Listen To The Silence by Sheryl

Chapter 12

...Just one key unlocks them both...

"Not my house, not my house... oh God please, I don't want to be alone here..."
Exhaustion limp, flat against sheets blessedly soft, so tired, desperate self hypnotic voice of his mind, Inhale, try not to shake, exhale, don't panic, inhale, exhale, keep breathing, forget about everything you saw..., heavy weight of the quilts comforting against his back, almost the feel of an arm around him, inhale... pressure just gently, softly, warm across him, soothing... exhale, let up of the pressure, waxing and waning with his breath... almost, almost he feels he's not alone. Just that simple rhythm of his breathing creating the illusion of companionship.
Sighing, eyes flickering open to the light from the living room, glowing through the crack in the door, illusion set by him to make him feel... feel what? Not alone, alone in Jordan's house, Jordan, lying in a hospital in somewhere across town, perilously close to death. Leave the light on and go to bed, safe in the company of sheets and quilts, imagine someone is in the living room... reading... should have left the TV on. Contrived companionship, but oh God this place is no good without Jordan.
Restless, scenting air perfumed with flowery wax. Forgot to put out the candle. Let it burn, let it all burn.
Onto his back, comfortable weight of the blankets gone now. Why is he still here? How can he leave?
Mind as restless as body, exhaustion his touchstone but unquenchable... how to sleep when dreams are filled with nightmare images? He brushes hair from his eyes, hands moving to rest behind his head, watching the shadow play of the candle on the ceiling. He wants to sleep, needs to sleep, but every time he dozes his mind fills with visions of corpses, bloodied and ragged, the last showing him the entire crawlspace of the house filled, filled with them, rotting by the hundreds. Shuddering relief on waking, only a dream, but the suggestion is there. Alone, in a house of death.
Tenuous stretching of his mental voice, he searches, find them, finds them all, all awake in their own private hells, and Jordan, Jordan, unaware even of the nearly lethal strike against him, not even fighting, comatose and unresponsive even to his mind touch. How could they not have known?
Thump of pain between his eyes as memory takes him back...
Flashes, only flashes, no sequence, no cohesion.

Morning... bright sunlight, birdsong, taste of the air sweet, damp, fresh.
Jordan... morning call, checking in, everyone there, everyone fine.
Mail truck, rumbling and clattering, stopping at the end of the drive, the drive...

He shudders, shakes his head as if to dislodge the memory, but it's stuck... stuck like melted wax and ash... burning and coating it refuses to fall free.

He can feel it still, that sudden rush of metallic fear, static charge in his brain as the attack rushes up... and through, through! Taking him, using him, using all of them, arrowing... with the force of a laser he feels the precision, feels it taking aim, and shouts his warning, along with the rest, the rest who have just sensed it, realized that they are being used... mental shields suddenly slamming up, too late, too late for Jordan as he steps to the mailbox, sudden force shoving him, making him stumble, into the road, into the path of the van... speeding, speeding, so fast, so big, their shouted psychic warning doing no good, his startled jump back too little, too late.

Hideous pictures then, Jordan, broken and bleeding in the road, there in front of him, frantic arrivals as the others, tuned in at the moment of attack, used as energy beacons, drained, guilty, in pain, rush to reach him. Horrible realization that without them, without their stolen energy it wouldn't have been.

Sav, wild eyed and frantic, the loss of his daughter too fresh, too new, to cope with the loss of his mentor and friend, stalking insane and furious up the road...

Mental images flooding, drowning, he sees it all again now as he saw it then, Sav's face as he finds his car, as he drives to Dannon's house...

Heart racing, he turns over again, then again, tangling the blankets, unaware that he's moving toward sleep, these memories taking on the flavor of a dream.

Kellan, Kellan, he doesn't know why, doesn't understand why, why does he see Kellan????? Why did he see Kellan? Sad, infinitely sad, and the look of hate, pure and unbridled, on Sav's face. Hate for Kellan???? Why?

Sav's face again as he looks into Dannon's house, never moving closer than the road, Dan's eyes suddenly rolled back in his face, nose bleeding, Kyle, Dannon's friend, no more than 16, suddenly collapsing, dead before he hits the porch, the fire in Sav's eyes.

Morianis, suddenly standing there, there in front of him on the road, kneeling by Jordan, touching him... and there with Sav, standing next to him, comforting, steadying hand on his shoulder, his voice soft... but unresistable.
"Enough... it's enough. Come..."

Two places at once, the man was two places at once.

Completely into dreams now, he moans in his sleep, grappling with it, the man, two places at once, on the road in front of him and miles away in the dooryard of a brutally injured young man and his dead friend.

Sweat beads up on his forehead, chest, arms... soaking sheets as he thrashes through the dreaming memory, unaware that even asleep he is reaching, reaching...

He had taken Kellan's arm, shaking it, gripping it, Jordan suddenly driven from his mind as he remembered... the boy! The boy from New York, the one who was landing in London. They had to meet him, had to go get him, he was going to be there...

Kellan's hand solidly knocking him away, striking, again and again, blacking his eye, bloodying his nose, teeth through his lip.

"Never mind him!!! He's a dream! We don't need him, Jordan's DYING!!! Don't you understand?!?!"

Morianis then, somehow with him, in the kitchen, how had he gotten inside? His implaceable voice... so calm, so steady...

"You're right lad, you're right, we have to bring him here..."
Hands gently cleansing the wounds on his face...
"You have to tell him where to go... send him to Sav... Sav needs him the most... you stay here... you create the signal for him to follow... bring him to Sav, for the sake of all of us..."

And now... lying in sweat soaked thrash tangled sheets, images of the day dissolving into nightmare realms of death and emptiness...

And now... around him the empty house, it's living presence removed, ticks and settles as darkness presses against the windows...

And now... alone in the night, shivering and sweating as fever burns off the rain, following the beacon a sleeping child is unaware he is holding, a barefoot boy makes his way north.

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