by Jared Stone
With another respectful bow of his head, Father Ini finished his speech, and one last round of clapping commenced. After half a minute or so, the crowd began to dissipate, each person going his or her own way back to classes or dorms, with some lingering behind to take advantage of this opportunity to chat with the new chaplain. Lucian turned to look at Willow, who was staring intently at the dark priest.
“Well, he seems nice,” Lucian stated vaguely. He was anxious to leave as well so that he would not be late to class.
“Nope,” Willow said bluntly. “Something’s weird.”
With this, the girl started squeezing through the remaining onlookers to approach the priest. Lucian called out, “Willow!?” before hurriedly following along behind her.
The two students darted and dodged through several walking and chatting people to make it to the front of the flock. Just as Willow arrived before the priest, the man who had been speaking with him stepped aside, leaving Father Ini open to receive her. The girl stood there, seemingly examining and scrutinizing every detail of the holy man in front of her as Lucian came up to her side.
“Hello there,” Father Ini said in greeting to the pair of students before him, apparently unperturbed by Willow’s critical eye. “You are?”
“Willow,” the girl said shortly. She then motioned toward the boy at her side. “And this is Lucian.”
“It is a great pleasure to meet you both,” Father Ini replied with a gentle smile. His eyes met Lucian’s, and the boy felt the uneasy sensation that the priest was somehow looking deep inside him, almost into his soul. Lucian quickly darted his eyes away and pretended to be distracted by something going on beside him.
“So, Alexandria, huh?” Willow continued, almost accusatively. “That’s quite a distance to come to fill a vacancy on such short notice.”
Father Ini cast his eyes on the girl once again. “I had been looking to make a change for a long time,” he said. “I could not let this opportunity pass when it presented itself.”
“Mhmmm,” Willow said incredulously. “Where did you go to seminary?”
“East of here,” Father Ini responded succinctly.
“And how long have you been in the U.S.?” Willow continued. And where were you on the night of the 14th!? Lucian added in his head as the perfect finale to his friend’s ridiculous line of interrogation.
“For quite a number of years now,” the priest stated, clearly less and less amused as the questions kept coming.
“They said from Egypt, right?” Lucian then asked in an overly curious and friendly manner, hoping to lighten the conversation a bit.
“Yes,” Father Ini said with a nod. “I was born there originally, but I have lived all over the world in the time since. I must admit, it feels like ages since I was last in my home country!”
“That’s so interesting,” Lucian exclaimed. “I don’t think I’ve met an Egyptian priest before; all my priests growing up were Irish. I’d love to talk with you sometime about your past experiences!”
“What, exactly, are you here for?” Willow chimed in again with a crossing of her arms and a skeptical raise of one eyebrow.
Father Ini smiled again. “My, you certainly are a curious one, aren’t you, Willow?” he said in both a kind and condescending manner.
“And very persistent…,” the girl added, as if it was a threat.
“Well, I am afraid I must go for now,” the priest announced suddenly. “There are many matters to which I must attend. I would very much enjoy having you both to my office sometime to continue this conversation, though. My door is always open!”
With this, the priest bowed slightly again, turned around, and walked back toward the chapel. Both Lucian and Willow stood there silently, watching as he left.
“What was that all about?” Lucian finally asked his friend in a scolding manner.
“Something’s up,” whispered Willow. “I can’t put my finger on it; I just have this gut feeling, that’s all. He can’t be trusted.”
“Oh, not again,” mumbled Lucian with exasperation as he pulled out his cell phone to check the time, confirming that he would now, indeed, be late for class.
* * *
Saturday, November 22nd
The rest of the week went by without incident, and Lucian found himself already struggling against complacency. As his life returned to the mundane wandering between his classes and completion of homework assignments, the events of only ten days before started to feel more like a dream than his own real-life experiences. Vanquishing a demon and witnessing the gruesome death of a close friend were incidents that would reside in one’s memories forever, yet they seemed so wholly separate and distant from the life the boy had always led that they could have easily been a dream. Lucian tried to remind himself that he would have to stay vigilant, as the masked man might be around any corner, just waiting to strike. But he also had to admit that he didn’t even know what such a strike might entail, or if the masked man was even still in the area.
Lucian had finished his last class of the week on Thursday afternoon and was thoroughly enjoying his first whole week in recent memory without trauma or the imminent risk of death. Unfortunately for him, Willow had left campus to be at home for the previous couple of days. Apparently, her parents were throwing some kind of big party that she was not allowed to miss, though Lucian didn’t know any more details about it than that. Willow had been particularly reluctant to discuss any of it in depth, preferring instead to focus on how she detested her parents’ substantial wealth and propensity for mingling with high society. Whatever the reason, the result was that Lucian had been all alone without friends for almost three days, and he was greatly looking forward to Willow’s return that night.
It was actually already late into the evening when Lucian shut down his laptop and closed the lid. He had initially intended to read the assigned chapters in his World History textbook to get ahead on homework for the upcoming week, but he had foolishly logged onto social media sites “only for a sec” instead. Three hours later, he had sufficiently guilted himself into returning to the textbook, so he left the world of digital interactions and laid down on his bed with his book in his lap.
No sooner had he flipped open the front cover than he heard a sort of scratching noise on the other side of his door. Lucian froze, his eyes wide as he stared at the doorknob, which now began to twist and turn, as if someone was trying to pick the lock and get inside. Lucian’s heart beat wildly in his chest. What is that!? Is someone there? Is someone trying to kill me? What if it’s the masked man?
With these thoughts racing through his mind, the boy silently slid off of his bed and tiptoed over to the closet. He threw several dirty shirts off of the sword, Kusanagi, which was hidden within and picked it up off the ground. As he drew the razor-sharp blade from its scabbard with a sliiink, the perfectly polished metal glinted in the bright lights overhead. With his weapon now in hand, Lucian quietly hurried back to stand before the door, which was now shaking more violently as some unknown assailant attempted to force his way in to kill the boy. Lucian lifted the sword up in front of himself, preparing to fight to his death, though he realized as he stood there that he truly had no idea how to skillfully use such a thing against a highly trained adversary determined to do him in. Regardless, he braced himself….
With a CRASH, the door burst open. In stumbled the ruthless assassin, one hand firmly fixed to the key in the doorknob, the other holding onto an old suitcase. He wore a navy blue hoodie with a back-pack strapped loosely behind him. Lucian jumped in alarm at the abrupt opening of the door, almost dropping the sword and letting out an unintentional “Ah!” Blake stood in the doorway, dumbfounded.
“… Hey…?” Blake said, clearly perplexed by his terrified, sword-wielding roommate.
“Blake!?” Lucian responded, slowly lowering his weapon to his side.
There was a pause as the two boys stared at each other.
“Dude, what’s with that?” Blake
asked, motioning toward the sword.
“Thought you might be a bad guy, here to kill me,” Lucian responded, blushing in embarrassment.
“Oh,” Blake said with a nod of his head. “I forgot what a pain that doorknob can be!” he added after a moment with a chuckle.
Lucian felt even more foolish after he remembered his chronic struggles with the doorknob himself. “Yeah, but there’s a trick to it. You’ll get used to it.”
“Cool,” Blake said. The interaction between them dropped into an awkward silence once more as the two boys stared at one another.
“How are you feeling?” Lucian then asked, still reeling from his roommate’s unexpected arrival.
“I’m fine,” Blake responded, almost defensively. “Fine. Why?”
Lucian was caught off-guard by Blake’s peculiar reaction. “Well…,” he began, “last time I saw you, you had just had a demon ripped out of you….” Lucian let out a short, nervous laugh.
“Oh, yeah…,” Blake said with a nod. “Yeah, I’m fine now.”
“Oh, well, good…,” Lucian said. The importance of the situation then slowly began to seep into his mind, and he realized the impact this would have on his and Willow’s efforts to combat their adversaries. “So…, you’re back!”
“Yeah,” Blake responded with a big smile, finally pulling in his suitcase and swinging the door shut behind him. “I told my mom that I should come back to campus, even though I won’t take classes til next semester. I mean, I don’t wanna miss out on all the great stuff in college just cuz of that thing with the demon, right??”
“Yeah, I guess not,” responded Lucian. “Well, I’m really happy to have you back. My friend Willow is actually gonna stop by briefly to discuss what we want to do about the guy in the mask. She’ll only be here for a few minutes tonight, just checking in, but we’ll probably get together again tomorrow too. You came back just in time to join us!”
Blake’s face sank. “Oh, actually,” he began, “I was planning on going to this party I heard about tonight. Gonna have a bunch of kegs and stuff. It’ll be awesome.”
“Oh,” Lucian said in confusion. Blake had been so willing and anxious to help him before, and he wondered why the boy had seemingly changed so drastically since.
“Yeah, so, another time then?” Blake offered.
“Yeah, sure…,” Lucian agreed, disheartened.
“Awesome,” exclaimed Blake, throwing his stuff down on his mattress. He unzipped his bag, grabbed some things from the inside, and stuffed them into his pockets. He then walked back over to the door. All the while, Lucian remained planted to his spot at the center of the room with the sword by his side, bewildered by the peculiar behavior of his returned roommate.
“I probably won’t be back til real late,” Blake said, reaching for the doorknob and twisting forcefully to open it. “Don’t wait up!”
Swinging the door open, Blake took a step out, only to immediately collide with the girl standing there. Blake looked down at her, and Willow looked back up at Blake. He eyed her multiple facial piercings and the red streak in her otherwise jet black hair.
“Wow, circus in town?” Blake said with a sneer when he saw the girl’s appearance.
“Excuse me?” Willow said without inflection.
“You look like a freak show,” Blake said cuttingly.
Willow calmly leaned to the side, looking around the tall, dark haired boy standing in her way, and addressed Lucian directly. “Golden Boy, who is this miscreant?”
Lucian was stunned by the appalling conduct of his roommate, and he didn’t know exactly what to say. “That’s Blake…,” he finally stated with hesitation.
Willow stood back up straight and locked eyes with Blake. “Ah yes,” she stated boldly. “The demon.”
Blake’s face dropped. “I’m late,” he said in a growl, roughly nudging the girl to the side to get through and out into the hallway. “You ladies have fun.”
With this, Blake strode down the hallway and down the stairs to the first floor. Willow just stood in the doorway glaring at Lucian, who was still at a loss for words.
“He’s charming,” the girl said sardonically.
* * *
“I just…, I mean…,” Lucian stumbled over what he was trying to say. “He wasn’t like that at all in the hospital.”
“Yeah, well… maybe he’s just gone back to the way he was before the whole mess with the demon,” Willow suggested. “You never met him before this, right? People sometimes behave very differently following a traumatic experience. But that… improvement… soon goes away just as quickly.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Lucian responded, shaking his head. He didn’t want to think that the Blake he had first met was only a temporary personality arising from recent hardship, but he felt that Willow might very well have a point. If it was true, it would make getting through the remainder of the school year much harder for him than he had anticipated. It also worked to effectively crush any hope the boy had of another ally in their fight against unknown evils.
“You were right,” Willow stated suddenly as she looked around the room. “This place does suck.”
Lucian laughed aloud at this. “I told you!” he said back to her. “Your place is SO much better!”
Willow continued to look around the tiny excuse for a living space with both disgust and a hint of pity on her face. It wasn’t with the air of someone who thought she was better than another, but rather like a goodhearted individual appalled by the conditions of the animal cages at the zoo.
“Well, I’m really happy that you’re back,” Lucian added, smiling at the girl. “It’s tough eating my meals alone!”
“Well, you could…, you know…,” Willow casually suggested. “Make friends.”
Lucian laughed again. “You make it sound so easy,” he said, dismissing her jab. He had already started to become accustomed to her offputtingly blunt style of interaction, and he no longer had to pause to rationalize what she said. “Anyway, what’s our plan moving forward? Other than Blake saying that the masked man is in a brick mansion up on a hill somewhere, we don’t really have any other info at this point.”
“Well, we keep our eyes and ears open,” Willow said back resolutely. “Do some research and what not. And I look into this new chaplain. I still have a bad feeling about him.”
“So, we really still don’t have a clue,” Lucian said, frustrated, as he put his arm against his forehead and slumped back to lie on the bed.
“Yeah, pretty much…,” Willow affirmed.
“Ugh,” Lucian grumbled in discontent. “I just wish there was something more we could go on. Nothing has happened since Zagan, and now it seems like Blake won’t even want to help us!”
“Just be patient and open to being led in the right direction,” Willow encouraged, looking down at the exasperated boy from her seat on the bed next to him. “If you’re open to it, the universe will show you the way.”
Lucian rolled his eyes behind his closed eyelids. He normally tried very hard to be tolerant of the girl’s eccentricities, but he currently felt completely lost and helpless, and her mystic mumbo-jumbo wasn’t doing anything to help him in his predicament. He sighed.
“Well, it’s getting pretty late, and I’m completely exhausted! Let’s continue this tomorrow,” Lucian announced, indicating that it was time to draw the night to a close. He truthfully wasn’t tired, but he suddenly found himself inexplicably bothered by the discussion of so many unknowns.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll leave…,” Willow mumbled as she stood up from the bed and grabbed her black bag. “I never planned to stay too long tonight anyway. I’ve still gotta unpack at my place, and I don’t really wanna be here when your jerk of a roommate gets back.”
“Maybe he’s just having a bad night,” Lucian stated hopefully, sitting back up on the bed. He honestly thought the chances of that were pretty slim, but he was trying to remain optimistic.
“Yeah, maybe…,” Willow said doubting
ly as she walked toward the door. “Well, see ya.”
Lucian suddenly had an ache of dread stab him in his stomach, and he blurted out, “I’ll walk you home!” before he could even think of why he had said it.
Willow stared at him in confusion. “Excuse me?” she asked with an inquisitive glare.
Lucian sat for a second, surprising even himself by his sudden outburst. “Ummm… I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “I just had this overwhelming urge to walk you home.”
The girl stood looking at him with one eyebrow raised in perplexed intrigue. “Oooookay…,” she said. “And here I thought I wasn’t your type.” She gave just the slightest smirk at this remark.
Lucian shook his head and chuckled. “I promise you, it’s not that!” he exclaimed lightly. “It’s just… I have this feeling like I should walk you home.”
Willow shrugged. “Alright. Suit yourself,” she said apathetically. “It’s no skin off my back.”
Lucian stood up as well and went to grab his coat from the closet. As he reached in, he glanced down at the pile of clothes he had thrown back over Kusanagi. He experienced a sensation somewhere in the back of his mind that he should take it with him for the walk. Should I? pondered Lucian, debating the practicality of carrying a sword across campus. He recalled how foolish he had already appeared at Blake’s entrance earlier that evening. Would probably look pretty strange…, he finally concluded as he pulled the coat off the hanger and shut the closet door. And you’re just being paranoid again.
“Okay, ready?” he asked Willow jovially as he walked past her and pulled the door open for her.
“My knight in shining armor…,” Willow responded sarcastically as she strode out of the room ahead of him.
* * *
The walk toward Willow’s apartment that night was surprisingly desolate. Although it was Saturday, it was just late enough that everyone had already headed out to party elsewhere and still too early for anyone to have returned to campus. Additionally, the row of houses where Willow lived was set aside from the main section of campus, making it both a quiet and somewhat remote location compared to the centrality of Lucian’s own dorm. As such, the two students were already halfway through their trip and had only passed one other person walking in the opposite direction. Lucian felt relieved that his earlier fears seemed unwarranted, but he remained alert and cautious as they continued on down the dimly lit paths.
