“Wesley!” Judith shouted as she clamored to her father. “Stop her!”
Wesley steadied his steps, creeping toward his mate. Her eyes were afire and fixated, yet hauntingly vacant. He had felt hope in the warm, early summer air. A dense aroma of change clung to the coming humidity. He had tasted it in the breeze wafting off Lake Michigan. Yet a nightmarish hurricane of turmoil and agony preceded all hope now.
“Did you see it?” she continued, walking to him. “Did you see it and not tell me?”
“See what, my love?”
“How could we have been so blind!” she lamented. “You saw it, Wesley! And how could you keep it from me?” She blasted, turning to Judith. “Of all people,” she whispered, her head whipping back to face Wesley, “how could you?”
“Aleksandra,” Wesley whispered, reaching out, grabbing her shoulders.
Aleksandra’s arms encircled him. She gripped at his shirt fabric, grasping fists of the cotton with one hand, and securing a belt loop between her middle finger and thumb with the other.
“Don’t be coy,” she snarled, hoisting him high.
Wesley desperately fought against her – his grip on her shoulders tightening, his fingers digging into her icy flesh. His feet dug into her shins, crawled eagerly up her thighs, slammed into her groin and ferociously punched into her stomach. His fingers clawed at her throat and pounded against her breast. She carried him backward, still, toward the window, driving his body into the glass.
Her hand slithered up his chest, snaking its way to his throat. She fastened her grip, pressing him against the window – the glass splintering behind him. “Did you see it?” She hissed.
“Have you seen the void?” Wesley cried. “Where did your dreams take you? Oh, my love, don’t let Bree’s madness eat you. Put me down; don’t give in to it.”
“Fight it,” cried Judith.
“Why?” Aleksandra hissed. “The void…I must fight for her. She needs me.” The glass moaned as she pressed Wesley firmly against it. “Did you see it? Did you see it and hide it from me? My love?”
“Did we see what, Aleksandra?” Colin cautiously creaked from the rubble. He stood, brushing debris and ash from his corduroys.
“The blood.”
“What blood?” Judith whispered.
“Aleksandra,” Colin questioned as he approached, stealthily, as if he were a cat hunting a mouse, “where would we have seen blood?”
“On mother,” she said her fiery glare softening. “Mother has blood on her.”
“Why does Bree have blood on her,” Colin asked. “Aleksandra, where did the blood come from?”
Aleksandra did not answer, her gaze fixed on the approaching poet. Colin was near to her now. Closely he inched, his feet gliding their way to her.
“She is still with us,” Aleksandra whispered, in a trance.
“No!” Wesley’s voice shook the glass once more. “Aleksandra, listen, she is not. Let her go!”
“She needs me,” her voice was a nearly inaudible whisper. “You’ll never understand.”
Colin grabbed Aleksandra’s shoulders. He tried loosening her grip; tried prying her off Wesley, but her hold was unyielding.
Her left hand released Wesley’s belt loop, snaked up, and clutched Colin’s sweater.
Colin resisted, and he thrashed and squirmed before she flung him aside. He landed against the glass, sliding to the carpet. Judith, watching, sat down, folded her hands, hiding them in her lap, and bowed her head, wishing to become invisible.
“Aleksandra,” Wesley whispered, “I’m moving her to the mausoleum tomorrow night. I must find a way to save you.”
Aleksandra met his glare. A cloud of dreadful unease fell as her piercing-slit eyes stared into his. Then her eyes widened slightly – enough to make each of them cower.
“Save me?” Her timber swelled. She closed her eyes as Wesley’s body rose toward the ceiling, barely scraping the white plaster. He reached up, stabilizing himself, trying to press against it and propel himself down. But he was adrift and helpless.
“Put me down,” he whispered, his body now floating toward the open balcony, past the billowing curtains and into the welcoming Chicago breeze. Aleksandra followed it. Toe-to-toe she walked, her eyes steadily affixed on the prize before her, her hand not dropping as he hovered perilously over the rail.
“You need saved,” she whispered.
Wesley howled, “Stop!” He thrashed and wailed and plead, and still he hovered while she stared him down with intense frigidity. His cries slowed the State Street traffic and hushed the incessant Chicago drone, and horrified all in the room.
“Aleksandra,” Judith shouted from inside, “stop this! Please, stop!” The young one urged.
“You will not move her,” Aleksandra shouted. “Do you hear me?” Her eyes darted between the three – Wesley hovering over the balcony, Judith standing in the room’s center and Colin slumped against the glass, knees drawn and head cradled in his hands.
“The first one to even touch her will feel sun fire, and you will not be saved from its hellish kiss,” she hissed, lowering Wesley’s body and resting him on the balcony’s platform. “My word is promise, be sure of that,” she spoke, turning to each of the three. “You will be ash, even if I have to burn with you.”
“Tell me,” Aleksandra demanded, landing on the balcony, thrusting the palatial curtains aside, “are you ready for this war?” A night had passed since she left Chicago yet it could have been days.
He turned from the opulent altar, its aged patina and jewel encrusted edges glistened in the darkness of nightfall and candlelight. His jaws slackened as she approached and clutched his pallium, pulling the fabric back. The archivist slipped toward Aleksandra, his feet shaking as he ended in her embrace.
“I ask for no war,” he replied.
She pressed his body into the altar, disturbing the linen neatly laid upon it. “Yet you start one.”
“You are mistaken,” he whispered, bravely, his eyes unblinking, staring into hers. “We are trying to end it.”
“Your words are hollow, old man.” Aleksandra released him and he grabbed the altar’s edge, steadying himself and calming his quickening breath.
“All wars have martyrs, my child; your mother was no exception,” he spoke. “The only difference: She understood the consequences if she failed.”
“You speak in riddles,” she spat, “You speak in lies!”
An envelope’s crisp edge grazed her palm as she turned, facing the balcony. He pressed it into her hand and curled her fingers around it.
“Riddles are only riddles until they are decoded, my child. Now, go.”
THIRTY-SIX
June 25, 2013
Evening
Sparks of grey-light shot from the moon, dripping silver shadows onto the rippling summer waters; and for a moment the world – that strip of beach, Chicago, everywhere, stood still. Aleksandra waded along the shoreline, letting the cool lake waters brush against her invading toes. The murky lake concealed the chipping eggplant lacquer; and the distance from city lights hid her unfed ivory skin.
The envelope was safely beside the parcel, both secure in the melon Louis Vuitton satchel at her side. Her fingers had traced each pen stroke on the letter inside that envelope. She had inhaled the lingering scent, tasting the dullness of lavender laced with linseed oil.
“Riddles,” she had grumbled, opening it five nights ago. She had landed on the outskirts of Vatican City, taking up residence in a crowded café. She ordered little and ate none of it, tossing bits here and there to the waiting birds approaching her street-side table. They pecked at the crumbs, their beaks tapping the worn stones in tympanic rhythm.
The candlelight glinted through the wine glass, a warm burgundy glow swelling over the envelope as she sat eying the café’s guests. The man with his wife, the family on vacation, all too consumed with their own trivialities to notice her. Their conversations blurred with the passing traffic, the whizzing moto
r bikes and honking horns. It neared eight, the dinner rush was en route, and the city was just beginning its nightly ritual of color and sound.
She had slid her finger beneath the crimson seal and opened the flap letting the envelope fall open. Aleksandra had removed the letter and resurveyed the crowd, wanting to be cautious, until her eyes drifted to the paper. A series of coordinates appeared on the bleached white page, and taped beneath it, a shiny, metallic key.
I have a code, Aleksandra had thought, as she punched the coordinates into her phone’s mapping program. She tossed it all – the phone, the parcel, the letter – into the satchel and slipped into the shadows behind the café. She ascended, the bag flapping wildly as she savored the Mediterranean air brushing against her cheek.
Now she treaded the shore, slicing the still water with her feet, leaving depressions in the smooth sand. Droplets of moonlight kissed her amber locks, while the subtle lake breeze picked up each strand, twirling them. She walked out into the water, wading into the lake until her calves were submerged. And she stood clutching the satchel and looked up into the summer sky.
She had seen those same summer stars in her childhood. She had seen those same constellations – Cassiopeia, Sygnus, Scorpius – every summer evening since. It will continue to be so, an unchanging sky, Aleksandra thought.
“These riddles, mother,” she spoke into the darkness, “I’m chasing and fighting and I know not what for! And now this?” Aleksandra clutched the satchel drawing it to her chest. She held the leather bag to her bosom. “Why this?” she whispered. “Why me?”
“In times of great peril, you must have faith,” a voice called from the shore. A darkened figure stood near an embankment, shielded from the moonlight.
Aleksandra’s grip loosened on the bag, letting it hang at her side as she ran toward the figure. The wet sand squished between her naked toes, and soiled the hem of her jeans. But despite her vampirish quickness, in the three seconds it took Aleksandra to reach the spot on which the figure first appeared, it had vanished.
The designer bag slid across the flagstone and through the open balcony doors with a thud startling Judith. She leapt from the couch, the new James Patterson thriller falling to the floor. Aleksandra followed, her feet touching the balcony’s edge as Wesley rushed into the room.
The hearth slumbered against the wall, its womb void of oak logs popping and whistling, sending their chorus skyward into the obsidian night. The sticky June air clung, though, to the ash-stained belly, appeasing the beast with humidity for the time being. And what had been a faultless marble façade was now cracked and shattered. Aleksandra winced at the marred fireplace with disgust as she walked through the room.
“Where have you been?” Wesley demanded, clutching at her arm as she moved past, but it slipped through his grasp. “Aleksandra, wait!”
“What’s this?” Judith asked, pulling a thick manuscript from the parcel lying at her feet. She began thumbing through it as Aleksandra walked from the room. “Wesley, you should see this,” her voice trailed, looking up to find him following his beloved.
“Wesley!” Judith shouted, leaping from the couch, the manuscript in hand. She trailed after, following their voices.
“I do not owe you answers, Wesley,” Aleksandra whispered, kneeling at Bree’s side. She took the matriarch’s hands into her own, kissing the milky fingertips.
“Oh, I believe you do,” he replied. He hovered over her, glaring. “Six nights ago you attacked us and disappear only to return, and you expect us to roll over?” His voice shook the small room. “You expect there to be no questions asked, for everything to be as it was, but it cannot be that way!” he shouted. “And you know this!
How can you not? How can you come back…” his words trailed off as Judith entered, eyeing him.
“The answers you seek, Wesley,” Aleksandra spoke, her eyes not veering from the matriarch, “are not mine to give.”
“I believe this may be of some help,” Judith intervened, thrusting the bound papers at Wesley before he could reply. He closed his gaping mouth. “We should read it, Wesley,” she urged, crooking her head toward the door. “I understand now, mother,” Aleksandra was whispering to the olive-skinned matriarch. She ran a palm over Bree’s hair. “I understand.”
“Yes,” Wesley whispered, glancing from Aleksandra to Judith, and then to the manuscript, “Let’s.”
A bone-chilling wail pierced the darkness startling Aleksandra. She awoke bathed in a black mist, its ethereal moistness blanketing her skin. The ground quivered beneath her bare feet and she stumbled, falling onto her knees. The soil slithered and nipped at her fingertips. The mist shimmered and turned cold, tickling her face as the wind gusted with each wail, blowing the darkness aside. Her knees sank into mud as the wailing grew to a muffled howl. “Hello?” She called out to the void, the mist dissipating as she met brick.
The wind blew wildly, blowing locks of her hair astray, tossing them this way and that as she traced her
fingers along the tunnel’s exterior. Memories of that nightmare, of that scratch....
It came again, the wailing. From the tunnel’s rear, it snowballed into a wild howl reverberating in her ears. The ground no longer quivered as the slithering at her feet ceased. The mist hung above her, its shimmering dulled. The brick felt oddly warm to touch, warm and slimy.
Aleksandra let her fingers trace the bricks as she closed her eyes and advanced inward, down into the waiting chasm. The musty bitterness of decay, growing heavier the farther she walked, stung her nose. She walked, trudging through a viscous liquid, with the sinking feeling of something crawling between her naked toes.
“Hello?” Aleksandra called, thinking she had heard someone whispering behind her. She turned quickly, groping at the darkness yet felt only the stale air.
“Hello!” she shouted. “Is someone there?”
Aleksandra kept turning, wildly groping at the wall, at the air, until she fell against the brick. A subtle rumbling grew near and she tensed, flattening against the wall. A soft breeze followed, brushing against her before the ground began to the quake. The slithering began anew and, while she could not see it, she felt the mist envelope her.
Aleksandra turned, hugging the brick, her body quivering. She began slowly following the wall, inching herself out of the tunnel. She willed herself to wake up, to make the mist dissipate, to make the slithering and quaking stop. But it was to no avail; there was no reprieve from the darkness. Aleksandra had not gotten far when she heard the whispering once more. She turned and called out, but again, no reply.
“Mother?” she asked, cautiously, quietly. “Is that you?”
Aleksandra waited as the wind slowed and the mist cleared. She waited as the slithering and quaking ended. She waited in the darkness, but got not reply.
“Is that you?” she said. She turned her face – tear-stained and soiled – from the unknown. Aleksandra pressed her palm against the tunnel’s wall and started for the entrance.
“No!” Aleksandra screamed. A stabbing pain stung her calf, and a hand – a claw-like, roughened, bony appendage from the feel of it against her skin – seized her leg.
Aleksandra reached down into the mucky earth, desperately feeling for her assailant. “Let go!” She howled. “Let me go, now!” She thrashed, kicking as her hands fumbled through the skittering mud.
Aleksandra managed to flip on to her back, wiggling her body. Aleksandra’s attacker lost its grip as she flipped. She scrambled frantically onto her knees, unsure of her bearings. She knew she had to run, and she had to run now.
Aleksandra’s left foot rose, but found no solid footing as it landed on the slithering soil. Aleksandra willed herself to fly as she struggled. Fly, she thought, fly out of this forsaken tunnel. Instead of soaring into the shimmering
mists, and then waking to the bustling Chicago night, Aleksandra planted, chest first, in the muck.
She rolled over and sat up. “What do you want?” Aleksandra hollered,
her words echoing in the blackness. “What – tell me – NOW – what do you want!” she stood, shouting into the void.
Aleksandra turned, feeling a presence slither near, hearing whispering in her ear.
“I cannot hear you,” she sighed. “I cannot help you if I cannot hear you.”
The whispering grew louder, but it was still whispering; still noise.
“Please,” Aleksandra’s voice softened as she twirled in slow, dizzying circles, speaking to the vastness surrounding her, “I want to help.”
All went still and quiet, and Aleksandra no longer felt the presence, no longer heard the whispering. Then she felt a firm pressure against her back, moving suddenly and too quickly for Aleksandra to fight its source. It clutched at Aleksandra’s head, grasping a wad of her auburn hair. It yanked her head back, squeezing the knotted locks in its grip; burning her scalp.
“Help…,” a rasping whisper bled into Aleksandra ear. “Help me.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
June 26, 2013
Evening
Is that the amulet, then, you know… what she’s clutching on to?” Judith asked.
“I guess so,” Wesley replied. The three of them had read the contents of Bree’s bound papers, and then reread them upon waking the next night.
“Was this her farewell, then?” Colin’s voice cut the tense silence eating at the room.
“I guess so,” Wesley whispered. He leaned against the cracked mantle, his shirt catching on the stone. There was a scuffing noise as he shifted loose. He held the manuscript to his chest, protecting it. Too many memories pressed against him, he thought, and too many secrets.
Chicago’s chaotic nightly symphony – the traffic, the people and the lights – existed beyond the study; beyond the marred mantle and the leather back chair; beyond the frightened fledgling caught in a conspiracy and a man with a second lease on life. Humanity sprinted below with careless abandonment, and the all-seeing eyes housed in the State Street penthouse above were for once unconcerned.
Descent Into Madness Page 29
