by Lissa Kasey
Training, he’d mentioned often. That was what relationships were built on. When you thought about someone for a while and had to learn to make things work. No one simply meshed together like magic, no matter how attracted. That made sense to me. I had looked forward to discovering more little details about him. The idea of waking up with him every day, of having that tiny smile directed at me, and his crafting frenzy calmed by my presence made me giddy. The idea of having lost all that? Agony.
Fuck.
Leaning back against the seat, I closed my eyes and tried to remember the good things. His smile, the teasing way he laughed, or the devious glint in his eyes when he talked about his silent war with the church ladies. Most of all was the thought of him wrapped in my arms, while he cried, slept, or made delicious sounds while we made love. Those moments holding him made me feel real again. Alive.
I prayed in that moment, like I never had before in my life, not to a single God or even anything specific, but to everything supernatural that might exist. Please bring him back to me, I begged. Take me if you need to, just bring him back.
Would anyone hear? Did anyone care? Was there a higher presence or was life the chaos it appeared to be. No fate, no higher power in control, just a couple billion drunks at the wheel. I sighed and lay down on the bench, curling up into a fetal position and staring into the unmoving darkness. Everything was still. No birds, bugs, or shadows. Quiet. Lifeless, I realized in that moment. Like I felt right then.
I sighed and began to count, trying to ease the anxiety and panic to think straight. Was there something else I could be doing right then? Anything to help Micah? A glance at my watch said it was nearing midnight. Where had the time gone? Would the shadow come out? Was there a shadow in his garden or was it something more sinister?
The counting helped. I could feel my heartbeat begin to slow a little and my eyes drooped with exhaustion. It was work to keep them open and I blinked a few times when it seemed like the gnomes moved. A flicker at first, then the arms gave a little twitch before the head turned. Only that wasn’t possible. A dream maybe? If I’d had more energy, I would have bolted upright and stalked across the distance to learn the truth even if it terrified me. But I couldn’t find the strength as once again, my limbs felt weighted and heavy, as often happened when I napped,. A doctor once told me it was a mild form of sleep paralysis, nothing to fear really, just a slow awakening of the brain after or right before sleep. Only as I lay there in the darkness, sleep dragging me downward, the garden seemed to come alive. Gnomes, cats, and shadows extending to encase the area in movement. It should have terrified me, watching the change metamorphose the entire garden into a moving, thriving, thing. Would anyone see it on video? Or was it another weird side effect of that day in the desert?
I fought to keep my eyes open, muttering Micah’s name into the darkness as the weight of something more powerful than sleep dragged me down. “Bring him back to me,” I begged, stretching a hand toward a large shadow. “Please.”
It reached for me with a spectral darkness of writhing shades, shifting and changing into something with defined shape, but making my heart race, even while I still couldn’t move. A child with black eyes molded itself out of the darkness, the wavering of shadows giving it form. I blinked at it, fighting for strength to awaken, or move, or break whatever spell it had me under.
“If you want him back, you have to help him, otherwise he’s lost to both of us,” I whispered through heavy lips. Did the child care? Was this my demon or Micah’s? Was it even there or my brain playing tricks on me? If it was Micah’s, it had spent years tormenting him, did it want him gone or was it all an elaborate game?
I couldn’t stay awake, even if the terror told me it was a good idea to not let it touch me. If I got Micah back, that was all that mattered. Lukas would take care of him if I were gone. “Save Micah,” I whispered to the darkness. “Save Micah. Take me instead.”
Chapter 25
The abrupt change from the garden to the desert sand storm jarred me to the bone. From near sleep to a battle for survival, I suddenly found myself sitting in the doorway of the tent, staring into the ripping winds, confused by the change, and assaulted by the elements. Was it a dream?
It felt real. The howling of the wind, the sound of the sand pelting on the tent, the heat wafting off the hot desert in waves of distorted color, and the giant mass of wriggling darkness beyond. I couldn’t recall it having been that clear before. All the dreams had lost its shape in the swirl of air, grit, and darkness. Now I could almost make out its face, not unlike that man who’d walked toward our base in the darkness.
The locals had called it a jin. I knew from my research that jin weren’t the genies of storybooks. They didn’t grant wishes and weren’t benevolence of any kind. According to legend, jin were mortal creatures, though longer lived than human, who lived lives parallel to humans, but had magic and were made of fire. Often when they died it was in a fiery blaze. Or so the stories I read had stated.
They also took over the lives of humans, pretending to be human, though I wasn’t sure if that meant they could shapeshift to be someone who already existed, or had a form that could blend in with humanity. Either way it was a confusing and terrifying prospect.
I had often thought of those stories I’d overheard and the thing I’d seen in the desert, wondering if they were one and the same. Therapy and doctors told me that entertaining the thought meant I was nuts. No such thing, they said. But this wriggling mass of shadow and power sure looked like something. All in my head? Maybe. If that was the case then why was I so afraid?
“Why?” I asked it, seeing it move in the darkness as some sort of giant, and feeling bold. Would answers help ease my guilt? “Why did you kill them?” Why my unit? Why kill them at all? I thought about Micah’s words about the battle between mankind and angels. Maybe it wasn’t a jin but some sort of angel dropped down to seek vengeance for God having created humans. It all seemed such a pointless waste of time, as much of religion did, hate for a species, skin color, orientation or whatever.
I watched again as the men who’d served with me answered the siren call and died. An explosion of humanity, blood and gore no less gruesome than the first time or the thousand nightmares since. Despite the clarity in the thing’s form, I still couldn’t see how he/it/they did it. Will? A thought? Magic? Or did it move so fast I couldn’t see? Not that it mattered as this was all in the past, and what had Micah said about the past? Ghosts were memories of the past, right? Isn’t that what this was? A ghost of a memory? Did that mean it couldn’t hurt me? Perhaps it meant more that fear was nothing but a useless emotion like so many therapists had claimed in the past?
I got up and walked toward it, leaving the safety of the tent. There was a brief flicker of roiling terror filling my gut that it would suck me up and rip me apart too, only that time had passed. I had survived. Escaped. This was a dream. I swallowed it back and kept moving, not willing to let it control me anymore.
As I approached, the wailing wind went from deafening to silent, like it was waiting for me. That gaping face twisted and writhed until it turned in my direction. It seemed to blast me with terror and the emotion rolled over me, ingraining itself into every pore and making my skin crawl until I wanted to rip it off. I paused a moment to process, breathing in the emotion, the tightening of my lungs, and overwhelming need to run and recognized it as not mine. Fake. Like those few seconds when you fall asleep and suddenly dream of falling and jerk awake, the world disjointed and clarified all at once. I shook off the weight of it and continued forward.
“Not real. This is the past,” I reminded myself out loud. A dream couldn’t hurt me. Even if it was a dream from the past. “I need Micah back,” I told the creature. “If you can’t help me, then you’re worthless to me. Powerless.” I pushed down the terror, walking toward that mass like it was nothing more than a puppy in need of cuddling. “You haunt me, but you’re powerless. Only a memory.”
Th
e face snarled at me, a dark limb of swirling dirt reached for me, but passed right through me. Harmless.
“Worthless,” I restated. “If you can’t help me find Micah then you’re worthless. The memory, the fear, and the worry, all of it is worthless.” The fear slaked away as if it had been some sort of coating. Micah had faced his fear and come out angry with himself that he’d lost time. I wasn’t willing to lose more time either. Not to fear or anger. And not the time I planned to spend learning how to adore him.
“Bring him back to me or leave me be,” I demanded. I reached the feet of the swirling darkness and stared up into the monster of heat, sand, and power. In many ways I could see more of it, almost give it a defined shape, and in others there was nothing I could have recalled specifically about the creature, even if there was a creature at all. A trick of my mind?
“Worthless,” I muttered again. Memories like this. Distorted lies of the past. “You’re not even real.” A ghost of a past memory from a fucked-up brain like mine. “Stupid worthless nightmares.”
I turned my back on it then, no longer afraid or even caring if there was a creature. He couldn’t help me and so had no power over me anymore.
When I turned the tent was gone. In its place was the dark looming shapes of tombs, St. Louis Number One. I frowned seeing a shimmer in the distance, heard voices. A child appeared before me. Small, undefined, and black-eyed, vaguely familiar. From Micah’s garden perhaps? But hadn’t that been a dream? A trickle of fear inched through my stomach and it smiled. Fire seemed to burn beneath its skin digging channels of orange magma through its veins. The thing from the desert, not whatever Micah’s monster from the garden is. I scowled.
“Worthless,” I told it again. More dreams to play on my fears. At least now I knew it was my monster and not Micah’s.
It held out a hand, offering me something that glowed.
“What is it?” I demanded.
Your choice. The words whispered on the wind around me. The child’s lips did not move.
I snarled at it. “Choice of what? Will it bring Micah back to me?”
Micah, the wind called his name a dozen times fading into the distance and I wanted to scream. Choose.
I reached for it, not caring in that moment if it was a trap or a way to drag me off to some other place. It was like the glowing object in a video game, something I knew I needed, though didn’t know why. I took it, feeling something solid beneath my fingers but unable to see it.
Touching the child set me on fire. There was no other way to describe the feeling. Burning from within, like my insides were liquefying and pooling in my core, but unable to escape the shell of my body. I gasped at the pain, the intensity beyond anything I’d ever experienced in a dream before. Was it real?
I fought for breath, choking back the fire and trying to catch air. Flashes of a million things rolled through my brain as if I’d been there and they were my memories. An older woman as a child looking at another woman in period clothing. Her lifetime flashed before me. Multiple marriages, children born and lost, family ties severed with injustice, rage, and pettiness. She had been a bitter thing in the end. Stirring up discord for the few moments of power it made her feel. I had never met her, but knew her every motive. Couldn’t recall her name, but could retell her life if someone asked. The trails of shadowy ooze stained the memories of her life, making some areas too dark to see, and even eating away at the edges of her psyche.
The vision shifted away from the woman and to Micah standing on a path in the woods staring at something as undefined as this child before me. My breath caught as I waited for something to happen or to feel what he did. Only Micah’s eyes were blank in that moment, nothing more than a doll staring lifeless into the void. The memory didn’t continue, though I tried to mentally grasp at it to keep him in my thoughts.
Again the vision changed, this time to a ceremony in the darkness in which two people nearly died over greed and a girl went missing. These two were tainted by the slime of shadowy darkness as well, parts of their lives captured in the waves of memory much like bugs in amber. Suspended in motion, beautiful, yet lifeless, and powerless. They were another battery added to the charge of energy in a city full of restless others uncontrolled by the simplicity of humanity.
Power arched outward, emanating from the city like some sort of nuclear reactor. It was a constant pool of movement, life, energy, and memories to fuel something I couldn’t quite understand. The thing before me used it to survive, that much I knew. In fact, most of the unexplained in the city used that well of endlessly swirled static charge to exist. Somehow, I was now plugged into them, viewing the other side while still not really part of it. The power seeped from the child before me, leaving burned trails in the ground beneath its feet and ropes of color, like a giant spider web, spanned outward, fading into the distance, feeding on life from things I couldn’t see.
The most terrifying part of the child-thing, was the sparkling cord of energy that bound it to me. The second I saw it, I began to tug and try to rip it free, only it wasn’t a physical thing I could touch. The more I struggled the hotter I burned. The fire scorched so hot through my mind I thought I’d die. Each vision like a brand, etching the memories into my brain though they weren’t mine. A thousand lifetimes, a million scenarios. It was too much, the weight endless and suffocating. I sank to my knees under the pressure, unable to let go of the child even if I wanted to.
Worthless? That wind voice asked.
“If all you can give me is fear, then yes,” I said, not caring if it killed me. “Worthless. Memories are worthless. Ghosts of the past. Nothing but memories. Useless. Give me back Micah. Without him my life is meaningless.” I was being overly dramatic, but it didn’t seem to matter in that moment because the child was confused by the intensity of my need for Micah, and angry that I defied it. Fear it understood, even anger, but not my defiance or the desire to hold Micah in my arms and protect him.
The child snarled, and the weight of something physical transferred between us, from whatever their non-corporeal hand was to mine, an item.
You owe me, it said, and I will collect. Then it vanished, leaving me kneeling, not in the desert or even Micah’s yard, but in the cemetery, something dark in my grasp.
The fire vanished so abruptly that I sucked in too much air and choked, coughing and gasping for breath through lungs burning with the weight of too much air. I tried to focus on whatever it was in my hand, the weight of it feeling like lead. My palms smoldered from the fire, skin blackened and charred. I thought it should hurt more, but it only mildly ached. The thing looked like some sort of ring. Not a wedding ring or anything so mundane, no this thing was a snarled mass of multiple metals, gnarled and discolored rocks, and negative pulses of energy. Instinct alone kept me from casting the nasty thing into the darkness to be done with it.
The world around me swirled and moved like a wet, acrylic painting instead of reality. The edges of reality smearing as I blinked, almost like my vision was covered in water. My breathing calmed enough that I could sort of focus on the rolling waves of the landscape. I was pretty sure I was in the cemetery. Real or a dream? I wasn’t sure of either in that moment.
A distant sound of voices forced me to struggle to get to my feet. I closed my fist around the distorted ring-like thing. The child had given it to me for a reason. I had to hope it was a chance to get Micah back. I stalked forward in the shifting wet landscape, feeling like my limbs were stuck in sludge. There were glimmers of things, shapes that moved around me, almost like people, only they were smeared shadows, and odd, stunted movement, as though they were on another plane than I was. I couldn’t touch them, even when I reached in their direction. It was like watching a movie soaked in water, colors and life leaking through scene to scene, but not really meshing.
I followed the sound of voices, feeling like my body weighed a thousand pounds. The trek slow and painful. But I found the open grave, and in this place, it was truly open. Not cove
red or even lined with police tape. It was a doorway, gaping into darkness much like the LaLaurie house had appeared at night, a lifeless, soul-sucking void. The edges of it scorched and even scored, like something with claws had grabbed on to the edge and tried to keep itself from being dragged inside, only to fail in the end as the gouges vanished into the darkness.
Near the grave stood two figures, more defined than the shadows and almost completely solid. I blinked a few times wondering if what I was seeing was real, and my heart lurched at one of them.
Micah!
“Fuck!” I cried, though my voice seemed lost in the wind and swirl. They must have heard me because they turned, Micah and a very tired looking Sarah. I tried to run, only again wading through the distance dragged my pace to a crawl like walking through a tanker spill of molasses. Was this a dream? Because if it was, it was the best and worst ever.
When I finally reached Micah, I took his mouth with mine, kissing him fiercely and feeling my heart race with joy. He returned my kiss, whispered things to me that didn’t make sense, not words, but mixed sounds. He felt real, warm, alive, and solid beneath my touch. I wanted to wrap myself around him, like that would somehow save him. I pulled away to look at him and Sarah, and while they looked like themselves, real, whole, and physical rather than shadows, the edges of Sarah’s form seemed to be fading.
Micah said something. I saw his lips move, heard scattered bits of sound, only I couldn’t make out any words. He held Sarah’s hand with one of his and touched my face with the other, trying to tell me something, though what I didn’t know. The odd world distorted everything, including the sound and the movement of his lips.
“I can’t understand you,” I told him. Was it only me who was lost in miscommunication?
Micah frowned and glanced at Sarah. They didn’t speak to each other. But he stroked my face and looked sad. No. I didn’t like that look directed at me. Sad acceptance, like we were all lost now.
