Dark Requiem (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 3) (18 page)

“
Because the day I found
that herb, I cursed us all. I do not want to be rewarded with one
of those cold, stone houses those creatures told us how to
build.”

Akan stared at him,
remembering the numerous sacrifices he had witnessed and the child
currently lying in her own vomit in the silent, gloomy
temple.

“
Perhaps we cursed
ourselves, Agu.”

Agu peered at him as if
surprised by what he had said. Then a sad smile spread across his
lips.

He did not ask Akan why he
wanted to know if there was an antidote to the ekniwa potion, but
just began preparing it for him, seemingly pleased about being
given the opportunity to instruct another. Akan left him a few
hours before he was due to be at the temple. The old man had fallen
fast asleep, having shared a few jars of alcohol with Akan. Akan
stared at his emaciated form for a few moments before he left,
making a mental note to himself to ask Rutia to get one of their
servants to bring food to Agu each day.

That night Akan performed
the ritual again. The delirious child lay trembling on the gold
platform, her gaze casting around the dark temple as if she could
see unearthly creatures crawling out of the shadowy corners. He
returned to the temple hours later and gave her the antidote Agu
had prepared for him. She did not vomit that night, although she
continued to weep.

He sighed and stroked her
hair. Perhaps it would have been kinder to have slit her throat the
moment he laid eyes on her.

Once again, sleep remained
elusive when he returned home. He had slaughtered so many in
defence of the village and was still feared among the Enwa people
and beyond. Yet he was helpless to save this one child.

***

Akan returned to the
temple each night for the duration of the ekniwa, always arriving
to the sound of tortured screams. The attendants had taken to
remaining outside the main temple chamber, unable to withstand the
child’s suffering. Some of her torment eased whenever Akan gave her
the antidote and she was able to eat a little, and sleep, although
she remained delirious, mumbling incoherently for hours at a
time.

Akan didn't know if he was
equal to this task, but he could not abandon the child. It was his
fault she suffered the horrors of the ekniwa. She had provoked
Mutata because of him, yet she was the one who suffered the
consequence of Mutata’s ambition.

Rutia clucked her tongue
whenever she saw Akan’s drawn, weary face each morning. She did not
mention the child, however, or say any more of what she knew or how
she knew of it. Those long daylight hours away from the temple were
ones of exquisite anguish for Akan, and he ran through the deserted
streets each night, praying to the goddess of the moon that the
child would still be alive once he got there. The snake around his
heart always stilled whenever he entered the temple and saw that
breath still entered and left her frail chest, but her torment
continued.

Most nights she merely lay
silent with her eyes wide open, but unseeing, trembling in his
arms. Her breath came out in thin wisps, her head dipping
occasionally as if she nodded her assent to spoken words he could
not hear. Akan hoped some of the more benign entities—beings that
had perhaps once been human, or other powerful benevolent beings
that had somehow become trapped in the underworld—were instructing
her. At other times she screamed through the night, struggling to
escape his arms as if to flee some terror only she could
see.

One night, the child was
whimpering in his arms, too weak to scream. He placed her gently on
the ground and moved into the shadows to retrieve a gourd of water.
When he faced her again she was sitting up in the pool of
torchlight, her legs crossed beneath her, staring at him with a
level gaze. A moment ago she had been too weak to even lift up her
head, but now there was no sign of the fever or delirium brought on
by the ekniwa. Instead her eyes shone with an eerie light, her
pale, dry lips spread in a smile that was cold and
calculated.

He froze with the gourd of
water in his hands, a chill overcoming him.

“
Goddess?” he
said.

Her only reply was that
smile and all-knowing gaze. He tried to shrug off the chill
wrapping itself around him. She was only a child. He had no reason
to be afraid of her. The chill deepened, however, and the longer he
stared at her, the less he could be sure the thing sitting before
him was the child he had tended over the last few weeks.

At last she spoke, her
clear, birdlike voice ringed with a darker tone not unlike the
screech of a vulture.

“
You won’t be able to save
her. She will die in front of your eyes. You will see everyone you
love die. You will watch death sweep through the village taking
every single man, woman and child. The streets will overflow with
the dead. Only you will remain to mourn them.”

The gourd slipped from his
grasp and clattered to the floor with a crack that resounded
through the temple.

The noise snapped the
child out of whatever trance she was in. She grew slack, her eyes
growing dark. She crumpled to the ground where she lay mumbling. He
stood staring at her, her words ringing through his mind. After a
few moments, he retrieved another gourd of water and gingerly
reached for her, lifting her head so she could sip some of it. She
lay against him again, clutching the wooden toy so tightly her
knuckles were bloodless spots of white. She spoke once more, her
voice little more than a whisper.

“
The goddess. You have her
favour. She will give you whatever it is you wish. You have her
favour.”

He did not know if the
words were for him, but they were not able to still his trembling
hands or remove the chill that hovered over him. She was soon
asleep.

He stared at her, at the
hollow dark rings under her eyes. The delicate bones made sharp
angles of her beautiful little face and her pallor was
deathly.

You will not be able to
save her.

The snake sank its fangs
into his heart sending swift waves of fear coursing through Akan.
Tears gathered as he held the child.

On another night, she had
been moaning in pain. He placed his hand against the side of her
head to urge her to drink some water. As fast as a rabbit, she
sprung out of his lap and was crouching on the floor before him,
her eyes wild and staring past him, pain aflame in them along with
a rage and hatred that was ancient and pure.

Icy caterpillars crept
along Akan’s spine.

“
I’ll kill them all, every
last one of her descendants! I’m the true goddess.” Her face
twisted with pain and distress so acute Akan’s throat tightened and
he could not breathe. “I am the true goddess. I...”

She grew slack and lay
whimpering on the temple floor. She would not eat or drink anything
that night. He left that morning with a block of ice in his
stomach, dreading his return to the temple the following night, but
unable to leave the child alone with her torment.

The final night of the
ekniwa, he arrived at the temple to find her completely motionless,
her eyes wide open and unblinking. She was still breathing—barely.
She was the same when he left the temple just before
dawn.

He returned home, unsure
of what to expect when he returned to the temple at dusk to mark
the end of the ekniwa. It seemed he had perhaps administered the
antidote too late and the child was forever lost to the nightmare
world she walked in. He tried to remain hopeful she would find her
way out and he would see again that little smile she had given him
when they first met.

I awoke expecting to find
myself in the red velvet bedroom with its familiar peeling
wallpaper and heavy, moth eaten drapes. Instead I found I was in a
room with pale, dewy walls and heavy, dark furniture. Panic bit
into me, and I tensed, my heart somersaulting against my ribcage.
It stilled the moment I remembered I was in Avery’s room and relief
washed over me.

“
Dallas?”

I turned to find Avery
sitting by the bed staring at me, his thoughts completely closed to
me, his face still, his eyes dark.

“
Avery? How long have I
been asleep?”

“
Nearly two
days.”

He looked away, down at
the ground, and a sullen silence hung in the room, one that grew
heavier the more I recalled of that long walk to the swamp and what
led me there. A chill passed over me.

“
Dallas, what happened?
Why...why—?”

“
I don’t know, Avery.”
There was a tremor in my voice. “It must have been the chapel
spirit or something. I don’t know.”

I was silent for a long
moment, trying to understand what I had thought and said during
those hours. Of why the things I had seen—the decaying red velvet
bedroom—had been so vivid. He merely sat staring at me, his eyes
large and fragile, his expression sombre. After another long moment
he sighed and ran an unsteady hand through his hair.

“
I have to attempt an
exorcism at the chapel in a few days' time. I was a priest once, so
I do believe I can perform one successfully.”

“
Are you sure?”

“
We don’t have any other
options.” He got to his feet and came to stand over me, his eyes
flaming with angst. “I won’t let anyone steal your life from you,
Dallas. No one. Once I exorcise the chapel entity you should be
safe and who...whatever is trying to possess you will be laid to
rest.”

He bent and kissed me on
the cheek. He let his lips linger, seeming to find it difficult to
pull away from me. He eventually straightened.

His gaze fell on the hand
with the “Shhhhh” tattoo and I thought I saw his eyes flame with
anguish. He left the room.

I stared up at the ceiling
feeling a weariness that was not just of body, but of mind and
soul. The dream of the Enwa village was still fresh in my mind, of
people and places so vivid they were becoming as real to me as
Mallory and Avery. And there was also what had happened at the
swamp.

I was so confused, and
between the dreams and those moments when I seemed to be in another
place and time, it felt as if I was slowly disappearing. Even now
as I looked around Avery’s room, the whisper driving me toward that
revelation was almost a shout and I kept expecting the room to
change right before my eyes.

Things could not continue
as they were. My body was so weak and at times the ties keeping me
bound to it—and life—felt threadbare and I feared I would be tugged
out of the world of the living before I got the answers I
needed.

Even the thought of Avery
performing an exorcism made my heart lurch for I knew it would put
him in danger. I couldn’t allow him to do it. This meant I had to
find out how to vanquish the Other once and for all.

I stared around Avery’s
room, struggling to see the room before me and not a room belonging
to another time.

Tears slid down my cheeks
and I closed my eyes, the child, Akan and the people in that walled
village coming to my mind. I opened my eyes again. I had thought
until now that Akan had been pulling me away from those waking
dreams to perhaps protect me from them. Now I was beginning to
wonder. The Other had been able to possess me the night I saw Akan
clearly. Now I asked myself why he had first appeared to me as
Avery’s horse. I also wondered what he really was and what
connection he had to the chapel entity—if any. Were the dreams of
the walled village and the little girl just a way for Akan to draw
my attention away from the waking dreams and the realisation they
were leading me to?

Whatever it was those
waking dreams were forcing me toward, if there was a chance it
could help me vanquish the chapel entity, I had to stop resisting
and rush headlong into it.

The past.

That’s what was whispering
to me. I had to know and understand the past if I was to have any
hope of a future. The memories had always been there waiting for
me. All I had to do was reach for them.

So I sought them and they
came to me over the following few weeks, at times utterly
overwhelming me. I would open my eyes in the morning in the safety
of the guest bedroom only to find myself in the past seconds
later.

Or I would be sitting in
the field of flowers talking to Avery, the moonlight turning his
eyes into pools of liquid silver, when I would find myself standing
in the red velvet bedroom, the sky beyond the window gilded as the
sun rose to meet the heavens.

Whenever I returned to the
present no time had passed.

Getting weaker with each
day that passed, disoriented as well as drained emotionally and
mentally, I surrendered to the past.

***

Louisiana 1862

I was tugged out of the
almost hypnotic trance by a sound. It was determined, almost like
someone knocking persistently on a door. It was a while before my
thoughts focussed. I searched around me for the source of the sound
and realised it was a small animal of some kind, wailing in
distress. For some reason the sound tore at my heart and my stomach
tightened. Before I knew I had moved, I was walking toward it,
oblivious to the indigo night sky and the secretive half-moon
flanked by white clouds polluted an ashen grey at its edges. Or the
long grass stretching wild, desperate fingers for the folds of my
skirt. I could see it now. Yes, it was a bobcat, a young one. It
appeared to have gotten its leg trapped in the exposed root of a
lone tree that cut into the landscape. Its wails increased in
intensity when it saw me.