The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  Talitha leaned back shocked. "You want me to bring her back? So soon? Will, please no. Look what I did." She pointed at the grotesquely beaten body of the Mexican.

  "He deserved everything he got," Will growled as anger flared in him at his sister's refusal. "You won't do this for me? For Lisa? How many times have I risked myself for you? How many of those damn dreams did I put up with for you? Huh?" Compared to his weeping and frustration, the guilt trip and the anger were oddly satisfying to him and they went well with his headache.

  "Will, I can't. It would be a waste, even if she knew, there's no way she'd help you. She hates you and Lisa both; I think she would just try to make it worse somehow."

  She was right, but perhaps there was another way. "Father Vogel, could you hypnotize the information out of her?"

  The priest shook his head. "No, for a number of reasons. Her subconscious is not..."

  "A simple 'no' is fine," Will interrupted. He got up and paced the room feeling his emotions spin away from him. All day he'd been holding back a nagging fear of what was happening to Lisa and now here he was and still just as much in the dark.

  Talitha tugged his leg as he passed and said, "There's another way perhaps. Since your ability seems to be back, you could look into the past to see what happened here. There is precedence for this; you were able to see the past as it concerned Fredrick Brabec."

  Will hesitated, afraid of what he would see, afraid to know what they had done to her. "Tal...was Lisa violated?" He shifted his eyes from his sister as he asked.

  Talitha was quick to answer, "No. She hasn't been, not like that. What do you think, will you look?"

  "Yes."

  Without preamble he sat and took Lisa's hand. Closing his eyes, he sent his mind back, searching.

  It was like running into a very dark night. Heavy black shadows were laced by slighter ones and nothing seemed to have form. Further out, just at the edge of his vision, things seemed lighter and he ran forward, hoping. It felt as though hours passed and still the light was only at a distant horizon. He became frustrated and swung his fist through the shadows close to him, but couldn't touch them. They shifted constantly and were unreadable. They were useless, as was his vision. After a time he grew discouraged and bored; not knowing what else to do he wandered uselessly—his steps numbering in the tens of thousands. Time stretched out as he walked, but then suddenly snapped back when he heard his name called. Will opened his eyes and had to blink from the bright light.

  "Did you see anything?" his sister inquired in a rush. She looked worried.

  "No, it was as if there's nothing to see. It was like that spell not only blocked my vision, but erased the past as if it never happened. How long did you let me stay under?"

  "Eight minutes," Talitha replied, anxious that she had made a mistake. "I know that seems like a long time but your heart rate and breathing remained unchanged during the duration. Was that ok?"

  "Yeah," he answered somewhat distantly—the eight minutes could have been eight months.

  Father Vogel took Will's pulse and gave him a quick once over. The priest then asked, "Talitha, can you track Amy by sense of smell?"

  "I could, but not if she drove, which I think she did. Do you have any idea where Lisa hid the sword?" she asked Will.

  "No." Surprisingly, Will had plum forgotten about the sword. His concern had been focused squarely on the safety of his wife and child. "Still, I don't think it matters. Amy has to have it by now."

  "Does she?" Vogel murmured. "Maybe Lisa hid it deep in the woods. We might still be able to catch up with her."

  "Perhaps," Talitha eyes went slightly out of focus and she breathed in deep. Suddenly, she bent over Lisa again and began inspecting even closer than she had before. She paid close attention to her shoes, a pair of very white Nikes. "She didn't go out in the forest in these sneakers."

  Talitha hopped up quick and ran from the room. Will guessed she was heading to the master bedroom and he found her with her head in Lisa's closet. "I don't think she's been in the forest in the last week at least, judging by her shoes."

  "So where does that leave us?" Vogel asked dispiritedly from the doorway. He was looking down at the hardwood floor eyeing the blood that trailed along from the stairs.

  "The bishop hinted that the Church could help out," Talitha mentioned, getting up from the closet. "Could they use some influence and maybe find out where Amy lives, or who these four men were?"

  Vogel nodded. "It would take time. Probably a couple of days..."

  This shocked Will. "A couple of days? No, we need to find her now. I want you to call the bishop right away, right this second."

  "I can't." Father Vogel had an odd embarrassed look to him. "He's still in the air. His plane isn't scheduled to arrive in Bangor until five." Will's mouth dropped open and the priest went on to explain, "Bishop Keenan wanted to have a backup plan available just in case you and your sister weren't successful here."

  "And what did the bishop think he could possibly do?"

  "He didn't come alone, Will. He brought with him a special paramilitary unit. You see there are certain people, men and women of great faith who volunteer their services in time of need. Thankfully, that need is extremely rare, in fact I've never seen one of these groups in action, but the bishop deemed the incantations important enough to call upon them."

  "Do they have any special abilities? Do you think they'll be able to help Lisa?" Will asked in a rush. Hope and relief made him feel a slight bit giddy.

  The priest killed the feeling quick. "I'm sorry, but I don't think so. They're just normal people. Most of them have military training, some have medical training and a few like Eric Milner are with the police or the FBI."

  "Milner is one of them!" Will no longer felt hopeful at all.

  "Technically yes, like I said, they're just normal people. Officer Milner has been very helpful to us in the past and I hope that despite what he has gone through, we'll be able to count on him again in the future."

  "Would it help if I apologized?" Talitha asked. She stood meekly half in and half out of the closet, biting her lip.

  Will answered before the priest, "No, it'd probably make it worse. But I don't think you have much to worry about, I'd bet that Milner isn't with them, just when he could be of some help." He walked out of the room, feeling the strain of the last few days on him like a weight. The bishop and a few boys with guns weren't going to able to help them out. At the door to the nursery room, Talitha caught up with him and tugged at his shirt.

  At first, she seemed nervous to the point of tears. "May I hide the bodies, please? I can maybe put them in the basement or in the trunk of their car. We have twenty minutes before they land and another twenty before they get here..."

  "Tal, hold on. Just leave them for now, they can wait. I need your help figuring out where Amy went."

  "They can't wait! The bishop will be here soon, and he can't see what I've done." Her eyes were wild in her head and the tears were only seconds from coming. "He'll blame me. He'll think I did all this on purpose or for fun. Please, please, let me move them. Is there a deep lake anywhere near here? I can weigh them down really well. They'll never come back up."

  This last she said with such honest conviction that Will's insides seemed to loosen and turn watery. She had sunk bodies before, he was quite sure of it. The other Talitha had left her many presents, the dead and the dying, for her to clean up.

  From behind his sister, Father Vogel asked, "How many bodies are there in the house, Talitha." He said her name deliberately to keep Will from answering. It was a moot point, he didn't know.

  "Four," Talitha replied in a whisper.

  "Can you recall how each died?" The question from the priest was strange and off-putting. Will looked past his sister; Vogel gave him a little headshake, telling him to keep quiet.

  "Yes. I shot the man in the nursery three times and then finished him off by bludgeoning him with my fists." Talitha's voice was low and unemo
tional, as if she were reading off a laundry list. "There were two in the living room; I killed the first with a kick to the throat, the second I killed with a stone." Her face clouded slightly at this, "I was angry about this for some reason. Oh yeah, right. It was because the stone didn't bounce back like I wanted it too."

  "Ok Talitha, you don't have to go on. I just..." Vogel started.

  She gave a little laugh, like a short bark. "You should've seen the first one I killed. I chucked this stone, Bam! Right in the forehead and you wouldn't believe, it just bounced right back to me, like it was a tennis ball I had thrown against a brick wall. It was so funny." She smiled at her brother as if she honestly thought he would appreciate what she had said.

  His mouth came open and he could only shake his head, confused. First, that he could, in any way, think her story was funny and second, that there were only four men in the home. By the sound of the gunfire, he would've thought it closer to six or seven. He remembered the two in the living room, but he had only stood there for maybe all of a second, before he had dived away. The gunshots had been strange. The first few had sounded like thunder in his ears, but then the noise had flip-flopped. The guns went suddenly muffled, while the bullets that tore through the air all around him had become loud. They zipped past with the shriek of shredding canvas.

  The priest spoke up in that very calm manner of his, "Talitha? Listen to me. You weren't here when these men died. Where were you?"

  Her smile had faded away. "I don't know. One moment I was outside in the backyard and the next, I was in the nursery. But now, I'm starting to remember what happened."

  "She shouldn't go near the bodies, Will," Father Vogel advised. "I'm worried the sight of them may spark a snap changeover. Talitha, the gap between your personalities is closing quicker than I thought it would. I don't have an explanation for it either."

  A pounding in his head reminded Will that it still ached and he rubbed at his temples, "If that's the case Father, then I have to ask you a favor. Will you please move the bodies and all of the guns out to where that black car is parked? I would, but I have to keep an eye on Talitha."

  The priest nodded easily. "That's not a problem."

  Brother and sister waited in the master bedroom until the priest moved the corpse out of the nursery, and then they went to the spare bed there. Talitha seemed drawn to Lisa, she gently massaged the little bulge where the baby lay nestled, warm, and hopefully safe. Her eyes were deeply sad as if this was as close as she would ever get to a baby. He felt compelled to try to cheer her up.

  "Just getting broodie?" Will asked.

  A puzzled expression cleared her face of most of its worry. "Broodie? What's that?"

  "Stop the presses. Talitha Jern doesn't know a word? Oh, you have no idea how badly I want to tell you to go look it up!" Will exclaimed. "But since from personal experience I know that can be terribly annoying, I'll answer your question instead. It's Australian slang. When a woman sees a baby, or another pregnant woman she sometimes gets that hankering for a baby of her own. That's being broodie."

  Talitha snorted, a noise somewhere between contempt and amusement. "First, there's no such thing as a dictionary of Australian slang, so it would be impossible for me to look it up. And second... I'm not broodie, I'm jealous. It feels like I've been cursed. Like my entire life has been one long demented joke, and I'm jealous of this baby. She has a future."

  "We hope."

  Talitha put her ear to the bulge, but spoke to Will, "You could find out. Without the little charm, you could look into her future; maybe you'll see something hopeful."

  "Or maybe I'll see something horrible," his voice cracked as terrifying images of his own making flashed into his mind. His imagination was too good sometimes. "That's why I'm not jumping at the chance. I'm afraid Lisa's future will be as empty as her past day has been."

  "That's no excuse," Talitha admonished. "If you rely on me or what little the bishop can do, your wife and child may pay the price for your cowardliness. There could be something that will point us in the right direction."

  Will cast his eyes to the floor and studied it for a long time. "I know." He sighed huge and then looked up at his sister. "Five minutes, no more, if her future is horrible I don't want to be there any longer than I have to." She nodded and he cracked a crooked, nervous smile. "Ok, here we go..."

  Will heard a voice that sounded like his own say, "You're having a contraction."

  "Oh really? I didn't know." Lisa's face was very white and was lined with a grimace of pain. Her mass of blonde curls was tied up in a great blob sitting on top of her head and she wore such a garishly flowered gown that he wondered briefly if they were in Hawaii. They were in a single occupancy hospital room; its walls were two-tone, pink on top, blue on the bottom. They were alone.

  It was an odd feeling being alone. Where was everyone? Shouldn't his parents be here? And what about Talitha? There wasn't even a doctor present. At the very least he had expected a smattering of nurses buzzing around like worker bees. But they were very much alone. Except that is for the technical looking machinery hemming-in the bed and a vase full of newly bought flowers from which pink balloons struggled to get away.

  There should have been more flowers.

  The contraction had been brief and when it was over, Lisa picked up the magazine that sat in her lap. The cove: a glossy picture of some young starlet shown out at him. He felt his eyes roll.

  Will's lips moved, "Would you like some ice?" He hadn't meant to say it, nor had even thought it, but out came the words nonetheless. Will was along for the ride in his own body and had no control of what it did.

  "No thank you," she sounded bored and Will didn't blame her. Even riding shotgun in his own body, Will was bored. He supposed that to be good thing. People in fear or danger were rarely this bored. How long had they been there? It felt like hours.

  Now Will looked down at a line of paper spilling from one of the machines. He didn't want to do this, but had no choice. What he really wanted to do was get a better look at his wife, to see if she had any scars or bruising, yet his stupid self of the future only stood staring at the procession of paper. After thirty seconds or so, a running blue line on the paper edged upwards. Next to him, Lisa gasped.

  "You're having another contraction," he said in a pleasant conversational tone. Will wanted to smack his future self.

  "Thank God you're here to tell me these things," Lisa said in between her panting.

  Will felt a sudden spin and the scene changed, but not terribly so. The walls of the hospital room faded to white and now Lisa was asleep. The machinery all looked the same, they beeped and hummed as they had before. There were other smaller changes, the flowers for instance had been moved and were no longer in his vision.

  In fact, his future self wasn't in the room. The room was empty save for the girl sleeping in the bed. For a long time he watched her, having no capacity to do aught else and in all that time she didn't budge, but slept as the dead. The sun went down and the room grew dark, but that was for seconds only and then the sun was up again.

  The blurred ghost like shape of people sped in and out and then it was dark again and still Lisa slept. The light came once more and then disappeared. This repeated itself, faster and faster so that it appeared as if a naughty boy was playing with a light switch. But then it went too fast even for that and soon the light stayed a steady grey. And still Lisa slept.

  Her hair grew and a second later, it was shorn practically all away. In seconds it grew again and eventually, like the light, her hair seemed to stay in a halfway stage. However, he knew that it wasn't, he was seeing a year fly by in seconds.

  It took a while, but eventually Lisa aged. Her beautiful golden hair turned grey and then white, while her face sank in so that her teeth grew more pronounced.

  And then she was dead.

  Light flashed brilliant and it stung to see, but Will couldn't blink away and was forced to watch in pain as Lisa's coffin was lowere
d into the ground. No one stood nearby and no flowers were anywhere in evidence. The view became only an intense black and the only sense that accompanied this was a rushing crackling sound. Then he was alone in the darkness. Lisa had decomposed and was gone.

  The utter darkness now became familiar. It was a cold, cold darkness. He was in the Void and he was all alone.

  "No!" The word tore from his throat as soon as Talitha shook him out of his trance.

  "Are you ok?" she asked, her brown eyes were very large in her face.

  Will hopped up without answering, and at first paced the small room, but in seconds, it didn't feel big enough. He hurried downstairs and surprised Father Vogel who was carrying a roll of paper-towels. Will didn't say a word to the priest, but left the living room in a rush, heading for the kitchen.

  "Will? What's going to happen?" Talitha called out from somewhere behind.

  "I don't know. All I saw were the outcomes for Lisa." The second outcome, where she stayed forever in that unnatural coma hurt his mind to dwell upon.

  "There was more than one? Will, come on you have to tell us. We're a part of this too," Talitha swept into the kitchen and then stopped dead, her eyes darting around. She was seeing her past, the memory of how she had killed the Mexican, it gave her a shudder. She came to the table and picked up a pair of scissors that were lying there. Will snatched them from her.

  "Sorry," she said with a little embarrassed shrug.

  Father Vogel hurried. "You looked into the future?" There was a long unstated, aaannd?

  Will told them. Viewing the first part of the vision had been only odd, but re-telling it was uncomfortable in the extreme. Talitha had been painfully absent and he didn't leave that part out. She sat spinning a roll of masking tape appearing nervous and sad at once. The second part of the vision was even worse, since it was very likely in that future, none of the three would live.

  "I'm sorry," Will said as a way of finishing.

  "You're sorry!" Talitha suddenly seethed with volcanic anger. She threw the roll of tape at his face as hard as she could and though Will managed to block it, his left forearm went numb from the elbow down. "Is that all you have to say? You're sorry? Well sorry doesn't count for shit. What's going to happen to me? Huh? Look into the future and see. Right now."