Chapter 11: The End
My hands claw at the armrests furiously. Somehow, I manage to keep my grin. He walks into the room and before he can even make out the greeting, I have his throat in my grasp.
"F-f-a-ahhh..." He sputters. My eyes burn with fury I slam his body against the wall.
"You dare tamper with my work, BOY?" I question. A dribble of black blood seeps down his chin. Letting him fall to the floor I quickly make my way towards chamber: CS 4-b89. Gripping the collar of his shirt and his hair in the other hand I hurl him into the compartment and lock the barrier door. Slamming his weary hands against the small circular window I smile and wave from the other end. Turning the various knobs, a liquid substance falls from above and his muffled screams fill his last remaining air. I despise sabotage.
My feet blindly lead me towards the bridge that leads to the highway. The gas station is the same one where I met Len, J.D., and Harry. The sun has completely disappeared now, darkness filling in the cracks where the moon shone past the clouds. It felt like one of my nightmares walking in this darkness. Careful where I rook a step, my hands reach out and search for the door leading into the connivance store. My hands grip onto a handle and I pull open the strangely heavy door.
"Hello!" I call out but with no answer. They must have left long ago. Closing the door, I begin to walk down the road. The friends I thought I had, I finally had, and now they're gone. I remember why I never kept anything at St. Jerome's. Everything eventually gets up and leaves without you. In this world, is everyone on their own?
A sudden realization comes to my mind. I start to run.
"LEN! ANN! SOMEBODY!" I call out into the night. They have to be alive. They just have to. My breath gives out short and I fall to the ground in a heap.
"Anybody...?" With my heart racing in my ears, the chuckle of the voice echoes in my mind. I'm so tired. I don't want to play anymore. Trying to stomach regret, I wish I never left the hospital now. I never wanted to get out like this. Never like this. In the distance, the shrill of a demon awakens. Dear God, I'm going to die.
God, please help me. I plead. Standing wearily, the moonlight answers my call. Staring into it's eyes right in front of me I walk towards the bright light. The sound of a horn blares in my ears. Just before I realize what's happening I turn back and notice black feathers falling from the sky. I turn around and open my mouth to scream but nothing comes out by the time the light touches my face. It's warm and calming. Like whiteout it takes the black away, it erases everything. I don't feel any pain. I can't move anything. Game over. Did we win or did we lose? Where did everything go?
Why does the air feel so heavy?
The light burns into everything, my sight, my memory, blocking out any other thing that comes in. Is the surgery over? I wonder why they're talking so much. The men in the white masks face one another and nod in agreement. The air is so heavy, I can't breathe.
"Give him another minute, he's pulling through." One said.
"Should we check on the boy?" The other asked.
The other replied with apathy, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. Suffocating me with a mask, I fall into blackness.
Sir...Sir, Can you hear us?
Opening my eyes and rising from the hospital bed, two young men in bright blue uniforms greet me with gratitude. One rests an ice-cold hand on my forehead. The other asks again if I'm alright. Where's Dr. Pumaill?
"Where...Where am I?" I reply weakly.
"Don't worry son, we'll have you to a hospital soon." More clearly now, I can see one of the men wasn't as young as he appeared before. The other left the room scribbling down something on a clipboard, the way Dr. Pumaill did.
This didn't look like St. Jerome's. It looked more like the back of a shuttle.
"When can I go back to my room doctor? My head is killing me." I murmured.
"What are you talking about? You were in a car accident, don't you remember?"
"A car accident?" I asked clueless to what was going on.
My head hurts so badly, I think I'm going to be sick...
Quickly bringing my hand over to my mouth, I sit up on command.
"Whoa, just relax. You're going to be fine. Just get some rest." He calms me lowering my head back to the table. Walking out of the shuttle, he closes the doors.
"He's gone!" Someone shouts.
"What," Another exclaims.
"I left to grab some bandages, and when I came back he was gone!"
"Was this about what he was saying?"
"Why, what did he tell you?"
"He didn't tell me anything, he was talking in his sleep. He kept saying, 'He's coming, he's coming."
I only have enough strength to scoot my hand towards my side. Setting it down immediately, I feel something soft.
Feather soft...
Everything was staring to spin.
"Hey...o...yo...hea...hat...ound...ike...roar...ng..." They remark.
My stomach was churning and my mouth was so dry.
Lifting it up, I can see it's a charcoal-black feather, all around me they're spread out like wings.
Oh god, he's coming.
"Get away! He's going to kill you!"
I couldn't speak. Trying to scream it out I accidentally bite down on my tongue. Sweet blood drips down my throat, my teeth were getting larger, sharper.
Run!
I can't breathe.
Get AWAY!
"Maaaaaaattttthheeeeeewwwwwwww..............."
Why am I so thirsty?
God, I'm so thirsty...
It's only me and Jack. We're inside of a blank room, the same room that represented my state of mind. Peering away from his stained hands, his dripping mouth nauseatingly stitches into a grin. His crimson teeth shining in the florescent light was making my stomach churn and somehow putting my blood to a boil.
"Are you thirsty?" He asks offering a hunk of god knows what, bloody and fresh. Looking closer I can see bits of blue cloth still hung from it, their nametag still in place.
"You sick f-k." I gasped backing away. I was too late.
"What? You treat them as if you were one of them." Jack replies strangely in a normal tone, not like his usual toying voice. He calmly starts flinging the rest of his dinner across the room, splattering red. Watching it dissolve into the floor it left nothing more than a faint pink stain than soon enough returned to its standard white.
"I've lost my appetite."
"What are you talking about?" I snap.
"The humans, I can't understand what you see in them."
"Those were people trying to help me."
"HELP you?" He menacingly chuckled. Jack found my breaking point and was determined to take advantage. "They seemed more like food than friends." My frown twisted into a frightened expression of disgust.
"What's the matter Matthew? Does your tummy HURT?"
Back off," I warned. The peace never lasted long.
"What are you going to do?" Jack mocked slicing his wrist with his fang drawing black blood. Shooting a black tentacle at me through his wound, he chocked my throat ceasing my end of the conversation.
"You can't even accept what you are. More or less deny what you can DO." With the air becoming heavier each passing second, something inside of me is...emptying. It feels like he's sucking my spirit straight out of my body.
"That's enough, Matthew." A deep voice commands. Dropping me obediently I have only moments to catch my choking breath before I can see the face of this man. Clenching my sore throat, I lift my head to meet the gaze of only one demon.
"What," I ask to myself. Am I dreaming? "You...what are YOU doing here?" He swifts his head to the side to move his jet black hair from his face. Unmistakably, his bloody eyes fix on us behind his cracked, rounded glasses.
"I apologize, Father." Jack immediately kneels to the floor bowing his head. Stepping towards him, the man rests his hand on Jack's crown. Jack gasps suddenly, and falls to the floor dead.
"Is he...?" I softly begin to ask.
"I did not kill him, I merely put him in sleep so that we could talk. " Stepping away from Jack's fading body; he seats himself in a chair that came out of the blue. Without realizing it sooner, I find that I'm sitting too.
"Matthew can get out of hand when it comes to, how do you say... sport?" He explained.
Did he mean by the body he was eating?
"But that isn't him, I mean me. Isn't that Jack? Like the little girl told me-"
"Matthew, I WAS referring to you. "
"But why did you call-"
"Please stop irritating me with stupid questions. I can become..." He started to claw at the arms of the chair, his nails becoming sharper than they seemed. His smile had become a snarling enraged frown. Suddenly, he stopped. He puts his hands back into his lap, sits up straight, and faces me with slight sweat beads forming at his forehead, giving me a plastic smile. "I can become very violent when I am annoyed."
"Why did you bring me here?" I demanded.
The walls began to drip brown-blackish gunk. For a second I thought it looked like blood. Bright red spiders swarmed across the ceiling spinning their bloody webs. One lowered into the man's palm, dangling from a vein-like thread.
"To explain what it is you intend to remember. It seems you're having trouble opening your closet door. Too many skeletons lodged in, perhaps?" He grinned.
"You really want me to remember something. Who are you and why have you been following me? "
"How rude, I terribly apologize," His deep, shadowy voice reminded me of something that Sweeny Todd would scathingly declare. Standing, letting his scarlet stained lab coat fall he faced me with a demonatic beam of joy. His vast fangs piercing right from the root were almost impossible to miss. His eyes glowed brighter than that of the spider's webs.
"I go by many names in this world. But only the human children believe now..." He announced bowing his head.
"But to only my everlasting children I am Father. I am Oliver Alptrum." Oliver locked his gaze spreading his arms out at me as if for a hug. Frozen in complete nothingness, my body couldn't decide over feeling thankful for finding my only living relative and giving him his hug, or freak out and run from this psychotic monster that killed my friends and family in the first place.
Backing away I make my mark. This man is lying.
"Come home SON,"
"Never," I bitterly replied, gritting my teeth.
"You've been lost all these years. Now is the time to put our purpose to use and avenge this world from its captive state."
"My Father is dead."
" I know of your adoption, Matthew."
My blood ran cold.
"Your wings, your thirst I know all. Stop denying yourself. Stop denying your fate as a Legan, an angel from both the worlds of the living and the dead. "
No...you're lying," He dropped his smile. "There's no such thing!'
"I do not lie..."
His hand covers my eyes.
Why can't I move!
"Know your true fate as a Legan. The fate of an angel caught between the undead and the deceased. Remember the night you died, the night you were re-born, and the night you proved your true power.
Remember Germany..."
I saw Oliver. He was crying at the boy's side, like in the past dream. He tried to escape from the guards again, but failed expectantly. I could see the door close as they strapped him to the operating table, and inject a huge, black syringe into his neck. The other was preparing a drill to finish this grotesque experiment.
He went limp, and died. The doctors started to un-strap him, and covered him with a huge white cloth.
Until his hand shot up, and began to choke one of them. The other gripped the drill and put it through his leg, sawing past chunks of red flesh splattered with black spots. He didn't even notice. The doctor fell to the floor, with the drill Oliver began to laugh hysterically as he finished the other hacking him in the back of the head with it. He soon fell to the ground as well. Black began to spurt from his leg staining the sheet. Something began to move, assuming it was his leg to make sure it was still in good condition.
To my horror, a thin, black tentacle rose from his wound, swiveling like its astounding life.
He continued to stare at it. Raising his hand slowly, he commanded it to follow his lead. It obeyed as he moved his hand to the left, then the right. It stretched to lift the drill, and handed it to him with ease. Dumbfounded at the drill, he clutched it with anger, hid his face and began to cry.
No, he began to laugh.
His smile was recognizable under his maddening shiver. Suddenly, he stopped. Falling back as if something shot him, he began to sleep.
The next scene was a young couple holding a baby. They're in a doctor's office.
"Give him one everyday." The doctor next to them explains. He looks like Dr. Pumaill. It went dark again and blurred into a house, with two parents and a child standing outside of it.
It was my house and my family before the accident.
"Matty, don't forget your medicine!"
"I won't mommy!"
It changed to a playground, and there was me with a little girl.
Oh my god.
It was the ghost-girl. Reaching out to stop him, he greeted her cheerfully.
As they swung and frolicked around, with not a care in the world I noticed I dropped a small pebble-like object from my pocket.
Picking it up, I saw now that it was a small, chalky white pill. It soon changed again, we were in school, and I looked like I was about to be sick.
Echoing voices ran all around, making the room spin faster.
"Matt, what's wrong?"
"Are you okay?"
"Do you wanna go to the nurse?"
Then I felt it,
more like a surge of lightning pulsing through my veins, but then it began to stop my heartbeat.
I fell out of my chair, slicing my hand on the sharp edge, spilling blood.
"Oh my god," The teacher shouted.
I crumpled onto the floor, mumbling and shivering.
"Matt...Matt," They asked.
"Matty," She got out of her chair.
She shouldn't have gotten up.
They were all so aggravating.
Why are you talking? Get away from me...
Wait how could have I have said that!
"Matthew, are you okay?"
My eyes...they were so bright. Like fire...
I could see the flicker of orange bleeding from my fingers, my blood bursting into flames. The screams of everyone and the panic as the doors locked and the windows shut to my command.
"NOOOOO," They cried.
I couldn't speak, he was here.
I was gone.
+Opening my hazy eyes, the destruction was gone, and I was back in my room. Or in my mind, I didn't really know where I was.
Looking towards my right I notice the same little boy from the church huddled in the corner of the door-less room. He looks pale with fear and his eyes purplish-black as if beaten brutally. He shifts his gaze towards me, and smiles. Opening his mouth his smile fades and forgets his original words.
"I don't have much time. " He confesses after a moment's silence.
"Have to go to a play date?" I tried to shed some light on the situation giving a little humor. The boy flashes me a scornful frown.
"Call it more of a showdown. This is serious Matthew."
"I'm sorry, " I apologize. Facing at the ground, he crawls towards the foot of the bed and seats himself.
"I see you've met the Hell Angel and the Devil himself."
"Oliver?"
Both," He corrects, twiddling his thumbs. I chuckle in amusement.
"What are you finding funny?"
"No, it's just my doctor used to do the same thing when he would think."
"What would he do, Matthew?"
"Twiddle his thumbs."
"And he would also stare at the floor, with his right leg flung over the other, correct?"
I stop and listen in surprise.
"I can see every move Oliver makes, as he can see me. He can take the form of other human beings. As to say, he can invade a body if he wishes to do so." He explains.
"What else do you know?" I demand, frightened now.
"Your doctor, his name was actually an anagram for Oliver, a pawn in his scheme for this world."
"You're lying."
"I do not lie." Suddenly, I feel as if my mouth was automatically sewn shut. Gazing dead into my eyes the boy continues with dissatisfaction.
"That being was once my body. Now he's more of a demon.
No, he's more of a ghost.
A long time ago, I had but only three sons. We lived happily trying to cope with the loss of their mother, my love." He begins to pace around the room, staring at the floor. It's strange seeing a child walk that way. The way a man filled with worry walks.
"When the army came and took them away, they tried to kill me in the process. Little did they know I had survived, fleeing I quickly followed their route towards their hideout, where they conducted horrible experiments on the children. I had but only a moment to save my second eldest, yet I failed.
They took me instead towards their lab instead out in the courtyard to shoot me. What they had in mind was to create a weapon out of a human being. But how ignorant can one person be to play the role of God. They injected me with their poison. That is where I met him. He promised me revenge, salvation, my sons. He had gone into my heart and retrieved what was left of my desires. Stupidly, I gave in and took his hand. That's where this all began. I let him take my body, and what became of me was a prisoner in my own flesh. Luckily, I am able to walk freely in the depths in my mind, in the only form that comforts me, that conceals my sanity. Childhood is the only heart of day where no man can mold his fate into pure hatred and evil. Alas, I've had only enough strength to hold on for this long. Soon enough he will consume this part of my soul as well. Which is why God sent this only loophole in that demon's deed...you."
"Me?" I ask.
"You are the only other know of him. He created you out of his own blood, along with your other two brothers. I know that only one has given into his power, but you were strong enough to withhold the world on your shoulders. You must stop them from destroying man.
Only you were a perfect completion of his plan.
Only you can destroy what I have started.
Matthew, the fate of mankind rests in your hands now."
"I can't kill him," I began.
"He's already re-opened you memory, releasing the blood's true form, your evil side. His true weapon's soul, your blood will consume you, control you if you do not take action."
"How can I kill something that powerful?"
"Remember that you too possess this power, unfortunately to your own disadvantage." I choke inside.
Grasping his throat the boy falls to the floor coughing violently. Picking him up from the floor, black blood splattered amongst his dirty white clothes and face. Staring at me with fright in his old eyes, he gurgles.
"Read me the line. Please... read me the line from the book."
Somehow, in my mind I remember it. I remember listening to a man read it to me, a man with black hair and kind, bright green eyes that I looked into for hope and guidance. With tears in my eyes I recite:
From this boy's head, whereon the apple lay
your new and better liberty shall spring
the old is crumpling down the times are changing
and from the ruins blooms a fairer life...
See; see what splendor streams around his eye!
This is not nature's last expiring flame
it is the beam of renovated life.
"This is not the end...it's only the beginning. The beginning..." He wheezed.
"Who are you?" I breathe despite the boy being on his deathbed.
"I am your father, Oliver Winndels." Grasping the edge of my shirt, he gravely whispers.
"Forgive me..." Staring into Oliver's eyes he loosen his grip and falls back, his bright green eyes fading into a swirl of grey and white. Inside I know I can't cry, because I've held it back for too long.
"D-dad?" I stutter. Brushing back his black hair, I can see strain in his face, as if he had made a huge mistake before he died. I can see it in his eyes. Closing his eyes, I hoist him onto the bed and pull up the covers. He looked more peaceful at least. Stepping back, I notice something grey poking out from underneath the bed. Pulling it out slowly, I find that it's Vern. Setting Vern in Oliver's arm it looked as if he were only sleeping now.
Kill him...
I vowed in my heart that moment I would avenge him, all of them. Not to avenge the world, the world that betrayed me, But for the people that loved me, when I didn't realize it before.
Closing my eyes, I can feel the room start to spin as I fall into the darkness.
Opening my eyes the first thing I can see is sky and all I can taste is blood.
But to myself there's a voice, my voice, realizing:
I'm not afraid of the dark anymore,
only because I can't be.
"Heheheheheh.............................
Well done, Matthew
Well done
Finally, after so long I can finally have my fun!
Heheheheheh.............."
Burn world...BURN