Monster of the Dark

by KT Belt

  Then, at last, she came to Eli. In his eyes she could see terror and her own reflection. He begged for his life while his comrades howled in pain all around him. His thoughts longed for the quiet comfort of home, for a long-lost girlfriend, for his father who’d advised him against volunteering, and for his mother he would never see again. But before Carmen could strike, he raised his rifle and fired. She gasped as she was torn apart. The bullets didn’t hurt—not exactly. Each impact seemed to deaden where she was hit until, at last, she fell to the ground, limp and unable to feel anything at all.

  Kali flew over them, shrieking like a demon but completely oblivious. Eli came to her slowly. He had dropped his weapon. He scooped her limp body into his meaty arms and cried.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said over and over again.

  She had heard that before, but she couldn’t remember when. The only thing Carmen could remember was that the words had seemed as impossible then as they did now. When she looked at Eli, she got another shock. It was Janus! Worse, the transformation seemed as fitting as when he had been a sorten.

  Carmen tried to scream, but it became harder and harder to breathe. Kali danced and played around them, still burning and killing everyone, even other Clairvoyants. Carmen grew dizzy. Her world began to spin quicker and quicker with each failing attempt to draw breath. Then, at last, everything went dark and she was alone.

  She opened her eyes and groaned softly as she sat up. Eli had been kind enough to throw a blanket around her, despite that she had said she didn’t need one. She wasn’t just being modest—she really didn’t need it—but Carmen appreciated the gesture nonetheless. She looked at the tent and paused, then raised an eyebrow. She couldn’t sense Eli at all. Her first thought was to call to him, but she decided against it. She still had no idea why she couldn’t feel his presence, but if he was still asleep, she didn’t want to wake him.

  She gave a small shrug and then winced from a sharp pain. Her makeshift bed was as comfortable as a rock—because there were several rocks among the grass where she had lain. She stretched and messaged her body while telekinetically cleaning the dirt out of her hair and clothes.

  Eventually, it didn’t feel like her shoulder was about to fall off anymore, so she went to the tent and opened it, being as quiet as she possibly could. Eli wasn’t inside. She pursed her lips as she looked around the camp. All of his belongings were still here. She didn’t know what time it was. Perhaps she awoke before he expected, or after? Her best guess was that he’d gone for a hike or something and would be back later. He had said they could talk in the morning, so he at least expected them to spend that time together.

  “Eli,” she called. She didn’t know if her voice carried farther than her Clairvoyant perception, but it was worth a shot. “Eli,” she tried again. If he heard her, she had no doubt she’d hear him. There was no reply, though.

  She let go an annoyed sigh as she considered what to do. She had planned to part his company after the morning. It wasn’t too much of a bother that he was gone, but she did want to thank him for his hospitality. Eventually, Carmen decided a proper thank you and goodbye was worth the effort. She had nothing else to do anyway.

  She stood up and looked around. “Where would he go?” she wondered out loud.

  Carmen had read stories about people tracking someone by a slight bend in a blade of grass. Those people must have been far more powerful Clairvoyants than she, as she had no idea how to track someone like that.

  “Where?” she muttered again.

  She tried to think it through before she eventually realized she couldn’t. She had no idea how Eli thought, or really how any normal person thought. Kali was right, as handlers routinely seemed to be. The perceptual frame of reference between Clairvoyants and non-Clairvoyants was too great a gap to easily surmount. Carmen closed her eyes as she sighed loudly and decided to handle this as a Clairvoyant.

  The air was cool, and soft fog still covered the forest floor. Other than that, it was a picturesque day. Carmen paid attention to none of it, though. She didn’t think. She stood very still. She’d never done this before, but she’d lived it every day of her life. The intuition couldn’t be rushed; it just happened.

  She opened her eyes and began walking. After a few steps, she turned slightly and walked in a different direction. The camp was almost out of sight now, and it made her wonder if she should just stay and wait for him to come back, but that didn’t feel right. It was hard to say why, but the feeling didn’t go away, even after she redoubled her commitment to trying to find Eli in the wild. Her body even wilted slightly. It reminded her of what she had felt when she talked to him last night. In time, the feeling lessened to just an annoyance at the edge of her consciousness. With more time, it passed to the subconscious and joined her other hurts that she paid no heed to but that were still part of her.

  She left the clearing and was back in the forest proper. The direction in which she was walking wasn’t very difficult terrain. Eli seemed to be an experienced woodsman and would certainly have no issue with it. The forest canopy blocked out most of the sun, leaving darkened shadows for her to traverse. The forest was quiet—disturbingly so. She was aware of life all around her, but none of it made itself known, not even as a warning caw or chirp that she was coming.

  Her eyes scanned back and forth as she looked for Eli. Her ears strained to take in all available sound. Her Clairvoyant perceptions took in the entire world around her and fed the most relevant bits to her conscious mind to digest. But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Carmen stopped in place, on the verge of giving up, when she felt prompted to walk in a slightly different direction. She felt the uncomfortable sensation from before and crossed her arms to hold herself. She didn’t know what it meant—possibly nothing at all. She bit her lip, well aware that that was hardly ever the case. She changed course again. She hated the feeling, but it drew her like a moth to flame. It was all she knew. It was all she had to look forward to. The only time she could recall not being in its company in some way was when she jumped off the bluff.

  On and on she went with slight course changes here and there, even once doubling back. There was no Eli, though. Then, once she suspected she was walking in circles, Carmen noticed something on the periphery of her perception. …It was nothing, yet not completely. It wasn’t the absence of what was supposed to be; it was an emptiness in that which was already there.

  Her meandering path became a straight line, and she even increased her pace. The fog and the brush made it hard to see, so she telekinetically uprooted whatever got in her way. The feeling only grew worse the closer she ventured to it, as well as the longer she delayed. Her steps turned into a slow run, and she was no longer able to think about herself. Invisible clocks counted down, hastening her, their alarms set to ring.

  She could see him now. He stood still in another small clearing, appearing to be looking at nothing at all. She was heartened by the sight and moved faster for no reason that made any sort of sense. Then she slid to a stop. He held a pistol in his hand.

  Carmen’s breathing came short and rapid, and her heart pounded. She slowly shook her head.

  “What are you doing, Eli?”

  “You know what I’m doing. You know why I’m here. You always have,” he said simply.

  His back was to her. She couldn’t see his face, but she could read all of his thoughts. It wasn’t chaos or rage. There was unremitting order—a definite sense of things. Yet there was also pain…and shame.

  Carmen found it suddenly hard to speak. She mouthed the words several times before they actually came forth. “I can stop you,” she said.

  Eli half-turned to look at her. “You can, but you won’t,” he replied. “You won’t take this away from me. You’re probably the only person who ever actually understood.”

  Carmen slowly shook her head again. A tear slid down her cheek. He was right, but she desperately wished he wasn’t.

  “I wish you hadn�
�t found me. I didn’t want to do this in front of you,” he continued.

  She swallowed hard. “I know.” She took a deep breath before she spoke again. “I wanted to thank you…for last night.”

  He looked away from her for a moment and considered something. There were so many thoughts flooding through his mind that it was hard for her to focus on any one.

  “You’re a nice girl,” he said matter-of-factly. The hand holding the pistol trembled slightly, a small aftershock from the earthquake in his mind. “I saw lots of girls like you on Luna,” he remarked. His voice was hollow and full of regret. “I didn’t even know their names. No one did. No one ever will.”

  The memories were called forth again, and his head dropped as each took root. Carmen felt a tear roll down her other cheek.

  “It’s wasn’t your fault,” she said, trying to come up with some comfort. “It was war.”

  He looked right at her then, and for one solitary moment, she knew what it was like for someone to look right through her—right into her soul.

  “Nothing justifies what we did,” he said firmly. He looked away from her again. “I’ve thought about this a long time. Came close a couple times…. Figures I would meet someone like you now. Has to be some sick twist of fate.”

  Carmen opened her mouth to say something, but Eli spoke first.

  “Can you forgive me? For what we did to your kind—to kids?”

  Carmen breathed in hard and swallowed. “I forgive you,” she said. The words weren’t hard to find at all.

  Eli nodded several times as he looked away. He didn’t look especially heartened by her answer, but she could tell it provided some comfort. His thoughts remained in the deep, dark depths where she was afraid to venture yet lived within every day of her life. The small meadow they were standing in was strewn with flowers. Colorful insects darted between them. To Eli, though, the scene seemed a hellscape. Everything did now.

  “You shouldn’t curse. It’s not becoming. Promise me you won’t.”

  Carmen looked at him through fresh tears. “I promise.”

  Eli nodded a few more times and smiled. As before, his smile was so genuine that she could feel it flow through her. She wasn’t heartened by the sensation, though.

  “Don’t let them do it. Don’t let them turn you into what they want,” he said. “You’re a nice girl…. Stay good.”

  Carmen froze in place. She didn’t think Eli was a bad person, but she wasn’t so sure about herself. She had easily killed more than he ever had, by several orders of magnitude. Her thoughts went to Mikayla and to his battle on the moon. If the circumstances were the same, would she have attacked all those troopers as her doomed peers had? It was hard for her to say she wouldn’t.

  He looked at her and waited for her response. She saw distress mount in his features when she was unable to give him one. “If you promise me anything, promise me that,” he said, desperation creeping into his voice.

  Carmen stood still, quivering like a cornered animal. She looked away a time or two. In each instance, she took a deep breath and swallowed hard.

  Her mouth trembled open. “I…” she began, but despite her best efforts, she could utter no more.

  Eli’s eyes grew wide and then finally fell in despair as he watched her struggle. Carmen hated herself totally and completely in that moment. She wished she could have simply lied, but she couldn’t—not now and not to him. The hand holding his pistol gave a quick tremor.

  “Don’t tell anybody about this,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone where to find me. I just want to be left here—I don’t want anyone to know. It’s what I deserve. I’m not a hero.”

  She nodded sharply to his command, no longer able to hold back her tears. Eli’s every thought and feeling passed through her mind. Her body shook, yet his became still. His voice was calm, while she was barely able to speak. She’d never felt such pain before. How he stood before her and didn’t shatter from it was beyond her. She swallowed hard again.

  “Carmen.”

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “My real name is Carmen. I wanted you to know.”

  “Carmen,” Eli said, trying the name on for size. “I like it. Suits you better than Edge. Thank you for telling me.”

  Then Eli brought the pistol to his head and fired.

  Birds flushed into the sky. A pair of spotted deer bolted in the other direction. The Clairvoyant, however, stood still. She cried no more tears as she stared at the body in front of her. She had seen dead bodies before, hundreds of them. They were usually worth no more than a passing glance. Yet now she stared.

  For the first time, she felt absolutely nothing, like she’d been dipped in ice. Eli had fallen like the lumbering bear of man he was. She hardly knew him, but she knew almost everything about him. Carmen continued to stare, unable to process what she was looking at. Her synapses didn’t fire, her heart didn’t beat, and she took no breath. Eventually she blinked, and color came back to the world.

  She walked toward him slowly, her breath shallow to the point of being almost ghostly. She stood over his body and wiped her wet face clean. Then she dropped to her knees. The pistol was still in his hand. She removed it carefully and held the weapon. She had held many weapons. She herself was a weapon. But Carmen had never held a gun. She considered the instrument for a second and then threw it away with all her physical might.

  Then she looked at Eli. His eyes stared back at her in pained horror. She leaned forward and gently closed them. Next, Carmen looked around until she found a piece of wide, flat tree bark that seemed study enough. She could have done the job telekinetically in a matter of seconds, but for some reason she wanted to feel the pain and sting of the physical exertion.

  After picking up the bark, she got to work on the grave. The ground was soft and yielded to her, as most things did to her might, but that was just the top soil. As she went deeper, the goings became harder, seeming to actively resist her every attempt at making headway.

  “Yes, Captain, I assure you she is in the forest,” Kali said.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the leader of the suppression team said. “I’ve had my team search the forest and have found no trace of her. The place is wild—there are no paths or anything of the sort. But our scanner didn’t indicate that she’s there. She may have gone into the forest and then flown off.”

  “She’s there,” the Clairvoyant repeated in an annoyed tone. Every member of the suppression team stiffened when they heard it. “I know my charge. She wouldn’t go anywhere else.”

  Kali didn’t say out loud, however, that she was surprised Edge hadn’t come to her yesterday. She knew her charge had spent most of the day at the edge of the forest, seemingly waiting for something. Kali had assumed she was simply waiting to muster the courage to face her and the town again, but that was certainly not the case now. Perhaps she’d overestimated how well she could anticipate Edge’s reaction? She didn’t think the girl would ever run away—she didn’t seem bold enough for that. Maybe she had flown off?

  The captain took a deep breath and looked at his tired men. Right as he was about to give his orders, his communicator beeped.

  “Home base, this is Alpha Two.”

  “Alpha Two report,” the captain said.

  “She just came out of the forest, inbound your position. Shall we intercept?”

  The captain looked at Kali, who shook her head. “Negative. Take observation position and report any change in her course.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The captain turned to the rest of his team. “Take defensive positions. If she makes a hostile act, take her down. We will only get one chance at this. This is Edge; I don’t need to remind anyone how powerful she is. Stay sharp. We’ve trained for this. Mitchell.”

  “Sir?” Mitchell said, stepping forward.

  “Is the dead man switch active?”

  “Yes, sir. The bird’s overhead. Should we use it? We haven’t completely evacuated the town.”

&
nbsp; The captain shook his head. “No choice. Better a town than a rogue Clairvoyant on the loose. Move out!”

  The team ran to positions on either side of the street where the makeshift command post had been built. Kali ignored them and walked to the center of the street. By now, she could see Carmen. Her mouth dropped open. Her charge’s clothes were covered in dirt, her hands were raw, and her fingertips were bloody.

  Carmen walked slowly. Every part of her ached. The tree bark broke and she’d had to resort to her hands. She could sense the townspeople watching her as before, but now guns also followed her every movement. She didn’t much care. It all seemed so trivial in the grand scheme of things. She could easily block them out. She walked toward her handler, who watched her in a state of shock.

  “Edge? What happened to you? Where did you go?”

  Carmen stood in front of Kali and said nothing, remembering her promise. She grabbed the woman in a desperate hug, suffering the shock of their bioelectric fields. She buried her face in Kali’s chest as the surprised members of the suppression team vacated their positions and approached. Kali brought her arms around her charge to provide comfort just as Carmen began sobbing. No one knew how long they stood there. Nothing was ever said between them about that day. Her handler never asked, and Carmen never offered. Eventually, they went for an ice cream as Kali had originally planned, though the suppression team stood by just in case. Then the lot of them loaded a transport and returned to the facility.

  Carmen looked at the forest as they flew by. She wouldn’t forget.

  13

  Another Flight

  Subject: Edge Age: 16 Status: Tempering

  Carmen’s eyes narrowed.

  “I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” she said through clenched teeth.

  Kali glanced at her and smiled. Carmen glanced back. She had long since matched her handler in height, and they now stood eye to eye. She would find this all amusing, Carmen thought dismally. Janus, at this point, only visited her in vaguely remembered nightmares. Her memories of the man were more mythical now than accurate recollections. Still, he was certainly less annoying than Kali could be.