1. Antiques
and Animosity
As soon as the blazing specks shattered the glass windows in front of
him, Vance Darcouver dove to the ground. Bullets devastated the walls of the
Plumbro music store in downtown Pittsburgh, ricocheting and splintering the display
case that served as Vance’s shield. Picks, guitars, and tuners were devastated,
while Vance felt a sharp sensation shoot up his arm. He looked down to see a
long shard of glass embedded there. Pain flooded his senses and blood trickled down
the case, coloring it like the stained-glass windows in church.
I skipped
confession last week, he thought absently, pushing
his face to the greyish-red carpet, hoping a stray bullet wouldn't give him a
kiss.
Glass flew
through the room; sharp raindrops trickled down his back. It wasn't the big
pieces he was worried about, but the little ones – the ones that bit into your
skin and held on like ticks. As he glanced at his wound, the glass case above
him exploded one final time. Sounds of destruction dwindled as whoever wrought
it passed on into the darkness.
"What the
hell was that? You okay?" A young man with scraggly blond hair appeared
from the back room. As he came into the light, Vance spotted the man's name
tag: Daryl.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Vance spoke quietly as he moved out from
the busted-up wooden frame and ruined glass. He shook his hair, raining crystalline
pieces out from his thick black locks.
Daryl surveyed
his customer. "Hey, are you hurt? I have a first aid kit in the back, you
know."
Vance shot him
a glare. "I told you, I’m fine."
"Alright,
geez man, sorry. Damn, what was that, anyway? A drive-by shooting? For a moment
there, it felt like the apocalypse."
Vance shifted his body forward, then walked out the dilapidated door
without a further word. The stale smell of the city night drifted into his
nostrils as police sirens wound up in the distance.
Thin streams
of blood slid down to the small of his palm. He moved his thumb in it, smearing
around the liquid and bringing it to his lips. His life essence, easily taken
from him by a single piece of glass. It frustrated him to realize just how fragile
he really was.
Vance pulled the glass out from his bicep, ignoring the irritating pain
in the back of his mind. He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a pale, thin arm
tattooed with a jagged crimson line. Blood continued to flow.
Dirty blue
sneakers connected with a discarded plastic bottle, sending it flying down the dark
street with an angry crunch. The ghostly wail of police sirens continued. Eager
to vacate the premises, Vance recalled his steps. He’d walked south, past Kaufmann's,
the two-story department store. Vance didn't care much for shopping. As of
late, he didn't really care for much at all.
Wandering, waiting
for the trembles of fear to evacuate his body, Vance tried to recall memories
of how life used to be. He’d experienced a relatively normal childhood living
with his parents in Turtle Creek. Things were simpler back then – back when his
mother was still around.
Vance watched
himself sitting on a small blue swing set in their tiny backyard, swinging back
and forth without a care in the world. His father was still in shape, smiling
as he roasted chicken on their mini-grill. His mother stepped out onto the
raised porch and started talking with his father. She gracefully moved down the
steps to the concrete driveway – Victoria, a beautiful, tall woman with long
black hair and porcelain skin. Smoke from the grill rose up into the sky, and
the sun’s warmth embraced their happy American family.
Then, she was
gone – vanished, without a trace. Vance had been 13, and four years later, his
father remarried.
The ashen streets
of Pittsburgh resurfaced as Vance's memories faded away. He tried remembering what his father had told
him at the beginning of the night...something about an ‘important business
meeting,’ which was surprising. Even Vance knew that his father was completely
worthless to his company. He was the type of worker who sat and did paperwork
all day like a mindless drone, only to return to his house, position himself
down in his easy chair, and stay that way for the remainder of the night. It was
depressing to think about how much he had changed since the disappearance.
A small green
light pierced the darkness as Vance crossed an empty street. It came from
behind a dusty glass window – a dim bulb fastened into the neck of an
old-fashioned lamp, poking out from a haphazard display of trinkets. Above the
window, Vance found a wooden plaque hanging over the looming doorway that read:
"ANTIQUES."
His eyes
returned to the lamp. There was a reason that dim green glow had caught his
attention – he’d seen it before. The maroon-colored lampshade, the wooden stand
sculpted to look like the bark of a tree with an eerie-looking owl peeking out from
within. It all seemed so familiar.
Once again, Vance’s
memory was rekindled. A tall, balding man named Mr. Caskett, his soft-spoken
wife, and his daughter Wendy, a rambunctious girl with dark brown pigtails and
a mischievous grin on her face. Vance’s mother used to take him over to their house
to play when he was a child. The exact same type of lamp had been there, on a
small table to the side of their big white couch. He remembered it so clearly,
and he’d never seen another like it. While the adults sat and talked on the patio,
Vance and Wendy would sword fight with sticks in the backyard...and she always
beat the crap out of him. She could climb the monkey bars, but he was too
scared. She teased him about it. But he always had fun playing with her, until
her family suddenly moved away.
Clinging
hopelessly to the remains of his childhood, the miserable, scowling 17-year old
stared up at the sign. Raven-black hair fell limply to his shoulders, sharply contrasting
with his pale face. His abnormal eyes – tiny black pupils with white irises – looked
on blankly, and he was all alone
*************
as she ran
through the streets. She clutched her hands against her yellow T-shirt, red-orange
hair bouncing lightly against her back. Since she was a little girl, she’d had
nightmares about this very moment. A large man chasing her, groping out for her
with gloved hands. He wanted to hurt her. It always ended the same way – she fought,
but she never won. She was too weak.
She didn’t know
why he had chosen her. She had absolutely no confidence in herself, whether it
came to looks or survivability. But the man had been tailing her in his car for
the past five blocks, and it wouldn't be long before he caught up with her.
Moonlight slid off the car as it coasted down the street behind her.
She took a desperate dive into the thin sliver of an alley. Peering down the
dark passageway in fright, she saw rows of faceless buildings cast against a bleak,
dark sky. In downtown Pittsburgh, she was just another face, a fragment of a
memory.
His brakes howled.
She ran down the corridor as best she could on the worn soles of her sandals. The
sides of the Oldsmobile screeched against the brick walls of the neighboring
buildings as it jammed itself into the nook, then roared and came to a stop.
If she lived
in a perfect world, there would not have been a high brick wall at the end of
the alleyway. But she was an orphan, and her foster parents had died in a car
accident last year. Miracles didn’t exist for her.
Radiant with
fright, her big green eyes stared into the car's headlights. A bead of sweat slid
down her mousy face. Folding her delicate, peach arms, she scrunched herself up
against the wall and wondered if this was the end.
The driver
window in the man’s car was already broken, so he quickly climbed out and hopped
down the hood. Beady eyes sat pinched between wrinkled skin, while the bottom half
of his face was scrunched up with a cocky smile. He held no gun.
"Get in
the car," he commanded. "NOW! Feel like my goddamn head’s
gonna split open..."
Petrified with
fear, she remained frozen against the wall.
"I said NOW!"
Abruptly, the
man lost what little patience he had and fired at her. She jerked sideways, and
a glowing bullet ripped through the fabric of her T-shirt, tearing away cloth like
teeth through meat. It skimmed her side, burning the flesh and causing her to
let out a cry of pain.
"It took
us so long to find you...now come–"
Suddenly, she
saw the man’s body spasm. He let out a pained cry and put a hand to his temple. She stirred – it was
a chance to escape. Then, the man barreled forward, lunging for her. A shot
*************
rang out through Vance's ears. He looked to his right and saw headlights
coming around the corner.
Again?!
Vance glanced
around frantically for any possible shelter. Yet again, his eyes were drawn to
the dull green glow of the owl lamp. It called to him, louder than the screech
of any tires. The doors to the antique shop beckoned.
Without a
second thought, Vance shoved his left foot through one of the windows in the
wooden double-doors. Shimmering glass flew away from him, spewing into the
store like the entrails of a slain beast. Vance kicked the remaining splinters
out with his cheap sneakers and slid his body through the opening. At six feet
tall, he was a tight fit.
It wasn't
until he was hidden deep within the darkness of the store that he noticed how much
blood now covered his left arm. Some of it was crusty, while the rest felt wet
and fresh, especially around his fingers. As he held them up to his lips, Vance
grimaced at the thin, metallic taste of blood – a taste that he would soon grow
much more accustomed to.
After a few minutes of taking it in, he cautiously removed his injured
fingers. They still bled. Frustrated, Vance rolled his fingers up against the
bottom of his jacket, squeezing as hard as he could to suspend the circulation
and hopefully retain some of his precious blood.
Vance squinted
and scanned the dark insides of the antiques store. The bottom floor of the
place was all one room as far as he could tell. At the opposite side, the
checkout counter was partially hidden by a jungle of cobwebbed shelves and
displays.
He crept up to
the window and peered outside. The streets were quiet again. Vance softly moved
his hand to the owl lamp, as if trying to preserve a piece of his past. It was
cold to the touch.
Vance withdrew, resigning himself to the depths behind the shelves.
Groping in the abyss, his hand smacked off the side of a small wooden clock and
sent a cloud of dust bursting up into the air.
He nearly
tripped himself falling back in shock as a loud chime emitted from the clock,
followed by a click. A panel above the clock’s face slid up, and something
rattled out from within.
It was a rickety,
crystalline cuckoo, each angle shining in the moonlight with a different color
of the rainbow. Azure gems for eyes, with a dash of emerald for the tuft of
hair at its top. But before Vance could reach out to touch this artifact, the
cuckoo zoomed back into the clock.
The ticks of
the clock echoed through the chamber. Why hadn’t he noticed that deafening
sound before? Vance fumbled around some more on the walls until he finally
found a light switch. In the dim glow, and with the cuckoo panel shut, the clock
looked shockingly normal, except for one thing – the clock’s face went up to the
number XIII.
Pushing the strange clock out of his mind, Vance looked beyond it to
spy a sleek black bar counter that spread out
across the rear wall of the shop. It came to a stop at the far end, leaving
behind the dusty antiques in exchange for a shelf of old whiskey bottles. In a
corner of the bar, barely visible in the musty light, sat an old brown journal.
While the outside was void of any sort of identification, scrawled within the
jacket in shaky, messy, print was one name: Edgar J. Caskett.
Stunned, Vance
froze, then hurriedly began to leaf through it. The book was thick, overflowing
with hastily-written entries. In disbelief, Vance opened to a random page and
started to read.
Feb 12
Sometimes I feel
they’re right around the corner, waiting for me. But it’s impossible. I covered
my tracks perfectly, and I had V to help me every step of the way. She’s right.
This is the best possible hiding place. It conceals everything that would
otherwise set us apart.
I miss my
wife. I miss my daughter. I miss V. I miss everything we used to have...but I have
a mission that’s much greater than myself.
It looks just
like any old clock to them...if only they knew. Within that timeless wood...it
hides the key to everything, the key to God Himself.
I won't let
them have it. My life's research, all the sacrifices that were made to bring us
this far, all the dimensions we traversed...my entire point of purpose rides
upon this mystical object. This was your last gift to me, V. Your dream
survives, wherever you are. It lives on in what you left behind.
A chill ran up Vance’s spine, breaking his concentration. What is all this? I thought the Casketts moved away...why is this here? Mom...this
is connected to you, isn’t it?
But the
questions were hollow apparitions. Deep down, Vance had always known. Months
after her disappearance, his father filed a petition to declare Victoria Darcouver
legally dead. He’d told his son to move on, but Vance never listened.
I know you’re still
alive, mom...you just haven’t been able to come back to us, for whatever
reason...
Vance slipped Caskett’s
diary into his pocket and turned to face the clock once more. He felt it
beckoning him to come closer, boring deep into his soul with some unknown
power. Like a child entreating a parent, he gripped its wooden sides.
I’m going to
find you.
Vance put the clock
under his arm – it seemed to fit perfectly – and stepped back out
into the night.
Next: Demons
