by Platt, Sean
Why did God make monsters? And if He didn’t make them, why did He allow them to exist? To torment those around them? Why would He randomly kill people around the world — innocent, good people, living their everyday lives, while allowing a monster like his father to hurt his family and grow stronger each day?
Downstairs, the fighting fell to silence.
The boy felt relieved, and guilty. He turned from the door to face his wall and window. Now that the monster was done beating his mother, he’d come to the boy’s doorway, watching his son with eyes full of hate, waiting to see if Caleb would turn or wake so he could punish him for the high crime of drawing breath.
The boy’s door creaked open.
He instantly regretted having turned from the doorway. Now he couldn’t peek to see if his father was standing, or coming closer. He could only listen and wait, watching through half-closed eyes as his father’s shadow crisscrossed his wall, praying it wouldn’t fall upon him.
“I know you’re awake, boy,” his father said, the word “boy” a nasty hiss.
Footsteps.
“I said I know you’re awake. Boy.”
Caleb’s heart pounded. The moment he’d been fearing. He considered turning around, admitting to the ruse, but feared more wrath from his father. He’d committed to the lie — better to wait it out, and hope his father would give up.
Instead, he felt his father’s hands press on the bed. He leaned in close to the boy’s head and whispered, “I said, I know you’re awake.”
His father’s alcohol-soaked breath was hot on his neck. He felt tears streaming down his face, then piss down his legs.
“Jesus Christ, did you piss yourself?”
He smacked the boy on the back of his head.
Caleb howled. Moments later the bedroom lights flicked on, and his father stood, staring at his son in disgust. “You fucking moron, you pissed the bed!”
“I’m sorry,” Caleb cried out. “I’m so sorry.”
“Goddamn right you are! You’re gonna get up right this instant and wash these sheets.”
His father reached out to yank Caleb by the hair, and grabbed a big clump. When the boy started convulsing, he pulled his hair even harder.
Caleb screamed and reached up to push his father’s hands away. Instead, his hands locked onto him, and he felt hot energy leaving his father and coursing into his veins.
The boy shuddered. Cold fire erupted in his body, spreading from his hands into his limbs and into his chest. He’d never felt more alive or more … powerful.
What’s happening? I’m … feeding from him!
Caleb saw flashes — memories, not his own, flooding his mind, too fast to make sense of.
Memories of being a young girl, riding on the back of her mom’s bicycle; the time she lost her cat, Fluffy, and cried for days blaming herself for the cat’s disappearance; the night of her first high school dance, going alone, hoping some boy, any boy, would ask her to dance, but nobody did; acing her college exams; her first real paycheck, and helping pay off her parents’ house; meeting Caleb and marrying him.
The boy looked down at the ashen remains, confused. Only he was no longer a boy and the ashes were not those of his father.
Caleb woke staring wide-eyed, jaw stretched open wanting to scream, cry, or anything other than the animal whimper leaking from his throat as he stared at Julia’s charred remains.
“No, no, no, no!” he cried, the words coming out in choked sobs.
He fell to her side, trying to revive her, but as his hand touched her chest, it caved in beneath him, charred ashes.
He cried out, backing away from the bed, staring down at his hands, the world crumbling around him.
What have I done?
Fifty-Seven
John And Caleb
2:14 a.m.
As Larry drove Hope to her new location — a location that had to remain a secret kept from John — Adam prepared John for reversion.
Once Larry returned, Adam would wipe the last few hours from his mind, just enough to bury Hope’s location from his memory. Now the only people who knew where she was were insulated enough from both John and Larry to protect her from discovery even if Jacob found them both.
The spell to return John to his normal self involved being buried for forty-eight hours, and a partial mind wipe. A reboot of John’s primal self, allowing the parasite to flourish again. While he maintained some of his magickal abilities now, he’d need more power to go against Jacob, and only the parasite’s full strength could make him a merciless killer.
Fortunately, he and Larry were prepared for battle. John had spent nearly a decade gathering artifacts, mostly weaponized, with magickal properties that could be used to injure and kill creatures from Otherworld. While John had been avoiding this war for a lifetime, the thought of losing Hope, of having to sacrifice their relationship, being forced to wipe her lifetime of memories, sent him into a white-hot rage.
And John would vent his fury on anyone who stood in the way of his bringing Jacob down.
Adam recited some spells while John drank a beer and swallowed a couple of sleeping pills, to prepare, and maybe numb the pain of Hope’s absence.
He was already drifting, embracing the daze, when he heard a distant scream.
He jumped off the couch, spinning around, searching for the source. Adam was still reciting spells. He looked up. “What is it?”
“Did you hear that?”
Adam turned around, confused. “Hear what?”
Again, the sound pierced John’s mind, now accompanied by a vision of Caleb screaming, standing over a dead body. Not just any body, but his wife’s.
It’s happening. Caleb has changed.
John hopped up and threw his keys at Adam. “I need you to drive.”
He reached into his pocket, grabbed the contact card Caleb had given Hope, and handed it to Adam. “Can you track this?”
Adam squeezed his eyes tight then blinked and looked up at John. “Oh yeah, his signal is strong.”
“Good. We need to find him. Now.”
Caleb
Caleb shuddered in the corner, staring at the bed where his wife lay dead, closing and opening his eyes as if he might wake himself from some terrible nightmare.
More of Julia’s memories fluttered through his mind. Snippets of conversations, thoughts, laughter, sobbing, spinning faster as memories blended, fogging the distance between his and hers.
Caleb crawled along the floor toward his pants, which were crumpled beside the bed. He reached into his pants pocket and fished for his phone. He had to call someone, but who? What would he say?
He was about to dial Wu when his stomach made an impromptu somersault. He scrambled on all fours to the bathroom, collapsed onto the cool, clean porcelain toilet, and vomited a torrent of thick ebony liquid that seemed to somehow sparkle despite its tar.
What the fuck?
Caleb clutched the toilet, staring at the phone, poised to dial, while trying to think of what he’d say.
Nothing made sense. He tried to figure out how he had killed Julia, how he had drained her life, how her body had wound up exactly like the victims of his mysterious killer. He wondered if, somehow, the killer had broken in, killed Julia, and slipped out making Caleb think he’d murdered his own wife.
While that would’ve been easier to believe, the truth proved more confusing, and less palatable.
I did this.
I … somehow … did this.
John
John and Adam stood outside the room where the card’s beacon had dead-ended. John ordered Adam to stay back. He was from Otherworld, but not a feeder, and vulnerable to Caleb.
John would have to secure his brother first, no easy feat.
Adam moved toward the room across the hall from Caleb, listened against the door, heard nothing, then waved his hand over the card reader, causing the door to buzz open. “I’ll be in here,” Adam whispered, slipping into the room, carrying his worn leather bac
kpack full of magickal gear.
John moved his hand over Caleb’s door, unlocking it with a buzz.
Caleb
The buzz of the door startled Caleb like a shotgun blast.
He scrambled from the bathroom, grabbed his gun from the nightstand, and aimed it at the intruder.
It was the suspicious man he’d interviewed earlier.
“What the hell are you doing here?!” Caleb demanded, rising to his feet, gun on John.
John stared at the corpse. “You did this?”
“Get on your knees!” Caleb screamed. “Now!” He wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow this man had something to do with Julia’s death.
“I’m here to help you, Caleb. I know what happened.”
Caleb closed the distance between them, aiming straight at the man’s head. “Close the door.”
John did.
“On your knees.”
John did, then looked up, “It’s not your fault. You’ve been awoken.”
Caleb reached for his handcuffs, also on the nightstand, but then thought twice, realizing his touch could kill the suspicious man. He backed away, gun still trained on its target.
“Talk,” Caleb said.
“When you came to my house earlier, you recognized me, didn’t you? You weren’t sure from where, but you know that you knew me.”
“Yeah, I told you that already. Get to the point,” Caleb said, annoyed.
“We’re brothers, Caleb. Only, you’ve forgotten. They erased your memories. Until earlier today, when our meeting triggered … this.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Caleb inched closer to John, gun in his face, wanting someone to blame for what happened, somewhere to point his rage.
“I’m saying that you are … ” John’s voice trailed off, causing Caleb to lean closer and ask him to repeat what he said.
John reached up and seized Caleb’s neck, causing a blue spark to shoot out and send them sprawling in opposite directions.
Caleb’s gun fell to the floor.
He leaped up at John, trying to unleash whatever destructive power resided in his hands.
John rolled out of the way, sweeping a leg into Caleb’s, knocking him facedown to the ground.
Caleb sprang up and spun around, trying to counter, but John was already moving toward him.
John
John reached for Caleb’s neck again, this time closing in with a pulsing wave that knocked his brother out cold.
John leaped up and raced across the hall, knocking three times sharply. Adam appeared with his bag of tricks.
“I need you to wipe his memory for the past twenty-four hours, and plant a new one — he came home to his hotel room and found his wife’s body. There was a stranger in the room, who knocked him out before he could respond. He didn’t get a good look at him. He needs to call the agency when he wakes up. He cannot know he did this. Do you understand?”
John hoped that if he could erase the truth of the moment that perhaps Caleb could still live a normal life as a human.
Adam nodded, ignoring the dead woman on the bed, looking through his bag for the right spell book. John was always impressed at the wiry young man’s no-nonsense approach to his craft. Many of the Others were careless, sloppy, and self-indulgent — using magick only to pursue their own nefarious ends. Adam seemed almost scholarly in his attention to detail, almost sage-like when they’d worked together.
“Will this subdue The Darkness? Can he go back to being human?” John asked. “This was his first turning, I believe.”
“In theory, it should. When I wipe his mind, I wipe the parasite’s as well, restoring some balance of power in Caleb. I’ll also use the confinement spell I used on you.”
“You said my remission might not be permanent. I need his to be.”
Adam looked grim, meeting John’s eyes. “I’ll do what I can, but it’s not like there’s a proven spell with a long track record of working on Earth.”
“Thank you,” John said, “for everything.”
Adam nodded then added, “I know you plan to go after Harbinger, but I think it’s a mistake. Especially now. If we can’t keep Caleb in check, Jacob will find him. Caleb doesn’t have your defenses. He’ll need you to keep watch on him more than ever.”
“So, what am I supposed to do? Go back off the grid? Follow Caleb home and play secret bodyguard from the shadows?”
“Unless you’re certain you can kill Jacob and bring Harbinger down, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”
“But what about Hope?”
“You have to let her go on with her new life.”
John closed his eyes and looked around the room, weighing Adam’s words against his desire to get everything over with and find Hope again. Adam was right. The smart move was to go underground, keep an eye on Caleb, and ensure his safety before moving on Jacob.
John had allowed his feelings for Hope to cloud his judgment, and a lifelong commitment to keeping his brother safe. Love had made him weak. And that weakness could destroy not just their lives, but this world.
“Okay,” John said. “We go underground. For now.”
Into The Present
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Fifty-Eight
John
October 4, 2011
Two weeks before John woke in the grave
John sat on his cabin’s front porch, watching the sun set over the lake. He reached down and stroked Calvin’s head. The golden retriever’s tail came to life, wiping the wooden floor.
“Ready for a walk?” John set his beer next to his Kindle on the chipped mosaic table beside him.
Calvin leaped up, surprisingly quick for a dog so old. The dog was more youthful than John was feeling these days. The veneer of a young twentysomething guise he’d worn so long had faded over the last decade since he’d last fed. He now looked midforties, and his body felt a decade older, every joint screaming as he stood.
“Come on,” John said as the dog led him along the twisting path on the way to the lake. In the distance, on the other side of the water, John saw lights flicker from inside the house of his only neighbor in the acres of secluded woodland. John thought he should drive over and introduce himself someday. It had been a while since he’d had any company other than Larry. As he approached the deck leading out to a jetty, he reconsidered the ride to his neighbor’s. Maybe he’d take the boat.
The sky had already bled from orange to bruised violet, but most of the world was made from shades of black and branches surrounding them. A cool wind blew by, bringing an unfamiliar scent — a flower?
No, a cologne of some sort.
A moment later, Calvin rumbled with a low whine, sensing what John already had: they weren’t alone.
A shot rang out. John felt a sharp sting in his neck. His world curled crimson at the edges and faded to black.
He was out before he hit the ground.
John woke in his living room, hands cuffed behind him by plastic tethers, feet tied to the legs of his kitchen chair. An old man in a dark gray suit sat in front of him — a man John had hoped he’d never see again: Duncan Alderman.
They weren’t alone. John sensed four agents outside the cabin and a car idling nearby.
“Where’s my dog?” John asked as he came to.
“Sleeping in your bedroom. He’s fine.” A pause, then, “Do you remember me, John? It’s been a long time.”
“Some things you never forget.”
“I’d like to apologize. You know we were only trying to heal you.” Duncan leaned forward in his chair, opposite John. “We tried to get rid of the parasite so you could live a normal life … like Caleb.”
John said nothing to the man who split him and his brother up in the aftermath of their mother’s murder. The
man who placed Caleb in foster care but locked John in a government hospital/laboratory, where scientists poked him like a lab rat for years. The same man who said John was broken, then tried to turn him into a killer for the Guardians.
“We failed you, John.”
“No, I escaped,” John corrected him. “Why are you here? To bring me in?”
“I wish it were that simple, John. But I can’t trust that you’d be safe in our custody anymore. Fact is, many among us want you dead.”
John said nothing, his eyes locked on the old man’s.
“Jacob will find you. It’s only a matter of time before your defenses fail you. Then he’ll use you to find Caleb. You do know where Caleb is, don’t you?”
John nodded. “I’ve kept tabs.”
“You’re a good brother, John. I never thought you were the monster some of the others did. I’ll admit, though, I didn’t always think your motives were benevolent. But following your escape, you could’ve come back for Caleb at any time. Woken his memories, reminded him of who he is, of what he is … but you never did. You let him live a normal life, even when you didn’t have to.”
“One of us should’ve had a shot,” John said. “Again. Why are you here?”
Duncan looked down at his shoes then back up.
“You love your brother, right?”
“Of course.”
“And you’d do anything to protect him?”
“Get to your point.”
“Like I said, you’re getting weaker. You’re not feeding; you’re aging. Jacob will find you. And I can’t allow that.”
“So, take him out,” John said with a wicked smile.
“You think we haven’t tried?”
John didn’t respond.