The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  Will looked defeated still and shrugged his shoulders as if it wasn't a big deal, "He wants dad's sword...the one he stabbed the demon with."

  Talitha's eyes went wide at the mention of it. "The sword," she said it quietly but with reverence.

  For the first time since Jim had met her, she became alive in a normal sense. She no longer looked insanely evil. The skin of her face flushed with a healthy pretty pink and she smiled happily remembering something fondly.

  "The sword...Oh my lord! I had forgotten, it was so long ago. I think I was still young in the void when it came. It brought with it hope... at least I think it was hope. I'm not too sure what that's like anymore. But it also had that smell, dad's smell. Do you remember his smell?" She breathed in slowly through her nose as if she could still smell him.

  "But the sword was fleeting and it didn't last. Isn't that funny? Everything else in the void is eternal...but not that sword. I remember I recognized it at once. The long silvery blade swept across the upper reaches of the void, making it seem like there was a sky and I knew it was dad's.

  "Ha! The demons were at first afraid of it, all but Ba'al, and they hid themselves as best as they could and the tortured, free from their misery, for just that short time made a mad rush for it. But I...I don't remember what happened next. I woke in the dark and the sword was gone. However, there were parts of it falling everywhere, they were like shooting stars, and the void was in chaos. The tortured and the demons ran about like children, as if they were on holiday. It was even fun! I remember smiling till my face hurt." Her face now, was almost all smile, with light tears trickling down her cheeks as if rain fell from her eyes.

  She looked about at the men towering around her, but saw none of them, she only saw the past.

  "I'm not bragging, but I found the largest part of the sword. Some piss-ant thing had it and I killed him for it. I took it away and hid it in the void. A part of me knew it was wrong, but I did it anyways. I covered it in my darkness, so that it would be mine alone and when the last of the sword had long since disappeared, I still had mine. I gloated over it and I stayed near it all the time, but eventually it vanished. I woke once...and it was gone. It had been whole and perfect and alive and then...gone. But I guess that's the way it's supposed to be in the void...no light, no love, only nothing."

  The room was quiet and she just stood staring at the floor, until Will asked her, "Why would a demon want that sword?"

  Talitha spoke in a distant way, without looking up, "I don't know. I didn't even know it still existed." She shook her head to clear it of those fond memories and her eyes hardened. "Where's the sword, Will?"

  "Near my home, but..."

  "But nothing! It's time to see an old friend," she said this with malevolent glee.

  "But..."

  She raised the gun and the gesture shut Will up quick, which made her smile. "Good boy! Alba, take that cop and get the hell out of here. If I so much as smell him again, I'll hunt him down and cut off all his moving parts, got it?" She paused waiting and when he didn't answer, she turned the gun on its previous owner.

  "Yes I got it, Miss Jern...I'll meet you in Boston then?" Father Alba asked hopefully.

  "Probably," she murmured.

  An hour later, Will drove his jeep at a speed that was worlds beyond reckless. In the front passenger seat, Jim gripped the console with near crushing force, and he feared if they took another turn like the last one, it would tear right off. He tried to concentrate on the passing scenery and relax, but it was impossible with the wind whipping through the bullet hole next to his right knee. The sound was an irritating high keen and it unnerved him so much, that he found himself staring at the noisy little hole, instead of at the pretty orange and gold trees zipping by.

  Jim didn't scare easy, he hadn't even been afraid while in the presence of the demon plagued man—but that gunshot in the box like interior of the jeep, had nearly given him a heart attack. This was what Talitha called an attention grabber. As she would later tell them, she didn't like to have to repeat instructions, so she prefaced this one by shooting the gun as near to his leg as she could.

  "The next one will go in his head, Will, if you don't pick up the pace," Talitha had said this with a happy grin at the reaction she had received from the gunshot. She then took to sniffing at the barrel of the gun in an interested fashion. Will didn't need to be told twice and he had pegged the gas pedal to the floor and unbelievably had left it there almost the entire time since.

  Jim soon found out that Will had some sort of supernatural power to see the future. Twenty minutes after the gunshot he turned to his sister, "There's a cop up ahead; would you like me to slow down?"

  Will's face held a look of disgust that had made Jim want to look back as well. Talitha was casually rubbing the fully loaded pistol between her thighs. Jim jerked his head away, embarrassed for her brother, who had turned a light shade of brick.

  "Oh damn! Yeah, slow down. Just when I was really starting to enjoy the ride. Hey Jimbo? Want to smell the gunpowder on this thing?" She held the gun out to him and he could only shake his head, no, as he felt his own color rising. As a distraction, he looked out for the police cruiser, but there wasn't one in sight. Yet Will kept the car tooling along at the speed limit, which suddenly felt unreasonably slow.

  Two minutes later the cruiser came into view. Jim had to ask Will, "How'd you know it was there? Do you have a scanner hidden under the dashboard?"

  "It's nothing...foresight, just a gift, it's nothing." He answered with embarrassment that Jim didn't understand. It sounded like more than nothing, and explained some of Will's quick reactions. Jim would've liked to be able to see the future. He thought it would be the coolest thing, but of course if it came with a complimentary insanely evil sister, he would probably pass on it.

  He gave the passing scenery a little smirk, realizing he had just lied to himself. The only thing that he ever truly wanted was to be a part of a family. It had been denied to him, not once, but twice and with his ugly looks and freakish size, he wasn't likely going to get a third shot.

  The first time had been when his natural mother had given him up. Maybe he'd been a big eater back then as well. Who knows the reason, but there he was in the middle of the night with nothing but his pajamas and a single name. As he always did when thinking about her, he tried to remember her face, nothing came; his memory of her had faded long ago.

  His earliest recollection was still that first night at the orphanage when he'd been given the bottom bunk under Sean Shay. He had tried to hide his tears, but Sean had heard him sniffling and had talked to him while dangling upside down as only little boys would do. Their friendship had begun right there when Sean had told him that he'd cried as well on his first night.

  Jim's second family had given him his second name.

  The Anderson's, Nathan and June, had adopted him when he was in the third grade. They had visited the orphanage a number of times and they had liked his low-key style. The other boys had always hopped around the two of them like a swarm of crickets on cocaine. Since he had never considered himself worthy to be adopted, Jim hung back.

  He hadn't been a cute child and he knew that was an import factor for most people. Not only that, everyone around him believed him to be a touch slow. Having never been to school before, he wasn't at all prepared for the second grade, but he was as big as the other second graders, so that's where he was placed.

  Sister Mary Agatha, old even in his earliest recollections, had raised hell with the neighborhood school, but to no avail. The teachers didn't go out of their way to teach what they obviously considered a handicapped kid, but regardless he was passed along year after year.

  Then the Anderson's had come along and took him from that life. For two glorious months he had been part of a real family. June seemed to care for him from the very start, lavishing affection on him at every opportunity as if he were really her child, but it had taken Nathan much longer to open his heart. However, on t
he day they had died, he had hugged Jim quite out of the blue.

  "Did you have a good time visiting your new cousins?" Nathan had asked with a smile. He could still remember the smile on his dad's face to this day. It had been perfect. There was no lie behind it. He wasn't putting on a show in order to impress anyone with his generosity of spirit. It was just that he liked Jim...maybe even loved him and that was what made it perfect.

  "Yes sir. It was lots of fun and they was real nice to me," he had answered and he remembered smiling also and thinking back, he hoped his smile was perfect as well.

  "I thought at first, that it was very polite of you to call me sir, but...it's been a few months. I think it's time you started calling me dad. Do you think that's a good idea?"

  "Yes sir...uh, Dad." It had sounded flat and awkward coming out of his mouth and the two of them looked at each other for a moment.

  "That was weird wasn't it?" Nathan Anderson said as he came down to one knee. "Try this...Ok Daddy! See, make it peppy."

  "Ok, Daddy I will," Jim didn't realize what he had just said and was about to be peppy like he been asked, when his father became his father. Nathan scooped Jim off his feet and hugged him fiercely to himself.

  It was their first and last hug.

  He could still recall that warm crushing feeling that was so wonderful. Nathan would be dead in fifteen minutes and June would die in the first light of the following morning, but they loved him. That couldn't be taken away, no matter what.

  It was that desire to be a part of family that had been foremost in his consideration when he took the job at Saint Thomas. He figured the orphanage would be the closest thing to being in a family as he would ever get.

  Jim looked over at Will, who gripped the steering wheel with white knuckled hands, and felt a stirring of jealousy. A glance back at Talitha however, nearly killed it.

  Her eyes knifed into his with an unsettling intensity. She smiled, "Ok Jimbo, where'd you get your last name? You never did tell me your, oh so sad life story at the orphanage." Her question following so closely on his thoughts, made him wonder if she had more powers than just the physical ones that she had displayed.

  He thought: ARE YOU A MIND READER, as loudly as he could and waited.

  Her response was not reassuring, "Come on Jimbo, out with it. I'm not a mind reader you know." It seemed like the just sort of thing she'd say if she was a mind reader.

  "I was adopted and I took their last name. Kinda boring, I'm sure."

  "Yeah very. Please tell me the 'Fella' part is a little more exciting." Her eyes were black as twin gun barrels and the thought made him look at the gun, which she had pointing at him from her crotch. An army of goose bumps broke out along his arms and arrayed themselves in proper formation.

  He pulled his eyes up to her face. "I'm sorry, there's not much to that story either. There was just another guy in my class with the same name and I used to call people, fellow all the time, so I was called Jim Fella."

  "No...you would have been called Big Jim. I take it the other guy was big as well?"

  "Yeah he was," he answered, wondering why she was so interested in him.

  "Yeah he was," she mimicked his slow deep voice. He peeked back at her again; she sat looking out the window with her head pressed against the glass. She repeated herself again, "Yeah he was." Pivoting her head, keeping it on the glass, she asked, "He was black, right? And you were all too proper to call him Black Jim and you White Jim."

  "Perhaps, I guess."

  "Perhaps, I guess," she mimicked again. "Maybe I was wrong about you. I had the feeling that you were smarter than you looked. Of course, it could be the pressure. Does the gun bother you at all? I like to see how pressure affects people...look at me."

  He turned back in his seat and the gun was pointing at his face; he had expected it. He looked past it and into her eyes. "What do you want?" he asked gruffly, irked that she was being such a pain.

  "Here's the deal, White Jim. I'm going to test your intellect and if you get these answers wrong, I'll shoot you somewhere of my choosing." She smiled with joy over the new game she had invented. "Now I have to tell you that I brought you along simply to amuse me and you're doing a very poor job of it, so this may be your last chance."

  She had been hoping for him to say something to this, but he only stared at her and she wrinkled her eyebrows at him, causing three little lines to appear between them.

  "Playing it cool with a gun in your face...impressive. Plus 10 points! Now, question one, we'll start with an easy one...give me three numbers that when you add them, the total is 1011."

  He wasn't going to play her stupid games and he just stared at her, looking into her eyes, which were not as lifeless as he had first thought. They were wet, bathed in the black waters of her insanity and everyone once in a while he could see a little question in them. The questioning look made her less of a killing machine and more of a person who had doubts.

  She began pulling the trigger back slowly, again as he expected, and he said matter-of-factly, "Getting shot is a better way to go than dying in a car crash or getting eaten by a demon."

  A girlish pout formed on her lips. "You're no fun! It's better if you're scared."

  "Sorry. If you want to pass the time, we could play the license plate game."

  "What? That's so childish!" With her lips pursed, she looked angrily out the window and proceeded to kick the back of his chair. He ignored it and it soon stopped. A minute later, she spoke in a grumpy voice, "A in Massachusetts."

  She won the game easily, but it had the desired effect of passing the time without the fun of gunfire. The trip ended quite abruptly for Jim, who didn't know where they were going besides Will's house. They drove through the small but pretty city of Bangor and minutes later turned off of I 95. The area was wooded and hilly, looking like it should have been the setting for a postcard.

  Soon after that they pulled up to a large white two-story house. It had a fine wraparound porch with a detached garage in the rear and as they got out of the car, a wonderful sweet smell drifted in from an apple orchard to the right of the house. The trees were pleasant to look upon, despite the wandering drunken fence that leaned against some of them to keep itself upright. The property had a splendid front lawn, that still held to its green and this ran down a small sloping hill to greet them.

  Jim had never seen a home, more homelike in his life and he was sure that there'd be the smell of something baking when they entered. He was about to compliment Will, but the man looked more tense than he had yet seen him. His blue eyes darted about the windows of the house, never holding to one for more than a second. He walked in short jerky steps, leading the way to the kitchen door, which was a light yellow that matched the trim of the place.

  When the door opened, Jim wasn't disappointed by the smell; Will's wife Lisa was definitely preparing something. He knew very little of her. Father Alba had filled him in on the pertinent details of Will's life on the drive up from Boston but he hadn't mentioned Lisa except in passing.

  "Will, is that you? You're home early." A small slim lady with a great mane of blonde hair stepped into the kitchen from an adjoining room. She was pregnant, but not tremendously so and she wore a black maternity jumper with a long sleeved white shirt beneath it. His first thought upon seeing the outfit was, penguin but on Lisa, it was cute. She had a pretty face with narrow features that traversed from smiling to shock at the sight of Jim filling the kitchen door behind her husband.

  He smiled back at her in a genuine fashion and because her look of shock wasn't tinged with disgust, he liked her already. She had just begun to reform the soft skin of her face into a smile, when Talitha stepped out from behind her brother.

  At the sight of her, Lisa's face seemed to come unwound from the inside out and her features sagged with her mouth coming open to stay. Her eyes, visibly green from across the room widened, not in shock as they had upon seeing him, but in dread.

  "Hi sis!" Talitha exclaimed lou
dly with exaggerated insincerity. She advanced forward caressing the gun to her cheek. Lisa looked paralyzed at the sight of her sister-in-law and the only part of her that moved as Talitha advanced on her, were her eyes, which grew larger with each deliberately slow step.

  Talitha seemed to be enjoying herself and practically screamed, "OH-MY-GOD! Look at you, all knocked up! And here I thought Willy J's willy wasn't working well." Talitha stopped abruptly and turning to Jim said, "Hey White Jim! Say that ten times fast...Willy J's willy wasn't working well."

  He glared at her instead and her cruelty caused him to advance forward in anger but Will restrained him with just a hand. He must have seen something, Jim thought and stepped back.

  Talitha just gave him a mocking smile before turning back to Lisa. "He can talk, I know he doesn't look like he could, but there are stranger things, right? Well?" Talitha flung out her arms, the big black pistol still in her right hand; she was obviously looking for a hug. After a moment, when Lisa didn't move, Talitha pulled her in close for a tight embrace. It was all one sided on Talitha's part and she held the embrace long enough to smell Lisa thoroughly.

  "A girl...you're going to have a girl, but I'm guessing you already knew that, what with ol' Will's talent. Can I touch the baby?" Talitha actually paused for an answer. "You can tell me no, if you think that's wise. I have been called insane before you know...wait, that's right you do know. You visited me in the hospital...ONCE!"

  Lisa's head was shaking back and forth slowly, but still no words came out of her mouth.

  Talitha continued on, ignoring Lisa's imploring looks, "We used to be best friends, but you don't call, you don't write and now you won't let me touch your baby. That's upsetting...I don't think you really mean it, so I will ask you again: let me touch your baby."

  Lisa's eyes were filled with tears and rimmed red with fear, she seemed mute, unable to form words. There was a long pause as she stared in terror at the gun pointed with purposeful indifference at her belly. Finally, a slight vibration of her head indicated that she had given her coerced permission.