Page 83 of Stalked By Shadows

I turned my back on it then, no longer afraid or even caring if there was a creature. He couldn’t help me and so had no power over me anymore.

When I turned the tent was gone. In its place was the dark looming shapes of tombs, St. Louis Number One. I frowned seeing a shimmer in the distance, heard voices. A child appeared before me. Small, undefined, and black-eyed, vaguely familiar. From Micah’s garden perhaps? But hadn’t that been a dream? A trickle of fear inched through my stomach and it smiled. Fire seemed to burn beneath its skin digging channels of orange magma through its veins. The thing from the desert, not whatever Micah’s monster from the garden is. I scowled.

“Worthless,” I told it again. More dreams to play on my fears. At least now I knew it was my monster and not Micah’s.

It held out a hand, offering me something that glowed.

“What is it?” I demanded.

Your choice.The words whispered on the wind around me. The child’s lips did not move.

I snarled at it. “Choice of what? Will it bring Micah back to me?”

Micah,the wind called his name a dozen times fading into the distance and I wanted to scream.Choose.

I reached for it, not caring in that moment if it was a trap or a way to drag me off to some other place. It was like the glowing object in a video game, something I knew I needed, though didn’t know why. I took it, feeling something solid beneath my fingers but unable to see it.

Touching the child set me on fire. There was no other way to describe the feeling. Burning from within, like my insides were liquefying and pooling in my core, but unable to escape the shell of my body. I gasped at the pain, the intensity beyond anything I’d ever experienced in a dream before. Was it real?

I fought for breath, choking back the fire and trying to catch air. Flashes of a million things rolled through my brain as if I’d been there and they were my memories. An older woman as a child looking at another woman in period clothing. Her lifetime flashed before me. Multiple marriages, children born and lost, family ties severed with injustice, rage, and pettiness. She had been a bitter thing in the end. Stirring up discord for the few moments of power it made her feel. I had never met her, but knew her every motive. Couldn’t recall her name, but could retell her life if someone asked. The trails of shadowy ooze stained the memories of her life, making some areas too dark to see, and even eating away at the edges of her psyche.

The vision shifted away from the woman and to Micah standing on a path in the woods staring at something as undefined as this child before me. My breath caught as I waited for something to happen or to feel what he did. Only Micah’s eyes were blank in that moment, nothing more than a doll staring lifeless into the void. The memory didn’t continue, though I tried to mentally grasp at it to keep him in my thoughts.

Again the vision changed, this time to a ceremony in the darkness in which two people nearly died over greed and a girl went missing. These two were tainted by the slime of shadowy darkness as well, parts of their lives captured in the waves of memory much like bugs in amber. Suspended in motion, beautiful, yet lifeless, and powerless. They were another battery added to the charge of energy in a city full of restlessothersuncontrolled by the simplicity of humanity.

Power arched outward, emanating from the city like some sort of nuclear reactor. It was a constant pool of movement, life, energy, and memories to fuel something I couldn’t quite understand. The thing before me used it to survive, that much I knew. In fact, most of the unexplained in the city used that well of endlessly swirled static charge to exist. Somehow, I was now plugged into them, viewing the other side while still not really part of it. The power seeped from the child before me, leaving burned trails in the ground beneath its feet and ropes of color, like a giant spider web, spanned outward, fading into the distance, feeding on life from things I couldn’t see.

The most terrifying part of the child-thing, was the sparkling cord of energy that bound it to me. The second I saw it, I began to tug and try to rip it free, only it wasn’t a physical thing I could touch. The more I struggled the hotter I burned. The fire scorched so hot through my mind I thought I’d die. Each vision like a brand, etching the memories into my brain though they weren’t mine. A thousand lifetimes, a million scenarios. It was too much, the weight endless and suffocating. I sank to my knees under the pressure, unable to let go of the child even if I wanted to.

Worthless?That wind voice asked.

“If all you can give me is fear, then yes,” I said, not caring if it killed me. “Worthless. Memories are worthless. Ghosts of the past. Nothing but memories. Useless. Give me back Micah. Without him my life is meaningless.” I was being overly dramatic, but it didn’t seem to matter in that moment because the child was confused by the intensity of my need for Micah, and angry that I defied it. Fear it understood, even anger, but not my defiance or the desire to hold Micah in my arms and protect him.

The child snarled, and the weight of something physical transferred between us, from whatever their non-corporeal hand was to mine, an item.

You owe me,it said, andI will collect.Then it vanished, leaving me kneeling, not in the desert or even Micah’s yard, but in the cemetery, something dark in my grasp.

The fire vanished so abruptly that I sucked in too much air and choked, coughing and gasping for breath through lungs burning with the weight of too much air. I tried to focus on whatever it was in my hand, the weight of it feeling like lead. My palms smoldered from the fire, skin blackened and charred. I thought it should hurt more, but it only mildly ached. The thing looked like some sort of ring. Not a wedding ring or anything so mundane, no this thing was a snarled mass of multiple metals, gnarled and discolored rocks, and negative pulses of energy. Instinct alone kept me from casting the nasty thing into the darkness to be done with it.

The world around me swirled and moved like a wet, acrylic painting instead of reality. The edges of reality smearing as I blinked, almost like my vision was covered in water. My breathing calmed enough that I could sort of focus on the rolling waves of the landscape. I was pretty sure I was in the cemetery. Real or a dream? I wasn’t sure of either in that moment.

A distant sound of voices forced me to struggle to get to my feet. I closed my fist around the distorted ring-like thing. The child had given it to me for a reason. I had to hope it was a chance to get Micah back. I stalked forward in the shifting wet landscape, feeling like my limbs were stuck in sludge. There were glimmers of things, shapes that moved around me, almost like people, only they were smeared shadows, and odd, stunted movement, as though they were on another plane than I was. I couldn’t touch them, even when I reached in their direction. It was like watching a movie soaked in water, colors and life leaking through scene to scene, but not really meshing.

I followed the sound of voices, feeling like my body weighed a thousand pounds. The trek slow and painful. But I found the open grave, and in this place, it was truly open. Not covered or even lined with police tape. It was a doorway, gaping into darkness much like the LaLaurie house had appeared at night, a lifeless, soul-sucking void. The edges of it scorched and even scored, like something with claws had grabbed on to the edge and tried to keep itself from being dragged inside, only to fail in the end as the gouges vanished into the darkness.

Near the grave stood two figures, more defined than the shadows and almost completely solid. I blinked a few times wondering if what I was seeing was real, and my heart lurched at one of them.

Micah!

“Fuck!” I cried, though my voice seemed lost in the wind and swirl. They must have heard me because they turned, Micah and a very tired looking Sarah. I tried to run, only again wading through the distance dragged my pace to a crawl like walking through a tanker spill of molasses. Was this a dream? Because if it was, it was the best and worst ever.

When I finally reached Micah, I took his mouth with mine, kissing him fiercely and feeling my heart race with joy. He returned my kiss, whispered things to me that didn’t make sense, not words, but mixed sounds. He felt real, warm, alive, and solid beneath my touch. I wanted to wrap myself around him, like that would somehow save him. I pulled away to look at him and Sarah, and while they looked like themselves, real, whole, and physical rather than shadows, the edges of Sarah’s form seemed to be fading.

Micah said something. I saw his lips move, heard scattered bits of sound, only I couldn’t make out any words. He held Sarah’s hand with one of his and touched my face with the other, trying to tell me something, though what I didn’t know. The odd world distorted everything, including the sound and the movement of his lips.

“I can’t understand you,” I told him. Was it only me who was lost in miscommunication?

Micah frowned and glanced at Sarah. They didn’t speak to each other. But he stroked my face and looked sad. No. I didn’t like that look directed at me. Sad acceptance, like we were all lost now.