by Brian Hodge
“Help me,” Moore said, placing a dagger on the table before the candelabra. “Stop me from doing it again.”
Edward placed his hand upon the hilt of the blade, soft air hissing from his mouth. “You are a monster.”
Moore swallowed deeply, a strange half smile on his face, eyes closed. “I know.”
Edward plunged the knife into Moore’s chest, the hot blood splattering into his face in a sanguinary mist.
Moore exhaled, a wet sound that was more of a sigh than a cry of pain. He opened his eyes and stared into Edward’s, a curiously peaceful smile on his angular face. Edward met his gaze, feeling the thumping of the murderer’s heartbeat reverberating through the dagger and into the bones of his fingers. When Moore’s heart finally stopped, Edward let him fall to the floor. The wind and snow outside had suddenly stopped and the unexpected quiet gave his tired mind a feeling of clarity.
Edward picked up the candelabra and held the flames to Moore’s clothing. The fire was gradual at first, but soon had enveloped the child murderer, the crackling of his skin breaking the silence of the house. The smell of burning flesh stabbed into his nostrils and he stopped breathing momentarily to chase away the nausea.
He set afire Paradise Lost and let it burn for a few seconds before using it to ignite some of the other books. When Edward finally walked out of the library, his eyes dazed and tired, the room was nearly consumed by flames
Edward stood outside in the frigid cold and watched his fire devour Jarret Moore’s mansion, his face stoic. “For Rosahella,” he began to chant like a mantra, watching the flames flicker and dance demonically from the windows. The elaborately carved columns burned brighter than the rest of the house, flames licking from within the wide eyes of the children.
Edward waited until the house collapsed, the black smoke drifting up toward the gray sky as if offering the children’s souls to heaven.
Though he was tired, Edward made his way back through the snow-covered wilderness and Dark Hollow. An hour later, he found himself standing once again before Rosahella’s grave, clutching his now unbearably painful hand within his singed coat. The sun was setting behind his back and the sky above was pink, giving the cemetery an unusual, yet beautiful glow.
“The monster is dead, Rosahella,” Edward whispered, brushing snow away from the tombstone before placing the bloody bracelet atop of it. “So many of you suffered.”
The breeze was light at first, the edges of Edward’s long coat flickering around his legs softly. Moments later, a gust of icy wind blasted into his body, nearly pushing him backwards. The whispers of dozens of children caressed his ears, as if they were somehow drifting within the wind itself.
The scent of fresh flowers filled his nostrils and his eyes widened.
Edward waited, sensing something monumental in the icy air he breathed, biting his bottom lip as if he was about to be taken down by a violent blow.
A deep imprint suddenly appeared in the snow in front of the grave—the body of a small child. It was as if an invisible child had dropped from the rose-colored sky above. The outline of angel’s wings sprung out from the side of the imprint, a perfect snow angel.
The wind detonated through Dark Hallow, the air coming alive with ghostly laughter. Dozens of snow angels sprung up around him, the sounds of tiny arms brushing against snow entering his ears. Ice crystals brushed his grinning face as they were picked up by the swirling wind. Snow began to fall in heavy flakes, twisting and whirling around Edward’s body as if alive. Columns of snow spun and danced around him like translucent wraiths, rainbows forming in the dawn sunlight.
Edward looked to the sky above and began to weep, spinning around in the snow amongst all of the angels, arms raised into the air, his laughter carrying through the cemetery air like a bittersweet song.
Some of Us Are Looking At the Stars
“It looks peaceful enough,” Baker said, his eyes calmly scanning Outpost 727, the largest space station ever built by the Dark Alliance.
I nodded before looking back at the pilot, letting my fingers run through my white hair. It had gone from dark to white seemingly overnight during the war. “It does, doesn’t it? Seeing it that peaceful just makes me all the more nervous. I feel like a small animal sneaking down to the river to take a drink where the lion’s live.”
“I still can’t believe they are just sending one man and not a fucking army,” Baker said, removing his gaze from the screen and looking me over. His face registered that he was unimpressed with my rather unthreatening appearance. “Sydney Vale has a very deadly reputation.”
I smiled and looked back toward the hulking space station. It rested ungracefully amongst the beautiful stars, turning clumsily in the silence of space. A few of the portholes were glowing with some odd, reddish cast. “Well, it’s certainly not because of my prowess in combat. I’m just a pilot. Syd and I go back a long way. We grew up together. We also shared a mutual friend. Paris was killed in the war, though.”
“Vale murdered Senator Huxley last month when he tried to check up on him. Sent some video feed of Huxley’s severed head with electrical-like wires stuck into it. He also killed twenty or so soldiers, guards and aides.” Baker grinned at me, his smile flashing from his thick beard. “I don’t know about you, but that would bother the hell out of me. Not only that, he has a little private army in there.”
“That he does,” I said, watching as our small space ship came into docking distance.
“Well, you still haven’t explained why they aren’t sending an army.”
I was already walking toward the door when I heard his comment, and I turned around to face him, my voice soft. “If you were the Dark Alliance and you had already lost a very important political Senator, would you send an army or a former friend.”
“I would send the army. Wipe his ass out. We’d probably get some casualties, but at least the risk would be gone. Why would they send you, you ain’t but a man?”
“Because, I’m expendable,” I said, leaving the room to his soft chuckling.
I studied my haggard face in the mirror, trying to prepare myself mentally to go into Outpost 727. Sydney Vale’s dark eyes swam into my mind, and I wondered what he would do.
The last time I saw him was at least ten years ago. We met on Krassnar 3, a neutral space station situated between the two higher powers. It was just after the Virus wars, and the Dark Alliance had been victorious.
When I met Sydney Vale at the bar that night, neither of us were smiling. We had lost too many friends in the war to feel any true sense of satisfaction. As far as I’m concerned, Victory only feels good when it’s glamorized in movies and novels. When you have lost as many close friends and family members as I have to the war, victory feels just as fucking bitter as defeat. Celebrating is like throwing a party in a room full of the corpses of your friends. It just feels wrong.
“I can’t help but feel tortured at the fact that Paris is not here with us,” I said, taking a long sip of my drink.
His eyes flashed then, and I got the kind of feeling that one gets when you are about to see extreme aggression. It almost appeared as if Syd was struggling to hold back a door, that if opened, would blow up the whole station. His face was entirely calm. I saw all this in his raging eyes. Syd’s voice was low. “Paris did not deserve to die like that. Would you believe he lasted five hours under the Reaper?”
The Reaper was a device that could only be described as an electrified razor blade. It both cut and burned the flesh, finding nerve endings with the precision of a surgeon. It could even remove eyelids without damaging the eyes.
“No, I didn’t know that. Perhaps now isn’t the time to discuss this, Syd. I kind of want to relax tonight. Lord knows we deserve it.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to stay with the Alliance,” Sydney said, sipping slowly from his glass. “Every time I look into space it reminds me of what I’ve lost. I think I need to get down on a planet.”
I chuckled. “You woul
dn’t know what to do with yourself on a planet, Syd. You’d go fucking crazy.”
Syd smiled then, and I swear there hasn’t been a sleepless night where I didn’t see that eerie smile in my dreams. It was a sharp smile, the kind that seemed to stab into your face with the apathetic violence of a sharp blade. His eyes glittered like icy stars in the dim lighting of the bar and I felt myself actually wince. At that moment, I knew how much Syd had lost and it wasn’t just friends.
It was his fucking mind.
He stared at me with those razor eyes, and that smile, and said, “I’m already fucking crazy, Randall. I don’t give a shit about anything anymore. When you get to where I’m at, nothing matters but the memories.” He started to laugh then, a chilly, almost computer-like titter that sounded nothing like the warm man I grew up with.
I didn’t return his laughter, only offered a fake smile and nodded. Syd threw his money on the table and got up. “I’m truly going to miss you, my friend. Our paths better cross again.”
As I watched him go, his back rigid from years of military training, I realized the sad truth. Sydney Vale, even though he was walking away from me, was already amongst my dead friends.
The doors hissed closed behind me as I entered the docking bay. For a brief moment, I thought Syd wasn’t going to let me in. Some part of me didn’t want to go in. It was my orders that if I thought things weren’t going well then I was to kill him. Whether or not I would be able to go through with the murder of a good friend was a debate I didn’t want to torture myself with right now.
I stared at the doors, waiting patiently, my fists clenched at my sides. The only sound in the bay was my own soft breathing and a strange, dull roar beyond the entrance to Outpost 727. I felt something soft brush the back of my neck, almost as if someone had dragged a piece of thread across it.
I knew at that moment that Syd was watching me from the security camera, knowing how impatient I was and probably a little amused. I kept my body language still, not allowing him the pleasure of knowing how annoyed I was.
“I really missed you, Randall,” a voice said from the speaker just above the door. It sounded machine-like and lifeless, but something in the inflection stabbed into my psyche like a blistering needle of recognition. “You have no idea how good it is to see your face.”
Before I could complete my thought, the double doors whispered open in front of me. I flinched visibly, stepping backwards when the music blasted into the previously quiet docking bay. It was a classical piece by one of my favorites, Gregor Handel, a composer that both Syd and I loved. I inhaled deeply before stepping into the dimly lit corridor, my mind resigned to the blunt fact that whether I accomplished my goal or not, I would be betraying my friend.
There was a man standing in the corridor as I entered, his body so still that for a brief moment I thought he was a mannequin. He wore a black military-like uniform, a stark contrast to the light blue and white colors I was used to seeing as a member of the Alliance. His head turned slightly, and our eyes made contact. He had no whites in his eyes, only an ebony sea of moisture, dull red pupils in the middle like a droplet of blood. The crow’s feet around his eyes were tightly etched into his unusually smooth white flesh, snaking across his temples like tribal tattoos. He nodded then—his pale chin coming down so slow I was reminded of a reptile, his closely cropped hair gleaming in the fluorescent lighting. Then, with a slow movement of his hand, indicated that I follow the corridor. I was surprised that he had not asked me to relinquish any weapons, but I certainly wasn’t going to remind him of it.
The music continued to play as we walked, seeming to fit right perfectly in the militaristic design of the station, all order and mathematical perfection. I could feel the sweat dripping from the pits of my arms, falling to my side like blood from cold wounds.
We stopped at the doors of an elevator and my escort kept back, watching me clinically with his hands behind him. There was something inhuman about him, something almost alien. He stood there watching me, his body impossibly still, studying me with that unnerving gaze. Shivering, I turned to face the elevator, feeling his stare on my back like the touch of murderer’s fingertip.
I concentrated on the digital numbers above the door, imagining them to be the countdown to a bomb. The humming of the elevator could barely be heard over the music and I resisted an urge to turn around to face my guard. I imagined that he was only inches behind me, studying me with his dead eyes, his teeth bared to bite hungrily into the back of my neck.
I stopped breathing when the doors opened, my knees quivering underneath my wiry frame, my hands curling up into tight little balls. My breath shot out in a hiss of air, my mouth immediately firing sharp staccato wisps of my own shock. “Paris,” I found myself whispering, my voice sounding ghostly in the now quiet corridor.
My dead friend stood there, an out of place grin under his dark eyes, his chalky hand held out to me. His head was shaven—long black veins winding around his skull like spidery shatter lines on broken glass. A large indented area stood out on his forehead, about the size of an apple, and it took me a moment to realize that it was a closed, third eye. I took his outstretched arm by instinct, his cold fingers enveloping my warm hand.
He pulled me to him then, his rancid breath shooting into my face, squeezing me in a frigid embrace. “I knew you would come, Randall,” he whispered into my ear. “We all knew you would come. God, it’s good to see you again.”
I was numb, but I heard myself say, “My god, Paris, you’re dead.”
“Not anymore, Randall,” he said, pulling me tighter into his arms. “Not anymore.”
“But they took your DNA from the lab. The Reaper—”
He laughed then, the sound of wings fluttering, his third eye opening. It was entirely red—looking more like an almond shaped bullet hole than an eye. “I crossed back. You have no idea the beautiful things I have seen.”
I felt the elevator rising, pulling me upward with the disconcerting feeling that he was soaring with me in his frosty arms.
“You’ll see too, Randall,” he added. I saw what appeared to be tiny fingers dragging across the red sheen that was his third eye. My stomach felt the punch when I realized it was some sort of spider. I could see dozens of them swimming around through the red window into his head.
“Hello, my friend,” Sydney Vale purred behind me, his voice taking on a liquid inflection.
He was standing with his back to the viewing window, the stars winking around his gaunt form and shaven head, his face turned to the side like crescent moon in the darkness. His arms were held rigidly to his sides, reminding me momentarily of the ancient film Nosferatu. His third eye glowed silently from the center of his head, a reddish tinge highlighting his arched eyebrows. He was grinning, his dark mouth a black slit on his snowy face.
To his right was a machine that could only be described as organic. Thousands of wires shot out from a pulsating red globe, piercing into the severed heads of Alliance soldiers that circled around it like some perverse sculpture, their mouths slowly grinding together like they were chewing. One of them was Senator Huxley. All their eyes were turned toward me, seeming to plead to be destroyed. Above the globe was some sort of scaly insect, its thick, tentacles seeming to undulate like it was breathing, or sucking the life of the soldiers.
Syd walked toward me then, moving so gracefully that he seemed to float, his palms outstretched in what seemed to be a mockery of a crucifixion. “I would love to hear what they are saying about me, Randall. Old Sydney Vale’s gone fucking insane right? Send his old friend to talk some sense into him? Kill him if that fails?”
He stopped when he was only inches from my face, the red window in his forehead glowing like a perverse beacon in the gloomy light. Small, parasitic tick-like insects could be seen swimming around inside, their legs dragging across the surface, some of them even penetrating outside.
His thin lips pulled back, exposing his metallic teeth. His mouth was red. “I’m not
insane. Would you bring back your dead friends if you could, Randall? You know you would.”
“I would never try and kill you, Syd,” I found my deadened voice saying. “I love you like a brother.”
Syd stopped smiling, dark shadows slithering across his smooth scalp as he moved. I noticed then that they weren’t crow’s feet around the eyes after all, but the raven tentacles of some sort of creature embedded deeply into the flesh of his temples. “I know.” He gestured toward the organic machine. “I found Them you know, or They found me. I think they sensed my loathing toward the Gods, Randall. They sensed I wanted to strike back.”
He held out his wrists, and I could see his veins as if they were made of glass. Tiny spiders could be seen in them. “They entered my body near the end of the war, most likely when I lay rotting in that cell on Tanex Five. The change was quick. I took this job as Commander of this station knowing I had some purpose. We’re all here now, Paris and Joseph. Even Gordon is here.” He gave me what he probably thought was a warm smile, but it only came out as creepy. “You can even bring back your mother if you want.”
Gordon was a childhood friend that had drowned when we were back in high school on earth. I was often haunted by memories of those days. When I realized I would be overjoyed to see Gordon again, I froze, the realization that I was being drawn into Syd’s world and its corruption seeping into my flesh like poison.
“Syd you aren’t even certain what you’re doing here,” I said, a sudden insight detonating in my mind. “You don’t know that’s its really even them. They could be fucking byproducts of your own damn memory of them for all you know.”
“You say that because you cannot see, Randall. I promise you that you will see differently by tomorrow.”
I turned toward Paris. “Do you remember what we talked about the night before you left for the war?”
Paris nodded, that fake smile on his face. “Of course I do.”
I waited in silence and when he didn’t say anything, I spoke again. “Well, tell me, Paris. What were the last words you told me?”
