AN: Hey guys, I hope everyone had a good weekend. Also, this chapter was hard to write from a technical standpoint and it was just emotionally draining, so... take that as a warning I guess. Also, also thank you for sticking with the story this long and an extra thank you if you reviewed; really, feedback keeps these chapters coming. In the mean time please enjoy,
***24***
"What the fuck Miles!?" I woke up to Schaefer screaming at me.
I would have talked back if I didn't gag when I opened my mouth. A wave of nausea that only let me focus on how hungry I was washed over me.
"You can't be that sick, you made it two miles in the snow to the park with my gun. Get up!"
Somebody got a call down to the park.
I curled in on myself and deeper into the couch. I could nearly taste the anger rolling off of Schaefer; it hung on the air and smelled sweat enough to cover the reek of alcohol. From my place I grumbled something resembling "go away" through gritted teeth.
"That's it, I'm doing what I should have done in the first place. We're going to the station." He shifted to reach for me.
No, not more people. Not now, I can't be trusted; I'm starving.
Good, more people. Some will be locked up too; easy targets.
More alien thoughts that were all my own surged through my mind. I did all I could to push them away.
An eternity after starting to move Schaefer finally came into contact with my shoulder. His grasp tightened around me.
I lost the fight with my mind.
My legs kicked out to sent me through the air and strait at Schaefer. The two of us toppled through the coffee table. The anger in the air grew as we crashed to the floor, it was joined by new scents of whisky and a hint of coppery blood. I blindly thrashed at anything that resembled a soft human body.
There was labored grunting as Schaefer twisted under my weight. A hint of tangy confusion twisted its way towards me. The world was getting clearer in that hollow way that eyes could not see. I felt the detectives muscles tense, ready to make a hard thrust upward. A second before he did I moved up.
His swing met empty air. Any momentum he could have used to get off the ground was gone. I peered back down, like a lamb waiting for slaughter Schaefer was outlined in an aura of fear. With my remaining arm I threw him from his heap of broken wood and into a shelf on the wall.
Broken bottles dribbled spirits onto the carpet. I didn't have to see to know that Schaefer was bleeding from the head and groped for the service pistol at his side. I came down on him before he had the thing aimed at me. My hand pinned his, I straddled him. Even if he had the strength to throw me again it wouldn't matter. I would keep coming. Nothing could stop me.
Schaefers face was getting clearer to me, from being outlined by traces and fear and anger, to having the details fleshed out by fleeting emotions and memories.
I looked at him from an inch away, wild panicked eyes looked back. The warm ground sagged beneath the two of us, humid wind traced its way down the soot covered street.
"Shit, Miles! Let me go!"
Now he was going to be sensible?
I took a breath, drinking in the savory taste of panic. I let my weight off of him for a second. Schaefer took the chance to wriggle away, he was gone at a sprint as soon as he got his feet under him. Where did he think he was going? I stood back on my charred street; a small swamp of hissing water had sprung up, a few of the derelict buildings had begun to sag into the black goo.
I walked after Schaefer. We were in a place of my making now; he could run all he wanted, it was only going to make him tired.
There might as well have been a trail of breadcrumbs leading to his hiding place. He cowered behind a burnt out car, helplessly groping for the pistol that wasn't at his side anymore. I came to a stop, the car sank and was swallowed by wet ground.
Schaefer scrambled to run again. I watched and basked in the cloud of confusion he left behind.
The idiot bolted to a house. I watched him force the door open and fling himself into the dark interior. Out of all the things he could have done he picked the worst possible choice.
I didn't have to move to reach the house, the world around me simply shifted to be the place that Schaefer had fled to. It was some sort of office building in here; hollow memories of people wondered this way and that, chatting around a water cooler and standing bleary eyed next to a copy machine.
Why was this the place that Schaefer brought himself to? What happened here that hurt him so much?
The man himself stood up from a paperwork covered desk.
"I'm going back to the thrift store, I think I missed something the first time." He huffed his way into a jacket.
"Hold on, I'll go with you." The man a table over scrambled to clear away some paper work.
"No, It's fine. I just got a hunch"
"Ok Schaefer, just watch yourself out there."
The detective walked away.
The office drifted away, swiftly being replaced by a run down pawn shop. What was that in the air? Dread? Anger? Some fine mix between the two that only grew when the door rang open and Schaefer stepped in. The man of the hour walked right past me; whatever memory he had trapped himself in was too strong for him to notice little old me.
The man behind the counter took no time to react to the detective,
"For the last damn time I don't got nothing for you" a grubby man spoke from behind the counter.
A customer grabbed their things from the counter and hurried away.
"Frank, you and I both know that's bullshit." The detective was wearing the same interrogating voice I'd heard at the Pierces.
"What's the real bullshit is you coming in and scaring away my customers" Frank grumbled.
"Ok, calm down. Just tell me what I want to know and I'll get out of your hair."
"I already told you, that girl you're looking for came in here last week and left real quick. That's it."
"Frank, I want to believe that, really I do, but you were the last one to see Vinessa before she went missing. There has to be something…"
This memory was starting to lose my attention. I let the two babble on and focused on the growing dread in the air instead. While I took the time to taste the scenery there was a burst of action and surprise from behind the counter.
Some box flew across the table, detective Schaefer ducked to avoid it. Before he was back to standing upright the shopkeeper had bolted out the front door.
"Son of a bitch!" The detective reached for the radio on his belt and yelled something about needing backup before following the man out of the building.
The memory warped around me to follow Schaefer. The boring shop melted away into a dreary alley. Schaefer stepped down the narrow path between buildings, the apprehension in the air grew thick and I happily drank it in. The shop keepers heavy footfalls faded in the grimey scenery. I watched from a new place among the garbage cans.
The detective drew his weapon and walked down the street.
"Come out and there won't be any problems." Despite the strong words his footsteps faltered with each passing inch.
An unnatural thickness settled in the alley. The sounds of the world were distant, like they were coming from underwater or from the other side of a wall. Traffic mumbled down the street, water dripped from a pipe somewhere, tendrils of fog licked the ground.
Schaefer tensed against the dark and damp.
I saw the scenery start to warp and twist behind the man. Whatever made this moment so deliciously agonizing was happening any second now.
There was a rush of movement and the clattering of trash cans, the shopkeeper bolted from a hiding place and down the alley. Schaefer ran after him with the gun still in hand. The two collided and toppled to the ground. I took a couple of steps closer to get a better view. The scene folded out in slowing motion. In the struggle Schaefers fingers tightened around the metal thing in his hand. A roar split through the commotion on the ground. From the street past the end of the alley a woman's agonized scream swallowed the dying sound of the gun.
The seconds distraction was all the shopkeeper needed to make his escape. After scrambling from the ground the detective took a step after him before another scream carried a twisted agony with it. The shopkeeper was still in sight when Schafer turned tail to go to the screaming street.
The air seemed to shatter with every step, the gray buildings bled a dull red. Schaefer's steps broke into another sprint. I watch from the mouth of the alley as he skidded to the side of a sobbing woman cradling a crumbled bundle of cloth with a growing patch of red.
The panic, the regret. It was the best thing I'd ever tasted.
"I need an ambulance!" Schaefer screamed into his radio.
The sirens of the back up he'd called earlier were bubbling in and out from the edge of the memory. The street seemed impossibly bright next to the gray alley. In a flurry of panic at the mistake he could never fix Shaeffer looked wild eyed for the backup.
The only thing for him to find was me leaning against the building.
"No, what? You? What are you doing here?"
The street grew brighter with the lights of police cruisers. The world twisted into nothing; the harsh lines of buildings being washed away by the searing light until the only thing left was the detective, myself, and the accidental dead boy.
"Where the hell am I!" a layer of anger tried to hide the regret and growing fear.
A hundred lumbering figures came from the edge of the glowing white void. I kept at my place leaning against a wall that was no longer there.
"Answer me damn it!"
I looked down at the little shock of red on the ground. The detective had worked missing persons in a big city by the looks of this memory. How many people had he never found?
Schaefer stopped his screaming at me at the sight of the growing hoard. Panic rolled off of him in heavy waves. I didn't try to fight the satisfied grin that twisted across my face. There was no where for the detective to run when the flood of people crashed into him.
Everyone was gaunt and gray. Their heavy feet crushed over the dead boy and labored words swelled from the crowed.
"You left us"
"Why did you stop looking?"
"You forgot me"
Schaefer struggled like a rat caught in a snake's coil. Long lost and nearly forgotten souls ripped at the man, bringing fresh pulses of regret and crushing sorrow. It didn't take long for the man too loose his will to fight the tide.
Had this been what he dreamed about last night? Was it the knowledge that he failed so many people that lead him to his first bottle? Well, it hardly mattered now.
The decadent waves of fear had stopped pulsing from the middle of the hoard. I took that as my signal. When I approached the lost and forgotten parted before me and left a pocket around the crumbled detective.
He was a gibbering wreck.
I put a hand on his shoulder, nothing fresh or tempinting was left to taste. It didn't take much force to pop the shoulder from its socket. The man on the ground didn't react.
Figures. One reminder of the past was enough to break the man. I should have been able to guess that from the start.
I leaned forward, a rib popped under the weight of my knee.
Oh well, he was fun while he lasted. At least I got a good meal out of him.
I took a last look at him. Vacant eyes stared back at me.
Pathetic.
My hand went through his chest like it was wet paper.
The burning white memory popped to black.
I fell through the nothing, then the world came into focus once again.
It was Schaefer's apartment, the same as I had left it. Bottles of booze were scattered across the ground and broken to glittering shards, the scent of the same wafted through the air and nearly made it impossible to focus on anything else.
My head screamed at me, every fibre of muscle that clung to my bones ached and begged me to stop moving while they twitched and demanded action at the same time. I compromised and tumbled backwards onto the soggy ground.
You've done it now.
Go away. Wallrider? What was it talking about?
And leave you in charge?
I shook myself back to my senses as well as I could manage. Phantom thoughts of a hunt still raced through my mind.
Hunt.
Shit.
"Schafer?" a few scattered memories trickled in. "hey, wake up" the small stream quickly grew to a flood. I shook the man, he stayed slumped against the wall.
"Schaefer? Schaefer, get the hell up!"
He's not waking up.
"Not now ghost" I used my only hand to feel for a pulse, for breathing, something.
I couldn't have killed him. No. I lost it, but not by that much. Right?
No pulse.
"Schaefer!" I shook him again.
Oh shit.
I told you so.
"Shut the fuck up!"
I don't know why you're so broken up about it. It's not like you haven't killed people before.
"I'm not a murderer!"
I stumbled to my feet. There wasn't anything I could do for Schaefer now.
The CEO, a score of regional managers, a swat team, a street full of police officers. You let Waylon die too.
"That's a low blow. Murkoff had deserved it. The others were accidents. I didn't kill Waylon, Murkoff did."
They might have pulled the trigger, but you could have stopped it. Instead you decided to take your time.
"You were there too. Don't act like you have the moral high ground." I still stood over the dead man. Why wouldn't I move?
Don't fool yourself into thinking that I feel remorse. I'm just pointing out the fact that you pretend that you're some knight in shining armour, but we both know that you never have been and never will be.
"At least I'm trying."
Tried as I might my eyes were still glued to the dead man on the ground. Whether it was the Walrider keeping me from moving, the dreamer disease keeping me near a fresh kill, or my own refusal to accept reality I don't know.
And look where that's gotten you.
My feet could have been made from lead for all I was able to move them.
I was still staring by the time I noticed that the swarm had started forming an arm in the sleeve of the jacket I wore. I fished around for the glove I had been wearing before, I must have had some sense because I found it tucked into my pocket. I brought myself to shuffle away while I fiddled with the glove.
Are you done with your little display?
The lady one unit over was watching something emotional. A few refreshing wafts of sadness drifted through the building. I shook that observation from my head.
"As done as I'm going to be." I went to the sink to splash some water on my face, like that would do something to clear my mind.
While the cold water did something to bring me back to there here and now part of me couldn't help but know that the other dreamer was out there. He was going to the center of town. Why? I turned off the faucet. There was something there, something smaller but tempting.
"Do something to block that out. I don't want to deal with it."
Sorry your majesty; the other dreamer is just as connected to me as you are. Even if it weren't you're connected to it too. So make nice. Or kill it. We both know that's what you're best at.
"Get off you goddamned soap box already! Jesus fucking christ, since when did you start caring about people?"
I don't. I just want you to know that you've doomed both of us because you didn't listen to me in the first place.
I bit down a few more choice words. Everything was coming apart at the seams. I grabbed a towel and dried off that last bits of water that clung to my face. I grabbed the sunglasses and went to the front door. I had a hand on the knob before I thought about Schaefer again.
I couldn't just leave him here, who knows how long it would be before anyone found him.
No, no. We can just leave him here.
It would probably scar whoever found him.
I shook the thoughts away.
I took a quick glance around the room. Schafers keys and phone sat on a little table by the door. I picked up the cell.
To my surprise he didn't have a lock on it. A couple of seconds of snooping later and I found a contact that looked like it belonged to someone he worked with; most of the messages talked about cases and file numbers.
I really hope this isn't just some random person.
I typed out a short message:
Don't know who this is, there's been a crime at detective Schafers house. Send a squad car. The door's unlocked.
I hit send and hurried out the door.