Silent Ground Part 2

by Quil Carter

  Once they were in Courtenay, Lex pulled into a liquor store inside of a plaza and came back with a bottle of whisky, one of vodka, and then two cases of cider for later that night. Crouched down in his seat, out of the view of the nosey public, Lex took a shot of vodka, and around the bottle was passed until it got back to Lex. He capped the bottle and put it back into the paper bag, and with a deep deep inhale, he pulled out of the plaza and started heading in the direction Nate had said the nightcrawler was.

  The alcohol did help sand off the worst of Jobe’s nerves, but his stomach was still a mess. He didn’t know what he was more nervous about, looking for Sasha in the back logging roads, or meeting another nightcrawler. Those creatures just sounded fucked up, it was a hard pill to swallow knowing Sasha was one of them.

  Jobe reached under the seat for the vodka when Lex turned onto a smaller road, the area around them now residential. He took a drink and grimaced as it burned his throat going down, and when Lex’s hand edged into his vision, fingers twiddling, Jobe handed it off.

  “That one,” Nate said quietly. He pointed dead ahead. “The one with the red Cadillac parked in the front.”

  Lex whistled, but Jobe just stared. Not only was the car, polished to shining and looking like it was in pristine condition, amazing in its own right, but the vehicle was parked outside of a suburban mansion. A newer house, probably built in the last several years, with dark brown siding and a black trim, and two balconies, one wrapped around the bottom, and the other most likely around a master bedroom. It had a black roof, dark red drapes, and plush green grass surrounded by what looked like rose bushes.

  “Who the fuck lives here?” Jobe asked, shaking his head in awe. It never occurred to him that a nightcrawler could be that successful and put together, the type just gave off an air of being rather… unstable and just scraping to get by. Like Sasha was.

  “He’s a friend of one of my brothers,” Nate explained, his voice still quiet and bursting with timid anxiety. He didn’t want to be here, it looked like the last damn thing he wanted was to be pulling up to this house. “He… he knows Kheva personally. They don’t really, um, get along great.”

  Jobe’s head quickly turned to Nate. “He knows Kheva?” he said surprised. “Why didn’t you tell us this earlier? Why… why haven’t you used him to help you get Rob back?”

  Nate wouldn’t make eye contact. “He’s just not a good person,” he replied. “Talking to him is like making a deal with the devil. You only do it when you have no other options.” As Lex stopped, Nate reached down and unbuckled his seatbelt. “Kheva murdered Ian, and now… and now I have no other options. Kheva’s going to pay for what he did to Ian.”

  And with that, he exited the truck, the door slamming behind him.

  Jobe didn’t move however, what Nate just said had the nausea in his stomach bubbling to life. What seemed like a good idea, a flicker of light inside of a pitch-black chasm, was now more reminiscent of realizing your survival kit held nothing but a pack of soaked matches and a dead cell phone.

  At first Jobe thought that Nate had gone ahead, but when he walked along the front of Lex’s truck, he saw the young man leaning against an oak tree, both hands in his pockets and his eyes staring blankly forward.

  “Nate?” Jobe called, trying to keep his voice down. “You…” He didn’t want him to, but Jobe knew he had to say something. “You want to stay behind?”

  Nate’s trance broke and he glanced up at Jobe. “N-no, sorry,” he said, and with his head hung low, he began to walk up the driveway. “Just… psyching myself up for it, I guess.”

  Then the sound of a door opening. Jobe looked over his shoulder, Nate now making a choking noise behind him, and saw a man standing in… a bath towel.

  And that was it, just a towel wrapped around his waist. But that being said, if Jobe had a body like that dude he’d probably be wearing less than that. The man was incredibly fit, six-pack, muscles, tight body and everything, and his skin was heavily tattooed; including one that started at his chest and ended as a sleeve on his arm, another on the opposite side of that chest, and one center of his stomach. Jobe couldn’t see what they were from the distance, but there was no colour, all blacks and greys.

  “Hey, Natey,” the man said in a musical tone, and he flashed a smile at the three of them. A hand then slicked back black hair, wet from a shower and almost touching his shoulders, but it immediately fell back over his eyes. Light blue eyes. “You brought friends!”

  “Hey, Caelum,” Nate said, and although Jobe was sure he tried, there was no hiding the caution and nervousness in his voice. “So, you’re still living away from your family?”

  “Yep,” Caelum said with a short nod. “Fuck ‘em. I’m done with the little blond shithead’s drama and my brother can stick it where the sun don’t shine. Not like he already doesn’t.” Caelum turned around and waved a hand. “Come on inside, this better be good, Nathaniel.”

  And then… well, and then Caelum’s towel fell to the floor. The naked nightcrawler made no attempt to pick up the blue bath towel, he carried on into the house with his muscular backside bared to the world; maroon and grey wainscoting and crown moulding making up the entrance, and a chandelier centered behind it in a second open room.

  Jobe and Lex exchanged glances, confused glances, but it was Nate who ended up speaking first.

  “He’s… a unique character,” Nate said quietly. “Just try and ignore his quirks.” Then he walked ahead, his head still slung, and entered the house.

  Another exchange of glances. “I guess that’s all we can do,” Lex said with a blink. “At least he’s doing a good job distracting me from my crippling depression.”

  “Indeed,” Jobe mumbled. The two of them walked into the house, removing their shoes and jackets, the both of them unable to resist taking in the incredible home.

  Behind the golden chandelier, with crystals hanging off of it, was a staircase with a curved dark wood bannister, and to their left, a living room with a full entertainment center, large TV, and leather furniture. The walls were the same maroon and grey wainscoting, and the carpet a dark grey.

  The left, where Caelum was walking, was the kitchen and dining room. It had all black appliances, a double door fridge, black cabinets and coffee brown granite, with an island in the center cluttered with various items, and further on, surrounded by bright windows, the dining room.

  “You’re like my age, how the fuck could you afford this shit?” Jobe said, his head shaking in awe. He stared at a row of light switches and another panel that looked techy; his fingers itched to press some of them. “Do you use your telepathy to guess lottery numbers or something?”

  Caelum gave him a confused look, and an eyebrow cocked. Yes, he was still naked, and Jobe had to use every sliver of self-control to not stare at what was being bared, even though it looked like it was made to be gawked at. There was also…

  Jobe’s gaze dropped.

  … Yep, there was a tattoo below his bellybutton, about two inches away from a circumcised dick.

  Fuck my shitty self-control.

  “Telepathy?” Caelum snorted, and Jobe’s gaze rose. “Nate, you fuckwit. Don’t tell me you told them I was a nightcrawler. I swear I will have you on the damn ground screamin’ for ya mommy if you told them I was one of those mental dipshits.”

  “What?” Lex said alarmed. His wide eyes went from Nate to Caelum. “He’s not…?”

  “Caelum, they don’t know about the first generation. They’re normal, I don’t want to fucking confuse them.”

  “It’s an insult! I’m nothing like those mentally-retarded Russian rejects.”

  Nate sighed. “I’m sorry. Lex’s nephew is one, and… I didn’t want to get into it and have to explain.”

  “Explain what?” Lex said, looking from Nate to Caelum and back again.

  “It’s not important,” Nate pushed. “There’s two different kinds of people like Sasha, and the first generation… look down on the second. T
hey don’t like being associated with them.”

  “Fucking wingnut screwballs,” Caelum muttered to Jobe’s left.

  “But does he know where Kheva is?” Lex asked, desperation settling in. “I just need to know how––”

  “Kheva?” Caelum cut Lex off. He stared at the two of them, the casual air of his previous words now replaced with hardened concrete. “This is… about Madden?”

  Lex nodded. “He took my nephew Sasha, and not only that, he murdered Nate’s brother Ian. We – we need help. I don’t fucking know what kind of help, because even if we found Sasha Kheva would kill us but… we fucking need something. I need my nephew back, he’s like a fucking son to me and he’s really messed up right now.”

  Caelum’s eyes, two cold rays of blue so pale they almost seemed white, shined with an inquisitiveness that Jobe found unsettling. “Interesting,” he said, and a smile split his face. “Yes, I believe I will be able to help you. I’d love to have another meeting with Kheva. I think more than a few of us would.”

  Jobe didn’t know what he meant by a meeting, nor did he want to know. All that mattered was getting Sasha back; if they wanted to make Kheva’s mind explode, that wasn’t Jobe’s problem.

  “Do you know where to find him then?” Lex asked. For the first time in a long while, Jobe was seeing hope in his eyes. Real hope.

  “Nah, I won’t be the one finding him.”

  Lex’s face fell, and Jobe’s heart wasn’t too far behind. Caelum, apparently, thought this was amusing; he chuckled and picked up a piece of chocolate from an open wrapper on the dining room table. “If I could find Kheva, I would have. But he has us all securely blocked off from him. I don’t know where he is, which is what he wants.”

  Lex threw up his hands, and as Caelum walked into another room, their eyes followed him. “Then why are we here! Why the hell are we here then?”

  There was rustling, then Caelum came back now sporting a pair of fire engine red underwear. If the tensions weren’t so thick and emotions not at their peak, Jobe would’ve had a few things to say about this man’s body.

  His thoughts on the matter would most likely be emerging tonight after the lights were off and he was in bed.

  “Easy,” Caelum said his mouth full of chocolate. He smacked his hands together in a ‘job well-done’ fashion and hopped up onto the dining room table. “Get Sasha back somehow, and when Kheva comes to re-claim his prize, give me a ring. I’ll take the man off of your hands with a smile on my face. How’s that? That’s what I can do for you.”

  “You – you don’t know where Kheva is though?” Lex asked, and already the defeat was creeping back into his features. It broke Jobe’s heart to see him like this. “Not a clue?”

  Caelum shook his head back and forth. “Not a clue, but when you do find him… give me a call and I’ll take him off your hands. Got it?”

  An eerie feeling made Jobe’s spine tingle. It was obvious there was more to this than what met the eye, but the last thing Jobe wanted was to get involved in it. Caelum was offering to take care of Kheva if they did get Sasha back, maybe that was as good as they could hope for.

  So Jobe nodded. “Yeah, we can do that,” he said, and he looked over to see Lex nodding too. “If you do hear anything about his location…”

  “I won’t be able to find him.” Caelum thrusted his legs forward to propel himself up off of the dining room table, and there were twin smacks as both feet landed on stone tile. “But if I were you, I’d find that kid quickly. Kheva’s a fucking maniac.” Caelum then chuckled, and began to walk towards Nate. “He’s really screwed up, like fucking fucked in the fucking head. He’s probably doing unspeakable things to your nephew. Find him quickly, my pretties, I’ll take him off of your hands.” Then the man raised a hand and smoothed back Nate’s hair. “And how are you? I swear you’ve gotten cuter since I last saw you.”

  Nate shrunk back from Caelum’s touch and tried to shift away, but Caelum grabbed his arm and gave him a wolfish smile. “Now, now, that’s no way to treat your ol’ friend. You missed me, didn’t you?”

  Jobe’s fists clenched, anger breaking through the eerie feeling he’d been experiencing. He exchanged hardened looks with Lex, the anger obvious on both their faces.

  Caelum was a fucking creep, and it was all well and fine until they fucked with someone who they both considered a friend.

  “We better go,” Lex said quickly. He walked towards Caelum and Nate, Caelum’s hand still grasping his upper arm, and put a hand on Nate’s shoulder. “Now. Let’s go.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” Caelum said with a devilish smile. “Don’t think I didn’t catch you staring. Lex, is it? Be honest, you’d kill for a shot with me.”

  “Thanks for everything,” Lex said, his ears turning crimson. Jobe’s own face was growing hot, and he didn’t realize his teeth were grinding together until he heard the dentin squeak. “We’ll call you when we have Kheva.”

  “Bye, pretties,” Caelum called after them as they exited the house as quickly as they could. “Be good now.”

  When they were safety inside of the truck and heading out of downtown Courtenay, Jobe made a noise of frustration. “What a fucking creep!” he raged. He looked into the rear-view mirror, and the anger boiling hot inside of him rapidly increased in temperature when he saw the scared look on Nate’s face. “Are they all like this? Just fucking sicko bullies with huge egos? Is Sasha going to turn into one of them?”

  Nate’s eyes flickered to Jobe, but when they made contact in the mirror, Nate’s shifted away. “I haven’t met many,” he said quietly. “Only a few.”

  “I don’t want to meet any more of them,” Jobe said angrily, then his attention turned to Lex, who was seething in his own frustration and anger. “We need to keep Sasha away from those psycho fucks. We’ll move if we have to.”

  There wasn’t any hesitation from Lex. He nodded, his hands gripping the steering wheel. “Once we have Sasha and Rob back, Kheva will never see them again.”

  Nate said nothing, he continued to look out the window, his fingertips now digging into the skin of his exposed arms.

  And after that, they looked. For three hours, they looked for every logging road they could find that lead them deep into the woods. Several times they even got lost, the twists and turns of these abandoned or barely-used roads leaving them completely turned around.

  It was during the last hour that Jobe’s spirits began to sink to the depths. To help blunt the sharper edges of his sadness, he broke open the whisky bottle, and also cracked open a cider for Lex to take sips of.

  “The gas gauge is getting into the red,” Lex said quietly. He tapped the clear covering over the dash and let out a slow breath. “I’d like to try that road that was blocked off some other time…”

  Jobe shook his head, and put the bottle to his lips. He was tipsy now, and quickly climbing the rungs to intoxicated. “That just means the road is actively in use,” he said, and passed the bottle to Nate behind him. The kid had been indulging in excess as well, but besides that he’d been rather quiet as they searched the back roads. “We’ll only come across a logging camp and some pissed off loggers. You might not pass a breatherizer if they call the cops.”

  Lex smirked and looked sideways at Jobe. “Breatherizer? You are getting drunk.” Ahead of them, the thick forest began to break, and the winding dirt road opened up to a highway. It was seven now, the sun had already disappeared behind the trees and everything was getting a monotone hue. “I’m jealous, I’m looking forward to getting home. Fuck, I need it tonight.”

  “Me too,” Jobe mumbled.

  “Me too,” Nate whispered.

  Jobe glanced in the rear-view mirror, and with the alcohol whispering questions in his ears, ones that Jobe’s tipsy mind would rather know the answer to than not, he asked, “What’s up with you and Caelum?”

  “Jobe!” Lex hissed, but Jobe ignored him and kept looking in the mirror. He wanted to know the answer t
o this question. There were many reasons why, but the glaring one was that he wanted to know just who he was dealing with when it came to Caelum. Right now, the man didn’t seem trustworthy in the least; he seemed like a fucking creep.

  Nate deflected eye contact once again, the blurring images of the darkening woods reflecting in his glasses. “It’s a long story,” he said simply. “Caelum is an asshole but we all want a common thing: to have Kheva no longer be a problem. That’s – that’s all that matters.”

  Jobe kept staring at Nate, but with another hit on the shoulder from Lex, he broke his inquisitive gaze. Nate was a mystery to Jobe, to Lex too. They barely knew him and the kid was closed off and reserved like Fort Knox. Nate never volunteered information about himself, and things had been so fucked up, they hadn’t really asked him anything. With Ian Lariat dying, Kheva making his warnings known, and also knowing for sure Sasha was alive but in danger, who’d had time to even catch their breath?

  Forty minutes later they were sprinting through Lex’s front door, a sudden rainfall and a grey sky appearing as they drove back to town. Everyone took off their shoes and jackets, and soon the liquor was being passed around and take-out was being ordered.

  As a storm developed outside, they ate pizza together, drank, watched television and exchanged small-talk. The small talk Jobe wasn’t overly happy with, he wanted to talk about what the fuck had happened at Caelum’s, but after seeing the nervous state that Nate was in, even Jobe’s intoxicated mind told him to shut up and let it drop. Jobe had his theories over what had happened between those two, but he was trying to push down the thoughts that kept creeping into his head like well-watered weeds.

  Eventually, Nate went off to bed, his movements wobbly and his eyes glazed over. Lex and Jobe remained downstairs snacking on the leftover pizza, a glass of wine in each of their hands and the television on mute.

  “Another day without Sasha,” Lex said. He was sitting on the leather couch beside Jobe, his sad green eyes staring at the electric fireplace. “I’m still not used to it, you know? It still makes me tear up going into his side of the house.”