Chapter Seventeen: Cleanse the Evil
DANIEL stood over the bathroom sink, struggling with his frustration. He should have seen this coming, anticipated the likely outcome of trying to move things too quickly, but his excitement had gotten the better of him. He scrubbed his hands angrily, frustrated that he couldn’t decide who he was angrier with, himself or Nikki. He wanted to blame her for leading him on -- with no small justification! -- but he was also aware that he hadn’t exactly stopped to listen; he had been so ...caught up... in the moment, that the second he thought he’d seen an invitation he hadn’t hesitated. He’d gone straight across the room and taken her in his arms, pulling her close, liking the way she’d felt. He paused, tightening his hands on the edge of the sink as thoughts of Nikki’s hips pushing back against him threatened to knock him back off the branch.
Down boy, he thought ruefully, that isn’t helping.
He splashed cold water on his face, then stared back at his reflection, watching stray water droplets run down the mirror. He smirked as he reflected that he needed a cold shower, that after two minutes with Nikki, a couple little splashes of cool water weren’t going to do it. He hoped she was as bothered as he was.
It would serve her right, he thought, wondering what she was going to do once he left, then quickly abandoning the line of thought at the titillating mental images that arose.
Grow up, Daniel, he thought, you need to chill out and get a little perspective. This is a minor set back; a delay. It’s too soon to get worked up. And if you don’t get a grip, you’re not going to be able to think straight.
Still, he felt a mixture of jubilation and frustration, jubilation that she clearly still had feelings for him; frustration for obvious reasons. But even his jubilation couldn’t completely put to rest his conversation with Ryan. What did she want? Was it really as simple as her wanting to start over? Too many years of contemplation and bad experiences had taught him that wanting something too badly made self-serving justifications far too easy to accept. Similarly, the more self-serving an explanation was, the harder it was for him to let it go.
He knew that Nikki was still sitting on the bed, doubtless listening to him running the water and muttering encouragement to his reflection. He quickly replayed their brief conversation, their first civil interaction since she’d left. It had been a strange, tense exchange, riddled with inexplicable undercurrents. Daniel suspected he would find some puzzling evasions when he began analyzing the conversation later. The realization left him feeling unsettled and anxious.
He hesitated, feeling some of his immediate frustration drain away. He realized he didn’t actually want to leave -- that he wanted to spend more time with her, if for no other reason that to study her, to see if just being in her presence could still fill him with the same sense of contentment and, well, rightness. She hadn’t kicked him out, after all -- he was the one on the verge of storming out...again. He took a shaky breath, releasing it slowly.
I’ve already left one conversation on an angry note. I shouldn’t do it with this one as well. Maybe we can still hang out a little more this evening, maybe watch a movie or something.
He snorted in disgust.
Netflix and Chill, Daniel...really? That’s going to be your play?
He shook his head as he laughed at himself, brushing a stray droplet off his eyebrow before calling out, “Hey Nikki...I just want to say that I’m sorry. That I...that I understand if you want to take things a little slowly, take stock of things and see where we’re at. I totally get it.”
He hesitated, waiting to see if he was going to get a response before continuing. He felt his heart begin to beat faster as he heard the bed in the other room creak, heard the shuff of her bare feet on the carpet as she walked to the bathroom door. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something white, a flicker of light gleaming in the dressing area between the bathroom and the entry hallway. Surprised, he turned to face her...
...and came face to face with an impossibility; a mind bending pearlescent ball of light, suspended by lambent, nacreous filaments completely filling the doorway. He grunted in surprise, then stood frozen, eyes wide, trying to trace the filaments as the light pulsated. Its light contained hints of disturbing movement and other shapes. He inhaled sharply, his eyes following the ball as it descended toward the middle of the doorway, held in place by the filaments surrounding it, reminding him of a massive spider, sinking within its web. Its light began to brighten, filling the small bathroom with blinding, pulsating white and silver light; he wanted to back away, close his eyes, crawl away while protecting his head with his arms -- anything to escape. He could barely think, couldn’t move, could only stare in mixed wonder and surprise as the ball of light began straining against its web, pulling toward him.
He tried to blink, the light leaving white and black sparks dancing across his vision. The bright afterimages burned into his eyes were colored light trails, streaks of blue and green and red; he heard a hissing, ringing in his ears, the sound humming in time with the pulsing colors dancing across his vision. Distantly, Daniel was aware that water was still running in the sink, the sounds of running water filling the room, blending with the sounds of the sparks. He watched, eyes wide, paralyzed as a single tendril extended from the web behind the ball, stretching toward his forehead. He desperately wanted to duck away.
He fought unwilling muscles, trying to will himself into motion as the tendril touched him, the contact feeling strangely cool. The light seemed to brighten as a strange electrical current began running through his body, reminding him of the dream. His he felt the tendril begin to twist on his skin. He began to see patterns and shapes in the light, the sounds becoming comprehensible, like a radio finally coming into tune . Involuntarily, his eyes were drawn into the center of the ball of light, seeing colors and shapes that he hadn’t been able to perceive before. He briefly wondered if the light was blinding him, if he was watching his retinas as they shriveled into bits of decaying tissue embedded in the jelly of his eye.
He tried to draw his eyes away, to pull back against the filament touching the sensitive spot on his forehead, but every movement seemed to bring his eyes back to the center of the light, each movement refocusing his eyes more deeply into the center. The bright sparks of color resolved into shapes, the shapes resolving into larger patterns, the sound around him beginning to reverberate in time with the patterns his eyes were seeing. He felt himself being drawn further into the shapes and patterns which filled his vision, his skin vibrating.
He seemed to see a heavy stone door through the shifting blizzard of lights filling his vision, a door in some dark place, marked with a strange triangular sigil drawn in soot. It was fashioned of some dark grey, almost black basaltic stone, dull, black and unforgiving. He knew it was important, feeling a something akin to terror at the prospect of the door opening. The door shuddered, slipping open a crack. He groaned involuntarily in surprise, stepping backward in shock. His foot caught on an irregularity in the floor, causing him to stumble.
His throat feeling raw, Daniel sat up in a field of sere grass. The smell of burning filled his nose, along with a disturbing sweet smell that he identified immediately as death; corpses bloating under the sun, unburied and decomposing. His pulse was already racing, but it accelerated further. The scenery around him blurred, the world seeming to streak by.
He stumbled, turning, wondering where he was. As he completed his circle, his eyes fell on the Ritz, perched in elegant luxury on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. His breath caught when he saw that it had been burned by a terrible conflagration, the roof collapsed into a pile of hollowed out, blackened infrastructure. It reminded Daniel of the remains of a man he’d seen, after he’d burned to death, all bones and charred flesh. He remembered staring at the corpse, trying to identify the man’s organs within the charred ruin of his ribcage. He hesitantly approached the hotel, walking over the brown grass that once covered the gentle hills of a golf
course, weeds overtaking the carefully manicured lawn. He stepped onto the cracked stone pathway that led around the seaward side of the hotel, toward the back patio. The smell of burning grew stronger, strong enough to leave an uncomfortable itch in the back of his throat and lungs. As he rounded the back of the hotel, he was drawn to the fire pits in the back courtyard, seeing a faint hint of smoke still rising from them. He remember spending many afternoons with Nikki, evenings when they could sneak away together. He remembered staring into the flames, Nikki leaning against him for warmth, listening to the waves shattering themselves against the rocks. He hesitantly crossed the brickwork, something gleaming in the nearest fire pit. He stood on top toes, peering over the brick edge...then immediately looked away as he saw the rounded top of a crushed skull mixed in with other charred bones, accompanied by dark stains on the brick coping.
Whatever fire had burned the luxury hotel had long since burned itself out, but the smell of burning and death was very strong in the air. He frowned as he saw divots in some of the stonework, divots he immediately recognized: gunfire. He closed his eyes briefly, feeling sorrow and pity well up; he had hoped never to see such evidence of violence again, defiling a place he had once loved. In the distance, he saw a column of oily black smoke rising into the sky; tires most likely -- a fire intended to be smoky to attract attention. As he focused on the column, superimposing its likely origin over his mental map of the area, his senses blurred, a sensation of movement causing him to stumble once more.
He was standing on a deserted stretch of Highway 1, some miles south of the Ritz. The black column of smoke was more distant -- somewhere to the north. He saw of a sign standing in the road, a heavy steel pole driven through the asphalt into the gravel and earth beneath. On either side of the sign, stretching to the edges of the road and beyond, he saw concrete k-rail barriers topped with razor wire. South of the roadblock, ruined, burned out vehicles partially blocked the road, most of them pushed haphazardly to the shoulder.
His stomach clenched as he saw more evidence of rifle fire in the starred, cracked windshields. He looked back at the sign in the road, seeing an improvised steel t-bar; hanging down the center was a black banner which flapped in the charnel house wind, depicting a bone-white spider web bracketed above and below with swords facing in opposite directions. As the banner rippled intermittently in the wind, he realized there was a darker sigil underneath, the black markings somehow darker in relief against the black velvety banner; a black rose. The top of the t-bar was lined with blackened skulls, though some of them were monstrously distorted -- too human to be animal, too grotesque to be human. He shuddered violently, wondering what could have happened here, what he was seeing.
He moved north, passing the Ritz (though he avoided looking at it), moving into the downtown area, to the junction of the 1 and the 92 freeway which headed east over the mountains, joining Half Moon Bay with the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area. All around him, he saw familiar buildings and landmarks, subtly altered by decay and destruction -- most commonly by fire. He saw evidence of fighting everywhere he looked, hints that some terrible battle had raged along these streets. A brief bubble of lucidity surfaced amidst the hallucinatory terrain, as he wondered what had happened here, and whether it had affected the family home. He was filled with worry, dread filling him in the erie silence. He realized he could hear the ocean half a mile away -- not even bird calls broke the unnatural stillness.
He arrived at the intersection near the family home and moved along it, seeing many of the homes lining the street burned, some still smoldering. Those that hadn’t burned had symbols spray painted on the door, bright red X’s with numbers in the arms of the X.
DB indicates bodies, he recalled, frequently seeing that marking the lower quadrant of the X.
82nd Airborne?, he wondered, horror and confusion slowing his feet as he began cataloging the markings he was seeing, Why is the 82nd doing rescue operations in California?
He shook his head, unable to find a working theory that didn’t have catastrophic implications. He was disturbed at the implications of the markings coupled with the silence of the neighborhood, illuminated by wan sunlight offering pale, washed out light with little warmth. It had never been this silent; even when the power failed, it had never been this silent; there had always been an almost instinctively heard under-hum of traffic on the 1, of children playing in the streets, distant jets from the airport on the other side of the mountains. As he walked, there was only silence; the crunch of his footsteps on the pavement, the faint skirling of the wind raising the hairs on the back of his neck...nothing else.
it’s the silence of the grave, he thought, suppressing a shudder. He wondered how many of the empty, silent houses still contained bodies, decaying just out of sight, perhaps collapsed in corners, empty decaying eye sockets fixed on him as he walked.
He shuddered again, then forced the thought away, forcing himself to focus on the street, checking for ambushes, distracting himself with the minutiae of tactical movement.
He reached the end of the block, finding the family home still standing. His breath became labored when he saw a disturbing pile of char in the middle of the front lawn. The tree that graced the front yard was reduced to a charred skeleton. His panic rose at the jumble of human bones mixed in with the blackened ash, his gorge rising as he noticed the gleaming white amidst the char of the tree. A diminutive figure had been nailed to it, hands above its (her) head, palms facing outward. His eyes fell to the charred corpse’s feet, noting another spike had ben driven through its (her) feet. Scorch marks on the heavy spikes suggested the figure had been fastened to the tree before it had burned. He shook his head in denial, feeling his chest constrict until it seemed impossible that his heart could still find room to beat; around the figure’s neck was a simple steel chain with a gold ring and a small cross. His eyes filled with tears as he recognized the ring -- his father’s wedding ring; Ramona had taken to wearing it on a chain around her neck after Connor, his father, had died. He stood beneath the remains, refusing to process the implications, even as grief and horror welled up.
How could this have happened?
He had no sense of time, had no idea how long he’d been standing over the ash pit when he was jolted out of his terrible, horrified stupor. He watched as a form unfolded itself from the shadows by the side gate. He took an involuntary step backward, his heart skipping a beat as the shadowy silhouette stepped into the wan sunlight; Audrey. He moved forward, relieved joy filling him as he realized that not all was lost -- that not everything he loved had been destroyed.
“Audrey,” he called, beginning to raise his arms, intending to enfold her into an embrace, but something stopped him, made his breath come up short.
“Audrey...?”
Her eyes had turned from the familiar cinnamon to nearly pure silver, her expression savage and unnatural. He tried to back away, but was rooted to the spot, her black hair whipping around her shoulder in an unfelt breeze. Even her voice sounded...strained...rageful...insane.
“Brother,” she intoned, “the Dark Lady has been looking for us.”
He frowned at the implied capitalization of the name, “The Dark Lady? Aud, what...”
She smiled bitterly at him, increasing his discomfiture as her pretty oval-shaped face twisted with hatred, sneering lines appearing around her mouth. He tried to shrink away as she cupped his face with her hands. Her touch was unnaturally cold, burning his skin, feeling as though an icicle was being driven through his head as an icy current traveled between her hands. She leaned closer, and for one horrified moment, he was convinced that she (her corpse) was going to kiss him. His struggles were futile, the cold traveling between her hands enervating, robbing him of will as she leaned in until her silver eyes almost filled his vision. If he could have found his voice, Daniel would have been screaming in pain and horror.
He saw flecks of light moving in her eyes, the silver pupils throwing back the pale heat
less sunlight. His eyes were drawn to a white sparkle deep in her irises, “This is the price of failure,” she hissed, her words somehow encompassing all he’d seen, all that surrounded him in this empty, ruined place. “This is the price of failure,” she repeated, as he realized that the thing he saw in front of him might once have been his sister, but was now little more than a vessel for...something horrible. The pain intensified as the white flecks grew in his vision, throwing radiating sparkles into the rest of her silver iris, a nacreous spiderweb of lines. The white fleck grew until it turned into an orb of blinding white light which filled his vision, colors around him turning white, white and silver.
“Cleanse the evil, brother, or face the price of failure.”
He realized the orb had retreated back into the open doorway of the bathroom, one of the lambent tendrils still spanned the air between his forehead and the glowing white orb. He jerked back, feeling a fibrous pain in his head, as though the tendril had penetrated his skull and was now hooked into his brain. He inhaled to yell in horror as the tendril grew taut, the tearing pain inside his skull intensifying.
He yelled once, his voice full of horror, then lost consciousness.