Things of Darkness (Fantasy Fiction)

The heavy gold-encrusted door slowly opened with a loud groan, letting in the one they called Minos.

Rough and commanding an uncomfortable amount of awe,

He ruled as the head and toughest of the judges who oversaw the afterlife.

His expression was always grim and fired up the most urgency in one's heart. Looking straight into his eyes sometimes, felt like looking down an ocean of doom and impending devastation.

This moment was less different, as the two standing by the exalted spiraling table turned to behold him with mirroring expressions on their faces.

Their gray luminescent robes gleamed golden as they ruffled out, catching in the light of the fine brilliance of their wigs.

Their wigs are not just ones you may have been opportune to know.

They were rather, fine tendrils of folded skin assuming the shape of a perpetual wig suspended over their heads instead of growing out of it.

They were called the Judges of the Hereafter.

Three divine beings who watched and oversaw the affairs of the afterlife. They were in charge of the happenings right after death and made sure everything ran smoothly and appropriately.

From the far right stood Rhadam; whose name was always spoken in a whisper for his elusive state of being. Although he constantly looked like he was disappearing into the thick folds of his robe, he was the fastest-thinking of the judges–possessing an extremely shrewd mind.

Aecham stood right beside him. The treasurer and records keeper who had the appearance of a benevolent lord, was, unfortunately, the most ruthless of the three, lacking even a single iota of remorse.

It was from his translucent lips that the hanging question fell from.

"What has happened, Minos?"

"A soul mender has just been spotted roaming the earth," Minos said without preamble, graveness coating his words as he advanced into the large cavernous chamber. He seemed to glow less brightly and the tendrils that made up his wig were rapidly losing their resplendence with each step he took toward the others. "There's no record as to how long it's been wandering loose out there."

A fatal silence blanketed the entire space of the mist-shrouded consciousness that they occupied at Minos's last words, and the reasons were any less severe.

They all knew what it meant. What they meant. The knowledge was enough to justify the dark agitation that overcame them right then.

Soul menders were a breed of fiendish evil beings who'd originally been an extinct form of undead. They were said to have roamed the earth and mid-world for centuries before they'd finally been captured and imprisoned in the deepest bowels of Limbo—a deep, dark valley of a sad abyss where even the worst of hell's inhabitants cringed to think of.

After long decades of persecution and vicious torments in the distasteful prison they'd come to know as home, they'd gradually metamorphosed into Liches—evil, gaunt, and skeletal-looking creatures with withered skin stretched tightly and painfully across their hanging frame.

They were said to have the ability to take over a human body that was five minutes away from the grave and possess it. Giving them the liberty to exist and wreak havoc on earth.

It was the reason they always appeared frail or sickly. Like a bowl of death warmed over.

"This cannot happen!" Aecham's smile lines were gone as he floated around the chamber. "It is all manners of wrong. We can't let it stay out there any longer or everything will come to ruins!"

"Everything we've built here in the afterlife. The sequence of things would be gone in only a stroke of time," Rhadam spoke with urgency, his whispery voice lending the gravity of the situation gigantic wings to fly.

It didn't matter at all. They all knew how things would deteriorate till nothing remained. They were aware of the dark shadows casting intense lines over their mystifying features.

And for once in a long age, Rhadam glowed more bright and glaringly obvious.

The state of affairs at the moment called desperately for it.

"We have to find it quickly!" Minos spat with inexplicit despise for the despicable breeds from the murky depth of Limbo.

"We have to get it back to where its kind belongs or I fear this could be the end of everything. Of all of us..."

The three judges stood in a half circle, regarding each other with pensive expressions on their faces.

The lone soul mender on the loose was dangerous and extremely volatile.

Existence as it was understood could come crashing down if it lingered too long in the realm of the living, and they needed to find it fast by all means.

The fate of the afterlife depended heavily on it.

✡✡✡

He emerged from the shadows for a brief second, the street lights on the east illuminating his bruised and bony frame.

The body had been perfect. Just as he'd wanted it to be.

Broken, frail, and withering on the inside.

The man had been called Ambrose Lasko.

An insurance lawyer who'd fallen to his death from the balcony of his penthouse apartment.

A corrupt foul minded asshole who'd constantly cheated at his job, his wife, and himself.

He'd joined with the man's body five minutes before his death, just as the ambulance had been pulling in to rush him straight to the surgery room.

He couldn't have asked for a perfect persona and it was terribly ironic that sarcasm had been his strongest suit for a long time. Ambrose Lasko's expression as he drifted into death was one many living mortals constantly prayed and warded against all their lives. It was of thick darkness and eternal torment. It was a glimpse of a vile creature whose essence had interwoven with every horror imaginable in the course of ages.

It was of the death; he died every day. Stuck in the depth of a heinous mind-altering place.

It was a relief to be out. To be in the realm of the living, even if it was for only a short while. He knew they would not let him linger on.

He had to find her quick with the little precious time he had to spend. He had to find her, to help save her before it was too late.

The promise had been made a long time ago when the veil between worlds had been lowered. Now it was time to bring it to fulfillment.

Despite the evil that made up the crochets of his entire being, he made sure to always keep his word.

He would become Ambrose Lasko.

An unfortunate degenerate who slipped from one disaster into another till he finally found her.

He wouldn't leave this realm till he did. There was no way he'd allow himself to be caught and taken back till he'd done what he'd set out to do.

To save her from herself.

As a cold wind drifted between the trees in the park nearby, rousing a nightbird who quickly escaped into the sky. The tall gaslights aligning the street flickered unsteadily for a moment. It was at this time, that he quietly slipped back into the shadows from where he'd appeared from.

As still as the night itself.

Elliot Stryke was an extremely purposeful man. He never did anything without intent. Which was why he stood firm and still on the driveway of his rambling bungalow house, scanning the street and houses around.

He appeared to be trying to decide whether to cross over to the other side or check if any of his neighbors were in.

That was how it would appear to an average person, and that was totally the image he'd been going for.

It would only take a special and watchful man to see just how painstakingly he examined the corners of the hedges outside the flamboyant house opposite his or the way his eyes ran over the cars scattered over the area. From the reddish-brown hair going gray at his temples, to the network of stress lines on his face. He looked thoroughly like a man with lots of secrets and plenty of skeletons to stick back into the closet.

To most people he was Elliot Stryke; an investment banker, and father of four, minus the one he lost years ago and the one who barely spoke to him.

To a select few, he was next in line to assume power in a mystical family dynasty. He'd been next in line for a long while now.

It didn't matter that he'd left it all behind years ago to move to America, nor that he rarely used his gifts these days except to protect his immediate family.

Just like he was doing at the moment.

For days, he'd sensed that he was being followed.

From the swirl of darkness that faded quickly when he turned, to the hovering unseen presence he felt around him even at the office. He knew something was really wrong somewhere and feared that she might be involved somehow.

After all, she'd sworn never to let him be. To haunt him till his dying breath.

Elliot Stryke knew there were some mistakes that never fully disappeared or stopped twisting you up inside.

He'd made his years ago when he married her, and despite the fact that they weren't together anymore, he knew he would always suffer for it.

It hadn't always been that way though. Most alliances started out unclear and fraught with tension but usually ended well. His had just been a hopeful fairytale alliance that instead of ending well, had turned out devastatingly ugly.

She'd been so perfect, so beautiful, and charming from the beginning.

Then all of a sudden, like a clearing illusion she'd changed into something he couldn't understand. Something he'd spent the last two years of their marriage trying to figure and work out.

She had terrified him, and Elliot Stryke wasn't a fearful man. He had his father's blood to thank for that.

She still terrified him on the rare occasions they'd met, and he was glad for the ocean of water that separated them for the moment.

After twelve years of marriage to her, all he had left to show for it was a thick scar that ran the entire length of his back and a son who despised him strongly. It wasn't a big mystery to anyone as to why. She'd made sure to poison everyone around them when he'd finally summoned the courage to leave her. To leave it all behind.

But like they say, no matter how fast you ran or how many miles you leave behind, your past would still catch up with you like a bounty hunter strapped for cash. He knew who they were and that they were tailing his family. He just hoped he'd always be prepared for whenever they finally came out of the darkness.

Clarissa, his wife was ignorant of the murky details of his past.

In the entire fourteen years of their marriage, they had never traveled to visit his family in London because he'd lied that they were estranged. She hadn't even realized when his second son had manifested his powers. He liked it that way.

It kept them safe and obscure for the time being.

Elliot needed a drink very badly. The entire deal was leaving him in various tight knots inside.

He closed his eyes and peered around in the darkness of his mind for some seconds.

Satisfied that the entire area was empty and secure for now, he returned to the house.

Perched on a bush of prized white roses behind a tall pecan tree a few houses away, a crow suddenly became visible in the afternoon light. Its focused eyes watched the house the man had disappeared into for close to a minute before it spread out its jet-black wings with a cry and took off for the sky.

Skye wheeled his chair methodically to the door covered in childish paint streaks at the end of the hallway and turned it open with utmost gentleness.

"Skye, you are here! I've been looking everywhere for you!"

Skye smiled as his younger brother, Timmy Nicholas Stryke bounded up from the play rug where he'd been arranging a bunch of jigsaw puzzles, a beaming smile on his face.

"I'm sorry, I was gone long. Rusty had a game and I had no choice but to stick around for one of Gemma's plays," Skye explained with a grimace.

"Oh…," Timmy made a face, prompting Skye to grin in amusement.

Even his brother understood just how uncomfortable Gemma's plays sometimes were. Good luck to anyone dumb enough to pass along that piece of information to her.

"Do you wanna hear about what happened in Ataraxia today, Skye?"

Skye tousled his brother's dark brown mane of hair, "Of course, kiddo. What's new in our favorite world?"

He watched Timmy's hopeful eyes light up as if fired up from inside before he settled on the armrest of Skye's wheelchair and began to talk excitedly. Skye watched the myriads of pleasant emotion pass through his brother's features as he talked about his favorite world and the constantly cheerful inhabitants.

Ataraxia was one of many worlds nestled in the depths of his brother's imagination.

Unreal but endearing, just like his many fixations and adorable oddities.

Timmy and his twin had been born when Skye was five years old. He remembered vividly because they'd both been scrunched up and loud and kept him awake all night after they returned home from the hospital.

After his twin brother's abduction, Timmy had withdrawn for a long while which had incited their parents to see a child psychologist.

Timmy had been diagnosed with a mild form of autism and some behavioral issues and had grown up incredibly sheltered since then.

That hadn't prevented or stopped him from getting bullied in school for his obsession with unreal and make-believe worlds, his tendency to be uncommunicative and particular in his interests, and his affinity for rodents and little critters.

Despite the slight ostracization he suffered in school or his lack of friends except for imaginary ones, Timmy was the sweetest eight-year-old anyone could find. He was extremely kind and loved to share his interest and toys with anyone who stopped long enough to play with him. Due to his condition, their parents had created a daily routine chart that hung on the wall of Timmy's room, marked and circled with bright colors just as he liked it.

The room itself was painted in every color of the rainbow; one of Timmy's requests and fixations.

Skye loved and was fiercely protective of his brother. He didn't mind listening to the same recycled details about Timmy's imaginary worlds over and over again.

To him, there was nothing wrong with his brother. He couldn't care less if he preferred some clothing textures to others or was sensitive to taste. Everyone he knew had their own quirks and Timmy's weren't really all that different.

Skye was about to ask his brother about his favorite TV show, CardMasters, when he heard a slight cough at the door and turned. His father stood there with an unreadable expression on his face as he stared pointedly at Skye.

He obviously had been standing there for a while.

"Daddy!" Timmy yelled and ran over to him.

Elliot Stryke bent and gave his son a hug and a fond smile. "How are you, champ? Talking about Pleasure land again, I see."

"Nooo, Dad. It's Ataraxia, the land of green elves," Timmy corrected with a laugh.

Skye noted the flicker of emotion that crossed his father's face before he bade them continue and left the room.

Skye called his brother's interest to the forgotten jigsaw puzzle on the mat and when Timmy was once more engrossed in assembling it all together, he left to search for his father. He was just in time to see his father pour himself a shot of whisky in his study and down the entire content at an alarming speed.

His expression was troubled as he turned to Skye.

"You shouldn't be encouraging him you know."

Skye shrugged. They'd had this conversation before.

"I don't see anything wrong with make-believe worlds, they seem more interesting than this one anyway."

"You need to listen and don't give people cause to talk more than they are already doing. He's only getting worse every day," his father spoke, this time a little sharply as he poured himself another drink.

Skye was suddenly annoyed. "Why do you care if people think Timmy's weird? He's just a little kid and there is nothing wrong with him!"

He hated his father's reactions to his little brother's condition and didn't care if he had raised his voice. He'd stood up to his mother's boss days ago for calling Timmy stupid just because he'd spilled water all over the office mistakenly.

It wasn't Timmy's fault that he had quite an aversion to water or large bodies of it. Skye himself couldn't stand dust motes or dirty places. There was nothing strange about having a particular aversion to some things.

"Everyone watches you when you're strange and different," His father began to say with a bitter tone, "It leaves you naked, exposed. You don't know the kind of attention you attract when you don't fit in."

Skye watched his father's face contort with a measure of pain before it disappeared and he poured himself yet another shot. Something was bothering him, and it wasn't Timmy's unwaning obsession with his imagination.

It was something else entirely.

He'd been like this for a while now.

After he returned from work, Elliot Stryke would shut himself in his study for hours on end. Not even surfacing when their mother would knock to signal him for dinner.

The stick-it notes and surveillance images pasted on the board in the study gave answers to his timely seclusion. Later at night, he'd walk the grounds of the house, Skye had seen him three different times from the window of his room. He'd stop at various spots to close his eyes for long moments, before continuing on his patrol-like walks.

Skye knew his father was like him. It wasn't because he'd read about the genetic contribution to psychic abilities or because he never spoke when Skye's mother commented on something unbelievable that had happened around him.

Skye always perceived the thrum of energy that ran in his veins whenever he was around his father.

He just hadn't the courage to ask or inquire.

He could end up being wrong and he didn't want to be on the receiving end of his father's disapproval.

The more his father rambled on about differences, oddities, and human reception, the more Skye's sense of unease grew.

With every shot of alcohol Elliot Stryke drank, his words turned ugly, vicious, and filled with resentment. Skye was uncomfortable. His father didn't use to drink like this before, neither did he spout gibberish about bad men lurking in the dark or shadows that weren't really shadows.

At the sixth shot he poured, Skye couldn't take it anymore.

"You've almost emptied the entire bottle, Dad. Don't you think you should stop now?"

He knew enough from the internet and watching TV that emptying an entire bottle of alcohol never always ended well.

With a series of rapid blinks, his father dropped the glass on the table and glared at him. "I own this house, and I say just how much I want to drink, young man. Now go back to your room."

Skye froze. His father's words had been cold and menacing.

He'd never heard him use that tone ever.

He couldn't stand the icy harsh frostbite floating around the room and turned quickly for the door.

But what he didn't miss was his father, pouring the rest of the whisky into the glass and drinking it down in one fell swoop. He also didn't fail to notice the dark melancholy that'd stolen into his countenance.

Skye knew he wouldn't be able to sleep tonight.

✡✡✡

✡✡✡

Do you know what Timmy 'Tim' Stryke loved about the dead of night?

It was the silence.

It yawned like his playgroup teacher; Mrs. Felicity Hawthorne's baby when she really wanted food.

Wide, big, almost swallowing the entire place.

He loved the way everywhere suddenly became calm, and the house stopped moving.

It also helped that everyone thought he was already fast asleep.

But it was all pretend.

His brother, Skye had taught him. Skye knew plenty neat things.

Another reason why Timmy loved the night was because his mother finally stopped fussing, and he couldn't get to see the black look his father always thought he was hiding.

The boy called Timmy Stryke knew a lot of things people thought they were hiding because he always saw.

Don't get it wrong, Timmy knew he wasn't like everyone else.

He liked things a little differently because when they weren't particular, they always annoyed him and he didn't seem to get what a lot of people got easily.

He knew not a lot of people liked him, or paid him too much mind.

It made him sad and cry sometimes, especially when they yelled or said mean words to him. But what Timmy knew he liked about everything was being able to see what people did when they thought no one was looking. It made him giggle a lot because some people did strange and funny things when they thought others weren't paying them no mind.

Things even his brother's funny best friend, Gemma wouldn't think was funny at all.

He knew his father got impatient with him sometimes, and his mother didn't know what to do when he got extremely disagreeable.

He knew all this, but he also knew they loved him bestest because his daddy always brought him candy canes and chopped off the head just as he liked it to be. His mother cuddled him close to her chest every single time he let her, making him smile because of the smell of oranges always drifting from her clothes.

But it was only Skye who really listened and cared for the people in his head.

His mommy listened too, but she didn't listen with the concentration his brother did.

Skye wanted to know how Penny Patchouli kept on escaping from the gobble monster in Pleasure land, and if Limping Lizard made it back to his cave safely in Ashtari after hunting in the perilous lands.

Timmy loved his brother Skye a lot because he was so cool.

He even had a cool chair he sat on every time with wheels and didn't have to walk a lot like everyone else had to. It could be tiring to walk and run long distances, but Mommy said Timmy needed his exercise.

Honestly, Timmy would gladly give away all his Lego sets just to avoid his exercise.

Or his peas, or the loud noises in the lunchroom at school.

That was why he preferred the dead of night. He could finally get the chance to lay still without doing anything but think.

Thinking of the people he saw whenever he closed his eyes.

Most especially of the tiny sparks that went off in his head sometimes.

Bright tiny sparks that looked beautiful against the blackness of the night.

Sparks that crackled occasionally through his body, especially when he got really sad and upset.

He didn't like getting upset.

He used to be called Dexter Hayato Stryke. The conventionally dressed man in his mid-twenties stood by the French colonial window of the old Gothic architectural-styled house on Ivy Lane, West London at the stroke of midnight.

But that was a long time ago. That was before he severed all ties linking him to his father, including the family name of Stryke.

Now he was known and addressed as Dex Toyaka; the son of Kagami Toyaka of the Toyakas of West London.

His mother's legacy.

One could say it really didn't matter a whit. For his father still stared back at him from the mirror every day of his life.

From his high defined cheekbones to his short aquiline nose which bore credence to Elliot Stryke's blood, he looked nothing like his half-Japanese, half-Caribbean mother except for the light brown skin tone and long dark hair worn in a ponytail.

None of the Toyakas had any issues with his appearance though, they were too apprehensive of his mother and they sure had every reason to.

As Dex gazed out of the window to the courtyard below just then, she appeared from the alcove below in an oxblood strapless gown and stood in his line of view, deep in conversation with one of the resident staff.

His mother was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his life and everyone else paled in comparison. With amber-colored skin and dark catlike eyes framed around an oval face, Kagami Toyaka was stunning, bewitching, and never forgotten in a hurry. She was also the fiercest, most skillful, and in recent times, most dangerously unstable woman Dex knew.

No one else in the family knew but he did. He knew there was something off-putting in his mother. He knew she wasn't in total control of her being, he'd known this for a very long time now.

His mother, Kagami ruled now as the head and matriarch of the Toyaka clan.

She'd assumed control immediately after his grandfather and uncle had died.

Although she was incredibly protective and headed the family swiftly and efficiently, she also had the ability to turn ruthless and cruel in the blink of an eye. Most imagined she had several moods and they had the tendency to surface at the least expected times.

Dex loved his mother more than anything else in the world. He was extremely caring and protective of her, but he also knew enough within himself to be wary of her decisions and actions.

Something was really wrong inside her. Something dark and vile seemed to creep up on her sometimes, making her appear and act like a different person.

It wasn't because of her multi-dimensional powers, or the dark magic she'd started to practice openly and uncaring to aid and strengthen them. It'd been there as long as he could remember and had only grown worse and erratic over the years.

No one else in the family had noticed or sat down to connect the dots because he'd done all he could to mask the episodes of mercurial strangeness she exhibited sometimes.

But Dex was apprehensive.

Things had been too quiet for a while now.

With his mother, there was either always a new change in the Toyaka plastic industry; the company which had been in the family for generations, or somebody who needed to disappear for messing with the family—she always had her ways and knew her paths in the murky underground of their world.

Dex wasn't worried about that; he was worried about her silence and serenity for the past months.

It only meant something crazier was brewing behind.

Something that had to do with the age-old feud between the Toyakas, and his father's family, the Strykes.

A feud that had started by blood, seized and ended with marriage, and unearthed once more again after a disastrous separation. It was this feud, that obsessed and kept his mother preoccupied every single waking moment

This time, Dex thought, things were going to be different and catastrophic. He could feel a rush of intuition rioting in his bloodstream.

His mother had just finished speaking to the help, Dex saw right then, dismissing the old African American lady with a careless nod of her head.

As the trees in the courtyard swayed a little sideways to the right, she stilled and looked up at the window, catching him with an intentional smile on her face.

Dex knew she'd known he was there all along. She knew a boundless number of things, his mother.

"You should get ready, son. Soon the war would begin. I can taste it already. "

He heard the disturbing words, soft like whispery pinpricks of breeze in his head.

Before Dex could force his eyes open and look down, the spot where his mother had stood was bare.

He scanned the entire area hastily even if he knew no one else was about and nobody else could speak telepathically and with accuracy to him except her.

A sense of foreboding and unease gripped him as he moved away from the window.

His mother had spoken to him just now like she'd always done.

The only problem had been, that the voice in his head hadn't sounded anything like her. It hadn't sounded like anyone or anything he ever wanted to be unfortunate enough to know.

"Elliot Skye Stryke Jnr?"

Skye jerked his attention back to the Language Ed. teacher, Mrs. Wilcox stood beside him with an expression of displeasure.

He almost smiled despite the distractions in his heart at the extra pinched look on her already constrained face.

Skye wasn't a foolish boy. He knew he hadn't been paying attention and that would only land him a trip to detention.

He'd never been to detention before.

He heard a lot of times from Gemma, and once from a disgruntled Rusty that it was extremely tedious and a waste of precious time.

"I'm sorry ma’am, I was distracted," he apologized quickly to Mrs. Wilcox before the tautness of her lips got any worse.

He heaved a sigh of relief when she walked away seconds later, amidst the wry titters all over the class and the probing look on his best friends' faces.

Today marked the second week since his father had begun to act really strange and even the colorful spring flowers right outside his classroom window weren't enough to make him feel better inside.

Since the night his father had spoken softly to him in the coldest tone imaginable, things had only gone downhill from there.

His parents quarreled more frequently than they'd ever done before and his father never came out of his study.

He'd also begun to notice some strange cars driving around their suburban neighborhood, where everyone knew almost everyone else.

Skye wouldn't have thought it weird or disturbing if he hadn't noticed one parked rather close to their house for hours on end the past Saturday. It had only pulled away in the opposite direction when his father's car had been coming up the road.

Although he wasn't done combing through the encyclopedia or reading enough books, he knew deep within his guts that something was amiss.

He'd woken up that morning with a stronger feeling. It could account for the reason why he was so bloody distracted.

"Man, you were a little off, in class. Anything up? " Rusty asked as they met up in the johns afterward.

Skye told Rusty almost everything, but he didn't know how to explain the discomfort and urgency he felt right then.

"Nothing, Rus. I just got carried away for a moment there."

"Sure?"

"Positive," Skye nodded and watched Rusty's attention shift to graffiti stretched across the wall of the restroom.

"Whoever did this is a clown," Skye gave the inscription on the wall a cursory glance as his friend burst out laughing. His mind wasn't on the lewd stream of profanities someone decided was funny enough to scribble on the tile walls. He turned his wheelchair around and left Rusty for class, the hair on the back of his neck standing out from an unknown frisson of tremor he couldn't quite place.

All was not well, Skye realized a few minutes later when his eyelids closed suddenly of their own volition.

He struggled to open them, trying not to panic as everything else started to blur and fade. The sounds of his classmates jesting, the long-suffering nasal tone of the, everything…

Skye tried to move his body and realized he was frozen in the chair. He couldn't hear or open his eyes to see anything.

The world had gone silent and dark all of a sudden.

With mounting pressure and fright, he opened his mouth and started to scream.

There was no sound. That was when the flashes began to come.

One by one…

Faceless men in black… Darkness, thick choking darkness…

An unclear woman is screaming…. He could taste her fright... No sound…

The ground is wet… Wet and red….

He couldn't see anymore… the darkness is back. This time with a face.

Faces… His parents'…

The house…

The fulminant explosion of lights that happened right then shook Skye to the depth of his core and the next thing he was off the wheelchair and curled up on the floor. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw the hovering faces of everyone in the class. They were peering down at him; some with worry, others with an excited expectation.

But Skye didn't care about all that or the sight he made as he was being hoisted back on the chair.

He had to hurry home, something was incredibly wrong and he couldn't wait for school to be over.

What Skye didn't stop to think or ponder on its implication, was the event that had happened to him in class, or if it meant a whole different psychic ability. The thought never crossed his mind as he was preoccupied instead with the flashes of images he'd seen.

Rather than wait for his mother to pick come them up, Skye rustled his brother, Timmy with impatience and joined Rusty and Gemma in their mother's car.

Mrs. Shapiro was always punctual to pick up her kids, she was also very sharp and didn't miss the hanging cloud of anxiousness Skye thought he'd been hiding successfully.

"Skye dear? You look a little pressured. Is everything fine?"

Skye didn't know how to answer and didn't have to worry about answering.

"He's fine, Mom. He's been like that all day," Rusty replied right then.

"Nothing an afternoon nap wouldn't cure," Mrs. Shapiro smiled with sympathy, as she drove into Skye's neighborhood. Her already beautiful face, enhanced to a state of radiance.

Skye didn't have time to smile back though, because his eyes went straight to the driveway of his house as they drew upon it and stopped.

His father's gray Cadillac was parked at its usual spot, right next to his mom's red old Benz.

They were both home at the same time. That was both strange and relieving.

"Leave me alone, you yelled at me. I'm going to tell Mom." Timmy pulled his hand away as Skye grabbed it and leaped from the car, running to the front door.

His brother was still mad about the manner he'd been pulled away from class.

He'd get over it soon. Skye smiled and murmured his thanks to his best friends as they helped him out of the car.

When he got to the front door, Timmy was kicking at it with his foot in petulance.

Skye calmly got out his keys and let them in, looking around the otherwise calm front room.

Everything was in place, just where they were supposed to be.

But the hair on Skye's skin still stood out straight as he wheeled behind Timmy who was yelling for their mom down the hallway.

His phone went off in a series of beeps and he stopped a few steps beside his parent's bedroom door to withdraw it from his pocket.

It was an IM from Rusty. He wanted to know if they were hanging out later.

He'd text him back later, right now he didn't know for sure.

Skye tucked his phone back into his pocket, wondering why he wasn't hearing anything from Timmy, and wheeled into his parent's room.

The reason was glaringly obvious he saw then. His brother stood glassy-eyed and frozen.

It was the kind of freeze that went past your skin, past blood and tissues, and straight into your bones, and Skye knew why.

He could see it all over the floor.

The flashes he'd suffered in school became visible and real right there.

The blood ran everywhere. Under the bed, soaking the center rug and smeared all over the wall.

And they lay there, his father and mother.

Vacant eyes, mouths twisted open and leaking blood all the way down their bodies, which had been slashed in the most sickening manner possible.

Skye heard a broken whimpering sound, and it was not the jazz melody streaming from the audio system in the room.

It had come from somewhere else, somewhere in the back of his throat.

Dazed and unoriented he reached with shaky fingers for his pocket to get his phone and call 911.

That was when Timmy began to scream…

✡✡✡

Poised in a different consciousness with a grin of satisfaction on her opaque appearance, was the Liche whose name couldn't be spoken in the human sense.

She was rather known easily as Jezebel in the realm of the living and had a reputation that preceded her. She wasn't just swirls of shadows, like others. She had a state, a host whose inner nature constantly fought and rebelled against her.

But this time, Jezebel had won. She won most of the time but this victory was the beginning of everything. The execution of her ancient plan. The plan she'd waited patiently in this realm for, all this while. When the Stalkers had returned to give the news to her host, Jezebel had been beyond ecstatic but her host hadn't.

They had argued terribly before she'd been shoved away to the consciousness she now existed in.

Jezebel hadn't minded at all. She had her way of getting back inside.

The Stalkers had done what they were supposed to do in the sweetest and most perfect manner possible, and that was enough to keep her appetite sated for now.

The wind began to howl madly through the trees outside the darkened house, loud and anxious. An owl hooted to its mate somewhere really close and in the entire middle of it, she caught a whiff of another.

She knew he was out there. She'd known for a while now.

But one thing the Liche called Jezebel had that few possessed was a wiliness that bordered on extraordinary. She would never let him catch her in that state.

There was still so much to do. So much havoc to wreck.

She'd bided her time really well. Nothing would get in her way.

Jezebel hovered in the room and let her host sleep undisturbed, causing her no further distress. She needed all the rest she could get for now.

There was still so much they had to do together.

The sniffles came again, this time louder and accompanied by fat gulping sobs.

Skye turned to his Aunt Celine who stood with a tray of chocolate chip cookies and a milkshake; his brother Timmy's favorite snack.

"He's refused to eat anything or come out of his room," she said unhappily. "I thought this would change his mind, he used to like them a whole lot before. "

Skye turned to the door and sighed heavily. It didn't look like things would get any better anytime soon. It'd been two whole weeks since they'd both found their parents murdered on their bedroom floor and Timmy wasn't taking it very well.

Although Skye himself wasn't, he hadn't any choice but to be brave and strong, at least for his brother's sake.

The series of events that had followed through since that afternoon had been a blur. If he was asked to narrate it all in accurate detail, he knew he'd freeze up just like Timmy had done that day.

All he remembered was the cops and paramedics had come a few minutes after he made the call, followed by Rusty and Gemma's mother who'd somehow managed to calm Timmy down enough to get him to leave the house.

The cops had put yellow tapes around the house and declared it a crime scene, then they'd asked him a series of questions which had been called off by Mrs. Shapiro with a deathly firm voice.

They were kids who'd just seen their parent's dead bodies, she'd said, they needed some time before the onslaught of questions would start.

Rusty's mother had put an end to the overwhelming inquiries and taken them home that night, before their mother's only sister, Aunt Celine, had flown in from West Virginia on the first available flight she'd found to pick them up.

Skye had gone through the next days in a state of perpetual numbness. He went through the motions as best as he could, despite the deep chill freezing his bloodstream. He couldn't bring himself to talk about what had happened or think about it.

His brother was a different case entirely. Timmy hadn't been able to do anything else but cry and ask for their mother over and over again. He wasn't eating or sleeping, and when he finally did, he started awake from nightmares with screams that unsettled Skye and made his heart ache.

His brother needed to eat something. It'd been almost a whole day since his last meal and Skye was worried he'd make himself sick if it continued for long.

"Timmy, it's Skye," he said and knocked gently on the door, glancing at his aunt's frazzled face. "Could you please open up? Remember no closed doors with family."

"Go away! I don't want to talk to anyone," came his brother's feeble cry which was followed by a resounding crash and a sudden outburst of tears.

"Please, Timmy. I really need to talk to you... I don't feel very good, I think I might be sick." Skye added in a low whisper.

And just like magic, Timmy stopped crying. Skye had hoped it would work and it did. His brother couldn't bear the fact that anyone or anything was hurting. It was his Achille’s heel. The door opened after some seconds and he stood there, hair tousled roughly and eyes red-rimmed and worried.

"What's wrong, Skye?" he asked with trembling lips, "Are you going away like Mom and Daddy?"

"Oh, no love," Aunt Celine answered hurriedly before Skye could, handing him the tray as she bent to Timmy's level.

"Your brother is only concerned for you, Tim dear. He's not going away. He loves you a lot."

Skye felt bad for his little fib but he was glad it had gotten Timmy to open the door.

Judging by the way he was eyeing the tray on Skye's lap with hunger and interest, it seemed to have paid off eventually.

"Can I have a bitty cookie… and prob'bly a milkshake?" Timmy asked hesitantly after some seconds.

"Sure! You can have as much as you want love," Aunt Celine smiled with relief and tousled his hair.

The uncertainty and unhappiness were once more creeping back into Timmy's face, and Skye didn't wait for it to manifest into words. He reached out for his brother's hand immediately.

"Come, Tim. You can sit on the armrest of my chair and eat. Just like we used to do at home."

Timmy lost the doubts and followed after him, making a grab for a piece of cookie which he shoved into his mouth in a flash.

Skye glanced at his aunt and saw a lone tear trickling down her face as she watched his brother eat. A chokehold of emotions constricted in his throat and he looked away, struggling against the tears prickling the back of his lids.

Aunt Celine and their mother had been extremely close. She was the only extended family who'd visited them often with the exception of mother's parents, who'd only been by once.

It was no mystery that Nan and Grandpa disapproved of their father. They'd said it openly at dinner that day before leaving immediately despite mother's pleas for them to stay.

"Skye?"

Skye turned to his aunt whose expression was once more light and cheerful, even though her eyes belied differently.

"You can set that down for Timmy on the play table, I need to speak to you about something."

Skye felt a terrible unease right then but hid it well as Timmy's gaze went from him to Aunt Celine.

"I'd be back real soon, buddy. Try to save some for me, ‘kay?" He set down the tray on the play table nearby and smiled at his brother with false cheer.

Timmy nodded, his attention reverted back to the tray of treats almost immediately.

Skye followed his aunt out of the room, his thoughts running wild and untethered.

For a couple of days now, Aunt Celine had been answering various upsetting calls which made her yell and sad afterward.

Skye knew it had something to do with him and his brother because the walls of the two-bedroom apartment were really thin and he'd overheard her mention them a good number of times.

He sensed it was the reason his aunt wanted to speak to him and didn't think it would be any good.

He wasn't wrong.

"I have some good and not-so-good news to share with you, Skye," Aunt Celine spoke up immediately they got to the living room.

Skye's heart began to pound heavily. "Are we going to be placed in foster care? We can't be placed in foster care, you are our family, we should stay with you. I can't be separated from Timmy. I have to take care of him."

"No… No Skye, calm down," Aunt Celine shook her head quickly and placed a hand on his shoulder to calm him. "You aren't going to foster care. I'd go to war on the entire system if I have to before I let you both be placed in foster care."

Skye sighed heavily with relief but worry still niggled at him. " If it's not foster care, then what is it, Aunt Celine? Have they found the person who killed Mom and Dad?"

Even as the question slipped from his lips, Skye knew the improbability of the answer.

He had a strong sense that whoever has killed his parents wouldn't be easily found.

They were too vicious, too uncanny to be.

"No, they haven't, love. But there's something else they did find," Aunt Celine answered with a ghost of a smile.

"They found your father's estranged parents, and also that they have custody of you and Timmy."

"Dad's family?!!" Skye was seized with unpleasant shock and disbelief.

"Yes, Skye. Your father's family are all in England. They are sending a helicopter to pick you both up in the morning."

Skye unfroze and began to shake his head, "No… No… They can't. We aren't going to any family, we want to stay with you, Aunt Celine. Please don't let them take us away."

"Oh, I'm sorry love, I'm so sorry. I wish there was something I could do about it," Aunt Celine threw her arms around him with a cry.

Skye couldn't hold back the tears anymore. He felt his body begin to shake and held the armrest of his chair in a tight grip.

He had never met his father's family before and thought of them more as myths than real people.

Elliot Skye Stryke was in a foul mood, and he couldn't quite put a finger on the real reason why.

Skye as he was called by everyone except Mrs. Wilcox, his Language Ed. teacher who called him Elliot, was better described as a boy who sat still and let life unfold around him.

It wasn't because of the fact that he was lazy or sat in a wheelchair for the pesky reason of not being able to use his legs anymore.

But because he knew that things had a way of being unfair and turning out whatever way they wanted to, no matter what anyone did about it.  Just like the football coach a few feet away who stole sorry glances at his cup of pink ice cream as it melted slowly, while Vice Principal. Gibbins chattered on to him.

He couldn't do anything about the melting ice cream in his hand, neither could he walk away from the vice principal who talked rather too much for anyone's liking.

Skye scratched his smooth auburn hair and pushed his gray wheelchair further away from the center of the room. Till he could feel the wall behind his back.

From that point, he had the advantage of viewing everyone in the cafeteria.

Skye knew his irritation and distraction didn't stem from the fact that he'd been waiting twenty long minutes for his buddies; Rusty and Gemma Shapiro, so they could eat lunch together.

He also knew it wouldn't be going away anytime soon.

"Hey, wheelboy. You look a little lost there, do you want your mommy?" A large tawny-haired boy called Lucas Thornton spoke with a taunting sneer, as he approached Skye without missing a beat. He was followed behind by his cronies, Bill Sandman; whom everyone called Sandy for his hair and sallow complexion, and Jacob McGillivray; a short stout boy with a huge penchant for trouble.

"No, Luc. He doesn't just want mommy," Jacob crooned in jest, kicking the left wheel of Skye's chair and bumping him into the hall. "He wants to cuddle and hide away from the big bad world."

Skye heaved a tired sigh and braced himself.

The Klux Rebels was their stupid name. Three bullies who hadn't known what to do with their oddities, choosing instead to feign toughness and be colossal jerks to other kids.

Their main target being him for reasons best known to them. Skye knew it obviously wasn't because he was crippled.

Everyone knows you're supposed to be nice to the kid with disabilities.

"Can you guys just leave me alone!" Skye voiced out with irritation. He wasn't in the mood to play their games today.

What he needed to do, was understand why he'd been feeling a terrible dissatisfaction and unease all day.

"And what if we don't want to, huh, wheelboy?" Lucas edged closer to Skye and placed his fist close to his temple.

"Any problem here?" asked the vice principal who'd finally released Coach Tucker to give the boys withering stares.

Skye felt instantly relieved when they turned reluctantly and walked away to their usual table across the room to sit and sneer resentfully at him. He suddenly felt a shot of annoyance that it'd taken the vice principal to get them to stop with their needling when he could have done that all by his good old self.

Skye wished he could close his eyes right there and feel them leave the ground, suspended in mid-air. He'd smile while they screamed in fright as their feet dangled loosely in the emptiness of the atmosphere.

He could imagine the realization dawning on their faces as they turned to him, right before he sent them facedown into the large green garbage bin at the corner of the room.

But as sweet as the idea felt to him, he wasn't interested in using his abilities to his advantage. He wouldn't acknowledge his powers that way.

For you see—he secretly knew, that they were one of the sources of his irritation and dissatisfaction.

Skye had always known that there was something entirely off about his family.

How could there not be? There were unbelievable things that'd happened over the past couple of years that pointed fat muddy fingers toward that fact.

He'd known way before the car accident that rendered him immobile from the waist down at the age of ten. The manual car that was being driven by his older half-brother, Dex that evening with no hands on the steering wheel; while he poked fun at Skye's pink sneakers, his shirt, and everything else about Skye in his usual cruel fashion.

It wasn't just the weirdness of the entire situation, as the car moved down the road on its own at an alarming speed. But also, the crackling energy that seemed to be emitting from his half-brother in teeth-gnashing waves.

Skye Stryke had known way before the accident when one of his younger twin brothers, Thomas Jeremy had been abducted. He knew because he'd stolen into his father's study that night and read the note that had been left on the desk. The note that'd explained why Thomas would never be coming home again. The note that had given him horrific nightmares for nights on end.

The mystery around his family had been a little understood on his eighth birthday. A cold rainy day in March five years ago. It hadn't been necessarily explained as you'd probably think, rather it had all unfolded before his unbelieving eyes. Skye had turned eight as the clock struck twelve, signaling the herald of the fifth of March.

He'd stayed awake all night just to see the brass finger on his mother's antique grandfather clock hit twelve right on the dot. His mother had promised him a huge party in the spacious backyard of their Arizona farmhouse-styled home.

There were going to be candles and new-age alien-shaped balloons. There was going to be a big yellow cake right at the center of it all, and he could invite all of his friends from school.

Skye had lots of friends back then. Everyone had said he was cool because he knew so much about extraterrestrial life forms. It helped that his mother wrote futuristic novels. She used to tell him lots of cool UFO stories which he regaled his classmates with at school.

There hadn't been any party that day though.

The rain had begun at dawn and poured continually throughout the morning.

No one came over because the rain had been quite heavy. They hadn't been able to get out of the house. It wouldn't have mattered because his mother had burnt the birthday cake. She had a long business call to take and forgot his birthday cake in the oven.

Frustrated by the universe and angry at the world, he'd stalked out of the house to the backyard and stood under the drenching downpour which soaked up his clothes in seconds. The next events had been rapidly fast like the whirring of a music tape in a madcap run to the end.

He could remember vividly that he'd closed his eyes right then.

He'd been building up a wild yell to relate his frustration at everything.

The rain, his mother's preoccupation with work sometimes, his father's absentmindedness with whatever he did in the privacy of his study when he returned late from work.

What had happened next had been nothing he'd been expecting though.

It was a startling push—which could be described by any person with special abilities in the world as a shove, separating the fixed consciousness from the untapped reservoir of energy deep within the mind.

The shrubs and flower beds scattered sparsely over the wide backyard uprooted from the earth by their roots as he felt a rush of energy move out of his body, leaving him dizzy and weak.

They fell in different positions, some hitting the house violently prompting his parents outside, just in time to catch him before he fell into a dead faint.

After that day, Skye came to the realization that he could move things with his mind.

He'd read it in one of his father's old books in the library and had tried doing that a little bit more. Although he'd tried explaining it all to his mother that evening it had manifested, she hadn't believed anything he said or allowed him to go on.

His father was a different case entirely. He'd sat there with an intense unreadable look in his eyes—a look Skye had come to understand later on as he grew.

Connecting the event of the night he lost his legs; when Dex had veered off the lane he'd been driving on before being hit by a drunk driver, coupled with the unsettling note he'd read when Thomas had been taken. Skye had finally understood strange things were happening with his family. He needed no one's confirmation to believe that.

It had taken him a short while to realize that a boy who could lift things with his mind and levitate didn't exactly fit into society's depiction of normal.

And as his powers got better and better, he hated it with a fierce passion. Asides from using it to maneuver himself into bed at night with less stress, he had no need or business with it.

It made him feel different. Weird, strange, like he never belonged with others, or anywhere.

He hated the way it changed his eyes' colors over time with each little use. The perfect lake blue of his eyes had gone disappeared slowly, replaced by an aquamarine shade on his left and violet on his right, which changed into a deep purple when struck by light.

Everything about being different; his gray wheelchair, his eyes, his abilities which he'd managed to hide from his two close and only friends; Rusty and Gemma infuriated and saddened him a great deal.

Along with the uncanny feeling of unease that came over him before something devastating would occur.

Skye was saved from hurtling down the perilous slope of overthinking, by his twin buddies; Gemma and Rusty, who strolled into the cafeteria together right then with different interesting expressions on their faces.

If one took a look at the twins, they had no doubt of the riveting combination of opposite things made sometimes.

What else could be expected from a part Hispanic, part Apache father who catered for a living, and a British professor mother who taught astronomy at the most prestigious university in Arizona?

Rusty and Gemma were fraternal twins who looked nothing alike or had any similar interests.

Rusty, who was a foot taller than his sister with a mop of short dark curls and funky medicated glasses, was a mechanical savvy gamer. He always appeared loaded with boundless hyperactive energy which seemed like an entire superpower on its own to Skye who struggled to catch up with him on many occasions.

Gemma on the other hand was a little rounded and homely in appearance with a bob of straight black hair and a smattering of pleasant freckles on her cheeks. That didn't stop her from throwing the meanest right hand and fighting dirty just like any tomboy even if she strictly wore dresses and spoke in a refined manner with the hint of an English accent.

She balanced her crafts club, theater troupe, and girl's guide meeting with roughhousing with Skye and competing aggressively in video game marathons with her brother. Sometimes the latter bled out to other aspects of their lives just like right now, judging from the abject look of helplessness on Rusty's face.

"Skye, Gemma's got another harebrained idea to save the litter of possum kittens behind the science lab and has gotten us involved without our permission," Rusty said to Skye as he stopped beside him, glaring at his sister resentfully.

Gemma smiled; the edges of her lips turned up in cheeky humor.

"Don't listen to his tone, Skye," she said and dragged a tuft of Skye's hair. "It's not as bad as he makes it sound, we only have to fib about practicing starter Buddhism and learn to chant like this. Om……,"

Rusty smacked his sister’s swollen cheeks, stopping her humorous chant and tomfoolery.

Skye laughed at that, and at Gemma's yell of playful indignation as he let himself be carried away by his best friends and their dysfunctional antics.

He could still feel the unsavory taste of impending menace at the back of his throat and a disquiet deep within his mind.

He knew he'd keep feeling it because it seldom went away without a manifestation. It rarely did.