Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (12 page)

“See?” Roger says.

“You’re just a shadow,” I hear a female voice say.  I whip around but Roger hasn’t reacted to it.  Corbin is looking around though, like he heard
something
, but not as clearly as I did.

“What?” Roger asks but we both shush him.

“We’re all just shadows on the wall.”

I feel a tingling in my ear and quickly reach for the itch.  I grab a hold of a delicate insect limb and pull a tiny spider out from my outer ear.  It is black with a white hourglass on its back.  But not an hourglass-like mark – an ornate, delicate image of an hourglass.  But even as I hold it, the spider disappears in my grasp.

I look at Corbin who looks disbelievingly back at me.

“What happened?”  Roger asks.

“
W
e’re shadows?”

“That’s what it said,” I reply to Roger’s question after explaining what just happened for the second time.

“So it’s trying to communicate with us?” Corbin asks.

I throw up my hands in incredulity.

We’ve just been over this, but Roger asks again, “So it was a
spider
?”

Exasperated, I sneer, “probably not a normal spider,
no
.  But what was controlling the shadows and what spoke to me just a minute ago had the appearance of a spider.”

“Do you think it was poisonous?”  Roger asks.

“Roger?” I begin.

“I’m just saying.  It was
in
your ear,” he continues.

“What time is it Roger?”

He frowns and stops talking.

“Do we go to the council about this?” Corbin asks me.

“And fast,” I say.  “Before another thing has a chance at us or any other sentiner.”  I pause for a moment accepting the possible consequences of what I’m about to say.  “As Captain of Central Gothica, I am hereby calling a reckoning.”

S
abetha sits atop the safe house, perched on a mushroom shaped steam vent in the gleaming glory of Neo Gothica’s lights.  The air tosses everything about her into a twirl, and the soothing sway of her coat coerces her into deep thought.

I fence-hop the edge of the building onto the roof, using one of the fire escape’s rails for a grip.  Its surface is rusted and gritty and while walking towards her, I slap my hands together to shed the orange-brown flakes.  She turns half over her shoulder then stares back to the Cynthecorp Tower for a moment before slipping down off the vent and into a sudden tornado of steam.  Her apparel is fanned upwards, snapping her trench coat like a whip.  She meets me at an open point on the roof and placates the rustles in her clothing.  “What’s the first order of business?” she asks.

“I’m calling a reckoning.  This is bigger than we thought and we could all be at risk.  We need to contact the others and get them to the theatre.  But we need something more secure than conventional means of communication.  I don’t quite know what it is we’re fighting, but it’s got to be closely connected to the consciousness.”

“What did you have in mind?”

I let out a long sigh, thinking.

“How about Corey?” she asked.

“Creepy Corey Caprelli?” I wait for a response. “Birdshit, creepy-Corey?” She still won’t answer me. “With the lazy eye?  Who hates us?”

“It would be
more secure than other methods, and even if our message was intercepted, it would take a lot longer to translate from red scroll.”

“That’s a
lot
of red scroll, sister.  Are you going to front the blood?” It’s a rhetorical question.

“You get the parchment,” she says challengingly.

“Sabetha, I was joking.  We’ll get some local chyldrin.”

“We can’t risk someone questioning the messages authenticity due to weak blood.  It will have to be mine.”

I try to laugh it off but my tone becomes annoyed and persistent, “There are too many of us.”

She is softly forceful in her tone, “Delano.  You have neither a choice, nor a say.  It’s my family too.  Now unless you have a better idea…”

I grit my teeth.

C
orey.  Where to start… Corey is a scabby old hermit who lives in the foundation of an apartment building owned by his mother, so I guess you could say he’s still living in his parent’s basement.  His passion is information and secrets; all types of information, and all types of secrets.  We come upon his building in an ilk section of town.  The brick exterior makes it unidentifiable from the next except for a strange blue glow of kharma, bright enough that even a sensitive undarkened might notice something odd about the building while passing by.

I open the front door and walk into the foyer.  Sabetha buzzes the lowest button and a voice answers almost immediately.  Through the intercom, which is old and crackly, it’s hard to understand just how gravelly Corey’s voice is.  That terrible exhale of his; that tar coated bronchial chuckle which comes out more like a gurgley gasp than laughter.  “Waddaya want?”  It sounds like he has a throat full of goo and I can’t help but cough and clear my own.

“It’s Sabetha.”

Again, almost instantly, he buzzes the door open.  I’ve been staring at a crow who sits outside the door on a low tree branch.  It bobs up and down looking sideways at us.  Before I go in, I press my middle finger to the glass in defiance of the bird’s presence.  Over the intercom I hear Corey’s cackling laughter in response.

We travel downwards into the cold, unwelcoming basement.  The air stinks of mold and decay.  Nicotine cases the walls so thickly it could be scraped off and smoked again.  Passing an open wooden door, warped and cracked like Styrofoam, I see strands of cigarette smoke. 

A fat woman between fifty-nine and sixty-two but looking seventy, with curlers in her hair and an old teal nightgown, lays wilted on a brown sofa.  Her mass spills over itself, the sweat-stained and soiled robe visibly lined with folds of fat.  A cigarette burns in her mouth and a television casts black and white light onto her blank stare.  Her skin is pale, and face sunken and deeply wrinkled.  The smell of her body, nearly as pungent as the menthol soaked room, drifts as far as the street.  Her lips, hands, cuticles and scalp are dry, cracked and flaking.  Ashes from cigarettes cover her and her furniture like dead snow.

She begins to turn her head so slowly that I wonder if she is going to look in our direction or if it is merely to drive the stiffness from her neck.  With her head trembling slightly in effort, her sagging features make the turn from profile to direct.  The erratic light from the television enhances the deadness in her eyes and her drooping lips reveals a row of rotted and jagged teeth.  Indifferent to us, Corey’s mother slowly turns back to her program.

As a receiver of emotions, thoughts, and anything else floating around in the collective consciousness, I cannot help but see glimpses of this woman’s life.  Her pain is so powerful and her fall from happiness so staggering that I cannot block it out.  A veritable tornado of negativity surrounds her.  She will die without dignity in abject misery and longing.

Such is the life of a darkened ilk.

Sabetha and I move to the door at the end of the hallway.  It is perpendicular to the first and more solid.  Sabetha knocks, then grips the handle and twists it.  The knob
clacks
and
clicks
, the screws loose and the lock otherwise mechanically inferior.  The door’s path inward is resisted by debris on the floor but is still opened to a full breadth.  A column of putrid air escapes with a hot belch from the belly of the room.  Amongst the mold and filth, the stench of excrement – both human and animal – is particularly potent.

I stand behind Sabetha who drapes herself in the doorway.  She smiles into the darkness.  “Corey?” she ventures, almost provocatively.

That terrible gasp comes again but this time un-muted by the intercom which filtered out the liquidity of his voice.  “Yeah.  Come on in.”  It sounds like large chunks of mucus are rattling just behind his tongue and thick bubbles are forming in his mouth as he speaks to us. 

Birds remain silent and still in the darkness all around us.  Newspapers, soaked with their filth, provide a soggy carpet underfoot.  Corey lets out a torrent of coughs, having not spoken this much in some time, I imagine.  He sits in a swivel chair with flannel patchwork coverings barely containing the foam that oozes out of the frayed stitching.  A network of boxy video monitors hangs from supports in the wall and ceiling.  Blue light from the screens illuminates his cancerous features and brown toothed and bloody-gummed grin.  Like most every ilk in Gothica, Corey has deep black circles under his eyes, but his are in different orbits, offset by about five and half degrees blank and neither one ever looks at you. 

He swivels to face Sabetha and ignores me.  “It’s ok,” he says after undressing Sabetha with his lazy eyes.

She speaks cordially to him. “I’m sorry.  We didn’t apologize for coming unexpectedly.” 

“I was talking to the birds,” he replies, then cocks his head unnaturally and continues. “They’re apprehensive of you.”

The birds suddenly begin to squawk wildly as they reveal their presence openly to us.  Like a lighting cue from off stage, the birds lining the walls of the room illuminate themselves and flap their wings, tossing feathers into the air.  The black daggers float lazily to the floor, a multi-angled sheen of light reflecting off each glossy surface.  They calm when Corey raises his hand.

“You know crows were once gray, stupid and fat.”

I resist the urge to make a pot/kettle comparison.

“But the kharma darkened them and they became beautiful and sleek, unseen but all knowing.  Did you know that there is nearly three ilk for every crow in Gothica?” He sneers.  “Of course you did.”

In a startling contrast to Corey’s, Sabetha’s honey smooth voice slips through the air. “We need your help.”

Corey makes a noise which I can only assume is an invitation for her to continue.

“We will need the use of your associates to spread a message.  It is of great importance.”

“Heh, competitors of information coming to me?  Must be important.”

“You’re not the only guy in town, Corey.”  I try to sound tough but it comes off as juvenile, and it only makes me madder to have to grovel before him.

He twitches as if trying to find me with his ears.  “What’s the message, and who‘s it to?” 

“We’ll give you the parchment and a list of people and addresses.  Can you do it?”

“What’s in it for me?”

I answer.  “A Secret.”

His stomach tightens with sweet apprehension and he leans forward.  The chair, disapproving of his movements, lets out an audible creak. “Tell me,” he says quickly, short of breath.

“There’s a second route into Salt Town.”

He scoffs.  “Everyone knows that.  No one’s stupid enough to take it.  I need a real secret.”

“They don’t know this route.”  I’m not bluffing and he can tell.

He turns back to Sabetha and looks her up and down, clearly excited by this fortunate turn of events.  I speak again, pressuring him before he can ask for more.  Unfortunately it is hard to hide the urgency of our predicament. “Do we have a deal?”

“How many people need it?”

“Three hundred and five.”

He begins laughing which is almost instantly turned into unstable coughing.  We wait impatiently for him to regain himself.  “Three hundred, eh?” He pauses with a devilish look in his drooping eyes. “I’m gonna need something more.  A favor.”

Coldly, and withholding a great amount of apprehension, I reply.  “Name it.”

“I have some…
friends
who have fallen on hard times.  I want their homes and businesses in my pocket.”

“Never took you for a philanthropist.”

“Hardly,” he replies. “A roach in Solthweros, a Chicken Bucket, and a photography shop.” 

Internally, I let out a sigh; he’s asking for bird feed – pardon the pun.  Nevertheless, I play it nervously.  “Solthweros?  That’s Cassandra’s territory.  You’d have to talk to her.”

“And ten-thousand dollars,” he adds greedily. “Cash.”  Corey scribbles some addresses down on a piece of paper, crumples it up, and tosses it to me.  I open up the paper and look at the places he wants the deeds to.  With a painfully theatrical look of dejection, I turn back to him.  “Deal.”

“We will be back in three night’s time,” Sabetha says.

“We’ll be waiting,” Corey smiles.

S
abetha drives while I sit, contemplating the long ritual ahead of her.

“I’ll be ok Del,” she tries to reassure me.

“Why three nights?” I ask.

“You and I both know we can’t risk any more time than that.”

“It’s not enough.”

“Look, I know what I’m doing.”  She pauses trying to shift the mood.  “You’re just jealous ‘cause I’ll be all the stronger once I recover.”