Sunday, September 22, 2013

Shadows on the Wall Chapter 80



Chapter 80 --  Halfway through the Wood

By Julia99/RJ


Sometimes people leave you.

Halfway through the wood.

Others may deceive you.

You decide what's good.

You decide alone.

But no one is alone.

--Into the Woods, S. Sondheim


Voiceover:  (Joan Bennett): Dark winds circle the Great House.  Old Lords call

to new disciples and the children of the Light fight to see the sun once

again. 
   

 Nicholas Blair did not notice anything but the gleaming golden mask of Ba'al.
The jewels glittering, promising, tempting.  Ultimate power was in his
grasp, finally.  He felt his own purpose solidify, his secret desires and the
fulfillment of his master's demands at hand.  He did not feel the power
rising behind him, the darkening of the room as Maggie whispered secretly her
private incantation all the while answering the Dark One's new commands.  She
could hear the words that were new but not foreign.  Her new Master gave them
over, a new language for them alone.  He told her that his minion Nicholas
was failing and arrogant.  He wanted obedience, not petulance.  Maggie was
obedient and greedy in a way that would work well.   She was also proving to
be quite adept at duplicity even with the man who knew her body but not her
soul.  He suspected her of nothing but desire for power, lust for him, not
treachery and betrayal.

"Maggie, isn't it exquisite?"  Blair's back was all Maggie saw, the Dark
One's words in her head, the heat of his power rising within, journeying from
her toes and fingers to her center. 

'Answer him,' she heard her Master command.  "Yes, Nicholas, exquisite."  Her
fingers ached to touch it, take it.  The power it contained.  She did not
fully understand but it's beauty pulled at her itching skin.

Nicholas adored the golden key.  He would not let it out of his sight again.
He held it like a baby.  "Master, I have what I've sought for so long.  I
have passed your tests, all of them and am now ready to -"

"Sancto!"  Maggie screamed the final word of the incantation-from her
outstretched fingers fire jumped toward Nicholas.  The burning flames
surrounded his body, a funnel of flame.  He did not drop the mask; only his
eyes betrayed his surprise.  Coolly, laughing, Maggie reached into the
flames, easily withdrawing the Mask of Ba'al from Nicholas' frozen hands.
"You fool!" she laughed. 


"Master!"  Nicholas screamed as the mask was taken so easily from his hands
and the flames rose up obscuring his face, his body, his entire being.
"Beware Margaret Evans.  What you've taken I do not surrender easily.  I've
long been his slave.  I know well what he wants.  I'll be back-"  His last
phrase was cut off by a violent flare and a demented, cacophonic laugh as the
earth parted swallowing him whole.

Screaming over Blair's anguished pleas, Maggie informed him--"Your Master
calls you home."

The stench of burning flesh and wool crept into Maggie's nostrils.  She
inhaled deeply the scent of her power.  The Mask of Ba'al glowed in her
hands.  She held it up but listened closely. 'Not yet my dear, not yet,' her
Master warned.

***
  
"Call me if you need anything."  Julia quietly closed the door to Vicki's
room.  Bringing her back from the Old House has been easy, but getting her to
rest and stop questioning where her baby had gone was another chore.  Julia's
headache had lessened but she still felt the Leviathans talking, celebrating.
Jebez had arrived;  they would soon accomplish their destiny.  Rubbing her
temples she walked to her own room for a long desired rest.  In this state,
she could not think, let alone find ways to stop the celebrated domination.

Vicki held up her hair brush admiring the many threads of dark hair
interwoven between the teeth.  Looking in the mirror she saw few remaining
dark strands.  Her hair was now mostly white. 

"Mother," a soft voice from a darkened corner called. 


Vicki spun to see her adult son, born only twenty-four hours earlier,
materialize.  She had seen him morph from a baby to this man; she had seen it
but still did not believe.

"I am Jeb."  He held out his arms.  He wanted his Mother's love.  He needed
it.

Vicki's eyes were wide, wild and confused.  How had this being come from her
body, her love of Quentin?  Was he Quentin's son? Or hers for that matter, or
had she purely been a vessel?  "I don't know what or who you are-" she
stammered.

His voice rich and full of power, blanketed her.  "I am your son, and I am
more."

"I don't understand."  She felt tears beginning to flow.  Where was the power
that had sustained her these last weeks?  She needed it now.  She could not
return to being the twist who cried and was in the dark about everything.
Where was the garden? 

Jeb's hands rested on his mother's snow white hair.  "In all the time you
were alone at the orphanage, in those days when the Collins family abandoned
you there-you wanted a child of your own.  In the centuries that I've waited
to be born, I planned for a kind and giving woman to bring me back into the
world--"

 
His words struck the right chord.  "Me?  You purposely chose me?"  She had
dreamt of children, something to love as she had not been.

"I, and others planned this, yes.  I am here to return my race to their
power, their glory, their divine nature.  You are part of those plans.  Your
Father, my Grandfather set things into motion long ago-"  His hand stroked
her hair as if she were the child, not the parent.

"My Father is evil!"  Vicki pulled away.  His crystalline eyes plead with
her.  She did not mistake what she saw.  There was something good in this
-this man?  There was immaturity, desperation but also, hope?

"Evil?  No, powerful, glorious, misunderstood, yes.  He does what he is
compelled to do, as will I-doing whatever must be done to bring about the
resurrection and survival of your race is not evil-" he naively and simply
explained.  He knew nothing but Petofi's words, his explanations.

"But you are human-"  She saw humanity, humility in his eyes.  Was there
kindness too?

"I am less human than the other but yes, as your Mother was human, so is
mine.  And I feel for this race, these humans but they subjected the
Leviathans-" He turned to a distant sound.

She knew what was calling to him, the ghosts and spirits of the Collins
forebearers.  They pleaded with him for life and the legacy of  humanity.
She heard them now too. "Can't you feel it?  Can't you discern the difference
between these races Jeb?  Where one is kind, the other is not-"

"Humans, kind?"  Jeb laughed.  "Need I remind you of the massacres against
your own kind, the genocide, the inter-familial pillaging?  I might not have
lived as a human but I've observed during my waiting, as a Leviathan all that
humanity has wrought to this place-innocence, goodness, they are
infinitesimal amounts of what humans are-"

She was not a history scholar, but a governess who knew the basics, what the
text books allowed to be said which didn't really deal with weighted truths,
with humanity's lesser accomplishments and greater sins.  "I can't argue that
humans are better than Leviathans through history, I can only argue what I
feel-I feel darkness and disaster from the Leviathans.  I feel the comfort
and love of my ancestors, your ancestors.  And from you I feel the
struggle-you want to be one of us but feel it is a lie-"

Jeb's hands reached out again.  His Mother felt all that he was; how could
she not?  She was a part of what he was, Leviathan, human, something else
entirely?  Even he did not completely understand his origin, his Grandfather.
"I am all that you are, we are the same.  I am your son and I am more.  You
are my Mother but also, so much more-"

Vicki laid her head against her son's chest.  She heard his human heart beat
rhythmically.  Jeb rested his chin atop her ivory hair.  "I know what it is
he wants-" she began haltingly.

"And you know I can not disobey." 


"I know."  She squeezed the steel muscles of his arm.  He had strength and
power.  But so did she.  She could not explain the longing in her heart to be
this man's mother nor could she explain her desire to save him from himself.
He was only to do what he was born, created to effect, just as she was.  But
somehow she did know better against Petofi's plans.  She had a sense of
humanity that her son did not, that her Father had not allowed.  She would
not let others destroy him or her-there had to be another way.

***


  Jeb left his Mother asleep in her room.  The quietude of Collinwood
surrounded him.  It was what his Grandfather had told him, a house of power,
a place of destiny.  It would be theirs for reasons beyond the knowledge of
even the powerful Nicholas.  Nicholas?  Jeb tilted his head outside the
closed Sitting Room doors.  He did not feel him any longer.  Nicholas wasn't
here, he was gone entirely.  He had been called home.  Jeb smiled.  There was
another but he'd worry about her later.  Right now he had two humans who
remained outside his control and they must be forced to capitulate before
they grew more willful. Jeb threw open the doors to the small Sitting Room.

"Well here you are-"  Jeb's voice bombastically filled the room.  He watched
the woman's eyes narrow, her chin thrust out in defiance.  The other man,
portly, professorial, wiped his monocle whilst smacking his lips.  "You two
have been very disobedient."

"We know what you are-"  Julia's voice was devoid of its usual nuances and
caring. 

"As you should."  Jeb picked up a small trinket from a side table, tossing it
back and forth.  "Now, it is silly for you two to refuse me, my plans-"

 

"It is silly for you to insist that we join such an absurd plot," Julia
retorted.

"What are you called?"  Stokes asked.

"You know already but to play along, you may address me as Jeb."  The
child-man walked about touching items in the room, reacquainting himself with
human existence. 

"Jeb, as Dr. Hoffman and I have skillfully demonstrated, we have no desire to
join in your plans for world domination."

"No desire-what of your desires?"  Jeb focused on the flames licking an
ashing gray log.  He need not stare at them to issue threats, to feel their
fear.  This would do.  Play upon their secrets.  Julia and Stokes exchanged
curious looks but remained silent.  "You daughter, Stokes, your secret desire
is for your daughter's life-"

"Do not speak of her!"  Stokes thrust out his chest insolently.  Julia's
comforting hand rested on his forearm.

Jeb spun around, his eyes alive with maniacal anger.  "I can restore her to
you-"

"She is gone, as it is to be.  You do not tempt me -"  Stokes reached down,
one hand resting on a burnished brass vase sitting atop the small table
before him.  Its diminutive nature exacerbated by his portly body.

"Too bad ... but perhaps the subjection of your dear dear friend Julia Hoffman
will sway you."
 

"You have nothing to tempt me with."  Julia stepped closer to the Professor
as the air filled with a familiar scent.

"Not your brother?  Raymond?"  Jeb snapped his fingers.  The ghostly visage
of a young man stood beside him.  He held a brown paper bag, he dropped candy
into his mouth.  "Raymond, your sister could return you here but she is
playing hard to get-"

Julia swallowed, her hands held onto Stokes for support as the scent of lemon
drops made her gag.  "It is not Raymond."

"Jules-"  The opaque man reached out.

Julia's eyes closed.  "You are not him."  Jeb snapped his fingers.

"All right, so perhaps I can not bring back the dead ... but I can cure Barnabas-"
Julia's eyes snapped open.  "Thought that might get your attention-both of
yours."

"Mr. Collins' affliction has been healed before without your intervention,"
Stokes huffed.

"Yes, but that was when he was made by little ole Angelique-but this time out,
well. . ."  Jeb took a few steps toward the standoffish couple.  "He was not
made by Nicholas or Angelique - but by my kind."

"You?"  Julia growled.

Seeing her curiosity, her anger, Jeb playfully informed her.  "Not me per
say, I just arrived-but by my caretakers, yes. And only I can unmake him-and
I will--"   

The Professor squeezed Julia's hand, she nodded, together they called out:  
"Amun-Ra!"  Stokes waved his free hand above the vase before him. 

Jeb looked down in amused confusion.  Stokes' hand gestured above the dark
copper vessel.  A thin line of white smoke began to rise.  "What the devil?"
Jeb laughed at the mere idea that these two could conjure up anything
threatening to him.

Stokes continued, Julia joined him.  "From the remnants of Osiris, through
the elixir of the body of Isis, the darkest soil of the Nile, from  this
sacred place, we summon thee!"  A long line of smoke traversed the room from
the vessel to the large hearth where the flames began to dance wildly,
crawling up the stones into the chimney, jumping out into the room.  Julia
and Stokes chanted, "Amun-Ra, Amun-Ra, Great God Ra."

Jeb laughed.  "What little incantation are you two trying to perform?"  The
words left his lips as the flames burst forcefully filling the entire hearth.
The heat of the sun emanated from the flames as the ball of fire collapsed
into itself taking shape as the searing heat flooded the room.  The ball
quickly changed shape, lengthening, elongating, forming a human figure.  Jeb
looked from it to the chanting couple.  Stokes' and Julia's brows were
dripping from the heat but they did not cease.

"Great God Osiris, lord of the Dead, is our family member returned to us?"
Stokes asked.

"Yesssssss-" A low, warm, female voice filled the room. 

Jeb suddenly became less amused.  "What have you done?!"

"Called in some reinforcements."  Julia smiled while touching her brow with a
hanky pulled from her jacket.

Jeb growled watching her pat her brow nonchalantly.  "You can't deny the
power of the Leviathans, nor our destiny forever, you stupid slattern!"

"Why have I been returned here?  David?"  Laura Collins, aglow in orange light,
stepped into the room.  Her nude form shimmered.

 

Julia pointed to Jeb.  "He is a Leviathan, and he has taken the mind and will
of your son-"

"My son!  You have harmed my son?"  Laura's fiery arms reached out.

"Stop this absurdity!"  Jeb stepped back, twisting away from the fiery claw.

"You must not harm my son!  Great God of Ra!"  From Laura's body a trunk of
flames burst out to engulf Jeb. 

***
 
"But you can, you must!"  Vicki stomped her feet petulantly.  Why would  Sky
refuse?  Angelique bit her thumb nail nervously watching and waiting. 

"Angelique-surely you -" Vicki pleaded.

"Surely I?"  Angelique's high pitched incredulous voice warned Vicki. 

Her hands to her breast, Vicki implored, "He is my son."
 

Angelique had enough.  Thrusting her errant blonde curls aside, she corrected
Vicki's naiveté.  "He is a monster!  He is inhuman and his complete aim is to
destroy all of us, every last one, including you!"

"No!"  Vicki shook her head.  "Sky-you have knowledge beyond mine.  But
together, our power can change this-we can help Jeb reject the Leviathans, we
can stop them, I feel it, I know it-"

"At what cost Victoria?"  Sky Rumson stood to his full height, an arm wrapped
about his wife.  "I've foresworn the powers of Darkness, although they now
attempt to retake my life.  Should I do as you ask, I will be subsumed, lost
forever-the Leviathans try what they will -there must be another way to stop
them.  I will not sign up for an eternity in Hell-"

Vicki's face twisted into a mask of hatred.  "Selfish, you are being
selfish!" 

"Aren't you?!"  Angelique stepped forward.  "We all know you could destroy
him without Sky's assistance but you won't!  You must save him-and for
that you do need help.  Who is more selfish, you or Sky?  You ask my husband
to sacrifice his soul forever to save that monster you think is your son!  A
being that has been here less than two days, you ask us to give up our hard
won, peaceful lives for the spawn of Petofi!?"

Vicki stared, hearing the woman but rejecting her logic.  Jeb was her child,
she felt it in her heart, in the emptiness now of her womb.  In her mind she
heard others tell her, Jebez is your son, he is human.  He is salvageable,
your son can be saved.

***
 
In a darkness he waited.  The strange fire creature had vanquished him for a
short time but he would rebuild his strength and return.  Let the haughty
professor and rigid female doctor think they had a victory over him, it would
make them careless.  That and their affection for his Mother. His Mother, did
she note his absence?  Did she feel it, had she known what they were
planning?  No, she loved him.  He loved her.  He wanted to be with her now,
feel her hands on his chest, listen to her words asking him to consider
another way, live another life.  He wanted to be what she wanted.

'Love is not lasting-stop fussing with such absurd human notions!'  Jeb heard
the voice, the one that directed him.  He felt a burning on his hand.
Looking down he saw a large, ruby colored ring.  He instantly knew, it was
the source of the voice, the power.  Within lay the spirit of his
Grandfather. 
 

"No, what compels her to exist, curiosity, desire, love-these things are not
absurd."  Jeb had tried for his whole two days of life to push aside these
things that lived within him.  They never screamed so loudly as when his
Mother held him, when he comforted her.  He could not spend eternity without
what he felt and knew when she held him, he would not, could not be devoid of
it.

'You are my Grandson, my son!  I forbid this type of thinking!  Focus on
returning to Collinwood and taking those two obstreperous humans into your
control-once they and their inhuman friend are under your power, we will
persevere!"

***


  "How long do we have?"  Barnabas worried his ring yet again.  Julia wanted
to reach out and grab his hands, stop his fidgeting. 

"Eliot said no more than forty-eight hours before he would be strong again
and return."  Julia pushed aside the stack of books she'd spent nearly eight
hours reviewing.  She pulled forth the last set, only three more she sighed
wearily.  Barnabas raised his head, checking the mantle timepiece.  He had a
few more hours before he had to retire.  He stood, a cup of tea would be a
nice thing for Julia he thought.

She opened her mouth to object to his departure but then spied him taking her
cold cup.  Since their conversation a few days ago, since he'd confessed all,
he'd been rather kind ... was that the word?  Yes, he'd been kind and solicitous
toward her.  He seemed to think about what she wanted.  He even said when it
was all over they would take a trip away to rest and shop.  He suggested a
new coat.  She had spied his frown before but didn't know her coat was so
intensely disliked.  She rolled her aching shoulders.  There was no time now
to dissect his reason or motivations.  She reached for the book he'd been
perusing for the last hour.  While he had keen eyesight, he was not a fast
reader.  She skimmed the text.  "Barnabas!"  She quickly read in the text all
the things he had told her about an ancient race.  Julia turned over the
cover of the book, it was ostensibly, and Eliot had said surreptitiously,
about Greek mythology.  But she read closely and saw it was not.  She read
aloud:
 
The Kraken
 Below the thunders of the upper deep,
 Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
 His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
 The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
 About his shadowy sides: above him swell
 Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
 And far away into the sickly light,
 From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
 Unnumbered and enormous polypi
 Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battering upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by men and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
 

"What is that?" Barnabas returned with a hot cup of tea.  He set it down,
resting a hand on Julia's shoulder as he leaned over.  She tried not to think
anything or react to the overly-familiar gesture. 

 "It's the book you were reading.  Eliot told us how it was written in code,
these references to the Ancient Ones, the Titans being the Greek Gods before
Zeus, Hera and that pantheon.  In this book, the Titans are actually code for
the Leviathans."  Julia twisted in her chair, Barnabas' hand falling away.
"Vicki said she had visions of a great sea creature before Jeb was born, a
dream-"

"Petofi-"  Barnabas stood taller, he kept his hand on Julia's chair back. 

Julia nodded.  "The only thing that could destroy the Kraken was the head of
Medusa, a priestess of Aphrodite whom the goddess punished for sleeping with
Poseidon in her temple-"

"She became a serpent woman-"  Barnabas remembered his Greek mythology. 

"Yes, Perseus used her head to turn the Kraken into stone."  Julia made an
exasperated noise whilst taking up her steaming cup of tea.  "Now where are
we going to find that?"
 
 ***
  

"You're back!"  Amy jumped like a child watching Jeb rematerialize.  She had
sat patiently in the Tower room awaiting him. 

Jeb saw her.  He wanted to free the child from the Leviathan control.  He
knew her soul was somewhere in torment watching. 

"No!"  Amy stomped her feet.  "You mustn't think of that."  She was becoming
quite exasperated by Jeb's vacillating emotional state.  Between him, Roger
and David she was the only truly loyal follower.  Barnabas had thrown in his
lot with his girlfriend and ex-wife.  Amy ground her teeth.  Those two women
exerted too much control over him.  Once Jeb stopped dithering, she would see
that he focus on Barnabas and the doctor.  

"Can't you hear her?"  Jeb looked out at the distant ocean, it called to him.

"No, I can't and you shouldn't try to hear her.  Things are ready, it is
time."

"You are driven," he noted with remorse.  His Grandfather's malevolent
lectures in the darkness had only tilted him further toward his Mother's
kindness and love.

"You were born to lead us Jeb, anything else you would do is a waste of
time."  Amy opened the door.  "You can pretend all you like but you were born
to restore us, them to the world, you can not do anything else."

"There can be no peace between us and them?"  Jeb followed the girl into the
hallway and down the stairs.

"That was decided long ago.  There is nothing to be done but follow the path-"

"But as a leader, I can chart another course-"Jeb and Amy halted at the
landing at the top of the stairs.  Below the could faintly hear Roger singing
some boozy version of  "The Lady is a Tramp."

"You forget, you are the Grandson of our true leader, you are to follow his
course, not chart you own."  Amy spun at hearing Roger drop a decanter in the
Drawing Room.  "And it's time for him to say bye bye!"  Amy bent down.  From
her boot she pulled out a syringe.  "Always good to have a doctor with drugs
in the house-"  She smiled sweetly before bounding down the stairs to the
drawing room.  "Mr. Collins!  I need your help!"

TO BE CONTINUED ...

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