by Carl Meadows
Eli invited me in for a brew, and I found Theodore sitting at the small table, surrounded by art supplies raided from the school. Eli says it keeps him calm.
I said hello to Theodore, and he looked up, showing something like… excitement for the first time. I’ve said he’s not very expressive, but he did this little bounce thing with his upper body, like he was someone who desperately wanted to tell a secret but knew he shouldn’t.
Eli obviously noted the change. “I hope everything is well, Theodore.”
Here’s another idiosyncrasy of his personal condition I’ve learned. If you ask Theodore a direct question, he won’t answer it. You have to word everything open ended like Eli did. It’s really fucking hard to do.
“She’s here,” Theodore responded in an emotionless voice. “It starts tonight. Not for her, no. Not for her, but it does start.”
“What thing?” I asked. See, it’s hard.
“I’d like to hear about what’s starting, Theodore,” said Eli.
He’s way better at it. I have to think so hard about turning a question into an open-ended statement that invites further information. Then he did something that made even Eli suck a breath with shock.
Theodore turned to me and looked me dead in the eye. And he doesn’t do that with anyone except Eli. He’ll look to your side, at your feet, at your chest (not in a weird way), or above your head. But Theodore responded to Eli’s statement by looking me right in the eyes and then said this.
“It’s all three. Everything is three. Tonight is the first dreaming. But not you, no, not you. You have to be last.”
He then seemed to just fade away, back to his blank stares and drawing on his art paper. He didn’t offer any more words until I was leaving.
Eli apologised and we had a quiet chat in the kitchen over a brew, but it weirded me out a little, so once the coffee was done, I felt the need to be away.
Just as I was leaving, Theodore held up a drawing he’d done in black ink without looking up.
“For you.”
“Aw, thanks Theodore,” I said with a forced smile. I was still a bit unnerved by his cryptic outburst, but I took the picture, said my goodbyes, and scooted back to Norah’s house where I was crashing.
Freya, I’m a little freaked out.
The drawing is of me, and let me just say, it is absolutely incredible. It looked like a photograph made from black lines. Honestly, the detailed accuracy was mind blowing. Savant doesn’t begin to cover it.
What’s really weird about it, however, is what I’m carrying in the picture. Eli told me that Theodore draws from memory. He doesn’t have emotive or abstract expression like other artists do. He is detail focused and draws still pictures from his perfect recall memory. He doesn’t make anything up. He’s not creative in his art, being more like a photographer that develops his negatives with ink by hand.
I expected to be carrying a gun, or a backpack, or something that I have actually carried at some point.
Instead, in my hand, holding it high, was a flaming torch. And I don’t mean a flashlight that’s on fire. I mean an old-school torch like you see in medieval times, sitting on a sconce on the wall, or like what the Statue of Liberty holds aloft.
Add to that, what the hell is the “first dreaming” and “everything is three?”
Freya, I am freaked out to hell by this. I keep staring at the picture and shivering.
I really wish Nate were here. I haven’t seen him for a week, but just having him around would likely calm me down.
I hope he’s okay.
HOME
“You’re up,” said Nate, gently nudging Alicia from her slumber.
A week of sleeping in the isolated farmhouse was taking its toll on both of them. Nate had more experience and had endured far worse in a long active career, but he was in his fifties now. Sleeping in the cold and taking a shift at night sentry duty were days he had hoped were long behind him.
Alicia had no such experience or training. She was a tough woman, especially considering the harrowing trials of being Bancroft’s captive, but this was a mentally and physically sapping experience. Alicia was learning the hard way that most of a soldier’s time was spent doing mind numbingly boring duties, and not going toe-to-toe with the enemy. Listening to bursts of tedious and inane chatter in the farmhouse all day with the Humvee’s radio was taxing. Hours seemed to stretch on forever, especially when there had been nothing of interest on the radio for a whole week.
Alicia did not think so, anyway. Nate was pleased to see she kept detailed notes of any communication and times they occurred, and she would relay them to him as he was sat in the hide constructed on the hill overlooking Ascension. While Alicia thought she was just writing dreary notes and reciting boring communications, Nate was starting to build a better picture of their structure and key personnel. As he watched, Alicia’s additional audio allowed him to add some context to his observations.
For the moment though, all he wanted was sleep. Alicia nodded all bleary eyed as she rolled off the bed and dragged herself to her feet. It was a little after two in the morning, and Nate shoved the hot, black coffee into her hand as she rose.
Mumbling her thanks, she shuffled out of the bedroom into the next first floor room along the small landing, closing the door behind her. The room went dark as her flashlight disappeared.
There had been no signs of anyone near their little base of operations, which was a good couple of miles from the cultist settlement. Nate would make the journey from here on foot to his hide each day, about a mile and three quarters each way, where he would stay all day observing the settlement. Getting eyes on it overnight would be a boon but staying in the outdoor hide was just too much of a risk. For one, it was just too damn cold of a night. Secondly, the undead were silent predators and he could not take the risk of falling asleep and being pounced on. Their senses were inhuman, and he had no way of knowing if it was just sight and sound they used.
Considering what he had seen on first contact, and in the week since, he could not be sure of anything these days. The disagreement with Erin played on his mind for the whole time, and her wild theory of a dark celestial agency was difficult for him to digest. Admittedly, the dead rising to destroy the living should have changed the boundaries of what he should consider possible, but the thought of some dark force moving pieces in a game of its own twisted making was a little too far for him to accept at the moment.
The hurt on her expression when she thought he and Alicia had united against her was still raw though. They had always been a great team, as frustrating as she was at times. Leaving it as they did left a knot twisting his insides that he just could not seem to pick free.
Nate stripped off his tactical vest and boots, slipping into his thick sleeping bag on his bed in the twin room, before falling back on to the pillow with a grunt. The batteries on the radios were almost done and they’d have to return home tomorrow. A couple of days of comfort and warmth, a resupply, charging the radios and the spare batteries to full, and then it would likely be a return to this spot and start the observation again. He was unsatisfied with the intelligence gleaned so far, and there were still too many spaces that needed colouring in before he considered it acceptable.
With another heavy sigh, he closed his eyes.
The garden was in full bloom, a riot of colour bordering the lush rectangular lawn of vivid green. The rich intensity of the lilac, the gentle sweetness of the mock oranges, delicate tones of jasmine, and the strong headiness of the gardenias, were an explosion of fragrances that flooded Nate’s senses as he breathed them in.
The garden was still and quiet. No buzz of insects or bird calls disturbed the scene, which remained motionless without even a breeze to stir the blooms in their beds, as though he existed within an exquisite painting.
Sitting on the decking’s swinging lawn chair, he knew it was not real. It was only a dream, though a pleasant one, for it had been more than twenty years since he had sat in thi
s spot. It had always been his favourite place in the world, and the only time in a life of frantic motion and violence that he was ever truly at peace. Sitting in his back garden in the summer, beer in hand as he watched her play…
Nate swallowed a hard, dry lump as his throat constricted, his eyes threatening tears as the dark phantoms of memory rose from their slumber to taunt him. Avoiding the shadows of those bleak thoughts, he turned his gaze around the bright garden, looking for Maggie, his ex-wife. His heart froze in his chest as he realised someone was sat beside him on the swinging chair.
Dark hair, dark eyes, and a face that would make Helen of Troy turn green with envy with her glowing skin, Nate’s ability to speak was taken from him as he stared. She was looking out over the yard, a serene smile touching her lips as she drank it in.
“This is a beautiful garden,” she said.
He struggled to find his voice as he stared in wonder.
“Freya?”
She turned, her smile so radiant and pure it almost burned him. The young woman appeared suffused with light, a paragon of such joy and purity, that the sight of her almost unmanned him. She spoke again and it resonated through him like the voice of an angel, melodious and uplifting, as though it was in tune with the harmony of creation.
“Hello, Nate.”
He began to stumble an apology, but she placed a soft hand upon the rough skin of his own and shook her head.
“What you did Nate, what I asked Erin to do, needs no apology. If anything, it should be me asking for forgiveness. I placed such a terrible burden on Erin, and I should never have asked her. With the knowledge I now possess, it scares me to think how close I came to breaking her. If she had pulled the trigger then, we would have lost this war before our first true battle was joined.”
The words confused Nate, but he said nothing, still drinking in the sight of the young woman he had so adored. Erin and Freya had become his surrogate daughters in those early days of the fall. Before any of the others had been liberated from Bancroft’s cruel grasp, the three of them – and Erin’s rodent she called a dog – were all that was left in the world. Keeping them safe had become his purpose.
“What you did was not something to apologise for, Nate,” she said, her dark eyes regarding him with something like pride. “You saved her from a torment she would never have recovered from.”
You saved her.
Those words were like cooling ice to the burning guilt in his heart, and he felt his shallow breath flow easier.
“This feels so… real,” he whispered, marvelling at the cool touch of her hand upon his.
“It is, and it isn’t,” she said with a mischievous smile. “Nate, I need you to hear me now. I mean really hear me, okay?”
He nodded, and Freya centred herself with a calming breath.
“Nate, Erin is right, about all of it.”
He frowned. “All of what?”
“The end of all things.”
“I don’t follow,” he said, confused.
“Nate, humanity is being judged for all its sins. Our dead have been chosen as the harbingers of this punishment and will remain so until our complete destruction unless we can find a way to earn our redemption.”
The veteran digested this, feeling the tangled knots inside him tighten. Erin was right? About all of it?
“It’s… hard for me to grasp,” he admitted. “It’s just so… so big. I’m just a marine.”
Freya laughed then, an exquisite lilting sound that seemed to bring the garden to vibrant life. The aroma intensified, the colours deepened, and a warm, comforting breeze seemed to sweep through the garden and bring peace to him. He should have been confused, and afraid, and doubtful, but instead he knew that Freya was speaking the truth. He knew in the marrow of his bones that this dream was somehow real.
“Nate,” chuckled Freya, shaking her head as if he had just cracked a bad joke. “You are not just a marine. We all have our parts to play, just as I did. Mine was to die, so I could sit here, with you.”
“Seems like a shitty part in the play,” he grumbled. “Why take a young woman like you, with all her life ahead of her?”
“I gave Erin a taste of something she’d never really had. I was a friend that accepted her for who she was, that didn’t want to change anything about her, and expected nothing from her. I’ve come to realise something about Erin since my time here, trapped in this endless day.”
“Realise what?”
“When you expect nothing from Erin, she gives you everything. It’s one of her gifts. You’ve seen it yourself, Nate. If you’re simply there for her, if you ask nothing of her, nor demand anything from her, she gives herself freely. You knew in the deepest part of you that when you, Mark, and Alicia didn’t come home that night, you knew that Erin would come for you. You let her be who she is, and that person is one that refuses to leave a friend in trouble, no matter the risk or cost to herself.”
Nate nodded, the ghost of a smile haunting his lips. “Aye. She’s a mad one.”
Freya laughed again. “Nate, she is fearless, and reckless, and takes maddening risks, but she does it all from a place of love.”
She patted his hand and turned her gaze back to the glory of the garden.
“She’s the very definition of an empath, Nate. When the mood around her is up, she’s on top of the world and a bright flame that draws others in. When those around her are hurting, it cuts her to the deepest depth of her soul. It’s why she fights so hard for light, Nate. It’s why her humour is so ridiculous, why she laughs about situations that don’t usually warrant such whimsical comments.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nate, she feels everything ten times as hard as you and I. Her joy is like an explosion of light in the dark, and her depression is heart-crushing despair. She can’t face the terror of that darkness, so she fights it with every shred of light she can find. It’s the only way she knows how.”
It was such a simple and elegant way to describe Erin, and yet Nate realised just how true it was. There was no middle ground with Erin Locke; she was crying in the dark or laughing in the light.
“She’s special, Nate,” said Freya.
“I know.”
Freya shook her head. “No Nate, I don’t mean just special to us. I mean she’s special, in that she has a part to play far greater than most in humanity’s redemption.”
Nate stilled. “What?”
“Three is a powerful number, Nate, as it always has been through many cultures and beliefs. There are three people that our fate rests upon, a Trinity, and if they pass their test, we will be freed of the dead, and given our chance to rebuild something new. Something better.”
“And Erin is one of these three?”
Freya shook her head. “No Nate, the burden of the Trinity is not hers. The Soul must be an everyday person, so their trial is all the greater. Their greater burden of responsibility requires a grand crucible to endure before humanity has any hope. Erin is already filled with such light, it makes her unsuitable for the greatest test, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t important in her own way.” She sighed. “But our Trinity is broken and divided Nate, scattered far and wide, and we don’t know how long it will be until they are united. We can’t see them, here on this side of the veil. They are too far from us, so we cluster around Erin.”
“So why is she special?”
“If there is anything left of humanity to be saved, our Soul must survive their crucible and our Trinity unite. Until such events occur, the fight continues, and there need to be those who hold the line for them, bright flames that push back at the darkness as a beacon of hope for others. There must be sanctuaries to shelter survivors, there must be those willing to show the powers that have brought this down upon us that we are worth saving. We can’t wait for the Soul to fail or succeed, or we’ll perish for sure. So, we have to continue fighting, and gather around those flaming torches of light and hope while our Trinity endures their crucible.”
/>
“And Erin is such a flame?” he whispered.
Freya simply graced him with a gentle smile of confirmation.
“But she can’t do it on her own, Nate. As I said, everything is always in threes. She’s fearless and emotional, with the heart the size of a mountain, but it makes her vulnerable. She needs you, Nate. You’re her anchor, the strongest link in her chain that prevents her being swept away in the storm of everything she fights against. She is the Flame, but you are her Shield, and she is your redemption.”
“My… redemption?” Nate shivered.
Freya’s expression softened as she turned back to him, aching in its compassion. She knew, he realised with dread. Freya knew.
“You’re her armour, Nate,” she said, her voice as soft as a petal. “Her shining defence against the darkness that will shield her from all that seek to extinguish her light. But in turn, that same light can burn away all the guilt and shadow that you carry from your life of violence and regrets. Nate, she’s already brought some meaning - some purpose - back to a life you thought empty of such hope, but now comes the hardest part of your task. You will always protect her, teach her, shield her, and support her. That’s who you are. But for her cleansing fire to burn away the last of your darkness, she needs one thing from you, and that is the hardest thing to give.”
“And that is?” he asked in a tremulous voice. He already knew what Freya would say.
“The truth.” Freya placed both her soft hands upon his. “Nate, you have to take her home.”
Nate’s hands went to his face so Freya would not see his silent tears. They were rough hands that had brought so much death, so much violence, to a world already overflowing with it. But for all his courage in battle, for the countless enemies of evil intent he had fought and killed, for all the innocent lives his actions had doubtless saved, this was the one truth he was terrified to face.
His greatest failing. His greatest betrayal.
