by Tobias Wade
Jessica is still watching Dantes as he disappears up the stairs. Gladys is shaking even worse when she stands again, breathing heavily as she deposits a sturdy shoebox on the table.
“That’s him right there—with rifle across his shoulder. Oh, I do miss him sometimes. All the gates of Hell could be breaking lose, but if he held me tight and told me that it would be okay then I’d believe him. Do you have anyone like that in your life…”
“Jessica,” she supplies, flipping through the pictures on the desk. “It used to be like that with my dad, I guess. He could take care of anything.”
“Here’s Max at a baseball game—they’re all cheering just for him, you know. People who didn’t even watch the sport came just to see The Cannon open fire. I don’t suppose it really matters anymore though,” Gladys sighs. Her fingers are shaking worse than ever as she reaches back into the box. “There isn’t anyone left who can help us now.”
“Since when do us girls need help anyway?” Jessica asks. There’s something beautiful about the old pictures that she can’t tear her eyes from. Everyone is smiling, frozen that way. And whatever else was going on in their life, and whatever else happened after they were gone, they’d still be smiling in that picture forever and ever.
“Oh, there’s no helping against The Beast.” Gladys’ voice is light and conversational. “Once he’s here, none of that will matter anymore.”
“The Beast?” Jessica jolts away from the desk. The snarl passing Gladys’ face lasts less than a second. She’s smiling again, but somehow the snarl is all Jessica can see.
“Haven’t you heard? He’s the first flower at the end of winter, and he’s about to bloom. A fragrant bud, still crisp with winter’s parting kiss, promising the spring of his coming.”
Jessica had never heard such pretty words spoken from such a tormented face.
18
“Strong women like us—we don’t need help, do we?” Gladys whispers. She’s slowly making her way around the desk toward Jessica, trembling hands dragging her forward along the coarse wooden desk more than her legs propel her. “Don’t scream—not a word. She only wants to speak with you.”
“Who does?” Jessica asks. She’s pushing her chair along the opposite side of the desk. The turn is too sharp—one wheel is caught on one of the desk legs.
“Your mother, of course,” Gladys says, her pace quickening. By the time Jessica reverses and untangles her chair, Gladys is already gripping the back. A physical struggle is useless here. Jessica takes a deep breath and stares straight ahead, listening to the words crawling up the old woman’s throat.
“It’s me. Don’t you recognize me? I love you, darling—I’d do anything for you. Why won’t you trust me?”
“You’re not my mother,” Jessica breathes, laboring over every word.
“This body didn’t give birth to you. Neither did that of Mackenzie Maston. But I am your mother, and I’m here for you, Jessica. I need to speak with you.”
“Then do it.”
“Not here,” Gladys’ voice twists again, sounding more like a barking dog for a moment than a human. Ethereal words follow: “Not through her. I want to be with you. Tonight—you’ll wait for me, won’t you? You’ll wait outside alone and let me find you.”
“You aren’t her. You replaced her. You killed—”
“Jessica. I love you. All I’m asking is the chance to explain. If I had really been replaced, then I would have brought the whole plane down. If it was just The Beast in me, I would have killed every last one of you to spread the fear of his power and ensure the safety of his plans.”
The way the old woman’s voice rose with feverish intensity and excitement at those words makes Jessica’s skin crawl. An icy sweat begins to bead down her neck, but she doesn’t dare turn around to look away from the contorting visage.
“Midnight. I won’t harm you or your friends, you have my word and the word of The Beast. You can see by the miracle of his gifts—by your own living flesh and blood—that The Beast’s word is law. I have so much to tell you.”
“Midnight,” Jessica replies, the word ominous in her ears.
“… never struck out. Not once in twenty-four games. Oh dear, how did I get over here? Mind checked out before my body, I tell you what.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jessica says, pulling her chair free from the slackened grasp. She half turns to look back at Gladys and her lopsided makeup. “Max sounds like a real hero. I would have loved to meet him.”
Gladys sighs and makes her way back to her seat, leaning heavily on her desk as she does. “You’re a charmer, I can tell. I would have been jealous if he even looked at you.” She laughs to herself, groaning as she lowers herself to sit. “It’s funny about heroes. They’re all just people until they go, and you don’t realize how great they were until you see how much of you they take with them.”
At 9 PM that night the old clock in Jessica’s room begins to chime. The sound is joined by Dantes’ knocking on Jessica’s door. He tells her that the first flight they could get will be at 1 PM tomorrow. She thanks him and begins to close the door, but he seems to be lingering.
“How do you like your room?” he asks.
“It’s certainly floral. Wallpaper, sheets, chair covers—it’s a good thing I’m not allergic.”
“You’ll let me know if you need anything, right?”
Her smile answers more than he asked. She thanks him and closes the door.
A little after 10, he knocks again. Just to make sure Jessica doesn’t need help with anything—packing, unpacking, reaching high shelves, you name it.
“Not that I think you need help,” he finishes lamely, immediately continuing to dig his own hole. “There’s not many girls—or women—or men, I mean, it doesn’t matter—not many people who could go through what you did the last couple of days. And being stuck in that chair must only make it—all I mean to say is that if there was anything I can do—”
“Thank you, but I’m all right,” Jessica says, feeling immensely sorry for his entire gender. “Goodnight Dantes.” Again the door shuts.
It could be her imagination, but she thinks she can hear his quiet self-loathing through the closed door. It’s almost cute.
It’s a quarter to midnight when she feels his presence outside again. Maybe it was the creak on the stairs, maybe a glimpse of his shadow passing under the door, maybe the muted call of his silent breath. Whatever it was, she feels his loneliness lingering on the other side of the wall. She feels his fear, and his doubt, and his restless hope, all things combining into an incessant pressure to be near her.
Feeling him standing outside the door reminds her of being on that rooftop somehow. The wind and her breath and her thoughts all raced one another, pushing each other, braiding together into something entirely new until she couldn’t separate herself from the cold air or the freedom promised by the beckoning void. She’d never felt so helpless, or so powerful, as the moment she’d stood on that edge. The same feeling as when she opens the door to let the midnight in.
“Dantes?” she asks, the word catching. There’s another creak, but no one is there. A door opens and closes somewhere near the front of the hotel. Shivering, she’s about to slam the door when—
“Jessica?” Another creak on the stairs. Dantes is just descending now, using his phone as a flashlight. Whatever she’d felt a moment ago wasn’t him.
She doesn’t move from the doorway as Dantes approaches her. A thousand sarcastic phrases are born and die on her tongue in the space it takes him to approach.
“Can I come inside?”
She nods, turning her chair to coast across the resentful floorboards. He’s still standing in the doorway when she turns. He isn’t doing anything, but his eyes don’t leave her for a moment. Their weight combines with the silence to form a conversation of their own.
“Can’t sleep, huh?” she says at last.
“Not in years,” he says, stepping into the room and closing the
door behind him. “Not properly anyway.”
“Why not?”
He shrugs, letting his gaze wander around the room. “Scared, I guess.”
“You? Mr. battle-hardened soldier shooting things since you were a kid? What could you possibly be afraid of?”
“Exactly.”
“What?”
He walks over to sit on her platform bed, legs dangling off the side without reaching the ground like a little boy on a high chair.
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. That I’m willing to sacrifice anything and everything I need to finish a job. If one of them offered me the demon seed right now to make all of this go away—to give you your old life back—”
“Don’t say that,” she interrupts.
“Why not? It’s true. I hate what happened to you. What I let happen to you because I was too weak to stop Ender from bringing that cursed thing back with him.”
So that’s what’s been haunting him. Jessica lets the air from her lungs leak slowly from her nose.
“I saw what was happening. I saw what he was turning into. If I just pulled the trigger then—”
“Then I’d be dead,” Jessica interrupts. Dantes’ wide eyes betray his confusion. Jessica takes another deep breath. Her hands are clutched together so tightly that they’re beginning to shake. She has to tell him though—just to spare him his own baseless guilt if nothing else.
“On the night Ender returned home, I took a hot bath.” Even that was hard to say. “I took a razor blade, and I ran it up my arms. By the time Ender got back, I was already dead.”
“So Mackenzie’s wish must have been to… but why on earth…”
“I don’t know!” Her voice is uncommonly shrill, her composure shattering with the effort of the confession. “Maybe the same reason I jumped before that. I wanted out. I wanted to go home.”
Dantes leans back against his arms and stares at the ceiling. The silence of the night is a presence in itself: everything that is has frozen to listen, while everything that could be moves all around them without a sound. “Is there a God too? Or just the Devil?” Dantes stirs the suspended moment.
“I don’t believe in either,” Jessica says. “There are just things we can understand and things we can’t. Anything we can’t understand is a Demon to us.”
“But a God would understand us, that’s the difference,” Dantes insists.
“Maybe the Demons do too. Better than we know ourselves.”
“You’re talking about what Mackenzie said on the plane. She was just trying to manipulate you—”
The words seem to be getting fainter, drowned out by the thundering of Jessica’s thoughts. She shouldn’t have told him. As if the wheelchair wasn’t bad enough. He must already think she’s weak, but this—and if the only reason he was trying to help her was because of his guilt? She’d only be a burden, and they’d leave her behind. Or maybe these weren’t even her thoughts. Maybe it was The Beast still inside her, controlling her, tricking her into —
But his hands were on her shoulders now, and the motion is loud enough to be heard over the storm. She looks up just in time to feel the warmth of his breath on her face before he kisses her, and all at once everything else goes silent. She isn’t breathing when he pulls away. She isn’t sure if she remembers how.
“That all happened to somebody else a whole lifetime ago,” Dantes says. “It isn’t who you are now.” The clock is chiming again. Midnight. Another shadow passes under the door. “You’re the only one who gets to decide who you are from here. And the person I’ve seen, the person you’ve shown me—I admire her very much.”
“I have to go,” Jessica breathes at last, all the words tumbling together. Dantes' shock is painful.
“What, now? In the middle of the night? Where are you going?”
But Jessica is already halfway to the door.
“I’ll come with you!” He leaps to his feet, but is frozen in place by the certainty of her stare.
“No. Don’t worry, I’ll still be here in the morning. Go try and sleep and dream of something other than me.”
She isn’t quite sure why she said that, but it doesn’t matter. She promised to meet her mother at midnight, and having Dantes there would be a sure way to prevent her from learning what she needed to know. Looking back over her shoulder at the stunned confusion on his face, she feels a wisp of that old feeling again: Helplessness, power, and the void ready to welcome her leap.
19
The heat is insufferable, compounded by the stench of sulfur forcing its way down Elijah’s throat. He’s sliding down the rock slope in a crouch, his fingers dragging across the blistering rock to slow his descent. Halfway down, he spares a glance back at the top to search for the demon Ender, but there’s nothing besides the desolate black rock.
“Krisha hurry!” The voice is coming from the marble gazebo on the stone bridge, but it isn’t Henry’s voice anymore. The last shreds of humanity have peeled back from it. Elijah can imagine a stone gargoyle possessing such a voice, so deep and cold and harsh. “I don’t have much time!”
Elijah calculates three possible options: to trust Henry, to trust Ender, or to stall. Is there anything left of Henry to trust? Or Ender with his black eyes—what of man remains in him?
“I can’t breathe,” Elijah wails, pausing to rest on a jutting slab of rock. “I’m trying, but I can’t—”
The screech which replies belongs to neither man nor beast. It cut Elijah’s consciousness in two, dividing him between who he was before he heard the terrible sound and the trembling child who exists afterward. It isn’t just the agony carried by the sound, although there is an overwhelming amount of that; it’s the madness that rattles inside Elijah’s skull and shakes him to his core. To think it’s even possible for a living, breathing creature to be capable of making a sound like that, its voice splintering from the strain of its desperation into a thousand musical shards, each roaring and clashing against one another in a frantic dissonance.
Elijah has no idea what’s going on inside Henry’s mind, but in that moment he is certain that no gift is worth the price he paid.
“Coming master!” Elijah splutters, flinging headfirst down the remainder of the treacherous slope. Half-running, half-falling, only to pitch himself forward again so that his momentum is the only thing preventing him toppling onto his face. Elijah hurtles onto the bridge spanning the lake of lava. His legs are shaking so badly that walking is almost impossible, and Elijah allows himself to lean upon the marble railing for a moment before staggering away. A perfect oval of skin remains seared on the railing where he leaned, the oils in it frying from the heat to cough greasy smoke into the air.
“Krisha, I need you!”
For the first time, Elijah likes the sound of his new name. Perhaps the real Elijah is safe somewhere at home, drinking his coffee and sorting through stacks of homework, grunting and sighing over the minor inconveniences of a dreary day. This poor fool crossing a lake of fire toward a beckoning demon? That was Krisha, someone else entirely. The thought buys a few seconds of merciful contentment—just enough to cross the remainder of the bridge and duck inside the scalding marble structure. After everything he’d already seen, the teacher thought he was prepared for anything. He isn’t ready for this.
The round pool that dominates the small structure isn’t empty, but neither is it full. Even lava would be better than this. Sloshing without direction, writhing without propulsion, existing without substance, it stares back at him like a great iridescent eye embedded within the marble. It doesn’t contain a liquid, or a gas, or plasma or any other recognizable form of matter, but rather some crude mockery of reality which taunts the feebleness of Elijah’s sanity. If the universe were to collapse back into the nothingness from which it came, then it might leave such a formless void as this in memory of it.
“Is it alive?” Elijah gasps, disgusted and fascinated by the idea. “It moves like a living—”
“The book, Krisha!
Give it to me!” what’s left of Henry wails. The metal case with the book is near the door, and Henry leans heavily upon the stone rim of the pool. He seems taller and more hunched somehow, his skin looser and paler. Cracks in his pale skin and the tremors are readily explained by the dry heat infused within this place. That voice though—it’s more akin to a tortured animal than man. And those eyes, practically glowing with a black light which seems to cast darkness upon whatever the old man looked at.
Elijah reaches for the case, swearing as the superheated metal devours several layers of skin. He unclasps the case with his foot, the heat still blistering through his shoes, and reaches inside to retrieve the book.
“Faster, faster!” the voice labors. “Open to where I’ve marked the page.”
Elijah complies, opening to a section near the end. The Latin script is meaningless to him, but the demonic visage leering from one of the pages offers a hint at the material the old man seeks. Henry stretches toward the book, and up close Elijah can tell the cracks in his skin run deeper than he first thought. Blood wells to the surface as one whole patch of flesh on Henry’s forearm begins to slide free and droop toward the ground.
Elijah snaps the book shut and takes a step backward. “You’ll soil it,” he says. “Instruct me what must be done.”
“It’s mine!” the deep voice resonates within the chamber, pounding Elijah from all sides. “It was written with my blood, my words burning into the monk’s fevered dreams. You have no right!”
“You’re out of time, Henry.” Elijah takes another step back, holding the massive tome protectively to his chest. “Henry didn’t write it. You do remember Henry, don’t you?”
The old man snarls, blood gushing between his teeth to dribble down his chin. More clumps of skin are sliding down his face like molten cheese from a pizza.
“The seed has grown too much within you,” Elijah says. “Give it to me, and I will close The Beast away from this world. I will free you and give you the book, and anything else you could ever want. It’s why you brought me, remember? I’m your only way out of this.”
