by Derry Sandy
The survivors nodded and hauled Sam into the back of the panel van. Once they had loaded him into the van, they pulled a black hood over Sam’s head, and bound his hands and feet as the van pulled away from the curb.
Sam, be strong. It is going to be a long night, Bitol said.
Sam was surprised he was not more perturbed about his current circumstances. Perhaps after months of living on the edge of society in the company of his own old incarnation, he had developed a higher tolerance for the strange.
We’ll be alright, Bitol, he replied.
Chapter 31
The morning after arriving at the village Clarence, D’mara and Lisa were allowed to wash in a nearby stream under the watchful gaze of the two sentries from the gate. Lisa felt strangely comfortable even in this strange place.
Clarence swam in a deep pool, naked as a newborn babe. After they were done and air dried they were each given skirts of blue feathers and the females were given a multitude of necklaces with which to cover their breasts. The clothes they had arrived in, tatters now more than garments, had been discarded.
Lisa wondered how D’mara felt about their nakedness. She was old enough to be Lisa’s great-grandmother, but still bore the outward appearance of a child. The necklaces covered her pubescent chest. Did she harbor adult sensitivities about nudity? Then again, after more than a century of life, did anyone still harbor sensitivities about something as trivial as nudity?
After breakfast, the First announced he would meet with the guests one by one. The individual evaluations were to be held in a log cabin at the center of the village. Lisa was called first and Clarence and D’mara were left sitting cross-legged on the hard-packed dirt outside the hut guarded by the two sentries.
The interior of the log house was filled with incense smoke and the furthest corners were obscured in shadows. The First stooped close to a smoldering fire with a long-stemmed pipe clenched in his teeth.
“Please sit.”
Lisa sat and the First spoke. “If you had to choose between a powerful enemy who threatened certain death, and an unproven ally who offered the dubious possibility of revenge. Which would you pick?”
The First’s voice sounded defeated. Lisa responded, “That’s a difficult question to answer. Certain death may be better than choosing the wrong side.”
“But if that death is multiplied across your entire people. Could you choose the moral high ground then? Morality over the lives of dozens?”
“This seems like something you should discuss with your people. What decision would they make if asked? Perhaps they would prefer not to side with evil.”
“As leader, the decision is mine.”
Lisa did not like where this was going and as her eyes adjusted to the gloom she noticed that they were not alone in the hut. Someone sat in the shadowed corner to the back. Feeling very uncomfortable, she rose to leave, the First made no move to stop her and there was no need. Just as the thorn wall had grown closed after they entered the village, the entrance to the hut had vanished leaving an unbroken log wall all the way around.
“I cannot risk the villagers’ lives by betting against one who is even stronger now than when he slaughtered us so long ago. He wants you in return for my people’s safety and it is the only sensible choice I can accept.”
Lisa reached for the key and its power. She would turn this village into a smoldering crater if she had to D’mara’s admonitions or not. But the moment she reached inward, a massive wave of nausea overcame her and she fell to the floor, her knees as weak as a newly-born foal’s. She reached again and this time the nausea was so powerful she retched.
“Stop trying. The smoke of the incense contains a narcotic to prevent you from burning us all to cinders.”
Lisa barely managed a response. “Don’t…please.”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot risk my people again. That girl who brought you leaves only death and grief in her wake.”
A short, ugly man emerged from the shadowy murk of a corner and came forward. He was carrying a woman over his shoulder.”
Kat? “What have you done to her?” Lisa’s anger cleared her head for a moment. The newcomer only sneered. As he approached, Lisa scooted backward until the cabin wall prevented further retreat.
“D’mara! Clarence!” she shouted in desperation. The little man kicked her in the stomach with the toe of his boot.
The force of the blow combined with the sickness brought on by the incense left her choking on her own bile. The man dumped Kat on the floor, then signaled the First over. The First held Lisa’s shoulders against the log wall while the ugly little man forced her head back, crushed her mouth open, and tilted a vial of bitter liquid down her throat. He pinched her nose and covered her mouth so she could neither spit nor breathe until she swallowed.
Lisa had thought herself weakened by the smoke but whatever was in the vial completely sapped any strength she had left. Keeping her eyes open became a monumental task and every lungful of air required her to marshal all her strength. Through the drug induced fog she noticed that Kat’s eyes were open but unblinking. How was it possible to drug Katharine?
Lisa dipped in and out of consciousness but she saw the little man fish one of the black boxes out of a satchel he carried and toss the box to the ground. When it grew to the appropriate size he grabbed Lisa and Kat by the ankles and stepped into the box dragging them after him. As they entered, Lisa went completely unconscious.
***
Outside Clarence and D’mara’s keen ears picked up the sound of Lisa’s cries through the thick, wooden, doorless walls. When they rose the two guards pressed the points of their spears against their chests forcing them back to the ground.
“What is this?” D’mara growled, prepared to fight.
There was a commotion; an intruder had entered the village. Clarence recognized the sullen looking man being pursued by three village sentries. The guard standing over Clarence hurled his spear at the newcomer. He ducked and it sailed past. Clarence and D’mara took advantage of the distraction and attacked their guards, dispatching them swiftly. Then the trio then fell upon the remaining guards. The scuffle was brief, violent, and one-sided.
“Where is she?”
“Lisa? She’s inside there.” Clarence pointed to the log house. “But she was screaming.”
“Yes, Lisa and maybe Katharine. The man who took her came this way. I’ve been tracking him through this cursed wilderness.”
“We saw no other man.”
Voss immediately feared the worst. “We need to leave before more people come. Let’s get Lisa.”
“The hut has no entrance. We’ll have to dig under the walls,” D’mara said.
So they dug. The three of them made short work of the task even with their bare hands. The scene on the other side of the log wall told a grim story. The First lay dead, his throat crushed by a powerful blow. An empty vial lay on the dirt floor and one of the travel boxes beckoned them to some unknown destination.
“The man who took Kat was here. Kat as well,” Voss declared sniffing the air.
“We must assume they went via the box,” D’mara said.
“Then we go as well.”
Clarence sighed. “I wish just one time, that something good would come of these boxes.”
The three passed through the wall of the box which very well might be leading them to an awful death.
Chapter 32
A cooling slab of pale flesh
A writhing amalgam of pale worms
A brittle pile of pale bones
The inevitable end to even the most noble human endeavor
- "An Immortal’s Musings" by an unidentified soucouyant
The dead men stood stock still, their blades gleaming in the light of the setting sun. An errant draft ruffled their matted locks. The reach of Lucien’s necromancy disgusted Rohan but he was loathe to be the aggressor against his mentor and brother, even in these, most unnatural circumstances. Rohan’s blades were nake
d in his hands, long blade in his right hand and shorter blade in his left. Rohan halted his approach about fifteen feet from the men.
“Isa, can you hear me? Dorian? Brother? Grandfather?”
“We hear you just fine. We came to welcome you and your bitch to the joys of servitude to Lucien.” Only Isa’s lips moved as he spoke. His eyes appeared to look through Rohan rather than at him. The only other movement was the fluttering of his grave-soiled garments in the nervous evening breeze.
Isa’s words chilled Rohan to the marrow. In life, the elder of Stone would never speak in such crude terms.
“So you have come to kill us?”
“Yes, but you must suffer first.” This came from Dorian’s corpse. “Are you ready to die, Rohan? Perhaps Lucien will make us a gift of your woman if your suffering is sufficiently great.”
These were not the men he knew. These were empty carapaces like those abandoned by molted cicada. They had to be slain. Rohan readied himself and the dead men charged.
The elder was the epitome of cerebral grace and speed while Dorian was brute force, rage and instinct. Rohan forced himself to relax and let his muscle memory take over. Too much thinking and he would die. Against multiple foes there was only time for reaction.
He stepped backward, moving to prevent them from circling around him or boxing him in, using his footwork to force them to attack in a queue instead of in unison.
Dorian rushed forward crowding Isa to the side. His axes lacked the range and versatility of the machete. The arc of Dorian’s attack was swift but predictable. Rohan dodged and sliced through Dorian’s throat leaving a thin bloodless slit. Keeping Dorian between his body and Isa’s, he struck downward in an overhead strike with the second machete gripping the handle as low as possible maximizing its range and force. The blow cleaved Dorian through one shoulder down to the groin. The wound released the stench of decay as Rohan yanked his weapons free and leapt back to put some room between him and Isa.
The body of Dorian Le Clerc did not fall but neither did it move anymore, it just stood, stock still, dead eyes clouded with a bluish cataract, mouth hanging open in the shock of a second death.
“You killed your own Chapterman, Rohan? How shameful,” Isa said in mock surprise. “Don’t worry, I will make you repent.”
Isa was not Dorian. The older man was anything but predictable. He circled Rohan, twirling the blade between his hands in a confusing blur.
“You couldn’t save us in the forest, you let us die. You even killed poor Dorian a second time. You are a disgrace.” Isa struck suddenly, Rohan parried but the darting blade still nicked him above his right eye.
“Not bad for an old dead man, yes?” Isa feinted as if he would strike the same place again but this time went low. Again Rohan parried but the blade managed to cut him across the thigh.
Rohan growled. If he let Isa set the terms of the fight, he would be slowly sliced to death. So, he did something Isa would not expect. He rushed him, like Dorian would have. The bullrush had the desired effect, but that was not the whole plan. Rohan stopped short and Isa took the bait. The older man overextended himself thrusting where Rohan should have been. Rohan stepped aside and, employing both blades, sliced off the dead man’s sword arm and head. Like Dorian’s body, Isa’s did not fall but neither did it move anymore. It stood rooted to the spot, frozen in a grim parody of a headless Greek ruin.
Within the stump of Isa Le Clerc’s neck, and from the gash in Dorian Le Clerc’s torso Rohan spied movement. Fat grubs with black beady heads crawled out of the wounds and fell to the earth. Hundreds of them flowed out hitting the ground with a pitter-patter like rain on leaves. The grubs began growing, rapidly increasing in size. Rohan took a step back but could not tear his eyes away from the macabre spectacle. The first of the grubs grew to the size of an infant child. Then it began sprouting weirdly jointed arms and legs, assuming a shape that Rohan knew only too well. It was the twisted phenotype of feral maboya. The other grubs began a similar transformation.
Rohan turned and ran for the house.
“They will have to squeeze under the doors one by one right. We can hold them off.” Kamara suggested as he slammed the door behind him and engaged the lock.
“No, in their completely degenerated form they can liquefy and flow beneath the doors in a torrent. We have a moment while they grow. Grab Agrippa and get through the service tunnel. Tarik can burn them like he did in Laventille.”
The first of many demonic shrieks ripped through the air of dusk as a marauding horde of pale monstrosities descended on Stone.
Chapter 33
Lisa awoke from a black stupor disoriented, achy, hungry, and badly needing to go to the bathroom. The memories of the moments before she went unconscious slowly began to assemble themselves like a jigsaw puzzle pieced together by a toddler. Where am I now?
“Hello.” A quiet voice jolted her fully awake. She sat up and looked around. A young man sat on a cot in the far corner of the clean, minimally furnished room. The man did not seem immediately threatening but Lisa was quickly learning that an unassuming appearance meant very little in her new reality. The man stood.
“Don’t come any closer, or I’ll…I’ll.” She realized that there was very little she could do to establish a convincing threat. There was a lamp on the bedside table, so she grabbed that and held it at the ready. The man sat back on the cot.
“Hold on, I won’t hurt you. My name is Sam, we, umm, I was taken and we, I mean, well… I’m here against my will, like you.”
Rather than being put at ease, the young man’s difficulties selecting the appropriate pronoun made Lisa more uncomfortable. “If you were taken then you’ve got some sort of power, something he needs.”
The man nodded and muttered something inaudible, as if he was having a conversation with someone she could not see. Lisa raised the lamp a little higher.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I know how strange this might seem, my situation is complicated. I don’t have power, but I have knowledge.”
“What sort of knowledge.”
“I know how to open a permanent hole to the Grey.”
“Shit, I have the key to the power needed to open that hole.”
“And we are both here together. That is probably not good.”
Their conversation was cut short when a girl in a red and gold sari materialized through the closed door. Lisa instinctively reached for the power of the key and was once again hit by a wave of nausea and a pounding headache. She tried to push through the pain, but the agony swelled and swelled ruining the focus needed to touch the source. When she finally gave up, she found herself doubled over. Sam and the newcomer were staring at her, with worried expressions.
The girl broke the silence first. “You will kill yourself if you continue doing that.”
“I know you,” Lisa managed, gritting her teeth as she waited for her stomach to stop roiling. “You’re the girl who tried to grab me in that awful house.”
“I’m Ghita, Lucien’s gatekeeper. It is very rare that people come to that house willingly. I just wanted to talk to you.”
“What are you? Some sort of ghost?”
“You could say that. But that is unimportant now. I must take you to Lucien. He is ready to begin.”
“Why are you helping him? He’s evil.”
“I have no choice, he has power over me. You will soon see how hard it is to resist him. I tried to help by warning Katharine, but I see she too has been captured.”
“Is she ok?”
“She’s alive for now, but she is still unconscious.”
“Can’t you just let us go?”
“No, Lisa. Once he gives me a direct order, I am compelled to carry it out. I barely survived the punishment after Lucien found out I had spoken to Katharine.”
“Lisa, it’s up to us then. We can’t help him, no matter the cost,” Sam said.
“Come now, Lucien is getting impatient.”
“And if we choose not to come?” Sa
m asked.
“Then I will be punished, and he will send someone far more unpleasant to drag you to him.”
Lisa decided to comply at least for the moment. She and Sam followed the little girl out of the room and through hallways hung with finely detailed and exquisitely colorful paintings from Hindu mythology. It was a beautiful place. The garden threw off the scents of many flowers, most prominently frangipani. The sounds of bullfrogs and crickets blew in from the surrounding countryside. The place seemed surreal, Eden-like.
“Where are we?” Lisa asked.
Ghita did not respond immediately, as if she was gathering her thoughts to provide a satisfactory answer. “Time, I have learned, is a strange concept, even stranger when you compare the difference between how time is perceived amongst the three realities. Only in the Absolute do we have rigid temporal structures for the past, the present and the future. In the Grey, time is far less rigid and, in the Ether, past, present and future may all occur simultaneously, or not at all, or in any sequence.
“To support the rigid temporal structure of the Absolute, every moment of the so-called past is immediately erased as the future is written. The past thus only exists in the memories of those who have experienced or learned about it.
“Because of this, every moment in the Absolute is unique, non-recurring, and fleeting. Human beings, generally, cannot travel backward or forward in time because there is no backward or forward destination, there is only the here and now. But sometimes, when a moment in time has been particularly tragic or significant, that moment cannot be completely erased. The heightened emotions and memories of those who have experienced it prevent that moment from being removed from the web of time. That moment becomes frozen outside the passage of time forever.
“It may be easier for you to conceptualize the occurrence as similar the circumstances under which ghosts are created. Ghosts linger because of some tragedy or deeply unpleasant emotions which assume energy of their own and linger after death.