A Requiem Eternal

Chapter 33 - Insight

The morning thump of the newspaper against the door jolted Kate into reality. She laid in bed sorting through her trip to New York and what a waste of time it had been. Two weeks after Daniel and Tess disappeared she began to see calls coming in on her cell phone bill from New York and knew it was where Daniel and Tess were hiding. She flew out there and roamed the streets hoping to catch a glimpse of them by accident. All she succeeded in was nearly getting mugged in an alleyway while she was chasing down shadows. Out of desperation, she went to the police and reported Tess missing. A detective took her information and coldly advised she should keep her chin up. The cop told her "her runaway daughter would probably call her after about a month in New York". Frustrated and broke, Kate had to leave New York when her savings ran out.

Why were they still delivering the newspaper to her? It was weeks since she was fired and they still hadn't updated their records? She was tired of it, yet couldn't make herself call and have them stopped. It was a reminder of her failure. She deserved to have a kick to her pants every day. It became the only thing keeping her sane and getting out of bed in the morning. She made herself read it as a form of self-punishment. Then it was time for a drink. The headline jumped out at Kate's eyes from the page.

"Media Kingpin, Steve Mac Found at Examiner Office".

She had just begun to devour the words on the page when the doorbell rang.

"Dammit."

She looked at herself in the mirror in the hall. Yes, it was the middle of the day and of course she looked like total shit. She peeked out the side window. It was Nori. She remembered her car wasn't in the garage. It was in the driveway, the consequence of a late night alcohol run.

"Oh, God Dammit."

She knew there was no choice. Her car was there out in the open and he would know she was there. She straightened herself up as much as she could and opened the door. Nori stood there with the paper in his hand.

"Well your name isn't on here, Luckily, I know enough to read between the lines," Nori said, livid.

"Come on in, Nori," Kate said with fake joviality. "I didn't give him the story, that's not in the paper, right?"

"No it's not, but it's pretty damn obvious he knew something. That's how they shut you up," Nori said pointing to the paper. "Why did you do this?"

She felt the raw emotion and the hurt aching in her throat.

"I don't care what they do to me anymore! I don't care if the world knows about them! I don't want this to happen to anyone else," Kate screamed.

Nori walked to her.

"Wait a minute, slow down...What else has happened? What do you not want to happen to anyone else?"

"Tess is gone. She left with Daniel. I don't know when or if I will ever see her again, Or if she is Psyon now. All I know is that she is alive, if you can call it that," she said, breaking down.

Nori held her for a moment. Then he helped her to sit down on the couch in the parlor. He sat across from her.

"I think you're right. It's time. I've been thinking about it myself for a while now. And I think I know how to do it. Where's your computer? Nori asked.

Kate wiped her eyes and smiled. A glimmer of what Nori was suggesting entered her mind. She gave Nori her computer and sat next to him on the couch.

"I'm going to set this up for you and you need to write all of it up in one sitting," Nori said. "Do you need some time to think about it? It'll be out there for good and there's nothing you, I or they can do about it,"

"I'm ready if you are," Kate said with a deep breath.

"Let me know when you're ready and I'll send it." Nori said.

Kate wrote through the night and into the morning. She transferred Sara's words from the grimoire then added her own experiences with the Children of Psyon. It all came to her so fast. She couldn't believe the risk she was taking. It wasn't like her at all. She didn't know if they would come for her. All she could think about was seeing her daughter again one last time.

Nori was sleeping on the couch across from her. He woke up when the light of day returned to the room. Kate smiled nervously.

"It's done. Now what?" Kate asked.

Nori walked over to her and hit send on her computer.

"Now we wait," Nori said.

"Please don't leave Nori. I don't want to be alone when they come for me."

"I'm not going anywhere." he smiled.

Kate smiled back uneasily.

Nori stayed with her a couple of days and then had no choice but to return to work. Weeks passed and nothing happened. No Psyon materialized to take her knowledge of them away. It didn't remove the uneasy feeling Kate had about her future, though. When she did have to venture out, she wasn't seeing them anymore. It was as if all of them left New Haven at once. She went to the club and found that it was just an empty space in a strip mall. The black on the door was removed. All of the elaborate Gothic furnishings she remembered from that night were gone. It was as if the club and the Psyon never existed. Everything was so quiet it scared her. Because she knew that was how the Children of Psyon operated, in silence and in secret until they chose to strike.

A month later to the day they released the information to the Internet, Kate's depression and fear lifted long enough to let her curiosity seep through. She wanted to check the website Nori created. She read through the teaser at the top of the home page and was surprised with how well written it was considering how her body shook the entire time she wrote it. She clicked on a link for the message board and was shocked at the activity there. A conspiracy theory had developed completely on its own. As she read through the conversations, she found some believed the Psyon were based on something real because of their own similar experiences. While the skeptics argued vehemently they were completely crazy and the blog was simply pure fiction. As she scrolled down further her heart nearly stopped at the number of hits her blog had received, nearly 10,000 for the month. It was bittersweet but good news. She thought at least if she lived another month, expenses would be one less thing she had to worry about. Finally, when Kate reached the bottom of the page she saw something that made her cringe. Her personal email was listed as the contact address.

She pulled up her email account immediately. The inbox was practically inundated. She thought it would probably take her days to sort through it all. She found most were from the crazies, everything from misplaced adulation to death threats. But one email subject line in caps and in bold red letters captured her attention. It read "Offer for publication of 'The Children of Psyon". It was from a publishing house she'd never in her life dreamed would contact her about anything. She opened the message and found a lucrative offer to publish her blog into a book in soft and hardcover. The undeniable urge to pace and think this through began. She paced and thought. It had been a month with no contact at all from the Psyon. Maybe they needed another stab at their heels to get their attention. It would either incite them towards some kind of vengeance or provide a slight chance to see her daughter and at this point she was beginning not to care which. A large part of her wanted to get back at them and wanted the world at large to know just what they had put her through. Hands shaking, she banged out a reply to the email accepting the deal. A familiar mist filled her home office when she sent the message, but this time Sara was silent. Her computer shut off without powering down at all. Kate stared at the black screen and realized the temporary quiet she had enjoyed was gone. It was on. She just didn't know what yet.