by Mason Sabre
They went through another door at the end of the corridor, and Stephen expected to walk into an office complex. He didn't expect to walk into living quarters. Maybe this was Lee's. There was a lounge; it was basic. It had a splash of colour to it but not much else. It was more browns and creams and just the necessary furniture for a man to live there by himself. "Well, you're really married to your work."
The plaster was flat and smooth, bare. There were no pictures to decorate the walls, no mementoes hanging in different locations to commemorate a life a man was happy to lead. There was no television, no objects of anything that might give a sign into the personality of somebody like Lee. But then, Stephen supposed, the absence of everything was Lee’s personality. He was empty, devoid of any decoration, devoid of anything inside the man to give him some compassion.
They went into the kitchen. Lee went to the sink and poured himself a glass of water. He knocked it back in five gulps and then turned the glass upside down and put it back into the drainer. There was a window above the sink, but it wasn’t a window that peered outside.
“Well shit,” Stephen said when he looked through it.
On the other side of the glass, there were trees and bushes. A wooded path snaked its way around to the back where there was a wooden shelter, a shed of sorts. Lee had his hands braced against the edge of the sink. He was pressing so hard his fingers dipped in and bent the steel bowl. If Stephen had a physical form, he probably would have done the same. Lee had a window to the very place Stephen had spent the last two years of his life.
Never again. If Stephen had to burn anything to his memory, it would be the sight of the room, of what was through the window. He would never go back, and neither would Helena.
There was a small archway on the opposite side of the lounge and through that was a kitchen. Another two doors were leading off, and one of them was like the door in the garage, just blank and unadorned. Stephen supposed it was a pantry of some sorts, although Lee would have little use for it now, with his gift of the tiger, he had also been given the need to eat meat, fresh, raw meat, dripping with blood, and hunted.
It was then that Lee came into the room. Stephen stepped back with arms across his chest, waiting to see what Lee would do, partly hoping that Lee would stare into his old life and weep, but Stephen doubted that would happen.
It wasn’t a pantry, it wasn’t even a closet stuffed full of all the shit people hideaway and close. No.
Through the door was a small room, the small room one might refer to as a box room. Not big enough to do anything with, no furniture, perhaps someone could have used it as a small office space. But standing in the corner of the room, was a woman. To Stephen, she looked and felt Human, and she was weeping. She held her hands, fingers laced together, across her abdomen the same way Stephen had seen Helena do a hundred times. It was a female instinct they all had to rest their hands protectively across their bellies where new life slept and stirred.
It was hard to tell how far along she was in her pregnancy. This swell of her belly had an odd shape to it. Instead of the dome-like roundness under her shirt, her belly seemed to be swollen on one side only and raised even more at the top part. It was as if everything that held the baby had vanished and the shape of the baby on her skin remained.
The woman had her eyes on them both, and her gaze darted back and forth; a rabbit knowing it was about to be hunted. It was like she could see Stephen, and he raised a hand in front of her and waved slowly. He didn't want to speak, not with Lee around. His focus at that moment was entirely on her.
Something about the way she looked at Stephen was odd. When she moved, she went to stand by him, and they watched Lee go through the door into the room on the other side.
Stephen wasn’t afraid of Lee, but something in his gut, inside his tiger perhaps, was already contemplating what they would see on the other side. He wasn’t a coward. Instead of going all the way in, he opted to stand in the doorway. He could see what Lee was up to as well as the woman. She had her eyes fixated on him. Oddly she was making Stephen more uncomfortable than Lee ever did. But, when Stephen gave his attention back to Lee and what he was doing, he almost wished to close his eyes.
The floor was dirty and dust-covered, but that didn't seem to bother Lee as he knelt. There was a woman slumped against the wall. Her face was marred with dirt, and there were streaks through the dust on her face. Her hair was matted, and the clothes she wore were different to the ones he could see her standing in now. There was a pool of blood on the floor beneath her, and she only wore socks.
Lee grabbed the woman by the jaw, pinching her delicate bones between his thumb and forefinger. “You couldn’t even do this right, could you?” He clasped his fingers together bringing about the snapping sound as her bones gave way under his grasp. The sounds only seemed to infuriate Lee more, and he slid his entire hand around her neck and slammed her head against the wall with a sickening thump. He rose before she’d even slumped sideways.
Stephen entered the room then, not out of morbid fascination, but he wanted to see the real horror of what was before him because his mind couldn't quite comprehend the sight. He had dealt with Lee Norton for two years. He had seen and witnessed so much that they'd done but staring down at this woman sent waves of shock through him in cold icy fingers down his spine.
He hadn’t even noticed what was next to Lee, but when he did, it was impossible to unsee. Her baby. It was fully developed, but not alive, and as he allowed himself to peer closer, he took in the stripes across the child’s face and raised his gaze to Lee.
The scars on the small body were more profound, more symmetrical, but they were part of the child, not carved in. Little tufts of fur poked out through the lines around his body, and the baby was wrapped in a blanket that was partly folded, but even with that Stephen could see the umbilical cord that slid out from the edge of it and run along to the baby's mother.
His throat tightened as Lee stood before him. He indeed had created a monster.
He wished with every part of himself the woman didn’t have to see the child’s body and her own. The way she wept silently in the kitchen, he knew undeniably that she had stayed there and waited, for what he wasn’t sure. Him perhaps.
“I’m sorry,” Stephen said, and even that wasn’t enough to ease the pain in the depths of her eyes
She said nothing to him as he took a step in her direction, leaving Lee in the room to himself so he could relish in what he had done. The real horror of what Lee had become lay on the ground, dead. Stephen could only shake his head and follow the woman as she left the room.
He had to help her somehow, maybe ease her suffering, his tiger growled. He wanted to get back to Lee, to the one responsible for this. It wanted to go to him, go through him with claws and teeth. It wanted to rip him apart, bit by bit, making him understand the atrocities committed against a new life.
Stephen pushed his animal back. He had to help the woman. He always knew the Humans could be cruel, even to their own kind, but to see it, to witness it like this, took Stephen’s understanding to an even deeper level; one he wasn’t sure he could ever comprehend.
It was clear to Stephen that the woman in the room had been nothing more than a womb for Lee to place his child to grow and develop. There had been no affection in Lee’s face when he had looked at her, no sorrow. He didn’t even seem to have any emotions attached to the child.
Stephen followed the woman. He could find Lee later. Filth always had a way of coming back, even when it wasn’t wanted.
But the woman deserved his attention. She might have been Human and one of the enemy, but she didn’t deserve to be treated that way, and she didn’t deserve the death she had been given.
He followed her out of the living area. Maybe he could help her, guide her. Something. There was a protective need in him that wanted to ease the pain emanating from her.
She went through the facility ahead of him, although she kept turning to make sure he was f
ollowing. When she took a couple of turns, he lost her.
He searched around some paths in the facility for a while, but it was so big, she could have gone anywhere. He had to stop. If she really wanted his attention, she could find him.
He closed his eyes, willed his thoughts as if he could physically put them out into the world. “I’m here if you need me.”
Helena. He had to go back to Helena.
Chapter 10
Stephen left the facility and headed back toward the house. He still didn't know where the house was, and if anybody had asked him for directions, he would not know what to tell them. It was like he had an internal radar toward the place. Perhaps the internal radar was pointing toward Helena and his children rather than the house itself. Whatever it was, he didn't care. He trusted it, and it got him there.
He'd given the facility a quick search before leaving. A fundamental part of him would have never given him peace for not searching for the woman. She'd been nowhere, and with every second he looked, there was a gnawing inside his gut that told him to go home. If she was in the facility, she was hiding from him, and he knew she would come out when she was ready … when she wanted to be found. Before then, there was nothing he could do for her anyway or her child. It wouldn't matter how much he tormented Lee for the atrocities he'd committed against the woman and her baby, they could never be undone. Lee would never understand what he had done. The only thing he could ever understand was power and greed, and Lee had that in spades.
It was still dark when Stephen emerged from the building and the shades of blue coming over the horizon told Stephen dawn was on its way. From outside the facility, Stephen could see the chimney that rose out of the back of the prison, the actual prison, the one he had been destined to go to when he first boarded the bus to Exile. Thick plumes of smoke billowed out into the sky, spreading vile poison into the air. Eden had told him once that when the smoke poured out like that, the Humans were burning what was left of the Others they had used and discarded.
Stephen asked once how often they spilt out like that. "Usually twice a week," she had told him. "For the busier weeks, when the boats come in, the chimney can spill out every day." He stared at it now, remembering her words and wondering if it poured out yesterday.
When he got further down the road in the direction he needed to go, he turned and cast a glance back at the facility. He wanted to imprint it into his mind, so if he ever got back to his solid form, he would know the way to get to where Lee hid. The small chimney stood out from somewhere in the middle of the facility. It wasn't as tall as the one ploughing out the smoke into the atmosphere just now, but it stood just as dark — a symbol of what this place meant and what went on behind closed doors. There was no smoke coming out of the chimney tonight.
It didn’t take too long to get back to the town where Helena was, Stephen thought, but he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t remember the journey from the facility to the house although he had walked it. The small lane that ran from the main road to the abandoned town where Eden had set up home, twisted and turned, and eventually petered out into nothing. Coming in from the outside was like taking a wrong turn from the busy road, and if Stephen had been driving and turned down this lane, he was sure as hell he would have thrown the thing into reverse and gone back the way he had come and never come back again. Maybe that was the point.
Even though there was a main gate to the town, there was another gate just on the outside. There was a small bridge that crossed over a ditch and on this side of it was a building they had guarded at one point—a gatehouse, or what was left of one. Now the building was a part crumbled, half-derelict thing that spilt out stones and rocks onto the path. There was a rusty hunk of metal lying twisted in the earth and the grass, and the weeds had grown around the edges as Mother Nature tried to grasp it back with her fingers. One day the gate would be nothing more than a rotted structure sticking half out of the ground, if visible at all. The path that led to the main entrance was potholed and decorated with muddy puddles, and there were small piles of tarmac at the side where someone cleared the way; there was even a partly worn tyre half buried in the overgrown grass.
The town ... a tall fence surrounded it and around the fence was a ditch. From what Stephen could see, the trench went the whole way around and acted more like a moat. It wasn't filled with any water or wildlife, and what was at the bottom was murky, slimy black. No living creature would have ever been able to survive in that.
One panel along the fence was a different shade of brown than the others. All the others had weathered grey patches to them, but this one had ripples of new wooden life. Stephen stepped off the path and went to the edge of the ditch to stand opposite the odd-looking panel. He crouched and peered across the ditch. The panel wasn’t fully flush with the ground like the rest. The rest were buried in the earth, but this one had a gap under it that was small enough for somebody to put their hands under and lift.
Next to Stephen's feet, there were grooves in the earth as if somebody had driven a car to the edge of the ditch and stopped, but then across the other side the imprint of tyres picked up and went to the panel.
“Witch tricks,” Stephen muttered to himself.
He knew that whatever the tracks and the reason for the new fence panel were something to do with Eden, but right then, he guessed it really didn’t matter.
Once this town had probably been filled with promise and hope. Now everything was nothing more than buildings with boards across the windows and masses of weeds growing in the gardens that had probably flourished beautiful flowers. Everything in Exile was eventually left to rot and decay like this.
He stepped around the first gate and then through the second, pausing only for a second as the whoosh against his skin jolted him. The house Eden had chosen was far enough back they could see it only a little from the outside of the gate, but close enough that it was near to the exits.
There was a small child outside the house, a boy. He appeared to be around the same age as Aiden, or maybe just a little younger. He was sitting on the bottom step tapping a foot to a song Stephen couldn’t hear. His slim frame said he was half starved, but the neat clothes he wore said he wasn’t neglected. If he was Other, it was impossible any Humans would have taken him in and cared for him, even if he was a child. The Humans were not picky about who they turned away. It was simple … all Others, no matter their age or ability, they were refused help. To Humans a child Other was as good to slaughter as any adult. Sometimes, children were better because they were harder to lose and easier to kill, and there was the bonus of the sorrow that would erupt through the Others with the child’s death.
Stephen kept an eye on the boy as he walked toward the house, and the boy stood and hovered around the front yard. He walked up three steps to the front door and then stopped outside and peered in through the small window at the side, then he took a step back and nearly lost his footing, but he turned at the last moment–back down the steps. With a quick hop, he moved over the small wall and peered inside the big window to the house. It was then that Stephen quickened his pace, his curiosity getting the better of him.
The boy pressed his face against the glass, and when Stephen got closer, he turned, shot Stephen a glare and went back up the steps.
“Hey,” Stephen called as he ran toward him. He tutted at himself, momentarily forgetting that nobody could hear him. But when Stephen got to the bottom of the steps, the kid was there. He stared right at him. “Hey,” Stephen said again. The boy looked him right in the eye, but never said a word, then he turned and went into the house.
The front door was still closed when Stephen got to the top; he didn’t recall seeing the boy open it, and his mind fought the need to be logical.
Although Stephen didn’t mind passing through objects, he’d already figured the doors and walls felt stranger than just passing through odd gates and bits of tables. He took a deep breath, shut his eyes and pushed himself forward and through the door.
It sucked him in and spat him back out almost immediately on the other side.
The boy wasn’t there, no one was. From the moment he stepped into the house, it was like he’d walked into an airtight container of sound. Chattering noise came from rooms in different directions, and he could hear Aiden wittering about something.
The need to search the house for the boy was great, but it wasn't as great as the need to see Helena to make sure she was okay. He would do that first, and then he would check. Whatever the kid wanted, he could wait.
His body still lay useless in the back room taking up space and time. The instant Stephen saw himself, bitter bile rose in his throat, and he swallowed. "You should just switch me off," he said to Helena. "I'm not fit for anything anymore."
She was still beside his bed, although she was standing, and she had a mug of something hot and steaming in her hands. There was another drawing on the wall above Stephen’s head. This time it was all the people together, and apparently, Aiden decided Stephen had blue hair.
“Eden says there’s more broth if you want it,” Xander said as he came into the room. He wiped at the corners of his lips and covered his mouth with his fist as he stifled a belch.
“I’m good. Tell her to put it in the fridge, and it will do for lunches tomorrow.”
He gave a nod, and instead of leaving the room, he entered it. “Any change?”
“Nothing.”
It was only when Xander came into the room fully, did Stephen see the boy again. He'd been hidden behind Xander, and he followed him in and went to stand next to him. No one else noticed, not Helena, not Xander. He was staring at Stephen, and then he glanced at the half-dead version of him on the bed before going back to Xander.
Another soul?
Stephen inched closer to him. He was over six feet tall, and his build matched the hours he had spent in the gym before someone had turned his world upside down. He shadowed most men at the best of times, and to a small boy, he probably seemed like a monster. Even the slight distance he kept it was hard not scare the kid away. "Can you see me?" He asked.
