Monochrome Chapter 13: Love
I can't breathe. Oh God, I can't breathe.
The icy water is in my lungs, my throat, my nose. I can't fucking breathe. My chest hurts; my head is a blinding ball of pain. I'm flailing, kicking up, but my foots caught in something. I open my mouth to scream, sending bubbles up. I look down, and I draw a mind numbing blank.
My foot is caught in someone's ribs.
Her skull is level with my head; I'm staring right into her pitch black sockets. The locket shines dully in the murky water, right between her clavicles. Her hair is the color of rust. With a swift jerk, I break free. Her rib snaps and I push upward; I gasp as my head breaks the water, hacking and coughing. I pull myself up to lay beside the pond, resting in the soft grass. Well, I found Anna and Teller. Jonah never mentioned their fates in his journal; he hadn't known they had been murdered. This explains why Anna never came for him. But who in the hell would have murdered them? The sun beats down on me, slow and burning. What the hell had happened? One minute, it's a clear summer day; the next I fall into an ice covered pond.
Wait…..did I really fall? I didn't trip, I just remember seeing a flash of something, and pressure on my chest as I fell back. Almost as if someone had pushed me. But who? I groan loudly in frustration and haul myself up, sopping wet and not amused. If I squint really hard into the murky depths of the pond, I can just barely make out the glitter of Anna's locket. I know that necklace is important; Jonah mentions it a lot in the journal. But I didn't expect Anna to still be wearing it. Dammit, I need that locket. Gingerly, I slip my hand into the water. Immediately I feel her hair wrap around my hand. I try not to gag as I pull her up by her sockets. She's wearing a green velvet dress, and her hair is still intact. The locket shines in the afternoon sun. I slide it over her skull, and stare solemnly at her face. This was the girl Jonah loved. They were going to run away together. They were two oddities, rare and strange, and they loved each other all the more for it. Now she's just waterlogged bones, an eaten through dress and hair like straw. Her sockets are dark and bottomless. If I remember correctly, she has black eyes. Her hair has lost its copper luster.
"When we found Jonah's body, he was nothing but ash and a few bone fragments. His pretty blue eyes got burned up. Did you know that? He died in a fire, burned alive in a furnace. His ghost was a burned corpse. I don't think he knows you were murdered, that you drowned. He really loved you."
Oh God, now I'm talking to corpses. Well I talk to Jonah all the time, what's the difference? I let her body sink back down to the bottom of the pond, to lie in its mud tomb. The locket seems strangely warm in my hand. This is the first time I've ever actually seen it. Even over decades underwater, it still smells of sage and coffee. For some reason, my head hurts. The sun is too bright, it's too hot. My knees give out and I crash to the muddy bank. The grass is soft against my cheek as my eyes fall shut. There's a hand on my shoulder and hair on my face. Her voice sounds like wind chimes.
"Why are you crying?"
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Dahlia stares with blank eyes at the small box in front of her. Her eyes are burning, toxic, electric green. They are wired but yet seem to not see anything. Her small frame rocks back and forth, shivering and distraught at the scene she is witnessing.
The old man groans, the sound is rich and dark like chocolate. He tugs his greying hair and pushes his coke-bottle glasses further up his nose. He has a headache from all the screaming, the insane ramblings of the deranged. He rises from his chair and stalks to the kitchen, throwing open the hutch. He growls and bangs his fist on the wood hard. All the vodka's gone; it explains why he seems more desperate than usual. The gaunt figure of the man ascends the stars, slow and calm. The pleading cries and laughter grows louder as he approaches.
"What are you?! Leave me ALONE! All of you just leave!"
The voice descends into sob; this is the moment the man opens the door. The boy sits in the middle of the floor, curled in a ball and wailing like a damn siren. His room is a mess; sitting next to him is an empty bottle, a half empty one in his hand. His black hair sticks up and his neon eyes are crazed, thick with desperation, alcohol, and pure terror. He turns to face the man and wails.
"Make them go away! Make them go AWAY!"
The last part is screamed; the boy takes another huge gulp from the bottle before chucking it at a wall. He's aiming at things only he can see. Ghosts, spirits, demons. You name it, they're here. They are drawn to the wonderfully pure, tragically fragile medium. The boy cries as the shattering glass does little but cut him; his tormentors are still there. His tears make soft plinking sounds on the wood floor.
"When did you start drinking, son?"
The boy lets loose a shrill, reedy laugh; it's terribly high and sends shivers through the old man's frame.
"That was my first ever. You seem so fucking dependent on it I thought maybe it'd help. Instead it just made shit blurry and made it harder to fight back."
Suddenly he screams, and I see two hand impressions on his shoulders. The ghosts are touching him, and the shards of his sanity litter the floor. His screams grow louder as the man draws closer; suddenly he pulls the tiny boy into his chest. He's too far gone to hear the snap of a glove, or the tink sound of the syringe. He gives a soft, low cry as he needle pierces his skin; he hums tunelessly and his head tilts back as the plunger does its job. He lets out a long breath and a small cooing noise as the drug reaches full effect. A breathtaking smile lights up his face as he opens his mouth to speak. His voice is a croak, the words slurred.
"Oh, God."
The old man chuckles softly and caresses the boy's face, pushing his bangs aside to kiss his forehead.
"Oh my dear boy, God isn't here. At least, not for you."
The box falls to the floor from numb hands; the teen gets up and trudges up the stairs. She goes into the bathroom; her knees hit the blinding tile as she kneels. She dry heaves; over, and over, and over. Five, six, ten, twelve. The tracks in the inside of her elbows stand out like white cords; and for the first time in years, she hates herself. She had been so young, so naïve. The acrid taste lingers in her soul, burnt and burning. She had thought herself infinite, but then she had crashed. She's been clean for four years, but sometimes she misses it. She tries so hard to ignore the dark shadow standing over her, the chip on her shoulder. If it wasn't for her….
After all, a parent is God in the eyes of a child.
/\/\/\/\
Popescu
"Matt? Matt?"
"Matt, where are you?"
Me and the Campbell's are searching everywhere for him, it's been five hours and he hasn't come home. He's nowhere in the house, he's not at the library, store, park, or the bar. We are now back at the house, hopelessly pleading he's okay. There's a sudden rustle and he breaks free of the trees. He's soaking wet, face grim and pale. Something shiny dangles from his right hand. As he comes closer, he starts to talk.
"Reverend. Get Dr. August ready, along with all the equipment. Mom and Wendy, would you mind dredging up some of my old clothes for Jonah to wear? Remember, he is positively tiny. Dahlia, get together some of his favorite things and set up a temporary room, preferably in the bird room. Dad, make some coffee and food, it's going to be a long night."
I am the first to speak.
"Matt, what's going on?"
"I found what we're missing. His soul is in the house somewhere, and now we can find it. We are bringing him back tonight, Reverend."
/\/\/\/\
Everyone is working. August has set up the mortuary as the place he will be reincarnated. Jonah's body is hooked up to a heart monitor; his ashes have been placed nearby. Right now the poor doctor is praying.
Dahlia has set up Jonah's room with some of his possessions. The bed has been covered in his quilt, along with his stuffed cat. His favorite books and his journal rest on the table next to the bed. His violin rests on the chest at the foot of the bed, a few of his paintings on the wall.
Wendy and Sara have sifted through all of Matt's old clothes, his cancer clothes. They are smaller, but still much too big. They ended up settling on an old baggy sweatshirt and a pair of gym shorts, mindful of the many bruises littering the teen's body.
Matt is staring through the open window, clutching a cup of coffee and Jonah's handkerchief. The fabric is pressed to his face, and Matt's lips move silently. The locket is around his neck.
I myself am preparing to bring a soul back from the dead.
Everything is ready.
"Matt, we are ready."
He glances up briefly, and in his eyes I see the cancer ridden boy I took under my wing. He's changed so much in the past two years. The shadow of death had left him completely, but in him I see an emptiness that wasn't there when he had cancer. That emptiness is the absence of Jonah. Their souls were so irrevocably intertwined during his stay here that his absence leaves a tangible mark on Matt's soul.
"Matt, what are we doing? How is this going to work; do you know where his soul is?"
"Yes. I was waiting for everything to be ready, because once we get his spirit there's no time to waste. Follow me, I can feel him."
He turns to walk to the basement, his hand closed around the locket. It's glowing a faint blue, and gets a little brighter as he starts walking down the stairs. It's leading him right to him.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Matt
The locket throbs dully in my hand; it grows hotter as I near the bottom of the steps and floor of the mortuary. Most everyone is down here, including Dr. August and my dad. I walk further into the room, the locket growing more frantic. I go left, towards the mortuary, and the locket actually cools down. If his soul isn't there, where else would it be? I get flashes, vague ones, and turn to the small patch of wall by the stairs. The locket sears, and I let out a low hiss and drop it, my hand blistering. I walk over to the wall, the bricks are rough and broken under my hand, and the bricks here are a different color from the rest of the walls in the basement. A low, dull hum seems to run through them
With the slow, careful hesitance that comes with too much experience with illness, I press my ear to the old brick, and the goose bumps that shake my spine at the sound of his soft, wailing cries will haunt me forever.
The fabric of my soul shudders as I'm sent back to the past for the first time since we freed the house. The walls shake and groan, and my vision blurs as his cries get louder, Aickman plodding down the stairs cursing as the bundle in his grasp wiggles free and tumbles down to lay in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.
The old man heaves a loud sigh and a few choice words as the boy's body comes to rest in a jumbled heap at the bottom of the stairs.
"Dammit boy, that's what you get for wriggling around so much."
The boy gives a muffled groan in reply, and Aickman merely laughs and gathers him up from the dirty floor to carry him to the ashen door under the stairs. He flings it open, the door groaning anciently. The walls and floor are hard packed dirt, and its pitch black inside. There are no windows; the air is musty with dust and decay. In the middle of the tiny room a small, gilded cage hangs from the ceiling, a tiny door in the side secured with a heavy padlock. The boy fights weakly as he's pushed inside, the padlock clanging loud as it's locked, the key tucked back inside the old man's shirt. As he's walking away, his hand on the door, his boy makes a soft sound. The man turns to see his soft blue eyes, so much like his mothers, looking at him. He gives a tiny smile, his face black and blue.
"I love you daddy."
The old man gives an answering smile, identical to his sons.
"I love you too my boy."
It's only after the door shuts that Jonah lets go.
It's dark as hell and the boy is shaking. It's freezing in his dank prison, his loud gasps of fear echo through the small space. The spirits are everywhere; before him, beside him, inside him. His screams meld in to one, he can't tell the living from the dead anymore, and he thinks frantically:
"Am I dead? I should be. Am I? I don't know, they are. Or maybe… maybe they're the living ones, and I'm the only dead one."
He screams, breaking his fingers on the cold bars and crying loudly. He doesn't know how long he's been in there. It could have been an hour, a day, a year. The pain is a presence, the fear his God as he breaks over and over.
He doesn't even register the door opening.
The old man is silhouetted in pale yellow light, a blanket tossed over his shoulder and his glasses flashing white. He sighs at the state of the boy, blood drips slowly from the cage. The small white frame shakes terribly, his eyes wide open and staring into nothing. He's covered in self-inflicted bruises and scratches, and his fingers are tore from prying at the lock. He's bathed in filth.
"Now just look at you."
The boy flinches and whines like an animal, scrambling to cower in the cage as far from his father as possible. Those three days might as well have been three years. He shakes harder as the man approaches, the lock hitting the dirt floor with a dull thud. The man reaches for the boy, but the boy just cowers away, crying softly. The man heaves a sigh.
"Come now, don't you want out of here?"
The boy just stares at him, his eyes big and empty.
Aickman yanks him out of the cage, bundling his filthy body in the blanket. Jonah stares with a vacant gaze as they ascend the stairs, the living room all ready for the séance. An hour, a bowl of soup and a bath are all that lies between now and the séance. He wishes Anna will come. He doesn't know she died just two hours before, pushed in a pond and drowned after her guardian was bludgeoned to death on the floor of their house.
He doesn't truly realize that tonight he will burn, or that his soul already died in that tiny cage.
Matt is yanked back to the present by the harsh sound of brick breaking, staring at his dad in shock as he pounds away with the sledge hammer, the ancient door being unearthed. 3 minutes later the bricks are down and the door is open. The now rusty cage is dull and dead in the light filtering in from the basement, but the soul inside shines a brilliant blue, raw and blinding. It cries softly, and a pile of blue crystals lie under the cage. 60 decades worth of glass tears. His fingers are shattered and so is his humanity, this tiny shaking emotion in its pure state. This bundle of fear and anguish, of decay and empty promises is the fabric of Jonah's soul. It looks at them with eyes so full of power, everyone flinches. Its glass arm reaches through the bars of his cage, skinny and weak, broken. Matt gives the opaque hand, a small, gentle squeeze.
"You found me."
"I looked forever. Never leave again. Stay with me."
"Through hell and high water, my friend."
/\/\/\/\
The small, pale corpse is surrounded by people. Matt, Sara, Wendy, Dahlia, Peter, Doctor August, and Reverend Popescu. Sara and Peter hold hands, Wendy and Dahlia exchange identical looks of understanding before Dahlia goes to stand beside Matt. The Doctor looks nervous while the Reverend holds a worn, beat up Bible. Matt holds a pale blue entity close to him, staring impassively at the beat up body on the gurney.
"Now, will everyone join hands?"
They form a circle around the makeshift shrine.
"Observe this circle of seven souls, Lord, these people all with hopes and dreams, with fears and fates. This boy has had his stripped from him, and we wish to restore his life so that his presence and purpose will exist once more."
The air around them gives a soft a soft ripple, and the candles go out.
"Matt, the locket please."
Matt steps forward and pries the locket from the entities grasp, placing it gently around the corpses neck where it gleams softly, resting where it should have been all these years.
"Lord, grant me strength and bless this endeavor."
With that, the Reverend began chanting. The lights flickered out, and a soft rustling was heard. It was the shifting if Jonah's ashes, they swirled in an invisible wind, scattering over his body. The empty, white eyes opened and his mouth gaped, a hollow rattle escaping the corpse, as the Reverend grew louder.
"Accept his soul Lord, make him one!"
And that's when it truly began.
Jonah's soul gave a soft yelp as he was yanked violently from Matt's arms, hovering terrified over his own body before falling with a crack, the blue disappearing into the body. The mouth snapped shut and the eyes closed, but nothing else seemed to happen. The onlookers gaped in confusion. The room was pitch dark. Then, little zings of neon blue light flashed over the pale skin, cracked through the air like lightning. The body started to shake and jerk, the head whipping from side to side.
Matt stepped forward, his voice small and pitched.
"Reverend, what's happening?"
The Reverend did not open.
The corpses eyes flashed open, and had been replaced with solid blue beams of light, shining through. The light shined through the eyes, the mouth, the nose, the bruises. He screamed a loud deafening scream, and the Reverend began to chant again. The ghost gave a particularly loud roar, thrashing wildly before Jonah's voice rang clear as day:
Make it stop, make it stop!
The ghost screamed in pain once more, before all the blue light suddenly guttered out. Someone had the sense to flip the light switch. Everyone in the room gasped loudly, necks craned out and eyes wide as they stared at the ceiling, the gurney now empty. Jonah's body hangs suspended in the air, ectoplasm dripping slowly as the house groans and stretches. Jonah gives one rattling gasp, and then crashes back down to the gurney. He starts to cough, and the heartbeat monitor attached to him beeps steadily. The blue eyes open weakly, and his chest rises in falls as he breathes once again.
He gives a breathtaking smile, much too big for his face, and he looks up at Matt. The room seems frozen, staring at this boy alive and vital. He reaches up to touch his face, and the monitor stutters. Jonah's face crinkles as he gasps, his heart speeding up and stuttering. Everyone in the room slowly unfreezes, and Matt grabs his hand and smacks his chest hard.
"Stay with me! Fuck, stay with me!"
Jonah chuckles, gasping again as his heart skips a beat, then another. His voice is strong and dark, and Wendy realizes with a start how much his voice resembles his fathers, though it possesses warmth Aickman's never had.
"Through hell and high water, my friend."
The monitor flat lines, and Matt's heart stops with it. August starts to count.
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Sara starts to cry, and turns to hug her husband of seventeen hard years. Wendy clenches her fists, biting her lip till it bleeds. Dahlia gives a sad smile, her eyes burning. The Reverends head is in his hands, the bitter taste of failure making his chest tight. Matt shakes hard, his face pressed into Jonah's bony side, his hand clenched in his. His hearing has fallen into one high pitched whine, loud and as constant as the monitor. It doesn't register to him when Sara suddenly gasps, when Wendy laughs and Dahlia gives a loud whoop, or when the Reverend gasps in relief as the monitor picks up again. His doesn't register the strong, constant beeping of the monitor. What finally registers is Jonah's thick, velvety voice, dark and slow as molasses with an ancient feel to it.
"What…what are you crying for?"
He felt the fragile ribs under his cheek rise and expand as Jonah breathes his hand warm as he squeezed Matt's. Matt looked up into Jonah's face, adorned with a mischievous little smirk.
"Now really, I don't die easy."
Matt gave a broken, wild laugh, throwing his arms around the weak, reborn medium, only to reel back in disgust.
"Ugh! You are freaking covered in ectoplasm."
Jonah laughed, and the candles fluttered back to life.