The Claiming

by Glenn Williams

  Emily hesitated, then nodded. “Very well. Once through, we must find and destroy the symbol that holds the memory together.”

  I wasn't as convinced as I had sounded, but I gave Emily a sharp nod and took her hand. Together, we passed through the flaming doorway.

  I could still feel Emily's hand in mine, but we were no longer on the path. Abruptly, we standing in an enclosed room that was almost completely engulfed in flame.

  Fire.

  It was everywhere, covering the walls around me. It was red and orange through the suffocating black smoke. I heard the roar of it as it greedily consumed and destroyed everything it touched. A hungry and inescapable presence that existed only to destroy.

  I fought through my panic and tried to understand what I was seeing. Something about this wasn't right. I had never realized that Gwydion had been through a house fire. Based upon the blackened and half-melted toys and stuffed animals everywhere, I guessed that it was a child's room. There were two small beds, on opposite ends of the room. The fire hadn't reached them yet, but they were blackening as the synthetic fibers in the colorful sheets and blankets melted from the heat.

  Gwydion and I had never shared a room.

  This wasn't Gwydion's memory. It was Rory's.

  Rory was standing a few feet away, his back to us. He didn't turn. He was watching something intently.

  “Rory!”

  I started towards him, pulling Emily along with me. She followed without protest. I put my hand on his shoulder and shook him.

  He didn't respond.

  That was when I truly looked at him. He was staring at something on the ground before us. His expression was twisted in agony and, though it must have been a trick of the light, the dancing flames seemed to fill his eyes. He was entranced.

  I followed his gaze.

  A young boy with a mop of black hair was on his hands and knees, crawling desperately across the room, towards a bundle of pink blankets on the floor. I realized the blankets were covered in Disney princesses, their cartoon-like faces frozen in vacantly cheerful expressions. They stared at me, unseeing, through the inferno. A small human arm poked out from the bundle. A child’s arm.

  Oh God, I can't see this.

  Halfway across the room, the boy doubled over coughing, his fingers digging into the beige carpet. Ash was beginning to fill the air. The fire engulfing the ceiling crept closer, following the boy. For a moment, I was certain that the boy was going to collapse. Then he pulled himself forward, still coughing and gasping for air.

  The boy was going to die. I was certain of it. I started forward, but Emily's hand tightened around mine. I looked at her, panicked.

  “He's going to die!”

  “You can't help them,” She said quietly. Somehow, I heard her perfectly over the roar of the fire.

  The boy reached the blankets. He pulled the cloth back and revealed a tangle of dark hair, identical in color to his, but longer. A girl. He shook her, but she didn't respond. She looked like she was asleep, but I knew that she wasn't. He shook her harder.

  “Olivia! We have to get out of here! Get up!” I could barely hear the boy's screams over the roar of the flame. He shook her again.

  The door behind us crashed open.

  A man in yellow and black fire gear rushed forward. He didn't hesitate. He seized the little boy across his mid-section.

  “Take her!” The boy screamed, attempting to get away from his savior. “Take her first!”

  Something above us cracked, sending a shower of sparks down on the boy and firefighter. The ceiling.

  The firefighter moved quickly. He scooped the boy up and, though the boy fought him, he slung him over his shoulder easily.

  “Olive!” The boy screamed, still thrashing. The sparks had ignited on his sleeve and his arm was engulfed in flames that were rapidly moving towards his face. He barely seemed to notice. “You have to help her!”

  The firefighter rushed out of the room, just as the ceiling collapsed into a mess of fire, charred wood, and black smoke.

  I screamed along with the boy.

  The scene changed.

  The little boy was crawling across the floor again. Towards a bundle of blankets. Frozen princesses stared up at me from soft pink cloth. The fire was following him on the ceiling. Though I knew what was going to happen, though I couldn't bear to see it happen again, I couldn't look away.

  Emily shook me roughly. “This isn't real!” She cried, “Remember why you're here!”

  I blinked. And, summoning every ounce of my will, I turned from the scene.

  “Rory, you have to listen to me!” I said, shaking him. “You have to wake up!”

  “He can't hear you,” A little girl's voice carried through the room, pleasant and musical. She sounded pleased. “He's here with me, forever and ever.”

  My eyes swept the room, looking for the source of the voice. The smoke was choking and black. It was so thick that it obscured everything. Had it been this thick before?

  “You should have left when I gave you the chance,” The voice said again, still sounding like a little girl's voice. “Now you'll be here with me too. Forever and ever.”

  Then I spotted her. She was on the ceiling, crouched in the far corner of the room. Her fingers were bent backwards and her face was covered in ash and soot. Her thin nightgown was charred. Billowing smoke and embers surrounded her like an aura. Black eyes pieced me through the inferno.

  Niram.

  “I don't like being banished,” She hissed, her eyes endless wells of darkness. I felt my body go numb and motionless as I gazed into them. “I don't think I care that you're not after power. I'll enjoy watching you attempt to save the warlock again and again, even while knowing deep down that you never ever will.”

  “That's not what's going to happen!” Emily called over to the demon. “This isn't a part of the trial! You have no power to do this!”

  The demon smiled coldly, viciously. Its eyes never left mine.

  “Oh, but I do. They came here to interfere with the natural order of how this must play out. I may do with them as I please.”

  Ice was spreading through my body, along with a despair so keen and piercing that it would have caused me to fall to my knees if I could have moved. And the eyes of the demon seemed to swell. Or maybe it was me, falling into them. The scene faded around me and I was in absolute darkness.

  I had failed.

  I had always failed Gwydion. I had watched for close to a year as our uncle had beaten my brother, right in front of me. I hadn't tried to stop it. I had let my fear paralyze me.

  I was weak.

  And even after Gwydion had shot him dead in my bed as he tried to rape me, I still let my fear paralyze me. All of my life, I had failed him, over and over. And it had never really changed, even when I became an adult.

  Every time that Gwydion had needed me, I had failed him.

  A sudden memory loomed up in my mind. I was sitting at the kitchen table in my tiny apartment in the U-District, exhausted after pulling a double-shift at the drop-in crisis clinic. My mind was filled with the traumas of strangers I'd probably never see again. My laptop was open in front of me and I was nursing a large glass of merlot. A half-eaten and rapidly melting carton of Ben & Jerry's was sitting next me. The blank page of my master's thesis stared back at me, just as empty as I felt.

  There was a knock at my front door.

  I frowned, setting my wine down. I wasn't expecting anyone.

  I crossed my closet-sized apartment to the front door. I hesitated, then opened it.

  “Gwydion?”

  I hadn't seen him in almost a year and for an instant, I almost didn't recognize him. There were dark circles under his eyes. He was thinner than I remembered. His hair was mussed and his lips were cracked. His clothes were stained and threadbare. He smelled like sweat and another odor I couldn't place, chemical and unpleasant. There was something hollow and broken in his
eyes. He was hugging his arms close to his body and leaning against the door frame.

  Upon seeing me, he burst into tears.

  I pulled him into a hug. In that instant, the years fell away from us. Nothing else mattered except that my brother was here and he clearly needed me.

  I let him in. Though he said that he wasn't hungry, I insisted on feeding him. After ransacking my pantry for something halfway edible, I found a box of pasta and a jar of spaghetti sauce. I cooked while he showered. The walls were thin in my apartment. Even from the kitchen and with the shower running, I could hear his ragged sobs from the bathroom.

  I was exhausted, but we stayed up all night anyway, because I knew it was important. It felt like one of those pivotal moments where everything could finally change. We talked about my life mostly. I was working two jobs to put myself through graduate school. Every time I tried to steer the subject to Gwydion, he grew quiet and uncomfortable.

  I tried to find the words to tell him that, whatever he'd been through, it was okay. That he could tell me, that I would still love him. But I couldn't, because I knew that it wasn't okay and I knew that love wasn't enough. It never had been.

  “Thank you for this,” He said later, as we were both dozing together on couch. It was morning and the curtains were steadily lightening as dawn gave way to day. He was silent for a moment, as though wrestling with himself. “I'm not in a good place. I really needed...”

  He trailed off.

  I fought my way back from edge of sleep, trying desperately to think of the right thing to say to get him to say the words that were rising up between us like so many ghosts.

  The silence stretched on between us, agonizing and electric with all the things I wished we could say to each other. But seeing the pained expression on his face as he struggled to put something into words, something twisted inside me and I broke the silence first.

  “Me too,” I said, taking his hand. My insides knotted up with guilt, but he seemed so fragile. I couldn't stand seeing him in pain. There would be time later to talk, to say everything we needed to say to each other. And, if I was being honest, maybe I wasn't ready as I thought to hear what he had to say. “I needed this too.”

  I fell asleep holding his hand.

  He was gone when I woke up.

  He had needed me and I had failed him. Just like I had all of my life. Just like I was going to now. Why had I ever thought it could go any differently?

  No.

  I hadn’t always failed him. I was here now. I was putting my life on the line for his. Even if I failed, I knew that I had finally done something right for him. I had finally chosen to be brave for him in the same way that he had been brave for me.

  Yes, I had failed him then. I had been exhausted. He'd reached out to me, and I had messed it up. Maybe he would have let me help him and maybe he still would have left, but he had needed me and I was the one who had messed it up. All of that was true. I couldn't deny it. But that didn't matter now.

  A strange conviction rose within me. We were just children. I had told myself for years that I couldn't have done anything to stop what our uncle was doing to my brother. But now, I knew that wasn't true. I could have done something. I could have at least tried, but I chosen not to. I had let fear paralyze me.

  As an adult, I had let a different sort of fear get the best of me. I hadn't wanted to hear everything my brother had to say to me. I hadn't wanted to hear what he had been through, knowing that, at the end of everything, I was to blame. I was selfish, though I didn't feel that way at the time.

  And now, as I gazed into the demon's eyes, I realized that I finally was ready to let go of my mistakes. All of them. I couldn’t undo the past. But I was here now and I wasn't going to give up on my brother.

  And I wasn't a child anymore. I was still afraid to face the horrors of our past, just as much as I always had been, but I was ready for it in a way that I hadn't been before. It would be painful and maybe even awful, but I was prepared for that.

  I knew, with absolute certainty, that this wasn't just about saving Gwydion anymore. It was about saving myself too. Maybe it had been all along.

  Piece by piece, the despair fell away from me and the ice faded from my limbs. I became aware of the fire around me once more. The darkness was gone.

  “Kendra!” Emily was tugging on my arm, trying to awaken me. “Kendra!”

  I blinked.

  The demon's face twisted, distorting into a mask of rage and disbelief.

  “Not possible,” The demon said, no longer speaking with the voice of a little girl, but with a distorted and bone-chilling caricature of human speech. It sounded just like it had been all along: a creature of evil.

  I didn't answer it. In fact, I didn't even look at it. I wasn't going to make that mistake again.

  Emily had said that we needed to destroy the symbol that was holding the memory together. I knew what I had to do.

  I pulled out of Emily's grasp and moved through the fire, towards the bundle of princess blankets on the floor. I grabbed the edge of the blanket and ripped it open.

  The scene immediately vanished into nothing, as though it had never been there at all.

  With a roar of fury, the demon vanished as well. I took little comfort in it. I knew that it would be back.

  I turned back to Rory. The look on his face was ghastly. Snapped violently out of the worst memory of his life, I saw awareness returning to his expression slowly. His mouth opened and an agonizing sound escaped his lips. He collapsed to his knees and doubled over, hugging himself as though trying to keep his insides together.

  In a sense, he was.

  Emily took my hand again. I glanced over at her. She looked shaken, but relieved.

  When Rory looked up, I realized that his glamour had broken. The left side of his body, including his face, was covered in a mess of angry red and white scars. I had never seen scars like that before in person, but I knew exactly what they were. They were burn scars.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  We had won, for the moment. But it didn't feel like it.

  Rory was still doubled over. His breaths were sharp and ragged. He seemed ready to dissolve into hysterics at any moment. I didn't blame him.

  We think that we're immune to trauma. We're not. We think that we're tough inside, but really we're just as fragile as the next person, waiting for someone or something to come along and break us. That's the unremarkable part of trauma, the expected part. That all of us can be broken. The remarkable part is that we sometimes discover that we can be put back together again.

  Watching Rory on the ground, I felt a true hatred swell in my heart for Niram for the first time. He might view himself as some kind of mystical gatekeeper, a necessary force that was required to prevent power from falling into the wrong hands, but looking at Rory struggling to hold himself together, I knew exactly what he really was. He — it — was a monster.

  I tamped the hatred down to a dark and quiet place inside of myself. It was useless right now. It wasn't going to help Rory. It wasn't going to help my brother, either.

  I exchanged a glance with Emily. She shook her head slowly, as though afraid to speak. But something in her expression was strangely cold as she stared at Rory. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but it didn’t matter now.

  I dropped to my knees in front of Rory, coming down to his level. Despite all of my training, I still didn't know what to say to him. That was okay.

  I put my arms around him instead.

  Something seemed to break inside of him. Some invisible wall that was holding his agony inside collapsed. He poured it out onto my shoulder in ragged and gasping sobs. Time passed that way, I'm not sure how much.

  Finally, Rory pulled back and wiped his eyes.

  “I'm sorry,” he said, looking away from me. His face was flushed and puffy from tears. Shame was etched on his features.

  “Please don't apologize to me,” I said gently. I pau
sed, hesitating. “Rory, there's nothing that you could have done. You tried, but she was already gone.”

  He nodded, but he didn't look at me. He didn't believe me.

  “Did your sister love you?”

  Rory jerked and stared at me like I'd slapped him.

  I locked eyes with Rory.

  “Did your sister love you?” I asked again, putting more steel in my voice.

  At last, Rory nodded. His face crumpled again and he looked away from me sharply.

  “Then she would have wanted you to live. She was already gone, Rory. And you got the chance to live. You didn't ask for it, but that's just how it happened. As long as you do that, you haven't failed her. Live for her, Rory.”

  A long moment passed, but finally Rory looked back at me.

  “Thank you,” He said, his voice rough. He paused, then he added, “You're more like Gwydion than I thought.”

  I gave him a small smile.

  “He was the only one that knew,” Rory said, breathing steadier now. “About Olivia, about my scars, about any of it. He— I didn't need to be anything else when I was with him.”

  “You didn't — don't — need to use your powers on him. You don't need to hide your scars,” I said, realization dawning. Something in my chest twisted. What would it feel like, to hide yourself so completely from everyone around you? What would it feel like to finally show it someone else and for them to not flinch? And Gwydion wouldn't have flinched, I knew that down to the very fiber of my being. He had his own scars. “You were able to just be who you are.”

  Rory nodded and swallowed hard, as though not trusting himself to speak. Then he looked up at me and there was a new determination written across his face.

  “Am,” He said, correcting me. “I am able to be myself with him.”

  “I have to say,” I said, smiling at him, “I wasn't completely sure about it at first, but I think I approve of Gwydion's taste in men.”

  Rory snorted, but he smiled back at me, “Your approval means the world to me. It gives me life. Truly.”