LeJeune Media

 

PART II

Chapter 14

PUAH HAD TOLD HIM that they needed to wait until closer to dawn to sneak into the city unseen, after the partying had died down and everyone was asleep. She knew Cain would have made an issue of her being gone, although she did keep that point to herself. Chase didn’t need to know about the depraved emperor just yet.

Along the winding road, Puah mechanically put one foot in front of the other, trying to walk away from the memory, trying to stomp out the pain in losing her dear friend Raphael. She didn’t need to search for him anymore. He was gone, and she just needed to face the truth and find peace with his death, as hard as that would be.

Chase’s insides were raging for his own reasons. He could not fashion the correct smile or formulate the compulsory words to help Puah in her struggle, as if it mattered in the dark of the predawn morning anyway. He had seen that face, those tears bubbling on the brink of spilling before, glaring back and laughing at him. Even now he felt alone. She was not paying attention to him as before, and he wondered if he’d done anything wrong. She was torn about having to forgo her search for Raphael, he knew, but he wanted to be the one to help. Silence reigned though, his inability to speak accelerating his weakness. In all of her pain she still somehow seemed strong, her energy radiating toward Chase, reminding him of his need to find a peace of his own. It was odd, this fleeting trance, this transcendence into her soul, as if it were a hallucination but for the force behind it.

They finally reached the end of the road and took their first steps into the city. Chase could hardly believe he was finally here.

As if fully aware of his thoughts, she smiled at him sweetly. He couldn’t understand how she could smile at him when she was in such obvious pain. For Chase, pain was pain. Joy was joy. There was no in between.

“I enjoy being with you, Chase. I like you. Even though I miss Raphael, you’re my friend now. That is something to be happy about.”

“So this is it,” he said.

“This is it.”

“It’s hard to believe this place can be so loud.”

“Well, once we had our fill, it was bed time,” she said. “Everyone should be in bed now.”

It was dead quiet. Chase had never imagined he’d join them, but when he felt the still silence in the streets, there was a pulling inside. He wanted them to be out, to be carousing, to be chanting his name now that he was here. He’d finally come to them as they’d always wanted, and there was no celebration to welcome him. Discouraged, he asked her if she was sure they were done partying for the night.

“Chase, you don’t want that life.”

“I was just curious.”

“Curiosity is what fooled me all that time,” she said.

She gasped suddenly and started running before he could respond. He ran after her, and they stopped at a weathered post with a heap of bones and dirt at its foot. An old, weathered sign was posted, and it read HERE LIES A MURDERER.

There was a torn up shirt protruding from the debris. Chase looked to Puah for clarity, assuming she would know who this person had been. He was right. She was horrified.

“I can’t believe it,” she sobbed.

The aged rags were half-buried in dirt, torn and faded, but they had not lost their familiar pattern. The bones were old relics, dry and brittle with the passing of time. The realization of whose remains these were was apparently clear for Puah; Chase, on the other hand, had no idea, of course. Suddenly thrown into a powerful human moment again, he froze, quiet and dumb. He placed his hand on her shoulder and in an instant recoiled it. He opened his mouth to speak and his voice went numb. The words puffed out in his mind but no sound came out to comfort her when it mattered.

“I can’t believe it,” she said again. “I saw him just yesterday.”

He stood there, wanting to hold her, wanting to run. Love wanted to soothe her sorrow, but it was paralyzed by years upon years of isolation. It remained strapped by the reminder that he didn’t want to impose. She needed him, and all he could think of was his own discomfort.

What am I?

“Chase, I saw my father just yesterday. I saw him just yesterday.”

“Is this—?”

“Yes, I recognize the shirt. It’s his. But his body…it’s…it’s gone. It looks as though it’s been years since he died.

“But that can’t be. I saw him just yesterday,” she repeated again, as if Chase were the judge considering her argument.

On his end, there was again nothing to say.

“I would have sworn it was yesterday,” she said. “How long did we sleep?”

“I don’t know.”

“My father is dead. And that bastard killed him. I know it.”

“Who?”

“Cain.”

Chase stood there in stone silence.

“What did you say?”

“Cain.”

Chase’s thoughts were really far from Puah now. They were far from her father. All he could think of was a distant afternoon at play with his twin brother.

Cain.

“He’s a villain,” she sobbed, choking through this introduction of the man that had changed everything. “He’s the main one we were avoiding by waiting to come so late. He always warned me not to leave. As a joke, but he was serious. And I left.”

He moved his hands to her neck and back and rubbed them gently, trying to assuage the pain, trying to appear comfortable in his own skin, trying to keep secret from her the truth he now knew. He knew the feeling inside should be compassion for her, but it wasn’t. And he felt sick for it.

“I am so sorry, Puah.”

Her wet face glistened, polished by the moonlight’s dance through the fog. Stray hairs were matted against her forehead, giving her the appeal and innocence of a little girl.

“Chase, I’m sorry too. You don’t need this.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s all right. I’m here.”

He found himself good at pretending.

She distanced herself from the pile of bones, as if the corpse’s white, fleshless fingers might lunge and grab her. She tried to release herself from this anxiety, this stark reality that she would never see her father again. Her eyes blinked on the bones, her mind bewitched into thinking that an occult energy was screaming from the corpse of her father.

“My mother,” she said suddenly, and ran away from him.

Had she been crazy, he could have understood her mad dash away from him. But it was in all of Puah’s sanity, with her body running wildly away in the darkness, that this night turned even darker in his soul. Chase’s eyes were wide.

“I’ll peck them out later,” said a strange, cold voice inside his head.

“Come on!” she whispered loudly back to him. “We have to find her!”

Chase caught up to her. Then everything seemed to slow.

They ran only a short way, and then there was the house.

The first thing he saw was the screen door. It was swaying back and forth.

The hinges were creaking.

The light wind was whistling.

The door kept swaying back and forth.

“Chase, come on!”

Chase didn’t want to follow. It was too dark. Dawn’s light was at least an hour away, if not more. He knew she needed him, but he couldn’t move. His feet wouldn’t peel off the ground.

“Chase, are you coming?”

The town was so still. So quiet. Only the whistling of the wind disturbed the silence.

And the creaking.

“Puah, I can’t.”

“Chase, I need you to come with me.”

It was more than just the dark. It was the familiar pattern in the wood, in the door, in the swaying.

He reluctantly consented. They entered. It was as dark as they’d imagined it. Puah was furtive but Chase clumsily tumbled over unseen things. The air was thick and rancid, a decomposed memory of an old stale smell. Maybe the cabbage was just a part of her soul, she thought. The foul air hovered in a darkness that mimicked the entire town—silent and waiting.

“Mama!” Puah called. “You here?”

There was no answer. Her mother would have woken up to the noise, and when Puah repeated her call and no response came, she knew the painful truth. She forgot about Chase for a moment, only to shudder when his low, heavy breathing reminded her of his presence. It reminded her of her own breaths, and for the first time, she realized how hot it was in the house. It stunk too. Their breaths, though quiet, still screamed in her ears like a predator-bird stalking her every move.

“Mama?” she whimpered now, hardly hopeful. Her very skin shredded by the silent screaming, she felt like a baby girl again, afraid of the monster under her bed. Chase felt like that monster now, her friend and enemy in one. She knew she needed him but for a moment wished she’d never met him. The thought chilled her even in the heat box, and in the next moment an unseen hand was covering her mouth, a man’s body wrestling her to the floor.

Chase was moving in another direction. He heard the remnants of Puah’s gasp and a crashing sound behind him, but he could not shake the allure of the light in front of him. It twinkled from inside the crack left by an open door, beckoning, demanding Chase’s approach. He was moved by a force stronger than his own, a pull like a hypnotic charm. It was a dancing silver line, the same silver line of a blade he had seen in his dreams time and time again.

The door crept closer. Chase’s feet took him toward it, and he reached for the knob.

It suddenly slammed shut. Chase tugged hard, but the door remained obstinate. He kicked the slats and pounded the wood with his fists. He groaned through grinding teeth, his mouth frothing like a possessed dog. Kicking, cursing, screaming. The more he raged, the more closed off he felt. The tunnel spun smaller and smaller, the air getting thin. Louder, louder became his gasps and cries, and his curses turned to God yet again, the easiest dupe to denigrate. He began to see ghosts and ghouls in front of him in the wood grain, their oval faces yawning toward him. Other wooden pieces broke off the door in the form of claws. They scratched at his arms, sending him reeling to the floor.

“Goddamn you,” he said, standing, staring down the obstacle in front of him. “Open!”

The whirlwind stopped. Desperate and angry, he placed his hand on the knob. Summoning all of his strength, he clenched hard and yanked as hard as he could.

The force sent him reeling backwards. The door had given no resistance this time.

It was as if it had never been locked.

The silver line glowed. Its straight line was captivating, like the blush of sunset on the horizon, a spectacle Chase had seen countless times before. None of them had ever been like this though, and he eagerly put one foot in front of the other, finally coming face to face with the light. It was just like the silver line he had seen in his dreams so many nights before. It dazzled and drained him at the same time, the silver line melting and dripping red in his sleep. This line was beginning to move as well, the light turning to a shade of red. Chase clenched his eyes shut and reopened them. The red was gone and the silver was shining again. The drip began again though, and Chase again shut his eyes to the memory.

“This is the blade in my dreams,” he said aloud.

He examined its smooth glow. His fingers seemed to fuse with the stream of silver. He looked at it long, searching in its glassy shine for its connection to the one memory he had never been able to shake, the one memory of a porch soaked in blood.

“This is the blade.”

Red began to drip. This time he couldn’t close his eyes.

Seasons and seasons had passed since that dark afternoon. Death had been as horrifying then as it so painfully was again now. The rain of tears, the river of bloodshed, the flood of fear had washed away a life of promise and splashed it with chaos. That day was the goblet that held the black potion of Chase’s pain, and the too familiar blade now spilled the cup of his sorrows again. Death had demanded that Chase stop to pay it homage. Death had made time itself a casualty.

And Chase felt as though he were dying all over again.

“I shouldn’t have left Puah,” he said.

“No, you shouldn’t have,” a voice said.

“A mistake?”

“A grave one, but not unexpected,” the voice said. “You seem unable to put the past to rest. You will have to fight to leave it behind.”

There had been restless nights with unconscious, rolling tears, but the push and press of an unwanted memory had made the feeling forced, almost false in its unending drip. So many years of piling mask upon mask to the invisible person inside him had made him lose the truth of who he was, from where he had come. Now, Chase was silenced into a teary fever, oblivious of everything around him, oblivious of his own present existence. His torture exposed, his soul raw, the need for Puah became fierce.

“You left her,” the voice said.

“I didn’t want to.”

“Of course, you did. So he could take her.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

He had. It was the truth. He knew exactly who Cain was. He knew exactly how close he was to him.

The past beckoned in the image of a whirlpool. It sucked him down hard, dragging him down alone. Helpless cries screamed to no one in the drowning. Chase saw himself there, and he moved to rescue himself. Then he saw his twin brother floating away, and he moved to rescue him. His indecision doomed them both.

His limbs were putty. Hopelessly weak against the powerful undertow, he let himself drift away, far away from the faces of himself and his brother. His eyes found the silver blade, and in the reflection, he saw himself floating in a muck of tears. The days upon days, the years upon years, had compounded on themselves and now kept him down, drowning below an immovable weight he couldn’t even see. The tears aided the water’s grip, assisted in his drowning, and finally, he simply allowed himself to lose touch with the pain.

Dawn arrived. Chase woke up disoriented. Puah was not with him. They were not outside under the sky as they had been just hours earlier. The blade of blood dripped in his mind, hanging over him like an evil bird in a dark room. He struggled upright and rubbed the cake from his eyes. As he blinked them open, he saw the silver shimmer before him, bringing the dream into full view. But in the next instant it was gone. There was no light, not anywhere. There was only the cold, hard reality that he was locked inside his old room. And the windows were gone.

Puah hadn’t woken up yet. She was mired in her own nightmare. Her restlessness was spun by hallucination. She felt as sick as she’d ever felt, as cold as she’d ever felt, a bite that kept her teetering between reality and the strange images she kept experiencing. Maybe it was the cold of those eyes she could see rolling in her mind that was really freezing her. Random thoughts from the recent past revisited her as well, memories of that first time she saw him mixing with the same chill that chewed on her now.

A picture of her mother bathing her and splashing water into her face was sentimental. Daddy had walked in, kissed his wife, and then started playing with his little Puah. Puah was all too ready to hug Daddy after he had been gone all day at work. He was dirty and his arms were rough, but his touch stayed tender. He sat on the floor and placed Puah, still dripping wet, on his leg, propping her up on his belly. The little girl poked at the bulge and giggled. He laughed too, squeezing his little bundle, his dear little girl. A Bible sat next to them, and he reached out and grabbed it. His reading of random passages was incoherent and garbled, and at this point in her dream Puah became cognizant of her condition. The recognition of her sleeping and the fondness of the dream actually startled her up for a moment.

It didn’t take long for her to drift off again. The dream picked up right where it had left off, but Daddy was no longer playful. His voice, so gentle before, was now forceful, his eyes fixed and frightening. The little girl tried to run, but her father’s snatching arms were quick, and he tightened his hold around her. His strength made her cry and squirm, but she could not wriggle away. Her father continued to repeat, over and over, the words of Scripture that were scratching at Puah’s ears.

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.”

A bird squawked outside, but Puah’s dreams took her deeper and deeper into yet another world.

It was a dark, cold, and rainy night, and the wolves howled into the wind. The trees swooshed above the ground, shedding a flurry of leaves at every rush. The drawbridge, closed for the night, still shook and creaked. Almost everyone in the kingdom had found shelter in the wake of the terrible storm.

Puah ran as quickly as she could from her attackers. The cold bite against her skin felt like little spears in the skin of her face. She had found comfort and warmth in her home, but men out to hurt her had broken in. Puah had managed to scrape away but now she was in the storm. There was terrible thunder all around her, both from above and from within.

Puah was the most beautiful maiden of the kingdom, and hers was the face most often coveted by the eyes of men. Many men, pauper and royalty alike, wanted her. This massed attraction had long concerned Puah’s parents, especially as the kingdom began to be pervaded by the disreputable. They had watched the glares and stares and secret comments made among groups of men; her parents were appalled at the lust in their eyes. These men made it play time to stalk Puah, smartly winking and glancing at her, smiling ever so smugly as if they expected her immediate melting. But Puah did not give in to these advances. She was ripe for romance, but she recognized in these men the presence of the wolf. What she needed was a strong man with the presence of a sheep.

Just as her father had just said. Beware…

She always smiled back at them, but Puah was just that kind of young woman. If anything she was not ill-mannered enough. To show courtesy was how she had been raised, and she chose it as the appropriate response to insinuate her disinterest.

About one step into her escape she regretted such civility. Now, as the storm raged, her heart was beating through her chest. Love was not her fuel. Survival was.

Puah tripped over a rock, sending her reeling flush into the wet mud. Her body froze for a moment, almost wanting to give in, to yield herself to them. But her spirit moved her onward, her chasers’ voices getting louder despite the rain.

There was a cave ahead and the exhausted girl ran there for shelter. Unable to shake the daze of the preceding moments, she did not consider the fact that she had unwittingly trapped herself. She heard the men’s yells and was forced to hide herself behind one of the cave walls. Peeking cautiously from behind the wall, she watched as a single silhouette moved into the cave. The yells and footsteps, both in the initial attack back at the house and now that they were coming from the entrance of the cave, had seemed so much more thunderous. She would have bet that a thousand of them were chasing before she would have bet on one.

But there he was, all alone, and stalking her. His breaths were heavy.

“Come out, come out, little girl.”

She had to cover her mouth. Mortal fear had bitten her bones.

“Don’t make me angry!” he growled, and immediately started laughing. It was maniacal, the anger, the comedy.

He unsheathed his blade. The sound startled Puah, releasing a whimper that blew her cover. The man’s head snapped toward her and he began to chuckle lowly.

“Come out, little girl. Come out, come out! You’ve been a bad little girl!”

He burst forward in her direction and she screamed wildly. She tried to run past him but his arms were fast. He gripped her hair and hurled her down to the hard ground.

“Get off of me!” she screamed. “Help! Help me!”

The rain discarded it all. No one but the bats heard her cry.

His body was wet with the rain. His mouth was lathering her neck when a horse and its rider suddenly raged into the cave.

Panicked, the heathen was gone in an instant. He ran deeper into the cave and was swallowed by the darkness.

“Hello, Puah.”

“Hello?”

“Chase. We met once long ago.”

“Too long! How did you know—?”

“They say love does strange things to you. I can’t say I knew for sure. But I had a feeling you were in trouble. Maybe it was your parents. They were worried. I told them I’d come find you.”

The shock of the moment had paralyzed her, but in an instant she was in his arms.

“I love you, Chase. I love you so much. I have loved you since we met.”

“And I, you.”

The hero plucked his princess from her feet and carried her to his horse. They rode out of the cave and into a brand new night, where the storm had passed and the stars shone bright.

It was such a romantic ending to what had been a terrifying escape. But one thought wouldn’t leave her.

The villain had escaped. He’d buried himself in the darkness.

A sharp cracking noise startled her in her sleep, and she walked to her window to survey the grounds. There was nothing. She turned back toward the floor, but this time she could not lie down. The escape spun back into her mind and was suddenly no good, and this time, she didn’t blame the waggish imagination of the child within. There was a strange aura in the air, an eerie jerking in the candlelight. Mortal terror consumed her, inexplicably, a feeling not unlike the fear she had in the cave. The story was dark and menacing now, a horror tale that suggested the coming of an equally horrifying sequel. The beast was waiting in the cavern walls for his chance. The wind outside swooshed and blasted through the shutters. Her room was wide open.

There was a flapping of wings.

Like there were a thousand of them.

But only one hopped in.

“A grackle,” she had said to Chase some time ago. “That bird is a grackle.”

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***Dream Chase is the wholly reimagined version of The Final Chase (out of print, but used ones still circulating) and the author’s preferred version of the story. It is better, and frankly, more readable. Please consider this as you make your purchasing decision.