The Birth of Bane (39 page)

My heart was in
my throat, pounding. I rushed to close the door, so the rest of my
family wouldn’t see.

I’ve always said
in my heart of hearts, I didn’t want to see more. I know that’s
what I’ve told myself time and time again – I really did
not
want to see anymore. I know this. I made myself believe
it.

But, as I stood
before the threshold to what Mrs. Gates had called the Breach, with
the door open no more than a foot, I looked. Maybe it was plain
curiosity. Maybe it was stupidity. Maybe… just maybe, I
really
did
want to know. Maybe I wanted to see what
the cost
had been. Maybe…

I could go on
for hours as I agonize over this subject. It still wouldn’t change
the outcome.

I
saw.

Up to this point
in my life, I have only ever told Valerie and not a single soul
more.

She had turned
from me, her hands at either side, each digit growing impossibly
long – longer than before. She stood upon feet that were much too
large for a woman of her size, even if she’d had large extremities
to begin with. I stared, dumbfounded over the length, the rippling
muscles, the toes that were twice as long as my middle finger. Her
ankles seemed wrong, as if they had been spun backwards like the
hind legs of a horse. She stood poised upon those massive feet, the
smooth skin of her calves broken out with large dark splotches as
if she’d been injected with some debilitating disease. They grew as
well, in size and strength as her dress shortened, was shorn in a
hundred places, barely covering a body that was no longer petite,
no longer that of a demure, young woman. A pair of thorny spires
ripped from her back, tearing even more of the garment she was
wearing. Her shoulders broadened, the barrel of her chest
thickening, while her hips remained as narrow as a teenagers. Her
damp hair became short, spikey, sucked into her head as if eaten.
Her skin became cracked and torn as if there was not enough of it
to cover her properly. When she topped seven feet in height, she
stopped changing physically. She was unlike anything I had ever
seen, so different I couldn’t put a likeness to any part of
her.

“
P-p-p-p-ple-e-ease let me alone,” came a plea from someone
who hadn’t been there a moment earlier.

It was Lenny.
The 50-gallon drum she had been leaning against while she’d spoken
with my family was no longer that. It was him, strapped to an
ancient-looking wooden chair, bound in place by rusted,
grime-coated barbed wire. He was punctured upon every surface of
his person, blood running freely from nearly every wound. His foot,
where she had snapped it in twain upon the framing of the basement
doors, dangled sickeningly, jiggling with every move he made. His
eyes were wild with fright. His hair clung to his head as sweat
poured from him. His shirt was sodden with it. His pants were
soaked in urine, caked with feces.

It was obvious
to me; she’d had at l
east one
“go-around” with him.

He gazed upon
her with frantic eyes, trickles of crimson seeped from both edges,
coating his cheeks. It was the desolation of macabre mascara and
made him even less real to me.

“
Why should I
leave you be, Leonard Favor?” she asked. Her voice was terrible,
deep, resounding, grating against the drums of my ears.

It was the voice
of a beast.

It was not the
lovely Mrs. Gates.

Lenny’s eyes
darted here and there, trying to find an escape as she crept closer
to him, her elongated fingers rubbing the front of her dress,
smoothing out the ripped material, glazing it with a patina of
Lenny’s leave-takings. “Pleeeease, I b-b-b-beg you… j-j-j-juuust
let me go,” he begged, spit, tingled cardinal, dribbling down one
side of his mouth.

“
Who am I,
Leonard Favor?” she inquired instead, looming over him, a towering
figure, hunching her back to do so.

He shied away,
closing his eyes as tight as he could.

She waited for a
few seconds. “Who am I?” Her tone was harsh, as if she were on the
brink of violence.

Through an
overflowing mouth, he managed, “You are my bane,
The Bane
of my existence!”

“
Yyyyyeeeessss,
Leonard Favor,” she hissed intensely, dripping salvia of own upon
his cheek and neck.

He shivered
uncontrollably.

She licked at
it, savoring her juices as they mixed with his. “I am Bane,” she
spoke so close to him, her sharp fangs snagged along the top of his
skin, tearing the flesh like a samurai sword. “Don’t you
ever
think to forget,” she threatened, ripping more
flesh.

Lenny squirmed
with agony. “I won’t!”

She stood erect,
a giant menacing form. “So, you wish to play a child’s
game?”

“
W-w-w-what?”
asked my one-time-father, unhinged by the change in
topic.

She rumbled with
cruel laughter. “You said you wished for me to release you,” she
began, taking a few paces in one way, then reserved her directions
and stepped in the other. “So, I take it to mean, you want to run,
while I seek…” Her voice trailed off into nothing.

“
I don’t
understand,” quivered Lenny.

Without warning,
she swiped downward, tremendously hard, her knife-like nails raking
the barbed wire as they swooped from high to low.

Lenny screamed
horribly as the sharpened prongs were hacked from the muscles of
his body. He fell to the ground in a heap at her feet, writhing in
pain, sobbing. He curled into a fetal position, trying to protect
all that had been ruined. He failed miserably. There was too much
damage to cover it all.

She giggled a
demon’s giggle. “You had better run, Leonard Favor. When I catch
you, every time I catch you, I will take a nice big bite of
you.”

He squealed like
a pig, twitching upon the ground.

“
You had better
move. Already I feel the vestiges of hunger and you look so
delicious, so nicely tenderized.” Then, she lunged at him, nipping
him upon the heel.

He jerked as
though he’d been prodded with a Taser. Somehow, he was able to get
on all fours and scurry away like a three-legged rodent. He got ten
feet when he pissed himself again, leaving a long trail in his
wake.

Bane tilted her
head back and chortled in earnest. “You are making this far too
easy for me, Leonard Flavor.” She swung her head around, toward me,
in that instant. “He leaves me a nice trail to follow… How nice of
him…”

Her face was
distorted. Her eyes were far too large for her skull; her mouth was
so wide it stretched all the way to either ear. Her cheeks were so
gaunt, they looked hallow. Her broken skin was pulled so tight
against the bones of her face, every single one of them was clearly
visible from below. Where her nose should’ve been was only a gaping
hole, congealed with snot and gore and some of Lenny’s blood. Her
eyes were squirming with flames. There were no whites. They were no
irises. There was only the red hot fire of revenge.

In her hand was
a golden blade, a Moorish knife much like a sword, only in
miniature. The words
Affliction’s Key
was aglow,
somehow visible from afar. I could read them readily. I could also
tell the edge was razor sharp, harder than stone, not the
show-piece representation of a bygone era. No, this blade was meant
to cut.

Her gaze met
mine.

I was paralyzed
as I watched the words change. Right before my eyes they writhed
and wriggled upon the metal like a living serpent, coiling and
uncoiling.

She
winked.

Only the
word
Bane
remained upon the knife.

I slammed the
door shut, clamping my hands over my ears to shut out Lenny’s
pathetic wails.

A few heartbeats
later, there was nothing.

The Breach had
been closed.

~~~~~~~<<<
ᴥ
>>>~~~~~~~

Chapter
Twenty-Four: Gone

It was my Uncle
Melvin who had called the cops. Most likely from the moment he
reached the street and felt safe, because they were coming around
the back of the house by the time we’d taken our first steps from
the basement. They had their guns drawn, though pointed at the
ground, and came in three teams of two, wearing bullet-proof vests
and tactical helmets. They hollered for us to stop where we were
and place our hands where they could see them.

We complied in
immediately with our hands overhead, walking in a tight knit
group.

I think we were
more relieved than scared. I knew I was, especially after what I’d
seen in the Breach. Watching the approach of those tall,
well-trained members of the LAPD was more than
reassuring.

We were frisked
for weapons and told to stand aside, while they made sure the
remainder of the property was secure. It took no more than fifteen
minutes. A police sergeant approached us, hulking in a half-suit of
riot gear, his brow creased, hands on his hips.

“
Wanna tell me
what happened in the basement?” he asked gruffly, using the typical
“bad cop routine” I’d seen so many times on TV. Apparently that
shit was real. Or, more likely, it had been broadcast so many times
via Hollywood it had become an entity onto itself…, one even real
cops took for truth.

It was my mother
who answered after we shared an awkward glance, one I
know
the sergeant recognized as hesitation on our part.

“
I… we really
don’t know.”

His eyes
hardened. “The gentleman who called 911, Mr. Melvin Favor, said his
brother was taken.”

“
He was,” I
piped-in. As far as I was concerned, my mom had had enough men
scowling at her for one night. It was time for me to deflect some
of that negativity.

“
You are going
to have to elaborate on that statement, son.” He leaned toward me,
bending at the waist.

Surprisingly, I
held my ground – both physically and mentally. After seeing what
Bane could do, this guy was a pussycat. “I can only tell you what I
saw.”

He looked away
and then back in between heartbeats. “We don’t have time to be
cute, young man. If a man is indeed missing, then we need to be
quick about it.”

“
I saw him being
dragged across the ground and I followed,” I said
succinctly.

“
By
whom?”

“
By the time I
got downstairs – my room is one the second floor -,” I though it
prudent to be specific, so the sergeant wouldn’t have cause to be
an even bigger nutsack, “everyone was on the ground, except my
Uncle Melvin. He was running down the walkway like a bat out of
hell.”

The sergeant
raised his eyebrows.

I took it as a
“cop queue” to continue. “I heard a sound and I turned to follow
it. That’s when I saw my father, Lenny, being dragged.”

The sergeant was
about to speak, angrily, but I stopped him.

“
I couldn’t tell
who had him.”

He visibly
calmed.

“
All I could see
were his feet. I knew it was him by the shoes he wore.”

“
What
kind?”

“
Earth
shoes.”

The cop grimaced
in confusion.

Then, I pointed
toward Lenny’s bloody foot covering still laying were it had landed
upon the ground.

“
Well, we’ll
check it out all the same. What else?” he questioned.

I shrugged. “I
followed, but I couldn’t make up the distance. I could never see
more than the lower portions of his legs and feet.” Another detail
came to mind. “And, the blood, I saw that too.”

“
I take it you
are referring to this trail here and the pool of it over by the
basement stairs?”

My mother’s eyes
widened when she saw her ex-husband’s lifeblood spewed and smeared
all about us. I guess she hadn’t realized what she’d been looking
at all along.

“
Yeah.”

“
What happened
by the basement stairs?”

“
Lenny’s foot
got caught on the frames. You know the ones that keep the doors
properly aligned?”

He
nodded.

I felt squeamish
at reliving the thought. It hadn’t been a pleasant one.

“
And?”

“
Wha-, whoever.” I had almost said
whatever
and covered
my mistake adroitly. I swallowed. “Whoever had ahold of him, pulled
him real, real hard. And…,” I felt my face screw-up, “Lenny’s foot
broke. His shoe flew off and handed where you see it. It almost hit
me.”

I heard Valerie
gulp hugely, defying the bile that had risen in her
throat.

The sergeant
bobbed his head at me. “So, what happened in the
basement?”

I thought hard,
uncaring if I was taking too long to answer. I guess, I could’ve
gone into detail, explaining all that I’d witnessed. I could’ve
told him how I’d found the flashlight and approached the heavy door
to the root cellar, that I flung it open and found myself in an
entirely different place. I could’ve told him about the strange
sign, the clothes, and the glass. I could’ve mentioned I was
sexually accosted by my long-dead paternal grandmother and just
about every other form of evil spirit or demon or devil. I could’ve
told him about Rosalyn, and Bore, and Mrs. Gates and what she’d
become. I could’ve talked about the terrible price she’d paid to
protect us.