“You were right, Mort. He sure is a gullible young sap.”
I jerked back around. Another silhouette stood at the opening to the barn. Brittle hay crunched under their footsteps as they closed in on me from both sides. Mort and Mallen continued to walk toward me, and I instinctively shoved my right hand into my pocket.
Mort spoke again, and I spun around to face him.
“Shut up, Mallen! It’s okay, Michael. I know you’re confused. I need time to explain.”
“Why? You could have just told me whatever you needed to before putting me through all of this.”
“Sure. Let me see. Okay. Hello, my name is Mortensen Bell, and I’m part of a group of people that can bridge the minds and bodies of others. Your mother had a special stone that we would like you to give to us. My twin brother had a crush on your mother, but he repulsed her. My brother, being the prick that he is, subsequently killed your mother and father.”
The rage welled up in me with every word he spoke about my mother. Mort continued. “In his impulsiveness, though, he didn’t think through the fact that once she died, her stone would remain loyal to only her family members with the gift as well.”
“So what? Why does it matter if I have her stone, and why did she have to die over it?”
I spun around when Mallen spoke from behind me, his tone several degrees colder than Mort’s.
“Come on Mort, shut up. Jesus, just give us the stone. I don’t have time for a history lesson, and you don’t deserve to possess such a powerful object.”
He stepped toward me, and my eyes narrowed in anger. I fingered the stone in my pocket, its coolness radiating into my skin.
Mort held his hand up to Mallen before talking again.
“Hold on, Mallen. I think he deserves at least a little explanation. Michael, you have an impressive gift, more powerful than most. You have made this more difficult than we’d hoped. The fact that you can fight your way out of a bridge makes you an asset. That strength can be used to help many people live comfortably, starting with you.”
“How so?” I tried to sound interested as a means of stalling while I thought of a way to get out of there.
“Imagine being able to bridge the minds of the powerful, the minds of those who make the real decisions. Take Mallen and myself, for example. We have the power, sure, but we can only bridge the weak, the feeble-minded. You, however, have the ability to bridge to anyone you wish. Your mother had the same ability, but she refused to use it. Imagine the power that you could have.”
“But if we have the power, why do you want the stone? It wouldn’t be any different than you using your own. I mean, it’s not the trace right? It’s me.”
“Don’t give yourself too much credit, kid.” Mallen said, once again jumping into the conversation. “Of course the stone has something to do with it. It allows you to use its extra power. We can gain that power with the stone.”
“Why even ask me for it, why didn’t you just take it from me? That would have been much easier for all of us.”
Mort interjected this time. “There’s a rule, we cannot take a trace that does not belong to us. The trace has to pass through a family member. If I simply take the stone from you, it will become just a stone. It would be rendered useless.”
“Well, I guess we need to come to some sort of agreement then,” I said.
“Well, well. We may have a team player here after all,” Mort said.
“Let’s think about this for a second,” I thought about that bastard Mallen; staring into his eyes, concentrating, focusing. I found the stone in my pocket and curled my fingers around the smooth edges while my eyes closed. The surge struck me, and the pain hammered me in the chest.
My eyes opened to a staggering pain at the back of my neck and the green periphery of my vision. I opened my eyes just in time as my body folded to the ground in the middle of the barn. Mort stood on the far side of my disabled body and stopped moving forward, confusion etched across his face. His head slanted to one side as he processed what had just happened.
I stood still in Mallen’s body as I tried to formulate some type of plan. My head screamed with agony as Mallen lost control and struggled to push me out of power. Mort lowered his head and broke into a dead run toward me. I steadied myself, bracing for the impact, but it never came. He rushed by me, barely brushing my arm, and disappeared into the darkness outside the barn.
I stood over my crumpled self while I fought the pain that gripped my head. Scanning the barn, I noticed a storage room under the stairs leading to the loft. I ran over and pulled the door open. A rope hung on the back wall. Grabbing it and moving to one of the beams in the center of the barn, I sat down and tied myself to the wooden support. The knots probably wouldn’t hold forever, but I hoped it would buy me enough time to bridge back to myself and secure Mallen before he released himself.
I closed my eyes and tried to close the bridge. The force came once again, and I found myself lying face down on the dirt floor in the center of the barn. Trying to gain control, the barn spun around me. The pain in my chest subsided, and I levered myself to my knees. Mallen struggled against the knots and his hooded eyes caught mine. He fought against the rope as I ran to reach him before he got loose.
I knelt next to him but he kicked me in the head when I reached for the rope. The blow clouded my vision, but the room stopped spinning and I got to my feet. I quickly worked my way behind Mallen. He had no defense as he reached around the pole, fists whirling in the air. I cinched the rope from behind and tied a few more knots out of his reach.
He growled and spat in the air as his situation became more desperate. I moved around to face him, and he grew still, his eyes dark with anger, his lips peeled back, and his head tilted to the side. His facial expression changed, and he chuckled before erupting into a full-blown belly laugh.
“You have no idea, do you? You have no idea what this is about. You can’t resist it. It will catch up to you whether you want it to or not. It will find you; it always does. You are one of us. You have the mark. You know it, deep down; you are one of us!” I searched the barn while he spoke. “We won’t let you forget it. I promise.”
I walked over and picked up a shovel that leaned against a stall door. My eyes glared at Mallen and he smiled while I smirked in return. Walking over to him, twirling the shovel in my hands, I stood over him with rage scorching inside of me, the likes of which I had never known.
He spat at my feet before speaking. “You don’t have the balls to…,” he started before the back of the shovel landed flush against the side of his head.
His body went limp before convulsing on the ground. Blood streamed from his ear, nose, and mouth, his head caved in. His eye on that side half spilled from the socket. Blood leaked to the dirt floor; the dirt floor where he deserved to die.
I stood over him, satisfied, as the earth became moist and dark around his pathetic body. He exhaled one last time before his good eye fixed into the space above him. His body slumped against the rope, and I dropped the shovel at his feet. I searched through Mallen’s pockets and found his trace. Dropping it into my pocket, I scoffed at him as he lay there. After one final glance into Mallen’s dead eyes, I turned and walked toward the crooked opening of the barn.
-Chapter 23-
Mort had run out of the barn, and I had to find him. My head peeked out and scanned the area. Though Mallen seemed to be the violent one of the two, Mort had gone through all of this for a reason. He wouldn’t just disappear and let me go on my merry way.
He had answers, and I had questions. Mort was now the hunted, not me. The house sat on a hilltop to my left, silhouetted against the night sky. The wind picked up, raking fallen leaves from the dirt road. I made my way up the hill to the melody of insects and rustling trees.
The aged wooden boards squealed as I stepped onto the porch. The front door was ajar, allowing a flickering of light to escape from inside. I stood to the side and reached over, nudging the door open. The hi
nges groaned, and I stepped into the doorway of the front room. My skin tickled at the sight of a silhouette sitting in the corner. My eyes strained to confirm what my mind already knew.
“Come in. Have a seat. Let’s finish our conversation,” Mort’s voice floated from the dark corner of the room.
“I think I’ll stand thanks.”
There was an awkward silence before he spoke again. “What did you do with Mallen? Did you kill him?”
“Yup.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. Unless he’s able to put the blood back into his body and he recovers from his head being caved in on one side, then yeah, I’m sure.”
“Remember when he showed you what I did to him all those years ago, in the tub? He looked dead then, right?”
My head spun when I remembered watching Mort slit Mallen’s wrists. My mind reeled at the possibility that Mallen would somehow walk in the door behind me. He read the confusion on my face and spoke. “It’s the stone. The trace allowed his wounds to heal. Remember when you asked me how I remained the same age for all these years?”
“Yeah.” I made my way to the opposite side of the room and sat in a chair. I kept my attention on Mort, but I wanted a view of the door as well.
“Well, that’s the answer. My trace heals my body and allows me to go on living.”
I gripped both stones in my pocket. “What if you lose your stone? What happens if someone else takes it?”
“Like I said before, it won’t work for anyone else. However, without direct contact, it can’t help you heal either. You see, as long as we have possession of our traces, we can live forever, you can live forever.”
“Why go through all this?”
He leaned forward, bringing his face into the light. His eyes grabbed mine and held them captive. “Mallen has been the problem all along. He is the one that has always caused the chaos, and it’s my fault. I discovered the power by accident and thought he had it also, since we were twins. He didn’t believe me and I couldn’t convince him to try the stone. That day when I went into the bathroom and did what I did, he didn’t let you see what happened afterward. I tossed my trace into the water and it boiled and swirled around him. A few minutes later, he emerged from the tub with fresh new skin, no worse for the wear, besides a few scars and being a little pissed off, but alive. He believed me after that, though he never truly forgave me for the method I’d used.”
“Well, if that’s case, I’m sure Mallen’s dead, then. I took his trace and got rid of it before I came up here.”
Mort leaned back in his chair and clasped his fingers together, holding his hands to his chest. “The trace has to be destroyed. Not just gotten rid of, but destroyed. I sent you here for that purpose, to destroy Mallen’s stone.”
Insecurity swept through my head as I tried to decide if he was sincere, or if he had something else in mind. “So this, all of this, was part of your plan?”
“I understand your skepticism, but think about our conversation when I came to you as Honeycutt. I told you I would lead you in the right direction didn’t I? Mallen is gone, and you are alive. Is that not an agreeable end to the situation?”
I thought about his words and held my response for a few seconds before answering him. “Why did my mother die? If she’d had her trace in the car that night, she would have lived, right?”
He hesitated before answering. “Your mother had the power to bridge anyone, but she didn’t have the mark of immortality. Her stone wouldn’t have saved her.”
“Why did Mallen want her dead?”
Mort stood up and paced around the room with his hands in his pockets. “Your mother was an amazing woman. Mallen had a thing for her, but she wasn’t interested. Mallen didn’t deal with rejection well, and he continued to harass her for years. He showed up everywhere your mother did. When your mother married your father, Mallen backed off for a while, but for some reason he became interested in your mother again and started to harass her.”
Mort’s path brought him closer to me with each sentence he spoke. Unsure of his intentions, I scanned the room checking for the fastest way out. He continued to talk while he paced the room. “I tried to stop him, but he kept going to her. Your mother knew Mallen was dangerous, so she had to be careful in her dealings with him. He finally resorted to bridging your father in an attempt to be with your mother. Your mother was smart, noticed every attempt, and blocked Mallen from doing it. Every time except for the night they died. Your mother missed the signs that night and…and that’s when the accident happened. If Mallen couldn’t have her, no one would.”
“It wasn’t an accident! He killed them!” I stood up, sure to keep distance between us.
He stopped talking and paced the floor for the next few seconds. “That’s all in the past. We can’t bring your parents back, and Mallen is dead. Why don’t you and I go out and find his trace to make sure it gets destroyed?”
He walked toward me, and I put my left hand in my pocket. My body tensed when I felt the flat edges of Mallen’s stone in my pocket.
“I’m not sure where it went. I threw it into the woods. Who knows where it went?”
The temperature of Mort’s voice dropped, and he glared at me with biting eyes. He walked closer, more aggravated with my answer. “Well, let’s at least try,” he said through clenched teeth.
Mort’s demeanor changed and my mind searched for a reason as to why he had become more and more agitated. Then a possible answer flashed in my mind.
“How do we destroy it if we find it?”
“I’ll show you when we find it.”
“No, why don’t you tell me now?”
He glared at me with colorless eyes. “Quit fucking around, Michael! Show me where you threw my stone!”
With those words, the pieces of the puzzle flew together. They only had one trace between the two of them.
I flung the chair at Mort and ran from the house. Mallen’s stiffening remains greeted me when I ran into the barn. The ropes pressed into his skin where rigor mortis had started to take hold. I ran up the stairs to the hayloft overlooking the interior of the barn, laid on the edge, and watched for him.
-Chapter 24-
Mort came in and stopped in his tracks in front of Mallen. He walked over to his dead brother and looked down on him. He wiped his eyes and took in a full chest of air. His eyes surveyed the barn before he ran through the damaged front door. I waited until he’d had enough time to get out of the area before climbing down from the loft.
I walked on tiptoes, trying to soften the crackling of the hay and gravel beneath my feet. My head peeked out of the barn and saw nothing of Mort.
I held the key to Mort’s immortality in my pocket, knowing he would put up a fight to get it. My Jeep sat maybe fifty yards from the entrance, and I dashed for it. My heart hammered in my chest when I reached the door.
My hand found the key still hanging in the ignition. Nothing. I turned the key twice more before realizing it wasn’t going to start. It hit me that I’d left the lights on when I’d first gone into the barn. Now what the hell am I going to do?
As I sat thinking about my next move, the driver’s side window exploded, sending shards of glass into my face. My left eye went red, and I instinctively jumped to the passenger’s seat. Pain seared my face as I scrambled to escape, my left ear ringing out in unbearable agony as I fumbled for the door handle. The door swung open, and I fell to the ground, disoriented. Footsteps pressed into the dirt as they got closer. I put my head to the dirt, and they stopped behind me.
Mort yanked me up by the collar of my shirt. I had no sense of balance and my surroundings spun out of control. He reached into my pocket and took out my trace. He held it up and then put it in his pocket. “I’ll hold onto this for you. Now, where were we? Where did you say you threw my trace?”
My legs struggled to find any support while he dragged me back into the barn. He dropped me to the ground, landing me in the putrid puddle of his
dead brother. I tried to regain my bearings while the black liquid squelched under me.
“Alright!” I shook my head, hoping to regain some focus. “I’ll take you where I threw it. Just give me a second to catch myself.”
He bent over and picked up the shovel I’d used to bash Mallen’s head in. “You have one minute to get yourself together.”
I struggled for something to say, anything to stall the situation. “The Somnibus, are they even real?”
“Not that it’s going to matter to you much longer, but they are. Not quite what I told you they were, but they are real. They’re stupid creatures, in fact. They can be a nuisance, but I know how to handle them. I’ve killed plenty of them, and now they just let me go about my business. As far as the other stuff, the stuff between Mallen and me, that was just theatrics, having a little fun at your expense.”
“Is that why they didn’t attack us when you took me to Brookesville?”
“Yes. They know better. Those were the lower-level feeders, and they don’t have much fight in them. Some of them can be nasty, but they don’t mess with me, and I don’t mess with them. There’s a balance to be had.” Mort lost his focus a bit and lowered the shovel, resting on his palms as we talked.
“Why do you need both traces? What’s the point?”
“I wish you knew even a little about all of this. Mallen wanted your trace. I went along with it, but he wanted to take over the world, so to speak. I’m not even sure he could have obtained the power needed from the stone. He was sort of a buffoon when it came to most things. I wanted him to have yours, so I would have my own. I just want my immortality.”
“I thought my trace would only work for me or my family. Why would it have worked for Mallen or you?” My balance leveled off and steadied a bit.
“Well, that’s true as long as you have living family members. It may not give me the extra power you possess, but at the very least it should provide the added protection of its immortality.” Mort grew more agitated with my questions and he picked up the shovel again. “Otherwise, it will be loyal to the first person to possess it after you die. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, that will be me. It’ll give me a backup, so to speak. Your minute is more than up. Let’s go.”
The Somnibus: Book I - Finding the Mark (A Paranormal Thriller) Page 8