Darkness of the Soul

by Kaine Andrews

  “Sigs ain’t worth jack, and you know it. Besides, our guy has been smart so far; no reason to think he actually walked into a pawnshop, sold the thing, then went and hunted down the new owner. And even if he did, I really doubt he signed for the sale with his own name or even with anything resembling his real signature.”

  Parker didn’t have an answer to that, so he just shrugged again and glanced up the street. The usual crowd was filing in and out of the casino, but other than that, traffic was at the wonderful point in the day where all commuting ceased for a brief window. Parker was glad for that; trying to get back to the office during rush hour would have been even more of a nightmare than the drive there had been, and being spared that was worth nearly anything. He pulled open his door and dropped himself into the cruiser, ignoring the wheezing of the brakes and the disturbing way it creaked as he did so. Drakanis followed a moment later, after casting a last glance up at the casino across the way.

  For a second, he’d been sure he’d seen something up there, some gleam, and the feeling of being watched returned. Then it faded, and he shook his head.

  “Waiting for the second coming, Mikey? Haul your freight.”

  “Yeah, yeah, shut up, asshole. Where to? Scene of the cr—”

  He was interrupted by a sudden chirping from Parker’s pocket. It bleeped out the Twilight Zone theme. Drakanis arched his brow. Parker shrugged, looking a trifle embarrassed. “Hey, it’s recognizable. No patting down to see who’s ringing.” He flipped the phone out of his pocket—quite a trick, given his girth and the narrow seating—and jabbed a button.

  “Parker.”

  Drakanis couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end, but the noise coming out of the phone was loud enough that he could detect some panic in the voice. He drew a question mark in the air, and Parker turned to him, shaking his head. The look on the other man’s face was enough to convince Drakanis that it might be best not to bother him just yet; he looked like death warmed over all of a sudden, or as if someone had just sucker punched him in the gut.

  Parker was nodding and tracing his finger in the air as if writing something. It was a habit Drakanis had watched often and always found fascinating. It wasn’t as if the person on the phone could see the gestures he was making, if he was really writing anything at all, but for Parker, it seemed to help.

  “Right. I got it. We’ll be there quick as we can. Uh-huh. Right.”

  Parker slammed the phone shut, tossed it to the floor, and then slammed his door and started the engine. He was pulling out into traffic even before Drakanis had a chance to register what was happening.

  “What’s up? Slow down, there, bucky.”

  “Morrigan just had a heart attack. Sheila thinks he was talking to our boy when it happened. Says the guy wanted to leave you a message.”

  Drakanis blanched. “Oh. Fuck.”

  “Right. Fuck.”

  Drakanis reached over to the dash and flicked the switch. The car came alive in pulses of blue and red, the siren blaring. Not that either was necessary, given the light traffic, but it made him feel a little better at least, and from Parker’s look, it did him some good, too.

  They sat in silence for a minute, and then Drakanis broke it by asking, in a tone of pleading desperation, “What the fuck is going on?”

  Parker didn’t have an answer for that. Yesterday, things had been nice, mundane, and orderly. Even working homicide got routine, after a while. Now it felt like everything had been turned on edge and given a little bit of surreal movie focus, and there wasn’t shit he could do about it.

  Drakanis could feel his skin trying to crawl off his body, provoking a fit of shuddering. He closed his eyes, trying to make it go away. He kept telling himself that it was just nerves, but he didn’t really believe that.

  Right, nerves. You know what it really is? They call that terror, buddy. Welcome back to the world of emotions. Enjoy the ride.

  Chapter 7

  2:00 am, October 12, 1986

  The walls thrum with the power put out by the thing in the middle of the room, making the crude frames dance and making it hard for the man to keep upright as he steps in. Every few seconds, the thrumming pauses and then booms out again, sending sonic shockwaves through the chamber and making the intruder’s brain jiggle in his skull as it tries to find a way to leak out his ears. The time between each of these beats has been shortening steadily since the intruder came into the building, and now they’re only a minute or two apart, at best. He’s waiting for them to pick up to a heartbeat rhythm, hopefully before the force of it crushes his mind.

  The intruder has been waiting for several hours now and may wait several more. His hands drip gore from their last act before entering this chamber. Murdering the keeper had not proven nearly as difficult as he had thought it might. He considered this pleasing, a sure sign that he was to be the next. The gore does not bother him, for he has spilled blood before and will surely spill it again in his time of service. All that matters is the waiting and the opening of the way.

  Though it will be many years before he knows the date and years after that before the day comes, here and now is the first time that he knows the way will be opened in his lifetime. It is here that the man called Karim Alvat is laid to rest—though he may use that name, when it suits him—and it is here that Karesh ibn Karesh is born, his body bloodied with the trauma of his coming, and his soul nearly torn asunder by the force that has called him.

  Though the Karesh of the now, the one who dreams this night again and again, does not know it any more than the Karim/Karesh who stands in the chamber on the former day, he has soiled himself, excitement and terror in equal measure loosening his bowels and thrusting him to orgasm simultaneously. He neither notices nor minds the smells or the shudders that overtake him as the heartbeat sounds again, forcing more of the human filth from his body.

  And I shall come among them, and be as a God to them, the dream-Karesh thinks, and the Karesh who dreams it smiles in his sleep. A pigeon, roosting on the fire escape, sees that smile and falls dead from its perch; cats in heat yowl with finality before tearing each other apart. Neither does Karesh notice.

  The light in the chamber—coming from the object at its center—begins to fade, and even though it is no longer light, Karesh finds he may see in it regardless. This was the first blessing the talu`shar brought to him, that he may see even when all others would be blinded. In the new darkness, Karesh felt his other senses likewise increasing, until he could smell the blood that had been used to forge the talu`shar, until he could hear the crickets outside, until he could feel and hear and smell his own blood rushing through his veins. At no moment, before or since, has he been as alive, as commanding of his body and all the information it processes, and he longs each night for this clarity, knowing it will only come again when he has completed his task.

  “Come to me, Warden, and forge your bargain.”

  The voice is not one he hears with his ears, though they strain to do so. It is a voice for taste and sight, one beyond any hearing but likewise beyond any disobedience. He could see the pulses coming from the talu`shar, and taste the command in the air, while his mind processed it into coherent order. Such was the way of the magic, bypassing the organs most associated with deceiving their owner and penetrating into the heart and soul.

  “Come to me, blood of my blood, son of my sons. Come, Karesh, son of Karesh, and be my Warden.”

  The song of the talu`shar could not be ignored by even the greatest of men, were they unwilling. The former Karim perhaps carried the potential for greatness, but his will was to join with the speaker, not resist it, and so he came at once, reaching out with a trembling hand to touch the surface of his summoner.

  “I claim the pact, father of my fathers. I hear and obey, serving as your hands, your arms, and your Warden, until at last you are free by my com
mand.”

  The power within the talu`shar, whatever god or demon made it more than just a painting, gave no further command in words, but the wave of self-satisfied pleasure that washed over him spoke as clearly as any language. The feelings it dredged up from his desiccated soul were those of a child’s comforts and an adult’s sick pleasures: milk from the nipple during a rape, a father’s comforting smile while peeling the heart still beating from a victim’s chest. These and a hundred more images ran through his mind, and Karesh could feel the beast that was his master devouring each one, tasting them and then shitting them back out, taking vicarious pleasure in each and hungering for more.

  It would be more than a decade before his degradation was complete and longer yet before he had tasted each and every fruit on the tainted vine that the talu`shar seeded on that day, but the images and sensations of it—millions of atrocities performed by hundreds of previous Wardens before being given to the talu`shar—all claimed him then, and he was lost in their ecstasies, vowing not to rest until he had sampled all of them and a million more in service to his new father.

  The Karim who had existed before his trespass in this place, the Karim who had merely called out to the tourists that water was for sale, the unassuming young man who said and did little outside of this, for fear of the police or the irate retort of some traveler or other, would have recoiled in horror at the thoughts now burning in his mind. That Karim would gladly have suffered whatever punishment was decreed to reveal an individual guilty of such atrocity to those who might do something about it. But that was a man who had not yet known the glimpse of power given him in the streets that day and who had not yet killed for the honor of being chosen. Such was a cowardly, childish part of him that was now properly dead and buried beneath his adult awareness, though Karesh vowed not to forget that version of himself, for to do so would be to accept the possibility of one day returning to such patterns.

  The person he had become now wallowed in the visions, as he would each night, reliving this moment, as he did each time his eyes slipped closed for even the barest fraction of an instant, as he saw them overlaid on each and every thing his eyes lit upon while he was wakeful. In the dream state induced in him by his new father and master, Karesh saw the face of the one who would grant the pathway and saw how it would be, though it would be years—ages, to his mind—before such things were made clear to him and he knew what he would do. For the time being, he surrendered at last, allowing unconsciousness to claim him and the visions and dreams of damnation to rule him.

  Chapter 8

  5:00 am, December 10, 1999

  Karesh awoke, the dream fresh in his mind as it always was and a smile upon his full lips. Thinking of his innocence—and yes, his stupidity—in those days often amused him, though he remembered his pact well and honored it always.

  Each night, he dreamed it again, and each night, he drew from it new information, a new fragment of the thousands of images that the beast beyond the talu`shar had etched into his mind. In some cases, they had been warnings, allowing him to see past the rocky road ahead of him and into a time of peace and prosperity for himself. In others, they had merely been suggestions, experiments to try when he was given time with this victim or that one.

  Of all the visions, however, one always stood, glimmering like a heat phantom, a presence felt but not identified. Only in recent nights had it become clear, and as he dreamed it again and again, he grew steadily more certain that the time of destiny was at hand, that at last he would cast off the bonds placed upon him by pitiful human flesh and ascend to become the true son of his master. His only regret was that he would not have the time he desired to toy with Drakanis properly, if he wished to succeed. There was time enough to torture him a bit more, perhaps, and certainly the past three years had been painful indeed to the man, but a true education in the understanding of pain would forever be beyond the policeman and his friends, for such knowledge came only after decades, if at all, and decades were no longer left to Karesh or his master.

  Time slipped through his fingers as grains of sand, each second before his ascension grating against his mind and striving to create the pearl of godhood within. To have it so close, to know the exact date of its coming, and yet to be forced to wait for it was an agony in and of itself for him. Still, there was much left to do, and not even a moment to be wasted, if he was to be prepared. So thinking, he opened his eyes to the things that had been familiar to him for many years but always subtly different.

  The room was like any other he had been in, for he had not had a place he truly called home since he had become the Warden. Each hotel room, regardless of the city, country, or year that it existed in, was always the same: sanitized bedsheets, always with the smell of cheap detergent still on them, and small bottles of sanitary products that never proved sufficient to make a person feel truly clean; a carpet that always appeared ready to be replaced but never was; televisions that received only the most insipid programming and could never be set to a decent volume, always far too loud or annoyingly quiet; the constant sound of maids rolling their cleanup carts down the hallways. These were his constant companions when he was not with his father in the place beyond the talu`shar. He might even have considered such things the signs of home, in his own way, were he a man who thought about such things deeply.

  He was not such a man, however, and so when he sensed nothing different about this room from any of the dozens of previous ones, he merely nodded to himself and rose to greet the sunrise, so that he could begin another day of work, marking it off on his mental calendar as one day closer to his freedom.

  When he grew irritable and turned on the television, he smiled as they spoke of the much-loved police captain who had died in the night and laughed as they told the tale of the young boy found mutilated in an alley. Busy days indeed.

  Chapter 9

  2:00 pm, December 13, 1999

  Drakanis and Parker stood among their brothers and sisters in blue, each of them with an upraised glass or mug, toasting the memory of the fallen captain; such was how he would always be remembered, though he hadn’t died in a dramatic gunfight or anything of the sort. Still, enough of them—Brokov, Drakanis, and Parker, at least—were of the opinion that his death, crazy though it might seem, had not been mere chance and was, in its way, tied to a case, and may possibly even be some twisted sort of murder.

  The others might have looked at them oddly if they had shared such thoughts out loud, but the fallen Captain Morrigan he would be, regardless of the circumstances.

  The mood in Woody’s was somber, quite unlike the standard post-lunchtime goings on in the place. The usual decorations, dozens of dancing figures and neon-lit sticks, had been removed for the day, leaving only a photo montage that had been arranged by the late captain’s widow to break up the drab wood walls. The jukebox, most often found pumping out the overly gleeful tunes of the mid-eighties, had been unplugged, leaving the room silent except for soft whispers and the clinking of glasses. Even the smell of beer and fried onions, normally so pungent a gas mask was recommended for first-time visitors, seemed muted out of grief and respect.

  Parker, watching the proceedings with a cynical eye, found himself feeling both amused and morbid about the whole thing. It occurred to him that if anyone had mischief on the mind, they couldn’t really pick much of a better time to do it. With at least half and more than likely three-quarters of the damn force crammed into this shitty little tavern and those not present thinking about it instead of their jobs, the chances of anything being seriously pursued today were basically zero. Thinking about all the idiots loose on the streets this afternoon led naturally enough to thinking about the specific nutjob he was after, so he tapped Drakanis on the shoulder—breaking into his catching up with Perez—and pulled him aside.

  Drakanis’s eyes were reddened, both with fresh grief and a few too many boilermakers. The grief had been something
of a relief. In a perverted sort of way, this new trauma had helped him let go of some of the old, come to grips with it in a way that living among their ghosts and shutting out the world had never been able to do. His voice was slightly blurry and muddled, but there was enough light left in him to hold something resembling a conversation, Parker judged.

  Parker—having had more than enough boilermakers himself, thank you—had decided he was finally buzzed enough to at least broach the subject, though it’d been hard to crack the shell of pessimism and seriously consider the idea for any length of time.

  No. What you’re thinking is insane. Drop it.

  That was what his mind had cautioned repeatedly for the last couple of days, and he’d considered it good advice, for the most part. Apparently, though, he had just been looking for an excuse to bring it up. With a few drinks in him, Drakanis was less likely to laugh, less likely to put it off as the heebie-jeebies, and maybe even more likely to take a look at the shit he’d dug up.

  “We gotta talk, man. I’ve been thinking some fucked-up shit lately, and I gotta air it out or eat it and smile; and I’ll tell you, I ain’t very hungry, you got me?”

  Drakanis arched a brow, working on his Leonard Nimoy impression, but the expression was hard to maintain when he really looked at his friend’s face. Parker wasn’t aware—or didn’t seem to be, at least—of how white and wan he looked at the moment, but there was an almost desperate air hanging around him. Drakanis could practically smell it.

  Hell, it’s what you looked like until just recently, and probably what you look like right now, isn’t it?

  He supposed that Parker at least had good reason. Morrigan hadn’t been just another guy on the force to Vincent; he’d practically been a second father to him, so Drakanis figured he was probably taking it a hell of a lot harder than almost anyone in the room today except maybe the old man’s widow. He let his face fall back into seriousness and quirked his head.