Forgotten Fears (21 page)

Their discussion was broken by the sound of Captain Henshaw’s voice drifting through the aircraft over the public address system.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Please be advised that we will shortly be entering a small patch of bad weather, and you may experience some turbulence.”

The frightened crew shared worried glances, and it was Cindy who spoke next.

“We have no choice. We can argue about it later, but right now, it’s worth a try. We’re with you, Sylvia. Whatever it takes.”

V

Ten minutes later, they were in the front galley, the curtain separating them from the passengers, and, more importantly, the man in 6A. Sylvia paced and wrung her hands, as Cindy and the others looked on, wondering what was about to happen.

Outside the aircraft, the soft white spread of clouds had started to morph into an ugly slate grey, and the smooth ride had started to shudder and jolt, only a little for the time being but with the promise of more to come.

“What do we do?” Cindy asked, trying to ignore the waves of nausea that surged through her.

“I need to see him, and he needs to see me,” Sylvia replied. “I need for you to pray with me, even if you don’t believe.” She looked at Carol as she said it, but all the fight had gone out of her, and she looked back blankly and nodded.

“Okay, let’s go.”

Sylvia walked through the curtain, leading the crew to the front of the plane.

“Okay,” she said to the others as the moved out of sight behind the divider curtain. “You all sit here. Hold hands if you want, but you don’t have to. All I need to you to do is pray.”

“How? What do I do?” Carol asked.

“Just ask for his help,” Sylvia replied, rolling her eyes towards the heavens. “And ask that we be led to salvation.”

Cindy took her friends hands in hers, the two women locking eyes. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“No, not really,” Sylvia said, almost managing a smile. “But I have to try. Stay here and join them. Pray for me, and I’ll do what I can out there.”

“You seem so unafraid.”

“I believe my God will save us,” Sylvia replied. “That’s all I need.” Before Cindy could say anything else, Sylvia pushed through the curtain and took up a position near the door of the plane, the crucifix removed from her neck and gripped in her hand. The man in 6A sensed her immediately, and cast his black gaze upon her, grimacing at the sight of the crucifix.

Sylvia locked eyes with him and moved her lips silently. Only she heard whatever prayers she was saying. The man with the black eyes squirmed and as Cindy watched, a light sweat began to form on his brow.

The rest of the passengers were oblivious, and may as well not have been on board because all that mattered was Sylvia and the man in seat 6A.

Cindy wasn’t religious, not really, but she glanced at David and Carol, and they were both sitting in their jump seats, holding hands and concentrating with their eyes closed. The aircraft lurched, and a murmur of concerned comment and laughter drifted from the passengers, who were otherwise silent. Rain now barraged the porthole glass windows, and there was another stomach-churning lurch, which brought the ‘fasten seatbelt’ lights flashing to life.

The passengers responded as one, doing as they were told as another shudder rolled through the aircraft.

Sylvia and the black-eyed man were oblivious, they were locked eye to eye, will to will. Sylvia clutching the crucifix as she continued her silent prayers, the black-eyed man squirming and glaring.

As Cindy watched, Sylvia’s hair began to change, the rich black colour starting to fade to grey. The plane vaulted, and for a split second, Cindy was sure this was it, and they were about to crash, but somehow the wings reaffirmed their grip on the air, and the aircraft righted itself. Now, the initial isolated comments of concern were a general murmur of worry as passengers glanced out of the windows as they entered the storm.

The black-eyed man screwed up his features, and as Cindy watched, a single crimson tear rolled down his cheek. Sylvia’s hair was now almost completely white, and she looked to have aged impossibly as if the last few minutes had taken years from her life.

The aircraft creaked, and the rain continued to tap and probe for a way in. Cindy could hear Carol sobbing softly, but couldn’t take her eyes away from the battle raging in front of her.

The black-eyed man groaned, the sound perfectly crisp in the stillness of the air, and then, almost immediately, something happened. The atmosphere which had been so heavy and electrically charged, changed and the man glared at Cindy with a look which contained so much rage, so much fury that she drew breath. She knew that sleep would be something that would be a rare luxury from that day on because she would never be able to rid the image of that expression from her mind.

Sylvia looked like hell, and ready to fall at any second. Cindy wanted to reach out to her but dare not for fear that she would distract her friend and send them all to their deaths. The plane shuddered once more, and then the light outside changed as the rain was replaced by sunlight which streamed through the aircraft windows. Whatever power the man in 6A had, now seemed to have gone. He shook his head and looked out at skies which were once again blue and clear.

The public address system crackled to life, and the smooth, if slightly tense, tones of Captain Henshaw filled the cabin.

“Apologies for the unsteady ride back there, but we are now in free air until we reach Boston. We will be ready to land in around twenty minutes time. Thank you.”

Cindy touched Sylvia’s arm, which felt cold and leathery. Her friend blinked, and the idea that she had somehow aged was only enhanced by the exhausted sigh, which she released.

“We did it, we’re safe,” she whispered, her eyes dull and ancient since her encounter.

Words like thank you didn’t seem appropriate, or enough, and so Cindy simply nodded as Sylvia shuffled to the nearest jump seat behind the curtain and sat down hard. Nobody said anything and could only watch as she sobbed quietly, still rubbing the crucifix between her thumb and finger.

VI

The plane landed safely in Boston.  By then, the passengers had almost forgotten about the turbulence, and Cindy thought it was some horrible injustice that they would never know how close to death they came or the sacrifice that one woman went to in order to save them. Sylvia still hadn’t spoken. Instead, she stared at the cross, her waxy features having lost the same life and vigour as her hair had. The man with the black eyes was the first to exit the plane, glaring at Cindy as he walked past her, his face still one of rage and defiance. The rest of the passengers followed, and when they were all off board, Cindy walked Sylvia, holding her frail friend under the arm and led her to the employees lounge in the airport terminal. David and Carol did not follow, and neither would ever set foot on an aircraft again, handing in their respective notices later that week. Cindy watched out of the window at the vast expanse of runway as planes landed and took off and were boarded and emptied. Life went on, but for her, it was changed, as she knew there were evil things in the world that existed alongside humanity.

She toyed with her glass and looked at Sylvia, who was staring vacantly ahead. “What happened up there?” She asked quietly.

Sylvia said nothing, and Cindy was about to ask again when she spoke, her voice as old and broken as she was. “What day is it?” she asked.

“Tuesday, it’s Tuesday.”

Sylvia nodded, and drained the double scotch in one with hands that she could barely stop from shaking.

“I failed.” She said simply.

“No, no you didn’t. You saved everyone on board. You did it, Sylvia.”

Sylvia looked at Cindy then, her eyes glassy and vacant, and she offered a thin, ghostly smile.

“No, I didn’t. I made it worse. He told me, told me that he was going to get right back on another plane. He told me he would make sure it was bad, and that whatever happened would be my fault.”

“What do you mean told you? I don’t understand.”

“Here,” she said, tapping her temple with her index finger. “I heard him in here, I saw what he is, what he intends.”

“Maybe we can call security, get someone to find him?”

Sylvia shook her head. “No, he will have changed form now anyway. They can do that. We’ll never find him. The first we will know is when we hear about it in the news.”

Sylvia put the silver crucifix on the table, and slid it towards Cindy.

“I don’t think I’ll need this now. Not after today. I want you to keep it.”

“I can’t accept this, please Sylvia, you’re worrying me here.”

“Don’t think any less of me will you?” Sylvia asked, her bottom lip trembling. Cindy grabbed her friend’s hands, ignoring their dry, ancient feel.

“You saved the lives of a lot of people today, I... we, owe you more than we could ever repay.”

Sylvia smiled and stood. “Today will be a day we will never forget, but I know now what I need to do.”

“Sylvia, what’s going on?”

Sylvia’s lip trembled, and she lowered her gaze.

“Goodbye, Cindy.”

She walked away, and in her shock, Cindy didn’t follow. Her mind was in turmoil, and she couldn’t seem to make sense of anything. She had intended to go home, but with a well-stocked bar on hand, Drinking seemed like a better idea. She was there two hours later when the news reports started to broadcast on TV. Suddenly, Sylvia’s words made sense, and as Cindy ran for the toilet to throw up, she finally understood the magnitude of what had happened.  As she wiped the mucus from her mouth and looked at herself in the mirror through eyes streaked with makeup, Sylvia was in a motel room five miles from the airport. She had used her belt for a noose, and although she hoped it would be quick, she had suffered and kicked as life stubbornly tried to hang on.

Cindy returned to her table in the employees lounge, and along with the large crowd that had appeared, watched as events unfolded. People put her pale expression down to the terrifying images on the television screens, but she knew different. She held Sylvia’s crucifix and rubbed it gently as she watched the reports on the news go from bad to worse. She was certain that the black-eyed man was onboard one of the planes. Sylvia’s words raced around her brain, and she had to stifle a horrified giggle.

“I made it worse. He told me, told me that he was going to get right back on another plane. And this time, he would make sure it was bad, and that whatever happened, was my fault.”

“What have we done,” Cindy said to herself as she glanced down at the newspaper, knowing that today was a day that nobody would ever forget.

It was Tuesday, September the 11th, 2001.

THE BIRTHDAY

[This one is another story from the Funhouse sessions and has bene kicking around in some form of another for a while. I like the idea of the amount of psychological drama the human brain can endure and how it might cope with it. Although this is a pretty bleak and harrowing story, I wanted to include it here as part of this collection as it was previously only available in the kindle only Feast of Fear omnibus. Like the other stories from this line, they’ve had a bit of a polish to improve on their initial raw nature. ]

WHY DID IT continue to mock him? Why did it laugh the way it did?  What did he ever do to deserve the disappointed gaze or the shake of the head?  The Boy tried to ignore it, but even when he looked away he could feel it staring at him, eyes burning into the back of his head.

He shuffled further into the corner, cross-legged and filthy as he stared at the line where the walls of the room met.

If he concentrated hard enough he could ignore the filth of the bare brick, he could see beyond the mildew stench of the black mould which grew and festered and spread across the walls to other, less painful places. He could even ignore the ghostly memories associated with this room, the one that had become his prison since the day his father had decided to lock him in and hadn’t let him out since. At first, he was just sent there as punishment, and only for a few hours. Over time, the spells became longer, until eventually they stopped letting him out at all.

He remembered his father’s cruel words, drunken, foul mouthed tirades about learning respect, about how he was being shut away for his own good. Despite it all— if he concentrated hard enough— he could break beyond those four walls, and in his mind could see other places. He saw great rolling fields of green or vast beaches of soft, golden sand. More importantly, he could see solitude. Peace. He could see freedom. There were, of course, things that he could not ignore. The room was cold, and his coverless and filthy mattress which he slept on was clammy with damp against his body, which itself was covered in sores and infected scabs.   He couldn’t ignore the constant pain which ravaged his emaciated frame, or the perpetual pain and hunger which plagued him during his walking hours. It wasn’t always like this. He was once a decent if average looking boy with strong features and sharp blue eyes. Not anymore.