“Tell me what,” Ruin demanded, eying Isadore who opened the passenger door, her gaze wary on him.
“I’m not telling,” he reassured, “now get in and tell me what direction to drive.”
If Scriber wanted him to know it, he’d be told. Right? He didn’t know anything anymore. Ruin didn’t think he could stand being too close to Isadore. He opened the back door and unloaded enough boxes to fit behind Sam’s seat. The smell of death on Sam seemed stronger than ever.
“Wow,” Sam said, looking toward Isadore. “You are really…really black.”
“He’s sitting here?” Isadore whispered.
“Yes,” Sam squealed. “Sitting right here.”
“Scriber, I’m scared,” she whispered.
Sam started the car. “Holy shite! That’s not exactly comforting.” He looked behind him and backed up. “Yeah, I realize, but she’s clearly terrified, I mean you never heard of sandwiching the truth? Open with a positive encouragement, slip in the truth, end with positive encouragement?” Sam gasped, seeming stunned. “I do not think that would be seen as a positive at this point, no.”
“Please stop,” Isadore whispered. “You’re making it worse.”
“Sorry,” Sam said. “It all ends good, that much I can say.”
“It does?” Isadore gasped in relief. “Yes! I knew that.”
“Not sure what has to come before that though.” Sam added the exception with so much doubt it ruined the good feeling.
Again Ruin wondered over his effect on him. It seemed in this state, the man evened him out somehow. A half hour later, the darkness grew to unbearable and Ruin placed his hand on the seat before him, sucking in whatever power Sam had, not caring, just needing it to keep from being lost entirely. He felt like a life preserver.
“How much farther, Ruin,” Sam said.
“Soon. The stench of death is burning my nostrils.” A sharp intake of breath came from Sam, like he knew. “Tell me, Sam,” Ruin strained. “I need to know.”
“He smells it on me?”
“Yes, I smell it on you,” Ruin said. “What does that mean?”
“Okay now I’m officially freaked the frack out,” Sam said. “Why is he smelling death on me? Oh great, he can’t say. Hey,” Sam pulled the pack of cigarettes down and bit one out with his lips. “I’m a player, you know that. Whatever God’s got for me, I’m ready. Do it to it.” The lighter clicked and he puffed the cigarette until smoke billowed around his head. “Wished this was a joint, though. Could use a little relaxation.”
Ruin didn’t get the young man’s courage. What had he seen in his life to make this traumatic experience seem dull? “Take the next right.”
“Damn, I was hoping you wouldn’t say that. I think I’ve dreamed of this place. Perfect, now Scriber just left, wonder if it was something I said. The joint maybe. I wasn’t entirely serious.” Sam searched the darkness around them as they drove. “This means we’re merging some shit, yours and mine. See, I told you we were connected. You have any idea what kind of judgment this is going to be? I mean how serious is it?”
“Cleansing.”
“Cleansing,” Sam took a long suck on his cigarette and waved his hand. “As in ethnic cleansing, or what,” he exhaled a jet stream of smoke, “little more specific.”
“That’s all I know.” But it wasn’t all Ruin knew. He knew that what was going to happen would enrage and torment. He knew that it would satisfy the evil hunger inside. Ruin gritted his teeth with clenched eyes. “Take the next left and drive until the road ends.”
Chapter Five
Isadore had never been so scared. Ruin was different. Not the same. Not himself. Since they’d left out of the bathroom it had gotten a hundred times worse. She could feel the…evil on him to the point of being scared of him. Really scared. Add to the fact that she’d been judged to be executed and she was a mess, hanging on by a thread. Something about Sam calmed her though. And the urge to grab hold of his hand was nearly overpowering. She settled for keeping her hand in middle of the seat.
“I’m scared,” she whispered, hoping only Sam would hear. The evil that pumped from Ruin was palpable and nauseating.
To her relief, Sam grabbed hold of her hand and Isadore strangled it with her own. “I’m sorry, I’m not usually this fragile.”
“Your lies make me hungrier,” Ruin warned from the back seat.
“I don’t think it’s a lie,” Sam said in a casual tone.
“It is,” Ruin growled.
“Give her a frackin break, will you?”
“There are no breaks in this world.” Ruin sounded winded, his voice straining.
Isadore knew he was fighting it. “Just hurry and get him there so he can be free of this.”
“Can do,” Sam said. Isadore felt him trying to pull his hand out of hers and her fear refused to let go. “I…really need my hand to drive.”
“She’s holding your hand?”
Even hearing Ruin’s anger couldn’t make her let go, she was stuck, her fingers were stuck on eternally latched. “Yeah, like I said, she’s scared big guy, calm down.”
“I could kill you,” Ruin said, like it was an afterthought.
“Yes, you could.”
“You don’t seem to mind.”
“Oh, no, I mind. I’m just not scared of you.” Sam looked in the rear view mirror. “Did you know I can see your true form when I look at you in my rear view mirror? Alarming to say the least.”
“You don’t act alarmed.”
“I’m good at controlling my emotions is all. Trust me, I’m alarmed,” he said lightly.
“Then don’t look,” he grit out.
“That’s why I stopped today,” he said, not bothered by the fury in Ruin.
Isadore clenched her eyes shut, not wanting to ever see Ruin like a monster. Terror had her so bad she hadn’t realized she’d scooted closer to Sam now. She would have clung to him if it weren’t for the tiny bit of reality keeping her rooted to the spot. Thankfully, Sam seemed to sense her dilemma but the idea made her need him more. She just needed to feel safe, needed to hide from the terror and dread pulling her over that cliff. One didn’t go over that cliff and ever return. She wanted to hold Ruin. And she couldn’t. Panic surged at the thought and Sam squeezed her fingers as though feeling it.
“I got you, you’re okay,” he mumbled like he didn’t want Ruin to hear.
“I’m ready to kill both of you,” Ruin gasped, sounding desperate.
“Hold on there, buddy,” Sam said. “How about we talk about something else. How did you two meet, anyway?”
“Not her!” he nearly roared.
“Okay, okay let’s talk about me then. Sooo, I’m twenty seven going on forty. Which is a joke, not a lie,” he added as though knowing it would bother Ruin. “I have no love interests, thankfully. Umm, I was adopted by two selfish idiots who raised me for the strict spoilation of their daughter, the most wicked little step sister ever to exist.”
He took a huge drag of his cigarette, inhaled loudly, and then continued talking, the smoke coming out with his words. “I mean I don’t hold it against her, seeing as they made her what she is, and yes is, she is still a little monster only not little now. And I might not be quick to hit the brakes if she appeared in the road suddenly,” he said, quite seriously. “I used to feel bad that she was in a wheel-chair until I realized she used it as a bull-dozer. I swear you never seen anything like it, I was only seven when I met her.”
“What was wrong with her?” Isadore clung to his story, her life preserver.
“Myel…Meyeloschisis. A severe form of spinal bfida. Led to leg weakness at first but by the time I arrived, she was four and in a wheel chair.” He barked out a laugh. “At first I was like ohhh, poor thing, isn't she so sweet. Until I realized she was the Satan's spawn with a set of wheels. I know how that sounds, trust me, but she was a little manipulator. Conniving manipulator, using her illness to make people dance in her sick little private show. And she
did it superbly. Her acting skills made Audrey Hepburne look like a wooden puppet.” Another hard drag off the cigarette. “Look, it takes its toll on a seven year old really quick. A seven year old already torn from their family by natural disaster.”
“Natural disaster,” Ruin whispered, dryly.
“Hey!” He aimed his cigarette at the rear view mirror. “That fire was from lightening, that’s natural.” Sam sounded defensive, like he'd argued over it before, only not with Ruin. He drove in silence for a bit and continued in all casualness, “So yeah, my family burned to death in a fire, I tried to save them. I slept in the basement for fun but I saw the fire before it came. I just…I was tired of being scolded for saying bad things I saw. And so that time I didn’t. Not that it would have made a difference,’ Sam said lightly. But Isadore heard the guilt in his tone. Of somebody who had the power to save a life and didn’t use it. On his own family no less.
“Any who, I realized later I was adopted for a political angle. Mr. Jacobs needed a good charitable deed on his record and a play mate for Satan’s little princess. I do get to be grateful for a few things. I got surgery for the burns so that I wasn’t entirely deformed, was sent to the best schools, and trained in every art the little demonized child desired to see me train in. She was on a serious power trip that started when she was two, I wager. Whatever she wanted, she got and I was suddenly the live-in entertainment pet. ‘Mommy, I want Sam to play the trumpet. Mommy, I want Sam to play me the drums. Mommy, I want Sam to do ballet. Mommy I want Sam to come to school with me.’
“It was sick. But by the time little Sam got to be twelve, he’d gained a little wisdom, formulated an escape plan." He glanced at Isadore with a gleam in his eyes. "I began to terrorize her, setting up traps that I’d save her from. I had her convinced that she was being haunted by a wheel-chair demon and that my gift of sight allowed me to see him. But in order for me to truly protect her, I needed to be a ninja.” He grinned at that. “So then it was, ‘Mommy I want Sam to be a Ninja!” Sam gave a truly sadistic laugh at that with a victorious fist pump.
“Wow,” Isadore said, amazed. “And so they put you through school for that?”
His eyes got huge. “They did! And it was rigorous, lots of time away from home,” he nodded, pouting then giving a grin. “Ahhhh the power of fear, oh God, I know, I know,” he muttered in pain. “There’s a special place in hell for people who fffrack with the handicap, and I’m pretty sure I have a mansion waiting for me there.” He rolled the window down and flicked his cigarette out. “I do confess every day though,” he assured, “but… the hatred keeps coming back, like a boomerang, I throw it away and it returns to me and I have to catch it.” He grabbed in the air with a fist that shook. “Then I throw it back out,” he demonstrated. “What else can I do, it’s like inhaling goodness then exhaling funky air.”
“So… you’re a Ninja?” Isadore asked.
He shot out a laugh. “God no. I have a little self-defense training but no, not a Ninja. That takes a lifetime to learn. But I’m proficient in a few of the arts. Nothing to save a little girl from the handicap hellhounds of the underworld. But I can see them, though.”
Again a tinge of irony came through. Like he considered the gift useless. “How long have you had the gift?”
“From in the womb. And I can’t tell you how nice it is to say without worrying about being called a freak.” He eyed the rearview mirror with a happy little smile, seeming glad that there was finally a bigger freak on the block and was really hoping they could pal around. “I saw my mother and father before I was born. Along with the other side. While in the womb, I was privy to seeing more of the other side than I do now. Now, I get only glimpses of what’s coming instead of a live feed.”
“Wow,” Isadore said, feeling calmer.
“What’s coming, Sam?”
Isadore couldn’t resist the frail weak sound coming from Ruin and turned to see him. She glimpsed his head resting on the door, sweat making his face shine. He looked normal and she let out a silent breath of relief. Isadore eyed his arm that extended to the front seat. She followed it and realized his hand must be touching Sam.
“You both are draining me,” Sam suddenly said, amazed. “It’s making me dizzy.”
“I have to touch you,” Ruin gasped. “Or I’ll be lost.”
Sam pulled his hand out of Isadore’s and groaned in relief. “That’s better.”
Isadore nodded, worried about Ruin while warring with jealousy. She wanted to be the one he needed. She thought about praying but what if she wasn’t allowed? Worthy. Or…whatever you needed to be to qualify. She was to be executed. Surely that meant she wasn’t worthy or qualified. Prayers were for people with hope. Not doomed. What had she done? Was it…all the premarital sex? The lies? Had they finally added up and caught up with her? Was it her interfering with those judgments? Was she too being punished, not just Ruin? They were one, that’s what they’d said. Punishment would fall on her too?
They finally came to the end of the road as Ruin had predicted.
“Ah, damn,” Sam whispered, turning off the car. “I’ve seen this place.”
“What did you see,” Ruin barely managed.
Sam undid his seat belt. “Not good things. I don’t understand why here.”
Ruin leaned forward and put his entire forearm across Sam’s upper chest, near his neck. “What’s here?”
Sam held Ruin’s forearm, seeming a bit alarmed. “Uhh. Just…it doesn’t end well here.”
“I thought you said it ended good,” Isadore cried.
“What doesn’t end well? Tell me Sam, I need to know.”
“I…I never get to the end of the vision, I just know that I don’t want to see it. I’m always too scared.” Sam’s words were whispered now. “There’s…a boy here. I’m always here trying to help him, reach him. He’s trapped here.”
“Is he real?” Isadore asked.
“I think so. He’s like me, he sees things. I think he’s been calling me here but I never knew how to find him.”
“Maybe we’re just here t-to help him?” Isadore suggested.
Ruin groaned and slid his hand off of Sam then got out of the car. Sam hurried out and caught Ruin before he could fall to the ground. “He’s fighting it,” Sam said when Isadore ran to help only to be warded away by Ruin. “Being close to you is painful, I’m sorry. He can touch me because somehow I’m a buffer between him and you. He can feel you but not so much that it interferes, that’s the best way I can explain it.”
“Is Scriber here?” Ruin stood and draped his arm around Sam’s shoulder. Despite his large frame next to Sam, he held him up with ease.
“I don’t see him. Wow, somebody eats their Wheaties.” The strain in Sam’s voice seemed to be the only thing showing the burden. Isadore looked around in the darkness, feeling a presence surrounding them.
“Are we alone?”
“Actually, we’re surrounded,” Sam said. “But not by anything you’d want to know about,” he added before Isadore could be relieved.
She followed the two of them through the woods as close as she could. “Tell her not to worry, they’re not wanting to kill her.”
Sam repeated the words she’d heard and it made her dizzy with hope. Not just the fact that it wasn’t her death she was walking toward, but that he was worried about her. She forced down the huge lump in her throat realizing that not feeling his love was slowly suffocating her, it was the worse feeling ever. But if she cried now, she’d grab hold of a tree and never let it go.
They made it to a clearing and Sam huffed, “That’s it.”
“Yes,” Ruin said.
Isadore searched the expanse of darkness, only seeing what looked like a lopsided wood shed off to the right. But that’s what they hobbled across the ground toward.
“Scriber!” Sam gasped. “Scriber’s here. Thank you God.”
“Shut up!” Ruin growled right in Sam’s face.
“Sorry, habit.” They h
urried the rest of the way with Sam looking all around. “I take it none of these things can see you,” Sam whispered. “That’s good, yes, I agree.” Straightening, Sam nodded at the air before them. “Do we get to know what’s going to happen or we’re just doing this one step at a time in utter darkness and confusion?”
Sam’s calm tone was a huge contradiction to the question Isadore very much wanted the answer to. She thought.
“I see. Right,” Sam looked down, nodding. “You can’t say, I get it. What about Isadore, does she really have to go, I mean she could stay at the car.”
“I’m going,” Isadore said, not wanting to be left alone. “I’d rather face what’s coming. Together.”
Sam regarded her. “I don’t think it’s anything you’d miss?”
“I don’t care, I’m coming.”
“She has to come,” Ruin said.
Sam raised both hands. “Three against one, fine.”
“Scriber agrees?” Isadore wondered.
“Yes, he does, and that settles it. So who wants to go first?” Sam asked this to Ruin while gesturing to the woodshed door.
Ruin only grunted his response and pushed open the weathered slats with one inch gaps between them. “Stay close.”
Isadore watched Ruin take hold of Sam’s hand and the need to have him touch her stabbed her guts. She gasped down the wet, moldy dirt air in the dark space. “I can’t see.”
“Hold my hand,” Sam said before her.
Isadore reached out and connected with the warm fingers in the dark and grasped them tightly, devouring the strength that flooded into her body through his touch.
The descended in silence until they got to a narrow passage leading up. The walkway widened as the ascended and when they got to a door, Ruin stopped. “This is it.”
“This is what,” Sam said.
“Where I need to go.”
Several seconds of silence ensued before Sam whispered, “Then, let’s go.”
Chapter Six