Grim

by Thea Atkinson

  "It's futile to run," he said and I thought I heard a note of relief in his voice. "You're mine. My last fare. I get to go home now. Finally."

  He was talking in riddles. A psychopath if ever there was one. Yet something in his voice caught my attention. The words, the concept was familiar. Home. Last fare. I met his eye and for one long moment we stared at each other, and then I followed his gaze upward, to the heavens.

  It was then that I noticed the ash falling from the sky. Large, gossamer flakes of it drifted down from an unseen source. Was the sky burning and dropping bits of singed cloud to the earth? It certainly looked like it was burning.

  "Feathers," he said. "From a blessed raven." He cocked his head at me as though I should understand what that meant.

  A feather landed on my shoulder. I reached for it, dumbfounded, and discovered it was wet. Scented.

  "Cypress oil," he said. "And sandalwood."

  "Oil?" I said, confused. Past the terror, the bewilderment had its own sort of paralysis.

  He nodded slowly. "And holy fire," he said. "You remember." He looked up.

  I followed his gaze as though it was a magnet and realized why I thought the sky was burning.

  The cathedral was on fire.

  CHAPTER 2

  I should have run. I knew I should. But all I could do was gawk at the flames as they crackled above me, chewing through the old wood of the gallery's banister and casting an eerie light onto the stucco ceiling above it. I wondered if someone else was up there setting everything to light while the psychopath was trying to ensnare me down here. I wondered why I was a target in the first place. Maybe it was Sarah up there. Maybe she had decided that I'd had it too good all these years while she'd been on the run and wanted me to suffer for it.

  It certainly didn't sound like Sarah, but I couldn't work out the significance of why I was here and connect it with her except to think that she must've been involved somehow. I was still trying to work through the confusion when a flaming chunk of wooden railing fell with a horrific thud just a foot in front of me. The flames caught the edge of an oil slick and blazed higher. Three others sparked to life as well. One to my left, to my right, and if I craned to peer over my shoulder, two to my back. Like corners. Just seeing them blazing all around me was enough to free my muscles from their paralysis. They seemed to understand even if my brain didn't that I would be trapped here if I didn't move. Burned alive. A fissure in the paralysis opened up, one large enough for me to crawl through.

  I put my feet to work shuffling back in an effort to reach the door without taking my eye off that quietly advancing form. I butted up against something hard. The door. Thank all the gods great and small. I hadn't realized I was close to the exit but I wasn't about to question it. I was literally feet from freedom. I stole a look over my shoulder to see him still standing there, arms crossed as though he was on a leisurely stroll.

  I spun around, fully intending to flee straight out the door, and leave the maniac to brave the fire on his own. I planned to pound my combat boots on the asphalt all the way to Old Yeller, and get the heck out of there. Cell phone be damned. I'd get it in the morning. With a dozen police men at my heels.

  That was when I realized I was nowhere near the door at all. I stared through open-air all the way through the several remaining feet to that drunken looking door and its pitiful partner. Whatever was keeping me from progressing, it wasn't because anything was in the way. It was impossible, and yet, I couldn't break through.

  "No," I said, telling myself I was just in shock. One thrust and I could launch myself at the door. Whatever I had felt, whatever barrier I believed I'd butted up against was nothing but terror. There was the door. There was the open air in front of it. I just needed to get to it. I took a running step. Nothing. I thrust myself forward as though I was running at a door. Again, I was propelled backward.

  It was ridiculous that I couldn't break through the open space.

  I launched myself toward the space between myself and the door and slammed against something hard again. I shouldered it. Kicked it.

  I hugged myself, glancing frantically around me at the fire's blazing in every corner. The heat from it was already making me break out into a sweat.

  It was no use. However impossible it might be, the air was as solid as the stone walls around me.

  "It's foolish to run," he said, following me. "You can't get past the spelled oil."

  "Spelled oil," I said, drawing out the words as though they could somehow explain to me what was going on, but only registering his statement that I couldn't run. That it was useless. My skin went cold despite the heat of the fires around me. If I couldn't run, I'd end up burning to death. Burning. To. Death.

  I swallowed but the liquid flooding my cheeks wouldn't stay down. I thought shadows had started to creep into the edges of my vision. I was aware that I'd begun to gasp at the air.

  I ran my hands over the air in front of me, feeling ridiculously like an untalented mime. What met my palms was solid and invisible.

  "Can't be," I said.

  A sob escaped me. This couldn't be happening. None of this could be happening.

  The flames were rising on my left. I could feel the heat of the burning oil heating my cheeks and making my hair stick from sweat to my temples. The crackling of the wood in the gallery above me as it was consumed by the flames sang in my ears. Even the slightest sounds were magnified: the footsteps of that psychopath behind me, creeping up on me as though he wanted to torture me by making me wait for him to reach me.

  "Don't worry," he said. "No doubt you'll just come back as a human again. Maybe not with that demonic red hair, but--"

  I didn't wait to hear the rest. I started to scream. Long and loud and exhausting ever bit of air in my lungs. My entire body spasmed with the effort. I had to get someone to hear me.

  The fire grew. It lit up the cathedral with its wavering light, and I could see my attacker as clearly as if he was strolling through a perfectly well lit church on a bright summer's day.

  He was indeed covered in tattoos. I wasn't sure if I should feel relief at knowing my vision wasn't betraying me or if it should worry me more. All I knew was the way my stomach squeezed at noticing those marks had been inked onto his eyelids, showing themselves clearly when he blinked. They were even on the palms of his hand when he stretched toward me. Swirling symbols inched their way down his chest and disappeared beneath the waistband of his pants. Each one of them was deep and dark. Too dark to be regular ink. I was reminded of my foster care creativity classes where we'd burned art into panels of wood.

  They didn't look inked at all. They looked like they had been branded into his skin.

  "Stay away from me," I said, inching along the invisible wall. "I swear if you so much as touch me –"

  "You'll what?" he said. "Tell daddy?"

  He laughed at that and I had the distinct impression he was mad. Not stark raving crazy like I might imagine a regular psychopath would be, but an obsessive compulsive type with a touch of stand up comedian complex.

  He levelled his gaze at me in a way that reminded me of someone pulling a mask down over his face. Like he didn't want me to see any emotion cross his features. As though he were trying to cut himself off from feeling anything.

  I wasn't going to let him off easy. I had no intention of making killing me an easy thing for him. I was going to make it the most uncomfortable and guilt-inducing thing he'd ever done.

  "I'm not even eighteen," I said as though that would make a difference. "I'm still a virgin for heaven's sake."

  Not exactly my finest argument in light of the fact of the whole psychopath element, but it was out there now and I'd have to deal with it. If I was lucky, he would just be a regular murderous psychopath and not a sexual deviant as well.

  "None of that matters," he said, and his tone was almost indulgent. "A few more lifetimes and you'll be closer than you are today. Just let all that go. I'm doing you a favor."

 
"A favor?" I blurted out. "You really are crazy."

  Blessed raven feathers, holy oil, fire at all corners. Weird ritualistic tattoos. This was the stuff of insanity. It was the realm of psychotic breakdown.

  "Seriously bat shit mad."

  He eased himself around one of the puddles of glass as though he were averse to treading on it. I looked down at his feet. Bare. How ridiculous. Who came to a murder barefoot? I wondered if he'd done the same thing to Sarah. If she was tied up somewhere, gagged and terrified. Did he force her to text me? Was this one of those family members she had told me about?

  "What have you done with Sarah?" I said. I had to know. If this was my last moment, I needed to know if she was alive or dead or waiting for me somewhere as afraid as I was.

  He cocked his head at me. "Sarah? I don't know this human. Is she one of us?"

  "One of us?" I heard a burble of ridiculous laughter make its way up my throat. "Look around you; we are human. We are going to burn because we are mortal, human bits of skin and flesh."

  My voice broke on that last, and something crackled in the depths of my memory. I expected him to leap at me. Instead, he cocked his head again, furrowed his brow.

  "We aren't human," he said. "Not really. This is just skin."

  He pulled at the flesh around his stomach as though it was a tight fitting shirt and I realized that talking was useless. Pleading, ludicrous. Even the sound of the fire crackling did nothing to sway his calm demeanor. My throat was burning from smoke, my lungs ached. I sucked in a breath, willing myself to stay calm. Cool. Say nothing. Just ease myself over to the nearest pew. I kept my eyes on him the whole time and let my hands roam the space around me. My fingers finally found the back of a pew and I pushed sideways in between the benches, inching along with my hands to find in the dark where the firelight couldn't reach. There were still some deep shadows in the cathedral even though the fire above me snapped and sizzled as it licked its way through the ancient wax and wood.

  I took a quick look at the wall, searching for an exit that I hadn't thought of. Maybe one of the windows. Maybe I could climb up one of the statues and heave myself out one of those arched window panes devoid of their gorgeous stained glass.

  I dared another look sideways toward the wall, hoping to see a gaping window frame somewhere nearby and discovered that the window closest to me was still intact. The fire from the galley lit up the colours on it in a magnificent way that would have made me gasp in awe if I wasn't so petrified.

  I almost groaned out loud but managed to just clench my fingers on the bench. My breath came out in long hissing notes.

  "What do you think about that panel?" he said. "Interesting, is it not?"

  "Think?" I said, "You're planning to kill me and you want to know what I think about a stupid window?"

  Three crosses. A skeleton helping a man down from the cross. Macabre, yes. Interesting, no.

  By this time, the burning oil had begun to coat my throat and I started coughing. My lungs felt as though someone had reached inside and begun to squeeze them out like a wet rag. I was dragging in air, not breathing it. Every movement I made, shoving into the belly of the pew, grew harder.

  I knew my knee was bleeding from where I had fallen on the glass. Fluid was trickling down my calf and pooling in my boots. Just thinking about it made me feel dizzy. I had to grip the back of the pew to keep from collapsing.

  "You're failing," he said and shuffled closer.

  I shook my head in denial. I would not let him win. I would not. Whatever was making me dizzy, it was nerves. Smoke inhalation. I could power through it. I had to.

  "You think it's the smoke," he said, almost musing. "It's an easy mistake for a human to make. But really it's the oil. It's too powerful for us to withstand. Add blessed feathers to the equation--"

  "Shut up," I yelled. His cool and calculating voice was too much. Terrify me, torture me with threat of harm, but at least get out of my mind in the meantime.

  Everything was shutting down and every word he spoke was as good as jamming splinters beneath my nails.

  "You're having a hard time thinking," he said. "Aren't you? It's coming back, all of it. I knew it would."

  "I told you to shut your mouth." I swayed backwards and fell onto the bench. I swore if I lost consciousness I was going to come back to it screaming and digging at whatever got in my way. I swiveled my head in his direction. I wondered whether or not I'd still be here in the morning when the firemen came or whether the psychopath would have lifted me from the bench and taken me God knows where.

  "Leave me alone," I said. "I haven't done anything to you." My voice came out all scratchy and hoarse.

  He reached the head of my pew and sat down on it. With an almost languid movement, he laid his arm across the back of the bench. His fingers were almost close enough to touch my shoulder. I shrank back, holding my breath. He looked even more terrifying up close. I knew I could throw a punch, but I imagined it would have no effect on that hard looking chin.

  "Leave you alone?" he whispered. "You know I can't do that. You know, that in the end, you wouldn't want me to."

  I watched, horrified, as he gripped the back of the pew and used it to pull himself the last few feet toward me.

  It was happening. In seconds I was going to be beneath his grip and I had no idea what would happen to me then. I didn't even know if I'd be conscious enough to see it coming. I thought maybe it might be a blessing to pass out.

  Somehow I found it within myself to fling myself onto the floor and claw my way underneath the bench, fishing myself back and forth to push myself deeper into the shadows. Dust went up my nose and coated my mouth. I could taste the oil in it. Not just Cyprus and Cedar wood. Something more holy than that. Frankincense. Again, I didn't want to think about how I would know such a thing. I couldn't afford to be even more scared.

  I was scrabbling forward, pulling myself pew after pew through the church to the door. With each agonizing move forward, my knee ground into the floorboards and sent wave after wave of gritty pain up to my throat. The roar of fire had grown more distant as I dug my fingernails into the boards of the floor. Used them to yank myself forward.

  I clutched something furry and cold and just managed to bite down on the scream that erupted up my throat, but couldn't keep myself from flinging the dead rat sideways in terror. Sweet Heaven, I couldn't breathe. Whatever air I had been dragging in before was now coming in short gasps. Everything was going black behind my vision.

  I couldn't black out. I couldn't. I had to dig deep, pull my resolve together like the edges of a sweater. I thought I almost had a grip on the tattered thing when I felt his fingers around my left ankle.

  I did scream then, letting loose the shriek that had been clotted in my throat with enough wind that I ended up sagging on the floor in exhaustion. At the same moment, he yanked me back toward him, and every inch of advance I'd made disappeared beneath my retreating fingertips until I ended up flipped over between pews, him leaning over me with one of those disgusting crow feathers in his hand.

  "Ligoria angelus," he murmured and for a second, I thought I saw a tear running down his cheek.

  "I'm sorry," he said as though he knew I had seen his tears.

  I made a weak attempt to slap his hand away, but my arms felt as though lead weights had been tied to the wrists and before I could fend him off, the tip of the feather made a cross between my eyebrows. He was kneeling over me by then, and oil trickled down my temples and into my hair. I realized the sweat that was beading my forehead and running into my hair was more than likely tears. I was gagging on the sobs because I couldn't stop crying.

  "Please don't hurt me," I heard myself saying. "I'm just a kid."

  Everything that I'd ever done flashed before me. The year I had failed a grade because that was the year I'd gone into foster care. I ended up older than all of the other students. I thought I'd finally graduate this year. Go to university. Party it up. Put a distasteful past behind me. All
that was washing away with that oil.

  I gave him everything I had left in me with one hard jab of my knee and I didn't bother to wait to see if it was effective or not. Instead, as my knee pulled back into my stomach and caught him in the groin from the back, I threw myself onto my side and peeled myself out from beneath him. I was euphoric with the possibility of escape. Hope streaked through my chest the way a knife moves through liquid butter. I was out. I was clean. I just had to make it to the door.

  I made it as far as the aisle before I realized that more debris had fallen from the gallery into the sanctuary and that the routes to freedom were few and far between. Fire lit up everything around me. I choked on my breath.

  "You can't leave," he said from behind me. "You must know that."

  "I don't," I said, protesting.

  I gripped the leg of a pew bench and pulled myself to a staggering stand. Fire roared in my ears as I swayed on my feet. I craned to peer over my shoulder at him.

  He was still terrifying. Broad chested with muscles in his neck thick enough to make it look like another man's thigh. And all over, covered in those black symbols that seem to come alive as the fire light danced over his skin.

  I wouldn't give in. I couldn't.

  "To Hell with you," I said.

  He grinned. "I should hope not," he said. "Living on Earth has been hell enough."

  I took a step backward. The back of my boot fetched up against that invisible wall again.

  "Holy oil, sacred raven feathers, fire," he said, noticing my panic. "Don't you remember?"

  I inched along the edges of the pews, deciding that if I couldn't get out the regular way, I'd run for the altar. Even in a Gothic church, the priests never came in through the common entrance. There lay the way to escape. I almost laughed in relief to have remembered that other exit.

  He was advancing on me just as slowly as I was inching away.