by Dan Dillard
CHAPTER 8
MORNING CAME WITH a roar and pain rushed from the base of his skull through to his eyes as they opened. He remembered drinking enough to satisfy a ship full of sailors, but little afterward. There were flashes of stumbling home and laughing in the loony way a man does once his senses have left him. The hangover was fierce and his tongue felt like it was coated in fur. Sunlight cast shadows in the room letting him know it was afternoon and he should get some fresh air. He wondered if air even mattered anymore.
It felt like punishment.
He thought about the priest and the child he had murdered and was grateful the alcohol made it seem like a distant and horrible dream. Pulling on his boots, he walked through the door and he glanced at the sun—early afternoon, just like he thought.
A walk will do me good.
The salt air cleared his nasal passages of the smoke and booze that lingered. He was unable to put his finger on it, but as the last time he had stepped out into the world, everything looked odd.
There was something different about the town and the people, a side effect perhaps of drinking and being undead? Nothing was obviously out of place, but as he looked from one person to the next, each appeared to have a halo about them, just a small rim of light surrounding their bodies.
He wandered in an out of shops in amazement at the auras of color, and took notice that each person's was a different than the next. He stared at children and how brilliant their lights were. Vibrant colors reached out from their bodies in long dancing strands. Older folks, by comparison, had dim lights in darker, muted hues that huddled close to their owners. They looked as tired and gray as the people they surrounded. He continued down the main street to the center of town, watching everything in amazement...and then he saw her.
A rush of clarity washed over him. A feeling similar to embarrassment, but also one of relief. He expected he would never see her again, yet there she was. No light surrounded her as she stood in stark contrast to the rest. Her skin was ghostly pale and her features sunken and dark and she blended into the dead still life of the buildings. His pace quickened so he might catch her.
“Caitlin!” he shouted.
She took no notice.
His feet moved through the crowds of people with the grace of a ballet dancer, each glowing their own color and intensity. Caitlin came in and out of view between them.
“Caitlin!” he tried again and again she either paid him no mind or couldn't or wouldn't hear him.
As he neared her she turned, walking casually in the opposite direction and seeming to gain ground even as he broke into a full sprint. He followed her around a corner and as suddenly as she had materialized, she was gone. To the left she was gone and to the right she was gone and he was again lost in a sea of insignificant human clutter.
“I told you that you would see her, but never have her,” said the abhorrent voice, but Harry was nowhere to be seen.
Kane looked to the sky in disgust and then back down at the people. He blinked his eyes and then opened them wide trying to make sense of what he saw. Each woman was Caitlin and they all looked directly at him with sad eyes that pleaded for answers. There was no sound except for a whooshing noise that the wind made whenever he turned his head. He felt as if his ears were clogged with salt water.
His nervous stare met one particular Caitlin, no different than the rest. Her head and eyes locked on him as her body turned underneath it, twisting the neck in an unnatural way.
“See, but never have,” Harry said.
He closed his eyes again and turned in the direction of the voice. This time when he opened them, Harrison grinned malevolently.
“Christ! Can you not leave me be?”
Kane’s eyes darted as he continued uneasily to look around from woman to woman horrified that each bore the same face and each bore the same chest scar as his beloved.
“Christ? Ah, interesting fellow was he. Did you know that he was promised that famous resurrection ahead of time? Takes a bit of the power out of the whole crucifixion story, don’t you think, knowing it was all a sham?”
His smile again widened. Harry pulled Kane’s chin around to look him in the eye using the thumb and forefinger of one gloved hand. Only then did the people return to normal and sound come back into the world.
“You see them now, don't you?” he said.
Kane knew he meant the glowing auras.
“You can see the colors?”
“Yes. I see them.”
“That is how you’ll know.”
“I don’t understand. How I’ll know what?”
“How you will know who I want. How you will see the delicious evil.”
His finger stretched slowly from a balled fist and pointed from where they stood. Kane’s eyes followed it as the finger, fist, and all that were attached dissipated into a black mist and were gone.
“There goes one now,” Harry's voice said.
Kane saw down the street between the passersby and beyond to the opposite corner. There stood an elderly woman, sixty years or more in age. Her glow was different from the rest alternating from black to a dark green to a deep brownish red, the color of dried blood. The rest wore bright yellows or blues, ever so faint their outlines, but hers was deep and engulfing. Something about that person was damaged and Kane was immediately drawn to her, the knot in his stomach forming again. Agony and hatred oozed off of her in thick waves and Kane smelled death again.
