Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis

by P. T. Dilloway

  Chapter 4

  She finds herself adrift in a sea of pink. The pink ocean is soft and comfortable; it nearly lulls her back to sleep. But she knows she can’t go back to sleep, not yet. She has to find someone, someone important. Louise. She has to find Louise.

  She flails her limbs against the pink tide until she’s finally free. She tries to stand up, but her legs are too weak to support her. To lever herself into a sitting position takes so much effort that she nearly crashes back down into the pink sea. No, not a sea—a blanket.

  She sees bars all around her. She’s trapped. Unable to stand, she collapses onto all fours. She crawls forward and notes something is wrong. Her hands are so tiny and chubby. That’s not what they used to look like. They used to be so long and thin. She remembers she took Louise’s hand in hers, how much bigger her hand had been.

  To crawl from one side of the blanket to the other is like crossing some great desert. By the time she reaches the end she’s tired again. Just a little nap for a few minutes to rest. But no, if she goes to sleep now she’ll have to start all over again. She has to find a way out of here. Louise needs her.

  A shadow falls over her. She looks up to see a giant staring down at her. The giant’s face is shadowed, except for its eyes, which glow red. A pair of giant hands reach down from the sky to ensnare her. She can’t sit up in time to do anything but squeal as the hands clamp down around her chest.

  She rises into the air. The blanket has become so much smaller. She can see that her prison, which at the time had seemed so vast, is really just a tiny part of a much bigger room. The room is so large that she knows she could never make her way from one end to the other. Not like this.

  The giant’s face becomes visible. It’s a woman’s face. The woman has tan skin and long black hair. Her eyes still glow red as she flashes a white smile. “You’re awake again.” The giant presses her closer to sniff her. “You’re still dry too. What a shame.”

  Even as the giant says this, she can feel around her legs turn warm. As this happens, her face turns equally warm from a mixture of anger and embarrassment. She’s not supposed to wet herself. Only babies wet themselves. She’s not a baby. She’s had a baby. Louise. She needs to find Louise. Louise is in danger.

  The giant pats her head and hisses, “Looks like it’s time for a change after all.”

  The giant carries her across the room, pressed close to her chest. She tries not to fall asleep again in the warm cocoon of the giant’s body. She has to stay awake. Every time she falls asleep, she loses more and more. If she concentrates, she can still see faces but no longer remember their names. One of these faces is of a very fat woman with hair not as dark as the giant’s and kindly brown eyes. Another is a woman with pretty gold hair and blue eyes that seem to know everything. Then there’s the man with tangled brown hair and a pointy nose. Whenever she sees this face she whimpers. She wants to remember his name; she knows it’s important.

  Through sheer force of will, she’s managed to hold on to Louise’s name and face. She can still see the little girl with the tangled red hair and pointy nose and the blue eyes that are so curious. She still remembers when she’d brushed a tress of hair away from Louise’s face to kiss her pudgy cheek. My baby. She’s my baby.

  The giant comes to a stop and pries her away from her chest. She’s turned around, forced to face the mirror. In the glass she sees the giant holding a tiny baby with a head of wispy red hair. She squirms and sees the baby do the same. No, she thinks. I’m not the baby! I’m not. Her face turns red and she tries to scream that this isn’t her, but all that comes out is a plaintive shriek. It’s a child’s scream for her mother.

  “You’re such an adorable baby,” the giant says. “Let’s get you changed.”

  She continues to squirm and scream, to try to get free, to get to Louise. But she can’t. She’s too little. She’s just a baby. Tears trickle silently down her cheeks as the giant sets her down on a table to change her diaper. When it’s over, the giant picks her up and presses her to her chest again. “Don’t worry, sweetie. I’m not going to leave you like this forever. I’m going to make you do the one thing you never could before.”

  She continues to cry as the giant carries her back across the room. By the time they reach the crib again, she’s exhausted. The giant sets her down in the pink sea again and a wave crashes down over her. Despite her efforts, she closes her eyes. As she does, she can feel Louise slip away, carried away by the tide.

  ***

  The sound of a buzzer woke her up. She flailed around with her hand until the buzzer finally turned off. Only then did she open her eyes.

  Above her she saw only a blurry sea of white. This seemed wrong to her, though she couldn’t remember why. She held up her hand to her face and lowered it slowly until the hand came into focus at the tip of her nose. Again this seemed wrong to her, but when she groped around with her other hand, she turned up a pair of thick plastic glasses. When she put these on her nose, the ceiling came into focus.

  A light flashed on and a familiar voice said, “Are you going to lie there all day or what?”

  A rush of cold air assaulted her as someone pulled the covers away. “Hey!” she shouted, though her voice sounded harsh to her ears.

  “Come on, already. You’re not going to be late for your first day.”

  A hand took hold of her arm to drag her from the bed. She landed on the floor and stared up at a very fat woman in a pink waitress uniform. The woman’s brown eyes glared down at her. “I don’t have time for this shit. Get moving.”

  “All right,” she said. She sat up and put a hand to her head. She tried to remember the strange dream she’d had, but it had slipped away from her. She took a moment to look down at herself and saw a long, thin body clad in a black Metallica T-shirt about three sizes too big. Something seemed wrong about that.

  The tiny bedroom seemed familiar to her in some ways. The posters on the wall for the Sex Pistols, AC/DC, and Nine Inch Nails did not ring a bell. As she scanned the CDs, DVDs, and clothes thrown about the room, she knew something was missing: books. Didn’t she own any books?

  “Jesus Christ, Emma. Am I going to have to carry you into the shower?”

  “No,” she said. Emma. That was her name. That at least seemed right. She rolled from her sitting position into a standing one; she wobbled for a moment before she steadied herself by putting a hand on the bed.

  Some inner sense told her the bathroom was across the hallway. She staggered that way and found she was right. When she flicked on the light switch, she saw herself in the mirror. She saw a very pale face with deep blue eyes and a nose a little too big surrounded by frizzy copper hair. She took a handful of hair and tried to remember why this seemed wrong.

  The woman came to stand next to her. The tag on the woman’s uniform identified her as Becky. The name seemed right, as did the weight, but not the uniform or the hair piled into a bouffant. “What’s wrong now?” Becky asked.

  “Was my hair always this color?”

  “Ever since you got out of rehab. If you want to dye it again you’ll have to do it after work.”

  “Rehab?”

  “You’re going to end up there again if you don’t stop acting like such a space cadet. Now get moving.”

  “All right.” Emma waited until Becky had closed the door before she took off her shirt. The slight breasts seemed right to her, as did the stomach so flat that it curved inward so that her ribs poked out against her skin. What didn’t seem right were all the tattoos on her chest and her arms. She had a wide variety of them that formed a mosaic on her body; they ranged from Celtic and Chinese symbols to a grinning skull on her left arm and a decapitated Virgin Mary on her right forearm that looked especially grotesque to her. Over her heart was an odd symbol, almost like a stick figure with its arms curved down. Despite all the tattoos, she didn’t seem to have any scars. She traced a finger along a dragon on her left shoulder to feel for a scar, but couldn’t feel anythin
g other than ordinary flesh coated with ink.

  She let lukewarm water run over her while she tried to make sense of things. Ever since she had woke up, some things seemed to make sense and others didn’t. It was like an episode of that show, The Twilight Zone. Except this was real life. Or was it? Maybe she would wake up in a minute to find out that this had all been a dream.

  After she showered, she returned to the bedroom to find her clothes already laid out. Becky had chosen a pair of khaki cargo pants and a dark blue polo shirt. This didn’t seem right to Emma either. Shouldn’t she wear something dressier like a suit? At this point she figured Becky probably knew better than she did, so she put the clothes on. With a brush on the vanity she did what she could to make her hair less frizzy, but it still seemed too puffy. She’d have to work on it later. For now she had to go to work.

  Becky waited for her in the living room/kitchen of the apartment. The beanbag chairs seemed familiar, though wrong. Hadn’t they lived in a better place than this? She thought better than to ask as Becky shoved a mug of coffee into her hands and a plate with a bagel on it. “Better hurry up,” Becky said.

  “I will.” Emma tasted the coffee and made a face at the bitterness of it. “Don’t you have any tea?”

  “Since when did you start drinking tea?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did they give you in that clinic? Are you sure they didn’t do a lobotomy?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you’re acting all weird.”

  “I don’t mean to.”

  “There you go again. Why are you acting so goody-goody?”

  “It just feels natural.”

  “Since when?”

  “Now, I guess.”

  “Yeah, well, just don’t try to save my soul.”

  “OK.” When Emma took a bite of the bagel, her throat tightened. She gagged a couple of times before she finally got the chunk of bagel down. Even after she did, she felt her stomach roil as if she were about to throw up.

  “What’s wrong with you? Feeling sick?”

  “I guess I’m just nervous.”

  “You should be. You screw this up and you’re going to be on the street. I’m not giving you any more second chances. Got it?”

  “Yes,” Emma said, though she didn’t really understand. She took the purse Becky pressed into her hands and then followed her friend out the door—or at least she hoped Becky was still her friend. The way things had gone, she couldn’t really be sure.

  ***

  Despite that it was cloudy, Emma’s eyes still burned from the early morning light. She wished she could ask Becky for a pair of sunglasses, but she didn’t think Becky was much in a giving mood at the moment. Instead, she looked down at her size-9 feet and focused on the steady rhythm of her brown clodhoppers.

  Becky kept her arm around the crook of Emma’s elbow as if Emma were a child. She was grateful for this since she didn’t really know where they were going. Becky had said something about a job, but Emma couldn’t remember what it might be.

  While she walked, Emma opened the purse to sneak a peek at the contents. It was mostly standard stuff: lipstick, tissues, and a compact. The sight of a tampon gave her pause; she quickly shoved that aside to find the jackpot—an ID card.

  It wasn’t a driver’s license, just a state identification card. She made sure Becky didn’t watch her as she read the information on the card. Her full name was Emma Jane Earl. There seemed to be something missing there, but she couldn’t remember what. The address on the card was for a house in Parkdale that seemed familiar to her, though she knew it wasn’t where she had woke up. It was probably an old address. The height seemed about right while the weight seemed a little high.

  The fact she really took umbrage with was the date of birth. From what she’d seen on the newspapers they passed, the age on the card meant she was only nineteen years old. That didn’t seem right at all. She wasn’t still a teenager; she was a grown woman. She thought this with a certainty that surprised her given how uncertain she felt about everything else.

  Someone reached out to grab her other arm, which prompted her to drop the ID card back into the purse. She turned and gasped. A girl with skin even paler than hers and wild white-blond hair had taken hold of her hand. “Can you spare some change?” the girl whispered and then coughed.

  “I don’t have any,” Emma said.

  The girl coughed again, hard enough to double her over. “Please, I’m sick. I’ve been looking for work but it’s so hard. Can you help me?”

  “I’m sorry. I wish I could.”

  Becky let go of Emma’s arm to shove the girl back. The girl landed on the seat of her ragged pants and curled herself into a ball. “Listen, you dirty bum, if you don’t stop hassling me and my friend, I’ll make sure the Specials get you.”

  “I’m sorry,” the girl said with a whimper. She crawled away, back into the alley from whence she came. As she watched the girl disappear, Emma thought she had seen the girl somewhere before, and not in an alley either.

  “Was that really necessary?” Emma asked Becky as they set out again.

  “You have to take a hard line with the bums here or they’ll walk all over you.”

  “She didn’t really seem like a bum to me.”

  “She’s probably a junkie.”

  Emma could see there was no reasoning with Becky on this point. “Who are the Specials anyway?” she asked.

  “If you don’t remember you’re better off not remembering.”

  “Are they not nice?”

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  As they continued along the sidewalk, Emma noticed there seemed to be a lot of police officers around. Even stranger in her mind was that they cradled machine guns and wore black body armor. She thought at first these might be the Specials Becky had mentioned, but then she saw the ordinary silver badges on their uniforms. Well, at least we should be safe, she thought.

  Becky hauled her over to the doorway of a diner called Eileen’s. Becky didn’t go inside; instead she smoothed down her uniform and patted her hair. “I hate to leave you here, but I’ve got to get to work. Think you can find the museum on your own?”

  “Museum?”

  “The Plaine Museum. Where you’re working. Ring any bells?”

  “Oh, right.”

  Becky put both hands on Emma’s shoulders. “Promise me you won’t blow this off. A lot of people worked their asses off to get you this job. You fuck this up and we aren’t going to be friends anymore. Got it?”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Now remember, a woman named Leslie will be waiting for you up front. If she’s not there yet just ask around.”

  “I will.”

  “Good luck, kid.” When Becky hugged her, Emma felt for a moment that everything would be all right. Then Becky went inside and she was alone in this strange new world.

  Chapter 5

  Tim woke up with a mouthful of dirt. He pushed himself up, grateful he didn’t at least seem to have materialized through the gateway as an infant. After he spit out the dirt in his mouth, he finally sat up. When he looked to the southeast, he breathed a sigh of relief.

  The skyline of Rampart City gleamed in the morning sun. There was no black fog around it, just the usual bit of smog from the cars and factories around the city. The black spindle of Robinson Tower loomed over the rest of the buildings, but from what Tim could tell, everything was still there.

  Except that it wasn’t really Rampart City. At least not his Rampart City. His had been swallowed by a black fog thanks to someone called Isis, who wanted to bend everyone to her will. That was what had brought Tim through the gateway in the first place.

  He got to his feet and brushed himself off. As he did, he noted he seemed to be exactly the same, right down to the clothes he wore. In his pocket he found Emma’s letter and the picture of Sophie—formerly of Renee Chiostro—had vanished. Well, if that was the worst that happened then
he should count himself lucky.

  The gateway had vanished after it deposited him here. Where the portal had been, he found the scroll Akako had given him. He tucked this into his pocket; he would need it for when it came time to leave this place. Before then he had work to do.

  The problem now was the same as ever since he’d talked to Joanna: he had to find transportation into the city. He turned to look back towards Sharonville and wondered if he should try to go back into town to try to get a cab or bus or something. He figured it would be about a ten-mile walk that way unless he could find a ride. He decided to start out towards Rampart City and held out his thumb.

  His first attempts to hitchhike didn’t go well. There were a fair number of cars from people commuting into the city from Sharonville or some of the more distant suburbs. No one slowed down or even seemed to look at him. He wondered if in his grubby Speedy Oil uniform and with his scruffy beard he looked dangerous. He was still walking with his thumb out when someone hit him in the back of the head with a foam coffee cup that still had some lukewarm liquid in it. This is hopeless, he thought.

  A tractor-trailer ahead of him sounded its horn. Tim stepped farther onto the shoulder to make sure the truck had plenty of room. It came to a stop and sounded its horn again. He realized with a start he was being offered a ride.

  He shivered from déjà vu when he approached the red truck to see an image of Wil E. Coyote painted on the side. Only this version wore a polka-dot dress. Once he scaled the side of the truck he realized why.

  “Where you heading?” the driver asked. The driver wore the same straw cowboy hat but this driver didn’t have a mustache. She had a long gray ponytail draped over her shoulder.

  “Rampart City,” Tim said. He hoped he didn’t look too freaked out.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Over there,” Tim said. He pointed towards the distant skyline.

  “You mean New Stockholm?”

  “New Stockholm? Oh, right. My mistake.”

  “I’m going to the waterfront. Got a load to drop off. I can let you out anywhere between here and there.”