This story is based within the world and upon the characters created by the imaginative minds of those at DC Comics and I have no legal claim to them. I also do not claim rights to the poetry used to inspire each chapter.
The original characters in this work were however created by me and I do claim the rights to them.
Any similarities to names and descriptions of places or people alive or dead is purely coincidental.
Haley Mitchell
Goddess
Prequel:
Awakening:
Part One
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
Gotham City, a lifetime ago…
It was a summer day but it was raining, a dismal day. The steady downpour seemed to wash away the color and the world turned grey. She leaned against the glass of the large living-room window in the small house, head tilted down, resting against the cool surface of the windowpane. Her breath fogged the glass and clouded the child's face, but she could still see, she could see everything...
She gazed past her quiet neighborhood, with it's green lawns, picket fences and colorful flowerbeds: Colorless now, as if the life was being drained away with the rain and flowed unhindered into the gutters. Her eyes swept past all that because the only thing that mattered at that moment was the house across the street.
On the surface she seemed normal, like every other child her age; perhaps six or seven years old. She wore blue denim overalls over a pink T-shirt. She had a mop of dark curly hair pulled into two pig-tails just behind her tiny ears. Her large almond eyes, hazel usually but grey today, stared out the window.
The dolls that she had been playing with were left on the living-room floor. Her game had been forgotten when a benign fantasy had given way to an unnatural reality. A terrible feeling of dread overcame her and as if in a trance she had walked to the window and began her silent vigil. Unblinking, never wavering, she could see everything and she wasn't normal.
With her grey eyes she watched the house across the street. She knew who lived there, a kind elderly couple with raspberry bushes in their back yard. On brighter days they would give the girl a small basket to collect those berries and smiling they left her to play in their yard. It was one of the few places in the world she was allowed to go on her own: Trees that begged climbing, sheds to explore, nooks and crannies to hide in, all the tools the girl needed to create her own little world of wonder and exploration. A world apart and all her own but now the world turned grey and those days would never come again. Her young mind knew this as she watched the house.
The girl wasn't like other children. She had what some called a gift, an ability that made her different and she hated it. The difference isolated her, forced her into a life of seclusion because she knew things about other people, things she shouldn't be able to know.
Her young mind was a beacon, a magnet for the emotions of those around her. She was an island surrounded by waves of sensation: A relentless and unyielding sea that surrounded her, pummelled her young mind from all sides. Before she understood them, before she had begun to learn how to separate them from her 'self', they would envelop her, overpower her, control her. They would leave her in a state of absolute confusion because all the feelings she was experiencing, all that emotional bombardment had no point of reference for her. What she felt in her mind were emotions that were not her own. They were those of every mind around her. They would bring her to tears of utter sadness, uncontrollable fits of giggling, or to lash out in a violent rage and a myriad of other reactions, sometimes one by one and too often, many at once. When it subsided it left the child gasping and exhausted.
It did not take long for the girl's parents to realize their child needed help, specialized help. Thus she was no stranger to labs where men in white coats looked at her with obsessive curiosity and a fear they took great pains not to show on their faces. They wired her to machines that scanned her brain as they tested the limits of her abilities: They tested the range, scope and her control of her talent. And they drugged her, perhaps trying to find a way in which to control her, all those things they did and they never really helped her. Much of her young life was spent in such places.
From them the girl learned many new words like thought-transference, neuroimaging, psychological symbiosis, anomalous cognition and meta-human but the words they mostly used in her presence was 'gift' or 'talent'. She didn't think of it that way; to her it was an obstacle that forced her into a life of chaos and confusion, to her parents it was a burden one so young should not have to carry alone and they did their best to help their child cope with her… gift.
She didn't know how it came to be but finally she was allowed to leave the labs and the doctors. She knew her parents had something to do with it but there was more to it that they were not telling her, and she didn't fully understand why they had had to leave everything behind and move away.
All she did know was that all those tests and experiments and the drugs they gave her made her condition worse. She found it harder and harder to concentrate on anything. Even her own mother whose bond with the girl was the strongest would become drowned out by all the others. At no time or place would they relent, she was bombarded constantly by the emotions of every soul around her. It was a terrible internal battle the little girl fought endlessly and it was a battle she was losing.
The family moved around for months trying to find a haven for the child, somewhere, anywhere where she could find some peace but when they drove across the bridge into Gotham City she instantly hated it. She could feel an undercurrent of fear pulse beneath this city's surface. It prickled at her mind like a thousand tiny needles. There was a sense of dread here that she could not describe. As if something terrible was about to happen; Gotham City was a city of fear. But like every darkened tunnel there was light, and here amidst the waves of unease there was an oasis where she found a modicum of safety.
When her distraught parents first brought her to them deep in the heart of Gotham's Chinatown she was like a frightened bird, wide eyed and constantly cringing from shadows only she could see and hear. She would pummel her own head with her tiny fists trying to make the shadowy voices go away but they never did. She ate little and rarely slept. She was thin and gaunt and her eyes were haunted. She was wasting away.
She never did find out how her parents found them, or knew that they would be the only hope that could save her from the daily torture her 'talent' put her through. They were Senji and Misheru, an elderly Japanese couple and together they saved the young girl's life.
They were tireless in their dedication in helping the child and worked with her for weeks through focused techniques in meditation until finally the girl learned to dampen her ability and on some levels, control it. She learned to push it back, to not allow it to dominate so they were nothing more than what the girl described as 'feather touches' against her mind. She had to learn to keep her 'self' separate from the minds that surrounded her every waking moment.
After months of constant moving the small family settled in Gotham so that she could be close to Senji and Misheru and their daily lessons. The old Japanese couple became family to the child, they became Sobu and Sofu: Grandmother and Grandfather. And when the girl and her parents moved into this small house on the edge of Gotham she finally felt that she was home. She was happier now than she could ever remember being before. She felt safe here, the world was a dangerous and chaotic place and here in this quiet neighborhood, armed with her new-found control she was safely isolated behind walls both external and internal.
On this dismal day however, her carefully constructed walls crumbled under the weight of a mind so different from what she had ever experienced before. Today her mind was touched; not by the fleeting brush of a feather, but by the brutally slow kiss of a razor's edge.
The child had no defences against it, she had never came into contact with a mind such as this. It was alien to her, like the surface of a dead world floating in space. Barren, lifeless and full of hard jagged rocks that threatened violent injury at every turn. That alien mind was inside the house across the street… Inside with that kind and gentle couple. She felt them too, blissfully unaware of the danger they were in.
That sinister presence stunned the child, overwhelmed her into a dazed immobility. She couldn't move or cry out so she did the only thing left to her. She tried to reach them mentally. The only person in the world she had ever contacted directly that way was her mother. She concentrated on them, focused her thoughts, sent them a warning: GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! She felt a rise of apprehension from them, but they didn't leave. She gathered her will to send another warning but that dark presence interfered, like an oily slick that polluted clear water. She had opened her mind but was pulled into to a darkness that threatened to drown her.
She had made a connection with a corrupted mind. Saturated with a darkness that went deeper than she had thought possible. With growing horror she could feel a cold hunger at the heart of it's misshapen brain. She felt it's bloodlust rise, it's eager anticipation of it's intended atrocities. Frightened, she tried to pull her mind back but that darkness held her immobile. She felt dazed and sickened, held prisoner by that disfigured mind. Gasping, she could do nothing but watch the house through the rain and feel a rising sense of dread as that dark and twisted alien mind stalked the gentle, unknowing couple in their own home.
She wanted to warn them, she wanted to stop it but she couldn't move. She was stunned, enthralled, imprisoned. Like a scared rabbit, in the presence of a hunting predator she stood immobile. She could only watch the house across the street and cry out a voiceless warning as she struggled against the horror of so ruthless a mind. Later she would come to learn a word that described what she was experiencing on that grey rainy day… Evil. Today she saw evil and evil saw her.
It was only for a second, a moment suspended in time. There was movement in the house across the street; it began as a blur of white across the large front window, a phantom, a malevolent spirit glided into her view, then it paused and turned. It wasn't a ghost, it lived and breathed, but that didn't make it human. It was a man but the girl did not recognize it as such for she saw not only it's body but it's mind; and if it had any humanity left it was buried far beyond reach. It was a dark and twisted mind, remorseless, emotionally impotent but full of a deadly single-minded purpose. When it stopped at the window it turned to gaze out across the drenched street. It's eyes met the girl's and it seemed to hold her for that terribly long moment as firmly as if it held her by the throat, then it smiled. She couldn't cry out , she couldn't breathe, she could only gaze back at that evil smile with it's even white teeth and dark empty eyes. Silently, she did scream as it looked away with that unholy grin, focused now on what it came there to do.
She could not see what came next but she could feel it, and that was far worse. Terror so powerful it shook her from her immobility and brutality so violent she reeled away from the window and fell over her forgotten dolls in her attempt to escape from it. Finally free from that mental prison, she began to cry as she crawled away from the window, away from that once welcoming house that now loomed so large and threatening in her window. She felt every emotion that emanated from those inside. That sweet elderly couple who gave her lemonade and cookies when she went there to visit were now made to suffer an ordeal much worse than simple death. Dazed she could only lay on the floor, her cries became screams of agony as each new wave of horrid emotion engulfed her. She felt their pain, hot and piercing and her small body doubled over with their anguish, her tiny heart pounded in her chest with their panic and her own. Though, beneath all that terror her little girl mind felt something else, something she didn't fully understand, was incapable of understanding but even more frightening… she felt that twisted mind, and she felt it's joy.
It revelled in It's cruelty, It was powerful, It was invincible. It fed off the horror in It's victim's eyes like a ravening animal. Every injury It inflicted caused It to quiver in sadistic glee. It rejoiced in their agony and their terror, the very terror that sent the little girl into a shrieking unmitigated panic.
A world away in the kitchen of the little girl's small home a young woman called to her daughter as she washed the breakfast dishes. She was tall and slender and moved with the grace of a dancer. Her long honey-blond hair was tied back but a few strands came loose and fell across her flawless face. Her demure beauty looked out of place in the kitchen of the small house in a quiet and isolated neighborhood. She absently tucked the stray lock behind her ear and called to her daughter again but her voice faltered and the soapy dish she was holding fell to the floor and shattered. The young mother ran out of the kitchen knowing something was horribly wrong even before she heard her daughter's cries.
Mother and child shared more than a body during pregnancy, much more, they shared their minds. While the child sensed the emotions of everyone around her, her mother could feel only the emotions of her child, and at this moment her child was more than frightened, she was frantic. It took only moments for the mother to understand the focus of what had sent her daughter into such a panic; the house across the street. She tried to calm the child the only way she knew how, the same way she had calmed her when she had these emotional episodes before. The woman took her daughter's head between her hands and forced the child to look into her eyes and soothed her not with words but with thoughts.
" I'm here baby, I'm here. You must be calm now. Show me what is happening, be calm and show me.''
The child's wild cries lessened to great choking sobs as she tried desperately to concentrate. Vague images assaulted the woman's mind, a kaleidoscope of pain and fear and malevolence. The images started to coalesce into a story the woman could understand, then abruptly the images stopped, replaced by something else, something far more horrifying…A great shrieking wail assaulted the woman's mind as her child cried out in a tortured agonizing scream. The woman cried out herself then she was thrust from her daughter's mind. The child squirmed and cried in her arms, the woman tried to re-establish the connection but to her horror all she felt was…
Emptiness. The child went limp in her arms, her tear-streaked face went slack, her grey eyes stared sightlessly. She gently shook the child in her arms, called her name with her outer voice as well as her inner one. The girl did not respond and the mother felt the child in her arms grow colder. The woman cried out her child's name again with fear and dread and strove to re-connect the bond she had with her daughter since she first felt her move inside her, but she just wasn't there. The woman was stunned, she had suddenly lost something she'd had for so long that its absence left a gaping hole in her world, it was like she had spontaneously lost her hearing, or sense of touch. Anxiously the woman checked the child's pulse, listened for her heartbeat and breathed a sigh of relief, it was slow but still there, then she reached for the phone.
The child was closer to death than her mother realized. The girl's mind was suddenly torn from her body by a violent wind. Spinning, whirling and shrieking with the voices of countless lost souls. The noise was deafening, she could neither hear her mother crying out her name, nor feel her comforting presence within her mind. If her world was turning grey before, now it was fading to complete darkness. She was being drawn into a great black vortex. It beckoned to her, a promise of peace beyond the shrieking veil and she was drawn to it.
She could feel two souls with her, felt them released from their bodily prison, free from pain and anguish. But in that moment of release the child felt a storm of sensation. Every memory the murdered couple ever had and every emotion those memories stirred assaulted the girl's mind. In the blink of an eye she experienced everything that had ever happened in their lives; every joy and every sorrow, every turning point and every regret of their long, long lives. The child relived it all with them including their shocking and brutal demise. In that moment of their deaths the child knew them as they knew themselves; every aspect of their being was thrust at the child's mind, an explosion of emotion. To the dying couple it was a catharsis, a liberation of their lives before they could move on, to the child it was a storm of emotion and memory that battered the girl with such rapid intensity she felt her mind in danger of being torn apart. Her body, lying on the floor before her mother began to convulse as every neuron in her young brain fired up with the chaotic emotional activity.
The woman was almost as frantic as the girl had been. On her knees beside the child in the throes of a violent seizure, the woman's voice betrayed her panic as she cried into the phone to the emergency operator trying to explain the crisis that was happening without knowing herself the nature of the events unfolding. All she knew was that something terrible was happening in the house across the street, something so frightening that it caused her sensitive child to first lapse into unconsciousness and now convulse in a dreadful seizure. The woman held her daughter so that she wouldn't hurt herself as the great spasms rocked and jolted the girl's small body. Somehow the woman still held the phone in her hand and she looked up, searching her troubled mind for the right words to explain to the operator that she urgently needed help and why, then she saw it. A spectre moving past the window of the house across the street, not white, not anymore; now it was soaked in crimson.
Engulfed within the storm in her mind the child could still feel them, the tortured couple. She felt them moving toward the vortex, their liberation from this world almost complete. They progressed through the veil with enormous relief but scarred by the fashion of their passing. The mental barrage abated as they passed through the great and terrible portal and the girl's mind quieted. Now she could feel it again, the pull of the vast inky black vortex and it was much stronger. The dark spinning maelstrom grew larger as it enveloped the souls that had just expired as if it had gained power from them. The pull the little girl felt grew even more compelling. Curiously she wasn't afraid but she knew in her heart that this was death.
It was familiar somehow, this great spinning vortex, like something the girl had experienced before, perhaps in a dream. She felt almost elated after the turmoil of the last few moments, she was free of chaotic emotion, her mind was clear amidst the howling wind. She was alone and not, at the same time, like most of her young life. She had always yearned to be alone, solitary in thought without the interference of others. Emotions all her own, and no one else. She had learned to build walls around her 'self' for protection, she lived in isolation, surrounded only by the familiar. Alone and not. Now she had finally felt it: Oneness, her sense of self, uncluttered, she had never before experienced such clarity, such joy. Yet there were others near, like whispers in the dark, barely heard under the screaming wind. She could sense them, but it wasn't the same; they didn't intrude on her mind, they didn't interfere with her own emotions. She felt them but she retained her own sense of 'self'. They were moved by the current of the wind, and she moved with them, toward the center of the vast blackness that was the portal, the twisting vortex. Quickly at first, she wanted to go, oh so desperately she wanted to lose herself inside, become one with the innumerable voices. But her progress slowed. She was hindered and she couldn't understand why.
The woman blinked and the image in the window of the house across the street was gone. The child's fit had subsided, and still holding the unconscious girl the woman rose and stepped closer to the window. The phone in her hand forgotten, she peered at the house through the grey rainy haze. She had begun to wonder if she had seen anything at all until she saw the front door of the house across the street open. She gasped when she saw it; a man-shaped thing standing in her neighbor's doorway. It wore a white jumpsuit that was stained with an appalling splatter of deep crimson that no amount of rain could wash away. In it's left hand it held something; she couldn't tell exactly what but she could guess. It dripped great wet drops of scarlet that mingled pinkish with the steady downpour. When her eyes reached it's face she felt a chill that shook her to the very core of her being and like her daughter before, she stood frozen. It was a maniacal face, twisted into a frenzied grin, all blood spattered and panting. The woman was locked by the implications of that cold and demented face, of the putrid mind behind it. Of what it did that drove her daughter into unconsciousness, what it was capable of, and what it intended to do now. It stood there for a time, it's head tilted as if pondering it's next actions. It's smile grew suddenly wider as it's eyes locked onto a new target inside a small house across the street. It took a step forward, then another, and another, it's grotesque smile growing broader with each step as it approached the woman's home.
The dark churning maelstrom was fading, the child could feel it. She could taste the harmony that she knew existed beyond and she wanted it to take her there but something was holding her back. She sensed something anchoring her to this world of pain and sorrow, of fear but also of hope and love and family. An invisible bond, as fragile as her flesh but as strong as her soul… life. The little girl still lived. Then all at once she realized, this screaming, swirling vortex did not come for her. It beckoned yes, but not to her, to the others and they were gone, it had what it came for. She could not know what it held for her; would she be forever lost in a void? a limbo between this world and the next? Her young mind could barely fathom such a place yet she became afraid. She was not ready. Instinctively she could not let the purpose of her life be denied because she was drawn into a portal that was not meant for her. Consciously, all the little girl knew was… she wanted to live.
The woman screamed into the phone, pleading for help as she watched the bloody apparition stalking toward her and her unconscious daughter. Still holding the child, she dropped the phone and ran, fearing help would come too late. Protecting her defenceless child was the only thing in her mind and she fervently tried to mentally revive her daughter as she retreated from the monster that approached but the child was still not responding. The woman ran into the bedroom and quickly laid her child on the bed then hurried to the closet where her husband kept his gun. She didn't like guns, but her husband had insisted she know how to use one. It was necessary, he'd said and finally she had agreed. Now more than ever she was grateful for his persistence. The woman frantically pulled boxes and items off the shelf of her closet looking for the one that contained her only hope of protecting her daughter. She silently cursed herself for not keeping the weapon where she could find it more readily when she suddenly jumped at an ominous noise… Somewhere in the house she heard the sound of breaking glass.
The girl was still surrounded in darkness but the maelstrom, the wind, the noise, it was all gone now and the child felt a pull in a different direction. Like coming home after a long absence her mind and body reunited with relief but also regret. The freedom, that sense of 'oneness' was gone. All the emotion she had kept at bay once more came flooding in and the most prominent was her mother's fear and anxiety. Slightly more distant but much more alarming she felt another presence; twisted and malevolent, and It was coming closer.
The girl opened her eyes and sat up. She felt exhausted, the emotional turmoil and the seizure affected both mind and body. All she wanted to do was curl up and cry herself to sleep but her mother's fear spurred her into action. She angrily wiped the tears from her face with a resolution that far surpassed her age. The child tentatively reached out to that thing, that creature that stalked them. It was close, she could feel it, a putrid stinking presence now in her own home.
The woman looked up and saw her daughter awake. The child could see the relief in her mother's eyes, feel her anxiety. Fear, both her mother's and her own, mingled and was so strong she could almost taste it, a coppery bile at the back of her throat. She felt sick with it. Mother and child didn't need to speak to convey the deadly situation they had found themselves in, they both understood the danger. Silently the woman turned her attention back to the box of ammunition for the gun she found and with shaking fingers was trying to open it and load what she thought was her only hope in protecting her child and herself. Wordlessly the child put her mother's urgent thought of flight aside, crawled off the bed and purposefully walked to the bedroom door. Bullets scattered across the carpeted floor when the frantic woman dropped the box to reach for her daughter, but the child calmly walked out of the room.
The girl walked down the hall toward the living-room, where it all started. She could see her dolls where she left them in front of the large window, a lifetime ago. Then she saw a shadow darken the brightly clad dolls. At the end of the hallway she stepped into the living-room and came face to face with It. The child's mind calmly took in everything. It's wet footprints that tracked from the front doorway, the broken glass from the window in the door. It stood where she had when she first sensed it's malevolence, looking out the large window at the house across the street. It turned toward her and smiled.
Grey light from the window illuminated the scene before her and she focused her attention on It. It was tall, she thought, taller than her father. It's soaked white jumpsuit almost completely covered in bright red. In it's left hand it held it's weapon; a foldable long bladed straight-razor, the kind men used to shave with on those old T.V. shows she'd seen. The blade, washed clean by the rain shined in the grey light. The gloved hand that held it was rinsed of blood as well, but not entirely clean. Those hands would never be clean… she could see the tell-tale redness, sticky between it's fingers and where the razor's handle rested in it's palm. Pink drops oozed and fell to the floor. In it's other hand it held one of her dolls. It's brightly colored dress stained now by the blood the rain failed to cleanse. The doll hung limply from the claw-like hand that clenched it, as if this creature's bloody touch had killed it.
Slowly she looked up at it , searching for something in it's features that showed it's malevolence: Short brown hair, soaked from the downpour trickled slow rivulets of water down it's face. But that too could not completely wash the blood spatter across the tanned skin that covered it's skull. She studied it's face, trying to detect any outward signs of the repulsive mind behind it; a tall forehead over a narrow nose, wide cheek bones and under that a thin lipped mouth; a mouth that showed starkly white teeth in a leering grin as it looked down at the small child.
She gazed up into it's eyes. Soulless, dark, mud-brown eyes, but they shined almost as much as the blade it carried. She could feel it's anticipation, she had felt it before and she knew what was coming. It said something to her then, an inquiry about why she didn't seem to be afraid but the question barely registered and she didn't answer it. She felt her mother behind her frantically trying to reach her, to warn her to get away from It, but the girl, for the first time in her life, purposely blocked her mother from her mind. She could not allow her mother to follow where she intended to go; her mother could not understand and wouldn't be able help anyway. With her mother's silent pleas muffled and only a faint rumble of distant emotions like thunder from far away, all safely behind her mental barrier, the child could focus all her attention on the creature that towered above her.
Still loading bullets into the clip of her husband's handgun with shaking hands the woman rushed out into the hallway after her child. In the living-room she found them, face to face. Her young daughter and the malevolent stranger. It looked down at the defenceless child, the hand holding the straight-razor rising, preparing to strike. The woman frantically threw a thought at the child to move, to get away so she could shoot but to her horror the child blocked her out and the stranger sank to it's knees before the girl. The woman could not fire the weapon for fear of hitting her daughter. Panic-stricken the woman could only hold the gun before her with shaking hands and hope for a clear shot.
The girl was afraid but she buried it, a calmer and colder 'self' prevailed now. Instinctively the child detached her own emotions and those of her mother behind her, she had to or she would have been repulsed by this diseased mind, the fear and repugnance of it would overpower her as it had before. Fear was what It wanted to see in her face and that was the last thing she would show It. There was something inside this little girl, something different, a sense of determination, a sense of purpose, a strength she did not realize she had. She couldn't let anything stop what she felt she had to do, not only to save her own life, and her mother's but anyone else this creature would stalk in it's future. What she was about to do she did because she sensed deep with in her very soul that it was the right thing to do.
The child's eyes locked with it, but she held It immobile this time, as she delved deep into it's diseased mind. All the hideous aspects of this creature's intent were still there, like before. It's mind was devoid of empathy, it was a pitiless, emotionless cavity that it had to fill with the anguish of others in order to feel something, anything and It was elated by the prospect of more bloodshed. It was with this twisted and broken mind that the child strove to bind with. It was not telepathy, no direct thoughts, that's not how her ability worked, at least not with anyone besides her own mother. It was an empathic gift or curse, and dealt only with feelings and emotions. What the child sought was the tentative bond she had inadvertently formed with this monster when she first sensed it. She focused all her will on it and it grew stronger.
It was on it's knees before her now, they were eye to eye. "What are you doing!" would be the last coherent sentence it would ever speak and it went unanswered. The child, with an incalculable amount of concentration searched deep inside the mind of the monster and located that emptiness she sensed before, that emotionless hole she discovered went all the way back to it's earliest childhood. She found the place where it's compassion, it's humanity expired so long ago. She saw how it died and it wasn't sudden, it was a long cruel, painful death. It was not a monster in the beginning, it was just a child, like her. A boy that was taught how to become a monster, a silent witness to years of brutality. For a fleeting moment she pitied that lost boy as she waded though the emotional wreckage that was the birth place of this fiend. She felt his fear in the beginning, the torment and his inability to prevent the horror that surrounded him. How he struggled to survive his hostile and insane world.
She saw how the monster was born, she saw how he embraced the madness and became one with it. And with that acceptance of evil the darkness inside grew, that emptiness grew until nothing else remained. Love and compassion were alien concepts, never in his life did he remember experiencing them. There was no reaching this creature now through sympathy or mercy, it lost the capacity for such things long ago. Pain, fear, cruelty, these were the things it understood now, it fed off them.
Although it was a twisted and evil mind it was still only a mundane human mind, bereft of gifts like hers and that was the child's only weapon. She would not remember how exactly she did it, or even how it occurred to her that she could. Perhaps it was the inky black maelstrom and the power only those in death witness, but she had seen it, returned from it and brought something of it back with her. Perhaps it was the dire need to rid the world of the enormous sense of wrongness that surrounded this creature. Perhaps it was just the child herself and a natural progression of the ability she had. She loved that old couple that this monster just ruthlessly murdered, and she loved her mother and would not let it hurt her and she had a purpose, all life did and she would not let this creature, take it, not now, not ever.
In her mind she summoned up the memories of the vortex, the wailing shrieking wind and the death of the couple she experienced. She gathered up all the pain and agony, all the fear and panic she and the murdered couple shared. All that emotion, still so poignant and fresh in her mind, almost overwhelmed her again. Tears fell from her eyes as she considered how appalling what she was about to do really was, but her concentration and determination never wavered as she found that boy deep inside the monster. That boy with the darkened soul, innocent and not. She subdued the surge of pity she felt rise momentarily and ruthlessly, like a spear she thrust all that emotion at the deepest part of the broken mind of the killer before her. The shrieking wind again assaulted her mind as well as the twisted one she had bonded with and with it the tortured death throes of the people this monster had just killed. Wave after wave of raw, grating, shredded, agonized emotion. The child was ruthless as she slashed and ravaged it's mind. If pain and fear was all it truly understood then that was what she gave it. Relentlessly she flung all the pain, all the anguish it had inflicted back at it. The psychopath dropped it's only weapon and the doll as it's hands instinctively moved to protect it's broken, breaking brain, as if the flesh of it's hands could somehow shield it from the mental barrage. The wailing wind in their minds was joined by the shrieking voice of a tortured killer.
The girl's mother stared incredulous at the scene before her. The gun, useless in her shaking hands, lowered as she watched the blood soaked maniac drop his weapon to hold his head and scream in terrible agony. Shielded from her daughter's mind the woman could not guess the terrible and awesome power her daughter had suddenly unleashed. As she approached she looked at her daughter with new and almost fearful eyes. Tears streaked the child's face, but she was not crying, there was a sadness in her eyes, but a determined resolve also. The woman tried to get a sense of what was happening but her gentle mental probe only confused her. She felt a heaviness, like a weight that strove to push her down, like the killer, to her knees and a muted sense of unfettered misery, like the memory of a deep and profound sorrow. Whatever the child was doing it was intense and while she was doing it she was also able to shield her mother from it. A flicker of fear touched the woman, not of the screaming killer, but of her own daughter.
The child's mental assault was brutal, unrelenting and even cruel. The boy that was, would never be again. Deep in it's psyche she realized all there was left was the monster. The young tortured soul was merely a shadow, an echo of what never was, but it was enough. She used it mercilessly as a target for her brutal attack. She used the torment the boy that was had experienced so long ago and intensified it. Used the sense of helplessness he once felt, the internal torture he lived through and would turn outward against the world. She turned it back on itself. She had to believe there would be no rehabilitation for this twisted soul, that there would be no returning from the darkness. She had to believe that because if she relented, even for a second, her attack would fail and it would rise to kill again. She knew she could not allow this creature it's freedom. She forced him and herself to relive the brutality of the deaths he had caused, and she grew angry.
She used that anger. Sweat beaded her face, mingled with her tears and she gritted her teeth with the tremendous effort as she focused her attack and intensified the onslaught. Never again would it to hunt and kill to feed it's hunger for blood. Never again would it stalk through the world looking for new victims. Never again would it's mind be free to think and act on it's dark desires. Never again, the little girl thought, will it hurt anyone!
With an agonized shriek the killer fell backward onto the carpet writhing in spasms of torment. Like herself only a few minutes before, he twisted and shuddered as his brain was overloaded with all the emotional turmoil she threw at it. He might have begged for mercy, if his mind was able to convey the thought into words, but it was in no condition to do so.
And the girl continued her barrage.
She stripped the monster naked, tore it's power from it. The fearsome predator was gone, replaced by a quivering, insane collection of flesh and bone and misery.
And still the girl continued the barrage.
He tried to crawl away from his tormentor. Tears and spittle and blood that was not his own smeared the carpet as he clawed and struggled in his desperation.
And still she continued her barrage.
Drooling and whimpering he lay on the floor, fetal amidst colorful scattered dolls.
And still she continued the barrage.
His mind in tatters, he lay there panting and sobbing. His brain barely able to function enough to keep his body breathing.
And still she continued the barrage.
She stood over the twitching form of the former killer and sustained the attack until consciousness fled them both. Then, like the monster that was, she sank to the floor and let the darkness take her.
She awoke hearing voices and sirens. Her eyes saw red and blue flashing lights through the window, stark and too bright against the grey. She felt like she was seeing the world through a haze, not really a part of it, an outsider looking in at a dismal unreality. She was cradled in her mother's arms. A policeman knelt beside them and was gently coaxing the gun from her mothers hand. She looked around the living-room of her small house and saw it was filled with policemen all pointing their guns pointlessly at the unconscious psychopath on the floor. They put handcuffs on the limp form and rolled it over. Some of them gasped at the blood on it's clothes and looked for a wound. They didn't find one.
The woman pointed to the house across the street and several policemen left to investigate. As her mother spoke to the police the child glanced out of the window as the policemen crossed the soaked street and disappeared into the house beyond. Two reappeared seconds later. Ashen faced, one doubled over and retched into a flower bed, the other rushed back to his colleagues to report a grisly crime.
When the ambulances arrived they finally hauled the blood drenched killer out of her house, twitching and jabbering incoherently. He would always be here, the child thought. His taint and her own would always be here, in her house, in her memory. The evil he did and the evil she did to stop it would always haunt her. Still held by her mother the child pondered these murky thoughts as she watched the police work. Cameras flashing, recording the scene, they walked through her home and with gloved hands they picked up the razor from the floor and put it into a clear bag. They did the same with her doll. Her blood soaked doll, another casualty of a severed innocence. The child wanted to cry then, but the tears wouldn't come. She was drained, like the world, all grey and colorless, and empty. Her child's mind wanted her doll back, clean and new but she knew that could never be. The blood on it would never wash away, it seeped deep inside, a darkness had stained it forever. She sorrowed for the loss.
They led her and her mother outside to a waiting police car. Suddenly her father was there. "Daddy!" She cried, and the tears finally came as she saw the concern on his face. He took her in his arms and hugged her and his wife fiercely. The little family stood in the rain and embraced each other, drew strength from each other and cried in relief.
Then she saw, over her father's shoulder, as they carried out the dead from the house across the street. White sheets covered them. An obscene redness soaking through. They were people she cared about, reduced to blood soaked sheets. People she knew as profoundly as if she lived with them all their long lives only because she shared in their deaths. The reality of the events of that day came crashing in on her then as she watched them roll out the bodies of that gentle couple. She cried harder and her father tried to shield her from the sight, but it was too late. It was burned into her memory just as their lives were. Just as their deaths were. The same death she used as a weapon against their killer. That act too was seared into her memory. The brutality of it, the unrelenting cruelty she didn't know she was capable of. Her tears were unstoppable now. She cried for the sweet gentle couple, so full of love. She cried in relief that she and her mother survived, and she cried for the loss of something in herself that was irretrievable: A child's innocence.
To be continued...