by Fey Truet
He pulled something out of his pocket and stuffed it in-between my collar.
“That creature you tried to follow is a gloom. It’s been tormenting this city for hundreds of years and has killed many of Cross’ sentries. It lures unsuspecting creatures into its shadows and traps them there, feeding on their misery until they die. The more sentient, the better.
“They are virtually impossible to kill because they have no shape or form. Even Cross himself can’t do much about it. If you run into it again run away. Not to it! As a Glutton, a lure, you’ve just became its number one priority. If you need me, my contact information is on that paper.” He dropped me. “Or you can just call my name. I’ll probably hear you if you’re within earshot. Just don’t die, dummy.”
Hm?
He walked so casually to the end of the alley, back into the light, and turned to me.
I hissed at him and got up to warily walk past him. Then I darted away!
You big fat bully! I yelled, but when I looked back, I could swear that he was smiling.
I stopped in an abandoned opening, catching a faint whiff of cold air and mildew.
Now I know why that demon banished me here. I was likely to die a miserable death.
I hissed at the air.
If you think this is misery, Demon, then you have to do a lot better!
I narrowed my eyes and looked around.
I no longer caught the gloom’s scent.
My soul-self relaxed. But still, I didn’t think it’d be easy, and I had already forgotten Dog boy’s name. It didn’t help that he was a bully.
I huffed.
The jerk!
Then I heard it. The blood-curdling scream of a woman.
“Kyle?! Kyle!” she shouted.
“Arlene! Kyle? Arlene? What’s wrong?!” a man shouted.
I looked up and saw a broken window that wasn’t as such merely moments ago. I hadn’t even heard it when it smashed.
The woman came to the window and looked around frantically.
“Kyle! Ky—” she stopped mid-yell, meeting my dual colored eyes.
I saw very clearly that it was the woman from yesterday.
I don’t know why, but the way she looked at me, I ran.
Gloom’s Doom
I ran and ran, never knowing where I was going or where I was heading to.
It was awful to think of what that woman must be thinking right now. Her son had gone missing under both our noses, and I, her demon, was right at the scene of the crime.
Her eyes—oh, how they haunted me—bore witness to that. And while I was innocent of the crime, I knew what was responsible.
Now I was angry with that stupid dog.
If he hadn’t stepped on my tail earlier the gloom would have had me and not that boy. Who knows what difference that would’ve made?
The entire situation swallowed me whole.
“Leave me alone! Let go, Julia!” A familiar voice managed to halt me. I stopped and listened, trying to find the source.
“Clean it up, pooper scooper,” I heard a girl badger.
I hesitated before I turned left at the laughter.
“Knock it off! Let Go!” Dory’s strangled voice crushed me.
I dashed left and didn’t stop.
I heard the cruel voice of a young tormentor.
“Eheh! Make her eat it, Mila.”
“I’m not going near that stuff, guys. Last time I got dirty my Mom gave it to me,” a boy whined.
“Shut up, Joseph!” the first girl snapped. “I said, ‘Clean it up, pooper scooper,’ or I’ll make you eat it!”
“I’m not a pooper-scooper!” Dory resisted.
Hold on Dory!
I turned again, and in the distance I made out a group of seven or eight children grouped together. It was nothing abnormal. Kids gathered together like so all the time. But these kids were all gathered around Dory as two other children held her, and a girl, the ringleader, led them on.
The girl pointed at Dory.
“Yes, you are! That’s what my father says and he works for the Prince. Are you calling my father a liar! I’d expect no less from a pooper-scooper! He can’t lie! Put her face in it to teach her a lesson.”
I was still too far away.
Dory struggled against a huge girl with pillows for arms and a tight hat squeezed on her head, and a neat little boy with shiny slicked back hair, big ears, with a pressed shirt and slacks. They bent her to her knees near a few coats, but something on the ground made her fight against them fiercely.
“Let me go!” she screamed again.
A girl with straight blond hair and ice blue eyes that chilled me from here bent her pointy nose down close to Dory’s.
“No one calls my father a liar,” she said coldly. “That peasant who gave you life got crap all over Father’s shoes and put him in poor favor with the Prince. Father let him keep his job so you should be grateful. Instead, you butt me in the head, so as punishment you have to eat this poop or I’m gonna tell Father and you and that goat in that hovel will be eating out of the trash!”
Dory growled at her.
“Everybody knows that your father kisses horse butt! That’s why he stinks and that’s why the Prince doesn’t like him! You’re a stub, Mila Stokes!”
“You are a pooper-scooper! It’s your job to get rid of poop! Make her eat it, guys!” Mila barked.
All the other kids watched as the two kids forced Dory down in front of a huge pile of animal waste.
“Hold her down, Julia!” the boy told the bigger girl.
“I’m trying! Why don’t you take your own advice, Joseph!” the girl grated out.
I was glad they were having a hard time out of it.
When I neared, I leapt on the blond girl’s head while she was still bent over and leapt next to the bigger girl, Julia.
I made up an awful sound from the back of my throat that sent the kids running and screaming “Demon!” The only child who didn’t run laughed at all of us, her black curls bouncing over her pink jacket.
Julia let go of Dory with a scream and tried to scramble away from us but I blocked her escape.
“What is that?!” Mila cried with a face covered in waste.
I turned to Dory who was now wrestling with the crying boy, Joseph.
I ran over to him and hissed, forcing my hackles up, and he let go of Dory’s arms and tried to run, but Dory landed a kick right to his rump. Next, she picked me up and ran.
She stopped midway down a path that seemed to lead her home, breathing hard. As she continued to walk she stared down at me quietly, and I back at her. I wondered how long she had been tortured like this.
“Thank you,” she said, raising me higher in her arms, then she sobbed into my fur.
~~~
I woke up tightly snuggled in with Dory.
Any tighter and I’d be unable to breathe.
My soul-self was restless.
I heard Dory sniffle again.
She had put on such a brave face for her mother and those wretched children. When she came home she ate and smiled and talked about all the things I’d expect a mother to be curious about in a child’s life. Her mother couldn’t be expected to broach the subject of the torture Dory suffered because the way Dory carried herself held no sign nor tale of misery.
I now felt Dory and I held a lot in common.
We knew what to show the people we loved and where to stop with the people we didn’t. She fought hard for everything. But did she fight for herself?
I didn’t want Dory to end up in the lake I was swimming in.
“SScriiiatch,” I heard from outside. It was like two hard surfaces scraping together.
It sent shivers freezing down my spine.
I have a bad feeling.
I wriggled out of Dory’s arms and jumped down from my bed. I was about to leap to the windowsill when the window just exploded, glass shattering both inside and out.
I covered myself as sharp glass pricked wh
ile shattering down on me.
The smell of cold air and mildew flooded around me.
When I looked up, Dory’s feet were hanging in the air above my head, and she was slowly being carried out by a dark shadow.
My heart throbbed and I immediately went into action.
I leapt onto the shadow and went right through it, feeling flashes of painful emotions right before slamming into the wall. For a moment, I had forgotten who or where I was. Then I saw Dory, and with a tremor, it all flooded back on a wave of fear.
Angry and desperate, I got up shaking my head.
No shape or form, right!
Dog-boy warned me about that, but he somehow forgot to mention the agony you felt when you touched it. It was something hard to overlook unless he just never came into contact with one.
There was no way to fight this thing but I couldn’t just let it take Dory.
I leapt again, this time grabbing Dory.
I hung from the sleeve of her nightgown like a dangling pendulum adding no kind of significant weight that’d make this fiend drop her. I also couldn’t fathom why it was moving so slow, though I couldn’t bear the situation happening as fast as it had been earlier.
Its head appeared next to mine and smiled and I felt a sharp smack that knocked me first into the wall and then onto the bed.
Other than a slight, I was okay.
I got up, taking in one little detail. Its scent had changed.
Before, all I had smelt of was air and mildew, but where it held Dory and where its head appeared, I smelled fermenting yeast and ice.
It was a shot in the dark, but I let my nose flare, trying to pinpoint the scent.
C’mon! C’mon already!
I was running out of time. The demon was slipping out of the window.
There!
I leapt to where the scent of the demon was most powerful, and when I grasped hold of darkness itself, I bit hard!
“WREEEEEE!” I heard, the very sound shattering all but where my will held onto the creature. It was so loud and long and vibrated like hammer strikes that I barely held on.
I felt coldness as it crushed my neck, and I was lopped off of the creature and out of Dory’s room, rolling into a closed door with a “Thump.”
The door opened and a scattering of thumps passed me. I opened my eyes to lights everywhere.
I tried to get up and it felt as if these legs were new once more.
The world wobbled and I couldn’t keep my balance. I bumped into the wall trying to get to Dory’s room.
The silence terrified me.
When I made it, there was Dory clinging desperately to her mother.
I collapsed on the floor.
I could see that they were crying and talking, but I couldn’t hear what about. It was so quiet.
Even so, it all seemed so big.
Dory rested her chin on her mother’s shoulder and blinked tears at me.
She pushed away from her mother, mouth flying, and picked me up cautiously.
Her mother came and stood by me and pet my head with a hesitant hand.
She touched my nose and her finger returned to her smudged with blood.
I breathed out and went to sleep.
~~~
I felt warm and nice all over. It sure was an improvement.
Don’t get too comfortable. I’m not doing this for your benefit. Answer me. How did you do that?
I opened my eyes to darkness.
It was all dark. But a relaxing, secure darkness.
The only light came from behind me.
I turned back and saw a man. Or. Not a man. A demon, for no man was so unearthly. Man couldn’t glow outside of his heart. Man wasn’t so cold.
I am no demon, Beast! He narrowed his eyes. Explain yourself. How did you harm Heath, Child of Blendon Sharon?
Heath? I asked.
I didn’t recall hurting anyone with a name like that.
Images formed in my mind of the events that had passed a couple of nights ago.
Heath, The Devourer of Darkness, The Spirit of the Void, his home which no longer existed. He was injured by me when even his own mother could not smite him. He who my master could not hew.
He is not completely without form. I followed the scent.
I told him.
Scent? Lies. Heath is the void himself. He is without form, shape, scent, or malice. He is darkness embodied. There are few that can harm him and even less who survive his wrath.
I would’ve laughed, because there was something cowardly and ironic in that statement. Instead, I just basked in that warmth that immediately stopped.
I sighed as pain began to slice through my own void.
You wouldn’t by chance be Cross would you? Otherwise, I’d only know one other person as touché as yourself.
I looked up at the man and found yellow crystal eyes glaring at me as though I was the fox that had stolen his chicken.
A familiar isn’t supposed to disrespect its Master. Lies and a vulgar attitude will get you nowhere, Emare Tales.
I got up and shrugged.
I’m still waiting for this ‘master’ person. Surely they’d know the truth.
The air crackled with an emotion this being didn’t express with his body.
I had no reaction to the scent of ambrosia mixed with rain-soaked graveyard soil.
Meaning!
I sat up and shrugged.
If you were truly my master we’d know.
I knew not how I came to that conclusion, but I felt that it was truth.
I’m still waiting for my master. Until then, I am either an ad hoc agent or a slave, I thought, not at him, but to myself.
He heard it anyway.
The man’s face turned up in anger.
“Then slave you are!”
His very words cracked the foundation of this place and it all fell away like the glass from Dory’s window.
~~~
I blinked and I was in Dory’s room by myself, her cherry scent engulfing me.
I called out, just a little worried that she wasn’t here. The window was still shattered, though boarded and cleaned up off the floor. I still feared that I had failed.
“Tails!” I heard her cry from the first floor.
I heard the thumps of her steps on the stairs, then in the hall, and there she was.
There was a small cut on her cheek, but other than that, she was fine. I was so glad.
“Oh, you’re up! I’m so glad. I couldn’t help but think the worst!” she cried, running up to meet me.
I did her one better.
I jumped up and met her halfway, her catching and hugging me.
“Thank you. You saved me again,” she whispered. “They’ve been after me for a while now,” she said even quieter.
Darkly.
An involuntary sound escaped me, and I looked up at her.
She walked over to her bed and sat down with me, gently grabbing up my pendant.
“Tails is such a pretty name. Did your owner give it to you? Are they a demon too, or are they like Mama?”
Now Dory was frightening me. I wondered who “They” were, and what “Like Mama” meant.
Who’s been after her?
I gave her a concerned sound.
Her eyes grew sadder and she squeezed me tighter.
“I missed how it used to be. When we were all together. Now they’re all gone, and it’s just me and Mama all the time.”
A fat tear plopped onto my nose and another in my fur.
I mewed at Dory, trying to coax her into telling me what was going on.
“You got hurt really bad. Papa lied when he told us we had to stay here. He promised us we’d be safe here and we’re not. This wasn’t supposed to happen anymore. What are we going to do if it happens again?”
Then I remembered what the dog-boy told me. This area was where life and death converged and that it was dangerous. So why would anybody be safe?
He also told me that I’d be t
he gloom’s number one priority, but I clearly wasn’t.
In that alley yesterday, it could’ve gone for me, but went for the boy, Kyle. And last night it could’ve had me again, but merely tossed me aside and tried to take Dory.
Why them and not me? Why them and not anybody else? Had anyone else like them been taken? This had to stop.
If he came once for Dory, what was to stop him from doing it again?
I jumped off of Dory and circled around her with urgency. I had so many questions. I wanted to know why her father had been sure they’d be safe here. Or what wasn’t supposed to happen anymore.
Why wasn’t she like her mother, or even why they traveled around so much before they settled here? I even wanted to know what happened to her brothers, Heaton and Heim. But right now, my main concern was Heath.
Where is he and will he come back?
I couldn’t let him come back here. If he ever got so close to Dory again, he was more prepared than I for the encounter. It was too big of a risk to let him have the first strike.
I had to go to him. I had to find the gloom. Even if it ultimately led to my own doom.
A Cry in the Void
I wrestled with my collar, looking for the paper dog-boy stuffed in it. It was a task without hands, and a vain one too, for the slip was no longer there.
Oh, no.
“Are you looking for this?” Dory asked after a loud sniffle, pulling out the slip. “I found it in your collar a few days ago. Is this your owner’s address?” she asked, opening up the sheet.
On it was neat little letters I couldn’t read, but I understood the numbers. “153” it read and then a word “Gland Ave” and then more numbers “#(27023-6589)” and another word below that “Collin.”
I shook my head no.
Dory put a hand on my head.
“Is it a friend?” she asked, and I nodded.
I put my paw on the note and barked.
“Huh? You want me to read it?” she asked, and I barked again. “It says 153 Gland Avenue. That’s on the nicer side of Medina, far away by the castle. I think it’s in Louvre. Then there’s a phone number, and a name, Collin. Do you have to go there or something?”