by Cody Lakin
Jezebel instinctively took a step back and, her mind rapt with the reality that she was in the presence of the actual god Pan, forgot about the upturned root. With a gasp she tripped over it, falling straight onto her back in a clutter of fallen leaves and snapping twigs. She grunted, trying to reorient herself, and she was in the process of pushing herself up from her back when the faun, the god Pan, appeared above her.
Her heart nearly stopped and it felt as though her throat closed. The faun blocked the sun from her view, so for a moment it was a silhouette crowned by golden rays of light. Then she was able to focus, and the first things she noticed were the eyes. The faun’s eyes were large and had no pupils. They were a dim white, almost gray, more like lenses than eyes. The rest of the face was human: slim, chiseled features, a playful grin spreading the lips. His ears were long, goat-like, where they sat in his wild bushy hair. His horns were like a crown, extending from his scalp and curling elegantly.
Pan and Jezebel stared at each other, Jezebel with her mouth open and eyes wide, breaths caught in her throat. She tried to say something, maybe to beg for the god not to hurt her, but no words would come to her. She could only gape.
The faun’s curious expression changed then into a look of clear recognition. Without a word he stepped away. Jezebel sat up from the ground, and the god Pan bowed ceremonially to her, the way a gentleman would to a distinguished and beautiful lady, and then galloped away at a quicker speed than any human could have managed, weaving through the trees as though dancing, playfulness and grace in all of his movements.
Jezebel rubbed the back of her head where it had hit the ground, watching as Pan vanished into the foliage.
He recognized me, she thought, frightened by that fact. Why would he recognize me?
After she made sure she was alone, she got to her feet and returned to the trail, sobered by the brief encounter enough that she didn’t want to stay here any longer. She looked longingly over her shoulder at the shimmering of the pools through the trees before going on her way toward home, already lamenting the subtle changes in the world around her as the leaves became less bright, the sky less blue, the sun’s light less golden. And when the trail once more became the asphalt of Fairlane Road and she entered a tunnel of increasingly regular-looking trees—signs that she was reentering Earth—the fullness in her heart faded, and was replaced by the emptiness she was so accustomed to living with. And tears filled her eyes.
It broke her heart to leave the higher world, and she suspected that it always would.
Chapter 7:
See, and Despair
Although town wasn’t far, Andrew Jean took his Volkswagen to run an errand even though he normally preferred to walk. One look at his seldom used old car had made him feel a hint of pity for it, as though it were an old neglected friend.
Halfway into town, he noticed that the mileage was overdue for an oil change. “Ah, shit,” he said, but smiled. It was nice having a reason to stay in town for awhile.
Instead of taking the route straight into town, he made a detour to the north side and to Lamplight’s Tire Factory. The owner, Mike King, had always liked him, partly out of a conservative disposition and occasionally overboard respect for the police force, and Andrew appreciated the man’s pleasant attitude as well as the fact that he normally gave Andrew discounts on services to his car. One of the advantages of living in a small town.
The Tire Factory was small like everything else in Lamplight. It had three garages, and as a building it was mostly featureless, but the people there had always been kind and efficient in their jobs. Today there were no other visible cars or customers, making even Andrew’s rusty old Volkswagen look out of place. He parked, walked across the empty parking lot, and entered the quiet building.
A middle-aged lady sat alone at the front desk. She was scrolling through her phone with a glazed expression of boredom. In one corner, a small TV played commercials about cars and tires and oil. None of the other workers were in the garages, so Andrew guessed they were likely all taking a break considering there was nothing else to do.
The woman looked up and smiled when Andrew approached the desk. “What can I help you with?”
“Is Mike around?”
“Oh, um, no, not today. You know him?”
“Yes. I’m an old friend.”
The woman’s eyes became serious, fully alert. “Oh, well, you hear about what happened?”
Andrew leaned against the counter. “No.”
“Mike got a call this morning from the cops and took off. Turned pale as paper and said it had something to do with his son. Left without saying anything, so I had the news on a few minutes ago. Then I got a call from a friend, asking if I’d heard about someone—a teenager—being murdered out at the park this morning. Mike ain’t called back or anything, so…”
“Oh, god.” Andrew put a hand to his forehead, suddenly feeling disoriented and far away, as if shaken outside of himself. “Mike’s son was murdered?”
“That’s what I’ve been worrying about since I got that call, ‘cause that’s how it sounds.”
“Jesus…” Andrew turned around, looking out the shop window and at the quiet, empty parking lot. “That’s the third murder in a matter of days,” he said, more to himself than to the woman at the desk. I’ll have to call him, he thought, tell him how sorry I am. He remembered meeting Mike’s son multiple times, and although the kid had, to Andrew, seemed hardly different from anyone else his age, he had still been the son of a friend.
“Scary stuff, about that Knox fella the police have been after,” said the woman.
“Yeah,” said Andrew.
“I wonder if he’s the one that did it. I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything that’s been going on.”
“Me too.”
“Anyway, you need anything?”
“No.” Andrew nodded a disoriented farewell and then returned to his car, having decided that he could put off an oil change for a few more days.
On his way to the grocery store, the emptiness of downtown became increasingly apparent to him. Shops, though open, appeared void of life; the sidewalks were mostly empty; the eyes of those he did see were despondent and afraid. And as much as Andrew didn’t want to admit it, this was how the town had been all those years ago, when Thomas and Susan Knox had been on the loose. People had been afraid to leave their homes or go out in broad daylight. That was what Charlie Knox was doing: making this town jump at its own shadow again.
But it’s worse this time, Andrew thought. Last time, three people died over the course of a few weeks. But Charlie Knox has killed three people already, and it’s only been a few days.
The grocery store was as empty as the rest of town, except somehow even more ominous. There was no friendly chatting to be heard between any customers or employees, and the music over the loudspeakers, though modern and upbeat, seemed to serve the sole purpose of making the aisles seem all the lonelier and emptier. It was like when there was a snowstorm when most of the shops, save a few, would shut down, and everyone was either snowed in or spending hours digging themselves out.
Andrew did his shopping as quickly as he could, feeling oddly exposed as one of the only people in the store in the middle of the day. The cashier who helped him wore the look of someone who hadn’t slept much the night before. The way she looked at him made him wonder if he looked the same.
It was out in the parking lot as he was about to get back into his car that he was interrupted.
“Mr. Jean!” It was a man’s voice calling from just a few feet away. Andrew’s body involuntarily tensed, his grip tightened on the top of his halfway-opened driver’s side door, and he turned his head toward the voice.
It was Billy Jones. He and Jezebel had dated for a few months, but she had ended it about two weeks ago. When Andrew had inquired as to why she’d ended it, her answers had been vague but painted with tame anger and disgust, leaving Andrew to work out on his own—not that it was difficult to figure out—that this unassuming, handsome Billy Jones was another selfish creep who wore a friendly smile. A harsh conclusion to jump to, but nothing else would have invoked the kinds of emotions Andrew had seen in Jezebel. Why Billy Jones would want to talk with him, Andrew had no idea, but his caution was instantly replaced with curiosity.
“Mr. Jean! Hey!” The young man came jogging over toward Andrew. He had short blond hair in a jelled crewcut, and he wore jeans with a red flannel. He didn’t look like Jezebel’s type anyway.
“Ah, Billy.” Andrew shut the car door so that he could lean back against it, arms crossed. “What do you want?”
Billy grinned and went to shake Andrew’s hand, then pulled his hand back awkwardly when Andrew kept his own arms crossed. “Hey, uh, I just… I just saw you walking to your car, you know, and thought I’d say hi. You know, ‘cause it’s been awhile.”
“It has,” Andrew agreed. He wondered why it was that so many young men gave off a simpleminded impression of themselves, as if their manliness willfully dulled their intelligence.
“Yeah, uh… yeah. Um… I… I wanted to ask how Jezebel’s doing. I haven’t, you know, seen her in awhile now, uh, and—”
“You’ll have to excuse me if I seem bitter, Billy, but it’s no longer any of your business how my daughter’s doing.”
“Mr. Jean, it… it’s not…” The young man’s cheeks were burning red, and his jaw was quivering. “Look. I know I hurt her. I’m an idiot for letting that happen. But I’m worried about her. You know, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and… I’ve never met anyone like her, and if she’d just talk to me—”
“Listen, Billy. If you’re telling this to me hoping that I’m going to relay your concern to Jezebel, I’m afraid you’ll end up disappointed. I suggest you tell her this, not me. The world could use more gratitude than regret, more people telling other people what they want to tell them to their faces.”
Billy Jones nodded. “Yeah… yeah all right. She really is okay, though?”
Andrew sighed. “Yes.”
“I’ve been hearing about the killings, and it’s been making me lose sleep. You know, perspective and all that.” Billy shuddered, eyes to the ground. “They’re saying the killer’s a member of the Knox family.”
“So I’ve been told.” Andrew fidgeted with his keys.
“I think I saw him, you know,” said Billy, a haunted look settling into his unfocused eyes, and wrinkles of tension showing on his forehead. “At the pub in town, just the other day. That’s what got me thinking about Jezebel. He was… well, uh… you know Tyler Tracy, your neighbor, the guy who flies the confederate flag? He tried to start a fight with the Knox guy, if that was really him. And all the Knox guy did was say some things, and it scared everyone silent, even Tyler Tracy, and I’ve never seen Tyler at a loss for words.”
Andrew suppressed a reaction, as if this was something he had already known, but in truth he was disturbed both at what Billy Jones was saying, and the tremulous way he was saying it.
“He seemed smart. That’s what kinda freaked me out the most.”
“I understand. I need to get going, Billy.”
“Oh yeah, hey, right, no problem.”
“But take care. And I mean that: be careful.”
“Sure. Thanks, Mr. Jean.”
Andrew got into his car but waited before shutting the door. “Billy. I may not have such a high opinion of you,” he said, ignoring the flash of recoiling embarrassment on the young man’s face, “but Jezebel did, for awhile. I’m sure she’d appreciate you apologizing to her in person, rather than through me.” He gave Billy Jones a long look, then shut the car door and drove away.
Billy’s words hung in his mind: He seemed smart. That’s what kinda freaked me out the most.
Smart, he thought, driving half-consciously as the rest of his mind turned back upon the past, toward the days of chasing the Knox family.
* * *
Although Forest Street was a quiet street by nature, today there was something different about the silence and the stillness. As with the rest of town, there was fear in that stillness, there was something that added weight to the air and to people’s thoughts. And Edgar Forgael tried to keep himself occupied so that he wouldn’t have to think too much about it.
He was unsettled by the state in which Jezebel had left his house, how despondent she had seemed, how restive beneath the surface. She had always been an independent and lonely girl, but there was more to her sadness now. It went deeper beneath the surface. It could be seen on her eyes, when normally she did her best to hide it.
She had left his house a few hours ago and had gone out to Fairlane Road. This much he knew—he had sensed her change of emotional state from despondent to euphoric as she had transitioned from this world to the next—but she had then slipped from his sight. Edgar’s ability to sense things, to see beyond his eyesight, could only go so far, and from his own house the Fairlane World was too far. But he had sensed her return to this world a few minutes ago, and had followed her with his preternatural gaze until she had returned to her house. As always, she had been crying. She hated coming back to this world.
Now, content to clean and perhaps do some leisurely reading for the day, Edgar had tried to keep his worries about Jezebel from his mind, but as he was setting a pair of clean dishes on a shelf in his kitchen, he was struck with pause.
A sense, a presence nearby. He could feel it.
Someone was standing on Fairlane Road. Someone who hadn’t been there seconds before and had just now appeared, materialized out of thin air. Someone who made Edgar’s sight go blurry, and who was shrouded in an aura of obscuring darkness.
He knew it wasn’t Jezebel immediately. She had gone home, and whenever he felt her presence nearby, there was never any darkness. No; this person, whoever they were, had appeared out of nowhere. And there was something wrong about them. Something dark.
In his uncertainty of what else to do, Edgar set the dishes down on the counter and left his house in a hurry, bothering only to retrieve his straw hat from his chair on the front porch.
A cold breeze assaulted him when he reached the street outside of his house. He turned left, confused by the wind which seemed to have just now picked up, but his burning curiosity was irresistible.
He kept one hand on his hat to keep it from flying away as he strode along Forest Street’s final curve. All around him, the bushes rattled and the trees swayed in the wind. He could feel the person’s presence growing ever more prominent the closer he got, and the wind blew harder and harder, filling the world with a whirling howl, drowning out everything but the rattling trees.
Edgar had time to wonder what was happening and also to accept that this wind—and the dark presence he felt—was of some unnatural origin, before he came to the last of the bend, and before him was Fairlane Road.
A dark man was there, down on one knee, his back to Edgar, his long black coat flapping in the wind, wild hair a mess. At his feet was the body of a teenage boy dressed in white underwear and nothing else; the asphalt all around him was smeared with blood and flaps of torn flesh, and his skin was hollow and pale. Edgar had seen corpses before, but would never grow accustomed to how, in death, a person ceased to look like a person and instead looked like an object, a thing.
Edgar’s breath left him in a silent gasp and he froze. He knew then without a doubt that the man before him was Charlie Knox, kneeling as if in prayer. And as
Edgar watched, paralyzed, Charlie rose slowly until he was standing, legs set in a wide stance, coat flapping out to one side. He turned his body half around. He wore pitch black goggles over his eyes, and he grinned when he saw Edgar standing a few feet behind him.
Oh my god, Edgar thought, and as he stood there, one hand keeping his hat from flying away in the wind, his heart began to race.
Charlie Knox walked over to him, grinning all the while, hardly seeming to notice the howling wind. Edgar felt Knox’s aura like a storm.
“Edgar Forgael,” said Charlie Knox. He stopped just a foot away from Edgar. “I had hoped to meet you one day, and here you stand. Here we both stand.” His voice was melodic.
Edgar trembled, gaping. “You know who I am?”
At this question, which to Edgar seemed like a perfectly normal question, Charlie burst out in laughter. His laugh was coarse and high—a frighteningly genuine belly-laugh—and although there was nothing sinister about the sound, it was ominous to Edgar how genuine it was.
When his laughter subsided, the howling wind died down to a soft breeze with it, and Charlie clapped Edgar on the shoulder as though they were friends. “Edgar, my friend, humility truly is a virtue—and a rare one, at that. My parents used to tell me stories about you, the world-walker, the keeper of Fairlane Road, scholar of the immortal Shadows and invisible ones. In fact, I believe you are mentioned more than once in a volume or two in the libraries of Faerie. What’d they call you? A passageway-guardian, was the direct translation.”
Edgar’s mind was spinning. Here he’d been expecting to be terrorized, threatened—or, worst case scenario, killed like the dead boy on the street—but instead was being thrust into a perfectly regular conversation with someone who, according to the local media and police force, was nothing less than a serial killer. Charlie Knox was the son of two nearly legendary psychopathic occult leaders, and was as mysterious as he was supposedly insane. Edgar had encountered Thomas and Susan Knox only once, years ago, and they had been crazy, sometimes unintelligible. But here was their son, an adult now like Jezebel, wanted for multiple murders and portrayed by everyone as absolutely insane from what Edgar had heard, and he was having a normal, arguably intelligent conversation with him.