Paranormal After Dark

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “My choice. It has always been my choice.”

  “I’m going to get you out.”

  “Tanya’s looking for you. That’s what I came to tell you. Don’t worry about me. You stay clear of that bitch. If I don’t contact you, it’s because I can’t. Do you understand?”

  “Then I’ll find you –”

  “No, you’re not listening to me. I didn’t spend the last ten years keeping you safe just to see you wind up exactly where I am.

  “Don’t contact me, Gabriel will pick up on where you are. Stay as far away from this hell hole as you can. Run, Cross. Do what you wanted to do all those years ago, and just run. I got your back, man. I always have.”

  Kale felt Gabriel pressing him for information. Tanya wanted answers and Tanya wasn’t good at being patient. He withdrew from Cross’s mind. He didn’t want to, but he knew he had to. He couldn’t hold Gabriel back for much longer.

  He also knew the lie he had to sell. The tears weren’t hard to manufacture, and neither was the mental fatigue. Both were real, but not for the reasons he wanted Tanya and Gabriel to believe. He broke contact with Cross and stopped the push on Gabriel. The result left him unbalanced and he staggered. A moment later Gabriel ended the connection and Kale was alone inside his head.

  He had fallen to the floor. With a hand on the bedframe, he righted himself. Tears leaked from his eyes as he pulled himself to sit back on his bed.

  “What did he learn?” Tanya asked Gabriel. It was clear the information wasn’t coming as fast as she wanted it. “Did you find him? Where’s Cross?” she demanded of Kale.

  He hadn’t counted on using so much energy just to keep Gabriel out of his consciousness. He had planned on pushing her to believe him. Now he was going to have to make do with lying. “He’s dead.” Kale put venom and guilt, pain and anger behind the words. “You goddamn bitch. He’s dead.” He lunged for Tanya, but the fatigue was real enough. Controlling Gabriel’s thoughts, while communicating with Cross, had tapped him out.

  He fell to his knees and settled for leaning back against the bed and glaring up at her. It was a truth. In his mind, he would never see Cross again. He hoped to hell Gabriel didn’t look too deeply at the words. He was too wiped to block him, or push him.

  “What? How?” Tanya didn’t sound happy. The hand holding the gun wavered as she took a step toward Kale.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I only know he’s dead.”

  She turned to Gabriel. “Is it true? Is Cross really dead?”

  “His grief is real, but I couldn’t get a clear read when I was in his head. He was blocking me. I’m not sure how, but I only saw what he wanted me to see.”

  Kale panicked. He stood, and wobbled until he could lean against the wall for support. “No, that’s not true. He saw what I saw. I couldn’t get a clear read on Cross because he was dead. Energy still surrounds the body for a few hours after death, so he hasn’t been gone long. That’s why I had a hard time finding him. That’s why it seemed like I was blocking you. I swear I wasn’t! I swear it.” He was breathing too fast and sweating freely. He’d blown it. He underestimated Gabriel and he blew it. Fuck!

  Gabriel shook his head. “He’s lying. I’m not sure what he did, but I know he’s lying.”

  Tanya kept her gaze locked directly on Kale as she put the gun up to the girl’s head and pulled the trigger. Sybil’s head erupted in a fine spray of pink mist. Gray mattered splattered the walls of Kale’s room as her lifeless body dropped to the floor like a bag of wet laundry.

  “No, no.” Kale couldn’t seem to turn away. The girl’s eyes were open and stared up at him, accusing him, blaming him for her death.

  “You killed her Kale. No one else, just you. You put your brother’s life ahead of this girl’s.”

  Kale slid down the wall to sit on the floor. A puddle of blood spread out from Sybil’s head in a growing circle.

  Tanya gave the revolver back to Robert. “Take care of this.” She motioned to Sybil’s body. “Then you get to have some fun. He can’t push you. Not like this.” She looked over her shoulder at Kale. “Just don’t kill him. I’m not done with him yet.”

  Robert made eye contact with Kale and his mouth twitched. “Yes ma’am.”

  Kale squeezed his eyes shut. He had gambled and lost. Payback was coming and it had a hard on for Kale.

  He had played with his guard’s minds over the years. Pushing them, making them believe they were seeing things that weren’t there. Creating the things he knew terrified them the most. It had been his only form of entertainment. They hated him, but they couldn’t touch him, because Tanya said so.

  Now she had given each and every one of them the permission for a little payback.

  He heard Robert pull Sybil’s body from his room and when he looked up he saw the swath of bright red. Her hair had painted the floor in blood.

  A moment later three muscle-bond men joined Robert in his room. The door closed behind them with a final metal clang.

  “You sure he can’t pull any of that shit on us?” one of them said.

  “Look at him. I don’t think he could shove a six-year-old down the stairs right now,” said Robert.

  The first guy looked like a shark circling prey. “Sweet.” He shook out a coil of rope.

  They were right about one thing. Kale couldn’t fight back if he wanted to, but that didn’t mean he still couldn’t screw with them a little.

  The third man had grabbed both of Kale’s wrists so Shark-guy could tie his hands together.

  Kale grinned and waggled his brows. “Boo.”

  Shark-guy dropped the rope and double-timed it back to the door.

  Kale winked. “Gotcha.”

  “You son-of-a-bitch,” Shark-guy returned to where Kale still slumped next to the wall. He tied the rope too tight around his wrists, but Kale still grinned.

  “You little fuck. Let’s see how long it takes me to beat that cocky look off your face.”

  Kale saw the backhand blow coming and a moment later tasted blood. His brain buzzed as he felt them hoist him to his feet and loop the rope around a hook above his head on the wall.

  His little cell had doubled as a hospital room for him more than once and the hook on the wall had been used to hold IV bags. Today it held Kale. His shoulders burned as they took his weight.

  “Yeah, this is going to be fun,” the first guy said. They all closed in on him and Kale closed his eyes. Maybe they would forget Tanya’s instructions and just kill him. Maybe if they did him that small favor, he could finally find his freedom after all.

  Chapter 16

  “MY MOTHER...” CROSS couldn’t finish the sentence. “You’re my...”

  “I’m your grandfather.” Charlie clarified for him.

  Cross needed to sit down. His knees buckled and someone helped eased him down to the ground.

  “Quite a lot to take in all once,” Charlie said.

  “I don’t...” Cross shook his head. “I don’t understand.” He only had vague memories of his mother and he wasn’t sure those could be trusted. “I don’t remember her very well. They took my memories. They took me.”

  The enormity of what had been done to him suddenly hit Cross hard. He angled sightless eyes toward where he thought Charlie was. “I don’t even know who I’m supposed to be anymore. What’s real, what’s fake, who’s using me and who I can trust. I don’t even know what or who I should be running from anymore.” He was suddenly exhausted at trying to figure it all out. Too many secrets, too many lies, not enough truths.

  A warm calloused hand touched his face. “That’s what family is for Cross. To help you find your way through the maze of lies and deceit,” Charlie said.

  “What if you can’t tell the difference?”

  “They have hurt you so much, my boy. Just like they hurt my sweet Maria. She blamed herself for letting them have you and Kale. She was too good, too unspoiled, and they warped what she was until it broke. Until she broke.” Charlie’s voic
e was sad but resigned as if he had already grieved through a lifetime’s worth of pain. “I can feel you teetering on the brink, Cross. I can help you. If you let me.”

  Cross had heard the words before, from Gabriel. He gave him a hard grin. “Everybody, suddenly, wants to help me, Charlie. What makes you any different?”

  “I’m all for keeping that cynicism alive and kicking,” Charlie said. “But what makes me different is I can actually help you see the truth.”

  Cross grunted. “That would be a great trick. I don’t even know what the truth is anymore. How you could show it to me?”

  “Well you got me there, I can’t show you anything.”

  “You just said you were going to tell me the truth.”

  “No, what I said is that I could help you see the truth.”

  “I’m not in the mood for word games here, Charlie. Just tell me what the hell you want from me. You didn’t save me from Tanya out of the goodness of your heart. You want something from me. What is it?”

  Cross heard Charlie move to sit in front of him. “What I want Cross, is my daughter back. But Gabriel Delancey and Tanya Santiago took her from me. What I want is a world where people don’t hunt each other for what they can take. A world where my grandsons are not treated like someone else’s property. I want to live without the fear of being taken from my home in the middle of the night because I am not what everyone else considers normal.” Charlie’s voice had thickened with emotions.

  “What I want, Cross are my grandsons, safe with me.” That strong calloused hand touched his cheek. Charlie cupped his face. “I understand your reluctance to trust anyone ever again. I’m not asking you for that. My small talent is a simple one, but perhaps for you it might be the most important one.

  “I can help you see past the lies and deceit, Cross. Past all the horrible things that have been done to your mind, I can strip it bare and allow you to see the naked truth. There will be no buffers, nothing to shield you from what you will learn. But when it is done, you will know, without a doubt, what is real and what it is they want you to believe.”

  Cross sucked in a breath. “You can do that?”

  “Yes, I can do that, but the truth isn’t always easy to accept. Sometimes it can do more harm than the lies.”

  Cross didn’t even have to think about it. “Do it.”

  “You can’t pick and choose what you see. I can’t soften it.”

  “I get it, I can’t move forward if I don’t know who to trust. Do it.”

  He heard Charlie sigh. “I can’t erase the damage caused by the bullet. But the things they hid from you, the things you thought were the truth, I can show you what is fact and what is fiction. First I need you to relax. Maizey.”

  Cross had nearly forgotten the girl was in the room with them. He felt her hand under his arm.

  “Here, love.” She led him to a low bed, or cot. “Just lie down and close your eyes.”

  “What exactly does he do?” Cross did as she asked and closed his eyes.

  “He’s already doing it,” she said. “Open your eyes, Cross.”

  When he did he saw Maizey standing next to him. He turned and took in his surroundings. He stood in the middle of nothingness. A vast, white, featureless space surrounding him. He turned back to Maizey and realized he shouldn’t be seeing anything at all. “Where are we? How am I seeing this? How am I seeing you?”

  “You aren’t really,” she said. “This is your mind Cross. What you’re seeing is your interpretation of reality.”

  “My reality is a fuzzy white nothing?” he motioned to her. “What about you, I don’t know what you look like. Why am I seeing you?”

  “Your reality is what you imagine it to be in your head. You hear my voice and in your mind you imagine what I look like. The nothing around us is there because you have yet to imagine what the world around you looks like. Once Charlie leads you into familiar territory that will change.”

  Cross thought he understood. She was right about one thing, Maizey looked exactly how he had imagined her. Long auburn hair, with freckles splashed across her cheeks and nose. Bright blue eyes that sparkled when she smiled. She looked exactly how she sounded. Beautiful with attitude. If this wasn’t real, Cross couldn’t say he minded very much.

  “Why are you here with me? If this is my reality, my truths, why are you a part of it. I just met you.”

  “We have found that sometimes the truth can be, shall we say, unsettling. People can lose their way, reject what they are shown and then not know how to get back to where they started. I am here as an anchor. A lifeline if you need it, a guide if you want one. If you don’t need me I will be in the shadows waiting to help you find your way out.”

  “You linked with me,” Cross said. He could feel her in his mind, now that he knew to look for her. But her presence was amazingly subtle and unobtrusive. A whisper. A mere suggestion of a whisper. If she hadn’t appeared to him he would never have known she was there at all.

  Maizey nodded. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s safer this way.” She closed her eyes briefly and then smiled as she opened them. “Charlie’s ready.” She motioned behind him and Cross turned to find his past.

  He saw himself and Kale. They were six, maybe seven. Wires connected them both to monitors as men and women in white coats hovered around them. Kale and he lay side by side. His brother made faces, trying to get him to smile, but Cross knew he wasn’t in the mood to smile. He was mad. He watched the little boy he used to be and he knew he was visiting a memory that had been taken from him. Tests and more tests.

  Can you make the numbers on the monitor go up, Cross? Can you move the pencil on the table? Come on, try, you can do it.

  Yeah, he could do it, but there was no way he was gonna, not for them. Especially not for her.

  Tanya.

  The tall blond woman sat at the edge of the bed and smiled at him. He remembered how much he’d hated that smile. How much he’d hated her. He could feel it seething through him now just remembering. How could he have forgotten how much he hated Tanya?

  Small isolated things. The tree house built under the skylight in the indoor garden, a small attempt at normalcy. Kale and he looking up at the stars at night through the skylight, a promise made in blood and innocence, planning a future they both knew would never happen. The one thing that remained constant was his love for his brother and the anger. The anger and the hate he had at everyone. God, how he remembered that. How he felt that.

  He remembered the punishments for disobedience. At first they were simple, but as Tanya realized withholding dinner was getting her nowhere, she became more creative. The beatings, leaving him tied and broken in his room, isolating him from Kale, from his mother. Tasers had been a favorite method of persuasion. One, as Cross remembered, that had almost broken him. For years he had managed to keep what he could do from them. But as shock after shock coursed through his twelve-year-old body he very nearly gave her what she wanted. He had managed to hold out- or rather pass out. He had known he had to get out or die in the attempt. If he didn’t, when Tanya was finished with him, or when he convinced her he was of no use to them, she would have him killed. He’d known this because he had been in Tanya’s mind. He understood what she had planned for both him and Kale. They were both to be rented out on military and private contracts. They were nothing more than a commodity to Tanya.

  Cross hadn’t fully understood what that meant back then, but his resolve to leave only hardened with the knowledge. It took some doing but he convinced Kale they needed to leave. Always the peacekeeper, Kale had tried to protect Cross from Tanya. He would show her anything she wanted, do anything she wanted if only she would leave Cross alone.

  He can’t do anything. I would know if he could! Cross had heard him tell Tanya that, more than once.

  But Cross could do things. Things way cooler than peeking around inside someone’s head. And Kale knew that.

  Fourteen. They’d melted the locks on their room. Easy pe
ezy. That was one trick Kale had never shared with Tanya- their ability to manipulate ambient energy and use it as a weapon. It was stronger when Cross and Kale linked together.

  They were stronger together.

  That was the one secret they both strived to keep from her.

  “Nothing stops us.” Cross had told Kale. “If we stay here, she’ll kill us. We get out or we die. We die together.”

  It was a promise.

  God, he could still feel the determination. He remembered feeling terrified as armed men shot at them.

  They’re trying to kill us! And then in the clarity of Charlie’s truth, Cross looked again. The agents surrounding them held Tasers and big rifles with darts- CO2 guns. Tranquilizers.

  Tanya had told him the truth. All those people. He had killed all of them. Not one of them was trying to kill him. They were only trying to stop him. How could he not have seen that?

  His breath caught in his chest as another truth forced its way into his memory. He had known, and he hadn’t cared! He could feel it all now. As clearly as if it were happening all over again. He remembered targeting the men, he remembered killing them. He’d felt nothing at their deaths. No wait, he did feel something – he’d felt vindicated.

  He remembered Kale trying to stop him. But nothing was stopping him.

  Except a bullet.

  Cross went to his knees in his white-hazed reality and try to block the memories, but that wasn’t an option, Charlie had warned him. “No more. Please, no more.”

  But the truth couldn’t be stopped. Maizey appeared at his side and helped him up as the memories continued.

  He felt hatred, intense hatred and it was directed toward one person. The only person he hated more than Tanya was Gabriel. They might have made it out if not for Gabriel. Images and feelings came at him hard and fast. Anger and fear and then a brief moment of blinding pain.

  Waking up. Confusion, darkness. Understanding what they planned to do to him, and being helpless to stop it.