Fractured (25 page)

There was a change in the air, like a thunderstorm was about to roll in.

“Bash, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

As he said that, a blood red snow like in his dream with Darius, started falling.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In that instant, something happened to Bash’s vision. The darkness started letting the light come through, at first just a blur. Then it focused, sharpening until the picture in front of her came into vivid detail. She was seeing, and this time, it wasn’t just a fleeting picture.

Memories spurred inside her of what sight actually was. She remembered a lot from when she was three years old. She knew what expressions looked like, she knew what colors mostly meant. Yet things had changed in twenty years.
She
had changed.

Beside her, Seth was watching her with a concerned expression. And then she realized she was able to see him for the first time in her life.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, blinking furiously. She was almost afraid to, as if blinking would cause the phenomenon to go away. It didn’t go away. She really could see. “I
am
awake, right?”

“What?”

She timidly reached out to touch his face, making sure it was real. The tactile feedback from her hands matched what her eyes were seeing, but she still couldn’t believe it. “I can...I can see you, Seth.”

“Wait, what?” he asked incredulously. “You can see me, Bash?” He rubbed his thumb under her eyes, wiping away the tears she didn’t realize had fallen. “Your eyes...!”

“I can see you.”

It would have been a happier occasion if they weren’t still trudging through hell. As it was, they were both exhausted and Bash was injured. The scene around them was ghastly for her first view of the world in so many years. She felt somber, like she was watching the events happen to someone else.

She frowned up at the sky, confused as she watched the blood red snowflakes lazily fall to the earth. “Is that what snow looks like?” She reached out to touch one. It melted as it hit her hand, feeling like normal snow. It wasn’t how she thought she remembered snow. Based upon the pristine landscape around them, it wasn’t normal either. The forest turned into bloody red smears and dots from the red snowfall.

Seth swallowed uncomfortably. “No. It isn’t.”

There was urgency in his voice. She saw why. The cloud of birds were turning around. They were almost to them, and this time, they looked serious about going in for the kill.

“Seth,” she whispered, fear in her voice.

“I know.”

There was nowhere for them to run. They were going to be pecked to death right here in front of the shithole hotel like they were in Alfred Hitchcock’s
The Birds
.

Suddenly, a figure stepped out in front of them, facing the oncoming onslaught just as the birds attacked. Because the shadow was blocking them, the birds parted around them like a river around a rock. The birds scattered and their eyes stopped glowing, no longer a mass, but a confused bunch of crows that all went their separate ways.

Seth and Bash were safe for the time being. Yet who had stepped in to protect them?

The figure turned and Bash gasped when she saw a ghost who had stepped out of her dreams.

“Dad?”

Eric Martin smiled down at her, the shard of glass still embedded in his right eye. The Eric in front of her was a bloody dead mess. He was somehow here in the real world, stepped out from her dreams, a specter of the past.

“Hello, Bathsheba,” he said, his voice ethereal, wrapping around them in a warm wave.

“I can see you!” Bash exclaimed in disbelief. “And it’s not a dream.”

“What?” Seth asked. He clutched Bash to him. Apparently, he couldn’t see or hear Bash’s father looming over them. “What, Bash?”

She ignored him as she looked up at Eric. “How can I see you, Dad?”

“‘Dad’?” Seth echoed incredulously.

“You always had a hint of her power, Bash,” Eric explained, an enigmatic smile on his ruined face. “You were always stronger than you realized. And it appears you’ve broken free of her enchantment. Unlike me.”

Bash’s blood ran cold. “What?”

“I have yet to show you my greatest mistake,” Eric said sadly. “And my greatest achievement.”

The ghost of her father moved over towards her. She closed her eyes as he extended a finger and touched it to her forehead. She fell into blackness, and the dark consumed her.

*****

When Bash opened her eyes she was standing at the very same spot in front of the Grand Trails Lodge, only it was a summer’s evening as opposed to the dead of a winter night, and there was an old, vignette quality to the world around her. She was watching the past again, with her dead father as a guide.

“After the sixth miscarriage, I brought your mother here.” She turned her head to see her father standing there, wavering in the breeze. “I wanted to give her a nice vacation to rest her mind.”

“Here?” Bash asked, shocked by the coincidence. “You brought her to the Grand Trails Lodge?”

Eric solemnly nodded. “I wanted to take her away from the pain she had endured at home, if only briefly.” He smiled absently. “You should’ve seen the brochure. It said that this place was where dreams came true.”

Bash shivered. Someone had said something similar. Who had said that? She shivered.
Lily
.

The front door to the hotel opened, and a younger version of her father stepped out, stumbling slightly. He had a glass of red wine in his hands and slowly, deliberately walked down the steps. He passed right by Bash and the ghost without so much as a nod, heading off towards the woods. In the twilight of the dream world, the woods looked inviting and lovely. It felt completely different and alien to the nightmarish world she had just witnessed.

“Cheryl was getting a massage to relax. And I had been at the bar, drinking too much,” he explained softly. “I had made the decision that I was going to do everything I could to get us a baby. I just had no idea how I was going to do it. It was killing me from the inside.” He glanced off towards the younger Eric who was ambling towards a copse of trees. “I went for a walk.”

Bash hurried to follow him, curious to see where he was going to end up. She glanced behind her, seeing that her deceased father was staying where he was. He waved slowly, deliberately. He wasn’t going to come.

Bash was on her own.

She stepped through the trees, following the back of her father as he went further and further into the woods, away from civilization. He seemed hell bent on going as far as he could into the woods. Something was drawing him there.

Bash bit her lip. Did she really want to see this? Did she want to see what had happened and had impacted her family for her entire life? She didn’t know.

“Who...are you?” she heard Eric slur. He sounded confused, as if he was going to panic at any second. “What’re you...doing here?” He was just around the tree about twenty-five yards away, talking to someone Bash couldn’t see.

Bash’s first inclination was to run after her dad and help him. Then she remembered that she was in a memory, and that she couldn’t do anything to change it. She looked down at the small stream babbling happily between where she was and where her father was. If she crossed it, she would be able to see who he was talking to.

Then she heard a voice that, while it sounded quite different in the dream, Bash would recognize anywhere. It was almost like the dream amplified the raspiness one hundred fold. Her blood ran cold, freezing her to her spot.

“Poor, lost soul,”
the voice whispered, slithering out among the trees like a thousand snakes.
“Wandering around with no one to turn to.”

Bash’s heart was pounding in her chest. She closed her eyes, trying to steady her nerves, which were fraying like an old shirt. She was scared. Even though this was in the past, she was terrified because she knew exactly whose voice it was.

Abyzou. The demon in the flesh was talking to her father.

“You can’t...call me a lost soul,” Eric slurred.

The demon laughed, her voice tinkling around the trees like a birds chirping. It sounded friendly, but with an edge to it.

Bash swallowed, leaning forward to hear.

“Your sweet wife has been having trouble bearing children, hasn’t she?”
Abyzou asked, mixing her gravelly voice with a sugary sweetness that gave Bash a headache. She was trying to entrance Eric with her slow, rhythmic voice.
“And you want to help her.”

Eric stumbled backwards, confused as he watched whoever he was talking to. “How...how do you know that?” he mumbled. He fell backwards, landing on his butt and shattering the red wine glass, yet he didn’t seem to notice as he watched the figure that Bash still couldn’t see.

“Awww, poor baby,”
Abyzou purred. Bash got the feeling she wasn’t talking about Eric’s broken glass.
“I can help, you know. I can help your wife bear the child that you always wanted.”

Eric watched the being, his jaw slack. Bash wanted to step out and see Abyzou, but fear rooted her to her spot. She didn’t really want to see the thing that had been tormenting her sister all of her life.

“How?” he asked. “How can you do that?”

Abyzou stepped out from behind the trees, and Bash held her hand over mouth to keep herself from gasping. She couldn’t change the events of the past, and she didn’t want to bring attention to herself. There was no telling what the demon was capable of seeing or doing, even in a memory like this.

Abyzou was a beautiful woman with a sense of timelessness about her. She wore an all-black Victorian dress, with a corset bodice and full skirts. Her skin was milky white and her eyes were completely black, including the whites of her eyes. Her long, silky black hair moved slowly, like a lovely breeze was blowing slowly around her. At some points, the swirl of hair looked like a veil, while at others it looked akin to Medusa’s hair. Even from where she stood, Bash could see she was beautiful, and Eric was entranced by that beauty.

She had to look away from the scene, it was just too perverse to see her father taken in by this demon. Looking down, she saw the demon’s reflection in the water, and gasped. It looked nothing like the enticing young woman standing before her father. Instead, a wrinkled old woman stood before her father in a matronly black dress. Her stringy white hair was loose, really resembling Medusa’s snakes. She wore a transparent veil that didn’t quite hide her eyes. Her all-black eyes were the same. And both the young lady and the old woman looked hungry.

All Eric could see was the beautiful woman. Bash felt the urge to yell out to him, though she knew that would do no good. If it accomplished anything, it would only expose her to the demon.

“You can help?” her father asked.

“Yes,”
Abyzou purred again. She knelt in front of him.
“I can help Cheryl give birth to a child.”

“H-how?” Eric asked.

The demon chuckled.
“I have my ways, Eric Martin. But you must make a promise to me, as nothing in this life is ever given for free.”

He visibly gulped, stumbling backwards. “What promise?”

Abyzou smiled, although Bash only saw it as her baring her teeth.
“You can have your firstborn child. But I will have your second child. Cheryl will give birth to two children in her life. And the second one shall be mine.”

Eric blinked. “What?”

Abyzou moved, unfazed by his blank look. She reached out and started unbuttoning his shirt.
“Your second child, Eric Martin. You must give her to me.”

“How can you help me?” Eric asked dumbly again.

Slowly, deliberately, Abyzou reached down and started undoing his belt and the zip on his pants. Then, to Bash’s horror, she saw the demon pull down her father’s pants, exposing his erection. He made no move to stop her, whether he was too drunk to stop her or he was consenting to it. Abyzou grinned wickedly as she straddled him, sighing as she pulled him into her.

This can’t be happening
, Bash thought.
This can’t be happening!

“I’m going to give your seed the chance to be strong,”
Abyzou said. Her hips started moving as she took Eric in the woods.
“Strong enough that your children will be able to survive birth.”

Bash’s heart was pounding in her ears. She didn’t want to see this.

“Do you agree to my terms, Eric Martin?”
Abyzou asked. Her face was a mask of ecstasy, mirroring the old woman’s expression in the stream below.
“Agree to them, Eric.”

Then, Bash saw it. The indecision on her father’s face. For a split second, he was weighing up the odds of what the demon had meant by her offer. For a split second, it looked like he was going to say no.

“Say it!”
Abyzou hissed. Her hips rocked harder.

“Y-yes!” her father cried out, coming into the woman that cradled him. He spent himself into Abyzou and took in a deep, shuddering breath.