Silent Ground Part 2

by Quil Carter

  There was a low chuckle… a chuckle that had every hackle in Jobe’s body raised.

  “You two look much better in person,” a deep, almost raspy voice said. It had the tone of being made out of a gravel road, one that was coated in clear cold ice. “That news report I recorded did not do you justice.”

  Jobe’s head turned towards the voice, and his thrashing heart lurched to a stop when he saw the man he knew was Kheva, standing ten feet away from him with his arms crossed over an open black leather jacket and white undershirt.

  Kheva was all the more intimidating in person. There was something about how he carried himself that fundamentally made Jobe uncomfortable. His eyes seemed… strangely focused and calm, yet at the same time there was a flash of sociopathic instability that seemed deeply rooted. The fact that Sasha had been alone with this man was terrifying, it made Jobe’s blood turn to ice.

  But it also filled Jobe with a determination to get Sasha back. Even if this man was dangerous, even if he could do things that no human being was capable of… they had to get Sasha back.

  Kheva drank in Jobe’s expression of shock with a serrated smile, and took a step towards him. “You seem rather unsettled,” Kheva said casually. His words were spoken calmly, almost slower than a normal person in conversation, as if every word Kheva spoke was important. “Do you not have something to say to me?”

  “Where’s Sasha?” Jobe asked quietly, and even though this loading area, a stretch of pavement filled with large stationary trucks attached to blue trailers, backed onto a noisy highway, his words rung out perfectly.

  Words that made Kheva’s jagged smile widen. “Where he belongs,” Kheva said simply. He took another step towards Jobe, but when Jobe tried to take one back, he walked into something soft yet solid.

  Jobe turned around, and was shocked to see Lex standing beside him, a vacant expression on his face.

  “He was in no state to talk to me,” Kheva said. “You seem to be the calmer one of the two. I don’t really suffer dramatics you see, but once he agrees to be calm, I will let him back into his body.”

  What the fuck…? Jobe slowly turned around. “You can do what they said you can do?” he asked cautiously. “You’re like… superhuman?”

  Kheva chuckled lightly at this. Fuck, even his laugh brought a chill to the warm spring air. This guy was fucked up, there was no doubt. He was some god damn supervillain or something. This can’t be real.

  “Supervillain?” Kheva said through that very chuckle, another step was taken towards Jobe, and since Jobe didn’t want to leave Lex behind, all he could do was let this maniac approach him. “Oh, you read too many comic books, Jobe Winter.” The steps came quickly and soon the man was standing right in front of him.

  His eyes…

  “I don’t care enough about you dirt-dwellers to be some… supervillain,” he said, and those eyes, green and… yellow? How was that possible? “I only care about my own kind…

  “…And your former friend, unfortunately for you, is my own kind.”

  Jobe couldn’t stop staring at his eyes, the yellow taking up almost thirty percent of each iris. It was an unnatural colour. Who the fuck was this guy?

  “Sasha belongs with us,” Jobe whispered, his skin crawling with spiders as Kheva remained only inches away from him. There was no personal space between them, Kheva had infiltrated everything, from his mind, all the way to his body. “He needs us.”

  Another chuckle, this one rolling around the gravel that made up his voice. “Needs you?” Kheva murmured, somewhat amused by this admission. “For what? To enable his weakness? To hold his fragile little hand as he exists through life as nothing but a pathetic burden on his enablers?”

  Anger tried to flicker to life, but it was quickly extinguished by the fear that was raining down on every feeble attempt at strength. “Sasha isn’t…”

  “Sasha isn’t a lot of things,” Kheva said coldly. He raised a hand, and rested it on Jobe’s face.

  It was cold.

  “But the one thing he is…

  Jobe

  …is mine.”

  The yellow blots in his eyes shone. “And I don’t really appreciate you continuing to look for something that no longer belongs to you. Nor do I appreciate you sending former annoyances after me in some half-handed attempt to retrieve these men from your past.”

  Kheva then turned around like he was looking for something. Jobe looked too, Kheva’s hand falling from his face, but he saw nothing but the vehicles speeding on the highway, and a small thatch of grass surrounded by a concrete barrier.

  Wait.

  There was someone standing on the grass, watching the cars go by.

  He was wearing a long tan coat, with dark hair and…

  The man turned around, and then stood with his arms to his sides, his eyes staring off and his mouth partially open.

  It was fucking Lariat.

  “What the fuck did you do to him?” Jobe exclaimed. He took a step to run towards Lariat, confused but alarmed with where he was, but swore when he remembered Lex.

  There was no way he could leave Lex… not alone with Kheva.

  “Isn’t it fun to have puppets to play with?” Kheva said casually. He reached out and patted the top of Lex’s head. “That’s all you really are to me, just fun little puppets I can maneuver and control. Up up and away, side to side and down and around, with my little puppets I play.” He smiled at Jobe.

  Jobe stared at him, and the insane expression that was on Kheva’s face. “You’re crazy,” he whispered. “And the moment your back is turned… we’re going to find Sasha, or Sasha is going to find us. You can’t keep him from us.”

  Kheva looked amused at this. He turned around so he was side by side with Jobe, his eyes on Lariat standing in front of the highway. The man hadn’t moved.

  “Sasha is just fine with me, Jobe,” Kheva said, staring out at the loading area and beyond. “No more headaches, no more self-hate. He’s flourished under my guidance, and his powers have grown exponentially under my training.”

  “Your… training?”

  “Do you know how I train them, Jobe?”

  Jobe stared at Kheva, the cold fear making him unable to answer back. There was something in his head that was screaming at him not to let Kheva answer that question. That if he did… the answer would haunt his dreams, his life, his being, until the day he got Sasha back.

  “Oh, wait a moment. I believe I want Lex to be awake for this.” Kheva’s green and yellow eyes shot to Lex. Then, with no magic words spoken, no hand gesture, no movements whatsoever, Lex suddenly coughed.

  Jobe swore when a spurt of blood suddenly erupted from Lex’s nose. Lex’s hand raised and he held his nose, his eyes staring forward in a seemingly catatonic state.

  “Are we going to behave, Lex?” Kheva chastised gently. “Or do we have to do that again?”

  Do what again? What the fuck…? He was saying that as if he was doing something else to Lex, besides just taking away his mobility.

  And when Lex answered, Jobe had a sickening feeling that he was right.

  “Yes,” Lex said in a weak, fearful voice.

  Kheva smiled. “Wonderful. I’m glad one of you is obedient.” Then he looked to Jobe. “Now, I asked you a question. Do you know how I train them, Jobe?”

  Lex burst into tears to Jobe’s horror. Sasha’s uncle sunk down to his knees, his hands over his head, and sobbed, tears and blood specking the hot pavement below them like a summer’s rain.

  “Maybe Lex wants to answer?” Kheva said playfully. “Lex… how do I train Sasha? How do I make sure his mind works properly? How do I make sure your weak-minded, pathetic little nephew behaves himself?”

  Lex, crying into his hands, shook his head back and forth.

  “Alexander, did I not ask you a question?”

  Jobe stared in horror, his legs rooted to the spot. Then he heard Lex say, faintly:

  “You’ve been torturing him.”

  “Y
ou’ve… you’ve been letting Kel rape him.”

  And just like that, Jobe’s world imploded. White and black sparks erupted in front of his vision, clinging to the edges like bubbles in a pot of boiling water. They inverted, then spread over his eyes, before turning blood red.

  Without another conscious thought, Jobe wound back his fist, and punched Kheva in the face.

  Kheva’s head snapped backward, and he stumbled, something that shocked Jobe in his moment of insanity and anger considering he’d put everything behind that punch. The man should’ve been knocked to the pavement… he should’ve been unconscious.

  But instead, Kheva’s tilted back head slowly lowered, his green and gold eyes fixing themselves on Jobe. The yellow in them, the unhuman yellow, burned like the suns own tears had embedded themselves into the emerald.

  Then Kheva smiled, his white teeth stained with blood, and a trickle of it slowly rolling down his square chin.

  “You will remember this day for the rest of your life,” Kheva said, the smile enough to freeze the bright day around them. “The day you realized you lost Sasha, and the day your anger got a good friend killed.” Kheva’s eyes then flickered to Lex, sobbing on his knees with his hands over his head.

  Lex? What was he going to do to Lex? Jobe jumped in front of Lex, panic an earthquake sending percussion after percussion through his shaking chest. “We’ll find him,” Jobe cried, spreading out his arms as he blocked Kheva’s view of Lex. “You can hide him all he wants but Sasha will escape. Or we will find him.”

  Kheva stared at him with an inquisitive look, as if he was hanging on his every word.

  “And then what?” he asked, an excitement to his tone, like a sadist being taught step-by-step instructions on the perfect way to torture someone. “Go on.”

  Jobe watched him, and on top of the rolling thunders of fear, he was hit with an eerie feeling, like Kheva was up to something.

  Something else…

  “You can’t hide him from us,” Jobe said. He looked behind him to make sure Lex was still safe. He was crying, rocking back and forth and murmuring to himself, but he wasn’t… he wasn’t dead. “We love him, and you can hide like a fucking––”

  Suddenly the sounds of screeching tires ripped through the warm air. Jobe’s head shot towards the highway behind Kheva––and he screamed.

  Lariat was walking onto the highway.

  The first car slammed on their brakes, the rear wheels skidding and bringing the back half of the car swinging forward, narrowly missing him. Lariat kept walking, his movements steady and without a single flinch, and another vehicle, this one a truck, also attempted to stop, but ended up smashing into the now horizontal car, t-boning it. This brought on an incredibly thunderous sound, followed by the high pitch shriek of twisting metal.

  Those two vehicles pushed forward, now combined as one, narrowly missing Lariat who continued walking onto the second half of the highway. Jobe then realized he himself was running towards the highway, his legs flying through the back lot, hoping beyond hope he could get to Lariat in time.

  He wasn’t close––not by a long shot.

  Whether the truck didn’t see Lariat because the driver was too focused on the crash, or they didn’t want to cause another accident, Jobe didn’t know. All he knew, was that one moment Lariat was walking onto the next lane, the next minute he was spinning through the air, his jacket flaring open like a cape, before he landed in a twisted heap in the middle of the next plaza’s parking lot.

  And a moment after Lariat landed with a low, sickening thud, something else appeared in the air and fell beside him.

  His own arm.

  Jobe’s movements halted and he stood in place. He watched in shell-shocked silence as more cars slammed on their brakes, which was swiftly followed by a series of crashing impacts and fender bender after fender bender. On top of the shrieks of twisting metal and shattering windshields ripping clean through the spring day, Jobe heard frightened screams, and saw people jumping out of their cars, some with cellphones in hand.

  It was a war zone. He was looking at a war zone.

  And he couldn’t move; he couldn’t stop staring at the carnage in front of him, at Lariat a crumpled heap of tan cloth and bloodied skin, twisted like a wrung towel. Blood… there was blood pooling underneath him.

  On the broken windshields too. And on the arm he could see sticking out of a passenger side door, no movement, no movement.

  So many screams, frantic shouting.

  Chaos in its most raw form.

  “Mary? MARY! Oh, god. She’s not breathing!”

  “The ambulance is on their way. Is anyone here a doctor?”

  “MARY!”

  There was the sound of low, steady footsteps behind him, then a shadow to his left.

  “I told you you’d remember this day,” Kheva said beside him. Jobe didn’t even flinch when he felt a cold hand on his shoulder. “Pray I don’t make you remember another one.”

  The footsteps then sounded again, this time growing fainter.

  And Jobe still didn’t move.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Master Kheva is coming back soon!” Kel exclaimed happily for what had to be the tenth time that day. Sasha had found him twice standing on the porch looking longingly at the break in the trees where the road was. It was cute just how excited he was about Kheva returning, but that being said, Kel was also taking great advantage of his master being gone.

  Yes, while the cat was away the mouse was at play. Kel had already mowed through their cupboard of ‘crap food’ as Kheva had called it, and had already baked butter tarts and chocolate chip cookies to make up for the lack of snacks in the house.

  Sasha however, hadn’t been that hungry. Outside was now heavy with the scent of burning corpse, a smell that Sasha couldn’t get away from when he was outside doing chores. The aroma gave him a full-body nausea, from the tips of his toes all the way to his head; it was a bouquet of burnt meat and ash, but with a nose-curling oily aftertaste and seemed to coat the roof of his mouth.

  And the potency of it… it was so thick Sasha felt like he could hang a hat off of the stench.

  “Tonight! Tonight!” Kel was in the living room, jumping up and down as he looked out the large window, both crimson curtains pulled back to show the lake, and to Sasha’s curled stomach, the large fire pit that was still burning Gavin’s bones. “I’m so excited! Oh, I hope he wants to have sex. I miss having sex with him!” When Sasha shuddered, Kel laughed. “He’s been too nice to you, Sashy, letting you get away with not having sex with me. He’s too nice to you. I’d have sex with you right now, but Master Kheva said I wasn’t allowed.” Kel said the last part with a snipped tone, like he was saying something most unfair.

  But it was a relief to Sasha. The one thing he’d been afraid of was Kel trying to have sex with him. Last night was especially terrifying since they both slept in the same bed, but the worst he had to deal with was Kel servicing himself on his side of the mattress. It lasted ten minutes, and admittedly, the moans and heavy breathing had brought a twinge out of Sasha’s groin, but once Kel had reached his peak, all was quiet and they both fell asleep until morning. Sasha thanked his lucky stars three times over for that, Kel could be unpredictable.

  Kel and not Rob… not since that talk they’d had the day before had he seen the real owner of the body Kel walked around in. His dire warning about Jobe and Lex’s safety was fresh in Sasha’s mind however, and he’d been mentally preparing himself for what he was going to have to do since he’d heard Rob’s words.

  He was going to have to sleep with Kheva. Not just oral which he might actually be enjoying on the rare time it happened, but actual physical sex with two consenting adults.

  The thought made Sasha’s heart speed up like a revving motor, it was his uncle and his best friend that gave him the strength to do what he knew had to be done.

  And he could do it––He would do it.

  Sasha saw Kel sigh as he looked insid
e of the empty crap food cupboard. What was once filled with potato chips of all their favourite varieties, Zesty Doritos, Dunkaroos, Fruit-by-the-Foot, pudding cups, homemade jerky, was now empty with nothing but a––

  Sasha paused as he spotted the empty Ziploc bag of jerky, resting beside an almost-empty bag of pistachios, Kheva’s favourite which Kel wasn’t allowed to touch (but had been anyway). His stomach’s nausea surged to the point of threatening vomit as a terrible thought entered his head.

  That was homemade jerky, yet he’d never heard of any cows being here…

  “What’s that jerky made of?” Sasha asked. He was sitting on the couch with Goodfellas on in the background. Kel had been watching it, before his hunger (or boredom) got the best of him.

  “People!” Kel grinned, but the grin was one full of mocking; he wasn’t being serious. “We’ll be salting Gavin tomorrow.” And then he gave a laugh, one that sounded as maniacal as he could make it sound. “But really… it’s beef,” Kel answered after his own laughs had died down. “We don’t butcher cows here. They’ll eat our flowers and make big holes in the field with their hooves. We buy a half cow from the butcher and we get it all cut up and packaged. It’s cheaper that way and it’s also fresh and delicious not store-bought Walmart crap.”

  Sasha raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been shovelling Walmart crap into your face since ten minutes after Kheva left.”

  “But it’s not meat,” Kel countered, his tone that of a rather sassy little girl. “It doesn’t count. Walmart makes good crap food but probably not good meat.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what they’re good at!” Kel said, throwing his hands up in the air. “They’re good for crap food but not meat.”

  Sasha tried to hide the smile. “Why?”

  “Because!” Kel yelled, his cheeks flushing with his frustration. “Because I said so!”

  Sasha couldn’t hold it back anymore, he burst out laughing. It was easy to torment Kel, and the opportunity was just too funny to miss.