The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  However, his other two options were more extreme. He could run back upstairs and attempt to scale down the side of the house. That he would fall was a certainty, but he had an even chance of living and if he didn't, it would at least be a natural death. Again, this would leave his father abandoned to the demon. His other option was an almost suicidal jump from over the railing, onto the stairs between the demon and his father. He would have to pass through at least part of the dreadful unknown of the demon's mass, which for all he knew could kill him outright just by touching it.

  In a flash he saw all of this with that amazing lucidity his unfettered mind enjoyed and Will came to a decision with a speed born of necessity. After what had happened to Talitha the choice was a simple one: he would save his father or die trying.

  In the same second that he made up his mind, he gripped the railing, and with a huge thrust from his powerful legs, hurled himself over it, twisting in midair like a cat so that he would land oriented with the stairs, facing the demon. As he twisted, he plowed through the outer reaches of the demon's "body" and discovered the impossible cold that tortured the very air around it.

  The blackness was not solid, at least not the part he traversed. Close-up he was able to see that the air, fouled by its very proximity to the beast, was constantly changing from a black gas, to a slick, oily, ebony liquid. Underneath that, and only partly visible, the liquid solidified into a shiny, crystalline mass.

  Even as he somersaulted over and through it, he took a mental snapshot of this and the picture, Will knew, would be there etched into his memory until the day he died. The solid part of the demon was made up of thousands of tiny faces, each of which looked to have been chiseled with exquisite detail, out of the shiny substance. They were layered—faces upon faces and each contorted grotesquely in untold misery.

  His mind rebelled against the very idea, but the stairs were shooting up at his feet in a rapid blur and he took the picture and stuffed it deep within himself. His body cared nothing about faces or demons, but only about sticking the landing after a nine foot twisting fall.

  And it did, with barely a foot to spare on either side, the demon in front of him and his father's out stretched feet behind. Again, there was not a tenth of a second to lose in hesitation or to cast a look back down the stairs, and even as his feet and legs flexed to absorb the impact of the fall, Will shot up again in a blind backwards leap.

  Only an Olympic gymnast or a seventeen-year-old boy could have made both jumps and landings with such perfection. Will had been in training for this very moment all his life. He had spent thousands of hours on the playground, in trees, at the park, and on the football field, all the while honing his physicals skills so that in the darkened stairwell where the slightest error meant a terrifying death, he was able to confidently throw his body backwards over his father, not knowing where he was going to land, only knowing that he would.

  Only a boy who had spent years accepting impossibly stupid dares, who had leapt from trees, fences, buildings, and even the tops of moving cars, could have done it. Will was that kind of boy. At the beach or the pool during the endless summer days that seemed like heaven, no dive was ridiculous enough in its danger to slow him down, if there was a sun kissed girl nearby to impress.

  It was that combination of recklessness and youthful agility that Will relied upon as he flew backwards, hurtling down in the darkness, over the body of his father.

  He twisted slightly and looked behind him at the long steep staircase and his eyes locked in onto his targeted landing spot. His hands reached out and gently caressed the walls zipping by, and with a little pressure at just the right moments, he was able to guide and correct his fall, so that he landed dead on.

  The same flexing motion of his body occurred on impact; this time, instead of jumping back, his hands shot out to grab his father's wrist so that he could use his momentum to heave the big man the rest of the way down the stairs. His mind screamed a warning, Talitha's touch had an energy draining effect, and his father's could very well have it too, but his body was well past responding to fear. It was mission oriented and his hands moved in a blur, seemingly of their own volition, and took his father's wrist and just as his legs began to rebound from the fall, he pulled back hard on that wrist.

  He was not gentle. Will's fingernails dug deep into the skin as he threw his weight back, his legs pistoning and surprisingly the big man was easier to pull than he expected. However, with the speed he gained there also came a tha-dump, tha-dump, tha-dump sound of his father's head on the stairs. Again, his mind screamed at him, this time to be careful. Yet bumps and bruises were acceptable and within mission parameters and his body only pulled harder.

  It was just as the staircase went from dark to midnight black, that Will realized the good news that his father was not draining the energy from him. The bad news was he could see the darker shadow of the beast moving down the stairs, closer and closer to his father's outstretched feet.

  Will began to worry; he was going as fast as he could expect to go, and once he hit the flat linoleum of the kitchen he knew he'd slow down considerably. Suddenly he jarred hard against the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

  "Uhh!" He grunted out a rush of air and a precious second was lost, as his momentum was checked. Heedless of any damage to the wrist, he yanked his father out of the tight corner and into the kitchen.

  A quick glance around the room showed him the obstacles barring the way to freedom: the kitchen table, he would detour around; a chair that lay on its side, presumably knocked over in his chaotic flight from the house—this he could kick out of the way, and finally the back door.

  The back door had been stuck the night before and Will suddenly envisioned himself straining at it with the demon coming up behind. That image was like a kick to the stomach. But worse, barely five feet into the room and just moving to his right to clear the table, he saw that the demon had gained the doorway and felt its cold horror reach out for him.

  The air seemed to vibrate as the heavy malicious intent of the beast swept over him and then unbelievably, passed him altogether. For a moment mad euphoria gripped the boy and he pumped his legs as hard as he could, thinking for the first time that they might actually escape.

  Seconds later when he glanced up to see the demon was still in the doorway of the staircase, he had to fight a desire to cheer. It was a full ten feet away now and Will only had to...

  He stumbled on the over-turned chair and fell over backwards, landing hard on his backside; his grip on his father's wrist broken.

  The chair made a stifled sort of clattering and the demon suddenly seemed alerted to his position. Will felt it striving to look upon him with its cold and deadly gaze. He could feel it all around him. Yet it was unfocused, and though horrifying, it didn't stop him from climbing to his feet once again.

  The demon had other ways to kill besides its gaze, and it swept forward in complete silence like a wind-born cloud of pestilence. Terror rifled along his nerves at the sight and in desperation, Will made to haul the heavy body again, but he gave a peek back at the kitchen door and he saw he wasn't going to make it in time. Looking to defend himself, he snatched up the fallen chair, but then a thought struck him. Instead of raising it to strike the onrushing demon, he hurled the chair past it toward the dining room.

  The chair was heavy and wooden, but the sound was incongruously quiet and muffled. Still, it was enough, and the demon suddenly shifted direction as Will had hoped and moved toward the dining room, lightning quick.

  Will was moving even before the chair had stopped tumbling and once again took up his father and hauled him to the door. The door, which had seemed unnaturally difficult to open just the night before, now opened with ease and Will was blasted by heat and blinded by the light of day.

  Blinking against the sunshine and the tears that he hadn't realized had flooded his eyes, Will pulled the Commander to the supposed safety of the golf course. There he felt suddenly weak, with the th
ick hot air making his head swim. Dropping to his knees to keep from fainting, he looked down and noticed how amazingly blue his father's eyes were compared to the rich green of the grass.

  Those blue eyes refused to blink at the new light, but only stared upwards, lifeless.

  2

  "Dad! Hey, Dad!" Forgetting the demon entirely, Will pulled the Commander's face toward him. The blue eyes rolled back and to the side. "Dad! Look at me!" Gripping the broad muscled shoulders, he gave his father a hard shake and watched in horror as the head lolled away from him. In a panic, he leaned in to listen at the thick chest for some sign of life; he heard nothing but his own ragged breathing.

  "Oh jeez!"

  At his father's urging Will had taken CPR a year before and now he tried to recall the thirty-minute lesson, only his mind was a jumble. The instructions coming back to him were muddled in a useless random order. Every moment had been precious to him in the house, but now seconds were flying by as he searched his memory for the proper method to revive his father.

  "In CPR, which is more important? That the victim's heart is beating, or that he is breathing?" The instructor's question came to him then. He had turned to look at Talitha knowing instinctively she would have the answer.

  Under the warm sun, in the green of the golf course, her response refused at first to come to him and he began rocking back and forth, moaning in anguish.

  "Breathing...heart beat? What should I do?" he asked his silent father. The body—the corpse really, just laid there. Perhaps it didn't matter, he couldn't make things worse after all. Will went to the chest but then the answer he wanted came ghosting out of the murky depths of his mind:

  "Since either is useless without the other, and neither will last but a few seconds without its complement, what is truly important, is to have the victims airway open and unobstructed." Talitha said this in such a way that it seemed beyond contention. Yet it had been contested and fiercely, but not by Will.

  "Open airway," Will murmured. His hands remember the lesson even if his brain didn't and he quickly positioned his father's head properly, with the chin up. On impulse, or perhaps as part of his half-forgotten training, he listened for a few more precious seconds and again there was no sound of breathing.

  That he should breathe for his dad, he knew, but how many breaths and for how long was lost to his memory. He pinched off the nose and blew a great blast of hot air into the lungs and then paused to see if this had any effect.

  When nothing happened he blew in a second longer, heavier breath, as if he were attempting to inflate the body. Another pause, and Will felt on the verge of crying in desperate panic. The lesson was now becoming a complete clutter in his mind. There had been so many different hand placements, and breathing/compression ratios to learn and every question put to the instructor had been answered beginning with, "It depends."

  One thing that did come back clearly, was the warning that during compressions, he'd likely break rib bones. He was supposed to ignore the crunching sound and just carry on regardless.

  The warning had the opposite of its intended effect however, and Will, not wanting to break anything, administered compressions to his father's chest that were as ridiculously shallow as the breaths had been huge. After ten seconds of compressions, he suddenly remembered he was supposed to be counting, but to what number he had no idea.

  He was at 36 when the body burped loudly.

  Quick as a wink, he was at this father's face, peering into it. "Dad?" He asked quietly but after a moment, he yelled loudly, "Dad!"

  Out of the blue, he slapped the face lightly. This hadn't been in the CPR class, but it had been in enough of the movies that he liked to watch for his subconscious to believe this was an acceptable method for revival. The slap had been too light however, since the face had only gently rocked back and forth. Therefore he hauled back and struck it a proper blow, hard with the palm of his hand. Another long gaze into the face followed this. The eyes had closed at some point and he pried one of them open, looking for some sign of life in them, but it stared out blank and the only effect the slaps had were to turn the cheek slightly red.

  Will wanted to stop; he was wasting his time uselessly abusing his father's body.

  Once begun, never stop CPR until:

  A) The victim recovers and begins breathing on his own.

  B) Another qualified rescuer takes over.

  C) You are physically unable to go on.

  D) All of the above.

  The test question popped into his head just then. Initially, he had put down 'A', but Talitha, sitting next to him, had given a slight cough. He did a quick re-read and went with 'D' instead.

  He would go on with the CPR.

  Without much hope, he bent and blew another gigantic breath into the body. Then he took two enormously deep breaths, as if he were going to swim submerged across the length of a pool, and again blew hard as he could. As Will was doing this he caught movement in the corner of his eye.

  His father's left hand rose up weakly and even as he watched, it feebly tried to push him away. Will leaned back, completely unaware that his eyes were overflowing with tears. He was afraid to say anything, worried that the hand would stop moving if he did. But the hand stopped moving anyway, falling back into the grass, as seemingly lifeless as it had been only a moment before. He leaned over his father, dripping tears onto his face, and asked quietly, "Dad?"

  "Stop... it," the answer came back, in a very quiet whisper.

  "Ok, ok. I will...what should I do? I don't know what to do." There was no answer to this and the relief he had been feeling vanished. He leaned down to see if his father was breathing. Seconds went by without any movement of the chest, but then there was a slight drawing in of the diaphragm.

  "Dad!" he shouted into his father's face. "I'm going to call an ambulance. I'll be right back so don't worry." He rocked back on his heels to haul himself up but his father's eyes opened the slightest crack.

  "No... run...run to the...hospital." Will had to lean all the way over him again so that his ear was an inch from his father's lips. "Don't let them kill...Talitha."

  Will looked into his eyes. "No, Dad. I've got to...."

  "Now!" Commander Jern demanded with a little more force. "Don't let them kill your sister."

  "Ok, I will. Don't worry."

  "Run." It was spoken faintly, the Commanders eyes then closed, and his head lolled on to its side. Will had another panic filled moment, until he saw the chest rise, ever so slightly. Then hope flared up again. Hope, not just for his father, but for Talitha as well. His father must have seen something, or perhaps felt something to make him change his mind about allowing Talitha to die. He hopped up and literally ran straight into Brian Galt, knocking the smaller boy to the ground.

  "Brian, I need your help!" he shouted into his friend's face as he stooped and without thinking, lifted him easily to his feet. Will shoved him toward the Harris' house, "Call an ambulance! My dad was...he had a heart attack. Call and get back here and stay with him."

  "What about..."

  "Just go!" he yelled at Brian and gave him another shove. A great urgency filled Will and the smaller boy must have sensed it because he took off running toward the Harris' house, while Will set off at a dead sprint for the hospital which sat nestled under large oak trees, just over two hundred yards away.

  Will's lungs started to burn halfway to the building, but he put his head down and ran on, concentrating solely on the grass of the Village Green fly beneath the blur of his feet.

  He surprised himself at how quickly his feet hit the black asphalt of the parking lot and seconds later, he slid and skittered on the waxed hallways dodging doctors and nurses. Bursting through the doors of the Intensive Care Unit, he ignored the angry shouts directed at him and raced for Talitha's room. The fear of being too late overpowered everything else and Will barely noticed Lisa, who sat cradling a crying Katie. Her eyebrows shot up quickly but not as fast as Will, who blew by her witho
ut a word and slammed open the door to his sister's room.

  Inside he saw his mother crying over Talitha, holding her hand, while Doctor Thielsen stood gaping at him in surprise. The doctor's hands were working at the tape holding Talitha's breathing tube in place at the side of her mouth. Will slowed only slightly. His breath fired out of him in great ragged gasps, and he knew it would be a waste of valuable time trying to talk to the doctor; instead Will went right up to him and grabbed his hands firmly.

  "Will..." His mom began, shock at his sudden entrance showing through her tears.

  "Stop! Stop...you can't..." he said, between huge gulps of air. "You can't...you can't...Dad says not to...he..."

  The doctor looked at Gayle uncertainly and then turned to Will. "I'm sorry son, but..."

  "No. I can't let... let you do it," Will said, interrupting the doctor. He conveyed the sincerity of the statement by increasing the strength of his formidable grip. The doctor's eyes widened in anger—but also fear.

  "Look son, this isn't how you act..."

  "I know...I'm sorry but... my dad told...me..."

  "Willy J, where's your father?" Gayle asked with trepidation coloring her voice, her eyes knew already there was trouble. He was just about to reply, when the frantic sound of an ambulance siren rippled the air. The little color left in Gayle's face drained away completely. "No, please no. That's not for your father is it? Tell me he's all right, ok?"

  "Something happened..."

  His mom cut him off, "Is he...is he..." Her eyes went to Talitha.

  "No, he's not like that. He's alive, Mommy." Will's tears were back and rolled unheeded down his face. His breathing had calmed somewhat but his hold on the doctor's fingers had not relaxed a bit. "He's alive...but he's not doing so well."

  "What happened? Was there another attack?" Doctor Thielsen demanded furiously. Will only nodded and the doctor tried to pull his hands away. "Let go damn it. Talitha will have to wait." Will released his grip and the doctor raced out of the room.