The Affliction

by Wendy E. Marsh

  I stopped dead at the bottom of the enclosed staircase, spreading my arms out wide, and Gabriel nearly plowed me over.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you seeing? Are they coming?” I couldn’t answer. Isaac interrupted before I could gather my thoughts.

  “Don’t ask her that, she can’t know things of that magnitude yet.”

  “Yes, she can,” Gabriel said in my defense. “She already has.”

  I could tell Isaac planned to argue with him, which we didn’t have time for just then.

  “No. No, I know who my dad is.” The looks on their faces told me that was unexpected.

  “You do?” Gabriel asked, impressed, apparently thinking my Sage talents had somehow led me to this conclusion.

  “Yes. Well, no…Sort of…It’s her dad.”

  “Whose dad?” Isaac blurted out. I ignored him.

  “She’s my sister, isn’t she?” I looked imploringly at Gabriel, and he nodded.

  “Oh,” I said, as a heavy weight sunk down inside of me. I started towards the car again and could feel Gabriel behind me. The conversation had gone over Isaac’s head, and he stood rooted to the spot.

  “Wait, who’s your sister?” Isaac called. I opened my door, threw my small duffel bag into the backseat, and then straightened up to look at him.

  “Dahlia.” I spit out.

  Isaac’s face looked as though he had just learned he would have to stay in the house while we burned it down, and I realized just how unfortunate my situation was.

  Gabriel looked at me uncertainly, then suddenly threw his arms around me in a tight hug that I returned out of reflex. “I’m just glad I finally found you,” he said, and then released me to sink down into the passenger seat in shock.

  Gabriel shut my door for me and walked around to the driver’s side of the car. I felt sick, and I wished I hadn’t seen Isaac’s face, so I shut my eyes as Gabriel backed the car around and Isaac prepared to set the house on fire.

  I hadn’t lived in the apartment long, but I loved it. I didn’t just leave my home behind, I walked away from everything I had ever known and moved towards a mysterious future which had pieced itself together in just a couple of days. Silent tears slid down my cheeks but I didn’t wipe them away for fear that Gabriel would recognize the movement, so I just looked out the window at everything I had always taken for granted.

  “Hey. It’s going to be okay.” Gabriel spoke in his rough, yet soft voice. I didn’t answer, and since he knew I cried, I could dab away the tears, but as I lifted my hand, he beat me to it. Gabriel brushed his fingers against my cheek, his gentle touch made my heart work overtime and everything inside me contracted again. “Please don’t be upset,” he said, and then he threw a ridiculous pouty face at me, and it melted my heart.

  “Okay,” I replied, impossible to just feel better all of a sudden, but not able to resist the full power of that endearing expression…And I was internally angry. How dare he look so enticing to me? As though I hadn’t already had enough of a difficult time suppressing the despised, unrelenting feelings I held towards him.

  There I sat, not altogether innocent in regard to my sex life, yet my heart had fluttered erratically at the mere touch of Gabriel’s hand across my cheek, and not whatsoever romantically. Just his fingers ridding my cheek of tears had sent involuntary lightning bolts of sensation crawling across my skin, heat embarrassingly flushing my fair complexion, and I turned my face and thoughts away from him.

  Although thoughts of him stubbornly refused to leave my main frame of thinking, my mind produced images formidable enough to uproot those uncomfortable sentiments. That spiky girl, for instance. Even if Gabriel hadn’t confirmed my suspicions, upon reviewing everything, I would have known without a doubt that she was indeed my sister. There was a definite resemblance in facial features, complexion, and of course the eyes.

  Besides mere similitude, I had felt something when I gazed into her eyes, as she touched me. Then, I had disregarded it as a shock, but as I once more peered out the window of the hatchback, I knew the feeling meant something more, unexplainable as yet to me. And she had said, “Finally, I get to meet you.” No wonder she’d wanted to handle me personally.

  She was younger than me, perhaps seventeen, I hazarded. But her mother was not Angela Lander, and she was apparently a Silencer if I had understood Gabriel correctly. I felt some jealousy in the fact that she had grown up with the knowledge about her talents and The Mystic, and had already mastered her calling.

  She was probably four or more years younger than I, yet she had always been aware of her gift and the society. I, on the other hand, had just discovered this other aspect of the world, being a complete outsider but for the fact that I had inherited talents I did not know how to control or use. More than that, our father had raised her but left me without a thought. Envy washed over me until I recalled the nefarious aura I had felt when I encountered the rebel side.

  Although our father had raised Dahlia in awareness of The Mystic, she was essentially evil, part of the Black Shadow. She used her gifts for malevolent purposes, fought against everything the society had ever worked for, against what her nature had intended for her to become. And, I guessed that the rebels’ effort risked the secrecy and safety of our kind and our father was in league with them. No, I no longer felt envious of my iniquitous half-sister and felt ridiculous for ever having done so.

  Quite some time passed before I started to wonder where Gabriel’s destination lay. The sun fell from the cotton candy sky and beat down its last feeble rays of rose light, declaring itself the victor of the day. We traveled on the narrow highway to Sundown when I spoke for the first time since we left my house behind.

  I asked where exactly Headquarters was, but Gabriel just told me it was back in Oil Creek State Park and could say no more. Apparently, the place didn’t have an address, didn’t appear on any map, and was not in existence to the knowledge of anyone who was not a Mystic or personally shown its whereabouts.

  I just nodded.

  He seemed disturbed at my silence but was not inclined to continue the conversation. Perhaps he brooded over issues of his own. His eyes did look troubled, and it reminded me of the graveness I had observed as I had studied him back at the Inn in Sundown.

  “How old are you?” I asked, not quite sure how to get around to what I wanted to know. He didn’t answer at once, but I did not repeat the question, sure that he had heard me. He had.

  “Twenty-two,” he finally responded. Ah. I had been correct in my judgment, just one year older than myself. I nodded, internally wondering how to proceed, and if I should.

  “You look twenty-two…but…” I hesitated, not wanting to sound rude or insane. “…But, you seem older somehow. There’s a heaviness I see in your eyes.” I looked at him, but he just faced straight ahead without showing any signs that he had either heard or understood me. The continued absence of his response scared me and made me wish I had just kept my mouth shut, but he finally replied to my odd speculations.

  “I know what it is you see in me, and you’ll most likely find it in every one of us. Even on the brightest day, you’ll see the storm clouds lingering in our eyes.” He looked uneasy then, and somewhat pained.

  “Why is that?” I asked, although I partially intuited the answer already, as he sighed.

  “I’m not bitter about it really, but it kinda sucks. We have to try to keep the peace on earth while both the Davos and the Black Shadow work against us, and you don’t realize how impossible that is until you try. Because of our line of work, we see humanity at its worst; encounter such ugliness and carnage unparalleled to anything any regular person has to endure. It starts to build up over time; seeing the violence over and over again. Figuratively speaking, we see through different eyes than outsiders and have an abnormally realistic view on life and this world.

  The problem is, it’s so damn easy to do the wrong thing. You’re conscience butts in sometimes, placing weight on you for sinning, b
ut it’s nothing compared to the strength it takes to do what’s right. That’s why our burden’s so ridiculously heavy.

  “We can’t change the world; we can only contribute to it while evil forces fight against everything we give, and they don’t ever play fair. But there’s comfort in knowing that they have to cheat in order to match up to us, and there alone I know that I’m on the saving side. If the price for helping humanity is this weight, this affliction, then I’ll pay it.”

  As he finished, I witnessed a strong determination in his expression, behind which the shadows, the affliction, always hovered, and I knew that it would not be long before I could find it inside of myself as well. Indeed, a small version of the affliction was already an integral part of my personality and being.

  I also realized why a rebel side existed at all. Gabriel said we were all compelled to use our gifts, but some of us were weak and lacked the strength necessary to carry the burden of the path of justice. The renegades of The Mystic were just those people, afraid of the weight they’d have to shoulder as they worked their talents for good.

  “So how is it that the Black Shadow just formed thirty years ago? Weren’t there always rebels?” I asked.

  “They never taught us about it, but from what I understand, there’ve always been members who couldn’t handle the tradeoffs, but they didn’t rally together like the Black Shadow, and there weren’t ever as many of them at a time. The same evils have always existed, and we’ve been fighting them for centuries, but it seems like more and more of us can’t take the increased pressure of this world.”

  I nodded, sadly understanding what he had said.

  As we spoke, the air around us grew hazy, and I realized I hadn’t even noticed the air had started to get dark outside. The woods were thick around us, the leaves started to look black rather than green, and Gabriel piloted the car around the water-filled potholes.

  We navigated along gravel roads that were more like paths, with no houses at all in sight, and steep banks that dropped off so close to the car that I couldn’t have stepped out of my door safely had we stopped. A sign marked a particularly rugged road, warning us snowmobiles and motor vehicles shared it and I wondered when the last time was that an outsider had even driven there.

  “How long is it going to take us to get there?” I asked him, trying not to sound impatient, as I was just nervous.

  “We’re close, and I’m glad you reminded me that you’ve never been to Headquarters before. We’re not like magic or anything, but we kinda have this understanding of the earth I guess you could say, so we can hide the place without me having to make it invisible, which would be all but impossible. Every chapter’s Headquarters are hidden and outsiders wouldn’t be able to find them. You’re one of us but you have to find it for the first time since you didn’t go through initiation at puberty. It’ll help that you’re with me but you have to use your talents and be open to anything.”

  And with those cryptic instructions, he turned off the road into a narrow fissure in the tree line, leaving me frozen in fear in the passenger seat.

  Chapter 12

  The pine tree labyrinth seemed so serene, peaceful with quiet ancientness, as though if you were to step across the border you would enter a different world altogether. The forest seemed mystical, and I would not have been surprised if elves and dragons and dwarves inhabited that hidden world. Everything was so still and the collecting layers of soggy pine needles absorbed whatever scant sound issued from the wildlife population there.

  Although I would usually avoid placing myself in such sinister settings, I was oddly comfortable as I walked down that ghost lit lane with the Guardian at my side, in search of the mysteriously hidden Headquarters. Our lamplight eyes allowed us to see not only what lay in moonlight but beyond it into the shadows of the trees, better than any human ever could.

  It used to freak Angela out when I was a kid; how I would never bother to turn the lights on. One night she had walked into my room and switched on the My Little Pony bedside lamp to find me sitting on the floor playing with my dolls. I remember how her face had blanched and she looked at me like I was some sort of demon child. I started using the lights after that.

  We walked then, rather than drove, since the path we followed wasn’t wide enough for a car and Gabriel said I would find it easier to use my intuition that way. We had left the shabby hatchback about five minutes after we turned onto the barely visible grassy path in the wilderness. Apparently, walking in was not custom, but in order for me to have the ability to see Headquarters for myself, I would first have to find it on my own.

  “Why can’t you just show it to me? I asked Gabriel.

  “It’s complicated,” he replied evasively; something I learned Gabriel did well.

  “Just keep moving. You’ll know when you’ve found it.”

  Great. My first night as a Mystic and they already required me to pass a sort of test. What would happen if I couldn’t find it? Would they kick me out before I even joined for being a loser? Could they just erase my memory and send me ignorantly back to the outside world? Surely not. I hoped not. There was no going back when you found out about something of that magnitude.

  “How did Cara find this place if she’s not one of us?” I grumbled, becoming a little frustrated that I didn’t discover anything.

  “Oh, she wasn’t brought here. Outsiders can and have lived here, but there wasn’t time with her, especially with the condition she’s in…they had to take her to another facility in Philadelphia. It’s equipped for the circumstances and the elders can safely deal with her. Not only that, but she probably wouldn’t be allowed here anyway. Now that the other side knows so much about her, she could lead them to us.” He paused with a sigh and seemed to continue on reluctantly as he said, “you might not ever see her again since she’ll probably have to be put into protection in the hands of another chapter.”

  I didn’t expect that answer at all, but as the sadness burned inside of me, the truth and seriousness of the situation became overwhelmingly apparent. Although I wanted to be selfish and demand that she stay I knew that it would not be safe for her or the rest of the chapter. Outsiders presented a weak link in the chain if they were exposed, so we had to hide them carefully if they were allowed to live among us.

  Even with this knowledge, I could not stop the stinging pain as I contemplated never seeing Cara again. I never thought there would be a time where she wasn’t a part of my life, and I hated the thought of her leaving without saying goodbye.

  The very likely possibility of losing her pushed me into some grim realizations. I had never been a very good friend to her. I was very selfish and looking back, even briefly, I easily saw that I had always attained what I wanted and she not only let me have it but stayed by my side no matter what it did to her. We had always been competitive with each other but the difference between us was that she was able to let me win and genuinely congratulate me when I did. What kind of person was I? Mean and horrible it seemed.

  What was I going to do without her reliably stable personality, her eternally bright sun, while the clouds inside of me continued to grow thicker and darker? We were so close we should have been sisters, unlike me and my real sister, whom I didn’t even know. Since the time I searched for my identity, Cara had been a major part of me, and then when I had just discovered my true self, she was gone without warning.

  I needed her now, as I always had, and never told or showed her. That was typical of me. I never liked to admit, even to myself, that I needed someone else, afraid that if I did I would find that they didn’t need or want me in return and laugh at my dependency. I guess I had my mom to blame for that but it didn’t change the fact that it was wrong and hurt people.

  I slowed down until I stopped walking altogether and just stood there in the middle of the path, overcome with wretchedness. I always waited until it was too late to tell people I loved them. Michael probably couldn’t hear me when I had spoken it to him, and then he ha
d died shortly after. Now I was never going to hear from or see Cara ever again, and I had never expressed to her what she meant to me.

  “Aubrie?” Gabriel questioned cautiously.

  I was afraid to talk for fear that the tears that threatened to spill out would give themselves away in my voice. After I didn’t answer or look at Gabriel for a minute, he couldn’t wait anymore.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that about your friend. I don’t know for sure what’s going to happen to her…” But his voice died out as I shook my head and finally turned to him.

  “No, you’re right,” I tested my voice, biting down on my lower lip. “That’s what’s going to happen.” That’s all I could manage to get out as my intuition told me that what Gabriel said was one hundred percent correct, so I left him with a desperate look on his face and continued on down the trail, walking even faster than I had been before.

  We walked on for another twenty minutes in silence and I knew that he regretted what he had said to me and tried to figure out a way to fix it, but I was lost in my thoughts again. I knew Cara was gone and I just had to deal with it. That’s what I was good at anyway…finding ways to deal with it.

  The pine grove slowly transitioned, more and more of the trees became Oaks and Cherries and Beeches and I felt an odd change surge over me. Where a hole burned into me with the loss of Cara, another part of me that I had ignored for so long finally felt satiated. There had always been that aspect of myself that consistently felt incomplete, but I had disregarded it as a typical teenage delusion that I was special and unique and meant for greater things.

  Now that I knew the truth and moved towards fulfilling these fantastic things that I truly was made for, that nagging empty hole closed satisfyingly. I started to understand what Gabriel had meant when he said he felt complete when he did his “job.”