Dead Man Walking

by Zach Adams

  “Oh yes, the injuries!” L’æon exclaimed. “Well, I attempted to catch the beast. It fought back for a time but then fled, leaving another knot of hollow in my path. Your friend was… I am terribly sorry Isaac. I could not save him, but I also did not kill him.”

  You lying son of a - Rage said. Isaac tried to drown the thought out. The chorus from Porcupine Tree’s ‘The Blind House’ boomed in its place. L’æon raised an eyebrow and said he was going to clean his face.

  When the vampire was out of sight, Isaac dug into his backpack. Nothing seemed to be missing. Volkov must have procrastinated on searching it, not that Isaac was complaining. A single Book of L’æsälum Page, the very first he had found, stuck from the top of his mock-leather folder, sandwiched between two spiral notebooks. A half-empty bottle of water rested underneath, next to his medication. He had just begun to remove the Page when L’æon returned, so he hastily returned it and shoved his bag to the side.

  “So, as I was going to say, probably,” L’æon said as soon as he was within view, pacing around the table as he went on speaking. “After getting away from the vampire, I continued my investigation. The creatures which attacked you - all the hollow and the moura - were summoned in the same fashion. That is, they left identical sensory traces, like a signature of the summoner which only another sorcerer could detect. The last sense to be affected by fading residual energy is usually smell, and no two spellcasters smell alike.” The silver man smiled broadly, clearly pleased by his own cleverness. “The library, the museum, most of downtown, you - and I desperately hope you take no offense to this - all absolutely stink of vinegar. This means there is only one culprit, and the scent seems to lead further to the north!” L’æon exclaimed, stopping a few inches behind Isaac to his right, next to his unclosed backpack. He took note of Isaac avoiding even a glance in his direction and looked downward. The leather folder had slipped into view, and the elf picked up the exposed Page out of curiosity, along with the notebooks.

  “Where did you get this?” L’æon demanded, waving the Page in the air. Isaac turned around and looked him defiantly in the eye. The silver man’s self-satisfied expression had vanished, replaced by shock and rage. “I had heard stories from the zätæwäpræcü, a Book containing the lost history…” L’æon scanned over the sheet again, bewildered. “But it was a myth! What are you doing with this, Isaac?” There was a frigid silence as #9 ticked in the background. After a minute or two a look of comprehension dawned on L’æon’s face, and he snapped his fingers. Isaac felt as though a cork had been popped out of his throat, and he was able to speak again.

  “It was here, the night we met. I found it just before the first hollow knot showed up.” Isaac said flatly. He hadn’t left his seat, but he was prepared to jump and start swinging if the vampire tried anything.

  “How did you know enough about it to merit stealing it? What purpose could be served by you assembling the Book?” L’æon asked.

  Isaac gulped, and rose to his feet. He made sure to keep the table between them. L’æon simply stood rooted to his spot, extending the Page forward as though coming too close to it might harm him.

  “Because someone -” Isaac emphasized the word sharply, and L’æon raised one eyebrow. “- Is trying to kill me and what’s in your Book could stop them,” Everything he said seemed to cause the vampire further distress.

  “You are correct,” L’æon replied. “This impossible object belongs to the Æ’géminë, and seeing as there are no longer any others…” Without another word, he gently tucked the Page in a pocket inside his coat. He then patted the outside of the pocket with his palm.

  Tackle the bastard! Get your Page back! Rage chimed in. L’æon looked as though a megaphone had been used inside his skull.

  “It was working,” Isaac told him. “It translated itself for me, I was getting spells to work.”

  “Lies.”

  “It happened twice now, and in my dreams -”

  “Lies!” L’æon roared. “I told you already, your kind cannot withstand the cosmic power mine wielded. You are meddling in things you could never hope to understand! And these notes…” He held Isaac’s spiral notebooks between two fingers, as though they were something slimy and decaying. “You are attempting to use my people’s dead history to write stories, with nary as much as a filter! This has been attempted before, human. It always leads to catastrophe. You would tear reality apart for your own gain?” His chin trembled as he stared, unblinking and wide-eyed, at Isaac.

  Isaac clenched his fists inside his pockets, battling to control his temper. “I needed to learn to protect myself,” He murmured. L’æon rubbed his temples with two overly long fingers.

  “I have been protecting you since we met,” L’æon told him.

  “Tell that to Donald Grigoryan,” Isaac spat. “Or maybe have Alex Volkov pass the message for you. That’s some protection you’ve provided… Vampire.”

  L’æon looked as though someone had slapped his face, shot his dog, and broken his favorite coffee mug all at once. He turned on his heels to face the window, unable to bear or understand the venom in Isaac’s voice. Sirens could be heard in the distance.

  “How dare you, human,” L’æon said coolly. He stormed through the bookshelves toward the exit. As he passed, Isaac swore he could make out a single tear gliding down his cheek.

  “You dare attempt to insult me, who has forgotten more lifetimes than you your unevolved mind could comprehend! Not for naught that my people forbade contact with lower species. Now I recall why we followed the old ways.” L’æon, with the Book of L’æsälum page, left the building.

  Isaac trudged across the room to his old workstation. Everything was as he left it. A second or two after he noticed that he reminded himself he had barely been gone for more than a day, so not much could have been moved. He pushed himself sadly across the desk, a gloomy imitation of his fallen friend’s habit. Isaac took considerably more care than Donny to avoid disturbing anything on the way. Not that he would have had to clean up the mess anymore, anyway. Once on the other side he dropped into his swivel chair and left his backpack by his feet.

  The library no longer felt like the sanctuary it had been during Isaac’s after-hours lurking. The half-darkened, empty building once had a sense of tranquility which helped him separate from the stress and pain from his daily life. Now, there was no separation. Given his connection to the place it seemed likely the police would come by at some point looking for him. Beige could have even decoded L’æon’s babbling and made an anonymous call to them.

  Should have kicked him twice, Rage sneered.

  Isaac smirked at his own violent impulse. Normally the thought would have made him anxious, but it hardly seemed to matter. After all, he was about to spend seventeen hours or so getting interrogated for dozens of murders while waiting for the universe to cave in on everyone. A daydream about battering the man who had made the previous two years so much more frustrating than they should have been, rather than being embarrassing and uncomfortable, seemed comical to him.

  Isaac idly fidgeted with some office supplies. Little had been changed on his desk. The only difference was his favorite galaxy-design pen with glittery black ink was in the center by itself, not in his cup of writing utensils where he usually put it after use. In an odd way he felt relieved that his former workspace hadn’t been fully disturbed yet. He hadn’t done much with it, but everything within arm’s reach was organized to his preferences. His small, folding twin picture frame still rested to his left. Olivia had probably prevented Beige from changing anything immediately, he assumed, before Volkov had shown up.

  Considerate of her, given the position your existence now puts her in, Panic said. All of the people whose very presence in his life should have been enough for him to stay off of this stupid quest flashed through his mind.

  You left Chloe alone, fed Donny to a vampire, and ran away from Tobias, Panic went on, with Rage harmonizing. You can’t even competently write
about people who do brave things, what made you think you could play hero? Maybe all of this craziness has just been reality punishing you for being a failure. Look at that last dream, you’re too useless to even die correctly.

  Almost unaware of the impulse, Isaac reached into his backpack. He dug out an orange plastic cylinder with fifteen white, blue, and pink tablets remaining inside. Isaac poured them into his palm, shaking so hard he dropped them on his desk twice. As Isaac bent down to rescue a few which had bounced to the floor he thought he saw a blurry gray humanoid shape move in the corner of his eye, in the window to Olivia’s office. There were no lights on, and no one should have been inside.

  Do you think Olivia came in ridiculously early and witnessed everything that just happened? Or maybe there’s another knot of hollow to finish you off? Panic asked.

  I do now, thanks a lot, Isaac snarled back. You two are grounded for the rest of the night. He returned the pills to their bottle and threw it aggressively into his bag, then examined the window from a few feet away. The room appeared empty, and the door was still locked. He grabbed a key from a peg on the back wall and let himself in, turning the light on and peering in every corner suspiciously.

  Nothing seemed immediately out of place. The photos of Olivia’s cats and siblings remained undisturbed. Paperwork to terminate one Isaac V. Falcone’s employment sat untouched, next to her computer keyboard. A beige post-it note bearing Ben’s loopy, garish penmanship was stuck to the top page, reading “Needs to be completed ASAP”. The ink was black and glittery.

  “That dick used my pen, I knew I wouldn’t have left it out,” Isaac said to himself as he looked around.

  Nothing to report, what’s up with that? Panic said.

  Find something dangerous! Rage agreed.

  Didn’t I leave something in Olivia’s office? And didn’t I tell you two to shut the hell up? Isaac asked over them.

  The brain gang froze in their tracks while Isaac turned on his heels away from Olivia’s desk and toward the file cabinet on the opposite side of the office. With a grunt he pushed the cabinet aside to reveal a foot-long sheet of ancient paper. It was exactly as it was when he hid it there, with only one change; a pink post-it was folded over the top edge. On it was a single word, in glittery black ink, in what appeared to be his own handwriting; Run.

  Isaac locked the door behind him and returned the key to its peg. He scooped his backpack from the floor, put the Page inside and abandoned his station for the exit. From the big window he saw flashing blue and red lights at the far end of the street, quickly approaching.

  Oops, guess they found us, Panic whined. No car, no safe place, and now no allies.

  Yep, well aware of all of that. Do you intend to be helpful, ever, at all? Isaac replied. He made for the stairs, building up steam to fly through the door and run as far as away as he could get. His flight was interrupted as he nearly collided with another passenger on the way. A dark-haired passenger in a wrinkled Captain Picard tee shirt and black jeans that looked like they hadn’t been changed in two days. She brandished a cracked iPhone in one hand while she grabbed her brother by the collar with the other.

  “Chloe? How’d you -” Isaac started to say, but the words died when Chloe’s hand approached his neck. He counted himself lucky that she stopped at his shirt collar.

  “Found your passcode for the door after I fixed your phone,” Chloe told him. She yanked him forward and just barely prevented them both from falling down the stairs.

  “And you just had a hunch you should use it?” Isaac asked.

  Chloe shifted her feet, uncertainty flashing across her face before she shook it off and nodded.

  “I think… That’s pretty much it, yeah. Now, you will explain everything in the car.”

  Man am I tired of explaining everything, Isaac thought as they left the building. She had left Tobias’ Volkswagen parked just a few feet away, engine running. Dense, wet snow pelted them at machine gun pace as they climbed in.

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Æ’genesis, Part One

  ?2018?

  “So, Tobias just let you take his car?” Isaac asked as he played with the stuffed falcon hanging from the mirror. Chloe focused her eyes pointedly on the road.

  “I borrowed it from him, more or less.”

  “He called you then?” Isaac asked. He didn’t comment, but he suddenly felt less guilty about taking the strange feather in his bag from Tobias’ display case.

  “Of course, he called me, you moron!” Chloe snapped. “You show up, on the run, at his apartment, then vanish again in the middle of the night and you think he’s not going to call your only other relative in Alaska? Think, Ivy! For that matter, think of a good enough explanation that I don’t just turn this car back around and hand you to the cops.”

  Would you look at that, Chloe yelling at me, it’s almost like nothing changed, Isaac thought. Well, she’d never believe the whole truth, but here goes…

  “First of all, what exactly did Tobias tell you?” Isaac asked.

  “Just that someone is coming for you, and your desperation to stop them is making you irrational. That you’re at risk of doing something monumentally stupid. Yeah, totally doesn’t sound like you at all.” Chloe replied.

  Gee, thanks, Toby, Isaac thought.

  “Wow, great,” Isaac began. “Well, basically, I was just checking out that comic book exhibit at the museum, and someone let an animal in. I tried to help the people there, so whoever did it got them all to say I was behind it.” Isaac told her. He carefully avoided any of the elements of his experiences that even he still had trouble believing completely.

  Chloe scoffed. “Is that a pitch for your new mystery novel? Tell me the truth or I’m turning the car around.”

  Isaac gulped and rubbed his temple.

  “Fine, but you asked for it,” He finally said.

  So, he laid out the entire story. Hollow in the library, moura in the museum, vampires working with gangsters and magic everywhere in between. Chloe couldn’t help but note how he lit up in childlike awe while explaining the magic he had witnessed, and claimed to have performed, no matter how disturbing it had been. It was like he was living in one of his dreams.

  “Stop playing around, this is serious!” Chloe demanded. As she said it, she pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex and directed Isaac to keep his head down. She guided the car behind their building, and they exited quietly, peering around from the corner.

  “Unmarked cops,” Chloe explained, pointing out two dark vehicles with tinted windows positioned around the lot. “They already questioned me, but I didn’t know anything,” As she said this, she punched Isaac in the arm. It would have left an impressive bruise, had he not already been covered in them. They waited behind the building for several long, cold moments as wet snow pelted them. Finally, the officers changed their positions.

  “We only have a few seconds, get inside!” Chloe hissed. They darted around the building and through the front entrance, with Isaac nearly tripping over his sister on the way.

  “You’re going to have to come up with something a lot better than vampires and magic, Ivy,” Chloe said as soon as she made sure the door was locked.

  Isaac dropped his bag on the floor and quietly went to the kitchen. Gamora appeared from the hallway and nuzzled his ankles, with Nikola bouncing after a moment later. A human-sized shape, presumably Chloe’s friend and temporary roommate Sarah, was bundled in a starry blanket on the couch, fast asleep.

  “I swear it is all true,” Isaac said. He unzipped his backpack and retrieved the Page he re-rescued from the library. “Look at this, this is what started everything. I found one of these in the library and those hollow things I told you about showed up immediately after. Then the other guy.”

  Chloe looked unimpressed as Isaac waved the aged, gibberish-covered sheets in her face. She pushed his hand aside at the wrist.

  “That looks like you tore it from a toddler’s coloring book. A really old one.�
�

  Isaac shook his head. “No, see, those shapes are the elf language. It translates for me, why… Ah, damn it all.”

  Chloe asked him what he was damning.

  “Well, Tobias said that the only way I could be able to understand the language is if someone - L’æon - was using me like some kind of magical battery,” Isaac explained. Chloe turned her head sharply at the implication that their cousin had hidden something from her as well. Isaac struggled to think of stronger examples. “You had to have spotted something, you spot everything. In the past few days, anything that was in your peripheral vision that turned into blank spots in your memory when you looked at it. Look over at Sarah.” He indicated a hazy gray figure standing next to her sleeping friend, leaning casually against the wall. It was roughly Sarah’s height and build but appeared as a patch of television static.

  We always thought those blurry non-people were because of our bad eyes, but this one isn’t mimicking Sarah like it’s supposed to. That one the other morning was behaving independently of Chloe, too. Maybe they’re another glitch? We’ve seen weirder this week, Panic chirped. Chloe spun her head in Sarah’s direction, just barely registering anything of the fuzzy shape, then turned back to him.

  “What? She’s just sleeping. She’s been keeping me company since you ran off. Are you going to tell me she’s a vampire too?”

  Isaac shook his head and directed her attention back to the living room. Standing casually against the wall next to the couch in jeans and a black sweatshirt stood a young Amazon, about a foot taller than Chloe with dark hair down her back, confused at the obviously false claim that she was asleep. The gray blur had vanished, and the starry-patterned blanket was folded neatly on the vacant couch.

  “You alright, Chloe? We just got back from saving your brother’s ass at the library,” Sarah said. Chloe shook her head in confusion.

  “Right… Yeah. We were both there. What are you talking about, Isaac?” Chloe asked. She looked dazed for a fraction of a second, as if she had taken a blow to the head.