The Birth of Bane (37 page)

“
What the hell,” I murmured, taking a wary step closer, my eyes
searching over the mini-armament before me.
Where have I seen you before?

It had a
wickedly curved blade, bending back upon itself almost forty-five
degrees in a swooping arch before the line of it plunged down to
form a shallow point further along the topside of the
blade.

I had seen this
before. I was certain of it! But, where?

“
Isn’t it a wonderful specimen?”
he asked, shattering my thoughts.

I peered through
my eyebrows at him, a little annoyed at the interruption. “Ah-huh,”
was all I could manage.

“
There aren’t many like it, Jeremiah Favor.”
He seemed to catch himself.
“Well, there a few like it, though
their meaning and purpose are quite different, but by no means are
there many of them. And, unfortunately, as time has progressed,
some have been lost as well…”
I
trailed off introspectively, something plaguing his
mind.

I let him talk.
My attention was elsewhere. I couldn’t take my eyes from the
incredible blade. It shone dully in the purity of the light. I
could see it wasn’t polished, and hadn’t been for quite some time.
It had shallow scratches and potmarks, and gave the impression it
was in fact made of gold. If that were true, it could be worth a
lot of money.

An errant
thought hit me. “Why do you want to give this to me?”

He seemed taken
aback.
“Why, my boy, it isn’t
mine to give. It’s yours in every meaning of the word. It always
has been.”
He gained a modicum
of control over himself.
“I’ve
been taking care of it for you, waiting for you to come to me, so I
might give it back.”

“
B-but I never
owned a knife like this before,” I replied. My breath was suddenly
hot over my tongue.

“
Sure you have.”
His smile
was back.

“
No. No, I
haven’t.”

“
Yes, you
have.”

“
No, I -.” I stopped swallowing the words about to follow.
Fleeting
wisps of remembered
thought became more solid in my head. The memory was
realized.

Affliction
’s Key? Was he
talking about Affliction’s Key? But, it wasn’t mine. It was my
mother’s. She was the one who found it. She was the one who had
dreamed of it. She was the one who had been led to find…
The thought froze in my head as though
an artic blizzard had suddenly formed within, flash-freezing all of
me that was internal. I looked at him again, the shock of
comprehension plainly written upon my face.

He smiled
through one corner of his mouth, seeing I’d connected the many
strings necessary to weave a completed cloth of
recollection.

I tried but
failed to find my voice.

He bent over the
desk and scooted the knife closer.
“It is yours, Jeremiah.”

“
Affliction’s Key
isn’t
mine,” I said, the word gushing from me like a water-balloon
popping on grass, random, messy.

He laughed then.
From deep in his core, a roaring, spirit-revealing chortling that
quickly turned into near-wild guffaws.

I stood erect,
taking a few steps back, my fists inadvertently balling. If this
fucker was going to get aggressive, then I was going to be ready. I
glanced about seeing if there was a way out, searching for another
door. The very means of escape I had found time and time again in
this retched place. There was nothing. There was no way out. The
four white walls about us were solid.

Without warning,
the laughing stopped.

My eyes found
him.

He was deadly
serious, as if his near-insane levity of a moment ago had been a
dream.
“What makes you think
this is
Affliction’s
Key
?”
he asked, his orbs like twin shards of ice.

I stared at him,
and then the tiny sword, and then back at him before my eyes moved
again to the knife. “Because it is,” I supplied. “It’s my mother’s
treasure. She found it in in our house, in the storage room off the
library, under the stairs going into the attic.” Suddenly,
specifics were a necessity.

He remained
unmoving, his stare level, cool.

I gazed back,
uncertain. The quiet became profound. I could hear my heart beating
as though it did so in my head and not my chest. It was
thunderous.

Something boiled
to awareness, a condition, an instance. My confidence returned, my
resolve hearty. I recalled, since the night Lenny had nearly killed
Elijah, we hadn’t been able to locate my mom’s funny little sword.
It had disappeared. My expression became accusatory. “You took it!”
I almost yelled, pointing at him.
There, you puckered asshole, take that!

“
Took what?”
he asked
nonplussed, shifting his weight to one side, though his eyes were
still intense.

“
Affliction!
What the hell do you think I’m talking about? You took it from the
window sill above the kitchen sink!” I was angry now, feeling all
of this was a bunch of bullshit, some idiotic ploy to get a rise
out of me.

“
Affliction?”
It was a
question, but he said it loudly, as if he were
appalled.

I nodded
fiercely, my eyes burning.
Why
did everyone have to fuck with my mother!?! I wasn’t going to stand
for this shit any longer. I was sick and tired of it. I was fed up.
I wasn’t going to sit aside and watch her get hurt any longer. I
was going to stand up. I was going to fucking FIGHT for
her!

“
My dear boy,
Affliction,
came all by herself. The choice was hers…, though she has chosen to
call herself by a different name, a more modern moniker. But, I
adore it all the same.”

I shook my head
like I’d been slapped silly, right across the face.
What the hell was he talking
about?

“
The sword is yours, Jeremiah Favor. It is yours to take. It is
not the one to which you are referring.”
He motioned toward it.
“Look at it, closely.”

Unsure why, I
did what he said when I should’ve felt nothing more than
trepidation. I leaned toward the knife. I let my eyes scrutinize
every last detail, trying to find anything that would tell me this
wasn’t my mother’s treasure. I searched and searched, but it me it
looked the same.

He must’ve
sensed this, because he said:
“Look closer.”

I came nearer,
my neck bending, almost painfully, my face no more than a few
inches away. No, it was the same… except… it
did
appear more
Arabian than Moorish, unlike the one my mom had plucked from
underneath the stairs… The crest along the top edge was higher… the
points sharper… the etching was wrong.
Why hadn’t I seen this before?
Yes, the tilt was rounded. My mother’s had more of oval
one with a cross-guard to match. This one round, but it was pinched
at either end, giving added protection to the one wielding it (if
it had been real).

“
It is
different,” I admitted.

“
It is yours. Take it. Name it. Give it a home.”
It was like a chant.

I came to my
full height, my hand reaching outward.

“
It is what you
came here seeking all along…”

My hand
continued forth.

“
Isn’t that
right, Jeremiah?”

My fingers were
inches away.

“
You came here
to claim what is rightfully yours.”

I stopped. My
lip curled with confusion. My brow folded upon itself.

No, I hadn’t…,
right?

“
Yes… you
did.”

“
No, I didn’t. I
came to find my father,” I said, pulling my hand back. I peered at
him befuddled, through a mist that was lifting. “I wanted to know
what happened to my father.”

He looked at me
with what could nothing more than pure hatred.
“Why?”

“
Because, I
needed to know.”

“
Forget him.
He’s nothing to you. He hates you, everything about you. Forget
him, Jeremiah. He’s nothing to you. Forget him!”

“
I have to
know.”

“
Forget
him!”

“
I have to
know.” I was more adamant.

“
Forget
him!”

“
No! I have to
know what happened to him!”

“
FORGET
HIIIIIMMMMMM!!!”

“
Fuck you! You
have no right to tell me what the fuck I should do! You are not my
mother! You are not my father! You are the one that it nothing to
me! I don’t have to listen to you!

“
I want to know
where my father is!” I cried then, though I am certain my tears
weren’t truly for the likes of Lenny. There had been something else
I was searching for, something I would never find. Something I have
never stopped looking for.

Her voice was
like morphine to a crash victim – soothing, warm and brought a
smile.

“
He is where he
needs to be,” she said to me, coming forth from between two large
trash bins, the white room vanished, the desk gone, the knife
disappeared. The man behind them all was nowhere to be
seen.

I recoiled like
she’d struck out at me with her fists, shielding my face with my
hands. “Stay back!” I yelled thinking she was yet another female
form sent to torment me, to vow to drain my testicles. There had
been scores already, why not another?

To my surprise,
she stayed where she was, four yards or so from me, hands clasped
before her, dangling prettily below her waist. She was the
only
truly beautiful thing I had laid eyes upon since I’d left the
confines of the basement.

I gazed into her
aqua-marine eyes. Though she looked no more than a few years older
than me, I could tell it was an illusion. She was at least four to
five times my age. Her expression, the cast of her visage, her
bearing – combined, it told volumes. A person of my years would
never have been capable of mastering it in such a short amount of
time. It is a thing requiring at least half a century to
mature.

When my stare
continue longer than what propriety required, a shy smile seeped
forth from her, like liquid water sweating from an ice cube, a
spreading of warmth over something icy.

I knew her,
then.

The only sound
came from the man in the suit. He raged with
frustration.

But the sound
was far, far away.

Apparently, I
was lost to him.

Mrs. Gates had
finally found me.

~~~~~~~<<<
ᴥ
>>>~~~~~~~

Chapter
Twenty-Three: Bane

I smiled in
return.

The wife of Mr.
Gates was undeniably disarming. Her face was narrow, though not as
severe as Valerie’s. Her jaw was slightly broader, better defined,
her chin squared, but in a feminine manner. Her lips were small and
thin, and would’ve registered on her face if they hadn’t been as
pink and glistening as if she wore lip gloss. The idea of Mrs.
Gates wearing make-up after the fact she’d been dead for more than
fifteen years didn’t occur to me as odd, though it does now. Her
nose was angular along either edge, giving her a flattened sort of
ridge down its’ entire length. Her cheekbones blended into the rest
of her visage, so they seemed polished instead of chiseled, making
her appear even more statuesque. She had a broad forehead and wore
her hair combed back over her head to accentuate the comely
feature. Her auburn hair was long and stringy, almost damp, as she
she’d come from the shower within the hour, though not recently. It
hung down to the middle of her shoulder blades, reflecting the
fantastical light within the alley, a glow that was everywhere and
nowhere at the same time.

She wore an
outdated dress when compared with those I’d seen my mother and
Valerie dawn. It was powder-blue, without sleeves. There were twin
swaths of fabric forming the bodice from either side. It flowed
from her shoulders, gathered about the waist by a darker blue
material that gave the impression she had wrapped a sash around her
midsection, though the fabric was a part of the dress itself. From
her waist, the dress flared considerably. It wasn’t as dramatic as
a hoop-skirt, but it puffed outward like the skirts I’d seen from
the 1950’s.

When I’d made
that distinction in my head, it all came together. It
was
a dress from that era, cotton with a layer of chiffon or like
material overlaid. It appeared gossamer, but wasn’t exaggerated in
that regard. She wasn’t some tireless haunt howling through the
night with long, billowing trains of a dress whisping behind in the
wind. She wasn’t like that at all. She was elegant as if she’d been
high-born. Though she looked young, her prowess in etiquette was
imbued in her graceful form. I could tell she would know how to
conduct herself in the proper fashion in any given situation. Even
with a knit-witted scamp like me ogling every physical component
she possessed.