Silent Ground: Part 1

by Quil Carter

  “Sasha always loved lightning,” Lex said with a smile. They were in the elevator now, the rickety thing shaking and protesting. Jobe had never been scared of elevators, but this one was doing a good job at fostering a new phobia of them.

  “That was one of the few times he’d open the blinds on his windows,” Jobe chuckled. “That and snow… he loved snow.”

  “This winter… we’ll drag him up to Mount Washington,” Lex said. “I’ve always wanted to take him to go tubing. He won’t have to talk to people, and after, or before, we can go on the boardwalk through the marsh. I took him there when he was little, the whisky jack birds would eat food right out of your hand.”

  The two of them smiled at the thought, each trying to make themselves firmly believe that Sasha would be home by winter.

  No… long before winter. Long… long before.

  Two weeks, three days.

  Lex knocked on the door and they both entered Ian Lariat’s shabby office. Jobe saw Ian standing by the single pane window, a cup of what smelled like coffee in his hand.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” Lariat said. Jobe could tell right away that the man looked nervous. His face, triangle-shaped and more haggard than before, looked troubled, and there was an air about him that burst with apprehension.

  “What’s wrong?” Jobe immediately asked. He pulled up one of the fabric chairs and sat in it. “What did you find?”

  Lariat looked surprised at being directly called out. He paused for a second, as if contemplating something, then as if he’d pressed play on his body, his movements resumed. Lariat took a seat on the old computer chair, the newer laptop open but the screen turned so Jobe couldn’t see a thing.

  “I, ah…” Lariat set the coffee mug down and folded his hands together. “I’m afraid my hunch may be correct, Mr. Zakharin,” he said and nervously swallowed. “I really… didn’t wish for it to be, but after making some calls… going to visit an old friend… it’s what I feared.”

  Jobe paled, and beside him Lex made a noise between a shuddered cry and a choke. Jobe glanced over in his direction, and when he saw the expression on Lex’s face, he found his hand and clenched it.

  “He’s… he’s alive, I’ll tell you now, Mr. Winter, Mr. Zakharin, Sasha’s alive,” Lariat said. “It’s not good news, but he’s alive.”

  Alive?

  The impact from the terror turning into relief was crushing, a thousand-pound giant who had been sitting on Jobe’s chest had been lifted. He and Lex exchanged looks of shock, and as their hands squeezed one another’s tight, their faces crumpled.

  “How do you know?” Lex asked, his voice breaking. “How can you be sure?”

  Lariat took a deep breath. He held it, the hesitation reaching critical, and was silent long enough for Jobe to want to scream at the top of his lungs to just…

  “Fucking tell us!” Lex suddenly cried. “Jesus Christ, Lariat!”

  Lariat flinched. He let out the deep breath, then strangely reached for something in his desk. He grabbed an item from it, something that rattled, then with trembling hands, he opened up whatever it was, and…

  Jobe’s eyes widened when he saw two blue pills resting in the middle of Lariat’s palm, two pills that Jobe knew all too well.

  He was taking Xanax.

  “F-Forgive me,” Lariat said after he’d swallowed the pills down with a gulp of hot coffee. “All of this is bringing back memories, bad memories.” He put the bottle of Xanax down, his shaking hands filling the room with sounds of nervous rattling. “Mr. Zakharin…”

  “Just… just call me Lex,” Lex whispered, his face drained of all colour and his eyes fixed forward in a dead stare.

  Lariat nodded. “Lex, the reason I took your case,” he began slowly, “was because it was similar to a case I had four years ago.” He reached for one of the manila folders on the top pile that was resting on the corner of his old wooden desk.

  Then another deep breath. “It was a case involving my brother’s boyfriend, a man by the name of Robert Sauer,” he explained. “He was… you see, my family took in foster children, all young gay men who’d been kicked out of their homes for being gay. I myself am gay, and when I was fourteen, I made friends with a young man living on the streets, a man named Nate.

  “We took in Nate, and it inspired my mother, a – a wonderful woman, to become a foster parent. We took in boys until they could get back on their feet, and eventually, we adopted Nate. About six years ago, Nate found a man wandering around a park. He was dressed in only cloth pants, no shirt, and he was… beaten to shit, broken nose, fingers, bruises and cuts all over him. When Nate approached this man, he found out that this man had no idea who he was. Nate took him back home, and my mother took him in, even before he told us he was gay. This man, he had no identification on him, but he told us his name was Rob, Rob Sauer.”

  Jobe nodded, the story was interesting but… what did this have to do with Sasha?

  Lariat grasped his hands, both of them kneading the other from stress. “Rob was… the more we got to know Rob, the more we realized he was different,” Lariat explained. “When he first began to live with us… he suffered from terrible migraines that had him confined to bed, total darkness, no sound… he’d be in agony and nothing would help.”

  Jobe began to get an uneasy feeling, but he didn’t dare say a word.

  “He also… well, eventually Rob also began cutting himself,” Lariat said slowly, his words drenched in cautious anxiety. “Lex, Jobe… I didn’t want to mention it until I double-checked with my brother Nate, but he confirmed it. Rob defended his actions by saying that blood helped take the edge off of his migraines.”

  You could hear a pin drop in that small office. There were no sounds, the only thing near audible was the hum of the laptop’s fan, and Lex’s shaky breathing.

  “What – what the fuck are you saying, Lariat?” Lex stammered. “Rob… he ran off too? He was mentally ill like Sasha?”

  Lariat slowly shook his head. “There’s another element to this story, Lex,” he said, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “A month before Rob went missing… he began spending time with a man… a man named Kheva who Rob said was familiar to him. I saw him, but only once. He was something that I’d never seen before. His presence was overwhelming, he carried himself like he was the king of the world. And his eyes, they were dark green with the other half yellow, completely bizarre. He––”

  “He has Rob?” Lex interrupted. His wide eyes were staring at Lariat with desperation. “This man has Rob and you think he has Sasha too?”

  Lariat paused, then nodded.

  “I believe so, yes.”

  Lex gasped, and Jobe put a hand over his mouth as nausea took him. There were so many aspects of that story that confused him, and the questions on his tongue could reach his toes if lined up single file, but the important part of the story was that… Sasha was alive.

  Sasha was alive. He was safe. He was just with… just with…

  Jobe’s internal thoughts faltered when he saw Lariat’s face. That face held none of the hope that Jobe and Lex were both feeling; he was staring at the manila folder with a look of sick terror. A terror that soon grabbed hold of Jobe’s relief and ripped it apart like a pitbull to the family poodle.

  As Lex broke down from relief, his hand clenching Jobe’s tight, Jobe swallowed down the nausea he was feeling, and said through a dry throat, “Lariat… what are you not telling us?”

  Lex’s head rose, tears glistening on the corner of his eyes. He looked to Jobe, then to Lariat, and upon also seeing Lariat’s face… the relief left him as well.

  “There are some things about this man that you need to know…” Lariat said hesitantly. “But I cannot tell you.” He rose from his seat, nervously cleared his throat, then said in a raised voice: “Nate… you can come in.”

  Jobe and Lex both turned towards the door, and to their mutual surprise and astonishment, the doorknob turned and in walked a young
man with thin framed black glasses. He had brown hair cut short, and an anxious expression that fit well in the current mood of the room.

  “Hey, Ian,” he said, eyeing both Jobe and Lex with a nervous look. He walked past them, and stood awkwardly as Lariat took some boxes off of a fourth chair, and pulled it up to the corner of his desk.

  “This is Nate Lariat,” Lariat said. Jobe and Lex both shook his hand, the man looking like he wanted to be anywhere else but here. “Nate, this is Jobe and Lex… Sasha’s best friend and his uncle.”

  Nate, wearing a pink t-shirt and jeans with rips from the knees to the cuffs, nodded and took his seat on the old chair. “Ian taped the news report for me,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear about Sasha.” His light green eyes glanced at Ian. “What have you told them so far?”

  “I told them how you came into the family,” Lariat said, he rubbed his nose and adjusted himself in his chair. “I told them about Rob and some of the issues he’s had. I didn’t go into great detail, Lex, to respect Sasha’s privacy, of course, but I did say that Rob and Sasha had some similarities.”

  Nate’s head shot to Lex. “Did he drink his own blood?” he pressed. “And – and… his…” He faltered and his cheeks tinted red.

  “His… semen?” Lex said, and when Nate nodded, Lex nodded as well. “Yeah, it was worse than that though. He admitted to drinking it from this bottle that some stranger left––”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Lex!” Jobe suddenly cried, the pieces connecting together like bits of a puzzle that had once looked so mismatched. “He said two men. Fuck, oh fuck, Lex. Sasha said it was two men who jumped him; he said it was the two men he thought had left that bottle.”

  Lex stared at Jobe, then broke eye contact when his head shook back and forth. “What the fuck is happening?” he said, and for the first time anger began to appear in his tones.

  “Please calm down,” Nate said quietly, his voice a plea. He was small for a man his age, barely five-foot-seven, if that, but as he scrunched down on that chair, his eyes downcast and his arms wrapped around his body, he looked like a kid. “Just let me ask the questions… please.”

  The last thing Jobe wanted to be was quiet, not when the bells of warning were ringing loudly inside his head. However, he knew those sirens were only blaring because it was blocking out the confused screaming. What the fuck was going on?

  And surprisingly, it was Lex who added calm to the tornado of nervous anxiety that was currently rocking the room. “Sorry, Nate,” he said, and he put a hand on Jobe’s knee. “We’ll tell you whatever you need to know. Continue.”

  Lex slipped his hand back into Jobe’s and squeezed it. Jobe couldn’t look at him though, his mind was a stirred pot allowing no solid thoughts or words to climb out of the slippery edge.

  “Ian told me about Sasha’s migraines, and he also mentioned having a voice in his head, right?” Nate asked.

  Jobe and Lex both nodded. “Sasha said the blood helped them,” Lex said. “The voice, it was usually yelling at him, saying mean things. We feared he was schizophrenic, or having some sort of mental break.”

  “Sasha was depressed then, wasn’t he?” Ian said. “He had things wrong with him. He was troubled.”

  Jobe was at first taken aback, but then remembered that it had been stated to the media multiple times that Sasha had been dealing with depression and social anxiety. “Yeah,” Jobe replied. “He rarely went outside, rarer still by himself.”

  “That’s why he had the voice,” Nate said under his breath, his body still hunched and his eyes fixed on the floor. “Kheva was luring him, just like he lured Rob.”

  “W-what?” Lex said confused. “What do you mean it was Kheva?”

  Nate’s downcast eyes lifted. “Your nephew isn’t like us,” he said slowly. “Kheva knew this, just like Kheva knew that Rob wasn’t. Kheva… he knows how to find people like him, and he… he takes them. He…” Nate’s voice cracked, and his eyes began to well. “He takes them, he breaks them down to nothing until their minds shatter to pieces. He alters their brains, he hurts them with his fuck-fucking mind.” Nate let out a sob, his hands trembling.

  Jobe just stared at him, and inside, a knot formed in his stomach. “What do you mean he… hurts them with his mind?” he said, his voice flat. “He alters their brain? What…?”

  “Nate…” Lariat said, placing a hand on Nate’s shoulder. “I don’t think we should – we should tell them that part quite yet.”

  “They have to know!” Nate cried, tears now dripping down his cheeks. He turned back to Lex and Jobe. “Your nephew, your friend… he’s something that Kheva calls a nightcrawler. They’re extremely powerful. Kheva is extremely powerful. He can sneak into your mind, he can read your thoughts, he can fill your head with so much pain you pass out. Their only weakness is their own brains, they need blood or body fluid from other nightcrawlers or else they suffer from intense migraines, and when their minds break, they become other people.” Nate looked from Jobe to Lex, and when he saw the doubt on both of their faces, his words became strangled. “I know this, I know this because that’s what happened to Rob. He thinks his name is Kel, Keluva Swift, he doesn’t remember me, he’s a brainwashed shell of who he once was.” Then he looked pleadingly at Lex. “Sasha’s adopted, isn’t he? From Russia?”

  Jobe just stared at Nate, and that pit in his stomach became a crater of doubt, confusion, and the emotion that was growing the strongest: anger.

  They’d been had.

  They had both been taken for fucking fools.

  Jobe rose from the chair. “We’re leaving,” he said. “Lariat, if you ever contact us again we’ll be filing a restraining order.”

  “I saw him!” Nate suddenly cried. “I fucking saw him with them last week. I saw Rob, I saw Kheva, and there was someone new, someone that looks exactly like the man I saw on TV.”

  Jobe stopped in his tracks, anger smouldering in his gut. “Don’t you fucking lie, you little shit. Don’t you fucking lie about shit like that.”

  “It was in Walmart,” Nate said. “I didn’t remember any of it until several days ago. Kheva had altered my memory, and the memories of everyone who saw him. I know I saw Sasha, Kheva told him to take Kel and run back to the truck, and he did what he was told.”

  Jobe didn’t know what prospect was worse, the kid lying or the kid telling the truth. All of this was too bizarre for words, people like that just didn’t exist in this world. Every word coming from Nate’s mouth sounded like something out of a movie.

  Telepathy? Being able to alter someone’s mind… even Sasha being adopted.

  No, it’s not true. None of this was true.

  They were being had. This is all a part of some sick joke.

  “Lex?” Jobe said, swallowing down the devastation. “Let’s go.”

  But Lex didn’t move, the man remained in his seat, his eyes staring forward with no words said.

  “Lex?” Jobe said again. “Come on… you know this is bullshit.”

  Lex didn’t move, nor did he say anything back. But as Jobe watched him, he saw the subtle changes. Lex’s eyes slowly shut tight, then his shoulders began to shake. Finally, as Jobe’s heart wrenched, he let out a muffled sob.

  Jobe’s teeth clenched. “You fucking happy now?” he snarled at Lariat and Nate. “You got your kicks? This is his fucking nephew that could very well be dead right now, and you two are fucking sadistic enough to do this to him? Fuck you both!”

  “I’m not lying!” Nate yelled. He slammed his hand down on Lariat’s desk. “They’re somewhere near Courtenay, they’re somewhere in the woods. Kheva has Rob and he has Sasha, and we need to find them both. We need to bring them both home.”

  Jobe shook his head. He turned back to Lex and put a hand on his shoulder. “Lex, come on. We’re going.”

  “No,” Lex whispered, his voice small. His head shook back and forth, a tissue now clutched in his hand. “We’re not leaving. We’re seeing this through.”

 
“What?” Jobe said. “Are you fucking kidding me? These two are nuts.”

  “There’s too many… similarities, Jobe,” Lex said. “The blood… the migraines…”

  “All things we told Lariat already,” Jobe said coldly. “Everything they’ve said to us, can be constructed from information we’ve already given them.”

  “What about the note, Jobe?” Lex sniffed. “The one signed with a K? What about the fact that every single bit of this fucking makes sense?”

  “Mind-controlling humans don’t make sense, Lex!” Jobe exploded. “This is bullshit. All of it!”

  “Then maybe I need to believe in bullshit, Jobe!” Lex suddenly cried, his eyes rising to join agony with anger. “Maybe believing bullshit is a hell of a lot better than believing my nephew, a man who in all respects is my fucking son, is dead. Maybe believing them, is better than going back to that god damn empty house knowing I won’t hear him knock on my door, knowing I will walk into an apartment that was never fucking empty before this.” Lex broke down then, and with tears in his own eyes, Jobe took Lex into his arms and held him tight.

  “I’m sorry,” Jobe whispered. “I’m sorry, baby, you’re right.” He closed his eyes, the tears stinging them. “We’ll stay. We’ll stay with this until the end.”

  Lex continued to sob, Lariat and Nate looking on with matching expressions of devastation on their faces.

  Twin looks that didn’t match two men trying to scam money.

  How can this be true? How can this possibly be true?

  Sasha… if this means you’re alive…

  …I’ll take it.

  “If you can look me in the eye and tell me I’m lying,” Nate said behind Jobe. “You can walk out that door and I’ll never contact you again.” Jobe looked over at him, and saw a man with a despairing glint in his eyes, and something that could only be described as hopeless hope. “I know it sounds crazy. I only believed it when Rob showed me what he can do. I’ve – I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

  This just can’t be true. Am I sleeping?

  Lex sniffed. “When you saw Sasha… did he look well?” Sasha was in a store? He hated going into stores, especially large ones like Walmart. “Was he scared?”