The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  Will eyed Talitha's hand closely, worrying over it. "Jeez, it's so cold. Jim, massage her arm at the bicep and the shoulder." Jim had only just begun, when Talitha drew in a sharp breath.

  "It's ok Jim, it's not you. It's just that the return of the blood flow can be invigorating," she said.

  He went back to massaging her arm. "Invigorating? You mean it hurts, right?" She gave him a small shrug and he continued, "Are your hands going to be ok?"

  "They'll be just fine. It feels better already, go ahead and put the rope back on."

  Will who was staring at Talitha's hands, said, "In my dream your hands were all pruney..."

  Her arm twitched beneath Jim's hands as she interrupted her brother, "Don't talk about the dreams, please."

  "This wasn't one of those dreams...this was almost like a normal dream. You were at this river and you just plopped down and started doing laundry..."

  Talitha interrupted him again. "Did you look in the river?" she cried in terrible anguish, her blind eyes wide in panic. Just looking at her made goose bumps rise silently on Jim's arms.

  Will seemed taken back by her reaction. "No. I was afraid to. That was the only reason why I knew it wasn't a normal dream...that fear of looking into the water. What was down there? It felt terrible."

  "It was nothing," she lied unconvincingly and hid herself with her hair again. Her arm muscle had tightened considerably in his hands and Jim gripped her harder in response, but she didn't seem to notice.

  Lisa, who had been watching all this silently, now gave her husband a look that obviously meant he was supposed to demand an answer from his sister, but he was already ahead of her.

  "No!" Will said harshly. "That's not going to cut it. We've been dancing around the truth, about you and these dreams...and the other you, the evil you, for too long. Now tell me, what was in that water?"

  Talitha's face looked as if her fortress, the one that guarded the remains of her soul had been breached. "Nothing. I'm not lying to you. I stood in that water and touched it many times."

  Will buried his face in both hands, sighing heavily. "Talitha, I know you won't lie to me, but you also won't tell me everything. We both know there was something there. Something terrible that you didn't want to see, what was it?"

  "It was...I don't...I," she stammered breathless with fear and her arm under Jim's hands kept trying to gesticulate as if it could speak for her. Torn between a perverse curiosity and a desire to protect her from her own memories, Jim could do nothing but look into her blank empty eyes with pity.

  "It isn't important. I was just...the river was..." she went on incomprehensively and then pushed her face into Jim's chest and spoke into the soft flannel of his shirt. "There was nothing in the river, Will. It was the surface...there are images or pictures of stuff that I had been forced to do, horrible things. The river will show you your guilt. It's terrible, but it's better than being tortured and if you keep working hard, you can keep the water moving too much to see the images well."

  Jim felt his shirt turning damp—Talitha was crying. Her breath hitched in her chest as she spoke: "I found the place by accident, the other Talitha, she had forced me to go to the pits at Rek, in her place...and I had to go. She was too powerful at that point and I couldn't stop her. But, I decided to try something new. Something I had been practicing in secret: meditation. You know to calm the mind since...since that is all you are in the void."

  "Did it work?" Jim couldn't help himself and interrupted her.

  She nodded into his shirt. "Yes it did. I suddenly found myself outside...not just outside the pit, but out in the open. There were trees and rocks and dirt. And the river. It was very calm and I could see the hills around me reflected on its surface. I wandered down to it and saw a woman there. She was older than I was, maybe forty and she was plump with black hair and had a hint of a black moustache. She was doing laundry in an old-fashioned manner. Hitting her clothes against the rocks and rubbing at them with a large block of soap." She paused staring into Jim's chest, remembering.

  He was about to ask if she was frightened of the woman at all, when she started speaking again. "I don't know why, but it bothered me to see her working like that. She was at it with a focused rhythm and a concentration that I was afraid to disturb. Therefore, not wishing to bother her, I walked away, up into the hills, but as the saying goes, All roads lead to Rome, I kept finding myself coming up on the river. This started to aggravate me, which began to erode my concentration and I feared that I would return to the pits if I couldn't remain focused."

  "Therefore, I went down to the river, finding my hands holding a basket of clothes and my own bar of soap. Even though there was nothing special about her I was unable to take my eyes off the woman and even as my toes touched the cold water, she drew my eye. I was near to her and gave her a friendly smile and she smiled back in a neighborly fashion. In all my time in the void this had never happened.

  "I called out to her, 'Hello,' and standing up, she smiled at me easily and said hello back, however she glanced down into the river near me and when she looked back up, her face had congealed into an evil look. I was shocked at this and she turned from me in contempt. I was about to ask her what was wrong, when a sight in the river, just in front of her caught my attention. The water had been calming after she had stood and now it was as flat as a movie screen and the lady was reflected there.

  "The reflection was her from another time and it showed what she had done. She killed her family, one by one in a slow cruel way." Talitha's voice broke; she blinked back tears and then gave a small rueful laugh. "I had seen so much depravity in the void, but this was real. This was something she did here...on earth and that made it all worse somehow."

  "The lady must have seen that my look of disgust now matched her own and she pulled her eyes from me and with painful hesitation, she looked down and saw what she had done. She started screaming at the image and I felt like screaming as well but I didn't. Instead I ran from her. But as before, I kept coming back to the woman who still screamed and screamed...it was so disturbing that my concentration slipped and I was back in the pits at Rek."

  "Did you ever try to go to the river again?" Lisa asked.

  "Yes...every time I could."

  "Did you ever look into the water yourself?" There was a hint of accusation to Lisa's question that caused Talitha to pale visibly.

  Her mouthed worked silently for a moment as she tried to spit out words but she finally spoke in a quiet whisper. "Yes...I couldn't help it. I didn't want to look in the water but my eyes...it was like a magnet."

  "What did you see?" Lisa asked with that same tone to her voice.

  "Just stuff...like sins I committed, that sort of thing."

  "Talitha! It was more than that or you wouldn't have been so nervous about looking into the water." Lisa's face was gravely serious and her eyes had become hard emeralds, lacking any pity.

  "I think we should let her be." Jim said with a quiet menace. He didn't like how Lisa was badgering Talitha. "Her sins are between her and God."

  "Mr. Anderson," Lisa began in a cold voice. "The Talitha I knew, back when we were younger, did not have any sins worthy of hell. These must have been sins she was going to do in the future and I think it behooves us to know if she's going to commit any of them soon."

  Her logic was sound despite the fact that Jim didn't know what she meant by behooves. He glanced down and asked Talitha, "Did you see your future sins...did you see what you did to Brian?"

  Groaning as if in pain, she shook her head, tears splashing down her face. "No, it wasn't the future, it was the past. Things that I did in the void. Things that I was forced to do...to others." Her blank eyes flicked briefly to her brother and then back down. Tears fell on Jim's arm and they were warm and full of the agony of life. He couldn't help himself and he reached out and wiped her face clear with his most gentle touch.

  "Oh," Lisa seemed to deflate, her worried look exchanged for an ashamed one.

>   Will rubbed at his twitch again, making the skin of his face red. "How can anything you do in the void be considered a sin? Wait...don't answer that. I really don't want to know about any of it. I'm just glad that I had that river dream instead of the other ones...I don't know how much longer I can take those. Let's retie her hand, Jim."

  A question nagged at Jim. "Am I missing something? You were in hell for only a day, how could you have had time to sin, let alone go through...all of that." He had been confused on this for a while, but had been too embarrassed to bring it up; worried he was the only one not understanding.

  "Time flows differently in the void. Either that or one's perception is skewed, but they both amount to the same thing...I was there far longer than just a day," Talitha said.

  "I need some coffee," Lisa announced tiredly and without asking if anyone else wanted any, she turned and walked out of the room, her slim shoulders slumping.

  Jim cinched the rope down tight on Talitha's left arm and the two men then went to work on the right, loosening the ropes and massaging the muscles. Jim looked down into Talitha's face and somehow sensing this, she arched her eyebrows.

  "What is it, Jim?"

  "What is what?"

  "You want to ask a question of me," she stated confidently.

  "Yeah, I guess I do. You said the other...uh, Talitha sent you into the pits. Wasn't that just you? I don't want to call you crazy or anything like that but..."

  She moved her head in the direction of her brother and there was a sheepish cast to her features as if she were now embarrassed. "I created the other Talitha. I know what the doctors say, but she is not a psychosis or a disorder; she is a separate individual from me. When I was in the void...it was horrible, terrible and I had to do something, so I took a part of me. The hardest part of my being and I created her. It was a mistake that I couldn't take back. Of any sin that I have ever committed, that was the worst. I made someone whose sole purpose was to feel the pain that I should have been feeling. To be tortured in my place."

  "How is that even possible? Creating a whole separate person?" Will asked, his hands massaging hers tenderly.

  "I don't know. I didn't even ask to see if was possible. I just did it, but I wish I hadn't. She hated the pain, but seemed to revel in it as well and she grew stronger. Somehow, she took the hate and the misery and used it or adapted it to her own ends and that was when she found out she had power over me. Then it was my turn once again to face the torture. However, I hadn't been entirely idle while she had been growing stronger."

  "I saw what she was becoming and I worried that the day would come, when she would be too powerful to control. I began meditating," she paused smiling and shaking her head. "Before. Before all of this, I had always considered meditation to be pure...I hate to say it, but pure crap."

  Her cheeks turned a slight pink and her brother smiled sadly at this, but said in an exaggerated tone, "Talitha!" He gave her hand a light slap.

  "I know I shouldn't be so vulgar, but that was how I felt. Either way it worked and I discovered the river. I would go to it and I would clean my clothes like the others, trying not to look into the water and wait."

  "What would you wait for? Why didn't you just stay there?" Jim asked.

  "For my body to be killed...my body in the void that is. The demons would eventually tire of abusing a body that wouldn't respond and they would kill it."

  Lisa came in then bearing a tray of mugs and a pot of coffee; she proceeded to hand out the mugs, including one for Talitha.

  "Should I be thirsty? What time is it?" she asked.

  Will yawned largely and took a gulp from his mug before answering, "Almost nine, we got to get going."

  "You're taking her, right?" Lisa asked slightly alarmed. She eyed Talitha nervously as she put the coffee to the bound girl's lips. Talitha pulled her head back.

  "You have to take me. Wherever you're going, I have to go too! I can't stay here. You mentioned that there were children in trouble?"

  Will grimaced before answering, "I'm sorry Tal, but...you may be more trouble than you're worth. The Talitha is too unpredictable. Would you consider going back to the hospital?"

  Talitha lowered her head, her hair falling again in front of her face and said in a voice that broke slightly, "Yes, please put me back in there."

  "It's just that you know where we live now," Will sad. "And you threatened Lisa, and...and you've been killing, not just her, but you too."

  Lisa jumped, spilling coffee. "What? You've killed people too? Oh my God! Why would you do that?" Talitha refused to answer and kept her head down, unwilling to look her sister-in-law in the eye.

  "Answer me!" Lisa shouted her demand.

  "It's not what you think. It wasn't me exactly," Talitha said as her head wagged from side to side. "It was the other Talitha. I would wake up and there would be...people. She'd leave me people...as a sick joke. They would be dying in the worst way, in tremendous pain and I...I would have to kill them. I had no choice! She's an expert at slow death; she can make it last days."

  Talitha paused a moment and when she began speaking again it was with a flat voice as if emotion was beyond her, "The first time, I couldn't bring myself to do it and the person lingered, howling in misery for hours, begging me to kill him. We were out in the woods; I had no idea where and I ran away from him, telling myself I was looking for help, but I was only running from the sound of his voice. You could hear him for miles, but we were alone in the woods. Just him and me and his screams..." She trailed off staring down at her stained flowered dress.

  Lisa appeared aghast at first and then apologetic. "That's horrible," she said to Talitha. "She made you kill these people? Couldn't you have called an ambulance?"

  "There was never any hope for them. Besides, she disfigured them so much they sometimes weren't recognizable as human. No one would want to live like that."

  Jim's heart broke for the girl. There was an actual pain in his chest, just behind his breastbone. "I think we understand, Talitha. It's obvious you had no choice. Will, I think she should come with us. I think she should be given this chance to make up for what she's done."

  "Atonement? It may be too late for me." Talitha declared, still without emotion.

  Lisa shook her head. "I don't know. The way she...the other one looked at me and at my baby!" She shivered slightly as she said this.

  "She hates you, Lisa. Almost as much as she hates me," Talitha said.

  Lisa slapped her thigh in frustration. "I didn't do anything to her...I've tried to be as supportive as I could."

  "She's jealous. Look at you. Look at what you have. It's everything a girl ever asks for...a handsome, loving husband. A beautiful baby girl on the way. Plenty of money. A great big house with lots of land. That's why she's jealous, but the reason why she hates you, is that it could have been you tied up in this bed, with the dead boyfriend and all the pain and the killing and the..." Talitha went quiet.

  "That's not my fault." Lisa said quietly, looking at Jim and Will, her eyes hoping that they would agree with her.

  "Of course it isn't. It was a coin toss and you won," Talitha agreed but with resentment seeping out into the words. "Of all the girls on the island, we were the only ones who hadn't...done it. It was down to you and me, and she hates you because...well, because you just got luckier."

  Will spoke up, "But that's not true. There were plenty of other girls on the island, who were virgins. It could have been any of them."

  "No. It doesn't work that way," Talitha replied. "I don't know everything about the rituals and incantations that can open a gate onto the void, but when a virgin girl is called for, her virginity in of itself is not enough, otherwise you could use a five year old. There's more to it than just virginity, there is virtue as well." She paused, but the others only stared at her with interest.

  "You see there's no virtue in being a virgin, only because you're so ugly that no one will sleep with you. Nor is it virtuous to be a virgin simply bec
ause fear stops you. Fear of becoming pregnant. Fear of what your friends will think, fear of your parents, fear of the act itself. No. No, there is no virtue in fear, none what so ever."

  "However, when a girls recognizes her virginity as the wonderful gift that it is, and holds onto it, waiting for the perfect man and the perfect time, to give herself freely in the act of love, that is virtue." She smiled sadly toward Lisa. "Out of all the girls on the island we were the only ones that fit that description. We were the only true virgins."

  Lisa's mouth hung open and her staring eyes were large green orbs. She looked as if she had been slapped. "But...I still didn't do anything to her. She shouldn't hate me."

  "You didn't have to do anything to her. It's just that you have everything." Talitha paused sniffling. "I wish I were you." The two girls faced each other and Lisa's fear and anger seemed to dissolve into sadness for her friend.

  "I'm sorry," Lisa said, her voice straining with emotion.

  "Don't be. You shouldn't be sorry for doing the right thing." Talitha sat silent for some time, looking lost but eventually said, "We were talking of sending me to a hospital, but is there something that I can help with first? You mentioned children."

  "Yeah, maybe you can give us some insight," Will answered and then with Jim's help commenced to tell the story of the demon at St Thomas. Talitha sat stone quiet, taking small sips of coffee from Lisa at short intervals. She remained nearly expressionless, except for her lips that tightened increasingly as the story progressed. It was only when Will mentioned the sword that her look changed slightly to wonder.

  The look was not lost on Will, who paused and smiled at his sister. "Your evil twin had that same look on her face when she heard about the sword."

  Jim nodded. "It's true and it almost made her look, uh...happy." He had nearly said pretty and the thought of saying it out-loud had made his throat tighten. She smiled up at him in her vague way and his throat tightened even more; he swallowed loudly.