by A. P. Moraez
Ash brought a hand up and rested it over the boy’s chest. He was so little that Ash’s hand, stretched over him, covered more than half of his width.
“Hey, buddy,” he greeted, words trembling. “How you doing?”
He immediately felt like an idiot for asking that question, and his eyes filled up with the agony, the impotency.
“I hope you had fun at the circus,” Ash whispered. “I can’t wait to see everything you’re gonna draw. All the animals.” A soft, sad smiled twisted his lips as he talked; he only hoped that would really happen. He couldn’t afford to think otherwise.
“You just have to hang on a little more, okay?” Fuck. He couldn’t do this. “You just gotta hang on a little more until the doctors find out what that bastard did to you.”
He leaned down and pressed the gentlest of kisses to the kid who meant so much.
“You can’t leave us, Trav,” he whispered, voice shaky. “You’re so loved. So, so loved. Just come back to us.”
Ash jerked back, caught by surprise, when his phone rang inside his pocket.
“Hello.”
Only breathing reached his ear.
“Hello?” he tried again. Nothing, just a calm, deep breathing.
He rubbed his face with his left hand. “Look, this is really not the time for p—”
“It’s good to hear your voice after so many years, Ash.”
Ash’s breath caught in his throat, and he was thankful for the chair that just happened to be near enough for him to lean down on, otherwise he’d probably have collapsed to the hospital floor.
“You know, I’ve been watching you closely through social media, but it’s just not the same as hearing your voice talking to me personally.”
Ash’s heart was threatening to come out of his throat, it was beating so fast. The last time he’d hear that voice, it was in the middle of a house being burned down.
“What do you want?” he managed to get out through gritted teeth.
“Oh, no long time no see?” Leo said, voice low on the other side of the line. “No I missed you? You’re breaking my heart, Ash.”
“Was it really you? You did this to the boy?”
A pause.
“You deserved it, you know. It’s your fault, really, for having run. Nobody runs from me. You should know that by now. The game only ends when I say it ends. You had no business getting out of the country and leaving me all alone behind.”
“You’re sick.”
Leo burst out laughing, then coughed more. “Thank you.”
Ash was breathing heavy, not quite able to process he was really talking to that monster after so many years.
“So, how is little Travis doing?”
“How’d you get this number?”
“Let’s just say I have my sources.”
That didn’t bode well. Only people close to him had access to his personal phone number. What did he mean by that?
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Ash rose from the chair so quickly it fell backwards with a resonating thud.
“How do you think he’s doing, you bastard? Uh? What the fuck did you do to him?”
Leo coughed, dry, then chuckled. “You know, I’m really proud of this creation in general,” he said with clear pride in his deep voice. He coughed twice, then continued, “It took me months to develop it, a few years back, but I finally reached the right formula.” He chuckled again. “If I’m not mistaken, Travis should have maybe an hour left, give or take a few minutes.” There was sound of liquid being poured into a glass. “You’ll be right there when he takes his final little breath, isn’t that just great?”
“Why?” Ash found himself saying in a moment of weakness. The last thing he wanted was to give Leo the satisfaction of seeing him hurting. “Why him?”
“Why Natasha? Why did you break my daughter’s neck and left her to burn?”
“It was different,” Ash sneered, losing his shit. “Trav is innocent. He’s pure and innocent. Your daughter collected eyeballs from the men you killed.”
Only background noise filled his ears for several seconds as he gripped the phone to his ear so hard his hand shook.
“I’ll call you back in an hour or so,” Leo said, evading his comment. “Just to check how things went. See ya, Ash.”
And then the line went dead.
The walls were closing in all around him, pressuring his head. It was hard to breathe. Ash just pressed a kiss to Trav’s forehead again and rushed out of the room. Hugh wasn’t outside, so he just walked back to where his family was. Logan was still talking in hushed tones to his family, who’d gathered around him, probably drawn in by his inner strength and light. Ash passed right by them, ignoring Logan when he called his name.
“Just going to the bathroom real quick,” he threw over his shoulder, too chicken shit to look and face the shattered expressions on everybody’s faces.
He just needed a moment to regroup. A moment alone where he didn’t need to keep up appearances for anyone’s sake.
Ash followed along the wide corridor, nurses and doctors and other strangers all blurred before his teared-up eyes. He locked his jaw and forged ahead until he thundered into the double doors into the men’s restroom. Another massive wooden pillar pierced right through the room, probably continuing down to other levels while it supported the ceiling. It was square in shape, but the edges were round and smooth, probably worn out by time. He’d always found a little weird that the otherwise modern hospital had so many features in wood, including parts of its own foundation.
Ash rushed to it and threw a punch, crying out in despair.
It was all his fault. Trav was going to die and it was all his fault and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Leo had created some chemical the doctors had never heard of before. They’d never be able to save him.
His knuckles were already bleeding from the first punch. The second one left blood smeared on the pillar itself. Ash was sobbing, head propped on the pillar, smelling only antiseptic and shit, while the world collapsed around him. His eyes were squeezed shut, hand pulsing with pain and dripping blood on the otherwise pristine floor, while tears ran free down his cheeks. And all he could think of was the first time he’d held the boy dying a few doors down. The absolute joy on Jeff’s and Soph’s faces when they held their baby for the first time. Ash had been there, right at their side, at Hoofslope little hospital room. A little movie of all the times he’d fed and bathed Trav when he was a baby, that one time the pest pissed all over his brand-new white shirt, played out in his despaired mind. His shy smile that’d greeted Ash countless times every time they saw each other. The day Jeff and Soph had told him they wanted him to be Trav’s godfather and the whole ceremony that had followed at Hoofslope’s church soon after.
He punched the pillar again, then jolted back in shock. It’d… it had electrocuted him. But how? There were no wires attached anywhere near the thing. Must’ve been his own body’s ionic response or something. He was breathing heavy, head pounding in synchrony with the pulsing in his abused, bloody right hand. He wouldn’t be able to play for a while, but how did that matter when he wouldn’t ever see Trav’s smile again?
Ash was about to turn around and head for the sink to try and get rid of some of the blood when something in the pillar caught his eye.
The symbols.
The… the runes.
The exact same kind that decorated his favorite bridge back home. That he’d seen here and there, in lesser amounts, in other bridges, carved deep into the front doors of some shops, and even there on the City Hall and Library. They were here too.
Ash narrowed his eyes and stepped closer. Five circles of them, interlacing with each other, two made exclusively of angular shapes and a few runes, while the other three were made of the circular symbols mixed in with a few runes he recognized from his researches in the past.
He’d been to this bathroom before a few times, but had never noticed them. He tho
ught the things were exclusive to Hoofslope. He’d never thought to look out from them in the other cities hidden here, away in the mountains. Mesmerized, Ash took a step forward until he was only one foot away from the pillar, and examined the circles of probably ancient carvings. As always, his mind wondered. What did they mean? Why were they here and… and everywhere else at home? Were they somewhere in Hardcliff too? Who the hell had carved them there? And why?
Ash winced when he lifted his bloodied hand to touch one of the circles. There were smudges of blood right at the point where two of them intersected, probably where Ash had punched the wood before. He hadn’t even realized the symbols where there, blind with anger and frustration.
When his fingertips touched the circle closest to his face, a bolt of what felt like electricity shot from them all the way to Ash’s neck, making him jump back in confusion and shock.
“What the hell…” he murmured to himself, breathing heavily through his slacked mouth. How the hell was he being electrocuted by wood? That shouldn’t even be physically possible.
It was crazy, and he was probably gonna be electrocuted again, but Ash stepped forward again, apprehensive, and lifted his hand to make contact once more.
His fingertips were about to connect with the markings when the impossible happened. In unison, the intertwined rings pulsed. Ash’s heart skipped several beats, and he pulled his hand back. He could’ve said it was just his eyes playing tricks on him, but in just a few seconds, it happened again.
All the five rings pulsed with blinding blue-white light that burned Ash’s corneas and left an imprint behind in his retina.
He gazed in the direction of the stalls, then the door, checking if there was anyone near to see this too. There was nobody. He shifted his eyes back to the freak show going on right under his nose.
They pulsed yet again and Ash wanted to run away from there. This was unnatural and certainly nothing he was equipped to deal with.
But he couldn’t run. Something. Some force was holding him right there, a mere foot away from the blinding rings of light that pulsed and pulsed and pulsed, like they were summoning, seducing. Ash groaned and tried with all his might to make his body obey him, but no use.
And just when he thought things couldn’t get any weirder, they did.
Those pestering lights that’d been with him for years and years, sometimes mocking, sometimes comforting, emerged from thin air before his eyes. Other than the first time they’d ever appeared, they never did unless accompanied by his music. Why were they there now, shifting and undulating before him? Why… why were they jumping right before his nose, and pulsing to the rhythm of the rings of ancient symbols on the wall? And why, for God’s sake, were they smoothing out and settling around the circles, forming a circle of their own?
Ash squeezed his eyes shut and tried to move yet again. Nothing. He was stuck in a hospital bathroom, with his nephew about to die, and he was the only one who knew of the inevitability of it. And where did he found himself? Stuck there having what was probably the worst episode of withdrawal ever recorded in History.
Because that had to be it.
Because things like this just didn’t happen.
They weren’t real.
The only things real were death and pain and suffering and psychopaths who killed innocent children like it was nothing.
Ash took a deep breath, then opened his eyes, confident that everything would’ve disappeared from before his eyes.
Nope.
Still there, the lines his mind had always created now resting, pulsing and shining around the still pulsing rings of carvings.
Something inside him knew what he had to do, but he was scared. What if it hurt? What if it was the last thing he ever did? Why were they here? What did they want? What did they mean?
But deep inside he knew it was the only way out of this bathroom. Back to his family. To Logan. They needed him. The darkest episode in their lives was coming, and they were gonna need him. He’d have to be strong for them. Because it was all his fault.
So Ash closed his eyes and moved, and this time he knew his legs would work, because it was his intention to move forward, not to run away. All the concentrated power of whatever it was that gave those carvings life warmed his whole front and made his spine tingle. He kept his eyes closed and tried to stamp down on his fear. Whatever was about to happen, it was bound to change him — to change his life — forever.
Flashes of long ago, when he was discussing the subject with Tom, invaded his mind. Love, Tom had told him the word rune meant. Affection. Ash took one last breath and raised both arms, bloody hand and all, positioning them at a level where he knew the bulk of the interlaced circles were waiting for him. Something hidden.
A cry from the depth of everything he was ripped through his body, out of his mouth. Someone was bound to barge into the room at any second and see whatever the hell was going on, but Ash couldn’t hold it back. He opened his eyes to see his hands molded to the wood, like it had liquefied and allowed his hands to penetrate it, right over the now radiating symbols. Because they weren’t beckoning anymore, with their little pulses. They were bursting with light that threatened to blind him. Electricity sparked through his spine all the way to his feet, and Ash screamed, not knowing how many seconds more he’d be able to hold it before it killed him. Before he knew it, though, gradually, the pain subsided and started to turn into warmth. Searing warmth that felt like it boiled his hands and crawled up to his forearms.
Without a signal or preamble, the five rings burst from the wood and Ash’s hands were released. He fell back on his ass, hands and arms burning. The rings grew, expanded, danced in the air right above him, the blue lines that had been with him for years now jumped from their circular formation and joined them, and for a few seconds it was all a wild dance in the air, so much light it rivaled the Sun.
Ash’s breath caught when they stopped all at once, contracted, and shot in his direction. They circled him, like a hurricane, and Ash’s body started tingling all over. In shock, he stood and just watched as, one by one, the circles contracted until they became smaller than what they’d been when carved on the pillar. They pierced his skin, blistering and burning as they settled, and Ash cried out, such was the searing pain coming from where they were embedding themselves. Meanwhile, one by one, the pestering little lights shot back into him. They didn’t just disappear into the air, as they usually did. They shot into him, right through his chest, and warmth webbed from there all the way to his limbs, followed by a shot of cold so intense it felt like his own blood was freezing inside his body.
He thought he was gonna pass out when the last circle hesitantly rotated around his wrist, passed its brothers, already scarring his skin, and settled with a hiss in the thicker part of his forearm, closest to the inside of his elbow. Now Ash had three full circles of symbols scarring, marking his right arm, and two on the left. As soon as they’d burned themselves on him, the skin had started healing, until only pronounced deep-red markings remained. And Ash didn’t know what to make of any of it.
For one thing, he didn’t feel different. He didn’t feel better or worse. Just confused. He raised both forearms to eye-level and stared at the symbols now marked on his skin, trying to make some sense of it. And only in that moment he realized that his hand, which he’d damaged in despair just a few minutes earlier, wasn’t even bloodied anymore. It wasn’t hurting anymore. It was like Ash had never punched that pillar.
Ash shifted his gaze to the pillar a few feet in front of him, and took the steps separating them. The blood there was gone too, but the five circles remained. They were exactly as Ash had found them, only now they were printed in his skin too.
He took a deep breath, rolled the sleeves of his thermal and sweater down to cover the new additions to his body, and rolled his shoulders. He didn’t have time for this bullshit. He had to go back and grow some balls and just tell his family there was no hope for Trav anymore. Better to just rip
off the Band-Aid than let them dwell in useless wishes and hopes that would only make them hurt worse when the worst eventually happened.
His hands and forearms were still all warm and tingling; all weird. But he didn’t have time for that now. He burst through the bathroom doors, throwing a menacing look at the massive pillar that had just screwed him up before leaving it behind.
They were all exactly like Ash’d left them: together and miserable in the waiting room. With a heavy heart, he approached them, every step feeling like he was walking through cement.
“Hey,” Logan greeted him, “extending an arm for Ash to settle into his side on the spacious couch.”
Ash settled there, taking comfort in Logan’s strength to say what he needed to say. He was about to open his mouth when his left arm burned and Ash had to bite his cheek to keep from crying out in pain. One of the symbols, a circular one, pretty, with a little curve at the top and two opposing curves at the end, emerged from his forearm, lifting through his clothes and stopping right before Ash’s eyes. Ash watched, mouth agape, as the thing, emanating a calm, gentle light, started gliding to the side, in the direction of the corridor that led to Trav’s room.
Ash instinctively knew what it wanted.
“Where you going?” Logan asked in a low voice when Ash rose from the couch.
“I’ll be right back. I just want to check on Trav again.”
He disappeared down the corridor, praying to everything in the Universe that Hugh or some other doctor wouldn’t stop him from getting into Trav’s room. The whole way, floating just a few feet ahead, the symbol guided him. When they got to Trav’s room, it went right through the door. When Ash pushed it open, it was nowhere to be found.
A weird instinct guided him to Trav’s bed. He was still sickeningly gray and sweating, heartbeat a little weaker than it’d been just twenty minutes ago. He had nothing to lose, so he closed his eyes and asked for help. For whatever it was that had carved those runes and symbols everywhere; for whatever those lights that for years had only served to mock and, occasionally, comfort him; for whatever force or entity had just marred his skin with five rings of light. Ash rested one hand to Trav’s forehead, and another over his little sternum, and he filled himself with intention and belief. He visualized Trav waking up and giving him that little shy smile that never failed to melt his heart.
