Dark Side Darker

by Lucas T. Harmond

  They drove on a little while before Karen decided to break the awkward silence. She’d been trying to place Carthy’s face ever since he’d first got into the car, now she remembered where she knew him from. “You’re that guy from the shopping mall, right?”

  Carthy raised his eyebrows. “You remember that? Must have made an impression I guess.”

  Karen smiled slightly, but she still felt uneasy. There was something very strange about the guy and it was impossible to see what thoughts hid behind his smile. There was something in the way—she realised she was still looking into his eyes and nervously cut away. She glanced back feeling mixed emotions, again met with that confident smirk and couldn’t help but return a small smile before looking away again.

  Rufus was still looking at Carthy through the mirror. He was even more uncomfortable now he knew who he was. Josh had never exactly been forthcoming with what ever this Carthy had told him on their first encounter, but whatever it had been had left him visibly shaken. It bothered him that he’d never pushed harder to find out.

  “So who are you?” he asked abruptly.

  “Name’s Carthy.”

  “And?”

  Carthy avoided answering the question. “What the hell is this shit we’re listening to?”

  Again Rufus glared at him. “Cypress Hill! What, you don’t like it?”

  Carthy shrugged. “I don’t like any of this rap shit! Just people stealing other people’s songs and talking over the top. I don’t get it! Now if you’re talking about real music...”

  “What the fuck do you want, Carthy?” Josh blurted out. He was tired of playing games.

  Carthy turned his glass-shielded eyes on him; behind was a look of pure ice.

  He feigned being hurt. “I only wanted to talk, Josh. Nothing else. I’m sure that there’s no need for that sort of tone.” And then in his head. ‘Stay calm. your friends aren’t fully aware of what’s happening. And you know I’m not one of the bad guys, right? So quit the bullshit, eh kid?’ The super intense voice leaked into his consciousness in a crushing wave that made Josh convulse.

  He struggled to regain his senses and fight off the sickness he now felt surging through him.

  ‘Get out of my head!’ he hissed silently and maybe, just maybe, Carthy smiled.

  “Okay, so I guess you’ve seen enough to want a few answers, right?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Well, where to start?”

  Josh interrupted. “How did you find us?”

  Carthy smiled knowingly. “You know, putting her into the hospital was a pretty bad idea. Not a good idea at all! Bringing in someone in Sarah’s condition will only have brought us all attention from certain parties we didn’t want interest from. Besides, what the hell did you think they could do for her? A soul enema?” He laughed.

  “Stop avoiding the questions,” Josh said. “How did you know I’d come to the hospital?”

  “Well, it seemed reasonable you’d come to visit your girlfriend at some point.”

  “That’s bullshit!” Growled Rufus and he punched the steering wheel. “How the hell would you even know who Sarah was unless you had something to do with her getting fucked up in the first place?”

  Carthy ignored his accusing look. “Oh, I had nothing to do with that.”

  Josh shook his head. “Then how did you know where to find us?”

  “Let’s just call it a hunch.” And there was a finality to how he said it that let Josh know they would receive no further answers.

  Josh sighed, looked back at Sarah. “Ok, so what’s wrong with her???”

  Carthy looked down at the curled up body, so still she could have been dead. “OD,” he said.

  “Bullshit!” Rufus barked.

  For a second Carthy seemed angry and then his familiar smile returned. It was the smile of a priest or a killer.

  “No, it’s true. I’m afraid poor little Sarah’s had one too many.”

  “Can you help her??” Karen asked.

  Again that smile as Carthy removed a fresh smoke and his Zippo. He looked ’round the car confidently, was clearly weighing them all up. Josh could sense it.

  “No. I don’t have the antidote.”

  Josh frowned. “And who does?”

  Carthy leaned forward as if he was speaking to a child. “The bad guys.”

  “Okay, what the fuck is he talking about?” Rufus growled.

  Carthy turned on him and spoke calmly. “Calm down Rufus.”

  Rufus felt an ice chill scythe up his spine and for the first time he understood the kind of power the man held. Carthy looked at him again and Rufus shrunk away mildly.

  Josh sat with his arms locked across his chest. He was trying to appear less scared but the expression on Carthy’s face told him the farce was useless.

  “I’m a...” A hesitation while Carthy amused himself by selecting his words, “an Agent.”

  “For who?” Even while he asked, Josh wasn’t certain he was prepared to believe what he would be told.

  “Another realm, a fracture of reality which moved along another path, another world. Take your pick.”

  Karen sat up smiling awkwardly. For some reason she no longer felt afraid but was still desperately trying to get a handle on the situation. “You’re a, what? Alien?”

  “Not in the sense you mean. There are different levels to reality, some higher, some lower, some lighter, some darker. I’m from one of these.”

  Karen laughed loudly, saw that everyone was looking at her as if she was mad and stopped. “Oh, sorry,” she said quietly. “Really?” she asked.

  Josh could feel Carthy filling him with understanding, and began to get a measure of what he was saying.

  “You’re a daemon? Angel?”

  Carthy frowned then shrugged. “Well, that’s probably as close as you can come to understanding. The right ball park as they say. It’ll do for now.”

  Rufus had been shaking his head for some time. He looked up at Josh. “I think this is bullshit.”

  He felt an ice stab as he again became the focus of Carthy’s attention.

  “Do you understand nuclear physics?” Carthy asked.

  “What? No, what’s...”

  “But you accept that the Atom exists, right? Good, now shut the fuck up.” Carthy shook his head and finally lit his cancer stick. “Okay, my world is less physical, we’re less ‘of the flesh.’ ”

  Now Josh interrupted. He could feel some shards of the truth Carthy was trying to ease them into, but his mind was still reeling. “What?”

  Carthy looked weary. He looked at Sarah, let his eyes trail over her briefly and Josh felt, rather than saw, the smile inside him. He shivered.

  “Okay, so here you’re all firmly rooted inside of your shells. you think, you feel but all from your flesh prison. your philosophers have questioned the notion of self, the existence of souls, but I’m not here to help you with that shit.” He laughed hard. “Okay, a thought, a feeling has no real form until you act on it. It can become speech, an act of violence, anything, but all through the filter of flesh. It’s warped, changed and the purity is lost. Words can never truly express the soul. Still, both the physical and metaphysical can exist in the same shell. We are not like this. It should be enough to say we are quite the opposite.”

  Rufus and Karen were listening like children, but for some reason he couldn’t place, Josh was recoiling in horror. He felt Carthy was sheltering them from something.

  “Sarah has taken a vast quantity of a drug supplied by the... people I’m to retrieve. That drug is also from my realm and by taking it she has opened up certain passages within and around her. Nothing she’s prepared for. I think you’ve seen the next stage.” He raised his eye brows at Josh.

  “Oh fuck!”

  “What?” Karen asked panicking. “What the fuck is he talking about. What’s all this stuff about demons and drugs? What...”

  She fell into silence as Carthy glanced at her.

  “Sarah has opened herself up to, e
r, occupancy. Her body’s firmly set in this plane but her soul is in limbo suspended between two worlds. Currently that means she is a border or a beacon as such.”

  Josh had to clear his throat before speaking. “Something could follow her back?”

  “Something already has!”

  “Jesus, you’ve got to do something!”

  Carthy smiled. “I can’t without the cure and I don’t have it. I need to catch the renegades for that.”

  “This is such bullshit!” Rufus yelled again, unable to control himself any longer despite his fear.

  “Why come here?” Josh asked.

  “I think you can help me and you in turn seem to need my help. Besides I didn’t want the hospital doing more tests. Can you imagine the confusion? I can’t imagine what they would have made of the enzymes they’d extract from her veins. I’m sure by now your police must have some sort of investigation going. My targets have been very sloppy. This is already a grade A fuckin’ mess.”

  “How so?”

  “I think, sorry, I know, there have been a number of killings, thefts and most unnecessary. As for the way they are handling their drug network, well they might as well walk round with big arrows pointing down at their heads. They’re going to bring attention to things your world isn’t ready for. Also they’re being careless in who they are giving their product to, as you can see this drug is very dangerous to the susceptible. There’s already been a number of... contaminations and it’s going to be close to impossible to track down them all. Best I can do is find the source and stop further contagion.”

  Rufus looked at Carthy, more wearily than before. “I don’t know about any of this,” he mumbled.

  Josh was frowning. “Okay, just say I accept this, what are these— things you’re hunting?”

  “Oh, they’re like me. My kind. Only they’re, well, criminals I suppose. They forced a way into this world, took bodies as their own. This causes problems for us, and for you.”

  Karen’s bemused smile died a little. “Took bodies?”

  Josh hadn’t heard. “Why? I mean why bother?”

  Carthy’s knife smile twitched on his face. “I wouldn’t say my world is necessarily better than this one. Just different. There are still things that feel better in the flesh.” He briefly looked at Karen who squirmed uncomfortably and fought hard to hide her own smirk.

  “Some of us prefer it here, others will do anything to leave. These subjects are merely using the resources available to them to make it here. They want to live it up. They want to know all the joy of being entirely flesh. I mean why does anyone deal drugs? The same reason every time. Self gain.”

  Rufus was smirking. “And you’ve come to stop them, huh?”

  “They can’t just be left to do what they’re doing! It destabilises everything. They’re opening divides that aren’t ready to be opened. If our realms, any of the realms, are ever meant to connect, it isn’t now. Just like here, we have creatures lower down the evolutionary ladder. Some of these have now ripped blindly into your world. People are getting lost, things are warping, becoming aware of each other. In short they could really fuck things up!”

  “I guess reality isn’t what it used to be,” Karen said.

  “This is real good.” Rufus was beaming wildly now. “So how did you get here? Take a body?”

  Carthy paused longer this time. Josh knew he wished he could have avoided talking about this.

  “Yes, I took a body. As a child formed I moved my consciousness into it, became it.”

  Karen was no longer smiling at all. “You murdered a baby?”

  Carthy actually seemed hurt for an instance. “I was inside its cells before any consciousness had formed. I came at a stage when it could have been aborted. As a result, I am more human. I understand you better. As agents we are all placed that way. Sleepers, waiting for a...” He stopped, distracted by Josh’s thoughts. “Come on man, don’t ask me who I work for. I’m trying to keep this as simple as I can.”

  Josh nodded. “Speak to children, use small words right?”

  “That’s right, kid. Very small words.”

  “So, what’s in Sarah?”

  Carthy sighed. “Something pretty far down the food chain. Like a moth to a flame. It’s not too far in, can’t understand where it is, what it feels. She isn’t in much danger.”

  “What if something else finds her?”

  “I’ll make sure it doesn’t,” Carthy smiled warmly, but it couldn’t fully hide that there was some lie hidden in his statement. Could he actually do what he had said? Josh wondered.

  Carthy cut in quickly. “Still, the sooner we find the antidote...”

  Everyone fell silent for a few seconds, leaving the music and the engine sound as the only noises.

  As he sat in the silence, Josh was at the edge of total belief; and he wanted it, a clarity of faith. Still, there were parts with the distinct smell of bullshit about them.

  “So, Carthy, tell me, why are you alone?”

  “Hey, we’re all alone kid.”

  Josh shook his head, smiling quietly to himself. “That’s not going to wash. Why are there no other agents?”

  “There were difficulties in birth.”

  Josh stared at him for some time, trying to detect some uncertainty, some nondescript haze. There had certainly been some real hurt in what he had said.

  “Why us?” Rufus asked, craning his neck to look at Carthy.

  “Josh is more gifted, more different than most here. And you have the best reason to help me.”

  The silence that followed weighed heavily over them for some time. Rufus slowed the car as they reached a new set of traffic lights.

  “Okay,” Josh said at last. “I’m in, but what now?”

  “Now you tell me where you bought the drug from and I go talk to them.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Why? What did you expect?”

  “Fuck knows! A plan maybe? And what about Sarah?”

  “Well she comes with us.”

  “What?” asked Karen. “You’re doing this now? I don’t want anything to do with any of this!”

  “Yeah, and I don’t want Sarah with us. I want her somewhere safe.” Josh added.

  Carthy looked first to Karen. “You’re already a part of this,” he told her. “You’ve just been an accomplice in a kidnapping.”

  Rufus nodded. “That’s true. you’re the first one which the police are going to want to talk to.”

  Karen was panicked. “What? But I didn’t do anything!”

  “You were there and that’s enough. Look I can’t let you go at the moment, you’ll stay at my place till this passes and as for Sarah, well I can see no reason why we can’t leave her there as well.”

  “And what if I don’t want to?” Karen asked.

  “Honey, I wasn’t giving you a choice. If they get to you that in turn will lead them to Josh and Rufus and if we are using his car that will inevitably lead to me. That cannot happen. I mean the chances are they’re already looking for it, but unfortunately that’s a risk we’ll have to take.”

  Rufus’ eyes flashed in the mirror. “Why the hell would they be looking for me? I haven’t done anything. There’s nothing that can traced back to me.”

  “There’s usually something people miss. The tiniest mistake can lead them straight to you, believe me I know! It’s my business as such.”

  “Fine then, we’ll leave Sarah there as well but what do we do next?”

  Carthy shrugged. “You show me where these dealers are and I bust some heads.”

  “That’s it! Straight away?”

  Carthy seemed to be studying him intently. “Why? you think that’s a bad idea?”

  Josh grimaced, felt like Carthy was in his mind. A strange image flashed somewhere behind the curtain of his mind’s eye. Maybe it had been a black bull, surrounded in flames, two towers of glass and a field of grass. The whole image opened up in his perception for only a second like a sun expanding
outwards inside his mind. There was a sharp pain behind his eyes.

  “Hmm,” said Carthy.

  Josh looked at him. “Did you just do something to me?”

  Carthy looked genuinely baffled. “Me, no. Why?” Then he tapped Rufus on the shoulder. “Hey, you know the light’s been on green for a while now?”

  “Huh? What?” Rufus seemed stunned. He looked up at the traffic light. “Shit, jus’ didn’t notice somehow.” He regarded Carthy with mild suspicion and then put the car into gear leaving behind a silver BMW which had slowly rolled up behind just as the lights changed again.

  MEDITATION

  JOSH HAD FIRST FELT the effects of Blue beginning to kick back into his system as they drove towards the flat Carthy was renting. He had felt a kind of unrealness falling in on him and then, at some point, he had obviously passed out since he had awoken sitting alone in a barren room.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his throbbing head. The room he sat in had no windows or doors. There was no light on the ceiling and yet the interior of the room was lit as if it were mid-day.

  A thousand voices were trying to penetrate the walls of the cell. They were reduced to whimpers and quiet shrieks by the muffling effects of what were obviously very thick walls.

  “Jesus,” Josh murmured and for the first time it dawned on him that this was not a normal room.

  He opened his eyes and found himself sitting in a small living room. A television sat in one corner. The reception was very poor and the female news reader’s voice rang out over a background of white-noise. Rufus and Karen sat uncomfortably on battered-looking sofas with protective plastic covers over them. It was Carthy who first realised Josh was now awake again.

  “Back with us, then?” he said, only partially a question.

  “Where am I?”

  “The flat I’m renting.”

  Josh looked around the room. Motes of dust hung in the air, set alight by the thick beam shot through the air by the early morning sun. Everywhere there was old furniture, doilies and cheap tacky ornaments. It reminded him of holiday homes with his parents before their marriage had disintegrated into chaos.