...fairytales often end violently...

...fairytales often end violently...

Sunday 26 June 2016

So Many Secrets ~ Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Shadows glided ahead and Natasha followed, gravel crunching as she turned into a roadside approach dipping down into a field of fruit trees. She slipped out of the car, blossom scent stalking the air and Shadows flaring, illuminating a road and driveway about a half-mile away. Rob and Jessalyn’s; the Shadows showed her their house, a bungalow of glowing windows spilling warmth, and a word, all over the ground:

FRIENDS FRIENDS FRIENDS FRIENDS

A happy somersault rolled inside, yet—“Windows?” She peered at the Shadow. “How am I supposed to sneak there without being seen?”

A cry called out of the vision and Dítě! A baby! seized her breath. But then a second Shadow rolled forward, an emerald fog with edges murky, olive colored. Toxic. The word permeated and with it the Shadow reformed, a skull and crossbones pulsing within the silver willows in the ditch, their leaves shining like knives in the starlight.

She stared at the skull, heart hammering. “But there’s a dítě. A baby.”

The skull and crossbones shifted color, blood red.

Yet the cries became louder.

Pain. She could feel it. And fear, so serrated she could hear the baby’s pulse, wracked and thundering. “I can’t leave it there,” she whispered, and turned her back on the skull and crossbones, said

I am coming

having no clue if the little thing could possibly hear her. Or even understand her if it did. Still

I am coming

she repeated, and ran, bursting through the skull and crossbones that had grown, trying to block her. Its scarlet Shadows clung to her as she sprinted, the ditch deep enough and overgrowth high enough to keep her hidden lest any traffic pass by.

Not that it would.

When she’d turned down this road, a yellow sign had read Dead End, and she’d looked away from the Shadow pulsing alongside it—the same scarlet skull and crossbones that now raced alongside her, whispering Jakob’s words: “Isolated. Vulnerable”. The warning rode the breeze as she ran, the silver willows’ blades scratching her pant legs, and the grade of ditch steepening as it lifted up onto another approach where—

Black.

She rocked back. Black. It was as if ink had spilled…everywhere. She stared but her gaze drowned in nothingness as she floated upon a night that had somehow swallowed itself over and over, becoming darker and darker until it was…“A pit.” She blinked. Then again. Then a third time, trying to coax some sort of gradient out of the landscape, the normal grays and dusks that would denote shapes and give depth perception.

Nothing.

The black was everywhere, was everything, and a Shadow drifted past, a wispy word that said BLINDED

A creeping certainty prickled over her shoulders; ‘Blind’ would have meant one thing. ‘Blinded’, though…? “Wh-who is here?” she called. “Who has done this?”

BLINDED was gulped up by the black as though the ink itself answered. A shudder slipped up her spine.

Anger chased it back down. Long ago, she’d asked her Baba: “Can I stop my Shadows?”

Ja.” Baba nodded. “They are yours to do with what you wish, my Natasha. Like this.” She’d feathered a hand over Natasha’s eyes, tenderly fluttering lids shut. “Do this to your internal eyes, Beloved. Shadows cannot thread a needle in candlelight.”

Thus she had learned ‘Don’t show’. Still—“What about other people’s Shadows, Baba? Can I stop those too?”

Ne!” Baba clapped her hands, sharp. “Those are not your gifts to play with, Natasha! Why, would you tear the wings off a butterfly? Rip the tongue from someone who sings?”

Ne. No. Never. Hurting someone…the thought had made her curdle. It still did.

Her Grandmother gentled. “It is a sin, my Beloved, to stifle the gifts our Lord gives to another: whether it is their talents, their friendships, their loves…all these things, they are sacred, Natasha.”

Sacred? She did not define her Shadows as such. Could certainly not define her ill-fated attempt at love as such, and yet….Now she was faced with someone who had quite clearly—and deliberately— extinguished her ability just as easily as two fingers would snuff out a candle. “Sin!” she whispered, her Baba’s word, and said like her too: ‘Seen’. Only she was allowed to call out ‘Don’t show’. Only she had dominion over this (dubious as she viewed it, genetic as Jakob described it) ‘gift’. She smacked her hands together, formed a cup and “Show!” she barked.

Shadows flickered, a mere guess of color within all the black. “Ne,” she breathed harshly. “You are stronger than that. I am stronger than that.”

A watery sensation replied from her sinuses, an encroaching nosebleed warning that she was edging up to her border. Beyond it.

Ne,” she growled again, and pressed on, hands cupped protectively around the weak pool of swamp-water color in her palm. “I’ve been blinded” she said. “Show the way.”

A glint of lilac, her favorite color, her Shadow’s endless quest to please her, speared—albeit lamely—to the right. She glanced, oriented, and “Northeast,” she breathed. “Okay.”

It was like running into an abyss, and she balked at the shifting slope under her feet, feeling it but unable to see it. “Please show,” she gasped, but her Shadows remained mere anemic strands of color, too weak to decipher. “Help me,” she begged.

A frail hue of scarlet spun on her left, its rhythm of movement reminding her of an emergency vehicle’s strobe light. Red words jumped in the ditch alongside it, transparent, yet readable.

STAY WITH THE NIGHT CRAWLER

She rocked backward, halting again. Owen Brophy? With his fake, sweetheart’s smile and those sea-eyes that seemed to see everything? Another burst of anger propelled her faster. The Night Crawler’s damn phony smile—he’d had dimples, for goodness sake.

Sexy dimples. So out of place in that rough looking face.

She scowled, shoved his image away. “He’s a liar. False friend. And he thinks I’m a hooker. Stupidni man. I’m to follow him?”

The Shadows became a smidge brighter. STAY WITH THE NIGHT CRAWLER

Night Crawler. Knight Crawler. “Follow him?” she panted. “Or…chase him?” Had Owen Brophy somehow doused her Shadows, her sight? Had that been why he’d seemed so attuned to her in the grocery store earlier? Did he know she was psychic?

Was he psychic too?

She forged ahead, the velvet chill of blackness devouring her, and when another approach rose up she stumbled, fingertips dashing out to kiss gravel, to push herself upright again. “Show,” she rasped, and Shadows fizzled, a mere mirage, yet still illuminating… “The driveway!” She exhaled, relief wracking her into shakes as she peered, hopelessly, around. Where, in this ink pool, was the Night Crawler? “I will find you,” she sneered, and sprinted.

A Shadow ruptured the darkness, so luminous her nose burst at last, a torrent of blood dripping off her chin. The skull. The crossbones. Don’t show! she cried, but then a second cry, the cry, ripped the rest of the blackness wide open and Rob and Jessalyn’s house was before her, mere meters away. She raced toward the shrieks, the words Dítě, and Baby flaring everywhere in Shadows now back with full strength. A baby. Her belly pitched yet she rushed, panning glances to the bungalow’s myriad windows. Where were Rob and Jessalyn? Could they not hear the cries? Could they not hear her? Her breath whistled and gasped, so loud it sounded as if she shrieked too, yet when she came within a hand span of the porch—

Music.

A beat, muted yet audible, rocked the house’s windowed east side. “Show!” she whispered, and Shadows arced: Rob at his drafting table. Jessalyn at an easel. Music playing so they could not hear…her gaze swept back to the porch, and—“Oh my God!” She jammed a fist in her mouth. Dítě. A baby. Not human but…a kitten, so teensy its ears were still flattened to its head. It flopped and yowled for one little paw—“Oh my God!” she repeated. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God, omigod…” A silver nail was driven through its tiny foot, tacked along with a note to the porch. Natasha’s mouth flooded, a taste stark and metallic, and the kitten writhed, its mews protracted into long, anguished shrieks. Her hands flapped helplessly, an echo of the kitten as it flipped this way and that before collapsing, weak and spent. Yet as she drew near it renewed its battle, kicking and mewling in agony.

“Shh, shh, shh!” She searched the porch. Tools were spilled everywhere, and a shiny red toolbox was upended on its side. A nail gun—the weapon!—lay near her right knee and she kicked it, sent it clattering.

Pliers lay behind it. Pliers! She snatched them up and “Hush, hush, hush” she told the kitten, laying a shaking hand on its back.

It hissed, swiping with claws still too underdeveloped to even break skin. That it could be so helpless yet fight so hard loosened tears and she choked “Who did this? How could anyone stand doing this?”

Shadows erupted. The skull. The crossbones.

“I know that part!” she said fiercely. “Now show me who did it! It’s the past. Show!”

Nothing. The Shadows shrank into the dim illumination cast by the porch light while the kitten screeched. “Okay, baby! Okay!” She tried grasping the nail with the pliers but her hand shook, missed the mark. “Please!” she begged but had no idea who or what she was entreating. She tried grasping again. Again. Still again, and…latched! But—her gut lurched and Oh my God. I can’t do this. The thought of pulling, of yanking…. I can’t do this. I

A Shadow surged—PULL!—in her face and as her belly roiled, she jerked, full strength.

The nail squealed in protest but popped out, blood spouting with it. The kitten shrieked, a sound unholy, horrifying, and her stomach jacked. Whirling, she retched, acid and bile spraying all over a tub of sunny marigolds almost laughably incongruous with all the chaos on the porch.

At her knees the kitten mewed frantically, trying to scamper away yet also lick the blood from its ruined paw. “Shh, baby! Shh!” Her heart stitched as it tried to escape, failing for its foot was wrecked and little legs were too worn out and weak. “Come,” she mumbled, mouth foul with stomach acid and rancid potato chips. Swallowing back another lurch of vomit, she scooped a hand beneath the kitten’s heaving little belly, scrambling down the steps and out of the porch light.

The kitten fought her, its frenzied little heart drumming out of control. “Shh, shh, shh!” She wrestled out of her sweatshirt, wrapped the cat snugly inside, fingers clamped as tightly on its bleeding wound as she dared. Now what? She glanced up at the house. Music still pulsed inside and annoyance she was unable to help fired within. How luxurious it must be to be as oblivious as sweet Blue Eyes and Heart Face. Yet…she blew a wayward loop of hair from her face. How could she expect them to know what she knew? In fact, thank God they didn’t know what she knew: that someone had lurked up onto their step and tortured a baby. Her belly heaved again and she shrunk against the lattice at the base of their porch, let the night air stroke cold relief on her face. Who did this? The Shadows said stay with Owen Brophy, but had the Night Crawler really hammered this poor baby to the floor? “Show!” she rasped. Her Shadows knew the past, dammit! “Show me what happened.”

A scene flared but then fizzled, extinguished before she could grasp anything solid, doused by the same pit-blind darkness from before. Comprehension—and alarm—whistled through her. Whoever did this…they were not merely capable of blinding her to the present. They could—and had—also erased the past. Which could only mean… “Someone knows that my Shadows show history. Someone knows me.”

So…Owen Brophy? How? He was a stranger. But if he was also psychic…

The kitten cried, a thready mew, and she peeked down into her balled-up sweatshirt.

Its little face, matted with blood, was both frantic and plaintive.

Her heart contracted and she rose, legs spongy from excess adrenaline. “We need to run,” she whispered, trembling as her gaze cast back down the driveway and beyond, out to where she’d be alone in that darkened ditch with a psychic, a strong psychic able to blind her again.

STAY WITH THE NIGHT CRAWLER

“Do you mean keep him in sight?” She barely recognized her voice for how reedy it was. “How do I do that when I don’t know where he is?”

The kitten mewed and “Hush, baby,” she whispered, lips grazing its fuzzy little head. “Let’s just…just run.”

A Shadow burst, blocking her with an image of the immediate past: her, sweating, shaking and yanking that awful nail out of the kitten—“Dost!” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t show! Enough.”

The Shadow persisted, sharper and “Oh! Oh.” The note! The slip of paper nailed along with the kitten’s paw…she scampered back up the steps, over the bloodstains. The odor of vomit stung her nose, yet she reached for the note—

A sweep of lights—are those headlights?—were as stark as a scream and she dove, kitten mewling as she cowered behind a hedge at the foot of the porch and peeked through leafy foliage, and not daring to breath.

—Shh, kitty. Please, shh—

The kitten cried fitfully as Owen Brophy climbed from a slick sports car, sea-eyes just as narrow as they’d been when her Shadows had shown him earlier, holding the… “Nail gun,” she breathed, and her belly twisted again. She took in his expression: all ice. No sweetheart’s dimpled smile anywhere near his rough face. Light-headed, she froze as he moved up onto the porch. He muttered “What the fuck?” then banged on the door. Natasha exhaled, the racket of his pounding absorbing this small hiss of sound, and when he yelled “Rob? Robert! Get out here!” she ran, cursing herself for not grabbing the note when she’d snatched up the kitten, yet its words were now locked in her Shadows, a grim proclamation that said:

The little Princess should suffer