Part IV: Chasing Shadows

Submitted by SpartanAltego on Mon, 03/19/2018 - 19:06

Let the Long Night End
Part IV
Chasing Shadows

Chasing shadows
Chasing love dreams in vain
While my heart keeps on singing
Just a lonely refrain.

“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay. To mould me Man, did I solicit thee. From darkness to promote me?” —Paradise Lost, X, 743-45.

MILTON
1982, July 3rd (Dusk)
Waynesboro, West Virginia

Milton came within sight of home with the sun almost vanished below the horizon, its last rays of light casting a bloody red cloud on the edge of the darkening sky. Pulling his Honcho into the front driveway, he parked and took a moment to simply let the engine sit, letting his thoughts melt into the rumble of the engine – and to appropriately announce his presence. Before him, his Charleston-styled half house awaits, a shadowed monolith battered by the tides of a bloody ocean.

In the years they had lived together, Milton had worked with Levi to develop something of an alert system, both of them wishing to be prepared for all eventualities. In Levi’s room was a CB radio set to a specific channel and left on at all times, a matching radio located in the older man’s Honcho. Flicking on the microphone, Milton leans in and whistles a short series of beats.

‘Olly, olly, oxen-free.’ Their all-clear signal. Silence meant that Levi needed to run and hide. Throttling the engine meant visitors, but no danger. He waits for Levi’s response.

Minutes pass. Milton frowns, and repeats once more their signal across the radio waves. When nothing and nobody answers in return, he sighs and shuts off his Jeep, stumbling slightly when his left knee flares with discomfort as he steps onto the gravel driveway. Maybe Levi wasn’t home, restless as he became when the moon waxed closer and closer to completion. The lights were out, after all.

Climbing the steps to his front door, he pulls aside the metal screen preface and slips a key into the interior door’s knob, letting himself in. Flipping on the lights, he slips out of his shoes, hangs his jacket, and breathes in the warm, familiar air. Home. Moving to the kitchen, he is disappointed to see it in more or less the same condition as he’d left it. Dishes were not done, there was no sign of any addition to the pile, and nothing new in the refrigerator. Levi usually cooked and cleaned – by his own insistence more than requirement – but perhaps this particular lateness of the lunar season was more potent than usual.

Still, Milton can’t help but feel a stab of wistful hunger as he removes a bottle of beer and takes a handful of grapes to chew on. He was too tired to prepare his own dinner tonight, and the immediate hunger for a warm shower was greater than the craving for a full belly. The second floor held both his own bedroom and Levi’s, as well as their adjoined bathroom – odd, he didn’t remember leaving his bedroom door closed when he left. Given Levi’s apparent absence, he decides to cut through the boy’s room to shorten the distance, absently flipping on the light switch by the door.

The vanishing of the darkness, and what it unveils, freezes him mid-stride. God, don’t tell me…

Deep gouges in the wall. A hole punched clean through. A shredded bed, and an open window, a warm breeze swaying the red curtains with impossible stillness, as if they were snakes twisting beneath the water. A trail of black droplets dried against the bare floor leading from the bathroom. With trembling hands, Milton follows the stains, images of a naked corpse, bloated in the bathtub and wrists opened on either arm, flashing in his sight in the instant before he turns the bathroom light on.

He can’t stop the shaking sigh of relief that bursts from his lips, a tinge of mirthless laughter in its final note. Levi was not in the tub – although the door to the medicine cabinet was, a crack in the shower wall from where it had been thrown with some measure of force. Maybe, Milton dared to hope, all of this was just another mood-swing and the boy would be coming back any minute now.

But something in the sink draws his eye. Flecks of red and black against the ivory bowl. A pair of stained scissors. Milton extends a hand and pinches some of it between his fingers; it’s hard. And bloody.

Several segments littered the basin, most severed at either ends to expose hollow innards. Some, though, had fleshy membrane inside, and threads of black that twitched in the light. Levi had trimmed his nails, then, and clearly done a poor job of it. Milton was the one who tended to management of the boy’s…less than pleasant bodily shifts as the lunar month progressed; filing and trimming the obsidian dog-like nails that grew up and over his human fingers. Cutting the increasingly thicker and rougher patches of hair that would break through the skin at various points across the body. Scrubbing away portions of necrotic flesh so that the smell (and the flies) wouldn’t disturb either of them, or anyone else for that matter.

“Okay. So you woke up, something set you off. You trash your room, then you head for your manicure,” Milton narrates, examining the blood-slick scissors. “You had to know that this would hurt like crazy. Definitely after your first attempt. But you kept going…until you finished, looks like.”

“And then…” the pastor’s brown eyes fall to the floor, and the flecks of dried blood that stood against the wood and tiles like macabre bread-crumbs. “You went…”

His bedroom door was closed. Milton knew that he hadn’t closed it himself. Levi went into his room, left the door closed to avoid signaling his entry, forgetting it had been open. Why would he-

The scissors fell back into the basin, utterly forgotten, as heavy strides propelled the suddenly very energized pastor out into the hall and directly for the plain white door that stood between his waking reality and his worst nightmares.

Milton paid heed to neither traffic etiquette nor speed as he hurtled down the road, pushing his Honcho as fast as it could go. Crumpled in a ball in the passenger-side seat, a small, smoothly written note of few words. Words were like living things. They carried meaning, point of view, and agenda. Pack-hunters. A few words could take down a malady of the soul, break the deepest fugue from a mind lost to weariness.

Words could rip an old man’s heart from his chest and eat it still-beating before his eyes.

“A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth. Thank you. You can find whatever is left of me – the real me – back at the well. I’m sorry.”

OSKAR
1982, July 3rd (Night)
Shenandoah Park, West Virginia

Oskar’s thoughts were mute as he followed the long, stomping strides of the hunter, who carried over his shoulder the limp form of Eli, holding the boy in place with one hand while the other gripped tightly the twisted and shattered remains of a shotgun. The bent barrel of the firearm glistened black in the moonlight, still wet from its recent use as an instrument of invasive cranial surgery. The scent of blood in the air, the smell of rot coming from Eli – somehow stronger since the arrival of the stranger, and the dire predicament he now faced left Oskar dizzy, nauseous, and almost paralyzed. Although his feet moved automatically, the rest of him was frozen, gridlocked between relief and dread.

He was alive. Eli was alive, contrary to appearances. Just when he’d thought he was done for, something – someone – had come in to brutally pull him out of the way of death’s charging train. Again. For the second time, he had been privy to what could only be described as a miracle.

Oskar wasn’t really familiar with religion or spirituality, beyond a general understanding of its prominence in Western culture and what he’d picked up since departing from Sweden. In America, many people believed in an all-powerful God, to whom they prayed and worked to please so they could be rewarded in the afterlife by following the rules of a moral and just life, while the wicked would be punished.

Oskar wasn’t under any illusions where he fell on that spectrum; he loved Eli. He would die for Eli. He would, if pushed, probably kill for Eli. Eli was a serial killer with a body count likely in the triple or even quadruple digits, and Oskar was helping to ensure he lived to kill another day. That was reality. In that light, Oskar’s near-death experiences had fit the picture of God as a punisher of the unjust to a point. Oskar loved a vampire, which meant he earned punishment. Being drowned in a pool could conceivably be seen as that punishment, a baptism that would cleanse his spirit of sin, leaving nothing behind but a corpse, as by that point he’d rotted to the core.

Instead, he’d been pulled from the brink and been born again. The hand that held him beneath the water was severed, and death was delivered by an angel with the wings of a bat.

Could that be called a miracle? It was said that miracles were ‘acts of God’, intervention from on high to protect the innocent and the good from harm. Yet he also understood that many religions preached that God punished the evil and would bar them from paradise when they died.

Being savaged by a puma could be considered justice, in a sense. Preyed on the way Eli had to prey on others, torn apart by a natural predator. Instead, the beast was slain by a stranger with impossible strength and a familiar face. Another miracle.

If God did exist, Oskar was of the opinion that He or She or It was very good at sending mixed messages.

“I know you.”

Oskar blinked, and became aware of himself again. “What?”

The hunter halted, torso and neck twisting to direct a baleful gaze that seemed to reflect the moonlight. “You’re the kid from the park. Oscar.”

“Oskar,” the correction comes automatically.

“Oskar,” the hunter echoes. “Right. Weird cadence. Your accent - - You from Norway, or something?”

“…or something,” Oskar confirms tentatively. The front of his pants was still damp, and itched. This man knew his name, which immediately made clear the stranger’s identity. Since coming to America, the only other person he’d told his name to – Eli excluded – was…

“You’re the guy who wasn’t homeless. The jogger.”

“Yes.”

Oskar waits for the inevitable barrage of questions; who was he, really? Why was he out in the woods after dark, near a cave with a seemingly decaying corpse? Where were his parents? Where did he live? All the tiny needles that, when pressed to the thin membrane of his new life, would puncture a hole from whence dark and ugly truth could gush forth. Questions he didn’t have answers for.

The other boy stares at him a moment longer, then resumes his stride. “Come on. We’re almost there.”

“There,” Oskar repeats with a note of confusion, following nonetheless. They break into a clearing of viridian grass and wide, bottomless skies, where sits, bafflingly, a simple stone well, with a thick seal of stone slid into place over its contents, only mostly masking a decrepit stench that almost forced Oskar to gag, nearly as putrid as being stuck in the enclosed space of the cave with Eli.

With the ease of slipping a travelling pack off his shoulders, the stranger shrugs Eli’s body off and sets it atop the well, arms and legs splayed out. Setting the twisted husk of his firearm into the dirt, the stranger sighs and plants his rear atop the well’s lid, hands pressed flat at his sides. “Well…” he sighs with an air of resignation. “Now we wait.”

“W-wait,-“ Oskar hates that he stutters. “Wait for what?”

“For my uncle to come,” the man replies. “Waynesboro is about thirty minutes away, driving. He should’ve made it home about…” A look to the sky. “Twenty, twenty-five minutes ago. And I doubt he’s minding the speed limit, so we should expect him any second now.”

Oskar found it passing strange that the notion of his uncle arriving seemed to disturb the stranger more than anything else that had occurred this night. But the prospect of another person, another adult, arriving set him into sudden motion. “No!”

A bemused tilt of the head. “No?”

Oskar shook his head emphatically. “No. We can’t stay here. I have to...put my friend back, where- where she’ll be safe. Please.”

His pleading earns him an incredulous frown. “Look, Oskar,” the stranger speaks softly, gentle with his words. “I’m…sorry, that this happened to you. Animal attacks are a little common around these parts in the forests, especially for two kids wandering alone at night. I wish I’d shown up sooner. But your friend…she’s gone.”

Again, Oskar shakes his head, wanting to shout. “She’s not dead. She’s just asleep – and I know how that sounds,” he exclaims, heading off an interruption. “But it’s true. If I don’t get her back soon, she’ll die for real.”

The stranger growls, pinching his fingers against either end of his head. “For God’s sake…Oskar, I can see that she isn’t alive anymore, and so can you. Look,” he points to Eli’s still frame. “She’s not breathing. She hasn’t breathed since before I picked her up.”

“She doesn’t need to breathe.”

“Doesn’t need to- “ The stranger stops, shaking his head as if ridding it of an irksome thought. His next words are calm, matter of fact. “You’re in denial. You’re in shock, you’re in denial, and you aren’t thinking clearly. I’ve been there. But you need to accept it. She’s gone.”

“No!” Oskar shouts with a sudden fury, and suddenly he’s rushing the stranger, grabbing him by the wrist and holding the dark flesh of the palm against Eli’s chest, pressing it against the thin fabric despite his quarry’s exclamations of “Hey!” and “Knock it off!”

He waits, and begins to the count in his head. Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven. Ten-

The stranger blinks rapidly, and suddenly his eyes are locked solely on Eli. Oskar pushes his hand closer to Eli’s chest, right over the place his heart resided. Fifteen…ten…five…

Another single beat.

“She’s…” the stranger murmurs. “I don’t believe it.”

“She’s alive,” Oskar repeats resolutely, grip tightening on the stranger’s wrist. There was something funny about the way the skin felt against his fingers and palm, like it was stretching in some way. “If I don’t get her back to the cave before sunrise, she’ll die. You’ll be killing her.”

The stranger flinches as though struck. Oskar presses further. “And I can’t let other people see her, or they’ll hurt us. Please, just…forget you saw her. And me.”

The stranger shivers, and a coyote cries out somewhere in the distance. Pools of green slide down to their intertwined hands, Eli’s thin face, and finally up to Oskar. This close, Oskar was surprised that he had ever mistaken this person for a grown man – his face was young, smooth, and barely looked to have aged past sixteen. Seventeen, at the most.

“Oskar…” the boy softly beckons, eyes large and all-encompassing as he leans forward until he is nose to nose with Oskar. Twin holes that sucked all light into the pinprick depths of his irises. “Tell me everything.”

MILTON

Milton burst from the Honcho the moment his headlights illuminated the crisscrossed links of a chain fence, marked with a red “Do Not Enter On Penalty of Law” sign designed to impotently ward off would-be trespassers. On a different evening, pulling himself up and over the barrier might’ve winded him more than he cared to admit. It had been a long time since he had taken care of himself physically the way he had in his youth. But where time and age eroded, fear and fervor bolstered. He was running the moment his feet hit the dirt.

Sprinting, because he could faintly make out two standing silhouettes casting shadows over the moonlit weeds. One tall, the other shorter and unfamiliar. Milton had no time for questions, though; right now, his focus was on one thing and one thing only.

His nephew. Alive, thank God, and waiting with a pensive look that deepened the closer Milton came. Sweating and exhausted, the older man finally had to slow to an unsteady walk as he crossed the distance between them and stood face to face with the boy, whose face reflected so much of his father it made Milton ache. Holding gazes, it was all the pastor could do not to fall to his knees and sob in relief, restraining his emotions to only the slightest quavering of the lip and a trembling in his hands.

“…” Levi shifted uneasily under his gaze, looking down and to the side, exposing flecks of dried blood on his cheek. Scabbed cuts at his neck, one hand shoved the pocket of his shorts. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Milton repeated flatly, feeling at once empty and ready to burst, torn between the desire to sob or shout. “Fancy seeing you around these parts.”

Levi grimaced. “I’m sorry. But…” he chewed his lip, found the courage to meet Milton’s gaze again. “There’s something we need to talk about. We need to go home, and we need to take him,” he gestures at the unfamiliar, blonde boy. “And her with us.”

Milton follows the direction of Levi’s finger, eyes drifting to the closed mouth of the well he had, perhaps unconsciously, avoided looking directly at. The smell of it was nothing new, although it was far sourer than he recalled, and seeing the thin, desiccated corpse strewn atop it offered all the explanation needed as to why. Milton tasted ashes in his mouth as he realized that this girl – this child – was most assuredly dead.

“Oh God…” he murmured pleadingly. “Levi, you didn’t-“

“No,” Levi interrupts vehemently. “It wasn’t me. I found her like that.”

“God…damn it! I knew this would happen,” Milton whirls on his charge. “You really expect me to believe that? You just happened to stumble on a dead girl the night you-“

“It’s true!”

Milton stares at the blonde youth, who seemed to deeply regret having opened his mouth. “…Beg pardon?”

The boy, who looked to be barely past thirteen, set his shoulders and repeated with his odd accent. “He…uh,” his eyes flit from Levi back to Milton, something strange about the feelings lurking within. “He is telling the truth. He didn’t hurt Eli or I. He saved us.”

“Us?”

“Her heart’s still beating,” Levi elaborates, a statement so obviously untrue that Milton can only surmise that the boy truly believed it. “See for yourself.”

Milton balked, judgement on the tip of his tongue as he wrestled with the urge to scream that it was simply not possible and that Levi – and whoever this child was with him – were deluding themselves and he was not going to be party to it. But they simply stare back, unblinking, and something about their calm certainty stops the fire in his chest from bursting forth. His eyes flit from the body, back to Levi, back to the body again. There was just no way…

He presses two fingers to the girl’s neck. Feels nothing.

“It’s faint. Give it a moment.”

Milton swallows, and remains still. Four seconds. Eight. Something twitches under his fingers, his heart twitching with it. He masters himself and waits further. It could’ve been his imagination, desperately wanting to play along with the fantasy where this girl was somehow not obviously dea-

Another beat. Milton asks Levi to repeat words that had come immediately after the pulse.

“I said…” Levi closes his eyes, breathes deeply. “Her heart beats about once every fifteen seconds. And she can’t be left anywhere with sunlight.”

Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.

“She’s…different. Like me. We have to take them home.”

“Why?”

Levi smiles humorlessly. “You’re always telling me I should try to socialize more.”

- - - - - - -

It was a quiet, pensive journey back from the edge of Greenwood, which bordered Shenandoah, back to the Matthews property. Milton had cleared space in the back of his Honcho for the ‘dead’ girl’s body, easily lifting her oddly light frame onto the truck bed and masking it beneath the bed sheet he had intended to wrap his nephew’s body in. As he cocooned the un-corpse, his eyes were drawn again to the frozen face of the sleeper - - who, according to both Levi and ‘Oskar’, was named Eli. He followed the nagging of his unconscious to its source, eyes rolling up and down over the thinly covered body, pale flesh and rigid bone draped in a plain black gown, bare arms and narrow legs. There was something off about the child. Something wrong - - beyond, of course, everything else about the situation.

Milton had shaken it off, but the dissonance was subdued, not slain. Disquiet pulsed within his temples as he climbed into his truck, his new blonde acquaintance taking the passenger seat while Levi sat in the truck bed, ensuring the body would not be unveiled or overly jostled during the ride home. All of them had mutually decided not to acknowledge the twisted remnants of the Remington shotgun, which had been unceremoniously dropped into the plunging dark of the well by a stone-faced Levi.

For Milton, the calm, sedate drive back into Waynesboro was far more nerve-wracking than his frantic exit had been. In haste and frenzy he had let worldly concerns slip away, everything but his route to Shenandoah dissolving into smears of light and inconsequential matter. All that mattered was getting to the well - - to a gravesite, ostensibly. What happened after was already decided.

He was much less certain what the future held for him now. Although he trusted that few would look twice at Milton or Levi carrying a sheeted carcass into their home, being well known as hunters in the community, the improbably small size of such a ‘prize’ as well as the presence of Oskar would assuredly raise questions if they were noticed. All it would take was one overly inquisitive soul, and Milton would find himself handcuffed and in the sheriff’s hands, at a loss to explain why he had been found with the body of a ‘dead’ child. Levi right alongside him, likely…with only days before his next molting.

He went along with his nephew’s desires only because, shamefully, Milton was intensely curious exactly who and what they had encountered on this night where the moon shone like silver and stars twinkled with platinum light. Just as he had been that first night with Levi, so long ago…

Finally, home came into sight once more, familiar yet blurred like the echoes of a dream recently woken from. The soothing crunch of gravel beneath his Honcho’s tires soothed his frazzled nerves, and before long he was parked and reaching for his CB’s microphone.

“Olly, olly, oxen free,” he mumbled, flinching into lucidity when he realized Oskar was staring at him, bemused.

“Do I find you here, old sinner? Long have I sought you,” Levi intoned from the Honcho’s bed, hopping down to firmly crush his feet against the dirt, shoes held by their strings between his fingers. His eyes were monitoring the surrounding homes intently as Milton and Oskar stepped out to join him, Milton noting with some discomfort that from this angle he could see the shine behind his nephew’s eyes. Clearing his throat before Oskar could notice, Milton is relieved when Levi notices his stare and promptly lowers his gaze.

“Nobody’s watching right now,” Levi informs them flatly.

“Good. I’ll unlock the door, you two take her and put her in the guest bedroom room for now.”

“Does your guest room have windows,” Oskar pipes up, his sudden verbosity surprising after a half hour of total silence. “Eli can’t be in the sun. At all.”

Ah, right. There’s that little caveat. “The cellar, then.”

Oskar. The boy’s accent was a dead giveaway he wasn’t raised in the States, if his name wasn’t already an indicator. What was a kid from Sweden, or at least raised in Sweden, doing alone in America with a…strange ward? Or was he alone? Levi hadn’t said, and…questions. Too many questions that needed answers urgently.

They hastily carried the wrapped body from the Honcho’s bed into the house, standing alert as a sentinel for any sign of onlookers until the deed was done. Oskar insisted on being formally invited in before entering the house, something was perplexed the old man but was done hastily nonetheless. Milton’s hands were clammy, not from exertion but rather anxiousness that he viciously tamped down and wrestled into submission. They stepped carefully down the stairs leading into the cellar, a wide berth of wine arrayed on shelves and stored in barrels – his private collection, dwindling steadily over the last two years. Hands occupied, he pressed his shoulder against the smooth brick walls and slid it up until it flipped the light switch, igniting several parallel bulbs stretching from the stairs to the opposite end of the basement.

“Here, we’ll just put her right down here for now,” Milton gestures to a space between two shelves where Eli could be tucked in, if somewhat uncomfortably, until they had time to find a better spot. “Hope she won’t mind the tight fit.”

“She won’t,” Oskar replies flatly, lips curled into a hint of a frown. His small, blue eyes trailed lazily from the cases of alcohol, two barrels of wine, cases of home-brewed beer. When he resumed assisting Milton in packing Eli out of sight, his face was guarded and cool. They finished quickly, and Milton grunted as he dragged one of his two 1935 Simi Cabernet Sauvignon barrels from its position next to its brother and slid it in front of the space occupied by the girl. All that gave away her presence now was the smell, which had not abated and if anything seemed to swell and ripen below ground. Positively charming.

“Better than nothing, I guess,” the pastor coughs, eyes watering. “Won’t have to worry about the sun down here.”

“Other people live here? No visitors?”

Milton shakes his head. “No, it’s just Levi and I. We don’t get many house guests. Present company excluded, of course.”

Oskar took the lead back up to the main floor, Milton a few steps behind, where Levi awaited in the dining room, idly toying with the wrappings on his fingertips.

“Have a seat, Oskar,” Milton nudged the boy, gesturing to the chair opposite Levi and adjacent to Milton’s. It was also, coincidentally, the seat farthest from the nearest exit. He didn’t want to feel threatened by a teenager, if Oskar even was one, but he did. Levi had been vague, but everything Milton had seen so far pointed to one inescapable truth: Oskar had seen something. And he couldn’t be allowed to leave until it was determined exactly what he knew.

Here they sat, bathed in the soft glow of the dining room chandelier, its crystalline frame filtering the light at the center so that it passed through the other side sapphire and soothing.

“So…” Milton exhales softly, the beginnings of a headache already upon him. “It seems we’ve all found ourselves in an inconvenient position. The circumstances of which I am still vague on.”

“I was out hunting,” Levi begins slowly, pausing when Milton’s eyes immediate fix on him with a deadly blank stare. He swallows, and resumes. “I heard screaming and went running, where I found Oskar and his friend. They were being attacked by an animal, looked like a cougar, and I stopped it. Then we went to the well and waited for you.”

“What were you doing out in the middle of the woods, alone at night?”

“I was visiting her,” Oskar explains lowly, without averting his eyes. The truth, then. “Eli’s my friend, and someone has to take care of her while she sleeps. So I do.”

“Right. And exactly how long has she been ‘asleep’ for?”

Oskar closes his eyes, chewing on his tongue, clearly weighing his words. “A little over three months, now.”

Alright, so the girl was comatose, then, that much was clear. With some kind of odd allergic reaction to light – she wasn’t albino, but her complexion was unusually pale.

“It’s just the two of you? Where are your parents?”

“Eli’s parents are dead,” Oskar replies brusquely. His brow furrows a little, as if pained by a sudden lucidity. “Mine are far away. It’s just us now.”

Milton could see the discontent in Levi grow at those words, and knew that he needed to redirect the flow of conversation before problems arose. “So, you both ran away together,” he begins contemplatively, slightly impressed. “And you’ve been on your own for at least three months? That’s something. Eli must be really important to you to take on all this responsibility.”

Oskar smiles. “The most important thing in the world.”

Milton smiles back, a little taken with the boy’s youthful earnestness. Love was wasted on the old – too many obligations, too much thinking in the way. Children were the only ones foolish enough and brave enough to care so recklessly for another. To think nothing of leaving home, living alone for months, and even taking care of a loved one’s special condition without so much as a hint of complaint. How refreshingly straightforward.

Now that he understood the nature of this strange encounter better, Milton felt far more at ease. Levi’s bold declaration had taken him aback, but now things made more sense. Levi had been distraught, in a wild state of mind, and so had taken what little information he’d gleaned and extrapolated to a conclusion that would be relevant to himself. Just a case of looking for the answer you wanted, instead of the answer that was.

“So where are you from, then? I can’t quite place your accent – were your parents immigrants?”

Oskar shakes his head. “No, I was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden. We came to America by boat.”

“You and your parents?”

“Me and Eli.”

“O-oh,” Milton stutters. “You’re from…Sweden. That’s where you ran from. That’s what you’re telling me.”

Oskar nods tentatively. “Yes.”

“My guess was Norway, personally,” Levi shrugs. “Pretty much the same.”

Oskar scowls, eyebrow raised. “No it isn’t.”

Levi shrugs again, while Milton struggles to come to grips with his fragile reality being shattered once more. Two runaway kids in the middle of West Virginia, travelled away the way from Sweden of all places. It boggled the mind, and although the pastor looks searchingly to Levi he gets only a cool stare in response.

Boy’s heard this before, Milton realizes irritably. Must have gotten the story out of Oskar before I met up with them. He’s just waiting for me to get there on my own.

Levi liked to play conversational games – it wasn’t Milton’s favorite part of his nephew, to be sure. “Why run away? Why come so far from home?”

“Because…” Oskar hesitates, eyes sliding to Levi. He gets a small encouraging nod. “Because Eli is a…special person. She’s sick, and it wasn’t safe for her to stay in Sweden after we met. We had to put enough distance between us and the people looking for us, to be safe.”

“People looking for you. Police?”

Oskar makes to shake his head, pauses, and nods once. “Police,” he admits. “But there are other people too, dangerous people. If they find us, they’ll kill us. Or worse.”

“I’m sorry,” Milton sighs. “I’m trying to understand, I really am. But none of what you’ve told me has made the slightest bit of sense. You say you’re from Sweden. That your friend is sick; and that she’s been in a coma for three months and there are people looking for you, police included. I can believe that she’s sick, and obviously if you ran away there would be authorities looking for you. But saying you took a boat into the country is stretching my willingness to believe.”

“We have money. Eli collected a lot over the years,” Oskar explains, hands shifting in his lap. “We sold some of it, used the money to get across the ocean into Canada. Then we crossed into Michigan, stayed in Detroit for a little while. Then we came out here.”

“Over the years…” Milton echoes, brow furrowed. “What do you mean by that? Neither of you look a day over twelve.”

“I’m thirteen!”

“Uh-huh.”

Levi rolls his eyes balefully. “I think Oskar’s answered enough questions for tonight. How about we show our guest some hospitality and pick this up tomorrow? I need to wash the stink of our other guest out of my skin, and Oskar needs a change of pants. Probably a shower, too.”

Oskar’s cheeks redden, and Milton, sense of smell recovered from the necessary numbing that come from exposure to rotting corpse, detects a faint trace of urine in the air. “Ah, damn it all. Sorry, son, I would’ve gotten you some clothes already. Just been a…very busy night. Levi can show you to the shower and I’ll get some fresh laundry for you.”

Levi rises. “Follow me.”

OSKAR

Oskar followed his strange new acquaintance up the polished dark oak steps leading to the second floor, internally dizzied by the glamour of the place. This was the nicest place he had ever seen, much less been in. Were they rich?

At the top of the stairs was a second-floor drop-off point, and continuing upward there was a third level barred by a single closed door. Following Levi, Oskar is forced to stop suddenly when his guide does the same, paused at the threshold of what looked to be a bedroom.

“Something wrong?”

Levi looks a bit sheepish. “Just, um…wait here a second. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Levi steps out of the hall and thus out of Oskar’s line of sight. He busies himself with examining the naturalistic wallpaper that fenced him in on either side, and after a brief interlude Levi returns to usher him in.

“Sorry about the mess,” Levi gestures to a pile of broken plaster, shards of wood, and what appears to be shower tile collected in a small bag and…a cabinet door propped underneath an open window. “Had to grab all this and get it out of the way. A bit of impromptu renovating.”

He gestures to the open bathroom, the shower curtain pulled back and two towels, one red and the other white, folded neatly and resting on the toilet tank lid. “I’ll leave some clothes outside the door for you, once you’re done. Just don’t take longer than six minutes or the hot water will start to go.”

Levi turns to leave, halts, then turns half-way around again. “Thank you.”

Of the things Oskar expected his host to say, that had been low on the list. He chews his lip, bemused, and it occurs to him that perhaps the older boy was referring to their first encounter. “It was nothing. I just felt bad, is all, and I had the money to spare so…”

What puzzles even further is when Levi seems surprised by his reply, as if he hadn’t expected Oskar to remember. He closes his mouth and quickly exits the room, closing the door softly behind. Oskar lets his eyes linger on the plain white woodwork for a moment, then steadily lets his legs bend until he kneels against the floor, feeling a million years old.

What do I do now?

He’d failed. He failed Eli as a friend and as a guardian. All that had been left for him to do was die, but instead he had been dragged out of his again mess – again – and forced to live. In a way, that was worse. Now he had to find a way to get himself and Eli out of this situation. He had been as vague as he could be without seeming dishonest during Levi’s interrogation, but what details he had given up were more than zero and that meant the danger of exposure.

He searched his pockets: nothing, not even his pocket knife. I must’ve left it back in Shenandoah, forgotten it after the attack. The realization leaves Oskar scowling, then shivering, and he forces himself to rise and move into the wash room, closing the door behind him out of habit. The shower was a simple walk-in, with a sliding glass door – it looked clean enough, he guessed, although there was a very large dent in the wall and several pieces of tile missing.

And the medicine cabinet that was set above the sink had a missing door. It stood out in stark contrast with the otherwise well-kept and expensive-looking climate of the house.

Oskar disrobes, and lets the water grow warm before stepping inside. The constant barrage feels wonderful against his sweat-crusted skin. He sets his palms forward to rest against the interior wall, letting the showerhead deposit directly onto his scalp, dribbling down his hairline and cheeks as he stares at the plain open black drainage hole at his feet.

Eli trapped, defenseless, and exposed. All because of you.

He shudders and sniffs, trying to control the stinging in his eyes and the growing warmth of his cheeks, his throat, and his chest. Water swirls around his feet, dirt, blood, and urine slithering down into the open drain. The drain that whispered…

Piggy.

“No.”

Piggy pissed himself.

Oskar covers his ears, but the cruel whispers only grow louder. The gurgling of the drain grows wetter and thicker, until it is the gagging of a puma, blinded by blood and skull partially caved in.

Want your pissball, Piggy? Don’t forget to rinse it out.

“Leave me alone.”

You are alone.

He fights with every ounce of his fury the tightening of his throat, and to steady his increasingly ragged breaths.

The tears come anyway.

When he leaves the wash room, Oskar finds that he feels more than clean – he has been rejuvenated. Finally allowed to cry and feel in private, the inside spaces of his head freed of the storm clouds of despair and fear so that he could think clearly again. All of it out there and not in him, the fingers at his throat loosened to allow him to breathe.

Waiting for him when he opens the washroom door is a pair of folded black boxer shorts, and a white tee shirt, easily a size and a half too large for his still growing proportions but adequate for coverage. The boy takes a moment to inspect himself in the reflection of the bedroom window, examining the bruise-colored flesh under his eyes. The hollow spaces of his cheeks that were once full and rosy.

I look dead. He realizes, with some fright. Just like that night.

Stepping back, the movement mirrored by his doppelgänger, Oskar briskly exits the room. Once in the hall, he turns, looking firstly to his right – the ajar door leading into what he supposed was Milton’s room. He looks to the stairway, where light climbed forth and he faintly heard the sounds of shifting feet – Levi and Milton were both downstairs, then.

Oskar’s eyes slide back to the open door. He takes a step forward, then freezes when he hears voices at the edge of the stairs. Hushed, but fervent.

“We’re taking a risk, keeping them here. You know that.”

“I know.”

“Why are you suddenly so interested in these two? What happened out there?”

“Enough. Besides, after what he said- “

“I know what the boy said, but I don’t think- “

“You already know what he meant. Just say it.”

“I don’t – “

A loud sigh. “Fine. I will. We have two kids here.”

“Yes.”

“One of them can’t go out into the sunlight because she has a sickness.”

“…Yes.”

“There are police and ‘other’ people looking for them. Dangerous, apparently.”

“…”

“She has collected a lot of wealth ‘over the years’ and sleeps for long periods of time. She has a heart that only beats four times a minute. She looks like a corpse but is somehow alive. Now tell me why.”

“And this Oskar boy?”

“The first time I ran into him was in broad daylight, and he doesn’t smell dead-alive the way his friend does. I think he’s clean.”

“Then why would he be with…whatever she is? How come she hasn’t killed him?”

“I don’t know. Why haven’t you killed me yet?”

A sharp rapport, flesh meeting flesh. Silence.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I know. I’m sorry, too.”

Oskar hears scuffing, something being brushed together. Something being muttered lowly, almost silent.

“...again. Please.”

“I’ll try.”

“Promise me.”

A long pause.

Promise me.”

“The shower’s stopped running. I should go check up on our guest, make sure he hasn’t tried climbing out the windows.”

Oskar backpedals rapidly as the stairs creak with increasing frequency, elbow thumping dully against the polished handrail and leaving his fingers tingling. He scurries back into Levi’s bedroom and plants himself directly before the open window, cool air raising goosebumps on his skin as he pretends to stare out into the distance.

“Shooting the breeze?” Oskar nearly leaps out of his skin, the words coming seemingly the very second after he had turned his head.

Levi stands blank-faced at the threshold of the bedroom, a pair of cotton pajamas folded over his forearm, shoulders slouched. Resisting a shiver at the chill behind those oddly bright eyes, Oskar tries to project a guiltless attitude. “Cooling down.”

The olive-skinned boy takes a step forward, unblinking. “Tend to run hot? Me too.”

There was something in Levi’s eyes – something Oskar recognized. It was the look Eli got in his eyes when introduced to a new puzzle to unravel or piece together; in this moment, Oskar was certain that he was the only object that existed in his host’s world.

The slight crease of his brow made the Swedish boy very uncertain how long his existence would persist.

Another purposeful step forward, eerily smooth in its movement. “Milton’s decided not to call the police or child services. Tonight, at least. You can take my bed for now, until we clear out the…guest room. Will that be a problem?”

“No, no,” Oskar shakes his head quickly. “It won’t be a problem I mean.”

“Good…” Levi is suddenly three brisk steps closer, nose centimeters from the blonde boy’s brow, their difference in height quite apparent. “That’s good,” the boy repeats. “Will you be a problem?”

Oskar slowly shakes his head. “N-no.”

"You're not going to try to sneak down to the basement and grab your friend? Run away?"

"No."

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Good. My uncle is a decent man. He’s taking a very big risk, letting you stay here and keeping quiet. Understand?”

“Yes.”

A toothy smile. Levi presses the folded pajamas into Oskar’s hands. “Great. Then we’re all on the same page. Feel free to close the window if you get cold. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything tonight.”

“Okay.”

Oskar waits for his host to turn his back and vanish from sight, the hallway light clicking off, erasing the world beyond the threshold of his appointed room. Now there was only a mouth of darkness, deep and impenetrable as the frigid ocean, where lurked secrets unseen and things not meant to be illuminated by the warmth of fire or light.

Oskar climbs into bed, pajamas still clenched in his fist, and curls atop the bedsheets. Although he has no intention of embracing sleep, he finds that it comes to him quickly, and that he has little fight left to muster.

In that sleep, what dreams may come?

- - - - - - -

Oskar dreams. He dreams that he is swallowed by darkness, quiet and empty and complete. Darkness that washes against his feet, over his legs, into his ears. Up his nose. Death is breathed into him, freezing his fingers and toes, chilling his flesh. The only warmth is at his groin, itching as if stung by biting ants.

The only light is the light of the moon, humming in glittering elliptical eyes. Eyes fixed upon him.

A thin shade rises from the dirt at the stranger’s feet, and Oskar opens his mouth to shout a warning, until his brain catches up with what he is seeing and the words die in his throat.

Eli looms behind the stranger, eyes deadly blank, charcoal pits wrapped by stretched pale flesh and blue lips. The man – boy – turns, and in that instant Eli seems to slither atop the boy, bony fingers working their way into the black hair of his scalp and around the flesh of his throat.

Teeth glitter in the dark. Eli leans forward, as if to bestow a kiss, and suddenly his quarry thrashes, Eli powerless to subdue his unexpected meal, emaciated as he is, and is thrown with great force into the trunk of a tree, the resounding snap turning Oskar cold and terrified to the bone. Eli hisses threateningly from the dirt, eyes wide and unblinking as the stranger advances, fingers curled half into fists, blood dripping from the tips as…something pokes through the gauze wrappings.

Gripping Eli by the throat, just as the vampire had done to him, the stranger pulls back clawed fingers, ready to decapitate the assailant with deadly sharp, blood-slick nails.

Eli rasps something. The stranger freezes.

They stay locked in that instant, Oskar watching, the stranger and Eli utterly absorbed in one another’s eyes. Eli’s eyes shrink, pale and milky at the edges once more, and his head sinks with his shoulders until he is slumped, held up only by the grip of the stranger.

Somewhere, a coyote yowls and is greeted in turn by a chorus that grows and grows until all the world is a symphony.