The Forsaken

PRAISE FOR ESTEVAN VEGA

“Vega writes well beyond his years…With his third literary attempt, Vega has hit his stride—one that can only pick up speed.”

—The Record-Journal

“Vega is definitely a talented writer with a white-hot literary future.”

—The Middletown Press

“Arson is not to be missed. It is densely layered, tense, packed with surprising compassion, and written with great courage…Groundbreaking!”

—Salt Lake City Examiner

“In a fortunate writer’s career, there is one book that inevitably launches its author to a new level of success and visibility, and Arson may very well prove to be just such a book for Estevan Vega.”

—Hartford Examiner

“Estevan Vega’s Arson proves he is an author to be reckoned with.”

—The Christian Manifesto

“[Arson] could be compared to other young adult books such as Jumper or even a young coming of age super-hero genre story. And even at times flecks of the Twilight series.”

—Title Trakk

“It’s a testament to his talent that Estevan Vega can turn a dark, disturbing story into an intriguing page-turner. Quirky, complex characters and Vega’s storytelling skills make Arson a must-read…and Vega an author to watch.”

—Robert Liparulo, bestselling author of Deadlock and The Dreamhouse Kings

“Arson is every bit its namesake: a sinister story that slowly licks at the edges of your subconscious until it fully engulfs you in a firestorm of fascinating characters, twisting plotlines, and an explosive ending. A great read and Estevan Vega is a talent to watch for sure!”

— Jon F. Merz, bestselling author of The Kensei

“In Arson, Estevan Vega has created a character as unique and captivating as Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas. With a fresh voice and an engaging style, Vega’s storytelling is something to pay attention to.”

—Mike Dellosso, author of Darlington Woods and Darkness Follows

“…[A] gifted young writer, and I expect to see great works from him in the near future.

—Bryan Davis, bestselling author of the Echoes from the Edge and Dragons in our Midst series

“Wonderfully envisioned and readable. The story of a young man with a secret talent he doesn’t want to be forced to use keeps readers edgy and waiting, and hoping he’ll let it all out.”

—John Neufeld, author of Edgar Allan and April Fool

For the man of sorrows. You search the darkness and redeem it.

1

HE COULD HEAR THE
wind whistling. He could see the sun setting. Haiti’s red sand formed tortured clouds around his feet; eventually it climbed into both eyes and sought to make a new home. At the root of him, he wondered if this village could give him what he longed for.

New whispers now blended with the air until he could no longer tell the difference. Dry mouth, back drenched in sweat. It was a penance for coming out here alone; probably to die.

As he looked out into the horizon, a dark summer sun still managed to capture his vision. Even at dusk, the sky’s masterpiece resembled something like a trapped, brooding vulture. Was it waiting to devour his corpse?

He knew he shouldn’t think this way, but the fear of death, a poison he’d never before drunk, existed now. He’d run away long ago because of a sick desire to put an end to his suffering and to control it. He hid well. He escaped. He manipulated and rose to every lustful challenge. Yet here he was again, at the end of his own strength, seeking new power and control. He forced himself to believe in the opposite—to believe he would not surely die but instead be reborn.

“Death, the last enemy,” he muttered.

There was a piercing rhythm in his veins all of a sudden. But what was it? Did it possess a name? Did it originate from within or without? There was no one around for at least five hundred yards, he was nearly certain. When the driver had quickly abandoned him to this village, several of the village’s bewildered residents returned to their homes. Perhaps they knew something was about to change. But what? What had crawled into him the last time he blinked? What new craving lingered under his blood?

He turned his wrist around, glancing intensely at it. Snakelike veins moved, and whether he flexed or didn’t, nothing altered. Something was alive and throbbing under the surface, and it stung. The vipers crawled higher up one arm, splitting off to make copies that would do the same. With every slither, he could feel them growing, multiplying, the storm in his veins now more concentrated. Screaming didn’t save him, didn’t end the torment. He dropped his bags immediately, and the shaking began.

He heard a voice. “Let it in. Let it take you. Do not fight.”

Where is the voice coming from?
He shifted his stance, but still he saw no one. Once more his vision splintered. The violent serpents showed him things he had never experienced. He was living the sins and murders of people he had never met, enduring the clips of rage, the reel of dark and horrible things. The things these serpents wanted him to feel. His heartbeat was a deep echo. He looked down at his wrist again, and the veins were black, twisting his arm like a wild infection.

“Why do you fight it so?” The voice spoke again. It was the same haunting whisper he’d listened to before. “You came here for resurrection. To be reborn.”

“Finish it,” he cried at last, but blood dripped out of his eyes.
Not your blood.
He blinked, thought it would go away. Blinked again. He was wrong.

Dropping to the ground, he grabbed his sides. The sting of thirsty serpents was too strong to ignore. They moved toward his heart, he knew. But they wanted control of something else; something he wasn’t sure he even still had.

“Some souls taste better than others, my friend. He will be pleased with yours. You will serve your purpose, like the others.”

Another blink spilled more blood into the sand. More events lit the back of his eyes. Ancient, dark deeds. Some, recent evils. He scratched his face, more red tears slipping from him. Something more wicked was coming. It began to bloom, and it was breathing new life every second, forming breaths with his breath, blinking using his eyes. Could he control it? Would he be able to bring it out and put it back when he wanted?

There was a stir that crept inside him then. It was full and inviting. The connection was almost complete.

“Every soul is part of the circle. You are a part.” The same voice. He no longer hated or feared it. “You came for answers. You came for change. You came to me for new life. And these great and wondrous things we have given you.”

When he tried to speak, no known language came out. Syllables bled off his tongue and floated away. Each effort was an unwanted chorus in an unknown song. Still, the foreign tongue communicated, and now the invisible voice that haunted him from every angle possessed form.

As the knowledge of this dark language spread through him, he felt his body being drawn closer to the edge of the cliff. The horizon shrank. His nostrils flared, and his dry tongue smacked against the roof of his mouth, forming sounds he’d never before uttered. Through red eyes it all now appeared before him. Through red eyes, his vision was made pure.

He stepped even closer to the edge. Small, jagged stones fell off the sandy cliff. He watched them crumble on tree roots and clefts and other boulders below. There was a bite at the center of his being. The cunning serpents had reached his heart. But he feared nothing. From where he stood, the bottom lay hundreds of feet down, violent waves crashing up against rocks and other frail life. The spit that had hung at the middle of his throat finally dropped into his belly. Fearless, he let go of the safety of the cliff’s edge.

His descent was quick. And there was a crash, like a wave, when his spine collided.

Fighting to breathe once more, he found movement complicated. His neck had snapped during the collision with the jagged rock. It was like a spear, chiseled from the earth. Tilting his head in a strange fashion, he felt around his new wound. His fingernails, what few remained, moved inside the grooves of punctured organs and splintered bones.
Like stones
, he mused.
Like weak stones
.

A shadow fell over him, and with its piercing revelation, the whispers hummed once more. He pushed up off the sharp rock, which had torn a hole through his abdomen, and moved himself, ever slowly, off. The sound of ripped meat and sliding blood was a hymn.

He tasted some of the blood, knew it wasn’t his. Knew it wasn’t even human.

Hitting the beach, he felt the sand crawl into his beard, mixing with the stains already crusting black. He could taste something else, almost rancid. It was the call of human souls. He craved them.

Suddenly, the hole in his gut pieced itself back together. His organs were no longer deformed; it only took a matter of seconds for the pieces of his body to replicate. The twisted intestines, sticky with slime and sand, were again placed where they belonged. Moving his spine, he heard the crack of once splintered marrow returning to its original form. His ribs followed similar patterns. Finally, each abdominal muscle was visible, films of thin skin reappearing over tissue and skeleton.

Snapping his neck back in place, he breathed a deep, new breath, and the craving grew stronger. He followed the shadow up the jagged mountain, climbing with his hands and feet. His eyes were blood-red, thirsty sewers.

But this thirst would be satisfied soon.

2

“DO YOU BELIEVE YOU’RE
crazy?”

It was just as the dust in his lungs began to settle that Jude Foster thought about the question for real. Dr. Irons, the old, outdated piece of meat sitting cross-legged in the chair about five feet away, had mastered the art of executing a question. He often presented them in ways that were impossible to ignore.

“No,” Jude reluctantly replied, cracking his knuckles.

Crazy
wasn’t a label he was ready to accept, not fully. The truth was that Jude was sick of walking into this doctor’s prison cell and talking about his feelings. It didn’t matter that he was forced to carry on these petty conversations in order to keep his position as one of the department’s lead detectives or that he hated the stink of this godforsaken room, how it reminded him of his grandparents’ basement; Jude had endured enough. The crap he’d been forced to swallow over the last few weeks was creating more than nausea in his gut. And Irons could tell.

“Relax, Jude. No one’s interrogating you,” Irons said. “I want to make you see. I want you to be better.”

Of course he did. Every doctor did, right? Like playing God with a few questions was supposed to make him feel right again. Like it could erase the past.

The medication hadn’t done much to help him either. All they left behind were droopy black pools shadowed beneath his condescending eyes. But they let him sleep some of the time. Lately, insomnia had been showing up to the masquerade ball, expressing itself in many twisted forms. In sleep or out of it, there didn’t seem to be any peace.

“You look…fatigued, Detective.”

Jude barely grunted.

“What’s the point of all this? Why are you here?” Irons asked, even though he knew the obvious answer.

“Just following orders,” came the reply. “It’s really the
highlight
of my day.”

“You enjoy sarcasm, don’t you? It’s quite the typical device for someone like you. It seems to me that you rather like making a fool out of me and the chief of police, maybe all of your peers down at the department. But what about yourself? Are
you
happy?” He paused. “Are you fulfilled by the life you took?”