What I thought would be a brief silence has stretched on and on with no one willing to break it. Anna's state is compromised and I’m part of the reason. It kills me. It is clear by the bouts of crying punctuated by rapid deep breathing to calm herself that she is trying to work through everything. I feel terrible that I have only given her a temporary reprieve from the warring magics in her head. I know now that someone is attempting to rewrite her memories, but it's being tempered by a mixture of the strengthening effect of Kai's tea and her own strong will. I saw her fighting it in the hospital. The commands I gave were to keep them at bay, but I was being a selfish prick. I can't use her, use this for my own ends. While I am trying to get information to help her, it is not right to let her go through this. But I keep getting negative feedback from my ability.
When my recounting was finished, she sat back, hugged her legs and has been this way since. Even when my mom sits beside her again, she doesn't move. We stay this way for what feels like hours until she finally speaks.
“She was right,” she says. Her voice is raspy and sounds every bit like she has been crying all day. I knew she would have something to say eventually, but this is not what I was expecting to hear.
“What?” I ask.
“She was right. Chrissy, I mean. She always said she was magical from the day she came to live with us. She said she could hear someone telling her she would do amazing things. My parents . . . No, I have to be honest, it was me too. We didn't believe her, but she kept saying it until she was put on meds. Therapy helped too until we were about twenty, then she stopped talking to me. She stopped talking to everyone. When I would reach out, she would push me away and at one point got violent. She finally called me one day and said that she was sending me something and I thought we were finally going to reconcile. I had no idea the things she was going through could be true. It's all our fault.”
“No!” Me, mom and Vithar, all yell in unison. It startles her from her guilt-ridden thoughts.
“No. No,” I continue. “That's not fair to anyone involved. How could you know that it was real? If you'd gone along with what she knew, you would've been dragged under too. Don't go down that road. It won't help you. Believe me. The worst place to be is inside your own head sometimes.”
She stares at the floor while I speak. “Did you and Chrissy talk? How did you know all of this?” she asks, her breath still hitching here and there.
I get up. “No, I didn't know her until last year. I'll be right back.” I walk upstairs into my bedroom and grab Christine's diary. Once I am back in the living room, I hand it to Anna.
“She left this for me when we had our first confrontation. This was on the ground when she disappeared into the shadows, but I know it wasn't an accident. It seemed important to her, given that it was a very carefully detailed accounting of her journey– even if it did show her descent into her addiction and giving in to her demon's hunger. She wouldn't have just left it.”
“What do you mean, disappeared in the shadows?” she asks
I am surprised that is what she focuses on, but I explain, “We were in a dead end alleyway and then shadows wrapped around her. When they disappeared, she was gone. That's what she could do, and she was very fast.”
Anna focuses on the diary, touching it softly on the cover and over the written words of her sister. Then she looks at me.
“What do you do?” she asks.
I shift uneasily in my seat. “I'm . . . much less impressive,” I say.
Oh, stuff it, I tell my demon.
“I get bigger, a total B movie stereotypical demon. And I have the power to cancel out magic, and it can help me go unnoticed.”
“Like invisibility?”
“No, not that cool. It's more of a process. I push out void energy and make people want to avoid me. Christine could do it too, but hers was more shadow based. It was closer to actual invisibility. She'd spent so much time with her demon and using her abilities though, that she knew everything she could do. I was kinda jealous until I found out what it cost her,” I say and stare at her, watching her expression.
“Hm,” she murmurs. “Most of this writing isn’t legible. Is it just gibberish?”
“Oh, right.” I'd forgotten that the diary was written mostly in demonspeak, the language of demons. “I can translate for you anytime,” I say.
“Okay.” She nods while still studying the writing.
I lean forward. “You're taking this a lot better than I thought you would.” I'm actually impressed at her ability to take the whole story in and stay calm. Aside from a few crying breaks, that is. She sets the diary on the table and rubs her face then looks at me.
“I've been seeing things–or, I guess, remembering them. I thought I was going crazy. I saw you fight that–that thing. It definitely wasn't a mountain lion. The same feeling I have right now–I remember having it when that guy was talking to me at the store, and you walked up. Your hole thingy?”
“Void,” I correct her.
“Void. I remember the feeling when you walked up. I wasn't thinking clearly until you called my name. Remembering that is helping. Plus, all of this still kind of feels like a dream.”
“I can totally understand that.”
“I do have questions though,” she says.
“Sure, you're entitled to many.”
She leans forward and, for the first time, seems very present. Her first few questions are about Christine. She asks about things like, how did she look, was she afraid, was she confused, and what her personality was like toward the end. I answer what I can, but explain that I didn't know her very well–not like Anna used to. There is another long silence while the three of us let her digest. She sits back and leans forward a few times. My mom gets up and lights incense while Anna thinks. She finally leans forward again and asks her last question.
“You say you can talk to your demon, and Chrissy could too. Did her demon make her do those things?”
I sigh at the question. I know what kind of answer she wants, but I can't give her that lifeline.
“No. I'm sorry. I temper the impulses every day, and she could have too. Sometimes it's like there's no filter when it comes to my demon's intrusive thoughts. But I don't blame him anymore. It’s got to be hard watching but never interacting. I kept him locked down for a long time and ignored him too. I probably would've felt the same if our situations were reversed, but we're on slightly better terms now.”
I feel an overwhelming sense of surprise from within, and the emotion is not from me. I guess that is the first time I have said how I feel out loud.
Anna's lip quivers and she hangs her head. “I still feel like I should have known.”
“And you probably always will,” Vithar says, surprising everyone by really speaking for the first time since Anna has been here. We all look at him, and he shrugs, “Projected guilt never goes away unless you find a way to make it smaller. Sure, the feeling can be masked or maybe even reduced, but it stays with you. You can only attempt to move past it.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
I wait for him to go into further detail, but that is all he says. Anna flexes her jaw, taking in his words. I wish I could make her forget. Everything changes with the knowledge she has now, but even that she doesn't get to keep. Not yet. While we were talking, I tried to strengthen the terms of the void–to get it to break the magic in her head. Nothing I have done has worked. Or at least, it wouldn't work without also breaking Kai's mental fortifications and possibly doing some other damage as well. I want his work to stay and I don't know for sure what else that would do to her. She would be dead right now if it wasn't for what he did.
“So what do we do now?” she asks.
All attention is on me.
“I can't break the enchantments on your mind. I tried. If I use my ability outright, it would be similar to blunt force–I could wipe everything out. It could take everything that makes you you with it. My ability isn't like a scalpel, it's more like a hydraulic press. It forces its will–my will–in increasing amounts until it breaks what I want broken. I can't do it delicately–at least not yet. Once I bring this bubble down, the conflicting memories will come back.”
The look of abject terror on her face is something I don't ever want to see again, let alone be the cause of. Her eyes go wide, and she starts hyperventilating.
“I'm not doing it yet!” I say quickly, trying to diffuse what looks like a quick spiral. I look between Vithar and my mom. “Can you help? Either of you?”
Mom holds Anna's hands and calms her down, speaking in hushed tones. Vithar looks at me, then at the floor before agreeing with a nearly imperceptible nod.
“We can both help with it,” Mom says. She says something quietly to Anna before getting up. “I will project her mind like I did with the locating spell and make it so that everything you do to manipulate the image, happens inside. Can you pull out what needs to be removed?” she asks Vithar.
“I'll do what I can,” he says.
They lie her down on the couch. Vithar magically puts her to sleep while mom sets up the table just like it was yesterday. This time though, she offers her own blood. She cuts the palm of her hand and it surprises me. It seems like an unreasonable place to do it. I can't imagine that lends itself well to manual dexterity with all the scarring it would cause. I have seen characters do that in movies and shows, though I thought it was pointless dramatization. My concern is rendered moot quickly though. When she wipes her palm clean of the remaining blood, there is no cut remaining. She takes a pin and pokes the side of Anna’s palm, putting two drops into the mixture. After the offering into the bowl, she begins chanting and also surrenders a portion of her energy into the process. She moves to the arm of the couch where Anna is resting and spreads some of the mixture across her forehead. She then puts a hand on either side and continues to chant. Shortly thereafter, the liquid rises from the bowl and spreads into a semi-opaque projection of a faceless head above her.
Vithar stands behind her. He focuses on the projection and begins his own spell. The red glow of the energy he gathers covers his hands in a crimson hue that makes them look like transparent red gloves. Mom's chant slows and changes in rhythm. As a result, certain parts of the projection are highlighted in a yellowish color, and motes of light bounce around in those spots. He plucks the motes with delicate hand movements, careful to only grab the ones highlighted in yellow.
“What are those?” I ask, and I chastise myself for being so mystified and potentially breaking their concentration. Vithar, however, answers like he is instructing a student.
“These yellow ones,” he says, plucking one of the motes out of the air. “Are the false memories that are attempting to overwrite the others. First I have to extract them. Otherwise when we break the enchantment, these remaining bits of the spell could bleed into other areas. It could cause brain damage. The spell your mum’s doing, actually makes this process a whole lot easier than I thought it would be.”
“I don't think I ever asked–what kind of magic do you specialize in?”
“Funny thing about that–I don't have one anymore. That's something the guild does to make sure they have the powers they need at their beck and call, but I've learned that the process of specialization actually weakens the guild as a whole. I used to specialize in fire, but I have studied so much over the past year that I am not bound to any one school anymore. Some of the things I have learned are amazing, but I don't quite have the capability to use them. Not yet, anyway.” He smiles.
Even though I always saw him looking at books, I guess I never thought about how much he had already learned. With Eph's tutelage, Vithar could exceed what he could have done even with the guild's guidance.
“Well, how–”
“Not to be rude, mate. But I've really gotta concentrate on this next bit.”
I zip my lips.
The motes have all been removed, and now he is breaking the enchantments in the yellow zones that were cordoned off in her brain–or more likely, her psyche. In the projection, they shatter like glass after some manipulation. The pieces fall, disappearing as they leave the projection field. The process continues until the last area unmistakably gives him trouble. It is a particularly large and obstinate area and I see him try a few different hand movements, but nothing is working. He looks at me with a hard expression, and tilts his head back toward the image.
“Everything else is gone, I need you to 'hammer' this one to pieces.”
“That won't hurt her?”
“No, the problem before was if you had done it when everything was still up, it would have ripped it all out and scarred the whole of her mind. I've gone through and essentially excised all the parts that would've caused serious damage like a surgeon. We’ve handled the precision, now we need brute force.”
That, I can do. I command the barrier that has been active this whole time to break this last mind-affecting piece of magic. I had trouble doing this before, because it was all so interwoven into her memories and brain. This time, however, there is no more precision needed, and I attack it with my power. The yellow shaded area wobbles and compresses at first, but doesn't break. I glance at her face while I press on. The intensity of the force I apply increases until it finally cracks and shatters. As it does, Anna exhales deeply.
Mom looks up at me, smiling in approval. It worked. All three of us sigh with relief. Vithar dismisses the magic surrounding his hands and mom does the same with the projection. The liquid the image is composed of evaporates without a trace. I am reluctant to release my ability. I know the threat should be gone now, but when I even hinted at lowering it, she nearly went into hysterics–and rightfully so.
Slowly as I can, the starry void recedes back into me bit by bit with me watching her face the whole time. She seems to be resting fast now–possibly the first stretch of real rest in quite a while–and we let her.
“Mike,” Vithar says while my mom cleans up the components from the table. “The energy that was causing her problems. It was . . . Mm, familiar.”
“In what way?” I ask. “Like the incubus?” I think I noticed it too while the magic was being channeled. I felt like I had been around this energy before.
“No, not like that. Though it was demonic in nature, yes. It was . . . uhm,” he hesitates.
“Like yours,” Mom finishes.
“What?”
“That energy, it felt a lot like yours,” she says, putting what she gathered back into her duffel bag.
“I didn't–”
“Oh, I know,” she responds. She wipes down the table, then sadly looks into my eyes, “It was very much like your father's.”
My anger builds quickly, and I have to stifle it. I am not blowing on this lit kindling–at least not here. Look, I am aware of the fact that at times, I can be like an angsty teen when it comes to my father, but why would he do something like this? Is there something I am missing? There just doesn't seem to be a point in messing with Anna's head.
Mom tucks a pillow underneath her and covers her in a blanket. She doesn't stir even once. This looks like exhaustion. I have definitely been there before, and I feel so bad for her. I am going to find out why this was done. She has been drawn further into this world, and that never should have happened after Christine was gone.
“Why? Why would he do that?” I ask.
Mom just shrugs. “I don't know, honey. He does what he does.”
Why is that phrase more infuriating than anything else? I need answers as to why he keeps showing up lately and not just 'he does what he does.' Is he just targeting me? Is he interfering in the lives of his other children? I need to speak with him. And soon. Now that we are past the hard part, my mind has time to decompress and…
“Hey,” I say, confusedly. “I just realized, I've never told Anna where I live. How did she know?”
All three of our heads turn in the direction of the front door as a trio of auras oozing malice approach.
“If that's Brad or someone else whose life I've ruined, I'm gonna be pissed.”
The door explodes into splinters that penetrate the room.
The front door again? You've got to be kidding me.
I really wasn't expecting that.