Consequences (6 page)

“I agree.” Flashing into my mind, the
expression on Ann’s face as I pulled out her most guarded secrets;
I broke her heart to the symphony of V’s laughter.

“Why do you do that?” He says as he studies
the nervous movement of my hand.

“Do what?”

“Rub those scars; like that … you act like
they still cause you pain.”

“Hmmm? Yeah, I guess they do cause pain, of a
sort.”

“Pain … of a sort? Maybe something sparked
for you, brought on by my opinion that stealing memories are
physically harmful?”

Even though Michael doesn’t have the
paranormal talents that I have … he can read people as well as any
psychic.

“Yes; something like that.” Looking over at
Lune, I don’t want to relive all that happened … not yet at least,
so I don't answer with anymore clarity.

When the shock to my central nervous system
finally reaches my brain, I know exactly what Ellie is going to say
from the intensity of her touch. “You promised him the truth,
Christopher.”

Through gritted teeth I answer her as quietly
as possible, “All right!”

Looking back at Michael, I can see he is
confused, not only by my pitiful responses, but by my behavior.
While I am organizing my thoughts, and noticing that Michael has
drained his beer, I go to the kitchen to grab him another one. From
the kitchen, I start my story.

Beginning where we left off, seems like the
best place to start, “I mentioned James, right?” He nods as I hand
him a fresh bottle of ale. “While James was infecting my mind with
his manipulative emotions, Ellie soothed my thoughts by just being
herself. Our relationship was pretty limited physically, because of
the separation of the ethereal divide, but we still managed to fall
in love … it was like being hit by a truck that no one else could
see. Thanks to Ellie, I even learned how to block James, for the
most part. When I realized that James wanted to destroy Ellie … he
wanted to feed her to V, I pushed Ellie away thinking that would
help. No, wait, that’s not quite true … I was ashamed that I
couldn’t physically help her, so I pulled away, intentionally
hurting her … because I felt inadequate. Not knowing what else to
do, I went to Vegas to talk to Ann Morris, an acquaintance of
James’s when he was still alive. I was prepared to be highjacked or
at least conned into helping James in some way … but what I found
was a good friend, who wanted to help Ellie and me, any way she
could. Ann was being abused by James and V, and had been for a very
long time … apparently those of us with these talents, attract
entities from the mist. Unfortunately for Ann, she had only met
dark ethereal creatures in her past.

"She wasn't entirely prepared for the
existence of Ellie. Ann told me about her friend and confidant,
William Blackbird … I think he helped her hold onto sanity, much
the same way she did for me. He knew she needed to believe that
there was good to counter all the evil that she had seen. He
explained that these creatures were only as powerful as we make
them, like a fire is only as strong as the oxygen it breathes. If
she hadn't found that philosophy, and taken the leap of faith to
believe in it … she would have died, and she couldn't have saved me
from myself.”

“So, Ann is talented like you … in what
way?”

“She can project her voice into your mind.
James’s powerful mob-like family used her to manipulate marks and
cheat at high-stakes tables … waste of talent if you ask me. She
can also see and hear the ethereal creatures without them having to
initiate contact.” Ann has broken away from James's family, and
started a psychic-medium business, where she can use her talents to
console people instead of manipulating them … but I don’t think
Michael needs to know that.

“So you can’t see or hear the creatures?”

“At first, no; but I’ve become more sensitive
to the change in the air. I know when one is around, and of course
I can sense their minds … and in their minds I can hear their
voices. Ellie made herself solid for me, or maybe better put, she
crossed the veil for me. She was only able to do it for a short
amount of time … and then she was gone. I have only knowingly met
two other ethereal creatures, V and James, but they couldn't make
themselves solid. They had to rely on influencing people with
thoughts alone. Unfortunately, most people don’t know how to, or
that they even need to, guard themselves from that kind of outside
psychological influence.”

Michael nods his head in response, “Most
people wouldn’t know how to protect their minds, even if they
understood what those creatures were doing. So, you went to see
this Ann, and what did you find? ”

“I found someone beaten to a pulp,
emotionally and physically. James had killed her parents when she
was sixteen, and V had taken a cruel pleasure in absorbing and
denying her happiness whenever possible. That’s why she named him
V, short for the Void, because that’s what he leaves behind, when
he’s done feeding.

“In my short time with her, Ann taught me
that some creatures, the monsters, live to absorb the chaos they
create … the more you fear them, the more they will gorge
themselves on your panic. The more control you give to them, the
more power they actually have. After a lifetime of being
terrorized, Ann’s body only knew how to run on the muscle memory of
constant dread. They used her like vampire bats use cattle …
feeding whenever they wanted, and making new wounds every time. For
good reason, she became paranoid to the point of mental
breakdown."

“Living through all that, she should be
flat-out insane … not just paranoid. Christopher, this is a mad
world you’re describing … it’s almost impossible to believe that
it’s actually around us, all the time.” I can see that Michael
understands: Ann is a soldier in the middle of a war, not some nut
case that can’t be trusted.

“Try being part of it. I think those of us
that are exposed to their world have to be slightly cracked to
start with, but by the time they are done with us … there’s nothing
left that remotely resembles sanity. Over the years, after her
parents' death, with no other family, William helped Ann in the
only way he knew how … education. As a member of the Southern
Paiute tribe, and believing in the old stories about spirit guides
and evil souls, he researched everything she told him; he treated
her like a victim instead of a freak, and gave her fear validation
… by being a grounding influence, he kept her sane.” Silently I add
… just like what you have done for me, and I thank you, Michael. My
heart aches for my friend, who still lives in Nevada. At least Ann
has William watching her back; I am grateful for that small
blessing.

“How did James kill her parents?” I can hear
Michael's built-in detective, voicing curiosity about what James
had done.

“He forced something he called ‘confusion’
into their minds, making her father drive into a concrete barrier
at sixty miles an hour.” Michael’s mind is telling me that my
matter-of-fact tone isn’t sitting well with him. Maybe now, he’s
starting to understand that my line to rational thought has to, for
the sake of survival, withdraw almost completely from emotions.

Continuing my story in monotone, hoping to
keep my despair buried inside, I have to try and explain my last
day with Ellie, so that Michael might understand my downward spiral
when I returned to Vegas for a second time. “When I returned to
Colorado, after my visit with Ann, I was informed by James that
Ellie would be a better prize than me. If I allowed James to take
her to V, he would leave me alone. I, of course, knew better … if I
let them take Ellie, they would kill her then come back for me. So
I brokered a deal with James: If he left Ann and Ellie alone, I
would go with him voluntarily, and I wouldn’t sacrifice him to V as
a failure.

"I broke in ways I’ll never be able to
explain, while I waited for Ellie to come back to me. You have to
remember, I had already pushed her away once, so that I could visit
Ann and find out more about James. Waiting for her to return so
that I could rip her heart out again, in order to save her from V,
just about killed me. Don’t get me wrong, Ellie can take care of
herself, and by that point she had already shown James that he was
no match for her … but V; he would destroy her in the most painful
ways possible. The weight of hurting her, so that she wouldn’t walk
into her own destruction, brought about a certain death to my soul
that will never heal.

“Nothing was as intense though, as the
constant paranoia that V might find out about Ellie, before I could
warn her about him. By the time she found me, I was dying … eaten
away, from the inside out. I didn’t know how much of a double-edged
sword freewill could be … the choices I made, gutted me. The most
surprising part was finding the strength to follow through with the
promise I made to myself … the conviction to push her away forever.
It came from a place I didn’t know I had. Death didn’t scare me
anymore, but life without Ellie terrified me. You'd think I would
have cursed the miracle that allowed us to find each other, just to
leave us hanging, destined to lose one another. I wished for Ellie
… the chance to love and be loved without remorse, even if it was a
mistake … there were never any regrets; and somewhere in that
realization, I became stronger.

"When she finally returned, she performed a
miracle of her own, so that she could be with me … she made a deal
with the powers that be: twenty-four hours, just twenty-four hours
to hold me … to love me. When she left that last time, she took a
strand of me with her, a life line reminding me of who I used to
be; who I wanted to be. After those precious hours were gone, I
thought I would unravel without her, but when James came, I knew it
was time to deal with the consequences of my choices, my promises …
so I returned to Vegas, and right into V's waiting arms. I returned
as a condemned man; but they weren't going to have all of me …
because Ellie took my soul with her.”

“Ellie left.” It was phrased as a statement,
not as a question. Michael seems to instinctively know that probing
into that wound will break my fragile, illusion of control.

“So what happened in Vegas?” Without a sound,
I thank him for changing the subject.

“Lune and I arrived with James in tow; he led
us to his old penthouse apartment on the strip. Apparently he had
purchased the space for three million dollars, and it had sat
vacant since his death. He had already set up a remote withdrawal
plan, out of his Swiss bank accounts, to pay for the upkeep …
including a maid service that came once a month. He was buried with
no ceremony whatsoever, and as long as the apartment was being
cared for, no one asked any questions. The apartment, like James,
just simply slipped into non-existence. I followed him into a
lifestyle that I had never dreamed possible for someone like me.
All of his clothes, his living space, false identities, everything
… if I dreamt it, I could have it. And it all came with an
allowance that would provide anything I wanted; whenever I wanted …
it was mine, just as long as I allowed V to use me.”

“Okay, I have two questions before you
continue … what exactly did V want from you, and where did all the
money come from?” I have to smile because Michael’s mind is full of
questions, but he only asks two.

“On the way to Vegas, James finally, and for
the most part, honestly, told me why he had been hunting me. V is
very old, approximately 550 years old, and he was part of a
particularly scary sect of Aztec priests. In his human lifetime, he
was responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Psychotic with a
taste for terror, thanks to his talents for inflicting pain and
feeding on hope, he became a sort of vampire. When we finally met,
I pulled memories of him bathing in blood. In any case, James
explained to me that V was looking to resurrect his cult; he needed
for us to torture people so that he could feed. He saw James as the
one to prepare the sacrifice, by imposing terror, and I was to
perform the surgery, extracting secret truths about fears … then
all V had to do was make sure those fears would come true. James
neglected to tell V that I could pull memories out of the threads
of truth, and he swore me to secrecy: I was to never tell or give
any sign that I could read ethereal creatures in any way. I
understood eventually that James had done that to protect me, and
since James would never do anything without harvesting something
for himself, he did it, hoping I would protect him, too. That was
the real reason he gave me free reign with his assets.

"James made his money as a hit man for his
mob family. He took side jobs, and hid the money, and his actions,
from those in control, mainly his boss. When he died, he had sunk
all the money that he had earned from the family into real estate,
like his penthouse apartment, and all of his other secreted
earnings went into Swiss bank accounts. Between both, he was worth
about seventeen million when he died. Hoping to give me incentive
to keep him safe from V, and give the appearance of cooperating
with his master, he gave me access to his Swiss accounts. Working
without names, just in numbers, no one was the wiser when I became
approximately twelve million dollars richer, overnight. I just had
to stay away from any of the assets tied to his family … ignoring
that particular warning, I stupidly used the penthouse.”

“James was a hit man? Did he use his special
talents to commit murder?”

“Yeah, that’s what made him so valuable. No
evidence, just a relatively mentally sound person doing things like
throwing themselves off of buildings, or having the sudden urge to
drive out into the desert and never return. I say relatively sound
because he couldn't force someone to take their own life if they
didn't want to … he would infect their brain with hallucinations,
making them act like habitual PCP users. Ultimately, he made
rational thought impossible for even the sanest person.”