The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (24 page)

The three words were like
a nail being hammered into her heart. Suddenly, she remembered the
argument they’d had on Friday afternoon. She relived the cruel way
she’d rebuffed his latest effort to make her feel sorry for him,
another sorry attempt of many, all aimed at breaking down her
resistance of wanting to be his girlfriend. Of which, she wanted no
part, she didn’t feel, think, let alone imagine herself
ever
being with him. He
wasn’t her type. He was needy and whiney, small, not very athletic.
Yet, if he was more normal, maybe none of that stuff would’ve
mattered. But, he wasn’t. All things being equal, he was weird.
That’s what scared her the most. The way he expressed himself, with
the underlying intensity, the veiled heat behind his stare and the
way he lost himself in wild scenarios just made her skin crawl.
There was no way in hell she would ever date a guy that made her
feel
that
way.
And yet, maybe I pushed him too
far, maybe I was too mean, maybe he just finally cracked…
Had she been too harsh on him? After all, she’d
said – no, she had
screamed
some bad things at him, but he hadn’t given her
any choice. The last straw was the way he’d carried on like they’d
had some unforgettable date at the Huntington Library. All that
really happened was he had traipsed behind her and her friends,
staring at her through the throng, muttering under his breath,
thrumming his fingers along his thigh.

Creepy!

At the rock garden, he
seemed like he was more in a trance than sitting among a bunch of
High School kids, chit chatting and goofing off. His face had been
slack, his mouth open just a crack as he absently played with a
strand of his hair, every once and a while, saying something so low
none of them could hear. Minute after minute, he just sat there
until he’d unsettled all of them. They agreed to move on through
the Japanese landscape beyond, hoping to put some distance between
themselves and him.

After all of the other
incidents, all of the other subtle attempts to get near her, the
excuses and “accidental” meetings in the hallway, the street, even
the mall, she had always been more irritated at him than anything
else. When he had somehow pirated her phone number and began to
call at all times of the night and day, asking those strange,
moronic questions, her first misgiving began to surface. They
became something tangible. The severity of his unnatural behavior
had been noted. It was on that field trip, her agitation began to
ripen into genuine worry. The uglier and deeper those uneasy
feelings about him grew, something vile began to take root in the
pit of her gut. When she’d looked back at him sitting on the bench
in the rock garden on that day, she knew something else was going
on within James’ head. He wasn’t merely a lovesick boy with a
misguided crush. There was something much more sinister and
foreboding going on in his mind, as if he’d crossed an unseen line.
He was now unable to hide it from the world about him.

She had glanced back at
him. She saw him staring after her, unmoving, his face no longer
emotionless, his eyes no longer looking far off into a distance
only he could see. He was returning her gaze with hooded eyes,
breathing in slow, deep breaths – inhale, exhale in rhythm with her
every step as if he was imagining something in concert with her
body. She couldn’t help her reaction, because she could see from
that piercing, penetrating stare, it was sexual in nature. This had
frightened her more than anything he had done or said in the past.
She had shuddered, and quickly turned away, scurrying amongst her
friends to hide herself from him, to escape his look, to break
whatever thought he was luxuriating within.

Maybe, he had just
cracked…

“
How did he do it?” asked
Sophie suddenly, not sure why.

“
What?” asked Jasmine, who
up to this point had been silent, entirely engrossed in the news
story.

“
How did James commit
suicide? What did he do to himself?” elucidated Sophie as Daiquiri
squirmed in her arms, tired of being held from a suspended
position. Sophie took a step and placed the small dog on her
bed.

He cracked…

“
Sophie!” Jasmines voice
was full with incensed outrage.

“
What?”

“
James didn’t kill
himself, aren’t you paying attention?” explained the other girl.
“He was murdered, girl, his right arm was torn off and is missing.
His body was pumped up with some sort of toxin that could’ve killed
an elephant. And… if that wasn’t gruesome enough, he was stuffed in
a mattress and dumped atop Townsend Avenue with a trash bag full of
all kinds of crazy shit – duct tape, dirty rags, a rope, a
knife.

“
Right
now, the police aren’t even sure what the hell
he
was doing with all that crap
before whatever got to him… well, got to him…,” she sighed hugely.
“Jesus Christ, kid, aren’t you watching what I’m
watching?”

Sophie’s eyes bulged with
shock, her ears hearing the reporter once more as she walked up
against the tape and barricades the police had put up to keep the
public back from the crime scene.

“…
now know the victim was
a fifteen year old student of Eagle Rock Junior and Senior High
School, by the name of James Henley, Jr. He was brutally murdered
somewhere in this normally peaceful, middle-class neighborhood. His
body was then stuffed in a mattress, carried and then dumped here
at the crest of Townsend Avenue, some thirty feet or so from the
street itself.

“
What the police still do
not know is why young James was crammed into this mattress with a
number of curious items after he was killed. Things they say that
often appear at the site of a murder victim, but never in the
manner discovered this morning – unused.”

“
Paula,
you mentioned earlier that this wasn’t the only strange thing about
this murder,”
prompted the female anchor
at the news desk back in the studio.

“
Yes, Marlene, that is
correct. The mystery deepened when police discovered neither of his
parents were aware James had left their house sometime late last
night…”

“
Oh my god,” was all
Sophie could say.

“
Tell me about it, girl?
And where was he going with all that ‘kidnapping’ shit in the first
place?” added Jasmine, as she clicked her tongue loudly.

The chill that went up
Sophie’s spine was so profound, her shudder so deep, she knew the
answer in an instant.

She felt Daiquiri stop
grooming herself, could feel the canine look up at her, knowing her
head had turned to the side in question.

Jasmine’s words echoing in
her head like a bell tolling in the dead of night…

…”
kidnapping”
shit…

He’d been coming for
me.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

She stepped through The
Way. It was a shimmering, silver rectangle slicing through the air
of the basement of one of the most famous homes in northeastern Los
Angeles. She was
Rasputna
- the Seeker, the Mistress of Chaos, the
harvester of deaths, killer of more living things than any other
creature in the four universes. She was the Snowman’s Dagger, the
knife in the dark, forever walking in shadow, unseen, unheard,
until it was too late. She struck with her infamous Stiletto of
Piercing and death soon followed.

It was said she had come
from human stock, a long time ago, having walked the earth amongst
the very first generations of that lowly race. Though it was the
truth, she never acknowledged or denied her lineage.

It was better to keep the
Lords of Storm guessing.

She let them think she was
far too deadly, way too evil to have come from the womb of a human
mother. It was true, however, she was without pity or conscience or
remorse. She merely did as commanded by the Lord of the Storm
without question, devoid of thought, action minus reaction, a
vessel of death, a harbinger of woe. No human should’ve had the
capability to delve to that level of soullessness, for her
detachment was absolute. No human being before or after had walked
or thought or lived in absolutes. She did. She was immune to the
human condition, foreign, unlike any other. In the quiet times,
when she sought out some depravity or another, she liked to think
of herself as the Unhuman Being. She liked the ring of it in her
mind.

She glanced around at the
familiar sight of the basement. She had come through this Way
countless times. It never changed. As long as the house above it
stayed the same, it probably never would. The basement was roughly
square, held up by mortar and cinder blocks and was obviously not
made of the materials of the house’s original foundation. It had
been modernized to withstand the frequent earthquakes of the
region. It was otherwise featureless despite a medium-sized heating
and cooling system and a three-foot-wide casement of stairs,
leading up.

The structure was
originally built in 1887 by the land speculator and real estate
developer, George W. Morgan at the foot of Mount Washington just a
few blocks from the old Highland Park Museum. It is an outstanding
example of Queen Anne and Eastlake architecture and was restored to
represent the rooms as they may have appeared in 1899. The house
itself was sold many times, even moved from 4501 to 4425 North
Pasadena Avenue (now Figueroa Street in the World of Man) before it
was purchased by James and Bessie Hale in 1906 - ever since, it has
been known as the Hale House.

Separating a few years
after buying the home, Bessie retained the title from her one-time
husband, living in and using it as a boarding home until the
mid-1960’s. Bessie left the house to her niece Odeana Johnson, who
then donated the structure to the Cultural Heritage Foundation of
Southern California in 1970. It was then moved to its’ current
location, adjacent to the Pasadena Freeway, at the very end of
Homer Street upon a plot of land known as the Heritage Square
Museum.

The Node of the Way hadn’t
always been within the basement of the Hale House. It had always
been in the small grove of trees that later became the Heritage
Square at this exact same spot for countless millennia. When the
conservators of the museum had the house placed here, Rasputna
decided to use the famous house as cover of her comings and goings
to this particular part of the World of Man. She had come and gone
for more than forty years completely unnoticed. Any other evil
creature would’ve smiled wickedly at her depraved antics over the
decades. She didn’t. She was immune.

She ran her hands down her
tall, athletic body, swishing her waist length, jet-black hair (as
straight as an arrow) from her shoulders. The static accompanying
her travel through a Way always played havoc with her hair. She had
a wide face and a wide nose and her pursed, bright lips shone pink
in the semi-darkness. The slotted windows about the basement only
let in a modicum of sunlight.

Her skin was so dark, it
was oftimes rumored to be darker than the night itself, over which
she wore garments from the World of Man. She preferred apparel from
her home, where the materials were more form-fitting, flexible and,
above all else, didn’t rustle. She wore a one-piece leotard; black,
clinging to her body like a second skin. She didn’t wear any
undergarments, so the tight nylon caressed her ample breasts and
budding nipples, clung to the twin, half-spheres of her firm rear
end and folded neatly around the crests and valleys of her vagina
like a fervent lover.

She only knew what
that
by its meaning.
Love was beyond her as well.

I’m immune to that
too.

Over her leotard, she wore
a long overcoat, made of kidskin leather, the type that would’ve
cost thousands of dollars on Rodeo Drive and not unlike those worn
by the cowboys of the Old West. Over her feet, she wore supple,
black boots with thick, suede soles that never creaked, never
scuffed the surface of any floor, and never revealed her position
to anyone. Though she moved like the wind, her clothing made her
all the more silent, deadly.