Escana

by J. R. Karlsson

  He pulled at the door and was surprised when it came free without any struggle, apparently Harvester wasn't concerned about thieves tonight.

  The barn was pitch black and Jakob proceeded with caution so as not to step on anything unfortunate. He felt his foot touch a pile of hay and with searching hands he clambered onto it.

  At least now he had time to think if nothing else. The odds were stacked heavily against him it seemed, he was so smitten with revulsion at his own murderous rage he couldn't carry out a task that appeared to be mandatory. This was assuming that his own feelings weren't at fault and the transition from his world to this one hadn't caused any instability.

  A sharp pain lanced through his skull as if underlining the possibility of the point, that or it was a harsh reminder yet again that it was too early to recall his former past.

  His former past? Surely he knew his former past already? He had come from the city of Daelovia with his father against his own wishes to this small hamlet so the man could ride about getting his jollies off on being a Warden. What more was there to know other than vague remembrances of his time in the city?

  In spite of this he knew that he was missing something, that the hazy recollection should have been clearer and less evasive to the touch of his thoughts. Every time he tried to grasp a memory it slithered away from him as if his own brain was a series of tiny snakes that fled from tactile recollection.

  He shuddered, sucking in a steadying breath and trying to avoid the intense throbbing that pounded his head every time he gave his history any thought. Something wasn't right with his mind and the searing pain seemed almost a mechanism of control to prevent him from ruminating further on the matter.

  A sharp stabbing sensation caught his breath and sent him to his knees as he thought this. He knew that there was something beyond what he was thinking, something far more important that he needed to recall. He couldn't do it, it was beyond him.

  He forced his thoughts away from the fragments of this curious past and pushed himself back to his feet. The pain was receding now, perhaps through discovering what triggered it further he would understand what was wrong with him. That or recall whatever past it was he had missed.

  Now was not the time to task his head any further on the matter, he needed to keep moving forward.

  The stranger had said there would be a clear sign that would guide him upon the right path, that he would know The Six when he saw them. What was Gooseman then? Was he one of The Six? Was he an accomplice that needed to be stopped? If he could somehow divine more information about the man's background he could know for sure, rather than running blindly and attempting to kill anything his emotions dictated. What if he was wrong? What if the murderous feelings he had were caused by something entirely inconsequential and he killed innocents? How was he supposed to get away with murder in the first place with all these people in attendance?

  He pushed his knees up into his chest and rocked back and forth. The rage and sickness he had been feeling had passed, yet his head felt no clearer as to what to do.

  'You can't hide forever you know.'

  Jakob's heart leapt as it sounded by his ear, tumbling off the pile of hay. The familiar voice continued talking, seemingly oblivious to his shock.

  'I should probably have been more specific. Those feelings have been placed inside you to guide you on the correct path. Use them wisely.'

  He searched the barn frantically but the darkness seemed to consume everything around him, he was definitely alone. Had he heard the voice?

  What kind of question was that? Of course he'd heard the voice, it was either accept that the man who threw himself off the waterfall had some supernatural ability or start to question not only his emotional state but his sanity. There was no doubt in his mind now, the voice had directed him as to the use of his feelings, Harold Gooseman had to be dealt with eventually.

  A creaking noise made him scuttle behind the hay, either the wind had picked up or someone was opening the barn door. The continued creak as it swung on its hinges was followed by a faint set of footsteps and a sniffing sound, someone had definitely entered the barn.

  The hay rustled slightly, Jakob could hear the intake of breath and the slow shudder of exhalation choked off by a sob. Whoever this was they were clearly in a great deal of distress, he was tempted to reveal himself and ask what the problem was but he doubted his sudden appearance would improve matters.

  All of a sudden Jakob realised that the breathing had stopped, had he been imagining this too? Was this whole barn a hallucination of his troubled mind?

  'You can come out now, I can clearly hear you breathing,' a weary female voice said, no more than a meter from him.

  Seeing no reason to continue hiding, Jakob emerged from the hay and peered into the gloom that no longer seemed quite as impenetrable.

  'Who are you and why are you hiding in this barn?' Ella asked.

  Jakob froze on the spot, a combination of a surge in his chest and a jolt of anxiety at having to speak to her. He couldn't think of any plausible excuse that wouldn't sound like he was stalking her so he went with honesty. 'It's Jakob, I ran away from the party and hid in this barn.'

  It sounded so utterly stupid as the words came out of his mouth that he felt compelled to add more. 'I'm not stealing anything from the barn, honestly.' Which is exactly what she now suspects, idiot.

  Ella kept her distance, he couldn't see her face properly and had no idea what to expect, she seemed somewhat eerie as she sat there silently judging him.

  'Unless you're in critical need of hay, I think you might have got the wrong barn.'

  In spite of the tension of the situation, Jakob couldn't help but laugh. How long had it been since he last laughed? The next thing he knew Ella had joined him in the brief bout of laughter, between the two of them it was a desperate sound. An unexpected sole moment of mirth to be pounced upon and exploited by those who needed it most.

  It subsided almost as quickly as it had come but it was clear now that the absurdity of the situation wasn't lost upon either of them.

  'Jimmy came to your defence,' Ella finally said, leaning back on the pile of hay. 'I know you meant what you said to me as a joke, albeit a terribly timed one. If Jimmy says you're a good person I'm willing to give you another chance.'

  Jakob was tentative as he lowered himself down next to her, as if she were a rare bird he feared to startle. He felt like they were children then as they dangled their legs over the edge and both stared at the barn floor. 'Jimmy hasn't known me long,' he said

  Ella shrugged. 'I trust him, he knows all about people.'

  'He doesn't strike you as a little bit naïve?' Jakob had no idea why he trying to sabotage himself. She forced her eyes up from the floor of the barn and turned her head toward him with great deliberation. 'He's naïve about the world perhaps, not about the people in it.'

  Jakob found he had nothing to say to that, it didn't explain her presence.

  'Why is it everywhere I go, you're there?' he asked.

  He thought he caught the glimpse of a smile then, his eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. 'You're the big city boy, there are many open spaces in the country but not many places for people to come together. It's not surprising we've seen each other a lot over the last two days.'

  While her explanation did make sense it still felt like the wrong answer. Jakob could swear there was more to it, or was he simply hoping that was the case? There were certainly strong feelings but he wasn't sure if they guided him or simply were a part of him.

  'It still seems strange that you're in this barn on this night. Why are you here?'

  The sounds of barking gradually drew closer to the barn, Ella's head jerked toward the door. 'You need to get out of here, I can't be seen with you,' she said, voice panicked.

  Jakob was inclined to fully agree but over the last few moments he had felt a strange compulsion take hold of him, cemented by a new-found belief in his feelings.

  It was as
if his will to flee had started running through hardened treacle, his thoughts of staying to defend Ella seemed less a fleeting fancy and more the correct course of action. He couldn't think of any explanation for it but then none of his most powerful thoughts of late seemed based in any rationale.

  Ella stared at him in shock and confusion at his inaction, he didn't mind her gaze right now, he knew he was doing the right thing. Whoever had come searching with the dogs was meant to find the two of them alone together in this barn. He had a good mind as to who would be doing the searching too, let him come.

  'Ella?' Solomon's voice carried through the wooden walls as if they weren't there.

  He felt her pulling on his arm, frantically trying to drag him out of sight, he stayed anchored to the spot, facing the door down as if it would strike if he dared to move.

  When it finally started to creak open she ceased her efforts and resigned herself to her fate with an unmistakable shudder. It was too late to hide.

  A dog's nose pushed it's way through the barn door, it sniffed briefly and the barking started again. Footsteps followed, then a thud of a boot as the door swung wide open, outlining Solomon with a lantern aloft.

  His face contorted, turning from frustration to anger through to fury over the course of a few seconds. A small voice in the sea of unbidden courage said this wasn't going to end well for either of them.

  He stood there for a moment, seemingly at a loss for words. Jakob offered him none, simply letting him drink in the scene and draw his own conclusions. Why did it feel so right to antagonise this man even further?

  It was with a strange detachment that Jakob watched Solomon's features twitch, the bestial howl the man let out should have terrified his ancestors yet he felt nothing but purpose flowing through him.

  Solomon rushed forward at him, arms outstretched as if he planned to rip him limb from limb. Jakob ducked under his grasp and bolted for the door, everything went hazy then.

  Run.

  He had made it outside the barn somehow, only to hear a growling sound from a grey shadow to his right.

  Run.

  Jakob started to back away from the beast, his eyes locked on those tracking him. He remembered from the depths of his past some nugget of advice about not staring at dogs. Then again he didn't think staring would make much difference given his current situation.

  Run.

  The word seemed to bounce around in his skull, it set his teeth on edge and cut through his remaining thoughts. Was he meant to leave Ella alone with this man? It wasn't an instinctive thing he felt, he was being told in no uncertain terms to flee on foot.

  Solomon had left the barn now, he was staring at Jakob with a calculated expression of hatred in his eyes. He took one look at the dog and uttered a single word.

  'Kill.'

  Run.

  The world exploded in brightness as Jakob finally turned and ran, he didn't know where he was going but he needed no further convincing.

  Having a healthy fear of dogs, Jakob knew there was no chance of him outrunning a wolfhound. His nightmares as a child only seemed to reinforce that belief, now the very substance of those terrors was chasing him. Or it should have been.

  He finally staggered to a halt, there was no dog on his tail and Solomon was nowhere to be found, all that remained was the sound of water, crashing down.

  9

  Ella

  The rain hammered down on the trees as if their rustling offered the sky affront. Laboured breathing and intermittent gasps sounded beneath their brows. The air felt thick with tension but the night itself remained indifferent to the cries that pierced it.

  He was growing closer to her, an unfettered fury powering his strides and eating up the distance with inevitability. There was no escaping him even without his dogs on her tail, he was just too fast for her.

  An upturned root caught her ankle, sending her sprawling into the rain-slicked road. Turning in horror she started scrambling back into the mud, a faint murmur of denial playing across her lips. The ankle was turned and there was nowhere to hide, there was no time to escape.

  The heaving breaths of Solomon drew nearer, then she sighted his familiar figure through the downpour.

  His eyes were lit up with a strange mixture of anger and lust that she had become intimately familiar with. He paced toward her fallen form and was shaking with rage. He had realised that she was going nowhere and slowed with menace, his chest was heaving but not from the exhaustion of the chase.

  'What was that?' he roared, catching her jaw with the toe of his boot. 'What the fuck was that? What the hell do you think you're doing?' He swung round and paced past her as she tried to find her bearings, his anger consuming him bit by bit once again. The dead leaves stuck beneath his feet as he ground them into the mud, there was no escaping him.

  'Do you know how fucking bad this looks?' he asked, trying and failing to keep his voice under control.

  She remained silent, staring vacantly past him as if he wasn't there. No tears streaked her face, all that remained was hollow resignation and a deadening of purpose amidst the explosion of pain colouring her head. The blood welled up over her lip and down onto her dress before the rain could wash clear the evidence. She had been here before, now it was just a matter of how bad it was going to get.

  He struck her with his elbow, the thick thud of the contact echoed as her head hit the ground. The forest spun around her as she ponderously righted herself with utter futility. The rain continued to hammer down upon them as if she had failed it too.

  She quietly tried to escape within herself and float elsewhere as Solomon continued to strike her mercilessly. She thought briefly of her childhood, yet any moment she managed to capture was but a fleeting memory offering no succour. This time she knew she was going to die, what little she had left would barely be called life by many.

  She should have been feeling fear about now, she should have cared about what he was doing to her.

  She was jerked back into consciousness as he slammed her against a tree. A bough cut into her back but she refused him the satisfaction seeing her react to the pain. It was a hollow victory at this point, but it was hers.

  'Are you even fucking listening to me?' he swore, his face pressed against hers. She could smell the ale on his hot breath as she tried to stifle an involuntary shudder but failed. She hated when he drank, it always led to something like this, the monster within him rising to the surface.

  He knew she had just tried to evade him in the only way left to her. He was wise to her attempts to do so, clearly sensing it and pressing himself against her harder, betraying his true intentions. 'So that's it?' he yelled. 'Lead me on some merry fucking chase and then just sit there and wait for it? Well I'm sick of you. I swear to god, you push me too far and I'll kill you.'

  Her mute despair only served to enrage him further, yet there was still the faint hope that he was still only threatening to end her. Part of her was tempted to goad him into ending her just to get away from him one last time.

  He pulled her from the tree and lashed another wild kick out at her as she fell. It caught her on the shoulder and sent her sprawling back into the path. 'If you're just going to do your mute whore routine again, I can work with that.' he said between breaths, his voice cracking. 'Just lie there and don't breathe a fucking word.' A slight pause now, she knew he was waiting for her to defy him, he always tried to bait her into doing so. An opportunity she knew better than to take.

  'That's it.' he said into the ensuing silence. 'You stay right there and you wait for me.'

  Still cursing to himself under his breath, she watched as he walked toward her prone form and undid the clasp of belt. 'You really don't make it easy for yourself, do you?' he said, whipping it off his breeches and cracking it out across the ground beside her heaving body. 'I could thrash you to within an inch of your life for all the fucking pain you've caused me, but I don't think that's enough. No, you'd never learn.'

  She expected a gri
n to spread upon his face yet it never came. She expected him to thrash his anger out and be done with it. She expected a lot of howling and bluster before the apologies began again. Instead there was a hollow look in his eyes that turned her cold.

  'You deserve what you get now,' he said, his voice no longer ranting and raving. He tore off her dress and flung it into the woods. 'You stay right. Fucking. There.'

  He stretched out before her and he placed her shivering hands on his clothes, but she couldn't see any sign of the former drunken lust in his eyes. 'Go on, pull them off,' he said between gritted teeth. 'It's what you fucking want after all isn't it? Do that and I won't kill you.'

  A brief tremble shook her body as she realised that he meant it this time. He was sobering up and still threatening her. A final flicker of defiance kept her hands from reaching up in spite of it. There was something entirely off with his behaviour that she couldn't place.

  He tore his shirt off and pinned her shoulders down with his arm. She whimpered with pain as he traced his knife along her thighs, the faint lines scouring familiar patterns in her flesh. She had even learned to like it after a time, now it just filled her with revulsion.

  As she lay flinching in apprehension of the further cuts he instead chose to throw the knife away instead digging any deeper. Her anxiety doubled, she had no idea why he would do that.

  His panting breath touched her skin as he tore off the rest of her clothes and groped for her hand. His discarded weapon was not a mercy then.

  She finally acquiesced to his silent instruction and undid his breeches, pulling them down at his command. She felt him claw at her skin and waited for him to rip her insides in his need. More blood trickled from her lip as she bit it, trying to suppress the cries of agony, yet still he didn't end the wait. As she was pressed back in the stagnant mud she stared upward into the dead branches of the trees. She prayed silently that he would start soon, at least then she would be numbed by the pain and wouldn't feel him.