something that just…”
“Just what?”
“That I just don’t get.”
“What?”
“You’re already dead. If you’re already dead, how can he claim you?”
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I felt deflated. I had hoped there would be something else, something more like a loophole that he’d just realized. “I still don’t believe that’s possible. I mean, look at me. Do I look dead to you?”