The Midnight Ground

by Eric Dontigney

  Something black beyond imagining blotted out the stars. It towered over me, even though I had the impression it was sitting. Eyes the color of blood rubies stared down at me and slitted, feline pupils bisected them. It made a noise that pressed me down against the ground with its sheer, undeniable force. That noise seemed to shatter me with its power and I shrank away. That noise was too much, too big, and it was, I realized, familiar. I stared up at the black shape over me and, without knowing why, I raised my hand.

  Something that felt like a battering ram plowed into my hand and knocked it around. At first, I thought it was mauling my hand. Then, I realized, it was trying to rub its head and massive ears against my palm. I pressed my hand hard against the presence’s head. It let out a purr that shook the ground, shook me, and seemed to shake the sky itself.

  “Lil,” I said.

  My voice sounded loud and alien, an unwelcome thing in that place. The presence let out another low purr that merely made the ground, me, and the sky tremble a little. Then, as if to add emphasis, a shocking splash of pink the size of a turkey platter flicked out. It felt like a sheet of huge, wet sandpaper rubbed across my palm. I heaved a sigh of relief and pushed myself to my feet. Dream Lil rose to stand. The black shape loomed over me. If Lil had wanted to, she could have lowered her mouth and bitten my head off.

  Is this what Helena sensed? I asked myself. I shook my head, negating the question. Whatever Helena had sensed, it must have been little more than an echo of the incredible predator that stood over me. I could feel the ancient strength and power that radiated off Dream Lil. If Helena had sensed anything like what I was sensing, she would not have played it so vague or so calm. She would have been worried, if not downright afraid, that a power like that had somehow claimed me.

  “Why are we here, Lil?”

  I expected the enormous cat to answer. Why draw me to a dream space, however grounded in some reality it might be, if not to communicate more directly? It didn’t happen. The giant head lowered and nudged me with what, I imagined, was probably its gentlest motion. I staggered back a step or two. The giant shape moved toward me and then slipped past. It took a few silent steps and then waited. Ruby eyes looked back at me before she took another step or two.

  “Oh,” I said. “You want me to follow you.”

  Another purr rumbled the forest floor. I did try to follow, but it was easy to lose sight of a completely black creature in an ever darkening forest. After a while, Dream Lil settled for me placing my hand on her side and I moved as she did. In the dream, the journey lasted for days, for weeks, in never-ending darkness, in a never-ending forest. Finally, we broke through the edge of the forest. I stared in dumbfounded awe. My gaze tracked up, and up, and up even more.

  There was a statue, if anything so far beyond human ability could be called a statue, which stood thousands of feet tall. I don’t know how wide it was at the base. We must have been some unspeakable distance away from the statue, because it looked proportional. It was completely, perfectly white. Not white like marble, or paper, but white in its true meaning of the absence of any color. That perfect absence of color threw off a glow, a radiance that lit everything for miles.

  I looked at the enormous Dream Lil and could, in the glow of that statue, make out vague features. Even here, in the odd dream space, part of one of her ears was missing. On regular Lil, it looked cute and endearing. On Dream Lil, it looked angry, violent, like the physical reminder of some long ago battle that would never go forgotten. She gave me a piercing look with her ruby eyes. She turned and pushed her head forward a little toward the statue.

  That required no telepathy. Hey jackass, look at the huge statue I dragged you all this way to see. I turned and looked at the statue. It was a sexless, androgynous figure that otherwise looked human. Its hands were lifted in penitent supplication to some unseen master. It was beautiful and fundamentally awful. Its face was absent anything like personality as I understood it. It was consumed, utterly, in worship of whatever gods or monsters it served.

  That emptiness of expression unnerved me. No human expression, no matter how purely devoted to a single emotion, was ever utterly that emotion. Human expressions are tempered by restraint, by self-knowledge, by knowledge of others, by the ten-thousand small things we do to protect ourselves and others. That statue’s face showed none of it. It was open, unfettered, and I knew, to my core, that such openness was wrong.

  I didn’t notice at first, but the pure whiteness of the statue began to shift, to darken into gray and then into red. The open expression of supplication grew less open and then it grew angry. Hands raised in supplication became fists raised in unabashed fury. The white light gave way to red light and then all light vanished. I could feel the presence of the statue. Even at so great a distance, it was palpable and appalling. I wanted to flee the overwhelming anger and betrayal that rolled off that statue like an ocean tide. I could guess what had happened. Its master, whoever or whatever that master might have been, had abandoned the statue.

  We stood in the shadow of that statue’s emotions for what seemed to me like ten thousand years. I started to turn away, but Dream Lil put herself in my way.

  “Lil, I’ve seen enough. My god, this is beyond awful. Let’s go.”

  Dream Lil made a noise. It was a soft, low sound of warning that nonetheless almost knocked me from my feet.

  “Alright, alright, I’ll stay,” I said, as if I had a real choice.

  I turned and waited another eternity. I heard a sound like static crackling. Red-black lightning shot skyward from the statue’s fists. The lightning lit the statue’s face enough to see its pure hatred. Its mouth was open in a silent scream. It was, I assumed, trying to take its vengeance on whatever had gone away. The red-black lighting continued to lance into the night sky and I could smell ozone. I realized that, because of the distance, the lighting looked as proportional as the statue had. Up close, though, that lightning had to be monstrous, and each bolt hundreds of feet wide.

  The statue’s show of power went on so long that I lost track of even the most subjective notions of time. When the statue finished its—well, temper tantrum, I suppose—I lowered my eyes. Why was Lil so insistent I see this? A shaft of golden white light slammed down into the statue’s face from somewhere in the heavens. The light passed straight through the titanic form. Cracks that must have been as deep as canyons, glowing with golden light, materialized over every inch of the statue. A final pulse of golden white light descended from on high and the statue exploded.

  Most of the pieces flew off at trajectories that would take them thousands of miles, if not farther, but one piece landed comparatively close. It was glowing red and, as I watched, the stone liquefied and seeped into the ground. Then all was darkness.

  Chapter 19

  Helena stared at me over the lid of her coffee. “Sounds like a fall from grace myth.”

  I suppressed an annoyed noise. “Yes, the symbolism was not lost on me. The fall from grace followed by divine retribution is common enough that even I couldn’t miss it. What I don’t understand is the relevance.”

  “Did you ask Lil?”

  I could see the twinkle in Helena’s eyes as she posed the question. Helena might have full access to feline telepathy, but I didn’t. I knew, because I’d tried and tried harder at it than almost anything I’d done in twenty years. I met with abject failure. Lil emoted cheerful laziness during my efforts. She napped, stretched, and then napped some more.

  “I did,” I said. “Her answer went something like, ‘merew,’ unless I’m misremembering.”

  “Cats do have a knack for concision.”

  “Cute. Maybe you’d care to give it a try.”

  “Oh,” said Helena. “I think I’ll be giving that a pass. I’m very confident that I don’t want to brush up against the mind of her other self, even accidentally. It was pure dumb luck she didn’t liquefy my brain that first time.”

  “Terrific. So, one more piece of information I
have no idea what to do with. Still, you should have seen it. That statue was just so damn big. It’s probably a metaphor for something, but I’ll be damned if I know what.”

  Helena swirled her coffee absently. “Is it always like this for you? Your life, I mean. Getting hurt, protecting cursed teens, trying to puzzle out meaning from dreams and glimpses into alternate planes of reality.”

  I leaned back in the uncomfortable chair. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, hospital cafeteria chairs were always the least ergonomic things. A vertebra popped into place with an audible crack. Helena snickered at me.

  I shook my head. “Not really. Maybe the getting hurt part, a little. Most days, things are pretty straightforward. I try to steer clear of obviously lethal situations.”

  “Except this time, for some reason.”

  “Yeah, except this time, for some reason.”

  “Why are you doing this, Adrian? You’ve never been squarely in the white hat camp.”

  “I’m a black hat, then?” I asked, but I smiled.

  “You know that isn’t what I mean,” she chided. “Like you said, though, you usually steer clear of things like this.”

  “Oh hell, I’ve got no idea. I spend half my time thinking I should bolt. Just pack up and leave.”

  “But?”

  There it was, the question that had nagged at me since the get-go. I’m not heartless or a sadist. I don’t observe the suffering of others with ease, my knife-wielding friend notwithstanding. That might have explained why I stayed in the first place, and why I had acted with such rash abandon in Abby’s hospital room. The costs weren’t clear then and I reacted. I wasn’t an idealist, though, nor driven by any particular moral code to intervene.

  In my experience, most of the people who got slapped with the label of evil weren’t particularly evil. Nor, for that matter, did they commit many actions that were objectively evil. I’d seen more evil carried out in the group homes I’d worked at for a while than I ever had in the dens of those practicing black magic. That wasn’t to say there wasn’t real, objective, scary evil in the world. I’d seen that too. I’d seen it in that graveyard and I watched it wrap an inky hand around Marcy’s throat. Sometimes, you had to fight, because there was no other practical alternative.

  That wasn’t true in Abby’s case. The practical alternative was obvious. Walk away. Whatever was going down, and whatever was making it happen, had no specific quarrel with me. If I left it to finish doing whatever it was doing, it would leave me be. That was the smart move. I wasn’t a crusader. I had no agenda, beyond getting by as best I could. Yet, I stayed.

  “Maybe I’m just stupid,” I said.

  “Ha! You’re a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe, unconsciously, I’m looking for some kind of redemption.”

  “Redemption? For what?”

  I gave her a look. “Take your pick. You hear the stories, right?”

  “About you?”

  I nodded.

  “Sure,” she said. “I assume most of it is bull or exaggerated.”

  “Some of it, without question, but there’s plenty of truth drifting around too. I could probably use some redemption for what happened in Tijuana.”

  A cloud swept over Helena’s face. Things had gone bad in Mexico. She’d lost friends. It was the kind of bad that a person never really gets clear of, no matter what. I’d cut out early, when I saw which way the wind was blowing. I’d told everyone to do the same, but they didn’t listen.

  “From what I heard from—” she paused, “from the survivors, you made the right decision. You told them to get out.”

  “I didn’t try very hard. I damn sure knew that the whole thing was going sideways and that it was going to be a bloodbath. I got out and didn’t look back.”

  “So, you should have what? Tried harder? Stayed yourself?”

  “Maybe. If I’d stayed, it might have gone differently.”

  “Or you might be dead. Is this some kind of survivor’s guilt?”

  “No. I don’t think so, anyways. You asked a question, and I’m trying to puzzle out an answer. The truth is that I don’t know why I’m sticking around or even if I’ll keep sticking around. Right now, I’m leaning strongly toward the stupid theory.”

  “Maybe some long-dormant hero gene is finally expressing itself.”

  “Add that to the list of things never to wager money on,” I said and then switched gears. “You get a chance to talk to Paul about Abby’s parents?”

  Helena took a sip of coffee and nodded. “I did. I don’t know if it’s going to help you very much, though.”

  “Can’t possibly hurt.”

  “Well, they met in California. Randall went out there to go to college on a tennis scholarship. He met Mary when he was a junior and she was sophomore. He brought her home to meet the family that Christmas. It was a whirlwind romance.”

  “Whirlwind romance?”

  Helena grinned. “Paul’s phrase, but I like it.”

  “Ah. Go on.”

  “I had to read between the lines a little, but I think Paul thought Mary might have been pregnant that Christmas. She and Randall were already talking about marriage, so it made a kind of sense.”

  I quirked an eyebrow. “Was she pregnant?”

  “No. She was just young, eager, and certain. You know how it goes. At that age, it’s all romance and love conquers all. Seems like they were making it work, though. After college they spent a couple years working in California before they decided to move here. To hear Paul tell it, Mary loved this place. She gave voice lessons and Randall opened up a small accounting business. I guess everything around here is small by comparison.”

  “You should check out Connor’s,” I said.

  “Connor’s? What’s that?”

  “Local version of a big box store. Big as a damn warehouse. It’s not relevant.”

  “Ah. The rest you know. They had Abby about a year after they got back. Then the accident.”

  It didn’t track. “Was there trouble at home? Domestic violence or, I don’t know, something?”

  “Not according to Paul. He wasn’t evasive at all, so I’m inclined to believe him.”

  “What about her family? Did Paul say anything about them?”

  Helena frowned. “No. She didn’t have any family. Both her parents were long dead by the time the wedding rolled around. No siblings or none that she talked about.”

  “Something isn’t adding up here. That thing didn’t pick Abby at random. It sure as hell didn’t do whatever it did to Mary’s spirit for kicks. They have to intersect somewhere.”

  I shuffled the information in my head, reordering it and looking for some new angle. Evil that potent was never a casual affair. It’d be like a person singling out a lone ant and spending months systematically torturing it. If it was all clustered together, it might be random, but not when it was spread out over years. That suggested planning and purpose. If Mary didn’t intersect with that evil while she was living in town, maybe it happened before she and Randall moved. Maybe it even happened before she and Randall met. That felt promising in my gut.

  “Maybe it happened back in California.”

  “What?”

  “The intersection between Mary and whatever is putting the bad juju on Abby.”

  “It’s plausible.”

  “Did Paul say why they moved back here? Did something happen in California?”

  Helena shook her head. “No. It wasn’t a rush move. They planned for months before they came here. Paul did a lot of the legwork, finding them an affordable place to live and an office space for Randall. You do realize what that means, right?”

  “What?”

  “If Mary had some kind of contact with ye old evil monster, Randall probably didn’t know about it.”

  “Not really surprising. Would you announce something like that?”

  “Yes,” said Helena.

  “Okay, I know that you, you personally
, would, but I mean basically normal people.”

  “I am normal.”

  I stared at her in shock. She had been vehement. She glowered at me for a good five seconds.

  “Say you’re sorry, Adrian,” she demanded.

  “Um, okay. I’m sorry.”

  “With sugar on top.”

  “What?”

  “Say you’re sorry with sugar on top.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry with sugar on top.”

  She gave me a slow, disappointed shake of her head. “How do you survive in the world being such an easy mark?”

  I groaned. “You haven’t had enough of that yet? Still punishing me for sins past?”

  “Oh, honey pie, I will never be done punishing you for sins past. You should get real comfy in that hot seat.”

  “Awesome.”

  “Yes,” she said in self-satisfaction, “it is awesome. So very, very awesome for me.”

  “Not for me.”

  “It wouldn’t be fun if it was awesome for you. How do you not understand this yet?”

  “I refer you back to my stupid theory,” I said.

  “Yes, maybe you were onto something with that. Okay, enough fun, what next?”

  “Now, I make a call to someone in California. See if he can dig up some more information about Mary.”

  “A friend of yours?”

  I thought about it for absolutely no time at all. “No. Not even a little bit of a friend. He owes me a couple favors, though. Even if he would like to forget that I and those favors exist.”

  “How mysterious. Did you sleep with his wife?”

  “What? No. Why would you even ask that?”

  “I decided I wasn’t really done having fun yet,” said Helena, lifting her coffee in mock salute.

  “He’s a cop. Had a few run-ins with some less than run-of-the-mill problems. I helped him clear them up.”

  “In your usual charming and discreet ways?”

  I nodded, a little put out. “Unfortunately, not every problem has a quiet solution. There might have been a little property damage,” I said, before adding very softly, “to a city block.”