Gently he reaches out and places his hand on my shoulder to help guide me inside the house. Although his fingers never close around my shoulder, the pressure they exude on me is firm and persistent. This is not a man who is often resisted or told "no". He's used to getting his way.
His presence is strong. Up close, everything about him radiates strength and confidence and charm. He never stops smiling, and the smile is warm and inviting. There is nothing creepy about it all, which is something you would expect from a man who has been accused of doing the awful things he has supposedly done. Everything about his demeanor tells me he is a harmless, gregarious and friendly guy.
And yet as I step across the door's threshold into his house, I can't help but feeling like I've just made one of the worst mistakes of my life.
CHAPTER FOUR
Peter Parker called it a “spidey-sense”. I’m not sure I have the same level of awareness as that web-slinging superhero, but one of the more fortuitous benefits of my new abilities is that I can “feel” the thoughts and intentions of people around me. It’s not quite as cool as mind reading, but I’m usually able to pick up more from a person than they believe they are giving away. And absolutely nothing about Chadwick Morrin’s intentions feel pure or magnanimous.
Even though his words purr out of him like a happy kitten just wanting to play, there is something dark hidden under every syllable he says. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but somehow his words make my skin itch instead of soothing me like he intends.
I don't want to be in this house, and I really don't want to be near this man. Something just feels off being in here. I've never felt so dirty being in a place that looks so clean. As soon as he shuts the door behind me, I make the decision to not go any further into the house. Standing in his kitchen and watching him smile at me, my skin goes from simply itching to a full-on crawling. Our conversation will happen right here.
"So what brings you arou-" he begins before I cut him off. I don't want to listen to his smarmy chitchat. Even if he's innocent of the crimes, he's still guilty of being off-putting and oddly creepy.
"Are you guilty?" I ask him while he's still trying to talk. I want to get straight to the point and see how he reacts when he's thrown off guard.
"What?" He asks and blinks at me. "What did you say?"
Even though I hear his words, it's his body I'm listening to. I want to see if his breathing or heartbeat betray what he says out loud. Flaring my nostrils, I inhale while he speaks and try to detect any micro-changes in his pheromones. Do my questions bring about the sour bite of fear or the cloudy taste of annoyance? Is he afraid that I know something or just bothered that his innocence is being challenged again?
Nothing. He doesn't react to my inquiries at all. His heartbeat remains steady, breathing is even and his scent never wavers. I might as well have been asking him if he noticed the flowers on his way home from work for all the reaction I get from him.
"Flat," I say under my breath for Ren (I've learned that if I don't keep him updated he tends to worry about me. He knows me well enough now to recognize what I'm trying to do, so he'll want to know what I learned. That one word is enough keep him in the loop.), and in response I hear my pocket click twice (His way of giving me a simple affirmative.).
Time to step it up even more, I think and step closer to Mr. Chadwick Morrin so that barely a foot of space separates us.
Drawing on a darkness that always lies within me ready to be released (And over the past year - ever since I willfully killed that drug kingpin, Mr. Black - that wicked well of blackness in my soul has become easier and easier to pull from. The more often I tap into it, the quicker it rises when I call on it.), I funnel it into my voice and say, "did you kill those girls?"
Pushing every bit of my will into those words, I press into his mind how much I want him to answer them. I need him to answer me (And I want to get out of this house. A bad case of the willies is beginning to tickle my spine.).
The deepness of my startles him voice (An unexpected effect of having the ability to hypnotize some people is that my voice takes on the tone of a three-pack-a-day-smoker on the tail end of a bender. It's unpleasant for me to do and mentally taxing, but it can really save time during an interrogation.), and I watch as his eyes widen. He then scrunches them tightly closed and shakes his head back and forth like he's trying to get his bearings after being punched (Which he has. Mentally. My voice is like an uppercut to the cerebellum when I'm pushing my will. Few people can resist me when I desire a straight answer.).
"Now why would a nice-looking girl like you ask me a question like that?" He asks through a tight grin and barely moving lips. I don't think he's happy with me. Time to try again.
"are you responsible for their disappearance?” I ask and then pull as much of the darkness as I can up into me and repeat my previous question, "did you kill those girls?"
Pulling the darkness up so quickly is a stress on my system, and I can feel my body's hunger kicking in a desire to refuel itself. I do my best to squash the hunger down in an attempt to prevent it from distracting me. I need to focus right now.
Waiting on him to answer me, I just stare into his eyes and watch his reaction (Well, it's more like staring "at" his eyes due to them being squinted shut and my wearing sunglasses, but the intent is there.).
But there is very little of one. His breathing increases dramatically, and his heart rate increases to the point that I start to imagine it's somewhere in the range of a three-legged squirrel on meth doing wind sprints down a hallway filled with cats. That can't be healthy.
Thirty seconds go by without either of us saying a word. As I listen to his vitals slowly come back down to normal levels, he smiles wickedly at me and cracks both eyes open to slits.
He resisted me! I think in wonderment. I came at him with nearly all my power and he just shrugged it off. That’s certainly an ominous start to the encounter.
"I think the problem we have," he begins saying, and I notice the accent is completely gone. "Is that you are essentially asking me two different questions. And those two questions have opposing answers." He pauses for a moment to breathe - loudly - before continuing. "And that confusion gave me a chance to fight whatever it was you were doing to me."
He opens his eyes the rest of the way and smiles that creepily charming grin (It’s an oxymoron, I know, but this guy was a walking ball of oxymoron...or irony...or something.). "By the way, what was that you were doing to me? It hurt." He stops talking again to roll out his shoulders and gently massage his temples. "A lot. I owe you for that."
This isn't going well, I think. Time to open the flood gates.
Taking his advice, I focus on just one of the two questions I asked previously and bring it to the front of my mind. Not holding anything back this time, I pour all of the darkness I can find into my words - knowing that I won't be able to hold back the hunger tonight because of it; I will have to feed very soon - and ask just one question, "did you kill those girls?"
The exertion of controlling that much raw energy is exhausting, and it leaves me spent and panting. Looking back on the day's events, I'm thinking that coming in here on a nearly empty stomach might have been a bad idea. But I didn't want to have to waste time hunting down prey while it was still partly light out, plus I didn't think I'd have to work that hard with this guy. Chadwick was supposed to be an open-and-shut case.
Hindsight reaches up its dirty, little hand and slaps me for that one. Oops.
Focusing my attention on the tall blond in front of me, I wait to see if my latest effort garners any different results.
Luckily he seems to be doing worse than I am. His hands are clenched at his sides, he's broken out in a slimy (and nauseatingly aromatic) full body sweat and his breathing is coming in short, rapid bursts.
"Wow," he says weakly after a moment. "You are certainly persistent, huh? Let's not do that again." He cracks open watery, bloodshot eyes (I guess the strain made him cry. I should cheri
sh that thought a bit.) and stares at me with open malice in his expression (I really don't think I'm making a friend here.).
"To answer your question," he continues in that weak voice. "No, I did not kill those girls. To my knowledge they are still healthy and alive." He says the last few words through a partial snarl and glares at me. "Happy?"
He's telling the truth. It pains me to hear it, but nothing in his body betrays the words he just spoke. After what I just put him through, I doubt he could mount a strong enough mental veil to disguise a lie to me. On top of that, his breathing and heartbeat support what he just told me. They barely flickered while he spoke. But if he's innocent, then that means-
My thought trails off as two new ideas fight for space in my brain: his heart did hitch a beat when he said they were "healthy", but even more important than that is what he said earlier in response to my two questions. He said my two questions had opposite answers, and if he's telling the truth about not killing them, then that means he is responsible for their disappearance!
Crap! He is guilty!
"-are you anyway?" I tune back into him talking and realize he's asking me questions. "And why are you really here?"
"No," I hiss at him and reroute what little darkness is trickling through my body into my muscles. I will end this tonight!
As my adrenaline surges, I can feel time slowing down to allow me to perfectly place my punches in his abdomen (Another neat ability that I'm starting to get used to: moving so fast that the world becomes slow around me. I can't do it all the time, but it sure is thrilling when I can pull it off.).
Lashing out with my left fist, I hit him twice in his ribs and feel several of the white, finger-like bones pop beneath my knuckles (like stomping on dry tree branches after a drought). As his body instinctively leans over to that side to protect the injury, I bring my right fist around and put my full weight behind the blow that smashes into his exposed abdomen (Something squishy deep in him ruptures, and my acute hearing picks up the satisfying sound of a water balloon bursting inside of him - I believe he is now down one internal organ.).
As his body crumples forward in an attempt to protect his suddenly aching insides, I reach out with both hands and gently cup the back of his head to guide it downward. As his blond mop becomes level with my hips, I drop my body into a squat and then fire myself upwards bringing my right knee into his well-tanned face. The explosive crunch of bone shattering as the top of my patella turns his face into pulp is much more gratifying than it should be. The impact lifts him off the ground and throws him backwards across the kitchen, and he slides a few feet coming to a rest against a lilac-colored wall (The man does have some interesting interior design choices.).
"Where are they?" I growl at him without approaching any closer (I've used up just about all of my reserved energy, and the Dark Hunger is really trying to wrest control away from me. I want to feed. I need to feed, and soon. And the blood covering his face is not making controlling my dark side any easier. If I get any closer to him, then there is every chance I will pounce on him and give in to the delicious pull of that blood. And with how angry I am right now - no one should ever do what he did to young girls - there is a good chance I wouldn't be able to stop myself until he was dead. And if he's dead, then I'll never find out what happened to them!). "What'd you do with them?"
He doesn't answer me right away. Or even move. He just leans against the wall and breathes heavily while clutching his stomach. After almost a full minute - him breathing with short, raspy breaths and staring at me sullenly, and me just trying to fight back the overwhelming desire to make a meal out of him - he awkwardly pushes himself to a standing position and says, "I'll show you. Just don't do that again."
He appears defeated and broken, but his heartbeat is strong and relaxed. I have a feeling he's lying to me about something; I just don't know what it is, yet.
He raises both his arms above his head like a kid playing Cowboys and Indians (He winces with pain and I can hear his muscles scrape against the broken ribs.), and mutters, "Look. See. I even surrender myself."
As he turns to walk through the kitchen doorway and into the main room of the house, I tell him, "That's not necessary. I'm not going to shoot you."
He ignores me and keeps walking through the doorway with his hands held high above his head. His fingers are high enough to scrape the top of the entry way as he passes through it. They catch my attention as he drags them along the underside of the decorative mahogany wood archway that separates the two rooms. The intricate design around the doorway is much like the rest of the house that I've seen so far: immaculately clean and impressive. So I find it odd when I see his fingers catch on something as they pass along the wood. A brown string springs out of nowhere and goes taut against his fingers as he moves forward.
The dark string pulls away from the wood frame above him and I see that it connects to either wall through well-hidden recessed holes. Holes that make a very distinct and metallic chink-kink sound as the string suddenly goes slack around his fingertips.
This can’t be good, I think as I watch the man who was so recently my punching bag fall straight forward like he'd just been shot by a sniper. Except instead of looking dead and bullet-ridden (A girl can hope, can't she?), I can see his arms coming down and his hands clamping over his ears. He's anticipating something bad, I realize.
I have no idea how much time I have until his surprise arrives to ruin our party, so my choices are limited. Try to get to where he is before the something happens, or turn and try to make it to the door? My guess is that the wooden entryway separating us will be harboring the present, so running towards him means putting myself closer to whatever's coming. Bad idea.
Instinct tells me to get away from the badness, and with that realization I turn and start moving across the small kitchen. Not knowing what the Aryan surfer has in store for us in the next few moments, I don't know if it's safer to stop and cover my eyes and ears or keep them open so they can assist me in my attempt to make it through the closed back door. Gambling, I decide to hedge my bets and try for both. I propel myself off the ground and towards the center of it while tucking myself into a protective ball. My landing will certainly be painful, but hopefully I'll survive whatever is about to happen.
As I'm in the air flying towards the door (Like a small, female Hispanic cannon ball), everything around me bursts into sunlight and thunder. The kitchen around me becomes a brighter white than anything I've ever experienced in my life. Even through closed eyes, the power of the whiteness is nauseatingly strong. Following on the heels of the sudden supernova is a roar that can only be described as an angry pack of lions riding a subway train into the mouth of a tornado as it destroys a fireworks superstore. It is such a level of overwhelming noise that it goes over the top and becomes a lack of sound.
Feeling both blinded and deafened by whatever just happened behind me in the kitchen, my ability to hold my body tightly together dissolves as I slam into the house's back door. Instead of hitting it like a well-aimed missile, I slam into the wood-encased glass of the door's window like a carelessly thrown jellyfish being discarded on the beach. My momentum carries me through it, and I spin end over end across the back porch and come to a rest on the recently cut lawn.
I was right, I think and try to find my way onto my wobbly legs. That wasn't good.
CHAPTER FIVE
The ground keeps moving underneath my feet as I try to stand, and I realize balance is not currently my friend. Then again neither is anything from the now foreign lands of vision or hearing. Falling back down onto my hands and knees, I look around what I believe is the backyard (At least that was the direction I last remember traveling. I'm not really sure what happened after I burst through the back door.) but everything is just varying shades of white. Behind me is a brighter white (I think that's the house.) and ahead of me is darker white, or at least a less strongly-illuminated white (most likely the unlit backyard.).
My ears are giv
ing me nothing more than a constant high-pitched ring of feedback, but I attempt to speak anyway in hopes that I'll be able to hear myself.
"Ren, I'm blind," I say in my best estimation of a normal voice so that he can have some idea of what's going on. Or at least that's what I intend to say. I mean my mouth moves and I'm pretty sure words came out of it, but there isn't a single change in sound hitting my ears. Just that constant ringing. Did I really speak or can I just not hear anything?
"I'm blind and deaf, Ren!" I yell louder than before and do my best to listen for any hint of what I said to be picked up by my own ears. Nothing.
I'm pretty sure I yelled because I opened my mouth more and strained as I pushed the sound out through my vocal chords, but it made no difference as far as what I could hear. It's very disconcerting to not know if you're making noise or not. I don't like it. At all.
With a final attempt to check my own hearing (And a hope that maybe I can hear and the issue is just with my vocal chords - an unlikely but hopeful possibility.), I bring my hands together in front of me in a clap. Aiming my hands for each other without being able to see them is surprisingly easier than I would have guessed, and they smack against each other about a foot in front of my face. The impact of my hands connecting with each other is jarring (I put some seriously frustrated strength behind the maneuver.), but if I hadn't felt it for myself then I never would have known it had happened. I couldn't see the action, and it certainly made no more sound than two shadows chasing a feather at midnight.
No good. I'm down two senses right now. Two very important and necessary senses.
After taking a quick breath to calm myself (What did that crazy, blond surfer just do to me?), I realize I can't just stay out here on his lawn. Either he will be coming out here after me (I doubt he's just going to embrace the forgive-and-forget mentality after what just happened in his house.), or the police in the car out front will be coming to investigate (That flash of light - and horrifying rush of sound - had to have been noticeable beyond the house's walls!).
Catharsis (Book 2): Catalyst Page 2