“Yes, well my parents like to be unique. Though I got the lucky end of the straw, my younger sister is called Ahsieg.”
“Oh, well Ahsieg isn’t so bad,” I laughed politely. “If I wasn’t born a girl, I was going to get the name Barry.” That was my father’s middle name. I must’ve worn my thoughts across my face because Elyograg turned in front of me suddenly to cut me off.
“Is something wrong?”
“Hmm, uh no, nothing. Sorry, it’s not...”
“You look like you’re about to cry.” My entire body tensed. I felt stupid for letting my emotions paint themselves across my face so childishly. Elyograg seems nice though, maybe it would be okay to open up to a stranger.
“Actually, my dad passed away recently and some of the problems he had have now become my problems. Sort of.” Elyograg nodded his head slowly. “Can I ask you something?” He turned his eyes and smiled. “What do you think happens when you die?”
There was no pause in his answer, “I believe in a heaven for the people who are good.”
“And for the people that were bad?” His lips twitched, debating which answer to give me.
“I suppose if the good go to heaven, then that means the bad go to hell…”
“So what if I told you there was a Third Realm?” Elyograg raised his brows and widened his smile, dimpling his cheeks. He was very handsome.
“A Third Realm?”
“Yeah, for the people who don’t believe in a God…?” The beat of my heart hammered against me. I was so nervous; I just didn’t want him to think I was some lunatic.
“I dunno, I guess it’s possible. How can a person get judged by a God they don’t believe exists?” My shoulders sighed with a mild shrug of relief. With that logic I allowed myself a small dosage of hope, that there was still a chance that the Staff existed; that all this fighting and dying wasn’t for nothing.
“Yeah, thanks.” We had already reached the post office. I slipped the envelopes into the open slot, my back turned, when Elyograg reached around my shoulders, pulling me into his chest. He held me for only a second but, though it felt like so much longer, his heat covered me like a blanket. The soft tickle of his breath moved across me, giving me shivers; and his smell, it was sweet and light like the essence of honey wafting through a room.
“It was really nice meeting you Rachael, I’ll see you later okay…” he whispered. I closed my eyes, the urge to sink into those arms draining all my other thoughts; all thoughts of standing upright, of being conscious of where I am and who I was, they all morphed into the dream of his embrace. He held me like a lover, gentle and secure. But then he vanished and the harsh reality tapped into my back. He was gone. Even the weather was sadder without him.
As I walked home my mind was consumed with images of Elyograg; that mocking smile, his chocolaty golden eyes, the left over tingle of warmth where he’d captured my arms; so much so that I nearly knocking into the front doorjamb before registering that it was even there.
The front door was left open?
That wasn’t possible. I had slammed and locked the door before I left. A sharp snap shot up from my chest and stopped half way up my throat, just where my voice box was.
Mum wouldn’t be back yet, so the only conclusion must be Lock. In the sun light, Lock was exposed to all the Hunters and Goons. I shuddered, thinking about what it may have looked like, that spilt second of stepping out into the sun, its milky glow spreading over him at the same moment that a demon attacked.
I couldn’t think of it anymore, my mind wouldn’t let me go there. Instead I focused all my brain power into moving my feet, right then left, into the hallway. The lights were still off, making the room dim and gloomy, shading all of the soft browns and gold into a bleak water-washed grey, like holding a dusty glass over the top of a picture. I glanced into the lounge room, peering quickly across the kitchen. I kept moving, only giving myself only seconds to scan. The stairs creaked loudly underneath me, dipping subtly under my weight. My shoes thumped softly as I ran across the floorboards. I darted my head quickly into Mum’s room but it was bare. I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe, and for a moment I couldn’t even lift my heavy foot to take the next step. If he wasn’t in bed I wasn’t sure of what I would do. I needed him to be there, I needed him to be alive. And not just for my own selfish reasons, not because he was my ticket out of this Banished spirit fate; it was something else, a need to protect that I couldn’t understand or resist. Like an itch in your eyes when you try to fight sleep, when in the end your eyes were going to close regardless of your strength.
The door ahead of me had been kicked open. My lower lip trembled as I stood directly in front of my room and glanced in. He was gone. Gone! I couldn’t believe it, I was angry and annoyed all at the same time, but most of all I was agonizing about him. I turned and ran, calling in an unfamiliar high pitched voice that was close to shrieking, “Lock?! Where are you?!”
Suddenly, a heavy weight punched into my right shoulder, spinning me around, my loose hair whipping into my face, blinding me against my attacker. Another hit, this time the force and weight staying on me, pinning me to the wall where I rebounded slightly against the sudden push. It was the Hunter, I was sure of it; it had come to collect my soul as well. I squirmed and instinctively shot my hands up to bat the thing away from me. Before I could land the first punch, a snapping growl erupted from the pit of its stomach, deep and disturbed. I heard the hissing of its breath exhaling through clenched teeth.
“You promised…”
That voice! Alarm bells rang, firing off cues inside my head. I instantly matched a face to the voice. Lock... I glanced up to see his human face scrunched into a livid scowl and his right arm extended out, his fingers clamped around my shoulder. He rattled me again, and then quickly loosened his grip.
He had changed again. It wasn’t the colour of his skin this time, or the clean face and the brown hair, it was his eyes. They weren’t snake-like anymore, but instead a softer green; lively, fresh, and pure like a blade of grass with a small droplet of morning dew skimming down it. The danger that had been imprinted upon them, flashing like a warning sign in bold writing, was now hidden behind his human youth. Instinctively, I didn’t feel the need to be cautious around him anymore.
I tensed and curled my fingers underneath themselves, turning my spread hands into fists.
“What’s the matter with you?” I snapped. His lips peeled back over his teeth and he leaned back, ready to lunge forward and take a bite.
“You just disappeared!” His voice rang with anger. He twitched his nose and flinched back, nostrils flaring before the green slits of his eyes zoned in on my neck. They rolled along my collarbone, trailing down my arms and chest as if he were tracking a scent. I instantly shot my arms up to cover myself before he could peruse any more.
“What are you-?”
“That smell,” he cut me off with a wheeze, “It stinks. Why do you smell like them?” It only took me a few seconds to catch up to what he was thinking.
“There was a boy I met-” I started when Lock bolted down the hallway and bounded down the stairs, his every footstep pounding along the floor boards. He pushed open the front door and was about to charge out, but I had kept up to speed with his mad dash and looped both my arms around him, hauling him off his feet in the same moment he made a jump for the front garden.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I twisted the young boy around in my arms, turning us both so we faced the stretch of the hallway. The open breeze of the outside was nothing but light touches along our backs. “You can’t go out in the daylight, remember?”
Lock squirmed in my arms and my grip loosened, reluctantly.
“It doesn’t matter…” His voice slipped down, sourly defeated. I closed the front door behind me so he couldn’t escape.
“I don’t understand, Lock,” I honestly admitted, turning my body to face him directly, breathing so heavily that the cloying scent consumed me to the point where I could tast
e it at the back of my throat. It hurt a little that the odour was so repellent on me, while on Elyograg it had smelled so sweet.
“Where did you go?”
“Just to the market… what is going on with you?”
“I thought you left me,” Lock snapped as his teeth sliced and bit the air before pulling back, “I woke up and you weren’t there. I thought you had run off, I thought you had…”
The lumpy build-up in my throat only seemed to get bigger, making it harder and harder to force the remorse down.
“I didn’t mean to worry you.”
I gasped and swallowed my words, as both of his arms slammed the door behind me on either side of my shoulders, before closing the distance and pulling me to him, caged in a firm embrace. It wasn’t an embrace of love or friendship; it felt much more controlled than that, like a possessive snatch or entrapment. He would’ve squashed me if his grip was any tighter; his arms were thin but strong, flexing underneath his soft skin. I felt my elbows buckle underneath his narrowing grip.
His head lowered very slowly into the dip of my neck, rustling the length of my hair. The beating of my heart roared with yearning, pumping the flow of blood through me, making my fingers and toes twitch. I was only half aware of the softening of his body as he reacted to mine. His throttling grip slowly and faintly morphed into a caress, no longer strangling, his body embracing my curves. And then, in a voice that didn’t match the softness of his touch, he hissed, “He followed you here…”
Chapter Nine:
The support behind me was suddenly pushed away, rocking my body with it as Lock’s steady breath rose and passed over my shoulders. He had opened the door behind me, inviting a tickle of breeze back in. His grip dropped as he stepped around me.
There was a bystander near the trees at the end of the drive way, watching us. But instead of turning and strolling away, the stranger tilted his head so his fiery red hair ruffled.
“Well, well, well,” Elyograg’s voice rode along the wind. It felt like he was standing right next to me, whispering those words directly into my ear, “If this isn’t a sight to see.”
Lock tensed next to me before brushing against my stomach, to stand as a bulwark between Elyograg and me. His hand glided behind his back, fingers patting my stomach, before stiffening and pushing me back deeper into the hallway. In my surprise, I couldn’t stop my feet as I stumbled backwards from the force.
“Wait. What’s going on?” I whispered, “Do you know each other?”
“What do you think?” I paused for a moment, whipping my head from Lock to Elyograg, then back to Lock again. Before I could open my mouth to answer, Elyograg stiffened and Lock jerked his neck up, all of this so subtle and swift that it looked as though they moved in sync.
“I am not here on business, Banished.” Elyograg smiled and bowed his head gently, muffling a chuckle, before redirecting his eyes up towards me. He kept them there for a while and I stared back, fighting the urge to swoon in admiration.
“Your kind is always on business!”
“So, this is your Host? How unfortunate for you both.” Host, was that my name now? “I’m sorry that you got mixed up in this predicament, but I assure you I am not here to harm either of you. My real name is Gargoyle, and it is my purpose to collect the…” He searched the sky for a better suited word, “misguided souls and retrieve them back to their appropriate places.” Lock growled at the mention of his ‘appropriate’ place. We all knew what he meant, but no one was going to utter the word.
”Then what are you doing here?” I asked.
“I owed a debt…” Gargoyle sneered and took a step forward. A beam of white light broke through the soft string of grey clouds crossing the sky, sprinkling down on top of the garden, spreading its wings and coating Gargoyle and the trees like a second layer of skin. Where the light stroked across Gargoyle’s form, a harsher glowing white started to foam and bounce off his skin, flickering like the reflection off a metallic plate, shifting the beams with every angle you tilt it.
As the sun kept crawling, slowly and peacefully, it engulfed his entire body so the white glow became an outer layer of cloud and his heavily gelled hair softened to feathers, bouncing with harsh red neon. His eyes heightened, just as Lock’s had been heightened in his Spirit form, into vibrant living eyes, dancing with a wealth of gold and small hints of oak wood. They weren’t wild like Lock’s, capturing and striking, able to take the breath out of you and knock you on your back; instead these eyes melted your face and swallowed you into a heavenly sense of security, so blissful and hopeful that you wanted to embrace them fully, not poke at their sharp edges.
I’d been so distracted that I hadn’t noticed how the distance between us had been shortened by Gargoyle’s quick steps. Lock had noticed though. He reacted by tensing his entire body and trembling, imagining how he would’ve loved to tackle Gargoyle so ferociously that his spine would snap. Gargoyle ignored Lock’s hostile stance and stood within metres of the front door. I took a step back, cautiously blinking my eyes twice, clearing the haze away.
“Hey!” Lock abruptly barked, “Step back, Hunter!”
Hunter? I had pictured Hunters to be older, much older, tough skinned men dressed in heavy cloaks and weapons strapped across their belts. The Hunters, they were supposed to be the bad guys, the one with thick, stubbly beards, controlling the Goons with whips and lashes. Why did he look like the good guy?
“Little spirit, you are no threat to me in that state; surely you know that as well as I do.” Gargoyle grinned and reached his hand out, aiming for Lock’s throat. But his hand then dipped down even further and lightly touched mine, the soft ribbon of his fingers caressing my knuckles, leaving a trail of tinging warmth bubbling under my skin.
Lock grinned at the extended hand. Before Gargoyle’s fingers could fully ring around my own, I snapped my hand back, but not before Lock swung outwards with his own, the power so rapid it could’ve broken his wrist as he knocked Gargoyle’s shoulder away.
“Don’t get cocky, Hunter.” Gargoyle’s smile dropped as he stumbled onto his back foot. Lock leaned in closer, his voice deep with rage, “And don’t you dare touch what’s mine ever again.”
My cheeks burned as Gargoyle turned swiftly on his heel, unimpressed. As he walked back into the trees, his eyes rolled upward as the light skimmed along the branches arching and sheltering him into the shade; his skin, eyes, and hair slipping away from its angelic glow and back into normal.
“Right.” Gargoyle glanced over his shoulder, “My debt has been repaid for now, you’d best pray I never come across you again. Next time I won’t be so kind...”
Lock tilted his head in question, but Gargoyle had already stepped back into the passing breeze, shattering into white sparks. Under the soft light you could hardly see the last vestiges flickering away in the breeze.
I waited for Lock to speak but he stood completely still, face turned away, watching. My fingers twitched with eagerness, a driving force that made me want to usher Lock back indoors.
“Lock, I think you should come back inside,” I suggested. But Lock didn’t react to my warnings and instead kept completely still. Then, he turned to face me once more, moving ever so delicately like he was stepping on brittle egg shells.
“I think they’re distracted…”
“Who’s distracted?”
“They are, the Hunters, they can’t get me because… something else is happening… they’re distracted.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because of what that stupid Hunter just did. I don’t know why, but he showed it to me…Hunters don’t usually stay on the surface because they can’t hide like we do. They are too obvious and stand out from all the other humans. So, when he stepped into the sun light and revealed what he really was, the other Hunters didn’t teleport him back; they didn’t hide him from you… They’re not watching the daylight…”
That’s right! Just like how everyone turned and watched Gargoyle at t
he market place; having that type of attention all the time would be too risky.
“I don’t know how long this will last for. We need to start moving now.”
“But what will that do?”
“They know where I am, where your house is, and how to find us. If we move, if we run far away from here, then they wouldn’t be able to track us.” With his mind made up, Lock grabbed my hand, pulling me forward. I tripped over myself as Lock bounded through the front door and into the open parking space. The cool breeze was lost behind the vise-like grip of Lock’s icy hands.
The sun was chequered by clouds, which were crawling sideways allowing small patches of radiance to spill out the gaps. I watched the soft shaft of light breaking through the holes and cutting out, like the flickering of a faulty light, as Lock moved obliviously onwards. I started to pull back, nearing the end of the driveway and Lock slowed in reaction, feeling the backwards protest of my weight.
He slowed, tossed his head over his shoulder, and glanced towards me questionably.
“Lock we can’t…” I trailed off, not knowing what fury may burst through him if I spoke. He was like a game of Russian roulette, never knowing which cylinder had the bullet until you held it to your head and pulled the trigger. I couldn’t just run off, it was stupid and idiotic and could only cause further problems. What would we do? Where would we go? And Mum, how would that look? She’ll panic, she’ll hire the entire police force and detective squad to track me down, and when they do find me, what would I say? Sorry Mum, but I had to run away with this strange boy because of reasons that I cannot tell you, hope that’s okay.
Lock paused and nodded, frustrated but understanding.
“When that woman gets back tell her you need to go somewhere. That it’s ‘important’ and you can’t miss it,” he ordered.
I felt unsure. Would she let me go? Probably. She did allow me to come here on my own, but then what? Sit underneath a bridge, waiting for the Staff to find us along with food and water?
“We can stay at the house back in the city.”
My Demonic Ghost: Banished Spirits Page 7
