A large black car sat idling at the gas pumps, chug-chug-chugging away, stinking with foul exhaust. It gleamed with liquid black paint and chrome fenders that stood up like knife blades.
The front grill was a grinning shark mouth under sly hooded headlamps. Bullet hubcaps gleamed under fender skirts over the dusty road.
A big guy was fiddling with the gas pumps. He had slicked-back hair and a black leather jacket with the collar flipped up. He was flicking the pump lever and banging on the handle but couldn’t seem to figure out how to get the gasoline to flow.
No one had shown up for gas at… this place? Since, like, forever, Darius thought. This place is home for me, but it’s not home. It’s someplace else. Valhalla. A place between lives.
Darius couldn’t see inside the car. The windows were narrow and black-tinted, but he thought he could make out a Buddha shape sitting motionless where the steering wheel should be.
“Hey. It’s ok. We’ll pump your gas for you,” Doctor Joy said. She had come out of the garage and was wiping her hands with a rag. Darius had moved to the front of the car, on the same side as her but closer to the diner entrance.
The others were close behind him.
The guy hadn’t noticed anyone and only kept banging at the pump handle and muttering. Darius stepped closer, rounded the hood, and moved toward the pump. As he approached the man, he realized who it was.
“Bucky? Bucky. Hey… Hey man, it’s good to see you made it out ok,” Darius said hesitantly. He felt relieved; he realized he was actually glad to see his old teammate, but there was worry, too. Things weren’t right.
Bucky continued to mumble and pull at the pump handle. Darius heard him giggle. He had never heard Bucky giggle in his entire life. Darius stepped closer and placed a gentle hand on his arm. The leather coat was scorching hot.
“Hey, Buck. Are you ok?”
“DON’T TOUCH ME!”
The scream jolted Darius, and he stepped back, his heart pounding.
Bucky continued on as if he hadn’t made any outburst and continued to struggle with the pump. He mumbled… “Put energy in… need energy…”
Doctor Joy approached him from the other side. “We will help you,” she said in a calming voice. “It is all right.”
With a bang, Bucky dropped his forehead against the pump handle and went still. Silent. He stood there motionless, eyes closed. And then his head began to rock slowly side to side as if to say “no.”
“No. No. No. It’s not all right,” he said quietly. Calmly. So calm that when he turned, lunged, and grabbed Darius by the neck, it caught Darius off guard. With one hand, he held Darius with a grip and strength far stronger than normal. Darius grabbed onto Bucky’s hand and fought.
“Let go, Bucky! Let go!” he said through gritted teeth. Bucky’s face was different. Dead looking. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a month. And he was dirty. He stank of something. Vomit. Darius could see he had a crust of something nasty-looking on the side of his collar. And Bucky wasn’t smiling. He didn’t have that same look of enjoyment in tormenting Darius that he had in the locker room. Bucky looked… sad. Really sad. The look of pure sadness and heartbreak on Bucky’s face was far away from his look of mixed scorn and glee that he usually had when something like this was going on.
“Everyone, move back,” Badrik said. Darius kicked against Bucky and swung blows against an arm that felt like a steel beam.
No one is this strong…
Behind Bucky, he saw Doctor Joy step forward with a fluid martial arts-type movement and drove her elbow into Bucky’s shoulder. It didn’t even budge him.
The Doctor pulled her sidearm.
“Let him go, or I’ll shoot.”
Bucky turned his head slightly.
“They said guns and stuff wouldn’t be able to hurt me. They changed me.”
Darius saw that the doctor didn’t have a normal pistol. It was a tiny crossbow. The bow was up and down, not side to side, with a small, pointed shaft loaded in it.
Darius fought harder against the grip. He kicked at Bucky some more, but Bucky blocked the kicks with his free hand—incredible strength.
“They made me stronger. See? I’m going to break your neck, you little shit. They make the hate in me so… so… angry. Angrier. So powerful. Hate flows through me like fire. I’m going to kill you and then your little friends there, too.” Darius watched as tears ran down Bucky’s face. His words were filled with hate, but his eyes didn’t match. His eyes were sad, crying eyes.
“He’s right,” Badrik called out from behind Darius. “Darius. Just hold on for a short moment. Keep fighting his strength. Doctor, don’t shoot yet. That won’t hurt him but I’m going to get you something that will.” Darius heard the bell above the diner entrance tinkle as someone went through the door.
Where in the hell is he going? Darius thought. He is the only one that seems to know what is actually going on around here.
The bell rang again as he heard Badrik dash back out of the diner. “Here, Doctor. Use this.”
A silver chain struck the doctor on her chest, and she grabbed at it with her free hand. She was still aiming her weapon at Bucky’s back. It was one of the silver jewelry chains from the counter.
The doctor wound the chain around the barbed tip.
While she did this, Badrik spoke, “Bucky. You are in with a bad crowd.”
“No shit!” he said and giggled. The stink of rotten breath washed over Darius.
“They have changed you, yes, but I’m warning you, the silver the doctor has will hurt. Let Darius go.”
“NO! You’re all the sick ones. Deceivers!” He gave Darius a shake. “Just like this one here. You are the lying garbage that needs to be cleaned up.”
“Let him go, or I’ll shoot.”
“Bitch, stuff it up your—”
The bolt and silver chain came straight through the front of Bucky’s shoulder and disappeared past Darius’ ear. A smoking hole dissolved into Bucky like someone had shot him with a blast of melting acid.
“AAAAAAhhhhhhhh!” The scream was intense, and Darius landed on his feet, free of the crushing strength. Bucky spun and howled at the doctor, his mouth opening too wide for his face, his jaw a rubber Halloween mask. “SONOFABITCH, that hurts!” he screamed and hunched back against the car. Darius could see daylight through a wound that was expanding to the size of a dinner plate. He backpaddled to join back up with Nova and Brock. Doctor Joy stood her ground. A second bolt was in her pistol draped with another piece of the silver necklace.
Bucky was bent over and writhing, spitting streamers of blood into the dust between his boots.
“You said they couldn’t hurt me!” he yelled and vomited.
The passenger door clicked and was pushed open. Two tall, bone-thin girls climbed out wearing matching black schoolgirl skirts, white dress shirts, and identical straight black hair.
The twins from the Rec Center.
Darius backed up and rubbed at his sore neck. Brock and Nova moved backward with him.
The twins’ eyes were swallowed with darkness—no pupils, no irises, just black orbs where their eyes should have been.
“The same eyes after they had become something else on the pool deck,” Brock said.
“Become creatures,” Nova added as she backed away.
Both girls went up to Bucky, one on either side of him, and pushed him to stand upright, his back against the big black car.
“AAAhhhh!” he screamed. “Don’t! DON’T! It hurts!” He tried to shake out of their grasp.
“Oh, come on, baby. It isn’t so bad.” One of them gave him a few not-too-gentle slaps on the cheek.
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“But you said they couldn’t hurt me,” he whined.
“Don’t be so stupid. They cheated, you idiot. Your fault you’re too dumb to get out of the way. You expect us to do everything? Normal things can’t hurt you. Special things can. Silver is special, silly.” She cuffed him on the face again. “You could have moved fast. Very fast.”
“Ya, like, vampire fast. And we didn’t know they would cheat,” the other girl said, affecting a pouty child’s voice. Darius realized this was whistle girl. The lifeguard. She was still wearing the chrome whistle around her neck.
Bucky glanced over at the opening wound that showed daylight through his leather jacket, and doubled over again from the pain.
“GOD, this hurts!”
Both girls winced. Mirror girl slapped him again.
“Now, baby, we told you, we don’t use that word.”
“We don’t like it at all,” Whistle girl added.
“No. Not at all. Now, I need you to focus.” Mirror girl grasped his lower face, smushing his cheeks, and forced him to stand again. She spoke directly into his face, “They cheated. That’s all that matters. And we’re here to help you, cuz…?”
“You can help me?” Bucky said meekly.
She pushed him away. “So damn stupid. Even with the hints we give you, you still can’t guess. Why did we get someone so stupid?” she said to her sister.
Whistle girl gave him a gentle cuff. “We can help you now because they cheated.” She ran her hands across the front of his jacket, down low, and slipped it into the front pocket of his jeans.
“We planned it this way.” Mirror girl ran a finger through the hair over his ear.
“It is their fault you were hurt.”
“You know we take care of you…”
“You know there are times when we get to have fun…”
“But you’re going to help us now.”
“We made you strong.”
“Took care of you.” Whistle girl shot her chin toward Darius and his friends. “After they left you.”
“Ya, they left you behind.”
“Ya. We’ll never leave you, baby.”
“You’ll always be with us.”
Badrik’s voice broke into their babble and sounded out across the clearing. It almost echoed as if it were amplified.
“You are not welcome here.”
Mirror girl turned towards Badrik, pulling Bucky with her. “See his jacket!” She tugged at it, and Bucky let out a groan. “Look what you did to it! Do you know how difficult it was to get this jacket? Almost as hard as getting the car.”
“You can’t just attack us,” Whistle girl said. “This is a waypoint.”
“Neutral ground.”
“Your friend made the first assault,” Doctor Joy said.
“Oh, that. That was just a misunderstanding. He didn’t know how to work the pumps,” Whistle girl said.
“Yes. The foul is on you,” Mirror girl said.
“You cheated, and now it’s our turn.”
Bucky was still leaning against the car, moaning. “Wait a minute. I need, I don’t know, like first aid or something, don’t I?”
“That wound is going to last until HE gets here,” Mirror girl said. “So he can see what they did.”
Bucky shook his head vigorously. “No. No. I don’t want him to come.” Darius could hear the worry in Bucky’s voice.
“Oh, he’s coming. We did our job. We found them. And you owe him. Remember. He fixed you up. Gave us to you. Then we got to get this cool car and these cool clothes and got to cruise around looking for them and we found them. That’s all because of Him.”
Doctor Joy had her weapon up and aimed at Bucky. “Get in the car and leave, now, or I’ll shoot him again.”
Mirror girl laughed. “Go ahead. Shoot him. He will just whine and spit more. It doesn’t matter. It won’t make us leave. It’s too late. I told you he’s coming.” As she said this, she opened her purse and took out a compact. The same one she had at the gym, the one she wouldn’t look away from when Darius spoke to her. She opened the mirror and, tilting her head, looked at the doctor’s reflection. Towards the doctor, through her mirror, she made a little “come on” twirl with her finger.
“And remember,” she said, “you made this happen.”
Fissures appeared in the doctor’s gun. She released her grip on it, and it broke into parts and fell to the sand like a river of dust from a broken hourglass.
“Everyone. Get behind me,” Badrik said.
Darius, Brock, and Nova went to Badrik, but the doctor was alone on the opposite side of the car. The other girl put her whistle to her lips and blew. The shriek from the whistle was a jumbo jet. The power of it sliced through the air, lifting the doctor off her feet and flinging her backwards to crash into the garage door.
The twin lowered the whistle and laughed gleefully.
“Doctor Joy!” Nova said. Badrik grabbed her arm and held her at his side. There was a constant ringing in Darius’ ears.
“Everyone has to stay with me, or I can’t protect you. The doctor will be ok. She’s much tougher than she looks. All of you, stay close beside me.” In his hand with the bracelet was a walking stick, and Badrik raised it and held it out like a sigil. He shouted words that Darius couldn’t understand. To him the words sounded like shock poetry spoken in a different language. Badrik’s long, jangling bracelet began to glow. The lines of faint script in his clothing came alive and moved, scrolling across the material.
The twin girls turned to face him. Mirror girl looked through the reflection of her mirror and made the twirling motion again. The items that Badrik held glowed even brighter. The other sister let go a blast with her whistle, and it was loud. Darius winced, but the sound had been deadened. It was as if someone had slipped sound protectors over his ears.
“You will have no effect here. I command you to leave now,” Badrik said. Even through the continuous screech of the whistle, Darius could hear Badrik’s words.
Whistle girl dropped her whistle and pouted at him through her bangs.
The driver’s side door of the car clicked and swung open, and a heavy work boot thudded into the dust. The cleaner from the pool climbed out. His movements made the suspension of the car shift, compress, and lift once he stood. He still wore the sweat-stained janitor’s outfit from the pool, complete with the dried blood from biting off his tongue. The ichor that ran from his black eyes was caked like rotten mascara on his cheeks.
“Uh. Really. We told you to stay in the car,” Whistle girl said to him.
“Ya. You are sooooo disgusting,” Mirror girl said.
“We tried to get him to clean up a little.” Whistle girl curtsied and batted her eyes at Badrik. “But he wouldn’t have it.”
“Mr. Kazimora—” Bucky began.
“No. Sorry. He’s no longer really with us. We keep them, but they are not here. You are still here… well, kinda,” Mirror girl said, slapping Bucky on the face. “But the rest of them aren’t. Mr. Kazimora and these girls are gone. You are stupid to notice we no longer speak with accents. Like us, this fantastic voluptuous man is all Erebus now, possessed in his great fine gloryness.”
“Gorryness,” Whistle girl said and laughed.
The Buddha flung his arms out and thrust his head back to look like he had just been electrocuted. The sky went dark. One moment, the sun and sky were there, and the next moment, they weren’t. The distant rocks and desert floor had been thrown into a shadow—instant solar eclipse. Darius searched for the sun, and he realized it was still there, but now it looked like a dark moon. The darkness grew, and the surroundings continued to lose their definition as if a fog was moving in.
“Is it getting even darker?” Brock asked.
“Yes. I think so,” Darius said.
“The sun became a moon. Now moon is gone,” Nova said.
A black fog wrapped around them, but it wasn’t just a black fog, Darius realized; it was the absence of light. He could no longer make out the details in the other’s faces. Even his own hands were disappearing from his sight. He could feel them still there; he just couldn’t see them.
“It’s also getting quieter,” Brock said. Brock’s voice sounded further away, but he hadn’t moved one step away from Darius.
The darkness thickened even more, becoming almost tangible.
“Isn’t there something you can do?” Darius asked Badrik. In speaking, he realized how quiet he sounded, and he raised his voice. It didn’t seem to make any difference. He turned and searched the darkness for the tall man. He saw Badrik look down at him and shake his head “no.”
“I can only defend and protect. I don’t have the power to reverse this.” It looked to Darius as if Badrik was shouting, but he only barely heard him.
“What if this continues?” Brock asked. Darius was losing the location of the others. He was no longer sure of where anyone was standing. The darkness was becoming complete—a thing of its own proportions. It was coming between them like a thing.
“There will be nothing. We will be lost,” Badrik said. “The girls have the power of fate. He has the power to erase.”
“But… but…” Darius said. “I don’t even know where this is yet.”
“Don’t worry.” He felt Badrik’s arm around him, his hand on his shoulder. It was incredibly reassuring. It was as if someone had placed a boat anchor around him. Suddenly, he felt secure. “Wait a moment,” the big man said. “Hold here. Help is on its way. We are inevitable. We are luck. We can deny these things. Feel my faith in that?”
“Yes. Yes, I can,” Darius answered, and he could. He could feel the strength of Badrik around him in the dark.
“Can you see something now?”
In the darkness, the darkness of the darkest night, a small figure in plain clothes and a floppy hat appeared in front of them.
“Master Juro,” Nova said from somewhere far away.
They could see him standing there in the darkness, just as they could still see the big janitor.
Darius watched as Juro bowed deeply. The little man seemed so small before his large opponent. The dark flowed towards the little master and covered him. As it did, the shape that was Juro disappeared. The darkness thickened and clung there as if trying to erase him.
“It is law that the dark is always followed by the day,” Badrik said. “Everything must allow for balance. Sometimes, we must force that balance. From the darkness, we can bring light.”
But Master Juro was gone. Darius could see only the black flowing, pouring out of the big janitor. The only sensation he had was Badrik’s comforting hand on his shoulder, but even that didn’t matter. Darius could feel the ground he was standing on starting to slide away. There was no longer any grip. Weightlessness. He looked up towards Badrik and realized he had been speaking, but Darius could no longer hear his words. He began to feel cold and alone, the sensation coming through him as if he was as insubstantial as a ghost, or a spirit.
We are not going to survive this…
And then fissures of white appeared in the wall of dark.
Light broke through in the thinnest cracks, seeming like tendril wisps that glowed. They shone brighter, and the lines grew slowly wider. It wasn’t light but a whiteness that was centred around where Master Juro had been. The lines continued to widen into a shape. The white lines mixed with black were beginning to form the outline of something. The outline of an animal.
The animal continued to materialize. It coalesced from the white, formed from the whiteness, but it was still shot through with jagged black. Darius could see the shape.
A tiger. A white tiger.
The white stripes of the tiger were brilliant against the blackness. They shone with their own light, revealing the shape of the big man and the twins that stood behind him.
The tiger turned and paced between the two groups. The blackness fought back and seemed to attack its pelt, appearing like the bars of a cage that twisted and tried to confine the big cat, but the tiger smashed at the lines of black, and the bars broke and fell away. The big cat was free, and with a bunching of muscle it pounced towards the janitor and the twins.
And the darkness vanished.
A white tiger stood in a clearing at the pumps. Even Bucky and the car were gone. The giant white tiger paced back and forth and glared out across the landscape.
Badrik lowered his walking stick and strode over to the garage entrance. He knelt beside Doctor Joy, who was sitting up. All of them went to the doctor and helped her to her feet.
“I’m ok. I’m ok. Just shaken,” she said, giving Badrik an annoyed look. “But a silver necklace? And a whistle? A mirror turning whatever you call that pistol I was carrying into junk?”
“Of course. They have been possessed by the Twins of Fate.”
“Twin sisters now creatures,” Nova said.
“Yes. And I still don’t have a complete understanding of what just went on here.”
Darius looked for the tiger, but it was gone. “Where did the tiger go?”
“Juro is gone to tell our master our time here has ended.”